If...
“If I told you I just found out I was adopted,” he asks his little sister, “a few weeks ago, what would you say?”
Mere is fourteen and thinks she knows everything. He is nineteen and is none too sure about that fact, either.
“Connor, you self-important freak,” she says, “you’re not adopted. Mom has all those obnoxious photos of you as a baby. Way more than she has of me. Which is so unfair. No way you’re adopted.”
In her hands, she holds the waffle with icecream he just bought her. She grins at him, sure he’s come up with a new way to tease her. It’s the same grin she had as a toothless baby, only he has never seen her then. He has never met her until about nine months ago.
It’s impossible.
“No way,” he repeats, and grins back.
“Wow, you had me going there for a moment,” she says, and after gulfing down some more of her scrawberry-flavoured icecream, confesses: “You’re getting better. So that’s what this Stanford thing is good for. You’re totally motivating me to go to college, Connor.”
“Nah, you’re too smart for college already,” he shoots back, and by the time he is on his way back to Stanford, he knows two things: she has successfully made him loan her fifty dollars for A Very Important Very Secret Don’t Tell Mom And Dad thing, and he’ll never ask her again. This is his world now, Mere and Mom and Dad and Stanford. His one girlfriend was Tracy who dumped him which he’s till sore about somewhat, but Tracy is dating some football-playing math genius now and safe and sound, and not in a coma or in a grave. He never breathed in the dust of a vampire after staking it. He never killed anyone.
He never had a daughter.
He’s just a boy.
Everything else is a dream. This is his world, and he wants to keep it.
The next day, Angel drops by for coffee, and the world ends.
Mere is fourteen and thinks she knows everything. He is nineteen and is none too sure about that fact, either.
“Connor, you self-important freak,” she says, “you’re not adopted. Mom has all those obnoxious photos of you as a baby. Way more than she has of me. Which is so unfair. No way you’re adopted.”
In her hands, she holds the waffle with icecream he just bought her. She grins at him, sure he’s come up with a new way to tease her. It’s the same grin she had as a toothless baby, only he has never seen her then. He has never met her until about nine months ago.
It’s impossible.
“No way,” he repeats, and grins back.
“Wow, you had me going there for a moment,” she says, and after gulfing down some more of her scrawberry-flavoured icecream, confesses: “You’re getting better. So that’s what this Stanford thing is good for. You’re totally motivating me to go to college, Connor.”
“Nah, you’re too smart for college already,” he shoots back, and by the time he is on his way back to Stanford, he knows two things: she has successfully made him loan her fifty dollars for A Very Important Very Secret Don’t Tell Mom And Dad thing, and he’ll never ask her again. This is his world now, Mere and Mom and Dad and Stanford. His one girlfriend was Tracy who dumped him which he’s till sore about somewhat, but Tracy is dating some football-playing math genius now and safe and sound, and not in a coma or in a grave. He never breathed in the dust of a vampire after staking it. He never killed anyone.
He never had a daughter.
He’s just a boy.
Everything else is a dream. This is his world, and he wants to keep it.
The next day, Angel drops by for coffee, and the world ends.