“No.” Gallagher reached forward and seized my hand. “Delilah, they died because of the surrogates. Let the guilt lie where it belongs. We didn’t bring them here. We didn’t lock them up instead of sending them back to whatever hell they came from. And we didn’t fire those guns or poison those milk cartons.”
I knew he was right. But I also knew that none of that mattered. We let the surrogates out.Weunleashed them on the world, and everything they—
Pain shot through my abdomen, so sharp and sudden that I cried out. Warmth flooded my thighs.
“What’s wrong?” Gallagher asked.
Lenore took one look at my face and knew. “The baby’s coming.”
September 1999
Rebecca Essig stood from her desk chair as the first bell rang, and fifth graders began to wander into her classroom. Today, there were noToy Storybackpacks orParent Traplunch boxes, but close-toed shoes and brown bag lunches were in abundance.
The menagerie had come to town, and the fifth graders of Franklin Elementary had complimentary, limited-access tickets.
“Everybody take your seats please!” Rebecca called across the room as she headed for the classroom door, where she stood every morning to greet her students. “We’re loading the buses right after the second bell, and the quietest table gets to line up first!”
Matt Fuqua marched into the classroom wielding a giant string of red licorice like a ringleader’s whip, lashing the shoulder of the girl in front of him. Rebecca confiscated the candy in midlash with reflexes honed by four full weeks of seizing contraband from her problem student. “No candy in the classroom,” she reminded him as she folded the licorice whip and dropped it into the trash can. And made a mental note to make sure it was still there when they left for the buses.
“Ms. Essig, my mom said to remind you to bring my emergency inhaler.” Neal Grundidge stopped in the middle of the doorway, heedless of the line growing behind him. “She says all that hay and dust will definitely trigger an asthma attack. Oh, and my EpiPen.” He shrugged. “I guess she thinks I might also inhale a peanut.”
“They’re already in my bag.” Rebecca waved him into the room to uncork the traffic bottleneck. “And you’ll be in my group, so you’ll have access to them all day.”
Neal was always in Rebecca’s group. As was Matt Fuqua. She couldn’t assign kids with severe allergies or behavioral issues to parent chaperones, which always left her with a ragtag group of charges suffering assorted problems and varying levels of attentiveness.
As the rest of her students filed into the room behind Neal, Rebecca’s gaze caught on a familiar dark ponytail bobbing in the sea of heads coming down the hall. Delilah Marlow walked into the classroom chatting with her best friend, Shelley Wells, and as she had on the first day of school—and every day since—Rebecca caught her breath.
Two towns over, Elizabeth would just then be walking into her fourth grade class at a school down the street from the Essig house, and though the girls were a year apart in age, they were virtually identical. Even down to the length of their hair and a fondness for sparkly fingernail polish on chipped nails.
But that was where their similarities ended. Where Elizabeth was fiery and outspoken, a chatterbox who never met a stranger, Delilah was reserved and thoughtful, only truly opening up to her best friend.
So far, Rebecca seemed to be the only person who knew both girls, but she worried constantly that the half-hour drive between towns wouldn’t always be enough of a buffer. That eventually, a mutual acquaintance would notice that Delilah Marlow and Elizabeth Essig looked so much alike that they could be not just sisters but twins.
Someday, Rebecca knew, she would have to put more distance between her adopted daughter and her secret sister. But that day would not come this school year. Rebecca still had eight more months to be a legitimate, if covert, part of her sister’s life.
“Good morning, Delilah. Shelley,” she said as the girls passed her. “Take your seats please. We’ll be loading the buses in a few minutes.”
When the second bell rang, Rebecca lined her students up and marched them down the hall and out the side door with the other fifth graders. It took two buses to ferry all three classes plus chaperones to the county fairgrounds, and by the time they arrived, Rebecca was ready to take the whole fifth grade circus right back to school.
Matt Fuqua was going to be the death of her. Or get her fired.
Rebecca gave her parent chaperones their marching orders, then began to herd her group of six children toward the front gate, following the calliope music like rats toward the pied piper. The kids chatted excitedly with one another, then oohed and ahhed over the shiny souvenir tickets the lady in red sequins handed out at the front gate.
As they headed into the menagerie, an acrobat walked by on her hands, her legs bent at the knees so that her feet dangled just inches over her own head. “How does shedothat?” Shelley asked.
“She’s a circus freak.” Matt stomped past the girls with an air of entitlement most boys didn’t assume until halfway through middle school. “My dad says some of them are just as weird as the monsters they got in cages.”
Rebecca hurried forward with an apologetic glance at the acrobat. “They’rehuman.” She grabbed the back of Matt’s shirt to keep him from wandering down one of the off-limits paths reserved for full-price ticket holders. And adults. “That’s all that matters.”
“Are wesurethey’re human? My dad says sometimes you can’t tell just from lookin’. Remember the reaping?”
Rebecca gave him a stiff nod and let go of his shirt. To most of her fifth graders, thirteen years may as well have been a century, and they thought anyone old enough toliterallyremember the reaping must be a senior citizen.
They had no way of knowing that their teacher remembered like few others ever could.
For the next couple of hours, she wandered the menagerie with her charges, rounding up the stragglers and setting a reasonable pace while they ogled the exhibits. But after Matt Fuqua made fun of Delilah in front of a large crowd, Rebecca decided it was time for lunch, just to give him something to do with his mouth, other than make trouble.
She led the kids to the petting zoo, where there were a series of picnic tables and a hand-washing station, so kids could wash up after petting the werewolf puppies and the centaur foals. The children took their time meandering the open-air stalls, staring at the exhibits, but it wasn’t until they sat down to eat, when she didn’t have to keep one eye on Matt, that Rebecca truly noticed the creatures they’d come to see.
