Chapter 19: Chapter 19

Thursday morning, I was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt my grandma had given me for my birthday last year that had a picture of a unicorn on it reading a book that said, “The Last Human,” which I thought was hilarious. My grandma really was pretty cool. I couldn’t sit still, though. I was pacing the living room while my mom went about her normal routine of cleaning everything. I must’ve been driving her nuts because she finally looked over at me from the shelf she’d been dusting across the room and shouted, “Cassidy Elizabeth! Sit down!”

“Sorry,” I said. She laughed, though, so I guess she wasn’t really mad. Just teasing.

“Did you drink coffee again?” she asked, moving on to the hutch.

I remembered trying it once before, when Elliott was here, actually, and I was trying to be a mature young adult instead of an awkward adolescent. “No,” I muttered, my mood going from anxious to somber almost instantly. “I’m just nervous.”

“Why?” she asked, running the green feather duster over the top of the antique hutch. “You’ll be perfectly safe with Jamie.”

“It’s not that,” I said, wondering why she thought that was my concern. “I just don’t know him very well.”

“He’s a nice young man,” my mom assured me.

“Mom, we both know he’s, like, a hundred and fifty.”

She paused and turned to face me now. “I can’t do that, Cassidy,” she said with a shrug.

I was sitting in my dad’s chair across the room from her, so it was sort of hard to make eye contact, but I did my best. “What do you mean?”

Mom let out a loud sigh and crossed the room to sit in the seat across from me, feather duster still in hand. “I can’t look at these people and see that they appear to be only a year or two older than you but know they were around during the Industrial Revolution. Or in Christian’s case, the Revolutionary War. I just can’t do it. I know it drives you and your sister crazy to hear me call them ‘young man’ or ‘young lady’ but that’s the only way I can process it. Maybe it would be different if I was in your shoes….”

“No, Mom, I get it,” I nodded. “I guess I never thought about it that way. I mean, I don’t have to process the fact that Jamie is so much older than me because he seems to be older than me anyway. I don’t look at him and think, ‘That dude could be my great-great-great-grandpa.’ I guess it’s different when you seem to be older than the person, even if they were born way before you.” I hadn’t really thought about it from that perspective before. “Do you wish….” I stopped myself. I didn’t want to hurt my mom’s feelings.

“Do I wish I wouldn’t have gotten so old?” she asked, laughing. My mom is almost fifty, my dad a little older than that, but neither of them look particularly old, although Mom has little laugh lines around her eyes and I know she colors her hair to keep the gray at bay. “Sometimes I do,” she admitted. “When I realized Aaron looks the same today as he did when I met him, when Cadence was a baby, when I see Hannah,” she shook her head at that, “and think, ‘Hey, that could be me,’ but for the most part, I’m happy with the choice I made. I know I wouldn’t be able to do what they do, what your sister does. What you will do.”

I was glad she had included me. It made me think she was confident in my ability. “What made you so sure?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Just a feeling. I’ve never liked violence of any kind. I have trouble squishing spiders. I can’t imagine tearing the head off of a Vampire.”

“Cadence almost threw up that time she saw a mouse in the trap in the garage,” I reminded her. “But she ripped that Vampire’s head off who had Drew without even thinking about it twice. Maybe you were just never in the right situation.”

“Maybe,” Mom shrugged. “Guess we will never know. It doesn’t matter. I’m happy with my decision. So is your father. He got enough of LIGHTS growing up there.”

“Do you think he’s sad that Cadence has already joined, and I am going to?” I asked.

“No, I know he’s proud of both of you, proud of his family’s legacy. But your dad’s a much better engineer than he ever would’ve been an assassin.”

Her choice of words had me laughing. I could see my dad in ninja garb with nunchucks. My giggling stopped abruptly when I heard a knock on the door, and my stomach climbed into my esophagus. I leaned over and peeked out the blinds and was startled to see an SUV in front of our house. I hadn’t even heard the engine. “They’re sneaky,” I muttered.

“It’ll be fine,” my mom assured me, resting her hand on my knee before she headed to the door.

I took a deep breath and tried to remind myself I was just going to my grandma’s house. With a friend of my sister’s. Who was a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old doctor. With magical healing powers….

“Hello!” my mom exclaimed, opening the door. “How are you?” I thought she was being overly welcoming because she knew I was freaking out. I walked over behind her, trying to remind myself to be cool so they didn’t think I was a goofy little kid, but it was harder than expected.

Jamie stepped in and hugged my mom, kissing her on the cheek, and Christian followed, shaking her hand. They were both wearing khaki shorts and T-shirts, which seemed so odd to me. It was hot outside, so I could imagine they would be dressed like regular people, but I was so used to seeing everyone in either black jackets or suits, it just seemed off.

***

“Hey, Cass,” Jamie said, smiling at me. “How are you?”

“Great,” I replied, trying to sound excited. “How are you?”

“Not too bad, thanks. Ready to get you up to Des Moines so you’re up to speed with everyone.” He sounded like he was repeating something Aaron would say, not like himself exactly, but I just nodded.

I looked at Christian for a second and managed an awkward smile with a mumbled, “Hi,” and he awkwardly smiled back at me. Jamie turned and looked at him but then made an expression like he was used to this sort of strange behavior.

“Cassidy has her laptop set up in the dining room,” my mom said, ushering them that direction as she closed the door. I took a few steps backward and they followed. I wasn’t sure if my mom was done with her thought, so I said nothing, and by the time I figured out she was, we were almost in the other room, and I felt like a weirdo again.

My laptop was on the dining room table. I had decided Christian didn’t belong in my bedroom. I opened it and said, “Do you need my password, in case it restarts or something?”

“Uh, probably not,” Christian replied, “but if I do, I’ll get it from Jamie.”

“Okay.” I wondered why he didn’t just want me to write it down but thought it was probably a good thing that he wasn’t insistent that I just hand it over to him. “Is there anything else you need?”

“Do you have any bottled water?” Christian asked, his hands on his hips.

I had meant computer related, so his question threw me off a bit. “Uh….”

“I’ll get it,” my mom said, squeezing my shoulder as she walked by. “Would you like a glass of ice?”

“No, thank you,” Christian replied, as if ice was repulsive. I usually tried to avoid looking at him because there was something about him that gave me the heebie-jeebies, but I couldn’t help but stare in awe right now. He was so weird….

“Here you go,” Mom said, handing it to him, and he plucked it out of her hand with a quick thanks and pulled the chair out in front of my laptop, causing me to jump backward to keep from getting hit by it.

“Shall we go?” Jamie asked as Christian began the sort of frantic typing one might see at the airport. I could tell Jamie was slightly amused at his friend’s behavior but that he was also used to it, and I wondered if it was anything at all like my appreciation of all things Emma, though I hated to compare her to Christian.

“Yes,” I nodded, turning to look at my mom.

She put her arm around my shoulder and walked with us to the door. I grabbed my phone and cross body bag off the table next to the door and my sunglasses from the little bowl I kept them in. “Now, drive carefully, Dr. Joplin,” my mother said, her arm still draped around me. “I know you can put her back together, but I’d just as soon keep her in one piece. She’s more fragile than the other young ladies you’re used to working with.”

“Yes, Mrs. Findley,” Jamie replied, smiling at my mother hen. I could feel my face turning red. Why did my mother have to be so embarrassing?

“Be careful, honey,” she said, kissing me on the head.

“I will.” I hugged her back but didn’t kiss her on the cheek like I usually did. She looked a little hurt, so I rolled my eyes and gave her a quick peck.

“Have a good time.”

“I’ll have her back in a few hours,” Jamie assured her as he opened the door and I followed him outside. Why did I feel like I was going on a date? My mom had a way of taking awkward situations and making them impossible.

My sentiment didn’t change when Jamie opened the door for me. If he pulled out a corsage, I was bailing. Of course, he didn’t, but he did close the door for me before running—in slow motion, for him—around to the driver’s side and climbing in beside me.

“Well, that was… weird,” he said, starting the engine. He pulled out some dark sunglasses and put them on, and I tried not to think of him as the same special agent type individual who had whisked my sister away from her first Vampire encounter.

“You think?” I said, rolling my eyes. “My mom, God love her, sure knows how to embarrass a person.”

“Oh, you’re mom’s fine,” he argued, turning the corner at the end of the street. He was driving just as recklessly as he had the last time I was in a vehicle with him at the helm. “I was actually referring to Christian.”

“I can totally see that, too,” I agreed. “But my mom talked to you like....” I stopped myself. I definitely couldn’t say what I was thinking.

“Like I was taking you to the prom?” he asked, merging onto the highway going the speed my dad goes when he’s out on the open road.

“Uh, yeah.” I wanted to grab the bar above the door but didn’t do it. Jamie just snickered. “Explain to me why you guys drive so fast?” It probably shouldn’t have been a question, but it came out that way. Elliott had done the same thing in the Lamborghini once, though I got the impression he was either trying to scare me, or he thought I’d have fun flying down the highway. I had no idea what Jamie’s objective was.

“Am I scaring you?” he asked, weaving out from behind a semi-truck and evading a minivan that happened to be changing lanes. The other drivers just kept on going like it was no big deal, like they didn’t even notice, and I realized we were going so fast, we might’ve seemed like a blur to them.

“Not scaring exactly,” I said, trying to relax. “Just… different than, say, my dad.”

He laughed but didn’t take his eyes off the road, which I was thankful for. “Don’t worry. I’m not driving nearly as fast as this vehicle is capable of going or my reflexes will allow. You’re perfectly safe.”