It's One of Us(50)
The decision hits like a lightning strike—no more! No more interference. No more pills and shots and hope and dreams. No more feeling inadequate, no more pitying glances from Park. She can’t keep on like this.
She is not going to be a mother, and she will simply need to come to terms with it.
Her heart is pounding, and she has the urge to weep, but there’s relief there, too. She’s been torturing herself—let’s not pretend fertility treatments are anything to laugh at—but it’s not that. Desire conflated with stubborn pride is a corrosive beast.
She takes a deep, shuddery breath. You’re okay. Strength.
24
THE DAUGHTER
The halls of the school are buzzing with girls in hunter-green plaid uniform skirts and white button-downs. Scarlett moves among them, smiling and laughing, waving to her English teacher as he leaves for the day, hugging her BFFs, before they all pile into her car for the after-school Starbucks tradition.
So normal. So right. This is what being a teenage girl is supposed to look like—beautiful, carefree, surrounded by excitement and energy, leggy colts just coming into their sexual and intellectual powers.
She shakes her head, and the fantasy dissipates. Yes, she is standing in the halls of the school, but there is no one with her. She is alone, as usual. She’s never felt like she fit in here. Maybe because she doesn’t come from the deep pockets of Southern money, maybe because she’s not good at playing the game and kissing the ring, maybe because she doesn’t have the completeness of a family unit—who knows? She doesn’t have any super-close friends, only a few geeky girls like her who smile and chat during chemistry labs. She eats alone, she goes to Starbucks after school alone. She pretends it doesn’t bother her, that she doesn’t need the companionship of a pod of girls, but sometimes, seeing them screaming and falling all over each other and laughing, it hurts.
She’s still not sure what she did that set her apart. Things had started well. She wore the same hairstyle—as much as she could manage with her curls—she wore the right shoes, had the right phone and case and pop socket, watch, even her own car, though not a Mercedes or BMW or Wrangler. There used to be invitations, there used to be open seats. Sometime, somehow, over the past few months, that’s changed, and she can’t pinpoint what she did wrong.
Maybe she’s too smart. Her grades always have been off the charts, and smart women who don’t play the game can be terrifying to their peers. She’s always been more comfortable behind the screen of her computer or the pages of a book.
Maybe it’s her mom. The weirdness started after a sleepover she’d hosted. She’d thought the night went great—Peyton had even shown up. Her handsome, friendly, already-off-to-college brother had been mooned over by several of the girls. Maybe he never returned their texts. Maybe that upset them. But one by one, they started peeling off until it was just her again.
It doesn’t matter. Another two years and she’s out of here entirely. And now she’s found another family, and who needs the approval of the Chastains and Gillians and Ashleighs of the world when you have actual sisters and brothers to discover?
Scarlett skips her normal after school-coffee—there she is again, lingering by the sweetener and milk, hoping someone asks her to join them, titter, titter—and uses the library’s computer to do some more research. She doesn’t want her mother hanging over her shoulder. Now that Darby knows, now that she has Scarlett’s password, she needs to find another path to her family.
She knows the email addresses of a couple of the Halves by heart. She opens a fresh email account, sends them notes—my mom busted me, she knows about the Halves, so do the police, and they’re looking for the one of us who killed that woman—careful not to share that she is the one who ratted them out, then digs into one of the databases she’s been using and looks at the group’s structure.
There’s a new match. Her heart flutters. Another girl, another sister, and she’s sixteen, too. These shadow selves are fascinating to her. There are now four of them, sweet-sixteen half sisters. Scarlett sends her a message—Hi, don’t want to shock you, but I’m your half sister. Want to chat?—and leaves her new email address.
The new email pings almost immediately, the subject line four question marks, the message short.
Half sister? What?
Hi! I’m Scar. Yes, you’ve matched to me because we share a biological father through sperm donation. I don’t want to upset you with this news, but there are quite a few of us. We have a support group on Discord. If you give me your info I’ll send you an invite. This is going to be very overwhelming for a while—trust me, I know—but we’re a super chill group and it’s been amazing learning more about each other.
She pauses. Should she tell her all of it? No. It’s enough of a shock to find out you have multiple halves without learning one of them is a murder suspect.
Let’s start with something easy, though. What’s your name and where are you from?
Nothing.
Not unusual, to start.
If the person isn’t looking for siblings on purpose, the shock of the news can be upsetting. Some of the kids are searching, with and without permission, but some have no idea they’re the result of sperm donation, so not only are their worlds being blown up, the lives of their parents are upended, too.
Using her compromised account, she logs into the Halves group. The chatter has slowed since the news of the murder. Not a huge surprise, since no one knows who did it, and one of them is a part of this group. But she has a DM, from Jezebelle.