Remember Jamie Baker (Jamie Baker #3)(4)
Admitting it out loud caused my chest to cave in. I met his angry gaze, and my voice cracked when I spoke my next words. “There’s no more hope. I’ll never know who I am.”
Tony’s rage dissipated in an instant. For all of his faults, the guy really did care about me. He sat down next to me on the couch and took my hand into his. “Of course you will. I’ve seen your notebook. You probably know more about yourself than most people do, because you’ve spent the last six months paying attention.”
That wasn’t the same thing. “Maybe I’ll know I like pistachio ice cream and old horror flicks, but I’ll never know my real name. I’ll never know my birthday. I’ll never know who my parents are or if I have brothers and sisters.”
My hand went to my neck, as it always did when I thought about my past. I pulled the little charm I always wore from around my neck and examined it for the millionth time. The necklace was, oddly, made of copper. The charm was cut in the shape of a sun and had a strange hole in the middle. I couldn’t figure out what it was for, but I could tell that it had a purpose.
The necklace itself was a mystery. I’d been wearing it when Tony found me after the explosion. I asked him about it, but he didn’t know what it was. When I asked him where I got it, his answer then had been that I’d worn it as long as he’d known me—since before the scientists had captured me.
Tony ground his teeth. His voice was strained as he fought to keep control of his temper. “Forget the past. It sucks that you’ll never know those things, but you need to get over it. Going to see that doctor was stupid. I hope, at least, you can let it go now. Move on. You’re April O’Neil now. You need to accept that.”
He may as well have slapped me. He was probably right, but he didn’t have to be such a jerk about it.
Too angry to speak, I left him alone on the couch and went to sit at the computer. As I turned the machine on and clicked open the Internet, Tony let out a hard breath. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to figure out who I am. If you’re going to be a jerk, then I’ll do it by myself.”
“What are you going to do? Post your picture on Facebook and start asking people if they know you?”
“If I have to!” I snapped.
“Visticorp would find you in two seconds.”
It was times like these that I wished my eyes shot actual lasers from the retinas. I didn’t have that superpower, but I still tried to develop it right then. When his head didn’t explode, I turned back to the screen. “For your information, I’m going to use my necklace.”
“What do you mean? It’s just a necklace.”
“The design is too odd. It’s unique. It has to be a custom piece. Perhaps a jeweler could tell me who made it, or at least point me in the right direction.”
As I googled custom jewelers in the closest city to our house, which happened to be Las Vegas, Tony scoffed. “Good luck with that. I wouldn’t get your hopes up too high.”
The lights flickered as my control on my temper snapped. “Well, it’s not like you’ve been any help. How could I not be on any missing persons database? You’re supposed to be a computer genius. How could you not find anything? Someone has to be missing me.”
Tony stuck his hands in his hair and yanked. “I told you, you were so little when you came to Visticorp. There wasn’t much I could do. I never knew your real name, either; just the number they assigned you. I can’t do a whole lot with Subject 4281 in missing persons databases. But why does it matter so much? We have a good life now. We have each other, and we’re safe. Why do you need anything more than that?”
He was really asking a different question. He wanted to know why I needed more than him. He was frustrated that he wasn’t enough to make me happy, that he wasn’t family enough for me.
I tried to relax, reminding myself that this was a hard situation for him, too. “Yeah, we’re safe, but hiding out in the middle of the desert, never leaving the house, isn’t a life.”
“We leave,” Tony said defensively. “We’ve visited all the national parks in the country, and we go to the Grand Canyon all the time.”
Not the same thing.
The house we lived in was located in Middle-of-Nowhere, Nevada. It was over a hundred miles from any human life in any direction. There wasn’t even a road that ran to it. The only way you could find it was with GPS coordinates.
The outside was designed to blend into the landscape around it. It was dirt-brown and dusty-looking. It was depressing on the outside, but on the inside it was a cozy, welcoming home with all the conveniences modern technology could give you. It wasn’t a bad place to live, but when it was just the two of us, well, the company became a bit stifling at times.
We lived here in complete seclusion. For the first three months after the explosion, we never ventured out of the house once. We lived off the supplies in the house and never left. Ever. Tony told me it was because we couldn’t take the chance of getting caught. He said Visticorp would be scouring the globe for us, using high tech satellites and stuff. We had to disappear completely so that Visticorp would be certain we were dead. I understood, but I didn’t do well cooped up inside.
After about three months, Tony finally relented and we started leaving to go for the occasional walk in the desert to practice controlling my powers, or to visit some national parks. But we were completely sequestered from the world, never seeing another soul besides each other. Tony was a sweet guy most of the time, but not nice enough for me to want to spend the rest of my life with only him.