806 Page 3

  “Yeah, amazingly bad,” I retorted.

  Dylan sighed. “Now are you gonna answer them?”

  I had so many emotions running through me that my hands were shaking, but I managed to send both of them an answer from Nonameband@aol.com. It just said, “See you tomorrow.”

  “You have to tell me everything immediately after you meet them,” Sasha ordered. “Do not breathe more than five times before texting me every word that was said.”

  “Call me when you’re ready to talk,” said Dylan, looking deep into my eyes. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m good,” I said. But I wasn’t. I was scared and a little sick to my stomach because I had a feeling that tomorrow my whole life was going to change, and then I realized something else. I didn’t know if Swimmy and Abracadabra were male or female. So right then I started hoping that at least one of them was a girl. Dylan was right, I really did want a sister. It would be sweet if she was vegetarian and liked the music I liked. Maybe she’d even have a real tattoo. Most of all, maybe she’d be someone I could count on.

  chapter five

  I got to Fuddruckers at ten minutes before noon, grabbed a table in the back, and stuck a sign on my guitar case with 806 written on it. I sat the case straight up on the chair next to me, ordered a salad, and waited for Swimmy and Abracadabra.

  While I was cooling my heels, it suddenly dawned on me that there was a chance I could know my sibs, at least by sight. I had looked up Cryosperm on the Internet, and back when Kim was sperm hunting, they were the only sperm bank in the greater St. Louis area. Central High was huge, and a whole lot of middle schools from all over the city fed into it. I tried to remember if I’d seen anyone at school who looked at all like me.

  Then I got a flash. It seemed to me that Amanda Cooley, editor of the paper and one of the truly hip, kind of resembled me on my very best days. She could possibly be walking into Fuddruckers any minute. I would be so stoked to be related to someone like her.

  My eyes were glued to the door, and my heart raced anytime someone my age walked in. By twelve fifteen, it felt as if I had been there for hours. I had given myself a headache from staring at the entrance, so I was more ticked off than nervous when I heard a loud sneeze and looked up.

  “Oh shit!” came out of me before I could stop it.

  Standing in front of me was Gabe Butcherelli, a bookwormy nerd who was in the science club. He wasn’t the cool kind of nerd who was funny and brilliant. He was the nerd everyone felt sorry for, who did bad magic tricks at the last school talent show. He was skinny, wore thick glasses, had mousy brown hair, was always coughing or sneezing, and he didn’t look anything like me. To make things worse, he was wearing a Breathe-Rite strip across his nose that had “806” written on it. It was beyond human comprehension that Butcherelli and I could be related. And then it got worse.

  As he blew his nerdy nose and sat down, I heard a voice say, “Sorry I’m late, I’ve got a messed-up sense of direction. I got kind of lost.”

  I looked up to see a nightmare from the opposite end of the high school food chain. There stood Jesse Worthington-Flax: captain of the swim team, blond golden boy, dumb jock, “Mr. Perfect,” major heartthrob, and major a-hole. He had an “806” sticky note stuck to his varsity jacket. A large group of girls in school, with the notable exception of me and Sasha, had the hots for him, but Sash and I couldn’t stand him and his posse of mentally challenged sports fanatics.

  He took in the sorry sight of me and the nerd and tried to smile, but even he couldn’t manage to pull that off. He just sat down, stunned, and we all stared at each other for what felt like forever. The disappointment in the air was stronger than the smell of dead cow burgers.

  “This is obviously a shock and a disappointment to all of us,” I finally said. “Clearly we are not each other’s people, and neither of you is the sister I was hoping for, but maybe we should swap bios while we’re here?”

  “Yeah,” Jesse said. “I’m hungry.”

  After he ordered a hamburger with extra bacon and Abracadabra ordered chicken soup (because, he explained, it sometimes cleared his nose), I wanted to disown the two of them on the spot and get out of Fuddruckers right then and there. Anyone who ate the meat of helpless dead animals was a project to work on, like Sasha. But Sasha was worth the effort. This jock was not.

  These nightmare sibs couldn’t have been less like me, but I’d agreed to fill them in on my story. I told them the screwy saga of my life with Mom up to now and all about Max and the big lie. I neglected to mention, however, that just looking at them made me feel really bad about the genes we shared.

  “My parents lied to me, too,” said Gabe, slurping away. “But I’m not mad at them. My dad was like Max. No swimmers. He felt really ashamed about that, and he’s always wanted kids. So my mom got inseminated, and they didn’t tell anyone, not even me.”

  “How’d you find out?” Jesse asked, chomping on his burger in the most revolting way possible.

  “We did blood typing in science class, and I got my parents’ blood types off their organ donor cards. They were both O, and I turned out to be A, so I had to have had an A parent.”

  “Did they freak when you told them you knew?” I asked.

  “Not really. First, I thought my mom had cheated on my dad, so I was really relieved to find out it wasn’t that. And they were so sad and guilty about not telling me the truth that I felt sorry for them. My mom’s the best. My dad’s a real tough kind of guy, but he loves me for me. He’s interested in everything I do, even if he doesn’t totally get it.”

  “If things are so perfect at the old homestead, then why did you want to follow your ‘806’ connection?” I wondered if I’d be searching for my dad if I had a great one at home.

  “I’m curious about my donor dad. Not what he looks like, ’cause I look just like my mom—same face, same bad eyes—but I wonder if he’s smart and if he likes magic and if he’s allergic to everything that grows, the way I am. I’ve always wanted some answers to a bunch of question marks in my life.”

  There was another long silence. “My turn,” said Jesse, after ordering another side of bacon. “I’ve always known I was a donor kid because I have two moms.”

  “That is beyond cool,” I said. “I’ve always considered lesbians to be the ultimate individualists.” This made me see Mr. Perfect in a new and cooler light.

  “I guess so,” Jesse answered. “It wasn’t always like that, though. I got teased about it in elementary school. Some of my teachers even acted weird, but Liz and Tina have always helped me deal with the crap. I just can’t handle the latest.”

  “What’s the latest?” the nerd and I asked in unison.

  “They’re breaking up. Now we’re gonna be screwed up and split up like almost everyone I know. They work together as party planners and after their next job, Tina’s moving back to Boston where she’s from, and Liz is staying here. They told me it’s up to me to decide who I want to live with by August, and I can’t do that. Tina’s my biological mom, but I love Liz, too, and I don’t want to change schools and all that. I have to choose between them, and I can’t. When they asked me what they could do to make it easier, I made them give me my donor dad’s number.”

  “Did one of them go straight?” It just popped out. I seem to have no edit mechanism.

  “Uh-uh. I asked that.” Jesse shook his head. “They’re both still gay. They said they don’t feel the way they used to, that they’ve lost what they used to have, and they need to be apart. I gotta find my dad so maybe I can live with him, or if I tell them that’s gonna happen, maybe they’ll stay together and try harder.”

  “Using 806 as a weapon may not be happening for you, Swimmy,” I told him. “He was a ‘do not contact’ donor. That means he wanted to be anonymous and probably still does.”

  I guessed Tina and Liz hadn’t shared that little tidbit because for a moment his face crumpled, and he didn’t look all that perfect. Then he ordered another bacon burger a
nd went off somewhere in his head.

  “Hey, wanna see a magic trick?” Gabe offered. “This is called ‘Silver Smoke’.” Without waiting for an answer, he stood up and did some lame trick that made quarters disappear into smoke.

  “Wanna see it again?” he asked as a couple at the next table flailed their arms to wave the smoke away.

  “How could we have the same father?” I meant to say it in my head, but it came out of my mouth.

  “Beats me,” said Jesse, looking at me with bacon grease lining the corner of his mouth.

  “Bacon burgers make me sick,” I told him. “I hate that my mom works at Burger Boy. I’m a vegetarian.”

  “You look like one,” he said.

  “What does that mean?” I asked, although I thought I knew. “What do you think it means?” he asked.

  I ignored the question, although I knew it meant I looked like an oddball.

  “Do either of you have a webbed toe or two?” Gabe blurted out. I think he was trying to head off whatever was coming between Swimmy and me.

  “No,” we both answered. “Do you?’

  “Of course not,” he retorted.

  “Then why did you ask?” I wanted to know.

  “I don’t know. Just in case,” he muttered.

  “In case of what?” Jesse asked.

  “This is getting too weird,” I said, standing up and picking up my guitar case.

  “You play guitar?” Jesse was full of brilliant questions.

  “No,” I said, “I just carry around a case.”

  “Talk about weird,” Gabe commented.

  I couldn’t listen to them or look at them for another minute. My sibling dream had crashed when I saw them, and now it was going up in flames.

  I threw “Have a nice life” over my shoulder as I headed for the door. I never, ever, ever wanted to see those two again. I was aching inside. They didn’t know it, and I knew deep down they couldn’t help it, but they had broken my heart just by being who they were.

  chapter six

  I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t feel like texting Sasha or calling Dylan. I just wanted to forget the Fuddruckers nightmare, so I wandered over to Forest Park, sat on the grass, and noodled on my guitar. I wanted to get lost in my music, and I guess I did because when I looked at my watch, it was almost six. I hightailed it home, hoping I’d be able to get into my room before my mom got back from work. I had told her I was meeting them, and I knew she would be full of questions I didn’t want to answer. But no such luck. There she was waiting for me, all excited.

  “What were they like?” she wanted to know. She was already glowing with the happy news she hadn’t gotten yet.

  “Like people I never want to see again,” I snapped.

  Her face fell. “What do you mean?”

  “My brothers are Jesse Worthington-Flax, an idiot jock, and Gabe Butcherelli, a nerd with allergy problems. I’ve seen both of them in school. I have zero in common with them, so I’m not really seeing family there. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  I caught a glimpse of her shocked, sad expression before I slammed into my room. I was thankful she knew me well enough not to follow me, even though she wanted to try and make it better. There was no way to make this better.

  I lay down on my bed to relive the horror of it all, and I guess I dozed off because I woke up to hear my computer yelling “mail truck.” I figured it was Sasha or Dylan and wanted to put off rehashing what had happened, so I lay there for a while thinking about how just when you think everything is the total pits, it can get even worse.

  When I finally made it over to my computer, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I slammed my hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t scream as my stomach clenched and churned.

  There was an email and the subject was: TO MY CHILDREN FROM THEIR BIRTH FATHER, DONOR 806. I opened it and saw it was addressed to “Swimmy” and “Abracadabra” as well. For a minute I couldn’t breathe from excitement, and then fear took over. I was scared to open it. Scared of who he would be and if he’d be the biggest disappointment of my life after Jesse and Gabe.

  I’m not religious, but I whispered a prayer, “Please God, don’t let him be a creep,” and then I clicked “Read.”

  “My dear children,” the email read. “First let me say that I was overjoyed to see your postings. I have long regretted my decision, seventeen years ago, to be a ‘do not contact’ donor, but it was only today that I discovered this website. At the time I made the decision to be a donor, I had no idea of the import of what I was doing. I hope I can make that up to you.

  “Let me tell you a little about myself. I grew up in St. Louis and played varsity soccer at St. Louis University. I met my beloved wife when we were both med students at Harvard. We share a practice, but most of our time is devoted to Doctors Without Borders. We have only recently returned from Zimbabwe, where we ran a mobile medical clinic.

  “A family is the river of life and you, my children, are examples of a miraculous faith in its loving power. I can’t wait to meet you all. Dr. Jeffrey Rosenberg.”

  I must have read it fifty times. Oh my god! He was so cool. Harvard! Zimbabwe! A man dedicated to serving others. The absolute opposite of Henry VIII. He was everything I could ever hope for, and he wanted a relationship. Unfortunately, that relationship included my puke-worthy brothers, but that was the least of it. I was going to have a dad!

  We exchanged emails, and Doctor Dad sent us his address in Ladue, a fancy suburb, and invited us to visit the next day. I agreed to take the bus with my lame sibs since it made sense for us to get there together. Jesse was really stoked. His plan to scare his moms into staying together might have a shot now.

  Just then my cell phone rang. It was Dylan.

  “I was worried when I didn’t hear from you,” he said. “I thought you might have been kidnapped or something.”

  “I just wasn’t ready to talk.”

  “Are you ready now?”

  “You bet your best bass riff I am.”

  “You sound really up. Were your sibs cool? Do you have a sister?”

  “No and no. My sibs are Gabe Butcherelli and Jesse Worthington-Flax.”

  There was dead silence on the other end of the phone.

  “You didn’t hurt them, did you?”

  “No, I left before that could happen.”

  “So why do you sound so good?”

  “Because we all just got an email from our ‘do not contact’ father who changed his mind and wants to meet us tomorrow.”

  Dylan actually sounded a little choked up. “You see, good stuff can happen to you even though I know you don’t think it can.”

  “Historically it hasn’t, so I base my expectations on that. It makes sense to me.”

  “Things are always changing, KT, except for one. I’m always here,” he said.

  “Until you’re not,” I answered. “I gotta go now,” I said and hung up the phone. There was nothing else to say, and I wanted to enjoy the good feeling I was feeling.

  And then I realized something that made me even happier. It was a really, really good thing I hadn’t gotten that tattoo because I was going to be a Rosenberg.

  We didn’t even sit together on the almost empty bus. Jesse stretched out on the back seat and went to sleep with his head on an overnight bag that had a soccer ball tied to it. Guess he thought he and the old man would kick it around together. Gabe stuck his stuffed nose in a book called The Science of Magic, and I sat across the aisle reading a paperback titled Every Goy’s Guide to Jewish Expressions. My mom had bought the book before she went on JDate. Like her, I wanted to be totally prepared and had already thought about converting. I pictured how happy my dad would be when I told him. I had seen videos of Sasha’s bat mitzvah when she was thirteen, and it was very cool. I wondered if I could have a belated one at my age.

  The doctor’s house was beautiful, a perfect family home. It had a cute little path with flowers on either side leading u
p to the front door. We stood in front of it on the sidewalk, just staring. Then Jesse took a preppy sweater out of his bag and slipped it on. He looked like a Ralph Lauren ad in one of Mom’s fashion magazines. I shot him a look.

  “What?” he asked. “I want to look like I fit in. I could be living here.”

  I rolled my eyes, and we walked up to the front door. I went to ring the bell, but Gabe stopped me.

  “Wait,” he snorted and pasted a Breathe-Rite strip over his nose. “I want to be clear, nasally.”

  “That is disgusting,” I said, ripping it off his nose. “Which one of you is more annoying?”

  “Probably me,” said Gabe as I rang the doorbell. We held our collective breath, and then the door opened.

  There stood a beaming Dr. Jeffrey Rosenberg. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and looked as if he were in his late thirties.

  He was about 5’10”, lean and good-looking, with a warm smile and nice twinkly eyes. He was wearing one of those sweaters with patches on the elbows. He looked smart and kind and understanding.

  He was the perfect dad and . . . he was African American. Yes, he was African American. His skin was a warm beige, like the color of Dave (Pink Floyd) Gilmour’s Stratocaster, but he was African American beyond a doubt. Next to him stood his pretty, Michelle Obamaish, pregnant wife surrounded by their kids: two teens who were younger than we were and a set of twins about nine. All of our smiles faded as everyone stared at each other for a long time. Then we introduced ourselves.

  “Your mothers must have very powerful genes,” the doctor said finally. “Please come in.”

  The kids surrounded us as we entered. The twins were smiling and curious, and the older ones looked suspicious and pissed off. I didn’t blame them. Who would want to share their perfect dad with three strangers?

  “KT, Gabe, and Jesse, I’d like you to meet my family,” said Doctor Rosenberg. “My wife Nicole, my little ones Rashida and Kidada, my daughter Susan, and my eldest, Marcus.”