Kiss The Wrong Name

CHAPTER ONE Day Eleven It was dark enough that she had to trust her hands. His mouth was at her collarbone and his fingers were in her hair, which was not her hair. It had been cut and dyed in a hotel bathroom eighteen days ago, and some mornings she still reached up and was surprised by it. But she wasn’t thinking about that now. She wasn’t thinking about the cameras, or which hand to hold a fork in, or the rule about never laughing with her teeth. For the first time since she came through the gate she wasn’t counting anything. There was only him, breathing like a man who had been underwater a long time. Then he said a name. It was barely a sound. She felt it more than she heard it, a shape pressed into her skin. It wasn’t Celeste. It wasn’t Maren either. She lay very still. He didn’t seem to know he had said anything at all. * * * Twenty days earlier Kieran was doing the crossword when she walked in, which meant he already knew. He did the crossword when he was nervous, in pen, which was its own kind of lie, because he was bad at it. He was sitting cross-legged on top of the blankets with the tray table pulled across his lap and a cup of ice chips going soft beside him. Twenty-two years old, and in the yellow hospital light he looked about fourteen. “Seven letters,” he said, without looking up. “‘Not what it seems.’ Starts with D.” “Deceptive.” “That’s nine.” “Then I don’t know, Kieran.” “Me neither.” He capped the pen. “So. Dr. Okafor came by at seven.” She put her bag down on the chair. She did it slowly, like she was setting down something that might go off. “It’s back,” he said. “Obviously. You can tell by the face you’re making.” “I’m not making a face.” “You’re making the one where your chin does the thing.” She put her hand over her chin. He laughed, and then she did, a little, and it was the worst sound she had ever made, because it was real and it was in this room. He told it the way he told everything, like a story about somebody else. A second transplant, if they could get him into remission first. A newer drug for the remission part, one the insurance company had already written to say they considered experimental. He said the word like the name of a bad restaurant. He had the whole order of things straight in his head, and she understood that he had been sitting here since seven o’clock putting it in order so she wouldn’t have to. “It’s a lot of money,” he said. “It’s handled.” “That’s what people say when it isn’t.” “Kieran.” “Maren.” He waited until she looked at him. “You get this look, like you’re about to rob a bank.” “I don’t have a look.” “You have a look.” She sat on the edge of his bed, and he leaned his head against her shoulder the way he used to when he was small and the thunder was too loud. Neither of them said anything for a while. * * * The financial counselor’s office was on the second floor, past a vending machine that only took exact change. Her name was Gwen. She had a bowl of wrapped mints on her desk and a printout she turned around with two fingers, the way you turn over a photograph. The number at the bottom had a comma in it, and then another comma. Maren read it three times and it was the same number each time. “There are programs,” Gwen said. “I want to be clear that there are programs.” “Sure,” Maren said. She folded the paper in half, and in half again, until it fit inside her fist. The stairwell was the only quiet place in the building. She went down two flights, sat on a concrete step, and put her forehead on her knees. She didn’t cry, and she was angry at how much she wanted to. Her mother had died when Maren was seventeen and Kieran was twelve, and in the ten years since, she had been the only adult in any room the two of them were in. She had been the backup for everything else in her life too, the second cast, the girl who knew every line in case somebody got sick. She had always been fine with that, mostly. Backups don’t have to be brave. They just have to be ready. “Whatever it costs,” she said to the wall. Her voice came back small. “I’ll fix it. I will.” Nobody heard her. That seemed to make it more of a promise. * * * Home was a fourth-floor apartment with a radiator that knocked and a view of somebody else’s air conditioner. There was a sheet of paper taped to her door. She knew what it was before she read it, from the color: the landlord used pink so you couldn’t pretend you hadn’t seen. Pay or quit. She peeled it off and put it in her coat pocket with the folded printout, and the two pieces of paper sat there together like they had arranged to meet. She didn’t turn on the light. She stood in the kitchen in her coat, listening to the refrigerator, and then her phone buzzed against her hip and she almost dropped it. A voicemail, from a number she didn’t know. It had come in while she was in the stairwell. “Ms. Solis. My name is Ines Tarrant. I represent a private family, and I’m calling about a thirty-day engagement.” The voice was calm and a little dry, the voice of someone who had made this call before and expected it to go the same way. “The fee is two million dollars. I know how that sounds. I’d ask you to hear the rest before you decide it’s a joke.” Maren sat down on the kitchen floor. “There’s an address. Tomorrow at four. If you’re not interested, delete this and I won’t call again.” A pause, and in it the small sound of a pen being set down. “You were recommended because of your face.” The message ended. Somewhere in the building a door slammed and someone laughed on the stairs. Maren held the phone in both hands for a long time. She had been told her whole life that she had a useful face, a face that could stand in for other faces. Nobody had ever told her it was recommended. Recommended by whom? She hadn’t auditioned for a private family. She hadn’t sent a headshot to anyone in over a year. Someone had looked at her face closely enough to know what it could be made into, and had given her name to a lawyer without once asking her. A private family. There was only one she had ever tried to reach. She played the message again, and listened to the last sentence twice.