Free The Rotten Beast by Mary E. Pearson Page B

time. But then it occurs to me that I have every right to waste her time after what she and her father have done to me. She deserves the punishment of these visits. She can’t smugly tell me I’ll be taken over and then just drop out of sight.
    I watch from the porch on days seven, eight, and nine, and on day ten she appears, swinging a paper bag in her hand.
    â€œMorning,” she says as she walks up the porch steps.
    â€œMorning? You disappear for ten days and all you have to say is morning? Where the hell have you been?”
    â€œWhat’s it to you? I’ve been busy. I’ve been living life .” She sits down in the chair next to mine.
    â€œIf you can call it that. Your father told me everything. I may be eighty percent lab creation now, but you’re even worse—ninety percent! We don’t have blood and muscles beneath our skin. We have blue goo and who knows what else? How can you call that living?”
    She ignores my question, smiling at something she sees in the garden beyond the porch. She jumps up. “Got to go!” And runs down the steps.
    â€œWait a minute!” I call after her. “You just got here. Where are you going?”
    She turns to look at me as she continues to walk backward, smiling as if this is all impossibly funny. “Ethan’s waiting for me on the road—and he’s way better company than you are. But I brought you something. In the paper bag. It might help speed up your… transition . Enjoy!” She turns and runs away.
    â€œWait! Come back!” But she’s already disappeared behind the long hedge of oleander. I hate her. And I’m not going to enjoy anything she brought me—especially not something that’s going to make me give in.
    I walk back to the rocker, still swaying from her abrupt departure, and look at the small brown bag resting beside it. I nudge it with my foot. Nothing happens, so I pick it up and look inside. A peach. A large, round, peachy peach. It’s an odd thing for her to bring me. I pull it out and sit down on the first porch step, looking at it from all sides. It looks ordinary. I scratch the skin with my fingernail and it peels back to reveal rich brown flesh. And that’s when I remember.
    Last year at the Charter, Rae was leading a discussion of current events. She liked to throw in fun, unusual news too, and that day she shared a news video of a newly developed chocolate peach. I remember being ashamed that I was secretly fascinated by this news. I loved peaches and I loved chocolate and I wondered what the two would taste like together, but to try one would go against everything I believed. All those months that I volunteered in the FSEB offices, I had heard stories. I heard about bioengineered plants entering the food supply and tainting natural populations to the point of extinction. It was another glaring example of why there had to be controls—even over chocolate peaches.
    I stuff the peach back in the bag and set it on the end of the porch. I could throw it away, but better that I save it for another ten days until it’s good and putrid and then give the rotten beast back to Jenna.
    But it isn’t ten days before she comes again. She comes the next day, this time with Ethan in tow. They only stay for a few minutes. Ethan hugs me, which I allow him to do since he isn’t really a part of this whole fiasco, just a bystander like me. I awkwardly return his hug and note the silky feel of his shirt against my bare arms. I pull away.
    â€œWhat is it?” he asks.
    â€œNothing.”
    Jenna smiles, as if she knows everything about me. I want to wipe the smile from her face. “Try the peach yet?” she asks.
    â€œNo!”
    â€œIt won’t last forever, you know?”
    â€œUnlike some things.” I know a few things too, Jenna . My parents told me how long we both might live, thanks to our Biogel and her father’s