Rush The Game

with an answer, albeit one he’s clearly edited.
    “In the beginning, it was because my parents thought it would be great for our family to experience different places and cultures.” His chest expands on a deep breath, then he blows it out. “Eventually it was just because Dad wanted us close.”
    That isn’t the whole story. He’s left out a huge chunk. And whatever he’s left out is horrifically painful for him. I know enough about suffering to recognize it. I feel sad that he can’t share it with me, and hopeful that one day soon, he’ll trust me enough to tell me.
    I feel around for an innocuous question. “So . . . any siblings?”
    He just stares at me, like I’ve hit him or something. I feel cold, then hot. My instincts scream for me to touch him, to take his hand, to hold it. I ignore that and just sit there waiting.
    “No,” he finally says, very soft.
    “I’m an only, too. I used to wish for a sister. But I always had Carly. Besides, there are some benefits to being an only, right?”
    He doesn’t say anything. I think again of his eighteen schools and figure he never had the chance to forge close friendships. So maybe being an only child was tougher on him.
    The silence stretches, and I feel the need to fill it. “It’s weird . . . I had this nightmare a few nights ago and in it, I had a sister. She had green eyes. Her name was Lizzie. But we were in a car accident and she— What?” He’s staring at me so intently, I think I must have avocado smeared on my nose or something. I do a quick swipe with the back of my hand.
    He’s still staring. I stare back. “Your eyes,” I murmur, “were you born like that?”
    “I was born with an opaque layer over my corneas. My parents took me to a bunch of specialists. No one could figure it out. They weren’t cataracts. They weren’t anything that anyone had seen before. And because I was able to see as well as anyone else, they decided against surgery. They just left well enough alone. Things didn’t change overnight. It was slow and subtle, but by the time I was six, my eyes looked like this. By the time I was seven, my parents figured it was easier for me to wear sunglasses and get a medical note than to try and explain my eyes. Kids can be nasty.”
    “Adults, too.”
    “True enough.”
    “So those diseases you rhymed off for Mr. Shomper. You don’t actually have any of them.”
    “No. I don’t have any disease at all.”
    “Why don’t you wear colored contacts to hide the color?”
    “I do when I absolutely have to. Like when I got my pic for my driver’s license.”
    “But you don’t want to wear them all the time?”
    “Can’t. They disintegrate within an hour.”
    I don’t know how to word the next question, so I just come out and say it before I chicken out. “So your eyes are Drau, which means somewhere back in your line, you had an ancestor who was one of them.”
    “Most likely. Does it matter?”
    I think about it, then say, “It matters in the scheme of the game. Are there some Drau who are good?” Is that why one of them is part of Jackson’s genetic pool, or is that because of a darker reason?
    But in the scheme of how I feel about Jackson, no, it doesn’t matter at all.
    “Never met a Drau I liked . . . ,” Jackson says. “Maybe if they weren’t trying to kill me, it’d be different.” He takes my partly eaten half a sandwich from me, takes a bite, then hands it back. “Next question.”
    Which one to ask? I have so many. “If I have alien DNA, why hasn’t anyone ever noticed anything weird in my blood work? Or my mom’s blood work? I mean, she had a million tests because of her cancer. No one ever said a word. Or is the alien DNA from my dad’s side? His mom had eyes like mine.”
    Jackson holds up his index finger. “You probably get the DNA from both sides. Your strain’s pretty strong for it to have come from just one.” He holds up a second finger and I realize he’s counting off answers to my questions. “Blood tests look at standard stuff. Iron. Red blood cells. White blood cells. Enzymes. Stuff like that. If you go for the average blood tests, they aren’t looking for genetic stuff most of the time. The doc has to special order genetic tests. And even then, they don’t have tests for every genetic variant.”
    “So basically you’re saying no one will see it because they aren’t looking for it.”
    “And because no one knows what to look for.”
    “How do you know