Carpe Corpus Page 0,3

his head. "You're welcome, honey. Happy birthday. Be careful."

She stood for a moment, watching him play with his piece of birthday cake. He didn't seem hungry. He was losing weight, and he looked older than he had just a year ago. He caught her look. "Claire. I'm fine. Don't make that face."

"What face?"

Innocence wasn't going to work on him. "The my-dad's-sick-and-I-feel-guilty-for-leaving face."

"Oh, that one." She tried for a smile. "Sorry."

In the kitchen, her mom was buzzing around like a bee on espresso. As Claire put the plates in the sink, her mother chattered a mile a minute - about the dress, and how she just knew Claire would look perfect in it, and they really should make plans to go out to a nice restaurant this week and celebrate in style. Then she went on about her new friends at the Card Club, where they played bridge and some kind of gin rummy and sometimes, daringly, Texas Hold 'Em. She talked about everything but what was all around them.

Morganville looked like a normal town, but it wasn't. Casual travelers came and went, and never knew a thing; even most of the college students stayed strictly on campus and put in their time without learning a thing about what was really going on - Texas Prairie University made sure it was a world unto itself. For people who lived here, the real residents, Morganville was a prison camp, and they were all inmates, and they were all too afraid to talk about it out in the open. Claire listened with her patience stretching thin as plastic wrap, ready to rip, and finally interrupted long enough to get in a hasty, "Thanks," and, "Be back soon; love you, Mom."

Her mother stopped and squeezed her eyes shut. "Claire," she said in an entirely different tone - a genuine one. "I don't want you to go out today. I'd like you to stay home, please."

Claire paused in the doorway. "I can't, Mom," she said. "I'm not going to be a bystander in all this. If you want to be, I understand, but that's not how you raised me."

Claire's mom broke a plate. Just smashed it against the side of the sink into a dozen sharp-edged pieces that skittered all over the counter and floor.

And then she just stood there, shoulders shaking.

"It's okay," Claire said, and quickly picked up the broken pieces from the floor, then swept the rest off the counter. "Mom - it's okay. I'm not afraid."

Her mom laughed. It was a brittle, hysterical little laugh, and it scared Claire down to her shoes. "You're not? Well, I am, Claire. I'm as afraid as I've ever been in my life. Don't go. Not today. Please stay home."

Claire stood there for a few seconds, took a deep breath, and dumped the broken china in the trash.

"I'm sorry, but I really need to do this," she said. "Mom - "

"Then go." Her mother turned back to the sink and picked up another plate, which she dipped into soapy water and began to scrub with special viciousness, as if she intended to wash the pink roses right off the china.

Claire escaped back to her room, put the dress in her closet, and grabbed up her battered backpack from the corner. As she was leaving, she caught sight of a photograph taped to her mirror. Their Glass House formal picture - Shane, Eve, herself, and Michael, caught mid-laugh. It was the only photo she had of all of them together. She was glad it was such a happy one, even if it was overexposed and a little out of focus. Stupid cell phone cameras.

On impulse, she grabbed the photo and stuck it in her backpack.

The rest of her room was like a time warp - Mom had kept all her things from high school and junior high, all her stuffed animals and posters and candy-colored diaries. Her Pokemon cards and her science kits. Her glow-in-the-dark stick-on stars and planets on the ceiling. All her certificates and medals and awards.

It felt so far away now, like it belonged to someone else. Someone who wasn't facing a shiny future as an evil minion, and trapped in Morganville forever.

Except for her parents, the photograph was really the only thing in this whole house that she'd miss if she never came back.

And that was, unexpectedly, kind of sad.

Claire stood in the doorway for a long moment, looking at her past, and then she closed the door and walked away to whatever