Genesis Girl (Blank Slate #1) - Jennifer Bardsley Page 0,75

window has opened in my heart, releasing all the pressure. I feel joy again. Joy and pride for being free.

Joy and pride for being myself.

My wrist is blank and shriveled. The skin smells funny until the nurse washes it clean with soap. “Do you want this?” She holds up the remnants of my cuff.

“Yes,” I say, and I think again about Ms. Lydia. I wonder what has happened to her cuff. I wait until everyone is gone but Seth and Cal, so I can ask. But they don’t know.

Seth has stopped filming and is now furiously typing into the air, uploading his latest post. “Can’t let The Lighthouse beat me to the punch.” he says.

“I think it’s safe to say The Lighthouse won’t be posting until later.” Cal coughs.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Dad’s the newest viral blogger in the family.”

“It was you?” My eyes open like saucers.

Cal nods his head. “Lydia was right about me. I was using our private conversations to find out information about the Vestals. Some of it I posted on The Lighthouse and —”

“Some of it he shared with me, for Veritas Rex.”

“You were working together?” I can’t believe it. I thought Ms. Lydia and I drove Seth and Cal apart.

“We figured it was the only way,” says Cal. “That’s why I started things with Lydia. To get more information.”

“We didn’t think you would ever leave the Vestals of your own accord, unless you knew the truth about them,” says Seth.

Cal takes a deep breath. “But never, Blanca, never would we have ever done any of this if we thought you would get hurt. And Lydia … I’m so sorry about Lydia.”

I feel a sharp stab to the heart at the mention of my aunt’s name.

Cal fights to keep it together, and Seth slaps him on the back a few times. Then Cal pulls his son in for a hug.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Seth tells his father. “You couldn’t have known she would die.”

“I made a mess of things.” Cal breaks down and sobs into Seth’s shoulder. “I shouldn’t have tried to control people so much — Blanca or you.”

“I made mistakes too.” Seth’s voice breaks.

“If you want to keep your own apartment, that’s fine with me.” Cal steps back from the hug and stares Seth in the eyes. “You’re all grown up, and I accept that.”

Seth wipes tears off his cheek with the back of his hand. “And you’re right about college. Not earning my degree is something I regret.”

But my mind is still stuck on my aunt. “Ms. Lydia was using you too,” I say, interrupting their reunion.

Cal and Seth both nod. “We know,” says Cal. “But we didn’t understand why until now.”

“It was me. Ms. Lydia was my aunt. She wanted to get close to me. That was why—” But I stop, midsentence. Color drains from Cal’s face and Seth looks awful too. “What’s the matter?” My hand reaches for my shriveled wrist where my cuff used to be.

Cal is too choked up to explain.

“Lydia wasn’t your aunt,” Seth finally manages to say. “She was your mother.”

“What? No, that’s not right. Ms. Lydia was my aunt. Her sister was my mom. I don’t know how it happened, but Barbelo harvested Ms. Lydia’s sister somehow. Barbelo was my father.” I shudder, saying the truth.

“No, sweetheart,” Cal says, gently. “They’ve done tests. They’ve conducted autopsies. Lydia and Barbelo were both your parents. Lydia was your mother.”

“No,” I cry. “Just no.” And then I cannot say anything more at all.

Seth is right about the truth. It hurts, and it digs into you, but once it’s finally out there, it ends up making things better. The truth is worth fighting for. It’s worth sharing with the whole world. So when Seth finally digs up the whole truth a few weeks later, I let him post all of it on Veritas Rex.

Then I write my own response on The Lighthouse. Cal has given me his password and handed the site over to me. “You can still be a light in a dark world,” he said. “One beacon of light at a time.”

So this was my first post:

My name is Blanca McNeal. I grew up an orphan at Tabula Rasa, a school currently under federal investigation. I too was one of the victims of Headmaster Russell’s sadistic tyranny. I too was sterilized at fourteen.

Unlike so many students whose parents were under the false impression that their children would have a better life, my parents knew better. My birth