The Genetic Code

Chapter 9

I fold the diary shut, and slap it down on my bed, still in shock. I wasn't expecting... anything like that.

My mother... has a soul? She used to have one, at least. And a pretty sappy one at that.

'It was the first time a boy didn't give me what I wanted. Or anyone, for that matter. I was stunned, bewildered, annoyed, of course, but also irresistibly fascinated. Who is this person? The boy in the red sweater. He didn't even seem to recognize me, Cordelia Rosamund, one of the most known and esteemed Perfects revered by even the Salman of Saudi Arabia, the Queen of England, and the Pope.'

'He didn't even beg forgiveness when he bumped into me the second time we met, two weeks later. He just muttered a swift apology, before seeming to recognize me, and asked me frankly if I was the girl who tried to pay him to pick up her fallen necklace from the fountain the last time. It seemed like that's all he knew of my identity: The spoilt rich girl who asked him for a favor... Just another ordinary person from the park...'

'At first I was offended, but then I was just intrigued, and amused. It's as if I were living another life where I wasn't the heir to the most renowned company in the world. There were no expectations, no preconceived notions, no mask of manners. It was just me that he remembered; the girl from the park; the one with the necklace...'

'And then he produced said necklace from his backpack. He'd laughed and rejected me when I'd offered him a hundred that day, and at that time my pride was too bent that I'd forgotten about it and left it in the fountain. But he'd retrieved it anyway, later, and kept it in his bag all this time, waiting for a time he'd see me again in this park to return it. He didn't want to do it for the money, but simply as a "favor to a pretty girl." I can't deny that I'd blushed a little when he said that.'

The tale of my mother's sordid teenage romance was chronicled over her eight-volume life biographies. I mostly just skimmed through them, trying to hold in my sickened gags at how cheesy and clichéd it was.

The part that surprised me was in the third volume, where she discovers that he's actually a Border. I'd expected her to cut off all relations with him at that moment and go home to disinfect herself and wash her mouth out with acid for all the times his tongue was down her throat. But instead she'd just... cried.

My mother. Cried. Cried! I didn't even know she had enough emotions in her body to trigger that kind of response. I'd grown up all these years thinking that her tear ducts were basically like water taps in the Saharan desert. What a disillusion!

She'd cried, thought about it for a few weeks, then returned back to him, and told him that they could have a forbidden love affair. How Shakespearean of her.

However, everything changed when her older sister, my aunt Grace, was disowned by my grandparents after marrying a Border. She was kicked out of the house and removed from the family registry, leaving my mother as the next in line for the position as CEO of Rosamund Tech.

In the end, she realized that she didn't want to suffer the same fate as her sister, and ultimately decided to break off the relationship. She chose the company over love.

However, none of that was what jarred me the most. The most interesting thing was how she described this man, Isaac.

'Isaac sometimes stomps his foot when he's upset, and grumbles under his breath like he's a little kid. It's childish, but endearing at the same time.'

'I wanted to get gelato, but apparently he's lactose intolerant, only in the mornings. How queer. He promised to go get gelato with me in the afternoon though.'

'I went with him to the doctor for a regular health checkup today. He's a blood type O-negative, which is pretty rare. That makes sense, since he's pretty rare too. I don't think I would ever find anyone else like Isaac. He's special to me, and I'm special to him.'

I'm slightly disconcerted by how many similarities I share with this man my mother has described. From these accounts in my mother's diaries alone, it seems like I'm more scarily similar to him than I am to Daddy, who I've always thought didn't have much in common with me at all. Unless... this man is...

No. No it can't be... Could it? It does make sense... But, no. That's ridiculous. I'm overthinking again, like I always do. There's no possible way that—

Then I flip to the last filled page of the eighth diary, where her accounts seem to stop.

'There are times when things seem to be falling apart, and he does too. His breathing becomes short and sporadic, he can't focus, eyes flitting about everywhere, he starts to break out in cold sweat, and it's like he's losing control. I think it has something to do with his condition. The day I told him that we should break up was one of those times.'

In that moment, the words written on paper begin to transform into reality, as I feel my heart rate pick up.

No matter how much I try to hide, how hard I try and fight when it happens, the pink spots always have a way of finding me again, and swallow me whole.

I think I may have just found out the reason why.