The People We Choose Katelyn Detweiler (graded readers TXT) 📖

each other down through mail-away DNA tests, regardless of a donor’s anonymity.

Some also ended up meeting by chance, fate, serendipity, whatever the hell you want to call it. One couple got married before they discovered their common origin. They had kids. Three of them. They’d felt connected from the first time they met. They’d thought that bond was a good thing. Until they found out the truth.

My moms and I had never seriously discussed signing up for the Donor Sibling Registry. But of course I’d wondered about it sometimes, in all my years thinking about Frank—how many donor siblings might be out there in the world. How many other half Franks were wandering around, not knowing about him. Not knowing about me.

It had seemed so hypothetical.

But it would be naive to think I’m the only one. That it’s just me and his actual son. And—oh god. Marlow. A possible half sister, too.

I drop my phone. I’m at my limit of absorption for the day.

Max texted a few times while I was engrossed in my search, and I read them now. He went to the house, he said, and no one was home. Was I working? The next text said that he drove into town for iced coffee, stopped by the studio with one for me. I wasn’t there either.

I deliberate over my lie, and then type: I had to run some errands today. New school things.

He instantly sends back a kissy face.

That emoji, a kiss, makes me nauseated.

I can’t avoid him forever. I do realize that.

Which means there’s only one thing to be done right now—I’ll call the cell phone number from the letter. The letter I tucked in my bag when I left my house this morning. I’ll call Elliot Jackson. Hopefully not the same Elliot Jackson who’s living next door. The one who is biologically half of my boyfriend. I’ll listen to his hello, or his voice mail message, and either I’ll recognize his voice or not and I’ll have my answer.

I can’t see Max again until I know the truth.

Because if it’s a different Elliot Jackson, then we’ll be perfectly okay. This will all be over. The most horrific misunderstanding possible, nothing more. Maybe Max and I will even be able to laugh about it someday. In the—very—distant future. Or maybe I’ll never tell anyone. It can be my secret. A nightmare that never leaves my own mind, never infects anyone else.

Please let it be a horrific misunderstanding.

I pull my journal out of my bag, find the page where I’ve neatly tucked away the letter.

And then I pick up my phone. I tap *-6-7 to block my caller ID, and enter his number slowly, carefully. I tap the last digit, hold my breath. Wait.

Seven rings. Eight. Nine. Ten.

An automated voice clicks on: You have reached the voice mailbox for two-one-five—

I hang up. Count to one hundred. Press to redial.

The automated voice comes on again and I throw the phone down. I’m not ready to leave a message, because what would I say? The plan was just to hear his voice, either in person or on a recording. That’s where my strategy ended.

I try a last-ditch effort—I do an internet search using his number. There’s nothing helpful, though, no clear identifiers for an Elliot Jackson. I could wade through useless webpages for hours. It feels like a black hole.

I need a sounding board. A second opinion. Some brutally blunt advice.

I need Ginger.

She doesn’t instantly respond to my text asking what she’s doing, which must mean she’s working at the diner. I gather up my blanket and bag and head to the car.

The roads and signs and cars are a blur. You are going to tell Ginger everything. I’m lucky that I pull into the diner parking lot unscathed. I kiss my hand and tap the ceiling of the car, a superstitious and nonsensical habit courtesy of Mimmy. But I don’t question it. Just in case. I scan the parking lot and exhale with relief when I see Ginger’s bright yellow car.

She’s with a customer when I walk in, looking like a perfect pinup retro waitress in her short red-and-white-checkered dress and frilled white apron, red scarf tied around her neck and cat-eye glasses frames that don’t hold actual prescription lenses. And red lipstick, of course. It might be the local diner and no one else gives a shit, but Ginger does. Ginger gives a shit. She somehow makes wiping down greasy Formica tables and serving plates of congealed omelets look glamorous. Like the most desirable job in Green Woods.

I sit down at a booth and watch while I wait. Her customer is certainly enjoying his service. A fifty-something man, balding with a denial comb-over, wearing a white muscle tee and acid-washed denim shorts that should have been disposed of several decades ago.

Ginger is smiling and nodding politely as he leers at her, but the second she turns away she rolls her eyes and purses her lips.

I wave from across the room to get her attention. She stops walking when she sees me, clearly surprised—I used to come here all the time on her shifts, but I haven’t done it once this summer. My guilt is a prickly, uncomfortable itch. I’m only here now because my life is a disaster. Not because I’m a good friend who wanted to brighten her day with my company.

But she smiles as she starts over toward me.

“Hey,” she says, dropping down next to me in the booth. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“I know. I’m sorry I haven’t visited you yet this summer.”

“Oh please.” She waves her hand, her nails tipped in checkered black and white. “I don’t really blame you. The food is supremely mediocre, for one. And I’d be distracted, too, if my soul mate suddenly moved in next door.”

Soul mate.

Did I think that?

Maybe. Deep down. In a place I wouldn’t dare let become words before. And certainly not now.

My face must crumble, because Ginger looks panicked.

“What? What did I say? Is everything