Page 28 of The Dysasters

Tate met her gaze, thinking that her unshed tears made her green eyes shine like emeralds. “So is my mom.” He shook his head quickly and corrected himself. “Sowasmy mom.”

“I know. It’s hard for me to believe Cora’s gone, too. I—I keep expecting her to come through the door and yell at me about how messy my hair is.”

“Mom would tell me mine needs to be trimmed. She was always on me about that,” Tate said.

“Moms always seem to focus on weird hair things,” Foster stated.

“We can definitely agree about that,” Tate said.

“It’s a start. Right?”

Tate thought Foster suddenly looked younger, like a little girl who was actually trying hard to be good. He forced the corners of his lips up and nodded. “Right.” Then he refocused on the soggy pages. “Tate Johnson? Did she really have new identity papers made up for me?”

Foster hurried into the Batcave and came out with a manila envelope, spilling the contents onto the desk. He picked up the Oregon driver’s license and stared at the picture beside the name, TATEJOHNSON, and some kind of phony address in a town called Ashland.

“She really did,” Foster said, flicking a finger at her own new license that said she was FOSTERFIELDS.

“Damn, you got my superhero alliteration,” Tate said. “And how the hell did Cora get my junior yearbook photo?”

“I told you. She was a genius at planning.” Then she added, “Superhero alliteration?”

“Yeah, I was Tate Taylor—like Clark Kent, Peter Parker, and Bruce Banner.”

“Huh. I never thought about that before. So I guess that means I get to be the superhero. Cool. I’ll be Wonder Woman.”

Tate snorted. “Fine by me. We definitely need Wonder Woman.” He went back to studying the letter. “This is serious. No one would go through all the trouble Cora did to set all of this up without a major reason. We’re really in trouble.”

“Yep. Us and the others.”

“Others?”

“Keep reading.”

He moved to the next page, which was wetter and harder to decipher.

Tate finished reading as much as he could make out, and then looked up at Foster, who had started pacing back and forth in front of Cora’s desk. “There are more like us.”

“Yeah. Freaks like us. In danger like us. Being hunted like us.”

“But this Doctor Stewart guy, he’s your dad.”

“Yeah, well, Jim Jones had kids, too.”

“Man, this is bad.” Carefully, Tate picked up the last page of the letter, which was soaked. Half of it was illegible, but even that half was enough to send skitters of fear up his spine.

“It’s hard to make out, but does that really say this Dr. Stewart guy experimented on us genetically?” Tate realized his hand was shaking and he put the paper down.

“It does.”

“Damn, that’s creepy.”

“Right?” Foster rubbed her arms like she was cold. “Makes me feel all crawly inside.”

“Hey, no. We’re not gonna do that,” Tate said firmly.

“Do what?”

“We’re not gonna start thinking we’re freaks.”