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Quentin gave me a dry stare like he was puzzling something out. What to say next.
“Your mom’s a great cook,” he offered. “I can tell how much she cares about you. I’m jealous.”
“Huh?” I was thrown off guard. “Why? Your paren
ts are awesome. They’re smart and they’re rich and they’re relevant!”
“They’re not real,” said Quentin.
“Wait, what?”
“Didn’t you hear your mom’s story? I came from a rock. I don’t have a mother or father. Never did.”
“Then who are those people downstairs? Actors? Con artists?” I was starting to get indignant at being lied to again.
“They’re no one.”
He reached into his hair and yanked a couple of strands out of his scalp. He tossed them into the air where they poofed into a white cloud like road flares.
“Goddamnit Quentin!” I waved my arms and prayed the smoke detector wouldn’t go off.
“Look.”
Once I finished coughing and fanning the vapors away, there, in my room, were Mr. and Mrs. Sun. They beamed at me as if we were meeting for the first time.
Downstairs, Mr. and Mrs. Sun and my mother laughed raucously at some joke, probably at my expense.
“Wha—what the hell IS THIS?” I half-yelled through clenched teeth.
“Transformation,” he said. “I can turn my hairs into anything. I needed parents to bring over for dinner, so I made a couple.”
He gestured at his mother and father and they disappeared with another puff of smoke.
This was . . . this was . . .
“Hoo,” I said without knowing what I meant. “Hoooo.”
I sank to the floor and began to furiously rub my eyes. Partly out of disbelief and partly because the faint white dust the Suns left behind was making my tear ducts itch. When my fingers wouldn’t cut it, I began scraping my face against my knees.
“Sorry,” said Quentin. “But I did promise to explain everything.”
I took a couple of Lamaze breaths.
“What,” I said as steadily as I could, “do you want with me?”
Quentin scanned my room before walking up to my shelves and plucking a book out. He took a seat on the floor in front of me, cross-legged. He could pull a full lotus with ease.
“Do you believe in reincarnation?” he asked.
“No,” I said flatly. That was the truth. Compared to some of the girls at school, I was about as spiritual as a Chicken McNugget.
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s something that just happens. All creatures live their lives, and then they die. If they’ve built up enough merit through good deeds and conduct, they’re reborn in another time and place, in more fortunate circumstances. If they’ve done evil then they’ll suffer in their next life. They might even end up in Hell.”
“What about you?”
“I’m immortal,” he said. “I freed myself of the Wheel of Rebirth because I liked being who I was. I didn’t want to have to struggle through who knows how many different versions of myself just to gain standing in the cosmos. I accumulated enough power within my first life to become unstuck in time, like a god.”
I could hear his words but couldn’t bring myself to allow them any quarter inside my head. How could any of this be true?
