“Cass, I’m so sorry….” Cadence began.
“And then there’s Mom and Dad with their annoying, ‘You should go hang out with your friends. Go back to cheerleading. Join a club!’ crap. They don’t understand. No one understands! There is literally no one else in the entire world like me!”
By the time she finished the last sentence, tears were streaming down her face, and Cadence could feel her heart breaking all over again for her little sister. She’d made one tiny mistake, one bad decision, and that misstep had cost her everything she’d ever known. “Cassidy, listen to me,” Cadence said, leaning forward and grabbing her sister’s arm. “I can’t imagine how you feel. I would be lying if I said I could. I do know what it feels like to wake up one day and realize everything has changed. Anyone who has gone through the Transformation process knows that, but we don’t know what it’s like to be the only one of our kind. Listen, I know it’s easy to focus on the negative—to remind yourself that there’s no one like you and how awful that could be—but you also have to remember what a unique opportunity this is.”
“For the team,” Cassidy interrupted.
“No, not just for the team. For you. Look, all I’ve heard about myself for the past year or so is how amazing I am, how I have special powers. I’m faster, stronger, better able to follow my instincts, than everyone else. That can be intimidating. There are times when I doubt myself, when I think, ‘What if I can’t measure up? What if I let the team down?’ So, from that aspect, I totally get what you’re saying. Those are the times when you just have to remember this is a gift, an opportunity to help others in a way that they’ve never been helped before. I don’t know why I was chosen to be the Hunter Leader—why I happen to be better at this than most other Hunters—but it’s who I am. I can either fight it, fear it, or embrace it.”
Cassidy was quiet for a second, her shoulders slumped, staring at her own hands folded in her lap. But she wasn’t crying anymore, and Cadence thought perhaps she was actually pondering everything she had just said. After a long moment, she said, “So… you just choose to embrace it?’
“Every day,” Cadence nodded. “It’s a choice I have to make every day.”
Taking a deep breath, Cassidy turned to face her sister. Streaks marred her pretty face where the tears had recently fallen. “But you have the team with you. To reassure you. To make you feel strong. I don’t have that. All I have is Brandon, usually via IAC, and sometimes you when you’re not too busy, and Mom to tell me how pretty I look or how straight my teeth are.”
Cadence smiled, knowing that would be her mother’s way of saying Cassidy’s teeth looked normal. “I’m sorry if I haven’t done a very good job of supporting you.”
“It’s not that,” Cassidy admitted. “I know you’re doing the best you can, and you’re super busy running… the whole world.” The tears were starting to come again. “I just feel so… all alone.”
Cadence scooted forward and wrapped her arms around her sister, who melted into her shoulder, something she had fought recently since the change. “You’re not,” Cadence whispered. “You’re not alone. We are all here to support you.”
“Do you mean that?” Cassidy asked, pulling her head back so she could look her sister in the eye and wiping at her tears. “Do you really mean that?”
“Yes,” Cadence assured her. “What can I do to show you I mean it?”
“I want to move to headquarters,” Cassidy began. “I know everyone thinks I should stay here and finish high school, try to be normal. But I’m not normal. And if that’s going to be okay, then, it’s time for me to go live with people who at least have some sort of understanding of what it’s like to be different.”
Cadence looked into her sister’s eyes and finally realized what she’d been trying to tell her for all of these months. It didn’t really matter what anyone else thought Cassidy needed to do—she was an adult now, regardless of what her human age was, and she should be allowed to decide for herself. If she’d allowed her to come with them to Philadelphia in the first place, as Cassidy had asked to do, she wouldn’t have felt the need to sneak up there, and this wouldn’t have happened. It was time to actually start listening to what her sister was telling her and to stop thinking she knew everything. She wiped the tears off of her little sister’s face and said, “Okay. If that’s what you want, then that works for me.”
Cassidy’s countenance changed almost immediately. A genuine smile played around the corners of her mouth. “Wait,” she said, clutching her sister’s arm. “Does that mean, ‘Okay, I’ll talk to Aaron and see if I can get his permission,’ or ‘Okay, let’s make this happen’?”
Cadence laughed. “Hey, if I don’t need Aaron’s permission to bring Elliott back from the dead, I certainly don’t need his permission to relocate my little sister to headquarters. He’s not the boss of me, you know?”
The smile broadened until Cassidy appeared happier than Cadence had seen her for months. “Okay, then,” she said. “I guess I need to talk to Mom and Dad.”
“And pack,” Cadence reminded her.
“I hope they will listen as well as you did,” Cassidy said, quickly hugging her sister’s neck before she headed toward the door.
“I hope I can convince Aaron this is a good idea,” Cadence thought to herself, a smile still plastered on her face for her sister’s sake. “Good luck!” she called, assuming her sister was off to talk to her parents. Convincing them would be easy compared to the task she might face in trying to talk Aaron into the idea. Not needing his permission and not pissing him off were two different things, and Cadence knew there could be a fine line between them.
