“I’ve Got A Bad Feeling About This,” by Ella Moon

Dec 20th, 2020 | By | Category: Fiction, Prose

Single. Solitary. Solo. Some other word for alone. A bee does a 360-degree swoop around my hair before diving head-first into the lavender bush beside me, and I’m too depressed to even react. Shockingly, falling in love with the first guy to wink at me from across a cadaver wasn’t a good idea, but that didn’t stop me, did it? I blame my mother. If a woman’s lit professor who spent the last twenty years raising me couldn’t teach me that lesson, who could have? Then again, her own relationships are never terribly successful, so maybe it was expecting too much for her to fix mine. Point in fact: my father/sperm donor disappearing in her second trimester. Maybe this was his fault. I mean, if he’d never left, I wouldn’t have asked the cute guy in my class to help me find him after he started talking about his research skills and secret investigative hobby. Which, now that I’m saying it to myself, definitely sounds shady. Oh god, maybe he’s been avoiding me because he’s a criminal and he’s about to drain my bank account. Because, he is, definitely, avoiding me. Alright, no, calm down, it’s probably just because he decided I was weird and he doesn’t want to talk to me. Because that makes me feel so much better.

At my feet, Binks (short for Jar Jar Binks, because of his ears) raised his head to stare at me mournfully, ears and jowls drooping to the ground.

“Exactly,” I told him, scratching his neck. “I feel the same way.”

I can hear a faint hum of traffic, but the road is hidden behind a hedge approximately the height of three aeroplanes stacked on top of each other. I lucked out finding this garden out back of my dorm two years ago—presumably other people must come into it, if only because I do not do as much maintenance on it as it needs, but I’ve never seen them. In front of me, extremely well-fed koi track lazy circles around the pond, almost managing to distract me from my depressed inner monologue. Binks stands up, takes two steps to the right, and then collapses down again, which feels like some sort of metaphor about my joy at finally kissing someone, only to have them start running around corners as soon as I come into view. Then again, I can’t construct a metaphor to save my life. There’s a reason I’m a med student, and that reason is that science is my one Marketable Talent. Which also means I can’t do document research, and had to get a guy who’s a year younger than me and, I am now for the sake of my heart choosing to believe, just an asshole, to find the man with half my DNA.

Binks’s ears prick up—instantly noticeable, at that size—and a second later I hear footsteps myself. And around the corner comes… Mr. Asshole himself. Why is he here? Actually, I’ve just decided I don’t care. I scowl, hoping he’ll get the message.

“Hey, Mandy,” he starts. He’s not getting the message. “Ah. I thought I’d find you here. I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you.”

“You should be.”

“I really am.” Dammit, he’s cute when he’s apologising. “It’s just… I found something. But first, I just want to say I wasn’t avoiding you because you kissed me. Or, I mean, it sort of was, but not in the way you’re thinking. It was because I liked it.”

I stand up and take a step towards him, this close to forgiving him, and deciding I definitely could if it means I get to kiss him again, but he puts his hands out, stopping me.

“I have to tell you what I found out.”

I frown at him, honestly more than a little confused at this point.

“I found your father.”

“Okay…”

“Like, I found him. In person. At my home.”

Did my father start stalking him? Oh my god, is my father a criminal and I’ve put his life in danger by asking him to help me? Is my life now a bad action movie?

“Mandy… I’m your half-brother.”

Oh. Bad drama movie. Star Wars? Wait. I kissed my brother. Holy shit.

————

Ella Moon is actually three writers stacked on top of each other wearing a trenchcoat. They all write different things, and all take turns haranguing the other two to put down that pen and go aimlessly browse online shopping sites instead, looking for cute sweaters for the eight-foot lake monster that lives in their backyard. Occasionally, the lake monster has talked them into banding together long enough to get published.

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