Marion County, Oregon, November 1, 201-

Earlier that morning, just before sunrise.

"Frankie honey, no questions right now, but I need you to dress like you're going on a hike. Practical. No heels, no platforms, no skirts, just jeans and a warm shirt or sweater, maybe hiking boots. Just wear something sensible for once!"

Frankie's mother began rummaging through the back of Frankie's closet where the less popular clothing lived before pulling out distressed jeans and a wool sweater. After tossing them to Frankie, Vivica started going through Frankie's perfectly organized shoe bin. Confused, Frankie sat up on her marble slab, leads still clipped to her neck bolts. Why was her mother trying to pull together an outfit made up of Frankie's least favorite clothes that she only kept around in case they came back in style.

They might, given Frankie's extended lifespan.

"Mom, what are you doing? Get out of my closet!"

Vivica turned and said quietly. "Shhh, keep your voice down. Your father doesn't approve of me involving you in this!"

"What?" Frankie's face crinkled in bewilderment. She stood up from her marble slab, disconnecting the charging cables from her neckbolts. What was going on here? Dad always went with whatever mom wanted to do. Why wouldn't he approve of ummm, well, whatever "this" is?

Deciding not to argue, Frankie pulled on her boring but practical clothes and followed her tall mother who insisted she not wear makeup today through the kitchen and towards the attached garage, hastily applying minimal lipstick as she went. ("What, no makeup?!" Viv lost that battle, and Frankie was glad of that. You can steal a girl's fashionable outfits, but you can't get rid of her on-fleek makeup.)

Getting into the small car that Viktor had given her for their wedding anniversary, Vivica insisted Frankie made good use of her new license and do the driving while she gave directions.

"Mom, where are we going?" Frankie asked when they turned onto I-5 which eventually led to Canada.

"You'll see." Vivica smiled tightly, a beat-up old alligator skin doctor's bag on her lap.

This was how every conversation for the drive went, other than, "Don't tell anyone, ever."

Like HELL Frankie would! It was embarrassing enough wearing last year's jeans while driving your temporarily insane mom almost to CANADA!

Then there was that mysterious truck Frankie was supposed to follow. What's up with that?

Finally, after turning onto an unpaved county road that seemed to wind into the woods for for-everrrrrr and then stopping in what looked like an abandoned Girl Scout camp, Vivica's car was absolutely swarmed by what felt like hundreds of strangers.

"Mom!" Frankie nervously released the steering wheel before setting the parking brake and unconsciously taking her mother's hand. "Mom, who are these people, and why are they staring at us?" She scanned the mixture of mainstream humans and unfamiliar RADS.

"Welcome to Sanctuary, Frankie. They're just excited to see a new face – it's pretty isolated out here." Eyes closed, Vivica took a deep breath and counted to three before adding, "Frankie, I want you to meet the shadow RADs."

"Shadow… RADs?" Frankie exclaimed. "Mom, what are—" only she was interrupted when somebody outside the car hollered, "Hi-hi-hi Mrs. Stein!"

A small round face covered with bruises and topped by two horns smiled into Frankie's window. "Didja miss me?" the dark-haired little girl exclaimed, "Didja bring crayons? Dr. Seuss? Gum? Cherry Chapstick? I lost a tooth! I lost a tooth – gimme a quarter, please? The tooth fairy couldn't find me out here!" The child's voice sounded like two people talking at once as she pointed at her bare upper chest where her shabby winter coat gaped with one grubby mittened hand.

Frankie gasped, covering her mouth - too late! Hastily stepping back back in her worn pink Keds the little girl looked away crestfallen, the shark-toothed maw dominating her upper chest abruptly slamming shut as she quickly zipped her coat over her second mouth.

Embarrassed by her insensitivity, Franky fell back into the leather upholstery of the little BMW, numbly watching as the back of the truck she'd been following for half an hour was opened revealing stacks of canned goods, frozen meat, two big boxed appliances, bundles of old clothes, and some boxes marked "library discards". The crowd surrounding the car quickly abandoned staring at Frankie and quickly began unloading the truck like they'd done it before a thousand times.

Not recognizing Toby as a schoolmate because of his half-mask and goggles as he shambled past their car carrying a case of canned green beans under each arm, Frankie swallowed her shame and leaned over the steering wheel exclaiming as she watched the unloading. "Mom, what's going on? Who, who ARE these people? Why do they know you?"

"They're shadow RADs, Frankie, remember? It's time you learned about them." Vivica shifted the medical bag on her lap, smiling sadly, "Seeing as in a way, you're responsible for them being here."

Food Truckin'

Short legs pumping hard, La-La scurried alongside Auntie S'Diya and her big brothers to Toby's loud stuttered yip of "Y-y-y-yEE-H-h-h-h-h-h-hawwwwww!"

Today was gonna be great!

You could tell because everyone was dressed in their best. Masks, hoodies, goggles, weapons, you name it, it was there!

Big brother BEN suddenly stopped and turned, rising over the general stampede of social outcasts to scoop up little sister Sally because she and her teddy bear, Mr. D(eath), were too slow.

La-La giggled with both mouths without breaking stride. Those two were always slow! Waving, La-La ran past Auntie S'Diya towards the pretty little silver car that came through the camp gate right behind the big supply truck.

Excited to see the nice mint-green doctor lady who would look at her cuts and bruises, La-La got up on her tippy- toes to peer into the driver's side window as soon as the car stopped, grinning to show where she'd just lost a tooth.

Only to find a different green face with mismatched eyes staring back at her with undisguised alarm.

Who was this?

Backing away while zipping up her coat to hide what made her different, La-La frowned in disappointed confusion as a girl about ClockWork's size nervously stepped out of the drivers' side of the car. Mrs. Stein came around the back of the car from the passenger's side, holding her arms out to La-La

La-La, hurt forgotten, ran forward: her favorite adult in the whole wide world had come after all!

Toby huffed and puffed his way past them in his mask and big yellow goggles along with Masky, Hoody, and Eyeless Jack, wrestling a new industrial washing machine over the rough, half-frozen ruts in the camp's neglected driveway. They stopped to catch their breaths, and waved eagerly at Mrs. Stein, (With Eyeless Jack facing the wrong direction, as usual.) before continuing to hump the bulky washer towards the big shed behind the dining hall, Laughing Jack capering along behind, the matching new industrial dryer easily balanced on his head stripy noodle arms fully extended for balance.

"Mom, what's going on?" Anxiously sidling up to Mrs. Stein the girl with mismatched eyes then asked, "And why am I responsible for all of… of…this?!" She gestured at the happy chaos swirling around her. "I don't know these people!"

"S'Diya, we're so sorry the truck didn't come on Wednesday as usual. We had engine trouble and finally got it fixed this morning – I hope this wasn't an inconvenience?" S'diya shook her head, smiling. Vivica then turned to Frankie, "Honey, we'll discuss this on the way home after we've had lunch with everyone – Eyeless Jack! Yes, you!" Vivica scolded the odd-looking teenaged boy who'd been helping move the new washing machine, "Oh no you don't, young man! I saw you reach into the cooler on my back seat – there's a special lunch surprise for you in that cooler and not one second earlier!"

Vivica passed La-La to S'Diya, saying, "La-La, go with S'Diya while my daughter and I get a few special things out of the car. I'll see you at the Nurse's Cabin in when the big hand is on the twelve and the little hand is on the seven just like I drew for you last week. Can you do that for me?"

"'K." La-La nodded, thoughtfully braiding a lock of S'Diya's luxurious pink hair as S'Diya and the two green women began unloading the little car.

Daughter?

Was this the nice girl that Mrs. Stein sometimes told La-La about when changing the bandages on her bigger injuries? Maybe Mrs. Stein hadn't told her about La-La's special gift. That was why she looked so frightened when La-La smiled at her. Or maybe she WASN'T Mrs. Stein's little girl and was just somebody who sort of LOOKED like Mrs. Stein.

Hmmmmmm, interesting.

To test her theory, La-La jumped from S'Diya's two lower arms and ran to the stranger who was lugging the big Styrofoam cooler across the churned up muddy gravel towards the Dining Hall.

La-La grabbed the hem of the green girls' beautiful coat and tugged.

Smiling anxiously, the big girl stopped and knelt so that she was eye to eye with La-La, the big cooler resting beside her on the gravel. "I'm so sorry. You startled me with your—"

"Are you really Mrs. Stein's little girl? La-La interrupted in chorus, hands on hips, "Cause if you ain't, you gotta lotta 'splainin' t' do young lady!"

The Long Ride Home

"You know Tina Morph, the big girl? And the Sargent Twins?"

Seeing as those three were Freshmen and Frankie and her friends were Seniors about to graduate, all Frankie could say was a cautious, "Yes?"

Instead of an explanation, Vivica looked out the window at the passing now winter bare trees of November, a light snow falling around them as they followed Vlad Tepes's big delivery truck back onto the Interstate, Sanctuary behind them. "Not all RADs have been as lucky as you. As Draculaura. As Cleo. As Clawdeen, or even Melody the Siren who was raised by (please forgive my racism) "normies" who don't understand her but love her anyway and want to give her a good life."

"I don't get it." Signaling, Frankie passed a log truck.

"Remember La-La?"

"Yes, that second mouth's soooo cute! Did you know she can sing "Row Row Row Your Boat" as a duet with herself?"

"Yes. I taught her the song last week." Vivica watched the truck fade behind them in her rear view mirror. "Did you know that when La-La was brought to us last year she could barely talk?"

"What?"

"She's six – we think. Her mother kept her chained up in the basement for years after that second mouth appeared on her chest." Vivica stated dully, "La-La was filthy and covered with lice and sores – she inherited the mouth and horns from her father, who abandoned both when La-La was a baby – we THINK. We don't know much because La-La's not too clear on anything from before she was rescued."

"How could anybody do such a thing to their own child?!" Frankie pulled over to the side of the Interstate, killed the engine, and stared at her mother.

"It happens." Vivica sighed. "Before we made you, I wanted to work for Doctors Without Borders in one of those Middle Eastern refugee camps that never seem to close. Only I let your father talk me out of it. He was afraid of what might be done to me, particularly outside the United States if it was known what I really was – if you think things here can sometimes get crazy when a RAD is outed, you should see what happens to our kind in the Middle East and similar places!" Frankie's mother shuddered, face now a bilious olive, "That YouTube video of what was done to that poor Ghoul family last year still gives me nightmares! So, I compromised and volunteered once a week at the Salem battered women's shelter."

"I didn't know that!"

"Let's just say La-La's situation is nothing new– do you know Ticci Toby?"

"Ew!"

"Frankie, be kind!"

"But he's nasty!"

"Most of that he can't help. Your father and I think that he had a RAD ancestor about two generations back –WHAT, we have no idea, but most of the more "visible" traits were bred out by the time Toby was born. His family was very religious; his inherited quirks didn't make life easy for him in that environment. The same for Brian and Tim, those two big young men with the ugly truck you sometimes see around town subcontracting for Clawdeen's family. They can pass, but both have certain mental "differences" that were mistaken for early onset schizophrenia. They were both institutionalized before they were ten. It shows."

"Oh."

"Your father thinks Jackson the young man whose great grandfather was Jekyll and Hyde and Tim share common ancestry – Hyde really got around, IF you catch my drift." Frankie's mother shook her head in disgust before continuing: "Only Tim's family didn't know what to do with him once he started showing both faces – he's lucky he wasn't locked away in an attic at age ten out of shame like a lot of them were before psychiatric drugs became common." Vivica added wryly "NOT that the drugs we've tried so far work on him or Brian for that matter. Totally different brain chemistry!"

"And the camp? Sanctuary?"

"Sanctuary is Draculaura's father's idea. When it became obvious that RADS could live somewhat openly in Salem, RADs we didn't even know existed poured in after you outed yourself and your friends."

"So, SO not sorry, mom."

Mother and daughter stared each other down before breaking eye contact with a shared nervous laugh.

Vivica continued, "No. You're not. Anyway, this sudden influx of new RADS makes us old-timers nervous. What if something they do causes our friends, neighbors, and colleagues to turn against us like it's happened before in the past? We can't risk it: shadow RADs are the RADS who give the rest of us a bad name – they come alongside RADs who are fairly harmless and eager to fit in. Now all newcomers go through three month's observation at the Camp until we who were here first vote to let them join the community or not – something you're now old enough to participate in. The Morphs, the Rosenbergers, and the Sargents are lucky. They got voted in. The ones who don't, either stay here like La-La and Tobias because they have nowhere else to go or try to find another place that will take them in. Then there's… Jeff."

"Who?"

"Remember the young man in the white hoodie sitting across from you in the dining hall eating Spaghetti-O's today? That's Jeff!"

"Dude! How will I ever forget that?" Frankie made a face. Pasta, chunks of meatball, and sauce, EVERYWHERE! Worse, he obviously enjoyed grossing her out— not cool!

"Be kind. Jeff can't help it!" Vivica said sharply. "But I agree. Jeff's table manners need work. Even Eyeless Jack left the table once Jeff started eating, and I don't blame him one bit!"

"Yo, MOM, be kind!" Frankie teased.

"Touche sweetie! Your dad, who doesn't want me working with the shadow RADS because he thinks they're dangerous, tried to fix Jeff's poor face when he first showed up. Even if the grafts had taken, Jeff is best kept in the Camp until we get his medications right. Let's just say he has an amazing metabolism."

"And the Schmidts? They seem so ordinary. Were they ever at the camp?"

"No. They came badly injured to our house one rainy night while you were having a sleepover at Cleo's. It was decided they stay with us until a decision about them can be made."

Digesting this, Frankie restarted her mother's sleek little car and prepared to pull back onto the Interstate.

"And?" she said looking left and right.

"They're on extended probation. Mike and his wife are amazingly stable, considering what they've been through, but I think Mike works too hard. He'll destroy the body we've somehow cobbled together for him at the rate he's going. The two girls? I just wish you and your friends would be nicer to them – it might help them fit in better!"

"Mooooommmm, it's not like me and m'boos have tried! Maggie's a thief, and Puck's the Biyach of the Century for no good reason!" Frankie groused as she merged back into traffic.

"You don't know their entire story. Give them time. If you do, perhaps you'll learn why they are the way they are."

Ten minutes later as they pulled into the Stein's driveway, snow now dusting the immaculate lawn, Frankie stopped the car. "Mom, if you're going to Sanctuary next week, I want to come with you. And I want to bring my friends. They need to see this."

Vivica smiled, "I hoped you'd say that."

Dinnertime Entertainment

It started during the first dinner in nearly a week that wasn't boxed macaroni and cheese and PB minus the J washed down with red drink.

It had been quiet enough to hear a fly fart, and other than chewing, the silence could easily be pierced by something that quiet when Brian, who liked stirring things up, called out: "…Sing a song, Toby sing a song!"

S'Diya, who stood holding four big serving spoons behind the big steam table, sighed with relief. Things were going to be all right after all: the dinnertime ritual of humiliating someone in front of the entire camp was back.

Soon the entire lodge was filled with an entire chorus of outcasts and crazies singing the simple tune while making as much noise as they could between lines.

"We won't shut up 'til you stand up, (slam, slam) Sing a song Toby! Sing a song!"

Toby stood up, head violently jerking to the right, brain totally blank on songs. He twitched and stumbled mentally and physically until a thin, evil smile stretched across his face and he added his bit to the nightly dinner ritual: "Sing a song Tim and Brian! Sing a song! (clap, clap) Sing a song Brian and Tim! Sing a song!"

S'Diya relaxed further. If Toby, her emotional barometer, was going along with things without protest, the tensions building the last few days because the supply truck was late were beginning to ebb, the squabbles and petty grudges that flared up all over Sanctuary would ease. She glanced up into the exposed rafters of the old CCC era building at where Bading-Tish! crouched, ready to intervene if things got out of hand. Bading-Tish! gave a brisk nod behind her blank silver breathing mask and shimmered out of sight. A quick ripple through across the dining hall's floor in among the tables towards the door indicated that the big Predator maiden was leaving.

S'Diya's fellow guard had relaxed enough to patrol the outer boundaries of Sanctuary for the first time since last Thursday.

Another good sign.

To the thunder of the entire camp's delight, the two good ol'boys paused in their shoveling, stood up, and sang in deep baritones for BEN to get up and sing a song before sitting back down to pound down more cheeseburger casserole and green beans.

BEN then passed it on to Lost Silver, who after awkwardly jumping to float next to BEN mid-air without limbs, passed it 'round the big room to the family tables and from there to Sally and La-La until E.J. had his turn.

"Well, I guess this one goes to someone we all know," He took a deep breath, obviously holding in a giggle. "She runs this nuthouse and makes us get up off our asses, so I guess…" His jagged grin spread as he tried singing breathily with a straight face, black tongue flickering. "Sing a song S'Diya, sing a song!"

The room filled with laughter and the loud bang of hands, tableware, and other assorted things joined the communal demand for a final round.

Blushing and bashful, S'Diya put down her serving spoons, glancing out the nearest window. The pale, featureless face that hovered there in the early darkness of a snowy November evening nodded soundlessly and vanished.

Whew!

"Guess it was a good idea to be in middle-school glee club after all!" She quipped still in her apron as she took a deep breath before launching into Jeepers Creepers' at the top of her impressive lungs, trotting around the room, grabbing other people to dance, all joining in. Finally, she took a bow, squeezed E.J. as hard as she could with all her arms, and sat back down panting.

Yes, they had passed the latest crisis point. Things would be all right.

Until the next crisis.