To Agent Silver: Good point, but the difference is that Parker refuses to have a relationship with Mary Jane to protect her from Spider-man's enemies. Austin refuses to have a relationship with Mandy to protect her from himself--or more specifically, his tentacles' homicidal potential.

In the last chapter...Austin finds Mandy Jennifer's (note initials, heh heh) love note, but refuses to respond for fear of hurting her. Brandon and Duke plot ways of getting back at Austin, while Anna, worrying about her son and not knowing what had happened to him, makes an appointment for a shrink. In this chapter, Austin tells Anna and Laufey the truth...but can they handle it? There's one chapter left...read it while you still can!

Chapter 7: Confessions and Confrontations

Would it have been worthwhile,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say, "I am Lazarus, come back from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all…

--T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

If I don't tell somebody…I'll break, Austin thought. Who can I tell?

His mother? No. She was so much in denial about his father, she couldn't take the news.

Magni? No. She'd gossip to her friends. It would go from being known by two people to the whole school.

Rachelle? She'd die laughing.

His accursed father? Yes, he knew what he was going through, but even if he could get in touch with him, he wasn't sure his father would want him to. He'd driven him away—and stood there watching, doing nothing, as he was hauled away by the cops.

A priest? For one thing, he had never been a big believer in religion. What kind of God would put an innocent teenage boy through this? They said that God is love. Love for who? The televangelists on TV every weekend, asking for money that would go who knows where? Certainly not someone like him. And what could he tell the priest? "Forgive me father, for I have sinned, I got tentacles grafted on my back and I'm afraid of becoming like my super-criminal dad…"

Even in his head it sounded stupid. And for once, his tentacles didn't argue with that.

Laufey? She'd been a second mother to him. She'd always listened to him, never judging. Why didn't he think of her first?

Anna Smith closed her eyes, sitting on the bed.

Why? Why didn't I believe Laufey, instead of Jake? What if I let Laufey explain what that cheating, deadbeat scum I had for a husband did to her? What would have happened?

For one thing, I wouldn't have had a drunken one night stand with an notorious supervillian.

If I had a son, he wouldn't have been kidnapped and then gone insane.

He wouldn't be forever known around this town as an octopus' spawn.

A lot of what ifs. And whys.

After school.

Brandon McCloud and Duke Kelly were seen by several people with soaking wet hair and pincer-shaped red marks on their lower legs.

"We were lucky," Duke Kelly said. The two miscreants had foolishly ambushed Austin in the deserted locker room. But Austin was ready for them.

"How is that? We'll never get a dime off the nerds again."

"We're lucky he just gave us swirlies instead of killing us. We bit off more than we could chew."

"Oh yeah, Kelly?"

"We were asking for it," said Duke solemnly. "We were Napoleon, and Austin Smith was our Waterloo."

"What the hell is a Waterloo?"

"Never mind. I'm done with this whole business."

"You can say that again."

"I'm done with this whole business."

"Do I dare disturb the universe?" –T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Mandy gulped. Austin hadn't called yet. Didn't he have a clue that she was the one who slipped the note in? What would he say if she told him she'd been crushing on him since, what, seventh grade? What if she asked him in person? Would he laugh at her? Would he think it was a sick joke? Or that, like Brittany Gibson, going on a date with him was some sort of punishment? What if she told her friends? Would they laugh at her? Ostracize her? (The deputy captain of the cheerleading squad, dating a science geek! She could have her pick of the football team and she had to date Octopus Junior.) Would they tell her that it was absurd? Would they remind her of the rumors surrounding Austin's paternity, as if she didn't already know about them?

Austin walked home, and was greeted by his mother. "I'd tell you to get your coat, if you didn't already have one on."

"Why?"

"I've made an appointment with Dr. Carolyn."

"I told you, Mom, I don't want to see a shrink."

"She's a psychologist, Austin, and she'll help you. Don't you see? I'm doing this because I love you and I want you to be happy."

"Then why won't you talk to me about my father? Why did you let me find out who he was from Laufey and the gossip sheets?"

"You wouldn't understand why I did what I did, Austin. You couldn't know what Jake Winthrop was like."

"Try me, Mom. I'm 14."

So Anna told him. She told him how a few days before a bar association conference in New York, Jake, Magni's father and her ex-husband, told her he had an affair with her sister Laufey. How Laufey had insisted Jake had drunkenly raped her, and she would never willingly hurt Anna like that. How Anna refused to believe her sister, calling her a liar, before running off in a huff with her suitcases to the airport.

There were mistakes and there were mistakes.

Because of her refusal (inability?) to believe her sister's story over her husband's, she had stopped by a bar to drown her troubles, and wound up drunk in bed with the first man she talked to, who just happened to be a eight-limbed supervillian.

She told Austin how she announced to Jake that she was pregnant, and Jake was so happy to be a father that she could not (would not?) bring herself to tell him that there was a fifty-fifty chance the baby was not his.

How Jake got so drunk at the sports bar that Laufey had to drive Anna to the hospital when she went into labor, even though Laufey herself was due to have her baby girl any day. How Jake finally stumbled into the hospital, reeking of beer, trying to find his wife and sister-in-law. How the sandy-haired, blue-eyed Jake had staggered in the hospital room, and saw his wife holding a red-haired, blue-eyed girl—and a brown-eyed boy with a mop of dark brown hair. And finally, Anna told her son how it took four hospital security men to keep Jake from beating her up right there. How he filed for divorce the very next day, leaving his daughter by Anna, Magni Samantha, and his daughter by Laufey, Rachelle Marina, behind.

Sex, lies, and alcohol. There were mistakes and there were mistakes.

Laufey peeked her head in. "Can we get going? The appointment's in a half-hour."

"I know you guys think I've gone insane," Austin said, "But I haven't really. You see, something happened when my father kidnapped me—I got in an accident."

"An accident?" asked Laufey, perplexed.

"Yes, it's why it looks like I'm talking to myself and it's why I've been wearing this long coat all the time."

Anna and Laufey just sat there, clueless but anticipating.

Austin took a deep breath.

It's okay. You can come out now.

He unleashed his tentacles, slowly as to avoid startling them. They wriggled out, opening the pincers to reveal four blue eyes, clicking and hissing as if to say hello.

Anna gasped. Laufey just sat there, goggling. Like snakes charming the humans.

Do they like us?

Who are they?

They are my mother and aunt.

"What the hell?!" Laufey finally said.

"It was an accident, honestly," said Austin. "You wouldn't understand."

"Try us," said Laufey and Anna.

And it was Austin's turn to explain.

How he was at the mall when he was kidnapped. How he was flown on a helicopter to a warehouse on New York City's Pier 56. How he had discovered the laboratory hidden in the basement. How on a rainy late autumn day, he took out his father's duplicate set of tentacles. How, against his better judgment, he had put them on for fun. How a bolt of lightning, sent by a cruel twist of fate, had electrocuted him, fusing the tentacles to his body. How he had woken up in a hospital room full of the corpses of surgeons whose only crime had been attempting to free him of his father's curse. How he had argued with his father and then did nothing as he was arrested, pushing away the one man who could have ever understood.

Foolish pride and curiosity. There were mistakes and then there were mistakes.

Anna reached out, hesitantly. "Will they let me touch them?"

"Don't worry. They won't hurt you. I won't let them."

Anna drew her son close. "Austin, why couldn't you have told us?"

"I was afraid that you wouldn't love me."

"But we do. We would have understood. We love you because you are a part of us. Because that's what a family does for each other. Because of what's in your head, and in your heart. What's on your back has nothing to do with it. You're still Austin Smith."

And with two tentacles, Austin drew Laufey into the hug.

"You're not the only one in this family who has issues," Laufey said. "Don't let the other half of your DNA get you down."