The Baby Shift- California Read online

  The Baby Shift: California

  Shifter Babies Of America 14

  Becca Fanning

  Copyright © 2019 by Becca Fanning

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Also by Becca Fanning

  Chapter 1

  Raising her hands in the air, Franny Phillips summoned the crowd of chemistry students in front of her. “Five minutes left of class!”

  She spread her arms wide. “Come on, people. I know it’s a Friday, but can no one tell me what NaCl is? I’ll give you a hint: it’s commonly sprinkled on French fries.”

  Fridays always saw Franny teaching the same Chemistry 101 seminar to freshmen students at Cañada College. Many professors would moan and groan about regurgitating the same material over and over again to a sea of disinterested young adults. But Franny loved teaching that class.

  To be honest, she loved teaching in general. She had spent so many years stuck in various laboratories working at every iteration of lab tech. And now it was a joy to finally be able to interact with young people, to – or at least try to – get them excited about science. It was infinitely preferable to being stuck to a microscope all day, always at the beck and call of self-serving and tyrannical former bosses.

  Franny had loved chemistry from the moment she stepped into her first class at Buena Vista High School in Phoenix, Arizona. There, she had lost herself in finding moles, making sugar crystals and, in one memorable experiment, making ice cream. Chemistry made sense. It had clear rules that, if followed, produced the same reaction again and again. The stability was a balm to the otherwise chaotic and unpredictable nature of Franny’s life.

  As Franny looked out at the sea of young people in front of her, she hoped that none of them were forced to deal with the same things she had when she was their age and younger.

  Franny was born a werewolf. When she was eleven, she shifted in front of her father’s boss during a dinner party, and her parents promptly kicked her out. Franny had bounced from one foster home to another before finally being taken in by an evangelical couple with eight biological children. The house was filled with noise: babies screaming, TVs blaring, and Franny’s sisters fighting over whose turn it was to take the family’s large golden retriever out.

  Franny spent most of her adolescence escaping to the library. Things were quieter there. Books told her that life wouldn’t always be this messy. She buried her head in fantasy and sci-fi books. And later, she scoured through Princeton Review books on how to apply to college, apply for financial aid and, in general, just escape Phoenix.

  Franny attended the local university on a scholarship that her chemistry teacher, Jean Donaldson, helped her apply for. From undergrad, she went on to do a master’s degree and was just beginning the second year of her PhD when she got pregnant with her daughter Rose. She had planned on finding a post-doc on the East Coast after she got her doctorate, but when Rose’s father abandoned them, that plan went out the window. Franny quit her Ph.D. program and became a single working mother, with all the difficulties that entailed.

  Rose was the best thing in Franny’s life. She became the light in what had for many years seemed an endless tunnel of darkness. Now twelve years old, Rose was a precocious preteen who loved gardening, reading fantasy novels, and coding. On one particular Friday afternoon, Rose was at an afterschool gardening club hosted by her middle school, which gave Franny free time to make it to the five o’clock yoga class held at her favorite local studio.

  Looking at her watch, Franny realized it was just four o’clock, which meant the chemistry class was coming to a close.

  “Alright, I’ll tell you. It’s salt! And if none of you knew that, you better study up because the unit exam is next Friday! Make sure to do the assignments on pages 89 and 90 of the textbook. If you’re having trouble, my office hours are 9-12 on Monday morning,” she shouted to the seventy-five pairs of eyes giving her their rapt attention.

  The students began to vacate their seats and walk down the aisles of the large lecture hall. Brandon Hutchinson, one of Franny’s favorite students, walked up to ask her about his application to transfer to the chemistry undergraduate program at UCLA.

  “I just can’t get the cover letter right, Franny,” he said. He walked up to where she was leaning against the long whiteboard at the front of the room. “I don’t know what to say. Why do I need a personal statement anyway? Can’t they just look at my grades and SAT scores and judge me on those?”

  Franny felt for Brandon. She wasn’t a great wordsmith, either, and personal statements had been her Achilles’ heel for the entirety of her academic career. But over the years, she’d learned a few tricks to make them slightly less painful.

  “I know how you feel, but don’t worry. I always find it helps if I write like I’m talking to a friend about why I want to study or work somewhere. Try that, and then we can review what you’ve got during my office hours and make it a little more formal, a little more academic, okay?”

  Brandon nodded. “Thanks. I’ll try that. Have a good weekend.”

  Franny smiled at Brandon and looked back at the seats in front of her. All of them were empty, her office was locked up, and she had two blissful days of freedom ahead of her. Just her, Rosie, and a pile of books. She couldn’t wait.

  ---

  Franny left Oasis Asana, her favorite yoga studio in Redwood City, at just after six, feeling refreshed and relaxed. Yoga was an essential part of her maintenance program for keeping her shifting at bay; the calmer, more relaxed she was, the less she shifted. Sure, she had the telltale golden eyes of a werewolf and the superhuman strength to match, but on a day-to-day basis, no one noticed anything mythical about her, and that’s how she wanted to keep it.

  Rose had inherited Franny’s wolfishness, but rather than seeing it as something weird or different, as Franny had as a child, she embraced it. She loved the heightened senses it gave her, saying it helped her tell when her plants were rotting before they ever showed signs of it. Some of Rose’s school friends even knew about her condition, and all of them thought it was “super cool.”

  As Franny watched Rose bound down the steps of her middle school, her twin braids flapping against her, she was reminded once again just how lucky she was to be Rose’s mom. They’d gone through some tough times together, but as long as she had her baby girl by her side, life was good.

  “Hi, Mom!” Rose said as she slid into the passenger seat of Franny’s used Volvo station wagon and buckled her seatbelt. “Was yoga fun?”

  “It was great, Rosie. They had that teacher I like, Janice, the one who doesn’t make us do as many backbends.”

  Rose was half-listening to Franny as she leaned toward the radio and fiddled with the dials, searching for her favorite Top 40 station. A song by Ariana Grande came on, and she started dancing in her seat, singing at the top of her lungs as Franny drove them through the quiet streets of the suburbs of Redwood City.

  Their house was out near the creek, right by the water. Franny had chosen it because, after so many years landlocked in Phoenix, she wanted to live somewhere she could look outside her window and see glistening blue no matter what time of day. Their house had a gorgeous view of the creek and was right near the aquatics center, so sometimes on quiet Saturday mornings, Franny sat on the bench at her bedroom window and watched people rowing down the creek, their arms moving in tandem like one giant water inse
ct.

  As Franny parked the car in their small driveway, she saw their neighbor, Mrs. Browne, outside watering her freesias. Mrs. Browne waved to Franny from where she was kneeling in the grass and Franny waved back. She still couldn’t quite believe her luck, to finally be living in a nice neighborhood, with kind neighbors and a good job. Their neighbors next door at the last house in Phoenix had, unfortunately, seen Franny shift one night when she was taking out the trash and been hit by sudden period cramps. She didn’t have time to start deep breathing before her skin starting morphing, her musculature changing until suddenly, at 8pm on a sunny summer’s night, she was a wolf. After that, they wouldn’t look her in the eye, and more than once Franny found threatening letters stuffed into her mailbox about how the neighborhood wouldn’t stand for such a freak of nature living among their ranks.

  “Mom! Come on! I’m hungry!!” Rose shouted from the front door, knocking Franny out of her reverie. She waved at Mrs. Browne and walked into the house, toeing off her shoes and picking up the mail that had been dropped through the letterbox onto the welcome mat.

  “What do you want to eat, Rosie Posie?” Franny asked as she leafed through the mail—mostly junk, except a letter from her friends Will and Monica, who lived in Las Vegas.

  “Quesadillas!!” Rose yelled excitedly from where she stood at the fridge, getting out the necessary ingredients.

  Spice tortillas packed with molten cheese sounded like just the thing for a Friday night. Franny helped Rosie make dinner, and they ate it in from of the TV, where a rerun of an old Doctor Who episode was playing.

  “What do you want to do tomorrow?” Franny asked after she’d cleared their plates and handed Rose a bowl of ice cream. Rose took a bite and seemed to be mulling things over, but Franny had an inkling of what her daughter was going to say. It was the same thing she said almost every Friday night.

  “Can we go to the library?”

  How could Franny say no to that?

  ---

  The Redwood City Library was Franny and Rose’s favorite place in their new home city. It had what seemed like miles of shelves of every genre and sub-genre imaginable. Here, you could find a book on local history, a steamy contemporary romance novel, star wars fan fiction, and Nietzsche, all in the same large, lofty space.

  Rose immediately ran to the sci-fi section when they entered the cool, air-conditioned building, while Franny made a beeline for the romance section. Though her life had only recently begun to resemble anything approaching a happy ending, Franny had read romances since she was a preteen, delighting in the love and family and friendship the novels focused on, and the fact that no matter what, everyone always lived happily ever after.

  Today, she was looking for some historical romances. She found a few Tessa Dares, a Julia Quinn and a Megan Frampton, then walked over to the crime section, where she wanted to get the new Ruth Ware thriller. After a browse through the new fiction section, and a peek at Rose to make sure she wasn’t getting more books than the library would allow (the limit was a generous 30), Franny walked over to the registration desk. And sitting there was Ed, the librarian. The librarian Franny had been desperately trying to ignore over the last few months because Ed was everything she’d ever wanted in a man. Tall, with light brown hair and piercing blue eyes, Ed had read seemingly every book ever released, including romance. He liked running after work, was working on his fifth novel, a fantasy about a faraway kingdom run by mythical animals, and never failed to put aside a few of copies of new releases by Rose and Franny’s favorite authors when they became available. He was, in short, perfect.

  And he was smiling at Franny as she approached the counter, a warm smile that sent tingles all up and down her spine.

  “Hi Ed,” she said, desperately hoping she wasn’t blushing.

  “Hey, Franny! Let’s see what you’ve got today.” He began scanning the books in the pile she had set on the counter. “Oh, I loved this Julia Quinn book. She’s the master, you know? I feel like everything she writes is pure gold. And the new Ruth Ware! You’re gonna love this but read it with the light on. It scared the bejeezus outta me.”

  Franny nodded, alternating between hoping he would keep talking forever and desperately wanting to take her books and run – run away from a situation that called on her to be flirty, sexy, interesting, – adjectives she would never personally use to describe herself. She usually favored “awkward, introverted and quiet.”

  Franny nodded and smiled. “Ha, I’ll make sure to read it before the sun sets, then. The last time I read one of her books I stayed up all night to finish it, and when Rose woke me up on the couch the next morning, I nearly screamed. It was very not-cool of me, apparently,” she told him.

  Franny liked talking to Ed. Yes, sometimes she felt a bit awkward, a bit in awe of his hot nerdiness, but Ed was extremely easy to talk to. He loved books and coffee and unabashedly wore Star Trek t-shirts to work. He never failed to put Franny at ease, and the few times he hadn’t been working on a Saturday had resulted in very lackluster library hauls, like Ed’s very presence at the registration desk spurred Franny into selecting more interesting books.

  They were talking about the most recent news from the BookRiot podcast, one of their shared favorites, when Rose walked up to the counter, her arms full of books.

  “Hi, Ed! How are you today? I like your shirt,” she said, motioning to Ed’s “I solemnly swear that I’m up to no good” shirt. Rose and Ed had a good rapport; as with seemingly every other genre, Ed had read almost all the latest and greatest sci-fi and YA books and was always recommending new releases to Rose. He took a few books from under the counter and handed them to her, telling her that the library had finally gotten a copy of Angie Thomas’ new book, and Ed had immediately set it aside from Rose.

  Franny’s heart melted a bit at this, at the sight of this man being so kind to her daughter.

  “So, other than those, let’s see what you’ve got here, Rose,” Ed said as he began scanning Rose’s books, making occasional comments about them as he waved them through the scanner. “Oh, I loved this John Green book. And Barbara Kingsolver! I wish I had read her when I was your age. Have you tried the Bean Trees series? If you like this one, I think you’ll like those. Let me know, and I can set some aside for you.”

  Rose nodded eagerly and helped Franny shove the checked-out books into the large canvas bags they always brought with them to the library.

  Franny was just fishing her library card from out of her wallet when she looked over and saw that Rose had wandered off, having seen one of her friends from school sitting at one of the nearby wooden tables that were scattered around the library floor. Franny handed her card over to Ed and put the last of the books into a bag.

  “Franny, I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Ed said as he swiped her card through the reader.

  “Oh no. What are my fines? I could’ve sworn I paid them all online last month! I swear, my new year’s resolution was to stop accruing so much debt to the Bay Area library system.”

  Ed laughed and shook his head. “Don’t worry, this isn’t about fines. You don’t have any of those this week so you can pat yourself on the back for keeping your resolution! No, this is actually about something else.”

  Ed squirmed a little where he was standing, looking, for the first time since Franny met him last spring, a little nervous. “I was wondering if…well, I was wondering if you’d like to go out with me tomorrow. To a bookstore in Palo Alto. It has a really good romance section, and a whole section of used books with loads of classics from Sara Paretsky and P.D. James, and it’s also right near the Stanford campus, so we could take a walk around there and maybe grab some lunch afterward. Is that…is that something you’d be interested in?”

  Franny was shocked. Was Ed asking her out? This whole time, she thought her crush on him had been one-sided. Ed was nice to all the library patrons, though now that she thought about it, he didn’t hold books for just anyone. In fact, he seemed
to only do that for her and Rose. Dammit, had Franny been ignoring his crush this whole time? She was so clueless!

  She was just getting ready to answer when Rose popped up at her side and said, “My mom would love to go with you. I’m going to my friend’s house tomorrow so it will be good if she has plans. Otherwise, she’ll just stay inside reading all day, and while that’s cool, she does that every weekend. You need to shake things up once in a while, right, Mom?”

  Franny shook her head, once again amazed at the chutzpah of her daughter. Rose never failed to surprise her. She was forthright where Franny was timid, extroverted where she was shy. And, though Franny didn’t think Ed needed to know that she spent most weekends inside, wrapped in a blanket on their sun porch reading, she was glad her daughter had told Ed yes, because it was the same answer she had been about to give him.

  Ed looked at Franny questioningly, and Franny nodded. “Yes, I’d love to, Ed. What time and where shall I meet you?”

  Five minutes later, Franny and Rose walked out of the library, book bags slung over their shoulders and a new date in Franny’s diary for tomorrow. Her first date in eight years. What the hell was she going to wear?

  ---

  “I don’t think those match very well. Try that black dress you bought at that vintage store last fall,” Rose said from where she sat reclining against Franny’s pillows as Franny tried on her fourth outfit that night. They were trying to figure out what she should wear to her date tomorrow. Something casual but with a twist, something different than the jeans and t-shirts that comprised the majority of Franny’s wardrobe. Her job at the college didn’t require teachers to dress up for lectures, and Franny’s previous positions as a lab tech allowed her to wear whatever she wanted, so most of her wardrobe consisted of funny graphic t-shirts, skinny jeans, sneakers, and knit sweaters. Great things to wear in a perpetually air-conditioned classroom or laboratory, but a little boring for a daytime date.