CHAPTER
TWENTY TOBIAS“WASN’T SURE IF you would come,” Nita says to me.
When she turns to lead me wherever we’re going, I see that her loose shirt is low in the back, and there’s a tattoo on her spine, but I can’t make out what it is.
“You get tattoos too, here?” I say.
“Some people do,” she says. “The one on my back is of broken glass.” She pauses, the kind of pause you take when you’re deciding whether or not to share something personal. “I got it because it suggests damage. It’s . . . sort of a joke.”
There’s that word again, “damage,” the one that’s been sinking and surfacing, sinking and surfacing in my mind since the genetic test. If it’s a joke, it’s not a funny one even for Nita—she spits out the explanation like it tastes bitter to her.
We walk down one of the tiled corridors
