Chapter Fourteen
IF I’d thought the car ride from the airport with my parents was painful, dinner with them was almost unbearable.
Owen tried. I gave him so much credit for his attempts at dinner-appropriate small talk. He asked my dad about his work. He even managed to sound interested in my dad’s job as a continuous improvement consultant. Not that manufacturing technology was particularly exciting. Neither of my parents seemed to know what to think of this charming friend of mine. Several times I saw my dad glance between Owen and me, his expression full of questions I couldn’t decipher.
Things got really tense when Owen asked about Iran. “Yusuf says he was born in Tehran. Is that where you two met?”
They exchanged looks. I don’t think I’d ever noticed before how often they had these silent conversations. Was it a new thing, or had they always done it and I’d just been oblivious?
“Yes,” Mom said. “We met while Joseph was working there. I was a student.” She paused, then said, “You call my son Yusuf. Are you, as they say, sucking up?”
“Mom!” I dropped my fork.
Owen grinned. “Nah. When he first introduced himself, he said his name was Yusuf. It kind of stuck. Besides, it’s a great name. And since nobody else calls him it, it’s kind of a nickname, just between the two of us.” Color spread across his cheeks.
If anything, my mom looked even more concerned.
Owen ate a bite of broccoli.
I racked my brain for something to talk about.
Dad raked his serving of rice from one side of his plate to the other, like it was one of those Zen sand garden things.
“Owen’s dad is a doctor,” I said when the tension got too thick for me to handle. I didn’t just say the words, though. No, I blurted them out at about twice my normal speed and volume.
Three sets of eyes jerked to me.
“Oh, um, I mean, I wanted you to know I’d had a meeting with a local doctor.” Remembering something Dr. Weyer said, I added, “You know. It’s important to have someone local who is familiar with my medical history.”
Dad paused his rice raking. “I’m sure he’s a competent physician.” I imagined he finished the sentence with “but he’s not Dr. Mirza” at the end.
“Speaking of,” Mom said before I could decide what, if anything, I should have said to my father’s disparaging tone, “we made an appointment for you to see Dr. Mirza tomorrow.”
For the second time over the course of the meal, I dropped my fork. “Why would you do that? I’m feeling—” I hastily substituted “all right” for “great.” I still didn’t need them to be aware of just how well I felt.
“It’s been almost three months since your last appointment. Even if you are feeling better—especially if you are feeling better—regular checkups are vital.” Dad laid his fork down.
“Besides,” Mom added, “After all this time, Dr. Mirza is practically family. He misses you nearly as much as we do.”
I could almost believe that. I’d been seeing him almost weekly for the last fifteen years.
“He mentioned there were some promising new studies in gene therapies—” Dad grunted, the words cutting off. I’m pretty sure my mom had kicked his shin.
“No treatments. No gene therapies. No appointments with Dr. Mirza. Not now. Not again.”
“Joey,” Dad began, but a look from my mom had him reining it in.
Mom reached across the table and patted my hand. “It’s good to have you home. We’ve missed you.”
Luckily we finished dinner a few minutes later. Owen started to help clear dishes before Mom shooed him away. “Guests don’t help. Go. Relax. Joey will help.”
Dad led Owen to the living room, saying something about baseball. To the best of my knowledge, my dad wasn’t a particular fan of baseball. He could go on for as long as anyone could listen about hockey, but baseball was not his sport.
I stacked plates and carried them to the kitchen, knowing full well Mom really wanted to get me alone while Dad distracted Owen. I started the faucet running, then rummaged through the cabinet under the sink for dish soap.
Mom added the serving dishes to the sink and clucked her tongue. She nudged me aside with her hip. “We have a dishwasher.”
We rinsed dishes and filled the dishwasher in silence. Mom grabbed a sponge and started wiping the already spotless countertop.
“What’s going on, Mom?” I took the sponge from her.
I was so much taller than her, I could have rested my chin on the top of her head. It made me grin to think of it. And because it made me happy, and because I was learning the importance of touch, I wrapped my arms around her, hugged her close, and rested my chin on the top of her head. Because I could.
“I love you. You know that, right?” she asked, her voice muffled a bit by my chest.
I stepped back. “Yeah, I know, Mom. I love you too.”
“You know you can tell us things. Things you feel. Things about yourself.”
Things I felt? Did she think I was keeping secrets? Well, to be honest, I guess I was. Lots of secrets. But I couldn’t explain to her about the Asiatic lion inside me. And if I couldn’t mention shifters, I couldn’t explain about the healthy thing. And there was no way that was what she meant. “Sure, Mom.”
“You know we, your father and I, love you no matter what.”
“Uh-huh.” I stepped back so I could see her face. I had her eyes. Not the color, so much, but the shape. And her nose. “What are you getting at?”
“I like Owen.” She said it with a decisive nod, as though daring me to argue.
“Um, okay. Good. I mean, he’s a good guy. A good friend.”
“I am not ignorant, you know. I have traditional beliefs sometimes, but I’m not narrow-minded. I voted for Hillary.”
She looked at me, waiting for a response.
“Okay.” I honestly had no idea what else to say.
“It is okay if Owen is your boyfriend.”
I choked.
“I only wish you had felt comfortable enough to tell your father and me that you are gay.”
I sputtered.
“That’s not… I mean….” I stopped to clear my throat. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “You cannot lie to your mother, Joey. It is okay to be gay. Your father’s mother’s sister had been in a lesbian relationship for forty years.”
I scrubbed my hand over my eyes. “Okay, I mean, yeah, I’m gay, or maybe bi, I don’t know for sure, but Owen’s not my boyfriend.”
“Why not? If you do not care for him in such a way, you had better watch your actions. It would be cruel to string him along. He clearly has feelings for you.”
“I don’t… that’s not….” I needed to stop sputtering. I had no doubt Owen had feelings for me—friendly feelings. Mom couldn’t think it was more than that. “Do you really think?”
Oh man. The hope in my voice was painful to hear. I couldn’t make myself retract the question.
“Joey. I often have regretted that you did not have the same experiences growing up as other kids your age.”
“I’m twenty-one, Mom, hardly a kid.” It absolutely wasn’t the point, but the regret in her tone was even more painful to listen to than the hope in mine.
“Shh.” She patted my cheek again. I should have found it annoying, but it was more touch than I was used to from her, and I found I reveled in it now. At least enough not to object to being treated like a child. “You will always be a kid to me. Twenty-one is nothing. Someday you will be as old as me.”
I hugged her again. “You’re not old.”
“And you cannot distract me. I want you to know there is nothing I regret more than you not having the childhood you deserved. But it’s nice to see you in the blush of first love.”
“Love?” I croaked and pulled away to gape at her.
Her eyes crinkled, and I couldn’t help but grin back at her. “Fine,” she said. “A crush, at least.”
“This is embarrassing. Is this what it’s like for normal teenagers? I’m glad I missed this. I don’t think I could have handled the angst as a thirteen-year-old.”
We leaned against the counter together, her shoulder pressing in my elbow.
“You seem happier,” she said after a moment. “It makes me happy to see it.”
“I am happier.”
The little wrinkle along her eyes, which moments ago had been crinkling with her smile, now tightened with regret. “We worry about you, your father and I, so far away.”
“It’s been good for me,” I told her.
“I can see it is so, but I still worry. We want you to be happy, but we want you to be safe. It’s hard to tell if you can be both.”
“I get it, I do.” I shoved my hands into my pockets. “But it’s time I made the decisions affecting my life.”
“I shouldn’t ask, but can you see Dr. Mirza tomorrow? He’s got the time, you’re here. He’s been so worried about you when you left. I have never seen him as upset as he was when we told him you’d gone to college so far away, refusing more treatment.”
“Mom—”
“One more time, Joey. For our peace of mind.”
I closed my eyes. “You don’t play fair.”
“Mother’s prerogative.”
I thought about how much I did not want to see Dr. Mirza. I thought about how much I detested the smell of antiseptic and rubbing alcohol. I thought about the invasive tests and unending discomfort. And then I thought about the sacrifices Mom and Dad had made to ensure I got the best treatment available. I sighed. “Fine. One more time. Then I’m done. Unless or until something drastic happens”—like turning into an Asiatic lion—“it’ll be the last time.”
“Thank you.” She reached up to pat my cheek again. Nope, still not annoying. I captured her hand and held it to my heart.
IT was 3:00 a.m., and my stomach growled long and loud enough to wake me up from a fitful sleep. A glance at the clock reminded me it had been less than two hours since the last time I’d looked at it. My stomach growled again, this time accompanied by an ache that was starting to feel familiar.
Mom’s bland dinner, while meeting some very specific nutritional requirements, was not nearly enough to sustain me. Not at the rate I’d been eating lately. I flipped the blankets back and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I had no idea what was in the kitchen, and if whatever it was would require some kind of complicated preparation process. I hadn’t gotten beyond microwave meals and ready-to-eat deli selections in my attempts to fend for myself in the kitchen.
I’d barely stepped on the slate-tiled floor when Owen’s voice from the living room stopped me. “Still wandering around in the middle of the night, I see.”
I spun to face him, heart thundering. “Damn, Owen. You scared the crap out of me.”
The growl my stomach let out was probably loud enough for a nonshifter to hear from the other room. Owen snorted. “Figures. Midnight snack craving, not insomnia, has you wandering the halls this time.”
“At least in part. Tonight’s dinner wore off several hours ago.” I’d never thought to ask Owen about his own metabolism. If I was hungry, he probably was too. “Oh man, Owen. You’re probably starving.”
“I could eat,” he admitted. “It’s not as new to me, though, so I probably don’t feel it as strongly. You, on the other hand, probably should have eaten at least twice what you did.”
I shook my head, knowing he could see me as clearly as I saw him. Maybe clearer. He was a part-time owl, after all. “It would have been suspicious. Also, there were no leftovers, so Mom made exactly enough servings.”
Owen came into the kitchen, and I nearly swallowed my tongue. He was wearing a white undershirt and boxers. It was the hottest thing I’d ever seen, even if the boxers had yellow-faced emojis grinning from the blue fabric.
“You going to raid the fridge? You can’t let yourself get too hungry. It’s dangerous.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Mom.” I headed toward the fridge. “You want something? I have no idea what our options are. I can’t cook, so we may be eating raw chicken or uncooked potatoes.”
Owen’s teeth flashed. “I’m a predator, dude. I’ve eaten worse.”
That stopped me. “Right. It hadn’t occurred to me. Does that mean you eat rodents and stuff when you change?” Another thought hit me. “You don’t, like, eat small animals in human form, do you?” I had an absurd image of me in my human body tackling a wildebeest or whatever Asiatic lions ate in the wilds of India. Did they have wildebeests in India, or was that an African animal? It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t be killing or eating a wildebeest, for fuck’s sake, no matter my form.
He grimaced. “Ick. Some things are easier when done as the animal. I mean, I could probably do it if I had to, like to survive or something, but I was kidding about the chicken. If I’m not wearing feathers, I’m not eating raw meat.”
I opened the fridge but looked at Owen instead. “I’d like to see that someday. You as an owl.”
“Someday,” he hedged.
My stomach dropped. “Is it private? Did I make some kind of shifter faux pas by asking?”
“It’s not that. I mean, there’s some level of trust, I guess, but it’s not really private. Not among shifters.”
“Then what?”
He tugged at his ear, averting his eyes for a moment. “It’s just, right now, it’s better if no one shifts around you. Not until you get better control. And not unless it’s someone your animal absolutely would not look at like prey.”
“You think I’d hurt you?”
“Not on purpose.”
“But you have to know I wouldn’t. I’d never. Besides, you can fly. Even in my lion form, I wouldn’t be a threat to you in the air.”
“It’s not just that. At this point it’s completely possible, likely even, that anyone shifting around you would trigger your shift. And with the exception of the Bradys, no one could effectively stop you from hurting anyone else who might be around.”
“So you do think I’m dangerous.” I was beginning to think life was less complicated and hurt less when I didn’t talk so much. I didn’t know how to protect myself from all these conversations today, all the words spoken. Opening up made me vulnerable.
Luckily for me, I could ostrich with the best of them. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.” I turned my attention to the fridge.
Heat seared up my spine when Owen rested his hand between my shoulder blades. “It’s just for a while, until things aren’t quite as new.”
I refused to look at him. I scanned the shelves. The pickings were pretty slim. “Aha! Hummus. And some carrots. No cooking required.”
“That’ll be good.” His words were soft, and I regretted the loss of warmth when he dropped his hand.
I set the hummus aside and reached for the bag of baby carrots. “Oh, cheese. Extra protein, right?” I grabbed a few tubes of individually wrapped string cheese.
We carried the snack to the table. Owen sat next to me, which seemed a little weird with no one else there.
After three carrots loaded with scoops of hummus and two string cheeses, I felt a little less irritated. It was easier to call it irritation than hurt.
Owen dipped a carrot into the hummus. He examined the label. “Is hummus part of Iranian cuisine?”
“Nah. At least that’s what Mom says. It’s more common in Egypt, Israel, or Jordan, Closer to the Mediterranean.” I cringed. “Sorry for the random trivia. Dad actually introduced it to Mom when I was little, not the other way around. We ended up researching it.”
“I like trivia.” Owen took a bite of his hummus-covered carrot. “You know what we should do now?”
I was unwrapping another string cheese. “What’s that?”
“Find your birth certificate.”
I fumbled the cheese. “Huh?”
“Now’s the perfect time. We’re up. Your parents are asleep. That was one of the things you wanted to do while we were here, right?”
“True.” I paused, trying to figure out why I was so reluctant to do what I’d planned on doing. Guilt, I decided. It came down to guilt. So many questionable decisions lately had been made as a result of this mix of gratitude, obligation, and guilt.
I glanced at the big wall clock hanging over the couch. Nearly four. “We’ll have to be quick about it. Mom is a bit of an early riser.”
WE started in my dad’s office. My dad was nothing if not organized. The room, which was meant to be a third bedroom, was wall-to-wall filing cabinets and bookshelves, with productivity, sustainability, and efficiency manuals lined up alphabetically by subject, and then further organized by year.
Owen pointed to a silver frame with a picture of me from when I was maybe four years old. It was summer and I’d been at a park. Mom got a shot of me standing at the top of the slide, posing like a superhero.
“This is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.” Owen scanned the shelves, probably looking for more pictures of me as a kid.
There weren’t any. Nothing framed and put on display, at any rate. I’d started getting sick shortly after the park picture had been taken, and I’d refused to let my parents take any unnecessary photos after that. There were some family pictures over the years, but nothing like this happy, candid shot.
There was a great picture from my parents’ wedding. They’d been married in Tehran about a year and a half before they moved back to the States with six-month-old me. I always joked that it was funny they had a honeymoon baby when they hadn’t gone on a honeymoon.
I’d always loved this picture. It showed a much younger version of my dad sitting next to an equally young version of my mom. Even though my dad was an American citizen, they’d done a fairly traditional Persian ceremony. The bridesmaids held the traditional sofreyé aghd, a symbolic cloth used in weddings, over their heads while Dad stared at Mom in wonder. It was that look, the obvious awe on his face, that showed me my parents’ marriage was based on love.
Owen sidled up to me and examined the photo. He pointed to a cluster of men in dark suits in the background of the image. “Dude, the men in your family are hot. Is this a cousin? This guy could be your twin.”
“Not a cousin,” I said, even as my brain latched on to idea that he thought someone who looked like me was hot. Which, if looked at logically, meant that he thought I was hot in turn. “Both Mom and Dad are only children.”
Owen tapped the frame. “Well, this guy’s a relative. You can’t deny the resemblance. Maybe a second cousin.”
“You know,” I said quietly, sitting behind my father’s desk so I could start going through his drawers, “I’m more confused than ever. I mean, David says there’s no record of an adoption. Which would mean one of my parents would have to be a shifter. But clearly neither of my parents is a shifter, which means I’m not biologically related, so I have to be adopted. But a family picture of some random relative—and, yeah, now that you point it out, if I grew a beard, I’d look just like that guy—would suggest he is related after all. But both scenarios can’t be true. I can’t be a shifter but not be adopted. It’s frustrating.”
I pulled a drawer open with maybe more force than I should have. The contents inside shifted, banging against the sidewalls.
Owen and I stilled, holding our breaths. When there were no signs of stirring from my parents’ bedroom, we relaxed. Dad’s desk was one of those old-fashioned wooden ones, broad and probably six feet wide. The kneehole was a deep cavern that was blocked from view by a heavy front panel. It had taken three movers to put it into place when we’d downsized from the bigger house to the condo a few years ago. I shouldn’t have been worried about the noise; it was too solid a piece of furniture to echo.
“I feel like there’s a Sherlock Holmes quote that might fit the occasion. If we keep eliminating the possible, whatever’s left—”
“No matter how improbable, must be the truth,” I finished. “Except it’s eliminating the impossible, not the possible.”
“Yeah, but we’re also talking about shape-shifters, so our understanding of impossible is already a little skewed.”
“Point to you. Why don’t you start with the cabinets by the door?” I indicated the first filing cabinet with a nod of my head. “Dad’s anal about his files, so everything should be neatly and meticulously labeled.”
I’d be the first to admit, searching through several drawers of my dad’s information—including electric bills from twenty years ago—was not very exciting. I’d actually thought it would be fairly easy to find my medical files. I mean, they were extensive, and, unlike the decades-old utility bills, still sort of relevant.
I started on the other side of the room. In the bottom drawer of a three-drawer cabinet, I found something unexpected. Nothing as pertinent as adoption records or birth certificates or proof of the shifter gene—though that probably wouldn’t be found in a manila folder. I found a container, shaped like a shoebox covered in floral paper, full of pictures. They looked like family photos from the last forty years. Some were formal, like school pictures, and some were candid shots of everyday life in Iran. Mom’s memories, obviously. Though it wasn’t the time, I flipped through some of them. Mom was very closemouthed about her family. She hadn’t shared much of her—our—culture either. I asked her about it once. She said some things were better to remain buried in the past, and some memories and traditions were too painful when one had to sever those ties. I hadn’t asked for more information because interpersonal communication wasn’t my strong suit, and prying when someone had very clearly shut the door on the conversation wasn’t in me.
Obviously a flaw I needed to work on.
I found a family-style photo with a man, a woman, and two kids. It was stilted in the way posed portraits always were. There was a boy, probably fifteen or sixteen, and a girl, clearly my mom, at maybe ten. I recognized the boy from the wedding photo, and without the beard, his resemblance to my mom—to me—was more obvious. She’d told me she didn’t have any family, but this had to be my mother’s brother.
“What’d you find?”
I hadn’t heard Owen approach, too caught up in the treasure trove of family history I’d discovered. “Just some old photos.” I returned the pictures to the box and tucked the whole thing back into the drawer. More questions. More secrets. But not what we were there for.
“You okay?” Owen clamped a hand on my shoulder. Like always, the touch helped me relax.
I leaned into the contact for a second. “Yeah. It’s just… a lot.” I licked my lips. “You finding anything?”
Owen’s lips quirked. “Yeah. Lots and lots of information about medical supply manufacturing and the related efficiency and budgetary reports.”
“Yeah, that’s my dad. Super exciting, I know.”
His hand slid down my back as he dropped his touch. It was a light graze, and probably not deliberate, but it caused things in my stomach to tighten. My breath hitched. “Um, we should probably, you know, keep looking.” I wished my voice hadn’t been quite so wispy, but my lungs had seized as goose bumps erupted along every inch of my suddenly overheated skin.
He moved away, and I probably imagined the quick flash of heat in his gaze as he did so.
I moved on to the next cabinet. I could tell I was getting closer to our goal because instead of the work-related files Owen had been riffling through, or the antique utility bills I’d found in the other cabinet, this one was full of important family documents. My gut clenched at the folder containing copies of my parents’ wills. I quickly moved on; I couldn’t even contemplate the idea of one or the both of them dying, not even in theory.
I moved to the second drawer in the cabinet. “Found it,” I said softly, knowing Owen would be able to hear me.
He rushed over.
File after bulging file of medical records for one Yusuf Robert Franke, color-coded by year, broken down by specialist. Owen hissed in a breath. “Damn. I know you’d said you’d been through a lot, but seeing it all laid out like this….”
I smiled grimly, shutting the drawer. I opened the bottom of the three-drawer cabinet and showed him another whole stack of folders.
“I really want to hug you right now,” he said.
The files went back twenty-one years. I backtracked until I found the one dated the year I was born. Yes, my dad really was that meticulous. The first few years of my life had skinny folders, with the typical kid stuff. Regular checkups. Stitches when I was three and cut my hand on a steak knife I’d somehow pulled out of the dishwasher when my mom’s back was turned. Nothing major. I pulled out the oldest file, which contained my first visit to a pediatrician after we’d moved back to the US. I squinted at it. “Weird.”
“What’s weird?” Owen asked, still distracted by the number of medical files.
“There’s nothing here from when we lived in Iran. Maybe they weren’t able to bring all their records with? Or maybe they lost them?”
“Yusuf, your dad has records going back to 1980—when he was in middle school. I’m not sure he’s lost anything in his life. And two of the cabinets I went through—all six drawers—have files from his time at MediCorp, which, based on what I saw, was the company he worked with in Iran. I think he even had dinner receipts.”
And if Dad brought random receipts back to the States, he’d have brought any medical information on me. Owen didn’t say it out loud, but I made the connection anyway.
“We might be looking in the wrong place,” Owen said. “I mean, this is all your medical history, right? Well, when you were born, that would have been your mother’s medical history, right? We might be able to find something there.”
I tried to let his words reassure me. After seeing those pictures, there was no way my mother wasn’t biologically my mother. I was the spitting image of her brother.
We both went statue-still at a subtle shift in the air. At first I didn’t know what had happened.
Owen leaned close. He had to stand on his toes to whisper in my ear, “Someone’s up.”
My gaze darted to the open door of the office. Shit. Why hadn’t we closed it? Because, my brain supplied just as quickly, it was never closed. That would have been suspicious.
I heard the lightest of footsteps coming from the hall.
Damn it. I couldn’t afford to be caught. I had no excuse for both of us being in Dad’s office. I slid the open drawer nearly closed, stopping before it could latch shut to avoid the clicking sound. There was a closet, but it was on the other side of the room.
“Behind the desk,” I hissed, ducking and pulling him after me. The desk was broad enough to hide us, the front completely covered.
Owen tripped on my outstretched leg on his way down, crashing into me, knocking us both flat to the ground. He wasn’t as tall as me, but he was solid muscle. The weight of him drove the air out of my lungs, leaving me gasping. He braced his arms on either side of my shoulders and sat up, giving me room so I could breathe. I gasped for an altogether different reason. He’d landed in such a way that his hips were cradled between my thighs, and the new angle pressed his abdomen solidly against my groin.
I gulped.
Owen watched me wide-eyed, lips parted.
Now really wasn’t the time for this. But, oh boy, did my body jump up and tell me this was exactly what we should be doing, at exactly this moment.
Footsteps in the hall came closer. Mom—I could tell it was her by the softness of the tread—seemed to be heading for the kitchen.
“Your legs!” Owen mouthed the words and nudged my knee.
Crap. My feet were sticking out beyond the edge of the desk. I pulled my feet back, raising my knees, which in turn shifted Owen more intimately against me.
He gulped this time.
The scent of Mom’s moisturizer wafted through the open door as she passed.
We held our breaths, not looking away from each other.
That kind of prolonged eye contact should have been uncomfortable. Too intimate. I’d heard the phrase drowning in somebody’s eyes before. I’d laughed it off as overly romantic drivel. But, damn, I was seriously drowning in Owen’s big amber eyes.
A kitchen cupboard opened and closed. Water ran.
My dick was as hard as it’d ever been. And from the flush on Owen’s face, he knew it. I couldn’t find it in me to be embarrassed.
A glass clinked in the sink.
Owen rocked into me, gritted his teeth, shifted back as though the original movement hadn’t been intentional.
Mom took a couple more steps, then stopped somewhat abruptly. In my head I traced her route to the kitchen for a drink of water, then the return trip. Both routes would have her passing the living room and the couch where Owen was supposed to be sleeping. Had she noticed the empty sheets? Did she know Owen wasn’t where he was supposed to be?
A few seconds later she continued to the hallway, her steps pausing again. But not here, not at Dad’s office. She stopped a few feet farther down. My room. I squeezed my eyes shut, anticipating a knock or the swoosh of the door as she peeked into my room. But neither happened. Instead, she walked the last several feet to her own bedroom.
So my mother, who now knew I was gay, and who suspected I was in a relationship with Owen even though I denied it, now believed Owen and I were sharing a bed.
One the one hand, I had to give her credit for being so cool about it. On the other hand, my mom and I hadn’t ever really talked about sex, let alone gay sex, or what the protocol was for overnight guests.
Breakfast was going to be awkward as hell.