In Your Veins is basically "an alternate-universe version of Chemistry." Though the premise is the same (a boy falls in love with his future stepbrother) and a lot of the characters are the same or similar, it is NOT the same story. There are major plot changes, the ending is completely different, most of the people have new/more characterization. If you're reading this because you expect it to be exactly like Chemistry, just edited, I'm sorry, but that's not the case. Travis McCall (of Chemistry) is not the same character as Travis Vaughan (of In Your Veins). There are differences in personality, history, and actions. Same goes for Garen Anderson (Chemistry), who is extremely different from Garen McCall (In Your Veins). Ben McCutcheon has the same name in both stories, but he's possibly the most drastically changed character of all.
I have a few people who are providing me with feedback, and I'm working to make the story the best it can be. I'm not going to post most of it here, because I'm hoping to improve the story enough that it can eventually be pitched to agents, and one day (in my dreams) be published. Because I've been talking about it a lot lately, though, I've decided to post the first bit of it here, just so you guys can see what I've been working on.
Please do NOT email me asking me to post the rest of it online. This is a novel I'm working on for publication, and if I posted the entire thing on the internet, no agent or publishers worth anything would really bother with it. As douchey as this sounds, most people will not get to read any more of this story than is already posted, unless/until it's published and they buy a copy of it.
My sister and I meet Garen the day before he and his dad move in. Mom keeps insisting that it hasn’t been convenient before now, that she wanted to give them a chance to get used to living in Connecticut before they had to get used to anything else. Really, she’s just afraid that Garen will hate us and convince his dad to high-tail it back to Ohio. It’s an understandable concern; Bill McCall wouldn’t be the first boyfriend Mom’s had who couldn’t handle her pseudo-bohemian daughter and mentally unstable son.
Before she lets us enter the tacky, sports-themed restaurant that she and Bill have selected for tonight’s meet-and-greet, she summons her best Stern Mother Voice and says, “Bree, pay attention. Travis, put your phone away. I want you both to behave tonight, alright? This is a big adjustment for everyone, and I want you both to be friendly and welcoming. Especially to Garen. I’m sure he’s very nervous about moving to a new town and becoming part of a new family. So behave.”
Her words seem to be directed to both of us, but she only has eyes for me. I try not to look too guilty, but I know why she’s glaring at me like that. At her worst, my sister is still full of sunshine and friendship bracelets. At my best, I am guarded.
Mom finally allows us to enter the restaurant, beckoning for us to follow as she threads her way through the other customers. There are two people already seated at the booth she directs us to; one of them is Bill, a burly former Marine who I’ve really only spoken to once or twice. The other must be Garen, though he looks nothing like I expected. He seems to be just over six feet tall, and made entirely of pale skin stretched over hard muscles. His dark brown hair is a very carefully constructed mess of straightened, soft-looking spikes that criss-cross over themselves, and he appears to be barely stopping himself from rolling his eyes at whatever his father is saying to him.
Bree pokes me in the side and murmurs, “Oh wow, he’s hot.”
Unlike Garen, I can’t manage to suppress my eye roll. “Bridget, his dad is dating our mom. Don’t even go there.”
She smiles impishly, but her reply is cut off by Bill’s enthusiastic greeting.
“Honey! I didn’t realize you were here already, or I’d have met you at the door. Kids, it’s good to see you again.” He stands and glares at his son until Garen does the same, his face suddenly split into a blinding, genuine smile. “This is my son, Garen McCall. Garen, you of course know Evelyn Vaughan already. This is Evelyn’s daughter, Bree—” Bree steps forward, overly friendly as ever, with her arms outstretched. Garen blinks, but leans across the table anyway to give her a one-armed hug, a kiss on the cheek, and a murmured greeting, though his dark green eyes somehow end up locked on mine. “—and son, Travis.”
“Nice to meet you,” Garen says, and for half a second, I think he’s about to embrace me, too. He settles for a handshake.
His fingertips are calloused, and he is still looking at me as if he is capable of either x-raying or undressing me with his mind. Either way, all I can manage is a brief nod and, “Likewise.”
“Sit, sit,” Mom urges, taking the bench seat next to Bill. Before I can move, Garen slides out of the booth, gesturing for Bree and I to sit, and I end up wedged between my sister and the almost-stranger. I try not to move too much, because every time I do, I seem to knock elbows with Garen, or press the side of my leg closer to his. I hate being touched, but when he catches my eye, I smile politely anyway.
“We ordered a pitcher of soda and an appetizer platter,” Bill says. “This place has great wings.”
“Colby’s was better,” Garen says, almost before his father is done speaking. I glance over at his face, now set in a grimace. Guess I was wrong about the authenticity of his welcoming grin. Noticing my eyes on him, he adds, “Colby’s is this dive restaurant back home, you know, in Ohio. Best wings in the world.”
“Garen and Bill have been living off takeout since they moved out here, so I’m sure they know all the best places to eat,” Mom says for Bree’s and my benefit.
“How long have you been in Connecticut?” Bree asks, leaning around me to address Garen, and nearly dipping the end of her long blonde ponytail into the glass of soda Bill sets down in front of her.
Garen shrugs. “A week? Feels like less or more, depending on how claustrophobic I start to get in the hotel room.”
Mom reaches across the table to pat his arm. “You’ll be out of there and into a real house soon enough. The last few boxes of junk we’ve been keeping in the guest room just went into storage today, so you’re both free to move in tomorrow!”
“Great,” Garen says with another false grin. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that his hands are balled up into white-knuckled fists under the table.
The appetizer platter comes soon after that, and we all pile food onto our bread plates, grateful for an excuse to avoid any more awkward small talk. By the time the entrees are eventually served, however, Mom is back on track.
“Are you excited to start school next week, kids?” she asks. Bree winces slightly at the word “kids.”
“Mom, I’m a senior. Aren’t we past that whole ‘get pumped for the first day and pack your pencil case’ stage?” she asks. Mom frowns, and my sister adds to Garen, “Are you going to Lakewood with Travis or Kandinsky with me?”
I dig my elbow into her ribs. “Don’t get all pretentious. You only go to Kandinsky for a few hours in the—”
“I go to Lakewood High School until noon,” Bree says, ignoring me as usual. “Then I take the bus over to Kandinsky Magnet, next town over, and spend the afternoon in the art program. Travis spends the whole day at Lakewood because he’s a talentless troll.”
I bat her hand away as she moves to pat my head. “Bree thinks she’s hot shit just because she can slap a rainbow on a canvas and say it’s art.”
“It’s called ‘abstract,’ moron.”
“It’s called ‘finger-painting,’ poseur.”
“Travis, Bridget,” Mom says warningly. Bree scowls down at her garden burger, and I try to fight back a grin. “Poseur” has been Bree’s least favorite word since she was seven.
Bill clears his throat and gestures towards his son. “Garen will be at Lakewood. I encouraged him to apply to Kandinsky’s music program, because he really is an excellent musician. He’s been playing guitar since he was twelve—”
“Eleven,” Garen corrects.
“—eleven years old. And he has a fantastic voice, too. He refused to even consider it, though.”
Garen hunches over his plate and spears a potato with unnecessary brutality. “It’s bad enough having to leave my old school right before my senior year. Why would I want to bother starting over at two schools?” He pauses to take a sip of his soda, then resumes his slaughter of the potato. “I could’ve just stayed at Patton.”
His father’s eyes roll towards the ceiling, and I can tell this is about to become a repeat of a fight they’ve had many times before. When Bill opens his mouth to speak, I clear my throat and say, “What’s Patton?”
“Patton Military Academy. It’s an all-boys boarding school in New York.”
This time, instead of leaning around me, Bree just pushes me against the back cushion of the booth. “Seriously, all-boys? Didn’t it suck to not have any girls around?”
“Oh, I didn’t mind it,” he says, and then, biting back a smile, he looks me dead in the eyes and winks. I nearly knock my plate off the table in my haste to turn away. On my right, Bree’s questioning look is burning into my already-hot skin, and on my left, Garen has twisted around to hide his grin from the rest of the table.
“Patton had a sister school a few towns over,” Bill says. “A few times a semester, the administration would arrange for field trips, dances, parties, that kind of thing. That way, the boys would get a chance to make new friends and meet some girls their own age. A lot of Garen’s friends were dating girls from the surrounding area.”
Bree cups a hand around my ear and whispers, “Am I the only one who has noticed the way Garen’s staring at you? Something tells me he wasn’t one of the dudes dating a girl from the nearby schools.”
I snort in amusement, but Mom says, “Do you have a girlfriend, Garen?”
“Mom,” I say sharply, and her eyebrows shoot towards her hairline.
“What did I say?” she asks. I open my mouth to retort, but Garen stomps on my sneaker under the table, and I shut up. Fuck. What are his shoes made of, cement?
“No, I’m single,” he says, then, eyes still trained on his napkin, he adds, “And I’m gay, anyway, so… yeah. No girlfriend for me.”
“Told you,” Bree whispers to me, and I poke her in the side until she falls silent. Mom blinks, her mouth hanging slightly open, and Garen flashes her another beatific smile. She rounds on Bill, who is staring at the dessert menu as though he can’t hear a word of the conversation.
“Chocolate lava cake sounds good,” he says in what he clearly believes to be a casual tone. Hunching down even further, he adds, “And look, they even put the nutritional facts.”
“William,” Mom says flatly.
Bill peeks over the top of the menu. “Yes, dear?”
“You never told me that your son was gay,” Mom says. Her mouth is fixed in an obviously false, slightly manic smile. Bill clears his throat and passes the menu to Bree.
“Well, I didn’t think it would be a problem.”
“Of course it’s not a problem!” Mom says shrilly, and Garen snorts. “I’m just a bit surprised, is all.”
“Kids, why don’t you all pick out what you want?” Bill says, a bit desperately.
“Actually, I’m not really feeling the idea of dessert. I think I’m going to just go wait by the car while you guys settle the bill, okay?” Garen says, hooking a finger through the belt loop of my jeans and giving it a sharp tug as he slides out of the booth. It’s a disconcerting gesture, but I’d rather endure an awkward silence with him in the parking lot than listen to my mom go on another one of her ‘I’m not prejudiced, I’m just firm in my values’ rants.
“Me, too,” I say, and Bree nods her fervent agreement, following me out of the booth. As we weave through the waiters and half-drunk football fans, I glance down long enough to see Garen’s shoes; scuffed, unlaced jump boots. Steel, not cement.
“Fuck, that was awkward,” Garen announces, throwing open the restaurant doors and inhaling the heavy summer air. I try to do the same, but at that moment, he stretches, revealing a slice of smooth, pale skin between his jeans and the hem of his black t-shirt, and my breath gets inexplicably caught halfway down my throat.
“Yeah,” Bree says, then, looking a little sheepish, she asks, “So, are you um… are you really gay? Or were you just saying that to freak our mom out?”
Garen laughs. It isn’t getting any easier to breath.
“I’m really gay. But from the looks of it, your mom seems pretty freaked out regardless. I bet she’s tearing Dad a new one right now,” he says. He fishes a slightly crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and nods to me. “Want one?”
“I don’t smoke,” I say.
He smirks and flicks open a Zippo. “Well. Aren’t you virtuous.”
“Travis? Virtuous? Yeah, right. More like fucking psychotic,” Bree says, giving me a gentle shove. I root my feet to the ground and glare at her. This is not where this conversation needs to go. Not now, not ever, not with him.
“I’m not psychotic,” I say sharply. “Bree’s a compulsive liar, so just like, feel free to ignore everything she says.”
“What a shame,” Garen says, cocking his head to the side. “Psychotic boys are my favorite kind.”
I sit down heavily on the curb, careful not to look anywhere other than my feet. If I look at him again, I am sure he’ll say yet another thing I have no idea how to respond to. It’s much easier to just sit here, being comfortably deaf.
Bree laughs and sits down next to me. “Hate to tell you, Garen, but in addition to being psychotic—” I make a half-hearted attempt to shove her over, “Travis is pretty damn straight.”
Garen drops down on my other side, taking a long drag of his cigarette. Eventually, he exhales the breath of smoke and says, “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I say, as calmly as I can manage. He stubs out the cigarette and leans back on his hands, his fingers nearly touching mine.
“Well. I guess we’ll see about that.”
He and my sister both laugh softly, but I still can’t make a sound.
I have a few people who are providing me with feedback, and I'm working to make the story the best it can be. I'm not going to post most of it here, because I'm hoping to improve the story enough that it can eventually be pitched to agents, and one day (in my dreams) be published. Because I've been talking about it a lot lately, though, I've decided to post the first bit of it here, just so you guys can see what I've been working on.
Please do NOT email me asking me to post the rest of it online. This is a novel I'm working on for publication, and if I posted the entire thing on the internet, no agent or publishers worth anything would really bother with it. As douchey as this sounds, most people will not get to read any more of this story than is already posted, unless/until it's published and they buy a copy of it.
My sister and I meet Garen the day before he and his dad move in. Mom keeps insisting that it hasn’t been convenient before now, that she wanted to give them a chance to get used to living in Connecticut before they had to get used to anything else. Really, she’s just afraid that Garen will hate us and convince his dad to high-tail it back to Ohio. It’s an understandable concern; Bill McCall wouldn’t be the first boyfriend Mom’s had who couldn’t handle her pseudo-bohemian daughter and mentally unstable son.
Before she lets us enter the tacky, sports-themed restaurant that she and Bill have selected for tonight’s meet-and-greet, she summons her best Stern Mother Voice and says, “Bree, pay attention. Travis, put your phone away. I want you both to behave tonight, alright? This is a big adjustment for everyone, and I want you both to be friendly and welcoming. Especially to Garen. I’m sure he’s very nervous about moving to a new town and becoming part of a new family. So behave.”
Her words seem to be directed to both of us, but she only has eyes for me. I try not to look too guilty, but I know why she’s glaring at me like that. At her worst, my sister is still full of sunshine and friendship bracelets. At my best, I am guarded.
Mom finally allows us to enter the restaurant, beckoning for us to follow as she threads her way through the other customers. There are two people already seated at the booth she directs us to; one of them is Bill, a burly former Marine who I’ve really only spoken to once or twice. The other must be Garen, though he looks nothing like I expected. He seems to be just over six feet tall, and made entirely of pale skin stretched over hard muscles. His dark brown hair is a very carefully constructed mess of straightened, soft-looking spikes that criss-cross over themselves, and he appears to be barely stopping himself from rolling his eyes at whatever his father is saying to him.
Bree pokes me in the side and murmurs, “Oh wow, he’s hot.”
Unlike Garen, I can’t manage to suppress my eye roll. “Bridget, his dad is dating our mom. Don’t even go there.”
She smiles impishly, but her reply is cut off by Bill’s enthusiastic greeting.
“Honey! I didn’t realize you were here already, or I’d have met you at the door. Kids, it’s good to see you again.” He stands and glares at his son until Garen does the same, his face suddenly split into a blinding, genuine smile. “This is my son, Garen McCall. Garen, you of course know Evelyn Vaughan already. This is Evelyn’s daughter, Bree—” Bree steps forward, overly friendly as ever, with her arms outstretched. Garen blinks, but leans across the table anyway to give her a one-armed hug, a kiss on the cheek, and a murmured greeting, though his dark green eyes somehow end up locked on mine. “—and son, Travis.”
“Nice to meet you,” Garen says, and for half a second, I think he’s about to embrace me, too. He settles for a handshake.
His fingertips are calloused, and he is still looking at me as if he is capable of either x-raying or undressing me with his mind. Either way, all I can manage is a brief nod and, “Likewise.”
“Sit, sit,” Mom urges, taking the bench seat next to Bill. Before I can move, Garen slides out of the booth, gesturing for Bree and I to sit, and I end up wedged between my sister and the almost-stranger. I try not to move too much, because every time I do, I seem to knock elbows with Garen, or press the side of my leg closer to his. I hate being touched, but when he catches my eye, I smile politely anyway.
“We ordered a pitcher of soda and an appetizer platter,” Bill says. “This place has great wings.”
“Colby’s was better,” Garen says, almost before his father is done speaking. I glance over at his face, now set in a grimace. Guess I was wrong about the authenticity of his welcoming grin. Noticing my eyes on him, he adds, “Colby’s is this dive restaurant back home, you know, in Ohio. Best wings in the world.”
“Garen and Bill have been living off takeout since they moved out here, so I’m sure they know all the best places to eat,” Mom says for Bree’s and my benefit.
“How long have you been in Connecticut?” Bree asks, leaning around me to address Garen, and nearly dipping the end of her long blonde ponytail into the glass of soda Bill sets down in front of her.
Garen shrugs. “A week? Feels like less or more, depending on how claustrophobic I start to get in the hotel room.”
Mom reaches across the table to pat his arm. “You’ll be out of there and into a real house soon enough. The last few boxes of junk we’ve been keeping in the guest room just went into storage today, so you’re both free to move in tomorrow!”
“Great,” Garen says with another false grin. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that his hands are balled up into white-knuckled fists under the table.
The appetizer platter comes soon after that, and we all pile food onto our bread plates, grateful for an excuse to avoid any more awkward small talk. By the time the entrees are eventually served, however, Mom is back on track.
“Are you excited to start school next week, kids?” she asks. Bree winces slightly at the word “kids.”
“Mom, I’m a senior. Aren’t we past that whole ‘get pumped for the first day and pack your pencil case’ stage?” she asks. Mom frowns, and my sister adds to Garen, “Are you going to Lakewood with Travis or Kandinsky with me?”
I dig my elbow into her ribs. “Don’t get all pretentious. You only go to Kandinsky for a few hours in the—”
“I go to Lakewood High School until noon,” Bree says, ignoring me as usual. “Then I take the bus over to Kandinsky Magnet, next town over, and spend the afternoon in the art program. Travis spends the whole day at Lakewood because he’s a talentless troll.”
I bat her hand away as she moves to pat my head. “Bree thinks she’s hot shit just because she can slap a rainbow on a canvas and say it’s art.”
“It’s called ‘abstract,’ moron.”
“It’s called ‘finger-painting,’ poseur.”
“Travis, Bridget,” Mom says warningly. Bree scowls down at her garden burger, and I try to fight back a grin. “Poseur” has been Bree’s least favorite word since she was seven.
Bill clears his throat and gestures towards his son. “Garen will be at Lakewood. I encouraged him to apply to Kandinsky’s music program, because he really is an excellent musician. He’s been playing guitar since he was twelve—”
“Eleven,” Garen corrects.
“—eleven years old. And he has a fantastic voice, too. He refused to even consider it, though.”
Garen hunches over his plate and spears a potato with unnecessary brutality. “It’s bad enough having to leave my old school right before my senior year. Why would I want to bother starting over at two schools?” He pauses to take a sip of his soda, then resumes his slaughter of the potato. “I could’ve just stayed at Patton.”
His father’s eyes roll towards the ceiling, and I can tell this is about to become a repeat of a fight they’ve had many times before. When Bill opens his mouth to speak, I clear my throat and say, “What’s Patton?”
“Patton Military Academy. It’s an all-boys boarding school in New York.”
This time, instead of leaning around me, Bree just pushes me against the back cushion of the booth. “Seriously, all-boys? Didn’t it suck to not have any girls around?”
“Oh, I didn’t mind it,” he says, and then, biting back a smile, he looks me dead in the eyes and winks. I nearly knock my plate off the table in my haste to turn away. On my right, Bree’s questioning look is burning into my already-hot skin, and on my left, Garen has twisted around to hide his grin from the rest of the table.
“Patton had a sister school a few towns over,” Bill says. “A few times a semester, the administration would arrange for field trips, dances, parties, that kind of thing. That way, the boys would get a chance to make new friends and meet some girls their own age. A lot of Garen’s friends were dating girls from the surrounding area.”
Bree cups a hand around my ear and whispers, “Am I the only one who has noticed the way Garen’s staring at you? Something tells me he wasn’t one of the dudes dating a girl from the nearby schools.”
I snort in amusement, but Mom says, “Do you have a girlfriend, Garen?”
“Mom,” I say sharply, and her eyebrows shoot towards her hairline.
“What did I say?” she asks. I open my mouth to retort, but Garen stomps on my sneaker under the table, and I shut up. Fuck. What are his shoes made of, cement?
“No, I’m single,” he says, then, eyes still trained on his napkin, he adds, “And I’m gay, anyway, so… yeah. No girlfriend for me.”
“Told you,” Bree whispers to me, and I poke her in the side until she falls silent. Mom blinks, her mouth hanging slightly open, and Garen flashes her another beatific smile. She rounds on Bill, who is staring at the dessert menu as though he can’t hear a word of the conversation.
“Chocolate lava cake sounds good,” he says in what he clearly believes to be a casual tone. Hunching down even further, he adds, “And look, they even put the nutritional facts.”
“William,” Mom says flatly.
Bill peeks over the top of the menu. “Yes, dear?”
“You never told me that your son was gay,” Mom says. Her mouth is fixed in an obviously false, slightly manic smile. Bill clears his throat and passes the menu to Bree.
“Well, I didn’t think it would be a problem.”
“Of course it’s not a problem!” Mom says shrilly, and Garen snorts. “I’m just a bit surprised, is all.”
“Kids, why don’t you all pick out what you want?” Bill says, a bit desperately.
“Actually, I’m not really feeling the idea of dessert. I think I’m going to just go wait by the car while you guys settle the bill, okay?” Garen says, hooking a finger through the belt loop of my jeans and giving it a sharp tug as he slides out of the booth. It’s a disconcerting gesture, but I’d rather endure an awkward silence with him in the parking lot than listen to my mom go on another one of her ‘I’m not prejudiced, I’m just firm in my values’ rants.
“Me, too,” I say, and Bree nods her fervent agreement, following me out of the booth. As we weave through the waiters and half-drunk football fans, I glance down long enough to see Garen’s shoes; scuffed, unlaced jump boots. Steel, not cement.
“Fuck, that was awkward,” Garen announces, throwing open the restaurant doors and inhaling the heavy summer air. I try to do the same, but at that moment, he stretches, revealing a slice of smooth, pale skin between his jeans and the hem of his black t-shirt, and my breath gets inexplicably caught halfway down my throat.
“Yeah,” Bree says, then, looking a little sheepish, she asks, “So, are you um… are you really gay? Or were you just saying that to freak our mom out?”
Garen laughs. It isn’t getting any easier to breath.
“I’m really gay. But from the looks of it, your mom seems pretty freaked out regardless. I bet she’s tearing Dad a new one right now,” he says. He fishes a slightly crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and nods to me. “Want one?”
“I don’t smoke,” I say.
He smirks and flicks open a Zippo. “Well. Aren’t you virtuous.”
“Travis? Virtuous? Yeah, right. More like fucking psychotic,” Bree says, giving me a gentle shove. I root my feet to the ground and glare at her. This is not where this conversation needs to go. Not now, not ever, not with him.
“I’m not psychotic,” I say sharply. “Bree’s a compulsive liar, so just like, feel free to ignore everything she says.”
“What a shame,” Garen says, cocking his head to the side. “Psychotic boys are my favorite kind.”
I sit down heavily on the curb, careful not to look anywhere other than my feet. If I look at him again, I am sure he’ll say yet another thing I have no idea how to respond to. It’s much easier to just sit here, being comfortably deaf.
Bree laughs and sits down next to me. “Hate to tell you, Garen, but in addition to being psychotic—” I make a half-hearted attempt to shove her over, “Travis is pretty damn straight.”
Garen drops down on my other side, taking a long drag of his cigarette. Eventually, he exhales the breath of smoke and says, “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I say, as calmly as I can manage. He stubs out the cigarette and leans back on his hands, his fingers nearly touching mine.
“Well. I guess we’ll see about that.”
He and my sister both laugh softly, but I still can’t make a sound.