Michelle sat on Ron's right. But she had a weird hero worship thing going on with Tristan, thanks to his helping her off the track at an eighth-grade track meet when she could hardly walk from shin splints. Even if she could actually find her voice before the end of our lunch break, they didn't have much in common to talk about. Neither of them had run track since junior high.
That left Carrie. But out of all of my friends, hers would be the toughest approval for Tristan to earn. Like Michelle, she knew only general rumors about the Clann and nothing about their true abilities or that vampires existed. And Tristan had never had an opportunity to help her or work with her on anything. A quick peek into her mind showed all she knew about him was his reputation as our school's biggest, richest player. She hated players. But worse than that was the money issue. She wanted to become a doctor, but her parents didn't earn a lot and were struggling to figure out how to finance her college dreams. Even my switch to expensive clothing, at my father's demand last summer when I'd moved in with him, had temporarily caused some tension between us. And we'd been friends for years.
Could she look past Tristan's last name and reputation?
Thankfully Michelle found her voice again and broke the silence to launch into her usual nonstop JHS gossip report, which brought the tension level down a few notches.
But while everyone else basically ignored Tristan, Carrie kept throwing quick little glances his way in between taking bites of her salad. I took another quick peek at Carrie's thoughts. She was trying to figure out what the attraction was between Tristan and me. Or more specifically, why I was attracted to Tristan beyond his good looks. She figured she understood why he was drawn to me...she thought of me as smart, nice, loyal to my friends almost to a fault, though occasionally a little weird and moody. But Tristan seemed the total opposite...a societal apex predator who went after anything in a skirt, cared more about money and image than what might lie underneath, and was about as deep as a dried-up creek.
Her words, not mine.
This wasn't going well.
Desperate to foster some sort of friendship between them, I reached for the first idea that came to my mind.
"Hey, Tristan, did you know Carrie's going to be a doctor someday?" I said, making my voice loud enough to carry across the table.
Carrie's eyebrows shot up then dipped into a frown as she wondered what I was up to.
"Oh, yeah?" Tristan turned to her with real interest. "That's cool. You know, I just learned some interesting stuff from Mrs. Horne today. She was talking about how there are companies out there now making synthetic blood using a process called blood pharming. Have you heard anything about it?"
Mrs. Horne the biology teacher? I silently asked him. When did you talk to her? We all took biology last year.
I ran into her in the hall on the way to your chem class and we got to talking, Tristan silently answered. Then he looked at Carrie again, waiting for her reply.
Carrie blinked several times in shock as she tried to assimilate her previous ideas of Tristan with this conversation starter.
Oh, of course, she thought. He's just trying to sound smart to impress me. Well, let's see how long it takes to reveal his real lack of IQ.
Out loud, she said, "Yes, I've read a few articles online about that. They're mainly creating the synthetic blood for use in the military in war zones."
Tristan nodded. "Because the regular donor blood doesn't last long enough on the shelf for use in areas far away from hospitals. By the time it reaches the soldiers, it's already too old and only lasts about a week. Plus there's that whole problem of getting enough of the more generally accepted O type blood donated."
"Too bad the synthetic blood requires the use of umbilical cords to make it." Carrie grimaced.
"How's that a problem?" Tristan said. "It's not like they're using the cells from the actual babies."
"Yeah, but it's an issue ripe for misuse," Carrie snapped. "Think about it. Who's got a big supply of umbilical cords they'd be too happy to sell off?"
"Hospitals?" Tristan said.
"And abortion clinics," Carrie said. "I'm all for a woman's right to choose, but I don't think anyone should be making money off of that. Abortion clinics would be only too happy to make some side profits by selling a bunch of umbilical cords to DARPA."
"DARPA?" Michelle asked, her eyebrows drawn in confusion.
"The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency," Tristan and Carrie explained at the same time.
Carrie stared at him with round eyes, her shock deepening. "DARPA's funding the research behind the blood pharming. And they're the ones who'll probably end up using taxpayer dollars to buy the big old steaming piles of umbilical cords for all the blood pharming."
Anne made a choking sound and pushed away her chili cheese fries. "I'm not hungry anymore."
"Me neither," Ron muttered.
Oh, boy. What the heck had I started? "Um, guys, maybe we should talk about something else-"
But it was too late. Carrie and Tristan were deep into the debate now, and there was no stopping them.
"Why shouldn't we find a use for something that's going to be thrown away?" Tristan said.
"Because it comes from dead babies, that's why!" Carrie said, shaking her long blond bangs out of her furious eyes.
"Not only dead babies. And it's not like blood pharming is the cause of their deaths," Tristan said. "What about all the umbilical cords from babies delivered alive? Those get thrown out most of the time, too. Why not reduce the biowaste and help save lives at the same time?"
Carrie rolled her eyes and sat back in her chair with her arms crossed. "If the cords were only obtained from live births, that would be okay. But who's going to regulate that, especially if demand for synthetic blood skyrockets? Besides, blood pharming costs too much to be worth it. They can only create twenty units of blood from each cord, and it costs something like five thousand dollars to do it. That's around two hundred and fifty bucks to make each unit, not including whatever fees they work out to pay for the cord itself. If the masses start thinking they don't need to donate blood anymore because we can all rely on synthetic blood instead, there goes all the donor blood that's already in short supply. Then we really do end up having to rely solely or even mostly on expensive synthetic blood. Do you have any idea how much health-care costs would shoot through the roof then? A trauma victim can require up to fifty units of blood. And cancer patients make up twenty percent of all blood transfusions given. Can you imagine what their health-care costs would become?"