Half the class groaned. Tyler had liked the idea. He had always liked knowing how things worked, the inside of an engine, the code underneath a video game. He had saved birthday money and ordered the kit himself without telling anyone, partly because he wanted the extra credit and partly because he thought it would be funny to surprise his family at Thanksgiving with a chart showing exactly how Irish they were. His grandmother Carol talked constantly about the Dawsons coming from County Cork. His mother's family, the Lindqvists, had come from somewhere cold in Sweden and settled in Minnesota before her parents moved to Tucson. Tyler had expected a pie chart in shades of green and blue.
He had spit into the plastic tube at his desk one night in August, filled it to the wavy line, sealed it, shaken it, and mailed it back in the prepaid envelope. Then he had forgotten about it, mostly, until that afternoon, when the email arrived while he was lying on his bed with his earbuds in, avoiding the barbecue.
Your results are ready.
He had opened the app expecting to laugh.
The pie chart had loaded slowly, segment by segment, the way those things do to build suspense. The first slice was what he expected: British and Irish, a broad green wedge. Then Scandinavian, then a sliver of Germanic Europe. That made sense. That was Grandma Carol and the Lindqvists. And then the chart had kept going, and a large amber slice had swung into place, almost a third of the circle, and next to it a label he had to read twice.
Indigenous Americas — Mexico. 34%.
Below that, a smaller slice. Spain. 5%.
At first he had thought it was a mistake, some mix-up at the lab. He had read about that happening. He had sat up on the bed and pulled out his earbuds and looked at the chart for a long time, his thumb hovering. He had told himself it was probably a glitch. Then he had tapped the tab labeled DNA Relatives, because surely if there were a mix-up, the relatives would be strangers, and that would prove it.