Master Class

by Christina Dalcher

  Further along, when I get to the meat of the monthly exams, everything is different. The math essay questions demand knowledge of at least five instances of false proofs of Fermat’s last theorem; the chemistry tests want in-depth information on Nobel Prize–winning research from a century ago. And the anatomy and bio I couldn’t ace if I had a year to study. It’s doctoral-level subject matter, and it was given to kids.

  No one could pass this, I think. No one.

  I keep the Word documents up and start moving through spreadsheets. My fingers are icy, not always registering on the trackpad. In a folder within a folder within a folder, I find an Excel sheet called SpecPop, very un-Malcolm-like in its snappiness, but then I remember a phrase Bonita Hamilton used. Special Populations.

  A list of names and addresses and Q scores fills the small screen. They’re all off the charts, these numbers, all Qs anyone would be thrilled to have.

  Each one is color coded, including Freddie’s.

  From the spreadsheets, Malcolm’s preferences are clear. He hates immigrants and minorities; Catholics, Muslims, and Jews; anyone with a middle-class income or lower; the entire LGBTQIA crowd; and about thirty-seven flavors of differently abled human beings.

  He doesn’t seem to have any negative feelings where Madeleine Sinclair is concerned, though.

  I scan another batch of emails. Madeleine became “Maddie” sometime last year. And, this past summer, “Maddie” became “Darling.”

  Motherfucker.

  It isn’t hard to see why. Madeleine is six feet tall in heels, blond, and gorgeous. And, according to the Wikipedia bio I read a few weeks ago, she’s thirty-six years old. Not what I’d call a spring chicken, but the woman has eight years on me—eight years of better skin and better ovaries. A hot flash of fever rolls through me, a reminder that as of yesterday, Madeleine Sinclair has more than better plumbing. She’s still functional. She’s still cool and smooth. I feel a furnace starting up inside me and go back to Malcolm’s emails, looking for hard evidence of what I know he’s done.

  I stop cold when I see the email from acartmill@genics.com.

  It’s probably nothing. Just some Fitter Family–Genics Institute–Department of Education bureaucratic bullshit. I run the back of my hand over my forehead, wiping away a trickle of sweat, and I click the email open.

  Very little of it is bureaucratic.

  Malc,

  She’s in Kansas. Showed up yesterday. I’ll see what I can do, and you shouldn’t have any problems with the divorce.

  Cheers,

  A

  Bastard. I don’t know which of them I mean, and I don’t care. But I get it. I can wrap my head around a man who doesn’t want me for a wife. I can understand Malcolm ditching me for Madeleine Sinclair. The numbers, though. The numbers I read in the SpecPop table and in all the other files, these are the workings of a sick mind, a monster.

  You should know, Elena.

  SEVENTY

  THEN:

  Two weeks after the new ID card system went through, I was sitting in the cafeteria with the same old group—Malcolm, Roy, Candice, and the others. We were still pariahs, but we were pariahs who got first dibs on lunch, discounts at the bookstore, and free tickets to football games. Not that any of us gave a shit about football, but we went anyway, piling into whichever car could be borrowed from a parent, flashing our gold cards at the gate on Friday afternoons. It was worth the boredom just to see the looks on the faces of kids who had to stand in the white card line and fork over their allowance money.

  I’d stopped buying up the last salads. Margie Miller never got her first choice anyway, and that was good enough for me.

  “There she is,” Malcolm said. “Little Miss Brainless.”

  He said it in a stage whisper, loud enough for most of the tables near ours to hear. Margie flushed, shook herself out of it, and pushed her chair back. She was on her way over to us.

  I felt sorry for Margie just then; I don’t know why. Maybe being the odd girl out for most of my school career did it; maybe I just thought Malcolm didn’t need to be so obviously nasty. Aside from acting as if I didn’t exist, Margie Miller hadn’t ever been truly mean to me.

  “Saw your name in the paper, Elena,” she said.

  I went cold. The newspaper article had been Malcolm’s idea. He’d said something about credit where credit was due, and I let the reporter interview me, answering her questions with simple one-word responses, not really wanting the word to get out about my spontaneous brainchild of merit-based cards and separate lunch lines and free tickets to Friday games. I nearly blurted out an apology to Margie right there and then, in front of a hundred pairs of eyes and ears.

  She beat me to the punch. “Here’s what I think of your stupid idea.”

  Now I really did go cold, even though my face was hot with embarrassment. Margie had been taking delicate little sips of juice from a bottle. She wasn’t drinking anymore; she was pouring it on me. My hair absorbed most of it, but didn’t stop the sticky liquid from streaking my white blouse, from staining me from head to toe.

  “There. Now you look like a Creamsicle, you stinking Kraut.” She marched off, back to her table, and the cafeteria exploded around me with laughter.

  I’d been called names before. Four-Eyes in grade school. Miss Know-It-All later on. Foul-Ball Fischer in gym class. All of them were at least based on something. But Kraut? I’d never heard that one, and it stung, mostly because it wasn’t true. My parents were Americans, as was I.

  In the hall bathroom, I changed my yellow-stained blouse for a T-shirt from my gym bag, and I thought of how much I hated Margie Miller and the rest of her stupid, snooty friends. I didn’t want to be like them, I decided. I would never be like them.

  Margie Miller ended up with a three-day suspension, during which she sat in a library carrel polishing her nails. I ended up with a new nickname that I didn’t shake until my senior year, when my parents transferred me to a private school an hour’s drive away. It reached a point where I stopped buying anything in the cafeteria, if only to avoid the notoriety of the gold-and-green-card line. I made excuses to avoid football games and dances, anything that set me apart.

  None of my actions did one bit of good. Margie seemed to be ever present in locker rooms and hallways. If I took a shower after gym, eyes squeezed shut against soap, someone would turn off the hot water, giggling as I scrambled to find the tap or ran out from the stall covered in suds. The frogs and worms and crawfish from biology lab would mysteriously make their way into my lunch bag. One Monday morning, I opened my locker to find a spray-painted swastika on the inside of the door.

  “They’re stupid pranks,” Malcolm said after each occasion. “Ignore them.”

  I tried, and I couldn’t. “They’re stupid people,” I said. Margie waggled her manicured nails at me from her table with the pretty/rich/jock people.

  And then, I said something without thinking, something I’d one day regret.

  “Wouldn’t it be great if all the people we hated could carry their crappy GPAs around for life?”

  Malcolm agreed. And he smiled.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  After another early-afternoon crowd crosses from the Methodist church to Patisserie Paul, it dawns on me that I haven’t eaten since Friday. I’ve been living on sparkling water since Malcolm brought me home. The fact is, even the thought of water brings a fresh wave of nausea, but Patisserie Paul will have Wi-Fi. And happy, pastry-munching churchgoers with cell phones, the kind of people who read stories about good Samaritans.

  If I were dressed in anything but sweat-stained pajamas, I might venture it. But I’m not. One glance in the side mirror tells me I look like hell. Also, I don’t have shoes and I don’t have money. I don’t have anything I need, and there are so few good Samaritans to count on. The jogger to my right, ponytail swinging like a pendulum, is listening to music, puf
fing her way through another mile. A couple passing me does a double take before herding their children quickly away, the wife checking twice over her shoulder. Families cycle by lazily, trailing babies in covered Burleys, and the morning dog-park crowd congregates on a corner, engrossed in observing their pets’ antics and picking up their pets’ leavings, hurrying on after they get a good look at me.

  They aren’t used to seeing the imperfect, not here, not anymore.

  What I want most right now is a number. I’ve learned to hate numbers, but I want three digits plus three digits plus four digits. The public hot spot where I’m parked must be weak, not even one bar, so I drive the Acura up several blocks, stay long enough to find the Post’s confidential tips page, download the Signal app, and send a hopeless message asking for Bonita Hamilton or Jay Jackson. Then I cut off the Wi-Fi on Malcolm’s computer before he can track me, and I return to K Street.

  And I wait, curled up in the backseat, with the blanket that’s protected the trunk from plants and mulch and topsoil wrapped around me like a shroud.

  I dream about all the things. Freddie as a baby and a girl and a woman. Girls in blue skirts and white blouses, not knowing what they hate or why. Qs with their long, curly tentacles, reaching out for a new victim. I dream in the present and the future and the past, jumbled images of love and hate and peace and war. I dream of my body going quiet, resting. I am an object at rest.

  I don’t know how long I’ve waited. I don’t know whether I’ve slept or whether I’ve dreamed of sleep, and when the sound of an angry fist on the window over my head bangs again, I shrink, trying to become smaller, trying to become invisible.

  A voice, filtered and fuzzy, calls my name once, then speaks slowly.

  “I am Bonita Hamilton. You called me.”

  Go away.

  Mother Voice drowns me out. Even she sounds defeated right now, but she answers. Her fingers find the edges of the shroud and she unveils me. When I open my eyes, a face, framed by two hands to shield the sun, is pressed against the window.

  SEVENTY-TWO

  Hospital.

  I hear the word “hospital.” It sounds like a place I’d like to go.

  But I have work to do first.

  Bonita has her phone in one hand, and my wrist in the other, the pressure of two fingers hard against my veins. I hear words, questions, a female voice counting. And another voice, maybe my own, saying laptop, password, pen, calling for Freddie. Someone asks me who the president is. I think I say Malcolm. Right now, I can’t think of anyone else who has that much power.

  I’m on a bed, or a sofa, a softness that I want to sink into and let absorb me. My limbs are so heavy, so tired, and there’s pain. Each move, even the smallest twist of my neck or the flex of my fingers as I point to the stolen laptop, requires superhuman force. I close my eyes to the lights above me, and even that hurts. It should not hurt to close my eyes.

  Someone says, “Four hundred photos. Jesus.”

  Someone says, “I can’t believe this shit.”

  Someone says, “Call the Kansas City office.”

  A hand rests on my cheek, cool and dry until it absorbs some of the heat I seem to be putting out. “Honey? You still with me? Elena? If you can hear me, I’m Bonita Hamilton, and that’s Jay Jackson over at the desk. I’ve called for help, and you’re going to be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “Thank you,” I say, slurring the two syllables.

  “No, honey. Thank you.”

  And then all the someones, in a chorus, say, “Where’s the goddamned ambulance?”

  Mother Voice tells me it’s okay to go to sleep.

  SEVENTY-THREE

  My mother is here. And other shapes. A bright light, blinding in its whiteness, shines into my right eye and then my left. I sense it without seeing it, that whiteness. It’s no more a thing than the needle under the skin of my right hand, or the bag of clear liquid hanging at the side of my bed. Light and steel and liquid have all melted together into a series of textures, all these objects trying to keep me alive.

  “Happy birthday, sweetie.” This is my mother. She can only be my mother, that much I know. Mothers seem to be there, always. The first and the last people you call for, from the beginning until the end. She lowers her voice, thinking I won’t be able to tell. “How much time do we have?”

  Another voice. “All you want.”

  And then a door shuts.

  Happy birthday. I’ve had forty-four of them, but these are the ones I remember.

  Oma, spry and sixty, holding me on her lap, helping me blow out the four candles on a chocolate cake.

  My father lifting me high, putting me on a horse twice as tall as I was at eight years old.

  Joe, sending me a box of carnations in my first year at college. The note said, Sorry I can’t afford roses.

  And, more recently, Anne and Freddie and Malcolm storming into my room the morning of my fortieth birthday with a tray of coffee, fruit chopped in chunks that looked like the pieces in a game of Tetris, and a single rose from the garden in a bud vase. Three voices, two high and one low, sang me awake. A good start to the day. Good starts set you up for a fall, though.

  Later that day, in class, I watched a few of the girls giggling over pictures on their phones. It hadn’t been that many years ago I was one of them, stealing Mom’s lipstick when I thought she wouldn’t notice, passing notes about the new boy in school—Do you like him? Do you think he likes me? The technology changed, but girls are girls, new women, life stretching out before them, futures unplanned and uncertain. What killed my birthday buzz was that old sonofabitch called time.

  I know I’m running out of it.

  The Mother Voice whispers one word.

  Wait.

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  From the Washington Post, Monday, November 11

  SILVER SCHOOL TEACHER BLOWS WHISTLE ON COVERT DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION PROGRAM

  by Bonita Hamilton

  In what may soon unravel as the scandal of the decade, Dr. Elena Fischer Fairchild, a life sciences teacher from the Davenport Silver School, has supplied heretofore unobtainable evidence concerning the DoE’s current practices. Photographs, voice recordings, and other documents point to a . . .

  Dr. Fairchild, the wife of Deputy Secretary Malcolm Fairchild, was taken to Sibley Hospital early yesterday afternoon and remains in critical condition. No comments have been made by her family or by the attending doctors, but . . .

  * * *

  —

  From CNN, Monday, November 11, 1:04 PM EST

  BREAKING: SECRETARY OF EDUCATION MADELEINE SINCLAIR RESPONDS TO OUTRAGE

  “I had no idea,” Secretary Sinclair said as she emerged from her offices earlier today. “This is a faction that has regretfully gone unnoticed, and on behalf of this department, I want to extend my gratitude to Dr. Fairchild for bringing it to light.” Sinclair, in her signature blue suit, has denied any knowledge of . . .

  * * *

  —

  From Twitter, Monday, November 11, 2:53 PM EST

  @Sec_Ed_Sinclair You stole my children and I hope you go to hell. #BringThemBack #NoMoreYellow

  * * *

  —

  From the New York Times, Tuesday, November 12

  LAST OF 46 YELLOW SCHOOLS RAIDED

  As the hashtag #BringThemBack, started by an actress-turned-activist, continues to trend in the social media sphere, an emergency team of federal authorities has announced the removal of over one hundred minors from a state boarding school in Winfield, Kansas. The late-nineteenth-century building and its grounds were once used as the site of the Kansas State Asylum for the Education of Idiotic and Imbecile Youth prior to changing its name to the State Training School in 1930. From 1998, the facility was used as a correctional facility before being condemned. Roy Tolliver, who led the operation in Winfield, has rele
ased a statement attesting to the substandard conditions at the institution. Judith (Judy) Green and high school classmate Sabrina Fox both gave interviews. “It wasn’t a school,” Green says. “Maybe we got an hour or two of actual class time in the mornings. The rest of the day, we were in the cornfields.” Fox, who has been taking care of nine-year-old Frederica Fairchild (daughter of Deputy Secretary of Education Malcolm Fairchild) since her arrival last week, adds, “This little girl was picking corn. Can you believe it? Picking corn. Like we don’t have machines for that.” Fox holds up the girl’s wrist. “You don’t pick fast enough, they make you. They have guards, see, and . . .”

  * * *

  —

  From Forbes Online, Tuesday, November 12, 10:00 AM EST

  Spokespeople for the federal wonder-contractors Genics Institute, Inc., and its subsidiary WomanHealth, Inc., confirm that the companies will seek refuge under Chapter 11 bankruptcy rules. Earlier this year, Genics acquired the prenatal services company in what now appears to be a calculated effort to consolidate genetic testing and abortion services in accordance with the Fitter Family Campaign, a grassroots movement that many experts are now analogizing to the eugenics craze of the early twentieth century. Petra Peller, chairwoman and CEO of the Genics Institute, could not be reached for comment, but a source close to her says . . .

  * * *

  —

  From Sarah Green’s Facebook feed, Tuesday, November 12, 5:16 PM EST

  I’ve had death threats and hate mail. I want them to stop. I am no longer associated in any way with the Fitter Family Campaign. This will be my last post. Thank you for bringing my daughter home.