If I had known how the whole thing was going to turn out, I would have taken my chances with my gun-happy schoolmates.
• • •
I threw my clothes back on, not caring that I put my t-shirt on backward. “Thank you, Miss Riley. You have a good day now!” I nodded and opened the door, letting the bright sun sting my eyes. I walked around the corner of The Box and saw Olivia about to go in. I smiled and gave her a wave as I parked myself against the brick wall of the school to wait for her.
After a couple minutes, I glanced down at my watch. Olivia’s inspection was taking longer than usual, and I knew there was no way she had a knife or a gun. I took two steps back toward The Box to knock when I heard it. “Please! It’s a present from my grandmother! Please don’t throw it out!”
Both Olivia and Miss Lillian emerged.
“I’m sorry, dear, but rules are rules. Nothing sharp. You remember what happened to that boy a few months back. He’s still in the hospital.” Lillian held a shiny metal chain between two of her fingertips. An Egyptian Ankh symbol sat at the end of it. “Those pointy ends could do some real damage.”
The sweat seemed to be running down Olivia’s face in rivers, but then I realized the little streams held tears as well. I pushed past her. “Please, Miss Lillian, can she just store it at the office and get it back at the end of the day? It’s the only thing she has from her grandma.”
Lillian paused. Finally, after looking around to see if anyone was watching us, she slipped the necklace into her own pocket. Leaning toward us, she whispered, “Meet me at the office after school, okay?” She winked, her kind eyes twinkling with mischief and sympathy.
“Thanks.” I smiled at Miss Lillian and gently guided Olivia inside.
The air conditioning system was broken in the entire school, meaning that when the sun baked outside, we became human cupcakes inside, swelling up and darkening with time. I started to take off my purple long-sleeved shirt, since I had a shirt on underneath. Then I remembered my t-shirt was on backward. I hoped no one would notice and took off the purple one anyway.
When school let out, I went straight to the office. Miss Lillian was there, but no Olivia. Lillian waited with me for a half an hour but needed to get back home to her own child, so she carefully slipped the necklace to me instead. I shoved it in my pocket and marched outside. We agreed that it was in both our interests to never speak of our secret exchange again. Lillian was glad to help us, but she was one of the lucky people who actually had a job, and she wanted to keep it that way.
I didn’t spot Olivia until I headed toward the parking lot. In the distance, to my surprise, I saw Olivia about to get into her father’s bright red car. He gazed past her when he saw me approaching, smiling an unnaturally white, pasty smile that gave me the shivers. “Hello there!” A chill went up my spine, but I pressed on. Olivia quickly sat in the passenger seat, gluing her hands in her lap, dress pressed perfectly over her knees.
“Hello, Mr. Cavanaugh,” I greeted him, keeping my eyes square on Olivia. “Liv, I have your necklace.”
“Oh good, thank you, I’ll talk to you later, ‘kay?” Her words came out in one long strand, all running together. After getting closer, I noticed her hands were in tight little fists. Her knuckles had turned as white as her father’s strangely translucent face, and purple veins peeked out through the skin. I remembered why, ever since we met in first grade, Olivia always came to my house and I never went to hers.
“What’s wrong, Liv?”
She glanced over at her father. “I just…gotta go.”
Her father laughed and slapped his bony knees. “Yeah, Olivia’s got a big job tonight. A couple of my friends are coming over.” He pinched her cheek hard, and a dark mark appeared where his fingers had been. “Hey, we could use one more. A pretty little redhead like yourself. Make some extra cash. Your mama must be havin’ trouble keepin’ her car too, right? I get to keep mine thanks to Olivia. Nothin’ bad, sweetheart. Just get to play a little dress-up and serve my friends some drinks. What do you say, little lady?”
The nausea returned, and the world started to spin along with my stomach. I ignored it and forced my eyes to steady themselves. From the menacing twinkle in his eye and the color draining from Olivia’s face, I knew in my gut that serving drinks wasn’t the only thing she’d be asked to do that night.
I tried to look at Olivia in the eyes, but she just stared down at her shiny black shoes. “Liv, get out of the car right now. I’m serious. We’ll tell my mom and she’ll make everything okay. I promise. Just get out of the car right now.” Tears itched to form in the corners of my eyes, but I blinked hard and ordered myself to stop before I started.
She looked up at me. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
I reached through the window and pulled at her arm as hard as I could. “Yes you can! Please!”
“I can’t. We…Dad says we need the money.” Her eyes glossed over in the afternoon sun. I was sure my eyes did too.
Her father reached over and pulled my hand off of her arm. His skin felt like plastic. “Suit yourself. I bet you would have been real good too.” He rolled the window up, and it sealed Olivia into the car with a sharp thud. He hit the gas. I saw Olivia looking back at me until the car disappeared. All I could see was a slight trail of gray exhaust, and even that faded quickly.
I dropped my homework folder on the ground, and the papers fluttered all over the sidewalk. Some drifted into the street, landing in puddles of water and motor oil. After too many guns and too many deaths, we had to make due with a plastic folder. You can’t fit guns or knives in a plastic folder.
Mom drove up to me while I was still picking up all my papers. I didn’t bother making sure my homework stayed neat and picked the papers up in fistfuls. Mom rolled down her window. “Riley! Honey, what’s wrong?”
I looked up at her, tears streaming down my face. “Everything!”
• • •
She didn’t make me tell her what happened until we got home. Thank God she wasn’t the kind of mom who insisted on hugging you before you’d calmed down, wrapping you so tightly that you started suffocating on top of being pissed. The last thing I needed when I was upset was to feel like a shrink-wrapped hot dog.
She gently guided me to the living room and wrapped a blanket over me, only leaving for a second so she could bring me some steaming hot tea in my grandmother’s pink teapot. I tried to smile a thank you, but it didn’t work and my lips hung limply, sinking toward the ground.
Finally, she sat down next to me. “Can you tell me what happened?”
I inhaled.
By the time I finished, I barely kept from crying again. “We have to get her out of there, Mom. Olivia’s dad…I mean, you should have seen the way he looked at me. And her! I almost threw up! Please! We need to help her. Please!”
She took my hand. “Riley, we are going to help her, I promise. I’ll call Bo right now and see where we’re at on setting up the boarding schools. Shouldn’t be too much longer now. Everything has to go through the system, but once it’s done, people like Olivia’s father won’t be able to hurt their children ever again. We’re going to save thousands of lives. Including hers.” She ran her hand over my head, straightening my mess of hair.
“But what if something happens before then?”
Mom paused, probably trying to find words that wouldn’t make me more upset than I already was. “It won’t.”
I hoped she was right.
• • •
A month after I begged my mom to save my best friend, President Gray declared on national television that the Aidan Crane Parental Morality Law was set up and people that he called Taskforce Officers were supposed to start saving children immediately. Probably for effect, he named the bill after my brother—had to look extra mushy for the cameras, of course.
Two days after that, I came to school and Olivia was gone. I waited outside for her, was even late to class, but she never showed. After school, I sat on a bench n
ext to where people picked up their kids, hoping that just maybe Olivia had magically switched all her classes for no apparent reason and that’s why I didn’t see her at all that day. Of course that wasn’t true.
When I got to Mom’s car that afternoon, I exploded. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye! Why didn’t you tell me?” I had never screamed at my mom before, but that day seemed like a good time to start. I threw my folder in the back of the car, and again, the papers flew out of the pockets, some landing on the floor and some spewing out over the passenger seats.
Mom pulled the car over to the side of the road and looked at me. “I didn’t know today would be the day, I swear. They don’t tell me everything, Riley. In fact, they don’t tell me much at all anymore.”
I just stared at her.
“But the Taskforce has to work like that. If the parents got wind that Officers were on the way, they would hide their children and people like Olivia would never get the help they need. So, unfortunately, that means no goodbyes. It’s terrible and I know it hurts, but it’s a necessary sacrifice.”
“But where is she? I want to go see her! Please!”
Mom grabbed my hand. “She went to an awesome boarding school, I’m sure of it. D.C. has the best one in the area. Remember what I told you about them? It’s a great, loving environment, Riley, I assure you. You just can’t see her for a while. They need to get her settled and started in the program. She’ll be alright, I promise. And when she’s adjusted, I’ll make a call and you can go see her.”
I didn’t respond. I wasn’t used to my mom talking to me like one of her audience members. Her words sounded stuffy, like something out of a pamphlet with some stupid title like “Dealing with Furious Offspring in Ten Easy Steps.” Though I admitted to myself that it made sense to make sure that no one knew when the Taskforce was coming, I just sat in the car with my arms folded across my chest and sank down in the seat as far as I could go without melting onto the floor.
Mom didn’t say another word. The only sound I could hear were the wheels against the pavement as we drove home.
• • •
For months after Aidan’s death, I woke up in the middle of the night to screams coming from my mom’s bedroom. On the nights she didn’t scream, I heard footsteps in the hallway. I would follow them downstairs to find Mom curled in a ball on the couch, staring blankly at the TV with dry, red eyes and an empty bottle of tequila lying on the floor. I wouldn’t say anything: I’d just slide myself onto the couch, lift Mom’s head, and place it in my own lap. She seemed to sleep okay with the company. I couldn’t say the same about myself.
But after Mom got the bill passed into law, she got sloppy. It was like she was back in high school, saying yes to everything no matter how wrong it seemed, doing whatever she could to be one of the “cool kids.”
Just these cool kids happened to work in the White House.
The thing I remember most about the next classmate they took was her skin. That sounds like a weird thing to remember, but it’s true. I don’t remember Kim’s expression, the way her eyes probably gaped open as two strange men in gray suits carried her out of our classroom as she screamed. No, I remember how pale she was. The girl who everyone envied for her perfect bronze skin had become the color of dirty snow.
After everyone else ran out of the classroom on the afternoon they took Kim, too eager to start their weekend or too chicken to ask questions, I tiptoed up to Mrs. Anderson’s desk. She was writing on a chunk of notebook paper, pushing the pencil around it with such force that I thought for sure the tip would snap. “Mrs. Anderson?”
“Yes?” She didn’t look up at me, just kept scribbling.
“Who were those people that took Kim? Where are they taking her?” Only then would she look me in the eyes.
“Riley, ask your mother.”
• • •
So I did. I had a friend’s mom drop me off that afternoon, and when I got home I found my mom in the kitchen. She was hovering over her laptop, teacup in hand, with her eyes way too close to the screen. It was a wonder she wasn’t going blind.
I pulled out one of our antique wooden chairs that we got from one of the neighborhood garage sales. The chair squealed as it slid.
“Hi, sweetie, how was school today?” Mom said, eyes still pointed straight at the computer.
“Mom, something happened.”
She shut the screen entirely and looked at me. “What happened? To you? Are you alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine…it’s just, some people came in and took one of the girls in my class today. Just handed my teacher a pink piece of paper, went to the girl’s desk, and took her. They grabbed each of her arms like she was in trouble.” Kim’s screams still echoed in my ears.
“Oh?”
“I asked Mrs. Anderson what happened and she told me to ask you.”
Mom’s teacup jumped in her hand. “Oh…I see. Taskforce Officers took her. Like they did Olivia.”
“Oh…okay.” I paused. “But Kim’s parents were really nice. I don’t think they would have done anything like Olivia’s father did.”
Mom sat her cup on the table. “Well, Kim’s parents could have done any number of things. Some kids are removed because their parents are alcoholics, others because their parents neglected them long enough for the children to commit a crime. Like the boy who killed your brother. There’s a list of criteria a parent must meet now in order to raise a child. They have to be trustworthy, since it’s such an important job. There are things that the parents must not do and duties they must fulfill.” She paused. “If they don’t, the government removes the child. Same as with Olivia. Her parents were not doing right by her. It may seem harsh and very scary, but what happened to that girl was actually the best thing for her. She now has a chance for a better life.”
I tapped my fingers on the table one by one. I thought about Kim, and her face, and wondered if I’d ever see her again. Her mom’s face flashed in my mind too, and I knew she was wondering the same thing. But I believed my mom when she said it was for the best. “Okay.”
She smiled. “Now go get started on your homework.”
• • •
Over the next year, my classmates and I grew scarily accustomed to seeing our fellow students dragged off by the ones we now called the Gray Suits. Every time the door opened and the Gray Suits entered, every single one of us looked straight down at our desks. I would squeeze a pen in my hand, clicking the tip in and out as fast as I could. One time I pressed the tip with my little finger so hard that it bled. I didn’t even notice until it dripped on my desk.
The blood didn’t distract me from the screaming.
Simon was the last person taken from our class. Goofy kid, glasses, wore ties to school, the whole bit. But a very nice boy. He was my history project partner. I remembered going to his house to work on our project; we picked the plague that wiped out half of the eastern hemisphere’s population. Really nasty thing. Killed people within hours after they got infected. Afterwards, all the countries affected slipped into poverty. And not the American kind of poverty where people still had roofs over their heads. The kind of poverty these countries found themselves in showed up in empty factories, empty villages, and full morgues.
The school project was around Christmas time. When Simon’s door opened, there were so many Christmas lights I had to squint. Simon’s mother greeted me warmly, and I joined Simon in the kitchen, where he was munching on an unlucky gingerbread man. I snatched one for myself.
Around the kitchen, and every other room that I saw, there were pictures: family pictures, a Hawaiian vacation, Simon’s sister’s first dance recital. There was even one of those tacky pictures where everyone wore the same sweater. Each kid also had their own frame of all their school pictures from kindergarten on.
One family picture in particular caught my eye. “Where was this taken at?” I grabbed the whole frame and handed it to Simon.
He carefully examined it, running his finger
down the mountain in the picture. “That was my birthday. Age nine. I told my dad I wanted to climb a mountain when I grew up, and he said why wait, so he took all of us to that mountain. We hiked up as far as the trail let us. He even had a birthday cake for me in his backpack that we ate at the end of the trail. Best birthday ever.” Simon hugged the photo tight.
Simon cried when they took him. He flailed around in the Gray Suits’ arms as they dragged him away. I’d never seen Simon do so much as squish a bug, but he kicked those men with the force only a scared little boy could produce. I could still hear him howling after they slammed the door.
Mom was my whole world. So when my mom told me something, whatever it was became truth. Until they took Simon.
His parents seemed kind, even sweeter than Kim’s were. Granted, I was only at his house for a short time, but the atmosphere spoke of kindness and love. What had the government found wrong with a cookie-making mother and mountain-climbing father?
I asked Mom when I got home, the day they dragged Simon away. She smiled and assured me that there must have been something I didn’t see. Something awful.
But as soon as she thought I was out of hearing distance, she picked up the phone.
From my post around the corner from the kitchen, I heard her perfectly. “Look, sir, if my daughter tells me something doesn’t make sense, then something’s wrong. At least look into the file will you? Hawthorne. Simon Hawthorne. This is the second one in her class that didn’t make sense.” Pause. “Sure, thank you.” Pause. “Absolutely. Please call me back when you have something.”
I wasn’t proud of it, but I prayed for alcoholism. Or a drug conviction. Something that would explain why those sweet people had their son torn away from them. I waited for Mom’s follow-up phone call.
It never came. At least not THAT phone call anyway…
• • •
Two Wednesdays after they took Simon, I was lying on my bed, desperately hoping sleep would come. Sleep had come to me in short bursts since I lost Olivia. For as long as I could remember, especially during the week, I would wake up in the middle of the night and find myself desperately sucking in air, my whole body tingling with sweat. But the nightmares had been extra vicious for a few nights in a row. Men in black masks grabbed Olivia by her hair and dragged her away from me, taking her with them as they walked slowly and deliberately into a green, slimy pond, thick with seaweed and garbage. The bubbles from her last breath danced on the pond’s surface.
The Extraction List Page 3