The War Game

by Black, Crystal

  Carol and Miriam both got letters again as well. Miriam used too much toilet paper, it said. I laughed. Carol slept in too late. That’s the truth.

  There were tall security gates surrounding this neighborhood. They made this creepy, echoing robot-monster noise. There were warnings signs posted nearly every ten feet. It simply read, “Danger! Stay Away!” I’m tempted to find out what would happen if I scaled one.

  I’d say there were about 100 houses within the neighborhood’s perimeters. I’d have gone exploring but that wasn’t on the schedule.

  There were time allotments for daily walks, but there were maps and only so many routes you were allowed to take. And the moving sidewalks only covered about half of the neighborhood.

  I had books here. They sucked.

  Most of the ones in my room were for sight readers, those little kids who only know words like “the,” “cat,” and “top.”

  The cat ran up. Up the hill. The cat ran down. Down the hill.

  That was the first book I read.

  Mom and Dad. Mom loves Dad. Dad loves Mom. Mom and Dad love you.

  A little bit better. But mostly because I made the mom look like Miriam pre–Camp X and I took an eraser and and whited out the mom’s face. I drew her to look more like Carol. The book mom had long blonde wavy hair and a pearl necklace and that wasn’t working for me. So I drew a black mohawk to make her look more like Carol. And I didn’t need my namesake hanging on a fake mom’s neck like that, like I was endorsing her.

  People call this place Camp X. Experimental society. Basically, a fake community that operates kind of like a halfway house. We are basically an in-between society. Rehab for those who could be saved. Saved from what exactly, is the argument. And by “saved,” I’m sure they meant to say “molded.”

  I think I might have found out more about the cards. The goal of the society was to be reintroduced into society with green cards. I guessed green cards allowed people to live in the States but I thought those were only for people not born here. Miriam said that to get a black card was bad but she doesn’t know why exactly. I’m thinking there were other colored cards that did different stuff but I haven’t found out much more than that.

  The books in the living room were much longer. Nothing I ever heard of before. I tried reading one but it was boring. I’d read a paragraph and then reread it without realizing it quickly. But that happened several times and I discovered that the same stuff was actually just repeated over and over again. All the books I picked up were like that. Like the writer got lazy and copied and pasted the same couple of pages to fill out a book.

  Then I decided to write a letter. To John. I’d seen Miriam write letters to people that she never intended to send. I caught a few words in one, “damn your eyes.” But it was hard to find any paper here. Probably another form of communication that was limited (or outright banned) in the community, even though it was ancient. Miriam used the backs of our letters that we got from the mailman. I gave her mine but I think it’s too late to ask for it back.

  I tried my luck with the garbage cans. We have several overflowing with package wrappers in the kitchen. Everything came in a wrapper. Even a damn banana had a wrapper. Apples come shrinkwrapped. I didn’t dig too deeply, because that’s where the nasty stuff was. I knew because that’s where I hid nasty stuff. I had stuffed some bloody underwear in there two days ago. I fished out an envelope and opened it up, inside out.

  I tried to write but the words wouldn’t come out.

  I hope you’re okay.

  Erase that.

  Are you thinking of me?

  Probably not.

  Do you remember me?

  That sounded more appropriate. But self-pitying on my part. I erased that but drew over it because my words left an impression on the paper.

  Do you still like me?

  Well, that was a start. I stashed it underneath my pillow to finish later. Maybe. I couldn’t erase it because I used up the pink eraser.

  ~~~

  Something peculiar happened in the middle of the night. Well, Wednesday morning actually. I only heard it, I didn’t witness anything. Miriam watched it but she was half asleep, she recounted it as a dream until I told her I heard the trucks too.

  Usually, I am awakened by the little boy that lives next door. He screams and screams and then the “mother” screams and screams right back at him. His name is Jerry and he’s ten years old. Miriam met them one day when she was doing some gardening. Miriam said to stay away from the mom and that she seemed “off her rocker.” Whatever a rocker is.

  This time, I woke up to my bed shaking back and forth. I might no longer be a child, but I still checked under my bed, especially now that I slept alone in a small room. I checked in the closets now too. I didn’t even remember having a closet when I was a kid living with my moms.

  I heard the rude rumbling of the cars (well, now I know they were trucks) go past our house. Then I heard the wheels scream and a bright light flashed in my room for a couple of seconds, pretty much blinding me.

  I looked at the clock to see what time it was once the lights went away as quickly as they came. The incident occurred at 45:7. Everything that happened in my room happened at exactly 45:7.

  The clocks here didn’t work. There were stickers over them. They all showed different times but it was written funny. One of them was 45:7 instead of 4:57. Other clocks showed real but permanent times such as 1:26. Just another way of keeping us in the dark, I guessed.

  It was like a secret code. Or, the person who was responsible for printing off the stickers didn’t even bother making sure it looked right. The morons probably ran off thousands of stickers before realizing their error.

  ~~~

  Sunday. Mailman came. This time he hand-delivered the mail and got our signatures on some paper that none of us could be bothered to read.

  We took our letters and shared, round-robin style.

  Carol started first, misdirecting her anger onto us. At least, I felt like I had done something wrong when she was done ranting. “They want me to grow out my hair so it touches my damn shoulders. Why? Why? And I can’t bite my own nails. They can force people who don’t even know each other to act like husband and wife but they can’t force me to stop biting my nails. Oh, and they need to be painted each week and filed down.”

  Miriam opened her letter and said, “Well, it said I did such a great job on my last intervention that they’re going to unlock a television channel for us.”

  “Really, which one?” I sat up in my chair. I had never watched an actual television channel but I did know of a few that still existed. Show after show after show. Now that would be something. DVDs were hard to come by, especially the ones worth the time it took to watch them.

  “The Sports Channel. I am required to host a football game pre-show bash this month in the neighborhood. I couldn’t even name a team if you asked me.”

  I was severely disappointed, to say the least. I knew it wouldn’t be the channels that only show movies but I was hoping for some old, dumb comedies at least. Not stupid sports.

  We watched men hit baseballs and other men catch them. Exhilarating.

  “This is a rerun. That stadium doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “What’s the point of a sports rerun?” Carol asked.

  “There is none. But I guess since the league was disbanded, at least in this part of the country, they have to resort to showing stuff people have seen before.”

  “I thought you hated sports.”

  “I do. I also hate boredom. I read a lot of newspapers.”

  “Do you have any newspapers with you?

  “No. Say, since we are now required to say 10,000 words to each other each week. Last week we said a total of 2,817. That was at least a dozen words right there. Okay, Pearl, you start.”

  Trying to stifle a giggle, I said hello.

  Miriam motioned me with a wave of her hand to keep going.

  “Hi, I’m Pearl and I�
��m going to be your daughter for this evening.” Miriam started to applaud thunderously.

  “Hi, I’m Carol, and I’m going to be the woman of the house for an unforeseeable future. How the hell do they know how many words we say?”

  “They’d rather pay someone to tally the words than pay someone to collect the garbage on a weekly basis. And I am Miriam, the other woman of the house who just happens to wear pants all of the time. However, I might take them off from time to time.” Carol made a face where she did not bother to try and conceal her disgust at the thought of Miriam lounging around in her whites, “So stay out of the basement unless you’d like to feel your eyeballs burn.”

  I thought it was funny. But I would never go into the basement now.

  “I’ll trade you my skirts for your pants,” Carol offered. Probably the nicest thing she had said yet.

  “We’ll see if they fit. Okay, we are still about 9,900 or more words short. But luckily, it’s just Monday. Oh, I’ll name the days of the week. Sunday. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday and Saturday. More points for us.”

  “Is “okay” one word or two? Like can it be said as in the letters, ‘O’ and ‘K,’” Miriam asked me.

  “Typically, people write it as one. But you could say it twice and it would count twice.”

  “Okay. Okay.”

  “State for the record, your first and last name.”

  “Carol Bunderson.”

  “Bunderson? Really?”

  “Yes, really, Miriam. What’s your full name?”

  “My birth name was Michael Jay Bernhardson.”

  “I guess there was no magical method in choosing members for families. They just did it alphabetically,” I said. No personality tests, clearly. Just basically names out of a hat and hope for the best. A great plan for failure.

  “Pearl, what’s your last name?”

  I hesitated before saying, “I don’t have a last name. Well, I don’t remember...I guess.”

  “Okay, here we have for your entertainment tonight: Carol Bunderson, Miriam Bernhandson, and Pearl Idonthavealastnamewellidontrememberiguess. We are all one happy family!”

  Just then an obnoxious bell rang throughout the house. We all jumped.

  Miriam didn’t move. Carol didn’t move.

  Being curious, I walked toward the door. “I’ll get it,” I said to no one in particular, just trying to get our word count up.

  Now, it was becoming clear that our voices were being picked up by devices implanted in the furniture or walls or something. But what I couldn’t really imagine is a group of people watching and listening to all that tape. How incredibly boring. To get an accurate count of words spoken, they must have had to employ at least a couple of people to double-check the count. Also, they also would have had to rotate shifts because what if we woke up to have a midnight snack and started a conversation? Maybe they hired someone to create transcripts too?

  I opened the door and there stood a guy I sort of recalled when we first arrived at Camp X. He had blond hair, the whitest teeth, and looked like he’d feel at home on a tennis court or even a yacht. In other words, a hot guy that I had never imagined myself one day being with because the gap between his level and my level is way too wide. And unrealistic.

  “Hi, I’m Steven. I’m here to take Miss Pearl on a date tonight,” he said with a slight southern drawl.

  “Date? What date?” Three, I counted the words back in a place that I was quickly forgetting.

  ~~~

  Yeah, thanks for the advance notice. I was just falling asleep in the living room not that long ago and now I was in this strange, circular place called a Planetarium.

  Steven pointed out a bunch of different constellations and famous stars on the program the ushers gave us but I didn’t care much. I did think it was pretty and all but I didn’t need to know anything beyond that.

  There were quite a few handfuls of mismatches in here, no conversations were detected by my ears. I swear, the half of each pair in the room must have appeared in one of the advertisements or a fashion spread in a Seventeen magazine I once read.

  “So do you like your new house?”

  “Yes, it’s very nice. Do you like your new house?” I asked, mostly out of politeness and I couldn’t think of much to say, except for repeating the questions he asked me.

  “I don’t live in your neighborhood.”

  “Oh, I guess I didn’t know there were more than one of these societies in the area.”

  “I live in a regular neighborhood. I am part of a youth group that focuses on preventative measures, instead of letting a problem become bigger and bigger. We have been selected to serve-”

  I suddenly remembered why he looked vaguely familiar. He was at the tables during orientation, handing out yellow cards. On the top it read, “Provisional Citizenship.” I asked him, “Who is this ‘we’?”

  “We are part of a program called-”

  “Actually, I don’t care about all of that. What’s the problem? Am I the problem?

  “No, no, of course not,” then he did this hideous fake laugh that he probably rehearsed in his training program. “We prevent problems. We signed onto this service for five years. The issue that we are trying to prevent is homosexuality.”

  I rolled my eyes, it’s one of them. I didn’t even try to hide it. “What do you get out of all of this?”

  “During our service, we get a weekly living allowance. And after the five years have been successfully completed, we receive a scholarship of $100,000.”

  “$100,000? So what exactly do you do for those five years of service?”

  The lights dimmed, the sound system made the seats vibrate, and we leaned back into our chairs to watch the show.

  “Well, we get married.”

  A crackling sound filled the room, the lights twinkled and changed into different constellations in the ceiling, and this invisible man started talking about Venus and Pisces and who knows what else.

  “It’s just like being outside,” Steven said.

  ~~~

  Steven. Oh, Steven.

  All the girls stopped me on my walks and kept telling me that I was so lucky and they wished that they could be me. Each time I asked them why they thought so. I got some variation of “because you’re engaged to Steven,” without fail.

  The other girls in the community tried to get me to hang out with them but I didn’t want to make friends. They were overly eager on pleasing the mailmen so they didn’t get warning letters. Every shirt they wore was starched from too much ironing. They take on what are called “leadership” roles, from tennis technicians (basically, fishing balls out of dirty leaf piles) to street coordinator (someone who tattles on the neighbors for dumb community violations).

  Yeah, I told the girls. I knew he was good-looking. Yeah, he was also nice. But I got the same kind of thing from the back of my cereal box. Flat. Cardboard. Initially enticing. Something to look at for a while.

  But I didn’t want to wake up next to a cereal box cover for the next several years.

  I wasn’t worried. I didn’t really think about it. Because you see, I couldn’t picture myself living a life (or part of a life) with Steven. I couldn’t see it at all. So it couldn’t possibly happen. If they did somehow solder that ring onto my finger, it wouldn’t be for long. Even if I had to cut my finger off.

  How could I marry Steven when I was in love with someone else?

  That was the question I wanted to spit back in the wedding planner’s face whenever she asked me some dumb detail about the wedding. “What song list do you want for the dance floor? Do you want the YMCA song? That’s always a crowd pleaser.”

  Miriam said I should humor this lady, act dumb, and let her suggest stuff to me. She talked forever when I did. I’d spent several hours already planning this stupid wedding that I’d no intention of attending so I just let her pick out everything. I wouldn’t have been surprised if that was her plan all along.

  I didn’t kno
w why the wedding planner, Michelle, even needed me to be there for the wedding planning details. Anything I decided on she overrode. And I was the one who was supposedly so picky, picky, picky.

  Before the “appointment” started, I met with the pastor who would be ordaining the service. A county judge was supposed to do it but backed out because they got more important things to do, I guess.

  The guy’s name was Eldon and looked like maybe he was handsome once. He took my hand when he spoke with me, kind of made me feel weird. And he kept calling me child, but not in a condescending way. I think he knew how ridiculous the whole thing was. He didn’t have much to discuss, basically went over the things he would be saying, where I would stand, when to light a candle and such.

  Michelle brought a briefcase and from within it, she placed on the table some papers, brochures, a Tupperware container of cake samples, a box of plastic forks, ribbons, a photo album, and a stack of stapled papers. I read the top line, “Your special day is arriving...make it one to remember!”

  She handed me a brochure with doves holding wedding bells in their mouths, “Hi, I’m Michelle and I’m going to be your personal wedding planner. Your special day is arriving...make it one to remember!” I had to hold in my laugh, it almost came out but it sounded like an aborted sneeze. “The wedding is being sponsored by our program, so no need to worry about the cost. We believe that the bride should have complete control over her wedding. It is, after all, the day she has been waiting for all of her life. Today we will be going over all the little details from what kind of cake you want served and the venue of the reception”

  “Do I get a choice of husband?”

  She ignored me.

  I thumbed through the brochure as she was reading the script out loud to me. I didn’t know why they sent someone over here to read me some Grimm Brothers-like fairytale, I wasn’t not four years old. They could have mailed it to me. I wasn’t the best reader or speller, but I could get the overall gist.