23 · UP THE RiVER
MILTON FELT LIKE a salmon swimming upstream, thrashing against a strong current in hopes of returning to—against all odds—the creek in which he was born. Only instead of a desperate run to his ancestral spawning grounds, Milton was just trying to make it to his locker before shop class with Mr. Nelson “Nine Fingers” Cos-grove.
The hallway was teeming with children, each seemingly going in the opposite direction from Milton. But it wasn’t just the physical flow that was wrong. It was everything. Milton’s life seemed to be coursing conversely to everyone around him.
Then, with a sudden slam to the shoulder, Milton and his handful of textbooks tumbled to the concrete floor. As he scooped up his books, a boot stomped hard on his copy of Calculus: Early Transcendentals. Milton’s eyes traveled up a thick denim-clad leg, across an un-tucked flannel shirt, and settled on the peach-fuzz-topped snarl of Tristan Parker.
“Aren’t you supposed to be asleep in your crypt, freak?” Tristan rumbled.
Milton tried to tug his book free. Just as he nearly had it, Tristan abruptly lifted his foot, sending Milton tumbling backward. He fell onto his back, with his backpack both easing his fall and holding him fast to the cold concrete floor. Tristan laughed, high-fiving several of his fellow ruffians as he walked away down the hall.
Milton felt like a tortoise that had been flipped over onto its shell, left struggling and prone as predator birds crowded around it.
This scene—the aftermath of a humiliating bully episode—was not uncommon to him. Neither was the fact that nobody had tried to help. But the looks in the eyes of the children gawking down on him weren’t filled with the usual detached amusement and relief that it wasn’t them on the cold floor of the hallway. Their eyes were full of fear. The kids looked down at him as if he had a deadly, highly contagious disease, which terrified them.
As Milton struggled to right himself, a dark, bony arm thrust from the crowd and reached out to him. Not having a lot of rescue options at this point, Milton took the hand, which hoisted him up with surprising strength.
“Thank you,” he said as he stood and stared into the grinning, just-shy-of-crazy face of Necia Alvarado.
She kept smiling at him, expectantly. It freaked Milton out. It made him think that they were having a conversation that he wasn’t aware of.
“Well,” Milton said to end the near-painful awkwardness, “I’ve got to get to class. Thanks again.”
He turned toward his locker, which had been only a few yards away all along. It was like someone drowning while a life preserver floated, unnoticed, just out of reach. Milton’s locker was hard to miss, though, considering it was the only one that had the words zombie boy spray-painted on it.
The hairs on the back of Milton’s neck stood on end. He turned. There Necia Alvarado stood, still smiling, still staring, still wanting … something.
“What?” Milton asked.
Necia was wearing her usual black wool overcoat, white stockings, and white leather flats. It was her uniform, though no school uniform policy had ever been instituted at Generica Middle School. Her plain, consistent dress had something to do with her weird religion. But Milton noticed a bright splash of color peeking out from the collar of her drab coat. A jumper with red and white stripes. And the glint of a name badge pinned to her breast: N. ALVARADO. Necia was a candy striper, a volunteer for the local hospital. The realization gave Milton an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu. Finally, her thin lips stopped their empty grinning.
“I don’t want anything,” she said with her ruffled, mousy squeak. “But I do happen to have something you want.”
Milton’s stomach rolled around like an old dog attempting a new trick. He wasn’t sure what Necia had in mind, but there was a dark confidence about her that he found unsettling. It was as if they were playing a game that she knew she had already won.
“Look,” Milton replied cautiously as he dialed the combination to his locker. “I appreciate you helping me and not being an evil dork like everybody else here, but if this has anything to do with your religion—you know, like, ‘I’ve got something you want: peace, faith, and eternal happiness … blah blah blah’—I’m not interested. I respect your beliefs and all, whatever they are, but I just—”
“I’ve got the package you left at the hospital,” she interjected. “The gift from your mother.”
Milton stopped cold. He suddenly forgot how to breathe. The old dog that was his stomach had been put down.
Necia resumed her grinning. “Want to keep playing?” she continued. “Fine. The package you left in Damian’s room at the very moment he passed away. Does that ring any bells?”
Milton traded his scuffed textbooks for some others in his locker. He tried to act nonchalant but couldn’t stop shaking.
“Cat got your tongue?” Necia teased. “Well, if curiosity gets the best of your cat, come by my ‘weird church’—the Knights of the Omniversalist Order Kinship. In the basement of the Barry M. Deepe Funeral Parlor on Jordan Avenue. I’ll be there tonight, at eight o’clock, after my shift at the hospital.”
She turned and walked away, whistling. Milton stared at her scrawny, sharply outlined form as the throng of chattering children slowly absorbed her.
Milton leaned against his locker, slamming the door shut with his back before sliding slowly to the ground. His head throbbed. His fate was indeed in Necia’s bony hands. Getting himself arrested wouldn’t help his sister or best friend, Virgil, down in Heck.
The warning bell rang.
Great, Milton thought, and I’ll be tardy to boot.
Just then, Milton was seized by a wave of nervous, crackling sensory overload. The hallway was slick with sharp smells and noises. Lucky must be awake, Milton thought. When he was asleep—which was about eighteen hours a day—Milton’s eerie, psychic connection with his pet was severed. But when Lucky was alert, Milton experienced temporary bouts of keen animal consciousness.
His nostrils flared, and he could sense dark, twisting fumes that became a taste in the back of his mouth. His freaky hearing could discern a complex path winding through the crowd of kids rushing through the hallway to their next class. Echolocation: navigation through sound waves.
Milton bolted up and dashed through the pathway that only he could sense, snaking through the sea of students like a greased eel.
He plopped himself in his seat at the back of Mr. Nelson “Nine Fingers” Cosgrove’s shop class just as the final bell rang. Students and teacher alike gawked as Milton made it to his seat with an athletic grace the likes of which they had never seen.
At least Milton had managed to dodge another in a seemingly endless string of personal humiliations. His stomach growled loudly. What he wouldn’t give for a live mouse right about now, he thought as he coughed up an imaginary hairball.
24 · iN MARM’S WAY
MARLO CRINKLED IN her plastic-coated chair. It was as if her butt were waged in a crackling, ever-shifting war of discomfort against her seat.
It doesn’t just smell like chicken soup, she thought as she wrinkled her nose. It smells like years and years of chicken soup … every chicken soup … chicken soup starring some long-extinct, prehistoric chicken, boiled along with mothballs.
The class was Necroeconomics, a curriculum heavy on burglary and safecracking, with the promise of elective classes in blackmail and confidence games for advanced students. Normally this would have fascinated Marlo. But her teacher, Ms. Mandelbaum—an old, two-hundred-fifty-pounds-and-counting teacher who seemed intent on being referred to as “Marm”—sucked all the life out of her potentially interesting lessons. Perhaps it was because she, like everything else in the room, was encased in the same stinky see-through rubber that was underneath Marlo’s disgruntled derriere.
It was as if Ms. Mandelbaum were a piece of exceptionally ugly dry cleaning, sealed inside of a tight, zippered garment bag for all eternity. Or a fatty cut of animated meat testing the strength of its cling wrap.
A large screen descended from the ceiling, announcing yet another taunting advertisement for the supreme spoils of Mallvana.
THIS CLASS IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY JESÚS CHRIST SUPERSTORE, LOCATED ON THE SECOND TIER OF BEAUTIFUL, EVERLASTING MALLVANA.
A throng of rapturous young people with long hair, flowing robes, and sandals dance together against a stark white background. Hands entwined, they spin, laughing, around a tall, bearded Hispanic man.
“Hola!” the man calls out, waving the camera closer. “Jesús here! And welcome to Jesús Christ Superstore!”
The crowd of young people sing together in perfect harmony.
“Jesús Christ Superstore. Prices so low you’ll come back for more!”
Jesús looks around at his disciples and laughs.
“Sure, I often get confused with that other guy.” He grins. “No biggie. But even though I can’t save your eternal soul, I can sure save you mucho dinero!”
The throng of giggling acolytes collapses at the man’s feet.
“Whatever you need, whatever you want … it’s all here,” Jesús says. “Everything from Abyssinian cats and accordions to zebra-skin rugs and zoot suits. And if you find a better deal”—Jesús points to the glowing aura over his head—“I’ll eat my halo!”
The crowd of young people wave a rainbow of varied currency in the air.
“And, unlike some places, I accept all denominations! Adios!”
JESÚS CHRIST SUPERSTORE. JESÚS SAVES … YOU
A WHOLE LOT OF MONEY. ONLY IN MALLVANA.
The girls trembled as one agitated body, twitching for silky, shiny, forbidden things kept out of reach.
“All right, you farblondzhet little women,” Ms. Mandelbaum said, unzipping the zipper covering her mouth as the lights flickered back on. “Maybe if I told you something about myself, you’d stop looking at me like yesterday’s lox!”
Norm discreetly tossed a note on Marlo’s desk.
M—
So what went down with the Grabbit?
—N
Marlo scribbled underneath her friend’s message.
N—
The big bad bunny liked our shoplifting skillz. Wants me and the peroxide princess to pull off a robbery that will really mess up things down here. Interested in being on my team?
—M
Marlo surreptitiously handed the note back to Norm.
“For over twenty years I oversaw the transport of nearly ten million dollars’ worth of stolen property” the teacher said, puffing out her swollen, plastic-wrapped cheeks like a shiny blowfish chomping chewing gum. “Back then, dat vuz a lot of gelt!”
The note returned to Marlo’s desk.
M—
Count me in! I’m sure Takara would want to, too. Maybe even Jordie, though she seems more like a free agent. But I wouldn’t put it past Lyon and Bordeaux to make her an offer she couldn’t refuse.
—N
“The newspapers called me ‘the most successful fence in the history of New York,’ among other things,” the teacher snorted, her beady black eyes flickering with the career highlight reel that played in her head. “I vuz a felonious feminist zat helped many a young woman to get her criminal career off the ground … not that you girls care, staring at your pupiks!”
N—
Cool! Glad to have you aboard. The job involves stealing—I’m practically positive—the Hopeless Diamonds! I—ve already been fooling around with some scenarios and tactics. With you and Takara, we’ll totally “rock” this jewel thing, “stone” cold!
—M
Marlo tossed the note back and began doodling in the margins of her binder paper, creating criminal equations with little x’s and diamonds.
The note was plopped quickly back onto her paper. She unfolded it.
Look up.
There was Ms. Mandelbaum, glowering down at Marlo beneath painted brows that held her high sloping forehead back like two pencil-greased dams. She slapped Marlo hard across the face. The Saran-Wrapped smack echoed through the sudden hush of the room.
“I’ve seen your type many times before,” the teacher seethed, fogging up the inside of her plastic coating. “You think you’re all that and a side of matzo. But you’re bupkes … BUPKES. Do you understand?”
Marlo rubbed her stinging cheek. Though it hurt, it helped her to focus on what needed to be done: proving everyone wrong, in a big, bad, bunny way.
“Yes, Marm,” Marlo said, staring her teacher dead in the eyes. “I’m bupkes. And you can kiss my bup.”
A rap at the door stopped the teacher’s plastic palm from striking Marlo’s cheeky cheek a second time.
“Who is it?” the teacher barked.
The door creaked open. In rolled Poker Alice in her wheelchair. With just the lower part of her body encased in ribbons of white plaster, she resembled a mummy on Casual Friday. Her neck brace restricting the movement of her head, she wheeled herself into Ms. Mandelbaum’s eye-line.
“Hello, Marm,” Poker Alice said. “I wanted to come by and personally introduce—”
Poker Alice spotted Marlo on the edge of her sight. She shifted her wheelchair with an angry jerk simply to glare hotly at the girl for a second, then jerked back to continue her conversation.
“—your new teacher’s aide.”
In behind Poker Alice walked a stocky, big-boned girl with eyes set a few millimeters too far apart and with the flared nostrils of a snorting bull. Like the other girls, she wore an oversized grandma sweatshirt, hers reading, WRINKLED WAS NOT ONE OF THE THINGS I WANTED TO BE WHEN I GREW UP.
There was something familiar and instantly dislikable about the girl, Marlo thought. By her furtive glances, it looked as if she recognized Marlo as well but was trying to hide the fact.
“Meet Amandi Firofnu,” Poker Alice said with a slight smirk.
The girl blew a strand of blond hair from her face and smiled. “Hello, girls,” Amandi said huskily.
Marlo shivered. The girls looked at each other, bewildered.
“Velcome to our little family, bubeleh,” Ms. Mandelbaum said as she gestured to a small desk next to hers. The girls winced as Amandi’s bulk tested the tiny chair’s structural integrity.
Ms. Mandelbaum wrote Amandi’s name on the chalkboard, then waddled to her desk with crinkly squeaks.
“It’s nice to zee such a healthy young woman for a change. I’m sure with such a large, accommodating frame comes a large, accommodating mind, yes?”
“Oh yeah. Right,” Amandi replied, swallowing a tiny lump beneath the high, bunched collar of her sweatshirt. “I know a lot about”—she looked past the teacher’s shoulder at the chalkboard—“necroeconomics.”
The teacher stared at her expectantly.
“Um,” Amandi continued, “it’s like … regular economics, only … necro. Deader. Not alive at all.”
Ms. Mandelbaum nodded faintly. “So”—she hesitated—“you’re zaying that the underworld economy is dictated by and supported through a vast network of exchanges, most of vich occur beneath ze surface?”
Amandi bobbed her squarish head in agreement. “Exactly. Well said, Ms. Mandelbaum.”
“Call me Marm.” The teacher grinned. Appeased, Ms. Mandelbaum walked over to the chalkboard. “Finally, a maidel with some saichel between her ears,” she said while grabbing a stack of papers from her desk. “I was ze upper crust of the lower order, bubeleh, back on ze Surface. I helped many young ladies like yourself off ze streets and into other people’s wallets—”
“It sounds like you were a veritable Marm Teresa,” Marlo said, her sarcasm level set dangerously high.
The teacher stormed angrily toward Marlo’s desk, like a hippo with hemorrhoids.
Amandi stood up suddenly. “Ms. Mandelbaum …
Marm,” she interjected, “don’t let this little, um … maidel waste your time when you have so much knowledge to share with us.”
The steam went out of Ms. Mandelbaum’s kettle. She fidgeted, rustling in her plastic wrap like a restless slab of deli meat.
“Why don’t you tell us about being a”—Amandi looked at the blackboard—“fence. Isn’t that about hiding precious things like, say, jewels until the heat’s off? Where would one hide something of incredible value down here in Heck? Hypothetically of course.”
The teacher arched her penciled eyebrow at Amandi.
“Hypothetically,” Ms. Mandelbaum continued with caution, “Sadia vould be a logical choice, because it vould be like breaking into a prison … and who in zere right mind would vant to break into a prison?”
Sadia, Marlo scribbled in the margin of her notebook. Perfect hiding place for diamonds.
Ms. Mandelbaum hastily grabbed a stack of papers from her desk and tossed them to Amandi.
“But enough of hypotheticals,” she grumbled. “Pass these tests out and let us see exactly vat ve have to verk with here. And I vant to hear the sounds of happy pencils dancing all ‘Hava Nagila’ across test papers.”
As Amandi distributed the papers, she leaned over Marlo and winked knowingly. Why was this freakishly familiar teacher’s aide being nice to her? Marlo wondered as she looked down at her test paper.
1. A stimulative meta-fiscal policy combined with a restrictive monetary policy will necessarily cause:
gross domestic product to increase.
totally gross domestic product to, like, decrease.
interest rates to fall.
All Marlo knew was that her own personal interest rate couldn’t possibly fall any lower. Next to the question, she wrote the name of the new teacher’s aide:
Amandi Firofnu.
She started playing around with the letters, like they were the word puzzles her mother did on Sunday mornings.
Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck Page 13