All Good Children

by Catherine Austen

  Mr. Graham marches into the room with two security guards. They yank Xavier to his feet. He’s limp now, muttering, a mess of snot and confusion. The principal stares at him in disgust.

  Brennan brushes himself off and sits at his bloody desk.

  “Would you like our statements, sir?” I shout at Mr. Graham.

  “Don’t do this,” Dallas whispers.

  “We are all witnesses to the disrespect that occurred in our classroom today!” I shout. “I would like to give you my statement.”

  “I don’t want your statement,” Mr. Graham says. “I have Mr. Warton and the recording.”

  “I want to give you my statement,” I repeat. I push forward, but Dallas won’t let me by without a fight.

  Mr. Graham walks out the door, followed by the guards dragging Xavier.

  I turn away from Dallas, squeeze between desks to the back of the room and up the middle aisle. I’m in front of the camera now. I know I should stop, I tell myself to stop, but I don’t stop.

  Werewolf eases his busted hand through his coat sleeve.

  “Verbal and physical abuse are not appropriate responses, are they, sir?” I shout.

  “What?” he asks angrily. He looks in my face and backs into his lecture projection. Words and images from history flicker across his face. His eyes glitter in the blue light.

  Dallas hustles over. “Our teachers work hard every day to be role models. We owe them our respect,” he says.

  I don’t glance at him. “Xavier Lavigne is a fifteen-year-old boy!” I shout at Werewolf. I want to rip his beard off with his smirk.

  Dallas grabs my shoulder, shoves me to the wall, leans into me. “We are all lucky to go to a school with good role models. We would not be lucky if we had to go to school by ourselves.”

  He holds me there to keep me from digging my grave. He’s risking his whole act like this, in front of Werewolf and the zombies and the surveillance camera. “We’re all lucky,” he repeats. He holds my gaze and nods, over and over, until I nod back.

  Werewolf is disturbed and angry, but he doesn’t accuse us of anything. He dissolves his lecture and squeezes behind Dallas, scampers to the doorway. He holds his broken hand over the place where his heart would be if he had one. “I don’t expect to see you all here next term.”

  “He’s suspended,” Celeste says. “I’d rather you didn’t come in. I don’t know what’ll set him off.”

  Xavier lies on his living room carpet, staring at the ceiling.

  “Don’t look so sad, Max. He’ll be okay. He might just need a new patch.” Celeste pats my arm. “We started an information campaign at the college about the new support program and how they should warn people on other meds to be extra-careful. We might do a petition.”

  I try to smile.

  She looks over her shoulder at her baby brother. “Sunday’s his birthday,” she whispers.

  At home, Mom sighs along with the news.

  “The New Education Support Treatment will turn the tide in our failing education system,” a government rep is saying. His words are straight from the Chemrose website, all about community improvement, cost savings, the best interests of the child.

  “What are we going to do?” I ask. “This is every academic school in the country he’s talking about.”

  Mom shrugs.

  “I have three years left of school,” I remind her. “Ally has twelve. Do you really think you can be there for every shot they give us?”

  She bites her lip, shakes her head. “Maybe we should leave,” she mutters.

  “Of course we should leave. You’re a geriatric nurse in a world full of old people. You can find work anywhere.”

  “But your schooling—”

  “There are a thousand virtual high schools I could go to.”

  “But the quality, Max. I can’t afford—”

  “We can’t stay here, Mom!”

  She nods. “Okay. Maybe we can go back to Atlanta.”

  “Atlanta, where Aunt Sylvia was murdered?” I remember all the poor people on the dirty streets, the sad ones begging from strangers and lying half dead in alleys, the scary ones hovering in doorways, hungrily surveying the wealthy.

  Mom rolls her eyes at me. “Either we stay or we go, Max. I can’t change the world.”

  “All right. Let’s go. A million people live in Atlanta, and hardly any of them are murdered. Right?”

  “Right.”

  The news shows a labor riot in the American south, where illegal workers are protesting the new universal id cards.

  “Can we take Dallas with us?” I ask. “He’s losing it here. He puts on an act all day and night.” She frowns, so I poke at her guilt. “You either have to get him out of here or give him the shot. You can’t leave him like this.”

  She holds her head in her hands. “Okay. We’ll take Dallas. We’ll take anyone who wants to come.”

  Ally plays inside the tent, singing to her teddy, “You find milk and I’ll find flour, and we’ll have pudding in half an hour.”

  I blow off Saturday’s coaching to do chin-ups in the park and run down the rich people’s sidewalks.

  I’m struck by the sight of a woman kneeling beside a two-year-old child and a bucket of chalk. They’ve covered twenty square feet of concrete with cloudy pastels— scratches and scars from the kid, bold blocks and squiggles from the woman. I jog on the spot beside them. “That’s glorious,” I say. “You should color the whole world like that.”

  She smiles at me, sincere and well-wishing, and offers me pink and yellow chalk. “Draw something in front of your house.” She has no idea they’re going to zombify her kid once he gets to preschool, no idea she’ll want them to. I leave them to their rainbows.

  I end up at Pepper’s house. I draw a pink heart on the concrete slab in front of her door. I write my initials inside it with a plus sign and a question mark. Then I ring the bell.

  There’s no answer.

  I drop the yellow chalk in her mailbox and pretend she might fill in her own initials. There’s a jingle in the box when the chalk hits bottom. My fingers find two keys on a metal wire. I close my fist around them.

  For the sake of the camera, I ring the bell again. I wait for an answer that doesn’t come, then reach into my pocket and whip out the keys like they were there all along. I hurry inside and shut the door.

  I don’t call Pepper’s name because I know she’s not here. I can tell by the smell and the static air. This is an empty house.

  I tell myself I’ll just get a drink of water and leave, but even as I’m thinking the words I know I’m going to search every inch of the place.

  Even though it’s on two floors, Pepper’s house is almost as small as our apartment. There’s a living room, kitchen and bathroom downstairs, two bedrooms and a utility room upstairs. There’s not much to explore—no clothes on the drying rack, no dishes in the sink. A few dresses hang in Pepper’s closet between dozens of empty hangers. There are some T-shirts in the drawers, but no socks or underwear. I’ve never thought about her panties before, much as I’ve thought about getting them off. But now that I’m searching her dresser, I wish I knew what they looked like.

  I sit on her bed and feel her absence like a ghost. There’s a thin layer of dust on her night table, with bare spots where picture frames might have stood.

  She’s gone. I lie back on the pillow and think those two words over and over.

  Before I leave, I peek behind her bedroom door in hope of a flimsy nightgown I could fantasize with. Instead I find a thin strip of wood—sawn-off window trim—that holds the tiniest painting I ever made. It shows Pepper in a skimpy elf costume up on her toes beside a stack of presents, one leg high in the air behind her, her pointed shoe sparkling like a star. I sketched it at the Christmas production last year, worked on it through the holidays, gave it to her on New Year’s Day.

  I’m happy that she hung it here. Every time she closed her door, she was reminded of me. But then she packed her frames a
nd panties and left my painting behind.

  I lift it off its mount. It’s not really stealing. She’s never coming back for it.

  Someone’s crying in the tent on Sunday morning when I get back from cross-country. I pull apart the front flaps and find my mother on the couch bawling like a baby, her face twisted and stained, soggy tissues in her fist. She looks up at me and hides her face in her hands.

  She won’t tell me what’s wrong. She shakes her head every time I ask, swats at me when I try to pry her fingers off her face.

  “It’s Xavier’s sixteenth birthday,” I say, but she just cries harder.

  I head to the kitchen and butter some toast, sprinkle cinnamon and sugar overtop. I sit at the table and scroll through Freakshow’s “behind the scenes” clips. Zipperhead and his girlfriend just got engaged.

  Eventually Mom comes out and sits beside me. I dissolve my screen and offer her my last triangle of toast. She shakes her head, clears her throat, takes my hand. She stares at the table and says, “Tyler Wilkins died last night from heart failure because of the shot I gave him.”

  The bread wads up on my tongue. I’m silent, disbelieving. I don’t say, “You killed him.” I don’t say, “You didn’t kill him.” I don’t say anything.

  I feel all ripped up inside, as if Tyler was my friend. I try to remember him busting my ribs, slapping Ally’s face, kicking Xavier, all the reeking moments he inflicted over the years, but every image gets pushed away by the memory of him storing my painting in his RIG and calling me an asshole because I thought I had him pegged.

  I get up and go inside the tent. I can’t sit down. I turn in circles and watch the walls blur by. I know exactly what I’m going to paint for the exhibit.

  I’ll paint children, dozens of them, real ones-Tyler and Pepper and Xavier, me and Dallas, Bay and Brennan, Montgomery and Kayla, Saffron and Chicago, the baby on the sidewalk yesterday, Zachary and Melbourne from the park, Lucas from downstairs, the high school kids on skateboards, the throwaways on skates. I’ll paint all of us doing what we used to—dancing and running and fighting and playing and laughing and being kids. I’ll paint us on the walls inside the tent where I’m hiding now, in dazzling hues and luminance. I’ll leave the walls outside dull gray, stenciled with a single word. I’ll call the whole thing Withstanding on a Perilous Planet. And I’ll give it to Xavier as a belated birthday present. I’ll tell him it’s a metaphor.

  ELEVEN

  There’s a meeting at the high school to talk about concerns with the New Education Support Treatment, but only my mother has any.

  “I expected you to be thankful for the treatment,” Mr. Graham tells her. “Your son is an obvious troublemaker— and I don’t mind using that word now that it’s a thing of the past. Maxwell is bright enough to waste hours of class time with his antics yet still complete his work and earn As. But in exercising what you consider his freedom, he impacts on the freedom of others. He wasted their class time, too, and they needed that time to understand their work. His fun caused his classmates to fail.”

  Everyone turns to stare at Monster Max.

  I have to admit, it’s a good argument. I never thought goofing around might send someone to throwaway school. He should have told me that my first detention.

  He blathers about the importance of home support strategies, which he’s sure are lacking in my life. “Nesting makes the children receptive to the tools of learning, but it’s up to us to shape them into excellent students.”

  Mom’s hand shoots up. “So is it the treatment or the reinforcement that determines their behavior?”

  The principal nods like she’s finally catching on. “It’s the reinforcement. The treatment makes them open to it.”

  “So they would behave in any way we promoted?”

  Mr. Graham glances at a black-suited man on the stage behind him, then says, “In a manner of speaking.”

  Mom persists. “So we could train them to do almost anything?”

  “No, you’re misunderstanding.” Mr. Graham smiles. “Let’s move on now. We have more to discuss tonight than the concerns of just one parent.”

  He amazes the audience with pie charts of cost savings and bar graphs of academic achievements. “Chemrose practically donated the treatments,” he says. “We barely had to pay half the cost.” The audience claps while the black-suited man bows.

  “How much was paid, exactly?” Mom asks.

  Mr. Graham pretends he doesn’t hear. Nearby parents glance our way and laugh. Their sons and daughters stand stiffly beside them, staring at the stage.

  “This is the best thing we have ever done for our children,” the principal says. “I know we’d do it even if the cost of education increased. It’s in the interests of our students to keep their marks up so they can remain entitled to the privilege of coming here. Or to the trade schools. Jobs are coming and companies need workers who will work.”

  Clap, clap, clap, pause, clap, clap, clap. You’d think the adults had been dosed. “You don’t want them disadvantaged in this competitive world,” they all say through the coffee and donuts.

  “I heard that the top student in each class doesn’t get the treatment,” a woman says beside me. “Is that true?” She’s talking to Coach Emery, who shrugs as if it has nothing to do with him.

  I catch Brennan’s eye, but he quickly looks away.

  “I’m sorry Nesting hasn’t impressed you,” a man says behind us. It’s the black suit from the stage. He’s tall and handsome with a wide face and close-cropped hair. He smiles and extends his hand to Mom. “I’m Bill Walters from Chemrose.” I stare at him with more interest than a zombie ought to show.

  “We sometimes have problems with subjects already taking stimulating medications,” he says, like that’s what’s wrong with me. “The treatment works on the central nervous system and there’s sometimes an adjustment period. The patch can be mildly sedating, but don’t worry. The body will find its balance. Your son’s attention will soon come into focus and his marks will improve. Nested children are extremely dedicated to their studies.”

  “But they lose initiative,” Mom says.

  He nods. “That’s one of the benefits. Untreated students often initiate activities that aren’t productive in the classroom.” He lays his hand on my shoulder and looks at me like I’m terminally ill and there’s no hope at all. “His body’s chemistry is working out its harmony. I’m sure you’ll see improvement soon. And keep in mind that this is a pilot project. If the results prove that the treatment should be discontinued, we’ll discontinue it immediately.” He smiles and moves on through the crowd.

  Everyone who goes to school is lucky, I read on the school notice board. All of my classmates are my friends. There is nothing more important than completing my work.

  Mom reads over my shoulder. “We have to stop this,” she whispers.

  I snort. “It’s a little late for that epiphany.”

  She stares off into some private distance. “I remember when we first conceived you, Max. The first match was a girl with a likelihood of breast cancer. The second was a boy with”—she shrugs—“nothing, really. He had nothing wrong with him. Increased chance of heart disease, I think it was. I couldn’t choose between you.”

  I close my RIG and slide it in my pocket. “You don’t have to tell me this.”

  “Your dad misunderstood. He said we could keep trying until we got one just right. But it wasn’t that. I wanted all of you. I couldn’t choose which ones to destroy. Just because they weren’t perfect.”

  There’s something about your mother telling you of the children she terminated that makes you want to be alone. “I’m going for a run.”

  I do chin-ups in the park until my hands are frozen stiff; then I pound the dark streets for an hour, north and south and north again, working my way closer to the core. The houses grow larger every few streets inward, and soon I’m in my old luxurious neighborhood.

  Lights blaze behind the curtains at Dallas’s hous
e. I stop on the road and catch my breath. A tall cedar hedge hides my old house from view. I want so badly to jog up the stone pathway, open the blue door and head up to my old room, to work in my sketchbook while Ally butts in every five minutes to show me a toy, and the soft voices of my parents float upstairs until finally Dad sticks his big blond head inside and says, “Time for bed, my friend.”

  I turn around and run back home to watch Freakshow. It’s no fun without Dallas. The studio audience looks zombified. Zipperhead and Squid are the most human beings on the screen. I don’t even care who wins.

  A nurse comes to our door. She’s in her forties, short and plump. She wears white pants, white shoes, white shirt, white coat, white gloves. Her hair is dyed platinum. Even her eyelashes are white.

  She shows me an identity card. Her name is Lara Fleishman. She works for the city. “I have some questions to follow up your educational support treatment.” She steps inside and frowns at the tent and the pissy stench of paint.

  Mom calls us to the table.

  “Maxwell Connors, age fifteen?” Lara asks me.

  I nod. “Almost sixteen.”

  “Roll up your sleeve, please.” She takes out a syringe and an empty vial.

  “What are you doing?” Mom asks.

  “Taking a blood sample.”

  Mom puts her hand on Lara’s. “No.”

  Lara frowns at the black hand on her white glove. “But that’s the main part of the follow-up. I have to take samples.”

  “No,” Mom repeats.

  “But I’m a nurse.”

  “So am I. Can I take your blood?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You can’t take theirs either.”

  Lara talks into her RIG, waits, sighs. “Okay. I’ll just check their patches.”

  “I’ve done that already,” Mom says. “They’re fine. You’re not touching my children.”

  Lara huffs. “Your negativity is harmful.” She projects a document onto the table. “There’s a short survey. Can I do that much?” She asks me twelve questions that sound innocent: Do you have friends at school? What field do you want to work in? Who is your favorite teacher?