All Good Children

by Catherine Austen

  All the time I’d thought I was playing it cool. Yet there I am on camera with my eyes soft and dreamy and my tongue hanging out. There’s no way she couldn’t have known how I felt about her.

  It’s cold in her empty house. I pull my arms out of my sleeves and hug my naked chest. When the recording ends, I watch it again. I project it onto my hand as if I’m holding her, but that just makes me sad. “Goodbye, Pepper,” I whisper.

  I crack open the door of her bedroom, half expecting an ambush of cops and nurses in the hallway. But there’s no one in the house or on the street. I lock the door behind me and drop the keys in the mailbox. I won’t be coming back here.

  Mom’s crying when I get home. Ally’s at the kitchen table coloring, and Mom’s sobbing on the couch. I sit beside her, but not too close because it unnerves me when she cries. I break into her sadness as gently as I can. “Hey, Mom, I found us a car. From Kim, my hairdresser. Her son fixes cars. Supreme, huh?”

  She looks at me and nods. Her eyes are red and her face looks ten years older than yesterday. “That’s great news, honey.” She tries to smile, but it’s contorted with her sadness so it just looks pained. I recoil, and a sob bursts out of her. She puts her face in her hands and rocks back and forth.

  “Did someone else die?” I ask. “Is Xavier okay?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Did Dallas call? I know he says he doesn’t want to go but he’s just scared. He’ll change his mind.”

  She shakes her head.

  “Did Rebecca tell us not to come?”

  “Stop, Max,” she whispers. “It’s nothing like that.” She pats my knee and opens her mouth to speak but nothing comes out. She wipes her eyes and shakes her head.

  “Are you sick?” I cringe as I say it.

  She laughs. It takes me by surprise so I laugh too. Her eyes are shiny bright and she sounds like a girl my age. “No! I’m not sick.” She laughs some more, then sighs and shakes her head at me.

  “Good,” I say. “Whatever it is, you shouldn’t worry, because it won’t matter in a couple of weeks. We’ve got our wheels. We’re getting out of here.”

  She sucks in a big stuttering breath.

  I figure it must be hormones. “I’m here if you want to talk about it,” I say, though I’d rather eat my own waste than have a chat with Mom about her hormones. I rise. “It’s good about the car, right?”

  She nods.

  “Anything to eat?”

  She grabs my hand. “Stay here for a bit.”

  “Sure. I’ll grab something and bring it over. We’ll watch a movie or something. Okay?”

  I don’t wait for her answer.

  I open the fridge and look for something to eat. “Hey, Ally, how are you doing?”

  “Fine, thank you, Max. How are you?”

  “I’m all right.” I shift bottles of ketchup and pickles, as if a grilled chicken sandwich might be lurking behind them. “What did you have for supper?”

  “We had soup with bread and cheese.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’ll have to do.” I lift the lid off the pot on the stove. There’s a bit left, so I warm it up. “I had a great day today, Ally. How about you?”

  “It was fine, thank you, Max.”

  “Did you leave the cream cheese out?” I find it behind the milk and pull them both onto the counter. I pour a glass, drink it, pour another. I sniff the cheese before I spread it on a bun because in this house, you never know. “You didn’t mind going back to school?” I ask. “Everything went okay?”

  “Everything is good at my school,” Ally says. “Every child who goes to school is lucky.”

  “What did you say?” I turn around and set my plate across from her. But I don’t sit down.

  Ally’s sitting very straight, with her head bowed toward her work. She looks intently at her page and fills in a numbered space slowly and carefully with a black pencil, her fingers moving back and forth in tiny overlapping lines.

  “What did you just say, Ally?” I repeat.

  She stops coloring when the space is entirely black. She sets her pencil down and looks up. Her eyes drift over the air before settling on me. “I don’t remember what I just said.” She scratches a stray hair off her cheek. “I’m having trouble focusing on my work. I’m too hot.” She takes off her sweater and hangs it neatly on the back of her chair. She looks down at her page, picks up a blue pencil, colors another numbered space.

  Her body barely moves, her coloring is so controlled. Her fingers jiggle. Her wrist shakes slightly. But her arm is almost still. Up at her shoulder there’s no motion at all, just a dark arm at rest. I stare at the big beige patch that wasn’t there this morning, and the knife slips from my hand. When the clatter of metal finally rings itself out, all I hear is my mother quietly crying in the living room.

  FOURTEEN

  “Whispering is wrong,” Ally says. She stomps into the living room, dressed in pajamas, holding her teddy bear by the snout. I’ve been living with her for one week since her shot, and I can’t stand her. “You should do your homework,” she tells me.

  We were right to call them zombies. They want to eat our brains.

  I force a smile. “Time for bed, sleepyhead.”

  She looks at me like I’m defective. “We have to tell an adult when children don’t follow the rules.”

  Mom rises from the couch beside me. “Max finished his homework, Ally. It’s not your business to oversee your brother.”

  “Work is everybody’s business.”

  We have to get out of this city.

  Ally stares at the coffee table. She points her finger and calls the world to witness. “You used my coloring pencils!

  You’re not allowed. They’re for my work.”

  “I told Max he could use them,” Mom says.

  Ally marches over to my drawing: a sunny dandelion sprouts from a crack in the sidewalk where zombie children march to school, one huge shoe with an industrial gray sole about to come down hard on it. “That’s not allowed!” She grabs the paper, knocking pencils to the floor, and folds it in her greasy hands.

  I want to flick her across the room.

  “That’s enough, Ally!” Mom says. She stops a rolling pencil with her foot. “Pick these up.”

  “Okay.” Ally groans and looks confused. “What do I do?”

  “Pick up the pencils,” Mom says. “We’ll do it together.” She claps her hands and chants, “One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, four to go.”

  “That’s silly,” Ally says.

  Mom takes a deep breath.

  We pick up the colored pencils together. “You could be faster,” Ally tells me. “We should always do our best.”

  I’m on my knees by the armchair when she walks past and my hand shoots out in front of her foot. She trips and falls. Immediately I feel like a beast—what kind of person trips the six-year-old zombie who used to be his little sister?—but I also feel intensely satisfied. “You should watch where you’re going,” I tell her.

  “You should be respectful of those around you.”

  I give her the finger when her back is turned. I peek behind the chair and give the spider a thumbs-up.

  It doesn’t look like Fred has put much effort into his web, but he managed to catch a clothes moth. It struggles from its fate while Fred works up an appetite. I wish he’d just eat it. Waiting kills me these days. Every moment is fat with hope and dread.

  I lie on the floor beside the chair and try to make my mind go blank. Ally’s shadow looms over me. I expect her to stomp my face. Instead she steps right over me onto Fred. His web peels off its anchors and sticks to her sock. She grinds the ball of her foot into the floor. Fred is a circle of black goo, his legs torn and scattered around his flattened corpse. Ally swats the web off her foot, catches the moth in the silk, and squashes it between her fingers.

  “You have to kill bugs because they’re dirty,” she tells me.

  I just lie there, nodding.

>   “We have to get out of here before she rats me out,” I tell Mom. She’s in the bathroom, brushing her teeth. I stir a packet of noodles into a cup of water in the kitchen. “We can’t wait for the passport of some kid who might not show till New Year’s Day.”

  Mom sticks her head around the corner. Her eyes are bright, her lips foamy. “Would you leave without Dallas?” she asks excitedly.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  She wipes her face and walks over, rests a hand on my arm. “They’re not going to let him go, Max, and taking him without permission is kidnapping.”

  I rip my arm away. “Man, you’re such a liar! You’re going back on this now?”

  “No. I’m just worried. Our races won’t play out well at the border.”

  She’s right. No one would blink an eye at a white family taking a black kid out of the country. But there’s no way the border guards will let someone as black as Mom smuggle a white ultimate away forever. “Did you tell Rebecca we’re bringing him?” I ask.

  “Yes. And if we stay with her, under her last name, Arlington might not find us for a while.”

  “You think he’ll try to find us in Canada?”

  “We’re kidnapping his child, Max.”

  There’s a knock at the door. We both jump. I figure the room is under surveillance and the word kidnapping alerted the cops.

  “It’s eight o’clock at night,” Mom mutters as she goes to the door. I crouch behind her, tiptoeing in my own home.

  In the hallway, Dallas waits with a backpack on one shoulder and his RIG in hand. “I’m informing the community about the benefits of our New Education Support Treatment,” he says. He chews a bit, and I pull him inside.

  Mom pats his arm. “Oh my god, you’re good at that. We were just talking about you.”

  “I know. I had my ear pressed to the door.”

  “What if the camera saw you do that?” I snap.

  He shrugs. “The zombies do it all the time. It’s part of their training.”

  “Could you really hear us?” Mom asks.

  “Just the odd word. I’m sorry about Ally.”

  “We should have left sooner,” Mom says. “At least you two are still okay.”

  Dallas waits for her to shut her bedroom door before he heads toward the living-room couch. “I just came to give you this,” he tells me. He unzips his pack and lifts out a blue-flowered pillowcase so full and heavy that the seams stretch tight. He sets it on my lap.

  I peek inside—pearls, gold chains, earrings, coins, bundles of paper money. “Jesus, Dallas, is this real?”

  He nods. “Austin’s been stealing from our parents and their friends since he was little.”

  I jiggle the contents. “What’s it for?”

  “For the car, of course.”

  “I told you. We’re trading the apartment for the car.”

  “Then it’s for gas and food and somewhere to stay when you get there.”

  “When we get there.”

  He shrugs.

  “Don’t start that again,” I say. “You can see your parents when you’re an adult.”

  “It’s not that. They don’t even like me.” He brushes his bangs from his eyes and tries to smile. “I just don’t think I can go. What if it’s all a spill-zone up there? Or what if there’s no work and we end up living in the car? Can we even go to school there? What if they ship us back? Or what if we get killed in Freaktown?”

  “It’s a lot closer than Mexico. And safer.” I try to lighten his mood by asking, “Who would you rather be killed by? A bunch of freaks or a bunch of Mexican drug lords?”

  He scratches his head. “I’ve never been good at decisions.”

  “We’ll be fine, Dallas. The timing is perfect. School’s out on Friday. Mom has the weekend off. You can tell your parents you’re Christmas shopping. No one will look for us all day. We’ll be over the border before they know we’re gone.”

  He nods, but his heart’s not in it.

  “Mom can probably get you that passport with the name Connors.”

  He snickers. “I’m a bit pale for your family.”

  “Then we’ll hide you in the trunk,” I snap.

  “And what if they look?” he snaps back. “You’ve got this one chance, Max. You can’t do anything illegal or they won’t let you out.”

  “It’s not illegal to leave.”

  “I heard that word.”

  “What word?”

  “Kidnapping.” He stands and brushes off his pants. “It won’t be easy getting me out of here. Even you guys alone might have problems. Your Mom’s a lot darker than you. They might think she’s taking her kids away from her husband.”

  “We have his death certificate and all our documents.”

  “You can’t take the chance of getting caught for kidnapping.”

  “We are not leaving you.”

  “I’ll have another chance, Max. My family has money. I’m almost sixteen. By summer I could have my own car. I can drive myself across the border.”

  “Summer? Dallas, we’ve been doing this for eight weeks and we’re barely hanging on. How are you ever going to make it through another six months?”

  “I can do it. I’m good at it.”

  “You’re falling apart! You’ll have nothing left when I’m gone.”

  He shoulders his pack. “I can do it, Max. I still have my thoughts. I just can’t say them out loud. I still have my feelings. I just can’t show them. I still have all the things that used to matter. They’re inside me. They can’t take that away.”

  I smack his arm. “Yes, they can! They can take anything away! They just took everything from Ally. They took it from Pepper and Xavier. And they sure took it from Tyler Wilkins, didn’t they? If they get their hands on you, Dallas, you will line up and ask them to take those things away.”

  “Shh!” Mom peeks into the living room, half asleep. “Keep your voices down. Is everything all right?”

  “Fine, Mrs. Connors. I’m just leaving.” Dallas waits till she’s gone, then whispers, “I’ll be caught at the border. And I don’t want to be caught, Max. I don’t want to take that chance. I cannot take the stress of hoping for something that’s not going to happen. I’d rather stay here and be hopeless. Then I might be able to hang on.”

  “To what?”

  He doesn’t answer. He just leaves.

  Mom stomps back in, ready to give us hell for keeping her awake. She softens when she sees my face. “What’s wrong?”

  “Dallas is scared to come. He thinks he’ll get caught.”

  She nods. “It’s risky.”

  She holds up her hand to stop me from interrupting, but I interrupt anyway. “Maybe we should all stay,” I say. “What if things are worse in Canada? Isn’t that a theme through history—people go off in search of a better land but they end up in some nightmare and wish they’d never left in the first place?”

  “There’s also the theme of people going off in search of a better land and finding a better land.”

  “But if we’re the only ones—”

  “You’re not.” She takes my face in her hands. “There is a whole world out there full of normal children, Max. We think because we’re trapped here that this is our only choice, but it’s not. We’ll be okay. Like you said, I’m a nurse. I can find work. We can go anywhere.” She kisses my forehead. “We can’t stay here for Dallas.”

  “You’re leaving him?”

  “No.” She nods as she repeats the word. “No.”

  “I won’t leave him, Mom. The teachers and his father? I won’t leave him to that. We’re taking Dallas or we’re not going.”

  Montgomery limps into history class wearing a crisp white shirt under his gray uniform. His right arm hangs limp at his side, no rings or dangling bracelets. He holds his neck stiffly, head cocked to the right, the muscles of his face pulled tight, partially paralyzed. I’ve seen a few kids like that since the shots. I think it’s temporary.

  Mr. Reese l
ooks up and follows Montgomery with sad dark eyes. Mr. Reese is a mess of sighs and pauses and coffee stains these days. The classroom tiles are spattered with French roast from the door to his desk. He arrives early every morning and projects his instructions so he doesn’t have to hear his voice shake while he speaks. He used to be my favorite teacher and I guess he still is, but that’s not saying much. Every time I look up, he’s on the verge of tears, his eyes fixed on one of us, swimming in memories of better days. There’s no outrage in his gaze. No petition, no protest, no hand up for clarification. Just a dull resignation. Like my mother must have shown when she first started drugging her patients. Sad but self-interested, waiting on a bright side.

  I can’t think of a single adult that I admire.

  “Please begin item one,” Mr. Reese says quietly. “Keep your voices low, please.” He does a lot of unnecessary begging.

  We’re supposed to pair up and ask review questions. I turn to Dallas, who sits in the row beside me. He looks away from me and taps Brennan’s shoulder. “I need a partner,” he says.

  Brennan glances at me for a moment before he nods, rises, straddles the back of his seat. He and Dallas stare into their RIGs and murmur answers to each other. They look like they were born best friends—obvious ultimates, worlds away from me, rich and tall and smart.

  Next thing I know, Mr. Reese is beside me, his bitter breath falling on my face. “Max, you seem to be the odd man out.”

  I almost laugh. “That is true, sir. That has always been true.”

  Mr. Reese frowns on me. “I’ll do the review with you if you like. Come up to my desk.”

  I hate the murmur of voices in the room. I tug on my ears and fold the cartilage against my skull so all I can hear is a dull drowning rush. My face tingles and burns. It launches into spasms I can’t control. My eyes blink and tear. My nose itches. My tongue travels inside my mouth, pushing over my teeth, under my lips, against my cheeks, poking around like something trapped and desperate.

  “Are you all right?” Mr. Reese asks.

  It feels like bugs are living in my eyebrows. My skin crawls with them, and I have a sudden compulsion to peel it off. I rub my face, and the itch spreads up through my hair and down the back of my neck, across my shoulders, along my forearms, between my fingers. I can’t stop clawing at myself.