Mr. Reese grabs my wrists with his pale sweaty hands. “Stop, Max, stop!”
I can’t stand the smell of him. I yank myself out of his grip and jump to my feet. “Don’t touch me!”
He reaches out like he wants to hug me.
I shove him away, and he slams into the wall. “Don’t touch me!” I shriek.
I stumble between the crowded desks, out of the classroom, down the empty hallway. The only sounds are my heels hitting tile and my breath coming sharp. I pass lockers, cameras, corridors lined with photos of previous graduating classes. I walk by the receptionist and the guard and out through the doors of the school. My skin chills and trembles in the cold air, but I’m hot and throbbing inside. I need to run.
I tear away from the school into a maze of gray suburban streets. I run them hard, trying to focus on my breath and the soothing swing of my arms and legs. When I reach the Spartan my legs tremble, my gut rolls, my cheeks tingle. I double over and vomit on the dead grass beside the entrance. Milky puke burns through me and splatters onto my shoes. I retch again and again until my gut aches and my eyes stream and screaming gobs of phlegm are all that come out of me.
I hork and spit. I can’t stand the smell of myself. I’m sour and rotten and shaking with cold. I straighten my spine and look around. I’m alone, brown and gray in a brown and gray landscape.
I break three branches off a cedar shrub and lay them over my vomit in a damaged attempt to cover the sight and smell of it. I wipe my hands on the soft creases of my pants and walk into the Spartan, up the stairs, down the stale hallway to my door.
I shower for twenty minutes and brush my teeth twice, then lie down in bed, naked under the covers. It feels too exposed, so I get up and dress. It’s so quiet. I might be the only person in the whole building.
I empty the pockets of my uniform and stuff it in a laundry bag. I check my RIG.
Already there’s a message from the principal about my outburst, a copy of an official letter to my mother. It informs her that I’m suspended for two days and that “any more unexceptable behavior will lead to expulsion.” Seriously, that’s how he spells it. A kid could choke to death on irony.
Mom hands me a large black wallet. “This is Cheyenne Connors, your new half-brother.”
A sixteen-year-old boy with long black bangs and big blue eyes scowls from a passport. He’s six-foot-two, one-hundred-and-seventy pounds. I know the kid—he’s a footballer from New Middletown Southeast Secondary School, home of the Blue Mountain Devils.
“He doesn’t look much like Dallas,” I say.
Mom snatches the passport from my hands. “They’re the same height, same weight. We can ask Celeste to make up Dallas’s nose and mouth.”
“And the birth certificate? Can we put Dad’s name on it?”
“I don’t have a birth certificate. It wasn’t in his wallet. We’ll have to take Daddy’s passport and death certificate and be prepared to lie.”
I’m in suspended isolation for the next two days. No one posts anything anymore—no journals, gossip, news, snapshots, nothing but school announcements. I don’t want to return to classes but I hate being disconnected. Dallas won’t answer my coded messages. We’re supposed to leave on Saturday.
I’m unsettled in the apartment by myself. I hear noises in the hallway, creaks and murmurs when no one is out there. Yesterday a woman laughed so loud I thought she was in the kitchen. She stood across the hall rummaging in her handbag for a key. I watched her through the peephole. Middle-aged and sagging, with dyed blond hair and a black suit she must have bought when she was thinner. She spoke to a younger woman projected on the wall. “Oh my god, what a bugger!” she yelled, indifferent to the camera and my eyes. “No kidding. They’re all the same.”
I’ve looked and listened for her today. I don’t know why.
I check out the Freakshow tryouts, but there’s no one who interests me. I wish they’d bring back Zipperhead.
I do homework and lift weights until I’m bored senseless. I work up the nerve to visit Xavier.
He answers the door himself.
“Xavier? I almost didn’t recognize you.”
His hair is cut short. He wears white jeans and a blue shirt with a Western motif down the chest. He looks twenty years old, serious, handsome, clean-cut and well rested.
“Hey, Max!” Celeste calls from the living room. She sits on a couch covered in throw blankets, a RIG in her hand. “It’s so nice to see you. I’m in a meeting, but come and keep us company.”
Xavier steps aside to let me pass. He smells like cheap hand soap, a dusting of baby powder over lye. “It’s good to see you,” I tell him.
“Thank you.” His eyes zoom in on me. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t sparkle.
“You know who I am, right?”
“Yes, of course. You’re Maxwell Connors.”
“Good. Royal. You’re doing all right? You look healthier.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“You cut your hair.”
“A man should wear short hair.”
I smile. “You’re sixteen, Xavier.”
“Yes. I had a birthday recently.”
I nod. “Mine’s on Saturday.”
He couldn’t care less. “I need to do my homework now,” he says. He leaves me on my own, sits at a little white desk in the corner, posture perfect on a tall pine chair.
“Xavier’s going back to academic school after the holidays!” Celeste shouts over her RIG. “His body chemistry just needed time to harmonize. Thank god. We were so worried. But the new patch works great.”
I lean on the sagging back of the couch and look over her shoulder. A color wheel and four faces float above her RIG. “What’s your meeting?”
“College yearbook club.” She points at me. “You could help with the design! You’re such a good artist.”
I straighten up, unsure if she’s serious, unsure if she’s been treated. She gabs to her friends about the color of stars and spirals in the yearbook sidebars. I stand there, awkward and ignored, hands in my pockets, smiling for no reason.
The room is furnished with odds and ends—glass coffee table, pine end tables, black plastic cabinet in the corner. An abstract art print hangs, black and pink, on one wall beside a huge brown Leonardo in an ornate frame. The place smells like bacon grease and disinfectant. It’s crazy, like their family.
Xavier’s eyes and fingers whip across his screen twice as fast as a normal person’s.
“What are you working on?” I ask.
He stiffens, unhappy with my interruption. “It’s a translation.”
“He translated a whole book last week from English to Russian,” Celeste boasts. “Now he’s doing it in Spanish. It’s his new obsession.”
“What book?” I ask. “Can I see?”
Xavier sighs.
I hover over his shoulder. When he looks around, I hop to his other side just to bug him. I lean into his RIG. “I never knew you read poetry.”
He shifts his chair away from me. “It’s an English poem from a Sumerian text. I’m translating it into Spanish.”
“Gilgamesh?”
He’s surprised I know it. He looks from me to the screen and back.
I shrug. “How many Sumerian poems are there?”
“There are many Sumerian poems.”
I laugh. “I didn’t know that. But Gilgamesh is famous. Pepper rewrote it in Communications last year. What part are you at?”
“I’m half finished.”
“What part in the story?”
“It’s a poem.”
“Is his friend dead yet? I liked his friend better than him.” I read the English half of Xavier’s screen. “Oh, this part. This is sad.” Gilgamesh is in a tunnel, without a friend in the world, and he has to crawl for hours in total darkness to get to the other side. He’s lonely and scared and he wants to give up. I sigh, shake my head, mutter, “I’ve been there.”
“No you haven’t,” Xavier says. “It’s from
the Middle East.”
I smile. “Yeah, but we’ve all been there.”
He squirms on his chair. “No, we haven’t.”
“Don’t agitate him!” Celeste hisses at me.
“Sorry. It’s a metaphor.”
Xavier shakes his head, furrows his brow, frowns at me with the exact expression Ally uses now, like I’m defective. “It’s a poem,” he snaps.
I don’t like his haircut. I don’t like his face with his new haircut. He looks like he was made in a factory. I don’t know why he ever reminded me of anything else. “I have to go,” I say.
He nods and turns back to his busy-work.
“Oh, hey,” Celeste says, glancing away from her yearbook buddies. “Can you take your tent with you? I know it was a gift and everything, but Mom says we don’t have room for it and it kind of smells.”
I think for a second that she’s joking. “You’re giving me back my painting?”
“We really like it, Max, but we don’t have anywhere to put it so it’s kind of a waste.”
I look at Xavier. “You don’t want your birthday present?”
“It smells funny,” he says without bothering to look at me.
Celeste laughs. “It really does.”
I hope they’re all zombified, the whole Lavigne family. I hate their dirty house and their shiny hair and their poor-but-authentic line of crap. Mostly I hate how much I miss Xavier. I don’t bother smiling. “Sure, I’ll take it.”
As I drag my metaphor down the peeling hallway, I feel angrier but happier at the same time. I saved my tent from being stuffed in a closet full of thrift-store clothing and stacks of useless petitions, from a future folded in on itself until there’s no memory of what it ever meant to anyone. To me. This tent is my work, the finest work of my life, and it belongs to me. Besides, I might have to live in it soon.
FIFTEEN
It’s Friday, December 23, the last day of school before the holidays. Dallas is heading inside when I arrive at the high school. He holds his id card under his chin and stares straight ahead. I take my place in line, quiet and cold like the world around me.
I sit behind him in Communications, still waiting my turn. Mr. Ames hands out holiday assignments on “persuasive nonfiction.” Our syllabus used to list epic poetry for this term, but zombies don’t care about fallen comrades. Mail delivery from ancient to modern times is a brain we can sink our teeth into.
“Yum,” I say to Dallas as I read the list of topics.
He doesn’t hear.
“Bring something of yourselves to this piece,” Mr. Ames says. “Any questions?”
We stare blankly.
He sighs. “You children are not what you used to be.”
I try Dallas again at lunch. I shuffle behind him in the lineup and say, “My mother watched a movie about zombies last night. They ate people’s brains.”
He doesn’t look at me. His eyes follow the cheesy macaroni spreading across his plate in a yellow ooze. His eyelids are purple with fatigue, black against the bridge of his nose.
I tap his shoulder. “Did you see that movie?”
He turns to me like he just realized I exist. No smile behind his eyes. No chewing. No clue. “I used to watch movies,” he says.
“I don’t watch them anymore. I don’t know why.” He grabs his tray and sits at the nearest empty chair between two strangers.
Brennan nudges my spine. “Shake it off,” he whispers without moving his lips.
I’m not aware of ordering lunch. I’m sitting at the end of a long table beside Brennan, staring at a tray of food I don’t want to eat—mushy vegetable soup, cold bread, bitter grapes.
Across the room, Dallas chews and chews but never seems to swallow. Eventually he rises and stacks his plates on the trolley. His jacket stretches tight across his shoulders but his pants barely hang on to his ass. He’s skinnier than he was three days ago.
“Stop staring,” Brennan whispers. He has a natural talent for ventriloquism. “Eat your food.”
I suck a spoonful of gelatin back and forth between my teeth until it liquefies with a red squeak.
History is excruciating. We study industrial catastrophes through the ages. We leave out the suffering and death, skip who’s to blame and focus on the bouncing-back techniques, every nose to a grindstone, getting the job done right.
Mr. Reese doesn’t participate. He shows a documentary, assigns a reading, points to questions on the screen, goes about his duties like a secretary to his former self. I hate him and all that he withstands. I hate him like I hate my mother, whom I love and wish I didn’t hate but I can’t help it. I hate every adult who feels bad about what they’re doing and does it anyway, sighing with every breath, clinging to the notion that they’re good people in bad times. I hate them for not standing up for me. I hate them for not helping me stand up for myself. I hate them for not teaching me to care about all the people they mowed down before they got around to us. I hope they choke on all their coffee-talk and tissues.
Mr. Reese squeezes down the aisles, inspecting our progress. I stick my foot out, and he stumbles, shocked and outraged but too scared to tell. I continue my work.
I’m no good at history anymore. I can’t separate the past from the future.
I harass Dallas at the lockers before gym class, stand too close and whisper, “Did you know that zombies eat brains?”
“No.” He reaches around me for his water bottle.
I’m right behind him at the gymnasium doors.
Coach Emery lays a hand on my shoulder and keeps it there.
“You look tired, Connors. Do you need to sit on a bench?”
I realize I’m staring after Dallas like a kid watching his daddy leave the daycare. I take a deep breath and relax the muscles of my face.
“There’s more to health than exercise,” the coach says. “Did you get a proper sleep?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re all right to participate?”
“Yes, sir.”
He pats my shoulder. “Good boy. You don’t want to be sick for the holidays.”
“No, sir.”
We start with laps. I can’t tell if I’m imagining things or if Dallas speeds up whenever I close in on him.
“Stay as a group! This is not a race!” Coach Emery shouts.
We form small circles for basketball drills, passing and stealing the ball. Dallas stands directly across from me, next to Brennan. His T-shirt drapes over his ribs. The veins of his arms snake along his pale flesh like a topographical map. His eyes drift over me as they follow the ball. I fumble on purpose, but he doesn’t react.
“Pick it up and try again,” the coach says.
I slam it straight at Dallas. Brennan ducks in reflex. Dallas catches the ball half an inch from his nose without flinching and bounces it over to Bay.
“Careful how you throw!” Coach Emery shouts. “You must remain aware of your situation and those around you.”
Every time I get the ball I slam it at Dallas. He never tires of it.
Coach Emery finally grabs the ball from my hands and shouts in my face, “Spit that gum out of your mouth, Connors! You know there’s no chewing gum in my gym!”
“I don’t have any gum, sir.”
He frowns. “What the hell are you chewing then?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
He puts his hand on my forehead, like I might be coming down with something. “Go sit on the bench.”
I sit out the rest of class. I close my eyes, take shallow breaths, listen to the ball bounce off the gym floor. Boom, boom, boom.
The coach kicks my foot as he walks by, and I realize I’m muttering to myself and pulling all the hairs from my thighs.
I sit on my hands, stare at the ropes that hang off the far wall, multiply numbers in my head. Two times two is four times two is eight times two is sixteen, and on and on until the trillions jumble in my head and I have to start over and over and finally the bell rings.
&n
bsp; Panic grips me in the shower. I can’t accept the fact that Dallas has been treated just before we leave. I cannot live with that.
I adjust the water temperature. The drops hit me like a thousand needles, freezing then scalding then freezing. The stench of chlorine fills my nose and lungs. I hear murmuring beneath the hiss of water and slap of feet. I jerk my head around, ready for a trap, but all I see are silent boys draped in towels, walking away to dress or waiting their turn in the water.
I watch Dallas from the corner of my eye, not caring if I come off gay. He faces the showerhead, moves slowly but efficiently like all the others. He rinses and towels off and walks away without looking at me once.
“Get dressed, Connors! You’re lagging behind!” Coach Emery shouts from the door. I haven’t even soaped yet, but I don’t bother. I shut off the taps and cover myself.
The coach stops Dallas from leaving the room. “Somebody,” he announces to the half-naked class, “I’m not saying who, but somebody left a water bottle on the football field, and you all know how I like a clean field. I want two volunteers to walk the yards and check for litter.” He points at Dallas, then across the room at me. “I want to see you two march like soldiers up and down that field. Pick up any garbage you find. Make sure you check around the trailer. The rest of you are free to go. Merry Christmas.”
I dress hurriedly, not caring that my socks are inside out. As I tie my shoes, I notice that my hands are trembling.
Brennan drops his shoes on the floor at my feet and sits beside me on the bench. He lowers his head and whispers, “Don’t ask any questions till you’re away from the cameras.” He wriggles his foot into his shoe and leans down to tie it tight. “Don’t give yourself away to him, just in case. Let us know what you find out.”
He stands up and passes me a swift sympathetic glance. As he reaches down for his dirty sweats, he adds, “Then get out, Max. With or without him.”
When Brennan leaves, I’m all that’s left in the change room. I like it here. It’s smelly but it smells like kids. Whatever the treatment did to them, it didn’t improve their stink.
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