“Untie me!” I yell. “My arm’s twisted. It’s going to break!”
I grimace and moan.
He doesn’t even look. “In a second.”
I kick at his feet. “Now, man! There’s something wrong with my elbow. I think it’s going to break.”
He rolls his eyes and swears. He keeps his legs around Mr. Graham, holding him in place with his head on the bench, and gestures impatiently at me.
I rise and offer the wrists behind my back. “What are you doing, Dallas?” I whisper.
He shoves my shoulder down, yanks my arms up until I scream, and frees his necktie from my hands.
“Thanks, man.” I grab his arm and fake a smile. “Let’s go.”
He doesn’t smile back, doesn’t even seem to recognize me.
He turns away and wraps the tie around Mr. Graham’s throat.
“No!” I claw at him and pull him off the principal. He tumbles onto his shoulder and swears. He knees me in the gut and slams his palm into my temple. I roll away from him, my head ringing in pain. He kicks at me furiously, knocking the bench onto its side. Mr. Graham thumps to the floor. Thud.
Dallas whips his head toward the sound. He sees a job half finished.
I grab the necktie and throw it across the room. Dallas reaches for the weight belt. I throw myself on it and trap it beneath my knee. He tugs, sighs, looks at me like this silliness won’t be tolerated.
“You can’t do this,” I say. I grab his lapels, lean into his face, speak softly, reasonably. “Dallas? Dallas, you can’t do this, man. Look what you’re doing.”
He stares at me like he hates me.
“You can’t walk away from something like this. You do this and that’s it, man, you go to jail, you don’t go anywhere else.”
He runs his tongue over his teeth, waiting for my lecture to end.
I slap his face. “Do you hear me? Get control of yourself. Look what you’re doing. Look where we are. Remember all the kids who used to be in this trailer? Remember our friends? We are all that’s left, man. We have to get out of here, Dallas. You’re not thinking straight.”
He leans away from me, looks around the trailer, stares up at his coat wrapped over the security camera. He furrows his brow, scratches his elbow, lifts up the sleeve of his uniform and tugs down a roll of duct tape he had jammed around his forearm.
“Oh, Jesus, no. That’s the principal, Dallas. This is assault. You stop now, you’re fine. It was an accident. He got hurt when I tackled you. The bench fell on his head. Leave it like this. You’re going to get us both executed!”
He pushes me away from him, sits on his ass, sucks in his cheeks. He nods. His eyes soften. He glances at Mr. Graham and asks, “Is he alive?”
I get on my knees and feel for a pulse. “He’s fine.” The principal’s mouth is bleeding. A huge bruise blooms across his torn cheek and a cartoon lump rises on his forehead. “He’ll have some swelling. He should have his head checked.” I lean back and try to think of a plan. “We should put him in recovery position,” I say, not moving an inch, just staring at Mr. Graham prone at our feet.
Dallas starts to curse, an aimless barrage of swear words that seem to soothe him. “You shouldn’t have hit me. I would have told on you if I’d really been treated.”
“I didn’t care.”
He rubs his cheek. “What’s with the slapping? Could you not hit me properly?”
“Are you okay now? You were far gone, man. You weren’t really going to kill him, were you?”
He snorts, stretches his neck, stares at the ceiling. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“We have to get out of here. We have to leave tonight.”
He smiles sadly. “I’m not coming with you, Max. I don’t want to get caught. Your mom will go to jail for kidnapping. You’ll be treated and so will I. I’m not taking that chance.” He waves a hand toward Mr. Graham. “Now they’ll be after you for this too.”
“This was an accident. Sort of.”
“I can stay here and tell them that.”
“I can’t leave you here.”
He laughs as he grabs my hand, which I realize I’ve wrapped around his lapel again. “Honestly, I’m not that way, Max. Give it up.”
I’m not smiling this time. “You’re coming with us or we’re not going.”
“They won’t let you take me out of the country.”
“My cousin said other families are leaving with no problem. Lots of them.”
“Families, Max. We are not a family. I can’t pass for your brother.” He puts his hand on my shoulder, all mature now.
“We’re cinnamon and garlic, remember?”
I do remember, and the solution to our problem hits me so hard, it’s a flash in my brain that actually hurts. I grab his hand with both of mine and laugh.
He pushes me away. “Stop it! Enough with the touching.”
I jump to my feet, smiling. “You got it, Dallas! What you just said. That’s exactly right.”
“About what?”
“Salt and pepper.”
“We’re going to wear our Halloween costumes to Canada? Is that your distraction strategy? ‘We’re not runaways, officer— we’re shakers?’”
“No! But they’ll let us cross. They will.” Energy pulses through me. I could run a five-minute mile. “We have to get out of here.” I run my hands over the principal, check his airways and circulation. “We have to find a teacher to take him to the hospital. Can you go out there and be a zombie again?”
Dallas shakes his head. “I’m never going out there again.” He picks up everything he can reach from where he sits— weight belts, jump ropes, helmets—and piles them on his legs. “Can you pass me that shield? Thanks.” He leans back and props a long red pad over his torso and head. “I’m going to melt into the walls now. Someone will scrape me off in the spring.” He starts to giggle.
“You need to eat, man. Come on. We have to get help.”
There’s a knock at the trailer door.
I scream. Dallas snickers. He peeks out from behind his shield. “Maybe we can hide him.” He points at Mr. Graham— face down on the trailer floor, huge and immobile, his legs and arms splayed, covering half the open ground between us and the door—and he starts to laugh, big and goofy, from the gut. He swats at the air, hunches over the debris around him, gasps for breath.
I get up and walk to the door.
“Who is it?” Dallas calls out in a girlish voice; then he laughs hysterically, listing to one side and kicking his feet. His face pulls into a grimace as he runs out of breath. His mouth gapes, but he’s silent except for his heels banging the floor and his laughter clicking quietly in the back of his throat.
“It’s Coach Emery! Open up!”
I obey. The coach glares from the trailer steps. “Why is this door closed?”
“Mr. Graham closed it.”
“Mr. Graham? What on earth was—?” He walks inside and falls silent. He stares at the principal, sprawled on the floor, and Dallas, curled up and quivering.
“Hey, Coach,” Dallas squeaks and heads into hysterics again, slapping his knee.
The coach rushes to Mr. Graham’s side, checks his pulse, turns him over and gasps at his bloody face.
“He hit his head,” I say. “Dallas and I were fighting and we pushed him into the wall accidentally and he fell into the bench. He’s been unconscious for a few minutes. He needs a doctor.”
Coach Emery looks up at the security camera.
“We panicked,” I say.
“What’s wrong with Richmond?”
“He’s exhausted.”
“Not treated?”
“No, sir.”
“And Mr. Graham knows that?”
“I don’t think so, sir. He knows I’m not but I don’t think he suspects Dallas isn’t.” I tell the coach what happened and how it’s conceivable that the principal’s injuries are accidental.
“You need to leave now,” he says.
&nbs
p; I nod. “We have a plan.”
“I don’t want to know it.” The coach looks at Mr. Graham and shakes his head. “You can’t leave the country if there are charges against you.”
“It was an accident, sir.”
Dallas sighs and wipes his eyes. “I did it.”
“It was an accident,” I repeat.
The coach looks from one of us to the other. “I should never have sent you out here.”
“It’s not—”
He silences me with a hand, reassesses the situation— me, Dallas, the disabled camera, our disabled principal—and comes up with a game plan. “Can you pull yourself together?” he asks Dallas.
Dallas shakes himself like a dog and stands up, tall and vacant.
“All right,” the coach says. “You and I will go into the school and get security.”
“No. We have to get out of here,” I say. “We have a plan.”
“Shut up, Connors,” Coach Emery says. “This is the plan. You’re leaving tonight.”
“I’m not going without Dallas.”
“He’ll meet up with you.”
“He won’t. I’m taking him now or he’ll chicken out.”
Coach Emery swears. “All right. Both of you go then. I’ll get Mr. Graham to a hospital. I’ll say I walked in and saw you two fighting and you accidentally knocked him into the bench.” He looks at Dallas. “I’ll tell your father you went somewhere. Where would you go if you were treated?”
He shrugs. “The library, maybe. Or Christmas shopping.”
“That’ll do for an hour or two. But where would you go for the next few years? Do you have any friends in other cities? Anything you ever wanted to do, like join the military?”
Dallas shrugs.
“If you disappear tonight, your father will go straight to the Connors,” the coach says. “He’ll go wherever they go and take you back unless he has another trail to follow.”
“I guess I always wanted to be an actor,” Dallas says.
Coach Emery nods. “Good. Write your parents to say you’re going to California to work in the trade that best suits your skills. Then get rid of your RIG so they can’t trace you. And find a way not to be there when they come knocking on Connors’s door.” He looks at Mr. Graham. “How long has he been unconscious?”
“Several minutes,” I say. “We didn’t mean to hurt him, sir.”
“I did,” Dallas says. He looks at Graham with disgust.
“Thank you for doing this, Coach,” I say.
“Just go. I’ll give you five minutes before I take him out. You have to leave town tonight. Right away.” He starts tugging the tape off Dallas’s coat. “Do you want to take this?” he asks me.
“It’s mine,” Dallas says.
The coach looks at him in surprise. Everyone always blames me for everything.
“It’s the only thing I own now,” Dallas says. He grabs his coat, and we turn our backs on the camera, walk outside into the sights of another camera.
“Good luck wherever you’re going,” Coach Emery says.
Little Jack Horner
Sat in a corner
Eating his Christmas pie.
He put in his thumb
And pulled out a plum
And said, “What a good boy am I!”
Eighteenth-century nursery rhyme
PART THREE
REJECTION
SEVENTEEN
At six o’clock I leave Dallas at my kitchen table with Celeste and head for Kim’s Trims. It’s dark and the temperature’s dropping, but sweat drips down my ribcage beneath my coat. I walk quickly, careful not to draw attention. The library closes at eight, and after that Dr. Richmond will come looking for his son.
Halfway down Fairfield Road I get a message from Coach Emery. Mr. Graham is awake, confused, suspicious. The police are accessing the school surveillance data to corroborate the coach’s testimony that the principal’s injuries were accidental.
I break into a run. This is how it happens in Xavier’s old movies. The hero embarks on his escape and there’s the bad guy waiting for him, snickering, right behind him all along. Dallas was right—living with hope is like rubbing up against a cheese grater. It keeps taking slices off you until there’s so little left you just crumble.
Kim is alone with the lights dimmed when I enter her shop. “All set?” she asks.
“Do you have the keys?”
She shows me a picture of a fat green car. “It’s a station wagon, two thousand and twelve, legally registered.”
“Two thousand and twelve? That’s ancient. It still runs?”
“It runs fine. The tank is full, and there’s two cans in the trunk in case you run out.”
“Is that possible? It doesn’t tell you if it’s about to run out of fuel?” I picture us stranded on the highway at midnight, hunkered in the backseat under our leather coats, staring through tinted glass at some flat moonlit landscape writhing with drug-crazed freaks and freebies.
Kim laughs at my expression. “It doesn’t speak, so you have to watch the dials. It’s perfectly safe. Your mom knows how to drive it.”
“You spoke to my mom?”
She nods. “She came in for a cut. I did what I could. You got lucky on hair.”
I run my hand over my head self-consciously. “So where’s the car?”
She holds up her RIG and projects a map of the city. She zooms in on the southwest quadrant, then slides the safe streets of New Middletown out of view to display the makeshift world beyond the walls, a sprawling shanty town I’ve been warned to stay away from my entire life. “You know the car park where I live? Just past that, on the south side-don’t go north to the old strip mall, you don’t want to take any valuables that way-but south of the carpark, along the old two-lane highway, you’ll find my son with your car.” She shows me a picture of a white man in his twenties. “This is Churchill. He’ll be there all evening.”
“He’s just standing there?”
She rolls her eyes. “It’s a car full of gasoline. What do you expect him to do? He has a second key in case he has to move it.”
“Why would he have to move it?”
“Don’t worry, kid. He won’t. I told him you’d be there at seven.” She checks her watch. “Is that still your plan?”
“Yeah. Thanks. I have to run. Are you coming back with me to see the apartment?”
She shakes her head. “I’m going out to celebrate. But I’ll take your keys.”
“There’s a code for the stairwell—”
“Got it.” She stares at my keys like they’ll open the gates to heaven. “I’m so excited I can’t tell you, kid. Don’t change your mind.”
“I won’t.”
She smiles. “You’re a good boy, Max. I’ll miss you.”
I can’t say the same, but you never know what you’ll miss about your life after it’s gone.
Back at home, my dad is sitting at the kitchen table.
“Told you I was top of my class,” Celeste says.
Dallas smiles. He beams. He radiates joy that pierces through all the makeup Celeste has packed on his face.
I can barely speak I’m so impressed. “I can’t recognize you.”
“That’s the idea.”
“How’d you get so blond?”
“It’s a wig,” Celeste says. “A woman’s wig, but I cut it into shape. Do you like it?”
“Yeah. I should have gone to you for haircuts all these years.”
“He’s right, Celeste,” Dallas says. “You could have been doing us regularly.”
“That’s just damaged now that you’re middle-aged,” I tell him.
“Keep it down,” Mom calls from the living room.
“Ally’s upset,” Dallas whispers.
“You have to work on your voice,” I tell him. “You sound too young.”
“My daughter’s confused by my return to life,” he says, deep and smiling.
I can’t smile back. I should be happy because this
plan is sure to work, but it saddens me to see my father at the table. I want to tell him what I’ve been up to for the past three years.
Mom comes in and kisses my cheek. “You’ll get used to it.” She stares at the face of her dead husband and sighs. “Well, no you won’t. Just get your bags.”
“What’s with Ally?” I ask, peeking into the living room.
“Is she asleep?”
“Just resting.”
“Your mom had to give her a sedative,” Celeste whispers.
“She freaked out when she saw her dad. I don’t know why— you said it was her Christmas wish to be with him one more time, right?”
“Right,” I say. “That’s why we’re doing it.” I wish we could tell Celeste the truth, but it’s better this way. If the police interview her, she might say we played a sadistic prank on my sister, but at least she won’t say where we’ve gone.
“She doesn’t seem happy about it,” Celeste says. “Maybe I should take it off and try again Christmas morning.”
“No!” I shout with Mom and Dallas.
“It’s the best present we can give her,” Mom says. “Besides, we’ll be in Atlanta on Christmas morning.”
My eyes return to Dallas. My father smiles at me. I shudder. “Are we ready?”
He pulls a stained towel from his shirt collar, brushes off his hands, rises tall and pale beside my mother.
“You look forty years old,” I tell him.
“Forty-six,” he says. “I like to keep fit.”
“Was Dad really this tall?”
“Almost,” Mom says.
“Why am I so short?”
Dallas laughs. “You got my artistic genes, son.”
“Let’s go,” Mom says. “Thank you, Celeste. Thank you so much.” She practically pushes Celeste out the door. She checks that our passports, ids, immunization records and birth certificates are in her handbag. She keeps her money and the jewelry Dallas stole from his brother in a suitcase with files of papers for Rebecca. “Get rid of your RIG,” she tells Dallas. “We all should.”
I groan and fret. “Can’t we just take the batteries out?”
We all stare at our RIGs with no idea how they work.
“I’ll ask Xavier,” I say.
All Good Children Page 21