The Phone Company
Page 36
“This isn’t reform, Casey, this is destruction. The students don’t even need teachers, not really. We’ve been reduced to lab aides. My language arts class? They’re basically programming apps. I criticized it in class, and one kid says to me it’s like HTML. The ‘L’ stands for language.”
“Heh.”
“Yeah, the kids thought it was funny too. But the programming for these apps, it doesn’t even use a familiar character set. It’s like the symbols for electronics mixed with tribal tattoos. It’s nonsense.”
“Sure, sure. But it’s like I told you. Get ahold of Araho. He understands this reform better than I do.”
They hung up, and Steve tried Casey Araho next. As the state executive director, Araho could help fight and enact state education laws. The union had also campaigned for the governor, so Araho had the ear of the capital.
“Crap,” Steve said. The voice stopped, and the line clicked a few times, as if processing a request.
“No, wait—”
“Guten Abend!” a guy on the other line shouted. His voice echoed, as if in a tiled room. In the background Steve could hear voices and machines and chopping sounds. “Kann ich die Sie interessieren in einem Schnitt von Schweinelende?”
“No, uh, sorry. Wrong number.”
“Schadenfreude?”
“Sorry. Bye.
“Ah, wunderbar. Fick Dich Schlampe.”
Steve hung up and stared at the school. Through the showroom window, he could see the manufacturing lab, the dies, the drill presses. The kids were at lunch, so the equipment sat there, waiting. In a few minutes the bell would ring, and Steve would need to return to class. He’d don his blue lab aide vest and resign to being useless.
He thought about going inside to look up Araho’s cell number. It was one of the rare times he wished he owned a Tether. Hadn’t Sarah said that with the Tether you no longer had to know anyone’s number, you simply looked them up?
He called Bill instead.
“Hey, buddy, what’s the haps?” Bill asked.
Steve didn’t know why he’d called. To bitch, maybe. To ensure things were truly back to normal between them, that Bill would welcome the bitch session like usual.
“I hate my job,” Steve said. It was a common phrase between them, a signal phrase.
“Yeah? Tell me more about that.”
They both chuckled. That was their other common phrase.
“They’ve got JJ out on the town, handing out PCo pamphlets,” Steve said.
“Yep, I know.”
“You know? How the hell—”
“I saw him.”
“Oh.” Steve started pacing around the lot. He noticed a flyer slipped under all the wiper blades and wondered, What the hell? “You mind keeping an eye on him for me? You know, while you’re on patrol?” He described the van the kids were in.
“You bet,” Bill said.
“Cool. Thanks.”
The line fell silent for a moment. That rarely happened between them. Even when it did, the silences were never uncomfortable. They knew each other too well.
“So hey,” Steve said, “you were right. The hormone hound?”
“Hormone . . .?”
“Sarah.”
“Oh yeah.”
“She’s always texting someone,” Steve said. “And she gets this little smile, you know? Whenever a message comes in? Kind of blushes.”
“Any idea who’s the hound?”
“At first I thought it was JJ. Same ringtone, ‘Frère Jacques.’ But blushing like a bride? I think it’s this muscle head from school, Gary Pervier.”
“Good old Perv-o. I know him.”
“Oh no. Don’t tell me.”
“It’s nothing like that,” Bill said. “Basically traffic violations. Speeding. Running the light. One MIP; alcohol.”
“Great. You know, he used to be one of my students. A real screw-off. Had the Disney girl do his essays for him.”
“Yep, I see that here,” Bill said. “He and Anastasia screwed around a lot, actually. It looks like he’s fooled around with Erica Tracy, too, in the school darkroom. Handjobs.”
“What? What the hell? Where are you finding this?”
“I’ve got my sources,” Bill said. “I can tap Sarah’s phone, if you’d like.”
“No,” Steve said, staring at the flyers on all the cars. They were facedown so he couldn’t see what was printed on them. “I’m not sure I feel comfortable doing it.”
“NSA does it.”
“To catch terrorists.”
“Right. They’re going to catch terrorists through data they gathered on Angry Birds. Great plan.”
“I’m not sure I support them anyway,” Steve said. “The whole Patriot Act? I’m not sure. There’s definitely a line. It’s one reason I’ve never upgraded to a better phone.”
“Parents track their kids’ phones all the time, Steve. GPS. See where they’re going, see where they’ve been.”
“That’s a little different,” Steve said, even as he was weighing the argument. Tapping Sarah’s phone could tell him everything. Her smoking habit?
From quoting stats to Janice, Steve knew each cigarette took fourteen minutes off a smoker’s life. So how many minutes? How many days of Sarah’s life could he have saved if he’d only had access to her phone?
Now that she obviously had a boyfriend, Steve had even more to worry about. Teen pregnancy, maybe even STDs if Bill was right about good old Mr. Perv-o. If Sarah was keeping her boyfriend a secret, there had to be some reason. There had to be something going on, something more than hand-holding.
“No,” Steve said, continuing to walk. “Don’t tap her. She and I just need to have a heart-to-heart.”
“Too late,” Bill said. “Aaron’s already tapped her.”
“Bill, no. Tell her . . .” Steve slowed to a stop. He had made his way to the southern end of the lot, checking things out, when he spotted the moving van. “Bill, is that you?”
Sure enough, Bill sat in the van, staring at Steve through his Dragnet glasses. “Look, Steve, I’ve got to go.”
The moving van fired up.
“Wait—”
Bill hung up. The van backed out and sped toward the exit, belching out clouds of exhaust.
“Wait!” Steve said, running after it.
Apparently, Bill had been parked at the school long enough that one of the flyers had been tucked under his wiper. It flew off and landed a few spaces away from Steve. The van roared off down the road.
Steve redialed Bill and picked up the flyer, reading it as the phone rang. The handbill depicted the mascots for both Burnt Valley High and HMS, the Ebumnanyth and the miner. The miner, with a devious grin, was passing a football to the Native American. The football was wired with dynamite.
HOMECOMING
IT’LL BE A BLAST!
Steve shuddered. Cracked Rock hadn’t celebrated homecoming in five years, and for good reason. Because instead of an actual date, the flyer simply said, “That Day.”
Janice, the school shooting—it had all happened Homecoming week.
* * *
“And we have our Queen!” the announcer said, his voice booming across the gym. It made Sarah’s headache worse, but she couldn’t care less. She had been knocked down and knocked out at the very beginning of the queen selection—it wasn’t fair!
She lifted her head off the polished floor, and past her own heaving chest, everything spinning and wobbly like the
earth. She made out the other girls scattered all around her, bleeding, sobbing, holding broken limbs. Their blood was spattered everywhere, in puddles, footprints, handprints, and smears. Strands and tufts of hair—brown, red, and blonde—stuck in some of the pools.
“All hail Her Majesty!” the announcer said, and to the roar of the crowd, the principal thrust Erica Tracy’s hand into the air. News cameras flashed.
“Oh, shit!” The principal stepped away and there was a collective gasp from the stands as Sarah tackled Erica Tracy.
The stands fell silent while
Sarah’s vision grew dark, and she passed out. She could hear buzzing, could feel hundreds and thousands of things scuttling around her, and then she flashed awake with the cameras, flash-flash-flash. She was standing in Erica’s place, her hand clasped with the principal’s and thrust into the air, and she smiled.
“Bow before Her Majesty!”
“All hail Queen Gregory!”
The principal placed the crown on Sarah’s head, and the crowd cheered. They stomped and chanted Sarah’s name until the whole gym shook with their fervor, and Sarah shook too, grinning, tasting her own blood, Erica’s too.
Her king came to join her, jogging across the floor in his gym shorts but no shirt, zigzagging between the wasted girls and their blood. The crowd chanted his name as he scooped Sarah into his massive arms.
Perv-o!
Perv-o!
Perv-o!
CHAPTER 37
“Hey, sugar, you ready?” her mother asked.
Sarah wiped at her eyes and looked back from her mother’s vanity. “I hate my stupid hair.”
“Oh, honey, here.” Her mother knelt down to Sarah’s level and helped her work a brush through the rats. “You’ve got my curse, I’m afraid.”
When they were done, Janice looked at herself over Sarah’s shoulder, fixing her makeup, tidying up the edges of her lips.
Sarah watched her in awe. It was like watching some painting come to life, such soft pastels.
Janice straightened her wig and patted Sarah’s shoulder. “Don’t take too long. We’ll be late.”
“I know,” Sarah said, staring longingly into the mirror as her mother left the room. She hated her hair. One of her friends had horse stables, and Sarah’s hair looked like the trampled straw; wet, dirty, matted. She wished she had inherited her mother’s lips instead. They were so plump. Dad called them nectarines. Sarah’s lips looked like dried-up worms.
One day, her mother had said. One day she would show Sarah how to apply makeup, so she could be beautiful. You’re already beautiful, Mom had said, but Sarah doubted it.
One day.
She ran the brush through her hair again and wondered if one day all her hair would fall out, too. At least the wig would look better. It wouldn’t even hurt to brush.
* * *
Most Homecomings, Cracked Rock held a different kind of parade, an impromptu one. Cops could have met quotas catching people as they sped out of town. Typically that week, a lot of kids missed school. Teachers took sick days, enough that HMS, and even the high school, ran out of substitutes. This year, though, everyone missed school. This year, That Day fell on a Saturday.
Steve stood at his vaulted window, where a crisp autumn light poured in from the meadow outside. He sipped his coffee, enjoying the peace and quiet and the warmth from the fireplace before his kids climbed out of bed and became terrors for the day.
Steve craned out the window to get a look up the hill.
#QG
Steve opened his inbox and paled. “What the hell?” he said, picking up his phone when it rang.
“Hello to you too,” Bill said.
“Sorry, I’m just . . . is this for real?” Steve scrolled through the file Bill had sent.
“It’s a transcript. All activity from Sarah’s dating app.”
“Bill, I’m not sure I want to look at this. I didn’t want you to do this in the first place.”
“No, I’m telling you, something very bad is about to happen. Look.”
Steve skimmed over the conversations, trying not to delve too deeply into his daughter’s personal threads. Apparently, she had been chatting up someone named “JJ.” By the content of the texts, Steve knew it wasn’t her brother.
Steve’s eyes caught a certain phrase over and over again. The Phone Company’s slogan, over and over.
“This is making me sick,” Steve said, rubbing his eyes.
“Look at the last few texts.”
Steve scrolled down.
“Yesterday’s and today’s,” Bill said. “Down where Sarah changed her name.”
“What dress?” Steve asked.
“Oh,” Bill said, “I forgot you aren’t connected. Here.” He emailed Steve a print version of an article:
FROM BROTHER KISSER TO PRINCESS,
A LOOK AT OUR NEW QUEEN
The article opened with a timeline of school pictures, starting with Sarah in seventh grade, bed hair and a pimple. It ended with her picture from junior year.
Steve had never seen her pictures lined up like this, had been too close to see her grow up year to year, but in the pictures he could see how her face had changed, how it had slimmed to a fine jawline like her mom’s. He could see a darkness, too, a pall that eclipsed her face more and more as the years wore on.
Seventh grade had been the last time Sarah actually looked happy. It was something about the fullness of her smile and the shyness in her eyes; something about those adult teeth, looking so big for such a little girl. Steve hated the article for showing him this, how she’d changed, how she’d darkened. He hated it for showing him what was lost.
“What the hell is NV Me?” he asked, reading the first few paragraphs.
“Popularity app,” Bill said. “Used to be locals only, but the leaderboards have merged worldwide. Sarah’s number one.”
“This has to be a joke,” Steve said. “I mean here it says JJ was her first. . . . Christ, Bill, you think those love notes are to her brother?”
“Here.”
Another email pinged Steve’s inbox. A link to a video.
“Watch it,” Bill said, and Steve did.
He watched an entire gym of girls—wearing their uniforms for sports, their tank top jerseys and Spandex shorts, their suits for swim team—Steve watched them plow Sarah down, watched her head hit the gym floor, and then she just lay there while Steve yelled at her to get up. The other girls ran around, attacking each other, punching, kicki
ng, scratching, pulling out each other’s hair. One girl jammed her thumb into a Squaw’s eye socket, and the Squaw screamed.
Steve knew these girls, he’d taught these girls—a lot of them had been good students. And Sarah still wasn’t getting up. Why wasn’t she getting up? Get up!
But then she did, and the end was the worst part. Watching Sarah attack her friend. Watching her get scooped up by that creep, Gary Pervier. Watching him kiss her. Steve screamed at him to stop, but Gary wouldn’t stop, and the camera zoomed in.
When had this happened? Why hadn’t Steve noticed? Why hadn’t he noticed something wrong with his daughter?
“Sarah?” he said, throwing his phone down and pushing away from his desk. He tromped upstairs to the loft and knocked on her door, which swung open beneath his fist.
“Oh my God.”
Sarah’s bed was made, but clothes were strewn everywhere. A box sat open on her floor. A box marked “Janice.”
Sarah was gone.
JJ was gone, too.
How?
How had they sneaked out?
And where had they . . .?
Shit, Steve thought, scrambling for his car.
* * *
“Your Majesty,” Graham said, bowing deeply. “You look ravishing this morning.”
“Thank you,” Sarah said. “Thanks.”
Wearing his jersey and crown, Gary Pervier sat on the back of Graham’s red convertible already. He and Sarah grinned at each other, then looked to the parking lot of the data center.
“Allow me,” Graham said. He knelt next to his convertible and offered Sarah a gloved hand.
“Thank you, kind sir.” Holding up her dress, Sarah dug a heel into Graham’s thigh as she stepped into the car. She settled in beside Gary Pervier, and their arms brushed. Hers was bare and goosefleshed; his was hard, tan, and warm. They sniggered and could barely meet eyes.
Sarah felt someone else watching her, felt the slime of it, like slugs on her back. The rest of the parade was assembling in the lot around them, and the marching band was practicing their drums and horns. Different music blared everywhere as the last few touches and last few streamers were applied float-to-float.