“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 looks 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.
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.