by Rowan Massey
Doc was writing something, keyboard clicking softly. His leg was bouncing up and down, and he was leaning toward the screen. He looked like a kid playing a game; just a serious, adult version.
“Almost done?” he asked, without turning around, and I jumped a little.
“Uh, yeah. Almost.”
Actually, I was done, but I wanted to recheck. He glanced over his shoulder at me.
“Take a break. Let me see how you’re doing.” He held his hand out, and I crossed the room to give it to him. As he looked at it, I rubbed and squeezed at my wrists, excited to see what he would say.
After looking at each page, he sat back in his chair and raised his eyebrows at me.
“Don’t worry, it looks like you’re doing perfectly. I checked some of this yesterday, so I know it’s not wrong. Honestly, I’m impressed. I’m proud of you. You’re taking it seriously.”
Proud of me? My face turned hot in one second flat, and my scalp tingled. All I could do was smile. Maybe counting his stuff was the first important thing I’d ever done right, besides taking fielders and being Spitz’s best friend. I’d never done any real work I could think of, even in school, much less anything to be proud of. I hadn’t expected to enjoy it, but I did.
I took a bathroom break and finished checking my counting, which didn’t take as long. The time really went super fast. Doc didn’t look at it when I handed the clipboard to him, just put it aside.
“Hungry?” he asked. I grinned, showing off my teeth. He smiled. “Right. Stupid question. Teenagers are always hungry. Let’s eat.”
I rubbed my hands together and licked my lips like a cartoon character, which got me another funny look. He took the keys from the table and led the way upstairs, where I expected to go down the hall to the kitchen, but when I started that way, and he started the other way, I realized it wasn’t a kitchen back there. It was…I didn’t know.
“Wally, this way,” Doc said, and I followed him.
We were headed up onto the second floor. He unlocked the gate and it swung upwards with less of a creak than I expected.
“Cool!” I couldn’t help it. It was really cool.
“Be careful with this hatch,” Doc said. “It will fall on your head if you aren’t careful.”
After we went through it, he lowered it with a rope so it wouldn’t slam. The kitchen was in an open space right in front of us. A row of closed doors were off to my right along the rail of the stairs. I hadn’t noticed from outside, but there was a third floor. I wondered what was up there.
I spotted the bruised, red apples in a basket right away. Maybe I could have one, since they were going bad, but I decided I could try to steal one later, instead of asking like a beggar.
There was a long counter with a big sink, a table with five chairs, and a hell of a lot of cabinets. I wondered what kinds of junk rich people had in their kitchen, and I leaned over the big counter in the middle.
“That’s a lot of cabinets,” I said.
He looked around the place like he’d never seen it.
“Maybe,” he said.
He opened the pantry and took out potatoes. Oh man, Spitz would be unbearable if I told him that! The little closet wasn’t full of food, but it was still a lot of stuff for one guy.
“Is there food in all of them? I would totally inventory the bitch out of this kitchen.” And steal stuff. I glanced over at the apples.
“I’d rather you learn to cook. It’s a lot easier than people think. You boil drinking water all the time. Boiling vegetables isn’t very different, for example.” He reached over, took one of the apples and gave it to me. I tried to pull my head in like a turtle. Did he know I was planning to steal it? I took it from his hand and bit in. It was crispy and amazing. I ate all the brown spots off first.
After making a lot of noise getting pots out, he filled a pot with water and put six red potatoes in. Maybe I’d missed the potatoes in vitamin stew as much as Spitz. I watched him get frozen vegetables out of the freezer.
“Do you like okra?” he asked, “I’ll show you how to fry it.”
I had no idea what it was, but I gave him a big nod. If it was fried, I’d eat it. I ate my apple and watched him cook. He didn’t ask me to do any of it, just explained as he went along. I got to move the okra around on the pan with a plastic spatula though. A piece went over onto the stove, and Doc picked it up and let me eat it after it cooled off. I’d never had anything like it before. It was slimy, but I liked it.
“This is about to be the fanciest shit I’ve ever eaten,” I told him. “You eat like this all the time?”
“Is it fancy?”
Is he fucking serious?
“It’s fancy,” I said, and pointed at the okra. “Like, I don’t even know where this shit comes from.”
“Farms,” he said, and gave me a smirk.
I smirked back. I didn’t know he could joke like that.
He got out bread rolls, and when he buttered them, I felt like I could already taste it. I got the food for my own plate and didn’t try to be polite about it. I took as much as I wanted, then I put butter, salt, and pepper on everything. Sitting down at the table with him, I felt like somebody in a movie. He poured us each a glass of tea with ice while I dug in. The flavors were sharp, and it seemed intense. There was a nice rush to my head. I was so happy, flavors washing over me, that I felt like I was about to tear up like a girl.
“Vitamins smell like old people,” I said when half my plate was eaten, and he laughed.
“What vitamins?”
“The gross shit they put in stew and food bars and all of it. It all smells like a rotting old man. It sucks. If I could eat this stuff all the time, I’d take the scurvy.”
“This has a plenty of vitamin C and lots of other things.”
I looked down at it and had my doubts but kept my mouth shut. If it had gross old vitamins in it, I’d have noticed. Maybe rich people got vitamins that tasted good.
I’d slowed down eating enough to notice the doc kept a napkin in his lap and his elbows off the table as if a TV mom was watching.
“Wally, do you know what a case study is?” he asked, but shook his head. “Never mind. What would you think if I wanted to write a sort of detailed description of you? Other doctors could read it, and I think it could be important. I’d be asking a lot of questions, giving you written and oral tests, and taking blood samples now and then.”
I didn’t know why he was even asking me, besides the blood part. He could write whatever he wanted, and it was my job to do what he said. I gulped down some tea and tried to think what I might be getting into that he wasn’t mentioning.
“You can think about it,” he said, but didn’t leave it at that. He was sitting there watching me, waiting.
“New questions?” I asked.
“Yes, about your family, for instance. I’d like to know all about your history. Sometimes we would do experiments, or just rate the way you feel, or I’d observe you for a few days, that sort of thing.”
Observe? Did that mean he wanted to…watch me? Watch me do what? I kept eating, and he did too. I was determined to eat all the food in case this was about to go sideways and I had to get out. But he could read my mind.
“If anything makes you uncomfortable, we can skip it.”
I nodded because I didn’t know what else to do, but it still seemed weird.
“Do you know how many fielders are left from the first six months the drug was out?” he asked, and touched my arm. His hand was heavy and rough, comforting. “Only nine here in the city. You’re one of those nine.”
It took a few seconds to understand what he’d just said. Nine? That was nobody. There’d been hundreds. I remembered those days like yesterday. That meant Spitz was one of those nine too. That made seven other people who had been fielders as long as me and my best friend. Maybe in the whole world, since Emporium had gotten the drug first. I definitely knew them if they’d been around so long. Maybe I would figure out who th
ey were and make sure I said hello whenever I saw them.
“Well,” I said slowly, “that’s a lot of people dead, but it was like that back then. All the drugs are better now. Feel better, too. Used to be, there were no days when nobody dropped on the field. You know, I’m really glad sometimes how many people died happy, instead of sad later on. It’s awesome, when you think about it. I know I say it all the time, but I’m so fucking glad I’m a fielder.”
He drew his head back and awkwardly patted my arm, then put his hand back in his lap. I could see he thought my answer was bullshit. Most people did.
“I get that people who aren’t fielders don’t think that way,” I tried to explain. “That’s why I’m trying to tell you. I can promise you, everyone is so much better off than if they never took it. It’s not a bad thing at all, even though we die. It’s amazing. It makes me feel like life will never get hopeless. Look at all the people who ended up getting out of their train wreck lives and come out dancing every night now. They feel better than they ever could have without it. Fielders all feel sorry for people who aren’t fielders. Death doesn’t mean anything when you get to live happy like this.”
He took a breath like he was about to say something but didn’t. He only looked at his food and poked at it. The look on his face reminded me of the woman in the volunteer station who washed my hands so many times.
“I’m sorry your kid died,” I said. Since he’d touched my arm, I went ahead and squeezed his.
He froze, and it seemed like he was tightening up so much he was shrinking. His neck went pink. Maybe it was a bad thing to say to people.
“Thank you,” he said, and cleared his throat. “I’m wondering, would you feel more relaxed about my studying you if I reciprocated? I mean, if I shared things about myself too?”
“Um, maybe?” I went back to eating and so did he for a while.
“My son was homeless like you when I met him. Fielders weren’t around until a year after the adoption. He was seventeen, almost eighteen. He used nonaddictive drugs before then, and I’d never worried.”
He took a bite and chewed it, swallowed.
“It was one of those batches that killed a lot of kids, all in one night. Twenty-seven people died,” he said, not looking at me.
I nodded. He missed his kid. They all did. I finished up the last few bites on my plate. When I looked up, he was waiting for me to say something.
“I bet he was a great guy. A good dancer,” I said.
He smiled, but it was his sad volunteer smile. “Thank you. You’re right. He was a wonderful dancer.”
Chapter Three
I met up with Spitz and Fiona at a meeting spot. I was tired, and Fiona always wanted Spitz to walk slow with her, so we got to the field later in the night than usual. If I hadn’t worked with Dr. Sardana, I would have slept somewhere all day. My energy was low, even though I’d eaten like a king. Digesting was taking up all my energy, and my stomach felt a little funny from eating things I wasn’t used to. I’d decided not to tell Spitz about all the food. It was too cruel.
When we got near the field, I felt the same happiness as always and started acting hyper, forgetting how sluggish I’d been. I ran ahead, past tourists, volunteers, and fielders, keeping an eye out for the other seven who had been around as long as me.
When I saw Nando under the trees, I got a thrill and hurried over to where he and Rydel had a small line going. Spitz and Fiona weren’t too far behind me.
Nando looked up from messing around with the product in his jacket pockets and looked right at me, even though other people were waiting for his attention. The corner of his mouth slowly went up, and I wished I could grab him and kiss him. It was a weird urge. I didn’t even know him.
God, he was sexy!
“What’s up, Skippy?” he said when it was my turn, and smirked.
Shit, I’d just skipped up to him like a little girl. I combed my hair down with my fingers, glad it was nice and clean, even if it was still scraggly, and I laughed nervously.
“Please tell me you have a different batch than yesterday’s,” Spitz said behind me. “That was bullshit.”
I didn’t know what he meant. It hadn’t been a bad trip; some nasty crawls, not a long trip, but nothing unusual. I looked over my shoulder at him. Was he jealous that I had a crush? That was hilarious! When he saw the grin on my face he gave my shoulder a little shove. I turned back to Nando.
“Yeah, yeah,” Nando said, and waved a hand at us, “I saw everybody butchering their heads like crazy. I’m not blind. But it’s not like they cook this shit up every night. Is what it is.”
“Can we get a discount, then?” I asked, and reached out and tugged on his sleeve. I noticed there was a bullet hole in his jacket, blood stains and all. Some gangsters wore things like that to look tough. He raised an eyebrow at me and pushed his fists further into his pockets. Fiona took a smell step away from us as if she thought I was about to get punched.
“Look at this pretty face,” Spitz said, and grabbed my chin, forcing me to shake my head. “You can’t really make this guy pay full price on a shitty batch, can you?”
Nando wasn’t shaking me away so I slowly worked the fabric of his jacket tighter in my fingers. I could feel his arm against my knuckles.
“Right, don’t pretend to me you guys are broke anymore. I heard Skippy here got a job with the doc. That true?” He squinted his eyes at me and looked me up and down in a different way than he had before. I let go of his jacket because it was getting weird and rubbed my neck instead.
I nodded. “I’m working in his lab at his house. It’s crazy.”
“Like shit!” he said, eyes going wide, “How did you land something like that?”
“Uh,” I shrugged, “don’t even know.”
“This world is not fair, man. I’m out here selling on the field and all, and I’m proud as fuck, but I worked damn hard for this. And you just skip around and dance, and bam, you’re cooking with the doc. That’s something else.” He seemed a little upset about it.
“It’s not that great,” I lied. “It’s just boring stuff, not cooking drugs.”
I got the five dollar bill the doc had given me out of my pocket and gave it to him. He looked at it with a sigh and gave me three back and some change, along with our fielders. Spitz and I gave each other a look. It was going to be shitty in a few minutes. We popped the pills in our mouths, chewing them.
“Don’t cut your heads up right here,” Nando said. “Need space to do business.”
“Right,” Spitz said, “see you later.”
Nando was looking at me with his head tilted, frowning. He was curious how the hell I’d landed that job. I could see the envy in his eyes. It was strange to have anything that other people wanted. We kept eye contact as I walked away, my neck turning until it hurt. He was watching me, his eyes going over my body like he was trying to decide something. I saw him look at my ass, my arms, and chest. It made my stomach feel like shit in a way that I liked.
We walked out of Nando’s sight and the three of us, counting Fiona, sat down in the dirt near a dead tree, Spitz and I hip to hip and Fiona leaning into his other shoulder. After taking our back packs from us, she took a box cutter out of her back pocket and pressed the slider on the side until it clicked forward. She handed it across to me. She hated trying to do it for us. It made her squeal and freak out, which made the cuts more jagged. We’d given up trying to get her used to things. I was the one who could deal with the crawls long enough to help someone else out. That is, without wanting to run out into the street and get hit by a bus.
“It’s gonna suck,” Spitz said. “Just do it now, before it gets here.”
He lowered his head towards me, and I parted his hair to cut a steady line from his neck to his forehead. The blood was quick, and a stream of it drew a line across his eye, which he closed. His teeth clacked together and his jaw clenched. It was starting.
“This side,” he said through his teeth, knockin
g his knuckles against his skull. “Right there.”
I did it where he said, twice. Taking care of him first was fine, but the crawl was spreading over my cheek bone and up past my hairline. It was like iron nails scraping their way into my skull. I didn’t want to cut my face, so I pressed a few lines above my ear. Five steady cuts. The slices were right over the crawling and the pain started to make me feel orgasmic. I leaned my head way back and rolled it back around over my shoulder, panting.
“Wally, stop,” Fiona said, taking my wrist and pulling it towards her. She took the razor. Spitz immediately snatched it and cut two fast lines on the same side of his head. She fussed but neither of us payed any attention. It seemed like it was lasting longer than usual. It was creeping in through my ear and scratching in my brain like an angry cat. I tried to focus myself by staring at my feet, and dragging my fingernails over my bleeding scalp, but I only got a confused feeling. My shoes didn’t have a definite shape or color anymore.
Fiona got up. She lifted both our heavy packs and put them over her shoulders. She took Spitz’s hand, then mine.
“I’ll take you guys in,” she said, and led us into the wild crowd, her hips swaying wide, as if to let people know to get out of her way. I couldn’t tell if it was my imagination playing with me, but I saw red streaks and smears on every single face and on everyone’s clothes. Was the batch that bad?
My body stopped existing.
I was traveling along over their heads, tethered to Fiona like a balloon. A red balloon.
Nando was watching us. I could see right through the bodies to where he stood. His face was relaxed and friendly. I wanted him to see me dance.
