by Rowan Massey
“They had a long trip, but I stopped every four hours or so to check temperatures, water, food levels, and so on. I have it all here.” He took a paper from a box and handed it to the doc, who handed it to me. I put it on the clipboard under the forms I was supposed to use to catalog the mice.
When he took one of the clear plastic bins full of mice and handed it down to me, I put the clipboard on top first and headed inside. Doc was behind me with a second bunch. I wondered how many we were getting because my bin had four in it, and it had looked like a lot of bins in the truck. Were they all ours? The little guys ran around and squeaked. I watched them and started to change my mind about them, even though the wood chips they were in smelled barfy. They were clean, bright white with pink tails and noses, not like the brown ones around town. Maybe they would be cool to play with. I took notice of the numbers on the bin, and decided on some names. I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart by their looks, but I would be able to tell by their numbers. These would be Snow, Ice, Igloo, and Snowflake because of their color. I’d run out of snow names pretty fast.
We stacked bins of mice down in the lab next to two huge shelving racks Doc had put up while I was gone the night before. He’d been crazy in the lab since my visit to Manhattan. I could tell he wasn’t sleeping much. He’d been more cranky. He couldn’t think about anything but his research. No more hanging around the field for him. I was the only one he was asking about moods.
There were big bags of feed and bedding to bring in, plus a bunch of bins like the others, but smaller and brand new; hard plastic with mesh lids and an opening to dump their food into a tray and give them water. Doc stayed in the lab checking the health of every mouse with his gloves on while talking to the delivery guy. I was doing most of the heavy lifting, but grunt work was my job. After everything was brought in and the guy left, Doc turned to me and smiled. His smiles weren’t exactly something I saw every day anymore, so I was glad he was excited.
“Ready for the paperwork? We need each of the mice in a separate bin. Find the labels over there, and we’ll get started.”
I got the labels from the inventory shelves and a couple of big markers, proud of myself for thinking of things he forgot. Sure enough, when I handed one to him, he smiled and gave me a satisfied nod.
“Alright, Wally,” he said, going over to a stool and sitting down. I pulled up a stool and we sat with our elbows on the counter. “Let me explain why this has to be done so carefully. These mice were very, very carefully engineered for this life. They’re expensive and exactly alike. They need to all be treated exactly the same and in ways that other scientists can replicate with the same exactness. The variables that effect the behavior and health of animals are extremely hard to control. So please remember, if you notice anything we’re doing to treat them differently, whether it’s the lighting they get, the quality of their food, the noises they hear, anything at all, you have to tell me. The way you clean up after them and feed them has to be exactly the same every day.”
“I can do that. I’m always careful around here anyway,” I said.
“I know. I notice. That’s why I’m trusting you with this.”
After that little talk, he seemed ready to get to the actual work. We set up the bins, numbered them, filled the bottoms with wood shavings, the bottles with water, and were just finishing up by placing each mouse in its new home, when I told Doc about the names I’d given the ones in certain bins.
“This one is Igloo,” I said as I picked one up and put it in a new bin. The little things didn’t even run away fast enough to keep me from catching them. They were used to people. “And I named these other three Ice, Snow, and—”
“What? Stop!” He put down what he was doing and came at me, hands waving, almost making me drop a mouse. “You can’t name them, Wally! What was I just telling you? They aren’t pets. If you name them, play with them, develop favorites, or any of that, you’re compromising the whole experiment! Just put it down!”
I closed the bins with mice in them and put the bigger bin on the ground. How was I supposed to know naming the stupid things was a big deal? I didn’t see how it made a difference.
“At least you told me about this now, and not later. Christ,” he was shaking his head and taking the named mice out of the small bins. “What others have you named?”
Feeling embarrassed and defensive at the same time, I pointed out the other three bins with mice that I’d named.
“Just go upstairs while I rearrange them,” he snapped. He carried the named mice back to the others with fast, jerky movements. I felt like saying if he scared the mice he might ruin the fucking experiment, but I kept my teeth clenched and hurried upstairs to get away from him.
It wasn’t the first time he’d gotten like that with me since New York. Anything could set him off if he’d been up all night at his computer. He was obsessed with the stuff about my brain.
For all I knew, he’d always been kind of a cranky guy, but it was hard to put up with. I was used to getting right up in people’s faces when they were assholes to me. Maybe another part of why it got under my skin was because he was so nice when he was in a good mood. It made me feel like shit when he stopped smiling all of a sudden. I still wanted to impress him and make him proud of me. I was trying to be a good assistant, but I didn’t know any science. Why couldn’t he just teach me in the fun ways he had during those first days and not be such a prick about it when I made tiny mistakes?
Hands in my pockets, I stomped into the clinic, wondered what to do next, and walked to the other end of the house and into the living room. Outside the big window, an older couple walked by in nice, warm clothes, swinging shopping bags in their hands. They looked like happy people. I wondered what kind of drugs rich people liked. What did Doc take when he wanted to stay awake and think smart? I’d never dared ask. Something gave me the idea he wouldn’t like the question. Maybe he never took anything at all. I couldn’t imagine living like that.
I did some people watching at the window for a good long while, wondering what drugs London, Avi, and other adults liked. My body was relaxing, and I figured I could go down and make a good show pretending I was sorry, even though I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong. But the whole thing was so important to Doc because he wanted to cure the thing that had killed his son. I had to keep that sort of thing in mind. I was glad he’d found something to work on that wouldn’t change us.
Letting my boots thunk down on each step, I made my way back down to Doc. He had put all the mice in their bins and started emptying the big bins into trash bags. He looked up at me, frowning.
“Sorry,” I said. “I started naming them before you told me how to treat them. I can be more careful. I won’t do anything near them that you don’t tell me to, not even in my head.”
“It’s alright, Wally,” he sighed. “I’m working myself to death and turning into a miser. Hose these down outside and leave them by the gate. They’ll be taken back to Manhattan by someone in a couple days.”
I walked over to him but didn’t pick up the bins.
“Can I ask you about something?” I said.
“Sure. What is it?”
“Why am I still not at a ten all the time like before? When do I stop recovering from that week I went to New York?”
His eyes widened a little, but he looked down at his lab coat to brush away some wood shavings.
“I don’t want you to worry about that,” he said. “You’ll reach a new emotional balance. You seem fine to me, only more…normal.”
“Normal?” I made a face. He was missing the point. “I don’t want normal. I want to feel like a fielder again.”
He was quiet, not looking me in the eye, just staring off to the side, thinking.
“I want you to consider that it might be a good thing,” he said slowly, still not looking right at me. “You haven’t been spending a lot of time with your wider range of friends, have you? Ever since this job and your new boyfriend, you’ve been too busy. A
ll the kids taking fielders have been experiencing something similar. They aren’t having their feelings erased quite as completely. Something is happening.”
“What? What’s happening?” That scared me. Was our fielder world being ruined somehow? How could that happen?
I sucked in a breath. No, he wouldn’t.
“Doc, are you doing this?”
His head snapped up, and he gave his head a shake. “No, it’s not me, Wally. I give Barkley the formulas he’s always asked from me, that’s all. I tweak and strengthen. Nothing else. I don’t experiment on everyone anymore.”
I nodded. That was good. I would have been pissed as hell, maybe even quit. Besides, he was focused on my brain transactions or whatever.
“Okay, well don’t you think it’s important?” I asked. “I mean, can’t you do something?”
He frowned and looked over at the mice. “I don’t know, Wally. Let’s deal with the task at hand. When you get back, I’ll tell you how to take care of the mice.”
It took an hour to hose down the bins outside, stack them so that they would dry, then go down and get instructions from Doc. He made me pretend I was changing out bedding in three cages, measuring the little pebbles of food, and cleaning water bottles with a special brush and cleaner. I’d been working in the lab for over eight hours at that point. I tried to hide it, but he could tell when I got tired of working and wanted to dance, so he paid me, and I left.
When I came to the corner where I always met Spitz and Fiona to go the rest of the way in the cart with them, I was excited enough to see them and spend time with them that I did a silly dance when they spotted me. I jogged up to them grinning until I got close enough to see that something was wrong. Spitz had seen me, but he stayed slumped in the back of the cart, using their junk as a bed. Fiona waved at me, but she wasn’t smiling.
“What happened?” I asked as soon as I got close enough.
“He did it,” Fiona said in a quiet voice. She was rubbing her arm in a pose that wasn’t like her. “He joined up. They did the initiation today.”
I hurried to the cart, heart thumping in my chest, thinking of Nando’s jaw and what it must have looked like when it happened. Spitz looked like shit. He had a bruise that spread between and under his eyes, and another on his jaw. I touched him there right away, but he didn’t flinch away, and it wasn’t that swollen. He was holding his side, so I lifted up his shirt and coat to see the bruises there. They didn’t look fun, but didn’t look any worse than the ones we’d gotten before from life on the streets.
“Not so bad, huh?” he said, talking in a funny way. “Worst part is my tongue. I bit it pretty bad. Don’t wanna talk.”
“Open your mouth,” I told him, and he did. It looked like shit in there. I winced, and he carefully closed it again.
“I think they went pretty easy on me because I’m a nobody loser or whatever. There were only two guys,” he told me, despite saying he didn’t want to talk.
“He ran away from me to do it,” Fiona said, looking miserable. “I should have known.”
“You lied to her?” I gave him a good smack on the arm, not caring that he winced.
“I lied to her because it’s all for her,” he mumbled.
She heard him, but apparently already knew he was thinking that way, and was obviously angry about it. I thought she was going to start yelling, but she turned her back to us so I couldn’t see her face.
“I should have told him no last night,” she said. “Idiot,” she told herself, and kicked the ground.
I stared at Spitz, pissed and worried as fuck, but he wouldn’t look at us. He was in pain and everything, but I almost felt like he deserved it. Going behind our backs was bad enough, but he was fucking up his girlfriend by saying it was all for her. I was best friends with a god damned moron.
“Anyway,” Fiona frowned, “he doesn’t have to wear colors. They gave him a windbreaker that zips up to cover his blood stains and an extra bandanna to cover his tat, but the windbreaker is too big and covers it anyway. All he has to do is keep track of people who work at Red House. They know he can’t work before around midnight every night.”
Now that would be a problem. I poked Spitz in the head.
“How are you going to do that, dumb ass?” I asked him. “You can barely walk down the street after a dance. You get too tired.”
“I’m going to bike the cart to Red House,” Fiona said, “and we’re going to sleep mostly during the day. The money means we can rent a room with another couple. They work all day, so he can sleep without anybody waking him up. Then he’ll get up, go dance, then go work.”
I was quiet, thinking of what that meant for the amount of time we could spend together. I’d see him from before we went to the field until midnight if I went with them to Red House every night. Then I’d be back at Nando’s before one in the morning, up at around ten for work, and so on. It made me feel stressed as hell going from a life of doing nothing all day but scrounging for trash and hanging out with my favorite people to working what felt like nonstop. Where was all the time we’d had to sit around doing nothing but talking and playing? My mind didn’t have any space to breathe and take things in anymore. I didn’t know how people did it.
“We need to dance,” I said, wiping a hand down my tired face. I was getting a headache.
“I feel like biking,” Fiona said, and moved to mount the bike.
I got in back with Spitz. He and I didn’t speak to each other the whole way until we rounded the last corner. He pulled something out of his pocket and gave it to me. It was a piece of candy in a blue wrapper.
“I thought, um…” He cleared his throat. “Since we don’t see each other as much, every time I see you I’ll have something to give you, even if it’s something stupid. It’ll be fun seeing what we can come up with.”
I rolled the candy around in my fingers. Instead of cheering me up, it made me sadder. Reaching into my pocket, I took out a condom and gave it to him. He took it and laughed, then winced and put a hand to his cheek in a familiar way. How many times had I watched Nando do that? I wondered if Nando started out with Dread Red doing the sort of job Spitz would be doing. I didn’t want to think about what that meant for Spitz’s future. Would he be a gun-carrying member someday, wearing only red and black, acting tough?
It was almost completely dark out when we pulled up to the field. I got out and looked around. There was a body laid out nearby. I would sing over it later, but for now, I would take fielders, dance with friends and strangers with my eyes on the sky and blood on my face, nothing but good feelings in my heart.
◆◆◆
Spitz was expected to show up and work even though he’d gotten that beating. After dancing for more than an hour, he was exhausted and in pain. Nando gave him one of his capital P Pain Pills, then headed home on foot. I wanted to stay with my friends. We had time, so I pedaled to a quiet area and Spitz napped in the cart while me and Fiona talked about everything. I couldn’t remember ever talking to her that way. The conversation was serious, practical, and felt grown up. We had a few laughs at Spitz’s expense while he slept, but mostly, we were both getting overwhelmed with life. The whole conversation was just more evidence that something about the fielders was changing. I told Fiona I’d asked Doc about it, and she begged me to convince him to fix it. I said I would.
After we dropped Spitz off, hugging him goodbye, Fiona said the room they were renting was practically just around the corner, so I let her go alone. I headed back to Nando’s on foot. I had my own key, so I didn’t have to knock. It was just another new and very weird thing in my life, having a place like that.
Nando was in his usual spot, sitting up in bed with a book, which he’d started sticking pieces of paper in. Sometimes he gave me a paper and had me ask questions from it to help him study. I’d started to learn to read science words that way. But Nando was asleep, slumped over with his neck at a weird angle. He groaned and rubbed his shoulder when I turned the light on.
“Sorry,” I said, and hurried to get a towel and go shower.
“No, no, wait up,” he said, and I sat next to him. “I needed to wake up anyway. I have some good news.”
“Yeah?”
“Well first, Rydel is doing better, but he moved in with his sister. They don’t live close by. I’m gonna miss him.”
“Well, that’s still good. Can he work?”
“Not yet, but anyway, I might have a promotion in the works. Red House.”
I slouched. He wouldn’t be on the field anymore? I tried to smile and be happy for him, but it felt like another blow right after the news about Spitz.
“Aw, c’mon,” he said, grabbing me in a side hug and shaking me a little, “it’s not right away or nothing. I’m just going to shadow my cousin and see what happens. Everybody is moving up, like I said, and it’s better than border duty. It’s for a few nights on top of working the field. He wants to show me around, that’s all for now. People who had been doing Spitz’s kind of work are going to be dealing soon.”
“You knew about Spitz?” I sat up straight and turned to him.
“Found out last minute and hurried over there to make sure they took it easy. I didn’t hit him or anything. He didn’t even see me. Didn’t want him to feel like I was babying him in front of the guys.”
I nodded. That was smart. Spitz wouldn’t have liked it if he’d known Nando had done that for him.
“So listen, Skippy, I’m glad you woke me up. I’m going to go see what Red House is like at the tail end of the night. He said he’ll have more time for me that way. I’m gonna get going in like five minutes, okay?”
Shit, I’d been looking forward to sucking his dick and curling up next to him with his warmth on my back while I slept.
“How many nights are you doing it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Between this and dealing, I’ll be busy.”
He was grinning, teasing me with fingers that were trying to tickle me a little.
“I’ll be alone a lot more,” I realized. “Spitz working, me working, everybody working too much. Even Doc works more and makes me work longer.”
