Viral Nation

by Grimes, Shaunta

  “Christ,” Isaiah said. “Look at those legs.”

  They were long and flexible, each one tipped with a satin slipper. Clear stones on the velvet caught the lights and her dark hair cascaded around her as she spun.

  The show was over in five minutes, and West knew another one would happen every half hour. Maybe another aerial show. Maybe jugglers on stilts making their way between the machines, or trained poodles jumping through hoops in the circus ring that rose from the center of the main floor.

  Anyone who had an entertaining talent could earn a few extra tickets by performing at the Bazaar.

  When the lights and music came back up, the shooter who’d rolled the eight handed the dealer back the coupon he’d been given for his win and took another token.

  “Just a pound of mutton,” he said to the woman next to him. “We can do better.”

  “I’m going to the machines,” West said to Isaiah.

  “Come on, I’m the next shooter. Then you. Then we’ll go tug the bandits, okay?”

  Isaiah smiled and laid a token down without waiting for West to answer. The shooter threw something that made everyone at the table groan and the female dealers lean precariously over the table to collect the house wins.

  “Okay, okay, okay.” Isaiah moved into position and placed a bet as the jester slid the dice to him. “Daddy needs a new pair of shoes.”

  He picked up the red cubes, tossed them around in his palms, blew on them, and sent them flying. The dealer in front of West, the girl with the huge breasts, winked a heavily made-up eye at him, then looked back at the bets in front of her.

  “Hot damn!” Isaiah smacked the heel of his hand on the wooden rim of the table, sending an empty glass balanced there tumbling to the floor.

  The winking dealer handed him a coupon, her fingers lingering a little longer than necessary. Isaiah slid his long brown fingers down the length of the girl’s hand, palming the slip of paper. He waved it at West after he read it. “Sweet!”

  Ten units of energy, West read before Isaiah slipped it into his pocket and placed another bet. Ten hours of power to one sixty-watt bulb.

  His run lasted two more rolls, and then it was West’s turn. He placed his first bet of the night on the Don’t Pass line because he needed to get out of there. He tossed the dice without Isaiah’s fanfare. They landed on snake eyes. Everyone else at the table had bet the Pass line and grumbled as the dealer handed him a ticket for a pound of potatoes.

  He left his bet and waited while more Pass line bets were placed, then rolled again. The dice tumbled, bounced off the far side of the table, and landed on snake eyes again. The dealer in the center reached for them with his stick, lifting his eyebrows as he slid them back and West took another ticket, for a loaf of bread this time.

  “Sure you don’t want to go for the Pass line?” Isaiah whispered in his ear. “You aren’t going to pull that out again.”

  West ignored him and threw the dice. He nearly came out of his skin when a lighted siren blared and twirled over their heads. Some of the other players had switched their bets to the Don’t Pass line. The man who’d turned in his pound of mutton wasn’t one of them, and he lost his last token.

  “Winner, winner, chicken dinner!” the jester called out, and handed West a card from his breast pocket.

  One live chicken, it read.

  Isaiah elbowed West in the ribs. “Good eats at your house tonight, right?”

  Not without his rations. West threw the dice again and finally lost his token.

  “Okay,” he said to Isaiah. “It’s been fun, but I really need to get out of here.”

  Isaiah looked back over his shoulder at the dealer who’d been flirting with him. He turned back to West with a grin on his face. “Do me a favor, man?”

  West sighed and held out his hand. Isaiah reached into his pocket and put his grandmother’s stack of ration cards into it.

  “I owe you one.”

  He owed him at least a hundred, but who was counting? “What about her extras?”

  “Oh.” Isaiah tore his eyes from the dealer who looked like she belonged between the pages of one of the magazines they sold in a dimly lit store at the back corner of the sixth floor. “Right.”

  He reached into his other pocket and handed West the energy coupon, one for a length of the homespun cotton cloth made in a factory in Ohio and shipped to the Bazaar by train, and one for a cantaloupe. Great. “Just give her these.”

  And then he was gone, pushing his way back to the craps table.

  He would probably have a chance with the dealer, too, West thought. Girls had always liked Isaiah. He watched his friend bend his dark head toward the woman and saw her smile, ignoring the table until the jester goosed her.

  He walked to the nearest bank of machines and put a token in one. The reels spun, and when they landed on nothing special four times, West went to the elevator. An operator, dressed in a tuxedo complete with top hat, grinned at him when he entered through a set of wide golden doors.

  “What floor?”

  “Produce.” West would go to the second floor, walk from room to room, and gather the fruits and vegetables that were the bulk of their diet, and then the third for the couple of pounds of meat that were supposed to feed them for the next week.

  There should have been plenty. The farm West worked on grew enough cantaloupe to keep the whole city fat and happy. But the Bad Times had ruined the country’s farm belt, and whatever food could be produced in each state was distributed by steam train to help feed the cities that couldn’t support themselves.

  Isaiah thought the live chicken was funny. But a laying hen would add to the two they already had and give him and Clover some extra protein each week. Mrs. Finch had a rooster. If he could pick a broody hen this time, they’d be able to raise some meat as well.

  Or maybe they’d just roast this one up. They’d never had an extra chicken to butcher, but he thought he could figure out how it was done.

  Mango lifted his head and woofed when West turned the corner and came walking toward the library, his pack full and heavy on his back. Clover closed her book and stuffed it into her own pack.

  West lifted a small metal cage toward her and the chicken inside it squawked. It was small and brown, with a black head. “Is it an egg chicken or a meat one?” she asked.

  “Egg.”

  She’d like to eat the animal’s meat, but if it would lay, then they’d have food for lots of meals. “Did you get candles?”

  West shook his head. “Not this time.”

  Clover shouldered her own pack, refilled with books, took one of West’s bags, and picked up Mango’s lead. “I got a book about beekeeping.”

  “Clover.”

  She hated when he said her name like that. “What? We could have our own honey, and wax for candles, too.”

  “You’ll be in school in a month.”

  “It doesn’t hurt to know things. I won’t be at school forever.”

  Clover tried to match her strides to West’s, but his legs were six inches longer than hers and she couldn’t do it. She took shorter, faster steps. Her red sneakers slapped against the concrete, like a song almost.

  Wednesday was her favorite day of the week, and the library was her favorite place in Reno. Once her pack was filled with books, she went to hear the new first-aid instructor teach about setting bones. And then she connected their laptop computer into the library’s nets and took a look at the classified ads.

  “Someone in Little Rock is looking for a husband,” she said to West. “Healthy, age twenty-six, red hair and blue eyes. Good cook and seamstress. One five-year-old son.”

  “Trying to marry me off to an older woman?”

  Clover ignored him. “And I saw a message from Albany, New York, that said, ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’”

  “Roosevelt,” West said, finally slowing a little for her.

  “Why don’t you ever read the ads, West?” They were the only way t
hat the cities had to communicate with each other. The only thing that widened the world a little bit.

  “I don’t have time. Besides, I have you to filter out the best for me.”

  Good point. Also, she didn’t particularly want him hanging out with her in the library, trying to tell her what books she should read or classes she should take. “Why would someone quote an old president in the ads?”

  “Haven’t got a clue.”

  Clover adjusted her pack. “I think I’ll go for a run when we get home.”

  “Mrs. Finch has soup for us. And bread, if we’re lucky. That way we can keep the loaf I won today and use it tomorrow.”

  Clover made a face. West stopped walking altogether.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You shouldn’t have said that I don’t like her soup. Sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps us going.”

  “But you don’t like it.” Clover doubted anyone in the world actually liked cabbage soup.

  “That’s not the point.”

  She didn’t argue. He was right. The point was, free food is free food. And Mrs. Finch was their neighbor. “Fine. I’ll eat it. And then I’m running.”

  Running was Clover’s favorite thing to do, after reading. She loved the way the cement felt hard and unforgiving under her feet until she reached the park and the dirt path that wound its way alongside the Truckee River.

  She liked the wind in her face and how it smelled like water. And the way Mango ran beside her, keeping her company. But most of all she liked the way the steady pace untangled her thoughts.

  She had a lot to think about with her Academy orientation only five days away.

  “Do you think it’ll be like primary school?” she asked West.

  “What’s that?”

  “The Academy.”

  Primary school made cabbage soup look like a spoonful of honey. Too many kids, too much noise, too much to remember to do so that she didn’t come across like a freak. Knowing every minute of every day that she actually was a freak and there was no hiding it.

  She’d learned a lot, but most of it was by fire.

  “I don’t think so, Clover. The students are older. I don’t think there will be as much chaos.”

  “I hope my roommate isn’t an idiot.”

  “They don’t let idiots into the Academy.”

  Clover shrugged one shoulder. Her pack was starting to drag on it. “They let idiots in everywhere.”

  chapter 3

  Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette—the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace.

  —JOHN TAYLOR, MESSAGE TO THE HOUSE, DECEMBER 18, 1816

  Clover smoothed her palms over the full skirt of her pale yellow dress. The cotton was soft and warm under her fingers. The dress had been her mother’s and was Clover’s good-luck charm.

  West told her to wear the same Academy uniform the other girls would be wearing. He’d picked up her gray pants and navy blazer at the Bazaar. They didn’t fit right and were made of itchy fabric that felt like sandpaper against her skin.

  Her mother’s old clothes were mostly cotton, worn to a smooth comfortable texture, and fit like they were made for her.

  Still, maybe she should have taken her brother’s advice. No one younger than Mrs. Finch wore dresses anymore. Now that she was in front of the Academy, Clover wondered if blending in was more important than luck. But the truth was, she didn’t blend, anyway, no matter what she did.

  She clutched Mango’s lead in her hand and tried to breathe through her anxiety. She’d made West stay at home. If she was old enough, and smart enough, to be accepted into the Academy, she was old enough and smart enough to go to orientation without a babysitter.

  At least that had sounded like a good plan at home. Now she sort of wished her brother were with her. She looked down at Mango, who sat at her right side when she stopped walking. “Ready?”

  He tilted his head, the folds of skin on his face jiggling slightly. She had a feeling she would need him even more than she needed her mom’s ghost to get through today.

  She took a deep breath and pushed open the heavy front door to the administration building before she could upset herself any more. Mango’s toenails clicked along the floor as they walked to the huge desk at the far end of the front room.

  A banner stretched across the ceiling that said, Welcome, New Students!

  The woman behind the desk grinned, showing a mouth full of worn-down teeth that didn’t quite fit the rest of her. Then she looked from Clover’s face down to her feet. “My, what a pretty dress. And a dog, too.”

  “It was my mother’s.” Clover rubbed a damp palm against her hip. “The dress, I mean. The dog is mine.”

  The woman raised both dark eyebrows. They were plucked to barely visible curves that arched above brown eyes. “May I have your name, dear?”

  It was on the tip of Clover’s tongue to say, Don’t you have one of your own? But she stopped herself. “Clover Jane Donovan.”

  “Well, welcome, Clover Jane.” The woman handed her a card encased in plastic with a pin on the back. She’d written Clover’s first and second name on it. Would everyone else have their second name, or had Clover managed to make a mistake already?

  Clover took the pin, and then she and the woman stared at each other for a minute. The woman was waiting for her to pin the name tag to her mother’s dress. Clover didn’t want to put holes in the soft yellow cotton. Finally, the awkward moment was over when the woman cleared her throat.

  “Okay, first things first, Miss Clover. No dogs allowed at the Academy.”

  Clover knelt and pulled Mango’s paper from a pocket on his harness, then handed it to the receptionist. “He’s a service dog.”

  “Oh,” the woman said, looking the document over. “Oh, my.”

  She handed it back to Clover.

  “Where do I go now?” she asked as she shoved the paper back into its pocket.

  “Well, to the ballroom. But…”

  Clover looked down the long hallways that stretched on either side of the front room. At the end of one were double doors with people milling around them. “Okay,” she said. “Thanks.”

  The skirt of her mother’s dress swished around her bare knees, and her feet felt weird in white leather shoes that forced her to walk on her toes. Her brother made her wear them. He said her sneakers were too informal for orientation, and if she was going to wear their mother’s dress, she had to wear the shoes that went with it. She hated how her toes squished into the front of them and the back slipped up and down on her heels. Her feet were already raw and swollen from the walk to the Academy. She didn’t want to think about how they would feel by the time she got home.

  Intellectually, Clover knew what a ballroom was. Still, as she came to the door, she braced herself for a room filled with every kind of ball she’d ever heard of: rubber balls, giant beach balls, baseballs, basketballs, the kind of tiny balls that bounced like crazy when you threw them to the floor.

  This ballroom was basically a big square with hardwood floors and elaborate, brightly lit chandeliers overhead. More electric light than she’d seen all at once in her whole life.

  There was no furniture except for a table along one wall that had stacks of folders and two more in the middle with food on them. There were no chairs.

  There were also no melon balls or Ping-Pong balls.

  Clover walked in a straight line toward the food, her arms pulled in tight against her body. No tennis balls, but there were a lot of people. The room was big enough that none of them needed to touch her, but Clover knew from experience that space didn’t matter to them like it did to her.

  “Oh, my God, look. She brought her dog,” an all-too-familiar voice behind her said. “They aren’t going to let her have her dog here, are they?”

  Mango stayed at her side, heeling perfectly. He didn’t react when a slender hand reached down and petted his head.

  “Pl
ease don’t touch him, Wendy,” Clover said.

  “Don’t be so lame. I’m just saying hello.”

  Wendy O’Malley. They’d been in primary school together. For the first time, Clover looked around. Her low-level anxiety ramped up when she realized that she recognized nearly all of the faces in the room.

  The Academy was her reward for putting up with Wendy and her gang of mean girls for ten very long years. It was hers. Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to her until now that it was theirs as well if they passed the exams.

  Her hand shook around Mango’s lead and the walls of the ballroom closed in some, but she tried not to let Wendy see that she was rattled as she walked away. There was chocolate on the table. West almost never won them any sweets or enough sugar to make their own. She could count on one hand how many times she’d had real chocolate.

  “You don’t have to be so rude,” Wendy said.

  Mango made a soft sound next to Clover. He knew better than anyone what happened when Clover had to spend any time around Wendy. Especially when there were no adults around.

  “Still wearing your mama’s hand-me-downs, I see.” That was Heather Sweeney. Wendy’s evil minion.

  “You both passed the entrance exams?” Clover asked as her weight shifted from one foot to the other, once and then again. It didn’t seem possible that they were both here. They barely had a full brain between the two of them.

  “Of course we did,” Wendy said. “I can’t believe you did, spaz. Do they have special ed here?”

  Clover looked around, but didn’t see any adults. She didn’t realize her weight-shifting had turned into full-fledged rocking and the low hum in her head was coming out of her mouth until Mango pressed against her legs and stopped her.

  “I guess you’d know,” she said.

  “Right.” Heather knelt and petted Mango on the head. “’Cause we’re the weird ones.”

  “Don’t touch him.”

  “But he’s so cute.” Heather’s brown eyes narrowed slightly, but her lips turned up into a wide grin. Clover looked from her eyes to her mouth and back again. She’s not my friend. A smile didn’t always mean friendship. Another difficult primary school lesson.