Goodhouse

by Peyton Marshall

  I closed my eyes. Behind my lids, I saw the late-summer light cutting through the thin blue water of the Deschutes. I saw my friends and the way we’d looked at ten and twelve and fourteen, wading in the shallows, our wet uniforms plastered to our bodies, the river cold enough to numb our legs. Everything about us had been unwritten and green. I could still hear the timbre of their voices. I knew the civilian names they had chosen for their lives after graduation—I knew the shapes of their hands, the rhythm of their laughter. In my memory they were safe. I was their stone marker. I was the sole repository of their history.

  * * *

  There was no reply from the doctor. A day passed and I grew more anxious. Dormitory 38, which was adjacent to our own, was abruptly evacuated and sealed. There were rumors that the students had been transferred to Protective Confinement, that they’d all been caught making and selling some kind of drug. I also heard that they’d been quarantined at the infirmary—that one of them had contracted an illness on Community Day. There were always rumors on campus. When Goodhouse didn’t supply us with answers, we created our own.

  And then on Thursday morning, one day before my Disciplinary Committee hearing, something unusual happened. I reported to the factory for my shift. I was alone in the suiting-up room, pulling on my protective jumpsuit. The room had a wall of metal lockers with the doors removed. They’d obviously come from somewhere else, because the paint didn’t fully hide the old graffiti. Clean jumpsuits were heaped in a gigantic wheeled laundry bin, and piles of dirty suits were in a nearly identical bin. One was marked CLEAN and the other DIRTY, but I knew boys switched the signs. Beside the exit to the factory floor was a dish marked SANITIZED EARPLUGS. Someone had spit an especially colorful wad of mucus into the pile of orange foam pellets. The sound of machinery hummed on the other side of the wall. I hastily yanked on a jumpsuit and was just grabbing a hairnet from the “clean” basket when I heard a voice say my name.

  For a second I thought it might be the intercom, but then the wallscreen blinked on and Bethany’s face was squinting into a camera, on the other side of some digital connection. Little dangling clusters of metallic stars hung from her earlobes. Behind her was a shelf for paper books and a bulbous cactus in a terra-cotta pot.

  “There you are,” she said. “You stood me up. Care to grovel?”

  I was so stunned that I could only stare. “How did you find me?” I stammered.

  “And people tell me I need to work on my bedside manner.” She smiled. “Aren’t you going to say hello?”

  “Someone could walk in here at any minute,” I said. I glanced at the camera.

  “Relax,” she said. “I’ve got a proximity program running and a few others.” She patted a handheld on the desk. “We’ll have plenty of notice. So, this is where you work?” She looked around. “It’s nice,” she said.

  “I hate it,” I said.

  “Well, yes. I only said it was nice to be polite.” She paused. “Your face is better.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. It was hard to look at her, to see an echo of Dr. Cleveland in her features.

  “I’ve been trying to catch you alone,” she said. “I had to be quite the corsair. You know, their wallscreen security is actually pretty good compared to their chip protocol. I think they’re more afraid to let you go online than let you wander around unauthorized. That says something.” She nodded. “It really does. The brain is more dangerous than the body, don’t you agree?”

  “The brain is the body,” I said.

  “God, I want to know everything about you.” She leaned forward to adjust her screen, and the lab coat fell open to reveal a tight blue T-shirt. The red, puffed scar on her chest rose out of the low neckline. “And don’t worry, I intercepted your message.” She winked. “Clever.” It took me a moment to realize she was referring to the note I’d sent her father. She thought it had been meant for her. I scrambled to remember the exact wording. “I’ve been watching your outgoing messages,” she said. “I knew you’d figure it out.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Glad you got it.”

  Bethany frowned at me. “What were you thinking, by the way? You had a green light last week. I had you cleared to go almost anywhere in the school and you just sat in your dorm room doing God-knows-what.”

  “Sleeping,” I said.

  “Which is a total waste of time,” she said. “So we need to try again. And I want to remind you that this is likely to be your last chance to meet up with someone of the opposite sex. At least for a while, and also, that I am actually very mature despite the fact that sometimes people think I look younger and sillier than I am. It reflects very poorly on them and has nothing to do with me. Please don’t say no—not right away.”

  And then I succumbed to some curiosity of my own. “Why are you doing this?”

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “Why me?” I said. “Why did you pick me? There’s a whole school of us.”

  Bethany frowned. “Because,” she said, faltering, “you’re convenient.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said. “Not if you have to override wallscreen protocol and all of that. I’m not convenient.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I like you.” And she seemed faintly subdued after saying this—these words that I’d wanted to hear, this confirmation that she’d been waiting for me on Sunday—not her but that other girl, the one who was not the daughter, not the extension of him.

  “I like you,” she said again. “And if you keep asking why, I’m going to run out of good answers, because at some point there really isn’t a why.”

  “There’s always motive,” I said.

  “I can accept that you’re a cynic, or else you’re doing that boy thing where you have to be a little bit macho, and anyway, why are you so determined to prove me wrong?”

  “I turned you in to your aunt,” I said. “You didn’t like that.”

  “That was rather annoying,” she said. “But I might have done the same.”

  Somehow I had wandered close to the screen without realizing it. We were face-to-face now, and I was suddenly filled with a light, expansive feeling that I didn’t immediately recognize as pleasure. I’d forgotten myself for just a moment.

  “Your aunt handed me an ax,” I said. “A real ax. And then she ran back into the house and locked the door. I think I was more upset than she was.”

  “She actually poured herself a drink afterward,” Bethany said. “I thought she was having a hot flash or something.”

  “And you brought me a real glass,” I said. “Didn’t they tell you not to do that?”

  Bethany smiled. “I’m sorry we armed you so extravagantly. That must have been confusing.”

  I didn’t know what to do with my hands, and I thought, That’s why civilians have so many pockets in their clothes, so they can tuck their hands away, keep them still. “Look,” I said, trying to impose a limit, to prepare her. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but—it’s too much of a risk. And really, what’s the point? It’s not like this is going anywhere.”

  For some reason, this made her laugh. “James,” she said, “I’m the girl. That’s my line.”

  “And my roommate will report me. He’ll wake up. He’s a light sleeper.”

  “Wait,” she said. “Is that a yes? Did you just say yes?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m listing the reasons why it’s impossible.”

  “So, it’s more of a soft yes.” She nodded. “You’re worried about keeping up your end of things. I understand.”

  “No,” I said again. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “Promise me you’ll find a way,” she said. “It’s important.” And her sudden sincerity brought me up short.

  “Any particular reason?” I asked. But she didn’t answer this. She just hurried to detail the plan, and seeing her so excited, so animated, I kept having to remind myself of who she was—and how little I knew about her.

  Bethany suggested that we meet tomorrow night i
n the school kitchens. It was the only night she could do it. “It might be out of my hands,” I said, actually feeling regret. “I have a hearing that day. I don’t know where I’ll end up.”

  “You’ll end up with me,” she said. “I have a feeling.”

  There was a little beeping sound and Bethany glanced at the handheld on her desk. “Proctor coming,” she said, and by the time the door to the changing room slid open, the wallscreen was blank and I’d stepped through the exit onto the factory floor.

  * * *

  It wasn’t that I forgot about my Disciplinary Committee hearing, it’s just that it seemed pointless to prepare. Owen, on the other hand, was convinced that our future depended on my performance. He was full of advice. “You’ve got time to practice,” he told me. It was Thursday afternoon, just hours since I’d spoken with Bethany in the factory. “Say you don’t remember what happened with Creighton. That you blacked out after the bus attack.” He frowned, and then waved his hands in the air as if erasing something. “No, you can’t say that. That makes you sound crazy. You remember,” he said, “but you’re really sorry.”

  “Are you asking me to lie?”

  “Be serious,” he said. “You’re sorry, right?”

  “Sorry I didn’t hit him harder.”

  “No,” he said. “That’s worse. Definitely don’t say that. Just be sorry.”

  And I did feel sorry—sorry for Tuck, and mostly sorry for Owen. I couldn’t stop thinking about Dr. Cleveland; I couldn’t stop searching for him on the campus. I put myself on several long wait-lists for Maintenance Intensives under his supervision. I was hoping he’d see my name and remember me, remember his promise. I’d stopped taking my monofacine at night. I wanted the nightmares to return. I wanted to see my friends again, to smell the smoke and feel the past coursing through my body, making me tremble. But, ironically, nothing happened—and to complicate matters, Owen and I were starting to talk, to become allies of a sort. It depressed me to feel as if one part of me could be made whole only by destroying another. Understanding had arrived too late. I’d put down roots here without even knowing it, without really meaning to.

  “Practice what you’re going to say,” Owen urged. “I’ll tell you if you get the face right.”

  “I don’t need to practice,” I said. “I’m not a complete moron.”

  Owen paused in a meaningful manner that implied he was unconvinced. I studied his earnest expression. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You have to look down,” he said. “They hate eye contact.”

  I apologized again. And this time I meant it.

  * * *

  Neither of us liked our new dormitory. As the newest additions, Owen and I got the usual hassle. We showered last, when the hot water was scarce. We picked our bedsheets last, so there were often holes and unappetizing stains. I was learning that 3s and 4s were very different from high-status students. Creighton and Davis regularly left their mark on the faces and bodies of those around us. Some had already had their sterilization procedures. Most didn’t bother to finish the logic games that we were supposed to complete each day, the ones that demonstrated proper brain function. I saw their desks lit during class and the problems unsolved as they palmed with each other almost continuously. I sensed there was a deep bond between these boys, but I couldn’t pinpoint it. The feeling moved around Owen and me like a stream bending around a rock. At first I thought their avoidance of us was because we’d lost status so quickly—I thought that they were protecting themselves from a dangerous connection. But that wasn’t it. They all seemed to be trading in some currency that we didn’t possess.

  Some kid named Carter was always crowding me out of doorways or kicking the bathroom stall door whenever he found me there. Carter had black hair with two patches of white above his right ear. They were like the spots on a fawn. His roommate was Ortiz, an ex–class leader who’d been ousted sometime in middle school and retained a frown-shaped scar on his cheek, a souvenir from his final fight. Ortiz never spoke to me, just watched as Carter made it clear that I was breathing his air and cluttering up his sight lines. I sometimes saw them getting hazed by Creighton, who probably didn’t appreciate seeing a ghost of his possible future wandering the campus.

  There was another emergency-preparedness drill. It happened while I was on a work detail, scrubbing graffiti off some of the ancient metal fire escapes that still laddered the sides of Vargas. Boys had been carving messages into the metal rails for years. None of it was recent—our chips made it impossible now to even approach the building without clearance—but I was struck by how unchanged our defacement was. In the dorm you could see the same rude pictures, the same threats, boys’ names written with a Zero symbol carved over the top—that Zero with a slash. I had seen my own name cut into a window ledge in the bathroom, my own name Zeroed.

  This time when a drill happened, when the overhead sirens blared and the woman’s voice announced that campus had been locked down, we all disregarded it.

  “Don’t stop working,” a proctor called. “We’re not done here.”

  The more drills Goodhouse ran, the more we were prepared to ignore them.

  * * *

  That night, after dinner, Owen and I did one of our extra work details. Students from our dormitory and several others were marched out to weed the large soybean field just to the south of the Proctors’ Quarters. It was dusk when we hiked out to the field. Dinner had been especially awful, some sort of stew that recycled the corn grits we’d had for breakfast all week. Owen and I were each given a shovel with a hard plastic blade. Our job was to pull weeds from between the soybean shoots and throw them into large compost bags. Creighton and Davis and several younger class leaders were supervising, but they were far away, little specks of darker blue among our light blue uniform shirts. Fortunately, the field was large enough that we could talk without being overheard or reported.

  We worked near the fence that surrounded the Proctors’ Quarters, and I kept glancing over at the compound. It looked subtly different. The staff houses had been newly painted or perhaps washed—the gray siding and white trim were crisp, free from the pervasive brown dust that coated everything. The coils of razor wire that topped the fence had also been removed. The main road onto campus ran alongside this field. Razor wire would undoubtedly send the wrong message to visitors on Founders’ Day.

  After an hour of weeding, my back hurt and I had a rash from the thick embroidered Goodhouse logo sewn into my shirt. It was defective in some way, and itchy. Owen had blisters on his palms. His hands were soft. He had been exempt previously from this sort of work. “Can you pull your sleeves down like gloves?” I said.

  Owen shrugged. “They can’t keep us here much longer,” he said. The light was fading. The vivid green of the new soybean shoots had gone gray in the dusk, and the school hadn’t yet turned on the overhead floodlights. A woman, a proctor’s wife perhaps, walked along the fence nearby, smoking a cigarette. I could see her silhouette, her long swishing skirt. Other boys watched her, too. The wives didn’t usually go near the fence. They probably didn’t appreciate the way we stared at them, like a pack of hungry animals. I looked away.

  A cool wind began to blow as the sun set. Somewhere—in one of the houses—the same song played again and again. The words were almost audible, the tune catchy but a little haunting, too, dipping unexpectedly into a minor key. It would have been peaceful if I hadn’t been so tired. I picked up a dandelion green and ate it.

  “Don’t eat the compost,” Owen said.

  “It’s a dandelion,” I said. “It’s gourmet.”

  “Maybe if you’re a goat.”

  I double-checked the location of our class leaders before I answered. “We did it all the time at La Pine,” I said.

  “You did it with goats?” Owen asked.

  “No, asshole,” I said. “You can eat clover, too. It’s good for you.”

  The woman pacing along the fence stopped to watch us. We both went back
to work. She was maybe a hundred feet away, and when she took a drag off her cigarette, the ember glowed red in the twilight. I could smell the smoke as it floated toward us across the darkening air. Since I’d seen the doctor, I’d been staring at every staff member, wondering if they were who they seemed to be.

  “Hey,” I said. I cleared my throat. I tried to make my tone casual. “Do you think you’d know if someone was a Zero?”

  “Sure,” Owen said. “You’d know once they tried to set you on fire.”

  “Don’t be a dick,” I said. “It’s a real question. What if I told you there were Zeros here at Ione? How would you pick them out?”

  “This isn’t La Pine,” he said. “You’re not at some backwater school anymore.”

  One of the plastic compost bags was too full and it tipped over, sending a cascade of weeds and dirt into the row. I knelt and began stuffing the material back into the bag. “At La Pine,” I said, “they lived with us. The proctors who did it.” I paused. “They knew us.”

  “And they’ll fry in hell,” Owen said. “Forever.”

  But I didn’t believe this. Not as much as I wanted to. “Do you think you could kill someone?” I asked. “I mean, if you had to?”

  “Are you really asking me that? Come on.” Owen looked around again to make sure we weren’t being overheard. “This better not be a serious conversation.”

  In the distance, Creighton and Davis and the other class leaders called for us to line up. A proctor’s voice boomed from a nearby speaker: “Work Detail 15, return your tools.” Boys were gathering up bags of compost and heading toward the main road, where a number of T-4s had arrived. Their curved, canopied tops looked like pale seashells, the sort of specimens I’d seen only in a book.

  “You remember that kid you hit with a tray?” I asked.

  “What kid?” Owen said, but there had been only one incident. He knew what I was talking about.

  “Why’d you do it?” I hefted two plastic sacks of weeds over my shoulder, holding both bags in one hand. Owen was carrying the shovels, his sleeves pulled over his palms. We made our way toward the road.