“We’ll be safe here,” she whispered, “until things quiet down.”
“They were standing right next to me,” I said. “I thought I was caught.”
“You must have been stomping around like an elephant,” she said. “What happened? Aren’t you all supposed to be masters of duplicity?”
“Who told you that?” I asked.
“Same person who told me you were all sexual maniacs,” she said. Briefly, I imagined her father giving her a lecture— a Zero educating his daughter.
“That’s not what they tell us,” I said.
“Of course not,” she said. “That would be bad for morale, and anyway, it’s just the same werewolf story they’ve been telling little girls for centuries. Something to keep us chaste and afraid.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, though I felt suddenly very aware of her body. She was warmer than the air around us, and her every movement—the way she sat on her knees, with her hands splayed out on the ground, the slight contraction of her throat as she swallowed—commanded my attention. I tried to shake the feeling. I needed to focus. I’d been confused and disrupted. I was off track. I forced myself to look around, and as my eyes adjusted further, I saw boxes and boxes of Swann Industries chocolate bars, all stacked to the ceiling.
“We think we’re so advanced as a species,” she was saying, “but really we’re all just animals.” She crawled nearer, and then, to my astonishment, she sat astride my lap. Her arms wrapped around my neck. I felt like I had several extra gallons of blood in my body.
“Well, aren’t you going to kiss me?” she asked. A lock of her hair touched my cheek. I’d never kissed anyone before, and I tried to hold something of myself back, to be that third person watching. I imagined how smug she must feel, how in control, and I dug my hands into the thick puffs of hair above her braid, clenching my fingers until she squeaked in pain.
“What are you doing?” She yanked her head back and squinted at me. All I could think was that I was holding something that the doctor loved. He didn’t know it, but I was standing over him. “James,” she said, “what’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” I said. And then I rolled her beneath me. I was double her weight. She jammed her feet into the ground, bucking me upward, but only slightly, opening her legs in the process, so that I pinned her more completely.
“I have to tell you something,” she croaked. Her braid had unraveled and I smelled her civilian shampoo. I reached for the memory of the fire, for a feeling of righteousness. I wanted to be engulfed by that moment of transgression, I wanted to let it twist me, show me the way.
“When you turned up at Rachel’s baby shower,” she whispered, her voice shaky and thin, “that was my idea. I made sure you came to our house.”
“What do you mean?” I said. I was conscious of her trying to breathe, her chest pushing against mine. “Why would you do that?”
“I saw you on the news after La Pine,” she said. “You were talking about what had happened, and it was like you were speaking just to me—like we were alone.”
She was talking about the interview I’d given after the fire, the one in which I’d credited the proctor for saving me. “I made all that up,” I said. “It’s a lie, a story.”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t matter.” She pushed at my shoulders and I lifted my weight off her a little bit. “Before we met,” she said, “I was thinking that I should just pick a day, right, a day when I wanted to die rather than waiting to fall face forward into a plate of eggs or in the shower or something awful. And then I met you and I knew we were alike.” She paused. “You don’t feel it yet,” she said, “but I do.”
I rolled off her and pressed my palms into my eyes. I was screwing this up—this easy thing.
“How do I know this isn’t a setup and your father isn’t going to come through that door and arrest me?” I asked.
“You don’t,” she said, gulping air. “But I’m on your side.”
“You don’t have any idea what that means.”
We heard footsteps on the path outside. The flashlight lay on the ground beside me. I put my palm over the beam, afraid that the click of the switch would be audible. But whoever it was didn’t stop. The sound of footsteps traveled past the commissary and away. We waited, still and silent, until it seemed that this person must be truly gone.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to Bethany. I was ashamed of myself. Of all people, I should have known that the child was not the parent. “I’m sorry if I scared you. I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I said. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
I lifted my palm off the beam, and when I found the courage to look at her, I saw that Bethany lay on her back. Her eyes were open very wide and she was struggling to breathe.
* * *
“What’s happening?” I said. “Are you okay?” I crawled over to her, but then I didn’t know how to help.
“I should probably have covered this,” she wheezed. “But you can’t put your weight on me.”
“Fuck,” I said.
She dug a small metal container out of her pocket, shook a white tablet onto her palm, and then popped it into her mouth. “I think it’s okay,” she said. But a film of sweat clung to her face, the tendons on her neck stood out, and her left hand kept opening and closing, as if it were grasping for something unseen.
“We need to get help,” I said. I started to stand, but she grabbed me.
“No,” she said. “Stay.”
I sank down beside her. It seemed wrong to just sit and stare, but that was all I could do. I put a hand out to calm her, but then quickly withdrew it. I had lost the right to touch her, and it flashed through my mind that if she died, I would have my revenge on Dr. Cleveland, and that this would be the worst outcome—to get what I’d wanted.
She took another pill and curled on her side. We sat like this for several minutes, until her breathing slowed and deepened. When she finally sat up, there was dirt on her black sweatshirt and grit on her cheek. “So,” she said, her voice smooth, her tone a little too casual, “do you want to get dinner?”
I thought I’d misunderstood. “Maybe you should go home,” I said, “and rest.”
“Don’t do that,” she said. “Don’t you turn into one of those people.” She got to her feet and dusted herself off.
I stood, too, but I was looking to see if she was okay. I was so much taller than she was that I took a step back. “Didn’t you almost suffocate?” I asked.
“‘Almost’ means it didn’t happen,” she said.
“I almost suffocated you,” I said. “I’m feeling a little fucked up over the whole thing.”
“That’s why dinner is a good idea,” she said. “It’s something we can do together. It will be very normalizing.”
“In the middle of the night,” I said. “At a Goodhouse?” I pointed to the spot on the floor where she’d just been lying. We’d disturbed the layer of dust on the concrete. “Is that going to happen again?”
“James,” she said, and now her voice had the playful, confident lilt that I was accustomed to, “if you can’t handle the answer, don’t ask the question.”
* * *
I followed her out of the commissary, across the lawn, to the school kitchens. We went to a side door, one used primarily by staff, and stood in the entryway. “I think I’ve eaten here before,” I whispered, trying to hide how shaken I was.
“Then you know how disappointing it is,” she said. “But that won’t stop us.” She pulled a small plastic rectangle out of her back pocket. It was a print reader like the one Montero had given me. I recognized its shape and size even before she summoned a glowing fingerprint to the screen. She opened the door and we stepped into a long hallway. A series of white aprons hung on brass hooks. They looked deflated and ghostly.
“Well, that worked,” I said.
“I keep these all over the infirmary,” she said, tucking the device back into her pocket. “They fi
t right on top of the real readers. You can’t even tell they’re there.” In the narrow hallway I accidentally brushed against her, and then folded my arms closer to my body. “The big downside is that they’re illegal,” she said. “Ten years just for possession, and I have around fifty of them on campus.” She smiled at me. “Don’t tell.”
We stepped into the main kitchen. Huge mixers lined one wall. They were as tall as I was. Large stainless-steel countertops had breakfast ingredients already laid out in sealed plastic containers as big as mop buckets. Overhead, silver-colored pots dangled from wooden pegs. I heard the faint skittering sound of mice, and then I stepped on something soft. I recoiled, immediately shifting my weight and lifting my foot. Two gray mice were stuck to a single glue trap on the floor. One mouse was dead and the other was on his side, legs moving. He was trying to get away.
“Now I know where the meat comes from,” I said. But I felt disturbed by the sight—by this creature’s hopeless and persistent struggle. Bethany came to stand next to me.
“The kindest thing,” she said, “would be to crush its head.”
I put out an arm to stop her. “Please don’t.”
“I’m just saying, if you’re going to kill something, you should do it outright, don’t you think?” She looked at me. “Isn’t that the best way?”
I paused. “Theoretically,” I said.
She reached for one of the plastic bins on the prep table, lifted the lid, and pulled out a handful of cornmeal. She knelt beside the mouse, and its legs ran faster, feet searching for traction. “You know, sometimes their hearts just stop out of fear,” she said.
“Leave him alone,” I said, backing away. She sprinkled cornmeal beside the mouse, and I thought that it would be worse for him—to have the food he’d been seeking but not the freedom to eat it. I turned away and walked into the dimmer recesses of the room. At the end of the prep area, I saw a huge wall-mounted knife case. Fifty knives gleamed in careful array, outlines drawn on the wood behind them. Every one was numbered. The case itself had a glass front and two metal bands, each with their own lock. I tapped the surface with my fingernail. It was plastic. Shatterproof.
“You’re not looking to chop his head off, are you?” Bethany asked. She was standing behind me and I turned with a start. For a moment I thought she was referring to her father.
“What?” I asked.
“Looks like you’re picking out a knife.”
She opened a nearby bin and pulled out a loaf of bread. “Do you love him?” I asked.
“Who?” she asked.
“Your father,” I said. She handed me two slices of bread, which I devoured.
“You were supposed to hold those,” she said. “And for future reference, when you’re on a date with a girl, you don’t ask her to discuss her feelings for her father. It’s a little bit of a downer.”
“A downer,” I said. “Right. Are we on a date?”
She led me through a storeroom, and there, on the floor in front of a prep table, was a picnic laid out on a blanket. Two plates, two glasses, a bowl of pasta, and several covered containers.
“I didn’t really know what you liked,” she said. “I figured anything but stew. I actually don’t know how you choke that stuff down.”
I looked at the blanket. A flower lay in the center. It was something from outside the school. She had put a lot of effort into this. We stood side by side. From that angle I could glance down her shirt, which I was both doing and attempting to conceal. She wore a lacy blue bra, the edge of which curved over her small breasts. In the darkness, I heard more mice scuffling. Everything felt surreal.
“James,” she said, her voice a little softer, “what’s the last thing that you did that you were really proud of?”
I shook my head. “Don’t know,” I said.
“You can’t think of one thing?” she asked. “Not even from your childhood?”
I thought maybe I’d been proud of my time in the choir, of the hours we’d spent in practice, in pursuit of some perfection of sound. But I would never say this aloud.
“If you can’t think of anything,” she said, “then how do you know that your life is worth it?”
“Worth it to me?” I asked. “Or worth it to someone else?”
“To you,” she said. “Other people don’t matter.”
And then she reached up and touched my hair, her fingernails scraping lightly at my scalp, a sensation that was unexpectedly pleasant.
“You have cowlicks,” she said. “And those are permanent. You can’t laser them away. You know you can change almost everything about a face now, even your skin color, but not a cowlick. It has to stay. Forever.”
“Cowlicks,” I said, “are the least of my problems.”
She hopped up on a nearby countertop, her legs dangling over the side. “I’m too nervous to eat,” she said. “Come here.” I walked over and stopped at her knees. She spread her legs slightly, then wrapped them around my waist.
“Is this a good idea?” I asked.
“We’ll be more careful,” she said.
She pulled me down to kiss her, and I resisted, planting my hands on the table. “I don’t want anything to happen,” I said.
She moved forward, lifted herself up slightly until her lips just grazed mine. “Too late,” she said. And this time I was cautious. I was more in control. “You’re supposed to open your mouth,” she said. “I mean, not right away, but like on the third kiss.”
“Third kiss,” I repeated.
“Like this,” she said. “I’ll show you. But you can’t do the slobber thing. Girls hate that.”
She tasted like mint, as if she’d recently brushed her teeth, and her face was incredibly soft. “Better,” she said. “Much better.” She made little sighing noises, and I pressed closer until her legs tightened around me.
We never did eat the food. Somehow we ended up crawling onto the chilly stainless-steel countertop, leaving vanishing handprints on its surface. Bethany pushed me away long enough to tug her shirt over her head. Her bra had tiny flowers stitched on top. And then she had unsnapped it. Soon I was aware only of her. Time slowed and stopped. It became an endless drugging now. I felt that being with her, pressing into her, I was somehow closer to being a real person.
* * *
At some point Bethany took my face between her hands and pulled us apart. “James,” she said. It took a moment for my eyes to focus. “James, you there?”
“Think so,” I said.
“I only checked you out until four,” she said. “I don’t mean to make you sound like a library book, but we have to get you back on the shelf soon.” I was lying beside her. My brain was so quiet it barely registered these words. I ran a hand over her shoulder, the scar on her chest, the slight mounds of her breasts.
I felt strangely incautious. That was something they didn’t tell you. Because, of course, they told us about sex, about the types of women to avoid, about the basics of it all. But for a moment I didn’t care about the chip in my belly, or her father, the Zeros, the bleak tomorrow. This was trouble. This was power.
“James,” she said again, “focus.” And we both sat up, tugging at our clothes.
“You know, they’re going to cook our breakfast on this table,” I said, and for some reason this struck us both as hilarious. I slid off and started to back away.
“Don’t go that far,” she said. “We have to say goodbye.” And then we were back where we started, on top of the table. I started to press down on her again, but she stopped me.
“Right,” I said. “Sorry.”
“It’s the ticker,” she said. “I didn’t cook up right when I was a baby.”
“Me neither,” I said.
“What’s wrong with you?” She looked so concerned that I almost laughed. “Oh, right,” she said. “But genetic markers aren’t really a deformity.”
“Aren’t they?”
“They’re going to learn how to turn certain genes off and on soon. I
really think so. It’s the next step for epigenetics, and then it won’t matter what you’re born with. They’ll just give you some cellular software and make you like new. Some of the problematic genes, most of the ones you have, scientists can already turn them off, or they think they can. They did some experiment on cows, but there was a problem. The cows lost the will to eat.”
I stared at her. “You read my file,” I said.
She froze. “I didn’t say that.”
“If you know what markers I have, then you read my file. Of course you did.”
“I meant markers in general,” she said. But she wouldn’t meet my gaze and I just waited, letting the silence call attention to her lie.
“What happened to me on the night of Community Day?”
“You got in a fight,” she said.
“That’s what my record says. But you know I’m not guilty.” I paused. “Otherwise you wouldn’t agree to meet me, right?”
“Well, you’re guilty of theft,” she said. “And I still met with you. And anyway, it’s not really assault if you fight a class leader and win, so why is it assault when you lose?”
“It wasn’t class leaders,” I said. “It was Mule Creek inmates.”
She pushed at my shoulders. “Let me up,” she said. I got to my feet. I backed away from the table. She seemed suddenly nervous.
“Look it up,” I said. “I was off campus in a building in the Exclusion Zone.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I’ll give you a clue,” I said. “It’s not just a leafy mound they forgot to clear. It’s an old basement, and they still use it.”
She pulled on her shirt, taking a little longer than necessary to straighten the fabric. She looked perplexed, but also wary, and I was suddenly afraid that this would be like the hearing. My history would discredit me. “There’s something else,” I said. “I have an appointment with your father tomorrow.”
Goodhouse Page 14
