Ally loves that story. Mom never tells the ending, where the mama bear gets shot the next place they steal apples and her cubs are put in cages for the rest of their lives. Mom pretends the happy bear family went to a national forest and stayed there, safe and shining, for the rest of their days, telling stories in bear language about the afternoon they ate apples and dodged bullets.
I’d like to think that were true. I tell Ally it’s true. But it’s not true. Those bears are dead.
Ally would like to see a bear, but she makes do with whatever wildlife is at hand. She saves a worm from drowning in a puddle on the way to the park, picks it up and settles it on the grass, saying, “There you go,” like she helped an old lady across the street.
The park is just down the street from our apartment complex. It has a large playing field flanked by oaks and maples, two swing sets and a jungle gym fit for chin-ups. Two eight-year-olds, Zachary and Melbourne, use it as their gladiator arena. They throw sand, smash heads into monkey bars, knock down baby bystanders, kick and scream. Today Zach pushes Melbourne face-first off the jungle gym. Melbourne’s mother jumps from the bench with a hand raised like she’s going to swat Zachary. Zach’s mother jumps up like she’s going to swat Melbourne’s mother. Melbourne latches onto Zachary’s ankles and yanks him off the platform. The mothers sit down like all is well.
“Hey, there’s Melissa,” I tell Ally.
Melissa stands on the sidewalk, long skinny legs and arms jutting out of flowery shorts and a frilly blouse. She holds her father’s hand and stares at her feet. He leads her to the edge of the play structure and nudges her into the sand. She walks to the slide, climbs up and spirals down without a peep. Her father turns her toward the swings. “Stretch and bend!” he shouts. “Get some momentum going!”
She swings until Melbourne and Zachary shout, “Get off! We want a turn!”
“All right,” her father says. “Let’s go.”
I point Ally in their direction. “Go say hi.”
She shakes her head.
“Hey, Melissa!” I shout. “Want to play with Ally?”
Melissa looks at Ally like she never met her before. Her father checks his watch. “I don’t know,” he says.
“That’s okay!” Ally shouts. “We don’t have time to play either.” She turns her back on her friend as they leave the park.
“Why did you say that?” I ask. “That’s not like you, Ally. You hurt her feelings.”
She shakes her head. “She has no feelings anymore.”
I laugh, thinking it’s a joke, but when she looks up at me, she’s almost crying. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” I ask. “Trouble making friends this year?”
“There’s something wrong with them. They’re fuzzy and slow. They just go along.” She looks around to make sure no one’s listening. “At first it was just my class, but now all the grade ones and twos are strange.”
I kiss her little head and twirl her braids. “Don’t you have any friends at all?”
She sighs and looks away. “I want to find Peanut.”
She sits before the tallest oak tree and clicks from the back of her throat, “Kch, kch, kch.” A black squirrel peeks out of its nest, twitches its tail, runs down the tree. “Peanut,” Ally whispers. She throws a few seeds on the ground.
The squirrel pauses, twitches, descends, backtracks, finally hops to the earth and inches closer. It cracks the seeds with orange teeth, chews them speedily, glancing up at me with nervous black eyes.
Ally holds the rest of the seeds in her palm. She giggles when the squirrel’s mouth nuzzles her skin. She pets its head and calls it beautiful. Peanut stays with her even after the seeds are gone, answering her questions with grunts and trills, until a scream from the swings sends it up the tree.
“Let’s go,” I say.
Ally rises and waves goodbye to the squirrel. Her eyes blaze with love, and it saddens me that she has to grow up and make friends with humans. I hear the future coming for her. Stomp, stomp, stomp.
THREE
I spend the final morning of my suspension punching a padded tree, sketching, and reading the Freakshow contestant bios. My money is on Zipperhead, a twenty-two-year-old with a head like a boulder, covered in scars from surgery that separated him from a conjoined twin.
Two of this season’s contestants are from New Mexico. That’s a rarity. Usually everyone is from Freaktown. I can’t remember the real name of the place—it’s been called Freaktown all my life. It was christened twenty-five years ago when two transport tankers spilled untested agricultural chemicals on the banks of the Saint Lawrence River. No one cared much until the birth defects showed up: conjoined twins, spinal abnormalities, missing limbs, extra limbs, enlarged brains, external intestines, missing genitals, extra organs. When the same defects appeared in the babies of agricultural workers all over the country, the poisons were taken off the market and the shoreline was cleaned up.
It came too late. Even today, one in three babies born in Freaktown has deformities. Nobody visits the city anymore. Strangely enough, nobody ever leaves the place either.
Deformed babies are sad, but deformed adults are supremely fascinating. Four years ago, a savvy media company started a weekly documentary about Freaktown’s twentysomethings. They called it Freakshow. It started off as an educational program, but it soon evolved into a contest, with voting and prizes and betting pools. It’s called a charity program now. Xavier says it’s controlled by organized crime.
I came fourth in the New Middletown Freakshow betting pool two years ago, but I couldn’t claim my prize because I was underage and Mom wouldn’t step up for me. She says the show is reprehensible. I know the time is coming when she won’t refuse any money, no matter where it comes from, so I lay a bet on Zipperhead.
After lunch I do my homework, tidy up and jog to Ally’s school for the three o’clock bell. I don’t hear much of what she says on the walk home, because I’m on my RIG fighting communism in the Chinese Civil War. I don’t play often, not like throwaways, but New Middletown just added the game Underdog to our network. Your ISP marks your alliance, so every American logged on right now playing the 1946 China map is a Kuomintang. Every Brazilian is a Communist. It makes gaming an act of patriotism.
A soldier spawns into my projection and stands there doing nothing for so long I suspect he’s a Commie spy. I’m about to knife him when he says, “Stop wasting your youth, Max. Log off and apply for the manual arts exhibit. I’m coming over after football.” Somehow Dallas always finds me idling online. I knife him before he exits.
I skim the manual arts application at home and submit my portfolio with an essay on why I should be a representative artist. I lie like a rug, apologize for my three graffiti convictions, flaunt my grades in art and architecture, and claim to be a productive citizen.
Ally tugs on my earpiece. “There’s someone at the door.”
A redheaded man with a handlebar mustache stands in the hallway holding a bowl of apples. His smile is lopsided and his teeth are blackened, but there’s no mistaking his vocals. “They said these apples are organic, but I found pesticide residue on them so I’m sending my samples to a laboratory for testing because they’ve stretched the certification definitions beyond reason.”
I smile. “Come on in, Xavier, and we’ll slice them up.”
When Mom gets home from a double shift at six o’clock, Xavier and Dallas are lazing on the couch watching an ancient movie about machines that take over the world. Dallas is wearing the red wig and mustache. Xavier is chatting through the action scenes.
“Why aren’t you in there with your friends?” Mom asks me.
I point to the kitchen screen, where I’ve projected Ally’s homework. “We’re working.”
Mom skims Ally’s ethics assignment: an evil bunny paints graffiti on the wall of a grocery store, all the nearby plants are poisoned, distracted drivers crash into bikes, the store gets robbed, and all hell breaks loose until two tattler bunnies save the d
ay by ratting out the evil bunny, who repents when interrogated. The follow-up asks, What makes a good community member? What should you do if you see someone harming property? “Wow,” Mom says. “That’s advanced for grade one.” She frowns with worry, then sits next to Ally and asks me to heat supper.
I wear my earpiece to drown out Ally’s struggle with every sentence. I don’t know why Mom won’t let her use the speech editor—half the country can’t read or write, and they’re not missing anything except the odd evacuation notice. They’re on question four of ten when I ladle out the soup. “Dallas! Xavier! Want to eat?”
Xavier streams the movie through his RIG and brings it to dinner. Mom hates electronics at the table, but she’d never hurt Xavier’s feelings.
“Elaine was asking about you today,” she tells me. Elaine is a patient at the geriatric center. I adopted her as my community grandparent for a sadistic school assignment in grade seven. “Why don’t you come for a visit tomorrow?” Mom asks.
I cringe. I would rather eat vomit than go back to that place. Elaine is sweet and funny but that just makes it worse, her being stuck there with thousands of people pissing themselves and rotting slowly. “I’m getting my hair cut tomorrow.”
“No!” Ally says. “I like your hair long.”
“Me too,” Xavier adds. His own hair dangles in his tomato soup.
Dallas laughs. The mustache falls off his face into his bowl. He pinches it between his fingers, holds it up dripping like a severed tail. “Max has high-maintenance hair,” he says. “We should cut it for him.”
“My sister does hair,” Xavier says.
“Oh, I wish she’d do me,” Dallas says. I smile. Mom rolls her eyes. Ally and Xavier don’t get it, but that’s just as well.
I go to the cheapest hair salon in the quadrant: Kim’s Trims. It’s the size of my bedroom, with a wall of mirrored tiles to plump it up. It reeks of hairspray and Kim’s musky perfume. She’s a middle-aged beautician who lives in a carpark by the highway outside of town. She and three other stylists take shifts at the salon. She probably bathes in the sink where she washes my hair.
Mom says carparks used to be places where people parked their cars before they took a bus to work in the morning. They’d return on the bus at the end of the day and get back in their cars and drive home. The cars would still have gasoline, and the tires would be on, and even the music systems would be in place, just as the owners had left them. That’s the kind of safety full employment used to bring.
Now, of course, carparks are places where people live in cars that don’t work. They’re the hallmark of modern efficiency. When you have a host of vehicles no one can afford to drive and a horde of people who can’t afford a home, a carpark makes royal sense. Especially if you live alone, like Kim. Then there’s lots of room.
Kim talks so much it takes an hour and a half to trim my hair, and it’s only two inches long to start with. Mostly she holds up her scissors and stares in the mirror, waiting for me to answer whatever her last question was.
“Huh?” I say.
“When I was your age, the student council met with the governing board every week to keep the dialogue going,” she says. This explains why I zoned out. “But my nephew tells me his student council just chooses the color of the yearbook. It doesn’t influence school policy.”
I shrug. “I’m not on the student council.”
“You should join it.”
I laugh. “They wouldn’t let me. I missed the past two weeks of school.”
“If you let other people make the decisions, you can’t complain about what they decide,” she says. “That’s what I tell my son. He’s always got his head in an engine. He doesn’t take any interest in what’s going on in the world. Then he raises his head and wonders how things got so bad.”
I should tell Xavier that the field of hairdressing is wide open to him. It’s a legal way to trap people in a chair and force them to listen to you for hours.
“Like the new education program they started this fall,” Kim says. “There’s not one student council that had any input into that decision.”
I wish I’d let Dallas cut my hair.
“My mom cuts my hair,” Dallas whispers into his RIG. “That’s how the rich stay rich.” He would never give anyone else that information. It’s like confessing that your parents grow their own meat or knit their own mittens. You might as well sign up at the psychiatric recall center.
He runs a hand through his silky bangs. “Who did you vote for on Freakshow?”
“Zipperhead. You?”
“Juice and Tiger.”
I don’t comment. Tiger is a teenager tattooed with stripes to complement his pointy ears and golden eyes that are probably plastic. Juice is almost twenty-five and so defective that he leaks from all orifices. There’s no way he’ll win—either he’ll be exposed as a fake or he’ll die of blood loss.
“Who do you think would win in a fight?” Dallas asks. “A tiger or two cougars?”
“There aren’t any tigers left.”
“I think there’s a few in zoos.”
“Then a tiger would win for sure.”
“I think so too.”
Austin shoves his face into the screen. He has a cracked lip, swollen purple ears and white goo on his chin. “Ice cream! Ice cream!” he shouts like an idiot child. “Dad bought me ice cream after my fight. None for you units. Hah!”
Dallas ignores him. “If you could only have one dessert for the rest of your life,” he asks me, “what would it be: chocolate cake or ice cream?”
“Xavier told me that chocolate cake doesn’t contain chocolate.”
“So? Ice cream doesn’t contain cream. They still taste good.”
“Maybe chocolate cake.”
“Me too,” Dallas says.
Austin whacks him on the cheek. “Ice cream is better, unit.”
Dallas swats Austin’s hand away and accidentally hits the ice cream cone to the floor. There’s a moment of silence before Austin jumps on Dallas’s head. The screen dissolves. It seems that in every two-child family, only one child is normal.
My first day of classes falls two weeks into term. Everyone is angry at me for missing so much school. Fortunately, my favorite teacher, Mr. Reese, is taking his weekly hypochondriac day, so I get a midmorning break from the nagging. A substitute stands at the front of history class, wringing her hands as we take our seats. She’s young, homely, scared. I can’t resist.
I answer the roll call for Pepper Cassidy before Pepper can get her hand up. The sub squints at me like she thought Pepper was a girl’s name but you never know these days. “Maxwell Connors?” she calls out next.
I wait. There’s a risk to jokes like this. I might lead the classroom fun or I might be laid to waste. Fortunately, word has spread on how I thrashed Tyler last week. Brennan Emery raises his hand and says, “Here.” I’m stamped with approval, checked off the list.
When Brennan’s name is called, three hands shoot up, all wanting to be him. Montgomery from cheerleading stands to attention. He lowers his voice and squares his shoulders. “I’m Brennan,” he says, trying to look straight.
Dallas answers for Montgomery. He snaps his fingers and sings, “Have no fear! I am here!” Dallas is a supreme actor. He played a drag-queen elf in the grade nine Christmas production, and the entire football team avoided him for weeks afterward. He jumps at the chance to revive the role. Mincing opportunities are rare for a fifteen-year-old giant whose entire family is named after parts of Texas.
Pepper answers for Kayla Farmer, the ultimate cheerleader. Pepper wiggles her fingers, jiggles her boobs, cheers, “That’s me! I’m Kayla. K-A-Y-L-A. That spells Kayla!”
Soon everybody has a new name and personality except the honest kids whose names start with A and B and Tyler Wilkins, whom nobody answers for.
I play a premium Pepper, but Dallas steals my limelight. No one can take their eyes off him as he mimics Montgomery, who’s flamboyant even for a ga
y boy. Dallas doesn’t hold back. He opens a pack of mints and waltzes up the aisle— literally, spinning and stepping, one, two, three—past all the girls and average guys, right up to Brennan, who’s playing me. “Hi, Max,” Dallas says. He leans across Brennan’s desk, stretching to pull his shirt up over his muscled belly. He bats his lashes and whispers, “Want a mint?”
Brennan tries not to laugh.
Washington Anderson swears from the desk in front of them. He’s Tyler’s ugliest goon, a rabid homophobe and racist who’s stuck playing his own damaged personality this morning. “You reeking hemorrhage, Richmond,” Washington mutters. “Get back to your desk.”
Dallas sticks a mint between his teeth and pulls back his lips. He leans close to Washington, daring him to take it.
Washington leaps to his feet and raises a fist.
The substitute teacher screams.
Dallas lifts himself off Brennan’s desk and stands up to his height of six feet two inches, transforming instantly from a happy fag into a serious fighter. He crushes the mint between his teeth.
Tyler hurdles a desk to hover beside Washington. I hop beside Dallas, smiling at the opportunity to kick Tyler’s ass again. Brennan stands up next to me with Bay, the biggest, blackest boy on the football team. “You don’t want to do anything rash,” Brennan tells Washington. The room is silent and tense.
The sub looks from us to the surveillance camera to the door, too scared to say a word.
Dallas smiles at Washington. “Do you have a problem with my mints? Not your favorite flavor?”
Washington snorts and swears, clenching his fists. His eyes gleam with fury. But his grades are borderline and a suspension might get him sent to throwaway school, so he backs off with a muttered, “Outside.” The sub resumes her lecture on climate change in the twenty-first century. She stutters so quietly I can barely understand her.
“I’m wasting face time on this?” Kayla asks.
“It’s worse than a virtual tutor,” Montgomery agrees.
The tension slowly fades, and we pick up our alternate personalities where we dropped them. Brennan sketches, I dance, Montgomery calls a huddle, Dallas and Pepper cheer.
All Good Children Page 4
