All Good Children

by Catherine Austen

  “I work until three,” Mom says.

  Linda shrugs. “You never know. I might be doing some after school. I’ll check at work tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” Mom says. She stands stiff and awkward, gripping me and Ally tight. When thunder rumbles way up in heaven, she squeezes us so hard it hurts.

  “We lost the game,” I tell Dallas on my RIG. “They were useless.”

  “You shouldn’t have bothered.”

  “You should have been there.” I describe the fat ladies and what they said to Mom and how it fits with the zombie children who yelled “You don’t belong here!” at us.

  He laughs. “They thought you were in grade eight?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “What is the point? You think the hepatitis vaccinations are turning kids into zombies? That’s what it sounds like you’re saying.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  He shakes his head. “You’re crazy, Max. Why would they do that? We’re their children. We are the future of this country.”

  “Maybe the future of this country requires a lot of slaves.”

  Dallas laughs and the screen dissolves.

  SEVEN

  We receive two announcements Monday morning. First, we can wear costumes to the Halloween dance next Friday. Second, we’ll be vaccinated over the lunch hour, grade nine students today, grade ten tomorrow. “As you know,” Mr. Graham says on every screen, “you are not allowed to leave the school grounds at lunch. Not any day.”

  “But tomorrow they really mean it,” Dallas whispers.

  “I don’t plan on being here tomorrow,” I say.

  “Afraid they’ll zombify you?” he scoffs. He hangs out his tongue and extends his arms, rolls his eyes at me when I don’t find it funny.

  We sneak out for lunch—through the chemistry lab, across the parking lot and over the football field, hiding our faces from the cameras. We eat in the skate park, slurping limp noodles from thermoses, while two grade twelve ultimates perform skateboard stunts for their gorgeous girlfriends.

  “I haven’t been on a skateboard since I was thirteen,” Dallas says, like it was decades ago.

  One guy rides up the bowl, spins and crashes, spills backward onto the pavement. He removes his shoe and wiggles his ankle with both hands.

  “I can ride better than that guy,” Dallas says.

  The other guy walks up to the railing and kisses his girl for a long time, one hand at the back of her neck and the other hand spinning a wheel on his board.

  “Maybe not better than him,” Dallas adds.

  I’m dying to say that I kissed Pepper, but I’m afraid he’ll tell me they’ve been sleeping together all term.

  He elbows me. “Remember that time you tried Austin’s board?” He wails like an ambulance and laughs.

  “I’m not good with wheels,” I admit.

  The feeble skateboarder clatters to the pavement again.

  He rubs his ass and laughs hysterically, then lies back on the concrete and lights a cigarette, blowing smoke rings at the cold blue sky.

  “How would you rather die?” Dallas asks. “Burning in a fire or drowning in icy cold water?”

  “Fire. No contest.”

  “Fire? You’re crazy. No one picks fire.”

  I shrug. “I don’t like being cold.”

  “So burning in a fire or drowning in a hot tub?”

  “Hot tub.”

  “Good man. Want to head back?”

  “Not yet.” I take a picture of the skater and his girl, his hand in her gray pocket, her red hair blowing in the wind, brown leaves dying all around them.

  Dallas grabs my RIG and scrolls through my photo albums. He pauses on my conservatory mural and snorts. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “The piece was supreme.”

  “Not the piece. The stealing. From a school.” He holds up his hands and asks the air, “What do the children do in art class this year? Nothing. Because Max stole their paint.” He shakes his head at me. “I would have bought you paint if you’d asked. What are you going to do with it all anyway?”

  “Use it in my art exhibit.”

  “You took fifty cakes, Max. How much do you need for one project?”

  “I’ll have a big canvas. Mom found an old army tent at the surplus store. There’s a guy at the carpark who’ll cut it and stretch it for me.”

  “You’re painting a whole tent?” He snorts and looks around for backup mockers.

  A vision of a silent gray tent leaps before my eyes: square canvas walls, flat roof, closed flaps hiding the interior. “I was going to cut it into canvases, but maybe I shouldn’t.” I see the tent walls blossom in graffiti—messy tags, shocking stencils, some masterpiece I can’t yet picture. I rise to my feet and pace, wagging my finger at Dallas. “A tent to represent the school. I have enough paint to do all four walls.”

  He shakes his head. “You know what you should do with that paint.”

  “No way. I might get caught giving it back. I’d be expelled for something like that.”

  “You should be expelled for something like that.”

  I’d argue with him but I’m too excited by my vision.

  “Let’s get going,” he mutters. He won’t look me in the eye but at least he stops shaking his head.

  We arrive at school sullen and late. The principal catches us outside the front gate when the bell rings. “Detention!” he shouts. “Connors! Richmond! Three thirty today in detention hall!” That’s all he says. His main qualification for the job is an uncanny ability to remember names.

  Mr. Reese is on his weekly stress leave from history class.

  In his place is my least favorite substitute, Mr. Warton. We call him Werewolf because of his excessive body hair. Back of his neck, back of his hands, everywhere from cheekbones to toenails, he’s a blanket of fur. “Oh joy, oh bliss,” he says when Dallas and I enter the room. We gave him a razor for Christmas last year and he hasn’t forgotten our thoughtfulness.

  I sit behind Pepper’s empty desk.

  “Pepper hurt her ankle in dance practice,” Xavier tells me.

  “Her father picked her up and took her to the hospital.”

  “Are you serious?”

  He nods. “I saw him. He’s bald.”

  “White or black?”

  “In between.”

  “Shaved head or naturally bald?”

  “Detention!” Werewolf howls at me. “You too!” he tells Xavier. “Three thirty in the blue room for talking out of turn.”

  “But I never get detention,” Xavier says.

  “You do today,” Werewolf snarls.

  I make a big deal of it, pleading and whining, saying I’ll be kicked off the football team if I don’t make practice, my girlfriend will quit me if I leave the team, and my adolescence will be ruined. Eventually Werewolf gives in just to shut me up. “All right,” he says. “But keep quiet for the rest of class.”

  “You mean it?” I jump out of my seat and shout, “Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr. Warton.” Then I sit back down and say, “Nah, wait. Actually I already have detention for being late. But thanks anyway, man.”

  The class bursts into laughter. Werewolf turns purple. “It was a good effort,” I tell him.

  Dallas cracks up, cackling like a witch.

  Werewolf turns on him. “Detention!”

  “But—”

  “Not one word!”

  “But I already have detention,” Dallas squeaks.

  The class laughs along with him.

  “You’ll be singing a different tune soon enough,” Werewolf snarls.

  Dallas and I start to hum quietly.

  The detention room buzzes with Freakshow gossip. Kids spin in their chairs, stick their legs in the aisles, hug their seat backs and chat to neighbors. There’s no supervisor yet. The teachers are probably in the lounge, drawing straws.

  Xavier docks his RIG at the desk in front of me and hacks through Blackboard to
change his science grade. “I deserve an A,” he says in explanation.

  The kid kills me.

  I groan when the teacher finally shows up. It’s Werewolf again. When he calls the roll and I answer, “Here,” he tells me to shut up. He files the attendance list and paces the aisles. He rests a butt cheek on my desk and smirks at me and Dallas, who sits next to me in the back row. “You’ll be getting a little present in a minute. Something your parents will thank us for.”

  “What kind of present?” Xavier asks. “Is the present for everyone or just for Max?”

  Werewolf snickers. He walks to the front of the room and announces, “Your classes are having their vaccinations tomorrow, but you people are getting yours early. We know that some of you detention types like to skip out on lunch, and we certainly don’t want to miss you.”

  “Shit,” I mutter. I look at Dallas, but he rolls his eyes at my distress. “I don’t want any vaccinations, sir,” I say.

  Werewolf raises his bushy brows. “Too bad for you.”

  I start to sweat. I consider running for it, but the doorway is suddenly blocked by Mr. Graham in all his bald white enormity.

  The principal shakes a paw with Werewolf and takes the floor. “You all know how it’s done. You’ll get two shots, one in each arm. They won’t interfere with your ability to do your homework while you’re here. Please be polite to our nurses.”

  He peeks into the hallway and beckons Linda, the fat white woman from the middle school football game. She walks in wearing a pink polyester shirt the size and shape of a barbecue cover. A stainless-steel serving cart rolls in behind her. The top shelf is cluttered with tiny brown bottles, syringes, a heap of sterile needles, stacks of gauze, huge square bandages. One of the cart wheels sticks so it drags across the floor tiles, shhhh, shhh, shh.

  I shudder as I look up at the black woman pushing the cart. It’s my mother. She stares at the floor like there’s no one here she knows.

  “Hey, Max—,” Xavier says.

  “No talking!” Mr. Graham snaps. “Let’s get this done quickly and quietly. If anyone speaks out of turn, Mr. Warton is instructed to put them on tomorrow’s detention list.” He smiles at Linda. “I’ll leave you to it. Make sure you submit the attendance records at the office. We wouldn’t want to shoot them twice.” He chuckles. Werewolf snorts. Linda smiles like a clown. Mom looks down at the tray, humble as a slave.

  Werewolf walks the principal to the door, then closes it and leans against it like a security guard.

  At the click of the latch, Mom lifts her head and stares at me. Hard. I have no idea what she’s trying to communicate. Run? Stay? Goodbye? I don’t know. Her mouth is tight with worry, her skin tugs on her cheekbones.

  “All right, children,” Linda says. “Take off your jackets and roll up your sleeves, please. These will go in the upper arms, one on each side.” She smiles at Mom. “Can you do the right arms?”

  Mom chooses a brown bottle and a syringe. She fits on a needle, rips off the security plastic, fills the syringe with god knows what. She holds it in the air the way my stylist holds scissors and looks down on the boy in the first seat—Michael or Martin something; he’s on the cross-country team with me and Xavier. He offers his arm, flexes his muscle, winks at my mom.

  “You’re eager,” Linda says with a big smile. “What have you got there, Karenna? The inhibitor? I’ll do the Hep then.”

  Mom nods without the slightest bit of feeling in her face. I wonder if she dosed herself in the hallway.

  She sticks a thermometer in the kid’s ear and nods after she reads it.

  “This won’t hurt much,” Linda yaps. “Needles are so thin these days. You should have seen them back in my mother’s time. Almost as thick as a pencil! Do you kids use pencils anymore?” She pinches the kid’s skin and rams in the needle. She does not have a delicate touch. No wonder she was fired from the old folks’ home. They’re so skinny there, she must have hit bone every time.

  Mom places two gloved fingers on the boy’s gangly right arm and aims her needle between them. She leans into him a little and whispers something just before she sticks him.

  I watch the syringe push the fluid into his muscle, and I know that he’s being zombified. I wonder who he was and who he’ll never be again.

  Mom pulls the needle out and presses a tiny gauze square over the entry point. “Hold this in place, please.” She reaches for a large square bandage, removes the packaging, peels the backing, checks the gauze for blood and delicately positions the bandage on the kid’s arm.

  “These patches we’re putting on have to stay in place for a week,” Linda announces. “They’re not Band-Aids. They’re part of your treatment, and if you pick at them, you’ll make yourself sick. Don’t worry, you can shower in them. Your parents will be sent more instructions over the next few days.”

  I sit like a stone and watch my mother move down the row of students, shhhh, shhh, shh, closer and closer to me.

  “Of course, being in detention doesn’t mean you’re bad,” Linda babbles. “It just means you’ve done something wrong and you’re not going to get away with it.”

  When they’re two desks away, I can hear what Mom is whispering in every child’s ear. I’m sorry.

  I start to shake. I want to get up and leave, but I can’t move with all these kids here, and the camera and Werewolf and my mother.

  Xavier is ahead of me, staring at his RIG. Mom gasps when she sees him. He looks up and smiles. “Hello, Mrs. Connors.”

  She breathes slow and deep. “Hello, Xavier. How are you feeling today?”

  “Fine.”

  “Oh my goodness, you’re a good-looking boy!” Linda says. “How old are you? Eighteen? Twenty-five? You belong on a poster in a college dormitory, that’s where you belong.” She laughs and looks at Mom. “I know they’re mostly all good-looking these days, but this boy is something special, wouldn’t you say?”

  Mom rests her hand on Xavier’s shoulder. “He’s a very beautiful boy.”

  Xavier smiles shyly at my mother, speechless for once.

  When the thermometer beeps, she shakes her head. “He has a bit of a temperature. We should wait until he’s well.”

  Linda scowls. She reaches across Xavier’s desk and snatches the thermometer from Mom’s hand. She wobbles her head around and mutters, “Well, hmm, I don’t know. It’s just on the edge. We should do him anyway.” She jabs her needle into Xavier’s left arm.

  Mom stares at the needle in her own hand. She swallows and tries to smile. “I don’t think so. I know he takes other medications and there may be contraindications, especially with a temperature.”

  “It’s critical that we get the detentioners done quick,” Linda says. “Don’t make me regret offering you this job.”

  Mom groans and sucks in her lower lip, stares down on Xavier’s angelic face. “What other medications are you on, dear?”

  Linda huffs and snorts. She tries to squeeze behind Xavier’s chair, but there’s not enough room. She stomps around the back of my desk and comes up on the other side, her fat shoes squealing along the floor. She seizes the syringe from Mom’s hand and plunges it into Xavier’s right arm.

  “Ow!” he shouts.

  “No,” Mom moans.

  Linda yanks out the needle, scowling. “That’s the sort of consequence hesitation brings.” She hands a patch to my mother. “We are here to do these children, and we are doing these children. Now let’s get a move on.”

  Mom presses the patch on Xavier’s arm, stroking it gently to fix it to his skin.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Connors,” he says.

  She turns to me with the saddest face I’ve seen since Dad’s funeral. “Hi, Max.” Her voice is soft like a little girl’s.

  “Oh my goodness!” Linda shouts. “This is your son! He’s at this school!”

  All the kids turn around and strain to get a look at my mother while she fills a syringe just for me.

  Linda laughs and slaps the air. “N
o wonder he was so odd at that football game! Oh my goodness. You’ll see such a difference after this. Oh, you’ll love it.”

  Mom sticks a thermometer in my ear. It feels obscene, and I cringe away from her. She leans into my desk, smelling of latex and toxins. “I’m glad you explained it to me,” she tells Linda. “I’m glad I could be here for this.”

  “Don’t you mention it,” Linda says as she readies her needle. “It makes all the difference to be there for them.”

  Mom reads my temperature and nods.

  “Mom—,” I start to beg.

  She pinches my arm, tight and twisted, digging in her nail. “Be quiet, Max!”

  I feel like I’m six years old.

  She lays her gloved fingers on my right arm. “It will make all the difference for me to be here.”

  I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out, not even air.

  She leans toward me and whispers, “Don’t say anything.”

  “Mom, don’t—”

  “Shh.”

  Linda jabs my left arm.

  “That doesn’t hurt, does it?” Mom asks softly. I look up at her. She smiles. “Does it hurt, Max? I tried to do it gently.”

  There’s no needle in my right arm. There’s something cold and wet against my skin, but no penetration. I peer down, but Mom’s hand covers the syringe and I can’t see what she’s doing. A bitter chemical stench rises into my face.

  “Almost done,” she says.

  She presses gauze to my skin, reaches for my hand, lays my finger over the tiny white square. “Hold this in place, please.” She flicks the needle into the garbage, lays the syringe on the white tablecloth. It’s empty. She takes a patch from her pocket, removes the wrapping, sticks it on my arm. “There,” she says. “That didn’t hurt at all, did it?”

  I can’t respond.

  Mom turns to Dallas at the desk beside me. “You’re next.”

  “I’ll come round the other side,” Linda says. “You might as well stay there and work your way up on the left. I don’t mind walking around.” She wheezes and squeaks as she walks behind me. “That’s one row down and four to go. We’ll be out of here before four thirty, but don’t worry, we get paid for the full hour no matter what.”