All Good Children

by Catherine Austen

  “Heights.”

  She looks up and smiles. “That’s where Mommy works.”

  “Let’s go, Ally.”

  She doesn’t budge. “It says the park is closed for six weeks. I can’t stay away from Peanut for six weeks. She’ll be hungry.”

  I stare at the black lumps scattered over the playground and I don’t know what to tell my sister.

  “That’s the poison symbol,” she says, pointing at the sign.

  I nod. “That’s right. We can’t go in there because there’s poison. Let’s go home.”

  She won’t leave. She stares at the lumps that aren’t dirt. “They put poison in the park?” She frowns and squints. “Won’t that hurt the squirrels?”

  The scene suddenly makes sense to her. She utters a choking sound and tries to pull down the fence. “Somebody poisoned the squirrels!” she shouts. The plastic slices into her fingers.

  I pull her off it, grip my arms around her waist and lift her off the ground. “No, Ally! You’ll get the poison in your skin.”

  She’s much stronger than I expect. It’s like trying to hold a baboon. She writhes and kicks and screams. “Peanut! Peanut!” She throws her head back into my face and smashes my teeth with her skull. She kicks her legs up and over the fence and falls to the other side. She screams and stumbles across the poisoned ground.

  “Quiet, Ally, please!” I look around frantically to make sure no one’s watching.

  She drops to her knees beside the nearest squirrel. She runs from carcass to carcass, touching them, turning them over, whimpering.

  It takes me thirty seconds to climb the fence. The plastic stretches and sways beneath my feet. I flip and land on my shoulder. “Stop it!” I whisper when I reach her.

  She’s at the bottom of the oak tree, wailing like a siren, holding a dead squirrel in her hands. Snot hangs from her nose to her chin and her whole body shudders. I drop beside her, hug her, shush her.

  The squirrel’s eyes are open and glazed. Its mouth is twisted, a hardened cadmium ooze collected in the corners. Its belly is bloated, its front paws locked together like it tried to push something away. It didn’t die easy. “Is that her?” I ask.

  Ally looks at me desperately, and I know she can’t tell one squirrel from another now. Whatever made Peanut recognizable is gone. “Yes,” she says because she needs that much to hold on to. “It’s Peanut. Poor Peanut.” She leans her face in like she’s going to kiss the thing, but I yank her head back. She can hate me, I don’t care, but she’s not going near that yellow ooze.

  “She’s poison, Ally. You can’t keep touching her.”

  She pets the squirrel’s head and cries.

  “We have to get out of here.” I pull her up beside me and she drops the squirrel. It falls straight and stiff from her hand to the ground and bounces on the dirt. She screams.

  I hug her to my chest, hard enough to cover her mouth. “It’s okay,” I whisper. “Just leave her.”

  “No,” she moans. “We have to bury her.”

  “No way. The ground’s too hard.”

  “We have to!”

  “Okay. We’ll take her home first. I’ll get her.” I cup my hand under the dead squirrel. It’s so soft and light, it feels hollow. I never realized how small Peanut was. Her whole body almost fits in my hand. The tail falls softly across my wrist.

  “Is she dead?” Ally asks.

  “Yeah. Yeah, she’s dead. We’ll find a box to bury her in tomorrow when it’s light.” I boost Ally over the fence and scramble after her. I tuck the squirrel in one arm like a football and keep my sister close with the other, trying to block her sorrow from the eyes and cameras that surround us.

  Ally sleeps with a dried string of snot across her cheek, her hands bandaged, her hair flattened against her temple, her teddy bear stuffed in an armpit.

  I walk to the lobby to tell Lucas that my sister is ill. I stop cold when I see Xavier waiting. Watching him beat up a teacher didn’t unsettle me half as much as seeing him in a group of throwaways.

  He stares at the ceiling, moves his head left and right like he’s comparing acoustic tiles. His hair is pulled back. There are purple bags beneath his eyes and red nicks and scrapes along his jaw as if he shaved with his fingernails. He’s lost weight. He’s lost intensity. He’s so dim he’s almost a ghost.

  “Hello, Max,” Lucas says. “I’m pleased to see your ankle is better.”

  For a second I don’t know what he’s talking about. I look at my foot. “Oh. Yes. My mom’s a nurse,” I say, like she can cure sprains instantly. “I’m sorry to tell you that Ally’s sick today with a bad cold so I’ll be staying home with her.”

  “That’s a shame,” Lucas says. “Especially since your mom’s a nurse.”

  I avoid his eyes. “Hello, Xavier,” I say. “I have a belated birthday gift for you—I’m almost done it.”

  He smiles in my direction, unfocussed, unhealthy.

  I turn around and head for the stairs.

  “We’ll see Ally tomorrow!” Lucas shouts. I don’t answer.

  I read my sister stories until she falls asleep. Then I sit in my tent under a blaze of colorful children. I spray-paint the exterior walls with one word repeated in capitals, wrapped around the corners without any breaks: WITHSTANDWITH STANDWITHSTANDWITHSTAND.

  Celeste comes over the next morning to stay with Ally. Xavier clings to her hand with both of his. His hair hangs in wet waves and smells of strawberries.

  “Is he sick?” I ask. “I mean, with a cold or something?”

  She shakes her head. “He got in a fight at school and ran away. We’re home-schooling him now. It’s either that or an institution for the uneducable.”

  “Uneducable?” I’ve seen Xavier build robots and hack into government networks.

  She walks her brother to the couch and helps him sit.

  He holds his neck at an odd angle and wears a pained expression that smoothes into emptiness when she turns on the big screen.

  “Where’s your tent?” she asks.

  I point to a huge pile of canvas beside the door. “I have to take it in for the exhibit. I’m giving it to Xavier afterward.”

  “Really? Why?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know what else to do.”

  We run laps in the bitter sunshine during gym class. Coach Emery asks for volunteers to clean out the football trailer at lunch. Every student raises a hand. He chooses me, Dallas and Brennan.

  The trailer is a reeking mess, with discarded clothes smelling up the corners and busted pads wedged under the benches. The walls are smeared with dirt and sweat and unidentifiable body fluids. The coach gives us a garbage can, a bag of rags, and three bottles of disinfectant. “Do a good job.” He nods toward the surveillance camera in the corner. “I’ll know if you don’t.”

  They installed cameras in the change rooms a few years ago. There was some concern about privacy, but a damaged assault during a football game hushed it up. It’s hard to imagine public safety without surveillance. So somebody sees you naked. If it keeps people from raping and murdering you, what’s to argue? At least that’s what I thought before the treatments.

  I act like a zombie janitor in the trailer, partly because of the camera and partly because Dallas and I haven’t had a real conversation with Brennan since the vaccinations and I’m scared this is a trap. When we’ve scrubbed the place clean, Brennan checks the time and says to me, “Why don’t you go outside and ask my father if anything else needs to be done?”

  The coach is waiting for me around the back of the trailer. “Good work, Connors,” he says loudly. He pulls me close and whispers, “I advise you to get out of town as soon as you can.”

  It’s just not right to hear a football coach whisper. I squirm away.

  “I’m serious,” he says. “Arlington Richmond doesn’t think you were properly vaccinated. He says there’s something wrong with the way you laugh.”

  “I didn’t know I laughed anymore.”

  �
��He recommended revaccinating you. Graham is hedging because overdoses are dangerous. He’ll probably do it after the holidays.”

  He talks like that’s just around the corner, but three weeks is an eternity these days.

  “Suffice it to say that your teachers are going to keep a close watch on you until then,” he says. “And you’re not going to pass scrutiny. Feelings pass over your face all the time. You mutter to yourself when you think you’re alone. Your eyes gleam from ten yards away.”

  “Should I wear contacts?”

  “It’s no joke, Connors.” He takes my head in his hands and shakes it like he’s trying to rattle a ball of truth into the right hole. “They’ll never let your mother give you the next shot. They are suspicious. There won’t be any warning. You understand me? You have to get out before the decision is made.”

  “We are getting out. But we need a car.”

  “So buy one from the carpark. I know your mother’s not rich, but she must have something tucked away. A small car that works is cheaper than a van that doesn’t.”

  “Are you going? Are you taking Brennan?”

  “We’re holding tight for now.”

  “Is it true that the top student in each class didn’t get the treatment?” I ask.

  He lowers his eyes and mumbles, “They don’t know how permanent the effects might be. They know they’re going to need some critical thinkers once you kids are in college so—”

  “So they saved the cream of the crop,” I finish.

  “This is not a policy I agree with, Connors,” he whispers.

  “We’re taking Dallas with us,” I tell him.

  I expect him to say that we’re sentimental, that times are tough and we’ll need our resources for ourselves, it’s a dog-eat-zombie world. But he says, “Then you better head for Canada or Mexico. Because starting January first, every child in this country will need to show their id whenever anyone asks for it, and there’s no way that boy is going to be able to hide from his father.”

  I’m called to the office at two o’clock. My name blasts over the intercom. Dallas stiffens in the row beside me. I plan to make a run for it.

  Mr. Reese looks up at the speaker and back to me with a worried frown. His face relaxes when he checks his watch. “It’s time to take your work to the art exhibit, Max.”

  Two girls wait in the backseat of the principal’s car, clutching black leather portfolio cases. I lean my rolled-up tent against the trunk.

  “What on earth is that thing?” Mr. Graham asks me.

  “It’s my exhibit.”

  He stares at me, scowling, but eventually he opens the trunk.

  I sit in the front seat, empty-handed and open to scrutiny.

  I stare out the passenger window as we drive south along the city spine. It’s so efficient, New Middletown’s core of office towers and hospital wards and agricultural warehouses. Nothing’s ever wasted here, not a drop of water or a moment of time. It’s beautiful in its way, and I know I’ll miss it if I get the chance to leave, but for the first time in my life I feel like this is not my town.

  Every moment I’m in this car, my tent seems more ridiculous. I can almost feel the weight of it behind us. It was a mistake, painting it the way I did. I should have submitted a small still life—fruit in a bowl or some naked beauty.

  Mr. Graham drops us at the pedestrian conveyor closest to City Hall and drives away to park underground. I consider running home, but the tent’s too heavy to carry far, and there’s no way I’d leave it here. I step onto the conveyor and let it take me forward.

  I raise my eyes to the shining columns of colored glass that reach into the sky. It’s still the most premium building I’ve seen in my life. But I understand what that taxi driver meant when he called it cold as ice.

  I drag my tent across the threshold.

  A man rushes up and asks my name. “Connors. Yes. I expected a sculpture.” He frowns at me and leads me to my station.

  “Excuse me?” I ask the kid unfolding an easel across from me. “When you’re done there could you give me a hand with this?”

  “Yes. Certainly. I’d be pleased to.”

  He doesn’t ask any questions, just follows my directions, holds the tent poles while I wrench the canvas overtop. I hang two flashlights from the ceiling and turn them on. The kid looks at the dim walls and says, “It’s stuffy in here.” He walks back to his still life—red tulips in a glass vase.

  It’s a long afternoon. People arrive at three thirty—parents, teachers, judges, citizens. They walk through the exhibit with polite curiosity, making small talk with the artists, nodding and smiling. I sweat beside my military surplus.

  They stare at my tent, baffled. They open their mouths to speak but close them again before anything comes out, walk away shaking their heads.

  I think I might get through this with embarrassment as my only damage, but at four fifteen a big black woman in a floral dress brushes open a tent flap and sticks her head inside my metaphor. “Oh my god,” she whispers, catching a few ears. She grabs a flashlight and lights up the walls. She snaps photos, leaning in and backing up. She nods her head, smiles, frowns, gasps, mutters, “Amazing.” Other adults peer through the windows or stick their necks through the front flaps but they don’t enter. They take one glance and step away, like unwitting performance artists.

  “Marvelous work,” the flowery woman says when she emerges. She smiles and pats my shoulder. “You have an exciting career ahead of you.”

  The principal hurries over to shake her hand.

  “I’m Rosemary Seawell,” she says.

  “From the New Middletown Monitor?” Mr. Graham asks.

  She laughs. “No, sir. I’m up from Pittsburgh.”

  I want to call Xavier and tell him the free media is in town, but I don’t know if he’d still care.

  “Pittsburgh!” Mr. Graham scoffs. “Why would you cover an event like this?”

  She smiles. “Great artists are discovered at events like this.”

  Mr. Graham stares at my work, revolted. “Stand with what?” he asks.

  “Withstand,” Rosemary corrects him. “Have you been inside?”

  He cautiously nudges the tent flaps apart, but he doesn’t pass through. He lingers in the doorway, canvas draped over his bald white girth.

  “Use a flashlight,” Rosemary says. She turns to me and smiles. “They’re a nice touch.”

  Mr. Graham backs out without bothering. He walks up to me, stands far too close, and stares down into my eyes. “When did you make this, Connors?”

  “I don’t remember, sir.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense to me. Does it make sense to you, boy?”

  “Nothing makes sense to me, sir.”

  He nods like that’s a good answer. “Pack it up, and I’ll take you home.”

  THIRTEEN

  Mom fries hamburgers at the stove while I sit at the kitchen table and lose my appetite. I have four hours of homework to suffer through, simple but repetitive: conjugate a hundred Spanish verbs, describe the probability of a hundred random events. They like to drive a point home, these teachers of the new economy.

  Ally sits across from me, her nose half an inch from the table, her tongue poking between her teeth. Lucas came by with her homework—a set of intricate black and white designs on paper with numbers in every white space. Each number corresponds to a color, and Ally has to fill in each space appropriately. She starts out well in blue and brown, but then she thinks of Peanut and starts to cry, smearing her work.

  Mom sets ketchup and milk in front of us. “I have a patient named Connors whose grandson visits every few weeks. He lives in town. He’s sixteen or seventeen, tall like Dallas, with black hair and blue eyes. I could get his id for Dallas to use in Atlanta. We could say he’s your half-brother, Daddy’s child from another marriage.”

  “The fingerprints won’t match,” I say.
>
  “They never check those unless you’re arrested.”

  “The kid would report a lost id. We’d get caught the first place we flashed it. You need to get his passport instead. He won’t notice that’s missing. If you can get his birth certificate, too, we could put Dad’s name as his father.”

  “Good idea. We could use them to get Dallas a new id in Atlanta.”

  I shoot down her dream. “We’ll never get an id with a stolen passport. But we might get into Canada with it.”

  “I don’t want to leave the country, Max!” she shouts.

  “I don’t even want to leave this city.”

  “We have no choice!”

  “What on earth are we going to do in Canada? It’s freezing there. If we have to live in a car, I’d rather park it in Atlanta.”

  Ally carefully picks up her pencils and takes her work to the living room. “I wish you’d put the tent back up!” she yells.

  I take a breath and swallow all the sarcastic backtalk that rises up inside me. “At least you have a niece there. You don’t have anybody left in Atlanta.”

  Mom swats the air. “I haven’t seen Rebecca since she was your age. I don’t even know her. And I don’t know anything about Canada. Not anything good anyway. How am I supposed to get a job there? What makes you think they’ll let us in?”

  “They take anyone with a trade. Their economy’s weak and their population is even older than ours. They need nurses. They’ll probably pay us to move there.” I smile, but she doesn’t find it amusing. “They’ll let you in, Mom, and you’ll find work. We’ll be fine. And we can hide Dallas there. We just have to leave before January first or they won’t let him out.”

  “We can leave whenever we like.”

  “No, we can’t! They’ll give me another shot when the holiday’s over. We have to leave by Christmas. You said you’d take Dallas, and you’re not backing out. So get that kid’s passport and birth certificate to use at the border.”

  She holds her hands over her face. “Oh my god, Max, what on earth are we heading into?”

  The trade school calls after supper—Ally must return to school tomorrow or supply a doctor’s note confirming her illness. When Mom tells her, Ally bursts into tears. She runs to the living room and stares out the window, crying for her dead squirrel.