All Good Children

by Catherine Austen

  “I don’t want to send either of you to school tomorrow,” Mom says.

  I dissolve my homework with a sigh. “The police will take us if we don’t go. It’s been on the news. Zero tolerance for truancy.” Another news story about a bear attack in the national forest gets me thinking about Mom’s orchard memories. I lead her into the living room and ask nonchalantly, “Did you tell Ally about the squirrel I saw today when the principal drove me home?”

  “What squirrel?” Ally asks through her tears.

  “You know that squirrel we saw in the park? The dead one we thought was Peanut?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know if that was really Peanut. On my way home today I saw a squirrel heading toward the forest that looked exactly like her.”

  Her eyes widen and her mouth hangs open, disbelieving.

  “I think she was following the roads out of town,” I say. “Away from the poison.”

  Mom stares at me warily, waiting to see where this goes.

  Ally wipes her nose. “You saw a real squirrel? You think it was Peanut?”

  “It looked like her. And that one by the tree didn’t look like her at all, did it?”

  “No, it didn’t.”

  “You know how smart Peanut was. She probably knew there was poison on the ground so she hid in her nest until it was safe to come down. Now she’s running away to find a better home.”

  Ally sniffles and sighs. “Did you really see a squirrel?”

  “Yeah. Not far from here. It looked just like Peanut. I told you that, didn’t I, Mom?”

  “Yes, dear. It slipped my mind.”

  Ally stares suspiciously at Mom, who avoids her eyes.

  “So you know what that means,” I say.

  Ally shakes her head.

  “It’s really sad,” I warn her.

  She shrinks back.

  “It means you’ll probably never see Peanut again. She’s so smart, she won’t come back here because of the poison. She’ll stay in the forest in an oak tree. You know what comes from oak trees?”

  “Acorns,” she whispers.

  “She’ll have time to collect them before it snows,” Mom says.

  Ally leans over the back of the chair, looks out the window down to the ground. “She’s gone,” she whispers. “Poor Peanut. She’ll miss me.” She stares down the back of the chair for a bit. Then she wiggles it away from the wall.

  A spider has spun its web in the corner of the living room. It’s plain, brown, half an inch long, scared of the light.

  “Watch out,” I say. “Spiders can bite if you bother them.”

  “What do you think he eats?” she asks.

  “Flies.”

  “We never have flies. He must be hungry.”

  “Put the chair back, honey,” Mom says. “You’re scaring him.”

  Ally wiggles the chair back, but not as close to the wall as it was before. She leans over the upholstery and smiles. “I’m calling him Fred.”

  “You’re a good brother,” Mom tells me after Ally’s in bed.

  I shrug. “She wasn’t going to make it through tomorrow without a lie.”

  “You make it through too, Max.” She sits on the couch with her hands folded in her lap. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’m just scared.”

  “We’ll be okay.”

  She pats my hand. “Sure we will. I looked up some things about Canada. Did you know that parts of it aren’t much colder than here?”

  I laugh. “That’s the part we’ll head to.”

  She smiles. “They have a nursing shortage. That’s hopeful, right? And we can keep our citizenship so we could come back eventually.”

  “Great.”

  She nods. “I’m sorry I got so mad, Max. I’m supposed to lead you kids out of trouble, not the other way around.”

  “It’s all right. So we’re really going?”

  “Yes. We’re really going. I sent a message to Rebecca. We have a better chance of getting in if we have a place to stay.”

  “And we can go before Christmas?”

  Mom nods. “We’ll need a car.”

  “And a passport for Dallas.”

  “If he really wants to come.”

  “He really wants to come.”

  She sighs. “Okay. Hang on a little longer.”

  Ally can’t stop smiling in the stairwell. She’s imagining Peanut setting up house in the national forest, packing leaves and mud into a condo in the trees, making squirrel friends, storing acorns.

  “You better get those giggles out,” I whisper. “Remember how you have to act at school.”

  She relaxes her face and dims her eyes. We reach for the doorknob at the same time. She laughs, then turns it into a cough.

  “Good girl. Who’s going to get the door?”

  She points back and forth between us and whispers, “One potato, two potato, three potato, four. Five potato, six potato, seven potato, more.” She turns the doorknob.

  Lucas and three other zombies await us. They wear bulky gray coats over their shapeless gray suits. There were more of them last week. They must be cleaning house at the trade school, herding kids into institutions for the uneducable. I wonder how many lower rungs there are on the ladder of childhood.

  “Hello, Lucas,” I say. “Nice to see you.”

  “Nice to see you too, Maxwell. And you, Alexandra. I hope you’re feeling better.”

  “I’m much better, thank you.” There’s a smile playing behind her eyes, but I doubt the zombies can notice it.

  “Goodbye, Ally,” I say as she joins them. “Be good.”

  Dallas has a carefully disguised fit on the school grounds when I tell him we’re going to Canada instead of Atlanta. “They’re never going to let me across the border!” He keeps a straight face and an even tone but he still manages to convey that he’s shouting. “They don’t let minors leave the country without their parents’ permission.”

  “We can get you a passport with the name Connors on it.”

  “Oh, that’s royal. We look so much alike.” He’s so mad he has to turn away from me to regain control. “They’ll catch us, Max,” he says when he turns back. “They’ll catch us and they’ll send me back and my parents will find out that I’m not treated and they’ll turn me into a fucking zombie.”

  “No. If we go to Atlanta—if we go anywhere in the States—any cop who wants to can ask for your id and send you back home when they find out who you are. You can’t change your fingerprints. You’ll be at risk every day of your life until you’re eighteen. But if you cross the border, it’s just one risk and you’re through.”

  “It’s a big fucking risk, Max.”

  “No, it’s not. We’re going to cross at Freaktown. They let anybody through there.”

  “What are you basing that theory on?”

  I shrug. “Rumors.”

  He nods for so long that I think it might be some kind of tremor. “It’s another country, Max. They’re going to examine my passport. We can’t just glue my picture in it.”

  “Maybe you look like the kid.”

  “Maybe I don’t.”

  “Then maybe we could take your real passport and forge a letter of permission from your parents.”

  “They’ll call my home.”

  “Then we’ll take the passport of someone a bit older who looks like you and you can come with us as an adult.”

  He clears his throat and says calmly, “Yes. Of course. We’ll just make a wish in the passport fountain and all my problems will be solved.”

  “Then we’ll—”

  He walks away from me, into the school.

  Dallas ignores me for two days. I finally catch him in the cafeteria, sitting alone with a buffer of empty seats between him and the zombies. “We’re visiting my cousin on Christmas Eve,” I tell him. I don’t whisper because that’s suspicious. We’ve learned to hide our words in other words. “That’s my birthday. I hope to do some shopping if the stores are open.”


  He plays with the turkey sandwich on his tray and doesn’t respond. There’s a tremor in his jaw and a twitch in one eye.

  “It’s the perfect place to shop because no one can find out what presents you’re buying.”

  “It’s a long way to go just to get out of town, Max.”

  “My cousin Rebecca went many years ago. She says the shopping is very good there.”

  He shakes his head. “I want to shop in Atlanta.”

  “It would be hard to find your parents a present in Atlanta.”

  He eats in silence while I list all the wonderful presents I want to buy.

  “Christmas is two weeks away,” he says at last. “I can’t prepare myself in time.”

  “Yes, you can. And you know we deserve a break. You remember how Coach Emery said we did a good job cleaning the trailer.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  I put down my spoon. “I thought you wanted to go Christmas shopping with us.”

  “It won’t work, Max.” He almost shouts the words.

  A girl at the next table turns around and stares at us.

  Dallas perfects his zombie face and says politely, “It’s too sudden. I don’t have enough money to go shopping with.”

  “Sudden? We’ve been saving up for six weeks.”

  He says nothing, sips his soda, moves his food around his plate.

  The nosy girl turns back to her tray. Beside us, three ninth grade girls suck their soup in silence, eyes glued to their RIGs.

  I sink into a whisper. “‘How long do you think we can keep this up?’ Those were your exact words three weeks ago.

  This is not sudden.”

  “Thank you, Max,” Dallas says loudly. “It’s nice of your family to invite me shopping. It’s good to be with your family at Christmas. My family would like to be with me too. It’s sad to be with someone else’s family at Christmas, especially when you obviously don’t belong with them because you’re different races and couldn’t possibly be related.” Anybody listening might think he was a recall, but they wouldn’t suspect he was talking about fleeing the country.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “Of course it’s better to be with your family. But if you need to shop and your family can’t take you, then my family would be happy to adopt you as my half-brother. I know you’d like to come with us because you’ve said so many times.”

  Washington sits down a few seats away with two other goons-turned-zombies. “Hello, Max. Hello, Dallas. How are you?” he says.

  I’m pissed off so I say, “We’re fine, Washington. How’s Tyler? Oh. I forgot. He’s dead. You must be so sad.”

  He opens the lid of his sandwich box. “It’s his memory that keeps me going.”

  Dallas looks down at his plate.

  “You can’t stay home while I go shopping,” I say.

  His jaw tightens and he sucks air through his straw.

  I have to fight the urge to swat him. “Dallas, man, you’re more desperate than I am,” I whisper. “Once I’m gone there’s nowhere you can relax. You won’t make it.”

  The gurgle of the straw fades out with a sniffle. His jaw twitches and he blinks rapidly.

  It’s always a bad idea to needle your only friend until he cries in public, but it’s especially bad when you’re surrounded by zombie tattlers. Our escape from this sad school is so close— it’s exactly the time fate would kick us in the throat for fun.

  “I’m sorry,” I say at normal volume. “We should never pressure our friends to do what we want to do.” Then I mumble, “Just keep it together. We’re surrounded.”

  He takes a few breaths, then looks up in perfect zombie mode except for the twitch in his eye. “I’m not sure I want to go that far.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Now that Christmas is so close, I might stay home and buy my gifts locally.”

  “There’s not much selection.”

  “I love this country,” he whispers.

  Washington stares at us while he chews his sandwich.

  “I know your parents love it too,” I tell Dallas loudly.

  “I know they’d be very happy for you to shop locally for the rest of your life.”

  His head falls with the weight of that thought.

  “How long can you last alone?” I whisper.

  “I’m becoming good friends with Brennan. That’s like trading up.”

  I nod to show I like his joke. “But what will you do when Brennan goes shopping? Think about it. My family would like to take you shopping with us and this may be your only chance.”

  “It’s forever, Max,” he whispers.

  “This is forever,” I say. “What do you think will happen to you? Look around.”

  Dallas turns his head slowly left and right. The zombies are staring at us curiously because we’re the only people talking in the whole place.

  I head to my hair appointment at 3:30.

  “Hello, handsome,” Kim says. “Didn’t I just see you at Thanksgiving? You don’t usually get a Christmas cut. I was surprised when you called.”

  “We’re visiting my cousin this year. Mom wants me to look premium.”

  “You always look premium. Come to the sink.”

  It’s unsettling to lean my head back into the porcelain bowl where she spits her toothpaste every morning, but the hot water and scalp massage feel glorious.

  “Same as usual?” she asks as she towels me dry. “Not too short? Bit of a fade at the back?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She sprays my hair with moisturizer. “You ready for Christmas?”

  “No.”

  She holds up her scissors and smiles in the mirror. “I found my son an old set of tools, almost antique, so even if he already has enough wrenches, it’s still a nice conversation piece.” Like she needs more of those. “Old cars have different parts than the new ones, so old tools probably work better anyway,” she adds.

  “Who does he work for?” I ask.

  She’s surprised to hear me ask a question, since I usually don’t even answer them. “He works for himself,” she says with a mixture of pride and shame because her son has initiative but he’s broke.

  “Does he sell cars?”

  She laughs. “Everyone sells cars out where I live.”

  “I mean cars that work. Cars you can drive across the state.”

  She shrugs. “He mostly takes them apart to make more living space. Once in a while he fixes an engine. Not a lot of people drive the old cars because the gas and permits are so expensive.” She selects a section of my hair with her fingers.

  “Permits?”

  She nods. “You need a permit to drive them because they pollute so much.”

  I swear.

  She cuts my hair in silence for a minute. “What’s up with you, kid?”

  I catch her eye in the mirror and she straightens up, her scissors held high. “My cousin lives far away,” I say. “We have to drive to her house, and I thought maybe we could find an old car.”

  “Why don’t you rent a car?”

  I don’t say anything.

  “How far are you planning on driving?”

  “Far.”

  She squints. “Will anyone be staying in your apartment while you’re gone?”

  I shake my head, pulling the hair out from between her fingers.

  She finds that section again, looks back at the mirror, and asks, “How long will your place be empty? A few days? A few weeks? Months?”

  I shrug.

  “How big is it?”

  “Two bedrooms, a big living room, a small kitchen.” I try to think of a selling point. “It has a nice view.”

  She laughs and repeats, “It has a nice view. Well, that’s good to know. How many months are paid in advance?”

  “Whatever’s required, I guess.”

  “Most places need a six-month deposit. That’s why I live in a car.”

  “Then I guess the next six months are paid for.”

  Her eyes go
dreamy in the mirror. “You’re sure about this? You’re not kidding? I know you’re a joker. Don’t joke about this, okay?”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “In that case, I’m sure I can find you a car that works.” She smiles and snips my hair faster than I’ve ever seen. “We’ll find you a very nice car with a full tank of gasoline. I’ll throw in an air freshener. And one of those little dogs on the dashboard that wags its head when you brake.” She laughs a big hearty laugh. She pats my shoulder and repeats, “We’ll find you a very nice car.”

  “I’ll need it before Christmas Eve.”

  “That won’t be a problem.”

  I take a detour to Pepper’s old house on my way home.

  My heart is gone from her doorstep. But I’m still carrying her keys.

  It’s unsettling inside, dark and hollow. I walk straight to her bedroom and close the door. I stare at the nail where my painting used to hang. I turn around and catch my dim reflection in a mirror: gray clothes and a black face. I could be anybody. I could be a zombie. With nice hair.

  I don’t know what I’m doing here. I rummage through her closet but find nothing new. I look under her bed and behind the dresser. I sniff the clothes in her hamper, bury my face in a jacket that smells like the chemistry lab. There’s an earpiece in one pocket, a storage chip in the other. I plug it into my RIG.

  I can’t access the documents without a password, but photos scroll freely before my eyes. I moan out loud to see myself with tomato sauce on my chin, smiling. The next photo shows Dallas holding my pizza out of my reach. There are almost fifty shots of us—in the skate park, on the school grounds, on the football field. There’s even a recording of our game against the Devils—not the one where I screamed but before that, when Dallas went wicked. I can’t look at that.

  There’s a recording of Pepper’s dance rehearsal, so premium it hurts to watch. She’s so beautiful, the motion of her hips, the concentration on her face. She looks away and smiles, shining like a sun. The camera pans to the doorway where I stand with my eyes glued to her, grinning like a recall.