Coach Emery sticks his head around the corner. “Time is ticking.”
Dallas and I drop our packs at the trailer and walk to the field in silence. I should have worn my coat, but it’s stuffed in my bag and I’m not thinking straight. I button my uniform, turn up my collar, shove my hands in my pockets. Dallas walks tall beside me, zipped and hooded. I can barely see his face.
The field is an expanse of dead grass fringed with skeletal trees in the west. They reach into a monotonous sky of the palest gray. The sun is a bright disk behind the clouds, already sinking at three thirty in the afternoon.
It’s strange to walk this field in shoes instead of cleats. The ground is hard beneath me, the blades of grass stiff and slippery.
“We should separate and begin at opposite ends,” Dallas says.
“No. We should walk together.”
“It’s more efficient to separate.”
“Four eyes are better than two.”
“No,” he says. “Two eyes—”
“We’re walking together.”
Sixty thousand is a lot of square feet when you’re walking it with a zombie. Fifty paces take us to the sideline, where we square off and head back like we’re mowing a lawn. The school looks formidable in the winter light, six units of ambition stretching into the distance, a place where futures are decided behind black glass.
The students are probably walking out the front doors now, or already gone home for the holidays. The teachers are still here—I see their bikes and Mr. Graham’s car in the lot— but they don’t show any sign of life. It feels like we’re alone.
We reach the sideline, square off, head west again. Dallas lowers his eyes but keeps his chin up, so it looks like he’s staring down his nose. I imitate him, but he doesn’t notice. He doesn’t care.
“What did you do after the library last night?” I ask.
“Small talk distracts us from our work.”
I want to swat him. “What did you do?” I repeat.
He stops and stares at me like I’m defective. Then he furrows his brow. “I don’t remember.” He shivers and walks on, staring down his nose.
“Did you watch a show? Did you do homework? Did you take any medicine?”
“You should look at the football field, not at me.”
“There’s nothing on the football field! I can see the whole thing from here. It’s clean. There is no one left in our school who would even think of throwing garbage on this field.” I stumble into him on purpose, banging his shoulder. “No one except you and me.”
He stops walking. “I would never throw garbage on the football field. That’s wrong! Why would you throw garbage on the football field? We’re lucky to have a football field. We should take care of what we have.”
I want to take his head off. I want to rip out his larynx. I want to knee his testicles into a useless pulp. My cheeks burn as I stare up into his eyes. God, I wish I was taller. I could kick his ass when we were small. He tapped out every time. Now he could hold me off at arm’s length while he picked his nose.
There’s outrage in his expression, but it’s the outrage of Lucas and Ally and all the other tattler zombies.
I can’t stand to think of him telling on me. He never told when I broke his dad’s headlight last summer, or when I loosened the lid on Coach Emery’s thermos in grade nine so he scalded himself and had to go to the hospital. He never told when I ran away after Dad died and hid in our empty house overnight, or when I forgot Ally in the yard when she was two and we found her in the core an hour later. He never told on a single wrong thing I did in the past fifteen years. But now we’re almost grown and he’d turn me in for a piece of garbage.
The fact that there is no one in this world who cares about me except my mother is just too much truth to bear. My face starts to tingle like I’m going to cry or throw up. I can’t talk anymore. The field is under surveillance and my tongue is too heavy to move.
For ten more minutes we walk in silence side by side, searching the field and bleachers for garbage nobody believes is there. I pretend the kid beside me is someone else, some new kid whose name I don’t know.
“It’s clean,” Dallas announces when we reach the end of the bleachers.
I have to bite my tongue to keep from crying, I’m so exhausted. My blood washes warm against my teeth.
“Now we’ll check the trailer,” he says.
I don’t go inside with him. I stare at the ground because I don’t want my grief-stricken face on camera. When I reach the back of the trailer, out of view, I start to shake. I bite my lips and wipe my nose and groan and hyperventilate and stomp the ground and do everything I can to keep from crying like a baby. I bang my face on the trailer wall and I like the feel of it, firm but with a little give, so I do it harder and harder, in the dead center of my forehead, and it feels like nirvana is just one knock away. But it’s not a typical zombie move, so when I see Dallas at the corner, watching me in confusion, I know I’m wrecked. He’s going to rat me out.
“What the hell do you want?” I say, sniffing my weakness up my nose.
He stares blankly, silhouetted by the winter sun.
“Come here,” I tell him.
“I am here.”
“Closer.”
He hesitates, but then he takes one step, out of view of the cameras.
I grab on to his winter coat and slam him against the trailer.
“Ow!” he says. “Stop this. I want you to stop.”
“I don’t care what you want.”
He frowns and tries to pry my fingers off his clothing.
“We’re supposed to meet tomorrow at my apartment,” I say. “You’ll tell your father you’re at the library, but you’ll come to my place instead. You told me to come and get you if you don’t show up. Do you remember that?”
He pulls on my thumb but otherwise ignores me.
I shake him, rattling his shoulders into the wall. “Do you remember that?”
“I remember that, but it was wrong. It’s wrong to force someone to do something they don’t want to do.” He gives up on my hands. He unzips his coat and pulls his arms out of it, leaving it empty in my grasp.
He’s walking away, and I can’t accept that. I plow into his back and tackle him to the ground. He tries to roll me off, but I slam my knee into his spine and force his head into the dirt, my elbow jammed in his temple.
“You come over tomorrow morning,” I say. “Or I’ll come to your house and haul you out of it.”
He lies there, unresisting.
“You hear me?”
No response.
I worry that I might have hurt him. If he takes medications I don’t know about, I might have rattled his brain into a seizure. “Dallas? Dallas, are you all right?” I get off him, turn him over, stare into his vacant eyes.
He blinks. He sits up and wipes the dead grass and dirt off his cheek. He rises to his feet and brushes off his uniform.
“Are you all right?” I repeat.
“I’m fine.” He picks up his coat and turns to leave.
“No!” I shout, pulling him back. “No way! You’re not leaving till you promise to come over in the morning.”
He shakes his head. “I have work to do in the morning.”
“No, you don’t.” I grab the gray lapels of his uniform and pull him closer. “I’m taking you with me.”
He brushes at my fingers. “That would be wrong.”
“I’m not leaving you here!” I scream those words, and I can’t stop screaming them. I shove him hard into the wall, over and over, stabbing my knuckles into his ribs. “I’m not leaving you here! I’m not leaving you here!”
“Stop!” He peels my hands off him and holds them in his fists.
“There is something wrong with you. You need to see a doctor.”
Suddenly I’m fighting tears again. All my tension—hours and days and weeks of it—starts to leak out of me. “I’m not leaving you here,” I whisper and choke. “I’m the on
ly person who cares who you are. I’m the only friend you’ve got.”
He smiles and lets go of my hands. “All our schoolmates are my friends.”
I smack his head.
His eyes darken and he gathers himself, tight and tense. “I have to go.” His voice rumbles deep and low. It’s an awful sound because it’s almost real and my hope rises to the bait.
“Dallas?” I try to catch his eye, but he stares at my hands where they cling to him.
He clenches his jaw. “Let go of me.” He leans into me, wraps his hands around mine, crushes my fingers.
I wince but I can take it. “Dallas? Is that you?”
He wrenches my hands from his uniform and pushes me away.
“No!” I hurl him around and slam him into the wall.
I shove my forearm into his throat and press on his windpipe.
“Where do you have to go? Are you going to tell a teacher?”
He doesn’t move, doesn’t look me in the eye, doesn’t answer. But he’s shaking. He’s angry, he’s losing it, I can feel him start to burn.
“If you were one of them, you’d tell a teacher,” I say.
He breathes deeply, blinks, says, “I don’t want to hurt you. You’re too damaged already. We should be kind to those less fortunate than ourselves.”
I step back and slap him across the face. His head swings against the wall and my handprint blooms pink on his pale cheek. “You are not one of them!”
He shakes his head and snorts. “You’re having mental health troubles. You need to see a doctor.” There’s nothing in his eyes, no sparkle, no hidden message. He’s angry because I’m in his way. I’m disobedient. I’m history.
“You’re not one of them!” I shout. “You’re not! You’re not!” I slap his face over and over until I’m out of energy and his cheek is flaming red and I’m just sort of patting him and bawling my eyes out, begging, “You can’t be, man. You can’t be one of them. You can’t be.”
“What have we here?” Mr. Graham stands at the corner of the trailer, smiling at me, round and shiny as a big white ball.
SIXTEEN
I shiver with cold and fear. I’m finished.
Dallas straightens up, takes my hands off his uniform, places them at my sides. “Max is unwell, sir. He needs to go home.”
The principal smiles. “I have just the thing to make him better.” He moves fast for a fat man. He’s at my side in a flash, hugely tall and wide, wrenching my arms behind my back.
Dallas stands just inches away, looking down on my struggle, doing absolutely nothing. “Pass me your necktie, Richmond,” Mr. Graham tells him, and he does.
The principal ties my wrists behind my back and pats my shoulder. “Now, Connors, stay calm.”
“Max needs to go home to his mother,” Dallas says. “She’s a nurse.”
Mr. Graham snickers. “I don’t want to send Maxwell home just yet. I might lose him over the holidays, and I don’t want that. Once he masters his antisocial tendencies, he’ll do the school proud.” He moves in front of me and pats Dallas. “Good boy, Richmond. Your father told me to keep an eye on you two.”
Dallas stiffens, blinks rapidly, clenches his jaw.
I arch my back and stretch my arms in hope of getting my hands around my legs and up in front of me, but they get stuck on my ass. Mr. Graham laughs at me. He grips my arm tightly. “Come back to my office now, Connors. I’ll drive you home from school today.” He looks at Dallas and smiles. “You’re free to go. Merry Christmas.”
He pushes me ahead of him, away from the trailer. I have a brief view of the school and the frozen grounds. I see Mr. Reese walking across the parking lot. He has a coffee cup in one hand, briefcase in the other. He’s the only person in sight.
“Wait!” Dallas shouts. “There’s something in the trailer you should see, sir.”
Mr. Graham pauses, turns, yanks me back out of view. “What?”
Dallas blinks rapidly. “There’s something in the trailer, sir. You need to see it.”
“Can’t it wait? It’s Christmas.”
“No, sir, it can’t wait.”
Mr. Graham huffs, scowls, rolls his eyes. “All right. Go get it.”
Dallas nods. He picks up his coat and turns the corner.
I hear scraping and thumping from inside the trailer. I think about tearing free and running for it, but I’m reluctant to try.
Part of me wants to see how it all ends. I don’t feel like it’s really me tied up, about to be zombified. I feel like I’m beyond this moment, above it all, looking down on the last kid on Earth.
Mr. Graham frowns at my misery. “It’s much better this way, son. They’ve done studies to back that up. You’ll be glad once you experience it.” He pats my shoulder, but I shrug him off. He runs his hand over his fat face. “Believe me, you will never want to go back to the way you are now. And you won’t have to. Other parts of the country can’t afford to keep up the treatments, but we’re privileged here, Connors. The future is in our hands.”
I hear Dallas stomp down the trailer stairs. I regret not running away. I reconsider it—there could be another teacher on his way home, Mr. Ames or Coach Emery—but I don’t bother. I don’t do anything except stand in the shadows and wait. The skin on my face is tight where my tears have dried. I can’t believe I made such an ass of myself. I’ll be sixteen years old tomorrow and I still cry in public.
Dallas waits at the corner of the trailer. He wears his football face, stands taller and stronger than I’ve seen him all day.
“Where is it?” Mr. Graham asks.
“I can’t get it because it’s on the wall.” Dallas’s voice is different. Deliberate.
Mr. Graham snorts. “Thank you, son, but I am not interested in graffiti. It’s the Christmas holidays. It can wait.”
“It’s not graffiti, sir. It’s a list of names.”
“Whatever, son. I’m not interested. I have to get Connors fixed up and get him home before his mother comes running over in a fury.” He turns away with a tight grip on my arm.
“It’s important, sir!” Dallas shouts. His jaw twitches and he blinks too fast. “I saw Max’s name on the wall while I was cleaning the trailer. I moved the bench and found a list of students who missed the vaccinations.”
Mr. Graham turns around and rubs his belly. “Really? Who’s on the list?”
“I don’t remember, sir. It’s on the wall.”
He’s lying. I know he’s lying.
The principal weighs the benefits of such a list against the hassle of climbing three steps. Dallas holds his gaze with too much interest for a zombie. “All right,” Mr. Graham says. “Lead the way.”
He pushes me ahead of him, up the steps and inside the trailer after Dallas. He sniffs the stale sweat and makes a face. “How do you all fit in here? You change in this trailer? The whole team? With the pads in the way? How do you keep from falling over each other?”
I barely hear him. I’m staring at the trailer’s security camera. Dallas’s coat is covering it—not hanging from it but wrapped around it tightly and fastened with tape. My skin crawls, thinking of all that could happen in a room like this when no one’s watching.
Dallas waits in the far corner, so tall that he has to hunch. He stares at me, his eyes deep in his thoughts, his face twitching, his jaw moving up and down in a chewing motion. He has a weight belt wrapped tight around his right fist.
“No,” I whisper. “No way.”
“So where’s the list?” Mr. Graham asks.
Dallas points to the wall beside him. “It’s right here, sir, behind this bench.”
“No, it’s not,” I say. “I erased it earlier when we cleaned the trailer. I saw that Dallas found it so I erased it.”
“No, you didn’t. It’s still there,” Dallas says. “It’s just hard to read.”
“Mr. Graham, there’s nothing there. Let’s just go.” I strain against my bonds. “Just get out of here.”
“How can you care ab
out people who care nothing about you?” Dallas asks.
“I care about you,” I tell him. “Where are you going to go after this? You’re not thinking straight. You haven’t slept or eaten for days. You’re all messed up.”
Mr. Graham eyes me suspiciously and shuts the trailer door. He looks at Dallas, raises his hands, rolls his eyes. “Move the bench so I can see.”
“No. This can’t happen,” I say. “I’ll take the shot. I’ll take the shot and Mom will take us somewhere safe until it wears off.”
Mr. Graham snorts like I’m a babbling recall. “I want to see that list.”
Dallas leans over, grabs the bottom of the bench with his left hand and tugs it out from the wall. He rises, points and waits.
Mr. Graham shoves my shoulder down. I realize I’m bouncing on the balls of my feet, edgy with nerves and the fear that my best friend is about to kill our principal. “Keep an eye on him,” he says to Dallas.
“Yes, sir.” Dallas’s eyes track Mr. Graham as he walks to the bench.
“No!” I shout.
Mr. Graham leans over, hands on the bench, looking for the writing on the wall. “I don’t see anything.” His belly grazes the wood, his head hangs there like an offering.
Dallas raises his fist, ready to slam the weight belt into Mr. Graham’s skull.
I dive for him. I pitch forward and ram my head into Dallas’s hollow belly as fast and hard as I can. He smashes into the wall and slams his weighted fist into my back. I jerk to my knees. We fall, knocking the principal off his feet. Mr. Graham collapses in the crowded corner. His arms give way beneath him, his cheek hits the bench. Oomph, crack, crash.
Dallas lifts me off him like a weight bar and hurls me aside with a strength that doesn’t come from calories. I fall into a pile of ripped pads and cracked helmets, smashing my elbow and my ass.
Dallas rises to his feet. He straddles Mr. Graham’s broad back, lifts him by the suit collar, and slams his head into the bench. Crunch.
“No!” I shriek. “Stop!”
Mr. Graham isn’t moving. Dallas presses a hand on his back while he leans over to pick up the weight belt from the floor.
All Good Children Page 20
