All Good Children (23 page)

I nudge Dallas in the ribs. “Good job. Wish I could have been with you.”

He smiles and shouts, “Don't be silly, Maxwell! Some of us are on the field and some of us are on the bench, but we're all on the same team and our team did a fine job today. So good job to you too.” Then he starts chewing brains. I swear he's going to make me laugh out loud some day and blow my cover.

“Please come celebrate at my house,” he says. I hesitate, so he repeats, “Please.”

Only three kids head over with the coach: me, Bay and Brennan. Three black kids. I don't know if that's significant.

Dallas's house is sparkling clean. The living room has been decorated green since I was last here. “Relaxing, isn't it?” Mrs. Richmond asks when she catches me holding a couch pillow up to a curtain. She wears a gray dress and carries a black RIG, messaging while she mingles.

“You have a nice home,” Bay says from behind me.

Mrs. Richmond smiles. “Who won the game?”

Bay scrunches his massive brow. “We did, I think.”

“Excellent.” She wanders toward the adults, her eyes glued to her screen.

Bay follows her. He tugs Coach Emery's sleeve like a five-year-old giant. “We won the game, didn't we, Coach?”

The coach stares at him for a moment before answering. “That's right. We won.”

Brennan leads Bay to a corner armchair and sits with him in a green silence.

Dallas joins me on the couch. “Feeble party,” he whispers.

“We should fly,” I whisper back.

“I wish.” There's a sadness in his voice that eats at me.

“Good game though,” I tell him. “I mean it. Good job.”

He doesn't answer. We sit on the forest-green couch and hug the mint-green pillows. “Who do you think would win in a fight?” he whispers. “Bay as a zombie or Brennan as himself?”

“Shh.” I nod toward the doorway. “Austin's home.”

Dallas shakes his head. “He won't catch on. His class was done last week.”

“So he's—?”

Dallas chews his brains.

Austin takes off his shoes and tucks them in a slot in the hall closet. He stores his hat on top and straightens his shirt before he enters the living room. His gaze roves around and stops on me. He smiles politely and approaches. “Hello, Maxwell. It's nice to see you again.” No “Hey, faggot, come to ask me out?” No “Where's your daddy, little orphan?”

“Hi, Austin. How are you?”

“Very well, thanks. Did you win your game?”

I'm waiting for the punch, or at least the punch line, but there is none. “Yes, we did.”

“I'm sorry I couldn't see it. I go to a homework club after school. We're helping each other prepare for next year.”

“That's premium.”

Austin smiles. “You two have fun.” He kisses his mother on the cheek, laughs at a joke his father makes, picks up the empty bottles and exits.

“He's changed a bit,” I say.

Dallas's eyes gleam. “Just a bit.”

His father's voice carries across the room. “No more police visits for underground fighting. No more slutty girls sneaking over the back fence. No more constant arguments.” He points at the couch and says, “And with the other one, there's no more detention or loud music or faggot Christmas productions.”

His mom chimes in. “And they eat whatever I make for dinner with no complaints.”

Coach Emery smiles politely. Dr. Richmond laughs until he chokes on his whisky.

Dallas hugs his pillow and stares at me. “So who do you think would win in a fight, Max? Us or the rest of the world?”

TWELVE

I hide in the tent with the
Freakshow
finale on my RIG and grow depressed watching Zipperhead haul his massive skull around the stage. I wonder what life was like for him growing up in Freaktown without surveillance cameras or Blackboard networks or nosy nurses.

Mom peeks around the front flaps. “Is Ally in here?”

“Don't touch that wall. It's still wet.”

“Why aren't you doing your homework?” She grabs my RIG and dissolves the screen.

“I'm watching that!”

She kneels in front of me and takes my face in her hands.

“You have to do your homework or you'll be revaccinated.”

I shrug and stare at the messy sheets draped over the furniture.

“I know you're tired,” she says.

“You don't know anything about it.” I take my RIG from her hand and turn the show back on.

Ally pops up from behind the couch, wearing her earpiece and singing, “Pussycat ate the dumplings, Pussycat ate the dumplings. Mama stood by and cried, ‘Oh fie! Why did you eat the dumplings?'” She giggles and claps.

“Get to bed,” Mom tells her. “And don't sneak out again.”

“You too,” I tell Mom. A commercial comes on for a fertility drug, and I absentmindedly pick at my patch.

She puts her hand on mine. “Don't give up, Max.”

I shove her hand away. “But I'd eat and sleep and take up hobbies.”

“I won't let that happen.”

“You let it happen for years.” I look her in the eye and sing, “Mama stood by and cried, ‘Oh fie!'”

She looks away from me to the faces I painted on the walls of my tent—Tyler, Xavier, Pepper. I turn up the volume on my RIG.

There's a knock at the door. We stare at each other, wide-eyed and paranoid. I peek through the tent window while she answers.

It's Dallas, vacant-eyed but chewing. “Hello, Mrs. Connors. How are you?”

Mom holds her hand over her mouth.

“It's okay, Mom. Shut the door.”

Dallas smiles. “I'm good, aren't I?”

Mom nods. “You've always been good. Goodnight, boys. Do your homework.”

Dallas sits beside me on the couch, and I stream the show on the big screen. He looks around the tent walls. “Wow. You're taking a risk.”

“I take a risk every time I leave the house.”

“I take a risk every time I stay home.”

I give him that one. “How'd you escape?”

“I told my dad I was going to the Christmas Ball planning session. I couldn't miss the final
Freakshow
, and there's no way I could watch it with Austin. It stinks in here.” He points to my wall of throwaways—the Asian kid skating for his life while Tyler and Washington leer over a railing. “Those were good days.” He blows out a big breath. He looks exhausted. His hands shake. He holds them over his face and swears aimlessly.

“Have you lost weight?”

He shrugs. “I have diarrhea every day so I just stopped eating.”

“You have to eat, man. Want some nachos?”

He looks at my paint-spattered plate and shudders.

“Want something else? We have apples and cheese.”

“Maybe an apple.”

He takes one bite of a Red Delicious and chews for forty seconds before he can swallow. “I'm tired, Max,” he says. He lays the apple on my nacho plate. “I can't take this smell.”

We close the flaps and sit in front of the tent on the carpet, four feet from the big screen. We scrunch our legs and lean back on our elbows, craning our necks. “This is better,” Dallas says.

He cracks a smile. “This is so much better than home. I can't even fall asleep anymore because I'm afraid my dad's got surveillance on me and I'll give myself away in a dream.”

“You have to sleep, man.”

He rolls his eyes. “Easy for you to say.”

They show the gruesome freak tryouts for next season. I turn up the volume to mask my laughter in case Lucas is below us with a glass to his ceiling. I relax for the first time in days. “I'm so tense lately. I feel like ripping someone's head off.”

Dallas nods. “I'm suffering withdrawal from fighting with Austin. I have too much adrenaline flooding through me now. I'll probably die of a heart attack before the zombies get me.” He smiles briefly. “Which would you rather be? A brain-eating zombie or the kind at school?”

“Brain-eater.”

“Me too.”

The show comes back on. Because it's the final episode with this batch of freaks, they spotlight the last two contestants' families in Freaktown. They show the place before the leaks—lush forests and fertile fields, buxom women and rugged men, vague urban vistas of crowded sidewalks, money and success. Then they show the place now—buildings boarded up and crumbling down, soup kitchen lineups, blankets draped over lumpy bodies, kids with warped eyeballs and exposed jaw bones drooling over drugs.

“My father was there before the spill,” Dallas says. “He has photos on his website.”

“Has he gone back since?”

“No. Why would anyone go there?”

I shrug. “Criminals might. To get away from the ids. Or maybe to get to Canada. There's still a border crossing there. I heard terrorists sneak into the country that way.”

“I'd go south to get away from the ids,” Dallas says. “Just hop in a car and keep driving. Wouldn't you? It could take years before anyone found me. Don't you think?”

I nod. “I want to go back to Atlanta.”

“I don't know much about Atlanta,” he says. “Is it big enough to get lost in?”

“I think so.”

There's a closeup of Zipperhead's scars and sorrows.

“I wonder if he was happier when his brother was still attached to him,” Dallas says. “It's hard to believe there was a whole person there once and now there's just a scar.” His face pulls tight and his eyes tear up. “I have to get out of here, Max. I can't do this anymore.”

“Are you serious? Because my mom would take us. She already said she would.”

Dallas wipes his nose. “Count me in.” He stares at me hard, trembling with exhaustion. “Even if they get me. Pack me up and take me with you. Don't leave me here with them.”

I envision Mom driving out of town and Dallas racing after us with a hundred zombies on his heels. “I won't leave you here.”

He nods, over and over again. He only stops when they announce this season's winning freak. “Squid?” he whispers in surprise.

Zipperhead hangs his massive head to hide his tears. It's hard to see why he would bother to lift it up again.

I swear and moan. “Life isn't fair.”

“I always knew that,” Dallas says. “I just thought mine would be better.”

Ally wakes me up the next morning. “Time for school.”

I look at my watch. “Shit.” I stayed up painting all night, and I'm a mess. I rush into some pants and smooth my hair as best I can. I walk as quickly as I dare down the hallway. “Do you have a lunch?” I whisper. She nods. Thank god Mom doesn't rely on me.

We arrive late in the lobby. I fake a limp. Seven kids are gathered to walk to the trade school. “I'm sorry,” I tell them. “I tripped on my weak ankle and re-sprained it. I hope I haven't made you late for school.”

Lucas bows his head. “We understand. Your mother works in the early mornings and you have no father, so you have to do things for yourself.”

I nod. “I enjoy doing things for myself. But I can be slow.”

He checks his watch. “It's fine. Let's go.”

I limp all the way back to the apartment.

At school, I keep my nose to the grindstone as the minutes tick by. I don't feel safe until I'm back at home. I pull Mom inside the tent. “Dallas says he'll come with us to Atlanta. We have to go soon, though, before he loses it. They're still fighting the ids down there, right?”

She shrugs. “I think so. No one asked for ours except at the airport.”

“Good. Then we just have to get there without flying.”

“They'd probably ask at the speed rail too,” Mom says. “But maybe we could find a private car.”

“Can we take him with us?”

“Who, Dallas? I guess so.”

“You can't go back on this.”

“All right. Yes. We can take him with us.”

“Is it illegal to leave New Middletown?”

“No. I don't think so.” She sighs and nods repeatedly. It's a habit everyone is picking up these days.