Mad Skills (13 page)

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Authors: Walter Greatshell

BOOK: Mad Skills
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“I know.”
“Tell your folks to get on them or something. This is ridiculous, seriously.”
“I know.”
They drove in silence for a few miles. Turning onto Maddy’s street, Stephanie asked, “So listen, are you really doing okay? Because it’s freaking me out not knowing.”
“I think I’m okay. I mean, I’m not
deeply despondent
or anything—actually I feel pretty good. Everything’s just very different from the way I remember it. But that’s probably just me.”
“Bullshit. It’s not just you. We’re all trying to figure this out; it’s weird for everybody. It’s weird for me, too.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying ‘I know’!” She pulled up hard before Maddy’s house. “It’s really annoying since you obviously don’t know, and neither do I. You have to start dealing with this shit.”
“I know—sorry. I mean I will. Well, thanks for the ride.” Maddy got out of the car and shut the door. “Maybe I’ll see you next week.”
“Hold up a second. You want to go to the mall tomorrow?”
Maddy was caught short. “Tomorrow?”
“Yeah, tomorrow. Like, the day after today.”
“Sure. Okay.”
“Cool. I’ll pick you up at ten.”
“Ten. Great.” Maddy watched the car disappear, then went in the house.
FIFTEEN
 
THE MALL
 
THE next morning, they went to the mall. Maddy avoided telling her folks until the last second because she knew they would make a big thing out of it, and she just didn’t have the energy. It wasn’t until Stephanie’s car beeped its horn that she said, “I’m going out. Bye!”
Turning off the vacuum cleaner, her mom called, “Maddy, wait! Where are you going?”
“To the mall with Steph. Gotta go!”
“With Stephanie? But, honey, that’s great! Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Just did! Love you—bye!”
Maddy had been going to the same mall forever, but she never reflected on exactly
why
. Over the years, she and Stephanie probably spent more of their weekends loitering mall stores than all their other recreational activities combined—i.e., they were typical American kids. As in most towns of its type, there was little else to do in Denton except go to church. It had been many years since the mall killed Main Street, and nobody missed it, with its meager town library and depressing local-owned businesses, certainly not two hormonal teenage girls. The mall, on the other hand, was their alpha and omega; it was their doorway to a wider world they knew only from television.
As Stephanie’s car came in sight of the sprawling complex, Maddy laughed to realize its implications. “Jesus Spends,” she murmured.
“What?”
She caught herself. “Nothing. Just thinking of all the stuff we did here.”
“Hell, yeah. We were hard-core. We
owned
this joint.”
What had made Maddy laugh was the shocking resemblance of Denton’s two major temples of worship, the megamall and the megachurch. How had she never recognized their similarities? They were so obvious: the same plastic cathedrals, the same seas of SUVs, the same eager customers seeking easy answers. It was no accident that these institutions were remarkably alike, not only architecturally but philosophically. Both traded on human insecurity. Both enforced conformity. Both pitched their wares on TV. Whereas traditionally their ideologies might have been opposed, they had learned it was more profitable to reinforce each other’s base. Play down the Sermon on the Mount in favor of the gospel of P. T. Barnum. Reassure their patrons that God loved a winner, and the only sin was in feeling guilty about it.
“Sick, dude,” said Stephanie, as if reading her mind.
“What is?”
“This! You and me! It’s gonna be awesome. You ready?”
“Ready when you are.”
“Let’s hit it.”
The girls’ mall-going had peaked in seventh grade, then sharply declined as Stephanie outgrew the thrill of following boys and actually started dating them. Since Maddy had no gift for this, being plainer, quieter, and terminally shy around the opposite sex, that put a crimp in their friendship. But it wasn’t until Stephanie hit on Ben that things really got difficult.
Ben.
Maddy still vividly remembered the feeling of seeing them together, like being punched really hard in the stomach. She would have rather been punched. But, as with most high-school romances, their relationship fell apart after only a few weeks. Maddy didn’t really know the whole story because neither of them talked about it afterward. Sometimes she wondered if it was because they realized the pain they were causing her. Whatever happened, it was certainly irrelevant now; Maddy had no bad feelings about Stephanie, nor of revisiting this shrine to their adolescence.
“What do you want to do first?” her friend asked, as they entered the busy concourse.
“Whatever you want to do.”
“Don’t do this to me, man. ‘What do you wanna do?’ ‘I dunno, what do
you
wanna do?’ Come on.”
Maddy was a bit dazed. She remembered the mall being huge and exciting, sleek as a space station. This place was oppressively grim and shoddy, a cheap mock-up of the shopping Mecca she knew so well. It was ugly if not positively unsafe. There was no fresh air, and queasy saxophone music oozed like poison from the ceiling. “I’m still getting my bearings. You lead the way for now.”
“Just like old times, huh? Okay, then.” Going up to the mall floor plan, Steph closed her eyes and randomly poked the map with her finger. Opening her eyes, she said, “Ew, that’s no good.” She tried again and hit a lingerie store. “This-a-way!”
For three hours, they cruised the small boutiques and the big department stores, Stephanie gushing over designer labels as Maddy feigned interest. It was almost unbearable, but she refused to disappoint her friend the way she had her parents. If she was ever going to make it in this world, she had to learn to get along with people, no matter how boring or idiotic they seemed. But why did they all have to be so boring and idiotic? It was maddening.
This is why people do drugs,
she thought.
Or get lobotomies.
Stephanie noticed Maddy’s glazed look and suggested they stop for lunch. Maddy gratefully agreed.
Eagerly digging into her pile of General Gau’s chicken, wontons, and pork fried rice, Steph asked, “So how’s it going? Are we having fun yet?”
“Sure.” Maddy picked at her salad, nervous about pesticides and
E. coli
contamination. She couldn’t even look at Stephanie’s food.
“What’s going on? Tell me.”
“I don’t know. I wish I did. I’m sorry. I feel like I’m ruining your day.”
“Fuck you, man. I’m here because I want to be here. Because I missed you. So don’t give me that bullshit; tell me what’s going on in your head. Like, what was that all about back there about the shoes?”
“I just didn’t understand how anybody could wear them.”
“What are you talking about? Those were expensive-ass shoes! I’d kill for those!”
“They’re not even shoes! At least with men’s shoes, you can see they were designed for a human foot, but with most of those women’s shoes, it’s impossible to tell what kind of weird hoof goes in there! They’re like some bizarre alien artifact. Whatever they’re meant for, it’s not human.”
“I think you’re being a little extreme.”
“Yeah, I’m being extreme because I think it’s strange to want to wobble around all day on two pegs like a double amputee. It’s stupid!”
“People just want to look good. Heels make women’s legs look longer.”
“Where did this idea come from? You know what I think the problem is? All these things were designed by Dr. Frankenstein.”
“What!”
“Think about it. A mad scientist is not going to appreciate a woman’s body as anything other than crude potential, an unrealized ideal. They’re looking for some abstract concept of aesthetic perfection that has nothing to do with physical reality. That requires that they unnaturally distort them, turn us into freaks.”
“It’s not mad scientists who are checking out my legs. And I happen to like those shoes! Does that make me a freak?”
“Obviously, that’s just cultural conditioning. Commercial manipulation mixed with sexual exploitation, preying on women’s fears of inadequacy induced by lifelong exposure to artificial physical ideals. In other words, brain-washing. Stockholm syndrome. Drill that into girls long enough, and they become the enforcers of their own oppression.”
“Oppression!”
“Same thing as with the diet industry, the cosmetics industry, the fashion industry, and the boob-job industry. As to why straight men like it, with enough time, any nonsense can be imposed as a cultural norm. I’m sure plenty of Japanese guys used to get off on seeing women’s feet bound up until the bones fused into horrible little gnarled stumps. Likewise female genital mutilation—that’s still standard in parts of the world. I can’t believe I never realized before just how much of our society is based on blind conditioning. Everything could work so much better than it does! It’s kind of terrifying.”
“Maddy, come on. Do you realize how lame this sounds? I mean, dude. You’re like some crazy radical feminist all of a sudden. Since when did you start hating men?”
“Hating men? How can I hate men when men have obviously been just as brainwashed? Why else would they need all these sports bars, if not to distract them from a rigged system that punishes their individuality, pits them against each other to see who can be the most soulless drone, humiliates them when they fail, then criminalizes their aggressive instincts? Oh, and chops the protective covering off their junk. Why else would they care about strangers chasing a ball, or watch a car go around a track five hundred times? It’s the same reason a captive lion paces in its cage. They’re not
made
for this.”
“It’s called civilization.”
“Then why isn’t it more civil? This is less rational than a baboon colony. It just has more stress.”
“Maybe we should go see a movie,” Stephanie muttered. “There’s less talking involved.”
The multiplex was at the far end of the mall. On the way, they passed the pet store, Petropolis, all the puppies tussling or snoozing in bales of shredded newspaper. “Aw, cute!” Stephanie said.
Not so long ago, Maddy would have melted at the sight of these baby animals. This was the same store where she had bought her cat, Mr. Fuzzbutt, and it had always been one of her favorite places in the mall—an opportunity to fondle all the furry creatures her parents wouldn’t let her have. These toys loved you back!
But this time she felt a chill. Her eyes were drawn to stacks of small, cramped cages in the rear, each one containing a lone puppy or kitten. They looked miserable, paws sore from standing on metal bars all day. Other sections held birds, rodents, or more unusual creatures like ferrets and snakes. Some of the birds had nearly plucked themselves bald, reminding Maddy of patients at the Institute … patients like her.
This is sick,
she thought.
Like a kick in the head, she realized how the pet store worked. How the pets themselves worked. She tried to slam her mind shut against the awful knowledge, but it was too late—before she knew it, she knew it.
The dogs had all been genetically engineered, bred and inbred to exaggerate their most extreme physical attributes. It was purely cosmetic; any useful traits they might have once had as work animals were corrupted, making them bundles of disabilities and behavioral tics. For that they were labeled “purebred.” They were about as cute as abused war orphans, half-crazed from the lack of any meaningful purpose to their existence.
The poor things!
Where Maddy had once found them adorable, she now realized they were grotesque mutants, barely functional as living organisms, utterly dependent on human beings to keep them alive. They were treated like merchandise. Their only relief was an occasional rotation in the front window, but the sickliest ones never got a break. If they missed their sell-by date, they went out the back door and were sent to discount brokers, who auctioned them online to the highest bidder. Any that still did not sell were picked up at lot prices by medical supply houses for lab experiments. Experiments like her.
“Let’s go,” she said, not trusting herself to explain.
“How come?”
“Because if we don’t, I’m gonna throw up.”
“Whoa! We’re outta here.”
Maddy had not been to a movie in over a year, but the general choices were exactly the same as she remembered: a big-budget fantasy flick, a CGI family movie, an action thriller, a romantic comedy for women, a raunchy comedy for men, and a cheesy horror film. Half the movies were in 3-D. None of them appealed to her.
“I feel like I’ve seen all these movies a hundred times,” she said.
“Come on, Debbie Downer. I think we both need a good laugh. My treat.” Stephanie bought two tickets to the raunchy comedy. Since it was a special occasion, she also insisted they splurge on snacks: a giant buttered popcorn, a king-size bar of chocolate, and two buckets of soda.

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