All Good Children - Catherine Austen [31]
“You’re not all that privileged, Max,” Dallas says with a smile. “And you can’t be one of them if you’re sneaking around behind their backs, can you?”
“I’m not the one who sabotages the surveillance and hacks out of the communications network,” I say with a glance at Xavier. “But even if I was, I wouldn’t be dangerous. I wouldn’t need to be controlled.”
Brennan raises his brow and shrugs.
“People always find ways around social controls,” Xavier says. “Good people or bad people. That’s the problem— there’s no end to it. Governments and corporations will set up more and more controls for as long as we let them, until we’re all living in a prison.”
“Prison might be better than a carpark,” I say.
“It’s not funny,” Xavier says. “One by one, our rights are being stripped. Freedom of movement, freedom of speech, freedom of organization. You don’t care because you’re where you want to be. But one day they’ll control us in a way that matters to you, Max. Then you’ll have to choose if you’re going to go along with them or fight back.”
Tyler laughs almost hysterically, shaking his head in disbelief. “What are you, insane? They are never going to give us a choice, unit.”
Dallas comes over Friday for the Freakshow elimination. “No!” he groans when Tiger lands in the bottom again.
Tiger talks about the recent death of his daughters. The host grimaces—she doesn’t consider it a significant loss since they were conjoined twins.
“He’s too young to have kids,” Dallas says. “He’s three years older than us.”
I shrug. “Not much else to do in Freaktown.”
Zipperhead, who was a conjoined twin himself, hauls his massive head toward the mike and says, “I’m really sorry for you losing your baby girls, Tiger. People don’t know how much pain and suffering these malformations cause us. The toxins are still poisoning our city and—”
The host whips the mike away and turns her back on Zipperhead.
Dallas laughs. “I bet he was supposed to say, ‘We’ve all lost loved ones, but it’s their memory that keeps us going.’” That’s the line every contestant uses when asked about the dead.
Mom gets home with Ally just before they announce the loser. “We had a parent-teacher meeting, and I lost my front tooth!” Ally shouts. She giggles through the gap in her smile. “I’m going to take my picture.”
“Did you get some supper, Dallas?” Mom asks. “We have chicken, lab-grown, fully humane.” Her voice is heavy and slow. Her head hangs with fatigue.
“No, thank you,” Dallas says. “I’ll just stay for the end of the show.” He leans forward to hear every word.
“One of you will move on to next week’s show,” the host announces. “The other will go back to Freaktown and spend the rest of his life as a social outcast, scraping a living by begging or thieving.”
The camera closes in on the two faces, now full of shame and dread on top of their freakishness. Tiger’s eyes look plastic to me. But Squid’s eyes almost pop out of their sockets. He has three arms that end at the elbows, a curved spine, a huge forehead, and he can barely string three words together. He deserves another week.
“After eighty million votes,” the host says, “the contestant who will be staying with us next week is…Squid!”
Squid’s inky black smile is so disgusting that even the host winces. Tiger hangs his head. His ears twitch.
“Shit,” Dallas says. “Sorry, Mrs. Connors. But, shit. I love that guy. Now he has to be a beggar.”
“Thief,” I say.
“You think so? What’s worth stealing in Freaktown?”
The four contestants staying another week line up onstage.
“Please turn it off now,” Mom says. “It’s so sad.”
“It gives them a chance to win money,” I say.
“We’ve had this talk before, Max. Turn it off.”
“I should go,” Dallas says. “Austin has college entry exams coming up and I said I’d test him tonight.”
“This early in the year?” Mom asks.
Dallas nods. “If they don’t make it, they need time to apply to the state schools. Bye, Mrs. Connors. Bye, Ally!”
Ally’s voice sings from the bathroom, “Goodbye, goodbye, good Dallas, goodbye!”
He smiles. “See you later, Max.