All Good Children - Catherine Austen [42]
“Almost done,” she says.
She presses gauze to my skin, reaches for my hand, lays my finger over the tiny white square. “Hold this in place, please.” She flicks the needle into the garbage, lays the syringe on the white tablecloth. It’s empty. She takes a patch from her pocket, removes the wrapping, sticks it on my arm. “There,” she says. “That didn’t hurt at all, did it?”
I can’t respond.
Mom turns to Dallas at the desk beside me. “You’re next.”
“I’ll come round the other side,” Linda says. “You might as well stay there and work your way up on the left. I don’t mind walking around.” She wheezes and squeaks as she walks behind me. “That’s one row down and four to go. We’ll be out of here before four thirty, but don’t worry, we get paid for the full hour no matter what.”
Mom slips on a fresh needle and stabs it into a bottle. I watch the syringe suck up a pale dose of zombie. She sets the bottle down and holds the needle high.
“Mom, you can’t—”
“That’s enough, Max,” she hisses.
Students stare at me like I’m a freak.
“Voices down,” Werewolf reminds us.
“Is he afraid of needles?” Linda asks.
“Yes, but he needn’t be.” Mom turns to Dallas. “Ready?”
Dallas smiles like she’s offering ice cream.
I lay my head down on my desk to get a better view of his arm. Mom cups her left hand over the needle so it’s hard to see. Her right thumb pushes slowly on the syringe. It looks like she’s really giving him the shot. My heart thumps as if my blood is too thick to push through the valves.
“Ow,” Dallas says. He looks up at Linda, who just stuck him in the other arm.
“A big boy like you afraid of a little needle?” Linda shouts. “I’m surprised anything can get through those muscles of yours. They’re hard as a rock.”
“Almost done,” Mom says softly.
Dallas looks at her, smiles, tries to see what she’s doing to his arm.
“There,” she says, pressing gauze to his skin.
He opens his mouth to speak, but she says, “Don’t talk. Just rest. Hold this in place.”
She flicks the needle into the garbage and grabs another patch from her pocket. I stretch back in my chair and get a brief but clear view of Dallas’s arm. There’s no mark, no piercing, just a moist gloss.
Mom presses on the patch and pats his shoulder. “All done.”
She works her way up the aisle of desks, whispering, “I’m sorry” to everyone. Everyone but me and Dallas.
She stops and sighs when she gets to Tyler Wilkins.
“Hello, Tyler,” she says sadly. She looks across the desk at Linda, but she doesn’t bother speaking.
“My goodness, child, you smell like cigarettes,” Linda chatters. “Do you know how many toxins one cigarette contains?” She looks at Mom and her smiles fades. “Oh for God’s sake, what is it now? Does he have a temperature?”
“No, but—”
“Then get to it, Karenna. We have to do them all.”
Mom looks at Tyler’s homely face. “I’m sorry, Tyler.”
He laughs and runs a hand down his tattooed arm. “It’s all right. I’m not afraid of needles.”
I watch the drug go deep into his skin.
I’m not sorry to see Tyler Wilkins zombified. But I suppose there are people who’d say the same about me.
There’s a dear little home in Good-Children street—
My heart turneth fondly to-day
Where tinkle of tongues and patter of feet
Make sweetest of music at play;
Where the sunshine of love illumines each face
And warms every heart in that old-fashioned place.
For dear little children go romping about
With dollies and tin tops and drums,
And, my! how they frolic and scamper and shout
Till bedtime too speedily comes!
Oh, days they are golden and days they are fleet
With little folk living in Good-Children street.
From Eugene Field’s
“Good-Children Street”
in Love Songs of Childhood (1894)
PART TWO
ADJUSTMENT
EIGHT
My mother sits on her bed, folded small like a child, hugging her knees. She’s in pajamas at dinnertime. Ally’s eating a sandwich in the living room, watching cartoons.
“How did you know?” I ask.
Mom sniffles and shrugs. “Parents are always notified of detention.”
“I mean how did you