All Good Children - Catherine Austen [6]
“It’s easy,” he says. “I forged Ally’s attendance, too, to sign her up for soccer. I gave her a seventy-five in a math assessment she missed on Wednesday, and I filled out the nurse’s forms for a vaccination she missed on Friday. You better tell your mom.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
“Did you take the speed rail? Did you see the bombings?”
“Nah. We flew.”
“I heard it was the Mexicans. They sabotaged our trains because we sabotaged their desalination plants.”
“That’s crazy, Xavier. We built their desalination plants. It was a militia from Arizona that sabotaged them. They probably bombed the speed rail too.”
“People are dying of thirst in Arizona.”
“So they should bomb the reservoirs instead of the speed rail.”
Xavier frowns. “My parents told me not to say that.”
I laugh. “Afraid you’ll get arrested?”
“Maybe. The state restricted the right to protest. Did you hear? You can only protest on your own land now. And they passed the universal id.”
“We already have a universal id,” I say.
“In New Middletown. Now it’s coming everywhere. Faces and fingerprints.”
I shake my head. “Everywhere? That’ll never happen.”
“Excuse us, Xavier,” Mom says at the doorway. “How are you, dear?”
“They’re testing pharmaceuticals on the prison population,” he replies.
Mom nods, smiles, leads Ally to their bedroom to unpack.
While Xavier details the dirty deeds of Chemrose International, I filter seven hundred and thirty-five messages from my week offline. Ads, celebrity news, listserv chatter, history. I’m stunned to see a call from Pepper Cassidy. She’s a member of REAL: Reduced Electronic Activity in Life. Her messages are rare and beautiful.
Pepper’s face shines on my screen: brown eyes, pink mouth, cinnamon skin. “I need you, Max! We all need you!” The camera pans over a line of pretty pouty girls whispering, “I need you, Max.” I couldn’t dream it any better. Pepper leans in close, smiling. “There are only two boys in dance this term, and you know they have no rhythm. Please say you’ll try out.”
I save the call.
“The children in the trials are institutionalized,” Xavier tells me.
“The dance trials?”
“Drug trials. Will you help me circulate a petition?”
I laugh. “I’m fifteen, Xavier. I can barely circulate peanut butter on toast.”
I sort through ninety-eight messages from Dallas Richmond—that’s one message for every waking hour I was offline. Ninety are single-sentence questions beginning with Who do you think would win in a fight. Seven are lists of names and bra sizes for the girls in each of our classes. One is a compilation of insulting names Coach Emery called me because I missed football practice. “I’m a limpdick and an asswipe,” I tell Xavier.
He nods without sympathy.
“Xavier! Dad wants you!” Celeste Lavigne glides down the hallway to fetch her brother. She’s a softer, curvier version of Xavier. She and I are the only people in the entire complex who have younger siblings. I think that should draw us together. She disagrees.
“Celeste!” I shout. “We’re back!”
She ignores me. “Come see what I did to Dad,” she tells Xavier.
I consider myself invited.
Down the hall, Mr. and Mrs. Lavigne hover inside their doorway. You have to use your imagination to see how Xavier and Celeste turned out so beautiful. The Lavignes are unusually large, white and old, like Vikings gone to seed. They’re pasty and spongy and they dress in woolen cardigans buttoned into the wrong holes.
Mr. Lavigne looks especially bad today because Celeste has been working on him. His face is scored with black and pink festering flesh, like a burn victim’s.
“Royal makeup,” I say. Celeste is a rising star in the special-effects department at the college she attends.
“Come inside, children,” Mr. Lavigne says through crispy lips. “Don’t talk in the hallway.” He glances at the surveillance camera in the corner.