All Good Children - Catherine Austen [63]
She’s much stronger than I expect. It’s like trying to hold a baboon. She writhes and kicks and screams. “Peanut! Peanut!” She throws her head back into my face and smashes my teeth with her skull. She kicks her legs up and over the fence and falls to the other side. She screams and stumbles across the poisoned ground.
“Quiet, Ally, please!” I look around frantically to make sure no one’s watching.
She drops to her knees beside the nearest squirrel. She runs from carcass to carcass, touching them, turning them over, whimpering.
It takes me thirty seconds to climb the fence. The plastic stretches and sways beneath my feet. I flip and land on my shoulder. “Stop it!” I whisper when I reach her.
She’s at the bottom of the oak tree, wailing like a siren, holding a dead squirrel in her hands. Snot hangs from her nose to her chin and her whole body shudders. I drop beside her, hug her, shush her.
The squirrel’s eyes are open and glazed. Its mouth is twisted, a hardened cadmium ooze collected in the corners. Its belly is bloated, its front paws locked together like it tried to push something away. It didn’t die easy. “Is that her?” I ask.
Ally looks at me desperately, and I know she can’t tell one squirrel from another now. Whatever made Peanut recognizable is gone. “Yes,” she says because she needs that much to hold on to. “It’s Peanut. Poor Peanut.” She leans her face in like she’s going to kiss the thing, but I yank her head back. She can hate me, I don’t care, but she’s not going near that yellow ooze.
“She’s poison, Ally. You can’t keep touching her.”
She pets the squirrel’s head and cries.
“We have to get out of here.” I pull her up beside me and she drops the squirrel. It falls straight and stiff from her hand to the ground and bounces on the dirt. She screams.
I hug her to my chest, hard enough to cover her mouth. “It’s okay,” I whisper. “Just leave her.”
“No,” she moans. “We have to bury her.”
“No way. The ground’s too hard.”
“We have to!”
“Okay. We’ll take her home first. I’ll get her.” I cup my hand under the dead squirrel. It’s so soft and light, it feels hollow. I never realized how small Peanut was. Her whole body almost fits in my hand. The tail falls softly across my wrist.
“Is she dead?” Ally asks.
“Yeah. Yeah, she’s dead. We’ll find a box to bury her in tomorrow when it’s light.” I boost Ally over the fence and scramble after her. I tuck the squirrel in one arm like a football and keep my sister close with the other, trying to block her sorrow from the eyes and cameras that surround us.
Ally sleeps with a dried string of snot across her cheek, her hands bandaged, her hair flattened against her temple, her teddy bear stuffed in an armpit.
I walk to the lobby to tell Lucas that my sister is ill. I stop cold when I see Xavier waiting. Watching him beat up a teacher didn’t unsettle me half as much as seeing him in a group of throwaways.
He stares at the ceiling, moves his head left and right like he’s comparing acoustic tiles. His hair is pulled back. There are purple bags beneath his eyes and red nicks and scrapes along his jaw as if he shaved with his fingernails. He’s lost weight. He’s lost intensity. He’s so dim he’s almost a ghost.
“Hello, Max,” Lucas says. “I’m pleased to see your ankle is better.”
For a second I don’t know what he’s talking about. I look at my foot. “Oh. Yes. My mom’s a nurse,” I say, like she can cure sprains instantly. “I’m sorry to tell you that Ally’s sick today with a bad cold so I’ll be staying home with her.”
“That’s a shame,” Lucas says. “Especially since your mom’s a nurse.”
I avoid his eyes. “Hello, Xavier,” I say. “I have a belated birthday gift for you—I’m almost done it.”
He smiles in my direction, unfocussed, unhealthy.
I turn around and head for the stairs.
“We’ll see Ally tomorrow!” Lucas shouts. I don’t answer.
I read my sister stories until she falls asleep. Then I sit in my tent under a blaze of colorful children. I spray-paint the exterior walls with