All Good Children - Catherine Austen [72]
Her body barely moves, her coloring is so controlled. Her fingers jiggle. Her wrist shakes slightly. But her arm is almost still. Up at her shoulder there’s no motion at all, just a dark arm at rest. I stare at the big beige patch that wasn’t there this morning, and the knife slips from my hand. When the clatter of metal finally rings itself out, all I hear is my mother quietly crying in the living room.
FOURTEEN
“Whispering is wrong,” Ally says. She stomps into the living room, dressed in pajamas, holding her teddy bear by the snout. I’ve been living with her for one week since her shot, and I can’t stand her. “You should do your homework,” she tells me.
We were right to call them zombies. They want to eat our brains.
I force a smile. “Time for bed, sleepyhead.”
She looks at me like I’m defective. “We have to tell an adult when children don’t follow the rules.”
Mom rises from the couch beside me. “Max finished his homework, Ally. It’s not your business to oversee your brother.”
“Work is everybody’s business.”
We have to get out of this city.
Ally stares at the coffee table. She points her finger and calls the world to witness. “You used my coloring pencils!
You’re not allowed. They’re for my work.”
“I told Max he could use them,” Mom says.
Ally marches over to my drawing: a sunny dandelion sprouts from a crack in the sidewalk where zombie children march to school, one huge shoe with an industrial gray sole about to come down hard on it. “That’s not allowed!” She grabs the paper, knocking pencils to the floor, and folds it in her greasy hands.
I want to flick her across the room.
“That’s enough, Ally!” Mom says. She stops a rolling pencil with her foot. “Pick these up.”
“Okay.” Ally groans and looks confused. “What do I do?”
“Pick up the pencils,” Mom says. “We’ll do it together.” She claps her hands and chants, “One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, four to go.”
“That’s silly,” Ally says.
Mom takes a deep breath.
We pick up the colored pencils together. “You could be faster,” Ally tells me. “We should always do our best.”
I’m on my knees by the armchair when she walks past and my hand shoots out in front of her foot. She trips and falls. Immediately I feel like a beast—what kind of person trips the six-year-old zombie who used to be his little sister?—but I also feel intensely satisfied. “You should watch where you’re going,” I tell her.
“You should be respectful of those around you.”
I give her the finger when her back is turned. I peek behind the chair and give the spider a thumbs-up.
It doesn’t look like Fred has put much effort into his web, but he managed to catch a clothes moth. It struggles from its fate while Fred works up an appetite. I wish he’d just eat it. Waiting kills me these days. Every moment is fat with hope and dread.
I lie on the floor beside the chair and try to make my mind go blank. Ally’s shadow looms over me. I expect her to stomp my face. Instead she steps right over me onto Fred. His web peels off its anchors and sticks to her sock. She grinds the ball of her foot into the floor. Fred is a circle of black goo, his legs torn and scattered around his flattened corpse. Ally swats the web off her foot, catches the moth in the silk, and squashes it between her fingers.
“You have to kill bugs because they’re dirty,” she tells me.
I just lie there, nodding.
“We have to get out of here before she rats me out,” I tell Mom. She’s in the bathroom, brushing her teeth. I stir a packet of noodles into a cup of water in the kitchen. “We can’t wait for the passport of some kid who might not show till New Year’s Day.”
Mom sticks her head around the corner. Her eyes are bright, her lips foamy. “Would you leave without Dallas?” she asks excitedly.
“That’s not what I meant.