All Good Children - Catherine Austen [75]
Next thing I know, Mr. Reese is beside me, his bitter breath falling on my face. “Max, you seem to be the odd man out.”
I almost laugh. “That is true, sir. That has always been true.”
Mr. Reese frowns on me. “I’ll do the review with you if you like. Come up to my desk.”
I hate the murmur of voices in the room. I tug on my ears and fold the cartilage against my skull so all I can hear is a dull drowning rush. My face tingles and burns. It launches into spasms I can’t control. My eyes blink and tear. My nose itches. My tongue travels inside my mouth, pushing over my teeth, under my lips, against my cheeks, poking around like something trapped and desperate.
“Are you all right?” Mr. Reese asks.
It feels like bugs are living in my eyebrows. My skin crawls with them, and I have a sudden compulsion to peel it off. I rub my face, and the itch spreads up through my hair and down the back of my neck, across my shoulders, along my forearms, between my fingers. I can’t stop clawing at myself.
Mr. Reese grabs my wrists with his pale sweaty hands. “Stop, Max, stop!”
I can’t stand the smell of him. I yank myself out of his grip and jump to my feet. “Don’t touch me!”
He reaches out like he wants to hug me.
I shove him away, and he slams into the wall. “Don’t touch me!” I shriek.
I stumble between the crowded desks, out of the classroom, down the empty hallway. The only sounds are my heels hitting tile and my breath coming sharp. I pass lockers, cameras, corridors lined with photos of previous graduating classes. I walk by the receptionist and the guard and out through the doors of the school. My skin chills and trembles in the cold air, but I’m hot and throbbing inside. I need to run.
I tear away from the school into a maze of gray suburban streets. I run them hard, trying to focus on my breath and the soothing swing of my arms and legs. When I reach the Spartan my legs tremble, my gut rolls, my cheeks tingle. I double over and vomit on the dead grass beside the entrance. Milky puke burns through me and splatters onto my shoes. I retch again and again until my gut aches and my eyes stream and screaming gobs of phlegm are all that come out of me.
I hork and spit. I can’t stand the smell of myself. I’m sour and rotten and shaking with cold. I straighten my spine and look around. I’m alone, brown and gray in a brown and gray landscape.
I break three branches off a cedar shrub and lay them over my vomit in a damaged attempt to cover the sight and smell of it. I wipe my hands on the soft creases of my pants and walk into the Spartan, up the stairs, down the stale hallway to my door.
I shower for twenty minutes and brush my teeth twice, then lie down in bed, naked under the covers. It feels too exposed, so I get up and dress. It’s so quiet. I might be the only person in the whole building.
I empty the pockets of my uniform and stuff it in a laundry bag. I check my RIG.
Already there’s a message from the principal about my outburst, a copy of an official letter to my mother. It informs her that I’m suspended for two days and that “any more unexceptable behavior will lead to expulsion.” Seriously, that’s how he spells it. A kid could choke to death on irony.
Mom hands me a large black wallet. “This is Cheyenne Connors, your new half-brother.”
A sixteen-year-old boy with long black bangs and big blue eyes scowls from a passport. He’s six-foot-two, one-hundred-and-seventy pounds. I know the kid—he’s a footballer from New Middletown Southeast Secondary School, home of the Blue Mountain Devils.
“He doesn’t look much like Dallas,” I say.
Mom snatches the passport from my hands. “They’re the same height, same weight. We can ask Celeste to make up Dallas’s nose and mouth.”
“And the birth certificate? Can we put Dad’s name on it?”
“I don’t have a birth certificate. It wasn’t in his wallet. We’ll have to take Daddy’s passport and death certificate and be prepared to lie.”
I’m in suspended isolation for the next two days. No one posts anything anymore—no