All Good Children - Catherine Austen [97]
Dallas looks at me like I’m crazy. Mom smiles sadly. Ally says, “Dallas disappeared.”
“I’m not going back to New Middletown,” I tell them. “There is a world out here that is nothing like anything I’ve ever seen, and I want to be in it.”
Mom sighs. She’d go along with anything, she’s so tired.
I look to Dallas. He shrugs. “I just want to go to school, Max. I don’t care where. I want to be an engineer. I want to build things. That’s what I’m good at.”
“You’re a doctor,” Ally says. “You save people’s lives.”
Dallas looks down at her and pats her head. “Poor kid. You’re going to be so messed up by the time this is over.”
“Where should we go?” I ask him.
“Anywhere. Anywhere but home.”
The redhead swaggers over to our huddle. “Where’d you get that tent?” he asks.
I hate this guy. I hate his smile, I hate his freckles, I hate his voice, I hate the way he holds his hips. “It’s my tent. You can’t have it.”
“It’s your tent?”
“It’s my tent.”
“But where did you get it?”
“It’s mine, man. I got it from my living room. What do you want?” He looks over at the tent. The stenciled word, WITHSTAND, jogs down the wall and into my heart. I take a deep breath, shake my head, “No way. You are not taking that tent from me.”
He sucks in his lips and steps in front of Ally, leans over to look her in the eye. “Do you know who made that tent?”
“Mommy found it in the surplus store and Max painted it.”
“Who’s Max?”
“Max is my brother.”
He looks over at me, back to Ally. “Your brother painted that tent? This boy right here? He painted that tent?”
She nods. “For the art exhibit. He didn’t win. His principal drove him home and he saw Peanut in the forest.”
He straightens up and turns to me. The other two guards walk over, smiling. “I can’t believe it,” the short one says.
“You painted this tent?” the redhead asks me.
“You’re not taking it.”
“What’s inside it?” he asks. “If you painted it you should know.”
“My life is inside it, and you’re not taking it from me.”
He laughs again, the harsh snort, and looks at his buddies. All three of them start shrugging and laughing and shaking their heads—not like they’re savoring the moment before they kill us, but like they’re genuinely happy.
The redhead puts his hand on my shoulder and shakes me a little. I step back out of reach. He laughs. “This tent is all over the world, kid.” He holds his hands up like he’s lifting a globe. “It’s everywhere. Everywhere.”
I shake my head, unnerved by his smile and touch. “It’s been in my apartment since the exhibit.”
“No, you don’t understand. It’s all over the news, kid. It’s a symbol.”
“It was on an international broadcast a few weeks ago,” the taller guard says. “Some reporter in Pittsburgh wrote a story about it, and it spread like wildfire. It symbolizes resistance against corporate control, how people are uniting in secret and biding their time before they take their country back.”
“It’s been picked up everywhere,” the redhead says. “This tent is everywhere. And that word, withstand, you can’t go anywhere without seeing it.”
“It gives people hope,” the short one tells me. “That there are still people who care, even in places like New Middletown, that there are people who are ready to lead it somewhere better.”
I don’t like the way they look at me. It’s that same feeling I had in the skate park when Washington and Tyler harassed the Asian kid. It’s like they expect too much of me, like I should be special and heroic. But I honestly don’t have anything to say. I just want my tent back.
“It’s amazing you’re here,” the redhead says. “You obviously don’t know the influence you’ve had. This word is on army barracks and factory walls and prisons and malls and everywhere people are hiding themselves.” He takes off his cap, finger combs his