After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia (23 page)

Back at school in January, there was a lot to do. I went to the senior class meetings,
but didn’t say anything. They decided for our Act of Humanity (required of every senior
class), we would have a blood drive. For the senior trip, we decided to keep it cheap,
as pretty much everyone’s parents were broke. A day trip to Bash Lake. “Sounds stale,”
said Bryce, “but if we bring enough alcohol and weed, it’ll be okay.” Mrs. Cloder,
our faculty adviser, aimed at him, said, “Arrivederci, baby,” and gave him two Saturday
detentions. The event that overshadowed all the others, though, was the upcoming prom.
My mother helped me make my dress. She was awesome on the sewing machine. It was turquoise
satin, short-sleeved, mid-length. I told my parents I had no date, but was just going
solo. Constance and I had made plans. We knew from all the weeks of mandatory Sunday
mass—the pastor actually spitting, he was so worked up over what he called “unnatural
love”—that we couldn’t go as a couple. She cared more than I did. I just tried to
forget about it.

When the good weather of spring hit, people got giddy and tense. There were accidents.
In homeroom one bright morning, Darcy dropped her bag on her desk, and the Derringer
inside went off and took out Ralph Babb’s right eye. He lived, but when he came back
to school, his head was kind of caved in and he had a bad fake eye that looked like
a kid drew it. It only stared straight ahead. Another was when Mr. Hallibet got angry
because everybody’d gotten into the habit of challenging his current events lectures
after seeing Constance in action. He yelled for us all to shut up and accidentally
squeezed off a round. Luckily for us, the gun was pointed at the ceiling. Mr. Gosh,
though, who was sitting in the room a floor above, directly over Hallibet, had to
have buckshot taken out of his ass. When he returned to school from a week off, he
sweated more than ever.

Mixed in with the usual spring fever, there was all kinds of drama over who was going
to the prom with who. Fistfights, girl fights, plenty of drawn guns but not for comedy.
I noticed that the King of Vermont was getting wackier the more people refused to
notice him. When I left my sixth-period class to use the bathroom, I saw him out on
the soccer field from the upstairs hallway window. He turned the stun gun on himself
and shot the two darts with wires into his own chest. It knocked him down fast, and
he was twitching on the ground. I went and took a piss. When I passed the window again,
he was gone. He’d started bringing alcohol to school; and at lunch, where again we
were back by the woods hanging out, he’d drink a Red Bull and a half pint of vodka.

Right around that time, I met Constance at the town library one night. I had nothing
to do, but she had to write a paper. When I arrived, she’d put the paper away and
was reading. I asked her what the book was. She told me, “Plato.”

“Good story?” I asked.

She explained it wasn’t a novel, but a book about ideas. “You see,” she said, “there’s
a cave and this guy gets chained up inside so that he can’t turn around or move, but
can only stare at the back wall. There’s a fire in the cave behind him and it casts
his shadow on the wall he faces. That play of light and shadow is the sum total of
his reality.”

I nodded and listened as long as I could. Constance was so wrapped up in explaining,
she looked beautiful, but I didn’t want to listen anymore. I checked over my shoulder
to see if anyone was around. When I saw we were alone, I quickly leaned forward and
kissed her on the lips. She smiled and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

On a warm day in mid May, we had the blood drive. I got there early and gave blood.
The nurses, who were really nice, told me to sit for a while and they gave me orange
juice and cookies. I thought about becoming a nurse for maybe like five whole minutes.
Other kids showed up and gave blood, and I stuck around to help sign them up. Cody
came and watched but wouldn’t give. “Fuck the dying,” I heard him say. “Nobody gets
my blood but me.” After that, a few other boys decided not to give either. Whatever.
Then at lunch, the King of Vermont was drinking his Red Bull and vodka, and I think
because he’d given blood, he was really blasted. He went around threatening to stun
people in their private parts.

After lunch, in Mrs. Cloder’s class, where we sat at long tables in a rectangle that
formed in front of her desk, Wisner took the seat straight across from her. I was
two seats down from him, toward the windows. Class started, and the first thing Mrs.
Cloder said before she even got out of her seat, was to the King. “Get that foolish
jar off the table.” We all looked over. Wisner stared, the mist swirled inside the
glass. He pushed his seat back and stood up, cradling the jar in one arm and drawing
his stun gun. “Sit down, Scotty,” she said, and leveled her short barrel at him. I
could see her finger tightening on the trigger. A few seconds passed, and then one
by one, all the kids drew their weapons, but nobody was sure whether to aim at Mrs.
Cloder or the King, so about half did one and half the other. I never even opened
my lunch box, afraid to make a sudden move.

“Put down your gun and back slowly away from the table,” said Mrs. Cloder.

“When you meet the Devil, give him my regards,” said Wisner, but as he pulled the
trigger, Mrs. Cloder fired. The breaching slug blew a hole in the King of Vermont’s
chest, slamming him against the back wall in a cloud of blood. The jar shattered,
and glass flew. McKenzie, who was sitting next to Wisner, screamed as the shards dug
into her face. I don’t know if she shot or if the gun just went off, but her bullet
hit Mrs. Cloder in the shoulder and spun her out of her chair onto the ground. She
groaned and rolled back and forth. Meanwhile, Wisner’s stun gun darts had gone wild,
struck Chucky Durr in the forehead, one over each eye, and in his electrified shaking,
his gun went off and put a round right into Melanie Storte’s Adam’s apple. Blood poured
out as she dropped her own gun and brought her hands to her gurgling neck. Melanie
was Cody St. John’s “current ho,” as he called her, and he didn’t think twice but
fanned the hammer of his pistol, putting three shots into Chucky, who fell over on
the floor like a bag of potatoes. Chucky’s cousin, Meleeba, shot Cody in the side
of the head, and he went down screaming as smoke poured from the hole above his left
ear. One of Cody’s crew shot Meleeba, and then I couldn’t keep track anymore. Bullets
whizzed by my head, blood was spurting everywhere. Kids were falling like pins at
the bowling alley. Mrs. Cloder clawed her way back into her seat, lifted the gun,
and aimed it. Whoever was left fired on her and then she fired, another shotgun blast,
like an explosion. When the ringing in my ears went away, the room was perfectly quiet
but for the drip of blood and the ticking of the wall clock. Smoke hung in the air,
and I thought of the King of Vermont’s escaped souls. During the entire thing, I’d
not moved a single finger.

The cops were there before I could get myself out of the chair. They wrapped a blanket
around me and led me down to the principal’s office. I was in a daze for a while but
could feel them moving around me and could hear them talking. Then my mother was there,
and the cop was handing me a cup of orange juice. They asked if they could talk to
me, and my mother left it up to me. I told them everything, exactly how it went down.
I started with the blood drive. They tested me for gunpowder to see if there was any
on my hands. I told them my gun was back in the classroom in my lunch box, under the
table, and it hadn’t been fired since the summer, the last time I went to the range
with my dad.

It was all over the news. I was all over the news. A full one-third of Bascombe High’s
senior class was killed in the shoot-out. The only one in Mrs. Cloder’s class besides
me to survive was McKenzie, and the flying glass made her No-face Batkin.

Senator Meets showed up at the school three days later and got his picture taken handing
me an award. I never really knew what it was for. Constance whispered, “They give
you a fucking award if you live through it,” and laughed. In Meets’s speech to the
assembled community, he blamed the blood drive for the incident. He proclaimed Mrs.
Cloder a hero, and ended by reminding everyone, “If these kids were working, they’d
have no time for this.”

The class trip was called off, out of respect for the dead. Two weeks later, I went
to the prom. It was to be held in the gymnasium. My dad drove me. When we pulled into
the parking lot, it was empty.

“You must be early,” he said, and handed me the corsage I’d asked him to get—a white
orchid.

“Thanks,” I said, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. As I opened the door to get out,
he put his hand on my elbow. I turned, and he was holding the gun.

“You’ll need this,” he said.

I shook my head and told him, “It’s okay.” He was momentarily taken aback. Then he
tried to smile. I shut the door and he drove away.

Constance was already there. In fact, she was the only one there. The gym was done
up with glittery stars on the ceiling, a painted moon and clouds. There were streamers.
Our voices echoed as we exchanged corsages, which had been our plan. The white orchid
looked good against her black plunging neckline. She’d gotten me a corsage made of
red roses, and they really stood out against the turquoise. In her purse, instead
of the Beretta, she had a half pint of Captain Morgan. We sat on one of the bleachers
and passed the bottle, talking about the incidents of the past two weeks.

“I guess no one’s coming,” she said. No sooner were the words out of her mouth than
the outside door creaked open and in walked Bryce, carrying a case in one hand and
dressed in a jacket and tie. We got up and went to see him. Constance passed him the
Captain Morgan. He took a swig.

“I was afraid of this,” he said.

“No one’s coming?” I said.

“I guess some of the parents were scared there’d be another shoot-out. Probably the
teachers too. Mrs. Cloder’s family insisted on an open casket. A third of them are
dead, let’s not forget, and the rest, after hearing Meets talk, are working the late
shift at Walmart for minimum wage.”

“Jeez,” said Constance.

“Just us,” said Bryce. He went up on the stage, set his case down, and got behind
the podium at the back. “Watch this,” he said, and a second later the lights went
out. We laughed. A dozen blue searchlights appeared, their beams moving randomly around
the gym, washing over us and then rushing away to some dark corner. A small white
spotlight came on above the mic that stood at the front of the stage. Bryce stepped
up into the glow. He opened the case at his feet and took out a saxophone.

“I was looking forward to playing tonight,” he said. We walked up to the edge of the
stage, and I handed him the bottle. He took a swig, the sax now on a leather strap
around his neck. Putting the bottle down at his feet, he said, “Would you ladies care
to dance?”

“Play us something,” we told him.

He thought for a second and said, “‘Strangers in the Night’?”

He played, we danced, and the blue lights in the dark were the sum total of our reality.

1.

Y
OU WANT TO KNOW WHO
I
AM AND HOW
I
GOT HERE
?

Reality Girl is the name my mother gave me but Real’s what I’m called. I’m fourteen
and until one day, a week or so back, my ambition was making it to fifteen. What I
want to tell starts that day.

Me and Dare—my girlfriend and partner—led our boys, Nice and Not, Hassid, and Rock,
down to the river for this appointment I’d set up.

It could have been any October afternoon: hot orange light and the sun hanging over
the smashed towers on the Jersey Shore. Like always, rumors ran of everything from
a new plague to war between the Northeast Command and the Liberty Land militia.

But I could see planes coming in and taking off from Liberty Land Stronghold in Jersey
like always. And along the waterfront little ferry boats took people on, unloaded
freight.

The world that day was the way I was used to: broken cement under bare feet, bad sunlight
that’d take off your skin if you let it, the smell of rot and acid on the water. Mostly
I was trying to get control of this thing inside me. I wasn’t sure I owned it or it
owned me.

Dare looked all ways, kept her hands inside her robes so no one knew what weapon she
was holding, ignored the boy babble.

Hassid told Rock, “You look too much at who’s watching you dive instead of on the
gold.”

“I gotta take this from a loser midget?”

“Listen to the lovers,” Nice said.

Dare stood tall with that crest of hair like a web singer or some photo you see and
know is of a hero. “Look tough,” she told them, and they formed a front as we moved
down to the waterline.

Me, I just stared around, looked downtown where black Hudson tide water was over the
banks and in the street. Anyone looking maybe would guess I was Dare’s useless little
girl trick. In truth I was seeing through her eyes, which was part of the thing inside
me.

When I was a little kid I had flashes where I was inside someone else’s head for a
second. It began to happen more often once my monthlies started. It scared me till
I saw it as a weapon and tried to take control.

This summer was me and Dare’s second together and we fit like a knife in a fist. At
first she hated it when I began slipping into her brain, and we fought. Then she saw
how no one would know I was studying them, and went along.

That day I saw what Dare could see: used-up diving boys with the skin coming off them
in clumps, and scavenger ladies with bags of garbage, all turned toward us snarling.
But Dare saw fear in their eyes, knew they were looking for ways to back off, and
she gave them the chance.

For what was left of the afternoon, we owned that stretch of the shore. But even here
some water spilled over the walls onto the walkway. And barefoot kids don’t ever want
to touch river water unless there’s gold in the air.

Then Dare and me caught sight of a long ground car with tinted windows and double
treads coming down the highway, dodging the holes, bouncing over the rubble. According
to the deal I set up with Depose, this was a party of tourists who wanted to see New
York diving boys.

The car stopped, the doors opened, and Depose’s people jumped out holding their AK474’s
ready. One kept an eye on Dare and the rest of us—cradling the rapid-fire in her arms.
Two covered the other directions, on the alert but not tense. One stayed at the wheel.

When Depose runs things there’s no reason to worry. You don’t cross her and you’re
okay unless she’s been given the contract on you or she sees some reason her life
would get better without you. In those cases you’re dead. Simple, the way not much
else is in this world.

Next the tourists in their protective suits and helmets got out of the car. A pile
of wreckage juts out from the walkway and into the water. Security escorted them up
there so they could see the show, then stood guard.

Dare and the boys looked up at them. Not said, “Aliens,” and spat into the water,
but Dare signaled him to cool it. Not and Nice became partners that summer, and Nice
rubbed his back and whispered something. They and Hassid, who’s single and older than
any of us—eighteen—stepped out of their shorts and moved right to the edge of the
cement. Rock, our fourth boy, was new and not at ease with us yet, but he did the
same.

Tourists get off on American kids staring up like starving dogs. Tourists want to
see us bare ass and risking our lives. Dare and me hated them as much as Not did,
but this was the cleanest way we’d come up with to get money out of them.

At first this bunch seemed the usual: half a dozen figures with white insulated helmets
to keep the sun off their faces, conditioned coveralls to make them comfortable, shields
to protect their eyes, and masks so they breathed clean air.

Under all that protection, you can’t even tell what sex they are. They could be alien
conquerors built like insects, soft and lovely ladies in silk from China where everyone
is rich, kings and queens from Fairyland. You hear stories of creatures like those
coming to see how New York got laid low. I maybe could have gone into their brains,
but I didn’t want to give away that secret until I really knew what I was doing.

Then the tourists shifted and one who’d been hidden by the others stepped out front
and showed me something very different.

This one didn’t wear coveralls, helmet, or mask, and was female with copper skin and
hair not so different from mine. She wore goggles and took breaths out of a tube she
carried while someone held a metal shade above her.

She looked familiar as I saw her through Dare’s eyes, and I felt my partner’s surprise
at how much the tourist girl looked like me.

This one was the center of the group’s attention and concern. They clustered around
like they’d stop bullets for her. Because of the goggles, I couldn’t see her eyes,
but I could tell she was staring my way.

Thinking back, maybe I kept my talent too much a secret. If I’d gone inside a couple
more heads we’d have been spared a lot of grief. As it was, when Rock turned to look
my way, Dare said, “Eyes front,” under her breath, because we didn’t want me drawing
attention.

Dare checked the boys one last time, made sure their skin was intact and that they
had the safety lenses in their eyes before they hit the water. She took some extra
care with Rock. Dare was a diver herself before she hooked up with me. She got out
of it in time, but she remembers.

If no one managed divers, tourists would make them compete so they drove each other
to death. With murder and the diseases they get, and being drafted to serve in the
militias, boys are scarce, and talented ones like ours are rare. Dare and I kept the
ones we had healthy.

Then sunlight flashed as a tourist’s hand came out of a pouch. Dare, calm and steady,
nodded to the boys to stand right on the edge of the busted pavement in the spaces
where there are no rails.

The hand went up, snapped the gold coin into the air, where it turned over as it fell
toward the water a bit too far away for a boy to make an easy catch.

Dare had tapped Nice, and he dived forward in an arc, snapped it up as he hit the
water. Nice flipped over and swam back and the tourists applauded, laughed. Nice was
back up on the pavement with Dare taking the gold out of his mouth as the next coin
sailed up in the air.

This was farther away and thrown harder, but Hassid kept his eyes on it as he dived,
and was a yard away from where it went into the water. He came up with the coin and
headed back as the next coin went farther out, and Not showing his skill and class
went under and grabbed it.

The tourists applauded but this is how they always do it, throwing each one a little
farther away, watching kids risk skin and eyes in water full of everything from turds
to nuclear waste, seeing if their nerve will fail, hoping for the thrill of having
one go under and not come up. The girl on the wreckage watched it all intently. It
didn’t seem possible anyone from this world could have the wealth and power she did.

Jackie Boy is the legend they’ve heard about. Jackie skimmed over the surface of the
water, and no matter how far or hard it got thrown, could catch tourist money in his
teeth before either he or the gold hit the river. Maybe he wasn’t human. I’d started
wondering if I was.

The tourists that day didn’t work the boys as hard as lots of them do. We got all
the coins except for one that Rock missed. But it turned out this was just a test.

One time that afternoon, a plane, a fighter, flew low over the city and we flinched
but the tourists paid no attention. This meant that it was nothing important.

Then maybe they got bored, because they started climbing down the wreckage. Right
that second, a chimera, the one called Silky, who’s half seal, half woman, and old
like they all are, came out of the water a bit farther upstream and caught their attention.
Her skin is tough and she doesn’t stay in long, and maybe that or luck lets her survive.

Chimeras come from when things were falling apart but some people in the city still
had money and tech and a big need to keep amused. There aren’t any new chimeras; probably
no one knows how to make them anymore.

Tourist helmets flashed as they took pictures of Silky. I saw the girl look my way
again and say something to one of the guys in protective gear, who took a few pictures
of me.

When tourists lose interest, and city smells and poisons start getting in their masks,
they go back to the expensive air at hotels in the Security Zone. Seeing the lights
from the Zone way uptown always twisted my stomach, made me want to do a lot more
than spit in their direction.

We got the boys cleaned off. There’s stuff the UN clinic in Times Square gives to
people exposed to the river or harbor, and we rubbed them down. We used expensive
pure water to clean out their eyes and mouths.

All of a sudden Depose’s car drove up. She got out and the girl said something to
her before the tourist party climbed into their big ground car and took off.

Depose, wide and mean, and her bodyguard stayed behind. Through Dare’s eyes I saw
her stride to us. But I didn’t look up until Depose went right past Dare without even
nodding to her.

“Real.” Her voice is this low growl and she motioned for me to step away from the
others, stood over me bearing down, sticking her face close to mine. “My clients are
in the city to shoot a Net episode. I brought you out today so they could look at
you and your fags. Mai Kin wants to use you!”

She watched through those heavy lids for a reaction. Depose went through girl- and
boyfriends like they were toilet paper, but liked them a little older than me. Otherwise
I’d want to stay away from her. I nodded that I understood, shrugged like it was no
great matter.

But that was why the tourist girl looked familiar. Mai Kin was a rising star right
then, playing
Astasia X99
, a girl superheroine who’s supposed to be around sixteen and who goes from place
to place having adventures, fighting crime and vampires, and it’s so dumb that you
can laugh at it.

Astasia has the power of disguise. She’s totally different in each episode. The last
time I saw her she was in a big city in Africa and she was dark with wild black hair,
infiltrating a revolutionary group.

What I just saw, I guessed, was the way she’d look here in New York. Pictures of Mai
Kin before
Astasia X99
show an okay-looking Asian girl who’s maybe twenty.

“The one called Caravaggio is going to direct this thing,” Depose told me. “He’ll
get in touch. I trust you not to screw this up. Remember, Real, you owe me. You’re
smart. You don’t need these dumb kids.” She indicated Dare and the boys.

And I nodded, kept my face straight, my eyes right on hers.

Depose was a power. When the militia at Liberty Land needed something done in the
city, she was the one they hired. Somewhere down the line she’d want me working for
her, but I didn’t want to get close and didn’t want to have to find out what was inside
her brain.

2.

In October the sun starts going down fast. We bought food and water at the Red Crescent
kitchen before we headed back to our place, making a tight group with the boys on
the outside and Dare and me and the gold in the center.

I told Dare what Depose told me, and she said, “If that’s Mai Kin, she tried to make
herself look like you. Why did that happen?”

I shook my head because I didn’t know. “If what Depose told me means anything, there’ll
be money.”

Dare said, “I don’t want that bull to think she owns us.”

Old people who remember twenty-five years back talk about how hot it is now, but winter
when it comes can kill if you can’t stay warm. “We both felt cold a couple of nights
ago,” I said. “It’s still okay in the days, but that’s what’s coming. Things are jumpy
lately and we may need lots of gold to survive.”