All Good Children (26 page)

“Yes. We're really going. I sent a message to Rebecca. We have a better chance of getting in if we have a place to stay.”

“And we can go before Christmas?”

Mom nods. “We'll need a car.”

“And a passport for Dallas.”

“If he really wants to come.”

“He really wants to come.”

She sighs. “Okay. Hang on a little longer.”

Ally can't stop smiling in the stairwell. She's imagining Peanut setting up house in the national forest, packing leaves and mud into a condo in the trees, making squirrel friends, storing acorns.

“You better get those giggles out,” I whisper. “Remember how you have to act at school.”

She relaxes her face and dims her eyes. We reach for the doorknob at the same time. She laughs, then turns it into a cough.

“Good girl. Who's going to get the door?”

She points back and forth between us and whispers, “One potato, two potato, three potato, four. Five potato, six potato, seven potato, more.” She turns the doorknob.

Lucas and three other zombies await us. They wear bulky gray coats over their shapeless gray suits. There were more of them last week. They must be cleaning house at the trade school, herding kids into institutions for the uneducable. I wonder how many lower rungs there are on the ladder of childhood.

“Hello, Lucas,” I say. “Nice to see you.”

“Nice to see you too, Maxwell. And you, Alexandra. I hope you're feeling better.”

“I'm much better, thank you.” There's a smile playing behind her eyes, but I doubt the zombies can notice it.

“Goodbye, Ally,” I say as she joins them. “Be good.”

Dallas has a carefully disguised fit on the school grounds when I tell him we're going to Canada instead of Atlanta. “They're never going to let me across the border!” He keeps a straight face and an even tone but he still manages to convey that he's shouting. “They don't let minors leave the country without their parents' permission.”

“We can get you a passport with the name Connors on it.”

“Oh, that's royal. We look so much alike.” He's so mad he has to turn away from me to regain control. “They'll catch us, Max,” he says when he turns back. “They'll catch us and they'll send me back and my parents will find out that I'm not treated and they'll turn me into a fucking zombie.”

“No. If we go to Atlanta—if we go anywhere in the States—any cop who wants to can ask for your id and send you back home when they find out who you are. You can't change your fingerprints. You'll be at risk every day of your life until you're eighteen. But if you cross the border, it's just one risk and you're through.”

“It's a big fucking risk, Max.”

“No, it's not. We're going to cross at Freaktown. They let anybody through there.”

“What are you basing that theory on?”

I shrug. “Rumors.”

He nods for so long that I think it might be some kind of tremor. “It's another country, Max. They're going to examine my passport. We can't just glue my picture in it.”

“Maybe you look like the kid.”

“Maybe I don't.”

“Then maybe we could take your real passport and forge a letter of permission from your parents.”

“They'll call my home.”

“Then we'll take the passport of someone a bit older who looks like you and you can come with us as an adult.”

He clears his throat and says calmly, “Yes. Of course. We'll just make a wish in the passport fountain and all my problems will be solved.”

“Then we'll—”

He walks away from me, into the school.

Dallas ignores me for two days. I finally catch him in the cafeteria, sitting alone with a buffer of empty seats between him and the zombies. “We're visiting my cousin on Christmas Eve,” I tell him. I don't whisper because that's suspicious. We've learned to hide our words in other words. “That's my birthday. I hope to do some shopping if the stores are open.”

He plays with the turkey sandwich on his tray and doesn't respond. There's a tremor in his jaw and a twitch in one eye.

“It's the perfect place to shop because no one can find out what presents you're buying.”

“It's a long way to go just to get out of town, Max.”

“My cousin Rebecca went many years ago. She says the shopping is very good there.”

He shakes his head. “I want to shop in Atlanta.”

“It would be hard to find your parents a present in Atlanta.”

He eats in silence while I list all the wonderful presents I want to buy.

“Christmas is two weeks away,” he says at last. “I can't prepare myself in time.”

“Yes, you can. And you know we deserve a break. You remember how Coach Emery said we did a good job cleaning the trailer.”

“Yeah, but…”

I put down my spoon. “I thought you wanted to go Christmas shopping with us.”

“It won't work, Max.” He almost shouts the words.

A girl at the next table turns around and stares at us.

Dallas perfects his zombie face and says politely, “It's too sudden. I don't have enough money to go shopping with.”

“Sudden? We've been saving up for six weeks.”

He says nothing, sips his soda, moves his food around his plate.

The nosy girl turns back to her tray. Beside us, three ninth grade girls suck their soup in silence, eyes glued to their RIGs.

I sink into a whisper. “‘How long do you think we can keep this up?' Those were your exact words three weeks ago.

This is not sudden.”

“Thank you, Max,” Dallas says loudly. “It's nice of your family to invite me shopping. It's good to be with your family at Christmas. My family would like to be with me too. It's sad to be with someone else's family at Christmas, especially when you obviously don't belong with them because you're different races and couldn't possibly be related.” Anybody listening might think he was a recall, but they wouldn't suspect he was talking about fleeing the country.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “Of course it's better to be with your family. But if you need to shop and your family can't take you, then my family would be happy to adopt you as my half-brother. I know you'd like to come with us because you've said so many times.”

Washington sits down a few seats away with two other goons-turned-zombies. “Hello, Max. Hello, Dallas. How are you?” he says.

I'm pissed off so I say, “We're fine, Washington. How's Tyler? Oh. I forgot. He's dead. You must be so sad.”

He opens the lid of his sandwich box. “It's his memory that keeps me going.”

Dallas looks down at his plate.

“You can't stay home while I go shopping,” I say.

His jaw tightens and he sucks air through his straw.

I have to fight the urge to swat him. “Dallas, man, you're more desperate than I am,” I whisper. “Once I'm gone there's nowhere you can relax. You won't make it.”

The gurgle of the straw fades out with a sniffle. His jaw twitches and he blinks rapidly.

It's always a bad idea to needle your only friend until he cries in public, but it's especially bad when you're surrounded by zombie tattlers. Our escape from this sad school is so close— it's exactly the time fate would kick us in the throat for fun.

“I'm sorry,” I say at normal volume. “We should never pressure our friends to do what we want to do.” Then I mumble, “Just keep it together. We're surrounded.”

He takes a few breaths, then looks up in perfect zombie mode except for the twitch in his eye. “I'm not sure I want to go that far.”

“You don't mean that.”

“Now that Christmas is so close, I might stay home and buy my gifts locally.”

“There's not much selection.”

“I love this country,” he whispers.

Washington stares at us while he chews his sandwich.

“I know your parents love it too,” I tell Dallas loudly.

“I know they'd be very happy for you to shop locally for the rest of your life.”

His head falls with the weight of that thought.

“How long can you last alone?” I whisper.

“I'm becoming good friends with Brennan. That's like trading up.”

I nod to show I like his joke. “But what will you do when Brennan goes shopping? Think about it. My family would like to take you shopping with us and this may be your only chance.”

“It's forever, Max,” he whispers.

“
This
is forever,” I say. “What do you think will happen to you? Look around.”

Dallas turns his head slowly left and right. The zombies are staring at us curiously because we're the only people talking in the whole place.

I head to my hair appointment at 3:30.

“Hello, handsome,” Kim says. “Didn't I just see you at Thanksgiving? You don't usually get a Christmas cut. I was surprised when you called.”

“We're visiting my cousin this year. Mom wants me to look premium.”

“You always look premium. Come to the sink.”

It's unsettling to lean my head back into the porcelain bowl where she spits her toothpaste every morning, but the hot water and scalp massage feel glorious.

“Same as usual?” she asks as she towels me dry. “Not too short? Bit of a fade at the back?”

“Yes, please.”

She sprays my hair with moisturizer. “You ready for Christmas?”

“No.”

She holds up her scissors and smiles in the mirror. “I found my son an old set of tools, almost antique, so even if he already has enough wrenches, it's still a nice conversation piece.” Like she needs more of those. “Old cars have different parts than the new ones, so old tools probably work better anyway,” she adds.

“Who does he work for?” I ask.

She's surprised to hear me ask a question, since I usually don't even answer them. “He works for himself,” she says with a mixture of pride and shame because her son has initiative but he's broke.