Goodhouse (15 page)

Some kid named Carter was always crowding me out of doorways or kicking the bathroom stall door whenever he found me there. Carter had black hair with two patches of white above his right ear. They were like the spots on a fawn. His roommate was Ortiz, an ex–class leader who'd been ousted sometime in middle school and retained a frown-shaped scar on his cheek, a souvenir from his final fight. Ortiz never spoke to me, just watched as Carter made it clear that I was breathing his air and cluttering up his sight lines. I sometimes saw them getting hazed by Creighton, who probably didn't appreciate seeing a ghost of his possible future wandering the campus.

There was another emergency-preparedness drill. It happened while I was on a work detail, scrubbing graffiti off some of the ancient metal fire escapes that still laddered the sides of Vargas. Boys had been carving messages into the metal rails for years. None of it was recent—our chips made it impossible now to even approach the building without clearance—but I was struck by how unchanged our defacement was. In the dorm you could see the same rude pictures, the same threats, boys' names written with a Zero symbol carved over the top—that Zero with a slash. I had seen my own name cut into a window ledge in the bathroom, my own name Zeroed.

This time when a drill happened, when the overhead sirens blared and the woman's voice announced that campus had been locked down, we all disregarded it.

“Don't stop working,” a proctor called. “We're not done here.”

The more drills Goodhouse ran, the more we were prepared to ignore them.

*   *   *

That night, after dinner, Owen and I did one of our extra work details. Students from our dormitory and several others were marched out to weed the large soybean field just to the south of the Proctors' Quarters. It was dusk when we hiked out to the field. Dinner had been especially awful, some sort of stew that recycled the corn grits we'd had for breakfast all week. Owen and I were each given a shovel with a hard plastic blade. Our job was to pull weeds from between the soybean shoots and throw them into large compost bags. Creighton and Davis and several younger class leaders were supervising, but they were far away, little specks of darker blue among our light blue uniform shirts. Fortunately, the field was large enough that we could talk without being overheard or reported.

We worked near the fence that surrounded the Proctors' Quarters, and I kept glancing over at the compound. It looked subtly different. The staff houses had been newly painted or perhaps washed—the gray siding and white trim were crisp, free from the pervasive brown dust that coated everything. The coils of razor wire that topped the fence had also been removed. The main road onto campus ran alongside this field. Razor wire would undoubtedly send the wrong message to visitors on Founders' Day.

After an hour of weeding, my back hurt and I had a rash from the thick embroidered Goodhouse logo sewn into my shirt. It was defective in some way, and itchy. Owen had blisters on his palms. His hands were soft. He had been exempt previously from this sort of work. “Can you pull your sleeves down like gloves?” I said.

Owen shrugged. “They can't keep us here much longer,” he said. The light was fading. The vivid green of the new soybean shoots had gone gray in the dusk, and the school hadn't yet turned on the overhead floodlights. A woman, a proctor's wife perhaps, walked along the fence nearby, smoking a cigarette. I could see her silhouette, her long swishing skirt. Other boys watched her, too. The wives didn't usually go near the fence. They probably didn't appreciate the way we stared at them, like a pack of hungry animals. I looked away.

A cool wind began to blow as the sun set. Somewhere—in one of the houses—the same song played again and again. The words were almost audible, the tune catchy but a little haunting, too, dipping unexpectedly into a minor key. It would have been peaceful if I hadn't been so tired. I picked up a dandelion green and ate it.

“Don't eat the compost,” Owen said.

“It's a dandelion,” I said. “It's gourmet.”

“Maybe if you're a goat.”

I double-checked the location of our class leaders before I answered. “We did it all the time at La Pine,” I said.

“You did it with goats?” Owen asked.

“No, asshole,” I said. “You can eat clover, too. It's good for you.”

The woman pacing along the fence stopped to watch us. We both went back to work. She was maybe a hundred feet away, and when she took a drag off her cigarette, the ember glowed red in the twilight. I could smell the smoke as it floated toward us across the darkening air. Since I'd seen the doctor, I'd been staring at every staff member, wondering if they were who they seemed to be.

“Hey,” I said. I cleared my throat. I tried to make my tone casual. “Do you think you'd know if someone was a Zero?”

“Sure,” Owen said. “You'd know once they tried to set you on fire.”

“Don't be a dick,” I said. “It's a real question. What if I told you there were Zeros here at Ione? How would you pick them out?”

“This isn't La Pine,” he said. “You're not at some backwater school anymore.”

One of the plastic compost bags was too full and it tipped over, sending a cascade of weeds and dirt into the row. I knelt and began stuffing the material back into the bag. “At La Pine,” I said, “they lived with us. The proctors who did it.” I paused. “They knew us.”

“And they'll fry in hell,” Owen said. “Forever.”

But I didn't believe this. Not as much as I wanted to. “Do you think
you
could kill someone?” I asked. “I mean, if you had to?”

“Are you really asking me that? Come on.” Owen looked around again to make sure we weren't being overheard. “This better not be a serious conversation.”

In the distance, Creighton and Davis and the other class leaders called for us to line up. A proctor's voice boomed from a nearby speaker: “Work Detail 15, return your tools.” Boys were gathering up bags of compost and heading toward the main road, where a number of T-4s had arrived. Their curved, canopied tops looked like pale seashells, the sort of specimens I'd seen only in a book.

“You remember that kid you hit with a tray?” I asked.

“What kid?” Owen said, but there had been only one incident. He knew what I was talking about.

“Why'd you do it?” I hefted two plastic sacks of weeds over my shoulder, holding both bags in one hand. Owen was carrying the shovels, his sleeves pulled over his palms. We made our way toward the road.

“Does everything we do have to have a reason?” he asked. A slight breeze picked up and a layer of dust lifted off the field. It hovered and spun.

“Yes,” I said, “it does.”

Later that night, after lights-out, I awoke to the sound of Owen unlocking his trunk. This was nothing new. I heard the rustle of wax paper as he unwrapped graham crackers and little squares of chocolate. I rolled over and tried to concentrate on sleep, but I was so hungry I drooled onto my pillow.

“You awake?” he whispered.

“Yes,” I said.

“Check this out,” he said. I sat up. Owen pulled the cap off a can of paint thinner. He poured a drop into our empty metal trash can. Then he used some sketch paper to make a cone with a little hole at the top like a chimney. He scraped the tip of a match across the floor and set the paper on fire. The trash can blossomed with flame.

“Holy shit,” I said. I scrambled out of bed to get away, thinking maybe he'd completely lost his mind. “Where the hell did that come from?” I couldn't imagine where he'd gotten a match. I stood back and watched as he sandwiched a square of chocolate between two graham crackers. He used a pair of paintbrushes like chopsticks and lowered the food into the flame until the chocolate melted.

“And you gave me shit about stealing a hair clip,” I whispered.

Owen shrugged. “Tastes better melted,” he said. He made one for me, and I was so hungry it was all I could do to keep from cramming the food into my mouth. The flavor was astonishing, earthy and sweet. I wanted more. He unwrapped another bar of chocolate and set a few crackers in front of him.

“Tomorrow—” Owen began, but I cut him off.

“I got it,” I said. “It'll be fine.”

The flame in the trash can faltered and died. Owen reached for more paper and began to fashion another cone. He took extra care this time, folding the sheet, feigning absorption in the task. I watched his fingers as they worked.

“You know why I hit him?” he said. “That kid?”

“Why?” I asked.

“I didn't like the way he looked,” he said, and for some reason this made him laugh, a slightly high-pitched giggle that I'd never heard before. I stared pointedly, making sure Owen had time to register my surprise. “I'm very aesthetically sensitive,” he said, and this made him laugh harder.

“You're sounding a little crazy,” I said.

“Come on, admit it,” he said. “That kid was ugly.”

I shook my head. Owen made another cracker for each of us, and dropped more paper into the trash can. We sat in silence, staring into the flickering orange maw of the fire. The room seemed to disappear; there were no more walls, no limits. Just a portal of light, a shimmering elsewhere.

 

TEN

After breakfast a proctor drove me to the Vargas Administration Building for my hearing. I'd never ridden in a T-4 at Ione. In this particular model, a piece of Plexiglas separated me from the driver. Sometimes, at La Pine, I'd driven the trucks they'd used in the logging camps, and they'd infused me with this same feeling—a sort of liberty—an appreciation of the wind in my hair, of the sky churning overhead. I tried to stay positive, but as we sped up the hill toward Vargas, all the pleasures of freedom seemed vivid but fleeting.

Trees like tall emerald columns lined the main drive. They were some kind of evergreen, and it bothered me that I didn't know the names of the native plants, as I had in Oregon. Dew frosted the ground and tinged the air with the mineral aroma of wet dirt. As we got closer to the building, it looked more imposing. The clock tower stood at least five stories tall, and a pair of turrets with conical roofs flanked the massive front doors. Vargas cast a long black shadow, and I felt the temperature drop as we drove into the shade.

The proctor circled past the entrance and parked on the side of the building. He walked me to a large wooden door that led into the basement. A little plaque on the wall read
ORIGINAL INTAKE DOOR, PRESTON SCHOOL, 1897.
“In Vargas, you have to stay behind the yellow lines at all times,” the proctor said. “Do you understand?”

I nodded. He told me to wait in what was marked as the old delousing room. It had originally housed a chemical pool. There was a plaque here, too, with a photograph of a mustachioed man pulling a rope tied to a partially submerged boy. I stared at the picture, at the boy in his chemical bath. He was in motion, so his face was a blur—a nothing.

After twenty minutes I was called upstairs to sit on a bench outside the door where the committee met. A proctor sat beside me. I sweated through my shirt even though the hallway was heavily air-conditioned. Across from me, hanging on the wall, were pictures of past students, full-color photographs, the Goodhouse success stories: here was a research scientist, there an engineer.

When I was younger, I'd picked out my name, the one I'd hoped to earn when I graduated. It was to have been James Nash. I liked the way Nash sounded—a little old-fashioned but also generic. Nobody would ask me where I was from or how to spell it.

Finally, the door to the committee room opened. Some boy I didn't recognize was escorted out. “Tell them to go fuck themselves,” he shouted. His shirt was ripped partway open and he had a dark stain across his denim pants. Two proctors dragged him down a nearby stairwell. They were touching him. That was bad.

A proctor stepped out of the room and called, “James Goodhouse.” I stood and followed him inside, distracted at first by the narrow pathway of yellow lines on the burgundy carpet. The room was dimly lit. Dark wood paneling covered the walls. It smelled like dust and orange polish. A metal chair stood in the middle of the room. It was clearly meant for me, and it faced a long table where the four members of the committee sat waiting.

Each man had a little brass nameplate and a glass of water. Tanner was perched at the end of the table, looking different up close—plumper, less like a dried-out man sheathed in paper bags. He adjusted his glasses as he scrolled through something on his handheld. To his left sat an older man. His nameplate read
MR. MAYHEW.
His yellowing hair had been raked directly back. Beside him was Dr. Beckett, my intake psychiatrist. He was a bald man with a very thick black beard, and his mouth looked like a little pink fish caught in a thicket. I tried to make eye contact with him, but he seemed preoccupied. Beside him sat a fat man wearing red cowboy boots and a bolo tie. His nameplate read
MR. M. HAWKE.
I wondered why anyone would be stupid enough to wear a cord around his neck, but I instinctively quelled that thought.

“Next up,” said Tanner, “we have the case of James, number 7783. Everyone should have the file. James, please sit.” He gestured to the chair. I sat, and two proctors stood behind me. I lowered my gaze. The feet of the chair were bolted to the floor.

“I'd like to open the discussion by asking if there are any comments from staff.” Tanner looked pointedly at Dr. Beckett, but it was Mr. Mayhew who spoke first.

“He's always been very polite in my class,” he said.

“I don't believe he's in your class,” said Tanner.

“Oh.” The man frowned at his handheld. “Which number is this?”

“It's 7783,” said Tanner. “James is a recent transfer student charged with theft and predatory violence. On May 25 he stole from his host family, and that evening he attacked a class leader.”