Rash (4 page)

“I guess.”

“How would you feel if someone called you a pretentious, worthless fool?”

“I guess I wouldn’t like it much.”

“In fact, your calling Mr. Mink a pretentious droog was a verbal assault with intent to inflict emotional trauma, was it not?”

“I was just kidding around. I didn’t mean to bonk him.”

“Second violation: You unfavorably and maliciously compared Mr. Mink’s mouth to an unsavory part of a dog’s anatomy.”

“Technically, that’s true,” I said. “You see, I noticed that when he wrinkled his mouth up the way he does, it looked sort of like a dog’s . . . um . . . rear end. I didn’t mean anything bad by it; I just happened to notice the resemblance.”

“Verbal assault, count two,” said Lipkin, touching the screen of his WindO. “Which brings me to your third violation. Have you been taking your Levulor, Bo?”

“Um, yes. . . .”

“Do I need to order a saliva test?”

“I might’ve forgot this morning.”

“Skipping your Levulor dose is a violation of school policy, Bo.”

“I know.” There is no defense for violating a medication
order, but usually skipping a day or two isn’t taken seriously. Kids forget sometimes.

“Take your Levulor, Bo.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Yes, sir.” I unclipped my medipack from my belt, slid a blue tab from the dispenser, and placed it under my tongue. It dissolved instantly.

Lipkin nodded, then said, “Number four. You were not wearing proper protection during this afternoon’s track-and-field practice.”

“Oh.” I didn’t think they would notice the missing knee-pad liners. Those surveillance cameras must be better than I thought. “I got dressed in a hurry.”

“That is no excuse.”

“I know,” I said.

Lipkin stared glumly at his WindO, shaking his head slowly. “Finally, we have attempted destruction of school property.”

“We do?” That surprised me.

“You threw your helmet on the ground.”

“Wait a second. Those helmets are supposed to be unbreakable. I wasn’t trying to destroy it, I just dropped it!”

“You threw it.”

“There was no malicious intent,” I said.

“Perhaps not.” Lipkin cleared his throat and frowned at his WindO. “Nevertheless, I’m obliged to file a report with the Federal Department of Homeland Health, Safety, and Security.” He looked at me with an openmouthed smile that reminded me of a dog farting, but this time I kept my mouth shut.

I should
have gone straight home after school, but I was all knotted up inside over the thing with Karlohs. I might have been looking at six months on a work farm, and all because of Maddy’s big mouth. I had to say something to her. I had to find out what was going on between her and Karlohs, so I stopped by her house on the way home.

She was in the flower garden behind her house wearing a net over her head and a pair of heavy rubber gloves.

“Hey, Mad,” I said, taking off my helmet.

“Bo! You startled me.”

“Sorry. What are you doing?”

“Picking flowers. You shouldn’t be out here without a net.”

“Why?”

“My mother saw a bee in the garden this morning.”

I looked around, stepping back from the flowers. “I don’t see any bees.”

“You don’t want to take any chances. There’s another headnet in the house. I’ll go get it.”

“I’ll take my chances,” I said.

“You could get stung.”

I shrugged. “I don’t care.”

“Oh, Bo, you’re
dangerous
, you know that?”

“No, I’m not.”

“I heard you
attacked
Karlohs!”

“He had it coming. He . . . You . . .” I stopped talking and took a breath—that was the Levulor kicking in.

“‘You what?” she asked, lifting the net away from her face.

Maddy Wilson looks like a doll: long shiny black hair, big blinking dark eyes, and a pair of lips so delicate and pink that when I looked at them my heart would stop and my throat would knot up and I would turn into a complete idiot. I don’t know how I got so lucky. But I had to know about her and Karlohs.

“Why did you tell Karlohs about my running strategy?”

“Your what?” She blinked a few more times. The left corner of her mouth twitched up into a half smile.

“You told Karlohs about the bear.”

“Oh—your bear story.” Her eyes shifted up and away.

“Well, we were talking and I—”

“Why were you talking to Karlohs?”

“What do you mean? I can’t talk to who I want to talk to?”

I shook my head, then felt a moment of disconnection. The Levulor again, slowing me down. I focused on the flower bed. A small orange insect was hovering over a patch of yellow blossoms.

I said, “I wish you wouldn’t repeat everything I say. Especially to a droog like Karlohs Mink.”

“Bo! How can you call him that?”

“I called him that to his face. It’s true. He’s a droog.”

“No, he’s not! He’s really nice.”

“He’s a droog, and I don’t like it when you talk to him.”

She moved closer to me, peering up at my red face. “Bo?” A little smile on her lips. “Are you jealous?”

“No!” But it was true. I was so jealous I wanted to rip out my heart and grind it into the dirt. No amount of Levulor could contain it. I fixed my eyes on the insect. Was it a bee?

“Bo, what’s going to happen to you?”

“Lipkin’s going to file a report. I could get sent up, but I’m hoping I just get a warning letter from the FDHHSS. In the meantime I’m on probation again,” I said.

“Oh, Bo.” She touched my chest with a rubber-gloved hand. “I worry about you.”

“Then stay away from Karlohs.”

She jerked her hand away. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

“I just did,” I said.

Her face hardened. “I think you should leave now, Bo.”

I opened my mouth to shout something at her—something hurtful—but the Levulor distracted me for that one critical instant, and I looked away, back at the flowers. Before I had a chance to think about it, I snatched the hovering insect out of the air. For a fraction of a second I felt its wings buzzing, then a searing stab of pain erupted in my palm. I let go with a howl.

For three heartbeats I stared at the angry red spot growing in the center of my palm, then Maddy screamed, and I took off running, holding my hand tight to my belly, throbbing with pain and shame.

My mother
pried my fist open and sucked in her breath. “Oh, Bo,” she said.

I hated it when she said that.
Oh, Bo.
I loved it when Maddy said it, but I hated to hear it from my mother.

My hand was on fire. It was the worst pain I had ever felt in my life. I was glad that wild honeybees were almost extinct.

“Oh, Bo,” she said again. “You’ve left the stinger in.” She found the tiny bulbous end of the bee stinger and, using tweezers, plucked it from my palm.

“It still hurts,” I said.

“We’ll put some baking soda on it.” Any normal mother would have called an ambulance, but not my mother. She’d rather give me one of her witch-doctor cures.

“What if I’m allergic?” I said. “I could die.”

“You’re not allergic to bees, Bo.”

“How do you know?”

“Because if you were, you’d already be swollen like a blimp.”

She was mixing a paste of baking soda and water when Gramps shuffled into the kitchen.

“What’s going on?”

“I got attacked by a bee,” I said.

My mother pressed a tablespoon of cool white paste into my palm, then wrapped it with tape. The sharp pain eased to an uncomfortable throbbing.

Gramps said, “Where? On your hand? Whatcha do, take a swat at it?”

“No. It just stung me.”

“Ha! Likely story! Bees don’t sting for fun, y’know.” He opened the refrigerator, reached into the back, and came out with a bottle of his home brew. “I oughta know. I been stung lots of times.”

“Take this, Bo.” My mother handed me a glass of water and a small white pill.

“What is it?”

“Aspirin.”

“I don’t have a prescription.”

“I’m prescribing it for you right now.”

Obediently I swallowed the pill. Another law broken. We Marstens were scofflaws all.

I decided to not mention my little problem with the FDHHSS. My mother would find out about it soon enough—if she hadn’t been notified already. Maybe she wouldn’t check her WindO for a day or so—Mom was pretty lax about things like that.

Dinner at the Marstens’ was a crazy generational triangle. My mother always had her line of quiet chatter going, aiming it straight into my left ear: what she did that day, how many more months Dad was going to be beheading shrimp, the precarious state of the family credit lines, and so forth.

Meanwhile, Gramps would be broadcasting his own conversational thread, usually something about when he was a kid, his voice booming in my right ear.

As for me, I never had much to say, and even if I did I probably couldn’t get a word in edgewise. So I used the time to practice what I call stereophonic listening.

Left ear:
Our Visa representative thinks we’ll be able to borrow seven thousand
V
-bucks a month against Al’s prison wages.

Right ear:
What the hell ever happened to real money? Use to be people only spent what money they earned. Nowadays it’s all Visa bucks. Used to be money was something you could fold and put in your pocket.

Left:
Al says one of the men on his shift sliced off his own thumb. Can you imagine? All those knives!

Right:
Wasn’t a kid in my school didn’t have a pocketknife or two at home. Guns, too. All illegal now.

Left:
I just thank God you’re still here, Bo. I swear there’s a curse on the men in this family.

Right:
One time we went out, me and Pops, drove all the way to South Dakota and bagged nine pheasants. Shot three of ’em myself.

Left:
I just wish your brother would write more often.

Right:
South Dakota. I bet they got a ton of pheasants there now, with hunting illegal.

Left:
Last time he wrote, he said they had his crew doing roadwork west of Omaha. I do hope they’re not making him work too hard. Poor Sam, out there
on that highway, trucks rushing past. . . . I worry about him.

Right:
Nebraska? They use to have lots a pheasants too . . .

I made a game out of trying to find the places where their conversations intersected. Sometimes they could go the entire meal without really connecting.

The next
morning I woke up feeling pretty good. That lasted about three seconds. Then I remembered arguing with Maddy, getting stung, the report Lipkin was filing with the FDHHSS, and the existence of Karlohs Mink. My stomach started to hurt.

I considered taking a sick day. Gramps claimed he used to skip school all the time by faking stomach pains. My pains were real. But if I complained, I’d have to visit our local Philip Morris Wellness Center to get a Certificate of Health before they’d let me back into school. I
hated
Philip Morris. The lines were long, and it would mean another
V
$900 charge to our family Visa account.