The Wikkeling (3 page)

DUMBIETTA

It had been thrown by Clarence or Clarice. Such airplanes were a common part of Henrietta's History and Nutrition periods. Since most of the kids had
watched all of the history movies already, and because they weren't getting graded, they made mischief of one kind or another. Henrietta plucked the craft from her lunch and was about to toss it into the garbage when she stopped suddenly. She felt a strange sensation, like someone was standing next to her. It was a creepy feeling, and it made her heart skip a beat: it was the feeling that preceded one of her headaches.

A moment later, the headache began. It wasn't too bad yet. It was still small. But it might get worse. Henrietta understood, though her parents had never said it aloud, that a headache could get bad enough to kill her. She was one of those kids who might not make it. She might not grow up.

Henrietta fished her pills from her pocket and ate three of them. She waited in perfect stillness, one hand still holding the forgotten airplane. After an unknown amount of time, she noticed that the credits for F
OUNDER
, H
UMANITARIAN
, F
ORWARD
T
HINKER
were rolling past on the screen. She turned and saw her classmates lining up behind Ms. Span. Carefully, she stood and joined them.

Henrietta had suffered headaches for a few years, since she and her parents had moved into the old house they lived in now—in fact, her mother thought it was the house's fault, and the doctor they'd seen had agreed, saying kids raised in old homes sometimes became House Sick. The cause was unknown, but something about those old places was not good for children. Maybe some kind of toxin. They were told they should move, but unfortunately they didn't have enough money to live anywhere else at present.

Henrietta's headaches, though supposedly caused by her house, seemed to strike her everywhere but at home, and they always followed the same progression.
First, it seemed for an instant like someone was standing next to her. Then the headache began behind her eyes, and either dissipated or grew. Henrietta either felt better or went to the hospital.

Today, she felt better. Though she was hungry because she'd eaten nothing during History and Nutrition, relief swept through her when she returned to the classroom. Such moments of recovery constituted the greatest joys of her life. She was so happy that when Ms. Span resumed the typing practices, she produced exactly what she was supposed to, and didn't become distracted.

At the end of the school day, Ms. Span displayed the class's statistics: They were in the top forty percent for the district, which meant they were in Good Standing. If they could keep that up, they'd do fine on the Competency Exam, so Ms. Span ended in a good mood.

Henrietta still had to stay after, though. As the other students left to wait for the buses, Henrietta began to retype her practice sentences.

At the front, Ms. Span previewed the following day's System Approved Lessons (SALs) and leafed through Student Statistical Profiles (SSPs) to see if there was any way to leverage a Competitive Advantage Boost (CAB). She was just starting at the school this year, so none of the students knew her very well. She was generally strict, but Henrietta knew another side of her, which sometimes emerged when the two of them were alone during detention after class.

“Henrietta, your work is looking excellent,” Ms. Span said, removing her reading glasses and squinting out across the rows of empty desks. “If only you
could perform this well
during class
, you'd be one of the top students.”

“Thank you, Ms. Span,” said Henrietta. She did have a knack for schoolwork, and the extra practice she endured in detention had further developed the aptitude.

Ms. Span projected Henrietta's detention and classtime statistics next to one another on the screen. “Why do you have such trouble, Henrietta?” she asked. “It isn't sensible.”

“I don't know,” said Henrietta. Her detention statistics showed her to be extremely fast and accurate, while her class scores were terrible. Even she was a little confused about it. “I just feel . . . nervous, sometimes.”

“Because you get made fun of?” said Ms. Span.

“Yes,” said Henrietta. But there was more to it than that. After class, when she and Ms. Span were alone, the work seemed more important, and she felt like she and Ms. Span were a team. This never occurred during class, when everyone competed on a curve. To do better during class meant someone else did worse, and to be singled out meant either you were failing or you were causing others to fail. The best success was to remain unnoticed, right in the middle, and that was pretty boring. Henrietta didn't say any of this to Ms. Span, though. Neither of them could change the way the school worked, and earning detention every day, for Henrietta, was a kind of clever solution to the problem. Not that she felt clever. She felt stupid.

When she completed her extra work, she glanced at her cell phone to check the time. She hadn't missed her bus yet.

“Thank you, Ms. Span,” she said, standing.

“Thank you for your good effort, Henrietta. Let's try to do better tomorrow, all right?”

“I'll try, Ms. Span,” said Henrietta, and she pulled her backpack onto her shoulders and departed for the bus. Ms. Span clicked a button, and her computer screen read:

STUDENT 3421836 LOG OUT CLASSROOM 7434 16.46.345 [UTC]

Henrietta arrived at the parking lot turnaround just as her bus was preparing to leave. One thing she liked about detention was that she didn't have to stand around with the other kids and wait, friendless. She boarded, found a seat, and began to buckle herself in with a lap belt, two shoulder belts, and a head belt, all designed to assure her survival in the worst imaginable crash.

Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket—her mother calling to see if she needed a ride. Fortunately, as soon as she fastened her last buckle, an automated message appeared on her parents' phones:

STUDENT 3421836 SECURED BUS#1056 ETA 16.46.345 [UTC] STOP 342

The blue warning light over her seat extinguished, indicating to the bus driver that she was fully secure. Around her, other kids talked excitedly and amused themselves, making a racket despite their restraints. The master safety light at the front came on, glowing yellow as the front doors closed and the engine rumbled to life. The bus rolled into the traffic jam.

Gridlock wound unceasingly through nearly every part of the Addition. The cars were packed in the streets, coughing out the city's familiar charred, floral
scent of exhaust. Its citizenry succeeded splendidly, labored diligently, recreated briefly, saved sensibly, and spent frugally their short lives in the dense grid of interlocked developments.

The bus crept over perfect asphalt surrounded by a fleet of garbage trucks emitting hazy, yellow-brown streams of lilac-scented particulates. Henrietta looked across the aisle to the seat opposite and saw a boy there she didn't recognize. He was her age, with straight black hair and thick, black eyebrows, locked tightly to his seat by the same network of straps that contained Henrietta and everyone else.

As soon as Henrietta's eyes landed on him, he turned to her, as if on cue. “I hate this!” he exclaimed, and without a pause, he unbuckled all of his safety straps. “Yeah!” he shouted, stretching his arms and sticking his legs out into the aisle.

“Put those back on!” said Henrietta.

There were immediate consequences for him. The yellow safety light went out at the front of the bus, and the blue warning light glared to life above his seat. The bus's engine stopped and then the bus stopped. A thousand messages erupted from outside:

“
YOUR PARENTS
CAN
AFFORD
A BIGGER, BETTER HOUSE
FOR YOU AT NEWVIEW ESTATES
!”

“
YOU'RE NEVER TOO YOUNG FOR YOUR FIRST CAR
—
NOW AT LURMY'S!
”

“
IS YOUR CELL PHONE A TINCAN?
IT BETTER BE!
”

These were Honk Ads, activated by all of the drivers whose vehicles were now stuck behind the bus. Each car horn blared a different advertisement, many
of them responding to the presence of the school bus by advertising to the children inside.

“
EDIBLE CLEANTASTE CORN SOAP—IT'S
THE CANDY OF SOAP!
”

Henrietta heard squealing tires as commuters tried to merge into other lanes, and the horns overlapped into nonsense.

The boy froze. He hadn't realized that this would happen, apparently.

“Don't worry,” Henrietta whispered to him through the din. “You'll just get a warning. He doesn't want to be off schedule.”

The boy shot Henrietta a worried glance as the driver, a large man wearing a yellow jumpsuit, walked back along the aisle, glaring at every pair of children along the way. When he reached the new boy he frowned down at him and said, “Name.”

“I forget!” said the boy, grinning ridiculously.

The driver produced a scanner from his belt, pointed it at the boy, and looked at the screen. “Gary,” he said.

“Scary!” quipped a child further back on the bus.

“Scary Gary!” said someone else.

“
Scaredy
Gary!” said a third student.

Hilarity ensued. Henrietta laughed too, even though she felt bad for the boy. She knew what it was like to be made fun of, but it also felt kind of good to make fun of someone else for a change.

“Okay, Mister,” said the driver. “I'm issuing you a warning for releasing your safety belt, and a detention for insubordination.” As he said this, he scribbled
with a plastic stylus on the small screen of the scanner. Then he reached out, roughly rebuckled Gary's straps, and lumbered back to the front, restarting the bus and entering traffic again. “
IT'S TIME FOR A LURMY'S EGG SANDWICH!
” one last Honk Ad announced.

“You shouldn't have aggravated him,” said Henrietta.

“Thanks for telling me
now
,” Gary replied.

“Well, I didn't know you were
stupid
,” Henrietta shot back. That was the end of their conversation.

Henrietta soon recognized the familiar streets of her neighborhood. Because her school was nestled into the Addition's perfect grid of streets, the landmarks Henrietta watched for were older buildings, which signaled the closeness of the Old City. Instead of walls of shiny mirrored windows, the older buildings were dull concrete, stained with traffic exhaust. Henrietta's parents often mentioned how ugly such buildings were, but Henrietta liked them because they meant she was almost home.

Usually she was the only one to disembark at her stop, but today as the bus rolled up, she heard another set of straps release as she released hers. When the door opened and she stepped into the aisle, Gary stood as well.

Henrietta tried not to look at him. She exited the bus and walked to the intersection as the driver stopped Gary and lectured him about the importance of safety. She crossed when the signal turned. Then she heard Gary's voice rise over the din behind.

“I'm sorry!” he yelled. Was he talking to the bus driver or her? She didn't wait to find out.

Henrietta's house stuck out like a sore thumb on her block. It was the only old house, the only house without a front yard, and the only house with a steep, shingled roof. It had originally belonged to Henrietta's grandmother, who had given it to Henrietta's parents two years ago when she'd married her longtime friend Al and moved with him to Sunset Estates retirement community, far into the Addition. The old house was rundown, leaky, cramped, and full of the strong smell of lilac air freshener, which Henrietta's mother used to cover the dusty, mildewy smells of age.