The Wikkeling (4 page)

As Henrietta reached the front door, she saw a moving van parked across the street. Several people were carrying boxes from it into a new house that had been erected the previous week. Henrietta saw Gary turn into the drive and enter the house through the garage. He was her across-the-street neighbor. This meant she might see him the following morning at the bus stop, a prospect she didn't choose to dwell on at the moment.

She crossed the narrow petunia border between the sidewalk and her front door, which opened as she approached to reveal her mother, a woman of medium height with Henrietta's closely spaced eyes, ruddy skin, and blockish body. She wore a pair of tan, fitted pants and a loose, white blouse, which made her somewhat resemble a vanilla ice cream cone. She ushered Henrietta inside and closed the door, shutting out the traffic noise.

“How was school?” she asked, giving Henrietta a brief hug.

“It was okay,” said Henrietta.

“No makeup work?”

“I did it fast,” said Henrietta as they entered the living room.

“That's good,” said her mother. “That's an improvement.”

“Hello, Henrietta,” said her father from the living room couch, where he watched the large, flat-screen television that hung in a picture frame on the wall. He was a bland, unobtrusive man dressed in jeans and a gray sweater.

The sound was muted on the TV, and the screen showed an advertisement for bathtub cleaner. Henrietta and her mother sat on the couch with her father, Henrietta between the two of them.

An animated soap bubble gleefully ate the scum ring from around the inside of a bathtub, and then the news resumed. Her father reactivated the sound to listen to the lead story, in which a family who lived in an old house was crushed when it fell in on them. The next story featured a boy who was scratched across the eyes by a cat. The scratch got infected, and the boy had to have his eyeballs amputated.

The ads returned, and Henrietta's dad muted them.

“Henrietta,” said her mother, “stay away from cats.”

“I will,” said Henrietta. The story had scared her.

“Henrietta,” said her father, a note of annoyance in his voice, “why can't you complete your work at school?”

“I'm sorry,” said Henrietta. Her parents had asked her this question before, and her inability to answer it, or change her behavior, was a source of constant friction. She restlessly pushed her hands between the pillows of the couch.

“Sorry won't help you if you get Finished,” said her father. He pointed at her with the television remote.

“Oh, Tom,” said her mother, grabbing the remote from him. “Don't be so hard.”

“Well, she needs to think about it,” said her father. “I don't want her driving a garbage truck the rest of her life.” He looked down at Henrietta. “Do
you
want to be a garbage truck driver, Henrietta? Is that what you want?”

“No,” said Henrietta, staring at the television screen where a magnetic kitchen cabinet door helped a woman lose weight.

“Good,” said her father, folding his arms decisively. He turned to the television also, as an animated toothbrush began to dance in a mouth full of happy teeth.

Later, after eating dinner and watching more TV, Henrietta retired to her bedroom, where she typed her homework on her computer and sent it through the school's automated grading program. Henrietta's homework was generally done quickly and with plenty of mistakes because she didn't proofread.

As she worked, a thought occurred to her. The boy from the bus—what was his name? Gary. With a few keystrokes, she opened the school network. Every student at school had a public page that summarized their performance, which was intended to foster healthy competition.

When Henrietta reached the network's front page, she saw two RedAlerts at the top, and stopped to read them:

REDALERT ONE

AN ISSUE OF DISOBEDIENCE ON A SCHOOL BUS HAS NECESSITATED A CHANGE OF SAFETY HARNESS PROTOCOL. BEGINNING TOMORROW, AUGUST 26, STUDENTS WILL NO LONGER HAVE AUTHORIZATION TO UNBUCKLE THEIR SAFETY HARNESSES UNLESS THE VEHICLE IS IN A FULLY STOPPED POSITION.

Henrietta knew this change had come because of Gary unbuckling his straps. He'd revealed a flaw in the system—that was interesting. She went on to read the next alert:

REDALERT TWO

BEGINNING NEXT WEEK, AUGUST 28, TEXTBOOKS WILL NO LONGER BE USED IN CLASSES. ALL CLASSROOM MATERIALS WILL BE ACCESSED THROUGH THE SCHOOL NETWORK. THIS CHANGE IS FACILITATED THROUGH A PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP WITH TINCAN TELECOMM:
HELPING SCHOOLS HELP CHILDREN HELP THEMSELVES AND US
^™
. TEXTBOOKS HAVE MANY DRAWBACKS. THEY CANNOT BE EASILY UPDATED, THEY ARE HEAVY, AND THEY COLLECT MOLD. AS OF THE IMPLEMENTATION DATE, DISPOSE OF ALL TEXTBOOKS IN A SECURE WASTE CONTAINER.

Henrietta looked at her textbook. She wouldn't miss it. It really was pretty heavy.

She clicked around until she found Gary's network page, with his picture at the top. When she saw his performance ratings, her eyes widened. He was number one in the whole class for both reading and math. His behavior on the bus hadn't been suggestive of great intelligence, but there was no arguing with the statistics. Gary was as high up as she was far down. They were opposites.

At the end of the evening, her mother arrived to tuck her in. She supervised as Henrietta donned her bedclothes, brushed her teeth, and got into bed. She pulled the warm blankets up around Henrietta's ears.

“Did you see the alerts on the school page?” her mother asked.

“Yes,” said Henrietta. “Actually, I saw why, with the seat belts.”

“What do you mean?”

“A boy unbuckled his, and the bus stopped right in traffic!”

Her mom winced. “Why would he do that? Senseless.” She shook her head.

“I don't know,” said Henrietta. But maybe she did know. Maybe Gary had just been fed up.

“Stay away from that boy. Do you know his name?” said her mother.

“No,” said Henrietta. She didn't often lie to her mother, but this seemed like an unusual case. She was curious about Gary, and didn't want to be forbidden from finding out more.

“I'll just check the BedCam quickly,” said her mother, stepping over to the wall, where a small camera was mounted, aimed at Henrietta's bed. The BedCam relayed an image to her parents' room so they could keep an eye on Henrietta during the night. Her mother checked the operations light on the underside of the small unit, and looked at the tiny screen on the back. She frowned.

“What is it, Mom?”

“Henrietta, could you wave at the camera?”

Henrietta waved. Her mother knitted her eyebrows. “I'm going to check this. Keep waving.” Her mother stepped from the room. She heard her call her father.

“Just now?” said her father.

Henrietta wondered what was going on as she waved at the blank eye of the lens. Soon her parents entered her bedroom again and her father inspected the camera, pressing some of the buttons on its back in various combinations.

“What's happening?” said Henrietta, finally putting her hand down.

Her mother tried to find words for a moment, and then said, “Come look.”

She led Henrietta into the master bedroom, which was considerably larger than Henrietta's and featured a wraparound countertop on which sat two computers, two televisions, and countless cell phones plugged into chargers. (Henrietta's father worked for the communications company TinCan TeleComm, so he always had the latest models.)

Also on the countertop was a video screen plugged directly into the output of the live feed from the BedCam. Henrietta looked at the monitor. There on the screen she saw . . .
herself
, in bed, sleeping. But she wasn't in bed. She was standing right here.

“Is it a recording from last night?” she said.

“It isn't built to record,” said Henrietta's father's voice through the wall from her room. “It's a glitch.” Henrietta looked at the image of herself on the screen. It was still, like a photo. She was lying on her side, facing the camera, her eyes closed in sleep.

Henrietta and her mother returned to Henrietta's room, and Henrietta looked at the small screen on the camera itself, which showed the same image. After more fruitless button prodding and empty theorizing, Henrietta's parents gave up.

“We all need to get some rest,” said her mother. “I'll call the company tomorrow. Would you like to sleep with us tonight, Henrietta?”

“I think I'll just stay in my room,” said Henrietta. “I'll be okay.”

“Are you sure?” said her mother.

“I'm sure. I can do it.”

“If you need anything,” said her mother, “even if you're just scared, knock on
our door, or call us.” She gestured to Henrietta's cell phone, which was charging on her bedside table.

Henrietta climbed back into bed and pulled the covers up, and her mother turned out the light and closed the door. The room glowed yellow from Henrietta's nightlight, a plastic canary with a large round body. Henrietta watched the dark square of the malfunctioning BedCam and eventually fell asleep.

S
he awoke just before her alarm went off, thinking she'd heard a thumping sound somewhere in the house. She listened, but it didn't repeat. She got out of bed and changed drowsily into her school clothes, blue pants and a red shirt with a yellow stripe down the back, designed for good visibility. Her room was lit dimly by her nightlight and her computer screen saver. The screen saver was a counting program. At the moment, it was displaying the number 36,548. When it reached 50,000 (in about a month), the computer would shut down and her parents would replace it.

From the other side of the wall, she heard her parents getting up. They were talking, and although the noise was muffled by the wall, Henrietta understood some of the conversation.

“. . . afford to stay if the other houses keep getting bigger,” said her mother.

“We've been over that,” said her father.

“Maybe it's for the best. Get out of this place. Henrietta's House Sickness—”

“It's pointless. We're stuck. And we don't know it's the house's fault, anyway. It could all be for nothing.”