All Good Children Read online

  “I need further assurance.”

  “Would you like to meet?”

  A sudden, asphyxiating gravity blooms inside my chest. I’m nodding, shutting my eyes against this new, foreign pain.

  “Mrs. Fontaine, are you still there?”

  “Y-yes.” I swallow. “Yes, I’d like to meet.”

  “I can be at your house in—”

  “No, no. Not there. The house is…it’s a mess. Completely trashed. Been a little, um, preoccupied. A restaurant, or maybe, let’s see, a park or…some place public.”

  “I understand. I’ll text you an address, meet you in thirty minutes.” She hangs up in a single breath. Seconds later, my phone alerts me of a new text. I would call Jay and tell him I’d be late but I don’t know how late I’ll be, or if I will be back at all.

  The jerk behind me bleats his horn again. Guess he doesn’t understand sign language. I pull out of the space and wave him in, smiling.

  Omalis chose the lobby bar of some ritzy upscale hotel twenty miles outside of town near the airport, the kind of place whose clients are too well-groomed to express emotion over the day’s events, the staff too well-trained. It’s hard to even tell if anyone’s heard anything—it’s like a warm bubble of afternoon champagne and business trip dalliances. I feel on edge; I feel like a needle.

  Of course I’m early. No—check my watch—right on time. Why do I always forget she plays these games too. Even her business card, writing her personal number on the back—that’s a game, too, and I’m not the only player.

  I scan the lobby bar, the red leather booths empty save for me, in a corner, red-shaded lamp an inch above my head, beaming its dim light down on my seltzer water. There’s a trio of suits at the bar, a TV on but as far away from breaking news as you can get—a prerecorded airing of last year’s sports highlights. The bartender, a woman about my age, wipes out glasses and stacks them under the counter. Faceless people pass by beyond the porthole windows of the bar’s double doors but I try not to look that way. I don’t want to see her coming, I just want her to appear. The difference between dying by a cancer or by a bullet.

  I can’t stop seeing their faces in my mind. Can’t stop hearing their voices. Only what I’m seeing and what I’m hearing isn’t fond, isn’t even pleasantly indifferent—it’s the last time I saw them. That damned last day. Jordan’s welt a condemnation, Jeremy’s tears a reminder, Jason’s stoicism a burial. How could I let them be taken away from me? How could any of us let this happen?

  When I read the names of the countless dead from today’s massacre in tomorrows newspaper, I guess I’ll have my answer. In the meanwhile, fuck this seltzer; I order a Tom Collins.

  Fifteen minutes late, Omalis sashays in on her cell phone, speaking in hushed tones, hangs up before she reaches me. She’s wearing black slacks, a plain white top, subtle makeup. I’m still wearing my errand-running yoga pants, track jacket top. She signals the bartender and the woman meets us at the table.

  “What’s your drink?”

  I eye Omalis. She eyes the drink. She tells the bartender, “Another Tom Collins.”

  I’m tempted to slow-clap her small deductive feat, but the impulse calls to mind Jordan’s face, her trigger-happy palms whenever Jeremy painted by the numbers completely in the lines—so proud of himself—and her there, slow-clapping him back into perspective. Now I’m tempted to cry.

  Omalis sits across from me, our knees miles apart beneath the table. She folds her hands atop the marble as if I should be reassured by her transparency.

  “What can I do to get them back?”

  “There is nothing you can do, Mrs. Fontaine. You have to wait—”

  “Bullshit. Don’t pretend like you don’t strike deals—”

  “I don’t strike deals.”

  “—all the time, behind closed doors, for the rich, or someone who has something you need. What the Over need.”

  “I do not wish to indulge you.”

  “For fuck’s sake, will you speak to me like a person? Like a god-fucking-damn human being?”

  The others in the bar turn to look. She’s unflappable, almost smug.

  “You are still human, aren’t you?”

  “Mrs. Fontaine, your children are safe—”

  “I think you have the wrong definition of that word.”

  “I understand you’re upset, but if you insist on interrupting—”

  “I insist.”

  We stare through the silence at each other. Her drink is delivered, and she slides it next to mine with the back of her hand.

  “You think I don’t know anything about you, Miss Omalis. You think you’re as a ghost in this. The Holy Spirit, delivering souls to Heaven.”

  “No.”

  “No? Right. You don’t believe that shit. Because you’re a smart lady, intelligent. You haven’t been brainwashed. By fear, maybe—we all have—but not by belief.” I take a long drink, dribbling a little on my chin, not bothering to wipe it away. “You survived the war.”

  “Is that a question?”

  I shake my head. “Bet I know how.”

  “You’re a lot like your daughter, Mrs. Fontaine.” She raises an eyebrow, quirks her mouth annoyingly. “She’s quite inquisitive herself. Strong-willed, as well.”

  I ignore this, that she could know anything about my child, who she is or how alike we are. Instead, I push out the things I know about her in a barely-contained fury.

  “You bargained for your life, or someone did. You couldn’t have been very old—” I look her over “—maybe eleven, twelve. So someone bargained for you. Someone begged the Over for your life and they gave it to you—or some semblance of it. Because they’re willing to deal, even if you aren’t. So… Take me to them. I’ll negotiate face to…in person, if you refuse to do it.”

  She sits so still, but I can tell she is thinking about all I’ve said. There’s a shift, not in her face or her eyes, but in her entire being. It’s a quaking not seen but only felt, separating the air around us, pulling all oxygen closer to her and exhaling it in measured shards, cutting her as it escapes. I can’t see it, but she bleeds.

  “Yes,” she says. Her voice is changed, more raw yet somehow more guarded. “My life was bargained for.”

  “Then you can understand.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ll take me to one of them?”

  “No.”

  I nearly dive at her, my elbow grazing the glasses on the table, upsetting them. “If I strike at you, they’ll come, they’ll—” She grabs my wrist, eases it down to the safety of the table top.

  “I will take your offer to them,” she says. “But, June, you cannot think of this as hope. Do you understand? Whatever it is I can give to you, it will not be that.”

  “I believe you.”

  God help me, I believe.

  ELEVEN

  JORDAN

  OMALIS. GOD FUCKING DAMMIT.

  A week ago, hundreds of people die, thousands, just like that, like you blink and there’s a corpse, there’re a hundred corpses, and more to come. Not even enough time to scream. Here at the camp, we have plenty of time, six long weeks—down to two now—to scream our throats raw if we want to, if we want to make that kind of trouble for ourselves, very well. But those clueless people, all those average Janes and Joes never did anything worth the end they got. They only had time to think, I should run, and then, nothing. Not one fucking thing.

  We watched it on TV, all of us in the dining hall. Our counselors wheeled in this huge television and switched on the news before anything had even happened yet, because they knew, they knew what was going to happen. Just when I think these people can’t get any sicker. What were we supposed to do after we saw that? Go back to our arts and crafts projects? We cried, or we hugged each other, or pleaded to talk to our parents. We screamed. Well, I didn’t.

  They herded us back to our cabins after the showing, where I went straight for the bathroom and pried up the loose tile. No thoughts f
or the razor, but I’d stashed my pills there, and if I ever needed what good ol’ American psychiatric science could give me, now was the time. I took three, just to make sure they’d work. Calm me down, keep my head on straight, my mouth shut tight. No need to stir things up, at least this week.

  It was hard that day and night, with all the noise, all those girls talking under around and over each other, cycling from anger to despair and back again. How gravely pointless. Taylor spent the night in my bed, just kind of curled against me and stony silent. I’d like to say it was welcome and warm, but really it was just kind of nothing, kind of a cold, hard nothing. And the next day, all these girls with their bloodshot eyes and puffy cheeks were led right out to the flagpole to start their day like nothing had changed, like we should forget what we saw and continue on because what choice do we have. Except that things had changed, and the counselors knew it, and the guards knew it, that was why they had handguns now.

  The guns were handcuffed to the guards’ wrists through the trigger guard. These I call guards because they are not our counselors, they’re new. They wear riot gear, helmets with bulletproof visors, and lead-plated body suits. A few of the girls resumed their crying at the mere sight of these new people, who slowly took up their positions, surrounding us. One of the counselors took up a bullhorn and called for attention. No pledge of allegiance this morning.

  “Campers,” shouted the bullhorn. “In response to yesterday’s unfortunate events, the Over have instituted several policy changes effective immediately. Their authority has been disrespected, and in turn, ours, as your caregivers and mentors during your stay here, has also been undermined. In a show of solidarity expressing your willingness to continue your respectful cooperation with the Over during all camp procedures, we hereby order all of you to surrender any and all personal possessions.”

  Puzzlement enshrouded the group. We looked around, clearly missing something, as all our personal possessions were confiscated on the bus we took to get here.

  Our gracious host clarified, “This means your attire.”

  It’s not like we all hadn’t been naked in front of each other before—like when we first met, exchanging our civvies for our prison uniforms under duress—but this was different. Purposely cruel instead of going through the motions. I scanned the crowd for Taylor; somehow we got separated on the trek out here and I lost her. All around the field, the girls started to react, breaking free of their shocked stasis in a fit of collective denial. And at the edge of it all, in our periphery and at our shoulders, the guards with their guns. It was almost welcoming, certainly fitting. Finally not hiding anymore.

  “If you do not comply immediately,” the counselor calmly explained, and a clicking like a thousand beetles thundering their mandibles swallowed us—the guards thumbing back their hammers. They took aim at the outer rim of girls. “Measures will be taken.”

  Just do it, I thought, just come right out and murder us already. End this waiting around bullshit, just—

  “Oh Jesus oh shit.”

  It was Taylor, right beside me as if she’d been there all along, pressing her shoulder into mine and grabbing for my fingers, which I realized as she touched my knuckles had been balled into tight fists. Her skin was slack and pale, the shadows under her eyes like bruises, courtesy of the sleep she couldn’t chase down.

  “Now!” shouted the bullhorn, and shrieks erupted, thinking this was the call for the guards to open fire. But they held fast, and the outer rim of girls tried to push into the middle, and I thought, this must be what fear smells like, sweat made potent with desperation, thick streaks of saline on plump and reddened cheeks. So sharp and so sweet. No wonder the Over love us so much.

  Now everyone was pushing, elbows jabbed there, knees stabbing here, and there were a lot of screaming voices, until, finally, someone started undressing and everyone stopped to watch her. She took her clothes off slowly, kind of defiant but really just crying away the whole time, shaking so much I thought she’d fall down, but she stripped herself to nothing and walked right up to a guard and held her pile of clothes for him. When he didn’t take it, she laid it gently at his feet and stepped, calmly as she could manage through the sobbing, back into the circle. And just like that, the other girls fell in line, following her stoic example.

  Taylor let my hand go and slipped her thumbs under the waistband of her sweats. “Jordan, don’t look at me, okay?”

  We stood back to back and undressed.

  Soon there was a jumble of clothes on the ground and everyone was too scared or too ashamed to look at anyone or anything other than the pistols still pointed at their faces. Even though the counselors eyed us, there were too many bodies, too much pink and brown and tan and white flesh to see through to our scars. Mine, I didn’t care so much about, they already knew it was there, but I felt some anxiety for Taylor’s, so small yet so glaring on the outside of her hip. I hoped she had the presence of mind to at least try to cover it with her hand.

  A kind of angry yet resigned silence descended upon us. The guards lowered their guns. You could almost hear the birds gabbing away in the distant trees.

  The counselor raised the bullhorn. “Thank you,” she said. “That wasn’t so hard. You see, things do not have to be so difficult. We’re all here to get through this. It can be easy and as painless as possible, or it can be like this. Please get dressed.”

  Silently, we complied.

  As we dressed, the bullhorn continued to bleat out: “Tonight, we will enact one of our new policies. A lottery that is to be repeated each night for the duration of your stay. In addition, nutrition will now only be provided every other day, on reduced rations, until we, and the Over, feel you fully understand how important is your obedience. Until this evening, you are to report to your group mentor who will dole out your examination assignments for the afternoon. Dismissed.”

  At first no one moved. Then, slowly, as the guards cautiously turned their backs to us and marched away, our crowd began to disperse in all directions, heading for their group buildings as instructed.

  I wanted to vomit. I reached my hand out behind me to try for Taylor’s but all I got was air. She was gone, and I caught sight of the back of her plodding off to catch up with her group. I watched her until she disappeared around the dining hall. And then I found my group and followed them.

  Later, after a late morning track and field session with my fellow group mates—a solemn affair, although Thirty-three did clock her best sprint time which usually sends her and her friends into mutual masturbatory giggles of admiration, but only got a polite perfunctory clap this time—my legs on fire and my stomach beginning to feel its emptiness, I caught up with Taylor outside the boathouse. I saw her bum a cigarette from her favorite counselor and duck inside, while the counselor moved off toward the lake. There was a guard patrolling around the shore, handcuffed gun rattling against his thigh, but he was heading away from the boathouse and the counselor joined him. I waited for them to get a little further along the shoreline before I followed after Taylor.

  She was leaning her back against a wall, flicking ash onto a fallen bird’s nest at her feet. On the floorboards right beside it were the three little swallows, their scraggly necks broken or their internal organs burst from the fall, or maybe starved if their mother couldn’t find them, I don’t know, but anyway, they were dead. It was such a pitiful thing to see, I couldn’t even breathe.

  “Why didn’t you do something?” Taylor’s voice was low, directed at the tiny bird corpses, so that I thought she was talking to them until she actually looked up at me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Earlier today, at the flagpole.” She pulled at the cigarette and held in the smoke.

  “I…I don’t know. Nobody did anything. There wasn’t anything anyone could do.”

  She let the smoke out in a haphazard billow. “Yeah, there hasn’t been anything anyone can do since we got here, but you still did something. On the bus, when you just toss
ed your shoes out the window like it was nothing—”

  I almost gasped but tightened my jaw. I didn’t know she’d been there for that, or the humiliation that followed.

  “—and confronting your bitch mentor during group—one of the other girls told me about that. And this—” She took two broad steps toward me and lifted my shirt to reveal my name. I jerked away from her instinctively.

  “See?” She went on. “You’re always doing something, some small ‘fuck you,’ even if it doesn’t change anything, even if you know it won’t save you because nothing can. But today. You just stood there, like everyone else.”

  I can’t really say exactly what I felt right then after she said all that, but it was somewhere in the vicinity of how I felt that time Mom found one of Jason’s joints in my sock drawer and wouldn’t let up about it for, like, a week. It wasn’t really my fault but I took the blame because she was so mad, and not just mad, I mean, I’d never heard her like that, like really overcome, like she just couldn’t believe it, how stupid I could be or how callous. She just kept saying, “What about your brother? What if Jeremy had found this?” Like he’d even know what to do with it, but whatever. Yeah, she was upset and, I guess the term is, beside herself, and it made me feel, I don’t even know, responsible or something. Culpable. Even though the joint wasn’t even mine. Anyway, when Taylor said that to me, I just, I felt the same way, or somewhere close, and I didn’t know how to respond to her.

  She kept her eyes on me as she finished her cigarette and stubbed it out on the floorboards. I sighed, saying finally, “Taylor… Those guys had guns. It was too much, you know?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it’s all too much, it’s all been too much.” She turned away from me and bent down near the bird’s nest. Extending an index finger, she slowly stroked the dead swallow’s spine.

  “You read any science fiction?”

  The change of subject threw me and I lost my voice. She went on, “Well, there’s this story I read once a long time ago. I remember I liked it a lot back then.”