All Good Children Page 6

  Then hands are on my shoulders, of course they are, tugging, and fingers wrap around my wrist and pull me off him. They get me on the ground and I struggle, why make it easy? They’re putting me in the Pretzel Lock, arms and legs pinned painfully against my back until I calm down. One of the aides is screaming in my ear, frantically trying to subdue me, ha. Her desperation floods into me and pushes all the anger out and I go slack. I can hear Mrs. Henrick somewhere above me, beyond me, placating Billy, asking another kid to take him to the nurse.

  One of the aides releases her grip on my legs and makes her way around the room with Mrs. Henrick, trying to regain control. I let the other aide lift me to my feet and walk me to the door. Barney catches my eye and smiles. I hope he doesn’t think this means we’re friends now.

  “What did you think you were doing in there?” The aide starts in on me, her voice still quivering. Maybe this is the first time she’s had to break up a fight. If she were assisting in one of the normal classrooms she’d be a pro by now.

  Her hands are tight around my wrists, which are pressed into the small of my back, like I’m in handcuffs. I bet she thinks she’s doing something important, something Adult, leading me away, helping me. I bet she thinks she matters.

  “What do you think that kind of violence solves, huh?” She won’t give it up. We take the stairs up to the first floor, round the corner, hurrying down the hall. Heads peek out from the girl’s bathroom. Ooh, drama, come have a look, tell your friends, sell tickets. “What did he do to you? To deserve a broken nose, or worse? There are no problems that can’t be solved by talking it out. Absolutely not one. You could have come to me, or Miss Beverly or Mrs. Henrick, you know that, don’t you?”

  I don’t say anything. We’ve reached our destination, the principal’s office. Well, his waiting room, but I won’t go see him. He only talks to the harmless kids, the class clowns, the peaceful disrupters. I’m here for Jonas Stephens, the counselor. One of. Our school has six, but I’ve only ever been to Stephens. He’s even been to my house, god bless him.

  The aide leaves me here, with one last deep and pouting I-hope-you-know-this-is-for-your-own-good sigh. Stephens’s door opens slowly and dramatically a few minutes later, and a scrawny boy about my age is led out by the hand. His eyes are pink around the corners and he tries to hide this with his hair. He untangles his fingers from Stephens when he sees me, sniffs heartily and walks out of the room without saying goodbye to the good, sensitive, selfless Stephens.

  Jonas Stephens has brown shaggy hair that looks like he spiked it too much in college, trying to fit in with a certain crowd that would never accept him because he was too stocky and too eager. He’s still got the earring in his right ear, but that might be recent, to show he’s “down” with us, the youth culture hasn’t passed him by, no sir, not one bit. His suit is brown to match his hair, a lighter brown than his skin but darker than his eyes. His white dress shirt isn’t tucked in probably because it won’t work around his slightly protruding middle, or again, because it’s the cool thing to do.

  “Ah, Miss Fontaine, we meet again,” he says, smiling. His teeth are yellow near the gums, a smoker. The yellowing on the first two fingernails of his left hand confirms this, but he never smells like smoke. An after work hobby. More power to him.

  He sits behind his big mahogany shield and I sit in a spindly, cushion-less folding chair, my knees nearly touching his desk, my elbows fighting for space between his potted fern and the adjacent chair. It’s a tiny office but it doesn’t take physical space to expand young minds, only hard work and determination. Thank you, inspirational wall posters, bulk manufactured for a profit that has nothing to do with my young mind.

  Stephens begins by clearing his throat, as he always does. I fold my arms across my chest and slump casually lower in my chair, as I always do. Let the games begin.

  “You got into another fight, I see,” he starts, kind of weakly, if you ask me. “Billy Rushman. I got a call from the nurse’s office; he had to be taken to the hospital. Seems you may have broken his nose.”

  I shrug. It’s too much to yawn.

  “This is serious, Jordan,” he says, and it’s obvious he really believes it is. “If he wants to press charges, you could be facing time in a juvenile detention center. Do you understand me?”

  All the restraint in me can’t stop my eyes from rolling. “Don’t count on it,” I say.

  He starts to say something but shuts his mouth fast. He clasps his hands then unclasps them, and his eyes fall to his desk. He’s starting to get it.

  After a long moment, he says, “Jordan.” He stops. Deep breath. “You’ve had your Liaison visit. When?”

  “Monday,” I say. My leg starts to shake. I shift in the chair and tuck it underneath me, awkwardly, but it stops moving.

  “Jordan, you’re aware that this does not mean you’ve been selected for the Summer Program. Twenty-six percent of Liaison visits amount to nothing.”

  “A stay,” I say before I can stop myself. He raises his thick, carefully trimmed eyebrows at me, and the brown in his irises deepens. “You know, like a layover.”

  He shakes his head slowly and rubs his hand against the thin whiskers sprouting over his chin. “Even if you are selected—”

  “Can you spare me the statistics,” I say quickly. “Everyone knows them.”

  “This is important, Jordan.” He leans forward, elbows on the desk, dislodging his pencil case to a precarious edge position but he pays it no attention. His eyes are unblinking. “You have to understand…I need you to understand…your behavior matters, now more than ever. You have to remain civil; you have to retain your humanity. Don’t you understand that? That’s something the Over can never take away from you, Jordan, from any of us. If we become animals, Jordan, if we let ourselves be pushed to that kind of cruelty, that kind of mindlessness, shamelessness… We become everything they want us to be. I won’t let them do that to me, and I refuse to let them do that to you, to any of you.”

  The tears in his eyes stab at me but his words fall crumbling against my ears, broken before they reach me. But he really thinks this matters, he really does.

  “I didn’t break Billy’s nose for them,” I tell Stephens. “I did it because he’s vile.”

  “Then let him bear the consequences of that,” Stephens says, clearly ignoring the obvious conclusion that his broken nose is his consequence. “We can only judge ourselves, through our words and through our actions. We are responsible for the things we do and the people we hurt. We are still and always responsible. That is something we have a choice in, no matter how powerless we feel.”

  “Okay, I get it, I am the captain of my destiny.” Blah blah blah.

  “No.” He shakes his head solemnly, and drops his voice. “That is out of your hands. But you are the captain of your choices now, of how you choose to react to your destiny. You’re the captain of your soul, Jordan. No one owns that but you.”

  We sit in silence then. His wall clock ticks, I lose count. My soul, huh? I’m pretty sure that’s part of the whole body package, and where it goes the soul must follow, round and round it goes, and where it stops everybody knows.

  BACK AT THE HOUSE, I decide not to give Stephens’s note to my parents. Well, it’s not really a decision in the sense that I consciously thought, I shall not pass on this note, just that it is in my pocket and that is where it will stay. He knows I won’t give it to them, that’s why he always calls anyway. It’s just a waste of tree pulp if you ask me.

  Jeremy can’t drive yet but we take the same bus, which drops us off by the dirt road that twists and bends a mile through our wheat fields until it reaches the driveway. He doesn’t talk to me on the bus; he sits in the front behind the driver and buries his face in a book, always. The loudest kids sit in back, hollering and shoving each other, boasting about how many cigarettes they’ll smoke when they get home, how many roaches they snuck in between classes, how many girls they’ve privileged with a backseat romp
. They laugh, they play. I sit by the side exit door and count the stops before our fields.

  On the walk down the road Jeremy continues to read. I point out debris he might want to sidestep, large rocks or deep holes, by periodically calling “left” or “right,” and he swerves, without looking up, in whichever direction I call. I realize the potential for childish havoc here, but Jeremy’s a quiet kid, never did anything to anyone, and besides, I wouldn’t want him to fall on his hands, those are his ticket, according to Mom.

  At the house, Jason’s in the front yard, dirtying his knees in the small herb garden to the right of the walkway. He looks up when he hears our footsteps in the gravel, lays down his trowel. If he still has it out for me he doesn’t let on with more than a stony stare. Jeremy walks right up the porch steps and in through the door without a pause or a glance away from his oh so engrossing pages, but I stop. In the driveway, next to the rambling piece of crap Dad uses to haul dirt and wooden planks around the farm, is Mom’s Honda. She’s never home in the afternoon, unless it’s Sunday, and then only to make us go to church, and then she’s off to the hospital again. Babies don’t stop for religious obligations. Not that I would either, if it were up to me.

  But I do stop, here, right in the yard, right next to her car, and I just look at it. I know what it means, but I can’t add it up, not with Jason right there, bent and sweating and purposeful, working working working. But Mom’s home, and Jeremy just went inside, just like that.

  I hear the screen door creak open, and look to see Dad step out. He’s not wearing his work boots, not even his tennis shoes or loafers, just gray socks. His jeans are free of grass or mud stains, his shirt is bright and white and searing.

  “Come inside,” he says, looking at the grass. “Both of you.”

  He goes back in. Jason gets to his feet and picks up the trowel. Always put your tools away right when you finish with them, wash them and put them away, don’t save it for later, that’s the key to the running of a well-oiled farm, never put things off, especially the small things. So he takes his trowel to the porch and drops it in a bucket of warm water and goes in.

  I bolt.

  It’s stupid and useless and childish but it’s better than going in there and sitting and listening and waiting and holding hands and Kumbaya. I run around the house and vault the stone wall that separates the yard from the woods, so I can bypass the pig pen and chicken coop and take the long way through the grazing field at the other side of the trees, circling back and just running, the tall grass whipping against my legs, scratching, scarring, so I can think.

  But I can’t think, not until I stop, and I don’t stop, not until I reach the barn and climb up to the loft and curl my knees to my chest and press my back to the wall and fiddle with a strand of straw sticking out from the square bales. If I look hard enough I can see the fleas scuttle through the loosely packed strands, making nests, making plans. I break the straw in two, pick up another piece and snap it, pick up another, and another.

  Now I think, I think about her. She came and she told me straight, there was no getting out of it, and I believed her and I accepted it, I’ve always accepted it, what else can I do? But here I am, hiding, waiting, just the same as I’ve always waited, as everyone waits. She told me nothing can save me, she didn’t say it like that but she meant it like that, nothing could save me, and she certainly wouldn’t. The exact opposite, that’s her job description, her choice. Who’s responsible for her choices, Mr. Stephens? Who owns her fucking soul?

  Someone’s coming up the ladder to the loft. I breathe in through my nose and swallow baby powder and lemon hand soap. It’s Mom.

  “Jordan,” she says. I look at her. She’s wearing her Sunday best, of course she is, smart black slacks, casual emerald blouse, bangles round her wrists, not slender but not pudgy either. “Come inside, okay?”

  I can’t even tell her no because something is blocking my windpipe and I realize with disgust that it’s tears.

  “We’re all together, honey,” she says, taking a couple steps toward me, crouching when the roof begins to slant. “We’re all going to be together right now. Please come with me.” She holds out her hand. It’s surprisingly steady.

  “I don’t want to,” I say. I should’ve just kept my mouth shut because the tears come out too, the hot ugly tears, from my eyes, from my mouth, from my everything.

  Then Mom is there, hugging me, or trying to, but I stand up, push my knuckles against my eyes, hard enough to see spots, red and yellow swirls, orange streaks. Her hands are on my shoulders. I break free.

  I take the ladder down and she’s a step above me. At the bottom, I fix my gaze with hers. My cheek throbs.

  “Told you,” I say, and go out the barn doors without waiting for her reaction.

  MAYBE I’M JUST NOT ONE for family gatherings, group activities, circle jerks. I head up to my room without looking at anyone in the living room, ignoring him when Dad calls my name. I have work to do, right? Don’t we all? Or are they only coming for one of us, or two of us? Well, I have inside information so I’m not going to sit around pretending I have a chance. No escape, no savior. Only a bag to pack and a goodbye to avoid.

  When you’re old enough to start going to school like the Big Kids, that’s when they tell you. When you’re old enough to hear things from the Big Kids, stories meant to shock and scare some precious little-girl tears out of you before naptime. Your parents usually want to make sure you come home sob-free, no extra monsters to add beneath the bed, so they sit you down before you go, all hopped-up on sugar cereals and dreams of the unknown, and they tell you, “Sweetie, if you hear the other kids talking about this, do not worry, they’re only trying to frighten you.” And then they tell you the truth, solid and straight, that in six to eight more years, when you’ve reached that far away age of the teenager, something might happen to you, something not good but not bad, something you shouldn’t worry about but something you will have to face. And they give you the Summer Program rundown, abbreviated for your bright eyes and bushy tail: it’s like a special camp, dear, where you’ll do activities and be with other kids your age, and at the end you might not come home. But you might, always remember that, always cling to that, you might.

  The kids at school fill in the rest for you, about Breeders and Feeders and Seeds. Growing up on a farm, no one had to explain Breed to me; I helped Dad deliver four calves before most boys experienced their first nocturnal emission. Breeding is simple mating, human-on-human, not human-on-Over, which I don’t even think is possible. They breed you until you die, and then I guess you become food. Which should tell you what Feed is. No pretense, you’re just slapped onto a silver platter and offered up, body and soul. Seed is murkier, I’ve never gotten a clear picture of this, but it pretty much amounts to a recruitment program. Not for Liaisons, though, those are volunteers. Anyway, you get this rundown, but you just don’t really think about it, you don’t think about it, because you have crayons that need your attention and Susie Haymaker who won’t stop pulling your hair at recess and lines to hurry up and get into before all the chocolate milk is gone. And when you do start to think about it, when you’re older, when reality grows thicker, persistent, no one wants to talk about it anymore, especially the ones who have been through the Summer Selection Program, the ones who made it through on that dangerously slim might.

  Mom never went. She won’t say it out loud but I can just tell, the way she shuts her mouth and looks away, she feels guilty. Dad went, but the only thing he ever says about it was that it “wasn’t too horrible.” Really, Dad? How horrible is too horrible? Give it to me in screams.

  “Jordan?”

  I’m piling my socks into the remaining space of the duffel bag I’ve already packed and unpacked twice this week when Jeremy’s voice creeps up from the top step. He’s standing there with hands clasped at his belt buckle, curiously devoid of his book. His bangs hang loosely over his left eye. He brushes the hair back but it falls again and he
leaves it.

  “I’m not ready,” I say, the words croaking out. I hope there are no toads in the area that might hear it and confuse it with a mating call.

  He shudders, actually shudders, a soft quaking that only moves through his shoulders, and then he swallows. “But she’s here.”

  At first I’m confused and almost yell at him, but then I get it and go to my window. There, in the driveway, boxing in Mom’s little silver Honda, is a plain white utility van, the kind you see TV repairmen driving, or people who want to remain inconspicuous in the movies. Touching my ear to the window pane, hot from the afternoon sun, I can hear that the van’s engine is on. No rush or anything.

  I turn back to Jeremy. He’s still standing there, hands in his pockets now, rocking slightly on his heel, trying to decide what to do.

  “Okay,” I tell him. “I’ll be down.”

  He hesitates then says, “Let’s go back down together.”

  I nod. I finish shoving the socks into the bag and zip it up, and make a quick final sweep of the room. For a second I consider taking one of the stuffed animals but the dust would just upset my allergies, and then my eyes find the beaded bracelet I wore on her first visit, lying on the floor now, pushed up against the boxes that hold up my mattress. I grab it up and slip it on, hiding it under the sleeve of my long shirt. It’s not for her anymore, but I like the way it feels against my skin, tight, secure. I brush past Jeremy without looking at him and take the stairs down faster than I intended to.

  No one’s in the living room anymore and I can hear voices coming from the front porch. I go out, Jeremy right behind me.

  There she is, Miss Omalis, hair exactly the same, casual dress selected from the same Career Woman’s specialty rack, except this time she’s opted for black slacks instead of a skirt, something that can really breathe, really move. She’s standing on the sidewalk in front of the porch, familiar clipboard in hand, reaching up the three wooden stairs to pass something off to my mom and dad, who just stand there themselves, arms at their sides, not taking it. I see that it is three pieces of pink paper, and I know immediately what that means before Mom’s indignant voice breaks the stunned silence.