All Good Children Part 4

"Elaine was asking about you today," she tells me. Elaine is a patient at the geriatric center. I adopted her as my community grandparent for a s.a.d.i.s.tic school a.s.signment in grade seven. "Why don't you come for a visit tomorrow?" Mom asks.

I cringe. I would rather eat vomit than go back to that place. Elaine is sweet and funny but that just makes it worse, her being stuck there with thousands of people p.i.s.sing themselves and rotting slowly. "I'm getting my hair cut tomorrow."

"No!" Ally says. "I like your hair long."

"Me too," Xavier adds. His own hair dangles in his tomato soup.

Dallas laughs. The mustache falls off his face into his bowl. He pinches it between his fingers, holds it up dripping like a severed tail. "Max has high-maintenance hair," he says. "We should cut it for him."

"My sister does hair," Xavier says.

"Oh, I wish she'd do me," Dallas says. I smile. Mom rolls her eyes. Ally and Xavier don't get it, but that's just as well.

I go to the cheapest hair salon in the quadrant: Kim's Trims. It's the size of my bedroom, with a wall of mirrored tiles to plump it up. It reeks of hairspray and Kim's musky perfume. She's a middle-aged beautician who lives in a carpark by the highway outside of town. She and three other stylists take shifts at the salon. She probably bathes in the sink where she washes my hair.

Mom says carparks used to be places where people parked their cars before they took a bus to work in the morning. They'd return on the bus at the end of the day and get back in their cars and drive home. The cars would still have gasoline, and the tires would be on, and even the music systems would be in place, just as the owners had left them. That's the kind of safety full employment used to bring.

Now, of course, carparks are places where people live in cars that don't work. They're the hallmark of modern efficiency. When you have a host of vehicles no one can afford to drive and a horde of people who can't afford a home, a carpark makes royal sense. Especially if you live alone, like Kim. Then there's lots of room.

Kim talks so much it takes an hour and a half to trim my hair, and it's only two inches long to start with. Mostly she holds up her scissors and stares in the mirror, waiting for me to answer whatever her last question was.

"Huh?" I say.

"When I was your age, the student council met with the governing board every week to keep the dialogue going," she says. This explains why I zoned out. "But my nephew tells me his student council just chooses the color of the yearbook. It doesn't influence school policy."

I shrug. "I'm not on the student council."

"You should join it."

I laugh. "They wouldn't let me. I missed the past two weeks of school."

"If you let other people make the decisions, you can't complain about what they decide," she says. "That's what I tell my son. He's always got his head in an engine. He doesn't take any interest in what's going on in the world. Then he raises his head and wonders how things got so bad."

I should tell Xavier that the field of hairdressing is wide open to him. It's a legal way to trap people in a chair and force them to listen to you for hours.

"Like the new education program they started this fall," Kim says. "There's not one student council that had any input into that decision."

I wish I'd let Dallas cut my hair.

"My mom cuts my hair," Dallas whispers into his RIG. "That's how the rich stay rich." He would never give anyone else that information. It's like confessing that your parents grow their own meat or knit their own mittens. You might as well sign up at the psychiatric recall center.

He runs a hand through his silky bangs. "Who did you vote for on Freakshow?"

"Zipperhead. You?"

"Juice and Tiger."

I don't comment. Tiger is a teenager tattooed with stripes to complement his pointy ears and golden eyes that are probably plastic. Juice is almost twenty-five and so defective that he leaks from all orifices. There's no way he'll wina"either he'll be exposed as a fake or he'll die of blood loss.

"Who do you think would win in a fight?" Dallas asks. "A tiger or two cougars?"

"There aren't any tigers left."

"I think there's a few in zoos."

"Then a tiger would win for sure."

"I think so too."

Austin shoves his face into the screen. He has a cracked lip, swollen purple ears and white goo on his chin. "Ice cream! Ice cream!" he shouts like an idiot child. "Dad bought me ice cream after my fight. None for you units. Hah!"

Dallas ignores him. "If you could only have one dessert for the rest of your life," he asks me, "what would it be: chocolate cake or ice cream?"

"Xavier told me that chocolate cake doesn't contain chocolate."

"So? Ice cream doesn't contain cream. They still taste good."

"Maybe chocolate cake."

"Me too," Dallas says.

Austin whacks him on the cheek. "Ice cream is better, unit."

Dallas swats Austin's hand away and accidentally hits the ice cream cone to the floor. There's a moment of silence before Austin jumps on Dallas's head. The screen dissolves. It seems that in every two-child family, only one child is normal.

My first day of cla.s.ses falls two weeks into term. Everyone is angry at me for missing so much school. Fortunately, my favorite teacher, Mr. Reese, is taking his weekly hypochondriac day, so I get a midmorning break from the nagging. A subst.i.tute stands at the front of history cla.s.s, wringing her hands as we take our seats. She's young, homely, scared. I can't resist.

I answer the roll call for Pepper Ca.s.sidy before Pepper can get her hand up. The sub squints at me like she thought Pepper was a girl's name but you never know these days. "Maxwell Connors?" she calls out next.

I wait. There's a risk to jokes like this. I might lead the cla.s.sroom fun or I might be laid to waste. Fortunately, word has spread on how I thrashed Tyler last week. Brennan Emery raises his hand and says, "Here." I'm stamped with approval, checked off the list.

When Brennan's name is called, three hands shoot up, all wanting to be him. Montgomery from cheerleading stands to attention. He lowers his voice and squares his shoulders. "I'm Brennan," he says, trying to look straight.

Dallas answers for Montgomery. He snaps his fingers and sings, "Have no fear! I am here!" Dallas is a supreme actor. He played a drag-queen elf in the grade nine Christmas production, and the entire football team avoided him for weeks afterward. He jumps at the chance to revive the role. Mincing opportunities are rare for a fifteen-year-old giant whose entire family is named after parts of Texas.

Pepper answers for Kayla Farmer, the ultimate cheerleader. Pepper wiggles her fingers, jiggles her b.o.o.bs, cheers, "That's me! I'm Kayla. K-A-Y-L-A. That spells Kayla!"

Soon everybody has a new name and personality except the honest kids whose names start with A and B and Tyler Wilkins, whom n.o.body answers for.

I play a premium Pepper, but Dallas steals my limelight. No one can take their eyes off him as he mimics Montgomery, who's flamboyant even for a gay boy. Dallas doesn't hold back. He opens a pack of mints and waltzes up the aislea" literally, spinning and stepping, one, two, threea"past all the girls and average guys, right up to Brennan, who's playing me. "Hi, Max," Dallas says. He leans across Brennan's desk, stretching to pull his shirt up over his muscled belly. He bats his lashes and whispers, "Want a mint?"

Brennan tries not to laugh.

Washington Anderson swears from the desk in front of them. He's Tyler's ugliest goon, a rabid h.o.m.ophobe and racist who's stuck playing his own damaged personality this morning. "You reeking hemorrhage, Richmond," Washington mutters. "Get back to your desk."

Dallas sticks a mint between his teeth and pulls back his lips. He leans close to Washington, daring him to take it.

Washington leaps to his feet and raises a fist.

The subst.i.tute teacher screams.

Dallas lifts himself off Brennan's desk and stands up to his height of six feet two inches, transforming instantly from a happy f.a.g into a serious fighter. He crushes the mint between his teeth.

Tyler hurdles a desk to hover beside Washington. I hop beside Dallas, smiling at the opportunity to kick Tyler's a.s.s again. Brennan stands up next to me with Bay, the biggest, blackest boy on the football team. "You don't want to do anything rash," Brennan tells Washington. The room is silent and tense.

The sub looks from us to the surveillance camera to the door, too scared to say a word.

Dallas smiles at Washington. "Do you have a problem with my mints? Not your favorite flavor?"

Washington snorts and swears, clenching his fists. His eyes gleam with fury. But his grades are borderline and a suspension might get him sent to throwaway school, so he backs off with a muttered, "Outside." The sub resumes her lecture on climate change in the twenty-first century. She stutters so quietly I can barely understand her.

"I'm wasting face time on this?" Kayla asks.

"It's worse than a virtual tutor," Montgomery agrees.

The tension slowly fades, and we pick up our alternate personalities where we dropped them. Brennan sketches, I dance, Montgomery calls a huddle, Dallas and Pepper cheer.

In the hallway, everyone pats my back in thanks for livening up the lecture. I feel supremea"I need successes like this to raise my standing, especially given my height.

"See you at practice," Brennan shouts as he walks down the hall with Kaylaa"quarterback and cheerleader, the love story that never grows old, just more expensive.

Sage Turner, Pepper's best friend, leers after them. "Do you think Brennan's the best-looking guy in school?" she asks.

Pepper glances at Dallas for a moment too long before she says, "I don't know."

Dallas doesn't rub my nose in it. He says, "No way. You know who the best-looking guy in school is?"

Pepper smiles at me and we all shout at once, "Xavier!"

Dallas, Pepper and I sneak to the skate park up the road for lunch. It's empty except for a few kids our age, probably throwaways skipping cla.s.s. Four boys skate around a bowl while two girls watch them, leaning against a railing, sipping on sodas.

Pepper keeps one eye on the boys while she calls her father. "Did Mom find a place for those people we spoke of?" Her parents help relocate New Yorkers whose homes are sinking into the sea. They're an unusually close family. My mother never talks to me about her patients. Dallas's father can't talk to anyone without shouting.

Dallas falls back on his standard topic. "Who do you think would win in a fight? The guy in the black shirt or the Asian kid?"

The Asian throwaway skates up the bowl and somersaults into the air. He lands in a crouch and zooms back down. The white kid dressed in black tries to copy him but chickens out on the somersault.

"Is the fight on skates or shoes?" I ask.

"Skates."

"Maybe the Asian, if the other three don't gang up on him."

Dallas swats my arm and points across the park. "Look!"

Tyler Wilkins is leaning over the railing near the girls, watching the throwaways skate. Washington Anderson steps up beside him, fury still gleaming in his eyes.

The Asian kid and the white kid zoom down opposite sides of the bowl toward each other. They link arms in the center, jerk hard and spin madly before they let go and zoom away laughing. The Asian boy flies up the concrete and flips in the air, lands on his wheels at the top. The girls clap as he takes a bow.

Washington nudges Tyler. He's found an outlet for his rage.

There's a reeking backlash against China these days. The news says it's a result of drought and famine and inflating food values, but that's c.r.a.p. Guys like Tyler and Washington always brim with hatred, and right now they're taking it out on Asians because blacks and Latinos have had enough.

Tyler shouts something at the Asian kida"I can't make out the words, but the meaning is clear. The boy's smile disappears. He looks around the park to a.s.sess his situation.

"s.h.i.t," Dallas mutters.

"I have to go," Pepper says into her RIG. The three of us rise to our feet.

"What do we do?" Dallas asks.

I shrug. "He has three friends."

"I'm not so sure," Pepper says.

The Asian boy skates to the bottom of the bowl where the others stare up at Tyler and Washington. Then the three white kids step away, leaving the Asian kid to stand alone.

"What do we do?" Dallas repeats.

"There's a time to fight and there's a time to walk away," Pepper says.

"Yeah, but which time is this?" Dallas asks. "What do you want to do, Max?"

Last year we would have slunk away, posting the news and photos. But once you stand up to someone, you're expected to keep standing.

I roll my eyes and sigh. I do not want to do what I'm about to do.

I toss my pizza crust into the compost and walk to the edge of the concrete bowl. Dallas moves to my side. It's a shining gesture but it only makes me look short in comparison.

"What do you f.a.ggots want?" Washington shouts.

Everyone looks our way. The girls step back from the railing and whisper. The skaters block the sun with their hands and look up at us. I feel like I should be wearing a cape.

The Asian boy picks up his bag while everyone's distracted. He speeds up and over the edge of the bowl, past us, down the sidewalk, out of the park.

Dallas laughs. "I guess this is the time for flight." He turns to Washington and shouts, "We want to learn to skate like that kid!"

Washington looks around the park, shakes his head and swears, checks his watch.

Tyler rubs his hand up and down the railing and says something rude to the girls. Then he mutters to Washington and they walk away.

The skaters keep their eyes on me and Dallas. The girls wait for something to happen.

"We should get to school," Pepper says.

Dallas puts his arm around her. "What would happen if you got caught off grounds?"

I pull her out of Dallas's embrace. "Imagine the shame," I say.