A Better World, page 20
She was locked tight, arms crossed and looking away. Linda was reminded of the monkeys that speak, hear, and see no evil. Linda’d always thought the monkeys meant that if you didn’t engage the evil, it didn’t exist. It occurred to her for the first time that the opposite was true. It meant evil was everywhere. Inescapable.
“Did they put you up to it? They’re afraid you’ll tell on them?”
“No. They were fine with what I did. But they probably don’t like that I got caught. People around here don’t like trouble. They don’t like being friends with anyone in trouble.”
Linda felt sad to hear that. She’d wanted to believe it had been someone else’s idea. “How can they not be talking to you? You’ve been going out, haven’t you? I know you got a ride home today.”
“It doesn’t mean they talk to me.”
“Why else would they give you a ride or hang out with you if you weren’t getting along?”
“They’re polite, Mom. It’s their thing.”
“That sounds more complicated than it ought to be.”
Josie stayed looking at the floor. “You know Jeanette with the different-colored eyes—one’s blue and one’s brown?”
“I do.” Jeanette was striking, refined, always had some hot companion’s arm wrapped around her.
“She said she like-liked me,” Josie said. “On Samhain.”
Like-like. So, this expression was still used. “Did you like-like her back?” Linda asked.
Josie shrugged. “I said I did. I’ve never had somebody. The rest of them have all dated somebody. They’ve done… more.”
Linda listened. Wanted so much to offer advice. “So, were you a couple?”
“I thought so,” Josie said, “but it was a joke. She was only joking.”
Linda felt the contents of her stomach bubble. Oh, the humiliation of the fake ask-out. “Then what happened?”
“She laughed about it. They all did. So, I laughed.”
Linda wanted to tell her daughter to punch their dumb goddamned faces. As if reading her mind, Josie added, “It’s that or be alone.”
“Can’t you hang out with other kids?”
Josie sneered. It was ugly, and it made Linda sad. “They’re losers. They get teased so bad. You sit alone, you get teased. You sit with the wrong group, you get teased. I’m in with the right group. All I have to do is make it two and a half more years here, and I can leave, Mom. I’m at BWU and fuck them.”
“Yeah,” Linda said, tears coming to her eyes. “What about Hip? Does he get teased?”
“He would, but he’s with Cathy and she’s untouchable.”
“Right,” Linda said. “Because of her parents. You feel pretty stuck, don’t you?”
Josie shrugged, like Linda had no idea. Like she was some kind of moronic alien life-form. “I feel stuck, too,” Linda said, the words surprising her as they came out.
“You do?”
“It’s so stifling,” Linda said. Stifling. She’d thought the word, but she’d never allowed herself to consider it. She’d pushed it down like a weighted floater in the Hudson River.
“You feel trapped, too?” Josie asked with surprise.
“I’m not myself here. I’m this pleaser…” Linda said, realizing for the first time that what she was saying was how she really felt. It had been like a pill stuck in her throat for months, unwilling to dissolve. “I don’t say what I think. I just agree… I’m not even sure I like the person I’m becoming.”
“So?” Josie asked.
Something was happening, here. Linda could feel a wall in Josie coming down. She wanted very much to say the right thing.
“So, I don’t know,” Linda said. “You’re not alone.”
“I am, though,” Josie said. “Can you go away?”
* * *
That Wednesday was a half day. Linda met Russell at his office for the department party.
Each staff member brought a plus-one, so there were twenty people in all. Streamers and paper caladrius sat on desks or hung from ceilings. Trim, young dayworkers with their hair pulled back passed hors d’oeuvres. Linda had been seeing the same crowd for so long that these fresh faces felt new, like a date night.
“Delicious cocktails,” Russell said.
“But also fussy. Like a tuxedo shirt with ruffles,” Linda answered.
“Or a bonsai plant.”
“I hate bonsai plants. I mean, what the hell?”
“I love them. I mean, what the hell?” Russell said, which was funny but also true. He loved bonsai plants; she found them horrifically controlled.
An hour in, with the help of his assistant, Heinrich climbed up onto the desk outside his office and made a speech about what a great job they were all doing defending the company. Their sister town was making great progress on another new synthetic that was set to launch the next year. Science was leading the way, and there was no stopping it. “In Plymouth Valley we trust!” he cried. Then everyone toasted with their absinthe-dipped pisco sours.
Linda pointed out the altar to Russell, upon which someone had broken raw eggs, so they were exposed and rotting. The ventilation was so efficient that they were hard to smell. “What and why?” she asked.
He kissed the back of her hair. “Let’s enjoy the mystery.”
She went over to the altar, inspected the three eggs. In each, the clear albumin had congealed. Green mold ran in veiny lines all through. Words were scratched into the wood over which the eggs rested:
Beware the Sacrifice
Russell joined her, his arm around her waist. “If we ask someone, they’ll tell us it’s nothing,” she said. “Just for fun.”
With hesitation, he stated like a question: “Maybe it is nothing? Or at least, not our problem?”
The party, though cocktails and not dinner, lasted four hours. The twentysomething assistant got happy-drunk, a middle-aged lady fell asleep at her own desk, and someone’s wife puked, which Linda discovered because she entered the bathroom when it happened.
Linda was washing her hands, thinking that the stalls there were the same size as the ones at Sluggs, where she’d taken Russell so many years before. They’d been so young back then. In old pictures, their faces looked as unformed as dough.
She heard gagging. She bent down, saw kitten heels pointed at the toilet. “Are you sick?”
More gagging.
“Can I get you some water?”
“I’m totally okay!” a cheerful voice answered.
Linda came out. The woman did, too. Then Linda laughed. “It’s you!”
It was Tania Janssen, the woman from the bakery, who’d come to the PV Hospital with her baby after the fire, worried the child had cancer.
Linda went to the sink, poured water into one of the glasses against the backsplash, and handed it to her. Tania swished and spit. Water ricocheted. Linda pretended not to notice that it had landed on her hand and blue silk party dress that she’d only just gotten from the Fabric Collective.
“Is everything okay?”
Tania shrugged. “I’ve got a PhD in this stuff, but I gave it up when I got pregnant. I never liked the work. Numbers. Who cares! I get so bored at places like this. These nights never end. You’d think we could play cards or go for a walk or something. Maleek usually keeps me home. I’m an indoor cat.”
Linda nodded with understanding. “It’s too much booze and it’s bad getting drunk but it’s worse building the tolerance and getting used to it.”
Tania smirked. “The baby’s fine, by the way. My mom’s watching her. And I’m not worried she’ll be sick. At least not this year.”
“This year?”
“The Parkers already got sick this year,” she said. “After the fire, I thought they might die, so then it would have been some other kids forced to hold black ribbons at the Winter Festival. But they didn’t die.”
“What?”
Tania took the glass, flung it inside the stall, where it shattered against the seat. Glass projectiled back, slamming Linda’s legs without breaking skin.
It felt surreal. Impossible. “What the hell are you saying? Why did you do that?”
“Oh, that’s right, you’re new,” Tania answered. “Don’t worry. Someone always cleans it up.” Then she popped a breath mint and walked with drunken precision back into the bustling party.
Linda stayed a minute in the solitary bathroom. She didn’t dry her legs. Drips ran down. The wash sinks were three side by side. A mirror along the wall traversed their expanse. She saw herself. A pretty woman in blue silk and done hair whose grays she’d recently dyed back to brown. A rich woman, who’d lost weight but nonetheless grown soft. Linda could see this in her own expression, which had lost all certainty.
She headed back out to the party, opening the door to laughter and music. She didn’t hear it. She was outside it all, watching open mouths and red lips and glinting teeth. People with glasses of imported wine toasted rotting eggs on an altar for a god she did not know. She saw her husband among his friends, looking happy and accepted, his eyes following every movement, every word issued, in what appeared to her like submission.
* * *
At first light Thanksgiving morning, Linda drove Josie to the police department.
“Next time you beat up a stop sign on Samhain, I guess you wear a mask,” Linda said.
Instead of chuckling or rolling her eyes, Josie started crying. Lonely crying, where just her eyes were wet and she was trying her best to hold it in. Linda pulled into the police department lot, put the car in park, and waved her hands at the outside—the police department, Plymouth Valley, the nice houses and shops, the pleasant people. “None of this is as important as you are. You know that, don’t you?”
Josie’s voice sounded low and old. “What does that even mean?”
“I mean, relax. Don’t take this all so seriously.”
“That’s what I thought you meant,” Josie answered, disappointed.
She’d failed to answer the question correctly. But Josie didn’t explain. Instead, she got out of the car, her broad back hunched.
It took Linda a second—sometimes the right thing needs to percolate before it becomes apparent—then she followed Josie inside. She found Officer Galani standing with Josie and two other kids who looked to be in their late teens. A skeleton crew was working reception and the desks in the back. Thanksgiving decorations had been tacked to the walls: folded tissue paper caladrius ornaments, a host of white feathers stuck into an apple on the altar.
“Great!” Galani called. “We’re all here. Today’s going to be fun. So many chairs to arrange!” he announced with mock enthusiasm—the way everybody talks to teenagers, like they’re hip to the fact that kids hate adults, which is what makes the power structure so especially funny. The kids looked at their running shoes, glancing occasionally at one another.
Linda’s worries eased. Okay, nobody was going to question Josie about what had happened. She wasn’t going to get in extra trouble, or need a lawyer, or get yelled at. In fact, this kind of punishment made sense. It would give her a sense of closure and community, without belaboring the crime. Kids get in trouble. They do dumb things.
“We’re good, Mom. She’s in good hands,” Cyrus said.
Linda moved to kiss Josie’s cheek. Josie backed up to avoid her.
“Call me if anything comes up. I’m always here.”
* * *
About an hour later, the remaining Farmer-Bowens were dressed and ready to go in new sneakers and warm, breathable jackets. Hip took the back of the car. “Did you know that corporations have the same rights as human beings?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Linda and Russell both answered.
“Cathy’s dad says corporations are more trustworthy to work for the common good than regular people.”
“They probably are,” Russell said, though he wasn’t paying attention. He was following a text chain that had been going around his office, half work related, half fun.
“Bee Ess,” Linda said. “A corporation marketed Glamp to everybody without health insurance on the East Coast.”
“Cathy’s dad says they do bad things because everybody does bad things, but the sum value is positive. Through the lens of history, the sum value’s all that matters.”
“I love Lloyd Bennet, but that man needs to get out more if he really believes that,” Linda said. They were a kilometer from the race and already parking was limited.
“Do you think Josie’ll be able to come later?” Russell asked.
“No idea. But she’s got her device. She’ll let us know. Did you talk to her?” She’d asked Russell to check in with Josie about what had happened with the stop sign and had reminded him twice.
“Hm?”
“Did you talk to her?”
“I’ve been getting home too late. Not yet.”
She pulled into the Caladrius Parking Lot, and the three of them walked toward the crowded starting line for the race. Halfway inside the park, Hip found Cathy in a pretty wool cloak and tennis shoes, an inauspicious combination for a race. Linda expected they’d walk the whole thing, chatting about existence, philosophy, and the great corporation.
Russell found his crew: Heinrich, Lloyd, and the rest. Linda joined Daniella and Rachel up closer to the start line.
“I’m just glad we’ll have less of these fuckers running around, eating my garbage,” Rachel said, low. True to Daniella’s word, she appeared vigorous and sober. The lines Linda’d gotten used to seeing under her eyes were gone. She looked ten years younger.
The Plymouth Valley Anthem, a song to the tune of “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down,” began to play. “I haven’t done this in years,” Linda said.
“Don’t worry. Nobody here’s looking to break a record,” Daniella said.
The crowd of about 3,500 jogged in place and stretched hips, thighs, and calves. At least a hundred penned-in caladrius clogged the podium, bumping around and gnawing the inedible wood stage. Dumb little monsters.
“You know, I saw this once before at Anouk’s house—caladrius penned together. But I thought they were solitary. I was told if they’re kept together,” Linda said, “they’ll fight.”
“It’s not indiscriminate. Discriminatory? They gang up and pick on one,” Daniella answered.
“It’s community building,” Rachel joked.
“Plymouth Valley,” Anouk called from the podium. “We’re here today to celebrate community. Let’s all give each other a sign of goodwill and peace.”
The crowd became a sea of gratitude prayer hands. Linda bowed to the person closest to her. The call was “May the wind be at your back,” and its response was “May you never come in last.”
This was not done with amused smiles. It was serious.
A man to Linda’s left offered his hand. She shook it, noticing only then that it was Percy Khoury. He wasn’t wild eyed like he’d been at the hospital and the soccer sidelines. Now, he appeared sluggish. She suspected lithium. “May the wind be at your back,” she said.
His eyes flashed with recognition, and she may have been wrong, but she thought she saw kinship there, too. “Beware the Great White,” he mumbled.
“What?” she asked.
But he’d turned to Amir Nassar. “Never come in last,” he mumbled, back on script.
Up ahead, Kai Johnson left the group of men he was with, including Russell and Jack, and walked back to Rachel. “Jack’s up to something. Run hard. Don’t stop. Make it a personal best,” he told her.
“I’ve got CEO in the bag. You worry too much,” she answered. Then she kissed him. They held one another. It warmed Linda’s heart.
“And now!” Anouk announced: “The Beltane King will do the honors.”
Keith Parson emerged from behind his mother, his costume that same skintight black jumpsuit, only he’d removed the mask. His movements were loose, like a cartoon jester’s, and she remembered his shamble back in the tunnels.
“On your mark.” He didn’t shout, but his deep voice carried. “Get set.” His eyes surveyed the crowd. Linda felt her shoulder with her hand. It had ached for days after pushing past him. His eyes found her. They stayed on her. They weren’t happy.
“Go!” he shouted.
It took a few moments before there was room to move. They were separated by heats, each wearing chips that activated once they crossed the starting line, for an exact race time. Suddenly, there was room. The three of them were jogging. Slow, at first. Anouk waved as they passed and they waved and hooted back. The road opened. Daniella and Rachel shot out. Linda sprinted to keep up.
Uh, oh.
Daniella and Rachel weren’t an anomaly. Everybody was running fast. Top speed. Didn’t they know this was a 5K? Were they really going to hold this pace for the entire race?
Linda panted, pushed herself. Her lungs burned. It wasn’t fun. It was hard. They passed the one-kilometer mark, where she noticed the map. It looked a lot like the Labyrinth below—turns upon turns that made a perimeter.
The sound of thousands of runners, shoes slapping, is a mix between rain and applause. You feel it coming up from the road and through you. The sound drowned under her heartbeat, her panting breath.
Going south, they passed the two-kilometer mark. Vaguely, she recognized Gal’s side of town, but this knowledge went nowhere, because all conscious thought was this: I can’t do this. I can’t keep up.
They rounded a corner. Her knee twinged. Her untested sneakers pinched. Guys, won’t you slow down? she wanted to ask. Isn’t the point of this to do it together, not to come in first? But probably, like most things around there, she had that wrong. The point was the performance: to come in first, to show strength, or not run the race at all.
Winding, winding. They approached Gal’s house. It had been repaired, the back half rebuilt and painted fresh. A hatchback was parked in the driveway. Linda felt her scalp recede over her skull, her hot limbs break into goose bumps: that was Gal’s car from the lot that night of the fire. Was she home so soon from the hospital?
“Have either of you visited Gal since the fire?” Linda blurted, loud and for everyone around them to hear.
“Did they put you up to it? They’re afraid you’ll tell on them?”
“No. They were fine with what I did. But they probably don’t like that I got caught. People around here don’t like trouble. They don’t like being friends with anyone in trouble.”
Linda felt sad to hear that. She’d wanted to believe it had been someone else’s idea. “How can they not be talking to you? You’ve been going out, haven’t you? I know you got a ride home today.”
“It doesn’t mean they talk to me.”
“Why else would they give you a ride or hang out with you if you weren’t getting along?”
“They’re polite, Mom. It’s their thing.”
“That sounds more complicated than it ought to be.”
Josie stayed looking at the floor. “You know Jeanette with the different-colored eyes—one’s blue and one’s brown?”
“I do.” Jeanette was striking, refined, always had some hot companion’s arm wrapped around her.
“She said she like-liked me,” Josie said. “On Samhain.”
Like-like. So, this expression was still used. “Did you like-like her back?” Linda asked.
Josie shrugged. “I said I did. I’ve never had somebody. The rest of them have all dated somebody. They’ve done… more.”
Linda listened. Wanted so much to offer advice. “So, were you a couple?”
“I thought so,” Josie said, “but it was a joke. She was only joking.”
Linda felt the contents of her stomach bubble. Oh, the humiliation of the fake ask-out. “Then what happened?”
“She laughed about it. They all did. So, I laughed.”
Linda wanted to tell her daughter to punch their dumb goddamned faces. As if reading her mind, Josie added, “It’s that or be alone.”
“Can’t you hang out with other kids?”
Josie sneered. It was ugly, and it made Linda sad. “They’re losers. They get teased so bad. You sit alone, you get teased. You sit with the wrong group, you get teased. I’m in with the right group. All I have to do is make it two and a half more years here, and I can leave, Mom. I’m at BWU and fuck them.”
“Yeah,” Linda said, tears coming to her eyes. “What about Hip? Does he get teased?”
“He would, but he’s with Cathy and she’s untouchable.”
“Right,” Linda said. “Because of her parents. You feel pretty stuck, don’t you?”
Josie shrugged, like Linda had no idea. Like she was some kind of moronic alien life-form. “I feel stuck, too,” Linda said, the words surprising her as they came out.
“You do?”
“It’s so stifling,” Linda said. Stifling. She’d thought the word, but she’d never allowed herself to consider it. She’d pushed it down like a weighted floater in the Hudson River.
“You feel trapped, too?” Josie asked with surprise.
“I’m not myself here. I’m this pleaser…” Linda said, realizing for the first time that what she was saying was how she really felt. It had been like a pill stuck in her throat for months, unwilling to dissolve. “I don’t say what I think. I just agree… I’m not even sure I like the person I’m becoming.”
“So?” Josie asked.
Something was happening, here. Linda could feel a wall in Josie coming down. She wanted very much to say the right thing.
“So, I don’t know,” Linda said. “You’re not alone.”
“I am, though,” Josie said. “Can you go away?”
* * *
That Wednesday was a half day. Linda met Russell at his office for the department party.
Each staff member brought a plus-one, so there were twenty people in all. Streamers and paper caladrius sat on desks or hung from ceilings. Trim, young dayworkers with their hair pulled back passed hors d’oeuvres. Linda had been seeing the same crowd for so long that these fresh faces felt new, like a date night.
“Delicious cocktails,” Russell said.
“But also fussy. Like a tuxedo shirt with ruffles,” Linda answered.
“Or a bonsai plant.”
“I hate bonsai plants. I mean, what the hell?”
“I love them. I mean, what the hell?” Russell said, which was funny but also true. He loved bonsai plants; she found them horrifically controlled.
An hour in, with the help of his assistant, Heinrich climbed up onto the desk outside his office and made a speech about what a great job they were all doing defending the company. Their sister town was making great progress on another new synthetic that was set to launch the next year. Science was leading the way, and there was no stopping it. “In Plymouth Valley we trust!” he cried. Then everyone toasted with their absinthe-dipped pisco sours.
Linda pointed out the altar to Russell, upon which someone had broken raw eggs, so they were exposed and rotting. The ventilation was so efficient that they were hard to smell. “What and why?” she asked.
He kissed the back of her hair. “Let’s enjoy the mystery.”
She went over to the altar, inspected the three eggs. In each, the clear albumin had congealed. Green mold ran in veiny lines all through. Words were scratched into the wood over which the eggs rested:
Beware the Sacrifice
Russell joined her, his arm around her waist. “If we ask someone, they’ll tell us it’s nothing,” she said. “Just for fun.”
With hesitation, he stated like a question: “Maybe it is nothing? Or at least, not our problem?”
The party, though cocktails and not dinner, lasted four hours. The twentysomething assistant got happy-drunk, a middle-aged lady fell asleep at her own desk, and someone’s wife puked, which Linda discovered because she entered the bathroom when it happened.
Linda was washing her hands, thinking that the stalls there were the same size as the ones at Sluggs, where she’d taken Russell so many years before. They’d been so young back then. In old pictures, their faces looked as unformed as dough.
She heard gagging. She bent down, saw kitten heels pointed at the toilet. “Are you sick?”
More gagging.
“Can I get you some water?”
“I’m totally okay!” a cheerful voice answered.
Linda came out. The woman did, too. Then Linda laughed. “It’s you!”
It was Tania Janssen, the woman from the bakery, who’d come to the PV Hospital with her baby after the fire, worried the child had cancer.
Linda went to the sink, poured water into one of the glasses against the backsplash, and handed it to her. Tania swished and spit. Water ricocheted. Linda pretended not to notice that it had landed on her hand and blue silk party dress that she’d only just gotten from the Fabric Collective.
“Is everything okay?”
Tania shrugged. “I’ve got a PhD in this stuff, but I gave it up when I got pregnant. I never liked the work. Numbers. Who cares! I get so bored at places like this. These nights never end. You’d think we could play cards or go for a walk or something. Maleek usually keeps me home. I’m an indoor cat.”
Linda nodded with understanding. “It’s too much booze and it’s bad getting drunk but it’s worse building the tolerance and getting used to it.”
Tania smirked. “The baby’s fine, by the way. My mom’s watching her. And I’m not worried she’ll be sick. At least not this year.”
“This year?”
“The Parkers already got sick this year,” she said. “After the fire, I thought they might die, so then it would have been some other kids forced to hold black ribbons at the Winter Festival. But they didn’t die.”
“What?”
Tania took the glass, flung it inside the stall, where it shattered against the seat. Glass projectiled back, slamming Linda’s legs without breaking skin.
It felt surreal. Impossible. “What the hell are you saying? Why did you do that?”
“Oh, that’s right, you’re new,” Tania answered. “Don’t worry. Someone always cleans it up.” Then she popped a breath mint and walked with drunken precision back into the bustling party.
Linda stayed a minute in the solitary bathroom. She didn’t dry her legs. Drips ran down. The wash sinks were three side by side. A mirror along the wall traversed their expanse. She saw herself. A pretty woman in blue silk and done hair whose grays she’d recently dyed back to brown. A rich woman, who’d lost weight but nonetheless grown soft. Linda could see this in her own expression, which had lost all certainty.
She headed back out to the party, opening the door to laughter and music. She didn’t hear it. She was outside it all, watching open mouths and red lips and glinting teeth. People with glasses of imported wine toasted rotting eggs on an altar for a god she did not know. She saw her husband among his friends, looking happy and accepted, his eyes following every movement, every word issued, in what appeared to her like submission.
* * *
At first light Thanksgiving morning, Linda drove Josie to the police department.
“Next time you beat up a stop sign on Samhain, I guess you wear a mask,” Linda said.
Instead of chuckling or rolling her eyes, Josie started crying. Lonely crying, where just her eyes were wet and she was trying her best to hold it in. Linda pulled into the police department lot, put the car in park, and waved her hands at the outside—the police department, Plymouth Valley, the nice houses and shops, the pleasant people. “None of this is as important as you are. You know that, don’t you?”
Josie’s voice sounded low and old. “What does that even mean?”
“I mean, relax. Don’t take this all so seriously.”
“That’s what I thought you meant,” Josie answered, disappointed.
She’d failed to answer the question correctly. But Josie didn’t explain. Instead, she got out of the car, her broad back hunched.
It took Linda a second—sometimes the right thing needs to percolate before it becomes apparent—then she followed Josie inside. She found Officer Galani standing with Josie and two other kids who looked to be in their late teens. A skeleton crew was working reception and the desks in the back. Thanksgiving decorations had been tacked to the walls: folded tissue paper caladrius ornaments, a host of white feathers stuck into an apple on the altar.
“Great!” Galani called. “We’re all here. Today’s going to be fun. So many chairs to arrange!” he announced with mock enthusiasm—the way everybody talks to teenagers, like they’re hip to the fact that kids hate adults, which is what makes the power structure so especially funny. The kids looked at their running shoes, glancing occasionally at one another.
Linda’s worries eased. Okay, nobody was going to question Josie about what had happened. She wasn’t going to get in extra trouble, or need a lawyer, or get yelled at. In fact, this kind of punishment made sense. It would give her a sense of closure and community, without belaboring the crime. Kids get in trouble. They do dumb things.
“We’re good, Mom. She’s in good hands,” Cyrus said.
Linda moved to kiss Josie’s cheek. Josie backed up to avoid her.
“Call me if anything comes up. I’m always here.”
* * *
About an hour later, the remaining Farmer-Bowens were dressed and ready to go in new sneakers and warm, breathable jackets. Hip took the back of the car. “Did you know that corporations have the same rights as human beings?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Linda and Russell both answered.
“Cathy’s dad says corporations are more trustworthy to work for the common good than regular people.”
“They probably are,” Russell said, though he wasn’t paying attention. He was following a text chain that had been going around his office, half work related, half fun.
“Bee Ess,” Linda said. “A corporation marketed Glamp to everybody without health insurance on the East Coast.”
“Cathy’s dad says they do bad things because everybody does bad things, but the sum value is positive. Through the lens of history, the sum value’s all that matters.”
“I love Lloyd Bennet, but that man needs to get out more if he really believes that,” Linda said. They were a kilometer from the race and already parking was limited.
“Do you think Josie’ll be able to come later?” Russell asked.
“No idea. But she’s got her device. She’ll let us know. Did you talk to her?” She’d asked Russell to check in with Josie about what had happened with the stop sign and had reminded him twice.
“Hm?”
“Did you talk to her?”
“I’ve been getting home too late. Not yet.”
She pulled into the Caladrius Parking Lot, and the three of them walked toward the crowded starting line for the race. Halfway inside the park, Hip found Cathy in a pretty wool cloak and tennis shoes, an inauspicious combination for a race. Linda expected they’d walk the whole thing, chatting about existence, philosophy, and the great corporation.
Russell found his crew: Heinrich, Lloyd, and the rest. Linda joined Daniella and Rachel up closer to the start line.
“I’m just glad we’ll have less of these fuckers running around, eating my garbage,” Rachel said, low. True to Daniella’s word, she appeared vigorous and sober. The lines Linda’d gotten used to seeing under her eyes were gone. She looked ten years younger.
The Plymouth Valley Anthem, a song to the tune of “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down,” began to play. “I haven’t done this in years,” Linda said.
“Don’t worry. Nobody here’s looking to break a record,” Daniella said.
The crowd of about 3,500 jogged in place and stretched hips, thighs, and calves. At least a hundred penned-in caladrius clogged the podium, bumping around and gnawing the inedible wood stage. Dumb little monsters.
“You know, I saw this once before at Anouk’s house—caladrius penned together. But I thought they were solitary. I was told if they’re kept together,” Linda said, “they’ll fight.”
“It’s not indiscriminate. Discriminatory? They gang up and pick on one,” Daniella answered.
“It’s community building,” Rachel joked.
“Plymouth Valley,” Anouk called from the podium. “We’re here today to celebrate community. Let’s all give each other a sign of goodwill and peace.”
The crowd became a sea of gratitude prayer hands. Linda bowed to the person closest to her. The call was “May the wind be at your back,” and its response was “May you never come in last.”
This was not done with amused smiles. It was serious.
A man to Linda’s left offered his hand. She shook it, noticing only then that it was Percy Khoury. He wasn’t wild eyed like he’d been at the hospital and the soccer sidelines. Now, he appeared sluggish. She suspected lithium. “May the wind be at your back,” she said.
His eyes flashed with recognition, and she may have been wrong, but she thought she saw kinship there, too. “Beware the Great White,” he mumbled.
“What?” she asked.
But he’d turned to Amir Nassar. “Never come in last,” he mumbled, back on script.
Up ahead, Kai Johnson left the group of men he was with, including Russell and Jack, and walked back to Rachel. “Jack’s up to something. Run hard. Don’t stop. Make it a personal best,” he told her.
“I’ve got CEO in the bag. You worry too much,” she answered. Then she kissed him. They held one another. It warmed Linda’s heart.
“And now!” Anouk announced: “The Beltane King will do the honors.”
Keith Parson emerged from behind his mother, his costume that same skintight black jumpsuit, only he’d removed the mask. His movements were loose, like a cartoon jester’s, and she remembered his shamble back in the tunnels.
“On your mark.” He didn’t shout, but his deep voice carried. “Get set.” His eyes surveyed the crowd. Linda felt her shoulder with her hand. It had ached for days after pushing past him. His eyes found her. They stayed on her. They weren’t happy.
“Go!” he shouted.
It took a few moments before there was room to move. They were separated by heats, each wearing chips that activated once they crossed the starting line, for an exact race time. Suddenly, there was room. The three of them were jogging. Slow, at first. Anouk waved as they passed and they waved and hooted back. The road opened. Daniella and Rachel shot out. Linda sprinted to keep up.
Uh, oh.
Daniella and Rachel weren’t an anomaly. Everybody was running fast. Top speed. Didn’t they know this was a 5K? Were they really going to hold this pace for the entire race?
Linda panted, pushed herself. Her lungs burned. It wasn’t fun. It was hard. They passed the one-kilometer mark, where she noticed the map. It looked a lot like the Labyrinth below—turns upon turns that made a perimeter.
The sound of thousands of runners, shoes slapping, is a mix between rain and applause. You feel it coming up from the road and through you. The sound drowned under her heartbeat, her panting breath.
Going south, they passed the two-kilometer mark. Vaguely, she recognized Gal’s side of town, but this knowledge went nowhere, because all conscious thought was this: I can’t do this. I can’t keep up.
They rounded a corner. Her knee twinged. Her untested sneakers pinched. Guys, won’t you slow down? she wanted to ask. Isn’t the point of this to do it together, not to come in first? But probably, like most things around there, she had that wrong. The point was the performance: to come in first, to show strength, or not run the race at all.
Winding, winding. They approached Gal’s house. It had been repaired, the back half rebuilt and painted fresh. A hatchback was parked in the driveway. Linda felt her scalp recede over her skull, her hot limbs break into goose bumps: that was Gal’s car from the lot that night of the fire. Was she home so soon from the hospital?
“Have either of you visited Gal since the fire?” Linda blurted, loud and for everyone around them to hear.
