I have to bite my tongue to keep from crying, I"m so exhausted. My blood washes warm against my teeth.
"Now we"ll check the trailer," he says.
I don"t go inside with him. I stare at the ground because I don"t want my grief-stricken face on camera. When I reach the back of the trailer, out of view, I start to shake. I bite my lips and wipe my nose and groan and hyperventilate and stomp the ground and do everything I can to keep from crying like a baby. I bang my face on the trailer wall and I like the feel of it, firm but with a little give, so I do it harder and harder, in the dead center of my forehead, and it feels like nirvana is just one knock away. But it"s not a typical zombie move, so when I see Dallas at the corner, watching me in confusion, I know I"m wrecked. He"s going to rat me out.
"What the h.e.l.l do you want?" I say, sniffing my weakness up my nose.
He stares blankly, silhouetted by the winter sun.
"Come here," I tell him.
"I am here."
"Closer."
He hesitates, but then he takes one step, out of view of the cameras.
I grab on to his winter coat and slam him against the trailer.
"Ow!" he says. "Stop this. I want you to stop."
"I don"t care what you want."
He frowns and tries to pry my fingers off his clothing.
"We"re supposed to meet tomorrow at my apartment," I say. "You"ll tell your father you"re at the library, but you"ll come to my place instead. You told me to come and get you if you don"t show up. Do you remember that?"
He pulls on my thumb but otherwise ignores me.
I shake him, rattling his shoulders into the wall. "Do you remember that?"
"I remember that, but it was wrong. It"s wrong to force someone to do something they don"t want to do." He gives up on my hands. He unzips his coat and pulls his arms out of it, leaving it empty in my grasp.
He"s walking away, and I can"t accept that. I plow into his back and tackle him to the ground. He tries to roll me off, but I slam my knee into his spine and force his head into the dirt, my elbow jammed in his temple.
"You come over tomorrow morning," I say. "Or I"ll come to your house and haul you out of it."
He lies there, unresisting.
"You hear me?"
No response.
I worry that I might have hurt him. If he takes medications I don"t know about, I might have rattled his brain into a seizure. "Dallas? Dallas, are you all right?" I get off him, turn him over, stare into his vacant eyes.
He blinks. He sits up and wipes the dead gra.s.s and dirt off his cheek. He rises to his feet and brushes off his uniform.
"Are you all right?" I repeat.
"I"m fine." He picks up his coat and turns to leave.
"No!" I shout, pulling him back. "No way! You"re not leaving till you promise to come over in the morning."
He shakes his head. "I have work to do in the morning."
"No, you don"t." I grab the gray lapels of his uniform and pull him closer. "I"m taking you with me."
He brushes at my fingers. "That would be wrong."
"I"m not leaving you here!" I scream those words, and I can"t stop screaming them. I shove him hard into the wall, over and over, stabbing my knuckles into his ribs. "I"m not leaving you here! I"m not leaving you here!"
"Stop!" He peels my hands off him and holds them in his fists.
"There is something wrong with you. You need to see a doctor."
Suddenly I"m fighting tears again. All my tensiona"hours and days and weeks of ita"starts to leak out of me. "I"m not leaving you here," I whisper and choke. "I"m the only person who cares who you are. I"m the only friend you"ve got."
He smiles and lets go of my hands. "All our schoolmates are my friends."
I smack his head.
His eyes darken and he gathers himself, tight and tense. "I have to go." His voice rumbles deep and low. It"s an awful sound because it"s almost real and my hope rises to the bait.
"Dallas?" I try to catch his eye, but he stares at my hands where they cling to him.
He clenches his jaw. "Let go of me." He leans into me, wraps his hands around mine, crushes my fingers.
I wince but I can take it. "Dallas? Is that you?"
He wrenches my hands from his uniform and pushes me away.
"No!" I hurl him around and slam him into the wall.
I shove my forearm into his throat and press on his windpipe.
"Where do you have to go? Are you going to tell a teacher?"
He doesn"t move, doesn"t look me in the eye, doesn"t answer. But he"s shaking. He"s angry, he"s losing it, I can feel him start to burn.
"If you were one of them, you"d tell a teacher," I say.
He breathes deeply, blinks, says, "I don"t want to hurt you. You"re too damaged already. We should be kind to those less fortunate than ourselves."
I step back and slap him across the face. His head swings against the wall and my handprint blooms pink on his pale cheek. "You are not one of them!"
He shakes his head and snorts. "You"re having mental health troubles. You need to see a doctor." There"s nothing in his eyes, no sparkle, no hidden message. He"s angry because I"m in his way. I"m disobedient. I"m history.
"You"re not one of them!" I shout. "You"re not! You"re not!" I slap his face over and over until I"m out of energy and his cheek is flaming red and I"m just sort of patting him and bawling my eyes out, begging, "You can"t be, man. You can"t be one of them. You can"t be."
"What have we here?" Mr. Graham stands at the corner of the trailer, smiling at me, round and shiny as a big white ball.
SIXTEEN.
I shiver with cold and fear. I"m finished.
Dallas straightens up, takes my hands off his uniform, places them at my sides. "Max is unwell, sir. He needs to go home."
The princ.i.p.al smiles. "I have just the thing to make him better." He moves fast for a fat man. He"s at my side in a flash, hugely tall and wide, wrenching my arms behind my back.
Dallas stands just inches away, looking down on my struggle, doing absolutely nothing. "Pa.s.s me your necktie, Richmond," Mr. Graham tells him, and he does.
The princ.i.p.al ties my wrists behind my back and pats my shoulder. "Now, Connors, stay calm."
"Max needs to go home to his mother," Dallas says. "She"s a nurse."
Mr. Graham snickers. "I don"t want to send Maxwell home just yet. I might lose him over the holidays, and I don"t want that. Once he masters his antisocial tendencies, he"ll do the school proud." He moves in front of me and pats Dallas. "Good boy, Richmond. Your father told me to keep an eye on you two."
Dallas stiffens, blinks rapidly, clenches his jaw.
I arch my back and stretch my arms in hope of getting my hands around my legs and up in front of me, but they get stuck on my a.s.s. Mr. Graham laughs at me. He grips my arm tightly. "Come back to my office now, Connors. I"ll drive you home from school today." He looks at Dallas and smiles. "You"re free to go. Merry Christmas."
He pushes me ahead of him, away from the trailer. I have a brief view of the school and the frozen grounds. I see Mr. Reese walking across the parking lot. He has a coffee cup in one hand, briefcase in the other. He"s the only person in sight.
"Wait!" Dallas shouts. "There"s something in the trailer you should see, sir."
Mr. Graham pauses, turns, yanks me back out of view. "What?"
Dallas blinks rapidly. "There"s something in the trailer, sir. You need to see it."
"Can"t it wait? It"s Christmas."
"No, sir, it can"t wait."
Mr. Graham huffs, scowls, rolls his eyes. "All right. Go get it."
Dallas nods. He picks up his coat and turns the corner.
I hear sc.r.a.ping and thumping from inside the trailer. I think about tearing free and running for it, but I"m reluctant to try.
Part of me wants to see how it all ends. I don"t feel like it"s really me tied up, about to be zombified. I feel like I"m beyond this moment, above it all, looking down on the last kid on Earth.
Mr. Graham frowns at my misery. "It"s much better this way, son. They"ve done studies to back that up. You"ll be glad once you experience it." He pats my shoulder, but I shrug him off. He runs his hand over his fat face. "Believe me, you will never want to go back to the way you are now. And you won"t have to. Other parts of the country can"t afford to keep up the treatments, but we"re privileged here, Connors. The future is in our hands."
I hear Dallas stomp down the trailer stairs. I regret not running away. I reconsider ita"there could be another teacher on his way home, Mr. Ames or Coach Emerya"but I don"t bother. I don"t do anything except stand in the shadows and wait. The skin on my face is tight where my tears have dried. I can"t believe I made such an a.s.s of myself. I"ll be sixteen years old tomorrow and I still cry in public.
Dallas waits at the corner of the trailer. He wears his football face, stands taller and stronger than I"ve seen him all day.
"Where is it?" Mr. Graham asks.
"I can"t get it because it"s on the wall." Dallas"s voice is different. Deliberate.
Mr. Graham snorts. "Thank you, son, but I am not interested in graffiti. It"s the Christmas holidays. It can wait."
"It"s not graffiti, sir. It"s a list of names."
"Whatever, son. I"m not interested. I have to get Connors fixed up and get him home before his mother comes running over in a fury." He turns away with a tight grip on my arm.
"It"s important, sir!" Dallas shouts. His jaw twitches and he blinks too fast. "I saw Max"s name on the wall while I was cleaning the trailer. I moved the bench and found a list of students who missed the vaccinations."
Mr. Graham turns around and rubs his belly. "Really? Who"s on the list?"
"I don"t remember, sir. It"s on the wall."
He"s lying. I know he"s lying.
The princ.i.p.al weighs the benefits of such a list against the ha.s.sle of climbing three steps. Dallas holds his gaze with too much interest for a zombie. "All right," Mr. Graham says. "Lead the way."
He pushes me ahead of him, up the steps and inside the trailer after Dallas. He sniffs the stale sweat and makes a face. "How do you all fit in here? You change in this trailer? The whole team? With the pads in the way? How do you keep from falling over each other?"
I barely hear him. I"m staring at the trailer"s security camera. Dallas"s coat is covering ita"not hanging from it but wrapped around it tightly and fastened with tape. My skin crawls, thinking of all that could happen in a room like this when no one"s watching.
Dallas waits in the far corner, so tall that he has to hunch. He stares at me, his eyes deep in his thoughts, his face twitching, his jaw moving up and down in a chewing motion. He has a weight belt wrapped tight around his right fist.
"No," I whisper. "No way."
"So where"s the list?" Mr. Graham asks.
Dallas points to the wall beside him. "It"s right here, sir, behind this bench."
"No, it"s not," I say. "I erased it earlier when we cleaned the trailer. I saw that Dallas found it so I erased it."
"No, you didn"t. It"s still there," Dallas says. "It"s just hard to read."
"Mr. Graham, there"s nothing there. Let"s just go." I strain against my bonds. "Just get out of here."
"How can you care about people who care nothing about you?" Dallas asks.
"I care about you," I tell him. "Where are you going to go after this? You"re not thinking straight. You haven"t slept or eaten for days. You"re all messed up."
Mr. Graham eyes me suspiciously and shuts the trailer door. He looks at Dallas, raises his hands, rolls his eyes. "Move the bench so I can see."