Chapter Nine
I was just standing up and brushing myself off a little bit when Parsnip and Random returned. They came back together, but they were not alone. They were marching sullenly, side by side with their heads hanging down, and Mother was right behind them. Mother did not look happy.
“Another one making a mess!” she snapped when she saw me. “I suppose this was all your idea?” I shook my head but words refused to leave my mouth.
“It doesn't matter,” she said. “You'll just have to go as you are. There's no more time. Now, into the classroom and take your seats.”
We found ourselves turning our bodies in the direction of the school and moving our feet. None of us said a word or even looked directly at one another. I wanted to talk so badly. I wanted to ask them if they'd found any less solid ground, if they'd thought about how we could dig, if they'd had any other ideas but my brain felt like it was strapped down tight and couldn't budge. My head was pounding, too, like someone had turned up the pain controls, and in a flash I knew it was exactly that. Somebody had direct access and it was probably Mother. In that moment I knew Midgerette was right. Mother had to be stopped.
But I was in no position to do it. I was sitting in my assigned seat, staring straight ahead of me at the empty green chalkboard that used to hold our assignments. I liked to draw on that chalkboard. One time I drew an entire Christian nativity scene, complete with baby sheep and baby geese and the little baby Jesus. Snotty McSnotch told me it was the best Christmas drawing ever. I was proud of myself.
“Twelve seventeen A!” Mother's harsh voice broke through the memory and I had a vague recognition of a person sitting next to me, on the left, but I didn't turn to see. I couldn't turn. I knew it was Parsnip Caravan.
“Drink your smoothie,” Mother said.
Shadows moved across my face and I realized they were my fellow students filing into the classroom, each one taking their seat in the row. I saw a tall glass placed before me on my desk.
“Twelve seventeen B!” Mother said, and now she was standing in front of me.
“Drink your smoothie,” she said, and I did. It was a sort of apple-cranberry concoction, not my favorite.
“This is your final exam,” Mother was saying as she moved on to the next desk, where I knew Random Williams would be sitting. “Compliance Awareness is all about attention,” she said. “To focus, to recognize and to resolve. These are the three components you will be tested on. How you perform will determine your final disposition. Do you understand?”
We did not understand. Even Parsnip did not understand, and I knew it. Somehow deep down inside I knew it. And not only that. I knew that Mother knew, that she knew it was all nonsense what she was saying, that it had nothing to do with what was really going on. There was no exam, there was no testing. There were no components. There was only … only what? I wasn't sure, but I knew she was lying.
In the silence under the lightening sky we drank our apple-cranberry smoothies. In the cold of that unheated so-called classroom we were brought to a state of complete and utter obedience. I understand now that we were being poisoned. We were being drugged. We were under her control. In the moment, though, it kind of felt pretty good. The pain receded and my eyes were able to see once again. I could turn my head and I took a deep breath. Two more people entered the room, and all of a sudden, I fell in love.
I didn't know what love was. Midgerette had tried to tell me but I couldn't understand the way one bird was drawn to another by the way they flicked their wing, by the way they cocked their beak, by the way they cawed and crowed, by some subtle little movement you would hardly notice in another. It sounded stupid to me. It sounded like a trap. If all it took was one dumb gesture and then you couldn't bear to be apart from that other creature well that was like a magic spell out of a fairy tale book and I knew that fairy tales weren't real. But this one was. It was as real as real can be.
One of the two people was Mrs. Blather. I could tell right off because she managed to end every sentence with a sort of giggle, a laugh-like sound that didn't indicate humor so much as contempt and self-satisfaction. She was short and round, very old with piles of thick white hear spilling out all over her head. She wore a silly pink dress with white polka-dots and a pearl necklace with huge pearls that were probably genuine and stolen from some unfortunate oysters. She wore white shoes on her white feet and white stockings and everything about her was pale and repulsive.
“So they've all survived this long” she said with a menacing chuckle at the end. “Unusual for you, isn't it, dear?”
“Hardly,” Mother retorted. “You remember the twelve fourteens. They turn out well, didn't they? Didn't you made a fortune. Don't deny it.”
“A fortune?” Mrs. Blather scoffed. “Hardly that. We got lucky with the Romans, that's all, and since then, well, it's been a long dry spell for you all here.”
They continued to bicker a bit more about how much money was involved and whether it was the Normans or the Romans or the Vikings or the Greeks who they “got lucky” with, but I was hardly paying attention to them. My eyes, my heart and soul were focused on the other person in the room, the one who came in right behind Mrs. Blather and now slowly paced back and forth across our row of desks. I couldn't tell much about this person at first, who was dressed all in black and wore a black sweatshirt with a hood pulled tightly over their face, and dark glasses covering their eyes, and dark skin, I saw the dark skin of hands and cheeks and chin and nothing else. Only when she spoke did I know it was a woman.
“What about you?” she said as she stood in front of Margaux Santa Fe. “Twelve seventeen E?”
“You will never find Elysium,” Margaux recited in a dull, sleepy voice.
“Thank you,” she replied, and continued pacing. I couldn't take my eyes off her. She stopped next in front of Lindley's desk.
“Say one thing,” she commanded him.
“It's not the smartest who survive, nor the strongest,” he replied. “Fitness means responsiveness to change.”
“So it does” she said, and resumed her walk. She passed by all of our desks many times, and more and more I realized I'd never wanted anything so badly in my entire life than for her to stop in front of MY desk and command ME to say one thing, and I even knew what the thing was I would say and it was “I love you”.
Once she had started inspecting us – and I quickly realized that this was the real final exam mother had been preparing us for – both Mother and Mrs. Blather stopped talking and stood back, watching this tall, thin woman in black go about her business. Her next question was for Random Williams.
“Eels and lobsters?” she asked.
“Left twenty two, right seventeen, left left zero and one,” he promptly replied, and she laughed. It was a real laugh, not like Mrs. Blather, but a genuine, warm and human laugh. She even pushed her hood back, revealing a mass of long and very curly, very black hair, and removed her sunglasses. Her eyes were brown and beautiful. And she leaned over and kissed Random Williams on the forehead. I never hated him before but I hated him then. Then she turned her head and looked right at me. My heart nearly stopped beating. Right beneath her left eye, the one now closest to me, a gaping red scar slashed across her face and the white of that eye was red, blood red.