Discards

 

Begin Reading

Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

 

Thank you for buying this

Tom Doherty Associates ebook.

 

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,

sign up for our newsletters.

 

Or visit us online at

us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

 

For email updates on the author, click
here
.

 

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author's copyright, please notify the publisher at:
us.macmillanusa.com/piracy
.

 

In a dark, stinking room on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, its discolored cinder-block walls scarred with generations of graffiti, Tiago Gonçalves lay sweating and thrashing, delirious with fever.

For a bed, Tiago had the box spring from a child's crib, stained and torn, over which was thrown a threadbare sheet that had perhaps once been pink. A battered plastic milk crate nearby held one pair of jelly shoes, three shirts too big for his skinny frame, two pair of shorts, some underwear, a plastic mug and spoon, a toothbrush, and half a cake of soap. That was all. But his most treasured possessions sat proudly atop the crate: an oil lamp assembled from discarded cans and bottles, using braided electrical insulation as a wick; a Swiss Army knife, its long-vanished plastic side panels replaced with scraps of teak painstakingly shaped to fit the hand and polished to silky smoothness; and a bouquet of flowers he had made by twisting together bits of colorful plastic bags.

All of these things Tiago had rescued from the landfill. But there was no one to rescue Tiago. He had lain here for … he didn't know how long, days maybe, without anyone to care for him. The other three
catadores
—“collectors” of recycled materials—who shared this twenty-reais-a-week room had lives and problems of their own. At least João had shared some of his water and fried manioc cakes.

Tiago shivered in his sweat-soaked sheet, which clung to him like it was his own skin. He ached all over; he could barely raise his head. He wondered if he might be dying.

He knew death. He had seen death far too often in his fifteen years. Every time there was a war between the gangs of drug
traficantes
that ruled the
favelas,
bodies turned up in the dump. Sometimes they were headless and handless, oozing black blood from the severed stumps. Once Tiago had unearthed a tiny newborn baby, the umbilical cord still attached, from a bag of rotten food scraps. Rats had eaten its ears. At seven he had seen his father gunned down by the police while stepping from his own shower, during a drug raid based on mistaken information.

His mother, too, was dead, or at least that was what he assumed. Two years ago she had gone off to look for work and never come back. Most likely she had been unlucky enough to catch a stray bullet from some
traficantes
' battle, never identified, and buried anonymously in a public cemetery. But deep inside he harbored the fear that she had tired of him, of the strain of caring for a hungry, curious boy as an unemployed single mother, and had run away, back to the countryside from which she had come before he'd been born.

He should never have been born. Just by existing, Tiago made things worse.

João poked his head around the tattered bath curtain that separated Tiago's space from the rest of the room. It must be the end of his work shift; time passed strangely in this delirious room without windows. “Oi, Tiago! Just checking to …
Nossa Senhora!
” Even in the near darkness, Tiago could see the shock in João's eyes, sudden wide white circles in his dark face.

“Wha …?” Tiago struggled to sit up. “What's wrong?”

“Have you seen your
face?
”

“No…”

João vanished, the curtain falling back, leaving Tiago blinking in dazed concern, heart pounding with fever and dread. João returned a moment later with the mirror from the men's washroom, a shining triangular scrap with a deadly point. Without a word he held it up so Tiago could see himself.

At first he thought that what he was seeing was just an effect of the fractured mirror. Then, as he continued to stare and the mirror shifted slightly in João's hands, he realized it was reality.

His face, formerly an ordinary but unlovely dark brown, had changed. It was now a dramatic hard-edged jigsaw of black, brown, and pink. One eye was still brown; the other, the one whose surrounding skin was lighter, was now hazel. His nose was divided down the middle—the left side had dark skin and a broad African nostril, the right was tawny, a slim Tupi Indian beak. Neither side matched the nose he remembered.

With wonder he touched his cheek. It was his own skin, not a mask—he could feel his fingertips lightly brushing his face—and its texture varied slightly, the pale skin smoother and the darker skin having a more waxy feel. The line between the two was distinct, but didn't feel like a seam or a scar. He rubbed at it, first in concern and then in panic, but though both sides reddened and warmed, the color did not come off.

His hands were the same patchwork of colors.

Suddenly alarmed, he sat up and pulled his shirt open. Triangles and rectangles of a half dozen different shades ran all the way down his chest and stomach and into his pants. Legs and arms too. His own hands on the parti-colored skin felt like ice.

He realized he was making noises—
ah, ah, ah
—frightened, animal sounds. He clamped his mouth and eyes shut, hugged himself with his arms, and rocked, trying to calm himself.

“You got the virus, man,” came João's voice through the keening in Tiago's head. “The wild card.” He sounded half-terrified and half-awed.

“No!” Tiago moaned into his knees. But he knew it was true. What else could cause such a change to happen overnight?

The curtain rattled and Tiago opened his eyes. It was Eduardo, the oldest of the four and the one who collected the rent.
“Que diabo!”

“He got the wild card,” João said, helpfully.

Eduardo clapped one hand over his nose and mouth and backed slowly away. “You can't stay here,” he said, muffled. “You take your things and go, right now.”

“But it's almost dark!” João protested.

Eduardo glared at João. “You wanna end up like him? Or worse, like some kind of fungus glob?” He shook his head, turned back to Tiago. “No. You go, now. Take your germy stuff, too. We'll have to burn your mattress.”

João looked back and forth from Eduardo to Tiago. Tiago—still trembling, chilled, disoriented—just sat and stared back at him. Then Flavio, the fourth boy sharing the room, came in.

Flavio took one look at Tiago, shrieked, and fled.

“That's it!” said Eduardo. He yanked down the curtain and threw it out the door.
“Cai fora!”
Beat it!

Tiago looked to João, but the younger boy just shook his head slightly, blinking in stunned incomprehension. He would find no support there.

Shuddering, barely able to stand, Tiago dragged himself out of bed. The Swiss Army knife he put in his zippered shorts pocket, along with his few bills and coins; the lamp and flowers would have to remain. The remaining contents of the milk crate he dumped onto the sheet, gathered up into a bundle, and slung over his shoulder.

He couldn't even manage a good-bye. He just glared at the two other boys as he dragged himself out the door.

*   *   *

As he trudged down the street—really just a dirt track between houses assembled from cinder block, scrap lumber, and discarded doors, illuminated only by the flickering light of methane fires from the dump—he considered that he didn't have enough money for even a shared room, and no one he knew had any extra space, even for one skinny little boy. Too late, he realized that he should have asked Eduardo for his share of the weekly rent back. But then again, Eduardo had probably already paid it to the landlord, or would claim to have done so.

The
catadores
worked around the clock. If he hurried, he might make the late shift, where he could pick up a few reais—if anyone would work with him. He turned his feet toward the Catadores' Association yard, where the pickers received the fluorescent vests that showed their authorization to work and caught a truck to the landfill.

But when he arrived, he found the yard empty, with stacks of sorted plastics, papers, and metals sitting silently beneath the buzzing floodlights. The last truck had already departed. Only old Vitor, guardian of the cash box, remained, sitting on an upturned plastic bucket and smoking.

As he approached, Vitor looked up lazily, then jerked to his feet.
“Porra!”
he swore, the bucket rattling away behind him.

“It's just me, Vitor. Tiago. The one who always brings the nice clean PET bottles.” But his hopes were already fading.

“Curinga!”
the old man replied, crossing himself and backing away.

Tiago's lip curled and he prepared to spit back a matching insult at the weak, shabby old man. But then he realized that Vitor's slur,
curinga,
was just the literal truth.

Tiago had become a
curinga
—a joker. A twisted, pathetic victim of the wild card virus.

He didn't belong here, not anymore. Not even the
catadores,
the lowest of the low, would associate with him. He was diseased, abased, offensive. There was only one place for him to go.

“I just need some money, man,” he said. He realized that tears were leaking slowly down his cheeks. He ignored them. “I need to get to Bairro dos Curingas.” Everyone knew Rio's Jokertown—the neighborhood where the virus's most unsightly sufferers gathered. There, at least, he would fit in. But Rio was a long way from the landfill, and he would need bus fare. “Can you give me an advance on tomorrow?”

Advances were strictly against the rules, and they both knew that Tiago would not be working tomorrow. Nonetheless, Vitor went into his little shack and returned with a small wad of money, which he flung at Tiago. The bills landed on the ground halfway between them.

Tiago sighed and took a step forward, reaching for the money. But before he could touch the bills, they fluttered up, seemingly of their own accord, to his outstretched fingers … and stuck there.

He blinked, shooting Vitor a glance that said
Did you see that?
But the old man just stood there trembling, clearly just wishing the scary
curinga
would go away.