Harmony (16 page)

“Are you feeling all right?” she asks.

I shrug. She puts her hand on my hair. “I heard about AD Block,” she says. “I'm sure you're disappointed about the candy.”

I hadn't even thought about the candy. “Are you mad at me?” I ask, my voice muffled by the fabric of her shorts.

She pulls me up into a sitting position. “No,” she says. “I don't think that was a nice thing to do, but I know you've already been scolded by Scott. Honestly, I think he's being a little rough on you.”

“So I don't have to go to AD Block?” I ask.

She breathes out a laugh. “No, you still have to go. But I can tell you that you won't be alone. I don't know the details, but I heard that Candy got in trouble for something, too. I'm not sure what. And on my way here, I heard Ryan yelling at Scott, so he may very well be on the AD Block roster by now.”

“Huh. So now only Tilly and Charlotte are eligible for the candy award? And I guess maybe Hayden?”

My mom shakes her head. “I guess, I don't know. That's really Scott's department. Listen, your hair's tangled from napping on it. Let's get it brushed before dinner, okay?”

 • • • 

AD Block takes place in the kitchen, so I just hang around the dining hall until everyone else leaves. And my mom's right: I'm not the only one who got in trouble today, even though I guess I'm the only one who got in trouble for the werewolf story. Ryan and Candy are both here, plus Hayden's dad, Tom, who's here to supervise. And it actually ends up being fun, at least for a while.

“Okay,” says Tom, once we're all there. “I'm supposed to start by reading you this task list that Scott left for us. One, clean up from dinner . . . and then there are like fifteen subsections. Wash dishes, dry dishes, wipe tables . . . you guys think you can figure out what ‘clean up from dinner' means, or do I have to read you every single step?”

“READ US EVERY SINGLE STEP,” yells Ryan, just to be annoying. He's bouncing around like he can't stay still for even a second.

Candy hits him in the arm. “We get it,” she says.

“Yeah, I think we can handle it,” I add.

“Okay, good,” says Tom. “Basically, there are three major tasks: clean up from dinner, set up for breakfast, and talk about what you all did to get here. If we multitask and do our talking and our cleaning at the same time, we may be able to get out of here fairly quickly.”

So we divide up the chores, and we get started. I'm washing the dishes, Candy's sweeping, and Ryan is cleaning the tables, pretending that his spray bottle of vinegar and water is a laser gun.

“All right,” says Tom. “Looking good. Now tell us, Iris: why exactly did Scott suggest that you grace us with your presence this evening?”

So I tell him about what happened with Jason, and I say all the right things about how I shouldn't have done it, and it was mean and I'll never do anything like it again. Tom watches me carefully, and it looks like he's going to ask me some more questions, but then he just shakes his head.

“Okay,” he says. “Ryan, what brought you here this evening?”

Ryan stops wiping. He's spraying way too much cleaning stuff; his towel is sopping wet already. But I guess the tables won't be dirty, at least.

“Sir, yes, sir!” he shouts. I don't get his brain sometimes—like, is he acting like a military guy because it fits in somehow with the laser-gun thing he was playing a minute ago? Or is it just as random as it sounds, because he has too many ideas in his head, fighting to get out? “I called Scott an asshole, sir!”

Tom's face twists, and he turns away so we won't see him smile. “Yeah, that'll do it,” he says. He bends down to hold a dustpan for Candy to sweep stuff into. “And how about now? Are you thinking that was a good decision?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” says Ryan and laughs like crazy.

Tom turns to stare at him. “Really,” he says, not even a question.

Ryan shrugs and sprays some more vinegar-water on the table. “No, not really,” he says. “I guess. But it was a joke. It was funny.”

“Which one was a joke? Calling Scott an asshole, or saying it was a good thing to do?”

Ryan's eyes get wide when he hears Tom say the word “asshole.” I can tell he wants to laugh or say something about it.
Just answer the question
, I say in my head, trying to send him a telepathic message. I do that all the time with Tilly, when I can see that she's about to do something stupid or inappropriate. It never works.

But somehow, Ryan pulls himself together and just says, “Both. They were both jokes.”

“Okay, well, that's where your problem is,” says Tom. “It sounded
like a joke to you, but I didn't think it was funny, and I sure as heck don't think Scott thought it was funny.”

I see Ryan's lips move. “Sure as hell,” he whispers. He thinks he's quiet enough that we won't hear him, but he's totally wrong.

Tom sighs. He carries the dustpan over to the big, gross garbage can where everyone scrapes their dinner plates, and empties in all the scraps and junk he's collected. He pulls up the edges of the garbage bag, getting ready to tie them together.

“You're an interesting kid, Ryan,” he says. Candy kind of snorts, hiding her mouth behind her hand.

“No, I'm serious,” Tom says. “I don't mean it in a negative way. You know what you are? You're like a scientist, doing tests in a lab. You don't just take it for granted that you're going to get in trouble if you cuss at Scott; you have to like perform an experiment to find out exactly how far you can push him, and exactly what sort of trouble you're going to get in.”

Ryan sort of jolts upward, excited, and he says, “My dad told me this story about a scientist guy who spilled some kind of acid on his hand, and his hand got all burned and shriveled up, and it had to be amputated.”

Tom shakes his head and gives up a little. “Yeah, okay. Hey, you want to know a secret, Ryan? When you're a grown man you can swear as much as you want. Until then, try not to say every single thing that comes into your head, okay?”

“Okay,” says Ryan, though I'm not even sure he's listening. He's spraying some of the vinegar-water on his hand and looking to see if it does anything.

“No, but I know what you mean,” I say to Tom. Sometimes around adults, like teachers and other kids' parents, I get this feeling, like it's up to me to show them that some kids can act smart and mature, even if nobody else is behaving that way. But also, what Tom was saying reminded me a little of Tilly. “It's like there are these invisible
signs everywhere, you know what I mean? Most of us just have them in our heads. Like if you come to a busy street—I mean, if you're old enough to walk around without holding a grown-up's hand—then you know there's an invisible sign there that says, ‘Don't Cross Until the Cars Stop Moving.'”

“Or you could just look at the ‘Don't Walk' sign, which
isn't
invisible,” says Candy. It's kind of funny, because I hadn't thought of that. But I want to get my point across.

“No, okay,” I say. “But like if you see some kind of machine, and it has a big red button on it that says, ‘Danger, Do Not Press,' there's also a little invisible sign in your head, telling you that you should follow those directions. But some people want to press it anyway, just to see what happens.”

“Yeah, exactly,” says Tom. “That's a good way of putting it.”

I finish up the dishes and start drying bowls and spoons for cereal in the morning. And then Tom asks Candy for her “misbehavior narrative,” as Scott calls it.

Candy shrugs. “Scott caught me trying to call my dad.”

Tom looks confused. “Your dad? You mean Rick?”

“No, my
real
dad.” She sounds a little annoyed, like everyone should already know. “He lives in Boston.”

“Okay,” says Tom. “So what happened?”

“I was trying to use the phone in the office, but . . . I don't know, it wouldn't work. I got a message about long-distance service or something. And so I was going to try to find out how to have my dad pay for it? I think there's a way to do that, but before I could figure it out, Scott came in and he went ballistic.”

“Hmm,” says Tom. “That's rough.” He doesn't say anything else for a while, just takes a clean rag and starts drying all of the tables that Ryan has left wet. I'm looking down at a spoon I'm drying, and suddenly something clicks in my head. The scrap of paper in the trash in the office: it means that letter never got mailed.

“So why
can't
she call her dad?” I ask. “Is it just because we're not supposed to use the phone or something? Because it's technology, or because it would cost money?”

Tom's quiet for a minute longer. “I'm not really sure,” he says. “I think that Scott wants to keep our group separate from the outside world for now. Just for a little while, until we're completely settled in.”

“But we
are
settled in,” says Candy. “And we're not separate from the outside world, because we just had this whole new group of people show up. I saw one of the kids with an iPhone, for goodness' sake.”

Just as a side note, I smile a little when she says “for goodness' sake.” When we first got here, she was saying “for God's sake” all the time, and Scott kept bugging her about it. Now it seems like her brain's all trained, and she just uses the appropriate version without even thinking about it.

“Yes, and you probably saw Scott take it away about two minutes later,” says Tom. “Look, I don't have an answer for you, Candy. I really don't. But Scott's kind of our visionary here, and he's got his own ideas about things. And even if I don't always agree with him, I respect him and trust him completely. So for now, I think you're going to have to do the same.”

Candy still looks mad, and I don't blame her. It would suck not to be able to see or talk to my dad. I have this sudden memory of what it was like every night at home, when my dad got home from work. We were always so happy to see him, and it was like a turning point for the day. Everything felt more cozy or something, once all four of us were there together.

It makes me feel sort of lonely and nostalgic, which is weird, because now I can see my dad any time of the day. But it's not the same, because we're both always busy with chores or listening to Scott or something. It doesn't feel cozy here very much at all.

We finish up in the kitchen, and Tom turns off the lights and leads us outside. We all head toward the lake, where I can see there's
still a campfire going on, even if the singing's over. Candy and Ryan run ahead, so I'm left walking next to Tom. It's kind of good, because maybe it's better to talk about this to a grown-up who's
not
my parents.

“Tom?” I say. My voice sounds high, like I'm nervous. “You know what Scott said to me this afternoon, after he found out about the story I told the other kids? He said that I was supposed to be the good kid.”

He doesn't get it. “Well, you are a good kid, Iris. Absolutely.”

“No, that's not it. He said it like I'm supposed to be the best kid here. Or maybe the
only
good kid.” I hope it doesn't sound like bragging for me to repeat that.

I can't see Tom's face very well in the dark, but he actually stops and turns to look at me.

“Really?” he says. “Scott said that?”

“Uh-huh.” Now I'm a little bit nervous, like maybe I shouldn't have said anything.

Tom nods slowly and then starts walking again. “Well,” he says, finally. “In spite of what I just said about how we all have to trust and respect Scott's decisions, I'm going to come right out and say that I don't think he should have said that to you. And it's not because I don't think you're a good kid.”

“Okay,” I say. “Um, thanks.”

He's quiet for a minute. “Here's the thing: One, I don't think you should make anyone feel like they have to be good
all
the time, because that's just not possible, especially for a kid. And two, I think you must've caught Scott at a bad moment, because I am certain that deep down he believes that all our kids are good. Look at it this way: if you're the ‘best' kid here, then by that scale, Hayden's gotta be the worst, don't you think?”

I nod and shake my head all at the same time, because I see what he's saying, but I don't want to look like I agree with that.

“Yeah, and you know that's not true, right?” he asks.

“Right.” I wonder suddenly if it's hard for him and Janelle, seeing all these other kids all the time who can do things that Hayden can't. I mean, I don't know what everyone thinks is going to happen from being here, all the grown-ups, that is. But I think they must be hoping that this whole experience is going to help their kids be more . . . I don't know, normal, I guess. But no matter how hard Hayden's parents work at it, there are just some things that he's never going to be able to do.

“I really like Hayden,” I say. “He's so sweet, almost like a baby.” Then I wonder if that's the wrong thing to say, like I'm putting him down for not being mature enough or something.

But Tom smiles and looks down where we're walking. “Yeah,” he says. “He is. And you know what? There are worse ways to be.”

“Yeah,” I say. “There are.”

Imagine a world in which people disappear from photos when they die. Like in
Back to the Future
when Marty McFly is almost missing his chance to get his parents together, except that there's no blurring, no gradual fading. They're there, and then they're not. A million widows crying over pictures of themselves. A million mothers, smiling at a crook in their elbow. A million babies, floating in midair.

School photos empty themselves, one by one. First the teachers, probably, leaving behind a crowd of unsupervised kids wearing old-fashioned clothes. Then the group winnows slowly, until nothing remains but the faded rug, the outdated maps on the walls. (Check out the names: Czechoslovakia. Rhodesia. Zaire.)

At senior mixers, potential lovers show each other photos of their young selves in wedding finery. Look at that lace. My mother sewed it by hand. A bittersweet game, layering the photos together, so that those young strangers appear to be standing side by side. Here's how we would have looked. What a handsome couple!

On Facebook, deaths are announced through blank bathroom mirrors, cameras holding themselves. Old
Playboy
s show empty
staircases, classic cars with no one posed on the hood. Lists of turn-ons next to rumpled, unmade beds.

Posters of people gone missing hold new measures of hope, right up until the moment when they don't. The FBI knows exactly when to remove a fugitive from their list.

Families gather together to pose and smile, knowing that sooner or later, the only thing anybody will see will be an empty room.