Machine Of Death (2 page)

I look up.

“So did you get your slip yet?”

I shake my head. “After school,” I tell her.

She narrows her eyes. I can sense the other girls, crashers both, also watching me, but I play it cool. I hope.

She nods. “If you get your c-of-d, and it’s crashing—anything:  plane, car, bike, hot-freakin’
air balloon, whatever
-you come talk to me again. Tomorrow.”

I have to bite the insides of my cheeks to keep from smiling. I try to look like this isn’t the best offer I’ve gotten all morning. I try to look tough. I want to be crasher material, I really do.

“Tomorrow,” I say, and she nods again, once.

Not one of those girls acknowledges my existence the entire rest of the class, but I don’t care. Everything will be different tomorrow.

Tomorrow, my life can begin.

Lunch isn’t what I’d hoped for.

I’ve spent all this time counting down to my birthday, thinking,
this is the day everything changes
, but it isn’t. I don’t feel like a No-Know anymore, even though technically, I still don’t actually know. I’m under eighteen, so I have to have my parent or legal guardian with me to get my slip. If I could’ve, I would have ditched lunch today, gone to the mall, gotten the whole thing over with. Instead, I have to wait for my dad to get off work. It’s so unfair.

So, even if I get my slip tonight, nobody but me is going to know my cause-of-death until tomorrow. Well, my parents will know, and my little brother, I guess. And I’m sure I could call Patrice and tell her, but why? After tomorrow, I’ll have new friends to hang out with.

But for today, I’m still stuck in No-Know-ville.

I grab my tray and slide onto the bench at the end of the table. Patrice waves me down further toward her end, but I pretend I don’t see her. I line up my eight extra packets of mustard and start tearing the corners off one by one, slowly squeezing out the sharp yellow and gooping it all over the top of my synthesized proteins and pressed vegetable shapes.

Covertly, I scan the room, wondering, fantasizing about where I might be allowed to sit tomorrow. Who’s going to welcome me with open arms? It all depends on my c-of-d.

A ruckus is going on over in the corner. Of course it’s the burner kids, cracking each other up, starting a food fight. The burners, the drowners, the crashers, the live-wires, and the fallers—all the violent accidentals—they sit in mingled clumps along the two tables in the corner. That’s the coolest corner, and I’m pretty sure I’ll get to sit there tomorrow, or at least close. The next couple tables out wouldn’t be so bad; you’ve got the med-heads and the sharpies and the bullets—mostly malpractice and murder, right?—though some kids sneak in there who should probably be over with the suicides. I can see those from here, all dressed in black and with pale faces. They look like a bunch of crows, pecking at their food.

Just please don’t let me be at one of the last two tables: sickness and old age. Ugh. They look boring even eating lunch. That would be my c-of-d if I was forced to sit at that table: Bored to Death.

“Happy birthday, Carolyn.”

I’m so startled I squeeze a mustard packet too hard and it squirts all down the front of my dress. I start to dab it with a napkin, but I’m just turning bitter yellow clumps into bitter yellow smears.

“I’m, I’m so sorry, Carolyn…
eff
. I—I--”

I look up into Jamie’s face. We used to be friends, a long, long time ago. He lives just down the street, and we used to ride bikes together every single day. I can still taste the sun and summer dust on my tongue, just looking at him. We stopped hanging out when his parents joined the Anti-MoD League. Sometimes, on the way home from school, I see his mom standing out in front of the mall with her placard and her sandwich board. “Lives are for Living” say her signs some days. Others, “People Against Machines of Death” or even, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Know—You Have a Choice!”

Jamie’s almost eighteen, and he’s still a No-Know. I’d just die if that were me. I’d just die.

“It’s okay, Jamie,” I tell him. “Don’t worry about it.”

He has a couple of napkins in his hands, and he’s dipping them in his water and holding them out to me. He started to dab one on my breast, but figured out in time it probably wouldn’t be such a good idea.

I try to stifle a sudden memory of me and him kissing behind the convenience store dumpster. I was probably about twelve or thirteen, and he was fourteen or so; right before his parents joined the League. I remember he tasted like strawberries.

I hope Jamie doesn’t see my ears and neck turn red. He’s one of the few people who knows me too well for me to hide it.

“Your mom picking you up after school?” he asks.

I keep dabbing, shake my head. “My dad.”

He nods. He’s watching the motions of my hands as I rub the damp napkins on my lap, on the fabric stretched across my ribs, but he’s not really seeing me.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and I don’t think he’s talking about mustard.

By the time Dad picks me up, I’m mentally exhausted.

He kisses the top of my head when I get into the car. “Hey kid! Happy special day.”

“Thanks.”

I throw my stuff in the back seat and fasten my lapbelt.

Dad’s just sitting there with a loppy-sided smile on his face. “You want to go get an ice cream first, or something?” he says. “You want pizza? A movie?”

How can he be so freaking clueless? I want to tell him what a moron he’s being, but when I look at him something feels like it slips sideways in my stomach. For the first time, I’m looking at the forty-something man with the glasses and the stubbled cheeks and the ugly sweater, and I don’t see my dad.

I mean yes, of course, I see my dad; the middle-aged med-head c-of-d (accidental overdose) with the over-expensive house and the boring job and the two kids and last-year’s-last-year’s car, bought cheap with high mileage from a rental fleet…

But I also see a guy. I see a guy who loves me so much, he can’t even put it into words. It never occurred to me to think this might be a big deal for him, the day I get my slip. He looks tired, I think. More tired than usual.

I reach out and put my hand on his where it’s resting on the steering wheel.

“Sure, Dad,” I say. “Whatever you want.”

He covers my hand with his other one, so it’s kind of like a hand-sandwich, my fingers and knuckles pressed between two layers of his. His eyes look a little bright for a second, but I decide it’s only my imagination as he places my hand back in my own lap and starts the car and pulls out from the curb.

I watch the school get smaller and smaller in the side mirror as we drive away.

I finish off the last of my ice-cream cone, and so does Dad. We wipe our sticky fingers on the wet-wipes and throw those away, and I get up from our food-court table and gather all my bags as I stand. Dad’s bought me a new pair of shoes, two new books, and a hat he says I look great in, but which I know I’ll never, ever wear again in a million billion. All I’m missing is the partridge in a pear tree.

“So…what next, Birthday Girl? Need some new gloves? Music? You used to love the music store.”

He’s walking over to the mall directory, studying the list of stores. I walk up to him, set down my bags of books and shoes, and touch his arm. “Dad,” I say, “It’s time.”

He doesn’t look at me right away. He takes off his glasses and starts to clean them on the edge of his sweater. I can see he’s just making them all linty and smeary, so I take them from him and clean them on the inside hem of my dress, instead. When I hand them back they’re considerably cleaner, and I pick up my bags and start walking in the direction of the slip kiosk. I don’t have to look up the location on the mall directory; I know exactly where it is. There’s not a fifteen-year-old in the country who doesn’t know the location of the nearest machine. I know its hours of operation (regular mall open-hours: ten a.m. to nine p.m.), I know how much it costs (nineteen-ninety-five-plus-tax), I even know the brand (Death-o-Mat, by DigCo.; “We Give the Same Results—For Less!”).

The only thing I don’t know is what’s going to be on that strip of paper when it scrolls out of that slot.

It’s getting kind of late, and the mall’s going to close soon. Most of the stores are empty. It’s a school night, so nobody my age is around. It’s mostly tired-looking shop clerks with achy feet, and straggly-haired moms pushing heavy strollers.

The machine kiosk is in a darkish corner over by the restrooms. The janitor has the door propped open to the ladies’, and even though I kind of have to go, I’m not about to brave the janitor and his stinky mop. Besides, I don’t want to put this off anymore. I need to know.

Dad pauses when we get to the machine. He fumbles with his wallet, pulls out his identity and credit cards. He clears his throat, but doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look at me.

I thought Dad’s hand shook a little when he slid his cards into their proper slots and keyed in his and my social security numbers and other information, but I’m sure I was imagining things. It was probably just my brain buzzing. That’s what it feels like inside my head right now; like all the curves and loops and folds of my brain are buzzing with tiny bees, or maybe electric currents. I guess brains
are
, after all, though. Filled with electric currents, that is, not tiny bees.

The machine’s green light comes on and an arrow points to the small, shiny, self-cleaning divot in the otherwise dull metal. I set my bags down at my feet, slowly reach one finger toward the indention—

“Carolyn!”

I jump, look up into Dad’s face.

He pushes his glasses back on the bridge of his nose, fumbles it a little, blinks.

“Uhm…for an extra five dollars, it will tell you your blood type, your glucose levels, and whether or not you’re pregnant.” He points to the list printed on the machine’s face. Then he frowns, distracted. “Hey, there’s no way you might be pregnant, is there?”

I close the tiny distance between us and wrap my arms around his waist. He hugs me back, and for a second, as I breathe in the warm fuggy-sweatered dadness of him, I feel like the most precious and important thing in the universe.

Without letting go of Dad or giving him any warning, I reach behind him and jab my finger into the shiny divot. Dad flinches, and presses my face closer to his chest.

A tiny slicing pain flits across my finger, then numbness as the machine sprays its analgesic and disinfectant.

I pull back from Dad, and he clears his throat and lets me go. The machine spits out Dad’s two cards from their slots, and my slip scrolls out from the single slot below. Dad and I both reach for it, but when I freeze he pulls back. I’ve got to do this, and he knows it. He plucks his plastic from the machine and slides the cards into his wallet while I uncurl my slip and read.

I read it three times. Four times. I’m on my fifth when Dad, unable to contain himself, gently tugs the paper from my stiff fingers and reads aloud.

“Death by Millennium Space Entropy,” he says.

“But…”

Dad wraps both arms around me and swings me up into the air like he hasn’t done since I was a very, very little girl. I keep my arms stiff, but let my legs and body go limp, and Dad twirls me in a circle, laughing, joyous.

He finally sets me down, and I have to reach out a hand to steady myself against the edge of the machine. I’m a little dizzy. Dizzy, and confused.

“Millennium space entropy,” says Dad, shaking his head, unrolling the slip and reading it again. “That’s amazing, Carolyn. It’s fantastic! You’ll be nearly a thousand years old by the next millennium. Maybe you live to be a thousand! Just think, medical breakthroughs all the time, vastly extended lifespans… It could happen, sweetheart. It could really happen.”

Dad, grinning, crushes me to his chest again, and I can hear the rumble of his happiness somewhere deep inside. “I just want you to have a long and happy life, Carolyn. A very long, long, long and happy life.”

“But Dad,” I say into the nubby wool of his sweater, “where will I sit tomorrow at lunch?” 

Story by Camille Alexa

Illustration by Shannon Wheeler

TO
ANY
OF
THE
COUNTLESS
SHOPPERS
PASSING
BY,
THE
KISS
WOULDN’T
HAVE
SEEMED
LIKE
MUCH
. Longer than a peck, sure, but nothing overlong or excessive. It didn’t appear to be anything special. But for Rick it was something else entirely. Any time he touched Shannon he managed to get lost in the moment, swept up like the hapless lead in some cheeseball Hallmark special.

“Bye, baby,” she said, giving him a little wave. “Don’t spend too much!”

“Not too little either,” he fired back, and her grin widened before she flipped her hair and walked away. As Rick watched her go he noticed more than one set of eyes doing the same, but he was used to that. When you’re engaged to a beautiful woman, it comes with the territory. Best to take it as a compliment, because at the end of the day she was coming home with him, not anybody else.