The Alex Crow (18 page)

Isaak turned the thing over and over in his hands. He nodded.

“This is nice. I can trade it for something good. Maybe some tobacco. Do you smoke, Ariel?”

Isaak kept staring at me, but I didn't say anything to him. I turned and went back to the place where I'd made my bed.

And Isaak called after me, “You're going to get cold there.”

The older boys laughed. They knew what Isaak meant.

It hurt to lie down. I'd almost forgotten the beating I'd taken on top of the humiliation of everything else they had done to me. I put my arm across my eyes and tried to shut everything out. It was impossible.

This is how it was now, Max.

I will tell you this, Max: The Jesus was not the only thing I'd stolen that day. I also stole a short paring knife, which I wrapped in a rag and kept snugged away inside the waist of my pants. It was a strange and desperate thing for me to do, I think. Because I could never use a knife on anyone, not even if he was harming me. That's stupid, isn't it? Still, I hoped to believe that just having that knife would act as some charm of protection, a deliverance that would keep those boys from ever touching me again.

“
This is the most fucked-up,
unfair competition I've ever seen,” Max said.

“A bunch of bullshit,” Cobie Petersen added.

We should have seen it coming.

Because Jupiter was so far in the lead of the interplanetary games, the counselors collectively decided to make the final competition worth so many points that any cabin who won the last event would be named overall camp winners. And there was a prize at stake, which was this: The boys of the winning planet—and their counselor—would get to take the Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys van and spend the entire day Friday, which was our last full day trapped in our miserable planets, at the Little America Mall, where there was electricity and video games (which most of the boys of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys salivated over) and clean toilets and pretzel stands and teenage girls (which only a few of the boys of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys salivated over), and so on.

“We should have seen this coming,” I said.

And Max said, “Yeah, but you never know.”

On Wednesday morning during our sixth week at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, the day before the contest was to take place, Larry gave us the disturbing news about the event before dispatching us to breakfast.

Max stirred his oatmeal sullenly. Cobie Petersen had a determined and focused expression on his face; he stared off into the woods, concentrating. Robin Sexton rocked back and forth slightly, dull eyed, plugs inserted, fingers twitching and stabbing at nothing, kite string dangling below his chin. And Trent Mendibles scratched his balls and tried not to listen to anything we were talking about.

The next day's event was going to be the longest and most challenging contest of the six-week session. And unfortunately, it was also quite possible that any planet would get lucky and win it. It was an orienteering challenge in the woods that sounded like the sort of event where Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys might end up a few boys short when all was done.

Every cabin would be provided with a compass and a topographical map of the forestland around Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, along with written instructions detailing where the individual teams were supposed to go. Each planet had a personalized flag that had been hidden somewhere in the forest, all of them three miles away from Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys. The instructions told us where to go to find our flags, which were hidden in different spots, so as to keep the planets from engaging in warfare or any other kinds of dirty tricks. So the game depended on the ability to judge distances on our own, use a compass to determine direction, and figure out what all the lines and patterns on a topographical map actually meant.

None of us had ever done anything like this before. But the planet finding their flag and returning it to camp first would win the competition—and the prize.

Six miles, considering the unlikely out-and-back shortest possible route, may just as well have been six hundred to some of the boys at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys.

I seriously doubted we'd be able to inspire Trent Mendibles or Robin Sexton to give it his best.

“We need to win tomorrow,” Max said.

Cobie Petersen looked at Trent Mendibles and Robin Sexton, then shook his head. And he said, “I have a plan.”

Of course Cobie Petersen had a plan. He always had a plan.

Cobie said, “Stay here. I'll be back in a few minutes.”

And with that, Cobie Petersen stood up from the breakfast table and bolted off into the woods.

We didn't find out what Cobie Petersen's plan involved until the next day, after they sent the five boys of Jupiter out into the woods, alone with a compass, a map, and some impossible instructions to direct us to our flag.

- - -

We could all see—well, Max, Cobie, and I could—that Larry was stoned.

We had just gotten back to Jupiter from lunch, which Larry, as usual, did not attend with us.

Cobie Petersen raised his hand. “Having a good day, Larry?”

Larry fired a dirty look at Cobie.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I care about you, Larry,” Cobie said. “I think I'll miss you in three days when we get to go home.”

“So write me a letter, kid.”

“You might be too busy with the fat boys.”

“There's a fat-guy boss on level thirty-three of BQTNP that's like impossible to beat. It took me over a week,” Trent Mendibles said.

“Really?” Max said, “That's fascinating, and also really sad all at the same time. And how do you propose helping us win the game tomorrow with all your awesome skills?”

“Fuck you, dude. I swear to God, before we go home you and me are going to go outside and have it out,” Trent said.

“Have what out? Do you mean you want to go
upload some streaming data
with me? No thanks, I'm a solo artist.”

“Dude, you're so fucking gross,” Cobie Petersen said. “Anyway, I know exactly what these two dudes are going to do to help us win. I have a plan. They want to get out of here for one day just as much as we do, and so does Larry, I bet.”

“I hate you all.” Trent Mendibles plopped down on his cot—
crumple!

Robin Sexton stared blankly at the ceiling and twitched.

And Larry said, “Sure, I'd like to go to the mall. But it's up to you fuckheads. Normally, the day before the last game is Carving Day, where we let the kids carve shit on the walls of the cabins. But after that Bucky fucker tried killing himself on day one, they told us no sharp shit allowed for the entire six weeks.”

Cobie Petersen raised his hand. “Larry? I pledge allegiance to Jupiter, and to you, Larry. And I also pledge to not stab myself in the throat if you let us carve our names in the wall. Please? Are you guys willing to take the pledge of not stabbing ourselves with me?”

Our general, back in action.

Faced with three raised hands, because Trent Mendibles and Robin Sexton didn't care about anything, Larry sighed and sat up on his bed. And he probably would have given in to Cobie Petersen's Pledge of Non-Self-Injury, too, but at that exact moment we heard the jangling war cry of Mrs. Nussbaum trumpeting her arrival at Jupiter's door.

“Boys! Boys! Hello! It's me, Mrs. Nussbaum, coming to pay my
final visit
!”

I looked from Max, to Cobie, and back to Max again.

We were now, officially, all terrified of Mrs. Nussbaum. After all, there were more than enough reasons why: She seemed to know everything about us; she wanted to eradicate males—something we all happened to be—from the human species; and, most frighteningly, she knew that I'd read her book.

The screen door swung open.

“Are you all dressed?” she crooned.

The cat had landed on the planet of mice.

Here, kitty-kitty
.

Cobie Petersen raised his hand. “Mrs. Nussbaum? It's a good thing you didn't come in five minutes later. Trent there was about to get into a fistfight with Max, and I just about had Larry talked into letting us carve our names in the walls.”

“You mean
have it out
means he really wants to
fight
me?” Max said.

“Oh my!” Mrs. Nussbaum said, “Well, I think carving your names would be a lovely thing for you boys to do. But what's this about fighting? We can't have that! No fighting allowed! You boys are supposed to be friends!”

Trent Mendibles rolled over on his bed—
crumple!
—and faced the wall.

Mrs. Nussbaum looked at each of us, frowning slightly. Robin Sexton ignored it all. He just stared at the ceiling and mouthed inaudible lyrics.

Mrs. Nussbaum cleared her throat. “Larry, would you mind leaving me alone with our boys for a bit?”

“You can have 'em till Saturday, for all I care.”

Larry stood up from his bed, a bit woozy and red eyed, and made his way out of Jupiter.

Mrs. Nussbaum sat down on the foot of Larry's bed, facing us.

“Sit down, boys! Let's chat, shall we? Max? Cobie?
Ahh
-riel?”

We sat on our beds.

Cobie Petersen raised his hand.

“Mrs. Nussbaum? What about those two?”

He pointed at the oblivious Robin Sexton and sulking Trent Mendibles.

“Yoo-hoo! Robin! Trent! Yoo-hoo!” Mrs. Nussbaum squealed.

“
Please make it stop
,” Max whispered.

Trent Mendibles crumple-rolled over on his bed so he could see our therapist. Robin Sexton removed his toilet paper earplugs and sat up.

And Mrs. Nussbaum told them this: “You two boys can run along. Why don't you go outside and
play
? I would like to spend today's time concentrating on Cobie, Max, and
Ahh
-riel! I feel they need me more, at this point in their lives.”

And when she said the word
lives
, I truly felt terrified.

“What are we supposed to play?” Trent Mendibles asked.

“Oh my! Why not just go outside and have a chat about
Battle Quest: Take No Prisoners
?” Mrs. Nussbaum said.

Trent and Robin looked at each other.

Trent Mendibles shrugged. “Sure. That sounds fun. Do you play, kid?”

Robin Sexton nodded.

And as they walked out, Trent Mendibles asked the twitching kid from Hershey, Pennsylvania, “What's your user name? I'll look for you when we get home.”

And that was that.

We were alone with Martha K. Nussbaum, MD, PhD.

“I wrote some more stuff on my index card, ma'am,” Cobie Petersen, laying on his West Virginia–boy accent, said.

“I filled up a whole side of my second one,” Max added.

I'd never revisited my choice about where I'd rather be than at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys since our first session with Mrs. Nussbaum.

“That's fine! That's fine! But, honestly, boys, I'd rather talk about something else today. Would that be all right with you?”

Mrs. Nussbaum smiled and made eye contact with each of us. I glanced away as soon as her eyes met mine.

“What would you like to talk about today, Mrs. Nussbaum, ma'am?” Cobie Petersen asked.

“Oh, Ariel! Is something bothering you? You seem nervous,” Mrs. Nussbaum said.

I didn't answer her. I was too afraid. I shook my head.

Mrs. Nussbaum cleared her throat and smoothed her white doctor's skirt past her porcelain knees.

“Tell me—what did you think about my book, Ariel?”

I felt the blood drain from my head. I was suddenly so cold.

I didn't know what to do, so I just shook my head again and shrugged.

Mrs. Nussbaum was not pleased.

She said, “So it seems our Ariel has reverted back to his nonspeaking behavior. That's a shame, poor boy. I'll bet you've plenty of stories to tell, don't you? About where you came from? Or perhaps the sad things that happened to you in the refugee camp, you know, before you met Major Knott?”

I felt dizzy. I also felt Cobie Petersen and Max looking at me, but I didn't raise my eyes from the floor. She was playing a game, and she was about to make me cry, too, and I suddenly hated her.

“Tell me,” Mrs. Nussbaum said, “you boys don't truly belong here, do you?”

“I've been saying that for six weeks,” Max said.

“And why do you suppose your parents sent you here, then?” Mrs. Nussbaum asked us.

Max said, “Because it's free.”

Mrs. Nussbaum smiled and shook her head.

“No, no, no . . .”

Then Cobie Petersen raised his hand and said, “Ma'am? I think I know why, Mrs. Nussbaum, ma'am.”

“Oh?” Mrs. Nussbaum's voice returned to her usual delighted squeal.

Cobie Petersen looked Mrs. Nussbaum directly in the eye and said, “Because I think at least one of us is chipped, and I reckon Alex Division is kind of scared of you, ma'am, if you'll excuse me for saying so.”

Mrs. Nussbaum continued smiling, looking at each of us. She said, “Well! I suppose they'd never get away with something so predictable as sending me a six-toed cat! And you boys make such handsome biodrones.”

Then Mrs. Nussbaum leaned forward and put her face directly in front of each of us, as though we were all living television cameras. She said, “Tell me—Jake, Colton? Would you really do that to your
own children
? Your very own sons? You would, wouldn't you?”

And that's when I threw up, all over my shoes and socks, and the dirty pine floor of Jupiter.

Alex, our pet crow,
attempted suicide one time by trying to drink a bottle of our dad's gin.

He did not succeed. Alex the crow ended up knocking the bottle down from the bar rack, causing it to shatter and dump its contents all over our living room floor.

Natalie cleaned it up.

“Oh, Alex,” Natalie said, as though the two words could adequately sum up all the emptiness inside her.

And from his perch in the corner, Alex said, “Leave me alone. I'm
working out a long division problem
.”

My brother Max was a powerful influence.

I don't know why anyone would want to keep a suicidal pet in the first place—where's the fun in it? You always have to be so careful around them. But so many of the creatures Jake Burgess brought home from his de-extinction lab were bent on offing themselves. I'm still not certain if that made no sense, or if it made perfect sense. When you're
extinct
, you're doing what you're
supposed
to do—a sort of biological imperative, a drive, like reproduction. When someone stops you from being extinct, I could easily understand why the drive to return to where you came from might be a strong motivator to self-destruction.

In carrying all these stories, I can't help but feel this powerful connection between them: the desire to
save
others; cruelty and choice; selfishness, control, and the loss of will.

Poor Alex. He's such a sad bird.

I hope you don't feel bad because I gave you my story about what happened to me in the city of tents, Max. There's nothing anyone can do about these things now. And you needn't feel guilty about hating me when I came here, either. There's only so much a person should be expected to put up with, and Jake and Natalie make you—us—put up with quite a lot, I think.

I learned to survive in the city of tents. I became something of a fox—a shadow that moved so quietly and could disappear so quickly. During the first two weeks I lived in the orphans' tent, I hardly slept at all. I was always terrified that Isaak, Abel, and those other boys would come back for me again, especially at night.

One morning, during my third week there, Isaak told me after the beds were stacked that I would have to get a bucket and wash the floor of the tent from one end to the other. I didn't mind working; they'd assigned me plenty of chores since my first days, and for the most part I never spoke to them or argued one time about the things they told me to do, whether it was sweeping up, washing some of the littlest boys' faces and hands, and even doing their laundry sometimes. But on the day I was told to wash the floor of the tent, it was very warm and all the boys had to go outside so I could do the work.

And when I was nearly finished, Isaak and the other three older boys came back for me. Isaak and Abel stood in one of the doorways to the tent; Paul and Jovan stood in the other. I pretended to ignore them, despite my being trapped.

Isaak said, “Ariel, it looks like you're almost finished here.”

I kept my head down.

“Almost,” I said.

“That's good enough. You can be finished now,” Abel told me. He and Isaak stepped inside the tent. Then they shut the door flap and tied it closed behind them.

“We have something we want you to do. Remember, Ariel?” Abel said.

I felt sick.

And I knew I wasn't prepared to use my knife on one of the boys. I couldn't stand the thought of it. Paul and Jovan came inside and loosened the flap door so they could tie it shut.

I dropped my rag in the bucket and ran at the doorway as fast as I could.

This surprised Jovan and Paul. Maybe they were not used to the boys in our tent resisting them. Even I could calculate the odds well enough to know it was a stupid thing to attempt. I tried forcing my way between Jovan and Paul so I could get out through the open tent flap. I knocked Paul down, but Jovan clipped me in the lips with his elbow. I felt and tasted blood in my mouth, and then I fell against Jovan as he wrapped his arms around my chest.

I was not going to let them hold me down again. Before Abel and Isaak were halfway across the floor, I spun around and broke free of Jovan's grasp. I saw how I'd smeared some of my blood onto the boy's face and undershirt, and I was happy for it.

I tore through the flap doorway and ran.

They chased me for a while, but I did not look back, so who can say? It felt like they chased me. I was certain the older boys were there. And I knew that in the crowds and between the tents, my smaller size gave me the advantage. I had learned to find my way through the city of tents, and there was no way Isaak and the others would ever catch me again.

This is how it was in the city of tents. By staying careful, and always watching, I managed to stay out of the filthy hands of Isaak and his sergeants. And I kept to myself, not talking to the other orphans unless it couldn't be avoided. Because there was always the possibility of having to carry someone else's terrible story, of feeling compelled to save someone, and I didn't want to think about who among the other boys were targets for Isaak and Abel and their friends.

But I continued to steal for them. I had to, Max. It was a means by which we came to some difficult mutual accord. I would never trust them, though, and felt certain Isaak and his sergeants were merely waiting for an opportunity to do what they wanted to me again. So I learned how to make it so those opportunities never happened. Like I said, Max, I became a fox, a shadow.

I felt guilty about stealing things, but it had to be done. Eventually, I learned to make excuses for taking the most pointless items—a small bag of clothespins, a book about Greece, a colander. Sometimes Isaak would get angry and tell me he was going to make me pay, but he and the other older boys never did their dirty things in front of anyone else. I think they were too afraid the rest of us might realize we outnumbered them. They were a hunting pack, and their strategy was based on isolating individual prey out from the group.

I had them figured out.

- - -

At the end of my eighth month, the city of tents found itself in the grip of a terrible winter. But I was about to be born, Max.

Snow fell on us for three consecutive days. It was the bitterest cold I'd ever felt. Even with the heater running and our tent closed up, it was impossible to keep warm. The circle of beds on the floor of our tent constricted like a fist around our little heater.

Until that winter, I had only seen snow in photographs. So you can imagine how wonderful it was at first, and how terribly cruel it became very soon after that. Everything was frozen hard—the ground was crusted in white, and there was even ice at the edge of the floor along the wall inside the orphans' tent.

Some of the boys didn't have shoes. They suffered tremendously.

And there was never enough food to keep us satisfied, Max. The relief workers didn't like to come out in the cold, either. Who could blame them? So on the third day of the snowfall, our lunch had been served very late, which caused us all to question whether or not there would even be a dinner.

I sat on the floor, shoulder to shoulder among the other boys, hugging my knees to my chest with my feet and face pointed at the heater. I always sat away from Isaak and his boys, 180 degrees separating us, and I'd try to keep my face positioned so our heater would block Isaak from looking at me. I saw Jovan stand up. He walked to the rear wall and grabbed one of our water buckets. I could tell by the way Abel looked at him that they were planning something.

The water pipes had frozen the day before, so the only way for us to get drinking water was to fill our buckets with snow and bring it inside to melt by the heater. The deepest, cleanest snow was on a small hillside at the outer perimeter of the tent city, just inside the chain-link fence.

“Give it to him.” Abel pointed to a new boy named Étan, who was sitting near me.

Étan wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve. He was small, maybe twelve years old, with dirty straw-colored hair and a coat that was too big for him.

“Come on,” Jovan told the boy. “You need to learn how to bring the water.”

I think everyone knew what was happening except for that new boy.

Jovan and the kid went out into the cold.

Maybe a minute passed, and then Isaak, Abel, and Paul got up from their post near the heater and followed Jovan and the new boy outside.

What could anyone do?

I looked around at the other boys sitting on their mats. There were nine of us left inside the tent, and I was the oldest. If that meant anything, I don't know what it was. It wasn't as though the others looked to me with the expectation I'd do anything to change the way things were. Like I told you, I never spoke to anyone in the orphans' tent, anyway. But I thought about my last birthday—the day I'd hidden inside a refrigerator. And my fifteenth birthday was coming up, too, Max, but it was impossible to think about the future, or God, or what warm air felt like pushed along by the winds of summer.

Nobody had the will to intervene.

I heard a boy whisper something to his friend, and the other only lowered his chin and shook his head.

Sick and afraid, without saying anything, I stood up and slipped out the flap door into the icy afternoon.

Nobody was outside in the cold. I could see Isaak and the others far down the row of tents, making their way to the hill by the fence. I cut across to a parallel row so I could catch up to them faster without being seen.

When I came to the end of the row, I turned along the fence and saw the boys out on the hill. They didn't notice me.

You know what I thought? It was funny how I knew I couldn't injure anyone to stop him from hurting me, but at the same time realized that I could not stay in the doubtful warmth of the orphans' tent and knowingly let Isaak and his boys harm someone else. This doesn't make me heroic, Max. Heroes make choices. I had no choice.

Étan's coat lay spread out on the snow. Abel was on his knees, choking the smaller boy and pinning him down on top of the coat, with Étan's shirt pulled up and twisted around the boy's struggling arms, while Jovan and Paul tugged at Étan's clothing. And Isaak stood at the boy's feet, unbuttoning his pants and laughing, telling Paul and Jovan to hold the kid's legs still.

Max, I held the knife I'd stolen on my first day. I'd wrapped the handle of it with the rag because I didn't want it to slip in my hand.

The boy was putting up a good fight. I thought he must have been braver than me.

Isaak was angry. Abel punched the smaller boy in the back of his head, and Paul and Jovan wrestled with Étan's kicking legs.

They were struggling so much they didn't see me as I walked right up to Isaak.