The Executioner at the Institute for Contaminated Children (2 page)

“He’s wrong!” I sprang to my feet. The entire hall stared at me like I just jumped out of a birthday cake. My feet went cold and all the blood rushed up to my head. This wasn’t happening, this wasn’t happening, this wasn’t happening… I pretended to be somewhere else while my body felt like a kettle about to boil. Could everyone look away, please? My knuckles tightened, but I couldn’t sit there and say nothing. It wasn’t right! The jock shot me a revolted look. “The answer’s C, the newt. Check for yourself.”

“Um…okay,” said the host. He glanced down at his card and then looked on his computer. “I guess she’s right. Sorry about that, guys. The answer is actually C, the newt.”

A triumphant grin spread over my face. The jock’s revolted face contorted into a grimace fixed on me and I sat back down, legs crossed yet somewhat wobbly. My ears still sizzled as though I’d gotten a horrible sun burn. 

“Wow,” Torrey said in a dull tone. “Are you satisfied now?” He placed his small hands on his knees, a pout on his childish face.

There, there, little bro. No need to be sore just because I beat you at
Tomb Raider
last night
and
got all the trivia right in the quiz bowl. Poor Torrey studied so hard to keep up with my test scores, all the while I put my time towards mastering my gaming skills. Whoever said you couldn’t have both top academic and gaming scores was seriously mistaken. Right again? Right again. 

“Hm-hmm, yup! Let’s go home.” My grin refused to fade. I felt victorious and wasn’t sure why; I had gotten plenty of answers right before. But for some reason standing up to that jerk made it worth something. Like I could make a difference. Serve justice. Just because he was pretty gave him no right to claim points when he didn’t deserve them. Not that pretty people couldn’t be smart, but that was ridiculous. It’s like he had him in some sort of trance… Then again, he was from LeJeune. “The Institute for Extraordinary Children.” One of twelve institutes total, at least. What exactly was so extraordinary about him? Not to mention, the word “children” made me laugh. But I don’t suppose “adult” was appropriate either. I guess in their eyes we’re more the former than the latter. Not we,
they
. I didn’t even go there.

We walked through the arch separating the mundane white walls inside Johnston Hall from the luxurious exterior which rose several stories high in gothic architecture. In a way, the building and I were opposites. I kept my exterior as bland as I could, my long black hair parted down the middle and tucked behind my ears, cut in a straight line. I hardly took off my school uniform since I didn’t really like to express individuality. But inside I had a gothic cathedral, or one of those crazy awesome
Final Fantasy
structures. I just didn’t dare show it because I feared judgment. What, you think I’m a coward? I could be brave when I wanted to, otherwise I would have never stood up to that jock. But it took injustice to shake me, no matter how small. Torrey differed from me in this case; he had to get pushed to the limits to act. It didn’t take much to tip me over the edge. It’s where I lived. 

The wind ravaged my black hair, the bird nest on top of Torrey’s head, and parted Lisa’s bangs, but we were used to the northern drafts. The rest of the crowd followed behind us like cattle and cleared far too fast. We stood out like sore thumbs.

Now the tricky part was how to go home and not get caught. I’d have to skip through Marquette undetected with two small kids in tow. No problem. It wasn’t that small a campus anyway. The only way my parents could catch me is if there was a sudden fire alarm.

Probability? Ridiculously low. 

We walked out onto Wisconsin Street as the rest of the Hall emptied. Home was walking distance from here, but I had to double check my parents were nowhere in sight. They strictly told me to not take Torrey and Lisa outside the house without their knowledge. 

I froze at the sound of the cocky footsteps behind me.

“What did you think you were doing? Stay out of my way, freak!”

Or so I heard him say in my head. I thought he’d judge me for sure. When I turned around to face the football player and his quiz bowl team (yeah, it sounded funny to me too), what he actually said was: “Quite a lot of confidence you had back there. Though you might pass up as a nerd, you sure look dumb.” Much worse. He placed a hand on my shoulder and sneered when he passed me, his mouth lowered to my ear. “What’s your secret?”

Rhetorical
and
hilarious. Where did this guy get off? He carried on down the street snickering with his team. What was so damn funny?! They lost! I was right, he was wrong! Who cared what I looked like? Or maybe…was he as competitive as me?

“D-D-Douchebag!” I called after him, but he was way out of earshot. Torrey clapped his hands over Lisa’s ears and gave me a disapproving shake of the head.

“Donna?”

I turned a second time.

“Oh…hey, Dad!”

“What are you doing here? I thought I told you—”

“We…just came to see you. Since you’d be coming home soon, I thought we’d meet up. You know I love this campus.”

Dad scrutinized me with a deep stare and then cracked a smile. “I’m only joking, it’s all right. Come here, you little runts.”

Torrey ran up to him and wrapped his arms around his torso while Dad messed up Lisa’s hair. I let out a sigh of relief. “With your luck, you’ll be seeing more of it in two years.” He winked at me. “Not that you’ll need it. Just pull those writing scores of yours up. What was it, History and English were your lowest grades?”

“Heh-heh. Yeah.” Damn reading courses. They bored me to tears.

“Let’s go make dinner. Mom will be late.”

I sighed. Typical Mom, always working late. I’m glad Dad at least was more laid back.

There was nothing to worry about. If I pushed my efforts just a bit more, I’d make it into Marquette on scholarship for sure, and get into law school. Only way to become a lawyer so I could really deliver justice. Although I hated the thought of all the laws I’d need to study. But I’d ace the Bar Exam easy. I’d pick up on the laws later through experience, one by one. It’s not like anyone could remember them all. And given the likelihood of finding a job out of college in this economy or even affording college at all, a scholarship would beat the odds. Unless…I guess I would find out tomorrow, but the probability something might change overnight was zero to nothing.

At least, that’s what I thought last night. When I woke up next morning, a bad hunch sat at the pit of my stomach. Something to do with that time five years ago when Dad snapped at me for getting all the answers right on Greed. He and Mom forbid me from watching another game show ever again. And I think I know why.

CHAPTER THREE—Catastrophe

T
he day started off at a peak and could only go downhill. Either a consequence or a confirmation of my hunch. My birthday gifts were more than I could ask for—comic books and video games galore! So many I lost count and couldn’t decide which to play first. If my parents didn’t let me dabble in game shows, they made up for it.

None of that was the problem. In fact, they could take back all those presents if it would mean the rest of that day would go away and be forever erased from my life. They could take all the presents I have ever been given before. All the
material
presents.

Maybe I didn’t want attention and I did want justice, but I loved my family above either of those things. That’s why what happened at breakfast and what ended at school… would scar me for life. It would also answer my question from before: No, I did not want to be contaminated.

I sat down giddy at the breakfast table. First to be there, too. A Narcissus bouquet stood at the center of the table in a white vase; Dad always remembered to get them for my birthday. I smiled and took in the sweet scent. Mom and Dad made pancakes in the kitchen while the news yammered on about the looming recession and the stock market crash. Them cooking together was the happiest vision for me. I loved to watch them, wishing someday I’d be that happy. Mom always told me to look on the bright side. Expect a good life, she said.

“Ah, damn, don’t they ever shut up?” Dad fumbled for the remote and turned off the news. “No need for that racket. Too depressing.”

“Nervous?” said Mom. She had a way of staying calm and collected even in the worst of times.

“I just can’t wait for this day to be over,” Dad said under his breath.

I frowned over my shoulder. Were they really happy, though, or did they do their best to hide their fears? Their constant worry that someday, any day, their children might be taken from them. Because they had both been exposed to the contamination. That’s what nudged me to go to Marquette. They never told us, but I looked into it a few weeks ago. They both lived in Wisconsin when it happened, just admitted as students to Marquette. Dad even went so far as to lie and tell me he attended Case Western and Mom claimed she went to Yale. It wasn’t that hard to figure out. But why insist on hiding the truth from us? The only possibility I saw was that they knew the odds of us being contaminated.

Probability? High.

“Dad…where’d you go to college, again?”

My father froze and stared at me. His expression quickly defrosted. “Case Western, Donna dear, I thought I told you.”

“And Mom went to Yale, right?” I turned to look at her, my face set. While I didn’t want to make them mad, I had to get to the bottom of things. I didn’t like the thought of my parents lying to us.

She smiled. Fake. “Of course I did.”

“How come I’ve never seen your diplomas?”

A fork clanged against a metal pan behind me. Dad’s eyes shot to meet Mom’s.

“I…guess we’ll have to show you when you get back from school today,” said Dad with a false grin. I shook my head just barely to myself. Did they really dare to take this charade so far? Then again, perhaps they wanted to protect us so badly they’d resort to lying, even to their own children. I still wasn’t okay with it.

That was when it all began. Lisa sat down at the table with Emberlily in her lap.

Al Capone rolled under Torrey’s chair and let out a guttural, “Mao.” Torrey sniggered. Beside my chair, Sissy groomed her paws. The black and white zig-zags on her back reminded me of shark teeth for their shape. One thing most people didn’t get about cats was how much more faithful they were than dogs. Feed a dog and he will be your friend. Feed a cat and they will still return to their master. They may even refuse to eat. I still didn’t understand why loyalty was associated with dogs. They were more like mercenaries.

“Lisa, sweetness, I thought I told you no cats at the table,” said Mom in a dry voice.

“But Emberlily likes it at the table, she says it scares her when the table hides our faces,” said Lisa. The kitten truly resembled a lily on fire, with its orange and brown fur arranged in the pattern of petals.

Dad looked at her strangely and Mom sat down, almost unwillingly, pulling the chair back with rigidity.

Mom laughed, her tone slightly quaking and Dad broke through a smile. Torrey and I looked from one to the other. I heard Lisa say such silly things before, but she never sounded this serious. Like she really believed the cat spoke to her.

“Lisa, please put Emberlily down. She’ll be just fine, I promise,” said Dad.

“No, she won’t! I keep telling you,” said Lisa, her eyes almost in tears. “She’s afraid, she’s all shakes. She doesn’t like it when we hide our faces. She says we look like headless giants!”

“LISA!” Mom roared. Torrey and I jumped in our seats. Sissy hissed and sprang from the room with Al. Emberlily dug her nails into Lisa’s arm and she winced, but didn’t let the kitten go. I wouldn’t have dared act so willful at her age, but we had also never heard either of our parents screech like that before. Tears spurted from Lisa’s eyes. “Lisa…please, darling…put the cat down. My sweet, you can’t tell what the cat is thinking. No one can.”

Lisa didn’t move, clutching the kitten in her arms. “I can.” Her voice was so defiant I couldn’t believe it belonged to a five-year-old. “You know what they call me at school? Lisa Paw. Because I hear what animals say. But you don’t believe me, I knew you wouldn’t believe me! You’re the worst, I hate you!”

She ran from the table. Dad stood in her way. I couldn’t move. What was this? Why was it happening? Beside me, Torrey’s hand turned white from clutching his fork.

“Lisa, give me Emberlily.”

“No!” Lisa screamed.

“I said give her to me.” His voice was cold, like an iced over lake. I couldn’t believe it came from Dad.

I stood from my seat in the manner of a soldier. “Dad, stop this.” Even if they were our parents, they had no right to take away the thing she loved!   

“You too, Donalie.”

“What?”

“Go get Sissy. Torrey, bring Al.”

I stumbled over my chair. They couldn’t do this...

“No, you can’t! You promised we could keep them!” Torrey cried, tears now in his eyes as well.

“Well, as your sister so cleverly figured out,” said Mom, sitting rigid in her seat, her face long and pale until her head turned stiffly to Torrey, “we lied.”

CHAPTER FOUR—Multiple Choice

T
hat day—my birthday—I didn’t want to go to school. A rare event since I hated missing class. I could only imagine everyone gossiping about why I didn’t attend school and how I was probably slacking. In reality, no one would probably care and I probably
would
spend the entire day playing my new video games, yet my thoughts often got the better of me.

Today felt like a part of my heart had been surgically removed. Narcissa had been beside me for as long as I can remember. She was the first thing I saw when I woke up; the last when I closed my eyes. She raced to greet me when I walked into my bedroom, licked my toes when I felt down, and laid back to back with me for a cat nap. She was family. I knew our time grew short because I was bound for college and her years gained on her. But not this. I did not think my parents, who loved her almost as much as they loved their own children (or so I thought), would collect her like an old sweater and take her to live with my grandparents. Who did that? Especially to Lisa and Torrey. Did they think it would keep Lisa’s signs from showing? She was contaminated. We got that. And they couldn’t keep her away from animals her entire life. Just what were they so scared of? Or did they really loathe the idea of what others would think?