Page 100 of A Better World

“I don’t know what I can teach that kid about sex. At fifteen I wasn’t close.”

“You knew some tricks by the time we met,” she said.

“All acquired from porn, none from experience,” he said, and they both chuckled. “Okay, I’ll talk to him. I’ll talk to them both.”

They rolled together in the bed. He pushed his groin into her and he was hard. It might be a good idea to make love tonight. It might make them feel closer. They were both considering, hands probing lazily, but they considered for too long and he fell back asleep.

She awoke a little while later to the sound of the shower. For reasons she couldn’t explain, she didn’t knock. She looked through the keyhole. He wasn’t breathing into a paper bag. It was more disturbing than that. He was staring at the floor, naked and utterly still.

“Russell?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

Slowly, he walked into the water.

Monday

Josie opted out of riding with Arnie Nassar and the soccer crew to school. Instead, Linda dropped her off, along with Hip. On the ride, Hip rambled about universal golden tickets. He and Cathy were working on getting everyone to sign the petition, but since New Year’s Eve, residents had been reluctant to add their names. Some were even asking for their names to be removed. They were afraid that Lloyd might not become chairman and that if a new regime came along after Parson retired, there’d be retaliation.

Josie interrupted from the back seat. Her voice was jaunty. Perky, even. “Could you forge ’em?”

“What? No! Why would we do that?”

“I dunno. Why would you pick universal golden tickets as a cause? Why not the society for rescuing dead cats? Or the conscientious citizens for increased child labor?”

“People have a right to care about their own lives. Everything doesn’t have to be about rescuing the poor or cleaning the air,” he answered from shotgun. “And in a way, universal ticketsareabout life and death. Outside is bad.”

“Yeah. But also, you and Cathy are lame-bot express. Trust me. Her next cause she’s gonna drag you into is harvesting spinal fluid from Pakistani babies so she can live longer, because this whole death from old age thing is really scary. Existentialism is giving her a panic attack.”

What Josie’d said was not nice. Linda knew that. When you love someone, you support the people they choose to love. But maybe that’swhat siblings were for, breaking those rules, because damn, it was a bull’s-eye.

Hip lost his mind. “How can you say that? You’re so selfish! You think you’re a good person but you only ever care about yourself. You’re all sad lately and we’re supposed to feel sorry for you, but why? You don’t ask how anybody else is doing. You don’t care. You don’t clean up. You don’t ever saythank youto Mom. You’re a freak. Nobody likes you. At least Ihavea girlfriend. At least people want me around.”

“Whoa,” Linda said. “Stop talking. Too far, Hip.”

The rest of the car ride was tense. Hip fumed. Josie tried to hide her tears by staring straight ahead and not wiping them. Linda didn’t wade in. She knew from fifteen years of peace-brokering that they were both too raw.

When Linda pulled up to the designated drop-off area, Hip busted out and didn’t look back. Left his door wide open, which was how Linda knew he wasn’t just angry, but distressed. Josie got out, shut her door, then leaned into shotgun.

“He didn’t mean it, Josie,” Linda said.

“No?” Josie asked.

“Okay. Maybe he did mean it. But that doesn’t make it true.”

After her shift at the hospital, Linda checked the kiosk for Katie and Sebbie Parker’s files. True to Chernin’s word, they’d been marked as discharged back in September. After that, she checked every pediatric patient registered at the hospital. None resembled the Parker kids.

In the absence of any leads, she decided on a physical search. She took the stairs to the fourth floor, which was divided into maternity and mental health. She found two sleeping babies in the nursery, their milk-fed mouths open in satisfied littleOs. A sole attendant read her device at the front desk. Linda passed from the east wing to psychiatric in the west wing. She hesitated only briefly—wasn’t sure she was allowed there—then palm-accessed her way inside.

It was shocking.

The sound-tight door opened to bedlam: ambient beeps andwhines, screeching wheels on rushing gurneys, yelps and shouts from patients and professionals alike. Everything whizzed, a fast-paced contrast to the rest of the hospital—the rest of Plymouth Valley. There were two whiteboards, both full. On the floor, a maintenance person was cleaning a quart-sized pool of blood, his mop’s yarn strings saturated with red. She skirted around that, kept her eyes wide for two small children.

The air had a fissure to it—a crackle. She passed one open door after the next, all occupied. Some were young people in their teens and twenties. More were middle-aged. Through the open door on her left, she saw a drooling, heavily sedated brick of a man. Spittle gathered along his lower lip and ribboned down to the shining floor. She froze. It was Keith Parson. The Beltane King.

He smiled slowly, a wide, ugly grin that showed too much gums and too many teeth. “Hello to you,” he said, patrician and arrogant, like that first day she’d met him, in Anouk’s cottage.

Linda walked faster, away from him. “It’s okay, honey. Don’t you know everything’s okay?” she heard a nurse ask a woman in the next room, who was weeping. Linda recognized her, too.

“It came to me on New Year’s Eve through the eyes of a goat,” goalie soccer mom Ruth Epstein answered. “It said I’m the new prophet. I’m God now.”

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