clean scrapes or cuts or what have you. She even carried it, in a small travel bottle, in her purse.
So I motioned for Alex to follow me and we headed back toward the Pharmacy section.
I felt horrible.
I had clawed him across the face. So brotherly of me. And he had a huge bruise developing along his jaw. Such familial tenderness. His eyes were red from crying. Because of me.
I rummaged through the fallen merchandise until I found the good stuff. I also grabbed a bag of cotton puffs.
“It wasn’t me,” I said, swabbing the first of his many scrapes. “Something in the air made me go crazy. You know I’d never attack you like that.”
Alex nodded, looking at the floor.
“Please,” I begged. “Say you forgive me. I feel so horrible. I couldn’t feel any worse.”
Tears welled up in my little brother’s pale eyes.
“It’s just…,” he said, his voice getting thin. “It’s just that I wasn’t scared before…”
And now he was.
Thanks to me.
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” he said. “Why you acted like that. Why Niko got those blisters and Brayden started seeing things.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I told him. “And I won’t… I won’t let myself get exposed to the chemicals in the air again. I promise.”
“But, Dean, if you can’t go outside, how are we going to find Mom and Dad? How will we go home?”
I could have lied. But Alex was smarter than me.
“I don’t know,” I said.
After I got him cleaned up we walked back together toward the others. He had forgiven me, but he was still kind of stiff with me. Wary, I guess. Or maybe he was just physically sore from the beating I had given him.
As we approached the Pizza Shack we heard: “I did too go to Emerald’s!” from Max.
There was this big disconnect between what the big kids were dealing with and what the little kids were thinking about. For example, while I was patching up my brother after having tried to rip him apart due to a chemical compound–induced mania, Max, Batiste, Ulysses, and Chloe were discussing Emerald’s, a strip club located near an off-ramp at the outskirts of town.
“He’s lying. You never went to Emerald’s. They don’t let little kids in there,” Chloe protested.
“They do if your uncle’s the bouncer!” Max countered.
“What do they do in there, anyway?” Batiste wanted to know. “Our church is always trying to get those sinners to repent. But I don’t even know what kind of sinning they’re doing.”
“Probably cursing,” offered Chloe.
“Tons of that!” said Max.
“That’s a sin.” Batiste sighed.
“And drinking liquor?” Chloe asked.
“Totally,” said Max. “They have these little glasses in all kinds of flavors like watermelon and peach passion and hot apple. But they taste horrible. Sweet and horrible. I had three of them one time and then I puked them all up, right on the bar, and my mom said if my uncle ever takes me there again, she’s gonna call the cops.”
“Drinking is a sin,” said Batiste.
“Wow,” Chloe murmured.
“I don’t want to go back, anyways,” Max continued. “Boring. Just a bunch of moms dancing around in their string underwear. Big whoop.”
I stifled a laugh.
“What?” Chloe said. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh… Alex was just telling me a joke,” I said.
“Tell us!” she demanded. “We love jokes.”
Alex shrugged, lost. “I forget.”
“Come on!” they pleaded.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “How do you make a tissue dance?”
“How?” Max said.
“You put a little boogie in it!”
Nothing. Not even a groan.
“That’s the worst joke I ever heard,” said Chloe.
“I don’t even get it,” said Max.
Alex and I left the grade schoolers to discuss the finer points of adult entertainment and went over to where the big kids were gathering. We crossed past Josie, who was sort of slumped in a booth. Still not saying much. Well, anything.
“How are you, Josie?” I asked.
Alex nudged me toward the other big kids. He wanted to hear what they were thinking about the chemicals. I did, too…
“I don’t understand,” Astrid said. “It made Niko blister up, Dean turned into some kind of a monster, and Brayden started having hallucinations. But Sahalia and Alex and Jake were fine?”
“It doesn’t make any sense but, yeah,” Jake said, scratching his head.
“Maybe they attack based on age or something…,” Brayden said.
“I noticed that the effects seemed to wear off very quickly,” Alex piped up. “It makes me think they attack the central nervous system.”
“That anyone could make this kind of poison is just horrible,” Astrid said. “The people at NORAD should be shot.”
“Hey! That’s my dad you’re talking about,” Brayden said.
“But why would they make such awful things?” Astrid asked us. “I mean, a chemical that makes people turn into savages? Or makes them blister up and die? It’s evil.”
“They made them to protect us.”
“Protect us from what? From who?” Astrid demanded.
“From our enemies!” Brayden answered.
“It’s inhumane,” I spoke up. “Just making those compounds violates the Geneva Convention. It’s illegal.”
“Nothing’s illegal if the government itself is doing it,” Brayden asserted, like an idiot.
“That’s just amazingly wrong,” I said.
“Hey, Brayden,” Astrid said. “What exactly does your dad do for NORAD, anyway?”
I’d been wondering that exact thing. I had sort of fantasized that Brayden’s dad was like a janitor.
“That’s classified, Ass-trid,” Brayden replied.
Then we heard some rattling.
“Hello?” came a distant voice.
We jumped up.
Someone was at the gate!
Beyond the plastic sheeting and the blankets, someone was rattling the gate.
“They came!” shouted one of the little kids. “They’re here for us!”
“Anybody home?” came the voice from outside. “Hello!”
We rushed to the gate. Everyone started clamoring at once: “Hi! Hello! We’re in here! Who are you? Hello! Hello!”
“Open the gate!” the voice shouted. “I hear you in there.”
“Yes, yes! We’re trapped inside, we want to get out! We want to go home!” shouted all the little kids in a big jumble.
Chloe turned to Niko and commanded him. “Take down the plastic. He’s here for us!”
“Don’t you touch it!” Niko growled. I’d never heard him so intense.
