Chapter Nine—The Victim

Shelli was thirteen, and she was not beautiful.

She was skinny, like a supermodel, only she wasn’t built like a supermodel. Her legs stuck out in odd, awkward ways, and her arms were built like a grasshopper’s. Her chest was flat, and normal for thirteen, but all the Popular Girls were B-cups already. Secretly, she thought this made them look a bit like upturned squashes, but that look was what people Accepted.

Her hair was chopped short in a sad attempt to be modern. Her clothes were too tight, because that was In, but instead of accentuating Shelli’s curves they accentuated her bones. The overall effect was that of a skeleton with a jet-black bowl over its head.

Walker was thirteen, and he was gorgeous.

He was in sports—football, to be exact, and the quarterback, too—and he was a great singer, and he could act. His hair was fuzzy and dark and usually surrounded by cooing girls. His eyes were, in a word, smouldering. He looked good in tight clothes and he looked good in baggy clothes, and people loved him.

He sort of knew Shelli. She was that weird kid he’d hung around with in elementary school. Scary smart, scary honest, scary weird—all that stuff. Walker didn’t like her much.

And he was Walker, not Johnny. But she persisted in calling him that whenever she saw him in the halls. It bugged him.

She was so weird. She was so smart.

So when they got paired up in Social Studies for a take-home project, he wasn’t sure whether he should jump up in glee or bang his head on the desk.

…

There was a groan of machinery, and a loud clinking sound, and someone kicked something made of steel. Then they swore.

Max sat up in his bed and felt it go liquid behind him—waves of fabric hit his back, and he fell out of bed. The floor was made of metal with fabric over in, in some sad attempt at carpet.

(where am i)

(oh right.)

(damn.)

Panic flared in Max’s heart before he realised the source of the noise—the doors were open, and Niki had opened his. From the looks of it, she’d also closed her foot in between door and wall.

“Um, morning,” she said, grinning sheepishly. “Sorry, did I scare you? Wanted to see if you were up yet.”

“No,” said Max, standing. “Um, and I am now.”

“Cool. Good. Sally’s here. She said she needs to show us how to use the kitchen.”

“What, cooking lessons?”

“Not exactly.”

…

“Food’s already prepared,” said Sally Wright, holding up a package marked “Broiled Potatoes”. “It’s a bit weird to cook when you’re a hundred feet underwater. Um. One of the jobs here is down in Food Prep, where you get to play with chemicals all day. I don’t really understand it. I can’t cook for the life of me. I burned cereal once, back topside. Tried to heat it up.”

She grinned sheepishly.

“You just add water and stick it on the stove—not like the preservative-loaded stuff topside, I swear. Tastes much better than that, without all the weird pesticides and stuff.” Sally made a face. “Or it does now. They’ve gotten much better over the past year.”

“How long have you been down here?” Max asked. He had a look of mild horror on his face that Niki sincerely hoped Sally wouldn’t notice.

“I was ten when I came up here. So three-ish years,” said the thirteen-year-old mildly. “Shelli saved me herself. My mother had been busy grinding down my self-esteem, you know? Parents do that sometimes.”

Her tone wasn’t self-pitying. Her tone wasn’t sad. Her tone wasn’t shameful, or scared, or embarrassed.

Sally might have been mentioning the weather.

She shrugged. “She’d tell me I was ugly, and weak, and stupid. But she was wrong, so I came here.”

“Um,” said Max, the master of articulation.

“Good,” said Niki. “You should have.”

And then the talk went back to the preparation of food, which holds little interest for those of us unable to actually eat it.

…

It was always awkward when you had someone coming over at a certain time. Especially when you had fifteen minutes before they were going to show up, and you had nothing to do that took only fifteen minutes. Or took up fifteen minutes. You just sat there. And waited.

Which was weird.

Walker sat on the couch and pretended to read a book. He couldn’t watch television—he’d been banned, and anyway, Shelli would look down on that. Not that he liked her, or anything, but the little part of his brain that was programmed to want acceptance was in full bloom at that age. Thirteen-year-olds want to be loved by everyone.

The doorbell rang.

Walker let Michelle Banks into his house, and his life changed forever.

That sort of thing happens in stories like this.

…

“Okay. So you know about the food, and the lighting, and the Rule Poster, and the toilet—“

God, yes.&l; They’d never forget the toilet.

“—So you just need to learn about the TV and the MiniNet.”

The house was small, the size of an apartment—roughly the layout of Niki’s old flat, in the spirit of coincidence. Two bedrooms, a bathroom with a strange toilet, a kitchen without a microwave, and a living room. The walls were undecorated except for a poster by the front door, which listed the Habitat’s General Rules. The living room had a mildly uncomfortable couch, a bookshelf with a few dusty paperbacks, a television, and a desk with a computer on it.

Those were their living arrangements. Hardly wanting for necessities, but the want for comfort was overbearing—that was the principle of the Habitat’s economy, as Niki and Max soon discovered. The place was a classic Capitalistic-Democratic society, but Shelli had raised the poverty level to a non-lethal zone.

That was it.

If you wanted more than the basics, you had to work for it.

“The TV is our own network. It’s only got like, two channels, because we don’t have enough people to produce more. You wanna change that, feel free to go into the television business. The MiniNet is our miniature Internet, which you get free access to. Works the same as the big one, only with less information. You can get wireless access to the big one at the top of the Main Dome, though, for some reason.”

“We don’t exactly have computers,” said Niki.

“Yeah, but you might later,” said Sally. “Um. You have the day to explore, there are maps in your desk, and then tomorrow you’ll have to go get tested.”

Niki deflated. “I thought the testing was today.”

“Naw, you’re allowed to settle in first.”

“Joy,” said Niki.

“Joy,” said Max.

They said it at the same time, with the same intonations, but for entirely different reasons.

…

“Fuck this,” said Walker. “I don’t understand this shit. Why am I supposed to care about some old dead guy?” He grinned in an attempt at camaraderie. If there was one thing every preteen had in common, it was hatred of school, right?

Right, but wrong. Shelli took her education seriously. Besides, in her mind the boy that she would later love was a moron, and nothing he said would raise his opinion of her.

“You mean George Washington?” Shelli asked, eyebrow raised. “The father of our country? Well, I can think of a few good reasons. You’d have a queen, for starts.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So saying that would get your head chopped off,” she said placidly. “You wouldn’t have the right to free speech.”

“Heh, why do I need that?”

“So, should you ever decide to form an opinion of your own, you can voice it.” Her carefully painted nails curled in annoyance. They were neon green, and sloppy, and were the exact opposite of appealing.

Shelli was thirteen, too. She wanted people to like her. She wanted to be normal.

But the part of her that was Herself was too strong to overcome, and that was where the internal conflict began.

Shelli wore nail polish because girls were supposed to wear nail polish, but she hated the bland colours that they always seemed to choose. She wore makeup, too, because girls wore makeup, but Shelli always seemed to choose the wrong day to wear lipstick. Namely, the day when she forgot to put on makeup of any other kind. She’d had her period at an early age, and people had teased her—enough that her father had finally convinced the gynaecologist to just put her on the pill and shut them up. And then they’d whispered about her moral integrity.

Some kids have targets tattooed on their forehead with invisible ink. Shelli was one of them. Most of what she’d learned about people was through observation, and lack of practical experience got in her way.

Walker looked at her nails and wondered if girls did stuff like that their entire lives.

“I have opinions of my own,” he said, hurt.

“Oh, really? Like what?”

Like your nail polish is stupid, Walker thought. Like I actually like math homework. Like I think…

“Like I think Carri was wrong. You look awesome in that shirt.” He didn’t understand why Carolina wouldn’t just call herself Carolina. She had to be Carri. And not even Carrie with an “e”—it could only have an “i" on the end, which was just stupid.

Wait, what was it he’d just said?

Shelli’s hand slid to her stomach self-consciously. “Carri didn’t like my shirt?” she asked. There wasn’t much about it to like. Or to dislike. Shelli had on a plain red T-shirt.

“She said that wasn’t your colour,” said Walker. “I think you look good in red.”

“Oh,” said Shelli, making a mental note to burn the shirt when she got home. “Okay, then. Um. Thanks for the compliment.”

“You’re welcome.”

“That was sarcasm.” Shelli rolled her eyes. “That wasn’t a compliment at all. Jerk.”

“Hey!” Walker looked hurt. He really did think red was her colour. “I wasn’t trying to insult you, Michelle.”

“Yeah, well, don’t patronise me, then.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Were.” Shelli sighed. “Can we just do this, please?”

…

Sally Wright left a silence in her absence.

Max sat on the couch. Niki sat at the table in the kitchen. Neither was entirely sure what to say.

“So what d’you wanna do, then?” Max asked.

“I,” said Niki, “am going to go explore.”

“Sounds like fun. I’ll get the map,” he said, totally missing the point of Niki’s choice in words.

…

The Main Dome wasn’t all that confusing, really. The lower you were, the worse your house was—there were twenty floors of housing and one that wasn’t. Floor One was the top floor, with the best cabins, and Floor Twenty was the worst. Max and Niki lived, it seemed, on Floor Nineteen.

“So what’s the difference?” Max asked. “Amount of bedrooms?

“One floor,” said Niki. “I dunno, we probably have more space or something.”

It was a cylinder with a central staircase that led all the way up to Floor Zero, which was the central hub of the Habitat. Doorways dotted the circumference of the room—there was only one wall on Floor Zero, and a fence around the bits of stairway that didn’t have steps directly underneath.

From there, you could go anywhere in the Habitat.

Niki and Max stood in the centre of Floor Zero, confused.

“What’s a moon pool?” Max asked. “Um.”

“I think that’s what the airlock leads to,” said Niki. “Where we came in. That little ring with all the subs in it.”

“Sounds like a strip club,” said Max.

She looked at him. He bit his lip.

“Um. Okay. What about the library, then? You like books, right?”

He looked at her. She grinned.

“Yes, Niki. I like books. Why don’t we go to the library?”

…

“And he lived at Monticello, right?”

Shelli slammed her head on the table. There was a moment of shock on Walker’s part—she started to grab her things.

“I’m sorry, I really can’t take this any more.” Michelle gave him a Look. He could literally see the capital letter in her eyes. “You know where Washington grew up, Johnny. You know who he was. You know what he did. So don’t act like a fucking idiot.”

“What?”

“You’re smart, Walker. I’ve heard you say smart things, okay? When you forget yourself. You’re a good, smart guy. And I cannot stand—I can’t stand it when you act like a moron, because you are not, and I need some fucking intellectual discourse.”

“Ew. I don’t need to know about your discourse.”

Pause.

“Johnny, discourse is conversation.”

“Oh.”

“That’s what I’m talking about.” She sighed. “Let me know when you’re ready to be serious.”

Gather. Stomp to door. Leave.

Click.

Johnny stood behind his front door, feeling like he’d missed something important, and wondered why she hated him so much.

…

There is no point, really, in describing Max and Niki’s winding path through the Habitat. They walked, and talked, and grew ever closer.

They visited the Library Dome, which had no Children’s section—but it had a Grown-ups section, where the few adult books landed. Most of the books in the library were written in crayon or had the covers falling off, and the collection of Shakespeare was lacking.

They visited the Therapy Dome, which was a garden. Children walked and talked and sat and talked and cried and talked. There was a serene fountain of salt water in the middle—Max made a comment about pressure that Niki didn’t understand, and they walked, and somehow her arm ended up in his.

They visited the Food Prep Dome, which was pretty much what you’d expect.

They had lunch, which was also pretty much what you’d expect.

They visited the Physical Maintenance Dome, which was a bunch of exercise equipment. It was suggested that one work out at least twenty minutes every day for health reasons, because it helped prevent the Bends.

After that, they visited the Decompression Chamber Dome, which was right next to the airlock.

And then Niki dragged Max back to the Main Dome, and crashed on the couch to watch some weird program about fish. Everything on TV down here seemed to be about fish. And they had dinner.

And then night happened.

…

“You ready to work?”

“That depends. Are you?”

“Sure.”

“Genuinely?”

Walker sighed. “Is there a reason you hate me?”

“Yes,” said Shelli. “You know it. Shall we?”

“Sure.”

Pause. Stare at the table.

“So why do you hate me?”

“I said. Because you pretend to be someone you’re not. You’re fake. Everything about you is a façade.”

“Oh, wow, that’s not insulting.”

“But it’s true.”

Walker ran a finger along the grain of the wooden table. His nails were grubby and uncut, his sleeve torn and grass-stained from football.

He hated football.

He’d never know why he said it.

“Yeah,” said Walker. “It’s true.”

There was another awkward moment. Shelli sighed, leaned back, and looked at him. Walker was staring intently at his hands, fascinated with the table.

“Why do you do that, then?”

“I dunno,” Walker said. He looked up. “Why do you?”

“I don’t.”

“Everyone does.”

“Please. I don’t dumb myself down.”

“No, you smart yourself up. Seems to me that’s not so different.”

Shelli smiled. “There, see? I knew you were intelligent.”

…

Max laid on his waterbed, staring at the iron ceiling, feeling uncomfortable. His eyes were drooping with exhaustion, his head aching down into his fingers—but he couldn’t muster up the courage to sleep.

This place scared him.

(too closed in)

It was full of noises. Something creaked in the ceiling above him—one, two, three seconds apart, methodical as the tick of the clock on his wall. The clock on his wall was ticking, too. There was a drip of water in the kitchen, or maybe it was the bathroom, something in a sink, that made Max jump every ten and a half seconds. And then, every second on the dot, there was a whirr of machinery. Computer, Max thought. Had to be a computer.

Oh, and footsteps. Probably someone getting a glass of water… from the cafeteria. All the way upstairs.

(that makes no)

They faded. Max sat up, rubbing his eyes. He was exhausted, and tired, and he needed to sleep. He really needed to sleep.

(sense)

Tap, tap, tap… The footsteps slid back into Max’s hearing range, and out again.

And in again. Someone was pacing outside their rooms. The paranoid nerves in Max’s brains flared up. Why would someone be pacing outside the flat? As far as he was concerned, this place was full of juvenile delinquents. Whoever it was, he was probably setting fire to something. Or drilling a hole in something. Or about to blow something up.

(these are only little kids)

(but she killed her parents)

Half a second later, Max was throwing open the door. Melina stood there, hand raised to knock.

“Melina?”

“It’s too late to call, isn’t it? Sorry, I…” She blushed. “Er. Can I come in?”

…

Walker thought he could pretty much sing along with the sound of typing at this point. Tap, tick, tap. And slide, click, and enter in some new numbers.

He liked math. He’d always liked math. But there was only so much repetition a guy could take, and he’d always really wanted to be a mathematician.

(just go for it johnny she said she believed in me)

He only ever really saw Shelli once or twice a year. Not enough to get bored with her, or to take the spark from the relationship—too much to get over her. He was stuck in love, really.

And Walker simply didn’t care.%3ll%3span

Shelli always made sure she stayed at least three nights. One for sex, she said, bluntly enough to make Walker flush with embarrassment. One for dinner. And one for goodbyes.

Which had always worked before. Three nights were enough to propel Walker through the rest of the year. The first kiss of a meeting was enough to keep the smile on his lips for a decade, at least—tender and eager and full to the brim with love. She loved him. A single kiss was all he needed to know that she loved him.

Sometimes the goodbyes had sex in them, too, but not usually. Usually they would relax on the couch in his living room and watch a movie, and she’d make him dinner. If there was a kid with her, they’d watch, too, and Walker would get to see the latest kids’ movie.

And he could pretend.

Walker was grinning goofily and staring into space. He was even twirling a pencil, now, mortifyingly dreamily. The stance could have given credit to a hormonally high teenage girl.

“Um, Mr. Walker?”

(er. crap.)

Marie Samson, the secretary, was standing in the doorway to his cubicle. She was a pretty woman on the waning edge of her twenties, with bleached-blonde hair and Kiss Me Pink lipstick. Her blouse was unbuttoned in a rather unprofessional manner, Walker thought. She really shouldn’t be dressing like that for work.

“Um. Hello. Yes.” Walker put down the pencil hurriedly, snapping his face back to the standard expression of an accountant—tired and disgruntled. Dreamers did not become accountants. Or, if they did, they usually didn’t stay dreamers long.

“Tired, sir?”

“Yes. Very.”

“Late night, then?”

“Um. Not really.c 0pldn’t sleep.”

“Oh.”

There was a pause. Walker tried to look like he had important work to get back to.

“Did you want something, Ms. Samson?”

“Not really.” She winked.

Pause.

Walker felt he was missing something.

“Goodbye, then, Ms. Samson.”

“Um. Oh. Bye.”

…

“Just wanted to make sure you guys were getting on okay,” Melina said, strolling into the apartment like she owned the place. “Um. You guys get a tour yet?”

“Yeah. Kind of. We walked around a bit, anyway. It’s a… cool place. Dark.”

“A bit. When it’s clear, it’s nice, only it usually isn’t. Would probably be nicer in Florida or somewhere.”

“With warmer water?”

“Yeah. And better fish.” Melina grinned. Her eyes were red, Max noticed. “I don’t mind, though. Where’s Niki?”

“Sleeping.”

“Oh,” Melina said.

And, now that he thought about it, there was a tightness to her voice.

“Are you alright, Melina?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

“You sure?”

The little girl shrugged, the image of nonchalant. Her hands were stiff and casual, her back just a little too straight. “Yes.”

Pause.

“No. I don’t know. I’m alright, I guess.”

Max was awkward in situations like this. Maybe it was a male thing, but he was just generally bad with the emotions of people he didn’t really know. Or people he did know. Or anyone, really. He wasn’t a psychologist.

“What’s the matter?”

Melina shrugged. “You got any coffee?”

“You drink coffee?”

…

“So we’re done.”

“Um. Yeah.” Shelli shrugged. “Thank god.”

“Yeah. Now I never have to see your ugly face again.” There was no heart in the insult.

“Yeah, and I don’t have to listen to your inane little attempts at mediocre jokes.”

Shelli stood on Walker’s front porch, hands in pockets, rocking a bit on her feet. Walker sighed and leaned against the wall.

“You’re actually not that bad,” he said. “For a weird-ass chick.”

Shelli smiled. “You’re actually not so bad,” she said. “For a guy with a dysfunctional social IQ.”

“You wanna catch a movie or something later?”

Shelli made a face. “You aren’t asking me on a date, are you?”

“No! No, just like, hanging out, you know?”

Shelli smiled. She was precocious, and slightly egotistical, and mature for her age. She was also an adolescent girl.

“Sure. Why not? Ca3Bt.e later, you have my number.”

Walker watched her half-skip to her mother’s car, and sighed. He was committing social suicide here, wasn’t he?

…

Soundtrack: The Dark I Know Well, from the musical Spring Awakening.

…

“More.”

“Now?”

“More.”

“Now?”

“More.”“Melina…”

“Okay, good.” Melina snatched the coffee from his hands and took a gulp. “Tasty.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen that much sugar in a drink since Red Bull was invented.”

“Well, duh. That’s what makes it taste good.”

“You might as well just have hot cocoa.”

“Yeah, but that’s a baby drink.” Melina grinned. She stirred it thoughtfully, swinging her legs from the kitchen chair. Max sat down across from her, hands cupped around his own, slightly less sweet, mug. He felt old all of a sudden; as if Melina were the teenager and he were in his forties or something. She was too old to be this young, Max thought. Not necessarily too mature, or too smart, but too world-wise.

She’d seen too much.

Melina was staring into her mug. She closed her eyes suddenly, biting her lower lip.

“You alright?”

Melina nodded. “There is a part I can’t tell about the dark I know well,” she muttered. The words were hasty and stumbling, so mashed-up that Max barely caught them.

Her eyes opened. “You ever see that musical?”

“What musical?”

“Spring Awakening,” Melina said. “It’s about these kids who don’t know what sex is. An’ lots of them die because of that. It’s kind of a gross play sometimes, but I like it. Because there’s this song.”

“Hm?”

“About. Um. About rape.” Melina grinned sheepishly, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “About two girls whose fathers—you know, um.”

“Oh.” Max felt even older, all of a sudden. Like he was a grandfather stuck giving his granddaughter The Talk. When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much…

Melina sighed. “I’m only seven, you know, an’ I’m not supposed to be able to understand that stuff yet.”

Finally, a revelation hit Max with the speed of a falling Bible.

“Your father didn’t. He couldn’t have. Not our Mayor—“

“He wasn’t as nice to me as he was to everyone else,” said Melina softly. “He was a mean guy.”

“But—everyone loves him. He’s the Mayor, he’s the guy everyone looks—er, looked up to. He donated to charities and had the new police station built, he fixed up the school and got funding for the library, had that pervert teacher

“Because I told him what Dear Old Daddy was doing,” said Melina. “Mr. Nichols. He was my favourite teacher ever, and I trusted him enough to tell him that I never really fell down the stairs, and then he went up and told Daddy what he was gonna do, gonna call the police, and Daddy got there first.”

Max was silent. “He must have…”

(had a good reason?)

(for rape?)

(what the hell am i thinking?)

Melina nodded. “He was a bad man, Max. You gotta understand that, he was a real bad man. He hurt me, and he hurt Thomas, and Mom didn’t understand so she hurt me too.” The words bubbled out, and then they ended.

Max was silent.

Melina was silent.

Her face was very dark. Hate like that should never reach the innocent features of a child, but Max saw them on Melina now. They made her beautiful, and old, and terrifying.

“They deserved to die.”

Max jumped at the sound of the young voice.

Saying something like that.

“Nobody deserves to die, Melina,” he said, but his voice came out all wavery and unsure.

“They did. Mom and Daddy. People like them are above the law, you know? They can’t be touched because people don’t want to believe that they’re bad, and they can’t be bad, because then they wouldn’t be so good…”

“But killing them?”

“I did it to save Thomas,” said Melina. “And anyone else they might come across. The world’s better without people like that.”

“But killing them?”

“I’m not a bad person,” said the little girl, completely ignoring Max. The bubbling words had become a geyser now, erupting with the pressure of withheld guilt. “I’m not. It’s not my fault, right, because they deserved it. They were so mean, so terrible, and they burned for it, burned for their sins, because that’s what it says in the Bible that they loved so much, doesn’t it, you can’t let a witch live—“

“Nobody follows that anymore—“

“And I’m not religious, I don’t believe in God, but they do, so shoul;d6rsquo;t I be allowed to enforce their rules for once? I hated them, Max, god I hated them, but—“

He slapped her.

Melina stopped.

“You,” Max said, “did not deserve anything that they did to you.”

Melina sat there, shaking. Her hands were clenched to white on the table.

“You are a good person, and you know that.”

“I don’t—“

“Want proof?”

“Yes,” Melina whispered.

“You’re guilty. You feel guilty. They didn’t deserve it, I don’t think, but only for the reason that nobody does. If anyone did deserve that, it would be your parents.”

Melina nodded.

“But, Melina, nobody in the world could blame you for that.”

“I burned my parents alive,” Melina said. “I didn’t think about it beforehand, you know? I knew what I was doing, but it only occurred to me later. That’s a terrible way to die.”

“Well… yes, yes it is.” That was probably not the right thacerto say, but Max couldn’t think of anything else. He wasn’t going to lie. Not right now.

Melina shrugged. “And…”

She hung her head.

“And what?”

“And I loved them, Max. That’s the worst part, is I miss them. I miss Daddy, and Mom, despite what they did. Despite that I killed them. I loved ‘em.”

“They didn’t deserve that.”

“No. But they were my parents, you know?”

“I know,” said Max. She was crying—not sobbing, but giving little gulping gasps, rivers running down her cheeks.

He leaned forward and put a hand on her shoulder. There wasn’t much else he could do.

…

A dark shape crawled out of the water. It shed its skin behind the usual bush and headed for the usual house, ready to surprise the usual person.

She hadn’t gotten to see him last time she was topside, after all.