did know. There was Front Half, there was Back Half . . . and there was the back half of Back Half. The end of the line. She put her hand to her hair again. Still in place. Of course it was. She thought of a tricycle she’d had as a very young child, the warm squirt of urine in her pants as she rode it up and down the driveway. She thought of broken shoelaces. She thought of her first car, a—
“It was a Valium!” the girl named Donna screamed. She leaped up, knocking her chair over. The other two children looked at her dully, one with oatmeal dripping from his chin. “A Plymouth Valium, I know that! Oh God I want to go home! Oh God stop my head !”
Two caretakers in red scrubs appeared from . . . from Mrs. Sigsby didn’t know where. Nor did she care. They grabbed the girl by her arms.
“That’s right, take her back to her room,” Heckle said. “No pills, though. We need her tonight.”
Donna Gibson, who had once shared girl-secrets with Kalisha when they were both still in Front Half, began to scream and struggle. The caretakers led her away with the toes of her sneakers brushing the carpet. The broken thoughts in Mrs. Sigsby’s mind first dimmed, then faded. The buzz along her skin, even in the fillings of her teeth, remained, however. Over here it was constant, like the buzz of the fluorescent lights in the corridor.
“All right?” Stackhouse asked Mrs. Sigsby.
“Yes.” Just get me out of here.
“I feel it, too. If it’s any comfort.”
It wasn’t. “Trevor, can you explain to me why bodies bound for the crematorium have to be rolled right through these children’s living quarters?”
“There are tons of beans in Beantown,” Stackhouse replied.
“What?” Mrs. Sigsby asked. “What did you say?”
Stackhouse shook his head as if to clear it. “I’m sorry. That came into my head—”
“Yes, yes,” Hallas said. “There are a lot of . . . uh, shall we say loose transmissions in the air today.”
“I know what it was,” Stackhouse said. “I had to get it out, that’s all. It felt like . . .”
“Choking on food,” Dr. Hallas said matter-of-factly. “The answer to your question, Mrs. Sigsby is . . . nobody knows.” He tittered and touched the corner of his mouth.
Just get me out of here, she thought again. “Where is Dr. James, Dr. Hallas?”
“In her quarters. Not feeling well today, I’m afraid. But she sends her regards. Hopes you’re well, fit as a fiddle, in the pink, cetra-cetra.” He smiled and did the Shirley Temple thing again—ain’t I cute?
8
In the screening room, Kalisha plucked the cigarette from Nicky’s fingers, took a final puff from the filterless stub, dropped it to the floor, stepped on it. Then she put an arm around his shoulders. “Bad?”
“I’ve had worse.”
“The movie will make it better.”
“Yeah. But there’s always tomorrow. Now I know why my dad was so butt-ugly when he had a hangover. How about you, Sha?”
“Doing okay.” And she was. Just a low throb over her left eye. Tonight it would be gone. Tomorrow it would be back, and not low. Tomorrow it would be pain that would make the hangovers suffered by Nicky’s dad (and her own parents, from time to time) look like fun in the sun: a steady pounding thud, as if some demonic elf were imprisoned in her head, hammering at her skull in an effort to get out. Even that, she knew, wasn’t as bad as it could be. Nicky’s headaches were worse, Iris’s worse still, and it took longer and longer for the pain to go away.
George was the lucky one; in spite of his strong TK, he had so far felt almost no pain at all. An ache in his temples, he said, and at the back of his skull. But it would get worse. It always did, at least until it was finally over. And then? Ward A. The drone. The hum. The back half of Back Half. Kalisha didn’t look forward to it yet, the idea of being erased as a person still horrified her, but that would change. For Iris, it already had; most of the time she looked like a zombie on The Walking Dead. Helen Simms had pretty much articulated Kalisha’s feelings about Ward A when she said anything was better than the Stasi Lights and a screaming headache that never stopped.
George leaned forward, looking at her across Nick with bright eyes that