right, but it wasn’t. The small rip on the lefthand side was gone.
Not his sneakers, not his poster, Willkie button gone.
Not his room.
Something began to flutter in his chest, and he took several deep breaths to try and quiet it. He went to the door and grasped the knob, sure he would find himself locked in.
He wasn’t, but the hallway beyond the door was nothing like the upstairs hallway in the house where he had lived his twelve-plus years. It was cinderblock instead of wood paneling, the blocks painted a pale industrial green. Opposite the door was a poster showing three kids about Luke’s age, running through a meadow of high grass. One was frozen in mid-leap. They were either lunatics or deliriously happy. The message at the bottom seemed to suggest the latter. JUST ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE, it read.
Luke stepped out. To his right, the corridor ended in institutional double doors, the kind with push-bars. To his left, about ten feet in front of another set of those institutional doors, a girl was sitting on the floor. She was wearing bellbottoms and a shirt with puffy sleeves. She was black. And although she looked to be Luke’s own age, give or take, she seemed to be smoking a cigarette.
8
Mrs. Sigsby sat behind her desk, looking at her computer. She was wearing a tailored DVF business suit that did not disguise her beyond-lean build. Her gray hair was perfectly groomed. Dr. Hendricks stood at her shoulder. Good morning, Scarecrow, he thought, but would never say.
“Well,” Mrs. Sigsby said, “there he is. Our newest arrival. Lucas Ellis. Got a ride on a Gulfstream for the first and only time and doesn’t even know it. By all accounts, he’s quite the prodigy.”
“He won’t be for long,” Dr. Hendricks said, and laughed his trademark laugh, first exhaled, then inhaled, a kind of hee-haw. Along with his protruding front teeth and extreme height—he was six-seven—it accounted for the techs’ nickname for him: Donkey Kong.
She turned and gave him a hard look. “These are our charges. Cheap jokes are not appreciated, Dan.”
“Sorry.” He felt like adding, But who are you kidding, Siggers?
To say such a thing would be impolitic, and really, the question was rhetorical at best. He knew she wasn’t kidding anyone, least of all herself. Siggers was like that unknown Nazi buffoon who thought it would be a terrific idea to put Arbeit macht frei, work sets you free, over the entrance to Auschwitz.
Mrs. Sigsby held up the new boy’s intake form. Hendricks had placed a circular pink sticky in the upper righthand corner. “Are you learning anything from your pinks, Dan? Anything at all?”
“You know we are. You’ve seen the results.”
“Yes, but anything of proven value?”
Before the good doctor could reply, Rosalind popped her head in. “I’ve got paperwork for you, Mrs. Sigsby. We’ve got five more coming in. I know they were on your spreadsheet, but they’re ahead of schedule.”
Mrs. Sigsby looked pleased. “All five today? I must be living correctly.”
Hendricks (aka Donkey Kong) thought, You couldn’t bear to say living right, could you? You might split a seam somewhere.
“Only two today,” Rosalind said. “Tonight, actually. From Emerald team. Three tomorrow, from Opal. Four are TK. One is TP, and he’s a catch. Ninety-three nanograms BDNF.”
“Avery Dixon, correct?” Mrs. Sigsby said. “From Salt Lake City.”
“Orem,” Rosalind corrected.
“A Mormon from Orem,” Dr. Hendricks said, and gave his hee-haw laugh.
He’s a catch, all right, Mrs. Sigsby thought. There will be no pink sticker on Dixon’s form. He’s too valuable for that. Minimal injections, no risking seizures, no near-drowning experiences. Not with a BDNF over 90.
“Excellent news. Really excellent. Bring in the files and put them on my desk. You also emailed them?”
“Of course.” Rosalind smiled. Email was the way the world wagged, but they both knew Mrs. Sigsby preferred paper to pixels; she was old-school that way. “I’ll bring them ASAP.”
“Coffee, please, and also ASAP.”
Mrs. Sigsby turned to Dr. Hendricks. All that height, and he’s still carrying a front porch, she thought. As a doctor he should know how dangerous that is, especially for a man that tall, where the vascular system has to work harder to begin with. But no one is quite as good at ignoring the medical realities as a medical man.
Neither Mrs. Sigsby nor Hendricks was TP, but at that moment they were sharing a single thought: how much easier all this would be if there was liking instead of mutual detestation.