to get a run of tests threw worried glances at each other.
Luke and Helen exchanged a look. “He’ll be okay,” she said. “It’s just worse for some kids than it is for—”
Avery was sitting beside her. Now he took one of her hands in both of his. He spoke with eerie calmness. “He’s not okay. He’ll never be okay.”
Harry let out a cry, dropped to his knees, then hit the floor face-first. His nose and lips sprayed blood on the linoleum. He first began to shake, then to spasm, legs pulling up and shooting out in a Y shape, arms flailing. He started to make a growling noise—not like an animal but like an engine stuck in low gear and being revved too hard. He flopped onto his back, still growling and spraying bloody foam from between his blabbering lips. His teeth chomped up and down.
The little Gs began shrieking. As Gladys ran in from the hall and Norma from around the steam table, one of the twins knelt and tried to hug Harry. His big right hand rose, swung out, came whistling back. It struck her on the side of her face with terrible force, and sent her flying. Her head struck the wall with a thud. The other twin ran to her sister, screaming.
The cafeteria was in an uproar. Luke and Helen stayed seated, Helen with her arm around Avery’s shoulders (more to comfort herself than the little boy, it seemed; Avery appeared unmoved), but many of the other kids were gathering around the seizing boy. Gladys shoved a couple of them away and snarled, “Get back, you idiots!” No big fake smile tonight for the big G.
Now more Institute personnel were appearing: Joe and Hadad, Chad, Carlos, a couple Luke didn’t know, including one still in his civvies who must have just come on duty. Harry’s body was rising and falling in galvanic leaps, as if the floor had been electrified. Chad and Carlos pinned his arms. Hadad zapped him in the solar plexus, and when that didn’t stop the seizures, Joe hit him in the neck, the crackle of a zap-stick set on high audible even in the babble of confused voices. Harry went limp. His eyes bulged beneath half-closed lids. Foam drizzled from the corners of his mouth. The tip of his tongue protruded.
“He’s all right, situation under control!” Hadad bellowed. “Go back to your tables! He’s fine!”
The kids drew away, silent now, watching. Luke leaned over to Helen and spoke in a low voice. “I don’t think he’s breathing.”
“Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t,” Helen said, “but look at that one.” She pointed to the twin who had been driven to the wall. Luke saw that the little girl’s eyes were glazed and her head looked all crooked on her neck. Blood was running down one of her cheeks and dripping onto the shoulder of her dress.
“Wake up!” the other twin was shouting, and began to shake her. Silverware flew from the tables in a storm; kids and caretakers ducked. “Wake up, Harry didn’t mean to hurt you, wake up, WAKE UP!”
“Which one is which?” Luke asked Helen, but it was Avery who replied, and in that same eerily calm voice.
“The screamy one throwing the silverware is Gerda. The dead one is Greta.”
“She’s not dead,” Helen said in a shocked voice. “She can’t be.”
Knives, forks, and spoons rose to the ceiling (I could never do anything like that, Luke thought) and then fell with a clatter.
“She is, though,” Avery said matter-of-factly. “So is Harry.” He stood up, holding one of Helen’s hands and one of Luke’s. “I liked Harry even if he did push me down. I’m not hungry anymore.” He looked from one to the other. “And neither are you guys.”
The three of them left unnoticed, giving the screaming twin and her dead sister a wide berth. Dr. Evans came striding up the hall from the elevator, looking harried and put out. Probably he was eating his dinner, Luke thought.
Behind them, Carlos was calling, “Everyone’s fine, you guys! Settle down and finish your dinner, everyone’s just fine!”
“The dots killed him,” Avery said. “Dr. Hendricks and Dr. Evans never should have showed him the dots even if he was a pink. Maybe his BDNF was still too high. Or maybe it was something else, like a allergy.”
“What’s BDNF?” Helen asked.
“I don’t know. I only know that if kids have a really high one, they shouldn’t get the big shots until Back Half.”