-1-
Maxwell moves back into the house with my dad and I. Carrington, now the presidential campaign manager, also moves in.
I don’t understand why Carrington moves in to our home but I don’t question it. At first I think it’s because Maxwell’s campaign office is in the house and she works so many hours. But within a week I’m introduced to dozens of aides and staffers on the campaign who come in and out of the house for meetings at all hours but don’t live with us.
It’s clear my parents weren’t used to having a kid in the house with them since Gemma had been living at school for two years. I overhear fights I’m probably not supposed to hear, about money, their relationship and even me.
Sometimes my Dad and Maxwell treated each other like they were still together but then other times Maxwell would treat Carrington like they were dating. They flirted constantly, shared drinks, and were always touching each other--one morning he made breakfast for her and they’d eaten eat in her bedroom together.
I didn't understand any of this. I didn't know adults acted like this.
I was dragged across Ft. Perch to fundraising dinners and events where I was paraded in front of donors as the miracle child returned. I couldn’t play the part like Gemma did when she was brought along . I didn’t know how to be charming and funny and entertaining to people so much older than me so my job was to stay silent and look like I loved my parents.
I try to do as Maxwell says so he doesn’t go off on me again and for the most part it works but it’s hard when I’m still not ready to trust my past life with them.
At the end of a charity dinner for disfigured RLA survivors at the Museum of Human Extinction there is a guest book for us all to sign on the way out. It was the first time I’d gotten to hand write since being earthbound and by muscle memory I’d absently written the letters S-K-Y-L-A-R-K G-R in the guest book before realizing what I’d done. I blacked it out with the ink pen.
But Maxwell notices.
He rips the page out, drags me out of the museum and into the backseat of our waiting limousine, demanding I tell him what I had blacked out and why. When I tell him I’d just made a spelling mistake he doesn’t believe me, he shoves the ripped out page in my mouth and tells me to chew and swallow it. Then I have to count out loud as he slaps me 15 times for lying.
My dad and Carrington come into the car on the 8th slap.
Carrington busies herself with her syndicate, totaling the money raised and my dad says Maxwell’s name briskly under his breath but doesn’t do anything to stop him from slapping me.
The drive home is an hour and it's completely silent. When we get to the house Maxwell takes off his tuxedo jacket in the foyer and makes the house play an upbeat piece of classical music.
“Dance with me, Lansing.” he says to my dad, blocking the stairs and stretching his arms. “We just raised $5 million, I think that deserves a dance with my husband.”
“$55 million is pocket change to the nuclear energy lobby.” My dad says, shrugging of his own tuxedo coat. “I don’t trust them. That’s why I advised you against going to them last time.”
“We didn’t have to do it last time,” Maxwell grins. “Come on, Lance. I was too busy shaking those old bastards hands to dance tonight. Don’t you remember what you used to do for me on the campaign trail when we had a record breaking fundraising night ?”
My dad shakes his head, walking
instead towards his study where he kept a liquor cabinet he always visited after a public appearance.
“Carrington,” Maxwell calls. “Dance with me.”
She rolls her eyes and smiles but goes into his arms immediately. Her sparkly
black ball gown shimmers as they waltz around the foyer. I'd been kind of mesmerized by her dress the whole night because it always seemed like one of her breasts was about to fall out but never did.
“We really should have let Gemma get the dog when she was a child,” my Dad calls suddenly. “I had no idea you were so good at training bitches, Max.”
Carrington’s head snaps around.
“Excuse me--”
“Ignore him,” Maxwell says, moving his hands lower on her hips. “He just wants to be a sore loser tonight.”
With Maxwell no longer blocking the stairwell, I quietly go upstairs and rinse the taste of ink from my mouth in the bathroom.
The first night I slept here my dad had said he wanted to watch me go to sleep just that first night. He d lied. He’d been doing it every night since I’d been back. Tonight is no different. He comes in nearly an hour after I turned all the lights out.
“Phoenix, do you mind if I stay the
night with you ?,” my dad asks after nearly 30 minutes of silence.
“Okay.”
“Or you can come sleep in the master bedroom with me,” he suggests pointedly “Max isn’t sleeping there tonight.”
“Um, I’m fine here,” I say.
Whenever Maxwell paid lots of attention to Carrington, my dad would suddenly pay more attention to me.
Even though it’s a California king bed and could fit 4 of me he chooses to lay right next to me. He doesn’t get under the covers and I can smell the liquor on his breath. He turns to face me and traces his fingertip from my hairline down to my jaw and then back up through my hair.
“I’m sorry your father was so hard on you tonight in the car,” he says. “He’s just very strict. I don’t approve but it’s how he thinks boys should be raised.”
“I’m not used to being hit,” I say. What I really want to say is why do you let him do that to me.
“I know. But you also shouldn’t lie to your parents.” he adds sternly.
Despite his softness, my dad was still a true believer in discipline, respecting authority and law and order.
His fingertips trace up the other side of my face, sliding down my nose and lips. He kisses my forehead and the tip of my nose.
“I love you, Phoenix. I love you so much, my sweet boy.” he says, his words slurring. “I shouldn’t be telling you this but….you’re the most special to me because you’re biologically my son, the only blood relative I have…I never thought I'd have a family of my own until Maxwell. I love being your dad. I love being Gemma’s dad. I’m never lonely--”
“Um-"
“They don’t have many foster children in the East when I'm from. I was an oddity. They could never match my DNA so my parents were probably off the grid or criminals or something. I had nothing. When I was coming up everyone my age thought I was too ambitious for what I was and once I succeeded everyone on my level said I was too young to be listened to…but not Max. He made me feel seen. I really did love him. Still do, I guess. He was my first love. My only.”
“Do you really want him to be president ?”
He smiles at that.
“Not as much as I did the first time, but yes. We sacrificed a lot the first time around and it kills me we never really got to do any good. I want him to have the second chance and then when his term is over we can all move our separate ways.”
He kisses my cheek again and then flops on to his back, crossing his arms over his chest, his weird rants seemingly over.
“I’ve been thinking…you probably need some breathing room from us. You should be in school. Do you think you’re ready for that ?” He asks, soberly.
“I’d like that.”
---
-2-
A Federation proctor comes to the house and I pass the academic aptitude test with flying colors. Mostly because they test me at a 9th grade level when I’d be in the 11th grade on the Star.
Most kids in the sprawl and Ft. Perch attend virtual schools that met in person twice a week for assembly but I was being sent to the United Auxiliary Forces Boy’s Academy, the military high school where Major Prescott was president of the board.
On my first day, a car operated by a secret service member drops me off at the school’s gate at 6:30 a.m. and the freshman class president, Simon Santos, is waiting for me outside with the headmaster.
I follow them to where the entire student body is assembled on the back lawn of the massive school building in identical shorts and t-shirts. The headmaster introduces me to the entire school and then a sergeant leads the entire school in 45 minutes of physical training that I can barely keep up with.
Afterwards I follow Simon and the rest of my class into a locker room and we change into starched uniforms that look similar to the military uniform my dad wore to work everyday. I go to my first class in the Maxwell-Prescott Wing.
My old school, Atlas Secondary School, has been rigorous but offered us a lot of autonomy. They didn’t track attendance, classes were only 4 hours, most of which was independent study.
It’s a whole different story here.
We moved through the school day as one unit in military precision and between the mandatory physical training, school day and mandatory after school activity I was at school from 6:30 AM to 6:30 PM.
Despite the long day, school is….easy. Atleast for me, anyway.
I start to notice it first during the morning physical training.
Most students got called out and yelled at for falling out of formation or running too slow but the drill sergeants looks the other way when I stop to breathe or trip over my own feet.
In chemistry, I purposely answer a question wrong as a test and the teacher twists herself into knots to make it seem like I was close to being right.
I’d found my stomach settled when I didn’t eat meat. A teacher commented on how I was only eating from the small salad bar in the back of the cafeteria. The next day they’d closed down half the regular lunch lines and re-opened them as vegetarian options.
I make friends easily too. The first day, multiple boys come up to me asking me to sit at their lunch tables and when I sit down they all want to talk to me and know my opinions on whatever they were talking about. I get invited to come to people’s houses for dinner nearly every day of the week.
Both of my parents go through the names of the people who invited me over; Maxwell to see who has parents he can campaign with and my dad to see who might just be taking advantage of me.
I liked hanging out with other boys my age, although most of the time they want to impress me how much alcohol and porn they have access to or ask me personal question about where I’d really been or how much money I had.
For the first time I suddenly understand why Zarina Jeffries only ever hung out with Faith Morgan. Because what they had was real.
***
“Sir,” My homeroom teacher, Sgt. Smith says, getting into parade position and saluting my dad as he walks down the school hallway.
The rest of the boys in line, including me, stand up a little bit straighter and give my dad the same salute. We were lined up in the hall to head to the buses waiting for us outside.
My dad had come to school for a board meeting that just let out. Teachers and staff parted ways as he walked down the hall with a secret service agent and his assistant hovering at his side. It was weird seeing my dad as most of the world saw him; an accomplished army major who commanded respect.
Not as the exhausted man who fell asleep the minute he was inside the limos after a fundraiser. The man who wandered the house in pajamas, clutching a bottle of wine after being belittled by Maxwell.
He stops in front of our line, his eyes roaming over the other boys.
“Are you gentlemen headed out to perform community service ?,” my dad asks us.
“Sir, yes, sir,” the line of students responds.
My dad nods, giving a half smile.
“Make the UAF proud,” he says.
He looks directly at me and then puts his hand on Sgt. Smith’s shoulder.
“May I have a moment with Phoenix before you go?,” Dad asks.
“Oh, of course. Absolutely, sir,” Sgt. Smith nods.
My dad smiles as the class files out to the buses, they all stare at me as they go.
“You will behave and do as you’re told today ?,” he asks once the hall has cleared and we are alone.
“Yes, sir.”
Then his tone lowers.
“Your father’s been in a bad mood these last few days. Let’s not give him more reasons.”
“Yes, sir.”
He presses his lips to my forehead .
“Go ahead, then. I don’t want to keep you.”
Once a month each homeroom class left the bubble of Ft. Perch to do community service in the Sprawl. This would be my first time going into the Sprawl. I knew it could be a dangerous place and I planned to do exactly as I was told. I had a fully activated syndicate now and my parents had made it clear it was tracking me.
I’m the last one on the bus and everyone moves over nearly in unison for me to sit next to them. Instead I take the empty seat in the front so I can look out the window.
The Ft. Perch bubble was nearly imperceptible, even as we go through the checkpoint that leads us out of it. We cross a long stretch of white desert, dotted with the occasional train station, until we reach the Sprawl.
The bus turns down tight alleys and the other boys are pointing out the windows whispering and pointing out about brothels, arcades and bars they wanted to one day go to. The Sprawl has a grime I didn’t see in the other cities I’ve seen. It looked like the streets had been lived on.
I’m taking it all in when a street sign catches my eye.
Honeysuckle Street NW
1512 Honeysuckle Street NW had been the address my guardian told me to go to if I got lost or never made it back to my fathers. I wondered if that was where Luce lived. The Star had likely taken off by now and I distantly wondered if Luce and my guardian had a way of keeping in contact that I could use.
I try to ignore it, the street could go on forever and he’d told me to only go there if something really bad happened. I’m not sure Maxwell being a monster to me was considered really bad or not.
Still, I memorize the turns of the bus as we head to our destination.
We stop in a neighborhood of crumbling glass and plastic homes. Sgt. Smith tells us the neighborhood was destroyed during a standoff between a street gang and the Federation a few years ago and had ended in a bombing. The Federation was now going to rebuild the site as new sustainable housing for disabled RLA veterans.
We were to go through the abandoned houses to remove the furniture and make sure nothing valuable was in the rubble before the demolition crews came through.
I’m paired with Zeke, one of the quieter boys in the school. He was one of the several foster kids brought to the school on scholarship who lived in the on-campus dorms. Other boys quickly offer to switch partners with me but I say I’m fine with Zeke.
The houses are a mess inside, but they're small and we work together to remove a dining room set covered in years of dust and mold into a dumpster. The heat outside of Ft. Perch is relentless and within a few minutes of us working I can barely catch my breath.
“Sgt. Smith has waters, want me to get us one ?,” Zeke asks me after a while.
"I can get them,” I offer.
“No--”
“I can do it,” I smile and jog over to the bus.
I’m not sure when I make the decision to do it. I don’t even think about it.
I step on to the bus, reach down to grab two water bottles from the cooler and then brush my syndicate from my ear and let it roll under the bus.
I walk back over to Zeke and throw him a water bottle. He doesn’t make notice of my missing syndicate. Lot of boys had taken their syndicates off because they were sweating so much.
“Um, do you mind if we switch partners ?,” I ask Zeke. “Santos really wants me to be with him so I was going to go over there.”
Santos’s grandmother was attorney general, he was the school’s second most favorite student to suck up to after me.
“Oh—yeah, okay.” Zeke agrees.
“Thanks,” I say.
I jog back like I’m going to join Santos’s group but instead cut across the back of the houses and walk away.