Part 18 (1/2)

He grabs Werewolf's middle finger and snaps it back. Crack. The sound of breaking bone echoes off the walls and pierces the surveillance camera. Werewolf emits a childish sobbing scream and holds his hand in the air like it's a foreign object.

A look of fury comes over Xavier, a look I've never seen him wear before. He stands up and roarsa”a shocking primal sound that spills into the hallway. He plows Werewolf in the face.

Werewolf 's head swings over his shoulder and he staggers backward into Brennan's desk. His nose gushes blood, hot and red, spewing onto his beard and his clean white s.h.i.+rt, down to the floor tiles. Xavier steps through the splatter and punches Werewolf in the gut, breathing so hard he's almost smoking.

Brennan pushes his chair back into the desk behind him. Other students shake their heads, glance at the camera, chant the rules prohibiting violence.

Xavier strikes again with an uppercut. Werewolf lands on Brennan's desktop with his hairy neck exposed like a chicken on a chopping block. Xavier looks prepared to sever the head with his own b.l.o.o.d.y hands while the cla.s.s looks on in annoyance. I almost want him to do it. I sit there and wait for it, but Brennan stands up between them.

Xavier turns his fury onto Brennan, who's ready for it. Brennan blocks a punch and knees Xavier in the groin, then gets him on the floor and pins his arm behind his back. ”Easy, easy,” he whispers.

Xavier curls up on the tiles and closes his eyes. He scratches his head like he's trying to claw something out of it and starts to sob, raw heaving cries of torment. His hair falls across his face like a veil streaked with blood. I can't take this. I'm on my feet. I don't know what I'm doing.

Werewolf sops his nose with a blue mitten stained purple.

”Don't let go of his arms!” he shouts. He looks prepared to kick Xavier in the kidneys.

I intend to take him down, but Dallas blocks me and shouts, ”Help! You don't belong here!”

Mr. Graham marches into the room with two security guards. They yank Xavier to his feet. He's limp now, muttering, a mess of snot and confusion. The princ.i.p.al stares at him in disgust.

Brennan brushes himself off and sits at his b.l.o.o.d.y desk.

”Would you like our statements, sir?” I shout at Mr. Graham.

”Don't do this,” Dallas whispers.

”We are all witnesses to the disrespect that occurred in our cla.s.sroom today!” I shout. ”I would like to give you my statement.”

”I don't want your statement,” Mr. Graham says. ”I have Mr. Warton and the recording.”

”I want to give you my statement,” I repeat. I push forward, but Dallas won't let me by without a fight.

Mr. Graham walks out the door, followed by the guards dragging Xavier.

I turn away from Dallas, squeeze between desks to the back of the room and up the middle aisle. I'm in front of the camera now. I know I should stop, I tell myself to stop, but I don't stop.

Werewolf eases his busted hand through his coat sleeve.

”Verbal and physical abuse are not appropriate responses, are they, sir?” I shout.

”What?” he asks angrily. He looks in my face and backs into his lecture projection. Words and images from history flicker across his face. His eyes glitter in the blue light.

Dallas hustles over. ”Our teachers work hard every day to be role models. We owe them our respect,” he says.

I don't glance at him. ”Xavier Lavigne is a fifteen-year-old boy!” I shout at Werewolf. I want to rip his beard off with his smirk.

Dallas grabs my shoulder, shoves me to the wall, leans into me. ”We are all lucky to go to a school with good role models. We would not be lucky if we had to go to school by ourselves.”

He holds me there to keep me from digging my grave. He's risking his whole act like this, in front of Werewolf and the zombies and the surveillance camera. ”We're all lucky,” he repeats. He holds my gaze and nods, over and over, until I nod back.

Werewolf is disturbed and angry, but he doesn't accuse us of anything. He dissolves his lecture and squeezes behind Dallas, scampers to the doorway. He holds his broken hand over the place where his heart would be if he had one. ”I don't expect to see you all here next term.”

”He's suspended,” Celeste says. ”I'd rather you didn't come in. I don't know what'll set him off.”

Xavier lies on his living room carpet, staring at the ceiling.

”Don't look so sad, Max. He'll be okay. He might just need a new patch.” Celeste pats my arm. ”We started an information campaign at the college about the new support program and how they should warn people on other meds to be extra-careful. We might do a pet.i.tion.”

I try to smile.

She looks over her shoulder at her baby brother. ”Sunday's his birthday,” she whispers.

At home, Mom sighs along with the news.

”The New Education Support Treatment will turn the tide in our failing education system,” a government rep is saying. His words are straight from the Chemrose website, all about community improvement, cost savings, the best interests of the child.

”What are we going to do?” I ask. ”This is every academic school in the country he's talking about.”

Mom shrugs.

”I have three years left of school,” I remind her. ”Ally has twelve. Do you really think you can be there for every shot they give us?”

She bites her lip, shakes her head. ”Maybe we should leave,” she mutters.

”Of course we should leave. You're a geriatric nurse in a world full of old people. You can find work anywhere.”

”But your schoolinga””

”There are a thousand virtual high schools I could go to.”

”But the quality, Max. I can't afforda””

”We can't stay here, Mom!”

She nods. ”Okay. Maybe we can go back to Atlanta.”

”Atlanta, where Aunt Sylvia was murdered?” I remember all the poor people on the dirty streets, the sad ones begging from strangers and lying half dead in alleys, the scary ones hovering in doorways, hungrily surveying the wealthy.

Mom rolls her eyes at me. ”Either we stay or we go, Max. I can't change the world.”

”All right. Let's go. A million people live in Atlanta, and hardly any of them are murdered. Right?”

”Right.”

The news shows a labor riot in the American south, where illegal workers are protesting the new universal id cards.