All Good Children by Dayna Ingram

Author:Dayna Ingram [Ingram, Dayna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Lethe Press, Inc.
Published: 2016-05-13T04:00:00+00:00

JORDAN FONTAINE LOOKS WORN DOWN. There are shadows under her eyes, her cheeks are drawn and pallid and her hair is mussed, uneven at the roots, indicating she may be pulling at it, willingly or in her sleep. If she sleeps very much, as Omalis suspects she does not.

The girl slouches into her place across the table from Omalis, and looks blankly at her. “Come to spring me?”

Omalis can’t help a pinprick of a smile. The girl is down but not out.

“Not quite,” Omalis says. “Checking in, merely.”

“Merrily?”

“Merely,” Omalis says. “It means simply, or only.”

“I know what it means,” Jordan says, shaking her head. “Trouble understanding you, with your accent and everything.”

“Right.” Omalis nods, straightening the papers she has in front of her. “That old preoccupation.”

“Getting tired of it? I thought we were building a rapport.”

There’s that aching again, someplace lower than the grumble of the hunger pains, someplace deeper. Jordan’s voice triggers it this time, that hollow, hopeless desperation disguised beneath a cracking patina of sarcasm. She was not like this a week ago; she had more life in her, more fight. Omalis knows it is because the program has accelerated, inevitably, redoubtably. But, still, that ache.

Omalis steers directly into it. “How are you dealing with the changes to the program?”

There’s a pause in which the girl’s eyes seem to go somewhere else though their focus never leaves Omalis’s face, and then they are back. “I guess I’m dealing how they want me to.”

“And how would that be?”

“I don’t want to play this game,” Jordan says.

“Which game would you rather play?”

Jordan flinches slightly, no doubt not quite anticipating such a response. Instead of answering, she asks, “How many weeks are left? Three?”

“Four,” Omalis says.

Jordan sighs and straightens her back a little, then lets it slump back down.

“You seem disappointed.”

“I just don’t like waiting.”

“You can do more than wait, Jordan,” Omalis says. “You can try.”

“Really?” Jordan’s eyes refocus, making Omalis realize she hasn’t been looking into her eyes at all, but in-between them, not seeing them, until now. “Because I have a theory, more like a bet, I guess. It goes that my death certificate was signed the moment you showed up at my house, mine and my brothers’, and any other’s kids’ you or yours visited three weeks ago. Now it’s just a matter of how it goes down, how long it lingers. Seems to me the shorter the better. So, I guess I am disappointed.”

For a long moment Omalis says nothing. She watches the girl’s eyes shift down to the table, then her cheeks flush with color, and her hands comb through her hair, trying to hide her sudden redness but not in too obvious a manner.

“Our last visit, Jordan,” Omalis begins, “you were less inviting of your fate.”

“Well,” Jordan says, “a lot’s happened since then.”

“What sorts of things?”

“I’m sure you can get the list from one of the Gestapo.”

Omalis almost laughs, tries not to register her shock at the reference, but is too curious to let it lie.

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