Part 32 (1/2)

A couple of the other nerds giggled.

”But then you start getting diarrhea, as the cell walls in your intestines break down and die. It's not just 'I ate too many M&Ms' diarrhea, either. It's b.l.o.o.d.y and chunky. That lasts for a few days, and then you go crazy from the pain and the diarrhea and the radiation scrambling your circulatory system, and you start bleeding out of every hole in your body.”

I had the nerds squirming. A couple of them stood up and walked away. The Junior stared at me with the same expression he probably had when his mom told him there was no such thing as Santa Claus.

”But you're right,” I said. ”I hope you pull the nuke, too. It's a better way to die, right?”

I didn't care about the rules anymore, and I wanted to make a good exit. I went over to the bleachers. I still didn't see Maggie anywhere. I asked one of her friends where she was, but her friend didn't know. She said her parents had come to take her out of school after homeroom. She wasn't the only one, either.

”I heard you pulled OLD AGE,” said her friend, after a few awkward moments of standing around, like teenagers do.

”Where did you hear that?”

”I dunno. Just a rumor I guess. People were asking me like I should know.”

”I didn't pull OLD AGE. n.o.body does.”

”That's not true,” she said. ”My mom's first boyfriend did.”

”Did you actually see his cert?”

”No,” she said. ”Why would my mom lie about it?”

”I don't know,” I said. ”It just seems kind of implausible.”

”Why?”I got that question a lot.

I shrugged. ”It's really ambiguous.”

”So?Lots of certs are ambiguous.”

”Don't mistake the exception for the rule,” I said.

”What?”She was getting annoyed. I got that a lot, too.

”Just because somebody gets a weird, ambiguous cert doesn't mean they all are. Or even most of them.”

She shrugged and looked away.

”I was wondering,” she said. ”Did you and Maggie do it?”

”That's private,” I said. She didn't see me blush.

”Yeah,” she said. ”You know what you said about ambiguous stuff?I was thinking. I think that's what it's all about, you know?It's ambiguous for a reason. That's why n.o.body pulls YOUTH.”

”That's silly,” I said. ”n.o.body pulls OLD AGE, either.”

”Whatever,” she said, and shrugged and walked away.

People were always walking away from me. I started to think that if I was going to live forever, I was going to be pretty lonely.

I tried to call Maggie, but her parents weren't answering the phone. I went to bed sad and worried, so I snuck one of my mom's Tylenol PMs to help me sleep.

That stuff gives me weird dreams. I dreamed I was standing on a charred ball of dirt, like a chunk of hamburger that sticks to the grill, all wrinkled and black and ashy. I watched the sun gutter and spit and go out, like a wick on a dead candle. It was cold. My breath came out and crystallized in front of me, a growing cloud of spiky ice.

Some dreams are like an emotion magnified into a wide, flat layer and wrapped around your whole brain, so everything that happens in the dream is stained with it. I woke up in the middle of the night, convinced that I was the only person left on earth, in the universe. Reality filtered in slowly, m.u.f.fled and grey. I heard my dad snoring in the next room, and pulled the blankets close. I got myself back to sleep by imagining Maggie next to me. I missed her warmth.

It was happening all over the country. By the next day, the number of kids who had pulled the nuke was over a thousand. A lot of people were starting to get worried. I stopped watching the news with my parents because I couldn't stop thinking about Maggie and what was going to happen to her, or what was going to happen to all the other people who had pulled it. Everybody was comparing it to 9/11. Now that we know that these people are going to die from a nuke, maybe we can do something about it. Maybe we can avoid another one.

A lot of parents didn't want their kids to get their blood drawn, and kept their kids home. The FBI was using the Patriot Act to get their blood by force. I started to think that Stephen Hawking was wrong, that chaos was going to win. A nuclear bomb is pretty much the definition of chaos, after all.

I walked to Maggie's house after school. She was anxious, but I think seeing me made her feel better. We hugged in her kitchen, and her mom and dad left the room to leave us alone. Her parents didn't mind. The boy genius who would live forever could go console the Nuclear Kid.

I had only been there for a few minutes when they came to test her. Her parents were furious but powerless, which made them even more furious. They looked at me when the FBI agents came to the door, as if I could do anything. Agent Williams was there with some cops and an ambulance that the government was renting out. It had a machine in the back, humming as it warmed up.

I sat on Maggie's bed, waiting. I listened to her iPod. She was listening to a lot of Tori Amos lately, songs about rape and wrath.

Williams came into the room and sat down on the bed. I muted the iPod, Tori's pounding piano ringing echoes in my ears.

He looked concerned, and then looked away, pretending to scrutinize the posters on Maggie's wall.

”It's scary, I know,” he said.

I didn't respond, hoping my stare would drive him away.

”I guess you've got it made, though. A couple of trillion years, right?”

”I guess so,” I said.

”There will be a lot of girls to love,” he said, suddenly, like he couldn't keep it in anymore, in that fragile moment where small talk cracks and shatters under the weight of Bigger Issues. ”My high school girlfriends are distant memories. I hardly ever think about them.”

”Thanks,” I said.

He chuckled, and said ”I'm glad they're still teaching sarcasm.”

”What are you going to do to them?”

”I'm not going to do anything,” he said.

”Until they tell you to.”

”Don't make more of this than it is. Nothing like this has ever happened before. If we can see something coming, don't you think we should do something about it?”

”What does it matter?If I'm not going to die in a nuke, what if I stayed right by her?Moved in, worked from home, holed up in a bunker?I'm still not going to die of a nuke.”

Williams sighed and rubbed his eyes with his palms, then sat back on the bed, resting his shoulders on Maggie's The Nightmare Before Christmas The Nightmare Before Christmas poster. Jack Skellington loomed over his shoulder, grinning. poster. Jack Skellington loomed over his shoulder, grinning.

He reached into his wallet and pulled out a yellow, crumpled cert. The stamp had been worn away, and the corners were soft and blunt.

”It's only fair,” he said.