G. Wright - Broken Things

“Do they hurt?”

Josh shrugged. “Not anymore. Now just my head.”

Will leaned closer and looked him in the eyes. “Doesn’t that sound bother you? Are they going to get you fixed?”

“Eventually. It’s pretty expensive though.”

“Hey, do you remember Mike? That used to play with us at the park?”

“Yeah.” Josh knew the story too, and didn’t want to hear it. “I really need to help pack.”

“Remember when he fell off the monkey bars?”

“Of course. He died.”

Will shook his head. “No he didn’t. I saw him the next day. They had him walking around and everything. He even waved at me when I went by his house.”

“Then where did he go? His parents still live at the same place.”

“I don’t know. They got rid of him or something. Maybe he damaged his head like you.”

“You can’t just get rid of a kid,” Josh said, “There’s laws.”

“Like throwing away batteries or old computers? Nobody pays attention to those laws, and nobody wants a broken kid.”

“They’ve already paid to fix part of me. They have to wait for my dad’s next paycheck to do the rest.”

“So have you met the kid that replaced Mike?”

Josh shook his head.

“I heard parents can trade old kids in for newer ones.”

“I don’t think they can trade in broken ones,” Josh replied, but he didn’t say it with confidence. The tech had hinted at much the same thing.

“They can, they just don’t get as much credit if the kid’s been junked,” Will said, “What I want to know is where the kids go afterward. I hear that you either get scrapped for parts for new kids and the rest they send to a kid cemetery . But they don’t bury you, they dump you in a gigantic pit of all the thrown away children. And if you’re not really dead you just sit there and rot while the bugs and worms eat you down to your bones.”

“How do you know that?” Suddenly Josh didn’t feel so well.

“I just heard it somewhere. Maybe on TV.”

“That can’t be real.”

“Why not? We’ve got to go somewhere.”

“We’re just like our parents. They fix us if we break. We can live forever.”

“Yeah,” Will agreed, “But I’m not going to get broken, just in case.”

“I’ve really got to finish packing,” Josh said, “I’ll see you when I get back.”

“Yeah, maybe. Bye.” Will hopped on his bike and didn’t look back as he rode off down the street.

“Idiot,” Josh said under his breath. They wouldn’t throw away children, they couldn’t. Parents, by definition, needed kids.

The SUV threw up a cloud of dust as it blazed a trail along the dirt road. Looking out the back window, Josh watched the dust rise behind them for miles, sometimes obscuring the very trees. The distant mountains had always felt so far away, and never so big! Soon, his parents continued to promise him, they’d find a campsite.

The trip felt like it had been going on for hours! Leaving the city limits surrounded them with nothing but desert, but when they’d left the highway and entered the foothills, the land turned from sagebrush to pine, aspen and fir trees. Every turn around every bend brought higher and higher mountains, the road taking them ever more upward. At one point they dropped down and passed a beautiful blue lake filled with people in boats and people on skis, people fishing, and people swimming.

“Can we go there?” Josh asked.

“We don’t have a boat, bud,” his father said.

“Can we at least play in the water?”

“We’ll find a spot next to the river. Most of the campsites are near the water.”

“This lake is huge,” Josh said.

“It’s the Anderson Ranch Reservoir,” his mother replied, not looking back.

“How big is it?”

“I don’t know, ten miles or so?” They drove along the lake for a while before the road once more began to rise and leave the lake behind, twisting into the mountains.

The trees grew thicker and soon to their left a river raced alongside of the road. Sporadically a cabin or campsites broke the wilderness, but those became fewer and fewer.

“Do we get to stay in a cabin?” Josh asked.

“No,” his dad said, “That’s not the camping experience. We’re here to get away from civilization. It’s about escaping people, not being surrounded by them. In fact, if you want to be around people we could set up a tent in the backyard. Then all you’d need is a wading pool. Hell, I think we’ve seen more squirrels back at home, huh sport? Want to go back?”

“No.” Staying home would’ve sucked. His mother continued to stare out the window and the scenery. Josh thought his mother didn’t want to go camping. Her idea of a vacation involved a hotel and a nearby mall. His father’s idea involved the garage. They were doing this trip for him. That’s what they’d said.

Still further they drove, until his father found a dirt road barely visible among the overgrowth and trees. The road, if it even qualified as one, twisted and turned wildly, and branches scraped against the vehicle causing his father to mutter curses under his breath. His father didn’t curse that often, and it made the boy smile as much as it made his mother frown in disapproval. They drove slower now, as every few feet bumps in the road jostled the vehicle roughly, and Josh hung on in fear of getting smacked into the window.

White aspens were thicker here than the pines or fir, covering the mountains in green and white. This road hugged the side of a mountain, and if his father were to but drift a few more feet to the right, their rig would tumble hundreds of feet down the side of the slope. The thought made his stomach clench, but he continued to stare anyway. Maybe some of the trees would stop them.

Finally the road dropped down once more, bringing the family to the river and a small clearing with just enough room for their vehicle and the tent. Off in the shade of a large tree a rickety picnic table looked forlorn and forgotten next to an empty fire pit. Josh leaped out before they’d come to a complete stop.

“Josh!” His mother hollered after him.

He ran a few feet away and stopped, staring up at the trees. They stretched far above him to form a canopy of branches and leaves. His senses were assailed on all sides by nature. The air smelled different, of water and plants and trees and dirt, not of car exhaust and whatever else the city smelled like. And the noise! The wind rustled the leaves in a constant symphony harmonizing with the steady melody of the river. Some kind of bird or bug chirped a chorus over the top of it all. He couldn’t hear any traffic, and he realized how truly far they’d come. Finally they were letting him do something fun for the summer.

“What time is it, dad?” he asked as his father slammed his door shut.

His dad didn’t bother looking at his watch. He rarely did but had an uncanny gift of telling time. “A little after one. What do you think of this place?”

“It’s perfect!” Josh tossed his head toward the river, flipping his straggly brown hair out of his eyes at the same time. “Can I check out the water?”

His father smiled and nodded. “Go ahead. Don’t fall in.”

Josh dashed away, headless of his mother again calling after him. The foliage grew thick along the river but once past that, it opened to a rocky beach. The river looked wide, and though deep, he imagined that he could wade across it without too much trouble, maybe if he found a good walking stick to use as support.

He crouched down on the pebbly beach and shuffled through the rocks until he’d gathered a fairly decent pile of skipping stones. He couldn’t believe that after three years he’d only just talked his parents into this trip. He planted himself in a sandy patch and launched the first stone across the river. The water flowed too rapidly to skip anything too good, but a deep spot provided just enough smooth water that he pulled off a few good skips. Sometimes he’d attempt to drop a larger rock onto the horde of water skippers that gathered near the bank.