Ellen Datlow - After - Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia

“Dude,” he said, “she sits right next to me. I am so going to love math this year.”

To show him up, I whipped out my new Droid. Four calls from Mom, and two messages, but I ignored them and waited impatiently as my Web page trickled in. Last night, I’d created six new levels for the game Nimbus, an opensourced first-person shooter that had become more popular than Jesus over the past few months. “Check out this crazy maze I built. No one’s getting out of this death trap.”

“Dude, you’re such a geek!” Vinny said. “I’m showing you tits and you’re showing me your game levels ?”

I felt disappointed. I’d spent hours building worlds in Nimbus, and Vinny was usually excited to see them. I slipped my phone back in my pocket.

Vinny twisted his head with his hands, looked like he was trying to tear it from his skull. I heard a crack. When some people are anxious, they crack their knuckles. Vinny cracked his neck. “So why are we here, again?”

I spotted Maeve and Elsa walking toward us, all dolled up in their brightly colored knee-length jackets, trying to avoid getting dirt on the new fabric. I gestured at them with my chin. “Maeve’s in my world studies class,” I said. Just saying her name made my heart skip a beat. “I told her I bike, and she got all excited.”

My phone buzzed. My mom again. I sent her to voice mail.

“Oh, so that’s why you dragged me here with these douche-bags.” Vinny whispered. “Maeve is a hottie. I’d totally like to—”

“Shut up!” I said. “Here they come. Don’t be a dick. Girls don’t like that.”

“What? Girls don’t like my dick?” He smiled wickedly at me.

“Shut up!”

I’d had a crush on Maeve since spring of last year, when we shared a square dance circle in gym class. Her hands had been so warm. But back then she’d been with Christopher Black, a kid who liked to wear plaid and who probably should have started shaving in seventh grade but had let his peach fuzz grow until it resembled a patch of blond mold. Rumor had it that they’d broken up over the summer, and since then I tried to learn everything I could about her.

“Hi, Vin. Hi, Russ,” Maeve said, smiling. Her cheeks were pink with cold, her black bob of hair half hidden by a gray knitted cap with tassels. Elsa ran a finger slowly around her hoop earrings. Both girls wore Ray-Ban glasses (prescription), which had, for some reason, become the Most-Necessary-Thing™ over the summer, and now all the girls whose moms could afford to buy them sported a pair. Maeve’s cherry red ones made her look like a punked-out NASA engineer. “Are you up soon?” she said.

In my best attempt at laid-back cool, I said, “Yeah, after Mi--ke.” But my voice cracked like I’d just hit puberty.

“Frog in your thr--oat ?” Elsa said, mocking me. The girls giggled. My face grew hot, and I fumbled to save myself.

“What my castrato friend here is trying to say,” Vinny said, “is, wait till you see his backside. Backside air , that is.”

I shook my head, but the girls laughed, and all was well again. Maeve stared at me. She looked expectant, her irises the color of fall grasses, a swirl of green and brown, and pupils dark pits that threatened to suck me in forever.

She let slip a shy, wonderful little smile at me. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just cheered as Eric Kellerman landed a jump. I sucked at flirting, and my hacking skills weren’t going to get me girls anytime soon. But I kicked ass at BMX. I had a growing reputation in the school as “That A-track kid who bikes.” I preferred that to the previous year’s moniker of “That nerd who hangs out with Vinny.” And I thought if I tricked out a bit in front of Maeve, got some sick air, then maybe she’d be impressed; and if the afternoon went really well, we’d go behind the trees and…

My heart hammered. This was going to be a good year.

“I heard you were good,” Elsa said. She whipped out a pack of Marlboro lights from her pocket and lit the last one, the one turned around for good luck.

Maeve smiled and swayed restlessly, the tassels of her hat swinging back and forth against her head like a Tibetan drum. “Can you do a full twirl?” she said.

“You mean a three-sixty?” I blushed. “Sure.”

“Awesome,” she said. “I love that.”

I couldn’t believe she was paying this much attention to me, that both girls were. I had shed my nerdiness like I’d shed junior high. I couldn’t stop smiling.

Vinny poked me in the arm and said, “Dude, is that who I think it is?”

I turned to see a frazzled woman, dressed in green scrubs, walking between the kids and their bikes. Her presence here was impossible, and for a moment it didn’t register. Then I remembered the phone calls.

“Russell? Is Russell Broward here?” Everyone turned to look at her, then me.

“Oh, god!” I whispered. I turned my back, pretending not to hear, hoping she’d vanish.

“Russ-ell?” She sounded like she was calling for a lost dog. She spotted me, stormed right across the Track, and Eric Kellerman nearly clobbered her as he came around the turn.

“Is that your mom?” Maeve said. She squinted at me.

“ My mom? Oh, uh… yeah .”

“You told her about the Track?”

Maeve pushed her glasses up her nose as if taking me in. I don’t think she liked what she saw. I couldn’t see her irises anymore, only the dull gray rectangles of reflected sky.

My mom strode up to us and put her hands on her hips. She took a long look at Elsa, who hid her cigarette behind her back. Then Mom turned to me. “Why didn’t you answer my calls? I thought I told you to come home after school!”

“What are you doing here?” I snapped.

Her hair was a mangled mess and her lipstick had missed her lips, fallen on her cheek. Ever since Dad had died two years back, she always had the appearance of going somewhere and never arriving. “They called me to cover a shift and I need you to babysit your sister.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now , Russell. And where’s your helmet?” She looked around. “All you kids should be wearing helmets.” She stared at Elsa, who had been trying not to giggle. “Does your mother know you smoke? You know teenage smoking increases your risk of breast cancer seventy percent?”

Oh, god. This wasn’t happening.

Elsa said, “My mom buys me all my packs.”

Maeve laughed, but quickly silenced herself when my mother glared at her.

“Come on, Russell!”

Humiliated, I muttered good-bye to them.

“Later, man,” Vinny said mournfully. Elsa seemed annoyed, and Maeve frowned. I heard Elsa mock, “‘Teenage smoking increases your risk of breast cancer seventy percent!’” Someone shouted, “Mommy says Russell can’t come out and play!” and a bunch of kids laughed.

I hung my head as I followed my mom through the trees and out onto the road, where her Honda CR-V idled. Jenna was sitting in the backseat, playing Derek Jeter’s World of Baseball on her pink pocket console as my mom opened the hatchback. I threw my bike in, got in the passenger seat, slammed the door.

“I don’t like your attitude, Russell!”

I was on the verge of tears. “You couldn’t call a stupid babysitter?”

“I’m sorry, Russell, but there was no one else.”

The tires screeched as we pulled away. I looked into the backseat, Jenna in her pink jacket playing her pink handheld game. She was humming happily to herself. I wanted to scream.

“I left money on the table. You can order a pizza. I want you in bed by eleven, your sister by nine. And no playing video games till your homework’s done.”