167
A l l G o o d C h i l d r e n
Advance Reading Copy
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.
“Can we take Dallas with us?” I ask. “He’s losing it here.
He puts on an act all day and night.” She frowns, so I poke at
her guilt. “You either have to get him out of here or give him
the shot. You can’t leave him like this.”
She holds her head in her hands. “Okay. We’ll take Dallas.
We’ll take anyone who wants to come.”
Ally plays inside the tent, singing to her teddy, “You find
milk and I’ll find flour, and we’ll have pudding in half an
hour.”
Ö
I blow off Saturday’s coaching to do chin-ups in the park and
run down the rich people’s sidewalks.
I’m struck by the sight of a woman kneeling beside a
two-year-old child and a bucket of chalk. They’ve covered
twenty square feet of concrete with cloudy pastels—
