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A l l G o o d C h i l d r e n
Advance Reading Copy
Xavier squints and nods. “You can’t see me.”
“Is he one of us?” Dallas whispers.
“Nah,” I say. “He’s just nuts.”
Xavier hangs his head as if someone switched him off.
Dallas twists around to look into his face. “You okay, man?
You’re drooling.” We walk him to a picnic table and sit him
down. He looks at the sky and smiles, then closes his eyes
in ecstasy.
“What is he on?” Dallas asks.
I shrug. “Whatever he used to be on plus whatever they
gave him.”
“It doesn’t seem so bad.”
“Whispered words are never healthy,” Pepper says.
I jolt and shudder. She’s behind the bench, staring from
me to Dallas with a look of absolute nothing on her face.
“That’s why we never whisper,” I say.
She squints. “You were whispering. I heard you.”
“If you could hear us, then we obviously weren’t whis-
pering,” Dallas says.
“You were in a movie I saw,” Xavier mutters.
“It’s nice to see you back at school, Xavier,” Pepper says.
“Like all children, Xavier is lucky to go to school,” I say.
I jerk my head around like a robot. “Look at all these lucky
children.”
Dallas bends his arms robotically and says, “We are
lucky…to be training…for our futures.”
Pepper frowns. We might have gone too far.
“Xavier needs help getting to class,” I say. “Dallas and I
recognize the needs of all our classmates. Goodbye, Pepper.”
