HELPER12, Jack Blaine [reading in the dark .TXT] 📗

to be.  If you don’t stay on track in training, you could wash out.”  I wonder if he knows what that means.

“What does that mean?”

I guess he doesn’t.

“It means that you could be sent to labor camp.  That’s if you’re lucky.  At labor camps the life expectancy is less than a year.”

He watches me.  He says nothing.  For too long.

“What?”  I finally have to speak.

“Are you upset with me about something?”

“No.”  I answer too quickly.

“I feel like you are.”  He takes the reader from my hands and puts it on the bed.  Then he takes my hands in his.

“I know that we come from very different places.  I know that you’ve had a very hard life.”  He looks into my eyes, searching for something.  “It’s still hard.  And I’m a part of that—of making your life hard.”  He shakes his head.  “I don’t want to be a part of that.”  For a moment he says nothing.  Then he continues.

“I want you to know that I do know some of what you’ve been through.  I’ve been trying to find out, trying to see what it must be like for you.  Because I do want us to be friends.  I think we may be the only chance at sanity William has, being raised in this place.  I need to do better, as a brother, and as a friend.  I hope you’ll let me try to do that.  I hope you’ll help me protect William from, well, from what this place can be like.”

He looks at me with so much hope in his eyes, but I can’t help him.  I pull my hands from his.

“His name isn’t William,” I say.

He looks puzzled.  “Would you rather have him called Baby4?”

I’m surprised he remembers Jobee’s Pre Ward name.

“Of course not,” I say.  “But that’s not his name either.  His name is Jobee.  It’s what I named him the day he arrived in my Ward, and it’s what he’ll always go by, even after he’s been tracked and trained in some stupid thing.”  I’m crying, and I don’t know why.

“Jobee.”  Thomas says the name slowly.  He reaches up to my cheek and smudges a tear away with his thumb.  “That’s a fine name.”

Suddenly I am full of fear.  “Don’t call him that, not in front of your mother.  Not your father either.”

“I wouldn’t.”  He looks at me.  “It will be what we know about him, together.”

I nod, and wipe my nose on my sleeve.

Thomas laughs.

“Are we okay, now?”  He looks at me, and something about how he looks makes me feel naked.  I nod.

“Good.”  Thomas gets up and walks to the door.  “Keep that hidden,” he says, pointing to the reader.  “I’ll see you at dinner?”

I nod again.

He starts to leave, but he turns back around.

“What?”

“What’s your name, Helper12?  Will you tell me?”

I am silent for a long time.  Finally I just shake my head.

He nods, as though he understands.  “Maybe someday,” he says.  And he leaves my room.

Chapter Twenty

The days fall into a sort of pattern.  I rise each morning to Jobee’s chuckles, bathe him and feed him his breakfast.  We spend some time outside in the courtyard where I show him everything I can—the sky, the trees, the plants, the fish in the fountain.  I watch him touch things and the expressions on his face are like a second childhood to me, one where there is no testing or surgery or tattooing; one where there is what looks like happiness.

After lunch, while Jobee naps, I get the reader from its hiding place under his changing table pad, and I study.  I read all about what will come for Jobee this year, and I learn many new words.  I fall in love with the dictionary.  Sometimes, I look up words that aren’t in the baby books, just to learn new ones.  I try to use them at dinner with Thomas, to see if I do it right.

Thomas included an art book with the ones we got from the PIC.  I found it the second day I was studying.  I hadn’t bothered to read all the titles until then, and the last one listed was Line Drawings by the Masters.  I gasped when I read the title, and selected it.

There were pictures.

There were line drawings of landscapes and city skylines, and animals.  There were all sorts of different styles, done by many different Artists.  When I got to the seventh Artist, there was a note that Thomas had added to the reader.

This one made me think of your work.

The sketches were of people; an old man on a train, a woman mixing something in a beaker.  They were made with strong, spare lines, and they did look like my work.

My work.  Nobody ever called it that before.  Of course, nobody knew about it until Thomas, but still.  I look at the drawings every day, savoring them, trying to understand why the Artist used a certain line, why the shading is done a certain way for one area and another for the next.

After nap Thomas usually comes to play with Jobee.  He holds him and tickles him and shows him something new everyday. Yesterday it was a tomato.  Today it was a wooden mallet.  Jobee grabs every new thing and touches it, feeling all the different textures, smelling all the different smells.  He is happy.  He loves Thomas.

I think Thomas loves him too.

Some days Thomas leaves in the morning, and doesn’t come back until dinner.  On those nights he is quiet.  I think he’s been to see Greg.  I don’t ask him, because I’m afraid I will be overstepping my bounds.

Helper is scandalized by the time Thomas spends in my room.  She grumbles to the Driver at breakfast and acts as though I can’t hear her.  The Driver just shakes his head, and winks at me.   I’m not too worried; we always have the door wide open, so that there can be no reason to suspect that something untoward is happening.  Certainly she walks past the