"My parents won't be coming," Jack said. "I've pretty much always been a disappointment, if you know what I mean."
"What, with a pretty lady like this on your arm?" Gary asked. "Come on, what father doesn't dream of a girl like Charlotte for his son?"
Jack made a mental note never to let Amy play at Nate's house under Gary's sole supervision.
"Oh, just ignore him," Liz said. "We have to go meet my mother, anyway. See you after!"
Together, Jack and Charlotte watched them leave. They sat on folding chairs and sighed in unison, though for Charlotte it was a simple motion of her shoulders. Jack leaned back and looked up at the vaulted ceiling. It was a good school. He kept telling himself that. It was a good school. Better than most kids got. Better than the insane military shit he'd been subjected to after breaking curfew for the umpteenth time, that was for sure.
"Hey." Charlotte slipped her cool hand into his. "It's my turn to ask you. What's wrong?"
He squeezed her hand. "Just thinking about my dad," he said. "How stupid he is to be missing stuff like this."
Charlotte smiled. "The important thing is that we found each other."
"Damn straight." He stretched one arm over her shoulders and pulled her closer. "Have I ever told you how smart you are?"
She shrugged. "All that graphene has to be good for something."
He kissed the top of his wife's head. He watched his daughter on the stage: her swinging feet, her eager wave. Her bright smile hit him in the gut, as straight and sure as if she had reached over the heads of chattering parents and bored siblings to deliver a finishing blow.
Amy's teacher, a willowy woman who wore her waistlength hair over a long denim dress, ascended the stage soon after that. She held the microphone with both hands in a white-knuckle grip. She swayed in place as though guided by some internal music. "Welcome to kindergarten graduation," she said in a thin, high voice. "This has been a very special year for all of us. We've learned a lot, and although we're sad to leave our class behind, we're excited for next year! On with the show!"
With that, the kindergartners shuffled out of their seats and sang a song complete with hand motions (guided from offstage by their swaying teacher), then herded back to their little chairs (with the name tags affixed to the backs), and fidgeted through a "commencement address" offered by the principal. She was wearing the goofy robes of her alma mater. Then it was time for the diplomas to be handed out.
"Amy Peterson," the teacher said, and Amy stood. She crossed the stage halfway, before pausing and squinting at someone standing among the other parents below the stage.
"Mom?"
A woman rose slowly to the stage. She wove unsteadily on her feet. Her clothes didn't quite fit; she'd buttoned her shirt wrong. She wore no shoes. Her skin bristled with unshed plastic. Otherwise, she was Charlotte's exact replica.
"Come on, Amy." The vN's voice had the rough, hollow sound of real hunger. She held her arms out. "Give your granny a hug."
"Please God, no." It was the first time in Jack's memory that he had heard his wife invoke any deity whatsoever.
Onstage, Amy came no closer but did not back away. She spoke clearly and sharply. "I don't want to hug you. Leave me alone."
Charlotte's double lunged, but Nate's sly five year-old foot tripped her up. He looked directly at Amy. "Run!"
But Amy didn't run. She stared as the other vN's arm shot out across the floor and grabbed the boy's tiny ankle. Nate screamed as she yanked him off the chair, off the stage, and threw him like a discus into the crowd. His soft little body hit the linoleum and concrete face-first before skidding down the aisle. Blood smeared from his open mouth and smashed nose. In the gleaming trail, Jack saw a baby tooth. Then it disappeared, swallowed by the tread of a man's boot. Charlotte's hand left Jack's grip as the shrieking started. Her feet pounded down the aisle. She leapt high and crashed down on the stage piano in an explosion of wood and music.
Charlotte said, "Amy. Run. Now."
"Mom–"
"Do it!"
Amy hurried down the stairs. Now Jack ran too, trying to get to her, but he stumbled and fell to the floor. Now he lay eye to eye with Nate, level with the blood oozing from his open mouth with its two front teeth still missing. The boy was dead. Terribly, awfully, horrifically dead, his eyes still open and his hands still sticky with ketchup, a redder red than the deep dark fluid pooled around his ruined face. Jack roared. It was a sound he didn't know he could produce, something mighty and raw that tore its way up out of his gut and must have signaled his child, because Amy crawled out from the forest of folding chairs to meet him.
"Dad…"