Izzy started thinking of her favorite stories, books she’d read at the library on summer breaks. There was “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, her mother’s favorite story, as if the actions of this fictional village more than proved her own agoraphobic tendencies. Her mother also loved “Hands” from Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, which was devastating and lonely. Were all of her favorite stories about fucked-up groups, lonely people living in broken-down villages?
It didn’t take long for Izzy to think of Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” which had terrified her in the eighth grade, the story of a spinster and her isolation from the town, ending with her death and the revelation that she had been sleeping with the decomposing body of her former love. Izzy had always loved the story, rereading it over and over even as it scared her. And, wonderfully, the story was told in the first person plural, using a “we” voice to encompass the entire town of Jefferson, Mississippi. It reminded her of how everyone in the complex began to use “we” in place of “I,” the way it seemed that your own desires were somehow those of the people around you. She downloaded a Word document of the story and used the word count feature to check the number of characters in the story. When the number came back, more than fifteen thousand, a quick shock of breath flew from her mouth, as if she had been pricked with a pin, and yet she did not turn away. She would do it, she decided in that moment. She imagined all the children of the complex reaching their hands into a pile of letters, letting them fall from their fingers like coins.
To be truthful, Izzy was grateful to have the art project, something that seemed completely separate from the day-to-day events of the complex. The children, ten divine constellations at birth, had turned into something altogether feral, ten hyenas after sunset. Cap had begun an awkward phase of biting any available piece of human flesh, as did several of the other children. Even the most innocent of games ended with scratches or unintentional injuries as the children swarmed over each other to recover a ball or a stuffed animal. They became defiant, which stunned the parents and caused them a greater sense of awkwardness as they realized that these children, while born to separate parents, were raised collectively. It was easy to hug another person’s child, to rock them to sleep as they smiled in their dreamlike states. It was altogether something else to punish another person’s child after they had dug their claws into your face. They handled this with what they believed was great patience, stern but fair, all the while silently holding grudges, blaming the parents of the child, no matter how collective the project was. “Genes,” Carmen once whispered to Izzy, “genes still count for something.” And Izzy tried to smile, knowing that her own DNA was as frayed and flawed as anyone else’s.
Dr. Grind seemed unconcerned. Or, rather, Dr. Grind was certainly concerned with the children’s progress and behavioral shifts, but he didn’t seem to think the recent developments required any hand-wringing or revisions to the program. “I remember, one time, Jody bit Marla on the cheek when she refused to give him an M and M,” he said, a strange smile on his face. Izzy had been shocked to hear Dr. Grind speak of his son and wife; he was always so careful not to mention them, and the rest of the family made a point not to bring it up in conversation for fear of upsetting him. As if realizing he had opened a door, Dr. Grind took a deep, controlled breath, but continued smiling. “I don’t remember the point of that story,” he admitted. “I think I was building toward reassuring you that the kids are fine. They are doing so wonderfully in so many ways. They’ll be fine, Izzy. I promise.”
On campus, her art class just ended, a group of students were heading to the coffee shop. David, who was smoking a cigarette so casually that he seemed like he might be more interested in setting something on fire, came over to Izzy and said, “We’re gonna hang out for a while; you wanna come with?”
David, a senior, was the darling of the art department. He made the most traditionally beautiful objects, amazing vases and bowls, but then he would film himself smashing it into tiny pieces with a hammer. Once the object was ruined, he went about gluing it back together as best he could. His final piece would consist of photographs of the original work, the video of him smashing it, and then the crudely repaired object. When she had first seen one of his pieces, she had instantly remembered Hal on the first day of art class, the vase he had set in front of the class. It had taken her breath away, as if Hal had somehow sent David into her life to remind her of him.
David was also incredibly handsome, had olive skin and dark hair, and would sometimes make casually flirtatious comments to Izzy during class, to the amusement of his friends. He was twenty-one, but seemed like he was much, much younger. All the students in her class seemed so young to Izzy, which she was quite certain would be irritating to them, as if Izzy was looking down on them from some mountain of experience.