“Hold on.”
The sounds became muffled and Janice waited. Her relationship with her daughter had had its ups and downs. Michaela’s decision to quit law school and go into television journalism (as big a bullshit factory in its own way as the prison system, and probably just as full of criminals) had been a valley, and the nose job that followed had taken them way, way below sea level for awhile. There was a persistence to Michaela, however, which Coates had gradually come to respect. Maybe they weren’t as different as it seemed. Daffy Magda Dubcek, the local woman who had babysat for Janice when Michaela was a toddler, once said, “She’s like you, Janice! She cannot be denied! Tell her one cookie, she make it her personal mission to eat three. Smile and giggle and sweet you up until you cannot say no.”
Two years ago, Michaela had been doing puff pieces on the local news. Now she was on NewsAmerica, where her rise had been rapid.
“Okay,” Michaela said, coming back on. “Had to get someplace quiet. They’ve got us outside the CDC. I can’t talk long. Have you been watching the news?”
“CNN, of course.” Janice loved this jab and never missed a chance to use it.
This time Michaela ignored it. “You know about the Aurora Flu? The sleeping sickness?”
“Something on the radio. Old women who can’t wake up in Hawaii and Australia—”
“It’s real, Mom, and it’s any woman. Elderly, infant, young, middle-aged. Any woman who sleeps. So: don’t go to sleep.”
“Pardon?” Something wasn’t tracking here. It was eleven in the morning. Why would she go to sleep? Was Michaela saying she should never sleep again? If so, it wasn’t going to work out. Might as well ask her to never pee again. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Turn on the news, Mom. Or the radio. Or the Internet.”
The impossibility lingered between them on the line. Janice didn’t know what else to say except, “Okay.” Her kid might be wrong, but her kid wouldn’t lie to her. Bullshit or not, Michaela believed it was the truth.
“The scientist I just talked to—she’s with the feds, and a friend, I trust her—is on the inside. She says that they’re estimating that eighty-five percent of women in the Pacific standard time zone are already out. Don’t tell anyone that, it’s going to be pandemonium as soon as it hits the Internet.”
“What do you mean out?”
“I mean, they aren’t waking up. They’re forming these—they’re like cocoons. Membranes, coatings. The cocoons seem to be partly cerumen—ear wax—partly sebum, which is the oily stuff on the sides of your nose, partially mucus, and . . . something else no one understands, some kind of strange protein. It reforms almost as quick as it comes off, but don’t try to take it off. There have been—reactions. Okay? Do-not-attempt-to-remove-the-stuff.” On this last matter, which made no more sense than the rest, Michaela seemed uncharacteristically severe. “Mom?”
“Yes, Michaela. I’m still right here.”
Her daughter sounded excited now—keen. “It started happening between seven and eight our time, between four and five Pacific standard, which is why the women west of us got hit so hard. So we’ve got all day. We’ve got just about a full tank.”
“A full tank—of waking hours?”
“Bingo.” Michaela heaved a breath. “I know how crazy this thing sounds, but I am in no way kidding. You’ve got to keep yourself awake. And you’re going to have some hard decisions to make. You need to figure out what you’re going to do with your prison.”
“With my prison?”
“Your inmates are going to start falling asleep.”
“Oh,” Janice said. She suddenly did see. At least sort of.
“Have to go, Mom, I’ve got a stand-up and the producer’s going crazy. I’ll call when I can.”
Coates stayed on the couch. Her gaze found the framed photograph on her desk. It showed the late Archibald Coates, grinning in surgical scrubs, holding his infant daughter in the crook of his arm. Dead of a coronary at the impossibly unfair age of thirty, Archie had been gone now almost as long as he had lived. In the picture there was a bit of whitish afterbirth on Michaela’s forehead, like a scrap of web. The warden wished she’d told her daughter that she loved her—but the regret only held her still for a few seconds. There was work to be done. It had taken a few seconds to get a hold on the problem, but the answer—what to do with the women of the prison—did not seem to Janice to be multiple-choice. For as long as she could, she needed to keep on doing what she had always done: maintain order and keep ahead of the bullshit.
She told her secretary, Blanche McIntyre, to buzz their PAs again at their homes. After that, Blanche was to call Lawrence Hicks, the vice-warden, and inform him that his recovery time from wisdom tooth surgery was being curtailed; he was required on the premises immediately. Finally, she needed Blanche to notify each of the officers on duty in turn: due to the national situation everyone was pulling a double. The warden had serious concerns about whether or not she could count on the next rotation coming in. In an emergency people were reluctant to leave their loved ones.
“What?” Blanche asked. “The national situation? Did something happen to the president? And you want everyone for a double? They aren’t going to like that.”
“I don’t care what they like. Turn on the news, Blanche.”
“I don’t understand. What’s happening?”
“If my daughter’s right, you’ll know it when you hear it.”
Next, Coates went to get Norcross in his office. They were going to check on Kitty McDavid together.
5
Jared Norcross and Mary Pak were sitting on the bleachers during Period Three PE, their tennis rackets put aside for the time being. They and a bunch of Silly Sophomores on the lower tiers were watching two seniors playing on the center court, grunting like Monica Seles with each hit. The skinny one was Curt McLeod. The muscular redhead was Eric Blass.
My nemesis, Jared thought.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said.
Mary looked at him, eyebrows raised. She was tall, and (in Jared’s opinion) perfectly proportioned. Her hair was black, her eyes were gray, her legs long and tanned, her lowtops immaculately white. Immaculate was, in fact, the best word for her. In Jared’s opinion. “And that would be apropos what?”
As if you don’t know, Jared thought. “Apropos you going to see Arcade Fire with Eric.”
“Um.” She appeared to think this over. “Lucky you’re not the one going with him, then.”
“Hey, remember the field trip to the Kruger Street Toy and Train Museum? Back in fifth grade?”