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  She picked up a second one. “Notice the red berries and the green holly, the red presents and the green Christmas trees. Our task is to create our own Christmas cards honoring the traditions of the Edwardian era. Who can tell me what some of those might have been?”

  A lengthy pause followed. Mrs. Veck placed herself in this awkward position over and over again, several times a day, like a dog with an electric fence collar that keeps zapping itself. No one ever volunteered to answer. Ever. Then Mrs. Veck would begin at her right with Maureen Dugan and work her way around the table, attempting to elicit some intelligent remark from someone.

  Patience and I would have had no trouble answering the question, but we didn’t want to give the evil Dugans any ammunition. Mrs. Veck finally gave up and said, “How about tannenbaums, cherubs, Yule logs, stars, mistletoe, snow, sleighs? You can use any of these images as you create your cards. I will pass out several cards now for you to use as models.”

  She left her position and walked around the table, handing a card to each of us. My card showed a little girl in a red dress. She was lugging a snow-covered Christmas tree over her shoulder.

  “Let’s all get to work! We’ll want to show Ms. Meyers eight lovely Edwardian Christmas cards when she arrives.” Mrs. Veck then stepped out of the room, leaving us to our work. We all knew she hadn’t gone far. The entire back wall was a two-way mirror behind which Mrs. Veck, or any parent observers, could sit and watch us. So we bent our heads and got to work.

  The evil Dugan sisters sat right across from me. They were new to The Highlands. Some people thought they were twins because they looked so much alike, but they were actually born twelve months apart, to the day. (I always thought that was creepy. So did Patience.) Anyway, Maureen was the older one. She had been kept back because she couldn’t read very well. Pauline was the younger one. She couldn’t read, either. She sat next to Maureen, directly across from Patience. Both Dugan girls had dark fake tans penetrating their top two layers of derma. They both had fake blond hair, fake white smiles, and fake red nails. Could fake boobs be far behind?

  The girl next to Pauline was Sierra Vasquez. Although she never exerted herself in any way, Sierra always had dark circles beneath her eyes and drooping lids above them. Her hobbies included sneering and muttering mean things to the Dugans about Patience and me. She was bony, with joints that actually showed through her skin at the knees and elbows, like the ends of broomsticks. Her short black hair was so intensely sprayed in place that she looked like she was wearing a bicycle helmet.

  Whitney Rice was at the end of that side of the table. Whitney had very dry brown hair that she brushed straight out and sprayed in place so that it looked like lacquered straw. She had extremely broad shoulders, but skinny legs. She also had shifty eyes and a tendency to wear gingham, giving her the overall appearance of an untrustworthy scarecrow.

  Sterling Johnston was the first person on our side of the table, one of the two boys. He was being treated for attention deficit disorder, as Mrs. Veck explained to us all in one of her “teachable moments.” He was taking a drug called methylphenidate, which supposedly kept him focused, but which had an unfortunate side effect. Ever since the onset of puberty, Sterling had been relegated to the back of all class photos because of his tendency to be in a perpetual state of sexual excitement. This was evident whenever he was called on to go to the smartboard to write something. Patience and I avoided him, but the girls across the table sometimes pretended to drop things in order to look at him.

  Hopewell Patterson, Patience’s brother, was next. He was a tall boy with a uniform layer of excess body fat extending from his neck down to his ankles, giving him a sausage-like appearance (just like his father). His terrible posture and his low self-esteem made him appear to be spineless. I was always surprised when I saw him stand up, or walk, or do other common vertebrate things. Like everyone else, even I had succumbed to the obvious temptation to refer to him as “Hopeless.”

  Hopewell had been taken three years ago, right before the Pattersons moved to The Highlands. The kidnappers had cut off his left ear, and he had never really recovered from the experience, physically or psychologically. That area of his head was always covered by a clump of thick brown hair. There was a rumor in The Highlands that Patience had also been taken and that they had cut off her little toe. I knew that was not true, because Patience was my best friend and we had gone together for pedicures. Patience, fortunately, had inherited her mother’s genetic traits. She was shorter and thinner than her brother (and three years younger—he had been kept back twice, due to poor grades). Patience had naturally blond hair, which she wore in cute, curly ringlets. Unlike her brother, she had excellent posture and a very feisty spirit. She also possessed the other hortatory name in the class.

  Mrs. Veck had begun school last year with one of her teachable moments, an improvised lesson on hortatory names. I guess she meant well, but she basically ruined our lives. Mrs. Veck announced cheerfully that “a hortatory name is a name that embodies a virtue, such as Patience, or Charity, or Faith. Such names were very popular among the first Europeans who settled here, the Pilgrims.”

  The lesson went on from there, but the evil Dugans weren’t listening. They had heard enough. From that day on, they referred to Patience and me as “the hors.” We minded it at first, but then we kind of embraced the title.

  I lay on my ambulance stretcher and thought about how they all looked, and how colorful the table looked, and how thin my own hands looked as I labored silently among them. I was the smallest member of the group, due to the fact that my mother had been only 1.5 meters tall and my father was 1.7. I had mousy brown hair, from my father’s side, that I wore shoulder length. I had bright blue eyes that I kept cast down on my work. I had skinny legs, a freckled nose, and a tight mouth that would not smile, owing to the presence of braces.

  After a while, a commotion behind the classroom mirror caused us all to stop coloring and cutting. I knew what it had to be, and I whispered to Patience, “It’s Mickie.”

  Patience raised the right side of her lip. “Gross.”

  “Yeah. She’ll be in and out for the next ten days.”

  “Is she going to make us be on her vidshow?”

  I shook my head fatalistically. “Is the sun going to set in the west?”

  Mickie Meyers threw open the classroom door and strode in. She was followed by her producer, a fierce-looking woman named Lena; then by her burly cameraman, Kurt; and finally by Mrs. Veck.

  Most people get excited when they see Mickie Meyers in person. Her red rectangular glasses, her big white teeth, the prominent mole to the left of her mouth, have become fixtures on vidscreens across the U.S. Honestly, I can’t understand what people see in her.

  My relationship with Mickie hadn’t changed much since the divorce. Very little had changed since then. Mickie had kept our last name. She explained to me that it was “for brand identity.” I think she liked the alliteration, too. Victoria and Albert started calling her “Ms. Meyers” instead of “Mrs. Meyers.” My dad started bad-mouthing her openly. That was about it.

  Mickie used the kids in our class shamelessly for her education segments and her holiday segments and her family segments, and this day would be no exception. She shouted, “Hello, children! How is everybody?” Mickie didn’t wait for a reply, but continued, “And a happy Christmas! A happy Edwardian Christmas. Right, Mrs. Veck?”

  Mrs. Veck responded promptly, “That’s right. The children have been working on cards—”

  “So they have! Lovely. Charity, honey, let me see yours.”

  I held up my red-berry-and-green-holly creation for her to admire.

  “Lovely. A lovely work in progress. And I see the rest of you are still hard at work on your works in progress, too. So here’s what I’d like to do. Lena has a box of finished cards that she’ll spread out on the table here. Go ahead, Lena. And Kurt will get some shots of all of you with your finished cards and your works in progress.
”

  Lena and the cameraman quickly followed those instructions as my ex-stepmother continued, “Now, while you are finishing up, I’d like to record a comment or two about how an Edwardian Christmas is different from a modern Christmas. Mrs. Veck, maybe you could lead a discussion of that.”

  Mrs. Veck smiled bravely. “Certainly. We were just discussing how the Edwardian era got its name. Who remembers that?”

  After three seconds of dead airtime, Mickie filled in. “It was from King Edward. Right, Patience?”

  Patience gulped. “Right.”

  “And which King Edward was it, honey? Was he the seventh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now why don’t you put that all together for me into an answer for Mrs. Veck.”

  “It was King Edward the Seventh.”

  Mrs. Veck nodded gratefully as Kurt the cameraman squeezed around her and continued to shoot. “Now, who can tell us how these cards differ from our modern cards?”

  During the silence that followed, Mickie Meyers directed the cameraman to vid certain specific cards. Then she looked right at me and raised her penciled eyebrows high, indicating that I should provide the answer.

  At that moment, Sierra mumbled something to Pauline.

  Patience seized the opportunity to suggest, “I think Sierra knows.”

  “Really? Okay, Sierra. You go ahead, honey.”

  Sierra pulled her lips back in an enormous sneer, like a cornered raccoon. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You didn’t? Well, how about saying a line for the segment, like ‘Have a happy Edwardian Christmas’?”

  “I’m not gonna say that.”

  “No? What would you like to say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “How about you, Pauline?”

  “Nothing. This is stupid.”

  “Oh! Come on, girls. I saw you working hard on the cards. Hopewell? Do you want to say something in the segment?”

  Hopewell let his head slide down to the right, and it remained in that position until Mickie gave up. “Okay, Charity. It looks like it’s back to you.”

  I mumbled “As usual” as Kurt lined up his shot. Patience, ever faithful, slid closer and looked into the camera with me as we intoned, “Have a happy Edwardian Christmas.”

  Mickie appeared to be satisfied with our greeting, insincere as it was. She immediately dispatched Kurt to the Square to set up for the second half of the shoot. She added, “Mrs. Veck, you and the children should follow quickly. All right? Each child should bring a finished card, one of the nice ones that Lena gave them. And a clothespin. Lena, do you have those?”

  Lena reached into a coat pocket and produced a handful of red and green clothespins, which she tossed onto the table. Then she and Mickie hurried out.

  I got jolted back to the present by a sound directly behind me, the sound of the ambulance cab door opening. This was followed by a violent sound, like someone’s head had been pushed into the cab wall.

  I ventured a quick look past my feet. The dark boy was no longer there!

  I heard a gruff, accusing voice from inside the cab. “You were asleep!”

  Then I heard a weary voice. “No.”

  “Shut up! Don’t lie to me, or…”

  My whole body tensed. I pictured the evil face of Dr. Reyes.

  The weary voice protested, “I was right here. She could not get past me.”

  “You were asleep!”

  “Just for one second.”

  “You are to be awake every second!”

  “It is way past my shift. It is Monnonk’s shift now.”

  “I will tell you when your shift is over. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what I will do if I catch you again?”

  The voice didn’t answer.

  Dr. Reyes continued, “You will never see it coming. One needle and it will be over. Do you understand now?”

  The voice whispered hoarsely, “Yes, sir. Yes, Doctor.”

  The door then slammed shut. Whoever was sitting in the front stayed completely quiet for five minutes. And so did I.

  At last I let myself relax. I lay back and stared at the ceiling. My heart was racing; my mind was racing. I had to do something right away or I might have a full-blown panic attack, like a wide-awake night terror.

  I rolled my head left and right, staring at the surrounding white walls of the ambulance. I pressed my hands against my temples, forcing myself to think about the white walls back at the satschool. What exactly did they look like? What was hanging on them? I remembered. Mrs. Veck’s posters were hanging on them—inspirational sayings beneath cute animal photos. A kitten clinging to a branch with the caption “Hang in there.” A grumpy bear looking out from a cave: “We all have bad days.” An eagle gliding in a bright blue sky: “Let your dreams soar.”

  I saw them all in my mind. And I was back in that classroom again, on that Friday morning.

  Mrs. Veck instructed us to gather our materials and to follow her out into the Square. She added, rather desperately, “Let’s all do our best to help Mrs. Meyers with her program.” That was an uncharacteristic slip of the tongue for Mrs. Veck, but it bothered me. I always resented hearing Mickie referred to as “Mrs. Meyers.”

  My mother, the real Mrs. Meyers, died when I was seven. She died during my first week in second grade. Back then, we lived in Lake Worth, Florida, about forty kilometers southeast of The Highlands. We lived in a regular housing development, not in an armed military compound, and I attended a real school, not a satschool.

  But my mother, who was a nurse, died of skin cancer, a melanoma lurking beneath her hairline that she never noticed. Neither did her husband, my father, a trained dermatologist. It all happened very quickly. From the first sign that something was wrong to her death was exactly 103 days. I counted them out on a calendar.

  I remember my father being totally devastated by her illness. I wasn’t devastated at first. I was just confused, and then numb.

  I remember my mother near the end actually urging my father, in front of me, to remarry. She told him, “Charity will need a mother. As soon as possible.”

  But my father, as it turned out, had another plan. He spent the three years following my mother’s death working at home, nearly around the clock. He threw himself body and soul into dermatological research. He became a hermit hiding in his room, scanning hundreds of content files for papers published in the field.

  Then, when I was in fifth grade, he emerged from his research cave to introduce a skin treatment called DermaBronze. When applied to the top two layers of derma by a trained physician during a ten-minute procedure, DermaBronze provided “a deep, medically safe tan for up to fifteen months.”

  The DermaBronze treatment made us rich, and it made my father briefly famous. He was deluged with offers to appear on vidcontent shows, and he grudgingly started accepting those offers.

  That’s where my future ex-stepmother came into the picture.

  Mickie Denman (her name at the time) graduated from the University of Florida with an M.S. in psychology. She opened her own office in Hobe Sound and counseled rich women about their mental health problems. She wrote an advice column for rich women based on her (slim) experience, but it was a big hit. The column got picked up by a content provider, and her name started to appear on vidscreens around central and south Florida.

  Soon her face started to appear, too, as she became an occasional guest for a medical show called Living with… Then she got her big break. She was asked to fill in for three days as the host of that show. The third of her three episodes was about the amazing new technique called DermaBronze. My father appeared with her that day, and the rest is history.

  My father never knew what hit him. Mickie says that she dazzled him with her charms. I guess that’s possible. I say he had just been working too hard for too long in his lonely room.

  Anyway, within a week they started slipping away together to the islands, leaving me with a series
of professional sitters. Within ninety days (I counted that out on a calendar, too), they had gotten married, and my new stepmother was hosting nationwide content shows as “Mickie Meyers.”

  Shortly after that, we moved to The Highlands. As they explained it to me, we had no choice but to move to a newer house in a better neighborhood. Our old house had been built before the World Credit Crash, so all we had to safeguard our currency was a steel safe bolted to the floor. We now needed a modern currency vault built into an inside wall, and many layers of electronic surveillance, and a private security patrol, all because my dad was rich and my stepmother was famous.

  But I hated The Highlands. I had no friends there. All I did was hide in my room. In my solitude, I finally started to grieve for my mother and to miss her terribly. That’s when Victoria arrived in my life. Victoria was there to help me during that period; my father and Mickie were not. They could have been, but they were not.

  Since those days, Mickie has gone global as the new host of the Living with… series of broadcasts. The first one was based on me and my departed mother: Living with Loss. The second was Living with Stepchildren. I guess that was partly about me, too, but I wasn’t in it. Her third, Living with Divorce, is still unfolding. I play at least a small role in that one.

  Mickie’s parent corporation, SatPub, has its headquarters in New York City, so she spends most of her time there. On Friday, December 21, however, she was in The Highlands, in the Square, directing her crew’s actions on the ground and directing Albert’s drone helicopter in the air.

  Whoever had decorated the public places in The Highlands was taking orders directly from Mickie. The theme in the Square was “An Edwardian Christmas.” There were twelve two-meter trees arranged around the nine-meter Scotch pine. Each of the twelve trees was decorated with items from one of the Twelve Days of Christmas—partridges, pear trees, et cetera. In addition, in front of the Sun Currency Bank was a golf cart that had been converted to a sleigh, complete with reindeer and a Santa (although I don’t think there was anything particularly Edwardian about that).