Child Z

CHAPTER 14 - MAI

On the board, Mr. Patel drew a two-column chart, which he labeled Myth/Fact. The topic for today's class was organ donation. He led with statistics, telling students that in the United States alone, over a hundred thousand people were waiting for a donor organ right now, and that more than twenty people a day were dying as a result. Despite this urgent need, he said resistance to organ donation remained strong due to myths and misinformation.

Mai was only half listening, daydreaming about Akna. She missed the chimp's expressive face, her thick brow arched over thoughtful eyes. She missed the early days, before the stress of long-term confinement in the shed. When Mai had first started feeding Akna and cleaning her cage, the chimp would stare with intense curiosity like she was trying to piece together exactly who Mai was. Sometimes Mai thought the chimp knew her better than she knew herself. It was hard having the chimp gone now, and worse, not knowing where Viraj and the surgeon had taken her.

A student in the back of the class said he'd seen a TV show where people who consented to donate their organs turned out not always to be dead when doctors started cutting into them. According to the student, doctors were eager to declare people dead so they could take their organs and distribute them to those in need.

Mr. Patel added donors not actually dead to the Myth column on the board.

Mai was sitting diagonal to Elsie, who was texting under her desk. Elsie's bony thumbs jumped around her phone composing a message likely bound for TJ. The sleeves of Elsie's baggy sweater ended abruptly at her wrists, which Mai found herself staring at. She couldn't help it. Elsie possessed a beauty Mai no longer denied. In fact, she'd recently told Elsie as much to her face.

It had slipped out the day after the masked people kidnapped Child Z. Mai and Elsie were walking loops around Heather Hills, going nowhere in particular. They didn't have Akna to care for anymore, and for the first time in ages, they were bored. Out of nowhere, Mai told Elsie she was pretty, saying, "I think you're pretty—and not just in the usual way." That was how it came out. The more she replayed the sentence in her mind, the sillier it sounded. Yet she could think of no better way to express the knots in her stomach. In response, Elsie smiled and gave her a peck on the cheek. The girls didn't speak of it further.

"Can you still have an open-casket funeral if you donate your organs?" a student asked Mr. Patel.

"Of course!" the teacher answered with a cheery tone inappropriate for the question. Mai knew the guy couldn't help himself. He always got excited when students participated.

A girl known for open-mouth gum chewing spoke without raising her hand. "Organ donation is a sham," she said. "Your organs just end up going to rich people who buy their way to the top of the list. I don't want my kidneys going to some slimy billionaire like Adrian Cooley."

Mr. Patel added rich people cut the line to the Myth column.

The same girl said, "Also, isn't Simia giving all their surrogates to some company called XenoLiv when the surrogates can't have babies anymore? I heard XenoLiv uses the chimps to grow human body parts then kills the chimps and harvests all the organs to sell for transplants."

Mr Patel laughed. "Sounds like something out of a horror movie. When you read things online, make sure to check your sources."

In a few short months, high school would be over, and Mai was looking forward to it. She didn't want to be around these idiot kids anymore. For a job, she was looking into the vet tech program at a community college in Denver. She'd already done many things vet techs were paid to do—lifting cages, restraining live animals, monitoring an animal's health needs, assisting in medical procedures. On the program's website, it said applicants should "possess the emotional stability to perform duties in animal life and death situations."