Heirloom

It was a Saturday, deep in East Texas, when the whole town awoke for the ceremony. Alarms across the cluster of buildings screeched at 7 a.m. sharp; bleary-eyed teenagers shook off the clutches of sleep and adults stumbled into their kitchens to brew their morning coffee. The town was called Jacobson. Situated in the middle of what had been a forest, before all the trees had been sliced into stumps, it held 12,463 people. Of those 12,463, on that June 15, there were 196 12-year olds, all of whom were participating. Attendance of the ceremony, was, of course, mandatory, which is why the alarms woke every man, woman, teenager, and child, and all of them went to attend.

Ellie Varner met her neighborhood friends—Cecilia Thomas, Janie Lopez, and Billy Donaldson— outside of her house that morning. The night before they had all agreed to walk over together, instead of with their families. This was not unusual. On the morning of the ceremony, many of the children found themselves too nervous to walk with their families. That inexplicable phenomenon where comfort can be found in those walking towards the same experience led the children to group together, and so they walked in threes or fours or twos.

Silence lay over them for the first block. It was a heavy silence, growing with every step; it did not fear being broken, as all four were firmly trapped inside their own heads. So it grew. Billy began to chew his nails down to nubs halfway down the second block, and Cecilia started thumping her hand rhythmically against her thigh. It was the fourth block when someone finally spoke, by which time the silence had taken such weight that they all jumped when it was lost from their shoulders.

“It’s nothing to be worried about,” Janie said.

“Shut up, Janie,” Billy said. “It’s not for you. You already know what’s going to happen. You’ll be fine.”

“My last name’s Lopez, Billy.”

“But you did better than everyone on the tests this year,” Cecilia said.

“The tests don’t matter as much as the sample,” Ellie said quietly. “Principal Lewis said so, remember?”

“She’ll be fine,” Billy said again.

“You don’t know that. I just don’t see why it’s such a big deal for everyone,” Janie said.

Cecilia looked at her incredulously, and opened her mouth, but thought better of it, and closed it again.

“My Mom used to talk all the time about how much better it was before the ceremonies,” Billy said. He kicked a twig as he said it, and his eyes followed it as it tumbled onto a sewer grate, teetered on the bars, and fell into the darkness. “They only started twenty years ago. She said it was a political thing.”

Cecilia and Janie nodded wisely, though they didn’t really know what that meant, for something to be a political thing.

“Doesn’t really talk about it anymore,” Billy said, and kicked another twig.

“My dad says the ceremony’s the best thing to happen in a long time,” Ellie said.

“I guess one of them is wrong,” Billy said.

“I guess so.”

The ceremony was in the auditorium, the biggest indoor building in the town. Janie, Cecilia, Ellie, and Billy stood still; in her pocket, Janie fingered the heart-shaped locket her father had given her that morning, saying it had belonged to his mother, that she had looked just like Janie and that it was good luck. Half a minute dripped away and then, as if something had reached forward and shoved them, they walked onto school grounds and towards the auditorium entrance, where a doorman took their names and ushered them inside.

Several feet behind, a ragged man named Paul handed the doorman $7500, all he had in the world, and the doorman marked his name down. Inside, the stage bustled with movement, children moving around the chairs.

“It’s alphabetical, come on down, now…Donaldson, you’re here, next to Dimlynne…” the principal of the school said, dragging out-of-place children to the places they were meant to be. It was a stark contrast, the children on the stage and the people in the audience; while those in the latter spoke of mindless matters simply to hear a sound, the children were all silent, weighed down by the same heaviness that the four had felt on their shoulders when they walked over.

“Looks like a storm’ll come in tonight,” Mr. Miner said to Mr. Lopez.

Mr. Lopez craned his neck around, looking at the stage.

“I put ‘em up last night,” Miner prompted. “The guards. Need ‘em for all the storms, these days.”

“She’ll be all right,” Mr. Lopez said, watching his daughter in her seat. Janie sat motionless, frozen as if the space around her had locked her in, eyes straight towards the back.

“Come on, now, David,” Miner said. “You know it’s bad luck to talk about the ceremony before it starts.”

“Not about luck,” Lopez answered. “She’s earned it.”

“All the same. No use in jinxing it.”

A few moments later, a heavyset man in a suit, faded by years of use, ambled his way up the stairs and onto the stage. With every step the clatter dropped a notch; by the time he stood in front of the microphone only the flight of a fly, amplified by every silence, fell on the ears of the audience. He waited for several seconds before clearing his throat and speaking.

“Good,” he said, and cleared his throat again. A reach into his jacket pocket brought four note cards, which he sat on the podium in front of him. A second ticked, and the entire auditorium seemed to hold its breath, and then he spoke the rote words.

The mayor nodded, a short, proper nod, and looked over to the girl in the front row on the far right. “You all know the procedure. The envelopes, if you don’t mind, Frank?”

After Frank handed them to the principal, his voice rang out. “Maisie Adams.”

The girl burst out of her seat, smiling and confident, blonde curls bouncing down her shoulders, as she walked to stand next to the podium.

“Fifth-lowest score,” Mr. Nodrum whispered to Lacey Goldwin as the envelope was opened. “She won’t make it.”

“She will!” Lacey whispered back. “Look at those curls!”

“Miss Adams is approved,” the mayor announced, and the entire auditorium burst into raucous applause, with a few hoots of support. All at once, they fell silent again, and the ceremony continued. Of the first twenty children, fourteen were approved; after every failure to pass, whispers leaking sorrow ran throughout the crowd, and the child’s head drooped as they returned to their seat.

“William Donaldson.”

Billy unfurled, tall and spare, with the eyes of all in the auditorium on him.

“Not approved,” the mayor read, and the whispers broke out again. Billy’s entire body seemed to puncture; which each step back to his seat he shrank into himself, and when he sat back down his head fell limply into his hands.

As the called children roped around the stage, closer and closer to Janie Lopez, Paul’s knee leapt higher and higher. And then it happened.

“Jane Lopez,” the mayor called.

As Janie stood and made her way past her classmates, the crowd all held their breath in their lungs. Mr. Lopez’s eyes drilled into the mayor; his lips parted from each other just slightly; Paul held onto time itself, these last few moments of the life he knew. Janie was a whisper, pretty and timid, wrapped into her own body as she waited for her results to be called.

“Not approved,” the mayor read. Janie shut her eyes; her father buried his head in his hands, but Paul stood.

“That’s bullshit!”

Every head in the auditorium turned to him, and those around reached up as if to pull him back down, some even clutching a handful of his shirt in their hands.

“Sit down, Paul, come on—”

“Just sit back down—”

“She’s got the best scores! We all fuckin’ know it!”

“Watch your language, Paul,” the mayor said. “Calm down. You know we can’t have this.”

“To hell with that! This shit is cause she’s Hispanic, and that’s a load of horse shit, that girl’s got more brains than anyone on stage!”

“Oh, be quiet, Paul,” Mr. Adams said from the other side of the audience. “Race ain’t got nothin’ to do with it. We all know that.”

“Your daughter’s dumb as hell, and she made it through ‘cause of her blonde friggin’ hair! This is bullshit!”

“Now, hold on—”

“We can talk about this outside, Paul,” Frank said, grabbing at his arm.

“No, fuck you!” Paul said. Some of the crowd gasped; others threw disgust at him; some of the children on stage looked down while others let their chins drop so their mouths made a perfect O. “I’m done talkin’ about this to you!”

“If you don’t come outside, I’m going to have to arrest you, you know that,” Frank said. “I don’t want to arrest you.”

Paul pulled himself free and marched to the back of the room; when his hand was on the door, pushing it half-open, he turned back and said, just loudly enough to carry through the crowd, “It’s just like fuckin’ murder. Takin’ away something like that.”

“Jesus!” Larry Adams said.

“Fuckin’ Jesus. Jesus would think this was a disgrace, Larry,” Paul said, and walked out the door with Frank behind him. The whole auditorium was quiet when the door closed; the sound of it shutting whispered and danced through the crowd, binding them to their seats, leaving them motionless, until the mayor cleared his throat.

“All right, then. Now that’s over, let’s keep on. We don’t want to be here if the storm starts up again.”

The ceremony resumed, but it was different, so subtly that one that had not been in the room before the break would not have noticed it. Like glass that had been broken, in one jagged strike down the middle, then repaired to such a level that only one that had seen the glass in its whole state would be able to notice the faint line betraying its split.

All politely lent the stage their eyes when Ellie’s name was called and approved, and then writhed as they found their coworkers and friends.

After half an hour only Ellie and Cecilia stood by the main entrance. Neither said a word, as neither had discussed standing to wait. They waited while the color ran from the sky, while the lint clouds unfurled and converged, until even the girls’ shadows left them. Then Janie and Billy emerged, and they all began to walk.

“I don’t want to go home,” Billy said after a few minutes, as his shoe sent another twig into another sewer.

“It’ll be okay, Billy,” Ellie said. “It’s not your—

“Don’t say it’s not my fault,” Billy said.

“But it’s not,” Janie said, voice as grey as the sky, the locket heavy in her pocket. A muscle in Billy’s jaw jumped and he turned to reply, but the words died when he looked at Janie, and for a while they walked again in silence. As the quiet stretched Cecilia and Ellie stole glances at each other, as if the words they couldn’t find would be written on the other’s face.

“It’s not fair,” Janie said, quietly, as they turned onto their street.

“It’s not,” Cecilia said quickly.

“When my scores came in, Mama cried,” Janie said. A raindrop hissed through the air and cracked on the street, and all of them quickened their pace. “She said she couldn’t wait to meet her grandkids.”

The sky splintered, like a tree tearing from its roots, and the rain finally began to fall. Ellie screamed, and the four sprinted to their houses as the raindrops shattered on the ground and the sound of fireworks rose from the ground.