The War Game (13 page)

             
I also found out about the origin of the “connect the dots” phrase from Miriam. She said that when she was a tot, she would get coloring books with these dots with numbers on them. You draw a line to each dot and it makes a picture. Draw a line to one-two-three. I guess you learned something new everyday.

             
Then I had to ask her what a “tot” was. She said it was short for a toddler. And then I asked what a toddler was. And then she rolled her eyes and said I should get my ass back to class.

             
I bet if you were to take a map of the all the camps I’ve been to and drew a line to each one in the order I was shuffled to them, you know, I bet it would make a giant skull.

             
I pulled out the birds’ nests in my hair with my fingers. Miriam no longer trusted me with her brush because my hair makes it fall apart. The two pieces snapped back together but I am banned from brushing. Miriam said I should care about my appearance more and start to wear makeup regularly because guys like that.

             
I caught my tongue when I almost said that if guys really liked makeup and all of that, then they would wear it themselves.

             
I could just imagine the stare down I’d get if I had let that one slip out.

             
The “men” (as some women refer to the soldiers) hadn’t been “shopping” as much lately. I guess this place had been picked over or maybe a camp close by received a new “shipment.”

             
Now that I thought about it, I felt like I’d been talking and thinking a lot in quotation marks. I heard louder whispers about “the game” and the “cards.” But no one really seemed to know what those meant outside of the quotation marks. Or at least they didn’t think a thirteen-year-old girl could handle it. What I did know was this: the cards and the game went together and it wasn’t found in a box with dice. It was something bigger. I think it had a lot to do with Camp Z. But that didn’t explain some people’s paranoia with it.

             
For now, I would just jump (or even free fall) to my own conclusions. It was a different camp altogether where people’s brains are hooked up to a machine and are made into characters in a video game. There are no teams, it was all for one and one for none. The more people you killed, the more you won. Until someone pulled the plug, and then everyone died for real.

             
Kidding. I didn’t know what to make of it yet but I knew that I needed to pay attention and strain my ears for details because it might pay off in the near future.

             
Back to the “shopping” or, rather, the lack of it. The soldier boys haven’t been coming around lately and that made me happy. Yay, another day where I didn’t have to worry about becoming some pervert’s child bride.

             
But I guessed all along, they had been putting “items” on “layaway,” as in, they were going to finally pick up what they bought. What they were stealing. And if that wasn’t sick enough, you’d got all these dumb women getting excited about the prospect of it all. To them, it was a lifetime meal ticket. I had known the type of people who would kill someone else here for a stale french fry. Not everyone in these camps was good in nature (some of them regressed to their inner animal), humble, or even plain nice.

             
I started to devise a plan in my head to start dressing like a boy so it would alleviate some attention from the soldiers. But then I nixed that when I realized how many of those same soldiers liked to try and hit on Dana and decided that it wasn’t such a great idea after all.

~~~

             
Just like with every other camp I had been at, eventually the duties of the soldiers and other such government workers, got demoted to us. It started with little tasks with dismal incentives, such as serving lunch for an extra scoop of slop. Confiscating the real good stuff that people barter, like candy bars and expensive jewelry. I had seen people take gold wedding bands from sick inmates (no better word to describe us) and giving it to a soldier in exchange for a kid-sized bag of potato chips.

             
Tattling was also huge. The tattler who told on the people who plotted to escape got a cookie. And yes, there were plenty of grime balls who were more than willing to sell out their comrades for a ball of flour and sugar.

             
Eventually, the tasks got bigger and bigger and soon another one had been recruited for the other team. Team Gray.

             
Laura had been digging with a twig to get to the remains of a pink-red lipstick Miriam traded to her weeks back. She improvised and used it as blush, one of the trade secrets the Ladies shared with her.

             
I presented my eyewitness accounts and pieced together tidbits of information I found on the matter but none of the Ladies really cared. They said I bitched too much about her. Then Dana said bugs were great for color. Didn’t know if that was true or not, as I didn’t feel quite inclined to try it.

             
Laura did this ritual with her twig and lipstick tube right before the slop gets trucked in. Right before this one soldier opened the gate (followed by others with guns) and she was in line with the women.

             
She even waved hello to this one soldier who could probably throw a ball (or more likely, a decapitated head) clear cross a football field. What could John offer her anyhow? She probably just figured that one out. A guy who’s been in camps more than half of his life doesn’t have a whole lot going for him, you know?
             

             
A soldier had living space that hasn’t been re-purposed or blown out and re-purposed again. He received some money. I knew it was enough to live on in this defrattled (I don’t think that’s an actual word but it seems to fit) economy and a little extra for entertainment but it was still not that much. Although, the soldiers were very creative in getting the campers to do their work.

             
Sometimes I wondered why a soldier wanted to live this kind of measly existence. But then I remembered, they do it for control.

             
They treated us like children but they would spank the soul right out of you.

             
Sue and Sheila just kind of hung around like flies. Overdressed flies but flies nonetheless. Sheila and I talked more than I talked to Sue and that was saying something because I didn’t understand a single word of what Sheila said. Except for “Hola.”

             
I didn’t really get Sue’s deal. She didn’t really know how to apply makeup, her long hair could have been combed but it never was. She wore just a skirt but other than that, she didn’t try that hard.

             
Then I started to feel bad because everything that could be said about Sue, could be easily said about me too. I think I might have just described myself.

             
My moms never bothered to wear dresses and kept their hair shoulder length or shorter. My memories were rather choppy. Sometimes I didn’t know if I could tell the difference between remembering something and making something up. Or know how much had been lost. I think I could remember more dreams than memories of my mothers.

             
Dreams tended to either reinvent the truth or reveal the truth. Sometimes they did neither.

             
Sometimes I might see or experience something really, really insignificant. For example, Ricky made a paper mask out of a page from an old newspaper. I didn’t think much of it but yet my mind stored it in my brain. I dreamed about the soldiers gassing us. They locked us into a room and looked through the window on the door. The soldiers were wearing gas masks but they were made out of paper.

~~~
             

             
A small plane dropped some clothes today. It landed on the roof of the building and some people volunteered to go climb and get it. It took them awhile and when they returned they were wearing brand-new outfits. Well, brand “new” old outfits.

             
The clothes came from the Underground, I assume. It sure as hell wasn’t dropped by the soldiers. It was nice to have clean clothes and I know I shouldn’t complain. For every nice, hooded sweater or a clean shirt without some company’s promotional lame catchphrase on it, there’s ten thousand pairs of tapered pants, blouses in the colors of sea-sickness green, orange cat vomit, and mustard, and shirts that had noticeably yellow sweat stains in the pits.

             
I occasionally rifled through the bags of clothes but rarely did I find anything nice. It was hard to find stuff in my size, let alone something a teenager would like. But since there's only one teenager for every hundred adults, I never let my hopes get even marginally high.

             
As soon as I let my hope float away of ever finding a treasure such as a band T-shirt of a band that I had actually heard of or didn’t suck on the pirate stations, I came across “the” dress.

             
Now, for some girls, “the” dress was a little black one you’d wear while sipping on a cocktail and smoking on a cigarette. Or “the” dress might be a red one that you’d wear to the ten-year high school reunion. Miriam told me that a high school reunion is where you went to see all your old classmates. You stayed for about ten minutes, just long enough to show all those jerks that made fun of you of what they could have had. Then you took all the food, stuffed it into your purse, and left.

             
Searching through the endless pairs of ripped-up jeans, I thought I would have to eventually settle for “a” dress.

             
At last, I came across “the” dress. It was hiding under a horrible dress that looked like it was designed with peace and free love in mind. It was backless. The straps tied around my neck and had place holders (that’s the only way I can describe the pockets that some dresses have made specifically for boobs) for my lack of rack. But luckily, this was a prom dress.

             
Miriam also told me that a prom was the one night out of the year where guys dressed up nice, pinned a flower on you, took you dancing, and then they got laid at the end. So she said. She said it was a school-sponsored event but I didn’t know if I believed her this time.

             
Oh, and “the” dress was pink. Normally, I would not be seen wearing a pink dress anyway but it was a raspberry pink with black lace.

             
Now I just needed an occasion or excuse to actually justify wearing this. Dining in at the slop tables, better known as the pig troughs? A stroll through the barbed wire enclave?

~~~

             
Between the four of them, they could have painted an entire cast of clowns for a circus. There were lipsticks in reds, pinks, purples, and nudes. Eye shadows in gold, brown, purples, pastel pinks, and blue (which was nearly empty with only a few uses left). There were two old wands of mascara, a black eyeliner, two blushes, a short powder brush (Sheila called it a kabuki), and lip gloss that came in a plastic palette in the shape of a hand bag. There were almost a dozen different nail polishes, including black.

             
“What color did you want your nails?”

             
“Black,” I said without hesitating.

             
“Baby, black ain’t your color.” Dana stood with her hands on her hips.

             
“I would have to agree with Dana. I think a more neutral pink would best suit your skin tones. I could totally envision you in this,” Miriam picked up the pink blush and handed it to me. The plastic cover fell off as I opened it. I snapped it back together and handed it back.

             
“Exactly. That’s too safe. I need something unexpected.”

             
“Then why didn’t you just say so in the first place!” Dana started flying around the room, excited at the prospect of dressing up a real live doll. That doll being me.

             
Black nail polish. Red ruby lips. Smokey eyeshadow. A little peach blush. When Miriam took over, she insisted on drawing a fake mole with a brown eye-liner. A “beauty mark” as she called it, but I desisted each of her attempts. It looked stupid. And I didn’t care for the fact that many movie stars can’t be seen without one.

             
“Danny boy, what do you think?” Miriam called.

             
Dana is adorable from a distance but now she was just getting on my nerves. Everything and everyone was so “darling” and she was always doing just “fabulous.” She’d been bugging me to do something with my hair. I’d given up on my hair. There was a bird’s nest in the back of it that only intimidated brushes.

             
I needed to find someone with a scissors, I started to tell her. Before I could explain why I had the need to get the bird’s nest out so it could be brushed, Dana started jumping up and down, exclaiming in her faux British accent, “What fun! A new haircut! I get to be your own personal hairdresser!”