Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

50

Under the general heading "Torturing the Bird Kids, Part Deux," you might find a whitecoat handing us a cardboard box that night.

We opened it carefully, expecting it to explode in our faces.

Inside, we found a slim wrapped package. It was a picture frame, book size but no thicker than a pencil. Of course Gazzy was the first one to press the red button on the side.

The frame bloomed into life, and there it was: that same picture Fang and I had found, once in a crack house in DC and once in Dr. Martinez's house. I swallowed hard, thinking about her. Wondering if she was real. Hoping she was okay. Trying to figure out what her deal was.

The picture was of baby Gasman, with his telltale cowlick, being held by a woman who looked kind of tired and washed out. He was plump and happy, maybe a few months old.

Then the picture started moving, not like a movie but like the actual picture was just...moving. The image zoomed in and rotated, as if we were walking around the woman and focusing on Gazzy. Then the picture pulled back and swung around. We saw an ugly room, with cracked walls and dirty windows. Was that the squatter's house we'd visited in Washington? Before it had become a bombed-out haven for thugs?

The camera focused on a wooden table, then on a slip of paper lying on the table. Again it enlarged and sharpened, enough so that we could read the paper.

It was a check. The name it was made out to was obliterated. The check was from Itex, for $10,000.

Gazzy coughed slightly, and I felt him trying to control himself.

His mother had sold him for $10,000 to the whitecoats at the School.