Free Life After Genius by M. Ann Jacoby

too. Whatever that point might be. Dead people don’t scare Mead. There was an open casket at his grandfather’s funeral a few years ago. The old man looked exactly the same lying in that casket as he had two days earlier lying in his bed, only with more makeup. “Pull up your grades or you’ll be burying dead people for the rest of your life like your father.” That’s all she has to say. But no, Mead’s mother has to go and make a big production out of it. Drive home her point. So fine, let’s just do this thing and go back home.
    “Sit down and I’ll be right back,” she says then disappears inside Mr. Wessman’s office. Once every month or so, Mead’s father has to come down here to pick up the body of some High Grove resident who spent his or her final days in the St. Louis Hospital, or in one of the city’s many nursing homes, and bring it back home to be buried. So unless Mead’s mother is planning to stick a corpse in the front seat between the two of them for a ride home, Mead doesn’t know what she hopes to prove with this whole charade.
    “Okay,” she says as she emerges from the office a moment later, “let’s go.” And she gets onto an oversize elevator not unlike the one at Fegley Brothers, only fancier, with inlaid wood panels and brass fixtures. The doors close and the elevator lurches into motion, heading south. Only then does it dawn on Mead that he is maybe not as prepared for whatever his mother has in mind as he first thought. “Just remember,” she says, “that I’m doing this for your own good.”
    The elevator shudders to a stop and the doors open. The first thought Mead has is that someone should turn up the thermostat. The second thought he has is that someone should open a window because it stinks down here. Like a chemistry lab. Like his uncle Martin after the man has spent a couple of hours in the basement of Fegley Brothers, only a whole lot stronger. All such thoughts go flying out of Mead’s head, however, when he sees what lies before him. Dead bodies. At least thirty of them are laying on stainless steel gurneys, naked as jaybirds. Men and women alike. Lifeless as fallen trees. Some with sutures in their necks, others with stitches in an arm or a leg. All of them wearing toe tags. And not a single one of these bodies is under a white sheet.
    Mead’s stomach heaves and he throws up on the floor. He turns and runs back into the elevator, frantically pushing on the CLOSE button until the doors start to respond. But his mother sticks her hand between the doors and they reopen. Then she steps onto the elevator and hands Mead a Wet-Nap to clean up his face. He gets a whiff of rubbing alcohol and almost heaves again, turns away from her, presses his hot cheek against the cool brass plate, and presses the CLOSE button several more times. The door responds and the elevator begins to rise.
    His mother grabs his face, turns it toward her, and wipes his chin with the Wet-Nap as if he were two years old. “Hold still,” she says as she swipes at his cheeks, then releases his face and tucks the damp tissue back inside her purse. “And that,” she says, after snapping closed her handbag, “is what average will get you.”
    T HE NEXT MORNING MEAD WAKES UP feeling hotter than a furnace. He splashes cold water on his face and dresses for school anyway. At the breakfast table he can barely get down his eggs and toast. “Are you feeling all right?” his mother asks and tries to touch his forehead but Mead pushes away her hand, still mad about yesterday. “I’m fine,” he says, scoops up his schoolbooks, and hurries out the door before she can touch him again. The November air is cold and feels good on his face, but Mead has walked barely two blocks when he is overcome by a wave of dizziness.
    A horn honks and he looks up. His Aunt Jewel rolls down the window of her car and says, “Teddy, you’ll catch your death walking to school in this weather. Hop in.”
    Normally he