The Immortals by Mary Hallberg (chrysanthemum read aloud txt) 📗

on the other end. Crap. I hadn’t meant for it to come out quite like it had. But there was no way in hell I was giving a second of my time to some Necropolis charity.

“All right, I understand,” he said. “But if you change your mind, the offer still stands. The benefit is May 30th. I hope to see you there.” He gave me his contact information and hung up.

A few minutes later, mom came in with a bowl of cereal. The last news program had ended so I changed the channel and got yet another news program. It seemed like that was all there was to watch here — news, news, news. What even went on here that was interesting? At least in The Necropolis there was always something going on, even if that something was incredibly stupid.

My not so new but still expensive phone rang about twenty minutes later. It was Matt. I hesitated; even though we had parted months earlier on relatively good terms, he hadn’t made any attempts to contact me since.

I answered anyway. “Hello?”

“Hey Kenzie,” he said. “Can we talk?”

I headed back to my room. “Sure. What’s up?”

“I know it’s been awhile, but I was wondering if you got a call from someone from Feed the Needy today.”

“Yeah...how did you know?”

“That’s my dad’s new charity. I gave the guy your name because I thought you might want to help. What did you say?”

“I turned him down. How was I supposed to know that was the one real charity that would call?”

He laughed. “It’s all right. Just promise me you’ll think about it, okay? I...I kind of miss you. You haven’t been back at all since the semester started.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I’ve just been busy.” It wasn’t a total lie. Biology II was kicking my butt this semester — which was strange since Biology I in The Necropolis had been a breeze.

“Busy? Really?”

“Okay, there’s other stuff too. Hey Matt, um, do you know if Gage and...”

“Elizabeth.”

“Right. Are they going to be there?”

“Yeah Kenzie, they’re going to be there. Hey, you should still come though. I really want you there.”

“Okay.” I blew a lock of hair off of my forehead. “I’ll do it.”

By the time I got back to the living room, mom had the remote. Not that I minded; there was never much on on Saturday mornings, or any other time. She hadn’t even changed the channel; the same news program I had left was still going on.

The report I walked in on caught my attention when the anchorwoman mentioned The Necropolis. I had almost zoned out again when she began talking about a dead Immortal.

The scene cut to an extravagant house in a neighborhood I recognized. The dead man wasn’t anyone I knew, though; according to the report, he was in his early 30‘s and had fallen off the roof of his new house while trying to lay tiles. Most Immortals I knew would have hired someone, but apparently he had left his family when he became Immortal and spent all of the money he had already gotten in grants on a new house. The anchorwoman held a moment of sadness for the dead man, then moved on to another story.

“See there?” Mom pointed to the screen with her cereal spoon. “If that doesn’t make you want to stop being Immortal permanently, then I don’t know what would.”

“Mom,” I said, “That guy fell off his roof. That could happen to anyone. If someone had been around to give him TNV, he’d probably be fine.

She shook her head. “But they weren’t around, were they? He left his family when he became Immortal. It changes you, McKenzie. Besides, I doubt he actually fell off that roof. And if he did, it wasn’t because he lost his balance.”

I raised my eyebrows. “What are you saying? That someone pushed him? That’s crazy, mom.”

“You’re probably right. But I’m really glad you left The Necropolis. Wasn’t your friend Jacey’s house broken into a few weeks before you left? Home robberies in The Necropolis are going up. Most of them don’t even make the news anymore.”

“Because there are so many they can’t cover them all.”

“No — because the government can’t have their most prized city looking bad.”

“But mom, how do you know all this? And why is the government trying so hard to make The Necropolis look appealing?”

She shrugged. “I don’t. It’s all speculation. But McKenzie, our economy is worse now than it was in the Great Depression. And even then, they had vaudeville and a few movies. But just thirty years ago the film industry had already evolved to these enormous, three dimensional action movies. People got used to that state of the art entertainment and now nobody has any appreciation for the low budget arts anymore. But nobody has the money to make those big budget movies anymore. So there’s not a lot of good entertainment other than The Immortals. It’s cheap and insulting to everyone involved, but it keeps people interested and gives them something to strive for.”

“That sounds crazy,” I said, but it really didn’t.

She sighed. “Even in the last few years pre-collapse, most of the people who were famous were either born into rich and famous families or on a reality show. Famous for doing nothing, that’s what a lot of the news commentators said. They were usually more well known for who they were dating or what stupid stunts they pulled than for their actual talents. But at least their shows were somewhat entertaining.”

The news was ending and some old TV show was coming on. “Oh, I used to love this show when I was a kid,” mom said. “My parents didn’t like me watching it. They said it was too raunchy. But I snuck down at night sometimes to watch it anyway.”

I stayed in the living room because there was nowhere else to go. I had to admit that the show was actually pretty entertaining, and soon I had forgotten all about The Necropolis and