Harsh Lessons, page 20
She watched as the girl looked back to her backlit paper screen and resume reading
She'd looked angry, before. And there were three empty seats at her table. Still smiling, still ignoring Tara and her shadows, Leeth wove a path between the tables and headed for the darker corner. Yeah, that was definitely Sleena, the pixie warrior! The cartoon heroine was part of a whole collection of images of lots of her favorite characters… Oh! She's got HyperGirl, too!
Her thighs bumped the girl's table, and she stopped as the girl looked up.
'What.'
It wasn't a question.
'I was just noticing the pictures on your bag, and saw Sleena the dark pix-'
'And you thought “I'll go and diss Marcie: that'll show the Power Princesses I'm one of them,” right?' Marcie leaned back, the anger once again clear in her eyes, but with a beaten-down look riding alongside it. 'Do your worst, but something tells me you're not in Terrible Tara's league.'
Leeth blinked. 'Uh, no. I was actually gonna say I loved Sleena. I mean, when I was little.'
'Really.'
Leeth looked up and away, smiling. 'You remember that time the giant slug thing was about to chew through the Flower Palace, and Sleena fanged him right in his eyeball-on-a-stalk? That was so cool.'
Marcie's lips twitched. 'Yeah, it was kinda “cool.” But gross.' She paused, waiting for the hidden knife to come stabbing out. Tentatively she added, 'I liked Hyper Girl and Argon best.' She twitched her bag so the blonde superheroine's face was uppermost, then touched it to zoom it larger, revealing Argon by her side. Ever-faithful. 'I used to imagine what it'd be like to have adventures with my own cyborg wardog, patrolling our neighborhood lasering all the bullies.' She smiled, looking back up and across into the new student's eyes. 'Jane? What's the matter?'
Her possible-new-friend's lips were pressed firmly together, and she was blinking rapidly. She shook her head. 'Nothing. I was just remembering my dog. Faith.' Her blinking sped up. 'I had to leave her, back at the, back on the farm.'
Marcie reached out a hand and took Leeth's. 'That's rough, kiddo. And all this – it must be like starting high school all over again, yeah? And with Terrible Tara wielding her magical mind-controlling charisma over males and females alike. That and her lips that lash, and wit that wounds. I swear, it's like she has a sixth sense for your Kryptonite zones.'
'Uh, yeah. Crypt tonight zones.'
Marcie looked at her oddly. 'You do know who I'm talking about, right?'
'Uh, sure. That girl who, you know, with the vampires….'
Marcie shook her head. 'Hey! You wanna see the very first superhero ever?' At Jane's eager nod, she accessed her Link, projecting an image onto the table after placing her bag to hide the picture from the people nearby.
'Mmm. Niiice. I like the little curl of hair.' Leeth admired the muscles. 'But why are his underpants on the outside? Does the big "S" stand for Stupid?'
'It stands for hope.'
'Hope?'
'Yeah, he kinda, well… I guess he kinda gave people hope that no matter how much evil there was in the world, no matter how powerful it seemed, it could never destroy hope. Hope is indestructible – just like Superman.’ She shrugged. 'But yeah, maybe people were kinda lame back then.'
The moment was interrupted by Jane's stomach, and both girls giggled, while Marcie withdrew her hand.
Leeth looked around. 'Where's the food dispenser?'
Marcie smiled. 'The school has a reputation to maintain. We have a chef.' A small chime sounded from her hand. 'That'll be my order.' She slipped off the chunky ring on her right hand, now projecting a multi-colored rectangle onto the table. 'Scan that QR code for the link, and you'll see the menu. The ’bol is nice.' Marcie stood up.
Boll? QR code? What the…? Why didn't Uncle or Emma teach me any of this stuff?
The blue question mark, though, answered all her questions – “Do you mean, spaghetti bolognese?” – and her stomach growled again as she skimmed the menu. But it was only as Marcie returned from the counter across the room with her tray, that Leeth realized she'd better keep her special Nelson-glasses secret. Hurriedly, she scanned the square pattern of colored dots with her wristlink, and activated its projector.
Marcie set down her tray, bumping the sauce bottle she'd set near the edge of the table. It had hardly started to topple before Leeth was across the table, her hand around its neck and righting it.
'Whoah! Nice reflexes, Jane!'
Leeth froze, mortified. Not special, dope! She wanted to bang her head against the table. Think before you act!
'That was a compliment, babe.' Marcie shook her head. 'You are one weird chica, you know.'
Leeth felt her eyes widen.
'Now what'd I say? Come on, all of us are weird, right?'
Leeth blinked. 'We are?'
'Sure,' Marcie grinned. 'Some people don't like Sleena!'
Jane smiled back, weakly, as Marcie picked her ring up from the table and slid it back on, tapping its projection off. Her meal did look good… and smelled better. The aroma decided Leeth: the “bol” and a nice rare steak. Selecting both with her fingertip, she tapped the Pay button and heard her credstick chime.
'Uh, Jane, I think you just ordered two lunches by mistake.'
Not this again! Briefly, Leeth considered agreeing…. No! I'm not going to spend weeks here, starving to death every day! 'Uh, I have a metabolic condition. I have to eat bigger meals. At lunchtime.'
Marcie looked doubtful, but said nothing. Instead, she picked up a shaker and sprinkled a pale yellow powder all over her food. When the smell hit her, Leeth reeled back in her chair in disgust as Marcie began some complicated twirling motion with her fork and the spaghetti.
Leeth watched, open-mouthed, as Marcie put it into her mouth.
'Mmm!'
O-kay. Maybe I do need this “socialization training!” 'What's that, um, strong-smelling powder?'
When Leeth returned with her lunch, sliding her bag to the side, Marcie looked puzzled by the sound the heavy brass padlock made when it fell over inside. A little sheepishly, Leeth drew it out and passed it to her.
'Oh, wow, that must be, what, fifty years old?' Marcie turned it over. 'I think this kind of lock was the first I ever learned to pick. Dad used to use it lock the shed where he kept his power tools!'
Leeth wanted to ask about the power tools, but… 'What do you mean, the first kind of lock you learned to pick? D'you mean you can pick this?'
'Sure!' Marcie took a hairpin from her hair.
'Could you teach me how to pick it?'
'Sure.'
Leeth jumped up, spun around the table, and trapped Marcie in her chair with the hugest hug. 'You are the best!'
When they returned to the auditorium, Leeth sat with Marcie instead of the Princesses of Power. The two of them were getting on so well, it wasn't until Ms Sorensen cleared her throat they realized the lesson had started. Leeth heard Tara, across the room, make a stupid joke about the new Loser Club that had started.
'Now, since we have a new student in the class today, it's a welcome excuse to review the basics.’
Groans from some of the students quickly died under Ms Sorensen’s laser-sharp gaze.
'Your craft as an actor is to feel the emotions and motives that lie beneath; and then to let just enough shine through for the audience to see inside.
'Less is more. Don't drench the audience in colors – sketch the outlines; let their own imaginations paint in the details. You don't want your audience thinking “What a marvelous actress Sorensen is;” they must be thinking “Can't Eliza see she's being manipulated?”'
By the end of the day Leeth felt more exhausted than after a long session with Dojo. Marcie, it turned out, lived in Oakland – and seemed impressed by the address of Jane's Aunt Elizabeth in New Francisco. Tara and her friends were picked up by limousines with drivers and security – 'Beth's mother is some exec at Omnicomm,' Marcie explained, 'and both Tara's parents are bigwigs at SegaFox. Ava's grandfather was a founder of Softgene.'
With Tara and friends gone, at least the taunts ended.
'What about your parents?'
Marcie looked sad. 'It's just me and my dad, and my little sister. Amanda. She's a real cutie, you'd like her. Mum died when I was only little. Dad's doing well: he runs an auto-trucking biz. He's got like a fleet of fifty, now,' she said proudly.
At that moment, an attractive boy huffed up to offer Jane a lift home in his sports car – in tones that suggested she should know what a Konnigs-egg G12, or something like that, was. But Leeth wanted to walk with Marcie to the MacArthur station instead.
A bunch of other students were headed in the same direction, and even through her tiredness Leeth heard some of the boys still talking about the “Green Ghost Girl” that had flown into the school in the morning and then disappeared.
Meeting Marcie had made up for all the rest of it, though. But she was surprised and thrilled when the other girl later hugged her goodbye before stepping onto her train. Leeth waved to her, too, then summoned her energies to sprint for her platform, on the green line. She made it onto the carriage with seconds to spare.
But as she got on, looking around for a clear space to play "train surfing," a really weird feeling reached up her spine. Her mind flooded with images, so disorienting that she wobbled and almost fell. A Japanese girl, with James, in a restaurant. Trapped! For a moment, she felt panic, and spun around.
In the crowd waiting for the next train on the platform now disappearing from sight, she glimpsed a large man, staring at her.
Expressionless. Patient. Waiting.
She shuddered.
Chapter 34
At Emma's insistence, Leeth had spent an hour that night talking to her uncle, getting advice about ways to handle Tara, Ava and Beth – that didn't involve exposing their internal organs. Not that he'd been all that helpful: other than suggesting Leeth picture doing something gruesome to them, and then smiling boldly and ignoring them. Which had actually been exactly what she'd already done, in the cafeteria.
Which just showed she wasn't as badly socialized as they all thought.
She also asked him about the “advanced” topic Emma hadn't wanted to discuss the previous morning – what to do when she just wanted sex from a boy, not to know him as a person.
He had not been pleased with the question. Which she'd found very satisfying. He does care about me.
But he hadn't answered the question, either. Instead, he'd warned her about all sorts of diseases she could catch. How curing diseases magically wasn’t like healing injuries, and blahing on about immune systems.
Which told her he really didn't want her having sex with other people. Talking to him by secure video was weird. It felt… safer. Yet kind of exciting, maybe because of that.
It'd left her feeling quite churned up, inside. She wasn't sure how she felt about him, any more.
She'd tried to talk about it with Emma, somehow forgetting about his mental controls. Which made her look like an idiot, of course, when her brain froze up. So instead – after she’d recovered – they'd talked more about what she'd learned, and about the girls, and boys. Actually, it was funny how the boys, who’d seemed like men to her in the morning, had by the end of the day somehow magically morphed into boys.
But that had led Emma to strongly encourage her to start making notes for the report she had to write at the end of it all. Dutifully, Leeth created a file called “Normal girls and sheep dynamic groups,” then lay on her bed admiring the impressively scientific title. Then, remembering Emma's words, she deleted the word "sheep," frowning as she did. Why hadn't Uncle ever told me people would hate me if I called them that? Was Marcie a sheep? Obviously not – but why not?
Oh, and it was actually supposed to be “group dynamics.” She fixed that, too. And then realized she didn’t know what it meant, and started reading the wikipedia entry. Somehow, she got distracted by thoughts of Superman; especially his outside-underpants. That led to hunting down a chill-sounding collection – from a few years ago, since that way, Marcie might have read them too. Besides, some of the older ones cost less. She tapped the credstick to the Buy button on her e-sheet, pleased at successfully executing her first ever on-screen purchase. Checking her balance, she saw she still had almost thirty creds to spend today. She bit at her fingernails. Why had Mother given her such a big budget?
Who knows? She settled down to Superman… and woke the next morning with her e-sheet on the floor by her bed, and nothing in her report except the title.
Anyway, she was kind of looking forward to this second day of lessons – despite the Power Princesses – and was messaging Marcie before she even headed down in the lift.
That strange feeling came over her again, though, while talking to her new friend as she walked to the Montgomery St station. She stopped, looking around, feeling cold. She found she'd let her eyes unfocus to look for Her, or Robo, here in the middle of all the people bustling about on their own busy missions.
A chill rippled through her. She wondered: had her vivid recall, acting out the Hunting of Her and Robo in the class yesterday, somehow summoned one of them?
She shook her head, as people bumped past her, some muttering insults under their breath. She ignored them. It couldn't be Her: she and Godsson had killed Her, together. Properly, and once and for all.
And it felt… more like Robo.
She gazed around, eyes still unfocused, but there was no sense of the straight line movements of that invisible thing. Or curving ones. She shuddered, remembering Her. She didn't know what she'd do, if She returned.
'-Jane! What's the matter? Jane, are you there, I can hear-'
'Sorry, Marcie, I, uh, thought an old, um, friend called out to me, and I was just looking.' She started walking again. 'So, you're getting the 8:42am from “Fruitvale.” Is that even a real place? It sounds like a cartoon suburb for happy munchkins….'
It was weird, yet at the same time perfectly natural, meeting up with Marcie on the crowded platform. It was nice, walking together to the drama school. The day was overcast, a bit cool. Probably that was the reason Leeth kept feeling uncomfortable, like she could sense Mean Robo around.
But chatting with Marcie was strangely easy, especially since the first topic of conversation was Tara.
'I talked to my uncle last night, and he said they're mean because they see I'm different to them, maybe better, and that makes them feel smaller. So by trying to make me feel small, they can feel big.'
'Yeah, that sounds about right,' Marcie agreed.
The walk to the school seemed to take no time at all.
That day at morning break, most of the class headed again to the cafeteria. Marcie explained that people usually put in their orders in advance, arriving as their order neared the top of the queue. She also explained how you could bid to pay more, to get your order “bumped up” in priority, and how a bunch of them always put their orders in before Tara, knowing the rich girl would always outbid them so she'd be first.
'So what's the point?' Leeth asked.
Marcie giggled. 'I just find it funny that the Power Princesses have to pay fifty creds for a coffee, and anywhere from two hundred to five hundred for lunch! And the funniest part is, the higher the price we bid them up to, the more pleasure they seem to take from “winning!” They have no idea.'
They were joined by two other girls, who Leeth thought maybe were the two Tara had called “peasants” the day before. Delta, and Sam, they'd introduced themselves.
'Anyway, what'll you have?' asked Marcie. 'We have to be back in class in fifteen. The mocha latte with hazelnut's good.'
'Uh, yeah, sure, that's a fav- ohh! What's hot chocolate?' Leeth asked, the drinks menu projected on the shiny tabletop from her ’link.
When no one answered after a few seconds, she looked up to see them all blinking at her. 'I meant, uh, they have hot chocolate!'
'Amazing,' Marcie dead-panned.
One of the other girls – Sam – giggled. 'Are you about to go beddy-byes, Jane?'
Leeth pictured the big blue question mark. 'Um. Beddybuys. Uh… What? No! I just like chocolate. I'm… I'll have two!'
Tara and her cohort chose that moment to pass their table. 'Good idea, Thunder-thighs,' Tara sniped as she passed by, eyeing their small group with disdain. And went straight to the serving counter at the exact moment their orders arrived. Leeth and Marcie exchanged a look, hiding their smiles.
But after about ten minutes, something weird started happening. Jane and Marcie's little group seemed to be attracting looks from the other students, and people began snickering. Leeth concentrated, and heard several people talking about “the Losers Club.” And then noticed a small pink icon flashing over Marcie's head.
The fourth girl in their group, Delta, was looking abstractedly into space, then swore. 'That bitch! You should see what she and her followers are saying about us on her feed!'
'Her feed?' Leeth asked. 'What's that?'
This time, all three looked at her like she'd just grown a third eye. Delta shook her head, tapping the wrist where Leeth wore her link. 'Project a keyboard for me,’ she ordered.
Leeth obliged, and the girl began rapidly typing. A moment later Leeth was signed up for “SoBo” – a "social feed" – and creating her own “Profile” and subscribing to “feeds” from Tara and a bunch of other students. She felt simultaneously dazed, and pleased by how much she was learning.
But she couldn't give it her full attention. Delta had a small pink icon now, too – a chubby, cartoonish penis, Leeth realized – flashing above her head, positioned within easy reach to “touch.”
'Is that a fruit fly?' she asked, casually pointing so her fingertip seemed to her to touch the icon. The moment she did, a maroon “L” appeared, tattooed on Delta's forehead.
What the-? Leeth took off her glasses, and of course it vanished. But more people were giggling, now, and a few others pointing. Leeth put her glasses back on, and the maroon “L” tattoo reappeared.
