My memories are a bit confused. I remember taking Karen to the prom, and realizing that there might be something beyond even the burgeoning friendship that grew out of ‘The Deal’. I remember walking along the lake afterwards, talking about the future.
Then I remember Arashi appearing. I remember charging at the bastard, only to meet a wall of sharp wind that cut through my tuxedo, lacerating the skin underneath. I clearly remember the gurgling scream as some wind slipped past me and Karen falling down in an explosion of blood and viscera. Why didn’t she stay directly behind me? I remember rage flooding my mind, changing me, only to be overmatched again. The only edge I had was in maneuverability, so I decided to take him with me: crushing his eye and plunging both of us into the deep lake.
And then blackness.
I awoke to the smell of saltwater and cold water lapping at my calves. A large man in coveralls was turning me over and jumping back when I coughed.
“Damn, son, I was sure you’d OD-ed. But you don’t stink enough to be a Merchant,” he said warily. One hand rested on a heavy belt with a radio.
Glenridge was far away from any ocean, so I had no idea where I was. “I have no idea how I got here. And where am I?” as I struggled to my knees, trying to get away from the wave freezing my feet off.
“Damn, must have been a hell of a party then,” the guy laughed as he helped me up. “You don’t even remember how you got to the docks?”
“I don’t even remember travelling to the ocean, whichever one this is,” Rhiyen groused.
A snort. “Well then welcome to Brockton Bay.”
*O*O*
The big guy was named Steve, and he worked for the Dockworker’s Union as an overnight security guard. I staggered after him to the office on bare feet. I’d either lost my shoes in the water or they’d been stolen while I was unconscious. Soon I was wrapped in a blanket and drinking strong coffee.
The Brockton Bay Police eventually arrived and questioned me. I decided to play it safe and claim amnesia – being too candid about weird shit would likely end me up in a psych ward. The medical examination determined I was healthy and placed my age around sixteen or so. That surprised me, but I was also a couple of inches shorter than I remember being, so I let it pass. I wasn’t going to correct them since I had no idea what to do next. I’d never even heard of a Brockton Bay before when I was in Glenridge. Harry’s story about how he found me suggested that there were other worlds. Had I fallen into one? Even if I hadn’t, the year was freaking 2010.
Best to assume nothing and keep my mouth shut.
Since the authorities decided that I was a minor, they turned me over to child protective services. After a perfunctory interview I entered the system and was assigned to a foster home. The Landry’s weren’t like foster homes I’d seen on TV. They ran their house like a business. They received money from the state to house four teenagers, so they supplied room and board and made sure we went to school. We also had assigned chores we had to perform. It wasn’t anything too onerous, so I could deal. But a kid coming here looking for emotional support, let alone a family, was screwed. The other three were all teenagers who I was pretty sure grew up in the system. School was out for the summer, so all of them were working part-time jobs, probably to save up for when they aged out. As soon as I got settled in my rather spartan room, I followed their example.
Karen would probably have laughed to see me working in a library, of all places. The thought was funny, but also bitter. We’d become friends, despite my stubbornness, and maybe would have become more. But she’s gone now, and all I have is maybes and should-have-beens. Regrets are painful. They eat away at you, and they never really go away. So, I worked as many hours as I could, and when I wasn’t working or doing yardwork, I was reading. Everything.
This world was freaking crazy. Back in the 80’s the first superhero, Scion, showed up. Since then, more and more people have developed superpowers, becoming what they call parahumans, or “capes”. Some decided to become heroes, but a lot more decided to become villains. A lot of the heroes got organized into the Protectorate, with teams in each major city. The Parahuman Response Team was formed by the US government as an official agency for policing parahumans. Other countries formed similar agencies. Ten years later, creatures called Endbringers started attacking every few months, targeting entire cities or vital infrastructure. When this happened, heroes and villains would call a truce and join together to fight them off. Sometimes it worked, but even then, they were only being driven off after the capes suffered massive casualties.
These periodic attacks had massive effects on the world. Behemoth destroyed enough oilfields to cripple global production, let alone the nuclear power plants he cracked open. The Simurgh stopped the space race and seems to delight in targeting any implementation of scientific breakthroughs. Leviathan sinking Kyushu and Newfoundland sent tidal waves everywhere. The mere existence of the aquatic menace sharply curtailed the shipping industry. This crushed the economies of many port cities, including Brockton Bay.
At work, I could access the computers on my breaks and discover how big the internet had become. The message board PHO, or ParaHumans Online, was a resource for keeping up on current events related to these weirdoes. Apparently, Brockton Bay was pretty bad off. There were a lot more villains here than the PRT-ENE could match. Three major gangs threatened the peace, the largest of these was the Empire Eighty-Eight, a group of actual Nazis. The second largest was the Asian Bad Boyz or ABB. They were led by a guy named Lung who reportedly changes into a dragon and once fought off Brockton Bay’s entire Protectorate team. A distant third was the Merchants, who manufactured or distributed most of the drugs in this town and actively marketed to kids and people impacted by the crashing economy.
In other words, this place was screwed. I also realized that I needed to get my grades up if I wanted any chance of getting out of this place. So, I started reviewing what I needed to know for school. I was penciled in as sixteen and entering my sophomore year at the end of the summer. Not that frigging New Hampshire knows what the season means. I was going to be ahead in some areas, like math, and struggling in others, like history. I checked out copies of some sophomore level textbooks and read them at home after dinner. This led to an interesting conversation with the oldest foster, Jared, a stocky black guy with short dreads.
“Why are you bothering?” the older boy asked as I was gathering up my books and notes.
“I just want to make sure I’m caught up before the new year starts,” I said.
He snorted. “It doesn't matter. I heard you’re going to Winslow with the rest of us, pretty boy.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, not liking the sound of this.
“The place is an absolute shithole,” Jared said bitterly. “More kids graduate to the gangs than any fancy colleges. Not like there will be any decent job waiting for them unless they get lucky or know someone.”
With that incredibly heartfelt endorsement, I was super-motivated to get ahead in my weaker subjects. I wondered if I could maybe pass as a lesser cape given my abilities… but that seemed like a horrible idea. Young capes had a short half-life on the streets as independents, and I had zero desire to join a gang, including the Protectorate. Being a little stronger and faster than normal wasn’t exactly an earth-shattering power, and the other thing I’m not even sure I can recreate at will.
My meager savings waxed as the summer waned. I was pleasantly surprised that the Landrys didn’t try to take any of it, but Jared said they were pretty straight shooters in that respect. They provided a service for which they were compensated and that was that. I didn’t need more than they offered, so I could respect that. But eventually I had to switch gears to attend Winslow. I was tempted to try and continue working, but I couldn’t make the schedules work, especially with travel times.
When I stepped off the bus in front of Winslow, I realized something. Jared was right.
The walls showed signs of layers of graffiti, barely scraped off. As I went inside, I passed through clearly wrecked metal detectors nobody had bothered to repair. The floors, walls, and ceilings had a faint dirty tinge that spoke to years of not-so-benign neglect.
And the gangs…
Dealing with asshole jocks in Glenridge was unpleasant and annoying, but I’d never seen students wearing gang colors inside a school before. Most of the Asian kids were wearing ABB red and green. A lot of the white guys were sporting skinheads and swastikas. Actual fucking Nazis. What the ever-loving fuck? I hadn’t seen a lot of them around the library for obvious reasons, but they were here in force. Checking me out. What the hell?
Then it hit me. Caucasian, black hair (albeit with red tints in the right light). Blue eyes. They were sizing me up. Oh hell no! I scowled back at them, and they began sneering. Good. Fucking Nazis. Just imagining what these jerk-offs would call my friend Harold left me steaming. They weren’t fit to kiss the shoes of the bravest fucker in Glenridge.
I couldn’t rightly tell if the dopers I could see were with the Merchants, or just regular customers, but I didn’t really care.
The schedule I’d been mailed told me that I had homeroom with Mrs. Knott, and then computer science. You’d expect a computer teacher to be a skinny nerd. That’s the stereotype, anyway. Knott was a tall broad-shouldered woman with long blond hair, so go figure. I was listening as she called roll, when she hit the Cs and hesitated, I piped up.
“Rhiyen Conner, here.” The blond-haired girl that had been eying me jumped a little.
“That’s an… unusual spelling I have here,” Mrs. Knott said dubiously. “R-H-I ?”
“I think it’s Welsh,” I replied blandly. It certainly wasn’t, but when CPS asked me my name I insisted on that spelling. My adoptive father Harry may have been a crazy hippy, but he’d come through when it counted, so I kept the name he gave me.
“Ah, I see,” Mrs. Knott said and continued the roll call. The class consisted of a skills assessment. I picked up a little over the summer about computers and the internet, but nothing at all regarding coding. Still, I was able to easily answer two thirds of the questions. From the muttered cursing and sighs, a lot of people were having more trouble. Only two people seemed to breeze through – a girl with long curly dark hair and a blond-haired boy with an unfortunate bowl cut.
Knott explained after the assessment that she would be handing out in-class assignments based on the state requirements and would be covered by the required readings. Students that could handle those easily would be given extra credit assignments on more advanced topics. The two that aced the test seemed to perk up a bit at this. I thought it sounded interesting as well. I wasn’t stupid enough to not see how the internet was growing, even with the Endbringers trashing everything. Somehow, somewhere, I am sure Howard is laughing at me.
After the bell, we had to hustle because there were only five minutes to get to World Affairs with Mr. Gladly. He was visually the opposite of Mrs. Knott, a short man with curly brown hair and an overly friendly manner. He called out to several students he seemed to know by name. From what I could see, they were also the most popular students from the “right” cliques. Noticeably the two top scorers from Mrs. Knott’s test were not included in this select group. So, it looked like he was going for ‘popular students’, rather than ‘good students’.
I also noticed that the popular students he interacted with tended to call him “Mr. G.” which made him smile and puff up like a bantam rooster. I manfully resisted the urge to roll my eyes. If the first class was supposed to set the tone, then this was screwed up. Clearly this guy was just here to make friends. Was he one of those guys that peaked in high school and never moved past that? Reliving his youth? I guess there were worse vices, but it was kind of pathetic.
But then his narcissism stopped being a victimless crime. One of the smallest sophomore girls I’d seen went up to sharpen her pencil. As she went back to her seat, she detoured and did something. I couldn’t see exactly what because of the people in the way. But the long-haired girl from Computer Science whipped her head up and began shaking something out of her hair.
“Hey Taylor,” another girl called out. “The head lice itching today?”
The short girl added as she sat down. “Maybe they need to shave it all off, make you look even more like a boy.”
Some other girls laughed. Bowl cut and the doper he was sitting with didn’t say anything. Nobody said anything about it. Mr. Gladly continued talking to one of the jocks like nothing had happened. Okay, this mean girl shit was ridiculous. What made this girl such a pariah?
I tried to ask her when class let out, but she bolted out of there as soon as the bell rang. When I reached the hallway, she was nowhere to be seen, but I did see some of the girls clustered together laughing. I went down to the cafeteria for lunch, but she wasn’t there either. What the hell?
I went through the line and collected some mediocre-looking food. After what I saw, I wasn’t feeling too sociable, so I found a table with an unoccupied end. I thought about what I’d seen so far as I ate. Glenridge High was a very small pond compared to Winslow. Even the jocks looked meaner. I was dubious about escalating things like I’d resorted to at Glenridge. The stakes seemed a lot higher if push came to shove. While my death came from fighting Sen Arashi, not anyone in high school, it still destroyed any faith in my own immortality. On the other hand, people also seemed to mind their own business a lot more. If you weren’t one of their in-group’s designated targets.
Keeping your head down seemed to be a valuable survival skill here. It rankled mightily.
I kept an eye out as I ate, but pariah-girl never showed up. She ducked into the Art room right as the third-period bell rang. I noticed an athletic black girl sitting near the door glaring at her as she passed. As the teacher, Mrs. Horn did her introduction, I realized that this was more of an eclectic elective, featuring segments on different mediums. It sounded kind of interesting. I hadn’t done any art classes since primary school, but this survey course was a requirement for my diploma. After the lecture was a short slide show presenting student projects from previous years. Some of them were impressive.
As the class let out to head to the final period, the black girl slowly packed up her stuff. As I stood up, I noticed she wore a t-shirt that said, “Winslow Wasps Track and Field”. The weird girl eyed her warily as she shuffled hesitantly past. The jock stood up from her desk abruptly and shoulder-checked the taller girl and snarled “Watch where you’re going Hebert!” as she shoved her aside. Was that her last name? I couldn’t remember from the roll call this morning. Hebert’s thigh smacked into a desk with a painful-sounding thump. She stumbled a bit, so I steadied her arm.
She flinched back and eyed me warily. The eyes behind the glasses were full of suspicion. I shrugged and smiled as innocently as I could, which probably wasn’t much to be honest. She may have given me an imperceptible nod and then left the classroom. Once upon a time I might have considered her rude. But with a pang, I recalled how suspicious Karen had been when I first proposed the deal. She’d been pretty skittish when I offered to trade protection for tutoring. Hebert’s reaction was far worse. How bad has it been for her? The girl left and I slowed my steps as I followed her out into the hallway and headed toward my locker.
The fourth and last class of the day was Math with Mr. Quinlan. The Hebert girl was sitting in the far back corner, huddled in a worn hoody that might have been a bit warm for the weather. She had the textbook open on her desk.
Near the center of the room sat a very attractive curvy redhead. The length of the legs folded under her desk suggested she’d be fairly tall when standing. She seemed to have freshly applied makeup, and her hair looked flawless. She also seemed as out of place as a rose in a pigsty. A couple of not-quite-as-nicely dressed girls sat on either side. They carried on a whispered conversation I couldn’t make out, punctuated by frequent glances at the back corner where the girl in the hoodie sat. I don’t think I needed to hear what they were saying.
Then one of the followers glanced in my direction. She whispered to the others, and then they did the worst ever job of glancing at me without seeming to. The whispering sped up. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that they were checking me out. Look, false modesty aside, I knew I was objectively attractive. I’m pushing six feet, on the wiry side instead of gangling, with blue eyes and black hair tinged with red. And I lucked out with the acne fairy again, so my skin was clear. But it was just a fact, like the sky being blue, my looks did not inform my every waking moment like it seemed to do for others. Maybe that’s easier for me to think because I don’t have any major flaws to obsess over. I might suggest that it was because I was more mature, but I knew that was a crock of shit.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
It didn’t hurt that none of my friends in Glenridge had looked like runway models. But they had it where it mattered. I scowled, thinking about how things had turned out when Mr. Quinlan walked in. He didn’t stumble in, but he maintained the slow, cautious pace of the dedicated day-drinker. I literally got a whiff of whatever he’d been drinking as he passed my desk heading for the front of the classroom. Cheap stuff.
Quinlan started off all right, going over the syllabus and course objectives. I focused on note taking and trying to ignore the redhead and her cronies as they tried to catch my eye. After a while, the teacher’s voice slowed down and faltered. Halfway through the class period, he handed out a skills assessment for us to fill out. I’d already done this earlier in the Summer, but I didn’t think that really mattered. It seemed like he was just looking to run out the clock. The other students seemed unsurprised as they packed up their books and papers ten minutes early.
When the bell rang the three girls got up and sauntered over. “I’m Emma Barnes,” the redhead introduced herself with a confident smile. “This is Chloe and Patricia. And you are?” I wondered if her full name was significant in some way as I answered, “Rhiyen Conner.”
“Are you new to Winslow?” Chloe asked.
I nodded. “Just transferred this fall,” I replied.
“We were pretty sure we’d have remembered you if you were attending last year,” Emma reasoned. Her eyes narrowed at the hoodie girl, Hebert, as she detoured around us toward the door. “Some people stand out a lot more than others.”
“I guess you are right,” I agreed. I supposed it was a compliment of sorts. “But I need to make sure I catch the bus, so if you’ll excuse me.” The girls glanced at each other, and at Emma, but moved aside a little so I could leave the room. I ignored the whispers rising behind me.
I made a quick stop at my locker before heading out. I noticed Hebert was doing the same nearby. She had little wasted motion as she finished up and closed it. I wondered why she was in such a hurry. Were the bus drivers super strict about leaving on time?
I sped up and made it outside before most of the students and saw Hebert walking away toward a city bus stop. I had to head toward a different one to get on the route to the Landry’s house. The ride was boring, but at least it was quiet. Winslow was a lot different than Glenridge High School. The gangs were a big difference. At Glenridge, as a senior I beat up some football players to draw a line in the sand and make them leave me alone. Making myself a target like that here would be irresistible to the gangers attending Winslow. And they ultimately had the backing of capes. I might be a little stronger and faster than normal, but that would just make me a minor inconvenience. Best to keep my head down if I want it to stay attached.
The bus reached my stop, and I arrived home before Jared and the others. I suspected he was meeting with friends after school. I got to work on the chores I’d been assigned on the chart in the kitchen. The Landry’s were still at work and wouldn’t be home until dinner time or later. After the laundry was run and sorted, I hit the kitchen and made a package of mac and cheese. My appetite was strong, and they’d given me a hard time about it at first. After threatening to have me checked for a tapeworm, I agreed to use some of my summer wages to buy cheap bulk foods for me to supplement the regular meals. It wasn’t strictly kosher, but I knew if they stopped showing a net profit from my presence I would be out of there. Mac and cheese made with water wasn’t the greatest, so I spiked it with a little of the communal milk jug.
After polishing off my afternoon snack, I started reading ahead in the textbooks I’d brought home. I felt a pang as I remembered that I wouldn’t have Karen around to remind me to keep up. So, I decided to get ahead instead. Maybe somewhere she was having a laugh at me too.
*O*O*
The next day at roll call I found out that Hebert’s first name was Taylor. I still had no idea why she was being harassed so much though. Through the randomness of class assignments, I saw her in every class except lunch period and I never saw her start anything with anybody. She just kept her head down and tried to avoid people as much as possible. It was stirring up some ugly memories for me. Karen’s and Howard’s bullies were a lot less subtle, but what I was seeing seemed just as nasty. Maybe girl bullying was different. I wasn’t sure, but I knew I didn’t like it. I’m not much of a poker player, so I guess my scowl was visible. People began to give me odd looks.
That still didn’t stop Emma Barnes from trying to chat me up in Math after Mr. Quinlan ran out of gas every afternoon. She and her friends started coming in right as the bell rang so they could sit near me. I stayed quiet and tried to focus on the lecture as much as possible, but she just bides her time before trying to draw me out. She was attractive, and my libido didn’t mind her proximity, but I got a sense that she was not serious. She just wasn’t used to being told no. When she wasn’t hinting that we should get to know each other better, she and her lackeys were making snide remarks about Hebert, which was a turn off. What the hell did she have against the girl?
Unfortunately, when I tried to ask Hebert about it, she was skittish as hell. She kept her head down and looked away when I asked, but I saw a flash of suspicion in her eyes. She saw something over my shoulder, then turned and walked away. I looked around and saw Emma smirking in this direction and speaking to her sycophants. Great, I groused. Did she think I was running a scam for Barnes?
The bullying seemed to have three ringleaders: Sophia Hess, who was in Art class, Madison Clements in World Affairs, and Emma Barnes in Math. There were other girls involved, especially friends of Barnes, but those three seemed to be the most active. They usually sat together when I saw them in the lunchroom. I began trying to subtly interfere in their crap. I’d linger in the vicinity when they tried to get Taylor alone. I “noticed” after Madison had collected everyone’s homework assignments that Taylor’s had “somehow fallen in the trash”, which earned me a scowl from the tiny twit. But I had a feeling that they were just having to adjust to work around me. Despite minor victories, Taylor still looked beaten down and avoided me when possible.
I really began to loathe all this mean girl crap, and the urge to beat the hell out of them if they didn’t stop was strong. However, I knew I’d just end up in jail. They had plenty of friends willing to lie on their behalf, and I was bigger and male – the optics were awful. But other people noticed my frustration.
I’d followed at a distance down the stairs, trailing behind to see if anyone made a move on Taylor without being close enough to spook the girl. Sophia Hess emerged from the crowd passing in the hall below as Taylor neared the bottom. They passed each other on the second step from the bottom and suddenly Taylor tripped and went flying forward. Several students laughed as she crashed to the ground, backpack coming off one shoulder, with an audible grunt as her lungs emptied. One of the track team gave the ascending Sophia a low-five. I felt my hands ball into fists as someone else’s hand closed on my shoulder. I looked back as I spun, taking another step down. A medium-sized guy with blond hair and green eyes wearing jeans, a polo shirt, and a windbreaker raised his open hands in front of his chest. “Peace, just wanted to talk.”
“Okay, give me a second.” I made my way to the bottom of the stairs, but Taylor was evidently all right because she picked up her bag and moved off into the hall as I arrived. She was looking down, but I could see her cheeks burning with embarrassment.
The guy caught up to me and nodded toward the bathroom. I followed warily. The break between classes was winding down, so the two people in there left right after we walked in. “Okay, let’s talk.”
The guy smiled. “My name’s Eric.”
“Rhiyen,” I replied.
“I heard about that. Weird spelling?”
“It’s Welsh,” I repeated the lie. “Is there a point to this?”
“Me and my friends, we notice things,” he said. “You seem to be picking up on some of the crap that goes on here at Winslow. You look like you want to do something about it.”
I went still. “Crap like?”
“Like that nigger Hess getting away with picking on that girl just because she’s on the track team and wins lots of medals.”
My mind screeched to a halt. Really? “Are you trying to recruit for the fucking Empire?”
“Hey!” he said, taking a step back. “White people need to look out for each other, or no one else will. You can see that here. Right-thinking people got to come together; Kaiser has the vision to make it happen.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Just… no. One of my best friends before I came here was a black guy. Smartest, bravest son of a bitch I’ve ever met. Lost his hand like Tyr fighting a real monster. If you don’t get the reference, look it up. After you go away.”
Eric frowned but took another step back. “You’re making a mistake here.”
“I don’t think I am,” I said. “Why haven’t “right-thinking people” done anything to stop the bullshit? Why aren’t you helping her directly? Or at least running interference?”
“We offered. She wasn’t interested.”
“Sounds like she had the right idea. Stay far away from me from now on.”
Eric’s frown turned ugly. “You’ll be sorry, nigger-lover,” he spat. But he left, nonetheless.
*O*O*
Taylor made her way down the hall to Mr. Quinlan’s room. Her knees and elbow ached from the fall, but she tried not to let it show. To not give Sophia the satisfaction of knowing she was hurt.
She suppressed a sigh. It always hurts. Even worse, she’d looked like an idiot in front of the new guy, Rhiyen. Of course, nobody intervened. Either they smirked along with Sophia or pretended to look away as if it didn’t happen, all the better to avoid negative attention on themselves. Standing up to see him coming down the stairs was the added sauce to the humiliation pasta that Sophia served up.
She shuffled into Math right before the bell and headed to the back of the room. She knew better than to sit in here with her back exposed. It wasn’t safe. It wasn’t like Mr. Quinlan had a lot to say, he just read from the textbook. So, she stayed ahead on that and did the homework problems on her own after his voice dwindled to mumbles.
Up ahead of her, she noted the position of Emma and her friends. It still hurt, knowing that she used to be one of them, but those days were long gone. They were again sitting next to the new guy, Rhiyen. She grimaced. It wouldn’t be long before she had him eating out of her hand. With her looks and charm, what Emma wanted, she got.
She couldn’t help but notice the new guy in their year and it seemed that Emma had latched on to him quickly, talking to him again. He was hard to miss, tall, good-looking, with black hair and blue eyes. He seemed to be keeping up with the schoolwork, which was more than she could say about Emma’s usual taste in guys.
He looked in her direction as she sat down and scowled. She wasn’t sure why, but his face clouded over more often lately. She wondered if he was annoyed at her presence. He was in all of her classes, so it’s not like she could avoid him if that was the issue. Yet another thing to worry about, when she had a plate full already.
She watched the muscles of his shoulders moving under the fabric of his t-shirt as he lifted his backpack. She had noticed his waist was slim and he walked on the balls of his feet, as if ready to leap into action. That tense readiness he stalked around with made her anxious.
When Gladly assigned Madison, as one of his favorites, to collect their homework essays, her heart sunk. She knew her paper had a poor chance of actually making it to the teacher’s desk. Madison collected hers with a smirk and put it on the bottom of the stack. Taylor started to protest, but she knew it was useless. But Rhiyen spoke up from where he was sitting, walked over to the trash can and pulled out her paper. His words were very mild, “I think one of the papers may have slid free from the stack.” It didn’t call anyone quite out, but at least her grade was saved. She’d wondered what kind of angle he was playing.
When he walked up to her between class periods, touching her shoulder to get her attention, the unexpected contact made her feel like someone had plucked a guitar string that ran from the top of her head down through the middle of her body. She was glad for the long sleeves of her top as goosebumps prickled on her arms.
He asked her why she was being bullied. She had to suppress a spark of anger. How could she answer that when she had no idea why? Still, he looked sincerely concerned. She always felt so awkward when she didn’t know what to say. So she defaulted to going still and quiet, hoping someone else would break the silence. She heard tittering behind him, then looked past him to see Emma and the others watching. Were they enjoying her embarrassment or…?
Then it hit her like a thunderbolt. This was another setup. Like last year. Three separate times Emma had talked a cute boy into talking to her, gaining her confidence a little. Then, boom, another betrayal. The first time had been the worst. After Henry and Emma openly mocked her and repeated back things she’d told him privately, she’d gone home and called out sick for two days in a row. The third time that year she’d been expecting it – Emma had just gotten better at covering her tracks.
She turned away then. No one was going to help her. Her father was too wrapped up in his grief. She couldn’t bear to make things harder for him. She swallowed past a lump in her throat. It always caught her off guard, just how much she missed her mother. She’d give anything to have a thirty-minute phone call with her, right this moment. She didn’t have the slightest doubt that her mother could have made sense of everything, put things into terms so simple that working it out looked easy. She shook her head, blinking back tears in her eyes, and took a deep breath as she moved forward down the hall. She was all alone.
*O*O*
“So what’s up with you?” Jared asked as I walked through the door. He was sitting at the kitchen table reading over what looked like a Senior math book. It appears he went straight home after school to study. I’d gotten off the bus a few blocks early to try and walk off my bad mood. Emphasis on the word “try”.
“What do you mean?” I asked warily. There were a lot of things up with me – few of them good.
“Seniors don’t pay a lot of attention to Sophomore Drama,” he said. “But you’ve been stalking around Winslow like someone killed your dog. People notice. Some of them who know about our living situation ask me. Personally, I think they just want to start a betting pool.”
I blinked. Okay. “Well, there’s some nasty bullying crap going on against a girl in my classes. Makes me sick.”
“Ah. I think I heard about that. Mean girls are vicious as hell. Guys just do a punch-up and it’s all over.”
I shook my head. “This is way past that. It’s relentless, every damn day, usually multiple times.”
“And if you step in,” Jared added, “they make you look like a psycho. I never get involved in that girl-on-girl crap. It’s a lose-lose scenario from the start.” He took a sip of ice water. The Landrys were not going to splurge on coke when the water faucet was cheaper.
“I’m not saying you are wrong, but that’s not right. It’s also frustrating as hell.”
Jared shrugged his shoulders. “Winslow’s the bottom of the barrel for a reason. The teachers play favorites every day. Track team is one of the few successful things going on there, so they get away with a lot. The track coach is a real piece of work. I used to do shot-put until I destroyed my shoulder last year. Doc says I was doing it wrong all along, coach never said anything. He just cut me from the roster as soon as he heard.”
I winced. “So, I guess you know first-hand?”
“Let’s just say that I never had any problems keeping my grades up until I was off the team.”
“You’re the second person to tell me about that today,” I said ruefully.
“Oh, who was the first?” Jared asked. He picked up his water and I waited to answer until he was drinking.
“The guy trying to recruit me for Empire Eighty-Eight,” I said casually. Jared spewed water all over the table and some out his nose. Good thing he wasn’t drinking something carbonated.
He scowled at me as he wiped off his textbook. “That’s not funny,” he growled.
“I’m not joking, he thought I’d be more amenable after watching Sophia Hess trip Hebert down some stairs.
“You better have told them to fuck off,” Jared glared.
“Oh no, I joined immediately,” I said in a deadpan monotone. “And then I came back to tell you about it because it has escaped my attention that you are, indeed, black. I just thought you had a really good tan. Shock and horror have consumed my soul.”
Jared took a deep breath in through his nose. I think he was less angry at me so much as trying not to laugh. “Seriously?”
“Seriously, I told him to take a flying leap. But I could see dumb kids, or those under a lot of harassment, falling for that line of bullshit. Protection is one of the reasons people join gangs, right?”
“That’s still not a reason to become a racist Nazi,” Jared grated.
“Note that I said, “dumb kids”, not “smart kids”. According to Eric the Stealth-Nazi, they offered protection to Taylor and she flat turned them down. Drowning people will also pull under lifeguards if they panic enough. Either way, I wonder if Sophia has any idea that Kaiser owes her a fruit-basket for the recruiting assistance.”
“Do you think she even cares?”
I shook my head and sat down on the opposite side of the table and opened my backpack.
*O*O*
Days turned into weeks as the fall passed. The coursework at Winslow wasn’t that difficult, which is a good thing because most of the teachers were awful. Mrs. Knott was the only one who seemed to know what she was doing. She still had to split her classes up into serious students that worked on their own, and mouth breathers that had to be constantly entertained. Stubborn pride wouldn’t allow me to coast with the latter group.
World Affairs should have been more interesting, given my lack of knowledge of this world. After all, I spent most of the summer trying to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. But Mr. Gladly was kind of a joke. He spent so much time palling around with his favorite students that any focus on the subject matter went out the window. The endless group projects were annoying, but I took the opportunity to join Taylor’s group. She normally ended up with Greg Veder and Sparky the doper. I knew from Computer Class that Hebert was at least putting some effort into her classes, so I asked to join her group before Sparky even realized that nap time was over. She looked startled when I asked, but quickly nodded. So, I ended up with her and Greg, and sometimes Sparky if the groups needed to be larger.
The doper was an intellectual non-entity, but oh my God was Greg annoying. Take Howard at his jealous and petty worst, then stir in some inability to stay on topic and an obsession regarding talking about whatever he’s been looking at online. How Taylor could stand him was a testament to her patience. He frequently tested my patience when I had to steer him back onto whatever topic we were supposed to be studying. But he occasionally brought up interesting facts and he wasn’t nasty to Taylor, so I can guess why she tolerated him.
Taylor herself was a little stiff when I sort of bulldozed my way into her project group, but she was too polite to just say no. I’m not sure what she had against me, or if it was just that I was a relative stranger since I wasn’t at Winslow last year. But she eventually loosened up a little and I discovered that behind the quiet, retiring persona was an agile mind. She made connections that had to be explained to me and easily clamped down on Greg’s wilder flights of fancy. This meant that I ended up sliding into the role of team representative when dealing with Mr. Gladly or other groups – especially Madison’s. The little bitch was incredibly annoying – even more than Veder. Every damn time we split into group work (practically every day) and announced which topic we selected, Madison would claim that Taylor had overheard her group talking about it and stolen their idea. And Gladly fell for it every. Single. Damn. Time.
When I began speaking for the group, it didn’t change. Even when I waved around the notes I’d taken from our brainstorming session. Madison would put on her little girl pout and whine, and we’d have to scramble to come up with a new event to examine or parahuman to profile. Finally, I got sick of it and just announced something different than what the group had agreed to. Before they could protest, Madison piped up again and Gladly reassigned the selection to her group. I turned back to the group to see Greg’s mouth hang open, Sparky blinking blearily at me, and Taylor giving me a small half-smile. After a whispered consultation, I turned back to Gladly and announced our original pick.
Art was interesting. A lot of the material was new to me, but at least Mrs. Horn graded on classroom participation and effort. If we were evaluated on skill alone, I was doomed to fail. Sophia Hess was in there, along with Taylor, so every day had some sort of low-key physical altercation. Or more accurately, Sophia managed to elbow, shoulder-check, or step on Taylor’s feet. Taylor tried to avoid her. A couple of times I was able to walk through and disrupt things, but between Taylor shying away from me and Sophia’s friends hemming her in, Hess usually managed to hit Hebert coming or going. I really didn’t know her plan. Was she trying to drive Hebert out of Winslow? Or was she just a sadist, getting her thrills?
Hebert was always just in time for the bell to Mr. Quinlan’s math class. She’d always sit in a back corner away from everyone else. Madison and her lackeys came in just after the bell and Quinlan never bothered them at all. I didn’t know if it was favoritism or inebriation. But they tended to take a seat in the middle, near me. I wish I’d been a bit ruder that first day. Maybe then they would have gotten the hint. But instead, the flirting and sniping continued. I wasn’t sure why Emma seemed to fixate on me; I’m not that attractive. Maybe it was because I actually had the temerity to say no?
And in the hallways between classes the Hebert harassment campaign never let up.