Roger looked his students over while they worked on their assignments. People think of teaching as reciting information, but to his mind, it was a detailed task of psychology, bordering on abstract economics. No teacher could force a student to study, so a good teacher had to be aware of what environment and incentives his students needed to establish enough of a rapport to be willing to learn.
They’d found another classroom full of locked doors and split up to work on them. Charlotte had one with sliding hexagons, occasionally sneaking looks around the room at the other people, meeting his eye and exchanging little smiles. She was straightforward enough, if only because he knew her best. She was sensitive but bighearted and hardworking; if she was around supportive people, she’d thrive, regardless of whether she had to lean on them or they leaned on her. It looked like she had found that in Sue. Hopefully Jason would help, although Roger would have to watch out for tension: after all, it was a three-person clique with mixed genders.
Sue had the next door, and seemed fully absorbed in it. He had the impression that she was competitive and liked to show off, but she didn’t seem to have much respect or self-esteem. She was the sort of girl who defined herself and her value by her grades. She and Charlotte should dovetail nicely if he paired them off for a group assignment, possibly with Jason, depending on how that dynamic played out. He made a mental note to try to think up some way to let them work together without spawning more raptors.
The other two girls were more enigmatic. Blank seemed to be having trouble; she’d mentioned that she was better with humanities than the sciences. She’d talked a bit, but he had the feeling she’d been skating around what she was actually thinking. She didn’t trust him enough to open up, and he wasn’t sure she did with anyone. He’d have to show her that he had her best interests at heart.
All of them were smart, but Bright in particular lived up to her name, and not just academically. Just from their first few minutes together, she was extremely perceptive about other people’s relationships; but she approached it in an adversarial way, like a poker player trying to read an opponent’s cards without giving any tells of her own. He wanted to ask about her mother: it was the first chink he’d seen in her armour.
“Got it,” she said, unlocking her door. Sue mouthed a swear word. Looked like he was right about her being competitive.
Instead of yet another classroom, the door opened to an elevator, one with cattle grid flooring and what looked like a bottomless pit below. Bright looked in, her expression still unreadable.
“I should keep going,” she said, “but I’m not quite sure where this goes.”
“I’m not sure what’s in the basement, but I bet there’s a university if you go up,” Sue offered. “After all, there has to be a reason why they call it the higher education sector.”
Bright narrowed her eyes but continued without replying. “I assume it’s a different department, or at least a different kind of maths. I’m sure I can figure it out, whatever it is …”
Roger was impressed: he’d never met anyone who could enunciate an ellipsis. “I should go with you,” he said. “It might be something you’re not familiar with, or there might be more raptors. Can you girls keep going without me for a few minutes,or would you rather come with us?”
Bright locked her cool blue eyes with Sue’s hazel-green ones.
“I hate leaving a problem unsolved,” Sue said. “Take your time, there’s plenty more work to do around here.”
Bright turned to Blank.
“Don’t mind me,” Blank said.
Bright turned to Charlotte.
“Uh, go right ahead,” she said. “I think I’m picking this up quickly enough.”
Bright turned to Roger.
“Okay,” he said, trying and failing to shake the feeling that he was taking silent orders from the reincarnation of Napoleon Bonaparte. “I’ll come back to tell you what we find there as soon as we’re settled in. Good luck!”
He led Bright into the elevator. On the control panel were buttons labelled ‘here’, ‘there’, ‘<<’, and ‘>>’. He considered them for a moment before trying ‘there’.
The doors slid shut and the elevator lurched downward, the initial jolt staggering them both and making the car sway as it descended. They got their feet and looked down through the cattle grid. There were no lights visible down the shaft, no context for how far down they had gone. The lights in the ceiling of the car only penetrated down a few metres, showing what looked like uncut rock, although it was hard to tell from the reflections.
“There’s got to be a pun in here somewhere about you making the basement a bit more bright,” Roger said.
“I hate puns,” said Bright. “Everyone hates puns. Their only value is in schadenfreude, if someone else hates them more than you do.”
Roger considered this. She wasn’t wrong.
“So I’d take it as a favour if you called me by my given name,” she said. “Michelle.”
“Michelle,” Roger repeated. It rolled off his tongue. His mother had a thing for French names too. “Don’t most private school students get offended by that sort of familiarity?”
She tilted her head, equivalent to a shrug. “It’s a throwback to the old European days, when your family was a more important part of who you were than you yourself. But our modern society treats people as individuals, and I am my own person. Aren’t you? Or are you just a part of the Abercrombie clan?”
“Family still matters today,” he said. “People should help each other, but it’s hard to trust people you don’t know. It doesn’t stop you from being an individual; it just gives you a free shoulder to lean on.”
“That’s a great theory,” she said. “What would you do if it didn’t work?”
Her voice was neutral, but he was sure she was biting back bitterness. “It doesn’t,” he said, “not always. You stick to it for the times when it does work, because they make the rest of it worthwhile. That being said,” he grimaced, “life isn’t a Christmas special. Things don’t always work out, and some people don’t behave as well as they ought. If the people around me always let me down when I needed them, I’d find better people.”
She gave him a look that lasted a few seconds too long without a blink. “You know,” she said, “in another life, I think I could have hated your sister. Not because of what she’s like, but out of sheer envy. I can be a bad person like that, sometimes. You really care about her, don’t you? It isn’t just some sense of obligation.”
“Of course,” he said. “She’s easy to care about. Out of everyone I’ve ever met, she’s the most … purely good. If she were in the Milgram experiment, I think she’d beg off before giving the first shock.”
The elevator finally came to a stop. The doors opened, and they stepped out into what looked like a storage area. There were piles of cleaning supplies and crates all leaning together, covered with a fine layer of dust. There were fluorescent lights overhead, spread thinly enough that they cast small pools of light over the supplies while leaving most of the room in darkness. The supplies and crates obscured most of the walls, but from what they could see, it was an irregular, open area that made Roger think of a cave, rather than the rectangular designs of most normal human architecture. He and Bright moved out, instinctively staying close together.
“I wouldn’t say her life is all that enviable, though,” he went on. “I look out for her, but I have to. We don’t have much income, or the other things that people don’t think about when they say that money doesn’t matter, like their own home, savings, a support network …”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Michelle shook her head. “I know that I’m the epitome of first-world problems, a spoiled princess, but your perspective is limited too. Humans are social creatures, not financial ones. It’s easier to point out a lack of money, but as long as you have enough to make do, it’s nothing compared to a lack of a shoulder to lean on, as you put it.”
It was the opening he’d been waiting for. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She let out a breath and took another in before she replied. “When I was thirteen, I had a problem. The details don’t matter any more. What matters is that when it happened, I wanted help, or at least to be given a shoulder that wasn’t cold. My father was at a business conference – in Geneva, I think – so I asked my mother, but she was working on a case until nine or later every night. When she got back, she brushed me off. She never even heard me out. Even now, she still doesn’t know what happened. I had to deal with it all on my own.”
She was keeping tone and expression impassive,and he couldn’t tellanything about what the problem was or how severe it had been. The fact that she was still resentful about it, years later, suggested that it had been pretty bad; but, equally, it might have been a trivial matter that had only seemed important when she was thirteen, complaining about it now would make her seem petty, and she was only upset that her parents hadn’t paid attention to her when she was down. Either way, she didn’t want to talk about it, and he didn’t actually need to know.
“Did you deal with it? Are you okay now?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I hate the implication,” she said, “that I’m a delicate snowflake who would let one bad day ruin my entire life. It was years ago, and the problem wasn’t cancer.I’m fine now.”
Roger nodded. “You do seem pretty tough. Resilient.”
“I pride myself on it,” she said drily. “The only reason I bring this up at all is that I know the same thing could happen again tomorrow, and she still wouldn’t listen.”
“What about your friends?” This might be a sore spot if they had let her down too, but she needed to vent properly and her pride needed him to keep prompting her. “Would they help?”
“Today, yes, but not back then. Like you said, it’s hard to trust people you don’t really know. I’d only just started at Aquinas, and I didn’t know anyone well enough. Except my cats, but they’re cats. They aren’t known for their sympathy.” She gave him another piercing look. “You, though. I don’t think you’d ever do that to your sister. Even if you were busy, and had something important for your career coming up, you wouldn’t say that you didn’t have the time or energy, you’d make the time and energy for her, wouldn’t you?”
“Well. I mean, of course I would, but it sounds like boasting to say it in so many words.”
“And in turn, she loves you,” Michelle said. “I think” she took a breath “that I’d like it if you loved me, too.”
“,” said Roger. Out of all the places a girl could have told him she liked him, he hadn’t expected it to be in this janitorial basement-cave place. “Michelle, you’re one of my students.”
“This isn’t a primary school and I’m not a child,” she said haughtily. “You can’t be more than a couple of years older than me. Besides, I’m mature for my age, more than most adults are.”
“That’s a lower bar than you think it is,” he said, “but I’m actually thinking about the specific rules against fraternisation. I’ve had run-ins with the law before. It’s a long story, but it almost ended … really badly, one time. I can’t risk that happening again.”
She shrugged and smoothed her skirt, drawing his eyes down. “If it bothers you, we can wait before going too far. I just … I want someone who’ll look at me like you look at her.”
“I don’t look at her incestuously.”
“I don’t want you to look at me incestuously either,” Michelle said with a touch of irritation. “I’m not asking for a purely physical thing, and I don’t think you think I am, or that you would want that either.” He said nothing. “Is this a no? If it’s a no, say it outright. Don’t just refuse to respond.”
“It’s not a no,” he said. “It’s complicated.”
“Are you just bothered by a girl taking the initiative like this?”
“No,” he replied. “I hate to brag, but this isn’t the first time a girl’s confessed to me, believe it or not.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Of course I believe it: I’m doing it right now, and I have good taste in everything. A lot of your appeal is that you’re a responsible person. My best friend is a boy my age, but I wouldn’t date him for two reasons, one of which is that he doesn’t have the maturity to take proper care of a girlfriend. That’s part of why girls like older boys.”
“…”
“We don’t like boys who don’t say anything, though,” she said shortly. “Say yes or say no, don’t just act like I’m not here.”
“Give me a minute to think how to put it,” he said.
He looked around. He was paying attention to his surroundings while they spoke, but he still didn’t understand it. Solving classwork shouldn’t let students into a supply area.
“I think you’re a pretty cool person, Michelle,” he said. “I’d like to spend more time with you.”
“But?”
“But you’re asking for a commitment,” he said, “and one has to be reliable to make those. I’m not, I’m only responsible. Those are only the same thing for people who have their lives together. I can’t promise anything to anyone.”
She frowned. “That sounds like an excuse.”
“Probably because it is one. In a perfect world, I’d say yes, but it –”
“But what?” she said. “If you have problems of your own, of course I’d help with them if I could. Do you think I’d ask for more than I was willing to give back?”
He shook his head. “You’re asking for romance. I know better than anyone that even good people aren’t always fair when emotions are involved.”
She gave him a deeply unimpressed look. “If you had said you weren’t interested, that would be one thing,” she said. “The fact that you tried to rationalise it –”
“It wasn’t a rationalisation. I meant it when I said you were cool and I’d like to spend more time with you. And if you’d asked me out when my life was on less of a knife-edge than it is right now, I’d have said yes. I value your good opinion.”
“In my opinion, self-honesty is even more important than maturity,” she said. “Being proactive is the highest virtue, because every other good quality is worthless if you don’t use it, but anyone can act when they really want to. The difference is when people lie to themselves, because then they invent reasons why they shouldn’t even try.
“Like you did, just now,” she went on coldly. “If you’d said you just didn’t want to, I would have accepted it. But you invented reasons why you shouldn’t. It means you’re the sort of person who doesn’t try. It’s …” She paused to find the right word. “… Disappointing.”
That stung. “Michelle, I don’t –”
“Leave me alone!” Her voice cracked on the last word, and she spun away.
Her foot snagged on a mop, but her centre of gravity kept going forward; she grabbed at air before crashing to the floor, pulling the mop and a jumble of crates on top of herself. Roger reflexively skipped backward out of the way of the falling junk, but then Michelle let out a yelp, and he moved forward and shoved the crates off her.
“Michelle, are you –” He caught himself before he could ask her whether she was okay, all of a second after she’d cried out in pain. “Where does it hurt most?”
“Left shin,” she said through gritted teeth.
He cleared away some space and gently rolled her onto her back. It was hard to see in the bad light, but her leg was already coming up with major bruising. He touched his fingertips to it. “Can you feel this?”
“Yes, and it’s still painful,” she said, “so would you stop?” She leaned forward to bat his hand away.
He sat back on his haunches. She’d also skinned her hands, but he was more worried that it could be a fracture. He didn’t know enough first aid to be able to tell by sight alone, and if he touched it, he’d hurt her and possibly make the injury worse. “We’d better get you to the nurse’s office. Do you know where it is?”
“Behind thirty doors of English lit essays,” she said tightly.
He thought. “The RAYS should have first aid supplies,” he said. “Can you stand, if I help you up, and walk if you lean on me?”
“Not with how much taller you are. I’d sooner crawl.”
“Yeah,” he said, talking more to give himself time to think, “because there’s any chance at all I’m going to just stand around for ten minutes while an injured girl I’m supposed to be taking care of crawls across a floor that’s barely even lit.”
“Fine, then go fetch the first aid kit and bring it back here.”
“Yeah, that’s even better, don’t stay with her during that. Hey, do your spine or neck hurt at all?”
“Just my leg,” she said sulkily, then, as if to make up for being helpful, “why?”
“It means I can do this.” He put one arm under her knees and one behind her back and stood, scooping her up, careful not to put any pressure on her shin.
She squeaked and threw her arms around him for balance, then smoothed down her skirt again. Roger tried not to grin: there was something indescribably cute about a noise that high-pitched coming from someone as regal as Michelle.
“That doesn’t count,” she said, turning pink and glaring. “You startled me.”
“If I’d asked, you would have said no,” he explained, making for the elevator. She was heavier than he’d expected, but he could manage for a short while.
“And we can’t have that.”
“It would be spending time on something other than getting you medical care,” he said. She fumed. “You get very contrary when you’re stressed, you know that?” I’m going to hell for this. “It’s cute.”
She glowered. “Couldn’t you have let me keep any dignity at all?”
“If there’s a way to do that and still get you to the RAYS quickly, I guess I’m just not Bright enough to spot it.”
“I don’t know what I did in a past life to deserve this,” she said, leaning back in defeat, “but I do know it wasn’t worth it.”