xx48.11.18 / 19:18 / Friday

Another stupid headache this morning, worse than all the others put together. After I drank some orange juice and forced myself to eat some yoghurt I felt just a tiny bit better, and then I had a little walk and got some fresh air and that made me feel better too. When I went back to my apartment, C2 was outside waiting for me, which is probably the nicest surprise I've ever had and DEFINITELY made me feel MUCH better.

"C2!" I said. "Why are you here?"

"To see you?" she said, after a moment's thought.

"Do you want to come in? It's bit messy..."

She paused at that. "If you don't want me to come in—"

"No, don't worry, just come in," I said, unlocking the door. In a way I felt weird letting C2 inside my apartment, though. She's the first person I've let see my private little safe place.

"It's not messy at all," she said, after looking around a bit. I laughed.

"Um, maybe not. I don't know why I said that, except people in TV shows always seem to say that kind of thing before letting someone into their house or room or whatever. Um, thank you for all the stuff you got me yesterday, by the way! I really appreciated it, so much, I was really sorry I wasn't here when you dropped it off—I was taking a walk to get some fresh air, like you guessed."

"You're welcome," she said, and she kind of smiled. "I'm glad it was necessary."

"More than necessary," I said, "I really didn't have any food at all here apart from orange juice, which isn't really food. Um. Do you want some? Orange juice, I mean."

"To drink?" she said, then gave a little start, like she'd caught herself, and said, "Yes, okay, yes please. I'd like some orange juice."

So I poured us both a glass.

"So, why are you here so early?" I asked. "At school, I mean."

That seemed to throw her. After she'd thought about it for a bit, she said, "Maybe you didn't hear me before. When you asked—"

"Okay, JUST to see me, I get it," I said. "Well, I'm really pleased to see you, of course! Is there even a bus this early?"

"My father brought me," she said. "I asked him especially. I felt as though I should talk to you. It seemed important to do so. But if you're uncomfortable or feel—"

"I want to talk to you too," I said quickly. "I still feel bad about the other day, I don't feel like I apologised properly."

"The other day," C2 said. She looked confused again.

"When I turned my back on you," I explained.

"Oh," she said, then she looked even more confused. "You already apologised? But now you still feel bad. Do you need me to say that I forgive you?"

"That would probably help, actually," I said.

"Then I forgive you. I think I understand why you were upset: you dislike Veronica Flux. She is associated with the self-improvement program, so you also dislike the self-improvement program. Am I correct so far?"

"Pretty much," I said. "But it wasn't fair to take that out on you, and running away—"

"I'm sorry to interrupt," she said, "but I want to ask this. Why do you apologise so many times?"

I felt like I should give a proper answer to this, so I thought for at least a second before replying:

"I think it's because I still feel bad about it, even after apologising."

"Oh!" C2 seemed really shocked about this, almost upset. "Then I should apologise, I didn't realise it was for your benefit. Please go ahead and apologise as many times as you feel is necessary, do you need me to forgive you each time as well?"

Sometimes C2 is a little tiring, I admit it. But she kind of had a point. Apologising so much wasn't for her benefit, she'd already forgiven me. It was just to make ME feel better. Basically, apologising over and over again was really selfish.

"Let's just ... just move on," I said. "I said I'm sorry, and you forgave me. That should be enough, right?"

"It seems fine to me," she said, carefully.

"Okay, good. Good! Um, so why did you come to see me?" I asked.

"It's something important. At the assembly, we talked about it briefly, but the setting wasn't appropriate for a proper conversation. Too public. Too noisy. Too many people around."

C2 was quiet for a bit after this. She took a sip of her orange juice, then she continued:

"You have noticed that the students here often share a similar mindset and mood. Yesterday they were focused and 'serious'. On Monday they were excited and enthusiastic. On Tuesday and Wednesday, they were displaying symptoms of depression." She was silent for a while, thinking to herself. "That was strange," she said, eventually. "I haven't seen that before."

By now I was starting to feel a kind of warm itchy feeling deep inside.

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"Are you saying there's something going on here?" I asked. "That someone's controlling the mood of the students?"

"I think 'control' is the wrong word," C2 said, very seriously. "This may not be intentional. I also don't think it's a reasonable assumption to make, that 'someone' is doing this."

I kind of ignored her. "How do you think they're doing it? Drugs in the drinking water maybe! Or something more insidious, psychic transmitters in everyone's pillow—I knew something was going on, I KNEW it!"

Then I frowned.

"Wait," I said. "If everyone's being controlled, then why aren't you and I being affected by it?"

"I think that you are," C2 said, even more seriously than before. "Although erratically."

I stared at her. I was thinking, no way! I'm not being controlled! But then she said something that made me think again:

"Perhaps you could perform a simple experiment. If you wrote down your mood every day, or better yet every hour, and also wrote down the mood of the student body as a whole—"

"I don't have to do that," I said. "I keep a journal, I can just read back my entries, that'll show that I'm not being controlled."

Except it showed the exact opposite. At the time I didn't notice at all, but after I read back my entries over the last few weeks it seems really obvious. My mood DEFINITELY differs from day to day, and it seems to follow the overall mood of the students, too.

"And on the weekends, when I got so tired, is that part of it?" I asked.

"It seems likely," said C2. "I've noticed similar behaviour in others. Specifically my friends."

I feel bad about this, but I stared at her again, and then I said, "You have friends? Other friends?"

She stared right back (at my chest, anyway). "Yes?"

"But I thought ... I thought you were..."

Fortunately I managed to recover.

"Of course you have other friends," I said. "You grew up here, you must have known them for ages."

C2 nodded. "But this year, things have changed."

"Just this year," I said. "C2, I think we're in the middle of something really weird here."

"I agree," she said. I smiled at her, then frowned.

"Wait, though," I said. "You still didn't answer my question. Even if I'm being controlled, why aren't you?"

"I don't know," she said.

"Do you..." I really hesitated at this, but I knew I had to ask. "Do you have a superpower?"

"It seems unlikely," she said. "Neither of my parents are scientifically promoted."

Of COURSE C2 would use the official technical term, that's kind of cute actually.

"But your parents don't have to be supers for YOU to be a super," I said. "It greatly increases the chances, sure, but ANYONE can spontaneously manifest powers."

"Since The Event the occurrences of spontaneous scientific promotion have decreased non-trivially," C2 said. "I haven't kept up with the latest figures, but I seem to remember reading about a figure lower than point zero zero zero zero—"

"Um, even so," I said, because I know the actual percentage and waiting for C2 to recite all those zeroes could take all morning, "it's not impossible."

C2 considered this.

"No," she eventually admitted. "Not impossible. But very improbable. I ... I have another theory. I have a ... condition. It's unlikely that you haven't noticed. I'm very strange."

"You're not THAT strange," I said, but C2 was kind of smiling now in a weird way.

"I know that I am," she said. "I can't help it. My emotional intelligence is almost non-existent. This could also be described as a lack of social empathy. I cannot instinctively or intuitively 'know' what another person is feeling. Even my own emotions are difficult for me to understand. It could be said that I lack self-empathy, although in a sense that is a tiny paradox and a contradiction in terms."

"Oh," I said. I didn't know what else to say.

"Even now, I don't know if I've made you uncomfortable by telling you this. Intellectually, though, I feel as if I have, because your response was brief."

"I'm feeling a little sad," I said. If I didn't have to tell the truth because of my curse, I probably would have lied. "It must be really difficult for you. I sometimes have trouble knowing what people are thinking or feeling, but I always at least have SOME idea. Oh, so that's why ... why didn't you tell me this sooner?"

"I wasn't sure about you," C2 said. "I didn't know if you liked me."

"Of course I like you!" I said. "You're my friend! Why would I be friends with someone I didn't like?"

"It happens," C2 said.

"Not for me," I said, as firmly as I could. "You're my friend, C2, and I'll tell you right now, if I ever do anything to make you uncomfortable, or you want to know how I'm feeling, just ask and I'll HAVE to tell you."

"You could lie," C2 said—she wasn't being mean or negative, I could tell that, she was just stating the possibility.

"No, I couldn't," I said. "Because I have ... well, I guess you could call it a condition, although actually it's a curse. I have to tell the truth. I can't lie."

"You could be lying about that, too," C2 said.

"I'm not. I'm your friend and I'm telling you, I can't lie. And even if I could, I wouldn't."

C2 thought about this, then she looked at me and smiled—I mean ACTUALLY looked at me, straight in the eye. It was only for the tiniest of moments, but still, it was nice.

"I have to trust you, then," she said, and I was a little bit embarrassed but kind of happy and also a little overwhelmed to see that she had tears in her eyes now. She cleared her throat. "My point. My point was, that I think it's my condition that stops me from being affected like the others. To clarify, whatever the cause of the mood alteration is, I believe it is nullified, or at the least greatly retarded, by my condition."

"But I'm not being COMPLETELY controlled, right?" I said. "There are times like right now when my head is clear, but at other times I'm not quite myself."

"Maybe your condition also protects you," C2 suggested. She smiled. "In certain situations, the truth is a perfect defence."

I think that was a C2 joke. I wasn't certain, though, so I just smiled at her.

"I'm happy I can talk to you about this," she said. "Even my parents are influenced by this mood alteration, much more subtly than the students here, but it is often noticeable."

"I'm really happy you told me, too," I said. "I might have never realised just on my own."

"I don't know. Maybe you would have."

"Oh?" I said. "Why do you think that?"

"I'm not sure," said C2. "It's just a feeling."

"Anyway," I said, "how are we going to stop this?"

C2 looked confused. "Stop this?"

"Clearly this is part of some evil plot."

C2 looked even more confused. "Evil?"

"Mind control, C2! Brainwashing! Mood alteration! How could that be anything BUT evil?"

C2 actually thought about this. "The school board could be attempting to improve education," she suggested. "If students could be influenced to be more enthusiastic and serious about study—"

"Oh my goodness what you're describing sounds SO evil! But I don't think it's the school board, or not JUST the school board, anyway."

"Who, then?" C2 asked me. "Who do you think would do something like this?"

I didn't need to think for even a second before answering:

"Supervillains."