Volume 1: Proscenium
Issue 6: Lunch
Florian Reyes Honeywell
By Roach
When the clock struck 10:50—signaling the end of class—I swept my textbook off the desk and headed for the door. I didn’t look back at Camilo again. Out of all my classmates, he had been the only one acting outside of the normal routine. He had deliberately sat down next to me, and consequently, positioned himself nearest my textbook. Short of a confession, I was almost certain he had manipulated the words on the pages. In which case, it didn’t seem like he was trying to hide it either. Maybe he wanted me to know.
As I navigated the hallway, a hum rose inside of me. It wasn’t strange for the swarm to grow restless from time to time. Insects weren’t designed to sit through an entire school day. To be fair, I didn’t think anyone was, let alone a bee. Normally, my pheromones were enough to subdue them without much effort. Yet, throughout English, they had fluctuated between stillness and restless song. It wasn’t terribly loud, but even if it was only audible to me, it was enough to distract me from class. The hallway chatter was all I had to drown it out.
I walked close to the walls, avoiding all the students migrating between classrooms. At the end of the hallway, I saw Amber, in conversation with two other girls. They walked towards me. Or, rather, they walked towards the algebra classroom between us—where I was also headed for my next class.
She shot me a glance, her eyes dwelling on me a moment too long. We hadn’t crossed paths since I had seen her harassing Max. I tried to read her expression—could she have been around school afterwards, when everything went down with Mr. Howells? Another hum rippled through my chest, as I envisioned blood seeping into the hallway. Hush, I soothed the swarm, trying to reason with myself. Amber most likely would have left the school earlier alongside everyone else. But what was I supposed to make of her analytical glare? Perhaps she was thinking about what I remembered of her exchange with Max—if I had it in me to rat her out. It all seemed so far away now, distant, like the thrum in my head, the writhing in my guts…
I changed course, heading downstairs. I went outside. Instantly, the air became less oppressive. Silky clouds draped the blue sky above. I took a moment to stand still. The swarm calmed, easing the pressure in my chest. I sifted through the various pheromones outside. I detected traces of other insects I couldn’t identify nor understand, but as for my bees, they were in repose. It occurred to me that maybe they hadn’t actively resisted my orders, but that my own signal had become unreliable.
Then, amidst the various scents—exhaust from distant traffic mixed with muted flowers—I recognized a familiar signal. Bones, death, bones… My scout. She landed on my shoulder, back from the mission I had sent her on before English class.
Although lunch wasn’t until after algebra, I decided to go to the greenhouse early, per the request of my secret messenger. As I walked, I spoke with the bee: What did you find?
She responded with murmurs of death, bones, and a golden sky. I tried to make sense of it all. But no matter how I looked at it, there was something very wrong with the theater. Whatever had taken the life of my biology teacher, could it be there…? Did you see anything living? I asked, not ready to commit to whether this thing was human or not.
Sisters of rot. Strange scents. Fresh.
I wasn’t sure what to make of the scents, but I knew what “sisters of rot” meant. Flies. Whenever I overheard the hive talk about flies, it was with a condescending undertone. They recognized them as creatures of their own domain, unlike humans or birds, but didn’t exactly approve of their detritivorous nature. Regardless, the presence of flies would be in line with that of bones and death… But the question still remained: where had the culprit gone? Did the scents have anything to do with it?
Deep in thought, I reached the greenhouse. It was located next to the sports field, seemingly as an afterthought. A stray football would crash through the glass walls at least once every semester, evidenced by the wood panel covering up a hole in the ceiling. The greenhouse itself was larger than my parents’, and hosted experiments for the biology classes in addition to activities for the Gardening Club.
I sat down on a plastic patio chair next to a row of sunflowers. Each pot was labeled with the plant’s respective treatment plan. They were being watered at different intervals, and some received different types of fertilizers. The sunflowers ranged from shriveled and withered to lush and thriving. Remnants of Mr. Howells’ work, I speculated. Considering it was the start of a class period, I found myself alone in the enclosed forest of experiments and nurture.
I let a handful of bees crawl out from my ear—not enough to draw attention in the event that someone showed up, but enough to alleviate some of their buzzing. The scout perched on my shoulder joined her sisters in flight. I took command of them, moving them from flower to flower. While I directed them around the greenhouse, the hum inside of me quieted. I kept my focus on the group of bees. As the swarm came to rest, I gradually let go of control again. The bees continued to visit flowers. Every now and then one would carry nectar back to my ear, then switch places with another.
I retrieved The Life of Meteora from my backpack. As the title implied, the library intern’s recommendation revolved around the hero Meteora—the Soviet Union’s response to Champion. She was impossibly strong, albeit not as strong as the American super soldier. But she could fly and fire laser beams from her palms, so she had that going for her.
I thought back to Mr. Whetter’s original question: how did the different superhero generations impact culture and vice versa? It was difficult to imagine a time when superheroes hadn’t been flying around or resolving conflicts with laser beams. The simplicity of it all almost made me laugh, but more so at a loss than out of humor. Someone like Champion or Meteora could have gone to the theater and taken care of whatever might be lurking under the stage. But instead of anyone remotely capable, the burden of that knowledge had fallen onto my shoulders. Hell, I couldn’t even help Max from something like a bully, let alone handle a murder case. I forced myself to skim the first couple of chapters from the book, trying to connect the dots between Champion, Meteora, and cultural views, but found myself re-reading the same sentences over and over. I was about to give up when the door squeaked open. I turned.
Camilo appeared in the doorway. He wore a black cardigan and distressed jeans. His backpack matched his outfit, with a keychain of a white dove hanging from the zipper. In his hands, he held a paper bag. “You’re here.” If there was any doubt before, his knowing smile confirmed to me that he had been my messenger.
“You’re… Camilo, right?” I put away the book.
He nodded. “I’m not sure what you like, so I brought some lunch options,” he said, shaking the paper bag lightly. It was labeled Aesop’s—the name of a small business across the street from Chapel Hill. Aesop’s functioned as part café, part comic book and games shop, and part movie rentals (if their small, yet quaint, collection of VHS tapes could really be qualified as such).
“Thanks, but… I’m sorry, who exactly are you?”
“Didn’t we just go over this?” he said teasingly. “The name’s Camilo. Don’t forget it.”
“That’s not what I meant. Like… How… What do you do?” I said, not entirely sure what I was trying to ask of him.
His expression became more serious. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Is it okay if I sit?”
“Be my guest,” I said, although he had been the one to invite me, not the other way around.
He picked up another plastic chair from a stack by the entrance, seating himself across from me. The gesture came as naturally as if we sat together for lunch in the greenhouse every day, when in reality, I stuck to my own corner in the library. “Allow me to demonstrate,” he said, pointing to one of the withered experimental sunflowers.
I studied the flower. The stalk thickened, the crispy leaves grew lusher, and the petals blossomed into a bright yellow. After a moment’s pause to let the image sink in, I said, “How?”
“I create illusions.” He snapped his fingers, and the flower returned to its wilted self.
That would explain the evolving letters in my textbook. I resisted the urge to ask him how he was able to do that. I didn’t want to risk him asking me the same about my abilities. Instead, I said, “Why are you showing me this?”
“Since I found out about your powers, it only seems fair. We’re even now.”
I lingered on his words. Even. In class, he had given away the answer when Mr. Schron singled me out. And now, he trusted me with information of great consequence—a secret I never would have given up willingly. I hadn’t asked him to. If he had never said anything, I would have remained blissfully ignorant that there was anything uneven in the first place. But he had confided in me regardless. I stared at the withered sunflower, searching my mind for his motive. “What do you know about me?” I asked.
Another illusion emerged in between the flowers. A miniature version of a boy appeared, floating like a hologram. I recognized the golden blonde hair and tattered backpack as mine. I was standing in the hallway again, wearing the same cream-colored sweater from two days ago. A stream of bees emerged from my mouth and eyes. It was strange seeing myself from someone else’s perspective. I had never noticed before how I rubbed my temples after summoning the swarm.
“This is what I saw,” he said. The illusion disappeared.
“You were there?”
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“Invisible, but yes.”
The pieces were starting to fall into place. “So… Then you saw Mr. Howells.”
He nodded.
“Do you know what happened?”
“Not exactly. I was coming down the hallway when I saw… something go into one of the classrooms. It was kind of like a tiger or a lion. Maybe. I didn’t really get a good look. Did you see it?”
“No.”
“But you heard the scream.” His voice faltered, as if he had intended to say more but couldn’t find the words. It was stated less like a question and more like fact. I didn’t comment. Outside, I could hear faint cheering from the sports field. Some of the football players had taken the opportunity to practice over lunch. Life at Chapel High carried on.
I was the first to break our silence. “I’m in Mr. Howells’ class,” I finally said.
“Oh. I’m sorry,” Camilo replied. Warmth returned to his blank stare.
“He was one of the better teachers. It won’t be quite the same.” I said the words before I finished thinking through them. But it was true. While Mr. Howells wasn’t necessarily an entertaining teacher, his explanations were solid and interesting. If anything, I was more surprised to find myself confiding in Camilo. But even if I hardly knew him, he had likely been the only other witness to my teacher’s final moments.
“No one deserves… Whatever happened to him. How have you been holding up?”
I shrugged. “Trying not to think too much about it,” I said, although it was all I could think about. I shifted in my chair. “Did you see anything else?”
I was relieved when he didn’t probe any further. Instead, he carried on with his testimony, “Being invisible, I was able to get pretty close. This is going to sound weird if it didn’t already. But, when I approached, I saw a blue shimmer from the room. Then there was this crackling noise. By the time I got to the door, the thing I thought I saw was gone… You came along a little after this.” He paused. “You know the rest,” he added bleakly.
“Was it you who called the police?” I asked.
He nodded.
I mulled over what he had told me. While I hadn’t seen anything noteworthy besides Mr. Howells’ body, I could easily believe that a predator stood behind his death rather than a person. The blue light was weirder. If Camilo were telling the truth, I must have been too far away to notice it. “What do you think it was?”
“No clue, but it sure wasn’t natural. For something to disappear like that, in a closed room. I checked the windows—all shut. Ever heard of a tiger that could open and close a window?”
I shook my head. “Most of this is new territory to me.”
“Yeah…” Camilo tapped his foot.
I traced one of my bees with my gaze. She fluttered from windflower to windflower, brushing the petals with her quivering thorax. My classmate had already laid his cards on the table. While he hadn’t asked anything of me yet, I got the feeling he was being patient. I deliberated with myself how much to reveal to him. My entire life was built on secrets. Sharing them now with someone who had essentially been a stranger to me only a couple of hours ago was unthinkable. Yet, this was the first time I had talked to anyone else like me.
Camilo reached for a croissant from the paper bag. “Sorry, I’m pretty hungry. Do you want some?” He directed the bag towards me.
“Uh, sure.” I politely picked out a scone from the small selection of baked goods. “Thanks.” I held onto the scone a little too tightly. Then I braced myself. “You know, I can’t tell you how the creature disappeared, but I think I know where it went.”
“Oh?”
I pointed to my bee nestled in the florets of a blue windflower. “As you saw, I can… control bees.” As I said it out loud, I was taken off guard by the absurdity of the statement. I continued, “Insects use pheromones to communicate. It’s a sort of chemical signal that travels through the air over distances. Look,” I guided the bee. It required no motion on my part, just concentration. I placed her on Camilo’s shoulder. When he tensed up, I added, “Don’t worry, she won’t sting.”
“That’s reassuring,” he said, relaxing a little.
“Unless I wanted to.”
Camilo broke a crumb off the croissant. He placed it on the tip of his index finger. “Does bribery work?” he asked, reaching the crumb out in front of the bee.
Take it, I commanded her. She did as I said, then returned to my ear. “Congrats. She accepted your bribe.”
Camilo chuckled.
I rounded up the ten or so bees that I had allowed into the greenhouse. They flew in small loops around the air. “I asked them to search the school overnight,” I explained. “My scouts noticed a couple of things. First, when the police showed up, one person stood out from the rest. They could move unnaturally fast, and wore a bright pink suit. At first, I thought maybe it was the culprit, but that didn’t really make sense since they were just hanging around the police. Meaning, it must have been someone with powers. And I don’t know about you, but I can think of one hero operating in the Bay who moves like that…”
His expression was thoughtful. “Neon-Racer?” he said.
“I think so.”
“No way. Starlight is involved in this?”
“Possibly.”
“Are you sure?”
“About 95%.”
“That’s pretty sure.”
“Yeah.”
“It must be more serious than I thought, if they brought a hero into the investigation.”
I nodded. “But there’s more. My bees found something else.”
“What’s that?”
“Bones. Under the theater stage, it seems. I wonder if it nests there.”
“That’s perfect,” Camilo said earnestly.
“What?” The only way I could make sense of his statement was if he were being sarcastic, but I didn’t detect any sarcasm in his tone. “That’s a terrible place.” Anywhere inside a high school was a terrible place for a monster to dwell.
“No. Yes. Well.” Camilo paused. “I mean, I’m in theater.”
“Doesn’t that make it worse?”
“What I’m saying is that I can get us inside. I can borrow the keys from Grace.”
“From who?”
“The stage director.”
“Why would you need keys to the theater?” I asked, although as I posed the question, the answer occurred to me.
“So we can get in,” he replied, confirming my suspicion.
“Hang on, you want us to go there?”
“Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.” He had abandoned the half-eaten croissant. Instead, he folded his hands together. “When you found Mr. Howells, your instinct was to use your abilities. Because you wanted to know what happened to him. Correct?”
“I mean, yes. So?”
“I reacted the same way. Because if I could find out what happened to him, then maybe I would be able to help. Isn’t that how you felt?”
“Where are you going with this?”
“I think we can make a difference. We know where the monster is and what it’s capable of.”
“As in, we know how dangerous it is.”
“I won’t deny that. But we can do things Mr. Howells couldn’t. That most others can’t.” His face lit up. “Hell, you said it yourself. You discovered something even Neon-Racer missed. Maybe we aren’t anywhere near the same playing field as Starlight, but our odds aren’t terrible here.” He drummed his fingertips together, and his eyes flickered with a sort of restlessness. I couldn’t help but feel his energy carry over to me. My swarm had accomplished something a professional superhero hadn’t.
I repressed a smile. This didn’t mean that the bees could match up against whatever creature we were dealing with. “Unless there’s something you’re not telling me, all we have to offer is bugs and mirages.”
“Maybe we don’t have brute force, but we can be smart. It’s two on one, and more importantly, we have the element of surprise. How many bees do you have?”
I studied my bees where they formed figure eights in the air. The rest of the swarm shifted inside of me. I felt their tarsal claws against every inch of my tunneled limbs and hollowed organs. “More than you want to know.”
“And they all sting?”
“Yes.”
Camilo pressed his palms together, resting his chin against his thumbs. His well-defined brows knotted together.
I intercepted before he could get too carried away by whatever train of thought he had: “Hypothetically, let’s say we go. If you borrow the theater keys, won’t it draw attention to you later?”
“Not if no one knows that I’m borrowing them.”
Then it dawned on me. “Right. Invisibility.”
“Bingo.”
“But at that point, isn’t it just stealing?”
“Not with the right attitude.”
“Okay, so, we borrow”—I drew quotation marks in the air—“the keys. Then what?”
He flashed a grin. “I have an idea.”
“Enlighten me.”
Camilo stood up and set the chair aside. Even for such a casual gesture, he carried himself with a certain elegance. Another illusion emerged on the ground between us. It portrayed the school’s theater stage, except it had been scaled down to fit the limited space, like a dollhouse.
“Can anyone else see this?” I said, nodding to the illusion. Although we were alone at the moment, there was still the risk of someone else dropping by.
“Right now, it’s just you. I decide who can or can’t see my illusions.”
“Good to know,” I said. I took my first bite of my neglected scone.
“There’s a trapdoor to the stage. Above it, there are catwalks which we use for certain stunts or props.” He incorporated the catwalks into the illusion. A network of them appeared, consisting of three altogether: in the front, middle, and back. “The most natural place for the creature to come out would be through the trapdoor.” I moved one of my bees to the trapdoor to represent the creature. “If we assume it’s hiding there, we should be able to drop something on top of it from the catwalk.”
“Is there anything heavy enough to do that?”
“For A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we’re using a moon prop in some of the scenes. The thing is a fucking wrecking ball. A borderline safety hazard.” The moon appeared dangling from the catwalk. The replica was oddly realistic, and much larger than I had expected. It emitted a soft glow. “If we untie it at the right moment, we could hit the creature with it.”
“And if we miss? Or it doesn’t work?” I asked.
“We get out of there. My illusions will help, but there are some limitations. When I make a really detailed illusion, especially if I’m combining different senses, I can’t really make anything else. Unfortunately, invisibility requires all of my attention. It will only be able to affect one of us at a time. That being said, I could still make us invisible interchangeably, depending on who is closest to the creature. And your bees can distract it until we’ve made it to safety.”
“Then here’s the last problem: how do we get the creature to appear?”
“Easy.” In front of the miniature trapdoor, a piece of raw meat appeared. My bee, which had been sitting there, shrunk back at the odor. While he had claimed his illusion only targeted me, it occurred to me that the bees might be impacted as a side effect. “I’ll make an appetizing illusion to lure it out. While I work on the bait, you can stay on the catwalk, keeping overwatch. If something goes wrong, would the bees be able to attack?”
I nodded. “I can direct the swarm. I’m not sure how much they could hurt the thing, but they might be just annoying enough to nudge it back into position.”
“Good. It shouldn’t anticipate that,” he said. “What do you think?”
What Camilo suggested was something I had only dreamed of—that there could be something more to the parasites residing inside of me. While I had often thought about their potential, someone else pointing it out made it all the more tangible. Not only that, but there was an opportunity to prove it, right under my nose. I summoned the handful of free-roaming bees back to me. My ear canals tickled as they crept back into my skull and burrowed down my throat.
“I’m in.”
The school bell tolled.