And so, for the third time in two days, and the second time in just over thirty minutes, I stepped into the belly of the beast. Hopefully, I thought, it would be the last time.
“Miss Fitzwilliam, Miss…ter Scrivens?” the principal greeted us, his pen in hand and his bushy gray mustache twitching with an aborted smile or a frown. “Please, close the door and have a seat.”
It was a novel feeling, being upset by being misgendered while also fighting to not whoop with triumph. Mr. Williams was elucidating! I had wound back time to give myself a chance to preempt him elucidating that I was my own twin, and it had worked! As if that weren’t enough, I was also stuck worrying about my safety loop, the program I had written last iteration to protect myself from any forced confessions about ‘Ervin’ or being a thaumaturge. With Jaeden in the room, I now needed to account for them, all while staying on top of guiding Mr. Williams’ elucidation.
Jaeden took the seat on the left, so I took the remaining one while I checked the time on my tablet. 2:59 PM. The final bell would be ringing at 3:16, which meant I had roughly seventeen minutes to sort out this situation. Knowing I had a limited window for the elucidation, I switched to the TTS app first, hurrying to type a response to Mr. Williams, but Jaeden still beat me to it.
“Miss Scrivens,” they insisted. They did not look thrilled by the twice over misgendering. “Not Mister, Miss. And for the umpteenth time, I’m just Jaeden…”
Had Jaeden corrected Mr. Williams like that last time? It seemed like elucidation tended towards explanations that made sense to that particular person, and with how ancient he was, he probably had no idea what it meant to be trans. An extra sibling must have made more sense on a fundamental level to the principal than a trans student.
And that was the crux of how I would likely have to handle this, as much as I didn’t want to. I would like nothing more than to abuse elucidation to convince everyone I had always been a girl, and if Mr. Williams couldn’t be convinced Ervin had never existed, then I would have to change tactics. Whether I was correct that he was an unwitting thaumaturge only mattered if, as Roslyn had implied, being Aware made elucidation weaker. But if I could convince him Ervin had never existed… Well, that was infinitely more preferable, and that meant I had to try, no matter how difficult it would be to manage that without lying.
Before things could go off the rails, I ran my own response. “Sir,” my tablet lilted, “I know you have me written down as ‘Ervin,’ but I’m ‘Chanel.’ I’m a girl.”
“Miss… Scrivens…?” he mumbled, his face beginning to more visibly pinch into a frown, though he didn’t have the glassy-eyed, confused look I had come to expect when people were elucidating. He looked like I had handed him a bowl of mixed orange juice and milk and a glass of cereal to drink, as if I had given him a series of elements that made perfect sense together, just not in the order I had presented them. He said nothing for a long moment, consternated and confused, then turned to get something from a filing cabinet behind him.
While he was momentarily preoccupied by my opening salvo, I quickly pulled up the safety loop in The Coder. The ReverseTime part was fine, but I had to edit the while-loop to account for Jaeden ASAP.
“I don’t understand,” he muttered, seemingly to himself more than either of us. There was an unmistakable edge of panic to the words, a worry that was oddly disproportionate to the situation, but I couldn’t afford to pay attention to that right then, my focus almost entirely on editing the code. Still, I couldn’t help but swear in the privacy of my head when he produced my file in mere seconds. He was not making this easy!
“How could I have the wrong name? The wrong sex?” he continued, flipping through the thin manila folder, the stack of paper inside no thicker than my finger was wide. “No, this— I only have one file for a Scrivens who is an active student, and the birth certificate for that student is right here and very clearly for a Mr. Ervin Scrivens!”
I needed more time to finish! I needed—
“Are you being serious right now?” Jaeden demanded, on the edge of their seat in frustration. They gestured at me, hand sweeping up and down. “What do you trust more, a piece of paper or your own two eyes?”
—Jaeden to delay him. Not exactly how I wished she would have done it, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Also, Jaeden either did not understand the significance of Mr. Williams’ office being nearly buried in paperwork, or else they had far more faith in his ability to care about more than what was accounted for by paper and ink.
“She says she’s a girl, she’s presenting as a girl… Guess what, she’s a girl!”
“My powers of observation are quite intact, Miss Fitzwilliam,” Mr. Williams retorted, more than a little unimpressed as I put the finishing touches on the while-loop. He tapped the copy of my birth certificate with his pen, eyes on me as he did. “My point is solely, and in its entirety, that I have no paperwork for Miss Scrivens here. Only for her twin, Mr. Ervin Scrivens.”
My heart dropped. I had taken too long, and he’d elucidated I was my own twin again. Worse yet, he had done it in front of Jaeden, who thought—
“Twin?” Jaeden said, befuddled. “What are you— You think she’s her own twin??”
No. No, I had to fix this. I checked the time: 3:02. I switched to The Coder, preparing to reverse only to pause when Mr. Williams pulled a paper from one of the piles on his desk and set it down on top of my file on the span of desk between us. It was the list, the ledger of names he said he makes annually, and a moment later, he indicated a spot on it with his pen. Even upside down, I could recognize ‘Ervin Scrivens,’ right beside ‘Morgan Scrivens’ and ‘Lynn Scrivens née Fenwick.’
“Every year I write the names of each of my students,” Mr. Williams began to explain, but I wasn’t listening any longer. The moment I had seen that paper, a plan had begun to crystallize, and I only needed to make a few minor adjustments to the code that had sent the five of us back twenty minutes, adjusting it down to seven instead. I had the changes complete in under a minute, and when I checked the time, it was 3:04. Three minutes at most, then I would have to reverse, or I wouldn’t go back far enough to stop his flawed elucidation.
I don’t know what either Mr. Williams or Jaeden thought was happening when I leaned forward and plopped my tablet on top of the pile of paper, but I doubt either of them expected me to take the lot and run.
“Wh—! Miss Scrivens!” Mr. Williams bellowed as I flung his office door wide open, sprinting back into the main office. Truth be told, I had not definitively seen a shredder on the way into the office on either iteration, but there was simply no way they didn’t have one, right? The gigantic copying machine was obvious, as was Mrs. Croft’s computer, but nothing — zilch — nada. What office didn’t have a shredder?
The office of James E. Meckle High School, apparently.
“Miss Scrivens!”
The secretary, Mrs. Croft, had already risen to her feet in mild concern when I had burst from the principal’s office, but that selfsame concern rose from mere worry to true alarm when Mr. Williams thundered my name loud enough that mere drywall and paint were no impediment. I half expected him to charge after me like a bull bearing down on some poor idiot in Spain, and maybe he might have but for Jaeden emerging from his office first. They yanked the door shut in their wake and, with the door knob clenched tight between both hands, they planted their feet on either side of the door frame where the wood met the cheap, flimsy carpet lining the office.
“Hell yeah!” Jaeden whooped, eyes alight and teeth bared in the sort of feral smile I had only ever read about in books, never seen on an actual person’s face in real life. “Be gay, do crime, ‘Nel! Go! Go!”
The door to Mr. Williams’ office jerked impotently, the principal hidden behind it having failed to tug it open. That was apparently what Mrs. Croft needed to be shocked out of her inaction, and as she scuttled around her own desk as swiftly as her heels would allow, I bolted for the exit. I caught just a hint of disbelieving Craig in the corner of my eye as I flew through the door into the hallway and, after a brief moment of disorientation as I tried to remember where the bathrooms were, I took off like a bat out of hell.
“What are you doing?!” Mrs. Croft screeched from behind me. I braved a glance over my shoulder and saw the older woman had paused to pull off her heels. Her thick hose weren’t going to do her any favors on the waxed, tile floor, but it was likely better than the all too likely chance she might twist her ankle giving chase otherwise. “Get back here this instant!”
Had she really expected that to work, I wondered, as I tore down the hall without so much as a hint of hesitation, even as I checked the time on my tablet. I watched the time roll over from 3:05 to 3:06, and with a muttered curse, I hurtled into the mercifully empty girls’ bathroom. I all but threw myself into the first stall and didn’t check the time; I either had enough time or didn’t, and I was about to find out which. Tablet already crammed under my arm, I pulled the papers from the manila folder, tore them in half, then tore them in half again.
Dropping half in the toilet, I flushed as I heard Mrs. Croft sweep into the bathroom and nearly collide with the enormous, 40-some-odd gallon trash can just inside the door. There was no time to wait for the tank to refill, so tempting fate, I grabbed hold of the divider wall and swung myself around in an arc straight into the second stall as my pursuer closed the gap. I chucked the remaining paper into the bowl and flushed as Mrs. Croft slid into place, blocking the way out with her dress suit askew, hose running from running, and winded to the point she was heaving in great lungfuls of it.
“No… where… to…!”
‘Run.’
----------------------------------------
The world lurched, and the sensation of going from standing to sitting was no less disorientating than it had been to do the reverse. I jerked in my chair, like I had nearly fallen asleep while sitting upright, and Jaeden started in their chair as well.
“I don’t… understand?” Mr. Williams was in the middle of saying, finishing on a confused note. He shook his head, throwing a look equal parts perplexed and suspicious over his shoulder for a moment. He shook his head again, threw one more ‘I know you did this but I don’t know how’ look back at me, and turned back to the filing cabinet drawer he had been rifling through at the back of his office. “I don’t understand… Where is it…?”
I had been more than a bit out of breath in the bathroom from my all out sprint, but while some part of my brain insisted I should be gasping for air, the rest of my body felt perfectly fine. The dissonance was jarring, but I put it aside as best I could for the moment, to focus on guiding Mr. Williams’ elucidation. The rest of the world was marching on with or without us, and that meant I needed to do everything in my power to keep things moving the direction I wanted.
I couldn’t remember exactly what had been said right before the moment we had reversed to, but I didn’t have to recall the precise words to remember the thrust of the conversation. Switching to TTS, I smashed the button for, “Hi, my name is Chanel Scrivens.”
“Yes, I— I see that, but if I could just find your paper—”
I made a quick, simple edit to the message and pressed the button to play it twice. “My name is Chanel Scrivens. My name is Chanel Scrivens.”
In the corner of my eye, Jaeden was smiling. It was scarcely a shadow of the wild-eyed one from earlier (Later?), but it was still nearly all teeth, the edges of their lip beginning to curl back in obvious enjoyment. Without missing a beat, they added their agreement to my insistence, “People are more than paper and ink! Letters and numbers on a page don’t breathe, don’t think, don’t feel!”
“Of— of course they are,” Mr. Williams blustered, his search losing steam as the futility of it settled in. Turning back to us, evidently unsettled, he added, “But there are rules and regulations that I am obligated to uphold! Paperwork I must have for a student to be registered…”
Jaeden opened their mouth to press the point, so I stood, silently cutting them off and drawing the attention of the room. I took a second to put the finishing touches on my message then played, “You agree that I’m a registered student though, right? You met with my Mom and me about accommodations because I’m nonspeaking now.”
That drew Mr. Williams up short, his scowl softening into a considering frown. “Yes. Yes of course, it was just— ah, Monday, was it not?”
I tried to nod my head, unthinking, and felt the loss of control grip me. Unable to stop myself, I shook my head and watched helplessly as my fingers started typing up a TTS message.
“It wasn’t? I thought…” Mr Williams began, looking unsure himself now.
“Actually,” my tablet announced, “yesterday was Thursday because of a time loop.”
----------------------------------------
Being reversed thirty seconds wasn’t nearly as bad as twenty minutes or even seven, but it was jarring all the same. My relief buoyed me through it, my foresight to have a while loop running having come in clutch to save the day.
“—I’m a registered student though, right? You met with my Mom and me about accommodations because I’m nonspeaking now,” my tablet lilted, the reversal having thrown us back to it mid-message.
Once again, Mr. Williams’ worry deflated a bit. Perhaps a bit more than before, as he blinked heavily through the disorientation of the reversal. “Yes, that’s… Yes, I believe that was… Monday?”
This time I very carefully did not answer his question. Instead, I held up a finger for a moment to ensure he and Jaeden knew I wanted to speak then began quickly typing up an alternative response. “Then can you accept for the moment that I am Chanel Scrivens and you will find my paperwork eventually?”
That edged dangerously close to a lie, but my conviction that I would be replacing the flushed paperwork for Ervin with paperwork for Chanel—for me—was apparently enough to let it slide past my Price unaffected. I didn’t stop my sigh of relief in time, but it seemed Mr. Williams and Jaeden took it as being just a normal sigh. And I was very ready to be done with this whole situation. Perhaps Mr. Williams felt much the same, if I were to judge by him slumping back into his large chair. His waistcoat was certainly grateful for the reprieve, no matter how defeated the principal himself looked.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Yes, I suppose that’s rather reasonable. I apologize, children. I can’t recall a single time in thirty years when I’ve lost paperwork, and I find myself… out of sorts.” He cleared his throat, rallying himself, much to his poor, stretched and abused waistcoat. “But that is no excuse. It will not happen again, I assure you.”
I carefully contained the urge to whoop and cheer, if not my sigh of relief. I had done it. I had found a way around the issue of Mr. Williams’, hopefully unwitting, thaumaturgy while also ensuring he still thought I was cisgender. That meant, to the best of my knowledge, that only five people—not counting myself—knew that I was trans. Dani, Roslyn, and Haven, all of whom knew because they were also aware that I was a thaumaturge, and Jaeden and Nico, who weren’t going to judge me for it and could probably be convinced that I don’t like to talk about it. Once Jaeden confessed to attacking Craig, the only loose end I would have to tie up was creating actual paperwork for my identity as Chanel, which I could hopefully work a miracle for if all else failed.
And right on cue, Mr. Williams continued, “Moving onto the reason why I summoned the two of you here. Miss Fitzwilliam, I confess that I do not understand Mister Stark’s actions with regards to Miss Scrivens, as she has every right to use the appropriate locker room. However, he has made a serious allegation that must be addressed. Did you punch him in the jaw and then kick him in his—” He paused to clear his throat again, looking away with a grimace. “—nether region?”
I’m still not exactly sure what caught me off guard more. Jaeden’s immediate, near deadpan answer of, “Absolutely and unequivocally, no,” which did not match up with what Mr. Williams’ claim in the previous iteration that they had confessed… Or that the principal accepted that answer with nothing more than a raised eyebrow and nod, as if he had expected their firm denial of culpability, before turning to me with an expectant look.
I was caught completely flatfooted. On some level, I had relaxed once the issue of Mr. Williams’ elucidating me as my own twin had been resolved. I had taken for granted that Mr. Williams had been telling the truth and presumed I was safe, and my presumption had immediately turned around and bit me.
“Miss Scrivens?” Mr. Williams gently coaxed when I failed to respond by gesture or tablet. “Did you witness Miss Fitzwilliam assault Mr. Stark?”
What could I do? I wanted to lie, to defend Jaeden like they had defended me by saying Craig was making things up, but I shied away from even thinking about that, lest my Price interpret my desire as intent. Saying nothing was as good as telling the truth, and it went without saying that I did not want to tell the truth.
“Well, Miss Scrivens?”
Jaeden hadn’t just defended me, they had unknowingly given voice to a part of me I didn’t want to admit existed. To the Chanel who had figured out she was trans years ago and wanted to scream the truth from the rooftops. Who had been forced to hold it all in, to learn to hide how she felt so Dad wouldn’t find out. Who had been subsisting on scavenging the lost, feminine effects of her classmates. Who had been dying a slow death of starvation in the dark until a miracle had finally set her free.
I numbly lifted my tablet, praying for inspiration to strike, for an answer to come to me. But I had nothing. I had no answer that wasn’t the truth. I had wanted nothing more than to punch Craig in his stupid face for daring to make me into a public spectacle… but the urge to hide and cower had been so much stronger. I was no different from a dog trapped in a kennel for years, too afraid to leave once the door was finally left open. Jaeden had done for me what I couldn’t, and I couldn’t repay them by having their back too.
In the corner of my eye, Jaeden’s crossed arms tightened. A crack in their mask of indifference; they might as well have been howling at my betrayal.
When I didn’t begin typing, Mr. Williams eventually said, “Well, I must confess, Miss Scrivens, I had feared you might lie on Miss Fitzwilliam’s behalf. It would have been better if you had told the truth, of course, but no answer is better than a false one. I already know what occurred in any event.”
The god awful creeaak of his chair as he turned to his ancient computer peripherals would have left my teeth screaming at me, if they hadn’t already been. He double-clicked something and muttered, “Wait, that’s not it… How do I close…? Right, right, I think it was…” Despite being the only one between Jaeden and me who could actually see the monitor between the towers of paper, I still had no idea what he was doing as he fumbled about for several long seconds. Eventually he managed to pull up a new window, and after a bit more fussing around, the window filled with something that made my blood run cold.
“We have it all on camera,” Mr. Williams said, the somewhat grainy picture of the hall outside the gym and locker rooms still clear enough to show what had happened. “No audio, I’m afraid, but it is more than clear enough what you did, Ms. Fitzwilliam. I do not care what Mr. Stark said to you or what he may have done to provoke you. There is never an excuse for violence.”
How had I failed to notice there were cameras in the halls? How many more had I missed? Were there any watching the hallway outside the office? If there were some outside the gym, then it made sense to me that they would have them outside the office as well, and that meant they almost certainly had video of me running through the halls with Mrs. Croft hot on my heels, her own heels in hand. If the camera had a clear view of who entered and left the bathroom, then it would be obvious to anyone who viewed that footage that we had entered and never left.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” Mr. Williams asked, fixing Jaeden with a stern look, ignorant to the ramping intensity of my worries.
Jaeden didn’t even hesitate. “Some things,” they drawled, pointedly looking away from me, “are worth doing, no matter the price.”
The last bell rang, the tumultuous din a gavel punctuating Jaeden’s judgment of me. Cheeks flushed and tablet hugged to my chest, I looked away as well. It was everything I could do to not start crying. I hadn’t asked Jaeden to step in, hadn’t asked them to hurt Craig like that, but I had wanted—needed—help, and I had turned the other way when they needed my help back. All because I couldn’t lie. I hadn’t ever felt like such a failure as keenly as I did at that moment.
Not yet.
What I did next was neither smart nor clever. It was stupidity in the extreme. It was also not an act of selflessness, like what I imagine Jaeden felt when they stepped between a bully and the poor trans girl who couldn’t muster what little voice she had to defend herself. No, while there was certainly a part of me that did it for Jaeden’s sake, I cannot deny it was almost entirely to soothe the wound my failure had left in my heart.
I had told myself there were only three options. Tell the truth, lie and be forced by my Price to say the truth, or say nothing, which was as good as having told the truth. An impossible problem with no answer. Except there was a fourth option, one I had failed to see because when I should have been focused on repaying Jaeden, I had gotten caught up in trying to solve my problems at no cost to myself.
The world around us lurched as I ran my code from earlier again, throwing us back seven minutes.
I should have remembered that sometimes, you just have to pay the price.
“—Miss Fitzwilliam assault…” Mr. Williams said, trailing off for a moment, blinking. “Sorry, did you witness her assault Mr. Stark?”
I typed out a message in TTS but didn’t play it yet. I stood, stepped around my chair, and opened the door.
“Miss Scrivens?”
I don’t know whether Craig had left when the bell rang and been brought back by my thaumaturgy or not, but what mattered in the end was that he was now right where I expected him to be, in the seats outside the principal’s office. I walked over to Craig, and in clear line of sight of Principal Williams, Jaeden, and even Mrs. Croft, I reared back my fist and hooked it right into his cheek.
In the second of shocked silence that followed, I pressed play. “I witnessed me assaulting Craig.”
----------------------------------------
While Jaeden had hurt Craig far more than I had, they at least had the mitigating factor that they had been standing up to bullying in their favor. I was far more audacious in the grand scheme of things; it made sense I was suspended for three days while they got off with only a day. One does not just punch another student’s face in full view of the principal in the main office without provocation and not expect to get a commensurate punishment.
Mrs. Croft called mine and Jaeden’s parents, and if the gleam in her eye was any indication, she took great pleasure in informing my mother how I had, “Appallingly attacked another student for no reason whatsoever.”
There was absolutely no trace of Mr. Williams’ jovial, boisterousness from yesterday as he tore into me for what I had done, one step shy of outright shouting. “Do you hear me, Miss Scrivens?! I don’t know what possessed you that you thought attacking another student like that was in any way acceptable, but I had better never hear of it again, or your parents and I will be having a frank discussion regarding the possibility of expulsion!”
More than once I debated reversing everything for the again. It was very tempting. If I hadn’t caught Jaeden’s eyes with my own at one point mid-lecture, I might have genuinely considered it. Respect with a healthy dash of confusion had replaced the quiet contempt from the iteration where I had said and done nothing. Well worth the trade.
Jaeden’s mother arrived first and had clearly come straight from work, judging by the server’s apron tied around her waist. Her hair was a sandy blond, but it was so overrun by streaks of premature gray that it may have been more gray than blond. The lot of it was pulled up into a frizzy bun on her crown, a fitting accompaniment to her frazzled energy.
“Jaeden Emery Fitzwilliam,” were the first words out of her mouth. It was immediately evident that Jaeden had come by their hint of twang honestly. “What were you thinkin’?”
That might have been the only similarity between the two of them. The two of them were almost a study in contrasts. Jaeden’s mother had pale hair and skin and a thin, drawn face, while Jaeden was darker and stockier. Their mother had a frayed disposition that couldn’t have been more different from their child’s wild and carefree energy. While Jaeden’s mother had hair long enough for a bun, Jaeden’s shaggy, undercut hair was only barely long enough to be pulled up into a short little tail. Even their heights were different, I noticed, when Jaeden stood from the chair where they had been waiting beside me and proved to be a half head taller than their mother.
“That somebody needed a swift kick in the balls,” Jaeden drawled without an ounce of hesitation. “And wouldn’tcha know it, Craig was right there.”
Jaeden’s mother closed her eyes and very visibly counted to three in her head, silently mouthing along. When she opened her eyes again, she turned her attention fully to Mr. Williams, who had risen from his chair and moved into the office to greet her. “Principal Williams. I am, just, so sorry.”
“Hello, Kyla. Let us just hope this year goes better than last year,” he replied, giving Jaeden a sharp look, “this inauspicious start notwithstanding.”
She didn’t seem to have a good response to that, so she turned back to Jaeden and told them, “C’mon now, git out to the car. I’ve got a shift to go finish, and you’ll be helpin’ with the dishes to make this in’nerruption up to mah boss.”
Jaeden followed obligingly as their mother swept out of the office, and just before they slipped out the door, they shot me a wink and a jaunty wave. Though I appreciated the final acknowledgment that we were parting on good terms, the gesture prompted yet another lecture from Mr. Williams.
“I know the start of the school year has been difficult with the abrupt onset of your handicap, Miss Scrivens, but don’t let that send you down the wrong path.” He fixed me with a stern look, but it was tempered, no longer as smoldering as it had been a few minutes ago. “I may not be able to find your records at this moment, but I distinctly recall you were the only student in your grade to get a perfect score on your English MCAP. I am being hard on you because violence cannot be tolerated in this school but also because I do not want to see you squander your potential to be someone great. Do you understand?”
I refused to meet his eyes, but I did nod, slow and unsure. I knew I had aced my exam, but I hadn’t realized I was the only student that had. I did not appreciate the condescension, especially regarding the loss of my voice, but he had given me some food for thought about school. I had almost forgotten with the hectic end of the day, not to mention all the looping, but Ms. Rose had noticed my inattention earlier, and that was a class I absolutely wanted to do well in. Reading was magical (no, not like that) and ordinarily a daily constant for me, so when I had discovered I could double up on English by taking Creative Writing? I was thrilled and signed up immediately.
I had jumped into learning thaumaturgy only out of the necessity at first, needing to learn how to break the daily loop. Using thaumaturgy to transition… that hadn’t been my intent today. Down the line? Almost certainly. The only thing that had ever held me back was my fear of how Mom and Dad (and to a lesser extent, Booker) would react, so discovering there was a magical solution that could let me transition without alienating my Mom or setting off my Dad, well, it had only been a matter of time. But having the choice of timing taken from me that morning had been the capstone to a very, very long week. I was looking forward to taking a step back and focusing on schoolwork and reading.
And there was one thing, maybe two, standing between me and refocusing on what I cared about the most.
I rose to my feet, stretching my legs after sitting for so long. Mr. Williams, who had been just about to return to his office, eyed me with suspicion, his overgrown mustache twitching as he frowned.
“Where are you going?” he asked. “Your parents aren’t here yet.”
It didn’t take me long to type my response. “To the bathroom.”
I’d had plenty of teachers in elementary school who were excessively controlling of who could go to the bathroom and when during class. One teacher in particular had been especially awful, to the point that one girl had wet herself trying to hold her bladder because the harpy wouldn’t let her go. Mr. Williams, however, did not give me the same vibe, and after a few seconds of hesitation to consider my perfectly reasonable request, he acquiesced.
“Very well. There is a girls’ restroom just down the hall if you take a right out of the office.” He started towards the exit as well. “It’s after school hours, so I’m afraid I will need to watch you from the door.”
I gave him my best, ‘excuse you?’ look, clutching my tablet to my chest and turning slightly away from him. I had hoped to elicit more of a reaction from him, but while he caught my meaning, he merely raised an unimpressed eyebrow. It seemed three decades of service as a school administrator had inundated him against everything except the most outlandish. To his credit, I doubt that even with all that time under his belt, he had ever encountered a thaumaturge. Or maybe he had, but certainly not a time looper who had flushed her school record down the toilet.
“From this door, Miss Scrivens. As I said, it is after hours. Students not otherwise engaged in an approved after-school activity must be chaperoned. I can see the bathroom entrance from here.”
I hadn’t truly thought he had been expressing anything untoward, but I likewise hadn’t been able to resist the opportunity when it was presented on a platter like that. Without further delay, I stepped past him into the hallway, stretching my arms and back as I did to give myself the chance to look around as best I could without being obvious. I didn’t exactly have to look hard.
I had said I was going to the bathroom, which was true. The reason why I was going, however, I had purposefully left unspecified.
I didn’t exactly have to look hard. I spotted a camera right away, angled so as to capture video of everyone entering through the front doors across the hallway from the main office. It was (and still is) honestly a bit embarrassing that I had managed to miss seeing them. Yes, I had only been to two days of school at JEM so far, but the camera was hardly hidden. The only justification I can give is they were obvious if one was looking for them, but perhaps not quite as obvious otherwise.
That camera couldn’t see the bathroom, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t another that did. The bathroom was right at the junction of two hallways, and sure enough, I noticed another camera off to my right as I passed into the bathroom, its field of view running almost perpendicular to the bathroom door.
If I could speak, I would have sworn under my breath. So in addition to procuring official paperwork for ‘Chanel Scrivens,’ I also needed to figure out what to do about whatever camera footage existed of my flight from the secretary into the bathroom earlier. It was a stark reminder that no matter how easily I could fool people with my thaumaturgy, some things were beyond my limits.
As it turned out, I did need to use the bathroom. I had for a couple of hours, truth be told, but I was a bundle of nerves about using the proper facilities in a public place, so had been hoping to hold it in until I got home and could go in private. Trouble was, stepping into the bathroom had prompted my body to insist, now that I wasn’t fleeing from someone like last time. No one was inside to see my private little freakout, thank God, so I took as deep a breath as I could manage without bursting at the seams and ducked into a stall to flush something other than paperwork.
It… was fine. It went fine. Which probably seems silly and obvious to you, but I’m not sure I can properly convey how overwhelmingly distressed I was by what had, prior to that day, been something I wouldn’t have thought twice about beyond, ‘I need to use the bathroom.’ Honestly, it was probably very good that my first time using the public bathroom as me was without other girls around, who might notice just how fast my heart was thundering in my chest.
I thought my heart would get a break once I had washed my hands and left the bathroom, but it wasn’t to be. I thought Mom was who would be picking me up from school, but when I stepped back out into the hall, it wasn’t just Mr. Williams waiting for me by the office.
It was my Dad.