by K. A. Excell
She tilted her head to the side. “You made it the business of every decent soul that’s ever lived, Liam. Now, you wanted a date so you’ll get one. You, me, and your martial focus teacher will be taking the ring tonight—Alya, if she can walk—will join us.” Her eyes flicked across the great room with an intensity that made my hair stand on end. “Castillo? You’re the aide for his martial focus class.”
The large, cold, calculating third-year stood from where he’d been having lunch at his year’s table, crossed the room, and sat in the void between the offender, Liam, and the other second years.
Hunt looked at the first year table. “Castillo’s only job is to make sure Liam can fight in the arena tonight before we turn his sorry a—” The teacher at the head of the room coughed, and the woman turned to her. “Sorry, Ms. Green—his sorry head—over to the police. I want each of you to pay attention, though. This is what happens when you attack another student. We do not train you to be monsters, and anyone who has so little self respect so as to become one is dealt with.”
I could feel the angry energy she wore like a cloak around her intensify as she strode out of the room, leaving complete silence in her wake.
I looked back at Liam, still self-assured. His anger burned deep, and there was something ugly and familiar in his eyes.
I turned back to Briggs and Smith before memories of Zach could finish rising to the surface.
“Why does she care?” I found the words coming out of my mouth before I could stop them.
Smith was still looking down at her food, so I had to lean forward to understand her words. “Why wouldn’t she care? Like she said, any decent human being has a duty to stand up for those who have been abused.”
I looked down at my empty plate. No one stood up to Zach until it was too late. He’d left his hands in my mind just as surely as he’d left them elsewhere. I touched the ring on my finger for comfort, but it was only cold metal—like a frozen needle against my skin. Still, needles were better than hands.
The bell rang, disrupting my thoughts until the data backlog cleared. By then, everyone else had cleared out. I hurried after them, only to stop as a voice cracked across the room.
I turned to find that same man who had yelled at me for being at the wrong table advancing across the room.
“Who gave you permission to run?” He demanded.
“N-no one.” I curled my hands into fists and touched the module that would clear all extraneous data.
“Then why are you doing it?”
I didn’t need the blue lines to find the error in his logic. “Technically, I was doing it. But I’m not doing it anymore. When you yelled I—”
“Well, technically you have detention. Don’t call your ride for pickup on Friday. Got it?”
I stiffened. “That’s not f—”
His eyes glinted in anticipation. “Do you want detention Saturday, too?”
This time, I stopped myself. Not having filters around this guy was just going to get me in more trouble.
“You’re already terrorizing her, Berry? Can’t you see it’s her first day?”
I looked up at the chandelier to see Tabitha Smith’s reflection coming toward us.
Berry shrugged. “First day or not, running in the halls means detention. I’m just enforcing the rules.” He glowered at her. “Got a problem with that, Smith?”
I opened my mouth to point out that ‘cafeteria’ and ‘hall’ weren’t even synonyms, but stopped as a new notification sought my attention. The first time I had corrected him, he’d given me detention. The second time, he’d threatened it. One data point and a partial weren’t enough to give a pattern, but data collection, in this case, was not its own end. Extrapolated data would do, and that graph showed that argument—whether that was offering correction or direct debate—had a direct relationship with detention.
Smith stopped even with me, then sent me a sideways glance through the curtain of her hair. “No sir. But you might want to make sure she knows what the rules are before you punish her for breaking them.” She looked up, though her eyes looked past him as she fixed him with a fake grin. “Like this! Oh, yeah. Farina, you’re not supposed to run in the halls—or, apparently, the cafeteria.”
Berry’s lips tightened. “You want detention for smart mouthing a Prefect, Smith? I can arrange that. As for Farina, it’s common sense. Halls—or cafeterias are for walking, not running.”
Common sense was, statistically, an oxymoron. But I pressed my lips shut before I could point that out, too.
“You can’t go a little easy on her? Come on, Berry. Even you’ve got to have some heart.”
“Heart’s got nothing to do with it. Now get out of here—unless you want to join her on Friday.”
Smith stiffened and started to argue again, but I raised a hand to stop her. Berry exercised what power he had because he wanted to be in control—funny how control was such an illusion. My blue lines blinked as they found the least-time solution to this particular threat. There was a silver knife on the table, only two steps out of my reach. The ropes suspending the chandeliers around the edge of the room were hidden, but not inaccessible. A precise throw of the knife could sever the rope in under zero-point-eight-six seconds with a twenty-six percent of failing. If I sprinted across the room to cut the rope, it would take three-point-seven-two seconds, but had only a three-point-two-three percent chance of failing. Berry, oblivious to everything except winning this petty argument, stood beneath a glittering, deadly light fixture that weighed at least a hundred pounds.
I considered the solution for another long moment, then dismissed it. Berry wasn’t a problem that warranted my engineering skills. I could stay an extra day at school, and be grateful for the extra time to catch up on my studies. Mother would probably be happy to spend less money on groceries for lunch, anyway.
I turned and walked away with a smile on my lips.
Chapter Five
The next class was Ballet with Ms. Kirna, in a classroom just down the hall from Mr. West’s classrooms. Briggs was clustered with some other students in the far left corner of the room, standing on some black flooring with a texture somewhere between vinyl and rubber. I started toward him as he looked up.
“Farina, get off the marley!” he hissed.
I pointed at the floor for clarification, and he nodded. Black flooring was called marley. Got it. I hurried off the marley and onto the wooden floor, only to wince as I saw the trail of dusty footprints leading across the floor.
As I considered how to erase them, another figure appeared on the floor.
“Alright, everyone, line up on the bar,” he said. Briggs and the other students hurried to obey him—which meant he must be someone in authority. The instructor for this class was named Ms. Kirna, though, so he had to be a Prefect.
When everyone was lined up next to the wooden bar that spanned the edge of the room, the Prefect looked down at the floor and deliberately traced the dusty footsteps to me. A sneer crossed his face. “You must be Farina,” he said, and stepped into the classroom, careful to remove his shoes and place them by the door before continuing onto the marley.
“Yes, sir.”
One of the kids snickered.
“I’m only going to tell you this once, got it? Stay off the dance floor if you’ve got street shoes or wrestling shoes on. Point-shoes and flats only. You savvy?”
I nodded.
“Then get over here.”
I blinked.
The marley covered the entire floor between us—there was no way to both stay off the marley and get to him.
“Take your shoes off, Farina, and get over here so we can start class.” He said the words slowly, like he was talking to a child. Not even I could miss the ire in his voice. I hurried to do as he said.
He waited a moment, watching me with predatory eyes before ba
rking out an unfamiliar word to the other students, who started bending their knees and pointing their toes at the bar.
I followed the Prefect into a room I hadn’t noticed on the other side of the dance floor.
He rooted through bins in a cabinet and tossed a pair of pink tights and a black leotard at me. I caught them before they smacked me in the face.
“You get these on before I get here or you’re late—that’s detention. Short your lunch if you have to, but I don’t want to see you here dressed in street clothes again, understand?”
I nodded, then looked up at him from beneath uncertain lashes. “Who are you?”
He scoffed. “I’m the assistant teacher, Doug Houston. Call me Doug, and I’ll hurt you. Now get those on.”
I looked around for somewhere to change, but the only place was right next to the wall where the cabinet he’d pulled the clothes out of jutted out an extra foot. Even though I was out of his direct sight, my cheeks heated while I changed. When I was covered again, I stepped out and looked back up. His face was carefully neutral, but his eyes held a quality that made me shiver. It was a hunger I’d only seen once before.
With Zachary.
Heedless of the ballet shoes I was carrying, I threw my hands up to fend off imaginary fists as Zachary’s smirking face appeared in my vision.
Houston blinked and picked the ballet flats from where they’d landed on the ground.
“Is there a problem?” he asked.
I fought through the ghost and shook my head, not trusting myself to speak. This man was dangerous—not only that, he was a Prefect. That meant he was good at hurting people, and he had the authority to get away with it. Suddenly, I wished the rest of the plasma pulser rings were on my fingers instead of hidden at home. The single ring I wore now was a reminder—not a defense.
He looked me up and down, then smirked. “That’s what I thought. Now put your hair up before I cut it off.”
I flinched and pulled up an image of some of the girls in the class with their hair twisted into a bun. I gathered up my hair and secured it with a hairband. Maybe it would stay.
The class that followed was full of bends, twists, and turns that left me half-sprawled on the marley.
“Farina, you’re off the beat!”
“Farina, get that leg turned out!
“Farina, point your toe!”
I tried to analyse everyone else’s movements, but the class moved on before I could complete any of the analysis. Even when I could fully understand a move, I couldn’t copy it well enough to make Houston happy. These motions weren’t like fighting where the move was reasonably accurate if I could hit the target with the desired limb. Here, they wanted grace—not economic movement, but economic movement that passed through some mysterious intermediates that somehow made the motion beautiful. By the end, my head pounded as badly as the days I computed the math for the plasma pulser.
Houston caught me after class with a frown on his face. When I looked at his eyes, they were silent. Silence, from a man like him, was more dangerous than anger. I couldn’t tell what he was planning.
I folded my arms over my chest and watched his center of balance. The blue lines rose to the forefront of my vision, and I pushed the pulsing pain to the back of my mind. Assistant teacher or not, this man was a threat.
“You’re awkward and slow, Farina. Your coordination is fine, but you have to pay attention to how everyone else is moving. You aren’t being attacked, you’re dancing!” He sighed. “If you need a CD player to practice, see Ms. Kirna after the Tournament.”
I nodded dumbly and watched his form until he left. Then, and only then did I lay a soothing hand on the blue lines and lay them to sleep. I checked my schedule briefly and sighed.
Biology. I could deal with biology.
I spent the entire class period locked inside my safe place, letting my headache die down. By the time the class was over, I could think again without pain. Hunt walked me back to Mr. West’s Martial classroom, then stopped me outside the door.
“After the martial period, we do a cool down and then go to Tournament. I’m going to be busy teaching that dirtbag, Liam, a lesson, so I won’t be able to check in with you until after. You going to be okay finding the tournament by yourself?”
I frowned at her and started to ask for clarification about the fight this morning, and the purpose of Tournament, but I stopped myself. My headache was about to be bad enough without extra data assimilation. I could figure it out later. I stepped into the classroom and looked around.
Castillo came up and pointed to an area off the mats where fifteen pairs of shoes were stacked. I pulled my shoes off and set them down nicely by the wall, outside of the mash of shoes and then returned to Castillo, who showed me some basic positions while the rest of the class did jumping jacks and pushups with Mr. West.
I spent the rest of the period kicking and punching with the same movements over and over again until Castillo finally nodded his satisfaction and gave me a different motion to practice. The gong rang forty minutes after the period started, and I dropped into a heap.
“Get up, Farina, we aren’t done,” Castillo said. I looked up at his eyes, but he wasn’t angry. I picked myself up off the mat and followed him and West in a series of stretches that relieved the burning in my thighs and arms for another twenty minutes. When the gong rang again, the class dropped what they were doing and filed out of the room.
I moved to copy them, but West caught my eyes through the mirror and motioned me over.
“Hold on a moment, Farina, I need to talk to you,” he said, and then spun around to face the open doorway. Hunt and another Prefect came in. The other Prefect’s face was curled into a frown, but Hunt was unreadable.
“Sir, we’ve got a message for you. It’s important,” Hunt said. She produced a letter—crumpled, but intact—from a pocket in her shorts.
West’s paled slightly—without my fixation on colors, I might not have noticed—as he scanned the letter’s contents. “Alright. In my office. Farina, we’ll talk after.”
He pulled aside one of the mirrors in the back of the room to reveal an entrance to his next door office. He gave me one more unreadable look, then disappeared behind the mirror. I scanned what little of the room I could see before the mirror-door closed and stored it for later analysis. Then I settled down to wait.
Ten minutes later, West emerged, face drawn. I tried to catch his eye to maybe see what the frown was about, but he avoided my gaze.
I clenched my jaw as I stood.
Eyes were the window to the soul—even more so for me. Yes, they were frightening but, ever since Zachary, I’d found out how useful they were. If I’d listened to what his eyes had said about him, I wouldn’t have had to hurt anyone. Since then, I’d focused on at least glancing at people’s eyes every once in a while to tell why they did and said the things they did.
And yet, I hadn’t once been able to catch Mr. West’s eyes in anything except the mirror.
It was almost like he was avoiding me?
I met his eyes through the mirror, and he offered a terse smile. “We’ll have to talk later. I’ve got a date in the ring.”
My eyes narrowed, but before I could ask for clarification, Hunt answered from behind me, “Usually Tournament is used for full-contact sparring, but today Liam,” she spat on the ground, “gets to go three rounds in the ring with me, West, and the defendant.”
There was blood in the other Prefect’s eyes, and I shivered. “Is that legal?”
Hunt laughed. It was a cold kind of humor. “He signed up for classes here. If he’s been studying, he’ll be fine. Besides, we’ll all be in full body protection. By the time we hand him over to the cops, he’ll have learned his lesson.”
I looked back at Hunt, and froze as the surroundings bled away, and there was only me, her, and pain tempered by los
s. Pain like from Zachary.
I blinked away as Hunt’s mouth formed a little ‘O’. Then her eyes hardened back into that impenetrable shield. “I’ll get this guy, Crystal. I promise that much.”
I nodded, and followed them out of the room.
Hunt made good on her promise. Liam was on the ground in the first two minutes, and both she and West aimed for his balls more times than I cared to count. By the end, he had to be carried out of the ring by the two police officers sent to retrieve him.
“You’d think they’d learn,” Tabitha Smith muttered from beside me.
I nodded. “But they don’t. Our only option is to become strong so they can’t hurt us.”
She turned, and I could tell she’d made some sort of connection—even though I couldn’t see her face. “Is that why you’re here?”
My face flushed. “I got kicked out of school for fighting. You were the only ones who would take me.”
Her eyes showed clear disbelief, but she didn’t press it any farther, and that was fine with me. Hunt knowing what happened was bad enough. She knew how it felt. Tabitha Smith had no such shadows in her eyes, and I didn’t need the whole school knowing about it.
Zachary’s face flashed behind my eyes as I stood. I wrenched myself out of the memory before it could get any worse.
There was a hand on my shoulder.
I spun and grabbed it, but it twisted out of my grasp.
“Farina, it’s just me,” Smith said. I opened my eyes all the way and traced her form.
Not Zachary.
Her chin was tucked to protect her neck, and her eyes were closed. Somehow, she was more dangerous this way.
I dropped my hands and stepped back.
After a moment, Smith relaxed, too.
“Dang, girl. Whatever it was really messed you up, huh?”
I grunted as I registered a dozen eyes staring at us.
Most of the students had already left, which meant the teachers had a clear view of what had just happened.
My stomach clenched.