At that point, Kara came in. She’d walked home with Sonya and probably dropped by her room for a few minutes. “What the hell are you doing?”
I must have been staring at Kitty-Poo like he was some sort of oracle, which kind of made me feel like a dork. But her tone was so hostile I actually interrupted my conversation to throw her a zinger: “Nice to see you back to normal.”
She didn’t say another word, just grabbed a towel and headed for the bathroom. Well, later for her. Like maybe a hundred years.
A.B. dropped to the floor and assumed Cat Position Two, his favorite. “It hasn’t happened yet, Traveler. I didn’t hear you agreeing to the Assignment.”
“But I must have! I had to have time-travelled for that to have happened.”
“Time is rather a tricky thing. More a loop than a path, they say.”
“Don’t feed me that garbage. You know perfectly well…”
A vise gripped my ankle. His tail. “Do you forget to whom you speak?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I’m sorry, Your Fuzziness. Would you mind explaining what in the name of Dante’s Eighth Circle you’re freakin’ talking about?”
“Dante’s Eighth Circle! That’s your father speaking, right?”
“A.B., talk to me!”
“Actually, it’s more your conversation, I believe.”
I lay down, to let my brain settle. “Okay, let’s start from the beginning. The Assignment— the Thing— it’s about the 2012 problem, right? Like I’m supposed to single-handedly prevent the end of the world?”
He held up a paw and examined it, evidently trying to decide whether it needed cleaning. “Certainly not. Your faithful servant would be charmed to provide the brains. Also the muscle.”
I didn’t even bother remarking to myself that he was neither faithful nor anybody’s servant— he’d just have read my mind. Instead I just sighed. “I don’t really have a choice, do I? I mean Haley’s already sick— there’s already this family thing with the oldest kid that goes back generations. So I’m already cursed.”
“That’s an interesting philosophical question, Student. No one is quite sure how time travel— or the lack of it— changes history.”
Oh, hell. I must have done it. So that meant I had to do it. The question was, what was it?
“Please,” said A.B., “research this phrase: ‘Mayan Codices.’ And report tomorrow at lunch.” And then he proceeded to hop back on the bed and stretch out full length— horizontally.
When I got back from my shower, I asked the question that was nagging me most. “A.B., I don’t get it. Why would anyone want to curse me?”
“The Zunger family probably wanted to.” He paused. “Chew on it. And for Gaia’s sake, get some sleep.”
Okay, if the Zunger family wanted to curse me, what would it be for? Breaking and entering? Possibly. Stealing? Probably. Betraying a social contract— something like violating the right to expect law-abiding behavior from acquaintances? Uh… check.
Probably angry Mayans cursed people for a lot less.
So maybe A.B. wanted me to steal something. That was my forte, after all.
***
By lunch, I had my report: “Codices. The plural of ‘codex’, those books they had.”
I was sitting at the table, and he was curled up on the floor with his back to me. No one would ever have guessed what we were doing. That is, on the off-chance they guessed we could do it.
“Go on.”
“First of all, they were covered with jaguar skin.” I made my voice as threatening as possible.
“Death doesn’t frighten me, girlo.”
“Oh. I guess not.” You just couldn’t faze the creature. “Well, moving right along, they were written on a paper the Mayans made out of bark that had a special coating to make the writing show up, and they were organized in pages, like an accordion. They were also decorated with all kinds of gorgeous pictures by a very high-born class of scribes who were members of the nobility. There was even a royal librarian.”
“Spare me the sociology. The books themselves?”
“All right, all right. There are only four surviving ones. Most were burned by the Spanish.”
“And what was in them?”
“You mean in the ones that still exist? I don’t know. Regular Mayan stuff, I guess. Astronomy and pyramid-building, maybe. How to wage war and grow corn— that sort of thing.”
“Really? Did you find any mention of the last Great Cycle?”
“Huh?” He’d caught me by surprise. “What’s that?”
“The one that ends in 2012.”
“Oh. When the world’s supposed to end.” I was “chewing on it,” as he might have said, but I must have looked a little nervous.
“Now, now, no need to panic. We have almost a year to figure it out— and to prepare for it, if need be. Of course, by then I’ll be gone— I’m almost at the end of my own Great Cycle. But don’t worry, you won’t miss me.”
“If the world ends, I won’t be here to miss you.” My brain was working overtime. “Hey, A.B., wait a minute! If it wasn’t in one of the books we have, it’s got to be in another. They must have written it down. What it’s all about, I mean. Why they ended the calendar there.”
“Really?” He was messing with my head, but I didn’t see it yet.
“Yeah. In one of those books. In a codex.” I sighed. “But the Spaniards probably burned it.”
He had that canary-feathers look again, that smug-as-a-slug expression that made me want to swing him around by his hateful monkey tail. Why’s he so proud of himself? I wondered. And then it hit me— what the whole Mayan history lesson was all about. “That’s The Assignment, isn’t it?”
He just sat there, blinking.
“We’re going after the codex, right? The one that has to be there— about why they think the world ends next year— and how it ends.” The importance of it was dawning on me. “Because if we knew how, maybe we could stop it. Like, maybe it’s a meteorite, or a Death Star and we could, like, just colonize the moon or something.”
“The Alpha Beast works for Gaia, not your benighted species.”
Suddenly I realized how small I was thinking. “Oh, right. Yeah, save the world— not just… uh, us. We’re more likely to mess it up. Hey, maybe it’s a nuclear explosion! Maybe we’d have to have world peace, because…”
“Does it occur to you that you’re babbling?”
“That’s it, right, A.B.? We’re gonna time-travel back to Mayan times and cop the thing.”
He flicked his tail, “Oh, I don’t know. Your Spanish is really quite passable. And your shoplifting skills were never in doubt. Perhaps we can simply liberate it from the conquerors.”
“The conquerors?”
“Cortes and that lot.”
“Huh? You know that won’t work! Because of the curse. Sonya saw a Mayan curse me.”
“Human, think! Cortes was one man— who else was around then? In the New World?”
“Uh… Mayans?”
He didn’t answer. But sure, they were there, maybe even including one who was extremely angry. With me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN—TACTICS OF MAGICAL COMBAT
I was confused. “Hold it, A.B. Mind if we backtrack a minute? Just because the Mayans thought the world ends in 2012—”
“Might have thought that.”
“Just because they might have thought that, how do we know it really means anything?”
“That’s the point, Soldier— I thought you had it. We don’t know if it matters. But if it does, can we really afford to ignore it?”
“Uh. Not if you’re a Planet Guardian, I guess.”
“Right-a-mento. Now, first of all— how do we find out if there even is a book?”
“Wait a minute. You’re the Alpha Beast. You mean you don’t know?”
His shoulders came forward in what looked exactly like a kitty shrug. Guess he’d been talking to humans so long he was starting to pick up our body language.
“The Alpha Beast is not psychic.”
And then another shoe dropped. “But the Ozone Rangers are. Is that your point? You want me to get my friends to figure this out for you?”
“That could help.” His voice was as smug as if he’d won a contest. “The time has come to unveil my…”
“…exalted presence.”
“I was going to say, ‘my identity’.”
“Hoo boy, that’s going to be an uphill sell.”
“I have no doubt you will find a way, Soldier. Shall we repair to the athletic field? With the rest of the school?”
Oh, yeah. Time for the punishment I’d brought on the whole school. AKA Study Hall with the Alpha Beast. Talk about your captive audience.
As we walked, he talked. “Shall we begin your magic lessons?”
“Huh? Magic lessons? You mean, for the Thing? I didn’t know I had to know magic.”
“Magical combat, student. I believe I’ve already mentioned that.
I sighed. “I can hardly contain my light-fingered little self.” I was being sarcastic, but actually I was kind of excited. Maybe real witches did more than burn incense and chant.
“All that’s perfectly good,” the Beast said. (I’d forgotten I had no secrets from him.) “Would you care to hazard a guess as to why they chant and burn incense?”
“Probably not.”
“It’s quite simple. All magic is focus; or rather is achieved through focus. Those things improve the focus.”
“Oh, crud. I seemed to have misplaced my Nag Champa.”
We were having this perfectly civil conversation, and all of a sudden the Beast went crazy. For the first time since I called him “kitty cat”, he used the Guardian Voice, the one that melted your toenails. “FOCUS, SOLDIER!” he roared. “FOCUS NOW, OR YOUR TOUR OF DUTY IS CANCELLED!”
“I’m focusing; I’m focusing.” I was focusing like a maniac.
“This is the Simple Secret of Magic: ‘As above, so below’.”
“Huh? You already said that. Sonya said it again last night.”
The creature flicked his tail, not his shrug flick, his impatient flick. It made me nervous.
“What do you think it means?”
I couldn’t think. I was too nervous.
“Simply put, it means the mundane is a blueprint for the magical; or vice versa.”
“Gee, that clears it up.”
“Focus, soldier! Remember what I said before— about magic being energy?”
I did, vaguely.
“If you change what you might call the smaller picture, you can use that energy to change the divine, if you will. The larger picture. Listen, Novice—”
“Hey. It’s ‘Soldier’.”
“I shall use the terms interchangeably according to your progress.”
I was stung, but I didn’t let him know it.
“Listen,” he continued. “Do you know the old light bulb joke— the one that inquires how many therapists it takes to change a light bulb?”
“Sure. The answer’s ‘One, but the light bulb has to really want to change’.”
“Well, recast it. How many witches does it take? That is, if the light bulb’s a thousand miles away?” He didn’t give me time to think, “Never mind. Here’s the answer: One, but she has to really want the light bulb to change.”
“I don’t get it. It seems more like she’d have to know how to do it.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. She would. But since she’s going to do it by using energy, she’s got to use an enormous amount of energy.”
“Ah. Focus. Like what we do in the Rangers meetings.”
“Correctarini. Even the candle is a focusing device. So focus first, then will. Magical will. Our witch will do what it takes to change that light bulb; she will do anything to change it.”
I thought, What’s your point, puddytat? And realized too late he’d know I was thinking it.
“My point, human, is you better start changing what’s available to change.”
Uh-oh. Should have known he was going there. “My attitude, you mean? Hey, I have changed it. Haven’t you noticed?”
“Chew on it, Soldier. Work with available materials. That’s the Fourth Tactic of Combat, by the way. And a perfect illustration of the Simple Secret.”
“Huh?”
“Combat exists on the mundane plane— ‘below,’ if you will. Yet the same tactic applies on the magical.”
“Wouldn’t that be ‘As below, so above’?”
“The Simple Secret is always expressed in the reverse.”
He pranced daintily off the field, leaving me still walking around and around, working off my punishment with the rest of the school. What happened to the days when they just made you write “I will not kick the principal in the nuts” a hundred times?
Okay, I wasn’t focusing. What on earth did he mean by available materials? I didn’t have any that I knew of— they wouldn’t let me have any.
But maybe I would soon. Maybe Cooper really would bring a phone to the Rangers’ meeting that night. I’d call Manny Diaz exactly as advertised. And then I’d call my family and after that maybe Jace and Morgan.
Jace and Morgan? Huh? Did I really want to speak to them? Oddly, I couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for it. Somehow, my previous life seemed so… mundane, as the Beast would say. I liked Carlos so much better. And Sonya was really growing on me. Even Julia, who might look like a mallrat, but look at the stuff she could do.
The only problem was the person from whom hostility radiated like the hideous color of her aura, never mind that I’d saved her life.
The one I shared a room with.
***
Cooper not only came to the meeting without the phone, but also without the computer. And with a kind of lame explanation: “I could only get it for two days.”
“Well, what about the phone?”
“I already gave the guy all my contraband.”
I was curious. “What kind of contraband was it?”
“The best kind, Pinkhead. Lincolns and Jacksons.”
Oh. Money. If I’d known I’d needed it I bet I could have smuggled some in too. I had to hand it to him.
“Oh, never mind.” I could fingerton a phone. It was what I did. “Everyone knows what I’m here for, right?”
Everyone shook their heads except Carlos, which made me think what a strange little group we had going. Except for Kara and me, it was like we were friends, like we were becoming more bonded every day, but we hardly knew a thing about each other.
“I’m like, a master thief. I can get us a phone. I don’t know why we never thought of it before.”
Kara’s notebook suddenly rose above the table and sailed towards my nose. I ducked, but didn’t make it. It swiped the top of my head.
“Crap, Kara! What the hell did I ever do to you?”
Silence. Not only on the part of Kara, but all around. Appalled silence.
“Okay, I’ll get the phone and I’ll make the call, but I’ve got a price.”
“Sure you do,” Cooper jeered.
“Tonight’s meeting is going to be all about me.”
“Isn’t it always? Even when it’s not?” Since we’d gotten the curse off him that one brief time, I’d started seeing Cooper very differently. If you looked at his eyes when he said stuff like that, they just looked sad, like something so much smaller was trapped in that huge cloud of energy. Something fine, something good. Or maybe they were just attractive eyes.
I ignored him.
“Why should we do that?” Julia asked.
“Because I’m getting the phone and I’m making the call. And because I need something for myself. And also because I need something for someone else. Something really important, that may affect us all.”
“Not may, Novice,” the Beast intoned. “Does.” He stood up and stretched in Cat Position Four, Yoga Kitty, his front feet out like a pair of oars, his big yellow butt up in the air.
“A
ll right,” Julia said. “That qualifies as new business. What do you want?”
“I’d rather go into trance first.” That was so Kara might be calm enough to refrain from throwing things.
Julia brought out the candle.
When we were deep into our trance, she turned the meeting over to me. “I have an enemy,” I said. “Not the person who cursed me. Someone my own age. I need to know how to solve the problem.”
The minute I’d said the words, I felt a huge rush of malevolent energy from Kara’s direction. Carlos, who was sitting next to me said, “Woo! Did anyone else feel that?”
No one answered.
And once I gave myself up to the trance, I wished I hadn’t. After a few moments, I asked people to open their eyes, but I didn’t bring us out of the focus and I didn’t bring up our roots. I had the feeling we were going to need them.
“Look, I’m sorry I started this; there were things I didn’t know.” I glanced at Kara, who had shrunk down into her chair and even, it seemed, shrunk within her skin. She looked like some tiny, withered vegetable; something you’d see at Von’s and pass right over.
“Wait a minute,” Julia said. “This is important.” She glanced at Kara. “You okay?”
No answer.
“Anyone else get that this is about Kara?”
No one answered. But it was clear that everyone had and no one wanted to talk about it. I was trying to get up the nerve to do it myself when the first book flew. It came off one of the shelves and hauled itself like a rocket in the direction of the table, catching the Beast squarely in the ribcage.
He yowled like a jaguar, but either Kara was unaffected or couldn’t stop herself. The next one caught Cooper, who yowled like the Beast himself, and then it was a snowstorm of books, all flying in all directions, all of us scrambling to keep from getting hit, no one succeeding. But not for nothing did we live in earthquake country. We seemed to make a collective decision to do what we’d do if the ground started shaking.
As one, we pushed our chairs back and dove under the table, an act that had its own set of complications. For one thing, the chairs crashed with an even louder racket than the flying books were making. We were in imminent danger of being discovered.
Bad Girl School Page 11