Bad Girl School

by Red Q. Arthur

  They all looked sad, as if they knew I was just deluding myself, but Hal went to get the first aid kit, and I loved it! Here was Reeno Dimond, bad girl extraordinaire, giving orders to the principal.

  A.B. made a show of malingering for awhile, even pitifully licking Lola’s hand when she came to make sure she hadn’t mangled him beyond repair, which was big of him, considering what he could have done.

  And me? I basked in glory. I even got called to the principal’s office. Hal started out slow. “Reeno, you did well out there. I’m going to tell you, we were all impressed. You really showed grace under pressure, which is what guts is, did you know that?”

  Guts is or guts are? I thought.

  But I grinned modestly. “Well, I’ve been around a lot of sick animals. My uncle used to have a farm where I went in the summer. But that didn’t mean I didn’t pray this morning— I’ve been around that kind of thing too. My dad’s a minister, you know.”

  “Everyone noticed how well you handled yourself with Lola, too. And Evelina says you’ve been showing a lot of progress. She feels you’re really maturing.”

  “I don’t think I can actually take any credit, Hal. The other kids set such great examples, you know? I watched them and I just, you know, kind of realized it was time to make things right. I feel good about it, I really do. I feel like I’m finally on track.”

  Oh, boy, was I full of it.

  But Hal said, “Well, we’re inclined to agree with you. The staff and I have decided to bring you up to Level Three.”

  I’d been hoping for that, but now that it was here, I really couldn’t believe it. “For real?” I blurted.

  Hal winked. “For real.”

  I jumped out of my chair and pumped my arms. “Yes! Level Three! Phone calls here I come! Can I call my dad? Now?”

  Believe it or not, Hal was really enjoying the show. You could see he liked being the good guy for a change. “No, but he can call you. I’ll tell Evelina to email him right away.”

  Pumped? I’m here to tell you! I felt so good I was sorry I’d lied about praying. And there was one other thing I was sorry about— that cheesy field goal crack. When I finally got back to my room— later that day, after lunch— A.B. was sleeping like a horse. (Some cats sleep like a kitten; not A.B.).

  He woke up blinking, a rare thing for him; he usually went for the paralyzing stare. But right now he looked so cute I reached out to stroke him. And naturally, he dodged my loving little hand. “When will the human learn? For the twentieth time, the Alpha Beast is not a pet!”

  “Sorry. You blinked. For a minute there, you looked almost like a normal kitty-cat.”

  Like he cared. “I hear congratulations are due.”

  “Yes! Level Three!” I pumped my arms again, and then it occurred to me I hadn’t been thinking about it— so how could he know?

  “Fluttermouths were here,” he explained. “They happened to mention it in between calling me Jaggy-pooh and Kitty-Baby. It seems they actually felt you deserved it— apparently having missed that merciless remark you made upon my becoming airborne.”

  “A.B., listen, I need to apologize for that. I knew you weren’t going to die— I just didn’t know you were going to hurt.”

  “Only my dignity suffered, Novice. Injury is a way of life in my line of work.”

  “You’re demoting me again?” It made me smile. “It got to you, didn’t it? The ‘field goal’ thing.”

  “Don’t be absurd. Hurt feelings are not in my repertoire.”

  “Well, all the same, I’m sorry. But it was so funny— I mean, you were so busy playing the Nutty Professor, you never even saw it coming.”

  He flicked his completely-healed tail, still sporting its unnecessary bandage. “Didn’t I?” He put his head on his paws and closed his eyes.

  Didn’t he?

  What did that mean?

  “Wait a minute. You mean you got in Lola’s way on purpose? So I could save you and they’d promote me?”

  “Congratulations, Student; let us leave it at that. By the by, do you happen to remember a thing I said out there?”

  “About fighting? Sure. You only gave me two more. Choose my battles and don’t fight if I can’t win. Tactics Five and Six.”

  “Do you have anything to add?”

  “You sound exactly like a teacher. ‘And you, Ms. Dimond— do you have anything to add?’ ”

  “Do you, Ms. Dimond?”

  “Well, yeah. I guess. I should probably pick the right time for battles too. Like, maybe not when I have my period.”

  His tail did a total flamenco dance. “That is Tactic Seven. Henceforth, you will please refrain from discussing bodily functions.”

  I laughed. I was in a great mood. “Knew that would get you.”

  “Could you focus, please? Three more points. Tactic Eight: Prepare for your battles. Understood?”

  “Too late for a black belt— but, yes. Understood.”

  “Tactic Nine: When possible, pull a hustle. Are you familiar with the concept?”

  “Beastie-boy, you are talking to the old-movie queen of the universe. I happen to have seen ‘The Hustler’ six times.” I shrugged to show him how simple it was. “You just act incompetent and the opponent underestimates you.”

  “Indeed. Particularly useful for an attractive young woman.”

  “Attractive! Aren’t we mellow today.”

  “Tactic Ten, and third most important: If you need help, call for it.”

  “Sure, back-up. Like in all the cop movies. See, one thing I never liked about Fargo, she just walked right into that nuthouse, pregnant and everything, without even calling for back-up. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Believe me, A.B., I wasn’t born yesterday. First sign of trouble, I yell.”

  “And what will you yell?”

  I stared at him. “Yell was a figure of speech. It doesn’t matter what I yell— because nobody’ll hear it but you, right?”

  “Wrong. Telepathy won’t work if we’re too far from each other. We shall have to rely on vocalization.”

  I thought about it. “How about ‘Here kitty, kitty, kitty’?” I smiled sweetly, majorly amused at myself.

  I could see he wanted to do his usual curled-tail pranceaway, but he couldn’t without blowing his cover— injured cats just don’t flounce out of rooms. I was raising my eyebrow, mocking him a little, looking right in his evil amber eyes, so I never saw it coming— he smacked me across the face with that anaconda he called a tail. Well, really! I sighed, not about to let him know how much it stung. “You win, A.B. How do you want me to call you? Holler ‘mayday’?”

  He put his head back down, closed his eyes again, and murmured, “Serviceable,” he said, “but hardly original. ‘Field goal’, I think.”

  Can you believe that? Just when I thought he had no sense of humor.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN—HISTORY LAB

  The whole rest of the day I had butterflies, waiting for my dad to call, knowing it probably wouldn’t be till night, but hoping anyhow. I even skipped the Rangers meeting, although it was Kara’s first one since the bookstorm, and sure enough, I was right.

  Evelina summoned me at nine-thirty.

  I raced to her office, sandals flapping, and grabbed the phone from her. “Dad? Dad, how are you? Dad, I miss you so much! How’s Haley and Curly? And Mom! I haven’t heard from her in weeks. I was just starting to get worried.”

  “Oh, Curly?” He sounded way too hearty. “Curly’s just great. She gets cuter every day.” He kind of paused, like somebody getting their nerve up— not sure whether to go on with the small talk, or just get to it.

  “Curly’s fine, but what? I hear a ‘but’ in there, Dad.”

  “Congratulations on Level Three, Baby. Great timing— I was going to call you anyhow.”

  My stomach turned over. “But you can only call in an emergency.”

  “Honey, there’s just no easy way to say it. I’m afraid I have some really really bad news.”

  It had to be ab
out Haley. But surely she wasn’t… she couldn’t have died, they would have called me.

  “Yesterday, Haley went to sleep and we couldn’t wake her up.”

  Oh, God, it was the worst! “She… died? Dad, are you telling me she died?”

  “No, no, of course not! We’d certainly have… I mean… let’s don’t even think about that. The doctors say it’s a coma, honey. We’re hoping she’ll come out if it.”

  I could almost hear the words he hadn’t spoken: But we’re not getting our hopes up.

  “Dad?” I could her the tears in my voice. “Dad, I need to come home!”

  “No, baby, you don’t. Haley won’t know whether you’re here or not. You need to be exactly where you are.”

  I thought about that. If Haley’s illness were really a curse, he was exactly right. And he spoke almost as if he knew it. “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “Because you really can’t do anything here. And I just have a strong feeling that where you are is where you should be. A strong intuitive feeling.”

  Intuitive. Why had he emphasized that word? “Isn’t ‘intuitive’ another word for psychic?” I asked.

  He laughed. “No, I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant I feel it in a big way.”

  “Well, Dad, let me ask you something— did you ever think I might be psychic?”

  “Are you kidding? I’ve always thought you were psychic.”

  What was this? “You did? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because…” He stopped dead; I could feel him searching for words. “Well, because your mother didn’t want to go there.”

  Of course. I brushed it off. “Well, look, Dad, I’m pretty sure I am. And those dreams I used to have— remember how vivid they were? I dreamed about you and Mom. You know what postcognition is?” I surprised myself. I was really taking charge here. “It’s when you know what’s happened in the past. I think I had a postcognitive dream about how you got engaged.”

  “Huh? What?” I don’t think I’d ever before heard my dad at a loss for words.

  “Dad, tell me something— it’s important. Why did you and Mom adopt Haley instead of just, you know, getting pregnant?”

  “Because we… because…”

  “Because Mom didn’t want to have children? Was that it? Because Haley’s illness runs in her family and…”

  “We knew it was safe to have you, Deb,” he said. “Don’t think for a minute…”

  “That isn’t where I was going with this. I know it only affects the oldest child. Listen, Dad, did it ever occur to you it could be a curse?”

  Silence. A long silence. And finally he spoke. “That’s what your mom’s relatives call it. The Family Curse. Like something in a horror movie, she always says. She doesn’t believe in it.”

  “Wow.” Even now, with her own child in a coma, she didn’t believe in it.

  “Yeah,” said Dad. It was weird how clearly I could see him, his jaw twitching a little, taking off his glasses, absentmindedly sticking the earpiece in his mouth. “What was that?” he said.

  “Nothing,” I said, but it was something. I’d had to suppress a sob. “Can I talk to Mom?”

  “Deb, got a little more bad news. Your mom’s not doing all that well. She’s pretty depressed about all this.”

  Well, surprise!

  “She doesn’t want to talk to me?” I knew she didn’t like me that much, but this made me feel really bad.

  “No, it isn’t that, honey, she doesn’t want to talk about… you know. And she knows she’d have to with you. So I called while she’s at the hospital.”

  It seemed late for that. I wasn’t sure I believed it.

  “Actually,” he said, his voice sheepish, “she’s pretty much at the hospital twenty-four seven.”

  I could imagine. My mom was so used to controlling things. It had to be the hardest thing in the world for her, a doctor and pretty much a dictator, not to be able to do a single thing for her own desperately ill child.

  “She sleeps a lot when she’s home,” Dad said. “I’m trying to get her to go on medication. I don’t… I just don’t…”

  He sounded close to tears.

  “…I just don’t know what’s going to happen if Haley… if anything happens…”

  “Dad, listen to me! I’m going to solve this. Understand me now: Haley’s going to be okay.”

  “I appreciate your trying to cheer me up, Deb, but you don’t have to be the brave one here. You’re just a kid.”

  Evelina was tapping her watch. I could finally have phone calls, but there was a twenty-minute limit. “Dad, they’re giving me the signal. I promise you I will solve this. Gotta run.”

  I hung up before he could answer, before he could say again that I couldn’t do it, I didn’t have to do it, I was too young to do it. I wanted to end on a note of finality: On a promise that had to be kept.

  I kept the tears in until I got back to my room. Thankfully, Kara was still at the Rangers meeting and A.B. was out slaying dragons for Gaia. So I could cry as hard as I wanted.

  ***

  Sometime in the night the thump of a twenty-pound feline shook the bed like a minor earthquake. I didn’t always feel the Beast land in bed, but that night I must have been sleeping very lightly.

  “A.B., I’ve been waiting for you.”

  No answer.

  “How is getting the book going to help Haley? I mean, if we don’t get it, I don’t get cursed.”

  “Novice, you are cursed. One way or the other, you’re going to do it. When we go back, it’s always going to be 1492— or whatever. It’s only when we leave that’s in question. As to how that helps Haley, I can’t say exactly. I can only say that you can’t remove a curse until you know what it is.”

  “But we do know. It’s…”

  “We do not know the specifics. As in, ‘you are cursed unless…’ ‘you are cursed until…’ ”

  I hadn’t thought of that. It was such a revelation I would have sat up in bed if I could have moved, but he pretty much had me pinned.

  “Let’s go now. Let’s go yesterday.”

  “Why the sudden urgency?”

  “My dad called. Haley’s in a coma.”

  “Ah. The situation is urgent. However, I beg you to reconsider. At the moment, you appear to be wearing pajamas decorated with pink bunnies. Is this really the way you wish to meet Cortes?”

  “Uh… probably not.”

  “Tomorrow then. Nighty-night.” He turned himself into a Fur Grenade.

  I must have been really tired. When I woke up the next morning, I was still trying to make it sink in. That this was the day we were going to get the book.

  This was it.

  But I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t worthy. It was all a fantasy, anyhow. Just something to get me through.

  A.B. was in the sink when I went to brush my teeth. “This is real, O’Neal. Three hours till blast-off.” He hopped down and skittered off.

  “Come back here,” I commanded.

  Did he listen? Ha.

  Three hours! Three centuries as far as I was concerned. Uh-uh. No could do. I couldn’t go to class and act normal. That took too much focus. It had to be now, but there was something I didn’t get, and for once I had time for breakfast before gym, which was good. A.B. hadn’t been out to the field since his unscheduled flight.

  I found him lapping milk in the dining room. “A.B., I’ve got a question. How long are we going to be gone?”

  “You’re not thinking things through, Novice. As long as it takes, of course.”

  “Fifteen minutes? Half an hour?”

  “What does it matter? Days, maybe. Months. You have something better to do?”

  “Well, meanwhile, what happens to my life? I can’t just come waltzing in here next Christmas and say, ‘Excuse me; I had an errand’.”

  “Don’t be absurd. We’ll come back a split second after we leave. We could leave right now, stay away two centuries if we like, and when we get back, for all
anyone will know, I’ll still be trying to have breakfast with a human asking silly questions. Blink-of-an-eye kind of thing.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s the beauty of time-travel— you have time on your side.”

  “Well, I’m not going on an empty stomach— can you meet me at my table?”

  He didn’t deign to answer, but I was munching granola when he sidled up.

  “A singularly appropriate day,” commented the Monster.

  “Why, A.B.? Are you into astrology?”

  “The simple fact is, you’re ready. You’ve seen the dark side.”

  “The dark side of what?”

  “Life.”

  “Oh. You mean that thing about Kara’s mom?”

  “And Julia’s. I may have mentioned that my line of work is particularly dangerous and violent. Do you happen to recall that?”

  “Sure, kitty-pie. You’re a regular pussycat bogey-man.”

  He grabbed my wrist. “Today of all days, you will take the Alpha Beast seriously.”

  “Believe me, I do.” I had cereal all over me. “I was just joking around.”

  “What I meant to say is this: you will see some things that are distinctly not pretty. The Novice you were a scant few weeks ago would have cracked under pressure. The Student you were two days ago might still have clutched. Today, my little girly-q, you are a Warrior.”

  “Who, me?” Maybe it was real, Lucille. I about fainted.

  “Yes. But one thing is as yet undetermined. We know we have to go to Cozumel, thanks to your little social group. But when, exactly, will we be arriving?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “Indeed,” he said. “When did Cortes land there?”

  I started to panic. This was the last thing I expected. “I need to hit the library.”

  “Blast-off in one hour. I shall meet you there.”

  “Uh… you want me to cut gym? I just made Level Three— they’ll bust me back.”

  “Does it occur to you that this is possibly more important?”

  I charged over to the library. I had only an hour to learn everything there was to know about what I was getting myself into, only enough time to skim, but I thought at least I had the dates and players right by the time the Beast arrived.