Riot Girls: Seven Books With Girls Who Don't Need A Hero
Page 72
Scott tightened his grip on his wrist as though willing himself to hold his ground, to not care if they spotted him.
But when Creed’s face turned in his direction, Scott dropped his pizza. He scrambled to rescue it from the sandy ground, but managed only to knock over his grape soda, which promptly fizzed away. He left everything where it fell, found one of his pack straps, and slung it over his shoulder.
His knees jimmied like loose hinges, but he didn’t stop until he reached his fifth period class — honors trigonometry — fifteen minutes before it was scheduled to begin. He took a seat in the rear corner of the empty classroom, the front of his shirt spotted with sweat, his lungs wheezing for air.
7
THE START OF seventh period found Janis speed walking down A-wing, scanning the room numbers above the doors for her final class. She’d gotten turned around and started her search on C-wing, only realizing her mistake when she showed her schedule to a hall monitor and he pointed her in the right direction.
And English was the one class she’d actually been looking forward to. Well, she’d also been looking forward to P.E. until Coach “Two F’s” murdered any and all hope that the class might actually be fun. So she didn’t get her hopes up now even though she enjoyed reading almost as much as she loved sports. She had actually gotten into 1984, creepy though it was. A world in which the government watched everything, controlled everything, all the way down to the thoughts in your head.
Turns out it’s big business.
She broke into a jog, notebooks braced to her chest. First day or not, she felt the pulse-pounding dread of being the only one wandering the hallways after the final bell. And with that thought, an image of a barren beach came to her mind. The dream last night? Room A-14. She’d have to think about it later.
Janis stepped past the threshold and stopped. She’d expected to find the entire classroom seated and silent, the teacher suspending her lecture for the latecomer. Instead, students stood around the rear of the room, backpacks slung over shoulders, books still in hand. Janis followed their bemused gazes to the chalkboard, where in great big letters a message read DO NOT SIT!
The first two words were underlined twice for emphasis.
Mrs. Fern — the teacher Margaret’s friends had said was weird — was nowhere to be seen. Janis scanned faces, disappointed to find another class without any of her friends. That was the thing about taking almost all advanced placement courses. During registration, the guidance counselors had advised freshmen to take no more than one AP course their first year, two tops. Five was considered loony tunes.
But it wasn’t as if she had a choice. Going all the way back to elementary school, her father made sure she was in the highest level of every subject — Margaret, too. He had the teachers give them extra work when he thought they were finishing their homework too quickly (Janis learned to slow way down); signed them up for intelligence camps each summer; and starting in the sixth grade, he enrolled them in an after-school program at the Center for Foreign Language Study until both could speak German and Russian reasonably well. “They’re diplomatic languages,” he explained whenever Janis would complain about having to go — as though their being diplomatic languages were reason enough. Her father would ignore her grumbles that none of her other friends had to learn even one “diplomatic language,” much less two.
Janis was surprised to spot one of those former friends in the English classroom. Amy Pavoni. She stood near the bookcase in a tight circle with two other girls, flipping her bouffant of hair from side to side. In matching blue prep-school outfits and berets, the three were all but declaring their little clique closed for the day, if not the school year. It was just as well. Janis couldn’t stand them. Beside Amy was Autumn, a long, lean clothing model, and Alicia, an aspiring actress with Phoebe Cates eyes. All three had hair the color of dark chocolate. The “A-Mazings,” they had started calling themselves in middle school. Janis could think of a name far more fitting that also began with an A and a hyphen.
Janis gave a small wave when Amy glanced over, regretting it even as it was happening. Amy’s response was to look her up and down and then decide she wasn’t there. She pressed closer to her group and whispered something. A second later, Alicia and Autumn turned and made similar assessments, Alicia rolling her eyes.
Janis lived one neighborhood over from Amy, and the two of them had been best friends throughout elementary school. They had even held a joint birthday party at the Skating Palace in fourth grade. But in sixth grade, Amy joined the Teen Board at the mall while Janis channeled her after-school energies into softball and soccer. They were still friendly, still stopped and spoke in the halls from time to time — until Amy fell in with the other two. Not long after, Janis found a note in her locker:
Softball is for lesbians.
It wasn’t signed, but it was Amy’s handwriting (never mind that she’d played softball herself once). Amy wouldn’t acknowledge her anymore, not even with a nod of her head.
Janis pressed her lips together. It seemed little had changed.
Beyond the A’s, Janis was dismayed to discover Star again. She was perched on the horizontal bookcase like one of the skeletal ravens depicted on her shoes. She hadn’t spoken another word the rest of typing class — not about her sister, not about anything — but just stared straight ahead with vacant eyes. Maybe she was a couple olives short of a pizza. Whatever the case, Janis decided that sitting beside her in one class was more than charitable.
She sidled away until she had a tall student between them. She was preparing to peek back, to see if Star had seen her, when the tall student spoke.
“H-hi, Janis.”
Janis raised her gaze and then stared a moment, recognizing and not recognizing the bespectacled face and distressed head of brown hair. Her gaze fell to his crumpled blue shirt, then returned to his glasses, which went crooked when he smiled. And now it clicked. He lived up the street from her, though she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him. Last school year, maybe? It was hard to say. He had turned into one of those quiet types who were easy to miss. But whenever it had been, he was much taller now.
“Scott?” she asked to be sure.
He made a choked sound and coughed into his fist, then pushed up his glasses and opened his mouth to try again.
The closet door inside the classroom flew open. Janis spun around with the other students. A woman who looked to be in her sixties sprang into the room, a wave of silver hair following her. Off to Janis’s left, the A’s screamed. The woman skidded to a stop at the teacher’s desk, her skirt of multi-colored patches billowing out, and shot her gaze from the columns of empty desks to the students at the rear of the room. She adjusted her glasses from the sides, magnifying her eyes. Then she stood back and grinned.
“Well, drat! I was sure I’d catch one of you at a desk.”
She turned and wiped the DO NOT SIT! message away with an eraser, then brushed her hands together and wheeled toward the classroom again. Her owl eyes blinked twice before closing. She stood there straight, chin lifted, silent. Behind Janis, a couple of titters arose. Mrs. Fern brought a long finger to her lips. The titters broke off.
“Is there a Mr. Dougherty here?”
A block-shaped boy to Janis’s right peered to each side as he inched forward. “Present,” he said.
“Oh, hush with the present. This isn’t a roll call. Let’s see… Dougherty, a variant of Doherty, probably. Irish. Of course it would have originally been O Dochartaigh or something close.” The globes of her shuttered eyes moved back and forth as if she read all of this from the inside of her eyelids. “Unfortunately, the name means ‘obstructive.’ Are you an obstructive sort, Mr. Dougherty?”
“No, ma’am,” he answered.
“Well, we can’t take any chances. It’s there in your name after all. And quit it with the ma’am. I’ll start looking for my mother, and she’s ten years buried. Chop-chop! To the head of the class with you.”
“Obstructive and disrespectful, I see,” Mrs. Fern remarked.
Dougherty jumped, but so did most of the rest of the classroom. She couldn’t have seen anything. Her magnified eyelids hadn’t parted, not even in the slightest. The back of Dougherty’s neck broke out in red splotches, and he began to stammer, but Mrs. Fern held her palm out for silence. No one laughed this time. Her eyes were reading the inside of her lids again.
“Miss Pavoni?”
“Presen — I mean, here.” Amy stepped primly from her clan.
“Is that an Italian name?”
“Yes, I’m Italian on my father’s side. My grandfather arrived on Ellis Island, New York in 1934 when he was twelve…”
Janis tensed her jaw. To anyone they deemed beneath them — which was almost everyone — Amy and her friends were dismissive and cruel. And still they were awarded Good Citizenship awards by hoodwinking their teachers with the same saccharine-speak that Amy was spooning out now.
“…The immigration service held him there because there was a tuberculosis outbreak and—”
“Do you know the Italian word for peacock?”
Amy scratched her elbow, her cheeks beginning to flush. “Well, I’m not sure exactly, but the Italian word for bird is—”
“It’s pavone, Miss Pavoni — with an e instead of an i. But pronounced almost the same. Pavone. Pavoni. Peacock. It was first used as a nickname for a proud person. Someone who thought too much of herself. Now, I’m willing to bet that the quality has winnowed over the generations since being ascribed to your family, if not disappeared altogether. But a bet is never a sure thing. How about this desk here, far from the windows where your reflection in the glass could pose a distraction.”
When Janis snort-laughed into her hand, she thought she saw the corner of Mrs. Fern’s lips turn up slightly. Amy glared at Janis and stomped to her seat, the façade gone. She glanced over her shoulder at her friends, sensing perhaps that she was not going to be sitting with them.
Amy would have been right. For the next thirty minutes, Mrs. Fern divined qualities from the origins of the students’ names and seated them accordingly. Alicia went to the back of the classroom (Joiner was an occupational surname for a carpenter, and Mrs. Fern wanted a good vantage for Alicia to monitor the state of the wooden desks). And Autumn was given a window seat (because Warren was Germanic for “guard,” and Autumn was to cry out at the first approach of anyone suspicious or untoward). Both of them had huffed and rolled their eyes and later tried to exchange a note before Mrs. Fern — still with her eyes sealed — plucked the message away, disappearing it into an unseen pocket in her skirt.
It was the most unusual seating system Janis had ever witnessed — and also the most entertaining. Finally, she was one of only two students left standing.
“Graystone,” Mrs. Fern said.
“Yes?” Janis’s stomach quivered.
“Nothing too revelatory about that name. Nothing too much to glean. English in origin. Self-explanatory, really. And yet I sense there’s something more to you.” She stood silently for a moment. “And your first name, Miss Graystone, is…?”
“Janis.”
The twin globes of Mrs. Fern’s eyes seemed to swell beneath her lids. “Ah, yes. Now we have something to work with. Janis, a derivative of Jane, perhaps, but also a variation of Janus, who was a Roman god. A god of two faces.”
At this, Amy sniggered from her desk.
“But not two-faced in the sense of duplicity, oh no,” Mrs. Fern continued. “Janus is a powerful god, a diviner. A god of doorways. Think of Janu-ary. One face looking to the past. The other peering ahead, to the future. But we speak not just of doorways in the sense of time. No, there is also the doorway between here and there.”
Mrs. Fern’s head bobbed slowly. Janis had been anticipating having her name explained, but now she became uncomfortably warm. She curled her toes inside her white Keds, alternating feet.
“The doorway between this world and another. Yes, another. One not quite seen, perhaps?” When her eyes opened, it felt to Janis as if they were poised to swallow her. “Isn’t that right, Miss Graystone?”
But Janis couldn’t make a sound because she remembered why she had felt protective toward Margaret at lunch. She remembered what had happened the night before. The dream, the experience…
In a torrent of horrifying images, she remembered it all.
“This desk in the very middle of the classroom will suit a Janis quite perfectly, I would think.”
But Janis did not go to the desk Mrs. Fern was opening her arm toward. She turned from the classroom and fled.
8
MR. SHINE STOOD before Scott, chuckling and holding out a quarter. “Ain’t much magic to making her jump. Jus’ a little diligence. A little patience.” His brown eyes flashed sky blue as he snapped his fingers. The quarter changed from tails to heads. “Go on and try for you’self.”
Scott accepted the quarter from Mr. Shine, whose eyes had settled to brown again, and snapped it between his own fingers.
The quarter disappeared.
“Not bad, young blood. Not bad at all,” Mr. Shine said. “Course, it ain’t gonna happen overnight, but look at you!”
When Scott looked down, he was wearing a full-body uniform, dark blue except for what appeared to be a pair of Speedos and boots, both yellow. Above a broad red belt, abdominal muscles showed beneath the uniform’s fabric in interlocking columns. He was no longer Scott Spruel, he realized, but his favorite comic book character: Scott Summers of the X-Men.
Smiling, Scott began to feel for his cyclopean visor.
Brakes cawed, and Scott jerked awake to find the school bus approaching his stop. After disembarking, he stood a moment squinting into the heat, watching the bus rumble away. He turned to the bush beside the Pattersons’ garage door, the one he’d hidden behind that morning. Maybe it was because of the dream, or because he’d made it through his first day of high school intact, but in the light of midafternoon, everything appeared more promising.
Scott crossed the street, then ran the rest of the block home, rejuvenated, his arms and legs fueled by hope. One of Scott’s hopes was that if the FBI hadn’t come down on his head, it was because they didn’t have enough evidence or didn’t consider his crimes criminal enough. There were still no Crown Victorias in his yard, anyway. Scott let himself in the front door using the key kept on the string around his neck. He dropped his backpack in the hallway and, without breaking stride, headed toward his room, J.R. yipping circles around his feet.
The solution, Scott told himself, was to leave his equipment in the storage room in the garage and give his extracurricular activities a rest for a while, take a hacking hiatus — a long one if need be.
But standing inside his doorway, Scott could see that was going to be easier said than done. His brain still harbored a compulsion to beeline to his computer desk, flip on his equipment, and launch into his latest hack, the behavioral groove well established and deep. Scott leaned his arms on the back of his office chair and stared down at his naked desk. There would be no more navigating the networks, no head-splitting challenges, no fist-pumping victories. He was out of “The Game,” as some hackers called it. At least until he was no longer a person of interest.
You need Wayne.
Scott picked up the cordless phone and punched his number. The exchange and suffix pulsed out — a pause a few milliseconds too long — then a ring. With one hand, Scott ushered J.R. from the room, letting him keep the stick of pizza crust he’d foraged from beneath the bed, and closed the door. On the eighth ring, Scott hung up. Either Wayne had divined it was him, or he wasn’t home yet.
Scott scrubbed a hand over his face and drew up his blinds. Light flooded the bedroom, shining over stacks of boxes where plastic
comic book bags peeked out, over D&D manuals, modules, and metal figurines crowding his lone bookshelf, over model spaceships dangling from vents and lining the windowsills, and over the mess that was the rest of his room. Scott frowned in thought. Something seemed out of place, and it wasn’t that the walls were bare from his having yanked down the hand-drawn Bell schematics the night before.
Then it hit him.
The room belonged to somebody barely out of elementary school, a child. So much of his attention the last three years had focused on Ma Bell, ARPANet, D&D, and comic books that he had neglected the fact that he was growing up. Today, he’d been the tallest in almost all of his classes. (His P.E. teacher had even asked if he would be trying out for ninth grade basketball — now that was a laugh.) But nothing in his room reflected that growth. And after the revelation at lunchtime that he was among a more mature, more accepting breed of student, he didn’t want to remain in his childhood any longer. He didn’t want to hide in his bedroom behind his computer. He wanted to belong.
Especially after his encounter with Janis.
Scott?
He drew a Glad Bag from the box his mother had set beside his trashcan (she had almost smiled when she said the trashcan was the one thing in his room that was actually clean). He whipped the trash bag open and pushed the scatter of RC Cola cans into its mouth. At the start of the day, he had imagined himself dropping into bed upon returning home and zonking out until eight or nine o’clock that night. But now that he was home, he found himself incapable of sitting still, much less nodding off. Because with the memory of Janis still swimming through his thoughts, he believed he could do this now, that he could remake himself. That he could belong.
Now tails, now heads.
Scott?