Brendan nodded, making the most neutral and benign face possible. He hadn’t heard any accusations of trespassing or threats of disciplinary measures or the mention of anything having been stolen. Mr. Childes spoke entirely in generalities. If this had been his old school in New York, the police would be present to haul Brendan away in cuffs, with the teacher not even bothering to demand an explanation. Another expulsion followed by another school, all part of Brendan’s quest to attend every school for children with behavior deviancies in a fifty-mile radius of his home.
So, what was going on with this place? Was everyone on the West Coast milquetoast?
Mr. Childes stifled a yawn. His eyes looked bloodshot. “Okay, Brendan, that’s it. Go get some breakfast, and think about what we talked about.”
“I will. Mr. Childes, is everything all right?”
He adjusted his glasses. “Hmm? Oh, yes, quite so. It’s just students are having a hard time contacting their loved ones with this whole network failure, so we’ve been quite busy. This adds extra stress to everyone. It’ll all be fixed soon enough. Off you go.”
Brendan exited the office, glad he hadn’t needed any of his premeditated excuses or apologies. In Mr. Childes’s outer office, three other students waited for a fourth to finish using the landline on the secretary’s desk. Brendan hoped the line would be shorter later so he could call his mother.
He found Poser and Tina among the breakfast crowd in the student restaurant. He grabbed an apple and joined them. Poser sipped at some coffee. Tina had a waffle topped with whipped cream, berries, granola, sausage links, and purple syrup. Steak knife and fork in hand, she was turning her plate and searching for a place to dig in.
“Tina has an announcement,” Poser said. “She’s pregnant. Twins. So did you have a meeting with your counselor this morning?”
“How’d you know?” Brendan asked.
“Saw you head that way.”
“I kinda got busted sneaking into the electronics lab late last night.”
Tina put her utensils down. “Brendan! What are you thinking? You’re going to get yourself thrown out of school. Did you break anything?”
He shook his head. “No. And there was another student there in the lab. Either of you guys have a Charlotte in your class?”
Neither did.
“She was working on some project of her own. I ran into her before there, but this time security saw me and ID’d me. I also had to leave my signal booster, so it might be gone and I’ll have to start over.”
“Well that stinks,” Poser said. “Be nice to have a phone that works. Phones have been out all morning.”
“I know. My counselor seems swamped with kids not being able to contact their parents. The school still has some landlines but so many parents don’t.”
Lucille walked by with her two boys and stopped. She studied the three and made a disgusted face when she saw Tina and her plate of food. “You’re going to get fatter.”
“You’ve given me something to aspire to,” Tina said, sawing off a chunk of waffle and plowing it through the syrup and cream.
“School has a strict anti-bullying policy,” Poser said.
“I’m just looking out for a classmate’s health, Poser,” Lucille said brightly. “See you later.” With that, she walked on, her two boys falling in without comment.
“What is it you see in her, again?” Poser asked.
“It’s a girl like her that makes geometry feel relevant,” Brendan said.
Poser laughed, then said, “I don’t even know what that means.”
Tina blew an exasperated sigh. “I don’t know what that means either, but please don’t explain it. Is it possible that you two could shut up for a minute so I could eat?”
They shut up. She ate.
***
Brendan found the school day passing slower than it ever had before. The class discussions dragged on for years. A lunchtime group project for civics in which each student had to present their research on an example of citizen responsibility took a decade. The labs and tests were pocket eternities. Finally, it was time for Ms. Hayes’s sixth-period electronics class. Brendan ran for the lab.
He was one of the first inside. The entire lab was clean, the tidiest he had ever seen it. All the workbenches had their tools, components, and scraps put away, including everything he had been working on the night before. Charlotte’s parts were gone as well. Even the floors had been swept of every remainder of clipped wire and stripped piece of insulation. Was it a previous class that had been so tidy, or had the janitors and security been through? He found himself worrying about what Charlotte would say when she discovered her project had been taken or thrown out.
Ms. Hayes sat reading on a stool next to her desk, her tablet in her hand. Other students trickled in behind him.
“Hi, Ms. Hayes.”
“Hello, Mr. Garza. How are you this afternoon?”
“I’m fine. Say, would it be okay if I went into the storeroom and checked on my project?”
“You have five minutes before we start.”
He thanked her and went into to the packed back office where he had been keeping his signal booster and its components. He half expected her to call him back so she could admonish him for his late-night lab activity, but she didn’t say anything about it. Perhaps she didn’t know. He sifted through the clutter, dropping a few things as he searched, but he didn’t see it.
“Please be careful,” Ms. Hayes called.
Brendan checked every cabinet and drawer. It was all gone. It had been stolen, disassembled, or swept away with the trash.
Ms. Hayes leaned in through the door. “Time for class. Please come and sit down.”
He started to open a set of drawers he had already looked in, the contents clattering about.
“Brendan. That’s enough. Go sit.”
She closed the office door behind him. The class was all seated and looking at Brendan, except for Poser, who had his head down on his workbench and was fast asleep. Brendan plopped down next to Vlad, fuming.
“What’s going on?” Vlad whispered.
Brendan shook his head. He was too angry to speak. He forced himself to look frontward as Ms. Hayes activated a projection for the day’s unit on transistors. His hands trembled. All that work gone. And if Charlotte’s project had been removed, that would mean he had another enemy.
After a few minutes, he whispered, “I screwed up. I lost my project.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was working on it last night, but security took it.”
Vlad wore a puzzled expression. “I think you’re mistaken. It’s in our workgroup’s materials chest underneath the tool trays. I thought you put it there.”
Brendan pushed off his chair and opened the chest where his class workgroup kept their allotment of supplies for projects. He lifted the heavy top tool tray, and there it was: his signal booster, the power supply, and a completed antenna.
“I thought you must have finished it without me,” Vlad said. “Maybe you’re just running short on sleep.”
“She must have done it.”
“Who?”
From the front of the class, Ms. Hayes said, “Mr. Garza, would you please take your seat?”
He sat, and a mixture of elation and confusion brought a smile to his face.
“You’re losing your marbles, amigo,” Vlad said.
8. The Disconnected Blues
Brendan worked with Vlad on his project, and also helped out a few of the other kids in their informal after-school electronics club. What Brendan lacked in understanding of terminology he made up for with experience and instinct. He was one of the few who had taken apart larger appliances before. The others had more exposure to computers and prefabbed kits, items that were often expensive gifts from their wealthy families and that filled Brendan with mild covetousness. He’d laid his hands on some neat stuff that he had only ever seen online. The time in the lab almost made him forget about
getting his phone to work.
He gathered his signal booster and new antenna and returned it to his room. He had double checked Charlotte’s wiring and discovered it was impeccable and neat. He wanted to test it out up on the dorm roof, but too many students were about in the halls and stairs, and he didn’t want to answer any questions about what he was up to.
Charlotte had said she would meet him at the restaurant, so he headed down.
He waited for an hour and didn’t see her. Seeing the other students eating reminded him he was hungry. He got in line for food. Vlad joined him and followed him to a table, missing all the nonverbal vibes Brendan was sending to try to get him to leave.
“That is both mysterious and very sexy,” Vlad said. “If I had a girl that would finish my projects, I would feel very special. And threatened. How is it that you never got her last name? Then we could look her up a little more easily.”
“It kind of slipped my mind when we were running from the security guard.”
“So what are you going to do now with your project?”
“Tonight I’m going to see if my signal booster works,” Brendan said. Vlad waited, an eyebrow raised. “And I do plan on finding out who she is. She’s going to show up somewhere. The school isn’t that big. Everyone eats. And she’ll come back to the lab. I looked once Ms. Hayes left. Charlotte must have hidden what she was working on or taken it, but she’ll come back for the tools to finish her project.”
“That she doesn’t want your help on.”
“Correct.”
***
He gave up on Charlotte showing. He yawned. It was almost nine. Dinner service had ended and the restaurant had been cleaned. A few students lingered, talking, reading, or sipping tea or hot chocolate from the stocked beverage bar. He returned to his room.
He needed to test his project, but too many of his neighbors were still out and about in the hallway. He put his head down on his pillow and waited.
Morning literally pounded on his door. “Brendan, you up?” called Poser. Brendan didn’t believe his eyes when he saw sunlight through the window. His phone read 7:50 a.m. and confirmed no signal. He did a sniff test of his armpits and decided that he failed.
“I’ll meet you in five,” he said as he opened the door and pushed past him.
“If you take your alarm clock for granted like your other appliances, it’ll never talk to you again.”
“I don’t own any other appliances.”
“See? It’s started already.”
The bathroom and showers were vacant, most of the other students on the floor having already been through. He soaked his head under a hot jet of shower water, washing the tiredness of a restful sleep away and hoping he wouldn’t need to resort to a caffeine overdose later to be able to finally test his booster. He’d get through the day quickly enough as there was much to do. The mystery girl was out there somewhere. He needed to call his mother using the landline. And his actual schoolwork needed to be finished.
Piece of cake.
He felt optimistic, even good, as he finished getting ready, and he went with Poser to get some food before heading to class. As he was cramming a raspberry scone into his mouth and reading over his world history assignment, Poser said, “Isn’t it weird how there’s no birds on campus?”
“We’re too far from the city,” Brendan said.
“You do understand that birds live outside of cities, too?”
The class chime sounded. Brendan finished his last bite and muttered goodbye.
His elevated mood lasted until English lit.
The students were to group up and do a read-through of act five of The Tempest. Lucille and one of her boys, the one named Paul, got Brendan before he could join another group. Why Paul, a sophomore, was in a freshman English class escaped him. Lucille shanghaied another pair of students for the group.
As the teacher walked by, Lucille said in her bossy tone, “Okay. Brendan will be Prospero. I’ll be Ariel. Paul can do Gonzalo.”
The teacher gave a nod and moved on. Lucille watched him go, and when he sat to listen to the frontmost group do their reading, she looked satisfied. She swiped at her tablet, and away went the play. She turned the screen and handed it to Brendan. Brendan saw a paragraph written in Spanish.
“What’s this?”
“An assignment for my Spanish this afternoon. I need you to translate.”
He made a face and tried to hand the tablet back. “I don’t speak Spanish.”
She looked him over. Her jaw clenched. “Don’t lie.”
“I know enough to keep my aunts happy when I visit. I can’t read it, and I can’t keep up a conversation with anyone older than three.”
“I’m not asking you to write an essay. I just need to translate the paragraph.”
“Use the internet. There’s plenty of bots that will spit out a translation instantly.”
“I tried. It’s out.” She put a hand on his. Brendan noticed Paul scowl at the gesture.
He slowly pulled his hand away. “I’m sorry. I’d just be guessing. Just do your best with the dictionary. There’s got to be nineteen other people in your class that would be able to help. Can we just read through this so we get the unit credit done?”
Lucille sat frozen, staring with her piercing eyes. “This…was your second chance. You don’t get another.”
She withdrew the tablet. Paul was now smiling. The expression held joy and delivered a threat. Brendan began to feel like raw meat under the gaze of a carnivore.
The threat had its payout three seconds outside the English lit classroom door. Paul’s foot hooked Brendan’s, sending him face forward onto the tile floor. Another student moved to help him, but Paul pushed the kid away. The other students filed past and tried not to make eye contact.
“Tricky spot of floor there,” Paul said. He offered a hand. When Brendan reached for it, Paul withdrew it and snorted. Brendan got himself up and straightened his clothes. Standing at the opposite wall was Lucille, a satisfied look on her face. She looped Paul’s arm, and they went walking to their next class.
“I’m fine, really,” Brendan muttered to the other students.
His rage built uselessly as the momentum of his classes dragged him along. Lucille and her escorts ignored him in geometry. Brendan found it hard to speak to anyone, be it student or teacher. He ate lunch, tasting nothing, wishing Tina and Vlad’s yammering would mute itself. Poser wasn’t around, for which he was glad. Brendan didn’t want to be cheered up. He poked at the foul emotion in his gut like it was a loose tooth.
After lunch, Tina walked along with him towards the science building. Physics was next. She wasn’t in the class but had biology in the same building.
“Crap day?”
He nodded.
“Want to talk?”
He shrugged. Unclenching his jaw took effort. “I’ll get through it. How are you doing?”
“Oh, fine. Used the school landline and talked to my baby brother in Scottsdale. They have a hot fall, still over a hundred degrees. Everyone is stressed out by whatever is going on with the phones and internet. Everything else is, you know, the same.”
“Sometimes the same is as good as it gets.”
“Talk to your mom?”
“I was supposed to, but I overslept. I’ll get in line for the phone after school.”
“Unless your project works or our cell phones start working again.”
“Or civilization ends.”
“Or that.”
The science building had a side lobby with high glass windows and a set of ellipsis-shaped benches under a large open stairway. Lush ferns grew in round planters. Brendan had turned to head up the stairs when he found his way blocked. Lucille and both of her escorts occupied the bottom step. Her boys moved to either side of him, boxing him in.
How could he be so stupid? He had often seen her heading the same way to another class. He realized that her expression when Paul had tripped him hadn’t been one of satisfaction
but of hunger. She had an appetite for petty cruelties, and she was greedy for more.
“Hey, guys, what’s your problem?” Tina said.
She had been heading down the hallway towards her own class, but now she quickly returned. Paul thrust a hand out and pushed her backwards. Her reflexes were impressive: she didn’t fall, but dipped a leg behind her and set her bag and tablet down on the floor all in one smooth slide. Then she rose, her hands raised as if to catch a punch.
“Such gallantry,” Lucille said. “Aren’t you glad you have a girl to defend you, Cesar?”
“Don’t call me that,” Brendan said.
“Why not? It’s your name.”
Paul kept a keen eye on Tina and flinched when she took a half shuffle forward and feinted with one of her hands.
“And where did you find her?” Lucille said. “What favors does it take to get someone to guard your pathetic bod?”
“Lucille, just leave me alone.”
“I’m not doing anything, just heading to class.”
The other boy, the one named Henry, nudged Brendan and tried to dislodge the tablet in his hands. Brendan twisted away. Paul was now laughing as Tina deflected a few of his lazy swipes. He was twice her size and had inches of reach on her. If he struck her, it would take her head off. But she moved quickly, and he was unable to connect.
“Tina,” Brendan said. “Get out of here. Paul and Henry aren’t going to do anything that gets them expelled.”
“Looks like your girlfriend is the one doing the fighting,” Lucille said.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Tina said. “And there’s a no-fault clause for expulsion in a fight. After I get past your apes, I’m going to tune up your face, Lucille. It’ll get us all kicked out, but it will be oh so worth it.”
Lucille considered for a moment. Then she snapped her fingers. “Time for class.” Paul and Henry disengaged and followed her up the stairs. Tina stayed at the ready until they were gone.
Supervillain High Page 6