by Wen Spencer
They gave identical inquiring looks to their teachers.
“She’s Louise?” Mr. Howe asked pointing to the correct twin.
Miss Hamilton paused a moment before answering. “Yes, that’s Louise.”
He picked up two cards and wrote “Louise” and taped it to her. The other went on Jillian with her name printed out. “Okay, let’s roll.”
* * *
The biggest hurdle to making the magic generator was Mr. Kessler. For computer literacy classes he came to their classroom, but the technology room attached to the art room was his official domain. Louise was upset with herself that she’d insulted him the day before. She knew that they would need the printers; she shouldn’t have lost her temper. Considering how he treated them before Louise snapped at him, he probably would have blocked any attempt to use the printer even without her standing up to him. Now, it was almost guaranteed that he would try and deny them access to the technology annex.
The twins had debated how to get around Mr. Kessler. Stealth was no longer an option. In retrospect, even if they started the printing anonymously, odds were he would have killed the print job long before it came to the end. Because of the long run time, they needed hours of uninterrupted access to the printer that only the play allowed them.
Since stealth wasn’t an option, they would have to use what they had.
After the class was engaged in building the one massive Styrofoam Marooner’s Rock and the three Darlings’ beds, Jillian took Zahara and ambushed Miss Gray with innocently worded questions about the mermaid costumes in terms of strategically placed seashells. Within minutes, Miss Hamilton was dragged into the whispered discussion of possibly scandalous wardrobe versus theater traditions. With another two teachers occupied, Louise was free to corner Mr. Howe and ask him for help with the printer in the annex.
“I don’t know anything about that equipment. You should ask Mr. Kessler for help. He’s in the room right now.”
“He picks on us.” Louise was glad she could be truthful about it. “I don’t know why, but he doesn’t like us. He teases us in front of the whole class.”
Mr. Howe’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Let’s go see Mr. Kessler.”
She couldn’t read his tone. Aware that he towered above her, she led the way to the annex. Did Mr. Howe believe her? Did he think she was making it up? Was she going to be able to use Mr. Howe to counter Mr. Kessler or were the men going to join together to create an adult wall of stupidity?
Mr. Kessler sat at his desk. He looked up sharply as Louise entered. “This equipment is for big kids, shrimp, shoo.”
Louise took a deep breath and clung tight to her courage. “I need to use the 3D printer in here.”
“There’s one in the art room for you squirts.” He focused on closing up the windows on his desktop.
“I need the advanced model for our joint class play. The art room one only prints at a hundred micron resolution.”
“No.” He glanced up and visibly flinched at Mr. Howe at her back. “Bill? Oh, I didn’t see you. Look, my stuff is not toys. I won’t let the ninth grade kids touch my printer because they don’t have the programming skills yet.”
“It’s not your printer, Mr. Kessler; it’s the school’s printer.”
“I know how to program it.” Louise held her tablet tight to her chest, afraid he’d try to take it and erase her work. “I made sure to run my job on a simulator to double-check my work.”
Mr. Kessler stood up and paced a moment behind his desk. “Okay. Fine.” He stormed to the 3D printer. “It’s mine in that I have to deal with all the hassles of getting it replaced if it’s broken.”
“It’s a printer for a high school. If it’s that delicate, it shouldn’t be here.” Mr. Howe said. “And if it’s here, my kids have a right to it.”
Louise linked her tablet to the printer. She had really hoped that she could print the magic generator but not with both men focused so intently on her. She carefully loaded the program to print the holographic projectors. After double-checking she had everything set up, she started the machine. The printer hummed and the scent of chemicals tainted the air. Otherwise, it barely seemed like the machine was working.
As she fled the room, she heard Mr. Howe growl softly. “You seem to have lost sight that these are little kids, Kevin. You are here to teach, not to casually insult them, and you don’t make them a target by singling them out. If I hear about you picking on any of the kids in my grade, or the school for that matter, I will do my best to see to it you no longer work here. I may even feel it necessary to give you a more personal understanding of the effects of being bullied. Hands-on, so to speak. I trust my position in this matter is clear.”
* * *
Louise was not sure if Mr. Howe had been serious, but Mr. Kessler seemed to think he was. He avoided her and Mr. Howe for the next few days. She wasn’t sure if that meant he’d peacefully allow them access to the printers. Half expecting him to sabotage the print runs, she did the two hologram projectors first. Only when they finished successfully did she feel confident on attempting to print the magic generator.
While everyone was working attaching the leaves to the first umbrella trees, she slipped away to the technical annex and programmed in the last job.
“This is the last one?” Iggy made her jump by suddenly showing up beside her.
She nodded, not trusting her voice to answer. She focused on making sure everything was set correctly before pressing the start button.
Iggy perched on the edge of the nearest art table. “You don’t like people paying attention to you, do you?”
“No.” She glanced toward the art room and discovered that all the teachers were focused on the rest of the class dueling with the newly made swords. It was the first time she’d ever been alone with a boy and it made her vaguely uncomfortable even though Iggy had been acting like they were friends.
“Most people actually don’t like being in the spotlight.” Iggy swung his legs back and forth, probably unaware that it made him look very much a little boy. He was, though, the oldest kid in both fifth grade classes. “Sometimes they find ways to keep people from noticing them. Little things. Like not smiling so much, not looking people in the eye. It’s so little that they don’t always realize they’re doing it.”
Was he implying that she wasn’t meeting people’s gaze? Certainly, considering everything she’d been doing lately, she had been trying not to draw attention to herself. Had he just caught her at stealing printer time? He probably didn’t understand the programming, as it was years above what they were doing in class. She closed the window just in case.
“The problem is that those little things work too well. People start to ignore you. But because you’re not totally aware of what you’re doing, you start imagining that there’s a good reason that they don’t look at you. You think you’re ugly and awkward and all the horrible reasons why people wouldn’t want to look at you.”
“I don’t…” And then she paused, as her breath caught in her chest with the realization that she did. Embarrassment burned up her face. He knew how she felt, like he’d found it written someplace and read all her secrets. “I don’t think I’m ugly.”
“Just not as cute as your sister?”
She ducked her head so he couldn’t see her blinking. Crying in school; only kindergarteners did that.
“Your sister is shy too.”
“Jillian?” Louise snorted with disbelief. Jillian loved people watching her.
“She doesn’t like people looking at her but if she can become someone else, have a part she can act, then she doesn’t mind them watching because they’re not really looking at her.”
“That’s silly.”
“You don’t like acting because you don’t like becoming someone you’re not. That’s why you’re fine with being the stage manager.”
“How do you know? You barely know us. I bet, from behind, you couldn’t even tell us apart.”
“I think
I could. Not a week ago, no, but now, yeah. Up to a week ago, you two were like some masked wrestling tag team. The villain-type that always cheat by being in the ring at the same time.”
“You watch pro wrestling? You know that’s fake?”
“It’s theater. And yes, I watch it with my dad. I think he’s worried about me growing up with so many sisters, like I might be permanently warped by Barbie dolls and Disney Princesses.”
“He’s afraid you might be gay.”
“I’m not! But, yes, in a nutshell, he’s worried I’ll get to like pink too much or something under the pressure…” He trailed off, blushing red. “My oldest sister. When she’s home and she’s alone, she’s really beautiful. But as soon as she knows someone is watching, she does all she can to make herself invisible. I didn’t notice, not for a long time. I don’t know when it went from being shy to something else. I saw the cuts sometimes on her arms, but I didn’t understand what they meant.”
Something quietly awful had happened to Iggy’s oldest sister. The details were carefully hidden away, but it involved an ambulance outside the school late in the afternoon and her entire class going through counseling the following weeks.
“I’m not like that.”
“I know you’re not.” He kicked at the table leg. “You’re smart enough to figure it out. If you make yourself invisible, then people can’t see how beautiful you are.”
“You—you think I’m beautiful?”
His eyes went wide and he blushed red. He hadn’t meant it. He slid down off the table, suddenly focusing hard on his shoes. She looked away, her throat suddenly seeming small and raw.
He started to flee but he paused by the door. “I—I think you’re like my sister.” He stammered without turning around to look at her. “All alone, you’re beautiful. And I wish someone had been able to convince my sister of that when she was younger. It’s okay to be shy, but by trying to hide, you might start to hurt yourself without even realizing it.”
15: CROWD SOURCING
Jillian was being Peter Pan when the bell rang announcing the end of last period. She was standing on one of the art room tables, practicing lines of the first scene with Elle as Wendy. Louise paused at the doorway, wondering if Iggy was right, that Jillian could only stand on the table, bigger than life, because at that moment, she was Peter and not Jillian.
Zahara shook her head at the lines. “I’m just saying, if he showed up in some girl’s bedroom in Queens, she’s not going to be all ‘boy, why are you crying.’ She’d be either hitting him with pepper spray or calling 911.”
“It’s a fantasy!” Elle cried. “What part of fairies and pixie dust are you missing? It’s not operating on our reality.”
“Obviously, the Darlings just moved from some little town in England to New York City.” Giselle held up one sheets of the backdrop graffiti that would be seen through the nursery window. “One of their parents has been assigned a menial government job at the British Embassy. Probably their father; he’s the government type. Their mother is either a daycare aide or works at a Build-A-Bear or something like that.”
“We’ve already changed the play to the point of breaking!” Elle waved her copy of the script. “It’s a classic. It’s like rewriting Shakespeare.”
“People are rewriting Shakespeare all the time,” Zahara said. “And making them newly arrived from some farm town kills the whole ‘not in Kansas’ angle we’re going for with the sets! Our audience will relate more to Wendy if she’s just a little freaked out about having some mental case show up in her bedroom.”
“Maybe Wendy is a mental case too.” Mason was looking pointedly at Elle. “Or maybe she’s retarded.”
“Mason!” Ms. Hamilton pointed at him and gave him “the look” that she used to control anyone that strayed over the line. As he ducked his head meekly, Ms. Hamilton waved Jillian down off the table. “School is over, it’s time for all of us to go home. We will discuss making changes to the script tomorrow.”
“Next week we will also be working on choreographing the fight scenes.” Mr. Howe got a cheer. He cut it short by whistling sharply. “Only people who email back signed permission slips this week will be allowed to participate. If your parents don’t reply to the email, you will be given a non-fighting role. And we will be checking against signatures on file, since the chances that one of your parents will sue the hell out of us is too high.”
Jillian had hopped down off the table and hurried over to Louise. Her eyes were full of questions that she couldn’t ask in front of everyone. Louise nodded to the most obvious one; the print job was started. They wouldn’t find out until tomorrow night if the generator worked and only if they managed to get it home unseen. Jillian grinned brightly and bounced in place.
Iggy fell into step with them going down the stairs to their lockers. He was still blushing and avoided Louise’s glance by focusing on Jillian. Strangely, Jillian shied slightly away from him, looking away. “You are going to be able to get permission from your parents, right?”
Jillian shook herself a little as if putting back on a mask. She looked up, full of confidence. “Of course I will. Our mom wants us to participate in class projects.”
“Are you?” Louise asked Iggy. She had gotten the impression that his parents were very protective of him. Certainly it explained why he’d be worried that someone else’s parents would refuse.
“I’m fairly sure my dad will sign it. Hook is da man!” Iggy waved his left hand with his fingers still in braces.
“How much longer before your fingers heal?”
Iggy eyed his left hand. “We see my doctor next Saturday. The doctor said four weeks, maybe five, so I might get it off Saturday.” He seemed doubtful. “Knowing my mom, though, even if the doctor says they’re healed, she’ll want me to wear it another week or two, just to be sure.”
Which meant it had been more than four weeks since they’d found out about their siblings. It didn’t seem possible that much time had already gone by. They had less than two months now to find the mythical box with mysterious nactka.
They got their jackets. Iggy’s locker was four down from theirs. As Louise activated Tesla, Iggy drifted back to pet the toy’s head.
“Good boy, Tesla, keep them safe.” Iggy waved his broken hand and headed back toward the stairs. “See you next week.”
“Bye!” Jillian called brightly. Louise forced herself to wave; that’s what friends did, wasn’t it?
Apparently the Chen family was still being paranoid after Iggy’s brush with violence; his sisters were waiting for him at the staircase so the family could go home together. His oldest sister was hunched as if carrying a great weight, head bowed, long bangs covering her face. As Iggy joined them, she looked up and for one brief moment, she was as beautiful as Iggy claimed. Then she ducked her head as if withdrawing into a shell, vanishing from sight.
“Who were you just now?” Louise asked Jillian.
“What?”
“When you said goodbye, who were you? Peter Pan?”
“Oh, no, not Peter. He wouldn’t think to say goodbye. He isn’t much on hello either. I kind of like that about him.”
Tesla tilted his head and said “Squirrel” in his little boy Welsh voice. Both of them jumped with surprise.
“What the hell?” Jillian laughed. “I forgot he could talk! Why did he say that?”
Louise squeaked with surprise. “Oh, I completely forgot!”
“Squirrel,” Tesla said again.
“Alarm off!” Louise pulled out her tablet. “I linked him to the box search so he could wake us up if the result came in during the night.” A squeal of excitement leaked out as a flashing icon on her screen confirmed a positive hit. “We found it! Dufae’s box! We found it!”
* * *
They rode home, heads together over her tablet as Tesla stood guard. Louise’s spider had found a dozen photographs taken of Dufae’s chest. It matched her CGI sketch perfectly. The pictures were dated from last y
ear. The text explained that the chest had been discovered in the basement of the Louvre. It was labeled “unidentified block of unknown wood with possible Elvish runes” with a side note that it had been donated to the museum in 1897.
On that site there was nothing else about the chest but there were hundreds of other photographs of objects found around the world at various museum and private collections. The common dominator was that they were all suspected of being from Elfhome prior to the first Startup.
“We were right that it must have been common for the elves to travel to Earth,” Louise said.
“But it doesn’t explain why they stopped,” Jillian said impatiently. She pulled out her tablet and started to follow trails of data. “Okay, where is the box now?”
“All these objects are part of a crowd-sourcing project. Oh! The irony!”
“What?”
“All these objects are linked to Dr. Forthwright,” Louise said.
“Forthwright? Our character?”
“No, the woman we based him on.” They’d changed the woman’s name to hide the fact that they’d raided her personal computer three years ago. Because they often played Forthwright opposite of Prince Yardstick and Director Maynard of the EIA, it felt weirdly sexist to keep the one non-ninja scientist female since they had made the character both extremely nearsighted and often clueless. It was like they were saying somehow that women shouldn’t be intelligent. They’d changed the sex as well as the name of the anthropologist. “Dr. Cassie Banks.”
“Okay, that’s a weird coincidence.”
“Dr. Banks has a sister that works at the Smithsonian. While doing inventory on objects in storage, her sister found a vase labeled ‘Jefferson’s Chinese Vase’ with what appeared to be Elvish runes. She sent photos of the vase to Dr. Banks, who recognized the mark. It’s a stamp that elves use to identify the clan and household who made the item.”