These were good people, compassionate to everyone around them just because that was the right thing to do. Prolonged exposure to them was giving her more perspective when it came to the whole whys and hows of being a posthuman hero.
June was beginning to worry that her fake-it-‘til-you-make-it approach to life wasn’t going to cut it this time around. You couldn’t fake super strength or bendiness. You couldn’t fake the stupid levels of courage you’d need to take on a tiger, or the kindness necessary to give a crap about everyone that came within a ten-foot radius of your face. You couldn’t fake that. Could you?
ISSUE #4
Zip had spent more than her fair share of time in the nurse’s station since coming to the Academy. Like her mother had said only too many times, the Good Lord had given baby Zipporah Chance a triple helping of ants in her pants when He’d put her together, but He’d left her moderation and impulse-control in the box. Before the Academy, she hadn’t been able to run very much. It’d been a practical thing. Running meant burning up energy, energy came from food, and food hadn’t always been available in the quantities that Zip needed to fuel a solid run. Not back home, at least. She’d grown up mindful of how much she ate, since her folks hadn’t had that much money.
Running more and not eating enough had given Zip fainting spells on the regular. It’d taken a lot of coaxing from Nurse Bliss to convince her that it was okay to take more than the other students, but she’d been successful. Nurse Bliss was good like that.
And that was why Zip had gotten up extra early to go see her. She needed some tips, and she was positive that the nurse was her best bet at getting some good advice.
Despite the circumstances of her serial visits to the nurse’s station, it was one of her favorite places on the campus. Zip knocked twice before poking her head in the front door. She breathed in a deep lungful of the fresh cedar and peppermint inside the sunny cabin. It felt soothing and safe, like a home should feel. Nobody appreciated that more than Zip, since she was almost positive that nobody had woken up in there as many times as she had.
Nurse Bliss was every bit as homey as her cabin. She reminded Zip of a character from Candyland that’d gotten lost in the woods, somehow. She was brown and plump and warm, wrapped up in a bathrobe as pink and fuzzy as cotton candy. Zip had woken up extra early, so she’d caught the school nurse before she’d even gotten dressed.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite bucket of sunshine,” Nurse Bliss laughed, giving her a hug. “I hope you haven’t gone and got yourself banged up again. Isn’t it a little early in the day for running your pretty little face into walls, Zipporah?”
“Nah, I haven’t gotten into any fight with walls lately,” Zip said, hugging her back. It felt like she could disappear into the warmth of her hugs. “I was just hoping I could, um. I-need-to-askyousomethingmaybeplease?”
The nurse’s eyebrows arched in surprise, but she covered it up with a smile.
“Of course. Sit or stand, honey. Whichever’s comfy for you,” she said, gesturing to the empty cots.
“I think I’ll stand, thanks,” Zip said, rolling her lower lip between her teeth. It’d taken her weeks to work up the nerve to talk to anyone about her situation, and now that she was doing it, she was twice as anxious. She probably wouldn’t have been able to sit. “So. S-so this isn’t about me. It’s about a friend of mine. Well, um, not so much a friend as a person that needs help and I’d like her to be a friend of mine.”
“Just to be clear, this isn’t a friend you made up because you’re uncomfortable talking with me about something, yeah?”
“No, it’s a real person,” she switched from chewing on her lip to gnawing on her thumbnail. “I know it’s none of my business, but I’m— I’m getting worried about my roommate.”
“You’re sharing a room this block?”
“Yep. I volunteered. I thought I’d get a new student, but I’m pretty sure that the one I’ve got is older than me. Her name’s Cindy.”
Nurse Bliss’ fingers tightened around her coffee mug. Her eyes softened, sympathetic.
“Cindy Dunn?”
“Yeah, that’s her,” Zip nodded, not sure how to take her reaction. It might have been that she was the only Cindy at the school, but Zip had a feeling that it was because Cindy’s name was more well-known than she’d realized. Around the Academy, being well-known meant either impressing someone with the power to put you on the inside track to a public team, or you’d ticked off someone with the power to stamp a great big red x on your permanent record. Mal’s sixty-seven was proof of how quick one could switch to the other, and how bad the transition could be.
“And she’s got you worried?”
Worried didn’t begin to cover what Cindy did to Zip’s head. Sometimes, she’d glance over at the angular lump of her body beneath the blankets, and she’d get unbearably sad for her. It was like she didn’t care about anything at all. Cindy didn’t care about the classes she was missing, she didn’t care about how far behind she was falling, she didn’t care about her partner, she didn’t care about her roommate— heck, she didn’t even care about herself. Watching her get progressively skinnier and scragglier, Zip couldn’t help but care.
It worried her that when she came back to change clothes before training with Mal, Cindy was usually in the same position that she’d been in when she’d left for class. It worried her that the pile of homework that Cindy’s frustrated partner, Ofelia, brought her was turning into a mountain. It worried her, because even though Cindy was about as sour as a lemon wedge, she was her roommate. Zip didn’t want her to get kicked out, and she was afraid that was right where she was heading.
“Yeah,” Zip said, pacing a line. “She, um. She’s been sick, I think? She hasn’t been going to her classes, and she eats next to nothing— and I don’t mean compared to me, ‘cause I know better than that— and she stays in bed all the time, but-I-don’t-think-she’s-sleeping-‘cause-nobodysleepsforthatmanyhoursand— ”
Nurse Bliss held up her hands, interrupting her with a gentle command of, “Breathe.”
She did. In through her nose, out through her mouth. Breathing and moving siphoned off just enough of her jitters to keep her from pure babbling, but only just.
“That’s the ticket,” she said, once Zip had cycled through a few breaths. “Now, have you talked to her about it?”
“Sort of. I mean, I’ve been trying,” Zip said, heaving a sigh instead of exhaling nice and smoothly, like she was supposed to. “I’ve been bringing her food from the mess hall, but she never-ever-ever eats it, and it scares me ‘cause she’s so bony and tired and mad and I don’t know what to do ‘cause all she does is snap at me whenever I ask if she’s okay and...”
The thought trailed off, her words caught up in the vice of her tightening throat.
Nurse Bliss sipped her coffee, her ruminative pause stretching into what felt like eight hundred years. Zip had to keep pacing, because standing still would have made the wait for her response feel even more glacial. She understood that regular people didn’t process things as quickly as she did, but that didn’t make her any less frustrated. She barely waited for her brain to string words together before she started talking.
“Sweetie,” the nurse said finally, setting down her mug. “How much do you know about Cindy’s situation?”
“Just a smidge and a half. I’ve tried not to pry much.”
That wasn’t a hundred percent truthful. Zip had tried to get her file to look through, but the request had been denied. Like Mal, Cindy’s file was sealed. That, she was learning, was generally a bad sign.
“You’re right about Cindy not being a new student,” Nurse Bliss said, getting up to top off her coffee. She kept talking, her voice floating from the kitchen. “She left Foundation a few months back— about halfway through her first year of her third block, which is why she’s repeating it. She’s got a lot of catch-up ahead of her.”
Zip had put most of that together herself. She’d h
esitated to put the pieces together, since none of the arrangements she’d seen had been flattering.
“I don’t mean to sound mean, but she hasn’t been doing much in the way of catching up.” Zip paced her way to the tiny kitchen. She hung in the doorway, watching her search for clean dishes. “If she’s not new, why’s she bunking with me?”
Nurse Bliss huffed a breath on a questionably-smudged spoon, buffing it clean on the breast of her robe. She stirred spoonfuls of sugar into her coffee until it resisted dissolving.
“Cindy ran away, hon,” she said, still stirring absentmindedly. “Her and another girl. They got themselves in some trouble, so the board thought it’d be best if she came back here to finish up her training.”
“Trouble?” Zip echoed uncertainly.
“She’s here because she’s gotta be here.”
And then, it clicked over. The green light went on in her head. She got it.
Cindy was a problem poster. She didn’t have a choice of whether or not she wanted to be at Maillardet’s.
“Oh.”
“And I think that they put you two together because a girl like her could use a bucket of sunshine like you in her life,” the nurse followed up with a warm smile that Zip was too shivery to feel.
“That’s real nice of you to say, but I don’t think she’s all that interested in sunshine,” Zip mumbled. “D’you know what’s wrong with her, though?”
“I’d say that it sounds like she’s depressed.”
“But she’s not sad. Not as far as I can tell, anyhow.”
“Not everyone feels it the same way. Some people do cry and express sadness, yeah, but others show symptoms like Cindy’s— irritability, outbursts, lack of energy, and sleeping problems. For those people, the thought of getting out of bed and facing the world is overwhelming. The longer they struggle with the first step of productivity, the harder it is to get up.”
Taking the first step had never been a challenge for Zip. It was a strange thought. Moving was easiest, always. She had no idea how to make someone move— probably like nobody else knew how to make her stop.
“Can you help her?”
“I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do. I’ll talk to Cindy’s instructors about her attendance issues. If she’s had more than three absences in any of her classes, I can have her come see me for a wellness exam. I’ll do what I can for her.”
“Thank you. Thank youthankyouthankyou.” It didn’t make sense that she was so relieved to hear that Nurse Bliss would be able to help— it wasn’t like Cindy had done much in the way of endearing herself as a roommate— but she was relieved all the same. Nobody deserved to feel like they couldn’t get out of bed on their own. Everyone deserved a chance to be safe and happy— that was what heroics were all about, right? “But, um, please don’t tell her that I said anything. I don’t want her thinking that I’ve got a big mouth.”
“It’ll stay between you and me,” Bliss promised. “You did the right thing.”
She’d chased the tail of that idea around in her head for weeks. Was it better to say something and risk getting Cindy in trouble— or making her even angrier with her— or was it better to just watch her get skinnier? In the end, she’d taken the risk because her gut had assured her that it was the right thing to do. The confirmation was appreciated, definitely.
“I just...I felt like I had to do something. Nobody else was. Nobody else even visits her. I don’t think she’s got friends.”
“She’s got you, now. She’s lucky. And I know a thing or two about luck.”
That was for sure. Nurse Bliss was a blue-band poster, a reality-bender like Mal. She made the best possible nurse because her power was to affect quantum probability— luck. Good things happened when she was around. Clumsy, scared kids with superpowers needed a sugared four-leaf clover in their lives, and Nurse Bliss filled the role well. The kids appreciated her loads more than the people outside of Foundation who’d tried to use her skills, she always said. She treated them like her own. That was why she’d known that she could trust Bliss with the Cindy situation.
“I will,” Zip said, nodding enthusiastically. “Thank you, ma’am. For helping and stuff. I appreciate it.”
“Anytime. I like it when you visit me without a concussion,” Nurse Bliss said, opening her arms up. “Now give me another hug before you jet off again, silly girl.”
She didn’t have to ask Zip twice. She put all of her gratefulness into a squeeze.
°
Strategy was the last class of Ernest’s day. The schedule worked out well in a practical sense— Strategy was his father’s class, so Ernest just went home with him after class was over— but it wasn’t the best thing for his attention span. Strategy wasn’t his strongest graded category, so it probably wasn’t a good thing that it was his last class in a long day. By the time he got to strat, his eyes were usually glazing over with tiredness and low blood sugar, so he tended to sit in the back, graze, and keep as awake as possible. If he started to drift off, June poked him with a pencil until he startled awake again.
But the Queen was subbing for the day, and Ernest was nervous. There’d be no nodding off in class with her in charge. When Auntie Amira was wearing her Professor bint Balqis scarf, so to speak, she didn’t believe in things like light work days. Dad had been going easy on them, since the upcoming Tuesday-Thursday Night Games would be hard on everyone’s sleeping schedule, but Professor bint Balqis wouldn’t let them off the hook that easy.
Ernest sincerely wished that his father hadn’t gotten tied up with a Presidential photo shoot. He loved his aunt everywhere but the classroom. When she was behind the lecture podium, he understood why people were scared of her.
“Who is familiar with the term ‘a parting shot’?”
The Queen didn’t bother with introductions— if they didn’t know who she was, they’d figure it out quickly. Everyone knew Amira bint Balqis.
June raised her hand. She was the only one that did. Ernest couldn’t help but feel a little tingle of pride at that. His partner was smart as hell. Brave, too. He never got over what a tigress she was. Not even the Queen herself intimidated June.
“Can you tell us what that means?”
“A parting shot is when you get the last word in during an argument,” June answered primly, dropping her hand back down on the desk. “Typically, it’s the last thing I say before I leave a room.”
Ernest thought that he caught just a glimmer of a smile on his aunt’s face before she turned back to the whiteboard.
“Very good. That is an excellent example of a modern usage. But a ‘parting shot’ is the corruption of an older concept: the Parthian shot.”
The Queen wrote a single word on the board in her neat, even cursive: retaliation.
“The Parthian shot was a maneuver that only the best riders could pull off with any real accuracy. When in full gallop, the rider would turn all the way around in the saddle and fire off an arrow behind them. It was the shot their enemy did not expect. The arrow that they wouldn’t see coming. Today, I’d like to discuss retaliation. In this world, retaliation often comes by way of the Parthian shot. You will rarely see it coming, but you should still endeavor to be vigilant.”
“Hold up. Not to jump the gun or anything, but I’m trying to figure out how arrows factor into things. I mean, other than being a great historical tidbit.”
Oh, fudge. June was in the habit of vetting their substitute teachers. She gave his dad grief during their normal strategy classes, always correcting him on the right way to say the names of all the dead men in togas. The Commander taught combat and strategy, and one was definitely his stronger subject. June had yet to have a class with the Queen, so she had no idea who she was poking critical at.
It was a shame that there wasn’t a universally-accepted hand signal for no, stop, you’re going to die that didn’t involve frantic arm-flailing. He had no way of warning June. Ernest ate the remaining half of his turkey sandwich as quietly as possi
ble, keeping his mouth full so that he didn’t do anything dumb like whisper-shout at his partner to run.
“Then allow me to paint you a picture, Juniper,” Auntie Amira said, briskly.
Ernest winced reflexively at June’s full name. He didn’t know why, but she hated being called Juniper. She reacted to her name the way a bull responded to the color red, so Ernest had learned to avoid it at all costs. He didn’t know which direction to brace himself in, so he concentrated on eating his sandwich.
“Let’s say that you graduate into the capstone class and become a public defender. That is your goal, yes?”
“Sure,” June said, examining the short tips of her candy-bright red nails. Not a chip in them, as usual. “I’ve been toying with the idea.”
“Well, then. Consider this scenario. You get married shortly after graduation, and have your first child, a son, several years later. As you know, the public heroes are given six months of paid maternity leave, but no paternity leave. Your husband is also a public hero, so he must continue patrolling throughout your pregnancy.”
“Sounds about par for the course for the American health care system,” June sniffed. “Silly me for thinking superheroes would get better coverage.”
He didn’t want to make it seem too much like he was watching her for a response, so he chanced glimpses of her out of the corner of his eye. Ernest wasn’t sure how June felt about that scenario, but it was one that’d always weighed heavily on him. As an only child himself, he’d always liked the idea of having siblings. Now that he was getting older, he was starting to think of things like dating and girlfriends and marriage and kids. There were complications to public heroes having children. He knew that only too well.
“When your son is a year old, you go back to full service. You’re criticized for spending so much time off the field, but time waits for no one— not the criminals on the street, not your growing child.”
The Posterchildren: Origins Page 16