The Posterchildren: Origins

  After she’d butted heads with her in strat, June had set aside some time to snoop. The Internet had offered her no shortage of opinions on the Golden Set’s token female founder. Since her mother had been an Ethiopian woman who married a Lebanese businessman through an arrangement, everyone had an opinion on whether or not the Queen was oppressed— and if so, how oppressed? Did she oppress herself?

  Amira had written several autobiographical pieces on the subject of her gender and her religion, but since she covered herself, she was deemed too oppressed to be objective about the whole thing. After making the mistake of skimming the comments section of one of her essays, June had moved her research to the library. It was slower, but books didn’t have racist, sexist, bigoted pigs abusing their right to free speech in the margins.

  Amira bint Balqis had been an eight-year-old chess prodigy, moving from Lebanon to London because a British intelligence firm wanted to see what would happen if they massaged her awesome brain. By the time she’d been June’s age, the Queen had been a child genius, a spy, and a superhero. It made June’s honor roll certificate look significantly less impressive.

  Since Amira bint Balqis was a public hero, all of that information— and more— had been available to June at the click of a button. Given all that she’d sacrificed as a public hero, it’d felt weirdly like an invasion of the Queen’s privacy.

  “Speaking of which: your essays on the gender biases built into the American justice system are due next week,” the Queen continued, her prim, accented voice floating over the din of the bolting students. “You’d do well to study your terminology lists in the meantime. The summer Night Games begin tonight, but keep in mind that you are expected to keep up with your class work, regardless!”

  June finished packing up her textbooks, sighing. The Night Game notices had gone up the last weekend in May, and if June hadn’t known better, she would have thought it was in preparation for a holiday she had never heard of. All of the regular students knew what was going on, but June didn’t like asking questions. She figured that if Ernest wasn’t having a meltdown, there was no reason to worry.

  Unfortunately, Ernest had saved his meltdown for the last minute. His baking habits were a good barometer for his mental state. If Ernest was cooking for a specific reason or person, he was happy. Green lights across the board. But if he was cooking for no apparent reason, he was worried.

  The racks upon racks of cookies that June saw when she walked in the back door said that her partner was courting an imminent breakdown. Her breakdowns ended in broken things— like irreparably shattered interpersonal relationships, for example. Ernest’s breakdowns were delicious. Sad, but delicious.

  “Hi,” June said, since he was busy scrubbing mixing bowls and muttering to himself. “So. How not okay are you?”

  “I’m just— I’m worried,” Ernest burst out, like it was some great big secret. “The Night Games are tonight, and everyone likes the Night Games, and I, uh.” He wadded up his apron, muttering something that June was unwilling to believe was dangnabbit. “And gosh darn it, I try, but I’m just not like everyone!”

  Well, of course he wasn’t like everyone. June had standards.

  “I’m about to say some of your favorite words, so listen up, because the doctor doesn’t have a lot of time for office hours.”June said, dumping her bookbags on the table. “Ernest, why don’t you tell me how you feel?”

  She wondered how many times he’d been told to suck it up and stop being a sap, growing up. Judging by how cautiously he approached her offer to listen to him talk about his feelings, it was probably a main theme of his childhood.

  “I...I’m not...”

  “Yes, that is a serious offer,” June said, taking a spatula from the cooling rack and starting to organize the cookies. He’d long since run out of counter space. “So lay it on me. You could start by telling me what a Night Game is.”

  This was how teamwork worked with them. Ernest clammed up and tried to handle things on his own, convinced himself in his head that they’d fail, and then panicked. June could see the pattern a mile away, now. After the Wrightsplosion portion of the show concluded, June stepped in.

  “It’s just what it sounds like. During the summer, we have practical exercises from ten p.m. to three a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” he explained, scrubbing out a muffin tin. She hadn’t seen any muffins on the counter, though. “They’re usually simple group games. Freeze tag. Capture the flag. That sort of thing.”

  “And why aren’t you all over this?” June found a semi-crushed muffin. Good god, the baked treats were like the sedimentary strata in a fossil dig site. There were layers. How long had Ernest been in there? “I thought that physical exercises were your thing.”

  Ernest just kept washing the dishes, his back to her and his shoulders slumped.

  “I’m a little worried ‘cause I’ve always been solo before. Now, I’ve got you with me.” Scrubbing furiously, he added, “And it— it’s not that I think you’re holding me back or anything. I’ve just never been responsible for anyone but me during the Night Games. It’s gonna be different.”

  “Ah, I see,” June said, giving him a sagacious nod. “Leaderly anxiety.”

  Ernest glanced at her over his shoulder. He was utterly woebegone.

  “Stop moping,” she said, poking his back with the spatula. “You’re everything-proof. You’ll be fine.”

  “June...”

  “Don’t ‘June’ me, mister. I said that you’ll be fine. Did you not hear me?”

  He sighed again, deeper, and dropped the sponge into the bubbly depths.

  “It’s not me being fine that I worry about,” Ernest admitted to the dishes in a very, very small voice.

  Great. He’d whipped himself into a cyclone of baked goods and suppressed anxiety over her. That was what this whole thing was about. The big blond lug was killing himself because he didn’t want anything bad to happen to her.

  The realization made June tingle in a way that she was one hundred percent unwilling to explore.

  “You’re nervous,” she said, choosing to not have heard her implied inclusion in his last remark. “And that’s okay. I’m not exactly what you’d call the most nimble woodland maiden, but I’m not freaking out. Do you know why I’m not freaking out?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Because between my brains and your guns, we’ve got this thing covered. That’s what teamwork is all about,” June said, patting his arm. “So I hear. In theory. Teamwork has never really been my thing, but I’m giving it a go. For your sake.”

  Trooper that he was, Ernest managed to give her a smile.

  “We’ll be fine,” he agreed, finally.

  “That’s the spirit.” June smacked him with the spatula. “Go pretty yourself up. I want to get to the forum before it fills up, so we should get a move on, cowboy. I refuse to end up in the nosebleed section. I hear that Underwood haunts it.”

  The startled horror that bloomed in Ernest’s eyes made her rewind her words. Crap. Underwood the Elder was on the list of things that they didn’t discuss. There were things that her partner didn’t like to talk about, things that he didn’t want to talk about, and a thing or two that he straight up wouldn’t talk about. The Underwood dudes were a wouldn’t for Ernest, and she tried to respect that.

  With anyone else, June would have done everything in her power to crack open the wouldn’ts. When you knew what was important to a person, you could identify their currency. With that knowledge, you could buy them. Once bought, that person was a new card for June to tuck up her sleeve. It was how June had gotten exactly what she’d wanted, when she’d wanted it, from the second grade on.

  But with Ernest, she didn’t go out of her way to crack his wouldn’ts. For six months, she’d managed to interact with her peers without having to rely on any of her old crutches. New June was still going strong. She wanted to keep it that way

  “Mal, I mean,” she clarified. “He lurks up in the back row l
ike a creep.”

  “I— I knew what you meant. Mal is— well, that’s just Mal being Mal.” Ernest cleared his throat, turning off the water. He took off his rubber dish gloves off with a squeak and a snap. “Gimme a minute or two to go get changed. If you need to change into something warmer, you can use the bathroom or the spare bedroom.”

  And now it was her turn to get the nervous chills, apparently.

  “...should I be changing into something warmer?” June asked, sealing up one of the Tupperware containers.

  “I dunno,” Ernest said, shrugging. “They’ll bus us outside of the compound, so nobody has turf advantage. It’s anyone’s guess what the weather is like out in the natural forest. Y’know what, I think that some of my old sweaters might fit you. I’ll check when I’m up there.

  Oh. They were going on a field trip. A field trip into the wilderness. June felt an icy drip of anxiousness slide down her spine.

  “If you’ve got anything that will fit over my boobs, sure. I’ll bring it along, just in case it’s nippy.”

  The way Ernest flushed at the casual mention of her unmentionables made her feel better. Not a ton better, but enough. While he went upstairs to change, June tried to make a dent in the towering stacks of cookies. He’d made more batches than the Wright family Tupperware could contain.

  Further inspection confirmed that the cookies were, in fact, made of lies. They were cookie-like and had chocolate-like bits in them, but where June was from, orange, red, and green were not colors that belonged in chocolate chip cookies. It was unnatural. The universe had never intended for there to be zucchini and carrots in cookies. June told Ernest time and time again that he needed to stop playing God in the kitchen, but he never listened.

  It didn’t take Ernest long before he was thundering back downstairs like a buffalo. He was done changing before she was through silently judging his cookies.

  “I found a sweater that should fit your, ah. You. The sleeves might be long, but you can roll those up.”

  Turning around, June almost had a cookie-related catastrophe. For a split second, she hadn’t recognized that the handsome stranger standing in the doorway was Ernest. She jumped, nearly dropping the plastic container as she had eight mini heart attacks in quick succession.

  “You have a...” June gesticulated vaguely. “The thing. On your face. What is that doing on your face?”

  Ernest was wearing a domino mask. It wasn’t one of the flimsy plastic ones that tied with an elastic string, or even a latex mask. The sharp, bourbon-like smell clinging to his skin said that it was stuck on with spirit gum, but it looked durable.

  It wasn’t a mask. It was the professional equipment of a seasoned day-saver. Which, as a sidekick since age eleven, Ernest was. The Foundation kids didn’t fool around. The ones that had been there since they were little knew what they were were for: to learn how to win any kind of fight they might find themselves in. In a couple of years, she’d see their faces on the evening news, on talk shows, and on magazine covers.

  Funny that it’d taken six months for that one to sink in.

  “It’s, uh, it’s just that I don’t like risking wearing glasses at night when I know I’m going to be running around. The domino’s from my old costume, so it’s got my prescription lenses in it,” he explained, his usual hesitance coming out of a much more put-together package. It was like some kind of ventriloquist act. “The instructors okayed it, since I disabled the thermal imaging and digital night vision. It’s just so I don’t drop my glasses and step on ‘em by accident.”

  He looked official. Official what, she wasn’t sure. But with the snug black clothing and the domino mask on, he looked polished and professional. She was too used to his baggy cable-knit sweaters and horn-rimmed glasses. The Ernest Wright she knew wore wrinkled old man clothes and was more golden retriever than teenage boy. That was how she liked him.

  June had meant to put the sweater on, but she’d just ended up hugging it to her chest, lost in thought. He lightly touched her arm.

  “Hey, d’you think you’re ready for this?”

  Was she? June’s preparation for the Night Games began and ended with wearing boots, since games had made it sound like they’d be doing something vaguely athletic. She didn’t know what she was in for— not really. Why hadn’t she just sucked it up and asked someone?

  The feeling of being grossly out of place almost swallowed June up whole. Maybe the pep talk she’d given Ernest had been a tiny bit premature.

  “No. Maybe? I’m not sure.”

  “Wait. What happened? ‘Cause I could’ve sworn that you said that we were okay not five minutes ago.”

  It was so weird, not being able to see Ernest’s huddled eyebrows and worried blue eyes. The white-out lenses and mask covered more than she’d realized. He was supposed to look like a stranger, and he did. And June didn’t like it.

  June buried her face in the sweater. She didn’t want to even look at him. Not until he reverted to nerd mode. If this was what having an epiphany felt like, June was officially not a fan.

  “So I’ve updated my status,” June mumbled from the argyle depths. This was not fun to admit, but she didn’t have a choice. “Second thoughts are being had, okay? I just— this Night Games thing, it’s a thing, isn’t it?”

  “It’s one of the only ways to pick up extra points, so people get pretty into it. We’ll make it through this, just you see. I’m the Alpha, and I’m the leader, so— so things’ll be okay. Okay?”

  Ernest opened up one of the pouches clipped around his waist, producing a baggie of mostly-intact cookies. Leave it to her fearless Alpha, her inspirational leader, to have snacks on hand.

  “Want a chocolate chip cookie?”

  The guy in the black clothes and domino mask was back to being her goofy partner, but that wasn’t as much of a relief as it should have been. If the Night Games really were as competitive as Ernest had been cautiously alluding to, they were going to need a leader armed with a plan of attack. All Ernest had was a utility belt full of chocolate chip cookies.

  So June needed to step it up. For his sake.

  °

  “Heeeeyyy, third blockers! Are we enjoying being up past our bedtimes?”

  The kids crammed into the bus roared, slapping their hands, seats, and each other.

  “We can’t hear you!”

  God, that was such a lie. June felt bad for Ernest, since his hearing was the only thing about him that seemed sensitive. Whistling and girl screams made him flinch, so the drive to the actual armpit of the Oregon wilderness was a rough one for him. Fishing out the earplugs she’d packed in her purse, June sighed and passed them to her partner.

  While her peers’ excitement was precious, June wasn’t in the mood for a migraine. After they’d called roll in the forum, all of the students in the first year of the third block had been shepherded into a remarkably normal-looking yellow school bus. That was when Ernest had started acting peculiar. He’d hung back, letting the bus fill almost all of the way before he’d gotten in line.

  Since the Night Games were a game of Alpha Says, June followed his lead. They’d ended up in the very back of the bus, where the brunt of the noise and smell in the vehicle flowed into. When she’d seen that Underwood was saving a bench seat for them, Ernest’s attempt at smooth maneuvers made sense. Rosario and her partner were on the other side of the aisle. Nobody made eye contact.

  The bus stopped for fuel in Wakerobin, so the instructors took advantage of the opportunity— and the gas station’s fluorescent lighting— to explain the rules of the super serious not-for-serious game they’d be playing.

  The chaperones for the Night Game were Mongoose, Copycat, and Kirrily Quinn. Personally, June thought that one out of the three was even remotely qualified to watch dumb kids.

  “So tonight, we’re going to be playiiiiiing...” Copycat cleared her throat with a sharp “AH-HEM.” People quieted down, waiting for her to say something.

  “Strewth, give
the woman a drum roll already!” Kirrily said, shaking her head. “Give her a drum roll, or we’ll be here all night.”

  Mr. W had graciously described Copycat as “very...Portland, I guess”, and June tended to agree. To her, being very Portland was a big step toward reflecting the real world.

  As a Portlander, Copycat was a couple kinds of colorful. Her hair had been bleached out and dyed a fantastically violent pink, matching the bubblegum-on-acid pink used in her sleeve tattoos. June privately thought that it was a brilliant move, because the candy-bright trimmings ensured that nobody ever suspected Copycat of being the best hand-to-hand fighter in the world. She taught combat classes, with aerial silks and ribbon dancing as electives.

  June disliked the messiness of inflicting and receiving physical pain. Psychological warfare was where it was at, but combat was one of the core skills. She spent most of combat class puzzling over life’s mysteries, as reflected in Copycat’s tattoos. June still wasn’t sure what her favorite tattoo— a cupcake eating a tinier cupcake while riding a pink lawn flamingo, the ink wrapped around her left wrist— signified, but it was probably deep.

  The posterkids slapped their hands against themselves, their seats, and— again— each other.

  “Tonight’s game will be...Scavenge!”

  Half the bus groaned dejectedly, while the other half cheered. If there was one good thing that June had to say about Ernest’s old friends, it was that they at least had the decency not to get caught up in the mob mind.

  “The rules of Scavenge are easy-peesie-lemon-squeezie. This is what you’ll be looking for,” Copycat said, pointing to Kirrily with a flourish. “We call them the glow jugs! My assistant, the lovely Kirrily Quinn, will demonste the proper carrying methods.”

  It looked like a normal gallon container— a flimsy plastic jug with a handle, usually full of water or milk. Kirrily unscrewed the water-filled jug, cracking a party glow stick and dropping it inside. The neon green glow stick turned the jug of water into a lantern, casting a wider, softer haze of green light.