by Ben Reeder
Eight jocks gave me slack-jawed looks, while Lucas just seemed relieved. It looked like they were buying my bluff. Their eyes kept moving back and forth between my face and my jacket pocket. All I had was the suggestion of a cell phone in my pocket and a credible-sounding threat. Hell, smoke and mirrors were more real than what I was trying to pull off.
“You. What do you want?” Brad asked.
“Let the skinny dude walk,” I said.
Lucas started to scramble to his feet, and Brad grabbed him by the back of his jacket. “Erase the video first,” he demanded.
“Don't try to negotiate with me, Duncan. You don't have the leverage here. I do. Cut him loose, or you're an instant Internet sensation.”
Brad tried to look unconcerned, but his friends were sweating. “Brad, the big dog would kill us if something like that got out,” one of them said softly. Brad let go of Lucas like his jacket had just caught on fire. He scrambled across the bathroom toward me and I heard him turn around behind me.
“Awright, he's cut loose,” Brad said. “Now erase the video, damn it.”
“Oh, I figure this is good at least till the end of football season. Call it a little negative reinforcement,” I said as I stepped back and slipped out the door. Lucas was right beside me as I headed for my locker. The halls were almost empty around us.
“Dude, that was awesome!” he crowed as he bounced beside me. “You ought to post it anyway. Brad will just try to kick your ass.”
“Leverage is only good 'til you use it,” I said. The fact that I didn't actually have any leverage didn't help. But as long as everyone believed it was real, the bluff would keep working.
“This is going to be the best year ever. Hey, I'm Lucas Kale.” He stuck a hand out.
“Chance Fortunato.” I felt the faint tingle of potential talent as I shook his hand. “You're gonna be late for class.”
He looked at his watch and cursed. “Dude, you're right. See you later?” He turned and jogged off, and I broke into a trot, too. I barely made it to Physical Science before the tardy bell rang. There was only one seat left, near the front of the lab, to the left of the teacher's desk. My heart started thumping in my chest at the too-familiar sight of a lab room. This one was a lot like the one at Truman High School where I'd spent the last four years. Except for the students. The difference was enough to help me get my feet going, and I slid into the open seat.
The girl next to me was dressed in a lot of black, with fingerless lace gloves, a fishnet top under a black t-shirt, and a lace-over-satin skirt. Her hair was a bright red bob with black streaks through it, and she wore thick, dark eyeliner and a nose ring. The rest of her face was as pale as cosmetics could make it, except for black lipstick.
Two guys sat across from us, both wearing t-shirts with superheroes on the front.
“You must be the new guy everyone's talking about,” the girl said cheerfully.
“New guy, I'll cop to. I didn't know anyone was talking about me, though. I'm Chance.”
“I'm Wanda. Yeah, word is Brad Duncan already hates you, good going there, and Strickland's doing his best to help the principal kick you out. Gina Morales' brother, Sammy, said you had a bunch of scars and some tattoos; were you in a gang or something?” she blurted in one breath.
I replayed the whole thing in my head to make sure I didn't miss anything before I answered.
“Okay, in order: nice to meet you; yes, he does, the feeling's mutual; it figures, the guy's a jerk; yes, I do; and no, I wasn't.” I waited for a moment while she sorted that all out.
“Wanda's like the CIA,” the guy on the left said with a smirk.
“Only with boobs,” the one on the right added. They both snickered as Wanda flipped them off.
“Any time, babe,” Left said.
There was a chorus of giggles behind us, and a square of colored paper landed on the lab table between us. Wanda and I both looked over our shoulders for the source. Two lab tables back, we saw a trio of blonde heads turned our way with a fashion magazine open on the desk in front of them.
“Try some, it'll cover the smell of bitch,” one of them said sweetly.
Wanda's face turned red, and she picked up the little perfume sample from the table. “I'll take bitch over skank any day, Leda,” she hissed and threw it back. Whatever Leda was about to say back was cut short as the door opened. The room went quiet for a second then the murmur of conversations started back up again as a familiar-looking redhead walked into the room.
“Speaking of skanks,” Wanda said, “all hail the Queen Skank. I heard you really pissed her off before first period. Shanté said she was crying all through Algebra. What did you say to her?”
“I called her…an accessory,” I said quietly. “Asked Brad if she matched his car.”
She turned her head to face me as she passed, and I could see fresh hurt in her eyes when they met mine. There was no way she could have heard me from halfway across the room, but she was acting like she had.
“Oh, wow!” Wanda gasped. “His truck is bright red, she totally matches it!” Was that all it was, I wondered? Brad's girlfriend made her way to the Blonde Table and was instantly surrounded by designer tops and perfect hair.
“All right, class, let's begin,” Mr. Chomsky's voice came from the front of the room. He was standing behind his desk with a blue ice chest in his hands.
“I hate it when he does that!” Right whispered, as Chomsky pulled the attendance book out of his desk.
I sat back to wait for him to call out names, and tried to think of a cool way to say, “Here.” However, Mr. Chomsky didn't seem to do anything the normal way. He looked out over the room, down at his roll sheet, then grabbed a pen.
“Here; here; here; absent; here; here; here; Brianna et al., here; here; Mr. Fortunato, barely here on time; and Miss Cooper, technically tardy. And, there's me, also technically tardy, so I can't hold it against you.” He set the attendance book down, then smiled before he spoke again. “Very well, class, let's get some learning done! First of all, we have a new student today, Mr. Fortunato. Make him feel welcome. Now, let's review briefly what we went over yesterday in chapter seven on thermal energy, then we'll be breaking out the Bunsen burners and playing with fire to demonstrate some of water's more interesting properties. Who remembers the boiling point of water?”
“Two hundred twelve degrees Fahrenheit, or one hundred degrees Celsius,” I said quickly.
“Excellent, Mister Fortunato. Next time, though, raise the hand, please. Now, can water in an open container get any hotter?” I started to raise my hand, but Chomsky pointed to one of the blondes behind me.
“Total no-brainer there!” she said. “Of course it can! My mom's stove goes up to like four hundred, and she puts it up to the highest setting when she boils water all the time.”
“Thank you, Miss Case. An interesting observation. Anyone disagree?”
My hand went up slowly, and I was the lone holdout against her opinion.
“All right, Mister Fortunato. Why?” he asked, as a few chuckles went around the room.
“Okay,” I started, “um, so, yeah, a stove goes higher than two-twelve, and yeah, her mom uses higher temperatures when she cooks, but that doesn't mean the water gets any hotter, it just means it boils faster. When water boils, it turns into steam, and that can get as hot as it wants.” I stopped for a moment to try to find the right way to describe what I'd seen hundreds of times while making potions and elixirs for the boss.
“Dork,” Leda said.
“Thank you, Miss Carson, for volunteering to defend Mister Fortunato's theory,” Chomsky said with a smile. “Now, stand up and explain to the class why he's right.”
“But…he's not, Mister Chomsky!” Leda said.
“Care to bet an A on that?” Chomsky said, as he carried the ice chest to the middle of the room.
Leda's face went slack as the wheels seemed to click in her brain.
“Sure, Mister Chomsky!” the first girl who
had spoken up said. “I'll bet an A on it, if the loser gets an F!” Chomsky turned a knowing eye on her before he answered. “Ah, interesting stakes. So, the age-old question comes back to the fore: how does the universe work? Even more importantly, it would seem, whose version of the truth does the cosmos favor?” He turned slowly as he spoke, clearly enjoying his topic.
“Well, class, the universe favors only its own truth. All we have are hypotheses that we test. If we can neither prove nor disprove them, they evolve into theories. But, if we can prove them, they grow up to be Laws. Thus, today's experiment. Mister Fortunato's table will be testing to prove his hypothesis that water does not get hotter than its boiling point. Miss Carson's table will be testing to prove that it does. Everyone else will be the control groups, repeating the experiment to see if they can get the same data. Hence, we are the scientific community in microcosm. So, Bunsen burners, everyone, and safety glasses. Remember the safety rules for using gas; we don’t want to duplicate Friday night’s destruction of Truman High School’s science wing.” He slipped his own pair of safety glasses on, then opened the ice chest and had half of us add three ice cubes to our water, to test the theory that cold water boiled faster.
“So, Kelly says you transferred in from Truman, and you've got a file like a foot thick. Did you have anything to do with, you know…” Wanda asked as we set up our experiment.
“It's a good theory,” I said as people around us complained about the safety goggles messing up their hair. “Can't be proven or disproven. The cops haven't charged me with anything yet.”
Wanda smiled and nodded, but the two guys on the far side of the table traded wide-eyed looks.
We stared at the thermometers in our beakers of water as they stayed at thirty two degrees until the ice was all gone. I got another thermometer and double checked that ours wasn't broken or something, but it showed the same temperature. The mercury slowly climbed until it hit two-twelve…and didn't boil. And kept right on not-boiling for another three minutes.
“Proving that a watched pot never boils, Mister Fortunato?” Chomsky said from over my right shoulder.
“Maybe,” I growled. “The temperature's right. Why doesn't it just boil?”
“Excellent question, my boy. The energy required to actually make water boil is five times that required to simply heat it to two hundred twelve degrees.”
“So, what is all that extra energy doing?”
“As you know, water is composed of an oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms. A very sentimental element, hydrogen. It forms relatively strong bonds when it attaches to another atom. The extra energy is required to break those bonds. Ah, your water is boiling. Please make a note of your temperature, Miss Romanov.”
“Still two hundred twelve Fahrenheit,” Wanda whispered to me.
Chomsky's face broke into a grin. “Really? Imagine that. Ladies, I see your water is boiling, as well. Mark your temperatures down, class, and check again in five minutes, then place your cards face down on the corner of your tables so I can collect them.”
“We are so getting an A,” Wanda said as he left. I shrugged.
“So, what's her name?” I asked as I looked over my shoulder at the spot of red in the sea of blonde, two tables back.
“Brad's girlfriend? Hang on a second. I have to take a second to enjoy this. A guy who didn't know Alexis Cooper's name.”
“Until now.”
“Good things never last.”
“I knew your name first.”
“Yeah, you did.” She smiled and glanced at the thermometer for a moment, then wrote down the temperature. I added my card to the pile at the corner of the table, and waited for Mr. Chomsky to come by. I didn't hear him come up behind me, but somehow, I felt him there. I looked over my shoulder at him to catch him blinking and shaking his head.
“Chance,” he said thoughtfully, “I'd like you to stop by after school today. I think we need to discuss better placement for you.”
“Better placement?” I asked warily. This was already the most basic science class I could be in without dropping back a grade.
“Yes. The questions you ask demonstrate a certain type of critical thinking. Which leads me to wonder if your true aptitude can't be measured by a standardized test. I believe that you might do better with a more challenging curriculum. One better suited to your…talents.”
“Really?” The right side of my mouth quirked up on its own.
“Stop by after school, and we will discuss it further.”
“Well, that was the kiss of death to your social life,” Wanda said under her breath as he walked away.
“What do you mean?”
“He's talking advanced placement classes, dude. Might as well buy yourself a pocket protector and glasses now and avoid the Yuletide rush.”
“I don't have much of a social life now. It can't be any worse than sharing class space with half the cheerleading squad.” I nodded back at the blonde table.
“Uh-oh,” Wanda muttered.
I followed her gaze, and saw one of the blondes, Leda, grab Mr. Chomsky's arm.
“So, do we get the A?” she asked, loud enough for the whole room to hear.
“Interesting supposition,” Chomsky said. “You assume that there was a competition for the grade. You should know better by now, Miss Carson. When I asked if you cared to bet an A on the outcome, I was testing how certain you were of your hypothesis, seeing as it flew in the face of facts that are in your text book. Your grade, as always, will be based on the academic quality of your work, and the effort you put into it. It helped that you and Mister Fortunato had the courage to speak out in defense of your separate hypotheses.”
He turned a little to address the whole class. “In science, courage can be as important as knowledge. True innovation, original thinking, and most of all, change, are not always well received. However, in the end, the truth will always be known. Very well, lecture over. Let's clean up.” There was a rush of noise as everyone started working at once. Our table was done first, mostly because the other two guys went out of their way to outdo each other, but I also knew my way around a lab. The other tables weren't so fast, though, and it looked like the blondes were going to be cutting it close.
“You should come hang out with us tonight at Dante's,” Wanda said as we waited for the bell to ring. “I think you'd like my friends. I'm sure they'd love you.”
“I'll see if I can make it.” I tried not to sound too eager.
“Let me know if you need a ride.” She handed me a scrap of paper with a number scribbled on it.
That got me glares from Left and Right, but the bell cut those short before they could do any permanent damage to my ego. Wanda was out of her chair and halfway to the door before the bell stopped ringing, and our two tablemates weren't far behind her. I grabbed my backpack and fought the urge to clean up the rest of the lab. Some part of me was still afraid I was going to get a beating for leaving it this way.
“That's over now,” I told myself as I tried to slip in behind the kids from the table behind us. A moment later, I was on the floor, buried beneath three blondes. For a moment, my hairy monkey brain had a field day. Then even that primitive part of me went shrieking back to its mental cave when I realized who I was buried under.
“Watch where you're going, reject!” Leda hissed at me as we untangled ourselves. “This is a two hundred dollar jacket. You're gonna pay for the cleaning!”
“Actually, Miss Carson, he's not. He's going to go to his next class, while you three come back to your table and finish cleaning up.” Chomsky said. He put an emphasis on the last three words, pausing for a heartbeat between them. He stood over us, and for a moment, he looked like some ancient, angry god in a sweater.
Leda and her cronies got up and sulked back toward the lab table. Alexis was still there, struggling to disassemble the ring stand. She gave them a lethal look as they came back, but they didn't fall over and die right away. She snapped orders at them, and they started
moving a little faster. Me, I was just happy I wasn't on the receiving end of that look.
“Away with you, Mister Fortunato,” Chomsky said with a warm smile. “You've a great deal more to learn today, I'm sure. And we have an appointment this afternoon, don't forget.” I was good at something other than sorcery and corruption. There was no way in all the Nine Hells was I going to forget.
Chapter 7
~ Make no pact with the Infernal Powers ~ Third Rule of Magick.
French and Wood Shop took way too long. If it wasn't such a beautiful sounding language, French would have been a snoozer of a class. Mrs. Solier was a nervous little woman with a soft voice, kind of like a mouse with self-esteem problems. Until she spoke French. Then she sounded like a completely different woman. I did my best, but I mangled the words at first. As I went along, it got easier, and I liked having something with a little beauty to it running around in my head.
Wood shop was my last class. Mr. Gonzalez was a round little man with brown skin and coal black hair that had gray at the temples. He barely came up to my shoulder, but he might as well have been a giant for the respect he got in the shop. The man was all business, but he went about it in the way a father with two dozen sons might. My first day was spent on safety and learning how to use every tool he could get my hands on. When the last bell rang, he told me that I would be able to start on a project next Monday, after I finished the safety lessons and showed him I knew how to use the tools.
My first day of school was done. All in all, it hadn’t been too bad. I headed back to my locker and picked up my French, Algebra and American History books, then headed to Mr. Chomsky’s classroom with a little extra spring in my step. I was hoping Wanda was right about advanced classes. All afternoon, I'd been imagining what Mom would say if I told her I was going to be in an advanced class. It took the edge off the memory of seeing her face when she laid my file in front of me.
My daydream crumbled when I heard Alexis Cooper's subdued voice. I froze in place as she came around the corner with her head down. I had just a moment to catch that she was putting her phone away before she bumped into me. Her head came up and her expression turned to ice.