by KT Belt
“Oh, what’s wrong?” her handler asked, aping real concern.
Carmen shook her head. What was wrong should have been obvious. “I look like an idiot!”
“What makes you say that?”
Carmen glanced at her again and then pointedly rolled her eyes. There were times she wished Kali could read her thoughts. Her dress had to have been made by an idiot. Worse than that, it looked like it had been sold in a store for idiots in a land of idiots. Who knew—maybe these were considered regal robes in Idiotatopia? On Carmen, though…. Well, she looked like an idiot!
The dress was light pastel pink in color. It wasn’t that she necessarily looked bad in pink—in fact, it complemented her skin and hair tones rather well. It just wasn’t her taste. The failure that was her dress, however, went beyond simple preference in color. Oh no, this was not merely limited to her subjective judgment. Its horridness was as plain as day and night. The thing was a mess of ruffles arranged in what could liberally be called a pattern. Just looking at them gave Carmen a headache. It had gold trim here and there, though why gold she didn’t know. It did nothing to help. Neither did the dress do anything to help her natural figure. If anything, it gave her curves and bulges she didn’t even know she had, making it rather uncomfortable to wear. She wouldn’t be surprised if the dress had been tailored for a mutant.
The two of them looked in the bathroom mirror. They were alone for the moment, even though the music from the party could be heard through the walls.
“Well, it’s not that bad,” Kali said. Carmen shot her a disbelieving glance. “I even think a few boys were looking your way.”
Carmen rolled her eyes again and looked back at her terrible reflection. “The dress probably turned them into stone,” she muttered under her breath. “They couldn’t look away.”
“Oh, you,” Kali groaned. She rested her arm on her charge’s shoulder. “Go out there and have fun—mingle. That’s why you’re all here. I’m not asking for much, just that you learn how to be around other people.”
“No,” Carmen said simply. Her handler groaned again. “They’re almost all Clairvoyants anyway,” she added, noting a flaw in the entire reason for this get together.
She and Kali had taken several other field trips over the past few years, even to Haven City. They practiced casual conversation and etiquette, but the endless practice never amounted to much of anything. Outside of field trips, Carmen was also encouraged to socialize with her Clairvoyant peers. That amounted to even less of anything. They didn’t shriek and run from her like normal people sometimes did, and she got along with most of them. She just doubted that associating with her peers was good practice for much. Kali often preached that, deep down, there was no real difference between Clairvoyants and normal people, and in a way Carmen guessed she was right. But dogs and cats were both mammals and had four legs, and, well….
“Edge, it’s not like I’m torturing you or anything. Just go out there, talk to your peers, and, you never know, you may actually like it.”
Carmen stared hard at the mirror. “Dressed like this?”
Kali groaned loudly this time. She stopped leaning on her charge and took a step back. “I happen to think you look very pretty. Just one thing, though. What’s with you and ponytails? Always ponytails,” she said as she began undoing the hair tie. Carmen glared at her. “You have such pretty hair. There,” she said, loosening the last of it. Then Kali gently aimed Carmen’s head at the mirror and leaned in close. “Now you tell me, do you really think it looks so bad?”
Carmen said nothing, but suddenly her reflection began to bubble. The glass cracked and the mirror warped. Soon, all that was left was a half-melted mess.
Kali stared at her charge. Carmen returned an innocent smile that bordered on a smirk. The expression was her best guess. She hadn’t seen real innocence in any form for more than a decade.
“It wasn’t me. The dress is just that ugly,” the teenager said sheepishly.
Kali shook her head in exaggerated fashion and groaned once more. “Rebellious little scamp,” she uttered before giving her a playful push. Carmen laughed. Kali then moved toward the door. “You’re coming back out here, and that’s final,” she said firmly.
There was no arguing with that tone. Carmen had already given it a game try on more than one occasion.
“Fine,” she said softly.
Kali nodded and walked out the door, but then she stopped all of a sudden. She frowned. “If you make yourself invisible, so help me,” she warned before finally leaving.
Carmen nodded obediently and took a few seconds to gather herself before she followed her handler out. The past few years were definitely an improvement over her first six, but there were still downsides here and there. A big one was parties. She hated parties. It wasn’t that she was shy or wanted to be alone. She rather enjoyed her time with Kali, and the two could and did talk for hours. What she didn’t like was how awkward it was to be around anyone but her handler. She just didn’t know what to do or how to act. More than anything, she hated being reminded about that.
She wasn’t the only one either. It didn’t take long for her to see why Kali had said that about turning invisible as a suppression team quite obviously hunted for a Clairvoyant that couldn’t be seen. Each member of the team held a scanner, and they spoke loudly to coordinate their efforts. Carmen shook her head with a wry smile. It had to happen at least once every party, and it never worked. The wayward Clairvoyant was always found. Janus had mentioned to her long ago that Clairvoyants could bend light to make themselves invisible. She had no idea how to do it, but for situations like this, it was very tempting. She shook her head again when the now cornered Clairvoyant revealed himself. Unfortunately, what would probably be the most interesting goings-on of the night was now over.
Carmen briefly surveyed the room. It was easy to divide it into three groups. There were the handlers, who mingled quietly if coldly among themselves. There were the assets, who simply stood alone wherever they happened to be in the room. Then there were the children of the various support staff for the facility. She didn’t know whose bright idea it was to include them in all this. They talked fluidly and openly to other people like them with no apparent wish to engage any Clairvoyant. There were also the suppression teams armed with foam cannons and rifles, but they didn’t count.
She watched the normals with an odd tinge of envy. She could walk along the ceiling, dance among the clouds, and read minds, in some cases like a book. But thus far, Carmen had been unable to do what the non-Clairvoyants were presently doing without conscious thought or anxiety. She well knew why Kali wanted her and her peers to mingle, but it was so difficult. She hated parties.
Her eyes fell on her handler in that moment. Kali stared right back—disapprovingly. She motioned toward a group of assets standing close enough to each other that they could be considered together, even if they really weren’t.
Carmen glanced at them. “Why me?” she asked telepathically, looking back at Kali.
There was no reply, which made her sigh. Her handler had a quiet yet violently unforceful way of getting her to do whatever she wanted. It was so effective that, at times, Carmen felt like she was a marionette. It was certainly different from the methods Janus had used. It was less overt—the difference between a growling dog and a barking one. She liked Kali very much, but there remained a part of her that was wary around her handler. It didn’t even come as much of a surprise when she learned that most everyone at the facility, even other Clairvoyants, gave Kali a wide berth. She was like a thorny flower.
Carmen looked back at her peers and then began walking. Her stride matched that of someone going to their execution. This will be easy, she told herself. All I have to do is just not think about it, and it will come just like everything else. They noticed her approach. She always drew slightly more attention than the average Clairvoyant.
“Hi,” she said when she was close enough.
“Hello,�
� one of them replied.
“Edge,” the other two greeted.
Carmen didn’t know their names, but almost everyone knew who she was even before she actually met them. Personally, she had no real care for her minor celebrity.
She gave a friendly smile, which her counterparts returned when they remembered such a gesture would be proper. Then there was silence. Carmen looked at them expectantly, hoping she wouldn’t have to do all the work. One of her peers looked away. The other two shifted in place uncomfortably. Carmen felt like a thumbless, blind monkey fumbling with a banana.
She glanced over her shoulder at Kali. Kali stared right back.
“Okay, so what do we do now?” she asked the group.
“I think small talk is next?”
“Oh, all right,” Carmen said. “What do we talk about?”
“Well…” one of them began. “It’s been nice weather, hasn’t it?”
She could sense one of them sigh before he actually did. “Please,” he muttered. “It could be torrential downpours and we wouldn’t get wet.”
“Yeah, maybe we should talk about something else,” Carmen said. “What are you into?”
“I don’t really know what I’m into,” one of them began. “I was kidnapped as a child and then basically locked in here with coloring books and puzzles to occupy my time. For all I know, the greatest thing in the world could be knitting. Now, I’m trying to pretend that I’m a normal, well-adjusted person so, when I graduate from here, I don’t freak out people who are actually normal and well-adjusted.”
There were grim nods all around.
“Tell me about it,” Carmen muttered under her breath.
“Maybe we can just pretend we’re communicating telepathically. All we have to do is smile and nod every now and then,” someone else suggested.
Carmen looked over her shoulder again, and now several other handlers were watching them with Kali. “I don’t think that will work,” she said. “We’ll be caught as soon as they start asking us questions about the conversation we supposedly had.”
“Well, if we hash it all out right now, that shouldn’t be a problem. We just have to make sure we give them the same story.”
“Okay,” Carmen said.
Everyone nodded, and the plan was set in motion.
The first topic they pretended to discuss was everyone’s favorite color. Carmen said neon green. It wasn’t her favorite color, but that was completely beside the point. Remembering everyone else’s choices wasn’t that hard. They took a few minutes to make sure they remembered each other’s preferences, just in case their handlers decided to compare notes. The next topic was dogs versus cats. Carmen didn’t really want to participate in that pretend discussion. She simply said dogs and helped the others remember the conversation they didn’t have. After that, the pretend discussion went to balloons, or clowns, or some such thing. Pretty soon, the sheer mass of the make-believe became hard to keep straight. Her head even began to hurt.
“All right, is there anything else we should think up?” a sensible person asked about a half hour later.
“I hope not,” Carmen said. No one responded, and she figured that was the end of their little ruse. “Nice to meet you. Thanks.”
Everyone nodded, and she went on her way. Her destination was the punch bowl. All that talking had made her thirsty. She had company even before she finished pouring her first cup.
“So, how did it go?” Kali asked.
The question was casual. All the same, Carmen did her best to act enthused, though not too much. Overt eagerness would tip her hand.
“It went fine,” she said.
“Really? What did you talk about?”
Carmen didn’t answer right away. She was actually a bit surprised that her handler’s tone wasn’t as accusing as she expected. Perhaps that was just her guilty conscience. Either way, no answer came readily to mind. She couldn’t really remember any of the script now that she needed it. After a few seconds, she could only sigh.
“We spent our time making up a pretend conversation so, when you asked us what we were talking about, we could use that instead of making it up on the spot,” she said dejectedly.
Kali stood very still. Carmen was sure she was in for it now. But then her handler nodded slowly. “So, your conversation was…pretending to have a conversation. That’s a bit unorthodox, but at least it’s something,” she said after a shrug.
Carmen thought about it for a moment. “Yeah.” She smiled but then muted the expression in anticipation of her next question. “Can I leave now?”
“Oh, no, no, no, Edge,” Kali said, waving her finger. “You don’t get off that easily. Now go. There are other conversations to pretend to have,” she continued, gently pushing her charge on.
Carmen groaned but offered no other protest. Unfortunately, her luck grew worse. Her next attempts were only met with blank stares. It was an event when someone even returned a hello. Kali spurred her on despite the hopelessness. At least her handler was right about one thing, she realized, as more than a few boys watched her. It wasn’t just them, either—the spectacle drew quite an audience. Every time she walked across the floor, heads swiveled to follow. Carmen had no doubt that they weren’t just interested in her ugly dress. She had to be the most entertaining clown for fifty miles; she sure felt like one. And that made it final. She hated parties. She absolutely could not stand them.
She found a chair and immediately sat down, fed up with the whole thing. She wasn’t going back out there; she didn’t care how mad Kali got. For now, her handler watched from a ways off but said nothing. Carmen only assumed she realized this would be a battle she wouldn’t win.
Carmen closed her eyes and sighed, reveling in her moment alone. When she opened them again, they went straight to the clock. Good, she thought. There were only a few more hours of the marathon left. All she needed to do was stay welded to the chair and not move for anything, and she’d probably emerge unscathed. It was then that she noticed some of the security personnel had deliberately moved closer to her. Strange, Carmen thought. She wasn’t doing anything belligerent. Even Kali wasn’t looking at her anymore. Instead, she looked at something just behind her charge.
“Why did you stop? I was enjoying myself.”
She turned around to see Artemis. The other girl looked…well, striking! Her dress was a deep blue and constructed in such an elegantly simple manner that it captured attention even while it seemed like it wasn’t trying to. Figures, Carmen thought. The two of them didn’t interact very often. It seemed the powers that be had made certain of that, lest they reprise their prior battle.
Carmen kept her eyes locked on the fellow one-percenter but didn’t move otherwise. Artemis calmly sat next to her. Her entourage of security guards took station nearby. Carmen glanced at them before looking back at her. Whenever they did consort, it was usually only in passing. They were never alone in such instances, as security always followed a half-step behind Artemis wherever she went. Carmen was quite certain she got a kick out of the whole escapade.
“What do you want?” she asked dismissively.
Then she half-turned in her chair to show Artemis her back. Her position didn’t allow her to see the other girl’s sneer, but since that was the point, Carmen just used her imagination.
“I just want to talk. That’s why we’re at this party, isn’t it? Besides, you’re the one who made a big show out of ‘Let’s just be friends,’” Artemis said, adding a touch of venom to the last bit.
Carmen rolled her eyes. “That was years ago…and then you tried to kill me.”
“Yeah, I guess I did,” Artemis said after a light chuckle. “But that was then and this is now. I just want to talk.” She paused, and Carmen didn’t know she was looking around the room. “It wouldn’t be polite to trash the place after they went to all this trouble.”
“Well, at least you’re more sensible now,” Carmen responded sarcastically. She swore that girl took crazy pills in t
he morning. She didn’t know Artemis smiled at the comment. “So, what do you want to talk about then?” she asked after a sigh.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Artemis began. “You seem to be the expert. When you were talking to those others, my handler said ‘See? You should try to be more like her.’” She groaned. “Years and years and years. You have no idea how often people compared me to you and said I was lacking. I know it was just to get me to do something or behave a certain way or whatever, according to my personality profile. But whatever it is, I really, really hate it.”
Carmen glanced at her over her shoulder. “Should I apologize?” she asked, half-sincere.
“Oh no,” Artemis began. “We don’t want the great Edge apologizing to little old me. I just want you to go back out there and make a fool of yourself again. It was quite fun to watch.”
Yes, very sensible now, Carmen thought after rolling her eyes again. She turned to face Artemis, who smirked at her.
“You know, I really don’t like you,” she said simply.
“Yes,” Artemis said, sarcasm bleeding into her voice. “Like I look at you and think rainbows, puppy-dogs, and roses.” Carmen opened her mouth to respond, but Artemis cut her off. “But what are you going to do about it?” she asked, her tone more hopeful than not.
Carmen said nothing. She really couldn’t think of anything to say. Her state only made Artemis smile. She opened her mouth but closed it again, as the words wouldn’t be enough. It was soon obvious that only one response would do. She stood, bitter at what she was forced to do. Artemis didn’t move; she just watched her expectantly. The security guards stiffened. As Carmen began walking toward the door, she could hear the other girl laugh.
“By the way,” Artemis shouted between chuckles, “that’s a real nice dress you’re wearing!”