So I continue to walk the halls with my head down, hoping that I, too, might disappear.
It has worked, in the sense that nobody besides Ty, Jerry and Bubba feels a need to push me, bump me, knock books out of my hand, punch my arm or give me body-part-related nicknames.
It has not worked in the sense that every time I pass Ty, Jerry and Bubba, they push me, bump me, knock books out of my hand, punch my arm and refer to me with body-part-related nicknames.
Looking at things logically, I suppose this means my approach is a bust.
But I am still determined to salvage some part of my original mission. Like the zero-g sharks of Rigel IX, I must move forward or die. I must be bold. I must take action. I must push the envelope and advance into uncharted quadrants.
2.06.01
I talked to a girl.
Not just any girl. That one I saw back on my first day. The one who cheers. She of the skin and the hair. And the smile.
Yeah. Her.
I learned that her name is Stephanie Spring. Spring, as in what hope does eternally. Spring, as in the time when flowers bloom and a young spaceman’s thoughts turn lightly to love. Spring, as in what the coyote optimistically straps onto his shoe as he embarks on his latest effort to nab that roadrunner.
Stephanie Spring.
It happened as I was walking back from one of my check-ins with Counselor Blethins. She and I play this little game: Every few days, I show up right before first hour, pretending that I believe she can fix my schedule. She looks around the office nervously, then hems and haws and apologizes, saying that she is waiting for clarification on the new schedule-changing policy from Principal Denton, and that she hopes I am doing well and would I like to talk with her again soon? But she also writes me a hall pass to be late for PE. Which I take full advantage of.
I was maximizing use of just such a pass by ever so slowly making my way to the gym when it happened: I saw Stephanie ferrying paperwork to the office. Range: about fifty feet, course heading 355 Mark One. I calculated speed and trajectory and estimated fifteen seconds to intercept.
Hailing frequencies were open—but what message should I send? “I come in peace?” “Greetings and felicitations?” “That’s a lovely skirt you’re wearing?” “How about them . . . ?”
“Hey,” I said. Those fifteen seconds went by fast.
She smiled. “Hey.”
We walked on.
What a great day!
2.07.01
Conversation! A whole conversation!
A day after that beautiful hallway meeting, I was at the checkout desk in the ARC, when who should walk in but Stephanie! Stephanie Spring! Spring, like the fresh smell of a garden after a gentle rain. Spring, like . . .
You get the idea.
I probably should mention that whenever I had observed her around the school, she was usually surrounded by friends. Lots of them. And I had been thinking—based on the way we had connected from afar, in the gym and in the hall, she could really help ease my way into the native culture.
Today, she was alone, apparently on an errand for another teacher. She approached the desk, and I just stood there, next to her.
She looked for Ms. Beacon. Then she looked at me.
I decided to seize the moment.
“Hey,” I said.
She smiled. Smiled.
“Hey,” she said.
I thought: Captain Maxim would totally approve of how well I am doing.
She looked back toward Ms. Beacon’s office, expectantly.
“I’m Clark,” I said.
She looked at me, bemused for a moment, but then the smile came back. “I’m Stephanie,” she said.
This was the greatest moment I’d had since arriving on Festus.
“ ‘Clark’ is an . . . uncommon name, isn’t it?” she said. “We don’t hear it a lot around here, at least.”
Isn’t it adorable, how she mentioned my name like that? “My dad liked the explorer,” I said, smiling.
A brief silence followed.
“You know, Lewis and . . . ?”
Blank stare.
“We have Athletics together,” I said, changing the subject. “Well, I have Athletics. You have cheer practice at the same time.”
She leaned her head to one side, quizzically.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I remember your first day. I think your eye has almost healed.”
I winced at the memory, but kept smiling. “I haven’t, uh, seen you, except in the gym. Much.” I said, wincing again at my own awkward words.
“No, I guess not,” she replied, perhaps warily. “You aren’t in any other classes with me, are you?”
“Uh, no. I’m sort of, um, having an issue with some things, since I transferred in, and the office, well . . .”
“Oh. You must be a hero!” she blurted, saving me from trying to explain.
A hero! This was a surprise. I had thought of my struggles as difficult, and I aspired to be noble. But heroic? Wow. Here was a young woman who knew how to judge someone by his inner qualities, and not by the size of the bruise on his face.
“Well, you know—hero? Not much of one,” I said, trying hard to sound modest as I stood a little straighter than I had been. “Although I suppose—yeah, some people would call me that.”
She smiled. “I thought so. And we’re probably not in any classes together because you’ve been gifted, right?”
I almost embraced her on the spot. She knew me. She really knew me. I might have swooned, if Ms. Beacon had not emerged from her office and accepted a packet from Stephanie, who turned to leave.
“Nice talking to you,” I said.
She turned again, with a questioning look, as if she were surprised that I could speak. But then, that smile!
“You’re an interesting person, Clark. I’ll see you around,” she said.
If you had told me that George Lucas had called to hear my thoughts on how he could improve his next movie, I could not have been happier. Interesting!
A hero!
Me!
2.08.01
Being a hero changes everything. I’ve started walking the halls with my head up. I’ve started noticing how the dirty windows in my remedial math class, where we have been working on converting fractions to decimals for two weeks, allow a lovely, golden light to filter in. And when Jerry Sneeva made fun of my parka, again, in the hallway this morning, I laughed and told him he was obviously jealous. I didn’t even look back as I walked on.
Like a hero. An interesting, gifted hero!
It was such a nice day, I decided to walk right through the middle of the cafeteria. Just to see what things were like. And wouldn’t you know it, I saw . . . Stephanie Spring! How lucky I was.
She was sitting at a table with three other girls. By some coincidence, they all had identical haircuts (Stephanie’s looked best) and similar sweaters with black collars peeking out from them (Stephanie’s seemed the most stylish to me). A suspicious mind would have been calling up data on clone armies and how to overcome them, but my guard was down. Dangerously so.
“Hi, Stephanie,” I started to say.
“That’s another totally great outfit! Way to rock the floral prints!” called the girl on Stephanie’s left.
I halted, panicked, looked down and saw nothing but my usual attire before I realized they were talking to a dark-haired girl walking in front of me, carrying what appeared to be a nicely balanced meal on a tray.
“Yeah, nice one, Ricki,” added the girl to Stephanie’s right. “Hasn’t anybody ever told you how we dress in this country?”
The dark-haired girl turned and started to say something in response, but amid peals of laughter from most of Stephanie’s table, her shoulders sort of crumpled and she walked on. Leaving me standing alone, awkwardly wondering how to catch the attention of Stephanie, who was looking away.
“What do you want, geek boy?”
And I froze as the clone army now focused on—me.
Stephanie turned my way slowly. “Oh hi, Clark.”
A clone’s jaw went slack as she turned and looked Stephanie’s way. “You know this reject?”
Stephanie let out a surprised gasp and glared at her. “Don’t be mean!” she said.
“He’s got to be some kind of reject,” said the clone, whose sweater was blue and whose gold necklace identified her as “Kaitlyn.” “I’ve never seen him in any of my classes.”
“Give him a break,” Stephanie said. “He’s new and . . . he’s a hero.”
Yeah, Clone Girl. Did you hear that? Stephanie thinks I’m a hero! I waited for the girl to apologize, then make room for me at the table.
“Uh, Stephanie,” said one of the other clones, whose sweater was yellow and whose necklace indicated her name was “Kaitlin,” “isn’t he Ms. Beacon’s aide or something?”
“I don’t know,” she said, sounding annoyed and looking at me a little nervously. “I guess so.”
“Stephanie,” chided Kaitlin, “they don’t let hero kids work as aides. Once you’re ‘gifted,’ they practically lock you up.” She rolled her eyes, as if this explained everything. “Doing nothing but gifted hero stuff.”
“Nothing at all,” said another clone, this one in a red sweater, whose necklace said “Katelyn.” “Until you pass.”
Something was not right here. These were no everyday clones. These were mascara-wearing, ribbon-bedecked, bubblegum-body-spray-scented weapons of ego destruction, genetically engineered to find their target’s weakest point, then annihilate.
“Yeah,” said Kaitlyn. “I had to do posters for hero last week for my volunteer hours. They made me do a cheer for some of them. It was the worst. But he wasn’t there. I’d remember that craptastic parka he wears.” She, Kaitlin and Katelyn laugh-snorted in unison.
YELLOW ALERT. YELLOW ALERT. RAISE DEFENSIVE SCREENS.
“Umm,” I said, “I’m not quite sure what—”
“Clark and I have spoken only once,” Stephanie said defensively. “It’s not like we’re friends. I was just being polite.”
RED ALERT. MAN ESCAPE PODS.
“Hey, Stephanie, I thought that when we talked, you, um . . . ,” I started to say. But the words shriveled up and ran dry. So I just stood there with a hopeful, desperate, pleading smile.
“OHMIGOD!” said Katelyn. “HE THINKS YOU LIKE HIM! HE THINKS YOU LIKE HIM!”
There were peals of laughter. None of it mine.
“Nice meeting you all,” I mumbled. I put my head down and sped toward the nearest exit.
Making my way out, I noticed a poster I had not paid attention to before:
STRUGGLING WITH STANDARDIZED TESTS?
Helping Everyone Reach Objectives
can get your scores back on target!
Just
Get In For Tutoring!
No matter how far behind
you are, You’re a HERO to us!
I was glad that the HERO students had a chance to get caught up on things. Maybe a little jealous, too, that social skills were not subject to mandatory testing. Clearly, I needed the tutoring.
Later, as I left Athletics, Sneeva, Hunter and Pignarski were waiting. They wanted to talk about the lack of respect I had shown earlier.
As they began to play a tennis-like shoving game among themselves, using me as the ball, I had no witty responses.
EXPEDITION LOG
ENTRY 3.01.01
Have not had much to report for the past two weeks. The routine does numb the mind, and I have no interest in recording each bruise and insult.
I should probably begin some kind of classification system for them, though, distinguishing them by size, shade of green/purple and level of harm inflicted. I hear that Alaskans do this sort of thing with snow.
I should note that I have succeeded at keeping signs of physical damage hidden from my commanders, at least. Long sleeves are great at masking, say, the spot where someone might have punched me in the arm between classes.
The psychological damage? Well, it’s nothing that a few hours of reading in my bedroom can’t alleviate. The books transport me to much more manageable planets, and when my commanders knock on the door, peek in and see me behaving the same as I always have, it sends the message that all is right in my universe.
Even as it gets weirder by the day.
3.02.01
Today I entered the ARC to the sound of conversation. An intense one. I probably should have just taken my seat and pretended to see nothing, but I was curious.
So I walked up to the checkout desk and leaned in a bit to get a better view of Ms. Beacon’s office. She was in a verbal duel with someone I could not see.
I felt the chill before I saw his brown suit.
“It’s a simple matter of obeying a superior officer,” he was saying.
“George, you might have impressed a few school board members with your military talk and business jargon, but despite your efforts, this has remained a public school, not a boot camp. And I will be treated as the professional educator I am.”
“You’re daring to question my credentials, again?”
“George, you can’t bait me into rehashing that argument. The school board sold people on the idea that middle schools needed military-style leaders to instill values and raise test scores. That makes you my boss. But it does not make you right. Especially when I think your judgment is highly suspect. At best.”
“One should be careful about what one infers in public, Edna. Especially about one’s principal.”
“The word you want is implies, George. I have inferred quite a lot, watching you order people around. But I know better than to imply anything. And while we are discussing grammar, one should not speak in the third person to make threats. It tells me that my principal is very flustered.“
Principal Denton pivoted and marched out of her office. His face was red, all the way past his forehead to his hairline. He slowed long enough to give me an angry look as he went past.
Ms. Beacon emerged a few seconds later and watched him go. She was wiping the palms of her hands on her blouse.
“Today’s theatrical presentation is over, Mr. Sherman. Take your seat.”
I did. But I spent the rest of the hour looking over my shoulder every few seconds. It was clear: On this world, nobody, and nowhere, was safe.
3.03.01
And then Les rolled in. Literally.
We had a cold-weather lunch—that means instead of forcing the inmates out of doors for a few minutes of recreation at the end of lunch hour, they give us the option of going to the gym or the ARC. In the gym there is spirited play and abundant social interaction.
Which is why I go to the ARC.
I usually head to the .600s section, for a couple of reasons. First, that’s always been one of my favorite Dewey numbers—it’s where the technology books begin. I keep hoping I will find plans for a jet pack that will lift me from this place. Second, it’s in a far corner, where none of my pursuers would see me even in the highly, highly unlikely scenario that any of them visited the ARC voluntarily.
On this day, I was so busy scanning the rocket science books that I almost stepped on him.
“Greetings,” he said.
He was lying flat on the bottom shelf, filed somewhere between metallurgy and carpentry.
“Hi,” I said, as if seeing him here were a normal thing.
“This is a good shelf, should you ever need a quiet place,” he said. “Woodworking and metalworking books. The only person in the building who would use them teaches shop. And based on my experience, he’s not that into literacy.”
I nodded as if I understood.
“I need to tell you why I’ve been avoiding you,” he said. His voice was only slightly muffled by the books on the shelf above him. “You have to understand that to be visible in this school is to be a target. If they can see you, they will hurt you. They have lots of ways of hurting you. I don’t mean just the stuff with the balls or the doors.”
“You and I are both targets. Together, we would jointly become one giant target. The assault would be constant and merciless. It is the opposite of finding safety in numbers; there is danger in numbers. We would merely provide them a target-rich environment. Are you with me?”
I nodded again.
“But I can call you, if you promise not to talk to anyone about it. Do you follow?”
I did. “You need my number?”
“Not if it’s the one on the luggage tag of that Cosmos backpack you’re carrying. You might want to clip that. You never know who might be tracking you.”
“Um, I will.”
“Good. Now, stay here and don’t leave this aisle for at least five minutes. I will be in touch soon.”
He rolled inward and slipped out of the shelves on the other side, probably in the mid-.500s, somewhere between space objects and natural disasters.
3.04.01
It took him two days to call. He did so right after Star Survivors.
When the command unit interrupted my inane social studies homework—coloring! They had us coloring maps of the continents!—to tell me my phone had been ringing, I assumed it was a mistake. I hadn’t expected him to follow through.
“This is Clark,” I said when she handed it over.
“I’m sorry it took so long,” he said. “My . . . older brother and his friends have been around.”
“I see,” I said, snapping the tip of my green-for-rainforest pencil in surprise when I recognized the voice.
The conversation almost ended there. I couldn’t think of much to say to a person who couldn’t even mention my name in front of his family. This friendship seemed to have as much of a future as the unfamiliar actor in the red shirt whom Commander Steele had just asked to explore the unusual chewing sound coming from the nearby cave.
Revenge of the Star Survivors Page 4