The Zanna Function

by Daniel Wheatley

  The window was already open, bringing in the scent of flowering dogwoods and spring breezes, and he put the kitten down on the sill. “Insert key,” he said, his fingers fiddling with the fine construction. “And make one full turn.” A few seconds later, the kitten purred to life. Its head turned around to take a panoramic shot of Zanna’s bedroom, and then it jumped up from the sill and zoomed into the sky.

  Pops whistled. “Can’t just use the phone like normal people,” he said, turning from the window back to Zanna. “Sometimes, I just don’t know what this world is coming to.” He shook his head playfully, a boyish grin spreading across his face. “Well? Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

  Her tongue felt like it had been stretched out and smashed with a hammer. “Ow,” she croaked.

  “Ah!” He turned back to the clutter on the desk. “Cecelia also gave me some instructions for when you wake up. Just have to find the little scoundrel . . .” He rummaged around until he found a matching floral envelope that had apparently come with the kitten messenger. “Here you are.” He cleared his throat dramatically. “ ‘Touch your thumb to each of your fingers. Touch your tongue to each of your teeth. Wiggle your toes.’ ”

  “Pops,” she tried again, and this time her croak was close enough to actual words to get his attention. He stopped reading the list of therapeutic exercises and adopted a more serious tone, sitting down in his chair to answer all the questions she was too weak to ask.

  “It’s May,” he said, reaching over to take her hand. “You’ve been asleep for nearly a month, I reckon. Cecelia told me you did something right foolish out there. Some madcap ‘paradox’ thing that darn near killed you.”

  Zanna dredged up her voice. “Splutter.”

  “Scamper, I’m going to have to take your word for it,” Pops said. “You know I’m no good with that Scientist stuff. All I saw was this crack like a strike of lightning, and then everyone around me was on the ground and howling in pain. Thought we’d been bombed or something.”

  Zanna’s throat clenched. Of course the other Scientists would have been caught in her Splutter. “I’m sorry.” Her voice fell apart, and she had to rebuild it. “The others . . . ?”

  He patted her hand. “Just fine. That one in the armor got us all out. Can’t remember his name for the life of me.”

  She didn’t have the strength to remind him it was Lord Hemmington. “Am I in trouble?”

  That made Pops laugh, big and boisterous and nearly deafening. “Not with me! Can’t speak for the others, though. I heard about what happened at school. I did tell you not to make too much trouble.”

  Zanna sighed. It would have been ridiculous to imagine she was going to get away completely scot-free. Mrs. Appernathy was surely going to be less forgiving than her grandfather. But at least it didn’t sound like Lord Hemmington was arresting her for stealing his limousine and interfering with a Primer operation, and she could live with that.

  There was one more question she had to ask, and she worked up to it. “Did—” It was like a boulder she had to move but couldn’t find a decent grip on. “What about her?” She willed herself to say it. “What about Anna? Did we get her?”

  Pops nodded, and it told her everything. “You got her, scamper. She’s not going to bother you ever again.”

  The next week made the days after Yellowknife seem like monastic sanctuary. Apparently, while she had been asleep, the story had gone around St. Pommeroy’s several times, each retelling growing more and more ridiculous. The girls visited, and Nora brought Zanna her own copy of The Constant so she could page back through its archive and read all the coverage for herself. And there was a lot of it. Everyone from Nora, Beatrice, and Libby to Xavier and Mrs. Turnbuckle had been interviewed multiple times for their role in “bringing down one of the most dangerous criminals known to Science,” as one young hotshot reporter described it. There were hundreds of pictures and articles, a special report of the high-security vault the Learned Society was constructing under the Brazilian rainforest just to hold Anna, and even an animated scene that Zanna could pull out of The Constant like a children’s pop-up book. It depicted the mansion and the limousine and the Primer camps, with big arrows and timelines breaking down the events of that night to the second.

  Of course, as soon as the news had leaked that she was awake, it was Zanna’s turn to sit for pictures and talk to reporters and recount the entire story, starting with her first day of school. But for the most part, everyone from the big Constant reporters down to the fashionable Japanese girl who ran the St. Pommeroy’s school paper, The Candlefoot, asked the same questions.

  “Why did you do it?”

  I had to.

  “Were you afraid?”

  Absolutely.

  “Would you do it again?”

  Yes.

  Eventually, the fervor died down, and Zanna was able to get a little peace and quiet. She knew things would never go back to the way they had been, but she managed to find a little bit of normalcy. The girls visited and gossiped about Libby breaking up with Amir yet again. Nora revealed that she had chosen her Iron—not a ruler but a crowbar with spots of chipped paint. “In case I need to hold any doors open again in the future,” she said, a giggle slipping out. Pops brought them lemon bars that were so sticky they had to stop and go wash their hands afterward. Her schoolwork had piled up while she was comatose, and on top of it all, St. Pommeroy’s wanted her to write an essay on the importance of heeding to authority in times of crisis—and do some other remedial tasks as her punishment. When she offhandedly mentioned to Nora that she had been prepared for something far worse, the girl’s face grew dark. “Don’t push it,” she said coldly. “A lot of people wanted it to be more severe. There was talk of expulsion. I think even the Learned Society got involved.” But she wouldn’t say any more.

  When exam week rolled around, Zanna was still too weak to get out of bed, so her professors came to her, instead. One by one, they ran her through an exhausting battery of tests, covering everything she had learned over the last year. The written portion was simple enough, but the practical portion was grueling. For an entire afternoon, Zanna juggled physics and chemicals and wrote functions while her professors watched in uncharacteristic solemnity, only speaking to direct her to use a different element or manipulate a different function. The whole experience made her feel like a performing monkey.

  At last, hours after her brain had been reduced to jelly and her bedroom window had gone dim with sunset, her teachers leaned back in their chairs and shared a wordless exchange. “Well then, I think we’ve seen enough,” Dr. Cheever said for all three of them, scribbling away on a piece of graph paper held by his horseshoe Iron. “Unless I’m forgetting something?”

  Zanna’s gaze flipped between Dr. Fitzie and Dr. Piccowitz, silently urging them both to keep their mouths shut and not remember any more tests for her to do. Her disheveled Chemistry professor fruitlessly tried to organize his papers and checked his pocket watch.

  “No, I think that’s everything,” Dr. Fitzie said brightly.

  “Finally,” Zanna said, not even trying to keep the exhaustion from her voice. She shoved all the chemical samples away from her and sank back into the pillows. “How’d I do?”

  “We’ll send out results in a few days,” Dr. Piccowitz said diplomatically. But when he looked away to consult his pocket watch again, Dr. Fitzie grinned and gave her a thumbs-up.

  True enough, a couple of days later her report card arrived—with a catch. Pops knocked on her bedroom door, but when he came in, he wasn’t alone. Dr. Trout was with him, a single piece of folded graph paper in her hands.

  “Do you have a few moments?” her professor asked, in that tone that said she already knew the answer. She set her baseball bat down at Zanna’s bedside, and it reshaped into a gnarled stool, complete with a side table for her to put Zanna’s report card on.

>   “I guess,” Zanna mumbled, her brain trying to find its feet. Pops ducked back out into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

  “There is something I would like to ask you,” Dr. Trout said. “It shouldn’t take long. Understand?”

  Zanna gave herself a swift mental kick and nodded. “I’m ready.”

  “Good.” Dr. Trout laced her fingers together. “Here is my question. Have you found your Iron?”

  All Zanna had to do was lean over to her nightstand and grab the handle of the frying pan that was waiting for her there. But something about Dr. Trout’s presence made Zanna move carefully and deliberately, as if she was showing off a museum artifact. She picked up her frying pan and felt the muscles in her arm work to lift its heavy cast iron. It was here in this room, in this very bed, that she had first met it. Sharpened to a threatening point and held against her throat by Anna. Now it was in her hands, and it felt good.

  “Yes,” she said, looking into Dr. Trout’s eyes and not wavering. “This is mine.”

  A moment of silence passed. The professor seemed to be doing a calculation in her head, the hard corners of her mouth twitching a little. Then she reached a conclusion and produced a silver pen from somewhere. With a scratch of nib against paper, she wrote a note on the report card, fanned it briefly to dry the ink, and handed it over.

  Three perfect scores marked off Mathematics, Chemistry, and Physics, with encouraging notes from her professors in the margin. But at the bottom, in the uneasy dark-red ink of a bloodsucking pen, Dr. Trout had given her a solid D. In the margin beside it, she had simply written Needs considerable improvement. But it was a passing grade. Barely.

  The stool creaked as Dr. Trout rose and turned it back into the baseball bat. It seemed as if she would slip away without another word, but Zanna looked up from her report card and caught her at the door. “Dr. Trout?”

  The professor turned back. “Is there something else?”

  There was, but Zanna couldn’t put it into words just yet. One finger flicked at the corner of her report card, bending it back and forth nervously. Her other hand reached down to her lap and rested on the handle of her frying pan. “Why didn’t you stop me at St. Pommeroy’s?”

  Dr. Trout’s face never changed. She just kept her stare, with its thick, lowered eyebrows.

  Zanna squeezed her frying pan and stared back. It hadn’t been an illusion or some other trick of optics. She knew what she had seen on her way out to the parking lot. Dr. Trout had let them pass without a word.

  Her teacher drew a breath through her nose. “Mistakes,” she said. And then she turned sharply for the door before Zanna could ask her anything else.

  By the time graduation day rolled around, Zanna was well enough to walk, though Mrs. Turnbuckle didn’t approve and said she should have at least another three weeks of rest. But Zanna insisted, forcing herself up on legs that still wobbled uneasily with Splutter pains. It took her a long time to put on her school uniform. Her fingers trembled involuntarily and made buttoning up the blouse especially difficult, but at last she looked at herself in the mirror and smiled. Time to go catch the bus.

  Her grandfather let out a low whistle as she came into the kitchen. “Look at you, my little scamper.”

  Zanna’s cheeks flushed red. “They’re supposed to arrange transportation for the parents. That’s what Nora said.”

  He pointed at a letter from St. Pommeroy’s over on the counter that had apparently been addressed to him for once. “I know. Don’t you worry, now. Wouldn’t dream of missing it.” With his whiskery chin, he indicated the frying pan she clutched tight to her chest. “You take care of that, now.”

  She hadn’t even remembered picking it up from her nightstand. “I will.”

  “It’s yours,” Pops said. “It always was.”

  Zanna took a breath. Her body still felt wiggly and haphazardly sewn back together, but holding the frying pan in her arms gave her enough strength to continue. “Pops,” she said, “they’re putting bets on what I’m going to decide today.” Ever since she had admitted to one of the reporters that she didn’t have any particular specialization in mind, The Constant had been abuzz with speculation. Even her teachers had not been immune to it—during her final exam each one had confided in her, when the other two weren’t in the room, that she would be a perfect fit in Mathematics, or Chemistry, or Physics. It was supposed to be cheeky and friendly, but to Zanna, it had felt more like getting pulled apart all over again. “And I don’t know. I don’t—”

  “Zanna,” Pops said. He stopped wiping down the counter and looked right at her. “Forget about all of them. This is yours. Do what you have to. I will be proud of you for that, and that alone.”

  She swallowed the rest of her worry. “Okay.”

  He grinned and shooed her away with his dishcloth. “Go on, then. Buses don’t wait for the likes of you and me. See you in a little bit.”

  The morning was warm with springtime and sun, but Zanna couldn’t shake off her shivers. She clutched her frying pan all through the bus ride, as if one of the laughing, excited students around her was going to steal it and run away. The girls were ecstatic to see her up and about, and she tried to share in their excitement, but the inevitable specialization decision soured everything, no matter how bright and loud the day was.

  St. Pommeroy’s was a riot of color. An illusion of robin’s-egg blue had been painted over the ancient marble, and the leaves of the olive trees in the entrance hall were a startling white. Metallic streamers decorated every archway and column, fluttering valiantly in a stiff wind that wasn’t there, and fireworks burst in the sky, somehow visible despite the bright sun. The girls waited with the other freshmen in the entrance hall, milling around aimlessly, recounting horror stories from exam week, snapping pictures, and showing off their Irons. Tomas, the sophomore Beatrice was dating, snuck in to congratulate them all. Then he and Beatrice disappeared, and Libby said to not look for them.

  Benito had brought a roll of aluminum foil, and he blew it into a shiny silver ball that he then tossed over the crowd. It floated over to Zanna’s group, and Libby swatted it away so fiercely that it nearly sailed out of the courtyard.

  “Hey,” Nora nudged Zanna playfully. “You okay?”

  Zanna snapped back to reality, realizing that she had been staring blankly at the reflecting pool for some time. “Yeah,” she muttered. “Just thinking, that’s all.”

  Tyson and Amir broke into their little circle with uproarious prankster laughter. Both of the boys had gone with musical instruments for their Irons—Tyson’s was a trumpet, and Amir carried an alto saxophone. As more students gathered around, the two boys broke into a jam-band melody, climbing up onto the lip of the reflecting pool to better show off their antics. Nora and Zanna exchanged a knowing glance and could only shake their heads.

  “Zanna?”

  Even without raising his voice one bit, Zanna heard Cedwick clearly through the noise of the impromptu concert. He had shouldered through the mass of clapping students and stood with his hands shoved into his pockets, the heavy chain laid over his shoulders. Zanna was alone. Somehow, Nora had disappeared completely and silently.

  “Hey,” she said. “Fancy running into you here.”

  “I’m glad to see you out of bed,” he said. In the ruckus, he had to take another half-step forward, and Zanna frowned when she saw that he, too, had gone through a growth spurt. Not as pronounced as Nora’s, but Zanna definitely had to look up a bit in order to meet his eyes, when she was sure they had been on the same level at the beginning of the school year.

  “Yeah, I’m glad to be out.” She rolled her shoulders around and had to stifle a wince as some lingering Splutter pain shot through her. “Did you have to write that silly paper about heeding authority too?”

  He nodded. “We got off easy.”

  “I know.”

 
“You know which specialization you’re going to pick?”

  Heat rushed to her face, so bright and obvious that she didn’t need to put her answer into words. “It really doesn’t matter,” he said quickly as she tried to hide her burning face. “Don’t let Nora tell you otherwise. All it means is one of your classes will be different next year.”

  The genuine apology in his voice brought a small smile to Zanna’s face. “I seem to remember someone telling me that if I wanted to be a Primer, I needed to specialize in Physics.”

  Now it was Cedwick’s turn to look away. “I don’t think either of us is getting into the Primers now. My father wouldn’t even read my application.”

  Tyson and Amir jumped down from the lip of the reflecting pool, taking the crowd with them as they marched around the entrance hall. But Zanna stood where she was and so did Cedwick.

  “Here.” He pulled a piece of graph paper out of his pocket. “I know it’s late. And Dr. Trout’s probably forgotten about it by now. But I still wanted you to have this.”

  Zanna’s stomach clenched up. “Is this what I think it is?”

  “It’s my report,” Cedwick said, taking her by the wrist. “I just thought—”

  “Attention!” The voice of Mrs. Appernathy filled the courtyard, silencing the screaming freshmen and the parade of musical instruments. “We will be entering the auditorium soon. Form a line in alphabetical order!”

  She sounded more snappish than Zanna remembered. Her torches were out in full force today. When Zanna looked back, Cedwick was gone. In her hand was his report.

  “Hurry up!” Mrs. Appernathy shouted from all around them. The students assembled into something that might have been a line, if Zanna squinted and used a very theoretical definition. She tightened her grip on the crumpled report Cedwick had handed her and trundled all the way to the back of line.