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{Part I:Subject 13 H15387924 (Yoake Village)}
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Chapter One- A Strange Awakening
You know, I bet the average teacher could spot us right off. Most students probably can too for that matter. We all know the type. The kid you sat next to on the bus who did nothing but stare out the window, while you wondered how the heck she could do that without getting a neck cramp. (And what on earth was there to look at on a road in suburban Arizona? And could this possibly get any more awkward?) The kid who you can just tell will be more familiar with the cast of some fantasy novel than with their homeroom class? Yup. That’d be us. Us weird, quiet, lame loner kids. My teachers and parents have been trying to rationalize my behavior pretty much since I was born. “Oh, Emma’s only having trouble making friends because she’s new!” “She’s just a little shy, Mrs. Harbor, that’s all...” “Don’t worry; she’ll grow out of all this eventually” “Erm... I’m sure this is all just a phase she’s going through....” “... A very long phase” Blah blah blah. They never seem to have much hope or conviction about this all. And who would? This is me we’re talking about. Emma Bering, age 14, certified nerd, straight-B student, friendless, unpopular, annoying. Now tell me, what kind of person would have much hope or conviction about some one like that? Anyone…? Exactly. The only people who think that there’s somehow still a chance for me are those who’ve just met me, but they all learn eventually.
Whatever. I should just get a grip. I’m sure there are people who have it much worse, people who would think I’m just being a whiney loser who doesn’t know anything about life. Besides, I have a whole day of classes to face. I might as well get it over with while I still have my senses. Yes, I know, smart kids aren’t supposed to hate school, right? We get good grades, what are we supposed to complain about? We should love school. Sorry to disappoint you all, but if that’s a requirement, then I don’t qualify as a “smart kid”.
* * *
Before first period begins, we have almost an hour with nothing to do until classes start, owing to the stupidity of our bus schedule. Some people stay by the stairs in front of the building where we have classes, gossiping or playing hacky-sack or grumbling about various teachers or sundry homework assignments or other inane things, but the intelligent masses stomp their grey, gloomy, early morning way across the campus to the library.
The Boulder Ridge School Library is a huge and tiny building at the same time. I know that doesn’t make sense, bear with me. It doubles as our sub-divison's public library so it's huge, about a hundred shelves in neat rows, twenty or so computers that have issues with our printers, and demand your library card and your phone number before you can use a school given password to sign on. It really seems much smaller than average though, because everyone directs their attention towards five shelves and the computers. That’s because 75% of the books there are nonfiction, and almost all of the rest were written for small children by authors with a certain disdain for their wide-eyed, drippy nosed audience and firmly believe that they are only allowed to write monosyllabically about empty little stories that probably have a hand in creating the average American kid’s hatred of reading. There are about five shelves of chapter books, tucked away in a far corner, five shelves of books that, perhaps because of their almost hidden location, have thankfully escaped the wrathful gaze of thousands of clamoring censors desperate to destroy anything that isn’t an alphabet book or an algebra lesson. This little oasis is the refuge of a good 200 kids seeking, quiet, air conditioning, and boredom relief.
I hand over my ID to the library security guard (library security guard, who comes up with these things?) After a few minutes of doubtful scrutiny, he informs me:
“Your card is bent”
So? Is the response that leaps to me, hovering tentatively on the edge of my voice. I bite it down. The “library security guard” (must… resist… rolling… eyes) is technically a member of the faculty, and all. I really should be polite…
“Is it, sir?” I ask.
“Yep.”
“Really?”
“M-hm.”
While this fascinating conversation proceeds, a small but very irritated line of people has formed behind us, trying to push past me and walk in.
“Uh… if I may ask, sir? Why is that a problem…?”
“It indicates that it could have been tampered with.”
I take a deep breath, reaching into my very final reserves of patience.
“Listen. This is the very same student ID I’ve been giving you since I started middle school. It wasn’t any different yesterday or last week or last year than it is today. Now please give it back and let me pass?” I don’t give him the option of saying no; I just snatch my card back and walk off.
I can take this as an omen of just how much the rest of the day is going to suck, but nooo, I decide to remain optimistic, heaven knows why.
Unfortunately, the second omen that I won’t make it through the day with my ego still intact comes in the form of my best friend, Kathleen Riala.
Something else that doesn’t make sense, sorry.
But, you know what? I don’t really understand it either.
“Hi!” I call out to her. “Guess what? I finally finished that stupid research paper!” I smile.
“Coolness.” She says in a bored voice, and returns to scanning the shelf of horror books for her favorite title.
Ouch. I shut up, back off, bite my lip. I duck behind the other shelf and begin examining the library’s meager anime selection.
Lately, Kathleen has gained a tendency to lash out at me if I talk to her too much when she’s not in a good mood. Basically, if she seems to have an actual interest in whatever I’m saying, I can proceed with speaking to her. If not, I need to shut up and go away. If I try to talk to her while she’s mad about something, I’ll probably end up the target of her venting.
“Best friend.” Yeah, right. If I so much as open my mouth when she doesn’t want it open I get this endless e-mail about how everyone I’ve ever met/saw/read about thinks I’m some kind of snotty bitch. She should start her own business: “Kathleen’s Character Reviews: Have Every Flaw I Think You Have Ridiculously Blown out of Proportion for Only 75 Cents!”
But whatever. I’m sure there are many people who have it a whole lot worse.
I make a point to smile politely at Kathleen on my way out of the library.
She gives me the finger.
Okay then.
* * *
The PE coach looks cheerily at us, smiling that ridiculous smile that means we’re all about to be very, very sad.
“We’re running the mile today!” he says brightly. Even all the popular jock kids look disappointed. “Remember, run one side of the triangle and from that point, you have 5 laps! Good luck! Anybody who makes it in under the nine-minute mark doesn’t have to run next week!”
Everyone looks slightly heartened by the nine-minute thing. Everyone but me, that is. How anyone can manage to run all that within 9 minutes is beyond me. I think I can make it in thirteen minutes if I run the whole way.
We all line up between the first cone and the basketball court, not quite a straight, neat row. People push to be in front, anything to have to run a few steps less.
The coach blows the whistle.
We all start running, jogging, actually, trying to keep from tiring out before the end of our first lap. Not that that will help much, I can already feel my breath coming short, much sooner than usual. Is it possible to get out of condition overnight? I know I wasn’t this bad yesterday…
I start panicking as soon as dark spots begin to appear at the corner of my vision. It’s the heat, I know it is. Whose stupid idea was it to throw 50+ eighth graders into the Arizona midmorning and have them run for an entire class period?
One lap finished. “Four minutes” the PE coach tells me. Great. I’m not even 1/5 of the way through and already almost half my time is up.
Second lap: eight minutes, thirty seconds. I start to run faster.
Third lap. Eleven minutes. I feel like I’m going to throw up or something. I keep tripping, probably I’m stepping on some rough patch of uprooted grass or something, but when I look back, I can’t see anything.
Fourth lap, Twelve minutes, fifty-nine seconds. I realize my vision is entirely blacked out now. I’m running blindly ahead, one hand out. I hope I’m going in the right direction; I don’t need to give Kathleen anything to ridicule me over. I’m vaguely aware of falling, I must have tripped again. I want to put my hands out to break the fall but I can’t , my arms won’t move and I can’t concentrate and I’m not aware of anything anymore as I fall forward and I can’t breathe and the world fades away.
* * *
The nurse is baffled.
I do not have a fever. I haven’t been coughing or sneezing and I don’t have a sore throat. No one I know has been sick recently and she’s sure I don’t have heatstroke. Apparently, all these facts combine to make me “healthy” despite having passed out five minutes ago. She sends me to Science.
* * *
Elizibeth Martinez’s cell phone is ringing.
It’s a high, loud screech. It must be a new cell phone, because she hasn’t gotten a ring tone for it yet. I should be grateful for that. The banshee-screech noise echoing through the room is infinitely preferable to listening to some rapper cursing. I should be grateful.
But it’s a little difficult to be grateful when you’ve been listening to something that sounds like that first victim in a horror movie for forty-three minutes.
No, I’m serious. It’s been ringing since I sat down for this class. I know that it’s Elizibeth’s cell pone because it’s on the corner of her desk, and I can see it vibrating slightly from ringing at full, piercing volume.
Goddammit Elizibeth, pick up your phone! Put us all out of our misery! Please?
I glance around the room. No one else seems particularly irritated about this, not even the teacher. I glance at Elizibeth. She’s busy answering the discussion questions at the end of the chapter. I reluctantly bury my head in my own science textbook.
I am trying very hard to concentrate on dominant and recessive alleles. I copy out the Punnett Square in my notebook like the directions on the board say to. I think I did it wrong. I can’t really seem to grip what I’m reading about, like my brain is a bucket with a hole in the bottom. I go back to the first page. Someone has written “I suck” on Gregor Mendel’s apron in the picture in the corner of the page. It’s “girl” handwriting, neat and happy and evenly spaced. Every girl at Boulder Ridge School writes like that except me. My writing is tight and scribbly and illegible.
The cell phone is still ringing. I’m surprised the teacher hasn’t taken it by now. Teachers here are very strict about the great anti-cell phone rule. But no one else even seems to notice, and the cell keeps ringing, like it’s gone on a loop, over and over and over. I watch Elizibeth’s hand move back and forth across her page. The pen is moving but it never gets past one point for some reason, and the movements are the same as though she’s tracing the same letter, over and over, on and on.
I realize then that she’s been working on the discussion questions for the past forty minutes, and not once have I seen her start over, or even pause, yet I haven’t seen her hand move past that point.
My blood turns to ice, but I bite my lip, forcing myself to turn back to the book, forcing myself to wonder what the results of this Mendel guy’s pea plant experiments were. There has to be a logical explanation, I’m sure there is.
But so many strange things have been happening lately…
People are standing up. The bell must have rung. I can’t hear it through the cell phone’s ever louder pleas. I pack up, stand, and pull my backpack over my shoulder.
You’ve been reading too many weird fantasy books lately, I tell my self firmly.
Oh, and guess what? The cell phone stops abruptly as soon as I walk out the door. Go figure.
* * *
When I sit down in third period, I can see Kathleen in the front row, next to her boyfriend, doing some cruel imitation of me running around the mile triangle.
“I can’t see, I can’t seeeeeeeeeeeeee!” she cries in a high-pitched voice.
“Oh no! What if I die from my terrible weakness! I mustn’t! I must keep bestowing my vicious ugliness on us all!” someone else chimes in.
The Social Studies teacher walks to the front of the room and switches on the laptop and projector. A PowerPoint slide emblazoned with “Lincoln’s Reconstruction Plan” shines down on the class. “Take out your notes, people!” she calls. “Ashley, could you hit the lights?”
I would not admit this under torture, but I love taking note off of PowerPoint Presentations. It requires no effort or creativity or brainpower of your own, yet you always know you have the answers right. All you need to do is remember them. I turn to a blank page in my Social Studies notebook and scribble down the title at the top of the page wile the rest of the class complains. Kathleen blows her boyfriend a kiss. She has not taken out her Social Studies notebook. Doubtless tomorrow she will panic at the sight of her test study guide and beg me for answers as though we’ve always been best friends and she’s never been rude to me. I look away in disgust. I doodle a smiley face at the corner of my page. The phone rings.
Inwardly, I groan. Not again! I just escaped Elizibeth’s banshee of a phone, don’t tell me there’s one here, too! But it’s just the official phone up front. The teacher goes to answer it.
“Hello? Yes. Is she being signed out? What? Oh …okay. Emma?” She beckons to me, a politely puzzled expression on her face. “It’s your mom,” she says when I reach her, “she wants to talk to you…”
I feel sick without knowing why. I take the receiver with my heart pounding.
“…Mom? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, dear.” She says, sounding unconvincing. I can’t decide if the unconvincing-ness is in the “nothing’s wrong” part or the “dear” part. I’m smart enough to figure out that my mom wishes I was some happy preppy cheerleader and not this weird silent loner with no friends and no life. But whatever, anyway.
“I-it’s just…” Mom continues, “…just…”
“Yeah?” I prompt.
“You need to c-c-c-c-“
“What?”
“C-c-c-c-c-c” she sounds like a disk skipping.
“Mom?”
“C-c-c-c,” suddenly, my Mom’s voice is interrupted, or, is it interrupting? I really can’t tell. It’s still her voice, but it doesn’t sound like her, like she’s stepped out of character or someone else is controlling her mouth. “C-come to the office.” The new voice is calm and deadly, deadly serious, with a slight note of urgency slipping into it.
“Do I need to bring my stuff?” I ask. I’m a little worried, but my spirits are also rising to the cheap corkboard ceiling. I’m being signed out! I get to leave and I’ll get my butt out of here and there’ll be nothing to worry about for the rest of the day!
“That won’t be necessary.” Mom says. I can feel my high spirits sink to the ugly purple and green floors, but I try to be happy.
I turn to leave.
The Social Studies Class is gone.
And the walls are streaked up to the ceiling with blood.
Next chapter: http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/topic22235.html
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(edit: just patching some things up before I post chapter 2. I can't believe I showed some of this stuff to the general public. *hangs head in shame*)
