The Secret Winslow Theater Department [Worm/Cyrano de Bergerac]

[LadiesWhoLunch]

Spoiler: Author's note

I've been posting this on SB, and thought I'd begin crossposting it here. I'll post a chapter a day until we catch up with SB, and after that it'll update once a week, on Saturday.

I love comments, and I'm happy to hear criticism, although if it's rude I might just ignore it.

This story is a slow burn; things happen, and although Taylor will eventually be pretty powerful, it'll take her a long time to figure it out. The next chapter includes her trigger event (not the locker), and that will of course be pretty grim, but after that things will cheer up a lot. I'd describe this as "crack taken seriously but still silly sometimes."

As you can tell from this chapter, there will be OCs who matter to this story. But eventually some familiar names, including Undersiders, New Wavers, Wards, and E88s, will be part of the plot. Some characters I will deliberately write as fanon instead of canon, usually because I find fanon funnier.

A lot of authors and readers are very interested in "shard mechanics," and that's an essential part of how they enjoy wormfic. I've got nothing against that, but if that's you, this story will disappoint you; I've made no attempt to make Taylor's power make sense within Worm shard logic, and none of this story takes place in shardspace.

Most of the theater nerds in this story are thinly-disguised characters from Buffy. There's no actual Buffy crossover, though.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy it.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010.

Sophia the track star could have easily caught me, but on this day Sophia was more interested in lazily herding me than actually putting hands on me. Student after student glanced briefly at us and, understanding the situation - it's just Taylor Hebert being hunted like an animal, yawn, must be Tuesday - glanced away, holding onto books and backpacks and the occasional skateboard as they hurried to leave the school. Not for the first time, I noticed a teacher deliberately looking away.

I tried merging into the river of students, letting myself be carried along by the human tide down the hall and, I hoped, out of Winslow High School's battered main doors. It meant leaving behind some books and items in my locker that I'd intended to bring home, but that seemed like a necessary sacrifice. I wondered if I could get away with doubling back.

As I was contemplating this, I noticed Sophia move past me, weaving between the mass of students and the hallway wall, effortlessly outpacing everyone in the hallway. She didn't even seem to be working hard. I could see her graceful, easy stride - a relaxed lope that I probably couldn't have kept up with at a full run.

Sophia skidded to a stop at the end of the hall, between me and the exit. She planted her feet, facing me, arms folded, and smirked. Her message was clear: No escape here, loser.

Not wanting to be swept into Sophia by the crowd, I looked around for alternatives, and saw the stairs leading to the basement classrooms. No good. Instead, I turned around and started walking away from the doors, against the human tide, but it was like a stick trying to resist a wind tunnel.

There was nothing for it. Going with the tide - but also a little diagonally - I managed to flounder to the basement stairs, grabbing the bannister and swinging myself out of the crowd.

As a rule, I never went into Winslow's basement. Partly because there was no reason to - Winslow's music department, which was housed in the basement, had been shuttered years ago for lack of funding, and the basement had the echoey abandoned feel of a dead mall. But mainly, I avoided the basement because it was a dead end. The basement had one long hallway with doors leading to music rooms and classrooms and teacher offices, but there was no staircase back upstairs at the other end, no doors with a red EXIT sign mounted over them, no public gathering areas where there might be teachers supervising.

Looking behind me, I saw Sophia strolling towards me, avoiding the crowd by walking alongside the wall and shoulder-checking a student who got too close.

There was nothing for it. I ran down the stairs and stumbled down the hall. No one was in sight. Not knowing what to do, I pulled on doorknobs as I went, hoping to find a refuge or at least a hiding place. But every door I tried was locked, except one near the end which was a closet filled with music stands and tall pieces of plywood. Hide? I glanced back at Sophia, who was still strolling, and obviously had her eyes on me. Hiding was out.

There were only three doors remaining in the hallway, unless I doubled back. The first two were ordinary classroom doors, and both were locked when I tried them.

The final door in the hallway was different. It was noticeably larger than the other doors, looked like it was made of metal instead of formica, and had a crossbar rather than a doorknob.

I realized that I had absolutely no idea what was past this door. Glancing over my shoulder, I could see Sophia strolling towards me like she had all the time in the world. But even at her leisurely pace, she'd reach me in a minute.

I pushed on the crossbar. To my great surprise, it opened.

Unfortunately, it only opened about two inches before it stopped. It didn't feel locked, just surprisingly heavy. I started over, first pushing harder with my hands, and then pressing a hip against the door, telling myself not to let panic take over.

Then I let panic take over, and pushed against the door with my meager full body weight. The door finally began moving, inch by agonizing inch - until it suddenly, catastrophically, swung freely inward, sending me tumbling onto the floor on the other side.

I landed face down, my nose almost hitting a newspaper that was lying on the rough wooden floor. It was an issue of THE HOOLIGAN, Winslow's student newspaper. The cover had a black and white photo of two boys wearing jeans and t-shirts holding a helpless boy in a suit and tie by his arms. A teen girl, also wearing a t-shirt and jeans, was kicking the suit kid in the nuts. Above the photo, a headline declared "WINSLOW DEBATE TEAM TRIUMPHS."

I heard the door I'd fallen through close behind me with a resounding thunk. Maybe that'll slow Sophia down… for five seconds. If I'm lucky, which I never am. Get moving.

I scrambled to my feet - or I began to. Halfway up I stopped on one knee, frozen with surprise and embarrassment. Six strangers - five teenagers and an adult with an oddly long face - were standing in the room, staring down at me. They had obviously been interrupted in the middle of doing… something. The teens were mostly wearing variations of basic black - black t-shirts, black jeans, black skirts - although one broad-shouldered guy was wearing a Hawaiin shirt. The adult was an old man wearing a brown sweater vest over a necktie with a pattern of pink octopuses.

I probably was kneeling silently there, while they stared silently back at me, for only a second or two. But the moment felt like it stretched on forever.

I glanced around, trying to understand where I was, but my brain wasn't able to put together what I was seeing into a coherent whole. It definitely wasn't a classroom - there were no desks or chalkboards or any of the usual accouterments. There were machines surrounding the area that I didn't comprehend - they had big gears and cranks with big wooden handles, like machinery from a 1950s science fiction movie. There were ropes hanging down from a distant ceiling, and curtains, and clothing racks and huge sheets of plywood leaning against a wall.

"Here now," said the old man, offering me a rather large hand. I took it, and as he pulled me up I was startled by his height - he was even taller than my dad, and my dad is six feet two. "My dear, this is not an open area for…"

He stopped as we all heard the sound of someone pushing at the same door I had just tumbled through. I whipped my head around to look at the door, and then began glancing around for someplace to hide but nowhere seemed safe enough.

"Do you… Are you looking for a hiding spot?" asked the man. He had a southern accent, and his voice was deep and rich and just a little slurred with age.

I looked up at him, and couldn't find the words. "No" was not gonna fly - he'd clearly figured out that I was looking for a hiding spot - but saying "yes," admitting that I'm so pathetic that even as a high school student I was trying to hide, didn't seem like the way to go either.

But apparently the old man took my silence as an affirmative. He reached out and gripped my shoulders, commented "Well, isn't this exciting?" and steered me between a rack of hanging clothes and a rough concrete wall. Despite his age, his grip was firm. "Stay," he said, holding up a forefinger in front of my face like I was a dog being trained, and turned and walked near to the door, which was slowly opening. Not knowing what else to do, I stayed.

A bewildering assortment of clothing was hanging from the rack, including a wedding gown, a cheap cape suit, and a cow costume. I peeked out between two glittering dresses as Sophia pushed the door open and came through. I took some satisfaction in seeing that even Sophia the athlete had to put her weight into it to get that ridiculously heavy door open. Although, unlike me, Sophia didn't fall down when she finally got it open. Because unlike me she's not a complete loser.

Sophia glanced around, unbothered by the people watching her. The students were quiet in a way that suggested they knew who Sophia was. It's like she thinks she's invincible. Which, at Winslow, she basically is, Taylor thought. "Hebert!" she called out. "I'm going to find you and then I'll… I don't even know what I'll do, but I'll enjoy it."

"May I help you, miss?" asked the older man, taking a single long step to stand directly in front of Sophia. She took a step back and looked up, looking a bit surprised by his height.

"Yeah, where'd she go?"

He looked puzzled. "Where did who go?"

"The girl who just came in here!"

"That would be you."

Sophia gave the old man an unamused look. "Before me."

"No girl came through the door. Before you, that is."

I could see that Sophia was getting angry. "I saw her go in."

He put a hand on his jaw and rubbed it, scrunching up his eyes as if he were concentrating. "Girl, girl… Mmmmmmn. Sorry. No girl."

Sophia raised her voice. "I just told you, I saw her!"

He shook his head and said, very flatly, "In the twelve years I've been at Winslow, no person has come through that door. You're the very first one. In fact, there was no door until thirty seconds ago. Probably some cape thing."

I heard the little group of students giggle. Sophia heard it too, and swung her head and glared at the other teens. They took a step backwards in unison and fell silent. Yup, they definitely knew who Sophia was.

"What's your name?" said the old man.

Sophia shifted her glare to him. He towered over her, but if she was intimidated she didn't show it. "Madison Clements."

"Well, Madison, unless you've enrolled in my theater class, and incidentally all my classes are full, you're not allowed here. And if I see you here again, we will have a discussion and that discussion will feature the word 'detention' numerous times. Am I understood?"

"Oh yeah," Sophia sneered. "I'm so frightened." Raising her voice, she called out "Hebert, you'll be seeing me tomorrow. Guaranteed."

And then - after a brief, victorious struggle with the door - Sophia was gone. "Some cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go," I heard the old man mutter.

Then he pushed the clothing rack I was hiding behind to one side - it was on wheels - and smiled down at me.

"That was fun," he said. "This must be how it feels like to be Legend. So… Who are you?"

I stuttered out apologies and made to leave, but the old man held out a palm and I stopped, waiting apprehensively. He had stymied Sophia and I'd enjoyed seeing that. But that didn't mean that he'd be on my side, and I wasn't enrolled in his theater classes (I hadn't known Winslow had theater classes), meaning I had no more right to be here than Sophia did. Maybe he's mad at me for leading Sophia here?

At some points the students had started excitedly talking to each other in hushed but excited voices. Taylor heard one girl say, in a fake southern accent, "there wasn't a door there until thirty seconds ago!" and the others giggled. The old man cleared his throat and they all stopped talking.

"At the risk if not virtual guarantee of Armageddon I will be leaving you on your own for a short while," he announced. "I want you to do an improvisational exercise together until I get back. You're all at a cocktail party, and you're all capes, with a power that will be obvious if people see it. Your first goal is to not let anyone know your secret power. Your second goal is to find out what everyone else's secret power is - without asking them directly. Charlotte, you're the party host. Everyone take a minute to make up your power and then begin."

One of the students, the broad-shouldered boy wearing a floral shirt, raised his hand. "What do we do if someone guesses our secret?"

"Exit the party and then re-enter as a new character with a new secret power of course, Xack," the old man said, turning away from the students.

With a "come along, spit spot" - did he just quote Mary Poppins? - the old man guided me through a narrow point where two curtains met, and on the other side was an actual stage. I looked around in wonder - it was a real theater, with a raised stage, auditorium seating, and a bank of stage lights (currently turned off). How the hell is all this here without me knowing about it?

I followed him down a short staircase on the side of the stage and into the empty audience area. There were seats on both sides of us, made of hard, shiny wood, bolted in rows to the concrete floor. The chairs were dark along the top and the sides, but had faded to a lighter color where backs and butts had polished them over the decades.

Partway up the aisle, the old man made a "tch" noise, reached down, and picked up a flier from the floor. I only had enough time to read the first sentence, which said "A Notice To All White Americans" in huge block lettering. Then the old man folded the paper twice, with the lettering on the inside so it couldn't be seen, and ripped it in half. "Trash by trash for trash," he muttered, shoving the remains into a sweater pocket. I couldn't tell if he was speaking to me or to himself.

When he reached the back row of the theater, he sat and gestured for me to do the same. I obeyed, but I was careful to leave an empty seat between myself and the old man.

"I am Mister Haller." He didn't just say it; it was more like he was making a proclamation. "Chamberlain Haller. The Theater Master of Winslow High School. And you are?"

What the hell is a theater master, I thought. Still, best to be polite - weird job title or not, he was clearly a staff member of some sort. "I'm, uh, Taylor Hebert. I had no idea all this was even here."

"Yes, well," said Haller, and then made a sound halfway between humming and chuckling, "that would probably be because we don't tell anyone we're here. It's all word of mouth. Very exclusive."

A movement caught the corner of my eye, and I looked at the stage. The theater students had gathered on the stage, and were greeting each other and miming holding drinks. One of them moved from place to place by saying "whooosh" and imitating flying with her arms held out. Another was smiling and chatting while keeping one hand clamped across their eyes.

"But - I mean - what about when you put on plays?" I gestured towards the stage. "Do you put on plays?"

"Of course! We wouldn't be much of a theater department without plays, would we? But our performances are very hush-hush. Friends and family only."

(It wasn't very loud from the back row, but I could hear the students talking on stage. "Whoops, sorry about that. They build walls so poorly nowadays.")

After a moment, seeing that I still looked confused, the old man went on. "There was an incident, you see. Years ago. Involving philistine members of the so-called Empire Straighty-Straight - pardon my French - who didn't appreciate our critically-praised performance of Cabaret. It was all very stressful, and going forward the powers that be decided we should keep things on the, as they say, down-low."

"And the school's okay with that?"

Haller smiled. "We're self-financed. If you're a self-financed department at a school like Winslow, they let you do what you want. Plus, if they shut us down, they'd only have to reopen the music department or a band - they need some sort of performing arts program to keep accreditation - and that would cost them money."

("This thing? It's not a cape, it's a bib. I'm wearing it backwards to honor my grandmother, which is a thing we do in my culture.")

"So now I leave the school administration alone, they leave our little program alone, and everyone's happier for it." He sounded a bit smug. "By now I expect most of the administration has forgotten we're here. We are a jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible." He switched to a gentler tone. "Would you be interested in joining up?"

I physically cringed and without thinking burst out "God no!"

Hearing how my voice sounded high and panicked, I stopped to regain control of my vocal cords. Then I added, in a quieter voice, "I really couldn't ever do that. I mean, I just… I don't like being around other students. Or having to talk to them. Or being seen. And I'm pretty sure acting would involve all three of those things."

"Yes, well," Mr Haller said, rubbing his mouth with a hand, "that would be a barrier to a career on the stage."

("Tail? What tail? AWWOOOOO!")

I glanced at the stage. The student - it was the guy in the Hawaiin shirt - completed his wolf-howl, turned three times in place, squatted, and scratched at pretend fleas.

"They're doing it all wrong," I said.

"Er… Sorry, what's all wrong?"

"Them. They're playing the game wrong. You said the goal is to not be found out, but it's like they're going out of their way to be found out. They should sit on the side without moving or speaking, and concentrate on watching the other students for clues. None of them are doing that. It's like they want to lose."

"Very funny," Haller said, sounding amused. I flushed and looked down. After a pause, Haller said "Oh, I see, you were being serious. Well, how can I explain… They're talking to each other because the game's more fun that way."

Right. Duh. Normal teens like talking to each other. Why am I such an idiot? This is the only teacher to take my side and I've already shown him I'm an idiot.

("Nothing's wrong with my eyes. This is a rare hand condition.")

"Taylor, do me a favor? Taylor?"

"Um, yes?"

"Look up. Straight up at the ceiling."

"Why?," I asked. I could hear how suspicious I sounded, but I couldn't help it. It was a weird request, and it was a bit too close to "close your eyes," which in my experience was something people said just before shoving a vanilla pudding into my ear.

"It's nothing bad. Just look up."

I hesitated a moment longer, but decided I was being ridiculous. He was a teacher - or a theater master or something - the point is, he was a staff member. He wasn't going to shove dessert into my ear canal. He probably didn't even have dessert with him. I leaned back in my seat and cautiously looked up. Twenty feet above me, I saw metal poles going in every direction, like a steel spiderweb, a bewildering collection of large steel light fixtures, and a metal catwalk with a wooden floor and a sort of podium in the middle.

"Since you prefer not being seen… Have you ever considered becoming a lighting tech? You'd be the only one up there."

"I would?" I took another look at that catwalk, contemplating."And I could go up there anytime I want?"

"I can't advise you to skip your other classes to hang out here. But if you did I'd never catch on."

"But -- you told Sophia that all your classes are full?"

"I can feel a spot just now opening up."

("Heat vision? No, of course not. I'm just an arsonist. A blind arsonist.")

"But…"

"Yes?"

"Why are you helping me? No one has ever…"

Oh my god, I thought. That sounded so pathetic. Which is appropriate, because I am pathetic. Idiot idiot idiot.

"Ah." Haller sat back and looked at the students on stage as he spoke in a sing-song voice, his southern accent suddenly exaggerated. "I could tell you that you obviously have a bully problem, and due to an overabundance of under-evolved people in the dust mote town I come from, I know how important it is to have a place where the bullies can't find you. I could tell you that I simply enjoy being able to help someone with the tiny shred of influence I have, especially when it costs me nothing. Buuuuut…" he said, extending the word, and then smiled and switched to his ordinary voice. "Maybe I just need someone to run the lightboard. Our production of Cyrano opens in four weeks."

I looked up at the catwalk. It looked very isolated. "Is there a book on running a lightboard?," I asked.

 

[LadiesWhoLunch]

Spoiler: Content warning

Author's note: This chapter doesn't have a "locker scene," but it has something similar. I've marked where that scene begins, for readers who'd prefer to skip the traumatic bullying sequence. Next chapter will be less grim, I promise.

Nine days later - November 26 2010 (Thursday)

"Hey," said a young-sounding voice from a few feet in front of me. Which was weird. One thing I liked about being at the Dockworkers Union hall was the low likelihood of anyone talking to me, once the initial greetings phase was done. It was peaceful.

I looked up from my book, and saw that the speaker was a boy of about my own age. I then looked back to make sure there was no one standing behind me - either whoever the boy was really greeting, or perhaps the boy's collaborator who was preparing to dump food on my head or kneel down to trip me when the boy pushed or just to drop something down the back of my dress.

But no one was there. Which made sense, since my back was almost touching a wall. The center of the hall had a couple of long tables set up with food, and a few dozen members of the Dockworkers Union mingling happily. But here at the edge of the hall, I was able to be alone. Until now.

"You okay, Taylor? You kind of have this thousand yard stare thing going."

He called me Taylor, which meant he knew me. Winslow? Had Emma put him up to this?

Or maybe I'd just met him at last year's Thanksgiving lunch - since he's here and too young to be a union member, he must be a Dockworker's son.

I looked him over. He was a slight and slightly dorky looking boy with reddish hair that was tall on top and short on the sides, wearing a black suit jacket over a red t-shirt that had "thank the turkeys" written in marker on the front. The suit jacket, presumably, was his concession to dressing up for the dockworker's annual Thanksgiving lunch, like my blue dress.

I told him I was fine.

This was the third Thanksgiving since my mother's death. I thought of all annual events this way - first Christmas since my mother's death, second birthday since my mother's death, and so on. All of the events that made Mom's absence even more conspicuous.

When Mom was alive, Dad would go to the Dockworkers' Thanksgiving lunch, saying that it was a job duty. But Mom and I never went - Mom was busy preparing our family Thanksgiving dinner, and I preferred staying home and reading.

The first Thanksgiving after Mom's death Dad planned to prepare the usual meal, determined to keep family traditions going. But Dad got lost in his head, staring blankly at a can opener for an entire hour, and forgot to turn the oven on, and we ended up ordering pizza. The next morning I noticed the entire uncooked turkey lying in the trash.

I understood, though - this was only two months after Mom died, and I don't think either of us felt fully connected to the world. The second Thanksgiving since Mom's death we didn't even attempt to do our own dinner and just attended the Dockworkers' luncheon.

I realized I'd just been standing there silently when probably I should say something so I wouldn't seem weird. Well, weirder.

It didn't look like the boy minded. His eyes were closed and he was nodding his head slightly, like he was listening to a song in his head. The mannerism seemed familiar to me, somehow. He nodded and walked off just as I realized he was one of the kids from theater class.

Five days later - Dec 1 2010 (Wednesday).

My legs dangled off the catwalk, swinging a bit in the air as I happily munched on the tuna fish sandwich I'd brought from home. Wednesdays had quickly become my favorite day, because the theater was empty. On Wednesdays there were no theater classes - Mr Haller said it was so he wouldn't be required to work three days in a row, because "I don't dare fall behind on my loafing, at my age I might never catch up."

More often than not, none of the theater kids hung out in the theater space during lunch period on Wednesdays. Presumably they spent their lunch periods on Wednesdays hanging out with friends and laughing and in some cases making out and and perhaps even eating lunch in the cafeteria and just being normal teenagers and, crucially, not being in the theater department to bother me or to see me and be reminded of what a weirdo loser I am. Just me and myself, safety vest clipped by a strap to a metal pole on the lighting catwalk, the stage and at the wood auditorium seats far below.

Just as it should be.

Not that the theater kids - I thought of them like that, collectively, "the theater kids," and so far hadn't learned their names or even to tell them apart - were mean or unpleasant. Technically they were what would be called friendly, smiling and saying hi to me as I walked past them on the way to the ladder to the catwalk.

At first I had looked for ways to avoid even that minimal level of contact. No one bothered me once I was on the catwalk, so the question became, was there a route to the catwalk that wouldn't require crossing paths with the theater kids? But short of leaving via Winslow's front steps and walking entirely around the outside of the school building - and it was a large building - no such route seemed possible. Even worse, the outside doors to the theater automatically locked from the outside. That didn't entirely deter me, but then Mr. Haller caught me poking at the locking mechanism with a screwdriver, and I don't think he'd entirely bought my explanation that I had a hobby of going around finding screws to tighten. So that plan was a failure.

So four days a week I had to walk past the theater kids, twice, once on the way in and once on the way out. Eight times. And they'd always smile and nod and some would ask me how I was doing, and to avoid seeming weird I'd smile and nod back and answer queries with a "mmm" noise, without slowing down my walk at all. The heavy canvas safety vest was kept on a hook on the wall, and with practice I learned to snatch it off the wall without having to break my stride. I was trying to give the impression that I'd love to stop and chat if only I didn't have lots of urgent theater lighting business to attend to, but I wasn't optimistic that it was working.

I realized that it was likely that some of the theater kids were also victims of bullying.

That didn't make them more trustworthy. If anything, the opposite.

If I assumed they were being bullied, it followed that they must be desperate to not be bullied. Many of the theater kids were Black, which would make them targets for both the E88 and the ABB, and many of them were gentle and artistic, which would make them targets for everybody. Therefore, just being allowed to sit and eat lunch at Emma's table, no talking required, could make it seem like they were friends with the trio, which might encourage other bullies to focus on targets with less intimidating associates. Ergo, all of these kids had a strong incentive to sell me out to Sophia and Emma at any moment, and maybe already had. It's even possible that they'd been instructed to befriend me, the better to betray me later. The trio had done that before.

So I minimized my contact with the theater kids, as much as politeness allowed (probably more), and tried not to notice them as individuals. It was better that way.

But their friendly greetings still created some stress. So Wednesdays - the theater-kid-free days - were better.

Managing the lightboard had turned out to be extremely easy, although I realized that at a non-high-school level lighting was much more complicated. Mr. Haller's stripped-down version of Cyrano de Bergerac had only twelve light changes, total. A worn spiral-bound notebook, literally tied with a rope to the lightboard table, listed each change alongside the line of dialog that immediately preceded it. (Flipping backwards through the notebook revealed a history, going back years, of every play that had been performed by the Winslow High School Theater Department and what its light changes were).

On my first day occupying the lighting catwalk, I taught myself to use the lightboard and memorized all the lighting cues. That accomplished, I basically had nothing but free time and peace. I could eat lunch. I could read. I could relax.

Or so I thought, because I was sometimes very stupid. I was so overjoyed by my new circumstances, I called out "This is my realm!" loudly, making a sweeping gesture with the hand holding the tuna sandwich. I smirked, amused by my own private dorkiness. So much nicer than the third floor bathroom.

Spoiler: Stop reading here to skip the traumatic bullying scene. Click this box for a short summary of the rest of the chapter

Emma, Sophia and Madison surround Taylor on the catwalk, make fun of her for a bit, and eventually leave her dangling upside down from the catwalk, held by a canvas strap attached to her pants cuff. Taylor knows that being left for hours hanging upside down can actually kill people - it was a medieval execution method. But she's afraid that if she gets out of her pants and drops, the fall onto hard concrete will kill her instead. She's still hanging there, thinking about how she never had a chance when, at the end of the chapter, she triggers.

"That's the most pathetic thing I've ever seen," a voice responded. A sneering voice, a voice I honestly knew better than anyone's. I whipped my head to my left and saw Emma, my former best friend and current lead tormentor, at the end of the catwalk, grinning like a jackal and hands holding the thin metal railings on the sides. Behind Emma was her friend/minion/lapdog Madison, looking less confident about her balance.

I scrambled to my feet, accidently dropping my tuna fish sandwich, which made a small plopping noise against a seat far below. Gotta remember to clean that up after Emma's done with me. I turned to move away from Emma - I knew there was a second ladder at the other end of the catwalk - but Sophia was right there, smirking, maybe six inches away. How did she do that? I didn't hear her, I didn't even feel the catwalk rock!

I jumped back, away from Sophia - but my jump came to a sudden end with a jerk, because I was still hooked to the safety strap. The strap connected the heavy canvas safety vest I was wearing (owned by the Winslow High School Theater Department) to a hook bolted to one of the metal poles supporting the catwalk.

I yanked and yanked again at the canvas strap. I wasn't thinking clearly - the strap was much too strong to be broken by me. Or by anyone except a cape, really.

I desperately scrambled my hands over the carabiner, trying to press down the latch which would release the strap's hold on me, but panic was making my fingers sweaty and clumsy and I had to start over three times before I finally got it. Which was all completely pointless, anyway, like so much of my life - Sophia was right there. The moment I finally pulled the vest free of the carabiner loop, I felt Sophia's arm look around my neck. I grabbed her arm and pulled, but her arm felt like hard wood and I wasn't budging it an inch.

It occurred to me that Wednesdays being theater-kid-free also meant Wednesdays were witness free.

"Taylor," said Emma in a mock-disapproving tone, carefully traversing the distance between us, "you can't unclip yourself up here. It isn't safe."

Is she going to throw me off? I began struggling in Sophia's grip, but I still couldn't break the stronger girl's hold. Remembering a move I'd seen in some action film, I pretended to relax for a second and then moved my head backwards as fast as I could, hoping to head-butt Sophia's nose, but Sophia had somehow known and moved her head to the side.

"Uh uh," said Sophia. "You don't hit me, Hebert. That's not your role here." As Sophia spoke, she let go of my neck and at the same time grabbed my wrist, and somehow I found myself with my face pressed hard against one of the vertical metal poles of the catwalk, and my arm twisted painfully behind her. I struggled, but it was useless. I didn't even know how to begin to fight her.

"Oh, hah, good one," said Madison.

I could see that Emma was giving Madison a bewildered look, and I got the feeling Sophia was too.

"You know, not her role? Like, a role in a play, because this is a theater?" Madison explained, gesturing vaguely towards the stage.

"You gonna scream? Come on Hebert, scream for help." Sophia hissed into my ear after a few seconds, electing to pretend Madison hadn't said anything. "No one's gonna hear you anyway. You're such a fucking idiot, putting yourself where no one can hear." Sophia pushed my arm higher behind her back. Even through the pain, I also felt some outrage at the unfairness of the criticism, since both of us knew from frequent experience that having other people around wouldn't help me at all. No one ever helped me.

(Well, Mr. Haller had that one time, but that was clearly a statistical outlier).

Sophia twisted my wrist a bit more. The pain was incredible, and I began to worry Sophia might actually break my arm, but I was determined not to scream, if only because Sophia had told me to. I heard myself grunt but bit down on it before it could turn into a moan.

Flipping back her red hair, Emma said "Even if people did hear Taylor, they still wouldn't help her. You know why?" I was normally taller than Emma, but because of the bent-over position Sophia had forced me into, Emma had to crouch a bit to get eye to eye. "Because no one cares, Taylor. Absolutely no one cares about you. You have no friends. The school doesn't care about you. Even your father doesn't really care about you, does he? From what Dad's told me, Danny has totally fallen apart. Tell me, if you never come home, how many days do you think it'll take him to notice?"

I grimaced and squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn't fight back, I couldn't get away, but I for damn sure wasn't going to cry. Not in front of Emma.

"Nothing to say? Good idea. I think you need some time to think about what a waste of oxygen you are. Sophia, make sure she doesn't fall off."

Sophia let go of my wrist - I almost gasped with relief - but before I moved, she'd passed her hands under my armpits and put her hands on the back of my neck. Emma reached down and pulled up one of my legs by the ankle, which definitely would have caused me to fall if Sophia hadn't been holding me securely. With her other hand, Emma reached into her pocket and brought out a steel box cutter with the letters "WHSTD" in block print painted clumsily across it, and thumbed the slider on the side to push the blade out.

"Um," said Madison. "Emma, what are you doing?"

"Just making sure Taylor stays safe," Emma replied, as she used the knife to punch a hole in my jeans, just above the ankle cuff. It was a bit of a struggle, but she managed to drive the sharp blade through the denim. "Safety is so important. Hand me that clippy thing, Madison."

"The carabiner?"

"The clippy thing!" snarled Emma, jerking her head towards the safety strap, which had one end still attached to the metal support pole, and the other end, with the carabiner attached, lying on the catwalk floor.

Madison picked up the floor end of the strap and held it out to Emma. "It's called a carabiner."

"Hmm," said Emma, taking the carabiner from Madison. "Learn something new every day."

Emma tried to clip the carabiner through the hole she'd cut in my jeans, but seeing where this was going, I struggled and tried to yank my leg away from her. But with a laughing Sophia still controlling my arms and upper body, and Madison coming forward to grab my leg, I had no chance, and the carabiner was soon attached to my jeans leg.

"See? Nice and safe." THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING, I thought. Then Sophia pushed me to one side of the catwalk and, in what felt to me like a single continuous motion, heaved me over the safety rail.

I fell out and down, coming within inches of hitting a thick gray support pole, and it was too much for me to take and I screamed. For less than a second. Then, with a ferocious yank and a ripping noise, my fall was halted. I could hear my breath coming out in gasps.

I felt my glasses slipping and grabbed for them, but I only managed to make them bounce off the side of my hand. I watched my glasses - or, rather, a moving blur that I knew had to be my glasses - fall to the cement floor with a clattering noise and then didn't see them anymore. Hope they're not broken.

I was dangling off the catwalk, held aloft only by a safety clip going through my pants cuff. The cuff had half-ripped off the pants, but the other half, to my relief, held firm. As I slowly spun I tried to estimate how high above the theater seats I was. Ten feet? Twenty?

I looked up towards the catwalk, and saw three blurry faces looking down at me. Then I'd spin to a position where all I could see was the underside of the catwalk. Then the three blurry faces again, and so on.

"You see?" Emma purred. "There's a good side to everything, even being a sexless stick - she doesn't weigh anything. If Taylor had any female characteristics at all, she would've hit the floor."

Snickering, the three teens walked back to the end of the catwalk and made their way down to the floor, Sophia by putting her feet on the sides of the ladder and sliding, then Emma and Madison went down more cautiously. They came in and out of view, as I spun, and I told myself not to beg, because nothing I said would matter and I didn't want to give them the satisfaction. The image of the Tarot card of The Hanged Man flashed through my mind.

Then I remembered a book I'd read years before, which described medieval executions in gruesomely thrilling detail. There was something called "inverted hanging" or "Jewish hanging" (because they killed Jews this way), in which people were hung upside down. Sometimes they were hung between two angry dogs, so they'd be bitten as well as being hanged, but usually they just hung the condemned person alone. Eventually the blood pools in the skull and the heart has to work too hard trying to keep blood circulating, until it finally fails.

It was created by someone who looked at regular hanging and said "you know? This just isn't sadistic enough. We can make it worse."

I tried to remember how long inverted hanging took to kill people. Three days? One day? Less? Didn't the book say twelve hours? I wasn't sure about how long it took, but I was positive the book described it as an agonizing way to die.

"WAIT!" I screamed. "PLEASE!"

My spinning had slowed down, and it took me several seconds to spin to the point where I faced the trio, who had just reached the fire door at the back of the auditorium. I couldn't see it - even the door, which was quite large, was just a blur to me - but I knew there was a sign on the door that said "Do Not Open - Alarm Will Sound" below which someone had written in thick marker lines, "bullshit." Everyone knew none of Winslow's fire alarms worked.

I could see that the blurry shapes of the trio had paused. I shouted "people can actually die this way! In Germany, in the fifteen hundreds! Jews! They executed Jews by hanging them upside down! You'll literally kill me! You'll be murderers! Let me down, fuck, I don't want to die!"

I could hear Emma's sneer as she said "Right, death by being upside down. That's why playgrounds are famously littered with little kiddy corpses. Nice try."

One of them slapped their palm down across the light switches, and the auditorium lights went out. The only light left was the open fire door. "So Mads, where are you at with that paper for Mr. Porter's class?" I heard Emma say in a perfectly ordinary tone. "I swear, he's trying to bore us to--" The heavy door shut with a bang behind the three girls, and I was plunged into absolute darkness.

"IDIOTS! FUCKERS!" I yelled.

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck…" I continued, my voice trailing off. I was crying, and the tears running down from my eyes to trail across my forehead felt strange.

My head already felt wrong from the blood rushing to it, like it was overly full. Which, I supposed, it was. I could hear my heart beating hard and fast. Is it because I'm scared or is that a symptom?

I was in the basement, where almost no one went. In the theater, which almost no one knew about. And even when Mr Haller arrived for work tomorrow - if he arrived at all, he proudly told his students that he was "famous on three continents" for his unreliability - he would go to his office, and not have any reason to come into the theater area before afternoon classes.

Would I be dead by then? Or alive but permanently damaged, with brain damage and a weak heart?

I tried doing an upside-down sit-up, to grab the rope, but I didn't have nearly the core strength to do that, and I was worried about how long it took for me to catch my breath afterward. Plus, being in the dark made everything harder. I had a vague notion that the room was legally mandated to have lit-up "exit" signs, but apparently those signs, if they were even there, were as poorly maintained as everything else in Winslow.

I considered trying to open my fly and just falling out of my pants. But that ten or twenty foot drop onto the hardwood chairs would very possibly kill me.

Why not? Better for everyone all around. Except for Dad, and he'll get over it.

No. Not suicide. I'd rather be murdered than have Emma knowing she got to me so bad I killed myself.

I couldn't stop fixating on the monumental unfairness of it all. I'd never had a chance. The school was on their side. The students were on their side. I could probably fight Emma, and I could definitely fight Madison, but they'd gang up on her, and anyway Sophia was stronger and faster and there had never been a fair fight, not for me, not for a second, and this is how it ends.

Everyone else somehow knows how to get through life without everyone being against them, without their life being destroyed for no reason, without getting murdered by literal medieval torture. What the fuck was I supposed to do? What's wrong with me?

Time passed.

I remembered Mr Haller telling the theater students that no matter what happened to them, no matter how awful or how painful, they could remember it and use it. "It's all material," he told them.

When the students walked on stage tomorrow afternoon and finally noticed my corpse hanging here, would Haller tell them "memorize this feeling of discovering a corpse, you'll use it someday, it's all material"?

Would Haller be the one to phone my dad? Or would that be Principal Blackwell?

I guessed it would be the police.

Which at least had the bright side that my murder would be investigated.

Except it wouldn't be, would it? The three bitches would alibi each other and everyone would say I committed suicide, and probably Dad would believe it and that thought crushed me.

"Not fair," I muttered. I heard the class change bell ring, and then again a while later, a longer brrrrrrrrr rung that I knew signaled the end of Winslow's school day.

This is it. No one rescues me and I die and I never once had a chance.

My heartbeat felt so large I could feel the blood pumping through my swollen head. My legs and hip had hurt before but now that was nothing compared to my shoulder blades, which felt like someone had shoved a paint scraper under each one and was trying to lever them out. My breath was coming in gasps, and I couldn't seem to exhale properly.

-----

"Sophia? Sophia?"

Sophia Hess sat up on her elbows, blinking. She was lying on the walk just outside Winslow's back exit. A flood of students were walking out, exhibiting Winslow's famous compassion and public spirit by detouring around Sophia but otherwise not slowing down. Emma was crouching by her side and bleating at her. "Shut up for a second," Sophia snapped, and then, "what happened?"

"You just fell. You must have tripped or something? But then it was like you were unconscious for a few seconds." Emma stood and offered her hand to Sophia, which Sophia slapped aside before standing by herself.

"Weird," said Sophia, and shrugged.

 

[LadiesWhoLunch]

Spoiler: Long term ship spoiler.

This fic is not a pillbug fic. Nothing against pillbug fics, that's just not where this story winds up.

Wednesday, Dec 1 2010 (later the same day).

I don't remember falling.

I remember waking up, still hanging upside down by one leg, gasping, spots appearing in front of my eyes.

And an entirely out of character thought came to me, with so much clarity that it was more like someone speaking to me than a thought from my own head: I'm not going to die here. I'm too good to die this way.

Hanging below the catwalk by my pants cuff, I realized I had two options, both of which most likely ended with me dead. First, I could wait to be discovered by someone. Maybe if I just waited five minutes a custodian would come in and see me, and I'd be rescued.

But it also seemed very possible that wouldn't happen. The theater was a little-used part of the school; I doubt that it was cleaned daily, or even weekly. There were no theater classes on Wednesdays, so no students had any reason to be down here. And I was already in a great deal of distress. My muscles, especially in my back, were cramping every few seconds. Worse, my breathing had become difficult and labored.

There's a reason this was once an execution method. I could easily die waiting to be rescued.

Or I could deliberately fall. Which could also kill me - the seats were hard, the concrete floor was harder, and I could easily imagine cracking open my head on either. Or on both in sequence, if I bounced off the seats onto the floor.

But if it didn't kill me, I could go home. Or go find help, if I was injured, which probably I would be. And if I died that way it would be quick. Except that I'd read about people dying from falls lingering or suffering for weeks or even months before finally dying.

So if both ways are likely to lead to agonizing deaths… The decision seemed impossible.

But if I die falling, at least I'll die doing something. I've been waiting for my suffering to end for over a year, and waiting has just meant I've stood by as everything got worse and worse, until it finally got so bad that I'm hanging upside down from a catwalk choosing which way to die.

Enough waiting. Fuck waiting. I might live or I might die, but either way waiting will be over and that's a victory.

Opening the button of my jeans was much more difficult than I'd envisioned. Something about the way my dangling weight pulled on the jeans had taken away the tiny bit of give needed to lever the button out of the buttonhole. Or maybe I was just weak; throughout this whole process - deciding what to do, struggling with my jeans - I was still burning with pain and struggling to keep breathing.

But eventually I opened my fly, thinking I should curl into a ball while I fell. But I can't tell you if I did or not.

I came to face down on the hard floor between two rows of auditorium seats. My breathing was actually better than it had been, although that wasn't a high bar. I felt a sharp pain with every inhale. I could only see out of one eye, my head was pounding painfully, and when I tried to move my left arm flared with agony. Using my right arm on a seat, I managed to stand, but immediately became so dizzy I fell, which led to a few minutes where I couldn't do anything but wait for my left arm to stop screaming.

So standing was out. Instead, I had a long, long crawl, from the auditorium, to the backstage area, out through the hidden doorway, then moving through the entire basement hallway, and finally going up the stairs. But I had to do it, because I didn't know how often custodians came down to the basement. On the main floor, I reasoned, I would be certain to find help.

Crawling down the hallway, I spotted a roach on the floor, a couple of feet away from my one good eye. "Go get help, boy!" I whispered. "Tell pa I've fallen down a well!" The roach crawled away in a leisurely, not-going-to-fetch-my-Dad fashion. Stupid bug.

I knew there were two sets of stairs I had to overcome - the few steps from the auditorium level to the stage, and the many more steps from the basement to the main floor - and the stairs were the worst part of the crawl. My left arm couldn't help me go up the stairs, so I had to drag myself up by putting my right elbow on the step above me, then pushing with my legs, repeat and repeat. I couldn't lift myself up enough to avoid my chest dragging across the steps, which was so painful I realized that a rib must be broken.

At one point, taking a rest break, I felt around my blind eye, and was relieved to feel that I still had the eye. But it wouldn't open, and the whole area felt tender. And as my hand explored my face it felt… wrong. Misshapen. My nose felt too big, and a few teeth felt loose.

These are problems for later, I thought, and I resumed crawling.

As it turned out, I didn't have to crawl the entire way up the stairs to the first floor. I didn't realize I was moaning and grunting with pain as I levered myself up step after step - but I was, and this was very fortunate for me, because a custodian on the first floor heard me. He came down the stairs, turned at the first landing, took one look at me, and fell backwards. I heard his head hit the wall with a crack, and for a moment I imagined my future - just me on this landing, with an ever-growing collection of unconscious janitorial staff in a pile. (I was a little delirious at this point.)

But of course that's not what happened. The custodian sat up, rubbing the back of his head, stared at me for a few moments, then yanked a cell phone out of his hip pocket. I closed my eyes and rested my head on a step as I heard him yelling frantically.

Oh good, I thought. Other people can take it from here. It was like running a relay race (which I'd never done) and passing the baton, except in this case the baton was my broken body.

I blacked out again. (A sure sign of a bad day is losing count of how many times I've blacked out.) The next thing I knew was the clacking of the gurney wheels, and the slight bumping as the EMTs rolled me down Winslow's front steps. I realized that I didn't understand how a gurney works - how could the legs be loose enough to drop down or pull up as needed, yet solid enough to not just collapse?

Probably tinkertech, I thought.

I remember earnestly trying to explain to the EMTs that gurneys weren't actually possible. But I couldn't fit the words together into sentences. I became frantic that the EMT workers would think I didn't appreciate their efforts, and I tried to thank them, and then I blacked out yet again.

-------------------------------------------------

I woke, like so many novel protagonists do, lying on something soft, and I wasn't in pain at all. It was Heavenly. Then I opened my eyes and saw a beautiful angel's face hovering above me.

She looked young - my age or a bit older - and wore a white hood over her head, which couldn't contain the delicate frizzy curls spilling out on either side of her face. Thin lips and tired eyes and an adorably slight hooked nose. Best of all, her face was crowded with freckles, freckles everywhere, more freckles than I'd ever seen on a person before. An entire elementary school's worth of freckles.

She spoke to someone on the other side of me. I didn't look to see who it was, a bit drunk on the sight of that face (or maybe elevated oxygen levels), as she rattled off a list matter-of-factly. "I've fixed up the broken arm and collarbone. And the orbital fracture and depressed skull fracture. And the broken ribs. And a number of bruises and cuts. She's also got a concussion, but I can't do anything about that." I felt her finger disappear from where it had been poking the back of my hand.

"What about her…?" asked whoever she was talking to. Another woman.

"There's nothing wrong with it," snapped the beauty, sounding irritated. "And I'm not going to change it without her permission."

Distantly, I heard a door opening, and the second woman's voice said "you can come in now." I rolled away from that voice to look at the freckled girl more directly. She was beginning to stand, and I was terrified by the thought she'd leave before I spoke to her.

Panacea, I thought. I know her name. It's Panacea. She's a cape who premiered earlier this year, everyone's excited because she can heal anything.

"Panacea," I said, expecting to hear a frog's croak, but my voice surprised me by sounding normal. She glanced at me.

I tried to take her hands but she pulled back. "Beauty lives with kindness," I whispered.

She looked at me like I'd sneezed a booger onto her.

"Taylor!" said a voice I knew. Dad's voice. I turned my head towards him, and he gasped.

"What--" Dad looked at me, then looked at Panacea, horror plain on his face. "What happened to her nose?"

"My nose? What's wrong with my nose?" I said. I brought my fingers to my face, and as soon as I touched it I knew my nose was wrong. It felt big. Really big. So big it took both of my hands to explore it. The sides of my nostrils ended where my cheekbones began. And the nose went so far out from my face. How did this not hurt?

There's only so much you can tell from a feel. I begged for a mirror until the nurse offered me a compact, but Dad stopped her. "You- you don't want to see this, sweetheart."

"What's your plan? Are you going to keep me from seeing mirrors for the rest of my life?"

It took a great deal of insisting before Dad relented.

Finally, as Panacea sighed with impatience, the nurse handed me the compact, and I held it up and saw my nose.

It was huge. Gargantuan. Ridiculous. Monumental.

It was still nose-shaped - not a long stick of a nose, like Pinnochio. It was still human. But it went out so much further and spread so much wider than a nose should, totally dominating my face. Before I had been plain, maybe a little ugly. Now I was grotesque.

Panacea, as you'd expect of an angel in human form, offered to restore my nose to its normal size. (She sounded a bit grudging, but I assumed she was tired from a long day of performing miracles, healing the sick, playing harp, and other angel tasks.)

"So what did your nose look like before? I mean, normally?"

"It looked, uh, like a nose."

Panacea gave me what I'd describe as an aggressively unimpressed look.

That's when I learned that Dad carries photos of me and mom in his wallet, which in retrospect was sort of heartwarming. He slid a picture of me out of its plastic sleeve and passed it to Panacea. She peered at it, frowning, and then held the photo up into the light. Her frown worried me. I hope she thinks I'm pretty.

Which would be weird if she did, because even with my nose at the normal size, I'm not pretty. I'm not even okay looking. I've got that…

I realized I didn't know what was so unattractive about me. I have large eyes, but large eyes are often considered attractive. I have wide lips, but so does Julia Roberts, and she was sort of famous for being attractive. And I have great hair.

Panacea, having had enough of examining my photo, suddenly loomed over me. I expected her to touch my nose, but instead she reached out and placed two fingers on my wrist.

Curious to watch the process, I held up the compact mirror again. Seemingly of its own will (I knew it was really Panacea's), my nose wiggled and pulled in, shrinking and reshaping. It wasn't painful at all, just strange, like part of me turned out to be made of clay all along and I never noticed before. It took my nose less than a minute to resume its normal size and shape on my face.

"Thank you!" I said, staring at my once-again-familiar nose. I tried to put heartfelt gratitude as well as an offer of friendship and admiration (but without crossing the line into creepy) into my voice as I spoke those two words, but that's asking a lot for only two words and probably it didn't all come through.

Panacea grunted an acknowledgement. And then, the moment Panacea pulled her (entrancing, radiant) fingers off my wrist, my nose shook and bubbled and became huge, even faster than Panacea had shrunk it. Again, no pain.

No physical pain, that is. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement.

"What did you do?" said Panacea, glaring at me.

"Um… I didn't do it on purpose?," I said, staring at myself in the compact.

"Yeah, sure," muttered Panacea. "Stand still." This time she put her hand directly on my nose. Again my nose shrunk, and again, the moment Panacea broke contact, my nose became enormous.

Panacea shrunk my nose twice more, only to have it grow back immediately each time, the moment she took her hand away.

"I give up. Look, can I talk to… um…" She gestured towards me.

"Taylor," I supplied.

"Can I talk to Taylor alone? It's like a doctor-patient thing."

"But you're not actually a doctor, are you?" objected Dad.

"That's why I said it was like a doctor thing, not actually a doctor thing," Panacea snapped.

"Dad?" My dad looked at me, and I made a "what the hell are you doing?" gesture, shrugging and scowling. "Just let me talk to Panacea, all right?"

Dad hesitated, then nodded. "I'll be right outside the door, Taylor." He didn't look good - his hair was awry, and his shirt was untucked. He swallowed and looked like he wanted to say something else, but then he turned and left the room. I resisted the impulse to shout after him to find a hairbrush.

The nurse left as well, shutting the door behind her.

Alone at last.

"Look, uh, Taylor. You've probably already figured out… Why are you looking at me like that?"

Because you have literally the most dazzling, beautiful face I've ever seen and I feel like I'm staring at the sun, I managed not to blurt out. Barely. With a conscious effort of will, I tried to speak like I was talking to an ordinary human instead of a celestial being constructed from starshine and joy and freckles.

"Uh, sorry. It's been a strange day," I said.

"Okay. So, uh, Taylor. You're a parahuman."

"What?"

"You're… a… parahuman" she said, speaking slowly and with clear irritation. "You know, like, a cape. I can tell."

I opened my mouth to deny it. I can't be a cape. Why would I be a cape?

But then I thought, why shouldn't I be a cape? I nodded slowly.

"Okay, I'm a cape. Soooo… what are my powers?"

Panacea shrugged. "I mean, so far, you've got the power to regrow your nose."

"I can… regrow my nose? That's it?" My voice was embarrassingly high-pitched on the last word. Of course I'd get the world's most useless power.

"How would I know? There could be more. Most people pretty much know their powers right away, but sometimes it's slower. Probably you should contact the PRT for, I dunno, power testing and stuff."

"Okay, that makes sense. But… um… My nose… How bad would you say it looks?"

Panacea opened her mouth, and then paused and grimaced before closing her mouth. She started again. "I mean… I've seen much worse. Once at an endbringer battle, they brought me a guy with--"

"Hey, Amy? How much longer will--" We both turned to look as a curvy blonde girl, wearing a white costume with gold piping and details and an honest to God tiara - even I recognized Panacea's sister Glory Girl - pushed through the door. Her eyes fell on me and widened. "Holy God what happened to your nose?"

 

[LadiesWhoLunch]

Sketch I drew of Taylor from this story. I'm really pleased with how the lighting and the hair came out.

 

[LadiesWhoLunch]

Still Wednesday, December 1, 2010.

I expected the hospital to keep me overnight, but apparently after Panacea heals you you're good to go. Or maybe they scoped dad's unbrushed hair and rumpled clothing and inferred that we didn't have any money. In any case, after Dad signed some papers which said Panacea-has-healed-you-and-you-won't-sue-her-or-us - the hospital had a premade form that basically said that, although their version was several pages long, and also advised me to eat extra for a few days - I was released.

It was night. As Dad drove me home, I stared out the window at the well-lit streets, buildings and houses whizzing past. The houses were pretty nice near the hospital, but became more worn and saggy as we approached our neighborhood. Not that our neighborhood was terrible, as Brockton Bay neighborhoods go. At least it wasn't covered in gang tags.
When I became conscious of my nose's reflection in the window - the image on the glass transparent but impossible to miss once noticed - I closed my eyes.

Dad coughed a couple of times, but neither of us said anything.

If I had some other sort of power, I might have kept it secret from Dad, at least for a while. But as it was, it seemed ridiculous not to talk about the elephant trunk in the room. A few blocks from home, I broke the silence. "Dad? So, yeah, apparently I'm a cape. Or, well, a parahuman, I guess."

Dad was quiet for a moment, and then gently said, "I kinda figured that, honey."

"Oh, and it turns out I'm kinda gay."

"...Okay."

"Okay? That's it?"

He shrugged. "I mean... I kinda figured that too. Since years ago."

"Wait, what? Really?"

"Do you remember when you were ten and I showed you the old Wonder Woman TV show? You spent almost forty minutes obsessively describing all the ways Lynda Carter is beautiful. And then you'd bring it up out of the blue every now and then for the next year. So what I'm saying is, there were signs."

"Huh."

* * *

My first day home was hard. I moped, I showered, I stared at my reflection and prodded my nose, I cried a little. Dad sat me down and I told him some stuff about the bullying, but I refused to name the bullies. Dad was angry with me for that, and for not telling him sooner, and I couldn't explain myself to his or my satisfaction.

There was also when Dad told me that he loved me no matter who I loved, and also mentioned that Mom had been bi, which was a little mind-blowing. And also surprising because Dad hardly ever talked about Mom, and it was nice to hear him talking about her with fondness in his voice. So that part was good.
But on the whole, a lousy day.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Thursday, December 2, 2010 (the next day).

I woke up feeling good.

I mean, really good. Better than I'd felt in at least a year.

I all but jumped out of bed, I whistled while I showered, I wore goofy PJs, I made Dad and I a big breakfast of bacon and pancakes and eggs.

And then, as if to give an ex post facto justification for my happiness, Dad told me he didn't want me going back to Winslow.

"You can't go back to that, that… that craphole school, Taylor. You just can't. I'm going to figure out how to get you into another school, and in the meantime, you deserve a vacation."

Dad had been planning to stay home with me, but I insisted I felt fine. I didn't want him to miss too much work - he'd already missed yesterday, and he'd be using one of his vacation days to visit the PRT with me, assuming we managed to get an appointment. Eventually he agreed to go into his office, after telling me to call him if anything happened, or if I just wanted him to come home for company. ("I'll drive home so quick The Flash would say wait up!" and then I asked him which Protectorate team The Flash was on and then he shook his head and didn't answer.)

He set me up on the sofa with a stack of DVDs, my favorite books (many of which I'd outgrown), pillows, a blanket, crossword puzzles, and a glass of chocolate milk, because apparently he thought I was six, and then left for work.
I rolled my eyes at his protectiveness, but felt a warm glow inside. Truthfully, this was the most concentrated attention he'd given me since Mom died. That was objectively sad, but screw objective truth, it made me smile.

An hour later, I was still in a pretty good mood, but no longer at rest. Despite how cozily Dad had set me up, I couldn't settle - the crosswords blended together, the movies didn't hold my interest, the chocolate milk was so good it was down my throat in under two minutes, and trying to read a book made me feel antsy. I wanted to go somewhere, do… I had no idea what I wanted to do. Something.

Exercise! I'd never been one for exercise, but suddenly it seemed like a great idea. I tried doing push-ups, and managed three before it was too hard. Three wasn't very good, but I reasoned that meant it wouldn't be too hard to improve on. I switched to jumping jacks, which were easier, and then tried doing squats, which were not.

I was struggling to do my first sit-up when the phone rang. I scrambled up and ran to the kitchen phone, picking it up midway through the second ring. It was Dad, calling to let me know that we had an appointment to talk to someone at the PRT tomorrow. Both of us were surprised they'd see us so quickly. Much later on, it occurred to me that the quick appointment might have been because the PRT was desperate for capes.

After I hung up, I realized that I'd never promised Dad I'd stay in and rest today. It was assumed, and you might even say it was implied (if you were a legalistic jerk), but it wasn't technically said. That would hold up in any court, right? My imaginary inner judge gaveled the desk and declared a mistrial, and I ran up the stairs, threw off my PJs, changed into underwear that I hadn't sweated in, and tore through my closet and my drawers, looking for anything that wasn't dreary.
But it was all dreary. Dark, baggy, worn. If I had been a vampire avoiding being touched by the sun's murderous rays, I might have chosen some of this stuff. Or if I had been a lonely bullied girl desperate to disappear and sure that anything nice I wore would be destroyed, I suppose I might wear this stuff.

Buried deep in my closet, I found black jeans that didn't fit me like a tent and a bright red tee shirt with a drawing of Big Bird from Sesame Street. In the coat closet near our front door, I started to grab my gray winter coat, but in a burst of inspiration grabbed a trenchcoat from Dad's half of the closet. I'm tall for a teenage girl, but Dad's tall for a full-grown man, so the coat came almost to my ankles and I had to roll the sleeves to keep them from covering my hands. When I left the house and jumped over the bad step, the coat billowed behind me like a cape and that felt right.

I decided I'd run, and made it less than a block before I had to stop, panting with my hands on my knees. I laughed at how out of shape I was, and after catching my breath continued at a walking pace a few more blocks, and then ran a full block. In this way, alternating walking and running, I made my way to the Boardwalk, Brockton Bay's most touristy shopping district.

The boardwalk had two main entrances, one from the west, and one from the north. Since I lived southwest of the docks the western entrance, popularly called the Moon Entrance, was closest. The Moon Entrance got its name from the large decorative arch pedestrians walked through to get to the boardwalk, two stories tall, and painted with a mural of a moon with stars behind it. It was one of those moon paintings where the moon is shaped to also be a big stony face.

The Moon Entrance formed one wall of a three-walled plaza, with the other two walls made of plain concrete. The walls had been constructed to give the area wonderful acoustics, especially for anyone standing on a raised platform at the base of the Moon Entrance, twenty feet below the painted moon face.

In theory the little stage was open for public use on a first-come first-served basis. That's how it had worked for years, and Broctonites who came to the Moon Entrance never knew what we'd be seeing: A folk band, professional Shakespeare, amateur poetry, jugglers, dramatic Tolkein readings, clown acts, a lecture on John Rawls, breakdancers, formal debate, even bingo night.

You might see anything at the Moon Entrance. That was the appeal.

But then an annoying Jesus shouter named Brother Jude took over the platform, by the simple expedient of arriving at five o'clock every morning to guarantee he'd be first. And once he was on the little stage, he'd stay there yelling into a handheld microphone until six or seven every evening.

The city had tried to change the rules, limiting how many hours or how many days in a row the same person could use the Moon Entrance platform. But Brother Jude sued, backed by a major right-wing legal foundation, claiming that changing the rules post hoc amounted to unconstitutional viewpoint-based discrimination.

The city took a look at its metaphorical empty wallet, shrugged, and gave up. And Brother Jude had had almost exclusive use of the Moon Entrance stage ever since.

So I wasn't surprised to see Brother Jude there on that day, as I approached the Boardwalk. Twenty or so people had stopped to listen - Brother Jude was by now a minor tourist attraction in his own right. Nearby a younger woman, Brother Jude's wife Sweetie, wearing a panel skirt and a gingham top, was offering fliers to passers by.

"It's not about hate," said Brother Jude. "We don't hate anybody, not even that slutty girl." He pointed towards someone in the crowd I could say, then shouted "Put on decent clothes!" I saw a girl in a short shirt and tights fast-walk away. "It's about wanting decent people to be able to raise our families in safe, clean communities. It's about keeping our children from being exposed to drunkenness, dissipation, debauchery, and" - and here his voice raised to a shout - "sexual deviancy!" Several of the people watching Jude made agreeing noises.

"Has anyone really met a happy queer? You know, these homosexuals" -- Brother Jude pronounced every syllable of "homosexuals" like it was its own word, "Ho! Mo! Sex! Yew! Alls!" - "call themselves 'gay,' but they're all miserable! And who wouldn't be?"

I wondered what would happen if Jude noticed me and he decided to target my nose? Would the crowd take his side and laugh at me? Probably. Sick as it was, Brother Jude has supporters.

Nazi assholes, I thought. I ducked my head until I was staring at my own feet, hoping my nose wouldn't be spotted, and walked quickly. Sister Sweetie stepped into my path, holding out a flier at me, and when I glanced up she jumped back. I rolled my eyes at her and hurried to get past the platform and through the Moon Entrance.

I didn't have much money. Was it worth walking the extra distance to Lord Street Market? It would be a lot cheaper there and I might actually be able to buy things, but that was quite a walk and I was tired.

As I pondered my options, I noticed I - or, rather, my nose - was attracting stares, and made sure to straighten up, with my shoulders back and my chin held high. When they see me, let them see someone proud. Someone who's going places.

Someone, I realized, entirely unlike myself. I wasn't someone who was proud; I was someone who hunched, hidden in a hoodie, trying to make myself look smaller. Why was I dressed like this? What had I ever done to be proud of?

I survived over a year of constant, vicious bullying, that's what.

They'd used everything they had trying to break me every way they could conceive - they turned students and staff against me, they destroyed my homework and my grades, Madison snuck every sticky substance known to public high school onto my chair, Emma turned everything she learned from years of friendship against me, and with her trademark lack of any imagination Sophia just hit me a lot. And I survived.

They hung me from a catwalk, a literal medieval torture. And I broke my own skull escaping. Who does that? Emma couldn't have done that, not in a million years. Because she wasn't Taylor Hebert.

That's who I was.

"Can I boop your nose?" said a small voice from below. I jumped a little and looked down at a tiny child. Wait, is she tiny? How tall are children supposed to be? I realized that I had practically never interacted with young children since I stopped being one. This girl wasn't even as tall as my hip and was wearing a wonderfully garish floral dress under a puffy winter jacket. Her hair was as black as my own, but where mine was curly hers was straight and shiny.

My first thought was that she was making fun of me, but she was just looking up, wide-eyed and curious, the guilelessness painted across her face as clear as a theater marquee.

I crouched down and smiled at her. "How about a trade? You boop my nose and I'll boop yours."

The girl nodded solemnly, and the boops were exchanged with all the formality of hostile governments exchanging hostages. We both held out our forefingers and, catching each other's eyes, simultaneously pushed them forward into the other's nose. I could feel her finger on my nose, and it didn't feel any different than when my nose was normal sized.

"Boop!" we both said.

The girl said "why's your nose so big?"

"Maya!" said an amused grown-up voice. I looked up to see a tired looking woman who had clearly just rushed up to us. She was Asian, but adult and not wearing ABB colors. Obviously the girl's mother. "I'm sorry, " she said, swooping Maya up and to her hip with a practiced swoop. "I just turned away for a minute and, and--"

"Nothing to be sorry about." I smiled, I hoped reassuringly. "Maya was just asking about my nose."

The woman, who had been talking to me but looking at her daughter, finally glanced at my face. Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. I'm gonna have to get used to that.

"Hey Maya? You asked me why my nose was so big, right?" The mother's expression managed to grow even more appalled and I had to speak quickly before she scolded her daughter or just ran away. "Well, everyone has something that makes them special. You do too. I'm just lucky because one of the things that makes me special is in the middle of my face."

"I'm so sorry if she--"

"Maya was fine," I interrupted. "Besides, how could anyone mind being asked a question by literally the cutest girl on the whole boardwalk?" Maya preened, as I intended.

We said our goodbyes, the mom stuttering with embarrassment. I walked away from the boardwalk with long steps so my (well, Dad's, but I didn't think there was a high chance of him getting it back) coat flared behind me.

That was strange, I thought.

That wasn't even remotely like me. Where had all that come from? The friendliness, the confidence, the lack of cringing?
Who am I? Can becoming a cape change your entire personality?

On the one hand, it was disturbing.

But I'd really enjoyed the encounter. More than anything I could think of since Emma turned on me.

If I was me, except with my capacity for enjoyment and pride vastly increased, was I still me?

If having fun and feeling proud means that I'm not me, that's like saying being Taylor Hebert means suffering. Mom wouldn't have wanted that for me.

Everyone changes. I'd changed when mom died, and changed even more when Emma turned on me. But I'd never questioned that I was still me, despite all those changes. So is it only still me if the changes make things terrible?

No, that's stupid.

I'm me. I'm still me. I'm just me with a power that makes me feel pride. That makes me not hate myself. The other changes hadn't meant I wasn't me, and this one didn't, either.

I headed off towards the Lord Street Market, occasionally whistling.

I didn't have much money, but if there's one thing the Lord Street Market had, it was a funky smell that the city should have investigated. But additionally, it had stalls selling used clothing, sometimes as cheap as five dollars per piece. I found a tie-dye purple shirt with a black cat design on the chest, some capris in my size, a bright red popcorn top, skinny jeans, and - the real find - a pink velour track suit, with a zip-up top and sparkles along the legs and sleeves.

Score!

At another stall, I found a red… cloak? It was sort of like a cape, but made of thick material, and with a hood, and it sort of draped around my shoulders. But its price tag said thirty six dollars, which was much more than I had. I put it on and looked longingly in the mirror, turning my shoulders left and right to make the cloak swoosh a little. It just looked so right. I folded it carefully and put it back on the shelf, but I couldn't resist hiding it behind some other clothing, so maybe it wouldn't sell before I came up with some money.

 

[LadiesWhoLunch]

Three days later. December 4, 2010. (Saturday.)

A couple of PRT employees told me they liked the red popcorn top. Unfortunately, that was the very best thing that happened at my PRT power-testing.

The doctor was a cheerful woman in a lab coat who'd introduced herself as "Doctor Joy," and boy did that sound like a cape name, or a drug dealer. Brockton Bay was famous for its unusually high populations of both, so I supposed either one was likely enough true, although I couldn't dismiss the possibility that she was, in fact, a doctor.

They pretty easily confirmed that I had self-healing powers. With my and Dad's permission, they used a miniature sterile poking device to make tiny cuts ("no worse than getting poked at a doctor's office") on my finger and my cheek, each time with a video camera focused closely on the cut. From this they were able to determine that I healed, not instantly, but a lot quicker than a normal person. "Which probably explains why you don't show any signs of having had a concussion."

But after trying the poking device on my nose, the doctor blinked. "Did I miss?" She leaned forward and tried again. And again.

Soon they were carting out their invulnerability-testing devices (a PRT power testing lab might be the only place which happens to have invulnerability testing devices handy in a closet), all of which worked on the same principle - they started with a tiny "trauma," like a pinprick, and slowly ramped the trauma upwards, while I kept my finger poised on an "abort" button I could press at any time.

I almost never needed to press the button. They tried cutting, slicing, stabbing, blunt forcing, branding, freezing, radiating and strangling my nose, all to no effect.

Blunt force was tested using a device which shot out a piston very gently, and then slightly less gently, very gradually increasing in force over dozens of tests until it maxed out at about "one hundred and fifty megaPascals." When I asked Doctor Pascal what that meant, she thought for a while and told me it was about as much force as being hit by a train.

That made my dad sit up, his mouth falling open.

"But what's really amazing," Doctor Joy continued, "is that none of the energy is being transferred to the rest of your body. It barely even pushed your head."

The one time I pressed the abort button was when they were ramping up flames to burn my nose. My nose didn't mind the heat at all - I could feel the heat on my nose, but it wasn't painful. However, the air around my nose quickly heated up in a way that felt painful to my face.

But beyond a slight healing factor and what Dr Joy called an "Alexandria-level" invulnerable nose, I had no powers at all. I didn't have super-strength, not even when pushing my nose against something. I didn't have super-speed or super-reflexes. I couldn't see around corners, or fly, or blast or melt or zap or tinker or tell the doctor how many fingers she was holding behind her back, or any of the dozens of other powers she tested me for.

At one point, as I was fruitlessly trying to move some fruit across a table telekinetically, my father and the doctor were whispering to each other, my dad with some urgency, but due to my now-documented lack of super-hearing I couldn't hear what they were saying.

Frustratingly, I didn't even have nose-based powers. My sneezes (induced with a tiny pinch of capsicum) weren't hurricanes. My sense of smell wasn't any stronger than that of any ordinary mortal, which seemed especially unfair. But apparently my epithelium, the little strip at the back of the nose which actually senses smells, was ordinary in size.

In short, no powers, aside from minor healing and the inviolable nose. And the only clear symptom I had was, despite the medieval torture, despite the fall, despite my useless power, despite my entire pathetic life --

Despite all that, I felt good. Better than I'd felt in a long time.

Hopeful.

When I asked, the probable doctor/cape/drug dealer told me it wasn't "unheard of" for a "trigger event" to bring about "an alteration in mood or personality."

When the testing was completed, they brought us to a little gray conference room and told us to wait. "How long?," Dad asked, but the door was already shutting. He shrugged at me and I rolled my eyes. We chatted for a while, but soon enough our conversation died out. It was nearly a half hour before Doctor Joy returned and sat down across the table from me.

"I know you're probably feeling a little disappointed," said Doctor Joy. "But in some ways you've won the power lottery."

"How can you say that when--" Dad began, then glanced at me and trailed off, obviously not knowing how to say "when my daughter has a grotesque and freakish face" without saying "my daughter has a grotesque and freakish face."

"The lottery for noses, maybe," I scoffed.

"I'm not trying to minimize, er, ignore that your nose… It's going to bring you problems, Taylor. I know it's not easy to stand out, especially as a teen. But--'' she said sharply, holding up a hand palm-forward to forestall whatever Dad and I were about to say, "if your healing extends to your general health, you might be exceptionally healthy for what could be a very long life. A lot of people would give anything to have that."

"Well…" I said. "I guess that's true." Dad slowly nodded, obviously rethinking things.

"And if your power is boosting your self-esteem and reducing depression… like I said, a lottery win."

"But what about, you know, fighting crime and all that?"

"My job lets me meet a lot of heroes," said Doctor Joy. "I admire what they do, I do. But I don't think most of them get much happiness. And it's an incredibly dangerous job."

"That's a good point, Taylor," said Dad.

"You're just happy I'm not going to be fighting Hookwolf or whoever."

"You really got me there," said Dad, smiling. "I am happy my daughter won't be throwing herself into battle with a murder blender. Shocking, I know."

I stuck my tongue out at him, then turned to the doctor. "So, uh, doctor… Do you see a lot of this?"

"A lot of…" she said, waving a hand in a little circle to indicate I should continue.

"A lot of people who, um, 'trigger' with powers that just aren't good for anything except maybe making the person happier?"

She smiled gently at me. "No, Taylor. You're the first."

I was not invited to join the Wards.

We left with Doctor Joy's contact information and orders to get in touch if there were any signs of new powers emerging (which she said was very possible), or if my nose did anything new, or if I caught a cold. Or if she was a drug dealer, a possibility I hadn't entirely dismissed, I could call her to buy cocaine. (Kidding.)

Although - cocaine is used by inhaling the powder up your nose, right? I wondered how much coke my new nose could suck up. I might need the supply for the entire city. Good thing I'm not a cokehead.

As we walked down the hall from the testing suite, with a PRT employee following at a polite distance to make sure we didn't get lost (or purposely wander) on our way to the elevator, Dad said "Well, an invincible, er, body part - that's really something. Alexandria level!"

I scoffed, shaking my head. "Yeah, all I have to do is ask any villains I'm fighting to please attack me specifically and exclusively on my nose. I'm sure Hookwolf would be happy to cooperate once I explain."

"I admit it's not good for fighting," said Dad as we reached the elevator - the PRT person tried to press the elevator-summoning button for us, but Dad got to it first. He continued staring at the button on the wall, rather than turning and looking at me. "But it's still pretty amazing. I don't have any invincible parts."

Well, if you love it that much, let's trade noses, I thought. But I didn't say it, figuring that Dad wouldn't appreciate the humor.

I heard people walking towards us. I turned to look, and took a full step back in surprise at what at first seemed to be a giant made of midnight blue metal. After a moment my brain caught up with reality - this wasn't a man made of blue metal, this was a man wearing blue armor. He probably wasn't even all that big - I was pretty sure the armor made him both taller and wider.

This was Armsmaster, one of the most famous heroes in Brockton Bay, and maybe one of the most famous tinkers in the country.

Was he actually the most powerful cape in the city, I wondered? I mentally went over other powers - I hadn't been able to sleep the night before, so stayed up researching capes. Panacea was clearly a much bigger deal, but in a non-combat way. There are rumors that Lung once fought an Endbringer one on one, which I doubted Armsmaster would ever do, since presumably he's not an idiot. And I'd heard some people argue that the little girl Ward, Vespa, was actually super powerful. Who knows?

The hero glanced at my face, and it was his turn to take a small step back in surprise. I heard a small "oof!" from behind Armsmaster. I had to give Armsmaster credit - that slight step back was a pretty mild reaction to my nose, as reactions go.

Then a boy with messy red hair, a domino mask, and a mock-injured expression stuck his head out from behind Armsmaster. Looking a little amused, the boy said "Hey big guy, maybe you should invest in some rear view mirroooaah WHAT THE FUCK?!?"

It wasn't difficult to pinpoint the precise moment the redhead spotted my nose.

My dad glared and I smiled as the elevator doors opened behind me. "It's not a fuck, it's a nose." I was trying for a tone of "I understand, no need to be embarrassed" joviality that I anticipated using frequently for the next seven or eight decades.

A thought that made me wonder, what would happen to my nose after I died? Being invincible, would it just stay the same while the rest of me withered away into dust? Could be a massive surprise for some graverobber someday. My final chance, after the grave, to make someone jump back in shock.

We all filed into the elevator car, the redhead still staring unabashedly at my nose. So was Armsmaster, for all I knew - his helmet included a reflective visor, hiding his eyes.

"I don't think I know you. Are you here to sign up with the Wards?" Armsmaster asked pleasantly, as the elevator doors silently slid shut.

"No, they don't want me." I shrugged. "I've got no powers, other than a big nose."

"Really?," said Armsmaster. "That's intriguing."

The elevator didn't feel like it was moving, but on the way in I had learned that was normal for this elevator. I actually thought the elevator was broken until the door opened and we were on a new floor. Kind of a poor design, in my opinion, making people nervous for no reason.

"I'm Danny Hebert, and this is my daughter Taylor," said Dad.

Armsmaster held out a gauntlet and shook Dad's hand. "Armsmaster. Not a case fifty three then?"

"What's a case fifty three?" asked Dad. "Yeah, what's that?," I interjected, because I felt a little put off by how the two adults were speaking to each other and not me.

"Monster capes," said the redhead. Was this guy's cape power an inhuman lack of tact?

"Hey!" said Dad, raising his voice enough so me and the redhead jumped. (Armsmaster didn't.) "You can't say that to my daughter. What the hell's wrong with you?" To his credit, Clockblocker seemed to realize what he said and looked embarrassed.

"Mr Herbert is right. That's not an appropriate term, Clockblocker," said Armsmaster. "Hebert," I said, but Armsmaster gave no sign of hearing me.

"If the PRT has your address on file, I'll have him send you a letter of apology." He was looking at my dad as he spoke. Honestly, I was finding Armsmaster more annoying than Clockblocker.

"Case fifty threes are parahumans with unusual appearances, often much more unusual than your daughter's" Jerkmaster continued. "But case fifty threes are all amnesiacs with no known family, whereas your daughter obviously-."

Enough is enough. "Hey, I'm standing right here, Don't talk to my father as if I'm not here."

Armsmaster turned to face me as the elevator doors slid open. "You're right. I apologize. No disrespect was intended." He held up his forearm, which rapidly extruded a small purple piece of paper from a nearly invisibly thin slot. He handed the paper to me. He then walked away - although his walk was definitely a stride - with Clockblocker following in his wake. The redhead turned back to catch my eye and said "I really am sorry. Nice meeting you."

As we stepped out of the elevator, I glanced down at the piece of paper Armsmaster had given me. "What is it?," asked Dad.

"…A certificate good for twenty dollars worth of merchandise at any PRT gift shop."

 

[LadiesWhoLunch]

Two days later. December 6, 2010. (Monday.)

On Monday I woke up early, pushed my newly acquired Miss Militia plushie aside, and dressed in sweatpants and a tee shirt, shoving a small bottle of Winslow cologne - or, as people who didn't attend Winslow called it, pepper spray - into a pocket.

Outside I vaguely stretched for a minute, not sure if I was doing it right. It seemed likely there was a technique to pre-exercise stretching, and I should research it. I paused for a minute, debating between starting my run versus going back inside to make a note for myself to research proper stretching technique, or for that matter getting online and researching proper stretching technique.

In the end, I decided one day of sub-optimal stretches was unlikely to kill me, and began my first morning run, sticking to relatively safe areas, which wasn't hard because I didn't actually get all that far. Even so, I had to stop a few times to catch my breath.

When I returned home, Dad served me bacon and eggs with a side of disappointment - Dad hadn't been able to get me an expedited transfer into Arcadia or any other high school. He brought up the idea of homeschooling, but to me, that felt too much like running away. Besides, even if he didn't say so, Dad didn't have time to school me himself or money to pay tutors.

Dad had gotten in touch with a lawyer his friend Alan had recommended and was looking into suing the school. (Alan was himself a lawyer, but not with the right speciality for this kind of lawsuit, which is just as well considering that it was his heinous bitch hellspawn that put me in this situation in the first place. I still hadn't told Dad about Emma's ringleadership of the bullying.)

But Dad's talk with the lawyer made him think that route might not be practical; a lawsuit would cost a lot of money we didn't have, and there was no guarantee we'd win anything. And in any case, Dad explained, a lawsuit was not a quick process. Even if we did sue, it was possible the case wouldn't be decided before I graduated.

I did get on Arcadia's waitlist, so… maybe next year?

In the meantime, Dad told me, I had at least been granted the rest of the week off.

"No," I said. Seeing his surprised expression, I said "What's the point? I feel fine. Another week won't make me any readier." I waved a hand near my face, indicating my nose. "Or my nose any smaller."

Dad looked a little stricken. It hadn't been very long, really, but I had already noticed the pattern - he looked stricken or sad or embarrassed every time I mentioned my nose, and tried never to bring it up himself. I hoped he'd get over that soon. Then again, he sometimes went months at a time avoiding any mention of Mom, so… Not optimistic.

So the next morning - after my morning run, a shower, and breakfast - I walked to school and was soon strolling the filth-encrusted floors of Windsor High, keeping my chin up and my stride firm.

And everywhere I went, people jumped and hushed and stared. Many students made noises - "WHHHOA!" or something like that. Even the seniors did double takes, which was the clearest evidence I'd ever had that seniors could perceive me visually.

A gaming nerd named Greg Veder seemed scared to talk to me (although he stared when he thought I wasn't aware), which I thought was a silver lining. Doubtless there's some video game monster with a big nose, and I suspected I'd hear all about it once Greg got over his shock.

But in the meantime… Peace at last, I thought.

Then I turned a corner, and found myself facing Emma and Madison. Almost nose to nose, you might say.

Madison literally shrieked, while Emma took a step back, her jaw dropping open.

"Yes?," I said, inwardly pleased with how calm my voice sounded, even while my heart was beating like a drum and my palms were suddenly moist. "Comments, thoughts, criticism?"

"T-t- Taylor, I'm so sorry, we didn't mean--" began Madison, but Emma cut her off by placing her palm over Madison's mouth.

"Don't apologize, Madison," and Emma's tone of voice made it clear that she was issuing an order. She turned to me and smiled sweetly. "We have nothing to apologize for. It's not our fault Taylor threw herself off a catwalk. I'm surprised they even let her come back. And as for her face… Honestly, I don't see much difference."

Madison blinked, seeming unsure what to say. Emma kept going, her smirk growing.

"Really, Taylor, you should be grateful this happened. You've finally got something sticking out in front."

I stood there not knowing what to say. Wasn't Emma embarrassed at all? I could feel my face heating up and my ears filled with a sound like wind.

And where was the new me? Why wasn't I talking back? It's like the moment I encountered Emma my old self came crashing back.

Why did I think anything would be different?

Just get out of here, I thought. I pushed my way through, and Emma snorted with amusement.

I turned into the first girls' bathroom I came to and almost sprinted into the first open stall, closing and locking the stall door. Then I put the seat down and sat on the toilet until my heartbeat felt normal.

Maybe expecting an instant change hadn't been totally realistic. But that didn't mean I couldn't change at all. I already had changed. In fact, I'd changed a lot, and not only in regards to my sniffer. I just needed time to… learn to make my change stick in front of the trio. I could do that.

I could.

Fuck the trio.

I got up, splashed some cold water on my face at the sinks, and headed towards my first class.

-------------------------------

A few classes later, I had managed to avoid any more encounters with the Trio. And I was thoroughly sick of seeing and hearing my fellow students (and teachers) gasp at me, and wondered how long it would take them to get over it. Surely by tomorrow everyone in Winslow would be aware of my nose, nullifying the surprise angle?

At lunch I started walking towards the stairs to the basement level, thinking I could hide in the theater department during lunch period and make some plans. But I only got a few steps before I realized that I hated the idea of hiding.

I've always hated hiding. The question is, do I hate it more than I hate being tripped and mocked? Do I hate it more than I hate having juice poured on my head?

Well… maybe I do.

I turned around and went in the other direction. When I saw the double-doors to the cafeteria, I stopped and prepared myself.

They're going to gasp. And stare. Maybe even scream. And then there will be a very, very loud silence.

I will not react.

Mentally fortified, I deliberately straightened up and pulled my shoulders back, Holding my erect posture, I pushed through the doors into the cafeteria. The response was exactly as I predicted: At first a few isolated gasps, causing other students to look around for what was up, followed by many more gasps as the general population caught on to the exciting news happening in the middle of my face, followed by the loud clattering of someone's full food tray falling to the floor (with hindsight, I should have predicted that as well), followed by the room falling silent.

I ignored it all, walking with my head up and my eyes forward. I even considered taking a seat at a center table, but enough's enough. I went and sat at a generally-abandoned corner table in the cafeteria's hinterlands, next to the case with cracked glass filled with trophies that probably no one had looked at since betamax was high tech, and sat with the wall protecting my back.

Why did walking into the cafeteria and sitting down feel like such an epic journey?

Whatever. I pulled a spiral notebook out of my backpack and flipped to a blank page. Time to make a plan.

"Taylor?"

I turned and looked at the speaker, who naturally jumped when he saw my nose. Going by age and zits, he was a student, big and kind of gawky, wearing jeans and a Hawaiin shirt. He got over his first look at my nose and smiled, shuffling his feet a little.

He looks familiar. Probably a plant sent by Emma.

Or maybe he's just a guy. My life is no longer run by Emma.

"Hi, yes, I'm Taylor. Um…Do I know you?"

"I'm Xack. We, uh, I see you like four days a week? In the…" He paused and looked quickly left and right, making sure no one was eavesdropping. "In the theater program," he whispered.

"It's actually kind of weird…" Xack continued. "I mean, how can you not recognize me? Oh, ohhhh. Mr Haller, he said you might have a concussion. Did you forget me because of the concussion?"

I nodded. "Let's go with that."

"Uh… Anyway, Mr Haller said to give you this," he said, holding out a small, cream-colored envelope. I took it from him - Xack, his name is Xack - and, glancing at Xack for permission, I made to rip it open. "Don't rip it!" said Xack. "It, uh, it unfolds."

Looking closer, I realized that it wasn't exactly a proper envelope; it was a sheet of paper cleverly folded up to look like an envelope. Or, rather, to be its own envelope. I gave it strategic tugs until it unfolded into some creamy, thick stationary, with a few sentences written in old-fashioned letters that seemed too tall and slanted, like the Declaration of Independence.

I stared at it, frowning. I briefly wondered if I was looking at it upside down, but turning the paper didn't help.

"Xack? This writing is so beautiful and fancy I can't read it."

"No one can," Xack agreed. "I think the idea is that someday a student will be able to read Haller's writing, and that student will be Haller's rightful heir and get the golden ticket."

"Dibs on the blueberry that turns me into a balloon," I snarked.

Then I thought - what would happen if I ate that blueberry? Presumably I'd turn blue and blow up into a sphere shape, like Violet Beauregarde did. But my nose was invulnerable. Would it be immune to the effect, so I'd turn into a giant blueberry with a human nose attached?

Putting that image out of my head, I turned to Xack. "So about this note…?"

"Right, uh. Haller told me that the note says you should come down to the theater as soon as school ends today."

"Am I in trouble?" Xack just shrugged. We chatted for another minute or so, then Xack noticed Sophia and Emma glaring warningly at him from across the cafeteria.The trio had made it known to all the students in our grade that any friendly interaction with me was subject to punishment with heavy mockery and perhaps a light beating.

But Xack didn't leave. Impressive. Unfortunately, he did start babbling a hundred words a minute out of fear, which killed what had been an atypically pleasant interaction, so I said I had homework and gently sent him on his way.

After he left, I stared down at the notebook on the table in front of me. Why had I opened it to a blank page?

Oh, right. Making a plan.

GOALS, I wrote at the top of the page in large script letters, trying to make the "S" swoop nicely. The swoop didn't work out, so I tore that page out and tried again, but overdid the swoop and the line actually went off the side of the page. On the third sheet of paper I achieved an acceptable swoop. Then I wrote a list.

1. Get my grades back up.
2. Make some friends.
3. Get nicer clothes. (Money? Job?)

I stopped and thought. My grades were down, and no one would talk to me, because of Emma and Sophia. (And Madison as well, but I knew she went wherever Emma went, as if Emma was the leader of a marching band and Madison was Emma's head lice). And any nice clothes I wore would inevitably be ruined by the trio.

As long as the three bitches kept on after me, this list was pointless. The thought made me whip my head up to make sure Emma wasn't approaching me, but she was all the way across the cafeteria, not even looking at me.

I crumpled the paper and restarted, being careful with the swooping S.

GOALS

1. Stop the bullying.
2. Find out why Emma hates me.
3. Make Emma stop.
4. Make Sophia leave me alone.

Wait, how would I do that? I knew from bitter experience that the school administration wouldn't do anything to reign in Emma or Sophia. No one would ever help me, because that would mean Taylor Hebert would be getting some fairness, and if that ever happens the universe blows up or something which is why it's never allowed.

I physically shook my head as I forced my thoughts back to my list. I considered some more, and then started the list over on a fresh page, getting my nicest swooping "S" yet on the first try.

GOALS

1. Get fit. (Already started go me!)
2. Learn to fight (how?) (Judo lessons?) (Or is it Karate?)
   1. Find out what it's called.
3. Stop the bullying
4. Find out why Emma Hates me. (Optional?)
5. Make Emma stop
6. Make Sophia leave me alone
7. Get nice clothes (Money? Job?)
8. Get my grades back up
9. Make new friends

Rereading the list, I realized the order was wrong, because I couldn't take judo/karate lessons until after I had money. Sequencing is probably the most essential trait of a well-conceived goal list, so I started over on a new sheet of paper.

GOALS

1. Get fit. (Already started go me!)
2. Find a job. (What am I good at?)

I frowned at the piece of paper in front of me before ripping it out of the notebook and crumpling it up. I noticed that the crumpled up sheets of paper near my elbow were beginning to form a pile, but that just showed how seriously I was taking my goal list. After a brief false start due to a badly swooped S, I started over on a new sheet.

GOALS

1. Get fit (begun!)
2. Get good at something that's a marketable skill of some sort.
3. Find a job.
4. Learn to fight (Judo/Karate lessons).
   1. Still need to find out what it's called.
5. Stop the bullying.
   1. Find out why Emma hates me.
   2. Make Emma stop.
   3. Make Sophia stop with my new fighting skills.
6. Get nice clothes.
7. Get my grades up.
8. Make new friends.

What else? I concentrated, staring into space.

9. Learn parkur (sp?)​

I stared into space some more, trying to wring a tenth idea out of my brain, and my eyes fell on a couple of seniors I didn't know, seated at the next table over. She was sitting on his lap, eyes bright, waving her hands to illustrate a point. He had a hand around her waist and was smiling at her like he was starving to death and she owned the city's best all you can eat Chinese buffet. They looked so happy.

I wanted some of that.

I turned back to my list and wrote:

10. Get Panacea to be my girlfriend.

I stopped then, biting my lip as I considered that last sentence. There was a lit-up trophy cabinet nearby, casting my shadow onto the table. Or I should say, shadows: one for me, one for my nose.

Self-esteem is good, but…I also had to be realistic. Panacea was objectively the prettiest, most brilliant, most refined saint in the entire world. She saves lives like Dad and I save grocery bags. Even if she was gay, and I had no reason to think the universe was that kind, she could have literally any girl she wanted - unrequited love? She'd say, looking puzzled. What does that phrase mean, I don't think I've ever experienced that.

Probably she hangs out with Alexandria and Dragon all the time. She could choose anyone. And realistically someone who could have anyone wouldn't want someone who looked like me.

Not as a girlfriend.

I redid my goal list on a fresh sheet of paper. The list now concluded with:

10. Become friends with Panacea.

1. Protect her
2. Make her happy
3. Live without romance, loving her in secret, content just to be near her.

There, I thought. Much more realistic.

 

[LadiesWhoLunch]

Spoiler: Author's note with mild spoiler about the direction this story is going

It's been pointed out to me that there are quite a lot of scenes of Taylor being bullied in this fic so far. It won't be that way forever; in this story, Taylor will eventually be able to stand up for herself very effectively and free herself of the bullying. But not just yet.

Monday December 6, 2010. The same day, a few hours later.

Once my final class of the day ended I headed downstairs, going to the theater to find out what Mr. Heller wanted.

But I was delayed. Halfway down the basement hall, Sophia stepped out of a door alcove, blocking my way. I moved to walk around her, and she sidestepped to remain in front of me.

"Hold up a minute, Hebert. What's the story with that?" She didn't need to point, we both knew what she meant.

I stood silent, refusing to answer.

"Yeah, right," said Sophia, as if responding to something I said. "Obviously you're a cape of some sort now - no normal could have a nose the size of their whole face. But what are your powers?"

I continued giving her the silent treatment.

"Mmmmn, I can't see you with anything that'll let you be strong, so that lets out most of the good ones. Not a blaster, not a brute, not a striker. I can't imagine you having master powers, either."

I finally spoke. "I have no idea what any of that gibberish means."

"I bet you're a stranger. Sneaky, weedy, weak. All of that is you. So what've you got? Invisibility? Oh wait - do you emit gas? I bet that's your power."

"I don't have any powers, all right?" I snapped. "Just a big nose, that's all."

Sophia stared at me for several seconds before doubling over with laughter. I tried walking past while she was indisposed, but she wasn't as unaware as she seemed and tipped to one side, leaning her hand against the wall so her arm blocked my path.

"Wow. Only you, Hebert. Only you." I had honestly never seen Sophia looking this happy. "I know lots about capes, and I've never heard of a power like that before. A big nose and nothing? Are you even sure - like, did the PRT do power testing on you?"

I nodded, trying to be stonily calm, hiding my mortification. I considered telling her the rest - the healing, the invulnerable nose - but I couldn't think of anyone in the world less deserving of a full and honest account of my life than Sophia Hess. Plus, the sad truth was, "invulnerable nose" didn't exactly lift me out of the "pathetically weak power" category.

"Have you really thought about this, Hebert? I mean, this has cosmic significance. Everyone knows that you're weak and worthless, and probably even you've always known it at some level. But this? This is the universe itself telling you you're weak and worthless. You are objectively the most pathetic loser in the world. Man, that's gotta sting. That's gotta-"

I had swung my fist at her, but she effortlessly swatted my arm to the side with her forearm. I hadn't even seen her move, just the result. Her hands shot out and grabbed my forearms, which she held up and out. I struggled with my stick arms but I couldn't break her grip.

"Wow, Hebert. That was sad. Normally I'd kick the crap out of you for that, but you're just such a mess that I'm gonna give you a pass."

I gave up on getting my hands free and tried kicking at her, but Sophia somehow saw it coming and swung me away so I fell, my elbow stinging where it hit the linoleum floor. I scrambled clumsily onto my hands and knees, but Sophia was already walking away. "That pass? One time only offer," she added without turning around.

I watched her leave and then collapsed back on the floor, panting and staring up at the light fixtures embedded in the hall ceiling.

Having more confidence and self-esteem is very nice and all, but what good is it when Sophia fucking Hess can still swat me like a moth?

It was my encounter with Emma all over again. Why do I seem so much better at everything when I'm not in school?

I wondered how late I was to see Heller. And how much later I would be once I was done crying.

But then I was surprised to realize that I didn't feel like crying.

Thinking about it, it occurred to me that there's no shame in being beaten by someone much stronger and faster than you. No shame on me, anyway. The important thing was, I fought back. Right?

Plus, if I was going to cry, it wasn't going to be in a public hallway where anyone could wander along and get an eyeful.

Maybe Sophia and I could have a rematch after I learn to fight. How shocked would Sophia be if I could give her a fair fight, by which I kind of meant, kick her skanky and probably incredibly fit ass? I imagined Sophia, bloodied and crying as I stood over her, and I kind of liked it. Another goal? Or more like a sub-goal?

And thinking about goals, learning to fight was number four on my goals list. Maybe I should bump it higher?

Spoiler: Taylor's goals list, in case you'd like a reminder.

GOALS

1. Get fit (begun!)
2. Get good at something that's a marketable skill of some sort.
3. Find a job.
4. Learn to fight (Judo/Karate lessons).
   1. Still need to find out what it's called.
5. Stop the bullying
   1. Find out why Emma hates me.
   2. Make Emma stop.
   3. Make Sophia stop with my new fighting skills.
6. Get nice clothes.
7. Get my grades up.
8. Make new friends.
9. Learn parkor (sp?)
10. Become friends with Panacea.
    1. Protect her
    2. Make her happy
    3. Live without romance, loving her in secret, content just to be near her.

But fighting lessons would cost money, so money had to come before learning to fight on the list. And money comes from jobs, so "get a job" needed to be above money and therefore above learning to fight. That only left the number one thing on my list - getting in shape - and since I had already begun that, it really had the number one spot nailed down.

My breathing had returned to normal. I got up, straightened my glasses, and brushed my clothes off. Doing a self-check, I was pleased to notice that neither my wrists or my elbow were bruised - self-healing power for the win! Take that, unkind cosmos!

I stood a minute, trying to decide between staying in school versus going home. The school day was officially over. And I felt zero desire to remain in Winslow for even another minute.

But I'd already been on my way to the theater department. If I left now, that would mean I'd altered my plans and schedule because of Sophia fucking Hess, and doing that would be unacceptable.

(You could argue, with some justice, that in fact I altered plans to avoid Sophia Hess so often it was, if not my life's work, at least a hobby. But in that particular moment I wasn't thinking of it that way. Hobgoblin of little minds and all that.)

Anyhow, I didn't want to get in trouble with Mr. Haller, since staying on his good side was essential to keeping the theater as a retreat. (Will they even let me up on the catwalk anymore?) In fact, I was probably already in trouble for being late. But not showing at all would be worse.

I walked down the hall and opened a door that at first seemed to be a storage closet. It had music stands and folded up chairs and large sheets of plywood. But at the opposite end of the closet - obscured by a twelve-foot tall sheet of plywood leaning against the wall - was an ordinary door which opened easily and led to a backstage spot in the theater. One of the theater kids, seeing me struggling with the heavy stage door, had taken me aside and shown me this alternative route.

Stepping through the door, I could instantly see that I was, in fact, in trouble. But not the kind of trouble I had been nervous about, because to be nervous about it I would have needed to first be able to conceive it.

There were balloons. And streamers. And a Formica folding table which had been set up, and on the table was a sheet cake, and on the cake was writing in frosting, and the writing said "Welcome Back Taylor!" with little hearts around the short sentence. And a bunch of theater teens who, after the requisite moments of shocked silence upon seeing my nose for the first time, cheered.

I shook my head. "You guys… I really have no idea what to say."

And I didn't. My life had in no way prepared me for this eventuality. Desperate for an escape, I spotted the stack of red plastic disposable cups next to a few liters of coke and 7-Up.

"Drinks!" I said, rushing over and grabbing at the red cups, knocking the stack over, picking them back up from the wooden floorboards, brushing them off and inanely saying "Three second rule! Who, uh, who wants a Coke?" a moment before knocking the bottle of 7-Up over.

Fifteen minutes later I was over my initial period of awkwardness and was instead in a new and happily less destructive period of awkwardness. The problem was that I had been around this group of teens for weeks without bothering to learn their names or even to tell them apart from each other, which now that I thought about this for the first time was very embarrassing. Fortunately, Xack, the guy who talked to me in the cafeteria earlier today, had apparently whispered his "concussion" theory around, and no one was mean about telling me their names, and no one said anything mean when I mixed up Celia (pretty Black girl) with Wendy (pretty Black girl but shorter and chubbier with glasses).

I desperately wanted to take notes but worried that might make me seem even weirder.

"Excuse me, children. I have announcements. Announcements of world-shaking importance," said Mr Haller, his deep voice carrying without needing to yell. Seeing my opportunity, I scrambled to my backpack and pulled out a pen and notebook, seemingly ready to take careful note of whatever Mr. Haller said. He quirked an eyebrow at me.

"Depending, of course, on how large or small your personal world is. Mine is small and, like my body, appears to be shrinking every year. I'll have you, and I use this term advisedly, whippersnappers know I used to be tall!"

I paused from what I had been writing in my notebook ("Celia - no glasses, Wendy, glasses") and blinked at Haller, who was well over six feet and almost certainly the tallest person in the school.

"Anyway, the first announcement we already know. Which is, Taylor and the welcoming back thereof." He cleared his throat in a showy fashion. "So: Welcome back, Taylor! It means so much to see you looking so healthy after your little tumble."

"Panacea," I said, the single word all the explanation needed. Freckles danced through my mind's eye like tiny graceful ballerinas.

"Ah, excellent, good show," said the old man, affecting a British accent, before moving back to his usual - perhaps also affected? - southern accent.

"The second announcement is less happy. Principal Blackwell, breaking with years of in my opinion beneficial precedent, has seen fit to take an interest in our upcoming season. Which you might expect would be lovely, but in this case 'take an interest' turns out to be a euphemism for canceling our coming production of 'Cyrano De Bergerac.'"

The students around me booed softly.

"Yes, well," continued Haller. "She said that some could see doing Cyrano at this time as being in bad taste, and I don't entirely fail to see her point. Still, like fake nails, we will press on. I definitely have a play firmly in mind for us to do, and also suggestions are welcome."

A while after that, I was actually having a nice time. The gang had broken off into smaller groups; Wendy and Celia were talking with Mr. Haller, while Spencer and Drina were having an extended debate about - at first I thought I must be misunderstanding them but I wasn't - the best Broadway role for dog actors.

("Sure, everybody loooves Sandy, but it's all been done to death and the audience will just expect an imitation of the original Sandy. Now, Trixie in Bullets over Broadway - there's a part fit for an acting hound!")

And I was talking with Xack and Charlotte about my favorite movie musical - West Side Story - which somehow led to us talking about the musicals of Stephen Sondheim, who I had never heard of, which in Charlotte's eyes was akin to someone casually mentioning they'd never heard of knees.

"No. You're kidding, right? You're kidding? You have a face that seems distinctly lacking in kidding. Okay, we can fix this. When can you come over?"

I blinked. "Come over where?"

"My place, Taylor! I've got so many videos to show you. Actually, we might need to make it a sleepover. Are you cool with stories about cannibalism? How's Saturday night for you? Did you know there's actually a Sondheim musical which is called 'Saturday Night'? Which we won't be watching because there's no video but that's okay it's not that great most of the great Sondheim shows have videos."

"You're… " I dove into Charlotte's pile of words and emerged clutching the important point. "You're inviting me to a sleepover?"

"Uh, yeah. Is that okay?"

"Taylor," interrupted Xack, leaning forward, "are you crying? What's wrong?"

"No, no, it's good, it's good!" I said, as I rubbed the tears from my eyes. My voice sounded sobby, even to me. "It's just… You don't understand what it's been like for me, and I…" I hiccuped.

"Awww," said Charlotte, opening her arms up and capturing me in a hug.

I stiffened for a moment, but noticed what I was doing and consciously relaxed my body. The hug was warm and soft and, objectively speaking, nice. I told myself to learn to enjoy this. Fake it till you make it.

Then Xack leaned in and put his arms around us both, turning into a group hug, and then it was like a sluice gate opened and released the waterworks.

I sobbed, then hiccupped, then finally managed to get it out. "I have to redo my list again! This was number eight!"

Charlotte rubbed my back and continued holding me while Xack held us both. She whispered, her voice full of sympathy, "I have no idea what that means, Sweetie."

 

[LadiesWhoLunch]

Saturday, December 11, 2010. (Five days later.)

At five that Saturday, I got off the bus in the business district - an area of downtown taken up mostly by banks, office buildings, and office supply stores. The tallest building in this area was the MedHall building, but plenty of other buildings in this area rose up five stories or more above the sidewalks. The occasional pedestrians were mostly adults wearing business outfits - jacket and tie for the men, jacket and blouses for the women. Brockton Bay was known for mild winters, and no one needed heavy coats.

When I told Dad I had been invited to a sleepover, he was so jubilant for me I actually found it a little insulting. But he had already made plans to go bowling with his friend Kurt and some other dockworkers, so he couldn't give me a ride. He offered to give me money for a cab, but when I saw how carefully he counted the cash in his wallet I told him it wasn't a problem for me to take the bus.

Charlotte lived in Montgomery Cliffs, a neighborhood adjacent to the business district, but bus routes being what they were, it ended up being simpler for me to get off in the business district and walk from there. I'd never had a reason to go to Montgomery Cliffs before. I slung my backpack onto my shoulders, then pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket. On the paper, Charlotte had scribbled down her address on Garbo Avenue. Below that, in considerably neater handwriting, were the numbered step-by-step directions I'd written out for myself after looking up the route online. I had figured out that I'd be walking directly away from the Medhall building, so as long as my back was to Medhall I'd be on the right track.

Following my plan, I walked half a dozen blocks east. Once I crossed Dietrich Avenue, the character of the neighborhood abruptly changed. It wasn't slums, but the sidewalks were noticeably dirtier, and the streets were narrower and had more cracks. The buildings got much shorter - most were two or three stories - and the sameness of office buildings gave way to an eclectic variety of storefronts, tiny restaurants, and dim bars. I stopped at the window of one store which had a big sign saying "Electronics," but although I saw many things in the window display - luggage, stuffed animals, baseball bats, clothes, jewelry - none of them were electronic.

Another store, with a sign saying "Treats From Abroad," was a tiny space with long ropes of sausage just hanging everywhere, supported by hooks in the ceiling.

The pedestrians around me were dressed mostly in jeans and light jackets. A lot of them were Asian or Black or Hispanic. With hindsight, I realized that everyone I'd seen in the business district was white, and like the white girl I was, I hadn't noticed.

One way the two neighborhoods were alike, though - regardless of race, everyone who glanced at my face winced or exclaimed or even jumped with surprise.

A few minutes later I had reached a somewhat more residential area, with brick apartment buildings built above bodegas and bars (the bars were mostly empty at this hour, but the bodegas looked busy), I took a right turn onto a street on which, according to my directions, I'd find the address Charlotte had given me. I would be early, but that was all according to plan - I figured it was better to wait outside for a while than to risk being late.

I found the right address - 1212 Garbo Avenue - and stared.

I checked the address Charlotte had given me, then looked up again, at the same address over the door. I blinked, trying to keep the tears from coming.

When had Emma gotten to Charlotte?

The building had large double doors, with the address written over the doors on a painted sign styled to look like it was written in lipstick. A sign hung on the inside of the glass doors said "closed." But the most striking thing was that the doors were surrounded by framed, autographed photos of beautiful women wearing little except lace lingerie and a lot of makeup.

Charlotte had given me the address of a strip club.

I could feel my face burning. I had a sudden vision of Emma and Charlotte chortling together, planning out nasty things to say to me about my new job as a stripper, or maybe about my inability to get hired as a stripper.

How could I be so stupid? Emma had done this to me once before - convinced a girl to pretend to be my friend just to give me hope then yank it away. How could I let Emma get to me with a fake friend again?

Was it just Charlotte, or were all the theater kids in on this?

"Taylor?" said a voice behind me. I spun, and there was Charlotte, holding a big paper bag in her arms. "Sorry I'm running late. I mean, you're a bit early, but I meant to be home by now."

A chubby adult man wearing a striped shirt and a broad-brimmed hat stopped by Charlotte and whispered something to her. "Seriously?," she said, sounding delighted. They whispered a couple more things I couldn't hear, and then the hat man walked off. And all the while, I felt my anger shooting up and up.

Charlotte walked up to me, smiling. "What the fuck, Charlotte?" I snarled. "Is this funny to you?"

"What?" she said. "Why are you…"

"Pretend to invite the friendless girl to a sleepover and then give her the address of a strip club? Hilarious! Was this your idea or Emma's? Or Madison's?"

"Whoa, stop Taylor! You've gotten it all wrong - it's a real sleepover."

"It's a strip club! How stupid do you think I am?"

"I don't live here! And it's not a strip club. See, Taylor, look," she said, pointing past me. "Just look."

"What, I'll turn and you'll dump something on my head? Fuck you, Charlotte. You bitches are all alike! Or Sophia will jump out and--"

"OhmyGOD! Look, just watch me, asshole." Charlotte stomped past me to a little alcove next to the strip club, with what looked like a metal service door - black and featureless. She pointed to small letters painted on the door.

1212b Garbo Avenue.

"We live three stories above the club," Charlotte snarled.

I could feel my face burning. I tried speaking a few times, but at first no words came.

Finally, I managed to choke out "I'm - I'm so sorry. I'll just go home."

"Yeah, I think that's a good idea. You're sure not coming in here." Charlotte turned her back on me, balanced her groceries on her hip with one arm while she pulled a keychain out of her jacket. I had a brief glimpse of a narrow hallway extending into the building when she pulled the door open, and a few seconds later the black door banged closed behind her.

I don't know how long I stood there staring at the door. It seemed like a long time. Eventually, I turned around and began to move in the direction of my bus stop, wiping my eyes now and then.

She was so nice to me and I called her a bitch. And now she's going to tell the other theater kids and my last chance of having friends is down the toilet forever.

Why do I ruin everything?

No, I didn't ruin this. Emma ruined this. Emma screwed me up so badly that I can't even deal with friendship when it's offered. Emma ruined me and now I ruin things so it's really Emma ruining things by proxy, right?

Or maybe I'm just a screw-up. I can't blame everything on Emma. I can't blame me acting like a bitch on Emma.

Maybe it wasn't hopeless. Maybe if I go to Charlotte at school on Monday and apologize, this could be repaired. Or I can send her an email once I get home.

A thought stopped me in my tracks. I can't go home. Dad was so thrilled I had a sleepover. He'd be so disappointed. I can't tell him what happened.

But it's not like I can stay out all night. I don't have anywhere to be.

Maybe I could go to the library for a few hours, then come home and tell Dad Charlotte wasn't feeling well so the sleepover was canceled? That could work. Or wait, how late will Dad be out, anyway?

That's when I spotted a couple of guys with shaved heads and leather jackets walking my way, about half a block down on the sidewalk. They probably wouldn't attack me - I'm white, after all - but they might hassle me, and I didn't want to hear any nasty comments about my nose. Better safe than sorry. I ducked into the nearest store, which turned out to be the place with sausages hanging down from hooks.

I moved into the narrow store and looked out the window, peering around slabs of meat on display so I could see when the skinheads walked by and it was safe to go out. Then a voice with an accent said "You want try sample?"

I turned and looked. A tiny old woman, with implausibly jet black hair partly covered by a handkerchief, was standing behind the counter and pointing a gigantic knife at me. I jerked back.

She smiled, and repeated "sample?" That's when I noticed the piece of sausage impaled on the end of the knife. "Go on," she said. "Sample!" I couldn't tell what her accent was, maybe Russian, maybe Polish. But I cautiously plucked the sausage off the end of the knife and took a bite.

It was absolutely delicious, and not at all like the sausage I'd had from grocery stores. It was soft and spicy and the "skin" had a really appealing snap. "Mmmm!" I hummed at the old woman, smiling and nodding.

Several minutes later, a newly-bought bag with a sampling of sausages held by one arm (the bag was on the small side, so the ends of sausages were sticking up out of the bag), I left the store and looked both ways. The skinheads from before weren't anywhere in sight. But there was a teen boy running towards me, yelling "Taylor! Wait up!"

"Xack?"

He stopped in front of me, panting a little. He didn't have a coat on, just a Hawaiian shirt "Hey. So glad I found you!"

"You were looking for me?"

"We all are! We split up. It turns out none of us have your cell number, which just makes me wonder what secrets you're hiding. Actually, hold on a sec." Xack glanced up at the store sign, pulled his phone out of his pocket and began rapidly tapping on it, muttering "found Taylor… Treats From Abroad." Then he looked up and smiled. "Come on, let's go back to Charlotte's place."

"I… I can't go back there. I--"

"Charlotte feels awful. She says she shouldn't have gotten mad."

"She shouldn't have gotten mad? But-- But I'm the one who--"

"Charlotte didn't explain it to me, but she said it was just a stupid misunderstanding, and she'll be heartbroken if you don't come back."

I hesitated, and Xack went on. "You wouldn't want Charlotte to be heartbroken on her birthday, do you?"

"It's her birthday?" Wait, was I supposed to bring a gift?

Xack shrugged. "It could be her birthday. There's a one in 365 chance, right? And look, you bought her some, uh, European sausage?"

We walked back together to Charlotte's place. When we were approaching, I could see that the strip club had opened up - the lights inside were on, music was playing, and a woman in a plaid shirt was setting up a projector, pointed at an undecorated part of the building, while other people set up folding chairs. I looked at it curiously. "Xack, why is the strip club setting up a projector?"

"No no, it's not a strip club. It's a drag club. Totally different vibe. Well, somewhat different vibe. I mean, I've never actually been to a strip club, or seen a naked woman, but I'm okay with that and shutting up now."

I stopped and stared at the double doors to the strip - to the drag club, with the autographed photos of glamorous looking women in heavy makeup framing the doors.

"Xack, it's possible I'm an idiot."

Xack nodded sagely. "I understand. We always welcome more company in Idiotville, population unknown because none of us can count. Anyway, the club projects old movies on their building every Saturday. Anyone in the neighborhood can come watch."

"That's… That's really cool."

At Charlotte's door, Xack pressed a button I hadn't noticed before. A few seconds later, there was a buzzing noise and Xack pulled the door open, revealing a narrow hallway barely wider than the door. We walked up a narrow stairway with many switchbacks. At every other landing was a door. When we reached the fourth floor, Xack knocked and Charlotte flung the door open.

"She's here," Charlotte called inside, and I heard a couple of voices say "yay!" Charlotte stepped out onto the landing and threw her arms around me, while Xack slipped around us and went through the door. "Taylor, I'm so sorry."

"No, I'm sorry. I mean, I--"

"I shouldn't have gotten mad--"

"I shouldn't have gotten mad!"

"Can we just start tonight over? Please?"

"Start over?" I asked.

Charlotte smiled, gestured towards the open door, and - in an exaggerated snooty voice - said "Welcome to my humble abode. Come in! The butler will take your, uh--" she glanced down at my bag "--your sausages."

The sausages were a pretty big hit, and went well with the pizza Charlotte's parents had bought for us.

There were six of us crowded in front of the den TV - Xack, Obi, Wendy, Celia, Charlotte, and I. Obi, a small boy with striking dark eyes, sat down on Xack's lap and put an arm around Xack's neck, while Wendy snuggled next to Celia on the sofa. Charlotte and I ended up sitting on the floor - not cuddling close - with our backs against the sofa and cushions and blankets all around us.

None of them were acting like the obvious same-sex coupling going on was weird, so I didn't either. But inside, I was reeling a bit - I hadn't realized that so many teens in theater were gay.

The den was pretty nice, with comfy seating, framed movie posters and a door with a sign taped to it that said "not a door, do not open." "Is that where all your dead wives are kept?" I asked Charlotte, who looked blank for a second and then got it and laughed.

After a few minutes of chatting, Charlotte grabbed a remote control and shushed us. "We'll begin our Sondheim marathon with a sweet family musical about a stripper with an abusive mother - Gypsy!"

"I think I've heard of that one. Are there any songs from it I'd know?" I asked.

Wendy lit up - I hadn't known her long, but I already knew she really enjoyed having answers. "I bet you know 'Everything's Coming Up Roses.'"

"Oh, right," I said. "I like that one - it's so happy."

A general chuckling went around the group. "What?" I said.

"Oh you sweet innocent babe in the woods," said Xack. "You see--"

"Come on, no spoilers," Charlotte interrupted. "Half the point of this process is for the rest of us to vicariously experience it for the first time through Taylor." Charlotte pointed the remote control at the DVD player and clicked the button.

After Gypsy was over (in context, "Everything's Coming Up Roses" turned out to be sort of terrifying), Charlotte said we needed to follow that up with something lighter, and put in a musical I'd never heard of called Sweeney Todd.

After Sweeney - which was in no way lighter, I complained to Charlotte, who seemed completely unrepentant about her deception - Charlotte insisted that we all go out for snacks. Charlotte's mother made all the girls promise to be back by midnight. (The boys wouldn't be returning with us, as they weren't invited to the sleepover part of this sleepover).

We all traipsed down three stories to street level. As we left, Charlotte's mother yelled down at us "Midnight! Remember what happened to Cinderella!" ("She became royalty?" said Obi after the door shut.)

"I can't believe your mom's letting us stay out that late," I whispered to Charlotte. "My dad would never let me step outside the house after ten pm."

"Oh, neither would my mom," said Wendy. "As far as she's concerned we are all now laying in our sleeping bags, with thoroughly brushed teeth and hetero hearts."

"I've got my parents too well trained for them to set curfews,' Celia boasted. "They're more like housemates who pay me an allowance."

I heard music with a heavy beat getting gradually louder as we got closer to the ground floor. Then Xack, who was in front, opened the door to the outside, and the music blasted in like someone had suddenly turned a stereo up to eleven.

Charlotte and Celia actually began dancing as they walked out into the street, which was filled with partiers. Xack, catching my surprised expression, told me "yup, Charlotte's street is really something else. On my street, we think ice cream trucks are exciting." He had to raise his voice to be heard over the music.

I'd never seen anything like this before. Amazing spicy smells were coming from barbecues on wheels merchants had rolled onto the sidewalks. There didn't seem to be any car traffic on the street, which was filled with people dancing, drinking, chatting, and in one case performing a handstand. A bridal party, led by a happy woman wearing a white veil and a t-shirt that said "Da Fuckin Bride," wandered happily down the middle of the street in an almost visible haze of alcohol.

"What is this music? It's amazing!" I asked Wendy. "Ska," Obi replied.

"Juke's!" screamed Charlotte, pointing to one of the barbeques on the sidewalk, and we all went in that direction, Charlotte and Wendy pulling my hands when I didn't immediately hop to it, and joined a line. I noticed two men on a stoop making out, and once again, no one seemed to think this was notable.

We were a bit further away from the music here, making it easier to talk. "How - how does this even exist?," I asked, waving my hands at the entire street scene. Wendy gave me an inquiring look. "I mean, aren't people worried about-" I leaned close to Wendy, lowering my voice. "-the Nazis?"

"I don't know. I guess it isn't a problem?"

"It's a serious problem," interjected Charlotte. "It's not like this every night. This kind of party happens about once a month, but the organizers don't tell anyone the date until just a few hours ahead, and one of the rules is to only tell people we trust. Then once it begins the crowd is too big for the skinheads to bother us."

"Exactly," added Celia. "The average 88-er is basically a hundred forty pounds of cowardice mixed with cocaine."

Charlotte said, "But don't get caught out here past one. Once the street empties out they sometimes come looking for stragglers."

By now, we'd reached the front of the line, and I could see that this stand sold what looked like hot dogs. "No, no, my good man," Xack was telling the vendor, a tall black man with a thick white beard. "Not the ones you give white people. Give me the real stuff."

"You sure about that?" said the vendor genially, with an accept I didn't recognize. Jamaican, maybe?

"I am made of certainty." The vendor shrugged and put a sausage onto a bun before handing it to Xack in exchange for some cash.

"What's that about?" I asked Wendy as Celia placed her order.

"Oh, well," said Wendy. "Juke's food is hotter than most Americans are used to by several orders of magnitude. Especially white people. So Juke has milder sausages for selling to whites, and also wimpy Black people like me."

By then it was Wendy's turn. Wendy asked for "one of the white sausages, please. My folks are French." Juke nodded sagely.

A few moments later, it was my turn. "I'll have one of the sausages for Black people, please," I said. "Taylor, no!" said Charlotte. But I insisted - I wanted the authentic experience. Xack, seeming amused, insisted on paying Juke for my food.

We stepped away, and I started to take a bite, but Charlotte stopped me. "Don't eat it until you're upstairs and we have milk handy. Trust me."

Xack and Obi said their goodbyes. This was the most I'd hung out with Obi since the Thanksgiving Dockworkers' lunch, and I still wasn't sure I'd heard him say more than three words in a row. As the two guys started walking away, their path intersected the bridal party's, and to my shock the bride, who was on the fat side, pulled up the front of her shirt and flashed her chest at them. "Well done" said Obi calmly, and the bridal party almost fell over laughing.

"I can't believe she just did that! I mean, she's getting married tomorrow!," I said to the group as the four of us clomped up the stairs to Charlotte's apartment. No one responded to me, because they were too busy chomping down on their sausages and making moans of pleasure.

How bad could it be?, I thought, and took a bite. It was absolutely delicious, spicy and savory like nothing I'd tasted before - for about five seconds. Then a hundred daggers plunged into my tongue, and each dagger was on fire, and the flames themselves were made of microscopic jackhammers pounding and the jackhammers were also on fire.

"Whhhaaaa! Waaaa!" I explained.

"I told you to wait," said Charlotte, smiling at me indulgently, which seemed like an unfeeling attitude to take with someone who was clearly about to die from her head bursting into flames.

"When will white people learn?," said Celia.

"I hear the President's going to do a commission on that," said Wendy.

"Come on, let's get you some milk," said Charlotte, putting her hand on my arm and pulling me upwards.

Spoiler: A/N

This is my favorite chapter so far - I hope you enjoyed it. My life hasn't been much like Taylor's and I have an ordinary nose, but a lot of the little details in this chapter are taken from my life. Like, once while travelling I went to find my AirBNB, and when I got to the address it looked like a strip club, until I finally noticed the inconspicuous door to the side of the club with the address and a "b" at the end. And that night, when the club was open, I realized it was a drag club, and they were projecting an old movie on the outside wall.

 

[LadiesWhoLunch]

Spoiler: Author's note

More trio bullying! Again, I promise the entire fic won't be like this.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010. (Ten days later.)

I needed to read a play aloud, so during lunch period I slipped into the French classroom, where I would be able to work in peace as long as there weren't any drug deals going down.

(Mrs. Parker, Winslow's French teacher, had won a lottery and moved to Quebec at the start of the school year and the school had yet to replace her, so the French classroom was always empty and became the preferred meeting place for drug deals, leading to vente de drogues becoming Winslow slang for buying pot).

Luckily, Winslow's student drug dealers, like other kids, were at lunch, so I had the room to myself. "Oh, Didi," I read, trying to make my voice sound regretful, "I'd save you if I could. But you've damned yourself, and no one can undo that, and actually I'm really enjoying watching you drown."

That didn't sound right, did it? I took out a red pen and was scribbling some notes in the margin when I heard the classroom door open.

I looked up and watched Emma, Sophia and Madison walk into the classroom, an aura of mean girlness emanating from them like stinky cologne. It had been about two weeks since Sophia knocked me down and told me the universe thought I was a loser, and in that time the Trio had left me alone. But although I hoped that would last, I knew it wouldn't.

Sophia cracked her knuckles - really, how cliched could she get? - while Emma asked, "What's that you got, Tay?" Behind them, Madison had shut the classroom door. The door had a window in it, and Madison peered out the window, playing lookout.

I was already standing and shoving my bundle of papers deep into my backpack, so hurriedly that I heard some pages tear. I didn't look, though - it knew it was better to keep my eyes glued on the trio. I felt around for the zipper and closed the backpack. "Just some theater homework."

Emma nodded. "I see. Brown nosing the only staff member who can stand you?"

Mrs Knott can also stand me, I thought but didn't say.

I shrugged again. "You know me, Em. I like keeping my nose to the grindstone."

"Joking about it? Aw, that's so brave of you, Tay. Which is what they say about hideously ugly girls with no future. She's going to die homeless and a virgin, but she's… so… brave."

"Last time you were saying I was a hooker. You should make up your mind."

"Oh, it is made. No one would ever willingly have sex with… that" she said, gesturing towards my face. "Or… maybe someone old and blind would. Have you been blowing the theater teacher? That would explain some things."

"Have you been blowing the theater teacher?" I said, my voice a mocking imitation of Emma's simpering cadence. "The obviously and openly gay theater teacher?"

Emma smiled. "So you're saying one of the boy students is blowing him?"

"You think an awful lot about blowing teachers, Emma."

"It's just very suspicious, isn't it?" she continued as if I hadn't spoken. "A teacher running a little cult in the school basement, without any supervision at all. Courses that are closed to all the students but his chosen few, which I'm pretty sure isn't legal."

I made a scoffing noise, but inwardly I thought Emma's point about legality might have something to it. Mr. Haller had told me Winslow allowed the theater program to continue because the school was required to offer a performing arts class of some sort. But if the classes were closed to virtually all students, are they really being "offered"? Surely some rule was being broken.

"Oh Tay," Emma said, sensing she'd scored a hit. "It's so sad that you think you have to defend him, but that's Stockholm syndrome for you."

"That isn't even what Stockholm syndrome means."

"Shh. You know what, Sophia? Madison?"

"Mmmm?" said Sophia, who had sat on a desk and been watching me and Emma with disinterest, like we were a TV show on PBS. Madison nodded from her place near the door.

"I think I should tell my father about this, so he can bring it up to the school board. The head of the Brockton Bay School Board is a conservative Christian who'd love a chance to shut down a creepy - what did you call him, Tay? - 'openly gay' teacher."

I was genuinely taken aback. "But why - what, are you a homophobe now?"

Emma made a tch-ing noise. "Of course not. You can't be a homophobe and be a model on the East coast - half the industry is gay. I'd just be innocently spreading information." Emma turned and spoke to Madison, who seemed startled to be addressed. "You know the real damage theater does, Maddie?"

Madison shrugged.

"It isn't being gay," Emma said, visibly thinking it through as she talked. "The problem is that theater gives the losers and dregs a place where they can pretend things are different. They can pretend they're different. And then they forget their place. Which is why Taylor's suddenly talking back when she used to know better."

"Maybe I've just figured out that it doesn't matter if I'm quiet or not, you'll still--"

"Which is why," she said, very loudly, cutting me off. "The theater program has to go. So Taylor here," she turned back to me and smiled sweetly, "can go back to having no place and no one, which is how things should be. Deep inside, you'll be happier for it, Tay."

Emma took two steps towards me, so only a student desk was between us. She held out her hand. "Your bag. Hand it over."

"No," I said, swinging the backpack straps onto my shoulders. I'd have to think about saving the theater department later. There was absolutely no way I could allow Emma to read what was in my backpack.

Emma sighed. "Be that way. Sophia?"

Sophia stood and began threading around the desks towards me, and I instantly spotted my escape route, like a diagram in front of my eyes. Step up onto the chair; from the chair, step up to the desk; then dive past Emma, landing with my hands on a desk which I'd then vault over, putting me closer to the door than either Emma or Sophia.

Then I'd only have to get past Madison, and I was betting I could knock her out of my way; I had been exercising quite a lot, and Madison was tiny.

The first two steps went well. But step three - diving from the desk I was standing on - was not a roaring success. I crashed hard into the desk I had planned to vault over, knocking it and two chairs over in a series of clattering crashes.

Ow, I thought, my head on the floor and my hip awkwardly on a knocked-over chair.

But even though plan A failed, plan B - which, to be strictly honest, was less a plan (which implies actual foresight of some sort) than a lucky consequence of plan A's failure - was effective, as the crash I had made had been loud enough to be heard outside the French classroom.

"Nix. Nix!" said Madison frantically, waving a hand in a quelling motion as she peered out the door's windows. "People coming! And Mrs. Knott!"

"Pfft," said Sophia. "Fine, whatever. Later, Hebert."

Emma dashed to the door and into the hallway. She'd left the door open behind her, and I could hear her in the hallway. "Mrs. Knott, come quick! Taylor threw herself off a desk!"

I groaned and began struggling up. At least I'd kept my backpack this time.

Fifteen minutes later my bruises were gone. But Emma had still left a mark on me, metaphorically at least, by giving me a new worry.

Was the school board really run by anti-gay bigots? I had no idea, but I'd read about other cities having issues like that, so it seemed plausible.

But how would Emma even know something like that? It's not like she's on the school board. She's not even in student government.

Not that Emma could get into student government, even if she wanted to.

Contrary to what many outsiders assumed, Winslow did have a student government. Every year, the E88 kids and the ABB kids both put forward a slate of candidates - President, Secretary, Trustee and so on - and did "get out the vote" work, which largely consisted of pushing unaffiliated kids against the wall and promising that if the other gang's slate wins, the day after the election they'll beat the crap out of anyone they even suspected of not voting for their side.

Since both gangs threatened the same unaffiliated kids, those kids were put in a Catch-22 where voting for either side would make them a target. This is probably why the lowest attendance day at Winslow, year after year, was the day after the student government election.

In theory students without a gang's protection were free to run for student government. But for obvious not-wanting-to-be-ganged-up-by-two-gangs reasons, nobody was eager to test that theory..

What really frustrated me was that, despite the regular if desultory efforts the E88 and ABB put into running for student government, the gangs never did anything with the student government once they had it! Both gangs only wanted the bragging rights of being able to say that their gang officially ruled the school.

I supposed Emma could have heard something about the school board from her parents. Alan Barnes was a high-priced divorce attorney, which had given him connections to a lot of powerful people in the city - there was apparently a high divorce rate among movers and shakers.

Mr. Haller had said the school was too cheap to offer a music course instead of theater. But if the school board insisted - even if they were just doing it to shut down an openly gay teacher - Principal Blackwell would find funding for a music class somehow. Maybe a cappella, that's gotta be cheap.

The way my power gave me more self-esteem had clarified that it really wasn't me. I wasn't the broken piece - the entire system was well and truly fucked. I was a perfectly good piece that didn't fit well into a fucked up machine. And someone like Alan Barnes - someone adept at manipulating the machine - could probably fuck over someone like Mr. Haller.

Maybe Emma really could get the theater program shut down.

Or maybe it was a line of bullshit she made up so I'd worry. And by thinking about it at all I was letting Emma win. I resolved to put it out of my mind.

After school, in a room deep within the oddly maze-like backstage area, I sat around a cheap folding table with several of the theater kids, including Charlotte and Xack. They were reading aloud from copies of my script.

Yes, my script. I'd written my first play.

I had started writing a script because I needed a new role in the theater group. I was no longer permitted to be on the catwalk, since the official story was that I had either fallen or thrown myself off and couldn't be trusted with heights. After Mr Haller had asked us to find possible candidates, I had recruited Sparky to replace me, reasoning that he would enjoy having a private place to pot de fumée.

I wanted to stay part of the theater program, but I didn't know if Haller would allow that if I wasn't doing anything theatrical. Acting was out of the question. So what could I do?

I began writing my play mostly out of desperation. But I discovered that playwriting was not only absorbing, it was incredibly satisfying. It also gave me something to do at night. Since I'd triggered I'd been sleeping much less - two to three hours a night was plenty.

So I had recruited a few of the actors to get together after school and do the very first reading of my play. They'd been reading for almost an hour, and had reached the last scene of the play. Before we'd begun the reading I had been mentally writing my Tony award acceptance speech (and possibly one for the Pulitzer as well), but the more I heard it spoken aloud the more I cringed.

DIDI: Tabby, I betrayed you. And without our friendship I turned into an almost implausibly mean hag thug creature. Now that the whole school hates me, I can see how wrong I was, and I won't even ask for your forgiveness, which I obviously don't deserve.

TABBY: I appreciate that. I've almost completely forgotten you, and forgiving you could throw a wrench into the forgetting process.

DIDI briefly weeps, then with a visible effort gets herself under control.

DIDI: I understand.

CHELSEA enters, showily flexes her muscles, then approaches Didi.

CHELSEA: Hey, Didi, you've still got me.

DIDI abruptly pushes Chelsea into a nearby well. Chelsea screams as she falls. Didi then shouts down into the well.

DIDI: Not to imply that I'm not to blame for my own betrayal of my best friend and really sister in all but blood but in a real sense this was all partially your fault!

What can I say? It was my first play.

After the reading, which I was aggressively not thinking about, I went downtown and returned to my epic and very possibly hopeless quest for a part-time job. It turned out I had no marketable skills (certainly not playwriting), but that still left me with the traditional teenage jobs to chase: burger flipper, cashier, waitress, car wash attendant, and so on. Not just traditional, I told myself: Iconic.

I'd been trying for a week, and my initial optimism had crawled into a lonely corner of my mind and was beginning to smell bad. A distinct and nose-related pattern had emerged.

1. Enter the store.
2. Wait for the frontline worker to get over their shock at seeing me.
3. Ask to see the manager.
4. Wait for the manager to get over their shock at seeing me.
5. Apply for a job.
6. Get turned down.
7. Repeat.

"Is this a joke?" was one manager's instant response. Another one told me that she was worried customers would think I'm diseased, and when I pointed out that the job was in the stock room, she said customers might still see me walking in or out.. A third asked me if I'd be okay working with "normal people." Most of them - even some with "help wanted" signs in their windows - just looked me straight in the nose and said there were no openings.

It's too soon to give up. What's needed is a new strategy, I told myself. I decided I'd take a break from job-hunting and rethink my strategy after the holidays.

-----------------------

Friday, December 24, 2010. (Three days later).

On the day before Christmas I was wandering aimlessly around the less dangerous parts of the docks neighborhood, although just in case I had brought along some Winslow Christmas cheer (a can of bear spray in my pocket).

It was winter break, so I had no school to worry about. I hadn't yet succeeded in finding a job and had put off more job hunting until after New Year's. So I was free, at least until it was time to go home so Dad and I could go eat Christmas dinner at Kurt and Lacey's house (two of my Dad's dockworkers association friends).

But that left me a few hours for aimless wandering, which I had discovered often helped my brain with playwriting.

Hearing the play read aloud had made me realize that certain aspects of the play were on the nose. (No pun intended). So I was trying to think of ideas for revision.

Although I knew I was making things up, sometimes it didn't feel like it. It felt like I just set up the characters in my mind and then they wrote themselves while I took notes. When I was absorbed imagining a scene, I forgot all my problems - my history of betrayal, my bullies, my complete lack of employment prospects, whatever tedious class I was sitting through, my nose. The world around me just faded.

Which is how I tripped over a Rottweiler.

I heard a soft "wuff" sound as I landed hard on my face. Luckily, my face hit nose first (by far the most likely way for my face to land), so no harm was done. "Sit, stay" I heard a girl's voice say, followed by growling "what the fuck is wrong with you?".

I rolled onto my back and looked up, and she did a double-take. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" she repeated with different emphasis. The girl looked about eighteen. She had a squarish face, shaggy hair, worn and dirty clothing, and a furious expression. She looked strong, too - her shoulders were wide - and I kind of wanted to ask to feel her biceps, but I figured this wasn't the time.

I looked at the Rottweiler, and was relieved that it didn't look hurt. "Sorry, sorry," I said, climbing to my feet and laughing. "Can you believe I did that? I mean, I literally just tripped over a dog. That takes talent, right?" Now that I was upright, I could see she had two more dogs with her: a German Shepherd, and a hairless terrier missing an eye and an ear. The two larger dogs were sitting absolutely still, staring at me with no humor or friendliness, while the terrier was also sitting but also wriggling a bit while softly whining.

"And you were there! You witnessed it!" I was genuinely amused at my own accident, but also trying to make this girl laugh. But her stoney face suggested she was miles from laughing and perhaps had never laughed at all. Tough crowd.

"You tripped over my dog" she growled..

"We've agreed on that. I was in the wrong and I'm sorry." I leaned down to address the Rottweiler, smiling. "I'm sorry I tripped over you, cutie. What's your name?"

That's when the woman kicked me in the ear. I fell down again, this time landing on my shoulder.

"What … Why the hell did you do that?" I said from the ground, one hand clasped over my stinging ear.(I didn't feel any bleeding, so good on me.)

"Did I say you could stick your big ugly nose in my dog's face?," she snarled.

I started getting up, but she pointed at my arm and said "Brutus, mouth" and the Rottweiler sprang forward instantly, grabbing one of my arms in its teeth. It wasn't biting through my sleeve, but the pressure of its jaws was enough to hurt. I struggled for a moment but the dog planted its feet and tightened its grip. I didn't want to fight a dog, so I stopped pulling, and so did Brutus.

I hadn't managed to stand up before Brutus grabbed me, but I was at least on my knees. I turned my head to give the woman my absolutely most devastating "what the fuck" expression and saw her pulling back her leg, preparing to kick me again. I managed to block it with my free arm - victory! Now both my arms hurt.

"Hey!" I yelled, seeing her position herself for another kick. "Stop!" To my surprise, she did stop. Behind her, the other two dogs had risen at some point and were staring at me with an "eagerly anticipating the order to rip your throat out" vibe. The German Shepherd was visibly drooling a bit. "Yeah?" she said.

"What kind of chickenshit bullshit is this?," I asked. I didn't normally swear this much, but I felt this might be a more efficacious way of communicating with this girl. "You seriously need to have your dog hold me to fight me?"

She glowered. "You calling me a coward?"

"I absolutely positively possibly am," I said, enjoying the feel of the words on my tongue.

Her eyes narrowed at me, and I realized that wordplay, as much fun as I found it, for some reason was pissing this girl off even more. I tried again. "If you don't call off your dogs and give me a fair fight, that makes you a coward. And a bully."

She looked me up and down for a moment - she was so obviously unimpressed it was kind of an insult, although honestly comparing her muscles to mine I could see her point - and then glared. I made myself hold her gaze. "Yeah, okay," she finally said. "Brutus release."

The Rottweiler immediately let go of my arm and, in response to the woman's slight whistle and gesture, moved next to the other dogs. "Sit, all of you." All three dogs instantly sat. "Stay," she said, then she held out a hand, index finger pointing up. "Stay," she emphasized, her voice even firmer. She leaned down to pick up the terrier's leash and clipped it to the German Shepherd's collar, then made some clicking noises with her tongue.

I stood up, my anger fading. (Which even in the moment seemed a little weird to me - my ear was still stinging from her kick). I was impressed by how perfectly the dogs obeyed - this girl was obviously a good trainer. (It was possible someone else had trained her dogs, but somehow I didn't think so).

She cracked her neck in both directions. Then she turned to face me, hands in fists by her sides. "Happy?"

I took off my backpack and leaned it against a telephone pole, then carefully put my glasses in the bag's front pocket. "Ecstatic," I said, trying to lighten things up.

I barely got the word out before she jumped at me, fists, as they say, flying. This girl wasn't as fast as Sophia, but I wasn't prepared and couldn't react before she hit me. Fortunately, she punched me in the nose, which didn't hurt at all and I didn't even have to take a step back, because my nose was bullshit. The girl paused for a second, taken aback, and I swung my fist, trying to hit her jaw but instead swiping my knuckles across her cheek. Still, she took a step back. I swung again, this time hitting her on the collarbone.

"Brutus, stay!" she snapped, and I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the Rottweiler - Brutus - had stood up and was growling. Brutus sat back down, actually looking ashamed. Dogs are very expressive.

"Okay," I said, raising my fists. This was already going so much better than fighting Sophia! "Ready?"

The girl sneered and threw a punch, which I stepped back from, but without pausing she moved forward and slammed her knee into my stomach, which hurt so much more than I would have guessed. The pain was dull but overwhelming, sort of a combination of agony and nausea, spreading out from where her knee hit to my entire midsection, and I bent over and couldn't breathe for several seconds.

Which was more than enough time for the girl to wrap her arm around my neck, a hold that Sophia had used on me on the catwalk and I still had no idea how to get out of. I tried pulling her arm off me, but she was too strong, or looked at from another perspective, I was too weak.

She began slamming her other fist into my face, a continuous flurry of blows, each new hit coming before I'd recovered from the one before. The punches that hit my nose didn't do any damage, but from her angle most of her punches hit near my mouth or eye. As well as being painful, it was incredibly disorienting; I couldn't focus mentally to figure out what to do.

"Happy now?" she snarled. "Is this what you wanted?" She shoved me and I fell to the ground.

"Yes," I gasped out. "A fair fight. I have no complaints and wish you well."

She stared at me for a few seconds, then at last she laughed, a single barking "hah!" I smiled at her.

"Fucking idiot," she grumbled, then she whistled to her dogs and the four of them walked away. I didn't get up, but I turned my head to watch her leave. "Merry Christmas!" I called. The girl ignored me. But Brutus glanced back at me, and although I couldn't see clearly without my glasses, I strongly suspected Brutus had a mocking expression. The girl walked about half a block down the street and turned down an alleyway by one of my childhood hangouts, the old Redmond Welding building.

I lay there for a few minutes, panting, before standing up, putting on my glasses, and shouldering my backpack. I brushed some grit off my clothes with my hands and turned towards home.

Spoiler: A/N

When I began writing this story, I made a deal with myself: I would allow myself one instance of Taylor, through pure chance, running into an important character from canon. And I also promised myself that the pure chance encounter wouldn't be Tattletale happening to spot Taylor on the Boardwalk and starting up a conversation. (I've enjoyed many stories which did that - Lisa is a marvelously entertaining character, so bringing her into a story in any way at all is reliably fun - but the random-Tattletale-meeting-on-the-Boardwalk thing has been done a lot.) There won't be any more purely random encounters like this, but this won't be the last time we'll see Undersiders in this story.