I think Emma, like a lot of real-life homophobes (especially politicians), makes a mental distinction between instrumental homophobia - just taking advantage of homophobia without passionately hating queer people - versus heartfelt homophobia. But it's a meaningless distinction. The word for someone willing to take instrumental advantage of homophobia is homophobe.
The Secret Winslow Theater Department [Worm/Cyrano de Bergerac]
- Thread starter LadiesWhoLunch
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I think Emma, like a lot of real-life homophobes (especially politicians), makes a mental distinction between instrumental homophobia - just taking advantage of homophobia without passionately hating queer people - versus heartfelt homophobia. But it's a meaningless distinction. The word for someone willing to take instrumental advantage of homophobia is homophobe.
Yeah. That's... honestly quite a common privileged position. "It's not bigotry if I gain something from harming minorities, right?"
I guess Taylor had to learn about theatre some day.
One hot dog at a time.
Must say this didn't feel much like Rachel to me—can't put my finger on why, though. Also, she's lucky Taylor's nose is doing some cheating here; if it didn't move back much or deform, it should have felt like punching a wall. And that can be pretty rough on the hands.
Taylor and Rachel
Just a sketch I did. Figuring out how to draw a bighead dog was more difficult than I imagined, and still doesn't look quite right, and one of Taylor's hands is totally at the wrong angle, but this is a fan sketch and it not being perfect is okay. 
Thanks for your comment! I really appreciate it.
I find Rachel as I wrote her to be pretty funny, but she may be inspired more by fanon than canon, alas: I haven't reread Worm in a couple of years.
My current thought is, Taylor's nose is about as hard to the touch as a regular nose is, and has a little bit of give on the outer surface, with less give as you go deeper. (Sort of like Leviathan, now that I think of it.) And, as you say, it cheats.
Chapter 10: 'Cause For The First Time In Forever...
Friday, December 31, 2010. (One week later)
To my relief, when Dad asked if I'd go with him to the Dockworkers' annual New Year's Eve party, I could truthfully say I already had plans. So instead of a thrilling evening in a dingy hall listening to burly men grouse about how there's no honest work anymore, I got to spend New Year's Eve at Charlotte's place with Charlotte and some other theater kids.
We had dinner - Charlotte's mother made us something her own mother had taught her, "frankfurter goulash." This was basically extra thick hot dogs chopped up with chunks of potato boiled in watered down ketchup. Since I'm a reasonable person, my expectations were low, but it turned out to be delicious. Most of us had seconds and Xack had thirds.
After dinner, Charlotte said it was too early to go out, so we sat around the TV room and I ended up grousing about how I couldn't find a job. Obi had a job, I knew. But he just shrugged and said "knew a guy" when I asked him how he'd found it
Driana announced that she had a job too. "It's all about space. Space and volume. Things don't seem like they'll fit together but I know better, and I turn them and twist them and suddenly they're pressed as close as baby birds huddling together for protection from the ravenous owl."
Spencer rolled his eyes. "Oh, for God's sake, Driana. You're a grocery bagger."
Driana blinked. "That's what I said."
"I, of course, have never needed or wanted a job," announced Celia, knocking wood on a wood side table. "But even I know that jobs are all about connections. Isn't your dad a bigwig with the Dockworkers? I bet he could find you some sort of warehouse job."
"I know, I just… I really wanted to find a job on my own, y'know?"
Celia shrugged. "That's not how it works. Ever notice how many famous people have parents who are famous? You think that Liza Minneli, Nick Cage and Angelina Jolie's parents didn't help them?"
"Hey, shush! You guys hear that?"
We all got quiet, and as soon as we did we could hear music and cheering coming in from several stories below. So - after a half hour of "just a few minutes" preparations, which involved the application of a lot of sparkly makeup - we all trooped out the door and down the stairs. Although not before Charlotte's parents quizzed us all, making sure that we knew the rules - no one wanders off on their own, and everyone had to be back in the apartment, or on their way home, no later than half past midnight. (Last time the curfew was midnight, but apparently on New Year's Eve we got an additional half hour.)
There had to be two or three hundred partiers out on the street, dressed in sparkling costumes with glasses and hats that spelled out "2011" and dancing to music blasting out from huge speakers which took up most of someone's second-story balcony. There were many other balconies facing the street, most of them filled with people drinking and dancing. Charlotte grabbed my elbow and pointed up at her own apartment's balcony, and we waved madly at Charlotte's parents, who waved back at us. The drag club was projecting "The Wizard of Oz" on the side of their building, which was a good choice because no one could hear a word anyway, but it's colorful to look at and everyone already knows the story.
Xack looked around and whistled. "As the frog said at his family reunion, this place is hoppin'." Drina and Obi had stepped into an alley to partager un joint ensemble. I had to do a double-take, because I didn't think anyone I liked would use drugs. It seemed wrong. What if they acted weird? What if they grabbed up a knife and starting acting out Sweeney Tood? But when I mentioned it to Charlotte, she told me that I'd probably never seen either of them not stoned.
Hearing that made me feel even more bothered. Were all my new friends stoners? Would they try to pull me into drugs? Was I overthinking? I resolved to bring it up with Charlotte again, sometime that wasn't in the middle of a party.
Wendy and Xack dragged me into a conga line snaking down the middle of the street, something I'd only seen on TV where it looked incredibly stupid. And once I was in it, it was incredibly stupid. But it was also incredibly fun.
And everywhere I looked, people were being openly gay, like they didn't know this was Brockton Bay. A group of drag kings - a term I'd never heard before, but Celia explained it to me - were dressed as the Village People and danced a sloppy disco routine. A couple of old women - they were in their forties at least - were making out on a bench, one of them planted on the other's lap, and I had to stop myself from staring. A lot of the people in sparkly dresses looked like men to my eyes, although Charlotte warned me to not assume, not even when they had mustaches like President Taft's.
After a while, I noticed that no one was screaming or jumping back from seeing my face. I decided it was because so many people here were wearing masks that strangers assumed my nose was fake. Or maybe it was because so many of them were drunk. (Or stoned, I supposed.) Either way, I enjoyed it.
At Charlotte's sleepover a few weeks ago, the others had introduced me to a song called "Fuck You," which had a wonderful mix of hostile lyrics and infectiously cheerful delivery.
So when "Fuck You" began blaring at the New Year's Eve street party, I recognized the song. And apparently so did everyone else; at least a hundred people were singing along, especially during the chorus: "Fuck you (Fuck you), fuck you very, very mu- uh- uh - uh - uch," with so much joy that I could practically breath it in.
And as I stood in the street, one arm around Charlotte and the other around Obi, singing "fuck you" as loudly as I could, the most extraordinary feeling swept over me like a wave. I'd never felt anything like it before. It was an intense sensation of belonging. A feeling that right here, right now, in this street full of happy silly gay partiers, I was exactly where I should be and everyone would accept me. I'm not alone.
When the song ended, I couldn't resist testing the feeling. I walked up to the first stranger I saw - a college-aged woman with her hair shaved on one side - and spread my arms. She looked at me questionably, then shrugged and hugged me. The next stranger I saw was a fat man with a long coat with at least twenty different colors swirling on it and a gigantic gray beard. Again, I spread my arms, and he laughed and hugged me. "Have a good night, dear," he said once the hug ended.
I wondered if being stoned felt like this.
Eventually, the new year's countdown happened, and hundreds of people on the street and balconies screamed the numbers out in unison. "Ten! Nine! Eight!..." As I called out numbers, I thought of my dad, how even though we were half a city apart, he was at this moment shouting these same numbers with me. "Five! Four!..." Probably the majority of people in the entire timezone were chanting the same numbers at the same time. Even famous people like Miss Militia and Legend and the President and Miley Cyprus. "Two! One!"
Everyone cheered, all the people partying on the balconies threw out giant handfuls of colorful streamers, and for a couple of seconds the air was as full as if it were snowing. I spread my arms and turned in a circle, watching the bright colors floating down. All around me I saw people kissing each other, mostly people I didn't know but Obi and Xack were kissing and I thought maybe their mouths were open. Then I noticed Wendy and Celia kissing, and Spence and Drina kissing.
Were all my friends already coupled? I felt a sharp pang in my heart. Sure, I had my secret undying unrequited love for Panacea, but I couldn't kiss that on New Year's Eve.
Can I kiss? How would that work with my nose?
The paper snow stopped falling and the moment passed. I turned and saw Charlotte looking at me. Noticing me noticing her, she smiled and said "Happy 2011!"
Not long after that Xack, Obi and Spence said their good nights and - after purchasing a bunch of Juke's sausages - me and the other girls returned to Charlotte's building. Charlotte had trouble wrangling the heavy metal door with her arms full of sausages, so I snagged the keys from her and got it open.
-------------------------------------
Saturday, January 1, 2011. (A few hours later, the middle of the night.)
I opened my eyes, the shout that had woken me fading from my memory. Had that been the real world or a dream?
I sat up on my "bed," which was just a pile of blankets on the TV room floor, and felt around for my glasses. Once I could see again, the digital clock on the DVD player told me it was a little past four in the morning. Only two hours since the five of us had gone to sleep.
Waking up early wasn't unusual for me - ever since my fall, I'd only needed two or three hours of sleep a night. Knowing I'd sleep less than the other girls, I'd come prepared with a couple of books. I snagged my backpack and tip-toed out of the TV room, carefully stepping over Celia and Wendy, who were spooning, Wendy snoring softly.
I had just reached the living room, where I knew there was a plush armchair with a reading lamp, when I faintly heard a shout. Alarm? Joy? Moving quietly, I crept to the balcony door and slipped outside.
Peering over the balcony's railing, I thought I heard something - scuffling, angry voices. But the sounds were distant, and I couldn't see anything. There were pools of light under the streetlamps, and another pool of light at the entrance to the apartment building. (I couldn't actually see the entrance from my angle, but I could see the light.) But most of the street was in darkness.
Then I saw a young woman with blue hair run into the circle of light by the front door. She got too close to the building for me to see - the angle of the balcony blocked it. But I could hear her knocking on the door - a soft sound from four stories up - and begging for someone to help her..
No one will hear her at this hour, I thought, feeling frozen. What should I do? Call the cops? Wake Charlotte's parents? Run downstairs?
Three men emerged from the darkness, obviously following the blue haired girl. They had shaved heads and black leather jackets and cruel laughter. The smallest one was carrying a baseball bat.
I shook myself out of my indecision and rushed back into the apartment. I ran into the TV room and turned on the light, scrabbling at the wall a little to find the light switch. "Charlotte!" I said as I crossed the room, jumping over sleeping girls. "Charlotte!" I said again, shaking her by the shoulders. By the time Charlotte partly opened her eyes Wendy and Celia were stirring too. Drina slept like the dead.
I explained to a bleary-eyed Charlotte that someone was being attacked outside her building and she needed to call the police. And then I explained it again, because she didn't seem to get it the first time.
(With hindsight, maybe I should have gone to wake Charlotte's parents instead, but would they have even believed me? Or would they have just dismissed me as a hysterical teen?)
Finally, I grabbed up Charlotte's phone and dialed 9-1-1. When the emergency operator picked up, I said "a guy is being mugged right now, right outside our building!" and then shoved the phone into a confused Charlotte's hands and ran out.
How long had that taken? Hopefully not as long as it felt. I had to undo a few locks on the apartment door to get out into the hallway. Then I ran down the staircase as fast as I could while trying not to trip.
Fourth floor? Why did Charlotte have to live so high up?
On the third-floor landing I lost my footing and slammed face-first into the wall. Like an idiot, I reflexively turned my head just before the impact, so the side of my face got slammed instead of my invulnerable nose. I went down the next few steps more carefully, my head ringing, but imagined getting to the ground and finding that poor girl bleeding or dead, and sped back up.
What am I even going to do when I get down there?
Those were three adult men. I can't fight three grown men. I can't even fight Sophia!
I kept an eye out for something I could use as a weapon as I ran down - a convenient length of rebar leaning against a wall. A brick. Something. But this building's halls were inconveniently free of useful improvised weapon clutter.
They had the weight and muscle of three men. They might have knives or brass knuckles. No guns, please, no guns. They definitely had a baseball bat. They had every advantage. What did I have?
An invulnerable nose. But I couldn't see that helping in this situation.
A minor healing power. Good to have, but not short-term useful in a fight.
The door.
The entrance to the apartments part of this building was heavy and made of metal - probably chosen for security - and locked from the outside. Unless they had someone as strong as Glory Girl along, they couldn't get through the door. The problem was, the blue haired girl was on the unsafe side of the door.
But from what I'd seen, she was near the door. All I needed to do was open the door, yank her inside, and shut the door before the skinheads realized what was happening. That sounded doable.
I finally reached the ground floor and ran down the narrow hallway and into the door, slamming myself against the crossbar without slowing down. The door swung open and I felt it hit something heavy as I heard a woman's voice grunt in pain.
Crap, I just hit the victim.
I started to run out the door, but remembered just in time that I didn't have the key. If I went outside, the heavy door would slam itself shut, and I'd be locked outside with the skinheads. Instead, I stood in the entrance, door held open with my hip, and took in the situation.
I'd assumed that the three skinheads were Nazis, and seeing them closer confirmed it. They wore black winter coats (I'd mistaken them for leather from four stories up), so their arms were covered, but one of them had an E88 tattoo on his throat, which suggested an unfortunately high degree of commitment. Two of them were adults - one of them surprisingly old, in his forties at least -, while the third looked about my own age. All of them had only stubble for hair.
The three of them were obviously surprised by my arrival, but even more surprised once they took in my nose. "What the fuck!" said the shortest and oldest one, who was carrying the baseball bat.
"Jesus, what's with your nose, bitch?" commented the biggest one, with the neck tattoo.
"Oh shit, I know her," said the young one, a weedy looking teen about the same height as me, with zits on his forehead like the Milky Way. Shit, Winslow student. Figures.
I peered around the door, and saw the victim sitting on the ground, looking terrified. She had blue hair, plastic glasses that spelled out "2011" in big numbers, a pierced nostril, and a black t-shirt with a big pink triangle printed on the front. She looked older than me, maybe college aged.
I stuck a hand towards her, but she only stared at my nose. Seriously? "Come on!" I said, and she finally got the idea and took my hand, and I pulled her up.
Unfortunately, the Nazis broke out of their surprise too and began advancing on me. I swung the blue-haired girl around me and, as soon as I thought her momentum would carry her into the building, let her go. She stumbled in and crashed to the floor with a pained grunt. Inwardly I winced, but I couldn't take the time to apologize, because I was trying to yank the door closed - if it was shut we'd be safe. But the Winslow student with all the zits was fast, too. He grabbed the door by its edge and stuck his sneaker between the door and the frame.
Well, that wasn't smart. I stomped on Zithead's sneaker as hard as I could and he howled and fell back. But by then the big Nazi was there, shouldering the young one aside and grabbing the edge of the door, pulling it open. I pulled back with all my strength, putting one foot on the wall for leverage. We were in a tug-of-war with the door as our rope, but he had at least a hundred pounds on me and I didn't like my odds.
But then the blue haired woman surprised me by pushing in next to me, grabbing the door's crossbar, and pulling with me. The big Nazi grunted and pulled back. I noticed his fingers on the door, which had little hairs poking through tattoos of iron crosses.
"I called the cops!" I yelled out.
"I'm not hearing any sirens," said the old one with the bat, who fortunately for us wasn't helping his friend pull on the door. Instead he was staring at me through the opening. "If I poke that thing, think it'll pop like a big zit?"
"Would one of you shitheads help me pull already?," growled the big one. The Winslow student limped forward, and I knew there was no way we'd be able to hold our own once the big guy got help.
The older guy held his bat high in front of him one-handed, like it was a fencing foil, and said "hold your horses." With an expression of concentration he poked his hand and the bat through the gap in the door, bopping me in the nose.
"OW!" I lied. It hadn't hurt at all, of course, but I hoped pretending would encourage him to aim for my nose again. I leaned to the blue-haired girl - with both of us grabbing the same crossbar, our heads were just inches apart - and whispered "let go when I do." She glanced at me, her eyes wide.
The guy thrust the bat at my nose again. "Ow! Leave my nose alone!" I said, studying his motion and mentally rehearsing what I'd do next. Just as the young Nazi grabbed the door's handle, the old one thrust the bat at my nose a third time.
He was still holding it like a foil - but a foil is relatively lightweight and with a grip designed to be held firmly one-handed. Baseball bats don't have those features. I leaned back to make him reach further, and when I felt the bat touch my nose I let go of the door and hugged the bat with both arms while rolling my body, yanking the bat out of the old Nazi's hand.
The blue haired girl had let go when I had, and with neither of us pulling, the door swung open almost violently, and the big Nazi stumbled hard into the younger Nazi. I fell face-first onto the floor on top of the bat, but rolled over so I was on my back, facing the door.
The old Nazi was standing in the doorway, reaching a gnarled hand towards me. I swung the bat wildly, and on my second swing the end of the bat slapped across his fingers. "Fuck!," he yelled, yanking his hand back and clutching it to his chest.
I gripped the bat firmly in both hands and stood up carefully. I could feel the blue-haired girl behind me, her hands on my elbow and back as she helped me stand. The two of us backed up together, her behind me as I kept my eyes on the Nazis, until there were a few yards between us and them.
"Give that back," the de-batted Nazi growled, standing in the doorway.
"Oh, right. I'll do that right away," I replied crossly. I raised the bat in what I hoped was a threatening, ready-to-break-skulls manner.
The three of them stood just outside, holding the door open, and paused.
I could see the old guy eyeing the space. The hallway was narrow - barely wider than the door. Which meant if they attacked me as a group they'd be getting in each other's way. They'd have to come at me one at a time, and I had a baseball bat.
Not that the bat would necessarily let me win a fight against any of them, but it sure improved my chances. Plus, even if they won, that didn't mean they'd avoid being badly bruised or worse.
From behind us, I heard the distant but clear sound of feet rushing down the stairs.
Maybe the Nazis also heard it, or maybe they were just sick of the stand-off. "Screw it, we're going," said the old Nazi, still cradling the hand I'd hit. "You'd better hope we don't see your ugly nose again, heeb."
"Yeah. We're taking the Bay back from the heebs and dykes. You better believe it," said the big one, and spat on the floor.
Zithead wrapped their presentation up by giving us the finger, and then they finally left, the door slamming shut behind them. See you in school Zithead, I thought.
My arms suddenly felt very tired and I dropped the bat, which bounced a little on the floor before settling. "Well, that happened," I said to the blue-haired girl.
Noticing the girl was staring at the door and trembling, I added "it's locked from the outside. You're safe now." She stared at me, and took a step forward, looking at me like she was asking for permission. Intuiting what she wanted, I spread my arms, and she hugged me and began crying into my shoulder. I put my arms around her. "You're safe now," I repeated, whispering. "You're safe."
Charlotte's parents finally completed their descent from the fourth floor and ran in, armed with a fireplace poker and a meat tenderizer. I explained what had happened while we walked back up the stairs to their apartment, the blue-hair girl clinging to me the entire way. Then I told the story to the other girls - minus Drina, who somehow was still sleeping - and by the end of the story Nellie (which turned out to be the blue-haired girl's name) had recovered a bit, sitting on a sofa with a blanket over her shoulders and clutching a mug of hot chocolate.
Which was when two policemen arrived, meaning we had to tell the story a third time, although this time we got to hear Nellie's part.
The officers didn't say or do anything overtly wrong that we could have reported. But it felt like they were hostile and looking for ways to blame Nellie and I for what happened. One of them asked Nellie what she'd said to them that set them off. (She hadn't said anything, but she thought they were reacting to her t-shirt). They asked which of the three skinheads was Nellie's boyfriend (she'd never met them before). They asked if she and I were girlfriends, even though I'd already told them that Nellie and I had never met before. They poked holes in my "unfounded assumption" that the guys were members of Empire 88, the local Nazi gang.
I began wondering what kind of tattoos we'd find if we could see the two cops without their shirts on.
When the cops finally left, they took the baseball bet with them, saying it was evidence in a crime. That was a big disappointment - I'd wanted to keep the bat as a war trophy.
Nellie had at some point used her cell phone to wake a friend to come pick her up, and he had waited patiently while the cops interviewed us. Nellie was frightened that Nazis might still be lurking outside, so Charlotte's father and I walked them downstairs and to their car. Nellie hugged me again and thanked me for what must have been the tenth time, and they drove away.
If there were any Nazis hiding in the dark, they remained hidden.
Charlotte's father offered to drive me home too, but I decided I'd rather go back to the sleepover. The Nazis were bad, but the idea of explaining what had just happened to Dad at five-thirty a.m. on New Year's Day felt much more intimidating.
To my relief, when Dad asked if I'd go with him to the Dockworkers' annual New Year's Eve party, I could truthfully say I already had plans. So instead of a thrilling evening in a dingy hall listening to burly men grouse about how there's no honest work anymore, I got to spend New Year's Eve at Charlotte's place with Charlotte and some other theater kids.
We had dinner - Charlotte's mother made us something her own mother had taught her, "frankfurter goulash." This was basically extra thick hot dogs chopped up with chunks of potato boiled in watered down ketchup. Since I'm a reasonable person, my expectations were low, but it turned out to be delicious. Most of us had seconds and Xack had thirds.
After dinner, Charlotte said it was too early to go out, so we sat around the TV room and I ended up grousing about how I couldn't find a job. Obi had a job, I knew. But he just shrugged and said "knew a guy" when I asked him how he'd found it
Driana announced that she had a job too. "It's all about space. Space and volume. Things don't seem like they'll fit together but I know better, and I turn them and twist them and suddenly they're pressed as close as baby birds huddling together for protection from the ravenous owl."
Spencer rolled his eyes. "Oh, for God's sake, Driana. You're a grocery bagger."
Driana blinked. "That's what I said."
"I, of course, have never needed or wanted a job," announced Celia, knocking wood on a wood side table. "But even I know that jobs are all about connections. Isn't your dad a bigwig with the Dockworkers? I bet he could find you some sort of warehouse job."
"I know, I just… I really wanted to find a job on my own, y'know?"
Celia shrugged. "That's not how it works. Ever notice how many famous people have parents who are famous? You think that Liza Minneli, Nick Cage and Angelina Jolie's parents didn't help them?"
"Hey, shush! You guys hear that?"
We all got quiet, and as soon as we did we could hear music and cheering coming in from several stories below. So - after a half hour of "just a few minutes" preparations, which involved the application of a lot of sparkly makeup - we all trooped out the door and down the stairs. Although not before Charlotte's parents quizzed us all, making sure that we knew the rules - no one wanders off on their own, and everyone had to be back in the apartment, or on their way home, no later than half past midnight. (Last time the curfew was midnight, but apparently on New Year's Eve we got an additional half hour.)
There had to be two or three hundred partiers out on the street, dressed in sparkling costumes with glasses and hats that spelled out "2011" and dancing to music blasting out from huge speakers which took up most of someone's second-story balcony. There were many other balconies facing the street, most of them filled with people drinking and dancing. Charlotte grabbed my elbow and pointed up at her own apartment's balcony, and we waved madly at Charlotte's parents, who waved back at us. The drag club was projecting "The Wizard of Oz" on the side of their building, which was a good choice because no one could hear a word anyway, but it's colorful to look at and everyone already knows the story.
Xack looked around and whistled. "As the frog said at his family reunion, this place is hoppin'." Drina and Obi had stepped into an alley to partager un joint ensemble. I had to do a double-take, because I didn't think anyone I liked would use drugs. It seemed wrong. What if they acted weird? What if they grabbed up a knife and starting acting out Sweeney Tood? But when I mentioned it to Charlotte, she told me that I'd probably never seen either of them not stoned.
Hearing that made me feel even more bothered. Were all my new friends stoners? Would they try to pull me into drugs? Was I overthinking? I resolved to bring it up with Charlotte again, sometime that wasn't in the middle of a party.
Wendy and Xack dragged me into a conga line snaking down the middle of the street, something I'd only seen on TV where it looked incredibly stupid. And once I was in it, it was incredibly stupid. But it was also incredibly fun.
And everywhere I looked, people were being openly gay, like they didn't know this was Brockton Bay. A group of drag kings - a term I'd never heard before, but Celia explained it to me - were dressed as the Village People and danced a sloppy disco routine. A couple of old women - they were in their forties at least - were making out on a bench, one of them planted on the other's lap, and I had to stop myself from staring. A lot of the people in sparkly dresses looked like men to my eyes, although Charlotte warned me to not assume, not even when they had mustaches like President Taft's.
After a while, I noticed that no one was screaming or jumping back from seeing my face. I decided it was because so many people here were wearing masks that strangers assumed my nose was fake. Or maybe it was because so many of them were drunk. (Or stoned, I supposed.) Either way, I enjoyed it.
At Charlotte's sleepover a few weeks ago, the others had introduced me to a song called "Fuck You," which had a wonderful mix of hostile lyrics and infectiously cheerful delivery.
So when "Fuck You" began blaring at the New Year's Eve street party, I recognized the song. And apparently so did everyone else; at least a hundred people were singing along, especially during the chorus: "Fuck you (Fuck you), fuck you very, very mu- uh- uh - uh - uch," with so much joy that I could practically breath it in.
And as I stood in the street, one arm around Charlotte and the other around Obi, singing "fuck you" as loudly as I could, the most extraordinary feeling swept over me like a wave. I'd never felt anything like it before. It was an intense sensation of belonging. A feeling that right here, right now, in this street full of happy silly gay partiers, I was exactly where I should be and everyone would accept me. I'm not alone.
When the song ended, I couldn't resist testing the feeling. I walked up to the first stranger I saw - a college-aged woman with her hair shaved on one side - and spread my arms. She looked at me questionably, then shrugged and hugged me. The next stranger I saw was a fat man with a long coat with at least twenty different colors swirling on it and a gigantic gray beard. Again, I spread my arms, and he laughed and hugged me. "Have a good night, dear," he said once the hug ended.
I wondered if being stoned felt like this.
Eventually, the new year's countdown happened, and hundreds of people on the street and balconies screamed the numbers out in unison. "Ten! Nine! Eight!..." As I called out numbers, I thought of my dad, how even though we were half a city apart, he was at this moment shouting these same numbers with me. "Five! Four!..." Probably the majority of people in the entire timezone were chanting the same numbers at the same time. Even famous people like Miss Militia and Legend and the President and Miley Cyprus. "Two! One!"
Everyone cheered, all the people partying on the balconies threw out giant handfuls of colorful streamers, and for a couple of seconds the air was as full as if it were snowing. I spread my arms and turned in a circle, watching the bright colors floating down. All around me I saw people kissing each other, mostly people I didn't know but Obi and Xack were kissing and I thought maybe their mouths were open. Then I noticed Wendy and Celia kissing, and Spence and Drina kissing.
Were all my friends already coupled? I felt a sharp pang in my heart. Sure, I had my secret undying unrequited love for Panacea, but I couldn't kiss that on New Year's Eve.
Can I kiss? How would that work with my nose?
The paper snow stopped falling and the moment passed. I turned and saw Charlotte looking at me. Noticing me noticing her, she smiled and said "Happy 2011!"
Not long after that Xack, Obi and Spence said their good nights and - after purchasing a bunch of Juke's sausages - me and the other girls returned to Charlotte's building. Charlotte had trouble wrangling the heavy metal door with her arms full of sausages, so I snagged the keys from her and got it open.
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Saturday, January 1, 2011. (A few hours later, the middle of the night.)
I opened my eyes, the shout that had woken me fading from my memory. Had that been the real world or a dream?
I sat up on my "bed," which was just a pile of blankets on the TV room floor, and felt around for my glasses. Once I could see again, the digital clock on the DVD player told me it was a little past four in the morning. Only two hours since the five of us had gone to sleep.
Waking up early wasn't unusual for me - ever since my fall, I'd only needed two or three hours of sleep a night. Knowing I'd sleep less than the other girls, I'd come prepared with a couple of books. I snagged my backpack and tip-toed out of the TV room, carefully stepping over Celia and Wendy, who were spooning, Wendy snoring softly.
I had just reached the living room, where I knew there was a plush armchair with a reading lamp, when I faintly heard a shout. Alarm? Joy? Moving quietly, I crept to the balcony door and slipped outside.
Peering over the balcony's railing, I thought I heard something - scuffling, angry voices. But the sounds were distant, and I couldn't see anything. There were pools of light under the streetlamps, and another pool of light at the entrance to the apartment building. (I couldn't actually see the entrance from my angle, but I could see the light.) But most of the street was in darkness.
Then I saw a young woman with blue hair run into the circle of light by the front door. She got too close to the building for me to see - the angle of the balcony blocked it. But I could hear her knocking on the door - a soft sound from four stories up - and begging for someone to help her..
No one will hear her at this hour, I thought, feeling frozen. What should I do? Call the cops? Wake Charlotte's parents? Run downstairs?
Three men emerged from the darkness, obviously following the blue haired girl. They had shaved heads and black leather jackets and cruel laughter. The smallest one was carrying a baseball bat.
I shook myself out of my indecision and rushed back into the apartment. I ran into the TV room and turned on the light, scrabbling at the wall a little to find the light switch. "Charlotte!" I said as I crossed the room, jumping over sleeping girls. "Charlotte!" I said again, shaking her by the shoulders. By the time Charlotte partly opened her eyes Wendy and Celia were stirring too. Drina slept like the dead.
I explained to a bleary-eyed Charlotte that someone was being attacked outside her building and she needed to call the police. And then I explained it again, because she didn't seem to get it the first time.
(With hindsight, maybe I should have gone to wake Charlotte's parents instead, but would they have even believed me? Or would they have just dismissed me as a hysterical teen?)
Finally, I grabbed up Charlotte's phone and dialed 9-1-1. When the emergency operator picked up, I said "a guy is being mugged right now, right outside our building!" and then shoved the phone into a confused Charlotte's hands and ran out.
How long had that taken? Hopefully not as long as it felt. I had to undo a few locks on the apartment door to get out into the hallway. Then I ran down the staircase as fast as I could while trying not to trip.
Fourth floor? Why did Charlotte have to live so high up?
On the third-floor landing I lost my footing and slammed face-first into the wall. Like an idiot, I reflexively turned my head just before the impact, so the side of my face got slammed instead of my invulnerable nose. I went down the next few steps more carefully, my head ringing, but imagined getting to the ground and finding that poor girl bleeding or dead, and sped back up.
What am I even going to do when I get down there?
Those were three adult men. I can't fight three grown men. I can't even fight Sophia!
I kept an eye out for something I could use as a weapon as I ran down - a convenient length of rebar leaning against a wall. A brick. Something. But this building's halls were inconveniently free of useful improvised weapon clutter.
They had the weight and muscle of three men. They might have knives or brass knuckles. No guns, please, no guns. They definitely had a baseball bat. They had every advantage. What did I have?
An invulnerable nose. But I couldn't see that helping in this situation.
A minor healing power. Good to have, but not short-term useful in a fight.
The door.
The entrance to the apartments part of this building was heavy and made of metal - probably chosen for security - and locked from the outside. Unless they had someone as strong as Glory Girl along, they couldn't get through the door. The problem was, the blue haired girl was on the unsafe side of the door.
But from what I'd seen, she was near the door. All I needed to do was open the door, yank her inside, and shut the door before the skinheads realized what was happening. That sounded doable.
I finally reached the ground floor and ran down the narrow hallway and into the door, slamming myself against the crossbar without slowing down. The door swung open and I felt it hit something heavy as I heard a woman's voice grunt in pain.
Crap, I just hit the victim.
I started to run out the door, but remembered just in time that I didn't have the key. If I went outside, the heavy door would slam itself shut, and I'd be locked outside with the skinheads. Instead, I stood in the entrance, door held open with my hip, and took in the situation.
I'd assumed that the three skinheads were Nazis, and seeing them closer confirmed it. They wore black winter coats (I'd mistaken them for leather from four stories up), so their arms were covered, but one of them had an E88 tattoo on his throat, which suggested an unfortunately high degree of commitment. Two of them were adults - one of them surprisingly old, in his forties at least -, while the third looked about my own age. All of them had only stubble for hair.
The three of them were obviously surprised by my arrival, but even more surprised once they took in my nose. "What the fuck!" said the shortest and oldest one, who was carrying the baseball bat.
"Jesus, what's with your nose, bitch?" commented the biggest one, with the neck tattoo.
"Oh shit, I know her," said the young one, a weedy looking teen about the same height as me, with zits on his forehead like the Milky Way. Shit, Winslow student. Figures.
I peered around the door, and saw the victim sitting on the ground, looking terrified. She had blue hair, plastic glasses that spelled out "2011" in big numbers, a pierced nostril, and a black t-shirt with a big pink triangle printed on the front. She looked older than me, maybe college aged.
I stuck a hand towards her, but she only stared at my nose. Seriously? "Come on!" I said, and she finally got the idea and took my hand, and I pulled her up.
Unfortunately, the Nazis broke out of their surprise too and began advancing on me. I swung the blue-haired girl around me and, as soon as I thought her momentum would carry her into the building, let her go. She stumbled in and crashed to the floor with a pained grunt. Inwardly I winced, but I couldn't take the time to apologize, because I was trying to yank the door closed - if it was shut we'd be safe. But the Winslow student with all the zits was fast, too. He grabbed the door by its edge and stuck his sneaker between the door and the frame.
Well, that wasn't smart. I stomped on Zithead's sneaker as hard as I could and he howled and fell back. But by then the big Nazi was there, shouldering the young one aside and grabbing the edge of the door, pulling it open. I pulled back with all my strength, putting one foot on the wall for leverage. We were in a tug-of-war with the door as our rope, but he had at least a hundred pounds on me and I didn't like my odds.
But then the blue haired woman surprised me by pushing in next to me, grabbing the door's crossbar, and pulling with me. The big Nazi grunted and pulled back. I noticed his fingers on the door, which had little hairs poking through tattoos of iron crosses.
"I called the cops!" I yelled out.
"I'm not hearing any sirens," said the old one with the bat, who fortunately for us wasn't helping his friend pull on the door. Instead he was staring at me through the opening. "If I poke that thing, think it'll pop like a big zit?"
"Would one of you shitheads help me pull already?," growled the big one. The Winslow student limped forward, and I knew there was no way we'd be able to hold our own once the big guy got help.
The older guy held his bat high in front of him one-handed, like it was a fencing foil, and said "hold your horses." With an expression of concentration he poked his hand and the bat through the gap in the door, bopping me in the nose.
"OW!" I lied. It hadn't hurt at all, of course, but I hoped pretending would encourage him to aim for my nose again. I leaned to the blue-haired girl - with both of us grabbing the same crossbar, our heads were just inches apart - and whispered "let go when I do." She glanced at me, her eyes wide.
The guy thrust the bat at my nose again. "Ow! Leave my nose alone!" I said, studying his motion and mentally rehearsing what I'd do next. Just as the young Nazi grabbed the door's handle, the old one thrust the bat at my nose a third time.
He was still holding it like a foil - but a foil is relatively lightweight and with a grip designed to be held firmly one-handed. Baseball bats don't have those features. I leaned back to make him reach further, and when I felt the bat touch my nose I let go of the door and hugged the bat with both arms while rolling my body, yanking the bat out of the old Nazi's hand.
The blue haired girl had let go when I had, and with neither of us pulling, the door swung open almost violently, and the big Nazi stumbled hard into the younger Nazi. I fell face-first onto the floor on top of the bat, but rolled over so I was on my back, facing the door.
The old Nazi was standing in the doorway, reaching a gnarled hand towards me. I swung the bat wildly, and on my second swing the end of the bat slapped across his fingers. "Fuck!," he yelled, yanking his hand back and clutching it to his chest.
I gripped the bat firmly in both hands and stood up carefully. I could feel the blue-haired girl behind me, her hands on my elbow and back as she helped me stand. The two of us backed up together, her behind me as I kept my eyes on the Nazis, until there were a few yards between us and them.
"Give that back," the de-batted Nazi growled, standing in the doorway.
"Oh, right. I'll do that right away," I replied crossly. I raised the bat in what I hoped was a threatening, ready-to-break-skulls manner.
The three of them stood just outside, holding the door open, and paused.
I could see the old guy eyeing the space. The hallway was narrow - barely wider than the door. Which meant if they attacked me as a group they'd be getting in each other's way. They'd have to come at me one at a time, and I had a baseball bat.
Not that the bat would necessarily let me win a fight against any of them, but it sure improved my chances. Plus, even if they won, that didn't mean they'd avoid being badly bruised or worse.
From behind us, I heard the distant but clear sound of feet rushing down the stairs.
Maybe the Nazis also heard it, or maybe they were just sick of the stand-off. "Screw it, we're going," said the old Nazi, still cradling the hand I'd hit. "You'd better hope we don't see your ugly nose again, heeb."
"Yeah. We're taking the Bay back from the heebs and dykes. You better believe it," said the big one, and spat on the floor.
Zithead wrapped their presentation up by giving us the finger, and then they finally left, the door slamming shut behind them. See you in school Zithead, I thought.
My arms suddenly felt very tired and I dropped the bat, which bounced a little on the floor before settling. "Well, that happened," I said to the blue-haired girl.
Noticing the girl was staring at the door and trembling, I added "it's locked from the outside. You're safe now." She stared at me, and took a step forward, looking at me like she was asking for permission. Intuiting what she wanted, I spread my arms, and she hugged me and began crying into my shoulder. I put my arms around her. "You're safe now," I repeated, whispering. "You're safe."
Charlotte's parents finally completed their descent from the fourth floor and ran in, armed with a fireplace poker and a meat tenderizer. I explained what had happened while we walked back up the stairs to their apartment, the blue-hair girl clinging to me the entire way. Then I told the story to the other girls - minus Drina, who somehow was still sleeping - and by the end of the story Nellie (which turned out to be the blue-haired girl's name) had recovered a bit, sitting on a sofa with a blanket over her shoulders and clutching a mug of hot chocolate.
Which was when two policemen arrived, meaning we had to tell the story a third time, although this time we got to hear Nellie's part.
The officers didn't say or do anything overtly wrong that we could have reported. But it felt like they were hostile and looking for ways to blame Nellie and I for what happened. One of them asked Nellie what she'd said to them that set them off. (She hadn't said anything, but she thought they were reacting to her t-shirt). They asked which of the three skinheads was Nellie's boyfriend (she'd never met them before). They asked if she and I were girlfriends, even though I'd already told them that Nellie and I had never met before. They poked holes in my "unfounded assumption" that the guys were members of Empire 88, the local Nazi gang.
I began wondering what kind of tattoos we'd find if we could see the two cops without their shirts on.
When the cops finally left, they took the baseball bet with them, saying it was evidence in a crime. That was a big disappointment - I'd wanted to keep the bat as a war trophy.
Nellie had at some point used her cell phone to wake a friend to come pick her up, and he had waited patiently while the cops interviewed us. Nellie was frightened that Nazis might still be lurking outside, so Charlotte's father and I walked them downstairs and to their car. Nellie hugged me again and thanked me for what must have been the tenth time, and they drove away.
If there were any Nazis hiding in the dark, they remained hidden.
Charlotte's father offered to drive me home too, but I decided I'd rather go back to the sleepover. The Nazis were bad, but the idea of explaining what had just happened to Dad at five-thirty a.m. on New Year's Day felt much more intimidating.
- Location
- Attached to a wall
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Instead Taylor went to a sleepover where so she could grouse about there being no work for an audience of peers, which is much better.
It's also nice how our big nosed hero who is looking for ways acquire money is conspiring against the Nazi's with gays who are openly flaunting that the Nazi's already got fucked once for their medieval opinions
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She certainly thought so!
Definitely not the last time she'll punch a Nazi in this fic.
LOL! Not the usual comment about pacing that my fics get.
Chapter 11: I Fear We'll Probably Fight
Daily updating was fun. But with this chapter, we're caught up with the SB postings. So from now on this fic will only update once a week. :-(
What you find funny, or not, is a very personal thing. This chapter contains the single line in this fic so far that amuses me the most. Let me know if you have a guess!
What you find funny, or not, is a very personal thing. This chapter contains the single line in this fic so far that amuses me the most. Let me know if you have a guess!
New Year's Day. January 1, 2011 (Saturday.)
After I got home from Charlotte's, the afternoon passed kind of slowly. But that was okay - I felt I'd had enough excitement for a while.
I got online on the ancient computer and messaged my friends on PHO (mostly Charlotte, but also Wendy and Xack), and Drina sent everyone a sketch she'd made inspired by how she imagined my confrontation with the Nazis (which she'd entirely slept through). It showed six gigantic shirtless Nazis (in her version, there were six) looming over me like a team of Goliaths menacing a big-nosed David. For some reason she'd drawn me wearing a princess gown, but it was still sweet.
The evening was nice. As a New Year's treat, Dad had picked up a couple of steaks, which he fried in a pan for our dinner. Charlotte, wanting me to continue my "musical theater education," had sent me home with videos of My Fair Lady and Into The Woods. We watched My Fair Lady, which turned out to be an old favorite of Dad's, and put Into The Woods aside for another day. I liked My Fair Lady - Julie Andrews in particular was amazing - but I would have liked it better if Eliza had gotten to punch Higgins just once.
I felt a pinch of guilt for not telling Dad about my encounter with the Empire 88 thugs. But what if he forbade me from going to Charlotte's place anymore? The more I thought about it, the more certain I felt that both Dad and I would be happier with Dad not knowing. .
Later that night, I sat at the small desk in my bedroom, flipping through a notebook and quickly finding the page I was looking for. I hadn't looked at it in a while, but New Year's Day seemed like the right time to review it. I started reading, then picked up a pen so I could make a few alterations.
GOALS
- Get fit (begun!)
- Get good at something that's a marketable skill of some sort.
- Find a job.
- Learn to fight
(Judo/Karate lessons)(Get Dog Girl to help?)Still need to find out what it's called.
- Stop the bullying
- Find out why Emma hates me. (Do I really care?)
- Make Emma stop.
- Make Sophia stop with my new fighting skills.
- Get nice clothes.
- Get my grades up. (begun!)
Make new friends.(DONE!)- Learn
parkor (sp?)parkour (begun, a little!) - Become friends with Panacea.
- Protect her
- Make her happy
- Live without romance, loving her in secret, content just to be near her
I felt I'd made an okay start on things, even if my goals weren't being fulfilled in the planned order.
It was really number three, getting a job, that was the big hold up.
I thought of what Celia had said, and resolved to ask Dad.
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Monday, January 10 2011 (nine days later)
It was the first day of school after winter break, and as I ran to school, I felt nervous about the possibility of running into that teen Nazi I had fought on New Year's Eve.
Would I even know it was him? It's not as if Winslow lacked for skinheads. But I thought I might recognize him - he had that distinctive Milky Way shaped pattern of zits on his forehead. Although that was a week and a half ago, what if the zits had healed?
And if I did recognize him, what was the etiquette? Did we have to fight, or was that elective? What if he had his skinhead friends with him?
I didn't bother hoping that he wouldn't recognize me. Since my nose happened, everybody always recognizes me.
If we met, could we pretend not to know each other? That would be awkward, but still the option I'd vote for.
But although I kept an eye out, I didn't run into Swastikur (I had at first mentally named him "Zithead," but some of my friends had zits, and anyway I hated appearance-based insults - go figure - so I renamed him) between classes, or see him in any of my classes. He might not even be the same year as me.
I also kept an eye out for the Trio, of course. None of them approached me, but they had this tone of gleeful anticipation in their smirks and sidelong glances that made me think they had something planned. There wasn't anything I could do other than try to be careful.
And yet, nothing special happened all day. After my last class, I dropped my books off in my locker and went downstairs to the theater, where we had a meeting where students could suggest what our next production would be. I didn't feel I had much to contribute as people threw out names and titles I didn't know, so I left them to debate ("Andrew Lloyd Webber is literally the devil!").
I was walking towards Winslow's front doors when I heard a gleeful voice behind me say "there you are!" I turned around and beheld, in all his dubiously washed glory, Swastikur, wearing the same black coat he'd worn outside of Charlotte's building and carrying a thick geology textbook.
"Here I am," I agreed. We faced off, standing about five feet apart in the wide hallway. "Do we have a problem?"
He reached into his pocket and pulled out brass knuckles, and made a production of flexing his fingers before he slid the weapon onto his hand. "Nope," he sneered, popping the "P," "I don't think it'll be a--"
Neither of us had seen Sophia approach, but there she was, kicking Swastikur hard in the side of his leg. He fell groaning and clutching his knee. Sophia leaned down and picked up his dropped textbook. "Geology, huh? Figures."
She swung the textbook into Swastikur's forehead, hard enough that the back of his head hit the floor with an audible thunk. He started to sit up, but Sophia hit him with the textbook again, and he hid his head in his arms and made a whining sound.
"You're gonna stay the fuck down now, right?"
"Staying down," he confirmed in a strained voice, without showing his face.
"Fucking Nazi," Sophia grunted, dropping the textbook onto him. She knelt next to him, slid the brass knuckles off his unresisting hand, and pocketed them. Then she glanced at me, and noticed what must have been an absolutely astonished expression on my face.
"What?" she says. "Just because I hate you doesn't mean I can't hate Nazis. I've got a life outside of you, Hebert."
"Oh," I said, backing slowly toward the door as I watched for any sign she was about to give chase. "Thanks, I guess."
Sophia grinned unpleasantly but made no move to come after me. "You're welcome. Go on. Enjoy your night." She turned her back on me and walked away.
I left the school, glancing back over my shoulder every few steps, but Swastikur didn't get up and Sophia didn't return.
Maybe if I hadn't been so focused on the possibility of either Sophia or Swastikur popping out of the doors and chasing me, I would have noticed the two track team members waiting for me, armed with a roll of duct tape. Instead I practically walked straight into them.
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Tuesday January 18 2011 (eight days later).
Oddly, I'd actually been inside Redmond Welding, the old factory building I'd seen the dog girl near. Years earlier, my dad attempted to organize Redmond Manufacturing (they ran several manufacturing workplaces around Brockton Bay, not just the welding building). Dad brought me to that exact building several times so we could participate in clandestine after-hours meetings with workers interested in forming a union.
More accurately, Dad participated in the meetings; I explored the meeting room, crawling under tables and pretending to be a spy. In my defense, I was five years old.
Once I snuck out of the secret union organizing room - with hindsight, it was just the employee break room - and onto the factory floor. I was fascinated by the big machines, whose functions were so opaque to me they could have been tinker tech. I eventually began mashing buttons, to no effect at all the first dozen or so times. Then a machine suddenly turned on and began making rapid, incredibly loud pounding noises. The workers located me with more alacrity than I'd have preferred, and that was the last time I was ever allowed to accompany Dad to secret Redmond Welding meetings.
Redmond had pulled out of Brockton Bay years ago, and most of their buildings had been abandoned. Once I realized I needed to see her again, it was easy for me to remember where I'd seen Dog Girl (as I'd christened her in my mind) and to start doing after-school runs in that area. If she really did live in that area, I'd see her sooner or later - a girl with three dogs in need of walks could hardly stay hidden inside.
My plan took a week to work. I had finished up a run, panting and sweating, when I began wondering if I'd recognize anything inside the Redmond Welding building. The building looked like an abandoned husk, with graffiti covering much of the exterior. I tried pulling on the doors, but they were padlocked, as expected. By jumping, I managed to get my hands on a window ledge and pulled myself up (I could now do pull-ups, a result of my new exercise habits), allowing me to see into the building, except there was so much dust, and so little light inside, that all I could make out were large industrial-looking shapes.
That's when a familiar gruff voice behind me said "You! Get the fuck away from our building!"
I dropped to the ground and turned, and there she was. She didn't have any dogs with her, just a fast food bag from Zack's Shack. "Dog Girl!" I said, happily.
"Nose Girl," she replied, seeming a bit surprised to see me again. But she didn't seem to be seething with hatred, so that was good.
"Wait, this is your building?"
She said "Yea…" and stopped and paused for several seconds, thinking something over. "No, it's not.".
"Then why - you know, never mind. I'm so glad I found you! You'll never guess what happened! You remember that fight we had, right?"
"You're asking if I remember beating the crap out of you?" Something in her tone made me worried that she thought I was making fun of her, so I continued hurriedly.
"That's the one! Anyway, a week ago at school, I ran into these two guys from the track team outside after school was over. I knew that was bad news because I know they're friends with this girl Sophia who beats me up."
"Like I beat you up?"
"No, not like you, this girl's a total bitch." Dog Girl blinked. "So these guys came after me, and I thought of running, and actually I did run at first, but they caught me right away because track team and the taller one shoved me in the back and I fell over."
"What does this have to do with me?" she asked, sounding impatient.
"Just wait, I'm almost there. So they let me stand up, and one of them says 'go on, run some more, it's fun chasing you down.' Which is exactly the sort of thing Sophia would say, so no wonder they're friends. And so I got up, and was about to run, but then I thought these words. These exact words.
"I thought 'Fuck this. Dog Girl wouldn't run."
She nodded, seeming a bit more interested. "Fuckin' right I wouldn't. I'd kick their asses."
"Right! So I tried hitting the nearer one and he took a step back and I missed, but instantly I pictured how when I stepped back from you, you just kept going at me without slowing down and put your knee into my gut, remember? So I tried that, I put my knee right into his gut, and he made this 'oof' sound and sat right down on the ground."
"Okay," Dog Girl nodded. "Then what?"
"Well, his friend was still there, and so I jumped at him, trying to put him in a headlock like what you did to me. And it didn't work, he just pushed my arms away, but then I stomped on his foot. Or I tried to stomp on his foot, but I missed and stomped on his ankle instead."
"You break his ankle?"
"I don't think so. But it seemed like he was in a lot of pain - he hopped around on his other foot yelling."
Dog Girl nodded. "So you beat them up. What's that--"
"Oh no," I said. "I didn't beat them up. I mean, there were two of them, and they were both bigger than me. The guy I kneed in the stomach grabbed me from behind in a way that, you know, he was holding both my arms to my sides? Then he held me while the other guy punched me. Then they duct taped me to a streetlight. It was really unfair."
The Dog Girl snorted derisively. "So you were a wimp."
"I mean, sure, I guess so. But I'd like not to be. And that fight I had with you - it seemed like it actually made me a better fighter, y'know? So I was thinking…" I trailed off, hoping she'd get where I was going.
"Yeah? You were thinking?," she said, sounding annoyed.
"I was thinking maybe you're some kind of cape." Dog Girl stiffened. "With some sort of training power, you know? So you can train your dogs really well, and you also accidently trained me to be better at fighting. So can we do it again?"
Dog Girl shook her head, like she was trying to shake some confusion off. "You… you want me to beat you up?"
"What I want is to be better at fighting. And if that requires you beating me up, well…" I shrugged. "Price worth paying, right? If I want to improve, I have to put the work in, and I think you are the work. It's like I'm a skier and you're a mountain."
She tipped her head a bit - which seemed funny to me, because she did it just like a dog would, but I felt it would be better if I didn't laugh - and frowned. I suspected she was coming to the end of her patience.
I decided to try another approach. "Look, can we just fight?"
A few minutes later, Dog Girl was sitting on top of me and pounding my face while I tried, with distressingly limited success, to protect myself with my arms. I tried tracking her incoming fists and turning my head to take the hits on my nose, but the punching kept on coming and, just like last time, it became too confusing for me to keep track of.
"Hey, hey - what the hell? Bitch, stop!" The punching stopped, and I saw that a big Black guy was pulling Dog Girl off of me. I let my arms, no longer required to ward off blows, collapse onto my face and I rolled onto my side, instinctively wanting to curl up.
He spun her to one side, letting go of her, and she caught her balance before she could fall and glared at him. "This isn't any of your business! She asked for it!"
"Why, what'd she do?"
"She asked for it."
"Yeah, you said, but what did she do?"
"Are you fucking deaf? She. Aaaasked. For. It," said Dog Girl, pronouncing each word distinctly.
"She means literally," I said, struggling up to my feet by leaning against the wall. I pressed my forehead against the bricks. My legs were weirdly tired considering that I'd spent most of the last few minutes lying down. "Ouch," I added, feeling my face for injuries, and then I added "I literally asked her for a fight."
"But why?" Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him glance around quickly, like he wanted to make sure no one was near enough to overhear. Then he said, a little softly, "is it because you know who she is?"
"What? No. Why? Is she someone?"
He sighed, and rubbed his eyes with the heel of one of his hands. "Okay, um…."
"Taylor," I filled in.
"Taylor," he repeated.
"I told you about her," said Dog Girl, sounding put upon. "She's that girl I beat up last month."
"You beat up the same civ-- the same person twice?" he said. He seemed more upset about this than I felt the situation warranted. Certainly more upset than I was.
I pushed out from the wall and turned towards him. "Hey, it's fi--"
"AAAH!" he said, jumping back. "Your-- your--" he said, trailing off in a way I knew well. It was the trailing off of someone who wanted to say "your nose is freakishly huge," but politeness forbade them. I saw this reaction quite a lot, and in a way, it was heartening that so many people were polite. The nation's mothers had done a good job.
"Yeah, I know," I said, turning away to pick up my bag, water bottle, and glasses.
"I told you she had a big nose," said Dog Girl peevishly.
"Just saying 'she had a big nose' didn't remotely get the idea across!" he snapped at her.
She shrugged. He looked at me again. "So, um… Are you a cape?" Since I hadn't had my glasses on before, this was my first good look at him, and although I didn't scream and jump back like he had, it was a close thing. Tall, muscular, lantern jaw, deep voice. For someone who seemed a little on the anti-social side, Dog Girl sure had a good-looking friend.
"No, not really," I said. "I mean, technically yes, but I don't have any powers or anything, apart from my nose."
"Really?," he said. "I've never heard of anything like that before."
"Yeah, I get that a lot."
"Wow." He took another look at me, this time more carefully. He leaned left and then right to peer at my face around my nose. "And you're really messed up." He turned to Dog Girl. "You know where we keep the first aid kit, right? Go up and get it and bring it right down to me, okay?"
"Do it yourself," she snarled. "I wanna eat my dinner." She gestured towards the fast food bag she'd left lying against the building. I noticed with a bit of smugness that I'd left a bruise on her cheek.
To my surprise, the big guy grabbed her shoulders and pushed her against a wall - not bone-shakingly hard, but not gently either. He whispered at her in a sort of furious hiss, so I could only make out some of his words. "Her nose makes her… bring in the PRT… major pain in the… including you." He raised his voice to a normal level. "So just get the damn kit already."
"Fuck," she said. "Fine." She twisted out of his grasp and stomped away, pausing to snatch up her fast food bag. The big guy sighed and turned back to me.
"Hey, listen. I'm… I'm really sorry that my friend beat you up. Um, twice. Can I take a look?"
"I mean, I'll be fine. But sure."
He approached me and, with a touch both sure and gentle, turned my head to each side, biting his lip a bit as he studied my face. If my heart didn't already belong to Amy, I would have found that extremely cute. Then, after asking permission, he felt the back of my head to make sure I wasn't bleeding where I'd been pounded against the sidewalk. Then he asked me if I was feeling dizzy or had any trouble seeing. I got the impression he'd dealt with the aftermath of fights before.
"I think you're okay," he said slowly. "You've got a lot of cuts on your face and you're gonna look black and blue in the morning, but I don't think you need any stitches and you don't seem to have a concussion. And none of the cuts are on your nose, which is…" His voice faded out.
"Which is weird, because it's the biggest target?," I said, consciously putting an amused tone in my voice. I'd gotten a lot of practice at putting people at their ease regarding my nose over Christmas break.
"Heh. Well, I didn't want to say, but yeah."
"Remember I said my nose is my only power? Well, it's not just big. It's invulnerable."
"Invul -- What, seriously?"
I tapped my nose. "It's like ten of Alexandria's noses here."
He chuckled and shook his head. "That's… That's gotta be the weirdest power I've ever heard of."
"I heard there's a guy out in Cincinnati that has a mole on his elbow that can open any lock."
"Here!" said a gruff voice, and Dog Girl dropped a pretty sizable first aid kit on the ground so it landed an inch from one of the big guy's feet. The box was made of metal, a cross painted on the lid in flaking paint, and it made a loud clunk hitting the sidewalk.
In her other hand, she was carrying a half eaten hot dog. Without waiting for a reply, she walked away and turned into the alley, taking a bite from the frankfurter as she walked. The big guy sighed, opened up the first aid box, and began working on my face, with more careful gentility. He started by using cotton balls that he wetted with something from a dark brown bottle - probably alcohol, judging by how much it stung on my cuts.
"So, uh… What did you do to piss her off?"
"I tripped over her Rottweiler."
He whistled. "Yeah, that would certainly do it."
"That was the first time. But this time, I really did ask her for a fight, like she said."
"Why did you do that? You don't seem like the revenge type."
"Oh, no, nothing like that." So I explained to him about how I needed to learn to fight and how fighting Dog Girl had seemed to help with that. He rubbed a hand across his eyes again.
"So I've got to wait and see if this time helped too. If it did, then I've got a good thing going here."
He stared at me. "That's not how it-- Wait. Are you planning to come back here and fight Ra-- fight Dog Girl again?
I shrugged. "I mean, if it's working."
He sighed. "Listen, uh… I'm sorry, I think you said your name but I forgot."
"Taylor," I said, smiling. The smile stretched my split lip a bit, which stung.
"I'm Brian," he said, as he finished up with the cotton balls and alcohol and, squinting a bit, started sticking little H-shaped band aids to my face. "So, Taylor, what would you say about a little trade of favors?"
"Mmmm?"
"How about I teach you some fighting basics? I promise I can teach it a lot better than, uh, Dog Girl." Seeing me hesitate, he added "I'll throw in a membership at the gym I go to. So we can spar in a totally safe environment."
"That does sound good," I said, hesitantly. "But before I agree, I need to know what kind of favor I'd be doing you in return." I wasn't worried he wanted sex. I mean, look at him, and look at me. Plus, he seemed like an exceptionally polite young man. I bet his mother really had it together.
"Yeah, of course. In return, you don't go looking for Dog Girl for any more fights, and you don't tell anyone - especially not police or the PRT - about the fights you've already had with her." He stood straight, apparently done putting bandaids on my face. "Do we have a deal?"
I smiled, ignoring the stinging sensation on my split lip. "That sounds like a fabulous deal." I held out my hand for a shake.
- Location
- Attached to a wall
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Gods that incredible prank had almost failed due to some spoilsport.
Good thinking Soph! Any enemy of your arch nemesis needs to be put down hard, so that your arch nemesis can spend more time with your friends diabolical plans.
edit: readability.
Good thinking Soph! Any enemy of your arch nemesis needs to be put down hard, so that your arch nemesis can spend more time with your friends diabolical plans.
edit: readability.
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Sophia was definitely proud of her quick thinking and decisive action to protect the "prank."
And she got to beat up a Nazi, and she got to steal herself some knuckle dusters! Win-win-win.
I wonder how much relief Taylor felt when she spotted the "prank". Because it had to be some serious cognitive dissonance to be saved by Sophia, and this must have made the world make sense again. Of course, then she'd have to deal with being weirded out by feeling relieved from being bullied...
Darn! Now I kind of regret not adding a scene like that...
The magic of writing is you can always edit or flash back!
...unless you're traditionally published. Then you'd have to run around sharpieing anything from dozens to millions of copies and that's not efficient.
Chapter 12: Gee, It Sure Would be Swell to Get Outta Here
Wednesday, February 2 2011 (about two weeks later).
I arrived at Winslow in the morning (running most of the way from home, as had become my habit) to find a very un-Wislowian woman, wearing a panel skirt and a gingham top, smoking on the sidewalk in front of Winslow.
Not that smoking was un-Winslowian. The area under Winslow's bleachers was piled so high with cigarette butts that rats did the backstroke in them. But everything else about this woman was seriously non-Wislowian. She looked to be in her thirties, too old to be a student - yet she had bright, hopeful eyes, rather than the black eyebags of despair most Winslow faculty members quickly developed. And her bright blue purse with its long, loose strap would inevitably be snatched by a member of the student council if she stuck around too long.
And she was reading a Bible. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with reading the Bible, of course - not everyone who reads the Bible is a raging bigot - but Winslow teachers were more likely to be found perusing self-help books or restraining orders.
A student walking ahead of me passed the woman, who glanced up and gave the student a little nod, which the student returned. Then I walked up, and she glanced up, screamed, and jumped backwards. I nodded politely, but instead of returning my nod she just stared at me with her mouth open, so I shrugged and continued on. Wonder what she's doing here, I thought.
As I turned a corner around the building, so I was now on Winslow's front side, the answer became obvious. Because almost two dozen similarly un-Winslowian adults were gathered in front of the main entrance, marching with picket signs or handing out fliers.
Oh, cool, a day off, I thought, since although my dad loved me no matter what, if I crossed a labor picket line I figured there was a good chance Danny Hebert would drive straight to an orphanage and pick out a replacement daughter.
But when I got closer, I was a little puzzled. Dad had taken me to numerous strikes when I was younger, and the vibes of this one felt… off. The people seemed a bit too carefully groomed - I'd never seen this many women wearing dresses at a union strike (worn jeans were the norm), or so many hairdos that were practically shiny with hairspray.
And then I got close enough to read the signs and came to a stop, glaring. The slogans all rhymed - poorly - and said things like NO GAY GHOULS IN HIGH SCHOOLS and TEACH SHAKESPEARE NOT GAYSPEARE and NO PLAYS GAYS OR CABARETS.
Although most of the protestors were walking in a large oval in front of Winslow's front steps, several protestors were lined up on the stairs - one on the bottom step, one a step higher, and so on until the highest of them stood on the landing, a blonde woman wearing red glasses and a red suit jacket that made her look like a real estate broker. She was trying to hand out fliers, but I was pleased to see most of the students detouring around her as if she were a stabbing victim (Winslow has its own culture).
Although a little group of students with shaved heads were clumped nearby reading some of the fliers with what looked like interest. That figures, I thought. The front of one of the fliers said, in large comic sans lettering, "Winslow's Theater Slop Must Be Stopped!"
Oh come on. That doesn't even really rhyme.
"Oh no" said a voice beside me, sweetly. I glanced to my right and saw Emma standing next to me, watching the protest with a smile. "How awful. I wonder who told them there was a problem with the theater department at Winslow?" She smirked at me, her eyes gleaming with malice and contact lenses, then turned and walked towards the entrance. She strolled up the stairs, strutting like a model, but when she reached the doors she paused, her back to us, and held both her middle fingers high above her head. She yelled "no homophobes at Winslow!" before proceeding inside.
There was a bit of cheering for Emma as the doors shut behind her. I was ruefully impressed by how shameless Emma was. Now absolutely no one would believe she was the one who tipped off the homophobes.
"SHAMELESS!" shouted the woman on the landing, and I was startled to hear my own thought echoed like that. "You see the kind of PERVERSION and DISRESPECT this so-called institute of education teaches OUR kids?" She kept going, but I tuned her out.
I looked for the source of the cheers and noticed a small crowd of students had gathered nearby. A few kids I knew from theater - Xack, Wendy and Charlotte - were there.
I tipped my head forward, letting my hair drop around my face, and walked towards the front steps, detouring a little to whisper "watch this" to my fellow theater club members. Keeping my nose behind my curtains of hair, I walked up to the landing, stepped behind the red-jacketed lady, and tapped her on the shoulder, saying "excuse me" in a pleasant voice. When she paused in her rant and turned, saying "yes?," I straightened and pushed my hair out of my face.
"Holy Jesus!" she screamed as she saw my nose, taking a step backwards. Unfortunately for her, she was standing near the front of the landing, and a step backwards from there was the first step down the stairs. She teetered for a moment before falling backwards into one of her friends, who was knocked into the next friend down, and they dominoed until five bigots lay in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, fliers fluttering down around them like homophobic snow. A foam board sign with the words "TEACH ALGEBRA NOT CALIGULA" had been bent so far it cracked.
The blonde woman's red glasses were askew as she stared at me with angry eyes.
I stared at the pile of homophobes, gobsmacked by how well that had gone. At least a dozen students had pulled out their smartphones and were taking pictures. Stay cool, I told myself. Pretend that was on purpose.
I looked down at them, trying to control my expression, and said "I only wanted to say good morning." I turned my back on the woman's glare and entered the school, flushing a bit because of the applause and cheers from some of the students outside.
I walked down the hall past dozens of students talking in groups of twos or threes or fours. Normally I tried not to notice other students more than the bare amount necessary to not be kicked by them, but for once I was straining to overhear snatches of conversations as I passed.
"There's a theater club?" "...have a point. The queers are getting out of hand. Kaiser says…" "If you see Sally tell her Kendrick's looking for her." "Okina hana o shita orokana on'nanoko o mitekudasai, kanojo wa watashitachi ga nani o itte iru no ka wakarimasen…" (I have no idea what that meant). "If there's a surprise quiz today I will literally die and turn blue and Mr Fish is gonna be in so much trouble.." "cousin's friend's friend goes to Arcadia, and she says they eat lobster every… "...I heard that guy Xack gives three-dollar blow jobs behind the dumpsters."
That last one brought me up short, and I stopped to see who was speaking. It was three of Emma's random hanger-oners, Julia and two others whose names I didn't remember. "That's not true!" I objected.
"What's the matter, Taylor - afraid of the competition?" "You should offer a fifty percent off sale. You know, charge a quarter." "I bet she can't even do it with her nose in the way."
"But you already know it's not true," I continued, struck by a thought. "You just don't care if what you say is true. You're moths. You just say whatever lets you flutter near Emma's light."
"Yeah, we're moths," Julia snorted. "You just keep telling yourself that. So what are you, a gnat?"
"Careful, moth girl. Emma will burn you up and forget you ever existed. Like me, starting now.`` I turned and did my best to heroically stride away, but it would have been better if I'd been wearing Dad's trench coat, so it could flare dramatically behind me.
-------------------------
Math class that day was so dull I nearly convinced myself the clock had stopped. Math was taught by Mrs. Jarvis, who combined being an incredibly boring teacher with a total inability to get over my nose.
Most people, if I spent some time with them - well, they didn't stop seeing my nose, but it stopped being all they could see. But not Mrs Jarvis. Whenever she interacted with me - handing me a graded quiz, for example - she'd do it staring fixedly at my nose. Even when she wasn't interacting with me, she'd sometimes look away from whatever student she was talking to to stare.
I briefly considered the merits of painting "my boobs are down there" on my nose, with an arrow pointing down.(Not that I had any boobs to speak of.) Probably not worth it, I decided. Plus, I didn't want to set a precedent for my nose being used as billboard space. Although maybe if people paid - I did need a job.
All classes at Winslow let out at the same time (not just at Winslow, of course, as far as I know all high schools work like this), so at the end of each class period the hallways would be instantly filled with a few hundred teens, gossiping and loitering and emitting awful scents and possibly even moving towards their next class.
"I heard Kendrick's looking for Sally." "...nothing against sex work, but three dollars is too low, Xack's ruining the market for all the other…" "...think there's gonna be a knife fight? Poor Sally." "Are Christians even allowed to pass out fliers at school?" "...at Arcadia they hire servants to type your papers for you…" "When did we get a theater club?" "...after me with a knife? But I thought Kendrick liked me!"
After math came an actually good class, computer science. Good not in the sense that I was learning a great deal, but in the sense of not being actively unpleasant or boring. I took fifteen minutes to finish the programming exercise me and the two other advanced students were assigned, and then I spent the rest of the period searching for help wanted ads and searching to see if the homophobes outside the school had made the local news. (They hadn't).
I needed to switch out books before my next class, so I headed to the east second floor hallway, home of my locker.
"So I lent Sally Knife Fighting For Dummies, maybe it'll…" "Is it even possible to throw up more wine than I drank?" "...the theater club is at Arcadia! Idiot homophobes protesting the wrong..." ""No no no, that's not what I - what's the word for when …" "I heard Winslow used to have a theater club, but after they did Sound of Music the E88 murdered the chick who played Maria and…" "She thinks I'm out to stab her? What the fuck, I just wanna ask her out!"
I turned a corner and saw Julia and Sophia waiting by my locker. Julia said something to Sophia - they were too far away for me to make it out - and then Sophia began to walk towards me. Behind her, Julia gave me a "you're-in-trouble-now" smirk.
I watched Sophia approach, and - looking at her walk, her arms, her calm demeanor - somehow I knew she was going to push me. A strong, two handed push to my shoulders, a favorite move of bullies since time immemorial.
I had no idea how I knew this. But it felt certain.
And Brian had taught me a counter.
As Sophia drew close to me, I saw her hands beginning to raise towards my shoulders. At the last moment I put up my own arms, elbows forward and forearms sticking up, and then pulled them apart. Just as I'd practiced with Brian, Sophia's arms were pushed outward and missed hitting me entirely.
This left her with her arms in no position to protect her head. I tried to slam one of her ears with the heel of my hand, remembering what Brian had told me about aiming to swing through her head. I missed and hit her neck below her ear, but that seemed to have a good effect, and Sophia stumbled sideways.
Unfortunately, Sophia wasn't considerate enough to immediately slump into unconsciousness, or to run away crying, either of which I would have considered a completely satisfactory outcome. Instead, she straightened up, shook her head, and grinned at me. I held up my fists at the right height to defend my head.
"Well, look who's taken a boxing class at the Y," Sophia sneered.
I shrugged. "Jazzercise was full."
"Funny," Sophia said as she lazily jabbed a fist at me, and pulled it back before it hit me. But my attempt to block it had pulled my arms off-center, and Sophia slammed her other fist into the opening. I managed to push her arm aside a little with my forearm, so instead of hitting me in the jaw her fist brushed past my cheek, but even that hurt. Sophia swept my legs with a foot. I saw it coming and tried to step back, but ended up stumbling.
I would have fallen, but by this time spectators had gathered around us, blocking the hallway in both directions, and one of them pushed me back upright. "Hey, you, with the stupid shirt" said Sophia to a boy in the crowd wearing what looked to me like an ordinary shirt. "Put that phone down." She glared around at the circle of watchers. "I see anyone holding up a phone and they'll be next, got it? Emma, watch for phones."
Across the way from me, I noticed Emma, smirking in anticipation of seeing her friend beat me down.
Sophia smiled at me. It wasn't a friendly smile. "Here's your problem, Hebert - sparring in a gym can't teach you anything about fighting in the streets. Which is why I'm gonna kick your flat ass."
"Street fighting? Sophia, you…" I was momentarily at a loss for words. "You ridiculous buttonhead, this is a high school hallway. You thinking you know 'street fighting' is like Snoopy thinking he's a fighter pilot." Sophia swung at me, but I saw it coming, spun to the side and pushed her arm away. I followed up with a punch to her side, on her ribs, which wasn't the ideal place to punch her but it was in reach.
I took a step back, put up my fists to protect my neck and chin, and tipped my head back just a little so my nose mostly protected my eyes. This is another move Brian had suggested. "Sophia, the truth is, you're a coward." Someone behind me reached past my shoulder and grabbed my wrist. I glanced - it was Emma. Of course.
"This is exactly what I mean - you can't even fight me without your friend holding me?" I yanked my arm down and up in a circular movement I'd seen in a video, making Emma lose her grip, then moved back into position, tipping my head back again.
"Leave her alone, Emma," Sophia growled.
I grinned at Sophia. "If you'd ever been in a real street fight you'd have run away crying in the first ten seconds."
I was trying to make Sophia angry enough so she'd be careless. But if anything, being angry seemed to sharpen her focus. Neither of us moved for several long seconds, then Sophia was on me, throwing punch after punch into my invulnerable nose, which I'd deliberately left open.
"What is that, your cape power? You've got an invulnerable nose?" jeered Emma. "That's the stupidest power ever."
"And yet still less sad than being a catalog model," I called back, keeping my eyes on Sophia as she turned to circle me. I mirrored her.
"Emma, shut up," said Sophia. "Hebert, you're a fucking idiot."
Sophia bent slightly at the knees and took a quarter-step forward - and just like that, I knew she was about to throw a punch Brian called a rear hook from her right arm. As she began her swing, I was already shooting my left arm forward, putting my palm against her bicep so her arm couldn't swing forward. Almost at the same instant I plunged my right fist into her nose.
Sophia took a couple of steps back, touched a finger under her nose, and held up her finger to see. There was a little blood.
I smirked the smirk of victory at her. She glared at me, spread her arms, and just full-on tackled me from a yard away. I pushed down on her shoulders, but I wasn't strong enough to stop her charge.
I hadn't realized my back was to a wall of lockers. But I sure realized it when Sophia's tackle slammed me into the lockers, much harder than I would have guessed. It felt like my body shut off for a second except for whatever part of my body is in charge of telling me when things hurt, and that part was wide awake and screaming like a banshee chorus. I fell to the floor, and immediately felt Sophia's boot driving into my stomach.
Sophia kicked me a few more times as I curled up, trying to protect my head, which just encouraged her to kick my ribs more. Then she crouched close to me, which I barely saw through my protective arms, and hissed "there's a lesson for you, Hebert - fighting is more than just boxing. No charge."
Apparently satisfied, Sophia and Emma left. I wasn't looking up, but I heard Emma call "Bye, Taylor! You should be more careful about what you say to Julia, I'd hate to see you hurt!"
I sat up a couple of minutes later, with my back against the lockers.
How long had that fight even lasted? Ninety seconds?
My last fight with Sophia had lasted maybe ten seconds. I'm improving, I thought. Sooner or later, I'd fucking kick Sophia's ass.
-------------------------
Wednesday, February 9, 2011 (one week later)
The protesters had been outside Winslow every day for a week, and they'd even been picked up by local news. On the third day of protests, I'd told Mr. Haller that the protests were started by someone attempting to ruin my life, and offered to quit the theater club. Haller turned me down flat.
Although "turned me down flat" may be misleading, because that phrase implies that Haller turned me down quickly. That was not even remotely true. He turned me down at what someone who wasn't a member of the Winslow High Theater Club would find a startling length, going on for several minutes, and ending by quoting Shakespeare - "For courage mounteth with occasion. Let them be welcome, then. We are prepared."
So rather than saying "Haller turned me down flat" I'll say "Haller turned me down fulsomely."
We spent half of that week auditioning. Not me, of course - I'd rather have pepper-sprayed Dog Girl's favorite puppy than acted in a play - but all the other theater kids auditioned, even Sparky. And that Friday, Haller gathered the whole theater club together in a part of the surprisingly large and warren-like backstage area, where folding tables and chairs were set up for Haller's rare classroom-style lectures and also for announcements.
This time, it was an announcement. "I've posted the cast list for Little Shop of Horrors on my office door," said Mr Haller.
Immediately all the students but me jumped to their feet and began rushing off. "No! Stop, you animals!" said Haller, raising his voice and miming a whip, and everyone stopped mid-step and stared beseechingly at the old man.
Haller rolled his eyes. "Fine, then. Go! But you'll never get the benefits of the very astute advice I was about to give! Your lives are forever benighted!" he yelled, and by the time he finished his sentence he was yelling at their backs. In seconds, he and I were the only people remaining.
Haller dropped his bulk into the chair across from me and folded his hands together on the formica table. "Taylor, while we have this moment of relative peace, I noticed you didn't audition for any parts. Not a fan of Little Shop of Horrors?"
"Uh, I mean, I'm not not a fan of it. It's just that, standing on stage, being stared at by people, that was horrifying to me even before my nose happened."
"Yes, I remember. Curiously, despite your accident, you seem less shy now than you were the first time we met. Much less."
"I mean, that's true. I'm feeling much better these days. And anyway, I've sort of lost the option of fading into the background." I gestured towards my nose. "But I'm still not ready to stand on a stage while hundreds of people watch."
"'Hundreds'? From your lips to God's ears. I'll consider it a surefire genuine walk-away hit if we manage to sell thirty tickets. But putting that aside, as you're not auditioning for a role, have you considered what your role in this production will be? You need to do something - this is a theater club, not an arcade or mall or a… a hashish den or wherever teenage ne'er-do-wells such as yourself congregate."
Haller was like that - he never used five words when he could use thirty. At one point Celia had told me that Haller loved only two things, the theater and the sound of his own voice, and there was some truth to that. But honestly, I enjoyed Haller's voice - it was rich and rolling, like a stage actor, which made sense since I assumed "theater teacher" was another word for "failed stage actor."
Even if I hadn't found him kind of funny, Haller had given me a place in Winslow where I could belong. The very least I could offer him in return was a bit of patience.
I shrugged. "Well… the school says I'm not allowed to do the lighting anymore."
"Yes, I know. Principal Blackwell was particularly insistent, one might even say threatening, on that point. But there's more to theater than just lighting. For example, I was thinking that you would make a marvelous stage manager."
"Stage manager? Um, I don't really know what that means."
"As a stage manager, you'll have the power and the glory, forever and ever." He smiled impishly, which told me that whatever he just said was a reference to… something.
"Is that a reference to something?" I asked. Haller looked weary for a moment, in that old person way.
"Forget that. Even better, stage managers get clipboards. And a clipboard means you'll be the one administrating everything."
"Everything?"
"Very close to everything. You'd still have to maintain a pretense of listening to what I say. At rehearsals, you'll act as my assistant. But during the actual performances, you'll be the one running things backstage. Costumes, sets, actors - you'll be making sure they're all where they should when they should be. And you'll do it all while remaining invisible to the audience."
"That sounds like kinda a lot."
"Oh, it is a lot, Taylor. More than a lot. You'd be more crucial to our production than the lead actors, but never let the actors know that, they're very fragile. You'll feel like you're being called on to do thirty things at once thirty times a day. But once you've pulled it off -- I promise you, you'll feel like there's nothing in the world you can't accomplish."
After that, I could hardly say no. Besides, Haller was right - I needed to be doing something in theater, and Obi was already running the sound board. Haller provisioned me with a bright red clipboard and a xeroxed copy of the script, and told me to read through it making notes for every scene and costume change, and to start thinking about how to make a giant moving plant happen on stage.
As I was absorbing that, I could hear the other students returning. I braced myself a second before Charlotte threw herself at my back, wrapping her arms around me in a tackle hug. Fortunately, my bruises from Sophia had healed already. "Taaaylor! I'm going to play Audry!"
"Oh, cool," I said, extracting myself from Charlotte's hug and turning to face her. "Is that a good part?"
I arrived at Winslow in the morning (running most of the way from home, as had become my habit) to find a very un-Wislowian woman, wearing a panel skirt and a gingham top, smoking on the sidewalk in front of Winslow.
Not that smoking was un-Winslowian. The area under Winslow's bleachers was piled so high with cigarette butts that rats did the backstroke in them. But everything else about this woman was seriously non-Wislowian. She looked to be in her thirties, too old to be a student - yet she had bright, hopeful eyes, rather than the black eyebags of despair most Winslow faculty members quickly developed. And her bright blue purse with its long, loose strap would inevitably be snatched by a member of the student council if she stuck around too long.
And she was reading a Bible. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with reading the Bible, of course - not everyone who reads the Bible is a raging bigot - but Winslow teachers were more likely to be found perusing self-help books or restraining orders.
A student walking ahead of me passed the woman, who glanced up and gave the student a little nod, which the student returned. Then I walked up, and she glanced up, screamed, and jumped backwards. I nodded politely, but instead of returning my nod she just stared at me with her mouth open, so I shrugged and continued on. Wonder what she's doing here, I thought.
As I turned a corner around the building, so I was now on Winslow's front side, the answer became obvious. Because almost two dozen similarly un-Winslowian adults were gathered in front of the main entrance, marching with picket signs or handing out fliers.
Oh, cool, a day off, I thought, since although my dad loved me no matter what, if I crossed a labor picket line I figured there was a good chance Danny Hebert would drive straight to an orphanage and pick out a replacement daughter.
But when I got closer, I was a little puzzled. Dad had taken me to numerous strikes when I was younger, and the vibes of this one felt… off. The people seemed a bit too carefully groomed - I'd never seen this many women wearing dresses at a union strike (worn jeans were the norm), or so many hairdos that were practically shiny with hairspray.
And then I got close enough to read the signs and came to a stop, glaring. The slogans all rhymed - poorly - and said things like NO GAY GHOULS IN HIGH SCHOOLS and TEACH SHAKESPEARE NOT GAYSPEARE and NO PLAYS GAYS OR CABARETS.
Although most of the protestors were walking in a large oval in front of Winslow's front steps, several protestors were lined up on the stairs - one on the bottom step, one a step higher, and so on until the highest of them stood on the landing, a blonde woman wearing red glasses and a red suit jacket that made her look like a real estate broker. She was trying to hand out fliers, but I was pleased to see most of the students detouring around her as if she were a stabbing victim (Winslow has its own culture).
Although a little group of students with shaved heads were clumped nearby reading some of the fliers with what looked like interest. That figures, I thought. The front of one of the fliers said, in large comic sans lettering, "Winslow's Theater Slop Must Be Stopped!"
Oh come on. That doesn't even really rhyme.
"Oh no" said a voice beside me, sweetly. I glanced to my right and saw Emma standing next to me, watching the protest with a smile. "How awful. I wonder who told them there was a problem with the theater department at Winslow?" She smirked at me, her eyes gleaming with malice and contact lenses, then turned and walked towards the entrance. She strolled up the stairs, strutting like a model, but when she reached the doors she paused, her back to us, and held both her middle fingers high above her head. She yelled "no homophobes at Winslow!" before proceeding inside.
There was a bit of cheering for Emma as the doors shut behind her. I was ruefully impressed by how shameless Emma was. Now absolutely no one would believe she was the one who tipped off the homophobes.
"SHAMELESS!" shouted the woman on the landing, and I was startled to hear my own thought echoed like that. "You see the kind of PERVERSION and DISRESPECT this so-called institute of education teaches OUR kids?" She kept going, but I tuned her out.
I looked for the source of the cheers and noticed a small crowd of students had gathered nearby. A few kids I knew from theater - Xack, Wendy and Charlotte - were there.
I tipped my head forward, letting my hair drop around my face, and walked towards the front steps, detouring a little to whisper "watch this" to my fellow theater club members. Keeping my nose behind my curtains of hair, I walked up to the landing, stepped behind the red-jacketed lady, and tapped her on the shoulder, saying "excuse me" in a pleasant voice. When she paused in her rant and turned, saying "yes?," I straightened and pushed my hair out of my face.
"Holy Jesus!" she screamed as she saw my nose, taking a step backwards. Unfortunately for her, she was standing near the front of the landing, and a step backwards from there was the first step down the stairs. She teetered for a moment before falling backwards into one of her friends, who was knocked into the next friend down, and they dominoed until five bigots lay in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, fliers fluttering down around them like homophobic snow. A foam board sign with the words "TEACH ALGEBRA NOT CALIGULA" had been bent so far it cracked.
The blonde woman's red glasses were askew as she stared at me with angry eyes.
I stared at the pile of homophobes, gobsmacked by how well that had gone. At least a dozen students had pulled out their smartphones and were taking pictures. Stay cool, I told myself. Pretend that was on purpose.
I looked down at them, trying to control my expression, and said "I only wanted to say good morning." I turned my back on the woman's glare and entered the school, flushing a bit because of the applause and cheers from some of the students outside.
I walked down the hall past dozens of students talking in groups of twos or threes or fours. Normally I tried not to notice other students more than the bare amount necessary to not be kicked by them, but for once I was straining to overhear snatches of conversations as I passed.
"There's a theater club?" "...have a point. The queers are getting out of hand. Kaiser says…" "If you see Sally tell her Kendrick's looking for her." "Okina hana o shita orokana on'nanoko o mitekudasai, kanojo wa watashitachi ga nani o itte iru no ka wakarimasen…" (I have no idea what that meant). "If there's a surprise quiz today I will literally die and turn blue and Mr Fish is gonna be in so much trouble.." "cousin's friend's friend goes to Arcadia, and she says they eat lobster every… "...I heard that guy Xack gives three-dollar blow jobs behind the dumpsters."
That last one brought me up short, and I stopped to see who was speaking. It was three of Emma's random hanger-oners, Julia and two others whose names I didn't remember. "That's not true!" I objected.
"What's the matter, Taylor - afraid of the competition?" "You should offer a fifty percent off sale. You know, charge a quarter." "I bet she can't even do it with her nose in the way."
"But you already know it's not true," I continued, struck by a thought. "You just don't care if what you say is true. You're moths. You just say whatever lets you flutter near Emma's light."
"Yeah, we're moths," Julia snorted. "You just keep telling yourself that. So what are you, a gnat?"
"Careful, moth girl. Emma will burn you up and forget you ever existed. Like me, starting now.`` I turned and did my best to heroically stride away, but it would have been better if I'd been wearing Dad's trench coat, so it could flare dramatically behind me.
-------------------------
Math class that day was so dull I nearly convinced myself the clock had stopped. Math was taught by Mrs. Jarvis, who combined being an incredibly boring teacher with a total inability to get over my nose.
Most people, if I spent some time with them - well, they didn't stop seeing my nose, but it stopped being all they could see. But not Mrs Jarvis. Whenever she interacted with me - handing me a graded quiz, for example - she'd do it staring fixedly at my nose. Even when she wasn't interacting with me, she'd sometimes look away from whatever student she was talking to to stare.
I briefly considered the merits of painting "my boobs are down there" on my nose, with an arrow pointing down.(Not that I had any boobs to speak of.) Probably not worth it, I decided. Plus, I didn't want to set a precedent for my nose being used as billboard space. Although maybe if people paid - I did need a job.
All classes at Winslow let out at the same time (not just at Winslow, of course, as far as I know all high schools work like this), so at the end of each class period the hallways would be instantly filled with a few hundred teens, gossiping and loitering and emitting awful scents and possibly even moving towards their next class.
"I heard Kendrick's looking for Sally." "...nothing against sex work, but three dollars is too low, Xack's ruining the market for all the other…" "...think there's gonna be a knife fight? Poor Sally." "Are Christians even allowed to pass out fliers at school?" "...at Arcadia they hire servants to type your papers for you…" "When did we get a theater club?" "...after me with a knife? But I thought Kendrick liked me!"
After math came an actually good class, computer science. Good not in the sense that I was learning a great deal, but in the sense of not being actively unpleasant or boring. I took fifteen minutes to finish the programming exercise me and the two other advanced students were assigned, and then I spent the rest of the period searching for help wanted ads and searching to see if the homophobes outside the school had made the local news. (They hadn't).
I needed to switch out books before my next class, so I headed to the east second floor hallway, home of my locker.
"So I lent Sally Knife Fighting For Dummies, maybe it'll…" "Is it even possible to throw up more wine than I drank?" "...the theater club is at Arcadia! Idiot homophobes protesting the wrong..." ""No no no, that's not what I - what's the word for when …" "I heard Winslow used to have a theater club, but after they did Sound of Music the E88 murdered the chick who played Maria and…" "She thinks I'm out to stab her? What the fuck, I just wanna ask her out!"
I turned a corner and saw Julia and Sophia waiting by my locker. Julia said something to Sophia - they were too far away for me to make it out - and then Sophia began to walk towards me. Behind her, Julia gave me a "you're-in-trouble-now" smirk.
I watched Sophia approach, and - looking at her walk, her arms, her calm demeanor - somehow I knew she was going to push me. A strong, two handed push to my shoulders, a favorite move of bullies since time immemorial.
I had no idea how I knew this. But it felt certain.
And Brian had taught me a counter.
As Sophia drew close to me, I saw her hands beginning to raise towards my shoulders. At the last moment I put up my own arms, elbows forward and forearms sticking up, and then pulled them apart. Just as I'd practiced with Brian, Sophia's arms were pushed outward and missed hitting me entirely.
This left her with her arms in no position to protect her head. I tried to slam one of her ears with the heel of my hand, remembering what Brian had told me about aiming to swing through her head. I missed and hit her neck below her ear, but that seemed to have a good effect, and Sophia stumbled sideways.
Unfortunately, Sophia wasn't considerate enough to immediately slump into unconsciousness, or to run away crying, either of which I would have considered a completely satisfactory outcome. Instead, she straightened up, shook her head, and grinned at me. I held up my fists at the right height to defend my head.
"Well, look who's taken a boxing class at the Y," Sophia sneered.
I shrugged. "Jazzercise was full."
"Funny," Sophia said as she lazily jabbed a fist at me, and pulled it back before it hit me. But my attempt to block it had pulled my arms off-center, and Sophia slammed her other fist into the opening. I managed to push her arm aside a little with my forearm, so instead of hitting me in the jaw her fist brushed past my cheek, but even that hurt. Sophia swept my legs with a foot. I saw it coming and tried to step back, but ended up stumbling.
I would have fallen, but by this time spectators had gathered around us, blocking the hallway in both directions, and one of them pushed me back upright. "Hey, you, with the stupid shirt" said Sophia to a boy in the crowd wearing what looked to me like an ordinary shirt. "Put that phone down." She glared around at the circle of watchers. "I see anyone holding up a phone and they'll be next, got it? Emma, watch for phones."
Across the way from me, I noticed Emma, smirking in anticipation of seeing her friend beat me down.
Sophia smiled at me. It wasn't a friendly smile. "Here's your problem, Hebert - sparring in a gym can't teach you anything about fighting in the streets. Which is why I'm gonna kick your flat ass."
"Street fighting? Sophia, you…" I was momentarily at a loss for words. "You ridiculous buttonhead, this is a high school hallway. You thinking you know 'street fighting' is like Snoopy thinking he's a fighter pilot." Sophia swung at me, but I saw it coming, spun to the side and pushed her arm away. I followed up with a punch to her side, on her ribs, which wasn't the ideal place to punch her but it was in reach.
I took a step back, put up my fists to protect my neck and chin, and tipped my head back just a little so my nose mostly protected my eyes. This is another move Brian had suggested. "Sophia, the truth is, you're a coward." Someone behind me reached past my shoulder and grabbed my wrist. I glanced - it was Emma. Of course.
"This is exactly what I mean - you can't even fight me without your friend holding me?" I yanked my arm down and up in a circular movement I'd seen in a video, making Emma lose her grip, then moved back into position, tipping my head back again.
"Leave her alone, Emma," Sophia growled.
I grinned at Sophia. "If you'd ever been in a real street fight you'd have run away crying in the first ten seconds."
I was trying to make Sophia angry enough so she'd be careless. But if anything, being angry seemed to sharpen her focus. Neither of us moved for several long seconds, then Sophia was on me, throwing punch after punch into my invulnerable nose, which I'd deliberately left open.
"What is that, your cape power? You've got an invulnerable nose?" jeered Emma. "That's the stupidest power ever."
"And yet still less sad than being a catalog model," I called back, keeping my eyes on Sophia as she turned to circle me. I mirrored her.
"Emma, shut up," said Sophia. "Hebert, you're a fucking idiot."
Sophia bent slightly at the knees and took a quarter-step forward - and just like that, I knew she was about to throw a punch Brian called a rear hook from her right arm. As she began her swing, I was already shooting my left arm forward, putting my palm against her bicep so her arm couldn't swing forward. Almost at the same instant I plunged my right fist into her nose.
Sophia took a couple of steps back, touched a finger under her nose, and held up her finger to see. There was a little blood.
I smirked the smirk of victory at her. She glared at me, spread her arms, and just full-on tackled me from a yard away. I pushed down on her shoulders, but I wasn't strong enough to stop her charge.
I hadn't realized my back was to a wall of lockers. But I sure realized it when Sophia's tackle slammed me into the lockers, much harder than I would have guessed. It felt like my body shut off for a second except for whatever part of my body is in charge of telling me when things hurt, and that part was wide awake and screaming like a banshee chorus. I fell to the floor, and immediately felt Sophia's boot driving into my stomach.
Sophia kicked me a few more times as I curled up, trying to protect my head, which just encouraged her to kick my ribs more. Then she crouched close to me, which I barely saw through my protective arms, and hissed "there's a lesson for you, Hebert - fighting is more than just boxing. No charge."
Apparently satisfied, Sophia and Emma left. I wasn't looking up, but I heard Emma call "Bye, Taylor! You should be more careful about what you say to Julia, I'd hate to see you hurt!"
I sat up a couple of minutes later, with my back against the lockers.
How long had that fight even lasted? Ninety seconds?
My last fight with Sophia had lasted maybe ten seconds. I'm improving, I thought. Sooner or later, I'd fucking kick Sophia's ass.
-------------------------
Wednesday, February 9, 2011 (one week later)
The protesters had been outside Winslow every day for a week, and they'd even been picked up by local news. On the third day of protests, I'd told Mr. Haller that the protests were started by someone attempting to ruin my life, and offered to quit the theater club. Haller turned me down flat.
Although "turned me down flat" may be misleading, because that phrase implies that Haller turned me down quickly. That was not even remotely true. He turned me down at what someone who wasn't a member of the Winslow High Theater Club would find a startling length, going on for several minutes, and ending by quoting Shakespeare - "For courage mounteth with occasion. Let them be welcome, then. We are prepared."
So rather than saying "Haller turned me down flat" I'll say "Haller turned me down fulsomely."
We spent half of that week auditioning. Not me, of course - I'd rather have pepper-sprayed Dog Girl's favorite puppy than acted in a play - but all the other theater kids auditioned, even Sparky. And that Friday, Haller gathered the whole theater club together in a part of the surprisingly large and warren-like backstage area, where folding tables and chairs were set up for Haller's rare classroom-style lectures and also for announcements.
This time, it was an announcement. "I've posted the cast list for Little Shop of Horrors on my office door," said Mr Haller.
Immediately all the students but me jumped to their feet and began rushing off. "No! Stop, you animals!" said Haller, raising his voice and miming a whip, and everyone stopped mid-step and stared beseechingly at the old man.
Haller rolled his eyes. "Fine, then. Go! But you'll never get the benefits of the very astute advice I was about to give! Your lives are forever benighted!" he yelled, and by the time he finished his sentence he was yelling at their backs. In seconds, he and I were the only people remaining.
Haller dropped his bulk into the chair across from me and folded his hands together on the formica table. "Taylor, while we have this moment of relative peace, I noticed you didn't audition for any parts. Not a fan of Little Shop of Horrors?"
"Uh, I mean, I'm not not a fan of it. It's just that, standing on stage, being stared at by people, that was horrifying to me even before my nose happened."
"Yes, I remember. Curiously, despite your accident, you seem less shy now than you were the first time we met. Much less."
"I mean, that's true. I'm feeling much better these days. And anyway, I've sort of lost the option of fading into the background." I gestured towards my nose. "But I'm still not ready to stand on a stage while hundreds of people watch."
"'Hundreds'? From your lips to God's ears. I'll consider it a surefire genuine walk-away hit if we manage to sell thirty tickets. But putting that aside, as you're not auditioning for a role, have you considered what your role in this production will be? You need to do something - this is a theater club, not an arcade or mall or a… a hashish den or wherever teenage ne'er-do-wells such as yourself congregate."
Haller was like that - he never used five words when he could use thirty. At one point Celia had told me that Haller loved only two things, the theater and the sound of his own voice, and there was some truth to that. But honestly, I enjoyed Haller's voice - it was rich and rolling, like a stage actor, which made sense since I assumed "theater teacher" was another word for "failed stage actor."
Even if I hadn't found him kind of funny, Haller had given me a place in Winslow where I could belong. The very least I could offer him in return was a bit of patience.
I shrugged. "Well… the school says I'm not allowed to do the lighting anymore."
"Yes, I know. Principal Blackwell was particularly insistent, one might even say threatening, on that point. But there's more to theater than just lighting. For example, I was thinking that you would make a marvelous stage manager."
"Stage manager? Um, I don't really know what that means."
"As a stage manager, you'll have the power and the glory, forever and ever." He smiled impishly, which told me that whatever he just said was a reference to… something.
"Is that a reference to something?" I asked. Haller looked weary for a moment, in that old person way.
"Forget that. Even better, stage managers get clipboards. And a clipboard means you'll be the one administrating everything."
"Everything?"
"Very close to everything. You'd still have to maintain a pretense of listening to what I say. At rehearsals, you'll act as my assistant. But during the actual performances, you'll be the one running things backstage. Costumes, sets, actors - you'll be making sure they're all where they should when they should be. And you'll do it all while remaining invisible to the audience."
"That sounds like kinda a lot."
"Oh, it is a lot, Taylor. More than a lot. You'd be more crucial to our production than the lead actors, but never let the actors know that, they're very fragile. You'll feel like you're being called on to do thirty things at once thirty times a day. But once you've pulled it off -- I promise you, you'll feel like there's nothing in the world you can't accomplish."
After that, I could hardly say no. Besides, Haller was right - I needed to be doing something in theater, and Obi was already running the sound board. Haller provisioned me with a bright red clipboard and a xeroxed copy of the script, and told me to read through it making notes for every scene and costume change, and to start thinking about how to make a giant moving plant happen on stage.
As I was absorbing that, I could hear the other students returning. I braced myself a second before Charlotte threw herself at my back, wrapping her arms around me in a tackle hug. Fortunately, my bruises from Sophia had healed already. "Taaaylor! I'm going to play Audry!"
"Oh, cool," I said, extracting myself from Charlotte's hug and turning to face her. "Is that a good part?"
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[Maui]
What can I say except "You're welcome!"?
[/Maui]
JCSS is a very good reference given whom they're dealing with right now.
Also, I'm just saying... The Producers is right there.
I'm not sure what you mean, because I actually haven't seen The Producers yet. :-( I wasn't in a position to see it when it was on Broadway. There's the 2005 film, but I've been told that it seriously fails to capture the spark of the musical. I guess I could look for a bootleg?
(I've seen the original movie, of course. The only song I remember from that is "Springtime for Hitler," which is amazing.)
I meant it's a really good musical to adapt for the E88
"Oh it's springtime for Kaiser, and Brockton Bay too!"
They can even do it in secret if they don't want to poke the nazis again, of course, which may be the wisest idea right now.
Chapter 13: At Last My Arm Is Complete Again (An afternoon at the Boardwalk, part 1 of 3)
Saturday, February 19, 2011 (a week and a half later).
Somehow my life had become terribly busy.
Preparations for Little Shop were taking up my free periods during school and two hours after school every weekday. After that, on Mondays and Thursdays, I'd rush to the gym for fighting lessons from Brian, who I thought was quite a good teacher. And it seemed to me he was enjoying teaching, too. Charlotte, through a liberal application of begging and puppy dog eyes, had persuaded me to spend most of my remaining afternoons reading lines with her - "Audry," as it turned out, was a leading and therefore very large role, a fact that made Charlotte veer dizzyingly between frightened and thrilled.
The Saturday after Haller posted the cast list, Charlotte wasn't available for rehearsing because she'd promised her mother she'd help straighten a closet, an obligation Charlotte spoke of with the grimness of a soldier called to the front lines. Since that left me with some free time, Celia and Wendy told me I was basically obligated to hang out with them. Having friends, I was discovering, was sort of a time suck, but so much better than the alternative had been for me. I suggested that we meet at the Boardwalk.
My suggestion had an ulterior motive - I had two tasks I needed to do, both on the Boardwalk. One task was theater club business but the first task was my own business.
As I walked up to the Moon Entrance to the Boardway, I was unsurprised to see Brother Jude standing on the platform under the giant moon mural, waving a newspaper and shouting his homophobic gibberish at a little crowd that had gathered. It was unsurprising because Brother Jude was there literally every day, all day, hogging the stage and not letting anyone else on. The crowd seemed like a mix of people who'd stopped to laugh at Jude and a few listening more earnestly.
"And you know, you KNOW!" shouted Brother Jude, "they are going after our children! Just yesterday, I read in the paper that they've got an avowed gay 'theater teacher' at Winslow High!" Something in the way Jude pronounced "teacher" made it clear that by teacher he meant pervert or maybe even pimp. "I don't think a person like that - a hoe moe sex yew awl - should be allowed to spread his sickness in our schools!"
I ducked my head and turned away from Brother Jude as I walked past, not wanting him to focus on me. Once I was through the arch I fast-walked down the boardwalk to make Jude's grating tirade fade that much quicker. It was a sunny Saturday, and there were a lot of people out enjoying the boardwalk, strolling families and clusters of giggling teenagers. I recognized some faces from Winslow, but most of them were unfamiliar to me.
As I walked, I could see people around me stop as they spotted my nose, some gasping, some just silently gaping. One woman dropped her bags.
It's fine. They're not malicious, just surprised, I told myself. This was something I'd been saying to myself regularly, almost a mantra. I reminded myself to walk with my head up but realized I already was. It helped that I liked the outfit I was wearing.
I was wearing black jeans and a black t-shirt, not skintight but tight enough to avoid bagginess. The jeans and shirt were just there as necessary background for my new vest.
The vest was a deep but saturated red - a color I could imagine royalty wearing. It was longer than most vests, hanging down past my hips with a red fringe at the bottom, and with a brocade pattern done in gold-colored thread. Best of all, the vest was light and long enough that if I jumped just right it billowed beautifully.
Dad had gifted me the vest a few days earlier. He hadn't even bought it for an occasion - he'd just been picking up some stuff in the mall, noticed the vest displayed in a store window, "and it just reminded me of how you've been dressing with more color lately."
I pulled the vest out of the bag Dad had handed me and just gaped. It was the most beautiful piece of clothing I'd ever owned. Dad, misunderstanding my silence, said "If you don't like it I can return it," and I immediately hugged it protectively to my chest and mock-growled at Dad. Then I hugged him hard enough to knock him back a couple of steps.
Given my plans for this day, there was no choice - the vest had to be worn.
The water-facing side of the Boardwalk had little mini-rest areas at regular intervals - little patches of grass with wooden benches facing the water. At one of these rest areas, I stopped to watch two college-age guys dueling with swords made of plastic pipes wrapped with thick gray padding and held together with duct tape. The shorter of them, a chubby guy with large dark eyes, spotted me and was so startled he dropped his guard and was immediately "stabbed" on the chest by his friend.
He kept staring, and I smiled at him. Suddenly realizing he was being rude, he said "I'm sorry, I was just- just… are you okay?"
"It's okay, it's just Pinnochio's disease. It happens anytime I lie," I lied. "Can you show me those swords? How do you use them?"
------------------------------
Sarah Pelham - or, rather, Lady Photon, since she was in costume - shifted from foot to foot and glanced down at the flier in her hands. "I can do this," she muttered softly - but apparently not softly enough, because Vicky immediately said "of course you can, Aunt Sarah! You'll see, this is going to be awesome!"
Vicky, who was in uniform as Glory Girl - Sarah's entire family was here in uniform, even Amy, who Sarah knew would have preferred being reclusive - picked up a hardcover book and held its cover up to show Sarah. Even though Sarah, by now, had already seen the cover a hundred times. "Look at what you've done," continued Vicky. "It's amazing! You're going to be famous. Er, famouser"
Across the top of the cover were the words "Sarah "Lady Photon" Pelham." And below that, in slightly larger letters, the title: Capes, Kids, and Coffee: My Life as a Hero Mom. And below that was a close-up photo of Sarah herself, dressed in her Lady Photon uniform while holding a tray of chocolate chip cookies, smiling as warmly as she could at the camera.
The book title, trite as it was, had been born from countless hours of arguments. Her publisher and her agent had wanted the book to simply be entitled "Photon Mom," which they felt would help sales. But "Photon Mom" was a nickname Sarah had quietly come to loathe over the years. She was proud of being a mother and of being a hero, and she thought her book actually said some real things about how hard it was for modern women to find a healthy work/family balance, but "Photon Mom" seemed to trivialize both sides of her identity.
So Sarah had put her foot down - "Photon Mom" was out. Then the publisher shared a quick-and-dirty phone survey their marketing team had conducted, which showed that Sarah was far more famous as "Photon Mom" than as either Sarah Pelham or Lady Photon, and in fact 63% of book consumers who could identify her at all thought "Photon Mom" was her official cape name. (A finding that Sarah would have, if she had her way, which clearly she didn't, preferred to go her entire life without knowing.)
Armed with the survey, the publisher had insisted "Tales from Photon Mom" was the perfect book title. Sarah's agent agreed. "Sales are sales. Don't you want royalties?" And she did. But she just couldn't sign on to calling herself "Photon Mom" on her own book cover. The very idea was humiliating.
So, the compromise. The phrase "Photon Mom" was, technically at least, not on the cover. But the words "Photon" and "Mom" were both printed in bright glowing yellow, while all the other words had more sedate colors. As a result, anyone glancing at the book would see "Photon Mom" first, and the actual title of the book second.
"You BITCH!" somebody yelled. Sarah looked around for the source of the yelling. Am I under attack? Crazed fan?
But the man creating the disturbance hadn't come for Sarah; he was screaming at Amy. He was muscular, in chinos and a gray polo shirt. Two store employees tried to pull him away, but he shook them off and charged at Amy "It would take you five seconds! FIVE SECONDS to SAVE MY LIFE!"
Victoria flew into his path and hovered, arms crossed, and the man bounced off her like he'd hit a wall.
"Neal, would you mind?" Sarah said to her husband, who was already standing up. Noticing Victoria had raised a fist, Sarah called out "Glory Girl, no." Vicky gave Sarah an annoyed glance but unclenched her fist. Neal, also known as Manpower, gently and effortlessly picked the man up and slung him over a shoulder.
As Neal carried the struggling man away, the man reached an arm out towards Amy. "I give my permission," he screeched. "Just fucking fix it!"
Then Neal exited the store, presumably to find some of the Boardwalk's enforcers, and all was quiet. The employees picked up some books that had been knocked over while Victoria comforted Amy. Amy seemed more angry than frightened, and from the glare she gave Sarah, Sarah suspected that it would be months before Amy would agree to another public appearance.
Neal returned and sat next to Sarah. "What did he want Amy to cure?" she whispered. "Cancer?"
Neal shook his head. "It was his chin. He said his chin isn't shaped right and it's ruining his life."
"But - he looked perfectly normal," Sarah said, puzzled. Neal just shrugged.
After a while, a fat, cheerful man with a Van Dyke beard clapped his hands for attention and said "listen up heroes!" This was the assistant manager of the bookstore, who exuded a sort of chipper competence, and although he'd introduced himself earlier Sarah couldn't recall his name. "Time to take your places! Everyone but Photon Mom take a seat on the folding chairs here, behind the podium. Just sit and watch Photon Mom while she reads, and no, I cannot stress this enough, no cell phones. I'll say it again: No no no cell phones. Then after the reading, move to the signing tables on the far side of the room, and sit behind the placecard with your name."
--------------------------
A fifteen minute boffer ("boffer" was what they called their foam swords) lesson later, I was walking in the direction of the bookstore feeling very pleased. Holding a sword - even one made up of pvc pipe and foam - had just felt right. A line from a musical Charlotte had shown me passed through my mind - "at last, my arm is complete again" - when my thoughts were interrupted by a loud guffaw, and inwardly I winced, knowing that it was about me.
Then a more rational part of my mind said Hold on, it's not always about me. It could have been about anything.
Then a teen male voice loudly called "holy crap, would you look at that girl's NOSE?"
Okay, maybe it is about me.
He'd been so loud that people did, indeed, stop to look. Part of me wanted to cringe and hide, but I ruthlessly pushed that feeling into a deep mental hole. I didn't want to be that me anymore. Instead, I slowly turned to look at the heckler, taking care to keep my body language relaxed and casual. He was a good looking teen boy, taller and broader than me, with an unfortunate blonde dye job with almost an inch of brown hair showing at the roots.
I turned and walked up to the heckler and smiled up at him. "Yes? You have something to say?"
"Your nose!"
"Yes…?"
"It's, uh… It's bigger than my head!" he said, loud for the crowd, and laughed at his own wit. I braced myself for the waves of laughter and jeering. But the crowd didn't laugh and didn't jeer, and I realized that wouldn't be coming, because as it turns out the entire world isn't Winslow. Even the teens he was hanging out with just chuckled politely, looking if anything a bit embarrassed.
I looked pointedly down at his crotch until the chuckling died out. Then I said, not yelling but projecting, "You're right, your head is small. Don't give up, it's what you do with it that counts." A few people in the crowd laughed - much louder than his friends had laughed at his joke - and his face turned almost as red as my vest. I patted him on the shoulder and walked away, grinning as soon as my back was to him.
(A few months earlier I couldn't have told a penis based joke if someone had paid me. Not that I hadn't heard much dirtier jokes - most of Dad's friends were dockworkers, a group that, once a couple of drinks were poured into them, leaned hard into their reputation for strong language - but I had never been the one telling the jokes. Now sometimes I was. Hanging out with the theater kids was expanding my boundaries.)
(I still couldn't say the C-word without turning red, a fact that caused Spencer and Drina to frequently try to trick me into saying it through silly bets and asking me to read sentences aloud.)
I walked along the Boardwalk, nodding genially at occasional strangers gaping at my nose. One person came up to ask me about my nose, but then lost courage halfway through asking: "Excuse me, miss, I hope you don't mind my asking, but… uh… I mean, how did…"
I smiled at her. "Yes?" "Your, uh, your…" "My vest? Yes, isn't it wonderful? It was a gift from my Dad."
She blinked, and then just turned around and walked away without another word.
These sorts of encounters happened fairly regularly when I was in public (although three in a row like this was a bit unusual). I didn't mind when children asked me about my nose, but it always seemed a bit rude for grown adults - total strangers - to ask. Although people as over-the-top rude as the "bigger than my head" idiot were actually pretty rare.
I came to a stop in front of the Aldenboo bookstore. I pulled two fliers I'd found at the library out of my pocket. The first had a big heading saying "Puppet Show Saturday!" I shoved that one back in my pocket, and reread the other flier, an advertisement for a book signing at the Aldenboo. (The Aldenboo had been a Waldenbooks before that chain went out of business. The new owner, rather than spending money on a new sign, strategically painted out three letters and christened the store "Aldenboo.")
I can do this, I told myself.
--------------------
Vicky, with some effort, managed to fake being alert and interested for the entire reading (Aunt Sarah wasn't a boring reader, but it was nothing Vicky hadn't heard before). She almost hoped for crime to break out just to give her an excuse to leave, but not really, because she knew Aunt Sarah wanted this to go well. Vicky considered herself nothing if not a team player, and the whole family was here to support Sarah (and to help draw in more customers).
She scanned the audience for her boyfriend Dean and, seeing him in the second row, gave him a wink. Dean had neatly parted soft-looking hair and was wearing a sweater she had chosen for him, not form fitting enough to be silly, but tight enough to emphasize the perfect triangle shape of his torso. Broad at the shoulder, narrow at the waist, nice on my eyes. He smiled back at her.
Spotting a small movement of Amy's arm, Vicky reached over and put one hand gently but immovably around Amy's wrist. Amy froze and huffed, her cell phone in her hand but her hand stuck in her pocket. She glared at Vicky - let me go! - and Vicky made a tiny movement of her head in Aunt Sarah's direction - pay attention!
Amy sighed, and Vicky could feel her sister gently release the phone. Vicky in turn released Amy's wrist.
Vicky turned her head a bit to see if the assistant manager with the van dyke beard had spotted Amy's infraction. Apparently he had, since he nodded at Vicky and gave her a small thumbs up.
After the reading (which seemed to go well), the audience applauded and a crowd immediately sprung up around Aunt Sarah. Vicky found Dean and took his hand, dragging him to the signing table area. Checking the little placards, Vicky found that she and Amy were sharing a table in the far corner. "Amy!" she called. "Ames, we're over here!"
Amy slouched to the table, the formality of her white Panacea robes somewhat belied by the worn blue backpack hanging off one shoulder, pulling her whole outfit askew. She dumped her backpack on the floor under the table, pulled her hood forward enough to partly hide her face, and collapsed into her assigned chair like she was planning to never move again. A few moments later, Amy suddenly leaned forward, picked up her backpack again and searched thought it until she found a laminated sheet of paper, which crinkled loudly as she pulled it out. Amy slapped the paper on the table in front of her.
The sheet said, in large letters in Carol Dallon's writing:
ATTENTION. Panacea CANNOT take requests for healing. DO NOT ASK. Do not follow Panacea. STALKING IS A CRIME. If you need Panacea's help, contact Brockton Bay Hospital Center East and inquire about the Panacea waitlist. New Wave thanks you for your understanding.
With that accomplished, Amy dropped her backpack and slouched once more, eyes glaring at the crowd as if she was daring anyone to approach. Which of course they would, since this was an autograph event and Amy was arguably the most famous member of New Wave. Everyone in New Wave was Brockton Bay famous, but sick people came from all over to see Amy - sometimes from as far away as Europe.
"Excuse me? Miss Girl?" said a child''s voice. Vicky turned her head. A young girl, maybe nine years old, was holding out BAY TODAY, a glossy magazine about Brockton Bay. The issue was about a year old; on the cover was a photo of Glory Girl, just taking off, one fist thrust into the air. Vicky remembered that she had to jump into flight forty times before the photographer was satisfied with how her hair flowed. A caption on the cover said, in large letters, "Mine Eyes Have Seen The GLORY!"
Vicky picked up one of the half-dozen sharpies lying on their table, and smiled at the girl. "Just call me Glory Girl. What's your name, sweetie?"
Despite the sternly worded sign, by an hour into the signing event two people had begged Amy for on-the-spot healing, one with so much insistence that Dean had come around from behind the table to gently escort the person away. The man screaming earlier had been extreme, but people begging for help happened almost every time Amy made a scheduled public appearance. Which was a shame, not just because so many people were sick and desperate and dying of cancer (which was a shame as well, of course), but because Amy had entirely the wrong personality for being buttonholed by desperate strangers every time she appeared in public.
Amy could have just healed them, of course, and a lot of people didn't understand why she didn't. But if word got out that Amy healed any sick person who walked, limped or rolled up to her in public, Amy would never be able to leave the house without being mobbed. Sometimes Vicky thought that New Wave's "no masks" policy wasn't a good match for Amy's… Well, for Amy's anything.
"Vicky, heads up." Dean was standing behind Vicky's chair, and had leaned over to whisper in her ear. His voice sounded both amused and empathetic. "Look, normally I wouldn't say anything, but that girl over there, with the red jacket thing? She has a crush. I mean, a ridiculously huge crush. So be really nice when you talk to her, okay?"
"Tch. I'm always nice," replied Vicky. Amy snorted. Looking towards the girl Dean indicated, the first thing Vicky noticed was the girl's vermilion red vest, cut long, which was a good choice for her lanky frame. She had her head tipped forward while she paged through a book, her long hair forming a curtain that hid her face. Her hair was really nice - dark, thick and curly. If a random girl is going to crush on me, at least it's a cute one.
Then the girl looked up from the book, glancing around the room, and Vicky heard Dean's sharp intake of breath as they both saw the girl's extraordinary nose. "Oh, I've met her," Vicky said. "In the hospital. I wouldn't normally remember, but in her case… That must be where she picked up a crush on me."
"Is… Is she a case 53?" Dean whispered.
"I don't think so. Shush, she's coming this way."
I guess they never found a fix for her nose, Vicky thought.Which makes sense, because if even Amy couldn't cure it… That poor girl. I can't even imagine how hard that must be. I should ask her to lunch. Or would that give her false hopes? As the big-nosed girl walked towards her, Vicky looked up at her and put on her warmest smile.
The girl walked past Vicky as if she hadn't seen her, stopping in front of Amy's half of the table with a heartbreakingly hopeful expression. "Panacea? Er, Amy? I don't know if you remember me? My name's Taylor."
-----------------------------
I instantly regretted saying that, because of course Amy remembered me. Since my fall from the catwalk, everyone who met me remembered me. It didn't even require actually meeting me - strangers who passed me on the sidewalk and saw me for two seconds remembered me. My graduation from merely unattractive to actively, hideously ugly had made me unforgettable.
Well, not me. Just my nose.
Almost the first words I'd heard, when I woke up in the hospital, had been Amy telling someone that there wasn't anything wrong with my nose. That wasn't exactly true, but it had been sweet of her to say. Could she have really meant it?
Amy blinked up at me. "You. Yeah, of course I remember you. Thanks so much for reminding me of one of my few failures."
"Oh, uh…"
"Listen, if you want me to try again, you have to put your name on the list." Amy tapped a laminated sign on the table in front of her. "You can't just walk up to me randomly in public to get me to heal your nose, which I can't do anyway."
"Oh, uh" I said while Glory Girl, Amy's sister, leaned over and whispered something into Amy's ear. I saw Amy roll her eyes. The sister - I knew from my onlinestalking researching of Amy that her sister was named Victoria - gave me an oddly happy smile as she withdrew.
"Okay, right, sure. Sorry if that was rude. Is there something else you wanted?"
"No, nothing else" I said, then caught myself. "I mean, that wasn't what I wanted at all. So I can't want something else beside it since I didn't want it in the first place."
I had been hoping for a less awkward conversation, but it was too late to quit now, so I pressed on.
"So, Amy - can I call you Amy?"
"I'm in my uniform right now, so no. You can call me Panacea."
"Oh, uh. Panacea." I swallowed. "Would you like to, um, go out for coffee sometime? Or tea? I mean, with me?"
Panacea looked taken aback. "What for?"
"Well, I mean, I'd just like to talk to you. Get to know you."
"So you've got a sick relative you'd like me to look at? An aunt with cancer or something?"
"No, no. I don't even like Aunt Mildred," I joked. "But, you did kind of save my life, and I'd like--"
"I save a lot of people's lives, okay?" she interrupted. "Did it occur to you that if I went out for coffee with them all I'd have no time left to have a life? Not that I do anyway, but did you even think about it?"
"Oh, um. I didn't. I'm sorry."
Her sister once again leaned over from her seat and whispered something into Amy's ear. Amy sighed wearily, and then looked at me with an insultingly fake grin. "Never mind, I'm here to be nice because we at New Wave love our public. May I give you an autograph?"
A minute later I fast-walked out of Aldenboo, staring at the floor with Amy's rejection still stinging my ears. I will not cry. I will not cry. I will NOT!
Somehow my life had become terribly busy.
Preparations for Little Shop were taking up my free periods during school and two hours after school every weekday. After that, on Mondays and Thursdays, I'd rush to the gym for fighting lessons from Brian, who I thought was quite a good teacher. And it seemed to me he was enjoying teaching, too. Charlotte, through a liberal application of begging and puppy dog eyes, had persuaded me to spend most of my remaining afternoons reading lines with her - "Audry," as it turned out, was a leading and therefore very large role, a fact that made Charlotte veer dizzyingly between frightened and thrilled.
The Saturday after Haller posted the cast list, Charlotte wasn't available for rehearsing because she'd promised her mother she'd help straighten a closet, an obligation Charlotte spoke of with the grimness of a soldier called to the front lines. Since that left me with some free time, Celia and Wendy told me I was basically obligated to hang out with them. Having friends, I was discovering, was sort of a time suck, but so much better than the alternative had been for me. I suggested that we meet at the Boardwalk.
My suggestion had an ulterior motive - I had two tasks I needed to do, both on the Boardwalk. One task was theater club business but the first task was my own business.
As I walked up to the Moon Entrance to the Boardway, I was unsurprised to see Brother Jude standing on the platform under the giant moon mural, waving a newspaper and shouting his homophobic gibberish at a little crowd that had gathered. It was unsurprising because Brother Jude was there literally every day, all day, hogging the stage and not letting anyone else on. The crowd seemed like a mix of people who'd stopped to laugh at Jude and a few listening more earnestly.
"And you know, you KNOW!" shouted Brother Jude, "they are going after our children! Just yesterday, I read in the paper that they've got an avowed gay 'theater teacher' at Winslow High!" Something in the way Jude pronounced "teacher" made it clear that by teacher he meant pervert or maybe even pimp. "I don't think a person like that - a hoe moe sex yew awl - should be allowed to spread his sickness in our schools!"
I ducked my head and turned away from Brother Jude as I walked past, not wanting him to focus on me. Once I was through the arch I fast-walked down the boardwalk to make Jude's grating tirade fade that much quicker. It was a sunny Saturday, and there were a lot of people out enjoying the boardwalk, strolling families and clusters of giggling teenagers. I recognized some faces from Winslow, but most of them were unfamiliar to me.
As I walked, I could see people around me stop as they spotted my nose, some gasping, some just silently gaping. One woman dropped her bags.
It's fine. They're not malicious, just surprised, I told myself. This was something I'd been saying to myself regularly, almost a mantra. I reminded myself to walk with my head up but realized I already was. It helped that I liked the outfit I was wearing.
I was wearing black jeans and a black t-shirt, not skintight but tight enough to avoid bagginess. The jeans and shirt were just there as necessary background for my new vest.
The vest was a deep but saturated red - a color I could imagine royalty wearing. It was longer than most vests, hanging down past my hips with a red fringe at the bottom, and with a brocade pattern done in gold-colored thread. Best of all, the vest was light and long enough that if I jumped just right it billowed beautifully.
Dad had gifted me the vest a few days earlier. He hadn't even bought it for an occasion - he'd just been picking up some stuff in the mall, noticed the vest displayed in a store window, "and it just reminded me of how you've been dressing with more color lately."
I pulled the vest out of the bag Dad had handed me and just gaped. It was the most beautiful piece of clothing I'd ever owned. Dad, misunderstanding my silence, said "If you don't like it I can return it," and I immediately hugged it protectively to my chest and mock-growled at Dad. Then I hugged him hard enough to knock him back a couple of steps.
Given my plans for this day, there was no choice - the vest had to be worn.
The water-facing side of the Boardwalk had little mini-rest areas at regular intervals - little patches of grass with wooden benches facing the water. At one of these rest areas, I stopped to watch two college-age guys dueling with swords made of plastic pipes wrapped with thick gray padding and held together with duct tape. The shorter of them, a chubby guy with large dark eyes, spotted me and was so startled he dropped his guard and was immediately "stabbed" on the chest by his friend.
He kept staring, and I smiled at him. Suddenly realizing he was being rude, he said "I'm sorry, I was just- just… are you okay?"
"It's okay, it's just Pinnochio's disease. It happens anytime I lie," I lied. "Can you show me those swords? How do you use them?"
------------------------------
Sarah Pelham - or, rather, Lady Photon, since she was in costume - shifted from foot to foot and glanced down at the flier in her hands. "I can do this," she muttered softly - but apparently not softly enough, because Vicky immediately said "of course you can, Aunt Sarah! You'll see, this is going to be awesome!"
Vicky, who was in uniform as Glory Girl - Sarah's entire family was here in uniform, even Amy, who Sarah knew would have preferred being reclusive - picked up a hardcover book and held its cover up to show Sarah. Even though Sarah, by now, had already seen the cover a hundred times. "Look at what you've done," continued Vicky. "It's amazing! You're going to be famous. Er, famouser"
Across the top of the cover were the words "Sarah "Lady Photon" Pelham." And below that, in slightly larger letters, the title: Capes, Kids, and Coffee: My Life as a Hero Mom. And below that was a close-up photo of Sarah herself, dressed in her Lady Photon uniform while holding a tray of chocolate chip cookies, smiling as warmly as she could at the camera.
The book title, trite as it was, had been born from countless hours of arguments. Her publisher and her agent had wanted the book to simply be entitled "Photon Mom," which they felt would help sales. But "Photon Mom" was a nickname Sarah had quietly come to loathe over the years. She was proud of being a mother and of being a hero, and she thought her book actually said some real things about how hard it was for modern women to find a healthy work/family balance, but "Photon Mom" seemed to trivialize both sides of her identity.
So Sarah had put her foot down - "Photon Mom" was out. Then the publisher shared a quick-and-dirty phone survey their marketing team had conducted, which showed that Sarah was far more famous as "Photon Mom" than as either Sarah Pelham or Lady Photon, and in fact 63% of book consumers who could identify her at all thought "Photon Mom" was her official cape name. (A finding that Sarah would have, if she had her way, which clearly she didn't, preferred to go her entire life without knowing.)
Armed with the survey, the publisher had insisted "Tales from Photon Mom" was the perfect book title. Sarah's agent agreed. "Sales are sales. Don't you want royalties?" And she did. But she just couldn't sign on to calling herself "Photon Mom" on her own book cover. The very idea was humiliating.
So, the compromise. The phrase "Photon Mom" was, technically at least, not on the cover. But the words "Photon" and "Mom" were both printed in bright glowing yellow, while all the other words had more sedate colors. As a result, anyone glancing at the book would see "Photon Mom" first, and the actual title of the book second.
"You BITCH!" somebody yelled. Sarah looked around for the source of the yelling. Am I under attack? Crazed fan?
But the man creating the disturbance hadn't come for Sarah; he was screaming at Amy. He was muscular, in chinos and a gray polo shirt. Two store employees tried to pull him away, but he shook them off and charged at Amy "It would take you five seconds! FIVE SECONDS to SAVE MY LIFE!"
Victoria flew into his path and hovered, arms crossed, and the man bounced off her like he'd hit a wall.
"Neal, would you mind?" Sarah said to her husband, who was already standing up. Noticing Victoria had raised a fist, Sarah called out "Glory Girl, no." Vicky gave Sarah an annoyed glance but unclenched her fist. Neal, also known as Manpower, gently and effortlessly picked the man up and slung him over a shoulder.
As Neal carried the struggling man away, the man reached an arm out towards Amy. "I give my permission," he screeched. "Just fucking fix it!"
Then Neal exited the store, presumably to find some of the Boardwalk's enforcers, and all was quiet. The employees picked up some books that had been knocked over while Victoria comforted Amy. Amy seemed more angry than frightened, and from the glare she gave Sarah, Sarah suspected that it would be months before Amy would agree to another public appearance.
Neal returned and sat next to Sarah. "What did he want Amy to cure?" she whispered. "Cancer?"
Neal shook his head. "It was his chin. He said his chin isn't shaped right and it's ruining his life."
"But - he looked perfectly normal," Sarah said, puzzled. Neal just shrugged.
After a while, a fat, cheerful man with a Van Dyke beard clapped his hands for attention and said "listen up heroes!" This was the assistant manager of the bookstore, who exuded a sort of chipper competence, and although he'd introduced himself earlier Sarah couldn't recall his name. "Time to take your places! Everyone but Photon Mom take a seat on the folding chairs here, behind the podium. Just sit and watch Photon Mom while she reads, and no, I cannot stress this enough, no cell phones. I'll say it again: No no no cell phones. Then after the reading, move to the signing tables on the far side of the room, and sit behind the placecard with your name."
--------------------------
A fifteen minute boffer ("boffer" was what they called their foam swords) lesson later, I was walking in the direction of the bookstore feeling very pleased. Holding a sword - even one made up of pvc pipe and foam - had just felt right. A line from a musical Charlotte had shown me passed through my mind - "at last, my arm is complete again" - when my thoughts were interrupted by a loud guffaw, and inwardly I winced, knowing that it was about me.
Then a more rational part of my mind said Hold on, it's not always about me. It could have been about anything.
Then a teen male voice loudly called "holy crap, would you look at that girl's NOSE?"
Okay, maybe it is about me.
He'd been so loud that people did, indeed, stop to look. Part of me wanted to cringe and hide, but I ruthlessly pushed that feeling into a deep mental hole. I didn't want to be that me anymore. Instead, I slowly turned to look at the heckler, taking care to keep my body language relaxed and casual. He was a good looking teen boy, taller and broader than me, with an unfortunate blonde dye job with almost an inch of brown hair showing at the roots.
I turned and walked up to the heckler and smiled up at him. "Yes? You have something to say?"
"Your nose!"
"Yes…?"
"It's, uh… It's bigger than my head!" he said, loud for the crowd, and laughed at his own wit. I braced myself for the waves of laughter and jeering. But the crowd didn't laugh and didn't jeer, and I realized that wouldn't be coming, because as it turns out the entire world isn't Winslow. Even the teens he was hanging out with just chuckled politely, looking if anything a bit embarrassed.
I looked pointedly down at his crotch until the chuckling died out. Then I said, not yelling but projecting, "You're right, your head is small. Don't give up, it's what you do with it that counts." A few people in the crowd laughed - much louder than his friends had laughed at his joke - and his face turned almost as red as my vest. I patted him on the shoulder and walked away, grinning as soon as my back was to him.
(A few months earlier I couldn't have told a penis based joke if someone had paid me. Not that I hadn't heard much dirtier jokes - most of Dad's friends were dockworkers, a group that, once a couple of drinks were poured into them, leaned hard into their reputation for strong language - but I had never been the one telling the jokes. Now sometimes I was. Hanging out with the theater kids was expanding my boundaries.)
(I still couldn't say the C-word without turning red, a fact that caused Spencer and Drina to frequently try to trick me into saying it through silly bets and asking me to read sentences aloud.)
I walked along the Boardwalk, nodding genially at occasional strangers gaping at my nose. One person came up to ask me about my nose, but then lost courage halfway through asking: "Excuse me, miss, I hope you don't mind my asking, but… uh… I mean, how did…"
I smiled at her. "Yes?" "Your, uh, your…" "My vest? Yes, isn't it wonderful? It was a gift from my Dad."
She blinked, and then just turned around and walked away without another word.
These sorts of encounters happened fairly regularly when I was in public (although three in a row like this was a bit unusual). I didn't mind when children asked me about my nose, but it always seemed a bit rude for grown adults - total strangers - to ask. Although people as over-the-top rude as the "bigger than my head" idiot were actually pretty rare.
I came to a stop in front of the Aldenboo bookstore. I pulled two fliers I'd found at the library out of my pocket. The first had a big heading saying "Puppet Show Saturday!" I shoved that one back in my pocket, and reread the other flier, an advertisement for a book signing at the Aldenboo. (The Aldenboo had been a Waldenbooks before that chain went out of business. The new owner, rather than spending money on a new sign, strategically painted out three letters and christened the store "Aldenboo.")
I can do this, I told myself.
--------------------
Vicky, with some effort, managed to fake being alert and interested for the entire reading (Aunt Sarah wasn't a boring reader, but it was nothing Vicky hadn't heard before). She almost hoped for crime to break out just to give her an excuse to leave, but not really, because she knew Aunt Sarah wanted this to go well. Vicky considered herself nothing if not a team player, and the whole family was here to support Sarah (and to help draw in more customers).
She scanned the audience for her boyfriend Dean and, seeing him in the second row, gave him a wink. Dean had neatly parted soft-looking hair and was wearing a sweater she had chosen for him, not form fitting enough to be silly, but tight enough to emphasize the perfect triangle shape of his torso. Broad at the shoulder, narrow at the waist, nice on my eyes. He smiled back at her.
Spotting a small movement of Amy's arm, Vicky reached over and put one hand gently but immovably around Amy's wrist. Amy froze and huffed, her cell phone in her hand but her hand stuck in her pocket. She glared at Vicky - let me go! - and Vicky made a tiny movement of her head in Aunt Sarah's direction - pay attention!
Amy sighed, and Vicky could feel her sister gently release the phone. Vicky in turn released Amy's wrist.
Vicky turned her head a bit to see if the assistant manager with the van dyke beard had spotted Amy's infraction. Apparently he had, since he nodded at Vicky and gave her a small thumbs up.
After the reading (which seemed to go well), the audience applauded and a crowd immediately sprung up around Aunt Sarah. Vicky found Dean and took his hand, dragging him to the signing table area. Checking the little placards, Vicky found that she and Amy were sharing a table in the far corner. "Amy!" she called. "Ames, we're over here!"
Amy slouched to the table, the formality of her white Panacea robes somewhat belied by the worn blue backpack hanging off one shoulder, pulling her whole outfit askew. She dumped her backpack on the floor under the table, pulled her hood forward enough to partly hide her face, and collapsed into her assigned chair like she was planning to never move again. A few moments later, Amy suddenly leaned forward, picked up her backpack again and searched thought it until she found a laminated sheet of paper, which crinkled loudly as she pulled it out. Amy slapped the paper on the table in front of her.
The sheet said, in large letters in Carol Dallon's writing:
ATTENTION. Panacea CANNOT take requests for healing. DO NOT ASK. Do not follow Panacea. STALKING IS A CRIME. If you need Panacea's help, contact Brockton Bay Hospital Center East and inquire about the Panacea waitlist. New Wave thanks you for your understanding.
With that accomplished, Amy dropped her backpack and slouched once more, eyes glaring at the crowd as if she was daring anyone to approach. Which of course they would, since this was an autograph event and Amy was arguably the most famous member of New Wave. Everyone in New Wave was Brockton Bay famous, but sick people came from all over to see Amy - sometimes from as far away as Europe.
"Excuse me? Miss Girl?" said a child''s voice. Vicky turned her head. A young girl, maybe nine years old, was holding out BAY TODAY, a glossy magazine about Brockton Bay. The issue was about a year old; on the cover was a photo of Glory Girl, just taking off, one fist thrust into the air. Vicky remembered that she had to jump into flight forty times before the photographer was satisfied with how her hair flowed. A caption on the cover said, in large letters, "Mine Eyes Have Seen The GLORY!"
Vicky picked up one of the half-dozen sharpies lying on their table, and smiled at the girl. "Just call me Glory Girl. What's your name, sweetie?"
Despite the sternly worded sign, by an hour into the signing event two people had begged Amy for on-the-spot healing, one with so much insistence that Dean had come around from behind the table to gently escort the person away. The man screaming earlier had been extreme, but people begging for help happened almost every time Amy made a scheduled public appearance. Which was a shame, not just because so many people were sick and desperate and dying of cancer (which was a shame as well, of course), but because Amy had entirely the wrong personality for being buttonholed by desperate strangers every time she appeared in public.
Amy could have just healed them, of course, and a lot of people didn't understand why she didn't. But if word got out that Amy healed any sick person who walked, limped or rolled up to her in public, Amy would never be able to leave the house without being mobbed. Sometimes Vicky thought that New Wave's "no masks" policy wasn't a good match for Amy's… Well, for Amy's anything.
"Vicky, heads up." Dean was standing behind Vicky's chair, and had leaned over to whisper in her ear. His voice sounded both amused and empathetic. "Look, normally I wouldn't say anything, but that girl over there, with the red jacket thing? She has a crush. I mean, a ridiculously huge crush. So be really nice when you talk to her, okay?"
"Tch. I'm always nice," replied Vicky. Amy snorted. Looking towards the girl Dean indicated, the first thing Vicky noticed was the girl's vermilion red vest, cut long, which was a good choice for her lanky frame. She had her head tipped forward while she paged through a book, her long hair forming a curtain that hid her face. Her hair was really nice - dark, thick and curly. If a random girl is going to crush on me, at least it's a cute one.
Then the girl looked up from the book, glancing around the room, and Vicky heard Dean's sharp intake of breath as they both saw the girl's extraordinary nose. "Oh, I've met her," Vicky said. "In the hospital. I wouldn't normally remember, but in her case… That must be where she picked up a crush on me."
"Is… Is she a case 53?" Dean whispered.
"I don't think so. Shush, she's coming this way."
I guess they never found a fix for her nose, Vicky thought.Which makes sense, because if even Amy couldn't cure it… That poor girl. I can't even imagine how hard that must be. I should ask her to lunch. Or would that give her false hopes? As the big-nosed girl walked towards her, Vicky looked up at her and put on her warmest smile.
The girl walked past Vicky as if she hadn't seen her, stopping in front of Amy's half of the table with a heartbreakingly hopeful expression. "Panacea? Er, Amy? I don't know if you remember me? My name's Taylor."
-----------------------------
I instantly regretted saying that, because of course Amy remembered me. Since my fall from the catwalk, everyone who met me remembered me. It didn't even require actually meeting me - strangers who passed me on the sidewalk and saw me for two seconds remembered me. My graduation from merely unattractive to actively, hideously ugly had made me unforgettable.
Well, not me. Just my nose.
Almost the first words I'd heard, when I woke up in the hospital, had been Amy telling someone that there wasn't anything wrong with my nose. That wasn't exactly true, but it had been sweet of her to say. Could she have really meant it?
Amy blinked up at me. "You. Yeah, of course I remember you. Thanks so much for reminding me of one of my few failures."
"Oh, uh…"
"Listen, if you want me to try again, you have to put your name on the list." Amy tapped a laminated sign on the table in front of her. "You can't just walk up to me randomly in public to get me to heal your nose, which I can't do anyway."
"Oh, uh" I said while Glory Girl, Amy's sister, leaned over and whispered something into Amy's ear. I saw Amy roll her eyes. The sister - I knew from my online
"Okay, right, sure. Sorry if that was rude. Is there something else you wanted?"
"No, nothing else" I said, then caught myself. "I mean, that wasn't what I wanted at all. So I can't want something else beside it since I didn't want it in the first place."
I had been hoping for a less awkward conversation, but it was too late to quit now, so I pressed on.
"So, Amy - can I call you Amy?"
"I'm in my uniform right now, so no. You can call me Panacea."
"Oh, uh. Panacea." I swallowed. "Would you like to, um, go out for coffee sometime? Or tea? I mean, with me?"
Panacea looked taken aback. "What for?"
"Well, I mean, I'd just like to talk to you. Get to know you."
"So you've got a sick relative you'd like me to look at? An aunt with cancer or something?"
"No, no. I don't even like Aunt Mildred," I joked. "But, you did kind of save my life, and I'd like--"
"I save a lot of people's lives, okay?" she interrupted. "Did it occur to you that if I went out for coffee with them all I'd have no time left to have a life? Not that I do anyway, but did you even think about it?"
"Oh, um. I didn't. I'm sorry."
Her sister once again leaned over from her seat and whispered something into Amy's ear. Amy sighed wearily, and then looked at me with an insultingly fake grin. "Never mind, I'm here to be nice because we at New Wave love our public. May I give you an autograph?"
A minute later I fast-walked out of Aldenboo, staring at the floor with Amy's rejection still stinging my ears. I will not cry. I will not cry. I will NOT!
- Location
- Attached to a wall
- Pronouns
- She/Her
🫡
Straightening closets is an important skill for all non-cishet's who need to infiltrate the general society of brockton bay.
Taylor's aware that but for the gold she's wearing Empire colours, right?
Also, it's just so in character for Dean and Vicky to assume the crush is on Vicky (though, honestly, they could have assumed it was on him due to heteronormativity) and for Amy to assume that, when Taylor asked her on a date, she was angling for healing. Because everyone, especially Amy, sees that as the only value she has to offer.
Yipes! Not only did Taylor not think of that, I didn't think of that. I chose the colors because red and black are a very common color scheme for costume designers to dress Cyrano in, including in the 1990 movie which is the version of Cyrano I imprinted on.
I'll have to think about what that means for this story. I might just lampshade and ignore it, though, or have someone warn her away from adding gold to her getups.
Thanks for the reminder - I feel a bit silly not having considered that aspect.
