*
3.5
*
On Tuesday I decided to skip class. The thought of walking into those halls and having people look at me the same way they had been for the last two years and especially of facing Emma and the others after yesterday was just too much. Besides, what was I actually getting out of school? Not an education; I'd learned more in half an hour of reading on my own than I had in the last three months of school. I had no friends to speak of, a kid who sat with me at lunch and barely said three words the entire time didn't count, so it wasn't like I was socializing. The only reason I still went was because it would be suspicious not to, but Winslow was the type of school where a kid could not show up for a day and most teachers wouldn't even notice.
I considered my choices as I got up, wondering how I could make the most use of this time as I dried my hair, and decided that the downtown library branch would probably be better, it was just all around larger compared to the one nearer the docks. So that morning I left at the regular time; taking a left a block from home, walked two blocks to another bus stop where I waited for a bus downtown. Moments later I found myself seated on a hard plastic chair as the bus trundled along, besides myself there were only a few other people on board, mostly older people making their way to jobs but there were a couple of other kids my age, neither of whom I recognized from school.
In my backpack I had both the books I check out yesterday, after all it would probably be a good idea to finish those before I moved on to anything more advanced. Given the speed I'd proceeded at the day before it wouldn't eat up much time anyways, maybe another half and hour for the rest of the physics text and then an hour to finish chemistry, but after that I'd need new material.
As the bus stopped and an elderly couple got on it occurred to me that my comprehension speed was a little frightening, now that I thought about it. If I kept going at this rate I could be caught up with modern science it what, a few months, maybe a year and after that what did my learning speed imply about what I could do with that knowledge? It wasn't normal, I was sure, which didn't exactly surprise me but even geniuses didn't learn this fast.
How could I explain any of this without revealing basically every one of my most terrifying secrets? I couldn't think of a way, which meant that I would have to keep quiet on everything I learned or that I would have to swear everyone I told to absolute secrecy, and worse that I would have to trust them to keep their word. The only alternative would be not to use whatever insights I gleaned, which might mean letting something life-saving go undiscovered until someone else happened to have the same breakthrough, condemning who knows how many people to additional suffering. I wanted even considering what else I might stumble on with less direct life-saving applications.
I was pulled out of my reverie by the realization that my stop was approaching, so I signaled that I wanted to get off at the next stop and waited by the closed doors until they opened and I exited onto the sidewalk opposite from the library. About six years ago there'd been a short economic upswing, and the new Brockton Municipal Library had been one of the projects funded at the time. I knew about it mostly because the ferries that were Dad's perennial project had not been, the plans still held up by politics until things went back to usual a couple years later, though Mom had been a consultant on the library project. If there had been reasons explained for any of it I was too young to care at the time, but at least I could imagine it as Mom still helping me in some way as I watched my reflection from across the street in the glass front supported by still new-looking red brick walls.
Once traffic had cleared I dashed across the street and up the stairs. I angled my way towards the desk as I entered and waited behind a tall lanky old guy with a thousand questions and a college aged girl carrying three books in her hands and tapping her foot impatiently. Unfortunately no one else was manning the desk, even though there were at least two other people sitting at desks in the back that I could see. Whatever it was that they did it wasn't answer questions apparently, but thankfully a moment or two later someone else came to the desk and beckoned the girl in front of me forward, and then a moment later it was my turn. The librarian who'd come rushing up was maybe in his mid thirties, olive toned skin lined but not wrinkled, with closely shorn hair that curled tightly to his skull.
"Where do you keep the science textbooks?" As I asked his face contorted in a moment of confusion.
"Towards the back and to the right. Are you looking for something specific, maybe we can look it up?" His voice carried an accent that I'd never heard before, though considering I wasn't exactly worldly that wasn't too surprising.
"Uh, no, I'm, uh just browsing." Yeah, that's not suspicious at all Taylor.
"Well, it is a large section, let me show you where it is." There was no one else in line, so I followed as he walked to the other end of desk.
There he lifted up the gate to let himself out and after closing it behind him started walking towards the shelves of books. Soon we were walking between shelves of books nearly half again as tall as I was. Once every few rows of shelves there was a wider open space where a couple of long tables sat with chairs arranged around them, at which I saw a few people reading books or working in notebooks. Beyond the shelves there were doors numbered in increasing order as I walked, which appeared to lead into study rooms of some sort.
"Young girl like you, should be in school, no?" He asked the question with the hint of a smile, almost conspiratorially, he had clearly guessed I was skipping. Though I had to wonder what kind of kid he thought would skip school to come to a library. Even though he was right I thought it would be better not to confirm his suspicions, in case I had to come back and repeat this event some other day. I needed to give him something that would make my appearance here sensible, uninteresting, and would explain why I wasn't sure what I was looking for beyond "science textbook."
"Uh, no? I mean, I'm home schooled, but, uh my dad is kind of reaching the end of his rope with what he knows so we're trying some self-directed study." How I came up with the lie I wasn't sure, because I'd never been all that great at it before. My mom always used to be able to tell right off the bat whenever I was lying but maybe that was just because she was Mom.
"Ah! Excellent, education is important. Here we are," we stopped about five rows of shelves from the back wall. "All the shelves from here to the wall are textbooks. Are you sure you do not want help?"
I smiled at him, trying to to show any relief that he'd bought the lie and said, "No thanks, I'm sort of browsing right now."
"Very well, if you do want help, do not hesitate to ask for Alim," he said, pointing to himself.
I waited until he'd disappeared from view and then start looking around. At the wall there were a couple of little cubicle like desks with chairs at them, and just one row of shelves back there was one of those gaps with the tables. When I moved on to more advanced material I might want to be able to have multiple books open at once, in case I needed to look up something I didn't understand in another book in order to grasp something so I chose the larger but more open tables. There wasn't anyone else in this area of the library so I wasn't really concerned about getting any strange looks yet. I sat down took out the physics book from yesterday and began reading.
As I'd predicted I was done in a little more than twenty minutes, at which point I pulled out the chemistry book and started reading that. As with the physics material yesterday, except this time I got three-fourths of the way through the book before it started happening, I could even run mental models of the material I read. Sort of.
Nothing was obviously wrong, but sometimes when I tried stuff I got the feeling that the results I was getting were ever so slightly off; all the results matched with what I was supposed to find so I couldn't quite pin down what was bothering me. It took a few more minutes for the reason to become clear, what was tweaking me was the fact that my models were overly simplistic; by which I meant that I was building them solely off of what was in the books I was reading and considering that these were were introductory high school level texts they glossed over what I was sure were a lot of complications. They lacked granularity, and so came off as very fuzzy to my perception. Frankly there wasn't a lot to be done about it except keep going, learn more, and thereby hopefully solve the problem.
Minutes after this revelation I was done with the chemistry text, so I went hunting for new books on the shelves and after twenty more minutes or so came back to the table with a stack of five new books; four more sequentially advanced physics and chemistry books, and a biology text that had caught my eye. Apparently in the time I'd been gone someone had joined me, an older woman now sat at the opposite table facing away from me so I decided to ignore her and set down my books.
I began with the physics books, just as I had yesterday, and soon I was barrelling through the first at much the same pace as I had the previous one. Soon enough though I began to run into mathematical expressions and vocabulary which did not fully make sense to me; the vocabulary problem was simply enough solved by quick searches on my phone but the math issue was less easily fixed. I hadn't brought my own math textbook, so I couldn't use that as a jumping off point and instead had to hunt down a suitable stand-in. That took a while, because I'd gone ahead and grabbed every math textbook from where I knew I was all the way to Calculus, in the hopes that that would carry me as far as I needed to go. Once again I sat down and set to reading, soon enough I had three books in front of me; a math book, a physics book, and one of the chemistry books. Periodically I switched between physics and chemistry just to create some sort of variety, and whenever I got stuck in either of those I would pour through the math book until I wasn't.
Before I knew it, it was three hours later and I was distinctly beginning to feel, not boredom exactly but something dangerously close to it. I'd blasted through the first of both the physics and chemistry texts, was well into the second of both, and had gone through I wasn't sure exactly how many math books. I was confident I was still firmly in the realm of high school material in all the areas, but just as confidently I was sure I was well beyond any of my peers at Winslow and had probably jumped a year at least ahead of the curve.
In the last four and half hours I had sped through at least two years worth of high school level physics and chemistry, without a teacher while simultaneously jumping forward at least a year in math. There was still a long way to go before I reached the level I needed in order to actually start figuring out some stuff and just beginning to realize how very clumsy the way I was going about it actually was. There had to be some better, more efficient way of getting all this knowledge besides plopping my ass down and reading every last word of a textbook, I knew there had to be but I had no idea what it was. Frankly I was starting to think that if I spent another minute reading anything I would snap, so I stuffed the two school books into my backpack and left everything else where it was because I would just be back in a little while to pick up where I'd left off.
First I simply walked around the ground floor for a few minutes, occasionally glancing into the little side rooms to find people working, either by themselves or in groups. Eventually I decided to see what the rest of the building was like, or at least some of it, not that I expected the other floors to be substantially different. The second floor was essentially the same as the first, with a few more tables and rooms off to the sides so I was moving on in just a few minutes. On the third floor I noticed two things almost immediately; one was that the library was connected to the building to its left by a skybridge, which was a little odd because I was pretty sure the library was just one building, and the second was that this floor had some different rooms. At first glance some of the rooms here appeared to be mini-sound studios or at least what I thought one would look like. The walls of each of them were covered in that spiky looking foam, and a variety of equipment of some kind sat against one wall.
"Taylor?" A voice asked from behind me.
I turned from where I was looking in on one of the empty rooms to see Sparky standing with a large rectangular case under one arm, a messenger bag slung over his shoulder, and a smaller box in his other hand. He had a surprised expression, one which I suspected I very much matched, after all this was one of the last places I ever expected to see him. Maybe that wasn't fair to him, I probably had as good a chance to see him here as anyone else from school.
"Uh, Sparky, uh, hey," Oh god, what should I say? "What, uh, what are you doing here?"
"Free sound studios for the college students, my sister reserves the space for me. You?" Shit, what do I tell him?
"Studying. Well, not really," lying time again. "Not for school at least. It's hard to explain."
"You skipped school to study?" he asked.
"I guess? When you say it like that it sounds really stupid, but I wanted a break from, you know… stuff." He nodded at that, and then a moment of silence stretched between us.
"I've only got the room for a couple hours, so… I better get to it." He tilted his head at the door to indicate which room he meant.
"Right, yeah. I've got… " man, lying about this stuff was a lot harder when the person actually knew something about me. "You know, studying to get back to."
I started moving past him and Sparky moved towards the door with a key I hadn't noticed before in his hand. He was already turning the knob when he hesitated and turned towards me again.
"Do you want to hear some of my stuff? I've shown it to some people online, but you know the sort of feedback you get on the internet and I'd like to hear what someone else thinks."
I searched his face for some hint of pity, if he was just asking because he'd heard about yesterday and felt bad I didn't want to spend any more time with him but he just looked like he was genuinely asking the question. Right now I wasn't really feeling up spending hours on end reading dry textbooks anyways so I figured, what the hell.
"Sure." I said, and his face broke into a slight smile while he opened the door. I followed him into the room and waited the few minutes it took him to start the computer inside the room and get the files from a little thumb drive he had in his bag.
"It's not much, it took me months of just throwing stuff at the wall until I found a sound I actually liked, but I swear I've been here every other day working." He laughed slightly at his last statement and then pressed play on the first file.
That sound turned out to be a jazzy trumpet solo, probably what was in the case as well now that I thought about it. It was nice, though I didn't love it, but it wasn't like I was any sort of music expert so for all I knew he was a genius. Sparky had two more tracks and even though each was very different in tone, they each still seemed somehow to be more him the more I listened to them. Clearly this was something he'd poured his heart and soul into, and it showed.
"They're good. I mean I, uh, don't know shit about music but I liked them all. Five years from now I'll probably be buying your CD's and telling people I went to high school with you." He laughed at that and smiled.
"Maybe, I have a long way to go though." He paused, like he was remembering something and started minimized the current window on the computer, and was online in seconds looking for something. "Actually, I want you to listen to something. When I read what you prepared for the report in Mr. Gladly's class I thought you might appreciate this, but I kept forgetting to mention her to you. That last piece was actually a cover-slash-accompaniment for this."
He kept glancing back and forth between me and the computer while I kept most of my attention on him and wondered idly what he was going to have me listen to. He clicked on something and then a second later there was a soft, slow sound filling the room through the computer speakers.
A voice came through, softly at first but building as it went on while a sense of sadness swelled as well. The lyrics described the life of a woman; stuck in a small town and tied to a partner going nowhere fast, she dreamed of being important and of doing great things, then some sort of opportunity and the song became more uplifting. The song still carried a sense of some melancholy, but tinged with happier feelings as well, it clearly matched the song that Sparky had been talking about. As the music ended I realised my eyes were watering and I had an unbidden smile on my face, glancing at Sparky revealed he had similarly been affected.
"She's a parahuman. Something in her voice makes her songs really powerful emotionally," he paused as if remembering something, and the smile was wiped from his face. "She got railroaded though, made one mistake and they're sending her to the fucking Birdcage! Can you believe that?"
The passion in his voice surprise me a little, especially directed in this woman's defense. Despite how big the Protectorate was and how the media focused on the personal dramas of capes, people still freaked out a lot. Online at least people were always crying out how this or that villain needed to be sent to the Birdcage, hell, Uber and L33t frequently bore the brunt of those calls when you talked about Brockton Bay villains which was weird because if any of the local criminals deserved someplace as bad as that it was The Empire's psychopaths. Every few months you would hear about this or that example they had made out of whoever had broken ranks or just been the wrong skin color in the wrong neighborhood. And they had plans too, everyone knew it, for 'when' they controlled BB to move on and create a white utopia in the rest of the country. Compared to them, Uber ad L33t were practically harmless annoyances.
Sparky began to explain the intricacies of the case, and that was how I learned about Canary and came to agree with him that she had indeed been railroaded for no better reason than fear; of her power and the utterly irrational and nonsensical apparent similarity with the Simurgh. It was not clear whether she had already been moved to the Birdcage or was due shortly to be moved, because originally she and Lung had been scheduled to be moved together but then Lung had been freed.
Then he began to show me other parahuman musicians, there being apparently a lot more than I'd ever known about. A drummed near what used to be Seattle who had apparently grown two more sets of arms, and a guitarist who could act as his own amplifier. It was fascinating to find out about these capes who weren't actually capes, who didn't fight or steal but instead used their new powers to do something almost normal. We started searching around for other non-fighting capes in the news, and found out that there were surprisingly few or that they kept a very low profile. A financial planner in LA advertised himself as a parahuman, but then we found news articles saying he was a fraud, then there was the architect from Ontario who could draw perfect plans by hand to machine precision. Beyond those though we found nothing more than brief news articles which mentioned people but never by full name and never in much detail. It was disappointing.
Something in my pocket vibrated, distracting me from what Sparky was saying; I pulled out my phone and noticed that Amy was calling me. Oh crap, we were going shopping today!
"Just a moment," I said to Sparky, and then answer the call. "Hey…"
"Hey, are you at your house? Or should I pick you up from school? Have you had lunch yet, we could grab something to eat before we go shopping?" Amy didn't even give me the time to respond between her questions, she seemed nervous.
"Uh, actually, I'm downtown right now at the library," With everything else I'd been dealing with I had completely forgotten about shopping with her today. "But I, um, forgot my money at home so I need to stop by and pick it up before we-"
"Don't worry about it!" She practically shouted, sounding almost cheerily relieved. "This is all my treat, after all you're doing me this favor. I'll be there in fifteen."
She hung up before I could make any sort of response, so I couldn't argue the point. What should I say to Sparky?
"Uh, I completely forgot I agreed to meet with a, uh… friend today. She's going to be here in a few minutes so I've, uh, gotta go." I was already halfway to the door. "I like your music! I guess I'll see you tomorrow?"
He nodded,I shot him a brief smile, and then I was out the door. It took me a minute or two in order to reorient myself towards the stairs, and then I was off rushing down the stairs at a fast walking pace. There seemed to be a lot more people in the library now than when I'd arrived, which made sense with classes letting out for both high school students and the college kids.
Once I was outside in front of the building I wondered why the hell I'd been in such a rush anyways, she had said she'd be here in fifteen minutes which meant I probably could have waited to leave instead of running off the first second. Oh god, I'd been so rude to Sparky. I'd acted like I couldn't wait to get out of there, what did he think of me now?
Could I run back up there, say sorry for rushing off and then rush off again before Amy got here? No, that would be even weirder, better to just wait until tomorrow and apologize in person at school. Any further thoughts on the matter were interrupted by Amy's arrival in an aging, though well maintained, gray colored car. She unlocked the passenger side door and I slid in, resting my backpack between my legs on the floor and gripping the top handle nervously.
"Hi." Amy said.
"Hey." I responded and then we sat in silence for a second before Amy pulled the car out into traffic.
We drove on in that same silence for several minutes, I occupied myself by surreptitiously surveying her car. It was clean and everything looked like it was in working order even if they car itself looked like it was maybe ten or fifteen years old. Amy's own backpack lay on the floor of the seat behind her, indicating she'd just gotten out of school herself; which, duh,we were both in high school after all though I knew sometimes AP classes went on after regular dismissal time.
After a few more minutes of of silence Amy broke the awkwardness.
"Did you have lunch? We can get something to eat first if you want." She glanced at me a couple of times.
"No, thanks." I answered.
We lapsed back into silence. I wanted to break it myself, but I wasn't sure what would be a safe topic; her sister and her powers both seemed to be somewhat of sore subjects with her and more than likely to be depressing. School was something I wanted to stay away from, asking about it would almost certainly lead to a reciprocation from her, which would lead into my skipping today which might lead into the reason and that wasn't something I really wanted to get into. I just didn't know enough about her to ask about hobbies or anything like that, so I resigned myself to the idea that we would drive on in silence.
As we approached closer and closer to the boardwalk I felt guiltier and guiltier for forgetting my money at home. I didn't want to take advantage of her, because even if she'd asked me to come as a favor it wasn't like I was getting nothing out of this. Unfortunately without her cooperation I couldn't really get back home to grab my money without inviting unwanted attention, so I would have to live with it for now and repay her some other time. I would do it though, that much I made a silent promise to myself on.
We parked on the street about a block from the boardwalk itself, facing toward the water. A clear sky and bright sun shone down on us; it was warm for a Spring day but not overly hot so walking wasn't uncomfortable. Neither of us really said anything r until we were on the boardwalk itself.
"The store's down this way," Amy said, pointing off to the right.
There wasn't exactly a crowd out today, seeing as it was a Tuesday, but with the warm weather more people than normal were out and it would only get busier until the late afternoon when it would start trickling down again. The real busy season was in Summer, when more tourists from surrounding towns made quick day trips into Brockton Bay. There were a number of restaurants, cafes, clothing stores, and a variety of other stores along the boardwalk so it did a good deal of business when the weather was good.
We passed an arcade, where I saw a couple of faces I vaguely recognized from school, so I picked up the pace for a moment until we were a shop past it. If Amy noticed she made no comment.
Finally, a few minutes later Amy turned towards a store a few minutes later and we walked in past mannequins decked in pretty floral, pastel, or jean dresses or in tiny short shorts and topped with large brimmed summer hats. None of the display stuff seemed like it would be right for me - too much exposed skin in all the places where I had nothing to show off. In other words they required cleavage.
As we entered a sales woman made her way towards us, a smile plastered on her pristine face.
"Hello, how can I help you today?" she asked.
"Just browsing for now," Amy answered, already moving past her with a confidence and ease that certainly made it seem like she knew what she was doing. I shot the woman a smile and followed.
Amy was already browsing a rack of dresses, as I approached she turned momentarily to look back at me. "Anything catch your eye?"
I shook my head in answer and she sighed.
"Well, start browsing."
While I examined this or that dress, I tried to remember every little bit of advice Emma had ever spouted off on our shopping trips but they were all so long ago and I hadn't really paid much attention to them at the time so nothing actually came to mind. How could I have known at the time that I might eventually need all those tidbits and wouldn't have access to their source, that my best friend would abandon me as she had? Besides they were all probably horribly out of date anyway. Instead I had to rely on my own eye and fashion sense, two somethings which I wasn't at all confident in.
Every few minutes Amy would come by with a suggestion or two and if we both liked them well enough we put them into a "maybe" pile. First was a peach cotton dress, I liked the color because it reminded me of my mother for some reason. Second was a white floral print thing that had a pattern which looked like it had come off of the curtains of some rich person's house where the couch legs were carved like lion paws. Last we decided on an egg-shell cotton dress which, according to Amy, showed off my legs. Personally I didn't think I had anything in particular to show off with my legs, but once again I probably wasn't the best judge of that.
Then I started trying them on. We ended up hanging on to only the second and last dress, even though the first was maybe my favorite Amy had been iffy on it from the start and I decided to trust her on the subject. Now we had to make a decision.
"Hang on, let me take a second look at something." Amy turned at disappeared back into the racks of clothes.
I looked down at the two dresses in front of me. Each was more expensive that I'd counted on, though I knew they were nowhere near as expensive as they could be, but still it was more money that I'd expected to spend today and that once again made me feel guilty that Amy was paying for it. I had the distinct feeling that she wouldn't accept money from me if I tried to give it to her when we dropped me off or later, so that meant I would have to find some other way to repay her. What that could be I wasn't sure, because I was fairly sure her family was better off than me and Dad and besides I had not idea what it was that she would be interest in anyways. Well, I would just have to figure it out.
A familiar voice caught my attention and I instinctively turned towards where it was coming from near the entrance and then froze. Emma and Sophia were standing right there, heads ducked in a conspiratorial whisper over some article of clothing. Immediately I dropped the dresses on the closest rack, ducked my own head and stepped behind the rack of clothes to shield myself from their sight. Luckily they didn't seem to have noticed me yet.
Shit, shit. I didn't want to drag Amy into my problems with Emma and her cronies, so we needed to get out of here right now without them seeing us, which meant getting to Amy as fast as I could before she brought any attention to us. I kept to the outside edge of the store, making sure to always keep something large and obstructive in between me and the other girls until I found Amy.
I grabbed her arm and whispered urgently, "We need to go, now."
"What?" she asked, voice way too loud.
"An… old friend of mine just walked in," I explained, as I pulled her away from the clothes she'd been browsing and towards the entrance of the store.
Keeping the both of us hidden was a bit of a chore, because Amy didn't really understand what was going on and didn't even know who we were avoiding. Still I managed it, though the last moments were a little harrowing seeing as the two of them were still near the entrance itself. I had to wait until Sophia pulled Emma away from the entrance to look at something to push Amy before me out of the store and then rush out myself before either of them turned back. In that moment I really hated the little chime that went off whenever someone went in or out of the door.
Amy was waiting, a confused look on her face, when I came out. I walked past her, grabbing her hand as I went and dragged her along, periodically glancing back to make sure neither of them had followed.
Once we were a few stores down I relaxed, let go of Amy's hand and noticed the strange look she was giving me. Then I noticed that I was breathing heavily; stupid brain, I didn't even need to breath anymore and it still started hyperventilating when I panicked.
"Sorry." I said quietly.
Amy seemed to shrug it off and then started walking. I followed after, not really paying attention to where we were going until I found myself sitting in a cushioned chair on the outdoor patio of a small cafe. In just a few moments Amy returned with two bottles of some soda I didn't recognize and I took one when she handed it to me and then she sat down opposite me.
"So…" Amy said, searching for something to say.
"We used to be friends. Since first grade, she used to spend holidays with my family sometimes, not the big ones of course but things like Memorial Day. When my mom died she was the one who I went to when Dad fell apart; I lived, ate, and cried myself to sleep for a week at her house." I wasn't entirely sure why I was telling her all of this, only that it was coming out like a flood and I didn't know how to stop it, or even if I wanted to.
"Just when I was starting to feel like myself again, one summer after I came back from camp she turned into a bitch. We didn't talk for six months. You know what the first thing she said to me after that was? 'Get out of my way freak.' Ever since she seems to have made it her mission to make my life miserable. And, she did this to me... she didn't mean to, but she made me… what I am." I gave Amy a meaningful look at that.
Amy didn't appear to be jumping up and running away, which was probably a positive sign, but beyond that I didn't know how she was taking this, or what else there was for me to say. I'd laid it out for her to judge, I could go into more details but what good would that do? She had the facts as they were, she knew now how screwed up I really was and exactly why I shouldn't be the person she turned to when she had problems.
I turned away from her, staring out the sun hanging low in the sky and the people walking past us up and down the boardwalk. I took a sip of my soda, watched a tall black kid with a cast on his leg lecture furiously at a much younger girl two stores down and then turned my head to catch a young girl blow out a candle on a cupcake a couple tables away. Silence reigned between the two of us.
A/N: Woop, woop! Just a few more parts before the real excitement begins.
