Slivers

3. So High School

3. So High School

Ben

Like most of Prospero High School, the staff room for their newspaper, Pride of the Poets, was cramped and terribly out of date. The dozen or so desks that lined the walls held an odd mix of computers, some of which were so old they’d never even heard of Zip disks, while state tax dollars managed to supply a few almost-new laptops. A few large tables in the middle of the room were taken up by page layouts, while the bulletin boards along the walls were covered with odds and ends pictures, advertisements, story ideas, and a framed newspaper from six years back when Pride of the Poets once took third place in a contest of Northern California high school newspapers. The faculty advisor, Mr. Miike, barely looked older than Courtney and spent most of his time playing computer games at his desk, occasionally offering advice or breaking up disputes but mostly allowing things to be run by the students.

Courtney had talked Mina and me onto the paper, mostly to give us an excuse to wander around school with notebooks and cameras without arousing suspicion, but I enjoyed the work. As a photographer I got free entry into all after-school events, and though I wasn’t the best, I was improving all the time. Mina’s efforts at journalism weren’t nearly as enthusiastic, but she kept up with her assignments on the “School Events” column.

I entered the newspaper office at the start of lunch, stretching away some of the more persistent aches from the car accident nearly two weeks gone. I was supposed to drop off a memory card with pictures of our school’s latest football trouncing when I heard what I called “The Newspaper Room’s National Anthem”—Courtney arguing with someone.

“I still think we need a front-page story on Ms. Velasquez’s disappearance,” Isaac Freeling said. He was a stocky, dark-skinned junior and a strong candidate to become lead editor once Courtney graduated. He was also nearly as arrogant as she was and slightly more argumentative. On their better days, it made for a good show.

“And you’re still wrong,” Courtney said.

“It’s what everybody wants to know! She’s been missing for eleven days; it’s got everyone on edge! It’s Haley Perkins all over again!” Isaac said.

“And like what happened to Haley Perkins, we don’t have any details yet. Printing a story without any facts regarding Ms. Velasquez’s disappearance would be irresponsible journalism,” Courtney said.

“But the people want to know,” Isaac said.

“And the people will know, when we have facts. Find me some facts, then we’ll talk. Until then, keep up with your story about the cleanup of the science building vandalism,” Courtney said evenly, catching my glance and nodding slightly. She was a good liar.

I could see why Mina still thought she might be a Splinter.

A very large, very round junior with blocky, black glasses, Anthony Glick, was shutting down one of the computers, stroking what could almost pass for his beard. He was a nervous guy but one of the easier people to talk to on the staff.

“Who’s winning?” I asked him.

“For those two, Vivere militare est,” he said. Anthony loved quoting Latin almost as much as everyone around here disliked him quoting Latin.

“Come again?” I said.

“Does it matter who wins?” he asked, laughing.

“Only if you want to bet money on it,” I said.

“Don’t have the time for that, I’m afraid. I got a date with some Fulci’s Pizza,” he said, pulling on his heavy rain jacket.

I watched the fight spill over, Isaac pulling in a rather uninterested Mr. Miike.

Sensing my moment, I snuck around one of the tables, caught Courtney’s eye, and set the memory card by her backpack. She nodded, nice enough not to draw me in.

Outside, I was met with a blast of cold air and that stinging kind of rain that only seems to exist in Northern California in late January. I doubted I’d ever get used to it.

I was pulling my hood up, preparing to make my way across the marshlike quad, when I heard it.

“Hey Glick! Gonna go get some pizza? Gonna go and puke on yourself again?”

That taunting voice.

Patrick Keamy.

Despite having more than a hundred pounds on Patrick, Anthony ran for the cafeteria like the devil was chasing him.

Patrick laughed, yelling, “Who’s the stultus asino now?”

He began to turn my way. I started in the opposite direction. I’d gone more than a month without having any trouble from Patrick, and I wasn’t going to start having any now.

“Hey, Ben, wait up!” he called out. I walked faster, keeping the woodshop in sight.

He caught up to me anyway.

“Wow, you’re fast. Ever consider trying out for football?” he asked conversationally.

“No,” I said.

“Well, you should, not that I think you or anything else shy of a miracle could really help us, but—”

“You do remember that the last time we talked, you nearly killed me, right?” I reminded him.

His pleasant, narrow smile faltered, but his cold eyes stayed focused on me.

“That’s true, but—”

“And that I pretty much hate you?” I said.

“Look, I didn’t come here to reminisce. I came here, on my own, no droogs backing me up, with not even the slightest of ill intentions, to make peace,” he said. “I was a victim of Madison too, man, and I feel awful for letting her get the better of me. She made me look bad, too. She made me look like a raging jackass after all those lies she told everyone about you, and I’m not!”

I’ll believe it when I see it, I wanted to say.

Instead, I said, “Are you apologizing?”

He scowled. “Look… you’ve got eyes. You can see what Madison’s got, and you know what she’s capable of. Once she gets you by the snake, she can get you to do whatever she wants, especially if you’re as enthusiastic as I can be, you understand?”

I understood more than Patrick ever could. Whatever he now thought of Madison Holland, the Splinter agent who’d led everyone to believe I’d assaulted her at one of Patrick’s parties, it couldn’t come close to the truth. Since Haley had arranged her expulsion and disgrace, I’d heard she was going to homeschool the rest of her junior and senior years.

I didn’t care what happened to her. I was just enjoying having my life back.

Which did force me to give Patrick’s words some thought. To call him a jerk at the best of times would be charitable, but he had been manipulated.

Much as I hated to admit it, I said, “Yeah, I do understand.”

His smile actually showed gratitude.

“Thanks,” he said, pounding me on the back too hard. “Now I’m gonna make it up to you.”

“That’s not ne—”

“Yes it is,” he said. “I did you wrong; now I want to do right. I’m throwing a party on Valentine’s Day, and you, my friend, are going to have Special VIP Access.”

He gave special emphasis to each of these words.

“Now don’t shoot me down until you hear what Special VIP Access gets you. Immediate front-of-the-line privileges at any and all traditional games and karaoke, complete carte blanche access to the liquor cabinet, and these are just your basic VIP perks. Want to know what makes it Special?”

I didn’t really, but he didn’t give me a choice.

“Being that it’s Valentine’s Day, we’re gonna bust out some of the classical romantical games,” he continued. “Truth or Dare, Spin the Bottle, Seven Minutes in Heaven… you know, everything the teen movies told us was supposed to happen at these things. And there’ll be a Bachelor Auction where a strapping gentleman such as yourself could have all sorts of fine honies bidding for a date. Being the Master of Ceremonies, I’ll have the ability to rig any and all of these games in your favor, so if there’s a girl, or two, or five you’d like to get to know better, gimme a list beforehand and I can make it a night to remember. Ask me for suggestions, and I can give you a fairly comprehensive guide to the girls in the junior and senior classes and what bases each’ll go to. This is my gift, to you. My apology to you. So, we cool?”

We weren’t cool, not by a long shot, but I knew he was trying, in the only way he knew.

“Not yet. But we’re getting there,” I said. It felt better than outright lying to him. I wouldn’t actually attend, of course. I’d think of some excuse to get out of it, apologize profusely, and hope that would be the end. Between the Splinters, the Slivers, and school, I really didn’t have time for Patrick Keamy. I certainly didn’t want him working on my love life when even I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do with it.

***

Even though my name had been cleared after Madison’s smear campaign last semester, and it was now safe for me to wander the school freely at lunchtime, I still spent about half my week in the woodshop helping Mr. Finn put together furniture and occasional pieces of medieval weaponry. He’d recently gotten in a shipment of metal hardware that would allow him to build fully functional crossbows to sell at the Renaissance Faire up in Braiwood this summer, and if there’s a cooler way to spend your lunchtime than building crossbows, I don’t want to know it.

Of course, keeping with my luck that day, he wasn’t there when I knocked on the door. Due to state budget cutbacks, he didn’t teach classes after noon on Tuesdays or Fridays, but he should have been there at least for lunch.

Must’ve gone into town for the hardware…

I turned back toward Ms. Craven’s classroom to go have lunch with Mina and Aldo. It would be a quiet departure from Mr. Finn’s woodshop, especially since Cayden had been taken over. The Shards of Cayden and the other former regulars at Ms. Craven’s classroom refuge had shown no interest in returning to it, so attendance had been sparser than usual. This was a relief to Ms. Craven herself. As much support as we tried to offer, she wasn’t handling the transition into the Splinter-world very well.

Halfway across the quad, a girl’s voice behind me sent a chill up my spine.

“You look lost,” she said.

I shook off the Splinterish chittering at the end of her sentence, and the fact that those were the exact words Madison had said when we first met, and turned to face one of the three new Shards The Owl had warned us about.

She was short, skinny and pale, with black hair that had been chopped short and the tips bleached blonde. Like the other two, Cayden Halvorson and Milo Perez, I hadn’t known her as a human, at least not well. I knew that she was a sophomore, that she’d spent her lunches in Ms. Craven’s classroom with a stack of sketchpads obsessively drawing God only knew what, and that her name was Diem North.

“I know what you are,” I said, dropping all pretense.

“And I know what you are,” she said. “What are we gonna do about this?”

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“Just having a little fun,” she cooed.

“Your bosses let you have fun?”

Diem c****d her head slightly, then smiled far too widely, sticking a forked tongue out at me. Tauntingly, she formed a small ball of fire at the tip.

Putting the fire out and drawing her tongue back, she said, “Not yet, but when your world is ours, we can have whatever we want.”

“But it isn’t yours yet, is it?” Haley said, walking up to me under the cover of a welcomingly wide umbrella. “So until then, lay off the high school bullshit and just let us eat lunch, all right?”

Diem crossed her arms across her chest and stormed off in a huff. She looked over her shoulder at me briefly, just long enough to wink a suddenly bright yellow eye at me and mouth, “Soon.”

I almost went after her, to demand to know if she was the one who had driven the SUV and what the hell “soon” was supposed to mean. Haley put a hand on my arm, holding me back.

“Don’t,” she said. “It’s not worth it.”

She was right, of course. “Fine. Let’s get out of here.”

We started for Ms. Craven’s classroom together, making the most of her umbrella. It forced us to stand close to each other, which I noticed brought a faint smile to her face.

“So are you doing anything this Saturday night?” she asked.

“Probably going to go over some surveillance feeds with Mina, nothing out of the ordinary unless we get another message from The Owl,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “I meant, are you doing anything real? Fun, even?”

“Not really, then, no. Why?” I asked.

She cast her eyes to the ground briefly before glancing back at me. “You know the old Canterbury Theater? Well, Saturday nights at eleven they run old sci-fi and horror movies. They’re terrible, but they encourage yelling jokes and insults at the screen. It’s really fun, if you’ve never tried it, and I was thinking, if you were interested, maybe we can go.”

I could see where she was going with this. “Are you saying this as an us-and-a-group-of-friends sort of thing, or as a you-and-me sort of thing?”

“If it clears anything up, Ben, I’m asking you out,” she said. “On a date. You know, two people who like each other having some human fun, maybe even end the night with a kiss if the situation calls for it?”

“Oh,” I said.

I think she was looking for a different response than that, because she started speaking very fast. “I know you and Mina have this kind of silent thing going on. I’m not blind. But I’m also going to be honest: I like you, Ben, more than just as the guy who saved my life, and unless the two of you figure out what you want to do with each other… I’d really like to see if we might have something.”

How was I supposed to respond to that? I really did like Haley. It wouldn’t take much to make us something more than friends.

Which was the problem. There was something between Mina and me, something real. Knowing how sensitive she could be about trust and basically anything human, I’d kinda hoped she’d make the first move, but maybe that was the wrong way to handle this. Maybe I had to start.

I didn’t want to hurt Haley. I wanted to lead her on even less.

“I’m sorry, Haley. I can’t do that,” I said, cringing at how my next words were going to sound. “I care about you, and our friendship. I don’t want to do anything to hurt that.”

She forced a smile. “Oh well, can’t blame a girl for trying, can you?”

We walked in silence the rest of the way. Haley closed her umbrella before we left the next overhang, opting to cover her head with the hood of her jacket instead. It didn’t do much to cover her face, but I soon realized she was using the rain to cover up her tears. I put an arm around her for comfort. She shrugged out from underneath it silently.

I almost found myself wishing for a Shard attack just then, anything to distract us for a few moments, but we weren’t that lucky.