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Youth of Tomorrow, Shaping the Future	By : Gianni1968 Category: X-men Comics > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 2433 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
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Chapter List
- 1
- 2
“Another Brick In The Wall”

Chapter 01

{Daddy's flown across the ocean}

{Leaving just a memory}

{A snapshot in the family album}

{Daddy what else did you leave for me}

{Daddy what didja leave behind for me}

{All in all it was just a brick in the wall}

{All in all it was just bricks in the wall}

[Piercing whistle.]

{“Hey!”}
{"You! Yes, you! Stand still laddie!"}

{Well, when we grew up and went to school,}

{There were certain teachers,}

{Who would hurt the children in any way they could,}

{By pouring their derision,}

{Upon anything we did,}

{Exposing every weakness,}

{However carefully hidden by the kids.}
{But in (but in) the town it was well known,}

{When they got home at night,}

{Their fat and psychopathic wives would thrash them,}

{Within inches of their lives.}
[Loud scream.]

{We don't need no education}

{We don't need no thought control}

{No dark sarcasm in the classroom}

{Teacher, leave them kids alone}

{Hey! Teacher, leave them kids alone}

{All in all it's just another brick in the wall}

{All in all you're just another brick in the wall}
{We don't need no education}

{We don't need no thought control}

{No dark sarcasm in the classroom}

{Teacher, leave those kids alone}

{Hey! Teacher, leave us kids alone}

{All in all you're just another brick in the wall}

{All in all you're just another brick in the wall}
{Wrong! Do it again}

{Wrong! Do it again}

{If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding}

{How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?}

{You! Yes, you behind the bike shed}

{Stand still, laddie}

{You! Yes, you behind the bike shed}

{Stand still, laddie}
[Sound of many TV's coming on, all on different channels]

{"The Bulls are already out there"}

{"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrgh!"}

{"This Roman Meal bakery thought you'd like to know."}
[Sound of several hammer blows to a masonry wall.]

{I don't need no walls around me}

{And I don't need no drugs to calm me}

{I have seen the writing on the wall}

{Don't think I need any thing at all}

{No, don't think I need anything at all}

{All in all it was all just the bricks in the wall}

{All in all you were all just bricks in the wall}

Theme: ‘Sympathy For The Devil,’ ‘Happiest Days Of Our Lives,’ ‘Another Brick In The Wall,’ and ‘Don’t Leave Me Now’

Performed by: Pink Floyd

Written by: Roger Waters

Lyrics reproduced without permission, and without intent to defraud or create revenue.
Starring, in order of appearance or as they are mentioned:

Dr. Cecelia Reyes

Senior Assistant Principal Frank Jennings

Andrew Snelson (Drew)

Theron Nunley

Jon Rustin (Babe)

Pam Butler

‘Miss’ Virginia

Lynn Stalks

James

Mrs. Barnes

Teri Boatman

Dani Boatman

Charles

Scott

Jean

Connie Haywood

‘DeeDee’ Johanson

‘Flat Head’

Kelly Brown
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The Author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.
I do not own the X-Men or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I make no profit.
Cecelia Reyes, M.D., PhD

12:37 pm, Monday, August 14th, 1995

Senior Counselors’ office, Springville High School, Emmons St., Springville, AR
"Miss Reyes, would you come to my office, please? The half-day students are here." It’s the moment I’ve been dreading since I got here in June. Frank Jennings, senior vice-principal, is controlling his voice in a very obvious way, which only makes me sure of the likelihood that just today he's finally gotten around to reading the files I'd left with him two days ago (he doesn’t realize that the entire faculty recognizes that bland tone to mean he’s angry and holding it in).
I lock my PC, and get my stuff together to enter the supposed lion’s den, and then welcome the new students. Little does he know that he’s just a jackal and I’m really the lion in lamb’s clothing, and some day soon he’ll be walking into my den.
In the back hallway of the Attendance Office I walk past the three boys sitting on a bench outside Franks’ office. Best not to stare too openly or walk too slowly; these boys are smart enough that they could begin to suspect that I have more than simple academic interest in one of them. Best just to frown as I walk by.
I recognize the boy Charles is interested in from the photo I’ve been shown. Jean hasn’t exaggerated one tiny little bit. The tall one with uncombed mid-length dark hair and piercing dark eyes is Snelson, while the one with the pale blue eyes and the darker complexion is the Nunley boy. That leaves the smallest of the three, the one with glasses and gorgeous strawberry-blonde hair. He’s the Rustin boy. Just before I knock on Frank’s office door, he stands and smiles at me, his hand half-raised.
“Good morning.” Oh lord, his unusual voice and knowing green eyes in that tanned and innocent little face disconcerts me for a few seconds. At twelve years old he’s already a heart-breaker.
“It has been so far.” Not smiling back is a struggle, which I win only by turning away just before my mouth quirks up.
“Yes, so far.” His whisper follows me through the door.
Frank slams the door shut behind me, and glares at me.
“I'm very upset about the stunt you've pulled on me.” I don’t reply to his statement. That would only lend it weight. The truth is that he has just finally realized what I’ve been talking about for weeks, and he doesn’t want the added work. I place my things on his desk, and sit casually in the chair beside it. That way he’ll be forced to either sit in his chair, or stand behind me where he can’t see my face. Either one will have a calming effect, besides allowing me to regain my composure.
I’m not cut out for this job. Well, for this job I’m overqualified, but I love having the chance to work with people, and put my theories and methods to the test.
Frank chooses to pace in the small space behind me, which is fine with me, because there’s something subtly ugly about the man. Besides his attitude, I mean.
"Look at those files! Snelson and Rustin both have a history of fighting and other disciplinary problems! And Nunley has always had a parent working at the school he was attending who could gloss over any problems." Frank comes around and paces behind his desk as he complains. “I expect he’s just as bad, if not worse.” But this isn’t the only job I’m doing here; I’m a double agent, also working for the National Security Agency.
"They'll most likely be here for four years. And because of that they've been given to me; I have the rotation to Seniors then, just like now."
Actually, I’m a triple agent, keeping an eye out on this boy for Charles and his school. In fact, I’ve taken on a fourth job voluntarily, because of something I’ve discovered right here in the school, and juggling the four things is likely to give me an ulcer before the first quarter ends.
Frank keeps running his right hand over his bald spot. I idly wonder if that’s supposed to bring him luck, like rubbing the belly of the Buddha statue at the Chinese place. I quietly wait for him to run down. There’s no reason to say or do anything until he does.
"I can't believe I let myself be talked into this. The last thing I need right now are three grade-hopping, trouble-making over-achievers to watch out for. My seniors are going to be trouble enough. These boys will have so called 'special needs,' and of course I'll have to make all the arrangements."
He’s begun to turn red with his anger. If I told him the truth now he’d be apoplectic. Little does he know, nor could he, in his wildest dreams, envision that these three boys aren’t the entire invasion, just the spearhead. And possibly the heart of the invading force. I can tell already that one of them, the one that I’ve been asked to watch for, will be the catalyst to turn this school into the Petri dish where teaching high-order genius is experimented with. Not by the repetition system Frank understands, but by tailored curriculum.
I sit forward and speak up; this is my cue to take the work off his desk.
"Calm down, Frank. That’s why I'm here; to help you with this. I’ll make all the arrangements. Remember, these boys represent an opportunity to take this school system to a new high; by themselves each of them should boost our test scores by a percentage point or more. They seem to have rather divergent interests, so it will still add up to three percent cumulatively."
What I’m not cut out for is keeping secrets and playing spy games.
"And all three of them are good candidates for the tutoring program. They might collectively coax another two percent out of the other students. If they can be convinced to keep records of their examples, the departmental heads could make them available to the instructors, and the increase could possibly be doubled, and certainly carried over to the next years. That could become a seven percent boost in test scores, and you know what that will do for us in the national ratings, and maybe even when it comes time for the state to dole out the educational budget. You do want to have a top ten rated public high school again, right?"
I know he does, and I can see him drooling at the thought that these kids, whose educations he supposedly oversees, are going to bring that kind of notoriety to his school. And, as its administrator, to him. Little does he know that I already know of over twenty others who will eventually join these boys in revolutionizing the American public education system, changing it, and this school in particular, forever. I see no need to disabuse him of the fantasy that he’ll be overseeing these boys’ educations. Not that I have any idea I’ll be guiding them or anything; these three are already making their own rules, and others will soon be following their leads. All I’m doing is smoothing the way for them to have every chance of success. So Frank will be useful to me for a while yet; I’ll keep him in the good graces of the counseling staff until he isn’t effective any longer.
Jon Rustin

12:40 pm, Monday, August 14th, 1995

Hallway outside Assistant Principal Jennings’ office, Springville High School, Emmons St., Springville, AR
The taller of the other two guys, the one named Andrew, has his ear to the edge of the door.
"Yeah, I was right. Baldy is a grade-A sourpuss, and he doesn't like us at all." He whispers in confirmation. He made that discovery, along with the rest of us, as soon as he saw Mr. Jennings.
"Why should he?" I ask. "It’s obvious he’s had experience with kids like us before, and he knows that we will intentionally or unintentionally screw up his whole carefully laid out plan for a year of brainwashing these high school kids, and making them into good little consumers, and conscientious joiners of things. Just by being ourselves."
"How do we do that?" He asks, not looking at me.
I’m obviously not registering on his screen. It figures; the ride over had been strained, to say the least. Sitting up front next to the coach who was driving us, he was as nervous as I’ve ever seen anyone that tall and smart at the same time. He turns out to be a nervous talker, keeping up a running monolog about everything in sight, and it certainly seems to annoy the coach to no end. I turn toward him to get away from the questioning blue eyes of the other one. He looks away just as I do so, embarrassed about being caught staring.
"We show the other students that the instructors, the administrators and the system as a whole are at best trying to hold together a rather unstable, make-do construction, and are eventually all too human and fallible. We show them that it isn't really necessary to join all those clubs and organizations to succeed in school and afterwards. Plus we show them that the grade system isn't as cut and dried as they want the kids to believe, and here we are rubbing their faces in it all." The two of them slowly turn to look at me.
"You're scary." Drew says slowly. "Just keep that brain pointed at the authority figures, huh?" At least I’ve made an impression.
"What're you griping about?” The other guy asks. “He's right; we're upsetting their plans to prepare the others for the depredations of Bill Gates, mass media, and the infallible U. S. government. One or two of us they could isolate, most of the time, maybe, but not all three. Next semester when we're hopefully all over the school spreading 'dissension' and 'discord,' that's when they're going to be watching us like criminals. And they've got two, maybe three more years of us to look forward to."
"Yeah, I know he's right. It's just that I was hoping to be the only one who knew it. So I could take advantage of it without anyone else knowing what I was doing. Just for fun, of course. But he's got it all figured out, and doesn't hesitate to repeat it to everyone in the place who cares to listen to us. And he talks like one of them, too."
"But no one else heard me," I tell him. "It's just the three of us right here who know. The adults are too busy to listen to us. We're just kids to them; kids in trouble considering where we're sitting. And as for how I talk, they listen to you better when you talk like them." I smile.
“But you aren’t supposed to talk to them,” The one with the natural tan says, “They’re the adversary.”
“And especially not to her; she’s our counselor.” The other adds; his disgust for counselors is evident.
“No, she isn’t.” I assert. His jaw drops and he stares at me in disbelief.
“He’s right. She’s not listed as one on the faculty roster. She may be standing in for the senior counselor, but she’s not a registered counselor in the state of Arkansas.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say she’s a … Doctor of Psychology.” Neither of them draw a breath for about ten seconds as they digest this. If they find that hard to take, then they’ll never believe the feeling I have that she recognizes me.
“How do you figure that?” The tall one asks me, his dark eyes already full of disbelief.
“Dark sensible shoes, dark knee-length summer-weight worsted wool skirt, no hose, long-sleeved white Egyptian cotton summer-weight sweater, sensible steel-framed glasses. They all point to a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches hanging in her office, to complete the cliché uniform of the movie psychologist. ” I tick items off on my fingers, switching hands now, as he goes back to listening at the door with his off ear.
“Her hairstyle is her only obvious sign of personal ornamentation, as she wears no jewelry other than her graduation ring, which is on a chain around her neck. Yale, from what I could see, class of 1987 with Honors and College of Psychology side panels, and the bezel torus indicating a doctorate in 1992.” Blue eyes stare owlishly at me again.
“It swung toward me and I got a look at it as she passed us.”
“Okay, she’s in there working Baldy over but good, bending his brain to her will, and planning on using us as tutors.” Andrew grins. "You’ve proven your point. Guess we're in this together, then. Drew Snelson." He holds out his hand, and I shake it.
"Theron Nunley," the other guy says. We shake hands all around. "So how did you find out about their system? My parents are teachers, so I saw it all my life, and it comes natural to me."
“I’m the youngest of five, and we’ve gotten progressively smarter about them.” Drew grins. “And I’m the pick of the litter.”
"Jon Rustin. This is the third time I've been moved up. After the second round I began to understand just how strained the system is by anyone who has a significant intellect. They get all confused, and most of them can't even conceive of another adult smarter than themselves, let alone a kid."
"Three times! How young are you?" Drew asks, curiosity plain on his face.
"Twelve, the end of last June." Neither of them speak for several minutes.
"And I thought we were gonna be the babes here at fourteen." Theron comments at last. “So what do you suggest we do about their plan to use us as tutors, ‘Babe’?”
“Well, as simple as it sounds, I say we do it. I think our best bet is to try to become their best examples of good behavior this semester.”
“For a few minutes there I thought you might be worth talking to. But I guess you’re just a stooge after all.” Drew starts to turn away, but Theron grabs his shoulder.
“Wait a second. Don’t you get it?” He has a look on his face that in the months to come I’ll begin to recognize as inspiration. “We have to set up a cover. Then we can start working from the inside, doing the unexpected.”
“Why?” Drew asks hotly. “Why should I listen to him? Who is he that he can tell me what to do?”
“I’ve seen both your records, and neither of you can be considered model citizens. So this semester we should build up some credibility for both of you, like the Babe suggested. We show them that the two of you have turned over a new leaf.” I smile.
“And while we’re doing that, we learn the political climate, the power structure, and find out what the issues are. We plan, plot, and scheme. We come up with a plan to simultaneously drive baldy crazy and de-brainwash as many other students as we can while we’re here. And we engage in random acts of kindness whenever we see the opportunity to do so anonymously.”
“Random acts of kindness?” Drew asks, interested in spite of himself.
“Sure.” I answer. “We can be ratted on by anyone who happens to see us near a place where anti-baldy stuff goes down. Random acts of kindness, especially those that are timed to coincide with our acts of defiance, or are blatantly against baldy-approved policies, will endear us to the other students, and get them on our side, effectively sealing their lips.”
“You mean they won’t snitch on us if we do things for them, or things that they like!” Despite himself, Drew has gotten caught up in the idea.
“So it’s agreed that the goal for our stay in this school system is to work baldy over as much as possible, letting him suspect anything he wants to, never directly diverting his suspicion from ourselves to anyone else, but never letting him have any evidence he can actually use against us?” Theron asks.
Drew nods enthusiastically, shaking his hand, and I repeat “Agreed!” The door knob rattles a bit, as one of the adults put their hand on it from the other side.
"Besides, as tutors, we get to meet girls.” Drew perks up when I mention girls.
“Hey, look bored you guys, here they come." He says, and quickly turns to face the far wall.
Cecelia Reyes

12:50 pm, Monday, August 14th, 1995

Senior Principals’ office, Springville High School, Emmons St., Springville, AR
“That sounds like a very good thing. F-for the school, I mean. And how hard can that be, with two trained professionals working at it?” I turn my head and snort. “What?” He asks in surprise.
“Easier said than done, really.” I sit down in the parent chair across from his desk.
“What’s so hard about it? All we have to do is keep their minds on academics.” I glance at the office door, stand, quickly turn on his desk radio, and pull him by his shirt sleeve to the corner farthest from the door.
“How long ago were you a teenager, Frank? Ten years? Twenty? Never?!” He begins to bow up at me.
“What does that mean, Miss Reyes? And why are we in the corner talking over the radio?” Frank turns to face me squarely. He’s still angry, and getting dangerously close to a place he doesn’t want to go, but he doesn’t know it.
“It means you’re talking like my maiden aunt. It means that there’s no way in hell you’ll keep a boys’ mind off some things once it gets on the subject. And it means that I think those boys aren’t averse to a little eavesdropping. Boys like that don’t get to high school early simply because they’re intelligent.” He looks at the door, and nods thoughtfully.
“A subject such as?” Not bad for the fool I know him to be; he hasn’t gone ballistic at the first thought of being spied on. Maybe it isn’t the first time; or maybe he expects such from teenagers.
“Girls. You do remember that we have girls here, don’t you?” His mouth opens, and slowly shuts again. “And how boys of their mental advancement are about girls of the age and physical development that we have running around this school in packs.” He nods slowly.
“So you’re saying that I – that we - will have to spend half our time just chasing after them anyway, to keep their minds on school.” I shake my head.
“You were obviously never a teenager. Or you’d know that that will never work.” Actually, he’d just seemed hopeful that it might be that easy. Obviously he’d been a late bloomer, sexually.
“So what do we do to keep them on the mark?” I sigh. Just when I’d had some hope for the man.
“As alien to you as this might seem, nothing. These boys won't need it. If you're really concerned, we can, in an effort to keep from interrupting their studies, arrange school functions, and whatever extracurricular activities they’re interested in, around their academics, and vice versa, of course, as much as we can.” He fakes shock pretty well for an amateur.
“Do what?! We can’t arrange things just for the convenience of a small group of students.” I want to yank on his tie until he turns blue, but I manage to refrain.
“Don’t bullshit me, Frank. You do it for the football team, the basketball teams, and to a lesser degree the band, the choir and the cheerleaders, so now you can do it for the gifted students, too. Not this semester, of course, but the next. Right now they” I nod at the door, “arrive too late in the day to join any clubs and they’ll assuredly want to get some electives out of the way, and they’ll be easy to push into a study hall where we can get them started tutoring other students.” I look up at him again.
“And I sort of expect them to spend quite a bit of this semester getting acquainted with some girls. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them doesn’t meet a girl today.” One thing I’ve got to hand to him; he doesn’t give up easy. Frank puffs up at me again. I guess he’s not really going to learn his lesson until I shove it down his throat.
“You’re going too far Miss Reyes, intimating that I go out of my way to schedule things particularly for any group of students. I’ve never been accused of such a thing before.” He sits on the edge of his desk, breathing like he’s about to have a seizure. I walk right up to him..
“Of course you haven’t, Frank. Everyone already knows about it, and approves whole-heartedly. But it puts the system on an uneven footing for the other students. I just want you to even it up a little by doing a few things for the smart kids. All the smart kids, not just these three.” I’m just at the edge of his personal space, and leaning in.
“How dare you?!” He leans back a bit, to get some distance. “I’m an administrator. I know how to do my job, and I don’t play favorites.”
“Frank, it’s getting rather deep in here, and these are new shoes. So let’s cut to the chase. I was given a certain amount of discretionary leeway when I was sent here, and I’m using some of it now.” His eyes widen as he catches on. “That’s right, I was sent here to investigate the practices and administrative techniques used in this school, and the Springville school district as a whole.”
“Y-you mean …?” I nod slowly. He loses the stiffness in his neck, and slumps a little. I return to my seat.
“And that being the case, my helpful little suggestions could be considered …”
“In my … I mean, in this school’s best interest?” I smile knowingly.
“I’ve seen it before. The most promising students left to languish by themselves simply because they aren’t very good at following rules they don’t see as applicable to themselves, aren’t comfortable in a group setting with the other students, aren’t into team sports or aren’t otherwise generally athletically inclined.”
“So how do we keep them out of trouble, and help the school at the same time?”
“Did you do anything more than skim their files?” He slowly shakes his head. “Well, Andrew Snelson is strong in the physical, technical and life sciences, likes computers, and has somehow gotten the wrestling coach to okay his addition to the team at the last minute. Despite appearances, he’s actually going to be the easiest to work with; his motivations are the simplest to use. Except that he has an unfortunate penchant for practical jokes.”
“The wrestling team? I voted for that program. I suppose I could be especially interested in and encouraging of his efforts.” I nod my approval. If it weren’t for his self-centered approach to everything in life, he’d actually be a competent administrator and educator.
“Theron Nunley is strong in the social sciences, and leans toward teaching. He has enrolled in debate, and was asking about the Hi-Q competitions when he was tested for the grade jump. He’s the most socially adjusted of the group, and should offer the least problems.”
“That’s promising. We should probably focus our early efforts on him, right? He’s already got the interest in what we’re trying to get them to do, I think.”
“Yes, he’s definitely our initial target for the plan we want to get them involved in.”
“What’s our first move on that front, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I think, in a few weeks when it becomes apparent which of the students need help, we simply ask young Mr. Nunley if he would mind helping them study. By that time he and the others should be well and truly bored by their study hall.” He nods slowly, then faster.
“Yes. Offer them an alternative to being bored, without really getting them out of study hall. The choice of the lesser of two evils. But, why not get them started tutoring today? I mean, get them in the program, get them used to the idea?” I look at him. I hadn't wanted to rush them, but ... the idea is a good one.
“I suppose it couldn’t hurt to have their study hall monitor get the texts out and get the volunteers ready. Of course, they still might not all be interested, so we have to be ready with a bribe of sorts.”
“Of what sort?”
“Nothing too untoward. A half hour of college credit in the subject they tutor in each year should do it. They look the type to try to clear as much of their basics as possible so they can get to the challenging stuff faster.”
“That could work. But how do we get them that college credit?”
“I simply speak to the Dean of Admissions when they go to enroll. He’ll go for it when he sees their exam scores, community involvements and transcripts. Colleges are always willing to cut deals for promising, well-rounded students like them.”
“Okay. What about the discipline infractions for Snelson and … Rustin?”
“If you’d really read the files, you’d have seen that those boys never started the violence. They’re intelligent and have strong opinions on certain issues, including issues regarding their own status as possible sparring partners for other, larger boys. They seem to have simply made sure they knew how not to get hurt when things did get started.”
“Just the same, I want to make it quite clear to them that I don’t tolerate student violence here.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t want anyone to think that we condoned student violence. Ensuring the safety of our students is one of our most important jobs.”
“Well, tell me about the Rustin boy. What is he interested in?”
“Pure math, as far as I can determine, and foreign languages, although he does exceptionally well in all his studies, as do the others, and he’s artistically inclined, also. Quite the little renaissance scholar, really. He doesn’t seem to speak much, but when he does he makes sure he’s well understood.”
“He’s a loner? My instinct tells me to watch him closely. Which one of them is he? The tallest one?”
“In fact, he’s the shortest. Actually I agree with your instinct, but according to his file his testers noted that he appears to have changed quite a bit over the summer. They say he’s become more open, and socially approachable.”
“But … but he’s the one with the worst discipline record? How can he be the smallest of the three? I was sure the smallest one was the Nunley boy.”
“He’s also the youngest by two years. It’s quite likely he’s still the one to keep your eye on.” He shakes his head slowly. “It does happen, you know.”
“Oh, yes. I’ve seen it, but when they’re like that, the little ones, they always swagger and -” I nod agreement.
“And exaggerate, and interrupt everyone, and make jokes about everything. This boy is different. He isn’t a show-off, and he isn’t trying to make friends or impress anyone. Frank, these three boys could, if the notion appealed to them, bring not just this school, but the whole school system to a grinding halt. I promise you that the thought has already occurred to them.”
“But – but … how?!” His eyes are wide and uncomprehending. I hold the open folder out to him.
“Right in here, in black and white and yellow highlighter. I wouldn’t go to so much trouble for plain-old every-day run-of-the-mill high IQs. These boys’ brains are off the charts that you’ve been supplied with by the state. Two hundred plus each. And at two years younger than the other two, the Rustin boy is dead even with them. Their behavior simply is not predictable.
“And in just a few days time we’re going to give them access to the school’s computer system, and its hard connection to the district mainframe. All they have to do is get bored, and we’re left guessing what they might decide to do for entertainment.”
“You’re assuming that they’ll work together. If they’re as smart as you say, why would they even want to talk to each other?”
“I couldn’t tell you why, but I know they’re doing it. I saw it in their faces when I passed them in the hall. They’ve already started to make plans. And I think the littlest one suspects I’m not just a school counselor. I don’t know why, but I’m almost sure of it.”
“Jesus Christ.” He sits back down, stunned.
“Nice try. But instead of praying, we should get moving toward establishing some sort of rapport with them. Are you ready?” He looks up at me.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I frown, and reach over to turn off the radio.
“They aren’t afraid of adults, Frank. At least, not the way the average student is. They’ve spent their lives learning everything they can, and I bet reading adults is just a little of what they know. So if you aren’t perfectly happy with all of this, they’ll know. I suggest you get happy. Now, if not sooner.” I turn to the door, and open it.
“Boys, come in, please.” They are already rising when I open the door, and I glance over my shoulder at Frank with my eyebrows raised.
Theron Nunley

1:01 pm, Monday, August 14th, 1995

Senior Vice Principal’s Office, Springville High School, Emmons St., Springville, AR
“Welcome to Springville High School. My Name is Cecelia Reyes, and I’m your guidance counselor. You can call me Miss Reyes. This is Mr. Jennings, and he’s your vice-principal.” You can imagine how it goes after that. School rules, handbook, closed campus except for seniors, dress code, passing periods, lunch shifts and split fourth hour, blah blah blah blah blah. And Jennings really hammers hard on his speech against violence and fighting in school.
About halfway through the spiel a knock comes from the door, and Miss Reyes opens it. A girl, quite a bit more than five feet tall stands there, a green phone message slip in her hand. I say girl because that’s the way it turns out to be, but at the time I’m not sure she isn’t a student teacher, or an intern or volunteer of some kind.
White Capri pants, white blouse, white flats and white jewelry contrasted interestingly with a vaguely dusky complexion, short-bobbed black hair, and smiling blue eyes surrounded by dark eye makeup. Solid shoulders and hips keep her from looking as tall as the doorway shows she is, and serve to support rounded curves, the kind that appeal to me, and would have been a little vulgar on a smaller girl. I can’t help smiling at her.
“Miss Virginia took a message for you, Miss Cecelia.” Her voice is a sweet alto, and I smile again involuntarily. The woman takes the paper from her hand, and turns away to read it. The girl in the doorway notices me, and smiles back, with a quick wave thrown in just before my new counselor turns back to her.
“Please ask Virginia to let them know that I will call them back as soon as I can, if they should call again, but that I’m in an important meeting orienting new students, and cannot leave until I’m done.”
“Yes, Miss Cecelia. I’ll tell her exactly what you said.” She backs out the door, starts to shut it, waves and smiles at me, and eases the latch. Click. Today is looking up. About fifteen minutes later we’re done. Dr. Reyes (yes, I’ve seen the same stuff Babe saw before, and I have to agree with him) ushers us out the door, and into the busy lobby just a few minutes before my schedule says the second lunch will end.
Now, this is where it starts to get weird, even for me, and believe me, my family is a magnet for weird: all of my family have little/or not so little psychic powers. For example, my mother is a finder, and my dad is a truth-seer, while my sister is a telekinetic. My grandfather and I are precognitive. That means that I get visions about the future. Let me pause here to relate a few absolute truths about precognition, just the things I know as hard facts. Number one, the visions I get always occur, and the events they portray happen right in front of me. Every time.
Two; my visions are never about me directly. I cannot see my own future. My visions are always about someone else, someone I know at the time of the vision, who will affect my future to some degree or another.
Three; I always have a sense of when the event or events I see will take place. The longer between the vision and the real event, the longer the vision seems to be, and the more important it is to me personally. The most in-between time I’ve ever had was just over eight days, and it was about my eleventh birthday party.
In fact, that’s when I discovered point number four; I can affect the future through what I see. For example; by not interrupting my older sister telling about an experience she’d had with our cousins at the dinner table on a certain night, my mother was convinced not to invite some bratty cousins to my birthday, and thus they were unable to break my new bicycle before I had even gotten a chance to ride it.
Now for some things I think are true, but I’m unable to prove or disprove. I never see good things happening, so I think that my power is meant to allow me to change things for the better. The things I see are important to me, but not necessarily to anyone else. As in my previous example: my sister wound up telling my mother too much about a particular experience that night, and was grounded for several weeks, including from my party. I secretly took her some cake after the party.
My Granpa, who has had lots of time to think about it, thinks that we, the two of us, tap into the underlying flow of the universe and the collective unconscious of the people around us. He uses a radio as an analogy, saying that our subconscious minds act as the tuner so that we can pick out the stations/signals which concern us most. And then we have our visions.
So, anyway, I’m just two steps out of the office door, and I get one. A precognitive vision. It’s a micro-second blip, so short I barely register anything. A dark-haired girl, in light clothes, drops something. The rest of the details are gone in a blink. I’m left with a lingering feeling of forlorn hope, but it’s somehow muted, possibly signifying that whatever is going to happen will have future influence.
Whenever I can, I like to tell my grandfather about my visions before they happen, but this time I obviously don’t have that luxury. This is going to happen in just a minute or two, judging from the vision. I want to say something to someone, just to say I’d tried to do something to change the events, and head off that nagging flavor in my mind.
But who can I tell? Certainly not baldy or the p.h.d. Tell Drew? As little open-mindedness as he’s shown about the little guy? If he can’t accept Babe as one of us, what will he say to this shit? What about the Babe himself, though …? If what I suspect about him is true, then he’s the perfect one to tell, because he’s already got a built in belief system.
But he’s hurried across the lobby to a table where a food service worker is selling cups of some drink, and is picking up a cup when I make the decision to talk to him about my vision. It’s already too late; the girl from my vision chooses that second to walk around the corner and almost collide with Drew, just a few yards ahead of me. I stop.
He automatically sidesteps her without even really seeing her. Intent as he is on the food smells, he makes three more steps before the girl gets through his hunger fog. I’ve seen a lot of double takes (being a precog gives me a lot of chances that way), but Drew’s is probably the finest example of a classic spinner that I’ve ever seen.
With one foot in the air he does a slow one-eighty to stare open-mouthed at her. I understand exactly what he’s feeling.
She’s at least six feet tall in her own right, and then she has on some of those white open-toed two inch high solid wooden heels with a style/name that males immediately forget after hearing. Something like … slingback. With them on she’s several inches taller than Drew. Deep dark richly colored hair in big loose curls frame a pleasantly triangular face, with dark eyes set at a slight tilt for a touch of the exotic, a long neck, athletic shoulders, and long toned arms and legs. A long-sleeved and very long-tailed white men’s oxford shirt struggles with her white leather and silver-chased fashion belt (and quickly fails) to disguise her perfect hourglass figure, from bust to waist to hips. But not miserably; nothing having anything to do with that figure could ever be miserable.
She’s an amazon – oops. I mean, she’s amazingly beautiful.
She skips to the side to avoid his shoulder, and everything should be okay, but she’s being followed by several other girls, who seem to be talking to her, and two of them bump into her. Her shoe strap breaks. And right then one of her brand new folders decides to pick that instant to live up to its non-sticky billing and slide out of the stack she’s clutching in her hands at waist level. It’s like a comedy skit. When she tries to straighten the one misbehaving folder, her notebook starts to slide, too.
And with all the movement and the one-handed grip, it isn’t long before everything is on the verge of slipping away from her. Finally one manages to work itself all the way loose, and begins a fluttering fall to the floor, and then another joins its free fall descent, and another.
Drew has all the time in the world to get over there and help her, and as it’s his fault she’ll almost certainly let him and then be grateful to him for it, but he’s so mesmerized by her good looks that he simply stands there as if frozen. Mouth open and one foot several inches in the air, staring blankly, well, he definitely makes an impression. Not that I could fault him for his reaction, mind you; she’s schoolboy fantasy material. Heck, she could be a model.
And then suddenly the Babe is somehow there on one knee in the floor next to the girl, and catching everything that’s falling, from blank paper to pens to folders to notebooks to pencils to books. He snatches each of them out of the air at fast-forward speed, and stacks them neatly on his own raised knee, until he has everything she’s dropped.
There’s nothing strange about him doing that; she’s the kind of beauty that elicits that kind of urge in guys like him. Me too, for that matter. Except … he couldn’t possibly have gotten there from the other side of the lobby in the less than a second that elapsed since her belongings began to fall. Nor could he have caught all of it. Or could he? Heck, he doesn’t even look like he’s moved faster than a walk in his whole life; he looks too laid back for hurrying. He actually looks like he’s spent all his life surfing and playing volleyball. I bet there’s a beach somewhere that’s missing his butt-print, like South Carolina, Florida, or the Keys; he’d fit in on Key West. Or maybe the Gulf Coast. He could be from SoCal, or maybe even Hawaii.
Anyway, here’s what I know: One second he’s standing off to my right, with his bag and that cup of whatever he’s bought to drink, and the next he’s thirty feet away on my left, on his knees and catching the girl’s folders and papers as they fall. Okay, maybe it isn’t exactly like that, but I’m probably the only one who really sees what does happen.
He doesn’t teleport or use instant translation or whatever they’re calling it this week in the check-out stand tabloids, or even just move really fast due to a hyper-adrenal reaction, or whatever other explanation the pseudo-scientists might come up with to explain the facts.
What I think I see, for just a fraction of a second, is the area between him and her contract to just a foot or so. He crosses it in a single calm stride, and then the room returns to normal. The space around them had crimped up, everything on the exact other side of them seeming impossibly thin, and then returned to normal, without anyone the wiser, other than me.
He seems to brush by a couple of people when he crosses the room like that, but they apparently don’t seem to see him. No one but me seems to realize that anything has happened.
Then he comes down on one knee and begins furiously picking things out of the air even as they fall around his hands. She doesn’t even really see him until the air between them begins to get empty. Then he lifts the whole stack, pens, pencils and all up with one hand while he reaches behind himself and picks up his cup with the other, and stands at the same time. He’s a full foot shorter than she is, and not in the least concerned about it, if the look on his face is any indicator.
I don’t know if he thinks he’s just that damn good, or if he’s simply completely unaware of what beautiful and popular girls like her are capable of doing to guys and their egos.
At this exact moment Drew leans over my shoulder, wiping his chin. Well, at least I have a nickname for him, too, now; Drewl.
“What did he just do?” Drew asks me in a low tone, as Babe walks out the door with the tall girl and her group of friends.
“Um … break the laws of physics?” He looks at me in confusion. He hadn’t seen it, then. “Oh! I mean … I think he just put the plan into motion. There’s no way on earth she’ll ever rat him out, now.” Not after a show of chivalry like that. And she’s obviously a member of the social clique, and has influence with them; so he’s already reached more than one person. And we’ve only been turned loose for less than ten minutes. Damn, the Babe’s a quick study!
“Well, that’s for me.” I turn slowly to face him.
“So? What are you doing standing here? For that matter, what were you doing just standing and staring while someone else was cleaning up your mess?” He grins at me.
“I’m too hungry to think straight. By tomorrow, with everything the teachers are loading on today, she won’t be able to remember my face. I’ll ask her out tomorrow first thing. And that wasn’t my mess.” I hold up a hand to stop him from going on.
“Was so. You were too hungry to watch where you were going! And what about Babe? He’s got first dibs, I think.” He laughs snidely.
“She’d never go out with him. He’s too short, not to mention too young.” I look back out the lobby doors. She’s leaning in toward his shoulder, and they’re talking animatedly about something. Her free hand is smoothing the dress down over her backside and thighs.
“Not from where I’m standing.” I tell him. Drew shakes his head and grins.
“It’ll never happen.” He says. That tells me a lot; while he has the looks and the brains, Drew has no clue about girls. Oh, and he’s full of himself.
Not only will that girl remember him the next day, as the cause of the accident, but I can see in her face that she’s absolutely charmed by the Babe. But … I can also see in her face that there’s a problem; at least six feet and a little bit tall, with those heels on she towers over the guy. She’s plainly disappointed that he’s so small.
On the other hand, Drew seems to think that all that he has to do is flash his grin, and girls will just roll over and kick their legs for him. Maybe a few will, lord help us. Maybe even a few more than a few. But the rest would laugh in his face. (I’m not claiming to be anything special, I remind you, but I know something about teenage girls.) I have a better than average relationship with my older sister; our parents had been really quick to quash the sibling rivalry stuff before it could get started. So she isn’t embarrassed to be seen hanging out with me, at the mall or the movies or wherever. Being smart and funny helps make it work for me. So last year when a couple of her friends told her they thought I was cute and asked about me, I got her to sorta let them think we’re fraternal twins. All it cost me was a week of her chores. She did it because she thought it was hilarious that they not only couldn’t see we aren’t the same age, but I was two years younger.
Things worked out fine for a few months, I went out with several of my sisters older friends; I was even escorted to second base by two of them (separately). But then they started comparing notes. My sister swears she tried to distract them, but it didn’t work. Good thing we moved at the semester break last year.)
Drew makes a beeline back toward the food smells, and Babe is following the fashion-plate down the front steps and along the sidewalk to wherever she’s going, still carrying her books, so I decide to look for the library and say ‘hi’ to my mom before going to World History.
As I turn the corner the girl with the phone message steps out of an office door marked Counseling Services just across the wide main hall from the Attendance Office. So I guess she’s a student helper.
“Hi!” She smiles brightly. Hers is a wide smile, with lots of sparkling teeth to match the brightness of her eyes. “I’m Pam.” She holds her hand out to me like a well-mannered boy would do. But she isn’t. A boy, I mean. I can tell.
“I’m Theron … and I’m happy to meet you.” I take her hand, and hold it, instead of clasping or shaking it. She blushes when she realizes what I’m doing, but she doesn’t try to pull away. I don’t know why, but I find it hard to not look at her eyes. I don’t try very hard.
“You were smiling at me in the office. I liked it.” Her eyes widen, and she flushes pinkly. “Your smile, I mean. It’s a nice smile.” She gets even pinker, and closes her eyes. She’s obviously flustered, like she isn’t used to talking to guys about their smiles, or having them hold her hand.
“Thanks. I like your smile, too.” I wait, and she gets pinker and pinker and pinker. Eventually she pulls her hand away.
“Aren’t you going to tease me?” I shake my head.
“Tease you about what?” She finally makes it to red, and puts her hands on her hips in frustration.
“About being shy and getting so confused I put my foot in my mouth and say stupid things I don’t mean.” I open my eyes as wide as I can, feigning surprise. Something about her is pushing me to say outrageous things, and … I like it.
“You don’t like my smile?” She starts to nod, then starts to shake her head, and catches herself. I smile innocently. Her eyes light up, and she stomps one foot, causing a nice jiggle up her left side.
“You are teasing me. That’s not fair.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll stop teasing you.” She nods. “So you do like my smile, after all?” I ask quietly.
“Yes, I like your smile. I like the way you smile at me, too. I even like the way you hold my hand. But you’re very mean to tease me.” She half lifts her hand, and I take it again.
“I already apologized. What else do you want me to do?” She grins. The door opens behind her, but I keep my eyes on hers.
“Smile at me some more.” I grin, and she pinks up again.
“Okay. I can do that. By the way, how’s that foot?”
“What?” I’m all casual innocence.
“Your foot. How does it taste?” She stares at me, confused. “I just wondered. Since I may be worshipping you at them some day?”
“That was quick, Mr. Nunley.” It’s the doctor of psychology standing behind her.
“Thank you.” She frowns at me.
“Miss Butler, let’s finish your schedule, please.” I do a double take. (It’s my first time. So that’s how they feel.) She’s as new here as I am! Before she turns away, I whisper to Pam.
“Debate, seventh hour.” Dr. Reyes shoots me a look. “It looks good on that college application, and its fun, too.” I stroll away down the hall toward the school library. I don’t look back; Dr. Reyes' look is a little too sure for me to be comfortable.
History is barely interesting enough to keep me awake. This is going to be an easy ‘A’ for me. If I can manage to stay awake. At least the teacher doesn’t have a monotonous speaking voice like Ben Stine from ‘Ferris Beuler’. I happen to be sitting across the aisle from a bigot who somehow has the impression that I’m an illegal immigrant from Mexico (???), and he’s been whispering hate at me throughout the second half of the class period. I’m glad to get out when the bell rings.
Study hall is a trip; the Monitor takes roll and then calls some people to the front. I’m not surprised that my new friends and I are part of the group.
There are piles of books on the table next to her, and she tells us to call her ‘Coach Brian.’
“This year we’re starting a new tutoring program. You are the best students in my study hall, and I’ve been instructed to ask if you will help the other students when they have problems. The new part of this plan is that if you agree to be tutors you’ll be starting as soon as the other kids have been given homework instead of a few weeks from now, and each of you will handle a different subject group.”
I can see Dr. Reyes' hand in this when Coach Brian just hands me a stack of history and humanities texts. I glance at Babe just to find him grinning at me, and then over his shoulder I catch Drew stifling a laugh while rolling his eyes. He almost falls over a chair when she hands him an even bigger stack of science books.
Babe just smiles when she shoves a stack of math texts toward him. English texts are given out to another student, while a little dark-skinned girl gets Spanish texts, but protests.
“So what if I have a high GPA? Why does everyone assume I speak Spanish just because I have a Mexican name?” She’s obviously been in this situation before. “I don’t speak a word of Spanish, and I have no intention of learning! I hate Spanish.”
Before Coach Brian can annoy another minority (which is a little weird because I think she’s a Filipina) Babe takes the Spanish, French and Italian language texts and adds them to his math texts.
“I’ll take care of these.” He tells her, and she frowns at him. "Math is what I do, languages are my ... " He looks around at the others, all staring at him, and obviously changes the word he's about to say. "They're my … hobby."
When I get to Forensics, my seventh hour class, there she is, with a big smile that’s two parts shy embarrassment and one part sassy flirt. I smile back, and sit next to her, and that changes the ratio of her smile to two parts sassy flirt and one part shy embarrassment.
“So she wasn’t able to talk you out of it?” I ask.
“She never even tried. But she told me to be careful, because you think a lot.” I just look at her. “What does she mean by that? That you think too much?”
“I suppose she means I’m a planner. I think things out ahead of time. I always take everything into consideration.”
“So … if we were out … on a date, maybe … “ She watches me closely. “Going to a movie, and I suddenly said I’d rather go dancing, what would you say?” I tap my chin.
“That … I need to change my shirt and my shoes?” She grins, and I wink at her, which makes her blush. I really like the way her eyes sparkle when she smiles.
She isn’t being very subtle, but we’re both new to high school and she probably wants to seem really cool and grown up to me. I know I want to seem that way to her, and I’d set the bold tone myself. I open my mouth to ask her if she wants to go to a movie sometime, but she cuts me off.
“Of course, I’ll have to talk to my mom about you whenever I get a chance for several weeks, so she’ll comment about how much I talk about you to my dad, and he’ll tell her they should have me invite you over for dinner. That way my parents can meet you. You’ll watch news with my father, listen to their music, play dominoes with the family, and help my mom clear the table. All before we could even think about a date.” I go completely blank. She waits, watching me as a frown forms on her face.
I shake myself.
“Wow! Déjà vu. You’ve been reading my parents scripts.” I tell her.
“For a few seconds I thought you were gonna wimp out.” I give her my cross-eyed look, and she giggles.
“No way. I was just surprised; my parents are the same way. Comes from being high school teachers.” She leans in and whispers to me.
“You’re TK? A Teacher’s Kid?” I nod.
“Two teachers; Mom’s a Library Science instructor, and dad’s an English teacher. Both right here in this school.” She tips her head toward me.
“Wow! That must be so limiting for you.” I start to lean back a bit to get some distance.
“Not really.” She leans closer, and I get a split-second look down her blouse at a very sexy, full bra.
“I got an even better one. I’m DK. A Deacon’s Kid.” She whispers again. I stare at her. A deacon? One of her parents is a deacon? "I've seen you and your family at temple." That's a surprise I'm not prepared for.
The instructor has finished role call, and asks for our attention. The rest of the class is taken up by him explaining debate to the class. It should really only take twenty minutes, but the teacher likes to tell stories. At least he tells funny stories.
While we can't talk, we can hold hands under the table. We do that all through class, one or the other of us squeezing the others' hand almost all the time. I so like her smile and her giggle, and her laugh, too.
After class we walk down the hall together, hand in hand, to where the buses are waiting to pick up kids. She's close to me, but not too close, and her hand is just tight enough on mine. My sister had explained it to me once, how the speed with which a girl gets close to a guy means things, and how the stage of the relationship versus the closeness she allows (or demands) tells a lot about the girl.
Pam has warmed to me fast, but I could tell from the beginning that she's also strongly empathic, and won't be this open with very many people. And when she admitted that it would take a lot of work for her to even get me a chance to ask her out, well, that was a big admission of trust on her part.
Just outside the door she pulls me aside.
"When do you get to school, Theron?" She says my name slowly, trying it out in her mouth. So she knows that I'm not a full day student. Which means she probably knows that I'm younger than she is.
"I'm here for most of second lunch." I tell her, and she smiles widely.
"Then I'll save you a seat." She starts to turn away, her hand loosening and pulling away as she takes the first step.
"Pam?" I almost don't say it loud enough. But she turns back, her eyes bright and questioning. Her hand slips back into mine. She's so pretty.
"Yes?" I have to force my mouth to work.
"When are you going to ..." I trail off.
"Talk to my mom? I'm not sure. I'll have to think about it." She smiles, and waits, her hand loose in mine.
"Oh." My smooth, my cool, they're gone. 'Oh' is all I can think to say. She watches me for a few seconds, and slowly nods. Her hand tightens around mine.
"I think that's enough thinking about it. You're too sweet, and too cute to tease this way. I'll start talking to her as soon as I get home." Her other hand comes to my shoulder, and pulls my chest to hers for a very short hug. I accept what she wants to give; it's all up to her. She squeezes my hands, turns, and walks away, her fingers trailing from mine.
I tell my family about her over dinner, and spend most of the evening thinking about her, her voice and her smile, while I do my homework for the first week of school.
Lynn Stalks

1:16 pm. Monday, August 14th, 1995

Main Lobby, Springville High School, Emmons St., Springville, AR
High school is going to be great. All of my friends are here, too. I’ve gained another two inches over the summer, improved my backhand and increased my overall speed all at the same time. My trainer thinks I'm going to be ready to compete in the Junior Nationals next year, if I can just keep my improvement up.
To make it even better I’ve decided to say ‘yes’ if James Huddleston asks me out again. He’s already asked me out this morning between 1st and 2nd hour, and I told him I had to think about it, so he’s sure to ask again the same passing period tomorrow.
I’m supposed to be paying attention to the teacher, but this is 10th grade English, and I can already tell that this will be a strictly by the book thing, nothing new this year, so I’m daydreaming, and doodling on my syllabus.
The bell rings, and I gather my things like all the others, and file out the door. I notice some of my friends coming, so I wait for them, and in a group we walk toward the stairs at the end of the hall. They’re being pretty lax about tardiness this week; they’ve already promised us that this morning during the announcements, so we’re just strolling along, looking out for other kids trying to find their classes.
We pass the attendance office, and turn into the lobby, walking toward the front doors. Because I’m daydreaming about what I’ll say to James when he asks me out tomorrow, I’ve let my legs carry me to a spot in front of the group, and almost run right into this guy coming the other way.
I’m sure I’m going to run into him, really, even though I jump to get out of his way. He isn’t looking where he’s going, just running on autopilot I guess, and at the last second he sort of takes a half-step and twist to the right, and we pass each other’s shoulders with just a little space to spare. I have a bare half-second to think that he’s kinda attractive, for such an empty-head.
But the floor is shiny and my shoes want to skid a little on the coat of wax I suspect was put on the day before. I slip and nearly fall, the heel strap of one of my shoes snaps, I bump into one of my friends before I get my balance, and another friend bumps into my books and stuff, and knocks half of them almost out of my hands. All thoughts of the guy that caused this are gone.
I try to nudge my school stuff back together against my tummy, but some of the still stiff corners catch and scoot other things out further. My friends are just standing there, watching me struggle with it. Nothing I do makes it any better, only worse. A few seconds later something starts to fall, and then another, and all the rest of the little stuff. I give up; I’m going to have to get down on my knees, risk tearing my dress, and looking stupid on my first day of high school. Yay for me.
Before anything reaches the ground a pair of tan hands appears from my right and they begin to pluck my things out of the air. The hands are attached to some toned tan arms, which are attached to a guy in a pink tee shirt and ragged white shorts. He’s on one knee, hands moving faster than anything I’ve ever seen before, stacking my stuff on his other knee.
“Oh, wow.” One of my friends says. I second that comment.
I stare. It’s all I can really do. The way he’s moving is incredible, and I barely notice his long wavy reddish hair or little silver glasses for watching his hands blurring through the air. And then everything that fell from my arms is on his knee; folders, papers and binder all stacked and neat, and all my packages of pencils and pens and other stuff in the pencil box.
He looks up and grins at me and, still kneeling in front of me, with one hand lifts them up for me to take back.
“Thanks …” I trail off. He has about the most brilliant smile I’ve ever seen, and big sparkling friendly green eyes. He also has a cute nose, a strong chin, good cheekbones, and a pure blond streak in his bangs, done in a little braid dangling down his forehead, which draws my attention back to his deep, warm tan. A wide leather strap runs over his shoulder and across his chest, and it’s worked with cut-in American Indian symbols.
“You’re very welcome.” Oh my god, he’s got a rich clear baritone. (Can he sing? I bet he sings.) He stands, and at the same time picks up a cup from the floor behind him without looking back at it. Aaaaand … damn. The top of his head doesn’t even come to my chin. Oops! Sorry, lord.
“How-how …” How come you have to be so darned short? “How did you do that?”
“I left my higher cerebral functions out of the loop, and connected my hands directly to my eyes through the motor controls in the medulla oblongata.” I stare at him. He looks like he’s serious, whatever it is he’s said. I guess I look confused, because he continues.
“Thinking slows things down, so I didn’t think about it, I just did it.” That sounds like something that my coach told me several years back. 'The best players,’ she says, ‘don’t think. Thinking slows everything down. They train themselves to react to conditions, doing certain things in certain situations. It makes everything faster, and it’s the mark of a great player.’ I’d thought she’d been razzing me for missing some tough shots, but now I’m not so sure.
“I’m Lynn. Thanks for helping me with this stuff.” He nods.
“My name is Jon, but my friends call me Babe.” A couple of the girls give him the eye, but most of them just smile and nod. It fits. The group begins to edge toward the door, and I drift with them, and so does he. Then I stumble because of the broken strap on my shoe; I’ve forgotten about it, and my stuff starts to slide again.
He kneels quickly, and a big leather book bag slides around in front of him, hanging from his shoulder. It’s covered in the same markings as on the strap, and has bead-worked fringe from the flap. He slips his hand into the bag for a second, and then reaches out and does something to my shoe. I start to tell him not to (I’m ticklish on my ankles) but he’s done almost before I can feel his fingers on my foot. His fingers are a momentary gentle warmth on my ankle, and then he’s standing again.
“What did you do?” I look down, and the shoe strap is back where it belongs.
“It’s a safety pin. It should hold until you get home.” He slides the book bag back around behind him. There’s a tiny silver gleam next to my heel. “You should probably let me carry those for you, though.” Every time he speaks it gets a little harder to be upset, at him, at my shoe, at the whole situation. Something in his voice is calming me down. Without thinking I let him take the heavy books out from under my new school supplies. And I can manage them now. He looks forward, and gestures ahead of us. Most of my friends are either at or out the doors, and I take several long steps before I realized that my dress is riding up my thighs.
I flush and look back to see if he’s staring, clutching my stuff to my chest. But he’s right beside me, passing me, flashing forward to open the door, still balancing my books one handed. I scoot through, taking smaller steps and using one hand to carry my light supplies and the other to pull the tail of my dress back down. We catch up with the others, who are waiting for us. Yes, us; they’ve somehow accepted him as part of the group. I can't stand not knowing what's happened in the last few minutes.
“Why?” I blurt out. A couple of my friends look at me as if I’m stupid.
“Why what?” He asks. I start to hold out my stuff, and think better of it.
“Why do it? You show up out of nowhere, and do that … that … do a thing I still think is impossible, just to help me? Why?” He looks up at me, and smiles.
“I could tell you several reasons, all true. You might even believe one of them.”
“Tell me one.” He’s being watched from all sides.
“Okay. I was bored, and I wanted to meet someone nice. I looked around, and saw you having trouble. That kind of stuff almost never happens to someone who isn’t nice. So I helped.” Several murmurs around him indicated a general agreement. Well, I agree, too. But I’m stubborn. And I wish he was taller.
“So you do impossible things to meet and/or help nice people?” He shrugs.
“It breaks the ice. And it wasn’t impossible, just very … unlikely.”
“Tell me another.” He smiles at me.
“Okay. I’m a superhero in training, and I can’t resist a challenge. A race with gravity is a pretty good challenge, I think.” There’s a look in his eyes that says he’s having fun, and I realize I am too. All around us my friends are giggling. But … I hadn’t quite been able to see his hands a few minutes ago, and he sounds very cool about it. Could it be true?
“Tell me one more.” He grins.
“Okay. Forgive my chess analogy. This is the very first opening gambit in a campaign hatched just this morning between me and two others to keep the school administrators in general, and Mr. Frank Jennings vice principal, in particular, in check as we undo as much as we can of the mental conditioning that every student here has received in public school.
“We’re going to be making as many friends as we can, and doing everything possible to create a positive public image for ourselves, so that when we actually start sabotaging their brainwashing scheme, no one who notices us or what we’re doing will be willing to give us up to the administrators’ so-called authority. By the time we’ve done our time here and move on to college, we hope to have broken their brainwashing machine, set free a generation of completely free-thinking teenagers, and caused all the administrators hair to have turned gray, been yanked or fallen out entirely.” Somehow we’ve been drifting along the walk, following him. Everyone stops, nearly blocking the walk to the math wing. They’re all staring at him, waiting for the punchline. He stands there with a completely straight face.
“We call what I just did for Lynn ‘Random Acts Of Kindness And Compassion.’ We’re an underground resistance group, fighting the oppression of the students by the administrators.” He explains, as if it’s a real thing and he’s serious.
The others are laughing, and smiling.
“A teenage freedom fighter, fighting for teenage freedom? That’s sooooo cool! I luv it!” One of my friends, who runs on the varsity track team, sneaks an arm around his waist and lifts him off his feet, twirling with him on her hip as he clutches my books to his chest, before dumping him back on his feet. The look that spreads across her face as soon as she gets her hand on him says she has no problems with his height. “Go Babe! I’m Teri, and I’ve got yer back. See ya later, cutie.” She hurries across the street to the science building, turning once to wave back at him.
He grins, mumbles something under his breath, and touches his waist where her hand had just been with his fingertips. In about fifteen seconds he has ten more girls agreeing to keep his secret, and they all try to reach out and touch him a little, including little Dani, the only one of us shorter than he is. She steps up to him, spins on one foot, and falls back into his arms, the back of her hand raised to her forehead dramatically.
“Oh, Babe, save me from the cruel oppression!” She looks up into his face, and smiles.
“Upon my honor, fair maid, that very thing swear I to do!” He holds her securely with one toned and tanned arm around her waist. Her eyes blank a bit, and she doesn’t move a muscle. She begins to pant, just a little, and little dots of … attention ... form in her shirt, and stay there long after he accidentally moves her. That’s when she blinks and looks away again.
“Whatever it is you’re going to do, you can count on me, Babe.” He lifts her and puts her on her feet, not even looking like he’s trying hard.
They all run off to their classes as the bell rings, and he walks into the building with my books.
“Don’t you have to be somewhere?” I ask, a little put out at all the attention he’s gotten from my friends, as I follow him into the building.
“Sure. I have to carry these things to your class.” He glances at me, and grins, and turns into the stairwell up to the second floor, where my Algebra III class is.
“I mean, don’t you have a class to go to? And how do you know where to take my books?”
“Yes, I do. The same class you’re going to. I saw it on your schedule earlier.” We go up a few steps in silence. “There’s one more reason I helped you, if you want to hear it?”
“I guess so.” I look over at him.
“I’m not claiming to have seen every student in the school, but I’ve seen over 300 just since noon. Of them all, you’re the only one I’ve seen who seems to have put more than average effort into preparing for the first day of school.” I nod slowly.
“From what I can see, you’ve been planning this spectacular look all summer, special dress, special hose, special shoes, special hair style, special nails, special exercise program, special tanning. And you’ve done it perfectly.” I stop several steps from the middle landing.
“How do you know?” He takes another step, and turns, one step higher than me, but still not quite eye to eye with me.
“I’m very observant, Lynn. Your tan is perfectly even, your face the same color as the backs of your hands and arms and legs and feet; palms and elbows too. You spent a lot of time getting it just right, different lotions with different SPF numbers and such. Your muscle tone is simply amazing, and not just in certain areas, but all over.” Well, lots of girls probably did that over the summer.
“You play a strenuous sport, and you played a lot this summer. That’s a professional manicure, and not the first you’ve had. That’s a fresh perm and style; the clipped ends still match up. You’re shoes are Italian leather, and only an unnoticeable fault in the stitching allowed it to break. By the way, it can be fixed.” Whoa. That’s … way too fast. How does he …?
“Your hose are white lace, and they have a seam. They’re not nylon, too expensive to be that, and you don’t have garter clips showing, so they’re even more expensive. Most likely silk. Probably with a button strap. And your dress is a man’s silk shirt. Fine silk, imported from Europe. Of course, neither the shirt, the hose or the shoes were bought in this state. So you traveled this summer, maybe NYC or LA, possibly Miami or Dallas, but I’m willing to bet it was Chicago, just from the cut of the collar and shoulders.” I’m in shock. How does he know about my trip, or my hose, or the shirt?
“You bought this silk shirt in the big and tall man’s section of a very upscale clothing store, such as Sak’s Chicago branch, with this very thing in mind. Then it was hand altered, and quite a bit, I’d say, and fitted right on you. By your mother, I expect, or possibly an aunt.” Jesus, Lord in Heaven. He’s unreal. Has he been spying on me?
“You love the way it feels, and you love the attention. It’s daring, and makes you feel deliciously naughty, and at the same time it’s almost completely opaque, and only gives a hint of your black lace underclothes. A nun couldn’t fault it. All together, a minimum seven hundred dollar outfit, probably more, and totally successful.” I startle when he says describes my bra and panties. Can he see into my head? How does he know how the silk feels on my bare skin?
“So you helped me because I look great?” He shakes his heady slowly. I can’t quite bring myself to admit how right he is, especially about the silk.
“Partly. I helped because you did it so well, and looked so happy until things started to fall apart on you. I didn’t want to see your day crash down around you after you put such an effort into it. Kneeling down to pick these things up,” he lifts the books, “would have mussed your dress, and I couldn’t let that happen.”
“How do you know so much about me? Who are you, and what do you want?” He blinks, and whispers his answer.
“I guessed; based on the information your clothes and face gave me. I want to be your friend.” I wait, but he doesn’t continue.
“And?” He raises his head, and looks me directly in the eyes. His eyes are huge, green, and honestly sorry he’s frightened me. I can actually see that he’s sorry in his eyes. They’re so beautiful.
“And nothing. Just friends. I want to be the nice guy you kinda like, who helped you when you needed it, when dropped your books.”
“That’s all? You promise? You swear?”
“In seven languages. Fluently.” I stare at him, and he’s serious. He means it; he can swear fluently in seven languages. Dear Lord help me, I like him, even if he does swear. I grin, and he grins back. I begin to giggle.
“If I ever again look like I need help, or a friend, or saving, mister teenage superhero and freedom fighter …” I let it trail off as he nods.
Nodding back, I climb past him, and he climbs beside me.
“One thing, Babe. Never explain things to girls, at least, not until you know them better. And not in that much detail. Mostly they don’t like it. Some get confused, and that scares them, and they don’t like boys that scare them.” He frowns thoughtfully.
“For the others, well, boys who know a few things, but don’t say how they know them, make girls curious, and they want to get to know those boys. Like just outside, when you were joking about being a freedom fighter, and even with the long build-up, they loved it. Explaining would just make it boring, and that makes them lose interest.”
He looks distracted as we walk into the classroom. The teacher turns to look at us, the attendance book in her hand. Yeah, we’re late. Judging by the look on the teacher’s face, we are guilty of the eighth deadly sin, the sin of tardiness. Babe stops and looks over the class, and I have to wait for him to move.
“I hope the two of you have a good excuse for being so late to class.” The last thing I need my first day in the mainstream school system is a reprimand for being late to class, and I’m about to start apologizing profusely. But he turns as he puts my books down on an empty front desk, and he has a look in his eyes that says ‘watch this.’ He winks at me as he turns back to her.
“You are Mrs. Barnes, and this is AP Algebra III?” He asks.
“Yes.” She nods.
“Then yes, we do have a good excuse.” He turns and walks to the only other empty desk, on the other side of the room. She involuntarily follows him a few steps, and watches him sit down. She’s even more annoyed now than she was before.
“Well?” She asks him.
“Well what, Mrs. Barnes?” He looks up at her innocently.
“Well, what is your excuse?!”
“Oh, that. It’s very simple; I’m a transferring sophomore. I’ve never been on this campus before today. Other than the attendance office, a kool-aid kiosk in the cafeteria, and now this classroom, I’m wandering randomly.” Which I know isn’t the truth, he knew exactly where the classroom was. She turns to me.
“And what is your excuse?” I just stare at her. If I tell the truth, she’ll know he’s lied to her. But I can’t lie. I mean, I can, but no one believes me when I do it; I get all red and stutter when I try.
I open my mouth without any idea what I’m going to say, and I catch sight of him out of the corner of my eye, swaying slightly in his chair. He’s holding his hands low like he’s holding a tall stack of something and it’s about to fall. I watch him for what seems almost a minute, and then I get it.
“My books!” I squeak out. She raises her eyebrows in surprise. “He – Babe had my books. He helped me pick up my stuff when I dropped it all, and he was carrying my books. You saw him with them when we came in. He started walking, and I couldn’t tell him … I had to follow him to get them back, but I couldn’t keep …” I look down at my dress, and she nods.
“I trust you both know how to get to class now?” She asks. I nod, and he shrugs.
“I know one route, but it’s rather long. I’m going to have to find a quicker way.” He tells her. Apparently, high school math teachers are different from math teachers in the lower grades; they have no sense of humor. Or maybe it was just Mrs. Barnes.
“Then you shouldn’t be tardy tomorrow.” She goes back to her desk, and finishes calling roll. Then she calls my name.
“Here.” She marks in her attendance book, and mouths ‘tardy’ under her breath. She writes quickly in the front of a text book and passes it to another student to hand to me. She calls Jon’s name. He looks at her, and she looks at him, and then she calls his name again.
“If I answer you, are you going to mark me tardy?” She nods slowly before answering.
“Yes.” He stands slowly.
“Why?” She glares at him.
“Because you are.” He gives her a very controlled look.
“Not according to my counselor. I’m supposed to have up to three days to learn my way around.”
“Too bad.” She calls his name again. He shakes his head.
“I’d rather be counted absent than tardy. Write me a hall pass, please.”
I think she’s going to explode, but after a few seconds of looking daggers at him, she writes him a hall pass, folds it once, and tapes it shut. He takes it with a quiet ‘thank you,’ and with his bag over his shoulder he walks across the room. He opens the door, and then turns back to look at me with his eyebrows raised. He gestures to the door, and I almost pick up my things and go with him, I even start to get out of my desk, but at the last second I shake my head and sit back down.
I want to go with him, but I don’t know why. And that makes me nervous.
Babe smiles, waggles his fingers at me, and disappears out the door. Mrs. Barnes is crabby for the rest of the hour. I think I hate math teachers. Please lord, forgive me. But I do.
Connie Haywood

3:11 pm, Monday, August 14th, 1995

Room 410, Springville High School, Emmons St., Springville, AR
The first day is almost over before I find anything good about being in High School. But my last class is Art, and I was told she’s a great teacher by my Art teacher last year. So I’m looking forward to this class. And just as class starts the last thing in the world that I expect happens.
The first time I see him is right before the tardy bell rings for seventh hour. I've been in my seat in the Art room since right after the passing period began; my sixth hour class is Accounting I, just two doors down the hall. All but two seats are full by the time he gets there, one right beside me, and one across the room next to a big hulking guy I remember from Junior High, a varsity football player complete with jersey and helmet hair.
But the guy I’m watching, the one I almost can't take my eyes off of, is standing just inside the door, looking from one empty chair to the other. He has big green eyes behind little silver glasses, white teeth, and more than slightly long styled strawberry blond hair with a single short braid of golden hair hanging from just above his forehead, and tucked behind his ear. His t-shirt is pale pink and falling just over a pair of off-white painter style cargo shorts. And he’s a medium coppery tan everywhere that shows, even his face, and under the brown leather sandals he has on his feet.
There’s very pale, very fine hair on his arms and legs, but it can't hide the toned lines of his muscles, or the length of his legs. Even at just under five feet tall, he’s more than half leg. And short is fine with me, 'cause I'm short, too.
Matching the sandals is a leather book bag hanging from his shoulder on a wide strap. He’s a doll, and I say that in all honesty. There’s something about him that I like at ten seconds, and without even knowing his name or hearing his voice.
He pulls a big coin from his pocket, and flips it into the air. It lands in his hand, and he slaps it to his other arm. The tardy bell rings, and he peeks under his hand, grins, and slips the coin back into his pocket. And he drops into the seat next to me!
Stuff like this never happens to me; cute guys just don’t sit next to me.
"Good afternoon, class. My name is DeeDee Johanson, and I'm the art teacher." I glance up. She’s tall and dark-haired, and it’s obvious why she’s called DeeDee. But she has a nice smile, and happy blue eyes, and I think maybe I can like her.
Several of the other kids raggedly sing back "Good afternoon, Mrs. Johanson." She grins.
"It's Miss, and I'd really rather you all called me DeeDee." Which makes all the guys I can see grin back at her. I sneak a look at the doll next to me, to see if he’s staring at DeeDee, and find he’s looking back at me, with the same knowing grin I can feel on my own face. His eyes are just as big as I’d first thought, and entirely friendly.
That never happens to me, either; cute guys don’t look at me, or smile at me, or seem to be thinking the same things I am.
The teacher puts her hand on one of the taller boys' shoulders, at the far corner of our table, and says "I would like everyone to stand and introduce yourselves, just your first names, and tell us what kind of art you like best. And we'll start with you," She looks down at him smiling back up at her past her chest, "and go to the right, all around the room, okay?"
That makes me and the boy beside me some of the last few to speak. I keep taking glances at him as the other kids slowly stand and introduce themselves. He’s sitting back in his chair in an utterly classic relaxed pose; eyes closed, hands behind his head, legs extended and ankles crossed. Miss Johanson is writing things down on her classroom map, and taking notes on the back besides as different types of art are mentioned, and never even looks at him. I want to reach out and touch his arm, or (oh, naughty me for even having this fantasy for a second) lean back against him and relax the same way he is, but I can’t make myself move.
I almost don't realize when it’s my turn. DeeDee has to wave at me twice to get my attention. I stand slowly, and glance sideways at him. He sits up and opens his eyes, smiling at me.
"M-my name is … uh, C-connie." Obviously, I stutter in crowds. Badly.
My only defense against it is to pick one person, and speak directly to them, and not acknowledge the presence of anyone else. He nods his head like he knows what I’m thinking, and smiles even wider. He seems so sweet and nice; he’s smiled at me!
That makes it so easy for me to decide to speak for him, his having the grace to reassure me that way. I find my voice. "I like most types of art, but my favorite is working with clay, either on a pottery wheel, or just with my hands." I sit quickly.
He holds his hands up and gives me just a little quiet golf-style applause as he stands. “Great going, Connie.” He whispers to me, making my heart leap in my throat with his unexpected baritone, before turning to the rest of the class.
"Hi, my name is Jon, but my friends call me Babe.” He isn’t loud; he doesn’t have to be. His voice cuts through everything else being said, and fills the room with his rich tones. “I like anything creative, but I have two favorites right now, both watercolors and chalks." He sits down again, and DeeDee walks over to stand behind him.
“Class, we will be covering eight separate types of artistic expression this quarter, one per week, leaving a week for finishing up your unfinished projects and tests and whatever else we need. The first day of each week will be introducing the fundamentals of the form and the other four days will be for you to work on your projects.
“The second quarter will be exactly like the first, even to the form, but dealing with some specialization within the larger form. This week we’ll be sketching still life fruit. Next week we’ll be painting the fruit. The third week we’ll be working with paper in various ways. The fourth week is open on my list, but I think I want to work in some of … um … Jon’s chalks.” She puts a hand on his shoulder as she says his name, but he doesn’t look up at her.
“I like watercolors for the sixth week, and maybe we’ll dabble in psychedelica for the seventh week. Winding things up for the quarter we’ll be sculpting clay in the eighth week. How does that sound?” There’s a general murmur of agreement, but I hardly make a sound.
After he sat down Babe pulled a little sketch pad out of his book bag, and a stub of charcoal pencil, and put them on the table. Then he started to put marks on the paper. I can’t see what he’s done; the cover bows up in the middle, and the pad is nearly on the other side of him from where I am. And then he looks at me, and smiles, and I forget all about what he’s doing.
Well, almost. That hand seems to be able to draw without him looking at what it’s doing. I look over at it, and then his eyes draw mine back. He gestures with his head for me to raise my chin, rolling his eyes until I blush and grin and slowly do it.
I turn my head slowly to one side and then the other for him, and anything else his eyes ask me to do. It’s exhilarating and confusing and scary all at the same time; boys just don’t pay attention to me this way.
But there he is, drawing me (I have to assume). I’m scared to death that he really is drawing me.
“Now we’re going to go around the room again, and I want you each to tell me what specialty or niche form of the type of art you’ve named is your favorite, and what makes it your favorite, either creating it or experiencing it.” And off we go again. DeeDee doesn’t go back to her desk this time; she stays where she is, and watches Babe’s hand as he draws.
As hard as I try, I can’t see much more than a vague face around his quickly moving hand; Miss Johanson has a much better vantage point for that, and I’m a little jealous about that. But she doesn’t have his green eyes peering into hers. His attention is intoxicating (at least, I think so; I’ve never been drunk, of course, or high on anything at all) and he has to touch my hand to bring me out of the fog I’m in. I’m lost somewhere in a land that’s partly his deep green eyes and partly the weight and texture of the best clay I’ve ever worked.
His voice is pitched so low that I know only I can hear it, and it’s nearly a growl. Or a rumble. Whichever, I can feel it in my hand where his fingertips rest.
“Connie,” he says, “You’re next.” So I stand up, and look around. Before I can begin to be afraid of the people looking at me, I look down into his eyes, and say the first thing that comes to my mind.
I think it goes something like this: “When I work clay I get caught up in the tactile sensation of the lump in my hands, and the experience of creation, and if I’ve completely let myself go to the moment, I’m able to create an experience. I – I know that sounds weird. What it means is that I’m able to put my emotions into the clay in a way that lets them come out again when I’m done. If I’ve done it right. I’ve been able to do it right th-three t-times.” Everyone is so quiet that I get nervous again right at the end, and sit down abruptly. Before Babe can stand DeeDee speaks up.
“That is exactly what I want each of you to have experienced before the end of the semester. The thrill of creating something that you know expresses an emotion - that will move those who view it to an emotion.” She touches my shoulder. “Connie has felt it, and I hope most of you will also.” She taps Babe on the shoulder, and takes her hand away as she steps behind me. He stands.
“I really like to work with pastels, which are usually oil-based but generally considered chalks because they work in pretty much the same way, and were widely used in the French Impressionist movement which began in the late 1800s and continued to be popular with Parisian street artists into the 1960s." His voice is so dreamy that I almost don’t hear what he says. But I get enough of it to realize that he’s talking about art history.
Oh no! He’s going to get a pounding as soon as the class is over, I just know it! That football player has almost certainly taken this class as a way to get a good grade the easy way. And John’s already made it clear he’ll be ruining things for him and everyone else with that same idea. And he’s so cute, too!
"Well, Jon, why don't you tell us about the French Impressionist movement which began in the late 1800s, and used watercolors and chalks?" Miss Johanson asks him, oblivious to the danger.
"Okay. It began in the eighteen-eighties as a small movement among the street artists of Paris, as an alternative to caricatures. The style gained common popularity, and was one of the first true pop-art decorative styles in the 1950s and 60s. More distinguished and hide-bound artists derided it as 'fluff' and 'trash.' The style had been described as unfinished sketching, but the developers of the style maintained that the purpose wasn't to make a recognizable portrait, but to suggest something, to create an 'impression' of whatever the subject was. Thus the name."
"Very good, Babe. One hundred and twenty years of focused art history in a nutshell, and still containing some detail and maintaining the listeners' interest. I think I’m glad I decided to add the chalk or pastel work this year." Obviously she’s decided she likes him.
“Thank you, DeeDee. I like to read a lot, and I tend to remember what I’ve read.” He grins at her, but I can tell he keeps his eyes on her face.
“Would you show us what you’ve been working on here in class? It’s very good.”
“Actually, I’d rather not show this one. It’s a private piece, being done for a specific audience.” Babe glances at me for a second. “But I could do something that’s more representative of the style I’ve described.” She looks from him to the drawing to me, and nods slowly. Oh no. Oh please no. He really is drawing me.
“Alright.”
“I’ll need someone to pose next to that easel.” DeeDee goes and stands uncertainly next to the easel. I don’t think she’s ever posed before. But I wouldn’t really know, never having posed before myself.
“How is this?”
“Stand behind the easel. Remove the board. Right heel off the floor. Left hand on the top cross piece. No, the lower, instead. Hips tilted a little more to the right. Look at the clock. Chin up a half inch. See how late it is? Do you have plans for the evening? A date? Dancing? Dinner? Don’t answer that, just think about what you’ll be doing later.” She does as he says, and suddenly she isn’t just a woman standing in a classroom. Babe turns his pad carefully so that it’s crossways in front of him.
Holding the charcoal loosely in his fingers, he makes fifteen or sixteen of what look like casual marks on the pad, a dozen half-hearted seeming scribbles, and three cross-ways swipes. It takes maybe thirty seconds. Then he holds the pad up for Miss Johanson to see.
"I … well … French Impressionism of the 1880s. That’s very good. How soon can you finish this?" He begins putting his pad and box of chalks and charcoals away.
"Monday." He answers immediately, closing the flap on his bag.
"That soon?" He glances up at her and nods.
“I’m not going to work on it again until Sunday. I have to see what ideas occur to me by then. I’m slightly busy with this other piece. But I’m thinking of a jacket, and a thin scarf. Can I drop it off right before 5th hour? It might get smudged if I carry it around in my bag any longer than that." She stares at him for a second or two before answering him.
"Um, sure, I guess so." DeeDee hands out a syllabus to us, sets out a bowl of waxed fruit on a stool, and gives each of us a charcoal pencil and sheet of heavy off-white paper. She calls it vellum. For the last five minutes of class everyone works on their sketches except Babe.
He spends a few minutes working on the picture in his sketchbook, then gets up and walks over to the bowl, studies it from all sides, and comes back to the table, where he carefully draws the bowl, without any fruit, even down to the chips and cracks and scars. After that he turns the vellum over and draws the bowl again. The bell rings, and he carefully rolls his vellum up and puts it in a storage cubby.
I walk out with him, and find myself asking him the question that I've been asking myself all hour before I know what I’m saying.
"Why did you sit beside me?" He glances at me, and steps across the hall to lean on the brick wall there. Smiling, he answers me.
"Well, I wasn't sure if it was more dangerous to sit next to him or you. And I couldn't decide how to choose. So I had to let luck decide. Luck has been good to me, never let me down, not even once. I figured if I flipped a coin I'd be okay." He grins impishly. "Heads, I sit next to the girl who looks as if she’s hungry enough to eat me alive. Tails I sit next to him, with all that ... you know. Anyway, I flipped it and the guy who looks like his skull chronically attracts falling rocks lost."
I’ve tried to get him to walk down the hall with me, away from the Art classroom, but he just won’t budge from that spot against the wall across the hallway from the art room. It’s like he wants to be seen. Only a few seconds later the thing I’ve been dreading happens; the football player comes out the door.
“Hey, I want to talk to you, shorty.” Babe turns to look at him, and smiles, still leaning against the wall.
“Okay. I'll assume you mean me. What do you want to talk about?” I’ll call the football player flat-head, because I can’t remember his name. Flat-head leans down and gets right in his face.
“Cool it in there with all that art history crap. I don’t need you to make this any stupider than it has to be. Open your mouth again about history and art, and I’ll pound you one.”
“Pound me one?” Oh my god, I can hear it in his voice, he thinks this is funny; he’s making fun of this gorilla. He’s gonna get killed.
“Yeah, pound you one.” Flathead can’t hear it, though. And Babe’s eyes don’t look like he’s having fun; they look like he’s very serious.
“Is this a desirable thing? Will we be going steady, then? Will you buy my lunch from now on?” Even if flathead can’t hear the teasing in his voice, he knows that he’s being made fun of when other people in the hall laugh at him, and they’re doing it really loud right now.
“Shit-for-brains, pound you one means hit you with my fist. Like this!” He draws back a huge fist, bigger than Babe’s face, and throws it straight at him. At the last second the little guy beside me moves his head aside a few inches, and the football player’s fist crunches into the block wall. The crunch seems to be his knuckles. Flathead yells, well … screams, as he cradles his probably broken hand gently.
“Well, that was slightly more enjoyable than it sounded like it would be when you said it, but not enough for me to stay and watch you do it again. I do hope you come up with some better ways to entertain people, because this one seems a little less than ideal in terms of personal cost.” He takes my arm casually, and walks toward the steps at the near end of the hall. “Oh, and don’t forget to mention to Vice Principal Jennings that I never ever touched you,” he calls over his shoulder. His hand is firm but gentle on my arm, and his arm is very solid under my fingers. And my arm is tingling like it had been asleep, but without the pain part, and I feel warm, but not in a bad way.
We walk past the drama room and out the door, turn right and stand at the corner of the building. People walk past us, glancing at him, and at me, but going past without a word.
"It was very nice meeting you, Connie. Will you hold a seat for me tomorrow?"
"Uh ... sure, Babe. If that's what you want." He smiles and nods.
"This is for you. I'll see you tomorrow." He hands me a folded piece of sketch paper from his pad, and turns to walk toward the Public Library just a block away across the field where the band practices in the morning. I slowly open the paper, afraid of what I’ll see on it.
It’s a sketch of a girl. Her eyes are closed and her head is tilted slightly back, like she’s enjoying the sun on her face. She has full lips, and she’s smiling slightly. Her hair is up, though stray locks are dangling all around her lovely face and long elegant neck. Her shoulders are bare with just a hint of a ruffled off-the-shoulder top at the edge.
At the bottom is a tiny line of print ‘Award for Bravery in the Face of Strangers.’ I love the picture, even though it makes me nervous at the same time. I’m staring after him when someone walks up behind me.
"Hey, Connie." I turn and smile. It’s my cousin; she’s supposed to meet me just inside the door.
"Hi, Kelly!" She’s also one of my few friends, and the only person I know here. Except for my new friend, Jon!
"Who's the guy? He's kinda cute." She watches him walk away. "Maybe more than kinda, he walks hot."
"That's Babe. We have art together. He does sketches in charcoal and chalks." I show her the half sheet with the little drawing of the face. She just stands there staring at it.
"Wow," she finally whispers. "He did this today?" She sounds impressed.
"I think so. Maybe. I saw him draw something. What makes you ask?" I look at it again. The girl in the picture obviously loves life, and wants to experience everything in it, to soak it in, like the sun, through her skin.
"You had to've posed for this." She tells me absently as she studies it. "Unless you've met him before, he had to do it today."
"What? Posed? Why?" It can’t be. Kelly looks at me funny.
"Don't you know? This is you." I start to smile, expecting some kind of joke, but Kelly isn't laughing. And I know, even though I’ve been denying it for several minutes.
"No it's not." She holds it up and points at it.
"This is the thing grandpa means when he says you have a wonderful smile. And why grandma tries to get you to wear your hair up to church, and why she bought you those contacts." I look closely and I see what she means, but finally I have to shake my head, just to say I’ve denied it one more time.
"I guess I can see that she looks a little like me. But she's so …"
"Look, here's the clincher." She points to a little half-moon mark just behind the line of the girls jaw and below her ear. "That's your beauty mark." I hadn’t even seen that until Kelly points it out.
"P-pretty?" It’s a whisper.
"No, not pretty, Connie. This is past pretty." She looks at the picture again. "I never noticed how long your neck is. You don't wear your hair up, so I couldn't. I like it up. What did he say to get you to pin it up like this?"
"I … I didn't … pose. Not really. My hair wasn't up." I shake my head slowly.
"Well, it had to be for him to see your beauty mark. And he drew these muscles in your throat that only show when you smile or laugh." She looks the question at me.
"He said funny things. Babe's easy to smile for … at … both, really." I take the picture from her and stare at it. It’s me. Just not a ‘me’ I've ever been comfortable showing to others. I turn it away so I’m not looking at my secret self.
"Did he smile back?" She asks, interested.
"Oh, yeah!" I blush suddenly, remembering the feel of his arm under my hand, and his hand on mine, somehow both soft and hard at the same time. "I mean, um, yeah, he did. He was interested in my sculpture and pottery. I could tell. And he looked me in the eye when he talked to me. Did I mention his eyes? They're a wonderful deep green. And big."
"Well, Con, he likes you. And you seem to like him a little too." She giggles at me, but it’s okay, because I know she means it nicely.
"How do you know?" I ask.
"Because of the way you look when you talk about him." I look at her. "Oh, you mean about him liking you. Easy; he drew you the way he sees you, and it's really you, even though he's never seen you this way. He drew you as a sensual, provocative person, though you hide that part of yourself away." I know better than to argue with Kelly, but this kind of stuff makes me feel funny, kind of nervous and fluttery in my tummy, a little like when I'm about to be sick.
"But how could he do that? He doesn't even know me. I met him just an hour ago. It takes longer than that to know someone as well as this." I hold the drawing out to her. She takes it, and looks at it again, smiling hugely.
"Come on, Connie, you told me yourself that you can't create something you don't feel. You never said you had to feel it for a week before you could sculpt it. Isn't creation a right now, in the eternal present kind of experience?"
"For me, and doing what I do with clay, yeah, it is. But this, this is a scary kind of thing. How could he know me this way in under an hour?" Kelly smiles in triumph even as I realize that I've been confirming and reconfirming that the girl in the picture is the way I secretly feel about myself. I can feel myself blushing.
"Maybe he's sensitive enough to the emotions people hide, even from themselves, that he can see them and bring them out in his drawings. Did you think about that? What if he really sees you this way? What if he can look inside of you and see what you feel about yourself? He couldn't possibly have drawn this if he didn't see you this way."
I look again at the girl in the drawing. She is me, just as I see myself when I think of how I want to be seen. And he sees this me, too.
Whoever Babe is, he knows me altogether too well for me to just blindly accept it. I have to find out how he does it, how he knows what’s in my heart and dreams.
Jon Rustin

4:12 pm, Monday, August 14th, 1995

Springville Public Library, Pleasantly St., Springville, AR
Mom is waiting for me at the Public Library just a block away from the school. As she drives she asks the obligatory questions: ‘did you make any new friends’ and ‘how was school’ and ‘how do you like your teachers?’
So I give her the ‘G’ rated version of my day, telling about the other two guys I ride there with from the junior high, but leaving out the plan to blow the administration’s ‘good little consumer creation’ conspiracy wide open, about helping Lynn and meeting her friends (especially Teri and Dani), but leaving out the way I did it, telling about becoming a tutor, but not telling about math class, telling about art and Connie, and the drawings I’d started for the art instructor today, but not the boy who tried to bully me after class.
She’s thrilled that I’ve had such an interesting day; we were both concerned that I would dislike high school. Little did she suspect that the prospect of another year of junior high was making me more and more depressed as summer finally came to an end. But it really is much more interesting at the high school.
On the way home I make note of two empty storefronts that might make good breakfast/lunch shops, and memorize the phone number on each of the signs. One is in a prime location and for rent, the other isn’t in as good a place, but it’s for sale.
At home I pour a glass of iced tea and make a phone call to my tame lawyer. His secretary recognizes my voice and puts me right through.
“Ian, take down these numbers.” I recite them, and he repeats them dutifully. I describe the locations where I noticed the signs. “I need you to take a camcorder and inspect both properties. Find out if the rental can be bought, and for what price. Find out what the flaws are, and what needs to be done to meet code for a bakery and sandwich shop on each property. I want your report by five Friday evening.”
He asks some questions, which I answer, and he says goodbye.
In my room, I spend a little over an hour reviewing the foreign language textbooks. I make another call, ordering a box of plain three by five file cards and a pack of colored markers to be delivered tomorrow afternoon from the store that delivers office supplies to the house for my mom. I expect to need them to give to the language students to make flash cards.
Other than the French, I already know the things in these books; I’ve studied the first and second year Spanish, Portuguese and Italian textbooks that the University uses, and the French textbook doesn’t appear to really hold any challenges other than pronunciation, at that.
Some music playing low in the headphones, I start my homework from the junior high. I quickly compare the syllabi and textbooks for each subject, and run through several weeks of assignments apiece.
That done I stretch out on my bed and think about everything that’s happened today.
I’ve met lots of nice people, and a few not nice ones, been hugged by some pretty girls, made four friends, and joined a conspiracy. And this is just my first day!
There are so many things to think about; Baldy’s (Mr. Jennings) unreasonableness and instant dislike, Cecelia Reyes and whatever secrets she’s hiding, Drew’s quicksilver changes of mind and attitude, Theron’s unusual eyes.
In addition there are the girls I’ve met today. Lynn’s dark eyes and self-control puzzle me. I can tell her emotions are strong, and she’s holding them under tight control. There’s Teri; I can still feel the tingle which started as her fingers pressed and cupped my hip just below the edge of my waist band. That had been a surprise, not just the tingle but the boldness with which she’d done it. In addition the warmth of her against my body, against my face, has filled me with longing, my body for her touch and my mind to know why she’d done it; and why she was embarrassed by it.
Dani had surprised me with her blatant approach; openly showing her belly below the hem of her shirt, and displaying her tiny perky breasts through the thin cloth. But the big surprise of the afternoon had been how easily her pale blue eyes, and her fierce soul, had begun to open to me almost immediately. Her trust as well as her touch had sent similar tingles along my nerves. I’d had to bring her out before we’d gotten too close to each other’s souls. How could she slip so easily past my defenses? That will require some investigation.
Mrs. Barnes is going to be a problem; she’s absolutely unconcerned about the student’s needs, and determined to punish me for not conforming to her expectations. I suppose I’ll just have to make her a personal project.
Coach Brian makes me nervous. Something in her eyes is cold and predatory, and makes me want to keep my distance. There’s more than meets the eye there, and I feel that she’s even less suited to teaching than Baldy is.
Connie tugs at my heart. Her emotions run so deep, and yet she hides them, even from herself. She’s afraid of something, and yet she longs to live beyond whatever it is.

This chapter is complete, and unless someone finds typos or something and brings them to my attention, I won't be editing this again other than to add to the disclaimer.
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Youth of Tomorrow, Shaping the Future