XGeneration, Books 1-3: You Don't Know Me, The Watchers, and Silent Generation Page 6

  Janis frowned and tried her best to appear thoughtful.

  “They only repealed the law last year,” Star went on. “Said it was outdated, and they’re probably right. We’ve got MTV now. And ‘Where’s the beef?’”

  Janis nodded, thankful she’d tossed her Wendy’s cup on her way in from the senior parking lot.

  “Do you watch MTV?”

  “Um, I’ve watched it,” Janis said, “but I wouldn’t say I watch it.”

  “Cable’s first nonstop commercial. The new opiate for the masses. And it’s not just music they’re pushing. Take a look around. It’s clothing, accessories. Telling you what to eat, what to smell like, how to act. How to think.” She snorted again. “Everyone wants their MTV. Can’t get enough of it.”

  Janis glanced around at the other desks she might have taken.

  “And everyone thought Big Brother was going to be government. Turns out it’s big business.”

  “Seems a tad dramatic,” Janis muttered.

  Black flames seemed to burst behind Star’s eyes, burning away any lingering impressions of despondency. “Oh, really?” Her gaze searched all over Janis before latching onto her pants. “Guess jeans. What did those cost you? Better yet, why did you buy them?”

  Heads turned at Star’s raised voice, and Janis fought to not bring her hair around to her nose, wishing she’d never opened her mouth. She wished, too, she hadn’t let Margaret dress her that morning.

  “My older sister,” she answered honestly.

  Star’s black-rimmed stare remained large and frightening. Janis tried to think of something better to say but couldn’t. After several seconds, the black flames relented. Star’s makeup grew dark around her eyes again. She gave a tired smile and looked down.

  Just as their typing teacher arrived, a short woman with a round, pleasant face, Star mumbled, “Yeah, I had one of those once.”

  * * *

  Scott balanced the paper plates of pizza on hand and wrist, and found a seat inside the sprawling root system of an oak tree. The day had warmed to ninety degrees, easy. He scooted back until he was against the tree and beneath its shade. With the breeze, it was almost pleasant. He cracked his grape soda, slurped the foam, and set the can atop a flat knot on the root to his right. Long banners of Spanish moss swayed overhead.

  This isn’t so bad.

  At Creekside Middle School, lunch had to be taken inside their sour-smelling cafeteria every day, no exceptions. That’s where Scott fell victim to the most humiliating “pranks.”

  Ha ha! Look, everyone! The dork’s dropped his tray again!

  Scott took a large, cheesy bite of pizza and glanced down at his lap. This shirt was clean, but the stains that had never come off his others told the story: faded squiggles of spaghetti sauce, spots of broccoli juice — the sloppy joe stains were especially gory, making it look like he had given gastric birth to an alien fetus. The steak and gravy only left mud-like impressions. And that’s what he had told his mother on that occasion, that he’d fallen in mud, because he didn’t dare tell her he was being bullied. He’d already learned that lesson.

  “Oh, stop crying!” she told him when he’d gone sobbing to her one night, unable to sleep for the dread of another school day. “If you can’t stand up to children, how are you ever going to call yourself a man?”

  But Scott never stood up to them, not when it happened. He knew that’s what the cretins were hoping for, could see it in their glinting eyes. No, he waited until he got home and was seated in front of his computer.

  Who was that who upended my tray today? Cam Moser? Well whadd’ya know? Cam’s in the student directory. How about we change the class code on that phone number from personal to pay. Got twenty-five cents, Cam? Because that’s what that annoying recording is going to ask you to deposit every time you try to place a call from your Touch-Tone. Let’s see how hard you laugh over that one. Hope it drives you and your family straight to the flipping nut house.

  Clickety-clack and voilá!

  The pleasure Scott would feel was grandiose and guilty, not unlike when he assumed his Stiletto identity in D&D campaigns. There, like in real life, his powers were predicated on going unseen, on being a slink. He would never tell anyone that he was behind the phone tampering, not even when he would hear the cretins grumbling at lunch and he’d want to stand and declare, “Yes, it was me! Behold the power I wield over your puny lives!”

  But now Scott recalled his summer spent at his computer, in the darkness, alone. He gazed on the other students spread over the lawn, their chatter as bright as the day. With high school, Scott had expected the worst: middle school on anabolic steroids. It had never dawned on him that the students here had other concerns besides making his life miserable. He remembered the solid guy in the pink Polo shirt. (“I totally didn’t see you. You all right?”)

  Then he thought of Mr. Shine and the quarter he’d vanished, then reappeared — now tails, now heads.

  In a snap, another thought came to Scott: maybe he could belong, for a change. He looked around again. Maybe he could be a part of this, a part of them. He felt he was already being accepted by his lunchtime peers for the simple reason that, like with Pink Shirt, they were tolerating his presence. They weren’t singling him out, anyway. Not like in middle school. Scott’s back stretched straight, and for the first time that day, he experienced his full height.

  Maybe he could—

  The thought fell apart. A black 1970 Chevelle was parked on Titan Terrace ahead of the shimmering food trucks, where the road curved near the tennis courts. Scott hadn’t noticed the car when he was waiting in line, hadn’t been looking for it. But now he held his aching wrist as Jesse’s recollected voice rose over him.

  Bring him over here. Let’s see how well he pulls his bullshit phone pranks with one arm.

  The Chevelle lurched. Creed, with his narrow face and black bowler hat, leaped from the passenger’s side. Tyler emerged behind him. The car was leaning way off kilter, as if it was trying to kiss the curb. Creed and his brother sauntered around to the driver’s side, where an elbow the size of a pig’s rump propped on the windowsill. Above the elbow, smoke steamed out in a jet. Scott couldn’t hear what they were saying, not from his distance. Jesse heaved his arm up, cigarette smoke trailing from his fist. Creed and Tyler lit their own cigarettes, hands cupped to their mouths. The other students gave them a wide berth.

  Scott tightened his grip on his wrist as though willing himself to hold his ground, to not care if they spotted him.

  But when Creed’s face turned in his direction, Scott dropped his pizza. He scrambled to rescue it from the sandy ground, but managed only to knock over his grape soda, which promptly fizzed away. He left everything where it fell, found one of his pack straps, and slung it over his shoulder.

  His knees jimmied like loose hinges, but he didn’t stop until he reached his fifth period class — honors trigonometry — fifteen minutes before it was scheduled to begin. He took a seat in the rear corner of the empty classroom, the front of his shirt spotted with sweat, his lungs wheezing for air.

  8

  The start of seventh period found Janis speed walking down A-wing, scanning the room numbers above the doors for her final class. She’d gotten turned around and started her search on C-wing, only realizing her mistake when she showed her schedule to a hall monitor and he pointed her in the right direction.

  And English was the one class she’d actually been looking forward to. Well, she’d also been looking forward to P.E. until Coach “Two F’s” murdered any and all hope that the class might actually be fun. So she didn’t get her hopes up now even though she enjoyed reading almost as much as she loved sports. She had actually gotten into 1984, creepy though it was. A world in which the government watched everything, controlled everything, all the way down to the thoughts in your head.

  Turns out it’s big business.

  She broke into a jog, notebooks braced to her chest. First day or not, she felt the pulse
-pounding dread of being the only one wandering the hallways after the final bell. And with that thought, an image of a barren beach came to her mind. The dream last night? Room A-14. She’d have to think about it later.

  Janis stepped past the threshold and stopped. She’d expected to find the entire classroom seated and silent, the teacher suspending her lecture for the latecomer. Instead, students stood around the rear of the room, backpacks slung over shoulders, books still in hand. Janis followed their bemused gazes to the chalkboard, where in great big letters a message read DO NOT SIT!

  The first two words were underlined twice for emphasis.

  Mrs. Fern — the teacher Margaret’s friends had said was weird — was nowhere to be seen. Janis scanned faces, disappointed to find another class without any of her friends. That was the thing about taking almost all advanced placement courses. During registration, the guidance counselors had advised freshmen to take no more than one AP course their first year, two tops. Five was considered loony tunes.

  But it wasn’t as if she had a choice. Going all the way back to elementary school, her father made sure she was in the highest level of every subject — Margaret, too. He had the teachers give them extra work when he thought they were finishing their homework too quickly (Janis learned to slow way down); signed them up for intelligence camps each summer; and starting in the sixth grade, he enrolled them in an after-school program at the Center for Foreign Language Study until both could speak German and Russian reasonably well. “They’re diplomatic languages,” he explained whenever Janis would complain about having to go — as though their being diplomatic languages were reason enough. Her father would ignore her grumbles that none of her other friends had to learn even one “diplomatic language,” much less two.

  Janis was surprised to spot one of those former friends in the English classroom. Amy Pavoni. She stood near the bookcase in a tight circle with two other girls, flipping her bouffant of hair from side to side. In matching blue prep-school outfits and berets, the three were all but declaring their little clique closed for the day, if not the school year. It was just as well. Janis couldn’t stand them. Beside Amy was Autumn, a long, lean clothing model, and Alicia, an aspiring actress with Phoebe Cates eyes. All three had hair the color of dark chocolate. The “A-Mazings,” they had started calling themselves in middle school. Janis could think of a name far more fitting that also began with an A and a hyphen.

  Janis gave a small wave when Amy glanced over, regretting it even as it was happening. Amy’s response was to look her up and down and then decide she wasn’t there. She pressed closer to her group and whispered something. A second later, Alicia and Autumn turned and made similar assessments, Alicia rolling her eyes.

  Janis lived one neighborhood over from Amy, and the two of them had been best friends throughout elementary school. They had even held a joint birthday party at the Skating Palace in fourth grade. But in sixth grade, Amy joined the Teen Board at the mall while Janis channeled her after-school energies into softball and soccer. They were still friendly, still stopped and spoke in the halls from time to time — until Amy fell in with the other two. Not long after, Janis found a note in her locker:

  Softball is for lesbians.

  It wasn’t signed, but it was Amy’s handwriting (never mind that she’d played softball herself once). Amy wouldn’t acknowledge her anymore, not even with a nod of her head.

  Janis pressed her lips together. It seemed little had changed.

  Beyond the A’s, Janis was dismayed to discover Star again. She was perched on the horizontal bookcase like one of the skeletal ravens depicted on her shoes. She hadn’t spoken another word the rest of typing class — not about her sister, not about anything — but just stared straight ahead with vacant eyes. Maybe she was a couple olives short of a pizza. Whatever the case, Janis decided that sitting beside her in one class was more than charitable.

  She sidled away until she had a tall student between them. She was preparing to peek back, to see if Star had seen her, when the tall student spoke.

  “H-hi, Janis.”

  Janis raised her gaze and then stared a moment, recognizing and not recognizing the bespectacled face and distressed head of brown hair. Her gaze fell to his crumpled blue shirt, then returned to his glasses, which went crooked when he smiled. And now it clicked. He lived up the street from her, though she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him. Last school year, maybe? It was hard to say. He had turned into one of those quiet types who were easy to miss. But whenever it had been, he was much taller now.

  “Scott?” she asked to be sure.

  He made a choked sound and coughed into his fist, then pushed up his glasses and opened his mouth to try again.

  The closet door inside the classroom flew open. Janis spun around with the other students. A woman who looked to be in her sixties sprang into the room, a wave of silver hair following her. Off to Janis’s left, the A’s screamed. The woman skidded to a stop at the teacher’s desk, her skirt of multi-colored patches billowing out, and shot her gaze from the columns of empty desks to the students at the rear of the room. She adjusted her glasses from the sides, magnifying her eyes. Then she stood back and grinned.

  “Well, drat! I was sure I’d catch one of you at a desk.”

  She turned and wiped the DO NOT SIT! message away with an eraser, then brushed her hands together and wheeled toward the classroom again. Her owl eyes blinked twice before closing. She stood there straight, chin lifted, silent. Behind Janis, a couple of titters arose. Mrs. Fern brought a long finger to her lips. The titters broke off.

  “Is there a Mr. Dougherty here?”

  A block-shaped boy to Janis’s right peered to each side as he inched forward. “Present,” he said.

  “Oh, hush with the present. This isn’t a roll call. Let’s see… Dougherty, a variant of Doherty, probably. Irish. Of course it would have originally been O Dochartaigh or something close.” The globes of her shuttered eyes moved back and forth as if she read all of this from the inside of her eyelids. “Unfortunately, the name means ‘obstructive.’ Are you an obstructive sort, Mr. Dougherty?”

  “No, ma’am,” he answered.

  “Well, we can’t take any chances. It’s there in your name after all. And quit it with the ma’am. I’ll start looking for my mother, and she’s ten years buried. Chop-chop! To the head of the class with you.”

  Dougherty made his way to the desk where she stood, the fingers of one hand balanced on the desktop. When Mrs. Fern stepped away, Dougherty snuck a look back and twirled his finger around his ear.

  “Obstructive and disrespectful, I see,” Mrs. Fern remarked.

  Dougherty jumped, but so did most of the rest of the classroom. She couldn’t have seen anything. Her magnified eyelids hadn’t parted, not even in the slightest. The back of Dougherty’s neck broke out in red splotches, and he began to stammer, but Mrs. Fern held her palm out for silence. No one laughed this time. Her eyes were reading the inside of her lids again.

  “Miss Pavoni?”

  “Presen — I mean, here.” Amy stepped primly from her clan.

  “Is that an Italian name?”

  “Yes, I’m Italian on my father’s side. My grandfather arrived on Ellis Island, New York in 1934 when he was twelve…”

  Janis tensed her jaw. To anyone they deemed beneath them — which was almost everyone — Amy and her friends were dismissive and cruel. And still they were awarded Good Citizenship awards by hoodwinking their teachers with the same saccharine-speak that Amy was spooning out now.

  “…The immigration service held him there because there was a tuberculosis outbreak and—”

  “Do you know the Italian word for peacock?”

  Amy scratched her elbow, her cheeks beginning to flush. “Well, I’m not sure exactly, but the Italian word for bird is—”

  “It’s pavone, Miss Pavoni — with an e instead of an i. But pronounced almost the same. Pavone. Pavoni. Peacock. It was first used as a nickn
ame for a proud person. Someone who thought too much of herself. Now, I’m willing to bet that the quality has winnowed over the generations since being ascribed to your family, if not disappeared altogether. But a bet is never a sure thing. How about this desk here, far from the windows where your reflection in the glass could pose a distraction.”

  When Janis snort-laughed into her hand, she thought she saw the corner of Mrs. Fern’s lips turn up slightly. Amy glared at Janis and stomped to her seat, the façade gone. She glanced over her shoulder at her friends, sensing perhaps that she was not going to be sitting with them.

  Amy would have been right. For the next thirty minutes, Mrs. Fern divined qualities from the origins of the students’ names and seated them accordingly. Alicia went to the back of the classroom (Joiner was an occupational surname for a carpenter, and Mrs. Fern wanted a good vantage for Alicia to monitor the state of the wooden desks). And Autumn was given a window seat (because Warren was Germanic for “guard,” and Autumn was to cry out at the first approach of anyone suspicious or untoward). Both of them had huffed and rolled their eyes and later tried to exchange a note before Mrs. Fern — still with her eyes sealed — plucked the message away, disappearing it into an unseen pocket in her skirt.

  It was the most unusual seating system Janis had ever witnessed — and also the most entertaining. Finally, she was one of only two students left standing.

  “Graystone,” Mrs. Fern said.

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing too revelatory about that name. Nothing too much to glean. English in origin. Self-explanatory, really. And yet I sense there’s something more to you.” She stood silently for a moment. “And your first name, Miss Graystone, is…?”

  “Janis.”

  The twin globes of Mrs. Fern’s eyes seemed to swell beneath her lids. “Ah, yes. Now we have something to work with. Janis, a derivative of Jane, perhaps, but also a variation of Janus, who was a Roman god. A god of two faces.”