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Celestial Souls, Book I: Christine
Chapter Two: The Elite

I was, in a sense, right. School the next day was as it always was, with Eric subtly fitting in. Less subtle was Shelby who was...well, Shelby. She seemed completely over-the-moon about Eric, and it wasn’t just because he seemed like an okay guy. No, this was her personal grudge taken to whole new levels, levels which I had never seen from her.

Okay, I hadn’t been there long enough to see her really get mad, but this seemed to be, at best, very messed up. She – who had been checking out a guy named Shawn Richard, as far as I knew – seemed intent on hooking him and I up, using the whole military thing as a convenient excuse. This bothered me, and I could tell her that this bothered me until I passed out from lack of air, but I was beginning to think she wasn’t listening.

I didn’t mind hanging out with Eric, sure – but it wasn’t really anything more than that. And if she kept hovering not too far from us and asking me questions after Carly had come by to sweep him away, it wouldn’t get any further. I hung out with him because he was new, I could relate – yes, there was some similarities, but my situation is hardly new...

Shelby wagged a finger. “It can become more than that, you know. You’d be much better for him than Carly.”

“Anyone would be better for him than Carly,” I said, jabbing at my food with the flimsy plastic fork provided. “I just happened to be sitting closest to you when you decided that.”

Shelby pondered it, her sparse eyebrows furrowing. “Yeah, the Carly thing is true. She goes through guys like...like how this school...goes through cheap forks.”

I was getting more than a little tired of talking about Carly, especially in relation to Eric. Usually Shelby was able to keep her sheer loathing to a minimum, but this whole thing seemed to send her into overdrive. What was worse was that she seemed to be the only one who still cared – everyone else was talking about last night’s news.

“I heard she went to Appleby,” one girl had said during History’s usual chat session, “they’re all in shock over there.”

“How d’you know?” Zack Dawson asked, completely ignoring his work.

“I have a cousin that goes there,” the girl had retorted. “She says everyone’s not letting their guard down. There’s cops patrolling the area.”

And now, even during lunch, I could hear snatches of conversation – “—police are patrolling the schools; how am I gonna cut today?”; “—was probably faking it.” “No, my cousin knows her; said she seemed messed in the head now.”; “I heard she was taken on her way home from a movie; should we cancel our date tonight?”

I didn’t know whether or not Shelby was catching any of this. Right at that moment she was glaring daggers at Carly’s back, her new toy Eric standing not far by. I couldn’t see his face; it was blocked by a pillar.

Carly turned just then, attempting to arch a thin eyebrow at Shelby’s death-glare, but it didn’t quite seem to come out as haughty as she’d intended. Her group began to pass by us on the way to the cafeteria, and she began talking. Loudly.

“There’s a new movie coming out today,” she said, directed primarily at Eric. “I really want to go see it.”

“Which one; that chick flick?” Eric said. Even from here I could see the face he was making. Evidently he didn’t like chick flicks. Neither did I.

“Yeah,” Carly said. “With the Scottish guy – The Here and Now. I’ve got a couple of free passes, you know...”

“Uh,” he said, looking even more awkward than when I’d talked to him, “I’m gonna be honest, click flicks aren’t my thing—”

The peanut gallery – a combination of her exes and several other admirers – sniggered openly; one did not go to a chick flick with Carly Dupree for the movie. But by the looks of things, Eric wasn’t too pleased with the whole idea, be it Carly or the movie, and that was...a relief, really. She had a disturbing chunk of the men in our grade under her. Carly attempted her weird-looking haughty glare at them, and they silenced rather quickly. It would have been funny if it were anyone other than her.

Carly laughed as though he’d told a very funny joke. “It’s been getting really good reviews – would one movie kill you? We can go to London, and you can see a real city, not this backwoods town.”

“Craig and I are going too,” a girl – I didn’t know her; she must have been a grade lower – piped up. “We can meet up before the movie.”

“Yeah, we could go as a group,” another girl suggested, and the thought of going as a group seemed to visibly relax Eric. Carly didn’t look too thrilled at the prospect, but considering she wasn’t snapping at them all she must have found it tolerable.

The ball rang just then – I jumped; was the period over already? Quickly standing, I tossed out my trash, intent on getting to my locker before the crowds came, or at least attempting to do just that. Carly had also left quickly, batting her eyes at Eric as she passed.

“Um, hey,” I heard, feeling a light touch on my shoulder. I turned to se who it was; Eric. He withdrew his hand.

“Hey,” I said. “Um, classes are starting...”

“Yeah, where’s your locker?” I gestured in its’ direction. “Oh good, mine too.”

He fell in step beside me. I was a little confused. Was he going to ask me to come to the movie with him? I hoped not – not that I didn’t like the idea of a movie, but because it was with Carly, who would likely make the night hell whenever she could. Could I be faulted for wanting to avoid that? Swerving and ducking through the crowds that were already bustling about, I caught up with him again.

“Listen – about this Carly,” he said, speaking over the crowd as best he could. “I...really don’t want to go with her tonight, but she – she doesn’t seem to like ‘no’ as an answer. But maybe, if we go as a group, it’d be not so bad...”

I quickly inhaled, making it sound a little like a hiss through my teeth. “Oh, er – Jesus. It’s not like I don’t want to go – I mean, I hate chick flicks myself, but I wouldn’t go for the movie – but...”

I stopped at my locker, quickly twirling the knob on the combination lock, popping it open and rummaging out my gym clothes.

“But?”

“But I know Carly, and me being there would just make everything so much worse.”

I saw a look on his face – a disappointed resignation – and I hastened to explain: “Trust me, you’re better off just going and tuning out. If I came along there’d just be a lot of bitching, which with her is way worse than just her by herself.”

Wow. I was really coming off smooth wasn’t I? Dumping the poor guy to the wolves – or cats, as it were. I must have come off as a heartless jerk.

He seemed to think about it, and his expression brightened a little; a grin played at the corners of his mouth. “Yeah, she does seem to have it in for you. I can’t figure out why.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, grinning myself, “I’m still trying to figure it out.”

He laughed – and then quickly frowned as he spotted the time. “Shit, I’ll be late – I’ll talk to you later!”

He ducked away, and all I saw was the back of his head before being lost in the crowd. I still felt like an idiot.

Gym was as it always was – Ms. Burns, or as I called her, ‘Sarge’, was there, waiting as everyone changed. I ducked into the change room and did so quickly, leaving the uniform in a crumpled heap on the nearest bench. Everyone else was waiting on the bleachers, chatting amongst themselves. The nearest spot, at the edge of the bottom row, was empty, and I sat. That was what I didn’t like about Gym – no one there that I really could call a friend, especially not Carly. People who I knew, yes, and who I got along with, but didn’t really interact much outside of class. Gym was not mandatory after grade nine, and so anyone who was there wanted to be there; the more athletic types mostly.

I was there because my mother had insisted upon it. Said I needed to stay in shape. So there I was, feeling very small, as Burns came out, her mousey brown hair pulled back into a short ponytail and a grey uniform shirt hanging off her frame. Roll call was taken as normal.

“I warned you,” she said, “from today until next Tuesday we will be doing the initial testing, and then again at the end of the semester to compare your results. Today we’ll be working in here, Monday in the weight room, and Tuesday will be the twelve-minute run outside.”

Tuesday had better be a warm day.

The ‘initial testing’ was merely doing pretty basic stuff – how many sit-ups could one do in a certain time, how far one could reach for their feet, and how long the position could be held – with the catch that it would be repeated exactly as it was at the end of the semester, and results compared. I remember last year’s results. The difference between ‘before’ and ‘after’ were negligible at best, something my mother hadn’t been pleased with. Somehow she thought singing lessons could translate well into physical activity.

“You take lessons, don’t you?”

“Yes, but what does that have to do with Gym?”

“They teach you breath exercises, you said,” Mama had said. “Shouldn’t that make you better?”

I had no idea where she had gotten that particular idea. Breath exercises were about controlling your diaphragm and vocal muscles to sing correctly; how my mother went from that to ‘breath exercises should make you excellent at running’, I’ll never know.

That day was the easy stuff – sit-ups, push-ups, and that ever-so-painful toe-touching. My partner – Kyle Taylor, who looked like he would have much rather been with his girlfriend – held a stopwatch as I struggled through the end of the push-ups, feeling a burning in my arms.

Of course, by the end of the period I was sore all over, and was quite the wreck by the time I stumbled into Music a few minutes late. Not that the teacher cared; she knew where I had been, and I was hardly the only late one there. Mrs. Burke did not take roll call. She never did, and somehow still managed to keep everyone’s name straight.

I don’t even know why I took this particular class. It was possibly the one and only class I was truly acing. I played flute. It wasn’t a bad instrument – the one assigned to me was showing its’ age, certainly, but it wasn’t bad.

The class’ music was, though. I doubt Burke expected much of us, even in Grade Twelve, but the awkward, staccato sound we were producing was surprising. I would have thought that they would have gotten the hang of their instruments by now; I know I had.

It was at the bus when I came across Eric again – Shelby had taken off just as I had been arriving at the locker, and I couldn’t help but feel that she was setting something up. Sure enough, Eric seemed to catch up with me as we walked to our buses.

“Don’t have a car?” I asked of him. It seemed odd that he would take the bus when a lot of the guys here just drove to school.

“Nope. My grandfather won’t let me use his car, and that’s the only one we’ve got.”

That I could understand. “Yeah, my mother’s the same way.”

“Seems like everyone has their own here,” he said, glancing at the clearly younger students around us.

“Yeah, most people do. I dunno where they get the money.”

He shrugged, as if to say he didn’t know either, before quickly switching subjects: “Hey, sorry if I put you on the spot earlier, about the whole movie thing – not that it matters. Carly’s apparently grounded until these kidnappings blow over.”

I did a double-take at that. Carly’s parents were well-known – her father taught the guys’ Gym class in the younger grades as well as coaching the basketball team, and her mother was some sort of entrepreneur with some success to her name. But they had generally given her free reign, or so it had seemed. Picturing her reaction – shocked, probably, followed by a sneer that she routinely gave Shelby – was funny.

“How’d you hear that?”

“Her dad took her aside on the way to French and told her, apparently. I wasn’t there, but Zack was. Said she was screaming discrimination and called off the movie.”

“Aren’t you lucky?”

“No shit,” he said with a grin.

We had reached his bus, and through the glare of the sun hitting the thick windows, I thought I saw Shelby’s fiery hair near the back. I couldn’t see her face clearly, but she offered a little wave.

“Well – I should be going,” he said. “See you Monday!”

The look on his face suggested that he had something more to say, but I was forced to brush it off as I saw Thom – and if I was behind him, I was certainly going to miss the bus if I didn’t move right then and there.

“Yeah, see you then!”

I practically made a mad dash to catch up to Thom and then the bus, my legs still somewhat sore from Gym earlier. I made it just in time; the doors closed behind me with a thud. Unfortunately, the bus was full as full could be – Thom had taken the last remaining seat, and had tossed his bag beside him. Feeling irked, I marched over to him.

“I’m sitting down; move your bag.”

“No,” he said. “Sit with Grant over there. I think he likes you.”

Thomas had a tendency to be an annoying bastard when he wanted to be, and right now he was milking it for all it was worth. I glanced at Grant’s seat as the bus started with a squeal; he had his bag in the aisle and was using the entirety of the seat, his muddy sneakers resting on the seat like a footrest. I winced at the thought of sitting on that mud.

“I am not sitting next to him, Thom. Move your bag or I’m sitting on it.”

Sometimes I needed to be a little aggressive with Thom – and by sometimes I obviously meant all the time, as it seemed he had turned from a mildly annoying but okay guy into an asshole who liked pressing my buttons for his own amusement. Thom did not immediately move, so I seized a strap on his black bag and shoved it over to him, sitting down on the edge of the seat.

“What the hell?” was his only exclamation as the bag suddenly landed in his lap. I removed mine, setting it on the ground between my feet.

“I asked you twice to move your bag,” I said.

“No, you ordered me, Chris, and I hate being ordered.”

“That’s too bad, because between you or Grant, I’d sit with you.”

Thomas swore under his breath.

There was no time to relax at home; I dashed inside, changed out of the uniform, and then went right back outside. Fridays were when I had my singing lesson, and I always got home with just enough time to change before having to head out again. The Saluccis did not live that far away; it was about a ten-minute walk, even on a bad day.

Of course, most says I wasn’t sore from my waist down due to cramming as many exercises as I could into one period, so the walk was a bit more difficult than usual. Quieter, too. Usually I would pass other people walking home from school, or walking anywhere really, but not today. The streets were deserted; not even a car passed me. It was a little creepy, even in the bright sun. People were upset about this one kidnapping – what would they say if they saw me out there, by myself?

I didn’t get a chance to find out, as I came across the Salucci house, the flowers trembling in the breeze. Stepping up to the door, I rang the bell; not a moment later, Carla answered the door. Her normally perfectly styled look wasn’t there that day; she was wearing jeans and one of her husband’s shirts, her hair pulled back. She looked like I’d caught her off-guard.

“Hello, Christine,” she said. “You’re here early; your lesson isn’t until four.”

“It is four.”

She glanced back inside at a clock; even at the angle, I saw her eyes widen. “Merda! So it is. Completely lost track of time – come inside.”

As was custom by now, Carla never even bothered to wait as I struggled to take off my shoes in the small entranceway. I could hear her walking about, the floorboards creaking a little with each step, but I knew where I was going anyway. Wrenching my shoes off and awkwardly placing them on the mat – they insisted upon that – I made my way through the house, floorboards creaking under my feet.

Lessons were held in the basement, it being the most soundproofed place in the house, and as I stepped downstairs, I could smell the strong scent of paint. They must have been renovating.

“Oh!” Carla said from the piano room, “Try not to touch the walls in the living room! We’re painting!”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Christine, Tony.”

“Is it four?”

It was then I stepped off the small landing and into the living room proper; everything had been dismantled and the walls were currently being painted an eye-blinding white. Antonio, Carla’s husband, was there on a ladder, his shirt covered in paint and a roller brush in his hand. He looked surprised to see me, brushing a lock of black hair out of his eyes and then cursing in Italian – he’d now gotten paint in his hair, too.

“Hello, Christine,” he said, desperately trying to wipe the offending bit of paint out of his hair and failing miserably.

“What’s the matter?” Carla said, finally poking her head out of the adjoining room. Trying to move past Antonio and the ladder – the Saluccis were oddly superstitious, and I thought it might have been funny to duck under the ladder, just to see their reacting, but it wasn’t big enough to comfortably do so – I edged past the walls, the scent of paint in my nostrils. Sliding past Carla, who was giving her husband an amused look, I stepped into the room.

“What colour are you going to paint it?” I said, trying to make pleasant conversation.

“A very pale green – makes the room look bigger when it’s a light colour,” she said. “I’d show you the paint swatch but I left it upstairs.”

Antonio said something in Italian and she responded, her voice amused, as she ducked back and seated herself at the piano. Her long fingers danced along the keys as she warmed up. I quietly shut the door behind me and stood in my usual spot.

“Don’t just stand there; do your warm-ups,” she chided as she continued to play.

I didn’t need to be told twice.

I liked the lessons and I liked them; they were nice people, if not busy ones. They were always doing something, and more often than not it related to acting. So I usually was whisked out the door at five, and not because I was disliked, but because they usually had to rush to a rehearsal of some sort. So I found it a little odd, once the lesson had been concluded, for Carla to remain at the piano. Antonio had disappeared upstairs, and by the sounds above me, he was cooking dinner.

“Go upstairs and have a glass of water if you’d like,” Carla had offered, finally standing.

“No rehearsals today?”

“No, we’re on a small vacation.”

Sure enough, I could smell something from the kitchen when I come upstairs again, Carla at my heels. Antonio was there, most of the paint gone from his hair, at the stove. He offered me a glass of water.

“Very good lesson today,” he said. “But you sounded a little flat at the start of the second verse.”

“Oh, you’re losing your hearing,” Carla said with a smirk, taking a glass herself.

The newspaper was on the table still; the headline was bold: Girl Found Alive: Missing since the previous night. Wondering if the newspaper would have given more information than the broadcast, I skimmed it over – but the details there were barely worth mentioning: her name was Caitlyn McCormick, she was a junior at Appleby High across town, and was currently in stable physical condition.

“What’s that?”

“The paper,” I said to Antonio. “Something about that missing girl they found.”

“She’s just the latest,” he said. “There’s been girls going and returning all over the province. You should be careful; apparently this is when they’re being taken – by themselves, usually at night.”

“They only go missing for a day or two,” Carla said sharply. “That could be anything from getting too drunk and passing out or getting lost on a road trip.”

“Yeah, but all over the province?” I said. She seemed nervous.

“I’m just saying – they make it sound like a serial killer is on the loose. None of the girls were hurt.”

“You never know,” Antonio said, “they might be. The papers are unusually quiet for something with this much hype.”

It appeared they, to a degree, had bought into the hype – I lived only a few blocks away, and it was still light outside, but they asked if I’d like a ride home.

“Just to be sure,” Carla had said.

I had declined. I didn’t want to inconvenience them. I doubted I would go missing anyway; people were coming home for the day now.

“If I go missing, I’m sure no one will blame you,” I said, jokingly. Carla laughed a little, but still looked odd. I wondered what was wrong, but there was no point in asking her; she wouldn’t tell me. It was none of my business anyway.

It was getting cooler outside, and I shivered a little, wishing I’d had the forethought to bring a jacket. Cars passed by me, headlights blazing, as I walked – see, there were witnesses, I wanted to tell the Saluccis. It would be a lot harder to grab someone when there was a risk of being seen. And, sure enough, I made it home just fine – my legs still ached a little. How much had I worked out? All I had done for the lesson was stand; no excessive movement or anything like that...

Mama was watching television when I came in, the beginnings of dinner sitting in the kitchen. She glanced up when I came in.

“How was practice?”

“Same as it always is,” I said. “Worked on I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls today.”

“Is that a hard one?”

“Not really,” I admitted. “She always likes to work up to more difficult arias; says it strains the voice less.”

“Oh,” she said, in that way of hers that suggested she didn’t quite understand. She was supportive yes, but she didn’t fully understand the details of it all. “That friend of yours called while you were out. Dinner won’t be ready until six – you might as well call her back now.”

She seemed to think that because we ate around six to six-thirty, and our neighbours did, that meant everyone did. Dinner at five seemed too early for her – not for Shelby, though. I had her over for dinner a few times, and she was clearly hungry as she waited.

“I’ll give her half an hour.”

Sure enough, I called around five-thirty, and the phone rang only once before it was answered:

“Hello? Chris?”

“Hey Shelby. Mama said you called here earlier.”

“Yeah, I just wanted to know how it went!”

Was she still on the Eric thing? Still? “How what went?”

“I heard Eric asked you to a movie earlier today because Carly cancelled on him.” She paused. “Oh, is he there? I didn’t want to interrupt”—

“No, he’s not here, and he’s not coming over here. He asked me just after lunch and I said no.”

I paused, waiting for the inevitable. In the background I could hear her family talking to each other, but that died down as Shelby presumably moved into another room; over here, Mama had finally gotten up from the couch and was doing something in the kitchen—

“You what?!”

“I said no,” I repeated. “He wanted me to go with him and Carly, Shel. Do you have any idea how badly that would have went?”

“The scary thing is, yes. Oh. He mentioned it to be during French; I assumed he’d just asked you.”

“No, he wanted me to go with him so he didn’t have to deal with Carly all night. But then she got grounded until these kidnappings end.”

“That’s kind of stupid. Who knows when they’re going to end? She could be grounded indefinitely. Wait, that’s awesome for me! Er, us. Everyone, really.”

I’m sure it was great news for those who hated Carly, which limited it to really only Shelby and a handful of other poor saps who had made it onto her ‘hate list’. For everyone else it was no big deal; I was willing to bet Carly wasn’t the first or the last to be temporarily grounded.

The conversation was short, as I had to leave for dinner – “you guys eat so late,” Shelby said, “how can you do it?”

I shrugged, even though she couldn’t see it. “We just do.”

Dinner was dinner – Mama did not delight in cooking; she didn’t like to experiment too much with spices or herbs, or just do something without a recipe. She cooked because we needed to eat, and between her cooking and mine, hers was definitely better. I could make many small things, but things like dinner tended to turn out badly. So she was the designated cook now.

Mama had a salad – just a salad, while we made do with chicken and rice. My plate was piled disproportionately high, and I eyed it warily.

“You’re too skinny,” Mama said, spearing a lettuce leaf on her fork. “Eat more.”

“I can’t eat all this,” I said, jabbing my fork into the nearest piece of chicken.

“Oh, you’re going to,” she said. “I’ve made a decision.”

“What’s that?”

“I need to lose weight,” she said, “and you need to gain it. I’ve never seen a skinny opera singer, after all. It’s not good for you.”

“So force-feeding me and starving yourself is going to fix this?”

“That’s generally how weight works,” she said.

Across the table, in the middle of dumping what looked like barbeque sauce on his plate, Thom snickered.

“Shush you, or you’ll be eating salad too.”

That immediately shut him up, and he moved his food around his plate. Glancing down at my own pile of food, I popped a piece of chicken in my mouth, immediately wincing as it seared my tongue.

The weekend passed by unusually slowly. I worked on homework; Thom lazed about the house, and Mama went to work. It was rather lonely. I was used to being alone, of course, but I had become used to Shelby calling, or coming over, and doing something on the weekends. It got me away from Thom, at least. But she was away – “My grandma’s sick, so Mom’s going up to Thunder Bay tomorrow to take care of her.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I had said.

“She’s taking me with her,” Shelby added, a touch of horror creeping into her tone. “Not for long, but she says she needs all the help she can get until my aunt arrives...”

“How long would that be?”

“Wednesday at the earliest...”

And I was very lonely. I wondered what it would be like to have good relations with one’s grandparents. Evidently Shelby liked that particular grandma; every Christmas, or shortly after, I would see her wearing some sweater that had been knitted for her, and it was not the usual ugly sweater, but something vaguely trendy and pretty looking. Of course she always claimed she felt obligated to wear it, but I could just tell that she liked her grandmother.

My mother wouldn’t even cross the street for her parents, let alone catch a flight back to Germany. And they wouldn’t do the same for her either. I don’t know what happened, and probably never would. And the Schumacher side never liked my mother, so visits to or from them dropped dramatically after Papa’s death. Screwed-up, that was for sure.

Monday morning was lonely – there was no one there to greet me at the locker, no one there to gossip about anything that crossed her mind. It was relieved about the whole thing at first – some silence, at last! No more talk about Eric, or plotting to go out with Eric, or even how much she wished Shawn would get off his ass and ask her out! Just peaceful, calm silence.

But by History class I was missing her. History itself was all right, but having no one to talk to was boring. Carly was in her usual spot, looking livid as everyone else around her talked about their weekend and what they would be doing after school. I was sitting by myself off to the side, staring blankly at the questions in my textbook. What were three factors that led to the Roman slave revolts? I don’t know, I wanted to write, if you were treated with as much dignity as a sack of meat you’d be pretty pissed off too. But I didn’t write that. I wrote something politer, of course. Something lamer.

The clock seemed to be ticking backwards with how slow the class was going. I glanced down at the second question – Why was Spartacus’ riot so successful? Because one pissed-off person isn’t a threat, but a bunch of them altogether was, that was why – who wrote these questions?

“Can I go to the washroom, Mr. Rourke?” Carly said loudly. Rourke must have said yes, for she gathered her books, quietly stood up, and left. There was still twenty minutes to go before class ended, but she wasn’t coming back.

A moment or two later, I heard a scraping sound, and looked up to see Eric sitting beside me in Shelby’s seat, his textbook under his arm. His dog tag glinted a little under the fluorescent lighting.

“Hey there,” he said. “You looked lonely. What happened to Shelby?”

“Some family problem,” I said, not knowing how much detail Shelby would have liked to tell. I could never tell. “Her grandmother’s sick.”

“Ah,” he said. “Sorry to hear.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, she said she’ll probably be gone till the middle of the week. Her grandma doesn’t live around here.”

There was a long pause. Eric glanced at the door. “I don’t think she’s coming back,” he said, referring to Carly. “She’s pretty pissed about this whole ‘grounded’ thing. Wouldn’t stop complaining the whole first period.”

“I’m not surprised. She brags about how often she goes out.”

It was uncomfortable talking about Carly; she had been the subject of too many conversations recently, whether or not she was nearby, and I didn’t want to keep talking about her. It was like there was nothing else to talk about but her, and I’m sure she would have loved that idea. She wouldn’t have loved the fact that it was Shelby and I doing most of the talking, but I’m sure she would adopt the attitude that negative talk was better than no talk.

I needed to change the subject: “How was your weekend?”

“Boring. Spent most of the time just driving around trying to figure out where shit was.”

“See anything interesting?”

“A tiny mall and a movie theatre,” he said. “There isn’t much to this place, is there?”

“Nope, there isn’t. Everyone usually just goes to London if they need something.”

“This place might as well be a part of there.”

“It...pretty much is, unofficially.”

Eric twirled his finger around the chain. It seemed he didn’t realise he was doing it.

“That’s why I’m counting the days until I can get out of here,” I told him, only half-joking.

“Where will you go?”

“Whatever university accepts me,” I said. “Live on campus and mooch off the government for four years. I figure by the time it’s all over I’ll have figured out something to do.”

I grinned. That wasn’t exactly my plan. My plan was a little more precise than that – I already knew what I wanted to do: music. People kept saying that it was not an especially stable position, and not one with a lot of jobs, and I told them to mind their own damn business; I wanted to do it and I was going to do it. But everything else was essentially what I’d told him. Eric did not look too surprised at the idea; he grinned.

“I haven’t even thought that far ahead,” he admitted. “But shit, applications are coming up soon, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, October or November, I think.”

He looked a little startled, like he wasn’t entirely sure how to react.

He stayed throughout the end of the period and the beginnings of lunch – by some miracle two seats were free, for once, and we talked over lunch. Well – I talked; he mostly sat and ate and occasionally offered a few comments. He reminded me a little of Thom, in the fact that he seemed to eat just about anything offered to him. The soggy French fries, the too-greasy pizza – they were gone practically seconds after he picked them up. He even ate the bits I didn’t eat, and considering I was to lug about weights next period, I needed the energy.

I did lug about the weights, and by the end of the day, my arms were aching, and Music itself went badly. It wasn’t that the flute was heavy, it’s just that I was convinced I’d ruined my arm muscles somehow. It felt like I had.

“What’s the matter with you?” Mama asked as I stepped through the door.

“Gym,” I grunted. “Weights. I think I pulled a muscle or seven.”

Mama tried not to laugh, or snort in disbelief. “I’ll have to give you more food tonight.”

(And she did, even though the aspirin did more for my arms than a plate full of food).

Eric was in class the next day – but Carly wasn’t. That was unusual. She might have disliked class, but she usually went to them, and she was apparently blessed with an immune system of steel – I had never seen her really truly sick, so this was odd. Not that I minded; it was much easier to concentrate when Carly wasn’t glaring daggers at the back of my head.

“Could you make any sense of that last question?” Eric said – he had taken up Shelby’s spot for the time being – peering at the textbook before class began. I glanced at it – the answer had to be a paragraph at least, and all I had written was three sentences about how people did drastic things when desperate.

“Nope,” I said. “I think it was trying to ask why Spartacus did what he did.”

Eric snorted. “They need a whole paragraph for that?”

Rourke came in, did roll call – commented on Eric’s sudden change of seat – and started the lesson. Immediately I began to tune out, my hand scrawling out notes automatically. Something about the Punic Wars? Whatever it was, it didn’t seem very important. Out of the corner of my eye, I glanced at Eric – I couldn’t see very well, but he looked like he was paying attention, dutifully writing down notes. Notes that made mine look great in comparison; I couldn’t really make anything out. I turned back to the chalkboard, shaking my head a little to snap myself out of it. Keep writing. It might have been boring, but keep writing, and I would be fine.

The work period came quickly, and I slowly snapped out of my daze. Pages upon pages of notes were in front of me, and there were more questions to be done in the textbook.

“What do you have after lunch?” Eric said, peering at a certain question.

“Gym,” I said automatically. Then I remembered the date – suddenly Carly skipping made perfect sense. “...and we’ve got the goddamn twelve-minute-hell today.”

“Aw come on, that’s not so bad,” Eric said, looking up. For him, maybe; he was well built and strong, I was a potato with pipe-cleaner limbs in comparison. He eyed me. I arched an eyebrow. “...well, maybe not for you,” he added. “No offense.”

“None taken. What d’you have?”

“French. I’m crap at it.”

“S’okay, I am too. That’s why I stopped taking it.”

He grinned. “You should talk with my grandfather – he’s big on that stuff.”

Eric straightened his posture and apparently attempted to imitate said grandfather: “‘You need to learn a language, boy, life will be so much easier if you do.’” he said, laying on a thick and forced British accent. “It’s so stupid. I don’t hear him speaking any second languages.”

I grinned. “Yeah, my Papa always wanted me to speak more German but he never spoke it when he could help it.”

“German? Yeah, I guess your name does sound it.”

“Yeah, it does,” I agreed. “I think my dad’s ancestors came from Austria. That’s what he always said.”

“Too bad this school doesn’t offer German,” he said, “I might actually pass that with you around.”

I grinned again, feeling a little pleased at that. The school only offered French to begin with, because it was small and there wouldn’t be a demand for anything else. But I liked the thought of tutoring him ...no, wait, I was just being a show-off. No one liked show-offs.

“Maybe you can convince him you should drop French and take private tutoring,” I heard myself saying. Oh God. I was being an idiot.

He grinned right back. “Only if you’re willing to work for beer and food, because I’m flat broke right now.”

I laughed at that. “It depends on the food, you know.”

“I’ll see what Nana can do.”

The conversation continued throughout lunch, as Eric inhaled his food and I mentally steeled myself for the upcoming class:

“That’s your dad’s?” I asked as he again twirled the chain around his finger. He automatically stopped, looking a little embarrassed, and I immediately felt bad for asking. Wasn’t I the definition of ‘tactful’?

“Yeah,” he said, and after a moment’s pause, held the tag closer for my inspection: William Dessler, Anglican, blood type A positive. CDN FORCES CDN, read the legend. After I leaned back, he tucked it away under his shirt again. The bottom half was snapped off, like my father’s own tag, and that only meant one thing. How long had it been? It couldn’t have been recently.

There was an awkward pause, and I immediately tried to salvage the situation as best I could: “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “That’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

I still felt bad for bringing it up.

To my horror, Tuesday afternoon was not warm. It was not freezing, but I was still shivering a bit as I stood outside on the track, my uniform practically hanging off me. Off to the side, my partner held a stopwatch, while Sarge stood nearby with a whistle.

“On the count of three! One...two...”

Then, with a sharp blast, the whistle went off – and so did I. I am not a runner. I’m not even a jogger. If I have do I can do short sprints okay, but this was practically torture – after a short sprint doing okay, I began to slow down. I struggled to keep my breathing even – one, two, one, two, I mentally counted each breath, trying to keep my legs going with the rhythm...

By the end of it my legs and chest were aching – I sucked at running and I sucked at keeping my breathing even, taking in gulps of air and clutching a stitch in my side – and although I felt one glorious second wind, the pain temporarily disappearing enough for me to keep going that extra little push, by the time the twelve-minute mark was up, I stumbled over to the people with the stopwatches, and all but collapsed, sucking at my water bottle like a baby. It was odd how I didn’t feel cold now, just sore. The water was cool and refreshing after the run, as my throat was dry.

“How—many—laps?” I panted to Rachel Lawson, who had been keeping track.

“Not quite seven. Something like six and a half.”

Then it was Rachel’s turn to go through hell – but she did cross-country, so of course she did better than me. Everyone did better than me, except possibly Carly, but she wasn’t there.

Wednesday was awful. Shelby still wasn’t there, I was aching all over, and no amount of aspirin was helping. But Eric was there, and he was still willing to talk with me. I could feel the daggers Carly was glaring as Eric passed by that area and went to sit in Shelby’s usual spot again. It was nothing, I attempted to reassure myself. I didn’t even know the guy all that well. He didn’t know me all that well. But I found myself looking forward to talking with him again, even if it was only trivial stuff like classes. I could relate to him, I told myself. Could he relate to me?

I didn’t know the answer, but I vowed not to tell Shelby right away. I knew she’d blow it out of proportion.