Continued from yesterday:
It was exhausting. Even in the AP classes, there were morons who were only there for the way their attendance would look on their college applications. These ‘traders’ as Sara called them, were both a source of amusement and migranes.
She began to *live* for Study Hall.
There, Sara would find a corner away from the gossipers and the object-hurlers and delve into the mailed courses from whatever thick envelopes that had arrived for her, that morning. Books, theorem, formulae… all were absorbed with supreme grattitude, and the work filled out, neatly stapled, and wrangled into the return envelope.
And on a more telling note, there was additional correspondance. The people administrating her course-work sent an accompanying letter, this time.
_Sara Adrien,_ the note read, _How much help and assistance are you receiving with these subjects? While it’s not unusual for students to finish courses early, we are forced to enquire about your own uncanny swiftness._ It was signed with an illegible scrawl that apparently represented a Professor Montegna.
Sara took out a sheat of looseleaf.
_Dear Professor Montegna,_ she wrote. _I can only give you my word that I’m doing all my own work, since I can’t provide a credible witness. I work on the provided coursework whilst in Study Hall, a 'class’ of people with nothing better to do and one sole teacher who appears to be deeply engrossed in the latest work by Jane Austin. If you recall such 'classes’, you will intuitively *know* that there is no availlable assistance in such a morass of mundanity._
Sara chewed her pencil.
_However, should proof be required, I should be able to obtain a copy of the school security tape, both raw copy and one slightly altered in order to highlight myself in action, as it were. Only the latter will be on digital media; so if you do require it, I will need to know your operating system and favoured video player. It should all be ready in a week, plus or minus three days._
_Thanking you for your indulgence,_
Sara signed it, printed her name legibly underneath, and added the folded sheet to the stack of work already inside.
Done and done. In the five minutes left to her before the next *real* class - and the next encounter with a moron-du-jour - Sara delved into her textbooks, eager to absorb all the information therein.
Wait. The next class was lunch hour. A positive saturation of morons behind the thin shield of her friends. And the very comfortable insulation of Todd, right next to her, to vent with.
_Don’t be so nasty, Sara Louise,_ she told herself. _The rest of the population *chooses* to indulge themselves in petty bickering and surface glamour. They’re not morons, they’re selectively stupid._
Yes. Always remember that some people chose out of ignorance - willful or not - what others avoided in reason. Which neatly explained the phenomena of smoking, imbibing alcohol, and the partaking of sundry drugs… up to and including the part where they attempted to get one to join in with them.
_Thankyou, Professor, for keeping all those marvellous books on psychology and philosophy,_ she thought.
+
Todd closed his locker to find Mr Stick-up-his-ass himself, Scooterboy.
“I need your help,” he said.
“Yo, I don’t swipe no test answers.” He glared at the ruby sunglasses. “In fact, I recently gave up swipin’ anythin’ at all. So whatever it is, I ain’t gonna do it.”
“You know Sara better than anyone here,” he said.
“Duh. Boyfriend.”
“How can I get her to like me?”
Todd’s hands knotted into fists. “You better not be sayin’ what I *think* yo'r sayin’ homeboy…”
“Nononono… I mean. I mean… Okay. How can I get her to *not* hate me?”
“Hate you?” Todd snickered. “Yo, my girl *despises* you.”
“I know. And I’m supposed to be the *leader*… I just– can’t do anything *right* around her.” One hand scrubbed through his hair. “I try. I honestly try to say or do something that’ll -Idunno- prove I’m not a badguy. Even Jean tells me I should wait her 'thing’ with Seniors out. It’s only a couple of months…”
“But?” Todd prompted.
“What if something happens? What if we *need* her on some mission or something and she decides to tell me to go stuff myself? What if people depend on it? What if something goes wrong because I screwed up my one and only chance to settle things out with her?”
“You don’t cope with loss well, do you?” said Sara.
Scooter almost hit the ceiling. “Could you not *do* that?”
Todd laughed into his hand. He had his own 'thing’ about Scooter, and seeing him jump like that was pure poetry. All the same… “Yo, ease up on the dude, okay, babe? He’s *tryin’*.”
“Very,” Sara iced.
Todd wisely decided to guide her away from the potential fight. “It ain’t easy fo’ him, y'know? It’s like an alignment conflict. He’s lawful good, I’m chaotic neutral… the dude’s bound to be suspicious of me. It’s like he can’t help himself, yo.”
“We all have the power to help ourselves,” said Sara. “It’s a supreme effort, I know, but it can be done.”
“Supreme wit’ cheese, sweetums,” Todd hugged her arm as they moved. “Even you an’ I needed some momentum.” They found the queue for the cafeteria and joined the end of the line.
“True, but the point remains. I had the *power* to stop hurting myself. I had the option of finding somewhere to stay and just - vanishing. I could have - at any time - removed myself from the cause of my problems. I could have *made* time to give release to some of the things in my boxes. I had those choices.”
“So why’d you stay with the ol’ witch?”
“Because Daddy would be upset if I left.” Sara sighed. “I do love my father, but it sometimes seems to me as if he’s trapped in a corner. I’ve made things even more difficult for him, now… but what choices were there? I couldn’t have mother dragging me out of the only sanctuary I’ve found. I couldn’t have her finding out about *you*… and if she knew what fun I was having now… She’d sue everyone from here to Sunday and arrest everyone she *could*. Mother *hates* not being in control.”
“It’s a bad sitch,” said Todd. “Somethin’ had to give or it’d explode, yo.”
“Mother’s better off without her favourite detonator anyway,” said Sara. “None of her special people can trip over me and embarrass her.”
+
Daytime could provide a restful sleep in the right conditions. Sam was an experienced traveller and could arrange those conditions with practiced ease. A night mask, gel earplugs, and a Do Not Disturb sign made all the difference.
Like Sara, he needed less sleep than most people, but he wasn’t at the extreme end. Six hours was his minimum, and he could go sleepless for forty-eight hours, provided he got his head down for twelve.
Exhaustion held him in its grasp, now. Just as desperation had him in the cycle of driving near-ceaselessly for as long as possible, finding somewhere to rest, and then starting anew as soon as he was able. Meals were barely remembered and rest stops blurred into a homogenous whole.
The important thing was getting home and battling to defuse the situation before it could get any worse.
A restraining order. That had him worried. Sara had to be in dire straights to give Jaquelline a *restraining* order. And since his wife always rendered a story for maximum sympathy on her side… finding the truth of it was going to be a trial.
He just wanted his lovely ladies to get along. Just a slice of peace.
But he had to get there first.
~
“What about you?” said Sara. “What held or holds you trapped in a corner?”
“Yo, when I say anythin’ 'bout that?”
“Does the phrase, 'puking blood’ ring a bell?”
Todd got a classic 'aw, *fuuuuck*’ expression on his face and attempted to hang it.
“Fifteen-year-olds don’t often have bleeding ulcers, dear,” Sara genly turned him back up to face her. “If it’s still a problem–”
“Naw. No. No it ain’t. Not often, anyway, yo.”
“*Darling*…”
He sighed. “Home was a bad place, okay? Real bad.” Todd fidgetted and looked away. Unable to face her. “Tied my guts in knots.”
“How old?” said Sara.
Now he focussed on his feet. “Idunno. 'Bout eight, maybe, when it started. Mystique took me out of it all. I’m mostly okay now, honest.”
“I’m guessing that, even with her, you still had stomach pains?”
“…meh… Not a lot.” He shrugged. “Not as often as it used t’ be.”
“Darling, ulcers in someone so *young*…”
“Hey, they don’t kick up no mo’,” he soothed, wrapping her arm in his. “Not since the ol’ bitch got lost. An’ I’m gettin’ better. Honest.”
Sara drew him into a hug. “Look *after* yourself, please,” she begged. “You’re the best person who’s ever happened to me. I don’t want to see you hurt. Even by yourself.”
~
Scott paused in his path between cafeteria counter and the table where the rest of the X-Men seemed to hang, watching Todd and Sara.
The young mutant was leaning on his hand, goofy expression plastered on his face, as Sara lectured absently about ancient philosophers versus modern physics. Sara’s lecture, from what he could hear of it, was somehow melded with modern thought-problems.
“Now Xeno,” Sara was saying, “he was a gentleman who loved to ignore reality. We *know* you can hit a moving object with an arrow, but the thing with halves? He got *everyone* fixated on that. They were obsessed with the half-distances, when all you had to do was plot a time-distance graph to prove him wrong.” Her finger traced two straight lines and two curves on the table. “It’s the same deal with Einsteinian paradox. He was asked at one stage if one could technically travel faster than light by getting up and walking forward on a vehicle travelling *at* light speed. Einstein told them no, the walker was travelling at light speed - and so was the train.” Sara grinned. “It’s not impossible. Different wavelengths of light travel at different speeds. No matter how fast you move on that imaginary vehicle, you are always travelling at the speed of light.”
“Damn, yo'r gorgeous,” said Todd.
“You didn’t understand a single word I said, did you?”
“Not a lot of it. But I was listenin’.”
Sara giggled. “It’s all a matter of thinking in curves, dear.”
Scott moved away, heading ever-closer to Jean. She and Duncan were still having a minor war over Sara’s tell-all pxt movie, yet there was still the implication that they were a couple. Even if they were a couple having a spat.
He took his seat nearby. Not close enough to be possessive, but near enough to hear and watch everything she said and did.
_Wait. Is this unrequited love or stalker behaviour?_ he thought.
_It’s wearing your heart on your sleeve,_ Jean 'said’. _Relax. It’s cute. I’ll let you know if you slide into 'scary’._
Telepaths. He’d never get used to them.
~~
Todd would have liked to stay and stare at Sara for the remaining twenty minutes of lunch period, but the call of nature quite rudely interrupted. She was now explaining light waves in relation to sound waves. Todd might’ve even understood some of it if he wasn’t so distracted. He waited for her to take a draught from her water before breaking in. Even then he hesitated, staring enthralled at the way her mouth curved around the lip of the mug and how her throat moved as she drank. Nature rang again.
“Sorry sweetums, but I gotta use the loo. I’ll be right back.” He kissed her hand and got up.
Sara squeezed his hand back, blew him a kiss and let him go. Todd passed Scott on the way out, noticing how he was sitting close to Jean. Poor sap. Too in love to move on to another girl and too prudish to do anything about this one. Unrequited love sucked. If anyone asked him, he’d sooner be alone than trapped in a one-sided relationship like that.(1)
The high school had more than one bathroom of course for the convenience of different locations. He skipped the one next to the cafeteria since everyone used it during lunch period and headed toward the opposite end of the hall. It was just one of his quirks that he liked to be alone in bathrooms when he had to go. Todd chose a stall still in working order and idly read what was scrawled on the door. His hands stopped in mid-unzip when his eyes fell on one particular scrawl. It was a question about Sara’s number - did anyone have it? Todd glowered, trying to recognize the handwriting and failing. He scratched at it with the metal part of his bracer, a sound that almost drowned the noise of the bathroom door opening. Shit, yo. Now he’d have to wait for the guy to leave before he could go. Damn negative conditioning.
He sighed and waited for the flush. Only there was nothing, not even the sound of a zipper. What was he doing? Todd cursed under his breath and risked peeking out through the crack in the stall door to see what the fuckwad was making him wait for. Combing his thin gray hair across a baldspot, well how lovely. Oh, and humming to himself now. Todd rolled his eyes, stomach starting to cramp. He gave one last ornery glare in the gentleman’s direction and caught his reflection in the mirror.
It was then that Todd felt his heart shudder to a near stop. He stared transfixed at the reflection’s face and tried to place the nose, the eyeshape and color, the teasing smirk from somewhere else. It didn’t work. That face only belonged to one person - and though it bore close resemblance to the gentleman’s brother, that man was dead. This couldn’t be. It shouldn’t be allowed. He should not be here. The man couldn’t be a teacher, surely.
The man was slapping something onto his neck now. There was a sharp aftershave smell that left Todd dizzy from too many bad memories and required him to lean against the wall for support. After an eternity, the man washed his hands off and left, whistling. Todd turned back to the urinal to do his business, not caring who the hell came through that door next just so long as he could get out of here. He zipped back up and stormed over to the sink. Todd used the tiniest amount of soap and ran hot water over his hands. It wasn’t a regular habit to use soap and everything, but he needed time to calm down before walking out of this bathroom.
_Maybe it wasn’t him,_ Todd tried to reason with himself. _It could’ve been someone who looked like him. They got Elvis impersonators an all this shit, why not Manny impersonators?_ Todd laughed out loud, with just a touch of hysteria. “Shit yo, I thought I was over this shit.” He laughed again and too late, his eyes fell on an object wedged between the spout and the base of the mirror. A bottle of Old Spice. The door whooshed open again.
“Heh. Whoops. Almost forgot my stuff."
Todd cringed and didn’t dare look up. The gentleman’s hand snatched up the bottle and Todd heard rustling cloth. He could only assume it was stuffed in a pocket. He mindlessly rubbed his hands together under the water as the footsteps retreated back to the door. They stopped a quarter of the way there. _Shit shit shit no, shit just keep walkin’!_ Todd begged with his mind. He kept his head down. "Excuse me, young man?”
_Fuck._ Todd refused to answer or look up. He was shaking. Manny was between him and the door. Not like he couldn’t whup the guy’s ass if he had to but if he did, he’d be in deep shit. And there were just some things a person could do to another that kept them helpless no matter how strong they were.
“Young man, what’s your name?” Manny didn’t sound curious, he sounded puzzled. Disturbed.
“Kenny Cartman(2),” Todd cobbled together finally, still not looking up.
“Oh. I see.” The footsteps resumed once more until he was gone. Todd turned off the water and slid down to sit, trembling, between the sinks.
“Get a fucking hold of yourself,” he hissed after a moment. The empty room made his voice sound much deeper and more in control than it really was.
(1) Yay irony.
(2) South Park to the rescue.
~