12.x (Histories)
“I don’t think you’ll be surprised by anything here. If you’ve been paying attention in class and doing your homework, you won’t have a problem here.”
Alister took the sheet, placing it face down on his desk.
“This is knowledge you’re going to need for just about everything you learn from here on out. If you don’t know this by the time you’re in high school, you’re going to fall behind.”
When the teacher had progressed far enough down the aisle, Alister reached into a pocket.
The pocketwatch was old, chipped, and the clasp sometimes took a few tries to work. Some of the damage was his fault.
In the corner of his eye, he could see his cousin. Ainsley was moving her hand, trying to get his attention. This, in turn, got the interest of a few more of their classmates.
“No,” she hissed.
Now people were staring at him. Lola Duchamp was among them, craning her neck from her spot at the very front of the classroom. Attention made the next part harder, which was probably intentional on Ainsley’s part.
She was such a pain.
He turned his head, glaring at her. Her hair was in braids, which didn’t suit her, and she wore glasses that he knew she hated. She wore a shirt with a frilly collar underneath overalls, and he knew she hated the clothes too.
Sad thing was, he thought, Behaim girls didn’t tend to age well. They were healthy, but healthy was not a label most girls liked to have stuck on them. Ainsley would be one of those most.
Going by their older cousins, she’d be pretty as a teen, and then she’d get… blocky. But the sad fact was, she was stuck with her parents while she was a teen, and her parents were dead set on making her a dork.
Tragic.
The two of them were as different as night and day. If it weren’t for their last names, nobody would even guess they were cousins. Much less that they were even friends.
Ah, Ainsley. You always play by the rules. We’d all be happier if you didn’t.
He span the pocketwatch like it was a top. It wasn’t, however, and it rattled as it turned onto one side, metal clicking against the cheap plastic cover of the school desk.
He stopped it with his hand. It clacked, hard, against the surface of the desk.
“Alister,” the teacher said, stopping midway through his process of handing out the quiz papers. “Do I need to confiscate whatever toy you’re playing with?”
“I don’t think so,” Alister said.
“I hope you’re right. No more noise, please.”
Alister grinned.
The moment the teacher’s back was turned, he pressed the button at the top of the pocketwatch. The door came away, revealing the face and hands below. The only peculiarity was the existence of two hour hands and two minute hands. One set in black, one set in red.
It wasn’t fancy, it wasn’t well made. But it kept time.
In more way than one.
Alister turned the dial that encircled the button at the top of the watch. The red hands moved.
One hour and fifteen minutes.
Ainsley made a firm gesture, glaring at him, but was forced to relent as her classmates got distracted, and the teacher reached the last desk, handing the last test paper to Lola Duchamp.
“Eyes forward, please,” the teacher spoke.
Lola reluctantly looked away from Alister to turn her attention to the paper. Ainsley, too, focused on her test paper, though Alister could see her watching him out of the corner of one eye. When their eyes met, she sighed visibly, and raised her hand to block her vision of him.
Deliberately looking away.
“And… start.”
Alister hit the button on the top. Simple mechanics made the clasp that held the lid of the pocket watch open move, but the lid was already open. The bent section of wire shifted position, and completed a diagram.
The diagram, in turn, housed a lesser zeitgeist, the smallest form of time spirit that could be tracked and bound.
The hour and minute hands moved, an almost instantaneous shift to where the red hands were.
“…translate between fractions, percents, and decimals,” the teacher was saying.
The test papers were gone. His books were open, and his own handwriting was in the notebook. The last section had a list of homework questions.
“And finally, let’s do five questions from section B. We’ve got some equations to solve, with percents in there. This is not hard. Let’s see… questions one, three, seven, and twelve.”
Alister marked down the questions.
Class ran for a few more minutes before the bell rang.
He dragged out the process of packing up his bag, hoping that it would give Ainsley an excuse to leave. Putting books away, pens, papers. He glanced back at the pages to see what he’d missed. He hadn’t actually disappeared, only giving up his perception of time.
But time was relative, and understanding that meant one understood a lot of the Chronomancy stuff.
He watched Molly Walker exit the classroom. She glanced at him, then glanced away. Lola Duchamp stepped back to get out of Molly’s way, though Molly wasn’t walking that fast.
Lola had a bit of a hard look in her eye, as she watched the Walker girl disappear down the hall.
Lola understood. Most of the family did. Molly was a Thorburn, whatever her last name, and the Thorburns were dangerous. Instinctively, Lola had cleared out of Molly’s way.
What did Molly make of it? Did she catch the look Lola had given her? Or was it something that she only caught once or twice a day? A cumulative pressure?
He realized he was still staring at the door… and Ainsley was waiting at the door. He couldn’t be too obvious that he was stalling for time.
“Dick,” he said.
“Hm?” A classmate asked.
“What’d you think? The test?”
Dick made a so-so gesture with his hand. “You?”
“I feel pretty good about it,” Alister said.
“Nerd. You’ve been wrong before. You’ve been hilariously wrong.”
Alister smiled and shrugged.
He caught a glimpse of Ainsley, who was standing by the classroom door, arms folded.
Ugh.
“Want to come over this afternoon?” Dick asked.
“Can’t. Got a thing.”
“You have lots of ‘things’ these days. I was talking to Tom about it. He thinks there’s something you’re doing and you’re too chicken to say.”
“Oh? Really?” Alister asked. “What sort of thing would I be chicken about?”
“He was joking around and saying it was something gay like ballet or cheerleading.”
Alister’s smile was cold and humorless. It clearly made Dick uncomfortable. “What do you think?”
“I dunno,” Dick said. “We were just joking around.”
“So you did have a guess?”
“Nah,” Dick lied, shrugging.
Doesn’t sound like Tom.