She moved quickly into a seat at the back, leaving a space between herself and a skinny geek with a scramble of hair at the top. He looked like a spesh — funny she didn’t know him.
And then, there she was on the screen, bigger than life: Mrs. R, spangles twinkling, silver fringe fluttering. She’d obviously been given a heavy dusting of glitter just before taking the stage, and she left a shimmery trail behind her, like a slug.
Cobain’s principal, Mr. Madonna, an XXY with extra-high intuitive qualities and an inclination to hold pep rallies, introduced her, though he said she needed no introduction, then led the band in a medley of sentimental grunge. Barbara loathed grunge.
And then Mrs. R stepped forward very quietly and started to, well, ripple. She wavered, like hot air on the highway in August.
In her dream, Barbara had seen all the details: the water, the noise, the rush of people to the exits, Mrs. R’s cold, white, limp body lying alone on the stage afterward.
The reality was worse. The audience at the stadium was really spooked, not to mention they got wet. The CPR team entered the hall cautiously, and way too late. At Microsoft Park, the audience couldn’t figure out what was going on. The guy next to her couldn’t seem to believe it. He kept saying, “This is incredible!” over and over again. Finally he turned to Barbara and asked, “Why did she do herself like that in front of everybody?” Barbara got up out of her seat and walked away.
He followed her, still babbling. “She’s the oldest spesh I’ve ever seen. She must have been one of the first. If she held out that long, what made her crack?”
“She didn’t do it to herself,” Barbara said finally. Mrs. R wouldn’t have. She was sane. She was happy. She couldn’t have done it to herself.
“My God, I hope you’re right.” He grabbed her elbow. Barbara almost pulled away, but he didn’t seem dangerous. “Come on,” he said.
She felt the ground beneath her feet fall away, then return. Wooden flooring. It was dark. The guy let go of her elbow. What kind of a nut was he? Where had he taken her? What the fuck was going on? He hit a light switch, and she realized where she was: Mrs. R’s chem lab.
“Jesus!”
“Don’t be scared: watch.” He grabbed a beaker and some flasks from a cabinet. “You take a little of this, a pinch of that. Use your bunsen burner like a blow torch, and — ”
“No! I’m outta here!”
The air in the room grew thick with noxious clouds that fizzled and popped and made her nose burn. He grabbed her and pulled her tightly to him, forcing his mouth onto hers. The clouds in the room turned black and heavy, and she couldn’t breathe — she couldn’t even take a breath. She started to pass out, his mouth on hers, his tongue down her throat. My mother was right, she thought. I shouldn’t talk to strange guys.
The next thing she knew, they were back outside the marina. He was still kissing her, and he’d pressed up against her real close. He had a hard-on, and she was kissing him back.
She broke away.
“Did that help?” he said.
“What the fuck is the matter with you?”
“I thought you could use a rush. Like in her honor, you know?”
“You are seriously fucked,” said Barbara. “Stay away from me.” She ran for the bus.
At the school door on Monday morning, Barbara pushed her right hand against the security switch that verified her ID, scanned her person for possible weapons, and then evaluated her emotional state to determine whether or not she would use them. The twitch switch, they called it. Since they could no longer ban guns, the schools tried to keep out students who would use them irresponsibly.
The solenoid seemed to hesitate. She forced herself to take a deep calm breath and slowly traced the raised lettering with the fingers of her free hand. “Donated by Microsoft — ADT Intrusion Insurance.” I am not an intruder, she thought, without feeling. It worked; the switch beeped its discreet little signal, and the door opened to admit her to school.
A norm, by his looks one of the CAs — the criminally active students — was standing by the lockers. He turned to stare at Barbara as she walked down the hall. The cas weren’t too friendly to the special-skills students. None of the norms were, but the CAs, who sometimes tipped toward the sociopathic end of the scale, worried Barbara more than the other norms. Supposedly every student at Cobain was a suicide risk, but you kind of got the feeling that the CAs might just take you with them.
“Hey, spesh,” said the norm, fiddling with a bone-handled folding knife. “Guess what I’m thinking.”
Her class was through the first door, and she had to pass him to get there. She put an edge on her voice that was sharper than his knife. “I’m thinking you’d look pretty funny with half a dick…. And now you’re thinking, ‘I wonder if she can see into the future,’ because that wasn’t what you were thinking at all.”
The norm looked confused. “Psycho bitch,” he muttered, but he turned back to his locker and didn’t pursue her as she walked by.
In class, she took her seat at the back of the lab, in the Microsoft — Dow section, still fuming at what jerks norms were. Pretty much everyone had heard about the drowning at Lake Washington; Barbara didn’t bother to block it from her mind, even though she usually guarded her thoughts around the telepaths.
Minerva, seated next to her, looked up. “Entertain us!” she called out. “Barbie was there when Mrs. Rathbone made like a salmon and went extinct.”
Before Barbara could brace herself, almost everyone in the classroom was pushing for a place inside her brain, probing her consciousness with questions like icy fingers. Telepaths froze her nose, the way they plugged in at will.
“Did she die all at once, or was it slow and lingering?”
“Did our test scores die with her?”
“Did her bra fill up with water?”
“Entertain us!”
“Entertain us!”
“Entertain us!”
That was a Cobain thing. It meant one thing to the teachers, another to the students. To the teachers it meant “pay attention.” To the students it meant “stop whatever you’re doing that’s interesting and do what we want you to do.” To Kurt Cobain, of course, it had meant “stick a shotgun in your mouth.”
All she needed to do was answer. Tell them all the grim details. Make it sound funny, make it sound like she didn’t care. If she gave them what they wanted, she’d be one of the gang. So why couldn’t she do it?
“Nevermind,” Barbie said.
“Did she leave a note?” Minerva asked. She gave a nervous laugh.
“That’s not funny,” Barbie said. “It was an accident.”
The ITV buzzed on and Mr. Madonna spoke to the class.
“Special-skills students,” he said, “As most of you know, Mrs. Rathbone met with a tragic accident last night, in the service of Cobain High. I am sure she would want you to quietly resume your studies and to welcome Mr. Collins, who will be with you shortly. We can all be proud of Mrs. Rathbone, because Microsoft — Boeing will be presenting the basketball team with new uniforms in her memory. Grief counseling will be provided in the cafeteria at lunchtime, courtesy of Microsoft — Taco Bell, and there will be a celebration of life sponsored by Microsoft — Coca-Cola on Friday at noon.”