Moving into you is like upgrading from a tricycle to a motorcycle.
“Really?”
No. Not really. Your father is a good man. He just tends to have more mental lapses than other humans.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” Ms Federlin asked. Her eyes wandered to his bruised neck, courtesy of his Brazilian jujitsu training.
Cameron shook his head. “Just coyotes, ma’am.”
We need to work on your lying.
“Mom and Dad yell at me when I practice lying on them, and it’s impossible to do that with you, so I blame you guys for my lack of preparedness in the fine arts of fibbing.”
Ms Federlin obviously didn’t believe him either. “Next parent/teacher meeting, I want both your parents here. Do you understand, Cameron? I’m going to have Ms Janice with me. I think we need to have a talk.”
How many times is she going to try to send you to the school counselor?
“Yes, ma’am.”
Cameron fled the room before she made him make another promise he couldn’t keep. Getting both his parents away from their operation at the same time would be like trying to get the Capulets and Montagues to set a wedding date.
That reminds me. Why are you doing so poorly in literature?
“I’m getting a C, and you’re not much help. You’re obviously not a very cultured Quasing, are you?”
Sorry. I was too busy fighting the Genjix and trying to prevent the Thirty Years War from happening to attend much theater.
“So uncouth.”
This coming from the guy who puts steak sauce on every single dish, including ice cream.
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”
“One more thing, Cameron,” Ms Federlin called as he walked out the door. “This exam is forty percent of your grade. I know you took it because you never stay after school, but in this case, it might not be a bad idea.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m good, ma’am.” He walked out of the door into the crowded hallways of Eureka High School. At a little over twelve hundred students, this was by far the largest high school in the area, though his parents considered Eureka the smallest town they had ever lived in.
Cameron kept his eyes on the ground as he navigated the maze of other kids, careful not to bump into any of them with his bulky backpack. Eureka was a tight-knit community. That made it difficult for an outsider like him to fit in. He had stayed with his grandparents, Louis and Lee Ann, down in San Diego, while his parents had gotten their operation up and running, and was home-schooled for most of his childhood. It was only after he had begged his parents every day for almost a year that they finally relented and let him come to a public school. After they were sure there were no Penetra scanners installed, of course.
The lesson was: be careful what you wish for.
High school was nothing like he had imagined. Tao had warned him ahead of time that it was its own insular, cruel world, but Cameron had longed for normalcy. Besides, he had been going out on dangerous jobs with Roen since he was thirteen. How much worse could high school be? Boy, was he wrong.
Cameron was stunned to find how difficult the transition from home schooling to the public high school was. He had a hard time communicating with his classmates. Sometimes, it seemed like they were barely speaking English, as if they had their own language.
For the students at Eureka High School, Cameron was an enigma as well. He was too socially awkward to fit in with any of the cliques. He just didn’t understand many of their jokes or cultural references or social behaviors. They knew he was smart, though. Many of the cooler kids tried to partner with him during lab experiments but would ignore him in the hallways.
He was also very athletic, a physical specimen who had the football coach drooling the first day he walked into gym class. Couple that with his years of martial arts training, Cameron could have made any of the sports teams, but didn’t sign up for any of them. In a small school, almost everyone was on at least one of the sports teams. Most of the athletes were on all the teams. It was the only way the school could fill an entire roster. Cameron’s lack of participation and his quiet demeanor had earned him the scorn of the jocks, while his frightening intelligence, due entirely to Tao – at least according to Tao – made him the subject of gossip among the faculty.
Basically, school sucked, and it sucked hard. The worst part was, when Cameron had tried to talk to his parents about it, begging his parents to home-school him again, they flat out refused. Unfortunately, Pandora had opened the box, and it couldn’t be closed again.
His dad just shrugged and chuckled. “Ahh, the good ol’ days. Don’t use your super powers to hurt anyone.”
“I don’t have any,” Cameron had responded. “Tao doesn’t do anything special.”
Hey now, Tao had said.
“That means you’re not using him right,” Roen had replied. “What’s for dinner?” As usual, once the topic moved to food, the conversation was over.
Cameron floated from class to class: math to English to Chinese (Tao insisted). Then lunch. Then gym class, and last was biology. Most of the classes just blended together. Tao was merciless with his education, making sure to teach him above and beyond what the teachers even knew. He was studying at a much higher grade level than what was being discussed in class, and for the most part, could teach the classes himself. He had learned, however, that no one liked a smart-ass, so he tended to keep quiet.
In his final class of the day, he was partnered with one of the prettiest girls in school. Well, more like she was using him to get a good grade while he did all the work. As unfair as that sounded to Cameron, it suited Tao fine, since his mentor somehow turned every dissection into a lesson about combat anatomy.
Do you see that ligament? Humans have something similar. Cut it and they lose all control of their lower extremities.
“Yeah, but if I can get a blade there, why not just slice upward?”
Because I guarantee that part of the anatomy is armored, at least too much for a blade. That ligament portion cannot be armored without hindering range of motion.
These fascinating lessons would sometimes go on for an entire hour, to the point he forgot why he was in class to begin with.
“What are you doing?” Heather, his lab partner, said from her seat at the end of the table. She detested getting the formaldehyde on her skin. “You’re supposed to be cutting into its chest, not playing with its legs. Come on, class is almost over, and we didn’t get any of the steps done.”
Cameron looked up at the clock; school was ending in five minutes. In the next four, he got through all fourteen steps of dissecting and pulling out the frog’s heart and lungs.
He slid the tray over toward her. “There you go. You can take this stuff away.”
Before Heather could protest, he grabbed his bag and walked out of the room. Cameron was fully aware, after all, that she needed him more than he did her, and that most of the people who wanted to partner with him didn’t really want to be his friends.
They were just using him; they were temporary relationships, like almost everything else in his life. Even his parents. Cameron remembered his earlier years, when it seemed like there was always only one parent around. Sometimes, he remembered not seeing Roen for months, or his mom would have to leave him with his grandparents for long stretches at a time.
The only real permanent thing he had was Tao. Tao was always there. Tao never left him. Not that he could, but his Quasing was his best friend, teacher, and the one soul Cameron knew he could always rely on. Sure, he was a snarky bastard sometimes and a taskmaster to boot, but Tao was the rock, the one stable presence in a sea of constant change.