City Without Heroes

by Tanya Lisle

  Shiraz and Indira stood at the counter with a small package of papers consisting of the school rules, a map, and their schedules. It was becoming very clear that this was as much of an introduction as they were getting before being sent to class. They slipped their temporary student cards into their bags, Shiraz catching her eye. She didn’t need to read his mind to know what he was asking and shook her head.

  “It’s all right,” Indira told her. “We have maps. We should be able to figure it out.”

  “All right, dear,” she said. “It’s a shame that you didn’t come a little later in the year, though. I know there’s plans to create something for all you new students that keep coming up to help you get used to the place.”

  Curious, Indira took a glance at her mind. The woman’s name was Emma and there was a group of students who really wanted to put together a Welcoming Committee to help settle the new students they seemed to be getting every week. Emma would really appreciate it because she couldn’t trust Rick in the office on his own for five minutes out of fear he might wreck the old copy machine. If he were at least decent at showing these new kids to their classes it might not be so bad, but-

  Oh, Emma knew that sound. He’d gotten the paper stuck in it. Again.

  “I’m sure we’ll be fine,” Indira told her, nudging Shiraz with her down the hall. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll be fine, you mean,” Shiraz said, though he didn’t protest their getting moving. He looked back down at the map and his schedule, then up to the numbers on the doors around them. “You are screwed.”

  “It can’t be that hard to figure out,” Indira said. “Look, if you need anything, just text me, okay? And if there’s anything weird-”

  “I’ll be fine. Try not to get too lost.”

  Indira swatted him on the arm and Shiraz left with a smug grin on his face down the hall. She took another turn before looking at her schedule again. She was supposed to go to room 321A, wherever that was, and started to walk, watching the room numbers climb and fall, though none of them seemed to be the right one. There were lines and lines of lockers and many rooms as she went up and down the stairs, as well as the random student wandering the mostly empty halls, but her room number never quite appeared.

  She frowned back down at her schedule. Shiraz was good with patterns, but Indira could never quite figure them out. She was fairly certain that she should be on the third floor, at least, but once she found it, she could not find any rooms that had letters on them. She was lost, and it hadn’t even been ten minutes.

  “Hey.”

  Indira looked up from her schedule to find a tall boy walking towards her. His brown hair was styled out of his face, letting her get a nice look at his strong jaw and pale blue eyes. He could have been the young protégé in an action movie, though his voice was just a little too deep for his face. “Are you lost?” he asked.

  She was quick to wipe the stunned look off of her face and turn it into an embarrassed smile. She took a quick look in his head, finding that not only did he actually want to help, but Indira was also looking very good on her first day. “Yeah,” she said, looking back down at her schedule so she wasn’t staring. “I’m sorry, I thought I could find the class on my own.”

  He came up next to her and stood tantalizingly close, offering his hand for her schedule. “Here, I can probably figure it out,” he said. She handed it over and got a hint of his Old Spice as he took it from her. “In… Indra?”

  “Indira.”

  “Kyle,” he replied, smiling widely enough at her that dimples cut into his cheeks. She was really liking Larkdale Secondary so far.

  “Well, it looks like you’re in luck,” he said as he led the way down the hall. “You have history with Mr. Cantrell. He’s supposed to be pretty easy. Likes to go off of what he thinks are current events and alternative stuff and all that. I’ve got Ms. Richards and, god, if you ever see her show up on your schedule just switch. She’s such a hard ass.”

  “So you know where it is?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Just this way. How long you been in Whitten?”

  “We just got here on Friday,” Indira said. She wanted to drop a little behind him and get a better view of him from behind, but there was no way he wouldn’t notice that. “Mom’s had us trying to get these weird black spots out of the walls all weekend, so we’re still barely unpacked.”

  Kyle laughed. “Oh, those things,” he said. “Yeah, there’s really no point. They’re everywhere. You should just ignore them. I swear, mom tried to get a bunch of them out back in the day and they regrew from the walls or something. There’s no getting rid of them.”

  “What are they?” Indira asked. It was clear Kyle wanted to keep talking about them, but he glanced at her to make sure it was okay. He hoped that he was being interesting. She didn’t care how interesting he was so long as she could keep looking at him.

  Kyle looked around and smiled conspiratorially, keeping his voice low like the story was meant to be a secret. “Okay, so back in the day – you know how Whitten’s all hero and villain free now, right? So back in the day that wasn’t the case. There was this big bad villain guy who launched a bunch of these things from the radio towers around town. They were supposed to be mind control devices or something. Thing is, they never worked. He did all this, but it never actually worked. Problem is that they are still everywhere, but since they’re completely inert, no one’s bothered to remove them.”

  “And that’s why Whitten is The Speckled City?” Indira finished. “So it was a hero thing? Or a villain thing, I guess? That’s kind of weird for a place like this.”

  Kyle shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. This place is kind of boring. I always wanted to go live somewhere that’s more exciting, you know? Somewhere that actually has all that mystery and danger and excitement! I think it would be awesome to actually be in the action and be able to do all of that, you know?”

  Indira smiled and shook her head. She caught the disappointment on his face, but more than that she caught the level of intrigue he had about her pulsing through his thoughts. “We moved here because of all the hero and villain stuff,” she told him. “There’s only so many times you can have your house and your dad’s work destroyed before your parents start thinking about finding some place that’s a little safer and stable.”

  The excitement coming off of him was palatable. “You’re from one of the big cities?”

  “Iverson,” she said. Indira wanted to continue, to make him smile more and stay around him longer, but her expression turned serious as she nodded at a large man that had appeared in the hall. She might not have been in Whitten or Larkdale Secondary for very long, but she was pretty sure she knew the difference between a student minding their own business and a teacher that was about to give detention to a pair of students caught wandering the halls during class. “So you’re saying my class is just over here?” she asked loudly enough to be overheard.

  Kyle followed her eyes and straightened up, handing the paper back to her. Following her lead, he pointed at a door just a few away from where they were standing. “So your class is just over there,” he said. “It was nice to meet you.”

  He offered his hand in a very stiff gesture and Indira took it, smiling. “Thank you very much, kind stranger,” she said with a wink as the teacher walked past. He did not seem to believe their show, but he wouldn’t bother them. “I really appreciate it.”

  Kyle nodded awkwardly and started to turn away. “I guess I’ll see you in Chemistry,” he said. He avoided her eyes nervously and turned away. As Indira suspected, the view from behind was very nice as well. She could get very used to that view.

  She watched as long as she could, but eventually her attention went back to the door. She knew she couldn’t delay this any longer. It was time to actually attend her new school. With a deep breath, she let herself into the classroom. Here went nothing.

  Chapter 4

  Personal Introduction

  The lack of
people in the room was the first thing she noticed. In Iverson, the classes were lucky to have a single spare seat in the room. Here, there were two people to a table, three tables across, and more than a full row at the back of the room that had absolutely no students in it. The students that were there largely looked like they had been forced farther forward than they would have liked.

  An older man, Mr. Cantrell, stood at the front and stopped as soon as she walked in. Other eyes followed, none of them confused. Indira could tell they were used to new students joining them, so a new girl a month into the new year wasn’t all that strange. She gently scanned the thoughts in the room to figure out where she stood. Some were glad for a break from the lecture, while others were concerned she was going to be an infuriating addition to the class. At least three of them tagged her with the word exotic and she made a careful note to avoid every one of them.

  Recognition fluttered on Mr. Cantrell’s face after a moment. “Ah! You must be…” He looked down at a sheet on his desk. “Indra?”

  “Indira.”

  “Well, take a seat. We were just getting into the parallels between the modern invasions of Afghanistan to the Napoleonic Wars. I’m sure you’ll be able to give us a fresh perspective on the whole mess of events.”

  Indira stopped looking around the class for a free seat and looked back to Mr. Cantrell. “How?”

  “Well, you know, I’m sure. We’ll get there.”

  It took a moment before it clicked. She looked around the class, noting that she was the only visibly Indian person in the room. She looked around and locked eyes with an Asian girl sitting alone at one of the farthest back tables. There was sympathy in her eyes. Indira knew where she was sitting.

  “My family is from Cambridge,” she said. “England.”

  “Ah,” Mr. Cantrell said, not looking the least bit troubled. “I’m sure you have more of a perspective on the matter than you realize. If you could, though.” He waved her to sit.

  Indira sat next to the Asian girl and dropped her bag on the ground, pulling out paper to take notes. The girl pushed her open text book between the two of them as Mr. Cantrell continued to talk about Napoleon and started drawing a very thin comparison between him and Osama Bin Laden that would not hold up under any level of scrutiny.

  “I’m Penny,” she said. “He thinks you’re Muslim, by the way.”

  “I know,” Indira told her quietly. It was jarring to see a different history text book than she was used to in front of her. It was new, for one. The pages hadn’t been worn away from years of students passing them down, and there were no marks on the pages or the sides. She didn’t lift the cover to check, but the corners of the book were still intact and hadn’t been bent from being jammed into hundreds of backpacks before.

  Mr. Cantrell continued talking in front of the class and Indira took out her notebook and a pen. She was only half paying attention, letting her hand take notes while she let herself get oriented. Her classmates were disappointed that her interruption hadn’t lasted longer and were already falling into minding their own business. A few were still wondering about her, wanting to steal a glance back, and a few did. A few were distinctly nervous about her, though she didn’t care to pry into why.

  Penny nudged her softly in the elbow, Indira feeling a bit of static pass between them. “You probably shouldn’t do that too much.”

  “Do what?”

  Indira followed Penny’s eyes to her own notes, with only a few lines written. She’d developed the habit over the years of only writing down anything that her teachers were particularly interested in or what they needed students to understand, given that those were usually the things they were tested on. Penny’s page was filled with carefully written points, including the thin comparisons to not so current events.

  “He’s not really going to test on all that, is he?” Indira asked.

  Penny narrowed her eyes at Indira, but went back to her own notes a moment later. “Just be more careful.”

  Uncle Ness’ warning about keeping a low profile echoed in the back of her mind, but she still poked at Penny’s head. There was nothing there, Indira recognizing the shield that some people put up to keep anyone from reading their minds. If she wanted to know anything she’d have to put some effort into it, and she didn’t want to potentially cause a scene in the middle of class if Penny’s defences turned out to be even half decent.

  The presence of it, however, told Indira more than enough. Penny was not your average high school student.

  “All right, I think that’s a good place to stop for today,” Mr. Cantrell said, walking around the class and passing out worksheets. “You’ll have tomorrow to finish these, but if you’ve been paying attention, you should be able to finish it before you leave today.”

  Indira didn’t need to read his mind to know that he was intentionally weaving his way through the class to talk to her last. When he did come by, he handed one to Penny, then knelt by the side of Indira’s desk as he handed the final one to her. “How are you doing, Indra? Am I pronouncing that right?”

  “It’s Indira.”

  “Indyra,” he repeated back at her. “How are you doing? Keeping up? How far were in in your last school?”

  Indira nodded. “We were just finishing up the Napoleonic Wars, so I’m okay,” she said.

  “Good to hear! Penny, can you give Indyra a hand if she gets stuck and catch her up on as much as you can?”

  “Sure, Mr. Cantrell,” she said.

  Indira started filling out the sheet, finding that her slim notes were more than adequate for the exercise. Her attention, however, went to the feeling in her elbow. The static from Penny earlier didn’t seem to have faded away, instead settling into a tingle that was slowly spreading up her arm, so lightly that she might have not noticed it if she wasn’t paying attention.

  Next to her, Penny was poised like she was writing, her hand moving across the page, but her pencil leaving no mark. Indira tapped her arm, but she didn’t respond. The tingling moved more quickly up her own arm like little tendrils heading for the backdoor of her mind.

  Magic. It figured.

  Indira split her attention between being in class and dealing with Penny. In her mind, she created an empty white room to meet her, separate from anything private that she didn’t want her poking around in. Penny appeared in it a moment later, looking around in confusion before finally seeing Indira standing in the middle of nothing.

  “Well, this is different,” Penny said to herself.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Indira asked.

  “Taking a look around.” Penny continued wandering, pressing her hand experimentally against the wall. She waved her hands and drew a symbol in the air, but nothing happened. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. No wall, but you have an avatar of yourself? Where is the rest of you?”

  Indira didn’t have the patience for her curiosity. “Explain yourself or I’m going to make things very difficult for you.”

  Penny laughed. “Oh? And how are you going to do that?”

  “Can you feel this?” she asked.

  Outside of her mind, Indira tapped Penny lightly on the shoulder. “Hey? You got any whiteout?” she asked loudly enough that, if Penny was even remotely present outside of Indira’s mind, she should have heard it. When Penny didn’t respond, she reached over to take Penny’s pencil case to look for herself.

  “Feel what?” Penny asked inside the white space.

  Indira shook her head. “Of course you can’t. What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m just here for a quick peek,” Penny said. She walked past Indira and kept looking around the small white room, puzzled. “I’ll leave behind a warning for your dreams tonight, since you look like you’re going to need it, but… where do I put it? There’s nothing in here.”

  “What were you expecting to find?”

  “It’s different for everyone,” Penny said, swiping at the air again and looking more annoy
ed when nothing happened. “Usually there’s something here. A metaphor for how people see themselves. But with you… seriously, what is the deal with this place? You’re like a literal airhead. There’s nothing here. I guess I’ll just leave the dream with you?”

  “Or you could stop being a bitch and just tell me what you want,” Indira suggested, a grin spreading across her face. “You’re not going to be able to make a dream in here.”

  Penny paused and turned around slowly to face her. “You’re… you aren’t just an avatar, are you?”

  “You realize your physical body is barely responsive, right?” Indira asked. “I’ve been going through your pencil case for the last minute. How do you not have any whiteout in here?”

  “You do have powers then!” Penny said. Her eyes went wide as she realized what was going on. “Look, I just wanted to warn you. You have to be very careful-”

  “To not use my powers in the middle of class when I’m probably going to get caught?” Indira finished for her. It wasn’t what Penny was going to say, but Indira didn’t want to continue with this right now. “Out of my head, Penny.”

  Indira collapsed the white space into nothing, kicking Penny out of her head. Next to her, Penny looked disoriented, blinking first at her worksheet, then looking around the room. A few concerned eyes glanced back at the pair of them.

  “You okay?” Indira asked as she handed back her pencil case.

  We’ll talk later, she added in her mind. Really, though, if you need to tell me anything, just think it really loud at me.

  Penny stared at her for a long moment, but Indira caught her smile as she looked away, and a feeling of annoyance. Her shoulders tensed, then relaxed as the smile became one of relief. “So, has anyone offered to show you around yet?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” Indira said. “I’ll take a grand tour if you’re offering, though.”

  “Lunch?”

  Indira nodded, though her attention was drawn down to the buzzing phone in her pocket. She looked up to make sure Mr. Cantrell wasn’t looking before she checked the screen and saw a text from Shiraz. Something is wrong with this place.