“I-I’m so sorry,” Fremont said, embarrassed, putting her hand over her mouth. “I-I mean, yes, we are, but I personally have never seen a werekin, that is, one who couldn’t change back.”
“How large is your extraordinary needs program if a lifer weretiger is a surprise?”
“We don’t use the term lifer, and as it turns out, we don’t have a compulsory,” Fremont said. “We do have, though, a variety of extraordinary individuals. For privacy reasons I can’t go into specifics, but we have, um… werewolves, and, and… a dhampyr, I mean, dhampyrs-”
“Meaning one of each,” I said. “For a total extraordinary enrollment of, what, two?”
I considered getting up and walking out, but Fremont seemed to gather herself. “I may be new here, Miss Frost, but I assure you that this is not new to the Academy,” she said quietly. “We have a dozen individuals on staff who have experience with extraordinary needs children, of whom we have several. I’m sorry that I was insensitive towards Cinnamon’s condition. It was a misunderstanding. My comment about the henna tiger stripes still stands, however.”
“They’re not henna, they’re tattoos,” I said, and Fremont raised her eyebrows. “And before you ask, I didn’t do them. Tattooing minors is illegal.”
“Don’t lets the tats fool ya,” Cinnamon said. “She’s more square than you are.”
“The proper way to say that would be, ‘Do not let her tattoos fool you,’” Fremont corrected, mouth pursed up. “You will need to learn to express yourself properly.”
“If Clairmont Academy can correct her grammar,” I said, laughing, “that alone will have been worth the price of admission.”
“We’ll do our very best,” Fremont said with a grin, starting the paperwork. But when done with name-address-and-phone-of-parent, she bit her lip. “And her real name? I do need it for the record.” Cinnamon lowered her head and mumbled something, and Fremont canted her head, making her glasses into reflective half-moons. “What was that, dear?”
“Stray,” Cinnamon said, quiet as a mouse. “Stray Foundling.”
Fremont’s head stayed frozen. “Is that another joke?”
“I’m afraid not,” I said, squeezing Cinnamon’s hand again. “Her former guardians aren’t bad folk, but they basically warehoused her. The only reason she has a name on record at all was a trip to the hospital when she was six. We’re petitioning to get it changed-”
Fremont kept staring at us, eyes hidden behind those half-moons, then she shook her head and began typing. “Is Cinnamon spelled like the spice?”
“Yes,” Cinnamon said eagerly.
“I hope you get it changed soon,” she said, smiling. “People really called you Stray?”
“Until Dakota,” Cinnamon replied, with a big toothy grin at me.
“Good for you,” Fremont said. But she didn’t look happy as she took the rest of the information we could give her. Finally she muttered, “no transcript… no transcript.”
“Is that really going to be a problem?” I asked. “Because I haven’t found one in my back pocket while you’ve been typing. I hope we haven’t all been wasting our time.”
“No, it’s just… this is a middle school. There are certain skills she’ll need coming in,” Fremont said, focusing on Cinnamon. “What books have you read recently, dear?”
“I hates reading,” Cinnamon shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “I likes audiobooks.”
“You read audiobooks?” Fremont raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“I dunno,” Cinnamon said sullenly. “Fuck, I didn’t knows it would be a test-”
“Cinnamon!” I said.
“We do not tolerate such language at the Clairmont Academy,” Fremont said. “And we have standards here, which you will have to meet to become a student.”
“What’s ‘standards’ means?” Cinnamon said, sharp and suddenly scared. “You don’t means cuss words. What’s ‘standards’ means?”
“Since you have no academic record, you will have to take an entrance exam.”
Entrance Exam
“But… but the letters, they swims!” Cinnamon said, eyes going wide. “How can you ask me to take a test before you teaches me to keep them still?”
Fremont’s brow furrowed when Cinnamon said the letters swam. “ Can you read?”
“Would you ask that if I was blind?” Cinnamon said. “That’s why there’s audiobooks.”
“You’re quite right, Cinnamon,” Fremont said, glancing at me. “So consider this the start of an aural test. What have you been reading? ”
“I-I-dunno,” Cinnamon said nervously.
“You don’t know because you don’t remember, or because you don’t read?”
“I do too reads,” Cinnamon said. She slipped out her iPod and began thumbing the wheel. “Magical Thinkin’,” she said. “The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Kafka’s Seashore-”
“You… have all those on there?” Fremont asked Cinnamon-but her eyes flicked to me, sharply. “You have all your books on there?”
“Not everything,” Cinnamon said. “Just recent stuff. It only holds thirty gigs.”
“May I see?” Fremont asked. Reluctantly, Cinnamon handed her the iPod; equally reluctantly, Fremont took it from Cinnamon’s long, clawed fingers. Once she had it, however, she clickwheeled like a natural. “ The Year of Magical Thinking? Kafka on the Shore? Really?”
“Yeah,” she said. Nervously, she grabbed an odd, numbered Rubik’s cube off the desk and began twiddling it with her bony claws. “I ran out of Mom’s books, but we knows this blind witch, and she gave me lots of books off her laptop. She says it was the ‘audible list’?”
“Witch isn’t a nice thing to call someone,” Fremont said.
“Unless it is accurate,” I replied. “Jinx-our friend-is a graphomancer.”
“Ah,” Fremont said. “How did you like Jinx’s suggestions, Cinnamon?”
“ Magical was sad, but I liked Kafka OK,” she said, scowling at the cube. “At first I was pissed ’cuz I thought it was a bio of the guy who wrote the bug book, but it reads OK.”
“Do not say ‘pissed’, say ‘upset,’” Fremont corrected. “What bug book?”
“ Meta-more-foe-sizz,” Cinnamon pronounced uncertainly, avoiding Fremont’s eyes, twisting the cube in her hands. “The guy becomes this bug and everyone freaks.”
“Mm-hm,” Fremont said, clicking through the iPod. “Who is Stephen Dedalus?”
“That writer dude?” Cinnamon said sullenly.
“That could be a lot of people,” she said. “Do you remember which book he was in?”
“Two,” Cinnamon said. “The portrait one, and the useless one.”
Fremont leaned forward, intent, scowling. “Who is Leopold Bloom?”
Cinnamon brightened. “The guy that likes the kidneys,” she said, half-glaring, half-smiling at me. “Sounded yummy, but the big square won’t get me none though.”
“I didn’t say never,” I said, surprised. “I just didn’t want, uh, kidney that night.”
“Good Lord,” Fremont said, staring at her. After a moment she seemed to notice the iPod in her hand and gave it back to Cinnamon. She seemed like she was weighing something. “Thank you, dear. Reading will clearly not be a problem. I’d still like to assess other areas, though-”
And then the glass door slid open.
“Doctor Yonas Vladimir,” a man said, smiling warmly as he limped inside. “So, you must be Cinnamon. The girl without a past.”
I smiled. I bet everyone tended to overlook the rumpled, chalkstained pants and the oversized Mr. Rogers sweater. I bet everyone ignored his bald dome and the clownish spray of brown curls beneath it. You just saw those eyes, sparkling behind his round glasses, and that smile, peering out from his trim goatee, and knew: this man was intelligent, and alive.
“I gots a past,” Cinnamon said, still fidgeting with the Rubik’s Cube, but smiling now. His grin was infectious-you couldn’t help it. “I just don’t gots an education.”<
br />
“Yonas,” Fremont said, half standing. “I’m so glad you could make it. Dakota Frost, Doctor Vladimir is head of the mathematics department.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Frost,” he said, extending his hand.
“Please call me Dakota,” I said, standing. He was my height, or a shade less-not as big as he looked, or perhaps that was the stoop. But what a smile he had.
“Of course,” he said. “Dakota… that’s quite an unusual first name.”
“Funny,” I said. “I was just thinking Vladimir’s an unusual last name.”
“I’m guessing my grandfather ran into a little confusion at Ellis Island,” Vladimir said, the warm smile sparkling into a deprecating grin. “It hasn’t been a common Russian surname for a thousand years. So, Katie, what did you need me for?”
Fremont smiled. “I hoped you could proctor young Miss Frost’s exam while I gave her mother a tour of the school. She’s got a reading disability, so it may need to be oral-”
That was great news, but Cinnamon wasn’t listening. It looked like she was stifling a sneeze-or a curse. Then her eyes seemed to widen, and she stood. Decisively.
“This is stupid,” she said. “A waste of time. Fuck! I can’t read for shit-”
“Cinnamon!” I said, as Fremont flinched and Vladimir just… chuckled?
“What? You cusses, in front of God, the police, everybody,” Cinnamon said.
“Cinnamon-” I warned.
“I can’t read enough to take a test,” she said, tossing the Rubik’s Cube, tail flailing about as she stalked back and forth in the room like a caged animal. “She just wants to get rid of me. You wants to get rid of me. You all wants to get rid of me. We should go. We gots to go-”
“Cinnamon Frost,” I said quietly, folding my arms. “ Sit. Down. ”
Cinnamon sat in the chair abruptly, eyes wide. It surprised Fremont, even Vladimir-but not me. She just sat there, hands clenched on her skirt, watching me out of the corner of her eye, frozen-except for her rapidly switching tail.
“What was our agreement when we started school shopping?” I said.
“If I wants to go to school,” she said, stretching her neck, “I gots to behave myself.”
“The other part.”
“That if I don’t behaves myself,” she began-and then the words began tumbling out like a running stream. “I’m sorry, Mom, I really am, please don’t takes my iPod away, but you don’t understands, we gots to go.”
“Quite right,” Vladimir said, patting Cinnamon on the shoulder as he walked past. He sat down on the desk and smiled at us. “I think it is a bit much to expect Cinnamon to have learned all our rules before she’s heard them. Have you heard of the Seven Dirty Words, Cinnamon?”
“Uh… no,” she said.
“Well, they’re words that the FCC-that’s the Federal Communications Commission, which you will learn about in Civics class-won’t let people say on TV,” Vladimir said. “We don’t use them at the Clairmont Academy, and I won’t say them here, but if you’re web savvy I’m sure you can look them up on Wikipedia as a guide for what not to say to your teachers.”
“Doctor Vladimir,” Fremont said. “To point a student to… such a list -”
“What happened to Yonas?” Vladimir asked, smiling at her. Idly he picked up the Rubik’s cube and stared at it. “Our job is not to hide the truth from our students; it’s to teach them how to learn the truth and use it responsibly. Huh. Two sides. Not bad.”
“I had four,” Cinnamon said reproachfully. Her tail was twitching something fierce now, and she had started to rock in her chair-but she still answered. “I was shooting at five, just so I could see the pattern on six.”
Vladimir stared at her, then tossed her the cube. “Show me.”
Cinnamon twitched as she caught it. “We gots to go,” she said, grimacing, but stared at the cube for a second before turning it a few times and flipping it back to him. “Four back at you. The counts, the pairs, the lonelies, and the pretties. I still wants to see what the other ones are.”
“Wholes, evens, primes,” Vladimir muttered, turning it. He held a side to us-it had 6s in the corners, 28s at north, south, east and west, and 496 at the center. “Are these the pretties?”
“Not all of them,” Cinnamon said.
“We call them perfect numbers,” Vladimir began. “That’s because if you add-”
“Fucking clown, ” Cinnamon snapped, abruptly turning away from him.
“Cinnamon!” I said, shocked beyond words. “ What did I say earlier?”
“Who cares? I can’t pass another fucking test,” she said. “We gots to go -”
“Not before you apologize to Doctor Vladimir,” I said sharply.
“There’s no need,” Vladimir chuckled, winking at me. “I can go on a bit, and I do have the look. But she is right, you do need to get going right away.” He turned to a set of cubbyholes beside Fremont’s desk and pulled out a folder and some papers. “The Academy is not a public school and we hold our students to a very high standard. Classes start Friday, not Monday, and we expect our students to get cracking over the very first weekend. We distribute textbooks here, but it will really help if you can get some of the supplemental books for her grade level, and after some assessments on Friday, I may have a few more suggestions-”
But I was barely hearing him. I just stared down at the folder he had placed in my hands, then held it up to show it to Cinnamon. It said, in bold gilt letters:
Welcome to Clairmont Academy:
A Guide for Students and Parents
“Yonas!” Fremont said, as Cinnamon seized the folder and her eyes started welling up. “You-you can’t just let her in, just like that-”
“Sure I can,” Vladimir said, shrugging. “We each get one pass. Just because you used yours doesn’t mean I can’t use mine.”
“But… but her accreditation,” Fremont said. “Her behavior-”
“Katie, you’re new here,” Vladimir said, a little less patiently. “A good ten percent of our good-reco kids will go bad and a similar percent of the bad-recos will go good. You know this. And as for her behavior, she is an extraordinary needs child-”
“Thankyou thankyou thankyou,” Cinnamon said, hopping up, tugging at her collar. “I’ll do my very best, I promises, but, like, we gots to go-”
“Sit down, Cinnamon Frost,” I said. “I’m sure I have forms to sign-”
“We can’t wait for that,” Cinnamon said, whirling. “Fuck, Mom, we gots to go -”
“Cinnamon!” I said, astonished. “What’s wrong with you?”
And then I saw it. Cinnamon wasn’t acting out because she was angry. She was terrified-and her whiskers were visibly growing out.
“I-I can’t stop it,” Cinnamon said, eyes in tears. “I… I’m changing. ”
Fur and Rage
“I knew it. I just knew it. When does the moon come up?” Vladimir asked, whirling to look at Fremont’s wall clock. It showed 3:54 pm. “How long do you have?”
“An hour,” Cinnamon said, clenching her fists. “Fuck! Not even.”
“Is it really the full moon already?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you have another day?”
“I haven’t changed in three months,” she whispered. “I can’t hold no longer-”
“That’s not healthy,” Vladimir said, frowning at me. “Changing is part of who she is. You shouldn’t be trying to suppress her gift.”
“I didn’t tell her not to change,” I said angrily. “She was poisoned.”
“Silver nitrate?” he asked sharply. “What’s that called, hyper-argyle-something?”
“Hyperargyria,” I said, squatting so I could look Cinnamon in the eye. Her eyes were actually glowing, and her pupils had narrowed to vertical ovals. “It damn near killed her.”
“Damnit,” Vladimir said. He looked at Fremont, who was gasping like a fish, and then he came to join me, watching the fine growth of fur on Cinnamon’s face. “Cinnamon, honey,” he said
loudly. “Cinnamon, can you hear me?”
“I don’t knows,” she said. “Speak up a bit.”
Vladimir nodded and drew a breath as if to yell, but I poked him and shook my head. “Oh!” he said. “That wasn’t nice. Cinnamon, do you need a safety cage?”
Cinnamon clenched her fists, staring at them, then nodded.
“We have one in the basement,” Vladimir said.
“No, we don’t,” Fremont said, horrified. “Marian Joyce was complaining it was cramped so… I’m having it replaced.”
“You’re WHAT?” Vladimir said, clearly angry.
“Classes don’t start until Friday,” Fremont said, eyes frozen on Cinnamon. “The new one is going in this weekend. I didn’t think-”
“No, you didn’t,” Vladimir snapped.
“How could I have known?” she cried. “The next full moon isn’t for, what, a week?”
“It isn’t legal to offer an extraordinary needs program to a werekin without a safety cage on site, full moon or no,” he said. “We’ll have to tell Cinnamon and Marion not to come in on Friday, and how will that go over with Miss Frost, much less the Joyces-”
“Stop fighting stop fighting stop fighting,” Cinnamon said softly, and Vladimir and Fremont both shut up. “For the love, keep quiet.”
We all froze. Cinnamon’s little fists were trembling, and I swallowed as a tiny bit of blood beaded in the clench of her hands. But her shaking subsided, her fur faded, and her whiskers slowly drew back in.
“Mom, take me home,” Cinnamon said. “We gots to go. Take me home please.”
“Of course, Cinnamon,” I said, putting my hand gently on her shoulder and handing her a wet wipe. I always carried them. Werekin blood, even a scratch, had to be cleaned up. I gave Fremont and Yonas an apologetic word and ushered Cinnamon out. In moments we were stepping through the doors onto the setting sun, and I sighed: this place was beautiful.
“Wait,” Vladimir wheezed, running (well, limping) up behind us. “Whoo. Ah, wait, please wait,” he said, holding up the folder. “I don’t want to hold you up, but, please. We would love to have Cinnamon as a student at the Clairmont Academy.”
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