Twig

by wildbow

  “Then what if I was a girl?” Jamie asked.

  “I couldn’t—” I started. I stopped myself.

  “The entirety of my existence,” Jamie said, voice quiet, “I’ve lived in his shadow. I’ve failed to be him. I wore his face and his name and many of his old clothes. So don’t jump straight to ‘I couldn’t ask you to do that’. It would be a relief. But if the idea bothers or disconcerts you—”

  I snorted.

  He seemed taken aback by that.

  “I spent enough time with Evette in my head, no.”

  Jamie nodded.

  “It might be useful,” I said. “If rumors about ‘Jamie’ being alive persist, me being in the company of two girls could throw them off.”

  “How very practical,” Jamie said, in a ‘how droll’ tone.

  I smirked.

  “I’m relieved I haven’t upset you,” he said.

  “No,” I said. I felt a massive weight lifting off my chest. One that had been there for years. “No. Just the opposite. You being out from the other Jamie’s shadow sounds… really nice.”

  I looked up, meeting his eyes.

  I closed my eyes for a moment. Trying to alter my conception, use the Wyvern dose a little to help myself make that switch. The framing of this Jamie, the longer hair.

  Easy enough to take in a different sort of stride.

  “I can’t guarantee I’ll even like-like you,” I said. “Just saying. I only really just said goodbye to Lillian. That might be a process. I don’t want to get your hopes up.”

  “Ah, yeah,” she said. She sounded disappointed. “That’s fair.”

  “I’ve really only just met you, in a sense,” I said. I shrugged. “But… yeah. Let’s let it happen naturally as it happens.”

  “I’m okay with that.”

  “You said something about getting out from under the shadow of the name?”

  She smiled. “I was thinking Jessie.”

  “Sticking with the J-name? You’re aware Jessie can be a boy’s name?”

  “I’m aware that Jamie is a unisex name too,” she said. “Parity.”

  “Okay,” I said. Then I tried it out. “Jessie.”

  On the spot, very clearly unsure of herself, she looked very different from how she had ten minutes ago. She smiled.

  I exhaled, letting out all of the remaining tension. That feeling of the burden lifting off of me wasn’t letting up. I felt as light as air. Buoyant. A demon that had been stalking me and lurking over my shoulder for years had been put to rest, extinguished.

  I spoke, “Good. Perfect. It was a massive pain in the ass, distinguishing between you and Jamie in my head. Can’t even say Jamie the younger because you’re younger in terms of years you’ve been around, but he’s younger chronologically, and that’s only the beginning of the issue.”

  I gestured at the stairs, and Jessie gave me a nod. We started up in Shirley’s direction.

  “I’m just glad that this puts your ‘pain in the ass’ innuendo to rest,” Jessie said.

  “We’ll see,” I said. Walking up the stairs next to her, I gave her shoulder a bump with mine.

  After a moment, she returned the favor.

  Previous Next

  Lamb (Arc 14)

  Students aged seventeen to twenty gathered in the library, shuffling from one side to another, standing on tiptoes, and craning their heads to see. A man in a white coat placed the sheet of vellum up on the board, tacking it securely in place, with three tacks to each corner. To one side, a stitched guard with a helmet stood with arms folded. A Radham Academy crest had been sunken into the flesh of the stitched’s chest and bicep, an ornate badge of metal surrounded by a ring of graying scar tissue.

  The stitched guard was necessary. Without it, the students might have dragged the man away from the wall or torn the parchment from his hands. They were increasingly restless as the man took his time, the people in the front flinching as if they’d been pained when he dropped one of the tacks.

  Lillian wasn’t part of the crowd. She leaned against the wall by the front door of the library, on the very fringe of the crowd. It was all too apparent that the man in the white coat was relishing the torment he was inflicting on the assembly, and Lillian had experienced more teasing in the last four years than most people experienced in a lifetime. She was inured to it. She’d learned patience.

  He dropped another tack. The stitched guard put a hand out, pushing away some of the students who pushed in a little too close.

  If this joker just happened to get dragged into the crowd, lynched complete with a tarring and feathering, and then thrown into a stall of hungry, carnivorous experiments, she might have put her usual feelings about needless brutality aside and applauded along with the rest of the crowd.

  She recognized faces here and there. Frank, Raymond, Harold, Chester, Walter, and Clifford among the boys, and Beatrice, Sarah, and Jane among girls.

  Duncan wasn’t here, which was a shame, but not too surprising. Duncan often got nervous enough at these times of year that he became nauseous. She had only found out after she had suggested his name for the Lambs project. Had she known before, she might not have nominated him.

  But that was why he wasn’t here. He couldn’t show that weakness in front of his peers. He would sneak in just as the bulk of the crowd dispersed, if he couldn’t catch her as she walked back to the girl’s dormitory.

  The man in the white coat finished up, more because he seemed to sense he’d pushed his luck as far as it could go. He backed away, and the crowd pushed in, while the guard continued to protect the paper.

  Lillian remained where she was. Even if she pushed, she wouldn’t see that much sooner. Patience. She had been tormented by a boy who had been engineered to be a right goblin, then she had made him her boyfriend and embraced the torment.

  Put up your dukes, world. I can take it, she thought. There was a cynicism in the thought, a lack of humor.

  Months of frustration and eagerness, a peak of fear and joy and pain, then… a long slump, emotionally.

  She watched as the first batch of students worked their way out of the crowd. She could read them on a basic level using tricks Sylvester had taught her, once upon a time. It wasn’t that she was anything special when it came to reading people, but when emotions ran this high, then it was as plain as day.

  Good practice, this.

  Raymond looked pensive. He usually did when he was most stressed. He was twenty and he couldn’t stay in the Academy for much longer.

  Jane looked delighted, but she had to play nice and suppress it because Sarah looked devastated. Lillian knew it was an unhealthy friendship, prone to sabotage and undercutting. The trio of Beatrice, Sarah and Jane were weaker together than they would be apart.

  And then… Patty.

  Patty wore her blonde hair in a style so short it could be mistaken for a boy’s, but where most boys parted their hair or slicked it back, Patty had parted her hair, then tightly curled the hair on both sides of the part, so it formed a single roll, and pinned it there. The execution was so tight it looked sculpted, not styled. She wore makeup that looked like it took some effort, too, heavy on the eyeliner and mascara.

  “Lillian, hon,” Patty said.

  Lillian managed a smile. “Good morning. How did you do?”

  Patty waved her off. “As if there was any question. Are you putting it off?”

  “I’m just waiting for the crowd to clear up,” Lillian said. “The numbers and letters on the paper won’t change if I wait five minutes.”

  “Sure, hon,” Patty said. She reached out for Lillian’s hand, snatching it up to then hold it up and squeeze it. “We’ve been in classes together for years. You and I are the only two girls who skipped ahead. The youngest girls in this crowd. You don’t have to lie.”

  “I’m not lying, Patty. We’ve both heard the stories of the quarter-end seniors rioting. Pulling hair to the point that scalps tear, students getting trampled…”

 
Patty scoffed. “Older students tell those tales to scare the younger ones.”

  Lillian was ninety-five percent sure that she’d seen one of the riots in progress, early on in her time at the Academy, but she kept her mouth shut. Patty was being good, for the most part.

  It would have been so nice if she and Patty had gotten along. They were the same age, they’d both skipped ahead, and they both were near the top of the class. But they had differed in seemingly every way. Oil and water.

  Patty was the oil, in that analogy. Glossy, rich, naturally rising to the top. In many ways, she was someone Lillian envied. Brilliant, sharp, capable, born to a wealthy family, with countless natural connections by way of that same family, Patty had been close to the top of the class and did it while freely building up social circles, going out, gussying up, and almost effortlessly sabotaging and tearing down her rivals.

  Patty had advanced ahead a year after Lillian had done so, without the leverage of being on a special projects team, and she had terrified all of the girls and many of the boys that were a year older and a year more experienced than the two of them. Lillian had been among those students who feared this girl, but by virtue of not being at the Academy, busy working with the Lambs and getting caught up with the other students, she had flown under the radar.

  Sometime into her work with the Lambs, two things had happened at once. Lillian had caught up, leaping to the top or near-top of the class rankings, and she’d made a mental connection. With that eye makeup she liked and the coiffed, fashionable style, Patty was an eerie, non-experiment parallel to Helen. A cut-rate Helen.

  With that, the fear had dissipated. And an unfashionable, mousy girl who didn’t fear her and just barely managed to stay ahead of her in the rankings perplexed Patty.

  Patty was the sort that attacked and blotted out what she couldn’t understand. Most of the time, she wasn’t even in the city to fall prey to Patty’s usual methods of attack. Lillian realized this attack was imminent too late.

  “What happened this summer, hon?”

  Lillian blinked. “This summer?”

  “There are rumors. People watch you, because you’re so near the top, you’ve obviously used back-channels to build connections with the blackest coats at Radham.”

  “Rumors can be wrong. I’m not denying I’ve built connections, but we all do that. I’m not sure what makes a connection back-channel.”

  Lillian wanted to kick herself before she was even finished talking. She was retreating, backpedaling, when she should be… what? Deflecting? Attacking? Negating? What would Sy do?

  Then she wanted to kick herself for thinking about Sy first and foremost.

  Duncan was a good model. What would Duncan do?

  Patty wore a condescending smile. “We all saw your dip in zero quarter, a faltering rise for first quarter, and then the steepest dip of any student this year in the second. Most students call it quits after a drop like that.”

  Sylvester leaving in winter, a quiet spring where she focused on her project before they started after Sylvester in spring… and then summer.

  Thinking the word ‘summer’ alone made her stomach sink. She kept it from showing on her face. “I’m not worried, Patty.”

  “You should be!” Patty said. “You were number one, number two sometimes! You’re my rival, hon. You’re not supposed to be this weak. More than half of the senior students who drop down in two of the five quarters fail. But three?”

  Patty gestured in the direction of the sheet, and her expression changed. She squeezed Lillian’s hand hard.

  Lillian’s heart skipped a beat.

  She looked for my name. She saw.

  “Nobody comes back from bad marks in three quarters,” Patty said. “They barely have time to review everyone’s work every year, so they shuffle the failures to the end, and they won’t even look at some of them.”

  She could see the pained sympathy on Patty’s face. It was too reminiscent of Jane’s expression with Sarah.

  “I think that’s another myth, there,” Lillian said.

  “Lillian,” Patty said, her voice dropping, becoming something urgent. “Hon.”

  “Patty,” Lillian said, dryly, refusing to be drawn into Patty’s tempo and rhythm. But her mouth felt dry, and her heart hammered in her chest, still.

  “Whatever magic you were working to do as well as you were doing before…” Patty said, “And we’ve all heard the rumors, you know. You need to recapture that. Find a way back into good graces.”

  “You’re being silly, Patty. The ‘magic’ is that I’m working with a special project for Headmaster Hayle. It’s an open secret. It was a hard summer with the project. The headmaster and my professors know this.”

  A bit of a fib, that.

  “With Headmaster Hayle and Professor Ibbot,” Patty said.

  Lillian sighed. “Special projects are secret projects.”

  “Ostensibly. You’re surrounded by clever people, hon. Don’t think we don’t see or pay attention. We talk among ourselves and piece things together. Ibbot spends his time in the company of his ‘daughter’, who bears no resemblance to him at all. She’s in his lab all the time, and when she isn’t, she’s often in your company. It used to be Lambsbridge, but not so much, lately. Are they keeping things closer to the Academy proper, so as not to interfere with your studies?”

  So this was it. Falter just a little for just a little bit too long, and the vultures would start circling.

  “You’re getting wildly off track,” Lillian said, with a calm she didn’t feel. “I’m fine. Truly.”

  Patty glanced left, then glanced right. A prelude to her follow-up maneuver, as if she was putting on a show for someone. The girl let go of Lillian’s hand, then she stepped closer, hands clutching at Lillian’s sleeves, at the upper arms. It was something Patty did a lot. Snatching at hands or clutching at someone. But even while Lillian could file it away as a technique one of the Lambs might try at using, she found herself falling prey to it in the moment. She startled a little, and froze enough that she got caught up in Patty’s follow-up.

  “They say Ibbot was baited to Radham with promises that he would be allowed to pursue his perversions. That girl he created. Having you at his beck and call.”

  Lillian found herself at a loss for words.

  “I don’t know if you agreed to it, thinking you could propel yourself up the class rankings, or if you were a victim. If that bloated, narcissistic, sleazy greaseball put his narrow, slimy hands on you, or if he just used you to test out his perverted pet. It doesn’t matter—”

  “Patty,” Lillian interjected. Were people listening? No. Nobody seemed to have drawn close to listen in. The rumor mill wouldn’t be agitated by this particular scene.

  “Hon,” Patty jumped in, insistent. “It’s okay! Whether you were victim or whether you went along with it, that’s the reality of being a young lady in the Academies. It’s not always easy. I don’t fault you. We don’t fault you.”

  Lillian experienced a monumental sinking feeling at the realization that this was the web of rumor that Patty had been spinning while she’d been away. Months and even years of sidelong glances suddenly made some small amount of sense.

  That ominous line of thought was cut short. Lillian could see Mary, some distance behind Patty. It woke her up to reality, so to speak.

  But Mary wasn’t jumping in to save her. Mary walked up behind Patty, made the gesture for silent kill, then stepped back.

  No, this was up to her, not Mary.

  “Patty,” Lillian said, more firmly. “You’re being silly.”

  “Lillian. Hon—”

  “Calm down,” Lillian said, adopting a tone more like a teacher talking to a young student. “You’re getting so caught up in your fantasy that you’re practically drooling.”

  Now it was Patty’s turn to be at a momentary loss for words.

  “Ibbot makes weapons,” Lillian said. “This is common knowledge. His ‘daughter’ is a weapon.
And it’s equally common knowledge to anyone in the know that the professor prefers his women like he likes his wine, matured. Which I promise you, is just as disgusting a mental image for me as it is for you.”

  She could see Patty preparing to turn the tables. Lillian hurried to deliver the knockout first. She took a page from Patty’s book, clapping a hand on Patty’s shoulder to startle before leaning in close to her ear.

  “If you fantasize of being with Ibbot, hon, then I’ll extend you a courtesy and I won’t fault you for your utter lack of taste. If you fantasize about Helen… maybe Ibbot would allow you to put yourself forward as a candidate for helping with any tests, when she reaches an age for those tests to start. I doubt they would help you with marks or help your standing in anyone’s eyes.”

  “You’re disgusting!” Patty exclaimed. Heads turned. Patty pulled back, and Lillian maintained her grip where her hand rested between the girl’s neck and shoulder, holding her firm for just a moment longer.

  “Do what I do,” Lillian said, unfazed. “Focus on the weapons, not lascivious rumors, and not the lascivious.”

  Patty pulled away, spinning on the spot, and took one step before finding herself face to face with Mary, stopping in her tracks.

  The girl changed direction, circling around Mary as she left the library.

  Lillian’s hands shook from the agitation of that confrontation, the shock at the allegations.

  “Patty, if I remember right?” Mary asked, looking over at the retreating girl’s back.

  “Yes,” Lillian said. She composed herself. She couldn’t afford to look weak, whatever the rumors were. “Hello. I didn’t expect you to show up here.”

  “Hayle sent me. He knew you would be checking your results here.”

  “He sent you for work?” Lillian asked, with a hint of dread.

  “Work,” Mary confirmed.

  Lillian wanted to ask, but the word remained at the tip of her tongue.

  “Sylvester,” Mary said.

  Lillian bit her tongue, instead.

  “He found his way to Laureas,” Mary said.