Elsbyth smiled her pride as she consoled Caomos for his wound. With this battle she had turned the tide, made the difference, and now it was a mere matter of mopping up to ensure a safe and peaceful future for all in the land. Her heart would have leapt from her chest had she given it leave to do so, and at last the young girl in the Lycra suit knew the value of faith in her cause as Elsbyth, the Warrior-Queen of Rheanna.
Chapter 7
Still smiling, Elizabeth said, “Program, save” and stepped out of the tank. Removing the headset, she took a long, deep breath of satisfaction. She had written the story herself. Sometimes she played different characters, occasionally even on the Dark King’s side, but most often as Elsbyth.
“Let’s go back!” said her 3V self. “Let’s go back and finish ’em.”
Stripping off the interactive suit, she scrunched her nose up. She’d definitely sweated during the battle, no doubt about that. “No, that’s enough for one night,” she said, tired but delighted. Well, she thought, at least the bodysuit is machine washable.
That made her think of her mom, which brought up the prickly question from the back of her mind, forgotten in the Land of Rheanna. There was absolute silence in the other room. They must’ve finished for the evening, she thought sarcastically to herself. I wonder how long they went on for this time.
She looked at the clock.
Oh my God . . .
It was three o’clock in the morning. Her parents had been so wrapped up in their battle, they’d left her entirely to her own. She’d played for over eight hours, and that meant she’d be dead tired tomorrow.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
Elizabeth quickly toweled off, shut down the 3V tank, and climbed under the covers. I’ve got to get to sleep, I’ve got to get to sleep . . .
She thought that mantra to herself for a full hour before finally drifting off.
“Monitor calling.”
The feminine voice repeated its hail in an affectionate, may-I-be-of-service tone. There was nothing quite as perverse as that measured, not-quite-cheerful sound when you hadn’t had enough rest.
“Attention, Elizabeth.”
The prerecorded, helpful voice became a tad more insistent, as if saying, No, really, for your own good . . . “Monitor calling.”
Elizabeth had been dreaming of her fictional husband, Ulaemeth, and how he’d wrapped his arms around her, kissed her, and told her how proud he was of her for defeating Mallus. He whirled her around in their joy and told her how she’d given meaning to his death through her victory. And then he stopped suddenly, looking around, as if hearing demons pricking at his ears with their pitchforks.
“What is it, dearest?” she’d asked. “What’s the matter?”
Ulaemeth looked her straight in the eye, his face falling, and suddenly he was her father, looking sternly at her. “There’s an ale house in southern Rheanna that needs a barmaid,” he said. “And that’s where you’ll end up. Queen of the Ale. That’s what’ll happen if you don’t answer.”
“Answer?”
(monitor calling)
“You think because you won the battle against the Dark King you deserve to wear that crown?” her father asked. Ulaemeth’s armor had been replaced by his dress shirt and slacks, a loose tie dangling from around his neck, his shirt sleeves rolled up. “If you don’t answer, you’ll amount to nada, zilcho. You’ll be a huge disappointment to your mother and me.”
“But—”
“Wake up!” he screamed, and she shot straight up in bed. Sweat plastered her hair to her forehead. She was panting, almost crying.
“Elizabeth Jackson. If you do not answer the monitor now, you will be counted as absent from today’s lessons.” The voice sounded downright prosecutorial now. But in a helpful way.
“Login Elizabeth Jackson!” she said desperately, cursing herself for oversleeping and knowing it would get back to her parents.
“Login complete,” came the smug-sounding reply.
A video portrait of her monitor appeared in the upper-right corner of the screen, along with the four smaller portraits of her classmates lined up along the bottom. They all looked put out at having to wait on her. Monitor Skinner particularly. Debbie Maselic, class kiss-up and brain, seemed outraged at having to miss a minute of her education. Michael Miller looked relieved to see her at last, though he made a stern face and darted his eyes up and to the left to indicate that Mr. Skinner was not in a great mood. The others just looked bored to be there, but glad to see that Skinner’s Evil Eye had settled on someone else for the moment.
“Good morning, Miss Jackson,” said Skinner. “So glad you could join us this morning.”
“Good morning, Mr. Skinner,” she said, trying to put on a good face. “I’m sorry to be late, I just—”
“Overslept by the look of things,” he finished for her. His eyes raked over her. As always, he could only see her from the shoulders up. But that was enough. He noted her disheveled hair, her rumpled clothes, her generally distracted, fatigued demeanor. “Were we up late playing 3V games again?”
Horrified at the question, Elizabeth stammered, “Uh, well, sir, I—”
“Mr. Skinner,” broke in Michael, “didn’t we finish up yesterday with the South firing on Fort Sumter?”
“Michael to the rescue!” her 3V self exulted.
“Quiet, Mr. Miller. When I require your newfound love of history to remind me of my lesson plan, you will be the first to know.”
Michael’s face deflated. Debbie Maselic smirked. The rest of the class continued looking bored as Elizabeth struggled with the decision to tell an obvious lie in hopes of keeping her 3V privileges. Or, at least, to try to keep the situation from getting any worse by telling the truth.
“We’re waiting, Miss Jackson,” breathed Skinner.
“Um, well, sir,” she struggled, “I did play 3V games last night, but not past ten o’clock. But I had such a hard time sleeping. It was almost three o’clock this morning before I finally fell asleep.” Well, a half-lie was, by definition, half of the truth. Wasn’t it?
“Hmmm,” said Skinner, giving the impression he almost believed her. “Then I must let the sysop for webgames know that his software is failing.”
Elizabeth didn’t understand. But she thought he was having a joke at her expense. “Sir?”
“Your game log here in front of me says you were on till nearly three A.M. Actively, I might add.”
Michael rolled his eyes. Debbie smirked again.
I forgot the log! Now what do I do, what do I do?
Ever since the courts had ruled webschools legally liable for a child’s educational achievements, certified monitors had full access to all recordable data regarding anything that might impact a student’s ability to learn. Webgame logins were easy to keep track of, so they were loaded automatically as part of the monitor’s morning checkup on his students before lessons began.
“Did you lie to me a moment ago, Miss Jackson?”
She thought desperately of a way out of it, of some way she could convince Skinner it had been a mistake, not a lie; an error, not a deception. Maybe she had fallen asleep online and, while dreaming in the I-suit, had jerked enough to fool the program into thinking she was actively playing. Or maybe she could say someone else had taken over her game for her and played it late while she went to sleep, and it just looked like she’d still been playing all that time. But no, who could she blame for that?
“Miss Jackson?”
She didn’t have any real friends in this town, certainly none that would sleep over.
“Blame Michael.”
The thought appealed to her at first. She glanced at the lower left picture-in-picture on-screen. The look on his face melted her heart. He looked as if he only needed a horse and lance to ride to her rescue.
“Say it was a sleepover.”
No.
“Miss Jackson, you are dismissed from class today.”
Her brain cleared immediately
. “Wh—?”
“You heard me,” said Skinner. He raised an eyebrow. “Or, perhaps you didn’t. Lack of sleep often leads to distracted behavior.” Skinner’s tone let her know his patience had run out. “So, I’ll repeat it for you: You’re dismissed from class today.”
“But—”
“You will be required to make up the work before the end of the term.”
Not another makeup exam. She’d gotten lucky yesterday, though she’d studied hard, it was true.
“Mr. Skinner, okay, I was playing last night . . .”
She darted her eyes to the others for help. Debbie looked smug, glad to be rid of the diversion from her lessons. Michael looked ready to cry out of sympathy. The others still just looked bored.
“Your parents will be notified that you have missed the day. Under the appropriate clause in the Parent-School Responsibility Sharing Act, it is they, not I, who will shoulder responsibility for your unexcused absence. The school will not be held accountable for your failure to learn today, and your parents will not be reimbursed for today’s prorated tuition.”
Her whole body felt numb with the certain fear of what was to come. “Mr. Skinner, please.”
The monitor sighed. “It is unfortunate, Miss Jackson, particularly in light of your improvement yesterday. But discipline is not something that can be shirked. Perhaps some words from your parents will ensure your proper rest and prompt login in the future. As it is, you’ve wasted ten minutes of the other students’ class time already today.”
Tears were streaming down her face now. “But you don’t understand, if you call my father, he’ll—”
“That is all for today, Miss Jackson. Good-bye.” Skinner reached forward and tapped a button. His image disappeared.
Elizabeth sat on the bed, staring open-mouthed at the dead screen in front of her, listening to the prickly, fuzzy electrons dying on its surface. The final echo of Skinner’s reprimand soaked into the walls, and her ears tried to catch and hold on to it, anything to keep what had just happened from being final.
But then there was only silence except for her sobbing. She wiped her nose with the bedcovers. She could see it all now, as if her own play were unfolding before her act by act, scene by scene. It would happen this way: After the day’s lessons had ended, the monitor would call and her mother would get the message. And she might make a half-hearted attempt to deal with Elizabeth herself, but she was never very good at that sort of thing, so she would rely on Elizabeth’s father to discipline their daughter. Then her father would get home and her mother would look for a good time to tell him what the monitor had said, and she would realize that there was no good time, and so, to get it off her chest, she would interrupt Web Report, which was the worst time to tell him, and then he would be all the angrier because it only confirmed that he thought Elizabeth was a failure, and then he would lay into her, ending his diatribe with a revocation of her 3V privileges for God knows how long
(depends on how bad Web Report is)
and then she would be in hell for that time, listening to them fight constantly with nowhere to hide from it.
Elizabeth sobbed harder at the paralyzing hopelessness of it all.
After a few moments, she gathered herself together and looked at the clock. Just after eight in the morning. Her father would have gone to his office already, but her mother would still be here cleaning up after breakfast and getting ready to go shopping online for the next couple of hours. Elizabeth knew she couldn’t stay here today, alone in her room, awaiting the inevitable. She began to plan how she might get past her mother on guard in the kitchen. Just thinking of her mother that way—on guard—made her wonder if Dad hadn’t posted Mom there to ensure Elizabeth attended webschool. It made her angry to think, despite today’s evidence, that such diligence might actually be warranted. That was beside the point, after all. That her father might not trust her—that really made her mad!
“All right then,” she said out loud to the empty 3V screen. “If that’s what he thinks, then that’s what he thinks. If we’re going to be punished for last night, we might as well make it count!”
She wiped her eyes and nose one more time on her nightshirt and took it off to prepare for the day. She put on some jeans, tennis shoes, and a T-shirt with a 3-D imprint claiming that Elvis The King (whoever that was) was long dead but that Mick Forrest—his apparent replacement from Liverpool, birthplace of The Beatles (whoever they were)—should long live hereafter. She put a change of clothes in her backpack, which she’d bought for a family camping trip that had never happened, and put on a baseball cap, her hair hanging loosely beneath.
Elizabeth pushed the keypad next to her bedroom door, which slid open about two inches, swishing all too loudly as far as she was concerned. She could hear the morning news coming through the kitchen’s 3V as her mother placed the morning’s dishes into the washer for cleaning. She saw her mom’s shadow dancing on the part of the kitchen floor she could see from her room.
About nine A.M. the webschool would break to allow students to go to the bathroom and grab a quick bite of breakfast or whatever they liked, and they would be expected to be back in their places with bright shining faces by 9:30. So around nine, her mother would be looking for her to come out of her room. That meant Elizabeth would have to get out of the house as soon as possible, before her mother discovered she’d left.
She stared down the empty hall, opened the door wide, and dashed toward the safety of the bathroom. The door hissed as it slid open, Elizabeth wincing at the noise. The dishwasher, just beginning to scour its contents, easily covered the sound.
She hid there for a moment, catching her breath and confirming the coast was still clear. A second door from the bathroom faced the kitchen, so she pushed the keypad and cracked it by a couple of inches.
Her mother was standing right there!
Susan Jackson stared at the 3V webnews in the glass of the microwave’s door, which doubled as both a window to see the contents of what might be cooking and a 3V screen. Elizabeth had one eye wide at how close they were, mere feet apart. Susan listened intently to the report about a brewing crisis in Asia. But then a clanking from the direction of the dishwasher broke her train of thought. Irritated, she turned toward the sound and walked across the kitchen, away from her daughter.
Elizabeth opened the bathroom door and slid out almost without thinking and was around the corner and into the foyer of the house in a few seconds. She opened the front door, slid through almost before it was opened all the way, and quietly keyed it closed behind her.
The sunshine felt like freedom. Her body lightened, as if she’d just slipped off a heavy suit made of lead. Elizabeth actually stood a little straighter and taller as her eyes adjusted to the bright, natural light. She basked in its warmth.
She knew this feeling wouldn’t last long. When Skinner called and her parents discovered she was missing, this glorious feeling would end. They would come and find her and drag her back here, chastise and punish her, and take the whole of Rheanna away from her.
“Don’t think about that now,” her 3V voice said, rebuking her for poisoning her few moments of liberation.
Yeah, Elizabeth thought. Relax. Enjoy it while you can.
“Don’t think about them and their bitching at one another and Skinner and his holier-than-thou attitude and that brownnosing bitch Debbie Maselic,” continued the 3V voice.
Skinner was Mallus, she thought to herself. But for now she’d beaten him.
“Don’t even think about Michael right now. Try to enjoy the sunshine for a change.”
And what a beautiful day it was! The early fall breeze was actually cool, a refreshing oasis after the muggy Texas summer. She rounded the corner of her house, well out of eyeshot of the front door. Elizabeth stood still for a moment, letting the ticklish warmth of the sunshine wash away the sterile cold of her bedroom. She looked around at the cul-de-sac of houses, then turned her eyes upward again to look through the branche
s of a pine tree and straight up at the most pleasant sky she had ever seen. It was the purest blue, and the most cottony of clouds floated above. They seemed to invite her to come and rest on their billowy softness, promising to take her away to a place without parents and webschools and worries.
She brought her eyes back to the houses around her again and, though they might not be the rolling hills and valleys of Rheanna, this sun was really warm, this sky was even more pleasing than Rheanna’s, and most importantly, this adventure wasn’t programmed. Elizabeth smiled at the clouds, promised to take a rain check on their offer to float her away, and set off down her street to see what she could see.
She wandered around most of the day, careful not to be too obvious about playing hooky. Elizabeth knew it was silly to even worry about that. Her parents would find out she wasn’t in school anyway, and her mom had probably already discovered she wasn’t in her room. Still, perhaps from some need to feel guilty, she kept to the neighborhood’s side streets, avoiding the main streets in town.
Elizabeth walked toward Second Street, an older paved road that had almost crumbled to gravel. She walked past most of her own neighborhood before she realized she’d done so.
The houses she passed seemed old to her, but then everything seemed old and worn down to her young eyes. The house they’d bought. The neighborhood. The tire-worn street they lived on. The smell of the air in Hampshire. Even that seemed old.
Her thoughts turned to Old Suzie’s house and how it terrified her with its smell of ancient decay. Even though she’d only been inside in her dreams, she knew the air in there smelled like the breath of the dead—moist and foul. The paint of the house’s exterior was cracked like her mother’s hands in winter. But the whole town seemed that way. Maybe not as old as that house, but old all the same, cracked and peeling and hunched over. Old and worn out and tired of living.
Shadows Burned In Page 8
