by E. C. Myers
At first she stood uncertainly with her food tray, looking around the room for a welcoming group or a friendly face who might gesture for her to join them, but no one did. Each time she moved to take an empty seat, she was told, “Oh, we’re saving that.” The other girls ignored her like she wasn’t even there—until she eventually found an empty table and sat by herself. Then she became the center of attention, as people snuck looks at her, their expressions an array of amusement, malice, and pity.
Somehow Trivia always ended up alone, even in a crowd.
Granted, she wasn’t much of a conversationalist, but she was a great listener. So she listened. She forced down the tasteless food while really feasting on gossip about her schoolmates. She heard about how Roux still slept with her stuffed cat and wet her bed every night and how Celeste had an older boyfriend at Oscuro Combat School. Laurel was the girl who cried herself to sleep every night, and Trivia wasn’t the only one who hated her. Veronica was the spoiled daughter of a Vale city councilwoman who had been sent to the school after stealing and trashing her mother’s boyfriend’s car—there was a lot to unpack there. Erin and Mauve were supposedly a thing again (yay?), the third time they had broken up and gotten back together again this month. They were so romantic and cute together, but would they ever last?
Trivia rolled her eyes.
Of course the other girls also talked about Trivia, some of them loudly enough that she couldn’t help but hear them. They all wondered who she was and what she had done. One girl somehow did recognize her as a Vanille, and said she’d heard their mansion had burned down the night before and her parents were dead. Trivia smiled at the thought, setting off another flurry of wild speculation. Someone said Trivia never spoke, and the girls at her table wondered why that was with increasingly outlandish theories. Another girl claimed that Trivia had lived in her parents’ attic, and she was only sent to the school when the police found out—which admittedly had some truth to it. Others criticized every aspect of Trivia’s appearance, especially her height and her mismatched eyes.
Trivia made note of everyone who said something meant to hurt her. But when you grew up listening to your parents say cruel things about you, even to your face, comments from strangers lost their sting. She didn’t know most of these people yet, and she certainly didn’t care about what any of them thought of her, but some of what she overheard might be useful one day.
Mostly, it was interesting for her to study other people. Since the fire, when Neopolitan had disappeared and begun asserting herself more directly, Trivia had become more observant of people’s motivations. What people decided to say aloud often said more about them—who they were and what they wanted—than anything else. And most people talk way too much and reveal more than they should.
Keep talking, Trivia thought, chewing her food. Tell me all your secrets.
Picking up gossip at mealtimes and in whispered conversations between beds and in the halls was always the highlight of Trivia’s day. After three days at the school, she was certain that she was dying—of boredom. She had been understimulated at home, sure, but here not only were students not allowed to leave the grounds without permission, but also they weren’t allowed to watch videos or play games, and their reading material was strictly controlled.
She was living her worst nightmare. One morning, Lady Beat was actually instructing them on how to walk.
“Remember: posture, girls. Keep your heads high. Backs straight. Chest out,” Lady Beat said.
Several girls tittered at that and pushed their bosoms out. Trivia rolled her eyes and focused on keeping her balance.
Slouching had never been much of a problem for Trivia; she was short, so she always tried to stand as tall as possible. But Lady Beat’s lessons to teach her girls to be more aware of how they sat and stood and moved, to listen to their body and what it was telling them about their feelings (gag), had at least showed Trivia that she did slouch sometimes. When she was depressed or upset, she almost tried to pull herself in, to disappear. And before coming here, she had been depressed and upset a lot.
Of course it was one thing to concentrate on not slouching when you were sitting at your desk, and quite another thing when you were balancing on a tightrope twenty feet in the air, with no net below you. Lady Beat believed in “tough love”—without the love part.
Trivia worked her way across the thin wire with her arms outstretched on either side. Head high. Back straight. Chest out.
She smiled. Okay, that was a little funny.
Surprisingly, thinking about those things helped keep her mind off the fact that she was in danger of falling and prevented her from overthinking every step she took. She strode across the ten-foot gap quickly and seemingly effortlessly, a few feet ahead of the other girls on the other ropes. Trivia gave a deep bow on the other side. Lady Beat led the others in a round of polite clapping. Ladies did not make unnecessary noise, and all the girls were here to learn to be proper ladies.
Which, of course the very notion of that practically made Trivia sick, but she had to admit, she was very, very good at this stuff and she loved it. The physical lessons—learning to study movement to really control yourself and your facial expressions—were some of the few bright spots about living at Lady Browning’s Preparatory Academy for Girls. Trivia enjoyed acrobatics classes, ribbon, fencing, even ballet. It was everything else that bored her out of her mind.
The social etiquette. Cooking. Cleaning. Sewing.
Actually, sewing wasn’t that bad. But the girls at the school were forced to make clothes they would never wear, high-fashion items that would be sold at boutiques throughout Vale like the ones Trivia used to shoplift from. Meanwhile, they all had to wear the same drab uniforms, since “distraction was a neighbor to destruction,” as Lady Beat liked to say.
Trivia missed destruction.
In fact, Trivia actually missed home. A little bit.
The real problem at Lady Browning’s Preparatory Academy for Girls was the girls, Trivia thought as the Malachite twins shot angry looks at her for the terrible crime of beating them across the ropes. Melanie and Miltia were the worst of the lot. The popular, pretty girls had singled Trivia out and turned the others against her. So much for having a fresh start and making real friends.
One day, three months after Trivia had arrived, Melanie and Miltia took things too far. Trivia woke up late and discovered she was alone in the dormitory. All the others had snuck out quietly before the alarm went off, and switched off the alarm so she would oversleep. And her uniform was missing, so Trivia had the choice of missing class or showing up late in her pajamas, like a bad dream. But she had a third option: Trivia simply used her Semblance to mask her pajamas and appear in the Lady Beat–approved short dark-blue-colored jacket, white blouse, pleated, calf-length skirt, and boots.
She paid attention when she walked into origami class (really?) to see who was surprised the most, and then she’d followed Melanie and Miltia afterward to where they had stowed her clothes in a maintenance closet. She listened outside the door.
“I don’t get it, Miltia. Her clothes are right here where we left them. So where did she get the other outfit?”
“I don’t know, Melanie. But I really don’t like her already. Do you?”
“As if.”
Trivia locked them in. And then, because she didn’t know what else to do, she went to Lady Beat.
Big mistake.
Lady Beat kept Trivia waiting outside her office before allowing her inside. Through the glass partitions Trivia could see her working, talking to someone on her Scroll and typing into her computer. She reminded Trivia a lot of her father. Lady Beat finally waved Trivia inside, and she sat across from her desk, an elegant antique like the ones her family collected.
Lady Beat smiled a perfect smile, which would have seemed genuine if Trivia had not known one of the classes at the school was called “The Art of the Smile.” This smile conveyed warmth and was meant to encourage feelings of
camaraderie, but there was a hint of meanness behind it and a sense that she was merely humoring the child.
Trivia started typing on her Scroll and swiveled the screen around to show it to Lady Beat. The smile cracked slightly.
“Why don’t you use the app,” Lady Beat said. Not a question.
Trivia managed to suppress a grimace. She pressed her thumb to the screen and the text pulsed. A mechanical female voice read the words aloud: “Melanie and Miltia stole my uniform to make me look bad.”
Trivia hated that voice. It made everything she said sound stupid. And it just didn’t sound like her. She didn’t know how she would sound if she could talk, but it wouldn’t be so flat. Trivia had always imagined her voice would be musical, airy and bright, like a flute. Hearing a computer substitute that sounded like those alphabet toys she had played with as a child was worse than keeping quiet.
But Lady Beat had made it clear that if she had something to say, she needed to use the voice app. It wasn’t reasonable for her to expect others to read her words for her, or work to comprehend what she was trying to communicate. Her parents had coddled her too long, Lady Beat told her privately, after Carmel Vanille had left, but those days were over now.
Lady Beat did not look surprised to hear Trivia’s accusation. Did the girls pull this on new students often?
“And?” She looked Trivia over. “I know about your Semblance, Ms. Vanille. And you know the rules.”
Trivia nodded.
“Say it.”
Trivia typed and pressed her thumb to the scroll. “Use of Semblances is not permitted on school grounds.”
“Why?” Lady Beat asked.
“Not everyone has a Semblance and a lady must not make others feel inferior to her.”
“And?” Lady Beat prodded.
“Semblances are a reflection of our true selves. Ladies do not reveal more than they need to.”
“Very good. Now drop your illusion and go let Melanie and Miltia out of the closet.”
Trivia released the illusion of her clothes. Lady Beat wrinkled her nose at the sight of her pink pajamas, the only things Trivia owned.
“Aren’t you going to punish them?” Trivia asked. Again, the generated voice grated on her ears.
“Ladies don’t tattle, Ms. Vanille. I am certain the Malachites have had ample opportunity to think over their actions, as I hope you will.”
Trivia’s mouth dropped open.
“Part of learning to be a lady is learning how to interact with others and settle disputes on your own. As long as you follow my rules, anything goes.” Lady Beat smiled again, but this smile was more chilling. “But do try not to kill anyone. I don’t like messy paperwork. Thank you, that’s all. I’ll see you in class.”
As soon as Trivia unlocked the closet door, it burst open and Melanie and Miltia stormed out. Melanie laughed. “Look at her jammies, Miltia! They’re so twee.”
Miltia frowned and studied Trivia. “Where did her other uniform go?”
“Whatever. We’ve got to get to class, and she still has to change.” Melanie smirked and sashayed away, her sister trailing behind like a shadow.
Trivia went into the closet and found her uniform on the floor. And on the sink. And on a few shelves. And inside a bucket.
The twins had torn it apart and scattered the pieces everywhere. Fortunately, the next class was sewing.
Trivia was aware of the attention from her classmates as soon as she sauntered into class in her pajamas. The other girls whispered to each other, wondering why Lady Beat wasn’t punishing her for being out of uniform—unaware that she was being punished.
Trivia thought back to the conversation in Lady Beat’s office. The headmistress clearly expected her students to fix their own problems without involving her. Breaking the rules meant she would have to get involved as a disciplinarian, which meant double the failure. What was Trivia expected to do?
As the old saying went, “You can’t put the moon back together.” At times you had to destroy something to make something even better in its place. When Mama had shattered Neopolitan outside their burning house, Trivia finally understood that she had been broken all along. Losing her friend was Trivia’s first step toward putting herself back together and embracing her true, best self.
There was only one thing she could do now: Pick up the pieces and use them to make something new. So she tuned out her classmates and Lady Beat’s voice and began stitching the cut fabric together. Rather than focus on repairing her uniform, she decided to get creative and make a new outfit: the kind of thing Neopolitan would wear. It had to be bold. It had to be eye-catching. It had to provide freedom of movement.
She shortened and hemmed the skirt, leaving cuts along the left and right seams for more mobility. She cut the sleeves of the jacket off at the elbow, and used the extra fabric salvaged from the skirt to lengthen the tailcoat. She deepened the neckline of the top and broadened the lapels, but she left the sleeves alone so they would extend beyond the jacket’s sleeves.
Trivia hadn’t been so caught up in her own little world in a long while, since she was little and making paper dolls and paper clothing to mix and match. Since she had used her Semblance for the first time to create a butterfly with one pink wing, one brown, with white spots all over—then sent it out through her bedroom window and watched it flutter away until she lost sight of it and let it go.
Finally, she was done. She attached the school pin to the lapel and looked up. She had been so absorbed in her work, in the act of destroying and creating, that it was now dark and she was the only one left in the classroom. Sewing class had ended hours ago, and no one had bothered to tell her. Or they weren’t able to get her attention. She had missed dinner.
Trivia tried on her new uniform in the bathroom in front of the floor-length mirror, enjoying having it all to herself for once. Arguably she had perhaps done more damage to the uniform than the twins; there was now about 30 percent less of it. But it was a much less formal affair now. It felt comfortable and modern, streamlined and smart. It felt more like her. Wearing this, she almost, not quite, knew (or remembered?) who she was—not as a student or a daughter, but as Trivia Vanille.
She wrinkled her nose. Her name still felt like a coat that didn’t fit right. She would need to tailor that, too.
She tilted her head and considered her reflection. Something was missing. Her hair shimmered as she flexed her Semblance to change her hair pink. No, that’s too much of the other girl.
She combed her fingers through the hair on the right side, changing it back to brown so it matched the color of her right eye.
She smiled.
Yes, she thought. There you are. Finally seeing herself for the first time was like greeting an old friend. Someone she had missed for a long time. She winked at her reflection and the girl in the mirror winked back.
Trivia exited the bathroom and headed back to the dorm, moving softly like her old game of Tiptoe Tag. It was already after lights-out and she didn’t want to be caught, considering she had already had one run-in with Lady Beat today. She was surprised to hear whispered voices coming down the corridor toward her.
She shielded herself behind an illusion of a potted fern just before Melanie and Miltia Malachite turned the corner and came into view. She thought they had sounded familiar. Their outfits were definitely not up to the dress code.
“It’s been so long since we’ve been to a club,” Miltia said. She was wearing a white sequined party top, white gloves, a black miniskirt, and red lace-up boots.
“I know! I so hate it here.” Melanie’s matching top and gloves were red, with the same black miniskirt and white boots.
“I’m not sure which I hate more, this school or Vale.”
“I’m sure. It’s this school and having to pretend—” Melanie stopped suddenly. She stared at the fern masking Trivia. “Hold up. Was that plant always there?”
“Who cares? Beat is always redecorating around here, ‘Make it feel more li
ke home.’ ”
Melanie squinted. Then she shrugged and they continued walking down the hall. “If she wanted it to feel more like home, she’d …” They moved out of earshot.
Trivia’s research had only turned up one reference to the Malachite family of note: Lil’ Miss Malachite, a crime boss in Mistral. But there had been no mention of her daughters, and why would a crime boss send her children to another Kingdom for school to learn how to become proper ladies? Still, it could explain why they were so bossy and acted like they owned everything and everyone. She wanted to find out what Miltia had been saying about pretending, so she dropped the illusion—a moving plant wouldn’t fool anybody—and followed them quietly. She already noticed how much easier it was to move around in her new outfit.
“Just remember, this is business, not pleasure,” Miltia said.
“I don’t see why it can’t be both.”
“That’s why the reminder.”
It sure sounded like they were planning to go clubbing tonight, but that would require them to leave the school grounds, and that was the number one rule that guaranteed expulsion if you broke it.
Correction: If you were caught breaking it. If she got evidence that they had gone out, she could get them in trouble this time, maybe even get rid of them. Or it would be nice to have some evidence that she could hold over them.
It was time for Trivia to shift from defense to offense. She continued trailing after them at a safe distance, her Scroll set to silent mode and recording. The twins went down to the basement level, a twisty maze of corridors, conduits, and machinery. It was dark and warm down there, some pipes dripping with water, others spewing blasts of steam. Trivia repeated the turns they took so she’d be able to find her way again.
Right, Right, Straight, Left, Right, Left, Left, Right, Straight … And there was a steel door, marked ALARM WILL SOUND IF OPENED.
Miltia pushed the crash bar on the door and it opened. Trivia paused, listening. No alarm.
