by Laer Carroll
“We heard you fought with him.”
“I was ready to. That asshole! But he was too weak for me to have to use force.”
“You are NEVER to try force! You ever pull a trick like that and that will be the last time you work for us.”
Anger at him began to warm inside her. She cooled it.
“Fine! I’ll try to avoid trouble! But if someone means to hurt my family or friends I’m going to give them more trouble than they could ever imagine.”
Again her monster self wanted to wake and again she eased it to sleep.
Kendall’s order buzzer spoke; the red light atop the small grey pyramid began to flash. He shook his head, picked it up, and got up to go to the pickup window.
Bethany took a bite out of her own burger. She looked at Miguel with raised eyebrows. He’d leaned forward and put his hands on the table edge, ready to snap upright and away from her. He’d sensed how dangerous she was.
Miguel relaxed. He took a very deliberate sip of his drink.
“Ken’s right. For more than emotional reasons. If you get hurt, or hurt someone, we could have big insurance problems.”
He opened his burger and added catsup and pickle relish to it.
“But you do what you think is right. We’ll sort out money problems later.”
Miguel was smart, she thought. He knew this argument would work better than her brother’s outright forbidding. And it did. She would not change her resolve. But she would be a little more thoughtful about interfering, and how, in other people’s problems.
Kendall had also gotten a little more thoughtful while getting his food. As he sat down and arranged his platter he spoke to her.
“You kids are all so computer savvy nowadays. We could use some of that at the office.”
“But you have two guys who are whizzes at computers.”
“They work mostly on identity theft and protecting companies from electronic break-ins. We need someone for a few weeks who can work in the office.”
She was on easy terms with computers, had been even before she began high school. But Burbank High was at the forefront of educational technology. All tests were given on a computer and the results electronically turned in at the end of the period. At the beginning of each school year they loaned a laptop to each student if they didn’t already have a suitable one, or replaced the loaned computers with a newer one.
They also spent the Friday before the first full week familiarizing the students with the computers. It was a holiday for the already tech savvy, but not for those who failed that first day. They had to attend remedial classes the next day. No one wanted to give up their last totally free Saturday, so students worked hard on Friday.
“I don’t like the idea of being a clerk.”
“That’s not what we need. We need someone to set up the office. Once that’s done we can take it from there. What do you say? It’s just for this last month till school starts again.”
Maelgyreyt had been an organizational whiz and Bethany had inherited some of that knowledge.
“OK. Put that way, I’ll do it. But I expect more than what you paid me to be a gofer. ”
Kendall blinked and sat back. Miguel grinned at him and gave Beth a double thumbs-up.
“I could have told you she’d negotiate. How come I know your sister better than you do?”
Chapter 4 - Junior
Despite Ken’s attempt to keep her only working in the office, Bethany made good money on weekends and evenings as a gofer. She was very popular.
By the end of the summer she’d put well over a thousand dollars into her bank. She spent very little of it. She loved to shop but it wasn’t a lot of fun without her fireteam friends approving and disparaging her choices and she returning the favor.
The four all returned mid-week before school started. They phoned and emailed each other but said little, saving it for Saturday when they got together for brunch at an Italian restaurant a block to the east of the indoor mall, the streets themselves an outdoor mall even larger than the indoor one.
Lihua arrived first and made sure of their reservation. And that they’d have one of the big round tables nestled in a corner with a good window view. The day as usual in southern California was hot, dry, and sunny. Shoppers were out in the usual skimpy SoCal attire, busily thronging the sidewalks.
Bethany arrived a few minutes later and tethered her bike to a bike rack near the front of the restaurant. Inside it was dark and cool, at least compared to the outside. She and Lee rushed to engulf each other in a hug just inside the door.
It was not more than a few minutes before Naomi arrived, triggering a second hug fest. Then Brigitte and Gerard arrived, he ushering her in the door and generally acting like a gentleman escorting his lady. There was yet a third hug fest.
He held Brigitte’s chair then plopped down beside her, looking all around the table.
“Thank God there’s not more of us,” he said. “More of these hugs against all those squishy female bodies and I’d VOMIT.”
Naomi gave him evil eyes, complete with a V-shaped poke of the fingers of one hand at his eyes. Then she lifted an obsidian arm and made a hard wiry muscle.
“Feel that. Squishy, my ass.”
“Exactly,” he said. “You have a squishy ass. Delightful, I’m sure, for those males who care about such things.”
She shook her head with a resigned air and took up her menu. The other girls laughed. Then for long minutes they all examined their menus.
Shortly the menus began to droop and the waiter came to take their orders. Then they were all deep into sharing their summer experiences.
Naomi, among other anecdotes, told them she’d fallen and bruised the side of one thigh badly while playing basketball with some French enthusiasts at one resort. It had been worth it, because she’d scored the winning point.
Her offer to stand up and show off the bruise was hastily turned down, though Gerard disagreed. He claimed he wanted to see how a bruise could possibly show up on her ebony skin. Naomi offered to give him a bruise so they could compare.
Brigitte had won an award for Most Promising Dressage at her summer horse camp.
Gerard claimed to have met a dreamy guy and they’d dated, discreetly.
Lee was enthusiastic about her Math and Science Camp. She’d been especially happy because one week her subject area, physics, had been taught by Dr. Ricardo Fino. A Lavalle Prize winner, he lived just a few miles away with his wife in Pasadena. He was a Senior Scientist at CalSci, the California Institute of Science and Technology, and taught occasional seminars.
“‘Occasional seminars’?” said Gerard. “What does he do with the rest of his time? ”
“He thinks.”
“Hey, I can think. I want a job like that.”
“Yes. But can you think things which will earn you a Lavalle Prize?”
“I could if I wanted to. I just don’t want to.”
That earned him a round of derision. He responded by assuming a Terribly Hurt but Nobly Bearing It expression.
“And what did you do?” Brigitte asked Bethany.
“Oh, not much. Mostly worked for Miguel and Ken. Some of it was pretty interesting.”
She told them about some of the events where she worked as a gofer and the people she’d met. Lihua had her I Know Something look to her while Beth was doing so. So she was prepared when Lee opened her mouth.
“I heard you beat up Stella Monroe’s father.”
“You of all people ought to know better than to listen to show-biz gossip.”
“Yes. But my sources are impeccable.”
The rest of the fireteam looked skeptical. All of them knew Lee’s “sources” were mostly gossip magazines. Her parents surely knew most of the scandal-worthy happenings in Hollywood long before they became public. But they were careful only to tell the more innocuous gossip at home.
“If you call helping a drunk wobble out into a hallway and lie down on the floor, yes, I beat him u
p.
“Though I think he OD’d on something. He didn’t smell like alcohol.”
Lee looked stubborn, Gerard disappointed. He was almost as big a celebrity-gossip hound as she was. Naomi and Brigitte pretended polite interest. Such gossip bored them.
Beth said, “I’ll tell you another thing the tabloids got wrong. Stella is very nice. Some of the other celebs treat you like dirt. But she didn’t. She even gave me a really big tip.
“Speaking of which. Isn’t it about time we did some serious shopping? I’ve got all this money saved up and my credit cards need some serious trimming.”
·
Monday the school year began. Bethany was psyched up. She was a Junior!
She bounded up the shallow stairs leading into the main entrance to BurbankHigh School and walked through the crowds with a spring in her step. She exchanged drive-by huglets with Brigitte going her way and high-fived Gerard going the opposite way. Naomi was too far down the hall to see, though Beth’s supersensitive nose caught her scent amongst those of hundreds of other students. Lihua was nowhere to be seen, even if such a short girl was seeable in the crowd. Her scent was faint. As usual she’d come early to get exactly the seat she wanted in her class.
Bethany’s first class was Algebra 2 and her teacher the same one as Algebra 1 last year: gorgeous but stiff Emile Hirsch. He nodded to the few students who greeted him. She thought to detect a faint smile coming her way from him, but even her superior senses could not assure her if this was her imagination or not.
He damned well should smile at her, she thought. Last year she’d been his star pupil, making perfect grades and even taking on advanced projects.
World History was her second class. She expected to enjoy it. Partly because she intended to study it very closely to see if it revealed the presence of shapechangers like herself operating behind the scenes. Or so outrageously (as Maelgyreyt had in the Mongol wars) that her actions were taken to be mythical.
Physics she expected to be a breeze. Several of her alien— ancestors?—knew it far better than anyone on Earth did. Her skimming of the textbook this weekend had brought back much of it already.
She knew, for instance, something Earth physicists didn’t know. Beneath all the dozens of “elementary” particles were infinitely small but enormously long strings like those of some incredibly complex musical orchestra. Each particle was a vibration node like a musical tone, and atoms chords of several tones.
Not that she expected to be spouting off about THAT!
The 11th grade English and Literature course she also expected to be easy, partly because Brigitte was taking it too and in the same classroom. It had always been one of their favorite subjects and they argued energetically about it in the last two years, often studying together though they’d been in different sections and so hadn’t had the same classroom.
Easier still she expected to be her first year of a World Language. She’d picked French because Maelgyreyt had spoken it (along with Hungarian and a dozen other languages). French was the one sharpest in her memory, though why she wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was the last one Mael spoke before passing her memories on to some future ancestor: Bethany.
For Phys Ed she did what she’d done the year before: substitute Advanced Dance and Pep Squad classes.
·
Dance was the next-to-last class of the day. She was a bit impatient with it. She wanted to get to the Pep Squad and the cheerleading routines they’d be learning and practicing.
Until she came into the dance room with its mirrors and barres and weathered wooden dance floor. For with teacher Rosita Quiroga was a young man wearing a navy blue sports jacket and grey slacks over a pale blue shirt. He had black hair and brows and a look she took to be Italian.
He was also movie-star handsome, with a compact but muscular body topped by a boyishly handsome face. Beth’s super-senses could hear breathing speed up in every girl and two of the boys in the class. And pheromones intensify so much she had to almost shut down her nose. There were going to be no lazy students in this class!
“In this first month,” the teacher said, “we’ll have a guest teacher and learn the show dance form of the Argentine tango. Our teacher will be Mr. Carlos Selaya. Who runs a milonga , or tango dance, every Sunday evening at the Argentine Association a mile down Glenoaks from here. He also teaches a lesson in the first hour of the evening.”
She stepped to the side and turned to the young man. “Carlos.”
He flashed a very white smile from his mildly tanned face.
“Gracias , Rosita. Thank you for inviting me. And I invite all of you to attend my milonga . Your fee will be waived for the first month. Consider the evening part of the practica for this class.”
His accent was completely colloquial except for the Spanish word-raisins with which he flavored his speech.
“This first week we’ll learn the simpler social dance form. Show dance decorates that with showy moves. Some of those moves are dangerous on a crowded dance floor. But most of them can be toned down. Such as this one.”
With that he kicked high with a move worthy of a karate fighter, ending it by crossing his free foot over in front of his standing foot and putting weight on it. Thus he stood with his legs almost wrapped around each other, seemingly perfectly at ease in this odd stance.
“On a dance floor instead we’d do this. ”
With that his kick barely lifted a few inches but ended in the same foot-crossed-over-foot stance.
“Now let’s watch a few show tango dance videos. I encourage you to sit. The single performances are short, but together they take up about 15 minutes.”
The room darkened to dim and the large wall screen on the end of the room behind the tango dancer lit to show a slide labeled SHOW TANGO DANCE presented by Carlos Selaya . Then the first of the videos began to play.
Each of the videos were obviously from a show. The couples were all alone on a stage, were costumed, and had a cloth backdrop with a scene by a French impressionist painter depicting a cafe with small round tables.
The first couple were costumed in faux French peasant clothing, he with a zebra-striped sweater, she with a wrap-around skirt which showed a lot of silken thigh. Their dance was almost a fight, matched by fierce tango music heavy on an accordion.
The second couple were two men in sports coats and ties under a snap-brim hat. They danced with each man taking turns dancing the man’s and the woman’s parts. The music was heavy on a tin-panny saloon piano. The dance was a contest of wills.
The third couple wore a tuxedo and a long slinky bright-red evening gown—also with a slit that showed flashes of thigh. Though not as much. The dance was slow and sensual, the music heavier on a violin.
The last couple wore beach clothes and seemed barefoot, though they actually wore flesh-colored shoes. The music was played by an orchestra made of the instruments her ear already was recognizing as tango orchestra pieces: accordion, piano (tuned!), violin, and a deep bass violin which got a workout. For the music was a recent popular hard-rock piece even though it was played by a tango orchestra.
The lights came up and the dancers sitting or lying on the hard floor applauded.
“Thank you,” said Carlos. “Now Rosita and I are going to demonstrate SOCIAL tango. Notice that we dance very close. This is the usual club style, because tango clubs are very packed in Buenos Aires. But in older upper-class salons the style is further apart, more old-fashioned and genteel.”
The two teachers came together in what looked to Bethany a standard ballroom embrace. Then Carlos swung back to speak to the class.
“Neither of those styles, or any other, are the ONE TRUE WAY to dance tango. Remember, tango Argentine style is a folk dance. There are no elaborate rule books such as the British and the American tango schools require you to follow.
“And all of what Rosita and I will now do is completely improvised. I set the over all pattern, based on the emotional feeling of the song. She decorates t
hat, making my interpretation more personal.”
He was silent for a moment, gazing at the students with an intense expression. She and everyone else there knew what he was about to say was deeply personal to him.
“Tango is a dance of emotion. All the athletics serves that purpose. Even show tango, where dances are choreographed to be spectacular.”
A pause, then he turned back to his partner, the lights dimmed, the music started, and they danced.
Bethany had never seen anything like it. Most of the dancing she and her friends did was basically just jumping around. She’d seen and a few times slow-danced in a ballroom-like clench, but not often .
This started like that, with the couple shifting their weight from side to side. Then it slowly became walking, circling the room, forcing those sitting or lying to turn their heads and then their bodies. This was not hard since the dancers moved so slowly in their long circle, also slowly turning around each other.
The music was a piece vaguely familiar to her, a tango piece she’d heard all her life, it seemed. It seemed to tell a story, of a young man leaving, maybe to a war, maybe to a far land, maybe never to return. Without words they were saying Goodbye to each other, saying they loved each other, would forever do so even if they never met again.
The music went to silence. The dancers stilled. Beth felt tears running down her face.
Then the room exploded with applause as everyone stood. These were third-year dancers, some of them taking classes since they could walk. They knew discipline and they knew art. And they’d seen both, here in this half-lit room hidden away from the bright near-eternal southern California sunshine.
·
The excitement of being a Junior wore off after the first week. She enjoyed all her classes. Cheerleading was fun but she had to hide her super agility and super strength. Especially that last. She could lift weights so heavy she’d sink into the earth of the football field, bend steel bars, and jump onto the top of the school. And punch her fist all the way through a car door. She shuddered to think what she could do to a human body if she got careless.
