Robot's POV:
Precipitation. Lovely.
Robot peered up at the sky when he stepped out of his home that morning. Mom Unit's forecasts were almost never wrong, and a white blanket overhead confirmed that at some point in the day, it would rain. If he was lucky, it would be before or after he returned home. But when was Robot Jones ever lucky?
Another day of uneventful human study, he thought. And no friends to make it go faster.
Whenever he asked his mother how he could possibly study human behavior if they refused to even acknowledge him, he meant it as a legitimate question. Six months at Polyneux Junior High School had taught him nothing about humans that he didn't already learn from his Grandfather, except that human personalities varied far more than he had originally thought. Some, like Socks, Mitch, Cubey, and even some adults, could be nice, and even considerate to the differences and needs to those who were not human. But far too many of them were impatient, selfish, and reluctant to understand. Robot was told that he was built for the purpose of connecting with these creatures personally, and he took that directive seriously. He considered himself a reasonable conscious being, and if he was pushed to his limit of trying, it wasn't his fault. A machine could only do so much. A robot designed specifically to bond with humans could only reach so far. He needed the humans to meet him halfway.
He contemplated this as the bus pulled up in front of his stop. The angry whoosh of the door opening and the driver's scowl was meant to be his welcome aboard. Nothing disingenuous here.
Robot adorned his most convincing smile, and climbed. "Good morning," he said to the driver, as he did every now and again.
"Take a seat," the driver replied, as he always did, when Robot decided to greet him. He was holding the wheel with one hand, and his head up with another. Most of the kids just assumed, on the mornings he looked like this, that he had a headache, or needed more sleep, but Robot was well read enough that he knew a hungover human when he saw it. How this inefficient, irresponsible human had authority over him was anything but justified.
Once again, Robot projected kindness, and it was not returned. But he wasn't really surprised by it anymore. He stepped forward, scanning every row in his field of view. Sometimes he got lucky and actually found an empty seat all to himself. Today, however, it seemed like they were all occupied with at least one student. Which meant that he would have to sit with someone-standing wasn't permitted. And he didn't feel like dealing with a punishment slip when he got to school. He just wanted this day over with, as quickly and painlessly as possible.
He scanned the familiar faces of the aisles, but didn't turn up with any smiles, at least any towards him. His friends were rarely on the afternoon bus, and never on the morning one. Too crowded. Socks's mom drove them when the weather was bad, otherwise they walked. While he could seek the sanctuary of their presence at school, he first had to get there. And that meant taking a seat next to someone who was not his friend.
This was going to be agonizing.
From the aisle, Robot peered into the seats on either side of him, and discovered both were only occupied by one person. He turned to his left, and asked in the most polite tone he could muster with his computer voice if the seat next to that person was taken. But the more politeness he tried to inject into his voice, the more harsh a rejection he got in return. Maybe it was the growing anxiety to sit and avoid trouble with the driver, but the rejections seemed to be coming faster.
No, it wasn't his imagination. Robot didn't even get to ask this one girl in a cheerleading outfit if he could take the seat next to her. As soon as his eyes fell on her, she was wag her hand away from him in a scowl. The kind a mailman would give a tiny dog that had just latched onto his pant leg. At least she was kind enough to make the rejection was non-verbal this time.
Robot gaze retreated to the muddy aisle floor. There had to be at least one bench that wasn't occupied. There almost always was. But fewer kids walked or biked to school when it rained. Ideally, if the bus had all occupants, it could still fit them all with two seated comfortably per seat. But nobody wanted to sit with Robot. Especially not after his exhaust problem last semester. That issue had been fixed almost immediately after the Harvest Dance, but few except Robot's friends had spent enough time with him to notice. Those dear friends who all offered Robot a ride to school in Socks' mom's carpool when it rained, but who conveniently forgot to call him that morning to see if he wanted in. As easily as he might refer to them as, "fair weather friends," that title wasn't totally accurate. Robot was told that when Socks' dad was at the wheel on mornings like this, that the invitation to ride wasn't extended towards the automaton in particular. And given Robot's history with being more distrusted among adults than kids, he could believe it.
Still, he really wished it wasn't like this. With some humans trusting him and even liking him, and some that just didn't want to be anywhere near him if they could avoid it. Every day that started off like this made him wonder why he was still doing this. Going to school, trying to interact with students, attempting to make a broader circle of friends. Gathering and interpreting data-and for what? For a top secret cause that he wasn't even allowed to be in on? While it wasn't in a robot's nature to question their prime directive, Robot's nature was to question everything. Including his own reasoning for still being here. Trying.
And all at once, with one glance upward, Robot remembered what he was still doing there.
Shannon?
Low and behold, there she was. Siting opposite that cheerleader that had shooed him away like a mutt. She was almost easy to miss, squished up against the window, as if trying to look-no, be smaller. In a world where height was so coveted, Robot could not understand how being tall, of all things, made Shannon seem so uncomfortable sometimes. Robot was cautious to judge those with troubles that he did not have himself, but Shannon was one contradiction after another.
Shannon never rode the morning bus. She must not get a ride from her parents as easily as other kids do, and Robot admitted he would rather put up with the conditions on the bus than risk getting pelted with the rain. Even if he didn't rust so easily.
Her head was turned towards the window, and her eyes was locked on an invisible point somewhere between her nose and the moving streets. She must be thinking very hard about something, Robot thought. While she had her average, what he'd call 'human' moments, like freezing up at the math board, there were times when she seemed more thoughtful and complex than other humans. The more he studied her, he noticed a wrinkle in her frown. Was she upset?
A snicker behind his head made him finally realize that he had been staring at her for what seemed like whole minutes. In a crowded bus like today, such an awkward moment wasn't going to go unnoticed. And now he felt ashamed for putting Shannon in the middle of that.
If only she'd let him sit next to her. Maybe he could talk to her. A real talk. His mind, his eyes, everything pleaded with her to acknowledge his presence. But whatever body language he could muster went unnoticed. Shannon might as well have been a statue, for all that she moved since he came into his range of vision. Her fuzzy purple sweater bobbed up and down with visible, oddly labored breaths, which proved she was breathing, but otherwise, nada.
Realizing that she was not only alone in her seat but refusing to talk to anybody is what finally caused Robot to move on. I guess she wants to be left alone today, he thought, feeling that he himself was always more lonely than wished to be alone. There was still something a little special about riding the bus with Shannon that morning, or even noticing her troubled look when he was sure nobody else did. Maybe he didn't talk with Shannon that much, but he was sure that he knew her more personally than most people did, just by studying her. By noticing that the words that often came out of her mouth were empty space fillers for a mind that was not here on earth. That she was always withholding something. Pulling in her breath. Trying to take up less space. To slip away.
When nobody behind Shannon acknowledged him with their eyes, accepting, judgemental, or otherwise, he knew he had no other choice. The black milk crates in the back where there was once a proper bench were calling him.
But when he got there, he stopped short. The crates were gone. Now there was nothing but a muddy floor and holes on either side where the seat had once been attached to the floor. He spun around to make sure he wasn't losing it, and none of the other kids in the back half of the bus paid him any mind. What on earth could they have needed with the crates so badly as to remove them? Maybe they deemed them a hazard because they wasn't stuck the floor, and could become a projectile in an accident. (Of course, only a committee of humans had the concern to think about flying crates in a collision, and not about seat belts). Whatever the reason, not only did Robot not have a seating partner, but now he didn't have anything he could remotely call a seat. He turned his head slightly so that he could see the mirror at the front of the bus, and the driver was glaring at him. Time to sit. Anywhere.
Sighing, he placed himself in the part of the floor he deemed the least filthy, bent his legs, and sat himself on the floor. Maybe if I pretend that I'm not here, I'll actually believe it, he told himself. But that was a silly thought. His logical brain was hard to lie to, no matter how badly he wanted to believe it. He refused to look up once he had sat down, giving the kids satisfaction at seeing how upset he was. He decided that he would kill time until the bus arrived at school by counting the tiny specks of mud in the tracks of the aisle. Which was hard to do, because being on the floor meant that every slight bump in the road sent him flying half a foot in the air.
Just. Get through. Today, he told himself, every time he felt his oil tank boiling inside him, like a caldron. Boiling up through the back of his head, pressing against his eyes...
But he hadn't even counted to fifty when he heard a familiar voice shout for him: "R-Robot! Sit here!"
His head jerked up, instantly finding her eyes, as a dozen messages running across his vision as his processors analyzed what he'd just heard. Shannon Westerburg's voice. Shannon Westerburg, saying his name. Shannon Westerburg, a stammer in her voice? Shannon Westerburg, asking-no commanding him to sit next to her. But, why?
I am malfunctioning. This is not happening.
"I said, come here!" she said, louder this time. More confident. Slightly angry. Some other kids looked up from their own conversations to see what was happening. Shannon shot them a scary, confident look that effectively caused them to turn back to their own business. There was something so startling about her tone and its fire, rising up in sudden bursts, in the middle of a long train of adolescent awkwardness and quietness, that made her hard to ignore. While Shannon may not have been a bully to the archetype that Robot had become familiar with, she definitely would not accept being bullied, either.
I better do as she says,Robot thought, less she think I'm dumb. Promptly, he stood up, and marched forward back to the space in the aisle, next to Shannon's seat. She'd already dropped her books onto the floor, so Robot didn't hesitate before sliding onto the seat next to her.
Now what? He wracked his brain for his next action, but nothing he could think of seemed to be likely to ebb the tension that was rolling off of her shoulders in waves so thick, even Robot could feel them.
Talk to her, said a feminine voice in his mother. Robot had a set of personal commands, definitions, and directions from his mother that kicked in when his own mind couldn't compute for him. But the commands were generalized for many situations, and Robot wasn't sure if he should trust that advice for this particular situation. When humans seemed angry, he, as a robot, was not to get involved, due to its connection with impending human conflict. But Robot wasn't like other units. He was built for personal interaction with humans, and he was built to have an interest in that personal interaction. And right now, he was dying to know what was troubling her.
But try as he might, he couldn't force the words out. He avoided making her angrier by keeping his eyes down on his claws. It was while doing this that he noticed, with a jolt, how dirty the bottom half of his chassis was. The mud, which he thought was dried and caked onto the floor for weeks, apparently was fresh enough that it smudged up the side of his chest. He looked at the space between himself and Shannon, and the words tumbled out of his mouth.
"I -I am afraid I may have sat down in some fresh mud. I hope I do not get it anywhere near you." As he said this, he scooted ever so slightly closer to the aisle. When he looked up at Shannon for a response, she merely rolled her eyes. Robot understood this as basically saying, 'I do not care.' She then retreated back to her corner and that stare into oblivion. The sky was getting darker outside the window, and Robot computed that they were definitely going to get wet once they stepped off that bus. But most of his mental work was with the situation on the bus. Why had Shannon asked him to sit with her, just to ignore him further? It certainly wasn't due to any sort of reputation she was trying to build for herself. Robot could tell that just asking him to come back from the back of the bus was hazardous to her own social status. Most humans treated Robot as if their proximity to him was equal to a number of social points that were deducted from their overall score. Between her 'go aways' and her 'come backs', Robot wasn't sure if Shannon actually believed in it too, or if she only pretended to.
It was something in the furrow of her brow, in the quiver of her scowl, which told him it was the latter. Her metal parts may have initially been what made him want to get close to her, but the mystery of who she was beneath the metal kept him coming back, despite her rejections.
His eyes trailed down to her legs, as if magnetically drawn by the metal of the prosthetic. If the average person were to look at Shannon from a distance, they might not even notice that she walked with an artificial limb. It didn't affect her gait the way one might expect it to, although with her physically awkward nature altogether, it was hard to tell. She never covered it up, probably because everybody knew it was there, but oh, did she looked mad when she saw Robot looking at it.
"Okay. What is it?"
Her hissed whisper was like a cement road block that halted his train of thought. If he was anxiously awaiting her to talk, a more polite phrase would have exited Robot's vocal slot. As it was so sudden, an automatic response tumbled out. "What's 'what'?"
"'What's 'what?'" she repeated, not patronizing, but angry. She was whispering still and looking around to make sure nobody was listening. "What is it about me that makes you treat me different from everybody else?"
Her words brought about a coldness and fear that struck him to the core. It was a robot's duty never to lie to a human, though many units would override this common rule in favor of other duties to humans, such as being kind. (Naturally, a robot would lie about how skinny he thought a ridiculously fat human was before he would tell him straight up.) Robot's mind spun with truthful responses, all of which he would rather pitch himself into a foundry before he said out loud. Because you're metallic,he thought earnestly. Because you're beautiful. Because you're mysterious. There was only one thing he could actually say. "Shannon, I don't know what you're talking about."
Because he spoke mostly in monotone, it was hard to tell when Robot was lying, but for his eyes. And it was rare for a human to tell when a robot was lying based solely on body language, because robots were notorious for lacking just that. But Robot understood that his emotive eyes were a terrible giveaway. Yet Shannon must have mistaken the confusion in them for the sudden prompting of the question for confusion for the question itself. Once again, this proved to Robot that his crush, though becoming widespread gossip throughout the hallways, was doubted in Shannon's mind. "What makes it so that you can't just talk to me about video games or algorithms, or junk like that? An entire semester and a half, and I still can't figure out why you just stare at me from across the room like a freak."
Robot couldn't even prompt himself to utter a "But.." While the most immediate parts of his CPU were attempting to form a response in defense for himself against such rash and hurtful words, his more complex thinking processers were attempting to understand the rationale for Shannon's outburst.
Video games? Well, of course he could talk with the boys for ages about that-that was his most common ground with them. But Shannon didn't particularly care about video games, or algorithms, or any sort of that stuff. What would even prompt her to bring this up? Why here? He thought anxiously. Why now?
If you were sitting with anybody else… She wasn't criticizing what he talked about. She was criticizing him for not talking at all. To her. But she barely acknowledged him about the mud.
Suddenly, Robot became very aware that he was sitting in the middle of many curious eyes. No, vulteristic eyes. They had turned their heads hearing Shannon's voice, some looking eager for an argument, or even a fight. All of them almost certainly knew about Robot's crush, or at least knew of it as a humorous rumor, and that on top of it must have made it-what was that phrase Socks used? 'Better than TV.'? To avoid them knowing that he knew they were staring, he turned his eyes back to the only person who was oblivious to his feelings. Shannon saw his eyes cross over her leg again as he looked back up at her face, and with one little, annoyed tug to cover it up, suddenly it had all become clear to him.
The curling up on the seat. The angry glare he got when his eyes fell on her leg. She thought that that was all he was after. To expose her.
Shannon had no interest in the possibility of sitting with him, let alone having a completely candid conversation with him. This whole thing had been a rescue. A pathetic, half-hearted gesture done out of guilt for the robot who, pitifully stupid creatures as he was, he thought resentfully, was only doing his job to make human lives miserable. To plop a few pity points on his social scorecard. All done while Shannon anxiously awaited him to try and pry her open like a tin can, and then go about doing whatever she thought robots did. If Robot could guess, it was probably something pertaining to gathering data on their most personal information, and caring nothing about the people it belonged to.
The idea of Shannon not really believing in the feelings he had for her was suddenly very painful. If she didn't believe in his love, maybe it was because she didn't truly believe he was capable of such feelings. Being a machine and all.
This machine didn't need to be rescued from social isolation. He needed her friendship. Her trust. Her honesty. And it was sinking in just as the rain drops began to pelt the windows outside the bus, that she might never give such things to him. Not ever.
His head was spinning and yet he felt himself speaking. "I do not know what you are hiding," Robot said, talking to her with a boldness he never dared to use with her. "But if you want to keep it all to yourself, then be my guest."
He stood up, and with a dreamlike awareness of the world, walked himself to the back of the bus. He said nothing as he did so. He also didn't look back to see how Shannon reacted to his reply. He half expected her to yell at him to come back. She did not. Though he sensed eyes were following him on his sad walk back. He didn't care who they belonged to.
The world was still turning. The rain was still falling. Everything felt numb, and yet Robot was just barely aware that something enormous had happened. He wouldn't buy into false hope for Shannon anymore, or anyone else for that matter who extended false kindnesses. If it took her to the end of time to open up, he would wait for it.
Even if it meant she'd never do it.
Shannon's POV:
What is that smell?
Shannon fidgeted with disgust in the seat as she realized that the smell that surrounded her was definitely familiar. She hadn't realized it when she first sat down, on between two rowdy boys up front and the screechy girls behind her, because the seat was dry and stainless. But now that she was stuck in it, it hit her what it was. Pee. Old, stale, semester-ancient pee. Someone had peed their pants, or at least had sat down in that very seat, in month long dirty underwear. And she was sitting in it. In the only empty seat left on the bus. And the school was still another twenty minutes away.
Buses were notorious for giving germaphobes reason for panic attacks, but this? Really?
This was why she preferred to walk to school. Not because of the exercise. Not because of the breeze. Not to avoid talking to people, which was sometimes true anyway. But because whatever uncomfortable situation she would find herself in on the bus, whether it was the stagnant or even smelly air, the shouting voices, or an unwelcome seat mate, she was stuck there. For the entire ride. And she couldn't escape it. Couldn't do anything to make her situation better. Not even crack a window-students weren't allowed to open the windows without the driver's permission. And this particular driver, with his yellow tinted glasses and trucker hat, wasn't anymore happy to acknowledge being there than she was.
She stood up, with her knees still bent so that the driver wouldn't notice in the mirror up front, and yanked her skirt downward as hard as she could before it threatened to slide off, to reduce her skin's contact with the seat. The plaid material was thin and worn from age, so it didn't offer much of a barrier between her and the seat.
Now she'd probably have to smell it for the rest of her day, lingering on the fabric of her skirt. Hopefully, if nobody else noticed, she'd run home after school and burn it. Chuck it in the fireplace. It wouldn't be much of a loss. This red skirt and the other copies just like it had been leftovers from her days at Jagger Elementary school. While Polyneux, like many public schools, didn't enforce a uniform code, Jagger did.
Many of the kids who transferred from there to Polyneux were at a loss with the idea of getting to wear whatever they wanted to school, and some sixth graders continued to wear their old school uniforms to Polyneux until they outgrew them. By the second semester, however, it was unlikely that any of them would be caught in anything but street clothes. Showing up after Christmas break in elementary school clothes was a stupid, yet legitimate reason for being bullied at Polyneux.
Although she sometimes heard whispers about her appearance behind her back, she was never directly bullied, like some of the other girls were. There could have been a lot of factors contributing to that. Some that she didn't control. She was tall, but thin and unthreatening. She didn't involve herself in tight clicks or talk in private with boys if they were clearly in a relationship. Doing any of that would bring a lot of attention to herself: Something-no, the thing she was trying to avoid the most.
Shannon absentmindedly tapped her left knee with her finger three times, hearing the metal 'ping' with every tap. This would tend to happen while she was willing away the ghost-limb pains that cropped up every now and again. (She was surprised that there was a medical term for it.) Sometimes it felt like the right rhythm of taps by her finger would undue time and bring her flesh and blood leg back, like Dorothy using the red slippers to wish herself home in The Wizard of Oz. But just as the thought formed proper words in her heard, she realized how stupid it was.
The point of the skirt was that it gave her leg a better range of motion. Having a hinged knee meant pants would constantly get stuck behind the hinge and pull tight around the back of her thigh. The result was that pants were uncomfortable to walk in, so she avoided wearing them whenever possible. Her current prosthetic, not unlike her braces, was terribly cheap, even if they were streamlined. She wondered if, when she had another growth spurt-which probably wasn't anytime soon, given she just had one over the summer-they would replace her current hinged leg with one with a human-like ball and socket joint, one that wouldn't get caught in pant legs so easily. Like she's seen other amputees have. Some of them were very feminine, and dare she even think it, pretty. She could hope, right?
"Oh, God, it's that robot kid again!"
"Don't let him sit next to me!"
The shouts pulled Shannon back out of her mind. Specifically, that word that was suddenly cropping up all around her like weeds in a garden. She knew immediately who they were talking about. Who else could it be?
That short, strange robot kid that went by the name "Jones" had just boarded the bus. She hadn't noticed the bus pull up to his house because she was looking out the window on the other side of the street. If she had, she would have been able to anticipate the groans and mocking chuckles that were to come.
She sank deeper into her seat as she heard his footsteps draw closer, the anxiety that someone would notice she smelled like urine suddenly replaced by a new one.
"Back of the bus, nerdo!"
"Seat taken, buddy!"
Every dismissal sent Robot's way took less and less time, to the point where Robot didn't even need to verbalize the request before he was signalled to keep going back.
And back. And back.
And finally, right across from Shannon.
She pulled her legs up close to her chest, trying to look nonchalant about it, feeling the cool metal of her left leg in the process. Don't ask to sit next to me. Don't ask to sit next to me. Oh please.
If Shannon was anything to Polyneux, it wasn't popular. Given her mixed interests shared by the nerds, the rockers, the bookworms, and the artists, Shannon didn't really know if she belonged to any group. However, the one group she could cross off with absolute certainty was the popular kids. The girls and boys whose names were spoken by everybody constantly. The ones whose fifteen minutes of fame expanded to last their entire middle school career. The ones that would probably be remembered, with either fondness or resentment, when the current students of Polyneux were in their forties. The kind her own mother occasionally still brings up from her middle school days. Those 'special' kids who just had something: money, a name, looks, talent, but something that would make them impossible to forget so easily. Shannon knew that between her headgear and klutzy behavior that she would never be one of those kids.
Thank God for that.
But she new those snobs had power. As she stroked the frosty metal hinge that she called a left kneecap, she knew that there was nothing more terrifying than being remembered so vividly, especially given her condition. Memories deteriorate over time, and if people were just going to remember her as the girl with the metal leg and the embarrassingly cheap retainer, she'd rather them not remember her at all.
For the most part, her strategy was to blend in with the mass of the student body as well as she possibly could. Attend Cheerleading Pratice-Blow off Computer Club. Go to every Pep Rally, and conveniently forget to read her novel for Book Club. Never miss a dance, an assembly, and don't forget her rainbow sweater. Pack away her sketchbook and not look at it until the summertime. This was the way that Shannon knew how to appear the most "normal." And for all its inconveniences. it was working. She was on a first name basis with virtually every group in school. She was not looking to become one of the popular crowd, but she needed them to like her. From a distance, at least. Once she had that, at least the social aspect of middle school-which for some kids was all that really mattered-was in the bag.
This had worked last year, when Shannon was in sixth grade. The first year of middle school, and the first year that kids get a taste for what hell life after childhood would be like. Somehow, adults thought that the best way to deal with children, from ages 11 to 14, during the most hormonally, emotionally stressing transition of life was to concentrate them in a building together. Some days, Shannon wondered if they secretly wished for them to just tear each other apart like wild animals in a cage
To survive, she needed everybody to like her. So she went to some Art Club meetings, said 'hi' to the more obscure kids like Mitch and Cubey, and continued talking with some of her equally awkward classmates from Jagger, including Socks Morton. But her aim was to be normal. Normal was practically invisible, and that was her key to keeping her life from falling apart.
But Robot Jones was ruining everything.
He was the reason they were looking at her. Pitying her. And sometimes even questioning her. The fear of people looking into what happened to her between Jagger Elementary and Polyneux Middle School, before everything in her life went wrong, was so terrifying, it made her feel gutsy enough to jump out the window of the moving bus.
As far as being 'normal' she knew she wasn't doing herself any favors by whipping out books during lunch period, or not trying to cover her prosthetic leg. But if there was one thing standing in the way of her being invisible, it was that strange, awkward little robot. If she didn't know any better, she'd swear went out of his way to get close to her. For what reason, she didn't really know.
Okay, she DID think might have something to do with the robot having a crush on her. At least that's what the rumor in the halls was. But even if it was true, which she seriously doubted, why would the school's only robotic student see in her?
Madman wasn't the only person at Polyneux who was wary of Robot's enrollment, though he was the only one so open about it. Most of the kids Shannon knew admitted they'd seen intelligent robots out and about, performing simple, everyday jobs, from cashiering at grocery stores to walking dogs, to something as complex as doing accounting for someone's taxes. It was becoming more and more common by the day. But nobody she knew ever even heard about a robot going to school before. What did he, a computer with more widespread and in depth knowledge than ten university professors, have to gain from going to school? School doesn't pay the factory that made the robot a wage, like an actual job does. At some point in the six months since he started attending Polyneux-since he started dogging her-she'd never directly asked. Nobody did. Well, maybe Socks, Mitch and Cubey, but if the did, they kept whatever Robot said private. At some point in time when he was talking to her and she wasn't paying attention, she'd heard him say something about 'collecting information', but she didn't get to press for details, nor did she really feel like she wanted to.
However, something that Shannon realized, and that overly paranoid Madman didn't, was that the way Robot tried to describe his 'mission' was as if he himself unsure about what it actually was. Which was ridiculous. For the people at Polyneux to not know exactly what he was doing there was one thing: if it had anything to do with the government, it was probably confidential, whether or not it needed to be. But Robot himself had to know what he was doing, right? What conscious robot doesn't know exactly what it was built for?
Whatever it was, Shannon figured that it wouldn't change anything. The kids at school already either hated him, or avoided him, or thought his existence in itself was the funniest thing ever. And because Robot sought Shannon out, he dragged her into the scrutinizing spotlight brought on by his unshakable awkwardness. The only time that light was positive is when he earned the respect of his peers for his novelty talents, or acquiring answers to a history exam, or showcasing a cool, unchaperoned robotic house for a party (which, admittedly, wasn't his fault, as Shannon knew the boys practically forced it on him.) Those events and all similar ones ended with him returning to one of the loser tables in the lunchroom. He bounced back and forth between momentary popularity and almost total social isolation, and Shannon stayed perfectly still, watching him in between the sides, like a tennis net watching the ball. If it weren't for the fact that he more and more frequently snagged her on the bounces back to the loser's side, it would almost be entertaining.
What had she ever done to warrant the attention? She'd never forget the look on his face when he first laid his eyes on her. It was like she broke him.
When the bus cleared the street, Shannon could see her reflection in the window. To believe that Robot had a crush on her was to believe that someone actually had a crush on her. And that was going as far as to believe that she was pretty. It was actually easier to believe that her unattractiveness was what made him stare. Was she so hypnotically ugly that the robot couldn't help but look at her with those massive, child-like eyes? Once again, she yanked at her skirt, feeling suddenly self conscious about her metal leg, in a way that only Robot Jones could make her feel. Did that have something to do with his fascination with her?
Before she could contemplate the possibility any further, Robot stepped into her view, and Shannon turned her head away, cheeks burning. Her throat was dry, and she didn't even know if she could physically say the words "you can't sit here" if she needed to. She hoped she wouldn't have to. All she wanted was to pretend that she didn't exist, and he wouldn't let her. Sometimes it felt like his entire existence was to make it impossible for her to be invisible. She just sunk down as low into her seat as possible, eyes still looking out the window, and willed him with her mind. Don't. Don't.
The girl across from Shannon-one of the more relatively popular cheerleaders who must have been in her eighth year-had just finished shooing Robot away before he'd even gotten a chance to do anything but look at her. Shannon hadn't heard him utter so much as a syllable before Robot had no choice but to turn to her now.
Don't. Sit. Here. She pleaded inside her mind, refusing to even look at him from the corner of her eyes, least she acknowledge him. He'd have to ask. She felt his gaze burning a hole into the side of her head. She felt her hands go clammy and she was breathing faster and shorter breaths. It occurred to her, in the spin of thoughts used to distract herself from this moment, that she couldn't really justify this panic based on Robot's unpopularity alone. Rather, she felt something deeply scrutinizing about his puppy dog gaze. Something that threatened to pull the mask off of her if she even trusted to look him in the eyes. The closer he got to her, the longer he stayed there, the more she felt like pile of gunpowder, immobile and useless next to an approaching flame. What was wrong with her?
And just when she when she was sure the word "NO!" was going to erupt from her throat, he walked away. His footsteps carried to someplace behind her, and became lost in the noise of the bus.
Shannon stared in disbelief, twisted in her seat, knees to the backboard, and peered at Robot from her seat. She let go of a breath she didn't even realize she was holding.
Okay… maybe he DOES have a choice.
She felt the anticipation fizzle out of her like a carefully opened soda can. A champion fighter gets angry when his opponent takes a dive before he can throw the first punch, and Shannon was at least expecting Robot to greet her before giving up. Had so many crowded bus rides ended up with denials that he just stopped asking?
Robot had finally done what many of the kids had told him to-to go to the back of the bus. On this particular old bus, a couple of crates took the place of a proper seat. It was fun for some kids, riding with friends, trading cards or writing dirty words on the walls, but miserable if you were sent there to be alone. Today, for whatever, there weren't even any crates this time. They had taken them to do something else with, presumably. When he got there, Robot looked at the filthy, mud stained floor before the back wall of the bus, made a physical slump that Shannon could only guess was part of a sigh, spun around, and sat down on the floor.
Then, the regret. SHE hadn't even acknowledged him standing there, looking at her, even when she could feel his eyes on her. Wanting to be noticed. She had always told herself that being mature was to ignore when she didn't have anything to say. On her better days, to simply not acknowledge his awkwardness meant not acknowledging him at all. Just let him walk away before her loaded mouth could shoot off mean words that she would regret later. Up until recently, she had told herself it was the kindest thing she could do, but now, it felt just as bad. She was leaving him in the spotlight instead of trying to pull him out of it.
Once again, she realized that she had to help him.
The words tumbled out of her mouth faster than she could stop them. "R-Robot! Sit here!"
It appeared to have taken a minute for his brain to process that someone had spoken to him. Three long seconds later, Robot lifted his head, and found her eyes.
Those eyes. Oh, God, why did they have to give him those eyes? If she only had to ever speak to Robot from the backside, she might never have noticed he had any emotions at all. But whoever designed him apparently knew exactly what they were doing, because the moment that those big, bright, puppy-dog eyes found Shannon's, she felt sick to her stomach. All the guilt of all the times she only thought of him as a machine hitting right at once. The confusion, the awe, the complexity that could only be found in a conscious being right there in giant, yellow headlights. It was hard to look at him, especially when those lights were pointed at her.
But there was no turning back now. Some of the kids nearby had heard Shannon's call, and were waiting for both of them to say something. Shannon cleared her throat. "I said, come here!"
Something about the impatience of her tone must have riled up some robotic obedience training in his programming, because Robot snapped to his feet almost immediately after she was finished speaking. He then left his filthy seat in the back of the bus behind, and marched up straight to her, with a soldier's precision.
There were then giggles and murmurs around her that she was certain had something to do with the scene that was playing out before then. There was going to be some damage control for Shannon's reputation-whatever that was-when this whole thing was over. But at this point, it was better to stick to her guns, and look confident.
She gave the popular girl across from her a firm look that said, Yeah, you like how I order him around? Bet you had a boy you could do this to. By that time, Robot was slowing his stride as he came up on looking unsure as to whether or not he could really sit down. Could you blame him? For all he knew, this was part of some horrible prank. But Shannon threw her books down on the ground with an intentional slam, and scooted her body over closer to the window. Of course, they were both small, so she didn't have to scoot much. Just enough to let him know he could sit now. Robot put his claw onto the seat, and helped himself upward, not daring to meet Shannon's gaze once he broke away from it. The giggling soon after gave out, and the other bus occupants had lost interest. The sky outside the bus was growing dark, and making many of the kids onboard quiet and craving another hour of sleep. Shannon could feel the instant that the blanket of invisibility feel back over her, covering him too.
They rode for something like two minutes in silence before Robot began looking nervous, at his own backside. "I am afraid I may have sat down in some fresh mud," he said, looking afraid and scooting away. "I hope I do not get it anywhere near you."
Robot, we are sitting, she responded in her head, on crusty boogers, bubble gum, PE sweat and what I highly suspect is human piss. I could honestly care less.
Out loud, she said nothing, but felt her eyes roll. Now that she thought about it, she was grateful that Robot had claimed the seat, as opposed to anyone else. He couldn't smell the odor and peg it on Shannon. He didn't have a nose.
And yet, that didn't stop him from giving her a weird look. Always that weird look. She could see it from the corner of her eye. He never gave anyone else that look. What was he doing, anyway? Studying her? For his 'information collection'? What was so interesting about her? What was it about him that he couldn't just ignore her like everybody else?
It was at this point that she, once again, held her breath, and waited for him to say something. To try desperately to initiate a conversation that she would deny at all costs. But he didn't. To her surprise, he just sat there, tapped his claws ever gently, so that they didn't even make a sound, and finally turned his gaze down at his feet. He was being good.
Too good.
Shannon liked not having to try to break the ice, and with most people, she didn't have to Whether her company was male or female, she was usually not prompted to speak too much, and when she was, it was usually in the form of a reply. Any awkward gaps in which she took time to re-evaluate her speech and posture were filled by someone else's words, or someone else's awkward chuckles. Robot, on the other hands, was not chuckling, or saying anything. Was refusing to even ask what caused her to grab him. And those awkward gaps grew into an awkward vacuum that threatened to strangle her alive.
She couldn't take it anymore. Paranoia of the eyes on her was eating her alive. At the risk of popping up from her blankets of obscurity once more, she said out loud: "Okay. What is it?"
Robot ripped his head upward, a look on his face like he couldn't believe that she had spoken to him twice in one morning. "What's 'what'?"
If she could think rationally for just one moment, she'd stop right then and there, not interrupting their silence. But this was Shannon. Always on the defense. Wary. Waiting for something to go wrong. Waiting for the hitch. "'What's 'what? What is it about me that makes you treat me different from everybody else?"
She couldn't blame him for the totally confused look on his face. Like offering a child a candy cane and then slapping them across the face. In hindsight, she'd realize how random it had to have come to him. He was smart, but he wasn't in her head. "Shannon, I don't know what you're talking about."
Her jacked up head that went back and forth like a stoplight, always in doubt, tried to form a single sentence to explain everything. But this was not a one-sentence problem. This was a problem that had been building on the inside for the while, and poor Robot was the easiest target. "What makes it so that you can't just talk to me about video games or algorithms, or junk like that? An entire semester and a half, and I still can't figure out why you just stare at me from across the room like a freak."
"But.." She could hear that it was a strain to put an audible emphasis on that word, and he was careful when to do it. A rumble of thunder outside confirmed that the kids were going to walk into the building in the middle of a storm. One of them groaned, but now most kids were leaning over the seats to look at them. Their attention was making her angrier, but she brought it on herself. She outwardly called herself a freak. And knowing that made her furious. This is what he did to her.
Can't you see I'm trying to make you invisible too? She thought to him, in words she simply couldn't say because they would expose her weakness. But you won't let me cover you. You'd like it if they could see both of us, wouldn't you? So you won't be alone. For the third time that morning, she tugged her skirt down, hard. She almost thought she ripped it. But it was no use. To have free range of motion meant exposing this leg to everybody, including the robot, whose life duty might as well have been to remind her, every day, with his awkward, calculating gaze that she was different. A freak.
The pulling down of her skirt. That motion was what set him off. She could tell, because the moment she did that, Robot's expression changed. The look of bewilderment melted into something that resembled hurt. And then, even so slowly… offense. Robot Jones narrowed his eyes, mirroring her glare.
"I do not know what you are hiding," he said. So coldly. "But if you want to keep it all to yourself, then be my guest."
Without so much as another word, Robot stood up, turned his head away, and marched without grace back to the back of the bus, and sat down hard on the muddy floor. But this time he didn't look forlorn. He looked mad.
Slivers of raindrops appeared on the window across from Shannon, but her eyes were locked on the automaton that was now refusing to look at her.
She had tipped him off. Even if he hadn't suspected anything before, he knew she was hiding something now. And the fact that he knew she damn well planned on keeping it a secret made him angry. Angry that she would never let him close to her, close enough to know what that something was.
As the bus pulled up to the school, only then did Shannon notice the raindrops on the window. The door opened and sleepy kids piled out of the bus, front seats emptied first. The usual clog formed that temporarily prevented the second half of the bus from entering the aisle. At last, nobody was looking at Shannon or Robot. But nobody was in a rush to meet the rain, either. Not when the huge hallways of the towering Polyneux Middle School were rarely warm. But as the ice cold rain hit them, and they became a wild stampede looking for shelter, 15th year, solitary custodian Clancy Q. Sleepyjeans was generously holding open the door for them, and getting himself drenched in the process.
"WHOOWEE, is that rain cold!" shouted Clancy, taking notice of the new bus of arrivals heading towards him. Even Shannon had to admit that Clancy's good attitude, and small acts of kindness towards the students, were the only welcoming thing about Polyneux.
Covering their heads with their sweaters and jackets and backpacks, the students flooded through the entrance, leaving a water streaked hallway and any memory of Shannon's outburst in their wake. Robot, who exited the bus second to last, before Shannon, marched to the door with no urgency in his step. Clancy's wild smile turned to a frown as the metal boy passed him through the door without acknowledgement of any kind. He looked more robotic than ever.
After letting everybody else deboard the bus before her, it was finally her turn. But just like Robot, Shannon didn't even try to protect herself from the rain. At some point, her legs stopped moving, in between the bus and the entrance the rain getting heavier and heavier on her face, in her hair, on her clothes, everywhere. The deflation of her hot paranoia, anger, had left her cold inside. The rain had an icy, numbing effect on her skin, matching her inside. And for once, as a soaking wet Clancy called her from within her daze, coaxing her by name to come inside 'before the cats and dogs start hitting ya upside your drenched head', she didn't care that he'd noticed her. Or that her hair was ruined, or her clothes were wet and putrid. And that all together she probably looked like a wreck.
She just didn't care.
HEY! If you're reading this, you made it to the end! or maybe you just scrolled down to see how long it was...
Good lord this is longer than it needs to be.
This started off as something I was writing on my phone on the bus and thinking about the things that Shannon would be thinking about on the school bus. The story here, with Robot's resolve at the end not to talk to Shannon until she starts being real with him, I plan on having that carry over for a few more fanfics I have in the works. This idea does stem from that picture of them fighting in the rain that I drew a month or so ago. I am trying to flesh out Shannon and kind of make logic of her character, because for me, if you look at her behavior a certain way, it canmake sense why she goes back and forth from being really nice to being a jerk. (IF you don't take disagreeing writers into consideration). Especially if the series eventually developed her just a little more, or shed some light on her history.
This is the first time I tried to really get her at one of her "jerk" moments and break it down, from both their perspectives. I also think Robot does have the potential to stand up to Shannon at some point, because he's not stupid, and it's reasonable to suspect he can better read into Shannon's behavior the longer they've known each other.
This thing should probably get cut down, but I'm tired of looking at it for now, and it feels about time to post it. So here we go!
Whatever Happened to Robot Jones? © Greg Miller & Cartoon Network