II
I entered the school. Despite everything, despite that I was so secure in my plans, I still felt nervous. I could stop them, I knew I could stop them if they tried something like the locker again, but my fear didn't have anything to do with logic. It was just, this place was oppressive to me. Where it all happened, and nobody cared at all. That they didn't care wasn't going to matter anymore. I would make them care. But still, I couldn't help but felt uneasy.
I could see Sophia Hess up ahead, in the crowd. I was in the same class as Sophia, so it wasn't suspicious that I was trailing behind her. I needed glasses, but even at this distance I could see that her phone was on the right pocket. I used a few cockroaches to sneak on that poForumscket, grabthe phone and bring it to me, weaving between the people heading to their classes. I grabbed it, and let them go. I controlled a nearby fly on the wall before the cracks could cover the world again, and pocketed it.
Before… before the locker, I couldn't have done such a thing. I couldn't have done such a thing, I suspect, if I had only got the bug controlling powers. That I could do this was unrelated to the fact that I had power now. On the contrary.
When I was in the hospital, I took a wall outside at night. It was a full moon. And I looked into the night with this power. I saw the simple, awful truth people hid from. The ground was like it wasn't even there, and the sky looked like it could fall at any instant. That simple knowledge, that reality could come unravelled so easily, that everything was so fragile… that made me understand all the more the preciousness of life. So, I decided I wouldn't spend even one more second under the thumb of those three bitches. That I deserved better. That there were fun things before that happen, and everything that happen didn't meant I had to stop living.
Those sincere thoughts I had as I looked at the night sky full of cracks were the only thing that allowed me to gather the courage to act on my thoughts.
She hadn't noticed it, but I didn't doubt that she would reach for her phone as soon as she was sitting in class, so I moved quickly towards the principals office. I stopped on the way, on a corner where I wasn't likely to be seen, to check the contents of the phone. I found Sophia and Emma talking about doing those things to me, preparing carefully, laughing about it. Laughing about the things they had done. Also, the locker. The bitch was so overconfident she even messaged with Emma about the fucking locker. Not about how they had prepared it, no. She wasn't that stupid. But they were laughing about it. Saying things like I deserved it, that I got what was coming to me. That if they knew who had done it they would make he or her or them a statue.
But that paled in comparison to what came next. A conversation about it: the flute. Sophia laughing, asking Emma was had got me so desperate to kept such a flute. Emma saying that it had be my only reminder of my death mother, that it was something I had told her before. Sophia saying what a cruel bitch Emma was, that she could learn from her and Emma laughing with her at that as if they were discussing something trivial.
I barrelled inside the principals office, completely furious, the words on that phone ringing in my ears like a chant. I realized that I had be subconsciously gathering a swarm of bugs, but I pushed them away. I couldn't do that. I couldn't. I repeated that to myself, many, many times, but those words on the phone came to me just as many times, and it was getting hard to remember why it would be such a bad thing.
The principal looked up from her computer at my arrival.
"Hebert." her lips pursued into a thin line. "I hope you have a reason to come here, like this. Explain yourself. Quickly."
"Yes, yes." I said. I walked to the desk, and showed her the phone. "I do have reason. Read it."
She read it, from top to bottom. Her face paled a little bit. I see. So they weren't just blind and stupid, no. They had be looking the other way. For some reason.
"This is Sophia's phone. How did you get it?"
"She dropped it, I picked it up. That's not important."
"Okay," she admitted. "That was bad. I talk to them, suspend them for a week or two."
"Suspension? That would be just a vacation for them." I answered. "Its not just that."
I took off the notebook from my pocket. The notebook where I recorded everything they had done to me, day per day. Wouldn't be concrete evidence, but I had the evidence in the phone to back quite a few things on the notebook, so, maybe, it would stick. I opened it and showed it to her.
"Everything they have done, day per day." I showed her the phone, too, while pointing at certain accidents. "Sophia pushed me down the stairs when I was near the bottom, making me drop my books. Then she tells Emma that I'm so scrawny that she could have bumped into me and I could have flew down the stairs anyway. Same day, same month, same year, about five minutes later, as you can see from the times of the messages. That same day, Sophia, Emma and Madison cornered me after school and threw my backpack in the trash. Then they talked about talking with other girls in my grade, to encourage them to make fun of me for that. So that they would all cover their noses when I came near, or I say I smelled like garbage. Then..."
"I see you have list of offences, and proof of it." the principal said, her lips so thin that they had almost disappeared. She brushed hair out of her eyes. "We will dealt with this matter accordingly."
"And how?"
"Suspension."
"I already said it would be just a vacation for them and it would do anything to prevent them for venting their anger to me. I don't want no suspension for them. I just want to be transferred to Arcadia High, leave all this shit behind."
"I can't do that. There's jurisdictions..."
"You don't get it, don't you? I'm not asking you. Do it. Then you can kept your precious, non-existent reputation or whatever you're hiding. Or I will leak the contents of this phone, and you will have to face up to what you have done anyway."
Left unsaid, of course, was the better part. That my only leverage wasn't the contents of the phone.I had the tape recorder dad brought me in my pocket, and it was turned on. So all our conversation had be recorded, and would be recorded. She was giving me all I needed tomake an issue out of it, whatever or not she would admit the truth. I would reveal that, too, if she refused me. I couldn't use this in court, but I could leak it. Or better, I could give it to the PRT. They, at least, had to listen to me.
"I don't want to make promises I can't fulfil, but I'll try."
"Try is not good enough."
"Be reasonable. Do you think I have such influence that I can guarantee you a place in Arcadia?"
"...No." that, at least, was the truth.
I considered my options. It was true that the PRT was my best chance, because I was a Parahuman, but I didn't think I was ready to join them yet. It wasn't just that it seemed oppressively close to hight school. I could get past that. The main reason was that, honestly, I wasn't the right shape to go on and fight. Today I woke up earlier for a morning run. I would need a few months of that, and more, because I was out of shape. Well, out of shape implied I was once in shape, so lets just say I was in bad shape.
I know that, in part, it was only to be expected and I could get the training I needed if I joined the Wards. But I don't want to be seen as the new, incompetent girl. The girleverybody needed to babysit, teach things to. And than that possible annoyance would lead to my experience in the Wards being just another extension of hight school. I meant, hell, I haven't got even a costume yet.
I had wanted to make myself a costume out of spider silk, which would be something that would take me some time. I at least wanted to wait until I got my costume, got some time to experiment more deeply with bug controlling and learn hand to hand combat. I seriously needed that last bit if I wanted my second power, the death perception, to be of any use as a Ward. If it got caught in a situation when I actually needed to make use of it, if I wasn't good enough to not get killed on the way and accurately trace the lines even in the heat of combat, it all would end messily.
No, I wasn't quite ready to join the Wards yet. But I still had the option of leaking the information. It was what they deserved, in any case. Maybe the results wouldn't be as fast, but once I turned sixteen, I could take online courses. Talking with my dad about why I wanted to do such a thing would be… awkward, since even though he knew things were bad we didn't really talk about it, but… I just had to dealt with it.
I remembered what Emma said about my mother's flute, I remembered what I read on that phone. And most of all, everything they had done to me. I wasn't running away, letting them win. It was just that if I stayed here, someday I would take it anymore and I would kill them with this power of mine. Before it would grown to that point, I wanted them out of my sight. If I had to talk about those things to dad to do it, then I would have to do it. Simple enough.
I nodded.
"Fair enough." then, because I couldn't resist: "I'm glad we understand each other."
I turned around, went away and pocketed the phone. I didn't head to class, of course. It would only waste my time. As sooner as I got this done, the better. I hurried down the stairs.
"Hebert." a voice I could have recognized anywhere. Sophia Hess voice. Had she caught up to what I had done, somehow? No, that was impossible. It was more likely that she had gone out to taunt me, since I hadn't show up from class. I stopped, in the middle of the stairs. I turned my head towards her, held her gaze. She was rather close to me, but not close enough that she could push me off the stairs if didn't react fast enough.
"What do you want?"
"My phone." those words almost made me stop breathing. How? She extended her hand. "Give it back."
"They say all blondes are stupid, but I never believed it until now." I told her. Contrary to my calm tone and my body language, I was getting nervous anyway. "Fuck off. I don't have your stupid phone."
"So your stay in the locker made you get a bit of backbone. Shame it didn't occur me earlier." she said, so easily. I hadn't turned off the recorder, hadn't intended to turn it off for the duration of the day, so I couldn't miss anything. And it paid off. I had caught on tape she confessing her own crime. "Now, let's see if you can back it up."
I moved before she even finished her sentence, fully seeing what she intended to do. I was in the ground before she got where I was before.
"Hiding, running." Sophia took a step down. "Like some little girl. Look's like you haven't changed all that much, Hebert."
"Stop saying Hebert, please. I might have to start to think you care to remember my name."
I couldn't outrun Sophia. That was self defeatism at work, but the plain truth. She wasn't the star of the track and field club for her good looks. Well, not just because of her good looks. If I ran away from her, she would catch me for sure and all my chances of making them pay for it would go down the drain. Without the contents of the phone as concrete evidence, the principal wouldn't do shit and nobody would believe me.
But, we were alone. That went for me, and for her. And there weren't any cameras in it, so footage wasn't a worry. I close my eyes, took a deep breath. Even before I opened them, the lines extended all over my vision, filling the world. As long as I was actively controlling my bugs, I couldn't see those cracks. If they were following a previous order, though, the cracks would still show. I went two steps up.
And before she could try anything, I bend down and traced with my fingernail the line of death on the step she had be about to take. She lost her footing, and went rolling down the stairs. I took advantage of that. I jumped down the steps, steadied myself and ran for it, hoping that the time I would gain for it would be enough for her to lose track of me.
"You're…" Sophia's voice, full of anger and incredulity. I had honestly thought that she would even refuse to consider the possibility that I could be a Parahuman, even after something like that, due to how she viewed me. I could have be wrong. Oh, well. If I had be wrong, then all the more reason to join the Wards.
I ran out of the school, not looking behind me, not trying to listen. I ran, ran, ran. I ran harder that I had even ran in my whole life, and I continued running even when I didn't need to do. I stopped only when my body burned, and breathing almost hurt. I was sweating so much it… I looked behind me, saw none of the trio or any person from my school, sat down on a nearby bank and tried to calm myself down.
How crazy. The whole thing, from start to finish, had be nerve wrecking. I had resolved to do this, I had prepared all that I needed, and still the unease didn't leave me. So when Sophia realized and came after me, the only thing I hadn't expected, my heart had be about to burst out of my chest. I laughed to myself, feeling a little silly. I took a deep breath, released and I stood up.
Then I headed towards the PRT's headquarters.
