Chapter 5/Chapter 7
Silver Spring, Montgomery County, Maryland. January 9th, 1972.
New name, new home, new town (or city/county in this case), new school.
Nora had to leave everything behind; both figuratively and literally. The life she'd built back in Salem, the habits she'd accumulated there, the name she'd gone by for the last four months.
Beverly. Before that it had been Diane; before that: Susan. It was easy to change a name: she just had to get used to writing it down. But it held an emotional weight in her heart. Every time she made her new ID papers, it was like getting punched in the face. A punch in the face that said 'you're still running. Stop running.'
Attachments were bad. Nora had known that for years. That was why she no longer went by her given name.
Brie? Grace? No, she'd already had those…
Attachments to people were especially dangerous—for her identity as well as her conscience. Nora only allowed herself to keep a few personal items from her past lives. They were usually books, or a particularly comfortable sweater.
Though she should have thrown it away years ago, Nora still kept the piece of glass from the hospital. It was probably the worst thing to keep, but ever since that day in the police station she'd never been able to shake off the feeling that she needed it.
Whether it benefitted her or not, Nora allowed herself to keep that one tether to her past.
Greta? No, that sounded too much like Gretel, which was German.
Even though the Americans had won the war, they still harboured a lot of hatred towards the Germans.
Mavis? No... She didn't like the sound of that one.
"Ugh," Nora got up from the table strewn with papers. She left the small place she called the dining room and headed into the kitchen. Grabbing a coke from the cooler, she settled down into the lotus position and bowed her head.
Nora had found this abandoned apartment building on the outskirts of town. She'd checked the town archives to discover that it had been on the market for the past six years. The owners had obviously left long ago, with the grungy, peeling wallpaper, plumbing in desperate need of repair, and the many shingles missing from the rooftop.
Even with Nora's genius intellect, and the technician/plumber's skills she'd acquired a while back (all it took was skin-to-skin contact), it had taken her three hours to get everything up and running.
This was how she lived: taking shelter in ever-changing, abandoned abodes; forging a new identity for herself and her "parents" whenever she moved towns. (Usually every six months.)
Nora made sure to always pick the worst-looking, lowest-budget schools she could find. She did this because those were the schools that cared the least about authenticity. She usually didn't have to worry about them asking for her parents. Besides, even if they did, Nora kept up the story that they were international ambassadors for the UN and rarely returned home.
Absentmindedly picking at the faded green wallpaper, Nora remembered the title of a book she'd once read.
Anne of Green Gables. She did a quick back check through her vast collection of memories (most of which, weren't her's) to make sure she hadn't used either aliases before. After a moment of concentration, she was sure; this was it.
January 13th.
"Merde, merde, merde, oh shit, shit, shit," Nora muttered to herself, switching back and forth between French and English.
She was—as always—late. Classes started at 9:00 sharp, and it was -what time was it again? She made a quick estimate; if she'd left the house at 8:45, walked for five minutes in normal time, then walked ten minutes with everything paused; then approximately seven minutes back on regular time... Then that meant it was 8:57?
"Oh merde..." Curse my screwed-up memory! Nora quickened her walk to a jog as she rounded the final corner to her new school.
On second thought, curse her entire array of over-powered, life-ruiningly-annoying abilities.
Nora knew there was no specific name for all the powers she had when combined into one person (which was exactly her situation), so she had separated them into their own categories.
First off was her above-average intelligence. (And by 'above-average', she had the 'could-have-graduated-high-school-years-ago' level.) As well as her useful (yet also annoying) tendency to remember everything she ever read, saw, or was taught.
Then there was the troubling fact that whenever she made skin-to-skin contact with some poor, innocent soul… Well, to put it simply: she basically had all of their memories, experiences, skills and habits stored inside her mind.
So, when her naked body had been wrapped in the jacket belonging to one Timothy Walker eleven years ago, his hand had brushed her shoulder. And in that instant she had received all the knowledge of his past twenty years of life (which really wasn't that much.) However, the skills Nora hadn't put to use from Timothy eventually retired to the very back of her mind. The only thing that truly remained of their accidental contact was Nora's frequent habit of cursing in opportune instances.
The last (but most certainly not the least) section of her abilities: Nora could manipulate time. To pause time (and when she did that, it stopped across the entire world) she needed a trigger (like snapping her fingers.) Stopping time was definitely the easiest and most-controllable of all her powers.
She could also slow down and speed up the flow of it all. (This sure came in handy for those dreary school days…)
And finally, there was the worst part of her curse. The one that was the cause of everything that had happened to her.
She could travel through time. It was as simple—or as complicated—as that.
But that's not the last of it: there were two very different subsections that her time-travelling abilities were divided into.
The first part she could control, much like pausing time—with a snap of her fingers. In this type of time travel she controlled when she went. The one setback to this control was that she could only travel up to one day into the past.
The second part was somewhat less complicated than the first. It also hurt more, by about ten bashes to the skull. In this branch of time-travel, Nora went back through any amount of time from a few decades to a few centuries.
She had no control over this 'ability'. It happened at least two times a month, and was completely unpredictable in when it would occur. However there were technically a few signs. Bleeding noses and strenuous finger cramps were usually-dependable examples.
Nora knew what she was.
Abnormal.
Freak.
Mutant.
She hated being like this. It was because of this that she'd lost her sister and home.
Nora had been lost the moment she left her century. She'd tried everything to get back… To go back to that terrible day and change what happened.
It had been ten years (or 600, depending on how you counted) since she'd arrived in the 1900's, and Nora didn't know why she hadn't ended it years ago… it wouldn't be that hard. (It was far too easy to acquire a gun in this country.)
Perhaps it was because she was waiting.
But waiting for what?
Or maybe it was because she'd already given up.
Nora reached the front steps just as the late bell rang. She was alone on the grounds, excepting a few others who were getting one last smoke in before class.
Tugging her jacket tighter around her torso, Nora stared at the ground as she walked past the intimidating group of teens
The girl who looked like the leader stared her retreating form up and down before scoffing unappreciatively and returning to her smoke.
"So I'll just need you to sign your name here," the secretary pointed out.
"All right," Nora responded, being very careful to sign Anne instead of Beverly. (She'd practiced her new signature the night before.)
"And your parents'll need to sign here and here." The secretary tapped a garishly-painted fingernail on the two blank spaces next to where Nora had signed her name.
Oh. Right: parents.
"Um, when does this have to be back in? Because my parents aren't home right now… You see, they're international ambassadors for the UN, and… they're rarely… home…"
Damn. Had she oversold it? The secretary stared at her with raised eyebrows and an unimpressed expression on her face.
"Just get it in as soon as you can, dear."
Nora nodded. Okay, disaster averted.
The secretary gestured to a row of chairs near the door to the main office; "You can sit over there and copy out your schedule. Just ask if you need any help."
Nora got the impression that she had enough on her plate already, so she chose to struggle through the layout of this new timetable. It was quiet in the school, the occasional pair of footsteps and the secretary's incessant typing being the only noises.
"Goddamn it, Pietro!" A voice came out of nowhere, causing Nora to jump in her seat. She whirled around, only to see the back of a girl sprinting down the hallway, lugging what seemed like a large instrument case behind her.
"You and your fucking, bitch-ass girlfriend! I don't even understand how we're always late?! And this was my last strike too! Baker said if I was late one more time I'd get detention! -And I'm his best student!" The girl's voice faded off into the distance.
The secretary's frowning face had jerked up at the foul language, but she only shook her head and returned to her work.
The only answer to the girl's retreating tirade was a jovial laugh and a gust of wind that blew through the office. Papers flew every-which-way, and the door slammed shut with a surprising force.
"Thought it was supposed to be calm today…" muttered the secretary as she got up slammed the window shut.
Nora had kept a strong grip on her papers, though the ink was a little smudged. "Um, where do I get my books?" she asked.
"Books are to be collected from the music room on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, see Mr. James for more details.
Today was Thursday, but she was already late enough.
Nora blew on the paper to dry the ink. It was a simple schedule, eight classes in total; four a day, that alternated every second day, with an hour lunch- break to boot!
Checking over everything, Nora noticed something out of place.
French, first period, Day Two, Week Two.
Wait a minute! French?!
"Um, about my language: I signed up for Spanish, not French." She was already fluent in French, and Nora only knew the small bit of Spanish that she'd picked up from a motel cleaning lady. (She'd been bedridden for three days, after the bustling of the woman had caused Nora's brain to convert everything to Spanish.)
The secretary—whose name Nora had finally gleaned from the nameplate on the desk: Mrs. Reese—sighed and moved a stray hair from her hairdo. "I'm sorry to say" —she really wasn't— "that due to lack of interest, the Spanish course was unable to continue this semester. Apparently, everyone wants to be like those frogs."
Nora had to try very hard to keep from punching her. Instead she simply said, "Oh."
There was no sense in dilly-dallying any longer, so Nora took one of the school maps from a plastic bin next to the door and left to find her French class.
It didn't take her too long, though it may have been more trouble for any normal teenager. Room 22C was exactly down the hall (to the left of the main office) up the right set of stairs, and through the fourth door on the left from the library.
It took Nora (at a brisk walk) one minute and thirteen seconds (according to her damaged internal clock) to get there. It was twenty-five minutes into first period by the time she opened the classroom door.
It was dead quiet.
Twenty-eight pairs of eyes all looked up from their respective papers to stare down the newcomer. Nora shuffled awkwardly in her sneakers past the front row of desks, towards the teacher.
He was a grumpy-looking, dark-haired, slightly-hunchbacked man named Mr. Mull. (according to her timetable) He wore a wrinkled brown suit and a permanently-tired expression on his face. It seemed that he'd given up on showing up presentable for work—that certainly told Nora a lot about the class.
She handed him the late pass that Mrs. Reese had given her. "I'm new."
He sighed and returned to his desk. "Well it's only the fifth day of semester." He handed her a thick paper booklet; "There's no need to finish the entire thing," and it's not like you could, said his eyes. "Just get as much done as you can before the end of period.
She nodded uncertainly and turned down the row of desks - there were two empty seats at the back. She headed in that direction, readjusting her backpack strap.
But Nora hardly made it two steps before a foot shot out into the aisle and she was sent sprawling.
"Eeeach!" She squeaked as gravity took its toll.
The class erupted into laughter; the guy who had tripped her systematically high-fiving his friend seated behind him. Mr. Mull tried settling the class down but he was unable to control the teenagers—as usual.
Even the nerds and geeks—who didn't have a place among the popular crowd—were making attempts to laugh at Nora's plight—only in hopes that they wouldn't be the next victims.
Nora's precious glasses had ben thrown off her face during her 'trip', and without them, she was practically blind. So the girl was reduced to crouching on her hands and knees to recover her spectacles—but not her dignity.
When she did, her worst fears were confirmed.
Carefully plucking them from the floor, it didn't take a genius (or even a partially blind one) to tell that the red frames were without their lenses.
Her glasses were broken; and to make it worse, Nora could already feel her face heating up.
"Awe, she's blushing!" A skinny blonde wearing a bright red top giggled and pointed at her.
The embarrassment of all of them laughing at her clouded Nora's vision. Her mind was run over by the anxiety of it all. What could she do now? She shouldn't have drawn attention to herself, but now she had! She was supposed to be invisible; non-existent. But hardly thirty minutes at this new school, and though no one knew her name, she had already tripped up! Literally!
She was helpless; there was nothing she could do. And Nora was sure they were already concocting up some some stupid nickname for her…
Except… she wasn't helpless… Not from something like this. She could fix something like this.
But should she?
Yes. She should be able to… it was only a few minutes after all… less than that, really.
Okay. Now was the time.
Nora took a deep breath. She pushed all the other students' taunts to the back of her mind. They're irrelevant, they're irrelevant, they're irrelevant. She repeated the mantra until something clicked in her brain.
The gears twisted and turned, their creaks and clicks echoing through her head. Nora's eyes flashed gold, then her stomach flew into her chest—as if she were suddenly free-falling.
Then…
"I'm new," she found herself saying.
She was back at the front of the class.
Mr. Mull sighed, "Well it's only the fifth day of the semester." Nora was handed the assessment booklet. "There's no need to finish the entire booklet," he said—again with that patronizing look. "Just get as much done as you can before the end of period."
All proceeded as it had less than two minutes ago. Except, this time, when Nora came across the jock's desk, she stopped right in front of it.
There. His leg had flinched. It had twitched in her direction, presumably in an attempt to trip Nora once more. But she wouldn't make that mistake again.
The jock stared up at her in bewilderment. Why did she stop? There's no way she could have known I was about to trip her! She had been the first to ever avoid the "newcomer ritual".
Nora stared down at him, a look containing both smugness and hostility briefly crossed her features.
"Is there a problem, Mr. Rickson?"
"No, sir." He quickly buried his head back into the assignment.
"Then I suggest you get back to work."
Nora continued her walk of victory to the back of the class, uninterrupted.
One other person had been a true witness to this brief, yet important encounter. And as Nora made her way past the girl from before, (the one with the red top, and even redder lipgloss) Rosie Robinson (Queen Bee; head of the popular squad; soft core slut) raised an eyebrow in interest.
