Chapter Four: Sorry for the Misogyny but These Bitches Be Messing with Mr. G (Part I)

Most people try to come up with unique New Year's resolutions every year, but I always commit to the same one: help everyone else be a better person.

It's an ambitious undertaking to be sure, but the feeling I get when I guide even one wayward child through the valley of the shadow of death is without parallel. One of the most gratifying aspects of my job is being able to do this on a daily basis, in numerous small ways. This specific instance comes readily to mind.

So it was one of the seven weekdays—probably not Friday, because Quinlan, Knott and I were in the staff lounge fortifying ourselves. On Fridays, we do that at night and with cards. It was early, too. I like coming to the school early because it means I spend less time at home alone with my thoughts, or worse, alone with my girlfriend's thoughts.

Quinlan had started getting to work earlier in the day as well. Maybe it had something to do with the brand spanking new secondhand zinc bar, but I can't say for sure.

"It's like this," he was saying as he mixed us drinks. "We get all the names of the girls track team members from Adams at the end of the day. We write 'em on scraps of paper and stick 'em in a box. Then we each pick a name. Whoever picks the track kid who wins tomorrow's meet gets the whole pot."

"I do so enjoy drawing lots for wagers," Knott said, gazing down into her coffee-infused bourbon, "because it turns tests of skill and observation into luck-based contests, rendering everything meaningless and arbitrary."

"Yeah, that," Quinlan said, nodding. "So, you guys in? Fifty bucks each."

Knott, being a rube and already fairly pickled, agreed. I was in from the word 'free-money'.

Quinlan set my usual glass of brandy down in front of me. I drank about a third and discreetly set the rest back down, to be poured into the neglected ficus by the couch later.

I had to think.

See, I knew from the non-disclosure agreements we'd signed at the start of the year that at least one of them was a Ward. Maybe whoever it was had the power to spit cyanide or glow in the dark or something unrelated to enhanced speed, but what were the odds? Why be on the track team if you don't have some advantage that lets you make the competition literally eat your dust? If I picked that cape's name, I'd win for sure.

I just had to remember who it was.

I pretended to grade papers while I waited for them to leave and for Adams to come in half an hour later. When he did, I explained to him that he needed to give me the name of the cape on the girls' track team.

He wanted to know why, of course, because he's an unrelenting busybody. He wouldn't believe my story about being a top-secret government agent tracking a rogue vigilante, so I had to tell him about the bet. He took it about as well as I expected.

"That is so dumb," Adams said, shaking his head as he filled his mug at the sink. "It's just a dumb bet."

"Yeah, go on and hydrate," I said. "All that salt's gotta be making you thirsty. Then tell me who it is."

"How about no." He emptied about ten sachets of protein powder into the mug and started dragging a spoon through the slurry.

"It's not like I don't already know. The information is in my mind palace somewhere, I just don't have access to it right now."

"That isn't the dumb part," he said, "although yes, that is pretty dumb. The dumb part is that you think being a parahuman is guaranteed to give you an edge on the track. I can name at least two of my runners who are faster than that one Ward."

"I don't want you to name them," I said. "I just want you to name the Ward."

"Besides," he said, ignoring me, "if any of them was using powers to cheat, I'd have caught them."

"And you would know this for absolute certain?"

He raised the mug of organic swill to his mouth, looking smug, like all the smugness had gone to his head and swelled into the language centre of his brain so he couldn't answer me. Stupid idiot.

I drank another third of my brandy to show him what he was missing out on. "Okay. What are you willing to stake on it?"

"If the Ward wins," he said, "I get you the desk fan with the five settings you keep blathering about. If anyone else wins, you wash my car for the next five months."

"Splendid," I said, warming to the deal, or maybe the alcohol. I'd never been able to justify the cost of that little appliance, despite its incontrovertible awesomeness. "So tell me who the Ward is."

"Not that easy, Gladly. I'll tell you after the meet."

"That's not fair. How do I know you're not lying?"

"Ask Knott or Quinlan. Or Blackwell." He grinned. "I'm sure she'd be happy to remind you."

Blackwell was out of the question. As soon as she found out about the wager, the whole thing would be dead in the water. Meanwhile, Knott and Quinlan probably didn't realise the advantage a parahuman had over their normal peers, and I wasn't about to clue them in on my plan to sleight-of-hand the name-drawing.

I had to make the Ward, or at least their name, come to me. The solution was obvious. I stared at my remaining third of brandy, and after a long minute, gulped it down.

I was going to have to stage a crime.

In between periods, I trawled the corridors till I found a kid with Empire tattoos, a shaved head, and the kind of face you feed into image recognition software so it learns how to identify future parole violators. I called him into an empty classroom pretending to want to go over his algebra test.

"Hey," I said as soon as we sat down, "so, I'm not actually your math teacher."

"I know," he said, eyeing me warily. "Mr. Quinlan doesn't give tests. Our final exam last year was calculating how much paint he could huff in one sitting. What's this about?"

I looked around to see if anyone was eavesdropping, then quickly approximated a salute. "Sieg heil, dude."

"My name is Dustin," he said.

"Of course it is. Listen, Dusty, you want a chance to 'never forget' it on with a Jewish individual in broad daylight?"

He scrunched his nose. "I have a girlfriend."

"No, I mean rough them up a bit. Except not really. It'll be consensual. Just call them slurs and pretend to throw a haymaker or two. For a demonstration."

"Not interested," he said.

I did some quick mental math. "I'll pay you in vending machine snacks."

He sneered. "You ever eaten anything from the vending machine? It's all packaged garbage."

"Then I'll just give you the spare change I was going to use to buy the snacks," I said in exasperation. "Are you a Nazi or not?"

"I'm not a fucking Nazi," he said, volume rising to match mine. "My parents are neo-Nazis. I'm a race realist."

"That's the same thing."

He looked even more offended. "It so isn't? I can cite articles."

"Look, it's not my job to educate you," I said. I lowered my voice and leaned in. "Just fake-assault someone for me. I promise you won't get in trouble. It won't 'Holocaust' you a cent."

I could see interest flicker in his eyes, but it soon guttered out and he slumped back into his seat.

"To be honest, I'm not sure it's worth the effort," he said. "The principal said I wasn't allowed to commit more than two hate crimes a month now that I'm a senior. I'm already halfway through my queue for March. Wanted to save the last one for something special."

Fuck. Blackwell has this weird condition where she has to be kept abreast of all matters that take place within the school, even the ones that don't really concern her and that she won't do anything about anyway. If she finds out something's been going on behind her back, she yanks one of us into her office and just totally chews us out.

I don't like being chewed out and strive to avoid this fate as much as possible, but sometimes it's inevitable.

"Just checking—did she impose any limit on non-hate crimes?"

"She didn't mention them," Dustin said.

"Would it help," I said, "if you wore a balaclava to protect your identity, and you pretended to beat up an unambiguously white student? It wouldn't count as a hate crime, more like a regular mugging to throw her off your scent in case you get caught and unmasked."

This was better, I decided. After all, muggers strike at all hours of the day, while racists mainly emerge at night, in internet comment sections.

"But I won't get caught," he said pointedly.

"You won't get caught," I assured him. "It's just for show."

"I want the Pop-Tarts. Only thing worth shit in those machines. S'more-flavoured. At least…" He hesitated. "Three."

"You'll get them. Just meet me at the hall in twenty minutes."

I wrote him a note excusing him from classes for the day, and he left.

We couldn't be seen leaving the same room, so I sat there for a while sending a few necessary texts and working out what needed to happen at what time.

"'Supremacy' you later," I said, to the empty classroom.

"Atrocious. Absolutely anaemic. Is this a mugging or a matinée?"

Harley stalked the stage of Winslow's decrepit multipurpose hall. I'd asked him to help out because he'd subbed for the theatre club a couple of times (the teacher-in-charge often left on extended spiritual journeys to find herself). But I was pleasantly surprised by how well he'd choreographed the mugging.

In rehearsals, at least.

"Where," Harley said, "is the power?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out," I piped up from my seat at the back.

"Derek, kindly refrain from commentary." Gesticulating with his e-cigarette, Harley approached the leads and the extras behind them. "Thought, flowing into emotion, flowing into motion. Thought, emotion, motion. Thought, emotion, motion. You cannot switch expression from shock and fear to suppressed fury mid-movement. That is not complexity—that is an incoherent, unreadable mishmash. Finish the motion, hold the pose, and let the nascent feeling seep into your body language like ether into Granny's favourite shawl."

He pointed at the girl I'd recruited to play the victim of the crime.

I'd determined that the best victims of muggings across all axes were elderly women—their chronic helplessness inspired sympathy. However, it was unlikely that I could secure the participation of either the lunch lady or the librarian without being coerced into certain favours I just didn't have the shovels for right now.

My underground casting call had instead uncovered Naomi, this kid who looked like a mix between a young girl and a little old lady. Which was pretty unfortunate for her at this stage in her life, but good if she wanted to play an intentionally misleading standardised patient in medical simulations. Does she have juvenile-onset or late-onset Alzheimer's? Should you be directing her to the pediatric care ward or scheduling the euthanasia appointment? Nine out of ten doctors hate her.

She was doing a great job here—muscles locked, face a rictus of controlled anguish. She was trembling and sweating beneath the stage lights like she was really afraid.

"...I want you to turn like you mean it," Harley told Naomi. "Swing around as you cry out, so that your outrage boomerangs into the audience. They will feel its impact."

She had to demonstrate this six times. Temporarily satisfied, Harley rounded on Dustin and the large red purse the boy was clutching.

"You. You're extricating it from her like you're merely—" He skimmed the purse with his long spidery fingers, then feigned plucking it from his grasp. "—pickpocketing her. Tell me, young Adolf, do you remember who you are?"

"My name is Dust—"

"Yes! Your name is dust. It does not matter. Let your history drift from your core and disperse into the wind. Then, as you feel yourself hollow out, command yourself to become. You are now the infant Führer, reincarnated as a brutish youth in a crime-ridden city at the end of the millennium, cast from society by the simple fact of your socioeconomic standing. Luck has seen you fit enough to make a humble living loading cargo at the docks, but you've found it hard to get by ever since the union went on strike. It's tough, oh, so tough."

"I've got to hold on," Dustin whispered, staring down at the purse in his hands, "to what I've got."

Harley nodded fervently. "It doesn't make a difference if you make it or not."

"You've got my money, and that's a lot," Naomi said, "for—"

"Bystander #4!" Harley suddenly snapped, whirling around to tower over one of the extras, who gasped and stumbled back. He continued, singsong, "If you don't stop trying to pull focus, I will pull your intestines out through your gullet."

"I'm not..." the extra squeaked.

Harley sniffed. "Of course you're not. With hands like yours? You will never make it in this business. You have zero potential! Zilch!"

The extra started sobbing into his disproportionately large hands.

"That's right, soak those kielbasas," Harley said, his voice ripe with contempt. "Even your misery fails to persuade."

I had to step out for a while to teach a class. By the time I got back, Dustin had become Naomi's jilted lover to create a 'solid emotional throughline', and he'd renounced the Nazi ideology in order to be able to languish in the proverbial left-wing closet of his alt-right household. Suffering breeds hitherto undiscovered acting talent?

I didn't care about the details. Mostly I'd been worried that Harley would get impatient and kick things off without me, but I figured that as long as no track team members saw a preview, everything should be go off without a hitch.

The problem was that he'd taken some decorative liberties at the site.

"No," I said. "No. No. You can't advertise it, Harley, you dipstick. I need it to look real."

"It does look real," he said. "Well, verisimilar."

"What part of this—" I gestured at the freshly glitter-painted signboards announcing the debut of two local stars in this exciting new psychological thriller. "—looks real? What does this mean, 'you'll laugh, you'll cry'? No one is supposed to laugh or cry!"

"There is always some artifice in theatre," he said with a dismissive flourish. "It's part of the experience."

"Well, there's too much of it! I'm trying to lure out a hero. If they see it's just some avant-garde crap and not a real mugging, they won't intervene."

"Intervene?" Harley asked, galled. "No one is intervening in anything until intermission. I have already disseminated flyers."

I was sunk. The track team would be here in twenty minutes, the cape among them, and I had no ready way of drawing out whoever it was unless they were really, really enthusiastic about crime dramas—to the point that they would jump on set for an autograph.

Then, like a crossbolt from the blue, it hit me.

During the play, while the whole track team was watching, I had to commit a real crime in the audience.

Muggings happen at all hours. But sometimes, all of them happen in one.

To be continued...