March 25th, 2987

Weather: Too damn bright Mood: Anxious Music: Shuishan Yui - Drunken Madness

So I took the "Lee." That's L.E.E. - "Lyceum Entrance Exam" day before yesterday. Then I went through "orientation," which was mostly touring the campus again, except this time the guide was a testosterone-addled moron in a black- and yellow-striped suit with runes on the pocket and a woman in an ugly yellow dress, and there were a bunch of teenagers taking the tour.

It was fucking boring. Something interesting did happen the day before the test, though.

I was chilling in the guest room. I felt like I should be getting ready, but everyone told me not to sweat it, so I wasn't sweating it. I'm good at not sweating it.

Okay, so after I wrote that line, I stopped to think about it, and maybe I'm not that good at it. But I damn well look like I'm not sweating it, anyways.

I couldn't have gotten ready if I wanted to. They told me the test was about seeing if you're an intelligent, logically-thinking adult. There's no faking that, they said, so don't sweat it. It was a constant refrain, really. The Grand Master told me not to sweat it. Foxham told me not to sweat it. I'm sure the green guy would tell me the same thing, in some totally radical way.

But that night, around eight-o-clock, there came a knock at the door, and before I could get it, Simon walked in, with snow in his hair. It was piled up inside his crown, freezing into ice wherever it touched skin, and falling on the floor whenever he moved. He had an almost-lucid look in his eye.

"Simon! What are you doing here?"

"Marce... Marceli..." he stammered. "Marcy!" I was almost startled by it. He hadn't called me Marcy in hundreds of years.

"Marcy, I wanted to tell you that I'm so proud of you!"

It was hard, but I took his hand. It was ice cold, a twisted, mummified claw that somehow still looked like the hand I held as a small child, when my mother was dead and my real father had fucked off to take over grandpa's empire.

"I... I knew you would be, Simon. You're..."-I gulped-"you're, like, part of the reason I'm here."

"Marcy, I'm not going to stay this way very long. There's something called thorazine, an ancient medicine, and too much of it could kill me, but I wanted to come see you off to college. I made him... the other me, I made him find some and take it. The effort itself nearly killed me, but I have another hour at least, enough to see you and then get safely away before I go mad again."

"Simon, you shouldn't have hurt yourself for me!"

"I want to give you three things before I leave," he said, and opened a little brown paper bag he had with him. He pulled out a men's dress watch with a brown leather band.

"You're about to take the ACT, more or less, so you need a watch," he said, and handed it to me. "That'll help you pace yourself, so you know when to slow down and when to hurry. Also, I bet it'll look nice on you."

I put it on. It did look nice. It had a little hair-line crack in the face, but it seemed to run well.

"It'll help you get to class on time too! And you really need some Number Two pencils, but I couldn't find any. These are the best pencils you can buy in Wizard City." He pulled out a bundle of fifteen or twenty wood pencils tied with twine, handed them to me, and then crumpled up the bag.

"Simon," I said. "You really didn't have to go to all this trouble! This watch looks expensive. It's a working pre-war Timex. These go for thousands!"

"Marcy, I've never had a daughter, but..."

Before I could stop myself I said "Don't, Simon, you'll just make us both cry!"

"...never mind, Marcy. I did have a daughter, and she's making me very proud."

We both teared up, thinking of the old days. I think we both nearly bawled.

"Go on, get a doctorate and make your old man proud," he said a minute later, laughing through the tears. "Oh, and the third thing. The third gift! I can't remember what it was..."

"There was nothing else in the bag," I said.

"Oh, I remember! It's a piece of advice. About the ACT or LET or whatever Charlie calls it-"

"-you know Charlie?"

"Oh, of course! Charlie's the one who told me you were here. I taught him a thousand years ago. It's a long story, and maybe next time I come to my senses I'll tell you. Anyways, the test! The only advice I can give you that always works is: 'don't sweat it.'"

"Oh, you silly old man, everyone says that!" I said, and gave him a hug. I only regretted it a little when I felt his entire skeleton through his clothing.

We talked for five more minutes, and then he told me that he had to go, because he didn't want me to see him come down off the medicine.

Before he left he got very serious. "If I never make it out of my mind again, will you do something for me?"

"Of course, but don't say that!" I said. I choked up again.

"Remember me as I was, as I wanted to be!" he said, and he left.

I sat on the bed and cried for longer than a grown vampire should. But I didn't sweat it so much after that.

The test was, honestly, nothing to sweat. We all sat in a classroom, where Doctor Foxham watched us to make sure we didn't cheat. There were a couple sheets of paper with questions, and a sheet where you filled in little circles with a pencil to represent your answers.

The funny thing was that Foxham had to keep reciting the same thing before each part of the test. He had it memorized by sheer repetition, I think.

"Turn to section (such and such). Do not begin until I signal. Do not look at or mark on other sections of the test at this time. Do not look at other students. Students who violate the rules will not be graded. Begin."

The second or third time, I looked up at him right after he'd finished saying it. He gave a sad little smile and nodded his head as if to say "I know, right."

There were five sections. Section one was math. I did the first five questions, but then they started throwing letters instead of numbers into the problems, so I skipped them. Section two was rearranging paragraphs. No, literally, rearranging paragraphs. The part where he calls her "your ladyship" is obviously after the part where he learns she's the Duchess. This was the easy part, I guess, the filler part, but I looked around the room discreetly from time to time and a lot of people looked panicked when we got to this part.

Then there was the "common sense" section, only they called it "logic." See, this is actually relevant to college, unlike the paragraph thing. The whole test could have been this. It started simple. "Fire is to water as X is to death." X is obviously "life." Alright, any child knows that. And then there were the trick questions. If I catch five fish and three asphyxiate in the air, how many do I have left? Five. But it made me stop and think. Then some were just mean. They'd show me a clock with no numbers and ask me what time the hands were showing. Took me ages to figure it out, and I had to use that watch from Simon. Foxham grinned when he saw me turning my arm at strange angles.

God, I love Simon.

So I only did alright on that section. Then there was a section where I basically had to read some dumb little stories and answer basic questions about them. I did great on that part. Then there were questions about science, which I also had to skip heavily.

But I see what they meant now about the test "separating the adults from the children." It's about common sense, not maturity. I guess I also see why Foxham thought it was hard "in a good way." "Sheer plod," he said several times, "makes plough-down sillion shine." I have no idea what a sillion is, but I get the point. You have to work hard to make things shiny. I get it. I can work hard, I guess.

Well, then Leaf came to town the same evening and told me she was going to give me the "inside scoop" on college. Like, to her, college was about drinking and having sex. I do both of those just fine, probably more than she ever has, so there has to be more to it than just that, but I sat in the little rooftop café and listened.

Ima tellda damn truth, diary, I kinda felt like I owed her for whatever things I might have done that night I can't really remember, when we both got high and ended up in bed. I sure as fupp owed her for shouting at her when she was on top of me. So I listened.

I also tried to convince her to lay off Smartie Juice, whatever that is. Me, crowned queen of addicts (literally, I think the root-word of "vampire" is like, the Norwegian word for "deadhead fucking junkie" or something), trying to talk a casual user off of the stuff! But I felt like I had to be a good friend. Is that even being a good friend, if you think you have to?

Then she told me about all the secret ways to sneak in and out of the dorms. She took my hand and drew a little imaginary map using the lines of my palm as guides. It was a nice touch.

"One last thing," she said, as she was about to jump across the street to the next roof-top, "I have a piece of advice that's not about girls or guys or beer, believe it or not."

"'Don't sweat it?'" I asked.

"I was going to say 'join the Knights.' You fight, right? They pay you."

She left, and I sat there in thought for a while. Like, so long that the artificial blood I'd bought from Ron James had gotten all cold and clotty by the time I actually went to drink it.

I thought about the Knights of the Lyceum. Now, I've been in six armies, broken lines of battle with my own axe while mounted on a demon horse and been everything from a private to a famous warlord. Girl's got to get paid, and armor makes great sun protection, so it's only natural I would have tried soldiering. I don't necessarily love it, but I love blood, I can regrow limbs and I'm good at fighting, so for about two centuries, mercenary work was my go-to job whenever I would run out of money.

If I joined the Knights while I was in college, I could have lots of spending money, be popular, and just generally, like, have my cake and eat it too. And if it wasn't what I consider a good unit, I could whip it into shape in no time. I make a good drill sergeant. It's the fact that most soldiers are men, y'know? There are threats that are just ridiculously fucking effective, and you never have to follow up.

But was that the point? Would I be learning if I was spending all my time soldiering? More importantly, would I get more mature from the experience if I spent all my time doing the same old thing from when I was younger?

I don't know. I don't know if I'll join up or even if I'll be eligible, but it's something I need to look into.

Oh, before I go, diary, I got my test results back this morning. I got a "23 and a half." They said it like it was good. It gets me in, at any rate.

[Author's note: Sorry for a slow installment. I'm just plotting this part out as I go. The next chapter will have fighting and start to get into the real plot.]