Author's Note: Woot, an update! Enjoy it, and I'll be back next week (or so).
Chapter Two
Somewhere in
Eden, Ursula Olsen woke in the dark. Through the slats on the window shades, red-gold beams of sunlight slipped, slanting shadowy bars over the bed. It was like waking in a cell.
For a moment, she simple lay there, shuddering, while the dream faded. Then, in a lazy voice that tasted like fear, she murmured, "Time."
Numbers, brilliantly green, hovered before her eyes, and she squinted into the darkness. 7:45. This was not good.
With a groan rising deep in her throat, she staggered out of bed, the overhead lights flickering on automatically to thirty-percent. Blind with lethargy, she stumbled over her vintage acoustic guitar and knocked over a cup of unsweetened pomegranate juice that had been sitting in her room untouched for two days. The juice spilled all over a raggedy pair of cutoff shorts that had been laid out neatly on the floor—the very ones she'd planned on wearing that day.
"Dammit," she hissed, and kicked the messed shorts under her bed before hurrying to her closet. At random, she yanked out a pair of army-green cargo pants and a ribbed camisole, reminding herself that she needed to get rid of that guitar. First, because it was ridiculously old and was missing four strings, and, second, because, because she had no idea how to play.
Ursula ran to the bathroom, hopping into a pair of white sneakers on the way. The petite teen had to stand on her tiptoes in order to peek into the mirror that was hung over the sink. She winced once at her reflection: her whisky-colored eyes were sunken and red from lack of decent sleep and were prominent in her colorless face. Her brilliantly purple hair with peroxide-blonde streaks was horribly tousled. Ursula changed her streaks' color often, and had been hoping to re-dye it today. But there was no time to do anything about that now.
It was her first week of high school and Ursula had already gotten two warnings for being late, and one more would get her at least a week of detention. She had also gotten warnings for not doing her homework, for her attitude and for listening to music during class, but those were other, smaller stories.
Ursula dashed out of her apartment, which was situated above the garage of her uncle's house, and hurried down the back staircase. It was a conveniently private entrance that only Ursula used, making it very easy to sneak in and out of the house when she needed to.
VAROOM…OOM…SPUTTER…SPUTTER…SPUT. Great, she thought sarcastically as she tried to rev the motor on her electric-powered scooter back to life. Ursula had forgotten to charge the battery the night before, and now it barely had enough juice to get moving.
She gave it another try, and it weakly whined to life. She hopped on immediately and took off, pulling from the alley behind the garage onto Second Street.
Second was noisy and crowded a party that rowdy guests never left. Street, pedestrian, and sky traffic were miserable, choking the air with pungent bodies and vehicles. When she'd first move to Eden, Ursula remembered it as a hot spot for wrecks and crushed tourists who were busy gaping at the show to get out of the way.
Steam was raising from the stationary and portable food stands that dotted the street, offering everything from rice noodles to soy dogs for the swarming crowds. She had to swerve to dodge a man who smelled considerably worse than his illegal bottle of homebrew, and took his flipped middle finger as a matter of course.
After clever maneuvering and considerable shortcuts, Ursula pulled up to her school on ReGale Drive.
Franklin Tech was an old school, old and big. It sat right in the middle of Eden, a grubby pile of bricks that sat staunchly amongst skyscrapers of gleaming metal that knifed into the sky from hilts of concrete. The grass was green, at least, but it was littered with soda tubes and empty birth control packages.
The school was public, and although Ursula's few friends from junior high had gone off to private school, she chose not to. Private schools had more rules than public schools, and Ursula didn't want any more of those.
She approached the school's back door and hopped off her scooter. In one smooth motion, she grabbed the scooter's handle and flipped it into one easy-to-carry unit. It was a practiced move, and she did it without breaking stride.
After scanning her thumbprint into the doorjamb, she crept quietly inside the building, but it was already too late. Thanks to the new attendance scanners implemented by the school board, roll call could be taken digitally, and the classic ruse of sneaking passed the teacher would never work again.
Resigned, she shoved open the classroom door.
"Well, well, well," Ms. Kowalski said to Ursula the second she appeared. "If it isn't Rainbow Head." She cackled a self-satisfied laugh that revealed sharp, metal teeth. Ursula wanted to point out that a rainbow had seven colors and that her hair only had two, but she figured she was in enough trouble already.
"That makes three tardies in one week," Ms. Kowalski snorted and made a note on her disciplinary tablet with a silver stylus. "That means you'll be joining me after school today and getting a note to take home to your parents. Won't they be proud?"
Ursula frowned. She wondered what Ms. Kowalski would say if she told her how her parents had died in a car crash when she was seven, how she now lived with her uncle, a guy she really wasn't all that close to. The bitch would feel pretty bad, wouldn't she?
But again, Ursula said nothing. What was the point?
Ursula just flounced to her seat in the back of the room. After plugging her thumb into the desk scanner, she propped her chin in her hands and tried to think about something—anything—other than chemistry class.
"Good morning, dudes and dudettes!" the chipper voice of Dr. Florence Radmin shouted, flooding the speakers of every classroom in the school. "WAZZUP?!?" It was the fifth time the students of Franklin Tech had been subjected to Principal Radmin's morning announcements, and they were steadily getting worse.
"Auditions for this fall's school play will be held today in the auditorium during ninth period. It'll be totally frosty. So don't be lame! Come try out!"
In the school's front office, not far from the office of Dr. Radmin—or "Dr. Rad" as she told the students to call her—freshman David Kent filled out a data tablet. It was something David was getting good at. Franklin Tech was his fifth school in three years, and every time he arrived at a new one, he got yet another tablet to fill out. "What are your favorite classes? What sports do you play? What level of math have you completed?" The only thing that ever changed was the name of the school.
But these forms were different. They were for his new job—his first job. It was only a part-time position in the school office, but still, David saw it as a chance at responsibility, not to mention some extra cash.
Not that David really lacked in either. David stayed out of trouble, and his parents had good jobs. His mother had something to do with interior design, and his dad worked in marketing…or sales…or sales marketing…or something. Come to think of it, David's parents didn't really talk all that much about their own lives.
David's grip tightened around the stylus and he swallowed a lump in his throat. David got along just fine with his parents; it was relating to kids his own age that was his problem. Every time he would make a friend, his dad's job would end up moving him and the rest of the family, and David would have to say goodbye. Eventually, he just stopped trying. Pretty blue eyes the same clear color as the sky began to darken with raw emotion.
But maybe it would be different at Franklin Tech. Maybe David's family would stay in Eden for a while. And maybe, just maybe, David might meet some other students he could call—Oww!
David managed to not say it aloud, though he thought it loudly enough. He looked over at the rude girl who had just knocked into him as she breezed by. David said nothing. Not because he was being polite, but because he was terrified of her!
Dressed in a black cocktail dress and a black flannel shirt, the girl looked like she might kill him if he even dared to open his mouth. After gracing him with a poisonous look, she stomped her steel-toed combat boots down the office hallway, her oversize arm bag bouncing jovially on her back. David sighed. Maybe he should just stick to the paperwork. It was one thing he understood.
The Lyric, a modest movie theater located in the deepest bowels of Eden. Her mother first took her there when she was two or three years old. It was her first brush with true magic, and it was when she'd first found out that magic tasted of buttered popcorn and excitement.
This was years before she'd been able to comprehend even the rudiments of the movie story, yet she was enthralled by the movements, the ceaseless rippling of fluid movement, on the great screen above her. How many times in her lost childhood she could return with yearning to this movie, recognizing it at once despite the variety of its titles, its many actors, its many colors and sounds. For always there was the Fair Princess.
Always, Raven Rodriguez could see the Princess for what she was. Daft and adorably delightful, with a bounce in her step and a sparkle in her smile that didn't quite leap into her monstrous blue eyes—and of course they were blue. Eyes as deep and blue as the sea, and hair like spun gold. But never, never did the Princess have black eyes and hair, nut-brown skin and a bulbous belly. Never, never.
Yet, even as she entered high school, she continued to seek out the movie. Slipping into theaters in obscure districts of the city, maneuvering around her mother with almost beautiful lies and manipulations. When insomnia struck, she'd sneak out of the apartment of a bodega and secure a ticket for a midnight show. She'd skip gym class and grab a bus for the theater, always back in time for the school's final dismissal. She wasn't fleeing her own life (though her life had grown baffling to her as teenage life does to those who live it) but instead easing into a parenthesis within that life, stopping time as a child might arrest the movement of a clock's hands: by brute force. The costumes of the actors, the hair styles, even the faces and voices of the movie people changed with the years, and she can remember, not clearly but in fuzzy fragments, her mown lost emotions, the loneliness of her childhood only partly assuaged by the looming screen.
She'd fallen in love with the color black, simply because she'd worn it so much as a kid. Aunt Isabella had an aneurysm, you say? And on the black would come, a comfort amongst the tears and memories of a boisterous young woman with light in her eyes. Perrito was hit by the ice cream truck, you say! And there she would be, cloaked in black, standing at the edge of her little dog's grave. Papa is gone, you say? He went out for a pack of Marlboros and never, never came back? And the black stayed, a shield from the harsh realities of the real world, a chain that held her securely to the happily-ever-after of moving pictures.
Raven shifted slightly on the hard wooden seat inside of the guidance counselor's office and frowned. They must she was crazy. Those People always did.
She must have said this thought aloud, for Miss Simmons, the counselor, made a funny a look and said, "I don't think you're crazy, Raven."
Raven's black-smeared lips pursed in blatant disbelief. Everyone thought she was crazy. Except maybe Raven's mom. But then again, Raven's mom was kind of crazy herself.
"According to your junior high records," Ms. Simmons continued, after studying her comp screen for a long moment, "you've managed to maintain pretty good grades, although…"
Here it comes, thought Raven thought, and glared at the filth caked beneath her talon-like fingernails.
"It wouldn't hurt you to apply yourself a little bit more."
If Raven had a credit for every time someone told her this, she could buy that new portable personal comp unit she was saving up for.
"Look," Ms. Simmons said, taking off her silver-rimmed spectacles, "high school isn't just about studying. It's about finding your place. It's about getting involved."
Raven didn't like the sound of that, and gnawed on her lip to keep from saying so aloud.
"You're not like other girls, Raven, I realize this," Ms. Simmons continued, unaware of the panic she'd caused. "But not all school activities are made for people who blend in; some are made specifically for people stand out. You know, the school play is holding auditions today."
"Yes, I heard," Raven said. Her voice was cold and polite, almost eerily so.
"Maybe you should check it out. Maybe it would give you a chance to show off a side of yourself that no one has seen before."
Raven blinked once, then twice. Silence stretched.
Finally: "All right. Perhaps."
