Worm: She's Dead, Jim Part Eight

DISCLAIMER: Worm, Parahumans, and the characters and settings of Earth Bet (and other places) were created by John "Wildbow" McCrae. I don't own them. This story was written for my own amusement, not for profit. If you are enjoying it, please write and post a review.

ADVISORY: Foul Language. The setting is in Brockton Bay.

On Monday I warily returned to school. True, Emma had had a couple of bad shocks the week before: first, Sophia being murdered, then Julia disappearing, but I wasn't counting on her leaving me alone. I'd done that last fall and that was a huge mistake. It was a lot more likely that she'd already be back on her feet and that the bullying would resume as soon as I passe the main entrance.

The morning announcements during my home room class sounded much the same, although Principal Blackwell asked for a moment of silence for a couple of boys she said had had "tragic accidents" over the weekend. I'd at Winslow long enough to know that "tragic accidents" was Blackwell-speak for someone who'd either overdosed or been murdered over the weekend. She gave a couple of names. I remembered seeing one of them: an East Asian improbably named Robert Lee: buff, tough, but surprisingly polite to non-gang members for someone from the ABB. His reputation had been such that a couple of people had called him "Cavalier" behind his back and out of earshot. The good die young here at Winslow. Damn.

The PA system came on again during my first class: "Would Emma Barnes please report to the Principal's Office?" In spite of the presence of a couple of Emma's coterie, I allowed myself a brief grin. Oh, dear, Emmie, you are in trouble, I thought.

The morning went on much like those mornings late last semester when I'd allowed myself to think that the bullying was finally over and that if Emma and I couldn't be friends again, she'd leave me along. I still had to watch out for the gang members: the Empire gangers were still feeling cocky since the Snake Skull guy had taken out so many ABB guys while the ABB gangers were still on edge wondering whether the Empire or the Merchants would try anything or it Snake Skull guy had any friends headed this way.

One of Emma's coterie tried to hassle me in the girl's room while one of the female ABB members was in there. She started spouting off and then to my surprise, the ABB girl hauled off and slapped her and told her that she was making too much noise and that she should shut up. Emma's fan-girl left the bathroom in tears, leaving me alone with the ABB girl.

I tensed up. I hoped that I wasn't next.

She looked me in the eye. I decided that if she was going to escalate, I wouldn't cringe like I'd done with Sophia.

"Should I say Arigato?" I said.

"Heh," she replied. "Wouldn't work. My family's Thai."

She continued to stare at me. It made me uncomfortable. I stood there waiting to see how the coin would fall.

"You know, it's a shame you're a round-eye," she said. "If you were Asian, I'd say you had potential, even if you do that mouse act."

My God, I was being complimented by someone from the ABB. "Thank you," I replied.

"Don't mention it," she replied deadpan.

-XXX—XXX—XXX-

At lunch, I decided to risk going to the cafeteria. I expected trouble but I didn't see Emma anywhere. I did see a couple of her coterie. They weren't acting like the queens of the hallways anymore. In fact, a couple of them looked like they'd had problems of their own. If their other victims hadn't turned on them, they showed signs that their victims' sisters and cousins had let them know that things had changed at Winslow. A couple of them gave me hateful glares, the others kept to themselves.

I wondered why, then mentally kicked myself. Hebert, you're an idiot, I thought. Use your bugs!

I found a couple of small bugs that had survived the Winslow staff's latest half-hearted efforts at exterminating them, then sent them on their rounds. The babble of different voices was difficult to decipher and then I got a winner: a couple of girls said that they'd seen Emma leaving a conference room in the company of a plainclothes PRT agent and what one of them said was a pair of Brockton Bay city cop. Perhaps this day might turn out OK after all.

I managed to get into the computer lab and logged onto PHO. No way to tell if the rumor about Emma was true or not: Emma was a juvenile and there probably hadn't been enough time for the facts to filter onto the PHO's message boards. The big news was about the Snake-Skull Guy and his fight with the ABB. The Snake-Skull Guy was still dead. The PRT was still trying to identify him and determine where he had come from. Lung had released a bombastic statement saying that despite its losses, the ABB had shown that it was willing to defend its territory and that if the Snake-Skull Guy had any friends interested in setting up in Brocton Bay, they could expect similar treatment.

A thought came to me: Could the Snake-Skull Guy have come from some other dimension? There were other dimensions, after all. Everybody knew about Earth Aleph, there was another Earth called Earth Gamma where humans had all died out, and most people thought that there had to be others. Were there other places where humans had powers?

After looking over some of the other discussions on PHO, I decided to look at my emails. I saw that I was still getting hate-mail, although the volume had decreased. I still hated looking at them and I thought about deleting them but I'd remembered the old cartoon showing the guy seated on the toilet captioned "The job isn't finished until the paperwork is done." I decided to save them: I might get a reason to turn them over to the PRT. If that happened, some of the senders were likely to have an unhappy time.

The rest of the afternoon was relatively quiet—at least for me. A couple of guys from the Empire and the ABB started a shouting match but backed off before they got physical. One of the lesser members of Emma's clique came out of a classroom with a frown and a stain on her pullover. I'd noted that some of the lesser clique members had been bullying some of Emma's and Sophia's other targets: might the targets had realized that the winds had changed? That would be entertaining.

I went to my first afternoon class after I left the lab. Emma wasn't there, making me think that maybe the PRT and the cops did take her away. If so, I wondered how she was handling her interrogation. Madison was the only remaining member of the circle: she looked rattled and alone. That didn't stop me from glancing at her, then grinning. See how it feel, bitch.

PE was my last class of the day. Again, it was relatively calm. Taking Sophia, Emma, and Julia out of the equation took the heart of the tormentors: I suppose somebody would have tried copying Sophia's shit if Emma had been there, but Marcie wasn't as physical as either Sophia or Julia had been and Madison was showing herself to be a follower, not a leader. It was just gym.

After showering I took the bus home. The phone rang while I was getting ready to cook dinner.

I picked it up and to my surprise it was Mrs. Barnes.

Author's Notes:

Some readers are doubtlessly wondering why so little happened in this chapter. I would remind my readers that except for the Death Eater this story is written from Taylor Hebert's viewpoint. We see or hear only what Taylor Hebert (or her bugs) see and hear although we do get to hear her thoughts. There's a lot happening right now, it's just that Taylor isn't seeing or hearing it.

This story is very much influenced by TheVampireStrahd's "What If Emma's Mom Found Out About The Bullying?" a short story published elsewhere. The major differences are that Strahd's story is set months before the Locker Incident while my story is set a couple of weeks after Taylor got home from the hospital and that Sophia/Shadow Stalker is dead. There was no prompting by Alan Barnes to investigate Sophia Hess; instead the PRT already has their people investigating the last days of Sophia Hess to see what they could find linking Sophia Hess to her killer.

My belief is that the PRT's investigators are going through Sophia's telephone and computer files and that they aren't liking what they're finding: months of Sophia bullying Taylor and other Winslow students without either the PRT or the Winslow High School Principal's Office doing so much as lifting a finger to stop it.

Just as Strahd supposed in his story, I believe that such bullying had to have been accompanied not only by official indifference on the part of the PRT personnel supervising Sophia Hess as well as on the part of Winslow High School's Principal's Office, but also by financial corruption. I can't help but imagine that the PRT would appropriate some money to make attending Winslow safer for its wards and that Director Piggot would get very upset about the money disappearing. Sophia's handler was not only not doing his/her job, he/she was also embezzling money from the PRT, and worse, embarrassing the PRT. Director Piggot is going to want scapegoats and severed heads.

Emma is not immune from Director Piggot's displeasure. While Emma is admittedly a juvenile, Sophia's and Emma's text and e-mail messages are showing that she was very much aware of Sophia's behavior, that she applauded it, and that she participated in some of it. Unlike the contents of Taylor's notebooks, Sophia's computer files are now in the hands of the PRT and are admissible as evidence in a criminal court. Sophia, being dead, no longer has a right to privacy. Even if Director Piggot might want to keep the brewing scandal of Winslow High quiet, that doesn't mean that she'll leave Emma Barnes unscathed.

Some people are very upset that I brought over a Harry Potter Death Eater instead of using some indigenous Earth Bet hazard to effect Sophia's demise. Maybe this would have been a better story had I done so, maybe it wouldn't. In any case, I'm the writer and it's my story. If they don't like it, they can write their own story.