Summary: The pixies are checking out the Learn-A-Torium before they begin the final phase of their plan, and Betty is stressing out.

Characters: Gary, Betty, assorted pixies, Longwood, Sanderson

Rating: K+

Prerequisites: None

Posted: July 29, 2016

6. Out of Character ("School's Out! - The Musical")

Friday June 14th, 2002

Year of Leaves; Spring of the Last Berry

"What the…?" Gary lay a palm across his mouth and started sprinting up the sidewalk. As he did so, he grabbed for the keychain that always dangled from his belt. It had the most adorable frog-shaped laser pointer/flashlight combination on it. After he fumbled for the giant golden key that opened the Learn-A-Torium's front door, he realized it hadn't been locked at all. He pointed the frog into the blackness beyond.

Ribbit ribbit. Ribbit ribbit.

"Hello? Betty? Flappy?" His left hand edged along the wall in search of the switches. "It's, um, it's five-thirty. Well past time to get the morning started. As we all know, we have a big, huge, collassarific day now that summer's starting up again! W-why were all the windows dark? Wasn't Betty supposed to be on opening duty?"

There were no noises. Even when he'd managed to send the lights flickering on one by one up the hallway, Gary hugged his frog near his left cheek and swallowed.

"The d-door was unlocked. Did we forget to close up yesterday?"

He rotated his eyes to the left, then the right. Someone had obviously been in here since they'd all left. A mop lay out in the middle of the floor. An emergency fairy-catching net with a broken handle lay beside it. So did the vacuum and two of those plumed feather dusters on really long sticks for reaching the high corners of the ceiling and across the ball pit. After replacing the frog and keys on his belt, Gary picked all of them up and made his cautious way towards the supply closet. Was Rosencrantz's alligator back for vengeance?

The door to the closet was shut. He moved behind it so he'd have at least momentary protection should somebody jump out at him. Placing his ear to the wood, he listened.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Adjusting his grip on the cleaning supplies, using the vacuum to shield the front of his body, Gary turned the handle. It was stiff. That meant he had to draw the little key from his belt, and after some hesitation, he lowered the mop so he could do so. It clicked in the lock. Stepping behind it, he eased the door open. Not that it helped- something small slammed into the wood, hit the wall, and rebounded onto his blue graduation cap as he peered around the door's edge.

"Sacred smoof-" Dropping a feather duster, he clamped the net down on his head as the thing bounced off and skidded across the front desk.

"Whoa, whoa! No one said you were going to have a net!"

Gary had already plastered himself to the wall and crossed his arms in front of the face. "Take me if you really have to," he shouted, "but do so safely and painlessly!" Then, when he processed the words, he realized he recognized the voice. Gary lowered his hands and sized up the creature on the desk in front of him.

"Um. Is that you, Mr. Bayard?"

The tall pixie (comparatively tall- Gary still wanted to squeeze him like a stuffed animal) made 'Easy, easy there, stranger' motions with his hands. "Put down the net, Gary. It's okay. There's no need for that. Let's all calm down. Lotus position. Ohm…"

Gary let his net clatter to the floor. As he slid the vacuum into the closet, he protested, "What are you doing here? No warning or anything? What if I'd been Flappy? Or Betty? You could've sent her into anxiety. You could've given her a heart attack."

Mr. Bayard wiped a pretend tear from beneath his shades. "What am I doing here? I am messing with you after totally not getting shoved into a locked closet without my starpiece. Eh, the others are further inside this joint checking to be sure all the preparations are in place. You pretty much said it yourself: today's the big day."

"Today?" Gary tried to think back to what he remembered about his end of the plan. "That's the day Betty and I put up advertisements all over the city and Flappy talks with the mayor? Ooh, by any chance, does that mean you brought the…"

Mr. Bayard picked up a familiar bright purple briefcase from behind the desk. When he opened it, a miniature version of Camp Learn-A-Torium, complete with a picket fence made out of super sharp Number 2 pencils, sprang out like a pop-up book. Beyond it, in the top lid, the case was deep violet. Impossibly deep. Gary kept his smile pasted over his cheeks, even as his right eye twitched at one corner.

"Well, isn't that wonderful? I'm so glad you remembered how much I love… travelling… inside the bottomless case when Flappy goes around doing his presentations. If you'll excuse me, I've got to get to the break room and take my claustrophobia pills."

"Hey, before you go anywhere, you've got to see the flyers I made you. I'm in marketing." Mr. Bayard reached inside the briefcase again and pulled one of the papers out. After stuffing it in Gary's hand, he flew around to his shoulder so he could see. "Look, it's yellow because yellow is the color of magic that can only be undone by the caster and lasts after their death, so it's satirical, because we're pretending that this time the thirty-seven-year plan is going to last forever."

"Yes, I… I got that part on my own."

"And it has a clown face on it. You know, because Flappy Bob still likes to dress up and pretend to be a clown. Clowns are nice. Kids love clowns. There's no one they trust more than a clown. That's why there's a clown on it. Look, look, I have a blue flyer too because blue is the 'irritation' color of magic and by this time next week, everyone is going to hate you guys. I'm hilarious. And, I brought you a really dumb clown hat that Tindall made." So saying, Mr. Bayard whipped the creepy hat out from behind his back and slammed it down on Gary's head. The cap was shaped like Flappy Bob's make-up-splashed face. Its brim (Flappy's clowny pink lips) was too short. Possibly because pixies wouldn't find it necessary to use the brim to block the light when they already wore shades everywhere they went. The fabric felt more like cardboard.

"Haha, thanks. You're a regular hoot, Mr. Bayard. Oh, and you have one for Betty too. Um, look at that. Yay. Ooh." He rubbed behind his neck as he stared down at the papers. "See, I hate to be a bother-wother about these, sir, but it's 'Learnatorium', actually. Without dashes. The 'A' isn't separate."

Mr. Bayard took the two flyers back. "Really? It says 'Learn-A-Torium' out there on your sign."

That made Gary bring his hands together so the thumbs touched and his other six fingers tilted forward and slightly down. "Yeeeesss, but stuff like 'planetarium', 'auditorium', and 'aquarium' is one word. Separating the 'A' in 'Smack-A-Mole' with dashes makes sense. Separating the 'A' in 'Learn-A-Torium' with dashes like it's a word of its own doesn't. You don't 'learn a torium' any more than a Yugopotamian would 'fake a fier.' They're not verbs. Betty and I just really like 'Learnatorium' much better, and if we were in charge, and if we could reach the outside sign with our ladder like we can reach the inside sign, that's what it would say. See?"

"I was told it's in chunks so it's not so scary for the kids. Perfect for reading."

"On paper, its official title is 'Camp Learnatorium' without dashes."

That got the pixie's attention. "Is it? Are you sure?"

"Positilutely."

"… Are you really, really sure?"

"Um. Prrretty sure? That's what it says on the wall of Flappy's office." Gary hoped the pixie wouldn't question who had painted it there. He crossed his fingers behind his back. "Why? Do you have the blueprints on hand?"

Mr. Bayard scratched his head. "Okay, it's one word if you say so. But all the flyers have already been run off, and there are hundreds of them, and if you think I'm fixing them then you underestimate my laziness; the lines here are hot and tangled as it is. I put them in your office, so I'd unlock it if I were you. And maybe think up an alibi if Betty asks why you wrote the word with dashes when you feel that strongly about it. Don't tell her it was me."

"Sounds great. Hey, is she here yet? Her bike was outside leaning against the wall, but the lights were off and I got worried."

"Yeah, I think she was reorganizing the toys in the Day Care room. You'd be doing us a huge favor if you could keep her in one place. We're all on edge with the thirty-seven-year plan about to unfold, and pinging away every time we hear approaching footsteps is beginning to get expensive."

"Wasn't her fault," Gary muttered under his breath.

"What was that?" the pixie asked, snapping the bottomless briefcase shut.

"Nothing, nothing!" He pointed behind off to his left as he backed away, still grinning. "This is me, skipping off in search of my totally fantastic super-platonic surrogate sister of a best friend who or whom I have healthy and acceptable feelings towards and clearly wouldn't sell my limited mundane possessions and all my allies to defend if someone I once trusted with all my heart should turn against us and destroy my entire life and happiness in the mistake of a moment just because we're only two little humans who mean absolutely nothing to the ultra-powerful immortal beings who have commandeered our lives since we were eight for their own selfish purposes before they plan to toss us aside like Kenny when their plan for multi-planed quarter-universal domination inevitably fails by next week! Toodles!" To himself, "'It's not so scary for the kids', my crown. Figurative crown."

As he trotted off down the hall, a crumpled ball of yellow paper bounced off the back of his head and landed in his hand. "I'm sick of always hearing about you and your problems during business hours, Cabrera. There are people who have it worse off than you. Come and talk to me once you've grown up with an addiction for attention after you lose your mother and your house and even your whole neighborhood, and your dad and beloved big brother get abducted by stork people for five hundred years, and you're stuck out in the middle of nowhere with no friends and four insufferable siblings who can't ever agree on the most pointless details, and you can't run away because there's no food for cloudlengths, and the only one who's really there for you is a drunk old man who pays more attention to a stack of bricks than he does to you anyway."

Mr. Longwood slammed a bunch of papers against the wall just in front of Gary and whipped off his shades. "Are you being insubordinate towards the boss again, Bayard? I can and will get you pink-slipped for this."

Mr. Bayard wiggled his fingers. "Ooh, please don't fire me, Woody. I'd hate to be disowned on paper as well as in my head and forced to live with the eel-worshipping amazon babes and explore their jungle's gingerbread caves for the rest of my life."

"Bayard, I will someday find a punishment you don't shrug off!" Mr. Longwood snapped his head around when Gary attempted to slide down the wall past him. The boy froze as the pixie tipped his shades downward. "Look, Cabrera. What happened to Betty on the day of the alligator attack was fully deserved and will not be apologized for. You're already on our red list for that little stunt you tried to pull with Sanderson's starpiece. I don't care about the Finder's Keepers Law or how much magic is boiling under the pre-instar skins of your species: If I had your wings, I'd be thanking my dust flecks that what H.P. had me do to her, I didn't do to you. Your, um… your metaphorical wings. And if you still want to push the blackmail envelope, then I bid you good luck finding another job when magical beings and a soon-to-be-citywide-despised clown are your only references. I'm sure that Kenny would be delighted to have the pleasure of your company in that little business way up there in the sky. Get the picture?"

"Y-yes, Mr. Longwood. I'm so, so sorry, Mr. Longwood. I won't badmouth you guys again."

Mr. Longwood straightened Gary's blue graduation cap, then looked him up and down. "See that you show it," he decided, and turned away. His hands and papers went behind his back as he skimmed forward. "Now, Bayard, about me being insufferable when I was one thousand five hundred, I'll have you know-"

Sighing with a flap of his lips, Gary stuffed the cheery yellow flyer away in his pocket. "How am I going to explain this? She's going to be so disappointed in me. C'mon, Gary. Think, think, think."

He passed several more pixies in the hallway, none of whom greeted him but several of whom seemed to glare inexpressively from behind their shades. Most held clipboards and were looking in and around and under everything. Gary did his best to suppress his shudders. It was almost like this was their workplace, and he was the uninvited one.

Well, technically…

When he finally reached the southern courtyard, Gary took another hall and pushed open the door to the Day Care room, expecting to find Betty with her arms full of alphabet blocks or naptime blankets. Betty wasn't inside. Though, that didn't mean the place was deserted.

"Mr. Sanderson?"

Mr. Sanderson whipped around. The tall mirror behind him vanished with a ping, and something made a distinctive jingling sound. "Gary!"

"What… what are you doing?"

Silence. Mr. Sanderson glanced to his left as though he expected to find the Head Pixie bobbing beside him as usual. When he did not, he turned his head to Gary again. "I'm supervising today, and it's my job to be sure everything's in order. Dimmsdale's, erm, magic lines have been tasting off for a week now. The place is soaked with constant Fairy, like drinking hot water on a stifling day. I don't know what happened here, but something did. Something gargantuan."

"You're supervising?"

"That is correct."

"You are."

"Yes."

Gary pointed behind him with a thumb. "But I passed Mr. Longwood on my way down here, and unless you got super mega-wega promoted, he's still company vice president."

Mr. Sanderson put one hand to Gary's shoulders and nudged him (read: attempted to nudge him with his cute nubbly arms) back into the hallway. The other hand patted his red hair. "You just let the grown-ups worry about that while you run along and play with Betty."

"I came in here looking for her, actually," he said, gripping the frames of the door. "Mr. Bayard thought she might have been in here earlier."

"She was. Mmph. Why are you heavy? She gave the place a quick sweep with her eyes and went on her way towards the rear of the building. I haven't seen or heard her return. Neeihh!"

Gary raised one finger. "Does your hat usually have that tiny tinkling star on the end of it like Mr. Longwood's, sir?"

"I'll see you tomorrow, Gary." He pinged off to some other area of the Learn-A-Torium. Gary, who had been relying on the pixie's limited strength to keep him from falling on his back, fell on his back. Still rubbing his injured funny bone, he picked his way along the hall in the direction Mr. Sanderson had indicated.

It didn't take very long to find her. There weren't a whole lot of rooms in the building – mostly open spaces – and Gary simply followed the trail of visible pixies round and around until he found one corner on the northeast end that they had left alone. It was the corner where their shared, cramped office was. Of course they'd left it, if she was behind only one door that could open without warning at any second (Back in the olden days, he and Betty had slammed a lot of pixies by flinging open doors). When the knob refused to turn, Gary knocked with the back of a knuckle and told her it was him.

"Gary? Oh- oh. What time is it? It's been that long? Oh- geez. Okay. Did you need something?"

"I… didn't. I've just been looking for you. It's almost six. Flappy will be here soon and we need to get ready to make today the greatest day we've had all year long! Are you psyched?"

"Right. R-right. He wants us to post advertisements all over town. Did you make flyers?"

"Yep. And they're in there." He hoped Mr. Bayard hadn't been wrong. He listened for the sound of Betty moving around to check them out, but it didn't come. The door budged slightly beneath his cheek and hand.

"Hey, you don't sound like your happy, peppy self. That seems a bit out of character-wharacter, doesn't it?"

Knowing Betty the way he did, Gary could tell by the soft scraping sound that she had rubbed the heel of her hand around the outside of her eye. "Gih. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just need another minute, and I can pull myself together after that. I'm just- just so stressed right now."

"Yeah?"

She must be doing the flapping-one-hand-at-the-eyes thing. Her favorite charm bracelet jingled and clinked. "Th-there's just a lot going on right now. I failed my physics final for spring semester, so now I have to stay after class today to make it up. But I can't leave work in the middle of the day because it's i-illegal to have that few babysitters to so many kids. And I promised Flappy I'd stay late to help you guys because of all the kids we're supposed to be getting after the ads go up, and I c-can't cancel with him. He's already made plans for us to go out there, and it wouldn't be fair to you to have to do it all by yourself. I don't want you to hate me and I can't afford to get f-fired. I don't want to do this anymore. I just want to stop existing. But I don't want to die. I just want to go home, but when I'm not here, I just want to be here so I could be with you, but I don't want to be with you because you just make me feel like an idiot, and usually I love that about you, but I'm just not f-feeling it anymore the way I used to. I-it's weird. And I can't get over this nagging feeling I've had for a month that something really, really important's m-missing from my life nowadays, and I don't know what it is. I feel like I'm going crazy. Why does it have to be this way?"

Gary rubbed his throat, not answering, then let his second hand join the first on the wood. "Betty, nobody could ever-wever hate you. Come out of there so I can hug you with my arms."

"I don't want to be hugged."

"But… but hugging releases bad toxins."

"I accept my toxins the way they are."

He set his jaw. "Elizabeth, let me give you love. There are no frowny-faces at Camp Learn-A-Torium. It's in the code of conduct."

"I would prefer not to, Garrett."

But he had a trump card she hadn't counted on. Gary reached for his belt with a jingle of metal. "I know how to cheer you up! Let's sing the 'Guess What I'm Holding' song! Oh, isn't it grand that it fits in my hand, what could it possibly-wossibly-"

"I don't care about your stupid games! Who do you think I am? I'm not two years old!"

He flinched. The doorknob rattled under his fingers as he pulled his hand away. He licked his lips.

"Okay. Right. Um. You can stay in there as long as you need to, okay Betty? If anybody comes in, I'll take care of them myself. I really don't mind at all, and you know I would never say anything bad about you to Flappy, right? If you're still there when it's lunchtime, I'll bring you some nachos from that place you like up the street. Maybe I'll catch you for reading at Circle Time later?"

"Gary, I didn't mean it like that. Gary, straighten your hat and take the tip of your pointer finger out of your mouth. I can only assume that you look r-ridiculous. Um. Er. Hey, so, wh-what was in your hand?"

"Iiiit's my special employee master key!" Brushing at his chest, Gary spun the ring around on his pointer finger. "Keys, keys, to a whole new world, what might we find in-"

"Oh, don't you even dare, Gary. Gary!" The door jerked beneath his hand. "I can hear you sticking that in the lock!"

"I'm not putting it in the lock! I told you that you could stay in there if it would make you happy, and I meant it."

"Why is everything in here made of safety?"

"Betty, I haven't touched the doorknob," he said, and she said, "Wait, I have a hard shoe!" He waited on the toes of his scuffed pink and white sneakers, listening, but she didn't speak or move for awhile. After a time, he became aware that the ends of her own fingers stuck out from beneath the door. Gary eased down to his knees and placed his hand on top of them. On any other day, Betty would have withdrawn them. As it happened, she did a startled jerk like she hadn't realized they were wedged under there, and curled her nails beneath her knuckles.

He would not say it. He would resist. He would not, he would not, he would not…

"Hey Betty do you wanna sing the 'Sunny Smile on Your Face' song with me?" he forced out, all in a single breath. One of the pixies at the far end of the hall shot him a Not today, punk type of look and zipped off.

"Normally I can't resist singing, but I'm not really in the mood for it right now."

"Oh, okay." He folded himself around so he was perched more comfortably on his crossed legs. "Do you mind if I stay here with you, on this side of the door, until Flappy shows up and the Learn-A-Torium officially-wishilly open for the day? Or, well, before we head out there to put up all the flyers? I… forgot today was the special day for that."

"I guess not… You really want to be here? Even when I'm in a mood like this?"

He smiled at his knee. "Of course I do. You're my best friend, and I love you. I'm not going to change my mind just because you're having a hard day. Everybody has rough days. Why, do you remember how I totally fell apart the afternoon of the alligator attack? You kept trying to say nice things to me and it only made me cry harder? I don't know if you feel like that right now, but it's the closest memory I have of feeling stressed and afraid for the future, so… Yeah. I want to be here for you."

Betty paused.

Betty paused for a long time.

"I love you too, Gary."

A thud in his heart. In his ears, then. "R-really? Hey, if you're feeling any better, then maybe Friday, would you like to go out with-"

"Nope."

He smiled again and nodded fast, even though she couldn't see him. "All right, cool. Very cool." He played with his frog again. Ribbit. Ribbit.

Betty shifted on the other side of the door. Her fingers drew away. Footsteps. A scooting chair. Shuffling papers. "So, did you make these flyers yourself, Gary?"

"Yeah, I spent all last weekend working on them, and I hope they're good enough."

"They're not bad. I think they're going to be fine. Only…"

His hands went up in surrender before plopping onto his crossed knees again. "I know, I know. I put the dashes in Learn-A-Torium. It just centered better that way, that's all. But do you like them other than that?"

The doorknob rattled. Gary sprang back to his feet in alarm as she pulled it inward, the stack in her hand and one hand to her waist. Betty held them out to him. And when he took them, she leaned over so her pale blonde pigtails swept into her face. The fingers of both hands wrapped around her knees, and her chuckles began to spill out into her typical, braying-donkey type of giggles.

"Aheh heh," he laughed with her, palms sweaty. "Betty? Do you… like them?"

"Well, Gary-Wary, since you ask-ed-wask-ed, I hope you realize that we've known each other for like, more than half of our whole entire big long lives, and you know you totally-wotally went and spelled my name wrong, right?"