-ooo-

Recoil

Part 1-6: Preparation

We didn't talk much in the car on the way to Winslow. Nina was apparently content to give me my space, and I had quite a bit to think about.

I was no longer a non-person, a cipher. More to the point, I was being enrolled in school all over again. This gave me a vague sense of unease, which was, if anything, exacerbated by the fact that it was Winslow that I was going to be attending. Again, but also for the first time.

Not for the first time, I reflected that time travel led to the weirdest grammatical tenses.

-ooo-

I looked around at the cityscape as Nina drove us both toward Winslow. Once more, I was struck by a sense of fractured deja vu. Some of the buildings were familiar, whereas some were out of place. The truth, of course, was that I was the one in the wrong place; or rather, in the wrong time.

Winslow itself did little to dispel the feeling as we drove up to it. It looked newer, different. Over the main doors was the name of the school itself, in large brass letters; when I had last seen these, they had been tarnished, grimy. Not unlike the school itself, I couldn't help thinking. Now, they were bright, obviously cleaned regularly.

I looked up at the name of the school as I got out of the car; it felt as though I were coming here for the first time. Which was simultaneously true and false, depending on the perspective from which one looked at it.

"Winslow High School," I murmured, reading it out loud. I turned to Nina. "So, is it really that great?"

She shrugged. "I haven't been to school in years, but I'm told it's one of the best. They apparently started computer studies courses a couple of years ago; Grantley still doesn't even have computers, from what I hear."

"Good to hear," I replied. "I'll be glad to learn whatever they've got to teach me about computers."

Nina's voice was dry. "From what I understand, you don't have much to learn in that regard."

"There's always more to learn. Even when you think you know everything."

Nina shot me a look.

I looked back at her. "What?"

"It never fails," she observed, apparently more to herself than to me. "Every time I start thinking you're just another normal teenage girl, you go and say or do something totally out of left field."

"I don't get it," I confessed. Inside, I was considerably unsettled. Did I say or do something that tipped her off?

"Taylor." Her tone was patient. "The number of teenagers who don't believe that they know everything worth knowing is vanishingly small. The number of said teens who are willing to admit it is even smaller."

"So what does this mean?" I asked, unwilling to comment on her statement.

"Short term? It gives a possible insight into whatever you were doing with your life before you got pulled out of the ocean," Nina told me.

To be honest, I could not argue with her. My life as a supervillain had done a lot to strip away my illusions.

"Long term?" she continued. "I foresee interesting times ahead for you and Winslow."

I had no real answer for that.

-ooo-

We crossed the parking lot, and climbed the stairs. Inside the front doors, someone was waiting. I didn't get a good look at her until she unlocked the doors and ushered us in. When I did see her, I nearly stopped dead in shock.

It was Principal Blackwell.

Lisa's warning came to me a second or so later, and I managed to get my brain back into gear with barely a hitch in my step. "Remember that Ms Blackwell isn't the principal, just another teacher."

I looked again; she was twenty years younger, old enough to be a teacher while still quite obviously dressing to appear one with the hip crowd.

The years would not be kind to her; she was slender and attractive now, with longer hair, swept into a stylish cut. Slender would become narrow, the carefully-trimmed blonde hair would end up in an unbecoming bowl cut, and her features would end up severe and forbidding.

I had no idea what she would go through in the years between to transform her into the Principal Blackwell I had known. But still I could recognise her, recognise in her the woman who would tacitly condone more than a year of torment at the hands of Emma and her cronies.

Well, not if I can help it. But that was a thought for the future. Here and now, we had other business.

"Thank you," Nina said to her, offering her hand. "I'm Nina Veder, and this is Taylor Snow. We're here to see Principal Woodbine."

"Carrie Blackwell," she replied, shaking Nina's hand. "I teach Home Economics. Pleased to meet you, Nina, Taylor. I'll take you to him now."

Despite her politeness, I noticed that she did not offer to shake my hand. It didn't exactly surprise me.

The question which nagged at the back of my mind was, How could Lisa even tell me that Blackwell would be a teacher here? Was it something she told me, before, or is she really …

I cut that line of thought off before it could go too far. If the truth was one thing, I didn't need to know. If it was the other, I didn't want to know.

-ooo-

The journey through the halls of Winslow High was an education in itself. As on the outside, the paintwork was brighter, fresher, newer. No graffiti of any sort was visible on the walls, a minor miracle for the Winslow of my day. More polished wood was on display, and the lockers along the wall were clean and shining and new.

This was Winslow before its fall into disgrace; the Winslow that was the Arcadia of its day. Even without the students in the halls, it fairly hummed with the promise of the future.

Well, I could tell anyone who cared what its future would be. Whether they believed me would be another matter entirely.

I picked out my locker by eye as we walked past; I thought I had repressed my involuntary shudder, but Nina evidently picked something up.

"Taylor?" she asked. "Is something the matter?"

I shook my head. "Nothing. Just felt a chill down my back."

"Or you remembered something. Does this place remind you of something?"

It reminded me of something all right; it reminded me of the very worst years of my life. But I shook my head. "It's a school. I might have had bad experiences in the last school I was at."

Carrie Blackwell was eyeing me curiously. "Do you have memory problems, Taylor?"

I looked at Nina; she pursed her lips. "Perhaps this should be covered at the meeting," she suggested.

Ms Blackwell nodded, although I could tell that she was still curious. "As you say."

-ooo-

"Taylor's been through a traumatic experience, and is suffering from specific retrograde amnesia," Nina informed the room briskly. "However, she shows no signs of loss of cognitive function, and has indeed reacquired a few facts from the time before the experience."

"Oh," replied Principal Woodbine. "That's good then." He frowned. "So when you say 'retrograde' amnesia ..." He was in his fifties, a once powerful frame now going to fat, a little vague rather than intense, with a kindly air to him. His closely-trimmed black hair was going grey, and he had the stains of a smoker on his fingers.

"I mean, covering the time before the traumatic experience," Nina told him patiently

"Just stuff about my life and my family," I put in helpfully. "I recall basic educational facts, just not when or where I learned them."

"Ah," Ms Blackwell observed. "So, no learning difficulties observed?"

"I've tested her as best I could on basic math, reading and writing skills, and knowledge of basic science and history," Nina put in. "She had no difficulty with any of it. In addition, she seems to display a distinct affinity for computers."

"Really?" commented the third member of the faculty present. "That's interesting to know."

"Mr Murray's our Computer Studies teacher," Woodbine explained. "He's always happy to find a student who's interested in using them for more than – what's that phrase you keep using, Brett?"

"A glorified typewriter," supplied Mr Murray. He seemed to be cut from the same mold as Woodbine, but at least twenty years younger, a few pounds lighter, and with buzz-cut reddish hair instead of black. He was trying to grow a moustache; it wasn't going well. "Too many of my students see computers as typewriters with screens, and decide that mine is a do-nothing class where they can while away the minutes passing notes to one another until it's time to go home."

"Taylor has been recently hired on by the Port Authority to help maintain their computer systems," Nina pointed out. Dead silence ensued, as each member of the faculty took that statement on board.

"Uh, really?" asked Murray cautiously. "What computers do they have, if you don't mind my asking?"

I thought about my reply before I answered him. "Well, without giving away too many details, they're Hewlett Packard nine thousands, running a specialised version of UNIX. The software is proprietary, though, so I'm not allowed to say anything about that."

More silence fell; Woodbine and Blackwell looked at me as though I had begun babbling in Urdu. Mr Murray, however, sat forward. "Miss Snow," he said with just a hint of pleading, "would you like to be in my computer studies class? Please?"

Nina raised an eyebrow. "You realise, she may already be beyond what you teach in your class."

Murray shrugged. "As a teacher's aide, then? I like computers, and I can see what potential they have for the future, but all too often, I'm just supplying the lesson plan as suggested by the textbooks. I'm not that good with them."

I cleared my throat. "I'm coming to Winslow to learn, Mr Murray. I don't want to be treated any differently by the faculty. I can look over the textbooks and give you what help I can, but at the end of the day, I'm just going to be another student in your class, and I expect to be treated accordingly."

Trying to break the serious mood, I shrugged and added with a grin, "Besides, I might not know the first thing about the computers you've got here."

"Well spoken, young lady, well spoken," Principal Woodbine said approvingly, bestowing an avuncular gaze upon me. However, Nina gave me another one of her odd looks, and I belatedly realised that I had shown altogether too mature an outlook. Again.

It was true though; all I wanted was to be just treated as another student, no better and no worse. I didn't want to be seen as different, better, unusual; any of that could interfere with my future plans. By the time I left school, I wanted people to have forgotten my strange origins, or at least to not be worried about them.

-ooo-

We exited the school once more, my arms heavy with textbooks. The remainder of the meeting had gone well, being mainly a discussion of class schedules, when and how I was to get to school every day, and exactly how much paperwork had to be filed before I was officially enrolled.

The answer to that last one was 'a lot'.

Ms Blackwell, due to being the junior member of the faculty present (I had no doubt that her being the only female teacher present also had something to do with this) had supplied us with tea and coffee. Brett Murray had made a lame joke about 'putting her Home Economics skills to good use'. I had offered to assist, but she had turned me down.

All in all, it seemed, Principal Woodbine thought it was a good idea to take me on, although I was not under any illusion that he would give me preferential treatment once I was attending classes. Mr Murray was transparently anxious for me to join his Computer Studies course, and he had also mentioned a 'computer club' which he was doing his best to maintain outside of school hours.

Ms Blackwell, on the other hand, was coolly polite to me the whole way through. I wasn't sure why; perhaps she disapproved of women being more interested in computers than Home Economics. Or perhaps she just resented giving up her Saturday to come in to school and serve tea and coffee to last-minute enrolees.

"Just by the way, Taylor, who is your legal guardian of record?" asked Woodbine, toward the close of the meeting.

I looked at Nina, and she at me. "I ... didn't think I needed one. I'm seventeen, after all." Adding a year; not so great a fib. I was, after all, tall for my age.

"You're not required to have one, no. It's just that it makes things so much easier for us if you do have one." He looked at Nina. "Ms Veder?"

Nina looked startled. "I ... honestly speaking? I would do it in a heartbeat, but Taylor cannot live with me. My home situation is ... difficult."

"So where are you living, Taylor?" asked Woodbine pleasantly.

"With the Heberts. George and Dot – Dorothy. Mrs Hebert – Dorothy – is more or less my boss at the Port Authority."

"They also have a son," Nina supplied dryly. I winced; I was sure there would be a conversation, later, about that little omission. "Danny."

"Ah, yes," noted Principal Woodbine. "Young Dan Hebert. He was here at Winslow just a few years ago. A good lad. How is he doing?"

"Working on the docks with his father," Nina reported. "He's shaping up well."

"Excellent, excellent," Woodbine said approvingly, then his tone turned serious. "Ms Veder, I do not wish to discourage you or Taylor, but we really would prefer that she have a legal guardian of record. Purely for administrative purposes, of course."

Nina nodded. "I'll talk it over with the Heberts and see what we can come up with. Is it okay for Taylor to attend in the meantime?"

"Oh, certainly," agreed Woodbine. He bestowed another avuncular look upon me. "You appear to have a good head upon your shoulders, Miss Snow; it would be a shame and a pity to let you go to another school now."

I nodded; that seemed safest. "Thank you, sir," I replied.

Shortly after that, the required textbooks had been assembled, and a receipt for same signed. I would bring in the money for them on Monday morning.

-ooo-

"Where am I going to get the money for these?" I asked Nina as I lugged the textbooks out to the car. "The Port Authority job isn't going to be paying me for another week or more."

"I'll cover it. You can owe me." Her tone was light, but she meant it.

I snorted. "I already owe you an arm and a leg, and the vital organ of your choice. I feel bad taking your money like this."

"I trust you to repay me. After all, I know where you live." She grinned to show that it was a joke.

"Which reminds me," I commented. "How are we going to settle the legal guardianship thing? Now that I have legal existence, I had kind of assumed that I could be my own legal guardian."

Nina chuckled fondly. "Taylor, dear, what the law says and the way things really are? Quite often two different things. You may be legally of age to do a good many things, more when you turn eighteen, and yet more when you reach your twenty-first. But until then, even though the law says you're an adult, quite a few people will find entirely plausible reasons to not treat you like one."

I considered that. I had rarely gotten a square deal from the heroes when I was a teenage supervillain, but I had put that mainly down to them being dicks. Could their perception of me being too young to make binding decisions for myself have coloured their options, guided their choices of action? It was something to ask Lisa about.

But for now, I was enrolled at Winslow – or would be, once the paperwork was filled out – and so my plans were on track. "I see your point," I admitted. "Where do we go from here?"

"Well, I have an appointment this afternoon, so I could drop you wherever you want, and you can take the bus home, or I can drop you straight home."

I thought about it. "Straight home, thanks." I indicated the pile of textbooks I was carrying in my lap. "I don't really feel like carrying these around town."

She nodded, starting the car. "Straight home it is."

-ooo-

"Nina," I ventured after several minutes on the road, "was it just me, or did Ms Blackwell not like me?"

She glanced over at me. "Now that you mention it, she didn't seem to take to you very much," she mused. "Of course, it could be because she noticed that you don't like her very much, either."

Startled, I stared at her. "Wait, what?"

" ... huh. You weren't even aware of it yourself."

"Aware of what?"

"Your body language was hostile toward her from the moment you met her. In fact, when you met her, I thought you knew her for certain. But she showed no signs of recognising you, so I'm guessing it's one of your quirky memories playing up. At a guess, you knew someone in your previous life who you didn't like very much, and who Ms Blackwell reminds you of."

"Ah," was all I could say. Nina Veder was sharp. She was correct on all essential points, of course; if she only knew that I was a time traveller, all the clues would fall into place for her.

I just had to hope and pray that she would not make that last logical leap.

-ooo-

Nina pulled up at the curb, outside the Hebert house. She squeezed my shoulder before I got out. "Take care, Taylor. I'll be around later tonight to help out with the paperwork."

"Thanks." I got out, then bumped the door shut with my hip, my hands being full at the time. Giving me a wave through the closed window, she drove off.

I crossed the lawn and climbed the front steps. On the second try, I managed to nudge the doorbell with my elbow. Danny answered the door a few moments later.

"Taylor!" he greeted me, obviously pleased. Over his shoulder, he added, "Mom! Taylor's home!"

That gave me pause to think. Was this house really 'home' for me any more? Would it ever be that for me again? Was the warm feeling I got from walking in the front door due only to my memories, or did I really feel as though I belonged here? Did I belong here?

Dot, bustling in from the kitchen, interrupted my musings. "It's good to see you back. How did it go?"

"Pretty good," I replied, heading through to the living room and dumping the stack of textbooks on the couch. I gave a sigh of relief; I had built up some muscle tone as Skitter and Weaver, but with my build, I would never have much in the way of upper body strength.

"Well, good and bad," I amended, flopping on to the couch beside the stack. "The police have absolutely no leads on who I might be. Which basically means that I've never been fingerprinted, really."

Danny sat on the other side of the stack and poked at it. "So what's the good news? And what's all this stuff?"

"The good news is that, with Ms Veder's help, I've been put back into the system. I now exist, legally speaking. Also, that pending the filling out of all this paperwork," I lifted the thickly packed manila envelope from atop the stack of books, "I've been accepted into Winslow."

Danny picked up the top book and looked at it. "Textbooks. Right." He shot me a sidelong glance. "So, is you getting into Winslow in the 'good news' or 'bad news' category?"

I grinned back at him. "Still figuring that one out."

He chuckled in return, paging through the book. "Wow, this takes me back."

"Yeah. Principal Woodbine remembered your name. You only left a few years ago? What are the teachers like?"

"Well -" he began, just as the phone rang in the kitchen. We both paused while Dot answered it.

A moment later she called out, "Taylor? It's for you."

Danny and I shared a glance and a shrug; I got up and headed into the kitchen. "Who is it?" I asked.

"It's Williams, the weekend manager at the Port Authority. He says he's having trouble with that machine." That machine was what she called the computer system that had been installed in the Port Authority building.

"I left clear written instructions," I protested.

She nodded. "I know. But it appears that they weren't clear enough. Would you be a dear ..?"

I rolled my eyes, then nodded. "I'll just get my Walkman."

"Do you really need your music that badly?" she asked curiously.

"It helps me focus my thoughts," I told her.

"Well, if it works, it works. Far be it from me to criticise your methods."

-ooo-

I was back downstairs in just a few moments, with Walkman in hand. Dot had been speaking soothingly on the phone; as I approached, she said, "Here she is now. I'll just put her on."

I dragged a chair over to the phone, and sat down, then accepted the receiver off of Dot.

"Hi," I said. "This is Taylor. What seems to be the problem?"

"You sound really young," said a male voice on the other end of the line.

"I'm sure it's something I'll grow out of. Now, what's the computer doing?"

"Nothing,"he said. "Seriously, nothing. Something's gone wrong with it."

I took a deep breath. "Calm down. Now, what's the last thing it did before it stopped working?"

It took me a little while, but I managed to coax some details out of him. "Right," I reassured him. "I'm just going to give you back to Mrs Hebert for a moment while I check something out." I handed the phone back, put the earphones on, and started the tape.

-ooo-

Lisa stood over a golf tee, shifting her feet until her stance was just right. The course stretched away into the distance, alongside the massive edifice of the memory palace. She wore a light blouse, a short skirt, and golfing shoes. A golden tan adorned her arms and legs.

Uh, Lisa – I began.

"Sh! Concentrating. Very important."

I watched, amused, as she addressed the ball, wriggling her butt under the short skirt.

With the utmost solemnity, she pulled the club up and back, then poised for a moment before commencing her swing. The club came down and around, struck the ball squarely, and smacked it into the middle distance.

"There," she said with satisfaction, turning to face me. "How can I help you?"

I raised an eyebrow. You don't play golf, I observed.

She grinned. "Teaching myself. It's something to do. Computer problems?"

I nodded. An error message I'm not sure about.

She reached into the golf bag and handed me the tablet. "There you go."

While I studied the emulator, she set up another ball.

"Should I shout 'Fore' or not?" she asked, as she readied herself.

I wouldn't worry about it. Unless there's someone else here I'm not aware of, I commented absently.

"No, but it's the look of the thing." She took a deep breath, yelled "Fore!" then swung the club. The ball disappeared along the general track of the last one.

I found the error message, pulled up the instructions for fixing it, and nodded. It seemed straightforward enough.

I handed the tablet back. Thanks. And I think your swing is improving.

"You think so?" she grinned, then leaned forward and kissed me. Her lips tasted of dust and blood. A wind blew up, bearing dust and grit. I blinked.

-ooo-

I opened my eyes and shut off the tape, pulled off the headphones. Dot was talking on the phone to Williams. Danny was standing by, watching me with interest.

"Got it," I mouthed to Dot.

She said, "Ah, she's back," and handed the phone over.

I took it. "Right. What you've got to do is this …"

It took a few more minutes to walk him through the procedure, but I could hear the palpable relief in his voice as the computer responded to the commands I was telling him to enter.

When the computer was apparently back up and running in normal operating mode, I handed the phone back to Dot. He seemed to be thanking her profusely, from the amused tone of her replies, and then she hung up.

"That was impressive," she told me. "You'll be paid for that, of course. I made sure that any consultation would have a minimum pay period of one hour."

I grinned at her. "Sounds good to me."

-ooo-

I headed back to the sofa, absently wrapping the headphones cord around the Walkman as I went. Danny came with me; again, we sat on either side of the stack of books.

"So, you were saying?" I prompted him.

Uncharacteristically, Danny ignored my question. "How did you do that? You just zoned out and listened to your music, then picked up the phone and told the guy how to fix it."

I shrugged. "I need the music to focus. It lets me remember stuff I've learned. Sometimes."

"So you can fix your memory problems?"

I shook my head. "No. It's a self-hypnosis thing. I can't get more than fragments, but I can recover procedures I've learned. Such as how to use computers. Nina – Ms Veder – is hopeful that I can get more use out of it later on, though."

"That'll be really great. I hope you do find out who you really are and where you're from."

"Thanks, Danny. I appreciate it." I paused, trying to shift the topic away from me without being too obvious about it. "But you were about to tell me about the teachers."

"I was? Oh yeah, I was." Danny paused for a few moments. "Well, Woodbine's all right, but if you get caught breaking the school rules, he can be a holy terror. There was one time I was …"

I settled back on the sofa and listened to his appraisal of the Winslow teachers. Soon enough, I would be meeting them in the classroom, learning from them. Anything I could learn about them beforehand was valuable data.

I had come to this time, this place, with a minimum of preparation. Now, I had a wealth of data at my fingertips, and time to prepare.

Preparation was everything.

With sufficient preparation, I could change the world.

End of Part 1-6