I am aware that Lila comes off a little Mary Sue"y". That is intentional. Lila is a super genius in a teenager's body. She's never going to do "Normal." She will make mistakes, just like everyone else, though.
September 12, 2011
Lila's first day at school was as underwhelming as the visit to enroll. She was pretty sure the vice principal was in or at least recruited for, Empire 88, the local Nazi gang. She actually had to negotiate her brain and body settings with her mom over the weekend. They had settled on two percent for her brain with a full half of that devoted to interpersonal skills. Her mother had wanted her to keep her body at full power, but that made it much too easy for her to hurt someone in a crowded hall. Eventually they settled on two percent, which Lila cut in quarter. Tough enough a knife or bullet probably couldn't penetrate, but not so strong she could accidentally put her hand through someone's chest. She had also had time to update her eye, so now she not only had a heat beam, but also had a kinetic beam and hard light generator jammed with a few other new improvements, like increased magnification.
For her first day, she was wearing a regulation knee-length blue skirt and matching blouse. She had to get used to shoes again over the last couple of days, and she wore a pair of generic tennis shoes today. No use in advertising that she and her mom actually had money. One of the first things Lila did after recovering from her accident was invest her money through a legitimate broker. With her Thinker power, she could see deep into patterns and play a, relatively, long game. Most Thinkers got caught by Watchdog by playing day trader. Her mom had gone ballistic when she found out what Lila had done, but it would be difficult to un-ring that bell without implicating Lila, so they were now very comfortably wealthy.
As Lila entered the school, she received some head nods from some of the students standing near the entrance. Since she didn't know anyone here, she ignored the attention; she was a pretty girl, despite the fact that she looked much younger than her actual age. She was bound to attract attention.
Her testing put her solidly at junior level, which was what she agreed with her mother to test at. It was no more difficult for her to get a specific score on the test than it was for her to get a perfect score.
She began the journey down the long hall to her homeroom class. Of course, it had to be on the other end of the building. She felt like she was on display. New girl, cute, starting two weeks late. Yup, all the better to get the attention of pubescent teens in high school.
As she approached the end of the hall, there was a group of girls gathered by her homeroom door. What drew her eye was the amount of tension in all the girls. Two girls were bracketing a third, while a few others stood around, blocking the third girl's access to the classroom. The two girls were saying something that was causing the third girl to shake. I noted them all. The obvious victim was tall, maybe five ten, but thin, wearing baggy clothes. Of the other two, one was a petite brunette in a pink dress with a pink bow in her hair, definitely playing up the 'cute' look. The other was a tall black girl who looked like an athlete. While her victim had a couple of inches on her, she had fifteen pounds of muscle on her victim. Right, she remembered how mean girls can be. In some ways, her life before the accident seemed idyllic, but there were plenty of bad times as well. She and her friends had been victims of 'mean girls' at times. Post-accident, she didn't have time for those games.
"SANDI, record," she said under her breath, and she saw the red 'record' indicator light up in her field of vision. Just one of the standard features in her eye.
As she reached the group, she gave them all a good look, before saying, "Excuse me, you're in the way. I'm trying to get to homeroom." She may have spoken a little louder and a little more whinny than her normal voice.
The group gave her a look before looking at something over her shoulder. Obviously, she should have been paying more attention to her surroundings.
Lila glanced over her shoulder and realized the 'head nod' group from the entrance had followed her. In that moment, she saw the bottom of a tattoo peeking out of the obvious leader's shirt sleeve. Her brain did a little extrapolation, and yup, we have Nazis.
Giving the Nazis a dismissive, look, Lila said, "Did you follow me all the way from the doors? Not impressed," she continued dismissively. "Go find some other girl to creep on."
The leader was brought up short. Lila could already see the scenario that was going through his head. 'SAVE' a white girl from encounter with a much bigger black girl. White girl swoons at his manhood and immediately joins his group of racist assholes, and they go on to have racist asshole babies.
"Hey," Nazi Leader said, "I was just making sure you got to class safe without having to deal with any undesirables."
"Safely," Lila corrected. "You could see that I was going to have trouble all the way back at the front doors, huh," she replied. "Looks like the 'undesirables' followed me here." As she finished, she folded her arms across her chest.
"Yeah, Nate," the athletic bully behind her began, "you can just—"
"And you," Lila interrupted the jock before she could really get going. "If you weren't taking up the hall fucking with people I would be in class by now." Lila started forward, grabbing the victim's arm as she walked by. "I recommend you pound the shit out of each other, since you are both looking to cause trouble."
As she reached the door, the homeroom and computer science teacher, Mrs. Knott walked into the hall, eyeing the group she left behind critically. "Ms. Hess, Mr. Bowman, I think you have homeroom to get to. Madison, come inside."
Lila filed the names away for future reference, but it was also recorded in her eye. She decided it would probably be a good idea to have a video record of all her school interactions. She could just leave the recorder running all through school. It's not like she would be running out of memory on her hybrid crystal/hard-light computer system.
"You shouldn't have done that," the girl whose arm she was still holding said quietly, almost a whisper. "You're only going to get yourself on Sophia's radar."
The small girl pushed her way past us moving toward the back of the classroom.
Lila looked the girl she rescued up and down twice. "I can see why she intimidates you, but you can't let bullies push you around. They just escalate things. Stand up to them, and they stop bothering you."
"It's not that easy," the girl replied. "They've been at this for a year already."
"Fair enough," Lila said. "I'm Lila, by the way."
"Taylor," the girl replied, as she began to sit at a desk.
Lila grabbed her arm, to keep the girl from sitting, before pointing to the seat covered in what looked like orange juice. "Let me guess, assigned seat?" she asked.
Taylor nodded. The poor girl looked like Lila did after her accident, dazed and confused. Lila led her to another pair of desks and sat her down before taking a seat. Assigned seating though, so she began using her brain power to plot a path through the coming interaction.
Mrs. Knott spotted the empty desk and began to look around. "Taylor, why aren't you in your seat?"
"Mrs. Knott," Lila replied cranking her interpersonal focus up to ten percent, "I'm new, so Taylor was going to sit with me, sinceIknowherandsometimeIhavesocialanxietywhenI'mingroupswithalotofpeopleIdon'tknow, and besides MadisonaccidentallyspilledorangejuiceintoTaylor'schairwhenshewaswalkingby, otherwise Iwouldhavejustsatnexttoher,butthechairiswetnowanyway,sowemovedoverhere, andMadisonsaidshewouldcleanupthejuicesheaccidentallyspilled, right Madison."
She could tell that the cadence of her little speech had done its job and scrambled everyone's brain just a little bit, making them all just a tiny bit suggestable. Madison was already walking toward the stack of paper towels at the front of the class and Taylor was sitting beside her nodding, agreeing with everything she said. Who need master powers to influence people. Maybe her mom wasn't completely wrong about the 'supervillain thing'. She turned her brain back down to school normal.
"That will be fine for today," Mrs. Knott replied, "but I would like you both in assigned seats tomorrow.
"Cool, can these be our assigned seats," Lila asked, pointing at seat she and Taylor were sitting in.
"I guess that will be fine," Mrs. Knott replied, before completely shaking off the hypnotic suggestion. "Since you are already up," she said, "you can introduce yourself to the rest of the class."
'Sure,' Lila thought to herself. 'My name is Lila, I can kill you with my brain. Instead, I would like to help you and everyone else off this hell-hole before it implodes.'
"Sure," Lila stood and said out loud. "I'm Lila Clarke, I'm a bit of a science and computer nerd. I've been homeschooled the last couple of years, and now my mom's tired of me being in the house all the time, so she sent me to High School," she concluded. "Oh, also sixteen years old and a Leo," she added before sitting back down.
"Why do your records say, 'Annalise Clarke'?" Mrs. Knott asked.
"Oh, yeah," replied Lila, "My real name is Annalise, but I go by Lila. Don't call me Annalise; I won't know who you're talking to."
"Thank you, Ms. Clarke," the Teacher replied before going back to her attendance taking.
Home Room was just glorified Study Hall, without the glory or studying. She was looking forward the next class, Computer Science, also with Mrs. Knott. At least she could get to do some programming. She had an idea on the way to school about an algorithm to improve the fidelity of her scanner. It's always a chore to keep the scanner up to spec when improving her other gear. Also, if she parsed out the bio-readings and applied a discreet filter, it would probably make a half-decent lie detector.
Lila turned to Taylor, who had pulled out a copy of The Silmarillion to read. Lila decided to interrupt her reading time. "Taylor, what classes do you have?" she asked. "I'm kind of looking for a guide."
Taylor peered up at her over the top of her glasses. "You don't want to be my friend," she said, her voice breaking a little. "It would be like committing social suicide."
"Taylor," Lila replied with a smile, "If I wanted a social life, I would have gone to Arcadia. You look like you could use a friend that could care less about the social politics of high school."
Taylor eyes turned glossy, but at least she had the good sense not to cry in class. "I don't think I would be a very good friend." She whispered.
"Oh, that works out then," Lila responded quietly with a broad smile, "I'm a horrible friend. I steal all the boyfriends, tie you up for hours on the phone, and I will absolutely never let you win a pillow fight. Also, I know nothing about makeup, so I'm horrible at makeovers."
"I guess you hate fantasy books too," she said waiving her book at Lila, a slight grin appearing on her face.
"Drivel," Lila replied quietly. "I quite assure you I could not tell you're the difference between an Ainur and a Maiar. Give me a good particle physics book any day. Don't even get me started with Shakespeare," she finished with a grin. "I will admit to being awesome at nail polish," she extended her nails painted, complete with Fibonacci artwork. "It takes a very steady hand."
"Nice," Taylor replied, before the frown reappeared on her face. "You know they're going to start giving you hell if you're my friend."
"Who the Nazis or the anti-Nazi jocks?" she asked. She was pretty sure that she knew the answer.
"Well, Nate will probably try to recruit you again, because, blond hair, blue eyes. You're probably his ideal girl," Taylor responded. "Sophia is going to make your life hell either way."
"So, I can either be a Nazi for Sophia to hate me or friends with you for her to hate me?" Lila asked. "I'm already sitting by you, and I don't want to take the time to hunt down *Nazi Nate* just to make Sophia hate me. Sorry, Taylor, it's easier to be friends with you to get Sophia to hate me, so I guess you're stuck with a new friend." she concluded before saying, "Plus Nazi uniforms look so utilitarian. All edgelord, no actual style."
"I hadn't thought of it that way before," Taylor smiled. "Maybe I should get business cards printed up, 'Taylor Hebert, slightly better than Nazis'," she snarked.
Lila actually giggled at that one and got a 'sshhhh' from Mrs. Knott. How long had it been since she had giggled, really giggled, not the fake giggle she sometimes gave her mom's jokes? "I would make it, 'Taylor Hebert, way better than Nazis'. You may as well exaggerate the resume a little."
That caused Taylor to snort earning another glare from Mrs. Knott. Lila expanded her view of the room and slowed down her subjective time to gauge everyone's reactions. Most of the students ranged from surprised toward the front of the class to actively hostile toward the back. The short girl, Madison, was whispering to three other girls as they all glared in her and Taylor's direction while Madison was texted on her phone. Mrs. Knott's expression had softened after the glare, which indicated that she was actually happy to see someone interacting with Taylor. She caught Taylor mid-snort but could tell that she had been living with a large degree of tension for a while. Taylor was slightly relaxed, but with a deeper tension across her shoulders and forehead that probably indicated long-term abuse or post-traumatic stress. Lila let her perception of time return to normal.
"I assume since you have Mrs. Knott for homeroom, that you're taking computer science as a second class?" Lila inquired.
"Yeah, almost everyone in here is in her first period class," Taylor responded.
"Cool," she replied to her new friend, "at least we'll have one other class together. What else do you have?"
It turned out that they only had homeroom and first period together on their even day, but they had lunch at the same time. On their odd day they had chemistry, because Winslow didn't have an honors chemistry class, and World Issues, since it was a mandatory course that she hadn't taken yet. World Issues and Chemistry bracketed lunch on their odd day.
Lila figured out that their bus routes crossed in the morning, so she could pick up Taylor's bus about half-way to Winslow. Was this stalker behavior? It felt like stalker behavior. She could tell that Taylor didn't expect this to be a long-term friendship. Her face wasn't hard to read. The other girl's faith in others had been worn down over a long period of time. Lila couldn't expect her to bounce back after a single interaction. Lila would just have to be the best friend Taylor could ever have. What was the sense in saving humanity if she couldn't help a person in pain?
Lila began walking Taylor across the hall to their first period computer class when the bell rang. Sophia was standing right at the side of the door when we came out. Lila spotted the bully's reflection in a window across the hall well in advance and was able to shift Taylor to her right side. She knew what was coming, and she needed to let it happen if she was going to deal with Sophia without having to hurt her too badly. As they crossed the threshold behind Madison, Sophia's leg shot out to trip Lila, as expected. Lila stumbled, but instead of falling on her face, she buckled her knees dropping straight to the ground. As she fell, she shifted her Brute ability up to ten percent, landing her left knee on Sophia's left foot. Lila could feel the moment when her knee snapped Sophia's cuboid bone. As she completed her fall, she shifted her Brute ability down to just above human normal. As Sophia fell, her foot kicked out, connecting with Lila's knee. Lila gave a convincing screech to match Sophia's scream as they both fell in a pile of flailing limbs.
Shifting half of her mental focus to 'acting', Lila cried, "Ow, ow, ow, ow," an actual tear rolling down her right cheek. She pretended to try to get up, only to have her knee buckle. And the award for best acting goes to...
Sophia was down on the ground nursing her foot. The shock of having her cuboid bone mangled had her in a state of shock, so she wasn't feeling the pain yet. As the girl stood, she felt all that pain at once and she let out a 'FUCK!" just as the principal arrived at the scene.
Ms. Blackwell frowned at the students arrayed before her. Sophia was standing and cursing, while the much more petite Lila was still on the ground holding her knee with tears in her eye. It was a shame the tear duct in her other eye didn't work for the full effect.
Before either Ms. Blackwell or Sophia could screw up the setup, Lila began talking, "OH MY GOD!," she cried, "I am so sorry, I didn't see you walking there. I was busy talking to Taylor, not looking where I was going." She made an 'attempt' to stand up, only to have her knee buckle again, then turned to Taylor, who was watching the entire thing, her mouth agape. "Can you help me up, Taylor?" she asked extending a hand to the girl. Taylor automatically reached out and helped Lila to her feet. She *tried* to put weight on her leg and winced. "I think I'm going to have to go to the school nurse," she said, looking at Taylor. "Can you help me? I don't know where it is?"
Ms. Blackwell, moving all the other lingering students along, turned back and said, "Taylor, please take her to the nurse. Sophia, stay here so I can get your story."
Lila chuckled inside. If Sophia wanted to keep up her image as a tough girl, she wouldn't be able to admit that a little thing like Lila had injured her, even accidentally. Lila, being an unknown quantity, could play up the 'cute little defenseless girl' trope, at least until everyone at school knew her better. No doubt, for a while, she would be known as 'that little girl Sophia tripped on her first day of school'. She could live with that.
She hobbled away, leaning on Taylor, pretending to wince any time she put a little weight on her leg. The bell rang and students began quickly running for their classes, tardy.
As they left the scene of the crime, Lila looked at the worried look on Taylor's face.
"Don't look back, but do you think they bought it?" she asked her friend.
Taylor almost stumbled when she realized what Lila said. "Did you do that on purpose?" she asked incredulously, then looked back over her shoulder.
"Is Sophia putting all her weight on her right leg?" Lila asked with a sly grin.
Taylor glanced back again, then looked forward helping Lila walk. "Yeah, she's lifting her left foot. What happened?" she whispered. "Why did you do that?"
"I saw her standing there when we were coming up to the door, so I figured she was going to mess with either you or me, or both of us. I just made sure it was me, since I was prepared for it," Lila explained. "I don't like people messing with my friends."
"Bu... that's... why…," Taylor managed to get out.
Lila grinned wider. "You're going to have to pick a question if you want an answer," she said, before shifting the look on her face to one of pain as the passed a janitor walking in the opposite direction.
Lila could see Taylor's thought process working as different expressions flashed along her face. "Are you even hurt?" she finally asked.
"Oh, yeah," Lila said. "Not as bad as I'm pretending, but I should have a nice bruise on my knee by the time the nurse looks at it. I had to come away with some damage, otherwise Sophia could claim that I was the aggressor. Now, I'm just some clumsy girl who Sophia accidentally tripped because I wasn't paying attention. I already gave them the narrative that they're going to use." She pulled out her phone and showed Taylor the video that she transmitted from her eye. "And I have video evidence that backs up everything I'm saying."
"Wow, how long did you have to work up that plan?" Taylor asked.
"Pretty much since we walked into homeroom," was Lila's reply. "There was no way a Queen Bee like her was going to let it go, so I was watching for her when we were leaving class. She wouldn't just hit me, too many witnesses and no deniability. She had to go for either a shove or a trip. I'm a lot smaller than her, so it was a fifty/fifty."
"I'm not sure if I'm impressed or scared," Taylor said.
"Be impressed, Sundance," Lila said with another grin. "Let's just make sure to stay away from Bolivia."
They finally reached the nurses office, so Lila put her painedexpression back on her face. Taylor 'helped' her to a chair, while they waited for the nurse to make an appearance. Twelve minutes passed before Ms. Blackwell made an appearance, dragging Sophia and the school nurse in her wake.
The principal immediately scowled at Taylor, "Don't you have a class to be in Ms. Hebert?" she growled, before helping a now limping Sophia over to a chair across from my own as Taylor exited with a, "See you later."
Lila had her right leg elevated in another chair, still with tears in her good eye. She used her powers to search the room for recording devices. She normally didn't use her ability to sense and control electronics, mostly just to surf the web or purchase stocks illegally, but it was useful for finding bugs or knowing when cameras were watching you. She noted that while the principal and the nurse both had a cell phone, neither was recording. She did note, curiously, that Sophia actually had two cell phones, neither of those was recording either. One of the phones was the newest Galtech phone one of the most upscale phones on the market, but the other didn't seem like an out of the box commercial phone. More like a hardened military phone. Weird.
"Sophia," Lila said sympathetically, "I didn't think that I hurt you. I mean, you're so big and I'm so tiny. Are you okay?"
"Like you could hurt me," was Sophia response as she rolled her eyes. "I just twisted my ankle when I fell."
Lila showed the nurse her knee, which was currently swelling and turning a nice shade.
"Oh," the nurse said when she saw Lila's knee. Then after a pause said, "it probably isn't as bad as it looks." She pressed a little on either side of Lila's knee. "Can you bend it?"
Lila demonstrated that she had most of her range of motion, "Yeah, it hurts, but I can put some weight on it. I don't think it's broken or anything."
The nurse pressed on the top of her patella. "It doesn't feel like anything is broken. I can wrap it, but let's get some ice on it for now." The nurse handed an ice pack to Lila and turned to Sophia, who Blackwell had moved to an examination table behind a curtain.
'Guess I don't rate privacy or an exam table,' Lila thought. She broke the ice pack to activate the chemicals and placed it on her knee. She could see the nurse sitting in a chair as she removed Sophia's shoe. She had a perfect view of the woman's face when she removed Sophia's sock.
Her face displayed shock. "WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO YOUR FOOT!" the nurse shouted in shock.
From her position, Lila could see that Sophia's foot was badly swollen and some nice shades of purple. She would have felt a little worse, but it was Sophia who had instigated the incident. She had no reason to doubt that the girl had been bullying Taylor for a year. Maybe having an injured foot would slow down her down.
Lila dropped ten percent of her focus into 'medicine'. Oh! Sophia would probably need some surgery to repair that foot. Lila really should feel worse about this. She could have come up with a dozen other gambits to stop the girl's actions. Maybe her mom was right about that psychotherapist. She let her focus on medical knowledge drop away.
The nurse returned to her cabinet for another ice pack and a roll of gauze. She broke the icepack to activate it and began wrapping gauze around Sophia's foot to keep the ice pack in place.
After finishing with Sophie's foot, the nurse came back to check on Lila. Checking her knee, she began quietly wrapping Lila's knee with an ace bandage. After ensuring that she could walk on the leg, the nurse sent Lila to class with a crutch to help her walk.
The class was already well under way. A simple programming assignment was written on the whiteboard. Mrs. Knott directed her to a chair, which just happened to be next to Taylor. She glanced at the assignment on the board and sat down, opening a text editor.
"Hey," Lila said to Taylor, "Is that the only assignment?" she asked while typing into the text editor.
"Are you okay?" Taylor asked in return, a worried look on her face.
Lila continued to type rapidly as she glanced up at Taylor and smiled. "Planned, remember?"
"Yeah, but you were gone for a while," Taylor retorted. "I was starting to get worried."
"They brought in Sophia for her foot, so it took a little longer," Lila replied, still typing.
Mrs. Knott interrupted their conversation, "Taylor, I know you're finished, but Lila just got back to class. Let her work on the assignment."
Lila looked up from the computer as she finished typing, "I'm finish anyway, Mrs. Knott," she said. "I've been programming for a while. I heard that we can work on our own projects when we finish our work, right?"
Mrs. Knott walked over and looked at her screen. "Dear, you still have to compile the program to be finished."
Lila smiled and hit the enter key. The screen lit up with a flash of red, white and blue, then the words, 'Hello World' complete with a cartoon image waiving an American flag. "I wrote it to automatically compile. It's a lot easier that way, if you know the shortcuts," Lila hit the escape key. "After the compile and initial run, the program leaves the executable behind along with the source code," Lila pointed her cursor at the new file sitting on the desktop. "I did say I've been programming a while. With programming there's always more to learn and new ways of doing things. Different programming languages and such," she concluded.
Mrs. Knott thought for a minute before responding, "How did you learn all this?" she asked. "It takes most people years of experience to program like this."
Lila lowered her voice a little, since she didn't necessarily want to the whole class in her business. "I was hurt in a car crash a couple of years ago, so I had a lot of time to learn programming while I recovered," she said simply. "Programming gave me something to do that wasn't moping." It wasn't actually a lie. Most of the technology she developed had some element of programming. She had started with the standard programming languages, but they were just too limited for her purposes.
"Do you have other computer skills, dear," Mrs. Knott asked. "There is a computer competition each year sponsored by Medhall: programming, computer defense, capture the flag. We don't normally have very many students interested, but I think you should give it a shot. It's the tenth of December, so you should have plenty of time to get in some practice. It would be nice to have one of our students win for a change instead of Arcadia and Immaculata. It comes with some prize money and a scholarship for the first-place winners in each category."
"Can I think about it?" Lila asked. She wasn't really sure how her mother would feel about it. It felt like cheating.
"Of course, dear," Mrs. Knott replied. "Please do. It would be nice to win for a change," she muttered as she returned to her desk.
"Wow," Taylor said beside her. "Computer genius, too I guess?"
Lila could already see that she had overplayed her hand with Taylor. In a world of capes, any oddity was easy to attribute to superpowers. To be fair, Lila was using superpowers, and if she was going to be friends with Taylor, she should probably tell her sooner or later. Lila frowned at that line of thought. Lila increased her subjective time to think through how she would explain this to Taylor. She reviewed her 'brain settings' and found that somewhere along the way she had, unconsciously, raised her interpersonal and empathy to five percent each. Her logical brain was still hovering around one percent.
She upped her logic to five percent and ran the thoughts through her brain again. It was almost like she was purposely outing herself to Taylor. She saw how her empathetic brain executed 'the plan' and she couldn't fault the actual thought process that went into it. If she waited too long to tell Taylor about herself, the other girl would feel betrayed. The 'plan' her empathetic brain came up with resulted in a ninety-nine point nine eight recurring chance of Taylor staying her friend. The best result her logical brain could come up with...eighty-two point seven six three repeating. She probably should reserve more of her thoughts to things not strictly logical; her mom was right again. She let her perception of the flow of time return to normal.
"I can tell you about it after school," Lila told Taylor. "If you want, I can put together a study guide for you. By the time the competition rolls around, you would kill it."
"Me?" Taylor questioned. "I'm not computer genius. I only putter around a little bit. I can program a little, but that's it."
"I'll enter the competition if you do," she responded. "You can do the programming, and I can do the computer defense thing."
"I don't think I can do that," Taylor replied. "I'm not that smart."
"Wait until after school to hear my proposal," Lila said with a smile.
"Proposing already, Butch?" Taylor said with a smile, "We just met."
Lila let out a snort, trying to hold in the laugh. Mrs. Knott looked up at them, then looked back down when she figured out that they weren't disrupting class.
"So, we have lunch at the same time," Lila said with a smile. "Want to meet up?"
"I usually don't eat in the cafeteria," Taylor replied.
"Sophia is out of commission today," Lila replied. "Who else is messing with you other than Madison?" She looked around and saw Madison in a corner with her group of friends still typing away on her phone. "She doesn't seem like the type who's brave enough to mess with you alone. Maybe stand back and laugh when others mess with you. Definitely a follower."
Taylor got a serious look on her face. "There's three of them, Madison, Sophia, and Emma." By the way her voice broke on the last name, there was some history with Emma."
"Okay," Lila said quietly. They were far enough away from everyone else that there was no risk of being overheard as long as they kept their voices low. "Why do they mess with you?"
"I guess because they can, "Taylor replied sadly. "I was friends with Emma before, but she changed when she started hanging out with Sophia."
With her empathy cranked up, she could tell that Taylor and Emma were once much more than friends. The way Taylor was talking wasn't former girlfriend, so…"So, you and Emma were close, like sisters, then she changed. You don't have anyone in your corner because they're popular and you haven't had any real friends since," Lila said before adding, "until now." with a wide smile.
"Why do you even want to be my friend?" Taylor asked, a pained look on her face. "You don't know me. It's going to make you unpopular."
"I'm gonna level with you," I whispered conspiratorially, "I've been shut in my house since my accident. It was bad. I almost died. My dad did," Lila paused for a second to clear her throat before continuing. "I've been homeschooled since, and I thought I was doing fine but my mom didn't think so. She thought I needed some social interaction with kids my own age. I wouldn't be here if she hadn't made me come. When I look around this school, I see gang members, bullies, and follower drones. You could probably make your life a lot easier if you just joined one of the gangs for protection but you didn't do that. You're an island in a sea of conformists. If I'm going to be friends with anyone, it won't be someone who is going to just do what I say. It has to be some with the will to tell me when I'm being dumb. It has to be someone who knows the difference between a Ainur and a Maiar. Sorry, Taylor, but you're the only friend candidate I see here."
Tears welled up in Taylor's eyes. I could see some degree of hope there, but also some caution from being beat down so much.
"I know, you've been burned," Lila said, a serious look on her face, "but give me a chance. I won't let you down."
"That's a lot to take in," Taylor said. "I'm sorry about your dad."
"You don't get over it," her new friend replied, "but eventually, I think you start to remember more of the good times than the pain."
"Is that how it is with you now," Taylor asked, a little hope in her voice.
Lila felt tears in her eye as she thought about the last two years. "No," she replied, "I just repress everything. I've become frighteningly good at it. Damn it, that's why my mom wanted me to come to school again," she said out loud in realization. "Parents are a lot craftier than they seem," she said sagely.
"I guess," Taylor replied noncommittally.
'Ah,' Lila thought, '_problems with her dad too. Probably stemming from her mom's death_.' She didn't have enough information to formulate a plan for that, but she put it in her queue.
"Can you come over to my house after school," Lila asked. "You can meet my, apparently genius, mom and we can talk about some stuff. Nothing bad," she added hastily, "just some stuff you need to know if you're going to be my friend."
"As long as I'm home by six, it should be okay," Taylor replied. "Why do I have the feeling we are going to be talking about some deep subjects?"
"Because you are a very intelligent and perceptive person," Lila replied with a smile. "Don't worry, it's nothing bad, really."
The bell rang and they each grabbed their bags, letting the flow of students clear. "Well, I'm this way," Lila said, pointing to the right. "See you at lunch?"
"Okay," Taylor said with a smile, "Try to stay out of trouble, Butch."
"You know me, Sundance," Lila replied.
Taylor gave her a mock serious look, and responded "Exactly," a grin appearing on her face, before she turned and walked down the hall toward her class, her steps much lighter than they were earlier this morning.
Lila managed to maneuver herself on her crutch to her next class. It was a pain. No way she wasn't going to let her body heal by tomorrow. Navigating around on a crutch one day was enough. Maybe a stylish cane. Her brain started modifying her theoretical cane: an anti-gravity generator, a 'Sophia and Madison' detector, Emma too once she had a recording of her, a high-efficiency battery to power it all. She stopped herself...not everything needed a ton of tech installed.
Lila's next class was English, which took up a minimal amount of her attention. It wasn't even literature, just brushing up on grammar. She had already read the textbook, so she wouldn't get any additional information by discussing it in class. She paid just enough attention to answer any questions that came her way. She was largely ignored after correctly answering the first three questions the teacher asked.
The rest of the time, worked on the programming study plan for Taylor and a redesign to her industrial CREEC reactor using the new HUD in her eye. The reactor actually scaled really well. The size of the tap and the ability of the power cables to handle the output were the limiting factors. After several hundred permutations, she determined the optimal configurations for both the projected and physical reactors. The projected reactors lent themselves much better to power production under one hundred megawatts. The physical reactors looked like they were good up to around a quarter million gigawatts...heat dissipation started to become a serious issue beyond that.
The bell rang, signaling lunch, so Lila turned off her HUD and gathered up her bag and crutch.
As she entered the school cafeteria, she passed Madison talking animatedly with a red-headed girl. This, she supposed, must be Emma, Taylor's former BFF. The girl had a look of concern on her face as she looked around the hallway, no doubt looking for Sophia who, if the nurse had any actual medical training, would be at the hospital at this point.
Inside the cafeteria, she found a throng of students eating, meeting with their friends, or otherwise mingling. Lila spotted 'Nazi Nate' and his friends in one corner of the room and looking to the opposite side of the room found a group of all Asian students. No doubt these were the ABB kids. Either in the ABB or ABB wannabes.
Lila slowed down time subjectively and began scanning the room methodically for Taylor. She also added a pattern match from the earlier picture her eye had taken of Taylor. Good thing she did. While she was still searching the room, her pattern-match program got a hit. She found Taylor tucked back in the very back of the room, hiding behind a group of goth kids. High school was going to be so cliché.
Lila felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. As she continued toward Taylor, she used her HUD to check the message. It was from her mother, 'heard about your incident. Sure, there is good explanation. principal claiming we have to pay hospital. Love you.'
Funny, Principal Blackwell was trying to shake her mom down. Good thing she had video from her eye. She had a really nice view that showed Sophie deliberately tripping her. Open and shut really. She sent back to her mom, 'will give 411 at home. Sending vid. Would say she owes 4 my bills. I will pay 4 lawyers. Not giving her anything.' She emailed the video, from the moment she stood up to the moment right before she apologized, to her mother. She sent video only, since the audio was recorded on a different stream.
Taylor spotted her before she reached the table and stood up, but Lila waived her to sit back down. Lila took a spot opposite the other girl. The tables were cheap polymer tables with metal frames and attached bench seating. It took Lila a moment to maneuver her leg and her crutch into her seat.
"I saw Emma and Madison talking when I came in," she said. "I think they're planning something."
"More likely they are trying to figure out where Sophia is," Lila replied. "I doubt they will try anything physical without her," she concluded as she pulled her lunch from her backpack.
"Let's see," she said, sorting through her food, tuna salad with her bread toasted on the side, a bunch of grapes, a bag of her favorite chips, two bottles of water, and three of the oatmeal raisin cookies her mother had baked the day before. Originally, she wasn't even planning on bringing a lunch, but her mother insisted. She didn't get hungry but it was an important part of social interaction.
Taylor's lunch was comparable to hers, but she didn't have a desert, so Lila broke one of cookies in half and slid one and a half cookies across the table to the other girl on a napkin, then she began to spread her tuna over her toast with a plastic fork.
Taylor smiled at the gesture, "Oh, cookies," she said. "Did you make these?"
"Nope," Lila replied. "That is all my mom. I don't really bake that much. Most of my cooking turns into a chemistry experiment." Lila meant that literally. When she baked, her power general took over and 'optimized' her food in some way. She would end up making cookies that turned normal people into super soldiers temporarily or something equally bizarre. Her mother had not been amused, but Lila also noted that her mom still had some of that batch of cookie dough in the freezer.
"I used to bake a lot, with my mom," Taylor said sadly. "I haven't really picked it back up though."
"Yeah, I get that," Lila replied. "Fishing was my dad's thing. I haven't been since the accident." Lila turned up her empathy and added a dash of psychologist. "Someday, I'll go again, when the good memories outweigh the bad."
"So, I'll emailed you a study guide for programming," Lila said, changing the subject. "It should be everything you need to get yourself spun up in time for the competition in December. All you have to do is follow the guide. One hour a day, three days a week. You can use first period to practice."
"Okay," Taylor replied, "If you went through all the trouble I'll do it, but why are you so gung-ho on getting me into this computer competition?"
"Mainly because Mrs. Knott is going to make me do it anyway, so at least this way, I have a friend there, too." Lila replied. 'Plus, you can use the win,' she thought privately. "Plus," she said out loud with a smile, "free money when you win."
Lila saw Taylor tense up as her eyes tracked something behind her.
"Emma and Madison?" she asked, only to receive a nod from Taylor.
Behind her she heard, "Is this the bitch that tripped all over Sophia?"
"You must be Emma," Lila said, without turning around. "Sorry, Taylor has a new friend now, you're stuck with the losers you have."
She heard sputtering behind her as Emma tried to formulate a response. Interesting, Emma actually did think that Taylor would become her friend again at some point again in the future. Lila shifted more of her resources into psychotherapy and interpersonal relationships, before turning in her seat to face the girl. She also upped her body's durability a bit, about the toughness of a brick wall.
Lila eyed the girl up and down, slowing her perception to looking at her body language. Interesting. Madison had a hand on Emma's arm. The other girl probably didn't want to confront Lila without Sophie. She wasn't confident in their physical abilities. Emma was just about to give her response to Lila and had a look of rage on her face. There was some outside event that she was thinking about that was feeding her rage. There was at least partial concern directed at Taylor. Wow, Emma actually still cared about her. That meant that either she was being directed by Sophie, or she thought that she was bullying Taylor for her own good. Lila let the flow if time return to normal.
"Listen, little girl," Emma began, "You're going to pay for tripping Sophia. Taylor's not your friend, because Taylor doesn't deserve to have friends..." Lila saw the expression on Emma's face change as she thought of a memory associated with Taylor. Whatever she was about to say would, no doubt be extremely hurtful. Lila would have liked to hear what Taylor's old friend would bring up, if only to understand Taylor better, but not at the expense of Taylor's mental well-being.
Before Emma could say anything, Lila interrupted, "I notice that Sophia still isn't back from the nurse," she injected into the conversation, "I hope it's nothing serious."
"Like a freshman could do anything serious to Sophia," the girl replied, taking Lila's bait to focus on her. "She's gonna stomp you into the dirt."
"Do you go around picking fights for other people often," Lila asked, a smirk on her face, information flowing from the girl now. Emma didn't feel confident in her own fighting abilities. Sophia had protected her in the past in some way. That was the focus of their friendship, whatever that incident was...when Sophia first protected Emma.
Lila noted that this argument wasn't even a footnote in Winslow's normal lunch hour. She saw at least a dozen similar confrontations happening around the room.
"I don't need Sophia to fight my fights," Emma scowled. "I'm a survivor."
Interesting, that she would call herself a survivor, Lila thought. That meant there was some incident that she survived. Sophia was involved somehow. Madison was the weak point in this trio. She didn't have whatever shared experience that Sophia and Emma had. She also looked like she would rather be anywhere else right now but was afraid to not back Emma up.
With the smirk still on her face, Lila said, "Bottom line this for me. What are we talking about here, a fight with hair pulling, possible some scratches to the face? Knockdown, drag-out, rumble in Bronx? I'm more than happy to mess up that little nose of yours." Threatening their appearance usually worked on girls. They wouldn't want their faces messed up, particularly something that would require surgical correction, like a nose.
Emma was now so mad she was sputtering, struggling to get words out. "Let me know when you get over that stutter," Lila said, turning back toward Taylor. Surprisingly, Taylor was now standing and in an aggressive posture...actually moving to back her up. Lila motioned her to sit down.
Behind her, the sound of Emma was receding, so she assumed that Madison had succeeded in pulling the girl away.
"Wow," Taylor said softly, "I don't think I have ever seen Emma that mad before." I could tell that Taylor was still holding out some hope that 'her Emma' would come back to her someday."
"Yeah," Lila, "I don't know what happened to her, but she must have some serious trauma in her life."
"I don't know what it could be." Taylor replied. "She changed sometime during the summer last year. I was away at camp."
"Do you want to look into it?" Lila asked. At very least it might give Taylor some closure. At best, maybe they could help turn Emma back from the 'dark side.'
"It would be nice to know why she became such a bitch," Taylor mussed.
"On the list," I replied.
"What else is on this list?" Taylor asked.
"Let's see," I replied, "make a friend, check; computer competition study guide, check; navigate high school, in progress; make my mom stop worrying about me, in progress; update SANDI, in progress; start my own software company, in progress; become independently wealth, in progress; save the world, in progress."
"Save the world is only, 'in progress?" Taylor asked. "Slacker."
"What can I say," Lila replied, "I'm stuck on 'navigate high school'. I blame my mother."
They chatted while eating, talking about computer programming and segueing into Lord of the Rings until Lila's alarm popped up on her HUD. "Looks like it's time for class," she said to Taylor. "Meet you out front after school?"
"Sure," the other girl replied, "if you still want to."
"Well, it was my idea, so…," Lila trailed off.
"See you after school, Butch," Taylor said with a grin."
"Sure thing, Sundance," was Lila's reply.
