Lunch break behind the school. Hero’s welcome. The high-fives just don’t stop coming. Sylvia’s shouting so loud we have to tell her to shut up like three times before she gets the point. Even Jimin has a smile on his face, which is good because he looked on the verge of a heart attack when I told him my plan.
“What did you say to him!?” Jet says. Ouch. Stop myself from grimacing. Of course he’s smart enough to ask that question.
I scratch my head. “I uh, pretended to be a huge fan.” I say, self-deprecatingly. It works.
“Well, at least now we know he’s gullible. Did you get anything about the monster?”
“He had the Moroccan government’s threat catalogue open. Some kind of killer desert worm. Honestly, I don’t know if what I saw was a worm or not, so who knows.”
“I still can’t believe you actually saw it.” Sylvia interrupts. “Come on, tell me what it looks like!”
“Shay was probably hallucinating. I didn’t see anything, just heard a lot of scraping sounds.” Antoine says. “Shay, promise you won’t go out there at night with him, okay? I’m running low on friends now that everyone forgot I almost died a week ago.”
I make all the promises I have to. The rest of lunch break is brainstorming central. Sylvia keeps asking me to steal documents from Fionn and Jimin keeps drinking more and more water every time she does. Jet shuts it down; thanks, Jet. We’re all in agreement. We just have to do our best to make sure it doesn’t kill anybody, and leading O’Hagan to it and letting him go all Starship Troopers on its arthropod ass is the best way to do so. It should be great.
It sucks. I’m the center of attention! My emotion-ray vision doesn’t work if more than one person is talking to me. It might not be conscious but it’s not magic, either, I still have to pick up on all the little cues! I can’t handle it. I can’t tell if Jimin is actually thankful that we’re limiting our exposure or if he’s worried about me. When Cell stops by and Jet gives him the rundown, I can’t tell if he’s actually placated or if we’re gonna find him impaled in an alleyway next Saturday. It’s too much. It’s way too much.
I end up making some excuse as to why I can’t hop on voice chat and play whatever new base-building game they’re all into now. I can’t even remember what it’s called.
Jimin and I end up going out for noodles instead. It’s easy to forget that nobody’s ever invited the poor guy out for a meal in the city before; most of us are busy with each other all the time, and it’s not like he has any other friends. I guess maybe I was trying to rectify that, and that’s why I asked him. I don’t remember that either. The curse has a way of making you forget what you said. When you’re overwhelmed, your words are just… flares launched out the back of a plane to distract heat-seeking missiles. I hate playing defense. It doesn’t matter how good I am at it, it hurts too much. That’s why I never miss a chance to shut up.
“So what did it look like? The monster?” he asks in lurid fascination, the sun having crept so far down the horizon that the city’s turned dark.
“Spooky.” I say, trying to shut up.
“Next time you’re out there, with Fionn, you should bring some of my silk.” he says, excitement creeping across his face. Maybe it’s the sugar high from the milk soda he ordered. No. I know what it is. He’s powerless—that’s the kind of person he is, no judgement, just the truth. He’s powerless, he’s Pavloved himself into that smooth-walled pit of fear, and so he wants a win.
Nobody’s powerless. Nobody’s more pathetic than me, and I reinvented myself anyway, turned myself fresh and new and safe when I used to be just as vulnerable as him. Turned myself into me.
I’m trying to shut up, but I’m gonna shut this shit down instead.
“What happens when Fionn catches me with my jacket stuffed full of illegal biomaterials, huh? Come on, Jimin. We don’t need your mouth juice, you’re great already. If you weren’t there to force us to give a shit when it counted, and if you weren’t brave enough to admit you were a Class A, there’d be no Outliars, okay? Anything we do now is your win. Just stay safe, dude.”
He tries to look disappointed, but I catch him smiling out the corner of my eye with my Shay-o-vision a minute later. ‘They care if I’m safe!’ Of course I do. You’re normal, and we don’t have history, and you still look up to us misfits. Cultural barrier or not, that means something. Get used to having friends. We’re not going anywhere.
red-headed android 