Eileen Gunn - Stable Strategies and Others

Barbara washed her face and carefully shaved designs in her scalp with a tiny electric razor. She hoped it looked okay: she couldn’t really see what she was doing in the back. She put more glue on the dreads, just in case. Then she got dressed and went down to the kitchen for breakfast.

“Well, good morning, B.J.,” said her mother. “You’re up early for Sunday. That new alarm clock must be working , hey?” Her mother looked at her hair, started to say something, then reconsidered. Instead, she grabbed Barbara’s wrists, turned them over, and inspected them in the sunlight. “You can hardly see the scars now.” She nodded in satisfaction. “I’m so glad we went ahead with the plastic surgery. Your father was wrong — it’s certainly worth the extra money.”

“Waste of dough, Mom,” said Barbara. “Scars rule.”

Her mother let go of her. “This bacon your father got for breakfast — I worry about the sodium content. On the Today Show they were talking about sodium and nitrous in packaged meats. It causes cancer.”

“Nitrates, Mom. Nitrous is what you inhale.” But her mother was already off on another subject, spouting some completely incomprehensible psychobabble she’d heard on TV that morning. “Mom, was I adopted?” Her mother didn’t answer.

Throughout the day, Barbara did her best to keep her mind off her premonition, so her parents wouldn’t notice anything unusual. They were worried enough about her self-esteem, without her troubling them with something real. Mostly she stayed in her room, listening to Airhead real loud on the phones and trying to figure out the words.

At dinner, she picked at her food: soggy ramen noodles with overcooked peapods and undercooked carrots. For dessert, a kiwi-fruit-flavored Jello with embedded banana slices. The jello had achieved a colloidal state, and the banana slices hung suspended in light-green goo. It reminded her of chemistry class. She pushed it away and excused herself from the table.

“You didn’t take very much to eat,” said her mother. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”

Barbara groaned and pulled on her jacket. “I’m going to the basketball fundraiser,” she said. She didn’t really want to go, but she had to be there. She had to see what happened.

“Dressed like that?” asked her father. “What the hell did you do to your hair?”

“That’s nice,” said her mother quickly. “You make some friends who like basketball. That’s a good idea.”

She figured she’d go to the marina, where Mrs. R was starting from. The crowds would be at the stadium, waiting for her to reappear.

Barbara knew there was nothing she could do. When she was a kid, when she first started premoting, she tried to change things. She told her father not to eat at the JellyBelly Deli, but her remark whetted his appetite for knishes; he got salmonella. She told her sister not to get up on the high slide, but Tina didn’t like being ordered around; she broke her arm. The incident with her mother’s car was especially unfortunate.

Barbara caught on, and now kept her mouth shut — it didn’t make any difference in the results, but at least she didn’t get blamed for it. She had never premoted anything this serious before, but she knew what she had to do: stay out of the way of the inevitable.

At the marina, a platform had been set up overlooking Lake Washington, with a field of folding chairs in front of it. Most of the chairs were empty, except way up near the stage. Barbara sat on the side in the back and tried to look invisible.

Klieg lights were waving through the sky, and cameras from the school TV station were trained on Mrs. R’s presumed trajectory, although no one had ever been observed in the act of teleportation. Huge screens from the Microsoft — Sony Educational Channel had been set up to make the experience of being there as real as watching it on TV. The Cobain Marching Band was on the platform playing the school song, “Live Through This.” The drum majors, dressed as Courtney Love, screamed out the lyrics. The norms really made a big deal of all this fascist school-spirit stuff. Barbara wondered how they faked it.

She moved quickly into a seat at the back, leaving a space between herself and a skinny geek with a scramble of hair at the top. He looked like a spesh — funny she didn’t know him.

And then, there she was on the screen, bigger than life: Mrs. R, spangles twinkling, silver fringe fluttering. She’d obviously been given a heavy dusting of glitter just before taking the stage, and she left a shimmery trail behind her, like a slug.

Cobain’s principal, Mr. Madonna, an XXY with extra-high intuitive qualities and an inclination to hold pep rallies, introduced her, though he said she needed no introduction, then led the band in a medley of sentimental grunge. Barbara loathed grunge.

And then Mrs. R stepped forward very quietly and started to, well, ripple. She wavered, like hot air on the highway in August.

In her dream, Barbara had seen all the details: the water, the noise, the rush of people to the exits, Mrs. R’s cold, white, limp body lying alone on the stage afterward.

The reality was worse. The audience at the stadium was really spooked, not to mention they got wet. The CPR team entered the hall cautiously, and way too late. At Microsoft Park, the audience couldn’t figure out what was going on. The guy next to her couldn’t seem to believe it. He kept saying, “This is incredible!” over and over again. Finally he turned to Barbara and asked, “Why did she do herself like that in front of everybody?” Barbara got up out of her seat and walked away.

He followed her, still babbling. “She’s the oldest spesh I’ve ever seen. She must have been one of the first. If she held out that long, what made her crack?”

“She didn’t do it to herself,” Barbara said finally. Mrs. R wouldn’t have. She was sane. She was happy. She couldn’t have done it to herself.

“My God, I hope you’re right.” He grabbed her elbow. Barbara almost pulled away, but he didn’t seem dangerous. “Come on,” he said.

She felt the ground beneath her feet fall away, then return. Wooden flooring. It was dark. The guy let go of her elbow. What kind of a nut was he? Where had he taken her? What the fuck was going on? He hit a light switch, and she realized where she was: Mrs. R’s chem lab.

“Jesus!”

“Don’t be scared: watch.” He grabbed a beaker and some flasks from a cabinet. “You take a little of this, a pinch of that. Use your bunsen burner like a blow torch, and — ”

“No! I’m outta here!”

The air in the room grew thick with noxious clouds that fizzled and popped and made her nose burn. He grabbed her and pulled her tightly to him, forcing his mouth onto hers. The clouds in the room turned black and heavy, and she couldn’t breathe — she couldn’t even take a breath. She started to pass out, his mouth on hers, his tongue down her throat. My mother was right, she thought. I shouldn’t talk to strange guys.

The next thing she knew, they were back outside the marina. He was still kissing her, and he’d pressed up against her real close. He had a hard-on, and she was kissing him back.

She broke away.

“Did that help?” he said.

“What the fuck is the matter with you?”

“I thought you could use a rush. Like in her honor, you know?”

“You are seriously fucked,” said Barbara. “Stay away from me.” She ran for the bus.

At the school door on Monday morning, Barbara pushed her right hand against the security switch that verified her ID, scanned her person for possible weapons, and then evaluated her emotional state to determine whether or not she would use them. The twitch switch, they called it. Since they could no longer ban guns, the schools tried to keep out students who would use them irresponsibly.