Eileen Gunn - Stable Strategies and Others

The solenoid seemed to hesitate. She forced herself to take a deep calm breath and slowly traced the raised lettering with the fingers of her free hand. “Donated by Microsoft — ADT Intrusion Insurance.” I am not an intruder, she thought, without feeling. It worked; the switch beeped its discreet little signal, and the door opened to admit her to school.

A norm, by his looks one of the CAs — the criminally active students — was standing by the lockers. He turned to stare at Barbara as she walked down the hall. The cas weren’t too friendly to the special-skills students. None of the norms were, but the CAs, who sometimes tipped toward the sociopathic end of the scale, worried Barbara more than the other norms. Supposedly every student at Cobain was a suicide risk, but you kind of got the feeling that the CAs might just take you with them.

“Hey, spesh,” said the norm, fiddling with a bone-handled folding knife. “Guess what I’m thinking.”

Her class was through the first door, and she had to pass him to get there. She put an edge on her voice that was sharper than his knife. “ I’m thinking you’d look pretty funny with half a dick…. And now you’re thinking, ‘I wonder if she can see into the future,’ because that wasn’t what you were thinking at all.”

The norm looked confused. “Psycho bitch,” he muttered, but he turned back to his locker and didn’t pursue her as she walked by.

In class, she took her seat at the back of the lab, in the Microsoft — Dow section, still fuming at what jerks norms were. Pretty much everyone had heard about the drowning at Lake Washington; Barbara didn’t bother to block it from her mind, even though she usually guarded her thoughts around the telepaths.

Minerva, seated next to her, looked up. “Entertain us!” she called out. “Barbie was there when Mrs. Rathbone made like a salmon and went extinct.”

Before Barbara could brace herself, almost everyone in the classroom was pushing for a place inside her brain, probing her consciousness with questions like icy fingers. Telepaths froze her nose, the way they plugged in at will.

“Did she die all at once, or was it slow and lingering?”

“Did our test scores die with her?”

“Did her bra fill up with water?”

“Entertain us!”

“Entertain us!”

“Entertain us!”

That was a Cobain thing. It meant one thing to the teachers, another to the students. To the teachers it meant “pay attention.” To the students it meant “stop whatever you’re doing that’s interesting and do what we want you to do.” To Kurt Cobain, of course, it had meant “stick a shotgun in your mouth.”

All she needed to do was answer. Tell them all the grim details. Make it sound funny, make it sound like she didn’t care. If she gave them what they wanted, she’d be one of the gang. So why couldn’t she do it?

“Nevermind,” Barbie said.

“Did she leave a note?” Minerva asked. She gave a nervous laugh.

“That’s not funny,” Barbie said. “It was an accident.”

The ITV buzzed on and Mr. Madonna spoke to the class.

“Special-skills students,” he said, “As most of you know, Mrs. Rathbone met with a tragic accident last night, in the service of Cobain High. I am sure she would want you to quietly resume your studies and to welcome Mr. Collins, who will be with you shortly. We can all be proud of Mrs. Rathbone, because Microsoft — Boeing will be presenting the basketball team with new uniforms in her memory. Grief counseling will be provided in the cafeteria at lunchtime, courtesy of Microsoft — Taco Bell, and there will be a celebration of life sponsored by Microsoft — Coca-Cola on Friday at noon.”

“Yeah?” shouted Carl. “What’s in it for me?”

Grief counseling probably wasn’t going to be necessary for most of the students, because Mrs. R was one of the few special-ed teachers who had the power to control her class, and most of the kids hadn’t liked her very much. The other teachers had the psychic strength of fig newtons, but when you gave Mrs. R a hard time, she teleported you straight to detention.

And Barbara had been her pet. There was no denying that: Barbara could have said anything in that class and gotten away with it. This had put her in an awkward predicament. When you can say anything you want, and the teacher takes your questions absolutely seriously and understands what you were really asking and answers that question, it’s not so much fun to be smartass all the time. It’s more interesting to think up really good questions. Especially when you’re actually getting interested in the subject. This is what had earned her the nickname “Barbie” in the first place.

“Mrs. Rathbone’s Teen-Talk Barbie,” Carl had called her when she asked too many questions about chemistry. Just like the Barbie doll that said “Trigonometry is fun! Want some help with it?” and “I find chemistry very stimulating!”

Carl’s names for people stuck like birdshit because of the leadership thing: some people had it, most people didn’t. Minerva once told her straight out: “I don’t trust anybody except for Carl. And I wouldn’t trust him, except he makes me.”

Why don’t you just stay out of my head, Barbara thought, but the TPs fought to get in, just because it bugged her. Barbara shut an imaginary door and locked her thoughts away in an imaginary room, then sat back in her chair and flashed what she hoped was a smug and knowing look. Why give these shitheads the details?

“Aaaaaugh! Too late,” Minerva groaned. “She’s closed us out, the bitch.” There was a slight note of respect in the way she said “bitch.”

Barbara smiled. She brought up an image of the three little pigs inside the imaginary room, with the big bad wolf and her classmates outside. She made the wolf piss on Carl.

“Up yours,” said Carl. “I’m ditchin’ you, bitch.” There wasn’t any respect in his tone. With that, he left her head. The others followed, even Minerva. Barbara bricked up the outside of the door and settled back in her imaginary room. She stopped thinking about the pigs, but kept the door and the bricks fixed firmly in her mind.

Then, for the first time since Saturday morning, Barbara began to think about Mrs. Rathbone. She’d known about a lot of dank things, not just chemistry. Though chemistry was dank enough.

She had never told Mrs. R how much she liked her. She’d actually liked this teacher as if she was a person. Well, as much as she could like somebody that old. And now Mrs. R was dead.

Entertain us, Barbie thought. She forgot the brick wall. A vision washed over her: a stocky, bearded man in a cheap green suit walking down a corridor, accompanied by a too-thin, too-tall boy in just-pressed clothes. Oh, fuck: the horny chemist from last night.

Minerva caught on and screamed to the others. “Hey! She sees the sub! It’s a beard! And he’s with some toothpick dweezle wannabe.” The other tvs tuned in to Barbara’s premonition.

“Wannabe,” said Carl. “That’s his name now. Juan-na-be. Juan for short.” All the dumb toadies laughed. It was too late, but Barbara put up a block anyway. She brought the picture of the boy to a place no one could find. He wasn’t a telepath, that much she was sure.

The sub, Mr. Collins, was totally weird. The minute he walked in, everybody could tell he was paranormal, though they couldn’t figure out what he did. The telepaths went for broke on it, but couldn’t crack him. He sent two of them down to the assistant principal’s office. And they went, which was pretty strange in itself. Maybe that’s what he did, thought Barbara. Maybe he bent people to his will, in spite of themselves. Maybe that’s how he got girlfriends, since he was such a fat old dork.