SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

Bernadette nodded. “You must not refuse any opportunity of learning, my dear. It is all fieldwork.”

“Good,” said the Dean, as though the thing were settled, which Ramona supposed it was. “I’m glad we’re in agreement. Let’s see what we can do about getting a child’s desk.”

The Dean addressed Kora, who was now grinning ear to ear. “Alright, Miss Gillespie, you may go out into the hall now, and wait to be taken back to class.”

Kora removed herself to a few feet outside the door without making a sound.

Dean Sophie lowered her voice. “Thank you, Ramona, I know that an instructor’s time is valuable.”

“Fortunately, I’m only a TA.”

“There is something else I’d like you to get to the bottom of, if you can,” said Dean Sophie in a now-that-you-mention-it tone. “The Seminary’s apparently having trouble with books. If it were only textbooks that were missing…but there seem to be pages torn from some fairly irreplaceable reference materials. From Burke Library and some other places. Nobody seems to know how she manages to keep doing it.”

The Dean went over to her desk and retrieved a list, a very long list, of titles and missing page numbers. First on the list were three random pages pulled from Malleus Maleficarum . “If you could just find out where she’s keeping them…I don’t think anybody wants anything but to have the pages restored as quickly as possible.”

“She could have just decided she wanted to make a bonfire of them,” said Ramona, “or that she wanted to see what old paper tastes like.”

“I think not,” said Dean Sophie. “Have a look at the list.”

“What makes you think she’ll tell me if I ask her?”

“Oh, she probably won’t. I wouldn’t ask her if I were you. But…she does seem to be looking for an excuse to talk to you. Use that.”

Out in the hall, Bernadette’s manner took on an extra briskness. “Where has the child gone?” Kora had apparently disappeared, leaving Davie Darby to suck forlornly at the dregs of his juice box.

“She’s probably just ducked around the corner.”

Bernadette took Davie’s flipper. “You go and get her before she thinks to take apart the fire alarm,” she said, leading the seal-boy away at a marching pace. Ramona hurried alongside her.

“I was wondering,” she said, trying out the Dean’s now-that-you-mention-it voice, “if you’ve had the chance to look at my new abstract?”

“What new abstract?”

“I left it in your box. The proposal regarding the increase of Leda/Europa births in Sant Ramon?”

“That sounds very interesting,” said Bernadette tonelessly. “I will certainly look at it.”

“There’s an incredible amount of work to be done over there,” Ramona continued. “Abduction pregnancies are always complicated, and when you’re dealing with animal forms…I just think that if somebody were to set up a practice there, it would do a lot of good.”

“No doubt,” said Bernadette, and sped up her gait. “I will certainly look at it. Hurry on, now. Miss Gillespie should return to her lessons, and you to yours.” Then, off Ramona’s look, she said, “Don’t worry about the child’s desk. I’ll find something and have it ready.”

It had been hard to look like she wasn’t listening while they talked about her this time.

Kora learned most things by acting like she wasn’t listening. People talked more, and about more interesting stuff when they forgot she was there. Whenever people decided they wanted to speak to her—in that slow, patient, stern, uninteresting way—that was when she usually stopped listening.

But this conversation had had too many important things floating around in it.

They’d found out about her pictures, and that was bad…but maybe she didn’t really need the pictures, now that she was going to be in Ramona’s classes. Maybe she should just go now, and throw them away, or slip them under one of the library doors. The pages didn’t really tell her anything. Not really.

Kora listened, squinted down across the quad. Dodgeball was over. The too-big kids, the eleven and over kids, were all playing at some game of chase: Annabelle, a very freckled girl with great big brown and white speckled wings, was circling and trying to kiss everybody. None of them was looking for Kora. At least, none of them had a ball to bounce on her head. They’d probably all forgotten about her for the day. She could do it, quick, and come back out again before the bells rang for dinner.

Kora shivered out of the tree she was in, and walked as inconspicuously as she could along the big clump of lindens, weaving in and out of them, searching for a good stick.

The game of chase was confused, full of false-sounding shrieks. Kora couldn’t tell if the boys were trying to duck Annabelle’s kisses, or catch them, or just pull handfuls of speckled feathers out of her wingtips. Kora knew which one she would want to do. She had always thought Annabelle’s wings were beautiful, even while Annabelle was calling her The Phantom, and screaming at her to stop staring, stop creeping!

The older kids’ games were like their dreams: confusing, anxious, stupid, fluttery, angry, hard to get out of once you’d fallen in. Annabelle only dreamed about getting fat and failing tests, and flying into jet engines, and boys laughing at her. That was one reason Kora liked the littler ones like Davie. Littler kids dreamed all sorts of dreams—mushroomy, monster-y, candy-coated, airplane princess dreams—and they didn’t seem to mind when she ended up in them.

But the too-big kids knew she wasn’t supposed to be there. They all stayed far, far away from her, unless they were playing dodgeball.

But now. But now! If they were really going to let her be a student in Ramona’s classes she would finally be learning the stuff that real midwives and doulas learned. And Ramona would see her learning it all, see how clever and how careful Kora could be. She wouldn’t still be mad about the window. Nobody gets mad at you for things like windows when you have grownup work to do. You aren’t bad, if that stuff happens to you when you’re doing your grownup work. You’re just busy.

And if Kora read fast, and learned fast, and paid attention to every single thing…well they would have to give her her certification soon, wouldn’t they? Once she knew everything? Once she had her certification, nobody could make her stay behind at the Seminary. She could go to Sant Ramon, too, and be Ramona’s assistant, rocking all the little half-bulls and half-swans to sleep. She would be such a good assistant, if it was just Ramona and her and no one else!

Kora found her stick, a long, thick, smooth one, still a little green so it wouldn’t break. She used it as a walking-stick, strolling along, smiling through chattering teeth. She was just wondering if Sant Ramon was a warm place to live, when someone thundered up behind her.

“What are you grinning at, Creeper?”

“Nothing…” Kora turned to face Aiden Averback, biggest of the all the too-big kids. Almost fourteen. He was pretty and curly-headed, with bright black horns and bright yellow eyes, but he’d never be adopted, and that just made him angry at everything. Just now, though, he seemed especially to want to be angry.

“Don’t give me ‘nothing’! Fucking night-crawler!” He threw the dodgeball at her head, but she batted it away with her stick, “You think you can just go creepy-crawling around wherever you want?”

Kora remembered, now, he’d had a dream, last night or the night before. It had been a stupid, nothing dream, him doing stuff to a girl with no clothes on; Kora wasn’t even sure how she’d ended up in the middle of it. But his eyes were like yellow sparks when he saw her standing there, watching. He’d wanted to hurt her then. He was going to try to hurt her now.