Diane Duane - A Wizard Alone

The huge shape crouched there for a few more moments, then, wobbling, it got up. For a long, long moment it stood over her, seeming to gaze down at her from that great height… but Nita still couldn’t be sure. Then the robot turned, and slowly and clumsily went clanking off into the darkness, out of the spotlight where it and Nita had been standing.

Nita broke out in a sudden sweat, feeling that she’d missed something important. “Look,” she called after it hurriedly, feeling incredibly inadequate and useless, “I really am sorry I can’t help you! If you come back later, when my sister’s awake, she should be able to figure out what it is you need. Please, come back later!”

But it was gone. — and Nita found herself staring at the dark ceiling of her bedroom. The sun wasn’t yet up outside, and she was still sweating, and feeling stupid, and wondering what on Earth to make of the experience she’d just had.

At least it wasn’t a nightmare, like that other one

, she thought.

But on second thought, considering how spectacularly dumb she felt right now, Nita wasn’t so sure…

There was no chance of getting back to sleep, so Nita showered and got dressed for school, ate a cereal bowl’s worth of breakfast that she didn’t really feel like eating, and then dawdled over a cup of tea until it was time to wake her dad. This was an addition to Nita’s morning routine that she heartily wished she didn’t have to deal with, but her father really needed her to do it. Recently he’d been turning off his alarm clock and going back to sleep without even being aware of having done so.

She knocked at the bedroom door. “Daddy?”

No answer.

“Daddy… it’s six-thirty.”

After a few seconds came the sound Nita had been bracing herself for, the sound she didn’t think her dad knew he made: a low, miserable moan, which spoke entirely too clearly of how he felt, deep down inside, all the time now. But this was the only time of day that sound got out, before he was completely awake. Nita controlled herself as strictly as she could, absolutely intent on not making things any worse for him by sounding miserable herself.

“Do you want me to make some coffee?” Nita said.

“Uh,” her dad said. “Yes, sweetheart. Thanks.”

Nita went down to the kitchen and did that. She had mixed feelings about making her dad’s coffee: That had always been what her mother did, first thing. Nita also wasn’t sure if she was making it strong enough — her mom had always joked that her dad didn’t want any coffee that didn’t actually start to dissolve the cup. Nita, being new at this, was still experimenting with slight changes to the package directions, a little more each morning, and secretly dreading the day when she would get it right, and it would most forcibly remind her dad of who had not made it.

She started the coffee machine and went quietly back up to her room. By then her dad was already in the shower. Nita sat down at her desk, picked up her book bag from beside it, and shoved in the textbooks she’d be needing today. She had a chemistry test that afternoon, so she picked up the relevant book from beside her bed and started reading.

It was hard to concentrate, even in the early morning stillness. In fact, it was hard to concentrate most times, but this was something that Nita had been pushing her way through by dint of sheer stubbornness. The rest of her life might be going to pieces, but at least her grades were still okay, and she was going to keep them that way. What Nita missed, though, was the sheer effortless enjoyment she had always gotten from science before. This stuff was harder than the science she’d loved as a kid. That by itself isn’t so much of a problem. I’m learning it. Though I’m not used to having to work at it

But the shadow of pain that hung over everything was also interfering… and about that, there wasn’t anything she could do.

“Sweetie?”

Nita looked up. Her dad was standing in her bedroom doorway, looking at her with some concern. “Sorry, Dad, I didn’t hear you.”

He came over and gave her a hug and a kiss. “I didn’t mean to distract you. I just wanted to make sure you’ll see that Dairine gets out.”

“Sure.”

“Don’t let her sweet-talk you.”

Nita raised her eyebrows at the unlikeliness of this. “I won’t.”

“Okay. See you later.”

He went out. Nita heard the back door lock shut behind him, heard the car start. She glanced out the window into the gray, early morning light, and saw the car backing out of the driveway, turning in the street, vanishing from sight. The engine noise faded down the street.

Nita sat there and thought of her dad’s still, pale face as he spoke to her. Sad all the time; he was so sad. Nita longed to see him looking some other way… yet for so long now she’d routinely felt sad herself, because she could understand his problem. It’s only been a month , she thought, and already I can’t remember what it’s like not to be sad .

The school shrink had warned her about that. Mr. Millman, fortunately, had turned out to be very different from what Nita had expected, or dreaded, when she’d been sent to see him after her mom had died. The other kids at school tended to speak of “the shrink” in whispers that were half scorn, half fear. Having to go see him, in many of their minds, still meant one of three things: that you needed an IQ test — probably to prove that you needed to be put in a slower track than the one you were in; that you were crazy, or about to become so; or that you were some kind of closet boozer or druggie, or had some other kind of weird thing going on that was likely to make you a danger to yourself or others.

Nita had been surprised that the crueler mouths around school hadn’t immediately started to spread one or another of these rumors about her. But it hadn’t happened, apparently because her mother was well known and liked in town by a lot of people, and this attitude had spread down to at least some of their kids. It seemed that those kids at school who knew her at all thought that though Nita was a geek, it was a shame about her mother, and counseling after her mom died so young wouldn’t count as a black mark against her.

So nice of them , Nita had thought when she first heard about this. But she had to admit to a certain amount of relief that mockery wasn’t going to be added to the whispers of pity that she’d already had more than enough of. Not that she wasn’t used to half the kids she knew making fun of her as an irredeemable nerdette. But having to deal with a new level of jeering, as well as the pain, was something she could do without right now.

She still had no energy to speak of. Sleep never came easily anymore, and she kept waking up too early. But once she was awake, she didn’t really want to do anything. If Nita had had her way, she’d have stayed home from school half the time. But she didn’t have her way, especially since Dairine was already in trouble with the principal at her school for all the time she’d been losing — so much so that their dad had to go see the principal about it this afternoon. Nita was completely unwilling to add to his problems, so she made sure she got to school on time — but she found it hard to care about anything that happened there.

Or anywhere else

, she thought. Even though she was up before dawn half the time, the predawn sky, even with the new comet passing through, didn’t attract her as it used to. Nita leaned on the sill of the window by her desk, looking out at the bare branches of the tree out in the middle of the backyard. She could see the slow words its branches inscribed against the brightening sky in the wind, but she couldn’t bring herself to care much what they said. She felt as if there was some kind of thick skin between her and the world, muffling the way she knew she ought to feel about things… and she didn’t know what to do to get rid of it. What really frightened Nita were the times when she clearly perceived that separation from the world as something unnatural for her, and still didn’t care if the remoteness never got better — the times she was content to just sit and stare out at the world, and watch it go by.