The Three of Them

Without hearing a word, Harper knew that the boys were laughing and she knew that they were laughing at her. She didn’t need to use psychic powers to get the main points of what they were saying. Harper could have picked up the specifics if she wanted, but, honestly, she didn’t want to know. Maybe Steven was pretending to ask Mike if she was walking funny or trying to twerk. Maybe Mike was saying he had something that could make her walk straight for once.

Harper had heard those jokes (or ones just like them) many times before, both out loud and in the boys’ heads. The first few times she’d heard them she tried to read the boys’ thoughts. She wanted to see what they were thinking, what made them say such gross things. Sometimes the boys would be thinking disgusting things, thinking about her body or some other poor girl’s. Sometimes it would be about impressing the other boys. Either way, it was never something that she was glad to find out, so she’d just stopped trying.

Today, Harper took a quick glance and she thought she saw something in Mike’s face. Something weird. She decided to come back to it later, when he was alone and probably not thinking about her. For now, she just kept walking away from the two goons. As Harper’s mother would say, even if boys were jerks, she still had to make it to first period on time. At least math was just boring instead of being gross.

Harper got to her locker and set her backpack on the floor. She moved her backpack into her locker and pulled out her notebook while the rest of the students in the hall kept moving, bumping and jabbering with each other. Harper hated hallway traffic. It wasn’t that it was dangerous. She hadn’t actually been knocked over since elementary school, and she’d had years of physical therapy and adaptive PE since then. The problem with the hall traffic was that it was thoughtless. Like if you had an army of robots, but instead of being laser-shooting killing machines, they were just dumbasses who were programmed to only talk about clothes or football and who would just stare at you if you said “excuse me” to try to get them to move.

The first bell rang. Harper knew that she still had a little bit of time, but not so much that she could fool around. She finished getting her things and closed up her locker, pulling on the lock once to make sure that it had clicked. She slid into the hallway crush, sticking to the right side to avoid the people in a hurry.

Harper watched some of the hurriers weave in and out of traffic. There went Ella, probably in a hurry to get a jump start on some chemistry project or to meet with a teacher about starting some club. She would lean and speed up or slow down to avoid running into anyone. It was impressive. It made her seem like she could’ve been an athlete if she wanted. Harper watched her go until she ran into a herd of football players that were blocking her way. Ella was trying to find a gap when Harper hung a right to get to her classroom. She was halfway to the door when someone bumped into her. It didn’t knock her all the way down, but she did have to steady herself against the wall.

It was some guy texting and walking. He didn’t even turn around to say that he was sorry. Harper listened to him quickly. It was the usual mix of boring song lyrics, worry about girls and annoyance about how slow his phone was. Harper tuned back out. Sometimes she had trouble coordinating her reading and getting around without running into things. She could chalk that up to her CP most times if people asked, but it could still be annoying and embarrassing.

Harper made it into the room and to her desk with a few minutes to spare. As usual, Mr. Spade was writing equations on the board, his back to all the students. Harper had listened to his thoughts once or twice (as she had with pretty much all of her teachers and her principal). As far as she could tell, he had nearly a constant loop of second-guessing himself running through his head. He might be thinking that he shouldn’t have had such a heavy meal for lunch, or he might be wondering if he shouldn’t have ended a conversation with another teacher so quickly. Some days Harper felt bad for him, having to teach math (one of the most hated subjects) to a bunch of little jerks while doubting himself for a ton of different reasons.

Today, though, Harper didn’t feel a whole lot of sympathy. Not that Mr. Spade was doing anything particularly annoying today (other than writing a bunch of sine and cosine problems on the board). There was just something bothering her today, she realized. Not just the boys, though they didn’t help. There was something else. Like a weird energy in the school.

Harper tried to shake it off as she got out her pencil, calculator, and notebook. Mr. Spade finished writing one last equation. He put down his dry-erase marker, but he didn’t turn around yet. He never did that until the bell rang. As Harper waited, she heard talking and laughing behind her.

Harper tried to ignore the laughing. She looked out of the classroom door. There was Ella, sprinting by the door. Harper wondered if she would make it to class on time. She also wondered if Ella might play by a different set of rules than she did. Harper had her own set of rules, in a sense. It was all laid out in her IEP, in those meetings she had to sit through where everyone explained how remarkable it was that she could do what other students could. But Ella’s different rules were different than Harper’s different rules. Ella could point to things. Harper could point to things, but they were different things, and that was what was frustrating. The bell rang. A new kind of frustrating started.

~ * ~

Krista jumped a little when she turned around. Who knows how long her mom had been standing behind her like a stalker? Krista hadn’t noticed her mom blocking the light or smelling of too much perfume or anything like she did sometimes. Krista gave a smile and went towards the fridge, not taking her eyes off her mother. “Hey.”

Her mom stopped rubbing her eye and nodded a little. “Homework done?”

“Mostly. I’ll finish after a snack.” Krista let the door slowly swing shut as she went back to the counter.

“Don’t ruin your dinner.”

Krista nodded. She opened the bread bag and took out two slices. Her mom just stood there, kind of watching. Krista dropped a knife into the peanut butter jar and started spreading it on the bread. “How was work?”

“Huh?” Her mom squinted just a little.

Krista decided not to press her luck. Instead, she finished spreading the peanut butter and licked the extra off the knife.

“Don’t ruin your dinner,” her mom said again.

Krista nodded and started to clean up. Her mom yawned and went back to her room, shuffling off in her sad and semi-creepy way. Another drag in an already strange day. Now it was both school and home where she had people sneaking up on her. She grabbed a paper towel and brought it and her sandwich back to her room.

When Krista got there, she closed the door and went to her bed. She guessed that her mom had laid down to watch TV and wouldn’t bother her again for a while. Krista closed her eyes and took a bite. The world was almost fully shut out. She was almost able to enjoy her life for a few seconds. Just her and her generic peanut butter. Even that didn’t last long as all the crap of the school day crept into her head.

Krista opened her eyes. Her door was still closed, thankfully. She reached over to her nightstand and grabbed her soda. It was warm by now, but at least it washed down the peanut butter. Krista replayed the day’s events in her mind, thinking about whether or not she’d been careless when she’d turned invisible. It didn’t seem like she’d been any more careless than usual. She’d waited until all the other girls were already in there, pretending that taking out her hearing aids slowed her down.

After turning invisible, she’d been very careful to walk without bumping into anyone. She’d showered in the corner, her back towards the walls, watching the other girls as she soaped up and rinsed off right away. The last things she needed was for someone to notice floating bubbles, but having some stuck-up blonde telling her how fat she was wasn’t far behind on the list. So she waited a bit, making sure there was a clear shot for her to sneak out of the shower. It looked like she had one, but right before she made her way from the showers to the lockers, some girl tried to turn around and go back in for something. Krista was able to steady herself against a wall, but the girl slipped and fell. Right away, everyone broke into their predictable camps. About a third of the girls went to the girl who had slipped. They asked her what happened. Krista was able to sneak out while the girl tried to figure it out for herself without losing the other’s attention.

Another third of the girls in class just shrugged it off and went on their way, brushing their hair or toweling off. The last group laughed quietly and started spinning their gossip before the poor girl even finished her story. It was sickening without being surprising.

Krista managed to grab a towel and go to the back of the locker room, where she dried off and let herself become visible again. She wrapped the towel around herself and went to her locker. While Krista was opening it, she could feel someone watching her. Her hearing aids were still out, so she could pretend that she was oblivious, but she could feel it.

Krista opened her locker, using the door like a shield. After she got her stuff out though, there was no more hiding. There was only Jenna. Jenna was the kind of mean that would wait patiently while her victim squirmed. Krista turned towards her and pretended to be surprised. “Jenna. Didn’t see you there.”

“I’m here,” she said. Krista wanted to punch her in the face.

Jenna went on. “I didn’t see you in the shower.”

Krista tried very hard to keep a straight face. “Were you looking?”

Jenna gave an almost smile. “You’re so funny,” she said.

Krista just wanted to be done with Jenna, so she leaned forward a little and said, “Huh?” hoping that her deafness would be enough of a bother to keep her from asking any more questions.

It was hard to tell if Jenna knew that she was being lied to or not. Either way, she just nodded and said, “Well, I’ll see you around.”

It had been a sad mix of creepy and mildly annoying. Now, eating her sandwich, Krista wondered if Jenna was a sign that something was even worse than usual in the school or if it was just a coincidence that she and Harper were having off days. Of course, they’d have to look into it. Harper wouldn’t let it go. That was probably for the best, but it was still a pain and Krista still had to finish her science homework. She took a last bite of her sandwich, slugged some soda, and opened her book.

~ * ~

James was finishing up his math homework when his mother came into his room. “How was your day, James?”

“Good.”

James’s mother stood by him quietly for a moment. “Anything exciting happen?”

James finished calculating a derivative and then tried to think. The comments from the football players would lead to concern from his mother and additional questions. Any interactions with either Krista or Harper could be interpreted as potential for romance, and that would also lead to more questions. The homecoming theme could be deemed exciting without putting focus on James. “This year’s homecoming theme is superheroes.”

“Cool,” his mother said. “Are they doing dress-up days?”

“On Friday, we can wear some kind of costume, provided that it’s appropriate.”

“Well that’ll be fun. Who are you going as?”

As a rule, James did not participate in school activities, and this one in particular seemed likely to result in teasing. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Hmm,” his mother said. “Well, there’s still time to decide, right?”

James said, “Or to decide that a costume is not of interest.”

His mother smiled. “I’m glad you’re not letting it worry you.”

James put down his pencil and closed his book, but decided he wouldn’t look up at his mother. They stayed silent for a moment before she said, “Well, dinner should be ready pretty soon.”

“Okay.” James ran through what assignments he’d completed and what he had left. He’d finished English, math, chemistry and history. He could finish computer science after dinner, and all he had to do for American government was watch a video, though he wasn’t entirely sure what the point of that was.

James’s mother touched his shoulder and then left his room. James thought about the superhero figures he had received at age ten. He’d taken a talking Spiderman figure apart. He understood now that was an inappropriate way to demonstrate appreciation for the toy, but at the time being able to explore the system of wiring had been interesting. Much more interesting than pretending that the figure had its own thoughts and emotions.

Next, James wondered if part of Harper’s interest in trying to keep the school and the people in it safe was simply a hero fantasy. He recognized that it was unlikely that Harper had received the same type of encouragement to like superheroes that he had as a child, but maybe she was impacted by the social pressures that Mrs. Peterson kept talking about in regards to issues of race, gender, and social class.

James decided against asking Harper directly. She often did not take such questions well, and she seemed particularly concerned in school today. James didn’t understand what she meant when she told him and Krista that something was “off” in the school (and James was pleased to see that Krista expressed skepticism as well), but he recognized that she would likely be combative for at least the next day, if not the rest of the week because of his follow-up questions. That kind of reaction was not out of the ordinary. The problem was how to prove or disprove things. How can a person measure whether or not the school is “creepier”? Imprecision in language always led to imprecision in measurement.

And yet, maybe there was some way to track things like the level of aggression throughout the school. Or if there was a way to track visits to the nurse’s office, suggesting that people were seeking out comfort or feeling physical discomfort because of emotional problems. These might be able to challenge (or possibly justify) Harper’s theory that something was wrong. But what to focus on first? And how could he take a baseline or control measurement? If things had already become “creepy,” then it was too late to establish what the normal rates were.

James closed his eyes. He pictured the drawer in his desk just to the left of his knee. He focused not on the handle, as he had the first time he’d tested his ability, but instead upon the rollers on each side of the drawer’s tracks. He focused on making them rotate, slowly pushing the drawer open. When James opened his eyes, the task had been completed. At least his powers still worked.