Holly Black (37 page)

“Henry IV,”
she says.

I nod. I can hardly hear the girls behind us anymore; I mostly just hear our breath coming fast and hard and the ground scrunching beneath us. “Like, admittedly I am not an expert in slang,” I say, “but isn’t
freaking
usually kind of sexual?”

Kayley turns around to me and runs backward just long enough to say, “Example?”

“‘Madam, I wish to freak your body.’ Or, ‘My heart desires to become freaky with you.’”

“Ha,” says Kayley. She doesn’t laugh much, but she ha’s a fair amount. “Yeah, well, maybe that’s what they want. Maybe that’s why they picked the cutest girls in the junior class. Maybe they just want to slather us in paintball paint and then do unspeakable things to us.” I laugh, but only for a syllable. I think Kayley is beautiful—oval face and big eyes and very curvy—and I think that I am marginally acceptable. I mean, there are no large-scale problems with me that I can detect, except for a general lack of vroom in the bust area and a nose that occupies a bit too much space. But no one would think of me as pretty at Hoover. Or even Kayley. Being pretty here involves so much more than just being pretty, and frankly I don’t have time for it.

By the time we crest the hill, I can’t even hear the Freakers anymore, and even though my Mary Janes are half-soaked, I feel good. I wish they hadn’t picked us. There are plenty of unpopular people to go around—the drama kids who do the tech work, the girl who single-handedly runs the student newspaper, the girls who Kayley and I play Pokémon with in the student lounge during free periods—but if they had to pick us, at least they’ve picked BOTH of us.

We descend the other side of the hill, headed toward the cemetery where the school founder and her family are buried. My weight is way back on my ankles as I half-walk and half-slide down the hill, dodging boulders and trees and the immense mounds of kudzu that have overtaken bushes twice as tall as me. We get down the hill much quicker than we got up it, and I know we’re near the bottom when I hear Hoover Creek.

“The bridge,” I say.

“Yeah, obviously,” Kayley answers without looking back at me.

“Jesus, sorry,” I say. The land flattens out and Kayley launches into full stride, and she gets way out in front of me, as if she feels compelled to remind me that she’s faster than I am. But it doesn’t matter—we’re going to the same place. I watch her reach the dirt road that leads back to the stables, run parallel to it for a moment, and then dip her head down underneath the one-lane bridge that crosses over the creek.

Kayley and I had spent many lunches under the bridge—the cement outcropping lets us sit with our legs dangling over the water, which ran loud enough to muffle our voices to anyone walking or driving above, but quiet enough that we could always hear each other.

I reach the bridge a couple minutes later and sit down next to Kayley, who is staring into the water.

She doesn’t say anything to me, so after a while, I tell her, “I feel kinda like an ork, hiding out under a bridge.”

“A troll,” she says, and then sighs. “You feel kinda like a troll.”

“No, trolls are people. I don’t feel like a person. I feel like an ork,” I insist.

She sighs again, this time clearly annoyed. “Lauren,” she says. “You’re so stupid sometimes. Trolls are not people. Orks are not people. Only humans are people. Orks are from Tyrol folklore, and they live on mountains. Trolls live under bridges. And they have really long hair and big noses, and that’s clearly what you mean when you say ork.”

I reach over and put my hand on her shoulder and say, “Okay. Sorry. I meant trolls. Jeez, are you okay?”

“Yeah, Lauren, I’m splendid. Everyone in my entire class is trying to attack me with paintball guns, and I’ve officially been declared one of the two least-liked people in my peer group, and my best friend doesn’t know crap about folklore, and I’m dirty and sweaty and gross and just
splendid
.”

“Well, you don’t have to be bitchy,” I say. “It’s not my fault.”

She says nothing.

“It’s not my fault,” I repeat, and she says nothing, and then smaller, I say, “You think…”

She takes that as a start. “I think that sometimes you can be a little…I don’t know. Meek. And they prey on that. So they prey on us.”

I just stand up and climb out from under the bridge. Maybe what bothers me so much is the thought that Kayley might be right, but mostly I’m just furious with her for even thinking that, let alone saying it out loud.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

“To the car,” I say as I walk away. I’m talking so softly she probably can’t even hear me. “All things being equal, I would rather be paintballed.”

I’m walking for about thirty seconds when I hear Kayley’s footfalls behind me. “I’m sorry,” she says.

I wheel around. “You know, you’re a total know-it-all. And it’s incredibly rude sometimes; I mean, you’re not perfect either, and you act like it’s my fault but it’s not my fault for being quiet or your fault for being a know-it-all. It’s not your problem or my problem; it’s their problem. They’re the demented ones, not us, so don’t take it out on me, because the only thing that holds anything together for me is having someone else on the Not Demented Team.”

Kayley just nods, and then we stand there for a second, and then she hugs me. She says, “I’m sorry,” and I can hear her crying in her voice a little, but then when we separate, she has her hands on my shoulders and says, “Back to the bridge for the trolls!”

We go back to the bridge and just listen to the water run. There is this phenomenon that Dr. Halfrecht taught us about in physics, about particle behavior, and I’m thinking about it while I watch the water rumble over the pebbles in the creek bed. When particles are suspended in water, they move around really weirdly, I guess, and one way to think of how they move around is that every time they run into another particle, they immediately forget everything about where they’ve been before. Fighting with Kayley is like this, thank God. We can completely forget our fights as soon as we run into each other in a not-fighty way, and I love that about her.

So after a minute, I say, “I still think trolls are people.”

“They aren’t human,” Kayley answers, friendlier now.

“Right; I’m not saying they’re human. I’m saying they’re people.”

“Dude,” she says, “I think you have a completely insane take on what constitutes personhood. For starters, people are real.”

“Oh, really? The Freakers strike me as pretty fake, but they’re still people,” I say.

“Ha,” she says. “Fair enough. Would they were clean enough to spit upon, as the Bard would say, but they are people.”

“And so are trolls.”

“No,” Kayley says, smiling. “Trolls are trolls; elves are elves; orks are orks; fairies are fairies.”

“I would say that trolls and elves are definitely people. Elves have to be people, because interspecies sex is gross, and there’s nothing gross about Aragorn getting it on with Arwen in
Lord of the Rings
.”

“Is the kind of thing someone would say,” Kayley scoffs, “if someone was basing their analysis on the movies, not the books. Doesn’t happen in the books!”

“Wrong!” I say. The burden of meekness has lifted. “They get married in the appendices! It’s a total symbol for the restoration of Numenor! Pwned!”

“We will have to continue this discussion,” Kayley says, realizing her defeat, “at another juncture. For now, let us return to your car.”

On the walk there, circling back around the other side of campus, we find other debates: Do zombies bleed blood? What happens if a zombie attacks a unicorn? How can mermaids hook up with seamen if they have no legs to spread? Princess or Toad? Dawn or May? By the time we make it to the car, in the gray twilight, I’ve forgotten our fight entirely in a way that the Freakers never forget their fights, because their fights are all they have. The Freakers have gone home, their cars all disappeared from the parking lot.

There’s a single lipstick-red splotch of paintball goo on the front grill of my car. It doesn’t wash off for months, but I don’t mind. It is not my scarlet letter. It’s theirs.

Text by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci. Illustrations by Bryan Lee O'Malley.

by
barry lyga

Okay, follow me for a second: Guys are like dinosaurs.

We don’t know much about dinosaurs. We know a lot, but not nearly enough. Just like with guys.

Of the twelve hundred or so genera suspected to exist, we’ve only discovered around three hundred and fifty. There are
huge
gaps in our knowledge. When you go to a museum or watch a movie and you see a dinosaur with a certain color pattern on its hide, that’s just someone’s speculation. It’s informed speculation, sure, but it’s still just guesswork. Because we don’t
know
.

We’re guessing what they looked like based on patterns imprinted on petrified mud. We conjure their motions from the interrelationships of their bones, figuring that if they fit together
this
way, then they must have moved
this
way.