Quicker (an Ell Donsaii story) (3 page)

Jake had turned bright red with fury. “Look young lady. I don’t give a crap how you scored on any tests. If you want to go to college, you’ll do things
my
way. Send—me—those—scores!”

Ell’s pulse throbbed harder. She took another calming breath. “No!
You
can’t keep me from going to college.”

Jake strode across the room to tower over Ell, “
Who
do you think is going to pay for you to go to college? Your mom? She doesn’t have the money!”

Ell felt herself going over the edge into the bad place that rage could take her. She took another deep breath to try to calm herself but it didn’t seem to help. “I don’t
want
your money,
asshole
!” Her own mind gibbered at her. She
never
spoke this way to adults. “
Get control of yourself!
” she thought. The world had slowed down and everything had started moving in a dreamlike fashion like it had when the man attacked her mom. She had a queasy flashback to the feeling of her fingers bursting into his eyeballs. She had only meant to poke his eyes to distract him. She noticed with dismay that Kristen looked mortified and had started crying but then Ell saw Jake’s shoulder tense. His arm swung back, and then forward, hand open. With everything moving in slow motion Ell realized that he intended to slap her! Her mind projected his hand’s intended trajectory, and the way the world’s movements had taken on a molasses-like motion made it easy to duck down out of the path his hand was taking toward her head. As it missed her, she realized that the powerful, un-deflected slap was going to go on to hit her mother instead! She reached out with her right hand as it passed and slapped the underside of his forearm just above the wrist in order to deflect his hand up over her mother’s head as well.
Oh no!
she thought to herself as agony washed up her arm from her hand. Moving so fast, she’d hit his wrist
far
too hard! Every time she had a “fight or flight reaction” like she was currently experiencing, the world seemed to move slowly and Ell moved
so
fast that she overdid things! She saw a visible dent appear in the flesh just above Jake’s wrist, then shock waves spread from and bounced back across the site where Ell’s hand had struck. Though it had seemed to be a slow bump to Ell, it obviously had been a very hard strike. She saw the effect of the blow on Jake, as he spun clumsily from the momentum of the unexpectedly missed slap. His eyebrows initially rose in surprise when he failed to make contact, then twitched together in concern. A moment later they rose again as pain messages flooded into his brain from his wrist.

Jake and Ell both grasped their injured appendages and bent over with the pain, glaring at each other.

Ell lay on her bed staring up into her HUD. Jake had been unable to use his hand and so Kristen had taken him to the ER. Part of the time Ell’s mind wandered over, around and through the disaster that had just befallen her family. She had managed to vigorously research scholarship and military academy options on the net though. She swore that she would pay her own way through college even if she had to work a few years before she attended a school and live like a pauper while she attended. The door creaked open downstairs and she heard her mother and Jake come in. Ell got out of bed and went to the top of the stairs where she stood uncomfortably, waiting with her arms crossed and her right hand squeezed in her armpit. Her palm still hurt where she’d slapped Jake’s arm up and away and the bases of her fingers had turned black and blue. She wondered if she might have done her hand serious damage but it seemed to work OK despite the pain. When Kristen and Jake came out from the kitchen Ell said, “I’m sorry.”

They looked up at her. Ell’s mother looked concerned. Jake, wearing a cast, still looked pissed. He said, “You broke my ulna!” His tone carried a mixture of anger and astonishment.

“
You
… you tried to slap me!” Ell’s tone was low, words uttered through gritted teeth, but there could be no mistaking the rage in her voice. She had thought that surely he would apologize to her also, especially if she went first. Even though he never apologized for anything, surely he would apologize for trying to
strike
her?

“Hey! Hey…” Kristen made little downward pushing motions with her hands, trying to calm them both.

Ell’s vision blurred with tears. A sense of abandonment swept over Ell as she realized that her mother wasn’t taking her side. She turned and marched back to her room, picking up the suitcase she’d already packed. When she reached the top of the stairs she saw that Jake and her mother were having a quiet but heated argument. They looked up at her standing calmly with her suitcase. “Good!” Jake said beneath lowered brows.

“What? Where are you going?” Kristen asked.

“Gram’s. I can’t stay here.” Ell started down the stairs.

Tears streamed down Kristen’s face but with resignation she quietly said, “OK, I’ll take you,” and picked up her purse.

After she pulled out of the driveway, Kristen said, “Ell?” When there was no response she said, “Ell, I’m sure you feel I’ve let you down. I kinda feel the same way. I really don’t know what to do when the two people I love hate each other like you and Jake do.” She paused, hoping Ell might comment but the girl sat there, staring ahead with her arms crossed. “Ell, if you and Jake can’t live together… If you can’t live together, I think having you at Gram’s is the best way to keep this family from coming apart. I know he acts like a jerk sometimes and I’m going to talk to him about it. But you were pretty rude to him too.”

“Only after he’d been rude to me for the
thousandth
time.”

“Well I appreciate your apologizing to him. I’ll talk to him about apologizing to you and maybe you can move back home in a couple of days?”

“
He
… he will
never
apologize. I, therefore, will
never
live in that house again.”

Silence reigned the rest of the way to Gram Taylor’s house. When Gram saw Ell with a suitcase she clapped her hands to her face, eyes darting back and forth from Kristen to Ell, taking in their grim looks, “Oh! I was afraid this would happen one day.” She looked at Ell, “You and Jake get in a fight?”

“Yes Gram. I’m sorry, but I’m hoping to live with you for a while?”

“Of course, of course.” Ell’s grandmother shepherded Ell into the house and began bustling around, clearing drawers in her spare room and throwing their contents on the bed, “But I’m sure you guys can work it out after a bit.”

“Not gonna happen Gram. If I can’t stay with you ‘til I go away to school next Fall, I’ll need to look into other arrangements?”

“Sure, sure, stay as long as you like. Keep me from being lonely! Next Fall? You’re just a Junior. You mean Fall after this coming one?”

“No Gram, I intend to apply for early admission and go after my Junior year.”

Gram’s eyes went back and forth from Ell to Kristen and back again, “Really? Will you be able to get in?”

Kristen said quietly, “She got the highest score in the country on her math SAT Mom.”

Gram clapped her hands together in delight. “Oh! That’s great! We should have ice cream!” They all worked to bag the erstwhile contents of the drawers for placement in the storage closet and spent a few moments unpacking the meager contents of Ell’s suitcase into the drawers.

Later, after a suitable dose of mint chocolate chip all around, Kristen went back to Jake’s house and Ell went to her new room to reorganize. Though it was late when she finished and laid down to sleep, sleep was long in coming. The fight with Jake kept cycling through her mind. Normally, when Ell had trouble getting to sleep, she mentally worked on her favorite math problem, an attempt to describe how quantum entanglement could occur through another dimension. One of the great mysteries of physics is that particles which are “entangled” somehow seem to be connected to one another even when they are far apart. Ell was trying to create her own math to describe how such entangled particles, despite being separated in the dimensions we are aware of, are actually in direct contact with one another through her postulated other dimension. In that they could touch each other in it even though, in the dimensions we see they were far apart. The problem was mind boggling and the mental effort usually wore her down and put her off to sleep quickly. This night however, her mind kept derailing off her “dimensional math” and back onto Jake and what he’d done and how Ell should have responded. It was almost morning before she finally fell asleep.

***

Phil Zabrisk encountered Ell for the first time on a brisk Fall Saturday at the service academy trials. It had been cool in the morning, but an Indian Summer sun brought a beautiful breezy afternoon that blew brightly colored leaves about. Phil’s dad was stationed at Seymore Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina and Phil happened to go to the Chapel Hill ROTC center for physmed testing on the same date as Ell.  His family had a long history of military service and it was his intention to extend that proud history.  Many of his ancestors had served in the higher ranks of the nation’s officer corps and it was the family’s belief that “breeding will show.”  Tales of Phil’s forebears had inspired him and it was his intent to exceed their accomplishments. Most Cadets are appointed to the service academies by members of Congress.  His Grandfather, Father and Uncle had easily pulled enough strings to ensure that Phil would get an appointment, assuming he passed the physmed testing and did even moderately well on the entrance exams. He had done well enough on the entrance exams that his admission was practically guaranteed once he cleared physmed.  He excelled at wrestling; talk even circulated about his chances for All-American status in college, so he had little fear that he would be physically disqualified.

Ell, on the other hand, had been a quandary for the Academies. She was underage and their lower age limit for admission was supposed to be inviolate. However, recruiters had been very excited about her math abilities. Then they had heard about her phenomenal scores on a reaction time test. They had offered to guarantee admission if she’d wait until she was “of age” but she’d refused. Then the honorable Senator Lloyd Danbridge of North Carolina, who’d put her up for admission, had raised a stink. The Air Force Academy had finally agreed to make an exception in her case, as long as she kept her age a secret from other cadets. After all, she
would
be of age by the time she graduated and started full active duty. Nonetheless she had to pass the physmed testing like everyone else or she wouldn’t be allowed in. Ell worried a lot because they required that she be able to run a mile in under seven minutes and despite her superb athletic abilities in quick reaction time sports, she was terrible at anything that required endurance.

In any case, while Phil stood there in his shorts being poked and prodded by the medicos, his mind wasn’t really on what they were doing.  Completely confident that he would pass physmed, he was doing a little girl watching on the women who were also there to be tested. Ell was three people ahead of him in line.  He noticed her because she had a “fine looking bod.”  She was above average in height and slender, but muscularly very well defined.  He smirked to himself, thinking that she’d probably wasted a lot of effort getting herself into condition for this test in the vain hope that it would help with an appointment. Nonetheless, she looked good from behind and he surely appreciated the view. When she turned his way at one point he realized that her face had a simple and elegant beauty.
That girl is hot!
he thought to himself.

At one of the testing stations, the screen displayed the entire list of applicants snaking their way through and by counting up three names he was able to determine that she was “Donsaii, Ell.” The examiners hadn’t taken the testee’s electronics away from them at that point so he simply queried his AI about her. In a few seconds “Chuck” began whispering in his ear. “She doesn’t have a very big presence on the public net. She grew up in Morehead City, down at the North Carolina coast. Only child of a widowed mother. Father and grandfather owned a fishing boat that sank with both aboard; mother currently works as a teacher in the winter, waitress in the summer. Went to public schools. Very good grades, played on several athletic teams, usually the star of the team.  Probably a very well qualified applicant who could truly benefit from a low cost education.”

With those genes she might make a good noncom,
Phil thought to himself. 

The next place Phil’s mind went was even lower.  He decided that a small town girl, with great legs, whom he was never going to see again, made a perfect candidate for the “Zabrisk charm.”  He asked Chuck to look up her accomplishments on the net and focused on the fact that she had been a pitcher on the State Championship softball team from her high school. 

Later, Phil happened to see the girls do their one mile run and with surprise saw that, though she looked muscular and in shape, she came in dead last. He wondered if she’d even made it by the seven minute maximum? As they wound through the interminable afternoon of strength, quickness, and reaction time testing and then got their blood drawn for genetic analysis, he saw her here and there and ran through a few “lines” in his head. He kept a close eye on her and, when they hit the showers, he hustled his so that he could be out before she was. He figured he’d have plenty of time—the women he’d known were usually slow getting dressed. However, despite hurrying he almost missed her—she was walking out of the building when he left the changing room. He jogged a few steps to catch up and said, “Ell Donsaii?”  She turned with a curious look on her face.
My God,
he thought,
she’s really gorgeous!
  “Did you play softball for West Carteret? I saw your name ahead of mine on the lists in the test center. A buddy of mine who’s a softball fan went on and on about watching ‘Ell Donsaii from Morehead City’ play in the State championship. He said she was an incredible player and I just wondered if you were the same Ell Donsaii.”