Sapience (18 page)

“Just relax, I haven’t even told you what you’re going to do yet.”

“That only makes it worse.” He raked a shaky hand through his hair.

“It’s not that bad.”

“It’s horrible.”

He looked like a man about to be executed. I haven’t even told him what to do and just the thought alone was starting to make him perspire. Trying to get him to go through with this was going to be impossible.

“Relax, Brianna and I will be with you the whole time.” This seemed to frighten him even more.

“Brianna’s going to be watching?” He said.

I stopped walking, we had reached my class.

“Is there something wrong with that?”

“She’s the hottest girl in school. She’ll make it worse.”

“She is going to be behind the scenes, working in your favor. She can add a lot of credibility to this mission.”

“Mission? You make it sound like this is some kind of battle.”

I placed my hand on his shoulder in an attempt to calm him down. “I won’t make you do anything you’re not comfortable doing, ok?”

I waited for his shaky nod before walking into the classroom. He was still standing outside of the room when the bell went off. I watched his head snap up and he took off down the hall.

The teacher started the class by giving us a reading assignment, we were to spend the hour reading “The Faithful Kingdom”. I cringed, the book was basically four hundred pages of people being killed because they had rebelled against the government. I’m ninety percent sure that half the stuff didn’t happen and the rest was changed around to make the Kingdom look like the good guy.

Don’t get me wrong, the reading helped to make the hour go by faster, I just couldn’t believe the teacher was going to make us do a book report on this crap.

Science was relatively boring, the teacher made us study straight from the books. It sucked but I was just happy no one brought up the rumor that Brianna and I were dating. Maybe Neal hadn’t told as many people as I had thought.

Neal found me again on my way to lunch. His nerves seemed to have settled since I had last seen him.

“I’m ready.” He announced in a determined voice.

“Ready for what?” I knew what he was ready for I just couldn’t believe it. He had been so down about it earlier.

“I’ll do whatever you tell me to.”

“Hey that’s the spirit! I spent most of last hour thinking of what you can…”

“Hey, guys.” Brianna interrupted as she walked up from behind us. She smiled when I turned in her direction. The smell of coconut was on her skin.

The color ran from Neal’s face. “I’m not ready.” he said in full relapse. “I’m not, I’m not ready.”

“Relax, you’re going to be fine.” I said, trying to once again calm him down to his previous state

“Are you ok?” Brianna asked.

He just nodded.

“How is your day so far?” I asked Brianna, hoping the change in subject would bring Neal out of his stupor.

“Lame, I can’t wait to get back to the house. Everybody keeps asking what I have been doing lately. They literally get angry when I say nothing. It’s like they are prying, you don’t think they know we moved in together do you?”

I shrugged, pretending that I had no idea that they were most likely trying to get her to confess to going out with me.

Inside the cafeteria I couldn’t help but notice that at any given moment at least one person was staring in our direction. I was going to have to do something about Neal’s rumor before Brianna found out. What, I had no idea.

I led us into the lunch line, Neal had a sack lunch and went straight to the table. I didn’t think Brianna had any money so I offered to buy her food. I was a little bit embarrassed as I handed the cashier Lillie’s shiny credit card.

“Why does everybody keep staring at us?” She asked when we were walking toward our lunch table.

I shrugged to buy time while I thought of a good way to explain. “Funny story.”

One of Brianna’s friends, an attractive blond haired girl, stood up from a near table, stopping me before I could go on.

“You two look cute together.” She said like we already knew.

“We do?” Brianna asked.

I wanted to crawl in a hole and hide. The whole thing was unraveling right in front of me, I felt like I was free falling.

“When did you ask her out?” She turned to me.

‘And there it is’ I thought to myself

“Well I,”

“Nobody asked me out.” Brianna cut in before I could come up with an excuse.

“You guys are dating, aren’t you?” The girl sounded confused and slightly irritated.

“Nikki, who in the world told you we were dating?” Brianna asked.

I could feel the temperature in the room rising. A bead of sweat rolled down the back of my neck. What could I say? Now more than ever I wished I had my old brain so I could think my way out of this.

“Oh please Brianna, everybody knows it.” She looked angry and started to walk away. “Fine if you don’t want to tell me. That’s your business.”

I stood there speechless as I tried to think of something to say. I could see Neal peeking his head over the other kids at the lunch table. The whole lunch room was abuzz with noise and people walking and sitting at tables.

“What’s going on?” Brianna asked after a moment.

“Apparently Neal went around telling people we were dating.” I finally said.

“Why?”

“I guess it looked to him like we were.”

“That explains the weird questions I have been getting all day. She said as we made our way to the lunch table. Nobody seemed to notice us as we sat down at the far end of the table by ourselves.

I wasn’t sure if I should say anything so I decided the best idea was to just eat my bagel. When I was done with it she still hadn’t spoken so I decided it might be best if I said something.

“What should we do about it?” I was desperate to make her say something, anything. “If you want I will go around and personally tell every single person in the school we’re not dating.”

She frowned. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I don’t?”

“Unless you want to.” Suddenly she sounded self-conscious.

“What do you want?” I asked.

She stared at her food, blushing. “Maybe we could just go with it?”

“Tell everyone that we are dating?” I couldn’t believe what I had just heard.

“You probably don’t want to.” She said, looking back down at the table.

“I do.” I said in a rush. “I mean that sounds like a great idea.”

She glanced back up. “It does?”

“Yes, I mean, it’s the easiest way right?”

“It will save us the trouble of telling every single person the truth I guess.” She said.

“Okay so as far as the rest of the world is concerned we are dating. In a way it could be a good cover for why we moved in together. Two love sick teens jumping in deep, so soon. People will call it idiotic but they will also believe it.” I would have to run it by Adrian but with a little tweaking the story might check out. Of course that still leaves why Spencer and the rest of the family moved in.

“So how do we act now?” She asked.

I thought as I picked at my french fries. “I don’t see why we would act any different.” I said between bites.

“You’re probably right.” She nodded. “It’s just that I’ve never dated anyone before. Blake was the closest I’ve ever had to a boyfriend. We really haven’t been free for all that long, I don’t know how normal couples should behave.”

“I know.” The Kingdom would have never allowed it.

“Could you imagine what kind of ramifications we would face if the Kingdom knew what we were doing?” She asked.

“It wouldn’t be pretty.” I said, the punishment would be down right horrible. “Solitary confinement with a daily whipping.” I guessed.

“They would probably make us stand on red hot metal.”

I shuddered thinking of the Kingdom’s more inventive ways of punishment. In truth, they didn’t really make you stand on the metal as much as run across it until you were gasping for breath and your feet were all blistered and burnt.

“They did that to the girls too?” I would have figured that that one was for boys only.

“They didn’t see us as girls, only soldiers.” She said like it was common knowledge.

“Did they ever use their stun guns on you?” I asked.

She nodded. “If we knew it was going to happen we went to the bathroom beforehand. Things could get pretty gross if you didn’t”

“What about when they lock you in a room and blew hundreds of angry wasps through the vents?”

“Did you know how that started? The Kingdom thought children were afraid of bees. It was a two-fer, we got punished whilst learning to face our fears. One time after they did that my eyes swelled shut.” She said it like it was no big deal.

“I spent three days in the clinic after they did that to me.” I said.

Her eyes got wide as if she had just realized something important. “I hate it when they poisoned our food.” She dropped the rest of her bagel down on her plate. “Then when we get sick from the food, they made us run laps.”

I set my food down as well. It was hard to eat while remembering the horrible things they would put in our food to punish us. Of course Adrian, Lillie and I had never fallen for it, we would pick at the food we decided wasn’t poisoned. Sometimes it would make our guardians angry and they would punish us in other ways. We chose to eat the poison a few times, not wanting to face whatever other punishment they had cooked up.

“They stopped poisoning our food after three physical users died.”

“Is that why?” She asked, scrunching up her face. “I always wondered.”

“After you guys escaped they brought back the poison for a while. They wanted to make sure no one else would try to follow.” I said, trying not to think about the things the Kingdom had done to us in that following week after they had left.

“They did?” Brianna gasped. “William I’m so sorry. We didn’t know”

“It’s ok. They were going to end up doing it eventually anyway.” The truth was that they wanted us to be hard. The strongest metal came from the hottest fires, they were just turning up the heat. That was how Adrian had explained it one day when we were little.

She looked down at the table like she had done something wrong. “Thank you.”

“You guys are dating!” I heard Neal yell from the other side of the table.

I didn’t want to turn and acknowledge him. It was hard to put on a smile and face the world with such memories running through your head.

“Why do you say that?” I said without turning away from her.

“Because you act like you are.” He pointed out. It was remarkable how much more outgoing he was with all his friends around him.

I watched as Brianna’s face changed from ashen to calm in the blink of an eye, the poker face of an assassin. In an instant she was wearing a mask that hid her true emotions, the pain of what the Kingdom had done to us.

“As a matter of fact, you’re right.” She said, slipping her arm around me. I responded by slipping mine around her and giving her a little squeeze.

“Dude, have you been messing with me all morning?” Neal complained.

“You caught me.” I added a sly smile to make it seem true.

“You.” He said laughing and pointing. “You’re good.” He glanced at Brianna and sat down really quick.

Most of the kids were starting to leave the lunch room. I was surprised as Brianna snatched my hand. I made sure Neal saw as I led her around the table toward the doors.

Before we turned the corner out of the room I glanced back and caught Neal and the other kids, they had their heads together in the middle of the table. Part of me wanted to know what they were talking about, the rest of me knew they were talking about us.

The walk to her next class went by way too fast. Neither of us said a word the whole way, I was just glad she was there.

When we reached her classroom she made to go inside but turned back at the fringe of the door.

“See you in gym.” She said then walked inside.

I wasn’t sure what to do. It all felt so surreal. It wasn’t until the bell rang announcing I was late that I snapped out of my haze and headed for class.

Chapter 12

            
 
When I got to class my history teacher was in the middle of a speech and I had to interrupt her to get to my seat. She gave me a pigeon-nosed glare before turning back to the students. As if that wasn’t enough, a fat jock with a shaved head decided he was going to stick his foot out and trip me up.

My first instinct was to fall and use the momentum to snap his leg at the knee. I resisted, instead I stumbled forward, catching my balance against a desk. The teacher had her back to the class, she spun around to see what had happened. All eyes were on me as I shrugged it off and made my way to my seat.