The Posterchildren: Origins Page 10

  She couldn’t help but smile a little at that.

  “A ‘worldly’ partner. Cute, Wright. Cute.” She wouldn’t consider herself bought by the explanation, but she was satisfied for the time being. With everything else she had to get used to, figuring out what made her new partner tick was low on her list of priorities. “Thanks for the snack.”

  “You’re welcome,” Ernest said, smiling back at her. “I’ll see you in class after lunch, okay?”

  “I have to hotfoot it from the other side of campus to get there on time, so do me a solid and save me a seat.”

  “Okie-dokie. Can do.”

  It’s just an act, June reminded herself as she bit into the lemony bribe. It had to be an act, because nobody over the age of ten and under the age of seventy used okie-dokie unironically.

  °

  By the time Zip packed it in for the day, she was beyond exhausted. At Maillardet’s, school began at eight in the morning and wrapped up at seven-thirty at night. They got a break for lunch between eleven and twelve-thirty and either a study hall or an elective from four-thirty until dinner, but it was still an extremely long day. Zip didn’t function well on little to no sleep, so it’d been a struggle from the moment she’d gotten out of bed.

  Zip spent a good two minutes— which was a long time, by her standards— just standing in front of the cafeteria line and staring blankly at her options for dinner. She felt too tired to chew, but she wasn’t sure if she should risk soup or pudding. She had a history of falling asleep unexpectedly when her tank was empty, and drowning herself in a bowl of tomato soup didn’t sound like an attractive way to go. What would her folks back in De Smet think? They’d sent her to Foundation so that she’d get the training she needed to do something good with her powers, so they’d be disappointed if her heroic career ended before she got out of the gate.

  She shuddered to think how her mother would explain her soupy end to everyone else in town. One way or another, wrestling a bear would be involved in her mother’s retelling of her tragic death. After reading about Oregon wildlife in a magazine at the dentist’s office, her mom had gotten it into her head that Zip punched cougs and picked fights with wolves as part of her training. She would’ve gladly traded her snarly partner for an actual wild animal. She felt like she would have had better luck befriending a black bear.

  She settled on a half dozen turkey and swiss sandwiches, wrapping them up so that she could take them up to her room and eat them whenever her hunger outweighed her tiredness. She was still imagining the hypothetical fallout of soupicide, as well as the likelihood of winning a wrestling match against a bear, when she got up to her room. The broad slat of light underneath her door startled her out of her own head. She was positive that she’d turned out the light before she’d ran to class, so that only meant one thing: her roommate had finally arrived.

  Balancing her bulging book bag and an armful of saran-wrapped sandwiches, Zip knocked on the door. It only seemed polite, since the room was a shared space, and she didn’t know what her new roommate was doing. She could be changing, for all she knew. Zip really didn’t want to start things off on the wrong foot. It felt like the wrong foot was the only leg she’d had to stand on all day.

  “Hi?” Zip called after the knock didn’t get a response. She couldn’t wait around in the hallway forever, after all. “Hi, I’m Zip. Zipporah Chance? Your, um, your-new-roommate? Hi. I’m coming in, okay?”

  She opened the door slowly, peeking inside. Someone had definitely been in the room— the light and the backpack on the other single bed said as much. But other than the backpack, nothing in the room had changed. Zip had taken great pains to keep that side of the room empty. She’d left it untouched in the hopes that her new roommate would fill up her space the way that she herself had. She’d hung up strands of twinkle lights, piling her bed with the afghans and quilts that her mom made for her birthday every year.

  But the other side of the room was bare. It was the kind of empty that felt like it should echo. Lying there all by itself, the backpack looked lonely. Zip dropped her stuff on her desk, wondering if she should stretch the lights over to the other side of the room. Maybe the new roommate would like it if it were a little bit homier. Everybody liked twinkle lights, didn’t they? Zip figured it was nearly impossible not to like them.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  There was a girl standing in the doorway. She looked like she needed a shower and a good night’s sleep, in that order and as quickly as possible. Her honey-colored hair was tangled and limp, falling out of her mostly-frayed ponytail. The girl’s eyelashes were thick and spidery with multiple days’ worth of mascara. She must have rubbed her tired eyes at some point, because she had a dark, greasy streak smeared across the back of her hand.

  “Oh, I.” Zip tried to collect her thoughts. “Uh, lights?”

  “Did I say that I wanted your lights?” The girl asked, like she was all geared up to pick a fight over it.

  “No, but I thought— ”

  She waved her off, turning to her bed and starting in on unpacking her backpack.

  “I’m sorry,” Zip apologized, anxiously wringing the bunched-up cords between her hands. Sometimes, it felt like she didn’t even know what the right thing looked like.

  “Yeah, whatever. Drag them over to your side.”

  Zip looped the string of lights into a neat, tight coil. She had the lights wrapped, the storage container they’d come from put back under her bed, and her running shoes unlaced and removed in the same amount of time it took her new roommate to fold one of her wrinkled t-shirts. Zip sat on the edge of her bed, drumming a beat on the wooden floor with the toes of her socks.

  “So you’re speedy, huh?” The girl asked conversationally, pulling off her shirt. Zip twisted in bed, turning away to give her some privacy.

  She hadn’t meant to look. She hadn’t given her any warning at all that she was planning to change. Zip was full of energy again, but none of it was good, usable energy. The buzz made her feel woozy and lightheaded, like she might pass out if she attempted to run.

  “Yep. Speedster, technically. Zip. Zipporah-Anne-Chance-but-everyone-calls-me-Zip-because-I’m-a-speedster-andthat’szippyso— ”

  “Yeah. I got it the first time.” Her roommate interrupted. She heard her snap her bra strap. “I’m Cindy.”

  Zip chanced a look, peering at her from the corner of her eye. Cindy was bent at the waist, wrestling her jeans off one leg at a time. The curve of her bare back was studded with the ridges of her spine. Her skin looked like it didn’t fit her right, pulled too tightly over her bones. Just looking at Cindy brought Zip’s appetite back in force. A phantom starvation gnawed at her belly.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” she said, unwrapping one of her sandwiches. She focused on the process of chewing and swallowing, looking purposefully away until Cindy covered herself up again. When her sharp angles and hollows disappeared beneath the baggy tent of her nightshirt, Zip almost sighed in relief.

  “Look,” Cindy said, tugging the tie out of her hair. She shook out the tangles, trying to work her fingers through the length of it. She gave up on that pretty quickly. “I just spent the last twelve hours of my life on a cramped bus that reeked of eau de hobo. I don’t really have the energy to deal with anything right now, so I’m going to bed. Keep your crap on your side of the room and zip it.”

  “Okay,” she said, unwrapping her next sandwich. “Zipping it.”

  Zip wolfed down her dinner as quickly as she could without the risk of choking herself. Death by sandwich inhalation didn’t sound any better than death by tomato soup, even though she knew her mother would rework the details until she sounded heroic. Cindy turned out the light and crawled into bed, kicking the partially-unpacked contents of her bag onto the floor. She rolled onto her side, pulling the blankets up and over her head.

  It could be worse, Zip told herself. She could have been alone.

  ISSUE #3

  Ci
ndy was still asleep in bed when Zip swung by on the way to her last class of the day. Since she’d shown up at the Academy, Cindy had missed more classes than she’d attended. She spent most of her time sleeping, as far as Zip could tell. Initially, she thought it was exhaustion, since Cindy had mentioned a long bus ride, but as the days passed it started to look like she just didn’t like getting out of bed very much. She did her best to tiptoe around and not bother her, but that wasn’t always easy. The first week, she’d brought extra food back with her from the mess hall, leaving it out in the open with a note that said Cindy was welcome to it. The offering was always untouched when she got back.

  Instead of giving up on it, she decided that she’d keep trying new things until she found something that she’d eat— or until Cindy scrounged together enough words to tell her to cut it out. Zip kept a list of everything she’d tried on the inside cover of her notebook. Today, she’d left her a pyramid of honeycrisp apples before running to her first period. Cindy hadn’t touched the red delicious apples two days before, but Zip had high hopes for the sweeter, smaller apples. She munched on a honeycrisp herself on her way to class. Her mother had raised her to believe that wastefulness was a cardinal sin, so she ate the core and everything. Waste not, want not.

  Athletics was a subject that she shared with Mal. The jury was still out in regards to what Zip thought of the athletics class, since it was being taught by one of the brand new teachers. Mr. James, aka the Mongoose, was a younger guy. He was short and muscular, scrappy in every sense. He was funny and involved with the class, but it was obvious he’d never taught before. He came off a little too strong at times, especially when it came to his lesson plans.

  It was obvious that athletics wasn’t the class he wanted to be teaching. Mongoose tried really, really hard to make it into a combat class any chance he had. According to the scuttlebutt, he’d applied as a combat instructor, initially. The Commander had given the combat job to the other new teacher, Ms. Newmeyer. Mongoose was passionate about dirty hand-to-hand tricks, so he did his best to work them in everywhere he could.

  Which was why he started waving a knife around at the class as soon as the bell rang and they got to their seats. This time, nobody even jumped. They were getting used to Mongoose’s antics. The first day of class, he’d come with a flamethrower, so he’d toned things down considerably.

  “Who can tell me what this little beauty is?” Mongoose called, holding the knife up to the light. He had to flip it open to expose the blade, so that meant that it was a—

  “It’s a spring-release Benchmade Model 42A balisong,” Mal answered flatly, like any simpleton should have been able to answer it. He hadn’t bothered to raise his hand. “The stainless steel blade is a standard 4.25 inches in length. The 42A is made here in Oregon, though its production has been discontinued. It is arguably the best butterfly blade available on the commercial market.”

  Zip wasn’t surprised by his creepily accurate answer, but Mongoose was. His eyebrows shot up, and the twitching at the corners of his mouth made him look like he wasn’t sure if he should be impressed, or seriously worried about that Underwood boy. Mal had that effect on people, it seemed.

  “Wow, okay, yeah.” Mongoose scrubbed a hand through his short hair, shaking his head. “Yeah, it is. Ten points to Slytherin. Now, who can tell me how to defend against a bladed weapon?” Jabbing a finger at Mal, he added, “And you don’t get to answer this one, Underwood. I think we’ve already established that you know your way around sharp objects.”

  Mal kept his mouth shut, even when the rest of the class failed to cough up an answer in a reasonable amount of time. It wasn’t easy to follow up a response as detailed as his had been.

  “Anybody?” Mongoose tried again, louder. He twirled the knife, the sharp edge dancing dangerously close to his fingers. “Really? If I came at you with this, none of you would know what to do. You’d just stand there and get filleted. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  Zip hadn’t spent much time contemplating the best way to handle a stab-happy threat. It wasn’t a problem that she’d come up against, seeing as weapons were forbidden outside of the training rooms. Running was her go-to answer for life’s problems, and it worked out okay most of the time. Zip figured that run away wasn’t the answer that Mongoose was fishing for, though. She caught a hangnail between her teeth, worrying at it. Silence made her fingers extra twitchy.

  “Mr. James— ” Ofelia began to ask, raising her hand. He snorted, waving her off.

  “It’s Mongoose. But go ahead.”

  “Mr. Mongoose,” Ofelia amended after pointedly clearing her throat. She’d been one of the first friends that Zip had made in Foundation, so she knew from extensive personal experience how much Ofelia disliked being interrupted. “I thought that this was an athletics class?”

  “Dodging knives isn’t considered an athletic skill?” Mongoose heaved an exaggerated sigh, flipping the switchblade shut with a sharp metallic click. “Okay, okay. I get it. You’re not feeling the practical applications lesson. I can respect that, I guess. So how about we take this party outside and do a few rounds of rock-paper-scissors?”

  Unsurprisingly, this got the reaction he’d been looking for out of the class. They burst into sound and movement, chattering excitedly as they started lining up for the door without waiting to be told. Rock-paper-scissors scrimmage had been one of the first athletic games they’d learned. The rules were simple enough. Two students faced off over the line that bisected the center of the field. When the instructor blew the whistle, they did a three-count, then threw down the hand sign for rock, paper, or scissors. The winner of the match had the right to strike first, giving them the offensive edge in the ensuing sparring match. The game sharpened their reaction times, forcing them to adapt and shift from offense to defense on a dime.

  Zip was an pro at rock-paper-scissors scrimmage, since her reaction time made baseliners look like they were snoozing standing up. The year before, her entire class had staged a rock-paper-scissors tournament. Zip had survived into the final four, which wasn’t too shabby at all. She’d lost in the semifinals, but it hadn’t bothered her. She’d gone toe to toe with the Champ in her last match, and there just wasn’t much that she could do to a guy like him. He hadn’t been able to catch her, but she hadn’t been able to hit him hard enough to leave a dent. They’d run out the clock, eliminating them both. Fighting Ernest Wright to a draw was nothing to sniff at.

  She smiled to herself as they made their way from Hinds Hall to the field. She walked with the rest of the class, taking the time to gather up all of her focus and point it directly at the scrimmage ahead. This would be a good opportunity to show Mal what she could do, she thought. He hadn’t traded more than a dozen words with her since the beginning of the week. Maybe if she impressed him in the scrimmages, he’d stop acting like he was saving up his conversations for a rainy day.

  “So what’s the plan, boss?” Zip asked, trotting beside her partner.

  “In a moment,” Mal said, his frown aimed at the two boys migrating their way.

  “Hey, Underwood!” Dillinger said with a broad, winning grin. His teeth were very white. “I’ve gotta say, I’m impressed that you stuck around. I don’t know if I would’ve come back here at all if I’d screwed up my second block as bad as you. You’re a brave man.”

  “I choose to believe that a person’s worth is not determined by a number,” Mal said, his voice so dry, Zip would have sworn it sucked the moisture right out of the air.

  Clay smoothed away his smile, but the sharpness of it still glinted in his eyes.

  “Tell that to the board.”

  The Underwoods had always been a big deal in Foundation, but Mal had soared to new levels of celebrity when he’d hit the perfect fifty. Some people were getting a little schadenfreude— and Zip had looked up that word on her own; it meant being happy over bad things happening to other people, and she couldn’t wait to work it into a conversation— out of his
situation.

  In the top ten percentile, the competition between students was tight. Really tight. She wouldn’t have been shocked if Clay had done a jig when the scores had been announced. He was generally an okay guy, but it seemed like he had it in for Mal. If it got to him, her partner didn’t let it show. He could make a killing with that poker face of his.

  “Are you trying to work up the courage to challenge me, Dillinger?” Mal asked, still as calm as could be. He was baiting Clay. Zip could all but see the gleaming hook of the taunt hanging between them, daring Clay to bite down. “A fight against a pair of sixty-sevens shouldn’t be difficult for you, yes?”

  No sooner had Mal dropped the line, Mongoose squared his hands on his hips and bellowed, “Who volunteers?”

  Mal and Clay’s hands shot up at a speed that was impressive, even to Zip. And that was saying something.

  “Underwood and Chance and Dillinger and Olivier it is! Square up, guys.”

  All the girls talked about how hot Clay was, but Zip didn’t really see it. He seemed kind of average to her, just another guy with a square chin, blue eyes, and brown hair. He didn’t have pimples, he was confident, he got good grades, and he was an Alpha. That stuff meant a lot to the girls in Foundation.

  He smirked as he and his partner, Henri, limbered up on their side of the line. Zip didn’t know much about Henri’s powers, but with his pale blond hair and all-white clothes, he looked a little bit like cotton swab someone had used to clean their ears. His moniker was something French-sounding that she never could remember, try as she might. Clay’s name was Bystander, because he could turn things invisible— himself included. He fancied himself a magician, so he was always playing to an audience. He blew kisses at some of the more vocal girls on the bleachers.