Chapter Six #2
“What, I would! But he’s clearly not over it, so I can’t be over it. Turn around.” I could change in my en suite bathroom, but these dorm doors are pretty much solid wood rectangles and I’d prefer not to have to shout to be heard on this particular topic.
“Why not?” Cass asks, walks over toward my bed, and turns around to face the window. “Wouldn’t that make you the bigger person?”
“Yes,” I answer flatly. “But I don’t want to be the bigger person. I want to be small. Microscopic.”
“Quantum?” Cass offers.
“Quantum.” I like the sound of that. “Quantum-level petty.”
“God, you’re cool. Can I turn around now?”
“Yep, done.”
Cass turns around and leans back against my bed, elbows back, while he sweeps his eyes up and down my outfit. “Oh, you’re wearing a skirt,” he says with the tiniest hitch in his voice. Maybe he has a little bit of sushi stuck in his throat. “You look—”
“Focus,” I interrupt.
“Focusing. But also I should go.”
“I know.” I smile. “Thanks for the sushi.”
“No problem.”
“And don’t forget I’m coming for you, Number One.”
“I know. And that”—Cass grabs the belt bag he tossed on my bed when we walked in and slings it over his arm—“is exactly how I like you.”
“Yeah, you like me now.”
“I’m always going to like you.”
Something in the way he says that, quieter than before and finally looking me in the eye, makes me think he’s talking about more than my ruthlessness.
“Cass, I—”
“Never change, Zora.” Cass slips out the door, letting in a three-second audio sample of almost-college party clamor before leaving me alone to process that. “And text your uncle.”
Was that weird? I’m not sure why it would be weird.
Not the uncle thing; that’s my own business.
But what he said before that. Of course Cass likes me; I’m his best friend.
His best friend who would never make herself worse to make him look good, which he respects in a “comrades on the field of battle”–type way.
That’s all. He’s my friend and—Oh, wow, I just caught a glimpse in the mirror, and this skirt makes my butt look like a whole nectarine.
Move over, shrimp tempura. It’s a new vibe for me, but so is becoming an overnight supervillain, so I guess I’ll switch it up.
Deep breaths, in and out. My hair has doubled in size since the morning’s humidity, but I’ve already made it clear to this group that neither my looks nor my personality got me here, and it definitely wasn’t my propensity for accidental ’70s Diana Ross hair moments.
When Cass and I first rolled up to the dorms Wizzard rented for the academy players, I literally thought the building was a part of Lincoln Center—all wavy glass and modern white concrete out front.
The rooms themselves are small but new, with a shared common room and kitchen at the far end of the hall.
All of the rooms on my side of the building have a floor-to-ceiling window facing south into downtown.
Now that it’s a little darker, I can see a hazy white glow hanging in the air twenty blocks south around Times Square, making it an even brighter spot in a city that doesn’t really do dark in the first place.
Which reminds me. Open messages, tap Uncle Clive’s smiling portrait in my most-texted list …
Made it to code camp! Huge day, I’m super tired. Call soon. Send text. There. I shove my phone down the front of my shirt since the pockets on this jean skirt couldn’t hold a grape.
When I open my bedroom door there’s already around two dozen people milling around in the common area at the end of the floor, with more just arriving as a few of the players I recognize from this morning come through a propped-open stairwell door.
One of them kicks at whatever was used as a doorstop, which on closer inspection is a scaled-down Companion Cube toy from Portal.
I wonder how everyone would react if I tossed it in the oven. How’s that for a supervillain move?
When gamers party, we take our fun in a different direction.
Someone’s already rigged up the common room’s old TV with a vintage Nintendo 64 and has a Super Smash Bros.
tournament getting rowdy on a ragged-looking couch.
A few others have Wizzard trading cards out on the kitchen table and are sitting there expectantly like a pack of grizzled travelers from The Witcher III jonesing for a game of Gwent.
I’m trying to look for Kavi or even Trieu to get my party bearings, but what I get instead is Ivan, who steps in front of me the moment I emerge from my room. How is one person so consistently inconvenient?
“Oop, sorry!” he says. “I was coming over to knock. Can we prop your door open so people can use the bathroom in here? Your room is closest to the stairwell.”
“Hell no,” I reply. I just moved in and this place is spotless. I don’t want a legion of gamers pounding Monster and peeing neon all over the seat. “Prop your own door open. No boys allowed in here anyway.”
“Is that why I saw your friend sneak out earlier?”
“No,” I say sweetly. “Cass was just helping me out with a little postgame nunya.”
“I’m not falling for that,” Ivan deadpans.
“’Nunya business,” I finish dejectedly, disappointed but not surprised he didn’t let me have that one.
“Whatever.” Ivan takes a dramatic step out of my way and half bows as if to usher me into a royal ball. “Enjoy the party, Maleficent.”
I’m sure if I concentrated I’d be able to come up with some variation of “I’ll put you to sleep forever,” but Ivan isn’t worth any more of my time tonight. I have bigger problems.
Like the fact that the aura in the hallway noticeably cooled when I opened my dorm door, and the common area isn’t much better.
Maybe I can think of this like a video game.
Like The Sims, but without all the aliens and vampires and drowning in the pool because someone (me) took out the ladder.
If this were The Sims, I could raise my popularity just by greeting other people and starting a group discussion about the nearest lamp.
“Cool shirt!” I wave to a pale, short boy with broccoli-cut hair and a Megadeth tee. His lip curls like a dog spotting the mailman through the living room window. A failed interaction. Let me try again.
Here’s a girl, and a Black girl at that. She might have some compassion for me.
“Hey, girl!” I smile at her.
“Nah,” she replies and turns her back to talk to someone else. Honestly, fair.
I’m almost at the end of the hall, where an open archway leads to the common area.
One group of players standing just outside looks me up and down as I pause near them.
They all look like they belong in a spinoff of Euphoria.
Not the drugs part, the “being really hot and the blond one is stacked” part.
“S-slay?” I attempt. The blond silently takes out her phone and takes a picture of me before going back to ignoring my presence entirely. What does that mean? And why does it hurt so much?
This is why I don’t play The Sims without cheat codes. I cross the archway and pray to find Kavi there, or Trieu, or both preferably. These leper vibes are starting to get to me.
It strikes me that I had the huge benefit of a blank slate coming into this academy, a chance to define myself for myself, but Brian scratched out my entry in the dictionary before I even knew there was anything to write.
I am not in control over how people see me, and since I’m apparently here to be seen, that lack of control extends to everything else in this program.
That’s the most annoying part of all of this.
Actually, wait. No. Ivan’s the most annoying part. But the surrendering of my personal narrative sucks too.
“Zora! Over here!” Kavi waves me over to where she’s standing with Trieu, near enough to the archway to greet people as they walk in but far enough to keep an eye on everyone else.
I feel a few sets of eyes following me when I cross over to them, but now that someone who’s not them has given me a place to stand, the bulk of their attention returns to themselves.
“One twenty-block walk and you already got a little bit of a tan,” Trieu says appreciatively when I shuffle over to only two people at this party who don’t want to kick me down a well. “Girl, you are glowing.”
“I believe that,” I say. “If only because people around here seem to think I’m radioactive.”
Kavi laughs. “Radioactive isn’t so bad. I mean, everybody loves Fallout.”
“‘War never changes,’” I quote with a half smile. “And neither will I, I guess. Pigeonholed on day one.”
Trieu looks over my shoulder at our so-called guests. “Maybe,” he says. “But ‘pretty girl outcast’ is something we can work with. If you still want our help in standing out.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I say, hoping that my newfound tan hides the blush I feel creeping up into my cheeks.
“I think trying to manipulate this situation will only make it worse. I’m not really built for all of this.” I gesture at the growing crowd of shiny gaming influencers and feel even more out of place, if possible. “But I still don’t want to stay in last place? I don’t know. It’s been a day.”
“Wait, so do you want us to help or no?” Kavi asks.
“I don’t want you to get radiation poisoning,” I reply.
“Did someone call a row-two team meeting?” Ivan saunters up to us, having finished his circuit of the room.
I caught him out of the corner of my eye a few times, glad-handing his ass off and kissing metaphorical babies like the self-appointed mayor of Wizzardland.
I took my eyes off him for a few seconds, though, and now he’s here. Again. I should have known better.
“Shoo, you,” Trieu says, more flirty than demanding, “this is girl talk.”
“All right.” Ivan holds his hands up and smiles at Trieu.
Really turning on the charm for that one.
“Let me know if you want to boy talk later …” He trails off and walks toward another group of people.
His path takes him all the way to the other side of the common area, past more than one cluster of players.
I see a girl stop talking when he passes by and hope for a second that he’s more of an outcast here than I assumed before, but there’s no reproach in her eyes. Just naked, obvious attraction.
“Might wanna back off that one,” I say, loud enough for her to hear me. Ah, there’s the reproach I was looking for. They were saving it for me.
“Seriously, what is your deal with Ivan?” I’m a little shocked at the sudden vehemence coming from Trieu.
“What isn’t my deal with Ivan?” I reply. It’s not my best comeback. Might actually be one of my worst, but it was a reflexive response. It sucks being the one human alive who doesn’t think Ivan Hunt walks on water. “Am I the only one who remembers what he did to—”
A commotion rises up from farther down the floor, closer to the stairwell and my bedroom door.
For a moment I think it’s more people freaking out about Saint Ivan walking among them, but it’s something more exciting than that.
My height lets me see over everyone’s heads and spot the source of the commotion before Kavi or Trieu gets a good look.
“—her!” I finish my sentence with a new note of triumph. I feel like Lex Luthor getting his hands on a giant chunk of kryptonite. There is one thing—two things, really—that I know will throw Ivan off his game.
Emilia and Jake are in the building.