Page 43 of (Un)wise
Sitting on the gym bleachers surrounded by the entire student body, I looked around warily for Penny. She would hate me even more, now. I should have made her forget. I just couldn’t bring myself to mess with someone’s head like that. It wasn’t like anyone really believed her. Other than the bullying, she wasn’t a threat to me. I had no justification for taking the extreme measure of robbing her of her memories.
“As some of you know, there have been cases of bullying. This is a serious matter that this school will not take lightly. We have a short film to help educate you on what steps should be taken if you are bullied, or witness bullying.”
The overhead lights dimmed and a beam of light from the AV room near the top of the gym pierced the gloom. The AV room, a recent addition accessed by a set of stairs outside of the gym, was prized by the faculty as a means to broadcast school news.
A shot of the girl’s bathroom burst onto the white gym wall we used for projection. My mouth popped open as I saw myself walk into the bathroom and go to the mirror. Some students near me started laughing quietly. The faculty, standing on the gym floor, started conferring in whispers as on screen, Penny walked in and we started talking.
One of the teachers left the gym presumably to reach the AV room and stop the movie. The lights in the gym turned on as Penny knocked the books out of my hand. No one moved. Everyone stayed focused on the projection. My stomach filled with piercing shards of ice.
“The assembly is over. Return to your last hour class. Those with Physical Education should go to the locker rooms and wait there,” the principal shouted, unable to use his microphone as the PA had been taken over by my voice, “All you’re going to prove is how mean you can be.”
No one moved. All eyes remained riveted on Penny as she stared at me, and I moved to retrieve the books. I could taste my panic, the flavor disgustingly reminiscent of vomit. Penny had finally succeeded.
I closed my eyes as the recording of my voice rang out. “Stop.” A murmuring rose in the gym, loud enough that others started shushing their neighbors as I gave Penny my little speech and then left the bathroom.
Opening my eyes, I caught the angle of the video change as the cameraman climbed off the toilet and opened the stall door to zoom in on Penny’s outraged face. Penny’s words, “I still can’t move,” echoed through the eerily quiet gym. The last image on the wall was of Penny suddenly falling to the floor. The projection shut off.
My face heated unnaturally. Someone next to me whispered to their neighbor, “Holy crap! Penny wasn’t lying.”
I sat up in the bleachers, surrounded by my peers. All eyes turned to me. A side door opened, and a teacher escorted a beaming Penny into the gym. As I stood, I grabbed everyone’s will but hers and planted a seed. My voice rang out. “You just witnessed proof of Penny’s dogged determination to expose something extraordinary. Instead, all she did was paint herself as a bully and show she has an amazing ability to act.”
Releasing their wills, I nudged my way through my stunned classmates. As I moved, I heard things like, “I can’t believe she was so mean,” and, “I would have slapped her face instead of walking out.”
Penny’s smug expression faltered as she noticed the change in everyone. Her mouth popped open as she stared at me. I walked up to Penny while holding the faculty back with simple wait and see thoughts. I stopped just in front of her.
“Whoever you had filming did a wonderful job,” I said. “If you’re this good over a no name nothing like me, I can only imagine how good you’ll be when you’re reporting on something real. Good luck.”
The sudden silence penetrated my dream. I emerged with my heart racing wondering why we’d stopped. I lifted my cheek from the warm spot on Luke’s back and, in the gloom around us, took in the shape of an old barn on a slight hill in the distance.
“Why did we stop?” I asked when he loosened the strap.
“I’d rather approach the Compound in daylight,” he said quietly.
My determination to push through bowed to his practical reasoning. I didn’t really want to face a horde in the dark either. I didn’t have their enhanced eyesight.
“How is the cut?”
I pulled the strap from over his head and climbed off the back. My legs ached from sitting so long, but I didn’t try stretching them out. The back of his shirt was stained with my blood, but it looked dark and dry. I shrugged in response to his question and asked, “Why here?”
He walked over to me, unzipped the jacket, and once again gently tugged at the hem of my shirt. Only this time, it didn’t lift. The blood had dried to the skin. He frowned as he answered, “They are too used to looking at hotels. I thought this would be safer.”
”This” meant sleeping in the barn. He continued to look worriedly at my stomach as if he could see through the fabric. “Some real sleep sounds good,” I murmured, trying to reassure him.
He sighed and gently touched my cheek. “You’ll tell me if it starts hurting,” he ordered softly.
I snorted. “It hasn’t stopped hurting.”
He smiled at me and dropped his hand. “I imagine not,” he commented as he shifted the bike into neutral and began pushing it toward the building. I zipped back up and slowly followed. Patches of snow coated the ground between tufts of long grass. Shivers trembled through me.
The barn leaned heavily to one side. Many of its old boards had rotted at the base. Still, Luke pushed the bike into the gapping door. Any hint of the dusk’s fading light disappeared after two steps. Disturbing the layer of dust covering the floor with my steps caused the smell of old, musty hay to fill my nose, and I sneezed once. It killed my stomach.
“I’ll look around,” he said a moment before he disappeared into the dark. I looked back at the door, just barely outlined now, and stayed where I stood.
“It’s empty and untouched. We’ll stay here for a few hours.”
He took me by the hand and led me further into the black. He flicked on a tiny LED flashlight attached to the bike keys and pointed to an empty stall partitioned by a half wall. I blushed as I understood and quickly grabbed the flashlight and shooed him away. I’d lived many lifetimes without the convenience of a toilet, but that was in the past. I liked flushing and washing.
After I finished, I moved into the hay-filled isle, clicked off the flashlight, and shuffled toward the front of the building.
