Chapter #41In Which Lots of Lies Get Told by: Seuzz   "Why does everyone laugh at me?" you ask Darcy as you fall in next to her as you exit the classroom together.
"You know why. You're not that dumb."
"Oh, come on, I got it right eventually! She just surprised me."
"If you paid attention in class—"
"Are we even studying the Whosits-American War?"
"No, we're studying the Hundred Years' War," she snaps sarcastically.
"Oh God." You stop dead in the hall. "I'll never cram a hundred years in time for the final. Well, you know, this stuff is boring. I can't concentrate on it for— Oh hey, Sandra!"
"Hi Joe!"
"You changed your hair! I like it!" The girl giggles as you reach up to brush one of her bangs back. "Come show it to me tomorrow," you tell her, then run to catch up to Darcy. "If I had someone to help me, I'd do better."
"Doesn't your brother help?"
"He's ugly." She gives you a look. "Also, he doesn't give crap about my grades. He thinks I'm a lost cause."
"Our families know us best."
"Well, what if you and me got together?" You tug her elbow. "After practice this afternoon, in the school library? You could go over your own notes, tell me about all the stuff I missed."
"You were sitting in the same room I was. Why can't you pay attention in there?"
"I can't listen to Cussler. She's too old."
Darcy stops and looks at you directly. "So, I'm not old, I'm not ugly, and I'm not your brother. That makes me your natural tutor?"
"It makes you perfect!"
She looks very skeptical, and it is clear she is about to tell you to fuck off. But something behind you catches her attention, and her eyes freeze. When she looks back at you, her smile is a wide, sharp thing. "I'd love to, Joe," she gushes. "Meet you at four?"
"Yeah!" you say, turning your surprise to excitement. She smiles again, and walks away with a very pronounced swing in her hips.
You return whence you came, but make a bad stumble and almost sprawl to the floor. "Sorry about that, Dumbass," comes a voice. You turn to find Adam Karter smiling at you.
You grin back, and mime shooting a pistol at his head.
* * * * *
You give instructions to Frank during basketball practice, and afterward meet Darcy. "Whoa, this is gonna be serious," you gasp, for she has a book open and several sheets of paper spread out on the table.
"If we're going to do this, it is going to be serious," she replies.
"Yes ma'am," you gulp, and sit down, holding yourself very straight.
Twenty minutes of facile generalization about late-nineteenth century imperialism follow. You feign rapt attention while tamping down every desire to correct the plenitude of grotesque simplifications and mischaracterizations. She seems to doubt you are actually listening, and Cussler-like will interrupt her own lecture to have you repeat something; you parrot it all back perfectly. She grows increasingly querulous. "Why can't you get this in class?" "It wouldn't last." "Try." "Gimme a pop quiz tomorrow." She rolls her eyes.
At four-twenty on the dot, Frank enters. "I'm leaving," he snaps. "Do this at home, or walk."
"We haven't even got to the first Moroccan Crisis!" you exclaim.
"What did you say?" Darcy's eyes pop.
"Oh, I remember that from class," you smoothly extemporize. "I think you weren't there that day. Cussler said 'Moroccan crisis', and I thought she said 'maraca crisis.' You know—" You hang your head in shame as you snap your fingers in a flamenco rhythm.
"Those are castanets," Frank says. "Come on, you can be stupid at home."
"Come with?" you ask Darcy with desperate hopefulness. "Have supper with us?"
"You should," Frank says. "If you don't he'll just play on his Xbox."
"We have an Xbox?" Your jaw drops.
"No, which is why it's so embarrassing to watch you sit in the front of the TV going 'ptchoo ptchoo'."
You show him your teeth. "Shut! Up! The only reason people think I'm dumb is because you go around telling them I am."
"The only reason I tell people you're dumb is because they can't believe you're as dumb as you seem. I just confirm their suspicions."
"You should definitely come with us," you tell Darcy. "I'll beat him to death if there aren't isn't anyone to stop me."
* * * * *
Darcy follows you home, but she doesn't stay long, and leaves in a bad humor. She has reason. No one likes to sit at a table as a stupid jock teenage boy charges his smart-aleck older brother for badmouthing him once too often, and then have said smart-aleck brother back into oneself and bang one's head against a glass sliding door, knocking one's self cold for nearly ten minutes. After Darcy goes, you and Frank recompose your distraught features into expressions of quiet satisfaction and calmly high five each other. In the scrum, she never noticed the mask going onto her face.
After that you call Ursula while Frank seals up the mask for you. While he does that, you prepare lots of fake, complicated sigils on several big sheets of paper.
You have them spread over the table when she arrives. You greet her with grave cheer, and Frank—again, as per your instructions—fetches her a diet soda before perching quietly nearby, to listen alertly and "follow your lead."
You start by pointing to the sheet in the middle. "Recognize those symbols?"
She peers at them, and—can't she read without using her finger?—traces over them with a fingertip. "The twelve constellations. And nine planets. Well, the Moon instead of the Earth—"
"Yeah. You recognize that one in the middle?" She shakes her head. "You wouldn't. That's Lemuria." She looks puzzled. "The Atlantis of the South Seas?" You'd have thought she'd be up on that crap, at least.
Maybe she is, for she sucks her breath in sharply. "I read a book about that once, when I was a kid—"
"Yeah, and that's about the age to read it," you snap. "At least, if you're going to read the books they carry in the 'occult' sections of bookstores." You blow a raspberry. "Let's get one thing straight," you tell her, and jab a finger at her face. "The stuff you find in the book stores and on the internet? It has about as much to do with real shit as Hans Christian Anderson has to do with Einstein. They're fairy tales, and bad fairy tales at that."
She looks hurt and crushed.
"Now, Lemuria comes into alignment only once every couple of hundred years, and it only opens with a fresh set of keys. And by 'fresh' I mean fresh. You can't prepare for it ahead of time, which is why we need your help, and the help of a couple of other people. We have to move fast."
"What do you mean by 'keys'?"
"These things." You point to the symbols. "Twelve constellations and nine planets. Twenty-one. Three times seven. You understand the significance of that, of course." Ursula nods fervently, and you lean back to nudge Frank so he won't smirk.
"Now, the last couple of times we were able to use people, which is what you're supposed to use, but people aren't nearly as receptive to this kind of thing nowadays. Even the assholes who write that trash you've read don't understand the real—"
"Wait, 'the last couple of times'?" Her face clouds. "I thought you said this only happens every couple of hundred years."
You smile meaningfully. "How old do you think we are? Frank and me?"
"Seventeen?" she says, a little uncertainly. "Eighteen?" You shake your head slowly. "How old?"
"Multiply those numbers by a couple of dozen. Think about it. Could a couple of kids know how to do all this? You think if I told her my cum was cake frosting I could get her to swallow it too?" you ask Frank in a private language that only you and he can speak. "That was ancient Lemurian," you tell Ursula in English. "My first language. I should have grown up speaking old Celtic, but a changeling got put in for me. Frank at least got to learn Latin before they took him."
She looks bewildered. "Who's 'they'?"
"The Lemurians," you say with exaggerated patience. "Stories about them still survive in legends about the 'Fair Folk'."
She leans back. Her tone is very measured when she speaks. "You're saying you guys are ... Lemurians?"
"No, not technically. But maybe, technically, yes, there aren't any original Lemurians left. Just changelings like us. That's what makes getting back and forth so tricky."
"I don't understand." Her tone is growing more skeptical.
You sigh.
"Look, I'm not going to lie to you," you tell her. "We're not really good people, Frank and me." Her glance shifts rapidly between the two of you. Frank shrugs. "We're exiles. And we're not like royal exiles either. We're more like gangbangers. Every couple of hundred years we break back in, make off with some swag, set a few fires. They're a lot of assholes, frankly, but so are we, and we like to remind them that we're still out here and still totally deserving of what they did to us. Still, it's a lot of fun, and there's no real danger in it. Just excitement." You twitch your eyebrows and grin. "You should come with us. It'd be a once-every-couple-of-lifetimes chances for you, crossing over to get a look at the place when the horizon opens."
Darcy gives you a very even stare.
"I think you're bullshitting me," she says, and gathers herself to leave. | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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