The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady (20 page)

It was always a danger. Teachers and
students both like to walk around the place on off hours. Just like
any high school, you have certain kids that hang at certain places.
Parkies are seen as the suck-ups, always under the teachers’ eyes,
or in some cases protection. Guess what? I wasn’t a fucking
Parkie.

Nice place though. Thought so walking
through it the first time with Ceinwyn Dale. Didn’t like that a lot
of the adults were waving at her as we passed by even then.
Students were already there too. Mostly four-year Intras goofing
off with friends they hadn’t seen for a month. Ultras have better
things to do than walk the Park. Only time you see an Ultra in the
Park is when they’re searching for a teacher or walking to get
somewhere else.

Most of the other student hangouts are in
East Section.

The Pools are literally these huge
Olympic-size swimming pools, complete with diving boards and slides
and other lawyer nightmares that no normal school would ever let
you near without a bible size stack of papers to sign. I’d been
swimming before, but wasn’t good at it, still ain’t, and don’t
particularly like it. Geomancer and all—floating ain’t my thing.
Unless my
P.E.
or
Survival
teacher made me get in, I
tried to stay out of them.

Do admit to hanging around to check out the
girls in their swimsuits though. Asa Kayode is a pain in the ass
but damn if that girl in a bikini with her fine brown skin and
taunt long body couldn’t make Prince Henry speak up every time I
walked by her. That’s the Pools for you, guys catching a look and
hydromancers and cryomancers fighting for water space. The kids at
the Pools are called Water Pissers. Or just Pissers.

Near the road in, to the west of the Pools,
you have the Hall, which has games inside. Pool—the other kind,
skeet-ball, table-hockey, bowling alley or two, even a few arcade
games from the 80s and 90s. Sundays they’d set up big speakers and
play music for everyone to dance to or just chill out. Hall kids
are called Kids, some in-joke from before my time I think. I admit
to spending time at the Hall. Not as much as you’d think
though.

The Hall’s full of a lot of Intra slackers
who don’t give a crap about learning the Mancy best they can or
what rank they have in their class or year. All us Ultras
cared—even me—so free time wasn’t something to waste on a
thirty-year-old
Pacman
machine. You get over that, and even
then . . . Ultra walking into the Hall is going to get some dirty
looks from jealous Intras. Can’t blame them. If I’d been Intra, I’d
have been beating some Ultra brains in for being smug assholes. It
ended up the other way around and instead it was me walking into
the Hall and taking those dirty looks, daring a brave bully to step
up.

Above the Pools you got the Gym. Call them
Rats. Obvious enough on that one? I liked the Gym in my time. Has
two stories actually, and a basement. That count as a story?
Anyway, first story is basketball courts or volleyball depending on
the need. Basketball ain’t my game. Guess why? Fucking short.
So
funny.

Second story is gymnastic junk: racquetball,
handball, stuff like that. Basement is weights and weight machines.
Spent time there alright. Started at a scrappy hundred pounds and
by four-year graduation passed by one-sixty. And you wonder why a
charmer like me gets the girls? Only annoying part about the Gym is
that the corpusmancers treated the place like a church. About every
seventh mancer is a corpusmancer . . . that’s a lot of religion to
have to deal with.

Above the Gym you have the Field. Which is a
field. Fucking deep. Kids there don’t even have a special name;
collectively they were ‘the Rest’. The Field is neutral ground. The
Belgium of the Asylum. Oh, just like Belgium it got invaded
sometimes too. Start a world war by Asylum standards. But mostly
everyone just chose their huddle and sat on the grass. Intras at
least.

Above the Field is the Mound. The Mound is a
mound. Again, fucking deep. Hills, rocks, trees. The Mound is Ultra
territory. Unless you’re an Ultra or your boyfriend is an Ultra,
best stay off the Mound.

Even then, bringing an Intra up there is bad
form. Doesn’t mean it ain’t done though. I did it. Easy way to get
yourself a shallow girlfriend. Even had a name for it.
Intra
Poaching
. Bringing in the pretty Intras in exchange for trips
to hang on the Mound. If the Asylum had itself a forest ranger or
an ye oldie sheriff, my ass would have been on the Most Wanted
list. Me and Robin Hood. He shot arrows. I break child safety
locks.

Every school’s got itself the top spot on
campus to hang. Most, it was jocks and cheerleaders and rich kids
or just plain kids that had a cool vibe to them. At the Asylum,
it’s all combined up in the Mancy. Chance again. For some reason,
the Ultra Vires were ‘
beyond the powers
’ as the name
suggests. That made Ultras the cool kids—the ones who got the
special attention from the faculty and got the Mound to hang out
on. Rising above the rest of the place, looking down on the
Parkers, Water Pissers, Kids, Rats, the Stuffers—that’s Cafeteria
kids, forgot to mention that first time around—and the Rest on the
Field.

Fourteen-year-old-me wasn’t thinking about
all that as he and Ceinwyn Dale exited from the Park. He didn’t
even know the Mound existed. To him, the Park was kind of nice.
Trees, birds, squirrels, fish ponds. My old school didn’t have fish
ponds. I’d hoped the fish ponds were proof the place wouldn’t
remain boringly normal.

I
was
thinking about Ultras though.
Special powers beyond normal mancers. That’s what Ceinwyn Dale
said. Hell yeah, I wanted it. Even with the extra three years it
would cost me. Sign me up. Send me spam. Totally worth it. Exiting
the Park, fourteen-year-old-me endeavored to kick ass on the test
they were throwing his way.

The Park is separated from Top by the
horseshoe road, at the time packed with people.

“If you try anything, I’ll find you,”
Ceinwyn Dale told me with a certain don’t-try-it look in her
eyes.

“What I do? I’m being good. I didn’t even
try to break that bridge back there. Could have,
but I
didn’t
.”

She gave me an eye-see-you hand gesture.

Okay, confession time. I’d been trying to
break that bridge. Trying to break things with my feeble Mancy
efforts became about the only thing that kept my mind away from
nicotine. All through the Park my fingers shook, my head flashed
little screws of pain. Around and around the rising edge we go.
Wonderful thing detoxing, you should try it sometime.

Buses were dropping kids off about one every
fifteen minutes. Staring out on the students mingling, on the
teachers and employees trying to exert some control, I commented,
“That’s a lot of people.”

Ceinwyn Dale nodded. “The majority held off
until the last day but some have already checked in early, and
others will be like you and stay through the break.”

“Of course.”

“Pents through Heps get their own rooms and
keep them their three years, while four-year students move into
their new dorms with a randomized class near thirty. We try to
break them up year to year so they meet new people.” In the thick
of it now, some of the boredom had faded from the explanations.

“And Ultra assholes?”

The smile twitched. “Same class for seven
years.”

“Way to ruin the new car smell, Miss
Dale.”

“Are you so sure you’ll be an Ultra, King
Henry?”

“I can pass any test you got.”

“It doesn’t work that way. Like most of life
. . . you either
are
or you are
not
.”

“You
are
.”

“Yes.”

“And you think I
are
.”

“I’ve been wrong before . . .”

“Do I got to break a bus axle to prove it to
you?”

“And on we go.”

As soon as they spotted Ceinwyn Dale, with
me trailing behind, we had about two-hundred eyes locked on us.
Lucky I don’t give a crap or I might have burst into flame from the
attention. Lucky Valentine Ward wasn’t there or I might have burst
into flame anyway.

One plus about being with Ceinwyn Dale is
people make space for you. If there was ever any doubt in
fourteen-year-old-me’s mind that she was a high up badass,
one-hundred teenagers being elsewhere killed it. It’s not like she
didn’t get waves or nods, but an undercurrent of respect ran
through the air quicker than any anima manipulation I’ve ever
seen.

Me? I got who-the-bleep-is-the-ten-year-old?
faces. Didn’t help that I was one of the few in uniform like a good
little fellow or that wearing a uniform unbuttoned and hanging out
is considered disrespectful to your Mancy discipline. Think I cared
even when I found out? Think I tucked that bitch in? You already
know me so well . . .

We made it into Top.

If Center is the rotting heart of the Asylum
then Top is the decaying brain. It’s got the Administration
building in the middle, then behind it is the parking garage for
all the cars and buses and stuff the students ain’t allowed to see,
the very back of the school proper, though the actual grounds
extend for acres, if not miles. To the right of Admin, you got the
Ultra dorms. That’s right—little shits get their own hill and their
own building too. And you thought jocks and cheerleaders were
bad?

Normal dorms for the Intras are made
utilitarian—that evil education again making me with the big
words—since they got to pump a lot more bodies inside them. Ultra
dorms are two stories. First story has four dorms, communal to fit
up to thirty, I’ll save them for a bit later when
fourteen-year-old-me gets to them.

Top floor is for the Pents to Heps. They get
their own rooms. Figure an even hundred of them. The rooms ain’t
big but being able to study on your own without Robin White singing
gospel songs ten feet away from you?
Fucking heaven
. Having
your own bathroom and kitchen?
Fucking whatever’s better than
heaven
.

Left of the Admin is the Library. Big
building, lots of books. I know you’re thinking, ‘
oh he never
saw that place
’ but I did as far as anima studies went.
Valentine Ward was always in there, so was her best friend Miranda
Daniels and a friend of mine, Raj Malik. Raj had a thing for
Miranda. Had a thing . . . look at me with the past tense. He still
has a thing for her.

Love . . . like I understand it. Kids in the
Library get called the usual—bookworms or Worms. Save for Valentine
Ward, who was named Boomworm by yours truly, and the name just
stuck. Amazing chick, the best one I’ve ever met.

Next to the Library are the graduate Ultra
classrooms. I don’t think I ever stepped inside the Artificer
classroom but the one time, first day of my Pent year. See, I was
the only Artificer the whole time I was at the Asylum. One just
before me, two just after me. But me . . . all alone. Me and my
mentor Plutarch got us some one-on-one, Yoda and Luke Skywalker
shit going. Don’t think Luke ever called Yoda a fucktard, but the
little green bastard probably deserved it.

And that’s it . . . that’s the Asylum.
Welcome for the stay.

Damn, I’m glad I’m done describing all that
stuff. Buy a map if you still can’t figure it out. Let’s get on to
my testing. Think I have enough time tonight to finish this . . .
Ceinwyn wasting my time with this . . . Plutarch coming up with the
idea . . . You better be grateful, you little assholes.

[CLICK]

Testing . . . what a disappointment it
turned out to be. I expect you’re sensing a pattern here.

Is there such a thing as perfectly insane?
If there is, the Asylum bottles the stuff. I’ve heard psychopathic
serial killers are often the last ones you expect—this knowledge
came from television which means it has to be true. The nice, quiet
one. That’s the Asylum. The whole place. The nice, quiet, perfectly
insane one that tried far too hard.

The Admin building is like a giant
principal’s office. Secretaries typing at computers, kids going up
to the Scheduling Room to pick up their dorm number—a teacher here,
a janitor there. Eventually I’d find out the place also had
offices, meeting rooms, and a chamber where the Elemental Learning
Council met to deal with business, both Asylum business and greater
Mancy business. School and Government all in one. No problems going
to be popping up out of that one. Commie bullshit.

The Testing Room is also there. Since most
Singles didn’t know any more about the Asylum than I did, they were
hounded to the place by the Ultra grads who drew the short end of
the sticks. This means there was a line of about fifty kids when
Ceinwyn Dale and I pulled up.

Another great thing about being with Ceinwyn
Dale: she doesn’t believe in lines. Or maybe she does in a general
they-must-exist kind of way, but she doesn’t think they have
anything to do with her.

It felt good.

Petty, I know, but think about it: skipping
a long line like that only happens a few times in most people’s
life, and every time it does, how do you feel? Right . . .
completely awesome. You could make a religion based out of nothing
but line skipping. We’ll call the religion Hollywood. So back up
off fourteen-year-old-me.

My Bi year
Theory of Anima
teacher,
Audrey Foster, guarded the door. An aeromancer like Ceinwyn Dale,
but not an Ultra, she believed in lines. In class, to teach us
about anima currents and flows, she’d set up these big glass tubes
that connected to each other with these breakers, then she would
pump in air or water or sand to make whatever point she was looking
to drill into our heads. She was in her mid-twenties back then.
Long black hair, tight brown eyes. Had a thing for whimsical airy
dresses. In the summer, when the classrooms would get hot . . .