Veneer (7 page)

“Oh yeah,” said Deron, feigning recall. “I remember that night...”

“No you don’t. You crashed out early because you’re a woman and can’t handle your smoke. So Rosa and I are just sitting there making fun of you and then we notice the floor is changing colors, but we can’t make out what it is. She starts laughing her ass off and I drag you to the wall and put your hand on it.”

Deron closed his eyes and muttered, “Crap.”

“Crap is right. Rosa and I are about to lose it, but then you open your eyes and start staring at her like she’s your favorite stuffed animal.”

“What does that mean?”

Sebo waved the question away. “So I thought there was gonna be a show because you looked like you wanted to do her right then and there.”

“And?”

“You pussied out, of course. All you did was draw naked pictures of her on the wall.”

“So what? I reconciled the wall. Anyone can—”

“That’s the thing with you. You’re the only one I know who does it involuntarily. You know why I remember that night so well? Because after you stared at Rosa you turned the whole room into a shrine to her. And it was fast too.” Sebo pinched at an imaginary wall in front of them. “Boom, picture here, boom, tits there. And perfect detail too, way beyond your skill level. Of course, when Rosa saw what you were doing, she went to the wall and started reconciling something else. You guys fought it out for a long time.”

“Why didn’t she just move my hand away?”

Sebo’s smile deflated. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s her competitive nature. She wanted to see if she could out-reconcile you.”

“She can,” admitted Deron. “No contest.”

“Yeah, when you’re trying, but when you’re messed up, you become something else. I think you’ve got a mental block of some kind. I mean, I already know you’re a killer, but now I think you might actually be an artist too. It’s just your brain keeps getting in the way of that.”

“It does what it wants to do.”

“Yeah,” replied Sebo, distracted.

Deron followed Sebo’s gaze and saw that Principal Ficcone had popped his head out of the cafeteria door and was surveying the students. When he spotted Deron, he started walking towards them.

They both wiped their palettes clean out of habit.

“Mr. Bishop,” said the principal, “I would like a word with you.”

“Sure,” replied Deron, fully aware that his agreement wasn’t required. He stood and slung his backpack over his shoulder.

“Watch that trailer later,” said Sebo. “I want to go tomorrow.”

“I’ll go if I’m not grounded,” he replied, looking to the principal.

“That’s entirely up to your mother, Mr. Bishop.”

Deron fell into step behind Principal Ficcone, unsure of what trouble awaited him.

8 - Russo

Ficcone’s office smelled like day-old deodorant mixed with burnt coffee. It tried its best to appear like the room of an important man, but Russo knew that every veneer in sight was just trying to mask the truth. The Berber carpet, the reconciled bookshelves, and the accents of purple and silver after the school’s colors couldn’t hide the room’s true purpose. Students sat in one of two chairs in front of a large desk, behind which the principal would sit and hand out sentences like a judge.

Like a court room, thought Russo.

Instead of the city’s seal hanging behind the desk, there were floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the plaza in front of the school. Instead of a jury box, there was a fish tank with a solitary Beta in it, swimming back and forth for no reason, stuck in a prison within a prison. Rubbing at his nose, Russo looked over the fake diplomas and certificates on the wall—fake in the sense that there wasn’t really a frame or paper, just some good shadow reconciliation to make it look three-dimensional. No matter what the veneers on the wall said, nothing gave Ficcone the right to judge, even though that seemed to be his primary function.

Russo slouched in his chair and tried to take his mind off the impending trial. Unlike the real thing, he wouldn’t get to hire a lawyer or be able to present any evidence. When the principal walked through that door, he would simply hand down his sentence, having decided the verdict long ago.

Exhibit A: Escorted to school by uniforms.

If Ficcone wanted to give him shit about being late to school, then he had taken his sweet time coming up with a punishment.

Exhibit B: The shop of Deron and his dog.

Groaning, Russo put his hands to his face and tried to press away the indignation. The sons of bitches were really going to try to pin that on him? It didn’t even make sense for Russo to post something like that, not after the constant threats. Ficcone had to be the dumbest motherfucker ever. He probably thought he was doing a good thing by punishing Russo, thought he was helping a troubled kid get back on the right track.

Un-fucking-likely.

The door behind Russo opened, and Ficcone walked in with that waste of space Deron trailing behind him. Though his face was impassive, Russo could see the subtle alarm appear in Deron’s eyes when he saw who else was in the office.

“Please have a seat, Mr. Bishop.” The principal moved behind his desk and sat down in the cushy, high-backed chair. He sighed as he swiped his hand across the dormant portal in front of him.

Russo looked at Deron out of the corner of his eye, daring the bastard to look over for just one second. “Do it,” he commanded mentally, “turn your fucking face so I can put my fist into it.”

“Gentlemen, you know why we are here.” He had that look on his veneer, that
I’m gonna fuck you sideways whether you cooperate or not
kind of expression.

Of course, he only looked at Russo like that. When his gaze fell on Deron, suddenly he was all flowers and rainbows. Well, it wouldn’t last, not when he found out what Deron had done.

“This is the reason,” said the principal, lifting a palette containing the shop of Russo and Jalay standing over the photos of Deron. Someone had censored it with black bars before entering it in the school’s database. “I would like to know why you felt the entire student body should be exposed to this filth.”

“Don’t look at me,” sneered Russo. “Ask him!”

“You two have been at each other’s throats since you first stepped foot on my campus and I want to know why. This feud has to end.”

Russo bit his lip at the sight of Deron smiling. It’d be a lot harder for him to smile if he were missing all of his teeth.

Ficcone sighed and leaned back in his chair. He eyed his charges one at a time. “What am I going to do with you two? It’s my job to keep the peace around here, which is why I can’t let this go on any longer. From now on, there will be no unauthorized reconciliation outside of normal classroom activities. That goes for the both of you.”

“Or what?” asked Russo.

“Excuse me?”

Fuck it—might as well go for broke. “Or what? How are you going to punish Deron when he puts up another picture of me?”

“I didn’t make that picture,” whined Deron.

“Who did what makes no difference now. And to answer your question, Mr. Rivera, the punishment will become clear to you at the appropriate time. I
will
tell you that this’ll be the last time we discuss this issue. From now on, I’ll have no choice to include the authorities and your parents.”

Deron winced—probably scared of what his mom would do to him, something extreme like take away his video games.

Russo looked down at his hands in his lap. He clenched them into fists and released them slowly. When he looked up, he saw Principal Ficcone shaking his head.

“Sometimes I don’t know if you young people understand the gift you’ve been given.” He stood and walked towards the window. With a quick tap of his finger on the glass, the principal reconciled an ornate floral design that spread out in waves and covered the entire window. “To reconcile is to change the world to your liking. You can create beauty or you can bastardize reality.” He motioned to the palette on his desk. “Right now, you take this ability for granted. You think you have the right to reconcile anything you want, anywhere you want. But you forget this is a society of people who can do the same thing you can. Reconciliation is a privilege of living here, not a right.”

The hell it wasn’t. Reconciliation was a part of human evolution, a magic usable by age six, earlier if you could get into Dahlstrom Academy. It could no more be taken away than... His mind jumped back to the morning’s events. It was also impossible to see past the veneer, but some jackhole in a fitted suit had done just that and with considerable ease.

“I see that bothers you, Mr. Rivera. You never considered someone could take your ability away? You don’t even want to know what they do after that. Do you think Easton has any use for someone who can’t reconcile?”

“If it was true—” he replied.

“
Were
true,” corrected the principal. “
Is
true.” He turned again towards the window. “If you asked someone a hundred years ago whether what we do would ever be possible, they would laugh at you. But here we are, using innate abilities to effect change. Think about what that means for just one minute and you’ll realize your petty squabbles aren’t worth the effort. We do something now that people couldn’t do before. Think of what we’ll be able to do as our power grows.”

“How do you stop someone from reconciling?”

Ficcone shrugged. “That I don’t know, Mr. Bishop. I’ve never met anyone who couldn’t reconcile. No one has.”

“Because it’s crap,” said Russo.

“No,” replied the principal, his voice somber. “Those who can’t share in the veneer have no place here.” His lips moved to say something else, but he changed his mind. “Just trust that you don’t want to know what happens to people who keep making pictures—”

“I haven’t made a goddamn thing since you told me to stop last year! Check my palette, you won’t find anything.”

“What about you, Mr. Bishop?”

Deron answered meekly, “I don’t have the skills to shop like Russo.”

Fucking right you don’t.

“So this is no longer about you two, is it? Your quarrel has spread to the masses, become a hobby for the great reconcilers to prove their worth.” Anger flashed across his face. “You two sit back and watch the mayhem while I have to explain to parents why their children are being exposed to obscene images. Or to the police why my halls are filled with kiddie porn! You are putting my job in jeopardy and I can’t allow that.” He squared his eyes at Russo. “So maybe they won’t take away your power for this, maybe you just pay a fine or spend some time behind bars, but you’re establishing a pattern. It all starts here.” He pointed emphatically to the floor.

It was all just posturing, Russo decided, all empty threats meant to keep him in line. But it wasn’t enough. The principal might have been the Big Shit when it came to Easton Central High School, but off campus he was just another clueless adult that needed to grow old and die so that the younger people like Russo could take over.

“Detention,” proclaimed the principal in his official voice, “both of you, two weeks.”

“The hell?!” Russo almost rushed the desk, but only his feet moved, shuffling backwards slightly.

“Language, Mr. Rivera.” Then to Deron, “You will serve your detention with the sophomore class. I won’t have you two antagonizing each other. Now, that is all, gentlemen. Mrs. Rhodes has your write-ups.”

Deron stood and left immediately, but Russo approached the desk.

“What do you want, Russo?”

He leaned over slightly. “If you ever threaten to take my power away—”

“Three weeks detention.”

“Fuck this,” said Russo. He turned and left the room, ignoring the principal’s extension of his sentence to four weeks. It didn’t matter; he had no intention of serving it anyway. Ignoring the note in Mrs. Rhodes’ outstretched hand, he headed into the hall. To his left, Deron was just turning the corner towards the cafeteria. He ran to catch up with him, but when he made the turn, he saw Deron talking to the lunch monitor at the cafeteria doors. When he looked back, Russo pointed a finger at him.

“We have business,” he warned, then turned and stalked angrily back to class.

9 - Rosalia

Deron told her about it between classes, but it wasn’t until the news got around during last period that Rosalia discovered it was because of her shop that he now had to spend two weeks in detention. He didn’t seem angry when last they spoke, just the same kind of blissful indifferent that he had always been on the outside. But then he didn’t show up at her locker after school, didn’t give her the opportunity to apologize for her lapse in judgment. She even walked by the detention room, saw him sitting alone in the back, but he never looked up.

Rosalia lingered in the hallway, wondering if she should knock on the door or just barge in and deliver her apology by way of a kiss. Ultimately, she settled for an instant message, a simple
sorry
with no punctuation or clichéd emoticons. She waited the requisite few minutes for a response, but nothing came through. He was probably busy copying words out of the dictionary.

By hand, she thought, and shuddered.

Outside, small groups of students were still milling around, sharing one last story before hurrying home to their rooms so they could talk to each other on IM. Rosalia walked through them undisturbed, though at times she did feel their eyes on her back. They were staring at her because of Deron, because of the threats Russo had made, threats that rumors had exaggerated. He was either going to punch Deron, beat him up, or just plain kill him. Nobody knew for sure, but that didn’t stop them from adding their own flair as the story passed from student to student.

She passed a line of waiting busses, all of them humming in their idle states. A knock on a window made her look up, and there she saw a concerned Ilya looking down at her. The Ukrainian raised her too-perfect eyebrows as if to ask, “What do we do now?” Rosalia could only manage a weak smile and an undecided shrug in return. What does it matter to her anyway, she wondered. It wasn’t as if Deron were
her
boyfriend, her sole reason for existing.