Veneer (8 page)

Detention was as much her punishment as his. That hour after school, before their parents got home from work, was theirs to spend together. They would take the long way home, window-shopping at all the boutiques on Parker Avenue, her for the clothes, him for the latest video games. What they did wasn’t important; it had become a ritual, their way of maintaining what little companionship they could afford. They could chat in the evening and throughout the night, see each other briefly between classes, but nothing rivaled the simplicity of just being together, of being walked home by her protector and confidant.

The further Rosalia got from campus, the less the noise of the student rabble affected her. It was quiet in the adjoining neighborhood; the empty driveways meant the worker bees were still away. The houses eventually faded away, replaced by condos with reconciled walls that displayed advertisements stretching ten stories high. Beyond that was Parker Avenue, a long, four-lane thoroughfare that almost bisected the city, growing out from downtown in a vine of commerce. It was a strange break to go from homes to condos to businesses and back again in the space of six blocks, but that was what they called progress.

Rosalia didn’t mind the artificial border between home and school. It was, after all, a welcome rest stop, a place to hang out with her friends and feel like a part of downtown without having to suffer the homeless or the crowded streets. Parker was a never-ending Main Street feeding the suburbs, full of restaurants and cafés, dress shops and sim parlors—everything an attention deficit disorder kid needed to get by in the world.

Their favorite place was Café Perrault, a blend of coffee and smoothie shop. The portals on the walls were always alive with some new distraction, programming geared towards the afternoon student crowd. It was the kind of place she could sit with Deron for an hour, ordering perhaps only one drink, without being pestered or told to leave.

“What’ll you have?” asked the barista in a sickeningly cheery tone. She had a smile on her veneer so artificial that it looked like her boss had reconciled it for her, one of six variations from the Café Perrault Customer Service Manual.

“Fountain of Youth smoothie,” said Rosalia, realizing she had entered Perrault’s out of habit and a subconscious desire to avoid going home.

Finding her usual table near the front windows, she sat down and set her bag on Deron’s seat. Her palette glowed when she pulled it out of her bag, making her hopeful for a message, but it turned out to be from Ilya.

“Fun game I found,” wrote Ilya, with a resource locator following.

The barista reappeared as the game was beginning to load and she slipped a napkin and the tall drink onto the table next to Rosalia’s palette.

“Enjoy,” she bubbled.

Rosalia smiled politely even though she was aware that everything the barista did was for the sake of business and had nothing to do with being a nice person, inside or out. But that was the way with everyone. She could spend a lifetime trying to guess what was under the veneer of people she passed on the street, but even on her deathbed she wouldn’t be one inch closer to the truth. Returning her attention to the palette, she watched the game’s menu fill the screen.

It was called Canvas and was evidently some kind of massively multiplayer art game. A small avatar representing Rosalia appeared on the screen, nothing more than a collection of white spheres that begged to be reconciled. Rosalia put in the necessary effort, taking care to sculpt her in-game character into something approaching reality, or at least, veneered reality. Once dressed, the avatar moved out of the small entry room and into a larger gallery. There, the pentagonal shape gave her five expansive walls. She approached one of them, feeling the blankness as a dull ache for color and shape. After staring at it for a moment, a dialogue bubble appeared in the air beside her. Blue letters exploded from a jumble to form a message.

“Reconcile your dream,” it said, and then popped out of existence.

How it qualified as a game wasn’t exactly clear to Rosalia, but she played along, reconciling an expansive vista from a viewpoint high atop a mountain. Her avatar stood on the precipice of a waterfall, surrounded on both sides by lush overgrowth that encroached on two stone statues. Only their overall shape was discernable, giving the impression of two men standing guard over the water’s escape. Where the land fell away, Rosalia brought up distant terrain, alive with animals and birds, their cries and calls filling the gallery with the music of the rain forest.

In the distance, the horizon sizzled under the heat of an orange sun. Above, the clouds cycled through various pastels before settling into a pleasing pattern. Rosalia drew her avatar back to examine the masterpiece. It wasn’t her best work, but it had killed half an hour. She sat back, sipped the last of her smoothie, and waited for another prompt.

Again, the bubble appeared next to her and when the letters fell into place, it read, “As you dream, others dream.”

Rosalia watched as her avatar’s hand came up and touched the wall. The canvas gave way and there was a rippling effect as she moved through her image and ended up in another gallery. This one already had two walls painted and when she examined the one behind her, she found a scene similar to what she had reconciled. The water ran a little faster and the trees were in a different stage of bloom, but overall, they were undeniably alike. All those little choices could have gone another way, she realized. Maybe if she had ordered a Blueberry Swirl, she would have been more inclined to make the statues more visible, as in this version, where the one on the left was clearly a woman and the other a man.

On the very edge of the cliff, Rosalia noticed a young girl with a folded piece of paper in her hand. It felt familiar and after a few seconds, she realized that it was a scene from the story she had read for English. That was why the veneers were so similar; another student at Central had interpreted the words in the same way.

Amused, she turned her attention to the other wall and saw a painting of a sandy beach that featured crystallized grains at the forefront. The rest of the beach expanded beyond it, folding into a horizon, into a starry sky, into galaxies. It made her think of nighttime, of the moon that wasn’t shown but that was clearly reflecting light onto the sparkling sand.

So that was the game. Person A drew a picture and through it, could access the pictures of Person B. It made sense as a social process, lending at least some credibility to the idea that people with alike dreams would also be alike. But who among her classmates had drawn this picture? Had she already stepped away to another beach?

Whoever she was, she shared something with Rosalia and that meant reciprocation. Approaching a bare wall, she began reconciling her strongest dream, a nightmare made fresh in her memory at Deron’s insistence. The moon stretched from floor to ceiling, sitting regally above a surge of water and a beach that revealed itself as the ocean drew away. A familiar sense of dread crept over her skin as she finished the detail on the moon’s surface. Cracks and craters, all with the right shadows, were as real as anything she would ever see in her lifetime.

Now, she wondered, who shares this dream with me?

The avatar stepped up to the wall and put its hand on it, but nothing happened. The image did not ripple as before and there was no way to move forward. Off to the right, the bubble appeared.

“The unique dream uniquely,” it said, accompanied by a short melody on a violin.

Great, she thought. Even games knew that she was alone, that some nightmares existed just for her.

“But I knew that already,” said Rosalia, surprised she had said it out loud. She wiped her palette clean and brought up her portal again. The time in the corner said it was now four-thirty. Detention would have let out fifteen minutes ago, so Deron should have been on his way home. Turning in her seat, Rosalia put her feet up on the low windowsill and scanned the pedestrian traffic. It didn’t take more than ten minutes to get from the school to Parker, and whether he went to her house or straight home to his, he would have to pass right in front of Perrault’s.

Her thoughts turned to forgiveness, hoping he wouldn’t be too angry to continue their relationship. Plastering the entire school with her shop had been a bad idea and she cursed herself again and again. It wasn’t her fight, wasn’t her place to be inciting more hostility in what Deron considered a nothing war. He did his best not to let it bother him and she should have respected that.

If he showed up angry, it would be justified.

A flash of something tall and lanky caught her attention outside, but it was just a random teenager kicking a skateboard along the sidewalk. Where is he, she wondered. Part of her started to worry, but she tuned it out.

Believing is seeing, she reminded herself. Just believe that Deron will walk around the corner and he will.

Any minute now.

10 - Deron

The cramp started in his palm, concentrated around his pinky, but soon it spread to Deron’s entire hand, making it ache in protest against the archaic activity. Copying words from a dictionary wasn’t just boring; it was a form of physical punishment. He couldn’t remember the last time he had actually written something down instead of typing on a virtual keyboard, or easier still, just reconciling the text onto a palette. It was kind of brilliant when he thought about it, giving the students something to remember their detention by. It was much more of a deterrent than the impotent paddles that hung in Principal Ficcone’s office.

Just as Deron began to imagine the principal sitting there in his fancy leather chair, the man himself stepped leisurely into the classroom. He nodded to Mr. Lee but didn’t say anything. Instead, he scanned the room, locked eyes with Deron, and then beckoned him with a quick turn of his head.

Grateful for the early exit, Deron closed the frayed dictionary and stood up. As he crossed the front of the room, he glanced at the clock. It was already ten past four; five minutes of reprieve was all he got.

In the hallway, Principal Ficcone settled into a slow amble and Deron tried to mirror the nonchalance. “How is your hand?” he asked with practiced sincerity. He tried to evoke informality by clasping his hands behind his back.

“It hurts,” admitted Deron. “I’m not used to writing.”

“It will get easier. By the end of next week, you’ll be a pro.”

Deron said nothing in return, didn’t feel like thanking him for the hollow attempt at comfort.

The principal coughed and cleared his throat in the way only old people found socially acceptable. “I need to apologize to you, Mr. Bishop.”

“For what?

“The photo that was passed around today. You didn’t make it.” His voice was quiet as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear him admit his mistake. “I checked with your teachers and they all agree that you don’t have the skill to reconcile something like that.”

Deron laughed despite the insult. He never thought being a substandard reconciler would one day get him off the hook.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it. A lot of people struggle with the veneer. I didn’t realize my full potential until my third year of college. You’ll learn to master it soon enough.”

“So does this mean I don’t have detention tomorrow?”

Principal Ficcone reached out and put a heavy hand on Deron’s shoulder. “No, detention still stands. You see, although I accept that you didn’t make the shop, I do think you know who did.”

Deron searched for a response, but didn’t feel confident he could say anything without broadcasting that it was a lie.

The principal removed his hand. “And I don’t think you’re going to tell me who the true artist is.”

“Even if I knew,” said Deron, trying to steady his veneer. If it wavered even a little bit, the principal’s keen eye would catch it.

“I know,” he replied, nodding, “which is why you will continue to serve detention. I will let the matter drop and leave it to you to make the necessary corrections with your conspirator.”

“She was just—” He caught himself, but it was too late.

“She?”

They were at the end of the hallway and to the right, the outer doors opened to the back of the school. Deron could see the sidewalk give way to a green lawn. Further on, it dipped to reveal the tops of the bleachers by the football field.

“As I said, I’ll leave it to you. I trust we’ll have no repeats?”

It wasn’t fair, him thinking Deron had wanted any of this. But those were the cards on the table, and it was no use thinking about the ones that had been burned. He shook his head feebly and looked away.

“Then have a pleasant evening, Mr. Bishop.” Principal Ficcone walked away, resuming his frantic pace as he rushed about the school tending to the late-afternoon fires.

Rather than follow the man that had just berated him, Deron exited through the double doors and took in a breath of fresh air. It smelled good, not like the stale air-conditioned environment inside the school. Finally free to pursue his life again, he thought of Rosalia. She was probably waiting for him, sending him messages every few minutes, holding a one-sided conversation until he got out of detention. Smiling, he unhooked the plastic clasps on his bag to take out his palette, but a flash of movement in the distance distracted him.

Deron paused, could just make out Sebo’s signature jacket. He was sitting on the bleachers on the other side of the field and when he noticed Deron, he waved invitingly. Sebo wasn’t one to hang around after school, so if he had waited for Deron to get out of detention, it must have been for something important.

Trudging across the lush lawn, Deron felt his shoes sink into the ground as if it had just been watered. He veered to the left to take the stairs down the small incline and as he did, he saw Sebo jump down behind the bleachers. He was reckless like that, both in reality and in the games they played. Destined 4 Death was always a crapshoot with Sebo; sometimes he liked to play it straight, stay in formation, and coordinate with other players. Other times, he preferred to interpret the term
run and gun
literally and forgo all planning. That was the way most of their nights ended, devolving into mayhem when everyone was tired and ready to quit.