Action Figures - Issue Three: Pasts Imperfect (3 page)

I arrive to homeroom in
plenty of time for attendance, but the minute I step through the door, Mrs.
Prescott shoves a hall pass at me and tells me to head to guidance.

“Mrs. Zylinski would like to
speak to you,” she says, giving nothing away.

From the back of the room,
Matt looks a question at me. I raise my eyebrows and shake my head in response:
Don’t ask me, I just got here
.

The last time I spoke to Mrs.
Z, she made me feel like I was doomed to a life in the food service industry
because I hadn’t yet laid out a detailed course for myself post-high school. I
promised her, and myself, to give it some serious thought, but a lot of things
popped up afterwards (please refer to my previous comment about the crazy
demon-god).

It’s precisely that sort of
out-of-left-field insanity that makes me question whether I’m fit for normal
employment. I mean, what would I do if a crisis arose while I was at my day
job? I couldn’t up and leave with no explanation. Bosses frown at that sort of
thing. Me, I frown at innocent people getting hurt or killed because I’m too
busy flipping burgers or whatever.

Okay, I’m getting
way
ahead of myself. I once told Sara her powers shouldn’t derail her dreams of
becoming a star of stage and screen, and I should take my own advice. There’s
no reason I can’t be a normal girl
and
a super-hero. I need to get
creative is all.

Or give up on ever being a
normal girl again.

Or give up being a super-hero.

It’s too early in the day to
be so depressed.

Mrs. Z hovers by her office
door, lying in wait for me. “Good morning, Carrie, and welcome back,” she says
cheerfully, then she hustles me into her office. “How was vacation?”

“Uneventful,” I say. “What’s
up?”

Mrs. Z sits, folds her hand,
and smiles at me, which is somehow not as comforting as it should be. “I wanted
to speak to you right away. We’ve been given a
very
exciting
opportunity, and I think you would make an excellent candidate.”

“Candidate?”

“Are you familiar with Bose
Industries?”

Talk about a trick question.
I know very little about the company and what it does, but I know the company’s
public face — or helmet, as it were — very well, but I can’t exactly brag to
Mrs. Z that I’ve raced Concorde (and won, thank you very much).

“Uh, a little. I know the
company made that suit that what’s-his-name, Concorde, wears,” I say.

“Bose Industries is a very
diverse company. They research and develop alternative energy sources, they’re
working to perfect bullet train technology, they have an entire division
dedicated to developing non-lethal weaponry for the military and police use...”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Z, I don’t
see how any of this is of interest to me. I don’t know anything about the
technology industry.”

“Well, there are many, many
facets to the technology field, Carrie, and you are only a sophomore, so it’s
certainly not too late to find something that might appeal to you,” she says,
slipping into what sounds like one of her well-rehearsed sales pitches. “That’s
why I wanted to talk to you. Bose Industries has offered to let a limited
number of Kingsport High students tour the facility, and I’d like to add you to
the list. You’d get a chance to see exactly what they do, meet with department
heads, learn about possible career opportunities, perhaps even take part in an
after-school internship.”

I’d heard the state was
pushing schools to get more girls interested in science and technology, and
lucky me, Mrs. Zylinski wants me to be part of this initiative. Whether I’m
actually interested in it?
Pft
. Details, details.

Then again, it’s not as if I
have anything else on the career horizon.

“Can I think about it?” I
say.

Mrs. Z gives me a pinched
expression. “Oh, I’m sorry, the tour is Wednesday, and I need to send a list of
students over by the end of the day.”

Uh-
huh
. Why do I get
the feeling she intentionally waited until the last minute to drop this on me?
I’m tempted to say no out of spite; I don’t like being played like this.

But, like I said, it’s not
like I have any better options.

Dammit, brain, whose side
are you on?

Mrs. Zylinski, perhaps
sensing my hesitance, turns on the gentle pressure. “You wouldn’t be committing
to anything, you know. If nothing appeals to you, so be it, but there’s no harm
in taking the tour, is there?” She smiles. “Besides, you’d get to associate
with some students outside your current circle of friends. I think that would
be good for you.”

Excuse
me?

“What’s wrong with my
current circle of friends?” I say.

“Oh, no, please, don’t get
me wrong,” Mrs. Z says, holding her hands up in a calming gesture, “they’re
nice kids, for the most part...”

“What do you mean,
for
the most part?
”

Mrs. Zylinski sighs and puts
on her best serious expression. “Your friendship with Matt Steiger,” she says.
“He’s...oh. How do I put this?”

I’d recommend carefully.

“The boy has a bit of a
reputation.”

“He’s sixteen. How much of a reputation can a
sixteen-year-old have?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised. I haven’t had my conference
with Matt yet, but I’ve already heard an earful from his teachers, and they all
say the same thing: the boy is unfocused, undisciplined, he doesn’t take
anything seriously...”

“Well, no argument there, but I don’t see how
—”

“I’m worried he could prove a bad influence
on you. I know you let your grades slip once because you associated with the
wrong kind of peers,” she says, referencing what I call my Dark Period, a time
in my life when I got swept up in being one of the popular kids. That one big
mistake encompassed many smaller mistakes, such as allowing my education to
fall by the wayside, because I let “the wrong kind of peers” convince me that
pretty girls like me didn’t need things like good grades.

“Matt is not the wrong kind of anything. He’s
a good guy,” I say. “I’m not denying he’s got some growing up to do, but
immaturity isn’t the same as juvenile delinquency, or whatever you’re accusing
him of.”

“Look, Carrie, we’re not here to talk about
Matt Steiger...”

A little hotly I say, “Then why did you bring
him up?”

Mrs. Z’s lips press into a thin, bloodless
line. Her cheeks turn a pale pink.

“Why don’t I put your name on the list?” she
says.

THREE

I stand by what I said: Matt is a good guy.

I’m not blind to his faults. He too often
speaks before he thinks and he doesn’t filter anything, so he can be
unintentionally hurtful. He can be self-centered. He doesn’t always think
things through, which is a shame, because he’s shown himself to be crazy smart
when he does. Like I told Mrs. Z, I chalk it up to immaturity; he’ll grow up
and grow out of his less appealing behaviors. It’s what teenagers do.

Point is, at his core, he’s a good person.
I’m not ashamed to call him my friend.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t times I want
to slap him.

“How come you get to go on the Bose tour? You
don’t know crap about science!” Matt says to me at lunch. “I’ve been bugging
Mrs. Z about going on the tour since last month.”

“You needed a teacher’s recommendation to be
added to the list, I guess. Did you have one?” I say, hoping the answer is no,
because that would get me off the hook nicely.

“Didn’t Mr. Potts say he was going to
recommend you?” Stuart says.

“Yes! He said that, like, the day he found
out about it,” Matt says. “Who recommended you?”

“Um...no one. Well, Mrs. Zylinski did, I
guess,” I say, but that’s not enough to mollify Matt. “Look, I didn’t ask to go
on this thing. I even told Mrs. Z you should go, not me.”

“And yet you’re going, while I asked, and I
got screwed. Thanks.”

“What? It’s not my fault Mrs. Z thinks you’re
undisciplined and unfocused and —”

“What’d she say about me?”

Shoot, me and my big mouth. I’m cornered, so
I tell Matt what Mrs. Zylinski said, sparing no details.

“I’m the top student in Mr. Potts’ science
class,” Matt protests. “I blew through the basic engineering course when I was
a freshman. The only reason I don’t have an A-plus average in geometry
and
statistics is because Mrs. Dalrymple docks me points for not showing my work!
So why does Mrs. Z think I suck so hard?”

“Maybe you should go ask her instead of
yelling at us because it’s making me really uncomfortable,” Missy says.

“This isn’t fair,” Matt grumps. He shoves his
lunch tray away and settles into a cross-armed little ball of resentment.

And there you have Matt Steiger in summary:
he expects things to just happen for him, and when life doesn’t go his way, he
lashes out, doesn’t consider his own role in the matter, and doesn’t take
productive steps to solve the problem. He and I have danced this dance before,
quite a few times, most often over the fact Concorde has continually dismissed
Matt and his very sincere efforts to become a super-hero, yet accepted me with
minimal resistance. Well, minimal by Concorde standards; the guy’s pretty
resistant, as a rule.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not unsympathetic,
and yeah, Matt deserves to go on the tour more than I do. His grasp of
cutting-edge technology is truly impressive, and I know he’d go absolutely
mental in a place like Bose Industries.

That said, I can’t bring myself to back out.
I know, it makes no sense to cling to an honor I didn’t ask for and don’t want,
but I’m doing Matt a favor. He needs to learn to how to respond to a problem
with something other than finger-pointing and petulance, and now he has a
chance to do just that.

What can I say? I’m a giver.

     Sadly, Matt utterly fails to change Mrs. Zylinski’s
mind. He stays after school to meet with Mrs. Z and plead his case, but when he
rejoins us at my locker, all of ten minutes later, it’s obvious his pleas fell
on deaf ears: his lunchtime scowl is back.

“She didn’t even listen to me,” Matt says.
“She gave me some crap about my ‘weak overall academic portfolio.’”

“That blows, man,” Stuart says. I keep my
mouth shut, and let Stuart play the role of sympathetic yes-man throughout the
walk to the Coffee Experience, where we plan to relax with some much-needed
caffeine and gaming.

“I’m going to tap four of my forests to turn
these other four forests into one-one creatures,” Sara says. “Now I’m going to
tap these five forests to add a three-three bonus and trample to my four forest
creatures, and to all my elves. Now, Matt, I am going to crush you like a horde
of crazed shoppers at a mall on Black Friday.”

Did I say it would be relaxing? I meant
frustrating and humbling.

Matt checks his cards. On
the table in front of him he has two rinky-dink goblins, several mountains, all
of which have been tapped, and one lonely card in his hand.

“Tell me what I want to
hear,” Sara says, grinning.

“You suck so much,” Matt
says, laying his un-played card on the table, face-down, in silent surrender.

“Dude, that deck is
hardcore,” Stuart says. “I thought your zombie deck was a pain in the ass...”

“I like to think I can
destroy you all in any color of the
Magic: The Gathering
rainbow.”

“I hope a killer deck is the
only reason I’m losing so bad,” Matt says, and that totally uncalled-for low
blow takes all the wind out of Sara’s sails. I know he’s upset about the Bose
tour, but come on...

“You think I’m using my
powers?” Sara says.

“All I’m saying is, you
always seemed to know what I was going to do.”

“I’m not cheating, you big
jerk, and I don’t need to read your mind to predict what you’re going to do.
Your strategy is always the same: Get your cheap creatures out fast, attack in
the early rounds while we’re defenseless, hope you can wear us down before we
can get our good cards out, then trot out your big gun creatures so they can
finish us off unopposed.”

“That is
not
what I
—” Matt says, but we cut him off with a well-orchestrated, yet totally
unrehearsed group groan.

“Matt, that’s
exactly
how you play,” I say. “I picked up on your strategy after, like, three games.”

“You’ve been playing that
way since we were kids, man,” Stuart says.

“Oh, yeah? If I’m so predictable,
why aren’t the rest of you beating me all the time?” Matt says.

“Because Sara makes wicked
obnoxious decks that totally smoke us before we can get our good cards out,”
Missy says, “and then she goes after you and by that point I don’t care if I
win anymore because you’re entertaining when you lose.”

“I’m so happy my misery
brings you such joy.”

“What kind of friends would
we be if we didn’t mock your pain?” Stuarts says.

“Yeah, okay, fair point,”
Matt says, pushing away from the table. “I’m getting a refill. Anyone need
their drinks freshened? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?”

He’s dropping movie
references again. He must be feeling better.

“You buying?” I say.

“
Pft
. No.”

“Then I’m good.” No one else
takes Matt up on his offer, which I suspect is nothing but an excuse to go
flirt with Jill, Coffee E’s crack barista and resident hottie. She plays along,
as always — not because she’s remotely interested in a guy ten years her
junior, but because it boosts her tip. She’s no fool. Matt by his lonesome has
probably paid off half her student loans.

“Carrie, your phone’s going
off,” Missy says.

“I don’t hear anything,” I
say. I reach into my jacket and sure enough, my phone (which I’d put on silent
mode because I’m respectful toward my fellow customers) is vibrating away. I
tend to forget how sharp Missy’s hearing is. The screen reads DR Q. “Huh. It’s
Dr. Quentin.”

“Doc Quantum?” Sara says,
lowering her voice. “Why would she be calling?”

Good question. Dr. Gwendolyn
Quentin, better known to the world at large as Doc Quantum, is one of the most
intelligent people in the world — possibly
the
most intelligent person
in the world. She’s also the leader of the Quantum Quintet, and one of several
local super-heroes who have my cell phone number. Can’t imagine why she’d be
calling me.

“Knowing my luck, she wants
to experiment on me some more,” I say, recalling (not at all fondly) my last
visit to the Quantum Compound. “Hi, Dr. Quentin.”

“Hello, Carrie,” Dr. Quentin
says. “Do you have any experience babysitting?”

Wow, curve ball. “Um, some,
yeah. I haven’t sat for anyone in a while, but I have some experience.”

“Would you happen to be
available Friday evening?”

“Why? You need me to watch
Farley?”

“I do. MIT is hosting an alumni
fundraiser, and I’m rather obligated to attend. It would be poor form to bow
out, considering they named an entire wing of a building after me.”

For the record, she’s not
joking. Hey, it was the least MIT could do, considering she paid for its construction.
Of course, that was the least Dr. Quentin could do, considering she was in
charge of the lab experiment that gave her and her husband Joe their powers
(and destroyed the upper two floors of the building in question — so, you know,
full circle).

“Farley’s not much for
fundraising dinners, huh?”

“Farley is five years old.
His tolerance for tedious philanthropic functions is equal to mine,” the doc
says. “I simply do not express my boredom to my fellow guests in the shrillest
possible terms.”

“Gotcha.”

“Are you available, then?”

Well, let’s see. I might be
partaking in on our weekly group dinner-and-movie outing. Better yet, I might
be spending the night in the company of one Mister Malcolm Forth, who has
expressed an interest in spending more quality time with one Miss Caroline
Hauser.

He would have to actually
ask me out, though.

Sigh.

“What time should I be
there?”

“Five would be ideal.”

“Five it is.”

“Very good. I’ll see you
then. Thank you.”

“Sure thing.”

“Were you just asked to babysit
for the Quantums?” Matt asks, having caught the end of my call.

“Yes, and I swear, if you
start griping that I was asked to watch Farley instead of you...”

“I am
not
going to
gripe about
that
,” Matt says.

He’s a terrible liar.

Mom was beyond thrilled that
I was invited to participate in the Bose tour, and she signed off on my
permission slip with no questions asked. Nice change of pace there.

Mrs. Zylinski is our lead
chaperone for the trip, which will keep me out of school for the day. I mostly
object to this because I’ll miss the daily social time with my friends and
Malcolm, but rare opportunity, opening doors, career path, blah blah blah. The
group consists of me and nine other students, and I’m the youngest among them.
I’m also one of only two girls. So much for getting the fairer sex more
interested in the technology industry.

No one speaks to me during
the bus trip, except when a junior, a kid named Ned, asks me, “Aren’t you the
girl Mal’s dating?”

“Uh, yes?” I say, even though
it’s a little premature to say we’re dating. Not undesirable, mind you, just
premature.

“Huh,” Ned says neutrally.
“And you’re friends with that Steiger kid,” he says, less a question than a
thinly veiled judgment.

“Yes.”

“Huh.”

Yeah, nice chatting with
you, too.

The Bose Industries compound
is a sprawling industrial park composed of numerous separate buildings, each
dedicated to a specific enterprise, but all part of the same corporate family.
The bus winds down a long central road, past several smaller facilities, until
it reaches the corporate offices in the center of the park. Not much to say
about it, honestly. It’s an office building, nothing especially sciencey or
techy about it.

The bus pulls up to the main
entrance, where a tall African-American woman stands waiting. She greets us as
we file off the bus and introduces herself as Miriam Roche, the company’s
director of public relations.

“Good morning, everyone,”
she says, friendly but businesslike. “Welcome to Bose Industries. We’ve got a
very busy schedule ahead of us, but Mr. Bose wanted to make sure your day
started off with a bang — or should I say, a boom?”

Ms. Roche gestures, drawing
our attention somewhere behind us — behind us and up, and guess who comes
roaring down for a close-range flyby? Concorde barely slows down, and he
doesn’t wave or acknowledge us in any way, but the cameo is enough to spark a
round of raucous cheering from my classmates.

“Are we going to get to meet
him?” Ned says.

A man’s voice responds.
“Unfortunately, Concorde is a very busy fellow. He won’t be part of the tour,
but believe me, kids, you won’t be bored. Hi, everyone,” the man says, stepping
forward to greet us. “I’m Edison Bose.”

I manage to keep my
expression flat, even though I have reason upon reason to be picking my jaw up
off the sidewalk. I’ve met Edison Bose before — several times, in fact.