Chapter Text
"Detention?!" I say, "Are you kidding me?"
Mr. Grady, the vice principal, steeples his fingers and nods sternly.
"You did punch another student. That ain't the kind of behavior we want to... promote at this fine place of intellectual advancement."
If chewing tobacco was allowed in schools, I strongly suspect Mr. Grady would be rolling a wad around in his big lips. As it is, he thoughtfully contorts his puffy red cheeks as he prepares to deliver the killing blow. He's a big, fat Texan with a bald spot and a mustache who wears bolo ties to work in an office at a private school in Indiana.
"Steph, I know that you're having a difficult time accepting this–"
"I'm not accepting this," I snap. Mr. Grady's fat brown eyebrows shoot up, and he makes that strange face again, like he's biting something in his lip. He takes a deep breath, and then opens his ugly mouth:
"I'm not willing to bargain with you, young lady. I have always expected you to set an example for the other students. Even students like Brittany Wallace."
"You want me to just–" I wave around vaguely, "Just kowtow to her? Admit defeat?"
"I am asking you to make a dignified concession."
"Buh–this isn't dignified! I'm going to have a disciplinary record!" I squeak, "I'll never get into Duke with a disciplinary record!"
Mr. Grady blinks lazily at me, chewing his imaginary cud as I burst into tears.
"You just don't care," I say, "You never make exceptions for me. You push me twice as hard as all the other kids, you tell me all these lies about how I'm going to do great things, and then–" the rest of the sentence is cut off by a watery gurgle. I sniff. Mr. Grady wordlessly hands me a handkerchief–an actual handkerchief, monogrammed with the initials 'AG' for Alexander Grady. It's so bizarre that I actually stop crying for a moment.
"Did your wife make this?" I ask.
"I made it for myself," says Grady languorously.
"Anyways," I say, dabbing at my wet eyes, "I can't believe you're treating me this way! After all the volunteer hours I've logged for you! There's absolutely nothing I can do to keep this off my record?"
"You can go to detention," Mr. Grady says, allowing me a moment of hopefulness, before he continues, "To avoid an additional count of truancy in your record."
"She deserved it," I spit, "That ungrateful bitch."
"Whether she deserved it or not is irrelevant."
Mr. Grady stands from his chair with a great deal of effort, and crosses the room, opening the door for me.
"So you're saying she did deserve it?" I ask, turning around in my chair to make eye contact with him.
"I will see you on Saturday, Miss Gutierrez."
I bite back an angry retort. The door closes quietly behind me, and I'm left looking directly into the black eye of Brittany Wallace, my arch-nemesis.
"See you Saturday," she says with a smirk.
I clench my fists and growl in frustration.
"You– what are you doing here?"
"Waiting for the bus," she says, examining her nails. There's really no reason for her to do that, since they're the ugliest nails I've ever seen, stubby and short. Brittany Wallace is the epitome of a 'before' picture: baggy jeans covered in paint splatters, that whole long-sleeve-shirt-under-band-tee thing that is so ugly, doc martens, greasy blonde hair cut in a way that looks much better on Jesse McCartney. I don't even think she wears concealer.
"That haircut makes you look gay," I say.
Brittany snorts.
"If I was gay I would be one of your groupies like everyone else here with a 4.0."
"You would not!"
Brittany laughs. It's a kind of soft, throaty sound, like a shoe being repeatedly scuffed. I roll my eyes and walk to the door, determined to be the better person.
The even better person, since I'm better than her to begin with, obviously.
"Wait," I say, popping my head back in, "You have a 4.0?"
Brittany tips her head back and laughs loudly this time.
"Why do you think I'm always in classes with you?"
I open my mouth to speak.
Better person, better person, better person.
"Oh!" I say, smiling brightly, "Of course!"
I hear Brittany snort as I close the door, my high ponytail swinging from side-to-side with the force of the motion. I check myself in the reflection of one of the office windows: I'm wearing this cute pink top with butterflies on it, but sometimes if I hunch too far forward it starts to slip and reveal my bra. I should have worn a camisole. There are matching pink butterflies on my jeans, and I have a pink headband on, which really ties the whole thing together. My eye shadow is a little smeared, but my mascara is miraculously intact–a minute and a half in the bathroom will fix that. Truthfully, I want to spend more than a minute and a half in the bathroom.
Now that I'm alone, my fake cheerfulness drips out of me, and I feel as empty as the halls I click-clack through in my designer heels. I pass Biology, where I peek inside, and then continue onward resolutely, deciding that appearing late to Biology would imperil my reputation. I would rather simply skip it, and make up some excuse about my period.
I stomp all the way down the hall and up two flights of stairs to the mezzanine floor of the library, where the librarians' offices are, but more importantly, the printers.
I sit at one of the booths that overlook the courtyard and open my laptop to the document tab, looking for March of my Freshman year.
Nestled amongst the book reports and college essay attempts, there's a file called 'little miss midshipman,' which I export onto a flash drive, and, with shaking hands, plug into the school printer.
I keep looking over my shoulder. As long as we use black ink, students are allowed to print as much as they want, whatever they want, but I always feel embarrassed printing out fan fiction. Or reading it. Or thinking about it. It's just something that a person like me wouldn't do, you know?
A girl like me probably wouldn't read the Partridge books either. One time I brought book five to the beach with me, and Stacey Parker took one look at the 64-gun battleship on the cover and asked me if it was for school.
I told her it was. What was I supposed to do, be myself?
It's not like I started reading Partridge when I had friends, anyway. I found Midshipman Partridge sitting on a bench at a rest stop on the way to Indiana when we first moved here, and I started reading it out of pure boredom during the drive. From that point on, the two of us were inseparable. I thought the sailing parts were really interesting, and I enjoyed the easy camaraderie between Partridge and his friends, Sweets and McCall. Even when Stacey grafted me into her cheerleader friend group, I still didn't feel like I had that kind of friendship with anyone.
And I had a teeny tiny crush on Partridge. That too.
Most of the other fans online were guys, older guys, too, since the books came out in the eighties. But somebody wrote a fanfic where a girl joins the navy and pretends to be a boy and falls in love with Partridge.
It wasn't...good, or anything. But it made me very happy at the time, and every once in awhile, when I get really sad, I pull it back out and reread it. The original writer actually deleted her forum account a year and a half ago, (In one of my weaker moments I thought about reaching out to her,) but by then I'd already downloaded it.
It can't hurt, can it?
***
I walk into detention on Saturday feeling light as a feather. This is because my parents took my laptop, my phone, and my copy of Twilight, saying I'm 'not allowed to distract myself.' UGH.
The thirty or so printer-paper pages carefully folded and tucked into the inside pocket of my sweatshirt are a reassuring weight as I slip through the office doors and stand in front of the office lady that I really like, Bridgitte or something. She's French.
"Steph?" She says, smiling sweetly, "What are you doing here?"
I blink back a fresh wave of tears. (I cried in front of my parents all night.)
"Detention," I say mournfully. It's usually best not to lie. That's why I told Brittany Wallace her haircut made her look gay.
"That's right," She says evenly, looking through a clipboard, "You will be working in the basement. Mr. Grady will find you there."
There's no sign of the disgust she must be feeling, to look at me in my drab brown cropped hoodie and low ponytail. I'm not even wearing makeup.
I turn away and clomp down the stairs in my brown tennis shoes, glad I'd worn them if I'm going to be working in the basement. (They're still designer, and they still have heels, but they're tennis shoes.)
It takes me a moment to find her, but Brittany is standing in a storeroom counting the small paperbacks we use in English class, making tallies on a clipboard.
"Good morning!" I say brightly, flipping on the light switch. It irks me that she got here first–it doesn't suit her reputation as a discipline case.
"Is that an order, sir?" she asks, blinking sleepily at me.
I blink. That's a line from the Partridge books. The scene is one of my favorites–it's, like, one in the morning, and Partridge says 'good morning' to Sweets, and Sweets is like 'Is that an order, sir?' and Partridge is like–
"No, it's an oath," I say aloud.
Brittany stares at me with her lips parted in shock. It takes her face half a second to slip back into her usual sour expression.
"Good morning," she repeats, spitting it out like it's a curse. That's what Sweets does, in the book, too.
"No. Freaking. Way." I say, putting my hands on my hips. Brittany looks me up and down with faint amusement.
"Yes way, it seems."
"I had no idea!".
"You never bothered to ask." She turns to her clipboard and continues tallying books.
"Which book is your favorite?" I ask.
"Seventeen. I think the part with the dove and Trafalgar was as cinematic as writing gets."
"Favorite ship?" Brittany holds up a hand, her sleeve flopping down her wrist to reveal a friendship bracelet that says Anna Katherine.
"Which one do you think is hotter, Partridge or Sweets?"
Brittany shrugs.
"They're like, gay for each other, aren't they?"
I gasp.
"Uh, no? Partridge is in love with Anna Bane?"
Brittany wrinkles her nose.
"That insufferable bitch? He hates her."
"It's about the sexual tension."
Brittany sets the clipboard down with a smack.
"Partridge is so gay. He literally says he wishes Sweets were a woman."
"Even so, Sweets betrays him."
"Maybe if they kissed instead of fighting that wouldn't have happened."
"You're just saying that to piss me off."
"For once," says Brittany, looking around the room to see if she's forgotten anything, "I am not." She slips out of the room and hands me the clipboard. I follow her.
"This ain't right," She says, looking around, "I don't see Grady."
I realize that I just took the clipboard without thinking and try to hand it back to her, but she shoves it against my chest.
"You can take credit for doing the work. I don't care."
"How selfless of you." Her fat finger is suddenly in front of my lip. I wrinkle my nose and open my mouth but she shushes me immediately.
"In all the years I've been a regular at detention, Grady never leaves me alone for more than five minutes, and never with another student," she whispers.
"Maybe he trusts me."
"No." says Brittany, in a scary low voice. She's always so loud, it's unnerving to hear her speak this quietly, "It's a district policy. He literally can't leave us alone."
"Oh." I keep my mouth shut.
Brittany creeps down the basement hallway toward an unlabeled room. She opens the door, and gestures at me to enter. I follow her in.
She grabs a stool, and drags it to the wall, where she stands on top of it and presses her ear to a vent that's situated near the ceiling.
"What are you doing?" I whisper. I don't know why I'm whispering.
"You can hear whatever's going on in the cafeteria through here," she says.
I walk over to the door window.
"I'm going to keep watch."
"Okay..." Brittany pauses for a moment, "...Good idea."
At first, nothing happens, and Brittany hears nothing. Then she tells me she can hear people arguing, faintly.
"It sounds like Brigitte," she says, confused.
"The office lady?"
I watched as Bridgitte's smart heels, stockinged legs, and pastel skirt suit appear around the corner. To my surprise, Mr. Grady is following her, pressing a gun between her shoulder blades. He grips her arm with one hairy hand.
"Oh, God," says Brittany, nearly making me jump. She must have gotten down from the stool.
"Oh God indeed," I reply.
"They're coming our way. Hide." Brittany says before she dives behind a shelf. I slide behind an enormous painting next to an ugly, spotty floor-length mirror from the sixties. Grady throws open the door, and slams it behind him, making the walls shake.
"I said I'd get rid of you and by George even if I have to do it here–"
Brittany and I made shocked eye contact. The voice is Grady's, but the accent is posh and English.
"So what if you do!" Brigitte shoots back, "I'll be back! I have your key!"
"That's not what I meant," Grady growls, "And you know it." He holds the gun to Brigitte's head, and I see in the low light that it's an old gun, a really old gun. A really really old gun: a flintlock.
She looks at him through half-lowered eyelids, her chin turned up.
"You could at least give me the benefit of being sent to England as a prisoner."
She looks around, and for a moment it seems like she's looking right at me.
"...And you know that I do not mean this England."
"What could that do for me? I was tasked with disposing of you, Bernard."
Brigitte–Bernard–shrugs.
"Dispose of me if you must. But I confess there is the hussar's pride in me. I would like to die in a fair fight."
Grady's pose softens, and he lowers the gun.
"Oh, I'll give you a fair fight," he says, a soft growl, "Return." He raises the gun again to point at her, standing an arm's length away.
She looks at him like he's mad.
"Return," Grady demands again, nodding sharply at the painting in front of me. I blanch. I roll out of the way and press myself against the wall behind the mirror, scooting back into the area where it presses against a pile of rugs.
Bridgitte sets the painting across from the mirror, propping it against a shelf.
There's an odd sensation, a hum, like air conditioning kicking on. The air feels charged with static.
Grady gestures with the gun again, and Bridgitte steps between the mirror and the painting, and then she's gone. I hear the safety of the gun click. Grady steps between them, and disappears too.
I look at Brittany. She crawls out of her hiding place and steps between the mirror and the painting.
"Don't!" I say, scrambling out of my hiding place, "Don't!"
Brittany stands there, leaning forward, examining the mirror.
"I wonder how they did that."
I look around frantically.
"We need to call the police."
Brittany shrugs, and grabs the edge of the mirror.
"It was like magic or something," she says, sticking the toe of one boot into the bottom of the mirror. I see it happen. Her shoe actually goes into the mirror.
"Probably was magic," says Brittany, "And if we don't use it now we're going to miss out."
Then she throws herself into the mirror, and it swallows her whole like an anaconda.
"Brittany!" I shout. No reply.
I stick a tentative finger into the mirror–it feels cool, like something thicker than water. I stick my hand in, and then my arm.
Hard, calloused fingers close around my wrist, and then everything goes black.