Technocracy: Freshman Year, Part 4

Marin went to her Ballet elective then, and Ardo went to Algebra, while Saera and Terry went to Theory of Knowledge. Ardo and Marin passed each other in the halls on the way to their respective classes, and they shot glares at each other as they went their separate ways. Saera and Terry passed an enjoyable hour in Theory of Knowledge, both of them relieved that there was not another speech on the Ravaging.

After this, Ardo and Terry reunited in Photography. Terry was intrigued, having never handled a deeply antiquated film camera before. Ardo had handled them before, only at the museum but he’d taken a few pictures here and there. Still, it was a thrill for his fingertips to slowly, tenderly move themselves over the antiques. He wondered, the entire class, how much they were worth. Meanwhile, Saera and Marin got the same Ravaging speech that Ardo and Terry had gotten, since they were both in English together. Saera was always somewhat intrigued by tales of what the world might have been like before the Ravaging, before what was had been burned away in nuclear fire. But Marin had twitched and fidgeted and played with the hem of her skirt.

Terry, then, had gone to Algebra. He’d always had a certain amount of interest in math, so the initial lecture by the teacher, Mr. Zebedee, had caught his attention. And, again, there was no Ravaging speech, which was nice. This was his last class. Saera’s last class was Creative Writing, and she had enjoyed the lecture from Mr. Jonah, and the promise of writing exercises to come.

Marin and Ardo, as mentioned, both shared Art as a last class. They had sat far apart from each other, and they had spent nearly the entire class scowling, tossing angry looks between the two of them. Marin could not help it, could not help glancing over her shoulder at the boy who sat there, red eyes shimmering with wrath. Ardo, too, could not resist the urge to glare daggers at the curtain of black hair on the other side of the room, and met her blue eyes more than once.

So, of course, they had packed up when the last bell of the day had rung, and they had both exited the classroom at exactly the same time.

“Watch where you’re going, fatass!” snarled Ardo.

“Me? You keep your hands to yourself, jerk!” snapped Marin.

“Do you think I have any interest in touching you?”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” said Marin, smiling fiercely and tossing her hair over her shoulder. The two of them continued to walk in the same direction, out towards the front of the school where the buses and the carpool lanes were sitting, basking in the heat of early September.

“Yeah, I’m sure you’ve already fantasized about me you fucking pervert,” said Ardo.

“Ugh, you? No way.”

“Well, good thing,” said Ardo. “Because I have absolutely no interest in you.”

“What, are you gay?” said Marin.

“You’d turn any guy gay with that voice of yours.”

“My voice is fine! What about you and that screech you make? Your voice gonna crack like that all year?”

“Oh, there you two are,” said Saera, coming up on Marin’s left side. She waved at Ardo, and Ardo could not stop himself from waving back, annoyed at Marin as he was. Then she raised a pale arm and waved again, and Terry appeared from the throng of students, backpack slung over a single shoulder.

“Hello,” said Terry.

“Hey,” said Ardo. He whirled back to Marin. “As I was saying—!”

“Um,” said a soft voice, and all three of them broke off their immediate thoughts. They turned. Saera was looking fearful, yet a twinge, a twinkle, was in her silver eyes.

“What?” asked Terry.

“I have been thinking,” said Saera. “And… I think… it would be nice after all… if we all sat together again, tomorrow. At Lunch, I mean.”

“No,” said Marin.

“No!” barked Ardo.

“I’d be fine with it,” said Terry.

“I am not spending any more time with her than I absolutely have to,” said Ardo.

“You don’t need to worry about that,” said Marin. “I’m going to go out of my way to avoid you.”

“Marin, please?” said Saera.

“Saera.”

“Marin?”

Saera smiled prettily at Marin. Marin crossed her arms over her chest and pouted. Ardo rolled his eyes. Terry looked, bemusedly, from one to the other to the other.

“Marin!”

“Oh!” said Marin brightly, swirling around with a shimmer of her black hair. “Mom!”

An extraordinarily beautiful woman was waving at Marin from the open door of a car. She had olive-hued skin, and her hair was brown. Her eyes were green. She wore a black dress and red earrings.

“Hello, Ms. Meni,” said Saera, waving at the woman.

“Hello there, Saera dear,” said Bellona Meni. “I hope we’ll be seeing you in a day or so. Marin has some shopping she wants to do and she was hoping you’d go to the mall with us.”

“I should love that,” said Saera, bright and soft, smiling gently at Marin’s mother.

“See you tomorrow, Saera!” said Marin with a wave as the doors of the self-driving car automatically closed.

“Her mom’s hot,” said Ardo.

“Oh, come on,” said Terry with a groan.

“Dude you’d have to be blind not to think she’s hot. Much hotter than fatass herself.”

“Her name is Marin,” said Saera. She turned to Ardo and Terry. “I shall get Marin to sit with us all tomorrow. Will the two of you show up? The same table, the same time?”

“Ugh,” grunted Ardo. “Well I don’t like fa-Marin, but the two of you are pretty cool,” he wagged two fingers at both Terry and Saera.

“Why does this matter so much to you?” said Terry. He fixed his coppery gaze on her, metallic browns meeting silver whites. “I mean, you have Marin. You have a friend.”

“But I… want more,” said Saera. She looked at them, intense, intent. “You… and you… I like you. Both of you. I think it could be… quite nice. Being friends. This is the first day of high school, why not take a chance?”

Ardo and Terry spared a glance at each other. In the very brief time they’d known Saera that felt like the most words she’d spoken in one go to either of them. It did, indeed, seem to matter to her quite a bit. “Okay,” said Ardo. “If you can get fata-Marin to sit with us, I’ll be there tomorrow.”

“I will, too,” said Terry.

“Wondrous,” said Saera. “Oh! My mother is here. See you all tomorrow!” And she waved, and with a flicker of her green skirt and a glimmer of her pale blonde hair Saera dashed for the car, where her mother was waiting.

“Weird,” said Ardo.

“Hmm?” said Terry.

“Both of them. They’re weird,” said Ardo.

“Well, so are you,” said Terry. “You act weird, too.”

“Me? I’m not the one who freaks out when his name is called!” barked Ardo, red eyes glaring hard at Terry.

And Terry huffed a breath, and chuckled, copper eyes light and playful. Something about them changed then, in Ardo’s eyes. They almost seemed to shift shades of brown, going from copper-colored to the color of bronze. “You’re right. You’re right! I’m weird, too. So that’s all four of us.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I guess we all belong together. I think I will sit with them tomorrow. You should do it, too, even though you don’t like Marin.”

“Bernardo! Principe! Come on, we’re here!”

“Auntie!” said Ardo, swirling around and waving, smile curling his lips. Two brown-skinned women with black hair were waving at him from an open door. Two children, one younger and one older, were also in the car, and they waved and screamed excitedly at Ardo, whose ruby red eyes glinted brightly to see them. Terry watched him go—just for a moment. Then he turned around and fixed Terry with a stare. “I guess I’ll find you tomorrow at Lunch. If fatass is there… whatever.”

He ran then, and piled into the car, receiving loving, welcoming pats and touches from the children there. The car pulled away, and Terry sighed. The buses were gathered, electric motors humming, in a separate parking lot from the carpool area. Terry shouldered up his bag and headed towards them, eventually finding the number of the same bus he had ridden to school that morning.

“So you had a good first day, then?” asked Aemelia, tapping on a datapad as their car drove through the quiet suburban streets.

“Yes, Mama,” said Saera, glancing up into the sky.

“Do your classes seem like they’ll be interesting?”

“Yes.”

Aemelia swiveled a brown eye towards her daughter. “Is everything all right, Saera?”

“Yes,” said Saera, somewhat primly. A tiny smile twisted her lips. “I am just… thinking. I made some new friends today.”

Aemelia smiled. “That’s wonderful, sweetie. I know how you sometimes have difficulty with that.”

“Yes.”

Aemelia’s face twisted at this, worried that she’d insinuated something unpleasant. But Saera did not seem to mind. She gazed out the window still, her expression neutral, but not troubled. In truth, Saera merely watched the clouds, and thought.

They pulled into their garage, and Saera said, “Mama, I have some forms you need to sign.”

“Oh, send them to my phone, sweetie,” said Aemelia, picking said phone up with her hands.

Saera did so. Then she said, “Okay, I’m going to go read now.”

“All right, sweetie, I’ll let you know when tea is ready. Do you want Earl Grey today?”

“Um,” said Saera, silver eyes twitching to the side, “actually, I should like some green tea, instead.”

“That’s perfectly fine. I’ll put the kettle on.”

Saera smiled, and bowed her head gently, and then she walked down the softly lit halls of the house to her room. When she arrived, she shut the door, and pulled out her phone, quickly cycling to its messaging app. She flicked on her white noise machine, and then she tapped a message into her phone.

>Marin!

“And he just kept calling me names!” growled Marin in the seat of her mother’s car.

“I understand, darling,” said Bellona, glancing down at her phone. Bellona worked as a marketing executive. She constantly had to be ‘on call’ for consultations for the firm’s various projects. “There’s always a danger of that, when you meet boys for the first time. Boys can be rough.”

Marin puffed out her cheeks and crossed her arms over her chest, and crossed her legs over each other. Her dress had held up well, for the most part, not betraying the sweating she’d done throughout the day. “I mean, I met two boys today, and one of them was really nice. But the other one...” she huffed a breath.

Bellona twitched a glance at Marin. The woman was in her twenties, and was adorned with the features of the Mediterranean, olive skin and brown hair. Her eyes were green, far different than her daughter’s arresting sapphire blue. She saw, and was used to, the expression of annoyance on her daughter’s face, at this point. A twitch again, this time of her face, briefly cast Bellona into a neutral, even an annoyed, expression. But in a blink she was gentle and happy to look at again. “Darling,” said Bellona, “this Ardo boy sounds like he has a very high opinion of himself—or, at least, that’s what he chooses to project outwards into the world.”

“He’s so arrogant,” snarled Marin, crossing her arms all the tighter over her chest.

“Doesn’t that sound a little familiar?”

“Huh?” Marin turned and looked her mother in the eye.

“Darling, maybe the reason you and this boy are clashing so much is that you’re more alike than you’d care to admit.”

“I am nothing like him,” said Marin. “I’m nice.”

“Marin...”

“Hmph.” She crossed her legs more tightly.

The car pulled through the gates of their house, which was large and opulent, albeit in a spare and modern way. Self-driving, it slid into the garage as it opened.

“I’m going to make some osso bucco tonight, darling,” said Bellona. “You’ll eat that, right?”

“I guess,” said Marin, slinging up her satchel and sliding from the car. “I can have some wine, right?”

“No, sweetie, you’re not old enough.”

“I just started high school today! That’s old enough, right?”

“Not according to the state,” said Bellona. “Send me the forms you got today, I know I have to sign them.”

“Whatever,” said Marin, sliding through the house, through its high, ornately decorated halls lit by glimmering cold LEDs. She at last went to her room, and shut the door behind her. Kicking off her shoes, she tapped a few pads on her phone, and music began to play from the speakers in the ceiling: sugary pop music, with a playful beat. Marin sighed and flopped back on her bed, putting one arm behind her head. The other peered at her phone, and her blue eyes bulged to see that she had a message alert. It was from Saera.

>Marin!

Marin rolled over onto her stomach and tapped on her phone.

>Yeah? What?

>You will sit with us tomorrow, right? With Ardo and Terry?

Marin grimaced.

>If Ardo’s gonna be there I won’t. He’s so annoying!

>I think you should give him a chance.

>Why? All he did was make fun of my butt and yell at me!

>Please, Marin? For me?

Marin’s sapphire eyes twitched off to the side. So much annoyance and anger was swirling in her chest. She puffed out her cheeks. But a note of cool dissonance sang in her heart. She did love Saera, more than anyone else. Except maybe for her mother.

>Fine. For you.

>:)

>ONLY for you. And if I don’t like it, I’m leaving!

>Thank you. See you tomorrow.

“Whatever,” mumbled Marin, rolling over onto her back again and stretching out across her bed as the music played.

“So, principe, did you have a wonderful day?” asked Aunt Martha.

“Yes, tell us, principe,” said Aunt Maria.

Ardo’s red eyes glanced to the side. “It was okay.”

“Just okay, principe? Come now, did you have a good day or not?” asked Martha. Her dark hair was cut short around her shoulders, somewhat like her nephew’s. Her eyes were brown, as were her sister’s. As were the eyes of the cousins that clustered around Ardo’s seat.

“Yeah, come on, Ardo!” said Diana, tugging hard on his shirt sleeve. She was seven years old and had hazel eyes and a missing tooth in the front. “Come on, tell us what you did! I wanna know what high school’s like!”

“It’s pretty low-key,” Ardo responded, not minding the tugging on his sleeve. “Way less of a pain than middle school.”

“Did you make any friends?” asked Maria. Her hair was long and she had it up in a ponytail.

“Yeah yeah!” cried Minerva, sitting in her booster seat. Minerva was five; she’d just finished her first day of kindergarten, and was in a very good mood.

“I...” Ardo’s ruby eyes glimmered. “I met some people… they might be cool.” Marin’s angry eyes and mocking words flared in front of his mind and he snarled. “Mostly.”

Maria and Martha shared a glance. “Well that’s… good!” said Maria, always the more chipper of the pair.

The car pulled into their carport, positioned on the left side of their large, low house. Maria helped Minerva out of her booster seat, while Diana bolted from the car, her dark pigtails flying behind her. Martha slid from the lefthand seat, while Ardo bounced out of the car, swinging his backpack over his right shoulder. He swung into the cool, sun-dappled darkness of the kitchen, and was moving towards his room.

“Ah, principe, hold on,” said Martha.

“What?” Ardo asked, turning.

“Heeere you go, sweetie,” said Maria, setting Minerva down. The little girl hustled herself through the kitchen, out into the family room beyond.

“What?” said Ardo again, seeing both his aunts standing there. There was a careful measuredness to their expressions. Ardo had seen it before. He rolled his eyes. “What did I do now?”

“You had a good day at school, yes, Bernardo?” said Martha.

“I already said so.”

“But you didn’t sound all the way so, principe,” said Maria. Ardo’s red eyes changed their lighting in a way that made both women uneasy. But Maria decided to press the point. “Was everything really okay? Really?”

“It was fine,” said Ardo, feeling weary, feeling the weight of having had this conversation so many times before.

“You didn’t have any trouble?” said Martha.

“No,” said Ardo firmly.

Maria sighed deeply, trying with her expression to deescalate. She smiled gently. “It’s just, Bernardo, please, you’ve had so many rough first days of school before.”

“You didn’t get called, did you?” said Ardo. “I didn’t get in trouble!”

“Yes, but, please, you sounded upset in the car,” said Martha. “If anything is wrong, principe, just let us—”

“I’m fine!” barked Ardo, raising his voice as his red eyes widened and flared. The shout clapped off the cupboards and shelves like thunder. Maria and Martha had known it was coming, but it was always a shock when it happened; Maria winced and Martha actually took a step back. And Ardo saw both of these things, saw both of them react. To him. And in an instant all his anger was gone, and in his eyes and in his heart there was a sickness and a shame. His ruby red gaze wavered, feeling the hurt he had dealt. “Aunties… I’m sorry.” He glanced to the side, hissing in a breath. The corners of his eyes stung. “I didn’t… mean to. I’m sorry.”

“I know.” Maria came to him and drew him into an embrace. “You never mean it, principe.” She tenderly sighed against him. “But you do it anyway. You’ve got to be careful.” She pushed him back, and fixed his ruby red eyes with her own potent gaze. “You’re growing up, Bernardo. You’re in high school now. You have to learn to fix this. To control this. You get so angry, Bernardo. It will burn you to ashes if you don’t learn to manage it.”

Ardo glanced guiltily to the side. “I know.”

“Do you?” asked Martha. “You’ve said ‘I know’ before. Do you mean it?”

Ardo met them with a careful gaze. “I’m trying, aunties.”

“I know it’s hard,” said Martha. “I know it’s hard. But you have to do it, principe. For your own sake, if for no one else’s.”

“Okay,” he said. He sagged, feeling the weight of his satchel. “I’m gonna go draw.”

“We’ll let you know when it’s time for dinner,” said Maria.

“Thank you,” said Ardo, turning and moving, huffing hot breath out of his nostrils. He came, at last, to his room, after one long hallway and then a turn to the right. His room was surprisingly neat and tidy; Ardo actually liked to clean. It made him feel better, inside. The only exception to this was his desk, which was a mess of pens and digital inks and pencil shavings.

Ardo slammed the door to his room shut. He pulled his t-shirt off; then he pulled off his shoes, and he unbuckled his belt and shrugged off his pants. Clad only in boxers and socks, he plopped down heavily at his desk, and with a tap on the righthand corner he brought the digital surface to life. He reached for the stylus, and pulled up his art program. There was a design he was working on, had been working on for days now. He wanted to make sure it was finished before the weekend; it wasn’t an assignment, just a personal goal of his. The tension and unease, the sense of wrongness, that he had felt while he was in school were gone now, replaced by a soft stillness in his heart. He looked at the picture again. It was a beautiful swirl of red lines and shapes, fading in and out of each other. He tapped red coloring into the stylus, and, with a quiet outward breath, he resumed his work.

The bus grunted slowly to a stop on the lonely street corner. It was one of the last stops the driver had to make, and the seat he rested upon was already getting more than a little uncomfortable. The boy who walked past him seemed to sense his unease, because he gave him a soft smile and said, “Have a good day.”

“You too, kid,” said the driver.

“Thanks,” said Terry, turning and walking down the steps of the school bus. The school bus’ automated systems closed the door, and its electric motors hummed quietly as it pulled away, further down the street.

Terry walked along the sidewalk, glancing up into the late summer sky. There were beautiful, fluffy clouds pocking the blue eternity. The sun beamed at an angle, from where it had, just slightly, begun to sink into the West. The houses in this neighborhood were smaller than Marin’s house, Ardo’s house, or even Saera’s house. Terry, of course, could not have known that.

He passed a swath of dirt on the sidewalk. Stopping, idly, he traced a vague design with the toe of his shoe. It was a square, and with a little more intensity of interest, he turned it into a cube. He stared down at it, half-interested, for a few more minutes. Then he smiled, a little, and continued on his way.

Terry thought about the three others he’d met today. Saera, at least, was definitely a friend. She seemed to be a package deal with Marin, too, and he supposed he could tolerate the black-haired girl, though her overwhelming arrogance and sense of superiority put him off a little. Still, she seemed nice enough. Ardo was a live wire, more than anyone he had ever met. Terry had noticed that Marin would not have acted as she had, argued as she had, if Ardo had not repeatedly provoked her over the course of Lunch. It was almost as if Ardo liked the idea of Marin arguing with him. It was almost as if he liked being angry. Or, at least, as if he enjoyed fighting and conflict.

Well, he could probably learn to live with all three of them. In fact, he found himself anticipating seeing them all again, to his own surprise. He had such difficulty making friends. He so often found that people wanted nothing to do with him. To meet not one, but three people whom he looked forward to seeing again was the oddest of things.

Especially if he was going to have another moment of command like he did today. That was particularly odd. He looked back on that, and was surprised again by how he had acted. He kept to himself, mostly. He did not interact with others. He didn’t like other people’s company. He certainly didn’t order others around. Yet there he’d been, shutting down the conflict between Marin and Ardo before it had gotten too far, before it had spilled into physical assault. Where had that come from? He was no leader.

Finally, with a mournful sigh, he stopped in front of his house. The lawn was not as neatly-trimmed as some of the other lawns in the neighborhood; weeds were growing in it, and the grass was growing higher than it should have. He had not had time to mow it recently. He wasn’t sure he actually wanted to mow it, for that matter. Oh well.

He walked up to the front porch and fished in his pocket for his keys. They were easy to find. He fumbled around, and unlocked one lock, then the other. Quietly, gently, warily, he pushed the door open and came into the house. “Dad?” he said.

No response. Terry went down a hallway to his bedroom. His room was a bit disheveled, but still relatively clean. At least, there was no dust on the floor. Dropping off his backpack, Terry walked to the family room.

“Dad?” he asked again. Then he turned a corner, and he sighed.

A man with brown hair and pale skin was passed out on the couch. A faint snore emanated from him. At least he was breathing. There was an open bottle of bourbon on the coffee table next to him.

Terry sighed again, and shook his head. He shrugged off his field jacket and rolled up his sleeves, walking towards the kitchen. He knew he had dishes to do.