First Night: Midnight

The Heroine Academy had a total of four hundred and sixty-eight—now sixty-nine—students; it said so on a big sign out front, and when I arrived, they flipped over a card to up the tally, like the score at a high school baseball game in a hick town that didn’t have the budget for an electronic scoreboard. Or maybe it was more. Ivy, at least, had arrived after me, so it had to be at least four seventy. I’ll take a head count tomorrow and get back to you later with hard data. Since the first sentence is devoted to it, that number must be of crucial significance later in the story, right?

Most of the heroines-in-training looked like they’d rolled off the same assembly line at Mattel. My roommates and I were the freaks, and let me tell you, it really tore us up inside to feel unwelcomed by four hundred and something Malibu Barbie clones. Or it would have, if any of us were so lacking in personality, we’d never had a friend in our whole entire lives. But since each of us made three new friends in a span of maybe ten minutes earlier that day, we spent the rest of it getting settled into our dorm suite, feasting on nachos and some beer that mysteriously materialized, as opposed to bawling all night over our lack of popularity and checking ourselves out in the bathroom mirror like we reached this stage of our lives without previously noticing what we look like. I can’t speak for all my roommates, but I can brush my teeth and comb my hair and dress myself without once consulting my reflection. I might look if I have to pop a zit, but that hardly ever happens, since my skin is so clear, it’s practically translucent, like a newborn rat when you can see its pulsing veins and bulging black eyes through its pretty skin.

I know, not what you’d expect from a girl from my hometown of Detroit, if you’re the sort of person who expects things based on a person’s city of origin. Believe it or not, I don’t drive a Ford or sing the backup doo-wops for a Motown group. If you’re the sort of person who expects things based on a person’s appearance, you might assume I’m from Seattle and a huge Pearl Jam fan because I sometimes wear a flannel shirt.

You’d be wrong. Seriously, they sell flannel everywhere the temperature drops below seventy, and Pearl Jam so went out of style when I was in fourth grade. Ivy’s not from L.A. (or wherever you think is the Kingdom of Leather Pants), Drew’s not from San Francisco (or wherever you think all cross dressers live), and Genie’s not from Minnesota (or wherever you think fashion sense went to die). Take a look around wherever you live and see all the different kinds of people who live there, not just whatever regional stereotype you’re saddled with. Florida isn’t populated solely by retirees and Cubans. Arizona isn’t populated solely by asthmatics who breathe easier in the dry air. Alabama isn’t populated solely by inbred—

Ahem. Sorry. Got a little sidetracked.

Anyhow, after I put away my clothes, bathroom necessities, half my body weight in nachos, and a couple of longnecks, I called home to let the folks know I’d arrived alive. Dad answered the phone. I call him “Dad” because I’m not a petulant brat who thinks calling my parents by their first names makes me sound mature and independent.

My dad’s great. He gave me his old truck when I was in high school. It was a clunker, but we had good times working under the hood together, and I appreciated not having to walk everywhere in the rain and snow and blazing summer sun. If I’d been enough of an ingrate to bitch about the funky smell inside the cab, a combination of gasoline and stale dog barf (our old beagle, Larry, used to get carsick, and the smell lingered, even though he died back when Dad was still making payments on the truck), Dad would have told me to take a good whiff of my shoes and see if I preferred the smell of my new mode of transportation.

The bedroom I shared with Ivy was square and had four walls, a ceiling, and a floor, as well as a door connecting it to the communal living room and a narrow window high on the wall, just under the ceiling. It had to be so high because the freaks got assigned to the subterranean level of the dorm complex. We were cool with the placement because it provided natural soundproofing in the event we wanted to have a party, and if we felt like coming and going without attracting the attention of the dorm police, the ladderback chair that occupied the room along with two twin beds could facilitate our passage through the window.

Not that we had any plans to unwind after our first week at the Academy by sneaking out after curfew and investigating what the town had to offer in terms of entertainment. Why would we do that when we could sit around pissing and moaning about how lame our lives have become instead? That would be so much more entertaining for everybody.

I had a hard time falling asleep because the nachos gave me gas. In the bed next to me, Ivy didn’t have it any easier. I pulled the frilly pink bedspread over my head. Ivy resorted to her pillow for the full filter effect.

“Ivy,” I said, voice muffled by the bedspread.

“Fuh,” she mumbled behind the pillow.

“We’re at a thousand words already, and all we’ve done is go to bed.”

“Hazza sressa ferbuks smow.”

“What?”

She dragged the pillow off her face. “I said—” She gasped, gagged, and gurgled as the foul air assaulted her nostrils.

“Made you smell it.”

She leapt from her bed and belted me with her pillow, punctuating each word with a whack. “I… said… it… has… to… stretch… for… four… books… somehow!”

I swatted her away. “I can’t keep this up much longer. I’m boring myself. What the hell happened to opening with action, or at least some kind of conflict? This is ten percent story, ninety percent infodump. Don’t they incarcerate, execute, or at least publicly humiliate authors who start stories that way?”

“I’m sure it’ll get more interesting soon.” Ivy resumed her position on her bed, stretched out on top of the covers. She remained wrapped in leather from boobs to boots, prepared to kick ass at a moment’s notice. “Get some sleep. Maybe you’ll have a dream sequence.”

I punched my pillow into a more pleasing position. “If I have a dream sequence, I want you to kill me.”

“Sure thing.”

“Preferably before I wake up and do the whole ‘Oh, it was only a dream’ thing. That would be even more annoying than this segment has been.”

“Andi, if you say another word, I promise I’ll kill you before you even fall asleep.”

I said nothing else, allowing one last silent but deadly emission to speak for me.

This time when the pillow hit me, it felt like it had a brick in it—not a paver, but one of the big red ones used to construct chimneys, like the chimneys my mom built in her job as a mason. They weren’t really red, more of a rust color, sometimes plain boring brown. Sometimes she even used stone, which mostly came in shades of gray. Regardless of the material or its hue, Mom built a hell of a fireplace.

I had time to think all that and note the digital alarm clock’s change of time to 12:00 before the blunt trauma to the head forced me into a semblance of slumber.

NEXT: A Little Bit After Midnight