“Napa,” Grand admits, embarrassed. “On vacation, at a wine tasting. Is it less trite if they were married to other people at the time?”
“Scandal!” says Chicago, delighted. “Am I really allowed to know that?”
“That’s off the record!”
“Yeah, fine,” she grumbles. “Anyway, mine met when… he was stationed in Germany during Gulf War One. No idea why. They went out dancing and he came back two years later to take her home.”
“My parents had the Death Talk with me after she–um,” mutters Grand.
“Killed herself?” says Chicago lightly. “They should have given you the Drama Talk instead.”
With the exception of Photography and French, Chicago doesn’t do well with grades. She approaches homework as a seasonal accessory, to be used as a prop for the Innocent Sophomore guise, and she skips any given class two days out of five.
Her teachers rarely object to the latter, though. They keep passing her, or at least passing her off: nobody wants her twice.
She doesn’t do many afterschool activities either. She remembers why every time she walks down the third floor corridor, where True has somehow talked the Fellowship of Christian Athletes into protesting, via flier, the suffrage of women.
“And your income is, heh, not derived from any activity declared to be criminal,” says the county clerk with a twinkled eye. Chicago’s eyes are flat.
“Just enter the petition,” she says.
“Sweetie, we get a lot of kids in here,” he says reasonably. “I know life with Mom and Dad can be tough, but unless you have a signed form–”
“Here.”
“–and not in shaky cursive–”
“It’s notarized,” Chicago snaps.
“Emancipation isn’t for fun, Miss.” He’s flat-eyed now too. “You’ll be a legal adult and your decisions will have real weight, you understand that?”
Chicago’s heart pounds and pounds.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
The earthquake hits while Mrs. Gretten and Mr. Hill are engaged in a quickie in the chemistry supply closet. It’s just a normal California shiver and only a couple of things fall off the shelves behind them.
These comprise two packets of silver nitrate, a small cascade of instructional DVDs and a beaker of sulfuric acid. It’s a Pyrex beaker, and sealed; it bounces off that indestructible black resin countertop once without breaking.
Then Gretten and Hill scream, because the beaker bursts in midbounce. It’s been struck by something very small, moving very fast.
But not as fast as Chicago’s shutter.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Grainy film, but it has to be, trying to freeze motion in indoor lighting when a flash would give you away. Chicago flaps them dry under red Christmas lights. There are six keys to the darkroom; a dead man has one of them, and she’s got the other five.
Two prints: the beaker halfway up its bounce, intact. The beaker at its peak, exploding. She almost expected to see a bullet piercing it. Instead it’s the cap of a pen.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” she asks herself.
“Yeah,” says True, behind her. Chicago chomps her tongue to kill a yelp.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Chicago spins around.
Tossing a dead man’s key from hand to hand, True contemplates tactics. He’s startled her; an advantage against a typical foe, but perhaps not the wisest choice when facing, say, a wolverine. She’s automatically half-crouched, and he knows she’s thinking about weapons first, speech second.
True knew Chicago’s mother: she used to teach his Sunday School class. He attended Sunday School, and Chicago didn’t. It’s never struck him until now how odd that is.
They really would look alike, he finds himself thinking. Those eyes, those freckles.
The curl of her lip.
The fall of her hair.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010