Chapter Thirteen
Emmy and JACY
Emmy
would normally have never blatantly taken a non-academic laptop to school. Even she did not have those kinds of
balls. However, today was Monday, the 28th
of March, a very significant day. At
precisely
The
evening before, she had looked up degree plans on her own. It turned out the ones that she wanted – Law
or Public Administration – required a Bachelor’s in Something that apparently
was not available in Law or Public Administration. A counseling session would have provided this
information for her, but she did not want to spend more time talking with
anyone at the University than was necessary.
Before
Next,
she pulled out the laptop. She looked
around, making sure that no students were actually paying attention to this
set-up. She sat the computer down on the
grass, and turned it on. When it
finished booting up, she right-clicked the connection icon, and clicked Search
for Connection.
She
waited. Her watch read
Connection
established. She ran her browser, and
found the log-in page for students who have never registered before. She typed in her Social Security Number, her
date of birth, and an alphanumeric password.
Enter. Nothing happened. The connection flashed an active connection,
but the page was not saying anything. No
access granted or denied. It refreshed
and showed blank fields where she had just typed in her information. She growled at the computer.
She
typed in the numbers again, and this time got sent to a page where it gave her
a seemingly random string of numbers as her new log-in code. She pulled out a pencil and jotted it down. She clicked next and was then sent back to
the same page as earlier. She clicked
Back several times, but got the window saying that the information on that page
had expired and would she like to click Retry or Cancel.
Emmy
clenched her teeth. She clicked and held
the Back button until a list of pages came down. She clicked the one for Registration. This time, she navigated to the page for
students who had this string of numbers as their access code. She typed it in,
and clicked Enter. Access Denied. She tried again. Access Denied.
The
urge to throw the computer against the building, burn down the tree, and kill
random people entered her mind, but first she really needed to get her
classes. She went back to the page for
new students, jumped through the same hoops, got an eerily different pass code
than the one before, and this time actually made it to the page where she could
register for classes.
She
felt like dancing.
The
school had a new system where all you had to do was specify the times that you could
not attend to school, and then select the courses that you wanted to take. The computer would automatically find the
right selections for you. She found that
page, specified that she was available any time, and selected the courses she
wanted:
ENGL
1301: Freshman Composition I
HIST
1376: US History through the Civil War
PHIL
1301: Introduction to Philosophy
ARTH
1308: Introduction to Art History
COMM
1302: Introduction to Communication Theory
Her
watch read
She
did a double-take at the screen. All her
classes had been rejected. It was the
same message, one for each rejected class:
Unable
to allow the adding of this course, due to a BLOCK.
Each
Block was linked to a reason for the blocking, and the reasons were the same:
no SAT scores.
She
screamed.
That
attracted the attention of one of the teachers.
The teacher walked over to Emmy, looked down on the computer and asked,
“Is that school property?”
Emmy
looked up without raising her head, so her eyes saw both the instructor and her
own brow. “Nope.”
“Then
I must ask that you hand it over.”
“Sorry,
that’s not going to happen.”
Emmy
reach over for her backpack, retrieved it, and put the computer back in. The teacher got huffy. “I ask that you hand over the computer!”
“No.”
Emmy
pulled in her own papers and books. The
teacher’s voice got low. “Miss. If you don’t give me the machine, I’m going
to have to issue a citation.”
Emmy
finished packing up. “Well, good luck,
since I don’t have my student ID.”
“What?”
She
got up and stretched. “You heard
me. You could issue a citation for not
having a student I.D., but…”
Emmy
ran from the tree about ten feet into the adjacent field. “But, you need to issue it on school
grounds!”
The
teacher walked over to her, remaining just within the grounds. “You can still get in trouble for skipping
class.”
“Not
if I don’t have classes at
“So? If I ever see you again, you’ll get three
citations – use of illegal computer, refusing a teacher’s request, and
trespassing.”
“Go
ahead. There’s five thousand students at
this school, and for what it’s worth, I’ve never seen you before, so I bet
you’ll never see me.”
“I’ll
be watching, and will have campus security with me when you’re cited.”
“Nice
to see what you’re real job is.”
The
teacher looked confused. “What?”
“You
know, citing students, not actually teaching them anything.”
“Excuse
me young lady!”
“Go
ahead. Cross into non-school
property. Come after me. I bet that assault on a student – a minor –
is far more serious than three citations.”
“I’m
only thinking about your future.”
“Piss
off.”
The
teacher unleashed a string of swear words.
Emmy walked away, but then stopped and looked back at the angry
teacher. “You know, you’re probably one
of those people who get their kicks from reporting on other people. At airports.
You like calling the Secret Police on them, and have them hauled away.”
“Why
you-”
“If
there’s a God, I hope He corrects flaws like you.”
Emmy
resumed walking. She walked along the
school’s property line, until she got to
Feeling
not in the luckiest of situations, she opted for the standard guest parking of
three dollars per day. It just might
take that long to register for five courses.
This was the first time she had actually parked legally at the
University, and so she wandered around trying to find the place with all the
bureaucrats and clerks.
She
found the main entrance with all the clerks, and saw that there was a long line
of people waiting to be seen. She joined
in at the end, and tried to see how many where ahead of her.
That
was when someone else saw her. “Hi,
Emmy!”
Oh
no.
“Hey,
Emmy! Come up here and join us!”
Emmy
closed her eyes, and began to think: does she stand and wait for hours to be
seen, or walk up much closer to the front with the feared foursome:
Jack,
Andrew, Stacey, and Yvonne. The bane of
Emmy’s four year high-school experience.
She closed her eyes tightly and hoped that it was all a dream. No luck.
She opened her eyes to see the feared foursome waving and smiling at
her. She opened her mouth and began to
make a sound, then actually said words.
“Oh, hey! Just wait a sec!”
She
made her way through the snaky line, excusing and pardoning herself. She avoided any angry glares, and tried to
think about how allowing her to cut in line was in fact their fault, not
hers. What was she supposed to do? Pretend not to know why they were, and simply
have them escalate their attempts to get her attention? She knew that they would not stop until they
had her in their little web of cheerfulness.
Now,
her she was. Jack perked up first. “Hello Emmy!
What’s going on?”
“Oh,
er, nothing. Just…wanting to register
for classes.”
Next
came Stacey. “So were we! We’re surprised that you didn’t show up
earlier!”
Now
Andrew. “Yeah! You’re usually really good about those sorta
things!”
Sigh. Now Yvonne.
“Where were you?”
“At
school.”
Jack:
“Why at school?”
“Because
that’s where I usually spend my Monday mornings? Maybe?”
They
all laughed, and now it was Stacey’s turn.
“Oh, you’re so funny!”
They
laughed again, in unison. Emmy wondered
why they just did not drop the pretense of being separate people, and unite
together to form the hive-mind Jackandrewstaceyyvonne, or JASY for the
acronym. Emmy pretended to be
flattered. “Gee, thanks, heh heh.” Oh, God, why did You create these people, and
curse her with them?
Andrew:
“No, really, why were you at school?”
Now
Emmy realized that they knew something that she did not. “Because…you heard me. Why would I not be at school?” Emmy
found it hard to believe that she just asked that question, since she had made
it a point to skip school at every opportune moment.
Yvonne:
“We went to a counselor, and they told us to come to school to register for
classes.”
Emmy
noted that there was something odd about that sentence. Both the content and the grammar struck her
as weird. “Why did you go to a
counselor?”
Jack:
“The teachers told us to.”
“When?”
Stacey:
“Last week.”
“Er…which
one?”
Andrew:
“All of them.”
“All
of them?”
Yvonne:
“Yeah. How come you didn’t hear it at
all?”
The
real answer was that she skipped class, daydreamed, did homework for some other
class, or browsed the internet on her phone while pretending to take
notes. Instead she said, “I must have
zoned out last week.”
Jack:
“Where you dehydrated?”
“No…”
Stacey:
“Sick?”
“No…”
Andrew:
“Not sleeping well?”
“Please
stop trying to diagnose me…”
Yvonne:
“Denial. It’s the second or third
symptom, depending on the illness.”
They
all nodded and uh-hu’ed in sync. Emmy
wanted to run away. “I’m fine. I was fine.
Maybe mid-terms got to me.”
Jack:
“They were the week before.”
Emmy
looked away in a really obvious attempt to evade their interrogation. “Post-traumatic stress syndrome.”
Stacey:
“Oh, you poor dear…”
Ack! Now Stacey was hugging Emmy? If it were not
for the fact that there were strangers all around, Emmy would start weeping
with agony. But, that might only cause all of them to hug her at the same time. Emmy clenched her face and held back a scream
for help.
Andrew:
“I think you’re squeezing too hard, Stacey.”
“Oh,
I am? I’m sorry Emmy! Are you OK?”
Emmy
pulled back. “Yes, I’m fine. Thanks for
your support. There’s no need to worry.”
Yvonne
had not spoken in the longest time of the four, so it was her turn, and the
rotation continued…
In
the half hour or so that it took to get to the front of the line, Emmy had felt
like she had aged a decade. JASY had
gone around repeatedly with their mind-numbing conversations about school,
their friends, and each other. Emmy had
positioned herself such that she would go first when the time came, but Jack
called her out on it, and had to wait behind Yvonne.
Jack
went first, and Stacy hung in the front.
As Stacy was about to walk to next clerk, Emmy saw Jack twitch and look
down at his side. Emmy saw that it was
his cell phone, apparently vibrating.
Since Jack still had to do things with the clerk, he ignored it. Then, Stacy’s phone vibrated. “Oh! I
wonder who it is!”
Emmy
noted that since two of them had so politely set their phones to vibrate, that
all of them had probably done so. Stacy
answered. “Hello? Oh?
Wow! That’s…sad. How did you find out?...uh-uh…yeah…wow…what’s
gonna happen?...I see…OK…thanks for the heads-up…yeah…you, too…bye.”
Emmy
asked, hoping that it was not a move that she would regret, “What happened?”
“Mrs
Hernandez died.”
Andrew
and Yvonne gasped, appropriately. Emmy asked,
“Which Mrs Hernandez?”
“The
one who taught Sophomore English.”
“Where? At school?”
“Yeah.”
Emmy
did not know what to do next. She
supposed that maybe she should feel sorry.
“That’s really sad. How’d she
die?”
“Dunno. They found her outside, near the tree with the
big field behind it.”
The
world around Emmy disappeared, and all she saw was Stacy. “The tree?”
“Yep. She just collapsed.”
Emmy
sighed. Stacy looked confused. “What’s wrong?”
“Well,
somebody just died, and…”
“And…?”
“ I
think I was the last person to talk to her.”
“What
was she like?”
The
world returned, and the background noise of people walking and talking made
Emmy feel like she could slip away. “We
barely spoke.”
Stacy
nodded. Andrew and Yvonne had not said
anything the whole time.
A
clerk called out, “Next in line!”
Stacy
turned and walked briskly to the next clerk.
The remaining people did not say anything to each other. Emmy hoped that, maybe, this tragedy would
make JACY be more like real people. She suddenly
disliked the idea. Emmy had the creepy
feeling that she was somehow responsible for the death of Mrs Hernandez.
After
taking care of registration, Emmy found that JACY was waiting for her. Andrew asked, “See you at school?”
It
felt like an accusation. Emmy
nodded. “Yeah, sure, see you there.”
She
followed JACY to the parking garage, and saw that they had carpooled in Yvonne’s
car. They waved good-bye, and so did
Emmy. She walked back to the
motorcycle. She thought that something
knew that she was responsible. The words
she said ran through her mind: If there’s
a God, I hope He corrects flaws like you.
She wanted a sign of what to do next.
Almost to the motorcycle, she looked around for real signs. Even graffiti. Anything that gave a command. She saw nothing but information signs
intended for people looking to park or exit.
On
the way back to school, she kept looking at the clouds. She looked for a face, words, a middle
finger, something. As she got closer to
school, the greater her fear became. She
wondered if this was how fugitives lived.
She dreaded any police officers pulling her over, asking about anyone
having heart attacks or brain aneurisms.
She dreaded random people approaching her for any reason.
The
worst part was not knowing what to do about it.
Mrs Hernandez was dead, and science was not at the level of reversing
terminality. Emmy knew that logically,
words do not usually kill people.
Unless, those people are in some way waiting for the words that would
kill them. She did not know this woman
well enough to know if she had any God problems or religion-complex going on in
her mind. Emmy tried to remember
anything about the woman that indicated trouble. Mrs Hernandez was just being mean. Nothing made sense.