Billy: Messenger of Powers (2 page)

In that fraction of a second, Billy knew he had “discovered” girls. Or at least, one girl. She was taller than Billy. No surprise there,
everyone
was taller than Billy. But instead of making her seem imposing, her height just made her seem lithe and graceful. Her brown hair hung to her shoulders in thick waves that shimmered in the sunlight. And her eyes were stunning: blue and beautiful, with an electric spark of intelligence and joy behind them that made it seem as though she were on the verge of laughing at a joke that no one else could hear. Billy noticed that the girl had a band-aid on one knee, and somehow this small blemish on the overall perfection of her image didn’t make her any less attractive. Rather, it had the opposite effect, as though reminding Billy that she was indeed human, and so perhaps—just perhaps—there was a chance that someday they might….

Might what? thought Billy, and blushed brightly at the possibilities that lay behind the unfinished thought.

“I’m Blythe Forrest,” said the girl.

Why does everyone in this school tell you their name first thing? thought Billy. Are they all crazy?

Still, being crazy—if Blythe was indeed crazy—didn’t make her any less pretty.

Blythe’s beautiful face wrinkled with obvious impatience. Somehow, this made her even cuter.

“Well?” she demanded.

Billy hopped dexterously to his feet, sending a suave look at the girl as he said, “I’m Billy. Billy Jones.” He made it sound cool. He looked cool. He
was
cool.

At any rate, that was what Billy
wished
had happened. In reality, he managed to lay there like a trout about to have its head cut off, and the only word he got out was “ahxgl” or something like it.

Blythe frowned. “Are you in the special class or something? What’s your
name
?”

“Billy Jones,” he finally managed. He tried to smile, but then remembered that his stomach was still trying to get out through his head, and clamped his mouth shut before he could blurt something stupid like “Did you know squirrels make cheese?” or “My moonbeam has peanuts,” or worst of all, “You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”

“Billy Jones?” she asked. Billy nodded, rather proud of himself for managing to maintain that level of muscle control. He felt like he had to go to the bathroom.

“Billy Jones,” she said again. When she said it, she had a look on her face that Billy didn’t like, as though she was trying out a dirt-flavored jawbreaker. A moment later she said, “Interesting. Your shirt’s ripped.”

Then she turned without another word, disappearing around a nearby corner like a strange, beautiful dream. One that smelled like strawberries.

The final bell rang. Billy was late.

He hurried to his bag and swept it off the ground, not bothering to dust it off. Then he pulled his schedule from his pocket, uncrumpling it as best he could while running at the same time. He didn’t even know where he was running to at first, but figured that moving toward the school’s center would probably be a good idea.

He managed to read the schedule as it bobbed up and down in his hands. History. Building B, Room Six.

Billy ran to his first class, trying to remember the layout of the school from the packet he and his parents had received three weeks before. Where is Building B? he thought as he rushed through the halls. The school, which ten minutes ago had seemed merely huge, now felt positively planetary in size. He half-expected to see small moons whipping through the halls, held there by the gravitational pull of the high school.

Then he remembered: Building B was the name of the second floor of the school. Of course, he thought. After all, saying “Second Floor” wouldn’t make much sense, would it? Wouldn’t want anyone knowing how to get anywhere, would we? Where would the fun be in that?

His internally voiced sarcasm, unfortunately, did not make time go any slower. So it was no surprise to him that when he finally found room six, out of breath from running up the stairs and then frantically dashing down the hallway that—thankfully—had a clearly visible sign saying “Rooms 1 thru 10,” all the other students were already seated.

They looked at him, all of them moving at once like their heads were connected by some kind of control center.

Billy shifted uncomfortably. He again felt like he had to go to the bathroom. Only this time it wasn’t because he was in the presence of the beautiful Blythe Forrest. It was because what felt like six hundred eyes were now staring at him, and each set of eyes was in a face that now held a smirking look that seemed to say “Ah-ha! Now I know who the Class Doofus is going to be!”

“Yes, may I help you?” said a voice. The sound cracked like a BB gun through the room. Billy turned to face the voice and was greeted by a new pair of eyes, dark brown and piercing, which looked at him with a mixture of impatience and annoyance. It was clearly the teacher.

She looked to be in her late sixties, but was still obviously strong and mentally agile. Her brown eyes glittered with not-quite-hidden knowledge. Her face was creased with age, and a permanent frown line pulled the edges of her thin lips downward. She was not particularly tall, but when she took a step toward Billy, he had the sense of being in the presence of a giant. He stepped back involuntarily.

“Well?” she demanded.

“Uh…,” he managed. This was clearly not going to be a day where he could manage any sparkling conversation. Single-syllable grunts were apparently the only thing he could do on command.

“‘Uh’ is not an appropriate answer to my question,” she responded, and this time her tone of voice brought to mind something with a higher caliber than a BB gun. A nuclear-tipped bazooka, maybe.

The class tittered. Billy blushed. He could feel his cheeks and the edges of his ears heating up as blood rushed to them.

The teacher silenced them with a glance. Billy suspected she could do this to serial killers and SEALs, let alone to nervous ninth-graders.

“I was late,” he managed.

“Clearly,” she replied. She held out her hand. Billy looked at it like it was an alien appendage. What was he supposed to do with it?

“Your schedule,” the teacher prompted. Billy handed it over, noting how she seemed to frown at the fact that it had been crumpled into a pocket, rather than professionally laminated and framed. She read it quickly, looking at it over the top of the reading glasses perched at the end of her nose. “Well, William Jones,” she said after a moment, “at least you’re in the right place, if not at the right time.”

The class nervously chuckled again, and this time the teacher did not bother to use her Death-Stare to silence them. She just handed Billy his schedule, then pointed to an empty desk in the second row.

Billy moved toward it, and as he did his foot caught on something. He tripped, stumbling forward in a desperate attempt to keep from falling on his face.

The students’ chuckles now turned to full-volume guffaws. Billy struggled to right himself, his arms flapping faster than hummingbird wings. He wished he was dead. Better yet, he wished he had
been
dead for a few hundred years, cremated, and the ashes buried under a small mountain on a frozen island in the middle of the Arctic Sea.

At least the day can’t get any worse, he thought fleetingly. But he knew, even as he thought it, that this absolutely the wrong thing to think. Experience had taught Billy that no matter how bad things were, they could
always
be worse.

“Harold Crane!” shouted the teacher. Her voice had moved up in intensity from bazooka to intercontinental ballistic missile. The class silenced instantly. Billy held himself motionless, still in a half-crouch, petrified by the teacher’s words. No one else in the class moved, either.

The teacher walked to a nearby student. The kid was a bit smaller than Cameron had been, but Billy could see that Harold Crane was clearly cut from the same kind of stock: thick chest, strong arms. His hair was dyed red at the tips, long bangs hanging artfully down over his eyes, which now had an innocent look pasted across them. He might as well have had “Born To Bully” tattooed across his forehead.

The teacher looked down. Billy and the rest of the class followed her gaze, and those close enough could see what she was looking at: Harold’s sneaker pushed out in the middle of the aisle. That was what Billy had tripped on.

Harold’s look of innocence faltered. He shrugged. “It was an accident,” he said.

“Very well,” said the teacher. “Be advised that if there are any more ‘accidents,’ they may result in ‘accidental’ visits to the Principal’s office.” Her gaze shifted to take in the whole class at once. “That goes for all of you.”

She turned to walk back to her desk. As soon as her back was turned, Harold turned around and locked eyes with Billy. He made a quick slicing movement across his throat, then pointed at Billy before turning back to face the teacher as she swiveled toward them again.

Billy sighed as he dropped into the seat behind his desk, his book bag dumping unceremoniously to the floor with a dull thud. What was it about his existence that made people like Cameron and now Harold so angry? Had he offended them in a past life or something?

The teacher’s voice—still commanding full attention, but softer now that she was not actively perturbed—reverberated through the room.

“I am Mrs. Russet,” she said. Her tone of voice clearly communicated that they should pay attention. Billy suspected that the President of the United States would sit up a little straighter if he were visiting Mrs. Russet’s classroom. “This is ninth-grade history, and I wish to make a few things very clear before we begin. First: I am the teacher that all the other teachers are afraid of. I grade hard, and I have been working here long enough not to care if that bothers some of the younger teachers here. Most of you will get average grades. This is nothing to be ashamed of. Average is not bad. A few of you will get better grades, and a few of you will receive excellent grades. These will be earned. You will have to work in this class, and work hard.”

The whole class groaned collectively. Mrs. Russet silenced them again with what Billy was already starting to think of as The Look.

“There will be reading assignments every day. I will not grade these assignments, but there will be pop tests on them. The tests will go over not just the reading of the previous night, but may cover anything and everything learned to that point in the class.”

Billy’s nearest neighbor, a small, fair-skinned girl, looked like she might either pass out or throw up at this announcement. Nor was she the only one; Billy could see that most of the class looked visibly disturbed by the pressure Mrs. Russet was already bringing to bear.

“That is the bad news,” she said. “There is, however, also some good news. The good news is that I will make myself available at any time—before school, after school, or weekends—to help anyone who feels they need extra assistance. I will not provide extra assistance for those in the class with excellent grades. They need no help. But anyone else can come to me at any time and make an appointment for private teaching at a mutually convenient time.”

Billy knew that he was likely to be one of the people who needed extra help. History had always been a tough subject for him. He was pretty sure that someone had discovered America at one point. He was also pretty sure that that person had been neither a giant squid nor a space-alien. Beyond that, however, the details always got sketchy. So he was at least a little heartened to find out that help would be available if—when—he needed it.

The momentary lightness was crushed, however, when Mrs. Russet reached into her desk and pulled out a sheaf of papers. She began handing them out.

The first student who received one gasped. So did the second and third students. Harold Crane—the red-tipped bully—was the first one to actually say something when he got his paper. “Pop quiz?” he asked. “It’s the first day of school!”

“Thank you for that astute observation,” answered Mrs. Russet dryly.

“How can there be a quiz on the first day of school?” Harold demanded.

“You all received orientation packets, did you not?” responded Mrs. Russet. She looked around the room for a moment, as though making sure no one disagreed with her statement, then resumed handing out the papers.

“You’re going to test us on the orientation packets? How can you test us on the orientation packets?” Harold’s cheeks reddened to the color of his hair-tips. Billy thought the kid looked like he might implode at any moment, leaving behind nothing but a charred desk and some tiny whiffs of red-dyed hair.

“The orientation packets were addressed to each of you, not to your parents. You should have read them, and you should be prepared to show that you understood what they said,” said Mrs. Russet.

“That’s not fair!” shouted Harold. A few of the other students muttered their agreement, and even Billy found himself nodding.

“Not fair, Mr. Crane? Why not?” The teacher broadened her gaze to take in the whole class. “I, too, received orientation materials. They included the names and pictures of each of you. Which I memorized. Along with as much of your background information as was available. Which is why I know what your previous grade average was, Ms. Conway.” Mrs. Russet stared at a girl in the third row, then shifted her gaze to a mullet-haired kid behind Billy. “And it’s how I know that you held the fifty-yard dash record at your old school, Mr. Carrey.” She moved her eyes to Billy for a moment, as though she was going to single him out, too, but then seemed to think better of it. She looked at a large boy in the back of the class. “And it’s how I know that you are the third of four children, Mr. Canter.”