Billy: Messenger of Powers Read online

  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.”

  She looked around at the class, which was now silent. “Why did I do this? Because I received the information, and I did not want to waste it. You should have all done the same with your orientation information.”

  Mrs. Russet resumed handing out the papers. “And as for what is ‘fair,’ Mr. Crane…” she stopped a moment. “There is a ‘fair’ that comes to the county every summer. Other than that, ‘fair’ is not something that most of us will encounter very often in life. I will be fair in that I will only test each of you on information I know you have received. But your notion of whether that is or is not ‘fair’ is not something that will concern me.”

  She finished handing out the papers. Harold looked like he was thinking of something to say, but before he could, Mrs. Russet held up a hand. “The tests have been passed out. Testing has begun. Anyone speaking before all tests have been completed will receive a zero.”

  She sat down at her desk, folded her hands, and began methodically scanning up and down the room, watching the students with the precision of a spy satellite.

  Billy fumbled in his bag for a pencil. Then he wrote his name at the top right of the page, and read the first question.

  “1. Where is the Principal’s office located? Please describe how to get there from the main Student Entrance.”

  Billy blinked. The words were familiar, he knew they were English, but he wasn’t able to process them. Between his encounter with Cameron, his time in the locker, meeting Blythe, and the whirlwind introduction into history class, he had blown a fuse somewhere. He knew he had to focus. Billy had neve
r been an “A” student, but he always tried his hardest. He would try his hardest here, too. But to do that, he had to calm down.

  He closed his eyes for a moment. He took a breath, held it, then let it out slowly. It was what his mom—a checker at a nearby grocery store who he knew had to face at least six hundred crises per day—always told him to do when in danger of panicking.

  It worked. Billy felt his heart rate slow down from Hyper-Speed to the level of You’ll Have a Heart Attack Any Second Now. Another breath, and he relaxed further.

  He concentrated on “seeing” the insides of his eyelids. At first, all he could see was pink. Then strobing flashes started to go off. He concentrated on them, and imagined they were space ships, carrying passengers into distant places. He imagined hopping onto one of them. It carried him into space, where nothing could hurt him, where he was alone and safe, where—

  “Mr. Jones!”

  Billy jerked, his eyes flying open as his name was called. Mrs. Russet was still at her seat, her gaze drilling into him once again. This time, her look was even more intense than it had been when Billy entered the class.

  Billy waited, horrified. Did she think he’d been asleep? Cheating somehow? What?!

  Mrs. Russet blinked a few times, as though she herself was uncertain why she’d called his name so loudly. Then her stare returned to its previous level. “Please stay after class, Mr. Jones,” she said.

  “But, I’ll be late,” he managed to squawk. His throat felt drier than the surface of the moon, which at least was an improvement over constantly feeling like he had to use the bathroom.

  “I doubt you’ll have to worry about that, but if it happens I’ll write you a note,” Mrs. Russet said.

  Billy nodded, feeling the class’s eyes on him once again. Mrs. Russet looked around at the class, apparently noting their attention as well. “The test is still in progress,” she reminded them. Everyone looked back at their papers.

  Billy looked down as well. He began writing, but knew when the papers were turned in that he’d failed his first test in ninth grade. And failed it miserably. His concern for what Mrs. Russet wanted to talk to him about consumed him, making it impossible for him to concentrate. He had tried his relaxation exercise again a few times, but each time he opened his eyes to find Mrs. Russet staring at him once again.

  The test took the majority of the class period. After the tests were all collected, Mrs. Russet handed each student a World History book, copying down which student had which copy of each, and informing them that the books were to be brought to each and every class, no exceptions, even on scheduled test days. She gave them their first night’s reading assignment as the class end bell blared electronically over the school intercom system.

  The students all shuffled out, schedules clutched in one hand, new books in the other. Several of them cast final looks in Billy’s direction as they left, ranging from concerned to amused. Harold Crane managed to pantomime cutting Billy’s throat one more time on his way out without Mrs. Russet seeing him.

  Billy barely noticed. He was still dry-mouthed and terrified about the impending doom of a private conference with Mrs. Russet.

  At last, all the students were gone. Mrs. Russet moved to the classroom door with a hand-written sign that Billy managed to read: “Please wait outside until door opens.” She used some transparent tape to attach it to the outside of the door, then swung it closed.

  As the door shut, Billy could sense that he was entering into dangerous territory. What could a teacher want with him? He’d managed to make it through the first nine years of kindergarten, elementary, and middle schooling without even being really noticed by any of the teachers, let alone being singled out in this way. He didn’t know what was going to happen here, just that it wouldn’t—couldn’t—be anything good.

  Mrs. Russet turned slowly to face him. A long moment passed, in which neither said anything. The teacher just looked at him intensely, and Billy did his best not to meet her gaze.

  Mrs. Russet finally went and sat down at her desk. “Come here please, Mr. Jones,” she said.

  Billy dutifully did so, slinging up his book bag to his shoulder. Hopefully that would remind her he had to get to another class and whatever torture she had in mind for him would be brief.

  As he approached her, Mrs. Russet did something strange: she reached into her desk and brought out a ceramic frog. It was a funny little figurine, the kind of thing Billy thought a person might find in a baby’s room, or maybe at a garage sale, hunched between the roller skates that hadn’t been worn in a decade and the broken video recorder. The frog was clearly eating something: insectile wings and the end of a thorax were hanging out of the large mouth.

  Billy had barely a moment to register this before Mrs. Russet brought the frog to her lips. For a moment, Billy thought the teacher was actually going to kiss the frog, no doubt hoping that the kiss would transform the amphibian into a middle-aged male teacher with a bad comb-over who would whisk her romantically away to a magical library where they could read forever and would be able to torture students every Wednesday night at scheduled times.

  She did not, however, actually kiss the ceramic frog.

  What she did do was even more bizarre.

  She turned the frog sideways, and whispered into its ear. Or where its ears would be if frogs had ears. Billy couldn’t remember whether they did or not, and right now he didn’t think that piece of information was nearly as important as the fact that his history teacher had clearly fallen clean off her rocker.

  Billy couldn’t hear what Mrs. Russet said to the frog, not clearly at any rate, but he felt something odd come over him. It was as though someone had stuck a hose filled with liquid nitrogen down his throat and then turned it on full blast. Coolness flowed from his heart outward, to his hands, his feet, and his head.

  For a moment, Billy swayed on his feet. He blinked, and in that moment, he thought the ceramic frog moved. It seemed to grin around the wings and body of the bug it was chewing on. Then one of its great eyes closed and reopened in what Billy thought was a wink.

  Billy’s eyes bugged in amazement, and he involuntarily blinked rapidly a few times. When he re-focused his eyes, the frog was not moving at all. In fact, he saw no sign that Mrs. Russet had ever held a frog. In its place, she was holding a manila file folder marked “Jones, William W.” on the side.

  It’s not the students who introduce themselves who are crazy, thought Billy. It’s me.

  For a moment, he wondered if he was really here. Maybe there had never been a bigger kid named Cameron Black, maybe the lovely Blythe Forrest had never existed. Maybe he was hooked up to a feeding tube in a mental hospital somewhere. But then he realized that would mean that he had never been shoved in the locker, had never fallen on his face in front of Blythe, had never tripped in front of the whole history class. That would be too good to be true.

  So I’m really here, he thought. Too bad.

  “What does the ‘W’ stand for?” asked Mrs. Russet suddenly.

  “Uh, Walker,” said Billy.

  “Hmmm…,” replied the teacher. She continued reading his file. Billy fidgeted. He snuck a glance at the clock, sure that the entire passing period must have passed, and that second bell would ring any second.

  To his amazement, barely thirty seconds had passed from the end of class.

  “Mr. Jones,” said Mrs. Russet. Billy snapped his eyes back to her, not wanting to chance offending this force of nature.

  “Yes, Ma’am?” he managed.

  “Please hold out your hand.”

  Billy blinked again, unsure what this meant, but held out his hand nonetheless, palm downward. Mrs. Russet looked at his knuckles for a moment, no doubt marking the best spot to hit him with a ruler.

  But she didn’t hit him with a ruler. Instead, she put out her own hand, and held it above his for a moment. Then she extended her index finger, and touched it ever so lightly to the top of his hand. They remained that way for a m
oment, Billy completely unsure what was going on.

  Mrs. Russet looked from his hand to his eyes, gripping Billy with a gaze stronger than an earthquake. “I have something very important to tell you,” she said, her dry fingertip still resting atop his hand.

  Billy waited. He nodded. It seemed like the appropriate thing to do. “Okay,” he said.

  Mrs. Russet licked her thin lips. She took a deep breath, then said, slowly and gravely, “Rainbow bears enjoy Ding-Dongs at Christmas.”

  Billy blinked again. His eye muscles were getting a workout today. “What?”

  Mrs. Russet nodded as though he was contributing to her bizarre statement. Then she said, “Fleas do the limbo while wearing chopsticks.”

  Billy did his newfound blinking trick again. He also re-revised his previous theory about the school’s insanity level. It wasn’t the kids here who were crazy. And it wasn’t him, either.

  It was everybody.

  Mrs. Russet withdrew her finger suddenly, and folded her hands on the desktop. She glanced at the clock. “I don’t think you’ll need a note, you should have plenty of time to get to your next class.”

  Billy just stood there, rooted to the spot by the sheer insane pressure of what had just happened.

  “Don’t forget to do your reading assignment,” Mrs. Russet continued. After a long moment, during which Billy continued to pretend he was practicing for the Olympics in the Most Widest Eyes And Openest Mouth competition, she frowned. “If you don’t hurry, you will be late. And I will not write a note for a student who is late merely because he is not intelligent enough to move his feet and legs in a rudimentary walking fashion.”

  Billy’s body turned toward the door. His head came last, as though it wanted to keep looking at the crazy teacher as long as possible. At last, though, both his body and his head were moving in a semi-coordinated manner toward the door.

  He pushed the door open, surprised to see how few students there were in the halls. It seemed like a million years had passed, but apparently it had really only been a minute or so. More students were coming out of the classrooms now, but no one seemed overly hurried, and Billy sighed in relief as he realized he probably would not be late to his second class.