Thirteen
The corridors of Armstrong High ran along the outside
walls with two that crisscrossed through the center of the building.
Marla often walked the outside corridors, basking in the sunlight, to work
off nervous tension during the day. With the world dark outside and so
little to be seen, she positively rushed along the corridor in an effort
to hold panic at bay.
Her virtual reality dream embarrassed her. How could
she have mistaken such childishness for reality? People with pewter faces
who obeyed her every whim? A gold and silver castle from a child's fairy
tale? A throne that encased her in crystal? How embarrassing that she
had fallen for any of it. It had been a very nasty trick.
But deep down she was very frightened. She could
fool others, but not herself. People in general were not much better than
peasants with pewter faces. Human ballast, her father called them. Most
of the kids about school were from lower to middle class families, hardly
human in the eyes of her family.
It was what she had been taught. She had not known
better. She had allowed her parents to encase her in crystal and place
her upon a throne set above the world. It was a gift of superiority
bequeathed to her. Just like her virtual reality experience, she had
lapped it all up like a thirsty puppy. She had taken it all for granted.
Her parents had made only one tiny mistake. They had
one another and their wealthy friends for companionship. She was an only
child, and children were things, another kind of simple possession.
What needs could a child possibly have once fed, bathed, clothed and cared
for? They had never held her. They had never
allowed others to hold her. Out of fear that someone on the staff might
abuse her in their absence, they had expressly forbidden anyone to so much
as touch her with a bare hand.
Rick Kaiser’s presence in her life had given her
clues to her deprived needs. He offered warmth, affection. and the need for physical contact
with another human being. The psych evaluation had brought it all out
into the open, but what was going to fix it? She was still isolated, frozen inside her crystal and enthroned. She
still froze up when Rick embraced her. No matter how desperately she
needed him, she could not feel through the crystal in which she was
embedded.
She could feel no warmth
whatsoever.
Besides, Rick had his own problems. Rick had told
her once it was always easier to see another person's problem than one's
own, and maybe he was right. Rick Kaiser was like an open book to her. He could be so infuriating at times. He needed
friends. He didn't know what kind of friends he needed, so he wasn't too
discriminating. But he used them like a mirror held up to his face. Only
through his friends could he see a reflection of himself. Inside his own
mind, he did not even exist. Becky Marple, the little schizoid genius twerp, and
Mort, the wannabe gang-banger, had similar problems.
Marla stopped dead in the empty hall. She had not
seen it before. She had thought them all so different from one another,
but they all had that one thing in common. They were all social
misfits.
She wondered if Armstrong High could really help.
The school didn't seem to be doing a very good job of it. The four of
them had been locked in the school and left to their own resources. What
sense did that make?
None that she could see. She started walking again,
her thoughts going around in her head like a hurricane and getting her
nowhere. Like walking around and around the locked-up school in the
middle of the night.
Marla started running. It wasn't enough to stop the
storm from building inside of her. She began screaming again, feeling the
pressure build up inside her. In the end, she'd explode. She'd shatter
the crystal that imprisoned her, but she'd never survive to enjoy her
newfound freedom. She hadn't a clue as to how to do that.
