In Summertime Saga

Monday. French class. I'd written the essay over the weekend between delivery shifts and it was good. Three pages on coq au vin that I'd mostly pulled from memory because in my past life I'd dated a woman who was a line cook at a French bistro and she'd talked about braising techniques during sex. I didn't include that detail in the essay.

Bissette was at the front of the room in a cream blouse and a grey skirt and the reading glasses were on top of her head and she was going through a stack of papers when I walked up and put mine on her desk.

"Arthur." She looked up. Blue-grey eyes over the paper's edge. "You're early."

"Figured you'd want to read the good ones first."

Her mouth twitched. She picked it up and read the first paragraph standing right there while I stood at her desk and the rest of the class filed in behind me. Her eyebrows went up. Her head tilted and the glasses slid forward into her hair and she pushed them back without looking away from the page.

"Très bien, Monsieur Arthur." She said it quiet, almost to herself, and her accent made the words warm. She looked at me and her eyes held mine for a second longer than a teacher evaluating homework. "You understand mise en place. Most students think cooking begins at the stove."

"It begins at the market."

The twitch became a real smile. She took the paper with both hands and her fingers touched mine on the transfer. Her hand was warm and the contact lasted a beat and she didn't pull away first. I did.

"Stay after class," she said. Pleasant, professional. But her eyes stayed on mine a half-second too long and the pleasantness had an edge underneath it. "I'd like to discuss your progress."

"Sure."

I went to my seat. Erik was doodling. Eve was in the back row with her boots up. Roxxy was in the second row scrolling her phone under the desk and not even pretending to pay attention. Bissette started class and her chalk moved on the board in that perfect handwriting. In the game, this conversation didn't happen until after the library book quest was done. I was a step ahead.

Class ended. The room emptied. I stayed.

Bissette was at her desk organizing papers and she didn't look up until the last student left and the door closed. Then she did.

"Your French is improving faster than I expected." She leaned back in her chair. The blouse pulled across her chest when she crossed her arms and the reading glasses were in her hand now, one earpiece between her fingers. "Faster than most students improve in a semester, frankly. You went from failing to competent in three weeks."

"I've been studying."

"Clearly." She tapped the glasses against her palm. "Your essay references culinary terminology that isn't in any textbook I've assigned. Déglacer. Fond de veau. Liaison." She pronounced each one with the accent that made my spine straighten. "Where did you learn these?"

Cooking videos. A girl from Montreal. The kind of immersive language acquisition that happens horizontally.

"Internet," I said. "Lots of French cooking channels."

"Hmm." She studied me. Her eyes moved across my face and down to my shoulders and she caught herself and looked back at the paper. "Well. Your accent needs work but your vocabulary is genuinely surprising. I want to arrange tutoring sessions. To refine what you've started."

"Tutoring?"

"Private sessions. In my office, third floor. Wednesdays after school." She wrote her office number on a sticky note and handed it to me. Her handwriting was as precise on the note as it was on the board. "Bring your dictionary and your essay. We'll work on pronunciation."

"I'll be there."

"Bon." She smiled again.

The hallway between French and the science wing was crowded with the usual traffic. Backpacks, sneakers on linoleum, someone's phone playing music they thought was quieter than it was. I was headed for the stairwell when something hit my knee.

Hard. Metal. Low to the ground. I stumbled sideways and grabbed the wall.

Konterina. The robot. Squat, wheeled, screen-face blank, her little jointed arms extended forward like she was trying to give the hallway a hug. She'd rolled directly into my kneecap and stopped.

"Oh- oh no, I'm so sorry-"

Ms. Okita was right behind the robot. Lab coat, black dress underneath, glasses, black hair straight to her waist. She grabbed my arm with both hands and pulled me upright with a grip that was stronger than she looked.

"She doesn't have collision sensors yet. I've been calibrating the sonar array but the lateral detection still reads perpendicular surfaces as open pathways. You're not perpendicular enough. Your knees."

"My knees aren't perpendicular."

"Exactly the problem." She was still holding my arm. Her left hand on my bicep, her right hand on my forearm. She hadn't noticed she was still holding it. "I need to install a LIDAR system but the school budget doesn't cover advanced robotics components and Smith specifically denied my requisition for infrared sensors, which is frankly criminal because the existing ultrasonic array has a minimum detection range of-"

"Ms. Okita."

She stopped. Blinked. Looked down at her hands on my arm. Looked up at me. Her expression didn't change.

"Your arm is larger than it was three weeks ago."

"I've been going to the gym."

"The cross-sectional area of your biceps brachii has increased measurably. Interesting." She let go. One hand, then the other, like she was releasing lab equipment. "The school's physical education program doesn't typically produce this rate of hypertrophy."

"I go to Planet Thiccness."

"The commercial facility with the inadequate ventilation system. Noted." She picked up Konterina's control tablet from where she'd tucked it under her arm. The robot was still sitting in the middle of the hallway. A sophomore stepped over it. "I apologize for the collision. I'll add your tibial height to her obstacle parameters."

She walked away. Konterina whirred and followed. Okita was already talking to the robot again, something about servo calibration, and she didn't look back. She turned the corner and the whirring faded and a freshman who'd been watching the whole thing looked at me and shrugged.

Art was third period.

Ross's room smelled like turpentine and herbs today, sharp and green. She was barefoot again. Auburn hair, headband, a smock that was more paint than fabric. She had a bowl of fruit on a table in the center of the room and a stack of drawing paper on each desk.

"Still life today, friends. Draw what you see. Not what you think you see. What you SEE." She said it like it was different from what she'd just said. Some of the class nodded. Most didn't.

I picked up the pencil. The paper was rough, good grain. The fruit bowl had apples, a banana, and two oranges arranged with the kind of deliberate casualness that only an artist would bother staging. I sketched.

Here's the thing about drawing: I could draw. In my past life I'd picked it up the way I picked up most things that were useful for getting laid. A figure drawing class at a community center because a girl I was interested in was taking it and I thought I'd sit next to her and bond over charcoal. She'd left after the first session. I'd stayed for six months because it turned out I liked it and drawing naked women was both educational and relevant to my interests.

The apple took shape under my pencil. Round, a dent where the stem met the skin, the shadow underneath heavier on one side. I didn't think about it. My hand moved and the apple appeared and it looked like an apple and that was already better than what the kid next to me was producing, which looked like a circle that had been in a car accident.

Ross was making her rounds. She stopped at each desk. Some she said "groovy" to. Some she tilted her head at and said nothing. She got to mine and stopped.

Her hand landed on the back of my chair. She leaned down. Her breath was on my neck, warm, and the smell of patchouli and turpentine and something sweet underneath both was close. Her hair fell forward and brushed my shoulder.

"You have steady hands," she said. Her voice was low and slow and it landed on my skin like the temperature changed. "That's unusual for your age."

"Thanks."

She didn't move. She was looking at my sketch and her face was close enough that the paint on her jaw was visible and the tiny lines at the corners of her eyes. Her mouth was set in that half-smile she always wore.

"Keep going," she said. And moved to the next student.

My neck was still warm where her breath had been.

Smith caught me after art. I was in the first-floor hallway headed toward the cafeteria and she came out of the main office like she'd been waiting for the specific combination of my face and this corridor.

"Mr. Cummings."

She used the name like a stamp. Grey suit, glasses on a chain, clipboard held at her sternum. Low heels that clicked on the linoleum with the precision of a metronome. She stopped three feet from me and the hallway went quiet.

"Ma'am."

"Ms. Bissette tells me your academic performance has improved." She put a spin on "improved" that made it sound like an accusation. "Significantly. In multiple subjects."

"I've been studying."

"So I'm told." She looked at me over her glasses. Her eyes were sharp and they moved across my face like she was reading fine print she didn't trust. "You arrived at this school grieving and failing. Three weeks later your French teacher is using the word 'surprising' and your art teacher says you sketch like someone who's been trained."

"I guess I'm a fast learner."

"Nobody is that fast, Mr. Cummings." She uncapped a pen and wrote something on her clipboard. "I'll be watching you, young man."

She turned and walked back toward the office. Click click click. The hallway stayed quiet for three seconds after she left and then the noise came back.

She was going to be a problem. Smith was always a problem, in every route, but this version of the problem was specific to me. I was running too many routes at once and the improvement curve was visible and she was the kind of woman who noticed curves. She'd notice more before I was done.

I headed for the cafeteria. Passed the stairwell.

Music. From upstairs. A bass line, heavy and jazzy, vibrating in the railing under my hand. A rehearsal, a groove that made the stairwell feel like it had a pulse. I stopped on the landing.

Through the open door of the assembly hall on the second floor, Ms. Dewitt was conducting. Cornrows ending in a high ponytail, a bright yellow sweater dress, heels, a tambourine in one hand. She was moving. Her whole body inside the music, swaying, her free hand cutting the air on the beat, the sweater dress shifting across her hips when she turned. She was saying something to the students I couldn't hear over the bass and she was smiling and the smile was wide and real and the yellow dress was very bright against her skin.

Two seconds. She didn't see me.

I kept walking.

Lunch was Erik talking about a raid he'd run in some game I didn't play and me eating a sandwich and thinking about Wednesday.

Bissette's office. Third floor. Private tutoring. Pronunciation.

Ross's breath was still on my neck. Smith's heels were still clicking in my head. Dewitt's hips were still moving inside that yellow dress.

Monday. Five teachers. None of them knew I'd been inside my foster mother twelve hours ago. None of them knew I was running their routes in parallel while the game engine that was supposed to pace them didn't exist anymore because this wasn't a game.

Erik was saying something about a dragon. I ate my sandwich. The bass line from upstairs was still in the floor.