Charlotte Powers 1: Power Down (9 page)

xx48.11.16 / 15:21 / Wednesday

Some stuff happened yesterday, and today too, but I'm too depressed to write much about it. Nothing important. Just stupid stuff with other students and stupid stuff with Veronica Flux. I joined a club, I'm in the chess club now. I don't even like chess, but if it'll keep that witch off my back I'll play a few stupid games every week.

Maybe I'm getting sick, I kind of feel sick. Really down and droopy and depressed. Everyone else seems to be like that too, all around the school. Everyone, of course, except stupid always-perfect always-perky Veronica Flux. Argh why do I keep writing about her okay something else then.

C2. I think I've destroyed our friendship. I saw her at lunch but she still looked confused when she saw me, I mean she had the same look on her face as when I turned my back on her, I just couldn't face her. I ran away and hid in the toilets. When I came out it was way after the bell had rung for afternoon class, but I just came back here and cried into my pillow for an hour instead. I didn't feel so 'weak' about that today, because a lot of people around the school seemed to be crying too, even guys.

Enough writing for now. Food and sleep.

xx48.11.17 / 15:17 / Thursday

I'm feeling a little better today, still kind of sick, worse than yesterday actually, but I managed to confront (confront, that's not the right word, it'll have to do for now) C2 about things. It was in the morning, we shared Lit class (new teacher, Mrs Green, she's kind of horrible) and had free study so I took a deep breath and walked right up to her.

"I was wrong and I'm horrible and I'm sorry," I said, all at once. She didn't look at me, but she said:

"I don't understand what happened."

"What happened is I was awful. I'm just a bad person, that's all."

C2 did look at me then. Well, almost.

"You're not ... bad. You're not bad."

"I am," I said, "I turned my back on you over nothing—"

"Then why did you do it?" she asked. She didn't sound hurt. Just confused.

"I don't know," I said—well, whispered, we were getting dirty looks now from the other students. "Just when you said you were in the self-improvement class—"

"I don't enjoy it," she said, and the WAY she said it was weird, almost hopeful, like she was hoping this would make me happy. Which it did, in a weird way.

"Oh," I said. "Well. Why do you go, then?"

C2 cringed, but I don't think it was at my question. She was just becoming more and more aware of the fact that we were disturbing the other students. She half-glanced at me, then she said:

"Being there is less conspicuous than not being there."

Then she put her head down and went back to her work, and I went back to my desk to think about what she'd said. I definitely felt better after talking to her, but I still don't get what she meant—she hurried off when the class finished and I kind of felt like she needed some space, and then after that I didn't see her again. I also forgot to ask for her phone number so I can't call her, I really want to do something with her not at school, even just going for a walk together would be nice. Starting today I'm going to take walks every afternoon, the sunsets are nice around here and it's not too cold, I'm not very good with seasons because at home they were crazy, but I think it's late spring here right now. There are a lot of flowers around, anyway, and insects too, and it's sunny every day even though the wind is sometimes a bit cold.

Maybe I'll go for a walk now. I kind of feel like I need to clear my head. I'm starting to feel a little sick again.

xx48.11.17 / 16:38 / Still Thursday

Argh. Missed C2. She came by while I was walking, I even came back early because I was feeling so bad but still I missed her, apparently she was worried about me because she left me a grocery bag with food in it and the sweetest note, I'm going to write it all out here because I don't want to ever forget it:

To: Charlotte Powers

You seemed to be sick today and I was worried that you might not feel good enough to cook for yourself, and also that you might not have food prepared that you could easily heat up or otherwise prepare without fuss. My intention was to help you cook some food, but you don't seem to be home. Perhaps you are home but listening to music or otherwise unable to hear my knocking, although this seems unlikely considering the absence of noise inside your apartment. Even with headphones I'm sure I would be able to hear something, if not the music then your movements inside the house. (You are wearing the headphones in this scenario, not me.) I can only assume that you are out taking a walk, perhaps you felt nauseous and needed some fresh air. If you are in fact in your apartment then perhaps you are asleep, in which case I apologise for potentially disturbing you.

In any case, I went to the supermarket after school and I bought you some food. Please consider this a gift and not some kind of shopping service or otherwise a 'food loan' (I'm not sure if there's a more appropriate phrase than this, I hope you understand my meaning). What I mean is that I'm doing this as your friend and as someone who cares about you, not as a way to sell you food you might not want. I'm also sorry if you don't like any of the food, I tried to select a variety of different things such as fresh fruit and yoghurt and also instant noodles (they're called 'instant' noodles but in fact they take more than four minutes to prepare).

Please try to rest tonight and don't do anything too strenuous (for example, exercise). If you need anything you can call me at my family's house, my number is 665-5321. It will almost certainly be my mother or father who answer (if you call), but please just ask for me (perhaps it would be best to ask for 'Charlotte' rather than 'C2' in order to avoid confusion, I'm sure my parents will understand via context which Charlotte is meant, especially since it will be you (Charlotte Powers) asking, and it is unlikely that you would be asking to speak to yourself).

I apologise for the parentheses-in-parentheses in the preceding paragraph, I understand that it bothers some people and is not strictly speaking good grammatical practice, but as this is a 'casual' note I think it's probably acceptable. Actually, I feel that this note is perhaps becoming too long now to refer to as 'casual'. I apologise if reading so much has made you feel worse, or if my handwriting is difficult to make out. I hope you feel better soon, and that I can talk to you in person as soon as possible.

From your friend,

Charlotte Crescent (C2)

Soooo sweet, right? And I really DID need some easy food like this, I was kind of dreading have to go to the supermarket, so now I'm eating not-quite-instant noodles while I write this and having a banana, and she got me peach yoghurt because she must have remembered me mentioning I hate anything with pips in it.

Kind of tired now, so I think I'll finish eating and just go to bed. More tomorrow, I guess.

xx48.11.18 / 07:18 / Friday

Another stupid headache this morning, worse than all the others put together. After I drank some orange juice and forced myself to eat some yoghurt I felt just a tiny bit better, and then I had a little walk and got some fresh air and that made me feel better too. When I went back to my apartment, C2 was outside waiting for me, which is probably the nicest surprise I've ever had and DEFINITELY made me feel MUCH better.

"C2!" I said. "Why are you here?"

"To see you?" she said, after a moment's thought.

"Do you want to come in? It's bit messy ..."

She paused at that. "If you don't want me to come in—"

"No, don't worry, just come in," I said, unlocking the door. In a way I felt weird letting C2 inside my apartment, though. She's the first person I've let see my private little safe place.

"It's not messy at all," she said, after looking around a bit. I laughed.

"Um, maybe not. I don't know why I said that, except people in TV shows always seem to say that kind of thing before letting someone into their house or room or whatever. Um, thank you for all the stuff you got me yesterday, by the way! I really appreciated it, so much, I was really sorry I wasn't here when you dropped it off—I was taking a walk to get some fresh air, like you guessed."

"You're welcome," she said, and she kind of smiled. "I'm glad it was necessary."

"More than necessary," I said, "I really didn't have any food at all here apart from orange juice, which isn't really food. Um. Do you want some? Orange juice, I mean."

"To drink?" she said, then gave a little start, like she'd caught herself, and said, "Yes, okay, yes please. I'd like some orange juice."

So I poured us both a glass.

"So, why are you here so early?" I asked. "At school, I mean."

That seemed to throw her. After she'd thought about it for a bit, she said, "Maybe you didn't hear me before. When you asked—"

"Okay, JUST to see me, I get it," I said. "Well, I'm really pleased to see you, of course! Is there even a bus this early?"

"My father brought me," she said. "I asked him especially. I felt as though I should talk to you. It seemed important to do so. But if you're uncomfortable or feel—"

"I want to talk to you too," I said quickly. "I still feel bad about the other day, I don't feel like I apologised properly."

"The other day," C2 said. She looked confused again.

"When I turned my back on you," I explained.

"Oh," she said, then she looked even more confused. "You already apologised? But now you still feel bad. Do you need me to say that I forgive you?"

"That would probably help, actually," I said.

"Then I forgive you. I think I understand why you were upset: you dislike Veronica Flux. She is associated with the self-improvement program, so you also dislike the self-improvement program. Am I correct so far?"

"Pretty much," I said. "But it wasn't fair to take that out on you, and running away—"

"I'm sorry to interrupt," she said, "but I want to ask this. Why do you apologise so many times?"

I felt like I should give a proper answer to this, so I thought for at least a second before replying:

"I think it's because I still feel bad about it, even after apologising."

"Oh!" C2 seemed really shocked about this, almost upset. "Then
I
should apologise, I didn't realise it was for your benefit. Please go ahead and apologise as many times as you feel is necessary, do you need me to forgive you each time as well?"

Sometimes C2 is a little tiring, I admit it. But she kind of had a point. Apologising so much wasn't for her benefit, she'd already forgiven me. It was just to make ME feel better. Basically, apologising over and over again was really selfish.

"Let's just ... just move on," I said. "I said I'm sorry, and you forgave me. That should be enough, right?"

"It seems fine to me," she said, carefully.

"Okay, good. Good! Um, so why did you come to see me?" I asked.

"It's something important. At the assembly, we talked about it briefly, but the setting wasn't appropriate for a proper conversation. Too public. Too noisy. Too many people around."

C2 was quiet for a bit after this. She took a sip of her orange juice, then she continued:

"You have noticed that the students here often share a similar mindset and mood. Yesterday they were focused and 'serious'. On Monday they were excited and enthusiastic. On Tuesday and Wednesday, they were displaying symptoms of depression." She was silent for a moment, thinking to herself. "That was strange," she said, after a while. "I haven't seen that before."

By now I was starting to feel a kind of warm itchy feeling deep inside.

"Are you saying there's something going on here?" I asked. "That someone's controlling the mood of the students?"

"I think 'control' is the wrong word," C2 said, very seriously. "This may not be intentional. I also don't think it's a reasonable assumption to make, that 'someone' is doing this."

I kind of ignored her. "How do you think they're doing it? Drugs in the drinking water maybe! Or something more insidious, psychic transmitters in everyone's pillow—I knew something was going on, I KNEW it!"

Then I frowned.

"Wait," I said. "If everyone's being controlled, then why aren't you and I being affected by it?"

"I think that you are," C2 said, even more seriously than before. "Although erratically."

I stared at her. I was thinking, no way! I'm not being controlled! But then she said something that made me think again:

"Perhaps you could perform a simple experiment. If you wrote down your mood every day, or better yet every hour, and also wrote down the mood of the student body as a whole—"

"I don't have to do that," I said. "I keep a journal, I can just read back my entries, that'll show that I'm not being controlled."

Except it showed the exact opposite. At the time I didn't notice at all, but after I read back my entries over the last few weeks it seems really obvious. My mood DEFINITELY differs from day to day, and it seems to follow the overall mood of the students, too.

"And on the weekends, when I got so tired, is that part of it?" I asked.

"It seems likely," said C2. "I've noticed similar behaviour in others. Specifically my friends."

I feel really bad about this, but I stared at her again, and then I said, "You have friends? Other friends?"

She stared right back (at my chest, anyway). "Yes?"

"But I thought ... I thought you were ..."

Fortunately I managed to recover.

"Of course you have other friends," I said. "You grew up here, you must have known them for ages."

C2 nodded. "But this year, things have changed."

"Just this year," I said. "C2, I think we're in the middle of something really weird here."

"I agree," she said. I smiled at her, then frowned.

"Wait, though," I said. "You still didn't answer my question. Even if I'm being controlled, why aren't you?"

"I don't know," she said.

"Do you ..." I really hesitated at this, but I knew I had to ask. "Do you have a superpower?"

"It seems unlikely," she said. "Neither of my parents are scientifically promoted."

Of COURSE C2 would use the official technical term, that's kind of cute actually.

"But your parents don't have to be supers for YOU to be a super," I said. "It greatly increases the chances, sure, but ANYONE can spontaneously manifest powers."

"Since The Event the occurrences of spontaneous scientific promotion have decreased non-trivially," C2 said. "I haven't kept up with the latest figures, but I seem to remember reading about a figure lower than point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero—"

"Um, even so," I said, because I know the actual percentage and waiting for C2 to recite all those zeroes could take all morning, "it's not
impossible
."

C2 considered this.

"No," she eventually admitted. "Not impossible. But very improbable. I ... I have another theory. I have a ... condition. It's unlikely that you haven't noticed. I'm very strange."

"You're not THAT strange," I said, but C2 was kind of smiling now in a weird way.

"I know that I am," she said. "I can't help it. My emotional intelligence is almost non-existent. This could also be described as a lack of social empathy. I cannot instinctively or intuitively 'know' what another person is feeling. Even my own emotions are difficult for me to understand. It could be said that I lack self-empathy, although in a sense that is a tiny paradox and a contradiction in terms."

"Oh," I said. I didn't know what else to say.

"Even now, I don't know if I've made you uncomfortable by telling you this. Intellectually, though, I feel as if I have, because your response was brief."

"I'm feeling a little sad," I said. If I didn't have to tell the truth because of my curse, I probably would have lied. "It must be really difficult for you. I sometimes have trouble knowing what people are thinking or feeling, but I always at least have SOME idea. Oh, so that's why ... why didn't you tell me this sooner?"

"I wasn't sure about you," C2 said. "I didn't know if you liked me."

"Of course I like you!" I said. "You're my friend! Why would I be friends with someone I didn't like?"

"It happens," C2 said.

"Not for me," I said, as firmly as I could. "You're my friend, C2, and I'll tell you right now, if
I
ever do anything to make you uncomfortable, or you want to know how I'm feeling, just ask and I'll HAVE to tell you."

"You could lie," C2 said—she wasn't being mean or negative, I could tell that, she was just stating the possibility.

"No, I couldn't," I said. "Because I have ... well, I guess you could call it a 'condition', although actually it's a curse. I have to tell the truth. I can't lie."

"You could be lying about that, too," C2 said.

"I'm not. I'm your friend and I'm telling you, I can't lie. And even if I could, I wouldn't."

C2 thought about this, then she looked at me and smiled—I mean ACTUALLY looked at me, straight in the eye. It was only for the tiniest of moments, but still, it was nice.

"I have to trust you, then," she said, and I was a little bit embarrassed but kind of happy and also a little overwhelmed to see that she had tears in her eyes now. She cleared her throat. "My point. My point was, that I think it's my condition that stops me from being affected like the others. To clarify, whatever the cause of the mood alteration is, I believe it is nullified, or at the least greatly retarded, by my condition."

"But I'm not being COMPLETELY controlled, right?" I said. "There are times like right now when my head is clear, but at other times I'm not quite myself."

"Maybe your condition also protects you," C2 suggested. She smiled. "In certain situations, the truth is a perfect defence."

I
think
that was a C2 joke. I wasn't certain, though, so I just smiled at her.

"I'm happy I can talk to you about this," she said. "Even my parents are influenced by this mood alteration, much more subtly than the students here, but it is often noticeable."

"I'm really happy you told me, too," I said. "I might have never realised just on my own."

"I don't know. Maybe you would have."

"Oh?" I said. "Why do you think that?"

"I'm not sure," said C2. "It's just a feeling."

"Anyway," I said, "how are we going to stop this?"

C2 looked confused. "Stop this?"

"
Clearly
this is part of some evil plot."

C2 looked even more confused. "Evil?"

"Mind control, C2! Brainwashing! Mood alteration! How could that be anything BUT evil?"

C2 actually thought about this. "The school board could be attempting to improve education," she suggested. "If students could be influenced to be more enthusiastic and serious about study—"

"Oh my goodness what you're describing sounds SO evil! But I don't think it's the school board, or not JUST the school board, anyway."

"Who, then?" C2 asked me. "Who do you think would do something like this?"

I didn't need to think for a even a second before answering:

"Supervillains."