One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy (8 page)

“Hey, we’re supposed to be working on the same book.”

“We are,” he answered, his focus never leaving the page image in front of him.

“No, we’re not,” she insisted. “Look at your page 42. Now look at mine. They are extremely different.”

He never took his eyes off the work in front of him, nor did he give Slue the satisfaction of looking in her direction as he spoke. He knew she would sooner or later come to this realization. In fact, her reaction was all going exactly to his plan.

“We are both reading
The Random Treewolf
by Naac Koonx,” he blandly reported.

“No, I am reading
The Random Treewolf
by Naac Koonx. You are reading something entirely different!” Her voice had begun to increase in volume, and he smiled. Some students at another table turned to stare at her.

“Shhhh…” he whispered at Slue.

Another crowd passed through the rotunda. “Hi, Slue!” A boy walking among them called to her. His voice echoed above the mashed sounds of a hundred conversations and she glanced at him for a quick second. Bob. Big. Athletic. Not a Topper. Okay student, but completely bland and nondescript. He "liked" her and she truly wished he didn’t. He emerged from the shadows with fifty other faces, smiling, staring at Slue as if she were pleased to see him. But she was indifferent, and the smile she tossed back at him lasted as long as her glance. Bob’s class transversed the rotunda, briefly illuminated by the room’s circular dark yellow globe light above, then their walking forms disappeared into the shadows at the opposite end. She’d say hello to him later. After this crisis over the book was resolved.

She whispered, but even her whispering was heard a few tables away.

“You are not reading the same book as I am. Our pages are remarkably different!”

“Same book, Slue.”

She dragged her chair closer to Hieronymus and the floating image of the page in front of him, then nearly thrust her face into the letters as she pointed out the obvious discrepancies to his amusement.

“Look at what you are reading!” she said, circling some text in the middle of the page with her stylo-point. “Who is this character Neef? And what is this business about the donuts in the back seat of the pelican push cart? And look! Look at that line, that sentence!
The candy-fine ran-ran bungled over her top nose as she told Paul how much the clouds at dawn resembled the veins in his hard-boiled, hungover dirty filthy bloodshot eyes, oh nuclear explosion, oh nuclear explosion, oh nuclear explosion, oh, spinning top, rop and mop!
How can you sit there and tell me that that is the same novel?”

She barely had a moment to let that last sentence leave her open mouth, her teeth slightly horselike at that moment, the blue strands of hair waving on either side of her lips as she made her determined point, when there was another greeting from another male admirer.

“Slue-Blue! Slue-Blue!”

Both Slue and Hieronymus looked away from their work as another large class of students passed into the media-viewing rotunda. Again, there was a fellow, tall and athletic looking, who smiled in Slue’s direction as he walked with his classmates through the rotunda. Jim. A star second backer on the Lunar Public 777 tellball team, he thought every girl in the Sea of Tranquility found him irresistible. Indeed some did, but Slue was not among them. And yet, there he was, just like Bob, convinced she was somehow interested in him. She gave Jim the exact same fake smile she had given Bob, then turned back to the contested book.

“As I was saying, Hieronymus, you are not studying the assigned text. Which, frankly, is your own problem. But being that we are working in groups and you and I are supposed to collaborate on this project, I guess you must think it’s very funny to pretend to be reading the same book as I just to get me upset.”

What didn’t help matters much was the fact that Hieronymus had a big smile on his face. He was about to explain the game to her at last when, for a third time, a voice called out her name.

“Slue! Slue! Slue!”

Once more, a large group of students entered into the rotunda and, as usual, there was an athletic guy whose head jutted up slightly from the bustling crowd of teenagers. This young man had an ear-to-ear grin on his face — an expression seemingly cut from an identical mold as the other two. This was Pete. Pete was also on the tellball team. And not only was Pete on the tellball team, he was also the team’s captain. He was also on the track team. He was a young man who liked teams a lot. Everyone in school liked Pete, but at this moment, Slue did not even bother to smile at him — she just turned herself back to the text, utterly and totally and completely embarrassed.

“Slue, why do those guys think you like them?”

“Shut up, Hieronymus.”

“No, seriously. It’s like you have a fan club here that only accepts barrelhead athletes.”

“I don’t know why they think I like them.”

“Well, you must have
something
to do with it.”

“Those boys are just dumb. I don’t know why they look at me like that. I don’t even flirt with them or anything.”

“Maybe you flirt with them by accident.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Maybe Bob or Jim or whoever dropped something like, I don’t know, a coin or a rubber band or something, and you just said something completely bland and neutral like, ’Excuse me, you dropped your rubber band,’ and to them, that was some kind of sexy flirtatious signal.” When Slue glanced sideways at Hieronymus, she saw by the curvature of his mouth, the tilt of his neck, and the tone of his voice that he was being as sarcastic as a bloody Pixie in Hades.

“Your head,” she stated, articulating very slowly, “is somewhere… on the…far side…of the round…rock…stupid…”

Hieronymus turned around to see Pete still trying to get Slue’s attention as the large group he was stuck with continued to shuffle through the media-viewing rotunda.

“Slue! Hey, Slue!”

Slue pretended to be deaf, but Hieronymus stared back at Pete. Then it occurred to him. This was the third huge group of students to pass through this normally quiet zone of research and study. Some kind of event must have been going on in the school, and they had no idea what.

“Hey, you! Guy with goggles!”

“Are you talking to me?” Hieronymus called back, almost shouting.

“Yeah. Tell your sister to look over here!”

“She’s not my sister.”

“Whatever. Can you tap her on the shoulder?”

“Tap her on the shoulder? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just do it.”

“What, tap her on the shoulder?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know, that’s sort of a tall order. I know for a fact that she doesn’t like to be tapped by anyone, especially me.”

“Don’t be a rectumexit. Just do it.”

“I’ll do it for five thousand dollars. I was originally going to charge you three thousand, but then you suggested that I’m being a rectumexit, so the price went up.”

“Don’t make me go over there, phallic-brain.”

“Actually, I’m trying to make you come over here so you can tap her on the shoulder yourself.”

“I can’t go over there. No one’s allowed to leave the line. Which means your nose stays on your face for a little while longer.”

Hieronymus paused for a second. Those threats meant nothing to him — and Pete must have thought Slue was wearing headphones to block all the noise out, for during their shouting-across-the-room conversation, two more classes came into the rotunda and the normally quiet library-like space was suddenly as noisy and chaotic as the cafeteria. Hieronymus stole a quick sideways glance at Slue — actually, she was working extremely hard to pretend she did not hear the exchange over
shoulder tapping
, pointing her face away from Pete, straining not to laugh.

More class-sized groups of students entered.

“Hey, shoulder-tapping guy! What the Pixie is going on?” Hieronymus sincerely asked his new nemesis. “Why are all these classes passing through the rotunda? Where are you all going?”

Pete only gave him a disgusted smirk.

“Go innacaws yourself, goggle boy.”

“I’ll make you a deal,” Hieronymus said, not impressed by the big guy’s insult. “How about if you tell me what’s going on, and then I’ll tap your girlfriend here on the shoulder — I’ll even knock her headphones off so you can just speak to her directly. I’m sure she would love to hear the eloquent way you go around asking people to tap each other on the shoulder.”

As expected, Pete had not the slightest notion Hieronymus was being sarcastic. He only followed through as if this was a serious, actual proposal.

“It’s a school assembly. Something to do with dental hygiene. Everyone is supposed to go with their classes. Why aren’t you and Slue with your homerooms? Everyone is supposed to go. There. I told you. Now tap Slue. We’re about to leave. Tap her on the shoulder, and do it quick.”

Hieronymus didn’t give this a moment’s thought. He turned slightly, tapped Slue on the shoulder with an exaggerated, mocking gesture that completely flew over Pete’s head, and she pretended to be surprised, pretended to take tiny objects out of her ears, pretended not to know what to expect as she swiveled herself around, pretended to be surprised, pretended to be pleased to see the larger form of Pete standing with his class, then pretended to smile in his direction as she waved. Pete waved back. Hieronymus also waved at Pete, and Pete waved at Hieronymus, and all bad feelings were instantly erased. As if they were all friends.

“So what’s
his
name,” Hieronymus asked with slightly cruel grin.

“That. Is. Pete.”

“Pete? That big guy who threatened my nose is named Pete?”

“He didn’t threaten your nose.”

“He did.”

“He did not. He only says things like that. He’s really very sweet…” That last word rolled of her tongue with a certain tone of regret.

“So you know him!” Hieronymus teased.

“No, I don’t know him.”

“But you just said that he was very sweet! How would you know that he was sweet or not if you didn’t know him?”

“I just know him a little bit.”

“A little bit. Did you ever kiss him?”

“Are we going to work on this project together or not?”

“I think you kissed him.”

“I never kissed him and I don’t think it’s any of your business”

“I think you know indeed that it is my business — and you know why.”

“You are such an idiot.”

“All of us One Hundred Percent Lunar kids have to stick togeth — ”

“I knew you were going to bring that up!” At this point, the noise level of the rotunda had decreased significantly as the last groups of students shuffled themselves out, and the discussion between Slue and Hieronymus once more became a public spectacle.

“We are NOT friends because we are both members of the LOS community! That has
nothing
to do with
anything
!”

There was an astonishing silence after that last syllable. A small group of students at the next table glared at them.

“
LOS community?
” Hieronymus gasped, his expression incredulous, embarrassed, amazed, and disgusted all at the same time. “Where does that come from?”

“LOS.
L
unarcroptic
O
cular
S
ymbolanosis! What are you, utterly and completely
ignorant
about
everything
in your own life!”

“No, it’s the
community
part that bugs me.”

“There is no name for us as a group! Have you ever wondered about that?”

“What are you talking about? Everyone calls us One Hundred Percent Lunar…”

“Exactly! Have you ever wondered about that stupid expression?”

“No, but come on, LOS community sounds like a place where frail elderly people go to stay away from…”

“One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy, Girl, Person, whatever is a derogatory expression that others invented for us. Do you know where it comes from?”

“Slue, I don’t know, and I don’t want to know,” he lied.

“Ninety-four years ago there were camps on the far side of the Moon. It was where they stuck all of us. It was during a time known as the Regime of Blindness. It’s not spoken about in schools. It is denied, and the deniers have been in power for generations…”

“I told you, I don’t want to know this!”

“Of course you don’t. It’s been erased from the history books.”

“Then how do you know? Who told you?”

Slue stared at him, unable to speak, the answer unable to launch itself from her gut.

A cruel laugh came up from Hieronymus — it sounded cruel, but actually, it was sad and, at its center, just plain jealous.

“Did one of your boyfriends tell you that?”

Hieronymus realized things with Slue were suddenly falling out of hand — and he was squarely to blame. He always liked to tease her. Two minutes earlier she was trying so hard not to laugh when he was mocking Pete. How quickly it had shifted into this. She was standing — her hands were clenched into fists. Her blue hair matched the short jacket she wore over a black t-shirt. Black and blue. In ancient times, blue was a sad color. It was associated with melancholy. Slue-Blue. Slue-Blue. For the first time, he quietly damned everything in his life for the simple fact he could not see her eyes. As they really were — without the purple lenses. He could see the shapes of her eyelids and he saw her eyelashes, the dark dots of her pupils and the whites of her eyes — but without the color of the iris, her eyes were denied. As were his own.