Rejected Text

Act 4 Complete

Yeah, I understand that reading about writing about writing is torture. I’ll try to be brief.

• Word Count: 97,000+
• Bodycount: < 10
• Sex Scenes: < 5
• Acts of Violence: < 5
• Poorly Written Lesbians: 1

I will be taking a break from the story for the next week or two, depending on how soon I can figure out the last two acts. I know where two of the characters end up, but because I’ve used so many shifting viewpoints, I have to account for everyone else. I made a simple cheat sheet. This is where we stand at the end of Act 4.

• Deron: returning
• Rosalia: wallowing
• Ilya: coveting
• Russo: plotting
• Jalay: reeling
• Sebo: ignoring

Six characters is a lot to tend to when you only have 10/11 sections per act.

Self-Sabatoge

Over the last week, I’ve been trying to flesh out the last two acts. Yesterday, as I wrote the final scene for Act 4, I included a paragraph that blows away the rough plan I had. It sucks to lose the brainstorming efforts, but the twist that it introduces changes how previous sections should have been read. I love stuff like that. Love it. I’ll take that over pre-planned garbage any day.

Rewrites

I celebrate a little every time I write a section, but the feeling is quickly lost when I realize how much editing and revision needs to be done. Here are some paragraphs from Act 4… just keep in mind this is Draft 0 stuff.

Even the advertisements plastered inside the tram seemed to promote conformity. If they were to be believed, everyone should drink the same soda, buy the same kind of car, and get their teeth professionally reconciled at Peck’s Dental Emporium. They were things Rosalia didn’t have to worry about, at least not yet, but the fact that her future was plainly written in gaudy letters on the seatback in front her made her want to scream. Growing up in Easton meant being different only long enough to find the right thing to conform to. Maybe it was a job, or a religion, or even a sexual preference, but it was all something, some definition that changed her from being Rosalia to an easily categorized demographic. She thought of the meta tags she could apply to herself and saw a list with no end. And that would keep right on growing, even as her veneer remained the same.

Sebo stepped into the harsh light of the outside world, happy that school was now over but confused by the mood of the day. It occurred to him as he collected his personal effects from his locker that he had barely spoken to anyone and most of his interaction had been through instant messages that weren’t returned. How tenuous it all was, he pondered, this closed social network that he had created for himself. It consisted of so few people that when one fell out, the others tumbled with them. Something about that was unsettling, especially given his inability to befriend other people. Jalay had been the first new person he connected with in forever. Now he was faced with the very real possibility of having to make new friends.

To say that I’m looking forward to revising what should be 120k+ words would be a lie, but I’m really anxious to get this book finished. I’ve been thinking lately of a new story… maybe I’ll test out some sections this week or next, put some stories back on this damn worthless blug.

Veneer Act 2 Complete

For those keeping score at home, there haven’t been any updates to Rejected Text since April 2. If you’re one of the 3 people on the edge of their seats about what happens to Deron, Rosalia, and Russo, fear not, the story continues.

I finished up Act 2 earlier this week. It was written mostly out of order, since I couldn’t figure out what to do with Russo at first. I also experimented with more viewpoints. You get sections written from Ilya’s and Sebo’s point of view. Only after finishing Act 1 did I realize how important it was going to be to have different tones between the sections… but I’m trying to do some of that on the fly now.

Story is at 48,000 words.

I can’t remember where I read it, but I remember an author once talking about how some writers were obsessed with the math of writing. With XRONIXLE, all I did in terms of math was require a minimum of 2,000 words per section, but the division of sections into Parts wasn’t set in stone until near the end. This time around, it’s a little more discrete.

The current plan is 5 acts, 10 sections per act, minimum 2,000 words per section. At a minimum, the story should be 100,000. Unlike good writers, I actually rewrite with more words, so it should end up on par with XRONIXLE, 100-130k words. Dividing it into little sections makes it easier to write and I think, easier to read, especially for people with ADD.

Tips for Writers

… can be found elsewhere. Every time I have a question like Can I write Act 3 from just one viewpoint? I end up answering with what most authors should tell themselves: Do whatever the hell you want. You’re the storyteller.

Software

I’ve been using FreeMind to keep track of all the details in my story. I really hate having to go back into the text to find the names of obscure characters only to discover that Richard is actually Ricardo and he’s a sophomore not a junior. It has a small learning curve (hit Insert to make a leaf), but once you get it going, you can organize almost anything. Right now, I have a People category, with Main & Secondary Characters, School Faculty, etc. Beneath that, full names of the people, under them, a little description. You’ll see how useful it is as the complexity of your story grows. Maybe not so helpful for shorts, but works great for novels.

I also checked out Celtx, which I was hoping would be a good replacement for Scrivener. It has some good features for character building, asking you a lot of questions that you should be thinking about anyway. I found it a little daunting.

If you have a mac, Scrivener is awesome. I haven’t found anything that rivals it.

Veneer - Part 10 - Deron

Previously: Veneer Part 9

The cramp started in his palm, concentrated around his pinkie, but soon it spread to Deron’s entire hand, making it ache in protest at the unnatural activity. Copying words from a dictionary wasn’t just boring, it was actually a form of physical punishment. He couldn’t remember the last time he had actually written something down instead of typing on a virtual keyboard or, even easier, just reconciling the text onto a palette. It was kind of brilliant, when he thought about it, giving students something to remember their detention by. It was much more deterrent than the paddles that hung in Principal Ficcone’s office.

Just as Deron began to imagine the principal sitting there in his fancy leather chair, the man himself stepped leisurely into the classroom. He nodded to Mr. Lee, who was sitting back in his chair with his feet on his desk. That didn’t seem very important though, as Principal Ficcone immediately began scanning the room. He found what he was looking for in the back of the room. When he locked eyes with Deron, he beckoned him with a quick turn of his head.

It was a tough decision, thought Deron. His hand was killing him, but at least he couldn’t get into anymore trouble just writing words on paper. If he got up and talked to the principal, who knew what could happen? I’ll just pretend I didn’t see it, he decided, and looked back down at his paper.

“Mr. Bishop, might I have a word with you?”

There was no denying that one. Now everyone in the room was looking at him. Reluctantly, he closed his aging dictionary and stood up. As he crossed the front of the room, he glanced at the clock. It was four ten; he wasn’t getting out of anything early.

In the hallway, Principal Ficcone fell into a slow amble and Deron tried to mirror the movement. “How is your hand,” he asked with practiced sincerity. He had his own hands clasped behind his back, trying to evoke informality.

“It hurts,” admitted Deron. “I’m not used to writing so much.”

“It will get easier. By the end of next week, you’ll be a pro at it.”

Deron said nothing in return, didn’t feel like thanking the principal for his hollow attempt at comfort.

The principal coughed, cleared his throat noisily. “I need to apologize to you, Mr. Bishop.”

“What for?”

“The photo that was passed around today. You didn’t make it.” His voice was quiet, as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear him admit his mistake. “I checked with your teachers and they all agree that you don’t have the skill to reconcile something like that.”

Deron laughed despite himself. He never thought sucking at reconciliation would ever get him off the hook.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it, a lot of students have trouble with it. I didn’t fully realize my power until my third year of college. You’ll learn soon enough.”

“So does this mean I don’t have detention tomorrow?”

Principal Ficcone reached out and put a heavy hand on Deron’s shoulder. “No, detention still stands. You see, although I accept that you had no hand in the creation of the offending image, I do think you know who did.”

Deron searched for a response, but he didn’t feel confident that he could say anything without broadcasting that it was a lie.

The hand left Deron’s shoulder. “And I believe you are not going to tell me who this person is.”

“Even if I knew,” said Deron, trying to steady his veneer. If it wavered even a little bit, the principal would see it.

“I know,” he replied, nodding understandingly, “which is why you will continue to serve detention. I will let the matter drop and leave it to you to make the necessary corrections with your conspirator.”

“She was just,” he started to protest. He caught himself, but it was too late.

“She?”

They were at the end of the hallway and to the right, the double-doors opened to the back of the school. Deron could see the sidewalk give way to an expansive green lawn. Further away, it dipped, and he could just see the tops of the bleachers surrounding the football field. There was nothing moving out there, he noted. Not students, not the trees. Just emptiness.

“As I said, I’ll leave it to you. I trust we’ll have no repeats?”

It wasn’t fair, him thinking that Deron had wanted any of this. But those were the cards on the table and it was no use thinking about the ones that had been burned. He shook his head feebly and looked away.

“Then have a pleasant evening, Mr. Bishop.” Principal Ficcone walked away quickly, resuming his normally frantic pace as he rushed about the school tending to the late-afternoon fires.

Rather than follow the man that had just berated him to the front of the school, Deron exited the building and took in a breath of fresh air. It smelled good, not like the stale air conditioned environment inside the school. He shielded his eyes from the sun and started reaching for his palette in his bag. Rosalia was probably waiting for him, sending him messages every few minutes, holding a one-sided conversation until he got out of detention. Smiling, he unhooked the plastic claps on his bag, but a flash of movement in the distance distracted him.

Deron paused, squinted, could just make out Sebo’s signature jacket glinting in the sunlight. He was sitting on the top row of the bleachers on the other side of the football field and when he noticed Deron, he waved invitingly.

Now that was a friend, thought Deron, as he trudged across the lush lawn. The ground gave way under his shoes as if it had just been watered. He veered to the left to take the stairs down the small incline and as he did, he saw Sebo jumped down behind the bleachers. The man was reckless like that, both in reality and in game. Destined 4 Death was always a crapshoot with Sebo as some days he liked to play it straight, stay in formation and coordinate with the other players, and other days he preferred to interpret the term run and gun literally and forgo all planning. That usually happened at the end of a good session, when everyone was tired and ready to log, as Sebo would say.

There was something inviting about the no fear mentality of warfare, the idea that a soldier could just go storming into an enemy stronghold and empty his clip into anything that moved. Such behavior was frowned upon in the real world, or preferred, depending on which side was doing the rushing. The only real problem with it was the ninety-nine percent mortality rate. But in the game, that simply meant spending ten seconds waiting to respawn. There were no consequences and as everyone knew, as consequence lessened, enjoyment increased.

At some point, it became clear that the guy kneeling on the ground behind the bleachers wasn’t Sebo. It was in the shoes; Sebo always wore reconciled throwback Skechers. Not that anything in the world was constant, but Deron had never known him to wear the heavy boots that the person in front of him was sporting. Then there was the general shape, broad shoulders that didn’t match up with Deron’s memory, hair that peeked out from under a baseball cap, and finally, the design on the back of the jacket. From a distance, it had looked similar to Sebo’s, but up close, there was no mistaking the imitation. Of course, all of this became clear a moment too late. By the time Deron had processed this new information, a blunt object was already moving swiftly through the air.

It connected somewhere above Deron’s right ear and sent tremors through his vision. He watched half of the world sizzle, as if the outlines of every object suddenly had a million volts pass through them. His body leaned dangerously, threatening to fall over. Stumbling backwards, Deron managed to raise his eyes, saw Russo standing there, a twisted smile on his normal veneer. In his hand, he held a metal pipe that looked dull and out of place in the shimmering world.

“I told you we had business.”

Despite the pain, a knot began to tighten inside Deron’s chest. This wasn’t going to be like the game or even like the Kung Fu movies he watched late at night. No part of what was about to happen was going to be choreographed. It would be brutal, it would be furious. And it was going to hurt. A lot.

Deron opened his mouth to say something, but Russo had already closed the short distance between them. Putting up his arms to protect his face, he felt the pipe impact his forearms, making them tingle at first, then burn a moment later as the electrical signals reached his brain. It came from the left, from the right, sometimes glancing off his arms to connect with his head. He leaned backwards, tried to escape the barrage, but couldn’t hold his balance. His body collapsed in the worn grass.

His right eye felt funny, like there was pressure on it. He struggled to see through the blur, but all his eyes would focus on was the pipe in Russo’s hand.

“Fucking pussy,” said Deron, tasting blood for the first time. He rolled onto his side, turned quickly to keep his eyes on Russo. “Afraid to fight like a man?”

The pipe flew through the air and caught Deron on the left side of his temple. Stars exploded all around him, little golden explosions as if reality were just a palette and some first-grader learning to reconcile had suddenly decided that what they needed most were twinkling decorations. A tentative hand went out, somehow knew that the pipe must be nearby, but before it could find anything, Deron felt a boot crush down on his elbow.

Deron laughed, tried to babble something about Russo liking to pin men to the ground. Then he was being pulled upwards, barely getting his legs underneath himself before Russo pushed him towards the bleachers. The metal scaffolding was unforgiving, but so much of his body had already gone numb that he barely registered it. A few feet away, it looked like Russo was pausing to catch his breath. That’s what he gets for skipping P.E., thought Deron.

It was time to rage quit, he was sure of it. Had this been a session of D4D, the frustration would have already taken over and he would have jacked out and punched Sebo in the chest. He groaned, spit blood on the ground. Something was going wrong in his brain. Maybe it was bleeding, maybe he had a concussion, either way he knew that all hope of being able to fight had gone out the window. He suddenly grew very dejected, unhappy with the way his day had turned out.

Part of him flashed on Rosalia and her misguided attempt to help him. It wanted to be angry at her, punish her, but that only made the conscious Deron furious. She loved him as much as any high school girl could be expected to. She wasn’t to blame for the beating he was experiencing.

Russo was.

Summoning his last bit of strength, Deron shot forward and began swinging. He felt his fists land a few times, but mostly they caught nothing but air. Russo seemed to move around them with ease and there could have been a smile on his face had the world not been so blurry. The momentary adrenaline rush waned and Deron felt the twinge in all his joints. His lungs burned and he could taste his own tears on his lips. He closed his eyes for an instant and somewhere in that eternal darkness, he felt something bony catch him square on the jaw.

There was something comforting about the grass, about the way it reached up to support a fallen body, cradling it as best it knew how. He had ended up face down in a heap and in a moment of perverse humor, he imagined what the chalk outline would look like when the police discovered his body. No, he thought, they wouldn’t be able to chalk up the grass, that was just stupid. And why would they need to do that when they could reconcile the scene with little effort? Stupid Deron, he told himself. You’re losing your fucking mind and at the worst possible time.

One eye didn’t work, he was sure of that, so he held it closed as he searched the horizon for Russo. He was standing near the bleachers, examining his hand and wiping away the blood with his shirt. Be careful with that, Deron wanted to say, I need that blood to live. It stained his shirt briefly, but Russo just reconciled it away. Evidently satisfied, he walked over to Deron and stopped a few inches away from his face.

Deron could see his boots plainly, shiny black with thick soles. They probably weighed a few pounds each. Russo was saying something, but the ringing in his ears drowned it out. It was probably just another threat, something about his superiority. It didn’t really matter; all Deron cared about were those boots. They were immediate, they were all he could see. And when one disappeared momentarily, his brain revved up, but not for any worthwhile thought. Instead, he asked the boot where it was going. Was it not happy there on the grass? He was. There was nothing better than lying face down in the grass, not having to worry about grass stains on his jeans or bugs crawling on his body. The only concern was the slight itching that might occur from all those little blades poking at his face.

The mystery of Russo’s disappearing boot came to an end in a brief and unsatisfying way. After being gone for an eternity and Deron unable to locate it in time and space, he felt it reappear on the back of his neck. At some level, his brain registered the pressure of the boot’s treads, how they pushed unevenly at the skin at the base of his skull. They tore it a little at first, making the skin redden in instants bruises. But that was all minor compared to the crushing weight that followed. And just like that, the other boot disappeared too, along with the rest of the world.

* * *

Lights, scrolling by overhead. A common scene. Movies, in-game cinematics, viewpoint of the victim whose existence has become nothing but waiting for the next light to come up and the last one to sink out of view. Why didn’t they put something over his eye, the one that worked, the one that he couldn’t command to close no matter how hard he tried? Too bright, he wanted to yell, too bright for the darkness in his head. It was better there, inside, cordoned off. Protected.

There was nothing worth seeing out there, nothing he wanted to see. But for some reason, they kept showing him things. Lights mostly, but then someone was turning his head. It was a nurse, an old one, with bad skin and wrinkles all around her eyes. His head went the other way, saw a doctor with a mask over his face. He had large eyebrows that ran from the left side of his face to the right, uninterrupted. He was squinting at Deron, looking for what?

And then he realized, this was no hospital. He was in some kind of abandoned building, with blank evercrete walls that looked like they had been through a nuclear blast. Everywhere, dirt and grime, unsanitary. The nurse pulled his head again and Deron felt something pop in his neck. He saw the alarm in her eyes, the red veins standing out so brightly around her iris. Harsh words, demands for information.

Then it all started to fade. The scrolling lights grew dimmer. Someone passed something through his field of view. It vaguely resembled a palette, except that it was blank. Cold and blank. Like the world. Like existence.

Deron took a labored breath, felt the suffocation grip his body.

They couldn’t keep him there, no matter how loudly they yelled at each other, no matter how fast they pushed the gurney. He was on a journey to a place beyond the confines of his mortal body.

He couldn’t see it, but he believed it was there.

Veneer - Part 9 - Rosalia

Previously: Veneer Part 8

He told her about it between classes, but it wasn’t until the news got around during last period that Rosalia discovered it was because of her shop that Deron now had to spend two weeks in detention. He didn’t seem angry when last they spoke, just the same kind of blissful indifferent that had always been. But then he didn’t show up after school, didn’t give her the opportunity to apologize for her bad decision. She even walked by the detention room, saw him sitting alone in the back of the room, but he never looked up.

She lingered briefly in the hallway, wondering if she should knock on the door or just barge in and deliver her apology by way of a kiss. He would no doubt be happy about that. Maybe not, thought the doubtful part of her. In the end, all she could muster was an instant message, a simple sorry with no punctuation or cliched emoticons. A few minutes went by as she waited for a response, but nothing came through. He was probably busy copying words out of the dictionary. By hand, she thought, and shuddered.

Outside, several students were still milling around, sharing one last story before hurrying home to their rooms so they could talk to each other on IM. Rosalia walked through them undisturbed, though at times she felt eyes on her back. They were looking at her because of Deron, because of the threats Russo had made and that rumor had made more violent. Either Russo was going to punch Deron, beat him up, or just kill him. Nobody knew for sure, but they added their own flair as the story passed between people. By the next morning, people would be saying Russo was going to blow up the school.

Rosalia passed the line of waiting buses, all of them humming in their idle states. A knock on a window made her look up and there she saw a concerned Ilya looking down at her. The Ukrainian raised her eyebrows as if to ask, “What do we do now?” Rosalia could only manage a weak smile and a undecided shrug in return. What did it matter to her anyway, she wondered. It wasn’t as if Deron were her boyfriend, her sole reason for existing.

Detention was as much her punishment as his. That hour after school, before their parents got home from work, they usually spent together, taking the long way home, window-shopping at all the boutiques on Cesar Chavez, her for the clothes, him for the latest video games. What they did wasn’t important, but it had become a ritual, their way of maintaining what little companionship they could afford. They could chat in the evening and throughout the night, see each other briefly between classes, but none of it matched the simplicity of just being together, of being walked home by her protector.

The further she got from campus, the less the noise of the student rabble seemed to affect her. It was quiet in the adjoining neighborhood with its empty driveways. The worker bees were still away and the children no longer played on their tiny lawns. The houses eventually faded away and were replaced by condos with reconciled walls that displayed twenty-story advertisements. Beyond that, she reached Cesar Chavez, a long street that almost bisected the city, growing out from downtown like a vine of commerce. It was a strange break, to go from homes to condo to business and back again in the space of six blocks, but that was what they called progress.

Rosalia didn’t mind; the artificial border between home and school was a great place to hang out, to feel like she was a part of downtown without having to suffer the homeless or the crowded streets. It was like a never ending main street feeding the suburbs, full of restaurants and cafes, dress shops and sim parlors, almost anything an ADD kid needed to get by in the world. Their favorite place was Cafe Dynamics, a blend of coffee shop and mulitplayer sim parlor. They didn’t have fancy equipment, nothing full sensory, but the causal games were enough to kill an hour, have some fun before returning home.

“What’ll you have?” asked the barista in a sickeningly cheery tone.

“Fountain of Youth smoothie,” said Rosalia, coming out of her haze. She had been lost in thought for most of the walk over and must have entered the cafe out of habit. It was okay though, she didn’t feel much like going home. Instead, she found her usual table near the front windows and sat her bag down on Deron’s seat. She pulled out her palette to see if he had responded, but the only message she had was from Ilya. It was just a link and a short message that said, “Fun game I found.”

The barista appeared as the game was beginning to load and she slipped a napkin and the drink onto the table next to Rosalia’s palette. “Enjoy,” she said, her veneer the picture of professionalism.

Rosalia smiled politely and wondered what she looked like under that veneer. Was she a college student slumming it for beer money? Or maybe a schoolmate from Central? It didn’t matter, she realized. An entire lifetime could be dedicated to trying to guess what was under the veneers that people wore and on her deathbed she wouldn’t be one inch closer to the truth. She returned her attention to her palette and watched the game load into full screen.

It was called Canvas and seemed to be some kind of massively multiplayer art game. A small Rosalia avatar appeared on the screen, just a collection of white spheres that begged to be reconciled. Once dressed, Rosalia moved the avatar out of the small room and into a larger gallery. There, the pentagonal shape gave her five walls almost twenty feet high. She approached one of them, could almost feel the blankness, the aching for shape and color. After staring at it for a moment, a bubble appeared in the air beside her. Inside, blue letters exploded from a jumble to form a message.

“Reconcile your love,” it said, then popped out of existence.

Rosalia smiled, took a sip of her smoothie. There was a time when the common definition of reconcile meant something else, perhaps to give up and accept what couldn’t be changed. It was ironic because it was one of the lesser definitions that would come to dominate, that of bringing something into harmony. It was just a matter of not believing in what she saw, but instead putting faith into what she believed. Reconcile your love, she repeated to herself, paint a picture of whatever makes you happiest.

How it qualified as a game wasn’t exactly clear to Rosalia, but she played along, reconciling an expansive vista from a viewpoint high on a mountain. Her avatar stood on the precipice of a waterfall, surrounded on both sides by lush overgrowth encroaching on two stone statues. Their original design couldn’t be seen, just the overall shape, giving the impression of a two men standing guard over the water’s escape. Where the land fell away, Rosalia brought up distant terrain, fuzzier from being out of focus, but alive with animals and birds, their cries and calls filling the gallery in an echo of the rain forest.

In the distance, the horizon sizzled under the heat of the orange sun. Above, the clouds cycled through various pastels before settling into a pleasing pattern. Rosalia drew her avatar back to examine the masterpiece. It wasn’t her best work, but it had killed half an hour and if the game had any kind of content sharing, other people might get to see it. She sat back, sipped on the last of her smoothie, and waited for another prompt.

It came suddenly, snapping her canvas into a two-dimensional image. Again, the bubble appeared next to her and when the letters fell into place, it said, “What you love, others love.”

Rosalia watched as her avatar’s hand came up and pressed on the wall. The canvas gave way and there was a terrific transition effect as she moved through her image and found herself in another gallery. This one already had two walls painted and when she turned around, she found a scene very similar to what she had reconciled. The water ran a little faster and the trees were a different color, but overall, they were undeniably alike. All those little choices could have gone another way, she realized. Maybe if she had ordered a Blueberry Swirl she would have been more inclined to make the statues more visible, so that the one of the left was clearly a woman and the one of the right clearly a man.

Amused, she turned her attention to the other wall, saw a painting of a sandy beach that started with a grain of sand at the forefront. The rest of the beach extended beyond it, folding into a horizon, into a starry sky, into galaxies. It made her think of nighttime, of the moon that wasn’t shown but that was clearly reflecting light onto the sparkling sand. So that was the game, she thought. Person A drew a picture and through it, could access the pictures of Person B. It was a solid theory that people with alike dreams would also be alike. But where was the person that drew this picture? Perhaps he or she had already stepped away to another beach?

Whoever they were, they shared something with Rosalia and that meant she had to give something back. She approached a bare wall and began reconciling her strongest dream, a nightmare, but a vivid scene nonetheless. She made the moon fill the entire wall, used a fifth of the bottom to show the water being pushed upwards, the beach exposed as the ocean drew away. The familiar fear crept back into her spine as she finished the detail on the moon’s surface. Cracks and craters, all with the right shadows, all as real as anything she would ever see in her lifetime.

Now, she wondered, who shares this dream with me?

The avatar cautiously approached the wall and put her hand on it, but nothing happened. The image did not ripple as it had before and she could not move forward. Off to the right, the bubble appeared and said, “The unique love uniquely.” She guessed the original text must have been in another language and something lost in the translation, but she got the gist of the statement. Basically, a game was telling her that she was completely alone in the world, that the things that tormented her existed for her alone.

“But I knew that already,” said Rosalia, aloud. She wiped her palette clean and brought up her portal again. The time in the corner said it was now four thirty. Detention would have let out at four fifteen, so Deron would be on his way home. She turned in her seat, put her feet up on the low windowsill and scanned the pedestrian traffic. It only took about fifteen minutes to get from the school to Cesar Chavez and whether he was going to her house or straight home to his, he would have to pass right in front of Cafe Dynamics.

She hoped he would forgive her for what she had done. Maybe plastering the entire school with that shop had been a bad idea. Closing her eyes, she cursed herself for the lapse in judgment. It wasn’t her fight, wasn’t her place to be inciting more hostility in what Deron considered a nothing war. He did his best not to let it bother him and she should have followed suit. What would he say to her? Would he be angry at all?

Part of her wanted him to be. Only punishment from Deron would help alleviate some of the guilt she was feeling. In all their years together, he had never yelled at her, never taken on a sharp tone even when the situation excused it. That was what made Deron special. Despite his lack of reconciliation skill, he had one of the most well-tuned veneers of anyone she knew. His power came from within, from his behavior and outlook and belief that nothing in the world should upset him. She often wondered how he maintained it, and more importantly, how much of it was just an act.

A flash of something tall and lanky caught her attention, but it was just some random teenager kicking a skateboard along the sidewalk. Where was he, she wondered. Part of her wanted to worry, but she tuned it out.

Believe is seeing, she told herself. Just believe that Deron will walk around that corner and he will.

Any minute now.

Veneer - Part 8 - Russo

Previously: Veneer - Part 7

It smelled in Principal Ficcone’s office, smelled like some day-old deodorant mixed with burnt coffee. Russo crinkled his nose, tried to focus on breathing through his mouth. He shifted uncomfortably in one of the two leather chairs in front of the principal’s desk, even though it was made of leather and patterned in purple and silver after the school’s colors. The whole room was like that, professionally reconciled, from the yellow-white berber carpet to the virtual bookshelves on the wall. Someone had paid a lot of money to make this room like anything other than what it really was, a court room.

Not even a court room, thought Russo. That would have been more fair. Instead of the court’s seal hanging behind the desk, there were floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the front of campus. Instead of a jury box, there was a fish tank with a solitary beta in it, swimming back and forth for no reason, stuck in a prison within a prison. Rubbing at his nose, Russo looked over the fake diplomas and certificates on the walls, fake in the sense that there wasn’t really a frame or paper, just some good shadow work to make it look three-dimensional. None of the degrees gave Principal Ficcone the right to judge, which is what he did most often.

Russo slouched in his chair, tried to take his mind off the impending trial. No, a trial would have evidence, people would present cases. When the principal walked through that door, he would just hand down a sentence; the verdict had already been decided. His mind began replaying the day’s events. If this was about being late to school or getting in trouble with the police, Principal Ficcone had taken his sweet time coming up with a punishment. Besides that, he had stayed relatively clean since arriving. He hadn’t picked any fights, no new shops had been posted. Except…

Groaning, Russo put his hands to his face and tried to press away the indignation. So they were going to try to pin the latest shop on him. Sons of bitches, thought Russo. Why would he post a picture of himself like that? Were they just the dumbest school administrators ever? That was possible, considering the way they had treated him over the years. Principal Ficcone was a hit with parents, but Russo knew his secrets, knew he was just as human as anyone else. He probably thought he was doing good by punishing Russo, thought he was helping a troubled kid get back on the right track.

“Un-fucking likely,” said Russo, out loud.

When the door behind him opened, Russo turned to see Principal Ficcone and that waste of space Deron enter the room. Though his face was impassive, he could see the subtle alarm appear in his nemesis’ eyes when he saw who else was in the office.

“Please have a seat, Mr. Bishop.” Principal Ficcone moved behind his desk and sat down in the cushy, high-backed chair. He pawed at his desk, reconciled a portal on the seemingly wooden veneer.

Russo looked at Deron out of the corner of his eyes, daring that bastard to look over for just one second. Do it, he commanded mentally. Turn your fucking face so I can put my fist into it.

“Ah gentlemen, you know why we are here?” He had that look on his face, that smug I’m gonna fuck you sideways whether you cooperate or not kind of expression.

Of course, he only looked at Russo like that. When his gaze turned to Deron, suddenly he was all flowers and rainbows. Well, it wouldn’t last, not when he found out what Deron had done.

“This,” said the principal, pointing to a space on the wall. A classic Dali painting flickered and was replaced by the shopped imaged that had appeared on everyone’s locker. Someone had censored it with black bars before entering it in the school’s database. “I would like to know why you felt the entire student body should be exposed to this filth.”

“Don’t look at me,” sneered Russo, “ask him!”

“Mr. Bishop, unless this is an elaborate frame-up in which Mr. Rivera fabricated a compromising image of himself in an attempt to divert suspicion unto you, then you have to admit that the next reasonable source would be you. You two have been engaged in a feud since you first stepped foot on my campus.”

“What feud?” asked Deron. “He likes to make naked pictures of me and post them around the school. If that’s not love…”

Russo bit his lip. Always the fucking funny-man. It’d be harder for him to smile if he were missing all of his teeth.

Principal Ficcone sighed and leaned back in his chair. He eyed his students one at a time. “What am I going to do with you two?” Then, switching gears, he spoke directly to Deron. “To be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Bishop, I am pleased to see you fighting back after so many years of abuse. Unwarranted abuse, in my opinion.”

“Fuck you!” screamed Russo, in his head. The anger building inside was about to boil over, and he struggled to keep himself still. Attacking Deron or the principal now wouldn’t solve anything. It needed to be discreet, needed deniability.

“However, my personal feelings on this matter are irrelevant. It is my duty to keep the peace in my school, which is why I cannot allow this to go on any longer. I need both of you to understand that there will be no unauthorized reconciliation outside of normal classroom activities, pornographic or otherwise.”

“Or what?” asked Russo, surprising even himself.

“Excuse me, Mr. Rivera?”

Fuck it, might as well go for broke. “Or what? How are you going to punish him when he puts up another picture of me?” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Deron put his hands up in protest.

“I didn’t make that picture,” he whined.

“Who did what makes no difference now. And to answer your question, Mr. Rivera, the punishment for further disruptions will be made very clear to you at the appropriate time. I will tell you that this is the last time we will meet in this room to discuss this issue. From now on, I will have no choice but to include the authorities. And your parents.”

Deron winced. He was probably imagining what his mom would do to him, probably take away his video games or ground him, something ultimately harmless.

Russo looked down at his hands in his lap. He was clenching them into fists and releasing them. Concentrating on the simple act, he didn’t notice the minute of silence that went by. He looked up when he saw movement, Principal Ficcone standing and turning towards the window. Like a king surveying his kingdom, thought Russo, except that the emperor wasn’t wearing clothes, or at least, wouldn’t be in Jalay’s next shop.

“Sometimes I don’t know if you young people understand the gift you’ve been given.” The principal put his finger on the glass and reconciled an ornate floral design that spread out in waves and covered the entire window. “To be able to reconcile is to be able to change the world to your liking. You can create beauty. And you can create disgusting bastardizations of reality.” He motioned again to the shop on the wall. “Right now, you take this ability for granted. You think you have the right to reconcile anything you want, anywhere you want. But the sooner you learn that this isn’t true, the better off you will be. Reconciliation is an ability like any other. It can be learned. It can be forgotten.” He crossed his arms behind his back and sighed. “It can be taken away.”

The hell it could, thought Russo. Reconciliation was a basic part of human nature, usable by age six with the right guidance. It could be no more taken away than… He paused, his mind suddenly jumping back to the morning’s events. It was also impossible to see past the veneer, but some jackhole in a faded suit had done just that and with considerable ease.

“I see that bothers you, Mr. Rivera. You have never considered that possibility before, have you?”

“If it was true,” he replied, tightly.

“Were true,” corrected the principal. “Is true.” He turned once again towards the window. “If you asked someone a hundred years ago whether what we do would ever be possible, they would laugh at you. But here we are, using innate abilities to effect change. Think about what that means for just one minute and you’ll realize that your petty squabbles aren’t worth your effort. We do something now that people couldn’t do before. Think of what we’ll be able to do as our power grows.”

“How do you stop someone from reconciling?” asked Deron.

Principal Ficcone shrugged. “I’d be lying if I said I understood it fully. I’ve never known anyone who has been stripped. No one does.”

“Because it’s bull-spit,” said Russo, not willing to risk the profanity.

“It’s not because they don’t exist. It’s because they are no longer among us. The story as I’ve heard it is that once a person can no longer reconcile, they simply lose the will to live.” He sat down at his desk and folded his hands in front of him. “So you see, Mr. Rivera, unless you are a stronger person than those that have come before you, having your reconciliation power taken from you is, in actuality, a death sentence.”

Russo shook his head. “Nobody gets sentenced to death for pictures they didn’t even make. I haven’t made a single goddamn shop since you told me to stop a year ago. Check my palette, you won’t find any source material.”

“What about you?” asked the principal.

Deron answered meekly, “I’ve never created a fake picture.”

“So this is no longer about you two, is it? Your quarrel has spread to the masses, become a hobby for the great reconcilers to prove their worth.” Anger flashed across his face briefly. “You two sit back and get occasionally embarrassed while I’m the one who has to explain to angry parents why their child is being exposed to pornography. Or to the police why my halls are filled with kiddie porn! You are putting my job in jeopardy and I cannot allow that.” He squared his eyes at Russo. “So maybe they won’t take your power away for this, maybe you just pay a fine or spend some time behind bars, but you’re establishing a pattern Mr. Rivera, a pattern of abuse of your power. It all starts here.”

It was all posturing, Russo decided. Just sound and fury meant to keep him in line. But it wasn’t enough, wasn’t delivered from a formidable enough opponent. Principal Ficcone might be the big shit when it came to Easton Central High School, but off campus he was just another clueless adult that needed to die so that younger people like Russo could take over. His words were meaningless, just like school and all the people in it. High school would be over eventually, whether in spring or at the end of summer, it didn’t matter. It would be done and Russo would be free to pursue his own goals. Whatever they may be.

“Alright,” said Principal Ficcone. The portal on his desk had gone dim but it returned when he touched it lightly. He tapped a few virtual keys, before clearing the screen altogether. “Detention,” he proclaimed in an official voice, “both of you, two weeks.”
s
“The hell?!” Russo almost rushed the desk, but all that moved were his feet, shuffling backwards slightly.

“Language, Mr. Rivera.” Then to Deron, “You will serve your detention with the sophomore class. I won’t have you two antagonizing each other. Now, that is all, gentlemen. See Mrs. Rhodes about a permission slip and get back to class.”

Deron stood up and left immediately, but Russo approached the desk.

“Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Rivera?”

Russo leaned over slightly. “If anyone ever tries to take my power away, they better bring a fucking army.”

Principal Ficcone narrowed his eyes, but his face remained calm. “Three weeks detention,” he said.

“Fuck this,” said Russo. He turned and left the room, ignoring the principal’s extension of his sentence to four weeks. He grabbed the note from Mrs. Rhodes’ counter and walked quickly into the hallway. To his left, Deron was just turning the corner towards the cafeteria. He ran quickly to catch up with him, but when he made the corner, he saw Deron talking to the lunch monitor at the cafeteria doors. When he looked back, Russo pointed a finger at him. “We have business,” he warned, then turned and stalked angrily back to class.