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“I mean, she cares about really important stuff. About political stuff. About global warming and worker rights and gay rights, and I think she thinks the stuff I care about is for kids.”
“Not everyone’s like Daneca,” I say.
“No one is like Daneca.” Sam has that slightly dazed look of a man in love. “I think it’s hard for her, you know. Because she cares so much, and most people barely care at all. Including me, I guess.”
Daneca used to annoy me with all her bleeding-heart crap. I figured there was no point in changing a world that didn’t want to be changed. But I don’t think that Sam would appreciate me saying that out loud. And I don’t even know if I believe it anymore.
“Maybe you could change her mind about the horror genre,” I say instead. “You know, show her some classic stuff. Rent Frankenstein. Do a dramatic reading of ‘The Raven.’ Ladies love ‘Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul has spoken!’ Who can resist that?”
Sam doesn’t even smile.
“Okay,” I say, holding up my hands in the universal sign of surrender. “I’ll stop.”
“No, it’s funny,” he says. “It’s not you. I just can’t—”
“Mr. Yu! Mr. Sharpe,” Ms. Logan says, coming up the center aisle to sit right behind us. She puts her finger to her lips. “Don’t make me separate you.”
That thought is humiliating enough that we’re quiet through Dean Wharton’s long list of things we will be punished for—a list that ranges from drinking, drugs, and being caught in the dorm room of someone of the opposite sex, to skipping class, sneaking out after hours, and wearing black lipstick. The sad truth is that there is probably at least one person in each graduating class who’s managed to break all the rules in a single wild night. I am really hoping that, this year, that person is not going to be me.
I don’t look all that good in lipstick.
* * *
Daneca finds us on the way to dinner. She’s got her curly brown hair divided into seven thick braids, each one ending in a wooden bead. The collar of her white dress shirt is open, to show seven jade amulets—protection against the seven types of curse work. Luck. Dreams. Physical. Emotion. Memory. Death. Transformation. I gave her the stones for her last birthday, just before the end of junior year.
Amulets are made by curse workers of the type the amulet is supposed to protect against. Only stone seems able to absorb magic, and even then it will work only once. A used stone—one that has kept a curse from its wearer—cracks instantly. Since there are very few transformation workers in the world—perhaps one a decade—real transformation amulets are rare. But Daneca’s transformation amulet is the real thing. I know; I made it myself.
She has no idea.
“Hey,” she says, bumping her shoulder against Sam’s arm. He puts his arm around her.
We walk into the cafeteria like that.
It’s our first night back, so there are tablecloths and a rose with some baby’s breath in little vases on all the tables. A few parents of new students hang around marveling at the high paneled ceiling, the stern portrait of Colonel Wallingford presiding over us, and our ability to eat food without smearing it all over ourselves.
Tonight’s entree is salmon teriyaki with brown rice and carrots. For dessert, cherry crumble. I poke at my carrots. Daneca starts with dessert.
“Not bad,” she pronounces. And with absolutely no segue she launches into an explanation of how this year it’s going to be really important for HEX to get out the word about Proposition 2. About some rally happening next week. How prop two augurs a more invasive government, and some other stuff I tune out.
I look over at Sam, ready to exchange a conspiratorial glance, but he is hanging on her every word.
“Cassel,” she says. “I know you’re not listening. The vote is in November. This November. If Proposition 2 passes, then workers are going to be tested. Everyone will be. And no matter how much the government of New Jersey says it is going to keep that information anonymous, it’s not. Soon workers are going to be refused jobs, denied housing, and locked up for the crime of being born with a power they didn’t ask for.”
“I know,” I say. “I know all that. Could you try to be a little less condescending? I know.”
She looks, if possible, even more annoyed. “This is your life we’re talking about.”
I think of my mother and Clyde Austin. I think of Barron. I think of me and all the harm I’ve done. “Maybe workers should all be locked up,” I say. “Maybe Governor Patton is right.”
Sam frowns.
I shove a big hunk of salmon into my mouth so I can’t say anything else.
“That’s ridiculous,” Daneca says after she recovers from her shocked silence.
I chew.
She’s right, of course. Daneca’s always right. I think of her mother—a tireless advocate and one of the founders of the worker-rights youth group, HEX—and of Chris, that poor kid staying at her house, with nowhere else to go and maybe no legal reason to be allowed to stay. His parents kicked him out because they thought workers were all like me. There are workers who aren’t con artists, workers who don’t want anything to do with organized crime. But when Daneca thinks of workers, she thinks of her mother. When I think of workers, I think of mine.
