“You tell me,” she said, pulling a fresh length from the roll of tape, “you’re the one with all the problems.”
Alex almost got mad. That would not have been a good idea, even if Margot was working in Michael’s class as an aide today, and therefore obligated to be more tolerant than normal. He’d had the bad luck to spar with her, just once, in Mitsuru’s class. He’d broken his arm blocking her first kick. Her second kick had been aimed at his head — at least he thought so, because of the concussion he’d received as a result. On the upside, he couldn’t actually remember anything else about the fight. He was about to say something obnoxious, then he noticed the tension in her movements, the slight indications of a frown of her face, and he remembered where she lived and got a little worried.
“Have you, uh — have you been back long enough to see Eerie?” he asked, looking away, trying hard to sound casual.
“I have.”
He waited a moment, but Margot appeared to be absorbed in wrapping his hand.
“Yeah?” Alex prompted. “How is she? We keep… not running into each other, I guess.”
Margot turned his hand and pushed his thumb up, so that she could put extra tape along the edges of his knuckles, where the impact would be the greatest.
“My understanding is that you suck,” Margot said blithely. “That’s what I hear.”
“Oh. Um.”
“Right,” Margot agreed, though he didn’t think he’d said anything that she could agree with. “That’s about the impression I get, too, so I can’t say I’m unhappy that Eerie is coming around.”
“She’s angry with me,” Alex said slowly.
Margot paused, the roll of tape hanging from one of his hands, and glared at him, but he didn’t think she was actually that mad.
“She said you guys made out once, week before last, and then you haven’t spoken to her since, even though both of you are in homeroom together.” Even as oblivious as he was, Alex couldn’t help but notice the envy in the last part of the sentence. He was a bit surprised. He never would have thought that Margot would have been the type to miss school. “She says every time she sees you, you’re with Emily, being all cutesy. What exactly did you think I was going to say, Alex?”
Alex sighed, and tried not to hear the other kids behind him snickering and gossiping about what they had overhead. Margot finished the wrap on his right hand, testing the tape to see if it was thick enough, smooth enough to satisfy her. Apparently it was satisfactory, because she reached for the gloves sitting on top of his gym bag. They were light, mutant things, bulbous on the outside but almost nonexistent on the inside, leaving the fingers and thumb free for grappling, but offering a couple inches worth of padding over the knuckles and the back of the hand.
“Pretty much exactly what you said, but maybe angrier,” Alex admitted, holding out his hand so she could work the left glove over the tape.
Margot appeared to think about it while she did the same to his right hand.
“I’m not that angry, because I don’t think that much of you,” Margot said casually, a thin, polite smile on her face. “I don’t like seeing Eerie with you. Emily is vapid and weak, so I don’t really care what you do with her. But the idea of you and Eerie, well, I don’t approve. Getting close to Emily might be the first thing you’ve done since you showed up that I can support. Keep it up. Eerie will get over you eventually, I’m sure.”
“Hey!” Alex objected. “Maybe I deserve some of that. But it was a little harsh, don’t you think? I mean, I do like her…”
Margot shrugged. She’d let Eerie cut off her hair, right before she started field study, and he was still trying to get used to it. It was a little ragged around the nape of her neck, but it didn't look bad. Still, Alex had to give it up to anyone brave enough to let Eerie get near their face with scissors.
“Not harsh enough, I guess,” Margot said, looking away, her expression terse and strained. “You know I live with her, right?”
“Well, yeah…”
Margot sighed deeply.
“You want to see her?”
“Wait, what?” Alex asked, scratching his head with one gloved hand. “I thought you said I sucked?”
“You do, but that girl is raving mad,” Margot said, looking at him briefly, and then hesitating. “Look, I can get you in, tonight, after dinner. Do you want to or not?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Okay. Then meet me outside the library after dinner. Wait on the back steps. When I’m sure everything is cool, I’ll come for you.”
The plan puzzled him, and he opened his mouth to tell Margot as much, to say that her time with Audits had made her paranoid, but she turned and walked away before he had the chance, striding off toward Katya who was patiently waiting her turn to be taped up. Alex looked automatically for the bouncing pigtails that were no longer there as Margot walked past him, and for a second, he felt a kind of giddy happiness at the thought of seeing Eerie. Then he remembered all the weird things that he had done, that he would have to answer for, and his apprehension returned. He wasn’t exactly sure how long Michael stood there, just off to his side, waiting for him to notice.
“Hi,” Alex said sheepishly. “Sorry. I was thinking.”
“Wouldn’t want to interrupt that,” Michael said, wearing his usual implacable grin. “But anytime you’re feeling up for it, I know this Muy Thai instructor who’s just dying to meet you.”
“Right,” Alex said, grabbing his headgear and mouthpiece from the gym bag. “I thought it had been a long time since someone kicked my ass.”
Michael clapped him on the back as he led him along, toward one of the gym’s three elevated boxing rings, and laughed. He wore a white t-shirt and board shorts, and as always, Alex was profoundly envious of his physique — Michael looked, more or less, as if someone had carved one of those ancient Greek statues of the gods out of some kind of lustrous, dark wood, then added dreadlocks and black tattoo work for good measure. He was easily the most popular teacher on staff, the best physical trainer and protocol instructor, and the most patient man Alex had ever met. Michael was also the object of more than a few crushes from students in the combat program, some of whom stared jealously as he walked Alex across the room.
“Thanks for not letting Margot do it,” Alex said tensely, biting down experimentally on his mouthpiece, a nervous habit he seemed to have picked up lately. “I think she might have tried to kill me.”
“I’m not a sadist, son,” Michael said, looking surprised. “This isn’t the Program. I wouldn’t do that shit to you. I’m trying to make you better, that’s all. I don’t like seeing people get hurt, much less my students.”
“I think you’re the only one here who feels that way,” Alex said gratefully. “I can’t decide whether it was better when Miss Aoki was in charge or Miss Gallow, but they’re both pretty awful, aren’t they?
For a second, as they approached the side of the ring, Michael looked so unhappy that Alex couldn’t believe it. Then it was over, so fast and out of character that he found himself doubting that he’d seen it all. Nothing, after all, bothered Michael, not like that.
“Yes,” he said, grinning. “But let’s get back to the job at hand, alright? The last time we did this, every time you clenched, you let him get you in a Thai plum,” Michael said, putting his hands on the back of Alex’s neck, fingers interlocked, to illustrate. “Then he can hit you with knees all day, son. You have to keep him outside, work your jab and throw some low kicks, keep him cautious. You have reach, I keep telling you, but it’s no good to you if you don’t use it.”
Alex nodded, put in his mouthpiece, strapped on his headgear, and clambered through the ropes, thinking all the while that Michael could have been talking about a lot more than just his reach.
15
Alice was in her diary room, printing the day’s events in laborious capital letters into a red leather book with cream-colored paper, a cup of coffee she had forgotten about an hour ago sitting, ice-cold, next to her elbow. All around her on the old writing desk, similar red and black leather-bound volumes lay in haphazard stacks and piles;
