Chapter 2: On the subject of normal

Richard must have been seriously sick because he missed a third day of school. His mom seemed intent on not giving us any details, so we were left to speculate about what was wrong.

"Betcha he's been turned into a vampire and can't come out in the sunlight anymore," said Matt.

"Of course, that's much more reasonable than, say, pneumonia."

"Or he can come out into the sunlight, but he's way too embarrassed by all the sparkling," Matt continued.

"Twilight reference?" I asked rhetorically.

"Or he's still transforming? How long does it take to turn?" he asked.

"Well, Jesus took three days to come back from death. Sounds reasonable enough," I said.

"Yeah, but Jesus isn't REAL," said Matt, with a grin.

"And vampir-"

"Of course vampires are real!" cut in Matt.

Kidding about vampires aside, illness is another issue of mine. I can't get sick. Well, I can, I suppose, but it takes a lot of effort. My human body is made out of matter that doesn't exist in the same way normal matter does. I need to be mentally present in order to hold my body together. If I leave, so to speak, then my body will instantly dissipate. I can create a complex human body and I can create a tennis ball, but I cannot do both at once. I can only be present with one piece of matter at a time.

Blunt-force trauma is easy enough to emulate. The only problem with blunt-force trauma is blood. The second I'm no longer in physical contact with my fake blood, it dissipates as though it never existed to begin with. The easiest way to deal with this shortcoming was to have my fake bone marrow create real blood. It takes some prep-work, but I am able to bleed like a regular human being.

The problem with illness is that it is draining to keep a virus or bacterium alive. My fake cells don't make good hosts for illness because they're too unstable. Bacteria that can't stay alive from the immediate ecology of whatever food I've eaten will starve to death, while viruses using my own cells to replicate, will die as they try to spread.

This sounds awesome. In reality, however, it is one more item on a long list of things that made me different.

Kerry was waiting for us again as we arrived at school that morning. I'd managed to avoid her again yesterday after lunch. Learning that she wasn't finished with all of her Tom-involved drama made me want to keep my distance. Part of that was because Tom could be a bit of a bully and I didn't need to deal with that. Also, part of me knew that nothing good would come from involving myself with Kerry.

Another part of me couldn't help but notice just how attractive Kerry was. This, more than anything else, convinced me that I was being infested with their brand of insanity. Insanity, after all, was a condition I knew I wasn't immune to.

Insanity transcends humanity.

Today she wasn't waving. She looked a bit more solemn.

"Simon, can we talk?"

"Welp! I'm out!" exclaimed Matt as he rushed past Kerry.

"Sure," I answered hesitantly.

"I hope you didn't believe Sarah yesterday," said Kerry, trying to cut past the nonsense, "That bitch was lying!" Kerry seemed angry. Properly angry.

I scolded myself for feeling happy at this newest revelation. Why should I care whether or not she was involved with somebody else.

"So," I said, thinking about what else Sarah had told me, "she's not single then?" I asked.

I don't know where I caught the bad habit of finding an enraged wildcat and, instead of running for dear life as was sensible, poking at it with a stick.

Kerry deflated for a moment, "Wait ... what?"

"She said she was single now. I guess she was lying."

"I thought," Kerry paused, "I thought she said I was doing, um, unspeakable things with Tom."

I was about to tell her that Sarah had indeed said that as well, but then I thought better of it. There was no need to further antagonize their relationship. Finding out that Kerry hadn't been having some intimate one-on-one time with Tom put me in a deplorably good mood. Somehow Kerry was slipping under my guard. The surprising part was that it had taken her just one day to do it.

I shrugged.

"Oh god!" said Kerry, looking mortified, "I already yelled at her. Now who's the bitch?"

She quickly ran off, "See you at lunch!" she yelled as she disappeared.

My first class was History and, as usual, Derrick sat next to me. Like me, Derrick was a nobody. He was the perfectly normal type of kid who would, in theory, fit in just fine with the in-crowd. Like so many 15-year-olds, he suffered from acne, which in turn, was probably what made him really shy around girls. Being shy is the best way I know of to keep yourself firmly secured as a nobody.

We shared a common social status and though we weren't really friends, we would routinely team up whenever the teacher said something like, "Find a partner and construct three arguments in favour of the native population and three arguments for the French settlers."

This is, coincidentally, exactly what we were told to do that day. It was more of an exercise in wasting time, than it was a means by which to learn the material, so we finished before the allotted time was up. There was literally a section in the textbook titled, "Complaints of the First Nations." Another titled, "The Settler's Rights." A third titled, "The Metis Peoples." Not exactly rocket science.

"Are you seeing Kerry?" asked Derrick. I should learn never to underestimate the effectiveness of gossip.

"I don't know. It's complicated."

"Wow."

"What?" I asked.

"I. Well. No offence. I didn't know you even knew her," he answered.

"Talked to her for the first time, like, two days ago."

"And you're dating?"

"No. It's complicated."

"Fine. Fine. Two days to go from never talking to 'it's complicated' – still impressive."

"Impressive or confusing?" I asked.

"Both!" he answered, then added, "But mostly just impressive"

Dick was still going to be absent during Math class so I had prepared myself for another boring class. I hadn't counted on Sarah. Sarah usually sat at the back of class and it was only the occasional giggle that passed between her and her friend Katie which gave any hint they were there at all. Today, however, she sat in Dick's empty seat.

Apprehension rose in me when I sat down.

"Hi Simon," she said as I sat down.

I returned a gruff, "Hi."

I turned to look at Katie who looked decidedly dejected and lonely without her usual math companion.

"Going to leave Katie alone back there?" I asked in what I knew was a futile effort to get Sarah back to her usual seat.

She waved her hand, "Yeah. She's fine," then she added, "This'll help us concentrate."

The lecture was fine. Sarah, evidentially bored by the teacher's droning, glanced my way every 15 seconds. I did my best impression of a student absorbed entirely in the lecture. The first half of class was always lecture and the second half was always time to ask questions and start the homework.

It took me longer to write out the solutions than it did to come up with them. I generally finished my homework for the next day while still in class.

Today, however, Sarah was full of questions. In fairness to her, they did seem like genuine questions and they were related to the subject material. We were solving linear systems, but it seemed to me that Sarah didn't really grasp how an equation and a line on a piece of paper are related. To most humans, the two-dimensional representation of a line is a line. Instead of trying to get her to solve the practice problems I tried to explain how an equation (like 5 = 2y – x) and this particular line (which I drew for her on a Cartesian plane) are actually the exact same geometric thing. One doesn't make the other. They're not mysteriously related. The equation isn't instructions on how to draw the line. They're just two ways of looking at the same thing.

Enough Math. By the end of class, I think she finally understood. She did seem genuinely thankful, so I was glad to have helped. I didn't really care that I was now fulfilling the nerdy stereotype perfectly. If eating a sandwich by myself in front of the locker could somehow lead to me being paradoxically more popular, then being 'outed' as a nerd would only serve to put me right back where I belonged.

Class was just about over when Sarah asked me, "Why didn't you tell Kerry what I really said?"

She seemed surprised to find herself being so forward with me.

"You hate Kerry because-"

"I don't hate her!" she interrupted.

"Fine. Your thing with Kerry is because of Tom," I said and she nodded, "Kerry, I think, is pissed because boys can't take 'no' for an answer and girls blame her for a problem she can't fix."

I gave her a moment to let Kerry's side of things sink in a little.

"I think you'll agree that neither of those things have anything to do with me and yet somehow both of you have made it at least somewhat about me."

Sarah studied me for a moment, and then persisted, "Fine. So why lie to her?"

"Because now it is just about you, Tom, and Kerry again."

"No it's not," she responded, "I don't care about Tom."

I looked at her a bit incredulously, "So what then? It's just about you and Kerry?"

"Yes. She's the one who betrayed me!"

I kind of understood where she was coming from. I was more inclined to believe Kerry's side of the story. Sarah's logic really didn't really seem to stand up to much scrutiny. Using a similar tone of voice as I was using while teaching her math, I said, "Okay. Let's consider."

She gave me a weird look but kept listening.

"Why would Kerry betray you?"

"I don't know! Ask her." She answered.

Ignoring her retort, I continued, "People always have a reason for doing something. It can be a really dumb reason, but they've almost always got one. Do you think, for example, that Kerry thought to herself, 'I wonder what I could do to upset Sarah today? I know! Maybe I'll go kiss her boyfriend and then she'll be totally pissed.' Would Kerry do that to you? Did you do anything that would make her want to hurt you?"

It was a leading question. By conceding that she hadn't done anything wrong, she was also conceding that Kerry hadn't kissed Tom with the intention to hurt her.

"No. I didn't do anything."

"Okay. So how about this reason. Maybe she's always had a crush on Tom and thought it would be worth betraying you in order to be with him."

"Yeah. Maybe," answered Sarah.

"Fine," I said, "But then it would probably follow that she wouldn't just ignore Tom thereafter. Having acquired her prize at the price of your friendship, she wouldn't just throw the prize away would she?"

"I don't know..." she said, starting to sound unsure of herself.

I needed her to be unsure of herself because it was the only way I was going to get her to accept she may have been wrong about what happened between Kerry and Tom.

"Instead, not only is Kerry not even friends with Tom, she now has a whole group of friends that aren't really talking to her. She has you really mad at her and she didn't get anything out of it. To all intents and purposes ... she started this thing with you having already lost."

"Well-" Sarah started.

This time I interrupted, "Or, maybe that's not what happened. Maybe Kerry isn't a complete idiot. Maybe she wouldn't betray you."

"But she-"

"What if this is all Tom's fault?" I asked.

"What?"

"No. Seriously. Think about it, at least Tom has motive" I stated.

"Well." Sarah hesitated.

"It was Kerry that told you about the kiss wasn't it?" I asked, then continued before she had time to answer, "Why wasn't it Tom who told you? What was he hiding?"

"I don't kn-" started Sarah, but I interrupted again.

"What if Tom kissed her and not the other way around? Even worse, what if Kerry's not the first one he's cheated on you with? What else was he hiding? What if Kerry was your only friend that was honest about it?" I asked.

"I-"

"And think about it. What does Tom have to gain? Imagine he'd been able to get both you and Kerry? That's good bragging rights at the very least."

Sarah suddenly looked a bit scandalized.

I continued, "Have any of Tom's friends stopped hanging out with him? Not that I've seen. He probably got a good pat on the back. So while you and Kerry are fighting and causing a ruckus, Tom gets away scot-free. He's probably laughing about it with his friends right now."

Sarah stared at me. I stared back. I knew blaming it all on Tom was pseudo-intellectual tripe at best, but I never really liked him. I let the silence thicken between us until I could physically feel it.

"I should have listened to my mom, she never liked him anyway," said Sarah, the hurt and anger evident in her voice.

I nodded.

"It's probably not Kerry's fault at all then!" said Sarah. She looked both happy and outraged. She wanted to be friends with Kerry. Now she could do it without having her pride hurt. Now she could comfortably blame it all on Tom.