Breakfast was a family thing in the Danvers house, and Claire actually kind of looked forward to it. She didn't often make it back for lunch or dinner, but every morning she sat with her mom and dad. Mom asked her about classes; Dad asked her about her job. Claire didn't know how other families in Morganville worked, but hers seemed pretty . . . normal. At least in the abstract. The specifics were bound to be freaky.
Breakfast over (and, as always, delicious), Claire headed out for school. Morganville was a small-enough town that walking was easy, if you liked that sort of thing, and Claire did - usually. Today, with her gross-looking face throbbing with the heat of the sun, she wished she'd taken up her dad's offer of buying her a car, even if it had come with the attached strings of also seeing a lot less of her boyfriend. She hadn't told Shane that he meant more to her than having a car. That seemed like commitment any guy would find scary.
Claire stopped in at the first open store - Pablo's Market, near the university district - and found a black cloth cap with a brim that shaded her face. That helped, and it made her feel a bit less obviously disfigured . . . until she heard a horn honk behind her, and looked over her shoulder to see a red convertible gliding up next to her on the street.
Claire turned face-forward and kept walking. Faster.
"What is it?" she heard a voice ask from the backseat of the car. Gina or Jennifer; Claire could never tell their voices apart. "It looks kind of human."
"I don't know. Zombie? We've had zombies here, right?" Gina (or Jennifer)'s vocal twin said. "Could be a zombie. Hey, how do you kill a zombie?"
"Cut its head off," a third voice said. There was no doubt about whom that voice belonged to, no doubt at all: Monica. It was cool, confident, and commanding. "Let's find the brain-freak and ask her - she'd know. Hey, zombie chick. Have you seen Claire Danvers, Girl Brain?"
Claire flipped her off and kept walking. Monica - black-haired again, no doubt looking shiny and pretty - was just a vague shadow in her peripheral vision, and Claire wanted to keep it that way.
And she knew, fatalistically, that it was never going to happen.
In fact, Monica didn't like being flipped off. She accelerated the sports car, whipped it around the corner, and came to a hard stop to block Claire's progress across the street. Monica and Gina snapped at each other, probably arguing about the specifics of how to kick Claire's ass without breaking a nail or scuffing a shoe.
Claire gave it up and crossed the street.
Monica threw the car into reverse, and blocked her there, too.
They played the game two more times, back and forth, before Claire finally just stopped and stood there, staring at Monica.
Who laughed. "Oh my God, it is the brain-freak. You know freak is only an expression, right? You didn't actually have to become a circus attraction just for me."
"It's the new thing. High-speed tanning. I'm on the way to an awesome summer glow; you should try it," Claire said. Jennifer actually laughed. She looked immediately guilty. "I'm going to be late for class."
"Good. That'll move the bell curve back toward the middle."
"Only if you actually attended to drag it down."
"Ooooh, zing," Monica said. "I'm crushed, because brains are my only asset. No, wait - that would be you, right?"
Claire sighed. "What do you want?" Because it was kind of obvious they wanted something - and probably something other than just the daily harassment. Monica had worked at cutting her off, after all, and Monica just didn't do work.
"I need a tutor," Monica said. "I don't get this economics bullshit. There are fractions and stuff."
Economics, in Claire's opinion, was voodoo science, but she shrugged. Math was math. "Okay. Tomorrow. Fifty bucks, and before we get into it, I won't take a test for you, steal the answers, or come up with some high-tech way for you to cheat."
Monica raised her perfect eyebrows. "You do know me."
"Yes or no."
"Fine."
"Common Grounds, three o'clock. You buy the mocha."
"Greedy little bitch," Monica said. Business deal concluded, she flipped Claire off with a perfectly manicured finger, smiled, and said, "You look like shit. Love the hat - where'd you get it, Cousin Cletus on the short bus?"
Their laughter lingered, along with the exhaust, as the three girls sped off on their usual mission of chaos and destruction.
Claire took a deep breath, pulled the hat down lower over her face, and went across the street to enter the gates of Texas Prairie University.
Claire loved classes. Oh, not the actual lectures, really - professors were, as a rule, not that exciting in person. But the knowledge. That was right there for the taking, as much as you could grab and hold on to - more than you ever wanted, in some classes.
Like English Lit, which she still didn't know why she had to take, and which was her last class of the day. It wasn't as if the Bront? sisters were going to make a difference in her daily life, right? Not like math, which was underneath everything from cooking to construction to going to the moon. No, science was definitely cooler.
At least until today, when her attention was temporarily pulled in by the class assignment.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.