Chương 10: Friends with Benefits

"Umm Cass, why are you staring at the tech kids table?" Mavis was giving me wary looks as we sat in our usual out of the way spot in the corner of the cafeteria. There was no flinging of feces or territorial fights, but the laws of the jungle were in full effect. Every table was its own little pod of teens trying to find some shallow sense of safety or belonging by huddling together while they ate what the school claimed was food.

"Because I need to talk to Orion," I said in a low voice, shoving a ketchup cracker in my mouth. Yeah, it was one of those days and they were best chewed as little as possible. I also forgot that Mavis really didn't need to know that information. In the words of Homer Simpson: D'oh! Her eyebrows shot up to the fiftieth floor.

"What did he do to deserve that?"

"Deserve what?" The words were muffled by the thick layer of wheat mush stuck to the roof of my mouth now, but I'm sure she understood all the same.

"I'm not going to attack him or anything." Talking to Mavis lately made me jumpy and defensive. Probably because she wouldn't be my friend anymore if she knew the real me. Mavis lifted a hand in the air like she was pointing to exhibit A.

"Because your verbal engagements usually result in the other party being left confused, humiliated, and mentally damaged." I took my time preparing my next cracker, spreading the ketchup on thick.

"True, I do talk to you a lot and you're pretty mentally damaged, so maybe you have a point." Oh great. I've sunk low enough to earn myself a place on a reality TV show. Just give me a glass of wine to throw and plug in some hair extensions on Mavis and we'll be ready for an epic cat fight. She looked down at her bento box of rice and vegetables with a stung look on her face.

"You've been acting so weird lately. I don't know what's gotten into you. It's like you're a different person." Mavis had no idea how true that was. But she really didn't want to know the new me, either. I shrugged my shoulders.

"I am trying to be different. I'm tired of being a walking middle finger to the world because not everyone out there is bad. You were the one to tell me to be nicer and let people help me. Well here I go." Her shoulders shrank and I could see her hand move under the table.

"I wanted you to be a better person, not a different person. I'm not sure who you are anymore."

"Well, I'll tell you," I stood up, stuffing my empty cracker packets into my brown paper bag.

"I am the type of person who is going to go have a pleasant conversation with my good friend Oren over there about if he can fix Gran's blender, so you are going to feel pretty foolish."

"His name is Orion," she grumbled.

"That's what I said. Orion."

"Fine, just go." Mavis pushed off her bench, gathered her things, and walked toward the cafeteria door. I shoved my bag into the trash and then made my way to the Isle of Nerds. If I'd had a class with Orion, I would have tried to corner him there. But then, since this might end up being a long-term partnership, perhaps it would be more suspicious if I tried to keep it secret. Maybe it was time for the school to see me interact in a positive way with more than one person.

Especially if that person decided she never wanted to be friends with me ever again. The jocks were psyching themselves up for tonight's game, too busy to mock me as I passed their table. Orion stood king of the tech geeks, holding up some homemade drone that he had brought which had them in awe like cavemen with a wheel. They didn't even turn their heads as I reached the table and was left standing awkwardly behind them. A Sophomore boy with red hair slapped his hand on the table.

"I'm telling you the propellers would generate much more lift with a combustion engine instead of this battery-powered one!" His voice rang out high and nasal. Calm down there, Elon Musk. Orion calmly leaned forward and began to explain something about the weight of extra fuel and the efficiency of the new solid state batteries when combined with a solar panel casing. The whole table nodded along but the red head took out a calculator, desperate to prove his failing point.

Orion was really in his element here; they would undoubtedly vote for him to be the CEO of their future tech start up. I leaned forward and tapped on his shoulder.

"Hey Orion, could I talk to you for a moment?" Every freckled, pimpled, and bespectacled face, who had all been arguing a moment before, immediately went silent and stared. Orion turned around and looked at me like I was a problem he couldn't figure out. He slowly nodded. I waited for him to get up and come talk with me somewhere, he sat there and waited for me to say something. The nerds just leaned in and looked at me like I was almost as interesting as the drone on the table.

"Umm could we talk privately?" I asked. That was apparently the wrong thing to say because as Orion shrugged and stood up, the rest of the table had their jaws on the ground. As I turned to walk away with him into the hall, I heard a whispered conversation.

"I can't believe a girl came over to our table."

"Ben, I'm a girl!"

"Yeah, Becky, but you don't count." Becky's shouts rose increasingly high into the air as I pushed open the exit door. The last we heard before the door shut was Brandon Meat Tower yelling out, "Nerd fight!" —------ People who say honesty is the best policy probably didn't have anything interesting happening in their lives. Or important. I was going to have to tell a lot of lies to make this work and I was on board.

Orion and I turned down a corridor and then I stopped him, shoes squeaking loudly against the paved floor.

"So I remembered that you offered to test out that Terminator arm on me about a month ago." The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"That's not really what it wa-""Clearly, I don't need it anymore." I wobbled my arm in perfect working order for him.

"But I might have a need for something else." If I was a problem he couldn't figure out before, I had now graduated to rocket science.

"Okay?" I leaned onto a locker, getting cozy.

"See, the word on the street is that you're like some kind of engineering genius." Always good to butter someone up with compliments, I'd learned that from watching comedy shows and political interviews.

"Like you've probably already got gadgets for teleportation and you're just waiting for the right time to reveal them to the world, amirite?" I nudged him with an elbow. Orion looked at me with a flat expression. Okay, maybe comedy shows lied about that.

"Anyhoo, I really don't need much. It's just that I've- I started a new job and it's in this janky neighborhood- lots of litter, lots of cats yowling wherever you go, you know- and I just don't feel very safe walking home at night after my shift. So I was wondering if you had anything that might help with that?" His eyes were looking to the side then, eyebrows drawn together and lips pursed, as if he were going through an invisible roster of items.

"What are you looking for: weapons or escape tools?" I filled my mouth up with air, then blew it out slowly.

"I'm not totally sure, can you give me some examples?" He pushed his glasses up and smiled slightly. You could feel the nerd excitement emanating out with a sonic boom.

"Come with me." His long stride quickly lead the way to an empty lab at the end of the second floor hallway. He pulled out a set of keys and unlocked the door.

"Don't only teachers have keys to the classrooms and labs?" I asked while looking around at all the tables covered in electronics and half-built gadgets.

"I made myself a set at the start of the year. They don't give us enough time to meet for tech club and I don't have any of this equipment at home, so I often just skip classes to come here and work." His voice was distracted as he opened up a drawer in the back and started rummaging through it.

"Oh." I sat on a table, shoving my hands into my jacket pockets.

"You want to give me some tips on how to do that without failing? I could have used this technique starting back in kindergarten." He looked up at me.

"I have an IQ of 150. That's the strategy. Be intelligent." I grimaced, snapping my fingers.

"Well, missed the boat on that one, I guess." Orion's hand finally emerged, clutching another set of keys.

"I've been testing out of classes for a long time now. The school really wants to be able to name me as one of its alumni, especially with the competitions I win." He turned around and began working the key into the door of a large locker.

"So, I worked out a deal with my teachers where as long as I turn in my work on time, they let me do whatever I want." He opened the double doors to reveal multiple shelves filled with wires, batteries, and what looked to be the dismembered body parts of robots. You know, like a serial killer but with a geeky edge. At least there was no need for glass jars.

"So," He turned to me with an eyebrow raised.

"What did you have in mind?" My eyes scanned the shelves, trying to find something familiar, but it all just looked like the remains of R2D2 as far as I was concerned.

"I'm really not up to date on the whole defensive weaponry market, so maybe you could show me some of them?" His hand reached in and came back with a small object.

"So, this might look like regular pepper spray, but it has a tiny wind/direction sensor and a one way shielded nozzle so the spray disperses more predictably downrange." I took it in my hands, studying it.

"Hmm, something tells me I would still just end up spraying it in my face. Got anything else?" He picked out a long black flashlight.

"Obviously you can use this as a blunt object, as well as being helpful in the dark, but I've also placed two light settings with an additional strobe attachment. So, shine the light directly into their eyes, the bright strobe will temporarily blind them, possibly even sending them into a seizure." I tapped a finger on my chin.

"Like the kind caused by certain Japanese animes?" He nodded.

"Yes, like that."

"Oh man." My hand dragged through my hair.

"I don't know if my family has the legal backup to deal with the possible lawsuits that could come from that. I can't exactly have a warning message about potential seizures flash before I blind them, can I? What about something that just kind of allows me to make an escape without necessarily crippling the guy?" Orion held up a finger, thinking for a moment. Then he reached up high to the top shelf and brought down what looked like a black hairspray can.

"Smoke bombs. Pull the ring, it ignites an interior flame, smoke erupts clouding the area, allowing you to run away." I took it in my hand, then nodded.

"Okay, that seems simple enough for us non-150 IQers."

"But," Orion stared up at the ceiling, thinking.

"That might be pointless if the guy does get you in a chokehold or something. You should really use something defensive." I held up both hands.

"Yeah, look I'm all on board as long as it doesn't put me in jail." He picked out what looked like a magician's wand from a shelf. With a flick of his wrist, it telescoped out and a loud click was heard as it locked in place. He held it out to me and I took it. It was made of a dense metal, about the weight of a car jack.

"So, just hit someone with it?"

"You can do that, but also-" He pointed to the tip where I saw small metal points emerging.

"There's an electrical current running through the nodes at the tip. It's not deadly, but if you hit someone with it, the shock should cause their muscles to seize up and they will probably lose bladder control." Ah, I was going to make a new horde of Captain Pee Pants. Well, if they were going to commit crimes, they were going to deserve it. I slid off the table.

"Okay, yeah that should do the job. Umm." My smile soured as I realized he probably wasn't going to give me this for free. And I didn't have an actual job to pay for this.

"Can we figure out a payment plan or something?" He stared at me for a bit.

"Actually, I just need something in exchange. There is one area in school that I need some help with- it's English papers. Strangely, the education system insists that brilliant engineers must have knowledge of literary books written a hundred years ago. I have no idea why."

"Oh well," I smiled in relief.

"I can help you there. I like to rebel against conformity by reading those books for fun." He nodded.

"Great, how about Mondays during lunch? All I need is a rundown of the book and maybe you can coach me through the writing?"

"Deal. What book are you on right now?" He rolled his eyes.

"It's a play. The Glass Menagerie." I shrugged, looking up.

"Ah, I mean- there's good stuff in there. All of the ways people try to escape reality, what that escape gets you. Maybe a little heavy on the jonquil mentions."

"Yeah, well-" He shook his head.

"The majority of instruction manuals are more interesting than that." I crossed my arms in front of me.

"So why are you making all of these weapons, anyway?" His eyes go wide, almost offended.

"Why not?" I nodded.

"Good point. Well, thanks for the stuff." I start packing the baton and smoke bomb into my backpack.

"This will make me feel a lot better when walking home."

"Yeah, anytime. Hope you don't have to use them." A loud ZRRRP sound filled the room as I zipped up my backpack, then swung it over one shoulder.

"You know, weirdly, I'm kind of looking forward to it. I think I want to see someone's face when they try to hurt me and they're just left with a cloud of smoke and their own urine puddle."

"It's the ideal outcome to just about any situation." Orion opened the door. Lunch was almost over and the hallway was now thronging with people. A few of them watch us come out of the room, but mostly they're busy talking to each other.

"Well, see ya," I say, about to walk off when I caught Brandon staring at us with a smirk on his Neanderthal face.

"Hey look, Zero's got a new boyfriend." I rolled my eyes, and continued walking away from him.

"I'm going to tell Colin you're cheating on him!" he yelled out, and I heard some of his friends feigning heartbreak. I walked with my head held high, back straight because I was no longer a zero. And if Meathead ever knew who I really was, he would think twice before messing with me.