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20

Prom

May 2006

Jules never cared about being popular. Greer pretended she didn’t, and Jack tried not to care, and Dale thought he was, and Carter and Eli, well, they actually were, but Jules, she just wanted to be Jules. And she was good at it. All through elementary school, no one ever batted an eye at how Jules walked through the world, often in mismatched shoes, always with several bows holding back her dark hair. She was perpetually covered in poetry and doodles, her skin just a canvas for haikus about her hatred of artichokes or a badly drawn homage to her pet frogs. Until puberty, that kind of thing was allowed. But when she finally joined the others in high school, the rules changed and no one had informed Jules. Frankly, she wouldn’t have done anything different if they had, but still, it would probably have been nice to know.

The bullying was relentless. Between her eccentricities and the weight she’d gained through puberty, Jules never stood a chance. Jack and the You Agains were already juniors by that point with the exception of Greer, who’d already graduated. That gave them a small modicum of clout, which they used to protect Jules to the best of their abilities, but what went on when she was alone was beyond even Jack’s reach. It wasn’t even the other freshmen causing Jules the most torment. For reasons Jack still couldn’t wrap his head around, it was mostly popular seniors on the verge of graduation who decided to devote their high school legacy to making Jules’s life a living hell.

Jules never wavered in her inherent Julesness. She never starved herself to fit into skinny jeans when she was perfectly comfortable in her size 12 cargos. She never wore makeup unless it was purple. She never shied away from asking a question in class, even if the bell had just rung and everyone, even the teacher, wanted to leave. But behind Jules’s fierce onyx eyes, Jack could see her light beginning to dim as the year wore on.

This simply could not stand.

Jack kept Jules by his side at every lunch hour, daring anyone who looked their way to try anything with a well-honed glare. Greer brought her up to her college campus on weekends for some quality girl time filled with kickboxing classes and CSI binges. Eli even ended up suspended for a week after getting into a fistfight with one of the guys on the football team after he’d shoved Jules into a locker. But it wasn’t enough. As the end of the school year rolled around, and with it the giddy anticipation of Senior Prom buzzing through the high school hallways, Jack knew exactly what he needed to do.

The night before the fairy tale–themed soirée, Jack dropped a glittery handmade invitation on Jules’s doorstep. Sure, technically he and the others were only going as guests of the seniors they’d managed to finagle dates out of, but he wasn’t about to let Jules miss this.

He’d spent three hours hopping around thrift stores until he found a suit that fit; the fact that it was orange, ruffled, and smelled like mothballs and cat pee was really neither here nor there. His date, Sara Hornbeck, had texted him a list of prom criteria including a dress code, and while this would break most of the rules on the list, it did qualify as something a fairy-tale character would wear. That character just happened to be a hobgoblin, but really, this was on her for not specifying. Besides, he wasn’t going because he actually cared about prom, and Sara was only going with him because she had a crush on Carter but was too shy to make a move, so her eye roll when he showed up felt a little unwarranted.

The school gym filled up with girls in princess dresses and boys who looked itchy, and by eight p.m., the party was in full swing. Jack kept his eyes on the door as he and Sara attempted an awkward, arm’s-length sway on the free throw line of the gym basketball court. Finally Jules slunk in, hair in four bows, wearing a purple sequined tube top and the pants of a tux clearly borrowed from her father or brother, tied with a scarf around the waist to make them fit. Jack’s face broke into a smile and he pulled away from Sara, who seemed relieved to have her toes out of stomping range. He made a beeline to Jules as the others caught sight of her and joined them by the door.

“Why am I here?” Jules asked by way of greeting.

Jack tipped his head at Dale, Eli, and Carter, who promptly disappeared, before he turned back to Jules. “End of year present for you.”

“Prom?” Jules practically gagged on the word.

“Kind of,” said Jack. It was then that he caught Jules’s eyes flicking away from him, their movements like a hummingbird. Jack followed them with his own. The You Agains weren’t the only ones who’d spotted Jules’s arrival. Her bullies had also taken note, and were whispering among themselves, pointing in her direction and giggling. Jack could feel the blood surge into his cheeks, his fists clenching hard enough for his nails to bite into his palms. He released one fist and slipped Jules’s hand into his.

“Come on,” he said from between clenched teeth, guiding Jules across the gym to a corner set up with folding tables topped with bowls of chips and soda. He pulled some chairs out from one of the tables and Jules, still half-distracted by her tormentors, moved to sit down, but Jack quickly stopped her. This caught her full attention, one of her heavy black brows quirking.

Jack smiled again and hoisted himself up so he was standing on one of the chairs. Now Jules cocked her head. She was fully back with Jack, fully distracted by his antics. Good. The bullies didn’t deserve her focus. He held out a hand and motioned to the chair beside his. Jules hesitated a beat, examining the outstretched hand with a scrunched face. She’d only just gotten over the concept that boys had cooties a few years back, and sometimes she still wasn’t convinced they didn’t. But with a giggle bubbling from her lips, she eventually accepted the hand and stepped onto the other chair just as Dale, Eli, and Carter returned, walking over with devious smiles. Then they, too, hopped onto chairs as Jack held his breath in anticipation.

The first scream came a moment later, from somewhere deep in the throng of teens at the center of the gym. Then another. Jules looked from one You Again to another for explanation, but it didn’t take her long to understand. A little brown rat snuck away from the crowd of seniors and scampered past them. Another slunk over a polished dress shoe, and a third was climbing a nearby tablecloth on an unwavering mission for chips.

Jules’s giggle turned into a laugh, and then, as more rats emerged and more teens ran screaming from the gym, it became full-blown hysterics. Even the teachers and chaperones on site gave in to their fight-or-flight instincts and fled the room, the drama teacher and two of the dads pushing students out of the way as they raced for the door. Before long, all that remained in the gym were the You Agains and a bustling pack of rats who seemed delighted by both the privacy and the abandoned snacks. At some point Jack would need to pack them back up and get them safely returned to the dumpsters he’d collected them from, but for now he wasn’t able to do much; his own laughter had him doubled over, tears streaming down his face, as he and the others succumbed to the absurdity of the situation. By the time they’d all returned to themselves, the light behind Jules’s eyes shone more luminously than Jack had ever seen it. She would be okay. He would always make sure of that.

21

Jack could feel the pocket of his designer slacks wriggling against his mid-thigh. He could also feel Margaret wriggling in her own right from somewhere beside his soul, her disapproval at this abuse of fashion more evident than it had been at any of Jack’s breaches of S.C.Y.T.H.E. policies. It was okay, he mentally reassured her, this wouldn’t take long.

The Exclamation Mark stood at attention behind a standing desk that hadn’t been there before. Great, she was making herself at home. She hadn’t noticed Jack yet, her attention firmly locked on the company-issued desktop suspended at chin height. Still, Jack wasn’t taking any chances. He bent down as low as his arthritic knees would allow and feigned retying one of Margaret’s navy snakeskin oxfords with one hand, while his other worked to empty his left trouser pocket as subtly as possible. The wriggling ceased both externally and internally, and Jack righted himself with a few pops and creaks before making his way over to the desk. Margaret’s vocal joints had done the job of attracting the interim archivist’s attention, and she was already in the middle of a terse “Can I help you?” by the time Jack reached her.

“Yeah,” said Jack. “I need the case files for a guy called Duncan Finch, died 1997.” Uncle Duncan held the record for second-dumbest death in Jack’s family, meeting his end after a night of heavy drinking led to accepting a dare to lick his friend’s pet newt. Apparently, the newt, named Petunia, tasted like beef and cinnamon, which may have been due in part to the quantity of poison her skin contained. Jack knew all the gory details—hell, they were near legend at this point—but S.C.Y.T.H.E. agents had access to archived case files, which meant that requesting one would give him a reason for being down there without raising any eyebrows.

The archivist gave a nod and let her fingers do their necessary dance across the keyboard as she plugged in Uncle Duncan’s information, her hand movements as sharp and measured as an Irish dancer’s legs. She’d been given her name badge for this branch of S.C.Y.T.H.E., Jack noticed, “Greta” etched in the silver metal pinned to her crisply tailored midnight blue blouse. Jack tapped his manicure against the handle of his purse as he waited.

“Thanks, Greta, dear,” he said, infusing syrupy warmth into his voice. He was a little old lady now, and that was something worth taking advantage of. Greta, for her part, didn’t let a single flake melt off her icy demeanor. “That color looks so lovely on you,” Jack tried. “Really brings out the blue in your…” Shit. Her eyes flicked up just long enough to reveal them as a cold gray. “Uh, veins.” Another eye flick. Okay, no buttering up, then. He’d just have to get straight to the point. “Say, Greta, is that…?”

With a gasp that would have knocked Meryl Streep out of Oscar contention, Jack staggered back against the desk and pointed frantically at one of the cockroaches he’d loosed not five minutes before as it skittered down one of the aisles. Two more crossed in front of the desk, bumping into each other and changing direction as yet another came into view. Jack waited for the shriek, for the expletives, for the frenzied run from the room, but when he chanced a look over his shoulder, Greta was as ramrod straight and stone-faced as she’d been throughout their entire interaction.

“How inconvenient,” was all she said, capping her words off with a disappointed tut.

Jack stared at her for a moment, trying to make sense of her complete lack of panic. That was not part of the plan. She looked back at her computer screen and addressed Jack as though there wasn’t a cockroach currently clambering up the side of her standing desk.

“Row forty-eight,” she said. Then, as Jack wandered slowly in the direction she indicated, Greta picked up the landline on her desk.

Jack slipped into the aisles, putting on a big show of scanning shelves but actually looking for any security cameras pointed in his direction as Greta made her call.