Chapter 1 – Rivendell Academy
Angel City, California – Twenty Years Later
Ashley’s Journal, Monday, June 22, 2308
I don’t belong here, on a bus going to summer school, but here I am, with my little brother. Seven o’clock and it’s already hot.
You know who goes to summer school? Bullies and nerds. That’s right, the stupid kids and smart kids. This is where they meet and establish the relationships in which one group will persecute the other for the entire year. Summer session is half-advanced placement, half-remedial classes, mixed with a little art, music and sports. Lions and antelope. It’s a slaughter, every year.
And the adults just want to mold us into tools. I do what they ask, but they can see it’s too easy. They’re not even bothering to hold the hoops out anymore.
I’ve asked my dad about moving me ahead a couple of grades, even just to take the test, to see if I’m ready, but he says it’s still too early. So it’s another day in the prison without bars that is my life, more like zoo.
Most parents in this tax-bracket send their kids away to camp or to visit relatives on hereditary European estates. And we have to go to camp too, but not fun camp. We have to go to because it’s good for you camp.
The fact that I have no input has become something of a hostile drama at home. I want to go to ballet camp. I have wanted to go since I was five. I get up an hour early to stretch. I do three hours of free practice every day before class. But No. For the third summer in a row, I have to go to Kung Fu Camp! Three weeks with a bunch of clumsy, uncoordinated boys. If they wanted to be good at Kung Fu, they should take ballet. We work so much harder. They have no idea.
Tonight we’re supposed to talk about it. But what’s the point really? I’ll talk, and he’ll say whatever he’s going to say and then ignore me, like he always does. Then he’ll give Geoffrey whatever he wants, and that will be the end of it.
I just don’t get why he’s being such a dick? He doesn’t care what I do the rest of the year. Why do these three weeks have to be caveman training? I’m not a boy. Get over it already.
On one of the outlying anti-gravity sections, several thousand feet above the earth, the heavily wooded Rivendell Campus was far from abandoned. Ashley and Geoff stepped off the bus, with the few other students, into the morning haze. The air was muggy and still, warming as the obscured sun cooked off the cloud cover.
Walking away from the shuttle, Ash and Geoff noticed Ted across the playground. A few of the older boys had surrounded him. They pushed him and tried to wrestle away his book bag. Derrick was the most intimidating, but he could be nice if you got him alone. The same could be said of Pete. Steve, however, was the most vicious of the group. Ashley suspected he was responsible for most the trouble they got into.
Ashley looked at the few nearby adults who ignored the incident. Geoff watched her closely, as he always did. Ashley caught Geoff looking at her with puppy-dog eyes.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Stop them,” Geoff replied.
“Geoff, come on? Are you serious?”
“What,” Geoff asked, “Are you going to tell a teacher?”
Steve slapped Ted hard enough to make him whimper.
“They don’t care at all,” Geoff gestured to the adults, none more than fifty feet away, a few much closer. They were all preoccupied with other children or each other.
Steve punched Ted in the stomach.
“They’re always picking on him, Ash.”
Ashley sighed, handed Geoff her bag and marched toward the snarling knot of children.
Without making eye contact, Ashley pushed through the bullies and grabbed Ted by the collar, almost as if she meant him more harm than the other three.
A look of fear shot across Ted's face.
Ashley smiled. She spun and hurled him from the group. Ted stumbled and lost his bag but didn't fall.
A couple of adults turned his way, but he straightened up and walked across the playground without looking back. At least, not until he reached Geoff, where together they watched from a safe distance.
Ashley turned to face Derrick, Pete and Steve.
Ted's bag lay on the ground between Ash and the boys.
Pete saw they had drawn the attention of at least one playground supervisor and took a step back.
Derrick stood his ground but said nothing.
Steve smiled and stepped forward. “What do you want, Fox?”
“I want Ted’s backpack,” Ashley said, gesturing to the pack lying between them.
“You do, huh? Well it ain’t yours, is it?” Steve said.
“It’s not yours either.”
“Well, Ted… See, him and I…”
“He and I,” Ashley interrupted.
“What’s that?” Steve asked.
“It’s not Him and I, It’s He and I, or Him and me, but never Him and I. That’s why you’re in summer school, you dumbass.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Steve asked.
Ashley rolled her eyes and reached for the backpack.
Steve lunged at her and shouted, “Hey! I was talking at you!”
Ashley involuntarily jumped back, frightened.
Ash straightened up, “To.”
“What?”
“Talking to, not at,” she said.
“Is that so?” Steve towered over the bag. Even though he and Ashley were the same height, he seemed so much taller than her. “Like I said, I was talking to Ted a minute ago, but now I’m talking to you! You interrupted me and Ted, Him and Me, from our little conversation.”
“I saw how you were talking to him,” Ash said. The moment seemed to slow down into slow motion.
Steve was the most ruthless bully in Ashley’s class.
Some of the adults had turned their heads and were now watching, but no one was close enough to stop him from hitting her, if he wanted to. And now she was in the process of antagonizing him. She could not stop herself, her mouth was already moving, her lungs giving life to her thoughts. Ashley watched, from some frozen place inside her mind; calm, cool and relaxed, fully aware of what she was willfully doing.
“Are you going to say the same kind of things to me? You should really think it through. Picking on Ted is one thing, but now you’re going to hit a girl?“ She smiled her most sarcastic, condescending smile.
The moment stretched on, just hanging.
She waited for Steve to strike her; she was daring him, taunting him. Did he have the guts to hit a girl, with half a dozen adults in view?
He did.
Ashley saw his body tense; she saw his hand fly toward her face. She instinctively shifted her posture, leaning back and to her right.
His hand sailed past, missing her by half an inch. Steve’s balance was off, and he stumbled, first to the side and then backward, as if afraid Ashley might take a swing at him.
Ashley noticed the teachers were turning away again.
Suddenly she understood the situation. Unless Steve had seriously hurt Ted, it would be difficult for the teachers to sufficiently punish him. In order to suspend him, or expel him preferably; he’d have to genuinely hurt someone.
Ashley had no intention of being that someone.
Steve narrowed his eyes.
Ted’s bag again lay directly between them, only a step away for either of them. Ashley knew that if she went for it, Steve would jump her, so she waited. She shifted her weight and took half a step backward, as if she were giving up.
Steve boldly stepped up and reached for the backpack.
Just a fraction of a second later, Ashley stepped forward, reaching for the bag, knocking into Steve with her forehead.
From a distance, it looked as if it was an accident, but Steve caught the wicked grin that flashed across her face. He crumpled to the ground, blood gushing from his smashed nose, painting his baby-blue school shirt a glossy crimson. The sun broke through the haze, illuminating his humiliation in sharp
, sarcastic hues.
Ash picked up the bag.
To his credit, Steve didn't cry. He sat on the curb, pinched the top of his nose and waited for the pain to subside. He didn't acknowledge her in any way. Ashley realized he'd probably dealt with this type of injury before. She turned and walked away, saying nothing.
Every kid, and every adult on the playground had their eyes glued to her. Ashley acknowledged none of them. She looked only at Ted and Geoff. They watched as she handed Ted his backpack. Ashley put her arm around her brother, and the three of them walked into school.
Ash acknowledged the layered irony in that, moments before, she had been angry about the violent techniques she would spend the next few weeks studying. Yet here she had used violence, and if she were honest with herself, she had enjoyed it.