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 Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 12:06 pm
Miriam blinked at her. "'Rapprochement.'" She unbent and unfolded so she was sitting up again, and then sat up fully with her feet on the bathroom floor and the rest of her parked squarely on the bench. "'Rapprochement.'" She made a futile effort at neatening her half-damp hair, which had fallen out of its barrettes. Miriam always had the oddest collection of little glittery butterfly barrettes. Little pearly-white corsage ones, too. "Does anyone actually use that word? I guess you do. There's probably some scientist who wants to know. 'Hero Barrett actually uses the word rapprochement.'"
It was another reminder that Adelaide Hero Barrett and Miriam Judith Jacobs came from entirely different sides of the tracks -- neither of which was remotely the wrong side, but looking back on it it was pretty likely that Miriam had grown up on Saturday morning cartoons and Barbie, not children's classics and American Girl. Rapprochement. She'd treated it like it was an SAT word.
Nevertheless, she was sniffling less and her voice didn't sound strangled. "Okay, um, I have a question for you," she said with hesitation in her voice. "I want an honest answer."
She wiped her face with the back of her hand. "Do you actually hate me, or do you treat everybody that way?"
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Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 5:05 am
There was a brief silence, lasting an infinity. When she spoke again, Hero said: "I treat everybody that way. Everybody who is a threat."
A trace of bitterness crept into her voice, which meant self-loathing, which meant shame. The fact that Hero Barrett could feel shame at all about any way she acted was probably something of a divine revelation to Miriam. A sacred mystery. She added, "Do you know, I treated Jude that way for the longest -- " and thought better of it and said, "It's not the same, really. You: I was angry to be here, and then I suppose I just..."
Miriam had pronounced rapprochement correctly, with the tone of somebody who at least knew how to pronounce their SAT word correctly when it came down to it. This was somehow comforting. Less comforting was the jibe. It was probably true. When she had been little she had loved using words that were too big for her: rapprochement, empirical, sartorial, some of which she used wrongly and was immediately corrected. She'd bristled. She always bristled. Back then her friends had been her collection of Scientific Americans before she realised that she would never be a scientist and had to abandon that.
"Anyway, I was jealous," she finished. "And angry. And then once I'd treated you -- like that, I had to keep on doing it." There was nothing to say then except: "I really don't hate you, Miriam."
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Posted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 12:09 pm
"Oh," said Miriam. And that was all she had to say about that for a while.
Miriam didn't look like the Scientific American type. Her bookshelves were tellingly -- well, not empty, just not chock full and brimming with books that needed more space than they had, which was the #1 sign of a bookworm or a nerd in a dormitory, generally. She had a lot of textbooks on her bookshelves, and then a couple novels like The Time Traveler's Wife and The Other Boleyn Girl, tucked in with Outlander and The Thorn Birds. Tucked in at the top left corner were a few lonely Frances Hodgson Burnetts, the best-maintained of which was The Secret Garden. Hero knew because the way she lay on her bed faced Miriam's bookshelf and she'd spent sleepless nights reading the spines. Miriam Jacobs was not Hero Barrett.
"I'm actually just like, really awkward," said Miriam. "Like, that's the whole thing."
This hung in the air like it was supposed to be some kind of surprise.
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Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2010 4:56 pm
It wasn't. At first she'd coded the behaviour as calculated, cruel, an act of aggression. It had taken Hero Barrett a very long time to admit that it wasn't calculated, cruel or an act of aggression, but simply the demeanour of someone suspicious and lonely who attracted company like ants to no picnic. Once again she was sorry.
Someone else would have been able to make a joke to alleviate the tension. Hero was not that girl. "I know," she said, and that was all she had to say about that for a while too.
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