[Original Novella] Perfect Enemy, Part 4

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Everything in him wanted to haul off and hit Mike. But that was the line he couldn’t cross without Warwick going from mildly annoyed to ballistic. He was dimly aware of Warwick shouting threats in the background as it was, best not to push him any further.

All around him phones were being pulled out, used to share recordings of the fight through near field networking. By the end of the day every interested party had high def 3D footage of the fight from twelve different angles.

It was compiled into a montage and set to music by 4pm, then remixed an hour later. By 10, Jeremy gave up on trying to set the record straight. Rumors spiraled out of control and by the time students two grades below were debating whether she’d frenched him or put her tongue in his ear, Jeremy had long since given up on dispelling any of it. Denial just added fuel to the fire, so he slept.

He awoke to a very flustered Marissa. Although his eyes were open and he’d already begun forming the words “what the fuck are you doing in my room” she saw no special need to stop shaking him by the hair.

“Have you even seen what they’re saying about us on Friendspace!?” Her face was now inches from his and in the process of covering it with frantic spittle. He considered threatening her before deciding it would be difficult to intimidate anyone in his jammies, much less the wild beast who flattened his nose yesterday.

“Marissa.” She stopped, still visibly frantic but attentive. “Yes?” Jeremy sat up, smoothed his hair, then made eye contact. “That sure does sound like it’s not my problem. Get out of my room.” The resulting shriek split his eardrums in half. Jeremy dragged her from his bed to the bathroom, as determined to brush his teeth and get dressed as she was to claw his face off.

“They’re saying we’re a couple! They’re saying I kissed you!” Jeremy shrugged. “So why don’t you?” He was still half asleep so it took him several seconds to realize the gravity of his words. Marissa just stood motionless, sporting an anatomically improbable full body blush. A few seconds later she was gone. Jeremy weighed the extent of the damage he might’ve done, decided he didn’t care, then began to undress.

To his surprise Marissa was seated immediately to the left of his usual spot when he arrived at homeroom. Nat was to his right. He almost turned around and left right then. The fireworks began the moment his paper clad buns contacted the painfully cold plastiglass seat. “Jeremy, get your phone out.”

Her whisper was harsh and distinctly dictatorial. He pretended not to hear it. Opposite Marissa, Nat perched sideways in her seat with the scowl on her face more commonly seen on a pitbull guarding its food dish. She had yet to say anything but looked a lot like she was trying to kill Marissa via psychokinesis.

Marissa punched Jeremy in the shoulder, hard. “Fuck, stop it already I’ve got my phone out.” She immediately shifted focus to her own device and began hammering out a text. “What did you mean this morning”.

He struggled to remember. Dim memories of a wild eyed and messy haired Marissa looming over him, shaking him like a ragdoll slowly returned. “Not sure what you mean. Just woke up when you barged in. Still wondering if I dreamt it.” She grunted. Wrong answer apparently.

“You know what I mean. Right before you went to brush your teeth.” Jeremy shoved Mike off his desk and turned away to prevent him from reading the convo. “Oh, that? I take oral hygiene very seriously”. Another frustrated grunt. Warwick chose that inopportune moment to call on Jeremy.

“No doubt you know the answer to this one, Jeremy. Everyone, be sure to listen as it may be on Friday’s test.” Everyone stared, on each face a knowing smile. Marissa retreated into her book and whimpered. “I, uh....Eli whitney and the cotton gin?” The room erupted in laughter.

“An intriguing answer, but as it turns out, not the name of the device used to decrypt intercepted Nazi messages towards the end of World War II. The Enigma Machine, that’s what I was looking for.” When the giggling subsided Warwick moved on with the material, satisfied that Jeremy’s embarrassment would ensure he paid closer attention going forward.

Mercifully, only Marissa joined him at lunch. A quick scan of the room revealed Nat observing from a distance. She was bitterly beginning to accept something about Marissa and Jeremy that he wasn’t quite ready to admit to himself. Marissa slid closer when she thought he wasn’t paying attention, just barely to the point that their elbows touched.

“You’re really not gonna talk about this morning, are you.” He mumbled, his mouth full of blue protein jelly. “Fine. What about the match? There’s something I have to know.” He shrugged and mumbled, all the encouragement Marissa needed to continue.

“Did you plan that? I mean, without my cavitation bubble holding back the water pressure, at that depth it’s a miracle my hull held up as long as it did. Never even occurred to me. Every step of the way I should’ve picked up on what you were making me do, but all of it seemed like my own decisions, right up until...you know.” She made an implosion gesture with her hands.

Jeremy swallowed, and fidgeted as he spoke, giving very careful consideration to the next words out of his mouth. “I knew everything you’d do before you did it. By fighting you that night we both snuck into the sim room, I got to know you. Maybe better than you know yourself.”

Her eyes lit up. “Or at least, I thought I did. Maybe you haven’t noticed but we have some difficulty just talking openly with each other like normal people.” She reached up to punch him, then realized that was exactly the sort of thing he meant and put her fist down.

“When you reacted to those rumors with embarrassment, like the idea of.... you know, with me....like that was a mortifying prospect...” She put both hands on his face, pulled it close to hers and laid one on him.

The reaction of other students spread outward like a shockwave, with Jeremy and Marissa’s embrace at ground zero. It didn’t matter. Marissa wasn’t bothered by it anymore. Even as absolute pandemonium erupted around them the room seemed to become quiet.

Everything outside of Jeremy’s lips faded to black, and all the pent up feelings she’d been denying until now overwhelmed her. Jeremy found that the sensation of her soft, warm lips against his prevented him from forming even the simplest thoughts.

Jumbled fragments of everything he ever wanted to say to her fought with one another for access to the vanishingly small percentage of his brain that was still receiving blood. Ultimately they all lost. For once in his life he had nothing to say. So he relaxed, let his mind go blank and savored the moment.

“...And if either of you or any of the other crude little apes in your class ever bothered to read the student handbook you’d know pawing at each other like that, in full view of freshmen no less, violates at least six of the interpersonal conduct statutes. Do either of you have anything to say in atonement?”

Jeremy and Marissa just grinned stupidly at each other as whoever this random jackoff the principal had asked to speak with them was continued ranting. “During school hours, you’re expected to maintain a certain....a certain....Am I talking to myself here? Eyes on me! This is serious business, I could delay your graduation for this!” Marissa casually leaned over and kissed Jeremy again. The counselor discharged an exasperated sigh and stormed out of the room.

Warwick soon relieved him, and asked Marissa to step out for a moment. She obliged, and as soon as the door shut behind her Warwick burst into laughter. It was the most surreal thing Jeremy had ever seen. “I’ve never known Travis to become that furious with anybody. Absolutely delicious, I owe you one.” His tone was sincerely jovial.

“This day, man. This fucking day” Jeremy thought, balancing on the very edge of the seat and preparing to escape into the hallway unless Warwick returned to normal sometime in the next thirty seconds. Instead, he took a seat next to Jeremy and began to speak with startling honesty.

“I don’t hate you. I don’t even dislike you. Your potential intrigues me, that’s why I’m always riding your ass. If I stopped pushing I’m afraid you’d slow down.” It was the first time Warwick had shown Jeremy anything other than adversarial contempt and it was weirding him out.

“You know, before I taught here I was a student. Very much like you in fact. An indomitable, know it all twit. In my defense, I actually did know it all.” Warwick waited for Jeremy to laugh but found he was staring at the wiry old man like he’d peeled away his face to reveal a complete stranger’s underneath it.

“I was also helplessly in love with a freckled blonde named Harriet. I went to all this trouble to ace some placement tests and fail others, just to wind up in the same classes with her every year. Stole and decrypted the placement criteria, pulled a 72 hour cram session before each test, I did basically anything and everything short of actually talking to her.” Jeremy’s curiosity got the better of him. “How’d it turn out?”

Warwick, who seemed unusually spirited until then, began to deflate. “Well....Every day I told myself, tomorrow’s when I’ll do it. I had this pile of gifts and notes, things I meant to give her but never did. The pile kept growing, and ‘tomorrow’ never happened. Before I knew it I was graduating next to her, then she was gone. Went off to fight the Constructs. Not me though, couldn’t leave this place without closure that I know I’ll never have. You’re in your last year, soon you’ll head off to fight Constructs above some godforsaken airless rock on the other side of the galaxy and I’ll still be here, waiting for the freckled little blonde girl to come back.”

It was difficult to tell in profile but the way the light struck him made this already decrepit man seem a hundred years older. The single salty tear his crusty ducts could muster conformed to every bump, scar and contour on the way down his weathered face before disappearing into his collar.

“You know, Jeremy, one of these days I was going to level with you. Just like this. Now’s as good a time as any. All I really had to say, was “don’t make the same mistake I did.” But I guess now I don’t have to. Do me a favor, though?”

Jeremy was wide eyed by this point, not knowing what to think. “S...sure, I guess.” Warwick stood up and brushed himself off. “Don’t let this change anything. I’ll talk to Travis and smooth things out. But when I next see you in class, I hope you’ll say something you think is terribly witty, and I can fire back that you’re a pain in my ass and a bad influence on everyone around you. Be the same Jeremy I’ve been pushing with all of my remaining strength these last three years. And I’ll be the same Professor Warwick. I’m too old to change, anyway.”

His smile exuded warmth. Jeremy probed it for any hint of sarcasm but found only humility, and a depth of being absent from anyone else in this school save for Marissa. It’s a bittersweet feeling, to sit down with someone you thought would always be your enemy, only to find a human behind the curtain.

“So, what was all that with Warwick?” The sun was by this point nearing the horizon, and the long thin clouds nearest it seemed to be on fire. A minute later the whole sky matched. “You’re awfully curious about it. Any special reason?” She handed over her phone. “They’re not gossiping about us anymore. I guess when we confirmed it, they lost interest. Now they’re saying it’s you and Warwick. An illicit affair in the principal’s office.”

Jeremy doubled over laughing. “Really? Jesus, I’m an animal aren’t I.” Marissa smirked. “You have to understand, men have certain unusual appetites.” She tripped him up and as soon as he was on his back, began peppering his face will small, sweet kisses.

“You two better not run off together. I’d be jealous.” That’s when Jeremy noticed something was wrong with the sky. For a split second it was black, speckled with stars and half filled with a brilliant teal nebula. He blinked and it was gone.

Replaced by the sunset, now in the late stages and almost painfully beautiful to look at. “Hey, isn’t that Warwick?” Marissa propped herself up on her elbows to get a better look. Sure enough there he was at the top of the hill, sitting on the hood of his car and smoking.

It was a beat up convertible that had obviously not been effective as a status symbol for several decades now. “This is exactly what I imagined him driving”, Jeremy mused on his way over. Warwick looked equally beat up, but also serene.

He searched the Professor’s face for any sign of lingering sadness but if he was dwelling on their conversation from earlier he didn’t show it. “Mind if I join you?” Warwick looked up, recognized Jeremy and smiled. “You know, the fact that you’re even out here means it’ll happen soon. When you step outside the school, it’s supposed to symbolize readiness to leave.”

Jeremy puzzled over that for a moment and then responded, “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” Stepping outside the school? The more he thought about it the more he realized that in the three years he’d attended this academy, this was the first time he’d been outside.

Jeremy searched his memory for instances where he’d at least looked out a window or wondered about the landscape surrounding the school but drew a blank. He shrugged it off as unimportant, then sat cross-legged next to Warwick on the rusting hood.

“When all this is over, I want you to keep her close. She’ll be there with you when it happens, and your job is to protect one another. I know how cryptic this must sound, but it’ll all come together soon.” Jeremy gave up on trying to make sense of the old man’s ramblings and just leaned back, sucking in the fresh air and admiring the sunset’s final flourish. In the distance, Marissa stood up and began heading for the front doors.

“I want to thank you. I didn’t know how to feel about it at first but I’m glad we came to an understanding. I won’t lie, I never really liked you, but in retrospect I don’t think I’ve ever had a more dedicated teacher.” A long silence followed.

“Better head inside, they’re preparing the sim for you right about now.” Jeremy stood up and began trudging down the hill towards the angular white structure of the school below. He thought of some appropriate parting words after a few steps and turned back, but Warwick was nowhere to be seen.

As usual during sim the rest of the school was eerily dark and empty. Everyone from every grade was packed into the sim room, so lights in the various unused classroom shut off to save energy. Something about this session would be different...he could feel it.

When Jeremy arrived, the other students were being paired off and given callsigns. Secretly he panicked and wondered if arriving late would mean that Marissa was paired with someone else. “Fashionably late. I don’t know why it surprises me anymore. Rambozo, you’re with Hellcat.”

Rambozo? “You know, as in ‘the clown’. We reviewed your antics during the last match on the display wall and everyone voted for Rambozo. Like it or lump it, that’s your callsign. Now go stand over there with Hellcat.”

Another quizzical pause. “Marissa. Go stand with Marissa.” He turned until his eyes met, electrically, with the familiar luminous blue pair across the room. “Eeeee!” She was every bit as bad when it came to concealing happiness as she was at concealing anger.

“Hellcat, huh? Should’ve guessed, it suits you.” She laughed and jabbed him in the ribs. “You should talk, Rambozo.” Mike ran over despite the instructor’s protestations and congratulated Jeremy. “You ranked second in your grade!” he looked excited but also as though hiding something.

“...And who ranked first?” Still panting, Mike began to beam. “No fucking way. What’s your K/D ratio?” Turning towards the big lumaprism wall he pointed out his score, 17 kills and 1 death. Next to it, his callsign: ‘John Henry’. Hard to argue with that.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 5!}