Suspension

THE ELEVATOR DOORS OPENED before Saige could say anything else.

Over the next forty minutes, Principal Gundersen spoke to Oscar, Saige, Gregory, and Tim separately. When that was done, he called everyone into his office together.

“It’s interesting,” he said, “because two of you say one thing, and the other two of you say something else entirely.”

“Principal Gundersen, if I may—” Saige said, but Principal Gundersen held up a hand to stop her.

“I’ve already heard your account of events, Saige,” he said, not unkindly. “The fact of the matter is I don’t think I’m ever going to know exactly what happened, because you four are the sole witnesses. Saige, you weren’t involved in the fighting, but as for the rest of you—there are only two weeks left of school, and it would be a shame to suspend you with so little time left. So I am prepared to send you home today, with your parents, for a one-day suspension. Well, technically I guess it’s a half-day suspension. I will welcome you back tomorrow, if I have your word that nothing like this will ever happen again.”

“I promise,” Oscar agreed. “I’m sorry, Principal Gundersen.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Gregory said. “It won’t happen again.”

“It won’t,” Tim echoed. “We swear.”

Mrs. and Mrs. Fairmountain arrived just as the four students filed out of the office. Julia Fairmountain yelped in shock when she saw her son’s face (Gregory had a quickly blossoming black eye), and she enveloped him in her arms, sobbing quietly while Clara Fairmountain patted Saige on the shoulder and looked vaguely disapproving of the entire situation.

“You better watch yourself,” Tim whispered into Oscar’s ear as his own mother entered the small waiting room.

Oscar ignored him and sat down heavily in a chair next to Saige and Dot.

“What a bunch of jerks,” she mumbled.

“I shouldn’t have punched him,” Oscar mumbled back, and he knew it was true, no matter what they had done to him first.

One by one everyone left, until finally it was just Saige and Oscar in the small waiting area, and Oscar was able to ask the question that had been burning inside him for almost an hour.

“The Night Market? What do you mean it’s coming?”

“Oh!” Saige said, her eyes lighting up at once. “Oh my gosh, it’s all anyone can talk about! Somebody found a flyer on their way to school! Stapled to a telephone pole! Oscar, can you believe it!”

Oscar could not believe it, and he also couldn’t allow himself to have even the slightest bit of hope that it might be real. It would be too much of a letdown if it turned out to be a false alarm. And there had been plenty of false alarms over the years.

Oscar had never actually been to any Night Markets, which were things of legend in Roan.⁴² They were unpredictable, arriving randomly, with no set interval of time between them. The last one had been six years ago, occurring just seven months after the previous one. Before that, two years had passed, and before that it had been four years and seven months.

The Night Market was run by Farsouthians,⁴³ who arrived in massive ships and caravans and erected their tents at night. You woke up in the morning and everything was ready, and then that evening, the Night Market would begin. It lasted for three days each time, and when it was over, everything was disassembled and carted away and gone before the first light of morning. There wasn’t much advance notice. About a week or so before the event, simple sheets of paper would start appearing all over the city.

But while the idea of a flyer found by a student on their way to school was promising…

It wasn’t a sure fact.

Flyers had been faked before.

“Did you see it?” Oscar asked finally. “I mean, yourself?”

“No,” Saige said, her shoulders falling slightly. “But Whitney did!”

“Keep your eyes peeled,” Oscar said. “There are always a lot of flyers.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I will. Well, I better get to class.”

“See you tonight,” Oscar said.

Saige smiled. “Yeah. See you tonight, Oscar.”

Oscar was the last one left in the office’s small waiting room, and he couldn’t help but feel guilty at having pulled Bilius away from the shop. And he couldn’t help but feel nervous that Bilius was going to be really, really upset with him.

And on top of all that, he was quite sore.

Principal Gundersen had asked if he’d needed the nurse’s office, but Oscar felt confident nothing was broken or severely hurt. His nose had bled a bit and his eye was still swollen and his body ached in a way it wasn’t used to, but he was fine.

Or he was fine.

Until his father arrived and, just as he’d worried, started yelling at him.

“What in the WORLD, Oscar!” Bilius said, his voice getting higher and higher.

Principal Gundersen poked his head out of his office. “Hey there, Bill,” he said. “Just a little scrap in the schoolyard. I’ve had a chat with all the kids.”

“Your EYE!” Bilius hollered. “Oscar, what has gotten INTO YOU?”

“I didn’t start it,” Oscar muttered.

“You didn’t… you didn’t… Oscar, did you FINISH IT?” Bilius demanded.

“Bill, if you’d just keep your voice down, please,” Principal Gundersen said calmly.

“No, I didn’t really finish it, either,” Oscar admitted. “I was just sort of in the middle for a minute.”

Bilius sunk into a chair and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Albert,” he said to Principal Gundersen. “It’s just a bit of a shock.”

“Of course,” Principal Gundersen replied. “I completely understand. Take all the time you need in here. I’ll give you a bit of privacy.”

He retreated to his office, shutting the door behind him.

“Oscar,” Bilius said after a minute. “What were you thinking?”

His voice had gotten quiet, and Oscar found he missed the yelling. This was unnerving. This made his skin crawl.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I was angry. These guys, they’re just… they’re so mean to everyone. They threw my apple into the sea. I know that isn’t an excuse, but… I don’t know. I just lost my temper, I guess.”

“We should have someone look at your eye,” Bilius said.

“No, no, Dad, I’m fine,” Oscar insisted. “I just want to go, if that’s okay.”

Bilius nodded. “Of course. I should get back to the shop.”

But Bilius didn’t move right away, and Oscar followed his father’s gaze to the wall…

Where a framed photograph hung.

Elenore Buckle.

There was that pang of old sadness again.

Sadness for a person Oscar couldn’t even really remember.

Elenore had been the principal of the school before Principal Gundersen. She’d totally reinvigorated the curriculum, and while the outside of the school was still kind of shabby, the inside was another story entirely. Oscar’s floor, for example, had light blue walls, light green lockers, and an underwater tile motif in all the bathrooms.

When Principal Gundersen took over, he’d renamed the school in Elenore’s honor, hung her portrait here and in the entrance hallway, and made sure things ran as smoothly as they had when she’d been alive.

Oscar wished he could say he missed his mother.

But that wasn’t exactly true.

More accurately, he wished he missed his mother. He wished he knew his mother. He wished he had some memory he could miss, like a pair of warm hands tucking him into a crib or a soft cheek pressed against his or a wave of brown hair falling across his face.

But he couldn’t remember anything like that at all.

Footnotes

⁴² Actually, they were things of legend all across the entire country of Terra.

⁴³ A not entirely clever name for people from the Far South.