Chapter 88 – Annie Time

Alex had her face cleaned up by the time the Cessna landed at Camp Atron. She even remembered to grab her dirty clothes out of the gym bag and leave a note that the bag was down one on underwear, and the suit needed to be washed, and she’d eaten half the energy bars. She stuffed the undies in a pants pocket before going silvery and flying home.

It was only a little after eleven in the morning when she flew through the pipe and into the garage. She was totally surprised — not! — to find Annie doing a chemistry experiment with their dad’s stuff. Sometimes Alex thought her dad had more chemicals and chem lab hardware in their garage than he had in his ‘official’ lab at the plant.

Annie didn’t look up from her experiment. She just said, “Mom has a dozen of Gloria’s apple fritters on the counter, and there’s a couple quarts of last night’s chicken stew in the fridge.” Alex stuck the dirty underwear in the right laundry basket, hurried into the kitchen, and ate two of the apple fritters while she was heating up a big bowl of the stew.

And why was it that her bowl always got the bay leaf in it? At least, it seemed that way.

The stew was really yummy, and Alex decided to have another bowl at lunch with Annie and her mom. Even if that was only maybe an hour away.

It was really handy not having to wash her uniform, and not having to re-pack her gym bag and then stow it away, and not having to deal with dirty clothes, and not having to mess with her electronics gear, except putting her tPhone in her pocket.

Okay, she was still going to have to deal with regular laundry, since she could tell from the stuff in the laundry room that it hadn’t gotten done yesterday. And with Annie home, there was more laundry.

And lunch was girl-talk in the kitchen, since she was home and Annie was home and her mom was home. So they had a great lunch, with salad and more of the chicken stew. And Alex had two more of the apple fritters for dessert. And her mom said the reason Alex got the bay leaf more often was because she ate three or four times as much stew as anyone else in the house, and she dished herself up way bigger scoops than anyone else did.

It wasn’t her fault she got hungry a lot!

Although it wasn’t really normal girl-talk, since a lot of it was about Terawatt and Action Girl and Batman fighting Bane and Poison Ivy. Alex could talk about some of that, since part of the fight had been captured by a couple of camera guys who had thought they were just going to film Bruce Paine giving a boring opening speech. So Action Girl’s dramatic entrance was on all the news. And there was like twenty seconds of Action Girl’s fight with Bane, which Annie said looked like it had been speeded up by special effects guys.

Come to think of it, Hanna’s fights did look like someone had filmed them and then speeded them up in post-production.

Alex said, “You aren’t supposed to know this, but Action Girl is really that fast. And that strong.”

Her mom asked, “Did you get to see anyone famous? Like Bruce Paine? Or any of the Westons?”

She sort of lied, “Yeah. I saw Bruce Paine. He looked like he was really drunk, and it was only like eight in the evening. And people acted like the bimbo he brought was a hooker.” Batman’s secret identity was totally not her secret to tell.

So she talked about the Empire State Building and the Paine Foundation Building and the museum and some of the other sights she got to see. It wasn’t her fault that she got dramatic aerial views of a big chunk of New York City without needing a plane.

And then Annie asked, “So did you really get a physical? Finally?”

Alex nodded. “From Dr. Fraiser. She’s really nice. And she didn’t even let the nurses know who I am. And she’s going to have more stuff to tell me in maybe a week.”

Her mom asked, “Did you talk to her about birth control?”

“Ooh, good idea!” agreed Annie. “Don’t get birth control advice from someone who doesn’t know about your biochemistry issues. I’m on the pill, but I think it would be a bad choice for you.”

Alex gasped. “Annie! You’re on the pill? And you’re telling Mom?”

Her mom just grinned and shook her head. “I got Annie to see her doctor and go on the pill before she left for college. I mean, Annie’s a good girl, but I’ve heard way too many story about frat boys and college parties.”

Annie rolled her eyes. “Frat boys aren’t really a big thing at M.I.T. But my periods are a lot more regular now that I’m on it. And they’re easier.”

Alex gasped, “You never told me!”

Annie said, “I never had time. It seemed like whenever I saw you, there was some crisis going on with your powers, and then it was all of you getting kidnapped, and now it’s just old news. I’ve been on it for years.”

Their mom asked, “Honey, what did Dr. Fraiser recommend for you?”

Alex gulped. “The diaphragm. But they’re huge! And they’re gross. And you have to prepare them and stick ’em up your you-know and then squirt more goo into you, and there’s no way I’d still want to do it after all that, and it sounds so horrible I may just stay a virgin. And what’s Ray gonna think if I’m all stretched out and full of goop and just too gross to touch?” She suddenly felt like crying again.

Her mom rubbed her shoulder. “Honey, it’s not like that. I’ve been using one for years, and it’s really not bad at all. And it’s not like you think it’ll be. Your father can’t tell the difference between when I have one in and when I don’t.”

Alex turned beet red. She so didn’t want to know this! “Mom! You’re old!”

Her mom frowned. “I’m not that old. And you don’t want me to suddenly present you with a baby brother, do you?”

Annie poked her on the arm. “Come on, it’s not like they’re in their eighties or something.”

This was just so gross! How could Annie be okay with knowing their parents still did … She couldn’t even make her brain go there.

Her mom said, “Honey, when you love someone enough to marry them, you don’t just stop making love with them because you had a couple of kids. Sure, your father isn’t as young and sprightly as he used to be, but then neither am I. We still love each other, and we still show it in a lot of ways.”

It didn’t sound so bad when her mom put it like that. Even if it was old-people sex. She had enough trouble getting her head around Jack and Willow, and Willow wasn’t old.

Her mom gently reassured her, “Alex, it seems awful now, but after you practice putting it in and taking it out a few times, you’ll get used to it, and it’ll be surprisingly easy and fast to get in, and it’s not uncomfortable, and trust me, it’s a lot better than condoms.”

Her mom knew about condoms, too? Eww! Alex just tried not to think about everything that was going on in her brain. There was just too much grossness, and she needed time to sort it all out.

But maybe everyone else knew she was grossed out, because Annie suddenly changed the subject. “I talked with Mom and Dad about having powers. They both said it was the worst thing ever. Maybe I wasn’t as sympathetic as I should’ve been when you first got doused.”

Alex shook her head no. “I was just barely thirteen. I was too dumb to realize just how bad it could’ve been, or how it might be for other people.”

And her mom frowned. “I think I really went insane. Completely crazy. It was horrible, and until I got enough antidote, I didn’t even realize I was acting like some sort of monster. All this time I’ve been lecturing you on self-control and not misusing your powers, and you were already doing so much better than I could do. I’m really sorry.”

Annie gasped, “And Dad said he couldn’t control his lightning power at all. He had to hold onto the jail bars so he didn’t electrocute everyone else in the room. He said he didn’t know how you did it.”

Her mom hugged her and said, “I hate that you got stuck with this, but I’m so glad it was you, and not someone who couldn’t control their powers, or couldn’t control themselves.”

Alex didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t like she’d ever just gone crazy with her powers, except that time the GC-Divide split her into two people and one of them was like her evil twin. And she hadn’t had nearly as much trouble controlling her lightning as it sounded like her dad had.

Maybe she’d been really, really lucky.

Or maybe it was something else, like whatever would be her world’s equivalent of Buffy’s Powers That Be. Not that Alex wanted to be The Chosen One in any way. Especially when Buffy’s life had been so mega-cruddy for so long. And other-Hermione said Harry’s life had been really awful when he was little, and then it had been pretty hideous for seven years at Hogwarts, and it still wasn’t exactly perfect.

Then her mom wanted to talk about the next big super-stress thing, because her mom was having her final meeting with her major professor Monday morning and doing a presentation in front of her committee Monday afternoon, and if everything went well, she had her Master’s degree! And her mom was so stressed out about it and didn’t want to be when her older daughter was only home for a few days, and her younger daughter had really big things to stress out over.

So Alex and Annie got the slow cooker going for dinner, with the pork and lentil stew recipe Alex liked, even if she put a little more coriander in it than the first time she and her mom made it.

Annie said, “I should get one of these. I can set it up at lunchtime, and I can follow a recipe like this, and then I could just leave it for the afternoon and we’d have dinner ready when I got home.”

Alex pointed out, “You can use some cheaper cuts of meat, too, because it gets stewed for hours.”

Annie grinned naughtily. “Can I buy you a slow cooker for your birthday and then take it back to school with me?”

Alex giggled, and then stuck her tongue out at Annie.

Their mom treated it like a serious question and answered, “You don’t want to be lugging too much stuff when you’re flying. Just buy one after you get back to college. Or ask if one of your housemates already has one.”

After Alex did her exercises and martial arts practice, Annie was bored because her experimental compounds had to be kept at a constant temperature for the rest of the day, so there wasn’t any more chem to work on. So Alex took Annie to Gloria’s and talked her into waitressing, too. After all, Annie could memorize stuff, so taking orders would be a snap for her. And Annie knew most of Gloria’s menu, because Alex and their dad were doughnut-ivores. So they had fun just chatting and waitressing and talking with Gloria.

*               *               *

The next morning, after Alex got her exercises done and she showered and she went to church with the family, she Skyped with Hanna.

“Hi, Alex!”

She smiled. “Hi, Hanna. I just wanted to thank you again for having me over. That was tons of fun. And I need you to thank your mom.”

Hanna grinned. “I was very glad you could have a sleepover with me. And next time, I will win at Marvel vs. Capcom.”

Alex teased, “That’s what you think. I’ll learn more moves from Willow and squish you like a teeny weeny bug.” Because Hanna was really competitive, so she was fun to tease.

Hanna just said, “Cindy explained about teasing. I think Charlie gets it from his father.”

Alex gasped, “It’s probably like a virus and you can catch it from hanging around teasers too much!” But she spoiled it by bursting into a giggle.

Hanna snickered. “Colonel Jack is very funny. Now that I know more idioms and references, I get more of his jokes. And do not tell Mom, but Jack’s the one who buys the cereal for me. Charlie sneaks it into my house when Mom isn’t around. And if you tell anyone who tells Mom, Jack will get in trouble, and I will have to live off of ‘healthy’ cereals.”

Alex groaned. “I wouldn’t want that.” Getting stuck eating high fiber cereals when you wanted Cocoa Puffs? Bleah.

Then Alex Skyped Willow. She figured it was going to be safe again, now that Willow was back home and not walking around half naked — or totally naked, or maybe even worse than naked if that was possible — in Jack’s bedroom. “Hi, Willow!”

Willow gushed, “Oh, hi, I’m glad you called! I’ve got a ton of stuff to tell you! Did Jack tell you who Poison Ivy’s major prof was?”

Alex sighed. “Yeah. Our favorite mad scientist genetics expert.”

Willow nodded. “I’m just calling her Wacky Maggie, like Jack does. So anyway, Dr. Isley let us take tissue samples of her and her plants, and majorly with the creepiness there. You saw how she’s green all over? It’s chlorophyll. Real chlorophyll, and modified chlorophyll-related chemicals. She altered her own DNA so she’s like thirty or forty percent plant now. Her lungs aren’t a hundred percent lungs anymore, and her skin is like the surface of a plant leaf, and she probably can live on just CO2 and sunlight and water if she wanted to, so she could just lie down in a damp, sunny field and have everything she needs to live on. And she altered the DNA of her plants. Bill thinks she can only command plants she’s altered and grown, not anything she happens to see. But those vines and pod plants you rounded up? They’re all sixty percent Pamela. They’re as much animal as plant now. And they really are pretty much her babies now, which is just creepy.”

“Mega-creepy,” Alex agreed.

“And that leaf bathing suit? It’s not a bathing suit at all, they’re real leaves growing out of her skin! I mean, that just creeps me out! How can anybody think turning yourself into a plant is a good idea?”

Alex was just really glad no one had pulled any of those leaves off Poison Ivy the other night. That would’ve been … gruesome. Maybe mega-gruesome. What if she started bleeding? And what if it was green blood? And what if it was green blood that did groty stuff?

Willow went on, “So anyway, Wacky Maggie taught her how to fit introns and transposons and other stuff from unrelated species into a genome so it would stay viable, which Bill says is an incredible trick. He understands what’s in Maggie’s research papers, and he says it’s still more of an art form than a specific scientific technique, even if the best geneticists can reproduce the stuff she’s already worked out. Bill says Maggie’s way smarter than we thought.”

Alex grimaced. “That’s not good.” She wasn’t a giant fan of Bill Lee and she thought he needed to be nicer to Grover, but he seemed like a really smart guy. If he thought Walsh was that smart, she probably was.

Willow went on, “So Pammie — who really hates being called Pammie, by the way — said she was just going to do like she did at the museum and give a big warning and scare a bunch of rich evil industrialists, when this mobster who she’s renting her secret lair from comes over and warns her about The Bat and offers to provide a little backup so her big moment doesn’t get upstaged by a weird animal-themed superhero. She’d like him a lot more if his theme was plant-based, like thorns or venus flytraps or something. So she didn’t care who helped her as long as they stayed out of her way and didn’t hurt her plants, and she had no idea about this Bane guy. Anyway, Pammie was perfectly willing to talk to Jack as soon as he offered to get her and her plants a jail cell together with lots of sunlight. Jack thinks she’s maybe gonna wither away and die if she can’t get lots of sun pretty regularly now.

“The Bane guy didn’t want to talk to Jack or Riley. But a couple of his minions admitted the mob flew all of them up from some little Central American country just to smash Batman, which gives you an idea how freaked out they are about him. And one of his minions said he was pretty massive and scary even before someone experimented on him without his permission using some freaky biochemical muscle enhancer. Bill thinks Bane may lose a ton of muscle mass if he’s held in prison long enough for the stuff to work its way out of his system, because apparently he’s needed a dose a day ever since he bulked up.

“And I got an email from Batman thanking me for the decryption help but telling me he doesn’t want to owe me or you or Jack any favors, the note was kind of rude and cranky if you ask me, but he also said he was sending me — via Jack since he doesn’t have my snail-mail addy — a prototype multi-burner for PROMs and EPROMs and EEPROMS and it sounds pretty awesome, and maybe I’ll try it out and send him some review comments. But I figure he’s gonna be trying really hard to figure out things he can do for you and Jack so he doesn’t feel like he owes you anything, because he’s still not with the trusting.”

Alex told her, “The other Batman is like the most paranoid, untrusting guy in the world, and a few times it’s still turned out he wasn’t paranoid enough, because they have super-powered alien invaders, and super-powered mind controllers, and super-powered magical badguys, and just tons of stuff like that. But he has to be able to learn to trust somebody once in a while, because the woman he’s dating used to be a supervillainess, and somehow they turned that into a relationship. Even if I have no idea how. I mean, so what if they’re both super-hot, how do you trust your arch-enemy enough to go hop in the bed with them? That sounds crazy.”

Willow wondered, “Well, maybe they weren’t exactly arch-enemies, just a sort of good guy and naughty girl thing, and they worked together to stop some real arch-enemy dealie?”

Alex shrugged. “You got me. At any rate, I don’t think he’s gonna be fighting Catwoman in our universe, because Selina Kyle’s already got a life. On another continent.”

Willow paused. “So let me think for a moment, because there’s more. Oh, yeah, Marshal McCloud needed a bunch of stitches, but he got really lucky that the knife — well, it was really more of a throwing spike if you really wanna know — went right in between two bones in his hand and didn’t completely sever any tendons or any major blood vessels, although it nicked a bunch of stuff, so he’s on restricted duty for a little while but he’s fine, and Sergeant Broadhurst said the chief hardly yelled at him at all this time. Jack just gave me this smirky look, so I figure he put in a good word for the marshal, and he’s gonna be protecting him, even if he keeps calling him McClod and McCowpie. And Joe Broadhurst thinks Jack must’ve put in a good word before, because they didn’t get yelled at a whole ton when they ruined that squad car with a dead silicate in it and couldn’t tell Chief Clifford what happened to the car. And Hanna didn’t have any broken bones, but the swelling on her jaw’s still pretty huge.”

Alex nodded. “Yeah, I saw. Her eye looks better, but her cheek’s still kind of swollen. And she’s got bruises all over her forearms and shins and stuff.”

Willow said, “Well, Bane’s got a ton of Hanna-sized bruises all over him, too. Hanna-fists and Hanna-feet and Hanna-elbows. He sure wanted to know where Jack got her, not that Jack was gonna tell. And Hanna’s bugging Jack to let her go spar with Bane some more, like Bane wouldn’t try to kill her first chance he got. He’s not a nice guy.”

Alex agreed, “Yeah, not a whole lot of nice guys found in the supervillain world.”

“Well, yeah, that’s pretty much why they’re supervillains instead of superheroes. Not counting that Cready guy who’s not exactly Mister Wonderful because — hello — mercenary guy, but he sure seems to be doing what he’s supposed to now. Maybe that whole being a silver blob burned alive constantly and never dying from it like he was really in hell kinda made him re-think the whole ‘do evil stuff’ thing.”

That was pretty much what Alex thought. Cready had probably done some pretty bad stuff before he got those superpowers, but she wouldn’t wish what happened to him on anybody. Not even Danielle Atron.

She wondered what kind of monster sees a man in never-ending unbearable agony and decides to withhold the antidote that could save him, and blackmail him instead. Well, she knew the answer to that one and wasn’t really asking it to get an answer. So it was a rhetorical question. Go-go Gadget SAT word supplier!

So Willow was really excited that Alex was nearly done with the ‘structured programming with C’ course and would be taking her exam in it before school started. Willow wanted Alex to do the Object Oriented Programming course next, and then a linux systems management course next, so Alex would have linux on her home laptop, and then a course on unix tools, so Alex would know a bunch of stuff like the C shell and the Korn shell and awk and sed. Even if Alex could hardly believe there was a unix tool called ‘awk’ which sounded like the noise a bird makes. Programmers were sort of weird.

Alex reminded her, “Okay, but remember I’m taking four AP courses this year, plus the half-credit mentoring thing, plus whatever you and Jack have me doing. I don’t know if I’ll have much time for those computer courses.” Even if the mentoring class would be pretty much nothing since she was already going to be attending Corcoran College.

And Alex was happy that Willow’s time at Jack’s house went really well. But Alex wasn’t sure Jack and Charlie were really prepared for Willow and all her stuff, because Willow had enough stuff to fill up an entire house already, and most of it she wouldn’t want to part with. All the computers and satellite dishes and UPS things and computer gear? No way. Not even if Jack got her access to all the computers in the SRI already. All her books? Nope. All her clothes and things? Nope. All her cosplay costumes and costume making stuff? Nope. Her home office? Extra nope! Alex had no idea how much stuff Jack and Charlie had, or how big their house was, but even if Jack had a ton of room in his bedroom already, there was really no way they had three spare bedrooms and a large dining room to give up for Willow’s stuff.

Okay, Willow’s house wasn’t big enough for Jack’s and Charlie’s stuff, either. Willow had enough spare space for Jack to visit as long as he didn’t bring more than a couple suitcases of clothes. That was really about it, because Willow had every room of her house fully used already. Maybe the garage could be turned into another bedroom, but that was about it. Alex figured Willow and Jack were going to have to have a lot of talks about this before anybody could even think about moving.

But Willow was still totally worried about Charlie. Charlie acted like he was okay with things the way they were, but what would things be like if they were living in the same house all the time? What if Charlie decided he didn’t want to take ‘parent’ orders from Willow? What if …

Willow gasped. “And what if I turn into some sort of crazed bisexual and I start having sex with lots of women? I could turn out to be a really, really bad girlfriend! I don’t wanna hurt Jack! And Charlie would hate me, too, and Grover and Hanna and Janet would never speak to me again!”

Alex tried to sound reassuring. “It’ll be okay. Didn’t Jack say you just needed to talk things out with him and let him know what you feel?”

Willow scowled. “Well, Jack also said he was looking forward to coming home and finding me naked in a hot tub with Megan Fox, and that’s not ever gonna happen. Besides, I don’t like Megan Fox. She doesn’t seem very nice to her co-workers.”

Alex didn’t think that was really the point Jack had been making. Assuming Jack had been making a point and not just being a total smart-aleck.

*               *               *

Late Monday afternoon, Alex was waitressing at Gloria’s when her mom called on her regular cell phone. “Honey? I passed! I have a Master’s degree now! This will make such a difference when I go back to work. I called your father, and we’re going out someplace nice, so you need to be home early enough to change into something nice, and we have reservations at eight o’clock.”

So Alex had to get off work about seven, so she had time to go home and clean up a little. Annie was all dressed up, and so was her mom, so Alex put on one of her good dresses and did her makeup more than she usually did, and she even had time to help Annie with eye makeup. Makeup and haircare was not Annie’s strong point, not that it mattered much when you were a science undergrad at M.I.T., at least according to Annie.

Wednesday Alex had her hair cut so it was a really cute pixie cut that was slightly asymmetrical in front. Then she went home and dyed it so it was just a shade darker than before. Now she wasn’t a blonde with hair down to her shoulders, and she looked drastically different from Terawatt. She couldn’t see what was the point of those comic book characters having a secret identity if you looked exactly like your super-powered identity down to the exact same hairstyle, just without a tiny mask that didn’t hide anything, like the Black Cat.

Thursday was the test for her ‘Structured Programming with C’ course. She was kind of surprised how much like the extra credit homework problems some of the test questions were. And how some of the test questions were just pretty easy. Did a lot of the people taking the course just not do the homework, or not check that their programs compiled and worked right? Still, she was pretty surprised when the proctor looked at his computer and told her she was going to get an ‘A’ for this course, too. Maybe it was just all the great advice from Willow.

*               *               *

Saturday was the big rush day. Terawatt had martial arts in the morning, and then Alex had to fly home and shower and get ready, because her birthday party was at the house at one. So she also had to eat the first half of her lunch before people showed up, so it would look like she was eating a normal lunch, because plenty of party invitees were not in Team Terawatt.

And the party was great. Her mom was in charge of it, but Robyn and Nicole did the inviting, and so there were about thirty friends. Everybody said they loved her new short hairdo, even Ray, who said it made her look sexier because it made her face stand out more. It was super easy to care for, and went under a wig cap really easily with just a little telekinesis, and looked nothing like Terawatt’s long hair. So lots and lots of pluses.

And was Ray the best boyfriend ever, or what?

So at one o’clock they had lunch, then they all watched a movie her dad and Annie put together of Alex growing up, and there weren’t too many embarrassing things in it. And pretty much everyone at the party was in the movie a few times, even Louis and Marsha and Lindsay and Mina. And then they had cake and ice cream, and then Alex opened her presents, and then, as everyone left, half a dozen people stayed a little and helped clean up. Not that there was a lot of mess, even if Marsha had taken a piece of cake over to Louis just as Louis stood up, so he managed to put his face right in the piece of cake she had for him.

Why did this stuff always happen to Louis?

And it was a total waste of a piece of an awesome sheet cake that was two layers of chocolate cake with a raspberry jam layer in between, and buttercream frosting. Alex ate all the rest of the cake while they were cleaning up in the kitchen. It wasn’t that many pieces. Really!

And she got some awesome presents. But the best presents were hiding under Annie’s bed for after her party was over. There were presents from Annie and the folks and Team One and Team Two and Jack and Charlie and Hanna and Willow and Grover and Cindy. Jack’s had a note that said ‘for some stupid reason there aren’t presents from Rome or Tokyo or Arizona or any of the other places whose butts you saved … ingrates!’

And there was a present that didn’t have a tag or card or anything on it, but had a post-it note from Jack saying that someone in New York City must really like her. Oh. She pulled the wrapping paper off and found it was the very top-of-the-line professional Canon camera body that had just come out like a month ago, which she knew cost more than Ray’s car, even if he’d bought it used. And it wasn’t like there was a way to just ‘send it back’ given who it was really from, unless she talked Jack into flying her all the way to New York again so she could fly to Paine Manor and puddle under the back door and leave it on the kitchen table with a ‘thank you but no thank you’ note.

But if she did that, he’d think of a way to buy her something even more expensive and even harder to return. She didn’t know what to do about it.

She so needed to have Willow send Bruce an email saying that it was an awesome present, but way too expensive, and Terawatt didn’t think he owed her anything. And Willow needed to send it from some address that would really make Bruce cranky, like making it look like it came from the head of his computer security staff, or maybe from Lucius Fox.

And Jack’s present was a utility belt in white-covered metal and hard white plastic that fit snugly around her waist and matched her leotard really closely. Alex had a pretty good idea who had given Jack the idea. It had pockets on the back side that were just big enough for two of her energy bars in each one. One of the small front pockets had a circular cutting blade made out of a titanium alloy and covered in diamond dust. Now she really understood what Willow had in mind as a cutting tool. In the same pocket was a ‘wiresaw’ covered in diamond dust, like a tiny version of what they used to cut the Downingtown blob into slices. And she could probably use both of them with her telekinesis, if she practiced enough. Another pocket had a fingertip charger with three different plugs so she could use it to charge her phones and earjack and tablet computer and even her laptop, too, all just from her fingers. There was a backup utility belt for her to put with her backup costume, and Jack had left a note that there would be a matching belt for each of the other copies of her costume, so there would always be one in whichever gym bag she needed. She held the cutting disk in mid-air and practiced spinning it. This could be really awesome once she got used to it.

She just needed to figure out what to keep in the other pockets. Besides food.

Willow’s present was a really cool computer program, naturally. And she’d already downloaded it onto the tablet. Alex had no idea how Willow got something like all of Photoshop, with a special tutorial, to fit on there, but she did.

*               *               *

Then Sunday was the sad day, because Annie was going back to school. They all hugged and cried at the airport. Well, her dad did lots of hugging without the weeping, because he was a guy. Annie smiled. “And since you’re finally in the twenty-first century, you can Skype me once in a while, too!”

*               *               *

And Monday was the start of a long week for Alex and Mina, because Monday and Tuesday were the registration days for all the classes, and Alex needed to make sure that all the headshots for the yearbook got done. Okay, everybody needed the headshots for their school ID, but Alex wanted to make an effort to help people not look hideous in their pictures this year. Every year, there were people who hadn’t even combed their hair, or were walking around with only one half of their face shaved, or something even worse. Like last year, when no one told Morgan Cooper he had a huge piece of spinach or something on one of his front teeth.

So Alex and Louis, as the co-heads of the Photography Club, were running the whole picture deal, which was only one little step in the whole registration process, but it was something Alex could help on, and it was saving the school a ton of money they could spend on important stuff, like new uniforms for the soccer and ski teams. They had a classroom off the cafeteria set up with four of Alex’s favorite photographers in the school club, and they had a booth set up at the entry door so people had a chance to comb their hair or brush their teeth or fix their makeup or whatever they needed. Louis even had a box of individually wrapped combs and toothbrushes and stuff in case someone didn’t have what they needed, because nobody would want to use some total stranger’s toothbrush. Eww.

Okay, Monday morning was registration for the froshes, who had pretty tiny black-and-white pictures in the yearbook, but their picture was going to be on their student ID all year long, and who wanted to be stuck all year long with a totally dorky picture they hated? So even the froshes got a couple pictures taken and the photographers made sure the picture was decent, and Mrs. Wright, who was one of the vice-principals, had someone making sure the right people got matched up with the right IDs and their ID cards got printed out properly with their name and student ID number correct.

Then, that afternoon, the sophomores were doing registration. Alex got the afternoon off, while Louis ran things. And Marsha was one of the people running the check-your-hair-and-teeth table before the pictures. After Alex got off work, she found a message from Louis that one of the sophomore guys was walking around with a booger hanging out of his nose and no one had told him, so they saved the day. Because Alex would have died if her student ID had her with a booger hanging out of her nose. All year long. In living color.

Since Alex had some off hours, she called Janet. It turned out Alex’s biochemistry was so weird that she was probably immune to most normal diseases, but there were some potential serious problems Janet wanted to watch for in future. And there was pretty much no way it would be reasonable to try going on the Pill. And Janet thought Alex was fertile, but maybe she couldn’t get pregnant without taking Ray’s semen and treating it with GC-161 and doing artificial insemination, and then they’d have to worry about her baby being super-powered right off the bat, which could be mega-bad. So the only upside was that at least Alex’s DNA didn’t look like Maggie Walsh had spliced spider and snake DNA in, which was kind of what Hanna’s DNA looked like, except there were probably no spider introns in there but some even weirder things that Janet had no idea where Maggie had gotten them. Alex tried not to sulk while she waitressed for Gloria. It was really hard smiling at customers when you just wanted to go in the back and cry, but that was the hard part of waitressing — well, that and being nice to totally creepy grouches but she didn’t have any that afternoon.

On Tuesday morning, it was time for picture taking for the juniors. And their pictures weren’t as big as the senior pics in the yearbook, but they were in color, and they’d want to look good. Tuesday afternoon was senior registration. Alex and Louis got to go first, along with over a dozen other seniors who were helping at various places. Alex was kind of surprised to see that Mindi was one of the people who were helping at the photography table, so Alex sort of kept an eye on her to make sure she wasn’t mean to people who weren’t fashion plates. But Mindi was being nice to people, and even helpful. Alex figured sooner or later she’d hear what was going on with that. Maybe Mindi got booted out of Libby’s clique or something. Alex hoped Mindi had some other friends she could hang with, because being all alone all the time would be awful.

But Alex had something else set up for senior registration. Every year there were dozens and dozens of seniors who didn’t care about their action picture. They just wanted a nice picture of them with some nice campus spot as the background. So Alex and Louis and Troy and Mikael had their cameras ready and were giving people like that the chance to get their senior ‘action’ photo done. By the end of registration, Alex figured they had maybe a tenth of the seniors taken care of. All the cheerleaders and sports stars wanted action shots of them doing that stuff, and most of the people in clubs wanted pictures of them doing club stuff, and the skaterbois wanted skateboarding shots, and everyone in the drama club wanted shots of them in plays, and that kind of thing. But still, plenty of people just didn’t care about their ‘action’ shot. And then there would be people who wanted action shots that were not going to get past the editors, like that picture of Sera Miles last year.

So she figured registration was a huge win for her and Mina and the yearbook.

Then she had to make sure she had her stuff all ready for Wednesday, which was going to be the first day of classes. She took all her old notes out of her big three ring binder that stayed at home, and she set it up for collecting notes for this year. Then she took everything out of the goes-to-school notebook and got it ready, and made sure she had her pens and pencils all set. She even made sure she had a plastic ruler and like twenty pages of graph paper in her notebook, because Annie said it was way easier to write up her chem labs on graph paper, because you could get your tables and your charts and stuff looking really good without a lot of trouble. Annie also said if you read over the experiment the night before, you could write down the intro parts and maybe even draw boxes for the data tables and the charts ahead of time, which made everything so much easier you could get your labs done in class most of the time. And Annie said Mr. Hooper always had labs on Wednesdays, and if there was a pop quiz it would always be on Friday.

So after Alex got her notebooks set, she looked over her notes on trig and Spanish, just in case that would help her in the first couple days of classes. Then she tried to get some sleep. The room seemed a lot emptier without Annie and her stuff.

The room seemed a lot lonelier, too.

 
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