“Spiders,” their mother added what mildly scared her. “And creepy looking lizards.”
“That’s just stupid.” Louise muttered quietly.
“Don’t pass judgment on people,” their mother said. “And no, you can’t go, and don’t you two dare sneak off by yourselves to see it, or there will be a world of hurt for both of you.”
“World of hurt” translated to them losing everything from Internet access to having to surrender their video equipment. In Louise’s opinion, corporal punishment would be over faster and thus less painful in the long run—which was probably why their mother opted for her way.
* * *
Louise was so disappointed that she forgot why she’d been on the Pittsburgh forum in the first place until they reached school. The day got worse as she searched through the forums and discovered no one had a telephone directory for Pittsburgh.
“This day sucks.” Louise explained what she’d found out and why she’d been looking.
“We have Alexander’s street address.” Jillian pushed Tesla into their shared locker. “He’s not going to fit in this when winter comes and we have two coats and snow boots to store in here.”
Louise really hoped that by winter they’d have worked something else out, although Tesla was making it so they had a great deal of freedom to move through the city. “Anything we mail has to hit Cranberry days before Shutdown to make it across to the border. If we miss the window, it will sit at the post office for a month until the next Shutdown.”
“So?” Jillian leaned against the wall and watched the ebb and flow of fifth graders in the hallway. “It’s not going to go bad unless we send something like cookies. Real homemade cookies, not the Girl Scout cookies. We can only call during the twenty-four hours of Shutdown. The first five hours are while we’re asleep. Then we’re here at school. And if we made a call at home, Mom and Dad are going to want to know who the heck we’re talking to.” Because they never talked to people other than Aunt Kitty on the phone.
“I’d rather talk to Alexander instead of mailing her a letter.” Louise started to check sites that might have a Pittsburgh phone book. They were places like the universities and government offices, so she needed to actually hack the sites to search them. At least she could bounce through the café next to the school, so she didn’t have to worry about being traced. “Just dropping a letter into the mail feels a little like writing a letter to Santa Claus. In September! If she answers back, it could take months for her letter to get to us.”
“Her answering would be Christmas?”
“Duh!”
“Shoot! Well, the day just got worse,” Jillian warned. “Incoming.”
Louise looked up from her tablet. “Huh?”
Jillian nodded down the hall where Elle stood surrounded by the girls from Mr. Howe’s class. “Elle is passing out invitations to the girls.”
“Already? I thought her birthday was next month.” Elle’s elaborate birthday parties were a yearly ritual. Pride and etiquette demanded that she invite all the girls in their grade, thus they were always included. It had taken them two disasters to realize that they were invited only in form, not in spirit. They hadn’t attended in third or fourth grade.
“I only did one invitation,” Elle handed it over like it should be on a silver platter. “But it’s for both of you. That’s why I just put ‘Mayer’ on it.”
“Thank you.” Louise knew her mother would ask later if she’d thanked Elle for the invitation or not. She also knew that because there was only one invitation, Jillian figured that they were both covered by Louise’s thanks.
Invitation delivered, Elle turned on heel and wove down the hallway, skillfully avoiding the curious boys to intercept Zahara, who was always late because she had to deliver her younger brother to his classroom downstairs.
Jillian tore open the envelope and muttered a dark curse at the invitation. “Little Mermaid.”
“You’re kidding me.” Louise had never understood the appeal of the Little Mermaid. “I thought she would have grown out of that.”
Jillian kept cursing.
“We don’t have to go,” Louise said.
“This isn’t about Elle’s birthday, it’s about the class play. She wants to do the play The Little Mermaid and she’s going to be Princess Ariel and I’ll end up as the Sea Witch.”
“Oh shoot,” Louise hissed.
“Wouldn’t be so bad if we did the original Hans Christian Anderson story where the mermaid dies after the prince marries another woman. At least that mermaid was a soulless creature made of water who was really after immortality by exchanging a three-hundred-year lifespan for a soul. The husband was just icing on the cake. No, no, we’ll be doing the story where she gives everything up for a boy including everyone that she loves dear, screws the world to hell and back and then needs him to kill the villain while she’s helpless someplace else. Oh god, I’m so sick of these wussy princesses and evil women. We’ve done the evil witches of Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel, the evil queen of Snow White and the evil stepmother of Cinderella. Is this some kind of campaign against femininity? Our choices are the evil and usually ugly powerful female or the helpless princess, desired just for her beauty? And what the heck is this shit about evil stepmothers anyway?”