fandomhigh | BWI Portalocity Terminal [Saturday Morning]

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!event: newbie shuttle

BWI Portalocity Terminal [Saturday Morning]

Rather than fly from Philadelphia to Baltimore, Eric's parents had given him a lift. They had offered to drive him directly to the school, but he told them he would rather meet the group at the airport and take the shuttle. That way he'd get an early glimpse at all the hot girls he was sure would be going to his new school.

So now he was relaxing in the lounge, drinking a soda and waiting. It wasn't going to college, but it would do.

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There was a well worn piece of paper in his hands. Jonas had folded it and refolded it on the way, making sure that the ink stayed visible despite that. The instructions were numbered, written in small, careful script that he'd written himself. Where to go, what to bring, what to say.

He vaguely remembered memories of things that flew (that weren't birds) but they were mostly blurred in his mind, running together and being just out of reach.

Jonas squinted and looked around, taking in the faces of those around him, memorizing them, adding memories. His bag was at his feet, nondescript and light. Jonas waited, unsure of what to expect and constantly on his guard.

At least this one didn't seem too creepy.

"Dude, relax," Eric said.

Jonas turned his attention from the piece of paper and to the owner of the voice. He found himself automatically comparing the features of the boy to that of those he'd known in the Community (Asher, for one) and could find no difference besides the obvious genetic one.

"I'm not relaxed?" Jonas asked, actually unsure of that fact. Perhaps he'd been doing it wrong. Relaxation hadn't been a concept he'd really studied since going Elsewhere, staying Elsewhere.

"You seem a little tense," Eric said. "You worried about starting a new school?"

Jonas took stock of himself, checking for tenseness, muscle stiffness or anything like that. He didn't feel any different, didn't feel any of the intense pain that seemed to cling to him from the memories he'd once received.

"No," he said after a moment's pause. "I think it's called...anticipation?"

He'd been given a dictionary in the Village and he'd read it through, memorized words but using them was still difficult.

"Nah, you're not sweating," Eric assured him.

"It's not warm in here," Jonas said, not understanding the association between anticipation and sweating. "Of course I'm not sweating. You're not either."

"Right, so there's nothing to worry about!" Eric declared.

There was no connection between anticipation and swearing. Eric just mixed up anticipation and perspiration.

"I'm not worrying," he said again, studying the boy's seemingly enthusiastic manner about the situation. "We're being transported to a school, right? That doesn't worry me."

Eric nodded. "Yup, it sounds like a good school, too. Feeny said he heard good things about it."

"And Feeny is?" Jonas asked, questions rolling off him as he tried to learn new things while they waited for transportation. Everything in his head was so rudimentary, so new and the feeling of drowning in his own lack of knowledge wasn't something he liked.

"Feeny's my next door neighbor and he was the principal of my last high school," Eric said.

"Oh." Jonas had lived in the same Community as his teachers but he hadn't ever been neighbors with any of them. It all almost seemed too close. "That wasn't strange? Being neighbors with an authority figure?"

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"Hi," Didi said simply. "Isn't going to school interesting?"

"My last one was," he answered honestly. "I haven't been a student at any other school to be able to say that about every school, though. It'd be a generalization."

Jonas was incredibly careful about language and language use. Stringent rules tended to do that to you.

"I've never been a student," Didi said thoughtfully. "I mean, I've been in schools. A lot of them. Most of them were interesting."

Not understanding things was a familiar feeling for Jonas but he felt like he should understand this. He knew what schools are, he knew what students were.

"Were you a teacher?" he asked, grasping for the last thing he possibly thought she could be doing in school without being a student.

"Me? No. Kind of. Sometimes." She looked down at herself. "I'm older than I look."

... that would clarify things, there.

Well, the next logical question was, of course, "How old are you?"

"Um ..." This should not be a hard question. "I'm 16? But I'm also two days old. And I'm also as old as the first living thing."

"Sixteen works."

She was pretty sure he'd think she was crazy. She did not mind that.

Jonas actually didn't think she was crazy. He'd been known by a number more than his own name for most of his life so he found things like that intriguing.

"I'm sixteen too," he said, slowly parsing her information in his head while he talked. "I was once a nineteen but Jonas was easier for some people to remember."

They could be crazy together.

"You're three ages?" he asked, getting back to her statements. "But one person?"

"I like the name Jonas," she said. "Better than a number, I mean. And yeah, there's only one of me, really."

She shrugged. "I'm Death. It gets complicated."

"Thank you," he said in response to her compliment about his name. He couldn't let kind words pass without gratitude being expressed.

"Death." The repetition was sometimes a nuisance, he knew, but it was helpful for him. Repeat the words, file it away, remember it for later. No one could take his memories this time. "I--Death has a body?"

Death as a concept was fresh for him, vividly painful and, already, Jonas was being that boy on the battlefield, begging for water before he died.

"It has me," Didi said, and recited. "One day in every century, Death takes on mortal flesh ... this is the price she must pay for being the divider of the living from all that has come before or will go after."

She looked rueful. "That's the idea, anyhow. The one-day-a-century thing went weird this time. And, uh, call me Didi."

"Didi," he repeated and gave her a slow nod. Grateful for his lack of memories and his lack of understanding, the fact that he was seemingly talking to Death itself wasn't that much of a shock to him. He had questions, endless ones but she looked his age even if she wasn't and he didn't want to overwhelm her with his requests.

"Why are you going to school?" he wondered, unable to stop that question. "Are you bored?"