Episode 123: School Planning (Acheron)

Daisy was always hard to track down, but he’d found her. She had this habit of disappearing, blending in, being forgettable. He wished he could figure out how to do that. He stuck out too much.

He guessed it was because she was a girl, so her shyness and her closed-offness just made her look like mousegirl in the library.

Boys, especially princes, weren’t supposed to be mousegirls in the library. This meant that even though Ach and Daisy had practically the same personality, she blended in and he stood out.

She was his favorite sister after Talise. Maybe a little bit just his favorite sister. They hadn’t always been close, but when Spence and Talise were dating, Ach hid from them both and discovered, accidentally, that he and Daisy had a lot in common even though she was decades older than he was.

She was his dad’s last kid with her mom. The last before the war destroyed her family. Ach, as the first byproduct of that destruction, had always felt guilty and uncomfortable around any of his dad’s older kids. But Daisy had showed him her secret room in the library and they’d plotted how they’d arrange the place if they were in charge and kind of been friends ever since.

Meanwhile his relationship with Talise had frayed. They were raising Talise’s kids together, and they practically lived in the same apartment, but the closeness was gone.

Their past had gone like this.

Step One: Talise and Spence started dating – Spence, because he lived in Sylem where homosexuality was illegal and he wanted to like girls. He thought, since he liked Ach, that Ach’s twin would be the perfect girl for him.

Step Two: Ach bonded to Spence. He should have died, because it took him days to figure out what was going on. Anyone else would have died and he had no idea why he hadn’t.

Step Three: Talise confessed she was sleeping with Spence, experimentally, because Talise…Ach couldn’t actually remember why. He’d seared it from his memory.

Step Four: Spence found out Talise might be pregnant, on a day he was grounded to his apartment for…Ach couldn’t actually remember why. But Spence decided to make himself a passageway to Talise’s room, inside the walls. The walls crushed him, and killed him.

Step Five: Ach’s bond to Spence made it so he could help everyone find Spence’s body, and his dad revived him. Ach (and everyone else) found out Talise was pregnant.

That was the end of Ach’s friendship with either of them. His mom and his Uncle Konrad and Uncle Nell were going on a trip to the Aorimaan Isles to see the Gancanagh island, and Ach volunteered to go with. He’d seen how gays there were treated and panicked, and Uncles Konrad and Nell had backed him down. He’d started training with Uncle Konrad.

And for years, he lived in the same house as Spence, in love with him, bonded to him, while Spence was married to Talise.

Daisy…he wasn’t sure what he would have done without her.

For two years, he’d trained with Uncle Konrad and hidden from Spence and Talise. And then one day, Spence had walked out onto the training field in the pre-dawn hours and joined him at training.

In under two hours, Ach had thoroughly ruined Talise’s marriage.
He’d gotten pretty good, for him, at hiding from her emotionally and trying to keep the house clean and stay out of the way and not be the guy who stole her husband.
And he’d gotten closer and closer to Daisy, especially with his dad asking him to work in the library.

Now that he would be teaching in the fall, he wanted her opinion on which books to have students read.

He set a stack of 28 books on the table in front of her. “Which ones of these do you think are most important if you had to pick five?” he asked.

He was going to do three books during the main body of the school year and then two, together, for the field experience, which he wanted to make immersive. He could have the students do trips to see the places where the books took place. Maybe read the books while staying in that realm, if the budget and all the school rules allowed it.

He was doing a really good job not thinking about any part of teaching that actually involved engaging with other people. Or having his rules and opinions questioned by people who were almost the same age as he was.

Daisy ran her index finger down the binding-side of the stack of books, mouthing the titles of each as she made her way down. She set five aside. “These five,” she suggested. She picked up another. “And this one, if you want to exchange a title.”

“Why those?” Ach asked. He picked up one of the coming-of-age books she’d ignored the entire genre of. It seemed like teenagers should read that kind of thing. Normal teenagers, anyway, who wouldn’t feel even more freakish by reading about how normal people functioned.

Ach gripped the table with his fingers. He couldn’t teach this class. He was going to fail, and then someone was going to get kidnapped in another realm, and then his students would have no respect for him because why would they, and then he was going to shrivel up like a raisin; too hardy to die but too gross for anyone to want around.

Except Ach wouldn’t be gross, he’d be pathetic, and everyone would see. They’d know he couldn’t do literature after all. He was just some guy who couldn’t anything.

“Because,” Daisy said. Her voice tore him from the depths of his misery, fragmenting it for him to pick up the pieces later. “They represent the types of issues that repetitively challenge a society. If I wanted people to learn, these five would avoid the biggest and most repeatable mistakes and cover the highest number of age ranges. But the sixth would inspire some hope in a lighthearted way, so maybe mistakes are acceptable if you don’t like all the overcoming stuff.”

Wow. She should be teaching this.

“Okay,” he said. He guessed he just had bad ideas here. “My dad told you then?”

“Told me what?” she asked. “I haven’t talked to him in two months. Our last conversation included roast apple recipes.”

Roast apples? Why would anyone want to roast apples? They were perfect the way they were; fresh and crisp and full of nutrients. Why cook them out?

Ach liked lunches that were about apples, cheese, and rolled hazelnut wafer sticks.

He laughed, because it seemed like she expected him to. Then he laughed some more, because he felt weird assuming she wanted him to laugh, and what if he’d laughed inappropriately? Then he laughed more because what if he was still laughing inappropriately?

Oh, no, he was stuck.

He forced the laugh to turn into a coughing fit and emerged from it red-faced and too hot. “I’m teaching this fall,” he explained.

“Oh.” She said.

Yes, oh. That was exactly how he felt about it.

“That’s exciting,” she added. “What subject?”

He pointed toward the books.
“War history?” she guessed. “Modernization? Literature?” She looked at him. “If it’s literature, I would choose a different set of books.”

“Why?” he asked. “These are all good.”

He was so glad he had her advice.

She picked a different set of four books, and pulled two out of the original set. “These two are broad, but I would also choose from these. The ability to adapt a curriculum would be more diverse and keep them more engaged. Plus the themes are less predictable from book to book.”

“Why aren’t you teaching this?” he asked. Her level of thought made him look inadequate.

“I don’t like teaching kids all day,” she pointed out.

He almost laughed, but he thought that might be rude.

“You’re going to be an amazing teacher,” she said. Maybe she didn’t know him well after all. “I wish I could take your class. Have you considered offering one for adults?”

Yes, that was what he needed to do. He wasn’t scared enough of kids, so he needed to make this even harder by teaching a group of people who were older than he was and probably all thought they knew more than he did.

He did laugh this time. “I’d have to talk to adults.”

“That’s true,” she agreed. She tapped a pencil against her lips. “I’m excited for you. If you ever want someone to take a quiz before you give it to the students, I would be happy to.”

So, so lucky he’d asked her.

“Yeah? Thanks.”

They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, mulling over the stack of books.

“Will you be working in the library?” she asked him.

He guessed what she probably meant was, Now that you’re done with school can we start sorting books together or will teaching get in the way of that.

He wished she talked to his dad more because then she would know he was supposed to work in the library as part of his job.

Actually, then his dad would have given the library job to her because she was better at it than he was.

“I think so,” he said. “How come you don’t talk to my dad much?” His dad was her only uncle, unless you counted Uncle Fenton but he didn’t really participate in family stuff much.

“Because,” she said. “He isn’t my dad and we don’t have much in common. He has other people to talk to.”

“He isn’t my dad either, but I still talk to him,” Ach defended. He wasn’t actually sure why he wanted Daisy and his dad-not-dad to talk, but he did.

She thought for a minute while she restrung a strand of hair into one of her braids. “That’s true,” she said. “Should I talk to him more?”

“Maybe?” he guessed. “I don’t know. They just got divorced.”

He remembered how alone he’d felt when Talise and Spence had been together. The situation was different, but the loneliness would be at least that bad. Lots of people were keeping his mom busy, but Ach wanted to make sure his dad-not-dad didn’t get forgotten in all of that.

Daisy looked up toward the library skylight, a hundred or so feet above them. “I could bring him a book about families in times of divorce. He might enjoy it. Or maybe he wants to discuss the physics of flight maneuvers.”

“You can try,” Ach said. His dad didn’t really read much physics, but that was probably just because he hadn’t discovered that he loved it yet. “I was going to give him a box of travel packs because he wants to explore more.”

“Or a bundle of ingredients so he can do the spellwork himself,” she suggested.

That was a great idea! Except… “He doesn’t have wicca magic.”

They breathed out, in frustrated unison.

“Is that why they’re divorcing?” she asked.

He hadn’t figured that out yet. He knew everyone else knew and he didn’t want to look dumb by asking. They’d had years of not divorcing while his mom had Uncle Konrad’s babies. Maybe his dad had something against Uncle Nell. Or maybe something else had changed…

“I don’t know. But if you want to get him a book, what about a travel guide?”

“I could,” she said.

Good, that was done. “I just want him to feel included,” he explained.

“That makes sense.” She nodded her head thoughtfully and chewed on the graphite end of her pencil. “Travel is a sign that he is considering leaving then? I can encourage him to feel part of the family.”

Ach started to explain that his dad was probably just going on dates, mostly, not planning to leave, but then he got all blushy when he thought about his dad dating.

“He’s seeing Niels’s mom,” he explained. “I don’t think they’re leaving.”

“Maybe a book about estate upkeep from Babylon, then,” she joked.

He liked Daisy so much, because he could always tell when she was joking. She joked like he did.

He laughed. “That’s probably a good idea.”

“Should we select a bunch of books he might enjoy and stack them in front of his door so he can’t get out or in without moving them?”

That was a really good idea. They could make like a wall of books in the hall outside his Giana-room door and then he’d know where to find the presents.

“Sure.” He looked at Daisy. “He always made sure Talise and I felt at home, even though we weren’t his kids. I want him to feel at home too.”

“My dad always said pranks were the best way to make someone feel at home. It gives you a story to share later.” She tapped the pencil against the books. He hoped really loudly that she wasn’t inventing some kind of prank to play on his dad. He wasn’t a prank guy, he was a hibernating grizzly bear guy. Scary yeti, maybe. Not someone to prank.

“I don’t think he likes pranks,” he warned. “Next time Uncle Nell wants to feel at home, maybe?”

“Maybe,” she murmured, noncommittal. “Are you ready to pick books out.”

He looked around the massive library. Yeah, he could find the best books here. And then he’d start sorting the books by category.

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