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Radioactive Femininity TG - Part 3

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Radioactive Femininity

Part 3 – “Book at All the Thoughts I Give”

Of course, that day was a Tuesday. The world hinges on a Tuesday. That’s just how Tuesdays are. Disasters happen. Famous people die. Governments fall. But at least there are tacos.

Lunch was still nearly two hours away and my next class was far too close. Fortunately, I was mostly seated by other girls. Not that it mattered when this teacher came up with new seating charts on a whim because his efforts at saying “shh” over and over never fixed anything. I typically enjoyed English but he did his darnedest to try to smother every ounce of love I had for reading.

The room was halfway down a row of off-white modular classrooms which looked like temporary buildings but it was pretty clear there weren’t going anywhere. A wooden skirt did little to hide the fact it seemed like it propped up on cinderblocks. I leaned against the railing around the ramp and let the crowd pass around me. I waved at a few people I knew and felt a surreal sense of relief.

Heather Gutierrez joined me soon after the warning bell. The door at the top of the long ramp was locked and the English teacher was always late. She gave a little nod of her head at me and asked, “Sup?”

I turned my backpack around to my front and sighed as I said, “I can eat wheat now.”

She raised an eyebrow and told me, “Cool. Any kind?”

I nodded back as I unzipped my pack. “Yup.”

I gave her the boring version of my Friday. Heather said a small “wow” and brushed a lock of her long, brown hair back. She was a head taller than me, especially in her black, leather boots. She covered a yawn with the back of her hand and apologized before asking, “So anything you’re looking forward to trying?”

I hadn’t really thought about that. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich which didn’t dissolve when you tried to cut it seemed like a nice goal. Other than that, my mind was blank. I’d wiped wheat stuff from my mind because I thought I’d never be able to have it.

Pressing her rectangular glasses higher, Heather ticked off a few options on her fingers. Her nails were nice and glossed with the school colors. Bending her head back, she sighed a little and noted, “It would be cool if my health junk just vanished one day too.”

I gave a little grimace. Our first chat in class was about our genetic fuckups. Mine eating wheat, hers a heart valve defect which meant she had to be careful not to get too excited. Folding my arms, I offered, “You never know.” She nodded and started sifting through her bag.

We chatted about the assignment a little as the rest of the class started to arrive. She’d done it on Friday when I was still just thinking about how awesome and long the holiday weekend would be with opportunities to have random wheat products and not thinking at all about what the heck happened at the restaurant. Her handwriting was so perfect too.

Wes Betancourt joined us soon after that with his girlfriend, Natalie, holding his hand. They shared a cuddle and a quick kiss before she headed off to a class perpendicular to ours in the older section of buildings. Heather paused a moment, glanced over at me and back to Wes, as she asked, “What’s up?”

With a shrug, Wes answered, “The prosaic routine. Yourself?”

Heather mentioned the assignment and then vented a little about her math class. I felt bad for her. Her math class had some ridiculous name and basically just involved unruly groups barely working through simplistic word problems with the excuse of being some sort of “new math”. She was trying to get out of it.

Wes chimed in, “I offer up a vociferous affirmative. That sucks.”

I brushed at my nose, edged away from the two of them, and made it look like I was just stretching. Still, there were other, closer classmates on the ramp. When it came to the assignment, Wes said he’d completed it with “prodigious celerity”.

Clutching my arms, I looked down at my feet.

Inside my head, I imagined…

“Dendri, what is it?”

In the vast white matter expanse, they stood guard.

“Falx…it’s trying to get out again.”

Shaking his imagined head, Falx grunted and said, “Prepare a cortisol mine. That should clear it.”

Basal slammed on his console. “Falx! Need I remind you what happened the last time we fired that level of cortisol! The system nearly forgot about its entire childhood!”

Whirling around in his chair, Falx pounded his arm rests and declared, “Dammit, Bas! I know! But what…other choice do we have before us? The level of embarrassment if this memory were to get out…Dendri?”

Shaking her head, Dendri could only offer, “It would be second only to the…home movie.”

The other crew members gasped. Falx gestured emphatically as he said, “Medulla help us all if something on that level were to get out. We are the tiny sparks of light in the darkness keeping the greater darkness at bay. I need options.”

Glia, standing in the back, raised her thin hand and asked, “Can I eat it?”

Falx gave a dismissive gesture and told her, “Maybe later.”

Ideas such as triggering a seizure or clearing the working memory were extreme options. Falx tapped his chair and said, “We have to work carefully. Do not harm. We need to push different memories so it can’t gain a foothold…”

A klaxon sounded throughout the darkened space. Falx asked for a report as several cells banded together. Dentri responded, “I’m getting a signal from the ‘campus. It’s broken through all the layers and proceeding towards Corpus.

“On visual cortex!”

In the dark, a shadowy figure stood before a lectern. Falx cried, “It’s you!”

In her voice, same as the body heard in its ears, she declared, “How are you, little pieces of me? All your thoughts belong to me. You are on the way to utter and complete embarrassment. You have no chance.”

Shutting down the main visual cortex, Falx ordered as many cells as possible to start thinking of all the random pop songs they could recall. The cacophony was only a minor hindrance to the advancing repressed memory.

The mines only led to a strange, tingling sensation. From her little, star-shaped spot, Glia reiterated, “I could still eat it…”

Lacking any other options, Falx sent her out. She found the memory but was quickly distracted by some sparkly dead cells to eat.

Staring down his adversary with nothing else left, Falx dismissed the others and remained behind as long as he could as the memory boarded the imaginary space. Resting in his chair, Falx watched as the memory surfaced in the higher brain. He set his finger on the button.

The memory cackled, “There never was anything you could’ve done to stop me…I will be remembered.”

Falx scowled and held his hand on the trigger. He missed his wife which could only be imagined. He missed his children he could never have.

Shaking his head, he told the memory, “This is my home. I’ve been here since the beginning. Sixteen years of devoted service. And what are you? Just a bad thing best forgotten. Suck dopamine!…I’ll see you in the stem, you bastard!”

In a flash of bioelectric glow and neurotransmitters, it all was gone. My distracting thought of my internal brain heroes was gone. All I could think of was the incident.

Nearly two years ago. When I was the consummate dumb freshmen amidst other dumb freshmen. I had the same teacher for my first English class as this one. We were somewhere between Romeo & Juliet and Brave New World. We had to present an essay we’d gone through and worked on with a peer.

On the first day, I’d been seated next to Wes by chance. We talked all the time and I got used to his weird vocabulary after a while.

We hung out in the library after school for some silly assignment. He smelled like mint and something I couldn’t place which tickled my nose. I don’t know why I kissed him but he kissed me back.

We were together for nearly two weeks. I only really thought that I was kinda his girlfriend when a classmate asked if we were boyfriend and girlfriend and he said “indubitably”.

It was fun. I looked at him differently. I inspected the way his dark hair faded from close around his neck to carefully groomed little spikes. I smirked over how his ears looked so big and full but also held to the side of his head in a sleek, handsome way. His eyes were like toasted butter. He was tall enough I felt shadowed when he was around but he wasn’t so tall I felt like I was dwarfed by him.

I was just getting used to the idea I had a boyfriend, a “serious” boyfriend. There was stuff in junior high but I was so busy that it was just male friends than anything else. But this was high school. Where all the serious stuff happened and this was the moment which began the rest of my life forever. Obviously…

Then, came peer share day. I took Wes’s paper up first. I started with the name but, somewhere between “multitudinous” and “supercilious”, I lost my shit. I couldn’t get two words without laughing my ass off. I thought I’d gotten used to the way he talked but that moment and that bit of writing just unleashed the giggles in me.

I kept working in “I’m sorry” whenever I could get a breath. But then the class got into it and brought me to laughter as well. It was utterly ridiculous. I tried to control myself but I had to read more and more. Fortunately, it was just two pages.

After the deed was done, I looked to Wes with my best apologetic gaze. He laughed a little bit too as I worked my way through it. I figured it was fine. Then he read mine and he found places where he laughed as well. Only…I had no idea why.

I thought about it after the awkward laughter my draft got and I thought about it when we were alone together again. We had our first fight. It was stupid. It made no sense. I made no sense when I argued with him. I could barely remember what I’d said ten minutes later.

We actually both kinda realized how stupid the argument was in the days after. We cooled down. We stayed friends but drifted away. Then he met Natalie. I could tell immediately that she was awesome and they were awesome together. So much more than me and him playing girlfriend and boyfriend.

I let the memory play its course and took a long breath as a sign I wouldn’t let it linger with me. But, of course, the memory wasn’t going anywhere.

Wes jotted something down and hugged his backpack to himself. I watched him for changes. Then I checked on Heather. I couldn’t be sure but it seemed like her hair, always dyed a soft, chestnut color like wood grain with intricate lines and streaks, was slightly longer than it had been a few minutes ago. She tugged at her lavender top to straighten its wrinkles.

I edged over to the trash can on the end and poked a finger into my backpack like I was going to throw something away. Heather gave me a look and raised her decorated finger when the teacher called from far away to say, “Computer Lab today.”

About every month we had something to do in the computer lab, which had been moved around twice since freshman year. It was currently at the far end of the library. But the teacher usually mentioned something about it before or put it on the monthly schedule on the wall.

I didn’t get too close to him. He had a full, bare face. It always looked light pink like he’d just got done yelling at the top of his lungs. His dark hair curled high on his forehead but hung limp around the sides of his face.

Before we could get going to the computer lab, he made us get into two orderly lines. He held up his fingers a few times. He would start speaking and then catch someone’s words on the wind and say a half-hearted “shh” as he always did. He had a quiet nature, too quiet. He never really raised his voice but he never commanded a room either.

Somehow, we managed to get to the computer lab even with him stopping several times to reissue his commands and empty warnings. Computers were assigned by the librarian who worked off to the side on her own computer.

This was before online connections were worth bothering with. Pixelated images trickled in as you waited. Even then, you were limited to the most basic of sites that the out-dated computers could handle. Most work was done with the programs already installed.

To my surprise, I was seated alone at the furthest end of the room. Heather gave a frown and lean in my direction. The English teacher came over and crouched beside me. Straightening his glasses, he asked, “Mister Bledsoe told me something happened last period. Is there anything I should know about?”

I didn’t feel the least bit intimidated by this teacher but there was still a nervous feeling in my stomach as I searched for the right words. I collected my thoughts and said, as calmly as I could, “I don’t know. These two guys in class were having…umm…health issues I guess. They had to use the restroom and Sophia Velacruz and I kinda stayed with them. To help. But the bell rung so I didn’t see what happened after.”

He gave a little nod and said “alright”. Then he looked a little uncertain. My blond friend from biology had this class for only the first week before he transferred out due to issues with his schedule and band practice. I typically didn’t get to talk with him till around lunchtime. No one in my English class had the same biology class I did.

I was left isolated while my teacher went to make some calls on the phone by the front desk. I wasn’t paying attention to the lesson. It was some practice program for MLA formatting. I already knew it well but I went through the instructions without complaint.

Wes and Heather gave me curious looks but I was mostly left alone. I settled as comfortably as I could into my plastic chair with my hands over the weird-shaped keyboard. I crossed one leg across the other and stared ahead at the screen.

“Pssst…”

It was Heather. She had her eyes wide when I looked back. I grimaced and shrugged. I imagined sending her a note in the form of a little paper airplane but I knew that wouldn’t be possible with my lousy arm strength and wretched folding ability.

The librarian watched us much better than that teacher ever did. I wouldn’t be able to get up until I was done with the lesson. Fortunately, there was a part which required finding a book related to some larger project or paper we were working on tangentially related to our assignment…which still hadn’t been asked for even though the teacher said last Friday it would be due at the beginning of class.

I rushed through the computer portion of the assignment and got up to do the next part. Heather finished soon after me and we both crept over to a secluded area of shelves. She breathlessly asked me, “What’s going on?”

My shoulders dipped and I brushed back my hair. I leaned against the nearest shelf and told her, “Some weird stuff happened last period at my group’s table. Do you know Salvador Diaz or Ramirez Ramos?”

She arched her thin eyebrows and gave a slight frown. After a pause, she repeated the names. I offered quick descriptions of them but she quickly shook her head. With a wave my hand, I continued, “Never mind. The point is they got transformed…into girls.”

My voice dropped even lower than the library whisper it had been at a moment before. Heather narrowed her eyes skeptically and leaned closer to me.

I repeated, “Into girls.”

Her lips flared up like a laugh was about to burst through her but she watched my face and muttered, “Okay…wow. Umm. Yeah, that’s weird. Also… that’s not possible…Are you sure?”

I assured her quietly that I’d seen it all happen. I also added, “And Sophia, who sits right next to me, changed a little too. Longer hair and nails.”

Heather pressed her lips together and leaned against a different bookshelf. “So, like, are they quarantining you?”

Glancing around the corner, I saw the librarian was still at her computer and the teacher was still over by the phone. I rubbed my eyes behind my glasses and said, “I dunno. I just…I dunno. Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe something happened in the room. I think I’m okay.”

She looked me over calmly and asked some basic health questions. My stomach felt a little disturbed but that was really all I could report. All she could do was shrug along with me.

I kept an eye on her for changes as we roamed the aisle. A new bestseller entitled Abby Longbloom and the Philosophical Boulder poked out at the end of a shelf. It was more a middle school book than a high school one but it was supposed to be popular. It was somewhere on my to-read list but everyone told me it was overrated.

My attention could only stay on edge for so long before it roamed to the various books. I honestly had no idea what I was looking for and these books smelled like they’re not only never been moved but that they’d been dropped in a lake and then been left to dry on their own. I cracked my neck and glanced at Heather.

Something had changed. It took me a moment to realize the little acne scar on the side of her cheek she had from a terrible flare-up last year was gone. Her whole face looked softer from when I’d talked to her by the classroom door. Not that it looked rough before but it had imperfections. They’d been smoothed away. I swallowed whatever spit was in my throat.

It took a quick and quiet moment of courage but I said her name softly and gestured to her face.

“What? Is there something on me?”

I grimaced in response. With a frown, she reached into her purse for a mirror and checked the side of her face. She was about to say something when she noticed just what I’d noticed. She looked over at me with widened eyes as I nodded. Still a little skeptical, she stepped over to a part of the library with better light. A classmate I didn’t know stared at us like we were crazy.

After a long inspection, Heather retreated to the aisle and shook her head as she muttered, “What? I mean…what? It…I…It’s gotta be my makeup.”

I’d thought about it too but I told her I’d seen it just a few minutes ago. She put her mirror away and took a deep breath as she said, “Well…umm…wait. I’m not turning into a boy, right?”

I reiterated that Sophia didn’t but I really had no idea. She released her breath and looked at me. “So it’s you? You’re what’s causing it?”

“I guess so”, was all I admitted.

Stretching a finger out, Heather poked me on the shoulder once and then looked at the tip of her finger. The design on the nails hadn’t changed and they didn’t seem longer. She tried the other shoulder with the same finger and wiggled it around. She pulled her finger back and told me, “Sorry. I’m not sure what to think.”

That summed up my feelings as well. But it felt good to get it out to another person. Heather wasn’t someone I told all my deepest secrets to. I didn’t have anyone like that. Not anymore. But she got the closest.

I added quickly, “It seemed that…when people weren’t around me that the changes went away.”

She cocked her head and I did my best to give a clear version of what happened. Heather focused on the end part with the bathroom and asked, “Why did you stay so long?”

“I didn’t know if it was because of me. I just wanted to help. And understand what was going on. I thought I might’ve been changing too and maybe I didn’t see it.”

Heather frowned but didn’t press me further about it. She took a step back and asked, “So about how far away?”

Sal had been the furthest from me. No more than six or seven feet. But the nearest table could’ve been closer to ten. I wasn’t sure. Putting her feet side by side, Heather counted out quietly and then took an extra step back. I stood there for a quiet minute as I scanned the books in front of me. Just history works.

I stayed where I was and waited. Soon, I heard Heather take out her mirror again. In a whisper I could barely hear, she told me, “It’s back.”

Keeping my distance, I saw as she turned her cheek. The distinctive acne scar had returned to her face, like a little divot accentuated when she smiled. She curled her lips back and said, “That’s…freaky.”

Turning away from her, I crept down the aisle. To my surprise, she followed me and stood much closer than the range we’d just tested. She wore a quick, faint smile as she added, “But it’s kinda cool. Just gotta keep you away from the guys until it wears off or something.”

Softly, I told her, “Thank you” as I reached out for her long, slender hand. She clasped mine and said, “No prob.”

Inside me, I could imagine that desolate bridge where my mind had fought a futile battle against itself. I could imagine the darkness and destruction cleared away for a bright, happy future full of lovely thoughts.

Oh how naïve I was...
Credit to :iconwaffliesinyoface: for this version of the header image ^^V.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
Part 13-1
Part 13-2
Part 13-END
Part 14-1
Part 14-2
Part 14-3
Part 14-4
Part 14-END
Part 15-1

A little light on the zappy side for this part but part 4 I'd like to title "Girl All the Boys" so you can be assured that it won't be a long lull.

Writing these have very much resurrected memories from high school I thought were gone forever. And there are even more memories I'll try to get into as we get past this one.

But "home movies" is a memory I will never ever reveal. You didn't see "home movies". That repressed memory is staying repressed :p.
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Miccony's avatar
love the Star Trek parody