Season 1, Interautumnal Interlude VIII - "The Double Date, Part 2"

“Well, what happened?” Reed asked, sitting next to Audrey on Isaac’s couch. Isaac had dropped Frances off at the station earlier that night; approximately thirty seconds after getting home, just enough time to take off his shoes and hang his greatcoat up, Audrey had kicked down his door again.

“Your date!” Audrey exclaimed, rushing up to Isaac, autumn moonlight spilling through the doorway. “How did it go? Did you make me proud?”

Isaac shrugged. “It was pretty fun. Regina’s friend turned out to be a basketball star.”

While Audrey pranced around Isaac, asking a million questions in a single breath, Reed picked Isaac’s door up and placed it back in the hinges. “So unfair. Where’s my double-date? I want somebody to pay for my dinner.”

Isaac chuckled. “Well, next time Dan and Regina hang out, you and I can go and you can pay for my dinner.”

Reed rolled her eyes. “Not with you, chutzpah. I want to go on a double date with those Institute girls. You ask her about her 401k? Even with the recession we’re in, I bet it’s looking pretty healthy. Institute girls. Smart and wealthy - that’s something you gotta lock down early. A long-term investment, if you will.”

“It’s not about money!” Audrey exclaimed. “What was she like? Do you think she could raise a family? Did she have good child-bearing hips?”

Isaac scratched his head. “...uh, well, she had some interesting character traits, I guess…”

And that’s how Audrey and Reed plopped themselves down onto Isaac’s couch, clearly ready to hear his story. And that’s when Isaac realized that one of the many fun things about going on a date was telling your friends about that date afterwards.

As he stood in front of the couch and regaled them with his tale, he decided to omit any mention of Dan’s preference for Audrey. Unfortunately, thanks to a slip of the tongue, the part about his weird feeling around tall girls made it in, but he quickly covered his tracks by talking about how nice Chopping Block Restaurant was. When he got to the part where he and Frances entered the park, he paused, not sure how to proceed after Frances opened her jacket.

The girls frowned at his pause.

“Well?” Reed asked. “Did she show you her bazookas? Her cannons?”

Isaac sighed. “You find new ways to make me uncomfortable every day.”

“You’re uncomfortable?” Reed repeated. “I’m not the guy who wants to be picked up by a girl taller than him.” She suddenly rubbed the side of her mouth, frowning.

Audrey crossed her arms and nodded. “You wouldn’t let someone eat food off of you, but you’d let yourself get picked up?”

Isaac threw his hands in the air. “I don’t know. I feel like there’s a trend in story-telling nowadays that makes every piece of media have a slight sexual bend to it. I guess that’s just influencing me without me even noticing.”

“Really?” Audrey said. “I never noticed that.”

Reed, thinking about the influence that old-school Japanimations had on modern story-telling, nodded in agreement. Still wearing her usual tights, she let her feet rest on the coffee table and leaned over, letting a finger rest between her toes. “Everybody knows that story-telling is just a vehicle to explore the author’s poorly-disguised fetishes.”

Audrey clapped. “Wow, I never knew!”

Reed looked up at Isaac. “And hey, what’s with tall girls picking you up? Couldn’t a normal-sized girl or person for that matter do it too?”

Isaac shrugged. “I can’t say I’ve ever given any thought to it.”

Reed stood up and made her way over to Isaac. The two looked at each other for a moment, then Reed grabbed both of his collars and tried to lift him. Isaac didn’t move.

“You’re struggling,” Reed complained as she tried again.

“I’m literally just standing here.”

“I need backup,” Reed supposed. “Audrey, bring me a box. I have need of it.”

Audrey, who loved collecting wacky nick-nacks like boxes found in dumpsters, immediately saluted and dashed off back to her own apartment.

Reed tried again, but made no progress. “You said Harriet lifted you with a single hand?”

Isaac nodded, but before he could say anything, Reed swore under her breath and rubbed the side of her face again. “What’s up?” he asked.

Reed grimaced. “I got these stupid kanker sores. I guess the lack of sleep is catching up to me.”

Isaac nodded. “My mother always told me that milk would be good for kanker sores, and-”

“Good idea.”

“Huh?”

Reed tilted her head. “I was just saying it was a good idea. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Oh, that’s alright.”

The room went quiet as the two stood there. Reed sensed a chance and immediately contorted her body to attack Isaac from a different angle, intent on picking him up bridal-style. Feeling like she hit a wall, she made even less progress there than she did attacking him head-on.

“Goddamnit, Isaac, lay off the dessert once in a while. I think your weight is putting me at a disadvantage.”

He crossed his arms. “I have a perfectly healthy diet.”

Audrey returned and dropped a wooden crate on the floor. She kicked it across the floor to Reed, who stopped it with a foot and then stood on top of it. She looked surprised for a brief moment, then her eyes scanned the room.

“Wow," Reed simply said, the tallest in the room for the first time. “I could get used to this.” She looked down at Isaac. “Hey, short stuff, how’s the weather down there?”

“Ha-ha.” Isaac dropped his arms, letting Reed get a tight grip on his collars. She took a deep breath and lifted-

Nothing interesting happened.

Reed wiped her hands in faux disgust. “Clearly you’re just dead weight, Isaac. If you weren’t dead weight, I would be able to lift you easily, but since I can’t, it must be your fault. I bet you couldn’t even lift me up.”

“Everybody’s a critic,” Isaac supposed. While Reed looked back at Audrey to make fun of Isaac, he sighed and easily swept her off her feet from the box, picking her up bridal-style.

Reed found herself in an unexpected position. She looked at Audrey, who simply shrugged; she then looked up at Isaac. “You know what? I can see the appeal in this. Walking is such a drag. Carry me to the couch, Isaac. Carry me to school. Life would be much simpler that way.”

Isaac just shook his head and set her back down on her feet. “Can I finish my story now?” he asked as Reed dusted herself off.

The two girls nodded and returned to the couch to hear the exciting end of Isaac’s double date.

Back in the park, Isaac stared blankly at the inside of Frances’s greatcoat. All he could see was the wooly inner lining and what seemed like dozens of pockets stitched inside.

When Frances saw the odd look on his face, she looked down in her coat and sighed. “Damn, usually I have vials in here. I was going to offer to sell some to you. Force of habit.”

Isaac knew from the Academy’s DARE II program that he should respond to a drug dealer by firmly saying no and calmly leaving the area until he arrived somewhere more crowded where he could find safety in numbers. Then he should report the incident to the Academy, his parent or guardian, or a trusted adult.

But contrary to popular belief and the look on Reed’s face as he later told her and Audrey the story, Isaac wasn’t a square.

“I’m all set," he said, imagining the greatcoat pockets filled with vials of murky liquid.

Frances nodded. “Fair enough. If you ever need any, you know who to ask.”

Isaac scratched his head. “I’ll keep that in mind.” As he watched Frances button up her navy-blue greatcoat, a thought came to his mind. “How come you’re selling stuff like that? I thought everybody who went to the Institute was rich.”

Frances chuckled. “What made you think that?”

Isaac motioned with his hands. “Well, you know…Cambridge is old money, the Institute is new money, the Academy is everybody else.”

Frances sighed and sat down on the grass again, letting her back rest against the thick trunk of the oak tree behind her. “You ever hear the phrase “‘Rich Japan, Poor Japanese?’”

Isaac shook his head. Reed’s Japanimation newsletter never mentioned that.

“The Academy ought to improve its economics class then,” Frances continued. “The Institute is rich. Doesn’t mean all the students who go there are rich. I get subsidized housing, transportation, and meals - but you get that, too. From a certain point of view, both of us would be rich. But from another point of view…”

Her eyes darkened as she looked out toward the city lights from beyond the park. “When you need more money than that, for something important, and you need that money fast…you gotta do what you gotta do to make it in this country sometimes.”

Isaac sat down next to her, feeling the cool grass beneath him. “That surprises me. I thought the Institute would be able to cover any sort of expense for its Rddhi users.”

Frances sighed again, watching her breath condense in front of her before disappearing into the air. “The Institute has far more users than your Academy does. The more people you get, the more bureaucracy you get. More importance is placed upon the strong and less attention is given to the weak. People just slip through the cracks.”

“But you’re a basketball MVP, too.”

Frances looked up into the air. “Yeah, well…there were some extenuating circumstances involving that and money.”

Isaac gave her a puzzled look, but Frances changed the subject. “I may have a weaker power, but I’m stronger than you’d expect.”

Isaac thought about the crushing handshake he received courtesy of her. “I think I'd expect you to be pretty strong.”

Frances smirked. “Watch this.” She reached into her greatcoat and produced a blue elastic hairband. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

Isaac watched as she used her fingers to stretch the hairband, extending her arm outwards, pointing it toward the rest of the park like a gun. Isaac realized she was listening closely - he could imagine the Rddhi grid spread out before her.

Trees rustled. A plane flew overhead. Isaac heard the muffled sounds of a train rolling into the nearest station. A bird chirped among some hidden branches, then flew off into the night sky-

Frances followed the band; Isaac thought Rddhi might've sparked in her fingertips, but no light appeared. Isaac watched the band dash away into the air nowhere near the bird. It deflected off a tree and shot upwards; a moment later, Isaac heard a sudden surprised caw.

The bird landed in a heap in front of them. It stood up on shaky legs, chirped indignantly, then flew off again.

“What did you think?” Frances asked. “Surprised?”

Well, she deflected a projectile off of something to hit her target, and well, I actually already knew her power ahead of time…

“Pretty impressive,” Isaac said, “But I guess I’m not that surprised. There was that big controversy over the MVP award last season. Your power is calculating trajectories and predicting movement ahead of time. Basically, you're a genius at math. People thought you were using your power while playing basketball. It was all over the news.”

Frances rolled her eyes. “Me being good at basketball came before I had any Rddhi powers. I actually like basketball more than the Rddhi. I would never cheat at it.”

Isaac nodded, feeling sorry for her situation. If he won an award like that, he would hate to hear people questioning it for a reason he couldn’t really control. And furthermore, her Rddhi power was now known across Narragansett, even beyond the people who followed women’s high school sports. Isaac remembered a newspaper headline calling it “Calculationgate” to emulate the scandals of the old days, though that name didn’t catch on.

Courtesy of Piper (damn her name!), the entire school knew about Isaac’s power when it should have only been revealed to them during the Combat Simulation. Maybe it was just the Academy tradition and education in him, but a person’s Rddhi power should be treated as a secret, only revealed to those closest to them.

Frances saw the look on his face and smiled. “It’s no big deal. People can know about my power all they want. It won’t stop me.”

“But what if you end up fighting against a Rddhi user and they know your power ahead of time?” Isaac asked.

Frances raised an eyebrow. “Fight? We’re high-schoolers.”

Isaac just scratched his head at that.

“...just how militarized is your Academy anyway?” Frances muttered, looking up at the twelve stars. She brought her face back down and looked over at Isaac with a smirk.

“I sure hope we never get into a fight, Isaac. Even if you know my power, I’d still bet on myself to win. You can book it.”

UNDER THE HARVEST MOON...