Plus Patricia had become pretty much the only person Laurence could talk to at school. Even the other so-called geeks at Canterbury Academy were too chickenshit to hang with Laurence, especially after he’d managed to get himself banned from the school’s computer lab (he wasn’t trying to hack anything, just make some improvements) and the school workshop (he was doing a carefully controlled flamethrower experiment). She was the only one he could laugh with about the Saarinian Program’s weird test questions (“Faith is to religion as love is to ____”), and he liked how she people-watched in the cafeteria, how her gaze turned Casey Hamilton’s student-council campaign into an amusing pageant taking place on the outskirts of fairytown.
Patricia pulled her legs out of the railing and got to her feet. “But you’re lucky,” she said. “There’s a difference between your type of outcast and mine. If you’re a science geek, people give you wedgies and don’t invite you to their parties. But if you’re a witch, everybody just assumes you’re an evil psycho. It’s kind of different.”
“Don’t try and lecture me about my life.” Laurence had gotten to his feet as well, and now he dropped his rucksack on the ground, so it nearly tumbled off the overpass. He felt both sides of his neck tighten up. “Just … don’t. You don’t know what my life is like.”
“Sorry.” Patricia bit her lip, just as a tanker rolled underfoot. “I guess that was out of line. Just trying to warn you that if you’re going to be my friend, you have to be prepared for worse stuff than just people thinking we’re girlfriend-boyfriend. Like, you might get some of my witch cooties on you.”
Laurence rolled his eyes at this. “I think I can handle a little peer pressure.”
*
BRAD CHOMNER GAVE Laurence a Dumpster swirlie after fifth period a few days later. Laurence looked up, head soaked with slime, rusty walls tearing at his uniform shirt, and Brad was grabbing Laurence by the lapels and hauling him up so they were almost face-to-face. Brad Chomner’s neck was thicker than Laurence’s whole torso. Worse yet, when Brad let Laurence fall to the cement walkway he saw that his indelible forever crush, Dorothy Glass, had been watching the whole thing.
“I don’t know if I can take four more years of this place,” Laurence told Patricia when the two of them were sitting at one end of the lunch table, uncomfortably close to the garbage cans so soon after his trash baptism. His head still itched. “I keep thinking maybe I could transfer to the math-and-science high school in town, instead.”
“I don’t know,” Patricia said. “You’d have to get up early every day and take the bus alone. You’d be spending so much time on the bus, you’d probably miss out on all the after-school stuff.”
“Anything’s better than this,” Laurence said. “Mr. Gluckman, the math teacher, already wrote a letter for me. Now I just have to get my parents to sign the form. I have a feeling they’re going to be weird about me going to school so far away, though.”
“They just want you to have a real childhood. They don’t want you to grow up too fast.”
“They worry about me too much, ever since I ran away from home this one time, to go see a rocket. They just don’t want me to stand out.” While Laurence was talking, a Tater Tot hit him in the head, but he just kept talking as if nothing had happened.
“I think it’s good that you have parents who care what becomes of you.” Patricia seemed to have a soft spot for Laurence’s parents, maybe because they weren’t scary overachievers like hers were.
“My parents are cowards. They’re always terrified someone will notice them and they’ll have to explain themselves.” A second Tater Tot impact. Laurence barely flinched.
Lunch was almost over, and then they had separate classes. Laurence changed the subject. “Hey, do you want to talk to my supercomputer?” He was gathering up all his stuff into his book bag. “I think it needs more interaction with different people, to help it learn how humans think.”
“What would I talk to it about?” Patricia said.
“Just whatever you want,” Laurence said. “Think of it as a friend to confide in.” He pulled a scrap of yellow lined paper out of his bag. “This is the computer’s IM account, on all the main services. Its name is CH@NG3M3.” He spelled that. “It’s a temporary name, just like it sounds. When CH@NG3M3 becomes fully sentient and starts thinking for itself, it can choose a new name. But I like that name. It’s like I’m challenging the computer to grow and change and find an identity for itself.”
“Or maybe you’re asking the computer to change you,” Patricia said.
“Yeah,” Laurence looked at his own handwriting on the notepaper. “Yeah, maybe I am at that.”
“Okay,” Patricia said. “I’ll try talking to it.” She took the paper from Laurence and stuffed it into her skirt pocket.
“Anything you tell CH@NG3M3 will be between you two,” Laurence said. “I won’t ever read any of it.”