An Ordinary Education

The headphones in the language classroom were supposed to go over your head. Delsie had worn hers under her chin, with the cups pushed up behind her jaw, while a recorded man repeatedly asked directions to a swimming pool. Her rabbit ears had heard him perfectly well. The cups were mostly there to satisfy the teacher.

At lunch, Bettina put two fingers under her own chin and said, “Like this?”

“Higher. You have to look as though your tooth hurts.”

Bettina tried it. Delsie laughed with a mouthful of sandwich and got bread on her sleeve. It was the first time she had laughed at school without first checking whether somebody was laughing at her.

“Wait why do you visit a normal school instead of a magic school? I thought demi-humans were inherently magical.”

“Naturally born ones, yes.”

“Naturally born…”

“I was created in a lab, by a bunch of amoral scientists determined to play god, if that’s what you are asking.”

Delsie took another bite. This was when people generally apologized or became very interested in something behind her. She had practiced the sentence until she could say it without having to choose any of its words.

Bettina kept her fingers under her chin. Then she lowered them.

“Oh. That’s horrible.”

“Yes.”

“Are they still there?”

“At the lab? It’s closed. Two of them are in prison.”

“Good.” Bettina pulled the lid off her yogurt, saw the watery bit, and put it back on. “Sorry. I thought you just didn’t get in. My cousin didn’t get in and he won’t talk about it.”

“I wouldn’t get in. I haven’t got any magic.”

“None at all?”

Delsie shook her head. The movement sent one gray ear brushing against the strap of her bag. There was a pale scar inside the other, mostly hidden by fur. Bettina glanced at the ear and then at the yogurt again.

“Do you want this? I hate it when it does that.”

“You can stir it.”

“I know. Do you want it?”

Delsie took it. The yogurt was peach, with little cubes of something that could just about have been fruit. They ate without talking for a while. Around them, chairs scraped and pupils shouted across distances they could have walked in four seconds.

“Do you skate?” Bettina asked.

Delsie had no sentence prepared for this.

“Yes.”

“Come on Friday, then. Roller rink. Six o’clock. I was going with my cousin but he’s doing some stupid thing with his boyfriend.”

“All right.”

“Have you got your own?”

“Not anymore.”

The first lie had been very small. The second gave it a past.

Bettina took out her phone and slid it across the table so Delsie could put in her number. The case had a raised pink strawberry on it, and the strawberry had lost every one of its painted seeds.

---

By Thursday, Delsie knew that Bettina hated peach yogurt but liked actual peaches, lost one particular silver ring so often that finding it had stopped making her happy, and wanted to cut her own fringe despite a previous attempt for which there was photographic evidence.

Bettina knew that Delsie lived with a guardian above a pharmacy, took two buses to school, and was bad at chemistry. The chemistry had come as a disappointment.

“But you were made by scientists.”

“They didn’t let me mark the tests.”

“No, I just thought you’d have picked it up.”

Delsie turned over her exercise book. Seven out of twenty was too low to leave facing upward. Bettina, who had got nine, let her copy a corrected diagram until the teacher came past. Then she covered it with her elbow, trapping Delsie’s pencil.

They drew increasingly ugly versions of each other in the back of Delsie’s notebook. Bettina gave Delsie ears so long they went off the top of the page. Delsie drew Bettina’s proposed fringe as a single square tooth. Bettina wanted the drawing photographed to send to her sister, but only after she had added a much better nose. On Thursday she sent Delsie a song with a message saying it was terrible. Delsie listened to it nine times before bed.

Delsie learned things about Friday without asking questions that would reveal anything. When Bettina mentioned the rental counter, she said, “Are the skates still awful?” and found out that you had to leave your shoes there. When Bettina complained about the price of drinks, Delsie learned how much money to bring. She learned that the floor was wood, that the music was loud, and that you went around in the same direction as everybody else.

At home she watched skating videos with the sound low. Her guardian knocked, brought in the laundry, and told her she could have a lift home on Friday if she called before nine.

“Unless you want the bus,” she added.

Delsie did not want the bus. She wanted a lift that nobody saw her get into. She negotiated a meeting point outside the supermarket, then spent twenty minutes practicing bent knees and a confident expression on her bedroom carpet.

She had been out of the laboratory for two years and at this school for four days. Adults still sometimes spoke about how well she was settling. She hated the pleased surprise with which they said it, even when they were kind. Bettina had invited her somewhere without consulting anybody or asking whether she would find it too much. Delsie wanted to keep the invitation exactly as it was.

On Friday she packed thick socks and wore the green T-shirt she had bought herself. She left the house so early that she had to walk twice around the block before going into the rink.

---

Bettina was already there, sitting on a bench in the carpeted area beside the floor. Her own skates were white, with red wheels and one black lace. Delsie had seen them in photographs. In person they looked terribly professional.

“You’re early,” Bettina said.

“So are you.”

“Yes, but I meant to be. Have you got the money? You pay over there.”

The boy at the counter asked Delsie’s shoe size, gave her brown skates, and took her trainers. It felt wrong to watch them disappear onto a shelf without her. She tied the skates tightly and stood up.

On carpet, they were heavy shoes. Heavy shoes were manageable.

Bettina took her elbow while they crossed to the entrance in the barrier. “Watch the little step.”

Delsie watched the little step. Beyond it, the polished floor reflected strips of violet light. People moved together in a broad, counterclockwise river: small children flapping, teenagers in twos and threes, a white-haired man who hardly seemed to move his feet. A boy with curled horns coasted past with tiny green lights hopping between his fingertips. An attendant pointed at a sign, and the boy closed his fist around them.

Bettina rolled onto the wood. Delsie put one foot after her. The foot left.

She grabbed the barrier and brought the foot back underneath her by force. Her other skate tried going in the opposite direction. Bettina turned, skating backward for a few feet, and laughed.

“Oh, don’t. You’ll make me fall.”

Delsie laughed too, loudly, as though the whole thing had been intentional.

Then Bettina kept going.

Delsie stayed by the entrance, both hands gripping the rounded wooden rail. Somebody behind her said excuse me. She shuffled sideways, helped along by the barrier, and got out of the opening.

Bettina returned after a circuit. “Are you coming?”

“These are different from the ones I had.”

“Are they too loose?”

“No. The wheels.”

Bettina looked down. “They’re normal wheels.”

“I can see that.”

“Have you only done inlines?”

The videos had explained what those were. “It’s been ages.”

“Oh, right. Here.”

Bettina offered her forearm. Delsie left her right hand on the rail and took the arm with her left. The skates rolled forward six inches, quite smoothly, and for those six inches she could see herself doing this all evening: green shirt, gray ears, somebody to talk to, her body taking her where she wanted.

Then Bettina turned toward her and Delsie’s left foot veered outward.

“Whoa. Knees,” Bettina said.

“I know about the knees.”

“Then bend them.”

“They’re bent.”

“More. Like you’re sitting down.” Bettina dropped into a squat and rose again, all while moving. “See?”

Delsie had seen. Seeing was not the problem.

They traveled the length of the barrier with Delsie’s right hand dragging along it. Bettina pointed out the drinks counter, the toilets, and three girls from the year above who were gathered near the middle of the floor. One wore an enormous blue skirt that swayed around her knees. Bettina waved. The girl in the skirt waved back.

“That’s who I told you about. With the video?”

Delsie did not remember a video.

“The one doing the thing with her feet. I showed you yesterday.”

“You showed me lots of things.”

“Well, that was one of them.”

They reached the bend. Delsie stopped.

“You can’t just stop,” Bettina said, stopping beside her. “You’ve got to turn.”

“I am turning.”

“You’re looking at the turn.”

A little girl went past pushing a low wheeled frame. Her father followed, carrying a coat and a bag and a second, smaller coat. The girl had a sparkling purple helmet. Delsie studied the floor until they were gone.

“Do you want one of those?” Bettina asked.

“No.”

“They’re not just for little kids.”

“I said no.”

“All right. Don’t pull my sleeve, though. You’re stretching it.”

Delsie loosened her grip. Bettina’s sleeve slid through her fingers and she grabbed it again.

They got around the bend. Delsie let go of the rail for perhaps a second, perhaps less. Bettina said, “Good!” so loudly that the white-haired man looked toward them.

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Announce it.”

“I only said good.”

“Yes. I heard.”

Bettina pressed her lips together. For a little while she said nothing, and Delsie could hear the wheels against the wood and a singer insisting that tonight was the night. She wished it would be whatever night he wanted so he could stop asking.

Near the far corner, the girls in the middle began trying a sideways step together. The girl in the blue skirt beckoned to Bettina.

“In a minute!” Bettina called.

Delsie moved her right hand farther down the rail. Her palm was hot. There was a place on the wood where the varnish had worn through, and she could feel every ridge.

“You’re doing the walking thing again,” Bettina said. “Try pushing. Just a little.”

Delsie pushed. Her legs separated, her stomach dropped, and she clutched Bettina hard enough to pull them both toward the wall.

“Okay. Again, but smaller.”

A bell had hung above Delsie’s bed in the laboratory. For three nights one spring, they had kept waking her and telling her to make it ring without touching it. She remembered the brass rim, the dent on one side, the man saying again while he ate something from a paper bag. She had cried because she was tired. On the fourth morning he had written uncooperative on her chart.

Bettina was waiting beside her in a stretched yellow sleeve. She was sixteen. She didn’t know about the bell.

“I don’t want you telling me every single thing I’m doing.”

“I’m trying to help.”

“Well, don’t.”

“Fine.”

Bettina freed her arm. Delsie caught the rail with both hands.

“Go and do the foot thing,” Delsie said.

Bettina looked over her shoulder. “Are you going to come off, or—”

“I can manage.”

“You’re cross whatever I do.”

“I’m not cross.”

Bettina gave her a look that would have annoyed Delsie even if it hadn’t been deserved. Then she went.

Delsie had expected another question. Perhaps one last, irritating offer. Instead Bettina was already halfway to the middle, lifting her arms to join the others, and Delsie was left with the exact amount of help she had requested.

She hated the blue skirt.

---

The music changed. Delsie made herself go forward as far as a pale patch on the rail. Then to a screw head. Then to where a person had carved half a rude word before either stopping or running out of talent.

She wanted to leave. She wanted Bettina to look over and see her skating brilliantly. She wanted her trainers back, and she wanted the brown skates to belong to her so she could take them home and learn in private for six months and return to this particular Friday.

A child rounded the curve too widely and brushed her arm. “Sorry!” he called, already gone.

She had worried that everybody would stare. Almost nobody had time. They needed the space immediately ahead of them, the next turn, their friend’s hand. When she looked toward the middle, Bettina was concentrating on the older girl’s feet.

They did the step slowly: one foot across, one behind. Bettina copied. The three older girls turned. Bettina turned the other way and ended up facing their backs. She hurried around them, laughing with her mouth open too far. The girl in blue demonstrated again.

Delsie watched with great satisfaction.

Then Bettina got the first part right. She glanced toward the barrier, apparently to see whether Delsie had noticed, and Delsie looked down too late.

Bettina raised a hand. Delsie did not raise hers.

For another half circuit she argued with Bettina in her head. She explained that some people had not spent their childhoods being driven to birthday parties. Bettina said something ignorant, and Delsie answered it perfectly. By the time she reached the entrance again, she had made herself so unhappy that she almost missed the gap.

She shuffled through onto the carpet. Her legs stopped trying to escape. There was the bench, there were the shelves with her shoes, and there was a clock showing that they had been here for thirty-eight minutes.

She sat down.

Her phone offered a way out. She could say she was ill. Her guardian would come early, buy something unnecessary in the supermarket while she waited, and take her home. There would be the room where she already knew how to do everything, because she had arranged it that way.

Delsie opened their messages, then closed them. Across the floor Bettina was trying the step again. She was still getting it wrong. She kept trying it beside people who could see.

Delsie took one skate off. A red seam marked her ankle above the sock. The skate looked quite small on the bench beside her. She lifted it, loosened the laces, and put it back on, leaving more room at the top.

She was tying the second one when Bettina came through the barrier.

“Have you finished?”

“No.”

Bettina sat at the far end of the bench. She bent to pick a twist of fluff from beside one wheel, then stopped and looked at Delsie instead.

“I can’t do that stupid step.”

“I saw.”

“You could’ve waved.”

Delsie tugged the ends of her lace unevenly. One loop was long enough to go under a wheel. She undid it.

“I thought you didn’t need me for anything.”

Bettina frowned. “It was a wave.”

“I know.”

The music came through the open entrance less loudly here. Somebody dropped coins beside the drinks machine and swore. Bettina ran a finger under the tongue of her skate.

“I’ve never been,” Delsie said.

“What?”

“Skating. Ever.”

Bettina looked at her brown boots, then at her face. “Why did you say you had?”

“I don’t know.”

She knew, but not in a way she could get out without making it sound worse. She wound the lace around her finger.

“You could have said,” Bettina said. “I wouldn’t have just gone off at the start.”

“Yes. You’d have been all…” Delsie made a small, helpless gesture.

“All what?”

“Careful.”

Bettina pulled a face. “I was careful. You nearly took my arm off.”

Delsie looked at the stretched sleeve. There was a faint gray smudge where her hand had been.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. It’ll wash.”

“No, for being horrible.”

“Oh.” Bettina picked at a loose thread. “You were a bit.”

Delsie waited. No explanation of how understandable it was arrived. Bettina’s hair had come partly out of its clip and was stuck to her forehead.

“I still want to do it,” Delsie said. “But I don’t want that purple baby thing.”

“The frames are yellow. The helmet was purple.”

“Whatever.”

“And I’m not holding you the entire time.”

“All right.”

“I mean it. My shoulder hurts.”

Delsie nodded. Bettina rubbed the shoulder, and Delsie felt an unpleasant pinch of guilt. She had not meant to hurt her.

“Can you just come around once?” she asked.

Bettina considered. “Slowly?”

“Obviously slowly.”

“You don’t have to say obviously. I know now.”

Delsie finished tying her skate. This time both loops were short enough.

---

Bettina went through the entrance first and waited out of the traffic. Delsie followed with her hand on the rail. The floor was no less slippery. The song Bettina had sent her began, and Delsie resented how much of it she had to spend looking at her own feet.

“Look where you’re going,” Bettina said.

Delsie looked up at her.

“Not at me. Over there.”

There was nothing to look at over there except a long stretch of floor. Delsie looked anyway. She moved one foot, then the other, and for a little distance the wheels carried her without doing anything unexpected.

Bettina skated beside her with both hands clasped behind her back. After a while she began singing the chorus.

“Those aren’t the words,” Delsie said.

“Yes, they are.”

“No. It’s ‘stay awake.’”

“That’s what I said.”

“You said ‘steak away.’”

Bettina sang it again, much louder and deliberately wrong. Delsie snorted. Her skate wobbled, and she steadied herself against the rail without seizing Bettina. Neither of them mentioned it.

At the bend she offered her left hand, palm upward. Bettina took it. They rounded the corner, inconveniently slow, and Delsie’s left skate caught Bettina’s right. For one suspended instant both girls stood there with their feet touching, trying to decide which of them should move.

“Wait,” Delsie said.

Bettina moved.

They folded down against the barrier, Bettina landing on one knee, Delsie on her bottom. It hurt, but not enough to stop her hearing Bettina make an extraordinary honking noise. She had never heard anyone laugh like that at school.

“Your foot,” Delsie said, with all the dignity she could retain from the floor, “was in my foot’s way.”

“My foot was there first.”

“It was beside me and then it was under me.”

“Because you brought yours over!”

Delsie tried to demonstrate with the offending skate. Bettina shoved it away, still laughing, then caught Delsie’s hand before she could slide any farther. Delsie held on and began her explanation again, louder this time, because Bettina was plainly not listening.