Black Friday Dream

I am preparing to go to secrets school.

We are in the hotel room. Mom and Angie are there, too. We are all waiting, waiting for it to be time.

Mom has been talking and has put us behind, and I am concerned I will not have enough time to get from the hotel in Black Warrior to the school in Prince’s Hamlet. She tells me it only takes an hour and a half, an hour forty-five.

I kina freak cos I have an hour and I haven’t bathed or anything.

So I grab my bag and leave, say bye to them, head off to catch the train.

The reticle shows the passenger cars have some space and should arrive on time, so I climb aboard one. It is a bumpy ride but uneventful, and we disembark at the school, seemingly having made it on time.

There is a gathering of students by a very small pond in the mouth of the campus.

An elder in a gravchair is arguing with the greetings instructor—I think his name’s Master Tonn. But we’re never introduced.

Tonn pushes the elder into the pond.

Being unable to swim, the elder appears to drown.

Tonn says that this is our first lesson.

He’s right, but not how he thinks because the elder emerges from the pond and wraps both arms around Tonn’s neck and pulls him underwater.

Neither re-emerge, and we are directed by a floater to seek out our residence assignment, so I do.

The hall is tall and stacked with floors and rooms. It has that bizarre juxtaposition of institutional intimacy, a place where we will do all these very personal things in public, but privatized, but in front of each other and under the Ministry’s aegis.

There is a girl in front of me, so I wait my turn.

Lily is the one handing out assignments. I was so in love with her, but not yet. Not just then. Then, she seemed kind of cold and distant to me. ‘Professional’ is how we might say it.

She says my name, then hands me a folder and the raiment, tells me that since I am still functional, only a fool would touch themselves here.

I say, Okay, Master. I understand.

Lily corrects me that she is not a master, not even a proper secretist, so I should simply address her as Lily.

I say,  Okay, Lily. I understand.

Then I go to my room.

The vid is on, and it’s playing a 21st Century film, which I very much like. It isn’t the original. It’s an interpolation, but I enjoy it nonetheless.

My roommate, Chaffy, arrives. He’s a head taller than I am and somehow skinnier and bigger than I am. He’s got a freshly shorn head, and it makes me wonder if I’ll shave my head or keep it long, since I am permitted to do both, unlike him.

He asks if we’re going to keep watching this commercial.

I explain that it isn’t a commercial, that it’s the actual film, that this is what films looked like in the 21st Century.

It’s obvious to me that he thinks it’s boring, old, and kina dumb, but will go along with it.

I don’t wanna make him watch anything he doesn’t want to watch, but I am enjoying seeing it again.

So I decide to go to the bathroom, since I haven’t had a chance today.

The bathroom is off my room but is less a distinct room and more a row of toilets that are adjacent to another bedroom—much larger than ours, with four girls sleeping in here.

I do my best to be quiet as I go, but soon find it difficult with other people around.

One of the girls says, Hey, Tracy, can you help us move this mattress?

I tell her I can’t right now, but I will in a minute.

Lily walks in, and I think I might die. It also feels hopeless now. Like I have to go, but will not be able to.

Lily sits down on the nearest bed and tells me to go.

I say I can’t and I lose my cool. I get a little hysterical about it, and say I can’t go and it isn’t even first bell yet.

No, it isn’t, Lily says.

I start crying.

You can do this, she says. You think you cannot because you are frozen in that time, in that moment.

What moment? I ask.

The one where she burst in. The one where she scared you so badly.

I know the one she means in my body, but not in my memory.

Don’t worry about the memory, Lily says. Just feel it. Feel and let go.

I do, and then I go.

See, she says. You can do it. Now clean up and get ready for first bell.

I do, and I love her for it.

Play procedures

• Lily is now available as a resource character. You can get instruction from her. She is not a secretist, so she cannot teach you new secrets, but she can help you develop an existing one up to two steps per secret.
• Chaffy is available as a companion. He is still a very young secretist at this point, so he only knows one secret. He’s rather loyal but isn’t particularly discerning about who he givers his loyalty to.
• You can now visit the secrets school in Prince’s Hamlet whenever you like, but you must take the train—which takes an hour regardless of where you are traveling from.