DIANE DUANE - A Wizard Alone

Nita had been surprised that the crueler mouths around school hadn t immediately started to spread one or another of these rumors about her. But it hadn t happened, apparently because her mother was well known and liked in town by a lot of people, and this attitude had spread down to at least some of their kids. It seemed that those kids at school who knew her at all thought that though Nita was a geek, it was a shame about her mother, and counseling after her mom died so young wouldn t count as a black mark against her.

Sonice of them , Nita had thought when she first heard about this. But she had to admit to a certain amount of relief that mockery wasn t going to be added to the whispers of pity that she d already had more than enough of. Not that she wasn t used to half the kids she knew making fun of her as an irredeemablenerdette . But having to deal with a new level of jeering, as well as the pain, was something she could do without right now.

She still had no energy to speak of. Sleep never came easily anymore, and she kept waking up too early. But once she was awake, she didn t really want to do anything. If Nita had had her way, she d have stayed home from school half the time. But shedidn t have her way, especially sinceDairine was already in trouble with the principal at her school for all the time she d been losing so much so that their dad had to go see the principal about it this afternoon. Nita was completely unwilling to add to his problems, so she made sure she got to school on time but she found it hard to care about anything that happened there.

Or anywhere else, she thought. Even though she was up before dawn half the time, the predawn sky, even with the new comet passing through, didn t attract her as it used to. Nita leaned on the sill of the window by her desk, looking out at the bare branches of the tree out in the middle of the backyard. She could see the slow words its branches inscribed against the brightening sky in the wind, but she couldn t bring herself to care much what they said. She felt as if there was some kind of thick skin between her and the world, muffling the way she knew she ought to feel about things and she didn t know what to do to get rid of it. What really frightened Nita were the times when she clearly perceived that separation from the world as something unnatural for her, andstill didn t care if the remoteness never got better the times she was content to just sit and stare out at the world, and watch it go by.

She found herself doing that right now, staring vaguely at the clutter on her desk pens and pencils, school notebooks, sticky pads, overdue library books, a few CDs belonging to the downstairs computer. And her manual, closed, sitting there looking like just one more of the library books.Overdue , she thought, glancing past it at the other books.That s not like me, either. I m so obsessive about getting them back ontime, usually I should take them back after school today .

But taking them back just seemed like too much trouble. It could wait another day, or two, or three, for the little fine it would cost her.Maybe I ll feel more like it over the weekend .

Nita let out a long breath as she looked at her manual. It wasn t as if it was alive in any way, as if it had anything with which to look at her

but itwas looking at her, and she wasn t sure what to make of its expression.

She flipped it idly open to the back section, where the status listings were. Turning a few pages brought her to Kit s listing, which she scanned with brief, weary interest. Then she paged along to her own.

CALLAHAN, Juanita L.

243 E. Clinton Avenue

Hempstead,NY11575

(516) 555-6786

powerrating: 6.76 +/- .5

assignmentstatus: optional

Nita stared at that for a long moment, never having seen anything like it on her listing before. Optional

Since when amI optional !

She sat there looking at the listing for a few seconds longer.Jeez , she thought,that sounded more likeDairine than me

It was still a strange listing. And the longer she looked at it, the less she liked it.

But that brought her to her next order of business for the morning. Reluctantly, Nita got up and went across the hall toDairine s room. Dari she said, knocking on the door and knowing what was going to come next.

Ngggg,said a voice from inside.

Get up.

In a minute.

Don t make me laugh, Dari. Say it in the Speech.

Nita grimaced.Dairine was twisty and shifty in all kinds of ways, but even now, even angry and upset with life as she was, she would not dare say anything in the Speech that wasn t true. Dairiiiiiiiiine

A pause. Must you be so disgustingly responsible at this hour of the morning

Yes, Nita said, unimpressed by either the volume or the sentiment. Get up,Dairine . I have things to do besides deal withyou all morning.

Then go do them, and give them my regards.

Not a chance. Get up.

No.

And so it went for another fifteen minutes or so. Nita s temper started fraying. Imight have seen the daybreak , she thought,but I m still going to be late forMillman , thanks toDairine .Again.

I ve had about enough of this!

Nita held out her hand for her manual, which obligingly picked itself up off her desk and came cruising along into the hall. She plucked it out of the air and began paging through it.Okay, today s the day , she thought.Today I actually usethat spell instead of just thinking about it. But I have to add something fast . Nita spent a moment wondering under which category she would find the addition she was contemplating for the wizardry she had in mind.Well, it s a teleport, but now it s complex rather than strictly inanimate Dairine, Nita said. This is just another cheap attempt not to go to school.

It s not an attempt.

Uh-huh. We ll see about that.Okay, here we go. The shape of the wizardry s a little weird now, but if I constrain the feeder end of the spell like this and this Yeah. Quick and dirty, but it ll do the job . You really ought to think about the consequences of your actions, Nita said, especially insofar as they affect what Dad sgonna have to say to you when school calls him at work to find out where you are.

Nita, that s my problem, not yours, so why don t you just butt out for a change instead of trying to run everybody s life. You re no replacement for Mom, no matter what you may think you re doing, and

A tirade, Nita thought, already halfway through the spell.Good . She paused just long enough to admit to herself that the remark about their mom did, indeed, really hurt, and then went on with the spell.Dairine was meanwhile still in full flow. when you come to your senses again, some time in the next century, you may discover that OWl

From insideDairine s bedroom came a loud thump, the sound of a body hitting the floor or, more accurately, parts of a body hitting the floor, and parts of it coming down hard on some of the many and varied things thatDairine routinely shoved underneath her bed. One-handed, Nita snapped her manual shut with a feeling of profound satisfaction.

Where s my bed ! Dairine shrieked.

It s on Pluto, Nita said. On the winter side, somewhere nice and dark and quiet, where you won t find it if you look all day which you re not going to have time to do, because you ll be in school.

Hah! I ll sleep inyour bed!

Youhate my bed, Nita said. My mattress is too hard for you. And what s more, my bed and every other piece of furniture in this house have been instructed that after I leave, they re to teleport any living creature they touch right into the part of school where you re scheduled to be at that particular moment in time. How you explain your appearance there is going to beyour problem.

I ll take the wizardry apart.

I ve password-locked it. If you want, you can spend all day trying to unlock it from outside the house and thenstill have to explain to Dad why you weren t in school again.After he s just spent an hour discussing the same subject with your principal. Meanwhile, if youwant to sleep anywhere, you can do it on Pluto, if you like but you re not doing it inthis house till after you get back from school.

The bedroom door was flung open, andDairine stormed through it, past Nita and toward the bathroom, head down, in a fury, refusing to give her sisterso much as a glance. The severity of the effect was somewhat lessened by the dust bunnies that parted company withDairine s pajamas along the way, floatinggendyin the air behind her .

I wish I knew what alien force has kidnapped my sister and left this vindictive thug of a pod person in her place, Dairine said to the air, slamming the bathroom door shut. Because when I find out, I m going to hunt it down and kick however many rear ends it has from here toAlphecca !

Nita stood there for a moment, watching a final dust bunny float toward the floor. Enjoy your day, she said sweetly, and went to get her book bag.

Her meetings with Mr.Millman were always about an hour before homeroom, so that they were finished ten or fifteen minutes before other students started to arrive for the day. The covert quality of the meetings was enhanced by the fact that Mr.Millman didn t even have his own office, because he traveled from school to school in the district every day. Neither he nor anyone else in school knew where he was going to be from one session to the next. Nita most often found him in a spare office down in the administrative wing of the school, a room furnished with a metal desk and a few wooden chairs and not much else. Today he was there, sitting behind the old beat-up desk with the office door open, and working intently on one of those metal-ring puzzles in which the five constituent rings have to be interlaced.

This kind of behavior was typical of Mr.Millman , and was one of the redeeming features of having to deal with him. Whatever you might imagine a school shrink as being like, or looking like, he wasn t that. He was young. He had a large,itizzy black beard that made him look more like an off-duty pirate or an escaped Renaissance artist than a psychologist, and his long lanky build and loose-limbed walk made him look like a refugee from aCheech andChong movie. Though he wore a suit, he did so as if it had an invisible sign on the back of it saying, THEY MADE ME WEAR THIS: DON T TAKE IT SERIOUSLY. He looked Up at Nita from the ring-puzzle with a resigned expression. Morning, Nita.You any good at these

Morning, Mr. M. She sat down in front of the desk and took the rings he offered her. Fortunately Nita knew how the puzzle worked, and she handed the rings back to him, braided together, in about fifteen seconds.

He looked at the puzzle with helpless amusement. Halfway to a doctorate, he said, and I still have no grasp of spatial relationships. Remind me not to go into rocket science.How ve your last couple of days been

Not the best, Nita said. I had to throw my sister out of bed this morning. She didn t want to go to school again.

That seems to be turning into a routine, Mr.Millman said. And from your expression, I get the feeling she didn t appreciate it. Shetry the line about your mother again

Nita nodded.

And you didn t punch her out

Nita allowed herself a slight smile. The temptation was there

They talked for maybe twenty minutes.Millman s style wasn t so much that of a shrink as that of a coach, Nita had decided:no long silences, nommm-hmms that transparently tried to draw you out and get you to talk about things. You talked or not, as you pleased, and Mr.Millman did the same. You asked questions or answered them, or didn t answer them, also as you pleased. It was all very leisurely and casual, and Nita was sure that Mr.Millman was getting a lot more out of what she said than she suspected. But, possibly because of the way he handled their sessions, she found that this wasn t bothering her. Any more of those nightmares Mr.Millman said at one point.