w I'm in with the "In" Crowd

Part 2

Catalina walked over to the table where Veleria was sitting, with three or four other girls. Part of her was thrilled - another part was suspicious. She wondered if they were making fun of her. "You - you want me to sit with you?" she asked.

"Yes, of course" Veleria smiled at her. She was a tall girl, with the blonde hair and pale skin typical of Venusians. "I know that you've finished eating, but if you have the time, we could talk for a while."

"Sure, I've time," Catalina responded cautiously, as she slid into a seat. "What did you want to talk about?"

Veleria looked around to see if any teachers were listening, then leaned forward. "I heard what that dreadful Davenport woman did to you," she whispered. "It's outrageous - ordering someone like you, the daughter of leaders of the UPP, to spend time with that spiral-eared freak. All of us," she nodded at the other girls, "think it's terribly unfair, and we thought we should tell you that we know it's not your fault."

Catalina could hardly believe what she was hearing. Nobody, not even Suzee, had shown her much sympathy over her predicament; now, the most popular, influential girl in school was giving her support. It was as wonderful as it was unexpected.

"Tell me," one of the other girls asked, "is he really as stupid as they say?"

"Even worse," Catalina said, grinning back. They encouraged her to give them a blow-by-blow account of her first tutoring session, giggling hysterically whenever she imitated Radu's plaintive "Why?". For nearly an hour, she talked and laughed with them. It was a wonderful feeling - the only thing that spoiled her pleasure was that occasionally she would look up to see Suzee glaring at her in stony disapproval. However, Catalina discovered, she was having too much of a good time to care.

"I hope you're properly ashamed of yourself," Suzee told her later, as Catalina got ready for bed.

"Ashamed? What for?" Catalina asked. She didn't know why Suzee had been so out of sorts since dinner.

"Playing up to those stuck-up twits who think they're so much better than everyone else, for one thing." Suzee began, "And for another...." she stopped and hesitated for a moment. "You never even introduced me," she concluded.

Catalina looked up, surprised. As she thought back along their conversation, she realized that she had not, indeed, introduced Suzee, or even spoken to her in front of Veleria and her friends. "I'm sorry, Suzee," she said, "it was just that we got talking, and I sort of forgot." She reached out to turn off the light. "See you tomorrow," she murmured, as she usually did.

"Maybe," Suzee said, still sounding miffed. But the light was out before Catalina noticed how worried she looked.

The next day, Suzee seemed to be all right - at least, until lunchtime. As soon as Catalina entered the cafeteria, she heard someone call her name. To her delight, it was Kerin Edwards, one of Veleria's closest friends.

"Veleria can't make it to lunch," Kerin explained, shaking her mop of dark curls in disgust. "We were talking during History class, so Dragonport blew a fuse and gave her detention. That woman is such a total idiot, isn't she?"

"Er, yes, sure," said Catalina, although she had never really considered lack of intelligence one of Miss Davenport's faults, whatever else they might be. "What were you talking about?"

"Oh, important things - what we'll wear to the dance, who we're going with, that sort of stuff," Kerin explained. "In fact, we're trying to make some serious plans. We thought maybe you'd...." She stopped short, letting a look of angelic blankness cross her face as Hank Morris and Pete Horton walked by on the way to the teacher's lunchroom.

"What?" asked Catalina, intrigued.

"Never mind," the other girl answered, slyly. "But Veleria wants to talk to you after class."

"It'll have to be at supper," Catalina explained. "I'm ... I'm busy at four."

"Oh, right, your tutoring sessions with Mr. 'Why'," Kerin nodded. "Well, don't worry about them, because we just might have a way to get you out of them soon." She rose, and gave Catalina a mysterious smile. "See you at supper then?"

"Of course!" Catalina smiled back. She watched as Kerin walked away, then murmured to Suzee, "That sounds good, don't you think?"

Oddly, her friend didn't seem to be rejoicing in her good fortune. "No," Suzee said shortly, "and you still didn't introduce me."

"Oh, you're impossible," grumbled Catalina. Why couldn't Suzee see that she needed the right moment to introduce her to her new friends?

She spent the rest of the afternoon trying to coax Suzee out of her bad mood, which of course meant that the amount of attention she was able to pay to her Interplanetary Cultural Studies class was extremely small.

After classes were over for the day, Catalina braced herself to face the unpleasantness of her tutoring duties once again. She felt a little more cheerful, however, than she had the previous day. I just have to get through an hour of this, she told herself, and then I can spend the evening with Veleria and her friends. My friends, now.

Still, she found her efforts no more successful than they had been the previous day. She gave up on word problems, and tried giving Radu basic math problems - fractions, algebra, some beginning hypercalculus - but the results were even more dismal than they had been before.

"No, no, no," she snapped, as she watched Radu floundering hopelessly through what looked to her a ridiculously easy problem. "You don't add fractions by adding the tops, and then the bottoms. It just isn't done that way!"

"I'm sorry," Radu replied, shaking his head. "I don't understand what you want me to do." He stared down at his work in despair.

"I want you to pay attention to what I'm telling you," she scolded. "It's perfectly simple. You should have known this stuff before you ever came to the Starcademy. Or don't Andromedans know anything about mathematics at all?"

Radu looked up at her sharply, his jaw set. "We knew enough to reach the Milky Way from another galaxy," he answered, his voice soft but firm. "Even the UPP can't do that."

("Good for you," Suzee said from where she had been silently watching the session.)

Catalina immediately regretted her undiplomatic outburst. She might not be crazy about Andromedans, but her parents had always stressed the importance of good manners, even - or especially - with those you don't like. The problem, she told herself, was her frustration at her own inability to make Radu comprehend what she was trying to tell him. It was like dealing with a broken machine that confounded each approach she took towards fixing it. She had never let a machine beat her yet, but she had a sinking feeling that this situation required different skills. She wasn't sure that she had them - she wasn't even sure what they were.

"I'm sorry," she sighed. "It's just that I don't quite understand what it is that you don't understand. Could you explain what you think the problem is?"

Radu took a deep breath. "I just don't see," he paused, and winced slightly before proceeding, "why you do what you do with the numbers."

Catalina buried her face in her hands for a moment. "But it's so simple, anyone with any.... Oh, forget it. Let's try a new one. 'The ratio of 475 to 14 is equal to 328 to what?'"

The end results of the second tutoring session seemed pretty much the same as the first; nothing was achieved, unless one counted the significant fraying of both participants' nerves.

At last, the fruitless session ended, and Catalina made her escape towards the cafeteria. To her delight, Veleria and Kerin were there, holding court with several other girls at one of the central tables. When Veleria saw her, she looked up and called Catalina over to her, pulling out a chair for her to sit down. Catalina felt strangely honoured, as if she had just received a Starcademy medal or something.

"Sorry I couldn't meet you at lunch," Veleria explained, "but Dragonport was on my case. What a pain that woman is!"

"Maybe," Kerin added mysteriously, "she can be our next project, when we've finished this one."

"Project?" asked Catalina, puzzled. She disliked the feeling that everyone knew what they were talking about, except her.

"We can't talk about it here," Veleria said, looking around and spotting several teachers in the area. "After supper, everyone come to my room. We can have some privacy there." The others nodded in agreement; actually, Catalina had noticed that it was rare for anyone to disagree with anything Veleria said.

"AHEM," a voice sounded in Catalina's ear. "Isn't it about time that you introduced me?" Suzee was there, wearing the sulky expression she'd had all day.

"Oh, right," Catalina agreed, although she felt a strange reluctance. She looked up at the rest of the group. "Hey, everyone, my friend Suzee wants to say hello."

The others looked at her, looked at each other, then burst into snorts of laughter. Catalina felt her cheeks redden. Fortunately, Veleria seemed to take pity on her. "Catalina," she said, with a gentle smile, "I've got to admit that I love it when you pull that stunt with the teachers." She looked at the others. "It drives Dragonport up the wall, I know."

"And Goddard does that sort of slow burn, like he's trying to be calm, but bits of smoke are coming out of his ears," added Kerin. "That's hysterical!"

"Yes," Veleria said, taking back control of the conversation before it got off the point she was trying to make. "The thing is, Catalina, you don't have to do it in front of us. It makes you look ... well, a little weird. So, Suzee's fine in class, but let's give her a rest when we're together." She smiled again, with the certainty of one who knows her instructions will be obeyed.

"What?" Suzee sputtered, indignantly. "Come on, Cat, let's get out of here. You don't need to hang around with this group of nitwits. Who do they think they are, anyway, telling you that you can't talk to me?"

"Excuse me," Catalina said hurriedly, "I've got to ... to get some more Erebian potato whip." It was a poor excuse - no one in Starcademy history had ever gone back for seconds of that particular dish - but she needed to talk to Suzee privately.

"Come on, Suzee," she implored, as soon as she was out of earshot of the group, "give me a break. After all, it is kind of rude for me carry on a conversation in front of them, if they can't take part in it. We can talk later."

Suzee stared hard at her for a moment, with an expression on her face that Catalina couldn't quite place. Her indignation was still there, but overlying it was something else - it looked almost like fear, although Cat had never seen Suzee afraid, so she couldn't tell. After a long silence, Suzee spoke, and the mildness in her tone was a surprise. "Sure, Cat, we'll talk later. Bye!" She turned, and abruptly left Catalina's view.

"Suzee?" Catalina called softly, but there was no answer. Sighing, she returned to the table. Surely, she thought, Suzee will come around. After all, she's my best friend; she must know how important this is to me. Still, as she talked and laughed with the others, her pleasure was marred slightly by the memory of the look on Suzee's face.

Of course, Catalina knew that she should have been studying, but she ended up spending the whole evening with Veleria and her friends. They insisted on giving her what they called a "make-over" - they set her hair in curlers, and showed her how to use cosmetics. Catalina tried to tell them that she was happy with her hairstyle, which was the traditional Saturnian one for girls her age, and that she wasn't really comfortable about the make-up (Saturnians normally scorned such artificial beauty aids), but it seemed important to them, so she let them do it. After all, she told herself, she could wash her face and comb the style out afterwards.

Looking in the mirror afterwards, she had to admit that it did make a difference. She could hardly recognize the sophisticated, somehow adult, face that stared back at her.

"Thanks," she told Veleria, "I - I've never seen anything like it."

"See, Cat, we knew you had potential," Veleria nodded, pleased with their efforts. "Trust me, once the boys see you looking like that, they'll be eating out of your hand."

Perplexed, Catalina wondered why she would want to hand-feed any of the boys. It sounded rather messy.

"Yes," Kerin added, "you can get any of the guys you want. Hekoro Dyak, the zero-g squash champ, or Kennie Young (he's such a brain, you'd be a good match), or...."

"Maybe Harlan Band?" Cat suggested softly, "I mean, I was thinking of asking him to go to the dance with me." She hoped that she'd be able to talk about him with the others; somehow, she felt, it might help her make sense of her confused feelings. Talking with Suzee had always made her feel better.

"Harlan Band?" Kerin gave a snicker of contempt. "Cat, aren't you setting your sights kind of low? You can do a lot better than him!"

Stung, Catalina was about to argue the point, but she was interrupted by the arrival of Crystal Trent, another of the Crowd. "Sorry I'm late," she said. "I got into a little trouble in the hall after supper, and had to listen to one of Dragonport's lectures for about an hour."

"What was the problem?" Veleria asked.

"Oh, well, the Andromedan was going up the stairs when I was coming down, and totally by accident, his compupad and stuff went flying. And Dragonport was there, and for some reason she thought I was responsible."

"And of course, Crys, you were completely innocent," Veleria grinned.

"Of course," Crystal grinned back. "You know how clumsy Andromedans are. One day he'll fall down those stairs, and break his neck or something."

"Oh, that reminds me!" Kerin giggled. "I heard the greatest joke today! 'How did the Andromedan break his neck while drinking?'"

They went through the ritual of asking how, and laughed themselves silly at the punch line. Catalina thought it was a good joke, although a little on the mean side; still, she told herself, if Radu wasn't around to hear it, what was the harm?

The mention of the Andromedan seemed to remind Veleria of something, however. Her face grew firm and determined, as she said, "I think that we've put up with this long enough. The Starcademy was built by the UPP, for children of the UPP. Why are they wasting their time teaching one of our enemies? He'll just take what he's learned back to his own kind, and the next time they attack us, they may succeed."

"Well, from what Cat's been telling us," Kerin pointed out, "he's not learning much."

"Whatever," Veleria answered coldly. "He has no right to be here. My parents have already lodged a complaint with the Starcademy, but all they get is some bureaucratic nonsense about 'diplomatic exchanges' and 'healing old wounds'. So, if they can't get him out of here, we'll have to do it ourselves."

"What?" Catalina said, stunned. Not that she didn't agree with them in principle, but how could a bunch of students manage it?

Crystal Trent started to explain. "We've been working on this idea for a while - actually, we've been thinking about it ever since we first heard an Andromedan was coming here. We've tried letting him know he's not wanted here in various ways, but he never seems to take the hint."

"I heard that some of the boys tried to beat him up," Catalina countered. "If he didn't take that hint, I don't know what you think we can do." The whole thing sounded like trouble to her, and she wished they'd drop the idea.

"He's Andromedan - what's the point of trying to hurt him physically? Besides, we'd really get in trouble if he were injured," Veleria pointed out. "No, we need something more subtle. The trouble is, we girls have been thinking too small. If he could be publicly humiliated - not just some little thing, but something that gives him the message loud and clear - he'd leave."

"But...," Catalina said helplessly, "I still don't see...."

"Kerin here came up with a brilliant, absolutely brilliant, idea," enthused Crystal. "She said, 'He's garbage, he should be treated like garbage.' And Veleria said it was perfect. 'Poetic justice', she said."

"What?" Catalina still couldn't figure out what they were talking about.

"We make sure he comes to the dance this Friday," Veleria explained. "Kerin discovered that the garbage recycling chute runs directly under part of it. If we can get him standing in the right place, then open one of the access panels, he'll end up dumped in with about a ton of slimy, smelly garbage, in front of everyone. He'll have to leave, after that."

"We've heard that you're a brain in engineering," Crystal added, "so we thought that maybe you'd know how to rig it, so that it would work properly, and still look like an accident."

Catalina frowned. "Well, I think I could set up a remote control that would operate the access panel, and make it look like a malfunction. But...." she searched frantically for a reason why the scheme wouldn't work. "We can't do it at this dance. The boys have to be asked by the girls, and no one's going to ask him."

The others exchanged glances. "Actually," Veleria said, with the air of one who brooked no argument, "we thought you would, Cat."

"Me?" Catalina asked, horrified. She looked around at the other girls; had they brought her here just to humiliate her, as they were planning on humiliating Radu?

Veleria quickly moved to calm her down. "I know, it sounds awful," she said, "and you'll probably be teased a bit, but it's just for a day or so. When we pull it off, everyone will understand - you'll be sort of a class hero."

"But," Catalina tried to protest, "isn't it ... kind of mean?"

"Who cares?" Veleria shrugged.

"Besides, it isn't, really," Kerin added, "not if you take the long-term view. He doesn't fit in here. The sooner he figures that out, and leaves, the happier he'll be. And the happier we'll be, as well. So, it's really for everyone's benefit."

The others nodded. "Consider it a way of proving yourself," Veleria explained. "If you can do this, you'll show that you're one of us. Everyone will look up to you - you'll be free of that bunch of Space Cases you're forced to hang around with now. On the other hand, if you don't want to...." she paused, leaving the consequences of such a betrayal unspoken, as if she could not bear to think about them.

"I...." Catalina stammered, "I'll have to think about it." She saw the other girls' eyes harden slightly. "About how to design the remote control, I mean. We don't want it to be traced back to us."

"See?" Veleria said, smiling once more. "I told the others that they were wrong about you. I knew we could rely on you."

"You've got to be out of your mind," Suzee said, shaking her head, as though she couldn't believe her ears. "That's the most moronic idea I've ever heard."

Catalina sighed. She'd been relieved when Suzee had finally shown up, back in her dorm room. She needed somebody to talk to, someone to help her figure out what to do. However, Suzee wasn't being particularly understanding, and Cat was starting to regret telling her about the plan.

"It - it's not such a completely terrible idea," she faltered. "I mean, perhaps it would make everyone happier in the long run. So, really, what's wrong with it?"

"Wrong?" Suzee asked in disbelief, and then proceeded to answer her own questions, counting them off dramatically on her fingers. "First of all, you could hurt someone. Who knows what's in the garbage recycling system? Broken glass, maybe, or sharp pieces of metal. Second, you'll get caught, and you know they'll throw you right out of the Starcademy for something like this. Being a Stardog has been your dream since you were six years old, and it'll be gone. Third, you're doing all this to amuse a bunch of spoiled brats, who wouldn't think of taking the risk themselves. And finally, it's just mean."

"Well, it's not dangerous," Catalina countered. She was actually glad that Suzee was raising the objections that were lurking in her own mind - it gave her a chance to refute them. "They've got filters on the recyclers to keep stuff like that out. It's just garbage, that's all. And I can easily come up with a way to trigger the access panel that will make it look like it just failed by itself. Nobody will know we did it." She glared at Suzee. "And Veleria and her friends aren't spoiled brats; they're smart, and they're popular, and they like me. They're my friends, now, and I don't want you to say mean things about them."

"Why of course," Suzee agreed, in saccharine tones. "I'll be as nice about them as they are about me." She mimicked Veleria's high sweet voice. "'Suzee's fine in class, but give her a rest when you're around us. It makes you look weird.'"

"That's not what she meant," Catalina tried to protest. "It's just like I told you - it's hard to carry on a conversation when they can't see or hear you. It's not polite."

"Oh, they're really interested in being polite," Suzee said, sarcastically. "Come on, Cat, can't you see what a mean trick they're planning, on someone who never did them any harm? And they're using you as their fall guy."

"When did you become so concerned about other people's feelings?" Catalina snapped back, starting to feel annoyed. "I never heard of you winning any 'Miss Sensitivity' awards."

"No," Suzee answered, "but at least if I pick on someone, I make sure they're my own size."

"What does that have to do with it?" Cat asked. "Anyway, Radu and I are exactly the same height."

Suzee glowered. "You know what I mean," she said, "you're just trying to avoid the issue. You know that you don't belong in that crowd - they're not your kind. If you've got any brains at all, you'll drop them like an overheated flux tube."

A light seemed to dawn on Catalina. "That's what you want, isn't it?" she asked, her eyes wide. "You don't want me to have new friends. You're jealous." The words flowed out of her, unstoppable. "Finally, I've got some friends in my own dimension, and you can't be part of it. So, you're trying to turn me against them."

"Of course not," Suzee replied, a shade too quickly. "Why would I care? I've got lots of friends here on Yensid. I'm just trying to keep you from making a fool of yourself."

Catalina thought for a minute. Suzee had always implied that she was popular on her own planet, and Catalina couldn't see why she wouldn't be - she was smart, pretty, and fun to be with (when she wasn't being a pain). But for the first time, it occurred to Catalina that she'd rarely seen Suzee with other people. She'd seen Suzee's family, of course, and her dog, and the occasional person Suzee brought home to study with. During the past year or so, there had been a number of dates with various besotted boys, although Suzee had never seemed very serious about any of them. But Catalina had never seen Suzee spend time with a group of friends, the way Catalina had just spent the evening with Veleria.

A wave of anger swept Catalina. "That's just like you, Suzee, to be so selfish!" she accused.  "Just because nobody on your planet wants to be your friend, you don't want me to have any friends here, either."

Suzee looked back, her face pale and hard as alabaster. "Maybe I was wrong, Cat," she said. "Perhaps you do belong in Veleria's Crowd - you've learned to treat people the way they do quickly enough."

"What?" cried Cat. "I don't understand!" But Suzee had already left, and didn't return. Catalina waited for her for a while, hoping that she would come back and they could apologize to each other, but finally gave up and went to bed. She didn't sleep well, disturbed by an unpleasant dream of being chased by a monster that looked suspiciously like a giant garbage recycling chute.

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