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"Hey guys, I didn"t think I was going to make it. I had to sneak out of detention to get here." Emily Woods said as she walked into the rehearsal room. She gestured to her untied pointe shoes. "I have no idea if my chemistry teacher followed me here."
Evelyn Duplessis helped Emily do up her pointe shoes. "What"s his car look like?" she asked
Emily shrugged, "I don"t know, red, probably."
"Whatever, this is more important." Evelyn said excitedly, "This is our first showcase on national TV."
Integra Dandleton couldn"t help but chime in. "Yeah, and the best part? No fatasses," she said, "Otherwise they"d go on about how they muffed it with the music."
The set was decked out to look like Van Gogh"s Starry Night painting. The shorter girls wore poofy white dresses with heart motifs, while the larger ones wore flowy blue dresses reminiscent of icicles. The guys wore bright blue shorts with dark gray vests, nothing that"d be considered fashionable. The Van Gogh backdrop and the icy-coloured costumes did not call to mind anything by Starpoint, much less "Object Of My Desire".
"Yeah," Leona Mobo chuckled, "and they"d probably crack jokes about you crashing that car."
"It"s not my fault, OK," Integra said as she rolled her eyes. "My shirt front flopped up because they don"t make them long enough to cover the boobs, and I couldn"t see. No wonder I hit the bodega." That was obviously a lie. Integra hit the bodega because she took selfies while driving.
Emily shook her head. "That doesn"t track at all," she chuckled, amused that anyone would believe that, "Nobody wears shirt fronts anymore."
"Regardless, it"s a good thing that the guy who runs the bodega took that cash bribe without even blinking, because otherwise I would have had a big hairy problem," Integra remarked. She got back on the floor and started dancing, "almost as hairy and ugly as our friend the earthquake with legs."
Leona puckered and glared at her. "I wouldn"t say that if I were you," she said nervously.She knew that if Six overheard someone call her that, they"d find their ass stuffed in the nearest locker, and rightfully so. It"s a mean and stupid thing to say.
"Chillax, OK," Integra said. She flicked her head back sharply, "Six isn"t even here."
Jennifer Stanton sighed, "Speaking of Six, I miss her. And Renata, too."
"So do I." Integra replied, "As long as she was here, the pressure to watch your weight and keep the body hair under control was off."
Jennifer stopped what she was doing, narrowed her gaze, and put her arms at her sides. "That…isn"t what I meant," she said.
"Oh well," Integra shrugged, "I can sleep easier knowing that I"ll never lose a part to gorilla fingers ever again." She then went back to her dance steps, stopping briefly to watch the TV.
Jennifer went back to what she was doing and noticed the TV out of the corner of her eyes. "You know," she said as she turned to Emily, "if Six were here and she saw the TV in the rehearsal room, she"d say it"s a bad idea."
Emily blinked in confusion. "What"s wrong with it?" she asked, "The gym has TVs."
A rehearsal room isn"t like a gym. You need to be able to focus. You can"t have distractions like a TV. If there"s a TV in the rehearsal room, musicians miss cues, get distracted and play the wrong passages, and nobody does anything because The Bachelor is on. It"s worse when dancers are involved. Dancers not only miss cues, but they run into each other, and the minute the news comes on, everybody gets too upset to dance. Sometimes a fight breaks out!
Leona couldn"t help but watch the TV. She got so distracted wondering if the ticker that said Kansas centaur slips in shopping mall was supposed to say Kansas senator slips in shopping mall that she stepped on Claudia Qian.
"Like I said, why would anyone think that TV is going to cause a problem?" Emily said, oblivious to what just happened. "It"s not like we"re gonna run into each other."
"Well, that," Jennifer said, pointing to Leona and Claudia.
Leona meandered toward her. "Hey, did you see that?" she asked, "I can"t tell whether or not that thing about the centaur was a typo or not." She wanted to say yes, but being around Six and the other monsters for so long made her think that maybe it wasn"t.
Sure enough, the rehearsal came to a grinding halt. The girls put their choreography behind them and turned their attention to the TV. While waiting for the ticker to come back, they saw a shocking story that shut them up.
The states of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut passed new legislation that will require students whose grades in mathematics are less than the 80th percentile to come to school on the weekends to complete extra math lessons.
Most teens would balk at something like this. "See, this is what I"m talking about when I say that the TV in the rehearsal room is too distracting," Jennifer said as she gestured to Emily, who had a different reaction.
Emily had fainted. Everyone now stared at her. "What are you doing down there?" Leona asked.
"I don"t believe it," Emily said flatly, "I"m going to have to go to school on the weekend."
Integra snickered. "What did you do?" she taunted. her first thought was that Emily had done something to get a Saturday detention.
Emily sat up. Sweat beaded her forehead, and not just because she danced a lot. "Doesn"t matter," she whimpered, "And that"s why I"m so upset." She had a tough time catching her breath.
The others looked around, wondering what her problem was. Emily stood up slowly. She staggered a bit, trying not to fall over. "You don"t get it. I"m beside myself," she panted, "My right arm is tingling, my jaw hurts, and I have this feeling of an elephant sitting on my chest because the only goddamn way to get out of this is to have a note signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, lost, found, posted on the internet for public debate, lost again, and hold on a sec…"
Emily never got the chance to finish her sentence. She stopped talking, ran to the window as fast as she could, threw up the sash, and threw up.
Claudia left the rehearsal room to get either their ballet teacher or the stage manager. "Emily just barfed out the window."
Real-life heart attacks look vastly different from movies, especially for girls. Either arm can go numb, not just the left. Contrary to popular belief, your heart is not on the left of your chest, but in the middle. Lesser-known things that happen during heart attacks include throwing up, fainting, and jaw pain.
Leona picked up the phone and got ready to dial 911, but Emily stopped her. "That might not be the best idea," she said.
"And why"s that?" Leona responded.
"The ambulance will take me to South Shore Medical," Emily replied. She shook her head. "I’d be better off getting an Uber to St. James"."
All of them stood there in confused shock. They still struggled to understand what Emily meant. "South Shore Medical is close to the interstate," she continued, "those guys only know how to sign death certificates for people who crashed their cars."
"We don"t need an Uber," Integra said as she flicked her hair back, "I have a Lexus; I can drive her."
Leona gave her a get-a-load-of-this-guy face. "Yes, but your parents confiscated your car," she responded.
Integra slapped her hands at her sides and rolled her eyes. "Fine," she whined, "I"ll take her there on the bus!"
Integra and Evelyn got their stuff, helped Emily get her stuff, and made their way down to the bus stop. Once they got outside, Integra spotted a large, winged monster.
"Oh crap, Big Bird"s here, I"m out," Integra said. She walked away quickly, hoping One didn"t see her. As she ran, she bobbed her head back and forth like a turkey and her arms hung out behind her.
It didn"t work. One still saw Integra run away awkwardly. I"ll deal with you later, she thought, you seriously thought you could convince me I got lost in a mall and buried the memory, didn"t you?
Not that long ago, Integra tried to convince One that she had repressed the memory of getting lost in the local mall because she flew as fast as she could in a straight line and just plain lost track of where she was going before coming to a stop at an electronics store called Crystal Purple. She supposedly got so lost that she got upset to the point of tears and the other monsters had to look for her. On top of that, Three, Five, and Seven got lost too, and she had to bail them out.
One didn"t believe her for a minute. It did not sound like the kind of mistake she"d make, and she would not hesitate to give Integra a bad time for trying to screw with her in such a fashion. Ever since then, Integra actively tried to avoid One whenever she could.
One turned around "Hey Ev," she said, "what are you doing?"
Evelyn struggled to catch her breath. Emily may have been skinny, but she was far from easy for Evelyn to lift. "Emily had a heart attack, so we need to get her to the hospital," she panted.
One stopped. She noticed how pekid and limp Emily looked. "How…how are you going to get there?" she asked.
"The bus," Evelyn nodded.
One tipped her head to one side and raised her left eyebrow. "So," she said, "You"re taking Emily to the hospital…on the bus?"
"Well," Evelyn began, "I don"t have my license and Integra lost hers, so…"
One shook her head. "I have a better idea," she said. "Leave Emily with me," she said, "Evelyn, you go back inside and get a footlocker and a couple of long pieces of rope." she pointed at the building the girls just exited, "If anyone asks, say it"s an emergency."
Evelyn stood there with a confused look on her face, looking confused. "Umm, why?" she asked.
One nodded, "You"ll see".
Evelyn left. Emily timorously meandered up the front steps, heaved herself up onto the concrete stoop, and sat down.
One followed. "I hope it"s OK to ask, but how"d this happen?" she said.
Emily took a deep breath and said, "I just found out I"m going to have to go to school on the…"
Just as she said that, Evelyn came back with a clear, plastic footlocker with no lid and two long pieces of blue rope. "I"m back," she said.
One let out a whistle. "Wow, that was fast," she said, "Thanks."
Evelyn put the ropes down and the footlocker on top of the ropes. One placed Emily in the footlocker. Evelyn wrapped the ropes around the footlocker like a present while One went down to the end of the side street, ran back fast enough to get airborne, and picked Emily up in her talons.
Not long after she picked Emily up, she flew over a traffic light with a red light camera. The camera triggered and captured not a license plate, but Emily"s slack-jawed, panicked face.
Emily looked around. "I think we hit that red light camera," she gasped.
"Don"t worry," One responded, "the ticket"s gonna go to that guy in the red Porsche."
Airlifting someone under your own power isn"t like using an aircraft. You don"t have a navigation system. Even with the GPS on your phone, you"re stuck following the road.
One figured the best bet would be to follow an ambulance. Hovering 1000 feet above the road made following the ambulance easier than following behind a car because of the view from up there. Thankfully, it looked like this ambulance was headed towards a hospital, not away from somewhere that stores gold bars.
"So, like I said before," One asked, "how did this even happen to you?"
"New rules mean if your grades are less than the 80th percentile, you have to go to school on the weekends," Emily responded.
"I saw that, and it"s about time," One said, "It"d be better if they could make the teachers come to work on the weekends, too." Just like kids, teachers like their weekends, too. The threat of coming to school on the weekend would be the kick in the pants teachers and students need to do their jobs effectively.
This did not reassure Emily. "I"m legitimately worried," she launched into a full-blown rant, "unless you"re getting perfect grades, you"re permanently going to Saturday school. Percentiles stay the same while the raw score moves around and I don"t know if I"m competing against my classmates or all the kids in the state."
To Emily"s surprise, One knew exactly what she was talking about. "That"s if your grades are below 80 percent, not the 80th percentile."
"No," Emily responded, "the press release mentioned percentile, not percentages."
"That"s a misprint," One replied.
Emily couldn"t believe what she just heard. "It was supposed to be kids who got less than 80 percent?" she asked.
One nodded. "Yeah, I think the journalists need to go to Saturday school," she giggled.
One began to recognize her surroundings from the air. "OK, I don"t need to follow the ambulance anymore, I know where I"m going"
"You do?" Emily asked.
One got ready to descend. "years ago, my brothers Four and Five got into a fight, and Four said Five should"ve never been born," she pointed at St. James" Hospital, "That"s where Five went to give himself back . "
They reached the hospital in under 30 minutes. One would have landed had she not seen a sign that said this: ER full due to asteroid strike - check in and wait for care at the Karl Farbman Store
"Dammit," One muttered under her breath
Emily got worried and asked, "What"s the problem?"
A large, metallic asteroid that weighed as much as a fully occupied cattle car hit Philadelphia a few days ago. The impact left every ER on the East Coast full to the gunnels and a mile-and-a-half-wide crater where CheeseSteak Row used to be. "No space in the ER. They want us to go to the Karl Farbman store," One grumbled, "This is not good."
"Is that related to you getting lost in the mall?" Emily asked.
"No," One shook her head, "I"m not allowed back there."
"Why?"
"Five thought one of their display toilets was the genuine article and all seven of us are now monstrae non gratae at Karl Farbman," One sharply explained, "Besides, I didn"t get lost in the mall. Integra made that up."
Emily giggled weakly. "She tried to convince you that you got lost in the mall?"
"Yeah, and I didn"t believe her," One said, trying not to yell at Emily. "I mean, who names a place that sells electronics Crystal Purple?"
Emily giggled, "Talk about a weird name."
They didn"t talk for the rest of the flight. As One tried to look for the Karl Farbman Store from the air, Emily pulled out her iPhone and played Polybius .
They landed across the street. "Are you OK to walk over to Karl Farbman from here?"
Emily looked up from her phone and nodded. One put the footlocker back on the ground and helped Emily out. She waited for Emily to make it across the street to the Karl Farbman store before leaving.
Emily entered and saw the sign that read please see store manager for hospital intake forms. She saw a vaguely Hispanic guy whose name tag read Felipe frantically walking around the store.
Thanks to all those people who needed hospital care, Felipe had his hands full. Despite the signs forbidding it, women had children on the lip sofas. The wounded bled on the sectionals. Any number of people threw up in a chest of drawers.
Emily finally caught Felipe"s attention. He shushed her. She had interrupted "Desperado".
Emily never received her intake form. She had waited 16 hours before dying without being seen for her myocardial infarct. Worse, the coroner misspelled her cause of death as massive internal fart.