Temporal Exploring 101 - Cultural Immersion

II.31 Shell-shocked

In the aftermath of Natty's announcement that she would have to leave St. Albert's in a few days, we were kind of shell-shocked. All of us – and that included even the four 'rich girls' who had always openly disliked Natty – appeared to be subdued and unhappy.

Natty herself had withdrawn deep into herself, to a place where it was hard to reach her. I had seen her do that before. It was her way of coping. She would sit in class without paying attention, looking out of the window or scribbling in her blue notebook.

Teachers were strangely lenient with her now. The news that she was going to leave St. Albert's had spread like wildfire. Apparently, our teachers did no longer see any point in disciplining her.

Take, for example, our Geometry teacher and Natty's own personal nemesis, Ms Gablins. That day, she was looking at Natty thoughtfully while we re all working on a problem. At one point, Natty noticed that and looked up from her notebook.

"What?" she asked, and when there came no answer, "So? Congratulations, you won. Aren't you going to celebrate?"

We all thought that Gablins would send her to see her tutor, or that she might even discipline Natty in front of the class. But our Geometry teacher merely turned away from my roommate, pretending not to have heard Natty's remark.

I recalled how Natty had predicted that many people at our school would be glad to learn that she had effectively been kicked out, finally. But oddly, nobody appeared to be very happy about it. At least, Ms Gablins was not celebrating.

In the meantime, Natty became more and more withdrawn. There were no more 'Fogg moments', those spectacular moments when Natty would step up to the blackboard to vigorously attack a problem that intrigued her.

At one point, Ms Jefferson attempted to draw her out, challenging us with an extremely difficult problem.

When it turned out that nobody appeared to be able to solve it, she directly addressed Natty.

"Fogg, would you like to try your hand at that?"

Natty looked up. "No, Miss."

"Why not?"

"It is too difficult for me, Miss," Natty replied, returning her attention to what she had been writing in her notebook.

When all is said and done there is not much a teacher can do, really.

I thought I knew what Natty was doing. She must be working on her own stuff, the math she herself considered interesting, rather than waste her time with doing exercises dictated by the curriculum, at a school she was about to leave.

I tried to talk to Natty, but it was difficult to get through to her anymore.

"What would you have me do, Cathy?" she inquired. "Or, more to the point, do you have any grand plan that may save my arse yet? Are you going to whisk me away to your 23rd century to get me out of this bloody mess? But wait, we can't go back there, can we? Because the bloody ansible is broken or not working properly."

She laughed, and turned up the volume on her record player, until I could not stand it anymore and left the room.

I switched on the ansible several times a day, in the faint hope of establishing a connection to the 23rd century again, without success. I desperately wanted to talk to Sara and Mira about the crisis I was facing here. I felt that I was badly in need of any guidance or advice I could get from my Temporal Instructor, in this dire situation. Left to my own counsel and devices, I felt terribly helpless.

Nancy also tried to talk to Natty, and failed just like I had failed.

Even Dorothy Barnett tried to talk to her, though from a different motivation. She, and possibly her three friends, felt guilty.

"I am sorry about the way this turned out, Fogg," she told my roommate, during intermission. "I want you to know that I never meant for this to happen, and neither did my friends."

"Whatever." Natty shrugged. "It does not matter anymore if you meant it to happen or not, can't you see that, Barnett? It just does not matter."

"It matters to me," Dorothy replied, in a small voice, but Natty had already turned away from her and marched off.

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A / N : Another short chapter. Things are looking awfully bleak at this point, aren't they? Which is so not my fault. I am just writing down the story as it has happened / is happening / will have happened. Whatever lol

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