The normal warnings apply. Enjoy!

I’m Not From Here Chapter 2: An Academic Hell

My First Day in Hell

My first actual class was Ai’a’ive-ish. The teacher was the same, her name was Onosa’i Ai’a’ive, but now she was teaching us a language I couldn’t understand. “Fa’apeafe mai Oe?” asked the teacher, who then stared at me. After a couple of moments, I said “ioe,” which meant yes. The whole class laughed at me.

“How are you?” asked Ereke, and he replied “yes”, using a fake voice to imitate me. The teacher then told him off, or at least I think she did, but it was in a language I couldn’t grasp. She then handed me a textbook and a workbook. Everyone else had one. The title was “Ioe.” One of those phony feel-good-confidence-inspiring titles that they put on textbooks for no good reason. And it was too much. My impression at the time was that nobody in Québec would call a textbook “Oui”, even if they were taking drugs.

The teacher pointed to someone and yelled what was probably a page number. The girl opened her textbook to a page and began reading aloud, everyone else had their books out and were following along. Every so often the teacher would call out a different name, and they would switch. My classmates on either side of me had their books open, and saw they had it open to a page with a picture of a truck. The dreaded moment arrived. “Pi-ayra,” announced the teacher, mangling my name and not respecting the silent e. My eyes went to the pages, as I tried to read the Ai’a’ive text. Everyone stared at me, and if I reached a period in my text, the class would laugh. Then another surprise appeared to kick me straight between the eyes. Upside down question marks and exclamation points. None of this was mentioned in my “teach yourself Ai’a’ive.” And my one question there and then was simply “why did Seiloa have to be so different?”

The teacher told us the class was over, after about fifty minutes that seemed like hours. But she told me to stay for a couple of moments.

“Piayra,” she began, “you’ll have to stay after school. There’s a special extra period for students who aren’t at the normal place.”

Not at the normal place, she said. So what was the place I was at? The abnormal place? The special place? “Sorry, I forgot to give you something!” With that she handed me a piece of paper with my schedule on it. Well things weren’t so bad, I only had to walk to room 245 for my next class, Biology.

But things turned worse when I became lost. It was logical to me that room 245 would be on the second floor. When I stayed at hotels, the rooms were always arranged in that logical manner. But here things were different. I took the stairs to the second floor, and wandered around. Then I noticed a door marked “305.” Further down the hallway were a few 300-numbered rooms, but then, around the corner, I saw “498.” I bumped into a student and asked “where is 245?” in English, except with the “2-4-5” part in Ai’a’ive. He pointed down one hallway, so I went there. And then I came upon what was arguably the stupidest thing that Masina Ai’a’ive Interplanetary (or “M.A.I.”, as I sometimes heard in conversations) came up with. A spiral passageway. Much like the one used at downtown parking garages in Montreal. All that was missing was the reminder to have my ticket ready to pay upon exiting. At least this ramp wasn’t one-way though. Lockers lined either side of this curved ramp. But there were also a few doors. And they were numbered in the two hundreds. I was ecstatic for a whole minute.

“Hey you!” yelled a low voice from behind me.

“Yes?”

“YES?” he said, imitating my accent. In front of me stood a large boy, with frizzy hair, dark skin, and a pair of grey wings with purple spots. “You probably can’t find your classroom, is that what why you’re here?”

“Yes, that’s it,” I replied.

“You’re a loser. And my name is Aouli. Don’t you ever forget it! I heard about you, you don’t have any wings. I’m so sorry, sorry you’re a RETARD!” He shoved me. Did that hurt, loser?”

“My name is Pierre, Pierre Tremblay!”

“What kind of a name is that? Know this, I can kick your muli whenever I want!”

I ran up the ramp, and stumbled into the door for room 245, which was partially open. The room inside was significantly darker than the other.

I stumbled in, my face slightly bruised.

“Explain to the class just why you are late,” fumed the teacher. He and all the class were staring at me.

“I didn’t know the way here, I thought 245 was on the second floor!” I explained. “I’m new here…”

“You better learn this place quickly, boy,” he scolded. He looked quite old, and had short white hair. His wings were a navy blue. He carried a cane that he tapped the desk with to get people’s attention. “Now, as I was explaining, before this boy came in and disrupted our class, today we will be talking about the anatomy of the wing.”

He pressed some buttons and a holographic projector showed a large three-dimensional diagram of an Ai’a’ive wing. My interest evaporated when he went into detail about various glands and important blood vessels and organs that would be completely useless to know about unless I became a doctor. Once again it was made clear to me that I didn’t belong. So much that my notes were incoherent. When I looked at them later that day my notes were so distorted that the name of some important blood vessel near the tip of the wing was labelled “wung capilary.”

“WHAT IS YOUR NAME?” he yelled. “I asked you what your name was!” he pointed his cane at me. He gritted his teeth.

“Pierre Tremblay, sir!” I said.

“You won’t call me ‘sir,’ you will call me ali’i, do I make myself CLEAR?” He whacked his desk three times.

“Yes ali’i.”

“Now, Tremblay, why aren’t you taking down notes?”

“I am s…ali’i!”

“But not enough.”

“I could show you…”

“Don’t waste my time. Now, as I was saying, the wing’s capillaries are located at the top near the tip,” he continued.

I didn’t get his name that class. Not that I wanted to. I wanted to be far away from him, and know as little as possible. I latter found out his name was Aso, or day.

I had recess after that. That break between periods was spent wandering around the grounds. It was nice and sunny. But things changed when a dark cloud made himself known. Aouli, whose name literally means “dark cloud”, was standing with Ereke. They both yelled insults at me. I tried to ignore it, but that only encouraged them to run up to me and punch me. When they turned around for a few moments, I walked away, and went by were a few girls were playing some game that involved flying, throwing a ball, and singing something incomprehensible. I walked under a girl who was flying over me, and a few moments later, a thrown textbook hit me in the back.

“What was that for?” I asked.

“Don’t give me that, you pervert!” shouted one of the girls. “You were trying to look up Iulia’s dress, weren’t you!”

“Hey, Pi-ayra love Iulia, Pi-ayra loves Iulia,” sang Ereke, as he, Aouli, and a few other Ai’a’ive males circled me. Iulia flew down and slapped me in the face. She had shoulder-length hair that was messy, slightly tanned skin, and a pair of light yellow wings.

“I hate you,” yelled Iulia at me. She quickly flew off.

“How’s your girlfriend?” asked Aouli, mockingly.

“She isn’t my girlfriend!”

“It must be hard when you love but don’t love back.”

“I don’t love her,”

“Of course you did, you walked under her and looked up, you liked what you saw, didn’t you, didn’t you?”

The Retard Room

My other classes were slightly better, and I especially liked Art. They were teaching us pottery that day, and before a pot is baked, it’s made to have a funny texture. It kind of resembles many diamonds raised in the surface, like something expensive from a jewelry store. Unfortunately, I then had the special after-school program.

Back in Senterre, I only stayed after school if I had a retenu, usually for forgetting homework, or annoying the teacher. Here it seemed like I was permanently in detention.

This place was called the “Learning Resources Centre”, but as I’d soon learn, it was just a euphemism for “The Retard Room.” That’s what the other students called it.

The Retard Room was in room 401, which, needless to say, wasn’t on the fourth floor. It was on the first. It was actually a self-contained suite, with its own hallways, all of them painted to look like the sky, and there were paintings of Ai’a’ive children generally being carefree, and having fun everywhere BUT the Retard Room. Each door had its own number, ranging from 000 to 007.

I went to a middle room “401-000” where the rest of my fellow inmates were waiting. I was relieved that my sister Sophie was there. I could tell her blonde hair anywhere, especially on Seiloa, where everyone else has darker hair. She and the others were seated on mats in a circle, and a low round table was in the middle. I sat next to Sophie. On her other side was a boy with unusually pale skin (for an Ai’a’ive), and he was wearing no shirt to hide it. He had brown hair, a distorted face with many folds and one eye lower than the other, and deformed buckteeth. He was also incredibly overweight, and he had a pair of orange wings that were likely too small for him to use.

“Koge,” he said, “I Koge”, with a slur that suggested he was either retarded or drunk.

On Koge’s other side was Iulia. She looked at me with scorn. Sitting next to Iulia, and opposite me, was a tall woman with café-au-lait colored skin, who wore a green dress with birds on it. Her hair was long and went down on either side of her head to her waist, and she had large purple-greyish wings, and deep green eyes. I could tell that this was our teacher. She also had something that I dreaded. A musical instrument that kind of resembled a ukulele, but it had eight strings, and a disproportionately long neck.

The next inmate was a boy with dark red hair, and equally dark wings. And to round out our group, there was another boy, who had dark skin, black hair in an Afro, and orange eyes. But the most noticeable thing about him was that his wings were different. Rather than resembling birds’ wings, his looked like insect wings. He had about four of them, and they were red and green. Those two were introduced as Osovale and Fimi.

“And I’d like to welcome you all back to the Learning Resources Centre, and I’d like to say a big HELLO to our new friends, Sophie and Pi-ay-ray Trem-palay!” The teacher, who introduced herself as Mrs. Leilani Vaosa Iki Ai’a’ive, said in a singsong voice. Friends. That’s what we were all, not students, or inmates, or clients, but friends. My brain was confused, how could one be “friends” with the people like these. She began playing her “welcome song” on that instrument, while singing a mixture of Ai’a’ive-ish and English. It was bad enough she couldn’t pronounce either of my names yet, but it seems like we were stuck with a teacher who thought this was a kindergarten class. Either that, or someone from the children’s show Passe-Partout (litterally “Skeleton Key”) took a wrong turn, went into space, landed here, and thought she was recording for that show.

“Now what did all you boys and girls do during the Chicken Festival?” she asked.

“I cooked chicken with my tina (mother)…TINA…I want tina, I want tina!” screamed Iulia, who flailed her arms frantically. She suddenly stopped. “And we took the train to Velu, just me and TINA, I want tina, tina!”

“Isn’t that SPECIAL?” asked Leilani.

“Ishawthe danceatthe temple,” said Koge, and then he hit Iulia.

“I hate you, I want tina, I want tina!” screeched Iulia. I knew then and there that this prison used torture, and Iulia was the one who administered it.

“AnywaysIthanked Tagaloa…myfatheris…faifeauoftagaloa…chickens are allnice!”

“That’s very MARVELOUS!” commented the perpetually smiling Leilani.

Fimi, who was sitting next to me, then began playing with my shirt with his left hand. I picked up his hand and pushed it away. Then he began playing with my shirt again.

“And can anyone tell me what Chicken Festival is called in our language?”

“Le Festivale de Poulet,” I replied, “that’s how you say it in my language!”

“You are very wrong, silly-silly!” said Leilani, as she strummed her instrument. “It’s Le Fiafia-moa! Now what did you do Osovale?”

“I went to see my family in ERRRRR Silisili and Doik, doik, doik we had fun, lotsa fun, fun, fun, Lammer lammer lammer, blue blue BLUE! And yes I ate chicken! TIHS, KUF, SA” Sophie and I began laughing.

“That’s NAUGHTY-NAUGHTY. Don’t laugh at someone just because he’s different, he has Wrong-Word Disease. But that’s not a happy thing, so let’s move on. Fimi, what did you do?”

“The dogs were dogging, the cats were catting, the birds were birding, the fish were fishing…” chanted Fimi with a vacant look on his face. He picked up one corner of the carpet he was sitting on and began scratching it absent-mindedly. “Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine…Chicken is tasty, yes it is, have much fun!” With that he bent down to kiss the table.

“And what about you two? I understand you’re brother and sister!”

“We didn’t know about this festival until today,” I told her.

“You’re being so silly, you don’t know what the Chicken Festival is? That’s a lie. And lying is NAUGHTY-NAUGHTY-NAUGHTY!” Throughout this entire ordeal, her face kept a smile on it.

“We’re from Senterre, Quebec!” said Sophie, as she turned around.

“You have no wings!” gasped Leilani, finally grasping the obvious. “But that doesn’t make you not SPECIAL!”

With that she began playing a tune on her instrument, that everyone, except Sophie and I, could sing along to.

“We moved here just a week ago, I’m not from here.”

“You miss your friends? Well everyone here is your friend, YES THEY ARE!”

I had to restrain myself. I really wanted to smash that ugly guitar over her head. She was the kind of woman who could give people cavities with her voice. And you could set her house on fire, kill her family, and smash her instrument, and she’d STILL be smiling, and just tell you you’re “naughty-naughty.”

Who’s idea was it to sit those who had catching up to do in the same room as those five mental patients? (I considered Leilani to be just as mental as Iulia, Koge, Osovale and Fimi.) I didn’t know that being from Quebec made you mental.

She gave us lessons on how to pronounce stuff in Ai’a’iveish, and some basic mathematics, which was alright, except a few of the symbols were not the same as what I learned. “Equals”, for example, looked nothing like “.” The closest thing to it that people would understand where I came from was “#.”

She then started taking individual inmates for some “one and one”, as she called it, in room 401-007. While she was gone with Sophie, Iulia jumped onto me and began punching me. I screamed. Everyone else just watched. I tried hitting her, and I punched her once in the stomach and I hit her right leg. She just kept hitting me.

“I hate you, I hate you, you looked up my dress, I want my tina, tina would beat you up, I want tina!”

“Flawless victory,” stated Fimi, “FINISH HIM!”

It was then that Leilani came in, and asked what was wrong. Iulia pointed at me and began crying. “It’s not like that,” I explained, “she started attacking me…”

“Well kiss and make up!” She pushed Iulia towards me and made us hug and kiss. Iulia then hit me. “No Iulia, just hug and kiss!” The only good thing was that neither Aouli nor Ereke saw this.

When my one-on-one session came up, I was asked about my relationship with Iulia. She also asked me about my experience in school so far, which wasn’t much, as it was my first day.

When I got home that day I was overjoyed to be back with my family. I told them how things went.

“You have to adjust, Pierre,” my dad told me. “You’ll like it. If I am able to adjust, so are you!”

The only good thing was that we now had a TV that actually worked on this planet. Why couldn’t they come up with one TV standard for the entire universe? Why did they have to have so many different communications standards and so many different electrical standards? What’s wrong with VHF/UHF on a TV powered by 110 volts AC through a Quebec plug?

The Principal, the Gym Class, and Other Things to Complain About

The next day, in homeroom, Onosa’i read the bulletins, and one of them said that I was to report to the principal’s office during lunch hour. The rest of the class turned silent when they heard that. That morning I had Math for the first time. But since I knew some of the odd symbols, it wasn’t that bad. Recess was bad, because I was always being followed by Ereke and Aouli, who made comments about me being in love with Iulia.

At lunchtime, I walked to room 520, which was at the top of a staircase at the top of a spiral ramp-way. And the funny thing was that the door to the room was set diagonally, neither a normal door nor a trapdoor, but something in between. The principal had somber brown eyes, a wrinkled face, and grey hair. He gave the impression of being a Mafia godfather. He had red wings and wore a purple lavalava and a purple shirt. Behind him were enormous windows arranged to resemble a flower pattern. It made him look even more terrifying.

“Pi-air,” he said, actually getting my name right.

“Hello,” I greeted him, as reached to shake his hand, but he gestured that it wasn’t necessary. “And you are the principal?”

“Yes, I am. My name is Serekele Ti’u Tuiupolu Ai’a’ive, but you will call me ali’i, do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, ali’i!”

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“I do not, ali’i.”

“Please, don’t use the title after every sentence. You are here because of Iulia. You shouldn’t look up the dresses of girls…”

“But I wasn’t…”

“Don’t interrupt me like that. As I was saying, you must not do that EVER again.”

“But I didn’t look up, I was just walking along, minding my own business.”

“And another thing, you did the wrong thing fighting her in the LRC yesterday!”

“But she started it…”

“You must never hit her, how would you like it if she hit you?”

“But she did, ali’i…”

“Nonsense. She’s not one of those kung-fu ninjas that they have on Earth, come on!”

“She hit me, when the LRC teacher left, she jumped onto me and…”

“You think that just because you’re from another planet, and you have no wings, that you’re somehow special. You think the normal rules apply to everybody but you. I’ve dealt with others like you before. Let me tell you this. You are triangular, the holes here are oval-shaped. Make yourself rounded and things will be a lot less painful!” He pounded the desk for emphasis. “You’re NOT better than anyone else, remember that! This is only your second day, and already you’ve caused trouble, I’m disappointed.”

I left his office, as I did a mental recap of all the teachers I had so far. Onosa’i and a couple of others liked me, everyone else either hated me or was indifferent. My least favorite class so far was Biology, my favorites were art and Interplanetary history. The only comfort at school was when I saw my sister. She could always put a smile on my face.

The next day was to be my first gym class. Before I was taken to school, my parents gave gym uniforms to Sophie and me. I was worried something bad would happen in that class. But I didn’t have to wait until gym period. Something bad happened in recess. I happen to be walking too close to Iulia, but she didn’t notice me, however, Aouli and Ereke did.

“Hey, and how’s your girlfriend today?” teased Aouli. Ereke grabbed me, while Aouli got Iulia. “You want her, yes you do, yes you do,” he teased in a fake voice. “How much do you want her? Ereke, lift up his lavalava to find out!”

Ereke did as he was told, and lifted up my skirt, only to be surprised I was wearing a pair of dark blue underpants underneath. A small crowd had gathered around, and they all laughed at me. “He dresses funny!” shouted one of them, and then others made other snide remarks. “Maybe he hasn’t got any!” yelled another. “Hey, he dresses like an AMERICAN!” chided Aouli let go of Iulia, who flew off. He pulled down my underpants, and the entire crowd laughed at me.

“Don’t you want to sing your national anthem, yankee?” I wanted to die, there and then. I later found out that many Ai’a’ive associate underwear with the United States. So for wearing a pair I was labeled “American.”

“I’m a Quebecois, not an American!”

“Ooh, so I get it, you’re French!”

“No, I speak French, but I’m…”

“American, because you’re wearing those American things!”

My gym class was worse for me. The boys’ gym uniform was an orange lavalava of special material…and that was it. I found out in the changing room nobody wore anything under their skirt, and the boys would all pick on me because I didn’t have any wings. One of them even took my backpack, flew up, and placed it on an overhead beam. They all laughed at me, and then the same boy went back up there, picked up my bag, and threw it at me.

Then gym class started. They were playing Football Aerien, but since I didn’t have any wings, the instructor told me to run laps around the gym. I wasn’t the only one. All those from the Retard Room were with me also, because most of them were too thick to play the game. Iulia and Fimi kept fighting, while Osovale and Koge would keep saying funny things to each other. Sophie and I were the only ones taking it seriously, and the instructor, when he wasn’t watching the game, would only look at me. Not at any of the others. So I had to be careful while everyone else would goof around and sometimes crack jokes or start singing. Was I some kind of attraction? Was I carrying a sign that said “genuine Quebecois boy, step right up, only 1 to stop and gawk!”

I am Not Her Brother Anymore

I grew more depressed as time went on. After the third week, it turned out that Sophie had somehow caught up, and she was liberated from the Retard Room. Since my parents didn’t want to make two trips to pick us both up, it was announced that I’d have to take the bus most of the way and then walk. If things weren’t bad enough, Sophie would often pretend I didn’t exist. The first couple of weeks we were always together. Now she’d make sure to ignore me in the lunchroom. We used to talk to each other en français. Now the only thing she’d say in our language was “ta gueuille!” or shut up. You see, she had her uo, or friends, a small circle of friends, mostly girls, who were magnetically drawn towards her. She called them her sisters, and in the case of the few boys, brothers. But she no longer acknowledged her real brother. At lunchtime she’d sit with her new soeurs, or uso as she called them (uso meaning a sister’s sister or a brother’s brother.) My parents were on my case, because I wasn’t as good at adjusting as was Sophie. I was pissed off because I didn’t have any friends yet.

“You just have to FIT IN!” insisted my parents. It was easy for them to repeat that over and over again, they didn’t have to adjust when they were my age, they didn’t have to leave Quebec. Why couldn’t Olosega have chosen someone else? I knew several shitheads at my old school that I wouldn’t miss if one of their fathers got that job.

I was always teased at school. Aouli and Ereke would frequently frisk me to see if I still wore underpants, and they’d tease me about having broken up with Iulia if I wasn’t anywhere near her, or being engaged to her if I was.

One day they opened an overhead air-duct, grabbed me, flew up, and stuck my head in, chilling my face. Meanwhile, they spread my legs and put my feet through rings on the underside of the duct, and lifted up my lavalava. Various boys and girls laughed at the sight of my naked derriere.

“We love looking at the French American’s muli!” laughed Aouli. Eventually they took me out, with my face frozen, and dropped me on the ground. “Oh, you forgot your American shorts.” Then they began an off-key rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. I insisted I was from Quebec. So they switched to La Marseilles. Sometimes groups of friends would stand together and sing. Most of those songs seemed to include my name now, and they’d make a point of mispronouncing it. I regularly bought Pepsi (those drinks were available EVERYWHERE) for a drink during the short afternoon break. Ereke started calling me “Mr. Pepsi.” Great, I had just resurrected an old stereotype about the Quebecois, and brought it to another planet. I started drinking something else, a local drink called Niu-u-u, which contained coconut juice from immature coconuts. Most of the gym classes were devoted to practice for the school sports, which all entailed flying. So it was guaranteed that I was left out, and forced to play with the retards.

With the exception of gym class, my sister was unaffected by this. She wasn’t a Pepsi girl, she wasn’t the odd French girl. No, she was treated like she was an Ai’a’ive, or at least an Ai’a’ive who had lost her wings. I seldom saw her for dinner, except when she had too much homework, because she was at this friend’s house or that friend’s house. And she wasn’t Sophie anymore, she was Sefelia, and even my parents and Celine started calling her that.

I approached her one day at lunch time. “Sophie, we have to talk!”

“Please, call me Sefelia!” she insisted.

“Well Sefelia, why are you always ignoring me?”

“Because I have my friends, and they all hate you. Besides, your Ai’a’ive ins’t that good, whereas I’ve been put in an advanced class.”

“But why don’t you even help me anymore?”

“I have my friends.”

“You just lost a brother, I remember when you said we’d go through that…”

“That was before I was popular. There’s a couple of guys interested in me, and they don’t want to see you!”

“JE ME SOUVIENS!” I yelled at her.

“This isn’t Senterre. It says “Sei ma Alofa”, flowers and love, on all the license plates. And try to get rid of your accent in English, it’s embarrassing. I wish I had wings so that I wasn’t stuck with you in gym class.”

“You…you’re nothing more than Iulia without wings.”

“I’m far more mature than her, Tuagane sister’s brother.”

“You sure aren’t acting like it.”

“You’re just stuck in the past.”

“Maybe I am, because I actually had people who cared about me. I had two good friends, and a sister who understood me.”

On the Tuesday of the fifth week we had to line up for vaccinations. On Earth they had replaced most needle-based vaccines with special pills. Not so over here, and we each had to get three needles, two small “tests”, and a large one the size of a knitting needle that was used for injecting a Leleleaga vaccine, as there was supposedly a “concern” about that disease. I later found out Leleleaga primarily infects the wings, so I wouldn’t have had to worry. For all I know it might not have affected me. But the visiting nurses didn’t care. And they couldn’t even speak English. They’d yell at me, so I’d swear at them in French.

“Maudit ange, mange ta aigule, la! Ostie, je veux utilise t’aigule dans votre aille droit, la” Let THEM see how it feels. But they just laughed. What’s so funny about the French language? If that wasn’t enough, they smiled as they injected me. But at that moment in time, I wished they’d just give me a lethal injection and be done with it. Nobody would have missed me, Sefelia wouldn’t have to worry about her friends leaving her because of me, and Aouli and Ereke could easily find someone else to pick on.

Lumiere a la Fin du Tunnel?

However, things started getting better that afternoon. In the Retard Room, of all places.

I was quite good at geography and physical science, and both Koge and Osovale had questions. They were actually quite easy to handle, despite Leilani being late. Iulia was also late, for which I was thankful. Despite Koge’s slur and Osovale’s sudden outbursts, things went well. They no longer seemed so retarded. Koge seemed to like good music, and Osovale genuinely wanted to know everything about Senterre. They were the new Maurice and Guy. A few minutes later Leilani came in, with a really long leash.

“Hello boys and girls, you know what’s at the other end of this leash?” she asked.

“The end,” replied Fimi.

“A dog?” I suggested.

“Ourprincipal!” joked Koge.

“Iulia?” asked Osovale. We all laughed. Iulia then came through the door, but not on the leash.

Leilani then gave the leash a tug, and it came in. It was an houpie. It had dark blue fur, a white beak, and light blue eyes. “HOOP!” it greeted.

“Iulia will name him,” said Leilani,

“TINA, I want tina, TINA!” shouted Iulia hysterically, and ran around the room for a couple of minutes before sitting down.

“Ok, Fimi will do the honors!”

“How do I do honors?” asked Fimi.

“Name the Hoopy!”

“This hoopy is named Name? I am going to E’e on a chicken, my name is shit!” With that he lifted up part of his lavalava, making us thankful the table was blocking the view, and began kissing his skirt. Then he kissed the table, and leant over and kissed me unexpectedly.

“Alright, Piayray, YOU name the Hoopie!”

I thought for a couple of moments. I was thinking of being cruel and naming it Tina Turner, but it was male, and Leilani would probably disapprove of that name. Then it struck me. “Marcel Galarneau,” I said, “That shall be his name!”

“Hoop, hoop, EEEEEE!” giggled the Hoopie.

“I can see he likes that name,” said Leilani.

Marcel made things more enjoyable there. A portion of the class would be devoted to taking care of him. I suppose it was some kind of new-age “therapy” for those who were “special-needs.” And if Leilani was late, which happened regularly, we’d just play with the hoopy, and pick on Fimi and Iulia. We even told Iulia that Fimi knows where her mother is. Fimi would start speaking total nonsense, while Iulia would lose her temper. And Leilani was too dense to notice this. When she came in she’d just tell them that the two were being “naughty-naughty.” I was beginning to think that my fifteenth year of life wouldn’t be that bad.

And another thing I enjoyed was the Interplanetary History course. I learnt that the Ai’a’ive were a winged race originally from the planet Earth, but most of them spread through the cosmos many millennia ago, and those left on Earth, in Polynesia, lost their wings. I also learnt about Seiloa, a planet the size of Earth, but because of the way it was “colonized”, it really had only one government, under the current matriarch, Lagi-Lupe. But it had many provinces, and none of them ever had any sovereignty movements. I also found about about many different races, including the Ya’a Naomi and Faerian. There were many other races out there, including things that looked like dogs and cats but with six limbs, and things that looked like balls of bur with feet and arms.

Not everything was going so good, however.

I was doing relatively well in some classes, but Biology, Mana and Technology were impossible. Learning all the stuff about wings was very difficult, and I failed a small in-class assignment because I couldn’t do a special kind of “blood-test” of my wings, because I didn’t have any. But the teacher said I should have “improvised.” How do you improvise in science?

Mana was bad, because that involved using “natural powers.” The Ai’a’ive are naturally what could be called “magically inclined.” As were a few other races, including the Faerian, which is what Fimi belongs to. (Despite his mental handicaps, he was able to do a few things.) The most I could do was cause a projection to appear in front of me, and controlling its color and shape were difficult. I was trying to make an image of a fleur-de-lis, but the closest I got looked more like a misshapen banana. I also failed the “ball test”, where one used one’s powers to move a ball through a maze without touching it. “Spread your wings and focus,” said the teacher, some woman with fire-colored wings and a severe attitude problem. Not to mention she could never just enter the room, she always had to make her own special effects, or once she even showed us teleportation, something not learned until “After Part VI.” So there was a Secondaire VI here? That meant I’d have to spend a year longer in this school. Or even more, if they had a VII as well.

Technology was the worst. It had me doing advanced stuff involving electrical circuits, stuff that would make Hydro-Quebec electricians faint if they saw it. Not to mention that “direction” was very important, as we were working with direct current. There were also problems to deal with involving ripple voltage. We also had to learn the parts of a direct current transformer. The teacher of that class, Pepe, would always look at my attempts to understand with scorn. If I ever asked him a question, he’d call me stupid, or say I was being a smart-aleck. “You should have learnt that in Part I,” he’d sometimes tell me. It’s not my fault that the Seiloan government and the Ministere d’Education du Québec can’t agree on standards as to what is learnt when. If I asked any other student for help, Pepe would throw himself down my throat, accusing me of not trying hard enough by myself, and reminding me that electricians seldom worked in teams.

My home life was also degenerating. I seldom had peace because my sister had the noisiest friends, who my parents would just welcome, as they wanted to be “exposed to the locals.” And I was no longer allowed to call Sophie “Sophie” (that’s what she was born as, that was the name I always used, and damn it all if I’m ever calling her Sefilia.)

And my parents were on my case about me not having any friends. I wasn’t trying hard enough to adjust. I told them about how I got along with Koge and Osovale in the LRC, but that wasn’t good enough, especially since I wasn’t supposed to be there. Right, my sister. She was so perfect. She’s such an angel. She deserves the wings. My other sister was always singing something cheerful in Ai’a’ive. And my parents were always dressed in the “fa’a Seiloa,” as they’d say in Ai’a’ive. My mother would always be wearing either Tahitian-style wraps or loose dresses, always brightly colored, and my dad embraced the lavalava. I was now the only one who liked to change into shorts or jeans when he got home.

Fiafia Fetu

Just before school had a break for the week-long Fiafia-Fetu, or Star Festival, about three months after I started, I noticed her for the first time. She had really long black hair, hazel eyes, and almond colored skin, as well as light brown and cream colored wings. Her name was Silei.

She asked me for help with something in Math. I was able to explain it quite well. She blushed and thanked me. I saw her again at lunch the last day. She thanked me, and showed me an assignment for which she got S for “SIRI,” (the local equivalent of “Bravo!”) Silei asked me what I was doing over the holidays. I told her I didn’t know. She was taking the train to Sapovi, because she had relatives there. Unfortunately, a week was too short for my family to return to Quebec. Before we left to go to separate classes, we hugged, and she wrapped her wings around me. I liked the feel of all those feathers. They were comfortable and warm. I felt them with a hand, this being the first time I felt comfortable touching an Ai’a’ive’s wing. I felt as though she was pouring warmth into me. I settled for hugging her normally, as I had no wings. I’d later find out just how special her wing-hug was.

“Thank you very much,” I said to her.

“You’re special.”

“Special? That’s what Leilani calls me…”

“I don’t mean Leilani special at all. I mean really special. I have Leilani as one of my teachers. She only got in because she was transferred from an elementary school, and she was guaranteed a job, or that’s what the stories say.”

“Really?”

“And she plays the musikalele because she grows tense without it. It reminds her of her mother. But let’s talk about something more pleasant than Leilani.”

“Anything you have in mind, Silei?”

“You!”

“Anything you want to know about me?”

“Everything. I want to know everything. You’re nice, you’re sweet…and you’re everything I want in a boy. I don’t care about your lack of wings.”

With that she gave me another wing-hug.

During the Festival I really felt left out. Sophie and Celine both had lots of friends by now, and where going everywhere with them. Fireworks were being set off from every house but our own. And then there was the night we were invited to dinner at Olosega’s house. My mother, ever wanting to “fit in”, bought me a new purple lavalava and a rather ugly red shirt. It wasn’t me. I was hoping my parents would give up when trying to find the place, but they wouldn’t. Trois-Rivieres has a maze of streets, many of them one-way. But they came to it. This large house had several domes made of thatched wood, and walls made out of colored bricks, with weird circular patterns. It made the artwork at Montreal’s Prefontaine, Joliette, and Honore-Beaugrand metro stations look very dull. Inside I was in for more of a shock. Some rooms had shelves that were completely filled with odd things. Small craftwork, statues, and souvenirs. And there were also posters from Montreal and Quebec City. Seemed like Olosega was some kind of Francophile. Is THAT why he brought us all here?

I also noticed there weren’t any beds in any of the rooms I went to. I asked Olosega, and he said that they slept on sleeping mats they kept stored near the ceiling by day. He was right, the bedrooms had special racks made of wood. Or most of them were. In the master bedroom, he just had to use converted luggage racks, some taken from a Voyageur bus, the rest taken from AMT trains.

Dinner consisted of soup filled with tiny balls, more pieuvre, and assorted meat and vegetable-filled pastries that resembled oversized perogies or samosas. The children of Olosega all picked on me, thinking I was funny. I was the one with his lavalava on slightly wrong, I was the one who had my plate directly in front of me, when I should have had it slightly off center. It was annoying. And also it was more annoying what they called desert. It was crème glacé, and they called it aisakirime. Why did they have to steal the ENGLISH name? I sometimes got the impression that the only parts of Earth most Seiloans knew about were America, Japan, and Polynesia. At least the coconut and berry flavor wasn’t bad.

After dinner I found out exactly why we ended up there. Olosega is superstitious, and his psychic-astrologer-advisor said that good luck comes from Quebec. So because of some Jojo (that’s the nickname we use for psychics and astrologers), we’re here. Because of some Jojo, I’ve been torn from my friends. Because of some Jojo, I’ve been alienated from my family. The only good thing about that lunatic’s recommendations was Silei, but I was tense.

For all I knew she could have had someone else lined up.

The other thing that happened at that house, Olosega’s children took my sisters and I swimming. I protested I hadn’t brought my swimsuit. No worry, we went naked. I felt even more self-conscious, because, being naked, my lack of wings was more obvious. And I felt a little uneasy seeing my sisters naked. But they didn’t care. Just a few more days, I told myself. Never before did I actually WANT to return to that blasted school.

When I returned, I was happy. So happy I was able to just walk by Aouli and Ereke, while they alternated between asking me to sing Alouette and talking about baseball and other “American” things to me. So happy, that Iulia picking on me didn’t bother me. I saw Silei at lunch, and then again after school, when she stayed around just to see me.

She called me that night. My parents were surprised, as it was the first time anyone called me. We talked about all kinds of things, but she was mostly interested in Quebec. Genuinely interested, not interested so she could make fun of me. I was happy when our conversation ended. Happy that I had a good friend who was a girl.

We sat next to each other at lunch. And I taught her a bit of French, including the swear words. And then she confessed something to me. “Je T’aime!” she told me. I responded by putting my palm on her forehead, and then rubbing her wings with my other hand.

“You know…” she began.

“I saw it on TV.”

“But I find it nice that you are adjusting…”

“Me, adjusting?”

“I’d be much worse in Quebec. I only know those few French words you told me.”

“Well, I could teach you some of that as well!”

Things weren’t so bad. She taught me how to do some basic mana techniques, nothing too fancy, but I was able to make a flame appear in front of my hands, meaning I’d no longer need any matches or cigarette lighters.

There was a school field trip around the tenth of November. The school had chartered a train for the occasion. Leilani insisted I sit with the retards, but fortunately Silei was able to sit next to me. And even better, Iulia was restrained. Special bands tied her legs to the chair, while her arms and wings were bound in a straightjacket, and to stop her incessant whining, she had a rubber mouth restraint. She looked like some insane cannibal psychiatrist from an old movie, but I wasn’t sure which one. I told this to Silei. We had many laughs at Iulia’s expense.

I felt things were getting better.

To be continued…

I thought I’d put up chapter 2. Now, I don’t even have a chapter 3, yet.