Scorpio

Chapter V

"I'm fourteen." I rolled one eye successfully and left the other one unseen behind its bruised veil. "Grow up."

"I did, four inches over the summer," he grinned.

"Whatever." I went back to evaluating the sine of 2θ.

"He, Ari," he scooted closer and nudged me in the arm. "Whatcha doing this weekend?"

"Nothing, but you asking that is merely social formality because we both knew what the answer was going to be."

"You wanna come to the city park after dinner? With me?" He was smiling widely.

"You've got another poker game or something?"

"No, just us. We haven't hung out in a while. Let's catch up."

I looked at him, not understanding where this was going. "We are catching up. Right now."

"I'll show you something cool. Trust me, you won't regret it," he promised.

"Alright," I assented.

"Saturday? Meet up at eight?"

"That's kinda late... How're we going to get there and back?" Someone had to be the practical one.

"Taxi. It'll be fine."

I finished the last trig evaluation. "Sure, that works."

"Okay," he smirked, "it's a date."

My pencil froze. It's a WHAT? Did he say it was a——

~ ~ ~

Another journey past the floating cats that were destined to be disemboweled. I was pretty sure that slowly pulling out someone's entrails had been a form of torture in the Middle Ages. Look at us now, doing the same thing but dubbing it SCIENCE.

The Inquisition never left. We're still stuck in Ye Olden Times, and people are still being labelled as "heretics" and getting burned at the stake. The witch hunt never ended. Everyone's continuing to point fingers at the ones they're afraid of and yelling, "WITCH!"

Some creative people might even substitute a B in place of the W, but that was none of my business. They could rinse their mouths out with Claren's mouthwash after they were done denouncing people for the day.

I yawned and slunk down the wall to seated.

Xanexa looked up from xyr sketchbook. "You didn't sleep well."

I didn't know half the time whether xe intended for sentences to be statements or questions.

I covered another yawn and shook my head. "I have insomnia," I admitted. "Sleeping is hard."

Xe looked sad, xyr face soft. "Why?"

"Something's wrong with my melatonin or circadian rhythm or some diurnal biochemical process," I said, regurgitating the wisdom I had gleaned from the Internet over the years.

Xe frowned disapprovingly. "Don't believe that s——"

I shrugged. "That's what the researchers have said."

"They tell you that you're the problem, yeah?" Xyr voice slung pure disdain at the faceless World Wide Web. "A problem that can be fixed with pills?"

"How else are medical problems going to be fixed?"

"Forget about the biology. The Earth isn't Huxley's brave new world. Soma and happy pills don't exist."

Tell that to the people hooked on opioids.

"And then what? Put all the MD/PhDs out of work?" I asked.