Page 47 of Knottingley Ever After
“We have established a rapport,” I say.
“Mm.” Patricia’s mouth twitches. It is the closest thing to solidarity I am going to get out of her today, and I take it. “Sector one’s house was, as of an hour ago, formally polled on the question of accepting an Omega placement. The vote came back unanimously against. The team has cited—” she lifts a finger and reads off her screen in the small clipped voice of a woman who would rather not be the one saying it “— quote, the risk of disruption to training environment and roster focus.”
“Disruption,” I echo.
“Disruption.”
“Of course.” My jaw is going.I make it stop.“It would simply not be fair to ask an entire Alpha team to share a kitchen with an Omega who might at some point in the calendar year experience a fully predictable biological event. The strain on their roster focus could be catastrophic. Possibly fatal.”
“Miss O’Shea.”
“I am being collaborative, Mrs. Henderson.”
Patricia sighs the long sigh of a woman who has earned it.
“I am not the architect of these policies. I am the secretary tasked with explaining them, and frankly, on a personal note, the Heat Clinic on campus exists for very good reason. Have you been by yet?”
“I have not. I have been alive on this campus,” I check my watch, “for approximately nine and a half hours.”
“Go today.” She is no longer reading the script. She has gone faintly maternal, the way a dorm mother who makes biscuits might. “Get your name on the list. The Heat Clinic is excellent. The Omega doctor on staff can re-titrate your blockers for the saturation here at North Star. The stronger formulary works, but it comes with side effects you will want to be briefed on, and there is currently a waitlist that grows by the day. So sooner is better than later. That is one piece of advice I will give you for free.”
I nod, slow, filing it the way I file everything.
“Duly noted.”
“Good.” She returns the glasses to her nose. “Now. Back to housing.”
“You said sector one refused.”
“Correct.”
“Which rather suggests the figure skating dorm is the only door left open.”
She types something. Clicks something. Reorders her three highlighters by some invisible logic.
“Sector two,” she says, almost as an afterthought, “has not been polled.”
I go very still.
“Excuse me?”
“Sector two. The other house. Captained by a Mr. Kavanagh. Senior leadership includes Mr. Bellerose and Mr. Santori.” Her eyes flick up over the glasses at the last name, and I will be wondering for the rest of my natural life whether she clocked something in my face when she said it. “They have not been asked.”
“Why not?”
“Because sector one’s refusal was assumed to be representative of the program at large. The director did not see the need to put a second team through the formality.”
Assumed.
Did not see the need.
Something hot and small and indignant lifts behind my sternum.
I push it down for later, where I keep all the things I will examine when there are fewer Beta administrators in the room.
“You have,” Patricia goes on, sliding a paper across the desk with two boxes I am meant to tick, “twenty-four hours to makea decision. Beyond that window, the scholarship office considers the placement forfeit and the offer revoked. Standard policy.”
She says it like a woman reading the weather. Tomorrow: light snow. The sun rises at six forty-two. Iris O’Shea may not have a college after lunch.
