Munmun(12)

“It was your stupid fault we ended up in that house in the first place, so, more your fault than mine, so maybe you should apologize to everyone right now,” Prayer said, and I knew she was wrong but the words were true.

“Prayer, Usher, I’m sorry I tried to get us to law school faster,” I said.

Prayer grumped.

“Part Two, I’m sorry I got us detoured to a house where a boy could possibly live, because, big planning mistake by me,” I added.

“I liked that boy and guesswhat, idiot, he liked me,” she said.

“He liked that you were getting naked at him, sure,” I said.

“Warner, you need to shut up,” snapped my sister. “You think someone like him couldn’t like someone like me, but just shut up. You don’t even know what happened.”

We rolled down the hillside as the darkness behind us melted pinkly. We were still high enough to get sometimes glimpses of the whole awakening city of Lossy Indica, all the way to the fogeaten beach.

“We didn’ ’t get the th thirty m munmun,” realized Usher.

“Also we lost the emergency munmun and all our freaking clothes,” I pointed out.

“We got a car atleast,” Prayer said.

It was full on morning when we got back to that middlepoor neighborhood and people were hustling and bustling, hosing sidewalks and putting out lawnchairs and eating more soups.

Now three littlepoors in a middlepoor cleaningcar will get some stinkface looks out on the streets and sometimes stopped and demanded, what are you doing. Lucky we had me who is pretty good with stories and lies.

“Just a transport mission to the law school,” I kept explaining. “Lossy Clean Co had too many cars up in the hills, not enough at the law school, but not worth it to send a truck or a middlepoor, so if you’ll excuse us, thankyou and yourewelcome.”

Mostly middlepoors nodded grumpily and said nothing, a few helpfully gave us law school directions, a few others kicked or threw us into the street and yelled not to take their jobs, so prettyquick I learned to stop saying the part about not worth it to send a middlepoor.

By the time we got to law school the glasstic was scuffed pretty bad and the steeringpad was beeping and flashing the same word overandover.

“BATTL L, LOW,” read Usher.

“Battlow,” Prayer and me realized.

I say we got to law school but it didn’t really feel like we had got to anywhere, because this law school wasn’t a big glorious parthenon. Firstofall it was a spreadout suburb of a bunch of different buildings, and secondofall they were all just grubby officeblocks and their dowdy frumpiness made me start to worry that we really didn’t have a plan and how the heck was Prayer going to meet husbands in these things.

We asked a few people if this was for real the law school.

“Yup,” said an old middlepoor, running a Quickstand. “You’re right in the middle of campus.”

If these were even lawstudents it was super confusing because they were dressed all slummy. But their scale was middlerich, striding up and down the street chattering into phones and screens, briskly stepping around the middlepoors underfoot.

“Which building are you headed to,” asked the Quickstand guy.

“The main one,” I said.

“Admin or lecturehall,” he asked.

“Leckcherall,” I said.

“Couple blocks that way,” he said, thumbing the air.

“Sir, we might not make it because we’re battlow,” said Prayer. “I know it is a big request, but could we possibly charge up on a little of your juice?”

He gave her a long look and breathed out of his nose and screwed up his mouth and shook his head.

But he also said, “Fine.”

While our car sucked his juice he sat us on his counter to chat and gave us a little tapwater and some shards of chip. His name was Paddy. Bodywise he was chubby and purply black with white curls dusting his head.

“Don’t see too many littlepoors in Sand Dreamough,” he told us. “You seem young so let me give you a little advice. Get yourselves that education while your brains are still soft. Because once that brain hardens up you can’t learn anything new.”

“Sure, yeah,” I said, feeling crappy because who the heck was going to give us an education.

“If you want to scale up, you got to make yourself usefull,” said Paddy. “Nobody’s gonna scale you up just to be nice.”

“Well that is pretty wise, and you are very kind to give us not just juice and food but also wisdom,” Prayer said.

“You won’t get to my scale with zero education, and that’s a fact,” said Paddy. “I started about twofifth the size I am right now and I never married or had any babybrats. So all my munmun goes to my own scale and that’s it. That’s one way to scale up, real slow over time, but it’s lonely. I mean, you get used to it. But look at me! I’m so lonely and bored, I’m talking to you!”

“For sure, yeah,” I said.

“So sop up that education while you still can because you don’t have a whole lot of years left of being young and soppybrain,” he said. “You’ll be my age quicker than you think.”

“If we even live that long,” I said.

“Warner, don’t be depressing,” said Prayer.