Work Text:
Constance resented her current predicament, kept captive by this big-footed man trying to teach her the stupid phrases everyone said day-in and day-out. She’d already struggled not throwing poems back at the teachers whenever they reprimanded her, and she could barely contain her annoyance with S.Q., but her grades at the Institute had fallen enough for her to be assigned remedial lessons.
She considered blowing off these sessions, but the other three said it’d be better not to draw even more attention to herself. They’d already heard about kids being sent to the Waiting Room for all sorts of reasons, and some part of Constance knew that going there would be an awful experience, more so than having to listen to S.Q. continually misspeak.
“You’re a smart girl. I’m sure if you keep at it, it’ll be a piece of clay (cake, she thought)! Repetition goes hand in hand with repentance (does he mean remembrance).”
Ugh. How could one man make so many mistakes so often? She firmly looked away from him out the window, tired of all this school and memorization and morse code and this whole island looking like one giant gray blob sitting in the middle of the ocean.
“Oh, please, Constance,” S.Q. pleaded, “the sooner you let me help you, the sooner you can go to your room and keep at your studies. Or watch some TV! You work best when you work less, so you have to keep the TV on when you want to be productive!”
No thank you. She’d waste her time with entertainment of her own making, thank you very much. Speaking of…
With a flourish, she grabbed one of her many pencils from her coat and began writing furiously down on the set of blank paper S.Q. gave to her to practice writing exercises. The man in front of her gasped as she knit her eyebrows and fiercely focused on filling in the white space. Before long, a cheesy wide smile spread across his face as he began murmuring to himself about his great tutoring skills.
After a few minutes, Constance set down her pencil and slid the paper to S.Q. “Glad that you found your gruel (surely that should be groove), now, let me just look over your work and-”
As the Executive picked up the paper, his cheer quickly morphed into confusion as he read the words the small girl had written:
With two giant feet and one small brain,
The monkey man cannot refrain
From using foolish words today
And speaking worse than yesterday.
No, it’s not a “piece of clay”
Unless you eat it everyday,
And you should make your ‘repentance’
To dictionaries’ for offense
You caused with your gray-matter gruel
By always speaking like a fool.
Coughing awkwardly, S.Q. put the paper down once more, carefully composing his thoughts as the rosy-cheeked girl crossed her arms in satisfaction. After closing his eyes and rubbing his temples, he straightened his posture, cleared his throat, and made direct eye contact with Constance.
“You’re certainly creative, aren’t you?”
“What, are you mad that I wrote down the truth? If you want me to apologize, don’t bother asking for one. My art doesn’t require apologies.”
“I’ll admit, the contents were… hurtful, but-” he suddenly stood up in a way that shook even Constance’s unflappable attitude, “I see it as a positive! You must’ve been listening to my words intently to correct me, and in such a spectazing way! Oh, I knew that I could get through to you somehow!”
This was certainly not what the girl was expecting. She thought that Mr. Benedict was the only weirdo who’d have this kind of reaction to her poems.
“You like correcting me, don’t you?”
Hesitantly, she nodded.
Snapping his fingers, S.Q. cradled his chin in his fingers, whispering, “Oh, S.Q., you’ve done it again, you expounding genius, you!” With a small gasp, he sat down and stared at the girl with enthusiastic eyes. “Constance, I give you permission to correct any mistakes I make when I speak, no matter where or when!”
She narrowed her eyes in response, suspicious of this cheerful attitude.
“No, no, honestly! I think this may be the best path to helping you remember… hopefully. Quick, I’ve spoken correctly all this time, haven’t I?”
“Absolutely not,” she snorted, “spectazing? That’s supposed to be spectacular and amazing, something you are clearly not. And though expounding geniuses exist,” her mind thought back to George Washington’s constant stream of boring facts, “surely you mean astounding, instead. Simple words shouldn’t be this hard for a so-called Executive.”
Breezing past the insults, S.Q. danced (gyrated?) in giddy excitement at his newfound discovery. “Right, right! Keep at it, and you’ll get your grades back up in no time. You might even become a Messenger with a memory like that!”
Out in the hall, the chiming of a bell sounded off, indicating the start of the dinner period.
“Ah, is it late already? I suppose we’ll have to leave off here, no good studying on an empty stomach.” Now there was a sentiment she could agree with. “I’ll be sure to see you in class tomorrow, little ladle!”
“Lady!” Constance yelled after him as he ran down the hall. Hhmph, well that was rude, but at least it didn’t drag on like she thought it would. And hey, a new admirer of her poems shouldn’t be a bad thing at all.
“Now, to remember this lesson on personal hygiene, you just need to remember this simple phrase: If you crush your teeth, you’ll kill all the germs until they come back.”
Reynie’s eyes instinctively looked towards Martina as the words left S.Q.’s mouth, anticipating her voice correcting his obviously wrong statement. Before she could even open her mouth, however, a small and familiar voice rang out from behind him.
“It’s ‘Brush your teeth,’ unless you want to skip ahead sixty years and get a pair of dentures.”
Suddenly, all eyes were on the tiny girl in the fire-red raincoat sitting at the back of the classroom, every person’s jaw dropped save for the teacher in front and the little girl at the center of everyone’s attention.
Shrugging off everyone’s stares with a sneer, Constance said, “What? It’s only natural to correct him, isn’t it? Not like anyone else was gonna do it.” She sent a pointed stare towards Martina Crowe, whose face quickly screwed up in frustration as she turned back towards the front of the room.
As the class returned to their usual seats, Reynie exchanged glances with the other members of the Benedict Society, with Sticky, Kate, and Constance looking shocked, relieved, and smug respectively. Looks like the remedial lessons were helping the small girl out somehow, and she’d manage to get a grasp on the material eventually.
Before Reynie could immerse himself back into the lesson, he noticed something quite peculiar. S.Q. seemed to be beaming, a smile turned in his direction. Not directly at him, he thinks, but at someone behind him, a someone short of stature whose temperament matched her height. A part of him couldn’t quite believe the conclusion his mind jumped to, but then again, the girl seemed to have a knack for pulling off the impossible when you least expected it. How hard could befriending an Executive be to a girl as strange and special as Constance Contraire?