A detail that really struck me while rereading TBOSAS is Coryo’s concern over Lucy Gray’s survival in the wild (p507).
Mind you, this comes after being bitten by the snake and chasing her in the forest with a gun. Coryo’s parting thought upon leaving a world that, according to his paranoia, is deadly to him, is of Lucy Gray. Even in the throws of hysteria, Coryo is hoping that Lucy Gray’s escape will be successful and he ensures that she’ll have the means to survive.
I find this duality in his feelings for her extremely fascinating: on one side he perceives her as a threat to his survival, and as such he hunts her down before she can do the same to him. However, once he realises that no one can harm him in the forest, his latent regard for Lucy Gray resurfaces as worry about her future wellbeing.
Once again, his behaviour reminds me a lot of Darth Vader’s final line ‘Where’s Padme? Is she safe?’ in Rots. I know for sure that Coryo wondered the same about Lucy Gray in the years and decades to come.
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Town Ghosts
Ok, so this is inspired by this post.
Danny almost lost his balance as he turned on Casper High’s street corner. Catching himself in the nick of time, he resumed his uncontrolled dash down the streets of Amity and finally made it to his locker just in time for the first bell to ring. As he looked up from his locker and noticed how sparsely populated the halls were, Danny frowned. First bell indicated they had 5 minutes before the actual beginning of class, and usually that meant a decent amount of stragglers were still chilling around.
“Damn it, do we have an exam?” Danny mumbled as he took out his phone to text Sam and Tucker.
Wheres everyone? He sent
Assembly, came the answer from Tucker to which Sam added, We saved u a seat
Danny didn’t bother answering and instead quickly gathered his things from his locker before hurrying down to the assembly hall. Everyone was talking which meant he wasn’t late, and he managed to catch Tucker waving him over. Danny maneuvered his way to his friends before sagging into the promised saved seat.
“I swear, if Boxy wakes me up at 2am again to rave about packing peanuts one more time I will put him in Soup Time for a month.”
Sam winced. “Rough night, huh?”
Tucker patted his shoulder in commiseration.
Danny closed his eyes. “At least tell me assembly is taking Lancer’s period?”
“We still have half of it afterwards,” Tucker answered.
Before Danny could groan, the teachers started shushing the crowd. As he looked up to the shoddy stage, Danny could see a blonde woman wearing all black.
“Nice boots,” Sam whispered.
“Hello everyone,” started the woman on stage. “My name is Black Canary, you may know me as a member of the Justice League.”
At that Danny sat up straight, suddenly way more aware. Simultaneously, a wave of whispers started amongst the crowd which was quelled by the numerous teachers shushing everyone. Once silence had been more or less reestablished, Black Canary started again.
“I am here as a spokesperson in our efforts to raise awareness about discriminations against meta humans. This initiative started as a personal project of a lot of the founding members of the Justice League. Did you know that recent studies that show that violence against meta humans is disproportionately more frequent than violence against baseline humans? In fact-”
And one she continued for the next half hour, after which she had some students distribute some pamphlets with different phone numbers on them. There was a little more time dedicated to a few exercises and a video of a testimony from a former meta human criminal. As the presentation progressed, Danny started relaxing more and more, to the point that he was half asleep when time for questions was announced.
“What about ghosts?” Paulina’s voice came through the mic the teachers had passed around, “Are they covered by all those fancy laws you mentioned?”
And yep, Danny was fully back to being awake now.
“Ghosts?” repeated Black Canary, in an even tone but before Paulina could answer, another voice cut through the room.
“Ghosts aren’t people, Paulina.” Valerie’s voice came through sharp and clear.
Paulina’s eyes narrowed in on her former friend. “Says who?”
“Says science!” Valerie exclaimed. “Though I shouldn’t expect a Phantom groupie to understand that.”
“You’re just jealous.” Paulina flicked her hair dismissively.
Danny sank into his seat as he tried to block out the very public argument happening in front of him. Black Canary seemed to be observing the exchange with curiosity, while the teachers were trying to reach Paulina to get the mic out of her hand. There were a few students with their phones out, filming the whole debate and Danny would bet it would be on the school forum by the end of the day, probably sparking yet another Phantom debate.
Just then, as if it wasn’t enough, Danny could feel his ghost sense activating. As he turned his head, he caught a green shimmer at the edge of his vision zooming past the window.
“Come on,” he mumbled. “Gimme a break.”
“Do you want backup?” Sam asked.
“I got it,” Danny grumbled. “Cover me.”
“For sure, dude,” Tucker answered.
Danny stood up and shimmied his way down the rows of chairs to a teacher with Paulina and Valerie still arguing in the background. When Danny reached the nearest teacher he asked for leave to go to the bathroom and by was granted it after which a teacher finally managed to get the microphone away from Paulina. As Danny walked out of the room, he could hear Black Canary’s fading voice asking a question as he got further and further away.
“What do you mean by 'ghosts'?”
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