---
School on Monday was filled with excited whispers. Lee felt himself grinning instead of shying away this time at the things being said. "They caught a sea serpent! I saw it!" "So COOL!" "Do you think those alien girls had something to do with it?" "Naw, they stayed back the whole time, probably didn't want to get caught by those government agents who came to try and grab the monster."
Lee was quite happy to be soaking in all this admiration. His jubilant mood was broken when he spotted Carla, though. She… looked pissed. Lee was a little taken aback. Why was she so angry? Then Lee noticed that while she was looking in his direction, it wasn't him she was glaring at.
He followed her gaze and found her glaring at… Sixer?
Then Carla noticed him watching her and turned away in a huff, striding quickly down the hall. Lee froze in place. Carla really was angry. And… with the things Lee had been thinking about, what with the way his brother saw Carla, how his brother talked about her… Lee was starting to think that maybe… maybe his brother had done something, said something to her sometime that he didn't know about, that was close enough to what he'd said to him yesterday that… maybe Carla had heard. Something that would get her this angry.
It worried Lee a lot. And made him question why Carla had actually broken up with him. She'd said it was because he was stupid, and that was true, but… if his brother had said something to her, told her he thought she was stupid… could that have started something?
...No. No, that didn't make any sense. Why would Carla take something out on him that Sixer had done? She wasn't like some of the other girls; she said stuff straight-out to people usually, even if it might really take her awhile to work herself up to saying whatever sometimes. And she didn't blame other people for other stuff; if she got mad at you, it was because you did something. She'd broken up with him because he'd been too stupid for her, and a bunch of other things that had made him a bad boyfriend; so she was mad at Sixer, because… Sixer had done something to make her mad.
Sixer said he hadn't, though. So… there was something he was missing. ...Maybe Sixer had said something really bad to her, but he just didn't think he had? Lee couldn't imagine his brother lying to him about anything, and Sixer was pretty bad at girls. And… uh. People, in general. (Lee was pretty sure that half the reason Sixer got along with the teachers was because there were pretty straightforward, consistent ways they were and weren't supposed to act. So Sixer knew exactly what to do and not do without thinking too much about it, and he didn't have to really change the script up between teachers.)
"Uh, Sixer," Lee asked his brother, nudging him in the shoulder with his shoulder. 'Are you sure you didn't do something to make Carla mad at you?"
Sixer let out a huff of breath, as he slammed his locker shut. "I didn't do anything to her. She made a stupid assumption -- multiple times -- and then acted upon it. It has nothing to do with me." (Lee frowned. That sounded like… a conversation that he didn't know about. As far as he'd known, Carla had never talked to Sixer for very long, and never out of earshot.)
And Miz had a very grumpy look on her face as she stared at Sixer. "But you didn't have to be so mean about it to her. She misunderstood." Though, Miz needed to really ask Carla for her side of the story to see how she saw it. Miz was still having trouble really understanding it otherwise. Ah… damn teenage drama.
Sixer turned towards her and gave her a flat look.
"If you knew half of what she thought she was doing, you wouldn't be saying that," Sixer said. He then turned back to Lee. "Believe me, it's better that you're no longer dating her. Crampelter is more intelligent that she is."
("That's just rude now," Miz muttered.)
Lee's jaw dropped. Then he clenched it closed again. "...So you did say somethin' bad to her," Lee said slowly.
"I made it clear what I thought, of what she told me, when she accosted and then cornered me," Sixer told him, adjusting his glasses. "Should I have ignored what she had to say?" he questioned Lee.
Lee frowned. "What did she say to--"
Lee stopped when a hand came down on his shoulder. He turned towards the hand, and came face-to-face with--
--Bill, who was on the other end of said hand, smiled thinly at him.
"It's not important," said Bill. "STOP talking about exes, stupid or otherwise. You DON'T want to do that." And Lee felt the hand on his shoulder tighten slightly, and very very firmly, as he stared the demon straight in the eyes.
Lee swallowed, hard.
"...fine…" Lee muttered, backing down for now. Even if he really wanted to know what had happened between Carla and his brother… he wasn't stupid, he wasn't going to keep talking about it in front of the demon. Not if it would get him mangled by Bill.
"GOOD," said Bill, letting go of his shoulder. "--It's a waste of time. It won't help you. You won't be getting back together with her, ever. Not even if you were the last two living humans on earth!" Bill said, grinning brightly.
"That's a very mean way to put it." Miz pouted at her brother, somewhat annoyed. She wanted things to work out between them.
"Is it?" said Bill. "And here I thought it was a good thing! --You can do better," he told Lee, slapping him on the back a lot more softly than Lee was expecting (which kinda startled him, actually -- it felt more like a pat). "And so can she!"
Miz sighed before patting Lee on the back gently. "Well, just focus on being happy and living your best life. Although I'm still a little sad it didn't work out between you two…" Seb's Stan and Carla ended up together after all. Then again, they were very different people.
Speaking of Carla, Miz wasn't quite sure what to do about her anymore. While she'd originally wanted to get Carla in trouble for breaking the project (possibly getting expelled or something), seeing how angry she was at how well Sixer and Lee were doing was just as satisfying. After all, wasn't the best revenge just living the best life and fuck the haters? (Not literally fuck them of course.) Not to mention that if Sixer had been such a jerk towards her, in such a pompous and derogatory way, even if he didn't realize it, Miz could see where Carla was coming from with her revenge plan. Heck, the only sticking point here was that Carla had hurt Lee as part of her revenge plan by breaking up with him in such an awful way. And that was what really made Miz unhappy. Lee was a good kid. He didn't deserve that.
...so… revenge on Carla was finished then? Maybe. Miz decided that perhaps it wasn't all that important anymore. Besides, her anger at what Carla had done had long since burned out. She really couldn't stay mad for long. Heck, she was holding Sixer's hand as they walked through the hallways.
...did she forgive too easily? Perhaps.
But Miz didn't mind. Being angry didn't feel nice. It made her chest ache to hold onto anger. She didn't know how Bill managed it. And the twins were doing fine even despite being disowned so… eh? Sure Sixer missed his chance to go to some fancy school but frankly, did he even really need it? (And it's not like his project was a real perpetual motion machine anyway.)
He still got an education and like seven Ph.D.'s or something, right? Or was it twelve? And he got to meet Fiddleford. Though Miz was starting to get the idea that Sixer wouldn't actually count either of those as a plus point. He was… kind of a self centered dick. With a superiority complex.
AND an inferiority complex. Not the best combination.
But...
Miz squeezed Sixer's hand. He wasn't beyond help. Not yet. He was still young, he could still change. She had to believe that. She had to believe there was still a chance for him to grow up to be a better person...
"Hey Sixer?" Miz asked. "Why do you think Carla's stupid?"
Sixer looked over at her. "Because she can't even tell the difference between me and Lee," he scoffed. (--And that immediately had Lee looking over at him, shocked. "--What??")
Miz twitched (while Bill kept a careful ear on Sixer). "I have trouble telling people apart. I have to cheat with my powers to know who's who. Does that make me stupid?" Miz asked. (Lee was still looking a little stunned, not quite past what his brother had just said to Miz about Carla, while...)
Sixer looked a little taken aback. "But you're not human; that hardly counts," he pointed out. (Because as far as he was concerned, if she had different senses that she relied upon, then telling her not to use them would be like telling someone who was human to close their eyes and then tell two people apart -- of course there was going to be an issue!)
Miz whined. "And if I was? If I was human, and I couldn't tell other humans apart, does that make me stupid?"
"Well, yes," Sixer said plainly, adjusting his glasses. He'd rather thought that was obvious.
Miz huffed and let go of Sixer's hand. "Well I guess that makes me stupid. Not worth your time." (Bill eyed them both, but remained silent for the moment.) Miz pulled on Lee's hand and walked away, saying, "Come on, let's get to homeroom," and Sixer blinked after her as she walked off.
"What did I do this time?" Sixer asked.
"You have a high INT but staggeringly low WIS," Miz huffed out at him as she stomped away. (Bill let out a 'HA' laugh with a wide and hard grin, then a "--YES!") Lee gave his brother a helpless look as he was dragged down the hallway along with her.
And Sixer froze in place as he processed that statement. Then he hurried to catch up to them. "--Was that a D, D and more D reference???" he asked her, as he came up next to her side, walking along with them quickly.
"What's it matter? I'm clearly too stupid for--" Miz snipped before Lee sighed and, having picked up on this over the last few days of knowing her, placed his free hand on Miz's head and gently patted her. She calmed but still muttered, "Prosopagnosia is a thing that people can have. It's not their fault! It's not my fault…"
Yeah, Lee didn't want to touch that one with a ten-foot pole. And hey, that wasn't really the problem here, anyway, right? "--Look, I don't think my brother meant to call you stupid," Lee started to say (as he removed his hand from her head, because he really didn't like the way Bill was watching him, ever since he'd started doing that...), but Miz huffed and said herself, "He clearly did."
Sixer looked between them. "Wait-- you--" But Miz 'hmph'ed and turned away from him.
"Might want to quit while you still have a HEAD, 'Ford," Bill told him, with an amused (but hard, and almost expectant) gleam in his eye.
And Lee stared at the demon and went chillingly cold, because that demon was angry and just waiting to show it (--like maybe how he'd 'showed it' to Crampelter? or worse?!), oh shit--
"--Sixer, just drop it, okay?" Lee barely managed to not stammer out. "Just stop talking, right now."
"'Stop talking'?" the demon said next, oh so casually. "Oh, but I think he should start talking instead. After all," the demon added next, "How is he supposed to APOLOGIZE TO MY SISTER, if your twin brother can't talk?" Bill gave him a dead man's stare. "He IS sorry that he said that INCORRECTLY, ISN'T HE," the demon said flatly. It wasn't a question.
"--He is definitely very sorry," Lee said quickly to the demon's demand. "Sixer, say you're sorry."
Sixer looked over at his brother and said plainly, "For what?"
Oh, god. His brother was going to die.
"Just, uh, just give me a sec--" Lee stammered out at the older demon, snatching his arm away from Miz, as he grabbed his brother to literally drag him off and away from the demons, to talk. (Read: save his twin's can't-talk-to-girls-to-save-his-life life.)
Miz sniffled. That made Bill look even more… something that Lee didn't have words for, but was really damn terrified of. He dragged Sixer away even faster.
"You are NOT stupid," Lee heard Bill tell his little sister, as he dragged his brother off down the hallway. "Don't EVER let ANYONE try and tell you otherwise."
"But I am stupid. Stupid for thinking that any version of Ford could possibly be nice…" was Miz's miserable reply.
"NO, you are--" But then, Lee saw Bill hesitate for a moment (just before Lee dragged Sixer with him into the boy's bathroom).
"...Define: 'nice'," was the last thing he heard from down the hallway, as the door swung shut behind them.
---
Lee relaxed slightly once there was some distance, a wall, and an actual door that he could (and did then) lock, between his brother and the demon that could toss Crampelter around like a ragdoll. "Dammit Sixer, do you want to be torn apart?"
"No. That would be a very unpleasant experience," Sixer said simply.
Lee groaned. "Do you even know what you just did wrong?" Sixer blinked. Lee resisted the urge to punch his brother in the shoulder as hard as he could, for being a complete moron. "You hurt Miz's feelings!" he hissed.
Sixer raised an eyebrow. "And?"
"You don't go hurtin' a girl's feelings, Sixer," his brother told him. "Especially not when the girl's got a very protective, really dangerous brother around, who's just waiting for an excuse to kill you for it now!" Lee told him. "You know, the guy who kicked Crampelter's ass last week for fun, and that was when he wasn't all angry like he is now?!"
His brother frowned. "But what did I do? She was asking about a hypothetical situation?"
Hypothetical situation? (The heck?) "--That's not the point," Lee told his twin, then rubbed a hand down his face and sighed. "Look, even if whatever it was was 'hypothetical' somehow, you still made the dragon-demon lady upset because she thinks you said she was stupid. You don't--" Lee rubbed his face again, then dropped his hands to his side, trying not to clench them. "Don't just go off insulting someone like that. And if they think you insulted them, don't argue with them about it, just say 'I'm sorry!' --That's just common sense!" Lee hissed out at him, then finally said something that he'd been holding back for awhile: "This is why people don't like you!"
Sixer opened his mouth to protest but Lee continued on, frustration bleeding through.
"--It ain't 'your hands', Sixer," Lee told him roughly, tired of his twin always blaming that on everything. "It's because you keep pulling shit like this, lately!" Even Crampelter didn't pick on Sixer for his hands anymore when he did it, not really; he did it because Sixer was a nerd now, not a freak. Getting picked on for being a nerd was normal. It wasn't like anybody was throwing rocks at them anymore. "--Everybody else has grown up, yeah? So why can't you?" Just callling people stupid was… Miz wasn't stupid, and neither was Carla! --Yeah, you heard him, he thought it! He might not be dating her anymore, but still!
"I am--" Sixer cut himself off, looking annoyed. "Well, you're one to talk," he seemed to settle on instead. ...Yeah, Sixer. Great comeback, there.
"Look, just apologize to her. Okay? --Tell her that you weren't tryin' to call her stupid, and you're sorry that you hurt her feelings." Lee sighed. "I don't want you gettin' killed for being an idiot."
"I'm not an--"
"--You don't even know what you did wrong!" Lee said in frustration and exasperation. "You didn't know. Right? I had to tell you. --And hey, you're the one who just said that if you don't know something…" Lee ground out, turning Sixer's own words against him.
"That's not what I said," Sixer huffed out.
"It's what she heard," Lee said, and he was starting to think (with a sinking feeling) that it was maybe even what his twin had actually meant. "Doesn't change the fact that you don't know nothing about PEOPLE!" Lee stressed.
"'Don't know anything.' Grammar, Stanley," Sixer said, "And I know enough--"
"No," Lee said, "You really, really don't. --And you know what? The old-man me is right. You need to know about people to get anywhere in life after high school. Because, hey, maybe you really are smarter than everybody else at book-stuff, but you know what? You can't just go off an' live off on your own, alone by yourself, all by yourself, and make it alone on your own dependin' on nobody." It just didn't work that way.
Sixer scoffed at this. "If I wanted to--"
"--except you don't want to, because then you'd have to do everything of everything and all of it by yourself," Lee told him. "Unless you want to add 'growing your own food' and 'making the cloth and needles and thread you need so you can go off sewing your own clothing' to the list." His brother was quiet. "Sixer, you can go off and be as smart as anybody, but treatin' people like dirt is just gonna get you nowhere fast. Nobody has to like you, or help you with anything, you know." And Lee frowned as he thought about the fact that his brother really was heading on down that road right now.
(And he made it a point not to say that Sixer wouldn't be able to make any friends or charm any business partners if he didn't learn to talk to people, instead of just dismissing everyone else right off the bat like he always did. And he damn well didn't say it, because he'd heard what Pa had yelled out at his twin when he'd tossed Sixer outta the house, --He wasn't gonna do that to his brother. That wasn't fair. Those college folks should've at least listened and let him talk about his science fair project thing, maybe let him try and explain--)
"I don't treat people like--" Sixer started to say but Lee just stared at him and Sixer trailed off. "What do you want from me?" Sixer sighed.
"Tell Miz what I told you to tell her." Lee crossed his arms. "And I want you to start actually thinking about how other people might feel at some of the stuff you say. Treat other people like they're people, and not just objects that walk around and exist around you." It shouldn't be this difficult.
Sixer rolled his eyes. "What do you want me to do differently, specifically?" Sixer asked next.
Lee frowned at him. "You mean right now?" Was his brother actually listening to him, here? Lee let out a breath and looked over his brother. ...Huh.
Yeah, okay. "--Like I said, you need to apologize to Miz before her brother rips you apart for hurting her feelings," Lee told him, leaning back against the wall. "And the fact that you didn't even realize you hurt her feelings is why you're an idiot," Lee pointed out, trying to put things in a way that his twin might understand a little easier. "Like how did you not notice that trap? She asks if you think she's stupid and you say yes?! What were you thinking?! You wouldn't like that if somebody said that to you--" Lee began.
"--Okay, whatever! I'll apologize!" Sixer ground out. He didn't look all too happy with his brother, though. "That doesn't tell me what else you think I should be doing differently, though. That's just one single instance that happened just this one time," Sixer complained at him.
Geez. "Sixer, it ain't hard, I swear. Just think about how you'd feel if you heard somebody tell you whatever you're thinkin' about sayin' to somebody else. It's not..." Lee frowned as he rubbed the back of his neck, trying to think of a better way to say this stuff that might actually keep his brother thinking about it. "It's not science-science, it's people-science."
Sixer narrowed his eyes, and frowned at him. "Sociology is a 'soft science'," Sixer said. "It's not a real--"
"--Most people don't think cryptid stuff is 'real science', either, Sixer," Lee told him, crossing his arms.
Lee watched as his brother clenched his jaw and thinned his lips at him. ...Yeah, well. He'd actually asked for it. So, y'know. 'Course he was gonna tell his twin stuff when he actually asked him.
"But cryptids are real! There are two aliens right there--" Sixer tried to complain but Lee rolled his eyes.
Yeah, but most people wouldn't believe it, even with proof and junk. --Hell, Sixer, those two demons haven't really tried all that hard to act human or hide what they are at all, and," Lee waved his arms, "No-one's called the cops or the church on 'em! No-one's called the government to come and take them away! Even the science teach called 'em a couple of aliens, and he's an adult! Did you see anybody try and haul 'em away?"
"...they did for the dragon," was Sixer's petulant reply. Lee rolled his eyes.
"And all they thought it was, was either some kinda new species of animal, or just some super-old mutant monitor lizard -- not an actual dragon." Lee had heard what those agents had been saying into their radios. "Point is, even if something ain't a hard science, don't mean it ain't real. And this people-science thing? It's real. People have feelings, and things you say or do can hurt them, and--"
"--Fine! I'll read a few books on practical sociology," Sixer said, throwing his hands in the air in disgust. "--And apologize!" Sixer repeated, at the long warning look Lee gave him. "Just because she's apparently sensitive about this!" He didn't sound all that sorry, but… yeah, Lee knew this was the best he was gonna get.
He gave his brother a nod, unlocked the bathroom door, and the two of them went back outside into the hallway. Miz was looking somewhat glum, and she didn't even look at Sixer when the two of them walked back up to them and Sixer said, "I'm sorry for calling you stupid."
"No, you're not. Sorry, that is." Bill pointed out, eyeing him. ('Great…' Lee mentally groaned.)
Miz sighed. "At least he apologized." She turned to Lee and took his hand to pull him to class, pretty much ignoring Sixer. "It's good enough for now. I guess," Miz said, not directly addressing Sixer as she went to homeroom.
Sixer clenched his hands into fists. He was… upset that Miz was still ignoring him. Even though he apologized. --What was the point of doing it, then?!
"WELL." Bill walked towards Sixer, then circled behind him. "Maybe try NOT LYING when saying 'sorry' next time, if you don't want her MAD at you!" Bill informed him, as he finished his circuit, then strode down the hallway after his sister. (Though, Bill was a little frustrated about the fact that her staying mad wasn't actually a given -- Miz had told him that she couldn't stay mad for long, which meant that if Sixer didn't try harder sooner, before that happened, then…)
Sixer huffed and walked to class. Lying? So what. He said an apology! Why should it matter if he meant it or not? And why was she mad in the first place, anyway? It had been a hypothetical question! She wasn't actually human!
---
Later that day, Carla paused at the sight of the person standing next to her as she opened her locker. She raised an eyebrow.
"You're not with your posse?" Carla asked the new girl, as she began pulling out her books and binders for her after lunch classes.
Miz sighed. "I wanted to talk to you."
Carla narrowed her eyes as she kept retrieving textbook after textbook. "I'm very busy. So if you would just--"
"Ford's a jerk." Miz said simply. "He's a twat. I can understand why you did what you did. He's an arrogant little dick and deserves to be taken down a notch, I think getting him disowned by his father and thrown into the street was a little much, but otherwise, I think what you did was a very understandable response to your frustration." Miz said quickly.
Carla blinked. "I don't know what you're talking about." She slammed her locker shut and then moved away from it, books and binders in hand. ...And Miz got in her way. She tried to side step the new girl and continue on her way but Miz moved to continue blocking her path.
"What I DO have a problem with, is the fact that you hurt Stan. Why? He didn't know anything. He never realized that you thought--" Carla stopped trying to get around her and just stood in place, giving her a full-on 'you'd better shut up about that RIGHT NOW' glare. Miz made a frustrated sound. "He loved and respected you. Still does. He didn't know what Ford did, or what you thought, he just thought you were smart and amazing and even now he still…"
Carla frowned as she realized what the girl was likely getting at, given how she'd been trying to hang all over both of those twins for the past week. "What? You're angry that he won't get over me so you can have him? --That's not my problem!" she huffed out at her. Heck, she wished the girl would just take him! Maybe then--
"I'm not interested in him like that," Miz replied. "But I consider him a friend, even if he doesn't. I don't like seeing him unhappy." Miz sighed. "Even 40 years in the future, when I spoke badly of you, Stan still defended you. So, I just want to know, why did you hurt Stan?"
"Forty what?" Carla twitched. Was this that stupid 'alien' thing again that, for some reason, everybody kept falling for--?!
Carla's eyes widened when the teenager in front of her seemed to shimmer and... she was looking at a little girl now, maybe 14 years of age at most. Carla quickly looked around her but the kids in the hallway were going about their business as if they saw nothing.
"They don't notice us," Miz told her plainly, and Carla turned back to her. "They can't hear our conversation either," she added. "I wanted to speak with you alone. So, please? I just want to understand. There have been too many misunderstandings. Please." She bowed forward at the waist.
Carla looked around again and realized that no one else was even so much as giving either of them a second glance.
Carla frowned as she turned back towards the girl. She didn't know how the new girl had managed to pull this little trick off, but...
She didn't trust any of this at all, though -- not one bit. And she wasn't about to stand out in the middle of the hallway and talk about--
So Carla reached out, took Miz by the upper arm, and pulled her down the hallway and into a doorway corner, glanced through the window in the door, then opened it and dragged her into one of the (yes) currently-unused advanced study rooms. (She knew how gossip worked. This girl already seemed to know enough -- too much. That meant she had to have talked to Stanford, that-- that--!! And if Stanford Pines had told her that, then he'd definitely also said-- Carla shook her head. The girl was just fishing when it came to Stanford; there was no way she could know what she had or hadn't done. She was probably just talking about how she'd made sure that his project had gotten thrown in the trash; that was all...)
Once the door was closed behind them, Carla finally turned back to the 'alien' girl and told her quietly, well under her breath, "Look, I know Stan didn't know -- that's the point," she hissed out at Miz angrily, and she looked back at the doorway as she clutched her books and binders to her chest. She looked angry and miserable.
"He didn't know that you thought he was Ford. He never realized it." Miz replied.
"He should have realized it! He--" Carla cut herself off, shook her head from side to side roughly, and she clutched her books to herself a little more tightly. "It's not my fault! He was wearing Stanford's clothes-- the same glasses--!" Carla looked frustrated, almost like she wanted to cry. (Maybe Stan really hadn't known -- but she'd still felt like she'd been played around with and used.)
Miz sighed. "I know. He should have realized what you would have thought, but he didn't. He didn't know. I told the older version of him about it and he was shocked. He never realized that…" Miz shrugged helplessly. This didn't happen in Seb's dimension since they were triplets and people were forced to pay more attention to know which one was which.
"But he should have!" Carla told her again, angrily. "That's the point!"
Miz was confused. "But how is that different from you not knowing--"
"--I don't care about how many stupid fingers he has, okay!" Carla snapped out at her. "That wasn't why I wanted to date him! I-- I shouldn't have had to-- it isn't stupid that I didn't 'check his hands' first, I--"
And Miz's eyes went wide.
"--You wanted to date Ford," Miz blurted out, staring at her.
Carla's expression went through several emotions, most of which Miz had trouble with; they all looked pretty complicated. 'Miserable', however, was pretty clear throughout.
Carla lifted a hand to wipe underneath her eyes a bit at a little of the wetness underneath (while feeling a little foolish that she even had the inane thought that, well, at least she was only wearing eye shadow and no mascara that day, or she'd look like a complete mess…).
"I thought he was smart," Carla said, sounding angry with herself, and also with Stanford. "I certainly know better now," she added far more coldly. Because he clearly wasn't smart enough to realize that other people were worth being nice to. To realize that was important. That caring about other people was...
Miz frowned. "But, you knew it was Stan at some point. You went on a couple dates with him…" and had even called him by name, which meant that… Carla had still dated Stan even after she'd found out?
"I thought Stanford wanted me to," Clar said bitterly, clutching her books to her chest even more tightly. "That I needed to date his brother too, for him to..." Carla looked away from Miz for a moment. "It wasn't like I didn't treat Stanley differently than--" Carla bit her lip. She looked angry and terribly frustrated all over again.
(She hated that she'd been tossed back and forth between them -- that she'd thought that she had been -- and that Stanford didn't even care what that had felt like, what she'd gone through, when she'd finally confronted him about everything, not wanting to do it anymore, to just and solely date him and him alone, and realized…)
(And, even after all that, and everything Stanford had said, when she'd finished staying home from school and crying herself to sleep for three days straight, until she'd gotten angry, instead of just feeling like she wanted to die of shame, and had decided instead that she wasn't going to let some stupid boy keep her from picking herself back up again after that particular ordeal, and she'd tried to give Stanley himself a real, actual, fair chance with her, despite everything? --She'd realized very quickly that one of the reasons Stanley had apparently been so interested in her in the first place had been because he thought she was smart. ...But his brother didn't think that. And Stanley listened to him. And with the way Stanley down talked himself over and over again, comparing himself to his brother…)
(Carla hadn't been able to take it. Stanley wasn't dumb, but the way he talked about himself was absolutely terrible sometimes. And Carla couldn't help but think helplessly of how Stanley might treat her, with the way he already talked about and treated himself, if Stanford changed his twin brother's mind ('woke him up to the fact that...'). If Stanley started thinking that she was dumb, instead, what that might be like... the very idea of it scared her.)
(And when Stanford spoke up about everything, eventually, and called her dumb to her face, this time right in front of Stanley -- because Stanford would do that, he'd practically threatened to before, she'd finally realized. With each passing day, and how the way Stanford had been looking at her had just worsened and worsened… it had all been left hanging over her head like a damned Sword of Damocles, one that that six-fingered bastard was holding onto for a rainy day, with his own 'special' pair of redesigned scissors.
And Carla knew that Stanley wouldn't defend her against what his brother said. He wouldn't call her smart if Stanford called her stupid. He wouldn't tell Stanford that he was the one who was wrong. --Because that would imply that Stanley knew something that Stanford did not. And Stanley… she knew him better than that, by this point. She didn't see him ever getting to that point on his own.)
(--And if Stanford decided to tell Stanley everything... She'd seen the writing on the wall; she knew exactly what was going to happen if she didn't do something drastic. Stanley would never, ever take her side in this, and she knew it, and-- it had made her angry all over again. The unfairness of it all; the way she'd let herself fall into this trap -- all of it.)
(And a boyfriend who just wasn't going to stand up for her, to his brother or family or anyone else? Was no kind of boyfriend at all.)
(--So instead of waiting for Stanford to ruin absolutely everything for her, she'd dumped Stanley herself first. As hard as she could; she didn't want Stanley thinking he had even so much as a snowball's chance in hell of getting her back -- because that would just give Stanford the perfect excuse to tell Stanley to stop trying, and why. And then… Well. It wasn't fair that Stanford should get off so easily, was it? For ruining everything like that, for being such a jerk, for how he'd treated her and talked down to her, for how he'd made her feel about everything when none of it had been her fault -- all of it.)
(...For thinking she was too stupid to get any little bit of payback, let alone get away with it.)
(And Carla didn't feel sorry in the least about it. Not at all; not even a little. --Because all she'd done was break his project at the exact wrong moment, using a very similar and practical application of her own science fair project on the use of electromagnetic waves for transmission and interference. A highly-practical application that she had very deliberately not written about in any of what she'd submitted for her grade, or on her poster board, or anything else beyond the set of blueprints she'd made for the little RF 'trigger' receiver device that would heat up when exposed to the right frequencies and a high enough magnitude to melt... while attached to a specialized mixture that was rather chemically-unstable at said high temperatures, to go off and explode inside the base of that stupid device, trashing the insides and letting off a not-insignificant amount of smoke just for good measure. Once she'd finished making everything she'd needed, she'd immediately burned the blueprints in her backyard afterwards, straight down to ash and dust. Every last little piece of it. And then she'd gone through with it, her hand on the button of the transmitter that would set it all off, standing there, listening in from the outside of the gymnasium, hiding in nearly plain sight and waiting for just the right moment, until... She'd gotten her revenge all right, and even more.)
(She'd kept her own submitted project almost completely theoretical, too, with just a token applied demo for the fair -- as was requested in the assignment -- and what had she gotten? --A pat on the head. If she'd been Stanford Pines, the 'teachers pet nerd' of the school, she would've gotten accolades and praises; those college admission board people would have come to Glass Shard Beach to see her, instead. But no. She was just a girl, not the great Mr. Pines, and so all she got from her teachers was a mere glance and an 'oh yes, that's nice Ms. McCorkle...' and nothing else. And yet--)
(Carla was glad that she'd done it. Even she hadn't realized what an absolute liar Stanford really was before then. She'd heard what a few of those college board admission people had said to each other as they'd been walking out of the gymnasium, leaving the school, and-- she was just glad that some real genius-level people had been able to look over what Stanford had done and finally set the record straight on him for everybody, once and for all. He was a poser. A loser. --So what if his project had managed to spin for a little over a week straight, one week wasn't the same thing as perpetual-forever, and he hadn't even been measuring the speed it had been spinning at over the course of that week, to see if it had been slowing down at all! He hadn't even bothered to check his work, the theory against the experimental practice; he'd reportedly only been running it for two days straight before the fair had begun. And yet he'd dared to claim that--)
(Breaking the project was meant to embarrass him in front of those people. Or make him mad later when he tried to figure out what had gone so very wrong and just couldn't do it. She'd only wanted to embarrass and outsmart him. But she hadn't expected what had happened next. Because when those college admissions people had questioned him on his project--)
(--The "great" Stanford Pines hadn't been able to explain his work once it had broken! And it had left Carla with a deep, dark feeling of terrible satisfaction, that he'd been caught out like that. Because she never would have suspected that he'd actually been lying about the science behind his project! She hadn't questioned his work properly; no-one at the high school had, not even the teachers. But maybe they all should have sooner. Because if his equations had been sound… if his understanding of it was real because it was real… then it wouldn't have mattered that it had broken, because the science behind it would have still been sound. And if those admissions people were as smart as she thought they were… it hadn't been. --She'd heard what those people had said about his paper as they'd been leaving the school; they'd all been given copies of it and had read it during the trip, before they'd come. And the discussion had been truly eye-opening for her. --They'd only bothered to still come in to the school anyway -- despite what they'd read in that paper -- because they'd been in the area. They'd thought they were wasting their time already before even coming in, because...)
(And it mattered. It mattered a lot. Because just like Mr. Harman always said, the science was what mattered there. Not everybody who was booksmart was good at working with their hands, and their teacher knew full well that getting physical demos working could be super-hard even for people who knew what they were doing, especially depending on the project and the physical tolerances involved. And this project hadn't been for their tech ed class, it had been for science class: the science had needed to be sound. That was why the physical demo had been only a quarter of the grade for the project, and practically a toss-away 'easy A' at that, along with the poster board that had been another five; it was the paper that had gone along with everything that had been a full seventy percent of the grade for it.)
(...And Stanford probably didn't even realize yet that the first place award for the science fair had been rightfully been re-awarded to her afterwards, after he'd been caught out like that by a bunch of real somebodys who'd been smart enough and well-respected enough to actually be able to call him out on it finally, and get it to stick. The jerk. He'd never seen her as a competitor or peer.)
(--Well, screw him. The stupid jerk hadn't even tried to apply to any colleges, from what she understood -- Stanley would've been talking about it left-and-right while they'd been dating, if he had. Meanwhile, she'd applied to West Coast Tech herself months ago, long before the college's deadline, along with all the other universities she'd been looking into that looked even halfway decent, and with her grades--)
Miz frowned and rubbed her temples, having picked up a lot of what Carla had ranted about loudly in frustration in her thoughts. "Okay. So this was apparently even more fucked up than I thought. Right. Got it." She sighed. "Well shit then." She didn't look any happier than Carla did. "And he's a little twat. He--" Miz made a frustrated sound. "--and goddamn if I don't kinda know how you feel, maybe…" she muttered. "Damn awkward nerds. Why did that have to be my type?!"
Carla let out a startled laugh, as she looked up at Miz and stared at her incredulously. "You like Stanford?" And when she realized Miz was serious, she went from looking incredulous to downright HORRIFIED. "No--"
"No! No-no-no! I don't like him emotionally! Or romantically! He's--" Miz waved her hands angrily. "He tried to peel off a piece of my skin because he was curious about my biology--" (The horrified look got worse.) Miz huffed. "Look, I admit, I find him attractive on an aesthetic level, and whenever he's not being a jerk, he's almost cute, but first of all, he's too young for me, and second of all, he's a twat," she groaned.
Carla twitched, frowning furiously. "He's not a 'twat'; he's a complete fucking horror show of a human being! --And I use the term 'human being' loosely, when it comes to him!"
"Well yeah, he's kinda almost worse than some demons I've met…" Miz groaned. "But he's still a kid, he might still be able to change, get better? Grow as a person?" (Carla snorted, because he was a seventeen-year-old guy to begin with.) Miz made a frustrated sound. "But I don't know how to teach him to be better! Hell, I'm still learning to be better! Since I don't--" She shuffled her feet. "Don't really know how to be a good human… the older Stan's been kinda teaching me? I know he's trying to teach Bill but I can't tell if either of us are doing any better--" Miz cut herself off. "That's not the point, I want him to be better. He's intelligent, he could do so much good for humanity if he was better and…" Miz slumped in place. "And I'm just being naive aren't I?"
"Look," Carla told her, ignoring the 'better human' stuff she didn't really get and just leveling with the girl in front of her, as she adjusted her books in her arms. "Don't go getting your hopes up on him, on anything. He's just not worth it," Carla told her. (And why this girl seemed to think that Stanford Pines was the person to pin the 'hopes of humanity' on… Good lord, there were plenty of other people around out there who'd be a hell of a lot better at it! Because...) "Stanford Pines just doesn't care about other people; he thinks we're all too stupid for him to bother with," Carla warned her. "If he doesn't think you're smarter than he is, well, then he isn't going to listen to you -- and he doesn't think anybody's smarter than him." Carla gave her a long look. "You do the math."
"I kinda got that when he off-handedly called his own brother, who wanted to drop out of school and work three jobs to give the money to Ford after he was thrown out, 'stupid'," Miz grumbled. (...Well, Carla could agree with that; Stanford wasn't worth doing any of that for, and he sure as hell wouldn't appreciate it. That would be a stupid thing to do!) Miz folded her arms. "Bill's smarter than him. But little Ford's too self-centered to really care." She frowned. "And older Ford's too traumatized…" She paused. "Could I traumatize him into being a better person? Like a scare tactic?" she asked herself, not really expecting Carla to respond as she thought aloud to herself. "Augh, but Stan would never forgive me for messing with his brother…"
"--Look, I don't know what the deal with you 'aliens' is, but I need to get to class before the bell rings," Carla told her, having noticed that the girl wasn't really talking to her anymore, and wanting to wrap this all up and get going. (At this point, she was a bit relieved that she'd finished eating lunch early and gone off to her locker pretty much right away before Miz had accosted her, or she would have been very late for her next class.) "But from one girl to another? If this 'older Stan' of yours is teaching you to be a 'better human', or whatever, maybe tell him to try taking on Stanford instead. --Don't waste your own time on him. He's not worth the stress, believe me," she told Miz.
"Right…" Miz rubbed her face. "I'll mention that to him, dunno if he's gonna think he needs to, considering the young Stan still loves his brother unconditionally, even with all the shit he's put him through."
"Not your problem," Carla told her succinctly, as she headed for the door to the classroom. "Oh, and one more thing," Carla said, turning back towards her. "Don't bother picking up Stanford's lie about his stupid project," Carla said almost haughtily, "You won't get anywhere with it."
"...I'll keep that in mind." Miz sighed, feeling rather tired.
Carla smiled. "Good." (Because while they really couldn't get anywhere with it, she didn't want to have to deal with it, though. And besides, even if they did somehow manage to prove that she'd done something to it in some way, it wouldn't really matter to Stanford's grade in the long run...)
And then Carla added, after losing the smile: "Because even his 'stupid' twin brother knew that that project was completely bogus himself." Even if she hadn't realized exactly how right Stanley was at the time until much, much later.
(Really, she wished she'd realized that Stanley was the smart twin from the start. Things would have been absolutely perfect if she'd known...)
And with that, Carla let out a huff of breath (at herself), flipped her hair over her shoulder, and strode out the door of the classroom, which slammed shut on its own behind her.
"Well yeah, a perpetual motion machine would be impossible, and if he really HAD succeeded, he would have created infinite energy…" Miz grumbled to herself. "And if he could have done that, he would have just rebuilt the damn thing and 'made millions' or some shit." She sighed. Because, really, Ford's machine wasn't a real perpetual motion machine at all. That wasn't the point though, the point was that the stupid thing ruined the lives of two children. Miz really wanted to set something on fire. This was all so stupid.
The bell rang abruptly, and Miz winced. Time for class; ah, at least she'd eaten lunch already.
Miz turned and left the classroom, might as well get back to her group for now.
---
Lee looked up as he spotted Miz coming down the hall. "Hey, where've you been?" he asked good-naturedly (but also a little worriedly, because he was pretty sure the demon would take it out on him among others, if something bad ever happened to his little sister in their school). It was a good thing they had study hall this period on Mondays, or somebody might actually care that they were now coming in late to the classroom. (Well, maybe just Miz. He'd had to hit the restroom himself -- for real, this time -- but he'd put his own stuff in the room already.)
Miz shrugged. "Had to go and clarify something," she said simply. Miz took Lee's hand and squeezed gently. "So, did you finish your homework for English class? I forgot to check on that over the weekend…"
Lee tilted his head back and groaned as they walked together to the 'study hall' classroom.
At the look he got from Miz for that response, Lee let out a sigh and said, "I've got time to do it now." He'd been looking forward to goofing off for the next hour, though. (And now he knew he wasn't gonna get that, because Miz would want to 'check it' now, and… she didn't treat English stuff like she did math. The math stuff, she'd let him screw up himself, as long as she thought he'd 'tried'. But the English class stuff, hoo boy...)
Miz sat herself down right beside Lee in the classroom and stared at him until he groaned ("Yeah, yeah…") and pulled out some lined paper, giving up on getting to relax that period, and getting down to doing the creative writing assignment, instead.
...It didn't really help that she was still ignoring Sixer, either. Lee was gonna get watched like a hawk because Sixer wasn't gonna be able to distract her, and he could see that his brother was upset at being shunned. Lee looked back down at his paper and grimaced as he started to write.
He had seen that a lot when they were much younger, the shunning thing, whenever someone was grossed out at Sixer's hands and didn't want to be around him. (Which had been, well, pretty much everybody except those carnival freaks that one time. ...And, y'know, totally stupid, because Sixer's hands were awesome, not gross.)
Sixer had stopped caring so much as they got older, writing off other people just as they had written him off. Lee had seen the way Sixer closed himself off over time. He'd started acting like he didn't care about anyone else.
Lee paused for a second and frowned, absently tapping his pencil against the paper. ...Well, no, that wasn't it. Sixer really didn't care about anyone else anymore. He'd stopped caring. (Not that Lee could really blame him. And after what pa had said as a parting shot when he'd tossed Sixer out… Lee glanced over at his twin.) Sixer had gotten used to being alone -- except for him -- and he hadn't really wanted to be around anybody else. He'd stopped wanting friends, or anything else, out of anyone else, really. (Well, other than the teachers at school and their parents anyway…)
But now Lee wanted Miz's attention. And he'd also pushed her away, done something to make her angry enough that she was ignoring him (again), when he finally wanted someone else's attention again. Lee almost wanted to tell him 'I told you so,' but managed to hold back from doing it. (That wouldn't help; it'd just hurt his twin brother all over again.)
And now Miz was giving him all her attention when Lee didn't really want it (and Sixer was getting a really scary level of watchful attention from the other demon that Sixer didn't even seem to be noticing). Lee sighed. --Why did this have to be a thing?
Sixer was seated next to Miz, trying and failing to hide his hurt expression. (Bill, himself, was seated right next to him, WATCHING HIM.) Miz ignored Sixer for a good half hour before she sighed.
"I guess I really am stupid." Miz muttered before turning and looking right at Sixer. (Bill's steady expressionless gaze flicked away from Sixer and over to her as she said this.) "--Look, you are an idiot when it comes to people. You're also a jerk," Miz informed him. Sixer looked taken aback and opened his mouth to protest but Miz pressed a finger against his lips. "Shush, I am talking right now. You will listen, and you will think about it. Once I'm done explaining what you did wrong, I will ask you a few questions to see if you cared enough to try and find the correct answer. If you can't even do that, I will simply ignore you and write you off for being an idiot, just like you do with everyone else in your life."
Sixer straightened in place and felt himself color. He wanted to protest immediately -- he wasn't an idiot! -- but he managed to keep his mouth closed (largely because it sounded like she'd give him a chance to protest her argument next), and slowly nodded at her, instead.
Miz sighed. She centered herself and took a calming breath. "You don't care about other people's feelings," she said simply. "Heck, you don't care about other people at all." She glared at him. "That is not good. Because it means you're an insensitive jerk who never thinks about how the people around you might feel when you say the things you do." (Sixer frowned; he didn't think that had ever been a problem before Miz.) "--I'm not saying you have to care about everyone," Miz continued, "But at the very least, you could be less of an ass to people. Especially when you actually want to hang out with them," she said pointedly. "Which brings me to my first question: why do you care so much about getting good grades? Why do you want recognition? If other people are just stupid and not worth your time, then why do you care so much about getting their praise and acknowledgement when you, yourself, don't want to acknowledge anyone else?"
(((((((((Quick note, the young Sixer here is an asshole, and we the writer of this fanfic do not agree with his bullshit. He's a twat and should not be taken for any sort of role model at all, ever. There are some very messed-up and subversively-wrong things twisted into Sixer's rhetoric below, so please be very careful as you read. Racism is wrong (and pretty damn stupid, as Sixer does note correctly), but he gets a lot of other stuff here wrong. To correct some of the most major things for the record: there is a very big difference between ignorance and stupidity; socioeconomic status does have a major and severe impact on one's ability to get an education and perform lifelong learning; and a person cannot simply start from nothing and 'make it' in life without multiple chances to make it big and fail and get up and have the chance to try again, and a good bit of luck and opportunity to go along with it, along with the support of others. Single-person success stories are a myth; it's never actually a single person managing to do it all without a lot of support from others and the leveraging of a great opportunity that they saw or found (not made themselves), if you actually go and look into it. Thank you.))))))))
Sixer folded his arms and snorted. "Well." he started. "I don't particularly enjoy the thought of having rocks thrown at me my entire existence," quite literally. "People generally don't attack their betters, when they realize that they are better than them in some way. These subjects aren't hard, so putting in the effort to show that I can do well at them, in the way they want the information regurgitated back to them, is only a matter of course." He was well ahead of his classes, and had been for some time; he'd read any book of any seeming importance and worth in the library by that point long ago. If it wasn't for mail-order booksellers, and monthly academic journals, he'd likely have gone insane from boredom a year or two ago. "If I do well on my tests, people look to that, and compare it against their own scores, and understand that I can do something that they cannot," he said. "Even my parents considered good grades to be important. And it puts me in good standing with the teachers, who generally don't like their better students being bullied into the emergency room."
Miz stared. "Are you… kidding me right now?" She asked flatly. The look on Sixer's face showed he was serious, he actually believed it. "Okay, first of all, the only people who threw rocks at you were the assholes who just wanted to pick on you because they're assholes. No one's doing that to you anymore, they haven't done that in years." (Yes, they'd stopped doing that around the time that he'd started being recognized as intelligent at school. Sixer wondered how supporting his own argument was supposed to be helping her own...) "And you being better than Crampelter hasn't stopped him from still being an asshole towards you, since it was never about the hands, it was just about him wanting to pick on someone smaller than him, always has been." She saw Lee nodding unconsciously out of the corner of her eye. "The high test score is one thing, but knowing the correct answers doesn't make you better. There are people who are denied a formal education. Are they stupid if they weren't even allowed to learn?"
Sixer frowned at her at that. "They are if they're in any way literate, and haven't sought out the information themselves at the public library; nothing's keeping anyone from going there to read whatever they want, if they're intelligent enough to actually think of doing so, and then understand what they've gone and read."
Lee stared at his brother. He saw where Miz was coming from with this question. There were poor kids who couldn't afford school and had to work at the family business, or on farms and stuff; adults wouldn't have the time to read, with two or three jobs, and maybe some extra mouths to feed and take care of. And then there were all those people in those villages in third world countries that didn't have schools or libraries at all. Lee knew about that, so Sixer should know about that, too. Hell, they'd learned about that in Social Studies class. And yeah, Sixer kind of had a point there, but Sixer was also completely missing the frigging point that Miz was making.
So Lee spoke up. "That ain't what she's getting at, Sixer. She means, what if they literally can't? LIke, if they aren't living here in Jersey or wherever, and there aren't any libraries or schools anywhere near where they are? Or if they have to work full-time just to have a roof over their head and food to eat, so they don't have time to go off reading whatever they want," and yeah, Lee saw him about to protest, "And even if they're tired but have some time at night, what happens if the libraries are all closed by the time they get out? She's wantin' to know, do you think people are stupid even if they don't have no way to learn book stuff, even if they wanted to?"
"Well, yes," Sixer said simply, adjusting his glasses. "Because they don't know anything. Therefore, they're stupid." And Lee felt so frustrated at his twin, because what the hell??
"Ignorance is NOT stupidity," Bill said almost too casually, looking over his fingernails, as he not-quite eyed Sixer sidelong.
"Willful ignorance is stupid," Sixer said right back, looking annoyed. "Knowledge is how you better yourself; the application of it is how humanity as a whole had made for themselves the time to do other things."
"...This is true," Bill said very coolly. "But do you know how you all started that cycle in the first place?"
Sixer frowned at Bill.
"Well, not everyone is as lucky as you, with people taking care of your physical needs and supporting you so that you can read and learn to your heart's content," Miz pointed out. "What would you have done if Lee or Stan hadn't decided to help you after you were thrown out?" Because no one else would have helped you, was what she didn't say, but Lee could hear it loud and clear.
"I--" Sixer was a little taken aback. "I went to the boat. I… would have stayed there, to start with…" Sixer frowned. He was a bit less distraught than he'd been when he'd first been thrown out. "School lunches are free for those without the means. And… there is the foster care system. ...And I doubt that the authorities would have been particularly pleased to hear that a seventeen-year-old had been thrown out of their home by their parents. I wouldn't have starved," Sixer pointed out with a grimace. "And I still would have been able to continue to go to school and get my diploma…"
"They certainly didn't do anything to help Stan when he was thrown out in the other timeline…" Miz muttered.
"Stanley doesn't like taking handouts," Bill said casually. "There are always strings attached. And he's stubborn. And going to school would mean seeing 'Ford again, which would have had 'Ford having a fight with him, and possibly Filbrick getting him tossed out of the school --" because Stanley had skipped like it was going out of style, and attending would have just been disruptive for 'Ford, and Stanley might've 'sabotaged' more of 'Ford's work... "-- or worse." Worse being not sheltered from getting arrested by the cops anymore when he 'pulled the usual shit' again, by the very nature of not being the kid of somebody in the community (who would silently stand up for him, and then punish him for his shit and make him make it up to whoever later, if and when he got caught at it). "...And Stanley already had what he thought was a clear pathway forward, to getting his 'family' back, which he couldn't have back until then." And in Stanley's mind -- from what Bill had Seen when he'd been looking around during that one quick Dreamscape tour of his memories, looking for the combination to that safe -- that had included 'Ford, who had drawn those curtains together on him 'that one fateful night' pretty harshly! He'd made it clear that he was standing with Filbrick, not wanting to see him again, at least at the time! (Not until he'd needed him as a 'patsy' of sorts to draw Bill's attention off of him for a little while… or so he'd thought…) Bill leaned back in his chair and glanced over at her.
"He shouldn't have had to do that. It's too sad." Miz looked legitimately upset by this. Lee winced. Sounded like things really had been that bad for that older him. (And now he knew why the old-man him had insisted on talking to their old man, if pa hearing about Sixer still going to their school might have maybe had pa trying to stop him from doing it…) Miz shook her head. "Well, either way, there are people who can't get support like that. They aren't given the chance to gain knowledge or better themselves. Do you still think that they're stupid if they want to learn but just can't get the opportunity?"
"If they were truly smart, they'd recognize the importance of learning, and they'd think of a way to do it. They'd find a way," Sixer said staunchly. "Otherwise, how would the human race as a whole have reached they heights that they have today?" Sixer demanded, glancing back at Bill. "It wasn't as though they had libraries back when the species solely consisted of hunters and gatherers."
Miz rolled her eyes. This was a pain, to try and talk to him. "Well, lots of people died in order for your species to make it this far. Many times they left their notes behind for the next generation to hopefully do better than they did."
"--Yes," Sixer agreed, jumping on that quickly. "The intelligent ones did what they could, despite the fact that they were limited by the technology and knowledge of their times! Exactly!" He smiled, because he believed that, with that, Miz had just proven his point!
"So if you died because you studied instead of eating, would that make you smart?" Miz asked.
"Well, no," Sixer said. "That's why we became agrarians instead of hunter-gatherers, in fact -- to become more efficient at food production, and then have more 'leisure' time to work on bigger and better things."
"You're welcome," said Bill. (Lee glanced over at him at that, frowning.)
Miz considered that. "And for the people who had to work so that others could have leisure time? What if the workers wanted to have an education, but if they stopped doing their jobs, other people would suffer? Like if you were working to support a family?"
Sixer frowned at her. "It's not like there isn't a scale of smart to dumb," Sixer told her. "And if I was less intelligent than those who were more capable, of course I would want to support them. --They would make things better for everyone, much faster, which would lead to less work for those below them, so that those in the next rung down could be educated to take up their work and they would be left to stand on their shoulders and reach new heights in everything else that would come next, and so on and so forth." If that was the case, he'd just have to wait his turn; he wouldn't though, because he was at the top of the heap no matter what pa or those stupid college admissions people might say.
"But do you think they're stupid if they don't have an education themselves? Just because they weren't able to get one?"
"If someone wanted an education, and they were truly intelligent -- hence smart -- then they would be able to educate themselves," Sixer maintained. "Just like everyone before them, from the lowest cavemen to the modern-day man today."
"You know," Miz said quietly. "Back in my old dimension, where everyone were shapes, the government specifically disallowed education for the lower caste." She saw Bill stilling in place. "The lowest caste wasn't even allowed to do more than learn to read."
Sixer frowned. "...Well, this isn't your dimension," Sixer said. "Maybe that's the problem you're having with this concept? --No-one is preventing anyone from getting a better education here," he told her, with confidence. "That would be stupidity itself in the extreme. Everyone here knows better than that." He paused. "I'm assuming that part of the problem in your dimension would have to have been that writing was heavily regulated, so that reading would be useless for the lower castes." He paused. "But you're clearly intelligent. Were you one of the upper or lower castes?" he asked, curious.
"What caste I was shouldn't matter," Miz told him. "And education suppression happens here too." Miz pointed out. "Do you remember a little thing called racism? Jim Crow? On paper, they're no longer around. But in practice, it's still happening. There are children all across America right now, who are barred from getting a proper education for all sorts of unfair reasons." She let that sink in for a bit.
"Look, racism is a problem, and clearly stupid, but it's been a problem for a long time," Sixer told her. "We're working on that," Sixer said, feeling annoyed, "And we are still able to get enough of an education to be able to move upwards from there." (Reading was the first step, and literacy wasn't going unaddressed, or being prevented or suppressed here. And as far as Sixer was concerned, he was in that exact situation: getting himself a proper education by finding ways to get himself the advanced reading and textbooks that he needed in order to do so, largely from the library, until that had stopped being enough.) "And I should think that what caste you were might be pertinent to this conversation," Sixer told her.
Miz sighed before she said quietly, almost shamefully, "My society was based on our shape. The more sides we had, the higher up on the rung we were. I'm a triangle." She paused. "Just a stupid unnatural triangle, that's what they all called me."
"Well, then that is just proving my point about racism being stupid, you know," Sixer told her eagerly, sitting forward in his seat. "You aren't unintelligent, but you were considered lower caste. The 'shape' of one's body shouldn't matter when it comes to intelligence, just like the number of fingers I have doesn't matter when it comes to that, either."
"Racism IS stupid. And your fingers don't matter either." Miz agreed. "But that doesn't mean that anyone who isn't on your level is stupid. Lee isn't stupid, and you shouldn't call him that. Everyone has their own circumstances. Just because they're not a genius, doesn't make them dumb."
"I didn't say Lee was dumb," Sixer said, adjusting his glasses. "I said he was stupid. --Willfully stupid." he told Miz. "He doesn't see the value of even trying to get himself a good education, and that's 'strike one'. He refuses to try and get himself even a basic one, of the quality that they are offering to us, here. He skips school, doesn't take any of his homework seriously, and doesn't bother to learn what he actually needs to learn, even when I tell him what that is, that's 'strike two'." Sixer frowned as he sat back. "Most of what they teach at school isn't all that important or useful," Sixer admitted. "So I've generally let Lee copy most of my work in the past, with enough minor modifications that we can't get in trouble for 'cheating'." (Lee winced a little, as) Sixer rolled his eyes. "But surely, you can agree that it is stupid of him not to take advantage of the opportunity to better himself and expand his mind, on the things that do matter and will be able to help him later in life? He isn't capable of differentiating between any of it, what is useful and what is not," Sixer told her, "But what is worse is that he doesn't ever come to me -- who knows what is and isn't important and can tell him -- despite the fact that he knows I will do this, knows that I consider getting a decent education important, and knows that I will happily take the time out and away from my own learning to help him to learn whatever he needs to know, if ever he did take me up on it again, like he used to. --And yet, he still refuses to learn! He'd rather spend his time doing other, frivolous things, instead -- such as boxing and wrestling, neither of which he is good enough at to make into a real career, and after-school jobs that teach him no skills he could leverage to be earning higher earnings in the future, to have to work less over time rather than more once he graduates, and a here-and-gone-again high-school girlfriend who he insisted upon wasting a good portion of that money on, instead of putting it into the boat he was planning on using long-term as a house and a home once he turned eighteen. --None of that will help him in the long run, not at all, and yet even after I have explained all of this to him in the past," he sent a long look Lee's way, "He still persists in his highly-incorrect belief that all of that is more important than learning, somehow. --And that, as far as I'm concerned, is a very big 'strike three'."