Unique Perspective

"Can anyone tell me where Sherissie Minaba is?" the teacher said about five seconds after coming into the room.

Deimosu looked over toward the empty seat a moment and frowned as several other students likewise started noticing the girl's absence while muttering excitedly and he heard Jason further down the seats saying "no words" while shaking his head.

Elsewhere, on the edge of the campus, the door to Minaba's dorm room slammed negligently shut behind her as she stormed into her room. Her solitary room, for the moment at least. She was between roommates again and she'd been told that the girls coming in either had been assigned to different rooms or lived off campus. She didn't particularly care since it let her use the space more practically.

It also told her that the Semezous were living off campus, since both this "Deimosu's" sisters were on the list of the people that weren't being sent to take up more of her private space in this room.

Setting her bag down on the bed, she took up her wallet and started scanning her walls and the various items papering it in something like a conspiracy nut's idea of wall paper. Fingering along she found the plans she was looking for somewhere between a list of names matched up with random words and the upside-down chocolate-stained memo on fire-evacuation procedures for the local water treatment plant. Looking it over for a few minutes she nodded and stepped back, crossing her arms.

"So, he's going to annoy my Darrin, hmm?" she said to herself while turning about on her heels towards a haphazard pile of magazines and catalogs and started skimming through them, tossing the ones she didn't want into another corner of the room. "Got you….hmmm."

The girl tossed the remaining magazines and such in her hand, the pile mostly now relocated towards another spot on the floor. What she held was a small coupon for a local business complete with hours of business and address. She'd shopped with them a bit, but the address always seemed to slip her if she didn't look at it. It was a bit farther than she remembered it being, always was, so it might take her a little while to get back to the campus and get everything set up.

While she was thinking about that, she pulled open one of drawers and pulled out the school approved clothes haphazardly before reaching down to remove the false bottom she'd put in within two nights of moving in to reach jeans and hoody underneath, replace it, and then replace the false bottom and start stuffing her clothes drawer again. She grimaced at the rather unrumpled look of the jeans and hoody, but folding them completely was the only way to get them to fit into the hidden space without an easily seen bulge. Resigning herself to the fact that she was going to look rather ridiculously wannabe in carefully folded, creased hoody and jeans, she got dressed.

Minaba checked the clock on her wall as she moved to take her cell phone from its charger in the wall, the phones weren't allowed in the classes, but they allowed them for keeping touch with family. Of course, most of the students were using the almost required laptops for the same sort of chatting and such that they would have used cell phones for, but that was neither here nor there.

Going to another section of wall for a moment and scanning along it before snatching a pair of binoculars from a hook and turning them on her ceiling, Minaba continued searching for the proper paper until she found what she was looking for.

"There it is, take out," she said with a smirk. "Okay…used them, used them…there we go."

Putting her binoculars back on their hook, she walked back to her bag and pulled out a notebook. Once opened it was apparent that every inch was filled with careful and neat handwriting. She flipped back to the rear pages and the handwritten index there before going back to the indicated page and the accumulation of notes there about the comings and goings of student, faculty and staff and tapped a particular piece of gossip.

Then she made a quick trip to the piles of not-quite abandoned phone books and scanned for the desired name. She flipped open her cell phone and dialed the number.

"Hey, is this the Jay-Jay's at the Livingston Mall? Am I speaking to Kylie Anderson?" she asked conversationally. "The one who's having an illicit affair with Mr. Dreyper at Bravura Academy?"

And then she hung up and put her phone into her pocket before walking out of her room, snatching up her purse and putting her notebook into it.

Minaba took her time working around toward the front gate, avoiding the landscaper who was undercover school security and stopping just within sight of the locked gates just underneath the camera that watched them. She crouched down and took out several stick of gum and considered each of the brands and flavors before settling on one and putting it into her mouth. It had taken her ten minutes to get from her room to the gate at a leisurely pace, and she waited for another ten before a car pulled up outside and a rather frantic sounding woman argued with the guard over the intercom until they finally started opening the gate to let the visitor in.

As the car slowly moved in, Minaba twisted about, staying crouched, and let herself out and dashed alongside the car's passenger side under the line of sight of one of the two external cameras and concealed from the other by the slow moving car just long enough for her to get past it, and then she was walking at a swift pace down the hill out into the town beyond. Humming to herself, she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and flipped it open again to start sending a text.

Still chewing her gum ten blocks later, she sent a second text and stopped to look across the street at a shop where a large van was parked. The side of the van was emblazoned with bright colors advertising itself to be Waterson's Professional Fireworks. She passed by the van, looking at it curiously and pausing when she noticed that the passenger door was unlocked. Glancing around she opened the door and reached into the glove compartment.
She was pleased to find the usual mess of assorted papers within there and calmly looked through them until she found a safety guide for arming and launching fireworks, which she folded up and stuck in her pocket along with a list of telephone numbers and addresses of musicians, caterers and the like. The rest of the paper was shoved back into the glove compartment along with the wallet she'd looked through long enough to get a name, address, a glimpse at family pictures and a credit card number.

Minaba had no reason to be mad at this guy just yet, but who knew what the future would hold.

She closed the van door and pulled out her notebook, turning to the first empty page and starting to write down some notes before her memory of what she'd just found faded and then turning to the back to index it on the appropriate letter page. All this while she was walking into the store front the van was parked in front of.  Once inside she waved at the man behind the counter as he dealt with the customer there.

"Heya, Minaba, just give me a moment," the shop owner told her as she came in.

"That's fine Mr. Leinniger," she said in a friendly tone.

"I really appreciate this last minute help, Hank," the other customer said. "The damn inventory clerk at my place apparently can't be bothered to actually check everything."

"Just glad I had this on hand," Hank Leinniger said, putting out a brown cardboard box. "You could have been out of luck completely."

Hank turned away from the packages on the counter for a moment to ring up the first customer's purchase. At which point, the man started patting himself down and grimacing.

"Left it in the glove compartment again?" Mr. Leinniger asked.

"You know, that's dangerous, sir," Minaba said. "Who knows who could get a look at it."

"I'll be right back." The man sighed irritably and hurried outside to go get his wallet.

"Well, let me get your package then, Minaba," Hank said. "Feel free to look around while you wait, there should be some new silly string in the shelves."

"Oh? Really?" Minaba asked excitedly, turning and starting to look through the shelves with all the restraint of a cat presented with catnip.

As she disappeared back into the supplies of practical joke and party supplies, Hank went into the backroom and came out with another, similarly sized brown cardboard box to place on the counter beside the first. "Shouldn't you be in school?"

"The guard let me out," Minaba responded over her shoulder in between smacking lips.

"Did he know you were going out?" was the response.

The first customer came rushing inside then holding up his wallet and coming to the counter.

"Got it," he said in relief. "Thanks again, Hank."

"Not at all a problem again," the shop owner said pleasantly. "Have a good show tonight."

"Thanks," the fireworks man said, snatching one of the cardboard boxes up and heading out the door as soon as he was done paying.

Behind him, Minaba arrived with a handful of materials she put on the counter next to the last box.

"All right, I'm going to ring this stuff up," he said. "But then you get right to school, got it?"

"Oh yes, sir," Minaba said. "After the hardware store, but after that, right back."

"Is this for some sort of school project? A Rube-Goldberg device?" he asked.

"Well, my last one didn't work quite right," Minaba said. "Part of it went off way too early."

"Well, hopefully, this one works better for you," Mr. Leinniger said. "Are the snakes the last part of the device?"

"Yep!" Minaba said, waving cheerfully. "Bye, Mr. Leinniger."

The unusual girl was typing out another text as she came out of the hardware shop and, as promised heading toward the school. She reached it and leaned against one of the walls outside the cameras' arc of vision and waited, chewing her gum. The delivery truck passed by her three minutes after she'd arrived and her eyes widened briefly when she realized that it could have arrived before she'd gotten ready.

"Have to update the local take-out's delivery times," she muttered to herself as she slipped back into the campus using the delivery truck as cover and hummed to herself as she walked out into the grounds, heading for the dorms and her room.

Once there, the focused and determined girl moved to the built-in bookshelf against the wall and shifted it aside to uncover a large section of loosened wall.  Pulling it aside, revealed a dusty crawl space with a small step ladder and a couple of large, empty plastic tubs, all of which she pulled out. With those in hand, she proceeded to hum to herself as she started cleaning her room, tossing the assorted collected pieces of information and putting them into her tubs, which she slowly dragged to the crawl space.

It was not an easy task given the way she was panting and gasping with each inch budged, but after an hour and a half of cleaning paper and magazines off the wall and floor…and another hour dragging the two tubs the fifteen feet to her hiding place for them…she had a room that appeared as boring as any of the rest of her class.

Well, except for the list of take-out businesses stapled to the ceiling still. Had to be fair after all.

Checking her clock again, she figured she had another hour before classes were released. Not including those that were being held after school for some reason, of course. But, while most of the students lived on campus and probably already put their morning stuff into their lockers at lunch time,  Semezou would likely stop to leave stuff in his locker or pick stuff up.

Dressed once again in the school uniform, Minaba walked out into the hall with her purse and the cardboard box from the party shop. She passed by a teacher and saw that he looked rather tired and somewhat angry.

"Is something wrong?" she asked, trying to remember which of the teachers this was.

"Nothing you need to worry about," he snapped before calming down when she stepped away from him. "Sorry, it's been a bad day; someone … scared my girlfriend with a phone call today."

"Ah! That's terrible," she gasped with an angry face. "I hope they catch the jerk!"

"You wouldn't know if any of the students around here did something like that, would you?" he asked.

"Not that I know of," she said, thinking about it for a moment. "Anyway, I've got to get to what I was doing, I'm on a deadline."

"Then what are you doing dawdling in the halls on the first day when you have a job to do?" the teacher asked with a bit more humor in his anger than he had before. "Go to it. And get rid of that gum."

"Right away, sir," Minaba said with a smile and a mock salute.

Slipping past all awareness of either irony or karma, Minaba was soon at the locker and removing tools from her purse as she pulled the gum out of her mouth and compared it to the gum on the locker before putting it back in her mouth again and starting to take the locker door off. She paused a moment when she pulled out the canister of paper snakes and frowned at it. It looked somewhat different than she was used to, and seemed a bit heavier.

Shrugging that aside, she went about the work of fixing it into the locker in front of her. Once that was done and the door back in place, she removed the gum from her mouth and fixed it into the spot where the previous glob had been just as the bell rang.