Read Online Veneer by Daniel Verastiqui - Free Book Online Page A

throats since you first stepped foot on my campus and I want to know why. This feud has to end.”
    Russo bit his lip at the sight of Deron smiling. It’d be a lot harder for him to smile if he were missing all of his teeth.
    Ficcone sighed and leaned back in his chair. He eyed his charges one at a time. “What am I going to do with you two? It’s my job to keep the peace around here, which is why I can’t let this go on any longer. From now on, there will be no unauthorized reconciliation outside of normal classroom activities. That goes for the both of you.”
    “Or what?” asked Russo.
    “Excuse me?”
    Fuck it—might as well go for broke. “Or what? How are you going to punish Deron when he puts up another picture of me?”
    “I didn’t make that picture,” whined Deron.
    “Who did what makes no difference now. And to answer your question, Mr. Rivera, the punishment will become clear to you at the appropriate time. I will tell you that this’ll be the last time we discuss this issue. From now on, I’ll have no choice to include the authorities and your parents.”
    Deron winced—probably scared of what his mom would do to him, something extreme like take away his video games.
    Russo looked down at his hands in his lap. He clenched them into fists and released them slowly. When he looked up, he saw Principal Ficcone shaking his head.
    “Sometimes I don’t know if you young people understand the gift you’ve been given.” He stood and walked towards the window. With a quick tap of his finger on the glass, the principal reconciled an ornate floral design that spread out in waves and covered the entire window. “To reconcile is to change the world to your liking. You can create beauty or you can bastardize reality.” He motioned to the palette on his desk. “Right now, you take this ability for granted. You think you have the right to reconcile anything you want, anywhere you want. But you forget this is a society of people who can do the same thing you can. Reconciliation is a privilege of living here, not a right.”
    The hell it wasn’t. Reconciliation was a part of human evolution, a magic usable by age six, earlier if you could get into Dahlstrom Academy. It could no more be taken away than... His mind jumped back to the morning’s events. It was also impossible to see past the veneer, but some jackhole in a fitted suit had done just that and with considerable ease.
    “I see that bothers you, Mr. Rivera. You never considered someone could take your ability away? You don’t even want to know what they do after that. Do you think Easton has any use for someone who can’t reconcile?”
    “If it was true—” he replied.
    “ Were true,” corrected the principal. “ Is true.” He turned again towards the window. “If you asked someone a hundred years ago whether what we do would ever be possible, they would laugh at you. But here we are, using innate abilities to effect change. Think about what that means for just one minute and you’ll realize your petty squabbles aren’t worth the effort. We do something now that people couldn’t do before. Think of what we’ll be able to do as our power grows.”
    “How do you stop someone from reconciling?”
    Ficcone shrugged. “That I don’t know, Mr. Bishop. I’ve never met anyone who couldn’t reconcile. No one has.”
    “Because it’s crap,” said Russo.
    “No,” replied the principal, his voice somber. “Those who can’t share in the veneer have no place here.” His lips moved to say something else, but he changed his mind. “Just trust that you don’t want to know what happens to people who keep making pictures—”
    “I haven’t made a goddamn thing since you told me to stop last year! Check my palette, you won’t find anything.”
    “What about you, Mr. Bishop?”
    Deron answered meekly, “I don’t have the skills to shop like Russo.”
    Fucking right you don’t.
    “So this is no longer about you two, is it? Your