Action Figures - Issue One: Secret Origins (29 page)

Before Sara or I can move, Mr. Dent is in the middle of the chaos, placing himself between Stuart and Angus. “Enough! Both of you!”

“Did you see what he did?!” Angus squeals as he tries to extricate himself from the demolished locker.

“Yes, and I saw what you were doing too,” Mr. Dent says. He pulls Angus free and thrusts a finger at him. “My office! Now! You too, Stuart! Go!”

The boys glower at each other for a second before beginning the long walk.

“Carrie, Sara,” Mr. Dent says to us as he helps Angus’s victim to his feet. “Do me a favor and take Nick to Mrs. Prescott’s room.”

“Go easy on him, Mr. Dent,” Sara says. “He’s under so much stress, he’s not—”

“I know he is,” Mr. Dent says, “and I’m sympathetic, believe me, but he’s going to have to learn to deal with it. There’s nothing he can do about it, there’s nothing I can do about it, so...”

Mr. Dent lets the conversation peter out there. He shakes his head at the crumpled locker door, mumbles something about cheap construction, and leaves to deal with his first headache of the day.

“Deal with it,” Sara sneers. “God, that’s so easy for him to say.”

It doesn’t make him wrong, though. Ronny Vick is coming here whether Stuart likes it or not, so Stuart’s got to be the one to suck it up and tough it out. I’m not saying it’s fair, because it’s not, but if the last several weeks have taught me nothing else, it’s that fairness is rarely part of the equation.

I keep my sage advice to myself because it’s clear at the lunch table no one wants to hear it; moral outrage is the mood of the day, and the flames are only fanned by the totally unsurprising news that Stuart gets to spend his afternoon in detention.

“That is such B.S.,” Matt says.

“He’s lucky he didn’t get suspended,” I say,
daring to inject a little reality. “And I bet he still got off light compared to Angus. Couldn’t they kick him off the team for fighting in school?”

“Mm. Yeah,” Matt concedes, looking past me to the jock table, where Angus and Gerry Yannick and their football goon posse are giving us some industrial strength stink-eye.

“He’d best remember that,” Stuart says into his food, which is, inexplicably, still on his tray, hardly touched. “I catch him picking on that kid again...hell, I catch him picking on
anyone
...”

“If you catch him picking on anyone again you should let the staff handle it,” I say.

“What, like the way the teachers at Jeff’s school handled Ronny Vick?” Stuart stabs his spork into his clod of mashed potatoes. It stands straight up, like a white plastic Excalibur waiting for someone to pull it free and declare himself king of Cafeterialot. “Teachers don’t do jack to stop bullies like Ronny Vick or Angus Parr. No one does.” He turns in his seat to face me. “Did you see anyone else going to help that kid this morning? Or was everyone too busy minding their own business?”

I can’t argue the point. “It’s always someone else’s problem,” I say, recalling Stuart’s words to me not too long ago.

“Exactly. Well, starting today, it’s my problem,” Stuart says as though he’s declaring war—not that his cause isn’t noble enough, but in his present state of mind I worry he’s not going to pull any punches, figuratively or otherwise. “As long as I’m around, no one is going to get away with bullying anyone in this school ever again.”

There it is. Stuart has given me exactly what I need to talk him back to earth. “Then you need to play it smarter than you did this morning,” I say. “He may have had it coming, but you can’t go mixing it up with Angus every time he acts like a tool.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would be a full-time job,” Matt says unhelpfully.

“Because eventually you’d get kicked out of school,” I say, “and you can’t stand up for anyone if you’re not actually here to do it. You really want Angus, or worse, Ronny Vick, walking around school with no one to keep them in their place?”

Please, Matt, for once, do not open your mouth.

Stuart, after giving it a little thought, grunts in agreement, then proceeds to shovel cold mashed potatoes into his mouth.

Great, crisis averted...for now, but there’s no guarantee Stuart’s better judgment will win out come Monday.

The rest of the day crawls on its belly. Even my web design course feels draggy, and I swear the clock above the classroom door hasn’t moved a single tick since the last time I checked.

The final bell sounds at last, and I’m scooping my stuff into my backpack when a classmate I don’t know by name comes up to me.

“Carrie? Can I talk to you a sec?” he says, and his approach is innocent enough, but his varsity jacket with the words TEAM CAPTAIN stitched on the right shoulder sets my teeth on edge. Jacket equals jock equals friend of Angus Parr equals brewing confront
ation.

“What?” I say icily.

“Hi, I’m Malcolm Forth,” he says, extending a hand. I wait long enough to make him think I’m not going to take it before I do.

“What can I do for you?”

“You’re friends with Stuart Lumley, yeah?” Yep, called it. “Could you give him a message from me?”

“Why don’t you talk to him yourself?”

“I tried after lunch,” Malcolm says. “He doesn’t want any part of me.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

Malcolm gives me a half-smile. “I know what you’re thinking, but seriously, I’m not trying to start trouble.”

“Angus started the trouble,” I say.

“Yeah, he did, and I’m putting an end to it,” Malcolm says. Now he has my attention. “I told Angus, from now on he lays off the other students—especially the special needs kids,” he says with a trace of anger, “or he’s not only off the team, he’s banned from the athletic program, permanently. I already spoke to Coach Fowle and he’s completely on-board. He doesn’t like his guys acting like a bunch of Neanderthals, so...”

So he’s on my side, is what he’s saying. Great. Another Carrie Hauser triumph, brought to you by snap judgment.

“Anyway, I wanted Stuart to know he doesn’t have to worry about Angus anymore,” Malcolm says. “Heck, if Angus picks on a special needs kid again Stuart’ll have to fight me for the first spot in line to kick Angus’s head in.”

“I’ll tell him,” I say. “Look, I’m sorry I was—”

“No, it’s cool, I understand. If I were you I wouldn’t want to talk to me either.”

“Still, I shouldn’t have been so...I’ve been going through some stuff lately and I’m not in a good headspace.”

“Sorry to hear. Hey, I’ve got to get to practice,” Malcolm says, swinging his backpack over his shoulder. “Thanks for listening.”

“Sure,” I say, and off he goes, tossing me a thank-you smile and a good-bye nod I don’t feel like I deserve, not after giving him a hard time he didn’t deserve.

Mm, crow. Tastes like shame and regret.

TWENTY-NINE

Stuart makes it to Friday without any further encounters, although he and Angus can’t keep from shooting death-glares at each other whenever they pass in the halls. Things are tense, but I expect Angus will be old news come Monday.

That is why the gang dedicates the weekend to cheering Stuart up in advance of what will no doubt be one of the hardest days of his life. The plan is to spend Saturday at his place watching old Arnold Schwarzenegger movies (why anyone considers
Conan the Barbarian
a classic is beyond me) and Sunday gaming at Matt’s place.

Unfortunately, I’ll have to send good vibes from afar because I’m heading to the Cape. Sara decides to hang out while I pack a weekend bag, which is impossibly modest for a teenage girl: a couple changes of clothes, one pair of pajamas, and a travel bag of cosmetics so small I could bring it onto an airplane without the TSA giving me a hard time. If the Women’s Union ever found out I travel so light, they’d revoke my membership.

“What are you going to do with your dad? Any
thing special?”

“I’m making Thanksgiving dinner for us tomorrow night.”

“Yeah?” Sara says, impressed.

“Well, a mini-dinner, more like,” I say. “Turkey breast, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, some mixed veggies, heat-and-serve rolls. Nothing too ambitious, seeing as it’s my first-ever attempt at a solo holiday meal.”

“If you’ve inherited your mom’s cooking genes, you’ll do fine,” Sara says. “I’d be more worried about how we’ll do without you.”

“What do you mean?”

“What if something happens? I don’t know if we can handle an emergency by ourselves.”

“Oh, stop. Nothing will happen. And if it does—which it totally won’t—you guys can handle it. You don’t need me.” Sara appears highly skeptical of that. “You’ll be fine, you have Matt.”

“Yeah...”

“Come on, I know he’s a big goof, but you know he’s not as dumb as he acts sometimes.”

“He’s also not as smart as he likes to think he is. Honestly? When things go down and start to get hairy? I’m not looking to Matt to tell us what to do.”

Oh. Wow.

“Anyway,” Sara says. “What else have you got planned, besides dinner? Catch up with your old friends, maybe?”

That’s not happening. My old old friends, the good ones, I severed those ties when I joined the StuckUp Pretty Girls Club, and the bimbos I wasted nearly two years of my life with? I cut them loose when I pull
ed my head out of my butt. I have no chance of reconnecting with the former and no desire to reconnect with the latter.

Not that I’d dedicate any energy to the effort in either case, because “This weekend is all about me and my dad. I haven’t seen him since September, and who knows when I’ll get to see him again.”

“Is he only allowed to see you, like, once a month or something?”

“Oh, no! No, nothing like that. He can see me whenever he wants. Mom and Dad have joint legal custody. It’s the distance, coordinating schedules, stuff like that.”

“Oh, okay. That’s good. That your parents have joint custody, I mean. That means they didn’t have a big fight over you, right?”

“No. I mean, I don’t think they did. I don’t know what happened, actually. One day they told me I was going to live with Mom and that was it,” I say, anger creeping up on me. “They didn’t talk to me about it at all, didn’t ask me what I wanted, they...I don’t know. I feel like they divvied me up like their DVDs and their books and the furniture and Mom won a coin toss or something.”

“If they’d asked what you wanted, you would have stayed with your dad.”

It’s not a question; she knows. “You know what sucks, though? When I first moved to Kingsport, all I wanted was to go back home. Then I met you and Matt and Stuart and Missy and I was glad I went with Mom. And then she started talking about moving away and I went right back to wishing I’d stayed with Dad.”

“Have you talked to her about it? Moving
away?”

“She said she’ll talk to me before she makes any decisions, but that’s nothing but an empty promise. If she decides to leave town, what I want won’t matter. Again.”

We jump when Granddad knocks at my bedroom door, which I realize now was never completely closed. Crap, has he been standing outside the whole time?

“You all packed?” he says. “We have to get moving if we’re going to get you on your bus.”

“Ready for adventure,” I say. I grab my backpack and head downstairs. Sara refuses to let me get into the car until she can hug me goodbye.

“Have a good weekend,” she says with her outside voice, and then, with her very inside inside voice,
Shout if you need me. I’ll hear you.

Back at you
, I say.
And keep an eye on Stuart. I’m worried about him.

Yeah, me too.

I climb in and buckle up and brace my feet against the floor and dig my fingernails into the seat, because my grandfather is a little bit of a maniac behind the wheel. He’d freak out a demolition derby driver.

“Do you know why your mother moved back home?”

The question is so out of the blue it takes me a couple seconds to process it. “Because it’s cheap?”

“That’s part of it. It’s mostly because she knows in her heart of hearts she’s almost completely incapable of living completely on her own.”

Wow. Harsh.

“I don’t say that to be mean,” he says, reading my expression, “I’m saying it because it’s true. Ever since you came along your mom’s always had a big safety net: your dad, me, your grandmother, Brian’s folks...she’s never had to live all on her own.” He takes his eyes off the road long enough to meet mine. “She’s never had to raise you on her own.”

“Are you trying to say you think she should move out so she can learn to be more independent,” I say, dreading that that’s exactly what he’s saying, “or that she shouldn’t move out because she can’t hack being a single parent?”

“I’m saying this is the first time she’s ever been the only person responsible for you, and she’s scared to death she’s going to screw up,” Granddad says, “so you might want to cut her a little slack.”

Universe, consider me duly chastised.

I make it to the bus on time, but that’s the only thing punctual about this trip. The bus sits in the station ten minutes past our scheduled departure time and we get caught in rush hour traffic three times, so I’m an hour late when we reach the end of the line in my old home town of Barnstable. That’s an hour with Dad lost.

My simmering anger vanishes when I step off the bus and the very first thing I see is one Mister Brian Hauser standing on the platform. I swear he looks exactly as he did when I left, right down to the ratty leather bomber jacket he’s had since high school, except this time he’s smiling.

I throw myself into his arms and we don’t say anything for the longest time. When he speaks it’s to say, “Missed you, kiddo.”

I nod into his chest. If I try to talk now I’m going to start crying.

Dad grabs my bag, marveling at how tiny it is, and leads me to his truck in the parking lot. There’s the obligatory how-was-your-trip small talk as we drive home—to his house, I mean, which, like Dad, hasn’t changed one bit since I left. It’s as if time froze in my absence, waiting for my return before starting up again. Even the inside looks mostly the same. The differences are trivial: a bare spot on a wall missing a picture that made the move with me to Kingsport, a distinct lack of cheesy romantic comedies in the DVD rack. It still feels like my home. It makes me happy. And a little sad.