Action Figures - Issue Four: Cruel Summer

by Michael C Bailey

  A late lunch followed, and after that, we all went our separate ways. Ben offered to come back home with Mom and me, but Mom told him we needed some mother-daughter time. We spent that time talking almost non-stop — rarely about anything of consequence, but we kept up the chatter. From time to time, we’d shut up, and a unique brand of silence would make its presence known, the kind of silence that exists only in an empty house, and that would give us plenty of motivation to renew the blathering. Before turning in for the night, we agreed that we’d get right back into our respective normal routines: work for her, school for me.

  Mom is in the kitchen when I come downstairs, finishing off a light breakfast. “Morning,” she says.

  “Morning,” I say. I pour some coffee, throw some Pop-Tarts in the toaster oven, and lean against the counter to wait. Mom glances over at me like she wants to say something, but she doesn’t. I can’t think of anything to say either. I think we exhausted our conversational reserves last night.

  Mom sighs. “Well, this is a lot harder than I thought it would be.”

  “Yeah. Maybe we’re trying too hard?”

  “Maybe.” She sighs again and finishes off her coffee. “You have work after school?”

  “Yeah. Mr. Crenshaw said I could take all the time off I needed, but I don’t like blowing off work unnecessarily.”

  Mom chuckles. “The blessing and the curse that is the Briggs-Hauser work ethic. My boss practically threatened to fire me if I came in today.”

  “Have to admit, playing hooky for the day is tempting,” I say. “You and me and a day spa binge.”

  “Followed by lunch at the Mexican place in town,” Mom says, gladly joining me in my little daydream. “Fajitas and margaritas on the patio...”

  “I’m sixteen, Mother,” I say. What is it with people offering to buy me drinks lately?

  She shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. We’re not going to do it. We shouldn’t. We’re not doing ourselves any favors by postponing the inevitable.”

  “It was a nice thought, though.”

  Mom smiles at me, and it’s a real smile. “Yeah. It was,” she says, draping an arm over my shoulders. “Come on, you. Let’s go be normal.”

  I knock on Sara’s door. She almost makes it outside without her father yelling at her.

  “Straight home after school, young lady!” he commands.

  “Uh-huh,” Sara responds. She shuts the door and shakes her head, but she doesn’t complain — not because she’s resigned herself to her fate, but because I’m a walking reality check, an unwelcome dose of perspective. A recently deceased grandfather trumps a domineering dad any day of the week.

  Nevertheless, “If you need to vent...”

  “No,” Sara says. “No point. Besides, I have a more immediate headache to deal with.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Matt.”

  “Oh, now what’s he done?”

  Sara starts off down her walkway. I follow.

  “After you left my place Saturday, he asked me out to dinner for tomorrow night, like for a private birthday celebration.”

  “He did?”

  “Well, in that kinda-sorta roundabout way of his. ‘I thought maybe we could, you know, grab some dinner together, if you want, I mean, it’s cool if you don’t want to, but I’d like to, so let me know,’” Sara says, expertly mimicking Matt’s tendency to mumble and avoid eye contact when he’s feeling insecure — by which I mean, whenever he tries to ask Sara on a for-real date.

  “Oh. I thought it was something bad.”

  “It is bad. He said it was totally a just-friends thing, but nothing between us is ever totally a just-friends thing. I waffled and told him I’d think about it...God, that was stupid. I should’ve said no right off.”

  “You should go,” I say, “and so what if it’s not a just-friends thing? Would that really be so bad?”

  “Carrie...”

  “I know, I know. You don’t feel that way about Matt, you don’t like him that way,” I say with a heavy dollop of sarcasm.

  Sara stops. “How come Matt has to back off but you don’t?”

  “What?”

  “Whenever Matt bugs Missy about coming back to the team, you tell him to knock it off and stop pushing her, but whenever I say I’m not interested in Matt romantically, you give me a hard time.”

  “Because I think you really do want to get closer to Matt but you’re scared to give it a shot,” I say. “Matt loves you, and if the last few days have taught me anything, it’s that the people you love won’t be around forever. You should appreciate them while you can.”

  Sara’s expression softens, but only a little. “But I don’t love Matt. Not like that. And I do appreciate him, but he needs to respect my feelings and stop trying to make ‘us’ happen. So do you.”

  Sara and I have had this debate before, a lot, and I’ve always held out hope that she’d get over this ridiculous fear of hers and let Matt in. Yeah, he can be difficult, but he has a good heart, and he’d never let Sara want for love as long as she lived — and that’s what freaks the girl out. She doesn’t understand how she could possibly deserve that kind of love, so she pushes it away. It’s sad. It’s frustrating.

  “I want you to be happy,” I say.

  “Then let me have my feelings.”

  That one lands with deadly accuracy. She’s right. They’re not my feelings and it’s not my decision.

  “You’re right. Sara, I’m sorry. God, I feel like I’ve been saying that to you so much...”

  “Promise me you won’t bring it up again and we’ll call it good. Okay?”

  “Okay. I promise there will be no more lame, clumsy, overbearing attempts at matchmaking.”

  “Thank you. And I never thought I’d say this, but can we go to school? I feel like it’s the only stable thing in my life right now.”

  “I hear that. Come on, then. Onward! To school!” I say, melodramatically pointing skyward. “Stability, ho!”

  “Onward to school!” Sara says, mirroring my pose. “And don’t call me a ho.”

  It’s rather shocking how easily I get back into the swing of things. My first day back at school has its awkward moments as various faculty members offer their condolences, but after that it’s right back into my old routine. I go to school. After school I either hang out with the gang at Coffee E or go to work. After that I go home for dinner, and then it’s off to the nightly homework jam, where we spend more time counting the days until the end of the year than doing our schoolwork. On the weekends I alternate between hanging out with my friends and going out with Malcolm (although our increasingly hot and heavy make-out sessions make that option much more enticing than sitting in Matt’s dining room playing board games). When the opportunity presents itself, I grab some sky time with Concorde.

  This is not to say there aren’t occasions when I’m reminded that our new normal hasn’t completely stabilized. At least once a week, I set a third place at dinner out of sheer habit. There are mornings when I wake up and step out of my bedroom and, en route to the bathroom, pause in front of my grandfather’s bedroom door. I stand there for a minute, staring at the bed he died in, wondering if he was awake when the heart attack hit, and it casts a pall over my entire day. I catch Mom doing the same thing sometimes.

  It’s worse for her. She has random bouts of melancholy that manifest as small, brief crying fits or angry outbursts over absolutely nothing. Ben and I have found common ground as recipients of these mini-tantrums and, because misery does love company, we’ve grown closer as a result, so, yay silver lining.

  Ben takes these dark moments in stride better than I do. Whenever Mom snaps at me, my natural impulse is to respond in kind (because God forbid I ever pass up an opportunity for a pointless argument with my mother), and I have to remind myself that our peacekeeper is no longer around to keep the peace. Our relative domestic tranquility is totally dependent on my ability to bite my tongue.

  Let that one sink in.
/>   While part of me hates to admit this, I’m grateful the Hero Squad has had no reason to jump into action. I learned early on that life as a super-hero is a feast-or-famine deal, periods of insanity followed by long stretches of nothing, and I’m kind of loving the nothing. It’s one less thing to worry about. I can instead concentrate on school and my social life and, at this particular moment in time, work.

  “Here you go,” Mr. Crenshaw says as he hands me a folder full of legal documents for Edison to sign. “Standard stuff, nothing controversial, but if Concorde has any questions, I’ll be here until closing.”

  “All right. I’ll be back in a little bit,” I say, tucking the folder into my backpack. As I turn away to leave, Mr. Crenshaw stops me.

  “When you get back, I’d like to talk to you,” he says. “I’d like to offer you an extension of your internship through the summer.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely. I’d love to keep you on. Honestly, if you’re up for it, I’d like to find some more challenging duties for you, expand your responsibilities. I think you’re up for it.”

  “That’d be great,” I say. “Thank you.”

  Mr. Crenshaw smiles. “You’ve earned it. We’ll talk more later. Go get those papers over to Concorde.”

  One benefit of having a boss who knows my secret identity is that I can take off right from the roof of his office. It’s a three-story building, which is occupied entirely by the Law Firm of Crenshaw and Associates, and I’m the only staffer (besides Mr. Crenshaw and the part-time custodian) who has a key to the roof. It’s not completely secluded, but as long as I stay tucked behind the HVAC unit and don’t strut out to the center of the roof, no one can see me take off or land.

  There’s no such convenient accommodation at Bose Industries. Well, there is (Edison has a similar private landing pad on the roof of his office), but in the interest of maintaining the illusion I’m a perfectly normal teenage intern, I have to land in the woods near the facility’s main entrance and check in at the security office. From there, one of Edison’s fancy carbon-neutral solar-powered courtesy cars whisks me to the administrative building.

  Trina, Edison’s administrative assistant, greets me outside Edison’s office and tells me to go on in. I don’t need an introduction anymore. Don’t I feel special?

  I enter to find Edison in conference with Matt, who is thoroughly enjoying his internship at Bose. I confess, I was surprised when Matt broke the good news he got the job; Edison has never much cared for Matt, and I’d expected that prejudice to kill any chance Matt had of landing the internship, but Edison can be a lot fairer-minded when he wants to be — which is not often.

  “Carrie, good afternoon,” Edison says as I cross to his desk, folder in hand.

  “Edison. Mr. Steiger,” I say to Matt.

  “Miss Hauser,” Matt says. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “You two know each other?” Edison says. The man lies with such ease it’s scary.

  “We’re friends, yeah,” I say.

  “Huh. Small world. What brings you by?”

  “Your attorney had some paperwork for you,” I say, handing the folder over. “Nothing major, he said. You know the drill, sign and initial where indicated. What are you working on?” I ask Matt.

  “Reviewing security protocol updates for the nuclear micro-cell production facility,” Matt says, flashing his tablet at me. The screen is filled with dense text. Matt continues on, treating me as though I knew nothing about the issue (even though I was the one who uncovered the problem, thank you very much). “Someone in production took advantage of a gap in the disposal process for flawed micro-cells and leaked them onto the black market, so Mr. Bose has been —”

  “Edison, Matt,” Edison says. “For the hundredth time, you can call me Edison. Everyone else does.”

  “I know,” Matt says.

  “Look at you, you respectful worker bee,” I tease.

  “The man runs one of the top tech companies in the country,” Matt says in a half-whisper. “I’m a high school intern. You do the math. Oh, sorry, I forgot: you suck at math.”

  “Oh, ha, funny man. I’ll have you know I’m up to a solid B-plus average in my math class now, thank you.”

  “Oh, really, how nice,” Matt says, pretending to tap his tablet. “Making a note to myself to have my A average send your B-plus a congratulatory muffin basket. Your phone’s ringing.”

  Yes it is. It’s the Killers’ “Read My Mind,” which is Sara’s ringtone, because I believe wholeheartedly in symbolic ringtones.

  I answer the phone, and I’m immediately seized by a chilling sense of déjà vu. There’s a second of dead air, a silence that roars in my ears, and a coughing sob.

  “Sara?”

  “What’s wrong? Carrie?” Matt says. I frantically wave him quiet. I can barely hear Sara’s strangled whisper as she tells me — oh God.

  “Sara was attacked.”

  EIGHT

  “Sara?”

  Sara starts. “Huh?”

  “You okay?” Stuart asks. “You looked all zoned out.”

  “Sorry,” Sara says. “Tired.”

  “Need another coffee?” Malcolm says, rising from his seat. “I’m going for a refill.”

  Sara considers her empty cup, then shakes her head. “I’m good. Thanks.”

  Stuart watches Malcolm cross the coffee shop to hit up Jill for another latté. “Mal’s cool and all,” Stuart says, “but is it kind of weird he’s hanging out with us now?”

  “No. Yeah. Maybe,” Missy says. “I mean, it’s weird that anyone not us is hanging out with us. Wait. That didn’t make sense.”

  “We know what you meant,” Sara says, “and yeah, it is weird to have a friend who isn’t, you know, part of the secret club.”

  “Who’s also friends with the entire football team,” Stuart adds, “who are, like, the anti-us. When worlds collide, man.”

  “I think it’s weirder that Matt and Carrie aren’t here because they’re working,” Missy says. “They have jobs and it’s like they’re grown-ups now and we’re not and we should be because we’re, like, all the same age and junk, so maybe we should get jobs?”

  “Doing what?” Sara says. “No way are we going to land cool jobs like they have. We’ll be lucky if we could get hired flipping burgers.”

  “So? First jobs are supposed to suck,” Stuart counters. “You get a crap job jockeying a deep-fryer or sacking groceries, earn some money, build some character, then go find something better. That’s the way it works.”

  “Unless you’re Matt or Carrie, then you get awesome first jobs.”

  “Don’t get mad at them because they lucked out.”

  “I’m not mad at them.”

  “You sound mad,” Missy says. “You sound mad a lot.”

  “I’m not mad, I’m under a lot of stress. You’d be stressed out too if your dad did nothing but dump on you constantly.”

  “You know, you’re not helping that any by hanging out with us and blowing off your grounding all the time,” Stuart says. “Just sayin’.”

  “Fine,” Sara says, standing, “then I’ll go home and sit there like a good little girl because I stood up for you.”

  “Aw, come on, that’s not fair.”

  “Yeah, well, welcome to my world.”

  Sara stomps out and, as she has many times over the past month, walks home alone, dark thoughts roiling in her head like a storm cloud. One break, that’s all she wants — a single twist of fate that, for a change, works out to her benefit. An offer of a dream job. A relationship-changing moment of clarity for her father. Someone to love and be loved by.

  That’s not asking a lot. Is it? she thinks as she fumbles her house keys out of her backpack, a sensation of dull-headedness settling on her, a mental fog that makes her wonder if, on top of everything else, she might be getting sick.

  She steps inside, the door slamming shut behind her — but hers is not the hand that throws it closed.


  That same hand grasps her hair and, with a sharp, painful jerk, hauls her around, driving her face-first into a wall. A weight presses against her back. Her instincts kick in. She wills the weight to go away. It remains in place. She pushes again, harder, to no effect. Shock turns to blinding terror.

  “I wanted to let you know,” a voice says, the speaker’s breath caressing her ear like a fat worm slithering across her flesh, “the King of Pain has arrived.”

  The pressure vanishes as Sara is flung away, thrown across the living room. She collides with the edge of the family coffee table, a heavy slab of oak on stubby legs, and the world spins wildly. She lands in the snug canyon separating the table and the sofa, her shins burning, pain eating like acid through the armor of her adrenaline rush.

  Sara lays there for untold minutes, fear locking her limbs — fear, and the certainty that the intruder is standing right outside the open front door, waiting to spring out and renew his assault should she display any signs of life. Furtively, slowly, she reaches into her pocket, feeling for her phone. Her hands tremble so violently she can barely hold it. It takes her several tries to place the call.

  “Hello?” Carrie says. “Sara?”

  “Carrie,” Sara whimpers, “someone attacked me...”

  “Carrie?” Matt says. “Come on, talk to me.”

  “She said there was someone in her house, waiting for her,” I say in a whisper. “He jumped her, said something like ‘The King of Pain has arrived,’ and —”

  Matt turns white, and his eyes widen to the size of dinner plates. “The King of Pain?” he blurts out, which causes Edison to jump to his feet.

  “What was that?” he says, his expression a perfect match for Matt’s — and if they’re both freaking out, I’d say maintaining secret identities might not be the main priority.

  “Sara said she was attacked by someone calling himself the King of Pain,” I say.

  “Give me the phone. Now,” Edison demands, crossing to us at a sprint. He snatches the phone from me. “Sara, this is Concorde. I want you to tell me exactly what happened, every last detail, every last word he said.”