Action Figures - Issue Four: Cruel Summer
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Love at first sight.
“Okay,” Matt says.
“...Really?”
“Yeah. Really.”
“You have to have questions.”
“They don’t matter.”
“Matt...”
“They don’t matter.” Matt squeezes Sara’s hand. “You need to rest. You need to get better.”
This time, Matt kisses her hand.
He rises to leave. At the foot of Sara’s bed, he pauses. “Tell me one thing.”
“Anything.”
“If you could hook up with any Disney princess, who would it be?”
“Belle,” Sara says without having to think about it.
“Why Belle?”
“She’s a doe-eyed French girl who loves to read. What’s not to like?”
Matt nods. “Good call.”
THIRTY-FOUR
Sara spends a couple more weeks in the hospital, partly for observation, partly for more tests to make sure she’s recovered from her ordeal (multiple MRI and CT scans come back clean, to the doctor’s astonishment), and partly for some light physical therapy to get her muscles used to moving again. She won’t be running any marathons anytime soon, but she can do a leisurely lap around her floor without getting winded.
Getting Sara back on her feet in the literal sense was the easy part. Even with Bart’s help, getting her life back together is going to be messy and painful. She’s officially in foster care. Her home will be going on the market as soon as various probate matters are addressed, and that could take months, maybe a couple of years to get straightened out, and every day along the way will serve as another harsh reminder of everything she’s lost.
The worst day of her recovery was the day she finally saw her parents. I visited her that afternoon. She couldn’t speak. All she did was cry.
Coming in at a close second was the day Bart grilled her about her ordeal. I didn’t see the point of forcing Sara to dredge all that up again, but Bart needed to tie the matter up in a neat little bow. He walked away disappointed; she couldn’t shed any real light on the King of Pain’s motivations. His reasons, whatever they were, may have died with him.
Her best day was when Meg came to visit, although the outcome was not what I would have guessed. They had a long talk. It ended with Sara asking Meg to give her some space, to let her get her head together and get herself back on something resembling stable ground. At first that decision concerned me. I was worried that Sara was pushing Meg away, isolating herself from people who cared about her, but she set me straight.
“Meg deserves a girlfriend,” Sara said, “not a project.”
Respect.
Still, I wish Meg had fought harder to remain a part of Sara’s life. She isn’t without support — she has me, of course, my mother, Bart and Natalie, even Edison — but the people who mean the most to her have frozen her out. Matt hasn’t visited her since their little chat, and Stuart and Missy still want nothing to do with her. Her friendships with them may be shattered beyond repair.
One problem at a time.
Bart picks me up Saturday morning and drives me to the hospital. He waits outside while I take Sara’s backpack up to her. I hand it to her, and she cradles the it against her chest, her gaze distant.
“I feel like I’ve been living out of this thing forever,” she says.
“It’s almost over. You’ll have a new home soon, someplace you can settle down. I put together a nice outfit for you. I thought you should make a good first impression on your new foster family.”
“I shouldn’t be going to a foster home. I should be going to Byrne.”
“Sara...”
“I killed someone.” She swallows hard. “I killed someone. You can’t just sweep that under the rug.”
I don’t know. The Protectorate’s done a good job of it so far. Concorde hasn’t made any sort of announcement to the media, so as far as the general public knows, the King of Pain is still at large. They won’t even tell me what they did with the body.
“I swear, if Bart won’t do something, I’ll turn myself in to the police,” Sara says.
“Sara, stop. I appreciate that you want to take responsibility for what you did. I respect that, but this is a complicated situation. Forget about Bart. I’ll work on Edison.” I give her a wry smile. “I think I can convince him to come down on you like a ton of bricks.”
Sara chuckles at that. “Thank you. For everything.”
“I have to take care of my best friend, don’t I? Come on. Let’s get you out of here.”
Sara slips into the bathroom and emerges a few minutes later, fully dressed, her empty backpack dangling sadly off her shoulder. Her doctor and an orderly pushing a wheelchair arrive a few minutes later to escort her outside.
Bart greets her at the hospital entrance. “Ready to go?” he says.
“Yeah,” Sara says.
Sara rides shotgun and spends the trip staring at her feet. Bart conspicuously avoids awkward topics of conversation, namely Sara’s request of him, and instead talks up her new foster home. He tells her he vetted the family personally, that she’ll be very happy there, but she’s barely listening.
“After you get settled in, I’ll take you over to your house to get some clothing, any personal belongings you might want right away,” Bart says.
“Uh-huh,” Sara says.
“I understand you’ll have your own room, so that’s good, right?”
“Sure.”
“Trust me, it’s good,” I say. “You don’t want to share a room with the girl who lives there. She can be a pain in the butt sometimes.”
“I think she’s perfectly pleasant company,” Bart says.
“You’re too kind.”
“Huh?” Sara says, glancing back at me. It takes a supreme effort of will to hold back my grin.
“We’re here,” Bart announces.
Sara twists back around in her seat to behold hew new home. She gasps, pressing her face and hands against the car window like a little kid marveling at a toy store’s Christmas display. She fumbles for the door handle and steps out of the car even as my mother emerges from the house, wiping her hands on a dish towel, her apron stained with tomato sauce from the massive lasagna she made for lunch — a more than suitable welcome home meal for our new guest.
Like I said, I have to take care of my best friend.
After lunch, we all head over to the former Danvers household to help Sara pack up. It takes a lot less time than I expect because she leaves a lot of her stuff behind, including half of her wardrobe. Her collection of Pirates of the Caribbean posters comes with her, along with her laptop and her movies, CDs, books, and an old stuffed bunny that she’s had since she was a baby, but the rest of her belongings stays right where they are. She claims she’ll come back for them later. I doubt she ever will.
It’s not a huge project, moving Sara into my house, but it’s enough to wipe her out. After we carry the last of the boxes upstairs, to the room that used to belong to Granddad, she crawls into her new bed to take a nap. She’s fast asleep by the time I close the door.
Now, time to take care of some overdue business. I could just call, but this needs to be a face-to-face discussion.
Mr. Steiger answers the door when I knock. “Carrie, hello,” he says. He smiles, two of his teeth a shade whiter than their coffee-stained beige neighbors — bridgework to hide the gap Matt created when he belted his father. “Looking for Matt?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Is he in?”
“In his room. Go on up.”
I pound on the door with authority. “I’m lookink foah Sarah Cahnnah,” I say in the world’s worst fake Schwarzenegger voice.
“What was that about?” Matt says upon opening the door.
“What? It was a Terminator reference.” Matt frowns. “I don’t even get points for effort?”
“Work on that pathetic Schwarzenegger impression and we’ll talk.”
“Can we talk anyway?” Matt steps
aside to let me in. “Thought you might like to know, Sara’s settled in.”
“Good.” Matt nods. “Good. How is she?”
“You could ask her yourself. You should ask her yourself. She misses you.” Matt nods again and sits on the foot of his bed. I join him. “Look, I get it. The love of your life told you you’re never going to be together and you’re disappointed, but that —”
“I’m not disappointed,” Matt insists. I raise a skeptical eyebrow. “Okay, I am, but I’m not. It’s like...” Matt stands back up and paces around his room as though physically searching for his explanation, like it fell off his nightstand and rolled under the bed or something. “It’s like I’ve had this huge question hanging over my head my whole life, driving me crazy, and I finally got an answer and yeah, it’s not the answer I wanted, but it’s an answer, and I now never have to worry about the question again.” He sighs. “That doesn’t make any sense, does it?”
“It makes perfect sense,” I say. “It’s called closure.”
“...Huh.”
Matt sits back down. I take his hand.
“We have to fix things,” I say. “I don’t mean the team. I mean us.”
“I don’t know if we can,” Matt says.
“But that’s not going to stop us from trying.”
“No.” He gives my fingers a gentle squeeze. “No it’s not.”
What does not kill me makes me stronger.
It’s a punchy way of saying that life is full of personal trials, and by enduring them and learning from them, we become better people. Sometimes that growth comes with a price. It comes with pain. It comes with loss. Sometimes your strength fails so completely that you’re left wondering how you can possibly survive whatever is beating you down.
You can. You absolutely can. All you need to do is find meaning in the suffering.
My life is now much more meaningful.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
When I sat down to start working on Cruel Summer in the fall of 2014, pretty much before I’d fully put Pasts Imperfect to bed, I was excited to finally tell this story. I’d had it plotted out in broad strokes ever since I conceived of Action Figures and was ready to finally bring it to life.
What I didn’t expect was how much this book would challenge me as a writer, particularly when dealing with the sensitive topic of Carrie’s sexual awakening. I wanted to balance honesty with restraint, to present the emotional truth of “the act” and its repercussions on Carrie without falling into titillation or, perhaps worse, timidity.
Not surprisingly, I was slightly off on a few points, and way off on one or two others, but my test-readers—my wife Veronica and my friends Kate Sokol, Julie Tremblay, Rob Isaacson, and Rachel Prue—were, as always, quick to point out where things went awry and set me straight.
In fact, Julie has proven herself one of my most reliable critical voices, and she has a proofreader’s keen eye, so when the need for me to find a new editor arose, she offered her services and I happily accepted. I’m hoping she’ll stick around to be my chief pedant and nitpicker for a good, long time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Bailey was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts and raised on a steady diet of comic books, Dungeons & Dragons, Saturday morning cartoons, sci-fi television, and horror movies…which explains a lot.
An effort to parlay his love of geek culture into a career as a comic book artist failed when he figured out he wasn’t that good, so he turned to writing as means of artistic expression. Since then, Michael has written several scripts for New England-area renaissance faires, as well as a number of articles based on faire culture for Renaissance Magazine.
In 2013, Michael left his job of 15 years as a reporter and blogger for his hometown newspaper, the Falmouth Enterprise, to pursue his writing career. His debut novel, Action Figures – Issue One: Secret Origins made its debut in September 2013.
Michael lives in Massachusetts with his wife Veronica, four cats, and an English bulldog.
Visit Michael online at www.innsmouthlook.com, and find him on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Goodreads.
Table of Contents
PART ONE: THE KING OF PAIN
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
PART TWO: THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
Table of Contents
PART ONE: THE KING OF PAIN
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
PART TWO: THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR