by Dan Wingreen
The halls still had kids roaming through them as he made his way to the cafeteria vending machines, but by the time he remembered he didn’t have any money and changed his destination to the teacher’s lounge, they’d mostly emptied out. As he walked through an area of the school he hadn’t been in for years—while desperately pretending this detour wasn’t the biggest adventure he’d been on in almost as long—he came across two older students—boys probably, but he couldn’t tell for sure from this angle—crowding a freshman-sized student against a row of lockers.
“Hey!” he barked, enjoying the way his voice echoed down the deserted hallway almost as much as he enjoyed watching the little shitbags flinch. “What’s going on here?”
Voice deepened for intimidation? Check. Threateningly neutral question? Check. It’s been too long since I’ve been able to do this. Please let this little freshman have a split lip or a bloody nose or something visible, so I can hand out some sweet, sweet suspensions.
“Shit,” he heard one of them say. “Come on, bro.”
Spencer gave a halfhearted shout for them to stop as they ran off, but he knew it was pointless. Only freshmen ever listened to the “get back here and wait to get in trouble” stuff. He resigned himself to letting them go right up until he came closer to the kid they’d been harassing and found himself staring into his son’s wide hazel eyes.
“Connor?”
“D—uh, Mr. Kent…”
Spencer saw red. He hated bullying at the best of times, but seeing it happen to his kid right in front of him, hearing the slight tremor of fear in his voice… All of a sudden, he was back in his own high school years; a small terrified boy who couldn’t take care of himself, let alone the tiny life growing inside a girl he’d exchanged maybe eight sober sentences with. The hall was so quiet he could almost hear the echoes of long-ago taunts and jeers.
“So, is your baby a little faggot too? Or is it just retarded?”
“I can’t believe that chink’s actually letting you raise her kid. I would have got rid of it the second I found out it was yours.”
“So, what are you gonna feed it anyway? Dogs and rice balls? Or just a steady diet of dick?”
He didn’t even realize he’d started to take off after the kids until he felt a hand grab his wrist, trying to hold him back.
“No, Mr. Kent, stop! Mr. Kent! Dad!”
Habit stopped him, more than anything else. Neither one of them wanted it to become common knowledge that Connor was Mr. Kent’s son. Spencer because he loved having Connor in his class, and Connor because he already had a hard-enough time without being known as the son of the most hated literature teacher in the school. Hearing Connor call him Dad in the middle of the halls had him glancing around to make sure no one had overheard, which had the side effect of freezing him in his tracks.
Fuck it. It’s not like I can catch them now anyway.
Spencer took a deep breath and turned to his son.
“What the hell was that?” he asked as he pried Connor’s hand off his wrist. “And I swear to god if you say ‘nothing,’ I’m gonna shove you inside a locker myself.”
“You can’t actually put a person inside these lockers. They’re too narrow. I think they were designed like that on purpose so no one—”
“Don’t change the subject,” Spencer said, crossing his arms. He’d never been tall, but he’d had years of dad experience in using every centimeter of height he did have to loom threateningly.
“It’s noth—”
Spencer raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, it’s not nothing,” Connor admitted, worrying at his lip and refusing to meet Spencer’s eyes. “But it’s not a big deal. They’re just a bunch of idiots who like picking on younger kids.”
Spencer clenched his jaw until he was sure he could speak without yelling. “I could quote suicide statistics that prove how much of a ‘big deal’ shit like this can be.” Connor opened his mouth, but Spencer steamrolled right over whatever he might have said. “And even if this is just an isolated incident of two bored losers pushing someone around because he’s too small to fight back, you’re my kid, so that makes it a big deal to me.”
“It isn’t though.” Connor’s voice was barely above a whisper.
Spencer refused to dignify that with a response. “I want names. Now.”
“What? No!”
“Connor.”
“No way, Dad,” Connor said, sounding panicked. “If they get in trouble, they’ll know I turned them in, and then it’ll get so much worse.”
“They’ll know it was you? So, they’re not actually bullying other kids?”
“They never got caught by a teacher with anyone else!”
“I could just say I recognized their faces.”
Connor started shaking his head before Spencer had even finished. “No, Dad, I’m not risking it. I’m not gonna be their punching bag for the rest of the year. No way. Please just let this go. Please. I promise it’s nothing I can’t handle. Just please don’t make this worse for me.”
He’d never been good at resisting his kid when he begged for something, but this time his anger outweighed the usual guilt that came along with being a middling-at-best single father.
“I could ground you for the rest of the year.”
“I’m home alone more often than not.” Connor said it straightforward, like it was just a fact of life and not anything particularly bad, but Spencer still mentally flinched. “You get back right before dinner, so that’s like four hours of grounding time before bed every day total. I could deal with that.”
Spencer could have reminded him about weekends, or the fact that he was only so late on days when he had to supervise the ninth-grade detentions—a task that had fallen to him as the newest freshman teacher—but he recognized when his son was going to be stubborn about something no matter what logic he used.
“Fine,” he ground out. “But I’m going to find out who those kids are on my own, and when I do, they’ll be spending so much time in detention they won’t have a spare second to think about who might have turned them in.”
“Dad, no. Please just forget about it.”
“I can’t do that.”
Connor’s eyes hardened. “Fine. I hope you enjoy it when I start coming home with broken bones every day.”
In an impressive feat of strength, he grabbed his bulging bag in one fluid motion and ran down the hall.
“Connor!”
Connor flipped him off over his shoulder right before rounding the corner.
Spencer sighed. “That went well,” he informed the nearest locker.
The locker wisely stayed silent.
He sighed again and rubbed at his too-dry eyes. If there was one thing he absolutely hated, it was fighting with his kid. Even when he was in high school and college and his parents were raising Connor more than he was, he’d always felt like it was the two of them against the world. It had taken a few years and more than a few lectures from his mom before he could bring himself to discipline Connor instead of finding ways to excuse his misbehavior, but even now when he had a better handle on all the parenting crap, he couldn’t help feeling horribly alone at times like this.
And he’s only barely fourteen. How the hell am I gonna deal with the next five years?
Although, Spencer had pretty much been asking himself the same question since he was a teenager, and his answer had always been the same. As long as Connor didn’t get anyone pregnant, Spencer could deal with anything. He believed that. He had to because the alternative—that he couldn’t do this by himself—wasn’t even an option. Becky was gone, his parents were almost four hundred miles away, he couldn’t afford a nanny, and guys weren’t exactly lining up to have their shot with the neighborhood’s twenty-eight-year-old single dad. No, Spencer was on his own, and being on his own was something he’d made peace with a long time ago. He could only do what he’d always done: muddle through, hope for the best, and occasionally take his frustrations out on an
y student stupid enough to give him an excuse. Lucky for him, he had the perfect two already lined up.
All he needed to do was find them.
Chapter Two
“Are you coming home for Christmas, Timothy?”
Tim Ellis barely kept from sighing audibly enough for his phone to pick up the noise. He hadn’t even been talking to his mother for five minutes, and he could already feel a headache coming on.
“Mom, it’s the middle of summer. I have no idea what I’m doing for Christmas yet.”
“But it’s Christmas! How can you not know? It’s not like I’m asking when you’re getting married. Although you should keep in mind your father’s knee gets worse in the cold weather, so a summer wedding would—”
“I might be working,” he said quickly. The lecture he might get for cutting her off would be a million times better than the five thousandth rendition of “I Just Want To See My Son Married In New York Before I Die.” “On Christmas,” he clarified, just in case his mom thought he was referring to his mythical wedding date.
“On Christmas?” she repeated, sounding predictably aghast. “Who works on Christmas?”
People who desperately want to avoid you, I would assume.
He grimaced as a guilty weight settled on his chest. His mother wasn’t really that bad. Just…trying, at times, especially when she got on one of her tangents. Like Tim getting married, or Tim moving back to New York, or Tim not being around to pick his father up from one of his many—and, Tim secretly suspected, at least 75 percent fabricated to make him feel guilty—doctor’s appointments, or Tim being four states away for the holidays. She would have been the quintessential Jewish mother if not for the fact that she was a mostly devout Catholic. Only mostly, though, because while she didn’t believe in divorce and had very specific views on sex before marriage, she was surprisingly liberal in her views on sexuality. She was even a card-carrying member of PFLAG. Literally. Her official business cards read “Mary Ellis, Owner, Slice of Heaven Bakery and PFLAG Mother.”
“I just got hired. I’m not exactly the first person in line for time off on Christmas,” he said, only half lying. He was new, but the owner was his junior-year college-roommate’s older sister, and she thought Tim was the greatest thing since instant coffee. Even if they were open on Christmas, if he asked for time off, she’d probably give it. The problem was, Tim had been making the twelve-hour trip from Chicago to New York every year since he’d moved out to go to school. Now, after finally graduating and getting his own place, he was determined to spend at least one year not crammed into a Greyhound going across one of the busiest highways in the country at the busiest time of the year.
There was a beat of silence from the phone.
“Is this about not getting into your graduate program?” his too-perceptive mother asked. “Are you falling into a depression? Our family is prone to that, you know.”
With effort, Tim pushed down the by-now-familiar feeling of failure and betrayal. “It has nothing to do with that.” Oh God, the lies. You were right, Mom; it’s hard to stop lying once you start. “And I’m not depressed. I just don’t know if I’m going to be able to get the time off.”
His mom made her skeptical humming noise, the one that used to make Tim feel like she was reading into his soul when he was a kid and that he would never admit to using on some of the younger center kids when they acted up.
“If you say so,” she said, and Tim could tell from her tone this was going to come up in every single conversation they had until he either admitted his supposed depression or he woke up in a hospital bed after a suicide attempt to find her standing over him telling the doctor, “I knew all along he was depressed, but he wouldn’t listen to me and now look what’s happened.”
“Will you at least try to come home, sweetheart? Your father and I miss you very much, and we aren’t as young as we used to be. God forbid this might be the last holiday we ever have as a family before one of us dies. And with all his health issues, you know your father is going to go first. I’ll probably walk in one day to find him dead right there on the kitchen floor. You’ll feel so horrible because you never got a chance to tell him you loved him one last time, and I’ll be all alone in an empty apartment, crying my heart out, with my son halfway across the world and probably dying too at that very moment, leaving me even more heartbroken and alone.”
The. Guilt.
Tim steeled himself. He was an adult now, freshly graduated from college and everything. If there was ever going to be a time to resist his mother’s emotional manipulation, this was it. All he had to do was firmly tell her she and Dad would be fine alone for one year and to stop being dramatic. A simple, firm refusal and he could maybe feel like some part of his life was finally back in his control.
“I…” Dammit. I can’t do it… “I’ll…try, Mom.”
Which pretty much meant he’d be having overcooked chicken in New York again this year.
“That’s all I ask.” There was another pause, most likely for his mother to close her eyes and savor the sweet taste of victory, before she deftly changed the subject. “So, how is that new job anyway? Do they overwork you? Do you still have time to volunteer? You know, at the center?”
“The job is fine. It’s…you know. It’s fine.”
“Timothy…”
“No, really. There’s nothing wrong with the job, I promise.” Aside from the fact that I’m back in a bakery because I have four years of psychology credits and Professor Asshole Douchebag wouldn’t let me into his graduate program unless I sucked his dick metaphorically and literally. “I’m just a little upset. I had to move halfway across the city, and now the center’s too far away for me to get to easily.”
“Oh, sweetheart! Don’t tell me you stopped going. You loved volunteering there!”
“I know, but my job’s more important.” Not nearly as important as what I wanted to be doing with my life, but keeping myself from sleeping on the streets is important to me, if no one else. “And it’s not like that’s the only center in the city. I found another one closer to my apartment I’m going to check out this weekend. Hopefully, they have a similar program or something.”
“I’m so sorry, honey, but I’m glad you’re keeping a positive outlook. Depression runs in our family, you know. Your grandfather jumped right in front of one of those police horses after he lost his job. Of course, the only thing he accomplished was bruising his tush when the thing knocked him over and worrying my mother to death, but he still made the attempt. I never want to go through anything like that again, especially with you.” She made another one of her patented noises, this one halfway between a scoff and a coo. “But enough about sad things. I’m sure these new kids will love you just as much as the old ones did. They’ll be good for you, and I know you’ll be good for them.”
For the first time since seeing his mom’s name on the caller ID, Tim smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so too.”
“See? Positivity! There’s my Timothy.”
He could practically see her beaming smile; the one that added ten years of lines and wrinkles to her face and yet somehow made her beautiful at the same time. If nothing else, he missed seeing her smile in person. Especially when he was feeling down.
“It’s important to keep a positive mindset,” he said, mostly for a lack of anything else to reply with.
“And he’s so smart too. How these schools aren’t begging you to be in their graduate programs, I’ll never know. You sound like a shrink already. Don’t you worry about a thing, sweetheart. Next time they’ll snatch you up, and in a few years, we’ll be laughing about all this over our yearly traditional Christmas dinner, you’ll see.”
A surprised laugh forced its way out of Tim’s throat. “Jesus Christ. You never quit, do you?”
“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain!”
Tim rolled his eyes. “Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Jesus.”
His mom made another noise, this one sounding suspiciously like choked-o
ff chortle.
“Well. Don’t forget the Commandments just because you’re living on your own. God sees all. Even in Chicago. Which means no wild sex parties either.”
“Mom, stop.”
“I’m just saying. Now that you’re single again, I don’t want you going crazy with the sex. I know how young people are these days, and you’re a handsome young man. It wouldn’t be hard for you to drown yourself in loose boys who are probably filled to the gills with disease.”
Tim groaned. Personally, he thought his mom was vastly overstating his appeal to the gay youth of Chicago. Sure, he’d had a few boyfriends over the years, and more than a few that wouldn’t qualify for the title under even the loosest definition, but they mostly tended to get bored with him once they realized he wasn’t into clubbing or the drug-fueled orgies his mother was probably imagining. Tim took dating seriously these days, and there weren’t very many college guys looking to settle down. There were even less older guys looking to settle down with a twenty-two-year-old assistant baker.
“What’s that noise about?” his mother asked suspiciously. “You’re still single, right?”
“Y—”
“Please don’t tell me you’ve gotten back with Rudy.”
“Oh, God. No, Mom. No way.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want you lying to me.”
“I’m not lying. I promise. I’m not back with Rudy. Rudy is…an asshole. And a bigot. And—”
“And he was incredibly rude to your father and me.”
Tim closed his eyes. Of course, this is about how he treated you. “Yes, he was very rude to you guys that one time you met him for five minutes.”
“He was!”
“He barely said two words to you.”
“Exactly! He ignored us—your parents! On our first meeting, even. Why are you still defending him?”
Because it’s barely been two months since we broke up. Because our relationship was nine months of unhealthy codependency and emotional manipulation, and I spent half of those nine months ignoring or making excuses for the truly awful parts of his personality and the other half stupidly thinking I could fix him. Because I so desperately wanted just one relationship to last. Because if we had stayed together a few more months I probably would have asked him to marry me like the idiot I am. Take your pick.