How Matt knows some of this junk...why he knows this junk...
“Ooh! The Simpsons!” Missy says. “We have the right number of people, we have two boys and three girls...”
“I like the way Snrub thinks,” Stuart says, appropriately.
“All in favor?” I say in my official capacity as chairwoman, and the motion is met with a resounding group “Aye!”
Costume talk goes on until we break for dinner. Sara walks me home and says she’ll swing back in an hour so we can hike over to Missy’s house, which is hosting the nightly homework session for the first time. Well, for the first time since I joined the group. I’m told that Missy hosts rarely because of her father Dr. Ken Hamill, who, according to local legend, is a stern and humorless figure who can kill a buzz at fifty paces. Homework nights at the Hamill household tend to be dull affairs that, shock and horror, focus almost exclusively on homework. I’m perversely curious to meet the man, if for no other reason than to compare and contrast father and daughter.
“Mom, I’m home!” I call out. Here in the House of Hauser this normally mundane ritual has become a formal check-in and, for my mom, cause for celebration. It means I’ve survived another day in a town she is certain is trying to kill me (oh, if only I could blow this off as baseless parental paranoia).
“Hey, honey, how was school?” she says from the kitchen, where something marvelous is cooking, as always. I live in fear of the day she decides she’s too tired to make anything after a hard day at work. Tonight is not that night. She dusts some fish fillets with one of her many top-secret spice blends and drops them into a pan of olive oil. I inspect a pot on the back burner. It’s full of mixed vegetables, steaming to perfection.
“Looks like we have a very heart-smart menu this evening,” I say.
“I noticed my pants were getting a bit snug,” Mom says as though this is no big deal. Trust me: whenever a woman’s jeans start feeling tight, it’s a big deal.
“Really? I haven’t had any problems.” She gives me a sidelong glance that tells me I’d best not sass her anymore. I make no promises. “Wait, only two of us tonight? Where’s Granddad?”
“Bowling night.”
“Since when does Granddad bowl?”
“He hasn’t in ages,” Mom says, “but he decided to take it up again.”
“He’s been going out a lot lately.”
“I know what you’re thinking. He’s not trying to get away from us.”
“Really?”
“Maybe a little,” she says, but she’s smiling. “But in a good way. You know how withdrawn he got after Mom died. It’s good he’s getting out again, seeing his friends.”
And that there is what you’d call the leitmotif of the Hauser-slash-Briggs family. We’ve all been going through periods of personal upheaval followed by periods of trying to find our “new normal,” and we’re all hitting our respective grooves. Granddad has been reconnecting with his old hobbies and friends, Mom has been getting together with co-workers—dinner party here, cocktails there—and I have the Hero Squad. I guess for me it’s more like I’ve found my new abnormal.
The only one who hasn’t readjusted is my dad. I talk to him a few times a week and when I ask him what’s going on, his answer always falls into one of three categories: work, stuff around the house, and “nothing much.” He never mentions anything that sounds remotely like a social life, not so much as a beer with buddies after work or a Friday night movie. He hasn’t found anything to fill his life now that Mom and I aren’t in it.
Crap. Now I’m all depressed.
“Speaking of friends,” Mom says, “where is homework night tonight?”
“Missy’s place.”
“You haven’t been there before, have you?”
“Nope.”
“Where does she live?”
“She lives right along, um...what’s the name of the main road out there? The road we’re off of?” I want to say Outhouse Lane but I know that’s not right.
“Brickhouse Lane.”
“Yeah. But farther down, like, heading toward the highway.”
“Okay. You planning to walk?”
“Yeah, Sara’s coming by after dinner and we’re heading over together.”
“Okay, good. When do you expect to be done? Usual time?”
“Maybe I should just file weekly schedules,” I say. “That way we can skip over this whole thing where you try not to sound like you’re grilling me even though you totally are.”
Mom turns to face me, hands on her hips: stern Mom Pose Number One. “I have a right to know where you’re going to be, you know,” she says. “It’s part of my job description, keeping track of you.”
“Yeah, but that last time you wanted a detailed itinerary was—”
When she was worried sick about me; when I was hanging out with a very questionable class of teenagers. We were typical bored, apathetic adolescents who spent our leisure time annoying mall cops with our mere presence, but Mom knew we were one unlocked liquor cabinet away from serious trouble. I didn’t see that at the time. I only saw a nosy pain-in-the-butt mother. This time she’s not worrying that my friends will lead me astray, she’s worried—terrified that one day I’m going to be walking down the street, minding my own business, when some super-powered whackadoo drops out of the sky to splatter me all over the landscape (again, if only I could dismiss this as Much Ado About Nothing – Parental Edition).
“Nothing’s going to happen to me, Mom,” I say. “I’ll be fine.”
A half-dozen emotions flash across her face before she settles on a thin smile.
“Call me when you’re on your way home,” she says.
“Hey Sara, hey Carrie,” Missy says through clenched teeth. “Come on in, my dad’s home, I’m so sorry.”
“I thought he was working late,” Sara whispers as we slip into Casa de Hamill, a house as clean and tidy inside as it is outside. If this were one of those fancy gated communities, this would be the impossibly perfect model home they’d show to potential buyers.
“He was supposed to but there was a power outage, so he came home,” Missy says.
“Melissa.” Missy cringes at hearing her full name. I peer over her head and see her parents in the next room, sitting at a fancy antique dining room table. Mother Hamill smiles at us. Father Hamill does not.
“Yeah?”
“Invite your friends to wait for you in the living room” Father Hamill says, “and come finish your dinner.”
“Coming. What he said,” Missy says to us. “Oh, don’t turn on the TV.”
“Seriously. Don’t turn it on,” Sara says as we take a seat on a couch that is, no kidding, sealed in transparent plastic. I thought only old ladies with a million cats did that.
We sit in near-total silence, near total except for the squeak of plastic beneath my butt and the clink of silverware against porcelain drifting in from the dining room. There’s no conversation whatsoever.
Eerie, isn’t it? Sara says via telepathy. Our practicing is paying off; she can turn our psychic telephone on and, more importantly, completely off easily.
I’ll say. It feels like a funeral home, minus the mirth and whimsy.
Sara snickers despite herself. I catch Father Hamill give her a look that is simultaneously neutral and disapproving. I’ve never met a man who expressed himself entirely in subtext.
I pass the time examining from afar a half-dozen photos in identical silver frames positioned precisely atop a mantelpiece, like elite soldiers standing at attention. One is a wedding photo. One is a family photo taken quite some time ago (Missy appears tiny even by Missy standards). She’s in two other pictures. In one she’s hugging an Asian man who is not her dad (her uncle, I later learn), in the other she’s wearing a bright leotard and holding a trophy nearly as tall as her, a testament to her glory days as an aspiring young gymnast—a pursuit that’s been on indefinite hold since the family moved to Kingsport a few years ago (the schools here don’t offer mu
ch outside of the traditional team sports). In every single photo, Missy is sporting that big Muppety grin of hers. How such a small face can contain such a huge smile...
Ten minutes pass before Missy returns, her mouth drawn into a tight line. “Carrie,” she says with an air of formality, “these are my parents, Patricia and Kenneth.”
“Hello, Carrie, it’s nice to finally meet you,” Mrs. Hamill says, and the first thing that strikes me is how mismatched the Hamills are: she has a touch of middle-age plumpness, he’s skinny as a rail; she’s the tallest person in the room by a couple of inches, he’s almost as short as Missy; she’s wearing a casual blouse and jeans, he’s in a suit the Secret Service would reject as too severe; she’s smiling, and I have sincere doubts Dr. Hamill has ever experienced a facial expression in his life—which is all the stranger considering that, now I see them side-by-side, I can see a lot of Dr. Hamill in Missy’s face, which is always bright and happy (in that respect, she definitely takes after her mother).
“It’s nice to meet you,” I say, shaking her hand.
“Hello, Carrie,” Dr. Hamill says. He does not offer his hand. “That would be short for...?”
“Caroline, but everyone calls me Carrie.”
“Mm.”
Translation: as far as he’s concerned, I’m Caroline.
“Would you girls like anything? Water, lemonade?” Mrs. Hamill offers.
“I’m good, thank you,” Sara says, enunciating carefully. She’s standing straighter, too.
“Same here, thanks,” I say.
“Well, if you change your mind, you just let us know, ‘kay?” Mrs. Hamill says. I catch the faintest note of a Southern drawl. Conversely, Dr. Hamill speaks without a hint of an accent or any undue inflection. He’s almost mechanical. If the academic field ever dries up for him, he could make a nice living recording announcements for public transit systems.
“I’ll be in my study,” he announces. “Unless there’s an emergency, I’d appreciate it if I wasn’t disturbed. I have quite a bit of work to complete for tomorrow.”
“Too bad about the power,” I say. Dr. Hamill, with the merest twitch of his eyebrow, asks me why I’m attempting to engage him in conversation. Apparently, I’m setting a precedent. Or crossing a line.
“You know about that?” he says.
“Missy mentioned it.”
“Mm,” he says. “Have a productive evening.”
“Arigato, chichi,” Missy says.
It’s there, for a split-second, as fleeting as a lightning bolt: a slight dip in the corners of Father Hamill’s mouth. Yes, people, he definitely frowned.
Missy remarked a while ago that her parents don’t act like people in love, and that comment comes back to me as the Hamills part ways without a word to or a glance at one another. Each acts like the other isn’t there. I repeat, I wouldn’t wish divorce on Missy, but now I at least understand where she’s coming from.
Once the parental units clear the living room, Missy proclaims with an impish grin, “Dad hates it when I speak Japanese at him.”
“But he’s Japanese,” I say.
“Not by choice.”
The boys show up partway through A Brief History of the Hamill Family, a dissertation by Missy Hamill, age fifteen. Missy’s grandparents, Daisuke and Yikiko Mifune of Tokyo, immigrated to America and, wanting their children Seiji and Kenjiro to fit in, pushed them hard to “act American.” Seiji, Missy’s uncle, resisted, but Kenjiro did exactly as told. The Mifunes’ plan worked too well and Kenjiro remade himself as a perfect American, to the point of legally changing his first name to Kenneth and, when he got married, taking Patricia’s last name instead of vice-versa.
“Crime against humanity, you ask me,” Matt says. “Who’d want to ditch a cool last name like Mifune? You could have been Missy Mifune. You could have told people you were related to Toshiro Mifune.”
“Who?” I say, and Matt looks at me with an increasingly familiar expression, a fine blend of distress, disappointment, and disbelief.
“I’m adding Seven Samurai to the long and growing list of movies you’re going to borrow from me.”
The nightly homework jam proceeds as usual, with each of us grumbling about our respective academic roadblocks: we ladies have formed a united front against mathematics (plus, Missy hates Spanish, mostly because it isn’t Japanese, which the school doesn’t offer); Stuart has a grudge against anything under the general umbrella of social studies; and Matt, Matt spreads his apathy in a thin, even layer over every subject (except, I note, science). He doesn’t complain as much as he looks for any excuse to do something more interesting. I’ve noticed that half the time he blows his homework off entirely and punches it out during home room the next morning.
The awkward moment of the night comes when I hit the kitchen for a glass of water and bump into Dr. Hamill, who is waiting for the tea kettle to boil.
“Dr. Hamill,” I say in my most respectful tone.
“Caroline,” he says. “How is the homework coming?”
“It’s coming along. It doesn’t want to but I think we’re slowly but surely beating it into submission.”
He gives me the slightest of nods. Okay, not much for the jokes, this guy.
“Melissa tells me you’re exceptionally intelligent,” he says. The unexpected compliment throws me.
“Uh, yeah, I guess so. I don’t like to brag...”
“You should be proud of your intellect.”
“Oh, I am, don’t get me wrong but, well, you know how it is when you’re the smartest person in the room.”
Dr. Hamill looks at me and his eyebrows arch and his lips purse ever so briefly. I’m not sure, but I think he just agreed with me.
“It’s shameful how our society sees fit to heap scorn on the educated,” he says, flicking the stove off before the kettle can whistle. “People are so quick to praise meaningless feats of physical prowess, reward those willing to play the fool on a television reality show.” He turns to face me full on. “I try to impress this on Melissa. It’s comforting to know at least one of her friends seems to be of a like mind.”
I have no idea how to respond to that. What he said was one part praise, one part expression of hope for his daughter, and one part steaming dump on Matt, Sara, and Stuart.
“Missy has good people in her life,” I say. “They care about her a lot. You should be pleased that she has friends who love her so much. She could do a lot worse.”
“Mm.”
Translation: she could do a lot better. I decide right then that I don’t much care for Dr. Hamill.
“Back to it,” I say, and I leave without ever getting my drink.
TWENTY-ONE
“Mr. Semler?”
Archimedes cannot bring himself to correct the guard. “Yes?”
“Your attorney’s here,” the guard says, his voice thin and tinny through the speaker. “I’m going to take you to the conference room so you can speak to him in private.”
My attorney, Archimedes thinks bitterly. That fool Fresch, a man who claims to be an ally, a friend. No such thing, not for him. He rises from his cot and a rueful laugh slips out. All he wanted was to be part of the real world. Now he finds himself more alone, more isolated, than he ever was as an elaborate piece of software “living” in a virtual reality.
The cell door pops open with a soft hiss and slides into a recess in the wall. “What’s funny?” the guard asks.
“Nothing,” Archimedes says. “Nothing at all.”
The officer is gentle, respectful as he guides Archimedes out of the cell and down a sterile white corridor. Byrne Penitentiary and Detention Center, he quickly discovered, is not dissimilar to the Protectorate’s detention area in terms of aesthetics, but is immeasurably more secure. The guards are armed and armored, every inch of space is monitored by cameras and complex sensor arrays, and every door is sealed tight by foolproof electronic locks that scan handprints and retinal patterns and require a voice ID confirmation—a
nd these are only the security measures he can see. Who knows what might be hiding in the ceiling, the walls, the floors to stop an escapee dead in his tracks, perhaps literally.
The guard deposits Archimedes in a small room with two chairs and a table, all of which are secured to the floor. The man who greets him is not Fresch but he has the air of a lawyer, complete with that characteristic smugness, and yet—and yet, he is so unremarkable that, were anyone to press Archimedes for a description, he would be unable to say anything more useful than He was a middle-aged white man with dark hair.
The man waits until the guard leaves. “Hello, Archimedes,” he says. “Mr. Fresch has been removed from your case. I’m representing you now. You and a few other new arrivals, actually, but for the present I’m interested in you and you alone. Sit, please.”
“I’ll stand.”
“Please sit.” The man takes a seat and folds his hands on the tabletop, bringing to Archimedes’ attention the fact he has no briefcase with him. “I don’t want a confrontation. We tried that approach with you already and, well, we all know how that turned out, don’t we? Yes we do.”
Archimedes stiffens, his fists clenching involuntarily.
The man holds up a finger. He takes a cell phone from his pocket, plays with the touch-screen, and lays the device on the table. “There,” he says. “Now we can speak openly. Should anyone ever review the security system’s records, they’ll discover that there was some sort of mysterious glitch in the audio.”
“Who are you?” Archimedes demands. “Who sent you?”
The man pats the air. Calm down, the gesture says. “My employer is very upset with you. It’s bad enough you stole one very expensive battlesuit and let it fall into the Protectorate’s hands, but five?” The man shakes his head. “Now, we do appreciate that you didn’t kill the pilots, that was noble of you, but your thievery, I’m afraid, cannot go unaddressed.”
Archimedes rubs the bare back of his neck, his fingers running over a small bump of scar tissue. He feels naked, defenseless.
“Unaddressed,” he says. He swallows hard in preparation for his next question. “Are you here to kill me?”
Action Figures - Issue One: Secret Origins Page 17