Action Figures - Issue One: Secret Origins

by Michael Bailey

  That face, now a few years older, is inhaling potato chips when I return; Stuart has a family-size bag sitting in his lap and a two-liter bottle of orange soda on the table, all for himself.

  “And the gorging begins. Do you get a whole turkey to yourself at Thanksgiving?” I say, and everyone goes freeze-frame on me.

  “We don’t really do Thanksgiving here,” Stuart says like it’s no big deal. I’m about to ask why but I catch Matt surreptitiously shaking his head at me and Sara slips into my head to tell me Let it slide, Carrie, don’t say anything else about Thanksgiving.

  “What we do do is take you to the mystical land of Greyhawk,” Matt says, swerving us away from whatever mess I nearly drove into.

  Over the next several hours we trudge through the Misty Swamp and the Moorfowl Mountains to discover the titular Palace, and along the way slay a lot of orcs and kobolds and freaky three-headed monsters and some giant killer monkeys (no lie, giant killer monkeys) to recover a legendary ruby worth a ton of gold. I walk out alive but a few years older (I got aged by a ghost), but I scored a couple of magic wands and a magic cooking pot (which I guess is way cooler than it sounds). Sara got a crystal harp, Missy got a magic dagger, and Stuart snagged a sweet ruby sword. Despite the complete lack of either dungeons or dragons, it’s a fun way to kill a Sunday.

  It’s almost dinnertime when we break. I’ve eaten nothing but junk so I could use real food, but I’m not all that eager to go home and spend another awkward night barely talking to Mom. Granted, maybe all our not talking is why things are still weird between us...

  Speaking of things unsaid, “Is someone going to tell me what I almost stepped in back there so I don’t do it again?”

  The group shuffles to a stop at the end of Stuart’s front walk. Matt looks at Sara who looks at Missy who looks at Matt who says, “Thanksgiving’s kind of a sore subject for the family.”

  “How come?”

  Matt looks at Sara who looks at Missy who looks at Matt. Could the saying I’m out of the loop be any more literal?

  “Just avoid bringing it up,” Matt says before abruptly taking his leave, I suspect to avoid any further probing on my part. Missy follows suit.

  “Please don’t ask,” Sara says.

  “I’m not trying to be a noodge,” I say.

  Sara starts walking. “I know, but it isn’t my place to say anything—and don’t ask Stuart about it. Seriously. He doesn’t talk about it, we don’t talk about it.”

  Matt, Sara, Stuart, they’ve known each other since they were little kids, and Missy’s been part of the group for a few years. As quickly as I became friends with everyone, I often forget I’m the newcomer. I shouldn’t be surprised there are pieces of personal history I’m not privy to. I shouldn’t be offended that they don’t automatically let me in on certain sore subjects.

  I shouldn’t be. Doesn’t mean I’m not.

  A phone call to Dad sets me straight. Sara’s totally in the right for not telling tales out of school, as he puts it, and I shouldn’t take it personally. Stuart’s baggage is Stuart’s to share and no one else’s, he says. I know all this, but hearing it from someone else, from him, is what I needed.

  Bonus: calling Dad gives me a perfect excuse to lock myself in my room right after dinner and avoid the maternal unit. I know, I’m acting like a petulant little girl by avoiding her, but I look at it as the best way to avoid conflict; my temper has been on a hair-trigger lately and I don’t know why.

  No, that’s a dirty rotten lie. I know exactly why I’ve been so pissy lately: between his birthday and the holidays coming up, I’m missing Daddy more than ever and I’m taking my frustration out at whoever gives me an excuse.

  I shouldn’t. It doesn’t solve anything.

  And yet, I’m finding it harder and harder to give a crap.

  Monday comes, Monday goes, and in the history of Mondays, I believe this one will not go down as the Mondayest of Mondays. It felt more like a Tuesday, really: plain and dull and uneventful.

  Which is perhaps why today, being Real Tuesday, has been one long bout of déjà vu. From waking up late to my hasty breakfast of coffee and strawberry Pop-Tarts (finest of all Pop-Tarts), to the walk to school with Sara, during which we discuss schoolwork and after-school plans while a light breeze blows dry autumn leaves about our ankles, to the drudgery of the school day, it all feels like a rerun of the day before.

  That is, until I see something I have never seen before: Stuart looking like he’s about to kill someone.

  The bell rings, freeing me from the evil clutches of math class so I can go subject myself to the cafeteria’s mad science experiment du jour, and en route I see Stuart jamming his books into his locker like a sadistic prison guard throwing an uppity inmate into solitary confinement.

  “Stuart? Something wrong?”

  Dumb question, that. His chest is heaving like he’s just run a marathon. “Tell Matt to call me when he gets out of school,” he rumbles.

  “Wait, where are you going?”

  “Home.” He leaves without another word or without closing his locker door, which now has a faint imprint of his hand in the steel.

  “That’s all he said?” Matt says when I relay the news at lunch.

  “Call him, he’s going home, that’s it,” I say. “But let me tell you, he looked totally apehouse. Like, one step away from taking someone’s head off.”

  “He was fine this morning,” Sara says, which is true; three hours ago he was normal ol’ Smilin’ Stuart Lumley, Mr. Cool himself. “I can’t imagine what happened since this morning.”

  But imagine is all we can do until the two o’clock bell sounds and lets us loose upon the world, by which point I’ve come up with any number of theories, all equally unpleasant, all equally unlikely; I highly doubt Stuart was getting kicked out of school for doing something stupid like getting into a fight or smoking.

  “Stuart? God no,” Matt says, leading us out toward edge of the school grounds, well away from prying ears. “Stuart’s never been in trouble in his life. Well, except for a few scuffles with school bullies, but that’s not—”

  Everyone stops and Matt looks at Sara looks at Missy looks at Matt and no one looks at me and my my, doesn’t this all feel familiar?

  “Oh, Matt,” Missy says, “you don’t think...”

  Matt digs his phone out of his pocket and makes the call. Sara can’t contain her anxiety, literally; I feel it like ants crawling all over my skin.

  “Hey, man, what’s going on?” Matt says. His entire body sags. “Wha—? Are you frickin’ kidding me?” Missy tries to speak but Matt cuts her off with a sharp wave. He’s silent for a long time and then he says, simmering, “You want us to come over? You sure? Okay. Call me if you change your mind, all right? Later.”

  “What is it?” Sara says, but all Matt does is cast an uncertain glance in my direction and chews on his bottom lip.

  “Oh, for—fine. I’ll leave so you can have your private little confab,” I snap, forgetting everything Dad said to me two nights ago. “Junior member of the group and all...”

  “Carrie, no,” Matt says. “Don’t go.”

  “Matt,” Missy begins.

  “She’ll find out eventually.” Matt gestures aimlessly, like he’s trying to mold the air itself into an explanation. “Stuart got some really bad news this morning from Mr. Dent. Next week this kid, Ronny Vick, he’s going to be going to school here.”

  Missy utters a gut-wrenching whimper and latches onto Sara like she’s a life preserver, and I feel Sara’s mood shift from gnawing worry to full-tilt fury.

  “Stuart has some kind of history with Ronny?” I say.

  “Yeah,” Matt says. “Ronny’s the guy who killed Stuart’s little brother.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The words hit me and I feel sick, sick with horror, sick with guilt over how bitchy I was just now. I sway on my feet and Matt grabs me by the arm to keep me upright.

  That picture in Stuart’s house, the
one with Stuart and two kids who look like him, one older, one younger—neither of whom I’ve ever seen in person, because one of them would be in college by now, and the other...oh my God...

  “What happened?” is all I can manage.

  What happened, Matt tells me, was a series of unrelated bad decisions that resulted in the worst day in Stuart’s life.

  Stuart and the others, they were all in seventh grade when it happened. Missy had moved to Kingsport over the summer and was new to the group but already integrated, already as close to Stuart as she could be without the benefit of blood or romance, and she was the unwitting catalyst for the chain-reaction that led to Jeffrey Lumley’s death at the tender age of ten. None other than Amber Sullivan, harpy princess of the Kingsport school system, started picking on Missy, who in the heat of the moment shoved her—right in front of a teacher who marched both of them to the principal’s office for immediate punishment. Missy spent the afternoon in detention and Stuart insisted on waiting for her. Once released, they marched over to the Carnivore’s Cave to drown their misery in overpriced chili cheese fries.

  Halfway through his second order, Stuart remembered he was under parental orders to go straight to Jeffrey’s school and escort the boy home. Jeffrey had been getting harassed by another student and, worried about the boy’s well-being, the Lumleys thought the presence of his big brother, who was far more physically imposing than a twelve-year-old should be, would keep the bully in check.

  Stuart dropped his fries and ran over to Jeffrey’s school. He arrived to find a crime scene.

  Ronny Vick, a kid who was two years too old for seventh grade and too much of a punk to care, had made it a daily routine to torment Jeffrey from his last class all the way to the bus. On this terrible day, Ronny added to the name-calling a shove down the front steps. By all rights Jeffrey should have face-planted, scraped his hands, skinned his knees, cried his eyes out. Instead, he cracked the back of his skull on the edge of the bottom step.

  Jeffrey Lumley died in front of his classmates and his teachers, and none of them realized it until he failed to get back up.

  Ronny didn’t try to run and hide. He stood there in a deeper state of shock than anyone and didn’t move an inch until a police officer took him by the arm and put him in his cruiser.

  This all happened three years ago, two days before Thanksgiving. The family skipped their holiday dinner and instead prepared to bury Jeffrey. That happened the next day, forever giving “Black Friday” a cruel personal meaning.

  I never met Jeffrey, I wasn’t there when any of this happened, but I’m bawling anyway, right along with Sara and Missy, for whom that day is a red, raw scar on their hearts, and Matt is barely holding himself together.

  “I’m so sorry,” I sob, not knowing what else to say. What can I say? What is there to say?

  “I can’t believe they’re letting him out,” Sara says, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

  “He’s already out. He got out yesterday,” Matt says, tacking on a curse. “Can you believe that crap? Guy kills a little kid, spends not even two whole years in a juvie facility and gets to walk out and go right back to living his life.”

  “And he’s going to be going to school here?” Missy says.

  “I guess it’s part of his probation. He has to go back to school and get his diploma.”

  “Let him get his GED,” Sara says. “At home. Far away from Stuart.”

  “Definitely be safer for him,” Matt says.

  “You don’t think Stuart would go after him?” I say.

  “The guy killed his kid brother. Wouldn’t you?”

  With everyone’s moods in the garbage, we scrap the nightly homework session. Matt vetoes going to Stuart’s simply to hang out and cheer him up, insisting that the man needs his space.

  Just as well, because I doubt I’d be able to so much as fake a smile tonight. More likely I’d see Stuart and start crying again. I feel terrible for him, and not only for the obvious reason; I think about what he said about his family passing on Thanksgiving, and I conjure this mental image of the Lumleys sleepwalking through the day, trying to pretend that the fourth Thursday of November is nothing special, certainly not a cause for a family gathering that will forever be one person short.

  I can totally sympathize on that point. Not that my case is anything like Stuart’s (thank God), but I know what it’s like to face a holiday dinner table that’s one seat shy of a full roster. I’m not looking forward to it at all, so I decide to do something about it.

  Mom gets home and I’ve fully prepared my case, rehearsed every possible argument in my head a dozen times over.

  “Hi, honey,” she says, surprised to see me home before her for once, but that doesn’t last long once she catches a whiff of my mood. “What’s wrong?” she says, jumping from zero to fearing the worst in a heartbeat.

  “Stuart got some really bad news today. Family thing,” I say by way of avoiding the specifics. “It got me thinking.”

  Mom joins me on the couch. “About what?”

  Inhale deeply, steel self, dive in. “I want Dad to join us for Thanksgiving.” I give Mom a chance to push back. She doesn’t take it. “I don’t like the thought of Dad being all alone. I thought it’d be nice to have him over.”

  For the record: this is all true; the thought of Dad sitting at home alone on Thanksgiving is like a knife in my gut. But, to be honest, I like the thought of my holiday without Dad even less. Ever since I was little we’ve observed an annual morning ritual of sitting on the couch and eating Pop-Tarts while we watched the Macy’s parade and mocked the ugly marching band uniforms (we’ve always had plenty of good material), and I’m not going to give that up without a fight—but, strategically speaking, I thought I’d make more headway if I opened on a less selfish note.

  It doesn’t work. “I’m sure he won’t be all alone. Uncle Tyler lives in Worcester, your father could get together with him and his family. Maybe he’ll fly down to Florida and spend it with Grandma and Grandpa Hauser. He hasn’t spent Thanksgiving with them in ages.”

  She’s not saying yes, but she’s not saying no. That means she’s not dead set against it. Maybe I can pull this off without resorting to playing the pity card.

  “We could call him and find out.” She sighs. “If he’s got other plans, okay, I’m happy,” I lie like a rug, “but if he doesn’t...”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Carrie.”

  Fine. Pity card it is. “And I think I deserve one last Thanksgiving with my family,” I say. “I think for once I should have some input on my own life. I didn’t have any control over the divorce or which of you got me or where I went after the split, and this one time I’d like my feelings to be taken into consideration.”

  The problem with dealing with my mom on any touchy subject is that she is the mistress of the poker face. Whenever I score a major point on her, or unwittingly hand her exactly what she needs to shut me down, she becomes totally inscrutable. There’s no way to know whether I should press the advantage or concede defeat.

  Screw it. Fortune favors the bold. “I’m not asking for this to be an annual thing, and I don’t think I’m asking for anything unreasonable. All I want is some closure.”

  “Carrie, I don’t want you to think I don’t understand how difficult all this has been on you. I do,” she says. “You’ve had to make a lot of hard adjustments lately—and so have I. Did you know I haven’t spoken to your father once since we left the Cape? I’ve wanted to. A lot. I get stressed out or I have a bad day at work or I fight with you and my first impulse, the very first thing I think to do is to call Brian,” Mom says, her voice crackling ever so slightly, “but I can’t do that anymore. I have to remind myself he’s not my husband anymore and I can’t go to him, no matter how badly I want to. This is my life now and he’s not part of it, and if I’m ever going to move on, I need to get used to that. So do you. I’m sorry, Carrie, but the answer is no. Your father cannot come for
Thanksgiving.”

  I want to fire back but I can’t; the anger is there, ready to erupt out of me with lethal force but all of my brilliant, unassailable arguments have vanished. I feel empty. Crushed.

  Mom pats me on the leg. “I’ll go get dinner going,” she says, but my stomach feels like a giant clenched fist.

  “Not hungry,” I mutter and I retreat to my room, where I sprawl on the bed and stare at the ceiling, my brain full of static that refuses to let a coherent thought form. I’d say it’s actually quite meditative except for the fact I have a knot at the base of my skull you could snap a two-by-four over.

  The knock at my door snaps me out of my waking coma. My alarm clock says it’s nearly eight, but that can’t be right. No way I’ve been laying here for more than two hours. What is it with me and missing time lately?

  Mom pokes her head in. “Can I come in?” I bite back a snide response. She takes my silence for permission and sits on the end of my bed—then it’s her turn to be silent. If she’s waiting for me to say something, we’ll be here another two hours.

  Or not. “What?” I say.

  “I think you should go visit your father,” she says. “See if he’s free this weekend or next, go spend a weekend with him. Maybe have an early Thanksgiving dinner, just the two of you.”

  In a single shot, Mom succeeds in making me feel simultaneously better and worse; it’s an excellent idea, and I’m a world-class moron for not thinking of it myself and a terrible person for trying to guilt her into giving me what I want. What is wrong with me? Now I’m making up problems so I have an excuse to fight with Mom? This is the kind of stupid, childish crap I used to pull during my Dark Period, when I imagined that everything my parents did was part of some grand conspiracy to ruin my life. That is some sick irony right there.