Action Figures - Issue Four: Cruel Summer

by Michael C Bailey

  Stuart grunts. “Guess that answers that question.”

  “You should go.” Missy says this with an icy finality. There isn’t an argument I could pitch to make them understand. They don’t want to understand. They want to be mad at Sara, and now that I’ve made the grave mistake of speaking in her defense, they have no reservations about sharing that anger with me.

  First Sara, then Matt, now Stuart and Missy — I’ve lost all my friends.

  I’ve lost everything.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Time heals all wounds.

  Whoever said that should have been more specific about the timeframe for healing. It’s been four days since the big fallout, but there’s no sign of healing coming my way. No one will talk to me. Phone calls, e-mails, texts — they’ve all gone unanswered. Matt unfriended me on Facebook. Missy refuses to let me visit her in the hospital.

  I’m not the only one who’s been shut out. Matt and Stuart came back to school on Tuesday, and when I entered the cafeteria for lunch, I found Matt sitting at the group’s usual table, completely alone. Stuart sat at a table halfway across the room, wedged in among a bunch of students who acted like he wasn’t even there. My guess is Matt made it clear he wasn’t giving up on Sara either, prompting Stuart to declare him persona non grata.

  Malcolm, bless him, every day he tries to get me to go out somewhere after school — Coffee E, the skating rink, Milne’s Woods, anywhere where I might be able to relax a little and get my mind off my worries, but I have no energy for it. I go right home after school, make a cup of tea I barely touch, stare at a blank TV screen, and half the time I’m in bed and asleep before Mom comes home.

  I trudge downstairs, ready to go through the motions once again, and the first thing Mom says to me as I enter the kitchen is, “I’ve made an appointment for you to see Dr. Connors after school today.”

  “You what?”

  “Carrie, I’m worried about you. You barely speak, you barely eat, you spend most of your time sleeping...honey, that’s not healthy.”

  “Gee, it’s like I’m depressed that my best friend tried to kill herself or something,” I say, the lie coming easily. Good girl, Carrie. Maintain the illusion.

  “You have every right to be depressed —”

  “Thank you for your permission.”

  “— but you’re bottling up all your emotions. You’re not dealing with your grief. You need to talk about what happened. You have an appointment at three.”

  Her tone is gentle, but it’s clear she’s not asking me to go, she’s telling me.

  I might as well. Matt and Stuart have been dodging me, and in turn I’ve been dodging Bart and Edison. They’ve called me a dozen times each over the week. I’ve deleted their voicemails without listening to them.

  The penultimate day of the school year passes like any other. Students buzz with excitement over the prospect of two full months of warm, sunny freedom, and I overhear more than a few declare that they’re not going to bother coming in on Monday (“It’s not like we’re going to do anything worth a damn,” Angus Parr reasons, and it galls me to agree with anything that meathead says). I wish I could join in the fun, but I’m not feeling it. I had such great plans for the summer. Almost all of them involved people who want nothing to do with me anymore.

  What few plans survived are the ones with Malcolm, and I can’t even muster any enthusiasm for those. I feel cruddy about that. He’s been so supportive and considerate. He hasn’t complained once about my mood or how I haven’t wanted to spend time with him...he’s been a perfect boyfriend, and he deserves better than what I’ve been giving him.

  More than once I come close to telling him the truth.

  Malcolm drives me to Bart’s office after school and offers to pick me up afterwards. Again I refuse his kindness. Again he takes it in stride. Again I feel like crap about it.

  I enter Bart’s office. There’s no receptionist to greet me. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Carrie,” Bart says, appearing in the doorway to his office. “I’m glad you came. Come on in.”

  I do as asked and immediately regret it. “What are you doing here?” I say to today’s surprise guest star.

  “We need to talk,” Edison says, “and seeing as you won’t return my calls...”

  “Seriously? You’re crashing my therapy session because you can’t take the very obvious hint I don’t want to talk to you? You’re unbelievable.”

  “It was my idea,” Bart says.

  “Then you both suck,” I say, turning to leave. Bart blocks my exit.

  “Please,” he says.

  Cursing under my breath, I flop down in one of the available easy chairs. Bart sits across from me. Edison takes the seat to my right.

  I brace for Bart to ask me the predictable opening question of How are you doing? but instead he says, “I want you to know, I don’t believe that Sara was responsible for her actions.”

  “What?”

  “I think she was a victim of psychic tampering. I’ve been reviewing our case files on the King of Pain with Sara in mind, and there was a clear, consistent pattern among the victims. After their first encounter with the King of Pain, their behavior became increasingly erratic. They experienced paranoia, mood swings, feelings of persecution...”

  “All the symptoms Sara displayed,” Edison says. Yes, thank you, I got that.

  Bart’s theory is that the King of Pain wormed his way into Sara’s mind and tapped the rich vein of familial turmoil he found there. He stirred the pot and set it to simmer, causing Sara to become overly sensitive and quick to anger, which exacerbated tensions between her and her father, which led to more frequent and increasingly volatile confrontations, which amped up her stress levels, which cause her to lash out more, and so on — and that made her susceptible to further tampering. With each encounter, the King of Pain turned the heat up a little more, until Sara couldn’t think straight. What started as touching a match to a candle ended as throwing a stick of dynamite into a swimming pool of gasoline.

  “I understand it might not make you feel any better about what happened,” Bart says, “but I thought you should know.”

  “And Edison needs to be here for that?” I say.

  “He’s here to help you with your recovery.”

  “Oh, you’re a therapist too?” I say to Edison.

  “You’ve experienced a serious trauma. Post-traumatic stress is a very real concern, so we want to help you deal with it early on and minimize the damage,” Edison says. “If we don’t nip this in the bud, it’ll affect you personally and professionally, in ways you’ll never see coming, and we need to address that before I can clear you for active duty.”

  Clear me for active duty? That’s all he cares about?

  Oh, who am I kidding? Of course that’s all he cares about. He doesn’t give a damn about Carrie Hauser. He just wants Lightstorm back on her feet and ready to throw herself at the next psychopath who comes along, and the one after that, and the one after that. There will always be some homicidal whackjob lurking on the horizon. It’ll never end. This is my life.

  I don’t want it anymore.

  “Let me save you a lot of trouble,” I say, getting to my feet. “I quit.”

  “You what?” Edison says.

  “I said I quit!” I shout in his face. “I’m done! I’m not going to do this anymore! I’ve put my ass on the line, over and over, and what’s it gotten me? Nothing. Sara’s a vegetable, my only friends hate me...I’m sick of losing my life one piece at a time,” I say, storming past Edison. “I’m taking it back.”

  “Two weeks,” he says.

  I stop. “Excuse me?”

  “You say you’re quitting? I say that’ll last two weeks. Maybe three at the outside.”

  “Edison,” Bart groans, “for the love of God, man...”

  “Where the hell do you get off? Huh?” I say. “How dare you tell me what my own mind is, you arrogant —”

  “It isn’t arrogance; it’s expe
rience,” Edison says. He stands and walks up to me. “Do you know how many times I’ve quit the life? Three. The longest I lasted was five weeks, and that was after Nick died.”

  That takes my anger down a notch. Edison rarely ever mentions his dead teenage son. It’s not a card he plays lightly.

  “I do know your mind, Carrie, because I’ve been there, several times, and I know that it doesn’t matter how pissed off you are today, in this moment. Someone is going to need your help and all that anger and resentment will vanish, and you’ll be right back in the thick of things. That’s the kind of person you are.”

  “You don’t know what kind of person I am,” I say before slamming the door in his face. “You never have.”

  Conveniently, Bart’s office is practically next door to the Law Firm of Crenshaw and Associates. Might as well take care of all my unpleasant business at once.

  I head right to Mr. Crenshaw’s office and knock on his door, even though it’s wide open (he takes his open-door policy quite literally). He looks up from the sheaf of paperwork in his hand and smiles warmly.

  “Carrie, hello,” he says, rising. “How are you?”

  It’s not a casual inquiry. Being in the loop on the deeper workings of the Protectorate, Mr. Crenshaw has no doubt been made aware of what’s happened. Good. Maybe what I have to tell him won’t come as such a surprise.

  “I’m not good. It’s been a hard week. I’m still processing it all and...look, Mr. Crenshaw, you’ve been a fantastic boss. I’m grateful for all the time you’ve invested in me, and working for you has been a great experience.” His expression changes. He knows what’s coming. “I don’t think this is the right place for me anymore.”

  “You’re quitting?”

  I shut the door to give us some privacy. “I’m quitting the business entirely,” I say, feeling a little pretentious for referring to it as “the business.” “I just told Edison and Bart. Like, two minutes ago I told them. This week has taken everything out of me and my heart isn’t in it anymore.”

  Mr. Crenshaw chews on his bottom lip thoughtfully. “I understand where you’re coming from,” he says, “but do you really need to drop your internship as well? You have a real gift for this kind of work and it would be a shame if you gave up on —”

  I raise a hand, cutting him off. “I appreciate what you’re saying, but I can’t. I’m sorry. I need to divorce myself from this life, completely, or I know it’s going to suck me back in.”

  Mr. Crenshaw sighs. “This is what I’m going to do,” he says, flipping to the next page on his desktop calendar. He circles July 20 and scribbles my name down. “Officially, you’re taking a one-month leave of absence. If by July 20 I haven’t heard back from you, I will formally accept your resignation, with deep regrets.”

  “I won’t change my mind,” I insist. I know he’s trying to be thoughtful, but I’m really tired of people acting like they know me better than I do.

  “If that’s so, that’s so, but I know a little about making decisions in anger. It never works out well. I wouldn’t be doing you any favors if I didn’t give you some time to cool down. Like I said, if your decision stands, I’ll respect it, but...”

  “Thank you,” I say, maybe a little too sharply.

  Mr. Crenshaw shakes my hand and wishes me well. I slink out of the building, my head down, gripped by an irrational fear that word of my departure has somehow magically leaked to the rest of the staff, and I’ll have to endure a gauntlet of co-workers — sorry, former co-workers — begging me to stay, telling me how much I’ll be missed.

  The feeling isn’t mutual.

  Mom leaves me to my own devices for dinner since she has plans of her own with Ben. That’s fine. I’m not in the mood for company.

  Looks like I’m getting some anyway; someone’s knocking on the front door. I’m stunned to see Matt standing on the porch with what my Grandfather would call a hangdog expression.

  “Hey,” he says. “Um. Can I come in?”

  I almost slam the door shut on him. Instead I shrug, grunt, and return to the couch and my makeshift dinner of a mocha swirl cheesecake from the bakery on Main Street.

  “Are you planning to eat that entire cheesecake?” Matt asks.

  “No,” I say. “Maybe. Don’t judge me.”

  “I’m not judging, I want to know if I could have some.”

  I gesture vaguely toward the kitchen. Matt gets the hint (a rarity on par with Haley’s comet) and fetches a fork for himself. He sits next to me and digs in.

  “Never took you for a stress eater,” he comments.

  “What do you want?” I say.

  “Edison called me. He said you quit.”

  “Edison has a big mouth.”

  “So it’s true?”

  “What do you care? You hate me, remember? You’ll never forgive me for hurting Sara, that’s what you said.”

  Matt puts his fork down. “I was angry and upset and looking for someone to blame. I picked you and I shouldn’t have. It was a dick thing to say and I’m sorry.”

  It’s a sincere apology, “But you don’t forgive me.”

  Matt sits there, lost in thought, and then he totally floors me.

  “I do forgive you,” he says. “I know you did the best you could and you never would’ve hurt Sara if there’d been another option.”

  Wow. This is huge. Matt’s slow to apologize, and he’s slower to forgive, even for relatively piddly offenses, so letting me off the hook for this...it’s nothing short of a legit miracle.

  And then he goes and ruins the moment.

  “Besides, we’re never going to get the team back together if you and I aren’t on the same page, right?” he says.

  “The team?”

  “The bad guys aren’t going to catch themselves — and God knows, with all those Byrne prisoners still on the loose, the Protectorate’s going to need all the help they can get.”

  “The team?”

  “Stuart’s wicked pissed at me so talking to him won’t do any good, but if we could work on Missy, get her on our side, Stuart will —”

  “The team?!” I shout. “That’s what this is really all about, isn’t it? You don’t actually give a crap about me, this isn’t about repairing our friendship, it’s about the damned team! There is no team, Matt! And if there were, I wouldn’t be part of it!”

  “Carrie, come on,” Matt says, “you know you don’t mean that.”

  “Don’t tell me what I mean!” I grab a fistful of Matt’s shirt, so I can better yell right in his smug, ignorant face. “I’m done with your stupid super-hero team, got it? Done! And until you get that through your thick skull, I’m done with you! Now get out!”

  I shove Matt off the couch. He gawps at me from the floor, slack-jawed.

  “Carrie,” he says.

  “I said get out.”

  Matt picks himself up and heads toward the door. He pauses with his hand on the knob and glances back, like he has one last thing to say. I shake my head. I don’t want to hear it.

  He leaves.

  I’m alone again.

  Fine.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  My cheesecake dinner loses its appeal after that. I throw the leftovers in the fridge and head to bed, which is where I stay the entire weekend. Mom pokes her head in periodically to make sure I’m still alive, and each time the dialog goes more or less like this:

  “Honey?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Carrie, you need to get out of bed.”

  “You said that already.”

  “This isn’t healthy. You need to get up and get out of the house. Go spend some time with your friends. Go spend time with Malcolm. Do something.”

  “I don’t feel like doing something.”

  “Carrie...”

  “Mom, please leave me alone. Harassing me isn’t going to make me feel better.”

  At which point Mom withdraws, only to reappear a few hours and repeat the cycle.

  Monday morning arrive
s — the last day of school and, coincidentally, the first official day of summer. I muster enough ambition to take a shower (by which I mean I stand under the hot water for five minutes), get dressed, choke down some coffee and Pop-Tarts, and then I head out. Again I pause in front of Sara’s house. The lawn has grown shaggy and is littered with newspapers no one will ever read, and the mailbox is so stuffed the little door won’t close all the way. Before long it’ll become that creepy abandoned house neighborhood kids dare each other to sneak into.

  I get to school and head to my locker out of habit. I returned all my schoolbooks last week, which means there’s nothing left in my locker — nothing except two photos taped to the inside of the door. One is a selfie of me with Malcolm from our first official date, a school dance I never got to finish out because I had to run off and help the Protectorate stop a rampaging demon (yet another instance of my former secret life screwing up my real person life). The second was taken by a waitress at Junk Food the first time I went out with Matt, Sara, Stuart, and Missy for Friday night shenanigans. We’d already become fast friends by then, even though we’d met only a few days earlier. I clicked with all of them so quickly. It’s like I’d always known them, like we were meant to be together.

  I almost wish I’d never met them.

  “Hey,” Malcolm says, sliding in to give me a hug from behind. “I tried calling you all weekend.”

  “I was in bed all weekend. I didn’t feel well,” I say.

  Malcolm turns me around, brushes a stray hair out of my face, and says gravely, “I want to talk after school. You and me, in private, no ducking out on me or saying you’re too tired. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I stammer, my heart suddenly a lead weight in my chest.

  Malcolm’s going to break up with me.

  The thought haunts me all day, but something unexpected happens with each passing hour. As I enter homeroom for the last time as a sophomore, a minor milestone that I’m too preoccupied to appreciate, I’m a walking panic attack. Matt senses something’s wrong, but, thankfully, he keeps his distance. By the time I leave for my first class, panic has subsided to a mild, gnawing doubt. I know I’ve been distant lately, but Malcolm isn’t the kind of guy to abandon ship when things get rocky. He’s had some serious rough patches in his own life, so he understands, better than a lot of adults, that such things happen, and you can’t give up on the people you love.