Crawling From the Wreckage Page 15

  “I once had this exact same conversation with Edison about you.”

  “You did?”

  “Almost verbatim. I don’t recall exactly when it was, but you’d approached Edison about training you and he was convinced he was facing the same no-win scenario you are. He only saw the two options, both of which ended badly for you.”

  “What changed?”

  “He realized that if something happened to you, he’d feel worse if he hadn’t tried to help you than if he had.” Any trace of a smile disappears. “Ask yourself that, Carrie. If, God forbid, something happened to Dennis, would you be better able to live with yourself if you’d at least tried to talk him out of doing anything rash, or if you’d simply washed your hands of the whole thing and walked away?”

  It’s almost a moot question. I know myself too well; I may have moments when I say to hell with this, I’m done, but ultimately, I’m not a quitter. I am my mother’s daughter, and Briggs women are stubborn to a fault.

  (I don’t know what bothers me more, that I referred to myself as my mother’s daughter — a phrase I never thought I’d utter — or that I referred to myself as a Briggs rather than a Hauser.)

  The rest of the session is a game of psychological dodge ball. Every time Bart tries to get me to open up about what happened to me during the Black End War, I deflect onto something else that’s eating at me — and fortunately, I have a wealth of alternate topics: losing my job, my father refusing to accept me for who I am, having to repeat my junior year, Mom’s new party girl lifestyle, Sara and Meg’s bedroom shenanigans, Matt taking over as team leader and doing such a good job of it they don’t need me anymore...we spend three hours talking, and I never let Bart get close to that subject.

  And yet, at the end of it all, for all the unburdening I did, I don’t feel any lighter.

  ***

  I arrive home to find Sara in the kitchen. Mom’s working late, she says, so she’s whipping up my mother’s Slacker Spaghetti for dinner, a weekday meal Mom makes from a Ragu base and a secret blend of spices that turns the boring store-bought sauce into something amazing. It’s a recipe she got from her mother, who got it from hers.

  And now Sara knows it.

  “Hungry?” she asks.

  “Not so much,” I say.

  “Did you not have a good session with Bart?”

  “It was fine, but that’s not —” I swerve at the last second. The last thing I need today is to blow up the domestic bliss vibe (such as it is) over something as petty as Sara being inducted into the Briggs Family Cooking Club. “Dennis is not my favorite person right now.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  I tell her. I mean to give her the quick-and-dirty version of the story, but something inside me snaps and next thing I know, I’m pacing a manic circle around the kitchen and ranting like a lunatic, complete with flailing arm action. Sara lets me purge, all the while regarding me with the same laser-focused expression Bart wears during therapy sessions.

  When I finish, Sara says, “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know, but Bart said I should take some time to cool down before I make any decision.”

  “Good call. I wouldn’t blame you if you dumped him, though. I get where he’s coming from, but that was a pretty underhanded way of —”

  “You wouldn’t blame me if I dumped him?” I laugh humorlessly. “We’re training together, Sara, not dating.”

  “You have been spending a lot of time with him.”

  “Yeah — training him. And it’s not like I have anything else to do with myself.”

  “I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”

  “Changing subjects,” I say pointedly, “could we go out Friday? The team, I mean? I feel like I haven’t spent any real time with you guys and Bart wants me to get back into some of my old routines.”

  Sara frowns. “I’m sorry, I have plans with Meg Friday,” she says. “Her band’s playing and she really wants me to go. Maybe I could beg off and —”

  “Never mind,” I say. I know a half-hearted offer when I hear it.

  “I’m sorry. Everyone else might be free. Give them a call.”

  “Maybe,” I say, but I’m not going to. What’s the point? It’s not going out with all my friends if all my friends aren’t going to be there.

  “We have tonight all to ourselves. After dinner we can watch a movie or just sit and talk or something.”

  And that’s what we do. Sara throws on Pirates of the Caribbean, and we sit on the couch, gorging on some leftover cannoli I find hiding in the back of the fridge and talking. After she trudges in from work, Mom joins us and it turns into an impromptu girls’ night. We stay up too late; we talk; we eat a lot of leftovers; Mom has a little too much wine. When we finally call it a night, Sara and I follow Mom as she wobbles up the stairs, ready to catch her if she topples over.

  I get ready to crawl into bed, hoping my emotional roller coaster of a day will see fit to let me end on a high note, but no such luck. I check my phone, and there’s a voicemail from Dennis waiting for me. I delete it without listening to it.

  And then I awake lie in bed for hours, staring at the ceiling and wondering why he called.

  EIGHTEEN

  I get a sense of why the next morning, after Mom and Sara leave for work, and I set about my busy day of puttering around the house. At precisely nine AM, I get a text from Dennis asking if I’m coming up today to train with him.

  I don’t reply. I think no answer is answer enough.

  Great, so now that I’ve blown off the only thing I had on my schedule, what do I do with myself?

  On a whim, I warp back to Kyros Prime and check in with my commanding officer, Do Lidella Det, to see if the Vanguard needs an extra body somewhere. They have hundreds of new cadets they need to train, so I figure they could use an experienced field officer, right?

  Wrong. They’ve got it covered, Commander Do says, but she offers to find a regular assignment for me, “If that’s what you really want.” I’m sorely tempted to say yes, it is, send me wherever you want, I’m good to go. Instead I thank her and ask her to hold off a while since I’ll be going back to school soon because, you know. Priorities.

  I warp back to Earth and touch down outside the Coffee Experience for a caffeine fix to get me through whatever I end up doing with the rest of my day. I walk in expecting to see my favorite barista Jill, the Goddess of Caffeine, behind the counter, but it’s a different friendly face who shrieks my name.

  “CARRIE!” Ashlyn squeals. She bursts through the little gate separating the counter area from the coffee shop proper like a thoroughbred going for the Triple Crown and hits me with a tackle hug that’d shame Missy.

  “That’s what I like about this place,” I say. “Friendly service.”

  Ashlyn does a giddy little happy dance, grinning like a kid on Christmas morning. “You’re back you’re back you’re back you’re back!” she beams, then she puts on a very serious face. “You’re back for good, right? You’re not going to disappear on me again, right?”

  “I promise you, I have absolutely no plans to go anywhere anytime soon,” I say with the same funny flutter I get in my belly whenever I lie.

  “Yay!” she says, grabbing me in another hug. She takes my hand and leads me to the counter. “What’re you having? Whatever you want, it’s on me.”

  “Ashlyn, no, you don’t have to —”

  “Uh-uh. My pretend girlfriend is back and I’m buying her a drink.”

  “You never give me free coffee,” an old man calls out from a nearby table.

  “And you never tip me more than a quarter, Russell, but you don’t hear me complaining about it,” Ashlyn retorts. The old man lets out a bark of a laugh. “No, wait, wait, I remember this. One mocha latté coming up.”

  Ashlyn begins cranking out a latté like a seasoned pro. “When did you start working here?” I ask.

  “Few months ago. They were looking for summer help but the boss likes me, p
lus a bunch of people left to go back to college, so I’ll be sticking around once school starts up again.”

  “Cool. Is Jill working today?”

  “No, Jill’s one of the ones who left. She decided to go for her master’s degree in whatever.”

  “Jill’s gone?”

  “Yeah, it sucks,” Ashlyn says. “I liked her.”

  “Yeah. Me too,” I mope.

  “Aw, why so glum, sugar plum?”

  “I’m not having a good week.”

  “You go sit,” Ashlyn says. “I’ll let Danielle know I’m taking my break and be right over.”

  I park it in a corner booth, the one I usually occupy with my friends. Ashlyn joins me a couple minutes later, hands me my drink, and sits next to me.

  “All right, sweetie, tell Dr. Meyer what the problem is,” she says.

  “Right now my problem is I don’t know what to do with myself,” I say. I know Ashlyn means well, but I spent a good chunk of yesterday talking out my issues with Bart. I don’t need to repeat that miserable performance. “I have nothing going on. School doesn’t start for a couple of weeks, I don’t have a job anymore, Concorde won’t put me back on the active duty roster until I — um, let’s just say I’m grounded until further notice. I was working with another super-hero, training him and whatnot, but that fell through.”

  “That sucks,” Ashlyn says. “I can’t help you out with the super-hero stuff, but if you’re looking for a new job you could always work here.”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah! Grant still needs a couple of warm bodies. It’s only part-time and the pay’s kind of meh, but the tips are great!” she shouts at Russell. “Plus, you’d get to work with me.”

  “Let me give it some thought,” I say, but what is there to think about? Me, work in a coffee shop? Seriously? I had a paid job in a lawyer’s office; I am not going to sling coffee for a bunch of surly old men and obnoxious teenagers for minimum wage and tips.

  “You do that. I need to get back to the counter, but you think and drink and let me know when you want to join Team Awesome Coffee Babes.”

  “Will do,” I say.

  By which I mean, no chance in hell.

  ***

  “What do you mean, no chance in hell?” Mom says as she slides a tray of lightly seasoned chicken breasts into the oven. It’s not an extravagant dinner, but I’m happy to eat real Christina Hauser — er, Christina Briggs cooking and not the Sara Danvers knockoff version for a change.

  “I mean, I don’t want to work in a coffee shop,” I say.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a coffee shop. It’s food service.”

  “So?”

  “I think it’s rather self-explanatory, Mother.”

  “You think you’re too good for food service.”

  “It’s a menial job.”

  “I’m a receptionist,” Sara notes.

  “Yeah, for one of the top super-hero teams in the whole country. That’s got some prestige,” I counter. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  “I don’t want you even thinking about finding a job until we get your school situation figured out,” Mom says, “but if your schedule allows, I think you should apply for it. Of course, you’d first have to climb down off your high horse.”

  Sara’s mouth falls open in perfect unison with mine. Good, at least I’m not the only one completely floored by that harshness.

  “There’s nothing wrong with food service. I worked my way through school waiting tables,” Mom reminds me. “No, it isn’t prestigious but it’s honest work, and you are not too good for honest work. Besides, if you think I’m going to go back to giving you an allowance, think again. You’re almost an adult.”

  “Thank you so much for this lovely pre-dinnertime conversation, Mother,” I drawl. “Getting dressed down always does wonders for my appetite.”

  I don’t storm off; I make a forceful yet dignified exit and retire to my room until mealtime. Bart said whenever I start to feel myself getting wound up I should withdraw from the situation, find someplace private and quiet, and decompress until I’m ready to deal with whatever is chewing away at my nerves.

  That would be much easier said than done if it weren’t for Dennis texting me again. This one says, Please call me? I want to talk.

  He’s not going to take the hint, is he? Fine, let’s do this and get it out of the way. I have a laundry list of headaches, and it’s sure not getting any shorter.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “What?” I say.

  “Are you doing anything tomorrow night? I want to take you to dinner.”

  And there’s jaw-drop number two of the evening. “Are you kidding me? You’re asking me out on a date? You do know I’m still pissed at you, right?”

  “No. Yes. Wait, hold on, let me back up. No, I’m not asking you out on a date. I want to take you to dinner because yes, I know you’re still pissed at me and I want to apologize. What I did was scummy and I’m sorry. I should have been honest with you.”

  “Yes,” I say icily, “you should have.”

  “What do you say? Give me a chance to make amends?”

  It’s a sincere plea — or so it seems. For all I know, this is another ploy. Let’s find out.

  “Suppose I say yes. What then? Do you expect me to train you again?”

  “I’m not expecting anything. If you said you didn’t want to train me anymore, I’d be disappointed but I’d accept it. I’d rather lose you as a teacher and keep you as a friend.”

  He leaves it there and lets me take my time considering the offer.

  “There’s a place here in Kingsport called the Country Kettle,” I say. “Meet me there tomorrow at six. We can talk but I’m not making any promises beyond that.”

  “That’s fair. Thank you.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say, trying to sound as uninterested as humanly possible. He’s not off the hook yet, not by a long shot. He has a lot of metaphorical wining and literal dining to do if he wants to get back on my good side again.

  A lot.

  ***

  With Sara leaving right from work for her night with Meg, and Mom telling me not to wait up (cringe), and Wednesday being a cat, I have no one to tell me how I look for my non-date with Dennis. I’m wearing nice jeans and a casual white button-up shirt, fashionably untucked — which to me says I take pride in my appearance but I’m not out to impress, but it’d be nice to have a second opinion.

  However, I am quite confident my resting bitch face is solid.

  Dennis is already there when I touch down in front of the restaurant. He too is in nice jeans and a button-up shirt — tucked in, I notice.

  “Hi,” he says with a nervous smile.

  “Dennis,” I say, cool and detached, determined to make him work for it. He opens the door and makes a little after you gesture. The hostess leads us to a table near the back of the main dining area, where Dennis pulls my chair out for me before taking his seat. Okay, strong start, I’ll give him that.

  “You look nice,” he says.

  “Thank you,” I say without returning the compliment, which doesn’t go unnoticed; he fidgets, and his cheeks flush, and he becomes utterly fascinated by the glass of ice water our waitress sets in front of him.

  Crap. Now I feel bad.

  “So do you,” I say.

  “Thanks.” He lets out a long sigh. “This entire night is going to be awkward, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. I guess that depends on you.”

  “Right.” He sits up straight, his lips set in a hard, determined line. “Carrie, I — ah, dammit,” he grumbles as his phone goes off. He sneers at it and flicks his thumb across the screen. “Sorry. That was Rando. She is not happy with me.”

  “Is she ever happy?” I say, posing what I suspect is a rhetorical question.

  “Lately? Not so much. She was a much happier person before she got her powers and decided to become a super-hero. Now she’s way too serious about everything.
”

  “What crawled up her butt and died this time?”

  “She’s mad I’m here with you instead of out with the team on patrol. She’s utterly convinced the Wardens will be the ones who track down Vendetta,” he says with a yeah, right roll of his eyes. “I told her she’d have to make do without me, I had something much more important to take care of.”

  “You did, huh?” I say, softening a little.

  “Yeah. I had to try to convince someone I’ve come to care about how sorry I am.” He leans in. “I screwed up. I wasn’t honest with you, I took advantage of our friendship, and I hurt you. I don’t know if I can ever make up for all that but I’d like to try, if you’ll let me.”

  When he speaks, there’s real, raw pain in his voice as he recounts his offenses against me. Every word is full of shame and regret, and any lingering doubts I had about his sincerity vanish. Unfortunately, sincerity isn’t enough. Not in this case.

  “Do you still plan to go after Manticore?” I ask. “Because if you do, we have nothing left to discuss.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” Dennis says. “He killed my brother. I can’t just walk away.”

  “I’m not asking you to walk away, Dennis, I’m asking you — I’m begging you to step back and look at this realistically. You don’t stand a chance against Manticore and I think you realize that.”

  “Then help me,” he pleads.

  “I am helping you. I’m telling you to slow down and accept your limitations and think this through. You can’t beat Manticore with nothing but guts and good intentions. It’s not enough to be stronger and faster and meaner; you have to be smarter than him, and charging into a fight you’re not ready for? That isn’t smart; that’s your anger talking.”

  Dennis flinches. He stares at me, his expression unreadable. A trickle of anxious sweat rolls down the back of my neck, and I wonder, perhaps too late, if I went too far in invoking his brother, even tacitly.