Action Figures - Issue Four: Cruel Summer Read online

  “You two are jerks,” Sara hisses.

  “What?” Matt says.

  “Don’t give me that. You deliberately provoked him.”

  “It was a joke.”

  “Dude has to lighten up,” Stuart says.

  “It may be funny to you two, but after we’re done gaming, we all get to go home to parents who aren’t making our lives miserable,” I say. “Sara’s stuck here with him.”

  “Correction: some of us get to go home to parents who aren’t making their lives miserable,” Matt says.

  My first impulse is to chide Matt for acting like his daddy issues are in the same ballpark as Sara’s. Mr. Steiger cheated on his wife and nearly destroyed his family, so I can’t say Matt has no right to be angry at the man, but he’s stubbornly rebuffed his dad’s many attempts to make amends. The boy can hold a grudge like no one I’ve ever met.

  Mr. Danvers, in contrast, has been actively harassing Sara over every facet of her life. It’s been going on for weeks now. I’ve overheard Mr. Danvers criticizing her friendships, particularly with Matt and Stuart; berating her for not going to church with him; shaming her for less-than-perfect grades; and he once laid an epic guilt trip on her for preferring the company of her friends over her family (while never once acknowledging his role in instilling that attitude in Sara).

  However, there is a proper time to call Matt out on his self-centered whining and a time to appeal to his sensibilities. When it comes to Sara, for whom he continues to hold a torch large enough to signal Rohan for aid in defending Minas Tirith, playing on his feelings is the way to go. It’s a little underhanded, I admit, but it’s effective.

  “Then you should be more sympathetic to her problem, shouldn’t you?” I say.

  Matt slumps in his chair, his eyes dropping to the floor sheepishly. “Sorry,” he says.

  “It’s okay,” Sara says. “Just watch what you say, huh? Last thing I need is for Dad to ground me so I can’t go to Missy’s tomorrow.”

  Unfortunately, I’m not so sure Sara’s going to dodge that bullet.

  Despite remaining on his very best behavior for the rest of the day, Stuart unwittingly sparks a major father-daughter blowout. Mr. Danvers wanders through the living room several more times over the course of the day, and on his last pass, as Stuart is plowing through a bag of Doritos, he pauses behind Stuart’s seat, leans over, and sniffs the air before continuing on into the kitchen.

  “Sara? Did your dad just, um...smell me?” Stuart says.

  “Dad, what the hell was that?” Sara shouts.

  Mr. Danvers appears in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, arms folded judgmentally. “Young lady, do not talk to me like that.”

  “Then don’t smell my friends like some kind of weirdo perv!”

  “Kids, you need to leave, right now,” Mr. Danvers declares, and a powerful sense of déjà vu washes over me. Several weeks ago, Mr. Danvers unceremoniously gave us the boot after we pushed our nightly homework jam past the oh-so-late hour of eight o’clock, leaving us with two crappy choices: stay there to support Sara and make things worse by doing so; or obey Mr. Danvers, abandon Sara, and make things worse in a totally different way. We chose, with deep reservations, the latter option.

  This time, Sara makes the decision for us. It’s okay, she says telepathically.

  It doesn’t make us feel any better about leaving.

  I spend the evening at home, reading in my room, waiting for Sara to give me a call on the brainphone to let me know what happened. I fall asleep sometime around ten without ever hearing from her.

  The radio silence lasts for a solid twelve hours. It breaks in the morning, when Sara knocks on my front door while I’m enjoying a late breakfast of strawberry Pop-Tarts and coffee.

  “Hey,” she says, darting past me like she’s trying to ditch a stalker.

  “Hey. I didn’t hear from you last night.”

  “I was too wound up. I didn’t want you feeling what was going on in my head,” Sara says to the floor.

  “You know, we have these amazing devices called telephones,” I say.

  Sara shrugs. “Where’re your mom and granddad?”

  She’s deflecting; she wants to delay the inevitable conversation about whatever happened after we left. I let her, for now.

  “Granddad is at church, mom and Ben are at brunch with some co-workers,” I say. “Just us girls here.”

  Sara nods. “It’ll be nice to have Missy back.”

  “Yeah. It’s been too quiet without her. Everyone speaking in short, coherent sentences?” I make a sour face. “Don’t care for it.”

  “Me either,” Sara says with a small laugh.

  I jump on the brief silence that follows. “What happened with your dad?”

  Sara sighs. “He grounded me,” she says.

  “What?”

  “I’m forbidden from leaving the house for the next two weeks except to go to school, and after school I’m to go right home.” She snorts. “Technically I’m not supposed to be here, but he’s off at church, and it’s not like Mom was going to try to stop me.”

  “Sara,” I say, preparing to deliver a gentle, friendly lecture about the hazards of defying a parental grounding.

  “Stuart’s been banned from my house.”

  What the huh? “Stuart’s been banned from your house?”

  “Banned from the house,” Sara repeats, “and I’m not allowed to go over to his house, or be anywhere near Stuart because — and this is a direct quote — he obviously has some serious substance abuse issues.”

  “Are you serious? Your dad thinks Stuart’s a stoner?”

  “Oh, the way Dad tells it, the proof is all right there: the long hair, the hey, dude attitude, the constant eating...I told Dad he was frickin’ nuts.”

  “And that’s when he grounded you.”

  “No.” Sara pauses, her lips pressing into a thin, bloodless line. “I asked Dad how he could think Stuart of all people could ever become a pot-head. I mean, Dad’s known Stuart since we were in first grade together. Dad said he must have turned to drugs out of guilt over what happened to his little brother.”

  I stammer unintelligibly, unable to express my outrage in actual human words.

  A couple years before I moved to Kingsport, Stuart’s little brother, Jeffrey, was killed by a school bully named Ronny Vick. It was a complete accident. Ronny shoved Jeff, who pitched down the front steps of his elementary school and landed badly. He suffered a serious head injury and died almost instantly. Stuart was supposed to meet Jeff at school and escort him home, but Stuart forgot and arrived late. It was a simple, stupid mistake, but it was his mistake. He carries the guilt to this day.

  Still, for Mr. Danvers to accuse him of smothering his pain in a fog of pot smoke is outright idiotic. I’d have had a few choice words for Mr. Danvers if he’d said that to my face, so I can’t criticize Sara for responding similarly — which she tells me she did, at length.

  “And that’s why he grounded me,” Sara says.

  “So your decision to ignore the punishment is less insubordination and more a protest,” I say, and who am I to judge? God knows I’ve staged more than a few “protests” in my time.

  “Whatever. I have no respect for the man anymore. Dumping on me constantly is bad enough, but making up ridiculous crap about you guys, and then punishing me when I call BS on him? Screw that.”

  “You do know he’s going to come down on you harder when you get back home?”

  “Let him try,” Sara says with calm defiance.

  After Matt and Stuart arrive, we head out as a group to Missy’s place. I can’t wait to see our Muppet again, and I’m not alone in that; we make the hike at a pace just shy of a jog.

  Stuart has the honor of ringing the doorbell. Footsteps thunder toward the door, a one-girl stampede, and Missy greets us with a bright cry of “Konnichiwa!” before leaping up and wrapping her arms around Stuart’s neck. She hugs the rest of us in turn as we file in
to the house.

  “All right, Muppet, tell us,” Matt says, “how was it?”

  As inquiries go, Matt’s is a mere formality. I can tell by looking at Missy that the trip did her a world of good. Our last case may have ended on the positive note of Missy reconciling with her father, but it took a lot out of her along the way. Now she looks rejuvenated in body, mind, and spirit, as evidenced by the fact she’s bouncing on the balls of her feet like a hyper-caffeinated Tigger.

  “OHMYGOD it was the most awesome time I’ve ever had in my ENTIRE LIFE! We got to stay right in Tokyo with my Uncle Seiji because he has a place there even though he works mostly in California but they send him to Japan all the time and he has this wicked cool apartment right near Shibuya Crossing which is like Times Square in New York except like ten times cooler because it’s Japanese but I’m kind of guessing because I’ve never been to New York and we went to Ikebukuro and Akihabara and Harajuku which are all these wicked cool neighborhoods that are like nothing but big hangouts for all the subcultures over there and we spent a couple of days in Kyoto which is where all the history is and it was soooooooooo beautiful and I could have stayed there all week but we had to come home because of stupid school and I want to go back like a million times because SO FREAKING AWESOME!”

  Wow. I think she did that in one breath.

  “You know what’s scary?” Matt says. “I understood that completely.”

  “Me too,” I say. “Good to know we haven’t lost our knack for Missy-to-English translation.”

  Missy puts a kettle on, announcing that she plans to make us some authentic straight-from-Japan tea. While the water heats up, she sets up her laptop, so we can look through the one thousand-plus (no kidding, a thousand-plus) photos she took during her vacation. I’d cringe at the prospect if it weren’t for the fact that every single picture is absolutely arresting. Even the obligatory touristy photos of Shibuya Crossing, a cacophony of screaming neon and gigantic TV screens, are somehow beautiful. They’re vibrant urban landscapes, crazy and colorful.

  Every so often a photo scrolls by featuring Missy, sometimes alone, sometimes with Dr. Hamill or her Uncle Seiji (who looks a lot like his brother), but always smiling, always bright-eyed and excited and alive. God, seeing her so happy makes me want to cry. A good kind of crying, I mean: in relief, in gratitude. A bad stretch or two can crush the strongest soul, and after everything the girl went through between the Black Betty and Buzzkill Joy cases, I was terrified Missy’s sweet innocence and joy for life would be extinguished. I’m thrilled that she’s proven me wrong.

  “Looks like you had a blast in the homeland,” Stuart says.

  “I had the best time ever. Me and Dad have actually been talking about going again sometime over the summer,” Missy says, and an odd looks crosses her face. “We talked a lot during the trip. It’s like we had all the conversations we never had while I was growing up.” She smiles. “It was nice. Dad and Uncle Seiji talked a lot, too. They never talked much before, just on holidays and birthdays and stuff.”

  “Sounds like your vacation was good stuff for the whole family,” Sara says, a little enviously.

  “OOH! I almost forgot! I got stuff!” Missy says, jumping to her feet and racing upstairs. She returns a minute later carrying a couple of canvas shopping bags (one featuring Totoro, the other Domo) full of gifts for us. I get a cool reprint of the 1965 Japanese edition of The Hobbit, complete with illustrations (Japan’s version of Gollum looks like an anthropomorphic frog).

  “Sara, you have something else, but I’m not giving it to you until your birthday,” Missy says.

  Oh, right, it’s almost time for the birthday double-header. Sara’s sixteenth birthday is next weekend — Saturday, May 1, to be precise — with Missy’s following on the fifth. Because they’re practically on top of one another, they celebrate their birthdays simultaneously rather than go through the hassle of organizing two separate outings.

  If asked for suggestions, I plan to strongly advise against spending the night in prison. Been there, done that, got the bright orange jumpsuit.

  “I think it’s your turn to host,” Missy says to Sara, who winces. “Ohhh, is your dad still acting weird?”

  I give Sara a small shake of the head. We’ve had in place since the Black Betty incident a vow to always be completely honest with each other, but there’s a time and a place for everything, and this is neither the time nor the place to tell Stuart he’s been declared persona non grata under suspicion of being a druggie.

  “Yeah, Dad’s still weird,” Sara says.

  “That’s okay. We can do it here. Dad won’t mind. He’s cool now.”

  “There’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear,” Stuart says.

  “What’s in the other bag?” Matt says, peeking into the Totoro bag. “Who’s that for?”

  “Oh yeah! Check this out!” Missy says, presenting to us something Missy calls an “Oni mask. Oni are Japanese demons and they sell these masks and this one is so totally me I had to have it.”

  Missy passes the mask to me. It’s made of a heavy-duty plastic or resin, a sturdy material, and it’s painted a blue so deep that it appears black depending on how the light hits it. It has short, pointed ears at the sides and a pair of stumpy horns high on the forehead. The mouth strikes me as distinctly catlike, if the cat in question had a mean streak a mile wide.

  “I thought it looked like a cat demon,” Missy says, echoing my initial impressions, “and since I’m kinda-sorta like a cat demon I thought this would look way better as part of my costume than that hood I always wear.”

  Matt perks up at this. “Does that mean you’re coming back to the team?”

  Missy’s enthusiasm falters. “Well, yeah. I guess? Dad says he actually wants me to be on the team because he’s proud of all the good stuff we’ve done and he’s being real supportive, and I will come back eventually, I swear, but I feel like me and Dad have been getting along better than we ever have and I don’t want to mess that up, so I need a little more time and I hope that’s okay.”

  As she speaks, Missy brushes back her hair, unconsciously exposing a row of four narrow scars running across her forehead, up into the hairline. The wounds, inflicted by Buzzkill Joy, are mostly healed now, and the hair the doctor shaved away to put in the stitches has grown out, but they remain a lingering reminder of what Missy endured.

  “Of course it’s okay,” I assure her.

  “Yeah, sure. What do you need? Like, another week?” Matt says.

  “She needs however long she needs. Don’t push her. She’ll be there if we need her.”

  “Duh,” Missy says.

  It takes less than twenty-four hours to make liars out of us both.

  THREE

  Monday starts as Mondays often start: against my will.

  The first day back to school after a vacation week is always particularly loathsome. A pleasant inertia sets in during the time off, and while I don’t hate school, I’m not so enamored by it that I’m eager to dive back into the world of academia. Were I in my junior year, when the class selection is wider and more interesting, I might think differently, but sophomore year is anchored in the core subjects. Necessary? Yes. Stimulating? Not so much.

  Mondays have an added strike against them in that they’re not a work day for me, and I do like my after-school job. Three days a week, Tuesdays through Thursdays, I intern at the Law Firm of Crenshaw and Associates. I work directly for Sullivan Crenshaw, a specialist in law as it applies to super-heroes as well as the Protectorate’s personal legal counsel. It’s not glamorous work, mostly processing paperwork, but Mr. Crenshaw is always happy to share his knowledge of his odd little corner of the legal profession. It’s a surprisingly interesting and exciting field.

  I find my little glimmer of joy within the dreary Monday routine in the form of one Mister Malcolm Forth, my boyfriend (oh, how I love saying that). I didn’t get to see him at all during vacation week as his family was off visiting relatives in
Pennsylvania, so our reunion in front of my locker is, shall we say, on the steamy side.

  “I feel really dirty watching you two,” Sara remarks.

  “Then don’t watch,” I say as I come up for air.

  “Hi, Sara,” Malcolm says. “How was spring break for you?”

  “It was okay,” Sara says diplomatically. For the most part she’s right. It was a decent enough week off, but it certainly didn’t end on a high note for her. Yesterday’s act of defiance resulted in Mr. Danvers doubling down on her punishment; she is officially grounded for the entire month of May — including on her birthday.

  (Sara’s response to this: “Dad can bite me.” She may be morally in the right, but if she doesn’t learn to handle her dad better, she’s going to wind up grounded until she graduates college.)

  The rest of the day passes as it usually does: classes, lunch, more classes, subtle yet shameless flirting with Malcolm throughout our web design class. I invite Malcolm to join us for afternoon coffee, but he has a long overdue meeting with Coach Fowle. Despite informing me months ago that he plans to retire from the world of high school football, he’s procrastinated wildly when it comes to sharing this decision with his coach and soon-to-be-former teammates.

  “Coach Fowle told me before vacation he wanted to talk about some things for next year,” Malcolm says, “so I really can’t put this off any longer.”

  I tell him I understand. Then we make out for a few minutes in a stairwell, because we’re classy like that, and we go our separate ways.

  “You’re late, young lady,” Sara teases as the gang gathers at my locker.

  “I had business with Malcolm,” I say.

  “Uh-huh. Business.”

  “What kind of business?” Matt asks, legitimately clueless.

  “Aw, dude,” Stuart says with a sad shake of his head. “Seriously?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” Sara says. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I need a caffeine fix bad.”