Action Figures - Issue Three: Pasts Imperfect (5 page)

School’s done for the day by
the time our tour ends, so I ask the bus driver to drop me off in town. I head
straight to the Coffee Experience, and Matt intercepts me before I reach the
front counter.

“How was it?” he says.

“Hello to you too.”

“Hi. Great to see you. How
was it?”

“Shoo. Let me get my
caffeine. I’ll regale you in a minute.” Matt gives me a sour look before
withdrawing to the group’s usual corner table. While Jill whips up my afternoon
mocha latté, I consider whether to downplay the day and make Matt feel like he
didn’t miss anything special. I only consider it briefly; after Missy’s brush
with demonic possession, we made a promise not to hold anything back from each
other, no matter how much it might sting. It’s only right I honor that promise,
seeing as it was my suggestion in the first place.

“Hey,” Sara says. “How was
it?”

“That’s my line,” Matt says.

“To which I shall now
respond,” I say. “It was okay.”

Matt’s eyebrows leap toward
his hairline. “Okay? You got to tour one of the top tech companies in the country
and it was
okay
?”

“It wasn’t my thing. I
didn’t understand half the stuff I saw.”

“Did you get to meet Edison
Bose? Was he there?”

“Yeah, he was there.”

Matt, never one to leave
anything alone, says, “For how long? Was it like a quick meet-and-greet or...?”

There’s no sense in hiding
it; Matt’s likely to hear about it from someone. Besides, vow of unflinching
honestly and all that. “He led the tour, start to finish.”

If you listen closely, you
can hear Matt’s heart shatter and fall to the floor. He expresses his
disappointment with his usual restraint.

“God, you suck.”

“Matt!” Sara begins, but I
wave her off.

“It’s okay. He has every
right to be upset.”

“That doesn’t give him the
right to treat you like crap,” Sara says to Matt, who, to his credit, mumbles
an apology.

“Was Concorde there, too?”
Missy asks.

“He made an appearance,” I
say, which is technically true. Under our agreement of complete honesty, I
should reveal Concorde’s day job identity to everyone, so no one can claim
later I withheld information, but I make a judgment call that this is a very
different situation; this isn’t need-to-know stuff.

Besides which, Edison would
eat me alive if I dropped that particular bombshell. No thank you.

“Did he see you?” Missy
says. “Did he recognize you?”

“Oh, he saw me, all right,”
I say, continuing the vague-a-thon.

“His head must have exploded
inside his helmet,” Matt says, and that warming thought dispels the last of his
snit fit; the rest of the afternoon passes pleasantly. We break a little after
five, agreeing to meet at my place after dinner for the nightly homework jam.

“Do you think I could hang
at your place?” Sara says.

“What, for dinner?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t see why not,” I
say, as if asking a question.

Sara picks up on my subtext.
“I can’t deal with my dad tonight,” she says.

“Is he still in his weird
mood?”

“Oh, yeah. I caught him
yelling at the guy on the news this morning. Haven’t seen him do that in
years.”

“Seriously? Wow.”

“Granddad used to do the
same thing.”

“So, it runs in the family?”

“On that side of the family,
anyway,” Sara says. “I remember when I was a little kid, Granddad would always
complain about the government, and about how hippies and pinkos were ruining
the country.”

“Huh. What’s a pinko?”

“No idea.”

“Was your dad always this
uptight and I never noticed?”

“You met him during a mellow
period. He goes through cycles.”

We reach my place, and I
groan at the sight of Ben’s car in the driveway. I do not need this tonight.

“What?”

“Ben’s here.”

“Ben your mom’s boyfriend
Ben?”

“The same.”

“Maybe I should go home,
then...”

“No,” I say, grabbing Sara’s
arm. “You want to hide out at my house to avoid your family, you have to help
me hide out in my room to avoid mine.”

“Fair enough.”

We enter to find Mom and Ben
sitting on the couch, a photo album sprawled across their laps. Oh, goody, the
time-honored tradition of adults bonding over embarrassing childhood snapshots.

“There you are,” Mom says.
Ben also says hi, but I barely hear him. “Dinner’s in the crock pot, we can eat
anytime you’re ready.”

Wait, the crock pot? Mom
used the slow cooker? The thing she once deemed the unholy abomination of the
kitchen? The thing lazy people use instead of cooking a proper meal? Ben, you
monster, what have you done to my mother?

“Honey,” Mom says, nodding at
Sara. “Introductions?”

“Huh? Oh, sorry. Sara, Ben;
Ben, Sara.”

“Hey,” Sara says.

“Hi, Sara, nice to meet
you,” Ben says, glancing up from the album.

“Mom, I swear to God, if
you’re showing Ben pictures of me in the bathtub, I will freak out hard enough to
destroy this house,” I say. “I mean, totally destroy it. Leveled. Scorched
earth.”

“Calm down, I haven’t shown
him anything incriminating,” Mom says. She flips the page, and her expression
tells me she’s about to be made a liar. “Oh, wow.”

“What? Is that Carrie?” Ben
says, his eyes ping-ponging between me and the album.

I rush over to the couch,
ready to tear the page out and burn it. It’s a newspaper clipping, yellowed
with age, brittle-looking, accompanied by a grainy black-and-white photograph
of a girl I barely recognize. She’s ten, maybe eleven years old, at the cusp of
her tomboy years and a period in her life she’d much rather forget ever
happened. Her dirty blond hair is in pigtails, her grin bears a prominent gap
near the front, and there’s a devilish gleam in her eyes. She clutches a hockey
stick as tall as she is. The hockey jersey billowing off her body has no team
emblem. The youth hockey league didn’t give teams names other than “pee-wee A”
or “mite D,” but we were unofficially known as the Seagulls, because the coach
thought it was cute. He was the only one who thought that.

“Oh. My. God,” Sara says,
“is that
you
?”

“That’s me,” I say, though I
can hardly believe it myself. The girl in the photo hasn’t existed for years.

“You played ice hockey?” Ben
says with a heavy note of skepticism.

“That’s one way to put it,”
Mom says, with a heavier note of disapproval. “Another way to put it is she
instilled utter terror in the kids on the other teams.”

“What does that mean?” I
say.

“Come on, Carrie, you know
what I mean. You were scary when you played.”

“I was not scary.”

Mom jabs a finger at the
article. “The reporter called you ‘the most dangerous little girl on Cape Cod.’
Her coach nicknamed her Hellcat Hauser,” she says to Ben, who looks at me like
I’ve sprouted a second set of arms.

“You’re a very unusual
girl,” he says.

“Thanks?” I say. “Mom, if
you don’t mind, I’m going to take my dinner upstairs. Sara and I have some
tests coming up, and we want to grab some extra cram time before the others
come over.”

“Oh, is it your night to
host?” Mom says, adding to Ben, “The kids take turns having homework nights at
their houses. Sure, hon, that’s fine. Sara, there’s plenty of beef stew, if
you’d like to help yourself.”

We head up to my room with
our steaming bowls of boring, by-the-numbers beef stew, and once the door is
shut Sara says, “So, that’s Ben.”

“That’s Ben. What do you
think?”

“Honestly? I don’t get any
bad vibes off him.”

I grunt. “I was kind of
hoping you’d tell me he was a fugitive from the police or something.”

“Sorry. He seems like a
decent guy. I think you should give him a chance,” Sara says. “I bet you’ll
warm up to him.”

If I ever do warm up to Ben,
tonight will most definitely not be a factor in my change of heart.

Mom and Ben take off when
the others show up for the nightly homework session, to “let us work in peace.”
Things run longer than we expect, and it’s ten thirty when everyone finally
heads home. I trudge upstairs to face-plant in bed, passing out as soon as I
hit the mattress.

I’m dead to the world until
a little after one in the morning, when I’m roused by the sound of laughter
outside my door. I hear Mom shushing someone, followed by that someone — Ben —
giggling an apology. Footsteps fade down the hallway and all is quiet
again...for a few minutes.

The noises that seep through
my wall are noises I never wanted to hear from my mother.

When wrapping my pillow
around my head fails to block out the sounds, I throw on some clothes and grab my
headset. I don’t care that I’m leaving the house at stupid o’clock; I need to
get out of here or I’m going to lose my mind.

I step outside and choke
back a shriek as I run right into my grandfather. “God! Granddad, what are you
doing out here?” I say, my heart pounding.

“Same thing you are, I
imagine,” he says.

“Ah.”

“Yep.” We stand there for a
moment, choosing to endure the chilly night air over...well, you know. “I’m
going to have a talk with her,” Granddad says.

“Oh, that ought to be fun,”
I say. “By which I mean, all kinds of awkward.”

“I expect so, but we can’t
have this happening again.”

I manage a chuckle. “Are you
going to tell Mom she can’t be bringing boys over anymore?”

“Sorry, kiddo, nothing so
drastic. Ben’s going to be around for a while, so you might as well get used to
him.” He looks at me. “You don’t like him, do you?”

“...Not really.”

“Because he’s not your
father.” I shrug. “No, it’s okay, I understand.”

“So it’s not a dumb reason
to dislike him?”

“It’s not a great reason, but
it’s a reason. It’s your reason and you’re entitled to your feelings, but you
are going to have to get used to him. I don’t think he’s going anywhere anytime
soon.”

I nod. “Do you like him?”

“I haven’t worked him over
with my pool cue, have I?” Granddad smirks, winks at me. “Jury’s still out, but
between you and me? This is strike one.”

As we stand there, doing our
best to warm ourselves by sheer force of will, I think to myself strikes two
and three can’t happen soon enough.

FIVE

“Are you okay? You look
awful,” Sara says.

“Thanks, love you too. Come
on in, I’ll be ready in a second,” I say. Sara follows me into the kitchen, where
I pour some coffee into the largest travel mug I can find and start dumping in
cream and sugar to bury the taste of the coffee itself.

“Seriously, Carrie, are you
okay?”

“Didn’t sleep much last
night,” I say, and I’m about to tell her why when Mom comes downstairs,
shrugging into one of her suit jackets.

“Good morning, Sara. Ohh,
hon,” Mom says, leaning in to better examine the raccoon circles around my
eyes, “you’re not getting sick, are you?”

Sick of your boyfriend,
sure. “No, I’m good. Late night last night is all.” Not as late as your night,
of course...

I take a sip of coffee and
wince, but not for the usual reason. It tastes mostly of the cream and sugar.

“What’s up with the coffee?”
I say. “It doesn’t suck.”

“Ben thought the coffee was
a little strong,” Mom says, “so I made it differently.”

My entire body goes rigid
with rage.

Okay, here’s the deal. My
Mom is a fantastic cook who, with access to a well-stocked spice rack, could
turn white rice into a toe-curlingly delicious dinner, but she has somehow
never mastered the simple task of making coffee. Dad complained about it
constantly and rightfully so: it’s
terrible
. Like, if it ever spilled,
we’d have to call in the EPA to clean it up. Despite Dad’s constant, ahem,
critiquing
,
Mom never changed how she made coffee. I’ve called it “hell-sludge” to Mom’s
face, Granddad outright refuses to drink it, but Mom’s technique never
changed...but
Ben says her coffee is “a little strong”
and all of a
sudden she’s a freakin’ Starbucks barista.