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"Left on an eastbound train
Gone first thing this morning
Why's what's best for you
Always the worst thing for me?"
-Nickelback
There was a branch digging into my ass, but then I guess that's one of the many disadvantages to hiding in a patch of evergreen bushes.
I know what your thinking: "Um, Bobby…why exactly are you hiding in a patch of bushes?" Simple, because hiding in the bushes outside my house was a hundred times easier than going inside.
See, before we'd left the school I'd lied to the Scott. I'd told him that I'd been communicating with my parents for months now, despite what had happened last time I'd been home. You know, with Pyro and the police and the giant SR-71 landing on the front lawn and all. But that's old news. Anyways, I assured him that my parents would be happy to have me home and that, I'd already arranged to have them pick me up from the bus station.
Good thing the Cyclops wasn't a pyrokinetic, or my pants would have seriously been on fire. That's how big a liar I was.
The truth: I hadn't spoken to my parents in months, I'd sent several e-mails that never got responses, called several times but no one ever picked up, even sent my brother a birthday card that got 'returned to sender, address unknown,' a few weeks later. But what other choice did I have? I was 18, so they couldn't send me off to some children's home, like Jubes, and with Rhane and Tracy both going to the Muir Island facility the Professor was hesitant to send anyone else there. He thought It'd make too tempting a target of us all. I'd been accepted to a few different universities around here, but it was the middle of summer. So that left me with two options: go home and risk ending up on my own, or let the Professor stick lock me in a safehouse or something. No, I'd rather make my own decisions. So I walked the fifteen blocks from the bus station. And…well, you know the rest: home, bushes, the whole deal.
"C'mon, Iceman, you can do this," I hissed under my breath. "Your typical day included dodging laser beams and fireworks. You can certainly walk up to your own front door and ring the bell." But by the time I finished talking to myself like a psycho, I was already there, staring into the formidable wall of glass and white wood that separated me from my family.
At least I wasn't in my underwear this time…and accompanied by a feral wild man from Canada…who was hell-bent on drinking the last of my father's beer. But all those factors really didn't make this any easier. 'Jesus, look at me! This shouldn't be so hard,' I thought to myself. Any other kid home from college or school would just walk right up and eagerly pound down the door. Then again, they probably weren't responsible for the destruction of half their parents' house and endangering the life of seven officers of the state police. 'Fine,' I told myself as I stood there on my own front porch looking like a complete dilhole. 'You can just live in your parents' bushes for the rest of your life. No TV, no phone to call Rogue, and up to your eyeballs in snow from November through April.' That thought got me moving. I focused my gaze on the doorbell.
"Alright, don't get cold feet. You can do this…" I stuck out my finger out. "I can do this." I moved my finger forward slightly. Then I froze.
My father was standing at the end of the entrance hallway, staring at me through the window.
"Shit."
Our eyes locked for a moment while my heart moved into my throat. His face was expressionless as he just stared. Then his mouth moved. I couldn't hear him through the thick glass of the door, but I didn't need to to know what he said.
"Bobby?"
"I've…we've been trying to reach you for months," my dad said, sitting down in his usual arm chair. There was a moment of awkward silence before my father waved a hand, gesturing for me to sit down on the couch. It was terrible, I felt like a stranger in my own home. I plopped down ungracefully. "But every time I called that number you gave us I got a girl that said you didn't want to speak to me." I groaned, knowing exactly what had happened.
"Did she answer the phone 'Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters: you freak 'em, we geek 'em?'" Dad nodded his head slightly, looking a little frazzled. And who could blame him?
"Yeah, uh…well something like that." He shot me a look out of the corner of his eye, a slight smile playing on his lips. It reassured me, catching a glimpse of my father's humorous side. It was the side of him I'd grown up with. "Why?" There could one explanation for my forty or so missed phone calls.
"Her name's Jubilee and has…had a tendency for putting words into people's mouths. Sorry?" I shrugged. Jubilee had better be thanking her lucky stars right now that there was an entire country between her and me or I swear to God she'd have woken up to a dresser stuffed with Spam.
What, you don't think I'd do it. Trust me, I was quite the prankster when I set my mind to mayhem. Dad looked slightly confused though still.
"What about those e-mails we sent?" he asked again. I was noticing a serious pattern here. Kitty knew more about the school computers than Dr. McCoy and the Professor combined. Kitty once hacked through three NSA firewalls. Kitty created my e-mail account for me.
The females of the school were out to get me.
"Uh…yet another chick with too much free time," I responded, my face buried in my sweaty hands.
"I take it then that you didn't get the birthday card we sent you?" And Rogue collecting the mail makes three.
"No," I confessed. "I didn't." We continued to stare doubly at one another, wondering how to act, what to say to kill the tension.
"So…uh, school's closed for good then?"
Okay, so my dad wasn't the best when it came to tension killing.
I looked him over as I nodded to answer his question. I don't know, maybe it was just me, but Dad seemed to have aged years in the brief eight months since I'd seen him last. His face was worn, eyes sunken and dark. He had more gray hair than before. And I knew that what I'd done to him, what I'd put my family through was probably to blame. I realized with a start that I was staring and quickly found something else to look at. Just so happened that it was the sliding glass door the police had stormed through during our last visit.
"You fixed it, huh?" I muttered to fill the ominous silence growing between my father and I. Wish I hadn't though, it just made the silence longer and more ominous. Dad coughed. I cleared my throat.
"So, where's your stuff?" he looked past me to the front porch.
"It's uh…" I'd almost said in the bushes, but I the last thing I needed right now was to have my Dad doubting my sanity. "…on the front porch. I'll just go and, you know, grab it."
"Yeah, okay," Dad nodded his head up and down, way to intent on the motion itself. "Good idea." More awkwardness, more silence as I walked softly down the hall and left him sitting in his chair. I shot through the door and felt as if all the pressure around me suddenly evaporated. Fresh air! I clunked down the wide porch steps, breathing deeply and trying to clear my head. I glanced around me. The old neighborhood looked exactly the same as it had before I'd left.
Mr. McCormick, the man who lived across the street, was watering his lawn in a pair of khaki shorts and tall, black socks, not to mention an Indiana Jones-ish hat. Yeah, he had worse taste in clothing than Remy and Sam combined, but that wasn't the point. The point was that in the time it took for me to haul my duffle, suitcase, and back pack from the tangled branches and barbs, McCormick had stopped watering and was now standing on his front porch, talking heatedly into his portable phone, glaring in my general direction. I could practically feel his eyes boring holes into me. I gave him a pathetic half wave as I hefted my bag onto my back. He scowled in my direction and stopped speaking. A minute later his screen door banged shut behind him as he retreated into his house.
"Jerk," I muttered. That man had once turned his hose on me when I was trick or treating at the age on 9. I mean, yes I was dressed as a convict with one of those little, plastic ball n' chains, but I was like 4' 9"! How could he have thought I was a real criminal! I stamped back into the house, dropping my stuff on the bottom landing of the stairs, just like I did every day after elementary school with my backpack. It was an unconscious gesture, one that surprised even me. Dad must have finally gotten himself out of the Laz-e-boy because I heard him shuffling around in the kitchen, and the sound of soft voices. A moment later I head the phone click down softly on the base.
"Dad?"
"Yeah," he called back. I walked into the kitchen and found him with his head buried in the refrigerator and the portable phone shoved into his back pocket.
"Who called?" He shut the door, chewing something, probably something he shouldn't have been. Dad's family had a history of high blood pressure, so Mom had kept him on a pretty strict, low fat, bran heavy diet since he hit forty. Dad had quite a knack for sneaking KFC into the house, disguising it as leftovers in the back of the fridge. Personally, Rony and I'd found it hysterical. It was nice seeing that he was still up to his old tricks.
"Yo'r mofer," he said thickly through his food.
"What?" I demanded, hopping up on the counter. Dad forced himself to swallow, then tried again.
"Your mother," he said again. That was the moment I realized that she was strangely absent, and so was my brother.
"Yeah, where are they anyways?" I asked, leaning back against the side of the fridge as my Dad opened the door again and took another bite of his stash.
"Sh' an' Wony 'ent to 'ee her mofer."
"Can't understand you, Dad!"
"They went to see her mother for a few days," he said again, in that tone he always got when he mentioned his mother in law/Grandma who lived in Virginia. He shut the fridge door and leaned back against the sink, regarding me seriously. "She wanted to get Rony away from those friends of his for a few days. She…we think their a bad influence on him. We actually found a pack of cigarettes in his coat last week!" he said, shaking his head in a forlorn kind of way. "We thought a few days away might be good for him."
"So?" I asked, waving my hands out in front of me. When Dad shook his head, obviously not getting what I meant. "What did she say?" Another blank look.
"About what?" I dropped my raised arms into my lap in a sign of defeat.
"About what?" I repeated in a higher voice, slightly exasperated. "About me." Dad rubbed the back of his neck and suddenly found something outside the window very interesting. "Dad…"
"Okay, look sport, I didn't exactly tell her you were home," I opened my mouth to protest , but he held up a finger forestalling my protest. "No look, this is a bigger deal than you think, Bobby. What happened last time really hurt your mom. She's gonna be thrilled to have you home, but this is a big transition. I didn't want her worrying or cutting their trip short. They could both use the time away. They'll be home in about a week." He gave a weak smile. "Besides, you know what that means?" When I didn't say anything, he answered his own question. "We have the house to ourselves for an entire week. You thinking what I'm thinking?" I smiled, despite myself.
"Takeout?"
"Takeout," he confirmed.
We were sitting sprawled out on the couch that night. Dad had a Bud Lite in his hand and I was slouched down, my feet planted on the coffee table in front of me. Before us lay the remnants of a medium, meat-lovers, Chicago-style deep dish pizza.
There were very few remnants, coughcrumbscough left. I know, it's obscene the amount of food men can eat while watching ESPN Classics. I think I hit my pizza limit somewhere between the 1984 World Series and SuperBowl 29. Still, there was just something so…nice about being home again. I mean, Dad and I'd done stuff like this all the time when I was growing up. But doing it now, after everything that had happened…well, it was like a peace offering. Like I was being welcomed back into the fold.
It was comforting, and good thing to, because what happened next might have just crushed me.
I was busy contemplating whether or not going into the kitchen for a new, not –flat Dr. Pepper would be worth the effort it took to get there. Dad was looking as if he regretted that last slice of pizza and was debating whether or not to sending me into the kitchen for an antacid would be worth the effort it'd take to get me in there. That's when then motion sensor light on the front porch went off. No big deal, right? Except that it was about 1:30 in the morning.
…Okay, so my dad and I have a bad habit of utilizing the all-night pizzeria near Boston U. So sue me…us, whatever. Back to that night.
Both of us turned and looked over the back of the couch. I cocked an eyebrow and, strangely, saw the same look mirrored on my father's face when he glanced at me. When nothing moved outside after a few moments, he said what we were both thinking.
"Raccoon, maybe?" I shrugged, turning back towards the game, even though I knew how it ended.
"Raccoon, could've been a car on the street, who knows? That thing was always spastic." I shrugged again. Still…the little hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. Dad started flipping channels again as I turned back to the door. And that's when it exploded into a thousand glittering glass shards.
"HOLY CRAP!" my dad exclaimed, flying off the couch like his ass was on fire. I was about a nano-second behind him. The temperature in the room had suddenly dropped like a rock; an unconscious reaction on my part. Dad didn't seem to notice that his breath was suddenly visible. After the sickening crash a sudden silence had spread over the house, perforated only by the sound of clinking glass as the few shards hanging from the doorframe continued to spiderweb and crack.
The two of us approached the door side by side, both of us staring in disbelief at what lay on the floor in front of us. It was a cinderblock, you know, those big industrial size kind with the big holes in the middle. And across the side of it someone had written in black chalk a single word. But I think it got the message across.
It said FREAK.
