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Tuck That Back -*- Copyright 2006 by Ellen Hayes.

Any resemblance between the writings in this work, and any actual
persons or places, living or dead, are purely coincidental, except when
used for satirical purposes.

This work contains adult situations, adult language, adult concepts, and
possibly sex.  If you are legally not allowed to read materials
containing such things, then you will be breaking the law by reading
this.  I am not responsible.
Continuing to read this document, or storing it or reproducing it
in any format means that you explicitly affirm that you are legally
allowed to possess and read such materials in your city, county/parish,
state, and country.

All rights reserved.  See the bottom for distribution rights.


Tuck That Back


***
04:02 26 Oct

     DAMNIT I hated being sick.  At least I hadn't woken anyone up, or
so it seemed.  I'd barely woken me up.  And I was not happy about being
awake either.

***
06:00 26 Oct

     The rattling under my head startled me awake again; it took me a
while to realize it was the mechanical alarm clock stuffed under my
pillow.  "Motherfucker," I sighed.

***
08:00 26 Oct

     "Val?"  I looked over, and Pam waved at me.  She was reading a
book, from her posture.  Or sewing, or something like that.  "You
awake?" she asked softly.
     "Not if I don't need to be," I sighed, and started fiddling with
pills and potions.
     "No problem," she said, and when I finished gasping in gustatorial
(SAT word) agony, she was back into her book.
     "'Night," I said, to be polite.
     "G'night Val."

***
10:43 26 Oct

     I woke up with the feeling that something was vaguely wrong.  This
feeling got a lot bigger when I managed to clear my eyes of all the
dried snot, and found I wasn't in my room.
     Then I had a coughing fit.

***
10:48 26 Oct

     "Goddamnit I HATE being sick!"  My face glared back at me from the
mirror over the sink, what I could see of it through the water vapor.
"Hrrk-"  I spat the latest offender into the sink when I got it loose,
and watched it try to swim to safety.  It was pretty small, and I didn't
see any red in it, or any green either.  "DROWN you fuck," I told it,
and splashed water at it until it went down the drain.  "DAMNIT I hate
being sick..."  It was better than eating it, but harder and hurt more.

***
10:52 26 Oct

     "Where is everyone?" I asked Mom.
     "Your father and Brian are out in the garage working on that
bicycle idea; and don't go outside without a coat and a hat, because
it's cold out there.  In the forties.  I'm here, and I've got no idea
where Susan is."
     "What?"
     "She's out of town.  At college.  Remember?"  Too late I noticed
Mom grinning.  "Ha ha," I said to show that I'd finally gotten it.
"Wasn't Mike and a lot of girls here last night?"
     "Weren't.  They ate breakfast and dispersed.  Some of them asked if
you were going to do Sunday cooking again.  Which you are NOT obligated
to do."  Which meant I could if I wanted.  "I thought we could do it
together, if you wanted to.  I told them you'd call when you figured it
out, or before noon."  I checked my watch, and decided I might have time
to wake up before having to make a decision.  "Your friends eat a lot,"
she mentioned casually.
     "Mike and Kathy eat a lot," I said, remembering.  "The rest of
them... you don't notice except there's so many of 'em."
     "Is... Pam, is she alright?" Mom asked.  "She didn't eat much at
all."
     *Mommmmm...*  I had enough sense running not to say that out loud,
though.  "Yeah, she-  Did anyone else say anything to her?  They're
watching her."
     "Does she have an eating disorder?" Mom asked, point-blank.
     I thought about telling her, but Pam hadn't indicated it was a
secret.  Still...  "I don't think so.  I'll ask around."
     "She ate a little, but not much," Mom repeated.  "And she's a
pretty big girl."
     "Pam?  This tall, long straight brown hair?"  'Big' did not
intersect 'Pam'.
     "Taller than you," she said.
     "Well, yeah, who isn't," I groused.  "Still, big?"
     "She just looked tall, so I expected her to be a bit bulkier, I
guess."
     I almost said something else, but caught it before it got out.
"No... I think she's got a thin body type, or something.  The other
girls were complaining at her about it once."

***
11:17 26 Oct

     "Pam went to church, Kathy had a class to teach, Jill was going to
go hang with Mike and Kelly for a while... Amanda had some homework to
do... uh... Julia said something about a rehearsal..."  Even Sabrina
was apparently having trouble remembering everyone who had been here.
Or who hadn't.  "Oh, and I was supposed to ask, were you going to cook
tonight?"
     "Yeah, if I can."  I still had to 'pay off' the laptop, which I
glanced at just to make sure it was still here.  It was.  I rubbed my
belly a little in thanks.
     "You are?"
     "Yeah?  Why shouldn't I?"
     "I thought you were still sick?"
     "Yeah, sort of...  I will NOT be coughing into the food, though, I
SWEAR I won't."
     "That's not what I meant," she sighed.  "I mean, if you're that
sick, I mean you're not going to school tomorrow are you?"
     "Dunno.  I've got a med eval tonight, to-
     "A what?"
     "Medical evaluation.  I'll probably go back Tuesday, if nothing
else goes wrong."
     "Man..."
     "Well, you saw the armor," I said.  "That'll protect my ribs."
     "Didn't you have a skull fracture or something?"
     "Yeah, but if anyone hits my head hard enough for that to make a
real difference I'm dead anyway.  I'll just be more careful this time."
     "Man, did you-  Well, Mike said you could find out about it?" she
half-asked.
     "About WHAT?"
     "What's been going on at school lately!" she said like I should
know what she was talking about.
     "Oh, that.  Yeah, sort of...  What have you seen?"  It would be
useful to know what she knew before I read the reports.  Mike wasn't as
good at writing them as Mom, and reports weren't really personal.  And
they skipped a lot.  I always did.

***
11:33 26 Oct

     "Knights?"
     "Yeah, your lit-  No, James is Mike's little brother.  Anyway, he
came up with the idea... um...  Knights errant," Sabrina remembered.
     "Ronin?" I sort of let loose.
     "Mike said that, and I didn't know what it meant."
     "Uh."  How much to tell a non-geek...  "Warrior class in Japan, the
ones with bosses or masters were samurai, the ones without were called
ronin.  Means 'wave man', I think," I said.  "And no, I don't know why
they'd be called that."
     "Oh."
     "Too much?  Too much geeking?" I specified.
     "No, just... I dunno."  I decided that 'enough or more' was the
correct value, and dropped further explanations.  She continued,
"Anyway, so..."
     "Knights of McAllen?"
     "Oh yeah!  See, the concept was, like, knights of the Round Table,
going around and doing good deeds, righting wrongs..."  *Plundering
peasants, raping women, abducting children, robbing treasuries, purging
unrelated religions, killing off the wildlife...*  I didn't like Normans
much once I looked into them.  "Debbie said a, uh, a cell structure?"
     That made me perk up.  "Say what?"
     "She called it a cell structure, though it seems more like a
pyramid thing to me, the way she described it."
     I'd never known Debbie read Heinlein; it made me shiver.  Then I
remembered Fight Club, and I almost yelped out loud.  *Oh Ghu I hope
not!*
     "Anyway," Sabrina continued, "the way it's going to work is..."  I
turned to the terminal and cranked up vi on whatever box I was on; I'd
find the file and move it to the right place later.

***
12:13 26 Oct

     Now I had an idea why Mom had been so pleasant; she'd been plotting
the overthrow of the local government.  Behind my back.  I was so pissed
I could barely talk.  *And colluding with DEBBIE...*  That seemed worse,
like inviting the Soviets to help you with your democratic revolution.
     "It is like so NEAT!" Anne-Marie crowed.  "I mean, I never thought
I could DO stuff like that!"
     "Yeah, it's neat," I said, trying to be appropriately happy for
her.  It was a lot easier over a phone line.  "Uh..."  'Meds' came up as
a good excuse, so I said, "Um, look, I have to go take a bunch of
medicine, so-"
     "Hey, can we bring her over?" Jill asked.  "For dinner?"
     "Oh, sure, call Mom and tell her how many so she'll know what to
get at the store," I said, thinking, *This oughta put a stop to this.*

***
12:18 26 Oct

     "Fuck'alla'ya, m'gowen'b'd," I mumbled.  Fuck the monitoring
equipment too.

***
12:20 26 Oct

     Something made my bed twitch, and I almost died before I realized
what it was.  "Get the fuck OUTTA here you goddamned allergen!" I hissed
at the cat.  I tried kicking it off but it got out of range, and then I
closed my eyes to rest for just a minute, before getting up to kill
it...

***
14:38 26 Oct

     "Eugene?"
     *Go AWAY...*

***
14:39 26 Oct

     "Eugene?"
     *Go Aw-*
     "Were you going to cook today?"
     I had to activate some of my brain to parse this, and then I
remembered.  Then I decoded what she was saying.
     Then I remembered what a question was, and what to do with it.
"Yeah," I tried to say.
     I hated being sick.
     The cat hated me being sick too; it took off like a rocket when I
exploded.  I tried to kill it with telepathy before it disappeared but
it didn't work.

***
14:42 26 Oct

     "Did you have a nice nap?"
     "Right up until the last little bit, when someone woke me up," I
grumbled.  It hadn't been as bad as last week, but I was TIRED of it,
and sore as hell too.
     Mom smiled at me and held one arm out, and I took the hug.  "We
love you, you know," she told me.
     "I know..."  Then I had a sudden horrible thought, and my eyes
popped open to scan the area, but none of my friends were watching me.
I relaxed back into the hug, and wanted another nap.
     "I wish you weren't sick."
     "Not as much as I do!  You can't, Mom," I said to forestall what
she was going to say next.  "You're not eating the snot."
     "Ehhhh," she complained.
     "Does this mean you're not hungry?" I hoped.
     "You'd have to gross all your friends out," Mom said, divining
where I was going, and I sighed; George was really hard to gross out,
and with Mike it was hard to tell because he didn't change color at all
until he threw up.  "And there's a lot of 'em coming."
     "How-  How do YOU know?"
     Her eyebrows went up, I saw as I pulled away and looked in her
face.  "You told them to call me with the numbers of who was coming?"
     "No I did-"  Maybe I had.  *DAMNIT!*  "How many?" I asked
fearfully.
     "Most of them AND most of their little brothers and sisters," she
warned me.  She started counting on her fingers.
     "Oh my god...  What did you get at the store?!"

***
14:50 26 Oct

     She'd gotten a lot, it turned out; she'd even been plotting -
usefully, this time - to figure out what would feed around two dozen
'friends' of mine and leave us enough food money to eat the rest of the
month.  "And I know there's a lot of chopping, but your friends are
coming over and they can help."
     "Oh yeah... what?  They are?  When?"
     Mom looked at her watch as she said, "About three, I said?"
     "Mommmmm!"  When she looked up, I managed to articulate, "Don't
invite my friends over HERE!  They'll COME!  Especially for FOOD!"
DEFINITELY for food, most of 'em.
     Her eyebrows went up like Dad's.  "I thought," she said, "you liked
them?  Them being your friends and all?"
     "Uhhhhhh!" I quoted Susan, which is what she said when someone had
been all logical and rational at her instead of catering to her tiniest
emotional whim.  Dad must've put a prototype radioisotope RNG in her
before he put the one in the basement; her moods were truly random as
far as we'd been able to chart.  "Where's Dad?"
     "He already said they could come, so-"
     "I just wondered!"
     "Out in the garage doing something with Brian," she said in a tone
of voice that told me I was being a little too much like an independent
adult to suit her at the moment.
     I closed my eyes, to blot her out, and breathed a couple of times
to make sure I was still doing that okay.  "Okay, so..."  So I needed to
look at the MacinCook to check the recipes and see if I was missing
anything like a four hour cooking time on a main dish.  "Right.
Cooking," I sighed.
     "How's your laptop?" she asked as she got out of my way.
     "Oh, dusty but okay.  I checked it out..."  No file damage, apart
from the stupidity of trying to use Windows to do anything useful.
     "What I don't understand, is how you knew who had it?"
     "Did I tell you what I did to it before?  I mean, why Dad could get
it?"
     "No?"
     I almost started explaining; instead, I asked, "Do you want to hear
about it?"
     "Sure!" she said, like I was being silly, of course she wanted me
to geek out on her.
     *What IS she on?*

***
15:17 26 Oct

     "Oh, Eugene?"
     "Yeah?"
     "I need to tell you something," she said, which told me it was
something I wasn't going to like.
     "What?"
     "I invited Debbie over for sup-"
     "You WHAT?!" I shrieked.
     "She saved your life, Eugene," Mom said solemnly.  "You know what
that mean-"
     "WHEN?!"
     "In the hospital, and getting Mike there.  You know, she picked
Mike up in the parking lot of your school and took him-"
     "What?"
     "You haven't read ANYTHING, have you?" she accused me.
     "Mom!  I've been SICK!"
     Luckily, around that point someone rang the doorbell, and I could
go answer it.  Which I did, as fast as I could move.  It was Julia
again, so I opened the door.
     "Hi!" Julia perked.
     "Hey," I said, and smiled at her.  "Come on in!"  *And save me from
my mother,* I didn't say.
     *Aw hell,* I decided as we walked to the back of the house.  *Mike
won't let Debbie do anything, MOM wouldn't let Debbie do anything - not
after all that hospital shit - and neither would Dad, and most of her
friends that'll be over, they were here yesterday.  She won't do
anything.  And if she doesn't want to come, she'll make an excuse,
instead of showing up and being mad about it.*  It wasn't like this was
HER family...
     And speaking of family, Mom was gone when I got back to the
kitchen.  Amen.
     "What's cookin' doc?" Julia asked.
     "Uh, well... would you mind helping?  So you can eat it?"

***
16:40 26 Oct

     She hadn't minded, and neither had Amanda, who'd brought the rest
of them, or Valerie Faciszewski - though we still couldn't quite look at
each other - or Sally Shu, Amanda's little, or Gina, Kim's little, or
Janet, an awesome looking cocoa-skinned freshman who was Julia's little.
Apparently, one of the things about whatever social revolution Debbie
had started and Mom had finished, was that the juniors were going to be
sticking with their freshthings.  Half of 'em were with Kathy learning
basic self-defense, which made me snicker a bit - how could KATHY of all
people teach a NORMAL person what to do in a fight?  But she was, and I
supposed it couldn't hurt.  I sure as hell couldn't do it, not now.
     "Ah, more helpers," Mom smiled at me.  I smiled back; cooking was a
LOT easier this way.

***
16:53 26 Oct

     "You sing?"
     "Yeah," Janet said, like she was sick of the whole thing and I'd
better not ask her to demonstrate.
     "Vv-Tuck sings, or so I've heard," Julia mentioned innocently.
     I made sure Mom wasn't around - downstairs fetching something from
a freezer, I thought - and evaded, "Only when I'm REALLY drunk."  I
didn't think I could get drunk enough to sing around a bunch of girls I
hardly knew; I could only hold so much before I'd pass out and/or die.
     "That's a shame," Julia said, like it was.  "I bet you have a
wonderful voice."
     "Huh?"  I looked at her suspiciously.  "Why?"
     "Because of your fingers."
     "What?"  I couldn't stop myself from looking at my fingers.  Then
Janet's.  "Oh, fuck you," I told Julia after she started chuckling.
"Remember, she gets all the rotted bits and gristle," I told the other
helpers.

***
17:03 26 Oct

     "Yeah- Hey, you could make picture day," Julia said to me.  I know
she was talking to me because she grabbed my other arm, the one without
a knife in it.  Apparently she didn't know about cross-side strikes.
     "I could make what?" I asked.
     "Picture day?  For the yearbook?"  *Oh, Picture Day.*  "They were
going to start last week, but with everything being so unsettled..."
She shrugged.  "So they're doing it next week, starting Monday."
     "Gee, and I might miss that.  How sad," I lied.
     "What is with you?"
     "I don't like having my picture taken," I told her.  "Seems..."  I
shrugged.  The reasons were vague, theoretical, and verging on clinical
paranoia.  "Dunno.  Just don't like it."
     "It is kind of a pain," Janet agreed.
     "Why?" Valerie asked.

***
17:18 26 Oct

     "Hi honey, I'm home!" Kathy bellowed from the front door.
     "Aw hell," I sighed, wondering if Mom had gotten enough and if we'd
cooked enough.  I THOUGHT I had, but-
     "What's cookin'?" Mike yelled.
     "Aw hell!"

***
17:26 26 Oct

     They'd brought most of the remaining littles - it SEEMED like the
entire freshthing class, anyway - and the place was amazingly crowded.
Seemed like one of Susan's birthday parties, except I wasn't in as much
danger going through the crowd.
     "When's it gonna be ready?" Kathy asked.
     "When we're done cooking it," I snapped.  I was feeling unusually
pressured at the moment about cooking.  *Must be the size of the
audience,* I guessed.  Plus I needed a break; the food was starting to
make me nauseous.
     Amanda said, "Hey, uh, Tuck, what're you gonna do if someone, uh-"
     "You okay?" Paul interrupted.
     "No, duh," George said, slapping his arm, "that's why he hasn't
been in school lately."
     "Broken ribs, lung damage," I summarized.  *Plus emotional trauma
on top of that... plus...*  There was a lot.
     "I had broken ribs once," said some freshthing male I didn't
recognize.  "What's gonna happen if someone does something to you?  You
got beat up already once, right?"  I nodded.  "Well..."  He looked
around.
     "Tuck's got something in mind," Dan smirked.
     "Who, me?  Lil' meek and mild me?" I questioned.
     "Big fat liar you," George said, and grabbed a shoulder and twisted
me around like he was gonna do something.  He was grinning, too.
     I pulled both ASP batons from the lower back sheaths Dad had sewn
into the armor-under-layer and snapped them open.  The authoritative
steel #SHING# got people's attention, and I swung the right one at
George's face, real slow and gentle, and a quarter-beat later knelt and
thrust the left one at his groin, off-aiming so I'd only hit his thigh,
which I did.
     George stumbled back onto some of the freshthings, who complained
and abused him, which generated some counterabuse, as I made sure of my
balance before carefully standing - dropping was easy, rising hurt - and
collapsed the batons.  Sheathing them required some work, but I had one
put away before George got free. "You do that again, no food," I said.
"And I beat the sh- hell out of you," I promised as I fumbled with
trying to get the second one back in place.
     "Can I see-"
     "No."  He'd just want to whack something with it.  "I'm going back
in the kitchen where it's safe."  Mom wasn't that bad...

***
17:43 26 Oct

     "Gee, I'd love to get an exam now," I lied to Doc Treble, who had
also shown up for the feast, "but Mom's up taking a shower, and if I
stop cooking at the moment the starveling horde will kill us both."  I
had not in fact stopped while I was talking; I couldn't.
     "So don't stop and you'll live," Amanda told me before giggling.
     "Get OUT!"
     "Get back to WORK!" she shrieked back.

***
17:53 26 Oct

     "Uh, mostly Asian, with a European-type green salad and a couple
other things," I announced to the multitudes that had shown up.  Having
a lot of helpers made a few dishes more feasible than usual.  "You all
set things up; I am going to go shower."  Hopefully Mom hadn't used all
the hot water.
     The idea of locking myself in my room occurred to me as I was going
up the stairs, but then I remembered I didn't have a door lock any more.
I did have wedges... but Mike and Kathy would bang on the door so much I
couldn't get any sleep.  Damnit.  *Guess I gotta eat,* I concluded
wearily.

***
18:04 26 Oct

     The dining room had been converted into its maximal configuration,
and it was nearly full.  "Jeezus," I sighed.
     "Come on!"  "We're waiting for you!"  "Hurry!"
     "Jeezus..."  I hurried as much as I could, and Mike had saved me a
seat, but I was not really in the mood to eat.
     Dad and Mike and Brian hurriedly chanted, "Good bread, good meat,
good god let's eat!" in a ragged chorus and then the dishes started
moving.

***
18:11 26 Oct

     "You never fix the same things, but it's always good," Amanda
complimented me across half the table.  She had to yell a little,
because the tableware noise was kind of loud.
     "Very good recipe database," I said, and smiled at Mom, who smiled
back before indicating my plate.  I sighed and got back to work.

***
19:10 26 Oct

     "I still feel like shit," I told Doc Treble.
     "Tired?"
     "Oh yeah..."
     "Sleep is good for you.  Get some more tonight, and no you can't go
to school tomorrow."
     "What about Tuesday?"
     She thought about it.  "I'd prefer Wednesday."
     I sighed.  I would like to get back to my friends before Christmas,
but I wasn't sure it was going to happen.
     "Besides," she added, "you could use the extra day to rest up."
     "Y-"  That was actually a good idea.  "Yeah," I said, like that was
what I'd intended.

***
19:22 26 Oct

     It was too cold for the front (or back) porch, and raining too, so
they were all wandering between the living room, dining room, and the
front half of the basement, seemingly at random.  I'd just parked myself
and was letting other people handle the cleanup and supervision thereof.
Mom had said it would be unpardonably rude to shoot a few of them to get
the rest to leave, and I didn't feel like napping when the lot of them
might be plotting against me.
     Plotting was in the air; half the conversations were mentioning
threads of conspiratorial action I could now recognize, from Debbie,
Mike, Mom...  I was beginning to grok the Illuminated advantage.
     "You still look like shit," George told me.
     "Thanks George," I sighed.
     "No prob," he grinned.  "What're you doing for Halloween?"
     "Do what?"  I checked my watch, and damned if it wasn't almost
Halloween.  "Aw, f- sh- heck."

***
19:28 26 Oct

     I was sort of sitting back, listening to everyone else talk about
THEIR costumes, while trying to get inspired.  I wasn't getting
inspired.  Then I caught Paul and Matt ostentatiously staring at Kelly,
which I didn't know if it was bugging her but it was bugging me.  "What
the hell are you two doing?"
     Paul said to Kelly, "Uh, we're trying to look under your bangs, to
see if we can see that big scarlet 'L'," as he put a hand up to his own
forehead and made an 'L' with his finger and thumb.  Matt laughed.
     "You assholes, knock-"
     "She doesn't have it yet," Kathy said loudly.  "She's still waiting
for her membership kit to come in the mail."
     I laughed until I hurt, which was about 0.3 seconds, then I kept
laughing.  But not as much.  At least Kelly thought it was funny too.

***
19:36 26 Oct

     "You know, I think Kelly coming out is a bad idea," Julia
announced.  When everyone glanced at her, she stated, "I mean, don't we
already have ENOUGH out-of-the-closet thespians at school?"
     You could sort of measure a person's speed of wit, by the time it
took them to start laughing or chuckling or grimacing or whatever.  Poor
Sally missed it; her English was a lot better than anyone else's Korean,
but absolutely measured it wasn't that good.  "A thespian," I said into
her ear, "i-  Thespian is a fancy word for 'actor'," I corrected.
     "Ah," she said, and nodded a couple of twitches before a smile
appeared.  "Sound like 'lesbian'?"
     "Yeah," I grinned back.

***
19:44 26 Oct

     "So, uh, Tuck," one of the girls I recognized but had no name for
started.  "Are you going to like do stuff for the bake sale?"
     "What bake sale?"  She shied away from me; I realized what my
expression was and tried to stop it.  It didn't work.
     I turned and yelled, "Mike!" but Dan was right there.  "You!  What
the hell is this about a bake sale?  And I'd better not find out I got
volunteered for anything..."
     "What?" he snapped like I was the one being unreasonable.  "Oh,
about the bake sale."
     "Duh!"
     "S'for equipment, for the nights."
     "Wh-"  'Knights', I realized.  "What equipment?"
     "Training stuff, radios, Mike wants batons like you got, uh-"
     "Fat damn chance of that," I mentioned.  They were probably
hideously illegal, because they might actually hurt if someone like me
used one.  As opposed to bare hands which hurt a lot if you were huge
and sporty.  All I could do was permanent damage and kill people.
     "Fuck off, it might happen," Dan said belligerently.  "Hey, can I
see one?"
     "No.  You'd just hit something with it."

***
19:54 26 Oct

     "Ohfuck!  Where's Debbie?!"  I'd just remembered.
     "She said she couldn't make it, she had a dinner date with
someone," Amanda said.  I sighed and slumped in relief.  I didn't THINK
I could've missed her, but I wasn't on top of my game tonight, and I
might have.
     "Where's Kim, is what I wanna know?" Mike broke in.
     Amanda shrugged.  "She said she wasn't feeling well..."  Mike gave
her a skeptical look.  "That what she SAID, Mike!"
     "It's been a couple of days," Mike pointed out.  "Is she avoiding
me or something?"
     Amanda shrugged helplessly.  "Not that _I_ know about..."

***
20:02 26 Oct

     "It's not so much that, it's like the patrols," Amanda said.
     "And the oath," Matt said.
     "What oath?" I asked.

***
21:12 26 Oct

     "Vv-Tuck?" Sabrina asked.  "You look really tired."  That was
probably because I was really tired.  "Why don't you go to bed?"
     "Okay," I agreed.
     "G'night Tuck," Jill said, and hugged me a little and kissed my
cheek.  Sabrina did the same thing when Jill let go, and then Kelly, to
my surprise, did it too.
     "Ooooh," Jill went, "now Tuck's got lesbian cooties too!"
     All the girls chuckled at that as I went, "What?"  I was going to
start yelling until I noticed that Kelly was grinning too.  "What?"
     "Tell you tomorrow," Sabrina said.  "Get some sleep... like I'm
going to."  Jill and Kelly nodded.  "See ya tomorrow night?"
     I nodded, to get her to go away, which they all did.  They were out
of sight before I remembered Sabrina's tutoring.

***
04:04 27 Oct

     I realized that I really ought to switch my med sched around some,
so I wouldn't have to be doing this so often during sleeping prime time.
     *But later...*  I still needed some sleep, and I could get another
couple of hours in before I had to take yet more meds.

***
12:19 27 Oct

     "Oh, man..."  I still felt like sleeping, but I had to go to work.
Which meant I ought to start getting ready about now.  Sort of.  At
least, I should NOT go back to sleep.  Which I REALLY wanted to do.
     *Caffeine,* I realized.  *And no pain pills.*

***
12:33 27 Oct

     *Half a pain pill,* I decided.  Life was unhappy with zero.  And,
while constant pain did make me really awake and alert, I didn't think I
needed to be that awake and alert.

***
12:37 27 Oct

     I remembered that Things Had Gone Badly last week, and if anyone
had had problems, they might've left me a message in voicemail or
something.  I checked, and there wasn't anything that seemed to apply.
All the messages in my voicemail from the Pack were older than Friday,
anyway, and I didn't have that much time.
     I did, however, have one from my dad, timestamped earlier today.
*What the...*  I played it, and it was The Voice Of God (or the closest
we'd gotten in voice synthesis) telling me, "REMEMBER TO TAKE YOUR
CELLPHONE WITH YOU TODAY."
     *Yes Dad... fuck you...*

***
13:26 27 Oct

     "Shit!" I commented as I slammed the door shut.  It was COLD out
there.
     I sighed at the injustice of it all, then went to find a coat.

***
13:29 27 Oct

     "Aw, man..."  I'd almost forgotten the cellphone again.  *Fuck
YOU.*  I stuck it into the belt pouch I had to carry around, then
remembered to make another check to see if I had all the drugs I needed.

***
14:03 27 Oct

     'My' Valerie clothes had been moved around on the hangers, and
there was the coat Rachel had forced on me Friday night, hanging right
there at the front, like it was a 'hint'.  "Jeez, have you been taking
parenting classes or what?" I asked the air.  But I took the coat.

***
15:06 27 Oct

     "Are you feeling better?" Ricky asked me.
     "Y-  I don't know.  I guess," I guessed.
     He grabbed my hand and squeezed it, like he was trying to be
supportive.  I looked at him in astonishment, but realized, way too
late, that I could have yanked my hand away and hit him several times.
I guess I wasn't very tense around him.  Or the wrong kind of tense.
     "Can I do anything?" he pleaded.
     "Uh... let go of my hand so I can drive?"
     He did, but complained, "That's not what I meant!"
     I knew it wasn't what I meant either, but I could drive, and use
driving as an excuse, as I tried to figure out what the hell to tell
him.   'No' would be easy but probably wouldn't work...

***
15:09 27 Oct

     "Look, Ricky, it's okay," I told him as gently as I could.  Traffic
was kind of loud at the moment.  "I just...  I mean, you have been
helping, really.  It's okay, you don't need to worry about i-"
     "I worry about YOU!"
     *Well, STOP, damnit!*  I couldn't say that, and it wouldn't have
worked anyway, so I kept my mouth shut and tried to think of something
else that would work.

***
15:35 27 Oct

     When I finished shutting off the car, quite a bit behind Ricky as
usual, I wasn't sure if I was sort of hallucinating at first, or not.
There was this eerie sound-effect kind of noise, vaguely like someone
being tortured or something.  I tried to pop my ears to hear better,
which caused an unexpected amount of pain as the left one let go with a
feeling like someone had stabbed into my ear with an icepick.  "Mah..."
I gasped as I wobbled in my seat, trying not to scream, and trying
especially not to scream 'Motherfucker!'.  It had thrown my balance off
too, and I grabbed on to the steering wheel to keep from falling out of
the car.  I breathed for a while, until the gyros realigned and the pain
subsided.  *Not that bad... must not've had an- not a real infection
anyway.*  A bad middle- or inner-ear infection would have dropped me on
the ground screaming in pain and unable to stand up with my eyes closed
for quite a while.
     As if it was reading my mind, that scary noise floated up again.
     I couldn't locate it with my ears, which meant I couldn't rule out
that it was in Ricky's house.  And Ricky had done the usual thing and
run for before I could follow him.  I scrambled out, slammed the door
shut to keep a little heat inside for Stella and ran for the house,
pinning my arm against my ribs, which slowed me down a lot.

***
15:37 27 Oct

     "A what?"
     "A dog!"  I could tell it was a dog.  It looked like a basset
hound, I thought vaguely; not that I was an expert on dog breeds, but I
thought I knew the more common or famous ones.  "I've been asking and
asking and asking but they finally said I could get one this weekend!
His name is Ruffles," which startled me a bit, since it seemed like an
original name.  Not Spot (the dog had none) or Rex or King or Blue or
any of the other stupid standards.  Patches wasn't that good either, but
we'd been young, and Brian had cried a lot to get that one, before we
had been able to convince him that crying to get his way was unmanly.
"Is it a good name?"
     I looked at the dog.  "Yeah..."  Actually, the dog looked like a
personification of the word 'hangover'.  "How old is it?"
     "About six months.  Mom said he used to be with someone who was
moving to a new apartment and couldn't keep him any more.  Isn't he
cool?"
     Ruffles looked at me like he was in torment and he wanted ME to
make it stop.  Then he came over and sniffed my feet, and submitted to a
furious petting from Ricky.  "Isn't he great?"
     "Yeah..."  There was something wrong.  No baby, I realized.  "I'll
be back in a minute.  Gotta get Stella."  Drugs would be clever too;
even if the dog had been bathed recently, it was still dripping Evil.

***
15:42 27 Oct

     "Oh NO!"
     I couldn't breathe at the moment but I looked around, and Ricky was
staring at me in horror.  And NOT telling me what was wrong.  *Damn damn
damnit-*  "What?!" I complained, letting out a lot of expensive vapor
that I might need later, before it had done me any good.

***
15:45 27 Oct

     "I was scared you were gonna die," he almost whispered.
     I sighed.  Then remembered I had oral meds to take, checked my
watch, decided I had a few minutes, remembered I was going to be
switching drug times around, recalculated, and got back to him.  "Ricky,
I'm not gonna die."  I'd just suffer excruciating agony and, if I was
really having a bad day, brain damage from hypoxia.  "I've got all the
equipment and drugs I need to deal with it, and I've been dealing with
it all my life.  I know what to do.  So does Mike.  And it might go away
again..."  It had before, for almost three years; that was why I hadn't
been carrying things like inhalers all the fucking time, like I had to
now.  Again.
     *And Benadryl...*  Which reminded me of the one I ought to take
right now no matter what I was doing to the rest of the drug times.

***
15:50 27 Oct

     "No we can NOT take the dog out to the park for a walk!  It's COLD
out there!"
     "It's not that cold!" he argued.
     "It is for me.  It hurts to breathe when it's that cold."
     He almost continued, but stopped.  I tried very hard not to smirk.
Having him be all spastic about my health did me at least ONE piece of
good...

***
15:52 27 Oct

     Ricky had just rediscovered how cold it really was outside.
     "No, Ricky; he's not MY dog," I explained patiently, "he's YOUR
dog.  I'm not babysitting the dog."
     "Well you're babysitting me and it's my dog so it's like the same
thing!"
     "No, it is not."  I knew this wasn't going to work even as I was
saying it, but I found something else in my frantic thinking as I said
it and so I instantly continued, "Ricky, the cold air is bad for me,
remember?  I can take it in short doses, but not for a long period of
time, and the more I do it the worse I get."  I almost added, 'Don't you
want me to get well?' but that was dirty fighting.  "So I'm not doing
it, and if you want it done you have to do it," I said instead.  "And,"
I realized, "I bet your mom and dad said for YOU to do it..."  That
would be why he really wanted me to do it; dog shit was one of the worse
parts of having a dog.  His face told me I'd guessed right.  "So you
need to do it.  And the faster you do it, the faster you can get back in
here and warm up."

***
15:57 27 Oct

     "It's really cold out there!" Ricky gasped as he came back in.
     The dog emitted an agonized noise that drove all rational thought
from my head.  I found myself with my little fingers jammed into my
ears, and gently - remembering popping one outside - removed them when
it looked like he was done.  "I think he agrees with you," I gasped.
     And the damned dog had set Stella off.  She was really scared, too.

***
16:03 27 Oct

     If I'd ever wondered why I had earplugs in my purse all the time,
this was why.  I wondered if Mom had carried some, and if not, why she'd
been so stupid not to.  Dad did, when he had the pocket room.
"Shhh-hh-hh-hh," I told Stella, bouncing her a little, as she shrieked.
"It's okay, Stella..."

***
16:14 27 Oct

     "Can we sell her to the Gypsies?" Ricky asked.
     I looked up at him.
     "Dad says that sometimes when he thinks I'm being annoying," he
explained.
     I thought about it.  "If only I knew some Gypsies, and if only
they actually did buy babies..."
     "Yellow pages!" Ricky enthused, and dashed for the phone.
     And Stella went off again.  "Ricky, I am so going to skin you
alive," I sighed, as I picked Stella up and put her back into the baby
sling.  The dog added a harmony that made my skin ripple, and Stella
went into sonic overdrive.

***
16:22 27 Oct

     "I think maybe it's the dog."  It seemed to fit...
     "Whyyyy?" Ricky whined, like it was all a plot to get rid of his
dog.
     "I don't know.  Ask her.  Ha ha, don't bother she doesn't talk," I
told him as I grabbed his arm.  "Besides, I got her calmed down for the
moment, and quiet."

***
16:33 27 Oct

     Ricky had taken Puddles or whatever it was out to the living room
to play with it, so I'd gone and fetched Stella from her room.  She
seemed a lot calmer, but she was looking around a lot, like there was
something scary around and she wanted to know where it was.  "Know what
you mean, kid," I told her.  I was just starting to deal with supper
when I remembered drugs.  Then I remembered that I was trying to re-time
them.
     Then, in a burst of orthogonal thought, I realized what the dog
was.

***
16:36 27 Oct

     "If Ricky likes me, and they're planning to get rid of me, then
they might do something like get him a dog, to distract him," I told
Mike.
     "Oh man..."
     Pause.
     "Am I wrong?"
     He sighed into his cellphone.  "I can't-  WE can't tell, Tuck," he
emphasized, "unless and until, you either get fired or don't."
     "Great.  Bloody great."  I hated being Schrodinger'd.
     "What happens if you do?  Are you gonna be able to get home?"
     "What?"
     "Emotional shock, et ceter-"
     "Yeah, I think so.  I might have a relapse or something, but I
should be able to make it home."  I had, after all, been thinking about
it for a while; it wouldn't be quite a surprise.
     "Alright... if it happens, it ought to happen today."
     "What?!"
     "Otherwise, Ricky'll get used to you AND the dog, and it won't be
effective as a distraction."
     "Oh."  That made too much depressing sense.  "Yeah," I sighed.
     "You need me there?"
     "Uh... no.  I can handle it.  She's not the type to get really
crazed about it..."
     "No," he agreed, before I could decide if I wanted to make it a
question.  "But don't fight it if she does fire you, just call Debbie."
     "Right."  Like hell.  No, I had to.  Oh shit.  *I can call her from
home...* I told myself, and thought it was a good plan that maximized my
chances of survival.  "Yeah."
     "You don't know, Tuck," Mike told me.  "So don't fuck it up by
assuming you are fired."
     "Right," I sighed.  Which meant...  "In that case, I'd better get
started on dinner."
     "What'ya fixin'?"
     "Miiiiiiike," I groaned.  "Go away."
     "YOU called ME, budd-"  I could fix that, and did.

***
16:41 27 Oct

     *I could-*  No, I couldn't; Travis was gone.

***
16:42 27 Oct

     "Valerie," Ricky said, and I tried to pull myself together, but he
grabbed my arm and hugged it fiercely.  "I'm sorry!"
     "It's not you," I got out.

***
17:01 27 Oct

     "Oh god your mom's home," I realized when I heard the noise.
"Look, let go-"  He did.  "I don't want her to see me crying all the
time."  She might think I was crazy or something, haha.
     "I'll stall her!" he hissed enthusiastically as he gave me a last
little squeeze and dashed off.

***
17:03 27 Oct

     "Hi, Miz Parker," I said, trying to be nice.
     "Hello Valerie," she said, then winced like she'd forgotten
momentarily.
     "Got about two hours on supper," I said.  "I can feed Stella in
about ten minutes.  Ricky DID take the dog out in the backyard, uh...
about four?"  I hadn't really noticed the time, unfortunately.  "Oh, and
thanks for getting the salad stuff."  She'd apparently been Enlightened
on produce, or something; there was enough stuff for a really good
salad, like I'd served Sunday.
     "Oh, uh... you're welcome?"
     "Oh!  I think Stella might be afraid of the dog, or something like
that," I mentioned.  She might want to know that; screaming children
tended to set parents on edge and keep them from thinking straight.  It
usually worked on me too.
     "What?"
     I realized I had drugs I needed to take, and shook my head.  "Go
change, let me take drugs, and when you come back down I'll tell you
about it.  It's not urgent..."  Me repairing my makeup was urgent.

***
17:11 27 Oct

     "'Cause she was screaming, I mean SCREAMING, whenever the dog made
any noise... and I don't think she wanted to look at it either," I
realized as I re-ran the mental videotape.  "I've never heard her scared
that long before.  And it was when the dog barked, not when I picked her
up or in the car or anything."
     "Really?  Maybe so...  She's been unusually fussy lately.  I didn't
let Ruffles play with her, because I wasn't sure how gentle it was yet,
and I didn't want it to nip her.  But I don't know if she's ever been
close to a dog..." she wondered.
     "That might do it," I agreed.  "Want me to go inform Ricky?  You
can watch Stella..."  I glanced at the kitchen food area, and confirmed
that everything there could hold for a while.
     She looked around too, then at Stella, then said, "No, I'll go do
it.  You can watch her..."
     "Oh yeah," I nodded.  "No problem.  Just, warn me if you're
bringing the dog in here, okay?  She might go off again."
     "Okay," she said.

***
17:15 27 Oct

     "Uh, Valerie?" Miz Parker called.  I looked around, but she wasn't
coming in.
     I guessed it before she said, "Can we try bringing the dog in?"
     I sighed to myself, then told her, "Let me get Stella first."  I
made sure that the cooking could wait a few minutes more, then went and
picked her up.  She seemed irritated that I was bothering her.  "Yeah,"
I said to Stella, "but watch this," then called, "Okay!" trying not to
be too loud and scare Stella with that.
     Miz Parker came in, holding the dog, and Stella exploded.
     I think Miz Parker might have said, "It's the dog," but I wasn't
sure.  When I looked up for a moment, she was gone, and so was the dog.
Not that this shut Stella off, of course.  "Shhhh, it's okay, that nasty
old dandery dog is gone...  Shhhhhhh..."  My earplugs were in my purse
again, and I thought it might be clever to get them while I still had
some hearing left in one ear.

***
17:22 27 Oct

     I handed the noisemaker to Miz Parker and went back to cooking.
I'd had about all I could handle for a few minutes.

***
17:25 27 Oct

     I was a little irritated that Stella had calmed down for Miz Parker
and not for me, but I wasn't going to complain about it.  I started
digging the plugs out of my ears with a feeling of relief.
     Until I managed to pop my right ear.  "Nnnggggh!" I mentioned as I
tried to grab a counter and missed, dropping to my knees.  *Ow, SHIT!*
I thought really hard in lieu of saying it out loud.
     Miz Parker was standing there making noise at me, so I gasped out,
"I'll be okay! I just had an ear pop."  *Ow shit shit shit shit...*
     She grabbed my shoulder and pulled, and I went the other way to
escape, which worked.  We babbled excitedly at each other for a few
seconds, then I yelled, "I'M FINE!"  She obviously didn't believe that,
so I tried to explain.  "My ears have been stopped up for a while, and
one un-stopped earlier this afternoon, and the other one just cleared.
It hurts.  Have you ever had an ear infection?"  She nodded, still
looking stricken.   "No, that's not it...  Have you ever had your ears
stopped up and couldn't clear them?"  I had to take- well, I didn't know
if it was UTTERLY necessary, but I took prescription decongestants
whenever I flew; once like this had been enough and I didn't need to
repeat the experiment ever again in my life.  It hadn't been once,
of course...  The nosebleeds I got sometimes were a small price to pay,
even if they made me dizzy.  And bloody.
     She nodded.
     "Mine sometimes get stopped up when I'm sick or whatever, and this
time I hadn't noticed..."  I guess being unconscious for a while had
thrown off my calibration; my own voice now sounded normal to my left
ear and painfully loud to my right.  "Might have been a couple of
weeks...  Anyway, it just now depressurized, when I was pulling the
earplugs out.  Guess the eustachian tubes opened today."  Maybe it was
spring and they were flowering, haha.  "I'm okay now."  I didn't think
about the pain in my side; I was very glad I'd taken a pain pill earlier
though.
     "Earplugs?"
     "Yeah?  It makes it easier to stand when she's crying continuously
and won't stop.  It doesn't block anything, just tones- I mean, lowers
the volume a lot.  So I can still hear like Ricky and stuff."  I got up
so I could show her.

***
17:27 27 Oct

     I had a box, not just a pair, so I had a pair of clean ones I could
give her to demonstrate.  "See?"  She didn't respond.  "SEE?"
     "Oh yeah," she nodded as she looked up, speaking a little loud.
"Wow..."
     "See, and if you listen, you can hear me just fine, right?"  She
nodded at that.  "It works really well in clubs, like dance clubs?  I
can feel the bass and stuff, but walk out of there and hear people talk
normally."
     "Really?" she said, then apparently realized what she was doing
because she softened her voice and went, "Sorry?"
     "You were talking a little loud," I smiled.  It happened to some
people.

***
17:40 27 Oct

     Miz Parker had convinced Ricky to take the dog out for another
'walk', before feeding time, and I needed no convincing to take Stella
elsewhere so she wouldn't go off in the kitchen.  Stella wasn't very
pleased about this, apparently believing that things were happening
under her nose and we were keeping her from them - which was true - and
therefore, I guessed, she wasn't really interested in the food I was
pushing at her.  "I could just paint you with it, like a Hudlar," I
threatened, but that didn't seem to affect her any; she pushed the spoon
away again and cursed me in Baby.  Well, maybe it did affect her.  "Same
ta you, buddy," I told her.
     "Valerie?" Miz Parker asked.
     "Yeah?"  I looked up, and she was nervous about something.
     *It's the axe,* I realized.
     "Could... could you bring Stella down to the kitchen, and talk?"
     "Yeah..."  I pushed myself up, and she helped me gather baby, food,
drop cloth, and the rest of the feeding equipment.
     I made myself go first down the hall and down the stairs, though I
was listening for her behind me to give me a little warning.  Mike and I
were both PRETTY sure she wouldn't do anything weird, like suddenly
attempt to stab me while I had my back to her... but there was no point
in assuming, and every point in not.
     But she didn't do anything by the time we both made it into the
kitchen and unloaded Stella and accessories, mostly on the table.  *One
data point for sanity...*
     I did some cooking stuff, mostly stirring, checked the time -
plenty of time before I had to do the salad stuff, unfortunately - and
went back to the table.
     "Oh, um, do you have homework you need to do?"
     Oh Ghu.  "No doubt, but I didn't get any more this weekend," I
lied.  I'd been too asleep or too upset for most of the day to do it.
"I gotta call someone tonight..."  No, I remembered, I'd probably see
her tonight.  Bleah.  "I do have drugs in, uh, twenty minutes," I told
her after checking my watch.  "That won't take long though."
     "Oh, okay," she said, and started fiddling with their stuff on the
table.
     I thought about letting it go, then decided that the tension would
get to me.  It was already getting to me.  "So, um, did you want to talk
about something?" I asked.  I guess I wasn't that eager to do it either.
     "Just..."  Then she stiffened herself, like she'd yelled at herself
to stop screwing around and do it.  "Why were you crying?"
     "What?"
     "Earlier?"
     "Wh-"  Oh yeah.  "Um... just stuff."
     "Was it..."  *Leave me ALONE!* I thought.  "... about here?"
     "What?"  *Man, I don't want to answer this...  Will she leave me
alone if-  No, she's a mom.*  Moms could never leave anything painful
alone, they had to pick at it.  "No...  Remember Travis and I had a
fight a while ago?  Before I..."  She was nodding, so I skipped trying
to figure out what to call it.  "Well, I guess we broke up because of
it," I forced out.  "That's...  Excuse me," I said, and reached over to
get my kleenex.
     "Did he, did he know?"
     "Know what?"
     "About... you..."
     *Oh, that I'm a freak.*  "Yeah, he knew, but that wasn't it... I
mean, he knew for months."
     "Months?" she sort of gasped quietly.
     "Yeah?  Look, could we not talk about this?"  There was no way I
could stop the tears now.  "I just...  'M sorry..."
     "No...  I'm sorry, Valerie, I didn't mean to-"
     "Mom!" Ricky shrieked, startling me.  "Leave her ALONE!" he
demanded as he came up and hugged my arm again.  "Stop bothering her!"
     "Ricky, it's okay, don't yell at your mother," I said blindly.
     "Well she shouldn't say things to make you cry!"
     "Ricky!" Miz Parker barked.
     *Damnit, now they're fighting, 'cause of me...*

***


"Not only is life a bitch, but it is always having puppies."
 -- Adrienne Gusoff


Distribution:
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+ @>--,--'-----   Ellen Hayes   o===[--------      __      vicki .sig  +
                  -=[1990]=-                       \/      virus 12.2
+      http://www.barkingduck.net/ehayes     PGP key: EFC9 5D55 (1996) +



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