Chapter 7: Chapter 7

Sidney stared up at the fan as it wobbled back and forth against the ceiling as it made a clanking sound in tune with the clock on the wall. There wasn’t anything he had to do today, so he didn’t think of doing anything at all, instead he just focused on the metronomic sounds of the otherwise perfectly quiet house. Sidney tried to keep his breathing in time with the sounds, but found it was too quick for it to be relaxing and instead made him anxious. He tried to time it to two ticks instead of one but found that even more frustrating to try and keep track of and jumped off the gray-green couch in his parent's living room and stomped around trying to dissolve some of his pent-up energy. It was like something was eating him alive inside out, and the energy it produced fueled his irritation. Like an itch he couldn’t scratch, it just kept sitting there in his mind, and he retaliated against the wall to the kitchen. He managed to put a dent in the wall, but his hand probably hurt more. Despite the impotent nature of the outburst, Sidney felt better and decided to check the fridge for the fourth time today to see if there was something he could bother making.

“Two eggs, past due. One carton of milk… still good.” Sidney poked around the fridge and mumbled to himself as he swept past each item he could see. His parents hadn’t bothered to bring groceries in over a week, so there wasn’t much left. He decided on just a bowl of cereal for now, and maybe he could take his pocket money down to the store later to get something himself.

After pouring himself a bowl of cheerios and putting the milk back in the fridge, he made his way back to the sofa and sat down. He stared at the black TV and wished once more that it would work again, so he could just tune out the buzzing thoughts in his head. The anger that was quenched earlier through the wall’s noble sacrifice burned a little in the pit of his stomach, and he tried to quell it with the bowl of sugar and carbs marketed as “healthy”. Despite the embers of his rage sparking again, he didn’t feel like he was going to throw another fit and finished his cereal quickly, headed to the sink, and washed out his bowl. He then headed to the living room and picked up the laundry.

Sid had just started the washing machine when the doorbell rang. He stared at the front door like it had asked him a question it had already known the answer to, not fully believing it rang at all. No one visited him at home, and his parents would have just let themselves in, if they were going to bother coming here at all. He was about to pass off the sound as a figment of his bored imagination when the doorbell rang again.

Opening the door was an unexpected sight. Mr. Johnson stood on the patio of the small, two-bedroom townhouse, and he seemed to be with another person as well. Sidney moved his eyes between the two men, staring first at his old teacher, and then moving to the man with a simple walking cane, then back to Mr. Johnson.

“Yes?” he replied, curiosity managing to outweigh his irritation for a rare moment.

“Sid, can we come inside? We need to talk.”

◊◊◊

Abigail sat down at the end of the sectional and placed her cup of coffee down and started back on the pile of homework she needed to finish grading. It was a sort of meditation for her to slowly go through each paper one at a time. She found herself zoning out while going through the corrections. Simple work like these was easy to grade and didn’t require much thought at all, and she liked to keep homework simple for the first month or two of school while everyone got back into the mindset of schoolwork.

She picked up her coffee and took a sip of the now cold brew, and almost spat it back into the cup. Sighing, she put the cold coffee back on the table and looked at her phone, she’d been grading for over an hour now and had completely lost track of time. She stood up from the couch, muttering an apology to the coffee for forgetting about it as she put the cup in the microwave for a minute and a half. While the microwave hummed, she decided she was a little hungry and went to make some food. Pulling out of the fridge some cheese, mayo, pickle, lettuce and tomato, she placed the ingredients on the counter next to the bread and went to grab a plate when her phone rang.

She hurried back to the living room and picked up her phone off the couch. Cathy was calling, which surprised Abigail a bit.

“Hello Mrs. Carlyle. What can I do for you this evening?”

“Hello Mrs. Knightly, dear, I wanted to see how your first couple days have gone.”

“They’ve been well.” Abigail sighted internally. She didn’t like pleasantries and preferred it when people asked what they wanted to up front. “The classes have been quiet, and the children are really well-behaved compared to my last workplace. But I imagine you’re calling specifically about the incident with the McCoy boy, right?”

There was silence on the other end for a second, tipping Abigail off that she hit the mark. “You got me.” She admitted, but Abigail felt her tone had a smirk to it. “I did want to know about that incident since you were there for it. Do you know why those two were fighting, and why were they fighting at that part in the hallway?”

The question her colleague didn’t ask flashed by her mind for a moment, but she decided to just answer the questions she was given. “I’m not entirely sure why they were fighting. As you know I’m new to the school, so I’m not as familiar with the problem kids yet but from what I could gather, Sidney happened across Tyler’s path and took advantage of the situation.” She sighed as she recalled the glass and blood on the floor in the aftermath. “Honestly, I wish I could have gotten there sooner to stop the fight, you know? It looked like that poor kid lost a lot of blood.” She paused and decided to answer the unspoken question for Mrs. Carlyle. “Tyler was fine, though. I talked to the nurse later, and it seemed like he only had a few cuts.”

There was silence on the line for a bit longer than Abigail felt comfortable with and tried to come up with something to say to fill the void, but Mrs. Carlyle decided then to speak up.

“Thank you, dear, for looking out for Tyler. I’m sure you don’t know yet, but he’s a very sensitive kid. I wish we could do more for our students in these cases. Oh, and thank you for sticking up for him and Durian to the principal. I’m glad to know we have one more supportive staff member.”

“You don’t need to thank me at all, Cathy. I just did what any other good person would do.” Abigail said sincerely. She didn’t like getting complimented and had a hard time accepting them in the first place. She remembered that it’s good to accept them anyway at the last minute and added. “But you’re welcome, and if it helps at all I’ll keep my eye on Tyler. I’m a little fuzzy on names since its still the first week, but I believe I already had a chance to talk to him one-on-one after one of my classes. He seems like an anxious kid. I’m a little worried, he tends to act like a scared faun whenever he gets rebuked.”

Cathy tittered on through the phone and then said, “Yes, the poor kid takes everything so much harder than is needed. Thank you for your time, Abby. I’ll give Christine a call and see how Tyler’s doing.”

“Bye Cathy.”

“Bye Abigail.”

◊◊◊

It was getting late, and they hadn’t eaten much at all. Tyler realized that was probably her fault since everyone got distracted by her problem, so she decided to make it up by helping her mom out with dinner. She went to work seasoning some chicken breasts while her mom was chopping up some whole lettuce for a salad. She blushed when she realized she was thinking of herself with female pronouns already, and wondered at how quickly her brain made the adjustment. Tyler was mulling over this bit when her mom spoke up.

“Tyler, do you think you’d like to stay home from school for another week? I know you’re out of school anyway, but I figured we’d extend it if you’re not ready to go back just yet. Or we can look into another school to go to for you.”

Tyler sighed as she responded, “I don’t know, mom. But I don’t want to go to another school. Besides, we don’t have the money to move or to put me into a private school anyway.” She began heating a pan with oil.

“We’d figure out something.” Came her reply. Then with a devious tone, she asked, “or is there someone I should know about at school that means you don’t want to move away?”

Tyler, for her part, blushed hard and just added the chicken to the pan.

“Oh, so there is? You’ll have to introduce them to me.”

Tyler hated when her mom got like this, but she realized this time she didn’t mind her teasing as much anymore. She just smiled while she started to wash her hands. All her feelings turned to mortification when her mom continued.

“That reminds me, I guess we’ll have to have another talk soon. You don’t know the first thing about being a girl.” Her mom looked at her and with a smile continued. “You know? It’s only been a day, but somehow it feels like you’ve been like this your whole life, that I almost forgot.” Tyler’s mortification was washed away by a powerful feeling of euphoria.

She was about to reply when Eris peeked around the corner and said, “Hey, that smells really good! What is it?”

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“Just pan seared chicken and a salad. I figured we could do something a little light today.” Tyler’s mom replied.

“Well, it smells delicious.” She looked at Tyler and the food she was plating and decided to take the seat at the far side of the table. Eris asked for some more wine, and Christine poured a glass for her and herself. They ate for a bit before Eris spoke up.

“Who made the chicken? This is delicious.”

Tyler’s mom just smiled and said, “Tyler did. She’s been helping in the kitchen since she was little. She’s an amazing cook, isn’t she.”

Was everyone going to try to make her blush today? Tyler pouted a bit before shoving a forkful of salad in her mouth.

Everyone began laughing, and Tyler’s blush deepened. She decided to change the subject away from her and satisfy a point of her curiosity. “Hey Eris, how can you eat? And what exactly are you?”

Tyler’s mom took the bait and her focus shifted to Eris and curiosity showed on her face.

Eris finished a sip of her wine and replied, “I’m able to project my true body out of your core that I’m bound to. This body is physical, and real. If I were to get hurt, then I would feel it, and while I don’t need to eat, I do enjoy it. As for what I am, I am a goddess. Or at least that’s what the people before called me. In this new era, I wonder if I should seek a new term to describe myself.”

Christine had an uneasy look on her face while Eris talked about being bound and Tyler scrunched her nose. “I dunno if it’d be a good idea to tell anyone that you're anything but human.”

“I agree.” Her mom said. “Until we know more about how things have changed since you were last awake, it might be best to lie low.”

Eris considered that a moment but agreed to keep a low profile. Tyler continued, though, “And what are we going to do about school? If you’re ‘bound’ to me, that means you have to come with too, right?”

◊◊◊

Matthew took a sip of the tea he was offered as an awkward silence hung in the room. Everyone looked at each other and glances were returned. Sid, however, was feeling relieved. He was sure he was going to have to stay in the house and be bored for the rest of the evening, but here came some free entertainment just for him, and watching his guests squirm uncomfortably filled him with giddiness. He took a sip of his own tea when the person he didn’t know started talking.

“What’s the deal with the TV?” he said, pointing over his shoulder at the television set that hadn’t worked for years. The reason it wasn’t working now, or since, had to do with the fist sized hole through the center of it.

In response, Sid just shrugged and took another sip, letting the silence fall again, and it hung in the air a lot less time than last time before Matthew decided to speak. He sat down his cup on the table and took a deep sigh before he started.

“Look, Sid. I heard about what happened at school—” but Sid cut him off.

“Oh? You’re not referring to me as ‘Mr. McCoy’?” Sid said his last name in a mocking tone. Matthew decided to keep a diplomatic approach.

“I’m not a teacher, and I have no authority over you anymore. If you’d prefer, I can use your last name instead.”

“Last name is fine.”

“Okay… Mr. McCoy. I heard about what happened at school and I had a few questions for you. First, exactly where did you have the fight?”

“Ooh. You’re going to have to remind me about which fight exactly. I tend to get into a lot of them.” Sid said with an air of smugness.

It was clear to everyone in the room that Sidney was just trying to get a rise out of the retired teacher, but years of dealing with students like Sidney was no match for Matthew. He simply continued, but with the slightest hint of frustration which Sidney found some enjoyment in, but he also suspected that whatever he was going to talk about was important to him, and he was more interested in his answers than anything else. A bother, since if he pushed him here, he’d probably just go ask someone else and there’d go his guests. Sid decided to play nice while he could.

“The fight with Tyler.” He replied, and the look he gave Sid told him that he was daring him to not give a straight answer. Sidney was sure now that he would leave if he didn’t give a proper answer. Luckily for Matthew, he had already decided to play nice, though a part of him couldn’t help but want to blow things up again.

“Tyler? That happened in the hall with the trophies.” Matthew’s face darkened a bit and Sid continued, “Near the end of the hall, by all the ones that were old enough to be gross colors.” Matthew’s face darkened again, and Sid wondered if he was giving the wrong kinds of information. He asked where, why did it seem like he was mad at Sid? He decided to just ask directly. “Why?”

Instead of answering, though, Matthew just asked another question, “Did any of the trophies get blood on them?”

“You ask really weird questions for a teacher.” Matthew looked like he was about to tell Sid off, so he quickly continued. “I don’t remember.” He said, almost like it was a question, “I remember there was blood, but I don’t know if anything on the shelf got damaged. Are they worth a lot? They just looked like hunks of metal to me.”

That seemed to assuage the old teacher, as he no longer looked like he was about to just shout at him and then leave, but the air of foreboding that had hung over his old teacher didn’t go away. Instead, it darkened. A lot.

“Thank you for your time, Mr. McCoy.” Matthew said and stood up to leave.

“Wait!” Sidney shouted, before he even realized he was talking. He kicked himself internally. It was a knee-jerk response to their leaving, and it gave away a peek at his anxieties.

Matthew was helping the other man to his feet when he gave the outburst and finished helping him before turning around and asking, “What?”

“Umm” Sid said, trying to find a reason for the outburst. He racked his brain for a good excuse. Either because he couldn’t think of one or he figured they wouldn’t stay, no matter what he said, he just decided to give up. It didn’t help that this line of thought made the anger in his stomach grow again. “Never mind." He finally replied. His voice was steady, and his face betrayed no emotion when he continued, "Remember to lock the door on your way out.” Sid quickly turned around and headed downstairs to his bedroom and closed the basement door behind him.

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