Talking about a bookstore definitely lightens the mood. There isn't a chance in the universe his dad would've ever taken him to one, he hasn't been in very many. The most recent was the Scholastic Book Fair, which he's convinced is just meant specifically for the rich kids. Usually he sees the ones like him — old sneakers and frayed backpacks — wandering around looking at the attractive colors but not even bothering to take anything off the shelf. At 14.99 for practically anything, the whole event was basically designed to rub his face in stuff he couldn't have.
Except. Except, now if he does all the chores he's assigned to (there's an actual wheel, these people are like aliens or magazine families) he gets a five dollar a week allowance. Three weeks in could get him almost anything there. It could also get him a bunch of cheap books from the bookstore. It's the easiest money he's ever made, considering he had to do way more when he lived back at the trailer.
"Okay," easily, happily. "It should only take me a couple days, and then I'll give it to you."
He's not bragging or anything, he just... reads really fast, he reads a lot, and he doesn't have any friends or anything better to do.
The Scholastic Book Fair is a special kind of cruelty. In Blue's class, the kids who can afford to shop generally have no interest in books. They buy the brightly colored markers and coloring books with robots or horses or the little journals with locks on them. Spend two books' worth on a holographic pencil set with dinosaurs on the side. (Which admittedly, those were really cool, but not cool enough to make up for the two books.)
The moment the posters for the book fair go up, Blue engages in a two week long battle with her mother. Last year, it ended with an exhausted Maura giving her three five-dollars bill and telling her to make good choices.
Blue couldn't find a single book -- not even with their pretty and colorful covers, and uncracked backs -- worth the number of books she could get for the same price at the secondhand bookstore. Learning the value of money in elementary school is a harsh lesson.
A couple of days seems about right for the thickness of the book he is holding. Except Blue's never met a kid her age who reads as quickly as she does. (Some kids in her class are still stuck on sounding out letters.) Blue's not sure whether she likes it or not. It's encroaching on territory that up until now has been firmly hers.
"Okay, thanks," she says. Her fingers are already cracking open her own book and flicking towards the bookmark. They've done an awful lot of talking already. Her teeth dig into her lower lip and she visibly turns his question over.
"We've company so I can't this Saturday." Like it's obvious. Like it's equally obvious that they can't just go after school one day. But-- company means a bribe for good behavior. "Sunday? Unless you go to church."
It's something that people in town do and the inhabitants of 300 Fox Way don't. Not for any disagreement with god or anything. The house is thick with belief. Just not necessarily in the Christian god or the popular depiction by the church. Also, the fire-and-brimstone type preacher called Maura Sargent a whore to her face once and that's not something easily forgiven.
He takes her opening her book as a cue, and follows suit — licks his fingers clean, then dutifully scrubs them on his pants to get everything off before he opens his book to the place the dust-jacket has bookmarked. He looks up from it a little too eagerly when she answers, fingers curling around the top of the pages from underneath.
"Why would I go to church? Nobody died." He seems genuinely confused by the question. The only time he's ever been is for a wedding or a funeral; the concept of religion isn't one his dad touched on in between his Klan rallies and his fifth of Jack Daniels. He knows about it, he's seen stuff referenced in books or whatever, but for the most part it's a foreign concept.
Maybe Blue shouldn't be so worried. He might read like a machine, but the number of knowledge gaps he's got could not-fill an empty book.
As in... there's a lot. He's had a weird upbringing so far, he has a lot to make up for in the next couple years. He'll get there.
The question makes Blue frown. As far as she's concerned, there's no reason to go to church even if someone died. But that's an opinion not shared with the majority of the town. Going to church is just something that is Done.
Which is the dumbest reason Blue knows for anyone to do anything.
A little crease appears at the base of her nose, and her mouth twists to the side as she tries to recall what the women of 300 Fox Way have said on the subject. Only problem is-- most of it isn't exactly kind.
"Some people like to remind Jesus of their existence on a weekly basis, I guess," she tells him with a shrug. "It's very dull when you have to go. You have to wear Nice clothes and you can't read while the preacher talks."
None of it doing much to endear Blue to church. The stories can be kind of cool, she supposes, but no one ever seems to go into details about the coolest stuff. Nor are they open to a little bit of constructive criticism. As much was clear two Sundays into Sunday school.
"I can have my mom talk to your--" Foster mom? Just mom? What's the protocol? "Harriet. If you want."
Blue turns her attention to her open book.
"We have a Volvo," she adds. Like it's important information for him to know about the planned outing. Implied: he can ride with them.
You can't read while the preacher talks. Wellp, that seems to be the deciding factor — Jack frowns a little himself, clearly dismissing the idea of church wholesale. Anyway, if Jesus is so magical, he probably shouldn't need to be reminded somebody exists — but what does he know?
It's the latter half of the conversation that he's fixated on, and his lips part. Only silence comes out. The fault in this plan has suddenly announced itself, and the gearshift in his mind grinds, transmission protesting, the whole thing whirring uncomfortably.
"...I've never asked her to go anywhere before," he says finally, voice quiet and concern knitting his brow. Concern, and maybe just a touch of fear. It's probably a weird thing to get hung up on to anybody else, to any normal kid. The thing is... there were certain guidelines to follow with his dad. Some things were completely off the table, some things were nebulous depending on his mood. After the second time having something thrown at his head he learned not to ask stupid questions like can I go to Jessie's birthday party or can Travis come over?
He doesn't know these rules or guidelines with Harriet yet. He doesn't know if he's allowed to ask, or if he'll get in trouble. He just got there, they're being really nice, they keep buying him books and giving him food, he really doesn't want to mess that up.
But he also... really, really wants to go to the bookstore. Overcoming the swirling conflict enough to actually read the words on the pages in front of him is rapidly becoming nigh impossible.
At first, Blue thinks that maybe it's the Volvo that makes him hesitate. Like maybe he's a car snob and he doesn't know to appreciate the safety and practicality of Swedish engineering. (Not that the Volvo is a great car. It's very-- beige.) But something in his low tone catches at her attention.
There's no world in which Blue Sargent can imagine getting in trouble for just asking to go somewhere.
The answer to every question you never is ask is always going to be no.
Another Maura Sargent truism.
It is, generally speaking, the not asking that gets her in trouble. Not, of course, that she's in trouble often or with any significant frequency. Blue is afforded a lot of freedom with the unspoken expectation that she behave according to the rules of the house.
"My mom is really good at talking to grown-ups," Blue offers. Even as she says it, she's not sure if it counts as lying or not. Oh, Maura talks plenty nice to aunts and cousins and the clients sitting in her drawing room. But she's exchanged heated words with the preacher, and the elementary school principal, and a handful of other grown-ups. Maura is good at talking. But she's also very good at yelling and fighting. Which she assumes is not appropriate for this situation. At all.
(Pick your battles, Blue, her mother has told her more than once. Pick them and then fight them well. It's usually in relation to fights Blue has already fought poorly and lost.)
"She could say Harriet would be doing her a favor, letting you come to the bookstore with us." It's perhaps a little disingenuous, but Blue's overheard Maura worry out-loud about her lack of friends before.
He turns the scenario over in his mind, weighing it against him asking Harriet personally — and nods decisively when he finishes fast-forward playing them both out. It's a pretty good strategy, he thinks, to have Blue's mom ask, grown-up to grown-up, and make it sound like a favor — but the real appeal is it happening while Jack isn't in the room. And if she does get upset with him, maybe by the time she found him she'll have calmed down a little. That sometimes worked back home— back at the trailer. He's been trying to shift the association.
Is that cowardly? Maybe a little, but bravery is how you get your arm broken. He'd rather be smart and careful about stuff like this.
"Okay," followed by another thoughtful pause. "Should I give you my phone number?"
Is that how that works? That seems like how it should work, but he's never actually... done it before. Maybe it's an address thing and they talk about it face to face, but that seems weirder. Worse, maybe. His dad always hated it when people showed up at their place — at least when it wasn't Red or one of his other drinking buddies.
A sudden follow-up thought springs to mind that he needs to quickly clarify, "Your mom's okay with doing that, right?"
The time between offer and answer, Blue spends with Ann Stavely in Hexwood Forest. One of her fingers tracking the words. Not because she needs to keep her place, but because she likes to touch the sentences. Like they are physical things, as real as the pictures they conjure in her head.
It's not to be rude or anything. Blue's still listening for his answer. She's just not staring at him in silence like a total weirdo while he makes up his mind. Also maybe (maybe) she's a touch impatient and distracting herself keeps her from being actually rude by demanding an answer already.
Blue's mouth is open to answer his first question, the book gently closing around her fingers in a signal that her full attention is his once more, when he hits her with the follow-up. She frowns like she hadn't even thought of the prospect that Maura might not be okay with it. She turns the novel idea over in her head.
"I think so?" she says, wholly unbothered by the idea that her mother's answer might be anything but positive. "I'll find out for sure when I ask her."
It shouldn't be a problem. But they can always think of another way. Blue's brain begins to spin away at a plan of heist-movie proportions. It involves a lot of misdirection and Jack climbing in the trunk of the Volvo and then pretending to be his own evil twin when they casually bump into each other in the bookstore.
"And I won't need your number," she adds, a touch of pride to her voice, "my mom knows everyone's number; she's got a phone book."
Except, as it turns out, Maura's first introduction to Jack Townsend isn't a quiet excursion to the local secondhand bookstore. Or speaking with his foster mother about the potential of such an outing.
Once the fading light begins to obscure the words on their book pages, Blue declares it time for both of them to head home. She climbs to her feet and gathers up their trash and disappears back through the woods with an optimistic see you tomorrow.
When Blue returns home that evening, 300 Fox Way is in deep preparations for the weekend. Tidying and sweeping floors, making beds and little jars of teas, and Blue judges the look on her mother's face and decides the bookstore is a question for tomorrow morning while they get ready.
Except morning comes with another flurry of activity and instead of sitting on the closed lid of the toilet and brushing her teeth while her mother showers, Blue finds herself eating a slice of dry toast while waiting on the school bus because somehow they ran out of time for both showers and breakfast.
Tonight then. Or this afternoon between school and running off to the forest to read in silence. (With Jack.)
With their desks on near opposite sides of the room, Blue doesn't have a chance to tell Jack about any of this. When lunch starts, Blue has to make a quick detour to the girls restroom, and then back to the classroom to pick up her book from her backpack. By the time she makes it onto the playground to try to find Jack so she can eat her homemade sandwich next to him, the same group of boys from yesterday already have him surrounded. His journal facedown in a puddle of mud at their feet.
Blue doesn't even think before wading into the group like an avenging angel.
Which is how Maura Sargent ends up having to leave work in the middle of the day to meet with the elementary school principal.
They've had to bring more chairs into the front office to line up all the combatants against the wall of the principal's office. Everyone is quiet. Beauregard Frazer III looks sullen where he sits pressing a wad of tissue paper against his nose, his chin and the front of his t-shirt stained with his own blood. Blue's heel thrums back against one of the legs of her chair, impatient and roaring against the injustice on the inside.
A couple of other moms have come and gone, after speaking with the principal and picking up their little "angels". Maura Sargent looks nothing like any of them when she enters. Maybe it's the hair or the oversized jewelry or the flowy dress cinched together with a snakeskin belt, or maybe it's the spirit of self-possessed calm that inhabits every inch of her even with her face twisted with annoyance.
With a glance over at Blue, she disappears into the principal's office. Blue leans over to Jack and whispers "that's my mom. Maura."
The last time he got in trouble in school and his dad had to come all the way down to the principal's office, he didn't sit right for a week. He knows Harriet doesn't punish the same way as his dad does, but it doesn't stop the anxiety from trying to vibrate his bones out of his skin. It's the not knowing that's eating at him, choking him up. Is she going to yell at him? Does he get sent back to his dad for this? Is she going to be disappointed in him? Throw out his books? That would be almost worse, his dad did that one all the time.
He's not going to cry. Crying only makes it worse, he knows. It's been firmly planted in him that crying is dramatic, that nobody wants to hear it, and I'll give you something to cry about. So he's not going to. Plus, he doesn't want to look like a baby in front of Blue, who might be his friend. Who might not want to if he starts crying like this is a big deal.
Who he wishes would have just let him get kicked around, because they'd have stopped eventually and at least he wouldn't be outside of the principal's office.
He's quiet. Like, stone-cold mute — partly because he doesn't want to say the wrong thing and get in more trouble (his father threw him out of a moving car for hiccuping out of turn, imagine what it's like when the words come out wrong) — but right now, mostly because if he unlocks his throat he thinks his voice will sound off. Thick, stupid, wavering. He doesn't want to open the floodgates.
Maura sweeps in, and there's the next bit of miserable news he didn't even think about until now — Blue's mom is going to see him for the first time after getting in trouble. She might not let him go to the bookstore with them. She might not like him, for getting her daughter in trouble. She might think he's the type to get in trouble. She might be mad at him.
He can't tell, based on the few seconds she's in view. That's almost worse than if she'd have scowled at him.
Blue leans over to whisper, and he wants to be able to say something back. His lips part, and he means to say she's pretty, but all that comes out is a soft click at the back of his throat. There's no way in hell he'll be able to say that much and still sound normal, so a second later he musters up a scratchy, "Okay."
And swallows his tonsils again.
A few seconds later, Harriet passes through the hall to join them. She's a fair bit older than Maura, more plain-looking, with the age and wisdom and patience of a woman who's done this several dozen times before with almost as many foster kids — often kids from troubled backgrounds that act out, so this incident will hardly be a blip on her radar in a few days. She seems far more kind than Jack's anxiety might lead someone to believe, but he's only known her a couple of months. There are habits, instincts, behaviors, feelings that don't fade that quickly.
She offers him a reassuring smile as she passes through, gives Blue a little wave (mostly just her fingers tapping the heel of her palm more than a back-and-forth) automatically like someone who has mom practically encoded in her DNA even if the child is a complete stranger, and enters the office with an immediate greeting from the admin staff. She's definitely on a first-name basis with all of them, and has been for years.
The smile loosens his tongue up just enough to manage, thickly, "That's my foster-mom."
They're not supposed to be talking. Ms. Harrison, the principal's secretary, made as much clear when she lined up the extra chairs along the wall. Blue's been struggling with that one, her teeth clamped tight around her lower lip to keep the seething unfairness of it all from spilling out and over. She's been pretty sure that if she looks over at Jack (he shouldn't even be here; he didn't do anything wrong) there will be no stopping the flood. It'd only get both of them sunk further into trouble neither one of them deserves.
Instead, she's been keeping her eyes locked on the wall in front of them and the stupid picture of an elderly gentleman from sometime in the forties. He's either the founder or the first principal or something. Either way, he has a stupid looking mustache and Blue has been glaring daggers at him rather than at Beau or his crew. If a fight breaks out right next to the principal's office, Blue is absolutely certain everyone involved gets automatically expelled.
Okay, Jack says and it's not like Blue knows him all that well yet. Not really. (Except the fact that he likes books and will read in silence with her. Which she'd argue covers the most important bits.) But, there's something weird about his voice. She dares a glance over at him, just a darted little thing and her whole face screws up in a deep frown.
She's distracted by the sound of the door opening and closing, and she looks over to see the kind-looking woman walk inside. At the little wave, Blue's mouth twists up into a tight and obligatory smile. Her eyes dart back over to Jack when he speaks again.
"She looks nice," Blue observes under her breath. She reaches out across the narrow gap between their chairs and grabs his good hand without asking for permission. Her fingers give his a tight squeeze of reassurance.
"Don't worry," she says quietly. "My mom is really good with authority figures. She'll sort this out."
It's a promise Blue isn't entirely sure she can keep. For all her rebellious ways, and how little she fits into the mold of what this town thinks a good little girl should be, it's not often that Maura has had to come down to the principal's office. Never in the middle of the work day like this. When Blue's first grade teacher told her she couldn't bring books to school anymore after she was caught reading under her desk rather than practicing the alphabet with the other kids, Maura took a day off work and sat in the little reception waiting area until the principal had time to meet with her. But that was different.
"Mrs. Sargent," the principal's raised voice can be heard through the door and Blue winces immediately.
"Ms." The word sounds like the buzz of an angry bee before Maura's voice goes too quiet to hear anymore.
Moments later, the door opens. Maura pauses in the doorway, giving Harriet a quiet nod of apology.
"All due respect," she tells the inside of the principal's office, her body already angled away from it. "Blue doesn't start fights. So I would like to hear what happened from my daughter before we start talking consequences."
If there's a protest, it can't be heard, and Maura walks the length of the hall to crouch down in front of her daughter. Her face incredibly serious.
"Blue," she says, quietly, her eyes and full attention locked on Blue's face, "do you want to tell me what's going on here?"
This right here, is the moment Blue has been waiting for all along. She squirms to the front of the chair, fingers still snagged with Jack's and no indication whatsoever that she means to let go any time soon.
"They were bullying Jack," she says, indignation shining through the serious tone of her voice. Like that's all the explanation she needs to give.
Maura's chest heaves in a slow and tired sigh.
"Who's Jack?" she asks patiently.
Blue gives her an incredulous look, like Maura ought to know this already, and casts a pointed glance in Jack's general direction.
"My best friend," she states, like it's obvious, loud enough for all to hear.
The little thrill of apprehension-tinged joy in Maura's chest doesn't shine through her eyes when she looks over at the thin boy sitting next to her daughter. She takes in the cast on his arm and the fading shiner, and maybe she'd think he was a bad influence -- the kind of kid to get in fights -- if it wasn't for the downtrodden look around his eyes and the slope of his shoulders.
"Hi Jack," she says kindly. "Nice to meet you."
Then she turns her attention back to Blue.
"I am going to go into that room and I am going to have a very strongly worded argument with your principal. But I would like you to reassure me that I am doing the right thing."
"They knocked his journal in the mud and they were hitting him," Blue says solemnly, voice lowering, and turning a little pleading. "You always say we should stand up for people who are being hurt."
She twists to look at Jack, giving his arm a little tug in the process.
Blue just about breaks him right then and there when she grabs his hand. Harriet hugs him a lot (he thinks its a lot), but other than that he's not too used to physical displays of kindness. When she takes his hand something hitches in his chest, and he has to tightly bite the inside of his cheek to stop it from escaping. He can't help the way he looks up at her, though. It's automatic, and a total traitor to his cause. His eyes shine a little too wetly, lips part in surprise — something that takes way too long for him to get over before he can tentatively tighten his hand around hers.
Maura closes the distance between them, and Jack's hand feels sweaty.
My best friend.
He outright gawps at her — thankfully, her attention's on her mother and all the injustices in the world for that moment. Maura, on the other hand, probably catches his deer-in-the-headlights expression. She rescues him from it with her greeting, and he shuts his mouth quick, thankful he isn't expected to return it.
Tell her, Jack!
Now's a truly awful time to not have a voice, to be stuck. He looks from Blue to Maura to Blue again, and after a few seconds, tugs his hand away from Blue's.
It's so he can reach down between his legs to unzip his backpack, and dig out a composition notebook that's seen better days. He offers it up to Maura, because maybe the evidence will speak for itself. True to Blue's account, the right half of almost all the pages are curled and water-logged, some stick together, a little partly-dried crust clings to the front and back where he missed wiping it off in his haste. A not insignificant portion of what's sprawled within has gone illegible, the ink bleeding into smudges or outright wet nothing.
When he finally manages to speak up, maybe it isn't the bold endorsement she really deserves. It's just a quiet, "Please don't let her be in trouble."
Something soft unfurls in Maura's chest when Jack's gaze shifts between them, his eyes lined with panic. It all compiles on the cast on his arm, the shades of vicious purple and yellow-greens around his eye, the look on his face when Blue proclaimed their friendship, the bright sheen in his eyes, and the way his skin stretches tight across the knot of bones in his wrist and his sweater hangs loose on his shoulders. She isn't Calla. She can't read his history with a touch. But she thinks some of it might be written right across him.
In the silence before he reaches for his backpack, Maura is about to assure him that it's alright, Blue can speak for herself. But her attention catches on the composition book he pulls from the backpack. Her heart sinks, and her expression softens.
"See?!" Blue interjects from her side.
With gentle hands, Maura takes the offered journal, her fingers carefully curling around its damp edges. It's more evidence than she needs. Blue doesn't lie to her. All she needs to go to war is her daughter's word.
A slow ache is beginning to spread through her knees down to her gently tingling toes, and she shifts her weight to the leg favoring Jack. One hand leaving the journal to brace gently against the edge of Blue's seat.
When Jack speaks, his voice is so low, Maura almost can't make out the words. But when her mind assembles them for her, she can't help the tender and aching half-smile she gives him.
"Thank you, Jack," she says, the words soft and heartfelt. She shifts the journal minutely up and down in the air in careful emphasis. "You don't need to worry about Blue. That's my job. Okay?"
Except Maura doesn't wait for him to answer. Her eyes still meeting his, she shifts again so she can release her grip on Blue's chair and hold the waterlogged composition book with both hands.
"Can I borrow this? I'd like to show it to the principal. I promise I will take good care of it and return it to you as soon as we are done speaking."
This time she waits -- patiently -- for his answer.
Maura puts off an air of kindness and sympathy strong enough that even Jack's static-filled mind can pick up on it, and it eases the tension in him down another notch. She's not mad — not at either of them, but especially not at Blue, and that's really the most important thing.
He nods his assent at not worrying about her, but as it's just been decreed that they're Best Friends, he keeps to himself that it's probably his job now, too. He... thinks. He's never actually had a friend before, but if he had to make up the rules of the role, he'd say that would probably be in the top five.
"You can have it," he says just a touch mournfully, a little frown tugging at his lips. "It's ruined anyway."
He won't even be able to read half of the stories he wrote in there. As in, half of all of them, they're all ruined. Sliced almost neatly down the middle, too water-logged for him to be able to retrace the words — he certainly won't be able to just remember what they were.
Once they're in the clear, his throat has opened up enough that he can look at Blue and quietly murmur, "Your mom is nice."
"Thank you," Maura says again, like Jack has given her something precious. (From what she's learned about eight year olds by having one, she is pretty sure that he has.) "I'll get you a new one."
The promise comes easy even though a vast majority of Maura's life has become doing math. A constant calculation of cost vs the balance of her bank account. There's no wealth in the kind of work she does. At least not in the way she does it. But a composition notebook is cheap enough. There might even still be one in the kitchen cabinet that's become the unofficial storage space of school supplies.
Easy enough, Maura rises to her feet and switches Jack's ruined journal to her left hand. With her right, she gives Jack's good shoulder a light and reassuring squeeze, and then she brushes bent fingers along Blue's cheek. They will talk later about using fists to solve problems and how it usually only creates more problems. But it will be a quiet conversation in private. Nothing so public as all this.
Blue watches her mother disappear into the principal's office and the tightness in her chest eases. They have a champion now. Someone to fight the injustice of either one of them (but especially Jack) being here in the first place.
"Most of the time," Blue agrees without looking away from the door where their fate is being decided. "Good call, giving her the journal."
It's ammunition in the war.
Blue looks over at Jack and gives him a quick smile, slightly tightened by circumstance, and reaches out for his hand again. Affectionate touch comes easy at 300 Fox Ways.
"The next one you get should have a lock on it," she offers. Perhaps a little too loud, because Ms. Harrison clears her throat very pointedly. Blue falls quiet, but her fingers tighten around Jack's like a promise.
Not too long later, Ms. Harrison appears in front of them. Her blazer sits awkwardly against her shoulders, the fabric straining around the single buttoned button.
"Jack," she says. "Mr. Larsen would like to speak with you."
I'll get you a new one; he doesn't think he'll ever really get used to adults just... giving him things sometimes now. It was a little hard not to cry when Harriet gave one to him in the first place, he wasn't really expecting to get a replacement. He doesn't really have the chance (or the gumption) to say that she doesn't have to.
He's also not sure if he'll get used to having his hand held, but now that it's less of a surprise than the first time he can remind himself to hold it back. Her hand is soft, it's gentle but not loose — though not nearly as tight as the invisible one gripping his chest.
He thinks about saying something. Mostly, he thinks about saying you're my best friend, too. He thinks about saying sorry you got in trouble, although it seems like she might not be. The few options he turns over in his head get crushed by Ms. Harrison, and maybe that's for the best. Maybe all of it would sound stupid, and he should wait until he has time to think about exactly how he should say it.
And then comes the executioner calling him to the gallows, and he shoots Blue a wide-eyed look.
This isn't something she can rescue him from, though.
After a second, he releases her hand and pushes to his feet, abandoning his backpack to follow Ms. Harrison into room he's never actually been in before. It's intimidating, probably intentionally so with its wide, foreboding cherry wood desk and plaques with shiny gold affixed to them. There's a single empty seat that he assumes is for him, and he moves as quietly as possible toward it, trying to swallow down the nerves flaring up underneath the gaze of stern adults.
It would almost be comical, how wide Jack's eyes get, if it wasn't for the fear sitting in their corners. Blue's fingers give his a tighter squeeze, the look she gives him firm and determined as she tries to impress an encouraging, but wordless you've got this on him. It mostly looks like her mouth pursing and her eyes narrowing. But hopefully the message comes across.
Ms. Harrison's heels are muted on the multicolored carpet as she leads Jack into the room and then quietly exits behind him. The latch of the door is barely audible over the creak of Mr. Larsen -- a thin and tall man in an ill-fitting suit with a mustard yellow tie -- shifting in his leather desk chair to consider Jack.
In front of him, in the middle of the tidy surface of the cherry wood desk, sits Jack's soiled journal like an indictment.
(Never trust a person with a tidy desk, Maura always says. They have too much time on their hands.)
Mr. Larsen's eyes dart down to it, like he's not fully comfortable with its presence there, and then back up at Jack. He clears his throat and steeples his fingers.
"Jack," he says, without introducing himself, like they already know each other (or like, at least, he knows of Jack), his voice oddly booming for his narrow shoulders. "Can you tell me what happened at lunch?"
"It's okay, Jack," Harriet assures him immediately from her own seat. "You're not in trouble. Mr. Larsen just needs an account of what happened."
It's not that Mr. Larsen makes for a particularly intimidating figure in any other situation, to any other person. Too skinny, too mustachio'd, too much of a sense that the guy gets his self-confidence through the authority of a job that actually has no authority to anybody not directly involved in its domain. His voice, though... It's loud, stern, a little too domineering. Probably necessary for corralling rowdy elementary schoolers with attitude problems, but Jack very much isn't.
It's only Harriet that keeps him from being too locked-up to speak, with her gentle reassurance that he's not in trouble. She's the ultimate authority here, seeing as she's the one he has to go home to. He looks from Mr. Larsen to her, and then back to Mr. Larsen's... desk, rather than his eyes.
"I was writing. And then Beaux grabbed my journal. He called me— something, and then threw it, and then tried to write— the word on my cast, but I kept moving and he's not really good at spelling anyway, so he told his friends to hold me down, except Blue told them to stop, and then they called her a name, and tried to grab her I guess because she's a girl, but then she socked him in the face and he started crying, and then his friend started crying for no reason, I guess he was scared or something, and then the teacher showed up."
A beat later, he holds up his cast, where a shaky but legible 'Fa' is scrawled in Sharpie.
It probably says a lot about Mr. Larsen that his eyes don't linger on Jack while he's telling the story, but rather shifts between the two adult women flanking him in the heavy cherrywood and leather chairs.
Unlike Blue, Maura doesn't let her anger spill out to the surface. But, anyone who knows the Sargents know that temper bred true from mother to daughter. Perhaps Jack can sense it though, in the way her hands fold in on themselves in her lap, or the quiet downturn of her mouth.
If Jack can sense it, quietly attuned to the mood of the room, it's quite evident that Mr. Larsen cannot. He doesn't even glance at Jack's cast, instead bearing down on Maura, his expression shifting to something almost triumphant beneath a thin veneer of professionalism.
"There you have it, Ms. Sargent," he says with a vague hand gesture. "From his own mouth, your daughter threw the first punch."
"That's what you got from his story?!" Maura retorts, voice rising an octave as she settles further back in the chair.
On the other side of Jack, Harriet leans over and puts a gentle hand atop his shoulder.
"Thank you, Jack," she says, warm and reassuring. "That was very brave of you. You can go back to the hallway now. We will sort this out."
"I think we both heard him say that Blue 'socked' Beauregard in the face," Mr. Larsen says, his artificial calm beginning to crack beneath the pressure of Maura's direct gaze.
"I think we both heard how Beauregard was being a bully," Maura snaps back.
At this stage in his life, Jack hasn't yet softened up his hyper-awareness of the people he's sharing a room with. One day, after a few years of relative safety and adjustment, this will shift intensely, but right now he can practically feel Maura vibrating beside him. The harder she vibrates, the harder Mr. Larsen vibrates. The only person not vibrating here is Harriet, and — neither for the first, nor last time — he really likes her being his foster mom.
It doesn't take any more encouragement than that single instruction for him to scamper out of the room, clicking the door shut behind him and retreating back into the seat closest to Blue.
"Your mom is mad," he says, just a subtle shade of awe in his tone. "Mad at him, I mean. It kind of looks like she wants to do to him what you did to Beau."
Evidently, even at his age the through-line between the temper of mother and daughter is clear as day. He likes Blue (a lot, she is his best friend after all, apparently), and he likes Maura (she was nice to him), but he'd rather get eaten by a shark than piss either of them off. That's the biggest take-away from today.
It takes another several minutes before the adults emerge again, with Harriet just as soft as before if not maybe... a little more amused around the eyes than what Jack would've expected after being present for a tense encounter like that.
"Are you ready to go, Jack, honey?" She asks, which is how she tells him what to do sometimes - a method he appreciates. For the first time, he hesitates, glancing between her and Blue, reluctant to leave her until he knows she's going to be alright.
Alone in the hallway except for her (now) sworn enemy Beauregard and his cronies, Blue's anger begins to fade, giving way to an uncomfortable twist of her stomach. The adrenaline fueled rage that's been carrying her through could never last forever, and with Maura here to take over the fight, Blue's knees slowly go to jelly. Her heart misbehaving in her chest.
She really did that. She punched someone.
The boys won't dare do anything to her. Not with Ms. Harrison's door open. Not even Beauregard is stupid enough to start a fight right next to the literal principal's office.
Blue tucks her hands beneath her thighs, trapping them against the plastic of the seat beneath her. The knuckles on her right hand throb unhappily. No one ever told her that punching someone hurts.
You're not supposed to punch people. Fists are for people who can't use their words. Blue should've gotten a teacher. She knows all these things. She's not a troublemaker. She's a paint within the lines -- unless the lines are stupid -- kind of girl.
Her left foot bounces restlessly against the floor and her shoulders and jaw wind so tight, she's certain her teeth will crack under the pressure.
When the waiting has become almost unbearable, the door opens up again and Jack slips back into the hallway. Blue keeps her hands tucked beneath her thighs, but her foot stills against the multicolored carpet, and she pulls certainty around herself like a cloak. Jack's her best friend and he's nervous.
They can't both be nervous.
Beneath her cloak of feigned confidence, something inside Blue relaxes. Her mother being angry at the principal is a good sign.
"Mom's too clever to punch someone," she says, and maybe there's an ounce of self-deprecation in there. If she was as clever as her mom, maybe they wouldn't be here now. But then again, she's only eight. She doesn't know an argument that will keep a bully from writing a rude word on someone's cast. "She'll sort it out. You'll see."
Are you ready to go, Jack, honey?
Harriet seems really nice. Blue appreciates that she isn't like the other mom's who have simply grabbed their sons by the wrist and dragged them along with a curt we're leaving. She's asking. Which is just how it should be, as far as Blue's concerned.
She gives Jack a tight and brave little smile.
"I'll see you later, okay?" she asks. In the woods, under their tree. Or maybe tomorrow at school, but hopefully under the tree. On an impulse, she turns in her seat and throws her arms around Jack's shoulders, giving him a quick and sideways hug.
As far as hugs go, it's not especially good.
"I'd do it again, if I had to," she whispers hotly against his ear, before she lets go and gives him a solemn look of unshakeable loyalty.
It's hard to say who's more surprised by Blue's spontaneous hug — Jack, or Harriet. He freezes for a second, and any adult would have been able to see the clear concern written on his foster mother's face. He hasn't been an especially affectionate child, and sudden acts of physicality being sprung on victims of abuse are always precarious. She doesn't have to worry long; two or three seconds in, his brain clicks into place, and he wraps his arms around Blue in turn, hugging her back as tight as he can manage without pressing his cast against her.
Quietly, Harriet resolves to have a talk with Maura to see about letting the two of them connect a little more. It's the first time Jack's demonstrated any social ties that she's seen. He needs a friend, especially one that'll look out for him the way Blue seems intent to do.
"Thank you," is all he knows to say, because he doesn't have enough time to say you really shouldn't, I don't want you to get in trouble, it's not worth it, I can deal with it, it's nothing, I've seen way, way worse.
They turn each other loose, and he offers her one last hesitant wave with his cast hand before the two of them disappear from the office.
Jack is surprised and relieved to learn that he isn't in any kind of trouble. Quite the opposite, in fact — Harriet takes him to dinner, just the two of them, no foster siblings to tag along. They have a quiet talk about standing up for himself, and about what trouble really means, and how he'll know if he's in it, and what he can expect if she's ever upset. He only cries once, and she buys him a sundae.
This is also the day Harriet learns that Blue is his tree reading partner. Unfortunately, by the time they get back from dinner, it's already almost dark. Having learned what the phone policy is, he's actually a little sad he never got around to getting Blue's number.
After Jack leaves, it seems an eternity before Maura Sargent steps out of the principal's office. It leaves Blue's imagination plenty of time to run away with her. By the time her mother stops in front of her, unknowingly echoing Harriet's kind you ready to go?, Blue has painted herself a tragic martyr; thrown out of school for doing the right thing, condemned to teaching herself about math, science, and history from books. (It's the one bright side to this whole thing. Books, Blue is pretty sure, make better teachers than Ms. Klein.)
Blue's sneakers scuff against the carpet as she slides off her chair. Trailing after Maura towards the door, she pauses to throw a look over her shoulder and stick her tongue out at Bo. His face goes red, and Blue feels a deep kind of satisfaction warming the pit of her belly.
As it turns out, there is no lifetime expulsion from school, no suspension (in or out of school) for Blue. But there is also no going out for dinner after complete with a surprise sundae. What there is, however, is a lengthy discussion during the car ride home about what other tools Blue has in her tool box to resolve arguments before resorting to violence.
It's not a lecture. Maura doesn't give lectures. Instead, they reason it out together. By the time the gravel of 300 Fox Way's driveway crunches beneath the tires of the Volvo, they are in agreement that if (when, Blue corrects her mother glumly) it happens again, the right thing to do is to involve an adult.
Only once Blue has worked her feet free of her shoes and Maura has briefed Calla and Persephone on the series of events leading her to need the Volvo for the afternoon, does the subject turn to Jack. Maura has a lot of questions, and Blue answers them dutifully while helping to prepare for dinner.
The house is unseasonably quiet. It's not a day to slip unnoticed into the woods.
Persephone disappears into her room to work on her thesis while Calla joins them in the kitchen, with an apron tied around her waist and brandishing a potato peeler. Occasionally, she breaks into Maura's line of questioning with wholly irrelevant commentary. (Is the milk still good? -- Actually I don't think it is. -- Oven-roasted or just boiled? -- We can't do mashed potatoes without milk. -- Oh, is there half-and-half in there? -- Have you ever made mashed potatoes with half and half? -- No? Can't see why it wouldn't work. Might even be creamier.)
Blue spends all of dinner near vibrating off her chair, her gaze drawn again and again to the kitchen window facing the woods. She should be out there right now, under her tree, waiting for Jack. She needs to let him know that she is fine. It's important. Except by the time dinner is over, and the washing up is done, the sun is already dipping down below the horizon.
Blue's whole face screws up in deep thought.
"I'd like to go into the woods," she tells her mother as she finishes wiping off the last plate with a flourish.
Maura looks through the window at the fading light.
"At this hour?" she asks.
Blue's chest sinks and she curls her fingers around the edge of the counter.
"Jack might be there," she explains quietly. She draws her lower lip in between her teeth, slowly chewing on it. The longer the silence between them, the sharper the pressure of her teeth.
"How about we go together then?" Maura asks, finally breaking the silence. The woods can be a dangerous place in the dark. But she's never been one to tell her daughter what to do or not to do. At least not in so many words.
Blue considers the offer, fingertips tapping restlessly against the counter as she thinks. They make a sound like hoofs of a tiny herd of galloping horses, moving at the same speed of her mind as she thinks.
Ten minutes later, leaves and sticks crunching beneath their shoes, Maura and Blue find Blue's beech tree empty.
"You will see him at school tomorrow," Maura says, giving Blue's hand a light squeeze.
Disappointment piles onto Blue's chest, its weight near crushing. She stares at the smooth bark of her tree, and the empty space between its roots, and then she nods.
"Yeah," Blue says. She sticks her free hand into the pocket of the coat her mother insist she wear, curling her fingers up tight against her palm, and tries to pretend she is feeling nothing at all.
The next morning at school, Blue arrives before the school bus, dropped off by Calla on her way to Aglionby Academy. (No need to tempt fate.) She swings immediately by Jack's desk, leaving a folded up notebook paper on his desk on top of a brand new composition journal.
The note, if he opens it, reads:
Dear Jack, I wasn't in much trouble at all. Don't be worried. My mother just wants me to explore other avenues before resorting to violence. I think that is very reasonable. We had chicken, broccoli, and. mashed potatoes made with half and half for dinner. It was okay. I don't really like broccoli. The journal is from mom. She still has yours and it is drying out. She thinks if we give it a little time, you might be able to salvage a lot of what you wrote, but she doesn't want to invade your privacy so maybe you want to come over some day and look? We don't have boys in the house often, except professionally, but you are always very welcome. If you still want to, mom is going to ask your Harriet if you can come to the bookstore on Sunday. xoxo Blue
Jack rides the bus to school with a handful of his older foster siblings, so altercations on the bus are generally unlikely. Not that Beau rides the same bus as him. He might have, if Jack were still living with his dad; fortunately, Harriet's house is in a nicer neighborhood than his trailer park had been.
The classroom is already half full by the time Jack turns up, and although he wants to immediately go up to Blue, his awkwardness gets the better of him. What's he going to do? Hug her in front of everyone? Not a chance. Say hi and run out of stuff to say almost immediately? She might not want to talk about what happened the day before in front of everyone. Instead, all he manages is an uncertain pause, and a wave of his cast-hand, and then a hesitant break-away to head back to his desk.
Where a composition journal sits. He lights up immediately, flipping the thing open just to get a look at the empty white pages. There's something strangely soothing about an empty notebook full of lined paper. It's so... clean, not yet ruined, full of possibility and space. Of course, the note is an immediate distraction.
Several facts get filed away one after another, and after a couple of seconds he digs around in his bag to pull out a spiral notebook to tear a page out — there are perforations, there's no way he's ripping an ugly eyesore into his new journal.
He does his best to make his handwriting... marginally less illegible.
Dear Blue,
I'm glad you didn't get in trouble. I'm also glad about the choice not to fight. Don't get me wrong, you kicked that guy's ass and it was awesome, but you really don't have to worry about me like that. I've had way worse than whatever Beau tries to do. He's not really very creative.
Harriet took me to Friendly's for dinner. She got me a Sunday, so that was pretty cool. What is half and half? Half of what?
I would love to come over, but it's okay if it's ruined. It was just stupid stories and stuff that I wrote, not homework or anything, so it doesn't really matter.
Harriet already said I could go to the bookstore with you, and also that if you want to call some time as long as it's before 9 pm and I answer any beeps and don't hog the phone, that would be okay. If you want to. Not that you have to. I'm not very good at talking to people, so it might not be an enjoyable experience. It might still be a good idea for your mom to call, just so they're on the same page.
I'm sorry I didn't show up at the tree. I don't know if you wanted me to, but just in case you did, it's because we were at Friendly's until it got dark.
I'm also sorry this is so long. I write a lot. I guess maybe it's to balance out the fact that I don't talk a lot.
Anyway, thank you for helping me yesterday, and also for being my friend.
He debates writing love at the end, because he's pretty sure that's how most people end letters, but it might seem weird to do here. He settles on a simple:
Jack.
He can't give her the note back until they're all lined up for a bathroom break. He offers it out as discreetly as possible, in case it's supposed to be some kind of secret affair, or in case it would embarrass her to be seen writing notes with him.
By the time the school bus riding students begin to filter into the classroom, Blue has already cracked open a book on her desk and is restlessly reading it. Her foot bounces against one of the metal legs of her desk, impatient and distracted, and she keeps glancing up at the sound of shoes squeaking against the linoleum floor near the door. It's a lot of disappointment, Blue sighing with each student who fails to be Jack and staring back down at her book with an increasingly furrowed brow.
The pinched look on her face is immediately replaced by something a little softer and more cheerful the moment she glances up to see his narrow shoulders and bright cast. She gives him a quick wave that's little more than a fanning out of her fingers like a wave crashing across her desk. When he makes his way to his desk, she twists in her seat, tracking his path with her whole body. It's unfortunate, that he's sitting so far behind her. It's not exactly conducive to surreptitious glances his way.
The look on his face when he picks up the blank journal sends a little jolt of warmth through Blue's chest. The first leaf of spring unfurling just below her ribs. If it wasn't for their teacher walking into the room and clearing her throat, Blue likely would've watched Jack as intently as a small hawk while he read and replied to her note. But, as it stands, she tugs her attention away from him and forces it onto the whiteboard instead.
During class -- if it's a subject she likes -- Blue is normally a diligent student. But even though Ms. Klein is talking about trees and their different leaves -- a subject bound to keep Blue's rapt attention on a normal day -- she can't stop fidgeting in her seat. For once, she can't wait for the lunch break. Not because it'll finally let her read uninterrupted again, but because it's her best chance to talk to Jack again.
Her best friend.
(Should they have talked about it first? The friendship thing? Blue feels like it was kind of implied since they shared that cupcake under the tree, but maybe Jack feels differently. But, blood has been shed over it, which she feels kind of seals the deal here.)
Too many thoughts make it difficult to concentrate on the difference between a maple tree leaf and a birch tree leaf. Even Bo, glowering past the ugly bruise squatting on the bridge of his nose and sending tendrils of dark purple and blue just below his eyes, at her doesn't steal as much of her concentration as Jack merely existing somewhere to her left behind her.
When the break is announced, Blue clambers to her feet quicker than anyone else, and then proceeds to waste just enough time getting to the other end of the classroom so they end up next to each other. Blue takes the note with the same level of discretion as it is offered, tucking it in her pocket like a spy and giving him a small, but determined nod.
Message received.
In the bathroom, Blue locks the stall and sits down before she retrieves the note from her pocket, unfolding it and reading it greedily. She reads it twice and starts on a third time before another girl pounds on the door of her stall.
Blue tucks the note back away, and slinks out of the stall with a somewhat guilty look on her face. Rather than lingering in the hallway of the restrooms, she hurries back to her desk, turning his note over and writing quickly on the back of it.
It takes the rest of the break and most of the next class for her to compose her response. Her mind keeps snagging on the fourth sentence and making her brow furrow with concern she can't quite convey onto paper.
Dear Jack, I can't both be your friend and not worry about you. They are mutually exclusive. Friends worry about friends. Bo is a stupid jerk. I don't think he will try again. But if he does. I will first try to find a teacher. But he is not allowed to take your journal or throw it in the mud. Or write rude things on your cast. I can't stand idly by and let that happen. Do you know who stood idly by? Nazis. That's how we got the holocaust. Friendly's is really nice. I like their french fries a lot. Mom says a sundae is just dressed up ice cream. But I like it a lot too. Half and half is HALF milk, HALF cream. I like mashed potatoes better with just milk. But the milk had gone bad and Jimi keeps half and half for her coffee. I think stories matter more than homework. I can help you write up new ones. If you want. Or you can read them to me after. If you want. I will ask mom to call so they can do that grownup thing. I think my mom would like that. She says your Harriet is "good people". That's a good thing. We have a phone in the cat/sewing room so I could call you. Mom can probably find Harriet in the phone book. Or you can give me your number and I can call sometime maybe. I'm not good on the phone either. It's no fun talking when you can't see the other person. Mom and I went to the tree just in case. She wanted to walk with me since it was getting dark. I'm glad you weren't there waiting for me. Dinner and dishes took a long time and I couldn't sneak out. So it's a good thing. You might have sat there all alone for a long time and then I would have felt bad. You can come over after school if you want. We can meet at the tree and then we can walk over. Or you can ride home with me. Or we can just meet at the tree. My house gets VERY loud sometimes. I don't mind that this is long. I like reading. You are welcome for yesterday and for being your friend. But I don't think that is something you are supposed to thank someone for. Did you have a chance to read some yesterday? I only read a little before bed and not for long because mom came to check on me. xoxo Blue
This time, Blue doesn't run ahead when they break for lunch. Instead she lingers in the doorway, waiting for Jack to come join her. Under the watchful eyes of Ms. Klein, Beau passes her with nothing but a low grumble of discontent that might be bitch or witch. Blue can't tell. Her face lights up in a smile when Jack finally makes his way over though. She slips her hand immediately in his and tugs him along towards the cafeteria.
"I wrote you a reply," she says, low and under her breath. In case they are still being secret. "You don't have to read it now, you can wait until after lunch."
All of Blue's intentions are interrupted by an older girl materializing the moment they enter the cafeteria. A fourth or fifth grader by the look of her, she's wearing a bright orange dress and a matching bow in her hair. She blows a bubble with her bubblegum, and considers the two of them.
Blue darkens significantly.
"You Jack?" the girl asks, visibly unimpressed.
"Orla," Blue says. The name a curse in her mouth. "What are you doing here?"
"Manners," Orla admonishes her. "Aren't you going to introduce me?"
Blue rolls her eyes and slips her hand out of Jack's.
"Orla-Jack, Jack-Orla," she says waving her now-free hand vaguely between them. "Orla is my cousin. We live together. Orla. What. Are. You. Doing. Here?"
"We're having lunch together," Orla says brightly. "Don't look at me like that. Mom's idea."
Blue heaves a very heavy sigh and gives Jack a look to say that she is very, very sorry about this turn of events.
"We're sitting outside," she tells Orla. "You should just sit with your friends. We're fine."
Except that's not how it happens. Orla clearly takes her mission very seriously, and she sticks close by for the entirety of lunch. Blue's lips squash tight together, and she picks at her lunch. Thankfully(?), Orla talks enough for all three of them.
Jack does indeed slip the note in his pocket to read after lunch. The way he figures it, they have time together now to talk or just hang out. The note is like extra time he gets later, there's no point spending it all in one place.
Besides, even if he wanted to, Blue tugs him along with determination and in a hurry. He hasn't quite mastered reading and walking yet. He's been working on it. Maybe it'll be easier without the cast.
And then there's an older girl he's never even seen before, much less talked to. For one brief, terrifying second, he thinks maybe Beau sent her to beat him up or something. His relief might be a little bit visible when it becomes apparent Blue knows her.
The introduction leaves a little to be desired, but he offers her a small cast-wave and a tentative, "Hi."
Not much time for more than that, there's a line forming and impatiently urging them along. Jack's got a packed lunch from home, in a neat blue cooler-bag with his name printed in permanent marker along the flap. Too neat to be his handwriting, though only Blue would know that. It matches the lunch bags all his foster siblings carry in every way except color, and it contains a Lunchable, an apple, and some juice. Way better than any lunch he ever got from his dad — not a guaranteed thing, and often supplemented by teacher-paid pity lunches he was too hungry to turn down.
Once they all sit down, the tension (mostly one-sided, he notes) is palpable and uncomfortable. He aims to break it with an offering of, "I like your bow."
He doesn't, really. He doesn't care for orange, and he's not all that into bows, but it doesn't hurt to offer somebody a compliment when you're trying to get on their good side. It seems to work well enough, because Orla talks them through most of the lunch period, and Jack's privately relieved he doesn't have to fill in much silence himself.
When he finally gets around to reading Blue's note, that bit about the Nazis leaves him blinking. Well, that escalated quickly. He guesses she's technically right, and in her defense, he has heard Beau spouting some distinctly uncomfortable things about 'the oppressed whites'.
He writes his return-letter on a fresh sheet of paper.
Dear Blue,
I think I misspelled sundae in that last note. That's pretty dumb, pretend that didn't happen. Sundaes might just be dressed up ice cream, but tuxedos are just dressed up clothes, and they still make you wear those to weddings and funerals. If you have to have one, I think you probably deserve to get the other. Like a consolation prize.
I've never had coffee. Have you? Is it good?
If I let you read my stories, do you promise not to make fun of me? You can criticcrit give me feedback if you want, that's okay, just as long as it's serious. We can also try to write one together some time, too.
Your mom is right about Harriet, she's the nicest person I've ever met. It's really weird. The house I'm at now is kind of like a TV sitcom family house, or like the pictures you see of rich people with golden retrievers in magazines. It's like aliens. But I'm not complaining, it's really good.
Here is my phone number #505-503-4455
I think I should meet you at the tree, since I can't ask Harriet if I can ride home with you yet. I'll go home and tell her first, and then if I'm allowed, I'll meet you there. Are you sure I'm allowed at your house, since boys don't come there very often? I don't want to get you in trouble or make your mom not like me.
I got to read only like a chapter :( sorry I'm taking so long. I'm almost done and then you can borrow it.
Jack
P.S. I really hope Beau throwing my notebook in the mud isn't the beginning of a chain of events that will eventually lead to the next Holocaust. Although, I guess you probably stopped that before it could start, so good job.
P.P.S. I'm getting my cast off on Saturday.
In a bold maneuver, he gets up to sharpen his pencil and drops the note on her desk on the way back. Ms. Klein doesn't notice. He's too quiet, and he has a reputation for being unobtrusive. Most people tend not to notice him, or their eyes pass right over him like their subconscious has scratched him off as a potential trouble-making threat.
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no subject
Except. Except, now if he does all the chores he's assigned to (there's an actual wheel, these people are like aliens or magazine families) he gets a five dollar a week allowance. Three weeks in could get him almost anything there. It could also get him a bunch of cheap books from the bookstore. It's the easiest money he's ever made, considering he had to do way more when he lived back at the trailer.
"Okay," easily, happily. "It should only take me a couple days, and then I'll give it to you."
He's not bragging or anything, he just... reads really fast, he reads a lot, and he doesn't have any friends or anything better to do.
Except maybe...
Tentatively...
"When can you show me the bookstore?"
no subject
The moment the posters for the book fair go up, Blue engages in a two week long battle with her mother. Last year, it ended with an exhausted Maura giving her three five-dollars bill and telling her to make good choices.
Blue couldn't find a single book -- not even with their pretty and colorful covers, and uncracked backs -- worth the number of books she could get for the same price at the secondhand bookstore. Learning the value of money in elementary school is a harsh lesson.
A couple of days seems about right for the thickness of the book he is holding. Except Blue's never met a kid her age who reads as quickly as she does. (Some kids in her class are still stuck on sounding out letters.) Blue's not sure whether she likes it or not. It's encroaching on territory that up until now has been firmly hers.
"Okay, thanks," she says. Her fingers are already cracking open her own book and flicking towards the bookmark. They've done an awful lot of talking already. Her teeth dig into her lower lip and she visibly turns his question over.
"We've company so I can't this Saturday." Like it's obvious. Like it's equally obvious that they can't just go after school one day. But-- company means a bribe for good behavior. "Sunday? Unless you go to church."
It's something that people in town do and the inhabitants of 300 Fox Way don't. Not for any disagreement with god or anything. The house is thick with belief. Just not necessarily in the Christian god or the popular depiction by the church. Also, the fire-and-brimstone type preacher called Maura Sargent a whore to her face once and that's not something easily forgiven.
no subject
"Why would I go to church? Nobody died." He seems genuinely confused by the question. The only time he's ever been is for a wedding or a funeral; the concept of religion isn't one his dad touched on in between his Klan rallies and his fifth of Jack Daniels. He knows about it, he's seen stuff referenced in books or whatever, but for the most part it's a foreign concept.
Maybe Blue shouldn't be so worried. He might read like a machine, but the number of knowledge gaps he's got could not-fill an empty book.
As in... there's a lot. He's had a weird upbringing so far, he has a lot to make up for in the next couple years. He'll get there.
no subject
Which is the dumbest reason Blue knows for anyone to do anything.
A little crease appears at the base of her nose, and her mouth twists to the side as she tries to recall what the women of 300 Fox Way have said on the subject. Only problem is-- most of it isn't exactly kind.
"Some people like to remind Jesus of their existence on a weekly basis, I guess," she tells him with a shrug. "It's very dull when you have to go. You have to wear Nice clothes and you can't read while the preacher talks."
None of it doing much to endear Blue to church. The stories can be kind of cool, she supposes, but no one ever seems to go into details about the coolest stuff. Nor are they open to a little bit of constructive criticism. As much was clear two Sundays into Sunday school.
"I can have my mom talk to your--" Foster mom? Just mom? What's the protocol? "Harriet. If you want."
Blue turns her attention to her open book.
"We have a Volvo," she adds. Like it's important information for him to know about the planned outing. Implied: he can ride with them.
no subject
It's the latter half of the conversation that he's fixated on, and his lips part. Only silence comes out. The fault in this plan has suddenly announced itself, and the gearshift in his mind grinds, transmission protesting, the whole thing whirring uncomfortably.
"...I've never asked her to go anywhere before," he says finally, voice quiet and concern knitting his brow. Concern, and maybe just a touch of fear. It's probably a weird thing to get hung up on to anybody else, to any normal kid. The thing is... there were certain guidelines to follow with his dad. Some things were completely off the table, some things were nebulous depending on his mood. After the second time having something thrown at his head he learned not to ask stupid questions like can I go to Jessie's birthday party or can Travis come over?
He doesn't know these rules or guidelines with Harriet yet. He doesn't know if he's allowed to ask, or if he'll get in trouble. He just got there, they're being really nice, they keep buying him books and giving him food, he really doesn't want to mess that up.
But he also... really, really wants to go to the bookstore. Overcoming the swirling conflict enough to actually read the words on the pages in front of him is rapidly becoming nigh impossible.
no subject
There's no world in which Blue Sargent can imagine getting in trouble for just asking to go somewhere.
The answer to every question you never is ask is always going to be no.
Another Maura Sargent truism.
It is, generally speaking, the not asking that gets her in trouble. Not, of course, that she's in trouble often or with any significant frequency. Blue is afforded a lot of freedom with the unspoken expectation that she behave according to the rules of the house.
"My mom is really good at talking to grown-ups," Blue offers. Even as she says it, she's not sure if it counts as lying or not. Oh, Maura talks plenty nice to aunts and cousins and the clients sitting in her drawing room. But she's exchanged heated words with the preacher, and the elementary school principal, and a handful of other grown-ups. Maura is good at talking. But she's also very good at yelling and fighting. Which she assumes is not appropriate for this situation. At all.
(Pick your battles, Blue, her mother has told her more than once. Pick them and then fight them well. It's usually in relation to fights Blue has already fought poorly and lost.)
"She could say Harriet would be doing her a favor, letting you come to the bookstore with us." It's perhaps a little disingenuous, but Blue's overheard Maura worry out-loud about her lack of friends before.
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Is that cowardly? Maybe a little, but bravery is how you get your arm broken. He'd rather be smart and careful about stuff like this.
"Okay," followed by another thoughtful pause. "Should I give you my phone number?"
Is that how that works? That seems like how it should work, but he's never actually... done it before. Maybe it's an address thing and they talk about it face to face, but that seems weirder. Worse, maybe. His dad always hated it when people showed up at their place — at least when it wasn't Red or one of his other drinking buddies.
A sudden follow-up thought springs to mind that he needs to quickly clarify, "Your mom's okay with doing that, right?"
He doesn't want to get Blue in trouble either.
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It's not to be rude or anything. Blue's still listening for his answer. She's just not staring at him in silence like a total weirdo while he makes up his mind. Also maybe (maybe) she's a touch impatient and distracting herself keeps her from being actually rude by demanding an answer already.
Blue's mouth is open to answer his first question, the book gently closing around her fingers in a signal that her full attention is his once more, when he hits her with the follow-up. She frowns like she hadn't even thought of the prospect that Maura might not be okay with it. She turns the novel idea over in her head.
"I think so?" she says, wholly unbothered by the idea that her mother's answer might be anything but positive. "I'll find out for sure when I ask her."
It shouldn't be a problem. But they can always think of another way. Blue's brain begins to spin away at a plan of heist-movie proportions. It involves a lot of misdirection and Jack climbing in the trunk of the Volvo and then pretending to be his own evil twin when they casually bump into each other in the bookstore.
"And I won't need your number," she adds, a touch of pride to her voice, "my mom knows everyone's number; she's got a phone book."
Except, as it turns out, Maura's first introduction to Jack Townsend isn't a quiet excursion to the local secondhand bookstore. Or speaking with his foster mother about the potential of such an outing.
Once the fading light begins to obscure the words on their book pages, Blue declares it time for both of them to head home. She climbs to her feet and gathers up their trash and disappears back through the woods with an optimistic see you tomorrow.
When Blue returns home that evening, 300 Fox Way is in deep preparations for the weekend. Tidying and sweeping floors, making beds and little jars of teas, and Blue judges the look on her mother's face and decides the bookstore is a question for tomorrow morning while they get ready.
Except morning comes with another flurry of activity and instead of sitting on the closed lid of the toilet and brushing her teeth while her mother showers, Blue finds herself eating a slice of dry toast while waiting on the school bus because somehow they ran out of time for both showers and breakfast.
Tonight then. Or this afternoon between school and running off to the forest to read in silence. (With Jack.)
With their desks on near opposite sides of the room, Blue doesn't have a chance to tell Jack about any of this. When lunch starts, Blue has to make a quick detour to the girls restroom, and then back to the classroom to pick up her book from her backpack. By the time she makes it onto the playground to try to find Jack so she can eat her homemade sandwich next to him, the same group of boys from yesterday already have him surrounded. His journal facedown in a puddle of mud at their feet.
Blue doesn't even think before wading into the group like an avenging angel.
Which is how Maura Sargent ends up having to leave work in the middle of the day to meet with the elementary school principal.
They've had to bring more chairs into the front office to line up all the combatants against the wall of the principal's office. Everyone is quiet. Beauregard Frazer III looks sullen where he sits pressing a wad of tissue paper against his nose, his chin and the front of his t-shirt stained with his own blood. Blue's heel thrums back against one of the legs of her chair, impatient and roaring against the injustice on the inside.
A couple of other moms have come and gone, after speaking with the principal and picking up their little "angels". Maura Sargent looks nothing like any of them when she enters. Maybe it's the hair or the oversized jewelry or the flowy dress cinched together with a snakeskin belt, or maybe it's the spirit of self-possessed calm that inhabits every inch of her even with her face twisted with annoyance.
With a glance over at Blue, she disappears into the principal's office. Blue leans over to Jack and whispers "that's my mom. Maura."
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The last time he got in trouble in school and his dad had to come all the way down to the principal's office, he didn't sit right for a week. He knows Harriet doesn't punish the same way as his dad does, but it doesn't stop the anxiety from trying to vibrate his bones out of his skin. It's the not knowing that's eating at him, choking him up. Is she going to yell at him? Does he get sent back to his dad for this? Is she going to be disappointed in him? Throw out his books? That would be almost worse, his dad did that one all the time.
He's not going to cry. Crying only makes it worse, he knows. It's been firmly planted in him that crying is dramatic, that nobody wants to hear it, and I'll give you something to cry about. So he's not going to. Plus, he doesn't want to look like a baby in front of Blue, who might be his friend. Who might not want to if he starts crying like this is a big deal.
Who he wishes would have just let him get kicked around, because they'd have stopped eventually and at least he wouldn't be outside of the principal's office.
He's quiet. Like, stone-cold mute — partly because he doesn't want to say the wrong thing and get in more trouble (his father threw him out of a moving car for hiccuping out of turn, imagine what it's like when the words come out wrong) — but right now, mostly because if he unlocks his throat he thinks his voice will sound off. Thick, stupid, wavering. He doesn't want to open the floodgates.
Maura sweeps in, and there's the next bit of miserable news he didn't even think about until now — Blue's mom is going to see him for the first time after getting in trouble. She might not let him go to the bookstore with them. She might not like him, for getting her daughter in trouble. She might think he's the type to get in trouble. She might be mad at him.
He can't tell, based on the few seconds she's in view. That's almost worse than if she'd have scowled at him.
Blue leans over to whisper, and he wants to be able to say something back. His lips part, and he means to say she's pretty, but all that comes out is a soft click at the back of his throat. There's no way in hell he'll be able to say that much and still sound normal, so a second later he musters up a scratchy, "Okay."
And swallows his tonsils again.
A few seconds later, Harriet passes through the hall to join them. She's a fair bit older than Maura, more plain-looking, with the age and wisdom and patience of a woman who's done this several dozen times before with almost as many foster kids — often kids from troubled backgrounds that act out, so this incident will hardly be a blip on her radar in a few days. She seems far more kind than Jack's anxiety might lead someone to believe, but he's only known her a couple of months. There are habits, instincts, behaviors, feelings that don't fade that quickly.
She offers him a reassuring smile as she passes through, gives Blue a little wave (mostly just her fingers tapping the heel of her palm more than a back-and-forth) automatically like someone who has mom practically encoded in her DNA even if the child is a complete stranger, and enters the office with an immediate greeting from the admin staff. She's definitely on a first-name basis with all of them, and has been for years.
The smile loosens his tongue up just enough to manage, thickly, "That's my foster-mom."
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Instead, she's been keeping her eyes locked on the wall in front of them and the stupid picture of an elderly gentleman from sometime in the forties. He's either the founder or the first principal or something. Either way, he has a stupid looking mustache and Blue has been glaring daggers at him rather than at Beau or his crew. If a fight breaks out right next to the principal's office, Blue is absolutely certain everyone involved gets automatically expelled.
Okay, Jack says and it's not like Blue knows him all that well yet. Not really. (Except the fact that he likes books and will read in silence with her. Which she'd argue covers the most important bits.) But, there's something weird about his voice. She dares a glance over at him, just a darted little thing and her whole face screws up in a deep frown.
She's distracted by the sound of the door opening and closing, and she looks over to see the kind-looking woman walk inside. At the little wave, Blue's mouth twists up into a tight and obligatory smile. Her eyes dart back over to Jack when he speaks again.
"She looks nice," Blue observes under her breath. She reaches out across the narrow gap between their chairs and grabs his good hand without asking for permission. Her fingers give his a tight squeeze of reassurance.
"Don't worry," she says quietly. "My mom is really good with authority figures. She'll sort this out."
It's a promise Blue isn't entirely sure she can keep. For all her rebellious ways, and how little she fits into the mold of what this town thinks a good little girl should be, it's not often that Maura has had to come down to the principal's office. Never in the middle of the work day like this. When Blue's first grade teacher told her she couldn't bring books to school anymore after she was caught reading under her desk rather than practicing the alphabet with the other kids, Maura took a day off work and sat in the little reception waiting area until the principal had time to meet with her. But that was different.
"Mrs. Sargent," the principal's raised voice can be heard through the door and Blue winces immediately.
"Ms." The word sounds like the buzz of an angry bee before Maura's voice goes too quiet to hear anymore.
Moments later, the door opens. Maura pauses in the doorway, giving Harriet a quiet nod of apology.
"All due respect," she tells the inside of the principal's office, her body already angled away from it. "Blue doesn't start fights. So I would like to hear what happened from my daughter before we start talking consequences."
If there's a protest, it can't be heard, and Maura walks the length of the hall to crouch down in front of her daughter. Her face incredibly serious.
"Blue," she says, quietly, her eyes and full attention locked on Blue's face, "do you want to tell me what's going on here?"
This right here, is the moment Blue has been waiting for all along. She squirms to the front of the chair, fingers still snagged with Jack's and no indication whatsoever that she means to let go any time soon.
"They were bullying Jack," she says, indignation shining through the serious tone of her voice. Like that's all the explanation she needs to give.
Maura's chest heaves in a slow and tired sigh.
"Who's Jack?" she asks patiently.
Blue gives her an incredulous look, like Maura ought to know this already, and casts a pointed glance in Jack's general direction.
"My best friend," she states, like it's obvious, loud enough for all to hear.
The little thrill of apprehension-tinged joy in Maura's chest doesn't shine through her eyes when she looks over at the thin boy sitting next to her daughter. She takes in the cast on his arm and the fading shiner, and maybe she'd think he was a bad influence -- the kind of kid to get in fights -- if it wasn't for the downtrodden look around his eyes and the slope of his shoulders.
"Hi Jack," she says kindly. "Nice to meet you."
Then she turns her attention back to Blue.
"I am going to go into that room and I am going to have a very strongly worded argument with your principal. But I would like you to reassure me that I am doing the right thing."
"They knocked his journal in the mud and they were hitting him," Blue says solemnly, voice lowering, and turning a little pleading. "You always say we should stand up for people who are being hurt."
She twists to look at Jack, giving his arm a little tug in the process.
"Tell her, Jack!"
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Maura closes the distance between them, and Jack's hand feels sweaty.
My best friend.
He outright gawps at her — thankfully, her attention's on her mother and all the injustices in the world for that moment. Maura, on the other hand, probably catches his deer-in-the-headlights expression. She rescues him from it with her greeting, and he shuts his mouth quick, thankful he isn't expected to return it.
Tell her, Jack!
Now's a truly awful time to not have a voice, to be stuck. He looks from Blue to Maura to Blue again, and after a few seconds, tugs his hand away from Blue's.
It's so he can reach down between his legs to unzip his backpack, and dig out a composition notebook that's seen better days. He offers it up to Maura, because maybe the evidence will speak for itself. True to Blue's account, the right half of almost all the pages are curled and water-logged, some stick together, a little partly-dried crust clings to the front and back where he missed wiping it off in his haste. A not insignificant portion of what's sprawled within has gone illegible, the ink bleeding into smudges or outright wet nothing.
When he finally manages to speak up, maybe it isn't the bold endorsement she really deserves. It's just a quiet, "Please don't let her be in trouble."
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In the silence before he reaches for his backpack, Maura is about to assure him that it's alright, Blue can speak for herself. But her attention catches on the composition book he pulls from the backpack. Her heart sinks, and her expression softens.
"See?!" Blue interjects from her side.
With gentle hands, Maura takes the offered journal, her fingers carefully curling around its damp edges. It's more evidence than she needs. Blue doesn't lie to her. All she needs to go to war is her daughter's word.
A slow ache is beginning to spread through her knees down to her gently tingling toes, and she shifts her weight to the leg favoring Jack. One hand leaving the journal to brace gently against the edge of Blue's seat.
When Jack speaks, his voice is so low, Maura almost can't make out the words. But when her mind assembles them for her, she can't help the tender and aching half-smile she gives him.
"Thank you, Jack," she says, the words soft and heartfelt. She shifts the journal minutely up and down in the air in careful emphasis. "You don't need to worry about Blue. That's my job. Okay?"
Except Maura doesn't wait for him to answer. Her eyes still meeting his, she shifts again so she can release her grip on Blue's chair and hold the waterlogged composition book with both hands.
"Can I borrow this? I'd like to show it to the principal. I promise I will take good care of it and return it to you as soon as we are done speaking."
This time she waits -- patiently -- for his answer.
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He nods his assent at not worrying about her, but as it's just been decreed that they're Best Friends, he keeps to himself that it's probably his job now, too. He... thinks. He's never actually had a friend before, but if he had to make up the rules of the role, he'd say that would probably be in the top five.
"You can have it," he says just a touch mournfully, a little frown tugging at his lips. "It's ruined anyway."
He won't even be able to read half of the stories he wrote in there. As in, half of all of them, they're all ruined. Sliced almost neatly down the middle, too water-logged for him to be able to retrace the words — he certainly won't be able to just remember what they were.
Once they're in the clear, his throat has opened up enough that he can look at Blue and quietly murmur, "Your mom is nice."
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The promise comes easy even though a vast majority of Maura's life has become doing math. A constant calculation of cost vs the balance of her bank account. There's no wealth in the kind of work she does. At least not in the way she does it. But a composition notebook is cheap enough. There might even still be one in the kitchen cabinet that's become the unofficial storage space of school supplies.
Easy enough, Maura rises to her feet and switches Jack's ruined journal to her left hand. With her right, she gives Jack's good shoulder a light and reassuring squeeze, and then she brushes bent fingers along Blue's cheek. They will talk later about using fists to solve problems and how it usually only creates more problems. But it will be a quiet conversation in private. Nothing so public as all this.
Blue watches her mother disappear into the principal's office and the tightness in her chest eases. They have a champion now. Someone to fight the injustice of either one of them (but especially Jack) being here in the first place.
"Most of the time," Blue agrees without looking away from the door where their fate is being decided. "Good call, giving her the journal."
It's ammunition in the war.
Blue looks over at Jack and gives him a quick smile, slightly tightened by circumstance, and reaches out for his hand again. Affectionate touch comes easy at 300 Fox Ways.
"The next one you get should have a lock on it," she offers. Perhaps a little too loud, because Ms. Harrison clears her throat very pointedly. Blue falls quiet, but her fingers tighten around Jack's like a promise.
Not too long later, Ms. Harrison appears in front of them. Her blazer sits awkwardly against her shoulders, the fabric straining around the single buttoned button.
"Jack," she says. "Mr. Larsen would like to speak with you."
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He's also not sure if he'll get used to having his hand held, but now that it's less of a surprise than the first time he can remind himself to hold it back. Her hand is soft, it's gentle but not loose — though not nearly as tight as the invisible one gripping his chest.
He thinks about saying something. Mostly, he thinks about saying you're my best friend, too. He thinks about saying sorry you got in trouble, although it seems like she might not be. The few options he turns over in his head get crushed by Ms. Harrison, and maybe that's for the best. Maybe all of it would sound stupid, and he should wait until he has time to think about exactly how he should say it.
And then comes the executioner calling him to the gallows, and he shoots Blue a wide-eyed look.
This isn't something she can rescue him from, though.
After a second, he releases her hand and pushes to his feet, abandoning his backpack to follow Ms. Harrison into room he's never actually been in before. It's intimidating, probably intentionally so with its wide, foreboding cherry wood desk and plaques with shiny gold affixed to them. There's a single empty seat that he assumes is for him, and he moves as quietly as possible toward it, trying to swallow down the nerves flaring up underneath the gaze of stern adults.
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Ms. Harrison's heels are muted on the multicolored carpet as she leads Jack into the room and then quietly exits behind him. The latch of the door is barely audible over the creak of Mr. Larsen -- a thin and tall man in an ill-fitting suit with a mustard yellow tie -- shifting in his leather desk chair to consider Jack.
In front of him, in the middle of the tidy surface of the cherry wood desk, sits Jack's soiled journal like an indictment.
(Never trust a person with a tidy desk, Maura always says. They have too much time on their hands.)
Mr. Larsen's eyes dart down to it, like he's not fully comfortable with its presence there, and then back up at Jack. He clears his throat and steeples his fingers.
"Jack," he says, without introducing himself, like they already know each other (or like, at least, he knows of Jack), his voice oddly booming for his narrow shoulders. "Can you tell me what happened at lunch?"
"It's okay, Jack," Harriet assures him immediately from her own seat. "You're not in trouble. Mr. Larsen just needs an account of what happened."
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It's only Harriet that keeps him from being too locked-up to speak, with her gentle reassurance that he's not in trouble. She's the ultimate authority here, seeing as she's the one he has to go home to. He looks from Mr. Larsen to her, and then back to Mr. Larsen's... desk, rather than his eyes.
"I was writing. And then Beaux grabbed my journal. He called me— something, and then threw it, and then tried to write— the word on my cast, but I kept moving and he's not really good at spelling anyway, so he told his friends to hold me down, except Blue told them to stop, and then they called her a name, and tried to grab her I guess because she's a girl, but then she socked him in the face and he started crying, and then his friend started crying for no reason, I guess he was scared or something, and then the teacher showed up."
A beat later, he holds up his cast, where a shaky but legible 'Fa' is scrawled in Sharpie.
"So she shouldn't be in trouble, please."
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Unlike Blue, Maura doesn't let her anger spill out to the surface. But, anyone who knows the Sargents know that temper bred true from mother to daughter. Perhaps Jack can sense it though, in the way her hands fold in on themselves in her lap, or the quiet downturn of her mouth.
If Jack can sense it, quietly attuned to the mood of the room, it's quite evident that Mr. Larsen cannot. He doesn't even glance at Jack's cast, instead bearing down on Maura, his expression shifting to something almost triumphant beneath a thin veneer of professionalism.
"There you have it, Ms. Sargent," he says with a vague hand gesture. "From his own mouth, your daughter threw the first punch."
"That's what you got from his story?!" Maura retorts, voice rising an octave as she settles further back in the chair.
On the other side of Jack, Harriet leans over and puts a gentle hand atop his shoulder.
"Thank you, Jack," she says, warm and reassuring. "That was very brave of you. You can go back to the hallway now. We will sort this out."
"I think we both heard him say that Blue 'socked' Beauregard in the face," Mr. Larsen says, his artificial calm beginning to crack beneath the pressure of Maura's direct gaze.
"I think we both heard how Beauregard was being a bully," Maura snaps back.
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It doesn't take any more encouragement than that single instruction for him to scamper out of the room, clicking the door shut behind him and retreating back into the seat closest to Blue.
"Your mom is mad," he says, just a subtle shade of awe in his tone. "Mad at him, I mean. It kind of looks like she wants to do to him what you did to Beau."
Evidently, even at his age the through-line between the temper of mother and daughter is clear as day. He likes Blue (a lot, she is his best friend after all, apparently), and he likes Maura (she was nice to him), but he'd rather get eaten by a shark than piss either of them off. That's the biggest take-away from today.
It takes another several minutes before the adults emerge again, with Harriet just as soft as before if not maybe... a little more amused around the eyes than what Jack would've expected after being present for a tense encounter like that.
"Are you ready to go, Jack, honey?" She asks, which is how she tells him what to do sometimes - a method he appreciates. For the first time, he hesitates, glancing between her and Blue, reluctant to leave her until he knows she's going to be alright.
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She really did that.
She punched someone.
The boys won't dare do anything to her. Not with Ms. Harrison's door open. Not even Beauregard is stupid enough to start a fight right next to the literal principal's office.
Blue tucks her hands beneath her thighs, trapping them against the plastic of the seat beneath her. The knuckles on her right hand throb unhappily. No one ever told her that punching someone hurts.
You're not supposed to punch people. Fists are for people who can't use their words. Blue should've gotten a teacher. She knows all these things. She's not a troublemaker. She's a paint within the lines -- unless the lines are stupid -- kind of girl.
Her left foot bounces restlessly against the floor and her shoulders and jaw wind so tight, she's certain her teeth will crack under the pressure.
When the waiting has become almost unbearable, the door opens up again and Jack slips back into the hallway. Blue keeps her hands tucked beneath her thighs, but her foot stills against the multicolored carpet, and she pulls certainty around herself like a cloak. Jack's her best friend and he's nervous.
They can't both be nervous.
Beneath her cloak of feigned confidence, something inside Blue relaxes. Her mother being angry at the principal is a good sign.
"Mom's too clever to punch someone," she says, and maybe there's an ounce of self-deprecation in there. If she was as clever as her mom, maybe they wouldn't be here now. But then again, she's only eight. She doesn't know an argument that will keep a bully from writing a rude word on someone's cast. "She'll sort it out. You'll see."
Are you ready to go, Jack, honey?
Harriet seems really nice. Blue appreciates that she isn't like the other mom's who have simply grabbed their sons by the wrist and dragged them along with a curt we're leaving. She's asking. Which is just how it should be, as far as Blue's concerned.
She gives Jack a tight and brave little smile.
"I'll see you later, okay?" she asks. In the woods, under their tree. Or maybe tomorrow at school, but hopefully under the tree. On an impulse, she turns in her seat and throws her arms around Jack's shoulders, giving him a quick and sideways hug.
As far as hugs go, it's not especially good.
"I'd do it again, if I had to," she whispers hotly against his ear, before she lets go and gives him a solemn look of unshakeable loyalty.
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Quietly, Harriet resolves to have a talk with Maura to see about letting the two of them connect a little more. It's the first time Jack's demonstrated any social ties that she's seen. He needs a friend, especially one that'll look out for him the way Blue seems intent to do.
"Thank you," is all he knows to say, because he doesn't have enough time to say you really shouldn't, I don't want you to get in trouble, it's not worth it, I can deal with it, it's nothing, I've seen way, way worse.
They turn each other loose, and he offers her one last hesitant wave with his cast hand before the two of them disappear from the office.
Jack is surprised and relieved to learn that he isn't in any kind of trouble. Quite the opposite, in fact — Harriet takes him to dinner, just the two of them, no foster siblings to tag along. They have a quiet talk about standing up for himself, and about what trouble really means, and how he'll know if he's in it, and what he can expect if she's ever upset. He only cries once, and she buys him a sundae.
This is also the day Harriet learns that Blue is his tree reading partner. Unfortunately, by the time they get back from dinner, it's already almost dark. Having learned what the phone policy is, he's actually a little sad he never got around to getting Blue's number.
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Blue's sneakers scuff against the carpet as she slides off her chair. Trailing after Maura towards the door, she pauses to throw a look over her shoulder and stick her tongue out at Bo. His face goes red, and Blue feels a deep kind of satisfaction warming the pit of her belly.
As it turns out, there is no lifetime expulsion from school, no suspension (in or out of school) for Blue. But there is also no going out for dinner after complete with a surprise sundae. What there is, however, is a lengthy discussion during the car ride home about what other tools Blue has in her tool box to resolve arguments before resorting to violence.
It's not a lecture. Maura doesn't give lectures. Instead, they reason it out together. By the time the gravel of 300 Fox Way's driveway crunches beneath the tires of the Volvo, they are in agreement that if (when, Blue corrects her mother glumly) it happens again, the right thing to do is to involve an adult.
Only once Blue has worked her feet free of her shoes and Maura has briefed Calla and Persephone on the series of events leading her to need the Volvo for the afternoon, does the subject turn to Jack. Maura has a lot of questions, and Blue answers them dutifully while helping to prepare for dinner.
The house is unseasonably quiet. It's not a day to slip unnoticed into the woods.
Persephone disappears into her room to work on her thesis while Calla joins them in the kitchen, with an apron tied around her waist and brandishing a potato peeler. Occasionally, she breaks into Maura's line of questioning with wholly irrelevant commentary. (Is the milk still good? -- Actually I don't think it is. -- Oven-roasted or just boiled? -- We can't do mashed potatoes without milk. -- Oh, is there half-and-half in there? -- Have you ever made mashed potatoes with half and half? -- No? Can't see why it wouldn't work. Might even be creamier.)
Blue spends all of dinner near vibrating off her chair, her gaze drawn again and again to the kitchen window facing the woods. She should be out there right now, under her tree, waiting for Jack. She needs to let him know that she is fine. It's important. Except by the time dinner is over, and the washing up is done, the sun is already dipping down below the horizon.
Blue's whole face screws up in deep thought.
"I'd like to go into the woods," she tells her mother as she finishes wiping off the last plate with a flourish.
Maura looks through the window at the fading light.
"At this hour?" she asks.
Blue's chest sinks and she curls her fingers around the edge of the counter.
"Jack might be there," she explains quietly. She draws her lower lip in between her teeth, slowly chewing on it. The longer the silence between them, the sharper the pressure of her teeth.
"How about we go together then?" Maura asks, finally breaking the silence. The woods can be a dangerous place in the dark. But she's never been one to tell her daughter what to do or not to do. At least not in so many words.
Blue considers the offer, fingertips tapping restlessly against the counter as she thinks. They make a sound like hoofs of a tiny herd of galloping horses, moving at the same speed of her mind as she thinks.
Ten minutes later, leaves and sticks crunching beneath their shoes, Maura and Blue find Blue's beech tree empty.
"You will see him at school tomorrow," Maura says, giving Blue's hand a light squeeze.
Disappointment piles onto Blue's chest, its weight near crushing. She stares at the smooth bark of her tree, and the empty space between its roots, and then she nods.
"Yeah," Blue says. She sticks her free hand into the pocket of the coat her mother insist she wear, curling her fingers up tight against her palm, and tries to pretend she is feeling nothing at all.
The next morning at school, Blue arrives before the school bus, dropped off by Calla on her way to Aglionby Academy. (No need to tempt fate.) She swings immediately by Jack's desk, leaving a folded up notebook paper on his desk on top of a brand new composition journal.
The note, if he opens it, reads:
Dear Jack,
I wasn't in much trouble at all. Don't be worried. My mother just wants me to explore other avenues before resorting to violence. I think that is very reasonable. We had chicken, broccoli, and. mashed potatoes made with half and half for dinner. It was okay. I don't really like broccoli. The journal is from mom. She still has yours and it is drying out. She thinks if we give it a little time, you might be able to salvage a lot of what you wrote, but she doesn't want to invade your privacy so maybe you want to come over some day and look? We don't have boys in the house often, except professionally, but you are always very welcome. If you still want to, mom is going to ask your Harriet if you can come to the bookstore on Sunday.
xoxo
Blue
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The classroom is already half full by the time Jack turns up, and although he wants to immediately go up to Blue, his awkwardness gets the better of him. What's he going to do? Hug her in front of everyone? Not a chance. Say hi and run out of stuff to say almost immediately? She might not want to talk about what happened the day before in front of everyone. Instead, all he manages is an uncertain pause, and a wave of his cast-hand, and then a hesitant break-away to head back to his desk.
Where a composition journal sits. He lights up immediately, flipping the thing open just to get a look at the empty white pages. There's something strangely soothing about an empty notebook full of lined paper. It's so... clean, not yet ruined, full of possibility and space. Of course, the note is an immediate distraction.
Several facts get filed away one after another, and after a couple of seconds he digs around in his bag to pull out a spiral notebook to tear a page out — there are perforations, there's no way he's ripping an ugly eyesore into his new journal.
He does his best to make his handwriting... marginally less illegible.
Dear Blue,
I'm glad you didn't get in trouble. I'm also glad about the choice not to fight. Don't get me wrong, you kicked that guy's ass and it was awesome, but you really don't have to worry about me like that. I've had way worse than whatever Beau tries to do. He's not really very creative.
Harriet took me to Friendly's for dinner. She got me a Sunday, so that was pretty cool. What is half and half? Half of what?
I would love to come over, but it's okay if it's ruined. It was just stupid stories and stuff that I wrote, not homework or anything, so it doesn't really matter.
Harriet already said I could go to the bookstore with you, and also that if you want to call some time as long as it's before 9 pm and I answer any beeps and don't hog the phone, that would be okay. If you want to. Not that you have to. I'm not very good at talking to people, so it might not be an enjoyable experience. It might still be a good idea for your mom to call, just so they're on the same page.
I'm sorry I didn't show up at the tree. I don't know if you wanted me to, but just in case you did, it's because we were at Friendly's until it got dark.
I'm also sorry this is so long. I write a lot. I guess maybe it's to balance out the fact that I don't talk a lot.
Anyway, thank you for helping me yesterday, and also for being my friend.
He debates writing love at the end, because he's pretty sure that's how most people end letters, but it might seem weird to do here. He settles on a simple:
Jack.
He can't give her the note back until they're all lined up for a bathroom break. He offers it out as discreetly as possible, in case it's supposed to be some kind of secret affair, or in case it would embarrass her to be seen writing notes with him.
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The pinched look on her face is immediately replaced by something a little softer and more cheerful the moment she glances up to see his narrow shoulders and bright cast. She gives him a quick wave that's little more than a fanning out of her fingers like a wave crashing across her desk. When he makes his way to his desk, she twists in her seat, tracking his path with her whole body. It's unfortunate, that he's sitting so far behind her. It's not exactly conducive to surreptitious glances his way.
The look on his face when he picks up the blank journal sends a little jolt of warmth through Blue's chest. The first leaf of spring unfurling just below her ribs. If it wasn't for their teacher walking into the room and clearing her throat, Blue likely would've watched Jack as intently as a small hawk while he read and replied to her note. But, as it stands, she tugs her attention away from him and forces it onto the whiteboard instead.
During class -- if it's a subject she likes -- Blue is normally a diligent student. But even though Ms. Klein is talking about trees and their different leaves -- a subject bound to keep Blue's rapt attention on a normal day -- she can't stop fidgeting in her seat. For once, she can't wait for the lunch break. Not because it'll finally let her read uninterrupted again, but because it's her best chance to talk to Jack again.
Her best friend.
(Should they have talked about it first? The friendship thing? Blue feels like it was kind of implied since they shared that cupcake under the tree, but maybe Jack feels differently. But, blood has been shed over it, which she feels kind of seals the deal here.)
Too many thoughts make it difficult to concentrate on the difference between a maple tree leaf and a birch tree leaf. Even Bo, glowering past the ugly bruise squatting on the bridge of his nose and sending tendrils of dark purple and blue just below his eyes, at her doesn't steal as much of her concentration as Jack merely existing somewhere to her left behind her.
When the break is announced, Blue clambers to her feet quicker than anyone else, and then proceeds to waste just enough time getting to the other end of the classroom so they end up next to each other. Blue takes the note with the same level of discretion as it is offered, tucking it in her pocket like a spy and giving him a small, but determined nod.
Message received.
In the bathroom, Blue locks the stall and sits down before she retrieves the note from her pocket, unfolding it and reading it greedily. She reads it twice and starts on a third time before another girl pounds on the door of her stall.
Blue tucks the note back away, and slinks out of the stall with a somewhat guilty look on her face. Rather than lingering in the hallway of the restrooms, she hurries back to her desk, turning his note over and writing quickly on the back of it.
It takes the rest of the break and most of the next class for her to compose her response. Her mind keeps snagging on the fourth sentence and making her brow furrow with concern she can't quite convey onto paper.
Dear Jack,
I can't both be your friend and not worry about you. They are mutually exclusive. Friends worry about friends. Bo is a stupid jerk. I don't think he will try again. But if he does. I will first try to find a teacher. But he is not allowed to take your journal or throw it in the mud. Or write rude things on your cast. I can't stand idly by and let that happen. Do you know who stood idly by? Nazis. That's how we got the holocaust.
Friendly's is really nice. I like their french fries a lot. Mom says a sundae is just dressed up ice cream. But I like it a lot too.
Half and half is HALF milk, HALF cream. I like mashed potatoes better with just milk. But the milk had gone bad and Jimi keeps half and half for her coffee.
I think stories matter more than homework. I can help you write up new ones. If you want. Or you can read them to me after. If you want.
I will ask mom to call so they can do that grownup thing. I think my mom would like that. She says your Harriet is "good people". That's a good thing. We have a phone in the cat/sewing room so I could call you. Mom can probably find Harriet in the phone book. Or you can give me your number and I can call sometime maybe.
I'm not good on the phone either. It's no fun talking when you can't see the other person.
Mom and I went to the tree just in case. She wanted to walk with me since it was getting dark. I'm glad you weren't there waiting for me. Dinner and dishes took a long time and I couldn't sneak out. So it's a good thing. You might have sat there all alone for a long time and then I would have felt bad.
You can come over after school if you want. We can meet at the tree and then we can walk over. Or you can ride home with me. Or we can just meet at the tree. My house gets VERY loud sometimes.
I don't mind that this is long. I like reading.
You are welcome for yesterday and for being your friend. But I don't think that is something you are supposed to thank someone for.
Did you have a chance to read some yesterday? I only read a little before bed and not for long because mom came to check on me.
xoxo
Blue
This time, Blue doesn't run ahead when they break for lunch. Instead she lingers in the doorway, waiting for Jack to come join her. Under the watchful eyes of Ms. Klein, Beau passes her with nothing but a low grumble of discontent that might be bitch or witch. Blue can't tell. Her face lights up in a smile when Jack finally makes his way over though. She slips her hand immediately in his and tugs him along towards the cafeteria.
"I wrote you a reply," she says, low and under her breath. In case they are still being secret. "You don't have to read it now, you can wait until after lunch."
All of Blue's intentions are interrupted by an older girl materializing the moment they enter the cafeteria. A fourth or fifth grader by the look of her, she's wearing a bright orange dress and a matching bow in her hair. She blows a bubble with her bubblegum, and considers the two of them.
Blue darkens significantly.
"You Jack?" the girl asks, visibly unimpressed.
"Orla," Blue says. The name a curse in her mouth. "What are you doing here?"
"Manners," Orla admonishes her. "Aren't you going to introduce me?"
Blue rolls her eyes and slips her hand out of Jack's.
"Orla-Jack, Jack-Orla," she says waving her now-free hand vaguely between them. "Orla is my cousin. We live together. Orla. What. Are. You. Doing. Here?"
"We're having lunch together," Orla says brightly. "Don't look at me like that. Mom's idea."
Blue heaves a very heavy sigh and gives Jack a look to say that she is very, very sorry about this turn of events.
"We're sitting outside," she tells Orla. "You should just sit with your friends. We're fine."
Except that's not how it happens. Orla clearly takes her mission very seriously, and she sticks close by for the entirety of lunch. Blue's lips squash tight together, and she picks at her lunch. Thankfully(?), Orla talks enough for all three of them.
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Besides, even if he wanted to, Blue tugs him along with determination and in a hurry. He hasn't quite mastered reading and walking yet. He's been working on it. Maybe it'll be easier without the cast.
And then there's an older girl he's never even seen before, much less talked to. For one brief, terrifying second, he thinks maybe Beau sent her to beat him up or something. His relief might be a little bit visible when it becomes apparent Blue knows her.
The introduction leaves a little to be desired, but he offers her a small cast-wave and a tentative, "Hi."
Not much time for more than that, there's a line forming and impatiently urging them along. Jack's got a packed lunch from home, in a neat blue cooler-bag with his name printed in permanent marker along the flap. Too neat to be his handwriting, though only Blue would know that. It matches the lunch bags all his foster siblings carry in every way except color, and it contains a Lunchable, an apple, and some juice. Way better than any lunch he ever got from his dad — not a guaranteed thing, and often supplemented by teacher-paid pity lunches he was too hungry to turn down.
Once they all sit down, the tension (mostly one-sided, he notes) is palpable and uncomfortable. He aims to break it with an offering of, "I like your bow."
He doesn't, really. He doesn't care for orange, and he's not all that into bows, but it doesn't hurt to offer somebody a compliment when you're trying to get on their good side. It seems to work well enough, because Orla talks them through most of the lunch period, and Jack's privately relieved he doesn't have to fill in much silence himself.
When he finally gets around to reading Blue's note, that bit about the Nazis leaves him blinking. Well, that escalated quickly. He guesses she's technically right, and in her defense, he has heard Beau spouting some distinctly uncomfortable things about 'the oppressed whites'.
He writes his return-letter on a fresh sheet of paper.
Dear Blue,
I think I misspelled sundae in that last note. That's pretty dumb, pretend that didn't happen. Sundaes might just be dressed up ice cream, but tuxedos are just dressed up clothes, and they still make you wear those to weddings and funerals. If you have to have one, I think you probably deserve to get the other. Like a consolation prize.
I've never had coffee. Have you? Is it good?
If I let you read my stories, do you promise not to make fun of me? You can
criticcritgive me feedback if you want, that's okay, just as long as it's serious. We can also try to write one together some time, too.Your mom is right about Harriet, she's the nicest person I've ever met. It's really weird. The house I'm at now is kind of like a TV sitcom family house, or like the pictures you see of rich people with golden retrievers in magazines. It's like aliens. But I'm not complaining, it's really good.
Here is my phone number
#505-503-4455
I think I should meet you at the tree, since I can't ask Harriet if I can ride home with you yet. I'll go home and tell her first, and then if I'm allowed, I'll meet you there. Are you sure I'm allowed at your house, since boys don't come there very often? I don't want to get you in trouble or make your mom not like me.
I got to read only like a chapter :( sorry I'm taking so long. I'm almost done and then you can borrow it.
Jack
P.S. I really hope Beau throwing my notebook in the mud isn't the beginning of a chain of events that will eventually lead to the next Holocaust. Although, I guess you probably stopped that before it could start, so good job.
P.P.S. I'm getting my cast off on Saturday.
In a bold maneuver, he gets up to sharpen his pencil and drops the note on her desk on the way back. Ms. Klein doesn't notice. He's too quiet, and he has a reputation for being unobtrusive. Most people tend not to notice him, or their eyes pass right over him like their subconscious has scratched him off as a potential trouble-making threat.
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