Note: While this story should stand alone on its own, it can be optionally seen as a distant follow-up/extended epilogue to "More Than OK" as well as the follow up to "Past Curfew."
Chapter 1: Headache
The clawing of the thrashing branches on the window pane added to the headache.
With a deep inhale, he twisted the phone dial and pressed the cool speaker to his cheek.
The line was accepted in an instantaneous click.
"CDA office, how may I help you?" The voice had that familiar youthful smoothness. It had to be the same guy he called yesterday.
"I would like-"
"Ah, Mr. Carlton." The receptionist had recognized his voice, almost like an old comrade expecting the voice of an old friend. Don was sure that it was his Mid-western trademark accent that he recognized. Don always did make sure to cherish his signature Minnesota inflection even after Oozmanian Industry let him go. The accent came naturally, he was "born with it," or was raised by the countryside with a Ma and Pa that spoke like that. Yet, it was by his fifties did he grow over-conscious of his accent, talking to himself to make sure he he hadn't lost it. It always did seem to charm his old clients before the downsizing and the decline of successful sales. The accent was still pure. What did expire about it was its effectiveness. It probably grew old to customers.
At least it still made him recognizable.
"We have no updates to offer." Don could imagine the guy's face, forcibly stretched into a grin as if to will his voice into the conventional "cheery social professional" persona. Or maybe he was just a genuine perky guy with no irritations to suppress. "Nothing new on the case of that Wazo... Wazosi-ski? And oh, that son of Bill Sullivan, yes James."
No verdict on Mike's and James's fate. Nothing. Proceedings were all confidential. Not even visits were permitted. He wanted to lie down.
"Just be patient, good sir," the receptionist told him once again, "and a verdict will be reached for those two."
"Any chance of getting those fellas on the phone?"
"Sorry, sir, not permitted." A pause. The receptionist has the professionality to let his client absorb displeasing news.
"Well, you have a swell day sir. Thanks."
"You too. Just be patient and everything will work out." He could imagine the guy hanging up, sitting at the desk, reverting to a grouchy face and wondering, "ugh, that guy again. Give me a break." Having been acquainted with many office types, it was common for grouchy monsters to be talented at "turning on/off" a nice persona as easy as twisting a facet knob.
Just be patient and everything will work out.
Patience. Even for his initiative to make phone calls, Don felt that he was being too patient with circumstances. The virtue of patience was instilled by Ma and his late Pa, in hopes of getting their boy to sit still and not scurry around in adherence to the old adage, "children must be seen, not heard." They had convinced him that it made him a better Scarer. It worked. He showed off his famous "Silent Sneak" in his high school days, until he reached the age when his suckers grew nosier and stickier, suckering away his confidence in his abilities, to the point where he was merely content with watching the Scaring Field Days and the recess games from the sidelines (but not without thinking, gee, I would like to jump back in the game someday if I learn how to quiet up those suckers).
He exercised patience when rehearsing his own little silent sneaks in high school. But he never learned to master patience until he entered sales. Time, he learned in the arts of marketing, was a valuable commodity, especially with looming deadlines and quotas. Even Scaring bore uncanny parallels to sales. Finish the pitch within this amount of minutes, complete the Scare within a range of minutes. Conclude the excursion. Wrap up the pitch. Escape the area. Greet your customers goodbye as efficiently but effectively as possible. Speed was encouraged, but patience was the anchor to speed, allowing him to slow down, so not to rush the customers.
No answers.
Perhaps there was someone else with some semblance of answers.
Hardscrabble. According to campus memo, she was testifying at the CDA hearing. But she was absent, unavailable on school grounds. Besides, even if they asked, they had to be too much on her bad side to receive an answer.
Professor Knight. Derek.
Maybe he knew something that wasn't confidential. He was a close acquaintance of Hardscrabble. Surely she might had leaked something to him. If so, slim chance he would pass along confidential info to even a friendly acquaintance.
Still...
Derek wasn't one who passed out business cards, so Don had to dig out his old Scare 101 syllabus, one he thankfully filed rather than threw away, to procure Derek's office number.
He twirled the phone dial.
In the intervals between the phone rings, Don was thinking, what was Derek doing now? What did he think of the whole Scare events? Derek typically had priorities. He might be grading Scaring term papers. Years ago in Scaring 101, he joked once, "your term papers are what I look forward to the most," even though Don knew he was a consistent B+ student and who never scored as high as that Javier fella. Don figured Derek liked him then because he started conversations about the day and weekend rather than beg for deadline extensions.
The machine picked up, "Hello, this is Professor Derek Knight. I am not at my desk right now. Leave a message."
He wanted to leave a message, but he wasn't so sure. Could Derek be at his desk, ignoring the ringing?
Hello, 'fessor Knight, I hope this ain't bothersome. But I am curious about whether you know anything about the case of James and Michael here? We're just concerned and would like to know if they're all right.
It should be little trouble saying that. But Don glued his mouth shut, not wanting to betray any breathing on the message.
He could fathom Derek being confused and pestered at this question.
Derek might be frustrated over the Oozma's dishonest victory. Was he was one of those once cheering OK fans turned disappointed by the scandal?
Don slammed the phone down. Derek might get confused by the extended voiceless message.
No use sitting around and assuming the worse of Knight's thoughts. It was Friday. The campus ought to be still active.
He'll try to catch Knight on campus for some answers. A face-to-face meeting would be less awkward. He imagined that Derek might look at him funny. That was the pros to phone calls. Without face-to-face, you never got to see the facial reaction of the other. But that was the con too. Hearing a voice over the phone made it less easier to infer how the person was really feeling.
He was also ready to return to Dark Avenue...
Not permanently of course. Last semester, it had been a weekend ritual to return to his apartment on Dark Avenue, Emeryville before the start of the Scare Games commitments, which he respected like a signed contract. He enjoyed it immensely, but, like contracts, there were cons to the pros. The cons were that it required him to stay at the Oozma Kappa's household on weekends and not go back and tidy up his apartment.
On the last weekend he returned to his flat, still recuperating and trying not to rub his stinging urchins wounds, Mike had made sure to holler drills and exercises through the phone, even jamming his inbox with messages that swept all the attempted calls of his old co-workers deep in the history files.
So Don had figured it didn't help or respect the team's, especially Mike's, confidence if he trained from a distance at his apartment where Mike's watchful eye could not track his progress. Besides, it proved motivating and productive to have a coach holler at ya rather than receive instructions from incessant phone calls. He missed Mike's orders. He missed that throbbing fist on his door. Or even those ambush drills where Mike, the expert stealthily creeper he is, would sneak into his room and blare an alarm into his eardrums.
The window pane thrashed and rattled. He ran his palm on it to be sure it was bolted tight.
He must beat the storm, make it to the campus, find Derek, then dash for the bus.
He slipped his business card (for luck) and his bus pass into his front pocket.
He didn't exactly miss his apartment. But returning there was... proper. This room was pretty cramped too with the photo of his family, friends, diploma, scrunched together above his desk, surrounding his diploma. His apartment would provide more space, even if it was just more emptiness.
The photo of Ma' and the late Pa' Carlton smiled at him. They seemed proud of him.
Pa never lived to judge Don's re-enrollment at M.U. He had made a risky investment when returning to M.U. He wasn't wealthy, but he had a still substantial amount in his retirement account to astonish him. Sudden impulses hit him at how to spend it. His immediate thought wasn't luxuries. He wouldn't overspend it.
He had needed an investment that would last him for a few decades. He could afford to make a life error. He was ready for losses. He hadn't honestly been thinking about retirement then because he preferred to worry about his career prospects. The hefty retirement withdrawal was worth the penalty fees for such an early withdrawal. Though all the penalty fees for the withdrawal rose faster than his financing skills. Not to mention the added tuition for the re-take of the entrance Scaring course.
Pa would call it a gamble. To Pa, "investment" would be a rationalization, an excuse, not a reason. When he had diverged the new plan to his Ma, halfway into the semester of Scaring with a high B average, she looked at him funny. To her relief, he was smart enough to afford a backup plan: computers, a minor just waiting to convert into a major.
He stared at a photo of himself and three close pals, all content with the good ole' days. He had a mop of fin-hair covering his now bald spot then. There he was. With Andrew, Pete, and Dan.
Andrew, five years more experienced at selling, had preached quality came from a creative drive in a manic sort. Pete preached quality too, but possessed the most patience, and mentored both Dan and Don more closely. Impulses were to be controlled and timed in the sales environment. Dan was known for impulses. He liked holding his clients in suspense. Dan, self-depreciatingly, speculated that his own shortcoming was that he spoke so fast that sometimes he skimped over the parts about quality or he was too quick for his clients to let them process the part about quality. Though at his best, Dan delivered at speed without excessive urgency.
Like Scarers, they possessed, adopted, exchanged the other signature techniques as goodwill. They adapted and adjusted to these values depending on the preference of their clients. They were their own mentors to each other and themselves. Mike taught him discipline with the regimen of exercise. The twins guided him through coordination. Art gave him breathing warm-ups and techniques that even salesman didn't know of. Scott didn't exactly teach him anything new, but instead reminded him that a compassionate fervor was everything.
Speaking of which, it had been weeks since he exchanged words with his old friends, even Dan. Having been confined to Sheri's house made Don suspect that his phone back at Dark Avenue had been crammed with messages. They might have been calling his old apartment. He typically only chatted with them on weekends if he felt like it, typically on better days when he had more good news than bad.
He never elaborated much on moving into the Squibbles house to them. It wasn't shame but the awkwardness of explaining the living arrangement. He told Ma he was staying in a homemade boarding home, but never mentioned the part about being in a fraternity part or the Scare Games. Only Dan knew of his fraternity stay and congratulated that odd idea of his.
It was nice to afford two places to sleep: his apartment on Emeryville on Dark Avenue (weekends) and the Oozma Kappa fraternity house (weekdays), technically Sheri's abode, conveniently close to campus. "Technically, it's my mom's house being that she pays for it," Scott once sheepishly explained to him.
A knock.
He expected Scott. He felt useless because he wasn't so sure he had any more original encouragements that could renew any smile in the boy.
But it was Sheri Squibbles who stood at his door. Trademark smile and all. Her face could be plastered over an oatmeal label and sell for millions.
Her immediate presence radiated an almost tear-inducing air. She smelt of overdosed honeysuckle perfume and stinging disinfectant. It appeared she simply slattered the perfume with little care. She had been busy with cleaning, particularly in James's and Mike's room. She seemed to adhere to the belief that devout cleanliness would hasten their homecoming.
She clutched a black square envelope, her palm trembling as she had been tentative since the arrest of Mike and James. "Sorry, nearly forgot to give-"
Now he could see the symptoms of grief in her reassuring smile. He could tell when her smiles were false because they wavered or the muscles of her dimples shuddered, such as the time he explained to her what those circulating photos on campus meant.
"It's quite all right." He received the letter out of her shaky palm.
Don sighed, figuring it was a disciplinary letter after the two incidents, wait, scratch that, three incidents due to the non-campus sales advertising to Headmistress Hardscrabble (a minor offense to Monsters University and Hardscrabble) to create a diversion in rescuing Mike.
The OK initial stared back at him. He restrained himself from squeezing the envelope in trepidation.
When he looked up, her smile had subdued into a somber expression, staring at him as if he was a tourist stranger making a frantic inquiry for directions, as if she knew it was all right not to fake a grin.
At first, Don suspected she shared this foreboding of the letter's contents, but something else seemed to dishearten her.
Her fallen expression brought to his consciousness that his face felt too relaxed. He forgot to wear the usual smile.
"Gotta' start an emergency meeting, if the boys are up for it."
He stared down at the letter, hoping to conceal the mild watering in his eyes from her scent.
Following chapter teaser: "Something, something. Anything to retrieve their grins. Like how Mike does. He owed it so heartily to Mike. But he also had to remind himself, as he pried his arm off the fabric of the armchair, he made that discovery himself. It was Mike who helped him perform the ceiling technique. In the library, in the mist of instinct, when he knelt to the floor, not caring how ridiculous he looked sprawled out on the hardwood, peeling his suckers off and on."
I do not own Oozma Kappa, Don Carlton included, Hardscrabble, Derek Knight.
I do own the mentioned Ma and Pa Carlton, Andrew, Pete, and Dan. Take a guess who Don's old friends were named after.