Hello, everyone! I am back with another Carter and Frankie story. Carter and Frankie are in this story briefly, and they will have more active roles in the next story. I hope you enjoy the story!
This is a prompt from Godzilla183.
WARNINGS: MENTIONS OF INCEST, VAGUE DESCRIPTIONS OF INJURIES
Disclaimer: I do not own Benji (2018) or the characters or anything that you recognize. I only my OCs, including: for Mrs. Abbot (who plays an active role) and Carly Torrents (who plays a minor role)
Mrs. Abbot vs Whitney Hughes
Mrs. Abbot really should have predicted her visit. After all, it was common knowledge at Road Brook Elementary School that the woman was very protective of her children, especially since the kidnapping incident (which only the staff knew about. Newspapers had censored the names of the underage victims, so the students remained oblivious). Everyone knew that Carter and Frankie had a very protective mother, and anyone who harmed her children- with words or actions- would pay dearly.
Alas, somehow… Whitney Hughes was a storm that Regina Abbot never saw coming.
It was the first day of the second semester, and Regina was casually grading papers when the door opened.
Regina didn't even glance up, assuming the unwelcome visitor was a student.
"You know, it is considered rude to enter a room without knocking," Regina stated, peering over the tops of her reading glasses at Johanna Stewart's report and underlining a particular sentence with her red pen. The voice she heard, however, was not the high pitched tone of a young pupil. Instead, it was the mature voice of a grown woman.
"It is also considered rude to kick two students out of a dance because of who they love, but you didn't seem to have a problem with that."
Regina sighed, placing the paper and the pen on her desk before removing her glasses and resting them on the desk beside her pen. After an unnecessarily long moment, she looked up to meet the eyes of Whitney Hughes.
Whitney Hughes did not look angry, but Regina knew better. Whitney may have looked calm and collected as she closed the door and stepped fully into the room, but her gaze was blank, eyes cold and emotionless, the calm before the storm, the ice before the fire.
"Whitney, take a seat," Regina offered (more like commanded).
"I don't think I will," Whitney replied, coolly.
Regina shrugged. "All right. What can I do for you?"
"Don't play dumb with me, Regina. You know very well why I'm here," Whitney snapped, the fire beginning to crack the ice.
Regina nodded. "I do. But Whitney, you need to understand, I did not do what I did to offend your children or you-"
"Yes, you did," Whitney interrupted, casually, almost like she was correcting someone on whether the sky was blue or that there were twelve eggs in a carton. It was a voice Regina used often with her students, but a tone she rarely had directed at her. "Go on."
Regina blinked, unsure of how to react at first, before she struggled to get her rhythm back as she continued her explanation, "Whitney, the other parents were concerned about their children being around two siblings in a romantic relationship."
"So you decided it would be better to deprive two kids of the night they had been looking forward to for weeks because of some angry parents? Well, let me tell you something, Regina. I am worse than all of those parents combined, and I think you know that," Whitney replied.
"Whitney-"
"But the thing is… it isn't even the fact that they couldn't come to the dance that angers me the most. It's the fact that instead of acting like the mature adult you are supposed to be and telling them the week before or even the day before that they couldn't come to the dance, you waited until they walked in the door to inform them that they had been banned. You wanted to humiliate them," Whitney realized in a matter of fact tone. "If you had forbidden them from coming to the dance, I would've been angry, but not this angry. Because the fact of the matter is… you may have been acting on the suggestions of other parents, but embarrassing them… that was all you."
"Whitney, these are outlandish accusations!" Regina exclaimed.
"Are they? So you didn't give Carter and Frankie detention for breathing a month ago? Or make them eat in separate classrooms instead of the cafeteria because you didn't want them around the other students? You didn't isolate them from everyone, including each other? I thought segregation had been solved decades ago, but apparently not."
"Segregation was the separation of whites and blacks, not normal children and-"
"And what? My children?"
Regina swallowed. She knew better than to answer. She'd already been digging herself a hole, and if she dared to answer, she would never be able to get out of the hole she had dug for herself, and staring into Whitney's narrowed eyes, she realized that she hadn't simply been digging a hole. She'd been digging a grave.
"Go on. What were you going to say?" Whitney wondered, airily. "Freaks? Abominations? My children have heard it all before, and let me tell you something: it disgusts me."
Whitney pulled a file out of her purse and tossed it on the desk.
"What is this?" Regina questioned, not reaching to pick up the file. She kept her eyes fixed on Whitney.
"A deal. You stop harassing my children, and I don't hand this into your boss. You see, as a police officer, I have access to a lot of files, including ones on Regina Abbot, who was a suspect for a hate crime two years ago. A brother and a sister- twins, actually- were in a romantic relationship, and they were found beaten so severely, the boy will never properly walk again and the girl still hasn't woken up from a coma two years later. They found your DNA on the weapon. You were never officially charged because your lawyer somehow got the DNA dropped as insufficient evidence, but it ruined your reputation. Even people who didn't approve of incest were against you because of that cruelty," Whitney added, flipping open the file to reveal the battered forms of a teenage boy and girl, both with blood soaked brown hair and pale skin that was so bruised, their entire bodies were painted purple.
"What does this have to do with anything?" Regina asked, stiffly.
"I wonder how your boss would take this. Sure, you were never officially charged, but combined with your negative actions towards my children, it might just be enough for him to fire you," Whitney answered. "So, Regina, you will not insult my children. You will not isolate my children. If you even look at them the wrong way, I rat you out. Do we understand each other?"
Regina thought this over, staring at the photos of the boy and girl, before she nodded, not meeting Whitney's eyes.
"Good," Whitney said with a smile before she picked up the file and closed the door behind her.
The storm had blown over, but the threat of a much larger storm still loomed on the horizon.
"Mom, what are you doing here?" Carter asked, shocked at seeing their mother in their school.
The hallways were crowded, the bell that signaled the end of first period having just rung, as students filed out of classrooms, filling the air with the stomping of feet, the clattering of lockers adding to the din of children chatting and laughing and occasionally yelling.
Whitney smiled at her children, who stood before her with a familiar girl beside them.
"Oh, I just had to take care of something," Whitney answered, vaguely. "How were your first classes?"
"Great!" Frankie exclaimed. "Social Studies, my favorite subject!"
Carter shrugged. "Eh, it was math."
Whitney chuckled. "I remember those days."
"Oh, Mom!" Carter exclaimed, realizing their friend was standing off to the side awkwardly. "Mom, this is Carly-"
"From the dance!" Whitney remembered, shaking the little girl's hand when she offered it. "It's good to officially meet you, Carly. Thank you for being such a good friend to Carter and Frankie."
"It's my pleasure!" Carly piped up.
"Mom, is it okay if Carly comes over after school?" Frankie asked, her blue eyes growing big as a pleading undertone entered her voice.
"Of course!" Whitney replied. "I have to get to work, but one more thing: make sure to tell me if Mrs. Abbot or anyone else bothers you, okay?"
Carter blinked. "Is that what you were doing? Mom, you didn't have to-"
"Carter, you're my kids. I am going to protect you whether you like it or not, whether it's from cruel teachers and bullies or kidnappers," Whitney responded, and a small amount of sadness colored her voice as she was reminded of the time she wasn't there to protect her children.
The children either didn't notice or didn't call her out on it.
"Okay, Mom!" Frankie said, and the couple hugged their mom before returning to Carly's side, disappearing into the crowd as their mother smiled at her children's backs, and she walked out of the school doors without looking back, confident that their new friends would watch out for Carter and Frankie.
They'd barely gotten five feet down the hall before the boy cut them off.
The boy was tall and beefy, looking like a kid that had been held back too many times, towering over the three friends, and staring at his ugly features, Carly recognized him as the one Carter and Frankie so accurately dubbed as Pigface.
"Hey, disgusting freaks," he sneered, his already hideous face twisting into an even uglier expression with the action. "Got a date night planned for tonight?"
"As a matter of fact, we do," Carter replied, bravely and cheekily, causing Frankie, Carly, and Pigface to look at him in shock. "We'd invite you along, but you know... it's a classy restaurant."
Pigface blinked a total of five times before formulating a response:
"Watch it, you little-" he snarled, taking a menacing step towards Carter.
Carly stepped into his path. "Sorry, Pigface. But these are my friends, so I need you to leave them alone. I think that big guy over there could do with some bullying, though," she added, pointing to the meanest kid in the school, who was leaning against the lockers in a stereotypical 'bad boy' fashion. He was a guy who looked like he'd be spending at least twenty five of his birthdays in a prison cell, his dark eyes glinting and unnerving as he glowered at the other kids who scurried away from him like mice every time they met that gaze.
Pigface gulped at the sight of the intimidating kid before he stepped towards her, trying to maintain his threatening expression. "And what are you going to do if I don't, princess? Kick me in the ankle?" He cackled, and some kids who had overheard joined him in his cruel laughter.
Carly tilted her head to the side in mock confusion. "Well, if you insist."
With that, she rammed her foot into his ankle hard enough to knock him to the floor where he shouted and actually started to cry as he held his surely bruised ankle.
Carly stood on an unoccupied bench pushed against the wall between a break in the lockers, and she called out, easily heard as the hall had gone utterly silent when they saw tiny Carly Torrents kick a bully in the shin:
"Remember, kids, violence is never the answer! But a good shin kicking should get a bully to back off, and if it doesn't... Run like heck!"
That made a good portion of the students snicker as Carly hopped down from the bench, grabbing Carter and Frankie's hands, and Carly and the siblings dashed away. All three of them had fallen into hysterics, laughing even as they bolted down the hallway, the crowd parting and creating a path for the three students, too shocked to do anything else but watch them run off, disappearing around the corner, but they didn't need to worry. Pigface was still bawling on the floor.
That day, Carter and Frankie walked through the halls, fearlessly, with Carly by their side and the hands of the siblings clearly interlocked. For once, nobody even gave them a second glance.
That might've been because Carly sent a glare at anyone who shot the siblings a dirty look or anyone who even started to say something. Nine year olds aren't typically seen as terrifying, but Carly was definitely an exception.
Note: I couldn't remember Whitney's job (I now know she was a paramedic in the movie), so I made her a police officer because it works better with the plot. For this to make sense, she was offered a job as a police officer shortly after the movie.
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