Being called to the principal's office is never good news, no matter what they say.
It was the first thing Abeke ever told Meilin.
It was quite true.
"Meilin, sit down," Mr. Lassel, the principal commanded.
Mr. Lassel was a tall, bald man with round glasses and round eyes that came with a withering look. Rumor has it, if you stare deep enough into his eyes, you'll see all sixty years of his painful, miserable life.
Reality has it, he was actually in his mid-thirties, unfortunately bald, and he was actually a very reasonable man.
Meilin didn't know which to believe.
"What is it, Mr. Lassel?" she asked, secretly praying to God.
He sighed, a long, weak sigh, just to identify sixty years of pain and misery. Score one for rumor. The man pulled open a drawer in his desk, full of folders from the letters N-Z. He scrambled through his alphabetically organized records of secrets (otherwise known as folders) to find a specific one labelled: Wang, Meilin. "Your grades," Mr. Lassel began, making Meilin's self-confidence drop to zero, "are not exactly improving."
Meilin didn't say a word, making a silent gesture for the scrawny old man to continue.
"I know it's only one month until you graduate ninth grade and you're on your way to high school, but I know you can do better than a C on your math test from two days ago, and fail your social studies test yesterday. This is your last month being a ninth grader. You can't just give up."
Meilin knew it already. She knew she might not go to her father's designated private high school next year. She knew her academic skill was falling, and she was not very happy about it.
She had always been struggling with social studies ever since fifth grade. But math? She had never gotten anything below an A- on her math tests. She had always been a perfect student in math class.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Lassel, I'll try to improve."
Mr. Lassel regarded her in the eye. "Don't say sorry to me, young lady."
Score one for reality.
X~x~X
Meilin prepared herself for Rollan's wrath of 'I told you so's'. She met him outside, in the field, after school.
But instead, "I can help you with social studies."
"You can?"
"I ace every test," he replied, unconcerned.
"What else do you ace?" she asked, clearly curious.
Rollan said, "Art, PE, and history. Surprise."
Meilin was indeed surprised. "I never thought that you would be tutoring me."
"I never thought that either."
Rollan put his hands in his pockets of his baseball sweater. In May, the weather in south-western Canada wasn't really cold, but Rollan seemed to prefer wearing a sweater because he resisted the heat, not the cold. Meilin, however, wore a zippered sweater to cover up her white crop top, which may or may not be against the dress code. Not that her school had a dress code, but specific teachers needed excuses to send random students to detention.
"So," Rollan said, breaking the silence, "are you walking home today?"
"Yes," Meilin replied. "Not that I have any other choice."
"Jumping home is another choice."
Meilin rolled her eyes. "Just spit out your question."
"I was just wondering if you wanted to come to my house," Rollan suggested, "since your father's busy training today."
Meilin tipped her head back; the light weight of her backpack reminding her she barely had any homework. "Will Abeke or Conor be there?"
"No."
"Then, no!"
"Why not?" he asked.
Meilin paused. "Because if no one else will be there, then- then that's like, you know, a- a-"
"A date? Really Meilin? Grow up, already."
Meilin was disturbed, considering that sentence came from Rollan. "Okay," she said. "Just don't make it awkward."
"Sure."
Meilin's mind was still on the fact that she had got a C on a math test. What would her father think?
"Don't your parents ever scold you for your grades in school?" Meilin asked, randomly.
"No. My mom just encourages me to do better," Rollan responded.
"And your dad?"
"Yeah, him too," he said, awkwardly. There was a strange expression on his face Meilin couldn't describe.
X~x~X
"I want to smash someone in the face right now," Meilin confessed, pacing around Rollan's room.
"As long as it isn't me, I'm fine with it."
Meilin's phone rang. She fiddled through her bag to try and find it. "Hi Dad," she greeted.
On the other end of the phone, Rollan heard her father say, "Meilin, I need to talk to you."
Oh no. He found out about her grades, didn't he? "Yes?"
Instead, he said, "Your graduation. I can't come. I'm going to be deployed in Syria tomorrow morning, and I can't be with you today, either."
Silence.
Meilin probably knew she shouldn't have, but she hung up.
From where Rollan was sitting, he caught her gaze, looking into her brown eyes, not letting go of it. He walked up to her, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to do.
"I heard," he finally said, catching his vocabulary.
"But you don't understand."
"Yes, I do."
Meilin sunk down in the corner. "No you don't. Look at your mom, getting a fancy job as an accountant, and your dad, whatever he does."
"Yeah, whatever he does," he muttered.
"You don't know…?"
"He's an engineer, I meant," Rollan lied.
Meilin scoffed, "Exactly. So both of your parents are fine, living together with a happy life… You don't understand."
"Yeah," Rollan remarked, "a great, happy, life."
Remembering how Meilin was bad at taking a hint, he thanked God.
"I guess I'm sorry," he lied, again.
"Whatever."
No one spoke for a moment, and then Rollan heard his mother calling from downstairs. "I'm going to my cousin's house for the weekend. She's having her fourth wedding, and it's kind of last minute. You don't have to come because we all know this isn't her last wedding," his mother said. "Bye, have a nice weekend, love you."
"Your mom's cousin…"
"Long story short, she's a picky eater."
The door shut.
Rollan's thoughts winded up to his father, suddenly, and he bit his lip to not tell anyone.
Once upon a time, Rollan met Conor, Abeke and Meilin. Skip to a year later and they became best friends. They told each other every secret, personal secrets, private secrets, and they promised they won't ever tell anyone.
But Rollan didn't tell this secret, because, once upon a time, his father left him and his mother, probably forming another family, probably forgetting Rollan's identity. And then, to make matters even worse, Rollan stopped replying to his phone calls, muting the ringer every time.
It never seemed to be a problem for Rollan to keep a secret, but at this point, he found it harder than ever.
"I'm going to walk home," Meilin said.
"It's pretty late…"
"Don't worry," Meilin said, with a hint of coldness. "I can jump home."
X~x~X
Conor's thoughts never left his head. They weren't good thoughts, calming thoughts, or even exciting thoughts. It went something like this: Financial problems, blah, blah, blah, moving away, termites chewing away the whole building, more financial problems, getting sued, people raging, even more financial problems, landlord Trunswick…
Basically, all Conor got was that his family had to move out of the crappy apartment and move into a new, smaller, termite free, apartment, because the housing price was getting higher, and Fenray's self-confidence was not.
Not to mention there was a small- small would be underestimating it- dispute between his father and the landlord, involving three things: One, financial adult stuff, two, financial termite stuff, and three, not-so-financial sibling stuff.
So, basically; nothing in any fourteen-year old's interest.
All Conor did to support his parent's financial issues was being a part-time cashier at a corner store, which, legally speaking, was not at all allowed. But no one seemed to notice he was actually less than sixteen years of age, as they all assumed Conor was some dwarf with blond hair.
"I would like to buy milk," a bland, skinny, customer told him in his bland, skinny, voice.
"We don't sell milk."
"I don't care."
Conor furrowed his eyebrows, wondering why the customer was still standing in front of him. "We have yogurt, a hundred percent natural," he suggested, although he knew the yogurt was practically zero percent natural.
"I don't care, I want milk."
"I am so sorry," Conor apologized, although he had no idea why, "we don't sell milk."
The customer grumbled. "I want milk."
"You can buy milk somewhere else."
"I don't want to buy milk somewhere else," the customer said, stubbornly.
Conor sank down the counter, then creeped his way to the employee's room.
"Angela, someone would like to buy milk. Can you help them?"
"No, shut up, dwarf, I'm on my break," Angela relied, munching on a sandwich that actually looked like it was made of sand.
Conor sighed. "Just tell me what to do."
"Fine, dwarf, but you owe me," Angela said, still chewing.
She got up from the tiny stool in the room and grabbed a bottle of water, and used her pen to write Milk on the label. She handed it to the bland man, who made a not-so-pleasant face to Conor.
"That would be four hundred dollars," Angela lied.
The man handed four one hundred dollar bills, exchanging it for the vandalized water, glared at Conor, and left.
"Why did you say it was four hundred dollars?" Conor asked. "And why in the world would you do that?"
Angela shrugged, returning to her sand sandwich.
X~x~X
"How was your shift?" Conor's mother asked, at dinner.
"Interesting," he replied, honestly.
His brothers sat across from him, one of them reading a boring book, the other texting furiously on his phone, both of them never looking up from their daily routines.
"Garrin," his mother called, to his middle brother, who jumped in surprise and unfortunately dropped his phone. "Stop texting your ten girlfriends. Wallace," his mother called, to his eldest brother, "stop reading that book."
His brothers both obeyed, Garrin putting his phone in his pocket where it rang ten times every second, and Wallace conveniently throwing the book somewhere in the apartment, probably covered with termites by now.
"Your father has something really important to tell everyone."
Fenray cleared his throat as if he were doing some long speech about human rights. "We're moving."
"Quite a speech," Wallace pointed out.
"Like we didn't know that already," Garrin pointed out.
"I expected something more spectacular," Conor's mother pointed out.
Conor didn't point anything out. He sunk down, unimpressed.
"We're going to the east coast," Fenray said, answering Conor's unasked question. "We're going to move to New Found Land, where the housing price is very low."
Conor sunk down even lower.
"Why do we have to?" Wallace complained.
Garrin scoffed. "Why do you care? It's not like you have any friends."
"Attitude, Garrin," his mother replied, silencing Garrin.
"What do you think, Conor?" Fenray asked.
Conor hesitated. He didn't know exactly what to say, so in the end, he nodded.
"We're moving in the beginning of July, so I'm sure, Wallace that you have plenty time to organize that junkyard you call a room into boxes," his mother mocked. "And you Garrin, you have plenty time to break up with your girlfriends."
He was surprised his mother didn't say, 'and you, Conor, you have plenty time to sink down your self-esteem to nothingness.'
Argue, you idiot, Garrin mouthed to Conor, with a glare.
Conor pretended like he didn't notice it.
"May I be excused?" Conor asked, to which his father replied with a nod.
He walked into his side of the room he shared with Wallace and Garrin. Wallace's stuff was piled up tragically into many bunches. Garrin's side of the room was trashed with clothes, but was strangely organised. Conor grabbed his phone, climbed up the loft bed and checked his text messages.
There was one from Rollan, which Conor immediately opened. Over the course of years, he knew Rollan barely used his phone, only replying to texts and calls if they were emergencies.
It said: Meet me in the park at eight.
It was seven forty-six, and to walk to the park took more than just fourteen minutes.
He jumped off his loft bed, grabbed a light jacket and headed out the door. Surprisingly, no one asked where he was going. Conor was fine with it. He ran down the stairs instead of taking the slow elevator that barely worked, and ran out the front door of the apartment building.
He ran to the park, checking his phone for the time.
"Conor," Rollan greeted.
"Why did you text me? What's the emergency? Who died?"
"It's about Meilin."
"Meilin died?" Conor mocked.
Rollan didn't respond to the bad joke. "Her father's going to be deployed tomorrow morning. And he's going to miss her middle school graduation."
"And I'm moving to New Found Land," Conor said.
"You are?"
"Yeah," he replied. "The housing rates thing is lower on the east coast."
Rollan sighed. "So you're telling me that you're going to New Found Land, and Meilin's going to that private school forty kilometers away, Abeke's going to West high, and I'm going to that boarding school. None of us are going to the same high school."
On the street, a couple of protesters yelled in people's ears about the financial problems.
"I guess-"
An explosion interrupted Conor's sentence. People screamed.
"Go!" Rollan yelled. "Let's run to my house, its closer."
Conor didn't reflect his mind on what the explosion was, or what caused it, but he just ran. Rollan ran a couple of paces ahead of him, leading the way to safety.
But Rollan stopped. Conor noticed that a little girl was sitting on the grass of the park, wailing for help. Rollan picked her up and continued running.
"What's your name?" Conor asked, trying to be helpful.
"Delphine," the girl replied.
Rollan stopped in front of a house that seemed about five times bigger than Conor's apartment unit. He grabbed his key and unlocked the door, locking it after he, Conor and the girl entered.
"I know who that is," Rollan said, pointing to the girl. "Lishay's sister." He then turned to Delphine. "Are you Lishay's sister?"
The girl, even traumatized, still nodded.
Rollan ran into the kitchen, grabbed a box of water and carried it into the basement. Conor and Delphine followed. Rollan ran to the kitchen again, grabbing something else, went inside the basement and locked the door.
"Now that we can actually talk, what in the world was that?" Rollan asked, sitting in the dusty basement.
"A bomb," Conor replied.
"I know what it was; I just want to know who caused it."
Delphine found a remote for the television in the basement and turned it on.
"Explosion in Main Street Office, eight fifteen today," the broadcaster said. Rollan turned the volume down. "We believe it was a man of six feet tall and greying hair, nicknamed the Ambusher, striking again, for the fourth time this year. We do not know the Ambusher's real name, but researchers believe it is-"
Conor turned the television off. "Main Street Office is where Abeke's mother works."
AU: the four fallen are on modern Earth.
Please review, thanks!
~Alice