Pavement and Resolve, Chapter Two
A/N: Decided that these are short enough to post two in one day...if not the whole thing...
His mother's reaction was nothing more or less than Carlton had anticipated.
When he first walked in, she had been about to tell him off for being late, but then she caught sight of his injuries and reacted with an appropriate level of motherly horror. "Oh my God, what happened, Carlton?" she said, hurrying towards him. She cupped his face in her hand lightly, the concern and fear obvious in her eyes.
Carlton tried to push past her to the bathroom. "It's nothing..."
"Carlton, don't try to pull that with me. What happened to you?"
"Mugged." he replied dully, not meeting her eyes.
"Oh my God, Carlton...let's get you cleaned up. And then we're going to call the cops and get the person who did this to you."
"There were two of them..." Carlton corrected automatically.
"Oh my...oh..." she clutched her chest dramatically, and on the whole, Carlton thought she was taking it quite well.
His mother forced him into the bathroom, and from then on, it was complete care-taker mode. She cleaned his face up and gave him a clean new shirt to change into, and to Carlton's relief, she didn't make a fuss about the bruises on his side and stomach.
When she left to get him something cold to help the swelling on his eye, he took his first opportunity to look at himself in the bathroom mirror.
His right eye was bruised and puffy, and his lip was swollen. There was also a dark bruise on his temple. It was pretty much what was to be expected; he looked like a teenage kid who'd been beaten to a pulp.
Carlton brought a tentative hand to his lip, then touched his eye. He flinched not only at the pain, but at his reflection. He looked broken and lost and weak. So terribly pathetic...
His mother returned with a bag of frozen peas. She handed it to him, and he took it and placed it on his eye, feeling ridiculous. "Thanks, Mom." he said gruffly.
"Honey, I called the police to report this. They're sending a couple of officers over to interview you. Is that okay?"
"I...yeah. That's fine." he replied.
He didn't really want to retell the story to two people he didn't know, but there seemed to be no way around it. And anyway, maybe, hopefully, they could actually find the jerks that had stolen his jacket.