FYI Sorry if this chapter seems less polished than other chapters. To make a long story short, last week, when I should have been doing the final editing, I was pretty sick. I'm okay now, but I wasn't up to doing much of anything. But, I decided to do a quick edit and publish this chapter anyway.
Chapter Twelve
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By the time May ended, Mox could ride his bike as if he'd been riding forever, and he was enjoying it. He still loved running and always would, but there was something incredible about being able to ride a bike. It was another form of freedom and a faster one than running. And, while it wasn't as fast as a car, it could go a lot more places that a car couldn't.
So, of course, life being life, now that he had his own form of transportation to get to HWA, he wasn't able to go as often. School was out, which meant Amber and Zachary were around, but it also meant Donna and Jacob were around, too. The boys at the Smithfield school either went home, or to some special summer camp, thus a nurse and an English teacher weren't needed.
On other years, Donna would go to summer classes, trying to further her education in the nursing field, while Jacob would play house husband. But now that Mox was here, Donna was taking the summer off too, and suddenly it became all about the five of them being one, big, happy family, and "Doing things together."
So, instead of being able to work six days a week, he found himself cut down to four. Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. Three days of family fun, no make that two and a half days, because on Wednesday mornings he had to go see a talk therapist. Not Charles, he was still back in Florida. His new one was another student, female this time, Robin McKinley. Mox thought he at least got out of the talk therapist by coming out here, but nope, they couldn't even give him that.
And what really pissed him off was that he had a feeling that if it wasn't for Dennis shooting that fucker Simon, and him having to witness this, he would have had the summer off from talk therapy. Of course, one could argue that the whole reason why Mox had connected with his blood family was because of Dennis shooting Simon, but, if there had been some other way they had connected that hadn't involved Mox witnessing a murder, he probably would have gotten a pass on Talk Therapy. But now, because there were "So many things going on his life," Charles and his social worker, and even Sefa and Jen had agreed he needed to see someone over the summer too. So, now he had to waste his Wednesday mornings on this talk bullshit. And it was the whole morning, it seemed. Because Robin's first appointment was at ten in the morning. So, by the time he got out it was eleven, which was pretty much afternoon by then. He might have gone to HWA in the morning, arriving at six and opened the place, worked out, and then biked over to Robin's office, but nope, instead, Donna thought it would be a good time to have a leisurely family breakfast. So, that ended up eating away the morning.
He had expected to get a lot of flack when he told Cory and Les about having to change his hours, the least being to ask him if he really did want to be a professional wrestler, or if he was just playing games. God knew he got hazed about everything else by everyone else that worked or came for lessons. But Les and Cory had been extremely understanding, to the point where Mox suspected Sefa might have had a talk with them and told them that while Mox was willing and eager to work, he also was supposed to be down there to get to know his biological family and that should be first priority.
Of course, that didn't stop the other trainers, wrestlers, and students from giving him grief. But that had been going on since the day he started and Mox had the feeling it was some type of test he had to endure. Some of the younger students were his age, but none of them worked there, they were paying for their schooling, which made them see Mox, who worked for his lessons, as some type of servant who they could order around.
It had been different in SPWA. Yes, he'd cleaned up puke and cleaned up the camp, and done all of that, even more grunt work than he was doing here, but he'd also been doing it as a member of the family, chipping in to help the family business. Even before the days when Mox started calling Sefa Dad and Jen Mom, he was still introduced as if he were a member of the family. And the campers and non campers had always treated him with the respect you would give your bosses son, knowing he was there to learn the business from the ground up. Mox considered that he was working to cover his lessons, but everyone else seemed to think that he was in training for the day when he might retire from wrestling and come to the camp and run the place when Sefa retired.
At HWA it was different. He was the kid who worked to earn lessons. Thus, some of the other students looked at him as if he were there to be at their beck and call. The older wrestlers, the ones who came and went and who were good enough to always be in the house shows and always ended up on TV treated him like a cross between a worker and a mascot.
Summer meant that some of the teenagers could come for lessons during the day, which meant that Mox's private lessons were now more likely to have more than just him as a student. That didn't bother Mox too much, because Mox knew he was at least as good as any of them, and a lot better than most. Heartland didn't even allow students under the age of sixteen, and you had to have your parent's permission if you weren't eighteen. Mox had been training since just before he was sixteen. Most of these kids had school and other activities most of the year and while Mox had chores, working at the camp, and studying for his GED, he spent every other free moment he could, wrestling. He had lived in a wrestling camp, and in free time, even if he didn't have an instructor, he could practice the basic moves, run the ropes, faceplant, elbow roll, back fall, so on and so forth. The moves that could be combined in various ways to look like complicated moves, especially when worked with another person. A face plant could be worked into a DDT if you had someone you were wrestling with. A good bounce off the ropes could snap you forward and as you were propelled forward, either you could grab someone or they could grab you and do a side slam, which was one of his big finishers, and when he did it, it was called Moxicity. He was always practicing, always working out, always pushing for that goal, to be a professional wrestler. Half these kids who were taking lessons, paid for by Mommy or Daddy, were just doing it for fun. The moment it got hard, the moment the pain lasted more than just one afternoon, the moment they had a girlfriend or boyfriend who wanted their time, they'd drop this. Mox wouldn't. Mox didn't want to date, Mox had dealt with far worse pain than this most of his life, and this was the most important thing in the world to Mox.
So, he gritted his teeth and tried not to think about what he could be doing when he went to see Robin McKinley to talk. He played the same games with her he played with Charles back in Florida, trying to avoid talking about anything Charles wanted to talk about, like his past, like the Timmy days.
Robin was a little more clever than Charles, Mox discovered. She would let him talk about anything he wanted, which usually was wrestling. So, he would be telling her what he learned, what happened on Raw, what was going on with the HWA shows, and somehow that would lead to things without him quite understanding what had happened. Like one time, he was talking about how he and another student, a kid named Adam, had been doing some moves, practicing, when Adam botched a move, that caused Mox to get his foot tangled in the ropes and to end up falling backwards and upside down, smacking his head into the ring apron. He was telling her the story, amused by it, but she had winced.
"That sounds really painful, Mox," she said. "Did you see a doctor to make sure you were all right?"
"No," he said, shaking his head. "It was no big deal. I didn't smack my head that hard and I got out of the mess pretty fast. Adam was more freaked out about it than I was. Cody was pissed off at the botch, and afraid I'd really gotten hurt.
"I can see why Cody would be!"
He shrugged. "It's not that big of a deal. I spent a lot of my childhood being strung up for a lot longer than a couple minutes. Rarely upside down, but a few times I was. And we're talking an hour or more at a time. Sometimes most of a day. I've been hung up so long that I've fallen asleep. A minute or so is nothing, even upside down."
"This was an accident, those other times weren't," she said. Not looking eager, just looking the same as she always did, interested, yet slightly detached from the situation. As if she were watching a documentary on something. "Why were you hung up?"
Oh great, he found himself thinking, I walked right into this pile of shit. I just volunteered that information. "Various things," he finally said. "It was one of my f-, I mean, Dennis's favorite punishments. Hanging me up in the basement. At least in the beginning."
"Why do you think he liked punishing you that way? And why do you think he backed off on that punishment later?"
"It made me feel helpless," he answered. "I couldn't do anything, and the longer I was chained to the pipes, the more it hurt. I'd get to the point where the pain would be so bad, or I'd be so numb that my brain would go numb. Do it for awhile, and soon enough you'll do whatever anyone wants, just to be able to get the blood circulating again, to drive away the numbness that's pain, too. And soon enough you start telling yourself you'll do anything to not have it happen. So, you start cooperating."
Then he realized that there he was, talking about it, and realizing she'd tricked him into it. And when he confronted her about it, she told him that he had brought it up, by telling her how he had a lot worse than his fall at the school. "I think that part of you realizes you have to talk about this," she said. "That it needs to come out in the open."
She got him talking about things before he realized he was even doing it. But, she also wouldn't keep pushing if he really got insistent that he was not going to discuss something, which was one of the good things about her. But he still would prefer he just didn't have to see her at all. He could think of a lot better things to do on Wednesday morning than to talk to someone who didn't seem to understand that most of the time, he wanted to forget his past. He knew he couldn't forget his past, but it would be nice if his past could be seen as less of a big deal than everyone seemed to think it was. He didn't want to tell people some of it, and there were things he never wanted anyone to know. But a talk Therapists job seemed to be to get you to discuss that which you most didn't want to discuss. Mox didn't get it. Every time he said something about life with Dennis and Simon, it went the same way. He told. Therapist tried to look as if this was no big deal, but usually failed. Questions were asked like, "Why do you think that happened to you?" or, "How did that make you feel?" And then came the grand finale, "None of that was your fault, Mox."
In Mox's opinion, therapy could be streamlined easily. Just give everyone a note card that said, "It's not your fault," and tell them to read it whenever they started thinking about the bad things. By now, he'd heard that so many times he was sick of it. Yeah, he got it, it wasn't his fault. He wasn't responsible, he was just a little boy, so on and so forth ad nauseam. But words weren't going to help him. Words and talking about it, all that did was remind him that it had happened. Talk therapy seemed to Mox to be all about living in the past, and the more miserable your past the more you needed to live there. His life was a whole lot better now, even if he was staying with this family where despite sharing blood with three of them, he still didn't feel as at home as he did with the Reigns. He'd rather be with the Reigns, but that was hardly in the same category as living with Dennis and Simon. So, what was the point? To keep him living in the past so he couldn't enjoy the present?
Wednesday mornings could mess him up badly enough that it was hard to go home and play happy family with folks he was having trouble considering to be his family. He stammeringly explain this to Donna once, and she told him that she would see what she could do.
The very next Tuesday, while they were eating dinner (one of those twelve piece dinners from KFC) Donna announced that Wednesdays were to be "Dad and Twin's day." When Jacob questioned that, Donna responded with, "Because Wednesday afternoons are Mox and my day. I have a lot of catching up to do with him and while I love the time we spend as a family, I want some time alone with Mox. We have Thursday and Sunday for all five of us to play together, but Wednesday are for Mox and I. He's got therapy in the morning, so we'll have the afternoons."
Mox had been suspicious of this announcement, thinking that Donna would expect them to have some fantastic bonding moments or something, but it turned out, she did it to give him time to decompress from therapy. If Jacob and the twins were in the house, they would go to a park or something. And if Mox just wanted to sit there and brood, she never said a word. If he wanted to try to blow it all out of his mind, by talking about anything else, they would talk. She told him stuff from his past, when he was a baby and a toddler. They went to a diner for lunch a lot, a favorite place of hers, that she said Jacob thought was too much of a greasy spoon. He told her about the diner in Florida, how it was the first restaurant he had been in since he was taken. Donna told him that she had taken him to McDonalds a couple times, because that was about all the fine dining out she could afford back then. They both would order breakfast at the diner, because they both agreed there was something awesome about eating breakfast food, real breakfast food, not fancy brunch food, for lunch.
If Jacob had the twins out for the day, they would go to the house and if he wanted to talk, they talked. If he didn't, they didn't. One time, after a bad session where he wished he could have taken back all the words he'd told Robin, they came home and he didn't want to talk, but he didn't want to be alone with this thoughts. They sat in the den together. Donna suggested they order a pizza for lunch, which they did. After it was delivered, she went into the master bedroom and brought out a bunch of DVD's, most of them Wrestlemania DVD's. "I got these the other day," she said. "They weren't expensive, and I thought you and I could watch them."
So, they ate pizza and watched some older Wrestlemanias. None of the video tapes he'd watched as "Timmy" were Wrestlemania, so these were new to him. It was just the two of them, watching wrestling, eating pizza and drinking soda. And she didn't even stand on the formality of glasses. She came out with a two liter bottle of Pepsi, and a two liter bottle of Barq's root beer. She handed Mox the Barq's and they just swigged it right out of the bottle. They finished the bottles before Jacob and the twins came home, which lead to Mox burping a whole lot this evening and her doing some herself. Every time Jacob or the twins called them out on it, they would look at each other and smirk, or cover their hands with their mouths to try to stop the laughing.
Donna wasn't Jen. Mox was pretty sure he would never be able to think of her like a mother as much as he did, Jen. But, Donna was all right. She was a mother to Zachary and Amber, but she seemed to realize that since he was older, it was a little hard to play mother. Especially since he had Jen. So, she was more like an aunt. A favorite Aunt who wasn't afraid to do things Jen might not approved of, but weren't exactly wrong. There was no law against chugging soda straight out or the bottle, but it was not the type of thing Jen would have approved of.
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Thursdays and Sundays were total family days. Like, "Let's go out and do things!" family days. Amber always seemed to want to go to the park, or Twist and Shout, which Mox thought was pretty much a park inside of a building, or at least a playground inside of a building. The first time he saw the inside, Mox realized that the place was for kids. The parents had tables where they could sit and talk to other parents and drink horrible coffee. About the only place where there were people his age was the room off the side, where older video games and pinball machines were. He thought video games were boring. Pinball was a little better, except sometimes he'd tilt the machine and one of the "Attendants" who wore black and white striped shirts like they were referees or something, would tell him, "Please don't do that anymore." And Mox would try not to and then forget and do it again. The food there was terrible too, especially the pizza. The sauce was sweet instead of savory, the cheese bland. The soda even seemed to be slightly flat.
If Zach had his choice, they'd go to the kid's museum, which was slightly more interesting, but most of the activities were meant for young children. Not teenagers.
The big problem seemed to be that Mox was the fifth wheel. Amber and Zach had each other. Donna and Jacob had each other. Mox was the loner, the one that sat by himself on rides if they went to the amusement park or a carnival. Or, he sat next to a stranger. Sometimes Donna would sit a ride out, and Mox would go on a couple rides with Zachary, but he knew Donna liked the thrill of a lot of carnival rides and he didn't want to take that away from her.
He tried not to act broody and put out, like many of the other kids around his age that seemed to be in the park with their families. The ones that stayed slightly behind their family, as if trying to look distant enough that people wouldn't associate that they were their with their family, while being close enough so their family wouldn't yell at them to catch up.
Mox knew what the Brooding Teenager was, because sometimes Roman could be one. Not often, Roman was pretty outgoing and one of those guys who liked being with people. If the only people he could be with were family, well, better than being alone and there were many times when he actually enjoyed the company of his family. But, occasionally, something in Roman's head seemed to remind him that he was a teenager and therefore, in public, with his family, he was supposed to brood. Usually Lance would start talking to him, saying ridiculous things until Roman couldn't help but laugh. But, a couple times, Mox had taken it upon himself to slide up to Roman, stand next to him, slouch his shoulders and mimic Roman's brooding face, but a little more exaggerated. If Roman didn't notice he was being mimicked, Mox would start doing everything that Roman did. Roman scratched his face, Mox scratched his face. Roman sighed, Mox sighed.
The first time, Roman put up with this for about three minutes, then looked at Mox. "What are you doing?" it was one of the only times Mox heard anger in Roman's voice. Usually, anger made him cringe, but Mox knew well enough by then, that Roman could get furious with him, but he would never attack him. Mox wasn't sure why, because Roman had no problem physically fighting with his older brother, but Mox was off limits, just as Lance was.
"I'm pretending to be an asshole," Mox said, trying to mirror Roman's look right back at him. "How am I doing?"
Roman's first reaction was to roll his eyes, then, as if it all hit him how absurd this was, first he smiled, then chuckled. "Okay, you got me."
"Are you sure?" Mox asked. "Because I can keep doing this, if you want."
"No, it's okay, please stop."
That was usually all it took. Mox had done enough brooding in his younger years. When you lived most of your life in a basement, doing what he had done, brooding was essential, at least when alone. He got why brooding happened, and that sometimes it was an appropriate reaction. Lance brooding on his mortality seemed perfectly normal, because Lance had brushed so close to death and still might be dancing on the edge of it. Roman brooding about Lance's mortality seemed normal because Roman loved Lance, and since it was Roman's blood that was supposed to help Lance stay in remission, Mox got why Roman might want to brood about it. But Roman brooding because he had to go to an event with his parents and brothers? That just didn't fly on Mox's radar. So, Mox did his best to smile and look like he was fine with being the odd one out on these family outings.
Donna and Jacob tried to pull him in, but it was hard. Zach and Amber were young enough that they needed watching, and, as much as Donna would like to believe otherwise, Mox was an outsider. For six, going on seven years, it has been Jacob and Donna and their two kids, Zachary and Amber. Then, suddenly, Mox, a sixteen year old kid was here, and Donna wanted to just wedge him in and it just wasn't going to happen very easily.
He wondered though, why he had managed to fit in with the Reigns so well, but couldn't fit in with the Ambrose/Millers. Maybe it was because Roman was close to his age. Or, maybe it was because he just stumbled into them and they had no expectations of him at the beginning, or, maybe it was because he had imprinted on the Reigns and they on him, the first people since he was five to care for him and later grow to love him.
Donna tried so hard to draw him in that he almost felt sorry for her. He didn't quite know how to tell her, but if she was with him, they got along well. If he and Jacob went out together, it was okay. There were even a couple times when Zach and Amber were with friends, and the three of them had been together, and that had gone well too.
It was like when the family was together, the four of them, they were a salad, different ingredients all working in harmony. And Mox felt like he was chocolate syrup trying to pass for salad dressing. But, Mox did his best to at least try not to look like chocolate syrup when they were all together in public.
But his favorite days were the ones he worked. Again, the work was hard, the work was often unpleasant, but it was work and it was wrestling related work. And, it came with wrestling lessons. Mox worked hard, learned fast, and refused to let anything get to him. Sure, a lot of the wrestlers and students treated him like he was to be at their beck and call, with their, "Hey, kid, go get me some water." "Hey, kid, get me a towel." "Hey, kid, you need to go clean the bathroom, it's a mess!" But he dealt with the hazing and it was actually starting to get better. Les and Cody were starting to show an interest in his training, and helping him. Other instructors began using him to demonstrate how moves were done. People began calling him "Mox" instead of "Hey, Kid!" Kids his own age stopped treating him as something inferior, as if he were just the janitor or the kid that ran the concession stand, and started treating him as an equal. A few even asked him if he wanted to go out and party with them at night. Mox passed on the partying, usually using the excuse that he was out here to be with his mother for the summer, and she was a stickler for family time. The kids his age seemed to understand that, probably thinking of some joint custody situation, and Mox didn't disillusion them. The truth was, Mox didn't want to party, because he was afraid that drinking and drugs would be involved and he would like it too much.
He was starting to feel at home in Heartland.
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Mox had a locker where he locked his cell phone every day. He couldn't have it on him when he was taking lessons, and he felt when he was working, he needed to be working, not playing on a cell phone. And, sometimes it was hard to resist looking at texts, especially if they came from any of the Reign's family. He had explained this to Donna and Jacob, telling them that if they needed him, they would have to call the gym itself, but he asked them please to not call unless it was a real emergency, because he didn't want to have to get grief over "Getting a call from your Mommy?" Donna agreed and told him that if there was information she wanted him to know, but wasn't an emergency, she would text him. He, in return, said he would check his phone for text when he had his lunch break.
So, he was surprised one day, when he went to check his cell phone before going to lunch, and it rang, and the screen told him the call was from Donna.
"Hello?"
"Thank god it's you," Donna said, her voice frantic. "And I'm so sorry I had to call you, but I knew you took your lunch around noon. And I wouldn't call you, but this is kind of an emergency!"
"What's wrong?" Mox asked, immediately on alert. Donna wasn't exactly a drama queen, if she said this was an emergency, then it was an emergency.
"Jacob," Mox could hear tears in her voice. "He fell off the roof."
"Holy shit," Mox said, before he could stop himself. "He's… alive?"
"Yes," Donna said. "But he couldn't move. I had to call an ambulance, and they're taking him to the hospital. I want to go there, but Amber and Zach-"
"I'm on my way home," Mox said, getting what was going on right away. "I'll watch them."
"Thank you," Donna said, sniffling. "I know this is a lot to ask you for, but-"
"But nothing," Mox interrupted, already headed out of the locker room. "I'll ride as fast as I can, I promise. Are the Johnson's home?" The Johnson's were the neighbors who had the famous Britney, she of the doll hair, who was best friends with Amber. "Could they watch Amber and Zach until I get home so you can leave right now?" He was looking around frantically, trying to find someone in charge.
"They left for vacation this morning!"
Of course they did, of all the shitty luck. "Okay, I'll ride like the wind, I promise. Hang tight, I just have to find someone and let them know. I'll be home soon." He hung up the phone before she could say anything else, because he saw Les talking with one of the wrestlers, a guy named Faulk Finnegan who also wrestled under the same name.
"Mr. Thatcher," Mox said, even though Les had given him permission to call him "Les" over a week ago.
"What's up, Mox?" Les looked him up and down, a look of concern on his face. "Are you sick? You're pale as a ghost."
"My… my stepfather," Mox said. "He's been in an accident. Donna had to call an ambulance, he fell off the roof. She wants to go to the hospital, but someone has to watch my younger brother and sister. I'm sorry, but I have to go home."
"Of course you do," Les said nodding.
"Oh wow," Faulk said, shaking his head. "You ride a bike, don't you?" When Mox nodded, he continued, "Your bike will fit in my trunk, why don't I drive you home, it will be faster."
Normally, Mox would refuse, he had a panic attack inducing fear of getting into vehicles with strangers, but this was an emergency, so he nodded. And it wasn't like Faulk was a complete stranger, he was actually one of the few wrestlers who never tried to haze Mox, but always treated him well. "I would really appreciate that, Mr. Finnegan,"
"Call me Faulk. Go and get your things, I'll put your bike in the trunk." Mox was allowed to bring his bike into the gym, and he parked it near the exit. "Meet me by my car."
Mox raced to his locker and pulled out his backpack and gym clothes, then raced out to the parking lot. He saw Faulk sliding his bike in the trunk, and sure enough, it fit fine. "Get in," Faulk called out. "Where do you live?"
Mox rattled off the address as he opened the door and tossed his backpack into the back seat.
Faulk shut the trunk door, and got into the car. "Isn't that near the Smithfield School?" he asked.
Mox nodded. "They live in that subdivision about four miles from there." He fastened his seat belt.
"I think I know exactly where they are," Faulk said. "Hang on, I'll do what I can to get you there, fast."
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Faulk was true to his word, racing through the streets. "Call your Mom, and tell her you'll be home faster, you've got a ride," he suggested to Mox. "It might make her feel better."
"Okay," Mox said, pulling out his phone and dialing Donna's number. Part of him wanted to correct Faulk on the "mother" thing, but technically, he wasn't wrong.
She answered on the first ring. "Donna, I'm on my way home," Mox said, before she could finish saying hello. "One of the wrestlers, he's giving me a ride and he drives like a bat out of hell."
"Don't get yourself killed!" Donna said. "I've got enough with Jacob, I don't need to be worried about you!"
"He seems to be a good driver," Mox said. "I'll be home soon. Are Amber and Zach okay?"
"They didn't see him fall," Donna explained. "He was up on the roof to get Amber's Frisbee and she was in the house getting a drink. I was in the living room, I saw him falling!" Her voice quivered for a moment, but she continued, "I told the twins he'd fallen, but I made it sound like it was no big deal. They're both frightened, but they think he probably just sprained an ankle or something. Mox, he fell on his back! He hit his head, too! What if he's paralyzed? What if he's got a brain injury?"
Let's hope Zach and Amber aren't listening from another room, Mox thought, knowing that was exactly what Lance would be doing. "Donna, don't buy trouble, okay?" He winced inwardly, knowing that was such a bullshit thing to say, of course she was going to think the worst. He would too.
He was aware of Faulk looking at him from time to time, but he said nothing, clearly concentrating on the road.
It seemed like forever, but it was actually almost no time at all before Faulk was pulling up to the house. As he started to unbuckle his seat belt, Faulk reached over the console and put his hand on Mox's knee. "It's going to be okay, Mox," he said, his voice soft. Mox stared down at the hand on his bare knee, below the shorts he wore for wrestling lessons, part of him wanting to go into his "please don't touch me" speech, but realizing Faulk didn't know about the no touching rule. Faulk was a wrestler and while the two of them hadn't wrestled, that didn't mean they wouldn't, someday. He's worried about you, Mox. Worried about Jacob and Donna. It's cool.
"You go in the house so your mother can get going," Faulk suggested. "Your brother and sister are probably scared. Tell your mom to leave the garage door open, I'll put the bike in the garage for you. I'll put your backpack with it."
"Thanks," Mox said, and got out of the car, running to the front door.
End Chapter Twelve
