September 2008
Donatello unlocked the door, and his heart sank. Had it really all been for this?
This was approximately ninety-eight square feet of linoleum flooring and cheap furniture: a dorm room at NYU.
He focused on the last part of that thought. As of today, he was officially a degree-seeking undergraduate at a prestigious university. It was what he had wanted. It was what he had fought for.
"Is there a problem?" Mom asked from behind him.
"No," Don said. "It's… it's paradise."
He moved out of the doorway, and Mom followed him into the long, narrow room. She set down a pair of large plastic tubs on the floor, then straightened up and looked around. "Not quite how it looked in the brochure," she said. "Do you want to check the place for rats before you unpack?"
"There is no need," Splinter said, as he slid a cardboard box onto the battered desk. "I am the only one here."
Don dropped his duffel bag on the bed. The thin mattress sagged tiredly under its weight. He was pretty much moved in already.
"Home sweet home," he said.
Mom popped open the lid of one of the totes, and started putting the sheets on the bed. The towels could stay in the bin for now. The cardboard box contained the components for a heat lamp, which Splinter began assembling, along with a collection of toiletries and enough medical supplies to last for a few months. It was less than it would have been in the past - Don's hormones had settled down considerably with the end of puberty, and for the first time in a long time he could say that his diabetes was under control.
The duffel bag, which later would serve in place of a backpack, held a brand-new laptop and a couple changes of clothes. That was all Don needed. An entire new wardrobe was going to be delivered the next day, courtesy of an arrangement the mutants had entered into with an upscale clothing company - free bespoke attire for life, in exchange for exclusive rights to use the mutants' likenesses in a "fashion for every figure" marketing campaign. Raphael had hated the idea and had almost refused to sign the contract. But he'd come around when Don had calmly asked what other plan he had for finding clothes that would fit.
After his few possessions had been arranged in the small room, Mom pulled a fat manila envelope out of her bag, and Donatello spent a cheerful hour with his parents, sorting photographs and taping them to the otherwise-barren walls. There were pictures of him with his Turtle siblings, pictures of him with his human siblings, pictures of him with his medical team, pictures of him with dignitaries and heads of state. He'd spent the last few years trying to make up for the near-total lack of photographic documentation of his existence in the fifteen years prior to that, and now the results of his efforts sprawled across the plaster, a fractal image of his life.
He'd spent the last few years doing a lot of other things, too. He'd studied like crazy, taken several standardized exams, waited tensely for his scores to come in the mail. Rejoiced when they'd arrived, numbers that NYU would accept.
He'd had seemingly endless meetings with admissions counselors, with residential life staff, with campus security, with the academic advisor who had been pre-assigned to him. The idea of attending classes while living at home with his mom had become less appealing as he exited his teenage years - could he get a private dorm room? Yes, they could arrange that. Could he bring Snowflake? No, pets were not allowed in the dormitories. What about legal protections for service animals? Yes, but Snowflake had never been formally certified as a service animal. Would he require any special accommodations in the classroom? Only protection from harassment by other students.
After much debate and heartache, he'd taken the legal name David Lamb, though it was common knowledge that he usually went by Donatello. Taking his mother's surname had made it easier for her to become his legal guardian. And it meant that the lead lawsuit for mutant rights was designated Lamb v. United States, which was a great name.
He'd practiced meditation. A few times, he had talked Mikey into giving him some of that hallucinogenic herbal medicine that helped him get advice from other aspects of his spirit. Once, he had let an Utrom "ride" him, hiding under his shirt and secreting neurotoxins into his bloodstream. He had no memory of those hours. He had seen the video, though; the speech he'd given had been extraordinary. He hadn't told anyone the truth about that day. No one had ever figured it out.
He had testified in front of Congress and spent a lot of time in courtrooms and flown back and forth to The Hague. He'd gotten ejected from flights for "bothering other passengers".
There had been victories. Realizing that the mutants weren't getting any younger, and that they would only be a burden on society if they couldn't work, the US government had hastily passed some legislation allowing mutants access to higher education. Michelangelo had been the first to take advantage of it, enrolling at RISD on a full scholarship in the fall of '06. Tom, who had graduated the previous spring, had been an important mentor to him; they'd worked out the awkwardness between them and become great friends.
There had been losses, too. For one, the prospects for mutant suffrage were looking dim. In 2004 Don and his brothers had been too young to vote anyway, but they weren't going to be welcome at the polls this coming November, either. That was too bad. A Black man was going to be on the ballot, running on a message of optimism and solidarity, and Don would have liked to be able to vote for him.
The fight for mutant marriage equality was also going badly. So far, the debate was being carried by people who made the argument, if mutants can't have children, why do they need to get married? Don had given plenty of interviews about how ludicrous and antiquated that argument was. He'd also continued to engage in a very public relationship with Miss Anna Dubreuil, who had matured into a homely and dull-witted but remarkably unjudgmental woman, just the way Don had always liked her. The comments about her were vicious. But Anna had zero interest in other people's judgments, so the attacks did not deter her in the slightest. Nor did she seem to care that her relationship with Donatello would never be formally recognized under the law.
The bigger problem was that Don was travelling most of the time, and when he wasn't, he was mostly bunking at the MIC, to check in with his family, enjoy the company of the Utroms, and be close to the halls of power. Whenever he could, he studied the martial arts under Splinter's tutelage. One day he'd tried to use them, when an entitled White man got physical with him at a bus stop. He'd lost. He'd spent a few weeks in a hospital, with a head wound and a couple of shell fractures. After that, his mom had gotten more serious about not letting him go out by himself.
"I'm sorry," he'd said, two years ago, when Mom had first introduced him to his chaperone. "Who are you?"
Her name was Meredith, and she had been the vet tech at Gentle Care Veterinary Clinic that fateful autumn when Donatello - nee David nee Greenie - had shown up in the back alley. She'd been the one to figure out how to feed him. She'd been the first to notice that he was not a normal turtle. And she was the mystery person behind the third set of handwriting in the notebooks.
After her time working with Dr. Lamb, she'd decided not to become a fully-licensed veterinarian. Instead, she'd become what she called an "exotic animal negotiator". When people found themselves living with tigers or monkeys or other animals that were too tame to return to the wild but too undomesticated to make acceptable pets, they hired Meredith, and she worked out a living situation that met the needs of all parties. She'd reconnected with Mom during that brief period when Don and his brothers had been living in Westchester, when she'd realized that the Donatello she'd seen on television was the same deathly-ill baby turtle that she had nursed back to life fifteen years before.
Meredith got things done. Meredith did not take crap. When cashiers, receptionists, and gatekeepers of all kinds refused Donatello service, Meredith made the transaction happen. Meredith defused spontaneous harassment incidents with an icy glare, and Meredith dealt with law enforcement whenever discrimination against Donatello was outrageous enough that it violated the few rights he had won.
Meredith was outside the dormitory right now, if the ringing in Mom's pocket - she had finally given in and gotten her own cell phone - was any indication.
Don tossed the roll of painter's tape onto the desk, and took his parents downstairs.
The front door of the dormitory opened directly onto a busy sidewalk. Meredith was leaning against the brickwork of the old building, reviewing the planner she always carried.
"Have you registered and picked up your keys?" she asked, barely looking at her young charge.
"And found my room and basically unpacked," Don replied.
"When are you getting your textbooks?" Meredith asked.
"Preferably before classes begin," Don said.
Meredith shook her head, making a note in the spiral-bound book. "Have you eaten lunch?"
"It's lunchtime?" Don said.
Apparently, it was. He couldn't believe how quickly the day had gone. Waiting on line to check in, hauling his stuff to the dormitory, and decorating his new home had taken longer than he'd realized.
Meredith led them half a block to a falafel cart, where she bought them a round of stuffed pitas. They ate them as they walked back to the dorm. A little frisson of excitement ran through Don when he swiped his passcard at the door and the lock clicked open: it hadn't been an accident that it had worked the first time; the university's leadership hadn't changed their minds and rescinded his access. He was really and truly an NYU student.
By the time the four of them rode the elevator back up to Don's room, someone had already pinned an anti-mutant slur to the bulletin board on his door.
"Hey," Don said, as they all went inside. This kind of thing had happened far too many times for him to really be upset about it. "Free thumbtack."
"I'll take this to security later," Meredith said. She detached the torn sheet of notebook paper from the board and tucked it into her bag before closing the door behind her.
"I would like you to keep this locked at all times," Splinter said, his eyes sliding to the door handle, "whether you are here or not. Whoever delivered this message must be close. Do not make it easy for them to reach you."
"Hai, Sensei," Don sighed. His brothers often complimented him by saying that his Hamato Japanese was almost comprehensible these days. But at least he had learned that Hai, Sensei was the correct response to any order.
"Do you want to go find your classrooms?" Mom asked. They'd only just come back upstairs, but she didn't seem interested in hanging around the room, which seemed even smaller now with the addition of a fourth person.
"No," Don said. His eyes, too, went to the door. "I want to meet my hallmates." He looked at Mom, then at Splinter. "Without my parents tagging along."
Mom's mouth tightened, but the fur around Splinter's eyes shifted in that way that meant he was trying to hide a smile.
"Are you sure?" Mom asked.
"I'll be fine," Don said. "After what I've been through, this is easy."
He took a step forward, and Mom hugged him tightly. "Come home whenever you want," she said. "It's only a subway ride away."
"Of course," Don said. "Let me know if you need any help in the clinic. Maybe I can squeeze it in, between my many hours of studying."
"And your many hours of socializing with your new friends," Splinter said, as he took Donatello in his arms. "Do not study too hard, my son," he advised. "There is much to learn that cannot be found in books."
"I will remember," Don murmured, into his father's shoulder.
Then they all stood around in the narrow room, looking at each other.
"Go," Don said. "Seriously."
With another round of goodbyes, his parents left. Don stood by the window, making sure they walked away from the building, watching until they stopped looking back. Then, while Meredith micromanaged his next few days, he went to meet the people he would be living and learning with for the next four years.