July is sarcoma awareness month! Just thought I'd bring that up for this chapter since it's the first Bucky chapter of the month. Ewing's is just one of many types of sarcoma that affect bones and/or soft tissue.
Bucky IX: Lessons Learned
The beginning of junior year brought with it many new things, some good and some bad. For one, they were finally upperclassmen to be respected by the other half of the school instead of ridiculed. However, this year marked the beginning of the college search and application process. Bucky was not looking forward to it, to say the least. He'd just finished the hardest year of his life, didn't he deserve a break? His schedule for the year lightened his spirits, though. Every single class he shared with at least one of his friends. Steve was with him for history (Steve's favorite), science (Bucky's favorite), and English (nobody's favorite). He'd heard good things about all of his teachers from older kids he knew, except for their English teacher Mrs. Dormer, who was new to Hudson Creek.
Bucky and Steve arrived together, as they often did, Bucky sporting his Klaue jersey that he'd gotten signed during his Wish trip the past summer. It was one of the only shirts he owned without a tailored left sleeve—he didn't want to diminish the value of it by altering it in any way. The flapping of the empty sleeve annoyed him, but it was worth it.
"Good morning. Are you ready for your first full school year since eighth grade?" Steve asked him.
"You don't have to remind me that I'm out of practice with the whole full-time school thing. Believe me, I can feel it. And it's not like you've never gone a year without missing at least two weeks of school."
"At least everyone's used to you now. We'll only get stared at by wide-eyed freshmen who've never seen an oxygen user or an amputee before."
"Did you just create the title for the semi-autobiographical children's book that we're going to write together someday?"
"I didn't know that was the plan until you mentioned it just now. Somehow I can't visualize "The Oxygen User and the Amputee" flying off shelves at an elementary school book fair."
"It will if you illustrate it."
"Let's put a pin in that and survive junior year first, okay?"
"Okay."
The first half of the day consisted of the usual: introductory powerpoints, syllabi, and mispronounced names. Bucky grew bored of learning about what he was going to learn, especially since his brain still hadn't fully recovered from the onslaught of chemo. By the time he got to his last class he was flagging a bit. Mrs. Dormer, the new English teacher, didn't even look up from her desk when he walked in, just instructed him to follow the seating chart projected in the front. He recognized it as alphabetical order and let out a sigh of disappointment. He'd be nowhere near Steve. The desks were set up in rows, not tables, and Bucky's last name placed him towards the back of the first row. At least he got a window seat.
The rest of the class filtered in, the seats immediately in front of, behind, and next to him occupied by kids he knew of but didn't necessarily say hi to in the halls. Mrs. Dormer stood in the front and made her compulsory introduction speech, made even longer by the fact she was new to the school. Bucky was nearly dozing by the time she started attendance. He snapped to attention when she called, "James Barnes," and raised his hand.
"You can call me Bucky," he said politely, the line he'd repeated to multiple teachers already that day.
"And you can pull your arm out of your shirt, young man. Last I checked this was a high school, not kindergarten."
The dense silence that descended over the class could have smothered a grizzly bear. Bucky glanced across the room and met Steve's gaze out of the corner of his eye, wordlessly asking how he should handle the situation. Steve's smirk clearly expressed his advice: "Give her hell." Mrs. Dormer maintained her stern glare until she recognized that everyone else in the room appeared to know something she didn't.
"And last I checked, my arm was not in my shirt, but right here where it's supposed to be," he said emphatically, extending his right arm into the aisle between desks so she had a clear view of it. "If you're referring to the other arm, I donated it to science so maybe the next person with a tumor like mine won't have to lose theirs."
Bucky didn't normally mouth off in class, but in this case the teacher might have deserved it. He stifled the smug smile that wanted to paint itself across his face and instead stared blankly back at Mrs. Dormer, waiting for her response. He heard Steve's unmistakable snicker-turned-cough followed by a few other students joining in. Just as he was starting to feel guilty about what he'd said, Mrs. Dormer collected herself and proceeded as if reading from a script, "I apologize for my undue assumption. If I may, I will continue with attendance." She nodded curtly and returned to her list, but the lingering tension in the room was unfixable.
As she resolutely proceeded with outlining the course, students periodically turned to Bucky and gave him a surreptitious thumbs up or a smile. He honestly didn't think he deserved any recognition for what he'd said, but nobody would catch him complaining about it. Her initial comment didn't offend him as much as all these people probably thought it did; she'd merely mistaken him for a person with both arms and acted accordingly. There was nothing inherently malicious about that. Were Bucky in her shoes he might've done the same thing.
The final bell rang at last and Bucky slung his backpack over his left side, threaded his right arm through, and buckled the chest strap. "Mr. Barnes." Dormer's voice stopped him in his tracks on the way to the door. He braced himself for whatever awkward conversation or punishment was about to ensue and turned back towards her desk. Steve waited for him just outside the door.
"Yes Mrs. Dormer?" Bucky said politely.
"I wanted to apologize more personally for my remarks earlier. It was inappropriate of me to chastise you without knowledge of your circumstances."
Bucky just wanted this conversation to end so he could go home. "It was an honest mistake," he said with a shrug.
"No, it really wasn't, but I appreciate you handling this so maturely. I look forward to having you in class."
"Thank you." She dismissed him and he scurried out the door to Steve.
"What was that all about?" he asked as they walked.
"A personal apology," Bucky answered. "She feels really bad about what she said."
"She should."
"It's really not that big a deal. I choose not to take things like that as personal insults."
"Good for you."
"I think she's actually going to be a decent teacher."
"What makes you say that?"
Bucky smirked. "The syllabus doesn't have that many essays on it."
~0~
"I'll pick you up at eleven, okay?" Gabe confirmed.
"You bet," Bucky shot back.
"Man, this is going to be great."
Bucky was almost as excited as Gabe, though arguably far more nervous. He hadn't told his parents about this because he figured they'd forbid it. Instead, he planned to sneak out. Maybe he could've argued his way into them letting him go, but he didn't want to put in that much effort. Besides, there was something enticing about the idea of sneaking out at night. Barely a month into their last year, the seniors at Hudson Creek were already celebrating. One of the seniors on the soccer team had his dad's house to himself all weekend and had invited the entire team to a party. Though he hadn't admitted this to any of them, it would be Bucky's first. Given that he missed most of freshmen year and his mom kept him on a ridiculously tight leash for all of sophomore year, it was understandable, but his teammates would inevitably still make fun of him for it.
At ten forty five, almost an hour after his parents had both retired to their room, Bucky changed out of his pajamas into his favorite pair of adaptive jeans and his tailored red Henley. Before leaving his room, he listened for any signs of movement anywhere in the apartment, but heard nothing. As he closed the front door quietly behind him, he asked himself why characters in movies made such a big deal out of sneaking out at night; that had been downright easy.
Gabe's car was waiting for him at the curb and he hopped into the passenger seat. "How'd it go?" Gabe asked.
"Easier than Coach's short passing drills," Bucky quipped.
"That's what I'm talking about." With a fist bump, they drove off. Their teammate's dad lived in a massive house outside the city, and upon arriving they could already tell the party was in full swing. Bucky hoped they didn't get a noise complaint from a neighbor or something. Gabe parked in an empty spot behind a car Bucky recognized as Monty's, another junior on the team. Just before they reached the front door, Gabe turned around and offered to be designated driver.
"Thanks," Bucky said. "I wasn't planning on drinking either, if it makes you feel any better."
"I did at the last party I went to and I definitely regretted it. Whatever you do, don't ever ask Monty if he has any videos of me."
"Well now that you've told me not to, I really want to," Bucky complained.
"Don't you dare."
"You shouldn't have mentioned it in the first place. Whatever I do or don't see on Monty's phone tonight is all your fault."
Gabe flipped him off, then reached for the doorknob and strode in. The noise immediately assaulted Bucky's ears, loud enough to resonate in his chest. Every room was already littered with discarded cups, and people in various states of intoxication danced about. A girl Bucky didn't recognize met his eye and waved shyly. Bucky was so overwhelmed by everything happening that he waited far too long to wave back, and she wasn't even looking by the time he did it.
"You need to work on your game," Gabe muttered to him.
"Shut up," Bucky spat back. They wandered around until they found the party host and congratulated him on a great night. He stopped making out with his girlfriend just long enough to thank them and offer them drinks, which they politely declined. At first, he'd thought it would be difficult to have fun sober at an event like this, but both Bucky and Gabe discovered the wonders of people watching within the first hour. Bucky didn't get the chance to ask Monty for this embarrassing video of Gabe because the guy was probably too inebriated to even operate his phone.
At just after midnight, Monty and two other midfielders cornered Bucky and insisted on a serious interrogation. "We've always wondered," they announced, "How do you tie your shoes?"
Bucky held back a laugh. He could tell them any sort of absurd answer and they probably wouldn't even remember it tomorrow morning.
"With his teeth," Gabe interjected.
Monty's eyes widened like a child's who'd just been told Santa wasn't real. "Can you show us?"
"No. Gabe's just messing with you," Bucky insisted. "Want to know my secret? I don't really tie them. When I first get them, I get someone else to tie them for me and then they just stay tied. Forever."
"Whoa." Based on their facial expressions, one would think they'd just been told the true meaning of life.
"How do you take a piss?" one of them questioned next.
"The same way you do," Bucky insisted. He didn't exactly want to go into the details. It had actually been one of the hardest things to relearn, especially considering that chemo infusions turned his urine into a veritable biohazard. Knowing that a misstep could give him chemical burns had added a nice degree of fear to the process.
"That's so cool," Monty slurred. Gabe surreptitiously moved his solo cup out of reach before he and Bucky headed off to mingle elsewhere.
"You missed the perfect comeback to that question," Gabe told him.
"Oh really?"
"Yeah. You should've said something ridiculous, like out of your ears or something. The looks on their faces would've been priceless."
"My phantom hand is flipping you off so hard right now," Bucky warned.
"What's that even supposed to mean? You're annoyed with me but you don't want me to know it?"
"If I didn't want you to know it, why would I have said it?"
"I don't know. If you want me to know it so bad, just use your not-phantom hand."
"Like this?" Bucky did just as Gabe described.
"You need to trim your nails," Gabe remarked. Bucky only rolled his eyes. The party started to wind down around one thirty in the morning, and they left at a quarter to two after ensuring some of their friends had called Ubers. Sneaking out had been so easy that Bucky forgot to be as cautious on the way back in. Turns out no amount of stealth would have saved him because his mother was sitting wide awake at the kitchen table, face red and stained with tear tracks. Utterly bewildered and not knowing what he could possibly say in this moment, Bucky waited for her to make the first move.
"You're lucky I thought to call Gabe's mother," she said, measuring her words very carefully.
"Yeah?" he exhaled. Bucky had never before felt this mix of terror, pity, and confusion.
"If she hadn't told me where you were, I don't know what I would have done. Why didn't you answer your phone?"
"It died." Bucky had forgotten to charge it after the day at school, and by the time he arrived at the party he was down to fifteen percent. He could have asked one of his teammates for a charger, but they were all preoccupied with beer pong. He waited for the inevitable onslaught and punishment, but Mom just sat there breathing with more intention than he'd ever seen anyone breathe except for Steve. But one thing didn't quite add up—why was she awake at this hour? If she'd heard Bucky sneak out, she would have confronted him before he could even get to Gabe's car. "How did you even know I was gone?" he questioned.
She sagged, as if embarrassed to admit this. "You weren't in your bed," she muttered meekly.
"Why were you looking in my room at this hour? Weren't you sleeping?"
"Bucky, I haven't slept through the night in two years."
"What? Why not?" This was news to him. As far as he knew, his mother went to bed by ten and woke up at six every day.
"I have nightmares," she explained.
"About what?"
"Well, not nightmares, exactly. More like memories."
"Mom, you're not making much sense," Bucky said cautiously. He had no idea what was going on with her right now, and he still hadn't gotten past how creeped out he was by the fact she'd been in his room in the middle of the night.
"I've had the same nightmare for two years, and the only thing that ever helps me calm down is looking in your room and seeing that you're okay."
"Oh." Well now he felt horrible for sneaking out and scaring her so badly.
"When I looked and you weren't there I thought the last year had been a dream, and you were actually—" She couldn't finish the statement. She didn't need to. Bucky now understood just how badly he'd messed up by sneaking off in the middle of the night. As much as he'd suffered during that time not so long ago, she must have hurt just as much, if not more.
"I'm so sorry," he murmured.
"You shouldn't be sorry. I should be grateful that you snuck out of the house like a normal teenager because for a while I was worried that you'd never get to be one." She paused, and any minute Bucky was prepared for this to turn into the scolding he definitely deserved. Still, it didn't. "I haven't told anybody except your father this. I wasn't planning on telling you at all because…well, you've come so far and you're doing so well that I didn't want you to be bogged down by the fact that I'm still stuck reliving the worst of it. But…after you finished treatment I was diagnosed with PTSD."
Bucky's eyes widened as his heart sank. After all this time, he had absolutely no clue that his mom still suffered so acutely after everything they went through. He knew it wasn't over for him after the last course of chemo, had dealt with the lasting effects for the past year and a half, but he should have stopped to consider just how much that experience still affected people like his mom. Almost every low moment for him had been one she had to witness.
"You should have told me," he said quietly. "I wouldn't have done something this stupid if I knew."
"That's exactly why I didn't tell you. You're at a time in your life where you're supposed to be doing stupid things," she said, the barest hint of a smile gracing her face. "Just because I'm still hung up on it doesn't mean you should be too."
Bucky understood why she hadn't wanted to burden him with this, but he sincerely hoped that confiding in him had helped her. It at least gave him some perspective. "I can still do stupid things without freaking you out," he promised. "And I definitely will."
"Good."
"Is there…anything I can do? Are you getting help?"
"Yes, yes, of course. I've been talking to Sarah a lot, and I joined a support group for what they call 'Momcologists.'"
Bucky chuckled at the name. "That sounds really great. I hope they can help." He knew Steve's mom had endured a lot of similar things over the years with his illness, made even worse by the fact her identity as a nurse compounded with her identity as a mother to create an insatiable desire to offer comfort and fix things. Bucky wondered just how many conversations the two of them had had about their sons, especially over the last two years.
"I've been doing better overall, but with your scans coming up so soon the worrying gets worse, and that makes the dreams worse," she explained. Bucky had almost forgotten scans were next week, but now that Mom had reminded him he felt a familiar buzzing in the back of his mind. Scanxiety was way worse after treatment than it had been during treatment, because he knew there was no real relapse protocol for Ewing's sarcoma. If they found his cancer had returned, there wasn't much even Dr. Potts could do beyond grasp at straws and attempt to prolong his life. It was a terrifying thought, one Bucky forced himself not to consider most of the time. But around scan time, pondering that eventuality was inevitable.
"Is there anything I can do?" he asked again.
"Just keep being you," Mom said sincerely. "Seeing you live a normal life is more helpful than anything."
"Okay. I'm gonna go to bed now, is that okay?" He was still awaiting that punishment.
"Yeah. Good night."
He walked away slowly, wondering if she would stop him once she remembered he ought to be in trouble for sneaking out, but she let him go. Bucky thought maybe this guilt he felt was punishment enough. Hearing her admit to regularly sneaking into his room at night to remind herself he was alive and healthy really shook him. God, he hated cancer. Even now, long after it had left his body, it was still finding ways to ruin their lives.
I remember reading this article in a magazine when I was younger about a boy born with no arms, and he said he often had teachers yell at him to pull them out of his shirt. That's sort of what inspired the beginning of this chapter.