The Carbon Copy

by Christopher R. Martin

Chapter 8 – Quality time


Another lunchtime in the school gym, another afternoon alone, practicing what I have been taught so far. Honing my skill, my technique, trotting further down this path I've set for myself. I asked Rocky to just pack my lunch so that I can eat it somewhere else, something that was never asked of him. Not when he was running the cafeteria. That's why my lunch is in just a brown paper bag and not a container. By now, all that food's been mushed together, barely recognizable from what they originally were.

Not that I care. I'll still try to eat it, anyway. And if it proves to be inedible, it's not any kind of loss to me. My hunger is secondary to the real matter at hand. Training.

Each punch, each kick and each blocking maneuver, I execute them with razor sharp precision. With every iteration of each technique I perform, the nuances behind them are imprinted in every part of my body. My bones, my muscles, my mind, my heart, my every internal organ. Likewise, the pain has become so natural that I can't really call it a pain anymore. Of course my body will ache, that's inevitable, but I've grown accustomed to the hurt that I can soldier through it and continue without the need to stop and catch my breath.

In the midst of my training, I reflect on a couple of things. One are the many instances of my being an idiot. Completely ruining Larry Needlemeyer's life just to win a lazy competition against Dad, being overwhelmed by the wealth of knowledge the Internet has to offer, and getting myself and Darwin lost in a dangerous forest are three notable instances that come to mind. Another are my less than graceful moments, such as the time I turned up at the Fitzgerald's house not realizing I was invited to a funeral for Penny's supposedly dead pet spider and not a date with her. Shameful moments that in reality I should look past, but wind up revisiting.

Those hideous memories come together to form an unsightly amalgamation. A disgusting creature buried in my consciousness that I will into existence. I stare at this monster dead in the eye and strike him down with my punches and parry his own attacks. He and I are locked into a struggle, and he looks down on me sneering. Demeaning me. Taunting me, as if I will never be more than what I am. More than what he is comprised of.

He does not really deal any blows on me, nor do I deal any on him, and at the end of my regimen, he returns to the concealed depths of my mind, back where he came from. Back where he belongs. The exertion I put in takes its toll on me, and I take many deep breaths. My growling stomach berates me for not eating early enough and settling for the slop that has now soaked the paper bag and the bench it's on top of.

In hindsight, it is a bad idea. Some necessities are too great to ignore. That's what I get, and that's a price I'll gladly pay for now. Heeding my empty stomach, I head to the bench and dig my paw into the paper bag. It's so soft and mushy in there. I scoop up as much of the slop as my paw can hold and stuff it into my mouth. The thick texture of the peas and mashed potatoes and the crust of the sautéed chicken make for an appealing, if not weird combination. It's not half bad. Thank goodness for my cooking know-how and my refined palette. Otherwise, I would have thrown this bag in the trash.

In my gym bag, I fetch my water bottle and gulp down half of it. Putting the bottle back inside, I proceed to the locker room where I go for a quick rinse in the shower and change into my sweater and pants. Past the gym doors I go, taking the first step in sync with the ringing of the school bell. The entire Elmore Junior High student body begins the walk back to their designated classrooms.

I move along with the crowd. On the way to the same classroom as me is Banana Joe, who spots me amongst these other kids and skirts his way past them to walk with me.

"Yo, Gumball," addresses Joe, giving me a pat on the back. I don't mind the gesture that much and let him walk by my side. "I saw you coming out of the gym. You've been in there a lot these past couple of days. I thought you hated gym, next to the library, the science lab, the race track and… huh, I guess most of this school for that matter."

"Ha ha ha, that's so funny I don't know why I didn't laugh sooner," I respond sarcastically, darting my eyes to the side.

Unsurprisingly, he doesn't understand my remark. He's thicker than cement.

"So what's up? Care to tell me what you've been doing in there?"

"Not much. I simply could use some alone time." In my defense, that's not totally a lie.

"Is that what the gym bag's for?" pokes the nosy yellow fruit, having no regard for boundaries.

"Pretty much."

"Hey, what's this white stuff?" What the what?

I try not to care in the slightest about his persistence, but as soon as he brings up my gi, I immediately move my bag away from him. I glower and snarl at him.

"Sorry," shrugs Joe, eventually coming to respect my personal space. But that lasts about as long as you think it does. "What the…"

Crap. I should have closed my bag properly.

Protruding out of the zipper is one end of my white belt. It has an orange strip on it, which Mom put on a couple of days ago. As a way of tracking my progress. She says that it means I'm at the halfway point of earning my next belt. That's why I'm starting to apply more of myself and why I've been neglecting essentials like food and water.

Or would have if I didn't think better of it.

Putting two and two together, Banana Joe's eyes light up, and he leaves his mouth hanging. "Wait a minute," he adds. He cracks a smile and laughs to himself. "Am I seeing this right? Will we actually see the return of the Karate Weiner?" He laughs again, and I repress the impulse to slice him in half with an open paw.

"It's not gonna work this time, Joe," I say resolutely as we come to the stairs and make our way down.

"Obviously. You really haven't learned a thing? Are you dense or something?" Hmph. It's hilarious hearing that question come from his mouth. "You're just going to fall flat on your face again. Literally. You'll be sorry about this."

At the next floor down, Joe enters the combination to his locker. He is unable to open it, though, and he whines that an object inside might be jammed against the door. He tries yanking it by the dial only to fall on his back and for his arms to dislodge.

He gets back up, and his laughter is now a nervous one. He's helping himself to a healthy dose of his very own words. "Eh heh heh heh heh. You don't see that every day," he remarks in the hopes that his mishap will diffuse.

He's eating his words now, but in a few seconds, he'll be swallowing them.

Rolling my eyes, I set my bag to the ground and roll up my right sleeve. I take a hearty breath, stand in my neutral datchi and still my whole frame until my heart is the only one moving. Pumping blood into my veins.

My paw balling into a fist, I deliver a fearsome straight punch at Joe's locker. The impact leaves a crater-like dent on the door and causes it to fall off while forcing every other door in the row open as well in a domino-esque sequence. The entire school—well, this whole floor, anyway—is shocked into silence, and their eyes are soon on me, the only person here who is unfazed.

No one sees it, but this does faze me, too. The spontaneous surge and release of strength through the punch I just delivered. I've had this theory, this fantasy, in my mind, but to see it unravel with my own two eyes trumps that theory, that fantasy, on a three-to-one scale.

Over my shoulder, Banana Joe stares at me in disbelief. Awestruck disbelief as opposed to hysterical. By the way his mouth and eyes hang open, his heart has to be racing in that tiny chest of his.

Affirming my grip on my composure, I take the two halves of a broken pencil from the ground and give them to Joe to let him know what the cause of the locker jam was. Hoisting my bag on my shoulder, I lower my head slightly and go on my merry way.

Not without leaving him one last comment to remember this event by.

"Told you. Not gonna work this time."

My fellow students look on with equally puzzled faces. They are either scared or amazed. Every single one of them has been robbed of the ability, the will to speak. Their accelerated heartbeats vibrate along the ground, and travel to me and synchronize with the beating of my own heart.

One thing that Joe has gotten right, that karateka is back. Not the Karate Weiner, but the Karate Winner.


"Oh, come on, Mom. I've been doing so well. You said so yourself," I announce, startled by the news that Mom has just given me.

"Yes, I know, Gumball, and I couldn't be any happier, but even the best martial artist needs a well-earned rest," says Mom while she folds up pieces of laundry after ironing them. "Besides, your grandmother's here to visit, and she said that she'd like to spend the afternoon getting to know you kids better."

"You don't sound the least bit thrilled about it," I remark, noting my mother's disinterested tone when she speaks.

"That's because I already know her well, for better or worse." She mumbles that last part of her comment as if she's sneaking it in. "Today is about her, just like it's always been." She sure is into the habit of muttering half of her sentences today, like she doesn't want anyone else to hear them. "Why don't you go ask her where she wants to go? That way we can get this over with." Is she even aware that I'm standing in the same room as her?

Compelled, I obey my mother's instructions. But as I go and seek out Grandma Senicourt, there she is waiting idly at the doorway, dressed up and ready to go. Judging by her disconcerting smile, she might have been listening on the conversation and already decided on where to go and what to do.

I reel from the astonishment and regain my base. Her eyes are a pair of daggers that hack and slash my skin and lodge into my mind and my heart. When I look away from her, I cannot un-see them.

"Grandma Senicourt!" I exclaim, placing my paw above my thumping chest.

In the snap of a finger, she takes heed of my display of surprise and adjusts her face, reshaping it into motherly concern.

"Oh, dear. I am so sorry," she starts, shuffling to where I stand and checking up on me. "It seems that I got too excited for my own good. Are you fine?"

"Yeah, it's no problem," I chuckle the fright off and scratch the back of my head.

"Mother, please don't give my son a heart attack," interjects Mom, carrying the iron and the ironing board and returning them to their rightful place. "Haven't you done enough of that already?" I'm convinced that she's not aware of the other people under this roof with her, and that her mumbling doesn't work as well as she does. Or if she does, she could care less and wants everyone around her to hear her loud and clear.

Actually, considering that Mom dragged Grandma Senicourt—and quite roughly at that—into the kitchen last night to talk to her, I'm sensing that there's much more between them than what they let on. That they don't have the most pleasant relationship a mother and daughter can have. Besides a brief comment that Grandpa Senicourt—Mom's dad—went on to live for a hundred and two years, I've never heard her talk about her side of the family that often, if at all. Not that I have any business poking my nose where it doesn't belong, but you'd think that she'd make even the slightest passing mention every now and then.

Or maybe I'm wrong and they're just prone to petty quarrels that will blow over and be forgotten in short order.

Grandma Senicourt registers the comment and appears glum for a short while, but reverts to her elderly giddiness in no time.

"Never in my right mind would I consider doing such a thing," she rebuffs nonchalantly, flicking her wrist in a girly fashion. "As for where I want to go, the mall sounds like a good idea. You can never go wrong with that."

"Eh, I hate to break it to you, Grandma, but malls are…well, malls," I intrude, raising a finger. "You won't find anything in Elmore Mall that you can't find anywhere else."

"Nonsense. There's always something for everyone," she claims, which I don't refute. "In fact, last time I checked, isn't there an arcade in this town's mall? And maybe after that, we all can go for some Joyful Burger for dinner. On me."

The offer she pitches is appealing, I can't deny that. There's a new game in the arcade that I've been meaning to try since it came out two weeks ago, and I've been increasingly jealous of my classmates who've tried it for themselves.

But under this roof, I'm not the one calling the shots.

"Mom?" I beseech her, paws clasped and eyes dilating in the imitation of a dog's.

Even Mom can't resist it when I put on a cute face. She may be made of steel—or is she bionic?—and she may be resistant to a face like this, but she can and will succumb to my whims.

She does. She sighs and growls in an admittance of defeat, snickering at one of her very few weaknesses and my childish behavior. At least it's lightening up her mood, if only by a small margin.

"Go tell your brother and sister to get ready," she says, leaning on the wall by her shoulder.

"Got it," I answer jubilantly, racing past Grandma Senicourt and up the stairs. I open the door to our room, poke my head through the opening and knock on the door. Anais looks up from her ten-inch textbook and Darwin gazes from the swivel chair in front of the computer. "Get ready, we're going out."

"Where?" asks Darwin with a furrow.

"To the mall."

"Why?" joins Anais, clearly uninterested.

"Because Grandma Senicourt wants to go out."

"Really?" they ask in unison in kindred disconnect.

I groan and roll my eyes at them. "Stop with the questions already and get ready. We're leaving in a couple of minutes."

Back down the stairs I go to let Mom know that I've done as she's asked of me. She nods and beams, and then goes back to a phone call that I think I interrupted. She gives me the car keys and tells me and Grandma Senicourt to wait in the passenger seats while she takes care of her call with Dad.


The plan for the day is that for the next hour or two, the five of us split up and do our own thing. When that hour is over, we meet with Dad, who finishes his shift at Fervidus by that time, at the food court.

Mom and Anais have gone ahead to get some shopping done, which leaves me, Darwin and Grandma Senicourt. I take the lead, leaving Darwin to hold our grandmother by the hand, which annoys him.

Inside the arcade, the sounds coming from the machines play loudly in an odd kind of melody. A melody that touches on my sensibilities as a gamer. Darwin and Grandma catch up to me, and we walk to the counter. Larry Needlemeyer greets us with the dejection he usually shows us.

"Good afternoon, Watterson," he says tepidly, half-alive and reclining his head on the counter.

"We'll have the After School Special, Larry," I say in response, directing my finger at the sign with those three exact words written.

"How many tokens?"

For every five tokens you buy, you get one bonus token on top. That bonus is doubled on Friday afternoons, starting at three o'clock, and for the entire weekend.

"Make it twenty, please."

While Larry starts pressing the keys on his register, Grandma Senicourt takes her wallet from her purse and checks its sleeve for any bills and coins. Larry finishes with his pressing and forks over a bag of tokens. Twenty tokens plus the bonuses on top of that gives us twenty-eight total.

"How much does that come to?" asks Grandma, who continues to look for money.

"Fifteen dollars. Cash or credit?"

"Cash, thank you." She takes out a twenty from her wallet and passes it to him. Larry presses the register some more and gives her the five dollars in change. "Okay, boys. What do you want to play fir—"

I've already bolted to the machine before she can finish her question, leaving a streak of blue in my path. The cabinet is more beautiful in person than it is on the Internet. A six-foot tall, high definition screen, surround sound speakers, a headphone jack and the controls themselves: four square buttons with two small rectangular ones below and a pair of knobs on the far ends of the panel.

The title of the game is spelled out on many sides of the machine, not just its marquee at the top: Noise Voltage: Harmony Highway. Its developer and the logo also printed next to it: Namiko.

This is what arcade gamers have been buzzing about as of late. What my classmates have been raving about for the past two weeks. It makes my mouth leak out a waterfall. I'm seeing stars. Where has this thing been my whole life?

I could hug it. Kiss it. Fondle it. Say a few sweet nothings to it. But that would be pushing it, and might get me banned from the arcade. I guess the only thing left to do is try the game itself.

Darwin shares the same sentiment that I do, feasting at the mere sight of the cabinet. Mesmerized, he mutters the name of the game.

"Noise Voltage. Someone pinch me." I clamp his skin between my thumb and index finger, and he yelps out of pain. "Yeowch! I didn't mean it literally!"

I ignore him and move forward. Then I insert one token into the slot, but as I should have expected, it costs three for one game. The following eight minutes is sheer gaming bliss. The stunning, detailed graphics, the heavy techno music, the futuristic menus, the gameplay itself—juggling between pressing buttons and turning knobs to create my very own sound—it's heaven on Earth. It's Nirvana. If this is a dream, I don't ever want to wake up. If I've gone and died, I don't want to be brought back to life.

But I'm not dead, nor am I asleep. The game ends, as does my euphoria, when those three words flash over a pair of closing shutters: 'Thanks for Playing'.

"Gumball," calls Darwin, waving his fin in front of my face. "Gumball!" He says my name more times than that, and I break from my trance on the fifth time. "Can I have my turn now?" He gestures to the bag of tokens in my right paw. I give it to him, and he hastily puts three into the slot.

I sit on a bench by the window next to me, still recomposing myself from the experience. I finally got to play it. I got to play Noise Voltage. I think I found a new craving.

I don't notice her until five seconds after, but Grandma Senicourt sits by my side, nearly out of breath. "You kids are hard to keep up with," she states, wheezing for air. "But I managed to do it. You must be having fun if you're staring blankly into space. What did you play, sonny?"

I show her the machine as Darwin plays it. She's only mildly fascinated by it. It must be because this is nothing like what arcades used to be back in her day. They weren't this detailed. This immersive. This fun.

My composure fully restored, I sit up from my slump and tuck my legs inward. "Wanna give it a try?" I invite Grandma Senicourt. "I promise you're going to love it."

"Oh, no, I can't," says Grandma, shaking her head and waving her paws. Preferring to just sit by and watch. "This is a little too far out of my comfort zone, thank you."

"That can't be true. Here, Darwin's almost finished. Hey, Darwin!" I holler my brother's name, and he faces me with rainbows painted on his eyes and spilling from his mouth. They drip down to the floor and create a colorful and glittery, yet messy puddle. "Grandma Senicourt's gonna have a turn now." I pull her from the bench gently, unlike Mom.

"Gumball, please, it's fine." She pulls back.

"Oh, come on. Just one game, and if you don't want to play again, that's alright."

"Alright, if it will get you to stop begging," Grandma Senicourt concedes. I insert the tokens and guide her through the menus, explaining how certain parts work, what button to press and so on.

It's as if I'm helping an elderly person cross the street. She gets the hang of the machine in time and enjoys herself like I knew she would. I still have to help her when picking a song for her to play. She's no pro, but then again, neither am I. Her enjoyment is all that matters.

The three of us take turns with the game, sometimes meeting an early game over, and in my case, raging at the game, my mouth foaming as a result. Darwin and Grandma Senicourt would then have to restrain me until the foam in my mouth dissipates and I've calmed down. And once my own rage settles, the other two would throw their own bouts of fury, leaving me to do the calming down for them.

Nevertheless, it's in the spirit of good fun. At one instance, a crowd gathers around our grandmother during one of her sessions. Either they're amazed that someone as old as her can play a video game decently, or they act like they've never seen an old person playing a video game before. As if it's a rarity, nowadays. As if a family, a pair of kids and their grandparent, spending time together in an arcade—scratch that, spending time together, period—is a rarity.

We're down to our last four coins, which gives us one more play. I put three of them into the slot and before I hit the start button, Darwin catches my wrist and nudges his head to where Grandma Senicourt is standing. He's trying to tell me to let her have this last play since she's only visiting us and won't be staying for very long.

At first, I don't want to do it. I pry my wrist from my brother's grasp and reach for the start button. Then I see my grandmother, who pays no mind whatsoever and encourages me to go ahead and play. This isn't a way for her to guilt-trip me or anything like that. She gently pushes me closer to the machine.

But I don't press the button. As much as I really want to, I step to the side and mirror my grandmother's smile.

"Here, you can have it," I say, ushering her to the cabinet. Before she can air her objections, I add, "I insist."

Grandma Senicourt accepts and presses the start button. I guide her once again through the menus, selecting the songs for her. The first two I choose are ones that she's already tried, while the last one is a completely new song. It throws her off, but she barely scrapes a pass, with only a sliver of the life gauge remaining.

She laughs off her poor performance, and I laugh along with her. She rustles the fur on my head, having enjoyed her time with us. Out the window, I see Mom passing by with the groceries in her hands, watching inwardly with a stern look on her face. No one else notices, and the three of us leave the arcade and meet her at the entrance. Even when her own daughter acts this harshly towards her, her enjoyment doesn't slip.

We then head off to the food court, where we find Dad standing at the center, waving at us once he spots us. He pulls out a chair from underneath a table that he's reserved for us. Mom plants a kiss on Dad's lips and sets her shopping down on the bench.

"Okay, kids. Pick whatever you want for dinner," says Dad, grabbing his wallet. He proceeds to give a fifty between us three kids, but Grandma Senicourt has another idea.

"That's alright, Richard," she interrupts, fishing out a fifty from her own wallet. "It's on me." Dad's eyes light up from the thought of someone else buying food for him; kinda weird of him, since Mom does that literally every day. "Not for you, though." Just like that, he's deflated, his rabbit ears drooping. "I'm kidding. Here you go."

She hands him a ten and a five, and he rushes off. She gives Mom the same offer, but Mom shakes her head and folds her arms. "I can pay for my own food, thank you," she replies coldly.

"I see," says Grandma Senicourt, swallowing her daughter's words like a bitter pill. "Well, let's go get something to eat, then."

Not showing the slightest bit of relent, Mom shoots her down yet again. "Just stay here and watch over our table. I'll buy your food for you. What do you want?"

"Surprise me, dear." Grandma Senicourt smiles, taking the bitterness in stride.

"Fine. Come on, kids."

Without objection, my brother, sister and I walk with Mom around the food court. As we pass one stall and then another, I can't help but spare a momentary look at my grandmother. She sits on the bench with her head lowered and her paws tucked under the table. Any remains of a smile she had before has been wiped away.

I then fix my eyes on my mother, who watches where she's going with a set of knives for eyes. She doesn't realize that she's clenching her bills so tightly they're crumpling. Darwin and Anais are busy looking at the stalls to even notice or care.

And it might be for the best that they not involve themselves in this. Whatever Mom and Grandma Senicourt had in the past, it can't be anything pleasant. I'll be darned if Darwin and Anais get entangled in this and end up getting hurt in ways they've never even thought of.

As for me, I think I have more of a right to know than either my brother or sister. Mom dotes on the three of us. She puts our happiness, our well-being and our future above her own, and though we don't always agree with her parenting, she does what she does with our best interests in mind. The woman will take on an entire army if she has to, and I guess she has done so before, and will do so again in the future.

Though she cares for this family, part of me believes that she's especially doting towards me. Following me around school for one day because she thinks she hasn't been giving me enough attention, pushing me so hard to become a winner to the point of stranding me in the middle of a desert, trying to console me after I had accidentally cracked Penny's shell, they're just a few of many instances where her motherly instincts towards me shone through. Where she acted on more than just her instincts. Maybe it's because I look so much like her or because I was born first. I don't know, I can't explain it.

Whatever her reasons, her motivations, may be, it might have something to do with what she and her mother have been through. It's a part of a cycle that must be ongoing in the Watterson family. A cycle that has led to frustrations, heartaches in the past. And that cycle has repeated itself, is on the verge of repeating itself, with me.

That's what I assume, anyway. This is lame. Twelve years of being alive, and I still don't know everything about my mother. It's as though I don't know anything about her. I wish I do. I wish I could. If I could, if I involved myself into this affair, if it meant finding a way to break this cycle before it's too late, then I would.

For now, the best that I can do is to continue this path I'm going. To prove to my mother that I can be the son that she deserves. To live my life as much as I can, as if it were to end very soon.

This, I know, is what she'd want. I know this is what I'd want, too.


Author's Note:

Now that Comic-Con's over, I'll finally get that video reading done in due time.