Interlude: Alan Barnes

Alan Barnes pulled into the Winslow High parking lot. The teachers lot was behind a chainlink fence which left him to park among the student cars, half of which featured body panels held on with duct tape or poorly sanded epoxy repairs somewhere. He felt no guilt at parking diagonally in two spaces in the partially empty lot given he didn't plan to be here for long.

Iridescent streaks from leaking engine oil floated across the wet pavement in the downpour. Alan hustled indoors to get out of the inclement elements. A poster in the window appeared to be printed in reverse until his mind caught up to the paradigm shift required to read it correctly. 'morP'... pretty clever actually. A few familiar faces came into view as he opened the Office door. Emma's friend Sophia and her Social Worker talked with Principal Blackwell.

"…is simply too much for such an offense. Three days is more reasonable."

Principal Blackwell said, "Our school district guidelines are clear, I've already given as much leeway about her extracurricular activities as I can, but the minimum in-school suspension for something like this is one week."

Alan turned to the secretary behind the counter and asked, "Pardon me, my name is Alan Barnes and my daughter Emma said she was trapped in a bathroom and to come get her."

"Oh yeah, today has been insane. I think the janitor is still working on the door. Around the corner and to your left," she said and pointed to the right.

Alan heard banging even before turning the corner. Pennies littered the floor around a man in blue coveralls and leather tool belt as he hammered a chisel in the gap above the restroom door.

"OK, try it now."

A tortured screech preceded a cascade of pennies to the floor as his darling daughter pushed while the janitor pulled the door.

Emma practically screamed "Daddy!" as she leaped into his arms for a hug.

"You OK now, kidlet?"

"Daaaaddyyy… you haven't called me that in years."

"I haven't had to come get you from school in years either." Alan released his daughter from the hug and asked, "So, ready to go?"

"Let me get my things from the locker and we can go. We could even go to lunch so today won't be a total loss."

"No can do, once I drop you at home I'll have to take your mother to the dealership to pick up her car and then it's back to the salt mines for me."

Speakers in the hallway crackled to life "Attention, would all members of the Track team please come to the office, thank you."

Bells signaled the end of class and Alan flashed back to his own school years as hordes of teens erupted from classrooms into the hallway.

Teenagers parted around the man in a suit while they chatted, looked down at phones, texted furiously, or even walked to their next class. Alan didn't like the looks some of the students were giving his daughter, not angry but if as in disbelief or overly interested, some pointed and laughed.

They rounded the corner to Emma's locker, or where it should have been but was now hidden under advertisements featuring his daughter defaced with crude graffiti and taped along the entire bank of lockers. Alan used his long reach to grab a page over the heads of the teens crowding between him and the lockers.

A glance at the added rude drawings of anatomy and word balloons with content more appropriate for truck stop bathroom stall walls was all Alan needed to see.

"Hey Emma," said an obnoxious bald boy, "Do you really..."

Alan clapped a heavy hand on the youth's shoulder. " My DAUGHTER," Alan said in his best courtroom voice, "appreciates your help gathering this EVIDENCE of foul play against her."

He grabbed another boy within arms reach and continued, "Your HELP will be remembered when we find out WHO is to BLAME for such a VILE act."

Alan lightly shoved the skinhead and probable football player towards the lockers and they gathered pages under the lawyers' glare.

After a minute, the boys he'd 'voluntold' to help brought him a stack of ripped out magazine pages and advertising flyers featuring his daughter. He knew it would do no good to ask if anyone saw who did it or waste the Brockton Bay Police Department's time dusting for fingerprints. He was glad to have managed to nip this in the bud.

Still, he salivated at the thought of the wondrous lawsuit he could press on the school district for what happened to his daughter today. Charges of negligence, reckless endangerment, harassment, stalking, assault; upgraded to aggravated assault, denial of freedom, abrogation of movement, premeditation, unlawful imprisonment, conspiracy to imprison, racketeering, failure of in loco parentis, and light treason. He smirked at the memory of that Earth Aleph series one of his interns and shown him.

A chittering of annoyed insects was lost amid the hubbub of students passing by in the halls.

Emma had gathered her things and he said, "OK, let's stop by the Office on our way out, I want to be sure this is handled correctly."

Alan skimmed the vandalized modeling ads featuring his daughter. Some of them had her phone number and a few also had his home number scrawled among the vulgar word balloons in thick marker. He actually looked forward to sitting at home tonight , perusing a reverse phone directory on the internet along with the classroom contact lists he'd kept in his den filing cabinet ever since his kids entered kindergarten a decade ago, and scaring the crap out of whichever pimply faced snot nosed brats called while enjoying a glass of wine. Alan wondered, "Does red or white wine pair with schadenfreude?"

Outside the office the assembled members of the Track team stood in a semi-circle around Sophia next to the Coach in the middle of a rant.

"... wants to fess up to this I will use this incident," the Coach roared, gesturing with one of the banners wadded up in his hand, "as a character building opportunity."

"Like an RPG?" whispered a boy as Alan and Emma passed by, to be shushed by his neighbor.

"Today's practice will be running laps, and you will keep running them until you all collapse, or one of you... the guilty party... cracks and confesses."

The Track team's collective moans and cries of protest faded as the door shut behind the two Barnes.

"Anyone who wants to see me privately, I'll be at my desk in the ball cage for the remainder of the day and the rest of us can put in a normal rainy-day practice in the gym," the muffled voice of the Coach carried through the door.

"Is Principal Blackwell in?" asked Alan as he strode towards her door and motioned Emma to sit next to a hangdog looking boy.

"She's on the phone," said the Secretary, "Have a seat and..."

"She'll see me now, thanks." said Alan when he opened the door, confidently not even breaking stride.

"...caught him bending a thick zip-tie around the axle of Mr. Quinlan's car. Now, while not..."

"Principal Blackwell," Alan interrupted and slammed the stack of papers in his hand on her desk, "This is completely unacceptable!"

Principal Blackwell turned in her chair, and said, "Pardon me. I apologize for the interruption, I will have to call you back."

Alan Barnes smugly smirked at how easily he seized the initiative from the petty bureaucrat.

"Tell me WHAT you are..." CRACK!

The Lawyer flinched as the experienced teaching professional shot to her feet synchronized with the loud noise.

Principal Blackwell thought, "The ol' steel-ruler-on-the-desk slap. Works even if they didn't go to Catholic School."

"MISTER Barnes, get out of my office."

Alan gestured with the stack of scribbled-on advertisements, "THESE were plastered all over my DAUGHTER's..."

An 18 inch steel ruler worked well as an improvised Main Gauche, and even though her days in the University Fencing club were over two decades in the past her point control never wavered a quarter inch away from his nose.

"Your daughter would have been polite enough to knock. Now make an appointment for next week and get out. I have an imbecile with cherry bombs on their way, and I'm not going to waste my come-to-Jesus voice on someone," she tapped Alan on his breastbone, "who should obviously know better."

"You need to..."

"Mister Barnes, I understand. Your daughter is your unique, special snowflake. No one is exactly like her or could ever fill the place she has in your heart. " Principal Blackwell explained while she guided the man to the door. "On the other hand I must deal every day with the blizzard of hundreds of unique special snowflakes of which your daughter is but one."

"Good Day." SLAM! the Principal's door shut in his face with an air of finality.

"I'd hate to have her on the bench... She's even worse than Judge Ostermark." Alan thought.

On the other side of the door Principal Blackwell quietly said, "And like all unique special snowflakes, at room temperature she's just a drip."

As she returned to the thankless, never-ending task of administrating the worst school in the Brockton Bay area she thought, "I wonder where I packed those old Rapiers or that Epee anyway..."

Emma drank a diet soda while she waited for her father. She never looked up to the ceiling to see several spiders tip a fluid-filled beetle carapace directly over the open mouth of her bottle, unerringly aimed at a gnat hiding on the bottom of the bottle. The teen model was also oblivious to the other bugs on her, and would only discover the effects of their sabotage later.

Alan made an appointment for early next week, signed his daughter out early and drove home.

"Does that sort of thing go on often?" Alan asked his daughter as he turned the windshield wipers up higher.

"No, not really," Emma said, "I guess everyone went crazy for April Fools Day this year."

"Oh really? Did you see anybody pull a real good one?"

"Well, Madison said Mr. Gladly sat on a whoopie cushion at the beginning of class, and..." gossiped the teenager and her father on the rest of the rainy drive home.

Large muddy puddles on each side of the driveway rippled as Alan pulled up.

"...of a pringles can. They were all wearing matching t-shirts until the teachers made them remove them."

Alan chortled, "They really set that all up? I'll have to see..."

The car lurched in the driveway.

No.

The driveway lurched under the car.

Concrete cracked.

Muddy water geysered up through cracks and out from the sides of the driveway.

The car nosed down.

Emma shrieked.

Car lurched forward.

Everything went white.