1.2
As the rust bucket of a gold sedan slowed to a stop in front of my house, I turned to my unwilling driver.
"Thanks." I said simply with a grateful nod. The young Japanese man remained silent, just as he'd been throughout the rest of our time together today. Stoically, he kept his gaze fixed on the empty street ahead of us.
As could be expected, I was still an unwelcome sight to most members of the ABB. Most of them wouldn't speak openly about me when I was within ear shot, not that they had any idea just how well I could actually hear, but unless ordered to interact with me they simply refused to acknowledge my existence. I wasn't complaining though; it wasn't like I had a burning desire to suddenly become friends with a group of gangsters. I was here out of necessity and was indifferent to their scathing indifference.
I opened the car door to step out and my chauffer wordlessly pulled on a lever next to his seat to pop the trunk. It was a small relief, as I'd considered the possibility that he might simply drive off before I could retrieve my parcels. Getting to my feet, I slammed the door behind me and stepped around the car to collect my welcome prize.
Groceries!
I'd finally been paid for my first services to Lung: nearly six thousand dollars, more money than I'd ever seen before. The first thing I'd done was deposit a large portion of it into my dad's bank account. Apparently, banks didn't really care who you were when you were making a deposit, just when you were taking money out. With that, the family coffers were practically bursting and we'd be able to catch up on all of the overdue bills. The next thing I'd done, was take advantage of the unwilling driver I'd been given for the day to do some real grocery shopping.
Reaching into the trunk, giddy with the sight of all the gloriously bulging plastic bags, I looped my right arm through as many of the handles as I could fit and then gathered the rest into a big bunch in my hand. I probably made a strange sight, slender girl that I was muscling all those bags in one arm so that I'd only have to make one trip, but enhanced strength had to be good for something, darn it!
Slamming the trunk, I slapped it twice with my hand and called out to my driver. "I'm all set." He leaned his head partway out and called back, the first words he'd said to me all day.
"Six thirty. Usual spot. Don't be late." Without further fanfare, he peeled out, burning rubber and shooting down the street at less-than-legal speeds.
"Good day to you too, jackass." I muttered under my breath, making my way for the front porch.
With a slightly more enthusiastic gait than normal, I made my way up the barebones ramp dad's friend Kurt had built over our front steps and dug my keys out of my pocket. Fortunately, with every bag in one arm, my other was free to unlock and open the door.
"I'm home!" I called out, stepping into the house and awkwardly shuffling in a circle with all of my bags until I could close the door. I didn't get a response, but I hadn't really expected to either. Dad had been in and out of pretty serious bouts of depression since his accident and finding out about my working with the ABB had set him off into another one. I was planning on making one of his favorite meals today in the hopes of giving him some spunk back.
Shuffling sideways out of the narrow entryway, arm of bags trailing behind me, I peeked into the living room. Dad was slumped on the couch, wheelchair pushed to the side a short distance away, and staring blankly at the television. The cable had been turned off months ago so we'd been limited to channels you could pick up with an antenna. With an excess of money in the bank though, we could afford to splurge a bit and get it turned back on. Maybe the prospect of having some real T.V. channels instead of mindless daytime talk shows would give dad something else to look forwards to.
"We've finally got some real food again!" I exclaimed, trying to pour as much emphatic joy into my tone as possible. "I've got all the ingredients to make mom's famous meatloaf! I was thinking about making it for dinner. What do you think?" Dad didn't respond, maintaining his empty vigil over the T.V. "Well, it'll probably be ready in a couple of hours, but if you get hungry before then, let me know and I'll get some snacks ready." I stood there watching him for a few more moments, struggling to keep my smile from slipping into a worried frown, before turning to step into the kitchen.
As soon as the door swung shut behind me, I carefully set my ponderous collection of bags down on the floor and let out a weary sigh. Slumping down into a chair, I reflexively ran a hand through my hair and froze when it hit the scrunchie holding my ponytail together.
"Shit!" I swore in a hushed tone, ripping the fluffy green and red accessory out of my hair and glaring at it. The last thing dad needed was having my affiliation with the ABB waved around in his face all the time. I stuffed it into my pocket and stood up to busy myself with putting away the groceries.
Now that the ABB had expanded to our neighborhood, their street thugs tended to be standing around corners in the area with increasing frequency. Openly wearing their colors helped me go about my day unmolested, not that their common members were much of a concern for me anymore, but getting stopped and harassed was a hassle. Most of the upper level members already knew about me: it seemed to be nearly impossible to keep the identity of a cape secret when they were the only white girl in your all-Asian-gang, but some of the lower street level people had yet to get the memo.
Not that I was happy that my identity was pretty much common knowledge, but there was nothing I could do about it at this point. Openly being a cape had its uses anyway. Lung's mandate about my presence in the gang had certainly gone a long way in keeping dissenters quiet, but the fear a normal person could have towards a supernaturally gifted parahuman was not to be underestimated.
After dad's accident, my motto in life had quickly become 'Make the best with what you've got' and it had been enough to get me by so far. After dropping out of school, struggling to pick up even the shittiest of jobs, and being forced to steal food on occasion, so many difficulties I'd struggled with in the past just seemed so petty now. Better to focus on the present and address problems as they reared their ugly heads rather than worry endlessly about something that I couldn't change.
Groceries stowed away just about anywhere I could find the room, (I may have gone a little overboard,) I dug out some pans and mom's old recipe book. Finally, before getting started on the actual preparations, I pulled out the cheap little MP3 player I'd bought at an electronics store a few days ago and popped in one of the ear buds. Cycling through it, I found the 'language playlist' I'd put together on the library computers yesterday and hit play.
Besides the audio files, I'd also taken out a few introductory textbooks on as many of the Asiatic languages as I could find. Featuring prominently amongst them were Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. It was probably a bit ambitious, but I had hopes for becoming at least moderately familiar with a couple of them over the course of the next few months. At the very least, I'd started to put together a notebook of useful phrases to have memorized. So far, I'd written down things like 'Someone kill the stupid white girl' and 'When she turns around, shoot this bitch in the head' among others.
It was a work in progress.
The next half hour passed by relatively pleasantly. Maybe it was just because it had been so long since we'd had ingredients to cook a real meal, but cooking was proving to be an oddly calming and therapeutic chore. Of course, it helped that the superhuman dexterity I'd displayed since gaining my power translated rather well to the handling of kitchen knives and potato peelers. Being able to take off just the right amount of skin without wasting any of the actual potato itself was a source of immense satisfaction to my well developed thrifty sensibilities.
With the meatloaf in the oven, I left the potatoes in a pot with water on the stove, waiting to be boiled once it was closer to being meal time. After setting the timer and washing my hands, I turned my attention onto my next chore for the day.
One of the braces for the legs of the kitchen table had cracked when dad slammed it with his fist, and now it leaned at an awkward angle. I had been meaning on trying to fix it sooner, but lately dad had been eating his meals on a tray table in the living room so it simply hadn't been that high of a priority. Today though, I intended to get the overdue bills squared away and having a level surface to work on would help keep me from wanting to break the table further.
Making my way to the basement, I grabbed the electric drill Kurt had left after putting together the ramp, and dug around through the pile of scrap wood for something I could use to brace the table leg. Eventually, I picked a few small rectangles of wood, a few mismatched screws of various sizes, and an extension cord for the drill. It was an older one, without the rechargeable battery pack, and had been a lifesaver for helping to install the various accessibility railings around the house. My tools selected, I headed back up to the kitchen.
I set the blocks of wood and the screws down on a chair and plugged the extension cord into the socket behind the fridge. Then, I sat down on the floor next to the table and set about trying to figure out where exactly I needed to add the blocks of wood to make it stable again. After nearly fifteen minutes of holding up various blocks at different angles, and then another ten trying to drill a screw through them without splitting the wood, the table was mostly fixed and I had resolved to get a few books on carpentry the next time I stopped by the library.
After cleaning up the mess of sawdust I'd made on the floor and putting away my supplies, I made a quick check on the meatloaf before pulling the thick black folder with all of the family's finances in it off the top of the fridge. If I didn't leave it up there, dad would worry endlessly at it, constantly shuffling through the menagerie of bills and notices as though something might have changed since the last time he'd looked. Setting it on the table, I pulled dad's checkbook out of my back pocket, updated with a far more merciful balance after my trip to the bank earlier, and sat down to take care of business.
The mortgage and utility bills were the first thing I took care of, filling out checks for the outstanding balances and even ones for the next billing cycle. I left the signature blank for dad to fill in later. The teller at the bank had told me that when I was sixteen, dad could add my name to his account and then I'd be able to sign the checks myself, but for now this system was more than good enough. Next, I wrote three checks for payments on dad's three nearly maxed out credit cards. They were only a small fraction of the overall debt, but it was a start and that's what was important. Finally, I dug out the old cable bill and pulled out my new cell phone, calling the number on the bill and starting the process of getting the service turned back on.
After a phone call that took far longer than it probably should have, I managed to get the ball rolling on reactivating our cable subscription and breathed out a sigh of relief. I felt like a weight I'd been struggling with for as long as I could remember had been lifted from my shoulders. Hopefully, dad would be equally relieved. Gathering all of the papers that had been scattered over the table back together, I packed away the folder back on top of the fridge and set the checks waiting for signatures into a neat stack.
With a glance at the timer on the stove, I realized it was about time I turned on the heat for the potatoes. That done, I dug out another small pot to heat up some canned corn in before digging dad's tray out of the cabinets and getting a plate and utensils ready. Most of the preparations done, now it was just a matter of waiting for the food to be ready, so I scooped up the stack of written checks, a pen, and went to check on dad.
He was still in his spot on the couch, blankly watching the T.V. without really taking anything in. I bustled by in front of him, grabbing his tray table from where it was leaning against the wall nearby and setting it up over his knees. That done, I carefully sat the stack of checks down in front of him and placed the pen on top.
"So," I began awkwardly, unsure of how to broach the subject and simply settling on blurting it out. "I put some money in your bank account today." He didn't react, which wasn't good, but was better than an indignant rebuttal. "There's more than enough to get us settled on the important bills for awhile with extra to spare. I actually called up the cable company to see about getting things turned back on and they said they'd send a technician over sometime next week. Finally, you'll have something other than stay-at-home mom talk shows to watch, huh?" I asked, trying to force some levity into my tone. Wordlessly, dad's gaze drifted down to the stack of checks.
"Anyway," I soldiered on. "I went through the bills and wrote out checks for the big ones. You just need to sign them and I'll bring them to the mailbox when I go out later. Pretty soon we'll be able to leave the phone plugged in again." He reached out listlessly, grabbing the pen and slowly beginning to add his name to the waiting stack. "Well, dinner will be ready in a few minutes. I'll bring it in when it's done and grab the checks." Bending down, I scooped up his reusable water bottle off the couch next to him to refill and readjusted the phone from where it had sunk between the cushions.
"I'll probably be going out for awhile later, but I picked up a cell phone earlier today in case you need me while I'm gone." Internally I winced, fearing that news of me getting a cell phone might be what set him off into another angry tirade. He hadn't been fond of them since mom had been killed while talking on one in the car and I was worried it might be enough to get him all riled up again. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, he didn't even acknowledge it, continuing to work his way through the stack of waiting checks in silence. "I'll tape the number to the back of the handset, so it'll be there if you need anything."
My piece said, I hurried back into the kitchen to wash and refill dad's water bottle and to put the finishing touches on dinner.
