TICKET
It's a long road to becoming James Tiberius Kirk. This is the beginning of that road.
The freshman class goes on a field trip to the shipyards. The trees are turning orange, and the endless cornfields are amber with autumn. Jimmy sits alone in the back of the rowdy bus and watches them go by. Sam sits at the front of the bus, laughing raucously with his rebellious friends. He will go home for the weekend with his friend Ricky. Jimmy knows Sam resents him for being in the same year as him. He says that Jimmy is making him look stupid. Jimmy thinks—but doesn't say—that Sam is smarter than him, just lazy.
Jimmy gets off the bus at the end of his driveway by himself. He walks to the door and discovers that Frank has changed the code for the keypad on the front door, and Jimmy can't get in the house.
He wanders off into the woods and spends the night in the hollow of an overturned poplar. He eats raw pumpkin seeds from the now-overgrown pumpkin patch he'd started with Grammy Cleo. It's too cold to be sleeping outside, and he shivers and wakes up every half hour all night. When morning comes, he goes back to the house and sits down in front of the door. He pushes buttons and fiddles and fidgets until he's figured out how the keypad works. He gets a screwdriver and pulls the faceplate off to look at the wires inside. He puts it back together.
And then he hacks into the keypad and opens the door. It's six at night and he's been at it for ten hours when he finally makes it into the house. Frank is out drinking tonight instead of lazing amidst the bottles on the couch, so Jimmy makes it safely to bed.
The next day he goes to the library and looks up everything he can find on computer hacking.
Winona Kirk is due back from her three year mission just after thanksgiving. They have three days off from school, and she is supposed to be back on Earth the day before classes start again. Even Frank seems cheerier at the thought of her return, and doesn't hit Jimmy for the week before her shuttle is scheduled to arrive. All three of them get in the car together for the first time in the years Frank has been their guardian, and he drives them to the airfield attached to the shipyard.
They wait in the arrival bay with other eager families. They watch as the shuttle lands, and a flood of uniforms disembark. Jimmy actually smiles, looking for his mother. They watch tearful and joyous reunions alike, but they see no Winona Kirk. They wait for two hours.
Finally, Frank's com buzzes with a brief video message. It's Winona. She's signed up for another year's tour.
Sam doesn't say anything. He just gets up and storms out of the terminal. None of them know where he's going. It doesn't seem to matter, anyways.
He doesn't know it, but Jimmy will never see his older brother again.
Frank looks furious. He grabs Jimmy's arm hard enough to bruise and drags him back to the car. When they get to the house, Frank smashes Jimmy so hard against the kitchen wall that he sees spots and knows he has a concussion. He kicks Frank in the chest and feels his lowermost right rib crack. Frank swears.
And then he breaks Jimmy's left leg.
Later, Jimmy looks at a calendar and figures out when his mother is supposed to be back this time. He picks up a red pen to mark the date, but then he hesitates. He leaves the day unmarked. It's the right call: a year later, there's a message on Frank's com saying she's signed up for another five years. Frank is too lazy to bother getting a divorce, even though he would like to be rid of Jimmy.
Jimmy would like to be rid if Frank, too.