Chapter Two: Teddy
Disclaimer: Fun and games only.
"Joan Watson?"
A woman wearing an ill-fitting suit stands on the top step of the brownstone stoop, a clipboard in her hand. From the open doorway, Joan notes the woman's sensible shoes, her lack of make-up, her tired demeanor. The only thing stylish is her hair—tight curls pulled back with a headband.
The clipboard suggests she's not here as a potential client. A pollster? Possible, though something about that conclusion feels off. Joan opens the door wider.
"Yes. Can I help you?"
"I'm LaWanda Stewart from the Truancy Task Force. Your son was identified by the New York City Department of Education as a student with chronic attendance issues. Can I come in?"
"I'm sorry," Joan says. "You have the wrong information. I don't have a son."
"You are Joan Watson?"
'Yes, but—"
"My records show that you are the mother of Teddy Thompson, a freshman at Bushwick Community High School."
"No, I don't have a—wait. Did you say Teddy Thompson?"
"You enrolled him at Bushwick on September 3rd of last year. Here's your signature." LaWanda Stewart angles the clipboard toward Joan.
"There's been a mistake, but come in. We need to sort this out." Joan steps back and LaWanda Stewart follows her. Motioning to her to sit on the sofa, Joan perches on the chair opposite and leans forward.
"I know Teddy Thompson, but I assure you, he's not my son."
"According to my records he is."
For the first time Joan begins to feel annoyed. The bureaucratic mindset on display—LaWanda Stewart unable or unwilling to bend.
"You said he has attendance issues. Is he in trouble?"
LaWanda Stewart purses her lips and nods. "He was absent 17 days in the first semester alone, but since the winter break, he's been out 30 of the last 45 days. Ms. Watson, research shows that children who miss more than 20 days of school are at serious risk of dropping out."
"Yes," Joan says, trying to keep the impatience out of her voice, "I know all that. I agree. Teddy needs to be in school."
"If there's a health issue we need to address—"
"I'm not sure, but I don't think there is."
LaWanda Stewart's expression goes sour. "You don't know?" She sets her clipboard on her lap with too much emphasis and says, "I see."
Suddenly patience seems less of a virtue. Joan stands up and, a beat later, LaWanda Stewart does, too.
"Ms. Watson, you have a legal responsibility to make sure your son gets to school. My responsibility is to remind you of that. If you need any help, you can call one of the numbers here."
She thrusts a folded flier at Joan and lets herself out the front door.
In the kitchen, Sherlock is on his knees wiping out the refrigerator, bottles and plastic containers of leftovers in a semi-circle on the floor around him. He glances up briefly as Joan enters and sits at the table.
"We had company," Sherlock says.
"The truant officer. Did you know that Teddy's telling people I'm his mother? Or at least that's what he told the officials at his school. Gave them this address as his home."
"Teddy the former pickpocket-slash-street urchin who lives with his adult sister and her two toddlers? That Teddy?"
"He hasn't been going to school, apparently. I hope something hasn't happened to him."
Straightening, Sherlock says, "Shouldn't be difficult to find out. We know his actual address. A visit to his sister would resolve the matter."
"Wouldn't it be easier just to call Teddy? Or text him? Don't you have his phone number?"
"In point of fact," Sherlock says, pulling his phone from his pocket and thumbing the screen, "I have not been in communication with Teddy in some time. The last time we spoke was—" He squints at his phone. "…May 24th, right before I left for London. He asked if I had some work he might do to earn money to buy birthday gifts for his twin nephews."
"I remember that," Joan says. "Didn't you have him counting the number of unlicensed cabs versus licensed ones trolling for fares near the Brooklyn Bridge Park? The licensed guys were being put out of business but the taxi commission insisted the infractions were too few to investigate. Didn't Teddy figure out that the licensed guys were right? That the ratio of unlicensed cabs to the legit ones was incredibly high?"
"1.75 to 1, in fact. If the cabbies of New York ever do actually hire me, I can produce the data. Teddy's gathering it was a completely spurious task, of course," Sherlock says, "designed to give him practice in algebraic equations. It was interesting, however, to see how many wildcat taxis operate in the area. I seriously underestimated the number."
Sherlock's eyes are on his phone but Joan sees him dart a look at her before turning away.
"So," she says, grinning, "you admit that you threw Teddy a bone out of the goodness of your heart."
"I have no idea what you are talking about," Sherlock says. "Although most higher maths are not essential to the ordinary person, a rudimentary knowledge of algebra is helpful. I was merely offering Teddy an opportunity to make a practical application of an abstraction. That he was also paid is incidental." He puts the phone to his ear and tips his head to the side, obviously listening. In a moment he pulls the phone away and shakes his head.
"No answer," he says. "A trip to Bushwick might be in order after all."
X
Leaving Sherlock to finish cleaning, Joan takes the B38 bus to the Bushwick Avenue stop and walks the rest of the way to the yellow brick walk-up where Teddy's sister Sharlaine lives. As much to Joan's surprise as to her relief, Sharlaine is home, inviting Joan in with a weariness that speaks of small children and long hours at work. Short and with dark features that remind Joan of Teddy, Sharlaine picks up a stack of papers from one end of a couch.
"I really don't know why you came," she says. "I don't know where he is half the time."
"Have you see Teddy today?" Joan says. From another room comes the sound of children laughing, then a bump and a scuff and a piercing wail.
"Just a minute," Sharlaine says, walking out. Idly Joan listens as Sharlaine scolds and comforts in equal measure what must be her two sons, the nephews Teddy told Sherlock he wanted to buy birthday gifts for. When she comes back, Sharlaine has a tattered bookbag in her hand.
"I can tell when he's at school," she says, handing the bookbag to Joan. "He takes this with him. See, there's some of his school books in there. Sometimes we go for days without crossing paths. He comes home after I'm in bed and I leave the next morning before he does." She glances up as if expecting Joan to say something. "I make him get up for school, but after I leave for work, I don't know what he does. You try to make a teenager do something, see how far you get."
"Teddy's what—14?" Joan pulls out one of the textbooks from the bookbag and flips through it. A physics book, and from the looks of it, extensive. Nothing watered down about it. She pulls out another, a chemistry book. It, too, looks challenging.
"Turned 15 last month," Sharlaine says. "I warned him about the truant officers. I knew they'd come looking for him."
"Does he have friends? Do you know where he hangs out?"
Again Sharlaine frowns. She shakes her head and says, "Look, I know you are trying to be helpful, but Teddy has a mind of his own. If he's in trouble, it's because he's making bad choices for himself. He's almost an adult. He has to be responsible sometime."
Before she can stop herself, Joan blurts out, "He's barely 15. That's still a kid!"
Sharlaine crosses her arms. "That might be true in your world," she says, the weight of what she doesn't say filling up the space between them. "But all Teddy's got is me."
Mary Watson wasn't exactly a Tiger Mom, but she was close. Music lessons, dance classes, a tutor when Joan's calculus grade started to slip, trips to Europe when she and Oren were kids—all orchestrated by a mother who wouldn't take no for an answer. Still, at 15 Joan had been free to make the kinds of mistakes that kids make—an ill-advised summer romance, a stint of cigarette smoking on the sly.
"I don't mean to pry," Joan says. "But if I can help—"
Sharlaine's expression softens. "I'll talk to him. I'll tell him that the school people were around to your place. That's all I can do, you know? It's really up to him."
X X
Teddy sees Joan Watson as soon as he rounds the corner. She's standing at the intersection near his apartment, one hand in the air to hail a cab. Stepping back and letting the crowd part around him, Teddy makes sure she doesn't see him. He isn't positive she would make a scene, but she might—and he doesn't need his boys, Lavar and Jess, to see that. Not when they're already pressing him to help again with the scamming.
"We were lucky it was Holmes caught us. Anybody else woulda turned us in." He's said this so often to his boys that they roll their eyes when he starts. So far it's all good, but one day Teddy knows they will decide they've had enough and they'll walk away. Then where will he be?
It's all Holmes' fault, too. What good is a pickpocket with a conscience? Or if not a conscience, exactly—because those cats he used to lift from had plenty to spare and probably never missed anything he took—then a healthy respect for the law. Or a fear of it. Or of Holmes. Because he'd find out if Teddy started scamming with his boys again. Somehow he'd know.
Joan Watson lets a gypsy cab pass by and waits for a licensed yellow cab to pull to the curb. As soon as it pulls back into traffic, Teddy gives a sigh of relief. Lavar punches him in the shoulder.
"What's that for?" Teddy says, ducking out of the way as Lavar fakes with his left. Jess joins in, giving Teddy's head a slap too hard to go unremarked on. "Hey, man, lighten up!"
Their hijinks catch the attention of a doorman standing outside one of the recently renovated apartment buildings facing the avenue. Lots of young couples have moved in recently—increasingly Teddy has to dodge their baby carriages on the sidewalk—and the doorman is a new addition. Gentrification. Teddy's heard his sister complaining that the rent will rise now that the hipsters are moving in.
"Hey, you kids! Stop horsing around!" the doorman calls out. Lavar and Jess shrug and hurry on, but Teddy plants his feet and puts his hands on his hips.
"Ain't none of your business what we do!"
"Beat it," the doorman says in an almost normal tone of voice this time, which Teddy accepts as a victory of sorts.
He considers passing his sister's house and crashing at Lavar's place tonight, but Sharlaine is waiting for him on the steps, Tyler and LJ playing at her feet with a dusty set of Legos.
"'Bout time you came home," she says as he walks up. "I need to talk to you."
"I already saw her. Ms. Watson was here."
"Why'd you tell the school you lived with her? You ashamed of me?"
Scuffing one toe on the sidewalk, Teddy shakes his head. "I didn't want them bugging you if something came up."
"Oh, something came up alright," Sharlaine says loudly. "You're gonna fail if you don't start going to school."
"I go. Just lately I had that cold and I stayed home."
Sharlaine snorts in disbelief. "You look fine to me now. What you been doing instead of going? Hustling in the park, I reckon."
"No, I ain't. I told you I quit after Holmes turned me loose."
"You don't go to school, you don't graduate. You don't graduate, you don't get a job. What you gonna do then? Go back to stealing in the park? You listen to me. Stop whatever this is you are doing and go back to school."
It's no use talking to Sharlaine. He understands her—he really does. She's scared he's going to end up like their dad, a bum on the street somewhere. But she doesn't understand him at all. High school isn't like middle school. It's a big pond filled with two kinds of fish—minnows and sharks, and Teddy isn't a shark.
His phone, for instance, the one he bought with money he earned from selling knock-off watches to tourists. Two months ago some Dominican kids shoved him to the floor in the gym locker room and bent his wrist back until he cried out. Then they took his phone and the cross necklace his sister had given him at Christmas. He'd known better than to tell anyone.
He wasn't being bullied—not exactly—but he was getting hustled of any money he carried. Two guys or three—one would shove him in the hall against the lockers while the others felt inside his pockets. Teddy started putting his lunch money in his shoes but one day they stole those, too—new red Jordan Instigators, the only pair he'd been able to find anywhere, two sizes too large but that was okay. Stuffed the toes with toilet paper and he was good to go.
If Officer Prescott was a straight up guy Teddy might have ratted out his tormentors, but the School Resource Officer was unreadable. Sometimes he seemed interested in the kids, asking them questions and being friendly.
But more often he stayed in his office with the door shut, either on the phone or his computer, coming out only after the dismissal bell at the end of the day, watching the students filing through the metal detectors on their way out of the building, his arms crossed over his ample belly.
The next morning Sharlaine means business when she shakes him awake. Teddy doesn't try to argue with her but gets up without a word, pours himself a bowl of cereal, and hunches over it at the kitchen table, one eye on LJ and Tyler as they bite designs in their toast and giggle.
His plan is to make a show of getting ready and then going back to bed after Sharlaine leaves to drop the twins at the sitter's on her way to work. This morning, however, she outmaneuvers him.
"I told my boss I'd be a little late today," she says as Teddy rinses out his cereal bowl. "So I'm not in any hurry. We'll walk with you. Won't that be fun, boys?"
LJ and Tyler leap around the kitchen while Teddy gives Sharlaine a jaundiced look.
"Don't walk with me. You'll embarrass me," he says. "I said I was going and I'm going."
With a sigh, Sharlaine says, "I hope that's true."
Slipping his bookbag over his shoulder before Sharlaine follows through on her threat, he waves goodbye and heads out the door.
Technically he's telling the truth. He is going to school. He's just not going inside.
X X X
"Is this what American students call a field trip?"
Sherlock speaks as softly as he can, but he catches Teddy off guard. Seated in one of the cushioned chairs in the main reading room of the Brooklyn Public Library, Teddy yelps and drops the book in his hand.
"Man, what are you doing here?" Teddy's tone is both annoyed and surprised.
"As this is during school hours, I believe I should ask the same of you," Sherlock says. Teddy looks away and shrugs.
"You talked to my sister."
"I did not. I talked to your school principal."
"What!" Teddy's alarm draws the attention of two other patrons who turn and cast disapproving glances. "Are you trying to get me in trouble?"
"You are doing that well enough without my help," Sherlock says, rocking forward on the balls of his feet. "Do you intend to spend your entire high school career hiding in the library?"
"I'm not hiding," Teddy says. "I'm just reading."
"They don't allow you to read at school?"
"Look, man, school just isn't for me, okay? Why do you care anyway? I thought you left the country already. Went back home or something."
From the corner of his eye Sherlock sees a woman behind a desk motioning to a security guard.
"Perhaps we could discuss this better over a cup of tea." He motions to Teddy to get up as the security guard starts in their direction.
"I don't like tea."
"Something else then. Whatever you choose."
The security guard's hand hovers over his sidearm as he strides closer. Surely he doesn't consider Sherlock a danger? On the other hand, tangling with the authorities would be time-consuming and unproductive.
"If you're just going to lecture me about going to school—"
"I do not lecture. I present facts."
The security guard is now a few meters away.
"Sir, is there a problem?" And then without waiting for an answer, the guard turns to Teddy. "Son, are you okay?"
"Officer," Sherlock says quickly, "I'm having a private conversation with my…associate."
"Your what?"
"There's nothing untoward going on, other than a case of chronic school truancy that I am attempting to address."
The security guard takes a step closer and Teddy hops up. "It's okay. We're good. Sorry for the noise."
He picks his bookbag from the floor and heads toward the door, Sherlock close behind. As soon as they get outside, Teddy says, "I need a mocha frappuccino after all that."
The coffee shop around the corner is small and crowded inside but the few round tables on the sidewalk are free. Sherlock and Teddy take their drinks there and sit. For a few moments they sip in silence, the only noise the foot traffic and cars passing by.
Teddy is the first to speak.
"So how come you're all up in my business anyway?"
"Two reasons," Sherlock says. "Watson says you, despite your attempts to appear otherwise, are actually a very bright student. Gifted even."
Teddy snorts. "How would she know that?"
"Your textbooks. Most freshmen take introductory science classes, yet you have in your satchel a rather difficult physics book and a college chemistry text. You would not be enrolled in those classes unless your teachers and counselors believed you were capable of the work."
Teddy fingers the plastic lid of his coffee cup. "So what? I like science. That's all."
"Furthermore," Sherlock adds, "you are being bullied at school. Don't try to deny it. I recognize the signs. A bright kid starts missing things—your phone, for instance. Where is it? Like most adolescents you were, the last time I saw you, tied to your phone with the ubiquitous earbud umbilical cord. It was never out of your hand. Yet where is it now?"
"I lost it." Teddy's voice resonates with false bravado.
"Did you lose your shoes as well? No self-respecting teenager with any means at all would wear generic sneakers from a department store bin, yet here you are."
He tips his palm down at Teddy's white tennis shoes.
Sherlock places his hands around his cup. "You have nothing to be ashamed of. The boys who did this to you, they are the ones who have much to account for."
For a moment he considers sharing his story. An intelligent boy targeted for being smart and aware—and silent. His silence was borne of fear and a sense of futility, the adults in his life blithely dismissing the bumps and bruises as boys being boys, the long history and tradition of English boarding school life.
Except, of course, that cruelty isn't particular to a place or time. And now here's Teddy, looking at him with justified skepticism.
Another moment passes, and then Teddy says, "I'm still not going back. Nothing's changed."
"That may be true," Sherlock says. "But you should know that when I spoke to your principal today, I reminded him that the safety of his students is paramount, and if that is being violated, it will be investigated."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I suggested that the SRO at your school—"
"Officer Prescott."
"—Officer Prescott might be spending time on his computer at work visiting inappropriate websites—"
"He's looking at porn? How do you know?"
"—and that an examination of his Internet searches might be in order and a new schedule of more active patrolling the hallways established. I also suggested that the newly donated surveillance cameras be installed as soon as possible in the hallways that currently have none."
"What newly donated surveillance cameras?"
"And as for you," Sherlock says, locking eyes with Teddy, "while there's no guarantee you can change the people who might want to hurt you, you can, at least, learn to defend yourself."
Teddy's face tips up. "You're gonna teach me to fight?"
"I will do no such thing. Such an undertaking requires more time and attention than I have to give."
"Then how—"
"There is, however, a youth boxing program at the gym near your home. The owner owes me a favor and has agreed to take you on as a student, provided that you are passing all of your classes at school."
"That's bribery!"
"Call it what you will. I think of it as an opportunity."
X X X
"Why haven't you been answering your phone? I was beginning to worry!" Joan stands at the stove ladling soup into bowls. Sherlock slides into a chair and watches as she sets a bowl in front of him.
"I no longer have my phone," he says, his voice oddly distant. "I will replace it tomorrow."
"What happened?"
"Who knows? Technology is wonderful except when it isn't."
It's an observation she's heard him make before, but this time it sounds perfunctory rather than impassioned, as if his mind is elsewhere.
"Did you get to the school? Did you find out what's going on?"
Sherlock dips his spoon in his soup. "A lazy SRO, primarily, who needed some prodding to do his job properly."
"And you accomplished that how?" Joan slides into the chair opposite Sherlock.
"I assured the principal that a lawsuit was a certainty if our son's safety continued to be compromised."
Joan pauses, spoon in the air.
"You said Teddy was our son?"
"It seemed easier that way. The school records show you are his mother. In your absence I had to find equal legitimacy. Voila, Teddy became our shared progeny. It worked. The principal is taking us seriously. And Teddy has agreed to return to school."
"That's good news! When you said you wanted to talk to him alone, I wasn't sure he'd be so cooperative."
"Oh ye of little faith, Watson." His voice is still distant, almost sad.
"Are you okay?"
"I told Teddy that on Saturdays he could come round to see if I need his help with some chemistry experiments. You don't mind?"
"No, of course not. Why do you even think you need to ask?"
"It just seems that he might need some more adults in his life at the moment," Sherlock says. "Adults who won't let him down, the way too many do."
It's the kind of admission Sherlock makes from time to time about his own boyhood—a hinted-at neglect, a betrayal by people who should have cared for him instead. She starts to tell him she understands, that she's sorry, but she calls back her words from the brink. Despite the pain of losing her father to mental illness, her life has been balanced by adults who cared for her with a fierceness that sometimes threatened to overwhelm her. What can she know—what can she truly know—about the loneliness and betrayals that make Sherlock who he is.
A/N: IMLTHO, second chapters are always the least reviewed of any story. Thanks for proving me wrong!
You remember Teddy from "M," the young boy Holmes had trailing Sebastian Moran. I'm not sure anyone calls him by name in the episode, but the actor, Bobb'e Thompson, is credited as playing the character called TEDDY. In my fic, he also gives his last name to Teddy.