Chapter Fifty-one
Wheel of Misfortune
It took the ride attendants over half an hour to fix whatever the problem was. Tommy reflected upon disembarking that it was hard to tell if the first or second time was better. Billy, Adam, Conner and Ethan were slightly disgruntled, but Trini, far from being incoherent after the disaster, was practically bouncing with cheerfulness, and Jason just couldn't stop smirking (Trent, however, had the good grace to look embarrassed). Zack seemed to be doing much better with Sandra than he'd done with the girl he'd picked up the first time, and Rachel and Rocky were flirting happily as they made their way down the platform.
As soon as they reached the platform, Kimberly managed to sucker Tommy into lending her (emphasis on lending, he assured her) his belt to rig up a harness for Jake, so that Jake could ride on Kimberly's back. He did this mostly because Jake had already shed enough on Tommy's black pants and dark green shirt, and he felt a bit better after they discovered Jake was just too big for one belt and Jason and Adam both contributed to the creation of the stuffed animal harness, which created a large crowd of hopeful onlookers. The four tagalongs they'd acquired remarked that it was both unbelievably strange and yet an awesomely hysterical idea; Kimberly kept nervously asking if it was safe, but Billy and Trini were both working on the project and assured her that Jake would be fine. Kimberly now looked like an intended victim in a bad horror movie, what with the huge bear on her back, arms outstretched as if to tackle her from behind.
The deciding vote cast was in favor of the second time on the wheel, however. More than anything else, it was nice to see Anna again, and she'd had a lot more cotton candy this time. She'd been one in a long line of random people sucked into his world for a short while before wandering off into the sunset—rather like Smitty before he'd become Zeltrax, or Diane—and Tommy had often wondered what had happened to her and thought about things like if her older sister still tried to lock her in the cabinet. (Anna laughed when he brought this up, and said that her sister had straightened out quite a bit.) Between the cotton candy and his run-in with her, Tommy figured it wasn't all that bad after all, and even overlooked the fact that his pants were slipping a bit and Conner was now holding hands with Dee.
They hopped the chairlift after the Ferris wheel, which had been Trent's idea and earned him a lot of teasing comments from Conner and Ethan about wanting more alone time with Kira. Zack's "chaos girls" accompanied them, as did Anna.
While Sandra seemed to be slowly catching on to the fact that Zack was an all-talk sort of guy, she didn't really bother to care. Rocky had found a common ground with Rachel, who, like him, couldn't cook but loved to eat. And Conner was thoroughly enjoying Dee, who seemed a little weird, but otherwise enjoyable. Best of all, she was good-looking enough for Conner's standards, although she was definitely the first girl with green hair and a Sharpie around her neck that he'd ever hit on.
"So are you from around here?" Dee asked him.
"Nah. Reefside. We're just in town for Power Rangers Day. Me, Trent, Kira, Ethan and Dr. O, anyway. The others are all Dr. O's friends."
"Dr. O?"
"Yeah."
"Is he a real doctor?"
"Uh, yeah. He's got a degree in paleontology or something. I think."
"So he's not your doctor?"
"No, of course not. He's my… um… moth—brother. My brother." Conner winced slightly. After that bit with Billy's father, Tommy had told people not to mention that Tommy was his science teacher. However, Conner hadn't bothered thinking up a good alternative. Oh, well. At least "brother" was better than "mother."
"Then why do you call him 'Dr. O?'" she asked curiously.
"Oh, ah… it's a nickname. Kim gave it to him." Note to self, Conner thought, never tell Dr. O I said that.
Dee giggled. "That's… descriptive."
"Heh," Conner said sheepishly. Dr. O's going to kill me for this, Conner said, scanning the carnival for hiding places automatically.
"So… do you take after your brother?"
"Huh?" Conner asked, snapping back to attention.
"Do you take after your brother?" she repeated in a rather suggestive tone.
Conner warred with himself for a moment. On the one hand, he was starting to get a vague feel for why Kira, Ethan and Trent were so disgusted by the thought of Tommy having a sex life. On the other hand, he had a reputation to protect.
"The guy's hopeless compared to me," Conner told her confidentially. Girl's bathroom behind the kamikaze ride. I could probably lose him near the pirate ship and hunker down in a stall. He'd never think to look for me in the girl's bathroom. Even though his hiding place was confirmed, he decided it was time to maneuver their discussion into safer waters. "So, where are you from?" he asked.
"Er… around. I'm on the road a lot."
"Yeah? Why's that?"
"Ever hear of the Sharpie Graffiti Girls of Doom?"
"No…"
Meanwhile, Tommy was using the chairlift as an opportunity to chat some more with Anna. The moment they were off the ground he suddenly reverted to the exact same Tommy he'd been the first time he met her, and every last one of his frustrations about Kimberly came pouring out to Anna.
Anna thought for a while after hearing the full story, then said, quite plainly, "So why aren't you with her?"
"I just told you, she dumped me," Tommy said, a little confused.
Anna grinned at him. "Come on. That's no excuse. Just about every boyfriend my sister ever had got dumped at some point, and none of them just let it lie. They were all back the next day, pleading, sobbing on the porch, that sort of thing."
"I'm not going to sob on Kim's porch," Tommy said firmly.
"Hey, it worked for some of them. Especially the ones who would catch me on the porch."
"Catch you?" Tommy echoed.
"If I didn't make it inside fast enough, they'd try to talk to me, plead their case with my sister through me. If I thought they had a good point, I usually put in a good word with Em. Most of the time, though, I'd just give them advice and cheer them up. I became a real psychologist after that day with you." She chuckled. "I'll never forget the time my parents came home to find me, all of ten years old, sitting on the railing, jotting down notes in my social studies workbook, with some guy lying on the porch swing like it was a therapist's couch, telling me all about his inferiority complex and why he was angry at his father."
Tommy laughed. "What did your parents say?"
"That I ought to start charging." She grinned. "Anyway, what I'm saying is, do what you want."
"How so?"
"If you want to be with this Kim girl, ask her out and don't give up until she says yes."
"I don't know if I want to be with Kim," Tommy told her.
She snorted. "Yeah? Cuz to everyone else, it's pretty obvious."
"Well, to all your third-grade classmates, it was pretty obvious that you were in love with Mikey Torrance," he shot back.
She looked him square in the eye. "We broke up last summer. We were together a year and a half."
"That proves nothing," Tommy said sulkily.
"Riiiiight." Anna patted his shoulder. "Things'll work themselves out, Tommy. No one is meant to be unhappy forever."
"I didn't say I was unhappy."
She shrugged. "Don't have to be an unhappy person to be unhappy about certain things."
Tommy smiled faintly and said, in the exact manner of the first two words she'd ever spoken to him, "You're weird."
"Yup," Anna said, laughing.
"So whatever happened to your sister?" Tommy asked, figuring it was time to steer the conversation to safer topics.
"Eh, we moved to Angel Grove when I was eleven, and she got a bit less antiestablishment somewhere along the line. Married a guy named Rick about three years after high school."
"Ever give him psychological advice?"
"I'm the whole reason they got together. Turns out he'd been really skittish about dating after some guy beat the crap out of him in his sophomore year, something about the guy was jealous of Rick, and Rick's girl ended up leaving him for the guy who beat him up."
"Relationships are freakish things," Tommy said emphatically.
Anna was quiet for a moment. Then she asked, "Speaking of, is that one guy seeing anyone? Ethan, I think you said his name was?"
Tommy stared at her for a moment. "Ethan?"
"Yeah. Wearing almost all-blue?"
Tommy shook his head. "I don't know. I know he took some girl to his prom a few weeks ago, but I haven't heard anything about her since."
"Prom? How old is he?"
"Um… seventeen or eighteen."
She tilted her head to the side. "Isn't that, like, six or seven years younger than you, or so?" He nodded. "How do you know him? Another Ferris wheel get stuck?"
"Um… long story," Tommy said, shifting a bit. "Oh, look, Rocky and Rachel are getting off. We're almost to the end of the line."
"You still owe me for the cotton candy."
"I know, I know. I'll pay up when we're back on the ground; don't want to drop my wallet up here."
Tommy and Anna were the last to hit the ground. Zack, Conner and Rocky were clustered together with their new friends, while Trent, Kira and Ethan stood nearby, making fun of Conner's dating tactics. Jason and Adam, meanwhile, were snickering at Kimberly, Billy and Trini as the three of them tried to refasten Kimberly's harness for Jake, as she'd had to remove it to ride the chairlift.
"Zack's doing the 'call me' thing," Kimberly reported as Tommy and Anna approached.
"Ah. That's nice," Tommy said. For Zack, "Call me" meant he wanted to see her again. "I'll call you" meant "I can't walk away fast enough."
Ethan wandered over. "Excuse me while I put a lot of distance between me and Conner in date mode," he groaned. "There are some things just born to be mocked."
"Got elbowed a lot, huh?" Jason said wisely.
"Yup. You're… Anna, right?" Ethan said, looking at her curiously.
"Yeah. Ethan?" He nodded. She smiled and started to say something else, but Trini interrupted.
"Hey, Ethan—are you wearing a belt?" she asked.
"Hello, questions you aren't normally asked," Adam quipped, looking resentfully at his belt, which Trini was connecting to Jason's.
"No, I'm not," Ethan said quickly, rolling his jeans waistband down to cover his belt.
"Darn. Go get Conner for me."
Ethan reluctantly headed back over to Conner, and the rest of Conner's group, plus Kira and Trent, came back over with him. Conner's belt was added to the harness (though Trent hastily followed Ethan's example) and finally the group decided it was time to pick a new ride.
"Merry-go-round's right over there," Zack said eagerly.
"That's the weirdest merry-go-round I've ever seen," Conner breathed. "We have got to ride it."
"We're all a little old for merry-go-rounds, don't you think?" Kimberly asked.
"Says the girl with a giant stuffed animal strapped to her back," Jason said, amused.
Kimberly grinned. "Got a point there. Let's go."
The twelve ex-Rangers and Anna headed for the merry-go-round, which was indeed quite weird. Rather than the standard horses, or even the quaint fantasy animals, the merry-go-round seemed to have every random animal that didn't belong anywhere near a merry-go-round. Kimberly hopped on the back of a rather sinister-looking raccoon, and Trini jumped on the snake next to her. In pairs they boarded the ludicrous animals; Anna, to Tommy's slight discomfort, sat on a bat next to Ethan's pegasus, so Tommy climbed onto a rabbit right behind them, Jason getting on the elk next to him and muttering about people monopolizing his wife's time.
"Should I be worried?" Tommy asked, nodding at Ethan as the carousel lurched to life, blaring mind-numbing music.
Jason shrugged. "You're not worried about Conner. Why worry about Ethan?"
"I'm not worried about Conner because he's got a knack for putting his foot in his mouth," Tommy said dryly. "The girl he went to prom with chucked a sandwich at his head and stomped off halfway through Kira's first set. Ethan's not exactly a girl magnet, but on the other hand that's what worries me."
"Bro, I know you're worried about what Ethan's parents think of you, but if they're cool enough to let the kid leave the city for a week with a science teacher on a trip that isn't school related, then when he goes back home to his mommy and daddy I don't think they'll be paying much attention to his new female pen pal in Stone Canyon. Let the kid have fun," Jason said with a shrug. "Someone ought to get to," he muttered darkly. He scanned what little of the group he could see. "Hey! How come everyone's got a girl but us?"
Tommy blinked. Rocky, Zack and Conner were chatting to their respective chaos girl. Ethan was talking to Anna; every so often Tommy could hear a snippet of computer slang over the loud, annoying music. Trent and Kira, he knew, were somewhere together on the other side of the wheel. Feeling slightly put-out by the revelation that he alone was extremely single, he twisted around in his seat to see Adam riding a frog and talking to Billy, who was on a buffalo.
"Billy and Adam don't," Tommy pointed out in relief, filing away jokes for future reference about "Buffalo Bill" and Adam's spirit animal.
"Only cuz Tanya's on another continent and Cestria's on another planet," Jason grumbled. "Everyone's got a girl but us."
But me, you mean, Tommy thought suddenly. Sure, Sandra, Rachel, Dee and Anna were probably fair-weather encounters, but despite Conner, Zack and Rocky's tendencies to have relationships implode early-on, they had a knack for picking girls up. Adam and even Billy were as good as married. Trent had been with Kira for over seven months now. And Jason was so happily married he bitching because his wife was more than ten feet away.
Tommy swallowed hard, staring at Kimberly, riding her demented raccoon four seats up with her giant pink bear still strapped to her back. Then he glanced at Trini. Trini, happily married to Jason. Tommy and Kimberly, alone. It never ceased to amaze him how wrong things had gone since high school.
"Do you know his name?" Tommy said suddenly.
Jason froze. Oh, god. Please don't let him be asking what I think he's asking, Jason thought in horror. "Whose name?" he asked carefully.
Tommy gave him a no-nonsense look. "You do, don't you."
Jason swallowed. "The guy from the letter, huh." Tommy nodded grimly, and Jason sighed heavily. "Tony."
Tommy frowned. Kimberly had talked about a Tony in her letters, he was sure of it. But he couldn't remember just who Tony was. There had been a lot of people mentioned in her letters, though she'd never once alluded to wanting to date any of them. Besides, he hadn't read any of her letters in a very long time.
Six weeks after he'd started dating Kat, they'd been making out in his room and at some point she'd pulled back and started to reach for the hem of his shirt. Then she'd glanced over his shoulder and suddenly jumped off the bed and wanted to leave. At first, Tommy had just figured she'd gotten scared, and he hadn't wanted her to feel pressured, so he'd let her go. Once she was gone, he'd turned around, instinctively wondering if she'd seen something that had upset her, and his gaze had landed on his bulletin board full of pictures and ticket stubs and drawings and such. Near the middle was a strip of pictures from one of those two-person photo booths. The top two were of Tommy and Kimberly smiling, and the bottom two were of them kissing, and rather heatedly at that.
In a fit of rage, Tommy had thrown everything Kim-related into a cardboard box. His room was suddenly only half-decorated; three years had built up a lot of mementos. Every letter she'd sent, every note she'd passed in class, everything she'd bought him, all the souvenirs and gifts and pictures were all put into that box and it was years before he'd opened it again. He'd gone through the box periodically over the years, reminding himself of Kimberly before shoving all the memories back in the box and putting it back on its literal and metaphorical shelf. But Kat had been rather pleased to walk into his room a few days later and find it completely empty of Kimberly reminders—at least, she had been until his mom had caught them and he'd been forbidden to see her for the next month.
"Which one was Tony?" Tommy asked quietly.
"Just… some guy," Jason half-whispered.
"Male gymnast?" Tommy inquired grimly.
"No, actually, uh… janitor."
Tommy nearly fell off his rabbit, and would have if it hadn't been for the reins. "She left Tommy the Power Ranger for Tony the janitor?" he hissed incredulously.
"Kinda… pun-like when you think about it," Jason said sheepishly, cringing. "I don't know if he was a janitor, exactly, but he cleaned up and did repair work in her dorm."
"Did you ever meet him?"
Jason shook his head. "No. Lucky for him." Tommy smiled faintly at that. "But she showed me a picture."
"Was he better-looking than me?" Tommy asked in spite of himself.
"Uh, no," Jason said, eyes darting about in search of an escape route as he wondered how he had wound up in this conversation. "He was short, she said. More… her height." Jason winced, realizing that probably didn't help. "And he had funny hair." Tommy gave him a look, as if trying to decide whether that was some sort of veiled, playful insult on Tommy himself. Jason hastily continued. "Uh… long hair. A couple tattoos. Said he used to talk to her in Spanish a lot. She never understood a word, though." Jason decided to leave out the part where Kimberly had said how romantic she'd found it. "He did a lot of things for the dorm. Carpentry, construction, cleaning…"
"Just an all-around multi-talented guy," Tommy said through gritted teeth, clenching the reins so hard that one end snapped right off the rabbit's head.
"Um, maybe we should talk about something else," Jason said worriedly.
"What happened to him?" Tommy demanded in a no-nonsense tone.
Jason sighed again. "She broke up with him before she left Florida and came back here. When she showed me the pic, she told me it was her 'ex from Miami.'"
"So she was single when Divatox kidnapped her."
"Yup."
"And I wasn't."
"Nope."
"Did she say anything to you about me when she came back?"
"Just that—" Tommy snapped the other end of the reins off. "No. Nope. Nothing."
"Jason."
"Just… she asked how you were doing."
"And?"
"And… I told her you were seeing Kat."
"Why the hell would you do that?" Tommy fairly shouted.
"You were!" Jason whined, leaning so far away that he was practically riding side-saddle. "I didn't know what to say! She just sprung it on me! She said, 'How's Tommy' and I said, 'Uh, fine,' and then she asked what you were up to and it just came out and she said 'Oh.' Just 'Oh.' I didn't know what to do. So I just handed her the scuba tank and off we went. It was a bad start to a bad day, if you catch my drift."
"I see," Tommy said, sighing. Figures. She'd come back to straighten things out and he was off rebounding with Kat.
Don't blame yourself, he told himself sharply. This was all Kimberly. Not you.
"Like I said, Tommy, I don't know much about the guy. I'm not even sure if he was 'the guy.' She was just showing me a bunch of pictures—her teammates, her coach, trips to the beach—some of those female gymnasts were fine, let me tell you—and stuff like that." Jason carefully scooted back into his saddle properly, watching Tommy closely.
"What were they doing in the picture?"
"Singing karaoke. Apparently he liked to sing."
Tommy's frown deepened. Tommy couldn't sing worth a damn, and Kimberly knew it.
"Did she mention any other guys?"
"No. Not romantically, anyway. She mentioned plenty, showed me a bunch of pictures, but she never talked about any of the guys like she had feelings for one of them. Just 'Oh, this is So-and-so, he's awesome on the uneven parallel bars' and 'Oh, this is Mr. Drucker, the security guard, he's the sweetest old man you ever met,' and 'Look, this is Mark, he worked at The Gap. The boy knows his accessories.' No one really stood out. She only mentioned the Tony guy in passing." Jason sighed. "Tommy, man… what the hell are you doing?"
"What do you mean?" Tommy said, rolling his eyes. Great. He'd just been fishing for information he'd never had the guts to ask about, and somehow he'd walked into yet another "Pull your head out of your ass and ask her out even though she already ripped your heart out once" conversation. Like he hadn't had enough of those lately.
"You're gonna miss your chance, man," Jason said quietly. "You've got until Sunday, if then. Then she's gone again."
"I told you, Kim and I are just friends."
"You're not friends, Tommy. You're two people who want each other hanging out together because you're deluded enough to think that's all you can have."
"You don't know that."
"Like hell I don't. That's my freaking life story, Tommy. Since first grade I adored Trini. The moment I met her, she was the coolest thing on the planet, but I was a complete idiot. Took that fool Richie trying to move in on her to get us together."
"Nice way to repay him, beating him up like that," Tommy joked.
"Don't try to change the subject," Jason said sharply. "I know what you're doing, Tommy, because I know you, and I know Kim, and more importantly I've done the same thing. I've sat on my hands wishing and pissing and moaning because I didn't have her. Think of all the grief I could've been saved if I'd just said something."
"Yes, you could have been married by the age of nine. Sounds like a great life."
"Stop it, Tommy. Do you even see how different you've been since Kim left you? More sarcastic, more annoyed, less enthusiastic, less happy."
"Yeah, well, life isn't all love and bunnies," Tommy said wryly, suddenly realizing that he'd snapped the reins off the rabbit's head. When had he done that? Ah, well, it was just a cheap carnival ride, after all. Maybe the reins just hadn't been connected right…
"Kim made a mistake, Tommy, you know that. You know she regrets it."
"Do I? You know what she said to me, that night she locked me in Conner, Ethan and Trent's room? She said 'I miss you. Not you the boyfriend you—just you.' She doesn't want me back, Jason, end of story."
Jason snorted. "Not even you are that dense."
"Excuse me?"
"Kim wants you back. We can all see it, even you, if you'd just admit it to yourself. She's scared as hell, Tommy. She broke up with you, and it was stupid of her, but by the time she figured that out you'd forced yourself to pretend you were okay like you always do. So she came back, and she saw you, and thought you were just fine without her. So she held her tongue and now here you guys are, dancing around each other like idiots."
Tommy sighed heavily, staring glumly down at the rabbit's ears. What a ludicrous place for this conversation… and yet a frighteningly fitting one. The merry-go-round.
Kimberly liked him. She'd flirted with him several times this week. She'd said she still loved him, was still attracted to him. Yes, Tommy did know that. He knew she still cared. But he didn't know if that was enough.
"I don't think I can do it again, Jase," Tommy confided with a sigh. "I don't know if I can let her back in. I don't know if I can forgive and forget and trust her again. I don't know if I could do It again, lose her again. And I don't think I want to find out."
Jason was silent for a moment, thinking. Then he burst out into fits of mocking, derisive laughter.
Tommy whipped his head around to stare at him, furious. How could Jason laugh at him? Especially about this?
Jason shook his head and looked at Tommy. "You know what's so sad about you and Kim? You gave up, Tommy."
"I did not!" Tommy growled hotly.
"Oh yes, you did. You gave up. She broke up with you and you just let her. You surrendered to some idiot guy in Florida, and I'm sorry, but that was weak of you. After all that sappy crap about a Ranger never giving up, you gave up on Kim, and you know what? The Tommy Kim loves would have teleported his ass to Miami and done everything he could to keep her. The Tommy Kim loves would have fought for her. Like I fought for Trini."
"We're not you and Trini!" Tommy snapped.
"I'm aware of that. But I fought Trini tooth and nail when she wanted to break up after the Peace Conference. And when she came back to Angel Grove, I did everything I could to get her back. And you should have done the same. You should be doing the same. Cut the pitiful 'it's just not meant to be' and the 'I'm kinda scared' crap and get your girl back, Tommy. I fought for Trini. Andros changed his entire lifestyle to be with Ashley. Taylor nearly ripped Eric to shreds, and he still went after her. Hell, Billy left Earth for Cestria. And from what I understand of Kira and Trent, she never gave up on him when he was evil. So stop being a chicken shit and start fighting, you idiot! We're Rangers. It's what we do."
Tommy swallowed as the merry-go-round halted. He had given up. He had let her walk out without so much as a feeble protest. He had wondered many times over the past week why Kimberly hadn't done anything to get him back or patch things up if she did indeed still care… and suddenly he realized that when he hadn't fought for her, hadn't even questioned her, she'd probably assumed he was glad she was gone.
Jason stalked off, leaving Tommy alone. Tommy threw the rabbit's reins down and dismounted. Jason was right. A Ranger never gives up, and all that. More importantly, Tommy never gives up.
What the hell had he been waiting for? Tommy could take her. It was time to get his girl back. By the time he was through with her, she'd never think about male gymnasts or janitors ever again.
"You're mine, Kim," he whispered, glaring in her direction. Had anyone been watching him, they would have seen his eyes flash green for a moment.