Baxter clutched the sheaf of papers numbly in his hands. The setting sun turned everything a glowing orange. Printed across the top in a clean, neat block font, was a title. 'NEW YORK CITY FAMILY COURT'.
"He… didn't even fight it." He said numbly.
Across from him in the limo, a young woman with dense black hair, cut into a clean, angled bob, offered him a sympathetic frown. She wore a dark gray woman's suit blazer and tapered trousers, wearing a white blouse that ended with a lace collar. She looked like she was maybe just his age, possibly only a little older.
"I'm sorry." She said quietly.
He looked down at the paper. He'd read it a dozen times. He'd heard the judge say the words he'd so desperately wished, hoped, dreamed he would hear one day. They even scheduled the hearing for his legal name change for the same afternoon.
He was officially Mr. Baxter Stockman, an emancipated minor. He should be happy. He should be overjoyed. So why did he feel so hollow?
"Are… you close with your dad?"
She shook her head, dark hair swaying around her ears. "People would think so. But no, not really."
"Damn." He sighed. "I guess maybe they all suck."
"I've heard stories about people who come from happy families." She said casually. "God, I gotta wonder; does a mom kissing your head feel that gross, really?"
Baxter shrugged. "I wouldn't know. Mine never did."
"Mine wasn't in the picture." The young woman shrugged. "Just me and him." She said the word like it was dirty, as if it tasted like vinegar in her mouth when she spoke it.
"Ooh." He winced. "You too, huh?"
"Oh, yeah." She nodded slowly, drawing her features into a squeamish pout. "That bad."
"What was your favorite hiding place?"
"I have to keep changing them." She grumbled. "He always finds me. I think my best time was two days before he found me again. God, I got my ass kicked for that. But it was two days without him in it. Pure bliss."
"Mine was the university library." Baxter quirked an eyebrow. "My dad was never exactly the kind of guy to pick up a book. Not unless he wanted to throw it at my head. Safest place you ever find just becomes a part of you, I guess you could say, after you spend so much time there." He rolled the papers in his hands. "...I loved it there. The library was ou–was my sanctuary. I got away from him at the only place I knew he'd never look. You get bored while you're hiding from someone who wants to end you, if you can believe it, so I read. A lot."
"Oh yeah. I believe it. Old hideout? Mini-fridge. Best idea ever." She grinned. "Me, I always went for abandoned buildings. The older and crummier, the better. I'm talking burnt-out warehouses near the train station, abandoned strip malls, things like that. I like to take photos of the graffiti. The people are interesting, too."
Baxter gave her a disbelieving look. She just shrugged. "It's true. Coolest person I ever met? This old deadhead who made rock-balancing art on the side of highways all the way from here to California. Called himself 'Yeti'."
"You're making that up." Baxter gave her a disbelieving look. "There's no way."
Karai smiled. "Good. How many times did I lie in that conversation?"
Baxter blinked. "What? I… I dunno, I'm not thinking about that kind of thing when I'm meeting someone."
"That's a shame." She shook her head. "You'll need to learn how."
Baxter sat back, looking at her with a look of bafflement. What in the world was she talking about? Why would she lie, and then tell him that she did it? Was this some kind of game?
Karai leaned forward, putting her elbows on her knees. "So, are you excited about your new place?"
"Yeah, I just need to get my stuff. Is that where we're heading?"
"Oh, it's already done."
Baxter blinked in surprise. "What?"
"While you were at the hearing, we went to your house. Your things are all packed and ready at your new apartment." She said this so smoothly, so briskly that it was almost as if this enormous intrusion of his life and privacy was something so small and casual it wasn't worth mentioning.
"What?!" He gasped. "I had sensitive projects going on in there! There was stuff in there that shouldn't have been moved, and–"
"We had your new team from TCRI examine anything in motion before it was packed away. The technicians told me they identified some things that required special packing procedures, and have taken the necessary precautions. They've reassembled your major projects at HQ and are monitoring them for changes now."
Baxter could hardly believe what he was hearing. His team? Of technicians? Since when did he have any of that?! And why in the world would they go through his stuff without asking? He had no words to any of this, so utterly stunned by the outlandishness of it all. How in the world did they move so fast?
"We examined your locker at the high school. Your interior decorator's been working to apply the aesthetic to your new apartment. I think you'll be happy with it; she's managed to track down some very rare Star Wars collectibles that matched the collage you had taped up inside."
"Hold on, now, wait!" Baxter blurted out. "You can't just go into my life and uproot it and–"
"And make it better?" Karai asked, tilting her head. "Mr. Oroku was very serious about seeing to all of your comforts. And he was serious when he said you'd never see your father again. He has very high standards of perfection, and he keeps himself to those standards as well." She leaned forward, eyes narrowed. "That is a warning, by the way. He expects perfection, and he doesn't take kindly to obstacles like privacy or permission."
Something about that chilled him. Deeply. There was little else said in that long car ride to his new home, his new future, his mind a whirl of thoughts. Confusion and umbrage battled with hope and curiosity in the space between his ears.
When they arrived at the building, Baxter didn't quite know what he was expecting. But he wasn't expecting this.
"A penthouse on the Bowery?"
"Really close to this amazing tea shop, too." Karai said smugly. "Honestly, I really think I outdid myself here. Got the seller to close on a reasonable price, too."
Baxter looked at her like she was… well, something bafflingly efficient in a way that terrified him. He could have sworn that she was his age. Was she older?
The apartment was beautiful. The walls were white and cream, with crown molding imprinted with tiny wheels and leaves. The countertops were swirling white-gray resin-marble, with flecks of mica that caught the light from the ornate brass fixtures overhead. True to Karai's word, it was decorated like something he'd had in a distant dream. When he was asked to draw his own dream bedroom for school assignments as a child, he may have imagined something like this.
It was dripping with Star Wars.
His MicroMachines collection was arranged neatly, dusted and locked behind clean glass, all posing in elaborate scenes of battle, Stormtroopers fighting Ewoks, the Millennium Falcon shooting tiny shimmering green mylar ribbons at TIE Fighters. Beside the TV's sizable movie shelf, arranged in a semicircle, were four cardboard standees of Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewbacca. A life-size sculpture of Yoda protected the coffee table with a raised lightsaber and fluttering robes.
He sat down on a couch, stitched with black canvas–not leather, to his sensation's relief–and rolled himself up in a handmade quilt patterned with soaring X-wings and Naboo Fighters. He held the blanket to his nose, breathing in its scent. It smelled clean. Not like mildew and an alcoholic's sweat. Like lavender.
For a moment, it was hard to accept that what he was holding in his hands, what he was feeling, was even real. Part of him felt afraid his father would pop out of the closet or the fridge, or come down out of the ceiling, proclaim this all an elaborate prank to break his spirit, take it all away from him.
And it didn't happen. He felt a single hot tear of joy, relief, leak down his cheek. He had, for the first time in his life, a home. His home.
He shot to his feet. "I wanna do something I've never ever done before!" He announced, rushing to the closet. "Do you know if they stocked pillows here?"
"Yeah, they should be–oh, you already found them." She said, voice trailing off into confusion as the closet door flew open.
Baxter's eyes gleamed, a pillow in each hand. "I have never, in my life, ever gotten a chance to do this. And honestly, if you didn't lie about it in the car, then I don't think you've ever done this either!"
"Done wha–?"
A pillow poffed her in the face before she could finish her sentence. Karai's face flushed bright red, too stunned to even process what had just hit her.
Baxter laughed aloud, rushing to the couch, giddily bouncing up and down on the cushions! "I! Have! Always! Wanted! A! Pillow fight!" He crowed with each bounce. At the top of an arc, he coiled up his arm, and threw the next pillow after her. She batted it aside with a fist, ready for it this time, the shock seeming to have worn off.
"S-stop!" She stumbled over her words. "You can't do this!"
"My dad isn't here to stop me," Baxter bounced on the couch cushions, leaping from one sectional to the other like a rabbit in moon boots. "And neither is yours!"
Karai seemed to take this sentence, processing it very slowly. It started as a twitch in her cheek. An idea that sparked in her brain. A single notion that had been long buried where the names of dolls and small songs sung by imaginary friends went to die. It slowly glowed back to life within her, a simple little joy.
"Oh, you asked for it! " She picked up both pillows, slamming them into Baxter's torso with a strike as hard and precise as a baseball pitched by a pro on the mound. They thumped into him, knocking him off course, landing into a heap on the couch. He got up, laughing, picking up one and tossing the other to her.
"I'll never fight someone unarmed!" He called dramatically. "Prepare yourself!" He brandished the pillow.
"Your sense of honor will get you killed, Jedi!" She grinned, taunting him with one hand.
"For the Republic!" He cried, trying to swat her with the pillow, swinging in wide, clumsy arcs.
She stepped back, so quickly and fluidly it was like she was just performing steps in a dance she'd rehearsed her whole life. She swung her pillow, bapping him in three places before he could even register that she'd moved. "For the Dark Side!" She laughed, lunging at him with her pillow.
It was almost an hour of the most fun he'd ever had in his life. Ordinarily, Baxter despised being touched by other people, especially strangers. But the sweet serotonin that welled from the smallest, most rebellious act of joy he could ever have overrode any hesitation. Soon, he was spent and gasping, shoulders slumped, pillow clutched in one hand. He wiped the sweat off his brow.
"You're tough!" He chuckled. "Are you really a jedi, or what?"
"I'm a martial artist. My father trains me." She stood up, flourishing the pillow and tossing it over her shoulder. It landed with a thump on the couch. "Although, I guess the way we train, I don't think the Jedi Council would approve."
"The Council is flawed, anyway." Baxter shrugged. "So, what's next?"
"Well, you're going to want to clean up." She gestured to him, sweat staining his underarms. "Mr. Oroku wants a meeting with you to go over next steps. We had your laundry cleaned, it's in your closet."
He thanked her and left to wash up. As the hot water from the gleaming shower head ran over his shoulders and steam filled the bathroom–a luxury he'd never been permitted before–he let his mind wander.
Sure, things were weird. But they were getting better, right? This was how things got better.
Nothing to worry about.