A/N:

WARNING: This chapter includes mentions of suicide and self-harm.

Chapter 6: 'Cause I Don't Think That They'd Understand

The following Monday couldn't have been worse. Although they'd beaten the Hawks, nothing changed. Varsity would continue giving them hell about Adam. The trial was set for that coming Saturday, and luckily, they didn't have a game. Coach Orion had canceled their practice so that they could go support Adam, plus, he and Charlie were both asked to be witnesses for Adam; even Scooter agreed to testify, though that didn't change much as far as his status with Julie, who was still mad at him for sitting with his Varsity friends and not speaking up for Adam. Still, when Charlie heard that Bombay had no luck getting Adam a plea deal, and that Adam needed to go up on the stand, the very thought made him feel sick as he entered the dining hall for breakfast on Monday.

Adam still didn't return to school; he was staying at Gordon's house while Charlie was at school and Casey worked. Not that Charlie could blame him. Adam still refused to speak with his dad, hoping that his dad would come around and realize how hard this was for him. But Charlie doubted Adam's dad would come around – he knew Adam's father's attitude about weakness.

As he sat with his friends at breakfast, he felt tempted to go over to the Varsity table and punch at least one of them in the face because he could still hear everything they were saying, as much as he tried ignoring it. Luckily, Linda's hand holding his was enough to keep him grounded. Still, overhearing what the Varsity players were saying left him unable to eat his eggs.

"I guess Banks isn't coming back around," Marc Lowe said loud enough for everyone to overhear.

"Good! The less we have of him, the better. He sucked anyway. Riley did us all a favor; the guy needed a stick shoved up his ass; maybe now he'll loosen up!" sneered Dennis Sheedy.

"Goes to show how weak he is," added Avery Cruise. "If he can't take it, he might as well not even exist anymore."

"Honestly? If he killed himself, then nobody would miss him anyway," laughed Toby McCarthy, and at that, Charlie felt close to exploding with anger. He clenched his hands into fists.

"Just ignore them," Linda whispered. "They're being stupid. Don't sink to their level."

"Maybe he should," Charlie heard Larry Swayze suggesting. "At least the air would wreak a lot less without that faggot infecting the atmosphere."

That caused Portman to whip around and glower at them. "Hey, let's watch the mouth, huh?"

The Varsities ignored Portman, continuing to talk about the different ways they thought Adam should kill himself.

"He should slit his wrists."

"Or take some pills. God knows he probably needs them."

"Or jump off a bridge."

"Hey, why don't you all just shut up?" snapped Julie, her voice rising in anger.

"Yeah, okay, babe," laughed Lowe.

"My name's Julie," Julie snapped. "You better leave Adam alone! If he chooses to come back here. I wouldn't blame him if he didn't want to."

"Then why don't you leave?" suggested Swayze.

"Because I don't have to prove a Goddamn thing to you about my place here. So, just shut up, and quit talking about him like that!" Julie shouted.

"Julie, relax," whispered Tammy, leaning a hand on her arm.

Julie sighed, shaking her head as they tried to focus on eating the rest of the hour. They had twenty minutes until the bell rang, signaling they had to go to their classes for the day. Charlie headed to his locker, which was next to Adam's, Averman's, and Julie's since they all had the same homeroom. But as he neared his locker, which was right next to Adam's, he saw something that he didn't want to see. Looking over at Averman and Julie, the two looked just as infuriated. Julie looked near tears.

Someone had trashed Adam's locker. The door was covered in graffiti written in permanent marker, with words like "faggot" and "slut" inscribed across it, as well as shaving cream sprayed all over it. But what infuriated Charlie even more was sticky notes pressed against the door; he went in closer and read what was on them.

If you die, nobody will miss you. Why don't you jump off a bridge? Headfirst would work.

Take this and slit your wrists. Near that one was a razor taped against the door. Charlie felt his hands shaking with rage as tears of anger stung his eyes, and he overheard laughter coming from Lowe and McCarthy.

"You think that's funny?" he demanded, his teeth gritting as Averman quickly pulled out a camera from his backpack to snap pictures of what was in front of them – they'd need that for evidence so they could report it.

Lowe and McCarthy responded with more howls of laughter, and Charlie angrily punched his fist against his locker door before stalking up to McCarthy and aiming a right hook right at his nose.

"Charlie!" Julie yelled, lunging for him and wrapping her arms around his chest to hold him back, but Charlie quickly ripped away from her and lunged at McCarthy, leaping on him and hitting him everywhere he could think. He heard Julie running, screaming for help as McCarthy overpowered him, punching him in the face several times, his nose splattering with blood as Averman jumped on McCarthy's back, arms winding around his neck while students gathered around, chanting for them to fight. But before it could escalate further, Charlie felt hands separating them as Orion, Fulton, and Linda came into view. Fulton yanked McCarthy off Charlie and got Averman down while Orion and Linda got on their hands and knees near Charlie as he slowly sat up.

"Are you all right?" Linda demanded.

Charlie shook his head and pointed behind them so they could see for themselves what he saw. When Orion saw Adam's locker, his face went deep red with anger.

"Come on, we're going to the dean's office," he ordered. "All of you!"

Charlie sat in Buckley's office, holding an icepack to his swelling nose while Casey and Gordon glared at him furiously. Averman's mom and dad looked just as angry, and Lowe and McCarthy's fathers looked infuriated. Linda was sitting next to Charlie, holding his hand, while Orion was pacing the room, shaking his head.

"What in the world were you thinking?" yelled Orion.

"Don't go getting pissed at me! They're the ones who did it first!" Charlie exploded.

"He threw the first punch like a psycho!" Lowe said, rolling his eyes. "He should be locked up!"

"You're the one who should be going to jail, asshole!" Charlie snapped. "After what you did to Adam's locker –!"

"Whoa, wait, what are you talking about?" Gordon demanded.

"They vandalized Adam's locker and taped a razorblade to the door of it with a note saying he should slit his wrists!" Averman said. "I'd say that's a death threat!"

"And they were saying earlier at breakfast that Adam should kill himself," said Julie, her voice shaking as tears ran down her face while Fulton kept an arm wrapped around her. "It was them, Swayze, Sheedy, Ringwald, and Cruise." Lowe and McCarthy's fathers seemed to pale at this, all anger briefly dissipating before it returned just as quickly as they glowered at their sons. Orion's face paled significantly, his eyes widening in alarm.

"They did not!" Orion practically growled, a protectiveness evident in his voice; you might as well have said to him you wished his daughter died in that car crash – that was how furious he looked, and Charlie realized with a stabbing pain in his chest that Orion loved them, probably as much as Bombay did, and that even though he didn't always show it or say it the way the Ducks would want him to, he cared. It made Charlie feel horrible that he ever thought Orion didn't have a heart.

"They did," Julie said tearfully, a hysterical edge to her voice. "It's disgusting!" She buried her face in her hands and cried harder, and Orion stepped around where he stood in front of Charlie to hug Julie, who sobbed into his chest and wrapped her arms around him, clinging to the back of his jacket. Orion just rubbed her back until she gathered her bearings, though she was still silently crying even as he pulled away.

"Tobias Allan McCarthy, look me in the eyes and swear you didn't do it!" Mr. McCarthy snapped, the horror evident in his voice.

"That's ridiculous," laughed McCarthy.

"Are you kidding me? We all heard you! We were all there!" yelled Charlie.

"Charlie, hey –!" Gordon said, leaning a hand on his arm.

"Stop telling me 'Hey!'" Charlie said angrily. "They had that one coming. I had no problem holding my tongue. But after what they did to Adam's locker, I –!"

"Charlie, relax!" Bombay grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him slightly. "Take a deep breath. Okay?"

Charlie nodded, desperately trying to control his breathing. His mom looked near tears at what he'd said about Adam's locker and the taunts about how Adam should commit suicide. Even Gordon looked troubled by that, his blue eyes filled with unease, but his grip on Charlie's shoulders remained firm and calm.

Orion sighed heavily as he stepped back around to address the four teenagers sitting in front of him. "Charlie, your reasons were valid. There's no excuse for going after them the way you did, but what you two did –" he pointed to McCarthy and Lowe, heated fury seeming to blaze in his blue eyes, his nostrils flaring as he struggled to contain how angry he was, "– if you think that's funny, then you've got to be a really sick person not to see how horrible that is." He turned to Dean Buckley. "Sir, can I make a suggestion?"

"By all means," said Buckley.

"What Charlie did was wrong," Orion said. "But he saw it as him sticking up for his friend. So, here's what I say: Charlie, I'm suspending you from practice for a week, and I also suggest a week of detention, and when that's over, I'm putting you on the third line for the next two games." He turned to McCarthy and Lowe. "You two, on the other hand, what you did was dead wrong. Averman's right; that equals a death threat in my mind. And I think expulsion would be a proper punishment, but I'm not the dean or a board member; I can't make any decisions."

"It was a joke," Lowe said, rolling his eyes. His father looked ready to kneel over and have a heart attack at how nonchalant his son was acting toward it, as if Marc didn't care that what he'd done could've driven Adam to hurt himself or something much worse. Even Orion looked shocked at how carefree Lowe was behaving.

"No, it's not!" Bombay said angrily, his blue eyes turning cold and hard as he glared at them. "There's nothing funny about that! Because let me tell you something, kid! When I saw Adam in that hospital bed after what had been done to him, I was upset." His voice calmed significantly into a whisper, but the iciness never disappeared. "And not just because he's one of my kids. It was because right away, Adam reminded me of . . . of me." Gordon seemed to need to steal himself for a minute; momentarily, Charlie saw traces of somebody who appeared much younger, as the older man remembered what it was like being fifteen, and that what happened to Adam was taking him back there. "You see when I was his age, I was the small, scrawny kid."

Charlie had difficulty picturing it; he knew Bombay was smaller and shorter than most hockey players in the League, but it gave him the advantage of being speedier. However, it also made him more vulnerable to more formidable opponents like Wolf Stanson "The Dentist," who'd taken that cheap shot against his knee when they played one-on-one; it caused Charlie to inwardly wince as he imagined what it must've been like for his former coach to be that small, and not as beefed up as the others in his class, to be made fun of for being on the shorter side. Even Averman was rendered unable to speak. Julie was crying silently, and Fulton looked shocked. Even Linda looked surprised that a jock had gone through such a hard time.

"Yes, I hung around Varsity, and I watched them screw around, but none of that mattered because even though part of me was their buddy, there was something else they saw as weak whenever they looked at me," Gordon continued, his voice cold and harsh as he gave the Varsity players such a blazing look that they seemed to shrink back. And Charlie knew he was just getting started. "One minute, they'd pretend to be my friend. The next, they'd pick on me every chance they got. The worst was this kid named Henry Bianchi – one day, after gym class, I was in the locker room changing when he jumped on top of me and slammed my head into the bathroom sink and the mirrors until I was bleeding, and I didn't say anything because I didn't want to rat him out. I didn't want to get on anyone's bad side, so I just said I fell. And you wanna know where he is now? Sitting in a prison cell because when I was in law school, I found out he killed somebody in a bar fight; he stabbed someone to death, and not in self-defense. It was murder, and I think about that every day, wondering if I had said something back then; I could've stopped him from becoming that. He could've been put in his place, and he wouldn't have done what he did. And if you don't think that's a possibility for you, well, let me tell you this: One of these days, there's a possibility that Adam or any one of the Ducks could be your boss, and you won't think it's so funny when suddenly, they're in charge of you because you'll regret having done what you did; if they choose, they could make your lives a living hell, and I bet you wouldn't be able to take for a week what you've done to them for months."

Gordon stole himself again, giving the two Varsities another hard stare before he turned his gaze to Charlie and the others and offered them a gentle smile. "But I know they wouldn't. You wanna know why? The Ducks are better than that – yes, they screwed around, too, but when they first came here, they did nothing to you." His face went from soft to hard again as he addressed the two Varsities, eyes blazing again fiercely. "They just exist. That's what they did to you; they merely exist. If I were you, I wouldn't be so arrogant, thinking I can get away with everything. Because one time, I thought I could. And you know what happened to me?"

Bombay continued his speech at McCarthy and Lowe's blank looks, his voice never rising to a shout; he stayed calm. "I got wasted and got caught driving with an open container by the cops –" Casey looked bewildered by this; never had Gordon shared that with her, even when they'd been dating, "– and I was sentenced to community service and was told I had to coach a Peewee team called District Five; these kids had nothing, nobody to teach them the proper way to do anything; they were using issues of The Enquirer as shin pads and they really sucked." He smiled at the memory of Averman, warning him in advance how awful the team was, and he looked close to laughing; even Averman was struggling to hold back his laughter. "And you know what District Five is now? They're The Mighty Ducks of Edan Hall, who won gold for Team USA at the Jr. Goodwill Games. They saved me; they gave me a life. They earned their place here. And Banks is part of that whether you like it or not."

Charlie saw the way Lowe and McCarthy's faces seemed to go white at Gordon's speech. Even Charlie felt the shock settling in, not realizing how much his coach had gone through. Yes, Bombay told him about the DUI, but he hadn't known about everything that led up to it. As soon as Bombay finished his speech, Buckley said, "Well said, Gordon."

Buckley turned to McCarthy and Lowe. "I agree with what Coach Orion has said; I will be speaking to the school board effective this afternoon, and the two of you, along with the others who suggested Mr. Banks commit suicide, will be expelled."

"WHAT?" screamed Lowe. "That's the whole Varsity team! You can't do that!"

"Watch me! And when these JV players become juniors, they'll be the new Varsity team, one that will lead by an example of how to respect others." Buckley turned to Charlie. "Mr. Conway, do you accept Coach Orion's suggested punishment?"

"Yes, sir," Charlie said. It was fair; he knew what he'd done was wrong, but he didn't regret it. He would get knocked down to third line if it meant that these guys left Adam alone if Adam ever decided to come back to school.

"Okay, you will serve your first detention after school today with Mr. Ryerson. And part of that punishment will be writing an apology to Mr. Lowe and Mr. McCarthy."

"Are you kidding me? Why should he apologize? They're the ones who vandalized Adam's personal property and suggested he kill himself!" Julie said angrily, more tears trickling down her face.

"Because he pulled the first punch, Miss Gaffney," Dean Buckley said. "All three of them were in the wrong for this."

"This is bullshit!" Averman cursed.

"Les, watch your mouth," Bombay said, keeping his voice level as he cast Averman a steady glance.

"Then it's settled. You are all free to go. Mr. Lowe, Mr. McCarthy, stay here," Dean Buckley ordered.

The others sighed as they left the office. Julie, Fulton, and Averman went off to their classes, shaking their heads. Charlie kept wiping blood from his nose; he knew he most likely had a black eye, because he could feel it throbbing as Linda touched it lightly.

"How bad is it?" he asked her in a low murmur.

"It's not too bad," she said, kissing him gently where he'd been slugged the most. "I'll see you at lunch, okay?"

Charlie nodded, watching as she left, and he was left alone with his mother, Gordon, and Orion. He turned to face Bombay, who cast him a tight smile.

"Even though I don't condone that, I'm proud of you, slugger," Gordon told him.

"Don't encourage him, Gordon!" Casey said, exasperated. She rolled her eyes; it was no surprise among anyone that Bombay's coach-player relationships with the kids sometimes crossed into being familial – he was more of a friend/dad/uncle, sometimes even an older brother, than a coach. Moments like these were where he went beyond professionalism, and he sometimes slipped into the role of "friend," forgetting he was older than the kids and should be setting an example for them.

"I'm not," Gordon insisted before turning back to Charlie. "But you're a good friend, Charlie. Adam's lucky to have you. You may not have done the right thing as a student. But as a friend, you're a good kid." He reached over and ruffled Charlie's hair in fatherly affection.

Charlie grinned. "You're crazy, Coach. Out of your mind. One minute, you're mad at me for doing it, and now you're congratulating me."

Orion looked like he'd like to knock their heads together. "You're both nuts." Despite that, a small smile was on his lips as his eyes glinted with a sort of pride that Charlie stuck to the ground of "Ducks fly together."

"Go to class, bud," Gordon said, smacking Charlie's shoulder.

"Will I see you later after detention's over?"

"I don't think so; Adam's gotta meet with the DA about the trial. But you can call him after we're through with it."

"You're not gonna tell him what McCarthy and Lowe did, right?" Charlie asked warily, his tone strained.

"I think it'd be best if it came from you," Gordon said.

Charlie nodded in agreement. "And Coach?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for what you did back there." Charlie felt his eyes growing misty; it felt good to hear an adult putting the members of Varsity in their place. In all his time at Edan Hall, apart from Orion and Bombay, nobody had bothered sticking up for them. And he was looking forward to that weekend, knowing Adam would see his day in court.

Gordon smiled at him gently and leaned a hand on his shoulder before the two of them embraced tightly, neither caring that it was in front of Casey or Orion.

Charlie mumbled, "Thank you, Dad." Gordon froze momentarily before tightening the embrace, reaching a hand up to stroke Charlie's hair.