"Hi Mrs. Burble, thank you for meeting with me. I know you have a busy schedule since you're talking to all the seniors this week." Abby sat down on the couch across from the guidance counselor.
"Of course, I meant for the whole student body, not just the seniors." She nods.
"This is actually about the seniors, the southside ones to be specific." She crosses her legs.
"What about them?" She leans forward.
"A Lot of them don't think college is an option for them. I'm not saying that college is a necessary thing for success but I don't want them to not consider it because they think they're not worthy of it." She got to why she was there.
"Who are a lot of them?" She put her pen to paper.
"Fangs Fogarty, Greg Jinx, Bingo Wilkin, Ivan Drakon and…. Sweet Pea Cannon." She said the last name with hesitant knowing he would be upset if he knew what she was doing.
She wrote the names as she listed. "Who are these people to you?"
"They're my friends and coworkers at the center. I decided I wanted to continue my career there. I don't want them to feel like they have to stay for me or the kids. If they have dreams then they should chase them." She didn't want her friends to resent her one day when they realized that they had lived their lives for her.
"Are all these friends from the Gargoyles?" She had read her background.
"I didn't realize that would be in my file." She looks at the files that are stacked on the desk.
"There was an altercation between the Gargoyle and the Farm. You were there." She explained why it was there. "Do you fear that people are doing things for you that they don't want to?"
"I have helped them out of a tough situation so I do wonder if they feel like they owe me." She never understood the duty that they felt to her, especially Greg. She was no longer the Gargoyle Goddess but she still felt like a righteous leader.
"Have they ever said anything to make you think that?" She crosses her legs.
"No." She shook her head. "I've expressed insecurity before and they swear that they want to be there, but it's hard to believe that when they have never told me no."
"Maybe, it's your feelings about yourself that make you doubt people's intentions." She said it so casually but it rocked Abby to her core.
"What?" She was taken aback.
"Do you feel like there have to be underlying intentions because you're not worthy of them?" She leaned in.
She stood up. "I'm sorry to take up so much of your time. Thank you for meeting with me." She walks out ignoring the lady calling her name.
The only reason Sweet Pea was sitting across from Mrs. Burble was because it got him out of class. "So, Sweet Pea, you have good grades, almost perfect attendance, and do a lot of community service. But, you have no colleges listed here." She had the seniors put down their list of colleges.
"I'm not going." He shrugged.
"Is that because of a girlfriend?" She knew a lot of teens didn't want to leave their love interests behind.
"My girlfriend has nothing to do with this." He was about to let her in his head.
"Just know that if you're meant to be then your relationship would survive the distance." She went on thinking the girl who visited earlier was the reason.
"I said she had nothing to do with this. I have never wanted to go to college." He pushed her away from his personal life.
"Never? What do you want to do?" She asked.
"Nothing I need a college degree for." He wasn't about to tell her about his gang. "Why is it that every authority figure thinks college is the way? So many people go to college because they were pushed too and they end up with a degree that ain't worth shit and in debt. I'd rather go to a trade school and make money that way."
"You're right, college isn't right for everyone. But, I want everyone to know it's an option for them. I don't want people to write it off because they don't have the money. There are a lot of scholarships out there. Even getting an associate can give you an edge that you might need in the future." She put a list of scholarships that were available for him on the coffee table between them.
"Did you talk to Abby? Because she said the same thing." He sat up straight, getting suspicious that she asked about her twice then repeated her.
"I'm not at liberty to discuss other people's sessions with you." She couldn't cross professional lines.
"You did. She has it in her head that I'm going to regret it if I don't at least try it out. But, if I want to build my life around her, that's my damn business. Not even hers." He puts on his backpack that was lying next to him.
"When someone goes through the losses like you did at such a young age, they normally don't let people in, and when they do they hold onto them so tight that it can be suffocating." She got him to pause.
"Are you saying that Abby is suffocated by me?" He glares at the audacity this lady had.
"I'm saying that you and her are too wrapped up in each other. She is scared of your feelings changing and you refuse to think that it's a possibility. You're both young and in a critical time of your life. She did the healthy thing of choosing a path based on herself. You have to do the same." She knew how teenagers got. They thought they could live in love but love was not enough.
He stood up to walk towards the door. "Our time is up." She looks back at the clock to see if he is right.
Abby was sitting on the desk in her room on a laptop looking for cheap craft ideas for the kids at the center. Tessie was next to her coloring. "Tessie, grandma is baking downstairs, do you want to help her?" Sweet Pea walks into the room.
"Yes!" She ran past him in a hurry. She loved to lick the mixing bowl clean.
"I thought you were working with your therapist to not be so meddlesome." Sweet Pea sat down on the edge of the bed.
She spun around in the chair to face him. "I was working on my codependency with Fangs and setting and respecting boundaries. I guess what I did today was crossing boundaries. But, I haven't been going to therapy because the FBI is no longer covering it."
"Then where the hell have you and Fangs been going?" He had more questions now.
"We've been hanging out. We called it our therapy days." The one rule they had was no talking about any problems, so the opposite of therapy. But, every once in a while, they wanted to pretend to be normal teens. "We didn't realize you didn't get that until like the third time. We thought it was funny and made it a running joke."
"Okay… that's… whatever." He waved it off mostly because he didn't care that they were hanging out.
"I'm sorry. I realize from my talk with Mrs. Burble that I was acting self-destructive because of my low self-esteem." She sat criss-crossed on the chair.
"She said what to you?" He used his feet to pull her closer to him.
"It's the truth. My self-worth is the reason I feel like everyone who stays by myself is doing it out of obligation instead of wanting to be with me. In my brain, Greg, Nancy, Kraken, and Dracula stay by my side because I got them out of Gargoyles. Tomoko and Trev have a childhood loyalty to me that is why they stay by my side even though I've been neglecting them lately." She could find a reason for everyone in her life being by her, but not once did she think it was because they enjoyed her company. That they care and love her.
"And why am I here?" He asked.
"You're here because you're loyal. You see me as a family now. We have a kid. You wouldn't leave me to fend for myself, not after all the promises we've made. It's not your way." She knew he was a man of duty.
"I'm here because I love you and I want to build a life with you. Growing up I heard so many stories about the Serpents being this group that helped our community when no one else would. Who protected us from authority figures who wanted to hurt us? As times went on they strayed from that and dove too far into drugs or other illegal activity to make money. But, what we're doing with the center is Serpents to its core. That's why I want to go all in with you. I want to be a Serpent that I grew up hearing about." He wanted to bring Serpents back to their origins. When someone saw a person with a snake on their back he wanted them to feel protected, not in danger. "All the serpents feel the same. They praise me for it but it's all you. You took the Serpents there."
"No, it was all of us. A lot of the Southside kids come because you guys are there. The Serpents are still seen as protectors." She reassured him that he was on the right path.
"I don't like you feeling this way about yourself." He felt helpless about this. It didn't matter how much he praised her, it was like a monster inside her wasn't allowing anything positive to penetrate her brain.
"Believe me, I don't like it either. I've been struggling with it all my life. The summer before my freshman year, before the town went to shit. Trev, Tomoko, and I were on a mission to make high school our bitch. Trev was working his ass off to make the football team. Tomoko was at a writing camp in hopes of restarting the Blue and Gold. I was working at Pops to afford a killer wardrobe. I was so naive. I thought if I dressed well and got a boyfriend then all my self-esteem issues would be washed away." She wished it was all that simple. "Just when I think that it's not affecting me anymore. I go through days like this and realize that it's still crippling me. It sucks."
"We are all works in progress, babe. I've been told that I'm impulsive and have a short temper." Everyone had their flaws. Her biggest one was beating herself up over hers.
"Your temper has gotten a lot better." She saw how much he had improved himself. "And you've been planning things out more"
"Only because when I get angry or before diving headfirst into something I think about you and Tessie. I don't want to leave you guys." It was easy to be better when he had good reasons to be.
"I'm scared Tessie is going to learn to doubt herself by watching me." She could feel those little eyes always on her.
"That's why you are constantly complimenting her." He found it weird when she told Tessie she was the best toothbrush-er ever.
"I'm probably overcompensating." Even Tessie told her it was nothing to get excited about.
"You mean well that's what matters. Who knows Mrs. Burble might have been able to help some Southsiders see that college can be for them. She had a list of scholarships." He let her know that what she did wasn't harmful.
"Good, I hate for all this trouble to be for nothing." She got up to sit on his lap and gave him a tight hug. "I love feeling your warmth." There was something about his body heat that was comforting to her.
"I love squeezing you." He gave her ass a two-hand squeeze, getting a giggle out of her.
"This is insane." She got a call from Eddie that Archie was sleeping at the center. He and the other kids had to sleep under the ring. "I can't believe you and mom didn't tell me you moved in here." She looked cot in the corner of the room and the duffle bag full of clothes.
"Dodger out of the hospital and lost in the wind. I'm the main target, it's not safe for you guys if I'm at home." He felt better here.
"You realize they think I'm the one that put Dodger in the hospital, right?" She pointed at herself. "I heard that they were last spotted in Greendale."
"Exactly, they are laying low close by. They are waiting for the opportunity to strike. " He knew they were coming for him.
"They have no men. It's an old lady and three men against all of the Serpents." She picked up the hood that was sticking out of the drawer of the office desk. "Is this about having free range to be the anti-hero?" She held it up.
"I'm only protecting the center." He took it from her.
"Archie, you can't keep doing this. You're going to end up seriously hurt." She threw it in the trash can.
"What am I supposed to do to let our town get destroyed?" He couldn't let that happen.
"I thought that's why you started the center. This is more than that." She kicked the can. "If you go by movies, having a superhero just attracts more villains." She sat down on the cot next to him.
"I hate feeling helpless. When I'm out there chasing bad guys away it makes me feel like I have control." He confessed.
"Not going to be in much control when you end up in the hospital or jail." She punched his shoulder.
"I know. I'm trying to stop. It's just I get to thinking about it and next thing I know I'm out there." He waved his hand to gesture outside.
"I didn't know you did a lot of thinking." She hummed, making him punch her shoulder. "Aw, you are bigger than me." She rubbed it.
"Are you going to use that excuse all your life?" He laughed. When they were kids she would play rough with him when he played in the same manner she would say he couldn't because he was bigger than her.
"As long as it applies, you big oaf." She jumped off the bed before he could put her in a headlock. When the laughter died down she got serious. "Can you at least promise to try and not put the mask on?"
"I'll try." He gets up to pull her into a tight bear hug.
"Archie!" She screams when he lifts her off her feet to spin her around. As a bigger girl, she hated when people picked her up in fear of them dropping her.
"I got you no worries." He put her feet on the ground. "Bigger brother always got you." He pats her head, something else he knows annoys her.
"Yeah, you're a bother. See you at home." She exited the office.
Sweets and Abby took Tessie to Pops for dinner. Mary declined to go with them saying she had work to do. Fangs runs into Pops and practically skips over to them when he spots them. He throws himself on top of Abby squeezing her tightly. "Thank you. You're the best. Thank you so much."
"I can't breathe." She gasps.
"Sorry." He laughed, letting her go. She scooted over to give him room to sit next to her.
"What are you thanking Mom for?" Tessie, who was sitting with Sweets across from them, asked.
"Your mom brought it to the guidance counselor that the Southside teens need extra attention when it comes to the college process. Mr. Honey and her have me on a plan so that I can graduate this year. He said if I do a good job then he'll write me a letter of rec for any colleges I want." He gave Abby a loud kiss on the cheek.
"That's great, Fangs." She smiled at him.
"Yeah, man. It would have sucked to walk across that stage without you." Sweets nods to him.
"I can't wait to finish school." Tessie hated waking up early every day.
Pops who came to get Fang's order put a hand over his heart. "Oh no, take it from an old man, be a kid for as long as possible, Tessie."
"But, I hate homework." It got in the way of her playtime.
"Bills aren't better." He got Fang's order before going into the kitchen.
"You heard it from Pops, enjoy this time. No worrying about the future." Sweets ruffle her hair.