Rivalries: Chapter Six, Part One

 Notes: We get closer and closer to a meeting! Hang in there, darlins ;)

Title: Rivalries, Chapter Six, Part One

 

***

Chapter Six, Part One

 

Honestly, there was no real reason for Johnny to care what had happened to Charlie Verlaine.

There wasn’t! Beyond the first brief flash of surprise and sadness, it wasn’t exactly a surprise. Charlie had chosen a dangerous job, and that job had done a number on him. Now he was back and reintegrating into life as a civilian. Full stop, no more rumination needed, no more thought required. It wasn’t like the two of them had ever been friends—they’d never been more than casual acquaintances. Maybe occasional enemies. Never friends. And Johnny didn’t ever think about him anymore, he’d stopped that nonsense years ago, and he wasn’t about to start it up again.

Besides, he had more than enough to deal with over the rest of this week and the next getting the kids ready to transfer into Euryale Academy. There were issues of placement, of staffing, of fucking mingling, which was code for “Keep your dirty poor kids away from our precious darlings.” Well, fuck that. Johnny was pushing for as much integration between the cohorts as possible, because he’d be damned if he was going to tolerate his kids being treated as second-class citizens in a school that was there to serve them.

At the very least, they would have combined lunches and physical education. Combined art and music too, which was mostly because those classes hadn’t been offered at Stheno for the last three years due to budget cuts and now was the perfect time to start persuading the school board that they were, in fact, useful and educational things for the kids to have the option of studying.

With scheduling, with talking to teachers, students, and parents, and with moving as many of their own supplies out of the cracked school as they could—because Euryale might be donating space but it sure as fuck wasn’t donating supplies—Johnny was busier this week than he could ever remember being. By Friday night he would have happily gone home and collapsed onto his couch for the entire weekend if it weren’t for the fact that they were having a teacher “meet and greet” with the Euryale staff tonight, compliments of the superintendent.

The party was set up in the gym at Euryale, which was extensive. Hell, it had multiple parts—the indoor track, the basketball court, the swimming pools, the section devoted specifically to kids with flying knacks…it was like walking into an upscale, members-only gym.

“I feel like I’m gonna break out in hives,” Debra Jones said under her breath as they walked in together. Debra was Stheno’s knack instructor, a woman with the ultimate knack for a teacher—she was utterly unflappable. Nothing surprised her, nothing shocked her, nothing disrupted her. Better yet, her knack was passive and didn’t require an effort of will to activate, just made its presence known when something untoward happened. She could go from cheerfully shooting the shit with her fellow teachers or calming down a crying student to coolly, calmly, and collectedly gathering her class and getting them out of their classroom after the first window shattered under the force of Roland’s tremors without batting an eye. Johnny felt like he’d learned a lot from her.

“Can you get hives?” Johnny asked as they headed for the punch bowl on the closest table to the door. It wasn’t spiked—too bad—but it was made with real fruit, some of which floated in a decorative frozen ring in the center of the bowl. Yummy.

“Only if I eat peanuts, but you know what I mean.” Debra took a sip, scanning the Euryale teachers. “Is it me, or do they not have any Black people on staff over here?” She was one of five Black teachers at Stheno, but the other side was a solid sea of white so far.

Johnny scanned. “It’s…not just you.”

“Mmhmm. Or at least not teaching. Bet you anything they’ve got Black janitorial staff who aren’t invited to this little shindig.”

“Probably.” It was ridiculous, but that was the moneyed elite of fucking D.C. for you.

“They all look like they shined up nice for this thing.” She took another sip. “Too bad they aren’t bothering to talk to us.”

“To be fair, we’re not talking to them either,” Johnny said. “I guess Cochrane is talking to Principal Cross, actually…” And they looked about as friendly with each other as a pair of wolverines.

“Well, shit. This is gonna be—wait.” Debra pointed across the room at the far corner. “There he is!”

Johnny craned his neck. He couldn’t see over the teachers between here and there. “Who?”

“Mr. Verlaine, the knack teacher here.” She polished off what was left of her punch and set the glass down. “And he’s alone. Perfect. I’m gonna go talk to him.”

Johnny was somewhere between a little envious and too nervous to even contemplate it. “Let me know how it goes, yeah?”

“Oh, if he’s an asshole you’ll definitely be hearing about it.” She left, and a few moments later she was gone. Johnny contemplated following, not to interrupt their conversation, just to get a glimpse of the guy. It had been a long time, after all…did he still do that thing with his hair? Were his eyes the same shade of green?

Go find out. Johnny nodded a little too himself, still nervous but feeling his determination rise a bit. He’d have to get used to seeing Charlie around, he might as well start inuring himself to it now. It wasn’t like he had to talk to them. It wasn’t like he had to even let Charlie see him. Maybe the guy wouldn’t recognize him anyway.

The thought unexpectedly stung. Fuck this, you’re not a high schooler with a crush anymore, get a move on! Decided, Charlie set down his glass and began to gently push his way through the crown. “Excuse me…excuse me, please, coming through…”

“If I could have your attention?” The voice of Principal Georgia Cross thundered over the room. Johnny winced and looked over just in time to see her pull her face away from the mic a little. “Ah, better now,” she said, then continued, “I want to welcome the staff of Stheno High School to Euryale Academy. Obviously, we’re entering uncharted waters in our relationship thanks to the havoc your poorly trained student wrought on your school, but I want to assure you that Euryale and its teachers are pleased to have you with us for the remainder of the semester. If you have questions or need our assistance, please feel free to ask. We are, of course, always available to help those in need.” She then handed the mic over to Ira, who looked like he’d just swallowed half a lemon.

“Thanks for that…stirring welcome,” he said after a moment. “We’re happy to be here, and appreciative of Superintendent Howards’ efforts at securing a place for us at Euryale Academy. I’m sure our students will have lots to offer yours, and vice versa. I’m very proud of all the work my staff has accomplished over this past week, and I have no doubt that the transition to our two groups of students working together harmoniously will be a smooth one.” He smiled bracingly. “And that’s that! Rub a dub dub, enjoy the grub, folks!”

People began to talk again, to move to the food and drink, and it was harder than ever to push through them all to a place where Johnny could see the corner. He felt a knack pressing at the back of his chest, knew it was something that could move all these people for him, but he held it in. He had better control than that. He got through the crowd, emerged on the other side of a sea of suits and dresses a little bit breathless, and looked around.

The corner was empty. There was no one there.

Rivalries: Chapter Five, Part Two

 Notes: On with the show! We get some more Johnny POV, meet his neighbor, and more importantly, we meet Sparkles and Sarah.

Title: Rivalries: Chapter Five, Part Two

***

Chapter Five, Part Two

 

Charlie Verlaine.

The name bounced off the inside of Johnny’s head all the way home. He drove on autopilot, stopped at the correct lights and turned in the correct places but hardly noticing the traffic around him. When he pulled into the driveway in front of his half of the duplex, he blinked and looked around and wondered how he’d gotten there.

“Shit.” He needed something to eat, something to drink, and something mindless to relax him after a day like today. He opened up his door, stepped out of the car—

--and was immediately assaulted by his neighbor’s dog Sparkles. “Ow!” Sparkles was a teacup chihuahua who ran at the speed of molasses and had a tendency to quiver, but her teeth were sharp enough to cut right through the hem of his pantleg and scrape the skin beneath it.

“Sparkles!” Lora Donahue, a retired kindergarten teacher who’d apparently decided to put away the primness required by her position when she got out of the classroom, came bursting out her side of the duplex wearing a black ruffled bathing suit, a pair of hot pink crocs, and a sheer, gauzy coverup that didn’t live up to its name. “Get back here! Sparkles!” Sparkles, meanwhile, had doubled down on getting a grip around Johnny’s pants. She growled viciously and shook her head back and forth, dominating his hemline with all she had.

“Oh, you rotten little thing.” Lora huffed and came over to Johnny, picked her little dog up and cradled her against her chest, cooing, “Rotten, so rotten! What is mummy going to do with her naughty little girl?” She looked down at Johnny—down, because Lora might be sixty-eight but she had two inches on him even now—and said, “Sorry about that, sweets. I let her out to do her business and the next thing I hear, she’s trying to commit murder. Did she nip you?”

“Not at all,” Johnny lied.

“Mmhmm.” She eyed him suspiciously. “Sure. Lemme get you a banana bread.”

“Lora, really, that’s not necessary.”

“Oh, I heard about what happened at Stheno today, so I actually think it is necessary.” She pursed her lips. “I’ve got a squash pie with your name on it, too. You need to get your vitamins.”

Johnny stopped arguing, because there was resenting being babied and then there was turning down Lora’s summer squash pie, which tasted like custard and sunshine and was way better than any pumpkin pie he’d ever tasted. He waited while she vanished through her door with Sparkles, then opened his arms to receive the pile of baked goods she’d decided to bestow on him.

“Brought you a bag of chocolate zucchini muffins, too. My daughter Hannah is growing her first garden this year, and I told her ‘Baby, trust me, one zucchini plant is enough to feed two families.’ But did she believe me?” Lora scoffed. “She planted three. I’m drowning in zucchini and my grandkids are learning to loathe the sight of it, but this…” She tapped one of the muffins. “This is a good recipe.”

“I’m sure I’ll enjoy it,” Johnny said. “Thanks a lot, Lora. It’s been a…really, really long day.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it.” She smiled unexpectedly at him. “But I’m sure things will turn around, Johnny. Go, enjoy some dinner, watch some trashy television, and when you feel up to it you can tell me how last night’s hot date went.”

Oh Jesus, had that been just last night? It felt like a decade ago at this point. “There isn’t much to tell, sadly. He was forty minutes late to the restaurant, he drank three beers before I’d finished my first, and then he went to the bathroom and didn’t come back.”

Her eyes widened. “You got dine and dashed? Johnny, whatever app you swiped right on for that asshole, go and leave him a scathing review. Or let me do it, I’m good at those. I eviscerated the AirBnB I stayed in last year that had the mouse turds on the kitchen counter. Got all my money refunded and everything.”

Johnny chuckled. “I don’t think I’ll get a refund on the bad date, but I appreciate the thought.”

“I’ll ask the good lord to give that jackass a nice case of gonorrhea tonight,” Lora promised before heading back into her half of the duplex. Johnny spent a few seconds juggling his bounty while he found the right key on his ring, then opened up his door and walked inside with a sigh.

He headed for the small kitchen just past the living room, the emerald-colored carpet squishing slightly under his feet. In the distance he heard a meow. “Sarah?” he called out to his elusive kitty cat. “Are you coming to say hi?”

“Meow.”

It sounded like she was in the space beside the fridge. “Sarah?” He put his food on the counter and crouched down to take a look. He could see her glowing eyes, but nothing else—she was as black as a shadow, and just as elusive. “Want to come out and say hello?” he asked softly. She didn’t meow again, and after a moment he left her alone. Sarah was a shelter kitty, newly adopted, and they were still getting used to each other.

Johnny’s previous cat, Tabitha Twitchit, had been the same one he’d had since middle school, a fat old tabby who was pushy and smelly and always slept curled up around his head, without fail. She’d died a year ago last month, and a week ago Johnny had finally taken the plunge and adopted a new cat. Sarah had been the shyest one at the shelter, but her big, luminous eyes had captured him. To say they were still getting used to each other was too mild, but he had hopes that she’d do more than sit on the other side of the couch as him while he played Forged in Fire reruns.

Let’s see…he could cook something, or he could eat a quarter of the squash pie and a zucchini muffin for dinner. “Sold,” Johnny muttered, plating the treats because he wasn’t a savage who ate pie straight out of the tin, then grabbed a fork and sank down onto his couch. He pulled up Netflix and stared at the screen blankly for a bit, then put on a movie he’d watched before and settled in to eat.

God, he was tired. He was so tired and wired, and he still couldn’t stop thinking about Charlie fucking Verlaine. He’d been such a jock, but so hot, too. Johnny had oscillated between near-adoration and outright loathing for that kid all through high school, right up until he’d tried to impress Charlie by showing off a knack that Johnny didn’t know how to control yet, a knack that didn’t have a name.

He shouldn’t have done it during a duel. He sure as fuck shouldn’t have done it when Charlie was being egged on by all his friends, because he let loose a shield that had knocked Johnny straight into the hospital. Charlie had apologized, Johnny had said forget it, and then…

He’d been absorbed into the military, like so many of the rest of their classmates. Johnny had assumed he’d never hear about the man again, and he hadn’t until now. What was Charlie Verlaine doing teaching at Euryale Academy?

Johnny pulled out his phone to do a little digging, conscious of the slim dark shape appearing at the end of his couch. He didn’t look at her, just kept his eyes on his search, and Sarah eventually settled in two cushions down from him. He would have smiled, but suddenly…suddenly he had nothing to smile about.

“Honorably discharged?” That was all the little article in the town paper’s “Local Knacks” section had to say, but the site led to another article which mentioned the action Charlie had been involved with overseas, and how it had cost him—

--his arm.

Oh. Oh, that sucked.

Rivalries: Chapter Five, Part One

Notes: Here we go, more Rivalries at last! Someone's memory is about to get jogged...

Title: Rivalries: Chapter Five, Part One

***

Chapter Five

 

Five hours later, Roland was on his way to a juvenile detention center that Johnny was assured by Roland’s case worker Camille was a temporary stop only. “We’ll get him into a group home as fast as we can, and start looking at new families for fostering, but…” She’d shrugged a little helplessly. “A group home might be his best option while he’s still in the system. After his reaction to the Pattersons, it could be very hard to place him.”

“What happened here today wasn’t the result of some irrational reaction to the Pattersons,” Johnny argued. “It was the very rational reaction of a teenage boy who was being abused in his home.”

“But we can’t prove that the abuse took place,” Camille pointed out. “Most abuse that comes from those with mental knacks doesn’t manifest physically. Subsequently, without a mind healer to verify, any results of the abuse usually get chocked up to the child acting out.” Despite being so tired that Johnny had actually had to invite her to sit down to keep her feet from falling out beneath her, Camille had worked up the energy to sound enraged at that. “And you know how many mind healers are active in the United States? Five. Just five. Two of them work for private companies that primarily employ those with knacks, and three of them work for the government. I’ve made over a dozen requests for a mind healer since I started with the CPS, and I’ve never received a reply. Neither has my supervisor.”

“Shit.” Johnny rubbed the pad of his thumb over the bridge of his nose. “Well, the most important thing is that he’s out of the house. What do the Pattersons have to say about all this?”

“Mrs. Patterson has denied everything, of course. She says she never used her knack on him at all, much less to coerce him to do something he didn’t want to, and that he’d been reluctant to interact with her from the very beginning. Colonel Patterson is out of the country, and we have no guidance for when he’ll be back.”

“Ugh.” It made sense—the colonel was active military and had offensive knack capabilities, so there was no way they were going to leave him puttering around at home when he could be bringing entire towns to their knees somewhere overseas. Fucking military. Not that Johnny had escaped it himself, not entirely, but he at least was only engaged with the research division. His knack was too unpredictable to make him good for anything else.

So many of his classmates had gone into that grinder and never come back. He knew of three who had been killed, and one who had taking her own life after her term of service. Some had come back and adjusted, with varying success, back to civilian life. Most of them were still in. He figured he wouldn’t hear anything from any of them until they’d followed suit, and either died or come back to assimilate.

He’d probably never hear one way or the other about the ones who went into covert ops. Like… Focus, Gibilisco.

“Okay, I’ll help out however I can with school. I can definitely make sure all his assignments are sent along to the facility, or go through you, whatever’s easiest.”

“Thank you,” Camille said earnestly. “If you can email them to me, I’ll make sure he gets them.”

“Sure. Let me know when I can go visit him.”

She smiled. “He might not even be there that long. After all, the damage to the school seems to be mostly cosmetic.”

“Mostly.” Some of it was decidedly not cosmetic, and the last Johnny had seen Principal Cochrane, he’d been in a desperate conversation with the superintendent over the phone. “Hopefully we can all come back to school soon.”

Johnny’s hopes of that outcome were dashed ten minutes later, when he finally caught up with the principal a few yards out from the front of the high school. Principal Cochrane sat on a broken piece of masonry, his rumpled shirtsleeves unrolled and unbuttoned, his tie completely vanished at this point, looking a little like a poorly stuffed scarecrow as he stared at the destruction. Johnny stopped next to him and shoved his hands in his pockets. “What’s next, boss?”

“That’s still being worked out,” the principal said, staring at the shattered welcome sign like it was a loved one’s tombstone. “He’s sending an engineer to evaluate the structure tomorrow, but even if most of the damage is surface only, there’s a lot of it. We’re looking at weeks out of class, possibly more. We can try transitioning to online learning, but with the knacks…” His shoulder slumped further. “This is such a crucial time in the students’ development, in learning to control their abilities,” he muttered, almost like he was talking to himself. “Taking that kind of time off, it’s something they might not recover from. These kids need help learning how to use their knacks, Johnny, and they need it before something like this happens to another school or home.

“I know Roland had a good reason,” he went on, anticipating Johnny’s objection, “but it’s hard to sell a good reason to the superintendent when we’re dealing with potentially millions of dollars in damages here.”

Johnny swallowed. Jesus. “What else can we do?” he asked.

“Well…” Principal Cochrane blew out a steadying breath and put his hands on his hips. “There are a couple other options. There aren’t any other really convenient locations we could use as a school in this area—all the actual schools are at capacity, and none of them are rated to handle kids with knacks. There’s a rec center on the other side of town that’s being renovated that we might be able to move into, but it’s being renovated because of a nasty roach infestation coupled with lead paint, both of which are still problems. Option three…” He glanced at Johnny. “We could combine with Euryale for however long the repairs take.”

Wait, what? Johnny actually laughed. “You think they’d tolerate us inside their ‘academy?’ They don’t even tolerate us bringing our dueling club to their meets.”

“The superintendent is confident that he can override any concerns from the principal and PTA over there by citing dire circumstances, which really isn’t a stretch at the moment.” Principal Cochrane shrugged again. “I don’t like it, but in some ways it might be good for our kids. We’d bring our own teachers, of course, but we’d get access to some pretty sweet equipment. And I hear they’re getting a little less snooty of late—they’ve actually got one of our graduates teaching their knack class.”

“Really?” Johnny hadn’t heard anything about this.

“Oh, yeah. Apparently he’s only in to cover for the regular instructor’s maternity leave, but still, I wouldn’t have expected them to go for an ex-army ranger with a history of attitude problems.” He smiled nostalgically. “I don’t remember him really well, but it seems like he did pretty well for himself.”

“Who are we talking about, exactly?” Johnny asked.

“Oh, did I not say?” Principal Cochrane shook his head. “It’s Charlie Verlaine.”

Charlie Verlaine. Johnny blinked. Oh. My. God. Charlie VERLAINE?

What the hell was he about to get into?