Running for Home - 85. May 14, 2022

May 14, 2022

They let Quentin out of the brig yesterday.

Can’t say that I feel completely comfortable with that. Not on your life. He won’t be in my class for the rest of the year, no, he’s going to be getting independent tutoring for a while to try and monitor his behaviour and see if the work they have been doing on rehabilitating him has had a measurable effect.

They are giving him the weekend to get reacquainted with life upstairs before classroom life resumes. His goons have been warned that if they are caught egging Quentin on to do anything unacceptable, there will be serious consequences for them as well. To be honest, the Cord twins and Vincent Stewart haven’t been that big of a problem in my class without Quentin around. It’s hard for me to judge whether Quentin is the source of all of it, or whether it’s just the toxic combination of those four kids that emboldens Quentin to act out.

Emma tells me that Quentin is very misunderstood. I rolled my eyes at that. What kind of problem child would he be if the world didn’t misunderstand him? People sure as fuck misunderstood me. But it’s one thing to say that about a misbehaving student in a normal school. It’s another thing entirely when that student is potentially an Omega-level telepath and has demonstrated a willingness to use his powers sadistically.

Regardless, I’m going to be doing my best to keep my distance from that kid. I have no desire to interact with him. I’ve got better things to be doing with my time. Sure, the kid needs saving, but I’m not the one who’s going to be doing it, not after what he did to me.

Liam finally got to have his sleepover with Carter and Sammy this weekend. Annie had to take care of something in New York, something she didn’t really want to talk about with Bobby and me. We offered to take care of Carter so she could be free to do whatever was necessary without having to plan around him. She seemed grateful for that, so whatever she has going on it mustn’t be anything fun.

Annie and Carter showed up at the door to our suite with Carter’s overnight bag just before classes Friday morning. We showed him Liam’s room and tucked his things away and then it was off to class for the boys and Bobby and I. Annie was heading out before lunch, she just had one last thing to do before leaving.

Other than the fact that Quentin was being released, it was a rather unremarkable day of class. My writing students had been working on short stories, and I took a peek at some of them in my office before gathering the boys to get ready for dinner. Kevin’s was absolutely gripping. To be honest, his prose had been showing a lot of good improvement over the last few months. I was pretty caught up in it, and just as I was finishing, there was a knock at my door.

It was Kevin, oddly enough. He said he had news about college. I perked up, but only cautiously so. He seemed a bit resigned. I asked him what was up. He told me he’d heard back from all the colleges now, and he hadn’t gotten in anywhere. Well, except for Brown, but he was on the waitlist there. He might get a spot, he might not. He wouldn’t know until they told him whether someone else decided not to come, maybe even as late as the week before classes start at the end of August.

I got up and came around the desk and pulled him into a hug. I told him I was proud of him, that even if things didn’t work out, this was proof that he was good enough and smart enough to go to college, and that his writing was appreciated by more people than just me. We’d just have to make sure his application was ironclad next year. If he needed to apply again. If Brown didn’t end up finding a spot for him after all.

I asked him if he’d be okay with me taking him out to dinner to celebrate, though not this weekend since Liam was having his friends over and I was not going to leave Bobby alone with his hands full. Kevin nodded and smiled shyly, telling me that Dani had taken him out for dinner last night after he read his letter from Brown. I apologized for not being able to do it tonight, but he shook his head, smiling, telling me taking care of Liam was more important.

I told him I really liked his short story, how proud I was of the effort he’d put into it. I didn’t really have all that much to criticize. It was solid from a structure point of view and engaging in its characters and development. Kevin told me that he’d started thinking about some of the things I was pushing him to think about when he was writing, and when he was doing peer reviews of his classmates work he was starting to see those problems in their writing - it wasn’t just things he didn’t like about their writing anymore, now he could actually understand what the problem was and point it out to them. It was still a bit harder to see those problems when reviewing his own work though.

I smiled and told him that he was definitely doing a good job of seeing them and I was really happy with his progress on all his work lately. I told him that even professional writers don’t take it all on their own shoulders. When you work with a publisher, you have an editor there for a reason - you can’t see everything. I told him that some authors keep a set of beta readers that review a good draft after the writer has gone through some stages of improvement on their own, before it even gets sent to a publisher. The peer reviews we were doing in class were essentially that process, but the author gets to be selective about who they show things to and they can build up a rapport with their beta readers based on the kinds of problems they typically identify.

Kevin asked me if I used beta readers, and I chuckled and shook my head no. I had done it a bit while I was in school, but that’s about it. I was lucky enough to have a pretty good sense for things, so after my work on revisions and review of my drafts, things were usually good enough to send to the publisher for edits at the next level.

I asked Kevin if he had considered submitting some poetry or other writing to a competition yet, either state-wide or national. He frowned and said no. He didn’t think he would win, so why bother? I shook my head. I told him I probably should have been encouraging him to make submissions in the fall, since some of these competitions would publish the writing in an anthology afterwards. Having a history of publications would definitely help with his college applications next year if the waitlist situation didn’t work out, and it would help with his career later too. Even if he didn’t win the competition, it was worth it on the chance that he might make it into one of the anthologies. Kevin told me he’d never thought about it that way, and asked me if there were any that he should consider. I told him I’d do a search sometime this weekend for any competitions that are running monthly or quarterly, since I was pretty sure the big annual national competitions all ran in the fall. I was pretty sure when I was a student there was a writing contest about contemporary issues and causes that ran monthly that Scott Summers had told me about in English class way back in the day, but I never jumped at it because I thought no one would care what I had to say, just like Kevin today.

Bobby interrupted us before we could talk anymore, reminding me that we were taking the boys out for dinner. I offered for Kevin to come with us, or we could do the dinner thing another time with just him and I. Kevin opted for the more private dinner, telling me dealing with a bunch of little kids wasn’t really his thing. I laughed and told him it wasn’t my thing either, but I was getting used to it. Bobby just smiled amusedly.

We gathered up Liam, Carter and Sammy from the games room and headed out to Salem Pizza and Pasta. Liam had liked it there before when we went out for my birthday, so we figured we might as well go there again. Sammy was very unsure about going out because his mutation, among other things, gave him scaly, fish-like skin. It had been a long time since he was out in public, and prior to coming to the School he’d been ridiculed and tormented by bullies at his elementary school in Vancouver. We managed to convince him it would be okay and Bobby and I hoped like hell there wouldn’t be a negative incident that would further traumatize the poor kid.

Well, thankfully we were right. Sammy was pretty quiet for the first twenty minutes after we arrived at the restaurant, looking around like a scared prey animal. Carter and Liam eventually managed to distract him with chit-chat while we waited for the food. Carter had a bit of an odd sense of humour, joking with Liam and Sammy about things his imaginary friend Jacob would tell him. Bobby and I both thought it was a bit odd that Carter still had an imaginary friend at nine years of age. Annie had warned us about it weeks ago soon after he first befriended Liam, so it wasn’t a surprise, but it was still odd. Annie had thought that once he started making friends at the School, the imaginary friend would cease to be a presence in Carter’s life, which is the normal pattern for kids, but if anything she had told us Carter seemed to double down on things. Emma had apparently told Annie not to worry about it too much, as she seemed to think the imaginary friend was a psychological construct that was helping Carter cope with his considerable and rapidly developing telepathic and telekinetic abilities. Well, I don’t know shit about any of that, so who was I to argue with Emma? But still, it was weird.

After the kids had gorged themselves on pizza, we headed back to the School. Bobby and I originally thought about stopping somewhere for ice cream, but considering that Carter and Liam had just barely been able to contain Sammy’s nerves, we thought it was best to save the ice cream for another day. We settled down with the boys in one of the common rooms in the faculty wing and put on the Disney flick Encanto for the boys to watch. All too soon, it was time to get them to bed.

Getting three boys ready for bed went a little easier than I expected. Then again, Liam had picked two good kids to be his friends, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. We read them the first chapter from a new graphic novel that none of the boys had read yet, and then had them settle for some sleep. Bobby and I retired to our room, a little tired but not as exhausted as I thought we would be. That would probably be how we felt tomorrow night. We were planning on taking the kids to Muscoot Farm in Katonah in the morning to enjoy some time with the animals, and then we were going to drive to West Nyack so the kids could have fun at the Palisades Climb Adventure. Hilariously enough, Liam was most excited about the fact that Bobby agreed that we could have dinner at McDonalds tomorrow night. Apparently Joanna had never taken Liam out for fast food, deeming it not nutritious enough. I mean, I guess she was kinda right, but what does it hurt to let a kid enjoy things once in a blue moon?

We weren’t expecting any visitors that night, but we were awoken at 3am not by Liam, but by Carter. He told us his imaginary friend Jacob had woke him up. Something was wrong with his mommy. We couldn’t calm him down, and he started begging us to let him call her. We tried to convince him to wait until morning, but eventually we gave in. Bobby called Annie. He let it ring for a good while, but she didn’t pick up. It went to voicemail. Bobby hung up and called again, but it went to voicemail again. Unsurprisingly, she either didn’t wake up from sleeping or more likely her phone was on Do Not Disturb mode for the evening. I mean, I didn’t blame her for it, but it would have been nice for her to stay contactable in case something happened. Bobby left a message that Carter had awoken and was worried about her and asked that she give us a call in the morning to help allay his fears. He hung up, and then sent her a text relaying the same information just for good measure.

We tried to convince Carter that she was likely fine and just asleep. He was having a lot of trouble accepting that. He told us that Jacob was telling him there was something wrong with his mom for a while now. She was acting strange sometimes, and he didn’t know why. We asked Carter to tell us more about this. He was having trouble explaining it to us, though. He said that sometimes it was like she was barely paying attention to him when he was talking to her. She seemed distracted a lot and focused on other things that didn’t make sense. She was also being forgetful, that he would have to remind her of things like helping him get ready for bed or when to start cooking supper.

Bobby and I looked at each other. I asked Carter if he knew more about why Annie was going into the city this weekend. He told us that she wouldn’t tell him, all he knew was that she said she’d be back on Sunday evening and she’d see him Monday morning before School. Bobby and I were both puzzled by that - even if there was something private Annie needed to do, a normal person at least would have told their kid some sort of reasonable excuse to allay their fears. Bobby and I told Carter that we would have a talk with his mommy to see if something was going on that she needed help taking care of, and that we would try to help if she needed it.

We managed to talk him down a bit after that, and we got him back to bed with the other boys. Bobby and I went back to sleep after that, and thankfully there were no more interruptions. It’s morning now, and Annie did call us while we were getting breakfast and talked to Carter. It was strange, though. He didn’t seem like he was comforted by the call. If anything, he seemed even more disturbed, but he wouldn’t talk about it with us. Instead, he put on this brave face and thanked us for getting in touch with her.

We had a good time at Muscoot Farm with the boys. Sammy seemed worried again about leaving the School, but when we arrived and there weren’t many people there he seemed to relax a little. We interacted with their farm animals, toured some of the historic farm buildings and learned about their purpose and history, and then took a hike around the property for a bit. It was enjoyable, overall. The boys seemed to find a way to make a game out of everything.

We are on our way to West Nyack now. Sammy seems to be getting nervous again, but Carter and Liam are distracting him with a game of Eye Spy. I am taking the opportunity to do a bit of journaling on my laptop while Bobby drives, cause I know if I don’t do it now I probably won’t get to it again until Monday night. So far this sleepover adventure seems to be going well. I am really glad that Liam has friends and that they are good kids. Hopefully we don’t hit any bumps in the road the rest of the weekend.

I guess Bobby and I will adapt, either way.