This choice: Flashback: Nine months ago • Go Back...Chapter #6Outside Life, Looking In by: Seuzz   "Dad!" Will Prescott whines, and tries grabbing the suitcase from his father. "I can get it myself. Or that guy can do it." He nods at you, and follows it up with an impertinent question. "Is that what you're paid to do?"
"Not exactly," you say, but take the suitcase from Harris Prescott anyway. "I'm a student here too."
Prescott reddens, and his dad nudges him hard. "Say you're sorry, Will," he growls.
"Oh. Yeah, sorry." Prescott extends his free hand. "My name's Will. Uh, Will Prescott."
"Really? My name's Will too," you say. "I got here first though, so you'll have to change yours."
Prescott's flush deepens. "Yeah, well, I guess they'll need some way to tell us apart."
Harris Prescott snorts. "Sure, you two look like twins. You play football, Will?"
"Pfft, no," Prescott snorts, then sulks under his dad's withering glance.
"Yeah, I kick one around with the other guy," you say. "We toss around a basketball too. What about you, whose-name-is-to-be-determined-later," you grin at Prescott.
His shoulders jerk up and down. "Not really. I study more."
"Which is his way of saying he doesn't play any sports," Harris Prescott says. "And there's another student?"
"Yeah, he's out running an errand with Professor Brennan. Shall we go in?"
Prescott and his dad murmur harsh things at each other as you lead them onto the porch and into the small house, then down the hall to the bedroom with the bunk beds.
Prescott pales. "Do I have to share this with someone?"
"Your choice," you say. "We've opened up a spare bedroom, what with the addition of a third student to our academy." You poke him in the shoulder. "I guess you could take it. Be kind of lonely for you, though."
"I'm just not used to sharing a room," Prescott grumbles.
"You'd've had to share one in a dorm if you were going to a regular college," Harris says. He looks around the room. "You and the other student share this room?" he asks you. "This is your stuff?" The shelves are lined with elementary and middle school readers; model airplanes and ships hang from the ceiling; the quilts on the bunk beds are decorated with cartoon characters; and the desk and chair are quite small.
"Looks like a kid's room," Prescott snorts. Harris glares at him, even though the same observation was implicit in his question.
"It is a kids' room," you reply. "The professor's kids. We just sleep here."
"And where are they?" Will Prescott demands.
"In the cemetery," you calmly reply. The new kid turns very white. "Yeah, he's kept their room unchanged for twenty years now. We don't touch their things. And we don't talk about what happened to Frank and Joe."
The Prescott men are very quiet as you lead them back into the living room, and offer to bring them colas.
* * * * *
You chat a little more with them for a half hour, and then the screen door opens and Professor Charles Brennan comes in. He beams at his guests and extends handshakes all around. "So delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Prescott," he says. "And yours too, of course, Will." You're relieved that Prescott is very courteous to him, and calls him "Sir." After refreshing himself a little, the professor returns to take a seat with his newest pupil and that pupil's father.
"Your son's scores were quite impressive," he tells Harris, "and I am immensely pleased that he will be studying with me."
"His scores took me by surprise too," Harris says bluntly, and stares hard at his son. "For awhile we were thinking we might even aim at one of the Ivy Leagues. But Will found your academy online and said he'd feel more comfortable with a tutoring establishment before he tried for something like that. And your prices were decent," he adds in a voice so soft only you probably heard him.
"Not to boast, Mr. Prescott, but I am much more rigorous and demanding than even the best schools," Charles says. "Though it is potential that attracts me, not scores. I very much liked your son's essay. It was thoughtful, careful, and hedged in at just the right points. Thinking is not a skill that universities look for, and not one that in my opinion they instill."
Harris looks at his son, and you can read his thought: The twerp is good at thinking? Coulda fooled me.
The pleasantries continue for awhile, before Harris rises to take his leave for the start of a long drive back to Saratoga Falls. He and his son stand together just outside the front gate for a very long time, talking intently. You watch them from behind the gauzy curtain at the front window. Again, you're sure you know what he's saying to the kid. Be good, work hard, don't lip off, try to get along with your housemates, and for God's sake don't fuck up.
Charles comes up softly behind and puts a hand on your shoulder. "You wish you were out there getting it yourself, don't you, son?"
And suddenly you have to swallow down the tears. "Yes sir. I couldn't say good-bye to him last year, and I can't say good-bye to him now. Will I ever be able to talk to him again? As myself?"
He squeezes your shoulder. "I don't know, son. I do hope so. He's a good man. I can tell because of the tongue-lashing he's giving that little jerkoff out there."
Your sudden laugh is so hard the snot flies out your nostrils.
After a few minutes, the two figures outside hug, and the older one gets in the car. The younger one has the grace to stand and watch and wave as he drives off. You watch too, until the car is out of sight, even after the front door bangs open and closes. "Alright, you fucker," Will Prescott snarls. "What's the idea of killing off me and Joe?"
"C'mon, Frank," you retort. "After all that shit you were slinging, don't you think you deserve it?"
* * * * *
But it's a nice homecoming once Frank has gotten your mask off--the one he's been wearing since Christmas, when he returned to Saratoga Falls to replace the golem in the role of you. It was his penance for the damage he'd done you at the climax of your misadventures in your home town, when you'd used the Libra Personae to impersonate and replace some of your friends. You'd repented after freeing Frank and Joe from the masks you'd put on them, and helped them put things to right. But Frank, in a fit of anger and misunderstanding, had nearly killed you. Only Joe--by quickly putting a mask to your face--had been able to save your life. Mortified, Frank had volunteered to take over the life that you would now never be able to return to.
And so he had, at least for the spring semester and summer, long enough to take you through graduation, and to bring your grades up enough give "Will Prescott" a shot at some prestigious schools. But in his guise as you he'd also been able to maneuver "Will" to an alternative, a very small and exclusive one-year tutorial academy run by "Professor Charles Brennan" in Olympia. Charles and you and Frank and Joe had had a lot of fun setting up the fake website and fake testimonials, which were good enough to fool your normally very skeptical dad into enrolling you for a year. At the end of that year, you hope to get "Will Prescott" into an overseas institution--the Stellae have some connections in Europe and the Far East that could be useful there--so that "Will" can continue to live away from his parents while pursuing plausible schoolwork. If this continues long enough, maybe you can find a way of getting your imago repaired so that you can resume your own life.
You and Frank catch up on things in Saratoga Falls. There are no surprises to speak of, unless it's that your old friend Caleb started dating Cassie Harper, and that Gordon Black got expelled for punching out one too many classmates. "Yeah, after the team took the championship, Sagansky came down on him like a ton of bricks," Frank drawls. And Lisa Yarborough? He shrugs. "I got you two to be friends again, but she wound up dating someone at Eastman, a guy named Dunholm. Me and Joe knew him. Nice guy. Smart. Could kick freaking Mansfield all over the debate platform, and did when they had a meet."
There's no further word on Fane or Eric Kim; the latter closed up King Kong Komics only days after your trio had flensed him, and no one has heard from him since. The Strausslers seem to be carrying on as though nothing happened.
And finally Frank asks you about Steve Patterson. "He's off with Joe," you tell him. "Camping trip."
Frank makes a face. "When are we sending him back, and do I have to be the one to drive him? I had enough of his golem. No way I want to deal with the real asshole."
Charles gently chides Frank, but the latter obstinately refuses to withdraw or modify his opinion.
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