Chapter 16

We were just about to start the trek down the mall when my phone rang. I’d been wondering when I’d get this call and I answered, dreading the worst, but hoping for the best.

“Hi, Mr. Forbes,” I said quietly and that got the girls’ attention right away. “How was your morning?”

“My morning was productive,” he said, sounding relaxed. “Patrick Waterman came in on schedule and we worked out the details of the agreement for most of the morning. Everything was finalized just before lunch and we start taking his statements in about fifteen minutes. It may take a few days to get all the details from him and straighten out the timeline, but he’s in. He credits you with giving him the advice to go ahead with the deal.”

“I just told him what his options were and told him which one I’d pick based on what I knew. He made the decision in the end. I may have set his mind at ease that I wouldn’t go after his family while he was in jail, but they were never in danger from me. Any idea when you’ll be able to make arrests?”

“Probably not before school starts next week,” he said gently. “The upshot of that is that you and your friends have the chance to see some of those boys taken away in cuffs.”

“I’d call that a late Christmas present,” I said, smiling at the thought of a couple of those guys weeping as they were led out of classrooms by unsympathetic police. “What about Marlene?”

“Oh she’ll be coming back to Boston,” he confirmed. “That’s the first thing we’re talking to Patrick about. We intend to issue all the arrest warrants and the search warrant at the same time, probably on Tuesday of next week, but the search warrant may be issued ahead of time to expedite her arrest warrant. We don’t want any of them to get wind of it and decide to make it difficult to locate them.”

“So long as we get a front row seat for some of it, I think we’ll be happy. Thanks for calling to let me know.”

“Not a problem. I’ll give you a little update when we serve the warrants. I trust you to keep it under wraps until the warrants are out.”

“Well, I’m with a couple of the girls now and they can tell it’s a good news call, so that much is out, but I can keep it quiet for you.”

“I understand. Don’t spread it around.”

I promised I wouldn’t, thanked him again and we said goodbye.

“He did it?” Lana asked. I nodded and the four of them looked relieved.

“Don’t spread it around. They need to keep it quiet until they’re done talking to him and then everyone’s gonna know.”

They were ecstatic over that and shopping became their way to celebrate. We went down the mall and Hector quickly got bored with clothes so I suggested that he and I go look in some of the other stores. I gave Lana a stack of bills that made Gina and Cheryl gape and told them I’d text them when we were bored or tired. They promised to text when they had all the space in the cars filled up.

We wandered around the mall and I steered him toward Best Buy where we could look at games and electronics for a little while. On a whim, I picked up a few games before I took Hector to the computer aisle. “How old is your sister’s computer?” I asked him as we looked at the new ones.

He shrugged. “I dunno. She’s had it for a while though.”

“Then she needs a new one,” I said simply and waved to the girl working sales.

She was nice, but a little condescending. I guess it was to be expected, since we were so young, she hardly expected to make a sale. I talked to her about brands and prices and finally picked out what I wanted. I pointed out the model and told her I wanted two of them.

The poor girl was skeptical, but her customer service skills were sharp. She kept the doubt off her face for the most part, her smile nearly seamless as she was ringing things in. I decided we needed accessories and bought chill stands, flash drives, external hard drives, mice, DVD drives since the newer models didn’t come with one and protective sleeves for them. I also got them a good set of earbuds and a larger set of gaming headphones with a mic for when we had to get by with chatting on Skype.

She dutifully rang it through and then gaped when I just pulled the cash out of my pocket and counted it out, paying extra for the service protection plans for both computers.

“Once we get it set up for your sister, we’ll see if her old one is good enough for you to use it,” I told him.

“Who’s the second one for?” he asked curiously.

“Cheryl needs a new one too. I think we can clean one of them up for you once they get all their stuff off them.”

“You think?” he asked hopefully and I was again struck by how much their parents must have struggled just to provide Gina with what she had. That had to change.

“If not, I don’t think Best Buy is out of computers. We’ll be back.”

We wandered into a comic store after that, Hector wanting to see the action figures. I looked around, but didn’t really see much that interested me. I browsed a little, but I didn’t see a lot I was really interested in. While I’d grown up on comics, I’d long-since outgrown them. While it was fun to read about Spider-man fighting his enemies, none of them ever stayed defeated.

I let Hector browse to his heart’s content and looked at some of the specialty board games while I waited for him to give up. There were a couple that I would have bought at the start of summer. I didn’t generally play games with the girls though and I wasn’t sure if any of them would be interested in those kinds of games. I decided to ask around before I bought anything in case no one was keen about playing something like that. Hector and I walked down the mall and I texted Lana, asking where they were. We headed in their direction and met Lana outside Victoria’s Secret.

“Bored?” she asked brightly as we walked up.

“We’re mostly shopped out,” I admitted. “There’s more we could have gotten, but I didn’t know whether we’d get any use out of it or not.”

“What was it?” she asked.

“Board games,” I told her. “The comic shop had some games. I know we were planning something more casual for New Years Eve, but I don’t know if anyone has interest.”

She shrugged. “I’ll play,” she said simply. “You want me to ask the others?”

“We’re not allowed in?” I asked, glancing at the store.

“Not today. It’s a surprise,” she told me.

“Alright,” I said. “Well ask and let me know who’d be interested and who wouldn’t and we’ll see if there’s enough interest to make it worthwhile.”

She nodded and disappeared into the store again.

“They’re shopping for underwear and it’s a surprise for you?” Hector asked, looking at me with a weird look on his face.

I grinned. “Trust me, in a few years, you’ll be thrilled to have a girl promise you a similar surprise.”

He shrugged and I knew I’d been the same way at his age.

A few minutes later, Beck came out to join us. “I’m going with you guys,” she said with a grin. “I can only handle so much girly stuff. I’m WAY past my limit. The girls said to pick up a game or two and we’d see. I’m supposed to keep you from going too crazy though.”

The three of us walked back to the comic shop and bought a few games. I bought one purely out of personal curiosity. It was called Talisman and boasted expansions. I bought the base game and the twelve expansions they had, figuring the game must be good if it was popular enough to support this much content. We also picked up a Star Wars board game, one that seemed to be based on Lovecraft’s works, a Zombie survival game that had a couple of expansions, a Game of Thrones game and a Marvel card-based board game that had expansions of its own. By the time we’d left the store, all three of us were weighed down with bags.

“We should take this stuff back to the car,” I said, awkwardly carrying the lightest bag in my right hand and managing a second bag in my left hand. We stopped at the lingerie store and Beck went in for the keys so we could drop off our load of games. The three of us went back to the food court and we hung out for a while, the two of us chatting as much with Hector as we did with each other.

“So you’re having a party for New Years?” he asked curiously.

“Not really,” I admitted. “It’s just me and some of the girls hanging out for the evening. We’ll play some games, hang out, watch a few movies and count down to midnight.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to my friend’s house. If you were having a party though, I’d have told him I couldn’t go.”

I smiled. “Have fun with your friend,” I told him. “The next time we’re throwing a party, I’ll make sure Gina knows you’re invited.”

We waited about another half hour before the girls came back, each of them carrying enough bags that they were having difficulty handling them all. We each took some and then went out to the cars for the trip home. We took everything inside and then packed up the stuff Gina and Hector were taking home. I got the bags from Best Buy and pulled out the laptops for her and Cheryl. They were both excited to have new ones and I divided up the extras that I’d bought them to round out the package.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Cheryl told me. “You spent too much on me today anyway.”

Gina was loud in her agreement too. “My laptop was just fine,” she protested.

I shrugged dismissively. “Then once we get all your files off it and get it cleaned up, Hector can have it. I bet he could use one for school and doesn’t particularly need something top of the line right now.”

“And what about my old one?” Cheryl asked.

“Do we know someone at school that’s been getting by without one?” I asked. “Maybe one of the girls?”

“I do,” Beck said. “Her family is making due with an old desktop.”

Cheryl looked a little more relaxed at that, but still anxious.

“If it makes you feel any better, I picked up some games just for me,” I told her.

She sighed and nodded, giving in. “Alright, but only because Lana and Beck swore you did the same for everyone else.”

“Speaking of which, I have something to tell Gina,” I said and looked at her. She looked like a deer caught in headlights, just staring back, not knowing what was next. “You’re going to college,” I told her. “Start figuring out which ones you’d like to go to and start putting together applications. I’ve agreed to pay for college for every one of my girls if they can’t afford it. You’re no different.”

“That’s WAY too much!” she said anxiously. “I can’t accept that.”

I sighed and frowned at her. She knew about Miranda, but I hadn’t told her about the money. I guess now was the time. I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my pictures to the one I was looking for. It was a picture I’d taken of the money stacked on top of my desk before it was put in the tool chest it was currently occupying. I showed it to her and Cheryl.

“I’m not going to suffer for the loss of enough to send you two to college,” I assured them. “Stop worrying. That money is there to make sure we all have what we need to make our dreams happen.”

They nodded reluctantly and that was the end of the argument. After that, it was time for us to go to the gym. Cheryl was going to stay home with Beck, so I drove to the gym with Lana while Gina dropped Hector and their bags of stuff at home.

“You know you’re still in for a hazing soon, right?” Lana asked on the way to the gym.

“Yeah, I know,” I said feeling a little less dread at the thought of it now that Lana and I were back together. She and Gina would both look out for me. “I’m sure that you and Gina will keep it from getting into territory that would get me into trouble.”

She shrugged. “I think that’s going to be the big locker room talk tonight,” she admitted. “Depending on what it is, you’ll have to wait until after the 9th to get it. If we come up with something that doesn’t involve any chance of infection, we could do it as soon as tonight if we don’t need time to prepare. We’ll see though.”

“I can hardly wait,” I said without any enthusiasm. Hazings were rarely pleasant, often humiliating and designed to make you feel invested in the team, like the ordeal had made the membership worth more to you because it was a trial you’d endured to get there.

When we got to the gym, I changed quickly and did what I could of my stretching routine. It sucked, but I wanted to get back into it and back to everything else as soon as possible.

When Diego arrived, I was ready for him and wanted a frank assessment of where we were.

“We’ve been working at this for about a month now, right?” I asked. “How are we doing? I know I’ve still got a long way to go. I’m just looking to find out where the water mark is compared to when we first started.”

“I’d say the water mark is at about 30% of normal right now. It was pretty close to 10% when we started.” He took his time working me out while we talked, limbering me up and then getting me to do exercises for strength and to improve my range of motion. “That’s incredible progress for a single month,” he told me. “Don’t get discouraged if you don’t keep that path up. It’ll fluctuate greatly. Sometime in the next couple of weeks, we’re likely gonna hit the wall and it’ll even out while we strengthen your shoulder. Then we’ll break through and you’ll make a lot of headway ‘til we reach that next plateau. It happens like that.”

“What does it usually take to break through that wall?” I asked curiously.

“Sometimes it’s a matter of just waiting it out until your body’s ready to go to the next level. Sometimes you bite down, power through and endure some pain to make it happen.”

“Do I get a choice which path we take?” I wanted to know.

“You get a vote,” he corrected me. “Your body gets a vote too and then I break ties.”

“That’s a sneaky way of telling me that I don’t get a say,” I told him. “My body wouldn’t be in agreement to pushing through the pain.”

“Probably not,” he agreed. “Let’s just say that I’ve seen people re-injure themselves by not accepting their new limitations.”

“I understand. I want to get back into my regular workout as fast as possible and that workout is heavy on arms and shoulders so right now I’m twiddling my thumbs a lot.”

“You’ve got a lot of determination, Matt,” he said admiringly. “That’s something you need. You could use a larger dose of patience, but I understand that you want to get back to normal. I can’t stress enough that you’ve made incredible headway. I’d expect you to have regained back to about 20% right now, so from my perspective, you’re almost a month ahead of schedule. If I had to guess, you’d be at almost 50% when we’ll have to take a step back while your body adjusts.”

We continued working on my rehab for the next two hours until I was nearly ready to ask for a break. I was pushing and I think he knew it.

At the end of our time, he gave me some homework to do. “For the next few weeks, I want you to start on a few light exercises at home. Take a small weight and do some lifts to get your shoulder used to picking up a little more weight.” He showed me what motions he wanted and I nodded. “Nothing more than a couple of pounds,” he warned me. “If you’ve got some small free weights, use a pound and then two once that feels good at the end of sets. Once you stop feeling two pounds, let me know and we’ll see about increasing it, but for now, start with one and then move up. Got it?”

“One and two and talk to you,” I rhymed off for him.

“Smart-ass,” he said with a smile. “Just make sure you don’t go to two until one pound feels like you’re not doing anything. Then when two gets to that point, talk to me and we’ll see where your recovery is.”

He took off and I went to change, shaking out my arm a little after the workout he’d put me through. When I came out, the girls were starting to break up. That told me that whatever they’d planned, there was no hazing tonight.

Gina kissed me before she left and Lana and I drove home. I asked what they’d decided and she smiled at me. “You’ll see,” she threatened mysteriously.

“I see,” I said. “Before January 9th or do I have to wait for test results?”

Her smirk widened into a grin. “You’ll see,” she assured me.

“Most distressing,” I confided. “At least keep the other girls informed so they don’t feel like it’s too much for them to accept. They deserve that.”

“You worry too much,” she said. “No one’s going to try to get you to do something that’ll get you into trouble.”

I nodded and hoped very much that she was right.

Dinner that night was a loud affair with the girls talking animatedly about Cheryl’s new wardrobe and the computer and how overwhelmed she was by it all. Everyone got into the spirit even though I didn’t think I’d done anything huge to warrant this much response. After dinner, I took Dawn out for another walk and this time I actually did have to cut it short. I was sore and tired from the full day of activity. I left Dawn tethered in the backyard for a little while and got a weight from the garage before going inside, leaving Dawn out to frisk in the snow for a bit.