"Okay, we’re going to try this once more. Skate to me." Tyler stood maybe five feet from Fran. It was four weeks later, and she was trying to skate again. They’d been trying forever, but her leg had been too weak. She bit her lip, ignoring the pain that was in her back from falling every single say, and rolled towards him. Almost losing her balance, she swayed her arms but stayed standing, and ran into him. "Alright!"
"Hey! I did it! I’m making progress!" She was in a good mood. Taylor had called the day before and said he was coming home. She figured the video shoot had gone well, from the way he said that he had so much to tell her when he got back.
Kyle’s death was still taking its toll on her. She was just beginning to get back into things, but it took one picture to send her back. The good mood she was in was only because Taylor was coming home, and she was getting back on her skates. She cried secretly almost every night, in the dark with no one around. She hated to know that she was crying, but she couldn’t help it. Her best friend was dead and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.
"Well are you going to move or are you going to stay in my arms forever?" Tyler joked, looking down at her. She gave him a nice hug and let go, happy she was finally able to stand on her own. Skating was going to take a lot of work, especially to get back the ten years she had behind her. Skating was something she did for fun and was exceptional at it, but trying to get that all back and then try to be on the fall roster was more than enough for her. She had all summer, though. At least she still had her strength.
"You’re going to be late for school," Coach Curtis said, walking out of the house. "And I know you kids, if you’re late one more time it’s the suspension again." Fran rolled her eyes. She’d been suspended more than twice with Tyler and Kyle for being late. To school, to classes, to everything. They just had a lackadaisical attitude towards school, especially about getting there on time. Of course they kept their grades up and everything, but the general attitude towards it kept them from many activities. That’s why they hardly bothered with the school’s hockey team, which was also coached by Coach Curtis. In that league he had to cut them for suspensions, school policy. Outside, they could do what they wanted.
The two hadn’t been to school since the previous Friday, and now it was Wednesday. They were hardly there at all the past few weeks, with Kyle’s death and all. It didn’t matter if one quarter they’d get screwed over by grades, it was just the semester grade that really mattered.
"Fine," Fran said, and took off her skates. She slipped on her shoes which were by the door and glanced around. "Okay, am I forgetting anything?" Tyler began to laugh, slightly. "What?"
"Um, it might help if you took your books along." Fran’s face lit up and she nodded. "You can be such a blonde, Fran." Fran took the comment to heart, and smacked him. "Ow! Dammit Fran, I meant it as a joke." She gave him a look and grabbed her books. He followed after her and they walked to the bus stop. When they got there, their bus was just pulling up.
"Oh God we’re actually early enough to catch the bus!" Fran said, before boarding. They never took the bus, because it had always come and gone by the time they got there. School wasn’t all that far away so they normally walked and were late, as usual. The somewhat familiar faces of the bus greeted them, and a few kids piled away from the backseat. They’d all heard of Kyle’s death, so they didn’t ask questions.
Fran and Tyler took their spaces in the backseat, the space they had declared theirs ever since they had the power to beat the shit out of anyone who wanted to sit there. Normally Kyle and maybe a few of the other Viking players sat back there, but not normally. With Tyler, Kyle, and Fran it was always them or no one when it came to school. They were notorious, people normally clearing the way for them to pass.
When the bus stopped, Tyler and Fran were let off first. It was policy. The strong are over the weak, and the weak can’t do shit about it. Fran and Tyler walked down the hall, a few stares and people ducking all around. "Jeez, I forgot how much these people are afraid of us," Tyler commented. Fran just smirked, making her way to her locker.
She found something written on it. "Kyle’s dead, get over it," she said, reading off the vandalism. "Someone’s in for it." She opened the locker door, glanced around, and slammed it as hard as she could. The entire hallway grew silent with the outburst. "Who did this?" Fran called out. When nobody answered, she just got mad again. "I fucking said, who did this!"
A frightened girl from across the hall came up to her. "It’s been there a while, you just haven’t been here to read it. Harry Raymond did it." Fran smiled to the girl and turned to Tyler.
"Do I know a Harry Raymond?"
"Yeah, he’s one of Austin’s goons. The one I punched at your party." Fran thought about it, then her eyes lit up. "Wanna go find him?" She nodded, and they set off to find this asshole. There was a lot of people who stared as they walked along the way, thinking about what they had done and what they might do. The two were notorious for beating up people, almost causing an expulsion but that was almost unheard of in a public school.
Well this Harry Raymond was standing at the end of the hall, talking among his fellow goons. Fran recognized most of them from the Hawks, but a few she’d never met before. "So, you’re Harry Raymond?" Fran asked. He turned to her and nodded.
"What’s it to you, little missy?"
"I saw what you wrote on my locker. I don’t fucking care what you say about me, just don’t dis my dead friends."
"Oh, little Fran. What’re you gonna do? You can’t touch me if your life depended on it, I know you. You wouldn’t hit me." Fran swung out her fist almost immediately and knocked him out. Turning to the rest of the crew, she found that most of them had fled.
"That was too easy," Fran said, turning back to Tyler. He just shrugged and they walked back to their lockers in the middle of the hallway. Before Fran could even open her locker again, she was interrupted.
"Miss Carlston," Fran heard. Her eyes widened for an instant and she turned to meet the principal, who just happened to witness the previous scene down the hall.
"Oh, hello Mr. Reedy," Fran said, trying to have a nice smile on her face. Mr. Reedy didn’t seem as happy to see her. "What can I do for you?" The middle-aged man grabbed her by the shoulder and took off in the direction of his office. He put her in a chair and quickly shut the door.
"Fran, what have I told you about hitting people?" Mr. Reedy asked, sitting down at his desk. Fran had to think about what he had said, because she didn’t remember.
"Um, stop?" she said, shaking her head. He gave her a look. "I’m sorry but with all that’s been going on lately, it’s not like I remember everything you tell me. Did you see what that asshole wrote on my locker?"
"Fran…"
"He wrote a demeaning comment against Kyle!" Fran yelled, standing up. "He’s degrading someone who is dead. Why the hell do you think I haven’t been in school lately? I’ve been going to counseling the past four weeks trying to get over his death and when I come back here, finally with the confidence to face everyone, someone decides it’ll be the best thing to make fun of him? I’m not going to take it anymore!"
"I can’t do much about that," Mr. Reedy calmly said. Fran dropped back into her seat, her eyes wide.
"But you can do something about me? Get him in here! I am not finished with that boy yet."
"Fran, you could of seriously hurt him. I know how hard you can hit, I know how angry you can get. I don’t want to see you hitting anyone else in the school or I will be forced to transfer you somewhere else." Fran looked away. They’d gone as far as sending her information about the next nearest public school, which was all the way across town. Those buses didn’t come out anywhere near her house, so she’d need a ride every single day. With her mother almost never being home and not wanting to burden Coach Curtis, Fran kept her mouth shut. "Now I’m going to call your mother again…"
"My mother isn’t home," Fran said. "She’s in Rome."
"Then who are you staying with now? I’ll have to contact them and have them bring you home."
"Mr. Curtis, Tyler’s father," Fran said. Tyler was just as known to the principal as she was. "But I have no idea where he would be. Tyler probably would." Before she knew it, Tyler had been called over the loudspeaker. Obviously this guy wasn’t pulling any chances with her.
"Fran, you’ve been in school on and off for the past month, why?" Fran looked at the man like he had two heads or something.
"The whole thing with Kyle," Fran said. "And I was just getting back to walking after months and it wasn’t exactly the best time. With all that had been going on, I didn’t have the ‘proper attitude’ towards school. To tell you the truth, I didn’t care if I lived or died, much less worry about my education."
"That’s completely unacceptable." Just then Tyler walked in the room. "Tyler, where would your father be right now? He needs to come and take Fran back to your house. I won’t handle her behavior." Tyler hid his smirk and glanced at Fran. She bit her lip.
"With all do respect, if you called my father do have him go out of his way and take Fran home, he’d laugh in your face! To him Fran is as much trouble as you are to him. And she’s not even his child." Tyler laughed. "Take her home, that’s something new."
Fran glanced at Mr. Reedy and he was more than pissed. It was nearly impossible to stick the two of them in a room together and expect a decent outcome. Together they were fearless, authority was a word they’d never heard of. It was twice as worse when Kyle had been around. Mr. Reedy feared a rebel alliance once Kyle died, and was still waiting.
"Tyler, you will tell me the location of your father right now." Tyler sat down in a seat, looking around the office. He wasn’t about to talk. They sat there in silence for a few minutes. When the two began to talk amongst themselves, the man was fed up. "Both of you. Home, right now." Fran looked at her watch. "Half an hour. That’s a record."
"Now!" The two got up and left the office, slightly laughing.
When they got in the vicinity, Fran stopped in front of her street. "I want to see if Taylor’s home yet." It was around ten, and they had left school at 8:30. After spending some time walking around, they got hungry and figured it would be best to go home. Fran and Tyler turned onto her street, taking their time. "I wonder if Mr. Reedy is going to let us back into school tomorrow."
"Whoever said we were going to school tomorrow?" Tyler said. Fran laughed and squinted her eyes to see if there was any cars in the Hanson driveway. It didn’t look like it, but they were still a ways away. "Mr. Reedy is just messed up. He knows we have problems but of course he won’t listen when we claim them."
"He was about to burst when I said that my mother was in Rome. You could tell by the look on his face that he wanted to yell his head off at her. It’s not my fault that I resort to violence! Blame that on your father."
"What the hell did my father do?"
"He taught me how to check." Tyler nodded. It seemed like a reasonable answer. "He also taught me how to hit and built my strength up. I just like to practice a lot."
"Figures you would. Not like I don’t end up getting hit every day." Tyler caught her fist before she could hit him. "And don’t start, you used my hit of the day on Harry." The mention of his name brought a smile to Fran’s face. "You did him in good."
"Yeah but you can’t go denying what you did to him back at my party. That was a good one." Tyler put his arms up in the air.
"Oh of course. You know, cause I rock and everything." They approached the Hanson house and indeed they were there. There wasn’t any rustling around outside, so it figured that they had been home a while. Fran heard talking from the backyard and decided to investigate.
Fran and Tyler found Taylor and Zac playing basketball, very poorly at that. Fran turned to Tyler with an idea. She put her finger over her lips to silence him and waited for one of the two to do something wrong. It wasn’t long before she could interrupt.
"Foul!!"
Taylor and Zac stopped dead in their tracks, startled. The look on their faces were enough to send anyone into a fit of laughter. Tyler and Fran broke down immediately, almost rolling on the ground laughing. Taylor glanced at Zac who looked like he was about to have a heart attack, then turned back to Fran.
"Aren’t you supposed to be at school right now?" Taylor asked, swiping at his forehead to get off the excess sweat with his sleeve. "It’s only ten, you don’t get out until three."
"We kinda got kicked out," Fran said, sitting down on the cool grass. "Just for today, as far as we know. We were there all of a half an hour before I hit someone, we pissed off the principal, and the both of us got sent home. We walked around for a bit then came back here to see if you were back."
"I swear, only you would be at school a half an hour and get sent home. I don’t have that problem because, well, my school is home." He walked over and gave Fran a hug, and greeted Tyler properly.
"What the…? Am I just not in existence or something?" Zac yelled. Fran smiled at him, and ran over. She smacked into him and the two fell over, laughing. "Okay, now that I’ve been knocked into and smacked against the hard ground, you can get off me."
Fran rolled off Zac and sat down on the cement. "I just progress a bit on my skates today. I actually stood up and made it a whole two feet before running into Tyler." Zac turned to make a comment, but saw the warning look on Taylor’s face, so he kept his mouth shut. "It’s so pathetic to see my trying to skate. I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to where I was."
"Frenchie," Taylor said, and sat down next to her. She smiled at the mention of her well known nickname. "If you think like that then it’s never going to happen. Lighten up, kid."
"Kid? I’m older than you!" Taylor just shrugged. She tried to push him over, but only ended up with her head in his lap. Tyler got tired of standing and sat next to Fran, who now was strewn out with her head in Taylor’s lap and her legs across Zac. Tyler took the advantage of using her stomach as a pillow.
"Well just make yourself comfortable," Taylor said, directing both to Fran and Tyler. The two of them smiled. Fran grabbed Taylor’s rat tail and swung it around. Taylor had inspired Kyle to grow one. It was pretty long, but then the accident happened and there was nothing left of Kyle or his rat tail. "Having fun?"
"Oh yes," Fran said, and smiled widely. "So, speak up! I wanna hear what happened. It’s not like it’s every day that one of us makes a music video."
"It’s corny," Zac chirped. "You’d think they’d take longer on one shot and work out the errors. I mean I was chewing gum the entire time and nobody noticed. Well, either that or nobody cared."
"That’s you. It gives you personality. I don’t know anything about the business, I mean you guys know that I can’t sing if my life depended on it." Taylor nodded, a look of complete assurance on his face. Fran smacked him. "That was completely uncalled for. Anyway, since I don’t, I don’t know what goes on so you have to tell me these things. What do you do, what happens?"
Diana walked out of the house and into the backyard. "Why aren’t you at school?" she asked, before Fran had her question answered.
"Hello," Fran said, with a smile. "Well Tyler and I had a problem with some kid, I hit him and got sent home. That was around eight thirty, then we walked around for a bit before coming here. We’ve been here for all of ten minutes."
"How did I know it was because you hit someone?"
"Cause that’s the way I am," Fran said, in a insolent tone. She hadn’t exactly been treating Diana with the respect she deserved lately. She hadn’t treated anybody well lately, excluding Tyler and Taylor. It was rare that she wasn’t picking on Zac, or talking about Isaac. Her entire mood changed, and neither Taylor nor Tyler noticed. It was strange because everyone else noticed.
Diana looked clearly upset at Fran, the girl she once knew. "Don’t pull that with me, young lady." Fran rolled her eyes. Diana didn’t catch it. She walked off mumbling, Fran hearing every word. "This is all because her father died. Bad enough Sally’s never home."
Fran got up without any warning, sending Tyler’s head onto the cement. He grumbled and rubbed the back of his head, watching as she walked as fast as she could. She wasn’t getting very far because she was still slow, but eventually caught up with Diana. The three boys outside had come inside and decided to listen in.
"You’re blaming all this on my father?" Fran said, sternly. Diana raised an eyebrow. "It’s not like he just walked out, Diana. He was murdered, you don’t know what that’s like. You didn’t have your best friend of ten years just die. You didn’t have your only future in this world completely fucked up!"
"Don’t even start this, Fran. There’s kids around, watch your language," Diana warned, trying her best to keep her cool.
"I don’t care if there’s kids around! You try living my life for one day, then tell me how you would act. My outlook on life is basically shot to hell while yours is just beginning. You have a huge future with the boys, while I’m just left home here in Tulsa wallowing in pity for myself."
"You have a lot more things to live for than your hockey."
"Name one."
"You have your studies," Diana said, then paused. "Oh wait, I forgot. You don’t take that seriously either. How the hell do you expect to make it in life if you don’t even go to school?"
"It’s not my choice, I got kicked out." Diana sighed and turned away. "I’m going home, and I’m taking your son with me." Diana didn’t say anything. Fran left, taking Tyler and Taylor with her. "You know sometimes I feel like I want to hit her."
"But you won’t cause you’re better than that," Taylor said. "And she’s my mother, that’s my job." Fran smiled at him and grabbed his hand. He gently kissed her and Tyler cleared his throat. He had a habit of doing that. He either cleared his throat or threw something. "You know Tyler, you can get annoying."
"That’s the point," Tyler said, a large grin on his face. "Don’t go pulling any of that around my dad, he’ll get freaked out. He’s still trying to face the fact that you’re together." Fran rolled her eyes. Coach Curtis was always questioning the relationship, mostly because he didn’t want to believe Fran was growing up.
When the trio arrived at the house, Coach Curtis was home already. Tyler and Fran exchanged glances before walking into the house. It wasn’t long before they were being asked questions. "Why are you home? I know as a matter of fact that you weren’t let out early."
"We kinda got kicked out for today," Tyler said, looking away. "But we can go back tomorrow. We just got the principal upset, and he sent us home. It’s not like we really missed anything anyway. All this week is just a mess, nothing’s going on."
"Oh really?" Coach Curtis said. "That’s why I got a call, saying you’re an F away from repeating the grade?" He was directing towards Tyler, which made Fran let out a breath.
"It’s not like it’s all that hard to make up anyway. The only reason why I’m doing bad is because I haven’t been there to take the tests and stuff. Once I get back I’ll get the grade pulled up." Coach Curtis shook his head and they walked upstairs, into Fran’s room. "Like hell I can get my grade up."
"Be careful, dude, you know they’ve been waiting for years to repeat us." Tyler sighed and leaned against the wall. After a while of contemplating, he looked up at Fran.
"Hey, you’re just the same as me, how come Dad didn’t make a big deal about you?" Fran just shrugged. "I’m waiting for Sally to come home, I have a feeling you’re going to summer school with me."
"I’m not going to summer school. I have plans over the summer, if all fails then I’ll just repeat the grade. Not like they wouldn’t have me doing it anyway." Tyler shook his head.
"Be careful, Fran." Fran just sighed.