| Spiritual Fiction posted January 28, 2022 | Chapters: |
1 -2- 3... 
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The lives of a teacher and teen collide
A chapter in the book Carter's Run
The Open Door - part 2
by DeboraDyess
| Background A Christian thriller. See author notes for summary to this point. :) |
The boy, Nick realized, was dressed only in jeans and a faded gray sweatshirt, the heavy denim jacket and toboggan cap he usually wore, missing. He had his gloveless hands shoved deep into his jean pockets in a failed effort to keep them warm. His ears and nose were red with cold. Carter shivered and Fowler could see the tiny cloud of the boy's breath in front of his mouth.
"Come on in," he ordered. "You're letting my heat out."
The boy hesitated and glanced behind him before stepping through the threshold into the heat. He shuddered as the warm air touched his skin and breathed a sigh of...what, Fowler wondered. Relief? Exhaustion?
He frowned and surveyed the quiet darkness near his door for a second time. He saw no movement in the tiny yard or the courtyard beyond. It occurred to him, probably too late if it were true, that this could be some kind of setup, that there could be a second person easily hidden in the dark. He couldn't imagine this particular student involved in anything like that, but teachers had been assaulted in the parking lot of Lincoln, and two weeks before one had been attacked in the hall of the ancient structure. It seemed a stretch to think of someone following him home but still...He mentally wrote the headlines that would accompany his fate-'Stupid Teacher Slain by Students'.
"Is there somebody with you?" he asked as he scanned the yard.
"No, sir."Â Carter stood uncomfortably in the entryway, unsure of entering the room now that he was actually inside. He chewed his bottom lip his brow drawn together frowned as he watched his teacher.
Fowler gestured to the living room, frowned again into the night, and closed and locked the door. He followed the boy, reasoning that if Carter had come to exact revenge for some perceived wrong, he wouldn't call him 'sir'. "How are your grades in my class?" he asked anyway and flicked on the overhead light.
"Good," the boy answered, confusion flattering across his face and disappearing into boredom. "Mostly A's."
"That's what I thought." Nick smiled as if he asked the question of every student who visited him after midnight on Fridays. Which, he decided, he might, since this was the first person to fit the insane criteria.
"Very high end, Mr. Fowler," Carter said, looking around the condo. Expensive, precisely matched furniture, a television set big enough to use as a movie theater and fine artwork melded together to create the look of a 'Better Homes and Gardens' photo. "I thought teaching was a poor man's profession."
Nick thought of the apartment he'd lived in three short years ago, a dinky one bedroom over a single car garage, and wished he still had that life. This one cost him too much. He ignored the comment and threw the stadium blanket he'd been dozing beneath to the boy. "Not exactly dressed for the weather, are you, Mr. Gibbs"
"I expected to be home before dark," the boy responded lamely.
"Guess you didn't quite make it."
"No kidding..." Carter pulled the blanket around his shoulders and up around his ears. "Were you watching wrestling?" He looked at the now dark television and sat uneasily in the chair his teacher indicated. He studied the screen as if he could somehow detect what had been there a few moments before. "I thought I heard it on from outside but, well, you just never seemed like...I don't know...a wrestling fan."
"It was loud enough, but it was a movie, I think." He yawned. "I was grading papers and fell asleep with the set on."
"Who was winning?"Â Carter still hadn't looked at him.
"I don't watch wrestling, Carter." Nick peered down at the top of the boy's dark hair. "I don't even know any of their names," he said. "And, anyway, it was just a movie..." It seemed like a ridiculously weird conversation to be having at almost two o'clock in the morning. Of course, he thought, it would be ridiculous to be having any conversation at almost two in the morning. "I really was grading papers. I guess somebody's put me to sleep. If you're lucky it wasn't yours."
Nick wondered if he was still asleep now, still dreaming this crazy scenario. Outside of a dream, no real kid would show up at a teacher's house at well past midnight on a weekend. No real teacher would let him in. This had to be a continuation of the dream he'd had just before Carter showed up. He glanced at his kitchen, wondering if George would appear to finish the job, or if Rod Sterling would step out to give his Twilight Zone dissertation. He resumed his spot on the couch. "So, what's up?"
Carter smiled weakly, still looking down. "I was...kind of over on this side of town. And you said any time we had a problem that your door was always open, so--"
"I meant my classroom door!" Nick raised his eyebrows in surprise. "My door was always open for a problem at school! I didn't expect you to follow me home!" He spoke before his brain had a chance to turn over what the boy just said. He could have kicked himself the minute the words left his mouth.
Carter stood, embarrassed. "Yeah...sorry, Mr. Fowler. You're right. I was--"
"Sit down," Nick interrupted shortly. "You're here now." He paused, struck by a sudden thought. "How did you find out where I live?"
"The phone book," Carter answered too quickly, shifting uncomfortably.
"Well..." Fowler raised his eyebrows and leaned forward. "That's interesting. That's really, really...interesting. Almost miraculous, really. Because I'm not in the phone book."
The Gibbs boy smiled at his worn running shoes, refusing to meet his teacher's challenging stare. "Sure you are," he countered. "Just not under Fowler. My aunt's a teacher, too, and she's in the phone book, like, under her maiden name. It makes it hard for kids to find her but she can still have friends look her up that way. I figured that since you don't have a maiden name maybe you'd make something up. I thought, you know, a fowl is a bird. So I looked under Nicholas Bird and, like, there you were."
Fowler sat back on the couch, feeling irritation, surprise, and admiration. He remembered a phone call earlier that evening. He'd answered and whoever was on the other end hung up immediately. Â "You figured that out, huh?"
"Well, not on the first try. I tried Hunter first, and then Fisher..." Carter looked at his teacher fully for the first time and misread the scowl that swept Nick's face. "This was a bad idea," he started.
Nick drew his brows together and narrowed his eyes. A huge bruise discolored the boy's swollen left eye and his upper lip had been split. He hadn't noticed either that afternoon at school. Nick leaned forward, reached toward the boy's face, and asked sharply, "Who hit you?"
Carter jerked backward to avoid the touch. "I'm okay," he mumbled. "I really shouldn't be here." He started to stand.
"Sit," Nick ordered. He barked the word, harsher and more irritated than he'd intended.
The boy glanced up, hesitated, and stayed perched on the edge of the chair. "Sitting, sir," he said softly.
"Who hit you?" Nick asked again. He spoke quietly this time, willing his voice to remain calm.
"Nobody...I mean, like...I didn't know them. I was out walking around, thinking, sorting through junk, and I...There were four or five guys, hanging around on the street. I tried to walk around them but they started to, like, harass me and it turned into a shoving match...I should have just..." The boy drew in a deep breath, looked just above Nick's head, and sighed slowly. "They hit me a couple of times, called me some names...I guess they made their point, whatever that was."
"Why would they start something like that?"
"I was out by myself." Carter looked at Fowler as if he belonged in the stone Age and shook his head slightly. "Why wouldn't they?"
Nick thought of the neighborhood around the school, around where the boy lived. He would think twice about walking that area after dark, and he was well trained in self-defense. Anybody out by themselves stood a pretty good chance of finding trouble, he thought. "Why didn't you go home?" He examined the bruise and cut from his spot on the couch.
Carter shrugged. "I had a fight with my folks before I left. I can just imagine what he'd say if I came back like this."
Nick arched an eyebrow to acknowledge what the boy said and scooted closer. "Your dad?"
"Stepdad. My dad died when I was, like, five or something. I can just barely remember him."
"That's tough," Nick leaned forward for a more careful inspection. The lip didn't look too bad. He imagined it would heal on its own with little problem. But the eye already showed several different colors and was swollen. Just below the eye, a white area shone where the unknown assailant's fist made contact. "Your eye looks pretty bad," he said. "We ought to think about a trip to the--"
"No!" Carter stood, suddenly animated, and almost panicked. He started shaking his head. "No, thanks, Mr. Fowler. No hospitals!" He started for the front door and Fowler hurried to beat him there.
"Fine," he agreed as he steered the boy back to the living room. Carter immediately shrugged the teacher's arm from around his shoulders. "Just settle down! I won't take you to the hospital, okay? Happy? Let me get us some sodas and we'll talk about what to do with you until morning. Is that all right?"
The boy frowned up at him, trying to make up his mind.
"I'll change that to hot chocolate or coffee if that sounds better. I just need to heat the water. Give me a minute, okay? Let me get you warmed up at least, and then if you still want to go we'll work it out, okay?"
Carter considered a second longer and nodded uneasily.
"Okay then. Give me just a minute." Fowler held his hands up in a 'stay' gesture and walked back to the kitchen, watching the boy the whole time, motioning him to remain on the couch.
Once in the other room Nick stopped and closed his eyes. He felt too tired to think clearly. "Fowler, what are you doing?" he asked himself, shaking his head as he filled two mugs with water, placed them into the microwave, and set the timer. "You have a student here without his parent's permission. He's been injured, it's past the city curfew...It's way too late for him to be here. This is an incredibly bad idea. Just call his folks and get it over with, Genius."
He retrieved two hot chocolate packages and a package of marshmallows, placed them on the countertop, and pulled a thick phone directory out of a drawer. He flipped through until he got to a surprisingly long list of Gibbs'.
He frowned. Stepfather, Carter said. It would be listed under the stepfather's last name. He wondered if he'd ever met Carter's mom at the school open house, if he'd heard her last name before. He closed his eyes, trying to envision some paper he'd sent home, returned with a parent's signature, but realized that with his eyes shut he was nodding off. He began to randomly flip through the thick book as he thought, but after a minute he slowed to a stop.
An image of monster-parents, fangs bared and claws threatening, flashed through his mind. He couldn't do it, he decided as he closed the phonebook. At least not until he knew more about what had happened. He would be breaking school policy and putting himself in harm's way, he knew, but he could survive without the job. And he felt some moral need to make sure nothing had happened at the boy's home.
The microwave dinged and Nick started. He glanced guiltily over his shoulder for Carter and put the book back in the drawer. He hastily poured the contents of the packets into the cups, stirred, and added a handful of marshmallows to each. He ate the few that fell onto the impeccable countertop. He worried that the boy would be gone when he got back to the living room, although he hadn't heard the front door, and it would be hard for the boy to sneak out without being heard. He grabbed the small first aid kit he kept in the kitchen cabinet, tucked it under his arm, picked up the mugs, and headed for the living room.
He stopped in the doorway. Carter was slouched onto the overstuffed arm of the leather couch, head pillowed in the crook of his elbow, snoring softly. The stadium blanket still covered the boy's shoulders and most of his head. Nick bit his lower lip and set the mugs on the coffee table. He watched the boy for a minute, picked up his cell phone, and dialed.
"Come on in," he ordered. "You're letting my heat out."
The boy hesitated and glanced behind him before stepping through the threshold into the heat. He shuddered as the warm air touched his skin and breathed a sigh of...what, Fowler wondered. Relief? Exhaustion?
He frowned and surveyed the quiet darkness near his door for a second time. He saw no movement in the tiny yard or the courtyard beyond. It occurred to him, probably too late if it were true, that this could be some kind of setup, that there could be a second person easily hidden in the dark. He couldn't imagine this particular student involved in anything like that, but teachers had been assaulted in the parking lot of Lincoln, and two weeks before one had been attacked in the hall of the ancient structure. It seemed a stretch to think of someone following him home but still...He mentally wrote the headlines that would accompany his fate-'Stupid Teacher Slain by Students'.
"Is there somebody with you?" he asked as he scanned the yard.
"No, sir."Â Carter stood uncomfortably in the entryway, unsure of entering the room now that he was actually inside. He chewed his bottom lip his brow drawn together frowned as he watched his teacher.
Fowler gestured to the living room, frowned again into the night, and closed and locked the door. He followed the boy, reasoning that if Carter had come to exact revenge for some perceived wrong, he wouldn't call him 'sir'. "How are your grades in my class?" he asked anyway and flicked on the overhead light.
"Good," the boy answered, confusion flattering across his face and disappearing into boredom. "Mostly A's."
"That's what I thought." Nick smiled as if he asked the question of every student who visited him after midnight on Fridays. Which, he decided, he might, since this was the first person to fit the insane criteria.
"Very high end, Mr. Fowler," Carter said, looking around the condo. Expensive, precisely matched furniture, a television set big enough to use as a movie theater and fine artwork melded together to create the look of a 'Better Homes and Gardens' photo. "I thought teaching was a poor man's profession."
Nick thought of the apartment he'd lived in three short years ago, a dinky one bedroom over a single car garage, and wished he still had that life. This one cost him too much. He ignored the comment and threw the stadium blanket he'd been dozing beneath to the boy. "Not exactly dressed for the weather, are you, Mr. Gibbs"
"I expected to be home before dark," the boy responded lamely.
"Guess you didn't quite make it."
"No kidding..." Carter pulled the blanket around his shoulders and up around his ears. "Were you watching wrestling?" He looked at the now dark television and sat uneasily in the chair his teacher indicated. He studied the screen as if he could somehow detect what had been there a few moments before. "I thought I heard it on from outside but, well, you just never seemed like...I don't know...a wrestling fan."
"It was loud enough, but it was a movie, I think." He yawned. "I was grading papers and fell asleep with the set on."
"Who was winning?"Â Carter still hadn't looked at him.
"I don't watch wrestling, Carter." Nick peered down at the top of the boy's dark hair. "I don't even know any of their names," he said. "And, anyway, it was just a movie..." It seemed like a ridiculously weird conversation to be having at almost two o'clock in the morning. Of course, he thought, it would be ridiculous to be having any conversation at almost two in the morning. "I really was grading papers. I guess somebody's put me to sleep. If you're lucky it wasn't yours."
Nick wondered if he was still asleep now, still dreaming this crazy scenario. Outside of a dream, no real kid would show up at a teacher's house at well past midnight on a weekend. No real teacher would let him in. This had to be a continuation of the dream he'd had just before Carter showed up. He glanced at his kitchen, wondering if George would appear to finish the job, or if Rod Sterling would step out to give his Twilight Zone dissertation. He resumed his spot on the couch. "So, what's up?"
Carter smiled weakly, still looking down. "I was...kind of over on this side of town. And you said any time we had a problem that your door was always open, so--"
"I meant my classroom door!" Nick raised his eyebrows in surprise. "My door was always open for a problem at school! I didn't expect you to follow me home!" He spoke before his brain had a chance to turn over what the boy just said. He could have kicked himself the minute the words left his mouth.
Carter stood, embarrassed. "Yeah...sorry, Mr. Fowler. You're right. I was--"
"Sit down," Nick interrupted shortly. "You're here now." He paused, struck by a sudden thought. "How did you find out where I live?"
"The phone book," Carter answered too quickly, shifting uncomfortably.
"Well..." Fowler raised his eyebrows and leaned forward. "That's interesting. That's really, really...interesting. Almost miraculous, really. Because I'm not in the phone book."
The Gibbs boy smiled at his worn running shoes, refusing to meet his teacher's challenging stare. "Sure you are," he countered. "Just not under Fowler. My aunt's a teacher, too, and she's in the phone book, like, under her maiden name. It makes it hard for kids to find her but she can still have friends look her up that way. I figured that since you don't have a maiden name maybe you'd make something up. I thought, you know, a fowl is a bird. So I looked under Nicholas Bird and, like, there you were."
Fowler sat back on the couch, feeling irritation, surprise, and admiration. He remembered a phone call earlier that evening. He'd answered and whoever was on the other end hung up immediately. Â "You figured that out, huh?"
"Well, not on the first try. I tried Hunter first, and then Fisher..." Carter looked at his teacher fully for the first time and misread the scowl that swept Nick's face. "This was a bad idea," he started.
Nick drew his brows together and narrowed his eyes. A huge bruise discolored the boy's swollen left eye and his upper lip had been split. He hadn't noticed either that afternoon at school. Nick leaned forward, reached toward the boy's face, and asked sharply, "Who hit you?"
Carter jerked backward to avoid the touch. "I'm okay," he mumbled. "I really shouldn't be here." He started to stand.
"Sit," Nick ordered. He barked the word, harsher and more irritated than he'd intended.
The boy glanced up, hesitated, and stayed perched on the edge of the chair. "Sitting, sir," he said softly.
"Who hit you?" Nick asked again. He spoke quietly this time, willing his voice to remain calm.
"Nobody...I mean, like...I didn't know them. I was out walking around, thinking, sorting through junk, and I...There were four or five guys, hanging around on the street. I tried to walk around them but they started to, like, harass me and it turned into a shoving match...I should have just..." The boy drew in a deep breath, looked just above Nick's head, and sighed slowly. "They hit me a couple of times, called me some names...I guess they made their point, whatever that was."
"Why would they start something like that?"
"I was out by myself." Carter looked at Fowler as if he belonged in the stone Age and shook his head slightly. "Why wouldn't they?"
Nick thought of the neighborhood around the school, around where the boy lived. He would think twice about walking that area after dark, and he was well trained in self-defense. Anybody out by themselves stood a pretty good chance of finding trouble, he thought. "Why didn't you go home?" He examined the bruise and cut from his spot on the couch.
Carter shrugged. "I had a fight with my folks before I left. I can just imagine what he'd say if I came back like this."
Nick arched an eyebrow to acknowledge what the boy said and scooted closer. "Your dad?"
"Stepdad. My dad died when I was, like, five or something. I can just barely remember him."
"That's tough," Nick leaned forward for a more careful inspection. The lip didn't look too bad. He imagined it would heal on its own with little problem. But the eye already showed several different colors and was swollen. Just below the eye, a white area shone where the unknown assailant's fist made contact. "Your eye looks pretty bad," he said. "We ought to think about a trip to the--"
"No!" Carter stood, suddenly animated, and almost panicked. He started shaking his head. "No, thanks, Mr. Fowler. No hospitals!" He started for the front door and Fowler hurried to beat him there.
"Fine," he agreed as he steered the boy back to the living room. Carter immediately shrugged the teacher's arm from around his shoulders. "Just settle down! I won't take you to the hospital, okay? Happy? Let me get us some sodas and we'll talk about what to do with you until morning. Is that all right?"
The boy frowned up at him, trying to make up his mind.
"I'll change that to hot chocolate or coffee if that sounds better. I just need to heat the water. Give me a minute, okay? Let me get you warmed up at least, and then if you still want to go we'll work it out, okay?"
Carter considered a second longer and nodded uneasily.
"Okay then. Give me just a minute." Fowler held his hands up in a 'stay' gesture and walked back to the kitchen, watching the boy the whole time, motioning him to remain on the couch.
Once in the other room Nick stopped and closed his eyes. He felt too tired to think clearly. "Fowler, what are you doing?" he asked himself, shaking his head as he filled two mugs with water, placed them into the microwave, and set the timer. "You have a student here without his parent's permission. He's been injured, it's past the city curfew...It's way too late for him to be here. This is an incredibly bad idea. Just call his folks and get it over with, Genius."
He retrieved two hot chocolate packages and a package of marshmallows, placed them on the countertop, and pulled a thick phone directory out of a drawer. He flipped through until he got to a surprisingly long list of Gibbs'.
He frowned. Stepfather, Carter said. It would be listed under the stepfather's last name. He wondered if he'd ever met Carter's mom at the school open house, if he'd heard her last name before. He closed his eyes, trying to envision some paper he'd sent home, returned with a parent's signature, but realized that with his eyes shut he was nodding off. He began to randomly flip through the thick book as he thought, but after a minute he slowed to a stop.
An image of monster-parents, fangs bared and claws threatening, flashed through his mind. He couldn't do it, he decided as he closed the phonebook. At least not until he knew more about what had happened. He would be breaking school policy and putting himself in harm's way, he knew, but he could survive without the job. And he felt some moral need to make sure nothing had happened at the boy's home.
The microwave dinged and Nick started. He glanced guiltily over his shoulder for Carter and put the book back in the drawer. He hastily poured the contents of the packets into the cups, stirred, and added a handful of marshmallows to each. He ate the few that fell onto the impeccable countertop. He worried that the boy would be gone when he got back to the living room, although he hadn't heard the front door, and it would be hard for the boy to sneak out without being heard. He grabbed the small first aid kit he kept in the kitchen cabinet, tucked it under his arm, picked up the mugs, and headed for the living room.
He stopped in the doorway. Carter was slouched onto the overstuffed arm of the leather couch, head pillowed in the crook of his elbow, snoring softly. The stadium blanket still covered the boy's shoulders and most of his head. Nick bit his lower lip and set the mugs on the coffee table. He watched the boy for a minute, picked up his cell phone, and dialed.
In the first part of this chapter, Nick Fowler opens the front door of his condo to find one of his students, Carter Gibbs, standing in the cold. Coatless, the boy is obviously freezing. Although it's too late for the kid to be out, Nick invites him in, trying to figure out what's going on.
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