Time Warp: Road Trip (Clement)

It had been four days, and Clement still couldn't believe he was going to Vermont. He could still see the black and white outline of the USA in his head with the state in question a tiny slice of red so far to the right of Cali that any further would be in the ocean. Clement didn't know anything about Vermont, except that Mrs. Anderson had said he would get to see snow. "Get to". The forty-degree mornings in December's rainy season were horrible in the unheated trailer, why would he want to fucking see snow?

His dad would-

No. It was surreal, that. Mrs. Anderson had come in yesterday morning. She'd spoken very softly. His dad had died in his cell. Anderson had identified the body herself. In a few days he would be put in a fire and burned into ashes that Clement had told her he didn't want. How creepy would that be, having his dead dad's burnt up body? But there had been no closure. No goodbye. The last image Clement had of his father was of the man raising his belt over his head.

He wouldn't be going home. The state of California had taken control of Justin Evans' assets and the proceeds would go into a trust fund, whatever that was. Clement had given Mrs. Lee, Ajima, permission to remove the things he wanted from the trailer. There was a packet of photos in the overhead cabinet above his father's bed. A flashlight Clement wanted from the glove box of his dad's car. The red shirt he wore when he wanted luck. Ajima had included the small belongings from the prison, Justin Evans' wallet and keyring, and had packed them all into the cardboard letterbox that Clement kept his things in at her house.

There had been the phone call, the first phone call Clement had ever gotten. He'd held the receiver with one unlocked hand and had listened to Ajima and Minho cry. Clement's tears had been locked up inside his head during that call, and he could barely make his mouth form words. He loved them, he said so, saranghaeyo. Saranghaeyo, Ajima. Saranghaeyo, hyung. They had only cried harder. Ajima said something about a doshirak, something about kimchi. She scolded him for leaving them even as she wept, for making them miss him, for being such a good son that she would mourn so in his absence. Then their phone had begun to beep and their voices fade, and suddenly they were both shouting saranghae, Minki, ppalli wa, and then the call had dropped.

It had not been a strenuous four days physically, but it had been the longest four days Clement had ever experienced emotionally.

So he was a bit on edge when the old, gruff man had walked in on the doctor pouring another can of Ensure into his tube. Clement's eyes narrowed and his lips pressed together, hands clenching. His breath sped up when the door started to close and his hands and arms turned grey-blue to his shoulders when it snicked shut.

"How you holding up, son? Heard you took quite the wallop."

Clement had no idea who this man was... or why one of his arms seemed to be... he didn't know. Like something from a cartoon. He was afraid, and that made him angry. He said the only English words he could think of.

"Fuck you."


*saranghaeyo - I love you. Formal.
*saranghae - I love you. Informal.
*doshirak - lunch box
*ppalli wa - come back soon. Informal.

"You've got quite the mouth for a kid your age."

Clement's eyes were drawn down to the noise, to the metal (metal?) fingers made little pinging sounds as they tapped the bed's sides. He couldn't see clearly what was going on, but he knew how light reflected off different surfaces and... he didn't understand. He'd seen prosthetics before, but they... they were different enough from what he thought he was seeing that he didn't put them in the same category. Looking back up to squint at the man's face, he caught the tail end of the small smile and pressed his lips back together.

"That mean that you know what's happening in the next few days?"

Choking back a second 'fuck you', Clement gasped when the discolored skin armored to his elbows.

That would be 'yes'.

The pain was brief, when the armor popped, but it was terrible. It took him a minute to get his bearings again, and when he saw the man had retreated to sit in a chair, the armor faded as quickly as it had come, taking the grey-blue tint from his upper arms as well.

"Let's start over, kid. My name's Wayne. I'm from the school in Vermont that you'll be going to."

Clement was quiet for a few minutes, trying to decide what to do about this. The guy - Wayne - probably knew his name, even though he seemed set on not using it. So he wouldn't have to bother introducing himself. Leaning back against the propped up bed, Clement stared at his lap.

"Why Vermont?" he asked, finally.

"It's quiet and out of the way. It's to protect the kids there because, sad as it is, there are some people out there who don't really like people like us all that much."

Clement had not been all that liked before he'd become meta, and the idea that people wouldn't like him now for just that reason made him feel even grumpier. It wasn't that he wanted people to like him, but this was like having the deck stacked against him before he even started playing. Clement already had strikes against him as a teenage male who looked 'suspicious' (meaning 'poor'), and had been turned away from various establishments as soon as he'd entered because he looked like a theft risk.

And then part of what Wayne had said sank in. Clement blinked at him. "You are too?"

His eyes found the curious arm again but he didn't say anything.

"It's also so that we don't keep bringing the Army in every time a kid slips and blows something up."

Not knowing whether or not the man was joking, Clement squinted at him briefly and then looked back down at his lap, where the stiff sheets and thin, scratchy blanket pooled around his covered legs. He tugged at the restraints on his wrists, but idly and not with any conviction. Being stuck in the bed made him... lesser, in this conversation. More than he already was. Put him at a further disadvantage. It added to his nerves, and all of Clement's negative emotions eventually evolved into anger, which helped nobody.

"D-d-does-" Shit. Not now. Clement went on like nothing had happened, though his brow furrowed. "-that hap-happen a-a lot?"

Shit shit shit. He wanted to bite his tongue, chew out the stupidness.

He tried looking at Wayne's face again, could see the darker areas that meant eyes and mouth but not the details. His hair was light in the way that meant old and not dye job, but the rest of him had a sturdiness to it that hinted there would be no kidding around. Clement felt a familiar tension in his shoulders. The one that turned his muscles to jerky when he was in the presence of his father's friends. Wayne was dressed a lot better than they ever were, and didn't smell like beer either, but something about him made Clement nervous.

"Yep. Since 1945, long before you were born, kiddo. I can make machines move, so long as they have parts to move. Can even feel what ails them a bit, if I listen close."

That sounded a lot more useful than a personal M&M shell that had medical personnel shoving cans of Ensure at him 24/7. Clement didn't know what would've happened if he hadn't manifested when he had, but guessed his father might've lived a little longer. Still, it was hard not to resent something that had fucked his life up so thoroughly and seemed to want to tell everyone when he was nervous. Clement also didn't have the math skills necessary to extrapolate from the date Wayne had given, but figured it was before computers and phones and electricity.

"Nah, just sometimes. Hammel's a place where kids learn how to control these powers. Sometimes there's a bit of a hitch, but most of the time things are okay."

Clement would go on to have the worst first day of school in his life, but neither of them knew that now. As it was, he didn't know what there would be to control. The idea that someday he'd be able to turn the armor on and off at will never crossed his mind, though if it had he would've been slightly more amenable to being 3000 miles from home.

He heard more than saw Wayne rolling his sleeve up, and leaned away in case it meant he was doing it as a precursor to throwing a punch. His hands went stiff again, in a way he knew without looking down that they'd switched color again to his elbows.

But there was no hit. There wasn't even a touch. The old man just lay his arm down so Clement could see it, and this close he could see it very well without leaning in. It was a lot to take in, a lot to look at, with all the moving parts and odd bits and pieces. It was a little like looking at his dad's car's engine. And like the engine, Clement didn't understand the arm, but knew it worked. He started a little when the fingers moved.

"Sometimes, our powers work in ways we never knew they could. Mine kept me from being a cripple for the rest of my life, but I never would have known I could do it without being taught at Hammel."

Clement's lips pressed together again. Yeah, yeah, rah rah Hammel. He didn't want to go, but when had what he wanted ever mattered? Mrs. Anderson had already told him he didn't belong to his dad anymore, but to Vermont. Clement didn't have much faith that a tiny sliver of land could do any better than his father had, especially when they sent a guy to fetch him that made him this nervous.

He was saved from having to think up more to say when a loud knock sounded at the door and a nurse walked in. "Sorry," she apologized. "But Clement's about to be released. We found you some clothes." The pair of jeans was faded and frayed around the cuffs, the t-shirt thin. The underclothes were institutional, a pair of cheap cotton boxers and anklet socks, and the shoes were the type made of canvas and plastic that wouldn't last more than a month before they fell apart. But everything was clean, and the shirt had a faded stencil of a bear on it that Clement kind of liked.

The nurse carefully removed Clement's nasogastric and patted his face with a cloth, and then freed his wrists. She smiled at Wayne and with justified weariness at Clement, and said, "Take your time. The paperwork is still being filed."

She left, closing the door behind her.

Clement rubbed his wrists and regarded the clothes with a frown. It was real. He was leaving. He was leaving his home, his state, his Ajima and his hyung, and he was leaving soon. Looking at the neatly folded pile, he didn't touch it or make any moves to get dressed. But the clothes reminded him of something. "Where's my stuff?"

With Wayne as close as he was, Clement kept half an eye on him, on what he was doing, on where his other hand was. The old man was in the same category as teachers in that he knew he wouldn't be cuffed or shoved around like he was at home, but that that didn't mean if he pushed that a hand wouldn't clamp onto the back of his neck or onto his shoulder to get a point across. Sometimes those touches scared him more than getting a fist to the ear, because they implied the worst was still to come.

But the man didn't do anything sneaky. He, though Clement didn't know the word, telegraphed his actions well and had uncomplicated body language. But Clement still watched.

"Oh that's right. I'm sure your boy Fowler has them. Why don't you get dressed and I'll put them in my car for you. Unless, of course, you'd like to rifle through it a bit?"

Not wanting to deal with his mouth tripping all over itself, Clement just nodded. Wayne pulled the curtain that separated the beds to give him some privacy and walked outside to talk to Fowler.

Pushing back the covers, Clement reached behind and pulled the ties on his hospital smock, but didn't bother with all of them, yanking it up over his head once he had the top two undone. The johnny was an adult Small but had gone down to Clement's knees. The t-shirt went on and then the jeans, and Clement realized as soon as he pulled up the pants that they weren't going to stay up by themselves. Clement, by virtue of his poor diet, had a leg length that did not jibe with his waist measurement, and people who based his pants size on one invariably made a mess of the other. But people who guessed based on his age, like the nurse in question had, made a wash of both. Once he had the legs rolled up, he sighed. There were only two things he could do with what he had that could get him out of a belt, which he was never going to wear for the rest of his life, if he could manage. Doffing the pants he pulled on the boxers, which helped a little, and then tucked in his shirt. It kind of worked. As long as he didn't move around too much. Clement didn't bother with the socks and slipped the shoes on. A little big but nothing terrible. Minho's hand-me-downs usually started bigger than these.

There was a knock at the door and then Wayne asked if he was decent.

"Yeah." Clement shoved the unused socks under the covers.

Two cardboard letterboxes were placed on the bed. One was worn, with mushy corners and duct tape along the edges. It said '이 민기' on it in Ajima's bold writing and 'CLEMENT' under it in Clement's early unsteady scrawl. The other was brand new and said 'C. Evans' on the top in Deliah Anderson's tidy script.

Clement opened the older one first, the one he'd been storing his best things in at Ajima's since he was seven. A forest of metal spirals stared back, fifteen single-subject notebooks filled with the scribbles and ephermia of half his life, and three blank, ready to serve. A shallow blue plastic pencil box that held his pencils and sharpener, and... what? Clement clicked the box open. Inside was a brand new package of colored pencils that he hadn't put there. The box of 24 he'd been saving for, that even during Back to School cost five dollars. He shut the pencil box and rubbed his eyes.

There was the red cloth pouch Ajima had given him Lunar New Year's money in that held his savings, three dollars, seventeen cents, and 631 won. The three Matchbox cars he'd managed to smuggle out before they were 'accidentally' stepped on. Jegi made with metal washers bound in plastic string. His Korean-English dictionary, a thick book made all the thicker with large type he could read without straining his eyes. A baby-food jar full of sand and small shells from the single time he'd gone to the beach for a school science day. And another thing that hadn't been there originally, hiding under the unused notebooks. The frame he recognized, it held the photo of Minho's father that Minho kept on his desk. But the photo in it now had been taken of the three of them, Ajima, Minho, and Clement, back in March. Ajima held her arms around her boys proudly while Minho beamed and Clement looked a bit sheepish. On the back of the frame a thick letter was taped with '민기' on it. Clement piled the notebooks back over the photo and shut the box.

The new box held everything Ajima had been asked to get from the trailer, plus the largest doshirak* Clement had ever seen, bundled in plastic wrap, and a jar of Ajima's spicy homemade baechu kimchi*. It held the three shirts he owned, and one last thing that made Clement's mouth and eyes wide. Minho was, without a doubt, the world's best hyung*. He'd only said it once. Years ago. That someday he'd have a jacket like the one his dad had. Clement had forgotten he'd said it. Minho, who rarely heard his dongsaeng* so earnest or see such a wistful look in his eye, had not.

It was in the box. The short coat's worn, broken black leather even smelled like Justin Evans, of oil and deodorant and the inside of his car, of California sun and rain. And more importantly, did not smell like beer.

Clement couldn't deal with it, and he shut that box too. He sat back on the bed and looked everywhere but at the boxes. Finally he looked at Wayne and nodded towards them.

"There's food in one," he heard himself murmur.

An orderly saved him from having to say anything else. A knock, and a wheelchair. "Get in," he said cheerfully, "You get to ride out. Standard operating procedure."

What? "I-I can walk," he said, the old ire rising back up.

"Everyone rides out, kiddo. C'mon."

Clement looked at Wayne, disbelief on his face.


*doshirak - lunch box, similar to a bento box
*baechu kimchi - kimchi made with napa cabbage
*hyung - older brother (to younger male)
*dongsaeng - younger sibling

"We'll make sure you eat that before it goes, kid."

Clement didn't say anything, or even nod. He just glanced once up into Wayne's eyes and back down, avoiding looking at the box left on the bed.

His dad was in that box. All he had left of him, all that was left of him. Justin Evans had departed his son's life in a deeply uncharacteristic series of terrible acts. He had died a Bad Guy. And Clement would never get an explanation, or an apology, or a second chance. His father had died Bad, before he had any chance to make it up. To be Good. To be who Clement remembered, the quiet man who had come home from work in the early hours of the morning smelling of engine oil and fry grease and dirt, who had tickled him as a small child and dug through his school bag for things to sign before he fell into bed.

Only time would tell if the man in the box was the Bad or the Good.

It was a relief to feel some of the old adrenaline, the familiar annoyance, leak into his system. The orderly smiled a somewhat weary smile, used to resistance and suspicion and rants about lawyers and overreactions. A smile that faded under the dark look of the old man into one that was more business-like.

"They want to make sure you get to the door okay, son. That's all. The car's a bit of a walk through the lot, though, so you'll have plenty of time to stretch your legs."

Clement bristled a little at being called son, something only Ajima had really referred him him as. A name the man in the box had not used, and now never would.

The idea of being wheeled out of the hospital in a chair was mildly humiliating, policies be damned. And it seemed to go against everything all the adults in authority preached about independence and personal responsibility.

But it would mean that he wouldn't have to worry about his pants falling down till he was out of the hospital, and that was something.

"Mr. Fowler and I will carry your things, so let's just get this circus routine over and done with. It's just until the door, kid - even if you weren't going with me, they'd still make you do it."

As Wayne spoke, the orderly walked to the bed and took down the high metal sides. There was plenty of room for Clement to scoot off near the foot, but seeing the edge of the bed without anything between him and falling made him scramble off, one hand clutching his waistband. Scowling down at the chair, he sat as Mr. Fowler ducked in to take the box on the bed. Clement sat with his knees pulled up and his arms tucked between them and his chest, and the orderly didn't bother to ask him to put his feet on the rests and sit like a normal person.

Five minutes later they were at the door, having been tucked near the back of the private children's rooms to keep Clement away from any anti-meta prying eyes. Clement was surprised to find his legs a little wobbly, though he'd just spent four days restrained to a bed without a lot of room to move. Fowler, who had the lighter box, gently caught him by the upper arm to steady him.

"Lead the way," he said to Wayne.

The hand on his arm made Clement uneasy, and when Fowler realized Clement was staring at it he let go. With one hand clutching the waistband of his jeans, he followed the two men close enough that they wouldn't have to badger him to keep up. His whole body was a little stiff from inactivity, but by the time they made it to the car he'd be nicely loosened up. Clement looked around at the hospital parking lot, trying to soak in his last bit of California. Hot. Sort of smelly. Tiny bits of odd greenery. Palm trees. Blacktop and cement. Cars. Cinder block buildings. People in tank tops and sunglasses. It was hard to make any special note of things when he didn't know what he'd see in Vermont. What he'd miss.

Still looking around, Clement almost bumped into Wayne's back when the man stopped, but he caught it in time. Squinting in the bright sunlight had made his eyes water, and he rubbed them so the men wouldn't think he was crying or anything.

"So kid, what do you like to be called?"

Giving a shrug, he said, "Clement."

And since he didn't want to start out on the wrong foot himself (considering he'd be trapped in a car with him for at least two days), he asked, "I-is Wayne your first name or... last?"

Clement eyed the box Fowler carried, wondering how long Ajima's doshirak would last. Not long, if the car they were using had no AC. He wondered what Wayne would think of the food he was guessing Ajima had packed, the kimchi and bacchan. At least his last meal would be good.