My phone rang a few seconds later. Cruz was on the line—he had already checked, and wanted to let me know that Attack on Sobrukai wasn’t on the list of replayable missions—at least not yet. Then he conferenced Diehl in for his traditional post-mission bitch fest. After, the Mikes tried to cajole me into joining them for a Terra Firma mission, but I mumbled something about having homework and said I’d see them at school tomorrow.
Then I got up and went over to my closet. When I opened the door, a small avalanche of stuff spilled out onto my feet. I rummaged through the dense forest of dress shirts and winter coats on plastic hangers until I found my father’s old jacket way at the back. It was an old black baseball jacket with leather sleeves, and it was completely covered, front and back, with embroidered patches, all somehow science fiction or videogame related, including several high-score-award patches for old Activision games like Starmaster, Dreadnaught Destroyer, Laser Blast, and Kaboom! Running down both sleeves were logos and military insignia from the Rebel Alliance, the Star League, the United Federation of Planets, the Colonial Fleet from BSG, and the Robotech Defense Force, among others.
I studied each one in turn, running my fingertips over the embroidery. When I’d last tried this jacket on a few years ago, it had still been too big on me. But when I slipped it on now, it fit me perfectly, almost as if it had been tailor made.
I found myself itching to wear it to school tomorrow—despite my earlier vow to stop living in the past and obsessing over the father I had never known.
I looked around at the posters, toys, and models that filled my room and felt a pang in my chest at the thought of moving all my dad’s prized possessions up into the attic. Despite my good intentions, it seemed I wasn’t quite ready to let go of my father. Not yet.
I leaned back in my chair, stifling a yawn that did not wish to be stifled. I did a quick systems-wide status check, the results of which confirmed that my wagon was draggin’. Plutonium chamber empty. Sleep required immediately.
I took three steps toward my bed and collapsed facefirst onto my vintage Star Wars bed sheets, where I immediately fell into a fitful sleep.
My dreams that night were plagued by visions of a giant Sobrukai overlord constricting its enormous tentacles around a defenseless planet Earth as if preparing to swallow it whole.
When I walked out to my car the next morning and glanced down to unlock it, I saw the long sine-wave gouge that now ran bumper to bumper down the driver’s side.
Someone had keyed my car. I turned to scan the surrounding houses, on the off chance Knotcher was still in the vicinity. But he was nowhere to be seen, and it occurred to me he had probably done this last night, while the Omni was parked outside Starbase Ace. I just hadn’t noticed after work because it was dark out, and my car’s paint job wasn’t exactly unblemished to begin with.
I turned back to resurvey the damage, this time in the context of the vehicle’s overall condition. The long scratch Knotcher had added would be barely noticeable to anyone else. One of the few perks of driving an ancient, rusted-out shit wagon was that it took real effort to make it look any less aesthetically pleasing than it already was.
This realization allowed me to calm myself enough to heed the whispered advice of Master Yoda now on repeat in my head: Let go of your anger.
I often tried to calm myself with Yoda’s voice (which sounded nothing like Fozzie Bear, damn you) during moments of distress. Obi-Wan or Qui-Gon or Mace Windu sometimes had calming movie-quote wisdom to share too.
That was only on good days, of course. On the bad ones, I found myself drawing on equally compelling advice from Lords Vader or Palpatine.
But it wasn’t their dark influence that motivated me to get the tire iron out of the Omni’s trunk and place it inside my backpack. It was the voice of my friend Diehl, recounting his warning last night about Knotcher’s threat to seek revenge.
I parked my car in the student lot and trudged toward my school’s front entrance while counting off the numbers of days remaining in my sentence—only forty-five more to go.
But when I reached the open grassy area bordering the parking lot, Knotcher was there waiting for me, along with two of his brain-trust buddies. All three were grinning, arms folded across their chests like goons in some Power Rangers episode.
My gaze shot over to the school’s front entrance, calculating the distance. If I tried, I could probably make it there before they stopped me. But I found that I didn’t want to.