Chapter Text
Lucy assumes that Michael had friends back in Phoenix. They never came around the house (for obvious reasons) and he never talked about them - whenever he went out, he’d just go. And Lucy - looking back, she knows she should’ve taken more of an interest in what Michael was doing and who he was doing it with. But she’d had so many other things to worry about - her abusive, alcoholic husband; her probably gay, definitely loner son; how to pay the mortgage and feed her family - that she had let it slide. It hadn’t even cracked the top ten on her list of things-Lucy-needs-to-be-concerned-about.
Michael, she reasoned to herself, was a normal teenager doing normal teenage things with people who were also probably normal teenagers. He never came home drunk or high or more bruised than he left and he generally got back before his curfew. It was something she could take comfort in. See, Lucy would think to herself, Michael’s alright. He’s got friends. He’s having fun.
She didn’t actually know if he was having fun. She tried to remember to ask him about what he did when he got home, but sometimes she would fall asleep on the couch waiting up for him (and always wake up with a blanket draped over her that she hadn’t put there) or she’d be at work, or making dinner, or—or—or—
Lucy can look back now and say with relative certainty that she had done her best in an impossible situation. But she also knows that for Michael and Sam, her best hasn’t always enough. She didn’t have the time or capacity to be concerned about the people Michael was hanging around with. She does now. And she is.
Moving to Santa Carla is the best decision Lucy has ever made for her family. Michael doesn’t flinch anymore when she reaches for him unexpectedly. Sam walks with his head held — well, not high, but his shoulders and ears aren’t melded together anymore, and Lucy is counting that as a win. They’re happy, for the first time in a long time. Really happy, the kind that stays when there’s nothing else to feel. Lucy isn’t scared of the rug being pulled out from under her anymore, and she doesn’t think her boys are, either. It’s all she could’ve asked for. It’s more than she had even dreamed about just a year ago. But — because there’s always a but — Lucy would change one thing. Just one!
She doesn’t like Michael’s new friends.
At first, it was the Frog brothers garnered more of her concern. They were odd, in a way she finds endearing now, but for a while she was pretty sure they were half feral (which she still thinks) and she was more than a little worried that they were going to convince Sam that vampires were real or to enlist in the military. Michael had been going out with Star, a nice girl that wasn’t going to give her son rabies or tetanus, so Lucy hadn’t really thought much about it.
But then Michael and Star had broken up — or just quit dating? Lucy doesn’t get the impression that they had ever been very serious, though their affection for each other is obvious — and suddenly, a biker gang had moved into her front yard.
There are four of them: Marko, Paul, Dwayne, and David. Star’s bandmates and now Michael’s friends. They move like a pack. When they go out, if Michael isn’t already at their place (Lucy thinks she heard one of them call it the Coronado Ironworks, but she must’ve misheard; there is no way those boys are living in an abandoned factory), they all come to the Emerson house to pick him up, even though he had a bike of his own. And if, for some reason, one of them — usually David — drives Michael, they all come to drop him back off. It might have been sweet, if they were kids riding on bicycles, but something about it feels . . . off. Lucy doesn’t know how to describe it. It reminds her of getting dropped off by her girlfriends after a night out when she was Michael’s age, the way they’d wait to make sure she got inside before they left to take the next girl home. But there’s something almost proprietary in the gesture when Michael’s friends do it.
Lucy wants to talk to Michael about it, but she isn’t sure how. She’s tried, a few times, during the rare moments when it’s just the two of them. Her lips part, questions flitting half formed in her mind — do you feel safe with them, do you really like them, what are they getting you into — but then Michael starts humming a song she doesn’t know, or dancing along to the record player, or something else sweet and open that she hasn’t seen him do in a long, long time, and Lucy can’t bear to taint those moments with her doubts. Michael is an adult now, all of eighteen, she reasons, and and she has to trust that his judgement is sound enough to keep him safe.
But then Michael will do something stupid, like put a spoon in the microwave, and Lucy will remember that he’s not even twenty years old, and no teenager has good enough judgement to stay out of dangerous situations if their friends are there.
But that doesn’t make it any easier to talk about it. And the more time that passes, the harder it will become, Lucy knows. Michael took to his new friends like a fish to water, and his attachment to them only gets stronger as the weeks go on. He won’t take kindly to Lucy raising her concerns about them. He’ll take it as a personal affront — any teenager would — and she, herself, doesn’t have much ground to stand on. Why is she questioning who he hangs out with when he’s happier than ever? When they’re the reason for that?
So she hasn’t said anything about Michael’s friends. Not yet.
It’s dark out, nearly ten o’clock, when Lucy hears the revving of four engines coming down the street. Sam, Edgar, and Alan are lying on the living room floor, passing vampire comics back and forth, debating their merits. Lucy tunes in and out of their conversation, sharing amused or weirded out looks with Michael when one of the kids says something particularly odd. Michael himself is folding laundry and Lucy is flipping through a bodice ripper she picked up at the grocery store. She can’t decide if she likes it or not, but she doesn’t put it down. The general air of contentment in the room has lulled her into a forgiving mood, so she keeps reading, despite the hero’s annoyingly overbearing behavior.
And then she hears the engines.
Michael does, too. His head snaps up like a cat who hears the chittering of mice in the walls. His hands go still, as if he’s forgotten all about the shirt he was folding in the face of his friends’ imminent arrival. Maybe he has. He looks at the door — a bit like a dog waiting for his owner, Lucy thinks — and then shakes himself and finishes folding the shirt. He turns back towards Sam and the Frogs, but he doesn’t pick up anything out of the still half-full laundry basket.
Someone knocks on the door, three firm, rapid thunk-thunk-thunks that speak to their visitor's politely, if barely, restrained impatience. Lucy looks at Michael. He’s already on his feet, standing in front of the door before Lucy can even say his name. He lingers there for one moment, two, before he opens the door.
Doesn’t want to seem like the eager puppy he is, Lucy thinks, aggravated for no good reason and frustrated with herself for being so. Lucy feels the urge to go stand behind Michael like a guard dog, as if any of his friends would actually be able to see her behind his broad frame. Or be even remotely intimidated if they did. Lucy stays on the couch, like the reasonable person she is, but she watches Michael closely.
“Michael,” says a warm, lilting voice. David, Lucy’s pretty sure. The angle of Michael’s body is blocking him from view, but she can see a tuft of white-blond hair peaking out above Michael’s curls. “Are you busy?” David asks. His tone suggests that nothing Michael could be doing is more important than whatever it is David is about to ask him to do. There’s a cool confidence about that boy that Lucy can’t bring herself to like. The way it rests in his eyes — it reminds her of her ex-husband on bad days, the way he’d look at her when they’d get in screaming matches and she’d swear she was going to take the boys and leave him that very night. His eyes had gleamed with assurance, secure in the knowledge that Lucy could scream herself hoarse and she would still be there the next morning, making breakfast for all of them.
“Just folding laundry,” Michael tells him. He leans against the door frame, arms crossed over his chest, trying to seem non-chalant. Lucy’s pretty sure he picked that up from a movie. She can see David’s face now, though, so she’ll let it go. David looks like he also knows what Michael’s about, but is more endeared by it. The calm assurance she imagined is replaced with barely repressed fondness.
David hums. “Think you can take a break from chores and join us?” He gestures behind himself, presumably to where Star and the boys are waiting with their bikes.
Michael looks over his shoulder at Lucy for permission to break up their nice, quiet family night. He’ll stay if she asks him to. He might not even sulk all that much. He knows how rare these nights are and how much Lucy and Sam value them.
Lucy doesn’t answer immediately. She marks her place in her book and joins Michael at the door. She wants to get a good look at David and remind herself that this is a teenage boy, not a man who is going to hurt her child.
David’s face changes when he sees her. His smile doesn’t fall, but his mouth forms a gentle line instead of the sharp grin that it had been a moment ago, and something around his eyes tightens. Lucy does frown. That’s an unusual reaction to have to your friend’s mom. It doesn’t improve David’s standing with her whatsoever.
“What are you all going to do?” She asks.
Michael’s brow twitches but David just rocks back on his heels and says, “We're going to go for a ride if Michael wants to come. Just a ride.”
Just a ride my ass, Lucy thinks. She wants to ask where to, and for how long, but she sees the way Michael’s glancing back and forth between them. He looks almost distressed and a little embarrassed and something inside Lucy clicks with understanding.
Michael thinks David and his friends are cool. This whole leather-rock music-motorcycle thing is the new flower power-Beatles-psychedelics. And Michael wants the cool people to like him. Lucy wants to laugh. Michael’s admiration of David makes more sense now. The hip crowd has taken an interest in him and he wants to be accepted into their ranks. Oh, god. Lucy is so happy Sam doesn’t give a shit about this crap.
David, she can see now, is taking Michael under his wing. He’s mentoring him in cool-ness. That doesn’t make Lucy like him any better, but she’s relieved to know that there’s a method to the madness.
“Sure, go on,” Lucy says. David smiles and nods to her; Michael grabs his jacket off the rack. His keys jingle in one of the pockets as he slings it on.
“Thanks, Mom,” Michael says as he breezes past her and down the porch steps. David follows on his heels. He seems pleased and amused, the same way Michael is sometimes pleased and amused by Sam’s childish antics.
Lucy steps onto the porch and watches as Michael mounts his bike and pulls up to where the others are waiting. Star slides off of David’s bike and onto Michael’s. She waves at Lucy. Lucy waves back. She likes Star. She wishes she knew what was going on with her and Michael, but they both seem happy, so she guesses it’s not that big a deal.
“Be home by one, honeypie!” She shouts just before they take off. It’s her right, as Michael’s mom, to embarrass him a little bit. Lucy can see Michael hunch over as the boys hoot and holler. Even Star’s shoulders are shaking.
“Let’s go, honey-pie!” One of them hollers before he peels off into the night. Michael follows him, fast and a little bit reckless. Lucy chuckles. She remembers what it was like to be eighteen and she thinks Michael’s doing alright, even if these aren’t the friends she would have chosen for him. She wouldn’t have chosen the Frogs for Sam, and look at them now. Michael will be alright, she thinks. Especially when he out-grows the hero worship.
“Was that David?” Edgar asks. The three of them are sitting up now, eyes trained on the door. “He’s a vampire!”
Lucy sighs.