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May’s working on the final paragraph of an article about the ins and outs of Grand Festival scoring—and, much more interestingly, some of the more controversial highs and lows of previous Festivals, based on those supposedly standardized metrics—when her phone starts ringing, which is a reason for why she lets it ring through before realizing she should probably at least check the caller ID—not many people would call her at this hour without good reason, after all—though admittedly not a very good one. This only becomes more apparent when she sees Drew come into the room from the kitchen, phone in hand. He says, “I understand. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
His voice washes concentration over with concern. Guiltily, she picks up her own phone and clicks the missed notification: a call from Kipper and Felicity’s school.
“Is someone hurt?” she frets as Drew hangs up and pockets his phone.
He shakes his head. “She said it was urgent but not an emergency. Not much more explanation than that, though.”
He’s annoyed, but May finds her shoulders loosening with relief at that confirmation. Whatever the situation is, it’s already a lot more manageable than one of their children maimed and dying. She takes a moment to save her work, then reaches past Skitty to set her laptop on the coffee table. Giving her a gentle pat on the head in thanks for the company while she worked, May gets to her feet and follows Drew out the door, taking the car keys from him as she does. Unfortunately, though, her attempts at discussing the issue are all met with stony silence on the ride there; clearly, he is running through all kinds of worst case scenarios to run counter to her more optimistic suggestions—perhaps Felicity or Kipper has won some kind of award, or maybe one of them has simply had a particularly off day and has been giving their teacher a hard time—and is all too content to leave them in his head rather than set his anxieties loose on her.
But even then, she doubts that either of them is prepared for the actual situation.
“What do you mean, you built a bomb?”
“I didn’t say it’s a bomb,” Felicity protests from where they’re sat across from the vice principal, between May and Drew. “It would have to be inside a casing and able to be detonated to be a bomb. That’s what Uncle Max told me.”
May stares at them for a long moment, then shakes herself. “Why is Uncle Max teaching you about bombs?”
“I asked him,” they say, like May is the idiot for being confused.
“Did he at least question why you wanted to know?”
“Why would he do that?”
Why, indeed?
“I do see what Felicity is saying, though,” Drew says, much more politely than May thinks she would be able to manage right now. “That’s just a powder. How can anyone prove it’s even explosive? They may as well have dug some flour out of our cabinets and told their classmates it was explosive.”
“Not that that’s acceptable, either,” May says quickly. “Obviously that’s a really serious threat and not something to joke about.”
“Regardless of the identity of the substance, the supervising teacher was quite insistent their intention was not to joke around at all,” the vice principal says. Gently, she sets the plastic bag of the confiscated white powder on her desk and levels Felicity with a very severe look. “He told me that Felicity said, and I quote, ‘Say that again and I’ll blow you stupid idiots up.’”
“Felicity!”
“They deserved it!”
“Was someone picking on you?” Drew wonders. “You know that you should go to your teacher for help if someone is being rude to you before taking matters into your own hands.”
They shake their head. “Not me,” they say. “Kipper.”
“Oh.” May glances at the vice principal, then to Drew, then back to Felicity. Finally, she says, “Sweetheart, you can’t threaten people on your brother’s behalf, either… You should still talk to your teachers first.”
“I did,” they protest. “They didn’t do anything!”
“We take matters of bullying very seriously, Felicity,” the vice principal says, disapprovingly. “If that weren’t the case, you wouldn’t be here right now.”
“I’m not a bully!”
“We haven’t heard anything about this,” May says uncertainly. “Why didn’t you tell us, Felicity?”
“Kip wouldn’t let me,” they grumble, crossing their arms petulantly over their chest. “He said it doesn’t matter, but I’ve seen him crying about it.”
“Oh,” May says again, and lifts her gaze up to meet Drew’s again, just for long enough to affirm that he is as troubled by that information as she is. She reaches out to brush back Felicity’s hair, saying, “Well, it’s good that you want to protect your brother, but you can’t solve his problems by blowing people up…”
“Oh, it’s not even real,” they huff. “I was just trying to scare them. It’s like Dad said, it’s just flour.”
May’s pretty sure she’s not imagining the relieved sigh the vice principal lets out at the admission. She picks up the bag and hands it across the desk to Drew. “Then, I don’t see any reason why we need to involve the police in this… But whether a lie or not, it’s a very serious threat. It’s grounds for a suspension, at least.”
“Of course,” Drew says solicitiously. And then: “And it’s safe to assume the same will be true for the students bullying our son, right?”
The vice principal’s cheeks pinken. “Well, unless we can prove anything…”
“Which teacher did you tell, Felicity?”
“Mine and Kipper’s.”
“It sounds to me like there are plenty of people you could ask about the situation for proof.” Drew’s tone has chilled considerably. “We have no issues with keeping Felicity at home for as long as you deem appropriate for what they did today. But I’m sure we both would feel a lot better about sending Kipper to school if we know something is being done about the bullying.”
“Of course,” the vice principal murmurs, though she doesn’t sound particularly pleased about it.
The paperwork formalizing Felicity’s suspension is quickly dealt with and Felicity and the bag of dubious powder ushered into the car. Once they’re a few kilometres away from the school, May sees Drew turn around to face Felicity in her peripheral vision.
“It’s not really flour, is it?”
“Am I in trouble if it’s not?”
“Well, you already got kicked out of school for the rest of the week, so I’d say you’ve reaped enough consequences, haven’t you?”
“It’s not flour,” they affirm.
May grips the steering wheel a little harder, loosing a sigh. “Honestly, Felicity, I didn’t think we’d need to tell you that bringing a bomb to school isn’t allowed…”
“It’s not a bomb, Mom.”
“Explosives. Whatever. You do know that’s not okay, don’t you?”
“I told that girl if she called Kipper names again that she would be sorry, but she’s way bigger than I am! What else was I supposed to do?”
“Tell us!”
“Kip said not to!”
“Well, honey, Kip also says that Grandma Caroline’s gingersnaps are gross, so we shouldn’t just go along with everything he says…”
“You don’t get it. He was really upset.”
“He might be upset, but we still need to know things like this. Don’t you think it’s better if we can help him feel better in the long-term, even if it’s embarrassing for him to tell us what’s wrong at first?”
“I guess so…”
“It’s nice that you want to protect your brother,” Drew tells them. “We’re not upset with you for that. It’s just the way you went about it.”
“Yeah,” May agrees. “Uncle Max told you how to do this?”
“Only ‘cause I asked him.”
As they roll up to the last intersection before they turn back on to their street, May glances over at Drew and assures him, “I’ll give him a call.”
“Is Uncle Max in trouble?” Felicity asks.
“Oh, definitely,” says May. “What was he thinking, telling an eight-year-old how to make a bomb?!”
“It wasn’t a bomb!”
“That’s for me and Uncle Max to discuss,” May grumbles.
Felicity heaves a sigh, throwing themself back against their seat. They remain silent all the rest of the way home, and thankfully don’t protest when May sends them to their bedroom when they get there. In their absence, Drew hands the bag of powder to May for her to inspect.
“Do you think it’ll really blow up?” she wonders.
“What, you want to test it?”
“Well…I’m kind of curious. Aren’t you?” She dangles the bag between them and hooks a grin in his direction. “There’s not very much in here. It couldn’t be worse than a firework, right?”
“I’d rather not know our child is on the path to domestic terrorism.”
“Sounds like my brother will be right there with them,” May points out. She sets the bag on the counter, then fishes her phone out of her pocket with a grimace. “Guess I’d better give him a piece of my mind, huh?”
“Do you really expect him to answer in the middle of the workday?”
“Oh, he’s gonna answer. Trust me.”
At last, Drew’s lips twitch up into a small smirk. “Well, far be it from me to stop you. Coffee?”
“Please.”
He reaches out to grab her free hand, giving it a brief squeeze, then turns and disappears into the kitchen. After a moment, May takes up her phone and selects her brother’s contact, hitting call. As she traipses back through the living room to resume her place on the couch beside Skitty—who has only moved about two inches since May and Drew left, by the looks of things—it rings through to voicemail. So she hangs up, and dials him again.
And again.
And again.
Until, finally, on the very first ring, he irritably answers, “What do you need, May?”
“Oh, I need lots of things,” she says idly. “You not making me have to call you seven times—”
“Four!”
“—is a big one,” she continues, ignoring him entirely. “But there’s an even bigger thing, which is for you to not tell my children how to make bombs! Seriously, Max? You can’t really have thought Felicity would just ask you something like that for fun!”
“They built a bomb?” he asks, amazed. “Wow! What did they make it out of?”
“That’s not the point!”
“It didn’t blow up the house, right?”
“It hasn’t blown up anything, and I’d really like to keep it that way!” May pauses as Drew comes back into the room, fortifying mug of coffee in hand. As she takes it, she smiles gratefully at him. “Thanks, babe.”
“You don’t sound like you’re in danger,” Max points out from the other side of the phone. “So what happened with the bomb?”
“Well…I guess it’s not a bomb yet. Just the stuff that goes inside a bomb and makes it explode?”
“That sounds even more dangerous.”
May takes a sip of her coffee, slanting a nervous glance toward the kitchen. “It is?”
“Some compounds are more unstable than others, so it doesn’t take much to make them explode…”
May straightens up in alarm. “Huh?! Which kind did you teach Felicity about?!”
Settled down on the other side of the couch, with Skitty between them, Drew looks over to her in concern. Unhelpfully, she offers him a jerky shrug, just as Max says, “Um…good question. You might have to ask them that.”
“Max! You can’t just—tell my kid how to make bombs and then forget about it!”
“I didn’t think they’d really do it! I thought they just wanted to know.”
“Since when have they ever asked you something just because they ‘want to know’?” May sighs, and sets her free hand on Skitty’s back, stroking her fur and forcing herself to take in and let out a deep breath. “Well, what’s done is done… They got suspended from school, you know…”
“They took it to school? Jeez, I’m sorry, May. I guess I was just so excited to tell them something cool that I wasn’t thinking about what they might do with that information.”
“Like try to blow up little girls who bully their brother?” May asks wryly. “Well, if I’d been smart enough to make a bomb at their age, I might’ve done the same thing for you.”
“Really? I probably would have tried to blow you up.”
“It might’ve depended on the day,” May allows. “Anyway, we already told them they can’t take explosives to school, but you should really have a chat with them about it too. And next time I’d appreciate if you’d ask why they would want to know something like that before just telling them…”
“I will,” he promises. “Actually, I’m out a little early today and off tomorrow. Did you, uh, get rid of the explosives already?”
“Well, now I’m scared to! You made it sound like they might blow up at any minute!”
“I’ll come and help,” he assures her. “I should be able to get there just in time for dinner.”
“Now I’m starting to think you have a secret agenda here,” May mutters. “But fine. You got us into this mess, so you can get us out of it. It’s probably better to talk to Felicity in person anyway…”
They spend a few minutes longer on the phone while he determines when the earliest he can catch a boat from Mossdeep is, and also while he directs her on where to store the bag of powder until he gets there. By the time May hangs up the phone, she feels…not better about the situation, but at least is able to settle on the couch again assured that their more explosive concerns will soon be out of their hands and in Max’s instead.
Their other concerns are a little less straightforward. It’s easy enough to see that Drew is troubled too, from the way he’s watching Skitty snooze away on the couch, coffee cup held in both hands, as if he might divine some kind of solution from the rhythm of her snores.
After a moment, he seems to feel May’s eyes on him; he jerks up and directs his frown her way instead.
“Is it bad that I’m not really mad at Felicity for this?”
“I don’t think so,” May says honestly. “But I almost wish Kipper were the one making bombs… It won’t even be a year before he gets his first Pokémon. The schoolyard isn’t the only place he’ll meet bullies, you know…”
“It’s probably a good thing he doesn’t want to blow them up, though,” Drew points out. “There’s got to be a healthy middle ground between that and not standing up for yourself at all.”
“I guess we just got too lucky with Summer, huh?” May flops back against the couch with a sigh. “So now we have to deal with a homemade bomb, school bullies, and I still have a deadline to meet tomorrow.”
“We can talk to Kipper when he gets home, and in the meantime I’ll handle dinner.” He offers her a small smile, as comforting as it’s ever been. “I’ll check on Felicity, too, so you can finish your article.”
“You’re the best. Oh, by the way…my brother will be joining us for dinner.”
“He’s not bringing any more bombs, is he?”
May shrugs. “Maybe he and Felicity will make another one when we’re not looking.”
“You’re joking now, but it won’t be so funny when our kitchen becomes a chemistry lab.”
She chuckles, and reaches for her laptop on the coffee table, assuring him, “I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”
The rest of the afternoon is quiet—whatever conversation Drew has with Felicity is clearly well-received, because even when they come out of their bedroom, they don’t appear to be particularly upset about the situation they’ve found themself in—and May is able to not only finish her article but edit the whole thing, too. It’s rare that she manages such a feat with more than twenty-four hours before a deadline; she silently pats herself on the back for giving herself enough time to do a second round of editing tomorrow.
Kipper gets home shortly after Drew has started making dinner and, as he usually does, immediately sets to work helping his father in the kitchen. He doesn’t say anything to or about Felicity, so he must have already been aware of why they got sent home from school. For their part, they sit at the kitchen table and idly spin a pen in front of their face. Their homework they would have done at the end of the school day had they been present sits unfinished in front of them.
After a few minutes of watching them continue to scowl at it, May settles down beside them to help—but is promptly summoned to her feet again by the doorbell ringing.
“Who’s that?” they ask.
May grimaces. “Uncle Max. And he’s not here to help you make any bombs.”
“Boring.”
May shakes her head and puts a hand over their head, ruffling their hair—earning an indignant cry in response—before rising to go answer the door. When she opens it, she’s met with Max’s sheepish smile, and a box of chocolates.
“Apology chocolates?” She takes them from him, inspecting the packaging. “I don’t know, Max, I think this mistake warranted at least thirty-two pieces…”
“They only had boxes of sixteen,” he protests. “And you didn’t sound ‘thirty-two pieces of chocolate’ mad on the phone!”
“I was still in shock about my child making bombs in their bedroom under my nose.”
“You said it wasn’t a bomb.”
“Oh, whatever. Just go tell them they can’t blow people up, please.”
His lips twitch up at that as she steps back to let him through. She follows after him back into the kitchen, standing back and watching as he takes the seat May vacated earlier. Trusting that he’ll take her word seriously, she turns away to drop the box of chocolates on the coffee table in the living room, then comes into the kitchen again and leans against the counter to observe Drew and Kipper.
“How was school?” she asks.
Kipper glances over from where he’s been stirring sauce under his father’s guidance. Quickly, he averts his gaze again.
“Felicity got sent home,” he says. “Why didn’t you bring me home too?”
She pauses, and then, gently, asks, “Did you want us to?”
“Well, yeah,” he mutters. “Why would I want to be at school if I don’t have to be?”
Over his head, May and Drew exchange a short look, before Drew reaches over to turn off the stovetop, saying, “It looks good, buddy. Why don’t you set the table?”
He just nods, stepping back and squeezing past May to get to the dishes behind her. She steps closer to Drew to give him more space, mouthing, Later, to him. He responds with a minute nod.
Dinner is a subdued affair as Felicity sits in the aftermath of Max’s chastisement—a first for them, probably; Max has always been pretty soft with May’s kids, but especially Felicity—and Kipper stews in what May can only assume is the upset of whatever harassment he’s been enduring at school. Somehow, she gets the sense that Felicity’s bomb threat would not have improved the situation, regardless of Felicity’s good intentions.
It's clear that everyone needs a pick-me-up, which is probably why May doesn’t think too hard about asking them all at the end of the meal, “So, should we test out Felicity’s bomb?”
“May!”
“It’s not a bomb!”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Only if we stand too close,” Max cheerfully assures Kipper—and Drew, who doesn’t really look any less scandalized by the suggestion.
“Can’t do more damage than when a Pokémon uses Explosion, right?” May shrugs. “If anyone tries to give us trouble, we’ll just say we were training our Pokémon.”
“It’s better than keeping it in your kitchen,” Max agrees. “Besides, you should see the results of your experiment, Felicity. In a controlled environment where no one will get hurt, that is.”
Drew still looks like he wants to argue, but May knows the battle is lost as soon as he sees the gleam sparking in Felicity’s eyes. Even Kipper looks curious; he’s generally a pretty reserved kid, but there’s probably no nine-year-old in the world who would say no to seeing something explode.
They decide to take the powder down to a secluded section of the beach. At this hour, it’s very quiet, though May supposes that won’t be the case for long. She stands back with her husband and their children while Max sets the powder out on a paper plate closer to the water. He’s grinning when he hurries back to join them.
“A Flamethrower should be enough to get it going,” he says, and May nods in understanding, reaching for Blaziken’s Poké Ball and tossing it up into the air. As her first partner materializes, she commands, “Use Flamethrower!”
The instant the Move brushes against the plate, it shoots up in flames—and the powder ignites, bursting up in magnificent and uncontrolled red-and-orange, carrying sound and heat and charred pieces of paper in their direction.
“Whoa!” Felicity ducks behind May, while Drew pulls Kipper closer to him, a protective arm shooting out around his chest.
“Very potent,” Max observes. “You did all that just with things you found at home?”
“In the cleaning stuff under the sink, in Mom’s medicine cabinet, and in the kitchen,” Felicity says proudly.
“I’m impressed,” May admits, watching as the flame dies down. From this distance, it’s barely a flicker on the wind now. “But I hope you see now why using it on your classmates would have been a bad idea.”
“I wasn’t really gonna blow her up,” Felicity complains. “I just wanted her to shut her stupid mouth.”
“We’ll make sure that she does,” Drew says darkly. “There are better ways to get what we want than building bombs.”
May glances over to see Kipper ducking his head away from his father, kicking the sand with the toes of shoes.
“Well,” she says, “we can’t do anything about that right now. So what do you say we head back home and have some dessert? I think we have everything we need for those yummy cupcakes, don’t we, Kip?”
He perks up at that. “Okay!”
She beams back at him, and recalls Blaziken at last. As she does, Drew sends out his Masquerain and commands it to use Water Pulse on the fire still remaining. Once the final sparks have died out into ashen grey, they turn around to head back home. Drew keeps his arm around Kipper, while May falls into step beside their youngest child. She reaches out to grab their hand, giving it a squeeze.
“You did good, kiddo,” she says.
“It was pretty cool,” they agree. “Maybe Uncle Max can teach me to make another one?”
“Yeah, not in a million years. But nice try.”
They heave a large sigh. “Fine. I guess I’ll just have to pick a job someday where I get to blow stuff up, like he does.”
“You know Uncle Max’s job isn’t blowing stuff up, right?”
“It’s not?”
“Maybe you could try asking him about his work instead of about explosives next time.”
“Yeah,” they mumble. “I guess so.”
May drops their hand with a chuckle, and shoos them away toward their uncle, a few steps ahead of them. With one last glance toward the beach, she finds her chest warming with gratitude. They’ll need to talk to Kipper before he goes to bed tonight, but for now, Drew’s got a good point: it’s nice to know that his sibling wants to look out for him.
After all, she thinks as she turns back to watch the four of them chatting with each other on the way back home, isn’t that what family is for?