Season 1, Episode 5 - The Boxtops XIV - "The Mouthguard"

----------------------------------------

Saturday morning. The day of the Combat Simulation.

Isaac, Audrey, and Alfie sat on the bench in the courtyard of the Academy, underneath the tall oak tree. The air carried that crisp November feeling with it, but it wasn’t too cold out, all things considered, and the three lounged around on the bench, spending a brief moment of silence to take in the autumn morning, the sun hanging low in a blue sky.

The sound of approaching footsteps brought them out of their spell. Audrey waved at Coleridge, who rubbed his eyes and yawned as he approached.

“Where’s our fearless team leader?” he asked, taking off his backpack and sliding onto a nearby bench.

Isaac shrugged. “Usually, she joins us when we walk here, but not today apparently.”

"She missed a great conversation on catfish!” Audrey added.

Coleridge stretched out on the bench. "Those are the fish with those whisker-things on 'em, right? We used to go fishing for them back up in Androscoggin. I always hated when the little bastards stung you when you're trying to take them off the hook after catching them. Buddy, I'm doing you a favor!"

Audrey raised her hand. "I've been to Androscoggin!"

Coleridge clapped his hands in excitement. He and Audrey reached across Alfie to dab each other up; Alfie just rolled his eyes and leaned his head back.

Coleridge reached down into his black backpack. “Well, unfortunately for Reed, she’s also going to miss out on these!”

Audrey pressed her hands against her cheeks in delight as she saw Coleridge’s present. “Oranges!” she exclaimed. “The only fruit to be named after a color!”

“What if the color was named after the fruit?” Isaac asked.

“...thank you, Coleridge!” Audrey said, making Isaac sigh.

“No problemo.” Coleridge tore each orange into two, creating four sections, one for each person on the bench. “I was going to skip out and let you guys eat them, but since I’m early for once, it's Reed's loss.”

Audrey nibbled quickly on her orange, reminding everyone of a squirrel, but she finished quick. “Hey guys, watch this!”

She opened her mouth wide, giving a cheeky grin, wearing the orange peel like a mouthguard.

Isaac chuckled, then saw Coleridge give a grin the same way, so he finished his share and put the peel in his mouth like a mouthguard as well.

Everyone looked expectantly at Alfie. He rolled his eyes, then opened his mouth, revealing an orange peel mouthguard.

The four went quiet for a moment, mouthguards in place, watching birds in flying V’s head south for the winter across a sky filled with rolling clouds. The four all nodded with each other in silent agreement.

A few minutes later, the mouthguards now discarded, a lone figure finally approached the courtyard from below Tsukishima Station. Isaac frowned as the figure got closer. It wasn’t their fearless team leader; it was, in fact, two different figures.

Isaac wiped his face. “Hello, Piper.”

Piper waved as she and Oksana got closer. “Hello, Isaac!”

“Are you guys watching the simulation?” Audrey asked, her teeth now a shiny orange.

Piper paid that no mind. “Of course! We’re all members of Class 2-C, so we want to watch and show our support for our classmates. Right, Oksana?”

“Teamwork makes the dream work,” Oksana agreed, her voice quiet and blank as usual.

Piper leaned closer to them, her voice dropping lower. “And, truth be told, I’m personally rooting for you guys. I’m rooting for you so much that I actually put down money on Team Red.”

“Money?” Isaac repeated.

Piper crossed her arms and nodded proudly. “Those kids in Class 2-B love their gambling. So, don’t even think about throwing the match, Coleridge!”

Coleridge shook his head. “On my honor as a Coleridge, I would never commit nefarious acts.”

Piper laughed, then turned back to Isaac and held her hand out, holding something in her palm. “By the way, you want a stick of gum?”

Isaac eyed the box of gum in her hand cautiously. “This isn’t a trick, is it? And this isn’t mint, is it?”

“Nope on both fronts. Some honest, strawberry-flavored gum for an honest, strawberry-flavored guy.”

Isaac knew he should know better than this, but he couldn’t help but fall for the bait, especially when strawberry flavor was involved.

“Alright, I’m trusting you,” he muttered, reaching his hand out. “Good thing you didn’t bring mint. I’m not a mint guy, it makes my mouth feel like the Arctic, and that’s not something I want to feel in November-”

“PLATINUM DISCO!”

Isaac could only sigh as an industrial-strength strobe light out of Piper’s palm hit him at point blank range.

When the brief flash of light ended, Piper held her stomach from laughing. “You see, there’s this underclassman girl who’s been offering people gum, then using her lightning Rddhi powers to zap them, all sneaky and tricky-like, so I thought I’d try Platinum Discoing people with gum! Did you see how it worked? When you reached over, I activated the Disco in my hand. Did you see it, Isaac? Isaac?”

Isaac remained in place, spending a brief moment wondering how sixteen years of life led him to this exact moment. All he could do was let out yet another long sigh as he slowly sat back in the bench, his eyesight gradually returning to him.

Piper shrugged. “Sorry, I guess I’ll set it to party-strength next time. Well, when I learn how to set it at party-strength, then I will.”

Piper and Oksana sat next to Coleridge on the bench (Coleridge scooched away from Piper in fear). Oksana stared into space; Piper crossed her legs, looking utterly relaxed, the breeze blowing through her hazel hair that spilled out of her gray scalley cap.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

“So, Isaac, today is Wampanoag U’s last game,” Piper said. “I heard this season was a trainwreck, and not even the good kind.”

Isaac wiped his face. “I told Dan the same thing. It’s a culture-building year. Our football team’s all freshmen and sophomores and we still need to fire the defensive coordinator. But just you wait!”

Audrey’s eyes lit up, spotting a potential friendship bonding moment. “Isaac and Piper, are you both Wampanoag fans? I didn’t know you had that in common!”

Piper nodded proudly. “Far more than that. We both grew up in the same town. Childhood friends!”

Before Isaac could speak, Audrey gasped and stood, her entire worldview recalculating at hamster-ball level speeds. “You guys knew each other for that long??? How’d you guys meet?!”

Piper began recounting the tale. “We were both young’uns then, kids who didn’t know up from down or left from right. Well, I knew, but Isaac was still wet in the ears and green around the horn. We’d run into each other a few times; I was out with the girls pedaling junk for candy at the corner store, while Isaac was out tossing the pigskin with the boys, pretending to be the next big star. But wouldn’t you it, our paths crossed on a fateful day...”

Eight-year-old Piper walked down the dirt road of Patuxet, a small town with one main, winding road, and one train station on a rail spur that connected it to the much-larger port city of Acushnet on Buzzards Bay. A number of smaller streets crisscrossed the main road, connecting it to butcher’s shops and delis in the center, with homes of increasingly larger size appearing as the inhabitants traversed outwards.

The economic boom of the years following Pulaski seized power meant that the number of construction projects in the country exploded, with numerous empty lots in Patuxet slated for later development. Some of these lots had plenty of space to play games in, which gave the rowdy youths of the town enough room to play. Their cries could be heard by the junk-pedaling girls in the center of town, who all rolled their eyes at the noise.

In youthful days like those, time passed by unnoticed. In the summer days of yesteryear, with no school and no responsibilities, the town youths headed out to play right as morning hit, and then, all of a sudden, workers lit the town’s new gaslamps, signaling it was time to head home.

Piper herself was doing just that, since she was a good child who got studied hard and would surely win an academic scholarship to Shanghai some day (for journalism, of course). With the orange glow of the gaslamps covering the streets, the kids in town, both boys and girls, all went their separate ways, heading home for the evening.

Except for one, that is. As Piper headed past an empty lot, she saw a lonely looking kid staring up a huge excavator, tears in his eyes. Piper knew she should’ve headed home, but she also knew a child in need when she saw one.

Piper approached him and placed a calming hand on his shoulder. “What’s wrong?” she asked gently.

Piper recognized him as Isaac, a small kid her age who usually just tagged along on his peer’s coattails. He pointed up at the excavator, a big, yellow machine with the controls inside the cab, and the words REED CONSTRUCTION on the neck identifying its owner and operator.

Isaac sniffled. “My football...we were tossing it around, and it got stuck up there. All the fellas went home and wouldn't help me get it down...”

Piper squinted her eyes and saw a football stuck in the excavator’s bucket, far too high to reach from the ground.

“Wait just a minute,” Piper reassured him. With a mixture of spiderlike and monkeylike reflexes, skill, grit, determination, and hard work, Piper climbed up to the top of the excavator’s cab, then scrambled up its neck until she could reach into the bucket, a whole ten feet off the ground.

With ease, she grabbed the football and tossed it down to Isaac. He missed the catch and it smacked him on the head, but that was his own fault.

As he collected the football, Isaac looked up at Piper in awe. She stood atop the horizontal end of the excavator’s neck, her arms crossed in front of her chest.

“Remember this moment, Isaac!” Piper exclaimed. “This is the moment you truly realized Piper will one day take on the entire world-”

Eight-year-old Piper felt someone hoist her up by the scruff of her neck. She tilted her head back and saw the modern-day Isaac staring down at her.

“Was it something I said?” modern-day Piper asked, sitting on the bench in the Academy courtyard, her head tilted back to see modern-day Isaac staring down at her.

Isaac was unamused. “Everything you said – literally everything – was completely false.”

“...aww...” Audrey stopped twirling in place and let out a sigh as her worldview’s recalculation finished and cute images of a helpless Isaac disappeared from her head. “So, what really happened?”

Piper laughed, then flinched when Isaac flicked her on the back of the head. “We lived in the same town,” Isaac explained, “but Piper was the loud one. We could hear her from the empty lots. Then, one time, she asked to play catch with me. I said sure and tossed her the ball. She then tossed it into the excavator bucket and ran off, laughing like a madman.”

Audrey looked back and forth between Isaac and Piper. “Okay...based on my friendships with you two, I know for a fact Isaac’s telling the truth here...but I’m going to believe Piper’s version!”

Piper cheered while Isaac sputtered. “Are you serious?”

“She’s got a point,” Coleridge added. “You see, when Piper told the story, it felt like I was actually there. Her narration was good and I don’t know, I felt immersed in her story. But, you on the other hand, it’s like I was just listening to you drone on and on. It's like you were just talking at me. And Piper’s story is a lot more fun.”

“Funness is an important quality!” Audrey exclaimed.

Isaac looked at Alfie and Oksana for support. Alfie just shrugged, while Oksana was too busy staring at small cracks in the paved walkway below their feet to say anything.

Isaac threw his hands in the air and sat back down.

Before any more boring truths or entertaining falsehoods could be shared, another figure emerged out of Tsukishima Station. From her short stature and the messy hair, it could none other than-

“Reed!” Audrey yelled out, waving.

Reed flinched as she approached. “Not so loud,” she muttered. She pushed her hair out of eyes, revealing dark rings below them.

Audrey squished over into Alfie and Isaac squished over into Audrey so Reed would have to space to sit on their bench. She yawned as she sat down, letting the Domino Sword in its scabbard lean against the bench.

“Did you get a good sleep last night?” Audrey asked.

“I didn’t get any sleep,” Reed mumbled, trying to wake herself by patting herself on the face. “I was up all night. But that’s alright.” She puffed out her chest in pride. “That just means I’ll be wired for the simulation today. I’ll have that junkie sort energy in me today. That’s an unpredictable sort of energy, and unpredictability is an important asset in our arsenal.”

Isaac shook his head, fuming, just a little bit. Not surprising. The night before a big battle and she's still just goofing off.

“Were you up all night watching television?” Isaac asked, unable to hide feeling a little annoyed that Reed would do something like that before a big match.

Reed shook her head. “I told you, I’m taking this seriously. I went home right after the football game and got ready for sleep right away. No television, no radio, no distractions, no nothing. I even brushed my teeth last night, Isaac. That’s how seriously I'm taking this. I went to bed right after, but something kept me awake. I’m not sure what it was.”

Isaac relented, feeling a little bad about pressing her.

Is she...nervous? When we fought in the sewers, she didn't seem nervous at all. But I guess I know her a little better now. She just tries to be cold and aloof but even she has stuff going on beneath the surface.

Isaac decided to poke a little fun at her about it later. As for now, the team needed to focus.

"Oh...well, sorry to hear about the sleep," Isaac said, scratching the back of his neck a little sheepishly. "But, at least the whole team's finally here now."

Reed shrugged. "I knew you guys were lost without me."

Audrey twiddled her thumbs, something on her mind. "Did the simulation keep you up?"

Reed raised an eyebrow. “It’s just a simulation, Audrey. How would that keep me up?”

Audrey shifted on the bench. "I had trouble sleeping last night too. I mean, I know we've already had life-and-death matches a few times already, but this...a lot of people will be watching. Stuff like that kept me up for a little bit last night."

Reed waved her concerns away. "Yeah, nice try. You'll never catch me in a moment of weakness."

Isaac and Audrey had to stifle smiles. Isaac remembered Reed opening up in the dojo and on the apartment walkway under the moonlight, and he knew she and Audrey had some heart-to-hearts after an incident in a convenience store.

Reed scratched her arm. “Stop that. What could I possibly be nervous about?"

“Well, you’re the team captain,” Coleridge pointed out. “That’s a lot of pressure.”

“You’re facing off against Mackenzie,” Audrey reminded her. “I think you guys should be friends, but there’s that rivalry thing you guys got.”

“And I made you lose last year!” Piper exclaimed. “So, this year is a big redemption year.”

“Maybe you’re worried about looking bad in front of other people,” Alfie said quietly.

“And a whole lot of people are watching,” Isaac added.

Even Oksana chimed in. "Nightmare nightmare nightmare-"

Reed threw up in the bushes behind them.