Quentin Collins - The Plan

[Kirsty L. Carpenter]

((Exterior. Salem, Massachusetts. Salem State University. Just Outside Rockett Arena.))

((2387 - The Before.))

Quentin Collins III blithely stared at the graduation chord and board in his hand as he awkwardly loped out of what was supposed to be the “beginning of the rest of his life”.

It was funny, before THIS very moment he had been achingly worried about getting everything right. Making sure his props were in their proper places and the final movements of his life as a student were completed. He had filed out of his classes almost a full day earlier than he was supposed to, post his finals and last term papers. His cap and gown had been purchased and shipped precisely a full week before everyone else’s in his building. Drawing more wary eyes and hushed whispers than usual, but he had been fully well used to that long beforehand. Like…second term, second year stuff that was.

This however? Was something altogether different. While he had honestly loved student life, as well the arduously engaging work of his studies, the last year of his career in college had become a sprint, not a marathon. Every grade, every assignment had become life and death. Every rehearsal with the theater guild and requirement of every other subsequent department, from the lowest of English to the most esoteric of Anthropology specialization, now a dire demand on his time. This…mutated, to be frank, further once the talk of graduation happened. That just kicked it into an entirely separate gear as the feelings shifted from mere expectations to something not unlike providence. All these feelings and thoughts and a whole lot more squalled and bared on Quentin’s mind and body…

Right up...until this very second. Where the time and energy and demands on him had finally stopped. Leaving him preciously, blissfully…unattached. Unmoored from responsibility and remands of professors and the proffered, haughty attitudes of his fellow students. He glanced up. Seeing the sun of the gorgeously chilly day crest over this section of the campus and was struck dumb by its mundane beauty. How the light caught the grass amid the sidewalks just so, giving it the impression of sheets made of swaying beads of green rainwater. Intersected by rich paths of smooth cream colored stone, crisscrossing now in eye-grabbing patterns that should have seemed obvious to him far before now. This was the place that he had lived for nearly five years now and he hated himself for not realizing how amazing it was.

These gorgeous real-life sets were suffused further with bright, laughing life as more and more of his fellow graduates and their families started to stream from the interior of Rockett. Quentin all but floated down the stairs, drinking in the sunny convection of the people and parents around him. Smiles, hugs, and shouts of elation surrounded him like a grand heavenly chorus. He smiled quietly to himself. He couldn’t help it. Despite having more than a few run-ins with the student body and feeling their harsh and oftentimes unfounded cutting looks across him and the occasional “good-natured” prank for…well, months, he still was happy for them. Just as he was happy for himself to a point. They had all worked hard and deserved the light of affection and recognition. 

“Even if Andrew Hardy once nailed all my shoes to the Common Room cork board that one time…”, he thought, suddenly souring his lightness. He shook the thought and POLISCI man-child from his hair, loosening his tended, but still too-long reddish mane of hair. He also unzipped the front of his dark blue graduation robe, drawing the cool, welcome air across his soft cotton oxford and judiciously steamed khakis. He forced himself back into the moment. Keenly reminding himself that these would be his last days on campus. He would have to savor them.

Just as he would have to savor his last few days on Earth…

His mouth twisted into a reflexive frown. That was still a conversation to come. He crossed further into the quad, trying to pull words from the miasma of feelings that started to overtake him. He had put it off for too long. Dad had even said so, even if he didn’t know the specifics. And knowing Mother she would find some way to put him on the spot about-

“Quentin! Quentin, over here!” 

He turned and silently cursed his own foresight. Just a few yards away stood his family. Mother, in her Sunday Funeral Best (but that was a usual sight around SSU), extricating herself from yet another fawning over session from the rest of her department and the Dean of Sciences. Dad, David, and Sara, as per usual, traveling in her wake. Sara’s face matched Quentin’s for the most part, grinning and soaking up the sights and sounds of the campus around her. David, as ever, looked bored and antsy to move on. Both had just turned fifteen, but looked much older flanking their Father, all clad in their version of formal-casual. 

Quentin started to slip off his robe, but was quickly disabused of that notion by his Mother, who started handing over her ancient, but well-kept film camera to Dad as she “tidied” him for pictures. Quentin started something akin to disassociating. Smiling vacantly through what seemed like 800 pictures, some unexpectedly punctuated by harsh, searing flashes of a nearly 200 year old light source. But the pictures with Dad and Sara and David seemed to have a different energy to them. One that even the usual stolid and aloof Mother even clocked. 

They were playful and candid and finally drew Quentin back up and out of the brain fog that still dominated his forebrain. But Mother’s voice started to pierce through the din. Recapping for the benefit of no one but herself the information they already knew from the graduation ceremony (along with Quentin’s basically mandatory check-ins with Mother ON campus in her office). Top 15% of his class, a double Degree with Honours in Anthropology and Parapsychology, and near perfect attendance (barring that few days in which he caught “the flu” after a particularly rowdy short tour of The Scottish Play with the theater guild). It felt as if he was being talked AT and not ABOUT. Dad and Sara seemed to clock his discomfort, suggesting an early lunch and maybe then further a tour of the campus.

Then Mother had done it. As Quentin started them toward their chosen parking spot, led now by David in a sharpish gait, Mother started in on his ‘future”. How the “world” was now open to him, beyond graduate studies and his doctorate, of course. “Professor Halsey was so impressed with you, Quentin, he would love to have you stay for your post-grad work. But also, we must keep in mind the benefits of graduate work at another school, of course. With your marks, Quentin dear, you could have your pick! Brown, Oxford, gods, even Miskatonic! I know Armitage is an old goat, but he runs a marvelous department. And thankfully, Arkham isn’t that far from home! You could study during the week and visit us during the weekends. I know the children would love to have you around more, they miss their big brother and-”

 

“Mom, I’m not going.”

 

The words fell from his mouth like rapidly cooling molten lead. Even the colloquialism, “mom”, he rarely ever referred to her like that. Much less to her face. Or, in this case, the back of her ink black power suit. David stopped short of the car, turning with wide, saucer like eyes. Sara, who had been walking next to Quentin, almost tripped over her own shoes, looking up at him now with a mixture of horror and horrified curiosity. Dad, as usual, kept somewhat distant from the scene. Observing from the side with an unreadable, but warm expression on his face (one that looked painfully similar to Sara’s; no mistaking who’s child she was in this moment). 

Unfortunately, Quentin felt himself spinning up and nothing any of them could do could help him. The molten lead of his words and thoughts started to temper and sharpen to something else. Something cutting and cold and unyielding. That was the only way you could talk to Professor Bouchard-Collins and if she really wanted to do this now, then he would do it to the fullest extent. No matter the audience of peers and students that continued to mill about the campus. 

“Also, Arkham is nearly SIX HOURS from Collinsport. What, am I just supposed to drop everything and come, I don’t know, rearrange the library every weekend and wonder what country you are in while I’m there? Get real, Mom.” Quentin ejected before he could vet it. Mother had turned now completely, her own eyes widening like harvest moons against the tastefully applied makeup of her face. 

“But…our plan. You were to-,” she started, but Quentin was there. Too quick, too sharpish maybe, but what started as a river of thought now exploded into a font of action. Words and thoughts and feelings spilling from him like he had been split across his middle seam, guts spilling steaming onto the pavement. “No, YOUR plan, Mother. Not mine. But then again, actually talking to me would allow you to know what and we all know you’ve always taken the hands-off approach.”

“Hey, now, son, let’s not…,” his Dad started, but was stopped by both Quentin and Angelique’s briskly bladed hand. This was not their first (nor would it be their final) argument, but this was one that was long, long overdo. And now that it had sprouted, it seemed like nothing short of scorched earth would bring it fully to bloom. “Well, I apologize for wanting my first-born son to follow in my footsteps. I just thought-.”

“That’s the trouble, Mom! You THOUGHT! You didn’t KNOW! And GOD FORBID you take the time to actually ask me what I WANTED!”

Mother’s eyes honed to slits. The rest of the family continued to stay outside of it and quiet, oh, so quiet. In David’s case, it was likely the most quiet he had ever been in his whole life. Mother took another breath. 

“I won’t apologize for providing for my family.”

“It’s more than that, Mom. And you are smarter than that. That’s a softball guilt trip, even for you.”

“Well, then, I won’t apologize for having a career and wishing you to have the same. Long stretches of our family were academics and if that’s not good enough for you-”

“GOD just STOP it. You KNOW that’s not it either! I love studying! I love studying so much, I’m still basically a freaking virgin. AFTER COLLEGE!”

A short yelp of laughter escaped from his Dad, but was quickly clamped away from the world by his weathered hand and the flashing eyes of Professor Bouchard-Collins. She turned back toward him and in that moment, Quentin had never seen his Mother look this old. More than that, this deflated. He hated the sight of it, but at the same time, tried to stand as straight as he could. As he reminded himself, this was something that had been brewing for years. This unfounded expectation of him to “follow tradition” and join academia alongside her. 

At one point, when he was young, the idea HAD appealed to him. Low-impact work. Plenty of reading. Potentially teaching one day (the only real aspect that had always appealed to him). But as he became older and spent more and more time away from home, he realized that the choice was never his. Even when it might have looked that way. Mother had always set this up and had designs as to what the next phase was.

But those next phases never matched Quentin’s and now, the time had come to try and reconcile those two parts into something new. Even, perhaps, at the cost of their relationship. He owed it to himself for the alternative seemed damning to him. To live and work a life that wasn’t his. Just another follower of a rubric he had no say in writing. Losing the precious little sense of self that he had already gained over the last years. 

“Don’t be vulgar, Quentin.”, retorted his mother in the tone that had felled many an undergrad and would-be magus who thought they knew something about something. Much like his siblings, he was well acquainted with that sort of tone, but now, instead of the chilly fear and dread it would usually bring him. Replaced was a sort of defiance. Slowly kindled, surely, but there all the same. Something new for the last day of school Quentin quickly appraised so he stood into it as if he was walking into a warm surf. Daggers of Mother’s voice threatened to pierce this newfound tenancy, but Quentin still held firm. Even though he knew he probably looked like a poorly made scarecrow facing off against the best Norma Desmond impersonator this side of the Potomac. 

“I suppose you have an idea of what you would rather do? Since apparently my suggestions aren’t good enough for you.”

“Stop it, Mom. Seriously. You are just cutting to cut now.”

“You certainly had no problem taking my money and whiling it away here for years.”

“Angelique.” came his father’s voice finally. A tender bolt from the peanut gallery that seemed to sting Mother in the way he intended. She winched at Quentin Jr.’s unusually stern tone and reoriented her ire back toward Quentin the Third. “Well, do you? What do you want to do with your life?”

Quentin Collins made the herculean effort not to go for the lowest possible fruit available to him at that second (“Dad would only really get it anyway,” he thought ruefully.) and held his ground. 

“You know what I want to do.”

“Indeed I do, cully,” she sneered. “I want to know if you have the steel to say it.”

“Starfleet.” It didn’t even take him a second.

“Oh, Hecate, not this ag-.”

“Star. Fleet.”

“Quentin, it is OUT OF THE QUESTION. I won’t have any son of my doing the bidding of those colonialist, clod-hopping cowboys! I would rather you live on the street than in space, mark me, cully, and mark me well.”

“Oh, sure, Mom, start banging that old tired drum. It didn’t make sense then, and it sure as snot doesn’t make any damn sense now.”

She wasn’t there and then suddenly she was, the finger of a harridan pointed up and under his nose. At that moment, she didn’t just look exhausted. She looked…terrified. Her eyes, once radiant pools of concentrated intelligence, were now wild and unfocused. Her free hand, jutting up, stock straight like some sort of ghoulishly sartorial weather vane. Quentin allowed himself a quick look at what she was indicating and it seemed…it seemed to be the very sky itself.

“You don’t UNDERSTAND! You CAN’T! If you had seen the things I’ve seen, son…what’s out there…?! Waiting…watching…” Both hands suddenly bunched his shirt, pulling him closer. Suddenly nothing around them or above them remained. There was only the boy and his mother and the crushing realization that the person who birthed you was precisely just that. A person. Capable and containing the same fears and anxieties and foibles as you do. “Let the star-kind sleep, Quentin. You’ll find nothing amongst them.”

“I’m not afraid.”

 

“Not yet anyway, cully. Not yet.”

Seeming as if she had made some grand point, she swept away from them all. Opening and slamming the back car door in what could be read as one motion. Quentin turned a rueful, angrily tearful eye back to the rest of his family, now hunched in their own little warren to the side of the pathway now. As if pushed physically aside simply by the force of Professor Angelique Bouchard-Collins’ will. 

Quentin started to stammer an apology and was met simply with a massive, all-encompassing hug from his Father. Despite himself he hugged the larger-than-life man that he loved with every bit of him back. Taking then in turn a patented “Sibling Hug” from Sara and David on either side of him once Quentin Jr. had released him. Quentin didn’t say anything, because he knew he didn’t have to. If there were any people he could depend on and trust to know what he needed, it would forever be this section of his family.

Perhaps one day, he could count his mother amongst that number.

But for now, he settled for a tense, but pleasurable lunch at one of his favorite local restaurants (an unnamed Continental restaurant/greasy spoon that seemed to be owned and operated by one of the largest men Quentin had ever met; hysterically named “Bibbo”), catching Sara and David up on the particularly goofy things that had happened to him in the last few months, and relishing the look of chaste disappointment he got from ordering alcohol in front of his parents for the first “official” time. 

At one point, when the sun had dipped low enough to reveal the starfield beyond their light, Quentin Jamison Collins III gazed longingly up toward them. How could anyone be afraid of something so beautiful? An infinite orrery of worlds and peoples, across vast incalculable oceans of stars. All just waiting to be seen. 

 

“I’m coming, universe.” he spoke into the night. “One way or another…”