Chapter Text
Connor Roy is a poor excuse for a boy scout. Robert Baden-Powell probably rolled in his grave the day Connor first donned a neckerchief he had failed to fold correctly, and he’s been spinning in it ever since.
“It’s a waste of his time,” he hears Pop say through the wall. “The Boy Scouts of America, huh? Fucking sissies.”
It’d be a real shame to prove Pop right. So, every week, Connor sneaks his empty sash back into the house in the pocket of his shorts.
Only Sierra knows his shame, finding the sash when it comes to washing his uniform.
“You won’t tell him?” Connor asks when she comes into his room with the uniform ironed and folded on her arm.
“Won’t tell who what?” Sierra asks, her voice easy and bright. She’s been behaving differently with him since Mom went away. Connor has noticed that she takes longer to dust his bookshelves. She takes twice as long to make his bed when he’s there, bunched on the window-ledge reading her passages from his Scouting Guide. And now, he’s got his knees to his chest, bedsheets kicked down to the foot of the bed, and she’s taking her time as she sorts his shirt and shorts into the correct drawers.
“You’re not gonna tell Pop that I’m useless.” He gestures weakly to the sash that Sierra is folding once, twice over itself. She stops, looks at it, and gives a soft sigh.
“It’s not a race to get all the badges, Connor.” She comes to sit on the edge of his bed, pulling the sheets up as she does so. He lowers his knees to accommodate the way she places the blankets over him. “Do you enjoy going? That’s all that matters.”
Connor shrugs. He doesn’t find it easy, not like most of the other boys seem to. When they went kayaking, he’d been the only one to fall in the water, and he’d cut up his knee pretty bad on a rock and no one was able to help him because the kayak was too far away by the time Connor had hoisted himself up onto the bank. Every sheepshank knot he makes fall apart under his fingers, dissolving into a limp coil of formless rope that the other boys laugh at behind their infinitely more dextrous fingers. He thought (and hoped) that his long legs would make him a natural climber, but by the time he scaled the first wall the others were already through the net. He had tried for the archery badge but was told that the scout leaders ‘didn’t trust him with the bow’ and that he should ‘go back inside and help with dinner’.
That was funny, really, because he couldn’t even get his cookery badge: the inside of the chicken is still pink, Connor, to which he replied, it’s rare.
Connor picks at the sash which Sierra has placed beside him on the mattress.
“Do you enjoy going?” Sierra asks again, knotting her brows.
Connor lifts the sash to his cheek and runs the fabric across his face. It is soft.
“Yeah, I think so. Yeah.”
“Can I tuck you in?”
“Uh-huh.”
She doesn’t do it quite right. But she isn’t to know. And it’s good enough to have someone make sure the edges of the blanket are tucked in tight enough to pin him down to the bed. It’s halfway to being hugged.
“I won’t say anything to your father. There’s nothing to tell, sweetheart.”
Sierra keeps her word. Even if Connor is paralysed in fear one evening when, hiding at the top of the staircase, he hears Pop quizzing Sierra about Connor’s Friday night excursions. But Sierra stays steadfast, and replies, “He’s taking it pretty hard, Mr Roy. It’s good for him to get out of the house, meet some boys his own age.”
“None of them are gonna want to be friends with that boy.”
This is a fair observation, Connor admits to himself as he presses his forehead against the banisters. The boys with lither frames, more agile limbs, tanned knees and upper body strength; he knows they laugh about him. They know who his Dad is. And, worse, some know who is Mom is. They don’t do badges for nutcases, they say, or you’d be sure to get it.
Of course, they don’t know that Mom knows things. She knows things even Pop doesn’t know. For one, she taught him that good things come to those who wait. He’d done his fair share of waiting and had almost begun to doubt. But she was right.
The night Connor finally gets his badge, he hurries home so fast he almost wears a hole in his brogues.
“Pop, look!”
Connor smacks his hand down onto the table hard enough to hurt. When he takes his hand away again, he leaves behind a small, red felt disk, within which is a yellow stitchwork cross.
“Not now, Connor.”
“But Pop… look!”
“I said not now! Would’ya get to bed?”
It’s not so bad, really, being sent to his room. It is nice because he gets to look at his new badge underneath the lamp on his bedside table. Like really look at it. He’d got sort of misty-eyed when the scout leader had handed it to him. But now, he can lay it down on top of his Scouting Guide and just stare at it. He stares at it for some time. Then, when he can no longer resist, he takes it up and turns it over, and over, and over again. He studies the way the threads shift under the light. He particular likes how, if you wanted to, you could count every single stitch in the work.
He loses count at two-hundred stitches – which is a lot of stitches.
It is only when he holds it up to his sash that he realises he doesn’t know how to sew it on. There is a sewing badge, but he doubts he’ll be coming home with that any time soon. He doesn’t have a needle and thread for a start. But someone will.
“Sierra?”
“Connor? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he says with grin. He grips the badge in his clammy fist for as long as he can bear before losing patience and shoving it in Sierra’s face. “Look!”
Sierra gasps. “Connor Roy!” She takes the badge from him with all the care that he believes it deserves. She holds it with reverence between both her hands. “Did you earn this?” He nods excitedly. “Which one is it?”
“First-aid.”
“First-aid!”
“Yeah! I had to learn how to put someone into the recovery position, and I know how to treat burns and cuts and fractures. And I know how to call the ambulance and I really think, if I ever did, I’d be brave enough to. Even though I don’t know the person I’m talking to, I know all the right things to say. And I know the signs and symptoms of a stroke and a heart attack. And… and remember how Mom would sometimes get those pains? Yeah, well, I think those were… umm… abdominal? Pains? So now, y’know, when Mom comes back, I know what to do. If it happens, I can help her next time. And that makes me really happy to know.”
Sierra’s hand finds its way to Connor’s shoulder and gives a gentle squeeze. “Oh, aren’t you proud?”
“I am. Yeah. I thought I wanted one of the cool badges. Like rafting. Or some of the boys have circus skills and they can juggle and I’d like to know how to do that. But, no, I’m happy.”
“You should be! I’m so proud of you, Connor.”
Connor’s cheeks go hot. He feels like he might cry, but he doesn’t really understand why. The feeling just bubbles up from nowhere and sits right beneath his skin where it itches. He wonders if this is just how pride feels, and that he might get used to it.
“There’s just one problem.” He scuffs his feet on the carpet. “I don’t know how to sew it on.”
Sierra doesn’t sew it on for him. Instead, she takes him downstairs and, collecting her sewing kit, she sits him down with the sash and badge. She makes him a cup of hot cocoa and, standing over the boy’s shoulder, she watches as he sews it on himself.
“Then push the needle up through… don’t force it, baby, just be gentle… that’s right, now pull it tight. Not too tight or you’ll break the thread… that’s it. Look at that, hey?”
It is a little wonky. The cross lists to one side. And the stitches around the edge are oversized so the badge has a series of little points like a star.
“Like a star,” he says, a little sheepishly, when he tries it on in front of the mirror.
Sierra stands behind him in his reflection. “Like you.”