Chapter 2: A Battle Not Worth Fighting

Chapter 2: A Battle Not Worth Fighting

The walk home was a blur of silent fury and crushing shame. The fifteen-minute journey stretched into an eternity, each step heavy with the weight of his empty phone account. Sarah had offered a few words of comfort before he left Mark’s basement—"He's a jerk, Liam. Don't let him get to you"—but her kindness was a thin bandage on a gaping wound. The words that echoed weren't hers. They were Derek's, sharp and dismissive, circling his mind like vultures.

A you problem, not a me problem.

By the time Liam’s key turned in the lock of his front door, the initial heat of his anger had cooled into a hard, desperate knot of hope. His friends had failed him. The social contract of their group had been shredded. But there was one final court of appeals: his father.

His dad, Tom Carter, was a man who believed in rules, fairness, and fixing things. He was an accountant, a man who understood the value of a dollar down to the last cent. Forty dollars wasn't just allowance money; it was a number, a tangible loss. Surely, his father would see the clear injustice of it all. He would understand. He would probably call Derek’s parents himself, a calm but firm voice of adult reason that would cut through Derek’s smug facade and restore order.

Liam found him in the garage, hunched over a lawnmower, the scent of gasoline and cut grass hanging in the air. Tools were laid out on a clean rag with meticulous precision. He was the picture of paternal reliability.

“Dad?” Liam’s voice was small, barely audible over the clink of a wrench against metal.

His father looked up, wiping a smear of grease from his brow with the back of his hand. “Hey, kiddo. How was Mark’s?”

“It was… okay.” Liam took a deep breath, the prepared speech he’d rehearsed on his walk home feeling flimsy and childish. “Something happened. With my phone.”

He explained everything, the words tumbling out in a rush. He told him about the prank, Derek’s casual promise to cover him, the sudden, shocking cascade of carrier alerts, and the final, brutal zeroing of his account. He repeated Derek’s final words, emphasizing the casual cruelty behind them.

“Forty dollars, Dad. He promised he’d pay me back, and then he just… laughed.” He finished, his voice thick with emotion, waiting for the expected surge of fatherly indignation.

Tom Carter set his wrench down slowly. He straightened up, his expression thoughtful, but it lacked the fire Liam had hoped for. He looked at his son, his gaze steady and unnervingly calm.

“So, this new kid, Derek, tricked you into spending your phone credit on a prank, and then refused to pay you back,” his father summarized, his tone clinical, as if diagnosing a mechanical failure in the lawnmower.

“Yes! That’s exactly what happened.” Relief washed over Liam. He understood.

“And you want me to call his parents and get the money back.”

“Well, yeah. It’s not fair.”

His father sighed, a long, weary sound that seemed to drain all the energy from the garage. He picked up the rag and began wiping his hands, his movements deliberate. “Liam, you need to learn to pick your battles.”

The words hit Liam like a splash of cold water. “What? But he stole from me. He lied.”

“He didn’t steal from you, not really. He was a jerk. He manipulated you, and you fell for it,” his father said, his voice maddeningly reasonable. “Forty dollars is a lot of money to you, I get that. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s a cheap lesson.”

“A cheap lesson?” Liam’s voice rose, incredulous. “It was eight weeks of my allowance! It was everything I had!”

“And now you’ve learned something about people like Derek Vance, haven’t you?” his father countered, his eyes holding no sympathy, only a kind of grim pragmatism. “You’ve learned that some people’s promises aren’t worth anything. You’ve learned not to trust someone just because they’re popular or have money. That’s a lesson that could save you a lot more than forty dollars down the road.”

He placed a heavy hand on Liam’s shoulder. “I’m not calling his parents. We’re not going to start a war with the neighbors over a middle-school prank. Sometimes, you just have to swallow your pride and let it go. Life isn’t always fair.”

Liam stood frozen, the weight of his father’s hand feeling less like comfort and more like a restraint. This was worse, so much worse, than Derek’s mockery. Derek was a bully; you expected him to be cruel. But this was his father, his champion, his last line of defense, telling him that justice wasn’t worth pursuing. That his problem, his very real and painful feeling of being wronged, was an inconvenience not worth fighting for.

He felt the last vestiges of his hope crumble into dust. The feeling of powerlessness was no longer just a social sting; it was absolute. There was no one to turn to. No adult would intervene. No one was coming to make things right.

He pulled away from his father’s hand. “Okay,” he said, his voice flat and devoid of all emotion. “I get it.”

He turned and walked out of the garage, leaving his father with his tools and his practical, soul-crushing wisdom. He went up to his room and shut the door, the click of the latch sounding like a final verdict. He sat on his bed, surrounded by the video games and books he’d carefully purchased with saved-up money. Each item was a testament to his patience, his frugality.

His father was wrong. This wasn't a cheap lesson; it was an expensive one. It had cost him forty dollars and his faith in adult justice. But as he sat there in the silence, the crushing weight of helplessness began to change. It wasn't evaporating; it was hardening, crystallizing into something cold, sharp, and patient.

He thought of Derek’s smug face, the easy way he had dismissed him, the power he wielded so casually. He thought of his father’s words: let it go.

No. He wouldn’t let it go.

He couldn't win this fight today. He couldn't win it tomorrow. He was a thirteen-year-old kid with no money and no power. But he wouldn’t be thirteen forever. People like Derek, they didn’t change. They just got older, their arrogance calcifying with age. They made more promises they wouldn't keep, created more problems that they would declare were not their own.

A new kind of plan began to form in the back of his mind, not a plan for days or weeks, but for years. It was a long game. He wouldn't forget the forty dollars. He wouldn't forget the humiliation. He would carry it with him, not as a hot, angry burden, but as a cold, polished stone in his pocket. He would wait. He would watch. And one day, when Derek had something he truly cared about, something he couldn't just laugh off, Liam would be there.

He wouldn't just get his money back. He would collect it with interest. The battle wasn't over. It hadn't even truly begun.