The Fall of the Aftons

045: Michael Afton

When William, Terrance, and Michael arrived at the new location, Michael couldn't help but explore the building. That was the first thing he did when he was adopted and brought to Fredbear's. Since he was the son of one of the co-owners, he had special access to all of the rooms. He had spent so much time wandering around the vicinity that he barely played any arcade games that day.

There wasn't much to see at the new location yet. All Henry and William had done were post sticky notes on the doors, walls, and floor where certain things were going to go. Which rooms were going to be their offices, which rooms were going to be birthday rooms, where the stage was going to be, where some of the posters were going to be, where something called Pirate's Cove was going to be. But it was still entertaining. He liked to read the sticky notes and imagine what the new restaurant will look like sometime in the near future.

Once he was done exploring, he sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall close to where the stage would be soon. He set his backpack next to him, pulled out his book, opened it, and soon fell into the world of reading after a few sentences. He read for almost two hours before Terrance suddenly shook his shoulder.

"Hey, could you help me?" he asked. He looked worried.

"Help you with what?" Michael countered as he gently closed his book.

"My homework. I only have math left, but I can't read--I don't know if you knew that or not. I've got this huge headache. All I need is for you to read the questions out loud to me. I can do the rest," he answered. "Could you do that for me?"

"Sure. I'll help," Michael mumbled, quickly putting his book back into his backpack. "But wait--you can't read?"

Terrance frowned and shook his head. "N-No, not really. Not yet. I've got this... this thing called dyslexia"--he pointed to his head--"that makes it harder for me to read. We didn't find out that I have it until just a few weeks before Uncle adopted you."

"Oh. Well, that's okay. I'll help you." He smiled when Terrance did.

~ ~ ~

"Okay, here's the next one: |5-2x|-11=0. What is the value of x?" Michael asked, staring dumbfoundedly at the weird equation. What were those straight lines? Why were there letters in the equation? So weird. He couldn't wait to learn how to do math equations like this one.

"x equals eight and negative three," Terrance responded almost instantly, a slight smile spreading across his face. He gently took the paper from Michael's hands and scribbled down his answer. "Hey, that's the last one! Sweet. Thanks a lot, Mike. That helped."

"You're welcome," Michael said. "How do you do those so fast? That last one was really weird, yet you got it immediately. They look fun to solve, though. Would you teach me?"

"I can teach you when you get to my grade. But right now, focus on your fourth-grade stuff. Don't pay any attention to my tenth-grade Algebra I."

"Okay," he grumbled. He was disappointed Terrance wouldn't teach him now. He didn't want to wait! He loved learning new things. "I'm going to go back and read." He stood up from the chair he was in, walked out of the room, and went into the main dining hall.

Henry and William were bickering over some minor detail. Michael noticed after a while that they did this a lot. Every time he saw them as they worked on this new location, they were bickering about something new. Ignoring their loud conversation, Michael sank to the floor next to his backpack and pulled out his book.

"What are you two gits fighting about now?" Terrance asked from the entrance to the hallway. "Are you seriously fighting over the stage lights again?"

Henry crossed his arms as he smirked at his friend. "No, we finally agreed on that. Now we can't agree on who will lift the other up to install them."

"He keeps saying that he's going to be the one to lift me, even though he knows that we've never done that!" William exclaimed. He sounded like a three-year-old that didn't want to go to bed. "I'm always the one to hold him up, but all of a sudden he wants to be the one who lifts me. It's absolutely ludicrous!"

The room was silent for a moment before Michael and Henry burst out into laughter. William and Terrance both had a heavy British accent--William and his family had moved from Britain to America when Will was three years old--and it was always hilarious, for the most part, when they said something and their accent turned statements and expressions into the most ridiculous things.

"You laugh, but you've got a slight accent now, Henry, since you've been friends with my uncle since you were little--and you'll get one, too, Mike," Terrance said. He chuckled yet manically.

"Back to the topic. Who votes that I should be the one to lift Henry?" William asked. He was the only one with his hand up. He glared at his friend when Henry began to laugh. "Ugh." He slowly lowered his hand. "And who votes that Henry should be the one to lift me?"

Only Henry raised his hand.

"Oh, come on, you two, join us!" Henry demanded, laughter filling his words.

"I'm not participating in this stupidity," Terrance told them. He raised his hands in surrender before he walked away. "I'm going to help bring in the new furniture into your offices. Mike, you break the tie."

Henry and William both turned to Michael expectingly. 

"I just wanted to read my ASL book," Michael muttered under his breath as he crossed his arms. "Why can't you guys just use a stepstool like normal people? It's not that difficult."

"That's not as fun," William complained jokingly. He laughed a little bit. "Come on! All you have to do is just randomly choose one of us. We won't judge."

After a few seconds of decision-making, he decided that Henry should be the carrier and William should be the carried. It never hurt to change things up a bit. At the moment, William was shouting at Henry to be careful and be still. Michael was switching his attention between reading and laughing at the two of them. 

"Henry, cut it out, you bastard! I'm trying to screw these bloody lights in!" William shouted, trying to deter his misbehaving friend. It only made Henry burst out into a fit of laughter for what felt like the hundredth time.

"Now you know why I wanted to hold you this time. You get to feel the same adrenaline I do whenever you pick me up!" Henry explained, his voice filled with his peal of seemingly endless laughter.

"Yeah, but you keep shifting me in your arms! I don't constantly change my grip whenever I'm holding you! I keep thinking you're about to drop me on the ground," he countered as he chuckled nervously.

Michael chuckled at their shenanigans and returned to reading his book. But he was snapped out of his reading world of new knowledge when somebody screamed.