652Author's Note:
Here's chapter three. And yes, I do mean to put every thing back up. And there are some pretty huge changes here and there. Nothing too major plot-wise, so don't worry there.
Thanks to Fiery Dancer and Silver Gryphon for your reading and reviews.
Alex paced the space of her room, keeping an ear out for Darren while she made a face. The week had been horrible; she completely forgot to call her family to tell them that she was okay. Of course, they had to call her to check for themselves.
"Look, Alex," her father said in that annoyingly rational tone that meant that he was borderline furious, "I know how hectic high school can be, but it'd take you five seconds to text me and simply state that you're alive."
She sighed and shook her head, wincing when her ear folded up uncomfortably under her hat. "Dad, it wouldn't take five seconds. We both know that you'd need at least an hour. Look, you're talking to me right now. I'm alive. All my faculties are in order, and I've avoided all alcohol and drugs since my arrival. I've managed to not put anyone in a hospital but I might end up killing my roommate." She paused when she realized that she wasn't kidding.
He didn't say anything for a moment. "Why might you kill him?" he asked, sounding calmer than before.
She shrugged, knowing that he wouldn't be able to see it. "He's an asshole."
"I'm sure he is," her father answered dryly, making her laugh.
"Worst thing is," she added on, sitting down on her bed to fiddle with the bottom of her shirt. "He's friends with my friends so it's not like I'm going to be getting away from him any time soon. And it sucks."
There was a long pause on the other end. "Friends?"
Oh God. She had just fed wood to the burning inferno of her father's obsession with the fact that she was perfectly normal being. Like that would ever happen, she thought sarcastically at herself before answering him. "Yeah. Friends."
"Is that all you're going to tell me? Do your friends have names?"
"Yes."
"…Are you going to tell me?"
She thought about it for a minute, head tilted to the side. "No, I don't think I will."
He let out a bark of laughter and she smiled. The words would never come out of her mouth, but she really missed him. The fact that he had always been there had made her used to it. Now that he wasn't, she felt a lot more on her own than she ever really had been before. It was a freaky realization that if anything happened, she was pretty much screwed. But she forced that feeling down. Way down, where she'd forget that it was ever there.
"Will you please tell me?" he asked slowly.
Sitting down on her beanbag, she grinned. "I guess. Okay, so they are Ethan, Roderick, and Thomas. I'm so glad that I finally have that off my chest." She heard another voice on his end, and then added. "Say hi to Derek for me."
"Alex says 'hi'." His voice was muffled as he faced whoever it was that he was talking to. Then he was back. "He says 'yo yo yo, what's up kitty cat?' and I'm going to forget that I had ever just said that in my old age and move on. I need more details than just their names, honey."
Sighing like it was the hardest thing in the world, she said, "Roderick's just Roderick, there's no way to explain it. He's pretty cool, though. He almost never shuts up, not really. He collects different colored Converse. You know, the shoe?" It surprised her when she found them. He had about fifteen different ones.
"And who the hell would blame him?" a new person asked suddenly, obviously using the extension on her father's phone.
Feeling the smile break across her face, she shrugged again. "Hey, Derek. Not much over here. And remind me to kill you later for that kitty cat comment."
"How come Adam gets to call you kitten?" her cousin asked.
"Because he's Adam and he's cooler than you," she retorted, fighting the urge to smile. She was not going to let Derek get away with calling her kitty cat all the time. "I am not a kitty cat."
"She'll always be my kitty cat," her father commented, obviously not to her.
Derek sighed. "Yeah, remember when she was like eight and was Cat Woman for Halloween? She was so adorable."
"Derek, you were seven," Alex said, irritated at the both of them, "And I sucker punched you for trying to steal my Twizzlers. You know what, you guys can just go without knowing anything about my new social life since you've both annoyed me." Knowing what their reactions would be, she held the phone between her ear and shoulder as she leaned forward to grab the remote for the TV.
"No!" Derek cried out loudly, sounding actually saddened by the thought of not knowing. "Please? I'll do anything you want. I'll stop reading your diary!"
This made her pause for a moment. "Derek," she said as nicely as she could, "I haven't had a diary since I was twelve."
"Oh," he held it out, "Right. That's Jennifer's diary I'm reading. Well, my bad. I can send you her diary. She has the most interesting dreams." Even though she couldn't see him, she knew that he was wiggling his eyebrows in a way that only really Derek could do properly. There was a loud thwack. "Hey! What was that for, Uncle Evan?"
"For being an idiot," Evan said dryly. Then his attention was right back on his daughter. "We'll be good, honey, just tell us about your new friends."
She smiled and chuckled under her breath. "Then Ethan is –" she broke off. "Well, Dad," she added dryly, making a face, "You already know Ethan. Remember, I went to middle school with him."
He didn't say anything. "Aiken?" he asked, using Ethan's last name.
"Yup," she said, swinging the Wii remote in front of her. "I managed to convince him that someone was out to kill me –"
"Which they are," Derek added helpfully. She ignored his sound of pain after another thumping sound. Evan had probably hit him again.
Sighing, Alex shook her head. "And he knows that he can't tell anyone. Also, did you know that Catherine is here too? She goes to the girls' school, Marguerite Cattrell, across town. She just about murdered me."
"Who the heck would have failed when we were going through the rosters?" Derek asked, sounding a lot more worried than she was. They were her friends, she trusted them.
"You." Evan and Alex said at the exact same time.
Derek went silent. After a long moment he changed the subject. "How're things with your roommate? Aren't you worried about him seeing something that he shouldn't or whatever?" he sounded concerned; she wished that she was there so that he'd understand that she was fine even with the nagging worry that Darren would see something.
"Actually, I think I got it all under control." She made herself sound more confident than she felt. "I make sure that I change the bathroom with the door locked and all that.
"That's good," he said. "Are you sure that you're alright with this, baby?"
"Totally. It's actually pretty cool here." She heard someone's keys jingling right outside of the door. Darren. "Yeah. Gotta go. Roomie's back. I love you both. Give everyone hugs for me. Oh, and Derek, I'm going to tell Jennifer you have her diary."
Before either of them could say anything, she flipped her cell phone shut and put it on the ground next to her feet.
"I think I need a job," Alex mused aloud the next day while trying to write a character analysis for someone from Romeo & Juliet for theatre. Who was interesting enough for a two page paper on them? Romeo and Juliet were automatically out since they were pretty much the same person practically. Sad, depressed, in love and dead. She was not going to write anything about either of them.
Ethan, who was sitting across the library table from her, reached for her bag of candied pecans to grab a handful that her family decided to randomly send her. In fact, there was a box of about twenty bags under her bed. The only complaints were from Darren because 'who needed that many nuts?'. She had to leave the room after that since she was laughing so hard.
After swallowing, Ethan gave her a look. "Why do you need a job?"
"For some money." This assignment was going nowhere. Sighing, she pulled out a piece of paper from her notebook where she had written notes on all of the summer reading and tore it into little strips. On it, she wrote every major and minor character except for the main two, flipped them over and made them into a pile. She pushed them towards Ethan. "Pick one."
He shrugged, wrote a note on something, and then snagged one. "Mercutio," he read. He crumpled it up and tossed it back on the table. "I thought your grandmother was filthy rich."
"She prefers the term, 'lavishly endowed', and doesn't understand why we kids can't look her in the eye after she says it." She waited patiently while he started choking on another mouthful of pecans. "But she's the one that has the money, not the rest of us. So as of right now, she's on this kick where we need to work to be able to have the money to go do stuff we want to do rather than riding on what she has in the bank accounts."
His look was pitying, so she threw the other slips of paper at him. "I feel," he said slowly, then paused as he sniffed, looking off to the side, "So sorry for you." Right after he said it, he grew serious and leaned forward on his elbows. "How're things with Darren? I know that he's kind of hard to get along with."
"Really?" she asked dryly, rolling her eyes. "I hadn't noticed. And things were going okay until I woke him up this morning and well…." She shrugged like that was going to finish the sentence for her.
"You woke him up?"
"No Ethan, I just said it for the heck of it. Yeah, I woke him up because I forgot where the damn beanbag was and tripped on it, tried to catch myself, and landed on him." Blushing in embarrassment, she ran a hand over her forehead. "Let's just say that it was awkward for everyone."
Ethan smiled at the imagery of that. For all the time that he had known her, Alex wasn't exactly one to be clumsy like that. "What time was this at?"
"Four thirty."
The smile slid off his face. "Why do you get up that early?" he asked incredulous, though it would explain the black bags that had been under her eyes for the past week, though they seemed to be disappearing. "That's why you've been so tired."
Her stare could have sent wood up into flames. "Duh. And yes, I do get up that early, I have a system, you know. Always have. Used to get up that early even in middle school."
"Wow." That was really the only thing that he could say. "What do you do that early?"
Shrugging, she jotted down some notes. "Run around the track a little, use the weight room, beat the punching bag, and do some yoga." She paused and jabbed towards him with her pen. "Shut up and let me work."
He shrugged, fighting off a grin. "Okay."
They worked in silence for another hour before Alex pumped a fist into the air. The stupid paper was done! And it wasn't even two pages. No, it was three. She was free to go do other things now. Even though she liked being the library, she was dying to get out.
Eyebrows lifting, Ethan gave her a look, "Done?"
"Yup!" She paused when she realized that it was fully possible that he wasn't finished yet. "You?"
"Eh," one shoulder lifted in a shrug. "Not really, but I can go. It's not due till next week so I can work on it later. We can go."
"Good."
"I have the feeling that you would have left without me if I wasn't willing to stop for the day," Ethan muttered as they left. They didn't even discuss it before turning towards the cafeteria. Lunch was being served, and it smelled like pizza.
"That's because I would have left you."
Ethan paused in the middle of the hall and turned towards her. "Hey, can I ask you for a favor?"
It was his tone that made her narrow her eyes. "Depends," she answered.
"Would you be okay with driving Roderick into the 'Burg tomorrow?" he asked, mentioning the town that was about a ten minute drive away. "He has this job at a book store, and I know that you and Catherine have something set up. It'd save me the trip."
"You lazy bastard," she muttered. It was true. Catherine demanded that they meet at the coffee shop. Her friend scared her just enough that she was going to go. And she liked Roderick. "Sure, I'll drive him."
In the cafeteria, they grabbed some food and sat down at the table where Roderick was already sitting. He didn't even notice that they were there while he was reading one of her books. When the redhead's hand shot out to take her Gatorade, she realized that he was just ignoring him. She grinned. "Hey, she dies in the end."
He choked. "What?"
Ethan laughed. "He's pulling your leg, Roderick."
Brown eyes narrowed on Alex. The effect might've worked if he wasn't smiling. "You're not a nice person. I though you were, but you aren't."
Shrugging, she took a bite of fabulous pizza. "That's not what you're supposed to say to someone who's going to drive you to work tomorrow."
"Ethan drives me," was the immediate answer while he gave them both a questioning look.
Shrugging, Ethan motioned towards Alex. "He's already heading in," he explained, "So he said he'd drive you. I figured it'd save the ozone a little."
Grinning, Thomas plopped down next to him. Alex didn't like that grin. "You know, Alex, Darren had the most interesting story about something that happened this morning." When she groaned and lowered her head to her hands, he blinked. "So it really did happen?"
"It wasn't like I was trying to molest him or anything. I tripped and he happened to be where I landed. Not my fault." She didn't raise her head.
Ethan glanced over towards the entrance. "Look, there's our sexually harassed friend now." And Darren was glaring at Alex.
"I'm going to kill you," Alex muttered through her fingers
He laughed. "Haven't you said that a couple thousand times since we've known each other?"
"I'm only going to have to do it once to prove each and every one of those times right."
"Hey, Roddy." Alex came up right beside him, put a hand on his shoulder. "I have to be in the 'Burg in about an hour, that good for you?" This was the first time that she was doing something like this, she didn't know what to do.
He thought about it for a second. "You have the car," he finally said, giving her a look, "I'm not allowed to have an opinion on when we leave. That's how it works. The one with the keys makes all the decisions." He paused. "I've been trying to make that rhyme. It's not working."
"The one with the keys never has to say please?" she offered up helpfully while she held open the door for him.
His face lit up as he repeated it. "That might work. Yeah, I like it. It's catchy and it's not a mouthful." His eyes were bright as he turned to stare at her. "That's great. Hey, I have to go this way, meet you in forty-five?"
She was already nodding by the time he finished. "See you then," she said to his back as he whirled around to run off. She really liked him, she thought as she chuckled under her breath. He was such a little bundle of energy, he almost reminded her of Derek. Only…Derek didn't have that look of…innocence. Derek hadn't had that for a long time.
Alex had one hand on the door to the stairwell when she realized that someone was leaning against the wall close to her. She was just going to ignore him but he cleared his throat loudly. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw large shoulders and hands, dark hair and mean eyes. That was the only term she could think of, mean eyes. Instead of saying anything, she raised her eyebrows.
"He's a faggot. You know that, right?" the guy said and she froze.
It felt like he had punched her. As the anger welled up at the fact that had had the nerve to use that filthy word to describe her friend, she moved back from the door to stare at the guy, crossing her arms over her chest. He had this disgusting smug little look on his face that she wanted to slap right off him. Her fists clenched from doing just that. When she smiled at him coldly, he blinked.
"I wouldn't care," she said slowly, quietly, "if he was a bright yellow canary."
"He's a fag," he repeated, slower.
Shrugging, she turned away from him. "Still don't care," she called over her shoulder. This time, she managed to get almost all the way through the door before she felt a hand on her shoulder
Ice cold, numbing terror flooded her. The shock of it ran all the way to her fingertips while she jerked forward, desperate to get away. Her elbow lifted as she turned, crunching into something solid. She stopped at the cry of pain. It took her a breathless frozen moment before she realized that she was safe, that no one was after her. Then she saw the guy sprawled on the floor, his hands over his nose.
"What the fuck?" he ground out. As she watched, horrified at what she'd done, blood started to flow through his fingers.
Without a word, she turned around and fled, mentally screaming at herself as she ran up the stairs. She hadn't meant to do it. She wasn't thinking and she went and elbowed him in the face. Hopefully she didn't break his nose. Sighing, she pressed her forehead against the wall. Okay, she had elbowed him. Fine, she could live with that.
And, she thought dryly, she was partially glad she did with the way he had been talking about Roderick.
Taking a deep breath to calm down, she got to her floor. Darren was already in their room, sitting at his desk. Dropping her backpack onto the floor, she threw herself on her bed and pulled a pillow over her face so that she wouldn't have to talk to him.
Half an hour went by in quiet before she sat up, letting the pillow fall into her lap. "Is Roderick gay?" she asked, eyes narrowed.
Darren visibly jerked, his pen flying out of his hand. Whirling around in his chair, he gave her a long look. "What?"
"Some random guy decided it'd be fun to tell me that he's gay, though 'gay' wasn't the word he used," she explained, lifting a shoulder. Darren's eyes darkened so she knew that he knew what she meant. "Not that I care," she added swiftly. "Because I don't. But I just want to know, is he?"
He nodded. A hand went through his hair as he glanced at her. "Yeah, he's gay."
For a moment, she was quiet, then she smiled. "Well, that explains why he was trying to get my pants off," she muttered. When she heard Darren start choking, her smile widened. "I'm kidding."
"Not funny," he answered, but he was grinning.
"Very funny," she corrected.
The door burst open, bouncing off of the wall and Roderick hurried inside, throwing his arms theatrically. "Ready to go on an adventure, Alex?" he asked loudly, sounding like he was having fun with it.
Making a face, Darren shook his head. "How can you be that happy going to work?" he muttered loud enough for them to hear.
"Because I work at a bookshop and I'm a bibliophile," he answered automatically, tossing his arm over her shoulders. "And I get a huge discount on those wonderful books. So it's all worth it. Not to mention that I get free cake on Fridays."
"Ah," she said, nodding.
Roderick paused and gave her a look. "Hey, is something wrong?" he asked.
It was his voice that made her pause. For a heartbeat, she wondered if he knew what had happened. Then she had to shake it off, because there was no way he could. Forcing a smile, she said, "I'm fine."