Title: "Uncomfortably Numb"
Author: Gracie
Rating: PG
Disclaimer:
None of it is mine. I just like to play with the characters every once in a
while.
Summary: Character piece; inside
the head of Bright Abbott.
Spoilers: Refers to events which
occur through "Controlling Interest" (aired 1/26/04).
The winter wind was bitingly cold, and the sun had set half an hour ago, so full dark was fast approaching. His fingers were numb from exposure, but still he continued. Bounce, bounce, shoot, swish, rebound, bounce, bounce, fake, shoot, miss, rebound, shoot, swish, repeat.
He wasn't on the team this year—couldn't be on it even if he wanted to. Funny how after all this time, and everything that happened, he was still the screw-up in the family. It didn't stop him from monopolizing the driveway every afternoon; didn't prevent him from practicing until dinner was ready or frostbite set in, whichever came first.
He had a vague idea of why he kept doing it. Ephram even had a word for it…cacophonous? No…cathartic. That's what it was. The younger boy had tried to explain the concept one afternoon when he stopped by and found Bright in the driveway, but Bright had only half-listened, taken his shot, and then pivoted on the rebound to pass the ball in the direction of Ephram's chest. The other boy faltered and blinked as the orange sphere hurtled at him, but he recovered well enough for a manga-reading non-athlete. His attempts at dribbling the ball were just this side of pathetic, and his shot weak, but Bright didn't comment and Ephram didn't complain. They settled into an impromptu game of HORSE, which Bright won in five shots, and the entire time Ephram continued to talk, expounding on everything and saying nothing at all. Bright had finally cut him off to ask him to stay to dinner, but Ephram declined—some excuse about having to watch Delia—and Bright knew it was really because Delia's new babysitter was pretty and anyway, Ephram didn't want to be around Amy. Who did, these days?
But that had been weeks ago, and Amy didn't live here anymore, and Ephram stopped making his impromptu visits and Bright just kept on shooting baskets in the twilight and beyond. Sometimes he thought about all the times he and Colin played one-on-one in this very spot, but those memories still hurt, and he wasn't allowed to grieve about Colin, so he would push the thoughts away. Amy had the monopoly on pain in the family, because she was selfish like that. He was just the dumb jock who killed his best friend, so who was he to feel any pain?
He was pretty sure his parents were losing it, and maybe even on the verge of getting a divorce, but there was nothing he could say or do to change that. So he stayed out on the driveway a little longer every night, until his dad stuck his head out the door and hollered for him to come inside. Then the three of them would sit in stony silence around the suddenly-too-big dining room table, and Amy was the invisible elephant in the room, and she managed to make Bright feel like nothing even when she wasn't there. He caught all the times his dad would stare at the empty chair; he noticed the empty plate on the sideboard that his mom accidentally took out because she forgot she wasn't feeding four anymore. And no one asked him about his grades or his friends or the possibility of college, and really that wasn't any different than it had been before, but now Amy wasn't there to fill the silence with her noise.
He would see her at school, but they didn't speak—she had stopped even approaching him after he kicked Tommy's ass at the wrestling match. Sometimes she was with Laynie, but mostly she was alone, and she didn't look happy or sad or angry or anything, really, and he thought that should bother him, but really he was just relieved that after all these years, she had finally shut up.
His dad was hollering out the door again, and that was his cue to go inside, but he took another shot anyway, some small act of defiance in a life that everyone believed was out of his control. Because nobody knew that he was passing all his classes this term, and no one bothered to ask about the college applications he worked on filling out with the school counselor, and next year when he went away to school, he wasn't sure anyone would even notice he was gone.
It wasn't an idea he particularly liked, but Bright was a realist, and that was reality. So he watched the basketball roll into the yard and left it there before jogging up the porch steps, and as he closed the door behind himself, he ticked off another day on the calendar in his head, which meant he had one less day to live without Colin and Amy. And every day that hurt just a tiny bit less, so that was okay. And pretty soon, tomorrow would be over too.