Author's Note: Reposted, with edits & an alternate ending to the original. Takes place during Spring Break.
Just a reminder that I have a twitter: AlbatrossTam14 (protected tweets)
I don't own Degrassi, Lost, or Mythbusters.
I.
"But why," Adam asked, "are there polar bears?"
Sav grinned at him from the other end of the couch.
"Trust me," he said. "Out of all the mysteries on Lost, this one will be the least of your concerns."
Adam frowned. "But why are there polar bears?" he asked again.
"Dude," Sav said to Eli, "clearly he is not getting the awesomeness of Lost."
"Maybe some Sayid badassness will change his mind," Eli responded with a shrug.
Adam peered over at his friend. Eli was sitting in what was usually his dad's recliner, his bad leg propped up. They usually watched TV upstairs in in the room next to Drew's bedroom, which had the Xbox and PS3, but since Eli was in his cast and couldn't get up the stairs, they had opted for the family room instead. At least it had surround sound and was right next to the kitchen, but the couches were nicer and the rug was super-expensive, and when Sav and Eli had shown up for a guy's night of watching Lost, Adam had warned them a hundred times over about what his mother would do to them if she so much as thought they had breathed on her precious carpet wrong. Adam was exceptionally thankful that his parents had gone to visit his grandmother overnight, because he didn't have to listen to her hovering over them with general distrust. Plus, she wasn't much of a fan of Eli to begin with.
"I don't have a clue what's going on," Adam protested.
"That's pretty much par for the course in Lost," Sav said with a laugh.
"Shush," Eli told him. "Eat your popcorn, and watch Sawyer be the bad guy. It's only the first episode, dude. Give it a chance. You'll love it."
Adam looked at him dubiously, but grabbed another handful of popcorn from the bowl at his feet, and crammed it into his mouth.
"This rocks, man" Sav said to Adam. "Thanks for inviting me. I'm glad we got the chance to chill and everything."
"Glad we got to see you," Adam told him. He was happy to be snatching any time he could with Sav; between student council and preparing his music supplement for university, the two of them never got to see each other outside of school anymore.
"Sorry I'm not functioning much these days," Eli added from his spot in the recliner, gesturing to his casted leg and his arm in a sling.
Sav waved his words away unconcernedly. "Aw, man, don't worry about it. I love watching Lost. And it's great to have someone who obsesses over it as much as I do."
Adam saw Eli grin.
Good, he thought. He's happy. He's enjoying himself. Hopefully, he'd succeeded in taking Eli's mind off of things, albeit extremely temporarily.
He turned back to the episode, where a guy was yelling at a girl in a bikini – a very hot girl, Adam noticed – who happened to be sunning herself next to the wreckage of the crashed airplane that she had nearly died on.
None of this made any sense.
"Okay," Adam asked both of them, after holding his tongue as long as he could. "Why the hell is there a French woman talking on the radio?"
Then a great many things happened at once.
The episode ended with its usual black screen, the word "Lost" ominously inching closer to them as the scene disappeared before their eyes. But the ending of the episode – and the answer to Adam's question – was lost as the front door swung open with a loud bang, startling the three of them. Adam opened his mouth to repeat the question, but suddenly was drowned out by Sav's incredulous, "what the hell?"
Drew stood in the foyer, his clothes dusted with snow. His face was flushed red, and he looked out of breath, as if he had run from wherever he had just been. His face was also smeared with black and purple, a liberal stain of bruising that decorated the entire left side of his face, and his left eye was swollen shut. Dried blood covered his nose and mouth, a gruesome Rorschach design. His good eye was wide and wild, and when Adam looked closer, he saw his brother was shaking, though from the cold or something else, he couldn't tell.
Bianca stood beside his brother, looking the least like her Adam had ever seen. Her shirt was torn, and she had a giant rip in her fishnet stockings that went all the way up her thigh, and her hair was flying everywhere, tangled and matted with wet snow. She looked skittish; spooked, almost, and like she was ready to bolt at the slightest brush. Her eyes were round and panicked, darting around the room as if expecting someone to jump out from behind the kitchen wall.
She looked, he realized, like an animal. A caged, wild animal.
Drew looked around at all of them, blinking as if he couldn't recognize them. Bianca's arm was linked with his, and Adam saw her hands. Her knuckles were bloody and scraped, and her elegant, manicured nails were broken, some of them ripped off completely.
Adam vaulted over the couch, racing to his brother.
"Holy shit," he exclaimed, in a higher-pitched voice than he would normally have liked. "What the hell happened to you?"
Sav took a tentative step forward, his arms out, as if scared they might turn tail and run. Bianca's entire body jolted, as if someone had shot her. The same tremor ran through Drew, who couldn't even look at them anymore.
"What happened?" Sav asked softly.
Eli was craning his neck in the chair, trying to sit up as best he could with his immobile leg. He shot Adam a wide-eyed look, and Adam bit his lip, shaking his head slightly. He tried to catch his brother's gaze, but Drew was staring at the floor, and Bianca's eyes were darting around the room so much it made him dizzy to watch.
He had no idea what the hell was going on.
He watched Sav take one more step towards them, and reach out enough to brush his brother's arm.
"Drew," he asked quietly, gently. "Tell me what happened. Are you guys okay?"
Drew still couldn't meet his eyes. Sav was staring at them, worried, but then his eyes widened in horror.
"Dude," he said, "you're bleeding."
Sav had one of Drew's hands in his own; Adam saw the bloodstains, as if someone had slashed the bare skin of his brother's palm. Feeling sick, Adam got right up into Drew's face, forcing his brother to look at him with his good eye.
"Drew," he all but shouted in his face, "tell me what happened! Who hurt you?"
Drew let out a scratchy half-whisper, barely audible. Adam leaned closer, trying to make out the words.
"What?" he asked.
Drew finally met his eyes.
"No one," he said hoarsely. "It was her. Her nails."
Adam stared at the cuts on Drew's palm, then back at Bianca's battered hands. She had dug her own nails into his brother's hands so tightly they had started to bleed.
"Come here," Adam said, gesturing towards the family room, trying to ignore the swoop in his belly. Sav ran to the kitchen. His brother sat down, sinking into the couch exhaustedly, but Bianca stood beside him, her hands clasped together and peering around anxiously.
Sav came back from the kitchen, carrying two glasses of water.
"Drink this," he instructed, handing Drew the glass. He glanced over at Bianca, but hesitated when he saw how badly her hands were trembling.
Drew drained the glass in almost one gulp. He set the empty one down, gasping for breath, water dripping onto the couch cushions.
Sav knelt down by the couch, eye-level with Drew.
"Drew," he said quietly, "tell us what happened. Who hurt you?"
Sav handed him the other glass of water, which Drew again downed in one gulp.
Bianca bolted from the room. Darting off down the hall, Adam watched her disappear into the bathroom, then lock the door behind her. He heard the sink turn on. He threw another glance at Eli, who looked even more bewildered than he felt.
"She called me," Drew said, when he found his voice again. "She was…she was really messed. Freaking out. I kept asking her what was wrong, but she wouldn't answer me. She wasn't making any sense."
"What was she saying that didn't make sense?" Sav said. "If she said something…"
"She didn't say anything," Drew replied. "All she said was, 'get me out of here, get me out'. I kept asking her, but she wouldn't say anything."
"But what happened to you?" Adam demanded, his voice rising with every syllable.
Drew glared at him. Shut up, the good half of his face read.
Sav nodded. He looked at Adam and Eli worriedly. "Dude," he said, "I think we need to call the police."
Drew shook his head frantically. "No way, man. No cops."
Adam's jaw dropped. "Are you insane? Look at you!"
"Dude," Eli called from the recliner, "you don't end up with a face like a Picasso painting for no reason."
Drew shot him a look. "I wasn't asking you," he snapped.
Sav shook his head. Eli shrugged. Adam glanced at the bathroom door, the sound of running water and frantic footsteps coming from the other side.
I should check on her, he thought. Make sure she's okay.
Another voice, crueler and colder, snorted inside.
Yeah, right, it taunted. And be called a "freak" and a "tranny" again. Remember, this is the girl who said she would kill you if you ever came near her. Think she's magically forgotten that?
Adam shook the thought away like a buzzing fly. Something might have happened to her. Something serious.
And you should be the last person on earth who cares about her. She certainly doesn't care about you.
"Adam."
Sav's voice snapped him out of it. "What?"
"What do you think?" he asked. "Call the cops?"
He glanced over at Eli, who was looking at him with an unreadable expression.
"Don't call anyone," Drew said tightly. "There's nothing to talk about. Just let it alone."
Sav looked intensely uncomfortable at this idea, but clamped his mouth shut in frustration. He asked Adam where the bandages were, and then got some for Drew's hand. Adam got him a third glass of water, which his brother tossed back like a shot, and then darted up the stairs, muttering something about a shower.
The bedroom door slammed shut behind him, a whole story there.
II.
After Sav had gone home and CeCe came to pick up Eli, Adam rifled through the clean laundry bucket his mother had left on the dining room table and asked him to fold before she left. He tried to find something Bianca could wear, since Drew was too shaken up to drive her home and Adam didn't have a license. He dug through the hamper of slightly wrinkled clothes, pulling out his father's Rangers sweatshirt and Drew's grey sweatpants.
These will swallow her, he thought, wondering if his mother would notice if he borrowed a t-shirt and a pair of her pajama pants for Bianca to borrow and if he could wash it before she came back tomorrow afternoon.
He briefly, insanely, toyed with the idea of digging in the garbage bag in the back of his closet and finding what was left of his Gracie clothes, to see if any of them might fit her.
Are you insane, he thought, mentally slapping himself. That's one way to get yourself eaten alive, moron. Why do you care, anyway? Let her sleep in those dirty clothes.
Grabbing Drew's sweatpants and one of his Panthers warm-up t-shirts, he darted upstairs to the guest bedroom, where they'd let her crash for the night.
Drew's bedroom door was open. His brother was sitting on his unmade bed, still in the clothes he'd shown up in. He was still shivering lightly, but Adam was sure it wasn't from the cold this time.
"Dude," he whispered, "what's going on?"
He looked at the clothes in Adam's hand. "Those for her?"
Adam nodded. "Are you gonna tell me what happened?" he said.
"I told you," Drew snapped. "I don't know. I don't know anything."
"People don't show up looking like that and nothing happen," Adam pointed out.
Drew buried himself under the covers.
"Shut up," he ground out. "Shut up, and leave me alone."
Adam walked straight to the edge of the bed. "What are you going to tell Mom tomorrow when she sees your face?"
Drew turned his face away from Adam. "Football to the face," he mumbled into the pillow.
Adam rolled his eyes. "Yeah, cause that worked so well the first time."
Drew's response was to tug the blanket over his head more.
"Shut up," he moaned, and Adam was scared by the quiver in the tone. "Shut up. Just go away. Leave me alone. I'm tired. Shut up."
His brother remained buried under his armor of flannel and fleece, a quivering, unresponsive lump of dead weight. Adam wanted him to keep talking, because his stomach was bubbling with fear, but he knew when Drew shut down, he could do the silent treatment better than anyone Adam had ever met. If he wasn't going to talk, he wasn't going to break – at least until tomorrow, when their mother forced a false confession out of him as to why he looked like someone beat the shit out of him.
He paused a moment outside the door of the guest room, hesitating before rapping his knuckles lightly on the wood.
"Hey," he called. "I brought you some clothes to sleep in."
The door remained closed. For a moment, he thought she hadn't heard, or she was just ignoring him, but then the door slowly creaked open, and he was face-to-face with her, so close he could smell the smoke on her breath from earlier cigarettes.
Adam forced himself to breathe and meet her eyes, trying to keep his face blank as possible. He hadn't been this close to Bianca in months, since before she had discovered him. His heart was hammering, and he wondered, briefly, if she would tear his face off or just slam the door in his face, but she just stood there, looking as blank as he was.
Standing this close to her, he got a much better look at her than he had in the kitchen. She was wearing one of Drew's t-shirts and a pair of boxers, her feet bare on the cold tile floor. Her dark hair was damp and matted, freshly washed and pulled away from a face free of make-up that looked drained and exhausted. Her eyes were still wide, black saucers against a white backdrop, and he noticed with a sickening feeling a ring of purple and blue fingerprints around her neck.
"What do you want?" she asked him hoarsely, her voice like sandpaper.
He handed her the bundle of clean clothes.
"Brought you something to wear," he said dispassionately. "Don't worry, they're my brothers. Not mine."
Bianca accepted the clothes without emotion, tossing them onto the guest bed.
"You want anything?" he asked. "Water? Something to eat?"
She stared at him blankly.
He dug his hands into his pockets, his ears burning.
"Well," Adam said, "if you need anything, Drew's bedroom is right down the hall. And the bathroom's next to my bedroom."
He paused. "Don't worry, I'll keep my door shut, so you don't have to see me."
Bianca's expression didn't change.
Adam turned abruptly on his heels, digging his hands deeper into his pockets, feeling like an idiot. What had he expected, anyway.
"Wait," a dry, cracked voice choked out.
The sound was enough to startle him to a stop. It sounded like sand, like harsh wind. It sounded inhuman.
He turned around slowly.
"You guys have any whiskey?" she rasped.
She stood in the doorway, dressed in that t-shirt, her legs and guard bare. Backlit by the light from the bedroom, she looked like a shadow, like just a piece of mist and dark, like she would vanish as just a trick of the light.
Because she had become a shadow of herself, because this whole night felt unreal, and because he noticed her step back slightly when he stepped closer to her, he let himself give her the tiniest of smiles.
"Whiskey, no," he told her. "But…I know something else that might work."
III.
Bianca pushed the empty plate away from her.
"Thanks for that," she murmured. "I was starving."
He shrugged. "No problem. Want me to make you another?"
She shook her head. "No, thanks."
Adam switched off the oven and put the griddle on an unused burner. He thought about taking the seat beside her at the kitchen counter, but thought better of it. Even with her guard down, this was still Bianca, and he trusted the both of them more if he had some distance on her.
"You sure you're not hungry?" he asked her again, not knowing what else to say.
He might have seen her smile at him, but he was positive it was just a trick of the shadowy room.
"No," she said. "Okay if I watch some TV?"
He nodded. "Sure. I'm gonna check on Drew."
She nodded, and he gave her one long look from the staircase as she curled herself into a ball on the couch, her skin blue in the glow of the TV light. She switched the lamp on the table beside her off, resting her head on the armrest, her eyes drooping as the images flashed and faded across her face.
Drew's door was shut and locked when he tried to open it. His brother was either fast asleep, or wide awake and determined to ignore him.
Adam bit back his frustration, trying not to kick the door. He wished he could smack the good side of Drew's face until he finally talked, because he could really use his help right now. Bianca was his girlfriend. He needed to deal with this, not run and leave Adam to clean up his mess.
Giving the door one last bang, he waited to hear a sound from the other side, and hearing nothing, he went back downstairs, where Bianca lay bundled together on the couch.
"He asleep?" she whispered.
He nodded. He moved to take the seat beside her, and thinking twice, jumped into the recliner Eli had been sitting in earlier instead. "What are you watching?" he asked.
"Extreme Couponing." Bianca twirled one of her curls around her index finger like a child's hand. "Ever watched this show?"
Adam shook his head.
Bianca's attention seemed entirely glued to the screen, so every now and then, he stole glances at her as carefully as he could, hoping she notice. The TV light was too poor to make out anything clearly, but he could still see the chain of fingerprints imbedded into her slender neck. And Adam couldn't be certain, but he thought he may have seen what looked like a silver line across her neck.
Like a scar. Or a cut.
Cut from what? he asked himself.
Blade.
The word hit him like disaster. He felt like throwing up.
He turned back to the television.
"Why would someone need 77 containers of mustard?" he asked, mystified.
Bianca shrugged. "I don't know. Why would you need ten frozen turkeys? Sounds like it would be a verse from that song. You know, the Twelve Days of Christmas." She glanced at the screen. "What would someone ever need to buy 70 bottles of non-dairy creamer for?"
"To light it on fire," Adam replied.
She stared at him incredulously.
"Ever seen Mythbusters?" he asked. "There's an episode where they blow up a crater full of that stuff and make this gigantic fireball. It's the perfect substitute for napalm."
"That's creepy," she said. "And we're supposed to but that in our bodies?"
Adam grinned. "You might want to stick to skim milk from now on."
She let out a small, dry laugh. "Forget that. I'm taking it black."
IV.
He couldn't sleep.
On the couch, Bianca had drifted off somewhere during a two-hour block session of Property Virgins, and while she was out cold, Adam couldn't even close his eyes without feeling his pulse throb with adrenaline. The show was still running in the background, the shadows flickering across Bianca's face, those bruises darkening her skin. He could definitely see it now – a long, thin line, no wider than a thread, holding together a strand of bruises, stringing them like words to a language he didn't understand, and wasn't sure he wanted to.
There was something blossoming inside of him now, a watermelon seed growing in the pit of his stomach, and he suddenly stopped in the middle of the hallway, sinking to his knees against the wall with his head in his hands. His head felt so heavy and his stomach suddenly hollow, because the knowledge birthed there had been realized, and he knew, and it weighed him down and made him feel empty and heavy at the same time. He lay with his head in his hands for a moment, the weight of it too much, because he knew, and maybe he had since they had first shown up that night.
He may not have been able to get either one of them to talk, but he knew, and he wished he never knew.
V.
The word had been lapping itself around his brain all night long, but it was dawn now, and the crowing in the back of his head has subsided to the dull thud of the bass, repeating the same beat over and over again. He knew he must look like the same hell they did right now from being up all night and pacing the halls, but he was wide awake, sitting at the kitchen table. He had placed two plates at the counter and had a fresh pot of coffee brewing, though it wasn't for him, because he'd been awake all night without the stuff's help.
He headed upstairs, tiptoeing past the sleeping figure on the couch. Bianca's head was tucked to her chest, her hair covering her face, but he could still make out the bruises on her neckline. He'd covered her with a light blanket after he was sure was fast asleep, and she clutched it in her long, scratched, blood-stained fingers as if it were a shield. Her right arm dangled over the couch like a question tossed out and never answered, like an unfinished thought, and her other one was tucked under her head, pulling the blanket over her.
He thought momentarily about repositioning the dangling arm, but thought better of it.
For the first time since this whole endless night had begun, he flopped down on his own bed, still wide awake. He slid under the covers and curled up in them, hoping the silo of his sheets was enough to help him face whatever was coming with the morning.
The sun would be rising soon.