A/N: I'm really sorry updates have been slow over the summer. I have no other excuse but that work is kicking my butt so much I'm in bed and it's only 9pm. Energy has been hard to find lately, so I'm posting this chapter in hopes that your feedback will motivate me to write more. This is set back when Erin and Jay were teenagers and will diverge from canon, because they'll go to the same high school. I also hope this will be a good opportunity to maybe explore the relationships within the families, mainly between Erin and Camille, and Jay and his family.
I would genuinely love to hear your thoughts, and if you think this is something you would want to read on. Because there is plenty more that I have planned. Just make your opinion known!
I would like to thank everyone for the incredible support and feedback I've gotten for the last piece. Your reaction was more than worth the pain of writing it! You guys are my reason for doing this.
If Erin had listened more carefully in Mr. Tanner's class, she would know all about the butterfly effect. She would know what chaos theory is, and how even the smallest cause can have a larger effect, and that even the smallest action of rebellion, can change the course of things in the future.
But even if she knew that standing up that day in class would change her life forever, she still couldn't have remained seated.
It all starts on an ironically sunny day. She plops down into her desk and pulls out her book with a loud groan. Her friend Kim eyes her sympathetically from the desk next to hers, and they smile at each other, before the dreadful bell announces the start of next period.
She has been going to her new school for almost two months now, and so far, Kim is the only friend she has managed to make. Besides a whole lot of enemies of course. There was that incident in the school cafeteria, where one of the school bullies wanted to force her to give him her lunch money. Remembering the black eye he sported around school for two weeks after, makes her believe he picked the wrong girl. She somehow managed to get away without detention, mostly because the crowd around them was so big, nobody actually saw what happened. It was for the best. She's trying hard to stay out of trouble. Mostly to please her new family, but also to prove it to herself that she can.
She mostly sticks to herself, head down, powering through, reminding herself that she has something to lose now. A family that has accepted her in ways she never expected. And she's never had something to lose before. It's a privilege, as much as is it responsibility not to screw things up.
For the first couple of weeks she went to sleep every night, sure that she would wake up and they would tell her to leave. But they never did. Camille, though reluctant at first, gave Erin the love she so desperately craved. At some point, she stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The English class is crammed into a small classroom. Two of the windows are damaged, so they don't open. The warm April they're having causes the classroom to heat up, and with almost no ventilation, it's a surprise that they can still breathe. But that's not the reason Erin dreads this period. It's not even the boring subject itself. It's their teacher.
Erin has met a lot of mean people in her life—people who have washed their lives down the drain and hooked themselves on drugs and alcohol. People who were mean because they were coming off a high, and they knew they had no money for another fix. Even her mother was one of them, and boy could she be mean sometimes. Her cheekbones were the first-hand witness of that. Her mother's slaps are something she sure doesn't miss.
But with Mr. Hardy it's different. He is mean just for the sake of being mean, and an educator no less. The person who is supposed to teach kids, but instead find new inventive ways of torturing them, and it bugs Erin to the core. Of course, she isn't a naïve little girl, surprised to find out that the system is broken. She knows that first hand.
So she sits in her seat in the third row on the right, and keeps her mouth shut when he picks his new victims day after day.
One time it was Tracy Edwards, whose mom is apparently a drunk. He asked her if she was doing anything to deal with her drinking problem, as if her mother's problems were her own—as if Tracy could do anything about it. Erin could relate to all of that. Then it was Kevin for being black, because the professor genuinely wanted to know if he needs sunscreen and if he likes his barbecue on the dark side as well. Erin got her turn, of course, shortly after coming to the school as a welcome, right after everyone found out where she came from. Erin Lindsay, the stray the Voights took in. The criminal. The junkie. She never let him know how much his words bothered her, and eventually he stopped.
Just last week it was Maria for being "too fat". Erin thinks she'll never forget how tears slowly fell onto her notebook, drenching the pages, smudging the notes Erin knows are flawless and very helpful, because she's been kind enough to lend it to her last week, while the professor asked her if she's sure her chair is strong enough to hold her.
Today it's the silent boy's turn. He sits in the front, almost never speaking, she remembers, and when he does, he gets picked on by class bullies. She's seen kids make fun of him. He mostly keeps to himself, not unlike herself, and she's only maybe seen him with the Ruzek kid, who's cocky enough for both of them.
She watches as his knuckles go pale and his palms form fists, as he listens to the endless rant about how he must be one of them gays, because he doesn't party and his grades are too good, and how his father is surely disappointed, but at least he's got one son that worthy of his name.
There are tears in his eyes. But he won't let them fall, she knows. It's a familiar kind of stubbornness. The unyielding pride.
"Look at me when I'm talking to you!"
He just stands up, stands still for a second while the class waits in expectation of his reaction. Then he turns to leave the classroom, as if unable to stand any more of the harassment.
"Enough!" She doesn't know when she stood up, or when the word came out, but the class is silent and the teacher is staring at her with the most shocked expression she's seen on him so far. The lines on his face pop out, and she gulps, cursing herself. But there is no way back. No repeat option. She has to go with it now.
"Ms. Lindsay, you will speak when I ask you to."
"What part of you gets off on torturing your students?" She thinks she hears someone gasp, or maybe it's just her imagination. She knows she feels like gasping. She realizes that the object of today's harassment has vanished through the door, and she wonders if she did the right thing.
"I said sit down!"
"No! You're unbelievable. You can't do this."
"And you're a failure, Ms. Lindsay. And you just failed English."
"You can't just fail me." At least she thinks so, but the little voice in her head starts doubting, and she's afraid she just threw away everything she's worked for the last couple of months.
"Watch me."
Leave him alone," she repeats, not sure what made her suddenly play the protector of the weak, but she knows that sitting there, pretending this isn't wrong is no longer an option. Every cell in her body is yelling at her that she did the right thing.
She leaves to follow the boy outside.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"To hell," she murmurs, not even bothering to stop to answer his question.
"Hey," she calls out after the quickly disappearing figure in the hallway, "wait up!"
For a second she thinks he's not going to stop. That he'll just keep walking, until she loses sight of him, but he falters, then finally stops, mid-stride, so she can catch up with him.
"Are you okay?"
"Why, so you can make fun of me to? Just leave me alone."
"I'm not making fun of you, I just wanted to make sure you were okay. You seemed pretty upset. I mean I get it, the guy is a total jerk."
"Didn't seem to bother you," he replied, and she thinks she catches a glimpse of admiration in his voice.
"I'm good at pretending," she confesses. "Don't tell anyone." She doesn't know why she's telling her deepest secrets to a complete stranger, but something inside her wants to make him understand that she's not the enemy. Something makes her want to trust him, which strikes her odd, because she hasn't been able to trust anyone in her life. Except for maybe Hank and Camille.
"I don't need you to protect me."
"I know. I did it for myself. I wouldn't be able to sleep one more night knowing I did nothing to stand up to him." But she did do it for him, because the helpless look in his eyes would haunt her otherwise.
"That makes one of you," he murmurs, but his voice visibly softens. She stares into his eyes—blue, even grey when the light changes. Despite the sadness in his eyes, the expression on his face screams that he will never give up; that he will find what he's looking for, and that he will make the world his own, and she feels that it's the way it's supposed to be, and that she has to be there to witness it, or she will never be truly happy.
That is the moment in which Erin Lindsay decides to befriend this boy with blue eyes, no matter the consequences.
"I'm Erin," she offers, and grins when he smiles shyly.
"I'm Jay."
Even his name speaks to her, and after months of being bored, and standing still, Erin feels that maybe it's time to move forward. Maybe future isn't so bad. Like a little girl solving a riddle, her entire being fills with curiosity and wonder.
"Nice to meet you."
"You're gonna get into trouble," he tells her. "Hanging out with me probably isn't such a good idea."
"I was never the one for good ideas. I'll see you around, Jay." His name slides off her lips, familiar, like she's been saying it for years. She turns around to leave, to report to the principal's office, because that's the last thing she heard Hardy yell after her, after she walked out of the classroom. It feels like a small victory, when a tentative I'll see you sounds after her. She doesn't let him see her smile, but it doesn't disappear all the way to the office that's way too familiar to her.
She takes a deep breath, and prepares to face to music.
"We agreed, no problems."
"I know," she whispers, not really knowing what to say. The disappointment in his eyes is killing her, because he is the one person that she really doesn't want to disappoint. Some weird part of her wants him to be proud. It's why she's taken so much of everyone's crap over the months she's started to live with them.
"Do you care to explain yourself?"
"I can't." She shakes her head to stop the tears from falling. "I'll go get my things."
"Oh, no you won't. You're grounded until further notice. You will come straight home from school, and on Monday, when we go see the principal, you will apologize to Mr. Hardy, and you will mean it."
His voice leaves no room for argument, and she's glad she's had a lot of practice on how not to start crying, even though the hot tears threaten to fall despite all her efforts.
She doesn't know what's going on downstairs, but she can hear somebody she doesn't know. It's not loud enough to recognize the voices though, and whoever it is, doesn't stay long.
The walls of her prison are painted blue, because that's what she wanted. When Hank told her to pick a colour, she thought he was kidding. It was a wall, weren't all walls white? But she remembers staring at the book with colour samples, and imagining it surrounding her.
Justin teased her about surely picking pink, obviously mocking her. She was as far from a girly girl they could get. She debated between yellow, but it seemed to happy then, and it seems too happy now. Blue is better.
She hears a knock on the door, and it surprises her that even in while she's trouble, they still respect her privacy. That alone makes her mutter a silent 'come in' instead of pressing her lips tighter together like she wants to.
The door creaks open and it's Hank. She wasn't expecting to see his face, judging by how soft the steps towards the door were. She's learnt that when he's pissed off, he walks like a Hulk.
"I had a very interesting conversation with your friend," he tells her, and she looks up. Kim wouldn't dare to come to her house, and she has no other friends. "Why didn't you tell me you were standing up to a professor who was bullying the kids?"
"What difference does it make?"
"A big one, in my eyes." His voice is soft, almost as if he's trying to make up for yelling at her before. For a second she wonders what he sees when he looks at her. "We'll discuss everything when I talk to the principal. Until we decide what's next, your punishment is off. Dinner is in 10 minutes."
"Okay," she murmurs, surprised that he's lifted her punishment, even if temporarily. It doesn't click, until Camille puts an extra portion of green beans on her plate at dinner, because she knows Erin likes them, or how even Justin gets up to refill her glass.
But how on Earth, would a scared boy she talked to earlier that day, have the courage to talk to Hank Voight and tell him what really went down, when the entire school knew who he was, and feared him. It was one of the main reasons she mostly got left alone.
It's going to be a long weekend of wondering, until she can see him again on Monday, and maybe finally get some answers.