Disclaimer: I don't own the Mighty Ducks and the title is the name of a song by Elliot Smith.
EDIT: I realize that the title is similar to Bottled Up and that is completely unintentional (actually, doubt that anyone cares but still...)
Author's Note: While I had originally set this as being a companion piece to Cowboy Lost, it seems to have taken off on its own. This is set a bit before Cowboy Lost and is in the same sort of universe as Cowboy Lost, and Finding the Cat. I hope the changing from first person to different third person views won't be too confusing; this will be a sort of experimentation for me with writing and it might be hard to follow, then again, maybe it won't be. The opening monologue is from Dwayne's point of view.
EDIT: I'm sorry for the frequent minor changes. Obviously this story was too rough around the edges to post at the time that I did but oh well. I apologize; I learn from my mistakes, heh.
::Bottle Up and Explode::
You know, it's kind of funny how much you notice when you're invisible. You just pick up on little vibes that people unknowingly give off. When you're quiet, you pick up on discrepancies, like when you're a little kid and you wade into a lake and you sit there as still as a five year old can and then suddenly someone comes along and the surface of the water fractures and breaks. And the other person doesn't even notice they made a difference.
See, people think that when things fall apart, it happens like that. It just happens right at that moment they realize it. If they took a minute to just take a step back they would realize that when things break down, when things change, it's an ongoing thing. It starts long before anyone really notices and it keeps going after everyone ceases to care.
And when you go unnoticed like me, you start to catch these sort of things a lot faster than everyone else. That's why when we all sat down on the green grass of the quad, after our formal introduction to the school Eden Hall, I knew this year was going to be different. Harder. Everyone talked strangely, in voices that held a different quality than normal, and the breath in the air seemed more precious, more nervous. They were either overly rambunctious or taciturn.
And no one seemed to notice it but me.
Dwayne slipped into his seat in English class, behind Adam who was already there. Julie was seated next to the blonde boy, searching her bags with a disgruntled air.
"What are you looking for?" Adam asked. Julie muttered something and Adam went back to scribbling in his worn notebook, as usual. Dwayne wondered what Adam wrote in that notebook nearly every day but never really thought to ask. He reached into his backpack to pull out a worn book and started to read when he heard Julie swear. The sharp words seemed foreign on her tongue.
"I lost my homework," she finally announced. Dwayne frowned; this wasn't like Julie at all, who was possibly the most organized person he had ever met, perhaps bordering a little on OCD. Kenny walked through the door, a full ten minutes later than any of the other Ducks, but still a good fifteen minutes before class.
"Lost it?" Adam echoed. "Is it in your room?"
"I swear to God I put it in my bag," she grumbled to herself, and searched through it again. She was pointedly ignoring Adam and Adam, being just who he is, was still trying to be helpful.
It didn't escape Dwayne's notice that Adam looked like he desperately wished that these seating arrangements could be changed since they chose their seats before he was bumped up to Varsity. By the looks of it, Adam looked as though he would rather be sitting alone on the other side of the room if it meant to avoid Julie and her uncharacteristic grouchiness.
Ken tried to hand Julie his homework.
"Stop it, Ken, I'm not going to copy your answers," she snapped.
"It's just a one time thing and you actually did the homework," Ken pointed out. "I saw you do it in study hall. Come on."
"No, it's not right. I read the assignment and everything." Adam looked up from his writing and eyed Julie cautiously.
"Ken's right," he said. "You did the assignment. Work on what you can now and copy whatever you can't finish." Julie glared at him but pulled out a clean piece of notebook paper anyway. Dwayne wondered why she was so frazzled when she was normally one of the most easygoing of the Ducks.
And when the bell rang and the majority of the students had filed in and taken out their homework or promptly set their heads on the table and started to fall back asleep, Julie finished up the last sentence and passed Ken back his homework. The teacher came in and as she collected the homework, Julie's knuckles turned white momentarily as she seemed to struggle with an internal moral decision, unable to let go of the piece of paper. In the end, her hand let go of her homework and the teacher collected and moved on, apparently unaware of her student's strange behavior.
Dwayne watched as Adam gave Julie one last sidelong glance and then directed his attention to the class. It wasn't just his imagination; Dwayne felt for sure that fissures were being created in relationships and the cracks were only beginning to spread.
The minute she woke up, Julie knew it was going to be a tough day. The sun was shining directly in her eyes and her alarm was still going off right next to her ear. She picked it up and chucked it against the wall and pulled the covers back over her head and started to drift off to sleep.
And then she remembered it was Monday.
"Crap," she muttered, and rolled out of bed and tripped over the cordless phone on the ground. She kicked it away, remembering her phone call with her mom the night before. Would her mom ever get off her back? Probably not.
Julie grabbed her messenger bag and stuffed it with her notebooks, not noticing that her assignment was still sitting on her desk, and grabbed an energy bar. She paused at the sorry excuse for a sink in her dorm room and brushed her teeth and splashed water on her face and was out the door in less than ten minutes.
The whole time she walked to class, her conversation with her mom was playing and replaying in her head. She shrugged it off. It could be worse. She could be not getting along with both her parents. Her dad told her not to worry about it; he told her that her mom was just in one of her moods again. Fuck her moods; they were pissing Julie off. She was more tolerant of her mom when she was younger. The older she got, the more easily she was annoyed and her mom found that a severe psychological problem. Every time she talked to her mom, she was left with a bad mood for a week and a strange, sour taste in her mouth. Julie accepted the fact that she just didn't get along with her mom but it still kind of hurt yelling and fighting with her.
She slid into her seat, ignoring Adam sitting next to her, her irritation rising already. Couldn't he stop acting so damn oblivious and just sit on the other side of the room already? It's not like the teacher was going to have an aneurysm if one student moved from their assigned seat. It wasn't the fact that he was on Varsity that really irked her. Okay, fine, that had a big part of it, but she would have been more than willing to make an exception for her favorite cake-eater. But she saw what happened, what Adam had done, or more specifically, what he hadn't done. What Adam didn't know was that she was there, just at the top of the stairs, that time he walked away when Cole and Riley were threatening Averman and advancing to hurt him physically.
What a wimp. What a fucking backstabbing traitor. He was on Varsity. Cole and Riley would have hardly hurt one of their players. Instead, he didn't want to risk his own skin and he just walked away, his eyes trained on the ground. And she saw everything. As far as she was concerned, Adam turned his back on the Ducks and renounced his membership as one of the group.
She reached into her bag and pulled out her notebook and flipped through it, her stomach suddenly dropping.
"Shit," she muttered. Did she, in her haste, forget to grab her assignment? "Crap."
"What are you looking for?" Julie didn't even glance at the other boy as she dug through her other notebooks. Finally, when it was clear that her assignment wasn't going to magically appear, she announced, "I lost my homework." The day just went from bad to worse.
Adam was writing and doodling in his notebook that served as a journal. He was doodling a little more than writing, however, since it kind of unnerved him how there were people, albeit his friends, sitting around him. His pen stopped moving momentarily then starting twirling around his fingers again. It was obvious that Julie was furious with him for one reason or another but the only thing that was really occupying his mind was what had happened the night earlier. Hazing they called it. What a simple, innocuous word. It was too early in the day for Adam to drudge up the actual memory of what happened.
Well, he should have seen this coming, right? The only freshman on a Varsity team, he should have sniffed this out from a mile away. But he was too pulled up in the euphoria of being good enough for Varsity and apprehension of leaving the Ducks to even stop and consider what the Varsity players would be like. Adam sighed audibly, a little annoyed with himself. Maybe he should talk to his dad tonight and ask him if it would be okay if he moved back to the Ducks. It wasn't like his dad would forcefully keep him on the team but he'd still do it. He'd still get Adam to stay on Varsity, through different ways. He was particularly skilled at guilt tripping Adam.
Maybe he should stay on Varsity. He might be able to do something to get the Varsity to leave the Ducks alone. Maybe he could stop Cole from perpetually stealing Ken's lunch every day and pushing Averman around. Adam sighed again. He didn't want to think about it; he didn't want to think about the look on Averman's face when he backed away. And he definitely didn't want to think about what Averman's expression might have been when his former friend actually turned his back on him and completely walked away.
He wanted to do something but only minutes earlier Riley had been quick to enforce his opinions on what he thought of Adam sticking up for the Ducks.
"They're still part of Eden Hall," Adam argued, when Riley laughed with some of his friends about the latest harassment he had imposed on the Ducks. Riley turned around to face the shorter boy.
"No, they're still trash. They're filthy, fucking trash." Adam scowled and got up to leave when Riley grabbed his shoulder and forced him back down.
"Did I say you were excused?" he had said, in that obnoxious, condescending voice. Adam gritted his teeth.
"From now on, you listen to me and only me, okay? You better stay away from those Ducks and if I hear you defend them one more time, you'll have hell to pay, Banksie."
"Fuck you." He stood up again and this time Riley slammed his hand back down on his shoulder and Adam was pushed against the back of his chair forcefully, momentarily knocking the wind out of his chest. He scowled and tried to ignore his smarting shoulder.
"Jesus, Riley, don't kill the boy. He's still only a freshmen," one of the girls said.
"That's what hazing's all about," Riley said, turning around and smiling brilliantly.
Fine, so maybe those threats shouldn't have stopped him from helping Averman. He was such a coward it made him sick. Maybe he could change things now; he still had a chance, right? He thought what happened last night, another one of Riley's "hazing" ideas, had decided him that he was going to leave Varsity, but now he wasn't so sure again. A real Duck wouldn't mind playing sacrificial lamb if it meant that the rest of the team was assured safety, right?
Adam sighed one more time. He wasn't sure what to do now. Sorry Averman, he thought. I'll do better next time, I promise.
A/N: Hope that wasn't too slow of a start. Hope you enjoyed.