a/n: Happy Birthday, Vicky! I'm not sure if you submitted something for the birthday fics section, so I basically just chose one of the pairings that I felt more comfortable with writing that was on your profile under your pairing likes; I basically did this while listening to Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol on repeat, and repeat, and repeat; hope you like it, :) God, this is depressing.
disclaimer: I own nothing — not the Jodi Picoult long quote or the title, m'kay?
chasing cars
claire/josh
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"people always want to know what it feels like, so i'll tell you: there's a sting when you first slice, and then your heart speeds up when you see the blood, because you know you've done something you shouldn't have, and yet you've gotten away with it. then you sort of go into a trance, because it's truly dazzling — that bright red line, like a highway route on a map that you want to follow to see where it leads. and — god — the sweet release, that's the best way i can describe it, kind of like a balloon that's tied to a little kid's hand, which somehow breaks free and floats into the sky. you just know that balloon is thinking, ha, i don't belong to you after all; and at the same time, do they have any idea how beautiful the view is from up here? and then the balloon remembers, after the fact, that it has a wicked fear of heights.
when reality kicks in, you grab some toilet paper or a paper towel (better than a washcloth, because the stains don't ever come out 100 percent) and you press hard against the cut. you can feel your embarrassment; it's a backbeat underneath your pulse. whatever relief there was a minute ago congeals, like cold gravy, into a fist in the pit of your stomach. you literally make yourself sick, because you promised yourself last time would be the last time, and once again, you've let yourself down. so you hide the evidence of your weakness under layers of clothes long enough to cover the cuts, even if it's summertime and no one is wearing jeans or long sleeves. you throw the bloody tissues into the toilet and watch the water go pink before you flush them into oblivion, and you wish it were really that easy."
— handle with care / jodi picoult
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She's the type of girl who can waste her life away on a labtop, just typing and clicking and watching.
Some people don't understand her, and Claire's just simply okay with it; she wipes her grape lipstick off with a saffron colored towel – she sniffs it – which has traces of Indian spices near the corners. She's been spinning away the daydreams, cementing the differences between free fall and hanging on with her blood caked fingernails peeling off layers, only to find even more and the chipping away never amounts to anything.
Claire used to doodle on her wrists during class, getting bored enough, easily, but he notices her when she's the only one who's actually paying attention to the lectures – hanging on to every last word as if the world depends on it; the teacher pairs them together for this English project.
And we danced all night, to the best song ever, she hums, words running through her head, falling out on the other side.
Sometimes, she spends the rest of the evening conversing across the internet with complete strangers, sometimes unconsciously plucking at the strings of her violin, peeling off the horsehair bow as the violin is banged against the piano seat, all the while staring at the photograph on the wall.
It's been there for a while, for as long as she could remember, and Claire's memorized every last detail of the photograph, from the way that the woman's lips curl up only one side – lopsided smiles are one thing they share in common – to the way that the man looks completely in bliss with the woman in front of him, a slight barbecue stain on the bottom of his worn out polo; they're holding two children below them, a Todd and a Claire Lyons.
Her younger brother — he could have been eleven today — a Todd Lyons had flaming red hairs and dimples; he's got a wide grin and is pulling at Claire's braids in the picture. She's reprimanding him slightly, but Claire can tell that she loved him. She still does.
Claire holds onto this photograph because it's all she has left. Her mother died in a car crash when she was barely two years old.
When she turns eight, the family who adopted her of the news but she doesn't bother to break down in tears, only taking a deep breath before asking the question – one of the many that floats freely through a constricted mind. "What was her name?" She takes a deep breath, waiting for the response, which comes only shortly after.
"Judi," Mr. Block; she can't find a way to call him Father or worse, William, "―Judi Lyons, and Jay Lyons."
Claire falls asleep that night with the photograph clinging to her chest, tears falling down her feeble frame; she wipes them frantically and after an hour when they don't seem to stop she rubs her back herself, and wipes the tears away, because she doesn't have a mother to do that for her.
When she wakes up, she realizes that she's fortunate – that people in this sort of situation – don't have everything that she has, and even though there's this hole in heart, Claire has a family. Glancing around the room turns out to be a mistake; there are knick knacks of all sorts, assorted flowers compiled by color and placed in their corresponding vases on the miniature coffee table, a mixture of Pollack and Picasso designed as the ceiling's painting, the starry night that she falls asleep to watching. The side door is firmly bolted, white curtains extended open on the other side of the room, opening up to a wide expanse of flowers and hedges, complementing the light lilac of the room.
Nevertheless, it's not what she had wanted, and that's all that matters.
In the afternoon, Claire softly munches onto the slices of pear that lie inside a bowl, the silverware bended slightly with the familiar monogram embedded onto the top of the fork; she wonders if she could plunge the fork into her dried veins, and maybe then the pain would come to a close. It was at least worth a shot – she feels numb – and remembers that she had been dead for a long time, just realizing it then.
While playing the instruments, plucking the strings and bowing furiously across them in a rote manner, pressing down the keys and the flats, stretching fingers to create a distance that Rachmaninoff himself would be proud of, there's no real emotion behind any of it. Food slides down her throat, numbly, sticking in the back of it along with the rest of the vegetable crackers and fruit roll ups that had been stuffed, the saccharine sweetness only covering up her bitter insides.
There's only so much time that she could keep up these lies; Claire didn't want to live like this. On the other hand, she couldn't not imagine not having the luxuries of living as though she was a royal up on a hill, but everybody knows that real life fairytales come crashing to a startling end soon enough.
Everything's all play and fun until the tears start springing; there's not enough glue in the world to fix her broken heart.
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Claire hates nose rings, high socks, and horror movies; she also hates cramped spaces, lipstick, and Joshua Hotz.
Everything's fine until she turns fifteen – the ohsodreaded age – and learns that she's not an only child. It's not more of a surprising discovery because this world of dreams was bound to come crashing down at some point or another, so why not now, of all times? While skimming through the credit card bills she had noticed the fact that her parents, the Block's, were conducting several expensive searches through international orphanages.
They find a Massie Block approximately three years after the searches have began, and with the help of several blackmailing techniques including large bags of money and impersonations get their real daughter back, the one that they had put up for adoption back in the days. The day that her life is ruined, Claire stands on the second floor in front of the tilted mirrors, and tilts her head from side to side, examining the plaid skirt that reaches down to the middle of her thighs and the slightly baggy striped shirt with different shades of pink, an HG logo on the side; polka dot tank top seeps through.
She walks outside, with a wide small on her face with the Block's, who immediately hug her and tell her that she looks beautiful – doesn't she always? Her friends have showed up too – Alicia Riviera; Kristen Gregory; Dylan Marvil, for support, they reassure her and Claire knows that she can't have better friends that them. Everything changes with them, that day too.
The assembled group of teenagers and adults hold their breath as a limo pulls up around the corner, coming to a smooth halt at the foot of the driveway; And, out walks the devil incarnate.
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All of her friends aren't really her friends anymore — then again, when have they ever been? — and Claire's just probably been too blind before to realize it; she's sitting in her bedroom, the light switch is still on high along with the rotating fans that threaten to cut out the power in the midst of a summer heat faze. Biting slowly upon a piece of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, the crumbs spill onto the mahogany table and the carpetted floor, water spills masked by towels and sheets spread across. Kicking her legs, slowly in a relaxing back and forth motion, she plugs in back her headphones and closes the tabs that have been opened weeks earlier, the empty screen taunting her to typetypetype but all Claire has the energy to do, and always ends up doing in the end is quitquitquit.
Everybody's already told her all the hard things in life; that life is going to get better but she stops believing her foster parents after a while, because they're probably still keeping secrets from her. In the end, isn't everybody? There's nobody to trust, and there's nowhere to run because she'll be caught by the end of the day. The first time that she ran away from home, she was only seven years old and both Mr. and Mrs. Block were yelling loudly at each other; she brought along her teddy bear and allowance, and watched one of those Disney movies in the IMAX theater, munching on pieces of caramel popcorn while smiling at the dreamy screen.
If only real life could be like that, Claire had thought to herself — by the time she had finished three movies and a large popcorn, she had returned back to the mansion but her parents had barely noticed that she had left in the first place; it was almost as if she was invisible, or maybe she was just an inconvenience.
There's a sudden noise from downstairs, the sudden beep of the alarms and Claire immediately checks her cell phone for the call from the Block's, but it had never come; they always called before coming in, yet the security alarm was still blaring loudly.
She grabbed a hairbrush; the best weapon ever from the shared bathroom her and Massie had. The Block's could afford much better than that, but it was their weak attempt for their daughter's sisterly bonding, something that was never going to happen in a million years though Claire had tried several times.
Somehow, Massie just didn't want to make friends with a loser in overalls who loved sugary candy; also, it could have gone down to the time that Claire had gotten the guy — Cam Fisher, soccer boy with cute eyes — all the way back in seventh grade, and Massie had never forgiven her for that. Nevertheless, the two of them were still going strong though it was already tenth grade, and most relationships weren't supposed to last this long.
Walking slowly down the steps, Claire locked her bedroom door behind her, from the top and the bottom, and creeped down the hallway, until she reached the cold hardwood floor of the mansion's bottom floor. There's a sudden noise from the back of her and she squeals, screaming as loud as possible, "I'm armed, and I'm a black belt in karate."
A figure comes out of the dark, dressed all in black; Claire immediately assumes what she hopes is a black belt karate position, legs crossed and nearly falls over, pushing herself back on her feet and instead drops her hairbrush on the island. "Josh?" She's seen him a few times before in the Block's house — it's usually when she interrupts some sort of strange make out session in Massie's bedroom, in which Massie comes chasing after her with a flaming hot straight iron in one hand and a tweezer in the other, and they end up in some sort of fight where Massie is berating Claire who just ends up standing as far away as possible, nodding quickly.
"Yeah, it's Josh? You're not Massie," he says, more to himself. "What are you doing here?"
She flees back to her bedroom, closing the door and locking it quickly with her heart pounding in an erratic manner — and she just doesn't even know why.
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It's Valentine's Day in July, the most stupid of holidays that this summer camp could have devised; but everybody in Westchester, between the ages of nine and eighteen ends up there by the end of the summer, and it's not exactly the type of camp that she's been used to back in Florida, where camp meant no cell towers and enjoyable activities without technology and prissy clothing and makeup being needed, and Claire declares that this place doesn't exactly qualify as camp.
She's participated in a few activities, but it's usually something that nobody else wants to be in — the Block's and the Rivera's practically own this camp — but they've never asked Claire once what she would like, instead leaving it to the real children, Alicia and Massie, to plan everything that was to happen.
The rest of the girls exclude her — on Massie's command; because they'll always listen to their alpha — but sometimes, she wonders what could happen if they were nice to her. Claire doesn't spend too much time thinking about that, though, and instead remembers that this is her birthday, the thirteenth day of July, one of the worst Mondays. She's wearing this lace dress, with the small kitten heels, lithe arms placed behind her back as she walks out of the deserted cabins, ignoring the water balloons that have been launched at her for days now, walking to the outskirts of the camp where there's a small bench.
She comes here often, whenever she just wants to be alone or just think for a while. It's a distraction from the world of technology and social imperialism, and just wishes that things could go back to the days where life only revolved around who got the best grades, or whoever was the nicest girl in school. Claire places her phone in her left hand, and goes wading in the water for a while, as if she's participating in a cleanse, trying to rid her body of the attribute, of all the chemicals that made everybody hate her. It doesn't work, however; Claire's tried this for months but still everybody hates her.
Someone might say that Claire's in denial, but she manages to convince herself — only to fall asleep at night — that this world is just a dream, and everybody loves to her; it's just a little hard to believe when people try tripping her during the camp and school presentations, and exclude her from everything as if she's vermin.
Somebody taps on her shoulders, and Claire immediately ducks in reflex and then sees those familiar pecan brown eyes and smiles, scooching over on the bench. "Hey, Josh," she says, with a warm smile, wondering what exactly he was doing her. He sits down, letting out a big sigh. Passing over a crumpled note, Claire reads it and her smile immediately fades; Hey, Josh. Meet me in the middle of the dance floor at 8:00 tonight, m'kay? xoxo, Massie; and she can't help but feel as though the light green transcends to the feeling of jealousy spreading quickly and everlasting. There's nothing unexpected about this, and Claire can't help but say, "What's wrong with that? She is your girlfriend, y'know."
He hands her something, "I have something for you," — and it's this valentine thing, with a large box of candy; and she smiles a little to herself. "Aww, thanks Joshie!" She envelops him in a bear hug, and lets go in a millisecond afraid of holding on too long because you know that when you have something good, it's always going to slip away and belong to someone else. "Thanks so much, really; it's really sweet of you, Josh."
And, then there's another voice behind her, and Claire stands up immediately, brushing her clothes off and says, "Is this about Massie; because, she's totally over you," Claire continues, hands on hips. She's speaking to a Derrick Harrington who immediately starts laughing.
"No, I have something for you, though," he attributes, handing over a box of candy and a large plush Valentine's Day teddy bear — the one that you can only win from countless games of winning in the arcade — and Claire smiles, and hugs him before seeing the text message on her new phone and runs out of the area, tears already falling quickly down her worn face, trailing down blushing cheeks, onyx fingernails trying to claw at wispy blonde hair, all blurs of colors.
Her mother's dead.
Not her birth mother — that case is still unsolved — but Kendra Block and she ends up crying on her mattress; Massie slowly opens the doors, and within minutes they're just holding each other and crying together and it's the most real connection that they've ever had. Weeks ago, all Claire could have wanted was the attention of multiple boys and popularity, but right now all she wants is a sister, and it's the best birthday present she could ask for.
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sorry for any sp&g mistakes in this - i'll properly edit it later. thankyou.