Author's Note: I'm weirdly excited about updating this. This probably won't end up being much of a pairing chapter, but I hope it's enjoyable anyways.

Disclaimer: The Long Walk does not belong to me in any way, shape, or form.

Stebbins took the liberty of watching Barkovitch leave until he was no longer visible, and then turned to walk into his house. A thorny bush caught on the hem of his pants, and he glared down at it, quickly disentangling himself from it.

His mother probably wasn't home, she was probably still at the restaurant. Damn, she worked long hours. Stebbins sighed and opened the door, it was unlocked as always.

The inside of his house was just as ghostly as the garden. Old photographs hung on the wall, completely undusted, and a lot of the furniture had plaster over it. He hung up his jacket and began making his way up the stairs, feeling each one creak under his feet. He really ought to tell his mother that their house needed fixing.

The stairs didn't creak when his father walked on them. They moaned and screamed as though they were being slowly tortured. Whenever his father came by, the whole house seemed to be on edge.

But he pushed that thought of his father from his mind and stepped off of the last stair. The upstairs floor carpeting was covered with dust, which seemed to rise in the air as he stepped across it.

His room was sparsely decorated, with nothing but a bed and a closet in it. Nothing on the walls. And the far wall was all a window, and contained a window seat that he called the dreaming seat, because he enjoyed sleeping on it far more than on his bed.

Stebbins sat down on his bed and looked contemplatively up at the ceiling, pulling his old, green sweater off of him. He always wore long sleeves at school and around his mother. No matter what weather. Always long sleeves.

The fabric rubbed against a fresh scar and he winced. Looking down at his bare arms through the pale fabric of his shirt, one wouldn't notice anything abnormal. But once you turned over his wrists...he had a...habit, that no one had been encouraging him to break.

He wasn't even sure why he did it anymore. It'd started as stress relief, and he guessed that that was how it had stayed. Something about releasing blood from his body really relaxed him, in a morbid way. He considered getting up and getting a razor at that moment, but...

"Dirk!"

The noise of his mother coming in startled Stebbins, and he quickly pulled on his sweater again. "Mother?" He made his way down the stairs as quickly as he could.

Stebbins' mother was a small, tired-looking woman whose caramel-colored hair was tied back in a bad ponytail and her clothes were always rumpled. "Sorry that I'm late."

"Oh, I only recently got home. I was nearly late."

"Stayed after school again?" His mother put her coat up on the hanger and sighed. "You should really find some friends to be with after school instead of just doing work."

Stebbins thought it would be best not to mention Barkovitch by name. He probably had a bit of a bad reputation. "Oh, someone walked me home. That should be close enough."

"Did you make a friend?" She still treated him like he was seven, despite that he was nine years the senior of seven.

"I don't think so."

"Did you get anything to eat?"

"No."

She gave him a smile that was obviously cracking around the edges. "I'll go make some dinner." She then began making her way through the house, turning on the lights. That was his mother, he thought. Always turning on the lights.

Stebbins sat down in one of the armchairs in the living room and stared off into space. His mother wanted him to make friends. Had he? No, he'd simply walked home with someone. There was a large difference between walking home with someone and being their friend.

He heard a loud sigh from the kitchen. "Dirky, you don't mind having soup again, do you?" She used her pet name for him, which almost sounded foreign to him. Hell, his own first name sounded foreign to him. He wasn't used to being Dirk. He was Stebbins. Stebbins the freak, Stebbins the loner. Not Dirk the waitress's son, Dirk whose father left him.

"Yes, Mother, I'm fine with that. You know I am."

"Dinner's on the table, then." Stebbins got up from the armchair and padded over to the dining room. The dining room looked as though it had been abandoned by one of the families in one of those dumb movies about rosy-cheeked children and magical governesses. The wallpaper was peeling and most of the plates on the table had been broken before and carelessly glued back together.

Stebbins shivered, remembering the last time his father had come around. There'd been a fight, and it had ended with broken plates and blood and crying. The memory of it made him seethe, it was cliché, but he felt responsible for his mother.

"Dirky, I don't think school's open after school tomorrow because there are conferences."

"Oh." He couldn't think of anything to say other than 'oh.' He could always just sit in a coffee shop for a bit, or sit alone in the house. "I could stay here."

His mother sighed. "See, Dirky...the thing is, I feel like I isolated you. You never hang out with any of the other boys or go to any parties or-"

Stebbins cut him off. "That's not a mandatory thing, Mother."

"Why do you always call me 'mother?' Why not 'mom?' Dirk, I don't want you to be isolated from everybody else for all of high school."

Stebbins narrowed his eyes. His mother had a habit of worrying too much. "I enjoy being isolated," he said in a reserved tone.

"You need to have friends. School's not open after school, why don't you go find a friend?"

"You're not suggesting that I spend time with Barkovitch, are you?" He was alright with walking home with the other boy, but actually spending time with him? He didn't think that either of them would be too open to that idea.

"Wasn't that the boy who got into a fight and put someone in the emergency room?" His mother looked quizzically at him.

"No idea," Stebbins mumbled, slightly embarrassed that his mother knew what fights went on at school.

"Are you friends with him?"

"I'm not sure. Perhaps I should ask him." The thing that his mother kept forgetting was that Stebbins didn't know how to make friends. They didn't just spring up out of the ground like magic. You didn't grow them. Somehow they just happened, and Stebbins didn't know how to make that happen.

"Dirk, it doesn't work like that."

Stebbins decided to lie. Perhaps he could go wander around the city for a few hours after school and say he'd gone over to Barkovitch's house. "Fine. I'll ask him if he would like to exchange time after school."

Stebbins' mother sighed. Her son was odd. He spoke like a Lewis Carroll character and was somehow just as reserved. "Good." But Stebbins had already gone up to his room, somehow slipping away without a word.

He lay on his bed and took out his mangled copy of Through the Looking Glass and felt like he could cry. This book had been his since he was about five. It'd been his companion, whenever he felt like the world wanted nothing more than to lash out at him, he could always escape to the twisted world of Wonderland.

So before he went to bed, he placed the pages he'd recovered under his pillow. He knew it was dumb, but he wanted a bit of the book to stay with him. That book was like his friend. He didn't need Barkovitch, or any of the stupid, juvenile boys at school. He had his books, and he bit down hard on his lower lip to keep the tears from coming and convinced himself that he was content.

I really liked giving Stebbins a backstory. This fanfic is really fun to update.