A/N: HEY EVERYONE! Hope school is going swimmingly for all of you unfortunate enough to be attending. My course load is a lot more hardcore this year, which explains the glaring lack of updates recently, but I promise that I'm still in love with this story and I will definitely be finishing it. (You know what they say about slow and steady things, after all!) Anyway, this chapter is a lot darker than the first, but I hope you still enjoy it for what it is. (Honestly, Toby's bit is one of my favorite things that I've ever written. [I LOVE TOBY, especially when he is damaged and honest and remembering the two best friends that he's lost.) Feedback of all kinds is greatly appreciated – especially concerning Emma and Sean's relationship (or lack thereof), which is the portrayal I'm kind of iffy about. I know the details concerning their break-up are kind of hazy, but I promise that'll all be cleared up in the third chapter, which if things go as planned, will be the last.
A/N 1½: Also, there's some fanwanking in this chapter – you'll see. As always, simply go with it, por favor.
Degrassi, not mine. Chapter title/lyrics, not mine. The awkward and sarcastic this story is chock full of? All mine, baby.
Part Two: Falling, Fallen, We All Fall Down
and
don't you squint at me because your childhood was the pits
every
single one of us have trodden through our shit
I.
"Go on – Jimmy – just a few words, please. Jimmy Brooks, everyone!"
Jimmy stared at Hatzilakos blankly for a few horrifying silent moments; she grinned and beckoned him forward. He turned to his left – Sean was shrugging helplessly; to his right, Toby was fighting back laughter. So this was it, he told himself as he slowly pulled his wheelchair out of neutral and rolled forward. This was the single most embarrassing moment of his entire twenty-seven years on the planet. He'd previously thought that nothing could top getting shut down by Ellie in grade twelve, the first time – oh, how wrong he'd been.
He turned to his right, wheeling along as slowly as he could manage to stave off the inevitable. The audience, unable to remain quiet for such a long period of time, started buzzing with whispered conversation and muffled giggles. The familiar freak show feeling was coming on, complete with the bile rising steadily up his throat.
A left, and he was working his way up the ramp that had been installed especially for him, a year or so after he'd gotten out of the hospital. Hatzilakos, that bitch – she had no right to do this, spring a speech on him like this. He had expected a few boring hours and some awkward conversation out of the day, not – not sitting in front of at least four hundred bored, cynical teenagers. What was he supposed to do? Enlighten them with his crippled wisdom?
He didn't have anything worth saying, anyway. Don't get shot? Avoid kids who beat up their girlfriends? Run fast, just in case?
It took an eternity, but he finally reached the mike that Hatzilakos had oh-so-kindly lowered to his height. Jimmy gulped, gazing out into the sea of Degrassi students. They stared blankly back at him, slouched over in their chairs and popping gum lazily.
"So, um, hey, everyone," Jimmy began awkwardly, "I'm, uh, Jimmy Brooks – although I guess most of you have, uh, figured that out by now. I'm living in Ottawa right now, working on a lot of different projects – a tee-shirt line, some articles for local papers, and I'm trying to open up an art gallery with a curator buddy of mine. I'm just your average starving artist – living off of pasta in my slightly sketchy apartment. I'm going to be honest, here, guys – I love it."
"But, um, yeah, as enlightening as the previous speakers have been – it's good that you guys know, uh, the exact number of reported serious bullying cases in the past ten years – four thousand, eight-hundred and ninety-two, huh? Wow. And that rap video was just, well, totally fitting…" He chuckled awkwardly, hoping to convey just enough sarcasm to get the cranky adolescents to like him. "But what happened ten years ago, today, in that hallway, right over there – it wasn't about statistics. Or numbers. Or the national decline of suspension for bullying-related infractions – thirty-eight percent, who knew? It was about one kid – Rick E. Murray. He was pretty smart, didn't have many friends – bullied. A lot. One kid, who finally decided that he'd had enough. Of getting shoved into lockers, tripped in the caf, pushed around in gym class and ignored by girls and getting paint dumped on him the one moment where he thought he'd shine –"
Emma, seated in the front row next to Toby, stood up. Muttering apologies and excuses, she bent down to grab her purse off the floor (much to the excitement of the pimply kids behind her) and scurried out of the auditorium. Jimmy paused, for a moment, considering his next words.
"The presenters seem to be placing all of the blame for this thing squarely on the shoulders of the kids who bullied Rick. Of course, they aren't blameless. I mean – I was one of them. We had our reasons for what we did to Rick, noble as they may have seemed at the time – but it wasn't just them. Us. Rick was a victim, yeah, in a lot of ways – but no one forced him to bring that pistol with him to school. He chose his own path, violent and destructive as it was. Lots of kids who are bullied in high school make it out perfectly okay. I'm sure we've all been bullied to some degree, in our lives – granted, not as harshly as Rick was, but – he made a choice, that day."
Jimmy was rambling; he had a tendency to ramble. He recognized this fact, internally, as he blabbered on and on about a day ten years ago that no one but him and Toby and Hatzilakos cared about – but he was too nervous and sweaty and eager to get back to being ignored to do anything to stop it.
"I'm not completely sure…what my exact point is. I guess…you can't pinpoint an exact moment where it all could have been different. Like, if I hadn't picked Rick last in gym the Monday before, he wouldn't have brought the gun in. The shooting was a build-up of everything that was wrong with our school, our society – the cruelty, and the violence." Jimmy gulped, picking a spot at the far end of the gym to stare at.
"On the surface, my life was easily the most affected by everything that went down. Obviously. I mean, I'm in a wheelchair. Crippled, in all aspects of the word. I can never – I haven't sprinted in ten years, or done a lay-up, or walked up a flight of stairs – even my self confidence is pretty much shot." Realizing the dark double-meaning of his last word, he coughed and added hurriedly, "Uh, just ignore that lame, accidental pun. But – what I'm trying to get to is – for everything horrific that happened, I like to think some good came out of it, too. Maybe that's just my inner naïve optimist, but – I can still play basketball, which was pretty much my life before this chair – so I didn't loose that. And, stuck in a hospital room for months on end, I – I discovered how much I loved to draw. And that's my life these days, so… If I had followed the original plan for my life, NBA by eighteen, Hall of Fame by 25 – I never would have found that. And, honestly, I don't know what my life would be like without art."
Jimmy couldn't resist a peek at the audience – while the Degrassi students didn't look exactly enthralled, none of them had fallen asleep yet. Toby had lost all of his sarcastic cheer from moments before – hunched forward, elbows resting on his knees, following Jimmy's words intently. Sean was slouching in the opposite direction, arms crossed and avoiding Jimmy's glance. Hatzilakos looked slightly stunned and the grief counselor who had presented first looked simply furious at Jimmy's acceptance of the entire ordeal. He didn't fit with the picture she'd painted of shooting victims: weepy, crippled, weak – stuck in the past, bitter. It hit Jimmy, right then: maybe he wasn't. Maybe life wasn't as bad as he thought it had to be.
That word struck him – acceptance. He had been shot. Life had gone on.
"It wasn't just me, though. My friend Spinner was the kid who dumped the paint on Rick; the most obvious choice for school scapegoat, since Rick was dead and all. He was shunned, after he admitted it, expelled – but life got better for him, too. Found something to believe in, someone to believe in him. He's a cop, now, doing really well for himself." Toby fidgeted for a moment, adjusted his glasses. Sean ran a hand over his head; gulped and sighed.
"I'm sure the others could tell you – would, if you took the time to get to know them beyond their People side-bar biography blurbs – the shooting shattered us, shattered our collective universe – but our lives aren't defined by what happened, right here, in that hallway, ten years ago today. My life isn't defined by my chair, or my broken spine – Toby isn't defined by how he's probably one of the few people who remembers Rick as more than a psychopath. Sean isn't defined by struggle with the gun that saved the school. We're more than that, more than this."
Jimmy paused. "I'm not trying to belittle the shooting, or what we all went through – the therapy, the nightmares, the isolation. But – it's been ten years, you know? I don't want to say I'm over it, exactly – but I've made my peace. With Rick, with that gun, with my lack of legs. It happened; it's in the past. My name is Jimmy Brooks, I was shot ten years ago. But – I'm alright."
Jimmy took a deep breath and dared another look at the audience. The students seemed surprised that it was over, already; glancing awkwardly at friends to make sure they weren't the only ones clapping.
The applause rapidly gathered momentum; moments later, the entire auditorium was on their feet. Toby, practically jumping up and down with excitement, bellowing Jimmy's name; Sean, grinning openly for the first time and whistling through his teeth. The countless nameless new Degrassi faces were no longer moments away from slumber – they were whooping and cheering. Hatzilakos seemed horrified at the unprecedented turn of events; she had leapt up and was running from reporter to reporter, frantically trying to take back Jimmy's words.
But that wasn't possible. Jimmy grinned and raised a hand in gratitude, acknowledgement – acceptance.
…He had been shot. Life had gone on.
II.
Hatzilakos had trouble curtailing the crowd after Jimmy brought the fucking house down. She practically rolled him off the stage herself, grabbing the mike and screeching as calmly as she could manage for everyone to please, please settle down. Grinning, Jimmy whirled down the ramp and back into his designated spot; Toby and Sean congratulated him loudly, clapping their friend on the back as Hatzilakos glared.
Sean reveled in her anger, thoughts spiraling back to Emma. She'd been gone for almost the entirety of Jimmy's speech, ditching as soon as Rick's name was mentioned. Sean didn't blame her – not that he really blamed her for anything, ever. (The numerous fuck-ups in their relationship always led straight back to him, anyway. Clean the ravine, anyone?) Throughout the entire speech, Sean had watched Jimmy intently, paying close attention – but somewhere at the far reaches of his mind, he'd also maintained a running tab on what Emma would think of Jimmy's words. It was almost instinctive, to him now – the constant commentary, How Emma Nelson Would Feel About Every Aspect of His Life, If He Had Not Fucked Things Up and She Was Actually There. Every time he ate a cheeseburger, opened his wallet, read his horoscope, gulped down a smoothie – there was always a part of him that wondered what she'd have to say. Although, he liked to think that he knew her well enough to replicate it authentically in his head…which sounded creepier than it actually was, really.
"Please, settle! Down!" Hatzilakos bellowed helplessly. The audience collectively rolled their eyes and obliged. "Okay…okay… Thank you for that, inspiring speech, Mr. Brooks!" She laughed awkwardly, and continued, "I just wanted to wrap things up by saying – ten years ago today, this school faced an unimaginable tragedy. And today, the victims return to you, all grown up and successful despite the adversary they faced –" – at this, Toby snorted – "– which only serves as an example to you all of the school motto: The perfect human being is all human beings put together, it is a collective, it is all of us together that make perfection. Socrates, everyone. Socrates. A very wise man."
To his left, Toby had shut his eyes, body wracked with silent hysterics. On his right, Jimmy shook his head and muttered, "How does that even relate at all?"
Quickly loosing control of the crowd once more, Hatzilakos finally concluded: "Go back to class, everyone! Back to class! Have a wonderful day! And never forget what these brave people went through ten years ago today! Remember the bravery! Remember the sacrifice! Degrassi Community School, class of 2007 – remember!"
"Remember to tell my husband to wire last month's alimony check, I'm scheduled for another Botox injection at three-thirty!" Toby coughed.
Sean grinned as he stood up, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck. As they waited for the students to file out the back, Jimmy twiddled his thumbs as Toby surveyed the gym. The three boys hadn't been friends at school, they hadn't spoken in years – thrown together only by this day, ten years ago.
"That speech – that was fucking awesome, Jim," Sean offered to ease the silence.
"Yeah, dude, it was ridiculous, I think Hatzilakos crapped her pants!" Toby agreed eagerly as they followed a crowd of giggling girls down the aisle.
Jimmy smiled and muttered a humble thank you. All the attention post-paralysis had quenched his former thirst for the spotlight three times over. The days when Sean and Jimmy hated each other seemed so far off, now.
They filed up the aisle and out into the hallway, swallowed by swarms of loud teenagers cracking gum and rolling their eyes dramatically every other sentence.
"Were we ever this annoying?" Toby asked as he pushed past a girl engrossed in some sort of epic text battle.
"I would like to say no, but…" Jimmy grinned and shrugged.
"We were endearing," Toby concluded firmly.
Sean flashed back to himself, circa grade nine: bandana, hoodie, wifebeater. Glaring and blaring inappropriate rap; mouthing off and rolling his eyes as he stole electronic equipment in a passive-aggressive attempt to hurt Emma.
"I was… a delinquent," he remarked matter-of-factly. Neither Toby nor Jimmy denied this.
"So you aren't anymore?" Toby asked cheerfully as they wandered past the locker Sean had slammed in Emma's face.
"You can't be a delinquent in the army, you get shot," Jimmy replied casually. At his last words, he shook his head and sighed. "You know, I really have to work on eradicating that word from my vocabulary."
"Are you stationed – in Iraq?" Toby asked, an edge in his voice. Sean nodded; Toby widened his eyes. "Man, that's crazy. I could never do that. Good – good for you."
That wasn't the reaction Sean was used to. Usually, news that he was in the army spurred skeptical looks and harsh political accusations. Blatant respect was rare. At that moment, Sean could not for the life of him remember why he and Toby had fallen out of touch.
"Thanks, dude. I – I do what I can, you know?" Sean grinned; he loved his job. He had about a month left of leave, but he was already anxious to get back in uniform.
"Could you imagine me as a soldier?" Toby asked, adjusting his glasses and snorting once more.
"I would fear for our country if they were letting you in the army. You are probably the reason they voted against the draft, man," Jimmy replied.
"You're probably right," Toby agreed easily. Looking around, he changed the subject abruptly. "So where'd Emma go?"
"I think when you mentioned Rick, Jimmy – it was too much," Sean muttered, grateful for an excuse to talk about her.
"She was really fucked-up after the shooting," Toby noted, a degree of sadness in his voice. "And… I don't think she ever got any less fucked-up afterwards; just better at hiding it." He shoved his hands into his pockets and added, "I'm going to go see if I can find her."
He marched off immediately, before Sean could voice his meager protest that he should be the one chasing after her, saving her. Oh, well. At least Toby was able to string together a coherent thought in her presence.
It occurred to him then how he must sound: absolutely fucking pathetic. He focused his thoughts on other things: nearly getting shot ten years ago; Jimmy actually getting shot ten years ago. Those were the things that mattered.
He skimmed his mental list of things to get done before he headed back to the Middle East: sprint two miles a day to maintain his shape. Visit his parents; dump their stash of booze when they weren't looking. Get his car fixed at Morty's and check to make sure Jay hadn't overdosed yet. Get a copy of Craig's new CD – unoriginal, weepy guitar strumming that it was, he still had to support the guy. Eat as much McDonald's as his body could take.
Sean and Jimmy stood next to each other, underneath a Carl Sagan quote Sean had never completely understood. Neither had said a word since Toby had left; the awkward surged.
"That – speech, Jim," Sean said, again, but what else was he supposed to do? "Good stuff."
"Thanks." Jimmy rolled over to a windowsill that peered out over the courtyard. "So, where are you going now?"
"Immediately?" Sean plopped down next to him. "Back to the hotel. Maybe later I'll see a movie. What about you?"
"Staying with my parents for the week, so I'll probably wander around a bit before calling one of them to pick me up. They mean well, but – I'm not some crippled teenager anymore, you know?"
"Yeah, you're a crippled adult," Sean retorted. He automatically resented anyone who took their parent's love for granted.
Jimmy took the remark with a stride, laughing as he replied, "Yeah, I guess the fact that I have to call one of them to pick me up at twenty-seven kind of kills the whole rebellion thing, right? It's just – today, especially, they're just – it's hard to explain. They don't really get it, not that I blame them, but – going out to a fancy dinner isn't going to excuse the fact that I got shot ten years ago today."
"Neither is a drawn-out ceremony."
"Yeah, Hatzilakos doesn't really get it either. I don't think anyone does…" Jimmy trailed off. Sean finished his sentence instinctively.
"Except, you know, us."
The silence that followed wasn't so awkward.
III.
Toby strolled into the closest girl's bathroom nonchalantly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. He really had no shame.
He ducked down and surveyed the stalls – they were all empty, save for one; just as he had expected. A pair of black heels, a pair of sexy legs – were wrapped around the toilet, emitting small, sad little retching sounds. The noises halted as soon as Toby let the door slam shut.
"Hello?" he called cheerfully.
Emma's reply was sarcastic and spiteful, to make up for the fact that Toby had caught her throwing up in a toilet. "Toby? Either you really are a girl, or you're hanging out here, waiting for the next hot high school chick to mack on."
"Option three, actually," Toby replied, leaning against a sink. He knew he should get comfortable; he was going to be here for a while. "I'm here to tell my friend Emma Nelson that, despite what she may have heard, puking all your problems away doesn't really work."
"How would you know?" Emma snapped. She didn't even bother to deny it. Toby hoped this was a good sign – after all, admitting you had a problem was the first step, blah blah blah.
"I used to have an eating disorder, too, you know."
"For like a week!"
"I was still caught in the brutal trap of conforming to society's rigid ideals; I even fainted. We're practically ED twins. Except, of course, I didn't have bulimia, technically; I used laxatives instead of purging – it tasted a hell of a lot better, if you ask me, since you can get chocolate flavored. But then it's really gross coming out– three hours later, you're stuck crapping – well. Moving on. Tomayto, tomahto, I guess."
"This isn't funny, Toby."
"But I'm trying, I have to get points for trying," Toby paused; he could feel Emma's eyes rolling skyward. "You must have missed me, all these years, eh?"
"Missed the annoying dork with a tendency to interrupt my self-destructive rituals? Like you wouldn't believe."
Toby let out a brief chuckle; witty banter aside, it was time to get serious. "Emma. I thought you stopped all of this."
"I did, for a while. I knitted; I went to therapy; I ate three meals a day and used the toilet for all the right reasons." Emma flushed. "But then... When me and Sean broke up, I was living in Vancouver, and suddenly I was all alone, in this random city, working at a job I didn't even really like. I had to deal with school, work, rent – all of it, completely alone. And I just… couldn't."
"And puking up meals solved all of this, I assume."
"Well, no, but – you know the deal. The one aspect of my life I could control, and all that."
"Why did you and Sean break up, anyway?"
Emma sighed. "It's a long story that ends with him happily saving lives in the army and me, here, straddling a toilet, talking to you."
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
Emma actually laughed this time; a good start. "You're so much like JT, it's frightening."
"I like to think his tendency to make inappropriate jokes at inappropriate times lives on within me." Toby grinned, despite himself – thoughts of JT always spurred that reaction. In passing, at least; if he thought too hard about all that had been lost, Toby would probably end up crouched over in the stall next to Emma. "But you realize that Sean couldn't stop staring at you throughout the entire assembly, right? Unless that's a bad thing, and you don't want him staring at you. In which case, he was probably dozing off and just happened to be blankly looking at you as he slept… with his eyes open. If Sean can do that. If…" he faltered, "humans can do that."
"Really?" Emma asked, her pitch a few octaves higher than usual. She hurriedly coughed and muttered, "Not that it really matters to me, though. At all. Really."
"It's good to know you've moved past him," Toby remarked dryly. He was, to be honest, enjoying this – it was refreshing to focus on someone's insecurities' besides his own – refreshing to be reminded that girls like Emma Nelson even had insecurities.
"Enough about my shitty life… How have the past eight years been for you, Tobs?" Emma asked, shamelessly changing the subject. Toby saw through her bluff, but took the bait anyway.
"Uh…" He stuttered and bought time, unsure if he should actually tell Emma the truth. How his job had him staring blankly at a computer for hours on end; his nights consisted of a depressingly silent phone and cold Chinese food. How fucking unsatisfied he felt every morning, every afternoon – every second.
Somehow, he got the vibe that Emma would understand.
"Pretty bad."
"And why is that, Mr. Isaacs?" Toby could see her legs slowly pulling themselves up – if she was stepping outside already, that would be a pleasant surprise. But she didn't leave her self-induced confinement, just chose a more comfortable seat on the toilet.
"I work a job I don't even really like, surrounded by people who I don't really like, in a city I don't really like, eating food I don't really like, watching TV I don't really like, in an apartment I don't really like, in a neighborhood –"
"Okay, okay!" Emma cut him off, but her next words were considerably softer. "You're trapped."
"Like a sexually repressed, stay-at-home mother of four."
Emma laughed again; the door to her stall swung open. Pale fingers clutching her purse for life support; eyes wide and rimmed in heavy black liner; hair tousled and dress riding up. "I've got to say, I never expected it." She offered him a small smile and stepped out, fixing her dress and adjusting her hair and fishing an eyeliner pencil out of her bag to re-cake her lids. "Eight years later, me and Toby Isaacs stuck in the exact same realm of suck."
She capped the eyeliner and dropped it back in her bag, smiling at Toby through the mirror. He grinned back, sensing the same old Emma-Nelson-loves-me-most tingle in his ribs. (Some things would never change.)
"Maybe this school really is cursed."
"All alumni are destined to lives of pathetic loneliness…?"
"Or maybe Rick's ghost is spiteful?" Toby asked brightly; Emma visibly winced. It wasn't the first time that Toby took a joke too far, but he ignored her uneasiness and asked, "Do you ever feel…guilty?"
Emma's tone was incredulous. "I kissed the guy, called him a freak… Three hours later, he attempted to gun people down. Uh, yeah, I feel a tad guilty."
"I was – his friend." Toby crossed his arms and avoided looking at Emma. Maybe, after all these years, he would finally get it out. "I was his best friend. I should have known – I should have stopped him."
"There's no way you could have known, Toby. What he did – how could any of us predicted that? I mean – a gun? The hell?"
"We – we talked about it!" Toby shot back fiercely. "We made Columbine jokes, to help us feel better after Spinner shoved us into the wall for the eightieth time that day. Days when math was particularly crappy, we'd decide to blow Armstrong up first!" Toby inhaled quickly – it was the first time he'd ever admitted this aloud. "We – we talked about it. I should have known."
Emma simply looked at him for a few moments. "You were a fifteen-year-old loser, so you joked around a little. A normal kid would never actually act on it, like he–"
"We all knew he wasn't normal. I could have told someone!"
Emma didn't respond at first, just stared at him through the mirror. "Wait – you think – you don't believe this is all your fault, do you?"
"Well, uh, yeah," Toby nodded; he found this to be fairly obvious. "I knew what he was planning."
"Somehow, I doubt that what Rick did was planned."
"But I – we joked, and I knew he was thinking about it, and after the paint – I could have, like, warned Raditch or whatever. But I didn't, I just went back to class. And all these kids were making fun of him, squawking and making chicken noises – and I didn't say a thing. I didn't even stand up for him."
"Toby…" Emma trailed off. "None of this – it's not your fault, at all. You didn't make fun of Rick, or pour the paint on him, or any of that. You didn't do anything."
"That's exactly it!" Toby said with a bitter laugh. "I didn't do a single thing. Didn't tell Raditch, didn't stand up for Rick when it counted, didn't try to stop him once he actually had the fucking gun. Sean – he jumped in the line of fire and wrestled the fucking thing away. Me? I held your hand and cowered in the corner."
"What else could you have done?" Emma asked loudly.
"Something – anything! Tried to talk him down, or gotten you away from there –" Toby shot back, equally as loud.
"Sean nearly died, because of what he did!"
"He was in the papers! He saved the entire school! You saw the fanfare he got back there – even Hatzilakos was fawning all over him, calling him a hero and Degrassi's angel, and all that crap! She hardly even mentioned me!"
"You wish you had risked your life… so you could be famous?"
"I wish I had risked my life – to prove that I had something worth risking in the first place!" Toby bellowed, almost directly down Emma's windpipe – that's how close they were. Emma blinked and backed away; Toby sheepishly wiped away stray tears and cleared his throat. "I …wonder if Rick can see us now, eh? Probably glad he got out of Degrassi when he could, right?"
Emma didn't laugh. "Come on, let's find Sean and Jimmy." She held out her hand; Toby hesitated a second before grabbing it. "Holding your hand is the only thing I remember," she informed him as they pushed through the door out into the hallway. "From that moment – the only thing I didn't block out. Be proud of that."
Toby smiled. Together, they continued down the hallway, hands clasped.
IV.
Emma and Toby found Jimmy and Sean sitting together on a windowsill by the science wing. Jimmy was the first to spot the two, still holding hands – he hit Sean in the arm, muttering under his breath. Sean looked up; his eyebrows shot up. Once they reached them, Toby took his usual route of attempting to ease the awkwardness but only succeeding in making it even more so: "We're pregnant!"
Sean coughed as Emma unlatched her arm from Toby's grip, regretting her momentary lapse in judgment. What if Sean thought she was with – Toby? What if he misread her signals, weak as they were? What if he didn't love –
Emma shut her eyes, ran her tongue over her teeth. Sean Cameron, single army officer. Sean Cameron, not hers anymore.
"We were just –" she explained hurriedly, struggling to come up with a fitting phrase for the conversation she and Toby just had. "– catching up?"
"In a completely nonsexual way, I swear," Toby added sincerely. Emma rolled her eyes, secretly grateful for the awkward comment and Sean's visible reassurance.
"Emma – you okay?" Sean asked quietly.
"Oh, um, yes, I'm…fine. Really. I –" – she locked eyes with Sean briefly and was momentarily inspired to speak the truth – "– remembering this day, everything that happened – I haven't really done that it a long time. It's…it's hard."
He nodded solemnly. She absent-mindedly brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. Oh, fuck, was that a grey bit?
She brainstormed methods to pluck out the offending hair while the boys weren't looking as the small talk continued. By the time she had decided to let it be for now, the topic had drifted towards post-ceremony plans.
"I'm meeting Ash for dinner at seven, but until then I'm totally open," Toby was saying, taking care to emphasize his last few words. Even ten years later, he was still jumping at the possibility of hanging with the cool kids. (The notion that they'd all once frequented different crowds struck Emma as so foreign, now. God, high school sucked.)
"Ash? Really?" Jimmy asked, barely able to suppress his grin. "How is she doing these days?"
"Really good, actually, working for some big name law firm. Single, and looking, just in case anyone in the general vicinity was wondering."
"Nah," Jimmy shook his head. "Me and Ash had our thing, amazing as it was – but it's good to know she's doing well."
"Who said I was talking about you?" Toby shot back. "I for was thinking my sister and Sean would make an excellent couple."
They laughed; Emma stiffened at the thought of Sean with anyone else. That was one benefit (the only benefit) of Sean being in the army – girls? Not so much. At least, in Emma's head.
"What were you planning on doing, Emma?" Sean asked pointedly.
"Me? Um, well, I was just going to head home and watch a DVD with Jack."
"We should, um – you know, before I leave – maybe, possibly – only if you're interested –" Sean stuttered nervously, fumbling over his words.
"What a great idea!" Toby hooted, clapping a hand on Sean's back. "We should all do something, while we're in town – as a matter of fact, how about right now? We're all free, aren't we?" The other three looked to each other, shrugging in a might-as-well-let-the-dork-have-his-day sort of way. Toby interpreted this as a rousing affirmative, growing more excited by the moment. "Alright, sweet! We should go to – The Dot! We totally have to go there! I spent most of my life at that place! I would kill for a plate of their French fries, but, only like a small dog or something – I mean, they're good, but they're not like second-degree murder good –"
The Toby who was excitedly recalling former glory days at the local burger joint was a completely different person than the man who'd shouted in frustration at his lack of anything minutes before. Emma knew Toby well enough to realize that this – this bumbling, eager, awkward joke-making dork – was how he compensated for the empty.
Ten years later, none of their coping methods had altered all that much. Toby rambled, Jimmy drew; Emma puked her guts up and Sean punched things. Some things had changed, however, like how her life was rapidly morphing into a heart-warming dramedy about former high school friends reconnecting in a sad, sick, twisted world. Ten years earlier, a school shooting shattered their innocence – but not their capacity to love! Coming to theatres near you. Lame taglines aside, it was odd. The former geek, jock, delinquent and (of course) the bulimic hippie – going to The Dot for French fries.
