NOTE: Yep, another chapter so soon! Fruipit and I wanted to really get the ball rolling, since we know chapter 1 wasn't much to grab onto. Hopefully this gives you a bit more of a taste of Pepsi Free- I mean, of what's to come!
CHAPTER 2
The sun was setting by the time Anna and Punz parted ways, Anna promising to ring later. She always hated having to but it was inevitable; they were teenagers, after all.
"Don't you have something with Doc tonight?" Punz asked, and while Anna knew the question wasn't intended to bring her down, she couldn't help but groan.
"Yeah," she admitted with a shrug. "The old coot has me running some weird science experiment, but it isn't until after midnight, so…" She smiled crookedly at her friend. "Might get a chance to call."
The last thing she expected was Punz's lips to hit her cheek, soft but sure, before she turned around with a wave. "You better not forget, loser!" she yelled over her shoulder. Anna could only lift her hand in a half-hearted, almost numb, wave in return.
After that, she proceeded to ride a wave of bliss – and her skateboard – all the way back to Aren Estates. With one hand in her pockets in order to keep Punz's phone number safe, Anna was unable to catch a quick ride on a passing jeep. By the time she rolled into her driveway, however, both her jaw and her hopes had dropped to the ground.
Her parents' white truck, the one she'd been given permission to use after the dance, was crumpled from the front bumper to the doors. There was no way it was going anywhere.
Anna's whole heart seemed to freeze, fall, and shatter inside her chest. She slid off her skateboard, staring numbly at the damage. There was a sharp beep, and she looked around. The tow truck that had obviously dragged the poor vehicle home was still in the street. She noticed it start to move, and hustled over to the shotgun window.
"What the hell happened to our truck?!" The driver shrugged, saying he only took down the owner of the vehicle.
As Anna watched her meticulously planned night with Punz slip away, her shoulders drooped. 'Maybe it's just the McFly way. Losers whose shit gets wrecked.'
Her pity party lasted for as long as it took her to turn around and spot two crushed beer cans. Bud Lite.
Her mouth lifted in a sneer. She knew exactly who had done this, because she knew her father didn't drink outside – that was what the couch was for – and her mother, well. Her mother drank other stuff. There was really only one person it could be. Tucking her skateboard under her right arm, Anna scowled and marched towards the front door.
'If that raging dumbass Hans did this… sorry, skateboard. You're about to get broken off in his ass.'
Of course, it was all bluster. Anna heard his annoyingly slippery voice even before she opened the door, and hitched her glare into place as she walked inside. Though that would probably be the worst she did.
"…Who's gonna pay my cleaning bill?" he was demanding of her father. As big of a man as Kris McFly was, he always stood with a hunch, as if to minimise his presence. That let the slightly shorter man tower over him easily.
"Now, Hans, I don't think we need to make a scene," he sighed, scrubbing his fingers through his lanky blond locks. "And I never noticed any 'blind spot' when I drove the truck. Maybe you just-"
"Maybe I what? Hm? You're going to turn this around on me? I never wreck my Jag."
"Then what's it doing in the shop right now?" Anna piped up, voice acid. She couldn't help herself, and if her dad wasn't going to say it, she would.
Hans Tannen turned slowly, head bobbing as he regarded Anna with complete disinterest. Another Bud Lite was in his right hand, and he sneered. "What the hell are you even doing in the shop?" Ducking his head as he took another step, Hans lowered his voice to a threatening whisper. "Diggin' on the new chick there, huh? Lemme save you the trouble: if she did bat for the other team, I don't think she'd want a scraggly, wannabe rock star like you."
Anna bristled, holding her skateboard tighter and raising her chin defiantly. She could snap the board right over his ugly face, but… that would only make it worse for her father. She looked at him, eyes pleading. 'Come on, Dad, stand up for yourself!'
Father and daughter shared a split-second look before Anna grudgingly stepped away. "I've never been to that shop," she said through gritted teeth. "Just… know that's why you borrowed our truck." It felt awful to swallow all the other things she wanted to say, but she also didn't want to make her dad deal with the fallout.
"Whatever," he grunted, taking another swig.
"And that's why. Can't you just, you know, realise that drunk driving is a crime for a reason?"
Whoops. That was exactly what her father had been trying to avoid: confrontations. Hans's eyes narrowed as he stepped closer, leaning over her in such a menacing way that her hand finally did clench into a fist behind her back. Ready.
"At least I can hold my liquor. Unlike some members of your family. Right?" His smile was poisonous, and he reached up to pat her cheek. "Say 'hi' to your mom for me," he told her, making it very clear that he had something else on his mind entirely. "Whether or not she can hear you say it… well, whatever, doesn't matter."
Then he handed her the beer can, startling her into taking it, and turned to leave the house. By the time she thought to lob it at his head, the remnants of the can spilling across the lawn, he was already too far away to notice.
Fuming, Anna turned back to her dad. She wanted to ask him why he did that – why he let himself get walked all over by that douche. Why he didn't seem to have even the most rudimentary of spines at all. Before she even had a chance to open her mouth, he was shaking his head. A plea for her not to ask – one she knew all too well.
"Why don't you go and see if your mother is awake?" he asked softly, and Anna's anger faded away to sadness.
God he was such a coward. She loved him – and her mother – with all her heart, truly she did. But that didn't make her blind to their faults, either.
As she turned down the hallway, stopping by her room to put her skateboard away and to charge her mobile, she thought about her family and where it all went wrong. Surely her father wasn't born a coward? Sometimes she even wondered whether they loved her or not. She was the youngest, a child they probably hadn't wanted but chose to take on anyway. She had some happy memories from her childhood, but they grew sparser and sparser as she grew up. Nowadays, her father had little interest in what she did, provided she stayed out of trouble. He had enough issues in his own life.
Her mother…
Elsa McFly had been beautiful, once. Young and full of laughter. Anna still had a few memories of when she was small, being chased around by a tickle monster with golden hair and a warm smile. When it was just them and everything was happy.
But then she became bitter as Anna grew up. And while she knew it wasn't her fault – at least not directly – it was obvious that if she wasn't in the picture, her parents probably wouldn't have tried to maintain their farce of a marriage.
Perhaps they'd both be happier, apart but without her, than they were together but with her.
Shaking herself, she came to a stop outside the master bedroom. The door was shut, though not completely. There was nothing but darkness beyond, and without knocking, Anna slowly pushed the door open.
There was just enough light, filtering in from the hallway and through the open blinds, to illuminate her mother. Elsa lay on her side, facing away from the door. Upon her bedside table sat a glass of water, untouched, and a bottle of whiskey, half-empty.
Sighing to herself, more from sadness than frustration, Anna stepped into the room. She picked up the glass of water, sitting on the edge of the bed next to her mother. The older woman woke with a start, giving a sharp exhale and a jerk. Anna only just managed not to spill the water on herself, but that was down to the years of practise she'd had more than anything.
"Here, Mom," she said softly. "You gotta stay hydrated."
Elsa let out a groan, covering her eyes. She'd already begun to develop a headache, by the looks of it. "What do you want, Anna?" she asked, still not looking at her daughter or taking the proffered drink. "If you want some money, you'll have to ask your father."
"I want you to drink some water, otherwise the headache'll be worse."
Elsa glared at her. "Don't you tell me what to do," she said. "I'm your mother, not one of your high school friends getting wasted at a house party."
Chest burning, Anna stood up. She half-slammed the water down on the table, letting it slosh over the side a little. There was nothing she had to worry about ruining, after all.
"Just drink the damn water," she growled, before stalking from the bedroom. She let the door slam behind her.
Suddenly, she couldn't stand the suffocating house. Without a car as a means to escape, she ran back to her bedroom and grabbed her skateboard, desperate to leave.
"I'll see you later, Dad," she muttered as she brushed passed him. He heard the door slam, and he still didn't have the guts to stop her. Casting a look back into the house, towards the closed door that hid her mother from the world, she let out a groan.
Within seconds, she was out the door and flying down the street.
~ o ~
An hour had passed by the time she returned. Not that it felt like that long. She'd spent her time listening to her iPod and skating around the streets. Looked at the clocktower flyer a few times, just to remind herself that someone could remember how to show affection. Cried when no one was looking - just a little to vent her feelings.
Her return was just time for dinner, which was on purpose; her family could be more civil during meals, usually. Her older siblings, John and Wendy, were just moving the entrée to the table when she stepped into the dining room. She could smell it a mile away; a frozen lasagna. Again.
"About time you showed up," John said in a snooty voice. He thought that just because he had a managerial job at Pizza Planet – which meant that he was helping support them – that he got to talk down to her. She wanted to kick him for it.
"Yeah, you left your phone here again," Wendy said. She was much more reasonable and independent; she lived on her own and was involved with some guy named Peter. Only came back for dinners most nights because she knew the family needed her support, though it was more emotional rather than financial from her. "It keeps buzzing with calls from 'Punziepoo Gemma'. Who's that?"
"That says 'G-ma'. You know, short for grandma?"
"Oh, I know who it is."
Anna turned with a sinking heart toward the door to the kitchen. Elsa looked a little more put together than she had earlier, and definitely better than some other nights. Miserable, obviously – her clear blue eyes were bloodshot, with dark bags underneath – but she was clean, dressed in a conservative blue sweater and old mom jeans, her blonde hair up in a bun. And in her hand, as always, was a Jack and Coke… or a rum and Coke. She did at least like to switch things up.
It didn't look like she'd drunk any of the water Anna had offered; in fact, it seemed that she'd actually continued drinking where she'd left off, instead of letting herself sober up a bit. There was a definite sway to her step as she moved into the dining room, plonking down on her chair at the end of the table. Glancing past her mother and into the kitchen, Anna could see the same bottle that had been present on her mother's bedside table. This time, though, it was empty.
"Stop fiddling with that television, Kristoff." Elsa's voice distracted her, brought her back to reality. "Dinner time is family time."
Even as she said it, Anna had the impression that Elsa didn't really believe that herself. Wendy was still looking between the two of them. "Well? Who is it? They left like, fifty thousand messages."
Anna knew she should probably be desperate to respond to Punz, let her know everything was fine. To apologise for making her worry. Right now, though, she just wanted to be left alone.
But that wasn't an option, so she took her seat in the middle of the table, equal distance away from her father and her mother. Kristoff finally turned back to the table, and Elsa, whose eyes had closed as she finished off her drink, gave a little hiccup.
"She wants to get in your sister's pants," she replied at last.
"Mom-!"
"Ew!" Wendy added into the mix.
"Now, honey," Kristoff began in a reasonable tone, "let's not be rude at the dinner table."
"Oh, it's fine. She knows I'm right. It's not rude if it's the truth, is it?" Turning her glare back to her youngest, she said in a would-be conversational tone, "I can't believe I raised a young lady to be a… well, when I was her age, that wasn't even a thing. Girls didn't chase girls unless they were trying to beat them up or steal their lipstick – and even then, a true lady would never have done such a thing. You'd certainly never catch me making out with another girl! What's the matter with Millennials?"
Focused on eating his salad, John managed, "They're brats. Don't know how good they have it."
"This is great, Mom," Wendy attempted to derail the conversation. "You sure can unfreeze a lasagna."
"Yeah," Anna commented quietly, more to herself than anyone. "You suck the ice right out of the food and use it on the family instead."
Silence. Wendy's eyes widened and John choked on his food. Anna could see, from the corner of her eye, her father sink lower into his seat.
Her mother didn't say anything.
It was uncomfortable, but that wasn't what made Anna slam her fork down and get up. It wasn't the silence, either – at least not directly. At least if her mother had yelled, or cried, or grounded her, at least then Anna would know she cared. Just before she slammed her bedroom door shut, she heard the beginnings of a new conversation, floating down the hall.
They could be a normal family. She knew that. They just couldn't when she was there.
Dinner was long over with when her mother came to her door. She didn't knock, but then, Anna never expected her to. She simply swung it open and stood there, a fresh drink in hand. For a moment, nothing else happened. They just stared: Elsa toward Anna, and Anna toward the wall past the end of her bed.
"You owe the entire family an apology for storming off in the middle of dinner."
"And you owe the family one for always being drunk off your ass all the time."
"ANNA LORRAINE!"
"Can you shut the door again? Don't want my room smelling like a bar."
That was definitely a step too far. Yes, Anna was tired of seeing her mother like that all the time. Yes, she was tired of having her budding relationship with Jen judged and belittled constantly, as if it were somehow worse than Wendy's with Peter. But she was still the child, and Elsa still the parent. So when the angry woman came storming into the room, eyes wide with fury, she flinched from fear and sheer chagrin.
"Listen to me, you little shit!" The hiss was dangerous and full of venom, but there was no strike, nor even a single finger laid upon her. Even in her worst hour, Elsa had never hurt her physically. At least, not yet. "Your father and I have sacrificed everything for you three. You have… NO idea. Even letting you run around and pretend you're a lesbian, messing around with that band of yours instead of applying to colleges. All we ask is that you just… have dinner! Act like you're a part of this family for an hour a day! And you're so damn selfish that you can't even manage that!"
"Selfish?" Anna let out a short bark of laughter, her blood beginning to boil as her emotions finally caught up with her: fear, exhilaration, and a rising anger. She was about to do something incredibly stupid, and she just didn't care anymore. "Selfish is never spending a single sober moment around your own daughter, someone you are supposed to love and care for."
Anna stood abruptly, almost whacking Elsa in the face with her head as she did so. They were face-to-face like a pair of hissing cats, her tirade washing away any doubts she had before.
"I am a part of this family – more so than you, anyways! You can't even manage to have one normal moment with us! Where you even look us in the eyes! Where is the 'how was school'? Where is the 'I love you'? Where is the 'maybe I wont drink as much just this once so I remember what the hell happened during dinner'?!" Anna was shouting by this point, eyes wet. She wasn't crying, though; she refused to let her mother see her cry. "Real moms care about their daughter's lives! Real moms care about their daughter's bands and girlfriends, i-instead of telling them what they want to do with their lives is stupid! Selfish is forcing me to do something I don't want to do in order to make you feel better about your wasted life. Selfish," she cried, seizing the glass from her mother's hands, "is this shit!"
She wasn't sure if she threw it on purpose or if it just slipped. Either way, the glass smashed against the wall, leaving an impressive dent and littering the ground in a million shiny shards. The contents spilled across the carpet, staining it a sticky brown. Elsa McFly stood silently, her mouth agape at the unexpected resistance, the violent noise and the mess, and the razor-blade edge of Anna's words.
"I wish I had never been born! And you probably do, too! Now leave me alone!"
Anna stood, panting with exertion as tears rolled down her cheeks. Fuck, and now she was crying. She stared, anger still bubbling in her stomach, but fighting for dominance against the unexpected pity she felt for the shell of a woman before her. The anger was standard procedure. Didn't she even care?
But apparently, this time she had struck a chord. Elsa closed her mouth and turned to leave the room, a sad, dejected figure in place of the bitter, angry harridan that had come in to admonish her. Through her tears, Anna almost missed her quiet parting words before she closed the door.
"I could never wish that, Anna. I do love you. I just… can't show it the way you think I should."
The door closed with a soft click, one that somehow seemed louder than anything else that had transpired that night.
Anna buried her face in the pillow and cried until sleep took her.
~ o ~
It was after one in the morning when Anna's phone went off and woke her. Just as Wendy had said, it was still plugged into the charger on her nightstand, completely charged and full of voicemails from the iPhone-deprived Punz. This time, though, it wasn't Punz. Only one person ever bothered calling her on a regular basis – and it wasn't her parents.
"Miss McFly!" a somewhat scratchy voice called through the line, not quite as clear as the phone company had claimed it would be. Though, perhaps that was her sleepiness coming into play.
"Doc?" she croaked, sitting up and rubbing her face. "What's… hmm?"
"Did you forget? The experiment is tonight!"
Shaking her head, she cleared her throat and managed to mutter, "No, no, I've been up for hours. I swear." The lie was only a little white one; she hadn't actually intended to fall asleep. It was a byproduct of everything that had happened that day: losing the gig, and her weekend with Punz; the fight with her mother; the crying.
Her whole stupid life.
"Great! I need you to pick up my video camera on your way to the mall parking lot."
"Nobody still uses those," she muttered, but had to stifle a yawn before she could get any further in her rebuttal. "Can't I just record it with my phone?"
"This is too important to leave to chance. I don't trust 'cloud storage' or any of that newfangled claptrap; accounts getting hacked! WikiLeaks!"
As she struggled into a pair of jeans, she managed to mutter, "Illuminati confirmed." Then she took a swig of leftover PepsiMax before she said, "I'll be there, Doc. Later," and hung up. Then she dumped the rest of the contents in the trash because it tasted like it had been sitting there for a week – and to be fair, it probably had.
But maybe this distraction was a blessing. The Doc's experiments didn't always work, but they were at least always interesting. At this point, Anna would take just about any excuse not to have to think too hard about her family.
The spring weather was just a little too chilly for Anna to go out at night in just her faux-vintage Guns N' Roses tee, so she threw on a thin blue flannel – queer pride! – and grabbed a red puffer vest to go over it, just in case. Maybe it made her look like a terrible Supergirl closet cosplayer, but whatever. Then she was carrying her skateboard and Vans as she snuck through the house.
As she crept to the front door, hand coming to rest on the handle, she heard a voice behind her hiss, "Where do you think you're going?"
No time wasted. "Out."
The carpet muffled any noise, but Anna had a feeling her mother had taken another step forward. She didn't sound as drunk as before, but that was no surprise. They'd had this fight before, and all it ever achieved was a temporary respite.
But in the end, the addiction always won, and Anna always lost.
"You walk out that door, and you're grounded from seeing that Jennifer Punzel ever again."
"You can't do that!" she said in a tight voice, whipping around. "She's the only thing helping me survive this trainwreck of a family right now. Take her away, and all you'll have is a dead kid on your hands. Wouldn't that be annoying?"
Silence. She turned the doorknob, taking a last look at her mom's face, almost wishing for another fight. Another reason to storm out, or slap her. She wanted the woman who had raised her to act like she cared; Anna was daring her to. But what she got was worse.
Elsa McFly was weeping freely, making no noise, but pushing a wad of tissues into her mouth and nose as her eyes streamed. It had been a while since she had seen her that low… and even longer since it had been her fault.
"Anna… where did I go wrong with you? I can't… figure you out. I try but I can't. Why can't we understand each other?"
"Mom..." But she couldn't stay, and she hoped, somewhere deep inside, that Elsa understood why. So she merely whispered, "I won't be gone long. I just have to help Doc with something, and then I'll come straight back home and go to bed."
They both knew it was a lie. This wasn't the first time Anna had left at odd hours. It wasn't even the first time Elsa had tried to stop her. But it was the closest either of them had gotten, in a very long time, to actually opening up to one another.
Despite that, Anna still found herself unable to stay; unable to comfort her mother, who so obviously needed it. Elsa offered no argument as she left; even as Anna shoved her feet into her shoes and began skating away, a small part of her was desperate to return. To hug the woman who, once upon a time, was her mother in more than just her title.
She could even imagine a future where, for once, her life went right. They'd hug and cry, and tomorrow they'd wake. Elsa would be sober and Anna happy, and maybe they could actually be a family. Her father would stand up for himself and John would have a revelation of just how important family was. Wendy might actually be free of them, able to be the person she was supposed to, instead of being dragged down by her unbalanced family.
Once the idea was in place, it was hard to shake. And it burned, leaking out of her eyes and down her wind-whipped face as she skated towards Doc's home. That was only ever going to be wishful thinking. She was tempted to sneak over to Punz's – there she could cry without fear of being judged. There she could ask for a smile and receive a hug, just for good measure. Punz cared about her because she wanted to; because to her, it was as natural as breathing. Their families cared because they were obligated to. When was the last time they said that they loved Anna? Scratch that – when was the last time they said they even liked her?
Was her being part of their lives really all that bad?
Swallowing down all those self-destructive worries, Anna tried to refocus. She was going to help Doc with his stupid experiment, and then she was going over to Punz's grandmother's place and confessing all of her feelings. It was so easy to waste time without telling people how much they meant. She wasn't going to be anything like her parents. That she could promise herself.
To Be Continued…
