January 2000

Beacon Hills, CA

The Stilinski House

Stiles was a naturally rambunctious child. He had long since mastered the function of speech and was not afraid to over exercise this function. Bea lay nearby on the couch. She was too sick to have attended school that day, and she watched as Stiles played a game of monopoly against himself.

He picked up a toy dinosaur that technically belonged to Bea and made it walk across the game board. "What the heck are you doing?" Bea muttered to Stiles, who glanced over his shoulder at her.

"Want to play Destroy Town?"

Bea snorted and broke into a cough. She sucked in a breath and frowned at him. "Ugh, what are you talking about?"

"Destroy Town!" Stiles danced his dinosaur over to a piece on the game board and made it jump up and down on it. "Destrooooyyy!"

The piece flew off the board and into the floor. They watched as it skidded under the couch and Stiles lifted his astonished gaze to Bea's face. "Good one," she muttered. "That's not how you're supposed to play, anyways."

"Just because you can't play monopoly with one person. I'm one person. If you'd play, there would be two. But you won't." He whined. "You never play."

"That's not true! I played with you last night, Mickey!"

"Yeah, for like two minutes."

She let her head fall back against the cushion of the couch and closed her eyes, gathering her patience. "We played through an entire movie."

"For like two minutes!" He held up his dinosaur toy. "Let's play again."

Bea smacked her hands over her face and groaned loudly. "I can't deal with you right now."

"Hey, that's mean." He shifted and looked towards the kitchen. "Mom! Bea won't play with me!"

"She's cleaning, Mickey. Leave her alone."

Paying no heed to his sickly pale sister, he stood up to swiftly stomp through the dining room into the kitchen. Bea listened to the white noise of the television and waited. She heard the faint voice of her brother and didn't even bother to go defend herself, taking a sip of the warm, sugary tea her father had made before leaving for work about thirty minutes ago.

It was quiet for a long time. Unnaturally long. Bea sat up and looked to the dining room, but stopped short when she saw Stiles standing in the doorway. He wrung his little hands and his bottom lip was pouted. "Mom yelled at me," He muttered.

"What?" Bea sat up farther on the couch, laying her arm across the back. "What happened?"

Stiles merely shrugged, his eyes stuck to the floor.

It took some effort but Bea managed to climb to her feet. She felt a rush of hot and cold, and her head spun. She waited for her vision to return and ignored the ringing in her ears, the chatter and music from the television quieting as she moved towards her little brother.

Stiles lifted his arms up expectantly and Bea sighed heavily at him.

"You're five years old now," She informed him. "You're too heavy for that."

His big, wide, tearful eyes made her resolve break before it even had the chance to fully form. She reached down and grabbed him under the arms to settle him against her hip, and Stiles quickly wrapped his arms around her and laid his head down on her shoulder.

"Don't—" She pulled her head away. "I'm sick."

Stiles sniffled and ignored her. "She won't stop sweeping the floors."

"Okay," Bea placated, deciding that she should assess the situation herself. "We'll just go see."

He reached out to grab her face and turn it towards his so that he could properly convey the gravity of his advice. "Don't walk on the floor, okay? She doesn't like that."

Bea resisted the urge to laugh at him. "Okay. Got it."

When they reached the kitchen, Bea saw her mom bent over the trashcan, which reverberated loudly as she emptied a dustpan and tapped it against the side to get it all out.

"Mom?" Bea lingered in the doorway and watched with Stiles in her arms at her side.

Claudia dropped the dustpan onto the ground and went to start in the farthest corner of the kitchen. She didn't even look in their direction and continued to furiously sweep at the floor.

Bea looked but could see nothing on the floor to sweep. Claudia moved the broom like there was a pile of dirt or mess that she was clearing away. She would start at the edge of the wall and floor and move out, sweeping the broom as if to scatter the invisible mess.

"It looks clean to me," Bea pointed out with a lifted eyebrow. Claudia looked over and pointed at Bea's feet.

"Where are your socks?" She said. "You shouldn't walk around without socks on. This place is a mess."

"My feet were hot." Bea shrugged. She shifted Stiles on her hip, and he sighed.

"Look at this corner! I just have to clean this part. It's not coming up. Do you think Stiles tracked dirt inside?"

"Maybe… Mom, seriously, the floor looks fine. Why don't you come watch TV? I think JAG is going to be on next."

"That's it! You kids are not allowed to wear your shoes in the house anymore! It's hard enough keeping these wood floors clean without having to worry about leaves and grass from the yard!" Claudia swept harder, cracking out a noise of irritation as she jabbed the broom viciously at some imagined spot. "This place is a pigsty!"

Stiles tugged at Bea's shirt. He silently urged her to leave Claudia to herself, and after a long moment's hesitation, she did. Bea and Stiles went back to the living room where she settled him on the end of the couch at her feet before she laid back down and tried not to think about how irritable her mom had become lately.

They made it through a whole three episodes before Stiles had to get up and go to the bathroom, so Bea took advantage of his absence to sneak another look in the kitchen. She saw Claudia in the same corner of the kitchen—sweeping the same spot.

If anything, she appeared even more irritated. The sweep would move in the same way, the same number of times, change direction, and sweet a few more times, before she'd tap it out on the ground and start all over again. Sometimes she would actually catch some stray piece of dust or minute clutter from the ground and she would freak out.

The day went on like this. At noon, Bea left Stiles on the couch to get herself some medicine and grab some lunch from the kitchen. She found that as long as she made a show of taking care to clean up after herself, her mom didn't get too aggravated.

She was able to linger just long enough to make a bowl of macaroni for Stiles, but when she went to cross the floor to the pantry, which was near where Claudia swept, her mom burst with anger and yelled at her to get out.

Bea collected the macaroni for Stiles and left with medicine, but no lunch for herself. Periodically, she continued to peek into the kitchen for the rest of the afternoon, and each time she found her sweeping the same spot. If Claudia noticed her, she would yell at Bea for not wearing socks, and if Stiles came in, she would yell at him to get out of the kitchen entirely.

It's not that Claudia didn't care, Bea told herself. She was just hung up on the state of the floor in the kitchen. Which wasn't even dirty. A small seed of doubt was planted, and as the worry in her chest grew, Bea kept Stiles as separate from their erratic mother as she could for the rest of the day.


New Years Eve 2011

Beacon Hills, CA

High School Gymnasium

"People are scared," The woman said, her eyes red rimmed and raw. She clutched the wadded tissue in her hand and sniffled loudly. All around them, people spoke in low murmurs. Most of the lights were out in the gymnasium but there were so many candles lit that it didn't matter. It did, however, make everything that people said feel more impactful, somehow. "Just scared, you know? These kids keep dying! And how can they be stopped? They're suicides—I mean, what can we do about that?"

Bea adjusted the cardboard drip protector on her candle so she could shift the camera in her hand. She held it closer to the woman, to be absolutely sure everything was caught clearly. "And you said you knew one of those kids?"

She nodded, pain reflecting with the glow of the candlelight in her shining eyes. "Yeah! I knew Casey real well. She works with me at the donut shop on Eighth Street for two years now. There's… she still has a jacket hanging in the break room. Her food is still in the fridge."

"When was she found?"

"Thursday morning, I guess. I didn't hear about it until I got off my shift that evening at six o'clock but I remember just being floored. I mean, it seemed like she worked too hard sometimes, you know, for a kid… but I didn't think she ever seemed sad. Just tired. And stressed."

"I guess you can never really know what a person is thinking," Bea pointed out. "What about her friends? Do you know what they said?"

"Friends?" The woman laughed, and then with some degree of shame and frustration at herself, she wiped all amusement from her face and rearranged her features into a more somber expression. "Oh, no. Casey didn't have friends."

Bea felt a wave of sadness on behalf of this girl. The girl who worked too hard, who didn't have friends, who felt enough pain to end her life. She cleared her throat. "Well, it sounds like she was a good employee. It must be hard to have to continue working without her there now."

"Yeah. Casey was the best. She was never late and she would always cover for you if you were sick. She was up for a promotion, did I mention that?"

"No," Bea paused. "She was up for a promotion?" Somehow, that made everything about the situation worse. It made it more tragic.

"Oh, yeah," The woman nodded. "Everyone thought she was going to get it, too. I'm not just saying that either. She deserved one a long time ago. She worked really hard for it."

Bea lowered the camera to capture the way the woman was anxiously picking apart the tissue in her hands.

"It's just so sad," the woman added with a shake of her head. Suddenly, someone approached them from the side, asserting something that Bea didn't quite catch at the woman. "Really, Bernie? It's not funny."

The man stepped into frame. He wore glasses with lenses thick enough to qualify the brown spectacles as coke-bottle glasses, and a tacky bowling shirt that would make Charlie Sheen proud. "There's nothing funny about it, you're absolutely right!"

"What?" Bea asked.

The woman rolled her eyes. "Don't encourage him."

"I know what happened to those kids!" Bernie proclaimed. "And it wasn't suicide, I can absolutely guarantee that much."

"What?" Bea asked again, more persistently this time. She caught Bernie's attention, and his eyes glued to the camera. He stepped forward to stand beside the woman and she rolled her eyes at him so hard, Bea thought they'd pop out.

"Bernie! This a memorial for these kids! They don't need you spouting out asinine theories of yours—"

"Asinine!? Are you really calling my research asinine, woman?"

Before the argument could escalate, Bea interjected with a finger raised. "Um—I would like to hear these theories of his, if you don't mind."

"Really?" The woman sneered. "I thought you were documenting reality. You know, the truth? For the sake of 'ethical reporting', or whatever, for some kinda respectable paper. Not a supermarket tabloid."

Bea felt her eyes narrow slightly on the woman but the man blustered out a speech before she had the chance to respond.

"It's very clear what's happening in Beacon Hills," Bernie started, his chest puffed up. "It's been happening for a long time, and it's because of the Citizens' Journal that more and more people are becoming aware of it. The big name papers would rather have you reading misinformation about mountain lion attacks and—"

The woman seemed ready to wring his neck. She clenched her teeth tightly and hissed, "Bernie, if you don't put a lid on it, I will personally drag you out by the short hairs—"

"I have cold, hard evidence! Visually confirmed proof, recorded on a genuine camera: the witness that can't blink! And what do you think those papers have as proof? Eyewitness accounts. Unreliable sources feeding them whatever information law enforcement is telling them to say about what they saw!"

"And you think it was a big, flying saucer?"

Bea blinked.

Bernie threw his hands up at the woman's provocative question. "I can't have a rational discussion with you if all you're going to do is ridicule—"

"Good! This is not the time or the place to be talking about UFOs, Bernie! Read the room!"

People nearby were starting to take notice. They looked back at the bickering couple and inched away, and word was spreading like a fire, jumping from group to group, and soon enough Bea caught sight of people all the way at the other end of the gym turning to peek at the couple as they loudly argued about UFOs.

What had started out as a promising, informative interview devolved into an absurd argument so fast that Bea still wasn't sure what happened. She was sure she felt some degree of embarrassment, however, at being so close to the quarreling couple.

"Bea!"

She turned and saw Mason flagging her from through the crowd. Relieved, she immediately disengaged from the arguing couple to weave through the throngs of people. At times she narrowly avoided a stray candle flame that wandered dangerously close to her sleeves and hair.

"God, you know what?" She said to Mason, who was already beaming at her. "It's a good thing they always have EMTs and police officers on standby at school gatherings like this. A bunch of kids trapped with lit flames inside an enclosed, wooden area? This is like, asking for a horrible, horrible accident."

Mason's beaming face fell slightly and he looked off to the side where a kid with a flat bill hat was giggling as he waved his finger through his candle flame. "I didn't even think of that… We should have done this on the lacrosse field."

"But it's cold out," The guy standing beside Mason reminded him. "And besides, the gym has ambiance. And sprinklers, probably, somewhere up there. What does the lacrosse field have? Besides dry grass, I mean."

Mason sighed loudly and shook his head. "Oh!" he put his hand over the guy's shoulder and presented him to Bea. "Look who I found! This is… was… Andrew Brown's boyfriend. God, I'm sorry, Calvin, I'm still getting used to this. I don't mean to be rude."

Calvin had thin wrists and delicate features. Bea noticed a silver hoop pierced through his septum and she offered him a kind smile as he waved Mason off. "It's fine."

Calvin didn't elaborate—but then, Bea realized, he didn't need to. What else was there to say, really? "I'm so sorry. I'm Bea Stilinski," She introduced, hoping that the subject change would ease some of the tension. She knew that a certain degree of discomfort couldn't be avoided though, given the nature of the vigil. Calvin offered her a scattered smile as he shook her hand. "I'm a journalist who works for The Daily Sun, but I'm guessing you already knew that."

"I was just talking to Calvin and—" Mason stopped himself to turn to the smaller framed boy. "You know what? Why don't you tell her?"

Calvin's eyes flitted in Bea's direction. "Right now?"

"Yeah!" Mason nodded enthusiastically. "It's cool, I swear. You don't have to say anything you don't want to."

"There's really no pressure at all," Bea reassured him. "This is supposed to be a cathartic memorial, not an opportunity for the press to put you on blast."

Calvin laughed and scratched at his chin, still looking mildly self-conscious. "Okay. Uh, well, I was just saying to Mason that Andrew was accepted to the art school in Chicago. He got a really, really big scholarship on early acceptance from them. Not full ride, but pretty close."

"Wow, that's incredible! Really? That's a—" she looked at Mason, making an impressed face. "That's a really big deal! That's like the ivy league of art schools."

Calvin nodded. "I know! That's why… it just doesn't make sense, you know? He wouldn't have done it. Not with Chicago so close." He shook his head. "But I don't know, maybe he stopped taking his medicine again."

"Andrew was on medication?" Mason asked, glancing at Bea. "He never said anything!"

"Well that's because it's not the type of thing people usually broadcast, Mason! It was for some mental health issues that were very personal to him. I really don't feel comfortable getting into it. I already said way too much. I was telling you because you're my friend, Mason. I wasn't expecting you to drag me to a reporter! Can we just drop it?"

Calvin was visibly irritated. Mason fumbled to apologize and Calvin was polite enough to shrug it off, but it was clear that the short-lived interview was over.

Bea had questions. Lots of them. She wanted to ask about Andrew's final interactions with Calvin. She wanted to know how he had behaved in the weeks leading up to the fateful day, and she wanted to ask how the police had been handling the investigation from the perspective of someone close to one of the victims.

Calvin waved his candle around. "My wick is ruined," He excused, his words clipped and tone short. "I'm going to go get another candle."

Mason apologized again and stood close to Bea as Calvin turned around to retreat to whatever group Mason had dragged him away from. Bea winced in a splintered effort to make light of the situation, and looked to Mason, who was riddled with guilt. He scratched at the back of his head.

"Well… That couldn't have gone any worse, right?" he cringed.

Bea laughed. "Oh, it definitely could have." She laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. "You did well. I know who he is now, so I can always follow up later."

"I don't know…" Mason shook his head. "He seemed upset. Maybe we should just leave him alone to grieve."

Bea sighed loudly. "You want to talk about disaster? I just had an interview interrupted by a man who's convinced that they're being abducted by aliens." Mason gasped and covered his mouth to contain the laughter that was begging to slip out, and Bea continued, telling him how the woman had revealed she thought it was some sort of cult was to blame, and how the two were still possibly even arguing about it as they spoke.

They turned to try and look for the couple, but they were gone, and the crowd around them had dispersed, leaving a clear view of the last row of bleachers. Bea spotted a girl sitting with her jacket hood pulled over her head, somewhat removed from the crowd that occupied the seats one row up from her.

What caught Bea's attention was the way the girl pulled at her sleeves. She recognized that jacket. "Hey…" Bea grabbed Mason's arm and pulled him closer. "Don't be obvious about looking, but—tell me, is that Sasha sitting at the bottom of the bleachers over there?"

Mason pretended he was fixing something about the top of Bea's hair and looked over her head at the bleachers behind them. He flicked a strand of her dark hair and Bea snorted at the action, surprised by how smoothly he covered his spying. Mason nodded at her as he pulled away.

"Yeah, it's dark but I'm pretty sure that's Sasha Pierce. Why?"

"She's not holding a candle," Bea noted. "Everyone else has a candle."

Mason frowned and hummed thoughtfully. "Maybe she just got here."

"Hey, thanks again for introducing me to Calvin. If nothing else, now I have a clearer picture of who Andrew was."

Mason didn't get the chance to properly respond. He was forced to watch as Bea split through the crowd to approach the bleachers.

She slowed her pace and lifted the camera to get a shot of the girl sitting alone.

"Hey, Sasha, right?" She greeted.

The girl looked up. It appeared that she'd been crying and when she recognized Bea, she looked very confused. Sasha wiped at her eyes and frowned. "You're the woman from the bridge…. what are you doing here?" Sasha looked around. "Are you following me?"

"What?" Bea shook her head. "No. I'm reporting on the suicides, remember? I was invited by the principal to the vigil."

"Oh." Sasha blinked hard and sighed, looking down. "Duh. Sorry. Diane always says I'm too suspicious."

"Is that why you're sitting alone?" Bea asked.

"Huh?" Sasha looked over at the group that sat higher on the bleachers. She looked away. "Sure."

"Mind if I sit? I promise I won't interview you."

"I don't mind," Sasha shrugged. She scooted over, the physical invitation making it perfectly clear since there was plenty of room beside her to begin with. "I might not have very helpful answers for you, though."

Bea went to join her. "Where's your sister?"

Sasha looked confused at first but seemed to catch on. "Oh, you mean Diane. She had to work."

Bea settled into the hard bleachers and set the camera down between them. "You knew Mariah, right?"

Sasha kept her face down and picked at her fingers, which already looked to be in a sad state of disarray. The flesh around her cuticles was picked raw. "We met a long time ago. When we were really little we were on the same gymnastics team. Then we got older. I quit and started taking ballet instead, but that didn't last either. Mariah stuck with it, though. She went to state one year, but I heard she lost."

Bea decided to just directly come out with it. "Are you okay?"

"What? Me?" Sasha asked, lifting her face to look Bea dead on for the first time ever. Bea was struck by how pale the girl was. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm just tired."

"Did you get to bed late?"

Sasha shrugged.

Bea frowned deeply. "You should go get some rest."

She shook her head. "I want to stay a little longer. It's important. These kids… It might just be a story to you, but they were my classmates." She looked down. "I didn't know all of them, but… it's important to be here now, even if I wasn't there for them then."

"You knew Mariah though, right?" Bea asked.

Sasha had her eyes trained on the stage, where the counselor was standing to speak about how important communication was. She clenched her jaw. "That's not fair for her to say," She noted, referring to the counselor. "I think it's way more important for parents and loved ones to listen to what their kids are saying. I don't buy that they didn't communicate enough. I just think maybe no one heard what they said."

"You're probably right," Bea acknowledged. "I'm sure the victims' families would agree with you right about now."

Sasha shook her head. "Too late now."

Bea squinted her eyes and studied Sasha closely, noticing how the girl kept her head down. She decided to come right out and ask. "Are you having suicidal thoughts, Sasha?"

The girl practically jumped out of her skin. She looked at Bea with wide eyes. "Me? No! I—crap. It did sound like that, didn't it?" She blew out a long breath and shook her head. "It's not like that, I swear. I'm just…"

Bea raised an eyebrow when Sasha didn't complete the thought. "What?" she prodded. Sasha sighed and looked away.

"Look, I lied, okay? On the bridge, when I said I hadn't spoken to Mariah since gymnastics, that wasn't true. I did talk to Mariah. We had social studies together. No one knows that. Not even Diane."

Bea kept a level head and she slowly nodded. She braced herself for whatever this young girl might tell her.

Hesitantly, Sasha continued. She kept her voice low and leaned in. "She told me some stuff about her coach, and I thought… I thought maybe she needed to have some space from him. But I never thought she would try something like this."

"Her coach?" Bea frowned.

The bleachers vibrated. Sasha broke away to pull her phone out of her back pocket. After checking it, she quietly cursed. "I have to go," She said. "Diane is home early. She doesn't even know I came here tonight."

Before Bea had the chance to do much more than call out, Sasha was off the bleachers and speeding across the wooden floors. Bea stood and watched as Sasha dodged past people and tore out the doors.

Just as Sasha darted out, a woman wearing a deputy's uniform quietly entered the gymnasium. Bea stood from the bleachers and watched as the officer approached her dad, who stood near the stage. The officer tapped his shoulder and whispered something in his ear.

They broke apart and Sheriff said something to the Principal, who nodded. Sheriff cast one last look around the gym before he followed the officer out. And then, as if some scripted cue came from the universe at large, phones started vibrating.

People checked their phones slowly at first, and then everyone had their face in their screens. A murmur broke across the crowd.

Principal Thomas was making his way onto the stage and Bea stood on the bleachers to get a better vantage point through the crowd as he tapped at the microphone. Bea's phone vibrated, but she ignored it in favor of aiming the camera at the stage and zooming in.

Principal Thomas loudly cleared his throat. "Sorry to interrupt, but it seems there… there has been another body found on the shore at Riley Bridge."

Immediately, the crowd burst into disarray. Everyone was talking at once. Kids became anxious, clutching at each other's arms and as they tried to figure out if anyone they knew was missing. Bea's heart sped up as she thought of Stiles and tried to find his face in the crowd.

As she searched, the principal continued speaking. "I-It's all right! The authorities have things under control—"

"How can you say that?" A distraught parent called out. "Our children keep dying! You're the principal, and another one of your students has just been found dead, and you have the nerve to say it's all under control?"

"Who was found?"

A quiet murmur of agreement rolled through the gym at the question, and Bea was somewhat surprised to see that it was Calvin who had spoken out to pose the question.

The principal stammered slightly and when there was no immediate response, the crowd became more frenzied. Parents and students started calling out names, asking if they were the one found.

Bea's eyes scanned all over the crowd. She saw people pushing, trying to move to the doors. The police officers that stayed behind had taken up positions at the main exit and immediately began to direct the foot traffic out to prevent anything so chaotic as a stampede from happening.

A girl nearby Bea was loudly crying, and she proclaimed something about Warren being missing. An older woman tried to give her calming reassurances but the hysterical girl broke away and sprinted through the crowd. Bea watched as she made a beeline for a side exit.

The girl shoved someone out of the way and crashed through the emergency exit. Alarms blared and flashed, and suddenly, all hell broke loose. Bea gasped as people darted around her in panic.

The person that the hysterical girl had pushed aside turned out to be the tall blonde girl who was in the Stilinskis' kitchen yesterday morning. Malia.

Malia made to chase down the girl who'd hastily pushed her into the crowd but a hand caught her by the arm before she could make it a full step. Malia snarled at the person that stopped her, who turned out to be Scott.

Bea was already hurrying in their direction. She saw Scott say something to Malia, who pointed angrily at the door the girl had disappeared through, and Scott shook his head.

"—chase down everyone who irritates you!" Scott seemed exasperated to explain.

Malia threw her hand up and jerked out of his grasp. "Why not!?"

"This is a school, Malia. There are rules."

"Guys!" Some other girl that Bea had never seen before interrupted. She had dark hair and a cute face, and for a second Bea came up short because she knew that was exactly the way Allison had been described. "Can we focus, please!?"

Malia's gaze locked on Bea. She stood straight and frowned. "What are you doing here?" She asked, just as bluntly as Bea had remembered her to be.

"Hey," Bea said to Scott. "Is Stiles here?"

Scott blinked, taken aback to see Bea. He blinked as he stammered, looking straight at the side exit that he had just prevented Malia from charging through. "No—he—uh—stayed home tonight? He's at home. He had to study. You didn't see him?"

Bea smirked. "You've always been a terrible liar, Scott."

He opened his mouth to protest but Bea was already through the side exit. She stepped out and ignored the sound of Malia complaining that Scott hadn't tried to stop Bea from going through the door.

She stepped out just in time to see the jeep pulling up to the curb. Stiles leaned over to yell at her and stopped short when he saw it was his sister. She felt a flood of relief at seeing him unharmed.

"Stiles!" She went to the passenger window. "Are you okay?"

"Where are the others?" He asked, ignoring her question. "They need to hurry up!"

"Where are you going?" She asked, instead of answering. The door popped open behind her and she knew without looking that the quick, frantic footsteps were those of the Scooby gang from the gym.

Malia didn't say a word, she just went to push Bea out of the way. The locks snapped in the jeep at the same moment that Stiles and Scott yelled at Malia. Bea swung her arms to catch her balance and Scott immediately steadied her.

"Malia!" Stiles yelled. "You can't push my sister!"

"She was in the way!" Malia exclaimed. "I thought we were in a rush?"

"Malia," Stiles said again, quieter this time, his eyes locked on Malia's. "You cannot push my sister."

Malia focused her eyes on Stiles, and Bea spared Malia a strange look. "I'm fine." Bea forced out a snort that punctuated the awkward statement. "Seriously. As long as you all are okay, I'm fine."

Scott's frown cleared and he looked back at Bea and the girl from behind said, "Um, guys? We should really go."

"What's your name?" Bea impulsively asked, frowning at the pretty girl with the long, dark, curly hair. The girl blinked widely and then offered an awkward smile.

"Kira," She nodded. "Hi, I've heard a lot about you. But we really need to go."

"Where?" Bea asked, looking back at Malia, who was now jerking on the handle of the jeep.

Stiles made an urgent noise. "Okay! Okay, stop, before you break another piece of my jeep," He proclaimed, and the locks clicked. Malia wasted no time in crawling into the back. Kira gave Bea a sweet parting wave as she followed closely behind, much more gracefully.

Scott patted Bea's arm. "Good to see you," He said, which was a phrase that was apparently become a habit of his to say to her. As if he expected it would be the last time for a while.

"Yep," Bea said, even as he climbed into the seat and closed the door. She gestured at the vehicle with a frown, and Stiles shouted some incoherent parting to her as they pulled away.

Bea stood there alone on the sidewalk and watched the red taillights of the jeep lurch through the parking lot, taking corners and dodging other vehicles in their scramble to get wherever it was they were going.

Bea sighed and muttered, "Good to see you guys too. Love that you can't answer my questions. Love that you're all acting super suspicious. Love that I can't get a second alone with my brother. Happy freaking New Years."

She watched the jeep tear down the street and shook her head. The people from the candlelight vigil were still filing outside to their cars, and she sighed loudly and started across the sidewalk under the night sky, her feet dragging all the way to her bike.


The countdown commenced. A board spread across the bedroom depicted the life and death of four teenagers who came from Beacon Hills. The details were sparse, but the impact was heavy. Heavy enough to unite a community tonight. Heavy enough that it shook the whole gymnasium when another body was found near Riley Bridge.

Bea lifted the bottle of gin she'd uncovered from the deep recesses of her closet to her lips and took a long swig. She dropped it back down and lifted it to the screen of the TV on the opposite wall in her room. In Times Square, thousands of miles away, there were couples embracing and kissing each other into the New Year.

Bea took another drink of her gin and winced at the burn. "Ugh. Tastes like soapy Christmas trees," She told the evidence board. Bea lifted the alcohol to the board. "Cheers."

She tipped it back and drained it. When she set it down on the desk with a loud tap, the cap flipped off the table and landed on her carpet. She felt warm and the room spun ever so gently. She was officially buzzed.

How pathetic. Well, at least she wasn't roaringly wasted. She wasn't even drunk. But still, being tipsy alone on a New Years skirted the edge of a sad truth that she didn't want to examine too closely.

The door down the hall closed. Bea swiveled her head around, alert. Her brain rationalized that Stiles was clearly home. Odd, since it was just past midnight now. She would have figured him to stay with his friends to celebrate the New Year. But then, considering what happened to Allison, perhaps there wasn't much to celebrate.

Death changes so much in a life. Bea knew that. She hoped that Stiles and Scott had a strong enough friendship to withstand the test of losing a close friend. She knew death either had the power to break people apart, or bring them together. Clearly. Look at the state of her relationship with her family, even after all these years since her mother had passed.

Bea, feeling melancholy and pathetic, trudged out of her room and down the hall. She gave Stiles' door a few lazy knocks before she just took it upon herself to enter.

She found him, sitting at his computer. He immediately called out in surprise and closed the window he'd been looking at.

"I didn't say to come in!" He exclaimed, spinning his chair to glare at his sister.

She fell face first into his bed and ignored the fact that he seemed annoyed and offended at her. "People keep dying."

"What?" Stiles shook his head, unable to understand what she said when her face was squished into the blankets. "What are you doing, Bea?"

Bea flipped over. "Ryan Seacrest just told me it was the New Year."

Stiles snorted. "Ryan Seacrest is an idiot. He tried to high five a blind guy."

A laugh tore from Bea's lips and she reached up to grab a pillow. She took a deep breath and pulled it to her chest. "Remember when we used to build forts?"

Stiles sat in his chair and stared at her. He looked away. "I'm trying to study," He said. "There's a paper I need to write for English and I haven't even started it yet."

Bea eagerly flipped over and crawled towards his desk. "Let me help! I can help! I went through college; I'm a pro at writing papers by now."

"You know I barely understood a word of that, right?" Stiles asked, focusing a critical gaze on his sister. She tilted her head. "You're drunk. Again."

"I'm not drunk. I'm talking in cursive." She lifted a hand to mime writing fluidly through the air. "Stiles has little feet and he smells bad."

He rolled his eyes. "That's very mature. You're twenty-three now, right?"

Bea fell over from giggling, mostly at her own joke.

Stiles laid his hand over his face and sighed. "Oh, my god," He muttered, though there was something that faintly resembled a tired chuckle hidden within the mumble.

Bea cleared her throat and propped her chin in her hand. "Stiles… I want to apologize for how… for everything."

He shrugged and ran his hand over his knee absently. "I get it. You can't always be here. You're twenty-three. You have a life."

"But I'm here now." Bea fixed him with a meaningful expression. "And… you can talk to me. I'm still Bea. I'm still your sister."

He looked away. "It's not that simple anymore, Bea. Things have changed." Stiles' face closed off and he seemed to draw his mind back to something. "I have a life now, too. There's so much you don't know." Bea stiffened. "Not like that. I'm not guilt tripping you for not being here! I said I get it and I do, okay? But that doesn't change the way things are."

"I know," Bea started, deciding to be as direct with him as she'd been with Sasha earlier that night, since she's found over the years that being direct and blunt is the best way to get a response from someone. "Allison, right?"

Stiles visibly flinched. His jaw clenched and he sat up straighter in his chair, like he wanted to physically remove Bea from his room. The glare he set on her was enough to communicate what he felt. A thought struck him, and his face changed again.

The tension drained from his shoulders and a shadow that Bea recognized well—guilt—fell across his face for just a moment before he gathered himself and cleared it away. When he spoke, it was much more measured than she would have expected. "I'll tell you about that sometime. But not tonight. Not after everything that happened at the candlelight vigil."

He must have meant the new student that was found dead, Bea realized. It would be hard to argue with him now. She sighed and rolled onto her side, closer to the edge of the bed, so she could swing her legs over and sit up. She teetered only slightly.

Bea ran a hand over her messy ponytail and focused her swimming vision on Stiles. "You knew Allison. Did you know any of the rest of them?"

Stiles popped the cap of his pen on and off. "No."

She didn't believe him. But something told her that if she pushed him, she'd get nowhere fast. Not tonight. "Dad said that you were there. When Allison was killed." She watched his reaction closely, saw how his features changed again and she wondered when he got so good at masking his emotions. He looked uncomfortable and in pain but Bea sensed there was more than just those shallow emotions. She decided to approach it from a different angle.

Bea rested her elbows on her knees to lean forward. "Can I tell you something I've never told anyone?" She asked, and Stiles took a breath and shrugged. Bea rubbed her lips together and folded her hands. "When mom died, I thought I would feel relieved."

Stiles' head snapped up and he frowned at Bea. He opened his mouth, but she put her hand up and shook her head.

"Let me finish. She did a lot of things, Stiles. Things that hurt us. Things that were wrong. And I know she couldn't help it, because she was sick. But I helped her cover those things up for a really, really long time."

Stiles couldn't seem to decide how to react. He shifted in his seat and rubbed his chin. "You were just a kid, Bea. We both were just kids."

She smiled sadly and shook her head. "I was sixteen when she died. That's old enough to know the difference."

"So what are you saying? You blame yourself? Bea, she was sick. She—"

"It doesn't change what happened. It doesn't change the fact that I lied to dad for way too long to cover for her, because we were both scared about what would happen to her if he knew. We were scared she would be taken away. And I thought I could take care of her on my own, that I could handle it."

Stiles shook his head and Bea sniffed loudly, looking at the posters on his wall. He said, "It wasn't in your control! I don't know how else to say this, Bea, but she was sick. Her brain was literally shrinking, okay? The parts of her that controlled her behavior and personality were literally atrophying. It changed her into someone else, and it wasn't your responsibility to take the blame for it."

"But by staying silent, I had just as much a hand in everything that happened—everything that went wrong—just as much as she did. And I was perfectly healthy." She paused. "I meant what I said. I thought when she finally died, I would feel relieved. But I didn't. Trust me, I understand what it means to feel guilty for someone dying because of something that's not in your control."

Stiles sat up, surprised. "H—" he scrunched his face. "How did you flip that around?"

She smirked and shook her head. "I'm talking about Allison now—"

"Yeah! I got that!" Stiles exclaimed in disapproval. He stood up and waved her off. "It's not even close to the same!"

"Really? The guilt isn't the same?" Bea sat back and crossed her arms. "You don't feel guilty about being unable to prevent Allison's death?"

Stiles was seriously pissed now. His face was so dark, she had never seen such an expression on his face before. He turned away, his fists balled at his side, and he looked ready to clear his desk off in a fit of rage.

"I don't see how you think it's fair to compare our experiences," He ground out lowly. "You don't even know what happened."

"Someone attacked her," Bea said. "It happened fast. Too fast to even see who did it. Way too fast to try and stop it."

Stiles turned to stare at her. "Who told you that?"

"Dad did." She crossed her arms. "He said she was mugged. You and Scott were there but neither of you were able to see the person clear enough to give a description of any kind."

Stiles looked away, his face a warring mixture of aggravation and grief. "What happened was…" He trailed off, unable to summon an appropriate description. His face said it all.

"I know." Bea reached out to grab his arm. He looked back at her, though she could see the wall he'd built between them plain as day in his familiar brown eyes, and it made her heart ache for him. "There's a name for what you're feeling. Survivor's guilt. You feel like you've somehow done wrong because you lived and she didn't."

Her words must have struck shockingly close to home, because he quickly withdrew from her touch and turned away. Stiles seemed to close in on his self and squeezed his eyes shut. "You don't know what happened."

"But I know how you feel," She reasoned. "You don't have to hide from me, Stiles."

For a long moment, he didn't respond. He just stood there with his eyes closed and let whatever pain and torrent of twisted emotions he was experiencing wash over him. Finally, he opened his eyes and nodded. They glimmered slightly, but he didn't cry.

"Kids keep jumping off that bridge and everyone's already forgotten about her." His voice broke with the first part and he turned to look at Bea. "And it pisses me off. It shouldn't, but it does."

"What would you like people to say?" Bea asked, and Stiles stiffened at the question.

"I don't know—anything?" He snipped. "Anything at all? We have three memorials for the suicide kids in the school. Did you know that? Three memorials. One in the main lobby, one on the lacrosse field, and one in the cafeteria. Tonight at the candlelight vigil, nobody spoke about Allison." Stiles settled slightly and went quiet as he shook his head. "All I can say is… I'm glad that her dad's in France, so he can't see any of this."

Bea let the admission sit for a moment before she responded. "What if you and the others put something together for her? You could make your own memorial for her."

Stiles looked at Bea as he thought about it. "You're right." He went to sit in his chair. "I guess we should… think of something. I'll ask Lydia and see what she thinks."

"Lydia?" Bea perked up, and went to jump back on his bed like a giddy girl. "Oooh, Lydia! Didn't you go to winter formal with her!?"

Stiles' face went fire engine red. He groaned loudly and let his head fall into his desk with a soft thud. "Don't remind me," He grumbled, and just like that—Bea felt an elation in her chest at the familiar feeling of teasing her baby brother again.

"Did you daaaance with her?" She asked in a sing-song voice. "Did you step on her feet?"

"Me?" Stiles guffawed, lifting his head to convey a skeptical and meaningful look at Bea. "Lydia would have heart failure if I stepped on her shoes and scuffed them up. No way, dad taught me to dance for a whole week beforehand."

Bea felt another pang of pain in her chest that was regret and guilt at not having been here to witness that for herself or help him in any real way. But that had been during the thick of one of her most recent stories, and she hadn't had the opportunity to split away and come home.

Instead of bringing this up, however, she asked if he had any pictures. Stiles' eyes flicked to the side and Bea followed his vision, seeing a framed photograph on his desk. Her jaw dropped.

"Stiles!" She squealed, already rolling across the bed, and the sound made him grit his teeth in annoyance and what may have been humiliation. "Let me see!"

She scrambled across the floor and dove for the frame at the same moment Stiles did. Being that she had a head start, Bea reached the picture first. She snatched it up and darted away.

"Look at you!" She gushed, her amused giggles coming out in snorted spurts. Bea covered her mouth and cooed. "Look! Your face was so red!"

Stiles' face was also presently splotched with embarrassment as well, and he rolled his eyes and mocked her laugh, and when he tried to make a grab for the frame Bea smacked his fingers away. Stiles sighed loudly and put his head in his hands.

"What is that?" she exclaimed, pointing at his shoes. "Oh, those are awful! Who picked those out?"

"Bea!" He practically screeched, and she merely shoved him back when he tried to grab the frame again. "Stop it! Are you serious!?"

"You should have worn a solid shirt and a solid tie. Maybe just a plain white dress shirt and a nice, slate grey tie, with black pants. It would've matched her dress better."

He scoffed and rolled his eyes. "Thank you, What Not To Wear. At least it's better than Scott's. He wore a duct-taped suit to the formal."

Bea's face scrunched in distaste. "What? Why? On purpose?"

Stiles snorted, his lips playing at a smile. "Well, in his defense he didn't have many options."

"How was the dance, otherwise?" Bea asked. "I mean, I know you said you got to dance with her. Did you have an after party? There were always after parties when I was in school."

Stiles cleared his throat and looked away. "No—ah—no after parties that year. And I had to practically drag her out to the dance floor."

"Why?" Bea frowned. "She was your date to a dance, and she didn't want to dance?"

"It's kind of complicated—"

"Wait a minute…" Bea stared at the picture. Stiles stood by the girl with his arm across her shoulders. He looked like he was making the extra effort to smile and make it a happy occasion, while the girl seemed to want to be anywhere but there underneath her perfect, glossy smile. "Wait! What happened to her boyfriend? Didn't she have a boyfriend? That was the whole thing about Lydia, wasn't it? You liked her but she was dating the lacrosse captain. Very cliché, by the way."

Stiles scowled at her. "It wasn't cliché." He paused. "Okay, it was a little cliché. But they were… on a break, I guess, at the time, and she needed a date. Scott and Allison were together, and Allison was best friends with Lydia, so I was the natural double date."

"That's a weird dynamic," Bea said, her eyes scrunched. "Very Ross and Rachel-esque. Because I specifically remember Scott was broken up with Allison at that dance. He was walking around like it was the end of the world. I remember from the Skype call we had, because when I commented on it you rolled your eyes and waved it off, and it was kind of the first time you guys had ever been so wrapped up in girls as far as I remembered."

Stiles blinked at her clear recollection of the events and she raised her eyebrows and nodded at him.

"It was a big deal. My baby bro's first formal date."

Stiles' expression broke and he rolled his eyes, the moment apparently ruined. "Shut up."

Bea smirked. "So what happened? Are you and Lydia together?"

Stiles' sigh was so heavy, Bea felt it from all the way over in her seat on his bed. "Well… not exactly, no."

"Not exactly, as in will-they-won't-they? Or not exactly as in nothing has changed and you still pine for her?"

Stiles pulled at the neck of his shirt uncomfortably and he cleared his throat. "I don't pine. And, well… we did sort of kiss." Bea gasped and perked up, but Stiles quickly put his hands up in warning. "Sort of! She put her lips on mine to help me breathe."

Bea paused, her eyes flitting to the side momentarily as she tried to figure out what he meant. "She… gave you CPR?"

Stiles smacked his head. "No! That's not what I meant. It was more… You know what? Why am I explaining this to my sister?"

Bea quickly tried to recover the moment. "Noooo!" She cried. "It's okay, I'm not judging! What do you mean? You kissed? That's great!"

Stiles' sarcasm kicked up to full blast as he said, "Yes, that is the response I was hoping to hear the first time around, but the you missed the opportunity. Look, it's—" Stiles waved his hands spastically, the most familiar behavior she'd seen him display since she got back. "It's more complicated than that! That's not—okay—let's just stop talking about it now!"

Bea hid a smile behind her hand where she had settled back to watch her brother flounder for a response. "So you didn't kiss?"

"Yes, okay? I would say yes. There was definite... it was definitely kissing. Okay?"

Bea pursed her lips into a sly smile, shrugging a shoulder nonchalantly. "Okay." Stiles huffed nervously and brushed himself off. "But you're not together?"

He furiously shook his head. "She... it's complicated."

"And her boyfriend? Are they still together?" Bea tilted her head.

Stiles paused. "Who?" His eyes lit up. "Oh! Jackson!" Stiles snorted loudly and shook his head. "No, he left."

At Bea's questioning expression, he elaborated.

"He moved to London."

"What!?" Bea scrunched her face up at the ridiculousness of it and shook her head. "Why?"

Stiles shrugged a shoulder. "I didn't ask. The point is, he's gone, and there's about five thousand, four hundred and fifty four miles between Lydia and him. And an ocean. And an eight hour difference."

"So she's single?" Bea surmised. Stiles nodded. "And you're single."

He paused. "...Yes."

Bea smirked. "Well, we can fix that."

Stiles groaned and put his face in his hands. He mumbled something, but she couldn't make it out.

"It's good to be home," She said, with a warm smile that made Stiles pause.

Stiles reluctantly nodded in agreement, rubbing his hair into a wild mess like a dog shaking itself off. "Okay," He said, turning back to his computer. "Want to help me research about cures for hiccups?"

"I thought you'd never ask," Bea readily agreed, cracking her knuckles. "Oh," She paused and held her hand up at him. "I should warn you. I did drink some gin, but when I drunk research I find some pretty entertaining crap."

"You have experience at drunk-researching?" Stiles asked, and Bea gave him a pointed look. He sighed and seemed amused. "How much did you drink?"

She hummed and squinted her eyes, trying to recall. "Like… Three shots worth."

"Well, go get more," He said, turning to the computer. "Maybe you'll start hiccupping and we can test some of these cures out."


Thank you for reading! Hopefully this satisfied those requests for more Stiles/Bea interaction! It was planned for this chapter anyways, so it seems like it was just in the knick of time, because some of you were getting frustrated XD Which is what I was hoping you would feel! That's how Bea felt too!

Let me know what you thought of their dynamic, and what do you think Bea will find out next? More changes in Beacon Hills? More details about what she missed? More details about the suicides? Ooooohhh the possibilities ;D