Author's Note: Thanks again to those who reviewed last chapter, favourited, alerted, etc for this story. Here is the beginning of the end...
Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Escape the Fate's song, Lose Control. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.
Saturday, 11 January 1969
I'm just like a fly on the wall
Tear off my wings and I'll take my last breath
And all my aspirations are dead
Because I've ripped them to shreds
It hadn't taken much convincing from Bradley and the other guys to convince Katie to go back to Buck's with them after the movie double finished at the drive-in. Once she had gotten some alcohol into her system she was happy to go anywhere, relieved at having something to distract her from the stupid argument she'd had with Curly during the first film that played.
They had arrived just after ten and been there about an hour when Rick turned up with Jodie and a few other boys at his side. Katie, who at this point had had more than enough to drink, felt a wave of affection for her brother and pushed past a couple of people in the crowded place to engulf him in a hug. She was drunk, but she didn't care because for the moment she felt happy. She was laughing, having fun and feeling unbelievably light, but her nerves stood on end when she noticed the rigidity of Rick's hug and the way his hand on her back touched her stiffly, digging his fingertips into the material of her light blue blouse, which had been revealed when she had shed her coat upon arriving at Buck's.
"What's wrong?" she mumbled to him, pulling away and assessing his face.
The bags under his eyes were more prominent tonight than most others, making his face appear gaunter than she was used to lately.
He didn't even look at her when he answered, "Nothin', just stay back," and when he moved past her she followed his direction with her eyes.
She thought to herself she shouldn't have been too surprised to see him headed for where the Shepards sat around a table on the other side of the room. Tim had been there when she arrived and his boys from the drive-in had followed just a few minutes after them, Curly among them.
"Hey!" Katie called after Rick, a sick, desperate feeling gripping her stomach.
She generally tried not to make a habit of seeing her brother get into fights, but one was coming very soon and she could either stand back and watch one unfold or she could try and diffuse her brother's dangerous mood.
A few of the boys Rick had entered with followed behind him with Jodie, and when they passed her she grabbed Jodie by the arm to stop her.
"What's going on?" she asked, glancing from Jodie to where Rick had come to a stop in front of the table the Shepard boys sat around.
Jodie just shook her head and continued to move forward to the front of the scene, her eyebrows knit together closely in anticipation of something bad.
Tim stood up from his seat and moved around his table toward Rick while the rest of his buddies stood up, too, ready right away for a fight.
"We have a problem," Katie heard Rick say as she inched forward, squeezing and pushing her way through the group of people that had stopped and gathered around to witness the confrontation. "Several, actually."
"Rick," Katie started again as she squeezed up beside her brother and tried to stand in front of him.
She didn't have a plan; she didn't even have a clue what she was going to do. All she could process about the spinning room was that her brother was in the mood to get himself into trouble and she hoped she could deflate the situation before he hurt anybody or got hurt himself. Panic was squeezing her stomach so hard she thought she might be sick once all of this was over.
She got to where she wanted to be, in front of him and partially blocking Tim from view, and just as she raised her hands to place on his chest in a stop motion he lifted his left hand up and brought it over to place it on the front of her left shoulder, and then tried to push her to the side. It wasn't the most forceful push in the world, but with how drunk Katie was it was enough to cause her to stumble.
It felt to her as though it happened so slowly, but still too quickly for her do anything to help herself. The push on her left shoulder sent a ripple effect through her whole body as she twisted to the left from the force of Rick's push. She felt the top half of her body tipping out and tried to move her feet to balance out her body, but one foot tripped over the other and she went tumbling forward away from her brother and toward an abandoned table to the right of Tim.
She realized when her forehead connected with the edge of the hard, wooden table that her arms would have been better off in front of her to catch herself against the table instead of flailing around at her sides, pointlessly trying to balance herself still. Her head snapped upward as she fell the distance from the edge of the table and landed on the ground.
Distantly she could hear a girl shouting her name, but all she could see was a blur. Her eyes fell closed shut and a vision rose up from deep within her memory of her mom being struck, spinning around and landing heavily against the stairs at the bottom of the staircase in their home. She couldn't see her father, but she remembered feeling his presence standing over her mom just out of sight as she and Rick sat at the top of the staircase, their eyes wide at having witnessed more than they had anticipated when they had come out of their bedrooms to listen in on the argument…
"Katie!" Hands were grabbing at her and she opened her eyes, the whole room rushing into perspective so quickly that it overwhelmed her, completely disoriented.
She tried to focus on who was closest to her. Susan was at her side, her hands cradling Katie's head and neck, and Jodie was leaning over her, inspecting her face.
"She's fine," Jodie yelled over her shoulder, "she's fine."
Katie groggily leaned forward and Jodie grabbed at her shoulders to steady her. Katie's eyes locked on Rick, who stood where he had been a few seconds earlier staring back at her, his eyes wide and bewildered.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Curly exclaimed, stepping closer toward Rick from where he stood by Tim. "That's your fuckin' sister, man," he said as Tim's arm stretched out across Curly's chest to stop him going any further.
"Let's take this outside 'fore you go and hit your girlfriend next," Tim said darkly, glancing over at where Jodie was helping Katie to sit further up.
Katie felt something warm trickling over her eyebrow and onto her eyelid, and a second later her vision started to blur again. As Rick turned to walk back out of the building the way he had come in, and everybody else began to follow him, Katie lifted her hand and wiped at her eye. When she pulled it back her hand was red with blood.
"C'mon," Susan said, looking at Katie then at Jodie. "Upstairs," she told Jodie, "to the bathroom." And then the two girls had Katie by the underarms and were hauling her to her feet.
They supported her as she found her feet again and let them steer her up the stairs and into the bathroom. Susan sat her down on the closed toilet seat while Jodie locked the door behind them, grabbed the toilet roll from its holder, ripped a decent amount of paper from it and ran it under the water from the sink tap for a second.
"What's going on?" Katie asked blearily as Jodie handed Susan the fistful of damp toilet paper and Susan bent down to dab it over Katie's left eye, instructing her to close it. Katie did as she was told and looked at Jodie expectantly with her good eye. Jodie looked away guiltily and Katie asked again, her voice rising, "Why the hell did that just happen?"
"I was talking to Tim," Jodie answered quickly, looking around the bathroom at everything but Katie, "on new years eve. We were here and Rick wasn't, and Tim and I got talkin' and I hadn't spoken to him since the whole thing with Mike," she paused for a breath as Susan pulled the paper away from Katie's eye and started wiping at the trail of blood across her eyebrow and forehead. "I accused him of being the reason Arnie did what he did because that's what Rick thinks happened, you know? He believes it so much. But Tim told me differently, and then all day and night Rick and I were just having such a good time, he seemed happier than he's been in ages and I thought maybe I could convince him, stop this whole problem between him and Tim before it got any worse, but…" she stopped and glanced at Katie nervously.
Katie was silent for a long time, just sitting there and looking at Jodie as Jodie raked her fingers through the length of her hair. Susan made it to the top of Katie's forehead, to the source of all the blood, and when she touched the wet paper to it Katie winced away and turned the pain into fuel for her temper that was quickly flaring up.
"But you just made it worse!" she yelled at Jodie from the toilet seat. "You idiot!" she seethed, getting up to stand in front of Jodie, her face just inches from Jodie's as she ignored the way the room had begun to spin again. "If you didn't know that telling him you'd had a nice and cozy conversation with Tim Shepard was gonna set him off, you're an idiot!"
"I didn't mean to –"
"I saw you!" Katie screamed, blood rushing through her veins to her head as the room spun more and more violently. "I saw you on news years eve, and I didn't like the look of it but I knew that telling Rick about it right now wasn't even an option, and now you've done it and he's out there," she swung her arm around to motion toward the general direction of the front door downstairs, "he's out there," she said again, blood pooling in her eyelid. She wiped at it with her hand before burying her head in both of her hands, "Oh God, I have to get down there." She looked back up and stumbled blindly for the bathroom door, but Susan's hands grabbed at her shoulders again and guided her back to the toilet seat.
"You have to let Susan clean your–" Jodie started to say.
"Get out," Katie interrupted, finding it difficult to understand why Jodie was even in the bathroom to begin with. When Jodie hesitated, Katie yelled at her to get out again and a moment later, after quickly handing Susan the roll of toilet paper that was still in her hands, she was gone, leaving Susan and Katie alone in the bathroom.
"You're gonna stay still and let me clean you up before anything else," Susan told Katie firmly as she ripped more paper from its roll and quickly wet it in the sink, discarding the last bunch of paper on the edge of the sink, its white completely soaked through with red.
She came back to Katie, whose breathing was evening out now. "I have to see Rick," Katie said quietly to Susan, looking into her eyes as light blue as a summer sky.
"No, not yet," Susan said, moving to press the wad of paper onto her eyelid again. "He's downstairs probably in a fight right now, there's nothing you could do to change that. He'll be fine though, he has his buddies with him." She dragged the paper up Katie's face. "This is gonna hurt a little bit now, but I need to clean the cut so I can see how bad it is."
She pressed the cold, wet paper onto the broken skin of Katie's forehead and Katie winced again and closed her eyes to the pain, but instead of pulling back like before she pushed her head forward into the paper, finding that the pressure on the wound helped.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she focused on the image of her mom looking up at Katie and Rick at the top of the staircase, looking down upon the result of their father's blow. She hadn't thought of that night in a long time, but she could still vividly remember the shame in her mother's eyes when she realized that her two children had witnessed something they shouldn't have had to.
It struck Katie that she had always just assumed that her dad had taken off voluntarily right after that and never came back, but now she found herself wondering if her mum had forced him to leave instead.
Don't worry, she could hear her mom saying to her one night when she was tucked into bed, we can still trust Ricky.
Katie opened her eyes and pulled her head away from the wad of paper in Susan's hand, no longer able to bare the constant stinging.
"He didn't mean it," Katie whispered to Susan, her eyes shining with tears. "Rick, he didn't mean to hurt me."
"I know that," Susan replied, "of course he didn't." She placed the wad back onto Katie's cut and continued to distract her from the pain of it. "I saw him right after and he was just as shocked as everyone else."
Katie nodded and a heavy sob wracked through her body as she began to cry.
"Hey, it's okay," Susan said, leaning forward and pulling Katie toward her with her free hand, pressing Katie's right cheek into the top of her chest and running a hand over her friend's back. "It'll be alright."
A minute or two passed and Katie's sobs turned to small hiccups when a knock came at the door.
"Occupied!" Susan called out as Katie moved away from Susan's hug to look up at the closed bathroom door.
"It's me," Dale said from the other side of the door.
"Keep this pressed against your head," Susan told Katie, pulling the bloody bunch of toilet paper away, ripping off a new length and pressing it into one of Katie's hands.
Katie did as she was told as Susan got up and unlocked the door. She swung it wide open so that the door now concealed Susan from where Katie sat on the toilet seat behind it.
"What?" Katie heard Susan say and Katie yelled out her own greeting.
"How's Rick?"
Dale gave Curly, who stood beside him leaning against the opposite door frame, a what-the-fuck look. Curly just rolled his eyes and shook his head. The guy had sent her – his own sister – flying into a table and the first thing out of her mouth was a question about his wellbeing?
"Uh, he got knocked out," Dale said.
Susan gave Dale an expectant look. "He's okay, though, right?"
"Oh yeah," Dale responded. "He was fine; his guys got him out of here pretty quick after that."
"Good," Susan said, "now can one of you go get me some ice or peas or something? Anything cold. And get Brad or Jeff up here, too."
"We ain't gettin' anybody up here," Dale bit back, shitty at Susan giving orders. "They all left."
"All of them?" Susan asked as Katie moaned from behind the door.
Susan glanced behind the door at Katie just in time for her to see her standing, lifting open the toilet seat and beginning to vomit.
Dale scrunched up his face and looked at Curly at the sound of what was happening in there. Susan looked back at him and he remembered her question, nodding a yes.
"We need to get her back to my place," Susan told the two boys. "My sister can check her out and make sure she doesn't need stitches."
"One of us could just do that," Dale said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, but not the right answer if the look Susan gave him was anything to go by.
"Scars on girls faces aren't tuff, Dale," she said slowly as Katie's retching came to a stop, followed by several loud, deep breaths, "they're ugly. A legitimate nurse needs to look at this."
"Alright," Dale said, throwing his hands up in the air in exasperation.
"We need somebody to drive us home in my sister's car because I can barely drive sober, I definitely won't be able to with booze in me, and Katie is probably concussed, but even if she weren't she's obviously too drunk to drive."
"I'm goin' where you go, so I'll drive," Dale said.
"You've drunk more than me."
"I can," Curly chimed in. "I've had one beer since we got here – I'm fine to drive."
"If you crash my sister's car I will kill you," Susan told him, "but first I need something from a freezer."
Curly and Dale retreated back down the stairs to find something cold and when they reached the bottom they found Tim standing there waiting for them, a beer in hand as he observed the party that had swung back into life. Tim's free hand held a bit of cloth from his shirt where Rick had ripped it in the fight. He pressed the cloth against his bloody cheek where Curly suspected there would probably be a massive shiner in a couple hours.
"What's goin' on up there?" Tim asked Curly as Dale continued on toward the kitchen without him.
"Dale's girl thinks we need to take them to her sister to see if she needs stitches," Curly told him, "so Dale and I were gonna drive them there in the car they came in."
Tim nodded. "You make sure you come find me if there's any trouble," he said and it was Curly's turn to nod.
"How bad is your cheek?" Curly asked to change the subject.
Tim pulled the cloth away to show Curly his cheek and Curly could see that a deep bruise had formed around the large split in his cheek.
"Thomas was off his fuckin' head, man," Tim said. "He was all over the joint, just 'cause I told his girl that I had nothing to do with his buddy dyin' but that that's what happens when you fuck with another guy's girl." Curly nodded along, agreeing. Rick's eyes had been wild, completely wired. "He's a fuckin' lunatic if he's willin' to pull a knife on me for tellin' the God damn truth."
"I got frozen peas," Dale said, appearing to the side of Curly.
"Remember what I said," Tim warned Curly before he and Dale went back upstairs. "Don't go off half-cocked if there's trouble, you come to me."
"Yeah," Curly said, not bothering to hide the annoyance in his voice – Tim was always expecting him to do the dumbest thing. Of course, that was because Curly had done some of the dumbest things in the past, but he was capable of learning a lesson.
The two boys made it back up to the bathroom and knocked on the door. When Susan opened it they could see Katie standing behind her, leaning back against the sink for support. Curly looked at her and took in her face. She was holding a bunched up mess of toilet paper stained red against her forehead, and several spots on her face and in her blonde hair had smears or flecks of dried blood. It looked like there had been a lot of it. She looked terrible.
"Peas," Dale said, holding them up for Susan, who took the small bag and wrapped the rest of a toilet roll around it. She turned to Katie and took the toilet paper from her hand and replaced it with the padded bag of peas.
"Keep pressure on it or it'll start bleeding again," Susan told Katie and then turned back to Dale and Curly. "Are you ready to go now?"
"Alright," Dale said and Susan pulled the car keys out of her pants pocket and handed them to Curly.
"I meant what I said about the car," she warned.
The four teenagers headed for the stairs, Susan keeping a protective hand on Katie's shoulder the whole way down. When they reached the bottom, Katie pulled the peas away from her forehead slightly and pressed the fingertips of her free hand softly on the cut. She pulled her hand away and didn't find fresh blood on her fingers, so she lowered the peas down and walked with her hands at her side as they all squeezed through the clusters of people around the room, so many of whom turned their eyes on Katie. She let her messy hair fall in her face as she walked in an attempt to cover the bloody cut on her forehead, but she knew she still looked as terrible as she felt.
"Okay, Hercules," Susan said once they were outside and heading for her sister's car. "Put the peas back on now."
Katie followed Susan's instructions again and the car ride home was a long one, with Dale and Curly in the front and Susan and Katie in the backseat. Katie's eyelids kept growing heavier and heavier until Susan jolted her, telling her not to fall asleep until her sister had gotten to look at her head. This happened several times until finally, Curly was pulling into the driveway of the house Dale had pointed out as Susan's.
Katie felt her body relax the moment she walked through the front door – this place was familiar and safe. The light in the den was off, but the kitchen light was on and Katie could hear the sound of somebody puttering around in there. She drifted over to the couch in the den as Susan turned a light on, told the boys to have a seat and disappeared into the kitchen where it was probably her sister, Kim, heating herself up some dinner after a long shift at the hospital.
Katie sank into the couch, her legs curling up to her right, as Dale and Curly took an armchair each. She felt like lying down and letting sleep engulf her, but knew she had to stay awake for just a little while longer.
Susan re-entered the den with her sister following close behind, wearing a long brown dressing gown, her hair dripping dry.
"Hi," she greeted Dale and Curly with a small wave and then looked at Katie, coming to lean down in front of her so that their eyes were on the same level.
"Bit of a drunken fall?" Kim asked her, a knowing grin on her face.
Katie didn't know what story Susan had told her, but it obviously wasn't one about her brother pushing her over into a table and she was grateful for that.
"Something like that," Katie replied, trying to match Kim's grin despite the churning in her stomach at telling a white lie.
"Can I see?" Kim asked and Katie pulled the peas away from her head. "It doesn't look too bad; it's only a very thin, clean cut. You shouldn't need stitches."
Susan lent forward behind Kim and assessed the cut again herself. "It looks much better than it did before. You should've seen the blood, Kim."
Kim nodded. "Head injuries usually bleed more than others. Can you open your eyes wide for me and tell me your name?"
Katie opened her eyes wide and said, "You know my name."
"But do you?"
Katie stared at Kim for a moment, not sure if it was some kind of trick question. "Katie Thomas."
"And who's the president?"
"Lyndon Johnson, until the election, at least according to my mum."
Kim laughed. "You're fine, Katie. Get some sleep, all of you." She stood up and looked around at Susan, Dale and Curly. "And if one of you wakes up in the night, try and wake her up to make sure she's still breathing." She winked at Susan then said her goodnights and disappeared down the hallway.
"Some night, huh?" Susan said, perching herself on the armrest of the armchair Dale was seated in.
"How's Rick?" Katie asked again, directing her question at Dale since he was the one who had given her information on him back at Buck's, and because somewhere at the back of her mind Katie could remember the argument she'd had with Curly earlier that evening. "What happened while we were upstairs?"
"He'll live," Dale answered, "might have a nasty scar on his arm, though."
"Why?!"
"He pulled a knife on my brother," Curly answered for Dale, looking at Katie, still annoyed that she still wanted to know if Rick was alright after all the trouble he had caused that night. "Luckily Tim knocked it out of his grip and turned it on him before he could cut up another person tonight. Your brother got cut, too – an eye for an eye."
It took Katie a moment to realize Curly was blaming her brother for the cut on her head. "He didn't mean to hurt me," she started to explain, but Curly interrupted her.
"My sister's plenty annoying, but I stopped pushing her around once I started gettin' bigger. You got in his way and he pushed you, there ain't nothin' okay about that."
"You don't have a clue what you're talking about," Katie bit back, but Curly rounded on her again, leaning forward in his arm chair.
"No, you don't," he hissed at her so as not to raise his voice in the quiet house. "You're so quick to judge everybody else and label them hoods, but your brother's the one that knocked his sister out and pulled a knife on someone else, not me or my brother."
"No, your friends just shoot people in the head," she spat at him, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back into the couch, frustrated, "but that's not worth mentioning, is it?"
"Hey now," Dale said, leaning forward and interrupting the bickering. "That is bullshit. Nobody even knew Arnie had a damn gun on him, much less that he was planning on usin' it."
Katie looked away from Dale and glared down at her lap while Curly glared up at the roof. A few minutes of dead silence passed and then Susan stood up, grabbing Dale's hand and pulling him up, too.
"Well, make yourselves comfortable," Susan said, sounding overly polite in the awkward moment. "Goodnight," she said, and she and Dale walked off down the hallway to Susan's bedroom.
Neither Katie nor Curly acknowledged Dale and Susan's departure, still glaring at their selected spots. A few more minutes passed and Curly sighed, finally dragging his eyes from the roof to look at Katie, still looking down at her hands, her glare having softened to a tired stare, though.
"I know he's your brother," Curly said quietly, almost kindly, "I just don't think you should bury your head in the sand about the kind of person he is when he's not bein' your brother."
Katie looked up at him and saw his face void of any anger, no malice or superiority. He was telling her his truth as he saw it; he was being real with her. She realized then how deeply each side of this stupid feud believed that their truth was the right truth. Rick believed without a doubt that the Shepards were bad, and the Shepards believed without a doubt that Rick and his boys were bad guys, for reasons she didn't really know about.
And she didn't know those reasons because she had buried her head in the sand for so long, ignoring the supposedly bad things about her brother and only believing the good, while she had been doing the exact opposite with Curly – choosing to ignore the good things about him, like how he made her laugh, feel at ease and smelt like smoke, and instead only focusing on the bad and irritating parts of him.
Curly finally gave up on expecting something, anything, from Katie and lent back in his armchair, moving his head about to find a comfortable position for it to be in when sleep came for him.
A moment later, deciding that she wanted to allow herself to see the good in Curly, in an attempt to balance out the bad, she stood up slowly, and when the world stopped whirling about so violently she walked off into the hallway where she opened up a cupboard and retrieved two old, thick blankets from it. She walked back out into the den and threw one on the couch she had been sitting on and then threw the other blanket at Curly in the armchair.
Curly coughed when the thick, folded blanket landed on his stomach. "Could you have thrown it any gentler?" he asked sarcastically.
Katie was going to answer back with a sarcastic quip of her own, but stopped short when she thought that he might interpret her words differently to how she intended them, so she just turned back around, went into the kitchen and flicked the light switches off. The kitchen and adjoining den fell into darkness and Katie had to stand still in the dark for twenty seconds or so as her eyes adjusted to the dark and she started to see the shapes of the furniture in the moonlight streaming in from the window.
She slowly made her way back over to the couch, feeling her way around in the dark, and collapsed onto it as slowly as possible, not wanting any sudden or forceful movement to hurt her head any more. Her forehead was throbbing, the cut stung and it felt as though a sledgehammer was hitting her skull from the inside. She laid on her back, pulling her blanket over her with her left hand as her right hand came up to rest on the right side of her forehead beside her cut.
She thought about putting the bag of peas, which she had left on the armrest of the other end of the couch, back on her cut but thought it would just sting worse, and she so badly needed sleep. She lay there like that for a while, hers and Curly's breathing finally beginning to even out when a noise came from down the hallway.
Curly's senses pricked up at the noise and he waited another few seconds for the noise to come again. It was a creaking noise. And it came again a second later. And again.
"Kill me now," Katie groaned into the darkness, rolling onto her side and pulling her blanket up over her ears as it struck Curly that he was hearing the sound of a bed creaking, probably Susan's. Curly genuinely laughed at that. At least Dale was getting a good ending to his night, and if Curly was going to suffer through having to hear it then at least so would Katie.
"Thank you," Katie said quickly and loud enough that Curly would definitely hear her, partly to drown out the sound of whatever was happening in Susan's room and partly because she just wanted to say something nice considering all of the nasty things she had said to him tonight.
"For what?" Curly asked after a long moment of pause, wracking his mind for what he could have possibly done in the past half hour to deserve her thanks.
"For getting us out of there," she answered and Curly's annoyance softened a little.
"Don't worry about it," Curly replied, looking over at where her voice came from on the couch. He could just make out her blonde hair poking out from under her blanket.
"And I'm sorry, for the way I acted tonight. Earlier, at the drive-in. I'm from the same side of town as you, and my life is…" crazy, haunting, nerve-wracking, "messed up just like everybody else's. I shouldn't have acted like someone I'm not."
Not knowing quite how to handle her sudden outburst of niceness and level-headedness, Curly decided to be his normal aloof self and steer the conversation away from apologies. "You were staring at me first though, weren't you?"
"What?" Katie laughed.
"On Monday, in History, I looked at you and you were already lookin' at me."
Katie laughed again. "Yes, I was already looking at you," she finally admitted before she had a chance to stop and filter herself. Maybe she was still a bit drunk, or concussed. Or both. Most likely both.
"See, that's all you had to say to begin with," Curly teased and more silence followed as Katie gave him a smile he couldn't see, leaving Curly hoping that Katie would say something soon to focus on over the other noises in the house.
"You didn't have to keep staring at me all week, though," Katie said through a yawn, her eyes closing.
Curly shrugged. "I felt like it."
"Why?"
"You're pretty easy on the eyes," he answered as if that were the most normal thing in the world to tell a girl who had just had a horror of a night and was concussed and fighting sleep on her threshold.
Katie laughed lightly, dreamily. "So are you," she breathed back quietly and a second or two later her smile faded to just the slightest upturn of her lips.
Curly could tell she had fallen asleep. The rhythm of her breathing had changed almost instantly and he felt her energy leave the room. The creaking from up the hallways ceased and he fell asleep not long after, her sleepy words still echoing in his mind.
Now I'm feeling at the end of the rope
Now I'm falling down the rabbit hole
Am I losing my mind? Or I just can't let go
I feel like I'm losing control
Curly woke the next morning to the sun streaming into the room through the open curtains in Susan's den. He cussed aloud, wanting to get up and close the curtains so he could go back to sleep, but he just couldn't bring himself to stand yet. His eyes hurt as he glanced around the room and the events of last night came rushing back. Arguing with Katie at the drive-in, her bust up with her brother, the gash on her head, the mood swings she'd had last night, hating him one moment and then admitting that he looked good right before falling asleep.
He looked over at her, still asleep on the couch, and wondered how she would treat him this morning. Whether the laughter they had shared in the dark last night would continue or whether she would go back to acting like she was better than him again.
He remembered Susan's sister telling them to try and wake her during the night to make sure she was still alive. He didn't know if anybody else had done it during the night, but this was the first time he had properly woken up since falling asleep early that morning, so he lent over the armrest of the armchair he had woken up in and softly shook her shoulder.
Her eyebrows pulled together as she groaned, squeezing her eyes tightly shut against the impending wake-up. Curly pulled away and watched her slowly, very slowly, open her eyes and blink back sleep.
"Well, you're alive at least," Curly commented, leaning his head back into his armchair and closing his eyes to the brightness of the room.
"Yeah, yeah," she groaned again, "rub it in."
Curly gave the roof a small smile, his head thumping its annoyance at the stiff position he'd slept in last night. "My head is killing me."
"I can guarantee mine feels worse," she said back, placing a hand on the side of her forehead that wasn't cut up and blood-stained. "Is it bad?" she asked, pulling her hand away again and looking over at Curly. "It's bad, isn't it?"
Curly looked over at her, taking in her appearance. Her blonde hair was stringy with knots and the bits of blood that had gotten in it and dried. Her eye make-up from the night before was dried halfway down her cheeks and dried blood was smeared on parts of her face that had no business being there. In the middle of the space of skin between her hairline and left eyebrow was a sore looking cut about two inches long. The cut skin looked red and angry and the skin around it was a dark shade of purple.
Curly shook his head. "It ain't too bad," he answered and then cracked a grin at her. "Makes you look tuff."
"I must look awful then," she laughed back, slowly sitting up in her spot on the couch, her hand pressed to her forehead again.
"Some night, huh?" Curly said, echoing Susan's words from the night before.
"Some night," Katie agreed, her eyes falling down to her lap upon realizing that it was daytime now and pretty soon she would have to go home.
"How're things gonna be at home for you?" Curly asked, unaware that he had read her mind.
Katie gave him a small shrug. "Fine," she said. "I know he didn't mean to hurt me," she looked up at him and said evenly, "I know you don't agree, but I know him. I'm more worried about my mom."
She didn't say anything more and Curly didn't want to pry any further into her home life. He believed that she wasn't afraid of Rick, he could see it in her eyes and hear it in the way she spoke, but it didn't change the fact that he had made her bleed.
"I need a shower," Katie changed the subject, pulling herself to her feet slowly, and when the room stopped spinning she walked off down the hallway, retrieved herself a towel from the same cupboard that she had gotten the blankets from last night, and entered Susan's bathroom, locking the door behind her.
She looked at herself in the mirror and thought to herself that Curly must have been trying not to piss her off when he'd told her she didn't look too bad. She looked like death, like several shades of shit, with her make-up smudged, her hair ratty and blood dried everywhere.
She noticed the blood was on her clothes as she peeled them off and when she got in the shower the water turned pink as it swirled down the drain. She kept her head out of the direct spray of the water and wiped gently at her face, particularly the area around her cut, with her wet hands. The sliced skin stung and throbbed, but after a few minutes of gritting her teeth she got used to it and finished up in the shower.
She felt dirty again as soon as her clothes were back on, but at least her skin felt fresher and aside from the gash on her forehead and her pale face she looked much better. When she came out of the bathroom she could hear voices down the hall in the kitchen and when she entered she found that Dale and Susan were awake and Curly had gotten up to join them around the kitchen counter as Susan spread butter over several slices of toast.
"Morning, Sunshine," Susan said, looking over at Katie standing in the doorway. "You look terrible."
Katie gave her a glare and sat down in one of the chairs at the kitchen table. "I'd hate to hear what you'd have had to say before I had a shower. At least Curly had the decency to lie."
Susan and Dale glanced at Curly, then back at Katie, and an awkward silence followed for the briefest moment before Susan cleared her throat and put down the knife she had been using to butter the toast. "Eat up," she told them, "I'll drive ya'll home after we're done."
The group ate silently, all appearing to be in deep thought, and the drive wasn't much different. Susan dropped Dale and Curly off at Curly's place first. As the two boys got out of the car and Susan started to pull away from the curb, Katie wondered fleetingly what Tim would say if he knew Curly had spent the night sleeping in the same room as Katie, talking until they fell asleep.
She wondered, too, what Rick would have to say about that, but she found that she wasn't as concerned with what his reaction might be as she had been previously. She didn't know if that was because he had knocked her down last night or if her eyes had just opened more to what Curly was like... All she knew was that it was a whole lot easier on her when she wasn't constantly thinking about what Rick would think. She liked Curly, she always had. There was an ease about him that rubbed off on her, that made her feel comfortable.
Katie's mom was home when she got home, it still being morning thanks to the sun waking up everybody at Susan's house so early. She thought about sneaking upstairs and avoiding her mom seeing her forehead, but she knew she couldn't hide it forever – there was likely going to be a mark there for a while yet – so she decided to get it over with.
Katie's mom was in her room upstairs, sorting laundry in a wide semicircle around her on the bed. She called out to Katie as Katie climbed the stairs and gasped when Katie appeared in her doorway, jumping up to inspect her closer.
"What happened to you?" Shirley asked, lifting her hand to touch Katie's forehead before Katie swatted it away.
"I'm fine," she answered quickly, "nothing major; Susan's sister already had a look at it."
Shirley pulled back and drank in her daughter with her eyes, concerned as she looked her up and down. "What happened?" she asked again, her eyes lingering on the blood stains on Katie's blouse.
"A fight broke out at this party I was at last night," Katie explained nonchalantly, "and I fell over in the frenzy and hit my head."
Shirley's eyes analyzed her daughter and Katie tried desperately to show some look of honesty in them. After a long moment Shirley nodded, seeming to accept the story. "These boys at these parties are dangerous," she stated the obvious, disgruntled. "You've got to keep away from them, Katie."
"I know," Katie muttered, "it was an accident, though."
"Were you drinking liquor?" Shirley asked, raising an eyebrow at Katie questioningly.
As Katie scrambled for an appropriate answer she and her mom heard the front door open and slam closed, and then footsteps on the stairs.
"Rick, will you look at what trouble your sister got into last night?" Shirley called out when Rick made it to the top of the stairs and a moment later he was standing behind Katie in the doorway. "And what's happened to you, too?!" Shirley exclaimed and Katie turned around to look at her brother.
Rick's bottom lip was cut and he was sporting a bruise on his right eye richer in colour than the bruise on Katie's forehead. He was wearing his leather jacket, and Katie figured he must have taken it off before his fight with Tim and that it was now hiding the slice on his arm that Dale had told her about last night. His eyes flicked from his mom to Katie and stayed there, looking directly at the cut on her forehead.
"I was just telling mom about this fight last night," Katie spoke quickly, hoping that he would catch on to the lie, "and I got caught up in the crowd and fell and hit my head."
"What happened to you?" Shirley interrupted.
Rick looked back at his mom and then at Katie again, his eyes narrowed at his little sister. "I got into a fight," he answered finally.
Shirley looked between her two children, at the way they were looking back at one another – silent pacts made telepathically – and suspicion began to grow. "The same fight that had Katie hitting her head?"
"No," Katie replied for Rick, "we were in different places last night." Shirley watched Katie and Rick for another couple of moments before Katie spoke again. "Anyway, I have homework," she said lamely and moved off down the hall to her own bedroom.
She fell onto her bed, lying on her stomach with her head turned to the left so as not to bother the cut. She lay like that for a few minutes, her eyes closed tiredly, and she was glad that she was at least exhausted enough that her mind was not whirring endlessly right now. She wasn't thinking, just revelling in the softness of her blanket against her right cheek.
A knock at the door came and Katie forced herself to roll over onto her back as she called out for whoever it was to come in. She knew it was Rick before he opened the door and let himself in; she knew the difference between Rick's knocks and her mom's knocks.
He stepped into her bedroom and closed the door behind him, looking at her forehead again before sitting down carefully in the chair at her desk as she sat up and crossed her legs on her bed. "Katie..." he started, regret so clear in his green eyes as he looked away from her and down at his hands in his laps.
"It's okay," she said, knowing already what he was going to say and wanting to spare him the guilt he was so obviously feeling.
"No, it's not."
"I'm okay."
"No, you're not," he hissed at her, trying to keep his voice down as he glanced at her bedroom door, agitated. "You're clearly not, Katie, so shut up and just let me say this." Katie watched him nervously, his nostrils flaring as he dug his fingernails into his palms. "I'm so sorry," he said, grunting as though it was physically hurting him.
"You don't need to apologize, Rick," Katie started again. "You didn't mean it."
Rick shut his eyes tight and shook his head. "I did, though, I meant to push you. I could've handled it so many other ways, but I just pushed you instead – it was my first reaction."
"You didn't mean to hurt me."
Silence fell between the two for a minute and when Rick spoke again he was almost laughing. "You sound like Mom."
"What?"
"You sound like her," he said again, looking at Katie, something insidious playing out in his mind as he spoke, "talkin' about Dad."
"Hey," Katie said defensively, scooting to the edge of her bed and leaning forward to grab one of Rick's hands. "I know you're afraid of being like him, but you are not Dad," she said strongly, believing her words with every ounce of her being. "You are a good person." Rick clutched her hand in his and she could feel him shaking. Looking at him now she remembered Jodie's words at Buck's on new years eve. She had told Katie that dwelling on what happened with Mike was just hurting everyone more, and now Katie thought that as angry as she was with Jodie for telling Rick that she had been talking to Tim, she may have been right. "Do you think," she began slowly, "that maybe things have gone a little too far?" When a confused look crossed Rick's face Katie continued. "It might be better for everyone involved if you and the Shepards just cooled it for a little while."
He laughed bitterly again. "And now you sound like Jodie."
"I think she might have a point," Katie said carefully.
"No," Rick answered immediately, dropping Katie's hand and standing up abruptly. "They murdered Mike," he said, standing over her and a small part of her shrunk back from his looming form. "I can't let them get away with that," he said, shaking his head before wrenching Katie's bedroom door open and leaving her alone in her room.
Pain, it hangs on by a thread
I lie alone in this bed, drift away
Am I stuck in a dream in a room
I fall apart at the seams in my mind