Chapter Seven:
The Broken
Note: Nick's P.O.V.
My plan had originally been to get home and discreetly pack. I'd be leaving early tomorrow.
But as I plodded down the stair to my room, I happened to spy mom sitting straight-backed on one of the stiff sofas around the little coffee table at the base of the stair. Something red sat on the table, she had her hands in her lap and stared straight ahead at some point on the wall.
For anyone else, this might seem normal for their mother to be waiting at home after school but not for me. I knew her. Just like I knew she would normally be in her office until six when she would begin to prepare dinner.
That was when I knew my plans would have to wait.
Upon hearing my footsteps she spoke: "Your flight's been changed."
Well. Shit.
I instinctively froze a moment, halfway between two steps; I knew I should've expected this. "Mom, I can explain."
She picked up the red thing that I now recognized to be my passport and stood. "Can you? Can you really?" Her voice was filled with the soft venom only brought out from betrayal and through having failed her control.
I hit the bottom of the stairs as she came to face me. The tension between us was so thick she just might take a slice and serve it for dinner.
I kept my voice solid, face emotionless, eyes beating into her. "I tried to talk to you."
"It doesn't matter." She looked down at my passport. "You had this ticket for weeks, you planned to go no matter what I said."
She dropped the booklet at my feet before shouldering past me, heading back up the stairs to her office. I just stood there, not wanting to give her that satisfaction of having discovered my escape. I heard her pause halfway up. My imagination could tell me that she turned around in hopes that I was looking, her mind conniving.
"My god, Nicholas," She paused to sniffle a little. "You were just going to leave without saying anything?" More huffing sniffles, she started moving again, "I feel like I've been living in this house with a stranger."
I stood there until I couldn't hear her footsteps anymore, then I bent to grab my passport and retreated to my room.
Although I didn't let her see it, in a way she had gotten to me.
Rather than continuing to put my crap together in a bag less secretly than originally planned, I found myself watching an old show on the T.V. while lying upside down. Except now that I'm thinking about what I'm doing, I wasn't actually paying it any attention, my gaze just happened to be directed towards the screen. All that I really knew was that it involved an older Volkswagen Bug.
I was caught up in my own thoughts. I checked my flight's new time, according to the airline's website, it was suggested to be present by ten thirty that night. Therefore I had tons of time to waste considering I had gotten home before it was even two.
I absent-mindedly rolled over and picked up a dart from one of the shelves on my bed's headboard, I rolled it around between my hands as I thought.
Somewhere in the back of my head, that little voice, the one that I'm not terribly sure if everyone really has it or not, that little voice that no matter what you do to disprove or displace it, it's still there and never wrong. The one that you're not even sure if it's really even yours and not some outer being's. That voice. The little voice that had told me to expect this, that my mother always has her fingers in everything, that there was no hiding something as big as leaving from her.
I couldn't help but to think that maybe, just maybe, I should have told her. Just told her that I can't turn down something like that and that I would go with or without her consent. And maybe that would have worked out better than sneaking around. Or maybe I should fix this, try to mend our relationship before I leave.
And maybe I was full of shit.
But her plan had worked, she had planted that seed of guilt in my mind. And grow it did, it had taken root minutes after she set and watered it. Like a strangler vine, it choked my conscience.
Plus, there was some thrill in going behind her back, that rebelling, forbidden sense that had died when she confronted me. Like it just wouldn't be quite as sweet anymore now that I've been caught.
I thought of a thousand different scenarios as I rolled my thumb across the dart's point.
At this point, my brain wasn't exactly my number one ally. In fact, I'm not even sure it had the capability of being helpful at this point. So instead of continuing to allow myself to wallow in my head's opinions and options, I sat up eyeing the ceiling's dartboard before taking a shot at it.
It struck the near the second ring from the outside. I rolled off my bed and pulled a jacket on. Since I was metaphorically still on the fence about leaving, I slipped the ticket, passport and baggage information booklet into the inner pocket. And after a moment of internal conflict I also pocketed the watch mom had given me for graduation.
Then I left.
Brigid Dwyer's party-throwing skills were not lacking. Even I could admit that. Although, I also admitted that she had a lot to work with in the first place: Nice, big place, parents who were loaded and conveniently away on short business trips often, acquaintances to buy the liquor and provide the drugs.
You couldn't miss out on much of what high school partying was about if you attended a Brigid party. Hell, when I had walked in, there was a pool the size of a house filled with balloons and people who were either completely dressed or missing a lot of what they must've originally had- especially the girls. But the night was still young, I'm sure there will be skinny dippers in an hour or so (if there weren't any hidden in the water already.)
I couldn't tell you exactly why I came here in the first place although I could take a few guesses that wouldn't be far off but anyway, while I was out, I noticed I was in her neighborhood, remembered Lisa's invitation, and thought 'I seriously want a beer.'
And that was that.
Now, here I was, sitting at a patio booth overlooking the pool whilst spinning the little drink server thing with a hand and taking an occasional gulp of Bud every so often. I think I know the song that was playing but I wasn't sure, after all, I barely dabbled in rock, much preferring R&B's Bob Marley, Liam Rooney, and maybe a little Drake over it. Either way, I could guess the song's name was something along "Taking Control" from the repetition of it.
During my mind's rambling, Lisa had caught wind of me. She slipped into the booth next to me, "I thought you were too busy to come."
She held a glass with some sort of amber/red alcoholic drink that she sipped from.
I tipped my chin up at her, "You wanna go to London?" When she scrunched her brows together, I realized the music overpowered my voice. I tried again. "Wanna go to London?!"
She smiled, raised her eyebrows questioningly before nodding and doing that tongue thing chicks do when they eat or drink stuff since they believe it makes us guys think dirty things. Which I may or may not have been thinking.
I showed her the pamphlet, "Serious. Your flight leaves in two hours."
She did that tongue-over-lip thing again as she took another sip before setting it down and leaning forward, "Then we'd better be quick."
She took me away be the thumb. Quite literally. Like, she held my thumb with her whole hand enclosed about it. I'd bet that it was another one of those girls-do-this-to-turn-boys-on things, except it just felt strange.
The next thing I knew was that we were in a bedroom, the door was closed and Lisa was on me.
To say we were fucking would be an overstatement. Her mouth covered mine and I tasted her lipstick and what she was drinking earlier, she attacked me vigorously. Red-blonde hair curtained my face and tickled my ears and neck. Hands were everywhere; mine planted on her ass as she grinded me. Her big loopy earrings thwacking me with the cold shock when we pulled away, her long, still jean-clad legs straddling mine.
And somehow, I felt detached. I was also pretty sure that somehow my pants were unbuttoned and that whenever she felt particularly lustful, a hand would slip down and in there too.
She pulled away, making me fall back when she dropped the pressure on my lips. Her hands ran down my chest, then back up from under the shirt, exploring what I had to offer. She bit her bottom lip in an ideal sexy smirk, exposing her pearly whites.
"What would she think of us now?" her voice was husky. "Your mother?"
I made a guttural sound as her fingers found my jean pockets again and began fishing.
Lisa dragged out a watch, the new one. "Wow, nice watch." She leaned over, giving me what would have been an excellent view of her cleavage had she not broken my interests, and rapped the new watch against the one I wore. "Why do you wear this old thing?"
I looked at it. "Dad gave it to me."
She cocked her head, "Wouldn't he want you to have a nicer watch?"
Biting her lip again, she dropped the watched and started to get back to work. Or would've anyway.
But let me tell you; I did not drink enough for this.
Instead of continuing, I reached out and grabbed her chin just before she could taste me and I pushed her back by it as I nonchalantly rolled out from under her, successfully dumping her onto the bed.
I'm honestly not sure if she only didn't say anything until I had redone my pant's button because she was expecting something else or she was just that shocked.
"What're you doing?"
I picked up my jacket, pulling out the passport and tossed it to her before putting it on. "Have fun, "was all I said before I left.
Note: Third Person's P.O.V.
One of the first things Nick noticed as he exited the party and returned to walking the street was how cold it was. Not the falling snow type of cold, just the frosty breath-seeing cold.
The second thing he took note of was how pissed he was. How he had the sudden urge to kick down a nearby trash can to blow off some steam, which he did in fact do.
The third thing that caught his attention took him a bit longer to realize. It was the grumble of a car engine moving slowly as it idled down the road, as it was very obvious the driver wasn't giving it gas. When Nicholas heard it, he looked back to see an older model car that would be expensive as hell if it was in better condition. He made a little waving gesture for it to pass.
The car gave a rough grumble-cough as the driver tapped the gas and released it again, as though urging Nick to get out of the road. When he noticed that the car was still there, he stepped closer to his side of the road and swept his arm in a much grander gesture this time. The car huffed again in the gas-release process.
And that was when sense hit him. He looked back at the car again, it was too dark to see anyone on the inside but he knew the chill that suddenly went down his back when the car gave another rumble had nothing to do with the cold.
Nick took off at a dead sprint and the car roared after him.
Through pure instinct but with the delay of his conscience mind thinking it through, he made towards the woods on the far side of the road, hoping to go down the trail that led near his home.
Unfortunately, that was what the car's pilot wanted, it didn't exactly strike him squarely- In fact, it wouldn't have touched him at all had the driver not foreseen that and threw their door open to ensure he'd be hit and momentarily stunned, at least. The impact snapped a piece of the side-view mirror off as it sent Nick flying into a puddle within the tree line with an "Uff!"
The car backed up and pulled itself in more neatly, the driver's door already closed again. Nick had already begun to recover and was rolling over to recover his feet while crawling away haphazardly when he heard a "Hey, where you off to?" and a pair to heavy footsteps following.
What happened next was a total blur to Nicholas, all he knew was that he was either being hit—by fist, boot, or bat, he couldn't tell—or trying to recover and run, his body in control of the robotic-like movements that kept seizing up. He could also hear in fragments.
Ari and Iggy taunted him as they beat him, considering how much he was still moving, they weren't hitting him too hard.
As for Maximum, she was the driver. And that was where she watched them with a dark intensity and the satisfaction that someone who had done her two wrongs was getting was he deserved by her means.
She could hear them, the occasional grunt of pain or effort mixed with the sound of flesh against flesh and wood against flesh.
And Sam, too, was there. His nose was bloody but not broken from where he's been punched out earlier. He sat in the rear middle seat; his eyes crinkled almost closed, daring to open them every so often. He whimpered, "I can't watch this. Please make them stop." It hardly came out louder than a whisper.
"Shut up," Max snarled quietly back.
"Please. Please tell them to stop," Samuel tried again, somewhat determined not to be doing nothing to stop them. "Please tell them to stop."
She ignored him. Waited a long moment before slipping out of the car and approaching the boys. She shouldered between them and held a hand out for Ari's bat, which he relinquished to her as he and Iggy stood back.
Max took a swing, which turned into more, each feeding her fury as her voice grew louder, harsher; "How do you like that lover boy?!" She kicked him. "Do you think of that now? Huh! Now that you've turned me in?!" Two last swings.
Sam had come out towards to scene now, like a starved and cowering animal too desperate for what there was to be had. "Stop! Stop! I didn't know. You were supposed to be on a plane, Nick-"
Iggy caught gave him a solid punch to the gut, sending Sam to the ground. "Nick can't hear you, you fucking idiot."
Ari moved behind Max to join in with Iggy.
Stepping forward, Maximum got a big handful of Nick's shirt to make him face her head-on. Half of his was covered in a lovely mix of blood and dirt.
"You're so damn perfect." She dropped him, "Who's the broken one now?"
It was amazing that Nick still had the strength left to croak, "You are. . . It's still you."
She had started to leave when she heard that, she turned back, "What'd you say?"
Nick had rolled back up onto all fours again by now; he looked at her and repeated himself again.
"Still you."
Max swung the bat at him hard, letting out a cry of effort and he thumped back down onto his back again. She was breathing hard as she backed away, ready to scram.
Except this time Nick didn't get up. The others were beginning to back away before the noticed this. Anytime he was hit before, he'd be mechanically rolling back and trying to crawl away within seconds. And yet, there he was still on his back.
The gang converged back upon him, slowly. Max and Iggy looked down on him.
"What'd you do?" Iggy asked quietly, trying to hold back the panic as Ari got down on his knees to check for breath. "Oh, jeez."
Ari put his ear over Nick's nose and listened, then scrunching his eyebrows in either confusion, frustration, or both, he held his fingers over the mouth and nose for a minute. He stood back up and looked at Max.
"He's not breathing."
Author's Note:
Dun dun dun dum.
I promise, it's better this way. If you guys want to take half a million guesses of what Max is going to do about it, go for it.
Anyway, I had some serious feels going on yesterday as well as drowning in my own baked goods so I almost made you guys wait until Christmas for this chapter but I will apologize for the extra day wait, this chapter turned out much longer than I expected.
So, yeah. Enjoy your cliff-hanger and I'm only going to do review acknowledgements every other chapter.
Hate the story? Like it? Love it? Something wrong? Review.
-TheInvisibilityComplex
