When It Rains by everymonday
Chapter Eight: The Skin I'm In
I like most liquor, but I don't like gin
Don't always like the skin I'm in
But when I get it wrong gotta start again
But I love the way you move
I love the way you move
Dave Matthews Band; Spaceman
He hates Creative Writing. The first fifteen minutes are always spent doing writing exercises, which for William, are just fifteen minutes where he stares at a blank sheet of paper and trying not to choke to death on the scent of citrus and flowers.
"I'm taking Gee to the park today," he tells her as casually as he can from his locker.
She looks surprised when her head turns to face at him.
William usually has to go to his locker to switch books out and drop off the calculator that messes up the arrangement of items in his backpack. He knows she has to go through the same ritual, though he doesn't know what books and items she switches because usually she's just getting to her locker when he's leaving his.
"Was that an invitation?" One delicate eyebrow is raised and her eyes are bright with amusement.
"It's just a fact." William pretends to rummage for something his locker, even though he already has his everything he needs.
"Is it now?" she asks facetiously. "A fact between friends?"
He turns just as she's pulling out a thick book that he doesn't recognize. She hugs it to her chest like he's seen her do with other books, and her arms obscuring the title.
"More or less," he replies, trying to match her tone.
"I'll have to think it over then."
He thinks that's useless, since they both know she'll show up at the park. She should just say that she would be there and cut the bullshit. William considers telling her that Gee would be happy to see her, and as true as that may be, he feels that might be too much of a Caroline-like tactic, so he simply nods. "See you, then."
Her smile falters, probably not expecting that from him, but then she regains her lost footing and nods too. "Later."
Caroline decides to sit with Charles at lunch, and Charles doesn't tell her not to, much to the disappointment of all other occupants at the table.
"I just feel like I don't know all of Charles's friends," Caroline says. "I really need to spend more time with Charles since I'm going to be away next year at college, you know."
Luke mutters something rather unintelligible, but William is sure he heard, "Thank God."
"Where are you going to go?" Aaron, the other boy, William finally learned his name after a few days, asks politely.
"Oh, I don't really know yet," Caroline shrugs. "I just have so many options."
"Have you taken your SATs yet?" Luke politely asks.
"Not yet. I need to sign up though. Senior year is just flying by!"
It hasn't even been three weeks yet. In fact, as he listens to Caroline ramble on about the advantages and disadvantages of living in sorority houses, he feels like time has actually stopped.
"Hey, William?" Collin ventures.
He angles his head slightly in Collin's direction to indicate that he's listening, though he knows Collin will continue even if he's not listening.
"Do you mind if I change partners?"
"Excuse me?" Part of him can't help but be insulted. If anyone should wish to change partners, it'd be him.
"I mean, see, I think I have a chance with this girl, and I'd really like to be her lab partner, you know, so we could get to know each other. You'd get to be partners with Meredith."
William is guessing Meredith is the one staring at their table with disgustingly hopeful eyes. She can't be any worse than Collin as a partner, so he gives an indifferent shrug, which Collin takes as an affirmative.
"Yes!" Collin pumps his fist in the air. "I'll let Mr. West know. Thanks so much for understanding!" He gathers his belongings and walks to the desk in the front and gives a thumbs up sign to Meredith.
The blonde girl with impossibly excited face takes his vacated seat and shoots him a bright, eager smile. "Hey, William."
He sighs. "Hello."
"I'm really excited about being partners."
"Do you know anything about Newton's Laws of Motion?" he questions her.
"Um." She blushes. "That-that's what we're studying now, right?"
"Yes."
"I have all the notes."
He shakes his head. That's not an answer.
Maybe he's just doomed to have idiot lab partners.
His marks are not where they should be. He's known this, of course, but sitting next to Lizzy in Government and seeing the 100 she gets on her quiz compared to his 67 really drives the fact home. He'll have to work harder, if only to show her that she doesn't get to win at everything.
"I'm working today," she informs him without preamble.
He turns his head away from the girls waiting for their rides. They're becoming fewer and fewer. It's relieving, honestly, even if it proves Lizzy is right about nobody liking him.
"So I won't be able to go to the park with you and Gee."
William nods, pushing away the feeling that resembles disappointment, which can't be right.
Today has just been an odd day.
He supposes that's what happens when you spend the previous afternoon in a rainstorm with a girl who is clearly crazy.
The ground at the park is muddy, but Gee still wants to swing and play, so he complies. They stay there until their shoes are caked brown and the sky is streaked with an array of warm colors surrendering into the dark.
When he arrives home, Mrs. Reynolds informs him that Lizzy drove by about twenty minutes ago to drop off the clothes she borrowed from him yesterday.
William opens the bag to find his shirt and gym shorts neatly folded and smelling faintly of laundry detergent and her.
He throws the clothes in the hamper because he needs to get her smell out.
"I came by your house yesterday after my shift. Did Mrs. Reynolds tell you?" she asks him in creative writing the next day. Her voice is soft, and he notices that she looked around carefully before telling him this.
He wonders whose reputation she thinks she's protecting – his or hers. Not that talking to him would have a negative effect on her reputation. No matter what she said about people liking him, he knew they respected him. That's all that matters really, according to his father anyway.
"Yes."
"So, are you going to be taking Gee to the park today?" She's turned around in her seat completely now, but her voice remains quiet.
"She's got a dance lesson and then some play date with a girl from her school." He narrows his eyes suspiciously. "Why?"
Lizzy shrugs, feigning nonchalance. "Because I might be at the park today. I have to do some still life drawings and I'm thinking about going to that spot where the hummingbird eggs are."
"Is that an invitation?" He struggles to keep his voice from sounding too eager. William won't admit it, but he rather likes this game they're playing.
"Of course not." Lizzy grins at him, tucking a loose curl behind her ear. "Just a fact, shared between friends."
"William," Caroline coos, latching onto his arm from out of nowhere. He could have sworn that Charles was behind him in line, not his ridiculous sister. Charles eyes are apologetic when they meet his over Caroline's head. "I heard you were going to the park today."
"Where did you get that idea?" he asks calmly.
Caroline is not stupid, and they both know this. For all of Caroline Bingley's faults, she is not an idiot. So the Oh, Come On look she gives him is very much deserved. "I heard you talking about it in first period today."
"I never said I was going to the park." That is the truth.
"You and Lizzy-"
"Lizzy was just telling me she was going to be at the park," he explains slowly, shrugging off her vice-like grip on his arm so that he can get his lunch. "I was there with my sister yesterday."
"Oh, how is darling Georgiana?"
William thinks that it should be said that he is not an idiot either, and he knows Caroline doesn't give two wits about his sister. "She's fine. Unfortunately, she's got a dance lesson today so I won't be able to take her to the park."
"So you're going to the park to hang out with Lizzy?" Her scathing tone doesn't match her innocent expression.
"I'm not going to the park at all." Actually, he just hasn't decided yet, but that really isn't anyone's business.
"Well, it's Friday, do you want to hang out with me and a few of my friends?"
Bollocks, is it really Friday? That means another weekend of being cooped up in the house with paperwork from his father. At least it gave him a legitimate excuse. "No thanks, my father's got me doing a few things for him all weekend."
Caroline pouts at him and he notices that her lips look rather sticky. "All weekend?"
"Yes, I'm afraid so."
"Are you sure? My sister Louisa is coming to visit and I think she'll buy us all alcohol if I ask her nicely."
William raises an eyebrow and glances at Charles, who is clearly shaking his head at him, though William's not sure if he's shaking his head because their sister won't buy them alcohol or because hanging out with Caroline under the influence of alcohol is a bad idea. "I'm sorry, Caroline. I can't."
He's so glad to be at the cashier that he almost walks straight through without paying. "Sorry," he mumbles as he digs in his pocket for his wallet.
He feels a temporary sense of relief when he's out of the line, but all too soon, Caroline is by his side again.
"Our usual table then?"
William wonders when his usual table became their usual table.
Collin would not have been able to switch partners had they been in the middle of a lab assignment. Meredith tells him so. Apparently they're allowed to switch partners up, though most people choose not to, as long as it's not in between labs. She, like Collin and Charles, enjoys talking, and unfortunately for him, today they're not taking notes, but starting a new lab, which means she gets to talk as much as she wants.
William glances over at where Collin is standing next to Lizzy. He hadn't realized it was her Collin thought he had a chance with. Had he known, William might have asked the boy what made him think he possibly had a chance with Lizzy Bennet. Or maybe he might not have, because he doesn't want to appear too interested in Lizzy's affairs – because he's not, really, and it wouldn't do to appear interested when one is not.
"Don't touch that," Lizzy hisses as she slaps Collin's hand away. A few snickers from fellow classmates around them follow, but Collin remains unaffected.
"I'm sorry, Lizzy, sweetheart. I was only trying to help."
"Stop calling me that. I'm not your sweetheart!"
"Darling, I really think-"
"Shut up! Just sit down and don't touch anything!"
"Should I measure it now?" Meredith asks him, taking his attention away from Lizzy.
"Alright."
"Lizzy is a horrible lab partner," Meredith mutters as she unrolls the measuring tape. "She never lets me do anything."
"Use centimeters, not inches."
The girl blushes, but does as he says without protest or excuses. However, she doesn't hold the tape straight, so he has to correct her again.
He can't really blame Lizzy for not letting this girl do anything. She's proving to be just as useless as Collin.
Lizzy's already in her seat by the time he arrives in Government. She's also free of paint splatters today.
"You're here early," he notes.
"No painting today means no clean up." She's doodling in her notebook and doesn't look at him.
"I don't think you should talk about facts when we're in the same classroom as Caroline."
Lizzy's pencil stops moving and she looks up at him with narrowed eyes. "Afraid to ruin your precious reputation?"
The defensiveness in her tone surprises him since it was her who spoke in quiet tones this morning. "More like afraid Caroline Bingley is going to know my whereabouts."
"Caroline hates the park," Lizzy tells him matter-of-factly.
"Well, she seemed pretty willing to accompany me there."
Her eyes roll. "Of course she was."
The bell rings, and his next question is forced to remain unasked as Mrs. Lane begins to speak.
"Why do you say that?" he whispers anyway.
"Shut up and pay attention. I'm kicking your ass in this class, you know."
He does know, and he does not like to be reminded of it.
What's worse is now, if he does choose to pay attention, she'll think it has something to do with her and her carefully chosen words. If he doesn't, she'll surely be right about beating him in this class.
William has no idea how she manages to get him into these situations where he simply cannot win.
He's still so annoyed with her by the time the bell rings signaling the end of class that he purposely takes his time packing his things together and waits until she's completely gone from the room before he starts to walk. He doesn't want any chance of having to walk with her to wait.
To be sure, William makes a trip to the loo before finally going outside.
She's already left by the time he gets to his usual spot, but he feels no satisfaction.
William rings Charles to see if maybe he wants to play video games this afternoon or something, but Charles says he's got a "date type thing" with Jane. He hesitantly invites William along, and as pleased as William is that Charles would sacrifice alone time with Jane to be a decent friend to him, he decides to pass, believing that this would be his way of being a decent friend back to Charles.
He begins to wonder about those hummingbird eggs. Surely they must be hatched by now. Or crushed. Or eaten.
He's betting on the latter two and he wants to be sure, so he decides to go to the park. William is only going to see what the hell happened to those hummingbirds, and that is a bloody fact.
Lizzy looks up when his foot snaps a tree branch. She's sitting in the dirt with her back against a tree, wearing blue jeans and a lavender colored blouse.
"Fancy meeting you here, Darcy." He can tell by the look on her face that she's been expecting him.
His rehearsed words are in his mouth and poised and ready to strike, but they don't. His powerful army of words cowers when it is met with Lizzy Bennet's soft gray-blue eyes (because he's realized two days ago her eyes aren't light blue, they're gray-blue).
He clears his throat, ready to try again, but then she says, "I'm glad you came," and suddenly, though he'd never, never, never admit it, so is he.
"Where are the hummingbird eggs?"
Her face becomes a little less sunny, and she looks down at her drawing pad. "The nest is over there. It looks like it's been stepped on or something though."
William walks over to where she gestured and again has to squint to see a nest. This time, though, it really is just a pile of dirt and twigs. He can see what is clearly an animal's footprint in what used to be a hummingbird's nest.
"Maybe they hatched before the nest got stepped on," William offers slowly, mostly because she's rubbing furiously at her drawing pad and it's making him slightly uneasy. Honestly, he thinks the eggs were eaten long before the nest was stepped on.
"I should have moved the nest when I saw it," Lizzy mutters, not look up at him, or even acting like she heard his words, words that were carefully chosen for her benefit.
"Pardon me?"
"When I saw the nest, I wanted to move it into a tree or something, so it wouldn't get stepped on, but Jane said that maybe the mother wouldn't be able to find it or wouldn't want the eggs after my scent was on it."
William stares at her, wondering how she could truly be upset about not moving a nest of two hummingbird eggs. As if that would have made a difference in the big picture. Hummingbirds weren't even endangered species, who really cared if two eggs never got to hatch?
"I wanted to take them home and get a heat lamp and maybe get them to hatch myself," she continues. "But my mom would have probably thrown a fit. Or my crazy sisters would have tried to put make up on them or something."
He's beginning to think that Lizzy is just as crazy as Caroline, but in a completely different way.
"What would you have done once they hatched? How would you feed them?"
"I don't know," Lizzy admits. "I would have looked it up online, I guess."
"So, you would have taken them from their mother without a real plan?"
"Well, I should have done something!"
"Either way, it would have ended the same. They would have died. I'm pretty sure they lost the battle for life when their nest fell out of the bloody tree."
"That's not true. They fell out of the tree and didn't crack or anything! That's got to count for-"
"It counts for nothing when the nest gets stepped on," he cuts her off.
"They wouldn't have gotten stepped on if I had done what I wanted to and-"
"You live what? Half an hour away on foot? You think you could have walked home with a nest held steadily in your hand?"
"Just because you don't think-"
"Then you would have gone through the trouble of purchasing a heat lamp, which by the way wouldn't have worked since eggs need to be incubated, not just heated, and then-"
"I would have found that out after I searched the internet!"
"Oh, brilliant. The internet!" he exclaims sarcastically. "Because the internet is just full of reliable sources, not a bunch of people with elementary school educations pretending to-"
"At least I would have done something!"
"But you didn't, Lizzy!" He cries. "You didn't do anything, and it wouldn't have mattered it you did. If that's something you're going to fret about, then I hope you're ready for a lifetime of fretting because there are always going to be situations where you can't do anything."
Her eyes narrow at him, her chin juts out stubbornly. "There's always something you can do."
"Sure, but it's not always going to be a solution."
"You should always try-"
"Trying doesn't always yield results."
"You won't know that until you try though."
"The birds were doomed from the start and you know it. Feeling guilty about it is a waste-"
"I don't need you to lecture me and talk to me about how I feel. You have no idea how I-"
"It doesn't matter how you feel because it doesn't change anything. So you should stop feeling anything about this and move on with your life."
Her nostrils flare as she lets out a harsh exhale. She grits her teeth and her jaw clenches. He expects her to continue defending her stupid eggs, but she simply looks down and continues drawing without another word.
William looks down at her drawing pad too, curious. He finds a pretty lifelike looking sketch of the trees and bushes in front of her. He also notices that her fingers are stained black from the rubbing of the paper.
He moves so that he's not directly obstructing her view, but can still see her face when he speaks to her. William refuses to sit though; the ground is soft and some areas are still wet and muddy. His trousers are much more expensive than her jeans that look like they belong in a garbage bin rather than on her person. They have more holes than he cares to count and stains of varying sizes and colors. He wouldn't be surprised if they simply disintegrated in the next hour or so.
"Don't you usually work on Fridays?" he asks, hoping this was a safe subject.
"Yeah, but Charlotte had something to do tomorrow, so we traded shifts. I totally forgot she was doing a double tomorrow though, so I kind of got the short end of that stick."
"How long have you worked there?"
"I got the job a few months after my dad died. It's my uncle's shop, and he let me have a job even though I wasn't old enough. I needed a distraction and my family needed money."
William wonders if he'll ever be able to say "a few months after my mother died" as casually as she can. Her eyes remain trained on her hands, and her face doesn't flinch. She says it in the same way she would say, "I'm going to the grocery store."
"How'd you get over it?" William asks cautiously.
She looks up at him, confused. "What?"
"Your..." He swallows. "Father dying."
Both her eyebrows lift, and she swallows too. "What? You want me to share my secret to getting over death with you?"
William frowns. "You seem like you're-"
"You don't get over it, Darcy," she says, her eyes suddenly hard. "Not really, anyway. You don't get over it. You never get over something like that. They tell you that you can, that you will, and sometimes you believe them. You start having more good days than bad days. You think you're okay and that you've moved on, but then, right out of nowhere, you're hit with this stabbing pain and there's a gaping hole in your chest and you realize that a part of you will always be missing."
He struggles to keep his face impassive, but she has just confirmed his worst fears, that it'll always be like this.
"Sorry," Lizzy whispers, looking away from him.
"It can't always be like this," he says gruffly.
She shrugs and doesn't argue, but William knows that neither of them really believes that.
For the first time since it's been there, William decides take the quilt out its hiding spot. It's pushed so far under his bed that he's forced to lay on his stomach and reach his hand underneath and feel around for it. He supposes that's from the particularly violent kick he gave it the day Lizzy was in his room.
He closes his fingers around the softness of the fabric and tugs it until they're both on his bed. He shuts his eyes and presses his lips together tightly to prevent the escaping of anything that's not ready to be out yet.
The scent of his mother's perfume, of lavenders, fills his lungs as he inhales.
It's hard to breathe without feeling like he was suffocating. There's a sharp pain in his chest and his heart is beating so rapidly that he thinks it might break through his ribcage.
It's just like Lizzy had described at the park. There's a gaping hole in his chest, and there's no way to fill it.
William lays in bed with the quilt half wrapped around his left arm and half on his chest. He stares at the fan making circles until his eyelids droop to a close, and he has the first dreamless sleep he's had in a very long time.
