Chapter Ten: Open to Abuse

Disclaimer: The Ducks and any reference to the past movies are property of Stephen Brill and Disney. Alex and any new characters are property of me! Any songs I use are credited, and this obviously never took place. Read, Enjoy, and Review!

All my heart is on these pages, open to abuse.

I should try to be dishonest but I lose.

It's never been for you.

Angry eyes, there's poison in the ink

---The New Amsterdams, "Poison in the Ink"

"What's everybody's problem?" Orion screamed at the team three hours later. "You guys are moving like slugs!"

"Stomach bug." Charlie lied through his teeth, trying to protect his players. "It's going around school."

"Ah huh." Orion surveyed his team doubtfully as they circled around him. "Apparently, this 'bug' is very selective." His hard glare fell on each player who had been skating under par during practice, which pretty much consisted of Julie and Connie. When Orion's shot his glare towards Averman, he blanched and Alex was almost certain he was going to throw up all over the ice.

"Immunity's a funny thing." Luis offered with a shrug.

"This wouldn't have anything to do with the party the busted up over on Highland Avenue last night, would it?"

Everyone looked around at each other and stayed silent. They weren't sure what would get them in more trouble: telling the truth, or getting caught in a lie.

"Because my hockey team should be smart enough to know that getting caught at something like that would automatically get them a seat on the pine pony."

"Yes, C-c-coach." Alex said bravely, her chin set. The rest of the team nervously agreed with her. Alex held up her head as Orion stared her down. If anyone betrayed the team, it wasn't going to be her.

"Coach, I hear it's just a twenty-four hour bug." Connie said, trying to add some credibility to Alex's claim. "A kid in my English class got it and he was really sick. He threw up all ov—"

"That's enough. Hit the showers. I can't stand to have you in my sight." Orion sad forcefully and everyone hung their heads. "I expect everyone back here tomorrow at noon. I have a practice to run….and you better figure out some way to beat this…'bug'. Be prepared to work." He skated backwards off the ice with out another word. Alex could feel his eyes boring a hole into her back.

"A little uptight?" she muttered to Charlie, pulling off her gloves as the team exited the rink.

"Uptight doesn't even begin to cover it. " Charlie told her. "But the guy knows his hockey."

The usually rowdy locker room was completely silent as the team changed out of their gear. Averman had managed to take off one skate and his jersey before he felt sick again. Everyone was too hung over and too guilt-ridden to talk. From their lockers, Connie and Julie sent icy glares. Uncomfortable, Alex changed as quickly as possible and left the room before an argument broke out.

"Al, wait up!" She heard Fulton call. His voice echoed off the bare walls of the atrium.

Alex stopped and turned. "What?" She spat out a little too angrily. Fulton was not the one Alex was upset with; she was upset with herself. "I'm sorry…I'm just tired, and angry at myself. Can we talk about this later?" The rest of the team was emerging from the lockers and Alex looked over nervously, searching for her brother.

"What are we gonna do about Portman?" Fulton whispered to her out of the corner of his mouth as they continued walking.

"Nothing. Don't say anything to him, ok?" Alex hissed back. "It's not his business, but if we make it his, there'll be hell to pay."

"But what if he finds out?"

"What is he gonna do?" Alex asked him pointedly. "It's not like he's never randomly made-out with someone while drunk. Ten to one, he tried to with that chick last night and got shot down. Just play it cool."

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ALEX'S JOURNAL

So, I'm giving in and writing in this stupid thing because it beats forcing myself to say words I can barely think about in my own head to a complete stranger. Why is everyone trying to make me relive a year and a half that I'd give up everything to just forget? EVEN HOCKEY. You read that right. I'd never so much as glance at a hockey stick again if it meant that I could bury those events in the sands of time, or underwater like the city of Atlantis.

And you know what's the ironic thing about all of this? Hockey is partially to blame; hockey was a catalyst. That's what really kills me. How could something I love so much be the cause of all my current misery? I think I blame my brother even more then I blame hockey. Or maybe I'm just attempting to place the blame on anyone and everyone but myself…..

But back to hockey. My brother only plays hockey because I do. Having both of us play was the only way my Dad could justify my playing hockey to my mom. She always swore to "treating the twins equally" (apparently that child-rearing principle did not apply to my forced ballet and tap lesson).

Bean was a bully from birth, but hockey helped to cur some of his aggression on the playground. He never really loved playing hockey as much as I do. He never will. My brother will forever get satisfaction from bashing people against the boards, and if he's really lucky, knocking out a few teeth in the time he spends on the ice. I've always wanted more than that.

My brother might be one of the very few things in life that I love more then hockey. How can things you love hurt you? Indirectly, that's how. Dean plays hockey. Hockey is a contact sport. Dean was always the goon, the big tough goon who players cowered in fear from. I, on the other hand, was the smart player. Small, but fast, and most importantly, I had the heart. My heart got me no where. Dean's size got him on Team USA Hockey at the Junior Goodwill Games, and he was shipped out to Minnesota, and then to California. I was left alone; hockey had taken my brother away. I stopped playing for awhile. My mom and dad started fighting. I was alone (and maybe scared) for the first time ever. I needed out; I needed to feel not alone again.

That's the real reason why you're all so concerned with helping me. My need to belong again got me mixed up with the wrong people. I did some bad thing. I did some illegal things. I saw horrors you can only imagine being played out right in front of my eyes. Luckily, I got pulled out. My brother came back only a few moments too soon. I was safe, but still damaged. I started playing hockey again. I slowly felt part of my brother's life again.

Funny, how the two things I love most can completely destroy me.

ARE YOU HAPPY NOW!

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"Well, I'm glad to see that you weren't at that party Friday night." Tom said with a smile as Alex entered his office and threw the notebook he'd given her onto his desk.

"How would you know?" Alex sneered back as she sat in her usual chair. She was getting sick of these meetings. Sick of the walls with their framed certificates, sick of the stupid knick-knacks on his stupid sickening desk. And most of all sick of this 'I just want to be your friend' act that she received two to three times a week.

"Because your name isn't on the list of students I get to meet with later to discuss binge drinking." He explained, brandishing a list of at least thirty names in her direction.

"Just because I didn't get caught doesn't mean I wasn't there." Alex smirked and crossed her arms. If she got in enough trouble, maybe they would kick her out of this school. It wasn't like they didn't know about why she was here.

"Would you like me to give you a lecture on binge drinking?"

"No, I think I'm all set." She said sarcastically. Tom said nothing in reply, he just looked at her with a bemused smile on his face. "Look, you have your stupid journal. Can you just read it so I can go?"

"I'm not going to read it with you sitting in front of me." He told her pointedly, picking the notebook up and depositing it in his top drawer. "But if you'll actually communicate, we'll cut this to fifteen minutes. Just stop back here sometime between lunch and last period to pick the notebook back up."

"I have to write in it again."

"I think it's more productive then you refusing to talk to me." He explained. "Look, I'm getting paid to give you the help that you need, and you do need it even if you think you don't. Point blank, sometimes it's good to have a person you can talk to with out fear of judgment or peer-pressure. That's what I want to be. I don't want to declare you crazy or send you away to a looney bin or put you on some type of drug that really won't help you at all. Because the only thing that's going to help you is figuring out what led you here, how you can stop it, and admitting that you make mistakes."

"I have no problem admitting that I make mistakes." Alex said defensively. "I make mistakes all the time."

"What kind of mistakes?"

'Well, today I was trying to write 'who' on a paper, but I wrote 'how' instead. So I crossed out the wrong word and fixed my mistake."

"That was hilarious. I'm really amused." The stone-faced therapist replied. "Your humor kills me."

"I've always wanted to go to jail for laughing someone to death. I'd be famous."

"I'll bargain with you; you tell me one mistake you've made recently, we'll talk about it and then you can go."

Alex glowered at him, wishing that she could shoot fire out of his eyes. The only thing she hated more then talking about herself was sitting in this office, and Tom was well aware of that. "Fine. You wanna hear about a mistake I made this weekend, fine. I don't care if I get kicked out of this school."

"Alex, I can—but wont—tell anything you tell me to anyone, under any circumstances, unless I believe that you are physically at risk because of it."

Alex nodded. "I went to that party."

"Mistake?"

"No, the mistake part comes after I get in a near screaming match with my brother and decide to forgot about it by guzzling down whatever anyone handed to me."

"Good! So you can admit that you used alcohol to try to solve you problem?"

"Yup, but it just created more…in the end." She admitted, looking down at her hands. "But….for those two or three hours, doing whatever I could to piss of Dean made me feel invincible."

"What other problems did you create?" He pressed the subject. Alex hesitated then shook her head.

"None of your business." She told him flatly, her green eyes hardening.

Tom sighed and smiled back at her. "I guess we're stuck here for another thirty-five minutes then." He folded his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair, putting his feet up on his desk. Alex was livid, this was going back on his bargain. She had lived up to her half. She spilled her guts out to this guy, whom she was supposed to trust for no apparent reason, and he'd lied to her. Trust was flying out the window behind his smug smirk.

"Fine." Alex said gritting her teeth and standing up. "Do you wanna hear that I don't remember anything after fighting with my brother? And that his best friend had to pretty much carry me home? Huh?' she screamed. "And that I felt so out of control the next morning because I couldn't remember making out with him? And that I helped get the team in trouble because I was too hung over to skate the next morning? Is that what you wanted to hear?" she asked, tears starting to fall from her eyes as she wavered on. "Did you want to hear that I know I'm fucked up and that I don't feel like I can do anything to stop myself from becoming what I was in Chicago? And that I don't know what to do because I really like this guy, because unlike everyone else, he doesn't know what I was and he doesn't think that I'm a ticking time bomb? And that this could ostracize me from my brother for life if I don't get some sense? And more importantly, Fulton for wasting his time with something that won't last because I will be too afraid to let it?" She turned away and closed her eyes, trying to swallow back the tears that she couldn't stop from falling. Using the backs of her hands as makeshift tissues, she wiped her eyes, took a deep breath and turned back to face Tom.

"Can-I-go now?" she asked brokenly, her shoulders heaving as she attempted to stop her sobs.

Tom handed her a tissue. "Yeah, you can go." He said quietly. "We'll talk about this when you get back from Chicago." Alex looked at him quizzically as she wiped her nose. "It's my job to know." He explained, then looked down to give her some quasi-privacy before she had to face the rest of the school. Alex took two extra tissues, and left, shutting the door quietly behind her.

'So it is possible to break down the unbreakable.' Tom thought as he watched Alex's silhouette disappear from view.

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