Closet Monsters

by TheBucketWoman

Disclaimer: I do not own anything connected to LWD or anything else I reference herein. No infringement of any kind is intended.

Chapter Eleven

Part One: Lizzie.

She had some more nightmares. Two of them recurred. The first one was just a run-of-the-mill flashback where she fought back against the creep as he ripped her top and jacket and broke one bra strap, and he just kept coming like Michael Myers. She saw his face and his stupid, dull eyes as he continued to grope her. He'd seemed a little older than Derek and he had spiky hair. He wore too much cologne. Tommy Hillfiger. He was the type of kid Derek would have called a tool. Kind of like Max, actually. But not Max.

Max himself had been really nice to her at school that day, asking after her between classes.

But her attacker had been the same kind of suburban, clean-cut, fake hip-hop rich kid. His voice after she'd fought him off, when the ambulance had taken him away, kind of sounded like a little boy's voice, all stuffed up from the broken nose she'd given him. He sounded younger than Edwin. He'd seemed so much bigger and older before that. And he was a good six inches taller and had maybe fifty pounds on her, but still a kid like her. Suddenly she thought that if he was Derek's age, she'd really be surprised.

Which is what led to the second dream. The one where she was on trial for assault and he was testifying against her looking like he'd just come from choir practice or reading to the blind. The one where the prosecutor reminded everyone of her purple belt in taekwondo and showing one of their own home videos where she broke a board with her foot. There was the sound of the kid crying on the stand. Crying the same way he had after she'd kicked him and then there was the sound of the gates slamming shut in her prison cell where the cast of OZ closed in on her.

It could happen. She knew that she wasn't about to get put in with creepy grown men, but she knew that Juvie wouldn't be much fun, either.

And if she didn't go to jail, then the kid would just sue and bankrupt the family. After they were done cleaning Mom and George out, they'd go for her Dad in New York. Then nobody could go to college and they'd lose the house and then they'd have to live in a one or two room apartment with rats and peeling paint and it would be her fault.

Her lamp went on. She raised her face from the pillow where she'd been trying not to make too much noise.

"Hey," Casey said. She sat down on the bed. Lizzie babbled about being sorry for waking her up and that she should go back to sleep. She stopped short of saying that Casey should enjoy her last days in her own comfy bed before they had to move to the hovel and they'd have to fight for space on the good milkcrate.

"Do you want Mom?" Casey said.

"No," Lizzie said. "I'm okay. Go back to bed."

"Do you wanna come with me?" Casey asked. "I have a bigger bed."

"I snore, remember?" Lizzie said.

"I've lived with it before," Casey said, her mouth turning up at the corners. "I'll live with it again."

"You're not...C-Casey," Lizzie joked.

"Come on," Casey said, putting her arms around her and letting her cry. Suddenly she seemed so Mom-like that Lizzie felt like crying harder, like Casey had somehow gotten the power to kiss it better and now all would be well. If anything else had woken Casey up, she would have complained for weeks about disrupting her sleep schedule, but when something was really wrong, she could always be counted on.

"Do you want some milk or something?" Casey asked.

"No," Lizzie said.

"Okay," Casey said. "Well let's go."

Thank God Edwin's room is upstairs, Lizzie thought. He was a lighter sleeper than Casey. And since he hadn't been sleeping well it was worse.

"I'm sorry I woke you up," Lizzie said.

"You didn't," Casey said. "I was just on my way back from the bathroom. Now come on. I hear my bed calling."

They both climbed into Casey's bed. Casey went directly to sleep, her breath whistling through her nose. Lizzie, afraid to move and wake her up again, stared at the ceiling thinking that she would stay like that all night. Somehow, she managed to drift off, though, because Casey's alarm woke her up.

"Go back to sleep," Casey said. "I'll wake you up when I get out of the shower."

Casey tried to get Lizzie to talk about the nightmares, but she wouldn't do it. She could picture Casey being comforting and telling her that of course she wouldn't get arrested, or sued, but she could also picture Casey running to George in a panic asking if it could happen. And Lizzie could just see George telling Casey that of course it couldn't happen, but not looking her in the eye while he did so.

And Lizzie'd been so sure that she'd be okay the night before. Casey had dragged Derek downstairs and announced that he'd gotten into Lizzie didn't know how many colleges.

The night before.

"Guess who has a whole bunch of college letters hidden in his drawer like they were Playboys!" Casey sing-songed.

"Jeez, woman," Derek said. "Way to steal my thunder."

"We'd all die waiting for you to break the news," Casey said.

"We don't all have to jump the gun, Gunny vonJumperman," Derek said. He'd been about to say something else when Mom hugged him and all he could get out was "oof."

"We have to celebrate," George said. "The day I thought would never arrive is here."

"Very funny," Derek said.

"I thought so," George said.

"And don't act like you didn't know about at least one of em," Derek said.

"I didn't open it, did I?" George said. "I mean, I saw a big thick envelope, but..."

Then it was his turn to hug Derek. "So that's two down, three to go," George said. "Where are we going for dinner on Friday? You pick, college kids."

"Sushi!" Casey said.

"Mexican!" Derek said.

"Sushi!"

"Mexican!"

Then there was tickling and slapfighting and Lizzie and Edwin got disgusted and left them to it. An hour or so later, as Lizzie had been getting ready for bed, she heard the two of them kissing in the hall.

"Love you," Casey said.

"Love you more," Derek said.

Gag me, Lizzie thought, smiling.

"Sushi," Casey said.

"Dream on," Derek said. "Mexican."

So right before Lizzie had fallen asleep, she'd been thinking about veggie roll and chicken mole, but it hadn't stopped her from having those dreams.

The next morning, when Lizzie got a look at herself in the mirror, she almost let Casey put makeup on her. Almost. In the end, she just used some of Casey's eye gel, which as far as Lizzie could tell, did little besides smelling like cucumbers. At least the bruises didn't look as bad.

Lizzie went to school and managed to look like she was paying attention. Brooke had her back in some classes and Jamie kept an eye on her in others. She was excused from gym even though it might have been fun to do a little running around if not a little batting practice. People were being too overprotective. Like she'd never gotten bruised up before. It used to happen once a month in taekwondo. When she took taekwondo.

Gonna have to come up with something else to do, Lizzie thought. Running could be good, she thought, even though Edwin was faster than she was. All those years of running away from Derek. Maybe she could get him to do it, too.

Nah, she thought. She imagined dragging Edwin out of his warm bed on weekends to run with her. Even those old too-tight sweatpants she had wouldn't be enough of an incentive to get him moving when the weather got cold enough. But she'd come up with something to do; she always did.

She paced the library for the umpteenth time. Her gym class was playing basketball today. She hadn't made the team, but she still had more hand-eye coordination than half her class and it was hard to get the ball away from her. When she wasn't two floors away from it, anyway.

She opened her phone to check the time and noticed that there was a text waiting for her from Edwin. From about fifteen minutes before.

How bored are you? It read.

She looked around guiltily for the librarian. When the older woman wasn't looking she texted, Falling asleep. You?

George had taken Edwin into work with him so Edwin could either be as bored as she was now, or George could be running him ragged.

He got back to her right away. Bertha loves me, he sent. Bertha was the document-eating copy machine at George's office. Edwin knew her well. Same with Joann.

Who's Joann!?! she texted.

Dad's computer, he sent back. Needed a defrag. Dad said 'What's a defrag?'

That sounded like George. Lizzie could picture Edwin walking around fixing stuff. Then again, Marti knew more about computer stuff than George did. He just wasn't interested in that type of thing. Ask George about the law, history, sports, or eighties music, he was an expert, but he typed with two fingers and was lucky that he knew how to send an email.

Bell's going to ring, Lizzie sent. Be good. Love you.

Part Two: Edwin.

It looked at first like Edwin's Dad was going to do the tough love thing after all. He dragged Edwin out of bed even before Casey was up and dragged him to his office.

Susan, Dad's secretary, knew exactly what had happened the day before, but didn't make a big deal out of it, just pointed him toward Bertha.

"Just look at you," she said from the doorway. "I remember when Bertha was bigger than you and you used to have to stand on a stool to fix her." Edwin himself had only just noticed that he didn't have to stretch to reach things in the copy room.

"When was that," Edwin said. "Last week?"

"Feels like it," she said. "Stop making me feel old, boy." She was maybe twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He had the biggest crush on her when he was little, as had Derek, but then she had to go and get married a couple of years back. Broke their hearts.

She reached past him and opened a cabinet, pulling out a handful of rubber bands, putting some in her pocket and a thicker one on her wrist. Then she gathered her dreadlocked hair back and used the rubber band to put it into a ponytail. Something about that gesture made him think of Lizzie. Susan was very tall and dark-skinned, of Jamaican descent, but still managed to remind him of his tiny, blue-eyed, freckled white porcelain doll of a girlfriend. He wondered how Lizzie was doing, but didn't get a chance to talk to her until after he spent an hour or so defragmenting his Dad's computer and enlisting Susan to help him explain what defragmenting was and why he needed to do it regularly. Then, he showed his Dad how to set a picture of Nora as a wallpaper.

He texted Lizzie before lunch, but he guessed her ringer was off because he was mostly done with his humongous deli sandwich when she texted him back.

"She better not be in class," Dad said when he caught Edwin with his phone.

"She has gym," Edwin said. "So she'd be in study hall."

"And bored to death," Dad said. "I get it. I'd tell you to say hi for me but I officially don't know about this."

He stole Edwin's pickle.

"You're being punished," he said. "No pickle for you."

Edwin got even by swiping a couple of his Dad's fries. He was actually pretty grateful that his Dad brought him there. It beat the hell out of sitting at home alone with his imagination. Dad was keeping him busy. He just hoped that Lizzie wasn't stressing too much. She wouldn't admit it over the phone if she was, so he had to wait to get home and get a good look at her to know for sure.

Shortly after lunch, Dad had to leave to go to a meeting. He looked stressed about it, so Edwin didn't protest when he was told to stay put at the office and do whatever Susan told him to do. She made him organize the supply room. It was mindless enough to keep him happy until his Dad came back in a bad mood.

"What?" Edwin asked.

"Nothing," Dad said. "Did you do your homework yet?"

"Some of it," Edwin said. "I'm still waiting on the email from Bio." Not that he couldn't do most of the work standing on his head.

"No reading to do?"

"No," Edwin said. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," Dad said. "Nothing that you need to be concerned about, anyway."

Edwin continued to stare at him. "We'll talk about it later," Dad said, finally.

That really didn't sound good.

Part Three: George.

George and Nora needed to pull Lizzie aside before dinner. The original plan had been to wait until after she ate, but it was just too obvious that something was up. Edwin had seen it as soon as George had gotten back from the meeting with the DA.

Really, he thought. Why do I have to have bright kids? Why couldn't I have gotten a couple of apathetic brats like my friends complain about?

"We'll talk about it later," he'd told Edwin. Edwin gave him the x-ray eyes, but nodded and shut up about it. George went back to his desk and started to rearrange papers and stuff. Edwin sat opposite him and pulled out a paperback. They stayed like that for about two minutes, neither of them saying a word.

"Okay," George said, when he just couldn't stand it anymore. "Wanna know what that meeting was about?"

Edwin dropped the paperback and sat up straight.

"I was talking with the DA and she tells me that Lizzie probably has to come to court and testify," George said.

"Shit," Edwin said. "Sorry."

"Nope," George said. "That's what I said, and the DA agreed. We can get her testimony on video so that she doesn't have to face the guy who attacked her, but I was hoping not to make her deal with this at all."

For probably the first time in his life, Edwin didn't look like he had anything to say. Normally, George would want to record that for posterity, but not this time.

"They're still trying to get him to accept a deal, but it doesn't seem too likely," George said. "The arraignment is scheduled for tomorrow, and if he pleads not guilty, then..."

"Does she have to be there for that?"

"No," George said. "But this is very likely going to trial and we all need to be prepared for that."

"How long before it goes to trial?" Edwin asked.

"Don't know," George said. "Could be a while. But like I said, they can tape her deposition and get it out of the way. She's fourteen. The court can take some measures to protect her."

"This is gonna suck."

"Yeah."

"She can do it," Edwin said.

"Yeah."

"I really don't want her to."

"Me neither," George said.

"But she'll be okay," Edwin said.

"Yeah," George said. The key to instilling confidence was to project confidence. It was bullshit, but it was for a good cause.

George kept that in mind when the time came for him and Nora to tell Lizzie. They tried to put a spin on it, make it seem less like bad news, but they expected a certain amount of freaking out.

Even so, what they got was the last thing they expected.

"So, Liz," George began. "I had a meeting with the district attorney today..."

"Oh God," Lizzie said. Nora put a hand on her arm, tried to rub it, but Lizzie pulled away, started babbling in an almost Casey-esque manner. It took a few seconds for George's brain to catch up, but he could have sworn that the girl had said something about turning herself in.

"Did you just say—"

"Turning yourself in for what, honey?" Nora said. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"Tell that to the jury," Lizzie said.

"Nobody is leveling any charges against you," George said. "At all."

"What if they sue?" Lizzie asked.

"They don't have a case," George said. "You were defending yourself. We have a statement from two witnesses from the Chinese place who heard you screaming." This wasn't anything Lizzie didn't already know, but she needed to hear it again. George guessed that she probably knew how irrational her worries were, but he also knew that that didn't make them any less powerful. He looked over at her and wondered if she believed him. He had no idea.

"What do I have to do?" she asked.

"You just have to show up and testify when the time comes," George said. He explained about a few of the particulars, putting emphasis on the fact that she didn't have to face the attacker in court because of her age, thinking that that was one of the things she was still most worried about.

"When?" she asked.

"That we won't know for a little while," he said.

"How long?"

"We have no way of knowing that, yet," he said. A look crossed the girl's face, one that he'd missed the past few days. The look said that she wanted to kick something. He took it as a good sign. Things might just be easier for her if she got angry.

"Right now," George continued. "We don't even know if it's going to trial. We have to wait for the plea. If he pleads not guilty, then there'll be a trial."

"There's still a chance that he might plead guilty," Nora said.

Lizzie gave her a look that said "Yeah, and your check's in the mail and Derek's room is clean."

"It is a possibility," George said, trying to help. "We can't count that out yet."

"We can't?" Lizzie asked, still not really believing him.

"Either way," George said. "We'll be okay. Got it?"

No, she ain't got it, George thought, even though she nodded. He knew he wouldn't mind having to repeat it.

Later on, after watching Lizzie pick at her food, Nora ran across her gi on the armoire in their bedroom.

She held part of it up.

"How long do you think I should wait before I bring this up again?" Nora asked.

"I dunno," George said. "I don't think it'll be too long, actually."

"Me neither," Nora said. "She's building up some major nervous energy."

"Think I'm too old to sign up for Taekwondo?" George joked.

"Um, yeah," Nora said. "But I can think of a better way of working off your energy."

"Ooh," George said. "Really?"

"Yeah," Nora said. "The garage really needs a cleaning."

George groaned.

"I'm kidding," Nora said.

TBC