A.N.: Hi. Okay, I really, really have to finish this fanfiction, like, to the end, because I went to watch Eclipse last night with my friend, and now I really want to rewrite my fanfic called 'Dallas Rose'.

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Rose Amongst Thorns

Chapter Twenty-Five

Fustercluck

It was like the previous week all over again; Rose was sure she'd felt the fine hairs at the back of her neck prickle as if people were watching her; she was sure they had all pointed her out in the halls and whispered about her when they thought she didn't notice.

What've I done wrong this time? Rose thought, as she approached her locker, ready to grab her textbook before heading off to History. Ria and Pearl were at Pearl's locker a few down from Rose's.

"Hi," Rose smiled, seeing them. "How was the rest of your weekend?"

Pearl's face filled up with colour and she dropped to the floor to shove some books into her bag. "Fine," she said, avoiding Rose's eyes. "It was…fine."

"I think the real question is, how was yours?" Ria asked, holding the strap on her messenger bag with both hands. Rose blinked at her, feeling that prickling, uneasy sensation again. Maybe it was the pack of people—girls, probably seniors, and part of the popular crowd, most likely—that glared at her as they walked past.

Rose wanted to tell them about the epic water-fight with the twins, Sean, Ian and Caleb, and watching Back to the Future eating John McGowan's famous chocolate-brownie-and-Reese's-peanut-butter-cup milkshakes. But the look in Ria's eyes… Rose didn't like it.

"What's wrong?" she asked quietly, blinking bemusedly at Ria. "Did I do something?" She knew she hadn't been that drunk at the party on Friday night; for one, when Evan had disappeared she had been too worried about her truck, and trying to search for Finn had taken up most of her time before she'd left with Aimee, Jenna and Bobby. By the time Jenna had told them all about seeing Hailey and Doug in the woods, Jenna and Pearl had already left Christian Todd's to get food, so unless Rose had done something to Ria when they were dancing in the back porch, she didn't know what she had done to upset her.

"You tell me," Ria said, eyeing her expectantly.

"We gotta go," Pearl said, tugging on Ria's sleeve. "We have that homework we're gonna go over, right?"

"Yeah. See ya," Ria said dismissively. Rose blinked, an unsettling feeling of having been both insulted and brushed off sinking into the pit of her stomach. She turned to her combination lock and focused entirely on the numbers.

"Hey," Aimee said, walking over. She looked tired as she leaned back against the wall next to Rose's locker. She let out a sigh and trained her eyes on the ground.

"Hi," Rose said softly, taking out her History textbook. She licked her lips nervously and glanced around. Different clusters of girls were watching her and whispering, and blushing and turning away quickly when they saw she'd noticed. "I feel like we've been here before, but…Can I ask you something?"

"Go ahead."

"Why do all those girls keep staring at me?" Rose asked in an undertone.

"Oh. About that," Aimee said, looking guilty and nauseated. "I think it's kind of gotten around that you and Evan hooked up on Friday night and that it's your fault Evan and Hailey broke up."

Rose stared.

"The last I heard from Evan, on Saturday night, he didn't know they were broken up," Rose said, frowning. "And I definitely did not kiss Evan McGowan. I did have fun ripping him to shreds after he tried to put Doug in the hospital Saturday afternoon. I'd never fool around with someone else's boyfriend. Who told them I'd do something like that?"

"I have no idea," Aimee sighed heavily, "but that's what they're all saying."

"Great," Rose moaned. There was nothing like vicious rumours to make home-life extremely uncomfortable.

"Evan and Hailey were like the star couple around here," Aimee whispered. "Like Brad and Jen. Everyone looks up to them. If they think he cheated on her with you…"

"You're comparing me to Angelina Jolie. I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted," Rose said. "But he didn't—I didn't. Hailey had sex with Doug. We were talking in the kitchen about Evan not wanting to be seen with me at the party in case something like this happened, and then Hailey walked in and started freaking out—we did not hook up."

"I believed you on Friday and I believe you now," Aimee said, giving her a small, encouraging smile. "It's just the rest of the school you have to worry about." Rose smiled.

"As long as you know the truth, I don't care about what anybody else thinks," she said quietly. Aimee smiled, and they walked off to their classes together.

Miller stepped away from the wall outside the cafeteria doors when Rose approached. She couldn't have been more surprised to find him waiting for her if he had been standing there naked—mostly because the McGowans had no sense of shyness about their naked flesh.

"Hi, Miller," Rose smiled.

"Hi," he replied, following her into the cafeteria. "Are we sitting inside again?"

"It's not a game-day, is it?" Rose asked.

"No, it's a travel day," Miller said. Rose smiled, and glanced at the courtyard. This morning it had been overcast and almost gloomy; she had had to wear a—gag!—jacket. It was the really nice dark-grey wool pea coat with the flared cropped sleeves and wide lapels that made the collar stand up at the back of her neck, and double-breasted buttons. But still, it was a jacket. Rose had never worn a jacket in over seven years! It was unnatural for her to have to wear layers. Outside in the courtyard, it was quite dark and dreary; rain periodically spattered the wall of windows.

"It looks like it's going to rain a little more anyway," Rose said. Miller nodded.

"It looks like it's going to rain more anyway," he repeated, set his jaw, and strode defiantly to the lunch-line. This was new; Rose had had to get his lunch for him last time they'd sat inside. This was a lot more progress.

"Why Evan McGowan would fool around with her I have no idea," some girl said to her friend as they walked by Rose, their expressions condescending and completely unkind.

"Damn, she is hot," said one of Darnell's football buddies as he and Darnell stacked trays with burgers and fries. "No wonder Ev wanted to tap that ass." Darnell rolled his eyes, saw she was looking, and shot her a grin, and told her to "keep your chin up," when he walked past her.

Rose picked out a bowl of hot clam chowder soup and a crusty roll, a cup of strawberries and bananas blended with yoghurt and peanut-butter and topped with honey-granola and freshly-cut bananas, an orange juice and a pack of Reese's Peanut-Butter Cups. Miller led the way to an as-yet-unclaimed table and sat down, quickly arranging his tray, his bag on the seat beside his. Rose sat down and followed suit, organising her parfait cup, juice and candy in a row.

She watched Miller grinning behind his roll; he had chosen the same soup as she had, and had to smile when his eyes twinkled and glowed the way they did. Feeling giddy and inexplicably proud of Miller, Rose was onto her parfait when the cafeteria doors opened and Evan strode in. His jaw was clenched and his eyes were narrowed to slits. He looked like a man on a mission.

Hailey's table was in the centre row near the front of the room. Her friends grew hushed as Evan approached. Every soul in the cafeteria was either watching Evan to see what would happen or pointedly staring at their food in an attempt to pretend like they weren't interested. He paused next to Hailey's chair. She didn't look at him. Rose frowned heavily over at them. Was Evan going to take the advice Rose had given him during her rant on Saturday night? As far as she could tell, Evan hadn't said a word to Doug since beating the hell out of him Saturday afternoon.

"Can I talk to you?" he asked.

"Sure," Hailey said, placing her bagel crust down on her plate, where all the innards had been scraped out. "Go ahead."

"Outside," Evan said coolly. Hailey cast a look at her friends, then sighed heavily, as if it was the hardest thing in the world for her to do, to press her hands onto the tabletop and haul herself out of her seat. Evan stepped aside so she could lead the way out into the courtyard. As they passed her table, Rose frowned and flicked her eyebrow up as Evan caught her eye; Hailey didn't even look at her.

The prickling of the fine hairs at the back of her neck made Rose realise she was now the centre of everybody's attention. Rose just shook her head slightly and devoted herself to her parfait; it tasted really good.

The second the door closed behind Evan and Hailey, the room erupted into supercharged chatter. The guys at the next table threw their money down between their trays, taking odds on whether Hailey would smack Evan first or vice versa. Miller just sat there, carefully eating his lunch, and Rose followed his example. Somewhat—she was curious what Evan would say to Hailey.

Evan was gesticulating wildly while Hailey stood there, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, looking as if she was trying very hard to look tough and fierce but all the while concealing how vulnerable she was because she knew she was way too far up that creek with no paddles.

The door was suddenly yanked open and Hailey rushed in, looking stricken and teary-eyed. She ran for the bathroom and a few of her girlfriends got up and followed. She's a fabulous actress, Rose thought unkindly. Drama over; Rose opened her pack of Reese's Peanut-Butter Cups and offered Miller one; he smiled and accepted it, and when Rose glanced into the courtyard, Evan was gone.

Having driven herself to school this morning, because Ian and Caleb had missed their school-bus and she'd given them a ride instead of making Regina late for work, Rose drove herself home after practice.

Hailey hadn't shown up for practice; her friends on the team had blindsided Rose all afternoon. No one but Aimee and Miller had said a word to her all day, and now she was going to have to concentrate on three hours of homework, which included a double-dose of problems Mr Jones had set her for practice because she was so crap at math and worried about the first quiz on Thursday.

She grabbed snacks from the kitchen and sighed heavily, catching Finn's eye and smiling when he emerged from the garden with his hair tousled and streaked with paint, and his hands covered in dried paint.

"Hey," he cracked his slow, charming grin. "You wanna come hang out in the shed?"

"I do, yeah," Rose sighed heavily, feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders, "but I can't. Mr Jones gave me an extra assignment in Math today that I have to work on for practice for our first quiz, so that'll probably take me until midnight to finish."

"Oh. Okay," Finn smiled forgivingly. "Why don't you ask Miller to help you—he used to help Sean with his calculus homework."

"I may do that," Rose sighed. "Well…if I don't kill myself over my math homework, I'll try and come down and see you."

"Cool," Finn dimpled. Rose hauled her snacks and textbooks into her arms and strode into the hallway, glancing up the stairs.

Caleb, standing at the top of the stairs in the hall, was decked out in some of her gauzy, floaty tops, a boa-like scarf and glittering necklaces draped around his neck, a ton of bracelets and bangles, a rhinestone headband, a belt wrapped twice around his little waist, a pair of her red-rhinestone Louboutin pumps and Barbie-pink lipstick she'd used for her Cheerleader Barbie outfit for her friend's costume birthday-party.

"Caleb! Take those high-heels off! You're gonna break your neck!" Rose ordered, and he giggled. Finn emerged into the hallway with his digital-camera (which he never went anywhere without putting in his jeans pocket) and burst out laughing as his littlest brother gurgled a laugh and pouted at the camera.

"Oh, he's gonna regret this at his wedding," Finn said, chuckling as he looked through the photographs he'd snapped. Rose laughed and hurried upstairs; Caleb giggled and clomped into her bedroom.

"Caleb, take those shoes off; you've no idea how much money they're worth," Rose said, following him in. It looked like her closet had exploded, and she sighed heavily as Caleb went to sit on her bed, her heels clomping onto the floor because they couldn't stay on his feet. If it had been any other day, Rose would have just laughed and encouraged Caleb to parade around the house in her clothes and accessories; as it was, she wasn't in the mood, and helped extricate little Caleb from all of her things, wiped the pink lipstick off his mouth, and sent him on his way; she had to tidy up the mess Caleb had made rifling through her closet, put her accessories back in their proper places and checked the heels of her Louboutin shoes in case they were in danger of snapping.

She organised her homework and notebooks and grabbed her Math textbook and notebook and sighed heavily, checking the page and question numbers in her homework organiser, turned her iPod onto Tom Jones, picked up her pencil and started to work.

She didn't notice anyone was in her room until her music suddenly cut off; she glanced at her iPod and noticed someone's hand hovering over it; she glanced up and blinked as she plucked her earphones out.

"Evan?" she said, surprised; Evan never came in her room. "Hi. Hang on a sec, let me just finish this problem, and then I'm done with my math homework." She frowned and focused on the last problem she had written meticulously in her notebook, the last of three columns to each page. Getting frustrated that she had been interrupted and therefore had lost her mojo, she tried to get back into her homework, glaring at the textbook and her notebook.

Evan slammed her textbook shut. Rose stared at it, and then blinked up at Evan. "Something wrong?"

"I just want to know why you did it," Evan said, squaring off in front of her desk. "Just tell me what in the hell would make you lie like that." Rose frowned, brain working on overdrive trying to catch up to wherever Evan was.

"I have no idea what you're going on about," Rose frowned bemusedly.

"Right!" Evan scoffed. "I know what you did, Rose."

"And what is that?" Rose asked, bristling.

"Don't give me the innocent act," Evan said loudly. "I'm not falling for it again."

"Act? What act?" Rose asked.

"Rose, come on! I know you told Hailey that we hooked up," Evan fumed.

"Ew," Rose grimaced, taken aback. "A, why would I ever hook up with you and B, why would I ever go and talk to Hailey?"

"She told me! She told me how you came to her and told her you just thought she should know the truth," Evan said. "Do you even know what that word means?"

"When would I have told her that, Evan? Between me driving off in my truck looking for her because you'd thought she'd left the party and her having sex with Doug? Or maybe, was it when I was searching all over Christian Todd's house looking for Finn so I could get a ride home?" Rose asked, her nerves bristling and burning with indignation.

"Nice try," Evan snarled, his expression snide. "She told me everything. How after I left, you went and found her in the solarium and told her that I'd kissed you and acted like you were just trying to be honest and take the high road or something."

"Well, I see she's got her story all worked out," Rose said coolly, standing up and glaring up at Evan.

"Her story?" Evan glared incredulously. "You're accusing her of lying?"

"Well, she did have sex with your brother, so I doubt she's very conscientious of lying to your face," Rose said cuttingly. Angry colour rose in Evan's cheeks, and his eyes crackled fiercely. "I never went looking for Hailey, and I'd never tell a lie about kissing someone else's boyfriend, never."

"You never did any of that?" Evan said sarcastically, his smile cruel.

"No!"

"So, what, you're telling me that Hailey's just making stuff up?" Evan said contemptuously, eyes flashing.

"Well, it would appear so," Rose snapped.

"Are you kidding me? You're really going to stand there and deny this to my face?" Evan shouted. Rose bristled. "Why the hell else would Hailey go off and sleep with Doug?"

"I DON'T KNOW!" Rose shouted back. "Maybe because your girlfriend's a psycho jealous bitch and HE'S PROBABLY A BETTER FUCK THAN YOU!"

Rose didn't see what happened next; one moment, Evan was glaring at her as if the Devil possessed him, the next second, her eye was exploding with pain, the sound of a backhanded-slap reverberating off the walls.

Evan's whole demeanour changed in the next instant; he gasped hollowly, eyes widening in horror, his expression falling slack in shock, as Rose clutched the right-side of her face, where her eye felt like it was going to explode, and her cheekbone stung like it had been doused with acid.

"Rose, I—"

She didn't stick around for excuses or apologies; she grabbed her purse and ran downstairs, out of the house, and into her truck, her mind numb and saturated with pain and humiliation and hurt. At that moment, she didn't care if she was grounded. She had to leave that house. She put the truck in gear and lurched out of the McGowans' land and onto the street; at the crossroads, she was sure it was Regina's car she saw, but her eyes were too blurred with hot tears that didn't fall to see in through the windshield. She would probably get grounded for this again, but at the moment, she couldn't bring herself to care. The way things were at school, she doubted she'd be invited to any parties in the near future anyway, and after the way Ria and Pearl and even Jenna had dropped her like a hot potato at the first sign of rumours, she wouldn't be accepting any shopping or movie invitations from them anyway.

Rose was a shopping-binger. Whenever she got upset—really, really upset—she spent money, just like her mother did, although Rose was less extravagant. But she had a high-school trust-fund to keep her in anything she could want for the next two years, and after she turned eighteen she'd have unimpeded access to all her family's money. And there had been one store she'd been dying to look into since she'd first seen it; the scrapbooking and craft store in the Sunol Boulevard plaza.

Rose spent a lot of money at MA Stampin'.

She bought a new scrapbook album, filler sleeves, a ton of beautiful papers, new stamps, ink pads, decorative brads, a ton of stickers, ribbons, embellishments, craft punches, glues and adhesives, magazines, pens, rub-on transfers, die-cuts, buttons, and several photograph albums. She was planning a scrapbook for Lucia, which was why all the stickers and papers were floral patterns and pretty colours and the stickers were all fairies and sweet cartoon animals and 'sister'-themed and cupcakes and strawberries and picnics, ballet and hearts, seashells and pretty fish, flowers and 'dress-up.' Lucia had loved pretty things.

She got the photograph albums to organise the photographs John had given her last night, and she spent a long time looking at knitting needles, magazines and yarns, planning scarves and gloves and hats and legwarmers she knew she would need in winter. She got into a long conversation with the owner, Suzanne, who wanted to know basically Rose's life-story, and if she had been scrapbooking long, and whether she was any good at knitting. Rose paid for all of her stuff, said goodbye to Suzanne and Daisy the resident cat, and climbed into her truck, carefully not crushing the paper or stickers or anything.

Regina's car was parked by the house when Rose directed the truck into the McGowans' property; taking a deep breath, Rose parked up the truck outside the barn, gathered all of her stuff (which was damn heavy for what it was) and let herself in the house. She got all of her new things into her bedroom before anyone knew she was back, but when John got home two minutes after her, bearing dinner, Regina was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, hand on her hip, looking determined.

She did a double-take when she saw Rose. Was guilt written all over her face? Rose was pretty impulsive when she was upset, and she had spent a lot of money in Massachusetts Stampin'.

"Hey," Regina said quietly, eyes trained on Rose's face. "I thought I saw you leaving when I got home." Busted. Rose flushed and nodded, feeling herself shrink.

"I…Evan and I had an argument, and I had to…get away from the house for a bit," Rose said honestly, glancing at Regina. "I know I'm grounded, I just…"

"Sweetie, trust me; I know how it feels to need to get away from here," Regina said. The expression in her clear blue eyes was calm but deadly. "Did Evan give you that bruise?"

"What bruise?" Rose asked, frowning.

"That shiner around your eye," Regina frowned dangerously; Rose blinked and dropped down the stairs, walking to the big hallway mirror. She blinked. Her right cheekbone was a reddish-purple colour in one place just at the corner under her eye, but that was it. She hadn't realised he'd actually left a mark. No wonder the girls at Massachusetts Stampin' had been giving her worried glances.

"Oh," Rose said quietly. It looked worse than it felt; having binged on scrapbooking stuff, she felt a little bit better, not as hurt and humiliated about having been hit. Nobody had ever hit her before—her mom had never even slapped her for mouthing off, because Rose never did mouth-off. To anyone except the McGowan boys, it seemed. They knew how to press her buttons in a certain way that didn't require her slow-burning long fuse; she just exploded with them. "No. It must've happened during cross-country practice."

"Mm," Regina said, unconvinced. "I might've believed you, if I hadn't seen Tara Smith at the supermarket on my way home and she told me you'd had your best practice yet because Hailey Farmer wasn't there trying to kill you." Rose gulped. Oh, no, she thought, her stomach tightening. This wouldn't happen—couldn't. They couldn't go after Evan for smacking her one. "Rose."

"I don't think he meant it," she mumbled, flicking her glance to Regina and down at the floor, cheeks and throat burning with heat.

"It just slipped, is that it? What were you two arguing about?" Regina asked cuttingly.

"About…we were arguing about Evan's girlfriend," Rose said, flushing hotly, remembering how she'd cussed at Evan and taunted him about Doug being a better lay than him.

"Ah. Say no more," Regina asked; Rose stared up at her with wide eyes. Regina offered a knowing, indulgent smile. "What's she accusing you of?"

"Evan said Hailey had told him I'd come to her and said we'd kissed at Christian Todd's party," Rose said, her face flushing with anger as she narrowed her eyes, the injustice still rankling.

"That Hailey," Regina half-growled, her eyes narrowing to slits, complete and utter dislike clouding her still-beautiful face. Regina's beauty had done a stunning job of holding on to her. She was just as if not more beautiful than she had been as a young-adult. Right now, though, she looked dangerous. "She's been jerking Evan around since they started dating. Well, come on; John brought takeout home for dinner. We'll deal with Evan later."

The boys had already thronged around the kitchen-table, while John was trying valiantly to get the Italian takeout from the big paper bags the restaurant had packed it all in. Caleb and Ian were racing around the room arguing and begging for food; the twins were arguing about something, Sean was reading while he grabbed knives, forks and plates, and almost dropped everything when Caleb and Ian raced past his knees.

"Ian! Caleb! Chill or be chilled!" Rose called, and the little ones exchanged a glance and went to sit at the table, calmer, if still moaning for food and arguing childishly. John and Regina's expressions were memorable, to say the least, seeing their most rebellious children obey orders. Finn emerged stinking of oil paints from the shed, his hands caked in dried paint, paint smeared on his t-shirt, forehead and streaked through his hair.

"Did the paint-pots stage a coup d'état?" Rose asked, surprised; this was messy even by Finn's standards. Finn just grinned and grabbed cups and sodas from the fridge.

Rose didn't know where John had got takeout from, but it was gorgeous food: there were several different appetisers; pizza-base garlic bread with melted cheese, crispy artichoke hearts, crab cakes, warm spinach and mushroom dip and warm pizza-base bread, stuffed and baked mushrooms with garlic sauce; there were several soups, tortilla soup, minestrone; there was a big chicken Caesar salad; there were several pizzas; pear and gorgonzola, roasted artichoke and spinach, a pizza with every topping, and a Jamaican jerk-chicken pizza; there were tubs of creamy spaghetti carbonara, Bolognese, four-cheese ravioli, curly macaroni and cheese and a big lasagne. And everything was quickly divvied out between them when they all sat down to eat. When there was food in front of them, there was no room for thought of anything else. Rose tried each of the appetisers, tortilla soup, a slice of pear and gorgonzola pizza and a slice of roasted artichoke and spinach pizza, four-cheese ravioli and the curly mac-and-cheese and went back for another crab-cake and stuffed and baked mushrooms.

After dinner, Rose had to go upstairs and finish her math homework, start on her English reading, plan and make notes for her next History essay, 'Name External Factors that Caused the American Revolution.' She worked a little in her sketchbook, wrote some stuff for her French portfolio-book Monsieur Gilliard made each of his students create every year full of essays and things to show their progression throughout the year, and tried not to hear John and Regina shouting at Evan next-door. She had finished her homework and was sitting cross-legged on her bed, going through everything she had bought at Massachusetts Stampin' and putting together different scrapbook pages, matching papers, stickers, brads, ribbons and stamps, when there was a knock on her door. She paused her CD and called for whoever it was to come in.

It was Regina. Feeling heat flushing her cheeks, she wondered just how mad Evan was at her now. She had tried to make it seem like tripping over during practice had caused her bruise, but Regina was one smart woman.

"Hey," Rose said warily, glancing at Evan's bedroom-door over Regina's shoulder.

"Hi," Regina smiled, entering her room; she walked over to Rose's bed and sank carefully onto the mattress beside her. "Wow. Did you knock over a craft store?"

"No!" Rose said quickly, blushing. "I…I kind of went a little crazy in Massachusetts Stampin'."

"Ah, that explains it," Regina said, with a sympathising smile. "That place can get you when you least expect it. This is such beautiful paper." She picked up a sheet of pearly pale-green paper that shimmered like silk, which was printed with rusty irises gilded with a mother-of-pearl sheen when light hit them. "So what's all this going to be used for?"

"Um…" Rose bit the inside of her cheek and looked around at all the stuff she'd bought and spread out on her bed, and the stacks of thousands of photographs she'd brought out from storage in her closet. "Lucia."

"Lucia?" Regina said carefully, glancing at Rose.

"Yeah," Rose said slowly. "I have all these photographs, but I never got round to putting them in albums. I mean, there's a ton of them; they've been stored in a plastic box for ages. I thought…I thought I'd start working on a scrapbook now, since I'm grounded." Regina watched her carefully, and then smiled.

"I think that's a great idea," she said softly. "Well, I'm going up to bed now, so goodnight."

"Goodnight," Rose smiled, and Regina kissed her head and left the room, closing the door quietly behind her, leaving Rose to listen to music and create outlines for a scrapbook album to commemorate her little sister's short life.

A.N.: Please review!