First of all, guys, I want to say thank you for patiently waiting for this chapter. I've been working a double-shift. D:

Secondly, say welcome back to StoriesAreMagic, who has been ill for a really, really, really long time, but is now "on the mend"! She's finally made it clear that she's getting better, and I'm so happy. Sam is one of my best internet friends, and she's such a dedicated fan, as well as an amazing person. She writes the Ninjago fanfiction "Crush it Cole" and is finally well enough to update it. If you guys checked out the story if you haven't already, or dropped her a line saying 'get well', you would make a new, wonderful friend. :) *If she isn't your friend already*

Welcome back, Sam, and everyone: enjoy the chapter!

36. After the Blackout

Arriving home after leaving my dad's house brought up a couple of thoughts I strangely didn't realize until now. First:

I don't know where my phone is. Second:

Both Seiko and Boku were gone.

I searched the whole house for them and my phone, turning up empty-handed. There wasn't a note or anything—I supposed she could've left a message on my phone if she really wanted to about where she was, but I had my doubts about the credibility of Seiko wanting to be the type of person letting me know she was headed out when I was busy rolling around in bed with my girlfriend. I didn't think for one second that she would've left me a message. She wouldn't care what I knew.

I just didn't know what was weirder, the idea that she wasn't home, along with Bokuyo, or that she was gone so early in the morning. I knew she didn't have to work today. It was an odd predicament.

I looked around the apartment some more for my phone before I collapsed in a heap on the couch, my mind shockwaving around the leading bases of my pessimistic tension. Over and over on the ride here (I took the bus…) I'd gone through my mind every possible explanation for my blackout, but I kept having to come back to an undetected mental illness that I had never noticed that I had. I'd watched a documentary once about a woman who showed no signs of having a hitch in her head for the longest time, until it was like someone flicked a switch inside of that occupied brain of hers, turning her in a 360 from her usual self into a psychopath. What if I had one of those ghost brain injuries that don't show up until a certain point in my life? What if my dad couldn't fix this like he said he could? What if I was certifiably insane?

I guess then Seiko would be able to empathize with me, but she'd never want to sit down and measure a support group between the two of us where we could build each other up based on our own personal insanities. Between the two of us, Seiko was good at putting on a show to fake a semi-normal face to fool the whole world, when I think sometimes I'm the only one who knows the truth about her mental condition. I wouldn't ever say that she's definably "sane," but I wouldn't ever call her "insane." Seiko is more off her rocker than she lets on. That doesn't make me think any less of her, I guess.

My point is that I wonder if anybody would think less of me if I really was insane.

Would my friends still want to be my friends? Would they abandon me the way Lou and Cole did to Seiko? Would my parents suddenly treat me like a kid instead of an adult, and I'd have to live with them so I could be monitored? Or worse: would they put me in Sunnyside?

There are a lot of things that could happen to me, a lot of scary things if it turns out I do have brain damage sufficient enough to push me down. What a riot I'd be, the green ninja letting himself be thrown by a brain injury—I'd be the laughing stock of all the history textbooks, and the tabloids would be full of my face. I don't even want to think about what that could mean for me. Saying that makes me sound like I'm trying to deal the least amount of bruises I can to my ego, but I don't mean how it can take me down as the celebrity I [was.]It would do something to me, to how I see myself, my viewpoints on life and the world. I've met some pretty crazy people in my life, and now I'm scared that one of those crazies is going to be me.

My dad told me to let it go in case something else happens. I'll honor his advice the best I can, but in the meantime all I can do is hold onto my own fear and pray that this was a one-time-thing. I try not to imagine what it would be like if we appeared at the doctor's office in our last of gags, the clothing on us the final pieces we'll wear until a white-coated professional deals the blow to us with his tone sympathetic, a clipboard pasted to his side, that mellow tone trying to cautiously ease in the information to us. Then he'll tell us, my mother grabbing me tightly from one side and my father steely-faced on the other, that I've been diagnosed with some really bad mental illness that has a very small percent of recovery victims from the brain-cell-eating virus that turns me into a blackout central. After my blackouts, I'll wake up to the bright light of a rectangular sheet covering a long light bulb searing into my eyes, an unfamiliar masked face hanging over me with unfeeling eyes bearing to my unkilter soul that resides among the rest of the lunatics in the asylum. The nurse will inject me with something, I'll be mild but not tamed, and I'll be the next diagnostically insane Hannibal Lecter, minus the cannibalism.

I felt crushed. That fate of mine painted a picture too vivid for me to domesticate with logic.

I pulled my knees up to my chin and buried my face into them. What could I do? Sit here and wait for the next week, on edge every second, waiting to fall off the edge again?

I wanted to isolate myself from everything so I would reduce my chances of blacking out in public. There was already a wide jungle between me and Seloria, but I wanted to wedge a javelin into my school life and working position so that I was nowhere near anything that once made my life "normal" in my own frame of reference. I wanted to hide someplace I couldn't blackout and do something ridiculous again. How would I explain to Seiko and Bokuyo that I was going away to hide in a hole for a week, two weeks? Neither of them would take it lightly…

Overreaction is one thing that my father told me not to invite, and here I am, doing the opposite of my orders. My father's directions are more important to me than my own epileptic antifantasies are. My feet ride on the shoulder line of my brain's condition now. There's no drug that's gonna fix me, no guarantee there even is one that can help me even if we figure out what my problem is.

Okay, I'm still overreacting. There's no telling that this is a brain problem. Maybe I just haven't been getting enough of a certain nutrient or vitamin lately. It could be that I don't drink milk a lot. It could be that my broccoli consumption is not relative to a healthy person's. I don't know what the problem is. I can't automatically jump bits and say it is my brain. Maybe it's just my body.

I got the feeling that my dad was holding back from me when we were having our little father-son talk. My dad is one of the most blatant people out there—My mom's said he's always been that way, and Uncle Wu once agreed to say that Dad will straight out tell you what he thinks without caring at all about what it's gonna do to you. That's not totally accurate, he does take your feelings into consideration and he will be careful with his wording if it has to be done, but my father's complexity within his own state of mind is calculative over reaction time and what happens around him. He sees all of those things, but if he has to tell you something, he will tell it to you, even if it hurts. Uncle told me a story about Dad one day walking up to a child they saw in the market and telling him that there was a blotch on his pants giving away that he'd leaked himself, right in front of a whole bunch of other kids. It ashamed the child that he'd had his problem pointed out in front of children who weren't looking at him before someone big called attention to it. It's an awful story, but it puts my point to play. My dad doesn't hold back, not for anything. Not for me.

He held back in that talk, though. I could tell, unmentioning the drill my father practically had to seam through his teeth just to make sure he didn't spit it out. I've got the sensation he knows something he didn't say.

My head squished against the cushion padding my neck into a curve that arched my throat, the ceiling draped with popcorn taking on my attention. Sigh.

I didn't want to go to class this afternoon. I knew it was my duty as a student, but going to class required seeing Seloria, and I wasn't ready for that yet. I reeled from our undocumented engagement.

Maybe if I talked to Caleb about this whole thing, I could ease out my own pain. I reached for my phone hidden in my pocket, but when I found the bulge on my hip absent, I sighed in remembering I misplaced my cell. I reached for the home phone we kept sitting on the table beside the couch and rocketed in my best friend's number without paying much attention to the letter-number combo I was slashing in. I knew it by heart.

The ringing in my ear went on for longer than I wanted it to. Only then did I realize that it was still really early in the morning, and Caleb probably had better things to do before his classes started, like sleeping, for instance. Something I should be doing right now, in my own bed and not Seloria's, having been there throughout the hours of the night.

Just when I was going to give up on reaching out to my friend for advice, the sound of the receiver being picked up hit me, followed by the sound of bed springs screaming in protest while they were moved on. A deep breath followed by a voice muffled with sleep greeted me. "Hello?" grumbled Caleb. I tried not to make it sound too obvious that I was sighing with relief.

"Hey, Caleb, it's me," I said, leaning back on the couch and kicking up the arches of my feet onto the edge of the coffee table, leaning my head back to the cushions, the curve of my back pushing into the floriated design underneath me. I ran my free hand over my face. "Caleb, something's wrong with me."

"Did you really just figure that out?" What scared me about Caleb's tone was that it wasn't joking. Not a hint of humor laid within his ascetic wake. Though it unnerved me, I brushed it off as early-morning crabs and continued on.

"Caleb, I can't remember a thing about last night," I confessed to him, frightened by hearing myself say it again. "Honestly. My memory cuts out right after you and I went into Minimalistic Muse, and I woke up this morning in Seloria's bed. I can't remember how I got there, or anything that transpired in between—all I know is what she's told me, and I friggin' can't believe it."

There was a long silence over the phone that made me fear that Caleb had hung up or simply set down his phone without listening, too tired to deal with this. But then he sighed, and the sound of his bed springs crying again as he sat up assured me he was still there. I chewed on my cheek, listening.

"Is this some kind of joke, Lloyd?" Again. He was humoring me. I could tell this by the way he spoke: He didn't want to answer me, or talk to me at all. He just simply asked that in humor of what I was saying. Taken aback, I spluttered out my response.

"What do you mean?" I managed.

"Don't pretend you don't know what happened last night just so you can try and manipulate me into not being angry with you. It's not going to work." I paused, wrapping my head around the claim. It was a clue into what happened last night, and by the sound of Caleb's voice, I was already dreading that I'd done more than just the damage I had painted myself with Seloria. Had I done something that jeopardized my friendship with Caleb, too? "And jeez, Lloyd, of all the lies you could come up with, you pick 'I don't remember,' like you were drunk or something. Do you think I'm an idiot? Is that what this is? I know for a fact you weren't drunk. Sure, you were acting like a dick, but you weren't drunk."

I kept my eye on the ceiling, stuck in the moment. "Caleb, I'm not trying to fake you out of this!" I honestly pleaded, using all of my hope to save me from this one thing. If I have to lose Seloria, so be it, but don't let me lose my best friend—that's already happened to me once in my life, and I can't let it happen again. "Please! I don't remember anything, Cay—it's like I blacked out. Everything gets fuzzy after I walk in the door of Minimalistic Muse, and everything that happened afterwards is gone. I don't know what happened that got me naked in Seloria's bed—"

"Wait, you were naked in Seloria's bed?" Caleb backtracked, now fostering more emotion than his deflecting wishes.

I guilted at hearing him say it and winced on the end of the phone. He didn't see it from the fact that this is a phone, but I hoped he knew that I was feeling worse the more I learned about this intellect shutdown. I nodded. "Yeah," I said, my guilt evident. "We did what you think we did. And worse."

"And worse?" Caleb repeated. I heard the sound of a lamp being flicked on.

I took in a gulp of air that satisfied nothing, and told him the truth. "I asked her to marry me," I said to him. "And all of this I don't have one single memory about."

Silence. The phone acted dead, a forest after the first gunshot has been fired. Every animal, every noise-making eukaryote, quieted at the sound of the bullet whizzing through the air, catching onto a victim and taking it down with it. I waited for him to say something—for him to make a noise, let me know he had heard me. This was something I needed help with, and the only person I can think to talk to right now is my best friend, because he'll understand…he always does.

I just didn't know why he was being crabby with me. I played it off with the early morning, believing he was just tired.

Caleb made a noise, finally, taking shape of a groan. It didn't come out as the "what're we gonna do" groan I imagined it would be, though; when he clothed his throat with the noise, it was a "this is retarded" one.

"Really, Lloyd… That's enough screwing around, now. It's not a funny joke. You got me. There. Now quit messing around." Caleb didn't sound amused, though that wasn't the goal in the first place.

"I'm not joking, Cay," I said, trying to figure out why Caleb would be like this to me. Tired or not, he wasn't a guy who would be talking to me like this. "Why would you think I am?"

"Maybe it's because you acted like a total dickwad last night. Does that ring your bell?"

A dickwad? I was speechless that me as a topic and dickwad came out of Caleb's virtuous mouth, impertinence against no one but those deserving of no more than a cheeky insult. I again was hit with the fear: What did I do during my blackout, this time endangering my friendship with Caleb? I had nothing but the feeling that, if I were now deserving of a dirt name from Caleb, it was something hard to come back from. There was a good probability he'd never believe my (true) story about the blackout, either, and our friendship would die from here…!

"Caleb, please listen," I begged, dying to prove to him that this was real. I leaned forward on the couch, elbows on my knees, free hand gliding across my nose and cheeks. I shut my eyes to block out the rest of the world, closing in this call. I treated it like it was life or death, convincing Caleb of my rectitude. That was twinned exactly: The life or death of our bond. "I really, really, really don't remember what happened. Honestly, I don't. I don't know what I did, and I don't know what's wrong with me, and it's freaking me out because if I lost my virginity and proposed all in the same, irretrievable frame of time and managed to make you think less of me, something's got to be wrong. Really wrong. I don't know what to do. I'm…a little scared."

I don't know how much time passed until I finally considered hanging up the phone. It had to be a lost cause, trying to induce Caleb of my unknowing, compared to whatever awfulness I must've done unto him to make him act this way, possibly hating my very existence for all I knew. The absence of knowledge on what I had dealt to him made me sick to my stomach. Caleb was a forgiving person; he was uneasily swayed from his normal mindset, predetermined on what his day would be like before it even got there and dead-set on keeping it as so. If I had done something that created this reaction in him, I knew it was something bad.

I didn't know what else to do when I heard nothing back from Caleb. What do you do? "I'm sorry for whatever I did," I told him, and then I hung up.

The phone fell to the floor off my lap, but I didn't realize I'd let go of it until it was gone. I drew my hands over my face. I had managed to endanger—possibly ruin—two of the best relationships in my life through a blackout that forced me to make amends with what little information I already had. All I could do was sit there, holding my head in my hands, trying not to go back to the insanity plea, instead searching my mind for any sliver of information, any small flashback that I could remember. But it was like the Glacier Barrens, empty of all signs of life, nothing but white, untouched snow coating the plateau for farther than the eye could see. There was nothing in my mind but a thin, straight line, beeping in one drawn out monotone. No blip, no peak made itself known on the scale. It was like a dead heart.

I needed help from someone. I had just told Caleb about it, but Caleb didn't help. I had told my dad, but he hadn't solved anything. Seiko wasn't here for me to talk to. My phone was missing, and I didn't remember half my friends' numbers by heart.

I went into my room, sitting on the corner of the bed and looking at how tidy it looked, pristine and well-brought up. It was normally a mess, but yesterday I had felt like putting things away, getting them off the floor and into a place where they weren't facing me every time I walked in. My bed wasn't made. That was the only thing in my room besides my desk that gave away there was a young, messy man living here.

I looked over at the couple of framed pictures I had sitting on my dresser, and automatically went to go pick up the first one I looked at. Captured in time, my mom and dad stood faithfully at my sides, smiling grandly while I wore my hideous yellow graduation gown. My mom leaned her head against my shoulder, and looking into the picture's memory I could almost feel the weight of her cheek against my arm, looped through hers. My dad's hand on my other shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze, made a shiver run down my spine. It almost felt like it was really happening again. "Good job, son," he whispered in my ear right after my mother said to me, "We love you."

The last vowel rung out, echoing in the air, and I was snapped back to the present. I blinked my eyes over to the next picture sitting there, a picture of five of us. Again I felt transported back to seven years ago, standing in front of the Destiny's Bounty as the backdrop. Nya's face behind her digital camera was grinning as she told us all to say "cheese" and I could feel Jay's arm loop around my back, Kai's thrown over my shoulder. Cole stood beside Kai, leaning an elbow to his shoulder. Zane remained at Jay's side, Jay's arm wrapped around his neck, tugging him in. For that moment, we were all suspended in happiness. Nothing could touch us.

The last picture I looked at was one I had taken myself, turning the lens on me when Seiko wouldn't take it for me. On my lap, Bokuyo smiled with both rows of teeth, still not used to smiling for a camera so it looked a little awkward, but a cute awkward. His eyes promoted the happiness that he was feeling on his fourth birthday, sitting in my lap with cake all over his cheeks. I couldn't help myself after running around with him, pretending he was an airplane and getting the loud screams of his giggles. My own smile as we leaned in for the picture shadowed the fun that we'd been having that day.

I wished he was here. I needed to be cheered up by someone who didn't see the bad things in the world. I was drawn to the question, "Where is Bokuyo?"

I moved out into the kitchen, walking over to the fridge and going to check on Seiko's schedule. No, she didn't have to work this morning…then where was she? Where did she take him?

…

Jay pulled into Cole's hometown feeling sleepy again. The people that were awake this early were looking at him like he was nuts, but he kept his eyes on the road, driving the long car through the alleys and wondering how in the heck he was going to get this to Cole's house without blocking the alley Cole's dad lived in. He supposed he probably should've thought of that when he was nearby a grass lot to park in, like many of the other people around, but that might've gotten the faun's car vandalized, since it was a limo and people would think it was worth more than 2 cents. (It wasn't.) He had heard the whole shebang about Elemental Leaders, Sensei Wu's decline of return from the dead, his goals, a little about the Great Battle, and an old dude named Shinichi from Mr. and Mrs. Smith. It was weird to hear parents so well informed on the ugly world their son was living in. Jay knew Ed and Edna didn't hardly have a clue.

"Daddy?" Jay heard his name, and looked in the rearview mirror, but he couldn't see crap. Why even put one in here if you can't see the back of the car?! It relied heavily on side mirrors, this car did, and you had to be careful with them.

"Yes, sweetie?"

"Where's Mommy? Can't we go home?"

Jay choked. He felt his eyes prickling with tears already, and he struggled to hold it while he was driving five miles per hour through the streets, getting looks from kids waiting for the bus. How do you tell your daughter that Mommy's not coming home for a while? How do you explain that your daughter's mother isn't going to be waking up for a long time? How do you tell your daughter, "We can't go home" and expect not to get some kind of comeback that makes it harder to explain?

He looked back in the rearview mirror, and this time, he didn't just see Natille's eyes looking at him. He saw Kai's.

Kai knew.

Jay brought his eyes back down to the road. You could see it in his face that Kai knew. You could just see it.

And then, they pulled up to Cole's alley, and not caring, Jay parked on the side of the road before they got into the passage. Jeriminé only won this thing. Not like she cared about it, right?

"Okay, we're here!" He said cheerfully, putting on a huge smile as he turned around to face everyone. He didn't realize how crowded the limo was until now. Good thing it was a limo. "Let's go scare the crap out of Cole!"

Natille wrinkled her nose. "Rie's dad?"

Jay nodded. "Yup! We get to see him!"

"Daddy, I know you're faking."

Jay froze. There goes Natille's freaky clairvoyance thing again, knowing the unsaid quicker than the said came. "Nattie, I'm serious! We're gonna see Cole!"

"Not about him. About your face. The smile is a lie, Daddy."

Jay sighed, his face falling, and he looked at Natille with a small, it-won't-reach-my-eyes smile. "We'll talk later." And that's just the worst thing ever to tell your daughter when the last thing you want her to know is that Mommy might not be coming back.

Go have an awesome day/night!