Title: This Is How A Heart Breaks - Rob Thomas

19 - This Is How A Heart Breaks

Seven days later she stood on the crashing shore of a beach in San Francisco, sleet in her hair and an ache in her heart.

It was nearly six in the morning. Back at Pinkerton, considering the time difference, class would be starting soon. Zero couldn't help but think about how much she wished she could still have that kind of mundane routine. That sense of permanence, of home, of stability.

Like clockwork, her phone began to buzz in her pocket, as it had done every twenty or so minutes for the past week. And like clockwork, she ignored it.

After the first few times, she'd had to switch her phone to silent. The endless repeat of her ringtone had only made her more and more miserable as time went on. She'd probably never be able to hear the chorus of AC/DC's Thunderstruck without wincing ever again.

The phone finally stopped buzzing, only to immediately start up again. Zero was struck with the vicious urge to grab it and fling it into the ocean. She tamped that down straight away - that was the kind of financial decision that would take a long time to recover from. And besides, she didn't want to lose that one connection that she still had to her friends, regardless of whether she was using it or not.

(Even if she knew she would probably never see them again.)

Letting out a heavy breath, she slipped the phone from her jacket pocket and stared down at Trixie's caller ID, tempted for a very long minute to answer, just for the sake of hearing her voice. She wanted to so badly.

Damn it, she really didn't deserve how dedicated they were to reaching out. How much they wanted to talk to her, to find out what was going on. It felt awful just to think about, and there wasn't a thing she could do to make it better.

She'd been trapped, blackmailed, and made a fool of. And she took it all lying down.

God, she hated a lot of people, but Elizabeth was damn near the top of that list. The only people who had ever put her through more misery were her father, and Macbeth. Even then, the former was firmly in the past, and the latter she had never been subjected to alone. Elizabeth was an entirely different kettle of fish, and there was nothing she could have done about it.

The phone buzzed again, this time with a message from Newton. She refused to read it. The dog picture he had sent through a few days ago had nearly reduced her to tears, because it was just so like him, and she couldn't bear to deal with that sense of emptiness right now. His happy, overeager companionship had always been a solid presence by her side. A lanky, messy-haired presence who liked to poke fun at his height and her lack thereof, even if she hated it.

Zero swallowed, turning away from the water. She had to put them behind her, now. It wasn't like she had any other choice. Besides, it was better that she had ripped off the bandage hard and fast, rather than dragging it out into something long and even more painful. Especially for Vin. He hadn't deserved any of this.

That was what she told herself, at least, in a pitiful effort to make herself feel a little less guilty. All the same, there was no stopping the tears as they slipped down her cheeks.

No one questioned Vin or Newton's presence as they followed Trixie through the girls' dormitory, continuing past her own bedroom and coming to a stop outside of Zero's. They probably didn't have the nerve to.

The first day back at school had been an exhausting ordeal, and spending the last hour explaining their confusion to Soper had been the icing on the cake. There was too much anger and hurt between the three of them, just simmering below the surface. One wrong move, and it would all boil over. The one thing that they all agreed on however, was that they needed to take matters into their own hands.

Brow furrowed, Trixie stared at the door handle, as though she couldn't bring herself to open it. Like she was afraid of what she might find inside. Newton seemed to be equally unsure, his face uncharacteristically heavy and tired. It fell down to Vin to turn the handle, and push it open.

He took one step inside, and stopped in his tracks.

The room was practically stripped bare. All of the wall hangings had been taken down. The punching bag was propped up in the corner. A garbage bag containing a few miscellaneous trinkets was sitting on the bedside table. Books lay in messy piles on the desk. The bed linens had been folded and left on the bare mattress.

It had all been premeditated.

Feeling as though his heart had dropped to the bottom of his stomach, Vin slowly stepped inside, head turning as he tried to look everywhere at once. He heard Trixie draw in a sharp breath behind him, and Newton made an angry noise in the back of his throat.

'How long had she been planning this?' he heard himself say. His voice felt empty and distant to his own ears.

'Long enough,' Trixie replied, words quivering with anger. 'Long enough.'

Newton went to the bedside table and picked up the garbage bag, inspecting its contents. 'God, she's an idiot,' he hissed, whirling around to show them. 'These are all INK gadgets, and she just left them here. She's lucky that we were the first to come looking!'

'She didn't want us to clue in to the fact that something was wrong,' Vin said hollowly, staring at the bag. Something about the sight of it struck a sinister chord, deep in his chest. 'Taking it all back to Headquarters would have been suspicious.'

'Yeah, but still.'

Vin slowly made his way over to the desk. All of her textbooks had been left in one corner, old spiral-bound notebooks in another. Taking up most of the space were several tottering piles of metal cds. Vin reached out to pick a couple up, a sick feeling in his gut.

She loved those cds. She would sooner have stabbed herself in the foot than given them up.

He flicked through them, wondering if there might be some sort of clue between the cases. Alice Cooper, Guns 'n' Roses, Halestorm, Metallica, Soundgarden . . .

Then, sticking out of the corner of a Whitesnake case, he spotted a slip of paper.

It was a thin, crumpled sheet, torn from a notebook. Vin recognised his own spidery handwriting almost immediately - it was a note they had passed back and forth in class one day, calling each other the most creative and insulting names they could think of. He had no memory of it, so it must have been quite a while ago. There were a few crude doodles as well, clearly something that had made them laugh like idiots at the time.

God, her handwriting was appalling. It was a wonder he could read it at all.

'What's that, Vin?' he heard Trixie say somewhere behind him. He startled slightly, brought out of his own head as he registered her voice.

'Nothing, really,' he lied, folding it up and tucking it in his pocket. For some reason, this was something he just didn't feel like sharing. 'Just an old bit of paper.'

Vin knew she was watching him, trying to assess whether he was lying or not. Determined to lose her attention, he went back to sifting through the piles on the desk.

He couldn't help but glance back at the cds. He had never been much of a fan of Zero's music taste; it was generally far too loud and aggressive for him. But then again, that was who she was. She was the walking, talking (and punching) definition of "loud and aggressive". And shit, he'd always loved her for that.

He found himself stacking them all into a tidy pile, tucked under one arm. He turned to see Trixie and Newton watching him apprehensively, and he gave them a look that dared them to comment.

Thankfully, they didn't.

Newton sat down on the mattress. He pulled a grappling hook from the bag and turned it absently between his hands, running his fingers over the lines and ridges of it. He met Vin's gaze, and quickly glanced away again, brow settling into a frown.

'We're gonna go get her, right?' he said finally, dropping the gadget in his lap. 'That's why we're digging around.'

Trixie, who had been busying herself with upending the nearly-empty wardrobe, paused. She glanced over at him, eyes slightly uncertain, and set down the old, blue jacket she had been holding. 'Newton . . .'

'We're going to go get her,' he repeated, looking unflinchingly at her. 'Right?'

'Newton,' she said again, voice tired and soft. 'She chose to leave. We . . . We can't force her to come back.'

'She might have chosen, but there is no way she wanted to. I don't believe that for a second.'

'It's really not -'

'She would never have wanted to leave us,' he said, louder now. His eyes brimmed with unshed tears. 'I know it.'

Vin swallowed back the lump that formed in his throat. 'There's nothing we can do, man. Who knows where she could be?'

He scoffed angrily. 'Please. That's the easy part - she took her phone with her.''

Trixie worried at her lip, brow furrowing a little. 'Whether you can find her or not is one thing, but we still don't know why she left. I really need an answer for that.' She paused, before adding. 'Because what if . . . what if it wasn't just us that she was running away from?'

'What do you mean?' Vin asked.

'Well, she went to her dad's, right? What did she find there? Did something happen that became a part of this whole mess?'

'She said she ran into his girlfriend there,' Vin said. 'But she didn't seem particularly bothered by the experience.' He paused, before adding, 'I think she was happy she got the chance for a little violence, actually.'

Trixie's mouth turned down even further at that. 'Something still doesn't seem right about it.'

Newton made a thoughtful humming noise, and they both glanced over at him. 'We need to go check it out,' he said firmly. 'No doubt about it.'

Trixie's eyebrows shot up her forehead. 'Are you serious?'

'Yeah. We need to find out what's been going on. That way, when we go to find her, she doesn't have a leg to stand on if she tries being evasive. You know, the shit she always pulls - "you don't understand what's happened" and "shut up, you don't know what you're talking about".' He folded his arms, mouth twitching with anger. 'I'm done with letting her run away from every mild inconvenience just because it suits her. We need her. I miss her.'

Trixie seemed unsure of what to say. Her eyes were tired and sad, and the exhaustion seemed to wear heavier on her shoulders as she processed Newton's words. 'Fine. Say that we do go and have a look - but when? Soper will notice if we're not in class.'

Vin spoke up. 'We should go tomorrow, at the end of the day. We can pool our money for a cab to get there as quickly as possible, and hopefully get back before he realises that we're missing.'

'Don't be ridiculous,' Trixie said. 'I'll pay. But where are we even going? It's not like she's casually mentioned a home address before.'

'Student file. There's no way that Soper wouldn't have it.'

'Okay,' she conceded, still apprehensive. 'And what if the girlfriend is there? She'll probably call the police.'

'We'll just have to take that chance,' Newton said. 'I don't want to wait. It's been too long already.' He gave them a hard look that dared them to argue. 'She's our family. And we need to bring her home.'

Liz was rather surprised that a decision had been made so quickly. To be honest, she had been expecting a little more of a fight to come out of the situation.

She'd heard the horror stories about Zero Toriello, after all. The vicious, nasty piece of work who could probably rip your arm out of its socket if she felt like it. Liz had been gearing herself up for a tougher battle, here. The last thing she had been expecting was for her to just . . . pick up and go.

It had been far too easy, and she was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Thankfully, her nerves were given a little relief the first evening back at school. She opened her bathroom locker to find a small square of paper, roughly folded over a few times.

Oh shit.

Liz cast a quick glance around the bathroom, double checking that she was alone. Once she had safely determined that Cathy would likely pose very little threat over by the sinks, she snatched up the note and squirrelled herself away in a cubicle.

She could feel her heart hammering in her throat as she turned the note over and over in her shaking hands. She sank down on the toilet lid, elbows supported by her knees. She doubted she would reliably keep herself up otherwise.

Shitshitshitshitshit . . .

She scrambled to unfold the note, cursing as her thumb slipped and was sliced by a corner. She ignored it, tugging the page open and leaving crimson smears along the edges.

The paper had clearly been torn from a notebook, and the jagged, chicken scratch handwriting was nearly impossible to decipher. Once she had it figured out however, she couldn't help but grin a little. She felt a faint sense of relief, very much a jarring contrast to the threat scribbled on the paper.

You got what you wanted, you twisted bitch.

Leave the others alone. If you don't, I'll find you, and you WILL regret it. That's a promise.

It was unsigned, but Liz didn't have the slightest doubt as to who had left it.

This was what she had been waiting for. This was what she had needed - something to show that she had successfully hit a nerve. Maybe it was only a faint echo of the absolute cataclysm that girl could embody, but right now? It was more than enough.

That evening, feeling far too trapped by his own thoughts, Vin put on one of those cds. He wasn't exactly sure what he thought he was going to get from it, but once the introduction crescendoed into a clashing of drums, he lay back in bed and pulled a pillow over his eyes.

It was far from therapeutic. The song felt loud, even though the volume on his laptop was down low. Despite that, something about it was so achingly familiar that he felt a lump rise in his throat. Shit, this was her, down to the core.

For the first time since she had left, he finally let himself think about her. If he really tried, he could pretend that she was beside him there in the bed, lounging about with one foot kicked up against her knee. Her eyes would be closed, perhaps, and her fingers would tap along to the drumbeat as she smiled faintly to herself.

After a while, she might open an eye and smirk at him, as if to say "I know that you're staring, dumbass." Then he would get indignant, as he usually did, and she would just laugh until he gave in.

God, he missed hearing it.

There was no putting into words the kind of ache he felt at her absence. It was as though he'd lost a part of himself, his second half; something that had been there for so long that it's loss was painfully wrong. And he just didn't know what to do.

He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, making a valiant attempt to smother himself with the pillow. It didn't really work.

He could still hear the music filtering through, muffled now. The faint wailing of electric guitars and the singing that accompanied it was enough to ground him as he pulled himself from his thoughts. He let himself focus on that - particularly the gritty, lyrical flow of the man's voice.

". . . in the night I call out your name . . ."

He breathed in.

And out.

" . . . I wake up in a cold sweat and I'm all alone again . . ."

There was nothing that he wouldn't give right now just to see her again. Even if it was just for a moment, he desperately needed the chance to hold her, to tell her that he loved her.

To beg her to stay.

With a heavy exhale, Vin threw the pillow to one side, sitting up abruptly. He winced as his head spun, before fumbling toward the bedside table in the darkness. He finally found his phone - shit, it was almost midnight - and opened his text messages.

It made his heart ache to see the endless chain of unanswered messages. It was the sense of not knowing that made it so much worse; was she safe? Did she choose not to answer, or was she unable?

He swallowed, rubbing one hand over his face. He wouldn't stop trying. Of course he wouldn't.

His fingers hovered uselessly over the keys, unsure of what to say. What was there that he could say, when it would just go ignored anyway?

". . . you're all I want, can't you feel the love in this heart of mine? . . ."

After several long, useless moments, he forced himself to type.

i would do anything for you, just please dont abandon me -

He furiously tapped at the backspace key, cursing at himself when the words refused to come out correctly.

please tell me that your safe, i know you think you can take care of yourself -

Nope, backspace. That would only make her angry, and it was the last thing he needed.

He had to lay all of the cards out on the table. Leave no doubt whatsoever about his own feelings, if nothing else. She deserved that much.

you know that i love you, right?

He hit the send button before any sense of fear had the chance to set in, and flung the phone across the room. It bounced off the wall with a clatter, and he slumped back into the mattress.

". . . since I lost you girl, I've been losing my mind . . ."

A horrible, anguished sob tore its way from his throat, and he dragged the pillow back over his face to muffle the noise. He drew his knees tightly into his chest, feeling stupidly like a child in the midst of a breakdown and not caring in the slightest.

He felt so lost. So desperate. He needed to keep a hold on something, anything, as the rest of his life had slipped away too quickly for him to catch.

". . . I've been losing my mind . . ."

It was all well beyond his reach now. There was nothing he could do but wait out the storm.

And hope.

Song: Now You're Gone - Whitesnake

The whole album is a fuckin banger tbh

24/1/22