Author: Jade Unicorn
Title: When The Thunder Rolls (Part Three)
Rating: PG13 for some fluff and stuff.
E-mail: tenryu@excite.com
Website: http://www.angelfire.com/weird2/tigerwolf (for other stories by me and my poems)
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I'm just using them for fun. I'll put them back when I'm done, promise. And I don't own the song "Whole" either, it belongs to the band Flaw from their CD "Through the Eyes." It's really, really, good.

When we last left off, Lizzie and Miranda were scared about sharing a bed together. Why?...
Lizzie sighed heavily and relaxed her tight muscles. "We're being stupid, I hope you know that." Miranda gave her a questioning look so she continued. "Why should we scared to share a bed together? We've slept in the same bed together before, why is this time any different?"

"Before we were dating. Now that we're girlfriends, don't you think that it changes how you look at the simple things that we use to do before?" Her voice sounded a little bit accusing.

"Like what?"

"Like going to the mall with our arms linked together, like sharing a bed together, things are going to be different now Lizzie, don't you see that?" She collapsed herself down on the bed. Maybe she and Lizzie shouldn't get together. Maybe they should just stay friends.

"I mean," Miranda said into the silence of the room. "What if this doesn't work out and we break up? Then what? Can we still be friends or are we going to hate each other?"

Lizzie kneeled in front of the girl and took her hands within her own. She was quite for a moment, trying to sort out the thoughts in her head. "I can't promise you much. I can't even give you everything that you deserve to have. I can only give you me and my love. And I hope that would be enough to keep us together. But if for some reason we break up, I want us to still be friends but I don't know the future, I can't predict what will happen between us. All I know for sure is that I'm falling in love with you Miranda Sanchez and even though I'm scared out of my mind, I'm going to love you with all that I am."

Lizzie finished, taking in a deep breath. Perhaps she said too much. The silence ran across the room making it unbearably painful to be there. She was relieved when Miranda finally spoke up.

"I love you Elizabeth McGuire. More than you'll ever know."

Lizzie grinned up at her girlfriend. The words were still new and weird to her now, 'her girlfriend' Lizzie always assumed that she would be somebody's girlfriend, she just never expected to have a girlfriend. "What do you say that we just go to sleep and worry about everything else tomorrow morning?"

Miranda smiled and nodded, sleep sounded nice right about now.

They climbed into the bed and got comfortable. The blonde reached over and turned the lights off. She curled up into Miranda's arms listening to her heart beat. "Miranda..." She said almost silently.

"Hmm?"

"I want to tell Gordo tomorrow about us. And then maybe our parents?" She questioned the last sentence. Lizzie felt Miranda tense up when she mentioned their parents.
"We'll tell Gordo tomorrow..." She waited and then said. "We shouldn't tell our parents yet."

Confused, Lizzie started to question Miranda's opinion but gave up and decided to wait until morning.


The sun shone brightly through the partly open curtains. Wincing, Lizzie buried her head deeper into her pillow. It was then that she realized she was alone. The other side of the bed was cold and she was by herself. Where did Miranda go to this early in the morning?

'Maybe she's downstairs waiting on me to get up.' Lizzie thought with a grin on her face.

Treading down the stairs slowly, she couldn't hear any sign of the girl's presences. The house was quite, too quite. Looking around Lizzie didn't see her girlfriend anywhere. "Miranda?" She called out but there was no answer.

"Miranda?" The blonde called out again as she went back upstairs. It was starting to worry her that Miranda was no where to be found. She opened up the bathroom door but instead of finding Miranda, she found a note taped to the mirror.

The note was fold up and had her name on the outside. Opening it, Lizzie read the words that made her heart bleed.

Lizzie,

I'm sorry...I can't do this. I thought that I could handle this, handle us, but it turns out that I can't. My reputation would be ruined if it came out that I was dating a girl. My parents would no longer talk to me anymore and I would lose all my friends.

Just know that I do love you, you're always going to be my friend. I hope that we can move past this and become stronger. I'll call you later tonight, we both need some time to figure this all out. And I really don't want you to tell anybody. Nobody needs to know what happened between us.

Miranda.

The tears slid down her face as she read it over and over again. How could this happen? Why did this happen? What did she do to cause this turn events?


Something was making a noise, something from downstairs. Recognizing the sound, Lizzie turned over to bury her face in the pillows, her parents were home. She hoped that they wouldn't come up to check up on her but she knew better. Her parents had yet to learn how to cut the umbilical cord from her. They treated her like a child sometimes. Maybe because she was still a child in a way.

"Lizzie?" Jo's voice came from the other side of the door. She tried to turn the doorknob but found it to be locked. It wasn't like Lizzie to lock her bedroom door. Well, aside from the time when Matt was younger and had some friends spend the night. She didn't trust her brother and his friends well enough to sleep with an unlocked door. "Lizzie, why is this door locked?" Her voice was irritated.

"Mom, I don't want to be bother right now. I'll talk to you later." The blonde yelled out.

"Elizabeth McGuire, I want you to open this door right now."

"Don't test me." Lizzie mumbled to herself. "I told you, I'll talk to you later! Just go away!" She screamed out. Screamed out? Did Lizzie really just scream at her mother to leave her alone? Was that how bad she was hurting from what Miranda did?

Shocked, Jo turned and left. She was too shocked to yell at Lizzie but also sympathetic because something bad had happened to her daughter while she was gone. But what?


"Sam, it's nine o'clock and she still hasn't came out of her room." Jo said in a worried tone. Since they had came home, Jo and Sam both had tried to coax their daughter out of her room. Neither one got anywhere. Within the past hour, they heard Lizzie's stereo blasting and things falling and crashing in the young girl's room. "I'm scared Sam. What could have happened to her?"

Before he could answer, the phone rang. Being the closest one to it, Sam picked it up. "Oh hello Miranda. Um, you want to talk to Lizzie?" He looked at his wife who started nodding her head. "Okay, hold on just a minute."

They stood outside their daughter's door knocking as loud as they could. The stereo shut off and Lizzie yelled, "What do you want now?"

"Miranda's on the phone honey. She wants to speak to you."

There was silence for a moment. "Put the phone down and go back down stairs, and I'll get it."

Not being able to afford to defy their daughter, they sat the phone down and followed her orders by going back downstairs.
Once they were gone, Lizzie opened the door and picked up the phone. "Miranda?" Her voice held some hope but mostly anger.

"Hey, what are you up to?" The question sounded uneasy, like she was talking to a person standing on the ledge of a building ready to jump. But the blonde didn't answer. She chose, instead, to sit there and let Miranda do all the talking. "I'm really sorry Lizzie. I didn't mean to hurt you."

"Why?" She dared Miranda to answer.

"I'm just not comfortable with it, with us. I can't do it and i wouldn't be fair to either one of us if I went on lying to myself and said that I could be happy dating a girl."

"Yeah, your reputation tends to get in the way when you're dating a girl doesn't it?" Scorn was in her voice and at this point she didn't really care.

"Lizzie, you and I both know that that's not how it is. I can't afford to be labeled as a lesbian in middle school. And you know what, neither can you. It would ruin the both of us if people knew..." She didn't finish.

"Knew what? Knew the real us? Knew us and accepted us for who and what we are."

"Were." She corrected. "Were, Lizzie. Who and what we were. We're just going through a phase right now. My mom said so herself."

Feeling as if she would start screaming if they spoke any longer, Lizzie turned on her stereo and laid the phone in front of it. She blared a song into the phone hoping that it would burst Miranda's eardrums.

So maybe I am bound by fate
A problematic scarring induced by hate
it never seems to all pan out
is that what all this teaching is needed to scout
You seem to have a bad effect
your rules and contradictions I would neglect
though not my fault you make me feel
like my own education wasn't truly real
then you came right in, tearing up my soul
how could all this loss be your only goal
I'm left standing here, desperate in the cold
since you took your life, mine has not been whole

Miranda sighed and hung up the phone. It would take a few days, but then Lizzie would be back to normal and they would have gotten over this, right?


Okay, this part kind of sucks. But I know where I'm going so just hold on and don't give up on me yet.

To be continued....