To all my wonderful reviewers, thank you! Your feedback is very much appreciated, and it makes me even more eager to get writing. I plan on hopefully returning the favor at some point. Glad to hear you're all enjoying it, and I hope this mini-chapter (well, they're all mini chapters, I guess) is up to par.

Chapter VII

Sean was getting antsy. His parents hadn't changed, drinking their way through the day more often than not, and he was missing Ellie, and going crazy trying to block the memories that just weren't blockable. To add to the fire, that one, horrible reporter had tracked him down yet again, and insisted that she deserved an interview. He continued to brush her off, but of course she refused to listen, so he spent most of his days on long walks the length of the beach and back, where, thank goodness, her high-heeled-highness dared not tread.

His parents hadn't bothered to harass him about school, and Sean had things he was much more concerned with, so he was alone much of the time, but he liked it that way. He had a nagging sense of loss when he thought of Degrassi and Toronto and all he'd left behind, but the memories would have swarmed him, and even here they had found him and were trying to chase him onward and away. He'd started swimming despite the fact that it was fall and freezing cold and although the water could clear his mind for moments, nothing could cleanse his memory entirely.

He wanted more than anything to pick up the phone and call Ellie or even Jay or Alex or hell, even Emma, but he couldn't. He was afraid of what he might hear, afraid that Ellie had crumbled, and even more afraid that she'd moved on. He knew it wasn't fair, to wish her chained to him, and he knew he had to stay away, but that couldn't stop him from craving her with every inch of his being. She was as much on his mind as Rick. He longed for her laugh, for her sarcastic wit, and Bueller, god how he missed that weasel. He dreamt of his hands in her hair and his lips on hers and the gentle angles of her body in his arms. But he would be poison to her, and seeing her would only force him away to cheap sex in the back of a car with a girl he'd known five minutes. He knew this, knew that he'd bury himself in relationships that couldn't work out just to continue the charade of normality.

And then the package came.

He was okay. Seeing her handwriting on the box was bearable, smelling her faint scent clinging to one of his sweaters was liveable. But a picture of Bueller, in Ellie's smiling arms, was too much. He'd never been a crier, but by the time he reached the beach, his cheeks were soaked with remembrance.

----------------------

"Eleanor Nash, this is unacceptable. I've rescheduled your appointment for tomorrow morning at 9:15 sharp. I expect you there or there WILL be trouble. You can't keep skipping out on appointments without calling and expect me just to forget about it. I'm not stupid, Ellie, and neither are you. If you want me to show up there with a cop car and an ambulance, I will. 9:15 or I'll declare you a risk to yourself, and you'll be in the hospital by tomorrow night."

Ellie rolled her eyes at Sauve's voice on the machine, but scribbled the time onto the back of her hand. She knew there would be hell to pay, but it beat having her door pounded down and then being shipped off to the looney bin. She would deal with it the next day, anyway.

That day, she'd found an eviction notice on her door. She knew it was only a matter of time--Sean had left the day before the rent was due, and his landlord was especially strict, knowing that they were only teenagers. The landlord had never been happy about them living there.

She hadn't had any calls about jobs--not that she was surprised--and she had no savings. She supposed she'd have to move back home. Her mother would be out of rehab very shortly, anyway, and Ellie felt obligated to help her out. She just hoped Bueller would survive the Nash residence--and that she, herself, would as well. She certainly hadn't done well on that front in the past, then again, her mother hadn't gone to rehab in the past. She sighed. Only time would tell.

She was riled up just thinking about it, and she wanted nothing more than to jam a knife into her arm, but she knew Sauve would be upset enough at her as it was, and if she managed to go a day or two without, she might just have herself a few bargaining chips.

She'd always been a good gambler.