Falling From Grace

Chapter 4 - Strangeness of Fear

Cooper followed at a distance behind Peter as he led the way to his office, but he didn't think it was an act of defiance. He could sense her eyes on his back as he walked, and he could see her features tense with nerves as he glanced back over his shoulder to make sure she was still there. He wondered what would make her that tense. Defiant, angry, and even a little dangerous, he'd seen all of those before. The school specialized in kids that thought they didn't have anything to lose, he'd seen just about everything, but never had he seen a student who was so two-faced. She was completely void of emotion one second, then a puddle of goo the next. And the nerves. She shook constantly, which was not a sign of a healthy-minded, strong individual.

What would make her shake like that?

Substance abuse? Sure.

A violent past? Definitely.

Fear? He wasn't so sure about that last one. Why would she be afraid? He was just another councelor in a long list of people who had tried to help her, and he didn't really know much about her. She kind of had the upper hand in this situation. So why would she be afraid?

It was obvious that the girl had a problem with authority, but that was a pattern with kids like her. Over the years it had become something of a requirment to be in the ranks of the "screwed up kids". So that didn't bother him. What bothered him that it seemed to be a facade, a mask she hid behind, much like her sister's openness, to cover up the fact that she actually feared authority figures. The kids that passed through Horizon had a lot of opinions about the teachers, but Peter couldn't remember one that was afraid of them. They were too close to the end of their ropes for fear.

And yet there it was, etched into Cooper's features clear as day. Fear.

Sophie watched silently as Lexis broke an egg effortlessly with one hand. She didn't get any shells in the pan, and she didn't get any egg on herself. Sophie had been cooking for years, and had never been able to do that. There were chefs that probably couldn't do that. Apparently Cooper wasn't the only sister with a few tricks up her sleave.

"What?"

Sophie blinked at Lexis blankly. "Pardon?"

Lexis supressed an eye-roll. "You were staring at me. Why?"

Sophie looked down at the frying pan they were manning, where the eggs had started to sizzle visiously, and cleared her throat nervously. Getting caught staring at a student wasn't the smartest way to go. It gave them something on you. It also made them uncomfortable. "Uh...I was just impressed by the way you cracked that egg. Where did you learn to do it?"

Lexis smirked a little at the teacher's jitters. "Carrie."

"Who was Carrie?"

"Our maid."

Sophie glanced up at Lexis, but the girl was focused on pushing the eggs around the pan with a spatula. Maid? The twins' files had mentioned that their families had been well-off financially, but a maid? As in someone who did things for them? The girls hadn't had daily chores, or done their own laundry or anything? That would certainly play into things later on then, because the students were expected to do things for themselves. Laundry and other chores included. "You had a maid?"

Lexis nodded. "Yeah. Carrie."

Sophie resisted the urge to glare at the girl. She was being cryptic on purpose and there wasn't any reason for it. It wasn't like they were talking about something that would reveal secrets about either sister. Unless, of course, the maid had played a large part in the downward spiral the girls had fallen into. But Sophie seriously doubted the maid's involvement. Very rarely was the maid the drug dealer...But, she had to admit, she'd seen stranger. "Are you going to elaborate at all?"

Lexis shrugged, skillfully avoiding Sophie's prodding gaze. "What's there to tell? She was our maid from the time we were born up until about a month ago. We loved her, she loved us, our parents fired her..." Lexis heaved a sigh that gave her away. "End of story."

Sophie didn't pry, because Lexis had visibly moved from careless to angry, but she knew that there was no way in hell that that was the end of the story.

"Why are you nervous?"

Dammit.

"I'm not."

Liar.

"I think you are."

No shit?

"And you know everything?"

No.

"No."

Cooper glanced up at Peter and saw that he was staring back at her intently. It made her squirm, which made her scowl, which didn't help the situation at all. She wasn't trying to make Peter like her, but she wasn't trying to give him a reason to shadow her either. Surely, pissing him off wouldn't do her any good at all. "No?"

"No, I don't think I know everything." He shifted his gaze down to the manilla folder on his desk, and Cooper chanced an eye-roll. She knew what was in that folder. Many years of carefully saying only what needed to be said to get her by, and nothing more, were in that folder. A purposfully sketchy story about a broken girl was in that folder, with blanks in crucial areas that she wasn't positive she could fill. Not without breaking down anyway. Breaking down was not fun. Cooper couldn't say that it was high on her list of things to do in the near future.

"Then what do you know?"

"That there's things you're not telling me," he said, choosing to ignore her expression as he stated the obvious. "And that I can help you...If you'd let me."

"I don't think so," Cooper said, slouching farther down into her chair until her ear-lobes touched her shirt collar. Peter half-expected her head to disappear into her shirt in her attempts to shy away from him.

"Why not?"

"Pain runs deep."

"I'm aware."

Cooper's eyes flashed with an indescribable emotion, and she twisted her fingers together nervously. "Then why do you ask so much of me?"

"Cooperation?"

"To relive it."

"That bad?"

Cooper gave him a solemn nod, and if the expression on her face was an indecation, she hadn't meant to respond. "I mean...you know...it all seems bad when it's happenening." Her features contorted in annoyance as her grey eyes found the floor, and Peter guessed that she was wishing she'd left it at the nod, and not added to her discomfort by speaking.

Peter picked up the manilla folder and held it out to Cooper. Her eyes met his reluctantly, as she carefully appraised him. She wasn't sure what he was trying to prove by offering her folder like that. Sure, she'd never read what was in there, but she knew most of it. As they could only put in what she told them, and she was positive that her parents hadn't offered up any additional information, but there was a part of her that was curious as to what it said. Exactly. Word for word, what she was on paper. She wanted to know what all of her therapists and councelors thought when they first read about her, what she was compared to what people anticipated.

Peter read the curiousity as it spread across her face, and pushed the file closer to her. "Take it. Read it." Slowly, very slowly, she reached for it, but just as her fingers grazed the edge, Peter pulled it back. "On one condition."

Fear flashed in Cooper's grey eyes for a split second, but then it was gone. Peter chose not to dwell on the strangeness of fear being the first emotion to grace her features until later, as she spoke. "What is it?" she whispered, looking as if she'd rather not know.

"When you give it back to me, you've filled in some of the blanks."

"Huh?"

"There's a sheet in there," Peter explained, nodding to the folder. "That we have the parents fill out about the child. We have one that's mostly full for Lexis, yours is close to empty. I want you to fill it out, so that maybe I can figure out how to help you."

Cooper stared at him, openly annoyed with the proposition. She was quiet for close to a minute before asking; "And if I don't?"

"Then we keep on having these one-on-one meetings until it's complete."

Cooper didn't contemplate the deal a second longer, just snatched the folder out of Peter's hands and ran from the office.