A/N: Here you go!
From the Eyes of a Skag
Chapter 4: Heart-to-Heart
By Preppygirl
One week passed, and then another. Soon, it was almost Christmas. By this time, I had dumped Dan Mettler. Jovanna Cameron and I had had a fight. Unsurprisingly, I started it. Also unsurprisingly, it was about Ace. Everything was always about Ace.
I won't go into details about the fight. I was pretty harsh. I said some things that, if I had had a conscience, I would have regretted. I regret them now. It suffices to say I won, quite solidly. But it hurt.
I knew Jovanna Cameron and Ace fooled around sometimes. I saw them together, heard rumors in the hall. It hurt more than I let anyone else suspect. I pretended not to care. I tried so hard to convince everyone else that I didn't care, I almost convinced myself. Almost. That hurt too.
But what hurt more, what hurt the most was when Ace and I got together. We were never an official couple again, then or ever, but we were forced into contact. Our social circles overlapped too much to avoid each other. We weren't in love, and didn't even really like each other, I can see now. It was much more a pure animal attraction, nothing more than physical lust. So we hooked up. Then I would wake up in his car, the next morning and look at him, sleeping.
Asleep was the only time Ace seemed-- normal, not horribly hard, scarred against the world. He was so- soft, so sweet looking, making me just want to hold him, hold him like you would a baby, not the way you would hold a lover. Then it hurt. Right where my heart was, right in the very center of my body, it ached. Terribly, constantly, mercilessly.
Then he would turn over, blink. And look at me, alertly. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Well, I have never seem, before or since, such a haunting view. And yes, haunted as well as haunting, gruesome as well as captivating. You could see the world, but it was not a world anyone would choose to live in. It was the darkness of the world, hidden in the shadows of alleyways and burned-out lightposts. The part of the world that happens behind closed doors and drawn window shades. The world we lived in.
Then he would smile, lazily, and it was not so bad. We would straighten up, smooth our hair and clothes, and he would drive to Blue Point Diner, where we would eat breakfast. He would drop me off at school, and leave for who knows what, for things I did not want to know about.
The follow-up was bad for the simple reason there was none. I would walk home alone. Ace would not pull up along side me, as he used to do, wink, and say, "Need a ride, babe?" I would not jump into that beautiful Chevy, and I would go home. Used to be, I didn't get home until later, after meeting the gang for shakes or burgers. But I could not stand to face them, knowing Ace might be there, or might not be. I'm not sure which would have been worse: Ace ignoring me in all but the platonic way, or Ace not being there, knowing he was with Jovanna Cameron instead.
Later that week, I had a real, somewhat civil conversation with Jovanna Cameron. No, I don't know why it happened. She started it.
I was sitting at the corner of Lost and Pond. Lost Lane is where I lived. There are six houses, all next to each other, no neighbors across the street, all getting farther and farther away from town. I lived in the second house from the corner. Pond was the street Jovanna Cameron had lived on. Her mother, no longer Mrs. Cameron, was expecting another kid, and had moved back to Castle Rock, supposedly to be closer to her family. She had chosen a small house also on Pond. This corner was where we used to meet, back when Jovanna Cameron was JC, and before... everything happened.
So I was sitting at this corner, and Jovanna Cameron walks up. I don't know why she decided to walk down to Lost Lane. Maybe she was feeling nostalgic, I just know that she did.
"Err... Hello, Claire," she said, looking at me. She seemed... nervous.
"Screw off," I told her in the tone one might use to day 'isn't the weather delightful and would you like another Chocolate chip cookie?' I smiled cheerfully at her, which faded as quickly as it took for her to sit down next to me.
"Claire..." She trailed off.
"Are you deaf, or just stupid?" I asked her scathingly. "I already told you to get the hell away from me. Why aren't you listening?"
"Because I know you don't mean it," she said simply. That threw me for a spin. I blinked a few times before recovering.
"What's that supposed to mean?" I said harshly.
"I know- no, I knew you. I knew you well, better than I knew anyone else. A person doesn't truly change so much, so suddenly. I asked the boys. They say this change happened in the year or so after I left. You didn't change overnight. Either you're faking it, or you were always this way. And I know that's not true."
I couldn't believe this. It was amazing to me that after all these years of... pretending that someone had figured it out in so little time.
"Like you care," I spat at her. She looked taken aback.
"I do care, Claire. I've always cared. It was so different when I came back. You've changed. Your Mère is gone. Your Pa's a recluse. I cared then, and I care now." I laughed bitterly.
"Excuse my French, but foutaise. Bullshit. People who care hand around. Bit of a fair weather friend, aren't you?" I asked.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"You've already touched on the subject. You know what I'm talking about. Didn't your little boy toys tell you what else happened in my life after you left?" A wave of confusion passed over her face, followed by understanding.
"Mère?" she asked tenderly. I waved it off. As cliché as it sounds, I didn't need or want her pity.
"Oui. She died after you went home. In the lake. And you didn't come. Where were you when I needed you? In the goddamn city." I looked away, biting my lip to keep from crying. Tears were already threatening to spill down my cheeks, but I couldn't let them. I blinked furiously, staring at the white trees ahead of us.
"Claire, I was twelve years old! Douze années vieilles! There was nothing I could have done! Nothing! Nada, zip, zero!" Alright, she was crying now.
"You should have come, as I would have come for you!" I screamed into the open air.
"Maybe, JC, you don't understand. I needed you. I needed you then. I needed you the next summer. You could have come then. But you didn't come, and you didn't come. I gave up all hope. I attached myself to the Cobras. You ask what made me this way, what started this downward spiral, this descent into el Enfer. Well, it was you. You, and the fact that Hell was warm. It felt good, welcoming. And by the time I realized it was going to burn me, I was too far in. I couldn't pull myself out. But when I was starting down that slope, you could have reached down and pulled me out. But you turned away." A tear leaked down my face.
"So it's my fault, is it? I wrote to you, I wanted to come, come to find you, find out what happened. But I couldn't. I had my own life to deal with. I was twelve years old! It's not like I could have hot-wired a car and driven up here." She paused, and a memory, unbidden, pushed its way to the top of my brain.
The summer I turned eleven. Adam, my darling older brother, teaching me and JC how to hot-wire a car, using his beaten-up pick-up as an example for us to learn on. Then, Adam teaching us to drive it. Old Mister MacAddam yelling at us for driving in his cornfield. Straining to reach the petals, my two favorite people by my side, JC running along aside us, Adam carefully monitoring my feet and hands.
JC looked like she was seeing it too.
"Okay, well, I could have. But think logically Claire. You were expecting the impossible," she explained. I stood up.
"Nothing is impossible." Then I turned and walked away. She let me- she didn't call out to me, didn't run after me. When I was almost to my house, I looked back. She was still sitting there, unmoving. The same wind blowing in my face was making her clothes flap soundlessly, in this muffled white wonderland.
"GOOD-BYE JOVANNA CAMERON!" I yelled as loudly as I dared. The wind flew up against me, so, to this day, I'm not sure if she heard me.
"Good-bye," I whispered to myself. "Good-bye."
A/N: Correct me if I'm wrong, (see chapter 2 for contacting
info) but here are the translations I have:
mère-
mother
foutaise- bull shit
Oui- yes, obviously!
Douze années vieilles- Twelve years old
Enfer- Hell
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