Title: Invocation
Author: ScribbleDream
Summary: The Breakfast Club is falling apart. None of them want to leave their old lives behind them, bad as they were. But when John shows up on Claire's doorstep, the members realize they can't just ignore their friends, even if they're different.
Rating: T, for drugs, drinking, languageand violence (all mild)
Disclaimer: They aren't mine, and it has taken me months of therapy to be able to admit that.
A/N: My first Breakfast Club fic, so be constructive, please! First chapter's Claire, but the other's will have their turn. Reviews equal good. ConCrit equals better!

Chapter One: The Damsel and the Distressed

It was three weeks since the Breakfast Club. Claire knew she should call Allison, or Andy, or even Brian, but she couldn't. She was scared to use the phone. And she loved the phone.

What would they say if she called? She could see it in her mind: Hey, Ally, it's Claire. Oh, it's Claire? GO TO HELL! The thought made her nauseous, not that she could blame them. Well, she could have, but not without feeling incredibly guilty. She had blown everyone but Andy off, and now, in defense of the others, he was blowing her off. She wasn't used to that.

Andy was doing pretty well with his new friends, as far as she could tell. He'd proved his worth as a human being by preventing his own best friend, Mike Tanner, from beating up Brian. Tanner wasn't speaking to Andrew now, but a few of the other jocks actually thought it was pretty cool of Andy to stand up for the less fortunate. Apparently, Robin Hood was in these days, Claire mused. So, Andy was still part of the Breakfast Club. As for her own status... well, Claire just hoped they wouldn't dismember her.

She became angry at the thought. Just because her friends wouldn't let Allison sit with her, she was evil. Just because she wouldn't be Brian's partner in Geometry, she was scum. Just because she wouldn't hold John's hand in the hallway... John. She had tried to forget him.

It didn't work. He was still there, in the back of her mind, lingering. All he did in school was glaring. Sometimes she thought he only came to school so he could glare at her, make her feel thouroughly guilty, and then leave. She didn't have any actual classes with him, except lunch, so she didn't actually know if he left, but she knew he did. He was still John after all.

Allison didn't even look at her in class, not after that first Monday when she'd tried to sit with Claire at lunch. All of her friends had kicked Allison from the table, laughing at calling her a freak. Claire had just sat there. Andy went off on her later.

"What do you think that was, Claire? She's your friend!"

"What was I suppose to do, Andy? What? Tell me."

"Anything! Anything would have been better than just sitting there and letting it happen!"

She drove the thought from her mind. She hated Andy made at her. Before the detention, they hadn't even been that close, but somehow his anger stung more than her best friend's. Former best friends. Shannon's superficial friendship really paled in comparison to Allison's or Andy's or Brian's. Or even John's. And yet she'd chosen Shannon and Kerry and Brit over the Breaktfast Club. It was the dumbest thing she'd ever done.

Sitting on her bed, she heard the storm begin. She heard the rain fall down, heard the thunder crack, but didn't bother to look out the window. She usually liked the rain, too, one of her little quirks. But the rain made her think of John. One of her fantasies always was to be kissed in the rain, soaking wet, and the only person she wanted to kiss was John. But he hated her. They all hated her.

She tried reading a magazine, but couldn't pay attention. She considered calling Shannon, but couldn't bring herself to pick up the phone. She watched TV for a while, but kept seeing their faces on her favorite soap characters. Damn them. Damn that detention. Why did she have to skip class to go shopping? The sale wasn't even that good! And she had to take everything back as punishment anyway!

But the truth was, she wouldn't take back that Saturday even if she could. It had been the only day in her life where she was truly understood, and appreciated, and nothing was expected of her. In the beginning, sure, she had been expected to be snobby and regal and all those other things, but after a while, she was just Claire. And they were just Allison and Brian and Andy and John. Not stereotypes. They stopped being stereotypes and started being people. And it was really the first time she had thought she could be anything other than a Princess.

Claire was bored with her room, so she wandered around the upstairs hallway. Her house was huge, and she knew it, and until then she had loved it. But now it just felt so empty and cold. Vast. Too vast for only three family members and a maid. The hallway just made her feel more lonely.

She went down to the living room, where she turned on the big TV. In her head she knew that it was really no different than the TV up in her room, but she turned it on anyway, flipping channels, ignoring her mother and father arguing in the kitchen. Or at least trying too. John had understood arguing parents. They all had. Shannon didn't understand, her parents were happily married. Kerry's parents had divorced before she was born, she'd never heard them argue. And Brit... well, Brit's family was so perfect it was a little creepy. None of them knew what it was like to spend evenings listening to their parents arguing over which one loved them more, which one should keep them, which one had done what to hurt the other one. And if they had, they didn't talk about it. Claire wished they would have, so now she wouldn't feel so lonely. She'd have someone to talk to then.

She heard the door bell ring. She ignored it, but dully noted that her parents instantly stopped fighting. To save face in front of strangers. Kinda pathetic.

The bell rang again. Claire yelled for Gloria, the maid, but she didn't come. She remembered it was Sunday, the maid's day off. Of course, Claire thought, mentally smacking herself in the head. Her parents certainly weren't going to get the door. She pulled herself off of the couch as another thunder bolt clapped outside the window. Grumbling to herself about not wanting to talk to anyone, she walked into the entry way, and opened the door.

A thouroughly soaked teenager stood in front of her, bloodied and bruised so badly on their face that Claire thought she was going to be sick. She stared in horror and sadness, her heart clenching. Everything sad she'd ever seen in her life, including the scene in Bambi when the mother was shot, did not compare to this. The pain those bruises - was that a black eye? Abroken nose?- must have caused was unimaginable to her. She reached out her hand, but couldn't speak. There was a bump in her throat, a mountain that speech couldn't climb. Finally she swallowed, and spoke, all the sadness in the world in the two words she said.

"Oh, John."