It's official: this is going to be the longest fanfiction I have ever written. The Microsoft Word file is already ninety-five pages long, and we're not even to BLU yet. Hoo boy. We've got a long trek ahead of us. :P
Sorry this chapter's a wee bit shorter than usual. Also sorry it took a bit longer to get this chapter up; my horde is gone, now, so I don't think that I'll be able to update every Monday as I had originally planned…maybe every other Monday, from now on…meh…
But still…
What madness will befall Gregory and Christophe with last chapter's turn of events? Well…read on, my dear friend, and you shall soon see.
Chapter Seven
Milfrey found Gregory in the first-aid Cabin that night, sitting up in bed and eating his dinner, chatting up a storm with the nurse. When the nurse saw the guidance counselor step into the Cabin, she immediately looked relieved, as if she were quite glad to be spared more of Gregory's nonsensical bantering. Milfrey smiled weakly at her and took her place at Gregory's bedside, staring in dismay at the boy's bandaged foot for a moment before looking up into his face, instead. The blonde boy beamed at him.
"Good evening, Mr. Milfrey."
"Yes, yes…good evenin', Gregory," the counselor said gently, his mouth still pulled down into a careful, calculating frown. Gregory opened his mouth to speak again, but Milfrey raised a single hand, cutting him off. "…Before we talk about what I came here to talk to you about…would you mind tellin' me why you're in here in the first place?"
Gregory's grin faltered, and a faint flash of pink spilled over his full cheeks and nose. He looked down at his nearly-empty tray of food and seemed as if he were having a hard time getting over some obstacle within himself. "…I…some older boys. They chased me down and I fell, and they beat me up. That's all. I suppose it's just their way of initiating me into the camp. After all, it is my first year…"
Milfrey sighed. "…N-no, Gregory…they were just bein' little shits, that's all. I'll find out who did this and then Rufus'n I'll take care of them, all right? They can't get away with doin' things like this here. Your mother trusts us to protect you, and we're gonna do the best we can to keep you safe while you're with us."
The British boy's eyes narrowed slightly, and he refused to make contact with Milfrey's gaze again for a few minutes. "…I don't need you to protect me," he said quietly, and for possibly the first time ever, a wave of darkness found itself passing over Gregory Thorne's face. Mr. Milfrey pulled back slightly, confused and a bit put off by the sight of this innocent little boy gaining such a hellish air out of practically nowhere. The blonde curls spilled in front of the blue eyes. "…I have The Mole. I have my own strengths. I can handle things here myself."
Milfrey refused to look away. "…You say that, Gregory, but believe me, you don't know what you really mean by it. Things can get awful tough around here, especially if me and the other counselors don't interfere with anythin' that happens. And if you ask me, Christophe Delorne doesn't exactly seem like the kind of kid who's always gonna have your back when you need him to be there for you."
At this, Gregory's head snapped up, his angry, slit eyes piercing through Milfrey's glasses. "…You don't know him like I do. No one does," Gregory hissed, and the moment he was done uttering these words, he pulled his face back down toward the floor beside him. His breathing was hard and strained, and Milfrey wondered for a split-second if the Brit was going to start crying. Realizing that now was probably not the best time to continue their discussion from earlier on in the week, he took Gregory's tray from him and began to walk casually away.
"…I can see that you don't really feel like talkin'," Milfrey said quietly, setting the tray on a table below one of the infirmary's few windows. "That's fine, too. We can talk more next weekend, then. Just so long as it's sometime before you head out." Gregory did not respond, even as Milfrey walked by him on his way to the door, and personally, the guidance counselor was quite okay with this; he didn't much feel like talking to a seven-year-old undergoing mood swings right now, anyway. Gregory fell back into his pillows and glared at the floor; Milfrey heard him mutter something unpleasant under his breath as he himself nodded to the nurse (who looked quite distraught), and he left the first-aid Cabin without another thought on the subject.
Gregory turned his eyes to the window and watched the purple, bruise-like sky, a sour flavor in his mouth that he couldn't quite describe. Nobody knows The Mole like I do, he thought to himself, and to the nurse's relief, he decided that now would probably be a good time to go to sleep, even though he really wouldn't have to do anything strenuous for the next week or so. No one will ever know him in this way. No one else will ever have his love. Fuck Milfrey. Fuck this stupid camp. I don't need anyone but Mole.
He closed his eyes and a few moments later, the nurse turned the light off, leaving the main room in favor of her own on the side of the Cabin with one last uneasy glance toward Gregory's bed. Within minutes, Gregory had fallen into a deep, restful sleep, with no idea that soon, The Mole would break his heart yet again.
The Mole awoke to the sound of dying cats for the fourteenth time on his second Sunday at the Academy. The other boys let out their usual chorus of groans and indignant swear words, ambling slowly out of bed and pulling their uniforms on. Mole, however, swept out of bed and slid his boots on as quickly as he could, pounding his way out of the Cabin and slamming the door shut behind himself as he began his trek over to the shower stalls.
There stood Rodney and his other, older friends, and the others looked a bit uneasy while Rodney told them something in hushed tones. Mole wondered, as he approached them, if Rodney was trying to convince them that The Mole was tough enough to be one of them. Rodney must have been their leader, Mole decided as he joined them by the showers and gave them all a devious smile. Still, the three of them looked uneasy at the sight of him; a tiny first-year, not even old enough to know what half of what they usually talked about really meant. Rodney was the only one who returned his smile.
"Hey, Mole, you made it. Great," he said coolly, and he clapped a hand on Mole's now muscle-toned shoulder, gesturing with this other hand for effect as he introduced his other friends. "This here's Aaron—" he pointed to a shorter, tubby boy with shaggy brown hair and a beard growing in beneath his pale chin, "—Dock—" a tall, skinny blonde boy with long hair, acne, and eerie, cold brown eyes, "—and Simon." Medium and stocky, with black hair in a bowl cut and an expression plastered to his face that made him look as if he were smelling something terribly rotten. Mole eyed them all with very fleeting interest before he pulled away from Rodney's hand and unsheathed his now unwrapped gift from the day before.
"I want to smoke," he growled, pulling one of the cigarettes out of the box and sticking it harshly into his mouth. The others' eyes twinkled, realizing that perhaps Mole would not be useless, after all, if he could be so easily corrupted. Dock pulled out a lighter as Rodney knelt down beside a small patch of sod (grown from the runoff of the showers, Mole surmised) and glanced around to make sure that no one was looking. Mole watched him pull the grass upward like a trapdoor, exposing a rather deep box-shaped hole that held a single shoebox. Rodney unearthed the shoebox and peeled the lid off, blowing the dirt off of its precious cargo. Mole's eyes flitted back to Dock, who had now managed to urge a flame out of his lighter and was lighting the tip of Mole's cigarette.
The Mole had seen people smoking before. He had seen beginners smoking; seen them try to breathe the smoke in too fast and wind up hacking their brains out. He could feel the older boys' eyes on him as he tensed his lips around the paper and drew the smoke into his mouth, carefully swallowing a little at a time. He felt his eyes start to water, his windpipe trying to force the smoke back up, and he breathed out too hard through his nose. He choked and spat out clouds of gray, like a dragon with hiccups, and Aaron and Simon laughed at him. He glared and wiped his eyes, turning away shamefully and trying again as Rodney began handing out magazines.
At this point, Mole could see the other boys making the slow, easy journey over to the cafeteria, scratching at their crotches and mumbling that it was too fucking early, as always. He had a feeling that he was going to miss breakfast, but for some reason, the cigarette between his lips—despite its rather unpleasant effects—and the boys behind him seemed a good enough excuse to skip the meal. He breathed in slow and let it out just as carefully through his nose, and it felt a little like he was cooking inside. He shuddered and Rodney dangled a magazine in front of his face, grinning as he did so.
"Here, Mole, this one's for you," the older boy said, and Mole took the magazine in his hands, biting down on the cigarette as he leaned back against the showers and stared at the picture on the cover. A half-naked woman. He had seen a lot of those before, he thought, and he flipped the booklet open, hoping he would be met with something more pleasant, but he was met instead with more obscene pictures. He wrinkled his nose and smoked and felt a bit sick to his stomach, looking at this. He had seen enough of this sort of thing in his younger days to last a lifetime.
When he had lived in New York, he remembered every day…before life on the streets…before Gregory and Mrs. Thorne's home-cooked meals…his mother had once had a job at a place where the women took their clothes off on a stage in front of men for money. Having nowhere else for him to go, Mole's mother had smuggled him into the club every night and made him wait for her in the back room. In the beginning, he had been able to fall asleep back there, hiding amongst the costumes and makeup…but after a while, men started coming back there and doing things with the women that had kept him awake. He had achieved a naturally tired, old, angry look over time, from months of watching adults—even his own mother—doing sinful things. He had never really been able to sleep properly since then; every time he was just dozing off, he would hear those sounds or see hands digging into flesh, and he would just lie there with his eyes open, hating everything about his life, hating God for putting him through it.
He hadn't told Gregory how he felt about the Lord, yet. He knew it would hurt him too much to hear it.
…Deeply irked by Rodney's magazine, Mole threw it back at him and puffed at his cigarette, even more annoyed when he realized that his Camel was gone. He snuffed it on the wooden floor of the showers, earning himself a look from Rodney and his friends when they realized he had just thrown away a porn magazine. The dark-skinned boy frowned down at him as he looked off at the faintly pink horizon.
"What's the matter, Mole?" Rodney asked quietly, and Mole caught a hint of amusement in his tone that made him feel sicker inside. "Not good enough for you in that one? That's okay. We've got better ones."
"I don't want to look at zat," Mole growled in somber response. A light breeze passed over them, and he felt the older boys exchanging wary glances behind him. He wondered why the hell he had thought this would be so great. It was nowhere near fun…although smoking, once he had gotten the hang of it, had turned out to be almost as good as he had expected it to be.
"…Kid's weird," Aaron murmured, and Mole pretended not to hear. It wasn't worth getting pissed over stupid shits like these. They're just like the others, he thought, closing his eyes softly. Just more arrogant. Fucking hell. Rodney shot Aaron an irritated look and sat down beside the first-year, fixing him with an inquisitive gaze.
"…So you don't appreciate porn. That's fine. You've got a while to get into it," the black boy murmured. He was now smoking his own cigarette, and Mole's eyes followed the trail of smoke lazily over to Rodney's squashed, apelike face. "We do more out here than smoke and jack off, so don't you worry."
"Yeah," Simon chuckled. "We play patty-cake and fingerpaint, too."
"Shut up, Simon, you dickhead!" Dock hissed, and Mole glanced up at him. "This kid's tough shit. Didn't you hear what happened to Jeff and his crew yesterday?"
"Yeah, so?" Simon growled. Dock gestured blatantly toward The Mole, and the first-year smiled slyly as Simon's eyes widened and he immediately shut himself up. Rodney grinned crookedly down at Mole.
"We're all out here because we've all agreed on one thing, man, and this is it: once we're out of this hellhole, we're going to use everything that we've learned to become mercenaries. You know what that means?"
Mole grunted. "No. Geeve me another ceegarette."
Rodney laughed and obliged. "It means we're going to work as spies for secret government agencies and go on dangerous missions to gather information on enemy weapons and other awesome shit like that. Me and these idiots…we've only got two more years of this bullshit before we're done, and then only one more year after that before we're considered adults…and that's when the cash starts flowing in."
The Mole perked up and fixed Rodney with an interested gaze, his green eyes flashing as his second cigarette caught fire. He took a drag and coughed a little, furrowing his eyebrows at the older boy. "…You can actually get a well-paying job doing sings like zat?"
"Man, you can get a well-paying job looking for proof of aliens," Aaron said, then paused for a moment to take a drag on his Camel. "Of course you can get a job doing that. You can get a job doing practically anything, if you look hard enough for people willing to hire you."
"Exactly," Rodney agreed, speaking in a quiet voice, now, as if unwelcome people were listening in on their conversation. "That's why you should pay attention to everything that goes on around here. Once you're a third-year, you'll learn how to shoot a rifle…that's really important, so pay a lot of attention to that. Learn everything about survival and combat that they try to teach you, kid, and believe me, you'll go far. You've got a lot potential in this field…and now that you're with us, we can help you out even more."
Mole couldn't hide his flattery. He snickered and looked back over toward the cafeteria, then, where the doors were now locked and he could hear the faint sounds of breakfast taking place without them. Smoke curled around his head, and he reconsidered what he had been thinking earlier. These boys were better than the others. Maybe they really were more his "crowd" than Gregory was…
"So what do you say, Mole?" Dock asked quietly. "Are you interested?"
The Mole grinned and pressed his cigarette to his lips again. "Of course I am."
It got very boring in the first-aid Cabin very quickly without someone willing there to talk to, as Gregory soon discovered. He tried to busy himself by naming colors and sleeping and singing all the songs he knew (even the ones he hated), but time seemed to go slower and slower as the day dragged on. He found himself wishing for a book or two, or perhaps even a newspaper, and he began to notice little things about the room he was in that became very irritating, after a bit. For instance, there was a cobweb hanging in front of the air conditioning vent that quivered and danced whenever the air blew through it; there was a rather pronounced crack in that floorboard; a chip in the paint that had been slathered quite carelessly onto that end table. His fingers itched and longed for a distraction of any kind.
He watched the other nurse (who was a bit younger but still very close to the age of the woman who had answered the door and chatted with him reluctantly the day before) for a bit, filing paperwork for a few minutes and then leaning back in her swivel chair, pulling from her pocket—lo and behold—a Gameboy. Gregory's blue eyes widened and he felt his brain begin babbling at him to ask the woman for the toy. She, as if sensing his brainwaves, looked up at him, and must have read the yearning in his face, because then she sighed and smiled weakly at him, getting up and walking over to his bed.
"…I only brought one game," she said as she handed the green Gameboy to him. "This is my son's, actually…but I know you'll get more use out of it than I do around here. Usually I have Anne Rice to keep me company, but not this year."
"I'm sorry," Gregory murmured, hesitating for a moment to look up at her and smile in gratitude. "But there's a whole shelf full of books in Cabin H…maybe you could find something worthwhile over there?"
"Hah," the nurse said, shaking her head. Then she stopped and gave him a quizzical look. "…You like reading, Gregory?"
"Oh, more than anything!" the blonde responded wholeheartedly.
"What's your favorite kind of book?"
"Well, I'm quite fond of historical fiction novels…though mysteries and short fantasies leaning more toward reality and explaining human nature have proven to be rather enthralling, as well. I'm into Roald Dahl at the moment, more than anyone else, and I'm probably going to be getting started on George Orwell's Animal Farm sometime soon…"
The nurse laughed at these words, and Gregory saw her smile genuinely at him. She reminded him a bit of a grandmother; someone who would always wear tacky lipstick and smelly perfume, and bake banana bread muffins for you whenever you wanted them. He wondered if she had any children. "Once you start talking, it's really very hard to believe that you're only seven, Mr. Thorne."
Gregory beamed at her and turned the Gameboy on, his face flushed distantly from flattery. "Well, I'm nearly eight…perhaps you're just hearing a bit of that older me."
She laughed some more and then she sighed, patting his head before she headed back to her desk and allowed his attention to be drawn toward the screen of the mini Nintendo.
The game that she had was an ancient form of Tetris, which Gregory—normally appalled by the mere thought of video games—easily lost himself in. Tetris was not like those stupid RPGs or side-scrollers; Tetris was a game of calculation and skill, and Gregory found himself smiling even after just a short while of tapping away at the machine. The nurse watched him from her desk, where she was doodling half-consciously on a memo pad.
Time flew by when it was filled with twitching, multicolored puzzle pieces. Before Gregory realized what was happening, the nurse had presented him with his lunch; a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a glass of milk, and a few graham crackers. He stared at the food before him for a moment before he looked up at her, and she gave him a bit of a look. "You've been playing that game for nearly two hours," she told him, making his eyes widen in surprise. She took the device from his hands and pointed to the sandwich on the tray in his lap. "Here. Eat that, and I'm sure your little friend Christophe will be in soon to say hi. Sidney left a note here that said to expect him before she went off with the older boys on their camping trip…"
"…Oh," Gregory murmured, a bit ashamed that he had been so caught up in Tetris that he had completely forgotten about The Mole's promise to visit him again that day. "Right…um…thanks," he said, smiling sheepishly at the nurse. She nodded at him and walked once more back over to her desk, leaving him with his food.
He ate his sandwich slowly, both to preoccupy himself while he waited for that oddly familiar knock at the door, and because he much preferred chunky peanut butter over the creamy alternate in this sandwich. Plus, Mole was quite fond of graham crackers, so it wouldn't do Gregory any harm to save his friend one or two of them. He peeled the crust off of his bread and chewed thoughtfully with each bite, eventually realizing that he had been staring at the door the whole time, waiting.
And finally, it came. Three fast knocks and then a pause before an isolated one. Gregory found himself wondering how he had memorized The Mole's knock, having only heard it one time. He supposed it was, for whatever reason, like a song that gets stuck in your head; you never forget it once you hear it. Though the knock was much less annoying than a pop song. The nurse flashed a smile at him and walked to the door, pulling it open and giving Gregory a view of that lovely mop of shaggy brown hair. He bit at his lower lip and looked at his sandwich.
"'Ow eez Gregory today?" Mole asked, standing on his toes and peering around the nurse. She stepped out of his way and gestured for him to come inside, and he did so rather quickly, almost pushing her further out of his path. She stared at him bemusedly for a second before she shook her head and closed the door, instead. Mole knelt at Gregory's bedside and folded his hands over the blonde's sheets, fixing his friend with an appraising gaze.
"'Ello, Christophe," Gregory said quietly. He found the graham crackers and handed them to his friend, whose eyes sparkled as he took them. He smiled up at the Brit and shoved one in his mouth before he remembered what he had come to tell Gregory. First order of business, though, was: is Gregory feeling all right today?
"'Ow eez your ankle doing today?" the French boy inquired, glancing down the bed where Gregory's feet made lumps in the sheets. The blonde shrugged.
"S'been better, I suppose," he replied weakly. "The nurse says that it should be better by Wednesday, so…yes. I won't be left out of the 'fun' this week, after all." The Mole's eyebrows furrowed and he looked back up into Gregoy's face, catching that hint of weakness in his tone.
"…Are you feeling okay?" he murmured. "You sound…eh…'ow you say…like you are 'aving a 'ard time speaking."
"No, Mole, I'm all right…just a little tired," Gregory said, making a bigger smile for his friend. The brunette looked only half-convinced, but nodded, anyway. Gregory could smell something weird on his best friend's breath; it stank, strangely familiar, and it made him want to gag. "How are you today?"
"Eh." Mole shrugged. "I 'ad a stomach ache earlier, but eet went away. I sink eet eez because zey served us cabbage for lunch. Do you believe zat? And you get a peanut butter sandweech! I fucking 'ate cabbage."
Yes, I suppose you did, Gregory thought absently, horrified a few moments later by how cruel that thought was. He flustered himself and stared at the glass of milk, sitting half-drained on his lunch tray, and he guiltily handed the other graham cracker to The Mole, who accepted it gleefully and spent a few seconds eating it before he started talking again. "…Wilma 'as told us zat we will be running drills een somesing zat she calls 'ze field' zees week. I 'ave a feeling zat she just wants us to run around until we are too tired to annoy 'er during deenar, which really doesn't bozer me…I like zose ozar boys better when zey are quiet, too, anyway. Reduces my urge to whack zem with my shovel."
The blonde managed to giggle a little at this, and the two friends met gazes and smiled at each other. Like always, Gregory felt warm inside when he saw Mole smiling, but today he thought he felt something else, as well. Something he couldn't place, just yet…but he liked it, nonetheless. He sighed. "And we get to go home next Sunday!" he reminded the French boy. "I cunnot wait to taste Mum's food again and sleep in my own bed after so long."
Mole chuckled, though it was more to himself than anything else. "Come now, Gregory…eet 'as not been zat bad een zees place."
A second of silence. "…Excuse me," Gregory mumbled darkly, gesturing to the room they were sitting in, and then there was an awkward, very uncomfortable pause between the two of them, during which a bit of fire found its way into The Mole's eyes and curved his mouth down into a distasteful frown.
"Well, I 'ave made friends een your absence, mon chéri," he growled, shaking his head. "And I don't care eef you deesapprove; I like zem, and I am going to stay friends with zem."
"Fine," Gregory said, hurt but successfully hiding it. "Just tell me…who are they?"
The green eyes sparkled and averted from Gregory's face, and he could immediately tell that he would not like the answer to that question. Some small part of him regretted asking. "Zose boys zat stand by ze showers een ze morning. Ze smokers. Zey are…eh…razur eenteresting."
Gregory felt his heart sink into his stomach. Oh, Lord, he thought, struggling to keep his eyes level with Mole's. Then that smell…cigarettes? He's been smoking? He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from saying anything that might offend his friend, and The Mole's gaze stayed unfaltering upon his face, waiting for the nagging words that usually followed a confession as serious as this. But the words didn't come. And Mole smiled in a rude way at his younger friend. "Ah, what? You are…surprised? Jealous? Tell me, what feelings make you react een zees way, Gregory?"
The blonde shuddered. He didn't want to say it, but he had to, now. Mole had asked. Mole had provoked him. He sighed and lowered his eyebrows, knowing full well that what he was about to say would probably mean The Mole would not speak a single word to him for the rest of the week. "…I am…disappointed, Mole."
The French boy's face fell and his expression immediately darkened, unsatisfied with this answer. "And why eez zees? You sink zey are too good for me?" Obviously he had been thinking about Gregory reacting this way.
"No, I…I didn't say that…" Gregory suddenly felt very tired inside. "I…if anything…you're too good for them. You don't need to smoke, Mole. You shouldn't smoke. Don't you know what it does to your body?"
"Pfah!" Mole spat irritably, getting up from his spot on the floor. The Brit wished that he wouldn't leave—that he weren't so hotheaded—but there wasn't really much that he could do about it in his current position. He stared up at his oldest friend, trying to ask him to calm down with his expression alone. But Mole seemed unable to process any emotions but his own, at the moment. "I sink you are jealous, Gregory! You are just jealous because you want to be cool, and you are too much of a nerd to evar be popular! You just cannot evar be 'appy for me, can you?"
A brief pause between them, and the air conditioning turned on and set the spider web in motion. "…Fine, Mole," Gregory murmured sadly, lowering his eyes back down to his milk. "You just think that about me."
You shallow bastard.
The Mole opened his mouth again to say something else, but God appeared to be on Gregory's side, at the moment; the brunette was struck with a violent coughing fit, and both boys knew it was from the cigarettes more than anything else. Gregory saw, in the glimpse that he took upward toward The Mole's eyes, a slight flash of something that he spitefully hoped was shame before the French boy turned around and stormed, outraged, to the door of the clinic, pounding his chest violently with his fist as he went. The door slammed loudly shut behind him, and Gregory leaned his head solemnly back into his pillows, wondering when their stupid game of push-and-pull would finally come to an end.