Summary:
Typical Drake & Josh storyline. Drake and Josh plan to go to a concert where a famous singer will be, but get sidetracked when a mysterious box addressed to Walter shows up and Meghan's pranks take over. Drake also must deal with an annoying girl (who says everything with a "w") from his class, that also shows signs she has a crush on him. When he & Josh go to the concert, something terrible happens.
Disclaimer:
Don't owwwwwwwn it, don't looooooan it, don't… what else rhymes with "own"? …Hum. Anyway, the point is, I'm fourteen and I don't own crap. –big grin-- Drake and Josh the show belongs to Nick, and Drake and Josh as people belong to themselves… but boy, would I give anything to own Mister Bell over there… heh.
Note to Readers:
This chapter is really short, but I still think it's crucial to the plot. LOL, it's kind of dorky, but like I said—crucial. The next chapter will be the big revealing "finale" kind of, but don't worry, we still have a half dozen chapters or so left before the end of the story! I hope you like this chapter, and everything! Read and review, my little mice! LOL. GOOOOO LUCKY CHAPTER TWENTY! YAYYYY!
Story: "Party in a Box"
Chapter: "In the Dark"; Twenty
Written By: Ginger
Extras:
Italics in "quotation marks" symbolize thoughts of
Drake's.
Italic Bold paragraphs are flashbacks.
Italic, Bold, and Underlined refer to the mysterious man.
8888888888888888888888888888888888888888
Josh's eyes flickered open and he awoke to a sound he presumed at first to be thunder, but after a few seconds, his head cleared and he realized that it must be something else. "Hey, Drake—" he began, in a cracking, tired voice, sitting up in his bed and suddenly stopping when he glanced over toward the other side of the room. Instead of seeing his brother lying asleep in his high bed, he only saw an empty bundle of blankets though a beam of icy moonlight.
The thunder had died away, but when he recognized the sound of something thump roughly on to the cold wooden floor at the foot of the stairs, he was up from his bed within an instant and rushing in to the hall, loosing any sign of clumsiness.
He glanced around himself, and seeing no one in the hall, he instinctively raced down the dark stairs.
Suddenly he stopped on the second to last step, staring with a frightened and awe-struck face down below him. The dim, dully colored moonlight in the hall grazed over the limp body of Drake Parker, who lay bleeding on the cold floor, very obviously having been beaten senseless by the hard steps of the staircase. Josh widened his eyes in bewilderment, when he bent to help his step brother, and for a moment he grew conscious again. "Josh…" his shivering, weak words were: "He's… quick, get him before he has time to get away—he ran outside."
Josh hardly knew what his injured brother was talking about and for a moment, wondered if the fall Drake had taken hadn't knock a few wires loose. Then suddenly, he knew what he had meant. "Josh, please—I'll be okay." The wounded teenager pleaded: "Go and—" "Hush, Drake. I'm taking care of you first—that's my job." Josh answered, in a gentle, brotherly tone. This seemed to lift a weighty burden from Drake's shoulders and with a sigh of relief, he layed his head back to the hard floor, closing his eyes in a very worn out way.
Josh stood for only a second to flip on a light switch, and then he bent, carefully grabbing his step brother's arm, making him open his eyes. "I'm going to help you up and get you over on to the couch, okay?" he said, looking down at Drake and wondering if he was going to even understand anything he was saying. Surprisingly, though, he got an understanding and clear reply, and Drake slowly managed to sit himself up and wrap a weak arm around Josh's neck. Josh reached to the side and held on his unstable teen brother's waist, and finally the two were able to struggle in to standing up, aside each other.
Josh helped Drake walk over to the couch, and was genuinely stunned when the boy pulled his arm away from around his neck and took a few steps by himself, reaching the couch and laying down with a muffled moan. Though of course, Josh knew Drake was hurt pretty bad, he also knew that it wasn't as bad as he had assumed. "Were are you bleeding?" he asked, walking up to the edge of the couch as the boy sat up and leaned over, putting his head in his hands for a minute.
"I don't really know, but—" Drake's sentence trailed off quietly and his eyes broadened in astonishment when he pulled back from his hand and realized that it was almost covered with blood. "Oh my gosh!" Josh muttered, from a few feet away, as his puzzled brother frowned and pulled his bangs back from his forehead and felt it. Sure enough, when he looked again at his hand, it was bloody too, and he murmured: "I must have busted my forehead on one of the rails!" "Does it hurt?" Josh asked, still shocked, as he raced in to the kitchen to grab some bandages and something to put on it. "…No! I don't feel anything, weirdly enough. Maybe I hit it so hard, it's just numb." he exclaimed, in a louder voice, so his brother in the next room could hear him.
A few moments later, Josh hurried back in to the room and put the items he had in his arms down on the coffee table, turning and stepping up to where Drake sat: "Let me see it." "Okay…" the teen ager muttered, wincing and pushing his hair back so his step brother could examine the bleeding injury. "Sheesh! That's really bad!" he gasped, cringing a little and turning around to pick up the peroxide off of the table. "'Kay, this is pro'lly gonn'a hurt…" he said, causing the other boy to sigh and close his eyes with a frown. Josh soaked a cotton ball in the stinging liquid and then quickly pressed it to his brother's forehead. Drake gasped and jerked back, opening his eyes wide and grabbing the hurt spot: "OW!" "Just stay still! It's gonn'a hurt worse if I don't put this on it!" Josh exclaimed. "It didn't hurt at ALL before you put it on!" the other boy complained, motioning toward his brother and scooting out of reach of the terrible stinging liquid.
"Drake!" Josh reprimanded, raising an eyebrow: "I'm going to either do this now, or do this later, and if you choose later, it's going to hurt worse." "How about never? Never is good!" Drake exclaimed, jumping up from his seat and hurrying around to the back of the couch. "Come on—if Mom and Dad come back tonight and find out that I didn't fix this, their going to kill me!" "No way!" he shook his head, backing away. "Give'ya ten bucks?" Josh sighed. "…Make it fifteen and you gott'a deal." came the reply, making Josh roll his eyes and fish the required bribe from his pocket and put it in to Drake's open hand.
The now wealthy teenager returned to the couch and sighed, drawing his hair from his cut forehead. In a few minutes, it was cleaned up and bandaged. "Aww, man, now I have a gigantic bandage on my forehead." Drake muttered, standing in the dining room and looking in to the mirror on the wall. "Drake! You hair covers it up, anyway! You can hardly see it!" Josh said, as his brother walked back over to the couch and lay down tiredly on it. He didn't reply in an argument like the other boy had expected, but instead just lay there in silence. After a long time, Josh became slightly alarmed and asked quickly: "Are you okay?"
"I think… I don't know. I'm just exhausted—and beat up. I think those stairs left a bruise on every part of my body." He answered, sighing. Josh thought for a moment and then slowly posed the question: "…That reminds me. What happened? And why did you end up falling down the stairs?" Drake's eyes snapped open and he wore a slightly frightened face, slowly sitting up: "…Why?" "What do ya' mean 'why?'?-! Of course I'm going to ask you what happened when I wake up to the sound of you tumbling down the stairs, and then when I come to see where you are, you're lying on the floor, with your forehead cut open!" Josh chuckled, frowning in a little bit of confusion, as he sat beside his brother.
"I just…" Drake faltered for a minute and tried to contemplate what he should say. He knew if he told Josh about what had really happened, he might have to reveal things that he didn't want to, but he also knew deep inside that if he didn't tell what happened, he might have another encounter of this kind, and that next time, it might not end up as pleasantly. Next time, his nightmare that he had dreamt only a few nights before may come true, if actions weren't taken.
"I just…" the words automatically flowed from his lips: "I only tripped." He sucked in a deep breath and frowned at himself, surprised at himself for spitting that story out, at all, he had intended upon speaking the truth. "You just fell?" Josh asked, frowning and looking intently in to Drake's face. "Yes! I mean, I just--" Drake began to stutter in confusion and indecision upon either backing up his story or telling the truth. "Drake—" his brother finally stopped him, by resting at hand on the boy's shoulder: "This is no game. Just… just tell me the truth. I won't listen to anything else."
Drake halted his sentence and then looked down, as Josh's hand fell away from his shoulder. Hearing such earnestness in the other boy's voice made him realize the urgency of the matter and caused him to shake his head for a minute. Slowly looking back up, he sighed: "Fine. I… didn't only trip. I was," he paused with a wave of long hesitancy and then spoke surely, with a firm tone: "Pushed."
In the back of his head, Josh had known that this was indeed the answer he would get from the boy sitting opposite him, but at the same time was shocked at the reality of it all. With the deepest of disturbance at these words, Josh leaned forward and drew his worried brows together: "Drake…"
With out another word for a long time, both of the teen age brothers only thought to themselves, occasionally glancing up fleetingly at each other. Silence reigned for moment after moment and with every second, the truth became more and more evident. Drake felt something crazy happening to him on the inside, his head was throbbing, his heart was racing and he knew that there was no more stalling to be done—that he had finally come to the point where it was crucial to tell Josh about it all. About everything.
