Fucking Gravity

Chapter 5

I've never been caught in a lie like this by my father before, and it ruins everything. I had this almost perfectly choreographed schedule that kept me out of the house (and subsequently away from him) as much as feasibly possible, and it has been running nearly the same exact way since sixth grade and I was dubbed old enough to leave the house on my own.

Then Jared happened, taking away my main escape and sequentially making a liar out of me and my excuses. Of course, I had to get caught out at some point.

Now my step-father wants to know where I am all the time and he wants proof. Sure, I lied about where I was and that's a reasonable concern to any other parent, but I only lied to get away from him.

If I spend any amount of time around the man, he will find something to criticize and punish me for. It's best to just stay out of his way and let him think I'm his perfect idea of a daughter while I'm not there rubbing his nose in the fact that that kind of person doesn't exist.

So, I had to stumble through a reluctant explanation of how my father caught me in a lie and can Kim's mother 'please call my dad and let him know that I actually am coming to your house tonight?'

And I have to come home as soon as the library closes, risking his sudden wrath if he's already started drinking. It's rare for him to drink on the weekdays, but it does happen, so I always figured it was best not to risk it.

It's the following Friday that finds me at another Friday night party on the beach. I stopped by the garage just after school to get permission (safer than asking at home the night before), and now I stand at a distance lost for what to do. I don't dare get closer to the fire, lest my father smell it on me and think I've picked up smoking.

I don't reach for a drink either because I assured him I wouldn't and deliberately breaking that promise would likely get me another broken bone. My arm no longer keeps me from sleeping, but my ribs do every time I try to turn over. It still hurts every time I bend in any direction and there are still dark blue patches littering my back and sides.

With a sigh, I slump down onto one of the fallen logs farthest from the fire. The other logs are looking mighty fully anyway, and mine only has one other person. I burry my head in my arms.

Sometimes I wish… I want to…

"Are you okay?"

My head jerks up and whips toward the voice. I groan, realizing who it was I ended up blindly sitting beside.

"Sorry," Leah murmurs, looking contrite. "I know you don't like me, but it's just… you look like you're in pain."

I'm too tired to be creeped out. Too lost. Too despondent.

"I'm fine," I sigh. It's because I turn away that I don't see the finger lightly jabbing into my ribs.

"Fuck!" I curse, flinching from the admittedly gentle probe.

"Sure you are," Leah says dryly. "I've broken ribs before- I know what it looks like."

I knew that. A couple of boys got into a scuffle on the cliffs in eighth grade and Leah accidently got caught up in it when she tried to pull one of the boys off her brother. She got knocked into, took a hard fall, and then fell over the edge into the water sporting two cracked ribs.

It took her nearly three weeks to be able to sit without wincing every time, and I remember thinking how brave she was for risking getting hurt by stepping into that fight. She did get hurt. I usually turn around and walk the other way with the slimmest hint of conflict, and she marched right into the middle of it.

I suppose I can't fault her for watching me. After all, I used to watch her (not in a creepy stalker way, just- if she was in the vicinity, my eyes had a way of finding her).

"How'd it happen?" she asks, and raises a cup to her lips. I wonder if alcohol makes her more volatile.

"Same way this happened," I say raising my broken arm. I'm sure Kim regaled the Specials all about my unfortunate clumsiness by now.

"You didn't tell Kim, though?"

"She worries easily," I shrug. It's weird- actually talking to Leah. She doesn't seem angry about the last time we were sat next to each other.

"Friends worry," Leah shrugs, and I wonder if she's complimenting Kim or hinting that she herself might be good friend material.

I can't help staring at the girl. Noticing again. The bags under her eyes, the slump to her form. The fact that she's here alone at an energetic beach party, like me, hiding in the back away from everyone else.

She's so different now, even physically, from just a year ago.

"What happened to you?" It slips out without a conscious thought. Leah's jaw clenches and she turns her face away, glaring at the bonfire. The orange glow casts her profile into sharp shadow.

I stiffen at the sudden negative tells, but all Leah does is take another sip of her drink.

"Fucking fate, I guess," she grumbles into the dark liquid.

"Fate?" I don't know why I press. Maybe because I used to practically be in love with this girl, or maybe because I'm lonely and she's making the time pass.

"Fate, destiny- whatever you want to call it. Apparently, it's inescapable. Like fucking gravity. Either way, I can't control anything about my life. It's not mine to control."

I wonder how much she's already had to drink.

She glances over again, and visibly softens. "I've scared you again," she comments, running her eyes over me regretfully.

"No," I deny. She did.

"I'm sorry," she sighs, slumping over her cup in the picture of sorrow.

We sit in silence for over a minute, and her words and grief keep circling in my mind. I've thought similar things before, every time a bruising blow hits me. (Thought about how my life isn't mine yet. Not really. It's his until I turn eighteen, and can get into college, and leave and never come back. This life isn't mine yet, but my actions are.)

"You control who you are as a person," I mumble hesitantly. The pause has stretched way too long to sound like a continuation of our previous conversation. "You control whether you get into pointless fights or walk away; you control whether you try or give up; you control whether you are kind and gentle or cruel and mean."

She blinks at me slowly as if my words are a foreign concept.

"Sometimes, I feel like even that is out of my control," she admits remorsefully, and maybe she isn't so sociopathic as much as lost (as lost as I feel- as broken as I sometimes feel).

…..

With the last of my face bruises fully healed, I don't have to wear any makeup Monday morning, and Kim winces at my eye bags.

"Nightmares?" she asks, guiltily.

"Some," I agree. "Other culprit is that damned insomnia."

"You should talk to your dad about going to the doctor- see if they can prescribe you some medication," she presses the far from new suggestion.

"I'll live," I shake my head. I'm sure he'd just love me talking to a doctor about the nightmares I have of him suddenly turning into a bulging green-orange monster that guts me, or having scales and horns and shoving me off a ledge only to find myself being tortured in hell.

No, I'll take the insomnia rather than the dreams, and the dreams rather than the reality.

Kim shrugs uncertainly as she always does. "If you say so."

I can't help watching Leah a bit today, interacting with her friends at lunch. She seems marginally better. Not happy, but interacting. She almost catches me staring a few times. Kim catches me several, but doesn't mention it at all except for a raised eyebrow.

My eyes stray over to her several times during chemistry, and I have to actively force myself to pay attention to the teacher. I blame sleep deprivation for the general lack of self-control.

I think I might have even fallen asleep and started dreaming when the teacher announces another partner lab, and I fail to muffle a groan as people begin paring off instantly. Then class is over and my classmates are leaving while chattering away with their friends.

Leah lingers by her table before slowly wandering over with a weary expression.

"So, you want to meet up at your house or mine?"

"What?" I blink at her.

"You need a partner, right?" she asks, and her hand raises to rub nervously at the back of her neck.

"Well, yeah, but why are you bothering? I mean, last time…" I trail off, watching her clueless expression, and I'm reminded that she didn't notice me until that most insignificantly random day a few weeks ago. "Never mind," I sigh, thinking on her original question. Both options sound terrible, but it is a chance to stay out of the house. "Your house is fine."

A hesitant smile curls on her face. "Great! Then I'll… I'll walk you there after school."

….

Seth Clearwater doesn't really… fit the picture of a Special. Maybe it's because he's so young and doesn't realize the extent of what he can get away with but… he's just not like the others he hangs out with. He's happy. Not just happy, but I haven't seen him snap in anger, and he still interacts with people outside of that group, and I've seen him frantically doing his homework in the library between classes. He doesn't act like his life is over so there's no point in trying.

I like Seth.

Except right now. I wasn't really expecting much from the walk to Leah's house, but I guess I forgot she has a brother because I'm surprised when he skips up to us as we're leaving.

It's not that he says anything rude. It's that he stares.

The entire walk, he just keeps glancing from Leah to me, a strangely pensive look for his young face. If anything, he looks weary of me. It makes me uncomfortable to be thought of as someone to be weary of.

Their mother greets us with a large smile as we come in through the door, and I'm reminded that their father died last summer. It actually happened right before both siblings joined the Specials, and Sam Uley, at age 19, became a tribe elder. Seth immediately sets upon the ungodly number of snacks on the kitchen table.

Leah, too, snatches up a number of them before leading me to her room. She offers me some, but I can only watch on as she downs an entire family sized bag of chips and a meat platter.

Leah is able to help out with the lab about as much as I'd expect of someone who hasn't paid attention in class all year. But she's here this time, so she does the physical aspects of the lab and I do the conceptual portions. She's even able to do the math parts as long as I point out which equations to use where and the unit conversions.

That lab is, once again, possible to do with only one person, but it's so much easier to do with another. And, admittedly, more enjoyable.

"That wasn't so bad," Leah says, sounding pleased as she puts down her pencil and stretches out her hand (no doubt unused to writing anymore).

"Not at all," I agree and sigh as I look at the clock. It really didn't take long at all.

"Do…" Leah starts in a soft voice. "Do you want to stay for dinner?"

I hesitate, looking at her. She seems… different. Well, normal- like she was before. Before she became a Special. She's missing some tension that's consistently been there for months now.

I really don't want to go home now.

"Let me call my dad," I decide, and Leah smiles widely, like she can't quite believe it. My step-father, predictably, ask me to put Mrs. Clearwater on the phone to make sure I am where I say I am.

"Wow, your dad's a bit of a hard-ass," she comments as I hang up and we're sent away from the kitchen.

"You could say that," I agree. Back in her room, I decide flopping onto her bed like I'd do at Kim's is too familiar, so I sprawl out on the floor. My back only protests a little bit, but my ribs like the hard flat surface.

"Do you get along with your dad?" she asks, slowly perching herself on her bed like she's not quite sure what to do with herself in her own room.

"Not really," I say, pressing my lips together, hoping that my tone alone is a big enough 'drop it' hint.

We've had so many awkward silences between us that they're not even really that awkward anymore. And then I think, maybe, I should try asking a question. At least, then, I can steer it away from dangerous topics. So, of course, my brilliant question is:

"Is it drugs? Is that what it is?" And I discover that our not-quite awkward anymore silences can get quite a lot awkward still.

"No," she says, looking away.

"Then what is it? What can change a person so much in such a short amount of time?"

"It's…" She won't meet my eyes.

"Complicated," I finish. "So Kim has said. Does she know?"

"Yes."

"And she's not allowed to tell me?" I guess.

"No." Leah finally looks down at me with earnest, imploring, eyes. Little flecks of gold shine at me, tugging at something familiar in my memory. "I'm not a bad person, Fay. I'm not… I'm a good person."

Most people think they are a good person. Everyone thinks that they are the hero of their own story. Who's to say who the hero and who the villain really is? Who's to say there are any?

"Don't look to me for validation," I whisper, turning my attention to the ceiling so that I don't have to stare into those god damn gold flecked eyes. "All I ever see are bad guys."


A/N: I guess I don't really have much so say excepts thanks for reading and please review!

~Silver~