Chapter One-Hundred and Five
Clarissa opened her eyes, smiling when she saw the John was still asleep between her and Thomas. She gently touched his back, brushing her fingers over his shoulders. "John, time to wake up Pumpkin."
John shook his head, accidentally waking Thomas up as he moved.
Thomas chuckled, climbing out of the bed to get ready for work. "Wake up, kiddo. It's time for school." He shook his head as John refused again, walking out of the room and appearing a moment later with Amelia in his arms. "John, I'm counting to three, and if you're not up I'm going to let Amelia wake you up."
John held up his middle finger burrowing deeper into the bed.
Clarissa sighed, letting Thomas put Amelia on the bed and set to work waking him up. "John! John! Wake up! You have to take me to school!" She climbed onto his back, her knees pressing on either side of his ribs, and her toes digging into his lower back. "Wake-" She was cut off when John jumped from pain, making her roll onto the bed beside him. "Up…"
John pressed his back against Clarissa's side, knowing that even if she couldn't stop the ache entirely, she could help make it hurt less. He let her touch him, her hands rubbing against his too tight muscles as she tried to make them relax. She tried to remember the pressure points that John's acupuncture therapist had used to take the tension out, but she couldn't remember each one. "Should we make another appointment for you?" She asked, as he sat up and stretched. "You have your physiatrist on Saturday, but we can make an appointment for acupuncture sooner if you think you need it."
John shrugged, letting Amelia climb onto his back as he stood and started for his room to get dressed.
Claire watched as John and Amelia walked past her room, wondering why they were coming from her parent's room. She started to walk after him, but was stopped by Kaylie. "What's wrong?" She asked, knowing that they only kept her away from John when something was up with him. "Is he okay?"
Kaylie gave a small smile, having seen John go to Clarissa and Thomas in the middle of the night. "He had some cravings last night." She remembered seeing the look of want in his eyes, knowing exactly what he thought he needed. "He went to your parent's for support. But we still need to keep a close eye on him today." She remembered her own small relapse about a month after she'd quit smoking and drinking. "We burners have a way of finding things even when we're not looking for them. I never told anyone about this… but I relapsed about a month after I quit. I had a drink of beer, and chewed a little weed so no one would smell it on me. That was the night after I had cravings so bad I had to crawl into bed with Richard and Jan. So, we have to keep an eye on him. Especially since he's got that too clever fox attitude working for him."
Claire nodded, still trying to understand what the burners went through. "Got it." She watched as Kaylie rubbed foundation onto the tattoo of Sid's name on her wrist. "You never told me about him… what was he like?" She knew that the conversation would be hard for her, but she also knew that she needed to talk about him. John had his music and poetry, but Kaylie didn't write, instead, she would burry herself in reading, or playing around with her fashion sketches.
Kaylie gave a sad smile, remembering the first time she'd met Sid. "He was amazing. He was like John but with less temper and more thought. I met him in first grade when we got stuck together in the three-legged race in gym class. That was the first time I met John too… he got into a fight with Sam over his lunch and lost his front teeth before we could pull them off of each other, it wasn't until our actual lunch hour that we realized Sam's lunch was missing and we found John barfing it up in the bathroom because he ate it too fast."
Claire remembered the day John had lost his front teeth, she'd never known the full story, but she did remember someone puking in the bathroom that day. "When did you start dating?"
"Not sure, I think we realized we liked each other around eighth grade -you know, after puberty hit- but I'm not really sure when we started dating. I guess we started going on solo dates when he started picking up odd jobs and taking me to the diner for coffee and donuts, when we were about fourteen." She picked up her hairbrush, brushing her hair out and picking up the clip that Brian had given her. "A week after we started dating, he and Dominic were holding John down as I tried to scrub his legs and feet clean after he got those burns on his legs. I'll never forget those screams, or watching him down the whole fifth of Jack Daniels we bought. It was Sid's idea to let him drink it all, he thought it would help with John's pain without risking an overdose on oxy. But he got really sick from it and it just made a huge mess." She picked up her eyeliner, expertly rimming her eyes with the black. "We all took turns watching him that night. And that was also the first time I ever did it. Sid and I were both fighting between finding something to get high on, and staying sober for John, so we decided that sex was a middle ground." She remembered the feeling of Sid's body on hers, the cold of the bathroom floor on her back, and the heat of Sid on her front. "It was as perfect as our lives had ever been. A year later, he proposed, and then… John found his body in the dumpster behind Greasy Ed's." She tensed as John's hand rested on her shoulder, meeting his dark eyes as she looked up at him. "I miss him." She pushed her tears back, seeing her pain reflected in John.
Claire rested her hand on Kaylie's back as she cried into John's chest, the pain that they both felt on a daily basis visible for the first time. She'd never seen them like this before, never seen John fight so hard to be strong for someone else. "I'm so sorry."