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The Not-So-Average Girl

Walking into the school, Claire wondered why she'd resisted the idea of telling anyone else about her healing for so long.

She didn't resent the friendship that she'd formed with Zach as a result of asking him to help her, but there was still only so much that Zach could even understand about what she was going through considering his position in the school hierarchy. While Claire didn't like to think of herself as 'popular' in the sense of being in a superior position in the school, and she always found it a little hard to really bond with anyone since Jackie became more cocky, Zach was used to being alone just because that was who he was. Even if she recognised that it was self-centred, she had a bit more trouble adjusting to the scope of what might happen to her if her secret got out than someone like Zach might, so it was easier for her to act like nothing had changed.

Ron Sinclair might be in a similar position to Zach- even if he was far more 'on the outside' than Zach ever was- but he was close friends with Kim Pierce, who was popular enough that she should be able to help him avoid going too far. Claire admitted that she and Kim hadn't been particularly close before last night, but they'd been friendly enough that she felt she could trust the other cheerleader with her secret.

As for Claire herself, she liked to think that she was coping with everything that had just happened as well as anyone in her position would be. Her mother had noticed she was a little off that morning after the previous night's events, but with her growing practice at hiding any injuries (even if that was mostly just hiding that they'd been inflicted in the first place) it hadn't been hard for her to just claim that she was tired after the party the previous night had been drawn out for longer than she'd expected.

She'd considered telling Zach what had happened, but when she hadn't even decided what to do about it and Kim and Ron already knew what had happened even if they didn't know who did it, she wasn't comfortable sharing out that kind of information. Brody had been a bit… physically aggressive… during their encounter, but Claire didn't want to condemn him for that when she for all she knew he'd just left her body in a drunken panic and Kim and Ron had 'saved her life' (assuming how long she was dead made a difference to anything) before he could tell anyone official what had happened.

God, I was dead last night and now I'm working out what I should be holding Brody responsible for…

She could at least tentatively assume that last night's events had confirmed for her that she would be vulnerable to serious injury if her body couldn't heal around whatever had hurt her, but that left her morbidly wondering how far that went. Could she basically kill herself for good if she shot herself and the bullet stayed in her head, or would it be something like that freaky guy in The World is Not Enough whose senses were damaged when the bullet got stuck in his brain but stayed alive for a while after being shot?

OK, so she probably wouldn't eventually die from it like that Bond villain would, so long as the thing didn't get lodged somewhere that affected something important like her ability to breathe, but it still raised some disturbing possibilities…

Stop this! she told herself in frustration.

She could try and distract herself by thinking about how she'd just come back from the dead, but right now she just wanted to get in and act like nothing had happened; hopefully Brody would just assume he'd knocked her out last night, feel guilty about what he'd done, and everything would go smoothly…

As she put her books away for lunch, Claire wasn't sure if she should be pleasantly surprised or subtly anxious at how easy the day had been so far. She'd had a brief moment of concern when Jackie and Brody ran into her in the corridor on the way to their next classes, but even if Brody had looked a bit surprised to see her, Jackie seemed to have accepted her claim that she'd left because she had too much to drink. She'd briefly thought about mentioning that Kim and Ron had taken her away, but if Jackie hadn't noticed them leaving Claire didn't think drawing attention to them would be the best idea.

Looks like this all worked out…

Her thoughts were interrupted when she closed her locker door and found Lori Trammel leaning up against the locker alongside hers, looking anxiously at her.

"Oh, hi, Lori," Claire nodded at the other girl; as with Kim, she wasn't exactly close to Lori, but they were friendly enough.

"Hey," Lori said in a low voice. "I saw you go off with Brody Mitchum last night at the bonfire."

"So?"

"So… what happened?"

"Nothing," Claire shrugged, wishing people would just give her a reason to stop thinking about this; Kim and Ron were already only tentatively accepting her excuses for the condition they'd found her in. "Nothing happened."

"I went off with Brody Mitchum once," Lori said, a bitter edge to her voice. "'Nothing' happened to me too."

The idea that this had happened to someone else was a particular shock to whatever tentative plans Claire had been making regarding Brody. When she followed Lori's gaze to look at Brody as he 'flirted' with another girl who clearly didn't seem that interested in his attempt to kiss her, Claire's eyes narrowed grimly.

Not only did this suggest to her that Brody wasn't actually that bothered about what he might have done to her- even if she was fine, Claire felt that a good person would have shown more concern about someone who'd been hurt the night before- but added onto Lori's latest revelation…

Suddenly the fact that she couldn't prove what Brody had done to her last night was a very real problem, which would require a particularly drastic solution.

She just had to make sure that Kim and Ron believed that she didn't know what to do about the Brody situation right now, and then she could get on with her own plan; something told her that her new associates (she wasn't sure she was at the point where she could call those two 'friends') wouldn't approve of some of the options she was considering right now…

I can't believe it was that easy, Claire thought to herself as she sat in the driving seat of Brody's car, driving home from school that evening.

She'd deliberately stayed behind after school to 'force' Brody into a position where he would have to give her a ride home, waiting in the amphitheatre until he passed by so she could claim that she'd been working on banners for the upcoming Spirit Week celebrations and her planned ride had gone home without her. She had been taking a chance asking him to let her drive, but considering that he had already raped at least Lori, had nearly done the same to her, and was apparently already lining up his next 'target', Claire guessed that Brody was so used to being in control that he wouldn't expect what was about to happen.

"Don't you think it's weird that neither of us remember what happened the night of the bonfire?" she asked, as she shifted the car into gear and picked up the speed.

"Must have been some night," Brody said, sounding slightly apprehensive.

"Yeah, must have," Claire responded, as the car sped up, to the point of cutting through a red light. Claire briefly heard Brody protest at her cutting the light, but she wasn't too concerned; she hadn't seen any cars coming, and if something happened she had tested her ability enough by now to be sure that she could recover from anything that might happen to her.

"You know how to drive a stick-shift, don't you?" Brody asked.

"There's a lot of things that I know," Claire said, her tone cold. "Like what you did to me."

"What'd I do to you?" Brody said, before his apprehension was replaced by a subtle arrogance. "I knew it; I knew this would happen. You get drunk, you come on to me, and it's my fault?"

"You're a liar," Claire said, unable to believe that story was the best thing Brody could come up with.

"Can't rape the willing, Claire," Brody retorted; Claire had to wonder if he actually believed that or was just trying to justify his behaviour to himself. "You wanted it as bad as I did. Stop the car."

"Did I want it as bad as Lori Trammel?" Claire retorted, easily waving aside his weak attempt to take the wheel; clearly he wasn't so far gone that he didn't recognise trying to take control in this situation was a bad idea.

"Lori Trammel is a slut," Brody said dismissively.

"Is that what you're gonna say about me?"

"I already do."

It was the smug tone in his voice that really convinced her that the Brody Mitchum she'd wanted to kiss before last night had never truly existed.

"You're just gonna keep at it, aren't you?" Claire said, unable to believe she'd ever found this boy attractive even as she kept her gaze on the road ahead of herself.

"You should let it go, Claire," Brody said, smugly settling back in his seat. "There's nothing you can do about it."

The worst part about that statement was that Claire knew he was right. If Lori hadn't told anyone the truth about what had happened to her before now, it was likely that Brody was careful not to leave any clear evidence of what he had done, even without her abilities basically compromising any chance she had of using herself as evidence.

Still, if she couldn't get at this guy through the legal system, her ability might give her another option…

"I can do this," she said, stepping her foot down on the gas pedal and heading into an outstretched bit of pavement, vaulting the car briefly into the air before it smashed directly into the side of the building

This was going to hurt for the next few minutes, but she could at least attribute her escape to a fluke; she strongly doubted that Brody was going to be that 'lucky' when the ambulance got here…