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The Not-So-Average Girl

Claire had never really thought about having a pet of her own, and a naked mole rat had certainly never been her top choice, but she had to admit that there was something strangely reassuring about Rufus's presence during that awkward meeting with her biological parents.

She didn't know if it was just the whole awkward issue of meeting their biological daughter for the first time, or the implications that the two of them hadn't spent any time together since Claire's birth ended their previous relationship, but Claire couldn't shake the idea that they'd been deliberately trying not to tell her something. She'd tried to open up the question of their medical history in case it led to anything about her own ability, but when they'd felt awkward enough bringing up her 'bio-mom's' diabetes or her 'bio-dad's' family history of cancer, Claire had felt fairly safe assuming that they didn't know anything about her rapid healing. She'd had a brief moment of hope when her 'life-mom' (just calling her 'adopted' in that context felt a bit insulting) had mentioned some old fears about her having some kind of chromosomal disease as a baby, but when her mother didn't seem to know much about it she'd decided that it must just have been one of those moments where the doctors were being overly paranoid.

Rufus had been a comfort after it had all been over, allowing her to talk to someone about her disappointment even if he couldn't say much in return, but she just wished that she understood what had made Rufus so… the best term she could come up with was 'jittery'… that evening. He'd calmed down once she'd managed to sneak him a few pieces of cheese from the fridge before bed, but he still kept looking at her and making urgent squeaks as though he was trying to make a point before he'd settled down for the night.

She regretted that she hadn't been able to give Rufus back to Ron yet, but when she'd gone into school there'd been rumours flying around about some event that had happened at that 'catch-up lesson' he'd had that evening that had meant he'd had to stay away from school that day. Claire had thought about giving Rufus to Kim, but Kim had pointed out that she wasn't going to see Ron any earlier than Claire was, so she had kept the mole rat for another evening once school was over.

Granted, she was having to wear an old pair of cargo pants to give herself a big enough pocket to give Rufus somewhere to stay or raise all kinds of questions about why she was wearing a jacket or something more conspicuous (her blue hoodie had a decent pocket, but Rufus would have been too obvious there), but having the rat on her was strangely comforting…

"You know," Claire said as she opened the door to find Zach outside her house, "I get that you're sort of socially slow, but you know you're supposed to call someone before you come over."

"This you're gonna want to hear right away," Zach said as he walked in, an urgent expression on his face as she shut the door behind him. "I found the tape."

"What tape?" Claire asked, surprising even herself as she checked her pocket to feel Rufus was still there.

"The tape of you trying to kill yourself twenty times; I found it," Zach said in a low voice. "Look, I was looking for my PSP under my bed, right? And there it was. You're safe."

Taking the small recording device from her friend, Claire stared at it for a moment before she punched Zach in the arm out of a lack of a better response.

"I thought this was supposed to be good news?" Zach protested.

"Well, I can't believe you had it this entire time!" Claire countered as she waved the small tape in his face. "Why didn't you look there before?"

"I did," Zach affirmed. "I tore the whole room apart. I must've checked the bed, like, fifty times."

Claire was prevented from asking further questions when her mother came down the stairs, putting Mr Muggles on the ground and walking between the two.

"Good morning, Mrs Bennet," Zach said, as Claire placed a hand over her pocket to make sure Rufus didn't leap out in a panic (not that she thought Mr Muggles would attack Rufus, but the rat had no way of knowing that). "Good morning, dog."

"How are you, Zachary?" Mrs Bennet asked in a low voice as she walked past him.

"I'm all right," Zach smiled. "Claire keeps punching me, though."

Claire followed that up by punching Zach in the arm again, using the distraction to slip the tape under a jacket on the nearby kitchen counter.

"Your dad's plane's gonna be late," Mrs Bennet said to Claire. "I won't be home until 8:00 or so. I am trusting you to hold down the fort."

"Because Lyle never listens to me," Claire rolled her eyes.

"Well, he will listen to you today because he knows what a big day it is for Mr. Muggles," Mrs Bennet said, as she picked up the dog in question and let the little furball lick her face. "Thank you. And he doesn't want to stress us out. Whew, does he?"

"Sure," Lyle said, from where he had been reading a magazine behind them.

"Will you two help me out to the car?" Mrs Bennet asked, passing Mr Muggles to Claire before Claire could do more than awkwardly button the pocket holding Rufus and hope that would be enough to stop him doing anything that might attract attention to his presence. "Your dad left the sprinklers on last night, and I don't want to get his paws all soggy."

As Claire carried the dog out while Zach grabbed the dog supplies, she supposed that she couldn't exactly complain about the way things stood. She might still have no idea where her 'ability' came from, but she had three good friends who knew that she wasn't normal and accepted her regardless, any evidence that she wasn't normal was contained once again, and she certainly couldn't complain about the family she'd ended up with even if it left her with these apparently unanswerable questions about her past.

Loading up Mr Muggles' supplies and watching her mother leave was almost an automatic reaction, Claire waving after the departing car before she headed back into the house to get the videotape somewhere safe; however Zach might have lost track of it, she'd feel better if she was the one who knew where it was right now.

"Lyle!" she called out, noting a discarded pizza slice on the kitchen counter, "you better not think I'm cleaning up after you; we just got rid of all those ants!"

Discarding a used napkin that was lying on a plate, Claire picked up her jacket, only for her eyes to widen in horror when the video tape was no longer lying under it. Hurrying into the den, Claire's eyes widened in horror as she saw Lyle watching the tape of her jumping from the tower, before she dived for the camera.

"Shut it off!" she yelled at her brother, as the two began struggling for the device. "Lyle! Give it to me! Give it to me!"

Even as her brother released his grip on the camera, Claire knew that he was still watching the video, which currently showed the time she was hit by a car, until she finally took the tape out of the machine.

"It's amazing what you can do with special effects these days, huh?" she said, already aware that it was a desperate excuse.

"That was all special effects?" Lyle said incredulously.

"Yeah, what else would it be?" Claire asked.

In response, Lyle grabbed a stapler and jammed it into Claire's hand

"Ow!" Claire yelled, cradling her hand as she pulled the staple out. "What is wrong with you?"

She knew even as she spoke that the injury caused by the staple would confirm that everything Lyle had just seen the moment it healed, but she didn't want to risk getting metal poisoning or something like that if she left this thing in her hand for too long. As soon as Lyle saw the wound vanish, he turned and ran out of the house, grabbing the videotape from Claire before she could stop him.

Damnit, Claire thought as she hurried after Lyle. If Kim were here, she'd have grabbed him before he even reached the door…

"Lyle, give it to me!" she yelled desperately after him as she ran out of the house after him. "Lyle! Lyle, get back here!"

Claire tried to ignore the awkward attention of a neighbour looking up from working on her garden; she could only hope that anyone watching this would just assume that she and Lyle were in the middle of a more typical teenage spat between siblings rather than something that could literally destroy Claire's life if it fell into the wrong hands.

"Don't let him get away!" Claire called over at Zach, relieved as she saw that her friend hadn't gone that far down the street after helping her mother. Turning back around, Zach virtually jumped off his bike and blocked Lyle's path as he ran for the edge of the garden, only for Lyle to run back to the house, subsequently diving into the car when Claire and Zach cut off both of the other directions he might have taken.

"Come on!" Zach said, as Lyle locked the car before turning to Claire. "Why would you want to kill him again?"

"Because he found the tape and then he stapled me," Claire answered indignantly.

"Help!" Lyle yelled from inside the car as a neighbour passed by mowing the lawn. "Somebody help me! My sister's a freak!"

Claire could only grunt in frustration as she slammed a hand against the car window, suddenly wishing that she had more than Zach and Rufus here; she wasn't sure what else Ron and Kim could do right now, but a little extra help wouldn't hurt…

"Come on, you can't stay in there forever!" Zach said, bouncing briefly on the back of the car before taking up position against the passenger door while Claire waited on the driver's side.

"Just give us the damn tape," Claire said; the neighbour Lyle had called out to earlier had apparently decided teen sibling drama wasn't his concern, but that wasn't going to last forever.

"I'm gonna put this thing on YouTube," Lyle yelled. "Make, like, a million bucks!"

"YouTube's free, you idiot!" Zach protested.

"You're not helping," Claire glared at Zach before turning back to her brother. "Lyle, no one can see what's on that tape!"

"Are you an alien or something?" Lyle asked. "Is he an alien too?"

"Yeah, yeah-" Zach began, before a frustrated chittering from Claire's pocket cut him off as they both looked curiously at Claire. "What was-?"

"This isn't helping," Claire cut him off, wondering what Zach was thinking with that particular 'joke' before she turned back to her brother, hoping that they'd forget about Rufus if she kept their attention on the current situation. "Just… get out of the car, please?"

"I'm not coming out until Mom and Dad get home!" Lyle responded.

"No, no, no," Claire protested desperately. "You cannot tell them. Lyle, please; they cannot find out about this!"

"Why not?" Lyle asked.

"Don't you get it?" Claire insisted, finally voicing the reason she'd never brought up her abilities to her parents. "If they found out, Mom and Dad would think it was a mistake to ever adopt me! We wouldn't be a family anymore. Please."

After a few moments of apprehension, Lyle finally rolled down the window and gave Claire the tape.

"Thank you," Claire smiled at him

"Whatever," her brother said as he got out of the car, even if he accepted the tentative hug Claire gave him afterwards.

Claire wasn't going to kid herself that this sorted all of her current problems, but at least Lyle seemed to accept that telling their parents about her abilities would be a bad idea.

She just needed to work out if she wanted to tell anyone else that Lyle knew or keep this particular development between her and Zach…