Hello, readers!

These coming chapters should be a little easier for me to revise and edit. Unlike a lot of the earlier chapters, this was about the time Citrine started betaing for me, so there's just a lot of clean-up. Like, mostly checking for consistency and other quality of life improvements. Some fleshing out of certain scenes, the occasional addition. . . . It's all mostly gravy!

This chapter has been updated as of 10/1/2016

~ Crayola


Chapter Twenty

Holding On

All I had to do was remember the story the government had concocted. It would be easy: I basically had to tell a vague version of the truth and just replace aliens with terrorists (go figure). Easy peasy. Most of the story would be spun by the Men In Black designated to my case—Agent Rawlins and Agent Cooper. All I had to do was answer questions after they'd done most of the talking.

Not even my own parents had asked me about the incident, so I hadn't needed to tell them the fake story. It seemed they were too busy worrying about whether or not they were going to upset me.

The closest I'd come to a lecture was hearing myself mentioned when they yelled at Kristie.

That was going to be fun: dealing with my sister's wrath. She was taking all the heat and I wasn't even being chastised for breaking the law.

At least neither of us had any charges filed against us.

Maybe Mom and Dad had already been given the public-safe version of the ordeal. I was just glad that they had been so supportive instead of angry. It was like they had decided I had been punished enough that grounding me or taking away privileges would be redundant.

I mean really, what was left for them to take away from me?

For the next six and a half weeks, I was under strict orders to use crutches. So, even if they wanted to take away any privileges, there was literally nothing I could do. I wasn't going to play soccer ever again, and I was perfectly okay with never leaving the house, either.

Besides that, all of my friends were dead. Wasn't like there was anyone left for me to hang out with. My teammates were just teammates, and I'd lost a couple of those to the aliens, as well.

Hopefully, my sister wouldn't hate me too much. Especially since their heated reprimands had come to a stop once I'd been released from the hospital. They'd said what they'd needed, I supposed. The point made: "your sister's a cripple, be glad that didn't happen to you."

As we left the hospital, Dad walked behind me while the nurse pushed me out in a wheelchair. Hospital policy. Mom was next to me, holding that stupid fox plush. I still didn't know why she'd picked that particular stuffed animal; the thing had just been sitting on a shelf gathering dust. There were plenty that had actually been on my bed.

I was finally in some real clothes, too—no more airy hospital gowns that left little to the imagination. My mom had picked out a pair of my jeans and a long-sleeve shirt. My favorite jacket had been destroyed during my struggle for survival, so she let me borrow one of her extras.

That was the one great thing about where the breaks in my leg bones were: my initial surgery had made casts moot and I'd sat through most of the initial, post-surgery healing process in that damn hospital bed. I was too old to be in one of those ass casts, and the pins keeping my knee together were enough. I still wasn't free to walk around as I pleased, but that was what the crutches were for—at least until I was cleared to start PT.

Six weeks was still six weeks, though. It was good enough for me that I wasn't in a wheelchair forever. I only had to deal with the one until I made it outside the hospital.

"Don't say anything to anyone, just go straight to your car," Agent Rawlins instructed. He was a beast of a man. Maybe not as tall as Wolf but almost as muscular, with dark enough skin that he was something of a novelty in our small city. He and his partner Agent Cooper, a gangly Jim Carrey-esque man, were escorting us through the hospital.

Agent Cooper continued where his partner left off. "We're going to hold a press conference later in the week so the vultures can wait until then."

Mom picked and threaded her fingers through my hair nervously despite how many times I swatted her away with my hand. She asked, "What about when we get home? I don't want them bombarding us every time we leave the house!"

"We'll try to keep them away from your home, but I can't really guarantee anything," Agent Cooper sighed.

Agent Rawlins grunted and rolled his shoulders. "We'll throw around words like 'national security' and 'Patriot Act' and we should be able to pull together some reason to keep them away from you. I'm sure the press conference will satisfy them enough to make them go away."

"How?" my dad asked.

"We'll go over that with you after you've settled in, probably a day before the conference. For now, just take your daughter home. She'll need some rest before her therapy begins tomorrow," Agent Cooper suggested with a furtive glance in my direction.

I glowered into my lap and sighed inwardly. "Therapy", right. More like "interrogation."

The door loomed closer and I felt my muscles go rigid in my seat. Even from where I was I could see the people hanging out by the door. "Can't we go out the back?"

"Unfortunately, there is no back."

Great.

Thank the high heavens that I wouldn't have to talk. For now, anyway. I wasn't in the mood to be seen let alone speak in front of whoever the hell was out there waiting. Not when I was still covered in bandages, my bruises not quite healed and still unsightly. Not when I hadn't had a real shower or a decent night's sleep for the past few days, dreading this very moment.

It had been a week and a half, but everything was still so fresh.

Sunlight blinded me for a brief moment as the nurse wheeled me out of the hospital. There weren't nearly as many reporters as I had been expecting, but there was a crowd of people and some cameras. Parents that I recognized, some that I didn't.

They were all in an uproar when they spotted me and the agents.

"Where's my son? Did he—?"

"What happened—?"

"Can you tell everyone listening how—?"

"Is she really the only—?"

"I haven't seen my daughter, is—?"

I turned my head away and brought my closed fists to my chest, curling into a ball to make myself as small as possible. Maybe I'd disappear.

Agent Rawlings lifted his hand and pushed a camera away when it was moved too close. "You'll have a chance to ask your questions when we make an official announcement. In the time being, we ask that you respect this very brave young lady and her family's privacy. She still has a lot of recovering to do after the horrors she's been through."

"Hey," Agent Cooper snapped at someone out of my vision, "get back! Have some decency."

More and more questions were shouted at us and the police present did their best to hold the line while I was pushed to my dad's Pathfinder. I kept my head down and let Mom hold my hand. Some of the voices I recognized, but most of them were a jumbled mixture of everyone hollering and throwing questions at the same time.

Between clenching my eyes shut and humming one of my favorite songs to distract myself, we reached the car. I was startled when my dad scooped me up and set me down in the back seat, but I settled in and buckled up while he closed the door.

Once he'd taken the crutches from the nurse who had come with us and tossed them in the back, we were off. I tried to keep my head down so I could avoid looking out into the crowd at all of the disappointed and desperate faces. Afraid, above all, that I would recognize some of them—and that they'd be angry.

And they'd have every right to be.

I'd survived and no one else had. I was mad at myself for letting my friends die. I still didn't understand why it had been me and not someone else.

"Everything's gonna be okay now, baby. You're coming home," my mom crooned from the passenger seat. She was turned all the way around and made a big enough smile that I couldn't help but return the gesture, even if there was no true feeling behind it.

*:・゚✧

"Remember, don't speak unless someone directly asks you a question, okay? And be vague when you answer. The more detail you give them, the easier it'll be for them to pick apart your story or find holes in it," Agent Cooper coached me.

I nodded mechanically, staring down at the table next to me. I was only going to be able to spend half an hour with the therapist at this rate, but the two agents didn't seem like they were going to stop talking to me anytime soon. The therapist was nearby, at least, and was good at peppering encouragements to me when needed and admonishments to the agents when their instructing became out of hand—when they pushed too hard.

The room we were in wasn't that big; a small side table was at my right with some Kleenex and a fake potted plant, and a plethora of posters with various coping mechanisms and stages of several common mental illnesses hung from the walls. The therapist and I both had big comfy chairs while the agents had to sit in folding metal ones.

Ava Rogan was a tiny thing, smaller even than me, but she had a welcoming smile and a commanding way about her that made up for her height. As expected, she had her handy dandy notebook and a fancy pen with which to write in it.

Probably about my behavior or specific things I said.

"Let's run through it one more time," Agent Cooper said, flipping the pages back on his pocket notepad. They'd read through that thing about a million times now.

I just wanted to go home if I wasn't going to receive any actual counseling.

Ava narrowed her eyes and leaned forward in her seat. "You will have time to run through it again with her later. Why don't you give her a break and skedaddle so I can speak with her about the things she saw and help her heal?"

Rawlins hadn't said much this whole time and it seemed as if he wanted to be there as much as I did. Cooper was the one who liked to hear himself talk. "We have to make sure she has this down so well even she believes that it's what happened. She still can't get her means of escape down right, so we have to go over it until she—"

"Agent, give her your notes as homework. She'll do fine! Get out of my office so I can have time with my client alone!" Ava snapped, swinging her own pad of paper like she meant to hit him.

Cooper looked like he was going to argue, but Rawlins pushed up from his seat and pulled his partner up as well. "She's right. Just give her what you have written down and she can study it at home on her own time. This is supposed to be therapy time right now."

"Study?" Cooper looked like the word left a sour taste in his mouth. "She's a high schooler! She probably doesn't even study her school work!"

After his partner gave him a stern glare, Cooper sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Alright, alright. Here, sorry for taking up all of your time." He handed the notebook over to me and I pulled it out of his hand like it was going to catch fire and burn me.

"Make sure you keep that somewhere safe and secret," Cooper added.

Agent Rawlins let Cooper leave first and then turned back toward us. Rawlins said, "We'll be in touch sometime before the conference."

Both Ava and I watched the door until it clicked shut, and then I turned back toward her and stared at the area around her feet. "I'm going to mess this up and get in trouble," I muttered despondently, leaning against my hand.

"Oh, I'm sure you'll be just fine. How have you been feeling lately?"

I pulled at a loose string dangling from the hem of my shirt and sighed. "I'm never going to play soccer again and I had to watch all of my friends die. How do you think I feel? I can't even talk about it with anyone but you."

The commanding air Ava had adopted was gone. She crossed her legs at the knee and leaned forward, her expression full of so much pity it made me sick. "Probably pretty angry."

"Among other things," I muttered, averting my gaze to stare at a poster about depression.

"Why don't you tell me about them?" she asked, her voice quiet.

"I don't really want to."

"Well, we can work up to that. How have you been sleeping?" She was too accommodating. I knew it was her job, but I couldn't help but be angry with her anyway.

According to the info graph next to the window, I was projecting.

Whatever.

Shrugging, I said, "Not at all."

She tilted her head slightly, a strand of her short black hair fell in front of her face. "Have you been given any medicine to help with that?"

"Yeah."

"And does it?"

Again, I just shrugged. "I mean, I guess. If I take them."

Her pen bobbed as she scribbled that down. She asked, "Do you not take them?"

I shook my head and wet my lips with my tongue. "No. I mean, not very often. I don't . . . want to sleep. I can't stand the nightmares."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

The therapist sighed and offered me a reassuring smile. I looked away from her. "We can try later, then. How about we just get to know each other a little better first?"

It was an obvious deflection and I knew what she was doing. She was going to make me feel like she was my friend so I was more comfortable around her. Maybe then I'd be more open to talking about everything. Maybe then she could pull some real answers out of me.

Part of me wanted to shut down her attempts altogether, but I knew deep down she wanted to help me. Way deep down.

The last thing I wanted, though, was more friends.

"I don't want to talk. About anything," I muttered, slumping into my chair and tugging at that same string until it finally came free.

"That's fine," Ava said with infuriating understanding. "Is it okay if I talk?"

For a brief moment I thought about telling her I'd be okay with sitting in silence, but I decided I didn't really want that. I heaved a sigh and nodded. "Yeah, okay. Whatever."

She smiled like I'd just given her the best present of her life and leaned back in her seat. "Alright, there's a couple things I'd like to go over with you . . . . First, I need you to understand that none of this is your fault, okay Nichole? The last thing you should do is blame yourself."

Despite myself, her words brought the familiar sting of pre-tears to my eyes.

Michelle had fallen. Jess pulled me back so we could help her. I tore my hand out of hers and kept running—running—running—

"Nichole, wait!"

"You did a miraculous thing that night and should be proud of yourself for pulling through it. I'm sure you did your best to save as many people as you could."

Jess hunched over, coughing blood-tinged spittle into her hands. Pain threw her body into fits and I rushed to her side. Michelle was screaming, her boyfriend holding her back. Jess' ribs cracked and I froze with fear—

My gut wrenched and I clenched my eyes shut, reminding myself to breathe. She was trying to bait a response. Deep down I knew she just wanted me to heal, but I didn't want to heal. This was the whole reason I had thought not coming home would have made this easier: I could have ignored all of this, all of the guilt of being human.

"Can you promise me you're not going to blame yourself?"

"Nichole, wait!"

Run . . . don't look back . . . run . . . they'll slow you down . . . run . . . .

I took a deep breath and blinked away the tears threatening to spill. I didn't want to deal with any of this. The memories—the emotions—my trembling hands—

My response was an incoherent mutter and Ava leaned forward. "What was that, Nichole?"

"I'll try."

Liar.

Ava smiled at me and my hands balled into fists. "That's all I ask right now. Do you have any questions for me about anything?"

"No." I shook my head.

"Did you want me to call the agents again so you can speak to them?" It didn't sound like a threat, more like she was genuinely curious.

"No," I said a little quickly. "Just, I just wanna sit here for a while."

She leaned back in her seat and took a moment to scribble into her notebook. "That's fine. We have fifteen minutes left."

The moment of silence didn't last long—a few minutes at the most. I was already stuck with my own thoughts during normal hours of the day. My anger dulled to a simmer and I started to fidget. Ava busied herself with flipping through the pages of her notes, and then finally I started to diffuse altogether. Maybe I didn't want to talk about my particular scenario, but I did have some questions.

"Is this the first time?"

Ava looked up sharply like I had startled her. "The first time for what?"

I scratched absently at a scab and glanced around, looking everywhere but at her. "Y'know. That aliens. . .and stuff."

Forming complete thoughts was obviously beyond me.

She blinked slowly and tilted her head to one side. "Well, it's not the first but it's not an often occurrence, either. There have been a couple cases in the past, though."

Now she had my attention. I sat up straighter in my chair and actually looked at her for the first time that entire session. "You mean like the ones I was trapped with? Or the one that helped me to escape the ship?"

My therapist rose her eyebrows at me and I thought I had said too much, but she didn't press the topic. "I'm never privy to that much information, unfortunately. They don't tell me specifics, just that my patients have had a close encounter and to . . . ."

"Fix them?" I offered.

"So to say. There's usually not much to fix. The human mind usually fixes itself during trauma, I'm just here to give them someone to talk to so they don't go crazy with all of the secrecy. Someone you can tell the unabridged version to." She brushed a strand of hair from her face. "And of course to prescribe certain drugs to help manage their symptoms."

"Symptoms?" I repeated, sounding more worried than I'd meant.

"Oh it's nothing to worry about," she assured me quickly. "Just general anxiety medicine to help keep you calm. Post-trauma manifests differently for different people."

Even though it made sense, it still made me worried. The nightmares were a given, but what else was there? Besides the vivid memories. I wanted to ask, but I felt my throat close and I just nodded instead. Maybe I'd look up some things on the internet, but that probably would just make things worse: I'd always been bad about assuming I have every ailment I ever researched.

Still, I had a small inkling of how often aliens visited Earth. I wasn't the first person so I wasn't going to be the last person, either. I wondered how many of them were abductees from little gray men with big eyes. Or those claiming to be.

Maybe I'd ask the agents, though they probably wouldn't want to tell me much.

"Of course," Ava added after a moment's thought, "there are different types of encounters so how I help people depends on that, too. Your encounter is somewhere between the Fourth and Sixth kind. You were technically abducted, there was direct communication, and there were deaths. Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth."

"What are the others?" I asked mechanically. It was somewhat intriguing, but I was left with the tight feeling of foreboding in my gut.

Deaths involved with the aliens. Jess . . . Michelle . . . everyone. . . .

She considered the question, then explained. "In order; visual sightings, physical effects, and the presence of an animated creature. There is, I guess, a Seventh kind but. . . ."

"But what?"

Her confidence and certainty were replaced by discomfort. "It's, uh, unprecedented. There are cases where some people have claimed this happened but there's no real proof of it being real. It's basically just a theoretical encounter."

"Okay . . . ?" If she didn't want to tell me, that was fine, but she could have just said so.

"It basically means that there was the creation of a human/alien hybrid."

I made a face and Ava was quick to dismiss her own words. "But like I said, it's just theoretical. It's never actually happened. Everything from first to sixth has, but never the seventh that we know of. It pretty much just exists as a 'possibility'."

"Well, I guess that's a relief," I muttered.

Great, I thought to myself, glowering at the walls. Now I had to consider whether or not Wolf intended on abducting and using me in some sort of breeding experiment. I shuddered at the thought.

Nodding, Ava promptly tried to change the subject. "Now, I do have some pamphlets I'd like to go over with you. Mostly, they just explain ways to manage your anxiety and stress, in case your trauma starts to manifest."

She pulled a few of said pamphlets out of the folder sitting on her lap and handed them over. For the rest of the short time we had left, we went through them together.