Well I know it wasn't you who held me down
Heaven knows it wasn't you who set me free
So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains
And we never even know we have the key
Chapter 33: Declassified
She biked to school the next morning, passing by the parked school buses to chain up her bicycle. She noticed someone there, and snuck by again before she walked to class.
It was two people. Liam and Hayden, close against a bright yellow bus. Hayden was taller than Liam, but she leaned against the bus so that they were the same height. Liam had one of his hands in her hair, tucking wavy strands behind her ear. Sherry backed away quickly, nearly sprinting until she reached the side doors of the school building. She felt nauseous — not jealous, not really, but disappointed that she'd been right. Something had happened in the past three days, something that turned Liam and Hayden from childhood enemies to barely friends to now lovers. She'd seen it coming, and she'd hoped it wouldn't, and she'd been proven right and let down yet again.
Malia approached her, her nose wrinkling in disgust. "Cut that out," she complained, joining Sherry. "You reek."
"I'm not trying to!"
Malia growled. "I knew it. If you want me to fight either of them, I will-"
"I don't want to hurt them," she said. "I want..." But she refused to say any more, and fingered the open ends of her pink cast. She hated the thing.
"Trust me, you won't feel any better if you do that," Malia said. "I can fight them and then you can stop smelling."
"Trust me, I won't stop smelling if you do that," she returned.
"Listen," Malia said, with the reluctance of cat near a bathtub, "I don't like many people, and I probably wouldn't like you, but you're like a puppy that just won't stop getting hurt. My advice is, you'll always keep chasing your tail if you don't woman up and go for what you want. If you want him, get him. If you want to hurt someone, hurt them."
"But you know I won't."
Malia grunted. "Well, I tried."
Near the end of the day, a wailing siren interrupted her regularly scheduled multivariable calculus class. Abandoning her graphing calculator, she hurried to the window and strained her neck to look outside. When the teacher passed by, she pretended to blow her nose.
Outside, a crowd gathered as paramedics loaded a body, still alive, onto a gurney and into the ambulance. She couldn't make out much except pale skin and a shimmer of silver.
Mason was there, racing to talk to whomever was on the gurney, and she realized that it was Corey, that quiet chimera kid, who was leaking mercury. Didn't chimeras do that when their bodies started to fail? Right before the Dread Doctors killed them?
Back in her seat, Sherry discreetly pulled out her phone and texted Scott, asking whether she should go to help.
He responded shortly, her phone buzzing so loudly she was almost certain she'd get a talking-to from her teacher. Scott had said no. She frowned, disappointed, and hid her phone away in her backpack.
Calculus was impossible to concentrate on now. All she wanted to thin about were the well-beings of her friends and Corey, but there was nothing she could do.
Except.
What was it that Malia had said earlier, that everyone else seemed to be constantly reminding her of? That she was too passive. That she had to make her own decisions herself.
Sherry stuffed her belongings into her backpack, not caring if her graph paper folded or if her pencil streaked up the insides of her neat bag. She approached the teacher and said, "I feel really bad. Can I go call my parents?"
"The school day's nearly over—"
"I think I'm going to throw up." And she left.
She almost did feel like throwing up after doing that, but she tried to force herself not to mind. She'd never once intentionally ditched class, even when she did feel awful.
As she rushed through the hallway, she saw Liam and Hayden running in the opposite direction. They paled at the sight of her.
"Where are you going? What happened to Corey?"
"He started bleeding mercury," said Liam, ignoring her first query. "Mason's worried about him."
"I would be, too," she said, and glanced at their linked hands. "Hayden, are you okay so far?"
"Totally." She sounded stiff, although it was ambiguous whether the cause was Sherry's presence or the guilt of the lie.
Sherry assumed the first, willing to give the girl the benefit of the doubt. "Alright. Let me know if I can help at all." Smiling reassuringly, she stepped out of their way and continued down the hall.
Scott was still there, flanked by Mason. Sherry rushed up to them, hugging Mason supportively. He spoke angrily to Scott, fury and anxiety mixing in his piercing glare. Her attempt at support didn't do anything to relax him, but at the very least made Sherry feel better.
"We need to go to the hospital," Mason argued. "The Doctors will be after him."
"I agree," said Scott. "But it's going to be difficult to fend by myself."
"I have a gun," Sherry piped up.
"Guns won't do anything."
Of course they wouldn't. They never did. She began to wonder why Braeden even gave her one in the first place if she couldn't even use it to fight for herself. Maybe it was just for that reason.
"Let's go," urged Mason, and Scott twisted his hands together in defeat.
The Beacon County Municipal Hospital sounded like the outbreak of an apocalypse. Patients called home, doctors screeched into landlines, and nurses lashed out. Gurneys and racks of equipment scattered across hallways, fallen tools leaving scratches on the linoleum and mixing with pools of fresh blood.
The moment she pushed past the double doors, the tang of iron and antiseptic battled for dominance on her tastebuds, fire alarms whining and sprinklers darkening her hair one wet drop at a time. Scott stood still, listening. The traffic and chaos seemed to slow around him, action blurring to a backdrop. Mason stood by Sherry, shoulder to shoulder, and she felt the tension beneath his jacket sleeve like a wall of cement.
Scott pushed past wailing people in sea-foam green — whether they were nurses in scrubs or patients in gowns, Sherry moved to quickly to tell. They reached the back door without encountering anyone, but Scott kept his nose trained and his expression stern. A far door made of plain metal, clearly meant only for employees, stood ajar, human-sized dents marring the surface. Scott pulled it open and slipped through, Sherry and Mason following after.
It was a garage of sorts here, a wide open space filled with parked ambulances and other emergency vehicles. Scott stood by a bright fire engine, an all-too-familiar droop in his stature.
There was Corey, slumped against the truck, a spear through his torso and a glaze over his dead eyes.
It was hard to concentrate the rest of the day, but she knew she had to or someone else might die. Like Hayden, who was innocent and hadn't done a single thing wrong. But neither Hayden nor Liam would return Sherry's calls or texts.
She'd been running low on sleep lately, and when she was sleep-deprived, her nerves often went overboard. She was shaking now, high on two cups of coffee, and terrified for her friends' lives. All she wanted to do was make sure Hayden was alright.
But she stowed it away, at least for the time being, when she returned home to check up on her mother. Linda sat at the messy kitchen table, pensively filling out forms and making calls.
Quietly, Sherry moved to a cupboard, taking out two mugs and filling them with hot water. She dropped in two teabags and slid one of the mugs, a round white one painted with the American flag, in front of her mother.
The forms were everywhere, piled on one side and spread out haphazardly on the other. The fresh white paper nearly covered all of the table, hiding the stained splotches of wood and ever-present sticky spots from view. Dense phrases peppered the sheets, shouting tax returns and medical care and tier three car insurance. On the phone, Linda filled the air with a professional tone — "Yes, absolutely, I've been employed by the CIA for twenty years; my skill sets have only increased over the years—" and excuses were peppered in here and there, distracting the other end with whatever it took to pull them away from discussing her term in prison.
Sherry rested her head on her folded arms, just watching. It had only been half a year since she'd been sentenced, but it felt like a lifetime. If college meant not seeing her only remaining parent for years at a time, she didn't want to go.
The immediate emergency rose again to Sherry's mind. She had to leave now, although she desperately wanted to stay safe and warm with her mother. Reminding herself of the worst, she forced herself to hug her mother goodbye, an action that felt almost alien to her.
Then she left, racing to Scott's place on her bike, her chest searing with effort. He wasn't there when she rang the doorbell, so she pulled out her phone and texted him.
The low rumble of an engine met her ears and she looked up, relieved to see both Scott and Theo in Theo's car, pulling into the driveway. A trace of a smile disappeared from Theo's face as he looked up, replaced by the resting solemn expression. He waved to Sherry as Scott stepped out, and then drove the car away.
Scott looked absolutely upset, the wide eyes of shock mixed with the tense mouth of repressed sorrow. His fist was clenched, his breathing strained. Something had just happened. Something beside Corey.
She hugged him, almost surprised when he returned it immediately. His grip was like a boa constrictor's as he nearly lifted her from the ground, his anger and disappointment and sadness seeping from his soul to his muscles into her.
"What's wrong?"
He didn't respond at first. Then, in a tiny little voice as he let go and composed himself, he whispered, "Some people aren't who I thought they were."
She felt bad pressing, but she thought it might be helpful to know. "Theo?"
His head shook minutely. "No." He sighed, his voice bitter. "I can't trust anyone."
"You can trust me, remember?" she said. "I'm always on your side, even if no one else is." She thought of months ago, when Scott had been slandered by the red-haired alpha. When his friends had turned their backs on him, so he had no one to trust but her.
But she couldn't wrap her head around the concept. Why now? Why again? She considered all the options. Whose betrayal would render Scott this distraught? His girlfriend was gone, Theo seemed to be safe, and Mason had nothing to hide. So out of everyone else, Stiles, Malia, Lydia, Parrish... The glaringly obvious hit her like a steel bat.
That night, before she'd left to Mexico, she'd overheard Theo and Stiles talking about Donovan. How Stiles shouldn't tell on Theo for killing the chimera on the roof because Theo hadn't told on him.
"Was it Stiles?"
Scott froze, midway through unlocking his front door.
"What did Theo tell you?" she asked, skirting around what little she knew until she was certain.
"We don't kill people," he responded, his voice trembling. "Not like that."
Like that? "But wasn't it self defense?" She didn't know for sure, but from the way Stiles had addressed it on the roof, it seemed as if he hadn't meant to kill Donovan. And that screamed fishy.
"He hit him..." said Scott, slowly, "With a wrench over his head, like he wanted him to hurt. I can't believe he would do that."
"I can't either." Which meant there was a lie somewhere, and she intended to find out. Not because she cared about the truth, but because she cared about her friends. "I gotta go," she decided, and added, "Can you check up on Liam and Hayden for me? They seemed a little off earlier."
Then she swung her leg back over her bike and tore to the sheriff's station.
A/N: I KNOW I'M UPDATING A DAY LATE IM SO SORRY. But I have AP tests soon, so next week I'll either delay again or just update the week after. I'll try my best to update on Wednesday, though. (I also have high school cheer tryouts today, so hopefully I can remember all the dances and chants!)
I know this chapter wasn't as eventful as the rest, but action is coming, I promise! I'm almost done with season 5a, so you know the final battle scene is coming! (And I've already written it!) What are your thoughts on this chapter? Which parts did you like? Did you think anything was out of character?
Review, favorite, and follow :)
