Disclaimer: All characters recognized in the Faculty movie are under copyright of Robert Rodriguez and Dimension Films.
-oOo-
Chapter 5 – Convinced
"N-no...no, Mom," Casey groaned, mumbling down the telephone receiver as he stood lamely in the hospital corridor, leaning against the cold wall. "No – really, it's nothing. It's just a break."
"Just a break!" his mother repeated, at such a pitch that the boy clenched his teeth, wondering if dogs could hear what he was hearing. "Casey! My God..."
Casey closed his eyes and sighed. A small root began to form inside of him, manifesting shame. She sounds so disappointed with me. Like it's all my fault.
He heard his mother's cracking, deeply ridden sigh from the other end of the line. "How did it happen?" she questioned, her voice cold and stern. "What on earth were you doing to break your wrist?"
Casey's mouth went dry. He really, really hadn't wanted to call his parents. He knew what their reactions would be, and how they would make him feel. Deep inside, right now...he felt pathetic. His mother thought of him as a clumsy child – someone who couldn't even keep their footing on tarmac.
He knew that he embarrassed his parents. Especially his father.
Dad... His heart sank.
"I...I erm," he stuttered, running his hand through his hair awkwardly. "I just fell down the bleachers – Mom?"
Another long, thwarted breath was released. Then; "Yes?"
"Don't tell Dad. Please."
"Casey, don't be ridiculous! Of course I'm going to tell your father! What do you expect me to say when you come home with your arm in a cast!"
His mind raced as he racked his brains. "I - !" he began indignantly, but then everything upstairs seemed to collapse and die. His mouth opened in a round circle, but then quickly shut again as if it were a drawbridge pulled. He closed his eyes, preparing himself for the result.
"I...I don't know, Mom," he whispered, hitting the back of his head against the wall as he gazed forlornly at the mint coated ceiling.
"Oh, Casey," Lorraine Connor breathed, that same dissatisfied flicker reflecting from the words that she spoke, ever so softly. "What are we going to do with you? You never know anything, do you?"
He closed his throbbing eyelids, swallowing back his humiliation. "No, Mom," he choked. "You're right. No...I don't."
There was a long, gleaming silence of pain and harsh breath. Eventually, Lorraine's voice arrived again, only after being distracted by a consistent muttering in the background, a voice gruff and low.
"Who's that?" the boy asked quickly, not wanting to sound as desperate as he felt.
"It's your father," she answered simply.
Casey gulped, his body rushing cold. "D-Dad?"
"Look, honey, are you still at the hospital?" came her reply, although this time she sounded a lot more determined for a serious response. "We can come and collect you, me and your father."
He caught his breath in his throat and pounded his good fist in frustration against the side of the room, teeth gritted. "N-no, Mom, don't worry about me."
"Don't be silly – are you there alone?"
He shook his head, almost to himself, and swallowed back the urge to vomit violently. "No, Mom, I came here with Grace. She's...she's waiting in the lobby." He trailed off towards the end, something biting inside. Secretly he wondered if she was still there.
Has she left me? Here? All alone?
He closed his eyes, a cold, shuddering feeling of self-disgust raging through his veins and bringing his whole body to a hot flush. Shit.
He hadn't realised the silence that had been present on the telephone for the last few seconds. Finally, his mother spoke up, sounding rather surprised, if not a little confused. "Grace? Honey, who's Grace?"
Casey groaned. "No one, Mom...she's just a girl at Herrington."
"Casey! You made a new friend?" He almost felt hurt at how enthusiastic she sounded. He glanced around, wondering if any of the hospital visitors were eyeing his burning face with horrid curiosity.
I can see why she's like this, though, Casey thought bitterly. It's not that often that I make new friends – let alone a girl.
"Well...sort of," he mumbled softly. It wasn't exactly a lie. She had helped him after his fall, and offered to accompany him to the emergency ward. However...she wasn't exactly the most understanding of people, in Casey's opinion.
She's just a complete jinx.
The teenager almost died on the spot when he thought he heard his mother giggling down the receiver. "Oh, sweetheart, how lovely!" she gushed, her tone strangely high-pitched. "It's nice that you made a new friend! Perhaps you could invite her over one day?"
Casey pulled a face. "Huh!"
"Well...honey," she continued, determined to bring her plan forth into view. "It's been a while since you've invited anyone over to stay, or for a visit. You're so secretive with your friends."
A welt of dejection swelled in Casey's chest. He cast his blue eyes to the waxed tiles, wishing he could smash his own body into a fleshy goop just by wishing it. He breathed a heavy sigh and felt his fingers loosen, the grip on the receiver weakening.
It's because I don't have any fucking friends worth bringing over, he thought miserably. But if I tell my parents that, they'll be disappointed in me, or some shit like that. God...I hate this. I hate everything.
He frowned. I hate her for making me feel this way.
"Actually," he growled, grasping the phone firmly, taking control. "She's not my friend. I-I don't even think of her that way at all." He didn't even realise that he was grinding the skin of his teeth away as he delivered his words. "Mom, she's –!"
"Oh, Casey!" she cut in, sounding elated. Forebodingly elated. "I-I don't believe it! You didn't tell me that you...you were crushing on her!"
The boy practically felt his whole world caving in at those few words. His hands shook uncontrollably, feeling himself break out in a cold sweat. He felt his lips dehydrate.
How...how could she even think that! he thought with belated repulse. Like there would be a chance that I could ever even think about liking her! I'd rather eat my fucking boiled puke than go out with her! I'd rather die! Die!
"No!" he screamed hoarsely, and to his own amazement down the receiver. "Don't say that, Mom – don't say that!"
A few occupied seats in the waiting hall glanced up at him with ominous, annoyed eyes. Their bloodied wounds and gauze-strung slings were metaphors of anger that travelled up their bodies and nested in their faces. Casey tried not to stare in their direction.
A long, flummoxed silence followed. Casey's mother was obviously rather taken aback by the outburst.
"Don't shout at me down the phone," she hissed icily, in a voice that she rarely used. "It's rude, dammit."
"S-sorry."
The quietness down the phone continued, and Casey could feel the edges of his ears burning, as if hot pokers were being pressed to them. He rested against the wall, relieved waves passing through them as the ice-cold titles soothed his humiliation.
His mother was silent for a long time; and then, when she finally spoke, her voice quivered a little, sounding almost as if she were to yell at him again. Casey also observed that her tone was more concerned than he had expected it to be.
"Casey?" she said quietly, sounding almost deadpan. "You are telling me the truth, aren't you?"
He blinked. "Huh?"
"About falling down the bleachers...that is what happened, isn't it? For you to break your wrist?"
Casey could see where this was going. He swallowed down a fiery, sick feeling in his throat and closed his aching eyes. It had happened for a while now, especially since he had been attending Herrington High. He had arrived home many a night with fresh wounds – cuts and bruises, black eyes and swollen cheeks. However, he had never received any broken bones from those bastards.
Not yet, is what Casey realised, and vaguely knew what his mother was asking him.
"I'm not lying to you, Mom," he said coldly.
"Casey, I'm not accusing you of lying to me," she replied seriously.
Like fuck, he thought bitterly. Not much.
"I just want to know what happened to you, honey," she continued, her words taking on a more sugary sweet tone, as if she thought it would be easier for him to tell her the "truth" if it sounded as if she was on his side. But Casey knew what she was really trying to do: butter him up to make a "confession". She wanted to hear that his tormentors were responsible.
Doesn't she trust me not to lie to her about something like this? he thought angrily.
"Mom –" he began, beginning to feel frustrated.
"If there's something you want to tell me...something you're perhaps afraid to tell me," she tried, speaking very slowly. "Then you know you can go right ahead. Nothing will happen to you – don't worry. I just want you to tell me the truth, sweetie."
Casey sighed, gripping the phone receiver, enraged. "I am telling you the truth, Mom. Why don't you believe me?"
"It's just...well, it isn't the first time that you've lied to me about something like this –"
"I'm not lying now!" the boy whined, wondering for a fleeting moment if he should hang up the phone and walk away – far away, right out of the hospital and never look back for anything. "Mom, I've broken something here...why would I lie – ?"
"But I never know what's happened to you, Casey – not really!" Lorraine protested, shocking her son by the hysteria in her words. "You never talk to me about those...things that happen to you at school. You..." – and here, her voice broke a little – "I don't know how to talk to you."
A low, hollow feeling swelled in Casey's throat and he had to close his eyes, bitten horribly by the words she had just said to him. She sounded so...disappointed in me, he thought, feeling a strange, prickly warmth emitting behind his eyes. He bit his lip to avoid it trembling later on, as he knew that it would.
"Why not?" he croaked. He hated sounding upset on the phone, especially to his mother. As always, it would turn ugly – usually damaging his self-esteem and his confidence. As everything does.
"I can't," Lorraine replied, and now her voice had grown stronger – sterner. "I can't talk to you, Casey...I don't want to."
He squeezed his eyes shut and felt rivers of pain flowing down his cheeks. He chewed the inside of his mouth as he felt the pulsing beat of his heart behind his forehead. Oh, Mom... he thought miserably. Do you really mean that? Do you really never want to talk to me?
Do...do you hate me?
"I-I gotta go, Mom," he sniffed, his fingers shaking as he held the receiver feebly – unwillingly, away from his ear, tasting the salt of his tears. "I'll...I'll talk to you later." He really wished that she couldn't hear his despondent voice crackling down the other end of the line.
"Casey, what's wrong?" she asked, in a not-too sympathetic tone. "Why are you crying?"
She doesn't care, he realised, rubbing at his damp cheeks. She doesn't care about me. She hates me...because I'm weak. She hates me...oh, God...
"Bye, Mom," he whispered, his sorrow pouring down his face and filling his words. And with that, not wishing to listen to any more of his mother's apathetic advice and words of wisdom, he placed the phone back onto its holder with a quiet click and a tiny sob.
-oOo-
At what seemed like forever, half an hour had passed after the soul-crushing phone call that Casey had made home. He had escaped the hall of wandering eyes, and had begun to occupy the waiting rooms, sitting dejectedly on one of the scratchy chairs with his arm in a cast and his eyes on the ground. His limb hung limply in a sling by his side.
"She hates me," he murmured, practically to himself. He began to feel the prickles bristling behind his lids again. "She hates who that I am."
Of course she does, came the voice of shame once again, pulling at the strings of anger and misery in his heart. Who doesn't?
Casey groaned, slamming his head into his hands. He felt the urge to vomit building up inside of his throat again, and he wondered just how long that Grace was going to be in the restroom. Why the fuck do girls take so long in there anyway? he thought bitterly.
You spend longer in there than most girls, dickhead – hiding from them.
Glancing down at his sneakers for a short second, he noticed with annoyance that his shoelace was untied. Ashamedly, he decided that he simply must tie it up again, to avoid disasters that would most definitely happen because of it. It must have come undone when me and Grace were arguing earlier, and I tripped over that tray of needles, he remembered, with a little shudder. Goddamn shoes...why can't they just stay together?
You should talk, came the voice. Someone else should pull his act together, huh?
Frowning slightly, Casey decided to wave the tormenting aside, as usual, and leant down as far as he could, in order to re-tie his rebellious laces. However, it wasn't long before he discovered that the task was virtually impossible. With his arm slung, and cast in plaster, he couldn't exactly use both hands to re-do his sneaker up. He twisted and turned in all sorts of directions, but it did no good for him. He twitched his fingers and stretched them as far as they could go, until he felt they might snap from their positions. In the end, he just gave up, leaning on his elbows in frustration and feeling useless.
Bollocks.
"Here," suddenly floated in Grace's voice, sounding rather distant and quiet. "Let me help."
He stared up at her from his awkward pose, resting back against the support of the chair and shifting his arm into the comfort of his other, cradling it. Grace had returned from the bathroom, and had noticed the boy's problem. Casey now glanced down at her on the floor, grasping his laces in her slender fingers and fastening them together, tying the sneaker for him.
"Thank you," he mumbled, unsure of what to say to her. Ever since their argument in the corridor, they hadn't said a single word to one another. He couldn't help feeling that she was still sore about it.
I really didn't mean to make her mad.
"No problem," she replied, unemotionally, her fingers still working. She didn't look at him.
Guilt swelled up behind his eyes and he sighed slowly, releasing it in a long, uncomfortable breath. He took to chewing on the nails of his hand, raising his good arm away from the girl's head, confused of what to say to her next. After all, she was helping him, despite the fact that he had constantly said to her that he could do without it.
Why would she do that? he wondered, ripping at the skin of his fingertips, causing them to bleed a little. Why hasn't she gone home? Anyone else would. Anyone else would have walked straight out of that door the second I started screaming at them. In fact – most people wouldn't have even volunteered to go to the hospital with me.
"Why haven't you gone home?" he asked her quietly, and out of the blue. His voice still quivered a little from what his mother had said to him earlier.
If Grace had noticed this, she didn't acknowledge it. Shrugging, she did the finishing touches on the poor boy's laces and stood up, still keeping her gaze far away from his.
"I dunno," she mumbled. "I just haven't." Then, suddenly, her voice raised a little – mostly out of aggravation than anything else. "Why? Do you want me to go home?"
She still wasn't looking at him.
Casey sniffed, and directed his vision to his dirty sneakers, which were now neatly tied in all-too elegant bows. His wrist throbbed a little in its cast, and he attempted to smother the croaky squeak coming from his bruised throat.
"N-not really," he admitted, gnawing at his lip like a rabid hamster. "It's just...well, anyone else...other people...would have gone home by now – and left me here."
As he muttered out those last words, he tried (with no success) to connect his eyes with her refined cinnamon ones, to see some kind of a reaction from her, or possibly for her to look at him – even for a second.
But she didn't.
"I'm not anyone else," she eventually whispered coldly, and that was the last thing that she said to him for a very long time. Rising to her feet, she strode past him and sat down on the chair two chairs to the right of him. She said nothing. She continued to gaze at her fingernails, and at some of the tortured-looking patients slumped on their woollen blankets and mattresses – some of them dead to the world.
She's still pissed at me, thought Casey glumly. She can't even look at me, let alone talk to me.
Sighing wearily, he rested his pounding head against the frozen wall and stared up at the flickering strobe lights and the whirring, rotating fans spinning above his body. He felt ill. Ill to his stomach; especially by the way that Grace was treating him at the moment.
I'm lower than dirt in her eyes, he understood, brushing away a few tears with his trembling fingers. She hates me more than she did before. I doubt she ever liked me at all to begin with...and she was only trying to help me. Help. That's more than most people do for me. And I just throw it all back in her face – when she was just trying to help.
And now she hates me.
I hate you too.
He felt the dripping salt of his tears coat his lashes and plaster themselves onto his face. He felt his skinny shoulders shaking with the thought of his horrible voice bouncing back and forth inside of his head, telling the truth as always...although it never refreshed him, nor dissolved any kind of pain.
I hate myself too, he told himself, replying his spoken mind as more tears sparkled on his eyelids. I wish I could do what you told me to do. I wish I could escape this world – this world where everyone hates me. I wish I could run away from myself...and people like Mom, and Dad...and Grace.
I wish I could kill myself.
Silence danced on the air around the waiting lobby. Grace still made no movement, and now, as Casey glanced at her, he noticed that she seemed to be locking eyes with another girl...around her age, across the room. She was convulsing and blabbering nonsense – obviously in shock – and was trying to be calmed by a group of nurses who were squeezing her hand, and mopping her sweaty forehead with a cold compress.
Then kill yourself, pussy – and set me free too.
I can't. I-I just...
If you want to so badly, then do it, for God's sakes!
I can't! the boy thought wildly, feeling his throat tighten at the unfairness and misery of the whole thing. I can't – I'm afraid!
Oh, big fucking surprise there! You hate this place so much, why don't you just be a man, for once, and just run!
Casey sobbed quietly, cupping his wet face in the palm of his good hand. I can't! What about all of the people I'll leave behind – I'll hurt them!
So what? They've all hurt you in the past – what's your fucking problem? Why would they care if you died anyway? You said they all hated you – they do! So why the hell should you give a damn what they'll be like after you're gone?
But...but – I'm so scared...
Of what? Killing yourself?
Y-yes.
Just go ahead and do it – however you want to. It'll only be painful for a moment, perhaps – but just think about it. Once it's over, you'll be free from this world. You'll be free, dammit. It's what you've always wanted. You'll be sent to a place where no one can ever hurt you again – where no one can hate you.
Y-you're right...
I know. I know I'm right. Just listen to me, for once in your life. Break free. Run away. Escape from this hell-hole that you call home, and just run. Far, far away, where no one can touch you. No one can hurt you, or call you names, or make you bleed. You will exchange your own misery for a lifetime of peace. You will exchange your blood for a lifetime of ecstasy.
You...you make it sound so...so wonderful...
It's your paradise, Casey. Where you belong. Your new home. Where you fit in.
Where I belong...
Casey didn't reply back to Grace either. For once, he listened to the echoing words of his spiteful mind and gave in to them, convinced that they had a point – something that he had been ignoring from the very beginning. Grace couldn't explain things like that to him. She would ramble on about how you should fight back, and learn to be happy.
I tried that, Grace, he thought bitterly. It didn't work.
And he suddenly understood, as he squatted there in that scratchy chair of scarlet thatch work and studied Grace's sombre face, hidden behind curtains of black velvet, he was convinced he was making the right choices...for once in his life. In his tattered mind of memories, he thought back to what had just happened not long ago:
"You pathetic little shit!"
"You never know anything, do you?"
"I can't talk to you, Casey...I don't want to."
"I hate you too."
"I wish I'd never met you."
"Me too."
He allowed the tears to flicker on his cheeks. He wanted them to. He wanted to show everyone that he was upset, and that he was serious about his feelings. He wanted everyone to know that he had had enough, and was about to put an end to all of his terrible problems. He wanted to show them that he didn't care what others thought of him...of what Grace, his parents – or anyone else for that matter thought. Including himself.
He wanted to show them that he was Casey Connor, and that, for once, he was not afraid.
I'm not afraid to be free.