5

"Cry"
Mandy Moore

Casey glanced at her stepbrother out of the corner of her eye, only taking her eyes off the road for a second. He wasn't doing well at all. She had to take the wheel of his precious Prince this time because he couldn't even hold up a half-filled cup of water without spilling everything; he was shaking so much. He couldn't sit still for a second, anxiously fussing in the passenger seat as if he was claustrophobic. He wouldn't speak, he wouldn't eat; he was running his fingers through his hair so much that large clumps would start falling out soon.

But Casey didn't say a word; she didn't offer him any comfort or reassurances. She wasn't sure if it was because she didn't know what to say to him or if it was because she knew him well enough to know he wouldn't want to hear it. Either way, she kept silent and drove as fast as she could without getting pulled over. She wasn't faring much better either, but she managed to get them to London in one piece.

Marti, the precocious little nine year-old, had fallen down a flight of stairs, breaking a rib and cracking her skull, but she still somehow had more than enough Venturi tenacity to not even fall into a coma. She was only unconscious for a couple of hours, but it was still more than enough time to send all three sides of the family into a tizzy. Abby was crawling up the wall, but George had convinced her and her parents to stay in their respective countries since it wasn't necessary to come. George's own mother was almost inconsolable until he called back and told her that her youngest grandchild was fine. Nora kept bursting into tears every time she'd even glance in Marti's direction, and Lizzie was like steel until Edwin finally grabbed and hugged her to him. It was the trigger that blew the dam and let loose the torrent of tears. Edwin himself didn't say a word unless it was to reassure Marti that her Smerek and Smasey were almost there.

When they did arrive, Derek had leaped out of the car before Casey even managed to park it, and normally, he would've been quite impressed with his action hero skills and Casey would've strangled him for risking getting run over. Neither of them said a word, though. He brushed past his family and made a beeline for his little sister, but instead of crumbling into tears like Casey had anticipated, Derek turned to absolute stone. He was a statue—a gargoyle, perhaps—standing guard over his napping little sister.

Marti had made Edwin promise to wake her once Derek arrived, but Derek didn't give the middle Venturi a chance.

It was…weird seeing him like this, to say the least. She'd seen him play with her, act like a normal human being because of her. She was the only one he'd cow to. He'd only do it to his mom and dad if he was really guilt-tripped and brow-beaten into it; but all it took was an adamant word from Marti, and he'd break.

It was horrifying enough to see Marti in this state—this bouncy, temperamental Energizer bunny trapped in a nine year-old little girl's body who was all broken and bandaged in a hospital bed. Seeing Derek like this was the chocolate fudge to this nightmare of a sundae.

Casey continued to watch Derek just stand there motionlessly until she felt a gentle tug at her elbow. She turned, eyes swimming with tears, to see George shepherding the rest of the family out of the room and trying to pull her out as well. He nodded once, and she let him tow her out and quietly shut the door behind them.

She glanced back through the glass wall, through the Venetian blinds of the private room. "Will he be okay?" she asked his father. "Will…they be okay?"

Nora had pulled Edwin and Lizzie to her on the waiting room couch, hugging them to her sides. George merely stood next to Casey, watching his oldest and youngest through the glass.

"Derek was nine years-old when Abby was pregnant with Marti," George began quietly. "At this point, he was kind of annoyed with having Edwin as his little brother, so when we told him he was going to have a sister, we expected a typical Derek reaction where he'd get exasperated and complain about how there were already enough psychos in the house or something. So when he just sat there, completely stoic, we got a little scared. But then after a few seconds, he frowned, gave up this weird grimace, and then asked exactly how crazy girls could get and if they were anything like Edwin."

Casey tore her eyes away from the pair to look up at the expression on her stepfather's face. He was still staring at Derek and Marti, but he was smiling fondly at the distant memory.

"See, Edwin was kind of a little monster at that age. He could fall down stairs, get caught between the jamb and a closing door, and get whacked in the face with a hockey stick—all he would do was laugh. So Derek had his hands full already, trying to keep his borderline-suicidal little brother out of harm's way, and when we explained how girls didn't have the durability of a combat boot like Edwin, we expected D to have a mini-breakdown," he explained. "But once again, all he did was sit there with this frown. In retrospect, I knew exactly what that expression meant—the kid was strategizing. He was probably already plotting out some way to encase Marti in some titanium bubble to keep her from getting hurt. And from that day on, he was always so protective of Abby. He refused to let her anywhere near a working oven, so she had to direct him from the other side of the island when she wanted to make dinner or he'd simply make me do it. He yelled at her if she went up and down the stairs too quickly, and he would always make sure there was nothing on the steps themselves for her to trip on. He had me buy those rubber circles for the bathtubs to keep her from slipping and falling. He wouldn't let her stay up too late, and made sure she ate three square meals a day on top of whatever other bizarre snack she wanted—even if he was in school. He basically insisted on doing my job."

Casey felt the corners of her mouth curl upward. Who knew?

"So when there were complications with Marti's birth," George sighed, his tone suddenly turning somber, "I was the one was consoling Derek instead of the other way around. Abby had to have a Caesarean, and we ended up leaving Edwin with my mom in the waiting room because Derek was right there with us in the operating room. I still cut the cord, but he was the very first to hold Marti. They've been close ever since—I'm sure you've seen."

Casey nodded in solemn agreement and then gasped when she saw Marti's eyes flutter open. The little invalid grinned up at her brother, and the stone statue finally cracked. Derek bent, scooted his little sister over, and then laid down beside her, holding her close against his side as they spoke quietly.

"How was he in the car?" George asked.

"Restless," Casey replied.

George smiled a little ruefully. The expression shouldn't have accentuated the lines on his face, but it did. "You're lucky."

Casey frowned and turned to look at him again. "What do you mean?"

"He was holding back," George answered. "Marti burned herself by touching a cookie sheet straight from the oven once, and Derek went ballistic." He turned and rubbed his stepdaughter's back. "You're fortunate that he had enough presence of mind to hand the keys over to you."

"What makes you think I didn't have to take them myself?" she joked, trying to lighten the mood.

George tilted his head toward her and gave a pointed look accentuated with the smirk that Derek inherited. She cracked a smile in reply, but as soon as she turned back to Derek and Marti, the fragile expression on her face cracked and fell again.

"They'll…they'll be okay, right, George?" she asked again, since he never actually answered her question before.

He dropped his hand from where it had come to rest on her shoulder so that he could scrub his face with both hands. "She's gotten hurt before, but never to this degree. I mean, he's still Derek, but I don't know how long it'll take for him to bounce back after something this."

"He looked really, really shaken up, George," Casey muttered. "I've never seen him like that before."

"He'll be fine," George responded reassuringly—for her benefit or his own, she wasn't sure. "He'll be fine."

The nurses understood the family's stress, but the fact of the matter was that it was still the end of visiting hours—it was time for them to go. But Derek didn't even give them an excuse or any sort of legitimate counterargument. He simply and steadfastly refused to move from the chair—not that Marti was of any help either once anybody saw the white-knuckled grip on her brother.

So the nurses gave in under the fiery glares of the two Venturis. Surprisingly, the only one who didn't cave was Nora. She'd taken to George's three children very quickly and very intuitively, so she knew without a doubt that someone else needed to stay with the invalid and the emotionally unstable statue.

No one looked to Edwin—the middle of the three siblings. No one looked to Lizzie—the level-headed, no-nonsense youngest McDonald. No one looked to George—you know, their father. No one looked to Nora—the most mothering out of everybody else there.

No, they all looked at Casey.

Because no matter how old they got or where they were in the world, where Derek goes, Casey must follow. Because the cosmos either hated them or got a kick out of making them so miserably compatible. Like nitric acid and glycerol.

So when she found him sitting on the bench outside instead of sitting guard over a sleeping Marti, she wasn't entirely sure if she should approach him or let him be.

But she was Casey McDonald.

And it wasn't that she knew she didn't know how to leave well enough alone. She knew when to leave certain people alone at certain times because regardless of women's intuition and simple common courtesy, there were times when being alone wasn't appropriate. And as she watched him—staring blankly into the dark parking lot in front of him, his shoulders slumped, hands resting limply on his thighs, and his legs stretched out haphazardly in front of him—there was a small part of her that knew he shouldn't be alone.

So she took a deep, steadying breath and braced herself to be rejected yet again. Then he slowly walked forward and cautiously sat down beside him, her elbow barely brushing his as she tucked her cold hands into her sweater pockets. She expected him to jump and sneer at her or something—anything—but he didn't even react. He just kept sitting there as if he was some indifferent ghost—everything passing through him, no one noticing him, and nothing affect him at all.

She felt an immature urge to poke him just to elicit any sort of reaction, but she shrugged it off and chanced a look at him instead.

It was only at that angle and at that close proximity did she see the faint gleam of wetness on his cheeks, reflecting the light of hospital streetlamp above them.

He'd been crying.

And that…rattled something in her. Rattled in the same way that…

Marti was, for all intents and purposes, the heart of the family—the broken, patchwork family that managed to chug along and survive in spite of all their issues. She was the baby, and in spite of Derek and Casey's teenage self-centeredness, she'd been the center of the McDonald-Venturi household for the last four years. If she was upset, everyone else would spiral into that same state. Regardless of how explosive the two eldest stepsiblings' relationship could get, it couldn't compare to one of Marti's episodes. Everyone else could essentially scatter or sink into the background to avoid getting caught in the crossfire between Derek and Casey. With Marti, however, it was less of a gunfight and more like a nuclear explosion.

Yet on the other side of the spectrum, this girl could sit back and observe or be entirely and absolutely absorbed in something else, and she would still be more perceptive than the entire family put together. Childlike innocence aside, Marti knew things.

A soft and steady presence, a heart knew things—may it be wise and perceptive, weird and unexplainable. And when it was in jeopardy, so was everything else.

But there had been something else—something Casey hadn't ever really considered before. It was an interdependency that was so subtle and yet so obvious.

Derek.

Derek.

He was the rock—the anchor—of the family. He was the one who weighed everyone back down when everyone—Casey especially—were in danger of floating away. Edwin would formulate his grand schemes and no one but Derek could cut him back down to size. Lizzie was too level-headed for flights of fancy, but even George and Nora had fallen victim to that once or twice. And of course, there was Casey.

He'd illustrated his role as an anchor time and time again, but it wasn't until that exact moment that she really saw how much she needed…him. As much as she was loathe to admit it, it was the truth. He did call her "Space-Case" after all. And who else would put aside decorum and common courtesy to shoot her back down to earth before she really made a mess of things?

But just because he was a rock didn't mean he was unbreakable.

There's always that one man that would never cry. He could steel himself through pain, heartache, and Titanic, so when he finally broke down, it broke down everything. It meant that something was just so horrible, that the chink in his armor had shattered, and if his walls crumbled, then there was no hope for anyone else's.

For her, that man wasn't her father or her stepfather. It was Derek—the skirt-chasing, inconsiderate, insensitive, prankster of a stepbrother. The chink in his armor had been found; the walls beginning to crack. Even though he still looked intact, she knew how close he really was to falling apart.

So she reached out and slid her fingers between his. When his fingers folded around hers, she pulled her other hand out of her pocket, covering his one hand with both of hers and giving him as much comfort and warmth as she could. The only thing in her mind was trying to help him hold himself together.

She didn't try to talk out why he was crying or reassure that Marti was fine. She didn't tell him everything would be okay or that he and the family would get through this. She never opened her mouth. Because sometimes when you're deathly afraid of something, you're beyond words of comfort. And she knew him enough that Derek had been deathly afraid of losing his baby sister—she fell down a flight of stairs for God's sake! She could've snapped her neck or completely cracked her skull open!

He wasn't crying anymore, but she knew that there were still things he needed to let out. In spite of how limp he looked, his entire frame was tense and stiff. There was something he was still bottling up, and Casey knew that the longer he kept it in, the bigger the explosion would be.

But she couldn't push him. She couldn't make him talk and make him let go.

So they just sat there.

Many different things ran through her mind the entire time—the smell of his hair, the feel of his calloused fingers between hers, the way the edge of the bench dug into the back of her thighs the longer they sat there for what seemed like forever but was, in actuality, just ten minutes.

She wanted to sit there forever. She felt as if though this was the only way to truly help Derek in a more significant way than being his source of entertainment or letting him cheat her out of money or TV time. If this was all she could do for him, then she'd do it. Not because she owed him or because she felt bad for him. She just…wanted to do it. Something in her…yearned to help him. It wasn't her "bleeding heart" or compassion. It was just…Derek. Uncharacteristic, unanticipated, and unexplainable.

Neither of them said a word as she tugged on his hand and stood up, pulling him up with her. He made no move to extricate his hand from hers even as they walked into the hospital and back into Marti's room. He just…gave her this look. This…unreadable look that clearly was trying to convey some sort of message that she just wasn't receiving.

"Your hand still feels the same," he muttered.

Uncharacteristic, unanticipated, and unbelievable.

Casey chuckled nervously, thrown by his comment. "What? Sticky and packed with cooties?" she quipped, trying to bring back some semblance of normalcy after everything that had happened already.

"No," he answered quietly, brushing his thumb back and forth against the skin of her knuckles while his eyes remained trained on their clasped hands.

And then he squeezed one last time before letting go and walking into the room, resuming his post next to Marti's bed.