2/4
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Claire finally stops pretending on a Friday.
She's stayed late after school, hanging up streamers for the First Week Dance – a pointless exercise, considering that Homecoming is in a month, but she has responsibilities, nonetheless. That doesn't mean that she can't be pissed off that Jackie totally bailed on her, though.
She's reaching up high to attach the end of a streamer to the corner of the bleachers when her stepladder wobbles and the cracking of wood reaches her ears. She knows what will happen a split second before it does, and vaguely hears a voice cry out loudly as the leg of the ladder gives way and she crashes headfirst into the bleachers, the crunch of wood and bone splitting the silence.
She hits the ground hard and there's sticky wetness all over her face, and she hears someone babbling. Before she can say anything to calm down whoever it is, the voice cuts off, and Claire knows they must be seeing her head wound disappear.
She waits until the strange, prickly sensation of her wound dissipates completely before reaching up and wiping the blood away from her eyes with her sleeve. She blinks up at her witness and sighs. Don't freak out, she says.
Holy shit. Zach's eyes are wide, and he takes an uncertain step backward. Claire, what –
Just don't freak, she repeats. Look, you can't tell anyone, okay?
Tell anyone what? Zach's voice is incredulous. What the hell was that? I don't understand.
Join the club.
--
Maybe it was a fluke, Zach says. They're walking slowly, though it's more like Claire walking and Zach following her. Maybe – maybe we're both just…
Tired? Claire suggests. High on caffeine and Gilmore Girls?
What?
Nothing. Claire wipes at her forehead again, hating the sweaty, sticky feeling. Just forget about this, Zach. You don't wanna know.
Yes I do, he says. There's something going on here, Claire.
It turns out that that's all that Claire needed, and she stops short in the middle of the street. There is something going on. Yes, there really is.
Zach helps her sit down on the curb, looking at her worriedly, and she wants to laugh because twenty minutes ago she had a gaping wound on her forehead and now he's helping her sit, like she has the vapors or something.
Has it always been like this? he asks.
I guess. Claire frowns. I don't know anything. I don't know who I am.
Do your parents know?
No.
You should ask them. Zach is remarkably calm. If you have it, then…maybe they do, too.
I'm adopted, Claire says idly, then stops. Wait, I'm adopted. The revelation strikes her and thrills and depresses her all at once. Oh my God.
Zach shakes his head. Cheerleaders, he says wryly. They're so slow on the uptake.
--
She gets an idea. It's not a fully formed one, but it's an idea, and the next morning at school she pulls Zach aside and asks if he has a video camera. He frowns and shrugs, says he uses one for A/V club. Claire snorts and makes a sarcastic comment, whirling and striding off before he can catch enough breath for a retort.
She shows up at his house after school, still in her uniform from practice. She pounds on his door like a madwoman, and feels slightly chagrined when his mother wrenches the door open and looks at Claire as if she's a piece of dirt stuck to her shoe. She shrugs and smiles her popularity smile and tells Zach's mother that she needs to borrow her son for an English project and could you please remind him to bring his video camera?
She feels slightly hysterical, dragging her almost-sorta-kinda-friend along by his collar, searching through her garage for weapons. She's tired of guessing, tired of not knowing, and the scene from her bathroom is prominent in her mind, sitting on her bathtub and working up the courage to cut herself.
She finds a handgun in her dad's toolbox, and she shakes her head, remembering the fight her parents had had about it. Protection, her dad had said. At the time, Claire was confused as to what exactly it was her father thought they needed protecting from. But right now, she doesn't care what it's for, as long as it's there.
Zach looks even more wary at the sight of the gun that he did before, but he follows her without question. She goes with a single-minded determination that surprises her, dragging him out to the empty cornfield down the street from her house. She cocks the gun and tells Zach to turn on the camera.
Whoa, whoa, Claire. Hold on a second –
Claire just looks at him. Turn it on, Zach.
His eyebrows pinch together and his face flashes with fear, but he uncaps the lens and switches on the camera, pointing it on her figure with shaky hands.
It feels incredibly heavy in her hands, heavier than she thought it would. She starts to point it at her head but chickens out, going for her stomach instead. She fumbles with the trigger and this is her first time shooting much of anything, let alone a handgun, so she's unprepared for the backlash, and she accidentally jerks the nozzle to the left slightly, so the bullet slices cleanly through her shoulder instead of her stomach like it was intended to.
She hits the ground and hears Zach cry out, but she can already feel the wound receding when he reaches her. Keep the camera on! she cries, struggling to stand. On my shoulder.
Zach gulps and focuses the shot on her shoulder, capturing every second of the wound knitting back together, disappearing in front of their eyes.
Claire takes a deep breath and looks straight at the lens. This is Claire Bennet, she says. And that was my first attempt.
--
It becomes a bit of a sick thrill after the first couple times. They run out of methods pretty quick – who knew how hard it could be to think of ways to kill yourself – and Zach ends up consulting his sci-fi novels for ideas. Claire spends Labor Day weekend jumping in front of a train, stabbing herself with a kitchen knife, electrocuting herself with a hairdryer and jumping over the side of a dam.
Attempt number six, a leap off a high scaffold in the middle of nowhere, ends as all the others do, with a bloody and disheveled Claire standing and walking away as if nothing happens, and she starts to wonder why Zach isn't running away yet. He treats the thing like something straight out of a comic book, and he doesn't get it. Not really. Mostly, she thinks, because it isn't happening to him.
She doesn't know why she's doing this with him, anyway. She doesn't know a lot of things.
One thing she really doesn't know, for instance, is where the sudden superhero impulse came from. It's not like she planned on any grand heroic gestures; it's not like she really thought about it at all. She was never the saver, only the saved. She's never taken care of anyone in her life, other than herself. But there's something inside her chest that tugs and pulls, and really in the end there is only one choice.
The man's name is Joseph Wellman, she finds out later. She reads the article in the Odessa Herald over eggs and bacon, and traces the guy's picture with a fingernail.
When her mother walks in, she pretends she's looking at the movie reviews.
--
Well, damn it. She probably should've thought of this.
Girls! This isn't a…criminal investigation. Nobody here is in any kind of trouble. Quite the contrary. The Sheriff of Odessa, Texas is kind of a putz, Claire thinks. He keeps touching his belt, which is sort of weird. There just happens to be a very grateful man lying in the hospital who'd like to thank one of you for…saving his life yesterday.
Claire says nothing, melting into the line of red and white and tan. Jackie, beside her, fidgets.
Principal Marks has always seemed nice to Claire, as nice as a high school principal could be. She almost feels sorry for him, he looks so bewildered. I've never seen anyone so reluctant to be called a hero. You're sure it was one of our cheerleaders?
The uniform said Union Wells High. The fireman guy squints at the line of cheerleaders, and Claire cringes inwardly. I'd have to say it was…her on the end.
Oh, shit. That's Claire Bennet!
Claire, where'd you go yesterday after cheerleading practice?
Shit, shit, shit. Uh…
It wasn't her. Claire jumps, and looks over at Jackie, who plasters a smile on her face and steps forward. It was me. I was taking a shortcut home from school, and…I saw the wreckage of the train…wreck. And…I just had to help.
Claire stares at her best friend incredulously. Is she kidding?
Why didn't you say something?
I guess I didn't want all the attention, you know? Jackie smiles, sweet as sugar. My God, she's just pulling this from her ass, isn't she? That's not why I did it.
People swarm over and suddenly it's a Jackie sandwich. Claire watches her carefully, and there's a second when Jackie catches her eye, and a hard look comes over her friend's face.
Claire says nothing.
--
Things start happening quickly. What Claire knows and what she doesn't soon isn't as clear as it was before, and hard truths, truths she thought she could always count on suddenly don't seem so reliable anymore. Her father, mother, brother, friends, life, all of it quickly becomes irrelevant. Shadows of a dream that she never really had or wanted in the first place, and Claire finds herself dreading each and every morning, yearning more and more to surrender to a lifetime of sleep. Just…fuzzy white oblivion. No cheerleading, no lying, no pretending. Just existing.
Everywhere she turns, there's another lie, another cloud of mist obscuring her vision until she's stumbling around, barely managing to keep her footing among the phantom hands that claw at her feet, ghoulish laughter floating up to her ears as invisible assailants wait for her to fall.
Her life is a house of cards, carefully and methodically built on a table of deception. She tiptoes around the structure, knowing every second that it was a second away from falling, and trying with all her might to keep it standing. She may be indestructible, but the ones she loves are not. And that's the thing that really worries her.
--
Then, she slams into her destiny. Literally, because she's hurrying toward the locker rooms because she's late and not looking, and she didn't expect anyone to be in the hallway anyway. Oh, sorry!
That was my fault, I wasn't looking where I was going. She shrugs and smiles. Her destiny is cute, with comic book hair and a trenchcoat. He definitely isn't from around here. He looks windswept, almost as if he rode here with his head out of the window. Maybe he did.
Hey, do you know this girl, Jackie Wilcox?
Oh, well, of course. Uh yeah, half-time show starts in about five minutes. She'll be out on the field. She's a cheerleader. He's got a nice smile, she notices. Are you a reporter or something?
Alumni. Lie. She's getting good at spotting them. I'm just curious.
Whatever. You know, between you and me, she's not that special. Just your average teenage girl.
He tilts his head slightly. She rushed into a fire and saved a man's life, that sounds kinda special to me.
She wants to know his name, but knows better than to ask. Yeah, you're right. I'm jealous. She's our town hero. Me? I don't win too many popularity contests.
She kind of figured that he'd stop her from walking away on that line. Hey, it gets better!
What?
Life after high school. It gets a lot better. Does graduation disqualify you from the American Society of Unkillable Freak Shows?
Well, no. But at least she wouldn't have to deal with Algebra anymore.
--
Jackie's a bitch, she decides.
She's always kinda known it, even before the whole popularity thing and the attention hound thing and now the Brody thing. But now, the Zach thing, that's really the last straw. Things are sucky enough without the co-captain from hell insulting the person who has quickly become her only link to sanity.
But as Jackie dangles from the hands of a killer, Claire can't seem to care about any of it.
Run.
Claire thinks of Gilmore Girls and lip gloss and obeys.
--
Peter. His name is Peter. Funny, she doesn't think he looks like a Peter. A Robert, maybe, or a Daniel.
But no, it's Peter. Peter Petrelli, brother to that Senator guy, the one that her mother thinks looks like a young Cary Grant. But the other Petrelli is shorter and paler, his jaw less defined and his shoulders less broad. She guesses that if she saw them standing together she would notice the differences and the similarities plainly. But all she can remember are his hands on her arms, steady and strong. His voice. Don't worry about me, just go!
And really, his shoulders hadn't seemed all that bad to her.
Peter Petrelli quickly becomes a beacon in her head, a symbol more than anything. She barely has time to even meet him before they're whisked away into their separate lives, but she keeps that name firmly in her head. Peter Petrelli. Peter Petrelli. Peter Petrelli. It's a mantra, or a prayer, or more like a sigh of relief.
She's not alone anymore.
--