Dislaimer- I do not own Degrassi.

SEE! I remembered! Yay me =)

Okay, so I wrote half of this chapter and absolutely hated it. I had writers block like you couldn't believe and my brain was just not working right (is it ever?), but I was annoyed and angry with myself so I just kept it. And then, I came back the next day and reread it and realized that it was actually good! That's kind of weird, but I guess I was just so annoyed that I would have hated anything.

Anyway, here is the next chapter. I have no idea how I'm going to start the next chapter, so it might take a while. I always say it might take a while, but then I don't feel so bad if I don't write for like 5 days.

He didn't hit me any harder. He didn't yell any louder. The kicks weren't tougher, and the pushes weren't stronger.

That doesn't change the fact that it was the most painful beating of my life. Not physically, not even emotionally, but something, something inside of me that I just can't place a name on snapped at the look on my father's face.

It wasn't anger. It wasn't hatred or fury or rage.

It was the exact same expression I wear everyday when I look at myself in the mirror.

And just knowing that somewhere inside of me lays a piece of my father, a part of ourselves that we share; I can care less about the bruises and wounds hidden beneath my clothes.

I am like my dad. I'm like the man that beats his daughter. I'm more like him than I am myself.

Terrified, miserable, hopeless, and breaking.

Or rather- broken.

Saturday morning fog has rolled in. Through the thick shades that are shielding what little amount of light there is from coming in through the window, my room is dark as midnight. My eyes will barely open, the dim setting acting as a perfect environment for sleeping more. But when I look at the clock and see that it's one in the afternoon, I jolt up, realizing now how I'm not in my bed, but on the couch, a soft wool blanket enveloping my lower body.

Moments of the previous night come rushing back in violent waves. My head hurts and I cringe at the evident bruises scattered across my stomach when I finally gain enough courage to lift my shirt up. They're sore when I touch them, so much that a loud, unstoppable gasp races out of my mouth.

Eventually standing up, I cross my arms over my chest and pace towards the kitchen. I can smell the aftermath of my father's daily morning coffee, which means that he's not home. I never know where he is on the weekends, or who he's with, but I always hope he's alone. The idea of someone else in his presence, being lied to and thinking all the wrong things, is just too much to think about.

For a moment I just stand here, alone, in the kitchen, still wearing my clothes from yesterday. The dishwasher is peacefully humming and someone is mowing their lawn out front, the rumbling barely making its way through the thick brick walls. The world is calm, quiet, serene, and I can't help but wonder if all of this has been a dream. The torture, the beatings, meeting Eli and chasing him away, feeling as though I can't even breathe. Just a dream; one that cut into my train of common sense and dimmed the light of reality. Maybe Eli is just a figment of my imagination. Maybe my dad really is the incredible man he throws himself out to be. Maybe I'm just paranoid, lost in a reverie and needing to see a therapist, quick, because I'm slipping away into the treacherous seas of my own dreamland.

I blink hard five times, hoping that during these few seconds I'll somehow wake up in a new world, one far, far away from the one I once drowned in. But each time I hesitantly open them, staring at the same old refrigerator, same old countertop, same old life, the hopeful fog in my head clears up.

Opening a cabinet door, I pull out a pop tart. I sit on the floor, cross-legged, and half-heartedly eat it.

Alli is probably off with Drew somewhere, making up excuses to touch him and giving him that flirty smile guys melt for. They might be at the Dot, sharing a desert Drew paid for, or at the movies, sneaking cautious looks at each other when they think the other isn't looking. Or maybe they're making out behind a dumpster in an ally-way, smiling like the lovesick teenagers they are whenever they pull away to gasp for air.

Adam might be reading a comic book right now, bobbing his head to music only he can hear through his headphones. Or he can be looking at himself in the mirror, the soft structure of his face, his small, fragile hands, and wanting and wanting to be who he's supposed to be.

I try not to think about Eli. Every time I do the look in his eyes comes back to haunt me, the look that left me speechless and makes me want to throw myself at his mercy, explain every detail, every carving of reason for the way I am.

And my dad. I bet he's with a group of friends from work, probably with some pretty girl, laughing at all the jokes they make and cracking a few of his own. He's probably making the ladies swoon and impressing all the guys, growing closer and closer to each and every one of them with each syllable that comes out to his mouth. The mask of a perfect man is fully shaped to fit his face, and no one suspects a thing about the person he really is. No one even considers that at home he may just have a dirty little secret concerning the bruises all over his daughter's body.

I wonder if his friends even know about me. I wonder if my dad talks about me or brags about all my achievements, or if he really is a totally different man around them, not only for who he is or what he does, but also for the people that are involved with him.

He's never actually brought anyone home before. Probably because being home means putting his guard down, loosening the strings he pretends don't choke him. I picture my dad bringing home a new girlfriend, and then being suddenly overwhelmed with the rage he always seems to feel and hitting her the same way he hits me. Is there any possibility that it might not be me that's the reason for all his actions, but our house? If we moved, would things be any different? Would all of this end?

I hate how I always ask myself all of these questions. All they ever do is leave me hanging on a desperate note with no one to pull me out. So when I take the last chuck of my pop tart, I erase all questions from my mind and think about anything else. But it's hard. The world is only question, no answer.

Two-thirty and I'm finally dressed, ready to go out. Once again, no destination, but I'm beginning to like the feeling of not knowing where I'm headed. It sends me into a high, a state of rebellion and freedom I've only felt once before.

I walk along the curb, careful not to lose balance and fall into the crowded road. People walk by, and the more people I see the more I realize just how identical we all are. The universe tries to tell us we're unique by putting on different faces and bodies and voices and traits, but when you rip it all of, dig down to the deepest parts of us humans, we're all the same. We all want to go through life with someone by our side. We all want to live as long as we can. We all want to be wanted. We all want to believe we're not the same. But we don't always get what we want. And when it's all said and done, we die in ashes of rusting wants.

Then what's the point of living, if we all know where we're headed? Everyone dies. The end. So why do people try so desperately to hold onto something that has been proven to slip through our fingers?

Again with the questions. Again with wanting answers that just won't ever appear. Again with the cycle of everything, the cycle of this crazy thing we call life. Life is constantly shifting before our eyes, making noises and rustling through the trees and spinning too fast for us to keep up with it.

And it ends in nothing but silence.

Eventually I find an empty bench in the park and sit down. There's barely any people around, just an elderly man walking his dog and a group of middle school kids gossiping around the central tree.

My eyes are shut and I watch the colors flash before the blackness. Red, blue, green. Dancing with each other, or maybe they're even chasing, but it doesn't matter because I'll ever know.

"Looking up words in the dictionary."

I don't need to open my eyes to know who it is. But I do, anyway. Eli is sitting beside me, looking into my eyes like he's clawing out a certain aspect to find out what's hidden underneath.

"What?"

"That's what I do when I feel like I'm going insane. I look up words in the dictionary. It calms me." His eyes shift to the tree above us and he studies it for a moment before looking back at me. It feels like he's about to say something else, but after a few moments of no one speaking, I say the only thing I'm capable of.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because," he fiddles with the hem of his shirt, "You seem like you could use something to calm you down."

I look away from him because I don't want him to notice how close I am to tears. A crackling of the damn that's been holding them up and water is one nerve away from leaking out.

"I know a lot of words," he continues on, ignoring my ignoring him. "Gallivant means seeking pleasure. Ravenousness means greediness. Impecunious means to have no cash or money. Vernacular means-"

"Why are you telling me this?" I say again, this time more forceful.

"I…" he trails off, the anguished look he had that day on the roof returning. Only he doesn't wipe it off or turn away to hide it from me. He wants me to see it. He wants me to understand just what he's saying.

Like so many times before, I don't say anything. And I think back to all those moments I've let silence do the talking for me and regret them, each and every one. Silence doesn't talk. It stays silent.

I'm not going to stay silent this time. Even if what I'm saying isn't important or life changing.

"What is it?"

The same words I said to Adam when he told me his secret. Reality sets in and it finally hits me; the time Eli walked out of the classroom without saying anything, when he shoved away my question of where he found the rooftop, the way he notices signals of secrecy like no one else does.

I close my eyes and brace myself for a confession. I can feel it crawling closer and closer.

"Clare, please don't close your eyes. This is hard enough as it is."

I shake my head, stubborn me, and refuse to open them. I don't want to know. I don't want to know anything about him while I'm tucking everything away.

"Clare."

His voice forces me to open my eyes. I look at him and wait for him to say something, anything, to stop the cold stream withering down my spine.

"You know what," he shakes his head, gazing down at the gravel below us. I can see closure in his eyes, the look that reflects Alli's expression yesterday at The Dot, right before she walked out the door.

"This was just stupid. You obviously don't want to know."

When he stands up and walks away, I know that I can't take another loss. Another person leaving me behind, or rather, me letting them walk ahead while I stand in the background and watch them fade out of sight.

Putting all thoughts and concerns away, I get up and follow after him. Eli doesn't look shocked or happy or angry when I grab his arm to spin him around. All he does is stand still, the visions of people walking by increasing in speed until they're nothing but blurs of colors.

"Say it," I demand furiously, my voice wavering with a totally different emotion.

I follow him over towards the bench once again and take a deep breath.

"Last year, I dated this girl and…" he scrunched up his face as though someone was digging a knife through his skin. "One night, one stupid, stupid night, we got into a fight about God knows what."

This isn't a time for speaking. Even when he pauses to collect his thoughts and doesn't say anything after, I still keep quiet, knowing that nothing I could say will change whatever pain he's going through.

"Things got out' a hand. I said all this crap that, God, I just freakin wish I could take back it all back!" Eli let's his head fall into his hands and chokes out what seems to be a suppressed sob.

I still don't say anything. I still don't move. All I can do is wait for the truth, the truth that has been tearing him up all this time.

"I killed her."

He says the words so quietly I question if I heard him right.

When Eli stares back at me his face is haunting, dark. Olive eyes turn into the color of stone.

"I. Killed. Her." He repeats again. By the look on his face I assume he's never actually said it before, out loud, and the phrase must hold an intense weight on him that I can't comprehend, even if it may be pushing down on me pretty hard.

"She got hit by a car. I let her go off into the night on that fucking bicycle!" His fist connects with the back of the bench hard enough to make the wood crack. Flinching, I swallow my fear and try frantically to take his words down with it.

"Do you really want to be with someone like that, Clare? A killer?"

"You're not a killer," I say, and I believe it, I really do, but the shock from everything make the words come out more remorsefully than truthful.

"Don't say that!" When I flinch again, Eli notices, and waves an accusing finger at me. "See! You're scared. You're scared because I'm a killer!"

"No I'm not!" I'm yelling now too, attracting attention from the few amounts of people still present in the park. What we must look like, Eli and I. A boy in black and a girl with no color on her face, both dark and shadowed and tired of it all, pulling at the last strands of hair they have left. "I'm scared because you're yelling at me!"

He stands up. "What do you want me to do? Cry? Fall into your arms and tell you how all this shit has made me feel? You wouldn't understand. God, no one understands! They say they do but they just don't!"

"How do you know that?" I scream, picturing my father's face transforming before my eyes, the monster beneath his mask melting away the good in him. "How do you know I wouldn't understand?"

"You just wouldn't, okay?" His hands stark shaking, goose bumps racing across his skin. "My parents don't understand. My therapist didn't understand. Adam barely understands! Why would you be any different?"

I can imagine the words assembling along the tip of my tongue. The way they would sound coming out of mouth, entering the world in one quick, swift tumbling of my lips. A breath of fresh air, a loosening of the strings grasping the skin around my neck, a million questions building up inside Eli's stomach and a million regrets forming inside mine.

I can see it all. The future as a movie in high definition with surround sound and incisions that reach all the way to my core. All it would take is one moment, one rapid moment of speech that could change my life.

Surrounding my silence is Eli's desperate waiting for a response.

"I don't know," I mumble helplessly, the sensation of hope dying just as fast as it came to life, "But I do know is that you can trust me."

Sighing, Eli settles back down on the bench and leans his head back to face the sky. I follow his gaze, clouds moving to the left, infinity amount of blue never shifting out of place. The sun is creeping in between the two, a seesaw of bright light and gradual dimming, the difference between a nice day for walking outside or a dreary one where you stay inside, doors locked, on the couch, watching a movie under a warm blanket.

"I know," he says after a long time, "I know. Adam told me how good you were to him and I did want to tell you, but I was afraid."

"Of what?" I already know the answer, but even so he needs to say it, out loud.

He turns to face me, the intense expression back on his features like I've seen so many times before. I stare back, just as hard, and wait to hear the words that are already playing through my head, that have been for a long, long time.

"I was afraid of losing you."

There they are. Afraid of loss. Afraid of being alone, one less shoulder to cry on or hand to hold, even when the person didn't know what they were doing. The feeling is all too familiar, the feeling of grasping onto something hard enough that your knuckles turn white, yet you keep holding on because the idea of it slipping away rips through your heart. It sucks, on every angle you decipher it. There's no upside, no grass is greener on the other side.

"Do you think you're gonna lose me now?"

I lean into him when he reaches out a hand to brush my hair away from my face. It's a soft and comforting gesture, one people would expect me to do to him. But right now isn't about comforting. It's about Eli knowing I'm here, I'm real, not dissolving right here before him or walking in the other direction.

"Should I?"

"No."

A soft smile makes its way across Eli's face. It reaches his eyes. The stone is gone, replaced now with the sparkling olive color I've grown to adore.

"Good," he whispers, pulling his hand away.

He smiled, but that still doesn't mean the pain isn't tearing him apart. And even though I want to tell him the truth more than anything, I can't, so I do the second best thing I can think of.

I reach my arm out to hold his hand.

So there you have it! Confession!

I need your opinion. Was the scene believable? Did I take it too fast