Trina felt nearly giddy with curiosity as she waited by herself in the Vega family's living room for her dad and Tori to come home. While taking a call from Trina and Tori's father who said that he had Tori in his police cruiser and was bringing her home, Mrs. Vega had burst into tears and barricaded herself in the bedroom that she shared with her husband. There had been more to the conversation on the phone – specifically, why exactly Tori had been arrested – but Trina hadn't been able to hear that part in her eavesdropping and the possibilities were driving her nuts. Whatever had happened, it must have been pretty bad to illicit that kind of a reaction from the practically unshakable Holly Vega.
Suddenly a car door slammed outside of their house, and Trina's eyes shot up from where she had been watching TV just as her dad came into the house with Tori trailing behind him, looking like somebody's lost and neglected puppy. If she felt as bad as she looked, Tori must have done something really off the charts while out with her friends.
"Where's your mother?" Officer Vega asked Trina, looking visibly drained.
Well, of course he was tired – he had to be horribly disappointed in his delinquent daughter. "She's upstairs in your room bawling her eyes out – the bedroom door is locked and everything," Trina answered, glancing between her dad and sister as she asked curiously, "What's going on?"
"Nothing, Trina," her dad answered, the stern tone of his voice catching her off-guard. He started to head up the staircase, saying, "I'm going to go check on your mother. Trina-" She looked innocently up at him as he ordered, "Be nice to your sister and leave her alone about this. You got it?"
David Vega had never spoken so sternly to her so that she remembered, nor had he ever been in such a bad mood in all of her recollection – but again, he had never arrested one of his own children before either.
Trina nodded obligingly. "Got it dad," she lied, waiting until he was out of earshot to bombard her sister with question. After all, the girl looked half dead, so this was bound to be good. "What the heck did you get yourself into that the cops had to show up? Especially Dad, of all people?" Tori didn't reply, just stood staring at the pack of a chair as Trina pressed, "Come on, what did you do?"
"I didn't do anything!" Tori insisted suddenly. "I was the victim here! And Dad showing up at the scene was just a fluke."
"Wait," Trina repeated, "Scene? As in crime scene?"
"Leave me alone!" Tori screamed before suddenly springing into action and racing determinedly up the staircase saying, "I'm going to go take a shower."
Trina followed her; desperate to know what had occurred earlier in the night with her sister. Tori was quicker, though, and ran into the bathroom, slamming and locking the door behind her before Trina could catch up with her. Trina huffed when she came face to face with the closed door, pouting a little as she backed away.
It was then that the low murmur of her parents' voices in the other room caught her ear. She crept silently closer to their barely ajar bedroom door, straining intently to catch what they were saying to one another.
"You told me that the dispatcher called it assault, right?" Trina heard her mother say. Officer Vega presumably nodded, because Mrs. Vega then desperately asked, "Then are you sure that it was that kind of assault?"
"She told me it was, Holly. Why would she tell me that the man had done that to her if he hadn't? And furthermore, why would she find it in herself to stab the man if she hadn't been in that desperate a situation? You and I both know Tori well enough to know that she wouldn't lie about something like that, let alone kill a man without having that sort of desperation to get away. She just wouldn't, and we both know it."
"Well…" Even without seeing her, Trina could tell that her mother was grasping at straws when she whispered softly to Trina's father, "What exactly did she tell you?"
"Holly…"
"Please, David, she's my little girl too; I need to know," came Mrs. Vega's painful insistence.
She heard her dad sigh heavily before he began to recount the story that he obviously didn't want to tell. Trina listened carefully, making sure that she didn't miss a word. Little by little, Trina found herself sliding down the wall as her mouth gaped and her heart began to pound with the horror of what she was hearing. Her poor sister!
When he was done telling his wife what had happened, the two of them remained silent in the room for a long moment while they both collected themselves before he said, "You need to go ahead and go to bed, Holly; I'm going to check on the girls and then I'll be back in, alright?"
Startled from her dazed numbness, Trina sprang up and darted into her room before her father could discover that she had been listening and heard every word that he had said.
Not a second after Trina had flopped into her bed pretending to be asleep did Officer Vega crack open her bedroom door and whisper her name. She mumbled incoherently, hoping to convince him that she had been sleeping soundly.
"I need to go be with your mother right now – this has hit her pretty hard; give Tori another minute and if she's not out of the shower by then, could you go check on her?"
Trina nodded, once again mumbling what she knew he would take as her agreement.
"Thank you. And, please, Trina, don't pester her about what's going on – trust me as the man who wants to protect you from life when I say that you don't want to know."
Trina nodded, biting her lip and wishing for once that she didn't know what she had just overheard.
"Alright."
Her father went to step out of her room, but Trina stopped him when she sprung out of bed and wrapped her arms around his neck, whispering, "You're a good dad, you know."
He smiled sadly, glassy eyes blinking back a sheen of tears. "Good night, sweetie."
"Good night," and then she added impulsively. "I love you."
"I love you girls too – more than you'll ever know."
With that he slipped down the hallway and into his bedroom. Trina shut the door to her own room and pulled on a pair of pajama pants, listening to the shower running. When it didn't stop before she threw her jeans in the dirty clothes basket, Trina went out into the hallway to fulfill her promise to her dad and knocked on the bathroom door.
Instantly the water was turned off, and Tori called out, "Just a minute."
Trina leaned against the wall of the hallway by the door, waiting for her sister to emerge. When after a number of minutes, Tori didn't come out, Trina knocked on the door again. "Tori?"
"I'll be out in a second."
Despite the reply, Trina cracked open the bathroom door and asked without looking, "Can I come in?"
"I don't care."
So Trina did, and what she saw made her want to cry even more then she had desired to the moment before. Her baby sister was sitting on the bathroom floor, her dark hair stringy and still dripping wet against her t-shirt and shorts and she was viciously scrubbing at her legs despite the fact that they were already red with rawness.
"Tori," Trina said gently, kneeling down beside her sister to capture the hand that held the washcloth. "Stop."
"I can't," Tori choked. "I'm still dirty… I still feel… He's still…"
"No," Trina said softly. "He's dead now, right?"
Tori looked over at her then as she nodded, and it was in that moment that Trina noticed that the water on her clothes wasn't coming from just her hair – she was also sobbing.
"I can still feel him though," Tori whispered brokenly.
Utter helplessness washed over Trina. The one time that she truly wanted to help her sister, and she had no idea how to go about doing it. Having no other ideas, Trina pulled her sister into her arms and held her close, letting her cry into the crook of her neck.
Trina began to cry too, letting the tears fall unheeded into her sister already wet hair.
After a moment, she began to sing softly through her tears, "I don't wanna make a scene
I don't wanna let you down
Tryin' to do my own thing,
and I'm starting to figure it out
That it's alright keep it together where ever we go
And it's alright oh well whatever
Everybody needs to know
You might be crazy
have I told you lately
That I love you
You're the only reason that I'm not afraid to fly…"
After a few minutes, Trina realized that they had both stopped crying. Looking down at her, Trina saw that Tori was even asleep in her arms, using her lap as a pillow right there on the cold bathroom floor. Something told Trina that if she woke her sister now, the youngest Vega wouldn't be going back to sleep tonight. Sighing softly, Trina grabbed a couple of towels from the towel rack and draped one over Tori's midsection before fitting one around her shoulders and settling in for a long and uncomfortable night.
Okay, new plan! This will be an eight-shot. Reviews make my day full of sunshine and spur me on in my writing! Thanks!:)