Disclaimer: I don't own In Plain Sight. It's just fodder for my imagination! ;)

Author's Note: Sorry for the skipped update yesterday and the late update today. Yesterday, the muses would only let me work on chapters that come much later in the story, and today... well let's just say my word processing program kept crashing like the Titanic on an iceberg, and my mother was having a bad day of Jinx-like proportions. My mother I can deal with, but computer problems? Nooooo! X(

Anyway, at long last, here's an update!

Fish Out of Water

Chapter 4

"Oh my God!" Mary shouted as she took the stack of forms in her hands and tried to tear it in half. The thick pile resisted her efforts, she felt, purely to spite her. "This fucking sucks!"

"Give them to me before you ruin them," Marshall said, grabbing the forms and trying to wrest them from Mary's grip before she destroyed all the work she'd done so far. She clung to them wrathfully, determined to exact her vengeance. A brief struggle ensued, each of them grappling with the other for dominion over the papers, until Mary's hands slipped free against her will and Marshall emerged the victor.

"You know, these college applications don't care if you rip them," he growled, glaring at his now petulant friend. "All that would do is prevent you from even applying."

"It's stupid to even try. I won't get in anyway," she huffed. "And even if I did, I can't afford it."

"It's stupid not to try. You could almost certainly qualify for financial aid," he replied as he turned his attention to smoothing out the wrinkled sheets of paper, scanning the information she'd entered so far. "A lot of it, by the look of things. And there are student loans to cover what that doesn't. Now, give me the pen."

Mary watched him warily as she handed over the writing implement. He took it and set about filling in the rest of the top sheet.

"Hey, what are you doing?" she cried, reaching to snatch the forms from him.

"These are getting filled out one way or another," he muttered as he batted her hand away.

"And you think Brunswick won't notice when my applications have your handwriting all over them?"

"He won't notice, because it isn't going to look like my handwriting."

"What? Let me see," Mary said disbelievingly, leaning over to see what he was doing. "So you're like, an expert at faking other people's handwriting or something?"

"Not an expert, no," he showed her the sheet. "You were already printing in block letters, and block lettering is a lot harder to distinguish than cursive or even regular printing. It's not like Mr. Brunswick is a handwriting expert either, so all I have to do is make it look passably not like mine. See, your handwriting is rounder and mine's more cramped."

"You're a nerd for knowing that stuff," she grumbled. "You really don't mind filling those out?"

"Oh, I mind. I also want it to get done, though," he paused, glancing at her. "If you stop pouting, I'll give you something nice tomorrow."

"Don't talk to me like I'm a little kid, you jerk!" she snapped. After a moment, curiosity got the better of her. "You're really going to give me something?"

Marshall nodded while he continued to fill in the paperwork.

"Well… what is it?" she prodded.

"I'm not telling."

"Come on, you have to!" Mary whined. "I can't wait until tomorrow."

"I'd give it to you now if you'd come to my house. Filling out forms in a windy park on the back of a notebook is less than ideal," he pointed out.

"No way. The criminal's kid hanging out with the marshal's kid is bad enough. You really think that having me meet your family is going to be a good thing?"

Marshall stopped writing and looked up thoughtfully. "You know, I just realized how completely appropriate that is for us."

Mary stared at him blankly. "Am I supposed to understand what you're talking about? Because I don't."

"You will," he said with a smile, and hunched over to continue writing.

Mary flopped back on the grass. Marshall said a lot of weird things, that wasn't new, but it had started to irritate her more lately than it had at first. She didn't really understand it; it wasn't angry irritation like she was used to, but more like a blush-inducing, fluttery thing, and her inability to figure it out pissed her off. It wasn't really Marshall's fault. It was her, some problem she had, and resolved to sort out whatever it was on her own.

The mid-October wind gusted sharply, tugging at the papers as Marshall wrote. The top sheets slipped away before he could catch them and skittered across the grass.

"Crap," he muttered, jamming the remaining papers under his backpack and scrambling after the ones that had scattered. Mary jumped up and followed suit.

They ran after the forms, still being tossed by the wind, and grabbed them up as they went. Soon there was only one left, and they both went for it at the same time. Their feet tangled and Marshall fell, reflexively grabbing Mary who had also lost her footing. He hit the ground and a half-second later Mary landed squarely on him, forcing the air out of him in a grunt.

Neither of them moved for a moment, recovering from the suddenness of the fall, then Mary planted her hand on Marshall's chest and pushed herself up, robbing him of what little breath he'd managed to get back. He oofed softly, scrunching his eyes shut in discomfort. Realizing he was still pinned to the ground, he opened them and blinked. He froze as he registered Mary's face above his; she was straddling him and looking down at him with wide eyes, a faint blush tinting her face pink. Her hair was draped around her face, cascading toward him and glinting golden in the fading light. He knew he should tell her to get off of him before she realized he liked it, but he couldn't do it; she was too beautiful, and thankfully, she wasn't sitting low enough on him to realize the reaction she was provoking from him. He scarcely dared to breathe, lest it snap her out of the moment, so he just stayed still, looking at her, the papers he'd gathered up still clutched in his hand.

Mary's heart thudded as Marshall's eyes opened and he looked up at her with breathless surprise. His hair was disheveled slightly from the fall, and the blue and white plaid of his cowboyish button-down shirt brought out the blue of his eyes. She found the sight of him, pinned to the ground under her in the grass and dirt, to be strangely exciting. The fluttery sensation she'd felt lately when she was around him had condensed into a tightly-wound knot of anticipation, and she was acutely aware of the warmth of his body where it was pressed against her own. She was suspended in the moment, unable to think clearly at all.

The two moved at the same time; Marshall reached for her just as she noticed the rogue sheet of paper they'd been chasing out of the corner of her eye and launched herself after it. His hand hovered where it had been about to settle on her hip, and then dropped as he pushed himself off the ground and followed after her.

"Hey, Marshall, I think we got them all," she smiled, hoping it was convincing. She didn't know what she was feeling for him, but whatever it was, she was certain someone like him didn't belong in a life like hers.

"Hard to say," he murmured as he took the papers she had and added them to his. "I'll take these home and see if I can get them back in order tonight."

Marshall plodded home after school, Mary's college applications in his book bag. He'd spent the past evening flattening them all out as well as he could, putting them all in order, and dutifully filling out each one. Among them, he had found her half-assed attempt at a cover letter; he'd taken it upon himself to rewrite it and type it up. He hoped he'd come up with something that sounded passably like Mary, albeit a version of Mary who actually cared whether or not she got accepted. It wasn't so much the case that she didn't care, but more that she couldn't allow herself the luxury of caring about something that might never happen.

He had intended to give the forms to her at school today, along with the gift he'd promised her the day before: a copy of Romeo and Juliet that she could use to study for their paper if she wanted to. It featured plain text translation on each facing page, as well as appendices of criticisms, discussion of themes, and explications of selected important verse, which he felt would help the development of their paper's central thesis considerably. He'd bought a second one for himself; he wanted his reading to be as close to exactly the same as hers as was possible, though of course the subjective nature of experience precluded perfect uniformity. Still, if she mentioned something from page forty-two, he would be able to look at exactly what she was seeing, and that would make the learning process go far more smoothly.

His intentions had come to naught, at least for the day, because Mary had been absent. He'd looked for her on the P.E. fields from his vantage point in biology class to no avail, but he'd allowed for the possibility that she was for some reason sitting out for the day, or that perhaps her class was in the gym. A lunchtime visit to the bathroom he'd come to think of as theirs had yielded no Mary either, however, and when at last he sat in English class alone, he was forced to accept the fact that she simply wasn't there.

He knew it wasn't a personal affront to him. He seriously doubted she thought he'd stay up late to do her paperwork for her. She was a far cry from the girls at his old school who had tried to befriend him for homework privileges. He didn't think she even wanted anything from him other than company, and even that she wouldn't admit to wanting. She didn't ask for favors, generally; he just felt compelled to bestow them, and there was no mystery there. He had developed a crush of epic proportions, that much he had figured out, but the trick was to keep her from finding out about it. Marshall understood intuitively that it had taken a lot for her to accept his friendship, perhaps more than she generally had to give, and anything more than that was beyond her at the moment and would very likely frighten her off.

He'd lain awake the night before, though he'd exhausted himself staying up to finish her applications, thinking about their encounter in the park that afternoon. He might have called it heavenly, if heaven involved heart-pounding, dry-mouthed nervousness, clammy hands, and a huge bruise on his ass. At least Mary hadn't been injured, though she had complained of landing on something too bony to be comfortable. The double meaning of her words was clear, even though she was only joking. She doesn't know the half of it. Marshall glanced around furtively, as though his thoughts were somehow in danger of becoming public knowledge.

It was then that he realized he'd taken the less direct route home out of habit, the one that passed by Brandi's elementary school. Mary had taken to picking her sister up if she wasn't going home with one of her friends, of which there were a few; in that area, the twelve year old was far more resourceful than Mary was. It made no sense to take this route today, since Mary wasn't even there, and Marshall was in the midst of mentally chastising himself when he spotted Brandi.

The girl stood on the sidewalk, casting anxious glances up and down the street, clutching her pink backpack with a white cartoon cat on it. The character was fairly popular, it seemed, and Mary had confided to Marshall that she'd bought it with money meant to replace her own ratty, holey bag because Brandi had wanted it so badly. Evidently, among Brandi's classmates, if you didn't own at least some educational paraphernalia branded with the character, you were no one of consequence.

Brandi spotted Marshall as he approached her. "Hi, Marshall!" she chirped, looking happier. "Did Mary send you to get me?"

"Not exactly," he said, his brow creasing with concern. It was unlike Mary, at least recently, to leave her sister waiting. "Is Mary sick? She wasn't in class today."

"Mary isn't sick," she answered, "Mom is. When she got home this morning she wasn't feeling well."

Marshall frowned. Something about Brandi's statement felt scripted, as if she was repeating something she'd been told.

"Mary said she might not go to school today, but she was still supposed to come pick me up!" Brandi added plaintively. "She wouldn't just leave me here!"

Upset, her voice carried, attracting the attention of a teacher, a motherly woman in her forties. She made her way to them in quick strides, a concerned look on her face and a clipboard in her hands.

"Brandi, who are you talking to?" she demanded, eyeing Marshall suspiciously.

"Miss K, this is my friend Marshall!" Brandi introduced him excitedly, grabbing his hand. "He takes me to the park sometimes. I accidentally showed him my underpants!"

"I'm her sister's friend," Marshall spluttered at the teacher's alarmed look. "I walk home with them, that's all!"

"Listen, I don't know who you are, but you can explain yourself to the police!" the teacher said, grabbing Brandi's hand out of his.

"Oh, wait, Miss K!" Brandi wailed. "I forgot! He's on my list!"

"I'm what?" Marshall asked, confused, as the teacher flipped through the papers on the clipboard.

"You're Marshall Mann?" she asked in a dubious tone.

"Uh, yeah," he replied as he fumbled for his wallet. "Here's my driver's license."

"Very well, your name is on the list and your ID checks out," the teacher said, her tone shifting as she turned to Brandi. "I'll see you in class on Monday, okay, sweetie?"

Brandi beamed. "Bye, Miss K!"

The teacher scowled at Marshall one last time before hurrying to break up a scuffle between some younger students.

"What's the list about?" he asked Brandi, taking the backpack she held out for him to carry.

"Oh, it's a list of people who are allowed to pick me up from school. Mary added you, so it's okay."

"Oh, it's okay?" his eyebrows shot up. "You almost got me arrested, and it's okay?"

Brandi grinned unrepentantly. "Almost doesn't count! Now, walk me home!"

He narrowed his eyes at her as they walked down the street. "Are you perhaps secretly evil?"

"Mary says it's not a secret," she giggled as she trotted ahead of him.

They took the walk quickly, spurred on by Brandi's exuberance at having gotten to be the center of attention, however briefly, and by Marshall's concern for Mary. He hoped they would see her on the way, that she would have some easy excuse like her watch stopped or she couldn't find her keys, but that wasn't the case. His worry grew as they walked. He also noticed that the neighborhood took a turn for the slummy after they passed the corner where Mary always left him; small, shabby houses, low-rent apartments, and run-down duplexes were apparently the standard, and as they rounded the corner, he saw two police cars pulled up in front of the third house down.

A belligerent man dressed in stained pants and a wife beater was bellowing at the top of his lungs and pulling against his handcuffs as a pair of uniformed officers dragged him across the lawn. Suddenly, a thin, dark-haired woman sporting a black eye flew out of the house, shrieking as she smacked at the officers.

"Don't you dare arrest my boyfriend!" she screamed. "You goddamned gorillas! Let him go!"

One of the officers whirled on her, spinning her against the cop car into which the other officer was depositing the apparent boyfriend and deftly pinning her arm up behind her back.

"That's enough, lady," he said as he pulled a second set of cuffs out and snapped them around her wrists. The other cop, now free of his payload, helped to manhandle her into the other car in all her kicking and screaming glory.

"You can't arrest me! You Nazis! You… you Gestapo!"

"Crazy bitch," one of them said as he closed the door and cut off the woman's abuses midstream.

"Oh, no! Mom!" Brandi wailed in dismay. She started toward the action, but Marshall caught her arm and held her back.

"Brandi, don't. It'll make things worse," he murmured to her gently. She burst into tears and clung to his hand.

Just then, a familiar figure emerged from the front door of the house. Mary had her palm pressed to her forehead in agitation, and she looked generally disheveled. She was wearing a tank top, her arms bare, and Marshall could just make out angry, hand-shaped red marks on both her lower and upper arms where someone had grabbed her roughly, apparently more than once. The marks, he was sure, would become bruises by the next day. He felt a cold rage tearing through him, and wanted nothing more than to get hold of whomever had made those marks and take them apart piece by piece.

One of the officers approached Mary. "You'll have to come back to the precinct with us to make your statement, seeing as your mother decided to do this the hard way."

"I understand, but my sister's still at school and I have to go get her," she murmured, trying to remain calm as she thought of Brandi waiting all alone or worse, on top of all else that had happened.

"Is that her? The little blonde girl with the tall guy over there?" the cop asked, pointing.

Marshall saw the officer point to him and Brandi. When Mary looked in their direction and saw him standing there, the expression on her face turned from distress to anguish mixed with humiliation and shame. She turned to the cop and excused herself; the officer nodded permission and she walked over to Marshall his charge.

"Hey, Squish," she greeted her sister.

The forced pleasantness in her voice and accompanying smile on her face made Marshall's heart clench. He hadn't realized until that moment what it meant to hurt for another person's suffering.

"Marshall, you shouldn't be here," she turned to him, speaking softly in an effort to not alarm her sister further.

"Just tell me how I can help," he replied, wanting to reach for her but, in light of her injuries, he could see no safe way to do so.

"I have to go with them, give a statement and then make whatever arrangements I have to for Jinx. It would be easier if I didn't have to take Brandi with me, and better for her if she doesn't have to go."

"I can watch her," Marshall confirmed. "I'll take her to my house and wait for you to call. You still have my number?"

Mary nodded and turned to her sister. "Squish, you're going to go home with Marshall, so behave yourself. I don't want his family to get a bad impression."

"Actually," he interjected, "my dad got called out for a manhunt early this morning, so he won't be back for days, and my mom has bridge so she'll be out late. You've got plenty of time."

"Thanks, Marshall," Mary smiled sadly, her eyes betraying her shame as they brimmed with tears. She turned quickly and headed back to the waiting police officer.

A/N: I swear, Brandi just writes herself. I want to thank my reviewers for the wonderful reviews I've gotten. They are truly fuel for my writing process! Please keep letting me know what you think, and keep coming back for more! =D