Disclaimer: I don't own In Plain Sight, but writing about it sure is kinda pretty good, maybe, in comparison... =P

Author's Note: Due to circumstances beyond my control, I'm going to have to cut down on frequency of updates. =( Boo, I know, I want to write 'em as much as you want to read 'em. I'd planned to take a trip to visit my dad, a bit later, but a while ago he realized it was a better deal if I came out earlier. Between that and the fact that I intended this to be a much shorter story - it turned out to have a lot more to it than I thought, which I love - one thing has overrun the other. But, I will have regular access to a computer and at least some free time. Therefore, I'll be striving to update at least every other day, or twice every three days where possible. I DEFINITELY will not abandon this fic.

Positives: There will still be regular updates, and the story has a ways to go! Let's do this, people! (Meaning me, mainly.) =D

Fish Out of Water

Chapter 6

The lunch bell rang on Monday morning, and Marshall arrived at the bathroom just in time to see Mary, already clad in a t-shirt, pulling the same loose-fitting sweater over her head. He caught the briefest glimpse of her bruised arms and bit his lip, resolving to say nothing. They had already discussed the matter in a brief moment of vulnerability on Mary's part when they'd met up on Saturday, and he was fairly certain that further inquiry wouldn't be as well received. His suspicion was confirmed when she pulled out her pack of cigarettes and lit one; her tough girl front was firmly in place.

"Haven't seen you smoke in a while," he commented. "I thought maybe you decided to quit."

"Nah," she shrugged. "You just got so bothered that I stopped smoking around you, and besides, Brandi's with us after school most times and I won't smoke in front of her, ever."

"So why now?" he asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Are you kidding? You know the weekend I had, and I couldn't get a minute away from Brandi after I got her back from you."

Marshall nodded and sighed. He still didn't like it, but Mary was in a tenuous place emotionally and if he pushed the subject, he didn't know what she might do. He didn't want to think she'd write him off completely, but she would be angry at the very least, and after what he'd seen of her home life he knew she would be inclined to push him away and go lick her wounds alone.

"When did you start?" he asked, aiming for a tone of neutral curiosity and largely succeeding.

"Toward the end of last summer. There was this guy, Mark," she stared off vacantly, reminiscing, "and we hung out, and I picked it up from him."

A jealous pang lanced through Marshall and he shifted uncomfortably where he sat on the floor. Whomever the guy in question was, she'd obviously liked him; it was written all over her face. He tried his best to hide his discomfort. For her to realize he liked her would probably be a bad thing, but if she realized it right when she was in the middle of telling him about some other guy, that would be more than he could bear.

"So was he your boyfriend?" he maintained a casual front as he asked, though he cringed on the inside. He didn't really want to ask more, didn't want to hear certain answers that he thought were highly probable outcomes, but he couldn't help it. It was like picking at a scab, horrifying yet compulsive.

Mary shrugged. "No. Not really. I mean we never did anything. He was just sort of around," she paused. "I think maybe he wanted to, though."

Who wouldn't? Marshall thought as his mind picked over what she'd told him. She hadn't been with the guy in a physical sense, he'd picked up that veiled meaning in her statement well enough, and that was a good thing… a really, really good thing, as far as he was concerned. But the guy had wanted to, and however reasonable that was, and it definitely was, Marshall found that a small but growing part of him suddenly hated this person he'd never even met. Then, he picked up on something else.

"You said he was around… so he's gone now? Did he transfer schools or something?" he asked hopefully.

"He didn't go to school, he was like twenty-two," she replied, and Marshall's eyes widened. "But yeah, he stopped coming around. I heard he got a few months for burglary or vandalism or something like that."

Marshall's jaw hung open for a moment before he could collect himself enough to respond. "And you didn't think a twenty-two year old guy hanging around with high school girls was even a little creepy?"

"It isn't that weird," she said defensively. "It's only a five-year age difference."

"That's a pretty big difference. That's the difference between us and Brandi, for example. If someone our age went after her…"

"That's completely different," Mary snapped, not wanting to concede his point. "Brandi's only twelve. I'm almost eighteen."

"Yeah, okay, so pursuing twelve year olds is an entirely different kind of sick," Marshall agreed, "but twenty-two? That's old enough to have graduated college, although that doesn't seem likely in this case given that he's doing time."

"That was just a rumor," Mary muttered. "Besides, even if he did come back, it's not like he'd still be interested in me anyway."

Marshall scowled. Everything he was hearing about this Mark character had wrong written all over it. Though it seemed unlikely the guy would be coming back anytime soon, it wasn't impossible, and from Mary's tone, Marshall knew she had definitely liked the guy. When she'd said he probably wouldn't still be interested, she'd sounded faintly disappointed.

Mary stubbed out her cigarette, lost in thought. She'd put Mark out of her mind when he'd stopped showing up, but now that she'd been talking about him, she realized she'd actually liked him. Not that it was worth anything; he'd vanished from her life as men had a tendency to do. As far as she was concerned, he was written off… wasn't he?

"College applications and cover letters: hand them in!" Mr. Brunswick declared once the class was settled in their seats.

"Aww, crap," Mary moaned, dropping her face to her desk. "I completely forgot about those."

"No, you didn't," Marshall murmured, slipping a file folder to her when the teacher's back was turned.

Mary flipped through the folder. "Holy cow, Marshall! You really filled all these out? And you wrote cover letters?"

"Just one of the many services I have to offer," he replied as he pulled out a second folder and went through his own applications once more.

"You didn't have to do that," she said with a small smile, touched by the gesture; she'd been so caught up in the weekend's events that she hadn't given the applications a single thought, hadn't even remembered he had them, and still, he'd covered her back.

"I know." He couldn't keep a smile of his own off his face.

So what if she'd liked that Mark guy last summer? It was a complication, but a minor one. Mark wasn't there now, and Marshall was; now that he'd had time to mull it over, he'd come to believe that improved his standing considerably. He could maybe even step up his game a bit, though not too much. He didn't want Mary to pull away from him, so he resolved to tread lightly.

"Well, now, Miss Shannon, what do you have for me today?" Mr. Brunswick appeared, swooping in from nowhere like a character in a vampire movie, shark's grin in place. He snapped up the folder from Mary's desk and leafed through it. His eyes widened.

"I shudder to speculate as to the activities to which these papers have been subjected that would account for their battered state," he smirked, chuckling briefly at his own imaginings, "but regardless, you have in any case somehow managed to complete them. Who knew you could be so full of surprises?" He handed the folder back and put a check mark next to her name in the grade book.

"Of course, what would truly surprise me would be if you actually bothered to mail them," he added with a sneer, and after flipping through Marshall's folder and finding it in order, he merrily moved off to consult with his favored group of students.

"What would really surprise me is if you ever figured out how to pull your head out of your ass," Mary grumbled under her breath at Mr. Brunswick's retreating back. Next to her, Marshall choked back a laugh.

The afternoon was sunny, though chilly as autumn took hold. Fallen leaves skittered along the sidewalk, chased by the gusting breezes of the season. Mary looked halfway relaxed as they walked, apparently beginning to shed the stress of the weekend. Brandi was going home with a friend and Jinx had no expectations of Mary for the afternoon, so she was free for at least a few hours. Marshall smiled; he was beginning to see how few and far between good days were for his friend, and he knew how badly she needed one.

"Hey Marshall," Mary spoke softly, the wind ruffling through her long hair, making it glimmer in the sunlight. "What was that thing you were going to give me? I totally forgot about it until just now."

"Oh, that," he replied earnestly. He'd been waiting for a good opportunity to bring it up but hadn't yet managed it. "It isn't anything to get too excited about, but I have it in my bag…"

He shuffled through the contents of his backpack, finding the book exactly where he'd put it the Friday before. He handed it to her and she took it with raised eyebrows.

"Romeo and Juliet, huh?" she asked. "Can't say I've ever been given a book before."

"Well, I thought you could use it, you know, for our paper," he hedged nervously. "It's got a lot of really useful information in it…" he trailed off.

What was I thinking? he chastised himself. She probably hates it. I should have realized it wouldn't be interesting to her…

Mary flipped through the book. She'd been worried that she wouldn't be able to make sense of it, but to her relief she found that across from every page of indecipherable prose was a modern English translation. She realized Marshall must have chosen the specific edition with that in mind.

"Thanks," she said with a small smile. "This is really great."

"Are you sure? Because if you don't like it, you don't have to accept it. I mean, you can tell me you don't like it, and if you don't want it you don't have to keep it," he babbled.

"No, Marshall, I really do like it," she stopped him with a hand on his arm. "I won't have to bother with a copy from the library and I won't have to wade through all that damned old-timey English."

Marshall smiled brightly. "See, that's what I was thinking. I even got a copy for myself," he said, his enthusiasm returning.

"Really?" Mary asked. "I thought you already read it before. It's not like you need the translation."

"Well, I know, but I wanted to be able to read it how you were reading it. That way, it'll be easier to work together."

"I don't know if you've noticed, but I don't exactly have a lot of reliable free time," she hesitated. "There's always the chance that Jinx will get drunk or Brandi will need me, and stuff like what happened on Friday isn't that unusual for me."

"It's okay," he replied, his enthusiasm refusing to be dimmed again. "You can read it whenever you have time, and we can go over it at lunch or after school. Why don't we go to the park and take a look at a few scenes?"

Mary shrugged. "I guess we could do that. It isn't like I have anything else to do."

After arriving at the park, the pair settled under a tree, its leaves lit up blazing red by the shifting season and the afternoon sun. Mary read silently with Marshall looking over her shoulder, occasionally pointing out a line for him to explain, and here and there he read sections of the play to her. He'd told her plays were best seen and second-best read aloud, because it was then that the words really came alive. Mary figured, at first, that he was talking out of his ass yet again, but as she listened to his voice as it flowed over words she didn't know, she began to understand. Though much of the actual dialogue was lost on her, she could begin feel the meaning of it, the cascades of prose bringing life to the modernized text she had already skimmed through.

"I get it now," she murmured into the cool evening air. "That thing you said about how this relates to us. It's because their families are on opposite sides of this conflict that has nothing to do with them, but at the same time it means everything."

Marshall smiled. "Something like that, yeah."

"That thing at the beginning though, about both families being 'alike in dignity'… that isn't true for us. There isn't much dignity to be found in my family, as you've already seen."

"Well, no, though in this case the term 'dignity' is meant to indicate their social standing as opposed to their personal graces," Marshall expounded, "but the argument could be made that the Montagues and Capulets are both lacking in the latter department. In the play, everyone else more or less hates both houses for fighting and causing problems for everyone else."

"Like people tend to dislike police in general and criminals for causing them to show up. I bet the neighbors were thrilled with Jinx's spectacle on our lawn," she said, nodding. "But our families aren't of equal standing either."

"That's true, and I won't pretend that we live in a society where that doesn't matter," he replied gently, leaning sideways so that his shoulder bumped into hers. "But it doesn't matter to me."

Mary glanced at him, a soft blush pinking her cheeks that she hoped would only look like windburn from the blustery autumn breeze. She met his gaze briefly and then shifted hers away quickly; she'd caught him looking at her with intense focus, his eyes assessing her with what possible intent, she knew not. Her blush deepened as she was embarrassed to have been caught looking back.

"So what about Rosaline?" she asked him, seemingly out of nowhere.

"What about her?" he murmured distractedly, finding Mary the more interesting topic of thought.

"Romeo was all into her, and then suddenly he wasn't," she continued. "So why should I even believe that he loves Juliet so much? How could he really know?"

"He loves her," Marshall stated softly. "He thought he loved Rosaline, but meeting Juliet made him realize he never did. And when it happens… you just know."

"Before you moved here, did you love someone?" Mary asked suddenly.

"Sort of. There was a girl I was thinking about dating," he said offhandedly.

"Tell me about her."

"There isn't a lot to tell. She was an exchange student. We were friendly enough, and I liked her, but it never went anywhere," he responded.

"Because you moved?" she questioned.

"That was part of it, but… I don't know. In retrospect it seems like there was something missing," he shrugged.

"Was she a Rosaline, or a Juliet?"

"A Rosaline," he replied. "Definitely a Rosaline."

Mary trudged up the sidewalk to her house. The afternoon had been an escape in which she had indulged, but when the sun had set and the temperature dropped, reality had come crashing back. She'd headed home as she inevitably must, her feet feeling heavier with every step. She felt like for a few hours she'd been a normal person with a normal life, and as much as she'd liked it, she also felt it was a dangerous delusion to chase.

And then there was Marshall. She didn't know what to make of whatever it was that she was feeling for him, overcome by the occasional wave of giddy sickness when she was around him or even when she was just thinking of him, sensations which weren't exactly pleasant but which she could not ignore no matter how hard she tried. She thought of his words earlier; 'But that doesn't matter to me…' She wished he wouldn't say things like that. It made her wish for impossible things. It wouldn't matter that he didn't mind where she came from; sooner or later, and probably sooner, someone would, and that would be the end of it.

The end of what? You don't even know if he likes you. Hell, you can't even decide if you like him… Mary sighed. If she was being honest with herself, which she hated doing, she wasn't sure there was room left for Marshall in her heart. Other men had already taken up residence there, like her father, like a handful of would-be stepfathers to whom she had tried to attach herself until she finally caught on that none of them would be sticking around for long… like Mark, brief and nearly nonexistent though that had been, whatever it was. She felt, deep down, that she shouldn't be wasting such precious space on people who were gone and would never be coming back, but she couldn't help it. Learning to uproot any of them would mean letting go of her father, and that, she could not do.

Mary slid her key into the lock and let herself in. She was relieved to find Brandi already home; it meant one less thing to do. Jinx had evidently been playing up the role of good mommy, because Brandi had even been fed, wonder of wonders. It wouldn't last, but it gave Mary a small break, and after greeting her sister, she slouched off to their shared bedroom and flopped onto her bed.

One side of her face buried in her pillow, she blew a breath out toward the other side and watched as some of the hair that was draped over her face flew upward in a small burst and gently fluttered back down. For her entire life, she'd felt trapped between a rock and a hard place, and while not exactly comfortable it was at least familiar territory. Now, she was trapped between her immovable past and multiple possible futures that had never before seemed within her grasp, and that was far more terrifying.

A/N: Thank you so much for your reviews! I love reading them so much. Let me know what you think of this chapter, and I hope you'll be around for the next one as well! =)