Haha oh my God, wowwwww, we LOVED reading your responses to Chapter 1! It seems to have produced a lot of tears, some screaming, a lot of swearing, and at least one person smoking out of aggravation and another falling asleep in class the following day. Now THAT is how we know we've been successful! ) Man, we wish we could be there watching while you all read that... we would have loved to have seen it happening in real time.

Part III: If I Move Away

Chapter Two: These Eyes

All three stalls are empty. Rush into the nearest one, lock the door and immediately start throwing up. Vomiting always makes me feel like I'm going to die. I'm crying already so my eyes are running and my nose is running and after retching for a few minutes, all that comes up is bile.

When all the throwing up is finished, I know, I still can't come out of the stall. I don't want to see anyone. I don't want anyone to see me, except for Sara, but right now I don't know if she will ever touch me again. I don't know if anyone will ever touch me again. My most terrible secret. . . the worst nightmare of my entire life. . . everything I've dreaded since I was old enough to know that what I felt was wrong, abnormal, sick. . . is coming true. Every terrifying scenario that kept me awake all these years in the room next to Sara's is finally all coming true and collapsing on me, just like I always knew that it would, no matter how hard I tried to believe that it was all okay.

I slide down the wall of the stall and onto the cool tile floor, quick shallow breaths, dizzy. Thank God nobody is in the other two stalls. Where did Sara go? She recoiled from me and ran and why? Because of a video. Because of Jaime. Jaime's stunned face comes back to me with a wave of nausea and I think I might throw up again but instead I lean my head against the cold metal of the stall wall and close my eyes.

It's over. Our mother will see the video and she'll be destroyed. My father, my stepfather, my aunts, uncles, my cousins. They'll be disgusted, humiliated. They will wash their hands of us. At least our grandmother didn't live to see what her granddaughters would become. Our fans? We'll lose all of them, except the perverts. Our career will be finished. Nobody will want to work with us ever again.

Our mother will see the video.

Sara, pulling away from me. Gone again. Lost again. And I'm lost. Again.

God, Jaime. I think of Jaime again, shut my eyes tight. I can't think about her right now because thinking of her right now cuts my insides. God. A fucking video camera. A file on a memory card and now my whole fucking life is over. How could she have done that? How? She was watching when me and Sara. . . when Sara. . . fuck. It comes back to me now, vividly, Sara pulling her fingers out of me, leaving me, my pants pulled down around my thighs so that she could. . . the rough hay underneath me, me lying there alone, crying, . I feel a wave of humiliation wash over me that anyone saw that, even Jaime. God, Jaime. . . how could she? She was the safest place I'd ever felt other than Sara. Sometimes even more than Sara, because I'd known that she could never leave me, hurt me, break my heart like Sara could. Like she had. But this. . . humiliating me in front of the world. . . I swallow a bubble of acid in the back of my throat.

"Tegan," comes Shaun's voice as I hear the washroom door swing open. "Are you in there?" My voice almost responds but when I open my mouth, I have to stifle more sobs. One gets out anyway and I sound like a dying animal. Everyone in the world is going to see it. Everyone in the world is going to see Sara fall on top of me and press against me in a pile of hay. Shaun is going to hear me crying in a public washroom and then he's going to see the video too. "Tegan?" he asks, and his voice is just on the other side of the stall door. "Okay, I can hear you in there. You don't have to say anything. . . I just want to know if you're okay." He's a nice guy. He hasn't seen the video yet so he's still my friend. For now. I'm going to be sick again, maybe?

If I tell him I'm okay he will go away, but my voice is drowning, in tears and snot and I'm shaking, I can't do anything.

"If you don't say anything, I'm climbing over this door," Shaun says, a little intensely. I start to answer him but I can hardly breathe now with the trembling in my chest. "Okay, you're not okay," I hear him mumble, and there's a moment of rattling and shaking in the walls of the toilet stall and his shadow moves over my feet and I look up and he is really, literally climbing over the wall. He sees me and looks shocked. "Jesus," he says, and slides down my side of the wall and now I'm in a toilet stall, in a bar, with a boy. In the women's washroom. With my bass player. "Hey," he says, gently. He's a gentle guy. He doesn't know yet that I'm a fucking freak so he's still gentle. I'm doubled over on the floor because I feel nauseated again and he squats down next to me, next to the toilet, his hand on my back. He's trying to look in my eyes. I just can't. "Hey, what happened? What's going on?" I guess he's still not believing what he heard. He doesn't believe it because it's fucking insane, fucking repulsive. My life is over. Where is Sara? Pain, just pain.

I can't answer him. I open my mouth and then just shake my head because I can't tell him. I hide my face against my knees again and the sobs come even harder and I nearly choke with each one. Even the sobbing makes me feel sick. He rubs my back.

"Whatever it is, it'll be okay. . ." he says. "I mean, nobody's dead. . . it's nothing that can't be sorted out. . .?" His words would be reassuring if he had any idea what he was talking about. Which he doesn't. It occurs to me that it might be better to be dead than to wait and see what happens next. It would be better for my mother to have a dead daughter than a fucking twisted sick freak as a daughter.

I think the sounds I'm making are scaring Shaun. He's trying to say soothing things but his voice is tense. He puts his arms around me in this stinking toilet stall and I resist him only for a moment, before I collapse against him and let go.

. . . . . . . .

I feel like I might be sick, like I felt in Vancouver when I found out that Jaime knew. And this is worse, so much worse. . . so horrifically worse that I just can't even accept it. So I need to find a place to throw up and I need to lose Piers. He's following me; he's seen the video; he knows what we are and I don't want to hear what he's going to say. I can't take it. Whatever it is. I need to go somewhere with no one, where no one will see me, maybe forever.

I tried to hit Jaime. I'm angry he stopped me. I wanted to strangle her. I still do. I would if I could. I don't know if I care what kind of person that makes me.

And now what? I can see Tegan's eyes as she reaches for me and I panic and pull away from her. And I think I can feel my heart die because I will never be able to touch Tegan again. Not like that. It is this sickness of ours that has led to all of this, that will destroy our family and destroy our band, cost us all of our fans, bankrupt us. Our mother will see the video. Our mother. Our mother will see it and know that her babies are sick and fucked up, and her heart will break.

I make my way quickly through a few narrow corridors and out the back door, with Piers just behind me.

"Sara," he calls after me, and I don't know what he's thinking now because he saw the video and now, what does he think? "Sara, stop." I don't stop. I am almost running as I cross the parking lot behind the venue. I don't know where I'm going.

"Go away, Piers," I say, angrily because I'm trying not to cry and talking makes that impossible.

"Sara!" he says, closer. He's tall; his legs are a whole lot longer than mine. "Where do you think you're going to go?"

"Piers, fuck off!" I scream over my shoulder, feeling the hysterical kind of tears rising up inside of me and I run, leaving him behind.

I don't know where I am and I make a couple of random turns, just running. And then I see a little city park with a fountain, a public washroom, some trees, benches. A few people look at me, concerned, as I race by, probably because I am streaming tears and my nose is running and I look insane. I pass by them and find a sheltering tree to collapse under. It's mossy and soft, a bit damp, and I drop to my hands and knees. I'm gasping, wheezing, my heaving breaths from running colliding with the hysterical sobs I'm trying desperately to repress and for a second I think I will suffocate or puke but then I don't. I lay down, my face in the soft, cool moss, struggling to breathe. Maybe I can stay here. Maybe I can die here, under this tree, like the tree on Tegan's arm, which I touched in the moonlight in the back of our bus and thought I could be happy for a moment. I'm a fucking idiot and it's all over. I stuff the sleeve of my hoody into my mouth and scream.