Chapter 59
"Isaac," Cora said uneasily.
The look in his eyes reminded her of a puppy ready to bolt and he did just that. He jumped down the rest of the steps and disappeared around the corner of the hotel.
She glanced back through the hotel doors in a panic then took off after him. Her feet pounded against the asphalt in sync with her heart.
"She's here. I can smell her," he panted, stopping at another alleyway that collided with the one they stood in.
He looked down both ways hopefully. Cora spun him around. He gaped around desperately.
"Isaac, no." she snapped. "She's not."
Isaac growled defiantly.
"She's gone." Cora mumbled.
She wasn't angry at him for the sudden chase. A week and a half ago she thought she saw her while grabbing coffee for herself and Danny. The hair was the same length and color and the girl wore glasses, but she smelled of pre-teen-glitter and Sweet Pea. It made her nauseous.
"You can't keep doing this to yourself," she said.
"I know," he said.
His body was fighting letting go. His stomach started to clamp up again just like it did when he was told that she was gone. His eyes rolled back. He felt Cora put a hand on his arm. The invisible hold on his insides grew tighter and yanked sharply, making it hard to breathe.
The truth wasn't that he couldn't let go. He didn't want to stop loving her. It didn't matter that she was gone. She was ever present in his head. Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her perfectly. Her dark hair and blunt attitude. The way she looked at him because he was all she could see. He didn't want that vision to disappear.
Cora looked around, her eyes hopeful. Her lips parted ready to call out for her. It was a side that nobody had seen. She didn't grieved over Melanie like others. Isaac was starting to think that she hadn't grieved at all but that she hoped Melanie would actually come back in some mysterious way. She searched, turning her head both ways then let it hang. Her claws retracted and she let her fingers hang at her sides.
"We should go. Scott and Chris are probably waiting," she said after a couple more minutes.
Resting bitch face returned, masking her emotions like he'd imagined the minor breakdown. She stalked past him, her feet moving fast to get out of there. He gave one last look.
Maybe it is in my head and I just want you to be here, he thought to himself.
Neither he nor Cora said anything about chasing after grief's ghost. Isaac took one more look at the creepy motel as they passed it on the way back into the overbearing lights of the city.
"You can't join them, Scott," Isaac said after fifteen minutes of headache numbing silence. It was obvious that everyone else was thinking it. Cora stared out the window. The pitch black scenery entranced her. Scott stared down at his phone. Allison was texting him about the trip and that Stiles and Lydia showed up. Chris was the only one with a legitimate excuse for his silence. He was the driver.
"We will cross that bridge when we get to it," Scott said, resigned.
"What a fucking cliché! We're going to be dead before we get to that stupid metaphorical bridge," Isaac snapped.
He bit his thumbnail, wondering how it was that Scott could be such a moron.
Chris drove them each home, giving them the same line that they should lock their doors and stay put. A bad line out of a bad horror movie and it'll get one or more of us killed probably, Isaac thought. Cora seemed to think the same. Her upper lip rose in the corner with dismay and she rolled her eyes.
"We're going to get out of this," Scott said as Isaac got out of the car.
Isaac walked a few steps then turned.
"Are you trying to convince me or yourself?"
Receiving no response, he went inside.
"Scott, he's right. You're an alpha now. You have a pack. You cannot join them."
"There's no other choice right now," Scott said in a whisper.
Allison was waiting for Scott on his front steps. Her knees were hugged together in the night chill. He took in the exhausted sight of her from her navy leggings with dark brown knee high boots past her black skirt to her black denim jacket hugging her shaking shoulders.
"I will see you at home?" Chris asked his daughter.
Allison nodded and he drove off.
"I want to go see Stiles, but he just wants to be left alone," Scott said, sitting next to her on the cold concrete step. A chill swept up through him, giving him temporary goosebumps.
"He's going through a lot, Scott. We all are," Allison replied.
She didn't look at him. In fact, she looked up at the night sky that was clearer than it had been in a long time. Stars shone brightly like diamonds. Her hand sought out his automatically and laced fingers with his fingers tightly.
"I'm guessing they've already told you how stupid this is?" she said, trying to let out a soft laugh.
It was nothing more than a choked sob filled with grief. This was a deep hole they were digging.
"Yeah," he said.
Allison shook her head. Scott thought about the fighting ring. The random thought made his chest feel heavy in remembering how Melanie just wanted it to be over, to give up and let herself die. He never agreed with her…out loud. She had gotten beaten down so badly. The confession of her inability to conceive and her choked sobs, wanting all of the pain to end…
It was only human. She was only human. A strong, intelligent, terrified human. Wanting it all to end was all Scott wanted now.
"I want to go to college," he said.
"Scott," Allison said.
She laid her head on his shoulder and snugged into his warm side. He radiated like a heater.
"We'll figure this out," she said and really believed it.
"I don't know. Mom is struggling with the house. I know she is. She isn't talking about it, but I saw the bills." Scott thought back to the other night. "Tuition is expensive. And I barely made it through high school. And now-"
"Take a deep breath," she said.
He did. His chest filled slowly and he let it out, but it still felt like he was suffocating. Not a plastic bag over your head suffocating, but a slow pillow over your face except that he wasn't fighting it. His breath was just slowly leaving his body and finding it difficult to return.
"Tomorrow is the last day," she said.
"Already?" he asked, looking down at her. "I thought we had a few more days."
"No. Seniors get out early. We have to go to graduation practice."
"Right," he said with a nod.
We wondered about what else he'd forgotten. The days had been blurring together. His mom was gone. Sheriff Stilinski was gone. Stiles had gone silent. Derek, from what Allison said, was back in full alpha mode. Deaton, caught in the middle, was struggling to keep the peace.
Derek. Even thinking his name made Scott pissed. He was causing more trouble and Danny was on his side. That was even more trivial. He didn't know Derek the way Scott did. He didn't know how he could be a manipulative jerk. Instantly he decided that when the alpha pack leaves town, Derek was leaving too. One way or another.
Isaac stared at the blackboard. Danny was scribbling in his notebook. Lydia was absent. She demanded to be caught up on all the tests so she was busy with that. Stiles had taken the easy way out and went with being sick during his time out of school. Melissa forged a doctor's note for him that allowed him leniency on the final tests for the year. She'd written some sort of deathly flu. The principal didn't question it.
The class was lit up by stripes of yellow sunlight across the room, the cusp of summer.
"Mr. Lahey," the substitute teacher said from looking at the call sheet.
Isaac snapped to and looked up. At hearing that Isaac didn't believe it for a second. The substitute had told the entire class his name but he couldn't remember. He stared blankly at the board.
"Uh, M?" he said. His eyebrows rose with uncertainty.
His head tilted to the side slightly as the substitute drew an arm that attached to a stick body that hung from a noose. He rolled his eyes. This game was truly terrible when he thought about it. If you don't get it right, you hang somebody. It's a pretty violent game for children to be playing.
Isaac let his head hang back as he let out a sigh and stared up at the ceiling. Playing hangman was the last thing he wanted to do. He should've been following Chris. He was next to be taken.
"Hey," Allison greeted, stopping beside Scott and Stiles at Scott's locker. Scott was emptying the contents of his locker into a black trash bin.
Stiles bore a moot expression.
"Can we talk about-"
"I tried," Stiles said, cutting Allison off. He scratched the back of his neck, blatantly agitated.
Scott looked at both of them.
"When is the meeting about graduation again?" he asked.
"Tuesday," Allison replied.
He nodded, his eyes staring off into some distance as he checked the schedule in his brain.
"We have to meet with Deucalion tonight," he said.
"Scott, this is a bad idea."
"I am getting tired of everyone saying that. If it's such a bad plan then don't be a part of it."
"You've already lost friends, Scott," Stiles chimed in. "Ethan, Aiden…Danny?"
"They made their choice. I've made mine," Scott said, his tone unchanging.
"We don't want to lose you…" Allison touched his shoulder.
When he didn't respond or even look at her, she dropped her hand and walked away.
"It's one thing to decide on alienating your friends, but don't do it to your girlfriend," Stiles said.
Scott continued to clean out his locker. Stiles stood there quietly. His mouth twitched-a sign of overthinking. He looked at his fingers. They were still tender and red. He leaned back on the lockers. Scott wasn't the person he'd known for so long. It was like pod people had snatched his body, except these pod peopled were werewolves. It was no secret that he was struggling to keep his alpha side in check, but that part of him seemed to be winning as he tried to keep what was left of his pack together.
Scott slammed his locker closed and stared at it for a minute.
"Hard to believe you've had that ugly metal container for the last four years," Stiles smirked, patting him on the back.
Scott cracked a smile. It was small but it gave Stiles a small sense of hope. Scott wasn't completely gone.
Scott held up a folded up piece of paper. The blue lines had faded and yellowed.
"It's the first note that Allison ever wrote me," Scott said.
He looked past Stiles. Lydia and Finstock were talking. He opened up a locker for her. His shoulders sagged. His usual angst was depleted. Scott listened in closely.
"This is kind of you. I was supposed to clear it out but I-" he didn't finish.
"It's okay. She was special to a lot of us," Lydia replied.
Finstock hesitated. His shoulders shook as he stared into the small space then walked down the hallway and disappeared around the corner.
Scott and Stiles walked toward her. She stared into the locker just like Finstock did. Her eyes clung to every corner of it.
"It's funny," Lydia said.
"I don't get the joke," Stiles said.
"A whole life preserved in such a small cubby hole," Lydia said.
She reached in and took out a large hoodie. The size of it could swallow a small country. She draped it over her arm and reached in, taking out a few books. They weren't textbooks. She only had one of those and that was her biology book. One of them was Lord of the Flies. Even dead you're ironic, Lydia thought.
On the inside of the door was a picture. It was small. It was overexposed but showed Derek and Melanie. He was smiling as Melanie poked at his cheeks, laughing.
"That's a strange picture," Stiles said.
"She never smiled like that. Neither of them ever have," Scott said.
"It was like she had permanent resting bitch-face," Stiles said.
"No, she said it was Lydia who had resting bitch-face," Scott said, shaking his head.
Stiles let out a hearty laugh. Lydia smacked both boys and scowled at them. She snatched the picture from under the plain, circular black magnets and then took her bookbag out and put it in the front pocket along with Lord of the Flies. After taking the biology book out the locker was officially empty.
"That's all," Lydia said. Their smiled faded. Melanie never did have much. Quantity wasn't everything to her.
The three of them walked out of the building. Lydia didn't take the bag to Isaac's like she intended. She took them home and tossed them into the corner of her room. Her mom bugged her with questions about food-if she was hungry and how the tests went and if she was okay. More than anything she was just tired and she missed Aiden. So she laid down, curled up and fell asleep with the decision that she would attend BHU in the fall. The only things she didn't understand was that the university wasn't in Beacon Hills but included the town's name in its title.
There were stranger things.