'Youth Novels'

Chapter Seven

It took John the opening cords to Rave-Up's first song to decide that they were a bunch of whiny wannabe British bastards. New Wave wasn't his thing, and for good reason. The venue itself was like a watered down Keroucian gimmick, filled with hazy blue light, hairspray and middle class punters in their thrift store bought individualism.

From a stool at the end of the long bar, he nursed his one beer and watched the girls dance beneath the strobing blue lights and smoke. It wasn't all bad. During lulls the barman, Bert, a hulking brown American chopper of a man with a handlebar moustache talked to him about the up and coming game between the White Sox and the Baltimore Orioles. Mostly however, Bert was kept busy, so John was left alone to his beer and the girls─ not that he needed to watch them much. Cats wasn't like Skinny's, and Claire and Allison already emitted their own respective auras of 'danger; do not touch.'

It was fun to watch them though. The two quickly downed beers had done wonders for Claire's inhibitions. She danced away as freely and as carelessly as she had done on the Saturday. Allison on the other hand needed no such encouragement. She lurched and she shook and she trembled to her knees like a preacher in the throes of a sermon. Together, the Princess and the Basketcase moved like no one was watching, and John realised that he probably was the only one who was.

"What are you doing here?"

A smirk gathered itself on his lips and he turned to face the speaker. Short blonde hair, no bra and a masculine sense of dress; it was none other than Watts, Duncan's favourite enemy. She was glaring at him, demanding to know why he was polluting her favourite hangout.

"I'm here with my girlfriend. I see you're here with yours too," he nodded his head to where Ray McCarthy was sitting with her artsy friends.

He'd noticed them walk in earlier with his arm around her shoulder. Ray had given him a wave so naturally John had ignored him. Buyer and seller was as far as he was willing to let their acquaintanceship go.

"I'm not with him," replied Watts shortly. She was pressed up against the bar, dollars in one hand, her other tapping along to the beat. It was the last free spot at the booze crushed bar otherwise she wouldn't have stood beside him. They disliked each other enough to respect one another's personal space.

"Ah yes," John smirked. "He is technically a guy after all."

Predictably, her head snapped around. "How long are you and your butthead friends going to keep cracking lesbian jokes?"

"I don't know? How long do you intend to be a lesbian for?"

"Sorry to disappoint your masturbation fantasies, jack off but I'm not a lesbian. Not that it would be any of your business if I were. My sexuality is not for your entertainment, Bender."

"Watts," he sighed. "I speak for the entire male race here when I say this; I'd sooner jack one out to Wookie than you."

It hurt her. He could see it in her eyes, the niggling doubt in regards to her own physical worth. He would've felt a little bad about it if he let himself to acknowledge it, but Watts and him at been at each other's throats since Freshmen year. She'd taken umbrage with the fact he and Duncan had given Phil Dale a hard time back in Elementary, so in response they'd taken umbrage with her very existence.

Watts clenched her jaw and turned to face the bar. "Can I get some service over here?!" she called to Bert. John snickered as the man ignored her in favour of a busty brunette in a tube top. "Asshole."

"Perhaps you should reconsider your wardrobe?" John goaded, picking a peanut from the tray in front of him and tossing it in his mouth. "I take it your thing is to pretend you're queer because no one finds you attractive?"

"If I'm so unattractive then why would I be here on a date?" she retorted.

"I thought you weren't with Ray?" At her stony expression, John laughed even harder.

"Going on a date with someone doesn't equate togetherness. It's just a date."

"So… why are you on a date with him if you don't like him?"

Busted. She shrugged. "It's something to do."

John knew for a fact that no woman, not even one as supposedly 'confused' as Watts liked to emit would ever concede to going on a date with Ray just out of boredom. The guy looked like a pumpkin that had been face fucked by a hedgehog.

He considered her answer for a moment. "So either you're desperate, which given your state of self is understandable or-or-" he leered, his grin widening. "Ray's not the guy you're aiming for tonight, you're just using him to get someone else's attention." When her lips frowned, he knew he'd hit the bullseye. "Man-" he turned away, shaking his head. "-that is a bitch move. I almost feel sorry for the guy."

"Like you've never done it."

"I've never had to. Pathetic isn't my style."

Right on cue, a pair of long white arms slipped themselves around his neck in a rich cloud of perfume. Claire had come to stake her claim.

"Are you coming to dance?" She asked, leaning her head against his shoulder.

"Sure, right after hell freezes over."

"Oh? I can go find the manager and arrange it that 'hell freezes over' suddenly becomes the new name to one of their songs."

He didn't doubt that she could. She probably had three hundred dollars in her purse and from her tone it was clear she was suspicious of him talking to Watts. John slipped an arm around her waist as he turned on his stool and pulled her in between his legs until she was leaning back against his thighs. Her hair was slightly wet and flat from the exertion of dancing and there was a thin sheen of sweat upon her face, otherwise she looked practically perfect as usual in a cream top of light, almost see-through material and a string of pearls. Claire had a level of sophistication that he'd never seen before in a high school girl. He really digged that.

"Or you can have a beer with me," he told her. "But you'll have to sit on my knee for a bit. Watts here is having trouble getting served on the account that she looks like a Swiss Pool Boy."

Claire hastily stifled a laugh with her hand as she looked at Watts' attire.

"Fuck you," Watts spat at her. "─Finally!" she grumbled as Bert approached. "You know, I've been waiting for the past two thousand years?!"

The man barely spared her a glance as he took her order. Then he turned to Claire.

"Rude much?" Claire wrinkled her nose at the girl's behaviour before asking for a red wine. John laughed when she was informed, of course, that they had none so she settled reluctantly for beer.

"For the lady," smiled Bert as he placed Claire's in front of her first. He gave John a congratulatory wink.

"You know," Watts spun around, drink finally in hand. It was clear she was gearing to get the last word in before they parted company. "You two are perfect for each other; the asshole and the bitch."

"Better a bitch than a butch," sneered his girlfriend.

John's chortles followed Watts all the way through the crowd and back to her table. Then Claire looked at him, an accusatory stare fixed in place.

"Why were you talking to her anyway?" she asked.

"She talked to me first. I made pretty damn sure she soon regretted it-" Claire smiled. "-Where's Kooky?" he glanced around for a sign of the mad woman.

"At the front of the stage… Christ, that girl is such a freak!"

His jaw clenched. "Who? Allison?"

"Course not," Claire looked offended that he'd even suggest it. "She's just weird. I mean her-" she jerked her head to the place Watts had recently vacated. "You know she wears old man's boxers?"

He wasn't surprised. "Are they her old man's?"

"Probably. She once threatened to shove a drumstick up Mia's nose too," she rolled her eyes. "And her psycho friend is always staring at Amanda. He's a total stalker. He was like staring at her out of it last week when Hardy and Amanda were fighting─ she thinks he's cheating on her again─ which he totally is because he always does, and she should like dump him already but Shayne keeps telling her not to-"

"Why?" he cut through her babble. He'd forgotten that sometimes she went full bimbo mode. It must've been engrained in her from years of dealing with bitches because Claire wasn't vapid. He didn't like it when she went like that, she was selling herself short.

"Because Hardy's the whole reason why she's popular in the first place," she explained like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "We all got to know her because of him so if she does something that Hardy doesn't like, he can easily get everyone to ice her out. It's the same with Steff McKee. If a girl turns him down then no one is to talk to her."

"Do you even like Hardy?" She shook her head and he held up his hands in an incredulous gesture. "But you would still ice her out if he told you to?!"

"…I wouldn't," she said stoutly, and he believed her. "I would still talk to her and hang out with her but my point is no one else would. She's not really the same as us in their eyes. She's at the edge of the group."

"Because she's not rich?"

She looked ashamed. "…yeah, kinda."

"There's no kinda about it, Princess. You said it yourself the only reason why you richies tolerate her is cause she's going out with Jenns. If she wasn't, you would never have given her the time of day."

"I gave you the time of day."

"That's because you've been enlightened. Face it, if you hadn't been locked in with me for nine hours, you wouldn't have looked at me twice."

"That's not true."

"Oh?" John cocked his head to the side as his mouth fell open in a teasing smirk. "So you looked before?"

She ran her finger down the label of her beer bottle, feigning nonchalance but her cheeks were red. "You're not exactly inconspicuous, John."

He pressed his forehead into the crook of her shoulder, feeling the warmth and the damp on his skin, breathing in the alluring scent of her perfume. When she'd suggested the drive-in originally, it had really taken him by surprise. He didn't think a girl like Claire would want to rush into things so eagerly. Maybe he had misjudged the reasons she'd frozen up on Monday? He dismissed the thought almost immediately. Claire believed in true love and Princes and goddamn fairy godmothers. She was probably pushing herself in order to prove to him that she wasn't a prude. Suddenly, John realised that he didn't particularly care if she was one or not. They'd get there eventually sooner or later, but better later when she wasn't so quite so uptight.

"You know, we can always hit the drive-in together some other weekend if it's better for you?" he suggested, trying to be as casual as possible.

Claire turned in surprise. "You don't want to go?" she sounded a little put out. John arched an eyebrow. Of course he did. She picked up on it, her cheeks flushing even pinker. "...Why do you think we shouldn't go?"

"I'm not saying we shouldn't, I'm just wondering if you've got stuff you need to do? You wanna be Prom Queen, right?" She nodded slowly. He sucked in a breath and tapped his foot against the stool. "I'm sure spending all your free time with me instead of going shopping with your friends will turn their votes against you. You said yourself they like to ice people out."

"If they were going to, they would've done so already."

"Maybe they're just waiting for an excuse? Maybe they wanna make it look like they tried but I somehow turned you against them? I get how this thing works, Claire. You gotta go to parties; you gotta kiss babies' cheeks and do bake sales and mingle with dicks like Jenns and McKee."

Her lips parted in a soft 'o' of astonishment. "You want me to win? I thought that sort of stuff didn't matter to you."

"Who doesn't want to date the Prom Queen?" She rolled her eyes. "Look, I really couldn't give a shit either way but you seem to want win it so…" He let out a stiff sigh. "You gotta do what you gotta do. We can save the drive-in for a later date."

He'd given her an out, whether she took it or not was her choice. A part of him hoped that she wouldn't. Being in her presence felt wonderful, having her talk to him like this felt even better. John had never had that before. He couldn't believe that a single person could make any situation instantly tolerable, but that's what Claire did. He found he didn't even mind the music any more, mostly because he couldn't hear it. Claire's presence muffled out everything around them.

"I have been promising to hold a sleepover for ages. I guess I should do that this weekend," she sighed, taking it. John's muscles relaxed. He hadn't even realised he'd been holding them. "And Jake's holding a party─ well, Caroline's technically organising it. It's on Friday night. You should come," she added.

"No can do, Friday night is family fun night at the old Bender house. A few of my siblings come over, we have meatloaf and we afterwards we kick the crap out of each other."

Claire's eyebrows shot up her forehead in alarm. "You guys fight physically?"

"We never had board games growing up so we've always had to iron out our issues the old fashioned way."

"Can you not skip dinner and come to the party instead? I'd feel a lot happier if you did."

"As tempting as that offer is, Princess if I ditch the repercussions will be far worse. My old man is a real stickler family meals; he likes to sit everyone down and tell them how much of a goddamn waste of space they are. Hence why there are only ever four of us at the table these days."

"God…"

For the horror on her face, John knew he should have felt more than resignation. Friday nights were just another sorry fact in his life, and if he wasn't there then things might get messy. He wasn't Senior's only punching bag after all.

"Plus, I have my date with Dick on Saturday morning bright and early. Do you think he'll like roses?"

The laughter quickly faded but they still sat wrapped in one another, content to share in each other's warmth and space. Soon Allison joined them. Dancing had done wonders for her make-up in that the sweat had washed most of it off. Now she looked less like a panda and more like a chimney sweep. They watched in disbelief as she produced a bottle of freshly squeezed orange juice from her bag, ordered a coke and a spare glass from Bert and then mixed the two of them together.

"Couldn't you have ordered a vodka like a normal person?" asked Claire, eyeing the concoction with disgust.

"I don't drink vodka," Allison dipped her finger tips into the molten wax of the tea light beside the peanuts as she sucked noisily through a straw. "I pour it down the sink and put the empty bottles on my windowsill. I've got fourteen of them now. I used to have more but I dropped them out the window."

Claire chose not to react to this. "How are things with Andrew going?"

The girl shrugged. "He's busy. He has a lot of friends. I can't talk to them."

"But none of them have been mean to you, right?"

"All they see is Andrew's arm around me. I could be any other girl to them."

"I'm sure Jake Ryan would talk to you if you tried. He's nice."

"He's a square."

"No, he's-" Claire frowned and then smiled a little guiltily. John began to laugh. "-Yeah, he is. It drives Caroline totally nuts. Have you spoken to Andrew?" she said, fixing him with another accusatory stare.

Before John could open his mouth, Allison cut across him. "He hasn't but then Andrew hasn't spoken to him either. They're pretending like the other doesn't exist." Then she turned to him. "You should talk to him."

"Why should I? He hasn't talked to me."

"He'll talk to you if you talk to him."

"Maybe I don't want to talk to him, alright?" he said, growing irritable. Things were too similar between him and Andrew. Shit just got too real. He didn't know how to look at him any more. "-He's him, I'm me. We've been fucking enemies since Kindergarten. No amount of shit is gonna change that. Right now we've got an understanding were we don't step on each other's toes. That's it."

"For two people who haven't talked that's really quite some understanding to have reached," said his girlfriend pointedly.

John removed his hands from her waist and glared. "Fuck off, Claire."

She got off the stool and away from him. "…Fine," she grabbed her purse from the countertop. "I will go to the bathroom, but you might want to consider being in a better mood when I get back."

John watched her saunter away to the ladies room, head held high.

"What?" he spat at Allison who had been watching the entire exchange with great amusement.

The girl just shrugged and tossed a peanut in the air and caught it in her open mouth.

Since turning sixteen, Claire had drunk wine in small chic cafes on the streets of Paris, sipped on champagne at the company Christmas ball and other high society events. She had even forced herself to drink beer at high school keggers, but never had she been to a bar before, let alone a concert where a band of men with floppy hair blasted sentiments of utter disinterest in love and modernity. She could appreciate it. It was different, cool even to see where all the art house coffee kids went to hang out. Being there made her realise just how envious her previous snide remarks and criticisms of them had been. They did the same things she did; they just had cooler places to hang out. They probably had cooler conversations too.

They didn't have better bathrooms however.

Claire looked in the first cubical and immediately recoiled in disgust at the overflowing bowl of sodden toilet paper. The second one was no better. The third at least was clean but there were streams of paper on the floor. Claire nudged it out of the way with her toe and put toilet paper on top of the seat before sitting down to do her business.

There were words of love and hate scored into red ply board all around her. Claire studied them, trying to search for the contrived meaning behind the disembodied song lyrics and political slogans. Someone had even written the full words to Hunter S. Thompson's The Wave quote just above the toilet roll dispenser. It was like a miniature city with a million voices all shouting over one another and all of them thought they were the most important.

She was annoyed at John, again but she was also annoyed at Andrew. They were being a pair of idiots. As she sat up, she heard a slightly drunk voice shout itself over those of the eyelinered girls' by the sink outside.

"─If I were you, I'd tell Dice what he said, that'd get him thrown out for sure. It'd also get Standish thrown out too," the voice added with vindictive satisfaction.

Claire sighed. No matter where she went there was always this bullshit. She gathered herself together, flushed the toilet and reached for the door, only to stop. Maybe she was a sucker for punishment but she wanted to catch them red handed bitching about her.

"If you do that then that other girl they're with will be thrown out too," interrupted another voice. "And I kinda owe her. She was the one who took care of McSlime for me this afternoon."

"The one in the Pretender's shirt?" It sounded like Watts speaking. Obviously John had said something particularly horrendous to her that she was still going on about it. "I thought you said it was the girl who came into TRAX on Tuesday?"

"That's her! Didn't you recognise her?"

Evidently Watts didn't. "But I thought she was a straight?"

"She's not."

Claire bit back a laugh at the mere thought of Allison living a cookie cutter life style. The girl was more like Wednesday Addams out of the Addam's family with sneakers thrown in.

"She looked like a straight on Tuesday."

"She's pretty out there," her friend assured her. "You wouldn't think it because she never talks. I don't think I've ever heard her speak before this week, and then out of nowhere she suddenly sticks a sanitary pad on Bender's glasses and staples McKee's shirt closed."

"She did what?!"

The girls jumped as Claire flung open the cubical door with a bang. She'd guessed right, it was Watts, along with Jena Hoeman, the New Waver with the bad attitude and even worse earrings and a red haired girl in frilly lace whom Caroline often liked to refer to as 'Cupcake girl.'

Jena's lip curled. She was smoking, her red and blue two tone eyeshadow was smudged and her purple lipstick was crushed into her chin from a possible hard make out session. "Are you gonna tell your boyfriend that we were talking about him, Standish?" she goaded, taking a drag. She blew the smoke right in Claire's direction.

"Whatever," Claire raised a hand to cut her off and pointed at Cupcake girl. "Repeat what you just said about what Allison did to McKee, from the beginning."

"Why don't you ask her yourself?" demanded Jena as Watts smiled. God, they were such bitches.

"Because if you owe my friend, you'll tell me," she shot back. "I'll be the one who'll have to warn her about whether or not she'll need to wear a bulletproof vest to school tomorrow."

With a glance at her friends, the red head reluctantly began to talk. Claire's jaw steadily dropped as the tale unfolded. She knew Allison was crazy, it was pretty cool how crazy she was but it was abundantly clear that the girl had absolutely no concept of how difficult Steff could make her life. It also figured that she lied about having already bought the tickets.

When she finished, Claire shook her head. "That's just great!" She ran her hands quickly under the tap and dried them with a sheet of toilet paper. "Of all the people to screw with!"

"I think what she did was pretty cool," said Watts.

Claire blinked at her, still reeling with shock. "Yeah, if you've got a freaking death wish! He's totally gonna set Benny and Trombley on her now."

This made Jena straighten up. "They're hardly a threat. I've been dealing with Barbie and her bimbo crew since Freshman year-" A cloud of smoke curled from her nostrils as she stabbed out her cigarette in the sink with a hiss and a jangle of bracelets. "-The worst they'll do is write skank on her locker. Fucking ironic, considering how much of a skank Benny is."

Claire snorted as she began inspecting her reflection in the mirror. "Tell me about it."

"I thought you were friends with them?"

She could see how Jena had easily made that mistake. By all appearances, they all looked like friends. They weren't really though, not in the way that Caroline and Shayne and Amanda were.

"They're not really friends," Claire admitted. "More like people I work with. I have got no interest in hanging out with them outside of school."

Watts scoffed at her. "So you consider this whole popularity thing you've got going on a job?"

Claire realised just how conceited that sounded. "What I meant is that they do some of the same extra-curricular activities as me. We go to meetings together and organise stuff, and we go to the same parties but we're not like friends friends…"

And they'd be even less friends now that Allison had humiliated Steff. There was a shit storm brewing on the horizon, Claire could feel. Anxiety clawed it's sickening hand around her gut as her instincts screamed at her to hide behind her usual defences; the Prom, the pretty people, the superficial conversations. Caroline was right, she could lose her chance at becoming Prom Queen and it was all because Steff owned people, just like Hardy. Anything they said went, and now poor Amanda was stuck with the biggest jackass the world had ever seen because of it. John's words about how her friends biding their time in order to make it look like she was the one at fault finally struck home. She'd thought he'd just been trying to get out of going to the drive-in for whatever reason.

"They're not particularly nice people," she admitted quietly.

"And you are?" Jena asked snidely. Cupcake girl nudged her in the arm to stop. Jena ignored her. Beside them, Watts folded her arms over as she waited for her response with a satisfied sneer on her face.

Claire's teeth clenched underneath their scrutiny. "I try to be. I mean, I'm not perfect. I sometimes say mean things but no more than you do. I don't enjoy hurting people."

"Then maybe you should reconsider dating Bender?" snapped Watts. "That's all he likes to do."

"If you have a problem with John, take it up with John but don't drag me into it. I've never done anything to you that you haven't already done to me." And with that she grabbed her purse and marched out the door, nose in the air.

The concert finished at eleven o'clock. John made sure to flip Dice Man the bird when they walked past him on the way to his van. After returning from the toilet, Claire had been in subdued form. At first he'd been worried that she was still mad at him for cussing her out but the way she kept glancing nervously at Allison told him otherwise. He didn't ask her about it. She hadn't asked any more questions about Andrew and he wanted to keep it that way. So he bought her another beer and they sat at the bar and the three of them talked about everything but awkward questions.

Eventually, after Allison went off to the dance floor again, she'd lightened up and kissed him, hard on the mouth, her fingers in his hair. So when they walked out of the bar at eleven, his arm was slung around her shoulders, he wondered why to himself, why had he convinced himself into convince her that changing their weekend plans was a good idea? It was probably the stupidest thing he had ever done.

He goddamn hoped she appreciated it.

As he unlocked the door, Allison drew something to his attention.

"Their car's broken down," She jerked her head towards where Watts was furiously slapping her steering wheel of her two toned Volkswagen beetle. Ray was in the front passenger seat beside her, trying to calm her down. She looked about ready to throttle him.

John chuckled and pulled out a cigarette. He offered one to Claire and she took it. She'd gone quiet again. John didn't like it when she was quiet. It made him feel on edge.

"Sucks to be them," he said lightly, climbing into the driver's seat.

"You should give them a ride," Allison was staring at him in her odd birdlike way, guilt tripping him into it.

But John wasn't going to let her do it. He'd already sacrificed sex tonight for her. "I'm not a fucking taxi service."

"There are no garages open at this hour."

"Not my problem."

"Give them a ride," said Claire abruptly. He turned to his girlfriend as if she'd suddenly just gone insane.

"She called you a bitch, remember?" he reminded her as he struck up a match and lit the end of her cigarette before lighting his own.

"So have you and I don't hold it against you…"

"No way in hell."

"I'm going to go help them," announced Allison, with one final glare at John, she sauntered off to the other car.

"Does you even know the first thing about cars?!" John called after her retreating back incredulously. "What?" he demanded, seeing Claire's look. She too was stuck on the idea of him playing the white knight of the evening it seemed.

"I caught her talking shit about you in the bathroom with Jena Hoeman," she told him.

"And so far you are not giving me any good reason here to give them a ride."

"Moral superiority, John," she flicked the ash into the overflowing tray. "You really need to clean that out." She added, pointing to it.

John picked it out of its holder, unwound the window and dumped it onto the wet tarmac with a thump.

"There. Clean," he put it back with a grin.

His girlfriend rolled her eyes in the way she always did when she knew he was purposely trying to annoy her. "Think about it," she said. He sighed. She was not going to let this one go easily. "You give them a lift and Watts can no longer go on at me for what a horrible dick you are to her."

"I don't need you to defend me."

"I know you can defend yourself, but I need to be able to defend the fact that I'm going out with you. You said earlier that I gotta do what I gotta do, right? So that involves hanging out with dicks like Hardy and Steff and convincing people that you're not as bad as you let on."

John's temper flared for the third time that evening. "You're not dragging me into your Prom Queen bullshit."

But Claire was staring at him, worried, frightened even. There was something in her expression that stopped the rage from sticking.

"John…" she said quietly after a moment. "Allison has landed me in a potential shit storm with Steff." She nibbled on her bottom lip before going on. "Watts' friend, you know the one that dresses like a cupcake-?" He laughed lightly despite himself. He knew exactly what girl she was talking about. "-Well, she told me earlier about something Allison did to him in the place where she works today."

"What did she do?"

When she told him, John howled with laughter.

"It's not that funny," but Claire's lips were splitting into a smile. She struggled with herself, forcing herself to be serious. Finally, she got a handle on it once more. "You know that thing you said? About them just waiting for an excuse?"

"You think they'll use this thing with Allison?"

She looked down, avoiding his eyes. "…I've worked really hard these past few years. I know you think it's dumb but it's important to me," she told him. She spoke gently, vulnerably like she was bearing her utmost secrets to him in the same way she had on Saturday. "I've done everything, I've joined the student newspaper, I help with the year book, I'm Vice-President of the Student Council and I run the Prom Committee. I work really hard to get good grades too, and then-" she swallowed thickly as her voice began to crack. "…The fact that someone can take that all away from me just because I want to be friends with certain people or date you, it…it's not fair!"

He suddenly realised she was crying. She tried to hide it, she tried to turn her face away from him but John could see her shoulders shake. Without a word, without a single thought as to what he was doing, he reached out and gathered her into his chest. For a while they sat there, her clinging to him as a new feeling of rage began to form in his stomach.

"Your friends are fucking scumbags," he mustered finally. "If they try anything, anything at all you come and find me immediately."

She nodded weakly, her head still buried in the front of his denim jacket. John stroked his fingers through her hair as tenderly as he could, despite wanting to punch a hole in a wall. He hated tears. He'd never known what to do when he saw them on Reinette's face or on the faces of his brothers and sisters. The only way John knew how to deal with them was by letting the anger drown out the feelings of helplessness and sorrow. It was part of the reason why he'd gotten so angry at Claire when she'd started to cry on Saturday. He'd been angry at himself too, at his Dad, at his fucked up excuse for a life.

Hell, he'd been angry at the entire world in that instant.

"Right, straighten yourself up, Sweets," he told her after another moment. "We gotta leave a nice impression on the neighbours─ Hey Allison!" he leaned out the window as Claire sat up and tried to recompose herself. "Tell them that if they want a ride, there's one going for them right now but I'm not gonna wait around for them to make up their minds."

"You're gonna do it?" Claire looked at him in surprise, her tears forgotten.

"If I kill Ray it'll be on you."

She wiped her eyes and smiled. "Thanks John."

"The shit I do for you, Princess."

She sighed heavily and leaned in against his shoulder. Her eyes flickered closed. "Thanks for taking the fall with Vernon too."

He smiled to himself as Ray pulled open the side door and got into the back with Watts. In his rear view window, Watts was looking at the mattress on the floor in disdain. She kept her mouth shut though when she sat down on it.

"Thanks man," Ray said, nodding at him with his stupid grin. He tried put an arm around Watts' shoulder but she shrugged him off.

"Don't thank me, thank Claire, she talked me into it," John told him shortly as he turned on the engine. Allison got in the front beside Claire. Noticing the puffiness of her face, she glared at John. He ignored it. It was her fault anyway. "Right, where to?─ and don't fucking touch anything or I swear to God I will kill you."

Ray's hand stopped halfway to the Carroll Dunham. "Cool painting."

"Thanks, I stole if off Allison's parents─ Do you want it back?" he asked the scowling girl.

Allison didn't even pretend to think about it. "No."

"You're going to get in so much trouble!" gasped Claire, shaking her head. "Allison, that's worth two thousand dollars at least!" John stared at his girlfriend, shocked that she was concerned about such a thing. As far as he knew that was pocket money for her.

"They'll just send me to the psychiatrist like they always do," Allison replied as she began to pick at her nails. "Even if I tell them John took it, they won't believe me."

"That's because you're a compulsive liar."

"…Can you get yourself prescribed Ritalin?" asked a hopeful Ray after a moment's pause. John had almost forgotten about them. It was a pity he'd remembered.

The dark haired girl turned in her seat to look at him. "I don't have an attention deficit disorder, why would I?"

"It gives you a good buzz," said Ray. "It's like Coke but without all the heart palpitations, know what I'm saying? That's right, right Bender?"

John ignored him.

"Hey, any of you seen the new Police Academy movie? There's this guy in it who can sound like a police siren. It's fucking awesome!"

And then he proceeded to try and imitate it. From the corner of John's eye, Claire had the good grace to flash him an apologetic smile.

"Allison?" he said, interrupting Ray's painful monologue of stupidity. "What did Steff McKee say after you stapled his shirt closed?"

For a moment Allison just sat there, confused as to how they had heard. She looked from his to Claire's face and back again quizzically until finally Watts put her out of her misery.

"My friend, Andie told Stan-Claire," she corrected herself quickly. John glanced down at Claire's face and sure enough, there was a ghost of a satisfied smile playing on lips. "She's the one who he was harassing."

"Oh…" Allison settled back into the car upholstery, a wicked smile spread across her face. "He said, 'Bitch! This is Egyptian cotton.'"

John nearly drove the van off the road he was laughing so hard.

To be continued...

A/N: So hopefully now you're beginning to see things taking shape.

As always, thank you for reading and for reviewing the previous chapters to everyone but especially those beautiful people who have done that. Feedback as always is welcomed and encouraged. Next chapter has the final part of this night, and then some lovely repercussions.