If you've skipped over my other stories, this is where some of it will fall into place a little more - you should be able to glean the reasons for Madison upping and leaving in the summer of 1984. Oh, and you'll meet her brother Zach who is a treasure. And you'll get more John.

Monday, July 17th 1994

It was less the alcohol and more everything else which conspired to make Monday morning, even one Madison didn't need to go to work on, much more painful than it needed to be. Her eyes felt gritty from crying and embedded mascara, whilst her hair stuck to the back of her neck with sweat. There was also a heavy weight on her chest; sooner or later, she'd have to face her mother.

Staring at the ceiling, she promised herself she'd get up in five more minutes.

The door crashed open. Madison's whole body jumped, making the bedposts creak, as her younger brother exclaimed around a mouthful of toast, 'So you're not dead, then!'

'Zach!' She scrambled into a sitting position. 'What are you doing? I didn't know you were even here yet!'

'Because you were too busy screeching when you got in last night.' He shrugged. 'Selfish, much? I could have been dead in a gutter.'

'Two death jokes in two minutes. That's a record.'

'One of us has to be cheerful.'

Madison glowered at him. 'Some of us have actual reasons not to be.'

'Is this the John-thing?' Zach sighed theatrically loudly. 'I told Mom to tell you, I said you'd be upset-'

'I'm not upset! And, hold on, you knew?' That feeling of betrayal surged again. 'Am I the only one who didn't?'

'Well, you're the only one who left, so...' Zach shrugged.

'You moved to New York!'

'Three years ago! And that's basically round the block from here. You're two whole time zones away!' Zach shrugged again. 'It's not like it affected you.'

It was that simple for him. It was as if his childhood illness had made everything else fade into insignificance. They'd never spoken about his leukaemia. She'd sat beside him most Sundays in hospital, chatting about inconsequential rubbish. He'd been basically her best friend for most of her adolescence, in as much as he was the only person she spoke to that was close to her own age. But they'd never had those heart-to-hearts, never addressed the very real elephant in the room. How he felt about the lost years and this sometimes unexpected future, she had no idea.

'When did you get here, anyway?'

He plopped down on the bed, spilling crumbs everywhere as he ripped off another mouthful of bread. 'Last night.'

'Late flight?'

He shook his head as he chewed. 'I drove.'

Madison raised her eyebrows. 'You don't drive. You don't even own a car!' The very thought of her messy erratic brother behind the wheel of a vehicle made her shudder, even as she remembered the unfamiliar car she'd been too busy and hurt to consider last night. 'You drove from New York?'

'Some guy I know was selling it. Needed it bringing out to LA. I said I'd do it.'

'Zach. We're not in LA.' She waited for the inevitable.

'I thought I could come for a visit.'

Zach's visits were predictably unpredictable. She never knew quite when he'd appear, but there was a certainty that he would, sooner or later, and that life would change around him. She had a suspicion that her room-mate Jen mainly kept Madison around for those pockets of time in which Zach's flamboyant nature made their lives brighter and more exciting.

There was a darker side, though, which Madison spoke about almost as rarely as his illness. She hated to bring it up even now, but her filter wasn't quite in place yet; it was perhaps only what he deserved for his rude invasion. 'What happened this time?'

'"Unreliable time-keeping and unproductive habits."' He spoke glibly, utilising air quotes and scattering his final crumbs before swallowing the last piece of toast. It was another firing in a very long list of firings, all of which had been kept strictly on a need to know basis. Zach never materialised in Chicago on these occasions. Except for this time. Madison tried not to wince.

Zach moved on, as if he hadn't just lost his job. 'So. Mom said there was a school reunion you were going to.'

'I'm not going to it!'

He shrugged. 'Better check the refrigerator.'

Madison gaped. 'She... she got the invite out of the garbage? That is...'

'Very Mom.'

Madison had to agree with him there. It was very typically Laura, passively encouraging her children to do something they didn't want to. 'I'm not going.'

'You said that about prom.'

'And that went so well.' She gave her brother a withering look. Prom was another more or less taboo subject: the romantic night her boyfriend didn't spend with her but with another girl didn't make for positive memories. That the same boy – man, she supposed, now – had disrupted another evening ten years later only strengthened her resolve to avoid any further trips down memory lane.

Part of that was not letting John-fucking-Bender (the sobriquet she'd privately given him over the years) get to her. Here she was, mid-morning, surrounded by her childhood items in an unfamiliar room. This was not how she rolled.

'Thanks for sharing,' she said now, sweeping crumbs off the bedcovers and slipping out of bed. 'Are you going to sit round here all day?'

Zach stood up, towering over her. Then, quick as lightning, he made a bolt for the door. 'Shower-time!'

'Zach!' She reached the bathroom door just as it closed in her face. 'Zach, that is not fair!' She gave the door a half-hearted kick – it wasn't, after all, her door – before retreating with a substantial huff to the kitchen.

The thick air deadened any sign of life either inside or outside the house. The trailer park was disturbingly still, whilst the only evidence that anybody besides Zach and her had been here was some unfinished washing up and a note with her name on it in which Laura explained where she and Mike were (hairdressing and the hardware store, respectively) and urged her daughter to call Jen who apparently had 'substantial messages' for her.

She dialled without hesitation. Jen was LA and LA was safe.

'About time.' Madison could hear her room-mate's eye roll. 'I called last night, what took you so long?'

Madison ignored her. Jen had a belief that she should be the centre of everybody's world, a belief few actually challenged. Madison certainly capitulated to most of her friend's whims as easily as she did to Zach's, and Jen seemed to all but set her own working hours. As for any of the men she dated, she had a strict two-hour call back policy: if she was made to wait any longer, they were frozen, deleted, cancelled. It certainly made for a clear-cut life.

'So, since I'm apparently your messaging service now...' Jen said, pausing for dramatic effect. 'Hold on, let me grab the scroll.'

Now Madison rolled her eyes. 'Come on, Jen, I'm calling interstate here.'

Jen related a couple of messages from work contacts, which Madison dutifully wrote down. 'Some guy named Jed also called and left his number.'

Madison ignored that one. Jed could very much wait longer than two hours.

'And our landlord called. We need to sign a new contract or something.' Jen was shrugging; Madison could tell because that was precisely what Jen always did when anything remotely legal arose. It was Madison's job to check the small print and negotiate terms. Jen was the party; Madison was the business.

'I'm in Chicago.' Madison stated the obvious, but she was genuinely unsure if her room-mate knew that. Given it didn't directly affect her, she might think Madison were just staying down the block.

'Yeah, but, like, not forever.' Jen was dismissive. 'I'll tell him to wait until you get back.'

Madison agreed by saying nothing. Their landlord was unlikely to evict them because of a slightly delayed new contract. If nothing else, he wouldn't want to deal with Jen.

'Okay, so, I'm actually just on my way out so...' Jen tailed off, and then the line went dead. Despite herself, Madison couldn't help a wry smile. There was the person she went to for a lifeline out of here. What did that say about Chicago?

All she could say about Chicago right now was that it was hot. Too hot. The house had air-conditioning, and even that was struggling. As Madison waited for her toast to pop, she stared out the window at the trailer park. She remembered summers in those cans, where the air was so thick you could chew it. This was definitely a trade-up. Then she felt uncharitable for even silently suggesting that this was a gold-digging mission for her mom. Laura deserved far better than that.

And she deserved far better than Madison herself had given her last night, she mused, as she chewed the toast. She could blame the alcohol or jet lag or shock or a million other things, but there was no excuse for the way she'd spoken to Laura when she came in last night. Even as a teenager, she'd almost never raised her voice, and she was sure any number of therapists could give her reasons for that: fear of being abandoned by another parent, of disturbing some kind of karmic forces in the universe. Everybody in LA had a therapist, except Madison. She had no desire to rake over the things in her past which made her like she was now. The truth was, she didn't like arguing with her mom, and that hadn't changed. She had some serious making up to do when Laura came home.

Just as she made that resolve, movement in the trailer park caught her eye. A door opening. A boot stepping out. John Bender emerged from her old home, blinking in the exposing sun. Standing on his own two feet, he didn't look quite so bad as he did last night. Madison was almost impressed that he was awake given the level of comatose he'd reached last night. Then she remembered that this was John-fucking-Bender, and revised her taste.

He helped her along right then by pulling a complete John-fucking-Bender stunt: from somewhere, he produced a pair of sunglasses. She almost laughed. He had nothing but the clothes on his back, but there they were, part of his hangover-repair kit. If he did this as often as it seemed so, she supposed it made sense that he'd be prepared. Even so, it helped her to see him as the guy who'd obliterated her heart ten years ago, rather than... what? A drunk deserving of her sympathy?

He crossed the park, head down. His hunched shoulders were a warning to everybody to keep away. Again, Madison was struck by how much he'd shrunk, that surprising physique from high school dwindling to a gaunt slenderness which didn't suit him. Hands rammed into his pockets, he loped along, before giving a momentary, almost cursory, glance towards the house. Madison wondered what he was hoping to see. It soon became apparent that it wasn't her, anyway. He faltered, stumbled, almost fell, pulling his sunglasses off to see if the alcohol was playing tricks on him still.

For a second, she met his eye, and she wished she hadn't. Because there he was: not John-fucking-Bender but... John. Older, harder, more hurt, more broken, but him. For a split second, all his feelings were writ large on his face.

Then, he slammed the shutters down. Sunglasses were jammed back on and the lope became a stalk, carrying him as far away from here as possible. Madison watched him go until he was out of sight.

Shit.

'So does this guy know you're driving his car around all over?'

Zach threw her a withering look. 'It's a trip to the mall, Mads. Live a little.'

She tried not to pout like a sulky seventeen-year-old, despite how much she felt like one. Running her finger along the faux-tortoiseshell panelling, she refused to let the matter drop. 'If it were me, I'd be pissed off.'

'Yeah, well, it's not you and you're still pretty pissed, so.'

She was about to protest that that wasn't fair, that she wasn't pissed, that she was merely making conversation, when she caught herself. Because she was pissed and Zach was right. She ducked her head and did her best to pull herself together.

This trip to the mall had been Zach's idea, itching to drive the car again, but had suited her. The trailer park had suddenly seemed too small, let alone the house, and going somewhere which wasn't haunted by memories old and new seemed too good to be true. What she couldn't leave behind was her mood, which had been dark and stormy ever since a certain criminal had strolled across their front yard.

She cleared her throat. 'So what do you even want from the mall?'

Zach shrugged. Driving suited him, Madison thought; he drove with a confidence and swagger that his too-lanky body never quite achieved in normal life, no matter how hard he tried. 'Nothing. Just thought it might be fun.' When she quirked an eyebrow at him, he glanced across again. 'What? You wanted to hang around that place all day?'

'No.' She hesitated before adding, 'Why don't you like it?'

He didn't reply for several seconds, before he finally said, 'We're here,' turning into the parking lot and proving his driving skill didn't quite stretch as far as parking: the car straddled two spaces. He swung out of his side, leaving her question unanswered as she hurried after him.

It wasn't an unpleasant way to spend an afternoon. The mall was air-conditioned and Zach was always good company. They wandered around with no real plan, drifting into shops, mocking items and adverts, generally just being childish. It was the best kind of therapy after the intense twenty-four-hours she'd had.

But she couldn't escape it entirely. Sitting around the fountain at the centre of the mall, with a coffee for her and a milkshake for him, Zach said, 'So, did you see John this morning?' Before she could snap or even glower, he held his hands up. 'Are we just supposed to talk around it? I get it, you're pissed-'

'I'm not fucking pissed!'

'- you're pissed, and I get it, but seriously, Mads, you can at least admit it.'

She swirled her coffee around in its cup. 'I just... I don't get why Mom would do this. What?' she asked, when Zach gave her an incredulous look. 'What?'

'You don't get why Laura Lawrence, the woman who doesn't even speak badly of the guy who left her with two children and a pile of debt, to live in a two-bedroom trailer, offers a bed to a part-time drunk a couple of times a month?'

All of what Zach said was true: Laura was the most generous, the most forgiving, the most incredible person Madison knew. Couched in those terms, it didn't even seem that big an ask. Compared to what their father had done, John's behaviour was small-fry. But still-

'Look, I'm just going to say it how I see it.' Zach took a long slurp on his milkshake, which Madison wasn't certain wasn't intended to make her jealous of it. 'You and John, you're long over. And the trailer's empty. He doesn't disturb Mom and Mike. He doesn't trash the place. He's a well-behaved drunk. So... what's the issue?'

Again, to an outsider, it sounded so reasonable. But Madison wasn't an outsider; this was very much inside of who she was, what she'd become in the years since leaving Chicago. The whole time she'd been away, John had existed only as a nebulous concept, one she shoved to one side and blamed any undesirable quirks in her personality upon. Now it was obvious that he'd remained a very real, visible presence in her family's life. More visible and real that she had been. How much of her anger was actually guilt, she didn't want to consider.

Perhaps the most galling part of it all was how many questions she had which weren't concerned with how much of a traitor her mother was. Even before she'd seen him this morning, the image of her ex-boyfriend slumped across Brian's backseat had been replayed over and over in her mind. Since locking eyes with him across the yard, her brain had only filled with more queries, more curiosities, more concern.

Trying to sound nonchalant, and instantly knowing she didn't, she said, 'How often does it happen?'

Zach shrugged. 'I don't know. Not that often. I don't live here, Mads, it's not something Mom and I chat about.' After a pause, he said, 'Once or twice a month when I was at home. It depends.'

She kept her eyes down over her cooling coffee. 'Why does he come here?'

'I don't know. Mads, I don't speak to him, we're not friends as such.'

'He always liked you. You liked him!' She couldn't help sounding accusatory, because the way John and Zach had got on had always been one of her favourite things.

'Yeah, we did. Past tense. But...' Zach shrugged again. 'It's not like we had much reason to hang out after...' He didn't need to finish his sentence.

Madison stood up. 'I need some stuff from the drugstore. You coming?'

Zach followed a few paces behind as she hurried through the mall. She still had questions, dozens of them, multiplying and falling over each other inside her head, but she wasn't sure she wanted the answers just yet. Besides which, it didn't seem much as if Zach had them anyway. Besides which, she did actually need some stuff from the drugstore.

She could hear her brother sniggering to himself from a few shelves away, presumably about contraceptives or something equally as juvenile. Madison kept her head down, determined not to be associated with him as he no doubt got in people's way, arms and legs always too long for him to remember. Jobless and aimless, she wasn't sure what he had to be giggling about, but it kept him out of her way for a few minutes whilst she picked up toothpaste, hair bands, nail varnish-

'Sorry,' she apologised as she dropped a roll of floss and, in bending down to retrieve it, knocked into a member of staff. Even as she was reflecting upon how clumsy she'd been since returning home, how this was exactly what had landed her in such trouble yesterday, her collision buddy said:

'Madison?'

Madison had to look from the woman's face to her badge and back again several times before she took it in. The make-up was neater, the hair less teased; a decade was a long time in fashion, and Nancy was nothing if not a sucker for it.

Now, she looked embarrassed, as if she'd never intended to say Madison's name at all. Madison knew how she felt; aside from John himself, this was the one person she'd least wanted to bump into, literally or metaphorically. But of course, this was her and this was Chicago: this was precisely how things went.

Finally, she said, 'Nancy,' with a small nod of her head. 'I... I didn't know you worked here.' As if this was the kind of information that would have made its way to her on the airwaves.

'I didn't know you were back.' A much more relevant statement. Nancy rather undermined the confidence of her tone by dropping her eyes to the ground and fiddling with what turned out to be a surprisingly tasteful engagement ring. Before Madison could question her about that – or, more likely, just continue staring at it wordlessly – Nancy regained some of the chutzpah she'd always had. 'I guess you're here for the reunion, right?'

Madison would cheerfully throttle anybody who mentioned that damned reunion again. 'My mom's wedding, actually.'

Nancy nodded. 'Right. Well... you look good.'

Blinking in surprise, Madison said, 'Thanks? You... too.' Because Nancy did. Obviously she had always looked good: there was a reason boys like John had followed her around like dogs on heat. But now she looked different, healthy, happy, content. Madison was loathe to admit it to herself, but she was sort of jealous.

Nancy shrugged as she half-preened herself. 'Yeah, well. Not bad for a mom.'

The word hit Madison between the eyes, which was dumb because it wasn't as if that wasn't precisely what she'd thought of as soon as she set eyes on Nancy. That tiny word encapsulated exactly why she'd gone to La-La Land never to return all those years ago. It was what had left indelible scars all over her, yet it was a word she'd never associated with Nancy herself. Moms didn't look like Nancy.

And dads really didn't look like John.

Nancy, of course, knew what she'd done. Nancy had always known the power of words, of well-chosen utterances and their ability to wound. The only difference was the look on her face now. Where once she'd have looked smug and self-satisfied, now that lasted mere nanoseconds, before something almost like shame crossed her face.

'I should get back to work.' She tossed her ponytail like the girl she'd been last time Madison had seen her. 'I'll see you around.'

Judging by how things had been going in the past couple of days, Madison somehow suspected that was true.

Laura looked around the table as Zach finished his last mouthful of his third helping. 'Well. When I said it was nice to have everybody together for a meal, I didn't necessarily count on the washing up.'

'I can do it.' Madison made an immediate grab for the nearest plates, almost upsetting her glass of water at the same time.

'I wasn't hinting,' Laura insisted. 'Let everybody catch their breath, Mads. There's no hurry.'

Madison sat back down in her seat with some reluctance. Much as she loved her mom, Zach, even Mike, the past couple of days were playing on her mind so much that a family dinner was a little more than her brain could cope with right now. All she wanted to do was tuck herself away in her room with only a book for company and a shield against intrusions. Shooting the breeze over coffee was not on her agenda.

Luckily, her soon-to-be stepfather was not the kind of guy for after-dinner chit-chat either.

'So, when do I get a go in the car?' he asked now.

'Now,' Zach said, just as Laura exclaimed, 'Really? It can't wait?'

'She's a good looking car.' Mike shrugged, grinning. 'Can't waste a moment.'

'I'll get her warmed up.' Zach scrambled for the keys and crashed outside with his usual carelessness. Mike gave Laura a peck on the cheek before following him.

And then there were two.

Madison reached for the plates again. 'So I'll get started-'

'Madison.' Laura raised her eyebrows. 'Shall we talk about last night?'

'No?' Hopeful as she sounded, Madison knew it was impossible; her mother didn't do requests. 'There's not much to talk about.' Then, hastily, she added, 'I mean, I'm sorry I shouted at you. But...' She shrugged.

Laura studied her for a few seconds before speaking. 'I should have told you that there was a chance that John might drop by. That he does come by, sometimes. I was wrong, and I'm sorry.'

'It doesn't matter.'

'It does and I'm sorry.' Laura paused meaningfully, as if she were waiting for questions to rain down upon her. She knew her children well.

'Why, Mom?'

'Why what?'

'Why do you let him come here?'

Laura frowned, as if it were an alien question. 'Because he needs somewhere?'

'Hasn't he got his own place? Where does he even go the rest of the time?'

'I don't know.' Laura shook her head. 'We don't talk that much. I think Brian could answer those questions for you. All I know is that, one day, a few months after you moved to LA, he turned up here, scared and sad and disgustingly drunk, and I couldn't turn him away. He was just a kid. And since then, he's dropped by every now and then, just as scared and sad and drunk, and I've never been able to turn him away.'

Madison studied the woodgrain of the table intensely. Her mother's words conjured up images to her, frighteningly familiar ones. She knew exactly what John would have looked like all that time ago and she knew with an alarming certainty that she wouldn't have been able to turn him away either.

In a much smaller voice, she asked, 'Why does he get drunk?'

'Why does anybody get drunk?' Laura sighed heavily. 'Like I said, Mads – John doesn't talk to me. I'm not even sure he talks much to Brian. He doesn't talk much to anyone. You know what he's like.'

Madison did, and she didn't agree. The John she knew talked constantly, to anyone and everyone, about anything except the things that mattered. She doubted Brian would be able to explain much, but she suddenly very much wanted to know.

'Can I borrow the truck?'

It was as if she'd been expected. Carolyn expressed no surprise or shock at finding her dinner guest of twenty-four hours acquaintance on her doorstep, welcoming her in for herbal tea and (somewhat incongruously) cookies. Madison found herself seated in the kitchen before she could collect herself, somehow ending up more confused than the hosts she'd sprung herself upon.

Finally, however, even Carolyn ran out of chit-chat and a silence descended. Madison and Brian eyed each other. She remembered the brain as a blurter, somebody who'd begin conversations where conversations weren't needed or desired. It had been annoying. She missed it now.

She took a deep breath.

'You're here about John, aren't you?'

She exhaled and nodded. 'Yeah.' Then she spat out, 'What's wrong with him?'

Carolyn gave a small snort of laughter. 'There's a big question!' Brian shot her a look. 'Well, come on Bri!'

Madison studied the cup of dubious tea in front of her. Words were her thing, or were supposed to be. She knew her previous question had been wrong, but didn't know how to make it right.

Thankfully, Brian finally unlocked his tongue.

'There's a lot wrong with John.' Abandoning his own undrunk cup of dubious tea, he folded his arms. As he spoke, Madison was struck by how hard he found it to reveal all of John's problems like this. Every word sounded like a betrayal. She remembered how, for some strange reason, out of all of them, it was Brian John had always gravitated towards. It seemed that friendship (if that were even the right word) had continued, although Madison had no idea what Brian himself got out of it.

'Once every couple of weeks, he calls like that. Or the bar calls. Usually the bar calls. He's drunk and out of money, or drunk and angry, or drunk and sad. So I pick him up and take him to your mom's.' Brian shrugged. 'Rinse and repeat.'

'But... why?' Madison surprised herself. She didn't know she wanted to know this much. Trying to narrow down the question, she said, 'Why do you take him to my mom's? How do you even know my mom?'

'He asked to go there the first time I picked him up. I hadn't seen him for weeks, but it was my number he gave to the bar and your mom's address he gave me. I didn't know it was your mom's place until we got there.'

'Why doesn't he go home?' Still, she frowned. If it were her, she'd want to be in her own bed, waking up somewhere familiar, not someone else's trailer. 'Where does he live?' A beat later, she got it. 'Does he... does he still with his parents?'

'His dad,' Brian clarified. 'His mom left not long after you did. It's been John and his dad ever since.'

Madison tried to imagine what that looked like, and couldn't. She had run to the furthest point she could manage in order to get away from this place, and she loved her mom. Home had been a refuge. That one time she'd set foot in the house John grew up in was imprinted upon her; she could still feel the tension and smell the fear. If she'd ever imagined anything about his life, she'd imagined him leaving that place behind as soon as he possibly could.

'Why would he stay there?' she asked aloud, only partially for anybody else to hear.

'He didn't have a choice.'

'He's found it hard to get jobs,' Carolyn put in by way of explanation. 'He's found it even harder to keep them.'

Brian shrugged again. 'It's not like he had a plan.'

Madison tried again. 'Nancy, though.' When Brian gave her a quizzical look, she said, 'You said Nancy had nothing to do with this. But I've seen her, she works in the mall on the edge of town, and she's engaged and she... had the baby?'

'John's baby,' Carolyn confirmed. 'Not John's engagement ring.'

Madison was about to ask more, find out more about the baby – child, she supposed, by now – but found she couldn't. All she could manage was, 'So... how?'

'She doesn't let John see Corey.'

She did her best to shrug off the name which made the baby very much a child. 'Why?'

'Cause she's a bitch.'

'Brian!' It was Carolyn's turn to shoot her husband a look. 'She has every right to stop him. He... he isn't always safe. I'm sorry, but... I know where she's coming from. I'd do the same if it were me.'

Brian said grudgingly, 'He did turn up drunk sometimes.'

It was a lot to take in. She'd come here looking for answers and she'd found them – or at least some of them. Whatever picture she'd had of John over the past decade was shattered. When she'd left, he'd been the boy who had cheated on her, knocked the high school tramp up, bled her dry of any emotions. That's how he'd stayed in her mind, and if she'd never been able to imagine him as a dad or playing happy families, she'd also never imagined that his life would have stayed so relatively the same. Same house, same routine, same self-destruct button being repeatedly slammed. It appeared it was still 1984 in his little corner of the world.

Eventually she said, 'So where is he now?'

It was more dark than light by the time she brought the truck to a stop outside a house she had never intended to visit ever again. Without the sun, although it was still somewhat humid, it was cooler, and she found herself rooting around for something, anything, in the truck to pull over her t-shirt. To her shame, she found even after everything, that she regarded her mom's ancient sweater suspiciously before succumbing to it.

The house was much as it had been a decade ago. The driveway was a little more overgrown, the paintwork peeling a little more, but no more evil or festering than before. Still, she regarded it through the truck window, keeping the door between it and her closed. Just as before, in Brian and Carolyn's kitchen, she only now began to awake from the trance she'd put herself into. She'd driven here without any consideration for what she'd do when she reached her destination. Now she was here, and she needed a few moments to collect herself.

This was the kind of impulsive she didn't do, period. She was careful to the point of banality in almost all areas of her life, and always had been. Except when it came to John. Part of what she was feeling was anger at herself: she'd been back in Chicago for just over forty-eight hours and already she was running around town, searching for something she thought she'd left behind ten years ago. Part of her wondered if she shouldn't restart the engine, hit the gas and keep driving until she reached the sanity of LA.

The other part of her opened the door and stepped out into the twilight. Again, she paused; again, she looked at the house, wondering if it might not swallow her up without so much as flickering. Fighting against her natural instincts, she took a few steps up the path, then a few more, until she was at the door. She lifted her hand to knock on the door.

'I wouldn't if I were you, Twinkie.'

She knew exactly how much he'd enjoy the way she started. Now she knew he was there, she could see him in the shadows, a darker space in that darkness. But she hadn't noticed him before, and it instantly put her on the back foot. From everything she could have said in response, all she could dredge up was, 'John.'

Stepping into the faint evening light now, he looked marginally better than this morning, and certainly an improvement upon last night. He surveyed her silently, and she found herself traitorously wondering what he thought. That internal anger surged again, and she folded her arms defiantly. John, of course, responded with that lazy smile which showed he knew exactly what she was thinking.

She went on the attack. 'Why are you lurking around in the dark like that?'

'It's my porch. I'll lurk wherever I like. Why are you ringing my doorbell?'

'You don't have one.' She instantly wanted to bite that back, because it was an incredibly bad riposte. Here she was, arriving uninvited into his life. She ought to have the element of surprise on her side, and instead she was playing catch-up. She took a step backwards. 'It's fine. I can take a hint.' It suited her to beat a retreat anyway. She half-turned to go.

'Did Brian send you?'

The suspicion and clear dislike of any show of concern by somebody who had done nothing but help him made her temper flare up. She wheeled round. 'No, he didn't send me! He tried to talk me out of it, actually, and I should have listened. Just... forget it.'

Seething, she headed back to the truck. She was almost there, her hand reaching for the handle when she heard, 'Twinkie. Twinkie!' Footsteps, few but there, and she turned to see he'd left the gloom of the porch for the path. His hands disappeared into his jeans pockets as he stared down at the ground just in front of her. 'Look, I'm...' His mouth wrestled with an apology and clearly decided against it, as what came out instead was, 'It's nice to see you.'

It was Madison's turn to wrestle with a dozen different responses, as wrong-footed by John Bender as ever. Finally, she settled upon perhaps the most surprising reply of all: 'You want to take a walk?'

Madison remembered the John Bender she'd first met, back when she was invisible and he was nothing but a criminal. He'd talked a mile a minute, always having the last word and matching everybody's utterances with a ruder, cruder, more shocking reply. Then she'd got to know him, and found a different boy underneath, one who could have serious conversations and actually listen to what others said. What she said. He'd heard her and seen her. Perhaps that had only made his betrayal of her hurt even more, because it didn't seem like something that that John Bender, her John Bender, could do.

But this John Bender was another one altogether. They walked silently for several minutes, passing from his neighbourhood into another, where there were fewer rusting cars and more picket fences. Madison wouldn't exactly say it was awkward, but she was deeply aware that she was the one who'd shown up, uninvited; she was the one who'd initiated this twilight stroll. Surely that made it her responsibility to say something, begin a conversation, but she had no idea what she wanted to say. Not for the first time since she'd touched down in O'Hare on Saturday, she had major regrets over coming back.

It was as if he could read her mind. 'So, why are you here?' Before she could take offence – and it was a perfectly reasonable question, so she had no need to take offence – he said, 'Don't say you're going to that bullshit reunion too? Cause, seriously, Twinks, you can go off people.'

She wasn't sure if this minor flash of the old John was a good or bad thing, so she largely chose to ignore it. She answered the question asked. 'My mom's getting married. I didn't know about the reunion until I got here.'

Mention of Laura put paid somewhat to his buoyancy. 'Oh. Yeah. Right.'

The silence threatened them again, and Madison gave in. 'Are you going? To the reunion?'

'Did you not hear me call it bullshit a few seconds ago?' John retorted. 'Why would I want to hang out with a bunch of balding assholes whose greatest achievement in life was contained within the four walls of Shermer High?'

Madison couldn't help glancing at his own very much not balding head as she tried not to smile. It was more or less what had crossed her own mind when she'd first trashed the invitation, alongside a more visceral need to distance herself from a place she'd almost never been happy. The reason for that almost was walking alongside her, and she pushed that thought aside just as quickly.

Instead, she blurted, 'Andy and Allison are going.'

'Sure they are.'

'So how come you weren't at Brian's last night?'

'I was busy.' He shot her a sardonic grin. 'The John Bender Fuck-Up Society Meetings can't just be cancelled, you know?'

'John!' She had no idea how that sentence was going to end, never had had, even all those years ago. It was the closest he'd come to being her John since they'd started walking, but it was precisely the side of him that she'd hated, wanted to cut out of him and discard. This internal loathing seemed nearer the surface than ever, barely able to be covered up with sarcastic quips.

'Well, it's what you're here for, right? Come to see John-fucking-Bender screw up again?' He came to a dead halt. 'So go on. Take a look.' He held his arms out to each side, so she could see just how much he'd changed. Or rather, hadn't. That surprisingly-athletic body didn't seem much diminished, he'd not put any weight on like Andy, his hairline was more than healthy. If it wasn't for how exhausted he looked, he could be that problem student all over again, and that killed her. He was supposed to be more than this. He'd started to be more than this. 'Let everybody at that reunion know they were right. "Most likely to fail".'

'I'm not even going!' As replies went, it was, she knew, utterly inadequate and missed the point.

Yet, somehow, it provoked a small smile from him. After a short moment, he said, 'Well, good. Like I said. You can go off people.'

Against her own wishes, she found her own lips twitching. Then, without either of them saying anything more, they continued walking on.

At length, John initiated the next conversation. 'So how's LA?'

'Okay. Sunny.' Feeling more able to speak, she continued, 'I'd forgotten how humid it got here. It's unbearable. I have no idea how you stand it.'

'It's a burden. Your mom says you work in film?'

'I've worked on films,' she corrected him, making a mental note to have a word with her mom later; this was not the first time she'd come up against this, most notably when she was first formally introduced to Mike as somebody other than their landlord.

'No names in lights then?'

'Not yet.' She smiled.

John let a few more seconds pass before he said, 'You... you look good.'

'Thanks, so do you.'

He cast her a sidelong glance at the automatic reply. 'Okay, Twinkie, there's no need for straight-up lying. I know I look like shit.'

'No, you...' Madison trailed off, because she couldn't tell a lie like this. At length she said, 'You look different.'

'Different good or different bad?'

'Different sad.' The words were out before she could stop them and they felt like weapons. She could almost see John being shot down by them, that easy tentative geniality they'd established vanishing again. Hastily, she said, 'What I mean is-'

'Don't.'

'John!'

'Don't!' It was a snarl, something altogether more animal than anything the old John was capable of. 'I don't need you bleeding pity all over me, okay? I didn't ask you to come.' Again, he came to a halt, but this time he turned back the way they'd come. 'Seriously, I don't need you or Brian or his Stepford-Wife coming down from your perfect lives to live amongst us peasants. I was doing fine before, I'll do fine again.'

'It's not like that!' she insisted, even as she knew it was. Why had she even come here tonight, if it weren't pity that drove that? Ten years she'd been gone, never giving him a charitable thought. How was it she felt like she was the one who'd let him down after everything?

'No? Then why are you here?' For the first time, he jutted his chin out, defiant and challenging as he had been at eighteen. She recognised the way he'd crashed his way through high school, unable to let anybody else have the final word. Today was no different. When she didn't reply, he said, 'Yeah. Thought not. Forget it.'

Madison watched him go through the dusk until he turned a corner and went out of sight. She let him go, following after ten or even fifteen minutes had passed. The porch was empty, the house as silent and secretive as ever as she released the parking brake and headed back to her mom's house.