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Entry tags:	clandestine

clandestine; chapter five
Title : Clandestine
Author : shinobi
Fandom : Linkin Park
Genre : Angst/Drama
Pairing : C/P
Rating : NC17
Summery : [multichapter] Chester wishes he could go back and change the things that went wrong, erase the mistakes, see the things he never noticed and amend the errors he made. Only he can’t and he’s got to live with the fatal consequences. Forever.



a/n; Thanks to everyone who reviewed, especially Bibi for the mammoth review and Sandy for reading this over and her words of encouragement. Okay, another filler chapter, I’m a tease and slowly building up to the real drama. Enjoy!


[Chapter Five]


He was fast asleep, buried securely beneath my old Winnie The Pooh bed sheets. Beside him sat my younger brother’s stuffed bear, Hendrix, keeping a watchful eye over my best friends sleeping form. I rubbed my hand across his, letting a sigh escape my lips as he shifted and murmured broken sentences in his sleep. Stitches ran above his right eye, stopping where the deep cut ended and the dark black bruise which smeared down the side of his face began.


“You idiot Mike,” I whispered, rubbing his hand some more, not sure if it were to comfort him or me.


The sound of the ambulance and raised voices of the paramedics that had burst into Rob’s house had soon woken and somewhat sobered up the others. Their eyes had widened and questions had ran from their mouths when they’d seen Mike and all I could tell them was that I’d found him like this: unconscious, a bloody mess on the bathroom floor. I’d been bundled up into the ambulance, the others following behind in a taxi. I’d been left crying and alone in the waiting room until they had arrived and Phoenix had held me as we waited for news, any news whatsoever.


And now two days later, here he was, fast asleep in my bed with skin almost as pale as mine. My room was lit only by the lamp on my desk and I could hear the soft sounds of the TV coming from the lounge down the hallway. It was almost nine pm which usually meant at least five more hours were left until I went to bed but I felt drained beyond belief and wanted nothing more than to get some much needed sleep.


Suspected overdose, the doctors had told us. I hadn’t yet figured out how they differentiated between ‘suspected’ and ‘actual’ overdose. To me it didn’t seem like there could be a difference. He’d either overdosed or he hadn’t. Simple as. Whether it was accidental or deliberate I still didn’t know, I couldn’t even begin to guess; Mike had plenty of reasons to want to kill himself yet I didn’t believe that he’d ever try it.


Or maybe I just didn’t want to believe that. He had, after all, tried it before and if I were to disturb him from his deep sleep by turning his arms over I would be revealing a thick, white scar that ran diagonally across the inside of his left wrist; a wound he’d inflicted on himself at just twelve years of age.


A mixture of Ecstasy, Cocaine and Painkillers is what the Doctors pumped from his stomach; found in his bloodstream two days ago. I kept on wondering why and how and what the hell had happened, just like I had done for the past forty eight hours. The questions were still whizzing around inside of my head; the answers still on the tip of my tongue as I waited for Mike to talk to me and tell me the truth.


Running a hand through my unkempt hair, I leant back in the chair I’d been residing in all day, ever since my parents had picked Mike and I up from the hospital and brought us back here. He’d been discharged with a bunch of painkillers to help ease the pain in his head that he’d obviously hit against the bath when he’d collapsed. It didn’t make sense to me. He obviously had a problem with drugs. Why give him more?


There was a knock at the door and I turned around to see it creaking open as my kid brother, Jack, stepped inside.


“Hey,” I smiled as he stood nervously in the doorway, his mop of mousy brown hair splattered with red paint which I soon saw as I looked down, was also all over his T-shirt and smeared on his hands which were holding a piece of paper.


“What have you got?” I asked as he stepped further into the room and let the door shut behind him.


I couldn’t help but smile as he toddled over to me, a grin on his face and that twinkle in his brown eyes that never seemed to disappear. My mom always said that I’d looked just like him when I was three years old too. I hoped to God that the cute thing standing in front of me, covered from head to toe in poster paint wouldn’t turn out like me, or find himself in the situations I always seemed to fall into.


“Is Mike going to get better soon?” he asked me innocently.


“Of course he is,” I told him, reaching down to pick him up, “Don’t worry about him, he’ll be fine,” I whispered as Jack settled himself on my lap and thrust the piece of paper into my hand.


“I made it for Mike,” he told me proudly.


A smile graced my lips as my eyes scanned over the picture in front of me, a swirl of bright colours and Jack’s handprints dashing across the piece of paper.


“It’s Mike,” he smiled, prodding one of his chubby fingers against a blue and red blob in the bottom hand corner.


I found myself smiling further more as he pointed at various other shapes and smudges, telling me in his small voice that the picture was that of Mike dancing with a hippo, two sheep and a chocolate cake.


“Your chocolate cake,” he grinned, “I helped Mummy make it. It’s in the kitchen and you have to blow off the candles.”


“Out, you mean? I have to blow them out?”


He smiled and laughed, but his grin was soon to fade as he turned to look at Mike. I was still holding his pale hand, still stroking the back of it with my thumb as Jack stared at his sleeping form. I watched him for a while, watched the way his eyes took in Mike, the way his smile had faded so quickly. He knew something was wrong, yet he was all so innocent to the whole sorry situation. He just thought Mike was sick, that’s all we’d told him. And in a way I wanted that to be the case. I wanted him to just have some bug, the flu or something. I didn’t want the mess of my best friend before me to be the consequences of too much alcohol and too many poisonous drugs. I wanted to be like Jack; innocent and shielded from the bitter truth because it seemed like it would be so much easier to accept.


I heard the creek of my bedroom door opening and glancing behind me I saw my Mom was standing there with a damp facecloth in one hand and a paint stained towel in the other. She stepped inside, walking over to me and stopping behind me, her hand resting on my shoulder. I glanced away, eyeing the watch on her wrist as it ticked away, averting my eyes from the time down to her red painted nails before my gaze finally settled on Mike again.


“Hey you,” she sighed, reaching her hand around me to ruffle up Jack’s hair, “I’ve been looking around the whole house for you. You’re just like your big brother here, he never wanted to have a bath either,” she chuckled.


Jack seemed to be still staring at Mike and I realised it was probably best he left already. A small yawn escaped his mouth, followed by a sigh as he rested his head against my chest.


“Come on buddy,” I sighed, “Bedtime.”


He nodded, obviously too tired to scream and cry like he often did when the words bath or bed were mentioned and my Mom leaned over me and took him into her arms. She squeezed my shoulder and I turned away from Mike, letting his hand go for the first time in hours.


“You okay?” she whispered.


I nodded, smiling as Jack began to fall asleep in her arms. His paint stained hands were clutching onto her black smock and she tucked her long mousy brown hair behind her ears before letting go of my shoulder, her smooth hands gone as she turned to walk out of the door.


“We’ll talk tomorrow,” she told me once she’d got to the door only I’d already turned back to Mike, was running my hand through his hair and tucking the covers tighter around him.


I heard the door click shut and wiped away the tears that had started to fall down my cheeks.




*



I lay awake in the comfort of my bedroom, lit only by the glow of the moon that was creeping in through a crack in the curtains. It was early morning but I still hadn’t fallen asleep. I was cold and the thin pyjama pants I was wearing probably accounted for my shivering but I couldn’t be bothered to get up and find something a little warmer to wear. My mind was too preoccupied with other things.


Mike was still fast asleep beside me. He’d not woken and through the dark my eyes could just make out the outline of him, his fragile features emphasized by the sighs and whimpers that had left his lips all night long. I could have sworn that he was having nightmares but he’d seemed immune to my attempts to wake him and given that he was supposed to be resting, I had decided not to try anymore and instead was keeping an eagle eye on him from where I lay in my twisted sheets.


The Darth Vader clock that I’d had since I was seven was ticking away on the wall beside the bed, it’s methodical clunk, clank noise hammering deep inside of my mind, punctuating every thought that fluttered across the mess inside of my head. I tried to stop myself thinking about Mike, about his crumpled body on Rob’s bathroom floor. I tried to stop envisaging the blood that had been seeping from his head and staining the tiles with it’s crimson inkiness. I’d tried everything I could, singing songs to myself, counting the days left until Christmas, calculating how many times I’d said fuck in my life and wondering what my voice would sound like if I sang upside down suspended by a length of rope over a cliff.


It wasn’t working though. It all came back to my best friend.


Every song I sang was one we’d written together. Every time I counted down the days till the festive holidays I remembered our short lived jobs at the local supermarket one year as Christmas elves where we had to dance around and entertain the customers every time Noddy Holder’s voice got blasted throughout the store. I couldn’t begin to figure out how many times I’d cussed in my life, yet I knew it had to be less than Mike as every other word he uttered was ‘fuck’. And every time I saw myself being suspended over a cliff I began to fall, and as I tumbled down surrounded by nothing but thin air, I could see someone above me with a pair of scissors, glaring at me. And that person was Mike, he was staring and staring and as I reached the bottom I heard him call something out.


You didn’t save me.


I groaned and sat up, rubbing my eyes as I swung my legs out of bed and set my feet on the soft carpet beneath me. I grabbed a hoody off the floor as I tripped over a pair of shoes on my way toward the door with all intent and purpose of getting myself a glass of water. Or a stiff drink.


But why I found myself sitting outside in the freezing cold on the love seat in the back yard was beyond me. I just, stumbled out there, found a packet of cigarettes in the pocket of my sweater and promptly lit one up. A cloud of dusky smoke drifted around me as I curled my legs underneath me and looked up at the house I’d lived in almost all my life.


It belonged to my Grandparents, who’d seen it fit for my parents and me to live there with them when my Mother had fallen pregnant with me at just sixteen. It had only ever been a short term idea, just whilst my mom and dad got themselves on their feet. Only twenty two years later, here we all were; my grandparents, my parents, me, my younger sister Steph and my baby brother Jack all crammed into the small bungalow that creaked in the summer and smelt of my Grandmother’s baking in the winter.


It was weird.


Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe sitting outside at three am and reminiscing over it was weird, or at least making me feel weird about it all. I flicked some ash into a plant pot beside me, suddenly cursing as I realised it was where Jack kept his pet snails. They were probably frazzled to death now, burning, melted by the hot remnants of my smoke. I felt bad for a few seconds before making a mental note to find some more snails later on in the day.


Snails.


I laughed to myself and lit up another cigarette. All this shit was going on with Mike. He was lying in my bed looking like death warmed up, I’d spent the night not able to shake his situation from my head and now I was thinking about my kid brother’s snail collection. Or deceased collection…


I had come outside to stop my cycle of thoughts though, but I found myself looking back up at the house again, my eyes watching the lonely hanging basket that swung in the night breeze from it’s home on the veranda. The blue paint of the back door was chipping off, despite my Dad’s promise that he was going to paint it. That had been several summers ago, just before I’d moved back in and the guest room had become my bedroom once again and the door had faded more and more, blue paint flaking off every time it got slammed shut.


A chill ran through me as I thought back about more and more things. I’d moved out when I was fifteen, to live with my one and only, the guy I thought I’d live with forever more; Josh. Flicking more ash onto the ground beneath me I could almost feel him wrapping his arms around me, just like he always would when I felt down. I closed my eyes and shivered, taking a deep breath before I found myself staring at the paint deprived door again. So many times we’d crept in late at night, so many chaste kisses had been shared by that door, so many hugs and whispers of goodnight.


I was crying again. Tears were streaming down my face, sobs escaping my lips as I angrily wiped my hand across my eyes, trying to push back in the cries that were building up inside and begging to be set free.


We’d been so happy together. We’d shared so much. We’d dreamed of being together forever, no one could have torn us apart; no one whatsoever. My parents had loved him to pieces. They’d welcomed him with open arms; they’d never had a problem with him let alone my sexuality. I’d always put their open mindedness, their care free ways down to the fact that they were so young. Now they were barely forty years old, they’d made mistakes but had never been the kind to hold me back from making my own. I’d probably not had been sitting outside in the cold had it not been for them. I’d probably had been six feet under, spitting up daises. Dead.


When Josh died my whole world had crumbled. Josh passing away had been so out of the blue; at least to me it had. But of course, no one kills themselves without a real reason, without the need and want to escape the world not having built up inside them for months on end. I never knew he felt low. I never knew that my own boyfriend, the one person I’d die for had been rotting away for months on end, plotting his way out of the world right behind my back.


And at sixteen years old I fell to pieces. Of course I did. What else was expected of me other than to sit and cradle the memories of my dead boyfriend in my mind night after night and ask myself relentlessly where it had all gone wrong and why I’d found him one morning in the bathroom, crumpled on the floor choking to death on his own vomit; drowning in his own blood.


After that all I could remember about moving back home was the fact that my mom had hassled my dad to paint the door one evening as I’d sat in this very place, watching the clouds of the summer slowly drift past above me. I couldn’t remember the pain, or the tears. Just the bloody door and the way my dad had answered ‘Yes dear, I’ll do it tomorrow’. Sometimes tomorrow was a world away with him.


Sometimes happiness was a world away with me.


I stubbed out my cigarette and got to my feet. My ass was cold, my fingers were numb and as I trudged back inside the warm house I wondered when in hell I was going to stop being so melodramatic.


Shutting my bedroom door quietly behind me, I realised I hadn’t even gotten myself a drink like I’d intended. I was too tired to go back though, I wanted nothing more than to snuggle up in bed and sleep the night away, and possibly the next day too. The walk outside appeared to have made me drowsy and I was just about to grab my pillow and settle myself on the floor so as not to disturb Mike. I’d slept in cramped camper vans. The floor would be a doddle. Only Mike let out a whimper as I slid my pillow out of the bed.


“Ches..?” he whispered, his voice cracking.


“Hey,” I whispered back, sitting down on the edge of the bed.


My eyes had grown accustomed to the dark so I was able to see the fragile look on his tired face as his eyes slowly fluttered open and he glanced around the room in what looked like a somewhat confused manner. Leaning behind him, I flicked my desk lamp on, filling the small area around us with its dusky orange glow.


He blinked back at me as I reached my hand to his head and brushed my fingers through his hair, repeating the words I’d found myself uttering earlier on.


“Idiot,” I sighed.


He frowned, his chapped lips forming to say something, only no words were spoken. Instead he just closed his mouth and stared back up at the ceiling. My clock was ticking once again, echoing around the room. I had a good mind to fling it across the room. I so hadn’t missed it while we’d been on the road. Even the sound of a running clapped out engine didn’t drive me as mad. Maybe I’d take the batteries out.


“Come on,” I sighed again, crossing my legs and resting my hands in my lap, “I’ve got the right to say that.”


“I know,” he murmured glumly.


“I’m tired,” I paused to take my pillow before I got to my feet, “We’ll talk in the morning.”


“Chester.. Where are you going?”


“Floor? I’m not sleeping too well. I’ll probably kick you or wake you up again or something,” I told him, dropping my pillow to the floor.


Truth was, I couldn’t sleep next to him because my mind wouldn’t switch off from the terrifying facts that were repeatedly slapping me in the face harder than one of Brad’s scathing remarks.


“You can kick me all you like,” Mike whispered quietly, no hint of humour whatsoever in his voice.


I bent down and picked up my pillow, swiftly realising what a selfish asshole I was being. My best friend had just overdosed, for whatever reasons and was now looking at me as if I’d just slapped him hard in the face, which metaphorically speaking aside I might as well have done. I’d never felt the need to drive a huge wedge between us any other time, nor did I plan to start creating one.


“Okay then,” I smiled, plonking my pillow, then myself down onto my bed.


Mike moved up a little as I pulled the warm covers over me and snuggled up beside him. I lay for a good few seconds just watching him as he stared back at me. The cut on his face looked painful, as did the black smudge of a bruise which had specks of blue dancing across it, tainting his complexion. He’d taken some fucking fall. I wanted to curse at him for not being more careful, for not letting Brad stay with him, for drinking and getting smashed but I knew he’d had his reasons.


“How are you feeling?” I finally asked, turning onto my side so I was facing him.


“Crap,” he replied honestly, chewing nervously on his chipped black fingernails.


A sigh escaped my lips as I leant forward and took his hand. He stopped chewing his nails then, he stopped and looked at me, nervously biting his bottom lip instead as I began to speak.


“Why?” I asked, “Why did this happen?”


He frowned, “What did Brad tell you?”


“Hmm? What does that have to do with anything? He just said he left you in the lounge at Rob’s, you’d passed out or something,” I explained, figuring that the poor thing was obviously still delirious from the medication he’d been given. That or the bump on his head.


“So he didn’t say anything?”


“About what?”


He shrugged, fiddling with the bed sheets with his free hand. I watched him for a few minutes as he fidgeted about beside me, staring past me with worried eyes. My hand instinctively tightened around his, my throat feeling dry as I tried to ask him the question I was dreading hearing myself say.


“Mike,” I sighed, waiting until he was looking at me before I carried on.


His brown eyes flicked to mine, and I knew that he was scared as hell, maybe out of confusion, or maybe because he was remembering what he’d done. That had to be why he was starting to resemble a deer caught in the headlights of a truck. Just spit it out already, I decided.


“You, you didn’t try to… y’know… kill yourself?”


“W.. What?” he spluttered, “Is that what you think?”


Obviously not then.


“No… I… Yes. Well what am I supposed to think Mike?”


“I didn’t, Chester I swear I didn’t,” he paused, “God I’m sorry. All I remember is Brad leaving and then I felt sick,” he closed his eyes, “I must have gone to the bathroom for some painkillers. I guess I wasn’t thinking straight… I must have fallen…”


“It’s okay,” I sighed, a weight falling from my shoulders as Mike smiled weakly back at me., “Let’s sleep,” I whispered into the night air, “I’m shattered.”




*




I opened my eyes, finding myself somewhere between a state of consciousness and the dark depths of the bad dream I’d been having. Groaning, I rubbed my eyes with the backs of my hands and sat up a little, blearily scanning the room around me, my gaze finally resting on the clock which glared back at me, letting me know that it was almost midday. The sleeping figure beside me stirred, causing me to jump a little, my tiny mind having forgotten that Mike was there. I shuffled onto my side, wincing as I saw the bruises on his face had darkened; their colour intensified against his pale skin. I let my hand wonder, fingertips tracing gently across his forehead, feeling sleep tug at my eyes once I again. I felt them close only to snap open once again when I heard someone else beside me clearing their throat. My body grappled to sit up and my eyes met with the one thing I didn’t particularly want to see first thing. Ever. It was Brad, a smirk on his face, glint in his eye ever present as he sat himself down on the chair beside my bed.


“He okay?” he asked after a short spell of silence in which I’m sure the glint in his eyes went from manic to normal in a matter of nanoseconds.


Whatever. I’d just woken up. I had a shitload of things on my mind and now was not the time to be trying to figure out Brad Delson.


“He’s tired,” I told him, carefully dislodging myself from under Mike’s body and getting myself to my feet, my arms automatically stretching themselves out above my head, followed by a yawn, “Anyway, how’d you get in?”


“Your Mom let me in, told me to come to your room. Been here a for a while now,” he paused, “Cosy, were you?”


I rolled my eyes and chose not to answer Brad’s question as I got to my feet and brushed past him, resisting all temptation to jab him in the shoulders or do something equally as mature. Making it to my window without falling over my clothes and some other random belongings, I pushed it open and revelled in that poor old undervalued thing called fresh air. Fumbling about in the tobacco tin that had been in wait on the windowsill, I took out a cigarette, lit it up and allowed myself a long, hard drag from it before turning toward Brad as he headed over to me.


“He’s going to be okay, right?”


I raised my eyebrow at him. For once in his life Brad Delson seemed genuinely concerned with someone else’s welfare as a pose to just being centred on his own. How refreshing, I thought bitterly as I flicked some ash out of my window, took another drag then decided to answer him.


“He’s going to be fine. You should have stayed with him y’know,” I pointed out.


“Yeah I know and right at this fucking moment I really wish I had, okay?”


A pang of guilt swam through me as Brad sat down beside me on the windowsill with a thud and a somewhat dejected sigh escaped through his lips. He ran a hand over his skull and glanced across at Mike’s sleeping form before his eyes settled on me once again.


“Have you spoken to him yet?”


“He didn’t say much,” I sighed, watching as more ash floated through the air, spiralling down to the ground outside and fading away from my eyes, “He says he felt sick so he went to the bathroom, took some painkillers and then he thought he must have fallen… least that’s all he can remember.”


Brad let out a long sigh and I stubbed my cigarette out into a half full ashtray that I couldn’t even remember when I’d last emptied before I shut the window and leant back against it, my forlorn gaze finding itself on Mike’s sleeping form once again.


“And that’s all he said, right? He didn’t say anything else?”


“No,” I sighed, momentarily watching Brad who seemed as jumpy and uncomfortable as I was feeling.


My eyes were soon on Mike again though and as Brad made his excuses and left the room, mumbling something about having to be at work, I barely heard because my eyes were trained on my best friend and the small whimpers that were now escaping his lips as he slept. Frowning, I got to my feet and walked over to him, kneeling down beside my bed as I took one of his cold hands and squeezed it tight.


“Hey,” I smiled as his eyes slowly opened looked at me for a few seconds before they flickered up toward the ceiling, without a word from his lips.


“I get it,” I sighed, “You want to sleep and forget about everything and the last thing you want is a lecture from your best friend?”


Mike smiled a little and nodded before closing his eyes and rolling onto his side.


“You know, I swear you can read my mind at times,” he whispered, eyes still shut.


“I wish I could.”


Mike cracked one eye open and looked right at me, “No,” he sighed, “No, you really do not mean that,” he told me before closing his eyes and burying his head into the pillows.


“We’ll talk later,” I sighed, squeezing his hand before I got to my feet.


Grabbing some clothes, I headed into the bathroom and less than twenty minutes later I was showered and dressed and ambling into the kitchen, allured by the aroma of my Grandma Lila’s cooking that had been wafting down the hallway. She stood by the stove, talking to my mother who was sat at the table typing away on her laptop and swatting my brother’s hands away every time they jabbed at the keys.


“Ahh it’s alive!” My dad smiled from where stood in front of the kitchen sink, planting what looked like something completely illegal and knowing my father it probably was. Everything bad; my annoying traits and my mischievous habits, I’d picked them up from him.


“Yes, it’s alive,” I jested, swooping down to pick up Jack from his chair. He giggled as I spun him around a couple of times.


“How’s Mike?” My mom asked, looking up from her work.


“Tired,” I sighed, “I’ve left him to sleep.”


“That’s probably a wise idea,” she nodded, “He can stay as long as he likes okay? Just you make sure he knows that.”


“And make sure he eats something too,” Lila added with a smile, “I’ve cooked plenty and you two boys look like you need fattening up. All this time travelling around it’s a wonder you have time to eat properly,” she told me light heartedly.


“Yes Lila, whatever you say Lila,” I quipped.


“Less of that cheek,” she chuckled, “Or I’ll be giving you extra helpings of vegetables, you hear me?”


I smiled and lifted Jack onto my shoulders, momentarily forgetting that my life felt pretty shit but as Lila had said to me many times; whenever you feel like shit, you’ve got to carry on regardless. I wasn’t sure if I were putting on a brave front, or if my family who I’d seen so little of in the past year were just reminding me with their smiles and caring ways that when it came down to it, happiness came from those around you. Or something along those rose tinted lines.


Smiling at the complexity of my inner thoughts, I found myself at the sink, watching with suspicious eyes as my father placed handfuls of soil and compost into several terracotta plant pots, his stubby fingers pressing down into the mixture.


“What you planting?” Jack asked inquisitively.


“Plants,” My dad smiled.


“No, what Jack means is what kind of plants,” I smirked, watching as my father threw me a playful glare.


“It’s a special plant,” he paused, “It helps heal people,” he grinned, picking his words carefully.


“And it will also get you into a lot of trouble if anyone finds out Lee!” My mother scorned, “I thought I told you to be discreet with that crap that god forbid you insist of having in here!”


Jack squirmed in my arms and I bent down and let him toddle off, laughing as my father muttered something about it being for medicinal purposes, which lets face it, was a load of bollocks. I headed out of the kitchen, passing the living room where I paused at the door and watched in amusement as my Grandfather attempted to change channels on the TV before exclaiming something along the lines of ‘Ahh screw it’ and throwing the small device down onto the table. I chuckled, causing him to look up.


“Ahh, didn’t see you there son. How are you doing? Good birthday was it?”


“Yeah, yeah it was alright,” I nodded.


“Nothing special birthdays aren’t,” he nodded, “Soon as you get past twenty one it’s all the same; another year, another day. How’s young Michael doing?”


“He’s okay,” I answered.


“Good good. You make sure he’s more than okay, won’t you?”


“You know I will,” I smiled, carrying on down the hallway and stopping once again as I came to my sister’s doorway.


She was lying on her bed, staring up to the ceiling with a somewhat forlorn look on her face. Pressing my hand against the slightly open door, I rapped my knuckle against it, half expecting her to tell me to piss off.


“Come in,” she sighed.


I pushed the door open and stepped inside her room, dodging hair straighteners, clothes and battered magazines that scattered themselves across her floor. It looked like she was taking after me in the stakes for messiest room.


“You alright?” I asked, settling down on the edge of her black and red spotted bed sheets.


“Not really.”


“What’s wrong then?” I asked, gazing around her cluttered room.


Her walls were lined with posters of Robert Smith and Kurt Cobain. School books and sheets of coloured paper littered her desk which stood underneath an old shelf filled with My Little Ponies and Barbie dolls with badly cut hair. The wardrobe in the far corner was bursting open with clothes and shoes and another poster, this time of Billie Joe, was tacked to the inside of one of the doors and his baby face, kohl rimmed eyes were staring back at me. Her room was every teenage girl. She was so not ready to become a mother.


“Steph ?”


“It’s Mom. She’s doing my head in. She just keeps going on about everything, y’know, what I’ve got to do, where I’ve got to go, what I can and can’t do. She’s even banned me from going to see you guys play next month. I mean, how unfair is that?!”


“Aww come on Steph , I’m sure she didn’t say you couldn’t come…”


“She did too.”


“It’s tradition. We always go to the Spring Festival together and beside, you’ve got to be there to see the one and only Hybrid Theory playing!”


“That’s exactly why she won’t let me go. I told her I was going to be front row, cheering you guys on and she totally flipped out…”


“And did she say you couldn’t go?” I asked, knowing damn well she hadn’t.


“Well, no, not in so many words…”


“You’re pregnant Steph . You can’t exactly be bouncing about in a mosh pit for an hour can you?”


“But all my friends will be there…”


“Steph ,” I sighed, “I know it’s hard…”


“Do you? How’s that so Chester, huh? I don’t remember seeing you carrying a foetus.”


“Okay okay. I don’t know, but I can imagine, okay? I sympathize with you.”


“I don’t want your fucking sympathy,” she groaned.


“Fine. I’ll be a total bastard,” I huffed.


“You? A total bastard!? I don’t think so bro. You’ve not got it in you.”


“What?!” I giggled, throwing a star shaped pillow at her, “I have so.”


“No way. You’re way too gay to be mean to anyone. Even Brad. And I know how much he pisses you off.”


“That’s beside the point,” I smiled, “Listen Steph. Mom just wants to do the best for you. Let her have her ‘mother knows best’ moments and be done with it. You’ll thank her for it in the long run and hey, at least she’s not thrown you out like a lot of parents would have done…”


“Yeah well she could hardly do that with her track record, could she?”


“Steph ! Listen to yourself!”


“It’s true. I mean, how old was she when she had you? Sixteen? So how can she preach to me about me being too young, tell me what a mess I’ve made of things; dictate to me what I can and can’t do and just generally make me feel like I’m one huge disappointment to her.”


“That’s not true. She is not disappointed in you at all,” I sighed, grabbing a heart shaped cushion and fiddling with it’s frilly edge for a few seconds, “You know, when mom got pregnant with me, she was so depressed. She didn’t know what to do or who to turn to and she did a brave thing telling Lila. She was mad at first, but then she came around to the idea and she did all she could to help mom.”


“I bet. I bet she didn’t make her feel like shit. I bet she didn’t make her regret having this thing inside her,” Steph hissed, prodding her stomach.


“You don’t think mom regretted having me?” I asked, raising my eyebrows, “Because I know for a fact that she did. I wasn’t planned, just like you didn’t plan to become pregnant either but Steph , you’ve got to work around this. It’s not the ideal situation, I know it isn’t but for God’s sake just stop being so stubborn. Let mom do her thing, because she’s been there, she knows how you’re feeling.. You know if you spoke to her, it might help make things better. You know what mom calls me?” I smiled wryly, “The best mistake of her life and that little thing in there,” I paused, pointing to her stomach, “That could be the best mistake of your life if you accept it…”


Steph sighed and bit her lip, “I hate you Chester,” she smiled, “You always make so much sense.”


I raised my eyebrows as I got to my feet and placed the cushion back down on her bed. Make sense? Me? Hardly. Anything but make sense is how I felt half the time. Mumbling see you later, I headed across the hallway and into my bedroom, softly shutting the door behind me. Mike was fast asleep and I went and sat cross legged beside him on the bed because something told me that he really needed me at that moment in time.



*



Life would have been so much easier if I’d had known the whole truth and the real reasons why Mike needed me so badly. Sometimes I wish that I could have had psychic powers back then. That way I would have been able to stop so much shit from happening not only to him but to myself as well.


*


TBC……


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