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Hawthorne
Aug 5, 2014 2:50:25 GMT -5
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Post by HburgEagle44 on Aug 5, 2014 2:50:25 GMT -5
Love love love
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Post by tonilous on Aug 6, 2014 0:29:58 GMT -5
And it wasn't until a while later when, in the hushed assembly within the church that comprised of family, friends, colleagues, and students—a sea of dark clothing and glazed eyes who kept their eyes on the coffin—that Noel Montgomery, still rather heavily bandaged but his burns healing, went up to the pulpit.
All eyes were immediately on him. As the Jeffersons looked up to his lanky form, they saw that he looked a little lost. More than one students wanted to go up with him to help him walk up to it, but Noel brushed them quietly away, preferring to limp slightly on his own. He stood at the pulpit to speak.
Noel looked at the sea of black, and closed his eyes for a moment. He didn't enjoy funerals in general. He hated funerals because it means someone had gone. He had lost many things, and he'd decided to dedicate his life against people losing other people. The last time he had been to a funeral, the coffin had been small and everyone looked at him as though they expected him to cry. There was always some kind of expectation in funerals, when it comes to the bereaved. And he didn't enjoy funerals like this one, where everyone knew you were important and they expected you to say something.
Even if he was the one who had asked to speak today.
With the pause almost getting to "uncomfortable", he opened his eyes, and saw the Jeffersons in the pews near the front, most of whom were still bandaged. They looked at him quietly, encouraging him on with their eyes. Noel's gaze fell to Charlotte and Damian, who sat at the front of the Jeffersons, right next to Charlie, who led the group.
Charlotte looked at Noel intently, passing him strength, and made a small swirling gesture with her hands. Her lips moved slightly, and clearly, in perfect silence: take a deep breath.
Noel, watching her, took in a deep breath without meaning to. And Damian nodded, smiling, gesturing for him: and then let it out.
Noel exhaled. And he spoke.
"Mr. Pentland showed up over me, when I was lying there after everyone had gotten out… I really didn't think he was real. I didn't think anybody else wanted to be in that place…. The last person I thought would've…gone in there was a teacher. Because teachers are smart, unlike us, who just ran in there without a thought. The rational thing to do was to wait for firefighters."
It wasn't dark or raining—it hadn't been anything. The weather was clear, the air was crisp and free of smoke. Charlotte had looked to the windows and marveled at the fact that the world continued to turn. She felt Damian's hand over hers, and she looked at him to see Damian getting ready to stand.
Let me help you up, his gaze seemed to say, nodding towards the crutch. Charlotte nodded slightly and let Damian take some of her weight as she slowly got up. Then the two of them nodded slightly to Charlie, who nodded back. And then Charlotte looked to see the other Pipers getting up.
"I wasn't—I'm not really the best person to talk about Mr. Pentland, I think. Because I…I guess I didn't know him as well as other people. All the best people to speak about him will be doing something better than just talk today…they're meant to sing to him the way that he was always so proud of them for doing. But…from what they've told me…I feel as though I really should talk. Because…you should know what Mr. Pentland was like to them. To us."
Charlotte smiled faintly as she moved to the side aisle with Damian, listening to Noel speak. Noel had come to her in the hospital, asking her how she was doing, and if she was getting well. Noel apologized for not being careful enough, and Charlotte had to tell him the same things she told Damian—that no one expected or wanted this to happen, and that Noel wasn't responsible.
"You see…even though a lot of the times, we like to think of ourselves as…able to do anything, because we were so privileged in this school…we lose track of reality. That…that we're not perfect… that we're not invincible. And so when we lose our way a little…we lose our heads. We think what we're doing is right. Even though the truth is…we needed to be pulled out of our own messes…"
The eulogy Noel was saying now was something the two of them worked on together. And as they wrote it—well, Charlotte wrote most of it, Noel softly added input now and again, and Charlotte didn't press him for what happened after they thought Noel had been left behind—for a moment, she marveled at how she had grown to like the little hunter who had tried so hard. And she marveled at how glad she was that he was okay. She knew what it was like to try and try so hard and feel that the world was against you. Sure, their situations were a lot different, but Charlotte felt that strange as Noel was…if he had been at Huntington, the choir group might have adopted him for strangeness and strength of spirit alone.
Because the strange ones had the most to fight through. They had the most to live for. The ones who had the biggest, most unlikely dreams—Charlotte wanted to be a star, and being bullied, in a high school like Huntington, was difficult even without that aspiration—were the ones who had to be the strongest.
"We didn't like being told what to do…what we can and can't do… but when we find ourselves in a pinch…we have to admit that we need help. That we couldn't do it alone. One of us was new here, when she came to Hawthorne. And she was surprised by how the teachers genuinely seemed to care, in spite of the fact that we fought them at every turn. …Mr. Pentland was like that. He was…well he was the kind of teacher that just let everyone in without minding what they were like on first impression."
Charlotte smiled when she remembered first singing For Good. When she had looked up, she was surprised to see Mr. Pentland there with a kind smile. She wasn't expecting worlds from this Academy's choir—yes, she was a brilliant performer, but even she knew that her style was not their usual fare; she had decided to overcome that by magnitude of talent. She was willing to fight and fight hard, because she expected large obstacles, which were always in the way as she aspired for what seemed to be the impossible.
Pentland had smiled and not only encouraged her singing, but let her sing to her old choir without questions. Charlotte was welcomed into a group of people with great ease for the first time.
Charlotte lowered her eyes for a moment and stood in front of the Pipers assembled on the choir's dais. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes as though she didn't want to see that the one who they usually sang to was now lying silent amidst the blooms before the altar.
She felt Damian squeeze her hand. Charlotte looked up, blinking away the mists in her eyes.
A man is placed upon the steps, a baby cries,
And high above the church bells start to ring…
And as the heaviness the body—oh the heaviness—settles in…
Somewhere you can hear a mother sing… "…the thing with Mr. Pentland, see…is that he really didn't see us with any kind of distinctions. Jefferson, Adams, Washington, day student… Even those who don't really take his classes. All of us were kind of his kids. But I think…I think the Pipers knew this better than anyone else. That's why he…he didn't want to lose a single one permanently. Even when…even when it seemed as though they were more trouble than they were worth. He stood up for them…and protected them when he could."
Charlotte glanced to Darren, whose eyes looked glazed, and it was not for the usual reasons. This was the first time in the past several days that any of them had seen Darren. Even when they were telling the events to the police, all Charlotte had heard of him was that after he said his side of it, he was recovering well.
Darren was one of the Pipers that, in spite of his own misgivings, Pentland looked after. That time during Winter Fest would not go forgotten among the them, when Pentland stood up to the Senator and asked him to let Darren stay, and grow a little more with the other students.
Charlotte remembered that, even after the huge fight during Valentine's Day – a replay of what nearly did cause Darren to be totally expelled last year – Pentland didn't believe anyone should be kicked out of the school. It was though he was confident that if they were allowed to finish what they began, things would turn out all right.
Then it's one foot then the other as you step out onto the road,
How much weight? How much weight?
Then it's how long, and how far, and how many times…
Oh before it's too late? "Mr. Pentland always wanted them to know that…that only when they stand together can they really make the music they were so famous for. All of the Pipers are pretty attached to music… My dorm is full of them, and they break out into song now and again. I think it helps them get through the days. And I think Mr. Pentland knew that too. That if they just keep making their music, if they stayed together and believed they could, they could keep going."
The pallbearers were all Hawthorne students. They all had wanted to do it, they insisted, and even Mrs. Pentland couldn't say no when she saw the expressions on their faces when they begged. This went even for those who were injured in the fire and were still recovering. If anything, they were the ones who insisted the most.
The parents had to intervene, and no matter how much Damian wanted to be a pallbearer, his shoulder injury would prevent it. Charlotte was out of the question as well, because of her leg. Grace certainly couldn't do it; she was still supposed to be mostly sitting down.
In the end, the prefects became pallbearers, along with the Jefferson Pipers who could. Because Mr. Pentland had been a Jefferson, a house banner was laid, along with the school insignia.
A soft rain had fallen earlier, making everything strangely fresh, and as they all reached out to pick up the casket—jet black, shining, covered in white lilies that lent a fragrance into the air with the baby's breath—Charlotte saw the tears spring to their eyes, that the students valiantly refused to let fall.
Calling all angels…
Calling all angels…
Walk me through this one…
Don't leave me alone…
Calling all angels…
Calling all angels…
We're crying and we're hurting…
And we're not sure why… "We undervalue our teachers, I think. It takes a different kind of person to want to go up against all our headstrong will and try to impose some lessons which, beyond our expectations, would give us a reason to keep going. They believe we can even though we think we can't. They were students once, they should know how it's like…it's like the world will end when you hit a snag… when the truth is that there are worse things that we have yet to face, and that with every stumble, we have to pick ourselves up and believe we can beat this. They impart their knowledge onto us in the hope that it takes root. Mr. Pentland taught us about music, about how important it was to help one another, and how to not give up."
As the pallbearers walked down the steps, down the path, Charlotte smiled sadly as she recalled that conversation she had with Mr. Pentland during the days to the Parents' Night. Pentland had told her that she had done so much more than she imagined she was doing when she came to Hawthorne. Pentland had stressed how much Charlotte had helped people by coming.
It was odd, Charlotte decided with the smallest fraction of a smile, as she followed the pallbearers to the cemetery grounds, that when she came to Hawthorne, she felt that she was the one meant to be helped. Protected from the danger she had moved away from, free to continue reaching for her dream with people who will not judge her.
It happened, all right, but she didn't know that she would come to have such an effect on the people she met here. How she managed to be with them and somehow have an effect.
And every day you gaze upon the sunset,
With such love and intensity…
It's almost…it's almost as if…
If you could only crack the code,
Then you'd finally understand what this all means… "How should we remember him? When you look back to this time—when you think about him, what will you remember? I know what I'll remember. Even if I tried to forget, I'd never be able to do it… I think what all of us will remember is what he tried to teach us. That…that even when all hope seems lost, there is still a way if you choose to find it. He could have waited outside, because it looked lost…but if he had done that…I would not be standing here."
But if you could…do you think you would
Trade in all the pain and suffering?
Ah, but then you'd miss…
The beauty of the light upon this earth…
And the sweetness of the leaving… As the parents of Hawthorne Academy's security personnel kept the small smattering of photographers at bay at the rail fences of the grounds, preventing them from intruding too far into the funeral, Charlotte turned away from the cameras and held Damian's hand.
It didn't seem real right now that the papers were freaking out about the incident, that the school building had burned while students were in it, that the discovery that there had been a disturbed student who had done all this. That the parents were openly furious that there had been such an oversight on the architecture of the building, and that half the entertainment papers were screaming that a famous actress had been killed, making the hysteria bigger than it might have been. Passed from mouth to mouth, no one really knew.
It was almost upsetting how they didn't focus as much on the teacher. He was the only one who had passed away, leaving behind an entire school of students who looked up to him as teacher, mentor, father, role model.
Damian's hand tightened on Charlotte's again and she looked up to see him closing his eyes against the tears that fell. Charlotte squeezed his hand as she closed her own eyes against the flood, remembering competition, when, with their teacher's prodding, the divided Pipers lifted their voices simultaneously, seamless, and created music.
"We can't forget the teacher. We can't forget what he did. No one will forget. What he did for all of us was something all teachers do—seemingly behind the scenes, but worth so much more than everyone can know. As his students…we all know that the best. That Mr. William Pentland did things for us that are well within the realms of real heroism, and he did it every day. We won't forget that he gave us music. We won't forget that he helped save us."
Calling' all angels…
Calling' all angels…
We're trying,
We're hoping,
We're hurting,
We're loving,
We're crying,
We're calling,
'Cause we're not sure how this goes…-8- The pallbearers laid the coffin very carefully upon the casket cart placed next to an open grave of fresh earth. Charlotte could smell the newly-turned earth and the blackness past it made her turn away. The casket would stay upon the cart for a moment as the priest would say the final rites, and everyone would look upon their teacher for one last time.
"I talked to Mr. Pentland a lot when Darren and I started having problems," Damian whispered to Charlotte as everyone began to gather. Some of the students trailed behind with their parents, seemingly still talking to them as everyone gathered around the area set for mourners at the gravesite. Damian glanced at the others before looking back at Charlotte with a sad smile. "When Darren started to…snap at me, I asked Mr. Pentland if he knew what I ought to do, because he knew Darren longer. If he was having some problem at school or at home…"
"And then the whole story spilled out…?" Charlotte whispered in reply, blinking at him. "That's how you found out that Darren had a temper problem."
"Well…sort of." Damian sighed and shook his head. "He told me that Darren…did have the tendency to lash out. And that it was something he was seeing a counselor for. But Pentland never made it sound as though I should stay away from him. On the contrary, he…he thought I was good for Darren."
"I'm sure you were…" Charlotte smiled. Damian just shook his head.
"I guess maybe Mr. Pentland was…more tolerant than I was. I mean…I just came from my old school and I spent every day living in fear back then. I started getting scared about things that I said or did around him. I didn't want him to hurt me or be angry. When I said the wrong things, he started to push me back, and he would lunge at me. I thought, if he threw his friends into bookshelves, then what could he do to me? He tried to help himself sometimes but…" Damian shook his head and touched his bandage as though remembering the wound just at that moment. "I think he noticed that, because it was like he kept trying to get something out of me that I…that I couldn't understand. I guess maybe I found out too late that what he wanted was for me to not be scared."
"He was hurting you, Damian, you and the others told me that," Charlotte said quietly. She glanced up at where the blond prefect stood, looking at the casket somewhat distractedly, as Michelle Wright tried to pull him gently away. "…you did help him. In the end, you did stand up to him, right? To tell him that there was something wrong. If you hadn't done what you did—that big fight in Pipers' Hall… Darren wouldn't be put onto actual treatment to help him. For what it's worth, it was a step in the right direction…because it looks like his dad sent him here just to keep him away."
Damian smiled faintly. "Pentland was the one who figured it out first, and he was the one who pulled Darren into the Pipers when he saw that Darren seemed to particularly like music class. And then he started looking after him." Briefly, Damian glanced to where Michelle and Julian Wright, Sr. stood, Darren standing a little way off and still looking lost in thought. "That's also why I made such an easy transition into the Pipers. He saw that I really liked music so… He was really glad that music helped us get back on track. He encouraged it. Which is why we could sing whatever we wanted at the duels."
"I had wondered about that…" Charlotte smiled. "He was the one who made that concession."
"He did. He said that…in music, we could take out everything we felt. Ms. Gregor agreed."
At the name, Charlotte lifted her eyes to her remaining music teacher, who had been silent throughout the entire ceremony. She had arrived looking tall, beautiful and composed as she always did, her blonde hair shining in the sun and her clothing in deep black. Charlotte had swallowed when she sensed that the black served a double purpose—to mourn, and to mask her steadily growing womb for the time being.
And though a beautiful black veil was cast down on her face by her hat…Charlotte knew the red-rimmed eyes and heavy lids of someone who had cried the whole night without sleep. She remained with her colleagues. She made no move to approach the casket, nor did she make any move to come near Mrs. Pentland, who was white-faced and speaking to her husband's colleagues, and some of the students.
"You see that that too…?" Grace whispered as she moved up to Charlotte. Damian had looked towards Shane and some of the other Jeffersons who were talking very seriously, looking distressed.
"Hard not to…" Charlotte replied, glancing briefly at her friend. "I think we should talk to her."
Grace whispered to her. "And say what?"
Charlotte raised an eyebrow at her friend. "We're here for you would be a good start." Her glance flicked up to the bandage around Grace's head. "How are you? Should you really be walking around? You're also wearing last season's Valentino."
"Oh, I'm going to be okay," Grace replied, shaking her head. "The doctors said that it was actually a good thing that I managed to stay awake after I got hit like that." She glared slightly at Charlotte for the rib on her outfit. "I was distraught; I'm allowed to make one fashion sacrilege."
"You're made of iron after all your accidents…" Charlotte gave her a hug that said that she understood and was only joking.
"One good thing about being a klutz, I guess…" Grace looked up. "Oh. Can you give me a minute? There's…someone I just spotted that I have to talk to really quick before we all sing—"
"Do not run, look at the ground so you do not trip, and—" Charlotte snatched the white flowers pinned to Grace's collar. "You're going to end up stabbing yourself with this so I'll take it."
"I'm not five," Grace snorted and rolled her eyes—and tripped over a rock embedded into the soil.
She gasped, flailed her arms, and there was a swift movement and Shane was holding her. The blue-gray eyes of the younger McGinty looked warm. "You all right?"
Deep scarlet and ignoring the smirking expression Charlotte was bestowing upon her, Grace looked up at Shane and flustered, "Yeah, I'm fine. Totally. You really have to stop doing that, you can't keep an eye on me all the time…"
"Wanna bet?" Shane smiled and Grace rolled her eyes at him, swatting him aside for a moment as she headed towards a figure in a black jacket that didn't fit well on her. Shane looked up to see who she was looking at and smiled. "Minah? You all right?"
"I'm all right," Minah said with a small smile, the bandage on her arm evident under the white shirt. Everything that she was wearing had been borrowed, since she didn't have much of funeral clothes. "I was wondering if I could speak to Grace alone?"
Shane paled just slightly. "What?"
"It's okay," Grace smiled at him and then moved towards Minah, who took her hand with a smile and led her aside.
"But—but—" Shane flustered to his brother who just rolled his eyes and took him aside as well.
"I was worried about you," Grace said, looking up at the taller girl when she released her a way off. "I was wondering what had happened, because mom didn't let me go see anybody."
"I'll be all right," Minah replied with a small smile. "I'm glad that you're all right too. You didn't look so good during that time… I thought something might have happened to you."
Grace looked at her intently. This thought had been distressing her for a while now, and she thought that now was as good a time as any to ask it. "Minah…you know you had no reason to be in that fire. To be in that situation at all. You don't even go to Hawthorne, and Shane wasn't even in there…! You could have died, Minah!"
"Okay, shh…" Minah looked at her with a warm smile. Grace saw the tape on her glasses and wondered if they had been broken in the fire and if she could give her new ones. Minah had looked after her protectively during the fire, and she now looked at Minah affectionately. "I knew Shane wasn't in there, but I knew you and Damian were. And if anything happened to the two of you…Shane might not be able to handle it."
"Shane cares about what happens to you too…" Grace said softly, feeling a little awkward and looking away from her. "If anything had happened to you—"
"No, we're not having a discussion of who Shane will care about more," Minah replied firmly, looking down at her. "I'm just saying that it had been my choice to help you and Damian. Especially you, since Damian was still standing and partially able to care for himself in that fire, while you were really in bad shape. I knew I had to take care of you. I think Shane would've wanted this."
"He wouldn't have wanted you hurt. You matter to him. You always have and you always will."
"Hey." Minah put her hands on Grace's shoulders. "Look, I don't want you thinking that way. You're with Shane now, and I practically hurled you to him. Seriously. I have no intentions of getting in the way of the both of you. Yes, I love Shane…but he's happy with you and that's what matters to me. It's something I just have to learn to get over. Start fresh and all that. There's no other way to go except forward."
"…Oh, Minah—"
"Look, I've had a lot of religious stuff shoved at me for the past year. If there was one thing I actually learned, it's that God notices those who try hard enough to get to a better place in their life. So consider all this as my desperate hope that He notices and throws something good my way." Minah smiled gently. "It's something to hold onto."
Grace smiled at her, eyes misting up, and she gave her a big hug. "Thank you, Minah. …really. Thank you for everything." She released her and looked up. "I…at first I'd been really… Well, before I knew you, I didn't like you all that much—" Minah's smile grew further, "—but now, I wish I was nicer or at least have more of a chance to get to know—" Grace stopped and blinked at her. "Wait, um… Do you…do you get to stay?"
Minah smiled. "I already told the others. I'm staying here in Massachusetts but…but not in this area. Not really going to be able to see any of you. I plan to go back to my parents and try to…work this whole thing out. Now that I know Shane's going to be okay…I can move on. I want to fight for myself now. This is who I am and I want them to accept me. I know they can."
"Another thing you're holding onto?" Grace smiled.
"Yeah." Minah pushed up her glasses. "I won't be able to come see you guys much. I'll have to work on my own for a while."
"What are you going to do now then?" Grace blinked.
"Oh, I guess for now, I'll make money tutoring…" Minah looked thoughtful. "I've already got some people…"
"Well…before you go," Grace beamed at her, "…at least let me get you new glasses."
"Deal," Minah grinned.
-8-
Charlotte had meant to go to Ms. Gregor when she had separated from Grace, but before she could move to her teacher, she saw her suddenly get caught in what had to be the most uncomfortable situation she could've ever get herself into—Mrs. Pentland had come over to her late husband's colleagues and started to talk to them, and to Ms. Gregor. Charlotte watched Ms. Gregor's face remain a perfect ivory mask, barely speaking.
"Not a good idea," a voice whispered behind her when she made to head towards Ms. Gregor in an attempt to rescue her. When Charlotte turned around, she saw Darren standing behind her. Charlotte stared—up close, his face looked paler and his eyes were heavily rimmed in dark circles. He looked very tired. "You'll make her look suspicious if you take her aside just as Mrs. Pentland is trying to talk to her," he added softly. "She's already been dodging her."
"You—you know?" Charlotte stared, surprised and aghast at Darren's appearance.
"I could tell," Darren replied with a strange smile. "The way they looked at each other sometimes. Had to be something. When I saw the look on Ms. Gregor's face today, I knew properly." Darren sighed and fixed his tie absently. "…like your world just broke apart."
Charlotte stared at him. After watching Darren unsuccessfully fiddle with his tie, she swatted his hands away and did it for him, but not without a sour expression. "You're going to make it worse. You're singing with us, we have to look our best for our teacher."
"I know. I came because Mr. Pentland…"
"I know." Charlotte let go and sighed. She looked at Darren. "You and Ms. Gregor have the same look."
Darren looked at her and glanced into the distance. "…yeah, maybe we do."
"The others talk. They said no one's seen you. Until today anyway." Charlotte tried to catch Darren's gaze. "Is it your father who's kept you away?"
"No, my…my father's been acting a little differently." Darren glanced back to where the parents were. They were gathering together, the fathers, and still talking, keeping half an eye out on their children. He looked back to Charlotte. "…he hasn't said anything bad about me all week. …Must be some kind of record. He'll burst soon. He has a reason to…"
"You can't be thinking that any of this was in any way your fault—"
"I was at the hospital all week, or thereabouts. As often as I could."
"Oh." Charlotte blinked. "Was it that bad? Where were you hurt?" She looked around for Darren's injuries which didn't really seem all that evident.
Darren simply shook his head. "No, I…" he took a long pause and then muttered, "…I was trying to see Juliet."
Ah. So that was why. Charlotte lifted her head and kept her face as devoid of expression as possible. "Oh. How…how is she?"
For a moment, it was as though Darren was lost in thought, but Charlotte did not see any of the usual signs of his medicated haze. He was clearly simply very occupied in whatever thoughts swirled in the aftermath. "…I…I don't know for sure."
"You're there all week and you don't know…?"
"Dolce Larson." Darren didn't meet her eyes. "Her mother won't let anyone at all come and see her… She hadn't…I hadn't seen her since— I…I heard she wasn't awake yet. That's all I know. …Derek and I, we took turns, trying to see if at some point she or any of Juliet's people will let us see her, but…Mrs. Larson doesn't want anyone coming near. And after the way my dad talked to her, apparently…" He shook his head.
Charlotte looked at him sympathetically and put a hand on his arm, trying to calm him. Strangely, when she put her hand there, Darren was not trembling with repressed rage or shaking with grief. He was still, very still, and seemed filled with the sadness of someone who is looking for a direction or a way to feel. "…she's alive. That's what's most important. She's going to be okay."
"You don't know that—" Darren whispered with some defeat.
"She will be," Charlotte glared at him.
"You don't know that! I jumped and left her in there—"
"You didn't have a choice, no one had a choice—!"
"Charlotte, if she dies—!"
"Shh!"
A few heads turned. The Jeffersons who had been talking were now looking at them. Charlotte found the Twins still as strangely identical as they stood, looking at them. She knew that they couldn't have possibly gotten identical injuries—they must have bandaged themselves to look alike still. They kept close to each other, watching them. The Adams also glanced up, and Derek stood from one of the chairs and took one step forward.
Then Damian appeared next to Charlotte and looked up at Darren. For an instant, the two of them who shared so much history looked at each other as though meeting for the first time. Damian broke their gaze to pat Darren's arm slightly. "Let's go. …We have to sing for Pentland one last time. …We both owe him."
Charlotte nodded and let Damian step forward to lead Darren with the Pipers, heading towards the coffin with the black lacquer. And as they moved, she heard Damian whispering to Darren. "…she'll be all right. She's your best friend. …She always comes back. She leaves and she leaves…but she always comes back." Damian looked at him. "You'll be all right too. You're really too headstrong. You're impossible to stop sometimes. And you have a little too much pride…to let this break you. You've never let anything stop you before. I don't think you'll let this be it."
"And you know me so well…?"
"I just remember a guy – who was supposed to hate me with a passion – calling for extra backup to save my brother from a rockslide, and sat and talked to me when I felt like the world was coming down on my head. You ran into a burning building with me and that whole…mess happened…and you stood by us and her the whole time, whether you were in that building by the end or not." Damian glanced at him. "…I know you enough to know that you're better than what we give you credit for sometimes and what you give yourself credit for."
Darren exhaled, looking up at the sky for a long moment, blinking. "Apparently you're also better than I give you credit for."
Charlotte smiled faintly at the sight of the two of them more or less getting along. She supposed that people who had to go through what they did together would find some same ground to meet in. She moved up next to Damian as the Pipers circled the casket, preparing to sing. Around them, friends and family stood. Darren glanced back and met Derek's gaze. Derek nodded somberly to his friend, but it was encouraging. Darren nodded back.
Silence fell around the grave as all eyes went to the Pipers and the casket. Everyone was still for a moment as the others looked their last upon the closed lid, and the flowers that rested on top of it.
Damian took Charlotte's hand and squeezed it. While Charlotte didn't look back to him, she placed her other gloved hand over Damian's encouragingly. The blue-eyed Piper whispered, "…thanks, Mr. Pentland. …for everything. …for giving us a chance."
Darren lowered his eyes and whispered something Charlotte could only make out as a very small "thank you, sir". Charlotte looked at the casket now, and smiled very very slightly, taking a deep breath. "…thank you, Mr. Pentland."
Damian closed his eyes and began to sing softly as the Pipers joined him.
There's no one in town I know…
You gave us some place to go….
I never said thank you for that…
I thought I might get one more chance… Damian laid a carnation gently down onto the coffin as he sang, and his hand shook just so slightly as he put down the flower. He managed a small, shaky smile as he gave his teacher a last look.
Charlotte moved forward then. She was holding a white carnation, and very gently, she laid it onto the casket. As the bloom slipped away from her fingers, she gave the coffin a long, lingering look before stepping back and lowering her eyes, singing with the others. She wouldn't forget the welcome for as long as she lived. Then she took Damian's hand, and the two of them moved back to the Pipers.
Darren stepped forward after her, and laid another carnation onto the casket. He had stopped singing briefly, to whisper, "…I'll try to make you proud, sir." And stepped back to join the others again, seemingly vanishing amidst the blue blazers.
What would you think of me now,
So lucky, so strong, so proud?
I never said thank you for that,
Now I'll never have a chance…
May angels lead you in…
Hear you me my friends…
On sleepless roads the sleepless go.
May angels lead you in… Patrick stepped forward and nodded once, slowly, to the coffin, in respect, before placing the flower down. He let out his breath, clasped his hands and stepped back, eyes closed. "Goodbye, sir…"
Diana nodded to him as she passed him and laid down a coffin. Her lips were pressed together and she laid her hand on the coffin with the very smallest smile. "…we'll do our best."
Grace smiled at Patrick and Diana before she walked forward. She placed a carnation with a handmade lace ribbon on it, and she smiled faintly at the coffin. "Thank you for taking care of us…"
The Twins helped her walk back, before both of them stepped forward. They stood over the casket, and the two of them placed a single carnation with two ribbons on it. "May angels lead you in…" they whispered.
So what would you think of me now,
So lucky, so strong, so proud?
I never said thank you for that,
Now I'll never have a chance…
May angels lead you in…
Hear you me my friends…
On sleepless roads the sleepless go.
May angels lead you in…
One by one, the Pipers moved to place their carnations onto the casket. Danny stepped back with the smallest repressed sniffle and Patrick put an arm around him. Thad crossed himself before stepping back, after he had placed the flowers. And when Bailey, with scarlet eyes, placed the last two carnations onto the coffin, whispering softly, "Thank you for looking after us, sir…" the Pipers stepped back to let others through.
Damian looked up when he saw Noel. He continued to sing, nodding for the younger boy to move forward.
And if you were with me tonight,
I'd sing to you just one more time… Noel came forward slowly, the white carnation he had was wet with his tears. His hands were shaking when he laid it down. And for an instant, they thought he couldn't let go. Then he whispered, "…thank you…for saving me…thank you…"
A song for a heart so big,
God wouldn't let it live… He shook with the force of the sobs he tried to stop, and Charlotte stepped forward again. She put her arm around his shoulders and gently led him back. "It's okay…" she whispered. "It's okay…" Noel sank against her, sobbing hard, following her as she led him back to the others.
The Jeffersons enveloped him their fold. The Twins broke off ranks in the Pipers to move over him protectively and led him carefully back to where his mother stood waiting for him.
May angels lead you in…
May angels lead you in… Charlotte had just reached Damian once again when he looked up and watched as their teachers' colleagues then moved forward and began placing flowers as well. Her gaze lingered a moment to Ms. Gregor, who looked and moved as immaculately as ever. Her face was hidden behind the veil on her hat.
She kept singing, watching as she moved forward and placed a white rose—not a carnation, which Mrs. Pentland had said Mr. Pentland had liked when she put them around the house onto the casket. Her hand never shook, but it lingered for the briefest fraction of a second.
Charlotte saw a tear slip down her cheek when she finally turned to walk away.
May angels lead you in…
Hear you me my friends…
On sleepless roads the sleepless go.
May angels lead you in… The few words the priest said went by so quickly to Charlotte—lost in her own thoughts—that before she knew it, the casket was about to be lowered. The family and friends of their deceased teacher surrounded it, and the students ringed this circle of people, glancing amongst each other, many with heads still lowered.
Damian remained standing outside the ring, and as Charlotte stood by him, leaning on her crutch slightly, she saw that the others around seemed to be filled with great distress. They looked at each other as though anticipating a greater problem. As though Mr. Pentland disappearing from them was a sign of something worse that had been bubbling up for the past few days. Charlotte watched as the coffin sank into the blackness and wondered what else they had to fight through this time…and how they would do it.
She felt Damian move a little closer to her.
"…you know…" Damian began and then he stopped. When he lowered his eyes towards the jet black casket, Charlotte could see his lashes still wet. "…I'm not really all that fond of funerals."
Charlotte gently adjusted his sling for a moment and then looked at him. She reached out to take his hand, but Damian met it halfway. He smiled, and Charlotte smiled faintly back. Damian said, "You know…it's like I can hear his voice in my head. Possibly getting irritated. Wondering why we're so upset, wanting us to move on."
"Well…" Charlotte smiled briefly, "…it sounds like something he'd say." She sighed, and looked at the wealth of white lilies that contrasted so powerfully against the coffin. She tightened her hold on Damian's hand. "What he did for us… I think…maybe he would've wanted us to repay him by…being strong. It's what he'd want, I think."
She looked at Damian, who looked lost in thought again. "…we'll get through this."
Damian looked at her and smiled a little. "Yeah."
"That…might be a little more difficult than we anticipated," came a whisper.
The two leads looked up to see Patrick and Diana standing near them. They both looked unsettled. Charlotte glanced for a moment, saw that the coffin was gone, and she turned away from the sight of the blackness of the grave and it felt like losing a safety net.
She looked back to the two Jeffersons who'd moved to them. "What do you mean?"
"There's a problem, and we only realized how big today now that we've managed to talk a bit better, and we're all in one place," Patrick said uncomfortably. Next to him, Diana stepped aside as the Twins also arrived. "It's about the school."
Damian felt something cold pass him. "…what about the school?" He almost didn't want to ask—because his father and his mother had mentioned something more than once that he didn't want to hear.
"The parents met up and they're petitioning to shut down the school," Diana whispered, looking at them, distressed. "Even the Alumni. They're waiting until after Mr. Pentland's funeral to do proper work to shut it down."
"Even the Alumni?" Charlotte stared.
"No one has been inside school grounds since the fire, no one has been allowed in," the Twins murmured. They looked at each other and then back at Charlotte. Lucas sighed, "So for over a week, Hawthorne had been at a standstill."
Logan nodded. "And the parents are talking, saying they don't want the students to go back into the school after the big security oversight."
"And the architecture of the Hall wasn't helping," Grace added as she and Han came up to the group. She was frowning now. "They're saying that all those paints shouldn't have been in there, that they were flammable and then how the building was built…"
"They've checked the other buildings—nothing was quite as bad as the Art Hall," Diana muttered. "Good news is, apparently Jefferson's the most well-built of the buildings; thing could withstand a gas blast apparently."
"It withstands Drew and Satoru, it better," Han remarked.
"No seriously," Patrick broke in, looking at them urgently. "If even the Alums are on board then we're all going to see Hawthorne shut down! All of us…we'll be separated." He looked at them, and the varying expressions on their faces. "We'll be taken to other schools, or overseas. We'll…have to start all over with different people. And…we'd only see each other in the vacations and…"
"…and the Pipers will be gone." Damian finished, closing his eyes. He didn't dare turn to look to the grave again. "Not that…that's the biggest concern, but…"
They all knew what he meant. Mr. Pentland's kids were going to be separated. Their friends would be going elsewhere now. Silence fell amongst them all.
After a moment, Damian whispered, "Even your dad, Diana…?"
Diana shook her head sadly. "Dad said he didn't want to really…close the school down but…but considering the situation…what the other parents are making out of it—and Juliet! She isn't even conscious yet!"
"How do you know?" Charlotte frowned a little.
"Everyone from school knows Mrs. Larson's got her daughter locked up in steel hoops. That not even Darren or Derek can come see her. Although as far as most of the media is concerned, Juliet's had an "incident" with a stalker and is undergoing recovery."
"Everyone's trying pretty hard to cover up the worst of what's happened here…" Grace murmured. "More for the Larsons' sake, really. They said they didn't want full details of what happened inside the art hall public…other than the stalker part."
"My dad agreed," Charlotte murmured, remembering a conversation with Henry while she was still in the hospital. "He said it…might be for the best that everyone doesn't know everything that happened inside the Hall. And for Adam's family."
The teens all winced at the name. But it was true.
When Mr. and Mrs. Clavell came to the hospital, everyone knew. Everyone had stared, watching as they made their way to see their son, who was in the hospital psych ward, away from everyone injured, and was cuffed to the handrails of his bed. The parents had arrived by police escort but no one came near them. Charlotte had seen Adam's parents, because they had tried to speak to her. They had tried to speak to everyone that their son had hurt. Ellen didn't let her speak to Charlotte…but she did talk to her outside. She saw through their shadows through the glass.
Mrs. Clavell looked like a good woman, and Mr. Clavell looked like a quiet man. But both of them had clearly looked so very tired. As though just hearing the news of what happened here in the school was enough to drain them of whatever vitality they possessed.
According to Ellen, Adam's parents had no idea about what their son had been doing. They knew he liked to be by himself, that he could get particularly…worked up about some things. They knew that there was trouble at his old school, about how some of the other students treated him, but again and again, Adam had simply retreated into his room and didn't tell them much. They thought Adam would be all right, at least until he got through high school.
They thought wanting to go to a new school was a sign that he was starting to get unhappy, and he wanted to get away from things. When they heard about the distance, they weren't sure, but Adam had so viciously demanded to be sent there and so they felt they had to concede. So they let him. They had no idea of what their son was doing, had done. But they were silent, very very silent, when they took their son away with them, and they were followed by the stares of all the other parents.
"But my mom did also say…" and Charlotte let out her breath, "that she's furious that the school wasn't able to protect us. That she agreed to send me to Hawthorne to be safe and this…isn't part of the package. I think he's on their side."
Han shook his head a little, looking uncomfortable. "Overlooking a killer stalker in school is a big deal—"
"No school is prepared for a killer stalker," Patrick muttered darkly.
"Fact stands," Diana muttered, "A teacher's—Mr. Pentland died, a lot of us got injured—"
"We went in there by ourselves," Damian reminded them.
"Tell them that!"
Charlotte held a hand up for silence. Then she looked at the Tweedles. "…so you're saying… after all this, that we can't…we can't even pick up the pieces and try to fix it? That officially…we are going to get our school shut down?"
The Twins looked at each other and then back at her. Lucas said, "Not…officially just yet."
Logan nodded slowly. "There's a board meeting later this evening. They were waiting until after the funeral. The people who run the school will be talking then. But they say that, with all this coverage…" he glanced to the fences. Cameras clicked distantly, as though trying to see who had come to the funeral. "…it might just be formality."
They all let out their breaths.
After a pause, Han began to say, "I should've—"
"Stop," Damian responded immediately with a direct stare to him. "…no one is going to start any sentence with "I should have" when it comes to this. No one is going to start blaming anything on themselves. This…this was out of our control."
"We had the illusion we had control," Charlotte muttered. She looked back to the grave. "…no one did. We couldn't have imagined any of this would happen."
"Yeah well…" Grace murmured softly, "…someone is blaming himself."
"Who?" Diana blinked.
"Darren was. I heard him."
And Damian looked to the sky, exhaling into it as though it explained his distress.
Where is Darren…? Charlotte wondered as she looked around. The ceremony was over, people were starting to leave, some of them, but she realized that she hadn't seen Darren since he placed the carnation on the coffin. She looked around and couldn't find the willowy blond anywhere.
Her eyes landed on Derek, who was still amongst the mass of Adams to one side. They were gathered together, also looking worried, and there was no sign of their prefect.
"…Hey."
Derek didn't look up from where he kept his head down, staring at the coffin and the people around it singing. Bailey elbowed him again. "Hey!"
"What?" Derek hissed, in no position to humor her.
"Look."
Derek looked up, and froze. A girl with long dark hair, wearing a trim black dress, looking more formal than he'd ever seen her, was walking to him from where she broke off the contingent of Dobry Hall students who had also come to pay their respects, and to help their counterpart school through the situation. She walked towards him with steady purpose, the same way she had done when she had walked away from him some months ago. For a moment, he stared. "…Casey…?"
He couldn't see her expression from behind the sunglasses she was wearing (they were the same Chanel sunglasses he'd bought for her), but she clutched her black purse tightly as though she was fighting her own will. Derek swallowed and glanced back to the casket once more before going to her, the Adams staring after him.
"…Casey?"
"Derek," Casey replied, looking up at him as she removed the sunglasses. Her eyes were red as she looked up at the bandage he wore. "A-Are you… I heard—I heard about what happened. To you and your friends and…and the fire and you got—" She took a breath and made herself regain composure. "…are you okay?" she said fervently, almost demanding, which was her usual way.
Derek stared at her and then pulled her against him and held her tightly, closing his eyes as he clasped her close. The girl seemed startled for a moment, but she didn't fight his grasp as she normally would've. When she felt him shake, repressing a sob, she put a hand on his back.
"Who is that?" Charlotte asked, surprised.
"Casey Lambert," Patrick said with a faint smile. "The only girl who got Derek to come close to settling down. They dated, exclusively, for two whole months, which for Derek was a record."
"Nice of her to come by…" Diana remarked. "He looks like he needs her." She saw Jordan among the Dobry students and nodded to her friends before making a beeline towards him. Charlotte glanced to Damian and whispered, "Shouldn't he be with his best friend?"
"I think his best friend is with their other best friend," Damian replied softly. "I saw Darren leave after the song. …he had talked to Derek, I think he went off somewhere. His father and Michelle are still here, so…"
"He went back to the hospital…" Charlotte murmured, considering. "Damian…I don't know how you feel about him right now, but I think he needs someone to talk to. We have to talk to him. He didn't sound right earlier, you talked to him—"
"Charlotte," Damian smiled at her. "Charlotte, I know. I understand. To be honest, I'm pretty worried about him too. I think we should go see him, talk to him. We have to see how Juliet's doing anyway."
"We'll go with you!" the Twins volunteered.
"I'm sorry, but that is not possible."
The group of them looked up. Mr. Brightman was walking to them, with Audrey Brightman. She smiled softly at the group of Jeffersons and signed, "Hello. How are you kids doing? We were worried."
"Doing better," Grace replied with a smile, one of the Twins signing simultaneously for Audrey's benefit.
"Why can't we go?" the other Twin asked their father.
Mr. Brightman looked around at the group of students, looking a little sad. He hadn't wanted to close the school either, but with the mounting pressure, some of the people who were going to be in the board meeting felt that this might be the only way to curb a very possible backlash against the school. Already a number of parents have expressed yanking their children from the Academy.
It was for the best, he told himself, and that was what Julian and the others had said as well.
Mr. Brightman spoke, but he signed as well, for the benefit of his daughter. "I need you to gather up your classmates. And you're to go back into school grounds."
"We can go back?" Grace's eyes lit up and Charlotte looked in surprise.
Mr. Brightman smiled sadly at Grace. Audrey answered, looking sad. "…you have to go back to your dormitories to get your things," one of the twins said out loud for the others.
"Get…our things…" Han stared.
"What do you mean get our things?" Noel suddenly spoke, coming up to them, eyes wide.
The twins' father exhaled and replied, "…the board thinks their decision will be made final tonight. Or at least by tomorrow. We want the students to go back into the dormitories and clear out their things…and tomorrow the school will be closed."
Charlotte stared at him with the same expression as all the other students. "…you're…you're really doing it. You're closing our school."
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Hawthorne
Aug 6, 2014 1:59:22 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by HburgEagle44 on Aug 6, 2014 1:59:22 GMT -5
Actually cried.
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Post by tonilous on Aug 8, 2014 2:50:22 GMT -5
Author's Notes: I think it's fitting that with such a big plot event happening this chapter, quite a great deal of people show up. Like in a Marvel wedding, when a superhero gets married, everybody comes to give support appearing briefly, before it returns focus on the main people. And I think Hawthorne needs its sons in its darkest hour (like Sparta). This chapter is my absolute favorite one. I have read and revised it multiple times and I'm incredibly happy with the result.
Siege will be the final chapter for a while. I will be going on a hiatus as school starts next week for me and I will not have time to update. Whenever I can, I will try and update my other stories since they are not quite as lengthy. ;)
I wanted to take this time to say thank you to those who have bothered to click Hawthorne, those who have made it to this page, those who loved it, have hated it, those who gave it so much as a glance, and to everyone who gave it even the smallest moment.
Thank you. :)
I hope, as I always do, that you will enjoy this chapter.
Hawthorne Siege
"Hey, Charlotte."
Charlotte looked up when she saw two familiar figures walking up to her. The funeral attendees were starting to drift away, some in small packs, while others lingered, talking to one another. And now, coming up to her, was someone else who she'd seen as her teacher. Mr. Hayes smiled as he came up to her, and to her surprise, Natasha was also present, clothed in a very proper black dress that Charlotte dearly wished to shorn the hemline of for an instant.
"Mr. Hayes?" surprised, Charlotte moved away from where she was with her mother, stepfather, Damian, as well as Mrs. McGinty to go speak to her former choirmaster. "Tash?" she blinked at her. "What are you two doing here…? I didn't see you in the church…"
"Well, Will was a fellow choirmaster and I thought it was only right of me to come here to pay respects…especially after he looked after you in the Pipers," Mr. Hayes replied with a smile, patting Charlotte's shoulder. "And, well, Natasha insisted on coming with me."
"That," she interjected immediately, giving Charlotte a direct look, "is because during that Valentines' Day carnival of yours, Mr. Pentland had been very courteous to all of us and even complimented me, and he can clearly acknowledge the strength of their future competition. I mean normally we'd be accused of being spies, but he was…kind. Very kind." Natasha nodded after a thoughtful pause. "He seemed like a very good man. We hadn't known him for long, but he seemed kind."
"He was," Charlotte smiled a little, glancing down for a moment before lifting her gaze back at them. "I appreciate you guys being here. Really. I—it means a lot to all of us."
"He'd been a great teacher, Charlotte," Mr. Hayes replied with a nod. "That boy who gave the eulogy… It really showed what a great job he did as a teacher to all of you, not just the Pipers."
"We actually came here to see how you were doing after getting out of the hospital, too…" Natasha said, looking at Charlotte with genuine concern in her eyes, "…and to see how you're handling all this."
"I'm…handling it." Charlotte replied, sighing as she sat down on one of the carved stone benches. "There's a lot of things to think about…and we don't even know where to begin. It looks like our problems aren't over just yet."
There was a pause as Natasha glanced at Mr. Hayes and moved to where Charlotte sat. She settled carefully on the bench next to her and gave her a small smile. "Yeah, we…we heard some of your schoolmates talking and the parents talking…" she gave her a questioning expression. "…Are they really going to close down your school?"
Charlotte glanced at her and nodded slightly. "That's what Mr. Brightman told us…. They want us to clear our things out. We told him that considering all the stuff in there, we're not sure if it could be done, so they're talking to the parents about letting us stay one more night in the school to finish taking everything down. We wanted to be responsible taking down our dorms. They might close the school by the afternoon of tomorrow. And…and we go someplace else. Separate. All of us."
For a moment, Charlotte sank her face into her hand. "All of us, we're going away. My new friends, people I lived with through all…this…" Charlotte gestured absently into the cold air. "We don't even get a shot to fix it. It's just…over. They decided for us. And we're stuck with that decision. And considering the situation with Damian and his family, I…"
Natasha reached over with a sigh and slipped an arm around her shoulders in an attempt to comfort her. "…you'll still see him, right?"
"Shane said that their mother and father want to take them both to live in California and start over. That's on the other side of the country, Natasha." Charlotte pursed her lips. "And his father isn't really my biggest fan."
"Oh…"
"And it's not just that." Charlotte glanced at Natasha and shook her head. "…I'm going to have to start over again…just when I managed to get comfortable with them. All of them. …like they waited until I decided I liked them all, even the really snooty ones who you want to wish root canals to sometimes."
"You're talking about those guys from the red house, right?" Natasha grinned.
"Adams, yes, them too." Charlotte sighed, shaking her head. "They…grew on me." She rolled her eyes and she picked at a piece of lint on her deep black jacket. Her eyes wandered to where the Jeffersons were still talking, looking distressed. In the face of separation, they stuck together, trying to find a way. "…I just feel like I'm leaving family again."
Mr. Hayes sat down with them and sighed, looking warmly at Charlotte. "You've been through a really rough couple of weeks, Charlotte… These things are a little beyond our control. Bad things happened and it always seems like it's the worst but you move forward. It's not like you'll lose contact with them forever; they're your friends, they'll still be there."
"It wouldn't be the same." Charlotte gazed absently into the distance. "Just like it wasn't the same when I moved away from you guys and into Hawthorne. It's a…different atmosphere there. …Not bad, just…different."
Natasha rubbed her back a little, also looking absently at the grass. It wasn't after a long pause when he decided to say what had been on his mind. "You know…if your school is closing down, you can always…" Natasha smiled a little at her; the kind of smile that people used when they were obviously trying to help but wasn't sure if what they were going to say was really going to help, "…you can always come back to Huntington. Back with us."
And the thing was…that wasn't the first time during all this that Charlotte had that thought crossing her mind. She looked at Natasha for a moment, and then looked back at Mr. Hayes, who just smiled faintly. "She makes a fair point, Charlotte. You could come back to us and we could make sure that your well-being is looked out for."
"I don't think you have to worry about Fitzpatrick," Charlotte remarked with a small smile. "We…I think we've come to some kind of understanding."
"Then the offer stands," Natasha's smile broadened.
Charlotte glanced at her and then looked back to the Jeffersons. It wasn't as though she expected to lose contact with them entirely—she knew that no one there would actually allow it, if they hadn't even let her go to Huntington for break without getting invaded by their hyperactivity. But she realized that maybe she feared it. Losing contact with them. More people to detach away from. Bad things happened, and now she had to make another move. But this time, it wasn't by choice.
And then for a moment, she wondered, Is this really it…? After tonight, when we've all packed, is that it? We say our goodbyes, we separate to various places…? I'll…lose Damian because he'll be all the way in the West Coast…? So much for our dreams of being together until we set off for Broadway and New York… I wouldn't see Patrick and Diana—haven't even seen where they live… I'll probably actually miss those crazy Twins, but they'll probably be taken overseas…. I won't see Grace anymore, if her mother will have anything to say about it…. Noel could adapt anywhere, there's no changing someone like that…. And then the Pipers…the people I know from here…. It's just…goodbye.
"…And after everything too." Charlotte murmured.
"Excuse me?" Natasha blinked.
"Nothing." Charlotte carefully began to stand. Mr. Hayes stood with her, handing her the crutch. Charlotte could walk without it, but she did promise her mom that she wouldn't put all that much stress. She looked up at her former teacher with an intent green stare. "I'll think about it, Mr. Hayes. But…it's nice to know that I'll always have you guys to look out for me. That's…more than I expected out of high school."
Natasha smiled and hugged her again. Charlotte allowed her, patting her back and wincing when she hugged tighter for an instant and she could feel creases on her jacket. Natasha's smile was bright and sunny as she looked at her. "It'll be okay, right?"
Charlotte just nodded. It has to be.
I'm Charlotte. And this is Hawthorne Academy.
Mr. Pentland is gone. It takes some accepting, still.
But I think if he was here…he'd know what to do about our problem now.
The school is closing.
And we're all not ready to let go.
"Hey Charlotte!" The Jeffersons were flailing to her now, looking anxious to speak to her. "Come on!"
The "Alice" rolled her eyes. "Duty calls."
"We'll see you soon, okay Charlotte?" Mr. Hayes nodded and smiled. "If you need us, you can call, okay?" and he let Charlotte move back to the Jeffersons.
Damian met her halfway, looking concerned, and in response Charlotte shot him an I'm-fine-relax expression before turning her attention to the others. "What is it?"
"We have all decided to head back to the school in the Brightmans' car," Damian replied, as if "car" was anybody's normal term for "stretch limousine." "Are you coming with us? You and Grace have a lot of stuff in there, mainly clothes. You should start early."
Charlotte nodded a little. "I suppose we'll have to. Pick up a lot of clothing bags along the way."
"Mom said she'll send me a lot; I'll give you some," Grace replied with a small smile.
"Hey Alice," The Twins suddenly broke in, looking to the place where Charlotte had come from. Behind him, Mr. Hayes and Natasha were standing with Ms. Gregor and they all seemed to be talking. Two pairs of blue eyes grew big at Charlotte. "That talking flower you were talking to earlier—what were you talking about?"
Charlotte hesitated. She glanced at Damian, who was also looking expectant. "My old teacher Mr. Hayes…he and Natasha said that if Hawthorne was closing down, I could always go back. To…Huntington. I mean, I think it would make sense. If I did."
There was an awkward pause where they didn't look at her much, as though they weren't sure of what to say. Of course Charlotte had Huntington. But of course…they wondered what this meant for the rest of them. Charlotte had arrived just this year, but she was just as much—if not more—a Hawthorne as the rest of them. Especially after everything that had happened, and all they've been through together. Losing Charlotte was as terrible to them as losing any of their friends, to distance, to change.
Patrick and Diana, the first people to bring Charlotte into Jefferson along with Damian, tried to find something to say and failed. Grace looked as though she wanted to say something but didn't think it was appropriate. The Twins seemed to know what they wanted to say however, because they looked at Charlotte with the same unfaltering stare they gave her that same first day in Hawthorne Academy. The twins looked a little pleased. "Then, we're glad."
"You are?" Charlotte gave them an incredulous look. For the past several months, she'd been their "Alice". She had thought that the Twins would be the second most unhappy—after Damian—to see her go.
The Twins only smiled warmly at her. "…Because then we don't have to worry about someone taking care of you."
"We'd been wondering ever since dad said we were all going to separate…" Lucas murmured.
"…About whether or not you'll be all right," Logan continued. "You're our friend, Charlotte. We don't want anything untoward to happen to you now that we can't watch over you the way we want to."
It was strange for Charlotte to hear these things, and stranger still to see the small smiles on the others' faces that proved that they agreed. They cared about her, and they had come to really like the girl who had become their headstrong, determined Alice. She gave them a slightly confused and rather pleased look. "…Really."
Noel shrugged a little. He still looked pale, and his eyes were red and his nose was red, but he looked composed and a bit more like his old self. "You're one of us, aren't you…? Of course we'll care."
Charlotte turned when she felt Damian staring at her. "We'll…miss you horribly," Damian replied with a faint smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. There was something about the way he said it that made it seem as though there was even more to it than he made it seem. "…I know I'll miss you more than I could possibly…" he waved his hand like he was waving away the rest of the sentence into the wind, "…but all I care about is that you'd be somewhere safe and happy. I want good things for you and I want you happy and loved."
"You're not allowed to say goodbye to me yet," Charlotte replied quietly, giving him an intent look and letting Damian tug her a little closer. Damian's smile grew a little as Charlotte added, "It's not time for goodbyes yet."
"No matter what you choose to do…no matter where you go…in the end…you're not chasing the Rabbit. I'll always be with you. Remember, that, okay?" Damian smiled and reached over to hug her as their friends smirked at each other and restrained themselves from their usual reaction. Damian shot them a "don't say it" look anyway as he held Charlotte, close. Charlotte smiled as she kept her arms around Damian, trying to swallow back the cold realization that not long from now, she might not be able to hold him like this again for a long time.
The Twins merely confined themselves to grinning again in Natasha's direction, saying, "We like that little flower. She's pretty and she seems sweet."
Charlotte choked, releasing Damian. "Natasha?"
"What…?" the Twins blinked back innocently. Lucas added, "She's pretty and small, like a doll…" as Logan nodded, "And she can sing…"
"And she's taken, by my stepbrother, now shush." Charlotte raised her palm to them for silence, looking as though she wasn't in the mood to really hear this right now. "Should we go?" she asked instead to everyone else, while the Twins stood looking amused. "If we're going to make sure everyone is okay…and besides, I'm not sure if the so-called "Knave" has been told that we have to pack up by tonight."
Damian nodded. "We should get going; I'll go with you."
"Rabbit, you have to come with us, though," the Twins reminded him.
"What? Why?"
"Back to the old digs. You've got a huge room to take down so you better get cracking," Han reminded him. "The theater alone's going to be a pain. Your single's got a lot of other people's stuff in it too; you want them to go rummaging through your things?"
Damian paled at the thought of the Twins, Patrick, and Diana ransacking his room. "No! You all stay out of my room if I'm not in it. Wait, what about Darren?" Damian looked at Charlotte with a small frown.
"I think I can handle him by myself," Charlotte replied easily. "He needs to get some sense into him." She gave Damian a reassuring expression. "I'll be fine, trust me. And apparently, nowadays you can trust him."
Damian smiled faintly. "That wasn't what I was thinking of. …Whatever you tell him…it'll come from the both of us. I think he needs to know people care."
As Charlotte nodded with a smile, Shane asked the others, "How come you don't threaten to go into Charlotte's room?"
"That's different," the Twins answered calmly. "We just barely escaped death; we're not willing to look it in the face again."
Charlotte gave them a withering grimace. "Ha ha. I'll see you guys back at Jefferson." She let Damian give her a kiss on the cheek, flushing only slightly. "Be good to Damian and Charlie while I'm gone."
"One last batch of cookies, please Alice? For old time's sake? We'll help you clean out your room." The Twins looked hopeful, and the others perked up.
Charlotte couldn't help but smile. "I'll think about it."
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Hawthorne
Aug 8, 2014 11:24:35 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by HburgEagle44 on Aug 8, 2014 11:24:35 GMT -5
NOO
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Post by tonilous on Aug 9, 2014 3:25:30 GMT -5
Charlotte and her mother had a lot to talk about as the latter drove her to the hospital at her request. It seemed clear, from what they discussed, that Ellen wanted Charlotte in a safer environment, and was leaning towards returning Charlotte to Huntington. "If those people can't even look after the bigwigs' kids then how can I think they can look after my daughter?" Ellen had said, still upset. "You're the most important thing in the world to me, Charlotte, and I could've lost you then. I don't know what I would do if I had. I don't know if I trust these people anymore."
"I trust them," Charlotte had replied carefully. "Mr. Pentland was one of them. If what he was willing to do was any indication…"
There had been an awkward pause after that.
Ellen told her daughter that she would wait outside for her, to tell her if she was ready to go back to Hawthorne. Before Charlotte had walked in, however, Ellen looked at her through the window. "Hey, Charlotte."
"Yes?" Charlotte leaned back to the car, her hand on the glass of the window.
Ellen gave her daughter a long look. Charlotte remembered that this was the way her mother looked at her all those years back at another funeral, during the funeral of someone so precious to them both. It was the look you gave someone when you're trying to tell them how you were the most important thing to them right now, and that because you were all that's left of that joy, you're even more precious. And people can be protective over important things, even more towards important people. "I just want you to be happy. You know that, right?"
"I know, mom," Charlotte smiled back.
Ellen nodded to her and Charlotte stepped back watching her as she headed to the hospital parking lot. And then Charlotte headed into the blast of cold air inside the hospital. For a moment, she wasn't sure where to go. If she went and asked a nurse, she might tell Mrs. Larson that she was here, but she didn't know where Juliet's room even was—
"Hey. Hey, kid!"
Charlotte looked up at the hissing tone. A tall woman in a crisp suit was flailing to her as surreptitiously as possible and crossing the lobby to her. Before Charlotte could speak, the woman gestured to her uniform. "I assume you're here to see her?" she said immediately as she led her off.
"Her?"
"Juliet, she's the only one left here," she retorted.
She wasn't particularly impolite but she seemed to be in a perpetual hurry, and wasn't very interested in Charlotte. She also did not make much of an effort to slow down so Charlotte could keep up. Annoyed, Charlotte yanked off her crutch so she could walk a little more properly. The woman barely looked at her—more down to her Blackberry—as she added, "You shouldn't come in through the front; we're trying to avoid cameras trying to catch her visitors. Why are you in uniform? It's like a beacon."
Charlotte raised an eyebrow at her and leveled a devastating green gaze. "Our teacher got buried today."
"Oh. I'm sorry." Again. Not impolite, but not particularly like she meant it with all the sincerity it deserved. They both stepped into an elevator at least and Charlotte caught her breath at last. She added, "You can join the other one who's already in there."
"I thought Ms. Larson said no visitors?" Charlotte stared in surprise.
"Yes, no visitors, but you can come only while Dolce isn't here. She's out talking to doctors in LA; she doesn't like the ones here. That one that came before you had been coming all week, I let him in because it was getting a little sad to watch." She let out a small snort that almost sounded like a laugh. "Other visitors are coming anyway."
Okay, maybe not completely unlikeable, if she was willing to bend rules a little, Charlotte decided as she followed her into the second floor. "Is the other visitor tall, blond, and…Abercrombie?" Charlotte rolled her eyes as she remembered Natasha's description.
The woman smirked a little as they moved through an entryway. "Darren? Yes, him."
"You know him?"
"He's always sending Juliet texts along with Derek, and I've met him more than once. Of course I know him." She stopped at a long, empty hallway. She gestured Charlotte on. "It's 216, but you'll know which one."
"What do you mean?"
She didn't answer because she was already tapping a message into her phone, but Charlotte realized what she meant when she walked down the hall and came to 216 at the end. She thought that it was because unlike the other rooms, the shades were drawn completely.
But then she noticed that as soon as she came close enough, she could hear music. In the silence of this ward of great glass and white wall, she could hear a sound coming from the crack of the door.
A piano.
And it was like ripple of déjà vu as she heard it being played in a way that she'd heard before—several months ago…. The familiar melody…a song she knew….
"I was thinking about you…thinking about me…. It was only just a dream…"
Charlotte couldn't help but gently smile as she silently pushed the door open a little more and found what she sought.
Lying on the bed of the room was a still form that she hadn't seen since the fire. Lack of consciousness aside, Juliet's appearance was better than what anyone had expected. There were still some bandages on her, and she had intravenous tubes going into her veins and wires going into machines that made a steady beep of a heart that was still beating.
Sitting on a couch nearby, with a keyboard set up—one she had remembered seeing in a Adams House room—was Darren, picking lightly at the keys, looking listless and singing absently. For a moment, the music was allowed to fade as Darren stared at the black and white keys, and then he resumed playing, as though he decided to start over.
Music in the air, the deep breath before he sang sounded like an effort. "I was thinking about you, thinking about me…thinking about us, what we're gonna be, I opened my eyes…"
"It was only just a dream…" Charlotte sang softly as she joined him in harmony, stepping inside. Darren lifted his eyes to her, not really surprised, and his eyes lit up just that little bit more as Charlotte sat next to him. He continued to play, the two of them looking to the girl on the bed as they sang.
"I travel back down that road,
When you'll come back—no one knows;
I realized…it was only just a dream…" Darren let the music fade again. Finally, he slipped his fingers away from the keyboard and sighed. The room became still, with nothing but the heart monitor making the steady beeping. Darren sighed softly and Charlotte felt him lean against her. It made her wonder if Darren was absorbing strength from her.wonder if Darren was absorbing strength from her.
"We have to stop meeting like this," Charlotte murmured lightly after a moment. "I keep finding you like this."
Darren managed to crack a small smile as he gazed at the keyboard. "If my music was a cry for help, then you must be emergency services…." But his expression was sincere as he leveled a gaze to Charlotte. "…I'm glad you're here."
"Damian and I may have been more worried about you than we let on…" Charlotte simply smiled again, and glanced around the room. The only sign of someone else having been in there was a very expensive jacket lying on one of the chairs. She immediately knew that it was Juliet's mother's—seeing as how that jacket was inaccessible to anyone who didn't have immediate access to the latest Paris catwalks had to offer. Charlotte spotted a little critter in a cage, snoozing in its little box nest inside, away from the hospital lights. "…Is…that supposed to be in a—"
"He's Juliet's pet," Darren shook his head slightly.
"A hedgehog?"
"Don't ask."
Charlotte shrugged a little and sighed, remembering the school celeb's rather prickly attitude. "Makes sense I guess." She made one more once over in the room before looking back to Darren and nudging him slightly. "…how is she?" Charlotte finally asked.
Darren nodded slowly, staring, drinking the sight in, as though this was the only answer he could give. He did ask all week to look at this, and he wished Derek was here to help him process it. But he saw Derek with Casey, and he didn't want to tear him from some happiness after all his friend had been through. He did send a text telling him that he had been allowed to see Juliet.
At least he had Charlotte, and Charlotte's presence had this way of calming him; it always had. He was just never sure if he was allowed to feel that way. "She's…she's doing a lot better. I asked the doctor who came in to peek a little earlier. They said her body is still in some shock. They think the only reason she's still asleep is because her body is trying to repair and gather strength. And…"
He paused. He looked at his hands, and he closed them into fists for a moment to stop the trembling. "…They said it was up to her mind. It was up to whatever she was thinking. If she was going to wake up or not. Ball's in her court now."
Charlotte nodded slowly. Of course. It was always the mind that was important—the human will is a powerful thing. You had to will yourself back over the brink. You had to keep fighting; you had to want to keep fighting, or no medical aid in the world can help you. "She's got to want to be here. I mean, you're here. She should know that people want her here."
"I had to be here, because…I didn't want her to be alone…" Darren's voice broke at the last word, making Charlotte look at him. Darren was clutching onto the last shreds of composure—Charlotte saw his shoulders shaking with repressed sobs, and Darren's eyes couldn't seem to stay on the prone form across them. His eyes flicked from it, to other things in the room—any other thing in the room. "I didn't want her to think no one wanted her back. I wanted to make sure she could come back. I don't…I don't really care about what she thinks, I don't care if she doesn't want to come back—I want her to come back—because she always…" a choke—Charlotte reached out to him— "…I didn't want her to be alone because the last time I left her alone—"
And then the wall dissolved. Darren broke down entirely, sinking his face into his hands and crying the way he had when he'd held Juliet after the fire, begging her to wake up. "This can't be happening—this isn't happening—why is this happening?!" He didn't even sound as though he was talking to anyone but himself anymore. Charlotte stared at him and tried to rub his shoulders but Darren sat up suddenly. "I can't—I can't do this here, I can't cry in front of her—"
Darren flew out the door before another word could be said. Charlotte followed him, worried he would get into some kind of trouble during this hysterics; when people who've held it all in the way he had, when they suddenly break, it has to flood out—it had to drain itself out.
The two of them fled down halls, one after another, making nurses and other visitors stare. Darren didn't stop running until he found an empty side-hall—the sun shining obnoxiously bright through the windows, as though it couldn't be bothered to understand the gravity of the situation—and he threw himself against the wall and punched it before sliding down onto the ground, sobbing. Charlotte immediately moved to him, holding onto his shoulders and trying to calm him down. "Darren! Darren, come on, you have to calm down—"
"I can't!" Darren practically screamed back at her before shoving his face into his hands again, completely flushed with rage and the crying. His knuckles were scarlet and Charlotte inspected them, fearing he had popped open his skin again. "I can't, okay?! It's all happening all at once!"
"I know, I know, okay? I know," Charlotte struggled to calm him but he was getting scared. Clearly Darren had little control over his emotions now that they all decided to happen at one go, it was too much. "Darren. Darren, please, take a breath or something, okay? Come on." She grabbed onto him trying to hold him and Darren shook with the force of his sobs as he hung onto Charlotte. Charlotte winced as Darren clutched tightly onto her, weeping openly.
A nurse who had seen them running had come after them and she rounded the bend and saw them. "What's going on? Are you two all right?"
"We're fine," Charlotte replied shortly as she held Darren, who was practically in hysterics. "He's just worked up, we've been through a lot this past week—"
"I think maybe I should get him a sedative—"
"No!" both she and Darren practically shouted at the same time, staring at her. Darren coughed and blinked at the nurse. "No, please. Really. I'm just…uh…" he glanced at Charlotte and then looked back at the nurse and just shook his head. "I just need a minute, please? Please? Leave us alone?"
"Okay…" the nurse nodded slowly, still staring at them. She looked at Charlotte. "Honey, if he gets any worse—"
"Please go away, or I will make myself get worse!" Darren shot back almost desperately before Charlotte could say something. "I need to be alone—"
"All right, all right, just please, you have to keep it down; there are patients here who really need rest." She gave Darren a long look and said, "Whatever it is, sweetie…it's going to be all right. Okay?"
Darren couldn't even fake looking reassured by her words; he just stared at her until she left. Charlotte was sure that she was still hovering at the other hall listening when Darren sank against her and starting sobbing. "Sorry…I'm sorry, I…. What was I even doing…?"
"Let it out," Charlotte replied, patting his back heavily, sighing. "Come on. That's what I do when something truly crappy happens—I cry, allow some self-pity for five minutes and then pull it back together. So just…just cry, go on."
And he did. It didn't really last more than ten minutes—Darren felt as though crying about anything was beneath him, and he hated showing weakness. He hated showing weakness in front of people. But at this point, everything simply flooded out. This was something he couldn't stop anymore. He had asked to feel. And now that he felt it all…he felt as though he was going to explode. Charlotte couldn't do more than keep the tide from dragging him away.
After a while, the sobs began to abate. He started to quiet down. Charlotte let out her breath. Darren sank against her, and his hold on Charlotte tightened. "…I'm so glad you're here…" he whispered, painfully sincere. "…I don't know what I would've done if you were…if you were like that too."
"I don't know how much help I am—you've already got a lot on your mind, from the looks of it." Charlotte was certain that her presence complicated matters, considering Darren's current frame of thinking.
"Do you think she…she…" Darren whispered, struggling to make himself clear and making Charlotte look at him. Darren raised bloodshot eyes at her and Charlotte stared, murmuring, "Sorry?"
"…do you think she'll forgive me?"
Charlotte sat back on her heels. There it was. "Forgive you?" she asked.
Darren shook his head and leaned back against the wall, letting out his breath, calmer now than before, his breath starting to go back to normal. He closed his eyes and his lashes were matted wet. "I feel…like an idiot. And I don't know what to do."
"Welcome to puberty." Charlotte leaned against the wall with a sigh next to him. "When you figure it out, tell the rest of us what to do."
"I'm the wrong person for that job." Darren shook his head, looking guilty and disgusted. He plucked out his Adams badge with hands anxious to do something. He flung it to the opposite wall. "…I can't believe I cried in front of you. I can't believe I cried in front of her."
Charlotte watched the badge clatter. "Do you seriously think she's going to take that against you?" Charlotte shot him a sideways glance.
"She might." Darren stared out the window. Sunshine peeked cheerily through the trees. He thought it was appallingly inappropriate. "She'd tell me to get up and deal with it."
"Shouldn't you take her advice, then?" Charlotte replied simply. "If that's what you think she'd want. You know her better than I do."
"But you knew her secret before I did," Darren looked at her intently now, questioning. "…you knew, didn't you? It's why you didn't want her to say it up at the Hall."
She knew she was going to hate the third floor of the Art Hall for the rest of her life. Charlotte swallowed a little and nodded slowly, not meeting his gaze. "I did. But she didn't want me to tell you, it wasn't my secret to tell, and I don't blow other people's covers. She had the choice to tell you herself."
"She didn't have a choice when she told me," Darren replied softly. "She never had a choice."
"Sure she did." Charlotte looked up and met Darren's eyes now. "…she had the choice to run and leave you…but she didn't. She chose you. If he really truly wanted to…she could've run…and she could have done it way before any of this happened. It's not her fault either…she didn't know what would happen next. But we all made our own choices." She looked to the windows as well. "Like everyone else in the world. I chose to not talk either. I chose to help her. I may not have chosen to be up in that place, but I didn't want to leave any of you up there either. …And now we have to take what we've got with our choices and make the best of it."
There was a pause, where it became so quiet that Charlotte could hear the PA system of the hospital call for some doctor far away. Darren closed his hand over Charlotte's, and his voice sounded so still. "…I'm sorry we got you into this. I have a feeling this wasn't exactly what you signed up for when you walked into Hawthorne Academy."
"Oh, I was warned," Charlotte smiled faintly. Their hands together felt a little awkward, and though she squeezed it back slightly, she curled up, hugging her knees. "I was warned plenty that I was headed into something crazy." She paused and then let out her breath. "But I don't think I'd look back and say I'd do anything differently."
Darren stared at Charlotte, the girl he had loved for quite a while, and wondered why he felt so tormented to remember that fact. He had told himself he would let go, and for a while, that worked less effectively than he'd wanted. It was hard not to love her, and yet to think about the fact right now was just as difficult; it made him feel guilty. Charlotte couldn't be his, and it looked as though these were the same things that had gone through someone else's mind for three years.
The thought of that was the most jarring.
He sighed and looked back outside. "I don't know if I could say the same. …not right now."
Charlotte got up carefully, minding her leg. Darren noted the injury and got up to help her but Charlotte stood by herself, brushing her sleeves off carefully. She raised her eyebrows at Darren as she handed him a handkerchief. "Here," Charlotte told him, shaking the handkerchief. "Clean up a little. You didn't want to cry in front of her, so I'm assuming you want to be presentable for her too. Go on."
She said it so primly that Darren managed a small smile and took it. And when Charlotte was satisfied that Darren had regained composure, the two of them headed back to Juliet's room. The nurse who'd followed them was at the station they passed, and she followed them with her gaze until they had gone.
The walk back to the ward was quiet, until they ran into the same busy woman that Charlotte had met. She looked up when she saw them. "I thought you'd left. Where did you two go?"
"There was a phone call—"
"I needed some coffee—"
They both spoke at the same time and looked at each other. The woman raised an eyebrow. Darren rolled his eyes. "Just—whatever, Carmen. We're headed back to the room."
"No no, wait, you can't go in there right now," she said, following them quickly, especially when Darren ignored her. Charlotte felt a more normal attitude from Darren at this point and wondered if it was safe for him to be opposed. When anguish drained out, Darren had room for his temper again. Hardly promising.
"Why, is Mrs. Larson here?" Charlotte asked, not wanting a showdown with the diva's mother.
"No—there're other people in there right now. Her friends."
"More of us?" Charlotte stared. "You mean from Adams House?"
"Juliet doesn't really have "friends" among her classmates," Darren pointed out.
"She does," Carmen replied tartly. "And…uh…not those classmates."
Darren stopped at the door and realized what she was getting at before Charlotte did. He glanced at her. "Who's already in there?"
"All of them."
All of them…? Charlotte wondered.
When Carmen said "all of them," she really meant it. When Darren, without heeding Carmen's entreaties, opened the door, it was hard to mistake any of them since the entertainment industry had made so much of them, and Juliet, from their famous TV show.
When she walked into that door, she was met with a bleary, travel-tired expression from Alicia Thornton, a blank look from Marcie Lillian, a blazing expression of annoyance from Patrick Wilson, the grave countenance of Nathan Miller, the caught-in-the-act-of-nail-biting wide eyes of Isabel Montero, an eyeroll from Natalia Saunders, the incredulous expression from Cameron Pike, and the truly exhausted look from Clark Sawyer.
All of them. The main cast of that TV show, Something Damaged.
In Juliet's room.
Charlotte had the most inappropriate desire to laugh. It was like walking straight into a scene from the show. She was half-torn with the desire to laugh in amazement or the need to choke it down, indignant—because if everybody was trying to keep attention at a minimum, this had to be the single worst way of doing it.
She didn't think they'd be here. It was the strangest thing she'd ever seen, juxtaposed with the gravity of the whole event. And there it was, a room packed with celebrities likely to have Juliet's own disposition, and now she and Darren added to the mix. It was sure to create disturbance in the force.
"Who are you?" Patrick asked, eyes narrowing slightly.
"I told you," Clark leapt to his feet. He knew them, of course, and moved to them. He smiled at Charlotte, nodding to her. "They're her friends and classmates."
"You're the one who sent the hedgehog?" Marcie asked, gesturing to the critter in the cage by the bed.
"I thought she'd want him." Darren replied coldly. "It's her pet."
"We know," Nathan smiled faintly. "We were the ones who got it for her."
So they were Juliet's friends from Tinsel Town. They all looked older than her. Charlotte raised an eyebrow. From the looks they all gave her and Darren, it would appear that Juliet's two sets of friends had never actually clashed until today.
"I thought this room was to be closed off for a bit?" Natalia remarked, looking the two Hawthorne students over, her air that of someone who felt as though she owned the place. "We'd like some time alone with her."
Darren closed the door carefully but firmly behind Charlotte without otherwise moving, and he moved in front of Charlotte in a protective stance while standing before the group of celebrities. All the danger signs were showing. "No. We're not leaving."
Cameron now lifted his head to meet Darren's eyes. When he stood, Charlotte stepped forward to stand next to Darren, in case Darren needed stopping—she doubted Darren would hesitate to lunge at people he considered "intruders", movie star or not.
But the leading man only stated, "And you're the one who brought the keyboard." He gestured to the keyboard at the side of the room, where they had pushed it back.
Hazel eyes flashed as a temper rose. "Yes, I decided I'd try to get through to her with music. Something she actually likes. It must be better than inane Hollywood chatter that you're surrounding her with."
Everyone moved the next instant; most of the male hands grabbed onto Patrick, who had immediately stepped forward, as though sure he was going to fly.
"Wait—wait!" Nathan hissed at him. Patrick glanced back at him and shrugged both him and Cameron off before he stalked to the corner of the room. Everyone exhaled. Nathan looked up to the two at the door, and managed a small, tight smile.
"It's fine if we're all here," he told him, ignoring the dark, wordless look Cameron shot him.
So there was no love lost between either of the families, either. Charlotte wasn't surprised. But she did say, "We didn't expect to find you all here either. I think the room's at critical mass."
"We're J's friends…" Isabel said absently. She was extremely pretty and without all the makeup, she looked younger. "He's like our baby sister. Not that she needs a lot of it, but we look after her."
The snort from Darren made Charlotte want to kick him—he was obviously spoiling for a reason to throw the divas out and he wasn't shy about it. "Really," Darren's sneer made Charlotte despair for peace. "Somehow I doubt you even knew what was going on for her back here in school."
"J doesn't even like that school," Patrick snapped, his temper also rising. He wasn't shy either; while the others simmered in their distress for their co-star, Patrick was looking for an outlet. "She never talks about it and never answers our questions about it. She looks pale and worried when she gets texts from you!"
Alicia leaned back and ate a potato chip, enjoying the proceedings in silence. She offered the bag to Charlotte, who shook her head.
"She doesn't seem to enjoy your company either, since we've barely heard of you back here," Darren retorted. "How are any of you good for her? Every time she comes back, she looks tired and wasted."
Patrick jumped up. "Yeah? Then why is her mother sending her back to California with us the moment she found out that there's a chance she could be transferred out?"
That stalled the party.
"What?" Charlotte stood.
Nathan closed his eyes, clearly willing some kind of self-control into the room. He opened them to look at Darren. "J's no longer considered critical and she's out of ICU. Dolce's getting her doctors in California to look after her. She's being taken out of here."
Clark looked unbelievably guilty when he added, "She understands it's risky even so, especially while she's unconscious…but she doesn't…want her here. Not anymore. And since J doesn't have a say in it…"
Charlotte paled at the news. That ruined everything. Completely. Darren wasn't going to get the chance to fix anything and they would all simply lose the "Cheshire Cat"…. And if that happened, there's no telling how Darren would deal with the aftermath. She knew that even the Jeffersons, especially the ones who had been in the mess of it all, didn't want to see that happen, regardless of what they thought about Darren or Juliet.
"You can't do that!" Darren's voice rose.
"Why not?" Cameron looked at him. His tone was even and did not accuse. He looked as though he genuinely wanted to know. "She'd get excellent care there. We can make sure she's protected. So this kind of thing doesn't happen again."
Darren opened his mouth but no sound came out. He looked at Charlotte, and then back at the others. "You can't just take her!"
"And if it is dangerous if she's unconscious, you can't take that chance!" Charlotte protested.
The group of Hollywood royals looked at each other. They all had this air around them very reminiscent of Juliet's own. Cameron shook his head. "It wasn't our decision. It was her mother's. But if she's safer there…we want her there. What happened here—"
"Was an unfortunate incident," Charlotte snapped, frowning. "Something none of us had any control over."
"Exactly," Natalia replied as she rose, looking tall, blonde and perfect. Out of all of them, she was the diva second to Juliet. "You had absolutely no control. You can't protect J from these situations because you've never had them. But where we stay, we deal with this kind of thing every day. We've protected both Pat and Izzy before. And now we'll take care of J. In the way you…apparently can't."
Cameron and Clark shot her a disapproving look nevertheless. An angry sound was rising from Darren when Carmen peeked into the room abruptly. "Dolce's on her way back."
"Tell her we'd like to speak to her about moving her," Cameron replied immediately. He looked at Darren and Charlotte, "We'll stall her. Give you more time." He then looked at the others. "Let's go. Let's give these two time with J. …it might be the last."
The group sighed and got up. One by one, they patted Juliet's hand and left. Nathan picked up the hedgehog cage when he left with them. When they passed, they did not look at Charlotte or Darren, carefully avoiding them, as though they had something they didn't want to catch. Irritated, Charlotte reached out and gingerly took the hedgehog cage from Nathan, who smirked a little and let it go. Charlotte couldn't think of a single reason why she just did that, but she placed the hedgehog back next onto the table.
It was kind Clark, who knew them through Grace, who really stopped, looking apologetic. "I'm sorry. I really am. I want her all right too, and I know she'll be sad to be away from you all. If…if I could help it, I'd let her stay. Honestly. But…maybe it's safer this way for everyone."
And he too left.
Darren stood until the door closed. And then he let out his breath and sat heavily onto the chair, burying his face into his hands. For a moment, Charlotte thought he was going to cry again, but he didn't. He was simply trying to control himself against the tide of the frustration that wracked him.
Charlotte sat next to him and shook her head. External forces were deciding for them now. They were like little castles under siege. Everything else was going to break in and break them apart, because they had a chink in their armors that weakened their defenses. And before they even had the chance to regroup, everything was being swallowed up by the tide.
"So it looks like…" Darren laughed hollowly, suddenly into the silence, "…she does have friends who care. It must've been easier for her to be there."
"Darren." Charlotte glared at him in warning.
"Friends who would fly in from across the country to check up on her in spite of crazy schedules and media risks…"
"Darren!"
"And apparently they can tell when something upsets her!" Darren looked at Charlotte now. "Something I apparently had been blind to for three years. Do you know, Charlotte, that I've sat up at night this past week actually wondering what that must've felt like? Because I can inflict some serious pain, but I can't imagine what kind of hurt that must've been like."
Charlotte lowered her head for a minute, taking a deep breath to get her thoughts together. And then she met Darren's eyes again. "No, you're right. I can't tell you what that must be like. No one knows what that's like except her."
Darren blinked at her. Charlotte stared at him and said, "…but I think you getting hurt like this was the last thing she wanted all this time." She made Darren look directly at her so he could understand the brunt of her words. "When she told you everything, she wanted you to run. To turn around and run and forget. It was an impossible thing to ask, but she wanted it because she didn't want to cause you this kind of pain. …it means she doesn't blame you for any of it. She never did. …So don't inflict it on yourself."
Charlotte glanced away for a moment. "People think…that many times other people hurt us. And that's…true. People really know how to hit a weak spot. …but we have to look out against hurting ourselves too. You can't live like this, Darren. You did to yourself for what—a week? And now that she's going, do you really want to leave her with the thought that all she's given you after all this was hurt? Really? Really?"
She sat back again and stared hard at the figure on the bed, willing her to wake up. If she could just wake up…maybe something different would happen.
"Three years…" Darren whispered, "…of not noticing…." The tall boy heaved out a sigh. "She told me loved me, Charlotte. One of my best friends of three years…and I never even knew…" She looked at the ceiling as though furiously trying to keep the tears from falling.
"How do you…" He stifled a bitter sob. "…How do you even begin to process something like that…? Did she…did she just feel this way the all the time?"
This brought a new thought. Charlotte hesitated before she decided to just ask. "I wanted to ask you something, you know. You said that you realize now that she'd been helping you all this time. Helping you to get to the people you wanted to love. And that you just noticed now that she maybe had tried to give you signs of how she felt. But…" she gave him an intent look, "…did you really not notice her…? Are you sure you had absolutely no idea?"
The expression Darren gave her surprised Charlotte. He looked almost afraid, as though that question was the one he hadn't wanted to be asked—it opened the door to someplace he cannot go. Charlotte gave him a questioning expression, hoping very very hard that he had an explanation for that fear.
"It…it wasn't that." Darren stammered, staring at her. "No, it's not like that. I really didn't know. It'd just…I never…let myself go there."
"Go where?"
"…To think of her like that." Darren swallowed. "Like…she and I…would be anything. She and I…at all."
"Why?" Charlotte asked, a little disbelieving. "You really just wanted to be platonic?" She certainly didn't expect Darren to jump every good-looking female he saw—it was just that this one was clearly someone who was very dear to him, for a steady three years and counting, someone who he was willing to face down psychos for, and to be stuck in a burning building with. And Charlotte thought, without vanity, considering Darren fell for her when he knew nothing about her, in a single song, it was surprising that he'd never even considered the slightest possibility of being with Juliet in any way other than platonic.
"I…" Darren tried to explain, but it sounded as though he was telling himself more than anything. As though he had just realized it himself. "…Juliet was…you know, always dating the next Hollywood it boy... That's what everyone knew, that was what I knew. So I put her aside for a while at first and…and when we started to get close…her, Derek and I…when we started to become really close friends… I didn't want to lose that. Charlotte, you know what my life at home is like. …I was only really happy when I was with D and Jules. Everyone came and went but they didn't. …But if I'd tried anything…anything…that'd break that thing we had…like thinking of one of them like that," he shook his head. "I just never let myself go there. It…must've been a long time ago since I decided that then but…I just never. I couldn't. It meant too much to."
Charlotte found herself smiling faintly. As she eased back into the couch, she asked, "…and now?"
"I don't know." Darren shook his head. He braced his arms onto his knees as he leaned forward, staring at the keyboard in front of the couch. "…I don't know. I really wish I did."
There was an instant of silence.
He said that…in music, we could take out everything we felt…
Mr. Pentland's words that Damian had told her filtered through Charlotte's thoughts. Maybe it wasn't the answer…but it makes you think. Charlotte turned to Darren and said, "…so you came here to sing to her."
"Yeah…?"
Charlotte tugged the keyboard closer to them. "Then we'll sing. I'll sing with you a little and play… you stand over there and sing to her." Darren gaped at her as she adjusted the keyboard settings, and Charlotte glanced at him, giving him a raised eyebrow. "I will only do this kind of thing for Damian, and you, so do not waste the effort. Go on. Stand there. That is what you're here for?"
There wasn't much Darren could do. "Wait…what did you want me to sing?"
"That's yours to answer…" Charlotte replied in an unimpressed tone as she continued setting. "You're the one serenading her back to life, Prince Charming. I'm just singing with you."
"Very funny." The blond paused for a moment, cogitating uncomfortably as he looked torn between the girl he loved and the girl who loved him. "…well…there was something I thought I might…" He hesitated. "I mean…I don't know if it's something appropriate but I just felt…"
This was all very amusing to Charlotte who had not quite seen Darren looking so defensive before. "Go on."
Darren named it. Charlotte resisted a smile and so she kept her gaze onto the keyboard. She'd heard a piano arrangement of that song before, and began to play the melody. Darren nodded. Charlotte resumed playing and gave him a prompting look.
And now Darren turned to the girl on the bed. He let out his breath.
Please… he begged in the silence. Listen to me for a minute…. And he began to sing.
I don't know where I'm at;
I'm standing at the back and I'm tired of waiting… Charlotte smiled as Darren walked a little closer to the bed, eyes never leaving his friend on it. He moved until he was right up to the bed.
Waiting here in line, hoping that I'll find what I've been chasing… Charlotte continued to carefully play as she lifted her own voice to join Darren's in the song, creating a harmony that brought the attention of certain people standing outside the room, who moved up to the door to listen.
I shot for the sky; I'm stuck on the ground
So why do I try, I know I'm gonna to fall down…
I thought I could fly, so why did I drown?
Never know why it's coming down, down, down… As they sang, there was a rustle at the doorway. Charlotte's eyes locked onto two Hawthorne blazers and two red pins. Derek stood at the doorway, observing the temperament of the room. His eyes fell on Juliet, and his face fell slightly. And then he lifted his gaze to Darren, and the briefest flicker of a smile appeared. He walked in without a word. Bailey was the other Adams present, but she stood at the door. Charlotte nodded to her, a little puzzled by her presence.
Darren barely noticed reached out to put his hand over the pale one on the bed. His voice rose in the way Charlotte knew so well—when he meant what he sang, when he felt through the song.
Not ready to let go, 'cause then I'd never know what I could be missing…
But I'm missing way too much;
So when do I give up what I've been wishing for… Bailey stayed by the door, listening to the song. Behind her, some of Juliet's friends from LA peeked in, listening and watching. Clark, the most musically inclined of them, stepped in, looking amazed. Charlotte and Darren's voices joined in harmony as the song reached its peak.
I shot for the sky; I'm stuck on the ground
So why do I try, I know I'm gonna to fall down…
I thought I could fly, so why did I drown?
Never know why it's coming down, down, down… Derek sat next to Charlotte and watched Darren sing, looking as though he were trying to figure out what was going on in his friend's mind. Charlotte imagined that there might not have been many instances when this happened for Derek. From her vantage point at the door, Bailey began to smile almost sadly. Darren kept a hold on the hand on the bed and he closed his eyes and Charlotte supported his voice with her own.
Oh I am going down, down, down
Can't find another way around
And I don't want to hear the sound, of losing what I never found… Darren's voice was the only one that remained, as the last strains of the song hung in the air.
Darren leaned over the girl on the bed, his hand still over hers, various expressions warring on his face. And in the silence, Charlotte heard him whisper, "Wake up. Wake up, Juliet. …please wake up."
Even before Darren moved his gaze away, Bailey lowered her eyes sadly and shook her head when, inevitably, there was simply no response from the school celebrity. Cameron and Marcie, standing in view at the door, gave each other thoughtful expressions. For a moment, Cameron smiled as he turned away. "She seems like in good hands here for the time being. Even Dolce would realize that…"
"Mm…." Nathan murmured from nearby, checking his phone and smiling at a text from his girlfriend. He returned his gaze to Cameron and replied, "…She doesn't talk about them but…I see why she keeps coming back."
Clark turned his attention to Charlotte, his stepsister's best friend, and grinned, whispering, "I knew you guys had Pipers who could really sing…but I missed the memo on how great you guys sing even impromptu, just like this."
Charlotte only shrugged demurely, but the praise clearly pleased her. Clark whispered with a smile before he rose to leave, "Thanks for looking after my sister, Charlotte—and my friend."
"They're a handful…" Charlotte replied softly with a small smile in return. Her eyes drifted to her schoolmate on the bed and wondered if it would get through to her.
As the actors left them to their silence, it was Derek who finally got up and pulled his friend back a little. Darren relaxed slightly at his friend's gesture and allowed himself to get tugged down to sit in the couch with the rest of them. And then Derek hugged him, bewildering Charlotte and Bailey.
Darren somehow managed to smile slightly, but he rolled his eyes. "…Derek, you're not allowed to hug me."
"Shut up, idiot, I'm trying to make you and me feel better," Derek grumbled.
"It feels awkward, stop." Darren grimaced, squirming away from his friend's grip, which made the athlete huffy, and punched him in the arm with just nearly enough force to bruise.
"Fine, see if I ever try to cheer you up again."
"This from you who was holding onto me and sobbing to the point that nurses wanted to give sedatives?" Charlotte raised an eyebrow at Darren. "Let him hug you, I think you need it."
"Like I have a choice?" Darren grumbled in answer as Derek gave him a few pats that felt more like whacks on his back.
"…Darren?" Bailey finally looked up, fidgeting uncomfortably, not quite leaving the doorway.
The Adams prefect raised his eyes to her. Bailey was very carefully holding out a CD. She seemed to truly be torn about what she was about to do, hesitating, but she still felt as though it was the best course of action. "…It's not mine to give…. But I…I thought…you might…want to listen to it."
For the longest time, Darren just stared. Charlotte glanced at her and then got up. She walked to Bailey and took the CD from her. In Bailey's neat handwriting, it said, "Valentines Fair: Juliet – Beautiful."
For a long moment, Charlotte stared at the CD, not really sure of what she was looking at. Darren looked up at Charlotte, who was raising an eyebrow at him. She waved the CD. "Go on and take it."
"…It's not mine," Darren murmured, eyeing the name on it.
"Bailey wouldn't be giving this to you for no reason."
"Can you…" Bailey added hesitantly, "…listen to that when you're by yourself? I just… When that was recorded, I… it felt a little private."
"I don't understand," Darren frowned as he glanced to Bailey, who just shook her head again. "You'll know when you listen to it. I just…I've never heard her sing like that before."
"Is this…" Charlotte turned elegantly on her heel to look at the Adams at the doorway, repressing a questioning smile that was starting to rise from her lips, "Is this one of the things you recorded during the Valentines Fair? In your booth?"
"Yes." Bailey smiled a little uncomfortably.
"But it wasn't broadcast, she just…sang?" Derek asked, looking surprised.
"It was after most of the fair was being taken down…. It sounded like a secret."
"Did she know you recorded it?" Darren suddenly asked, expression darkening.
Bailey looked unsettled and guilty. "No." She hastily glanced towards the girl on the bed, and then to Darren, who looked very tense at the purported intrusion. "She…" a tentative expression on her face, "…She didn't really seem to care what I did…she just had to let it out."
There was a pause as Charlotte looked down at the generic little CD with the sharpie marker label, but an instant later, it was gone from her hand and it was in Darren's. He put it away so quickly that it looked as though it were burning him. "Fine, I'll…I'll just keep it. Thanks." He trained his eyes to Charlotte now, and he rose to go to her. "Will you be—I mean…are you staying…? Until they kick us all out, I mean?"
Charlotte gauged the look on Darren's face at the moment. It wasn't a desperate attempt to get her to stay, but he looked as though he would really prefer her to do so. Derek sat behind Darren, and clearly he wasn't going to be unappreciated while their third friend was not conscious. It was just that Charlotte felt strange being in the room while the idea of Darren and Juliet had yet to resolve itself. And as much as she wanted to also make sure that the actress who was with them on the third floor would be all right,s he figured time might be better spent on Darren if he was left to sort things out first.
The whole time they had been together today, Darren didn't seem to know which way to look, and he had fallen apart. If Charlotte stayed, he would just get more confused. Two things would clash: The fact that it was she that Darrenn loved and chased for nearly as long as Charlotte had been in Hawthorne, and perhaps Darren still did feel something for her….
…And the other fact would be that that clearly, Juliet had changed the game with her forced confession, and Darren didn't know how to feel about it. And that every time he even thought about it, he still didn't know what he was doing.
That was a lot to digest, with a best friend still unconscious.
Charlotte began to reply, but she heard her phone go off. No rest for the weary. She sighed and pulled it out, and saw that it was from her mother:
"You all right in there?"
She let out her breath and tucked the phone back into her uniform. Her eyes met Darren's, which looked expectant, and Charlotte put a hand on his arm. "I have to go."
Darren released the breath he was holding and nodded. His hands dropped to his sides. "Yeah, I guess…I guess that Damian must be looking for you by now."
Charlotte shook her head. "No…. It's my mom. She has to take me back to Hawthorne and pack up."
Confused, Darren looked up. "Pack up?"
Perplexed, Charlotte wondered if none of the Adams had talked about this at all. And then she realized that both Derek and Darren had been away from the school all this time—they might not be fully aware of what was going on. Inwardly, she wondered if Senator Wright had even mentioned it to him.
"Mr. Brightman told us that we were to begin packing tonight," Charlotte replied. "They're…closing the school so…all our stuff has to be out by tomorrow morning. And then they're closing it down. Everyone's already headed there."
"What, like right now?" Derek sat up. "They're kicking us all out right now?"
"Board meeting's this evening," Charlotte replied. "We don't have any time but now."
"They can't close our school!" Darren exploded, making Charlotte check him with a disapproving stare. His voice dropped only a few decibels. "Who said—"
"The board and the alumni are talking about this tonight, or that's what Mr. Brightman told us," Charlotte snapped. "Be quiet!"
"My father never—" Darren caught his breath, wide-eyed at him and he whirled around to look at Derek. "Did you—?!"
"My father didn't say anything either," Derek got to his feet, frowning. "And he wouldn't close the school! He said he liked this school back when he went!"
Legacies, Charlotte remembered. Both Darren and Derek were. But then, so were the Brightmans, and it was their father who seemed to be spearheading this whole matter. Even Diana's father had the same inclination, although Charlotte also heard that Drew's father wasn't quite as thrilled either.
"How can they do this?" Darren murmured, aghast. "What will happen to all of us?! I'm not going back to New York to be with him full time!" He gestured to some vague direction of where the Senator was presumably at.
"I guess we all…end up scattering…" Bailey murmured. Unlike them, she seemed well-informed. "It's all over." She sighed deeply, staring at the ceiling. She almost looked as though she was expecting this kind of catastrophe and was resigned to it.
There was a pause amongst the teens, and, Charlotte glanced to the girl on the bed, who never stirred. And she whispered, "…I guess even if we wanted her to stay…there's nowhere to be."
The thought was entirely unwelcome for everyone in the room. A flash of color soared into Darren's face as he glanced towards Juliet, and then back at Charlotte with a frown. He put a hand on her shoulder. "No. There'll be a place. For all of us." He looked at Bailey and Derek. "Come on, we're going back to Hawthorne."
"What are we—"
"We can do what they want for now, but I'm calling my father or Michelle to see what is actually going on here." Darren replied as he began taking down the keyboard. "They can't just close down the school."
Charlotte smiled as she watched him for a moment, before she herself rose to her feet and headed for the door. If there was one thing Julian Darren Wright II was known for, it was his incredible stubbornness. And Charlotte had no doubt that he was going to do exactly as he claimed. For now, she had to see to her own responsibilities back in the dorm full of despondent schoolmates packing their school life away.
Charlotte was at the door when she happened to glance back, and she saw something she wondered if she ought not to have seen:
Darren's tall form was bending over the hospital bed, blond hair falling onto the face of the still form lying amidst all the apparatus. No one in the room moved, though they stared. Darren remained that way, his eyes fluttered shut as he leaned his forehead on the girl's—the girl that no one in Hawthorne had laid eyes upon since the night of the fire.
"…wake up, Juliet…" Darren whispered without opening his eyes. "…please wake up."
Charlotte watched him for a half moment long before she tore her gaze away and she fled the room, her heart pounding. She wasn't sure if she wanted to wait and see if Juliet would open her eyes to respond to that quiet pleading—that strange intimate tone that Charlotte was certain she had never heard from Darren before.
She had heard Darren plead to her, had heard him ask her to stay, ask to be loved by him, ask to be a friend. But that tone, the one she strangely felt more than heard, was different.
She assumed, as she rushed past the caucus of celebrities in the hallways who wondered where she was off to in such a hurry, that Juliet would wake up.
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Hawthorne
Aug 9, 2014 15:53:33 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by HburgEagle44 on Aug 9, 2014 15:53:33 GMT -5
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Post by tonilous on Aug 10, 2014 2:08:49 GMT -5
Five Days Later… The room looked old. It was full of carved paneling and antique bookcases containing files and the secretary seemed extremely busy, handling the madness that had gone on. Charlotte tore her gaze away from the horrifying amount of paperwork she was doing—realizing at the same time that while everything had seemed alright following that ridiculous stunt of theirs, other people had to catch the rest of the work—
Charlotte had never been in there before, but she was fairly certain that so many of the others have done so. It was likely that the scuff on the floor past the double doors were made by the doors swinging open to receive one student after another; most likely Jeffersons who needed some extra-strength haranguing from the man whose office had double doors that had the intimidating plaque reading "Headmaster Winters".
The doors opened. Grace stepped out, looking flushed. She kept her head ducked down, fingers anxiously running through the curls in her hair, but she smiled at them. She nodded to Charlotte, before she left the office altogether, the others' gazes following her.
While Charlotte was generally considered to be a "behaved" student, she had been to Dean Lowell's enough times to make her wonder if Jeffersons had shared the rent in that place. However, she had never really met Headmaster Winters. In fact, she'd only seen the Headmaster in official occasions, and heard his voice over the PA system for formal announcements. She recalled glimpsing the headmaster's silver head bobbing in the crowd of the older people during the funeral of their late choirmaster, too. Other than that, it seemed like he was happy enough to remain in a vague authority figure, and in the school, he seemed to just let Lowell run the show.
So she wasn't entirely sure what to expect, now that she was sitting there. After everything that had happened after she came back from the hospital, and that truly insane thing that she and her friends had done—
"Charlotte Summers?"
She quickly looked up, and she saw the secretary smile. The others sitting next to her, also waiting, looked at Charlotte with wide eyes, wondering how she would fare. "Yes?"
"You can go inside now."
Charlotte rose and crossed the opulent flooring towards the oak doors. She hesitated as she put her hand on the antique handle, wondering if this was really going to be alright. She tried to glance back at the others.
Damian nodded, and his voice was steady, the way it had been when he spoke to Charlotte five days ago at that fiasco that the students had managed to conjure up. "It'll be alright. You always know what to say."
The smile was the same one that first welcomed her into the halls of this school. Charlotte nodded, comforted by it, and she felt that familiar virtue—courage—return to her as she pushed the door open.
With the headmaster being a dark silhouette behind a wooden desk that looked like it was older than he himself was, Charlotte used the time it took for her eyes to adjust to look around a moment. The shelves were full of books, and there were paintings of old men who were familiar to her by now, having seen them once before. Piled in a stack, next to the headmaster's still-moving pen as he wrote, were bound records books, that Charlotte was, by now, also familiar with.
"Please sit down right there, Ms. Summers," the headmaster spoke, his hand gesturing to the single chair before the desk. A little handycam on a stand was facing the chair.
As though he knew without even having to look up, that Charlotte was staring at the camera, he said, "Don't mind the camera. It's merely for documentation." The sound of the fountain pen stopped with a flourish. The Headmaster closed the book he was writing in, and rose. When he walked closer and away from the harsh outside light, Charlotte was able to see him better.
As she sat down at the lone chair, she saw that Headmaster Winters was a stately man with silvery hair, who looked as though he was well into his forties. For someone in such an opulent office, his suit merely looked neat, and comfortable, and Charlotte was amused to find that its colors seemed to slightly echo the overall banner-colors of red and blue that the Hawthorne students' uniforms had. As the headmaster faced Charlotte, she noticed that he was tall enough to sit on his desk with shoes still touching the ground.
"Alright, Ms. Summers." When the Headmaster smiled, his face crinkled in a comforting way. His whole demeanor made it clear—he had been a Hawthorne student too. "We'll take as much time as you might need but I want you to tell me whatever comes to mind. There's no need to be formal about it. Just give me your answer to the question."
"The question?" Charlotte sat as still as she could on the chair.
"Yes, of course, the reason we're all still here." Headmaster Winters smiled. "So…"
"Why do you want to be in this school?"
Charlotte's image on the camera looked as though she was carefully considering that answer. But when she looked up, her eyes were clear of doubt.
"To be honest…"
Five days ago. "You guys didn't get anything done," Charlotte protested in frustration.
The group of students that littered the area looked up as though deer caught in headlights and shot her slightly embarrassed looks, but they altogether carried on with their enjoyment.
When Charlotte walked into Jefferson for the first time since the fateful Parents' Night, she had fully expected that, by the hour Ellen finally managed to drop her off at Hawthorne, the students would've made some actual headway towards dismantling their frankly ostentatious rooms. Or perhaps at least packed their easily movable things.
The Twins' room alone housed an appalling collection of unnecessary things that included a nerf and paintball armory capable of shaming major hobby store outlets. They've proved, nevertheless, that the variety of things that they dragged into campus with them had some use at least, as Charlotte recalled the landing pad that had saved their lives.
But when Charlotte entered Jefferson, what she found was absolute pandemonium.
It was evident from the foyer alone. One step inside and Charlotte found herself in a battlefield of possessions that evidently no one owned, judging by the way everyone seemed to take no notice, walking over and around things like they weren't there. Suitcases lay popped open on the floor, sports equipment bounced down from the staircase, and there was snack food in trails heading to all directions. Textbooks covered in highlighter marks and doodles on the margins were all over the place, and notebooks were flopped facedown. The major pieces of furniture were not in their proper places—as though each nook and cranny was being ransacked for hidden treasures.
Not to mention the fact that Drew and Satoru's TARDIS was sitting in the hall surrounded by several stacks of computer paraphernalia that could only be Han's, along with several electric cars of the variety toddlers liked driving around in. A pile of paintball guns rested at the bottom of the staircase along with tubes of ammo, while the superhero costumes littered the steps themselves. And what looked like a huge, two-storey bounce castle was deflating painfully slowly from the outside, judging from what Charlotte could see through the kitchen windows. The kitchen itself was bedlam, as though someone had tried to be helpful and got out cookie ingredients but simply ended up making a mess of the whole place.
And this was only the first floor.
The boarders had certainly been in the contemplative stages of packing, and may have even actually applied this contemplation, but as usual, they stopped halfway due to utter distraction.
"Oh! Oh!" Grace cried from the common room where most of the culprits were piled into. She was dragging something out of a trunk. "Look, remember this?" And when she unrolled it, Charlotte was certain that at some point in time, Jefferson House had taken a dog of the fluffy mop-like type, rolled it in every color of paint in the world and allowed it to run amok on canvas.
Patrick melted. "Oooh, I remember that! Last year, for the Pet Day!"
The Jeffersons in the common room degenerated into nostalgic reminiscing about various pets brought in—and Patrick went off into a truly distressing story about someone bringing half a dozen piglets onto the campus grounds and subsequently setting them loose in the halls during class, "…and that was after Noel's snake got away!"
Charlotte bristled at the complete lack of attention she was receiving; it was already getting dark, and there was little to no progress in Jefferson's work whatsoever.
"Hello?!" she demanded.
At her tone, Damian looked up from his laptop—he had commandeered the sofa and was surrounded by CDs and thumb drives—and grinned. "Charlotte! Charlotte, come here, look at this!" He flailed wildly to his girlfriend and gestured for her to come over.
The Jefferson diva raised an eyebrow at the evidently thrilled expression in Damian's face and went over to his side to take a look. Diana did the same, took one look at Damian's screen, and burst out laughing.
"Look! It's last year's Parade!" she crowed through peals of laughter. The Jeffersons scrambled up next to them and Charlotte looked at the screen to see the Jeffersons flailing around a massive reproduction of the Black Pearl from Pirates of the Caribbean. They were all dressed as pirates—there had to be at least three Jack Sparrows in that group—and they looked immensely proud.
The next photo reduced most of the students behind Charlotte into hysterical giggles—what looked to be a float made out into the shape of a big griffin was now a black lump of smoldering paper maché, and some very unhappy Adams were surrounding it.
"We were so proud!" Patrick managed a teary sniffle.
"Of that?" Charlotte raised an eyebrow.
"Of the fact that we managed it by using hay, a magnifying glass, and some very obliging sunbeams."
"I had nothing to do with that!" Noel yelled. "I'm innocent!"
Charlotte shook her head as she watched Damian scroll through the pictures. There was one particularly brilliant one of a Science Fair experiment erupting into fireworks as Jeffersons ran from the blast zone.
There was another photo of what looked like a play cast entirely of Jeffersons, with Damian, Diana, and Grace and a very unwilling-looking Han dressed as Musketeers, only the first three of them were giving Han a strange look as the other boy was holding a blue lightsaber.
And then there was one particularly noteworthy photo that seemed to have a huge flock of ducks—hundreds of them—coming down one of the school lanes and it was captioned, 'Second week, Junior Year: Charlie's first rage-fit of Prefecthood.'
"So this was all that I missed before I got here…"
"To be honest, after you got here, we were actually a little more 'tame'," Damian winked at her.
"That, I'll believe," Charlie snorted as he came in. Charlotte looked up, relieved, wondering if their prefect was about to get them all moving, but to her surprise, even Charlie was not carrying luggage. He even went and booted some of the students off the couch so he could sit with them. He was holding a thick sheaf of ring-bound paper, but said nothing about it; he merely looked at the photos. "You through all that stuff yet, Damian?"
"Not yet," Damian replied with a smile, and he looked at Charlotte with a grin. "I'm helping Han do a data check on all these CDs and thumb drives we found lying around the house. Didn't want to throw them all out without figuring out if there was anything in them worth saving. And looks like there are."
Patrick suddenly started cackling. "Hey, Chaz, here's that photo of you and Saint Felix, and the other upperclassmen dressed up like the Spice Gi—"
"GIVE ME THAT!" the memory stick was all but torn out of Damian's laptop and the boarders howled, trying to tackle Charlie to submission and recover that priceless piece of blackmail.
Over the din, Charlotte narrowed her eyes and asked her boyfriend, "And Han couldn't have done all this…why?"
"Han's busy trying to take down and pack up his room," Damian replied absently, clicking through some pictures of Noel's latest birthday party. Charlotte tried to not smile when she caught sight of a blurry photo of her stepbrother tossing Derek off. "I figured I could help do this, I mean you've seen what his insane room looks like…"
"I guess we all just got a little distracted," Grace piped up, looking a little embarrassed. Shane was curled up close to her on the floor, evidently making a valiant attempt to help—and failing spectacularly. He was watching, amused, as Charlie roared and stomped around the common room, with three or four students hanging off him, still trying to fight him down. "When we started trying to pack, we came across all this stuff that we had lying around and we started remembering."
Charlotte smiled faintly. She supposed that it was inevitable. The Jeffersons did live in this house, generations and generations of them, and they packed it with memories from the ground up. Now that they had to take it all down, they were bound to run into some old moments in the nooks and crannies.
Then the Twins burst into the common room, dragging out a Rock Band set that looked as though it had endured nuclear war. The conspirators crowed and leaped out of their seats, running to it and all talking at the same time.
Charlotte shook her head and looked to Noel, who, apart from his last outburst, was keeping quiet at the bay window again, and digging through a suitcase and laying out books of the type that looked like they'd be props for a Harry Potter movie. "I thought we were supposed to be packing up, not taking them out?"
"I don't know what these are," Noel replied as he kept dusting off covers. "But I found them in the attic."
Charlotte raised eyebrow at him. "And what, pray tell, were you doing in the attic?"
To which Noel colored slightly and retorted, "I can't keep all my important instruments in my room, I need some kind of panic room!"
"You used the attic as a Hunter's panic room?"
She was ignored by the self-proclaimed spiritualist by now Damian sat next to Charlotte again with a smile. "How did the hospital trip go? Any news?"
"His manager let us see him." Charlotte sighed and shook her head. "But I think Darren and Derek didn't know about us being told to pack our stuff."
Damian nodded and glanced out the windows, to the direction of the other houses. In the far distance was Adams House, and there was very little movement to be seen. Damian was a little surprised at that—Adams took pride in being efficient, but he supposed that not even they were willing to detach from their House as much as any of the other students in school. There was no sign of Darren or Derek. And far off in Washington House, Damian was sure they were also being quiet.
Distantly, towards South and Main, a small trickle of Day students were already appearing, carrying bags stuffed with books. It must be even worse for them, who had always tried to keep out of trouble compared to the Boarding students who looked for it openly—they were collateral damage. Unlike the boarders, they had far less to pack and bring home. But there were so few of them really moving anything. They sat around the benches with their bags and were talking, most of them.
Almost as if no one really wanted to leave the school if they could help it. Or as if they didn't know where else to go, or stay, but here.
It brought a thought to Damian.
"…Did you tell your mom about what Huntington said?"
"I mentioned it to my mom before we left." Charlotte sighed, setting down a photo of the Pipers at competition. "She seemed to think that no matter what happens to the school, it was a good idea. I guess she's still pretty worked up about the incident."
"I don't really blame her…" Patrick muttered from where he sat back down on the carpet, looking through what looked like old term papers. "My dad insisted on having some of his people patrol the school while we're gathering our stuff."
"That's a little overkill, I think…" Grace blinked, packing up art projects and pricking herself with a thumbtack. "Agh!" she glowered at it, mumbling to herself, before she added aloud, "Even my mom said it was okay if it's just to pack up everything. I mean the movers won't be arriving until tomorrow to help us all cart away the heavy things…"
"My dad is not the best person to define what 'overkill' is and isn't when it comes to his kids. He has two settings: off and full-auto." Patrick rolled his eyes. "Well, I managed to talk him off it. But I think maybe one or two bully boys are out there incognito."
"You're a mob-lord-to-be," Diana reminded him pointedly, and patiently. "Isn't this normal for you?"
"We are not mobsters. …Technically. …Or full-time. Aaaargh—" Patrick flopped over in surrender, even though he seemed relatively pleased that his friends have not decided to start clearing away from him thanks to his family's…business. "I just want to finish high school and college and run the restaurant chain."
"How's your mom, Noel?" Shane asked, peering at the boy his age, who was now reclined at the end of his seat and staring out the window. The pale boy, who had seemed to steadily regain his composure following the conversation with Mr. Brightman at the funeral, was staring out the windows.
After a pause, Noel shook his head. "I think for the most part, my mom was just glad that I was alright. She didn't even say anything about taking my salt or…my stuff." He picked at the upholstery of the seat, looking a little distant. His eyes were still red, but he did look more like his usual self than they have seen him in the past few days. "That was always a good sign…"
Diana patted him heavily in the back and tugged him down to sit on the floor, sending the younger boy sprawling against her and Patrick, rumpling the dark hair. "Well that's good news at least…" The hunter, irritated, struggled to untangle himself from the grip of the two upperclassmen, but his weak flailing was suppressed easily.
Charlotte smiled faintly and her gaze fell to Damian again. Her boyfriend reached out and cupped his hand into hers, and she could tell that Damian had something on his mind, seeing as how his eyes looked at her so intently. "What is it?"
Damian's smile looked strained. "…nothing."
"…it's not nothing when you look at me like that." Charlotte raised an eyebrow, lips almost quirking into a smile. "The last time you looked at me like that…you thought I was going to choose Darren during New Year's."
"I was just…" Damian forced a laugh, staring at her still. That laugh didn't reach his eyes, and Charlotte knew that laugh: it was another one of Damian's armor parts falling into place. "…I was just thinking that…I'm really tired of feeling like I'm about to be without you."
Charlotte stared. After a beat, she turned fully to face Damian and frowned slightly, squeezing his hands. "You're not going to lose me."
"I know…I know that, I just…have trouble with it because of…this." Damian gestured absently in the air, looking at the world, weary of it.
He meant having trouble with everything that had ever happened. Charlotte knew that for nearly the whole time that she and Damian had been together, every external force of nature possible had been trying to drive a wedge between them for one reason or another. Even after they themselves overcame their own miscommunication, trouble just kept coming back. And after the fire, and with the school getting closed down…it looked like the world was about to succeed in pulling them apart.
"We were safe here…" Damian murmured, glancing around the house. "Supposed to be safe here. I was…looking forward to moving past the Parents' Night event and maybe just enjoying the fact that I was in a school and singing with the girl I love and now…" Damian closed his eyes.
The two lead singers leaned against each other. Charlotte glanced at Damian briefly and felt the thread of anxiety and distress through him.
Damian let out his breath in a sigh. "…we were always safe when we were in here."
"Well…in a manner of speaking," Charlotte replied with a small smile.
"What do you mean?"
Charlotte ignored the sound of something toppling from upstairs and the eruption of laughter from students on the second floor. "As far as safe goes, we're about as safe as the next baseball bat into a chemistry set." She smiled a bit more.
POW!
The entire floor shook, the sound of electric crackling was just an aftershock. Smoke came pouring out of the kitchen. No one batted an eye, some even laughed.
"We ought to thank Drew and Satoru," Charlotte rolled her eyes as she reached up beside the couch and handed a fire extinguisher to Drew—"Thanks, Charlotte!"—who ran off. "With all the stuff they've been blowing up all year, we weren't all that fazed anymore when we heard the explosions in the Art Hall."
Damian laughed softly in agreement, sitting a little closer to Charlotte. "Just in case, though, they said they'll dial it down during the move."
He looked around at the room again, to the students who were still squabbling over the little items scattered around. He smiled as he watched Patrick and Diana argue with the Twins over ownership of a bust that looked remarkably like Stan Lee, and added, "It's hard to believe that in a while, we'll actually live somewhere where things don't explode at random and we don't get raided by food and coffee cups."
Charlotte laughed, shaking her head. "And whatever else, too. Who knows what kind of madness has been going on in this house before we even got here."
"Considering the way we are now…?" Damian snorted a little, nodding towards the pile of students howling on the carpet of the common room, pelting each other with nerf bullets. "How much worse could it have been?"
"It's less a boarding house and more like a daycare," Charlotte remarked bluntly.
There was a pause, as the teens continued to talk and squabble around them. They sounded worlds away. When most of them ran out of the hall for a moment to get "the rest of the gear", and heaven knew what all that was, they sounded even further away.
Charlotte felt Damian's hand close over hers. It felt warm, almost feverish. And she thought, as she leaned against him, she could feel Damian's heart beating fast. She remembered how warm his hand had been in the hall, gripping her own to keep them from being separated, and how his heart beat this way. Damian was scared.
"I don't know how to do this," he admitted.
"Change is always difficult," Charlotte agreed.
"I know but…did it have to be this kind of change…?" Damian sighed. "…I mean, this is family."
And Charlotte knew exactly what that felt like. "…it gets easier."
Damian closed his eyes, as though he didn't want to look at people pulling bright memories out of the walls and the furniture and the mayhem. "…When?"
Charlotte let out her breath. She had asked that before—had been asking that for a long time…since the very beginning. "…When indeed."
After a moment, Damian looked at Charlotte properly, as though he was working through his own thoughts. "This really strange thought came to my head when we were up there, you know. It came at the…the weirdest time, I had you wrapped with the fire blanket and we were running down the halls and I was trying to find the best way through and I thought…did I tell you that I love you?"
Charlotte stared at him. Damian laughed, a little embarrassed, looking down at their hands. "It was the strangest thing. It just popped into my head. Had I told you I love you that day? Because…because I was right there dodging fiery debris and at any minute the ceiling could cave in or the floor could fall out—"
"Damian—"
"—and all that time!" Damian managed a laugh that almost sounded like a sob. He shook his head, embarrassed with himself now. "All that time, I just thought…if it were to happen in the very next second…would I have told you that I love you? Would I have been able to tell…my parents, my brother…? …were any of you going through all that knowing that I've loved to you all to the last moment?"
"Well I knew."
Damian stared. Charlotte's mouth quirked into a small smile. "I knew. Of course I knew. You ran up a burning building and kicked a door in and got stabbed by that…that lunatic. Because you knew I was up there. And you didn't even want that fire blanket, you kept it around me. I mean…" she rolled her eyes, trying to sound offhand, "…as a rational human being, you had no reason to want to be anywhere in that."
"I'm not rational; I live in Jefferson." A small smile threatened to quirk up Damian's mouth as well.
"I knew that much, but speaking as a 'rational Jefferson' myself…" Charlotte smiled a little more, sighing as she closed her eyes. "…when I heard you call out my name in that fire, I thought it would've been fair to say that you came running in there for me. And that, well…is more than enough evidence of how you felt."
Charlotte opened her eyes to see Damian looking down at their linked hands, with an expression of quiet acceptance that, although not exactly one hundred percent, was enough to alleviate whatever shadows encroached in his mind that kept him from the smile Charlotte knew so well. Charlotte nudged him a little. "…and if you don't mind my saying, all things considered, you looked pretty hot crashing in through the doors to the rescue with Darren."
That got Damian to burst out laughing. Charlotte rolled her eyes at him, smirking a little. "That's all it takes, huh? For me to admit that you looked hot in a Die Hard kind of way? Wow, Damian-"
"Alright, alright!" Damian was trying to hold back the laughter, hugging her. "I didn't even know you watched Die Hard!"
"Henry did, not me. Technically. And Alex. It was bonding time and I watched it since I made them sit through a Project Runway marathon."
"Again?"
"Again. But seriously, afterwards Henry actually subconsciously started to coordinate his outfit colors and Alex used the term 'empire waist' to describe Natasha's dress one time, so I consider that a huge success."
"God, I love you." Damian grinned.
Patrick materialized and shoved a Tupperware practically onto Damian's nose. "Does this smell edible to you?"
Damian withdrew immediately and choked, gasping for breath. "No?! It smells like Diana's football socks!"
"I heard that!"
"What is that?" Charlotte coughed, waving fumes away.
"I dunno, I was hungry, and I saw it in the fridge, had a biohazard sticker."
"And you thought this was safe for consumption how?" Charlotte narrowed her eyes.
Patrick shrugged as Diana poked a spoon into it. "It tasted alright and the spoon didn't melt."
Satoru skidded to a stop at the entrance to the common. "Is that my germ culture?!"
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Post by tonilous on Aug 10, 2014 2:51:18 GMT -5
"Why do you want to stay in this school?"
Charlotte Summers blinked calmly. "When I first came here, I wasn't sure what to expect. I think, whatever I did expect, well...it certainly wasn't what I found. I was coming here for the same reasons as some of the others did... to be safe. I heard this place was safe and it felt like the best decision at the time. It had been the best decision at the time." She seemed to consider, and then laughed softly, eyes distant. "I found it strange that I fled one home and then found another one. I didn't...well, I didn't expect that."
Grace Van Kamp blinked at the camera, puzzled. "W-well..." she cleared her throat, shifting awkwardly in her seat. "Why wouldn't I want to be here is the question, right? I've been here since I was a freshman. I wanted to be someplace away from home, because I wanted to figure myself out. Isn't that...isn't that what going here did for a lot of the students? We all came here for different reasons but in the end, this is really where we're finding ourselves. I don't know how this school does it. Maybe it's the people in it..."
The students came into the common room dragging even more of their things in it. Charlotte resisted the urge to drag her hand down her face. This was all very counterproductive, as they were supposed to be moving things out, not in. But all the same, she admitted to herself with a sigh as she caught the portfolio of summer looks Grace tossed her, she couldn't really blame them for finding every excuse to not do their real errand.
"Hey Grace!" Damian suddenly spoke, taking the little artist aside. "I wanted to give you something, you know. Before we all left."
"Really? Oh, Damian, you don't have to, honestly…" Grace pinked and fidgeted awkwardly, but was nevertheless curious about the black box bag that Damian was holding.
"There will be no wooing!" Shane materialized out of thin air, leaning into his brother's space, eyes narrowed. "Any and all wooing will be done by this McGinty right here, not you!"
Damian splayed his hand over his brother's face and pushed it away from him. "There is no wooing, I'm just giving a goodbye present! Go away, geez!"
Grace giggled as Shane shot his brother the 'I'm watching you' hand gesture and stepped away. Damian just laughed and shook his head. He pushed the case into Grace's hands. "Well, I thought…maybe it was just something that could help you once you're out of here. Your mom mentioned it and, well, anything that will get your mom off your back, right?"
"What do you—? Oh Damian, no, I can't take this!" Grace had opened the case and had found a camera. Even Charlotte gave a start from where she had been watching. Grace immediately flustered, knowing that anything this old came with a history. And if she remembered the photographs on Damian's desk correctly— "Damian, I can't take this thing, it's not…it's not mine to take!"
"The person who last owned that was one of the best artists I knew in my life," Damian replied quietly, trying to keep Grace's flailing hands from dropping the camera, and urging her to hold onto it. "His name was Jude and he had amazing photographs. And if you ask me…I think he would've been more than happy for that camera to go to another artist, especially one trying to get into photography. I want you to keep it, Grace. It's time I let go, and for that thing to make good memories…and not stand around being a reminder of bad ones. Okay?"
Grace was flustered, hands clutching the precious camera tight. She looked frightened and unsure, and her expression was still confused as she gazed at it. "I…"
"From one of my close friends to another of my close friends," Damian nodded. From a few steps away, Shane just smiled almost sadly and he nodded as though agreeing with his brother. "Say you'll take it, Grace. Take some amazing photos."
Staring down at the camera—and pointedly ignoring some distant mutinous grumbling from certain people talking about the likelihood of inheriting a ghost's wrath for taking their property—and glancing up at Damian, Grace smiled a little and nodded. "…okay. Thank you, Damian. I know how much this means to you. I'll take good care of it."
"Good luck, Grace," Damian responded with a smile. "I know you'll do something amazing with it. Be careful with it, okay? Jude said something about the flash being on the fritz and the battery getting too hot or something."
"You didn't even check?" Grace gaped, holding the camera like it was bomb. "Is this thing functional?! What if I open the battery pack and it explodes?! Damian!"
"Trust me, you'll be fine, Grace…" Damian grinned and jerked his thumb to Shane, who happily ran off to go help Grace. He took Shane's spot where he was sitting next to Charlotte, and smiled.
Charlotte took his hand and nodded, proud of him.
"Charlie, I think this is yours," Noel spoke up, and he held out a large blue book he had picked up, glowering at its dust-covered pages.
"I seriously doubt that I own anything that ancient," Charlie frowned back.
"It says Jefferson Rulebook – Prefect's Copy! It's yours."
"Oh." Charlie reached for it as there was a nasty crack—everyone looked up to see Patrick and Diana smashed up against the fireplace, groaning and laughing at the same time, half a huge "PIPERROCK" banner from last year in their hands and the Twins expiring in hysterical laughter with the other half in their hands.
Grace was pouting. "We worked really hard on that, you guys!" She carefully nudged Shane's arms away from her—the younger boy had gotten all overexcited with the others and was overheating her.
The Twins were laughing too hard to speak, especially when Patrick and Diana tried to get up and only managed to get entangled in each other, the two of them gasping for breath between laughter.
"Back to the hospital again?" Damian smirked as Patrick rubbed his head as though checking for injury from banging it too hard on the grate. The mafia heir only grinned up at him.
"Jeffersons are resilient!" he replied.
"With the way this house lives, I'm not surprised you all didn't just evolve into your own species. Like dinosaurs." Charlotte smirked and got up, sweeping up some of the scattered music sheets in a vain attempt to find order in the chaos.
"Be careful!" Noel protested, hustling the two older students away from the fireplace. "I haven't gotten my stuff out of my place there yet!" He started moving his hands over the bricks.
"Your stuff?" Grace blinked, perplexed, as Charlie sat down next to Damian, looking into the old prefect manual that Noel just handed him.
Charlotte frowned as Noel began pulling at the bricks with his fingers, the way one usually tests for loose ones. "When they said to take the stuff at the House down, I don't think they meant the walls, Noel."
"There's a spot here—ah!" There was the sound of scraping against mortar and a group of bricks stuck together moved a place back, leaving a neat black square of space. The Jeffersons watched as Noel started taking out a little jar of salt and a bottle of holy water as well as some medallions from the space.
"Do you just have this kind of stuff all over the house?!" Patrick demanded as Noel took out a lump of white chalk.
"I am the one force standing between humans and the undead!"
"Let it go," Diana sagely patted her best friend's shoulder as Noel dug further into his little stash and brought out what looked like pieces of crystal. "That way lies madness."
"In this house lies madness," Charlotte retorted.
"Hey!"
They looked up as Noel, frowning, up to his elbows in the hole in the wall, said indignantly, "Have you guys been messing with my stuff again?!" He glowered pointedly at the Twins, who were trying to discreetly place a plastic teacup—with its own plastic saucer—on Charlie's fluffy head without his notice, since he was looking at the handbook so intently. The Twins smiled angelically in answer.
"What did you put here?!" Noel demanded, tugging at something.
"We didn't put anything," the Twins replied, looking puzzled.
"Did too!" Noel was tugging with all his might now. "What is this thing?"
Damian sighed, "Guys, why do you do this to Noel…?"
"Let me see." Charlotte picked up a flashlight among the many scattered things in the common room. She checked to see if it was on and she moved over to where Noel was, shining it into the gap in the wall. The two of them peeked in. "Looks like a box…" Charlotte muttered. "Knowing the twins, it's probably booby-trapped. Leave it."
"We haven't done anything!" the identical boys chorused, having managed to balance a plastic teacup and a lump of sugar onto Charlie's still-oblivious head.
"I'm getting that thing out of there," Noel snapped. "It looks old and for all I know, they've desecrated an artifact." He started tugging at it.
"Is that such a good idea?" Grace murmured, looking worried, coming closer, and Shane got up with her, grinning as he peeked in. "Oh cool!" the younger McGinty looked elated. "Like a treasure chest!"
"Maybe the Twins stuffed it in there for one of the treasure hunts and forgot about it," Damian remarked, also peering in. The Twins threw up their hands, exasperated, but not at all looking offended—in fact, the idea that any hijinks were attributed to them instantly seemed to be somewhat of a compliment.
"Oh alright, let me help." Charlotte grabbed onto Noel. Shane carefully swatted Grace away before he could try—and possibly dislocate something in the process—and held on as well. Damian reached out and held on from Charlotte's side. "On the count of three. One…two…three!"
There was the sound of metal scraping stone and whatever Noel had found was finally dislodged from the fireplace, throwing the group backwards. At first, Charlotte feared that it was part of the building and, knowing Jeffersons' luck, it was going to result in the complete collapse of the House, but when Noel dusted the debris off it, it appeared to be a metal box.
The Jeffersons crowded, puzzled. "What is it…?" Grace whispered, curious, as Noel brushed the bits of stone and dust away from it.
"Looks like something for a ritual," Noel frowned, brow furrowed in concern, as his fingers traced over the etchings all over the box.
Charlotte opened her mouth to make an argument against it, but looking at the box, she realized that Noel may be closer to the truth than he thought. It was a very old-looking box, the size of a hatbox, and it had tiny engravings all over it.
But why did it have a Jefferson crest?
Charlie finally came to from where he was reading. When he looked up, the two teacups and the little saucers and the sugar lumps tumbled off his head and the Twins made a sound of dismay. Charlie, already well-drilled in the madness hanging around him at all times in this House, rose from his place and walked up to the crowding students. "What is that?" he asked.
Damian shook his head. "I don't know. It was in the compartment inside the fireplace."
"…we have that?" Even Charlie looked perplexed now.
The Twins nodded cheerfully. "Yeah. Like the funny little storeroom with all the baseballs behind the second floor bookcase."
The Jeffersons stared at the two of them. "…we have that?!"
"What, you don't know these things?!" the speaker crackled from the table as Han snorted in derision. "If you've seen this House's blueprints, it's pretty nuts; it's got all kinds of rooms and passages like it was being prepared as a war shelter—"
"Well, I'm sorry we're not spending our days unlocking the deep dark secrets of this academy—" Patrick bristled at the speaker.
"Will you guys shush and help me open this thing?!" Noel finally retorted.
Diana knelt next to Charlotte, fascinated. "Woah…look at the initials on it."
Charlotte ran her fingers over the etchings. A closer look did show that the etchings, neatly scratched in block letters, were initials. They covered the box in neat rows, with a year after each set.
"It looks pretty old…" Damian murmured, looking over Charlotte's shoulder. "And it has a Jefferson crest."
There was a pause, then Charlie looked up with realization in his eyes, feeling startled. "Oh my god."
The Jeffersons stared at their stunned Prefect, who suddenly ran out of the common room and into the entrance hall. When he returned from rummaging amidst the chaos of the hall, he was holding a heavy book. He picked up the older book that Noel had given him and he opened both to a marked page.
"…That better not be what I think it is," Charlotte remarked.
"The Jefferson Rulebook?" Grace grinned. "Yeah it is."
"What kind of a Rulebook has a siren rule anyway?" Charlotte demanded.
"One that has rules on New Year's parties, paintball warfare, pastry-sharing protocol, kidnap initiations, and how Jefferson deals with the universal omerta of all three Houses," Patrick grinned.
Charlotte sank her face into her hand, feeling a headache coming on—it was the same kind she usually got when Jefferson was doing things that made no sense outside of the school.
Charlie murmured, "The old book has some different rules from the new one, but both books say the same thing in the last part of the 'Prefects Only' section. Frankly the old book's rules are kind of…nuts. Even by our standards."
"I find that hard to believe," Charlotte replied.
"Well, it's more like protocol in times of battle. It calls for barricading the entire House perimeter with furniture at the event of a midnight takeover from other Houses and catapulting flaming baseballs that come from the second floor storeroom."
"…Okay, I believe it." Charlotte massaged her temples, feeling ill. She tried to make her face as neutral as possible as she did it, but she was certain it wasn't working. What kind of a school is this…? She asked herself this on a nearly-daily basis, so it was rhetorical. How did it remain standing to this day…? This is not the Crusades, people—
Charlie turned both books to the same page. "For the Prefect," he read out loud to the Jeffersons. "Until it is time, you are not to read the end of this book. As the end of the year approaches, turn to the last page of the book and follow the instructions strictly. As prefect, it will be your honor and duty to lead the last tradition."
"And let me guess," Damian gave their prefect a smile. "You did exactly as a Jefferson does when told not to do something."
Charlie's smile was almost embarrassed as he turned to the end of the book and read, "'Since we are sure you are reading this because you didn't listen to the rule that says don't read it—'" an explosion of laughter from the Jeffersons, "'—keep this a secret until the time comes. As the year ends, take a select group of your seniors as your honor guard, and begin the tradition. In a loose brick in the fireplace hides our Legacy. Open it, treasure it, and find your way back to where we wait for you.'"
"It's like a scavenger hunt!" The Twins looked absolutely delighted, jumping up and down.
"Looks like this school is playing one last game with us before we all leave," Damian smiled.
"We're galloping off to find the Holy Grail, are we?" Noel raised an eyebrow.
"Well first thing's first, Arthur—we got to get that box open," Charlie gestured to the box.
Damian got up, dusting his hands off his pants. "Well…that's going to take a little effort. The box is old, but the lock is new. Which means we can blame last year's students for sealing it like this. Did they give you a key, Chaz?"
Charlie just shook his head. "We need a crowbar or something. Remind me to thank Ryan and the others." He rolled his eyes before leveling a gaze at the Twins. "You guys are the ones good at messing with locks. Can you do something about this?"
Both twins produced a set of bolt cutters. Why they were even carrying a pair around was lost to everyone. "Let's just break the stupid thing," they declared.
"Why is your first reaction to break something—?!" Damian demanded.
He was ignored by Jefferson's terrible two—and they poised the cutters over the padlock. They shooed away danger-prone Grace—"Go stay over there before something flies at you and blinds you or something…"—who sat next to Shane, watching curiously as the twins prepared to break the lock.
Both twins placed their hands onto the handles. "Okay…in one…two…"
A metallic clang broke through the air as the lock snapped under the cutters and the Jeffersons winced only slightly. "There we go," Logan grinned as Lucas reached over and undid the lock pieces. Then he ceremoniously dropped the box into Charlie's hands. "S'all yours, chief."
Charlie blinked at the box in his hands. The Jeffersons all collectively backed away from him as though they were holding a time bomb. Whatever it is that was in that box, if Jeffersons had something to do with it, they had every right to question whether or not it was booby trapped.
"Charlie, you should be wearing a welding mask of some kind," Charlotte warned.
"No, I've got this," Charlie winced as he very carefully began to lift the lid. "I'm prefect, I have to take…point…" He trailed away, blinking at the contents.
Silence fell in the room.
"What is it?" Grace finally whispered.
"…Paper." Charlie pulled out a thick sheaf of paper in varying degrees of age. The Jeffersons crept up to him as he shuffled carefully through the pages, each one with the seal of the house at the top. Below were years, followed by many, many names.
"More names," Charlotte muttered, taking a couple of the papers. "Are these…?"
"…Old Jeffersons," Damian murmured, looking over her shoulder. "They have to be. It's full of names of the Legacies." Somberly, he passed the papers out to the others, who stared as with each sheet, the list of names became older and older, with each year. The paper got yellower the further they went back, more delicate—stained with time with the ink of the pens bleeding and fading. Some were so old that the Jeffersons didn't want to pick them up. Damian held on to one particular piece of gilded paper that seemed to be more like an honor roll than a record of names.
"Prefects list," Damian muttered.
Charlotte looked up and stared at the paper in Damian's hands. Across each year were names. "Looks like they have to sign it—to say that they've put the names in every year."
Charlotte ran her perfectly cared for fingernail down the list of names, and blinked in surprise when she came across one name. She laughed. "Noel, there's someone with your name on here."
The hunter's head snapped up from where he was inspecting the papers for marks of evil sacrificial rituals. "'Scuse me?" he asked, dark eyes big.
"Well, it says Noel Montgomery. The middle name is different."
Noel crawled up to Damian and Charlotte and looked at the paper. Charlotte drew a line with her nail under the name Noel Harrisford Montgomery. Noel's eyes grew as large as saucers when he saw the name and year, and a quick mental calculation later: "That's Uncle Ford! It's my uncle!"
"Wait, your uncle went here to this school—to this House—and you didn't know?" Damian blinked. "You don't know that you're a Legacy?"
"I knew he was here at some point!" Noel flustered. "I mean, he said he was sent here! That's how I even knew this place existed because he—but I didn't…that he was a Jefferson—and prefect—but he…."
The others stared at him in surprise. Not only was his uncle a bona fide Hawthorne boy, but he was a Jefferson, and a Prefect. Noel, dumbfounded, could be gibbering like that for the next half hour or so, and so Charlotte continued to look down the list of names.
She grabbed Damian's arm. "Damian—look!"
Damian looked down. "What?" His eyes followed to where Charlotte was pointing. It was one of the more recent numbers, and Charlotte was carefully pointing to one name that jumped out in neat handwriting.
Patrick looked up when he felt Damian tugging at his sleeve. He and Diana leaned forward as the Twins squatted down and took a peek as well.
"Whoa…." Diana began to grin a little.
"William Pentland…." Damian murmured with a small smile.
"He was a prefect…." Charlotte felt a little surprised. "I mean, I knew he was a Jefferson because of that banner during the service but he was a prefect too? Why didn't anyone say anything?"
It might not seem like much, considering how much attention the students gave Charlie sometimes, but the fact remained that in Jefferson, being a prefect still counted for something big. Although it may seem like more of a punishment than an honor, being prefect in Jefferson meant you had the respect of every eccentric, hardheaded, rambunctious student within its halls. It was still a position of power.
Charlie murmured, "Because it shouldn't matter all that much in the end. Jeffersons are Jeffersons…and we all look out for each other." He looked at the others. "Don't we?"
The Twins just smiled knowingly to themselves as some of the Jeffersons laughed softly. If the last incident was any indication, then clearly that was true. Damian nudged Charlotte a little, beaming at her. Charlotte returned the smile, remembering how even long before the fiasco that was purgatory, these same students were the ones surrounding her when she had come to this school, the same ones who stood by her when they thought she was in some kind of danger.
They were the strangest people she knew, but they were also her friends, and they proved that time and again.
"What do you mean why?" Patrick Hughes laughed hollowly, looking as though he had been prepared for the interrogation from the way he sat for the camera. But he checked himself, and sat up a little straighter when the headmaster gestured him to sit up a little. "I came here because it was safe. It was someplace I could be...I could be just me. It was good for my family, good for me…. And I felt...amazingly normal here. Because back home, sometimes…." He made that hollow laugh again and made a little strangling gesture. "Argh... you know what I mean...?"
"It's the place I always knew I'd go to," Diana Sullivan replied evenly, looking cool and composed, ignoring the camera and seemingly staring directly at the Headmaster. "My dad talked about this place in two moods—the times when he sounded like he was so happy to have gone, and the times when he seemed to wonder what he ever did to be sent here. I found that interesting too. I always knew I'd go here, just like Dad did. Not just for Legacy, but because...because aren't those two moods the way you talk about home sometimes...?"
The paper wasn't the only thing in the box. There was a rattle that broke them from their reverie, and Charlie withdrew a ring of keys, old and jingling as he lifted them out. "What are those for?" Patrick asked, puzzled..
"Maybe there's something else," Charlie replied. "There may be more to this than just the list of Legacies. Look." He tapped a silver plate in the velvet inlay of the box.
Engraved on the plate were the words, From Hawthorne boys, to Hawthorne boys, and to the boys yet to come.
When examined closely, the silver writing on the plate matched the ones on the silver tab on the keychain. There were no words on the ornament, only a code, which said, "HHB 117".
"I guess they didn't prepare for Hawthorne being a co-ed school," Grace murmured.
"Well that one makes sense at least," remarked Lucas, straightening up to full height with marked confidence, as his twin nodded, pointing to the silver tab.
"It does?" Charlotte stared.
"HHB is the building code for the Herman Hawthorne Building," Logan explained. "It's in the South and Main compound of buildings, though it's not connected to it like all the rest are."
"Yeah. South and Main's got classrooms and laboratories and offices, but there's nothing that links it up to the Herman Hawthorne Building. That's where you find a some of the separate staff offices, but it's also mostly used as a records annex," Lucas added.
"They've memorized the school map," Han supplied helpfully from the speaker, as though he could sense Charlotte's narrow-eyed expression of disbelief at the twins' remarkable knowledge of the school grounds. "It helps when you break into places and have to run away. You see, Alice, school can be a labyrinth if you don't know the way."
"I'm sure." Charlotte raised an eyebrow, and then looked at the others. Damian stared back at her and shrugged, and turned his eyes to their prefect. Presently, all the students now stared at the senior who was meant to be leading them all.
Charlie was looking at the prefects' list in his hand, moving down the list. He stopped near the bottom, where he knew his own name would have been if he could graduate from this school. When he looked up, he saw all eyes of the Jeffersons on him. "What?"
They stared expectantly back, waiting. Charlie's eyes landed on who he may have deemed the only living relatively rational being in Jefferson.
Charlotte only kept her eyebrow raised incredulously, completely unhelpful, and clearly not on the side of prudence. "What have we got to lose?"
Charlie sighed. He slammed the box shut. Oh why not. He's been good long enough. He looked at the others. "Bring the bolt cutters."
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Hawthorne
Aug 10, 2014 3:37:56 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by HburgEagle44 on Aug 10, 2014 3:37:56 GMT -5
Ooh a treasure hunt! I'm smiling again
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Post by tonilous on Aug 11, 2014 3:37:32 GMT -5
"It's just that we've had so much progress here, you know?" Derek Seigerson tried to make himself clear, sprawled on the chair. "We keep talking about all the successful alums, the amazing SAT scores, the championships, the charities, everything this school has ever done. And yet all of that pales in comparison to what's been done to, well...the students. Some of them...actually a lot of them built themselves up again in here."
Julian Darren Wright II was sitting very still. His eyes never left the Headmaster. When he spoke, he was almost unnaturally calm. "...This is home. At least, for me it is. A lot of the time...it feels like Manhattan is the boarding school. I'm there but it doesn't feel...like anything. It's bad, isn't it, to say that kind of thing?" The corners of his lips quirked a little. He added, "...this place feels like home to me. I don't even know what it meant until I started to lose it."
"What are all of you doing here?!" Patrick demanded in a pitched tone that gave away true shock not more than fifteen minutes later.
That was the amount of time it took for the Jeffersons to completely drop their supposed "packing" schedule, and prepare to mount a sneak invasion to the Herman Hawthorne Building. (By then, Charlotte and Damian—and it seemed, their long-suffering prefect—had given up any hope of getting the Jeffersons to do anything).
After recruiting some Jeffersons to run interference against Ann Burkhart, the main pack of conspirators fled the building. It was still daylight, and getting to the South and Main was done in stealth mostly to not arouse any suspicion—they weren't supposed to even have any business in there whatsoever. Charlotte kept her eyes to the building that was their target, and pretended she could not see very well in the distance, the closed-off fence of tarpaulins that blocked the way to the ruined Art Hall.
Upon arriving at the structure—old, brick, and strangely resolute in spite of the grave circumstances—the indefatigable Brightman Twins displayed exactly how good they are at breaking into places: it took them a grand total of thirty seconds to open the door for the others, most of which was taken up by one of the twins unlatching a window from the outside, and going from window to door.
Locating the room was a bit of a challenge. They had to break their way into a couple more dividing doors into other hallways before they finally saw the old wood of the double doors with the little brass plate engraved 117. Considering their history of breaking and entering into places they are not allowed into, the way they slip into impromptu plans of such things with the ease of practice, they had expected to get this far without much problems.
What they didn't expect was that they wouldn't be alone in their quest.
The fact was, Damian decided as he stared at the assembled students in the dead silent hall, was that no one was even supposed to be here. As far as the school was concerned, the students were only supposed to be in their houses, or the South and Main for the Day students packing things up from their lockers.
In fact, he had expected that only his fleet of friends would be brazen enough to go traipsing around their still mainly off-limits school grounds, break into an administration building—the school does need better security, then, or at least Tweedle-proof ones, he thought unhappily—and prepare to unlock some student-related secret pact of Legacy.
Which meant that the presence of his ex-best friend leading a small detachment of Adams showing up in the same place was completely and entirely unexpected, bordering on the universe downright messing with Damian at this point. This also went for the fact that Charlie's best friend—Saint Felix Bancroft of all people, honestly—had also led a small group of Washingtons into the hall. Majority of those assembled were Pipers.
Charlotte, standing next to Damian's shell-shocked expression, didn't have to look at him when she reached over with one hand and carefully closed Damian's mouth for him.
Darren Wright crossed his arms and glared in a way that was only at twenty-percent menace. "I should be asking all of you the same thing."
"We're rather impressed, Darren," Lucas grinned at the Adams prefect, his expression suggesting that this was true. "We didn't think you or any of your guys had the guts to break into an administration building."
"Or that any of you even knew how," Logan added with a sweet smile, leaning on his double.
"It helps when you have the keys," Derek told them with a pained smile, holding up a ring of keys. "Seriously, why go through the whole cat-burglar thing?"
"The point that Patrick was trying to say," Charlie said loudly now, making them all look at him, "is what are you all doing here?"
It was Damian who finally gestured at the box—yes, the size of a hatbox—under Darren's arm and smiled. "It looks like for the same reason we are." He walked up to the other prefect, with Charlotte watching curiously. "Where did you find the Adams' box?"
"The rulebook said we can't tell," Darren replied with a sigh that suggested that this should've been obvious.
"Well of course you'll have a rulebook…" Charlotte sighed deeply before she looked over to the familiar teens with the white and gold shields. "And so does Washington?"
In response, Felix simply smiled and held up his own silver box. By comparison, the Washington box seemed the best kept. It still shone. "I felt that as this may be the very last time this would be done, so I went ahead and went as planned…"
Darren snorted, mildly impressed. "You read the back of the rulebook too?"
"Doesn't everyone?" For someone supposedly a respectable Washington, Felix looked honestly stunned that people were just not compelled to go ahead and not do what they are told, especially by crusty old rulebooks. To their credit, the other Washingtons stared at their prefect like he'd grown a second head.
Charlotte finally decided that they've all tortured themselves with suspense long enough. "Lucas, Logan, could you just—open the door?"
"Yesma'am!"
In a swift move, Lucas happily flicked the keys off Charlie—"Hey!"—and tossed the keys to Logan's waiting hand. The twin caught them easily and he faced the double doors as the group of boarders anxiously surged forward to look. Charlotte walked to the door with Damian as there was the click of the heavy bolt lock releasing.
The Twins stepped back a little to push the doors open for everyone. As the old oak moved away, the smell of ink, paper, and dust swept at the group. Charlotte blinked into the darkness of what looked like a very large room with no windows.
"…Huh?" she heard Damian murmur as he moved next to her. The two of them joined the other mystified teens as they stepped forward into the darkness. Footfalls clicked on floor, and echoed like they were in a cave. "Grace, stick by the others, I don't want you hitting—"
There was the sound of a foot catching onto something and a body hit the ground moments later. "...um...ow."
"—Anything." Damian finished lamely. He sighed into the blackness. "Where are you, Grace?"
"I've got her!" chirruped Shane's voice.
"Of course you have, why did I ask...?"
"Ow! Spencer, that was my foot!" Felix snapped.
"I'm over here, how could I possibly—" there was the sound of a slap. "Oh god, I'm sorry—"
"Well, there goes my eye!" Thad grumbled, in pain.
"This is it," Noel murmured despondently in the dark. "This is where I actually die. In an old cursed room in the dark with everyone tripping over every single spell in the—"
"Noel, please—" Charlie ground out.
Only Darren could sound as truly exasperated as he did when he spoke up. "Hang on. I found the light."
Before anyone else could speak—or injure themselves—there was the loud click of a heavy switch, and the room was almost instantly flooded with light from old yellow lamps curling from the pillars. The entire room burst into illumination—Charlotte had just caught her breath, the students swarming up behind her in shock, as a stunned and almost dazzled Darren hit the next switch, and a large chandelier of the same golden color burst to life overhead.
The teens stood, in complete wonder, when they saw walls covered in images and old portraits, in glinting frames. Dozens of them, all around, some of them actual painted portraits, while others were photographs, large and small. Some of the portraits had a single person, distinguished with his own plaque, but many, many of them entire classes of boys, and only just recently, both genders. Tiny indicator ribbons decked each frame-in the colors of the Houses of the students in the photos, or in Hawthorne's own colors.
And standing all around the entire hall, in neat varnished rows, were what looked like cubby shelves. Endless rows of shelves, separated only by a middle aisle, cordoned off in velvet rope.
Damian stayed at Charlotte's side as the two of them walked down the hall in wonder, gazing at the hall, marveling at the tarnish of age on the oldest of the shelves while the newest ones still gleamed as though recently procured. "What is this place…?" he murmured.
"Good question…" Patrick remarked, looking around.
"Some kind of…archive, I think," Charlotte blinked, looking at all the photographs and the shelves. "Are these all the graduates? There's no way these are all the graduates…is it?"
"Well…" Damian moved close to one of the photographs. "There's a class photo for each House. And then a year. So I'm guessing, yeah. This is everybody."
"Haven't any of you people heard of yearbooks...?" Charlotte murmured, although it lacked conviction, as she stared at the illustrious place.
The Twins suddenly crowed out in delight, making the others look up. They were near the end of the hall, at a velvet rope, and were jumping up and down in excitement, pointing to a portrait. "Look! Look! Look! Look!"
"God, they're like muppets," Charlie muttered, stalking towards them. "What is it?"
"It's great great grandpa Alfalfa!"
"Your grandfather's name is Alfalfa?" Charlotte stared.
"No, that's just what they called him because he liked to eat alfalfa," Lucas replied cheerfully, pointing happily at a blond man whose portrait hung heavily against the far wall.
"His full name is Oscar Thebold Brightman," Logan added importantly, brimming with pride. "He's one of the founders of Hawthorne Academy."
Full stop.
"Excuse me?" Darren demanded.
"Wait, I thought Herman Hawthorne founded Hawthorne Academy." Derek frowned, getting up from where he had been inspecting some of the shelves near the ground.
"He did!" Lucas struggled a little, climbing one of the pedestals to get a better look, even with his twin giving him a boost. Charlotte rolled her eyes and yanked the blond twin back down before something very old got destroyed, and she received a pout from Logan for her efforts. Lucas continued, "But Herman Hawthorne didn't raise the whole place on his own. Our we-don't-know-how-many-times-great granddad Alfalfa was one of the guys who helped him put it up."
"Dad said there's been a Brightman in Hawthorne since the beginning!" Logan added cheerfully. "Just like it was meant to have been!"
This is the first time Damian was hearing of all this, and he stared at them, stunned. "Wait—what are you saying? You guys…your family owns this school?"
The twins looked at each other, puzzled, and then back at the others, looking contemplative. "…Sort…of…? We wouldn't exactly call it that..."
Charlotte sighed, shaking her head. Things began to fall to place, as to why nothing ever stuck to the Brightmans and why they did everything and anything without fear. "How else would they be able to get away with half the things they do?"
She paused and looked at Damian. "And didn't Mr. Brightman say that he of all people should've been able to better protect the school?" At Damian's baffled expression, Charlotte returned her attention to the twins. "Is it because Brightmans are responsible for this place? Mr. Brightman thinks he should've kept a better eye on the school."
"It would make sense…." Patrick remarked, looking around before smirking at the Twins. "And the two of you do whatever you guys want without seeming to care about getting expelled… This place must be your own personal playground."
"It's not that easy," Logan protested, a little flustered. "Well...yes, it gives us a lot of clout, but that means next to nothing..."
"...If we do it carelessly," Lucas finished. He looked at everyone. "But what dad always said was, it also means we've got to take care of this place…and the people inside it."
Which was really a very strange responsibility to put on two teenage boys, Charlotte decided. But then again, on her list of Strange Things In Hawthorne Academy, this wouldn't make anywhere near the top ten.
Suddenly Charlie spoke up, his tone belying equal parts apprehension and amazement, "…Is that why you two ran into the Art Hall just like that? When we found it burning, you two ran in without hesitation! Did you do that because..." He let that trail away.
The twins seemed to be expecting Charlotte's gaze when their "Alice" looked at them again. "It wasn't just that," Lucas began.
"It's because we're all friends, right?" Logan said, smiling a little. "...How could we have just stood there...?"
In spite of herself, Charlotte smiled at them.
After a pause, Darren spoke, almost hesitantly. "…all of us?"
Damian smiled to himself as he stepped up next to Charlotte and glanced back at the Adams prefect who stood with a strange look on his face. He looked to the Twins, who shrugged a little.
"We'd yank out Charlotte, Damian, and Grace out of a nuclear power plant set to blow if we had to," Lucas declared.
"But we go way back with you…and Juliet's not completely heinous…" the grin on Logan's face showed deep amusement, "...we guess maybe you guys grew on us too."
Darren rolled his eyes and instead occupied himself with the shelves. "What is all this...stuff anyway? Students' records?"
"I thought those would go into the archives office…" Danny spoke up, puzzled, having been helping out at the school offices and quite aware of where things went. But he had never heard of this place before.
"Easy way to find out." Charlie looked into one of the shelves and pulled a handful of paper out.
"Chaz!" Grace gasped, horrified that they were desecrating the place.
"I'm Jefferson Prefect, I can do anything I want," Charlie retorted indignantly and grumbled as he sifted through the papers. "If I there's a time to abuse my power, it ought to be—" he stopped, flipping over an old photo of a young man with dark hair and horn-rimmed glasses. "Oh."
"What?" Charlotte hurried up to him, curious, as the others swarmed around her.
"It's an old photo and it looks like a letter. Some old exam results…." Charlie carefully opened the folded letter.
"To the Hawthorne boy holding this, I want you to know… I spent most of my high school years trying to get everything perfect in everything I did. I had to do everything perfectly. I had to, because the people around me expected my focus and my outstanding grades. I lived for that alone. One day in senior year, I got an exam result that wasn't perfect—I was so concentrated on everything, I neglected to turn the paper over. I failed that exam. I want you to know—the world didn't end. Nobody laughed at me, nobody thought less of me. I spent my years thinking if I wasn't perfect, I was nothing. But I'm not nothing. I was still the same. A single failed exam didn't define me. I feel sad that I let my life revolve around this, and I missed all the things I should've been doing. All because of a few points on a piece of paper…."
With realization dawning on him, Charlie looked up, stunned. "…These are for us."
"To the Hawthorne boy holding this letter," Patrick suddenly began from one of the other pieces of shelving, making everyone look at him. He was holding the photograph of a boy with sandy hair. "This school has been my home for the past few years, and I think that I've found my best friends here. I don't believe that I will ever have a Legacy so I leave this to you. They say high school is awful for a lot of people…and it would've been for me too. But I came here, and I realized that it didn't have to be horrible. That I had friends here. That I was safe."
"Letters…." Charlotte stared as others began running around the shelves, looking at plaques of years and photographs. They dug into the shelves, pulling out treasures. "Letters left for the future." She stared in amazement as paper started flying. She realized, This place...it's like one big time capsule. But left for others to find.
There was a laugh of delight from Grace when she pulled out a letter and hundreds of paper stars fell on her. "Look at this!" she cried, delighted. She was reading in the letter in moments.
The Twins were laughing, running around tossing an old autographed baseball they found in the shelves, and they vanished into the other aisles, looking for more.
"It's memories…?" Damian whispered as he picked up one of the letters in the shelves. "Lots and lots of memories. From everyone."
"This is what they meant..." Charlie looked amazed, looking around at everything. "The books say...every year, the Prefect and the Seniors make these letters, leave these treasures, and read some of the letters. And then, once that was done, they will take their own memories and the ones they saw in here, and give advice to the incoming freshmen. They do it every year."
"It's like..." Felix let out his breath. "It's passing on memories and knowledge. In stories or advice. From the seniors to the freshmen and on and on, until they have to leave their memories here too..." He stopped and did a double take at one shelf, and made a beeline for it as Spencer and Danny went after him.
"All this, this was done by…Hawthorne students…" Charlotte looked around, surprised. "From the very beginning."
"Ours are supposed to end up here too…" Damian replied, looking at a photo of a boy with a group of friends, smiling happily at a lacrosse game. "Supposed to be. But…" his smile faltered. "I think after all this…this will all disappear. There...isn't a new generation to pass this on to."
"They can't not remember this…" Charlotte frowned, almost scandalized, as she walked to one of the relatively "newer" shelves. "They have to know all of this is still in here, right…?" She put her hand into one of the shelves and pulled a photograph out. A very familiar blond boy looked back at him from the photo.
"Darren…?" Charlotte whispered, stunned.
Surprised, Damian laughed a little as he looked at the photograph in Charlotte's hands. "It's him!" he looked up at the Adams prefect, who thought he was being called.
Charlotte felt confused, staring at the photograph in her hand. "But...I don't understand. No one's been in here, how would Darren..."
"What?" the Adams prefect moved to them, sensing he was the topic of their conversation. Charlotte turned to him immediately, holding out the photograph. "Darren, look. How did your picture get here?"
"That's ridiculous." Darren gave her a confused expression for a moment as he took the photo from her hand. Holding it with both hands, he stared at it, and was silent for so long that Derek looked up, sensing something amiss.
"...What?" Charlotte asked, blinking at him.
There was a strange expression on Darren's face, as though he wasn't sure of how to react. There was a fight of emotions on his face, none of which he was permitting to show. When he got his voice back, he murmured, "...This...this isn't me." He loosened his hold on the picture a little, closing his eyes as though trying to believe it.
"It's not?" Damian carefully took the photo from him and stared. But it looked absolutely like Darren: the hair, the eyes, even the same cool expression. He handed it back to Darren, who took it carefully.
"No..." Darren murmured, gazing at the photograph, swallowing. He looked at those hazel eyes that were just like his own, clear with youth, and it felt as though he was looking into someplace he had never thought he'd see. "...this is my father."
The others stopped momentarily to stare.
"That's Senator Wright?" Charlotte asked, looking from Darren and back to the photograph, remembering only now that the hard man that she had seen before in the Winter Festival. The same volatile man who had been furious in the hospital, had gone to the same school as they did. And there he was. It was—and couldn't be anyone other—than Darren's father.
"Legacies…." Grace whispered her realization, looking around.
As if the word turned on a switch, the teens began to run. Behind her, the Twins ran off, diving into the shelves. Diana had a strange expression on her face as she went to the shelves as well, looking for the right house from the same ranks that Charlotte had been looking into. Derek took another glance at his best friend and surreptitiously looked at the shelves, looking as well.
"Did this…" Charlotte looked up when Darren spoke again, and the tall boy's breath seemed to catch. He hesitated before continuing, "…was there anything with this…? Or was it just a photo?"
Charlotte looked at him, and then carefully pulled out the rest of the papers from the shelf she looked into. "These?"
Darren gave her a long look before he tentatively took the papers from her hands. "Thank you."
Seeing the expression on Darren's face, Damian was about to ask him if he was alright when he heard Diana speak, strong and clear.
"To the Hawthorne boy reading this…." Diana began, Patrick looking over her shoulder with a smile. Diana held the photograph of a young man who she looked strikingly like, a wide smile on the boy's face. "I may not know who you are, but I'm leaving this for you. One day, you'll be my son, though. You see, if I ever have a kid, I want to send him to this school too. Not to punish him…" puzzled, she looked at Patrick, who just shook his head, confused, and shrugged, "…but because I think I found friends who may be my friends for life. I want him to have those same things. I hope you have those same things too. I was alone once. It was alright for a long while and I thought it was the only way I could get through…but once I wasn't so alone, I realized that maybe letting people in wasn't such a bad idea."
Diana exhaled, looking at the photo, questions written all over her face and strangely touched by it. "Harry Sullivan. Dad. My dad..."
"To the Hawthorne boy reading this…." Noel murmured after her, making the people around him jump. He was looking into a photograph of a young man with dark hair, who he found he looked rather alike. His voice wavered, different from his tone at the pulpit. "…I don't know if you will be my Legacy. I can hope you are, but all the same, I'm glad you found this. This is what I leave for you. They say that high school is full of monsters. That can be so true, and sometimes, not. But I think there are other monsters out there much worse than we think. Some of them are inside us. I didn't think much of this place when I first came here, but let me tell you what I do know. I've seen my share of demons, both in me and out. Guess that's why I was sent here. But what I know for a fact is…in this place, you get to find people who'll fight your demons with you." Noel folded the letter closed, closing his eyes. "Ford Montgomery."
"Either of two things," Derek read from the letter in his hands, which shook in spite of his best efforts to hold it back. He kept blinking into mists. "You don't take it seriously enough, or you take it too seriously. Either extreme is bad. And I learned that the hard way. Somewhere along the middle is just about right. And I learned that here. Here's hoping I don't forget it along the way, but even if I do, I hope you don't. It's just not worth it. You just have to do what you can. To do your best. And however it turns out, you know you did right in the end. P.S. Just in case you're my Legacy, then whoever you are, I hope you know I'm proud of you. My dad hasn't told it to me enough. So I'm telling it to you. I'm proud of you." Derek closed the letter and looked down at the photo of a boy with a handsome grin, and he fought back a watery smile and had to look away." Ernie Siegerson. Dang it, dad…"
"I am very difficult," Felix read out loud, letting out all his breath while holding the photograph of a boy wearing a family emblem on his tie—one that looked like the one he himself had not worn in a long time. "I know that very well. I've fought at every turn, got me into quite a bit of a mess back home. I didn't like choices, decisions-the hard ones. People had to do it for me, and I hated that too. The funny thing is, when I set foot in this school, I started to learn that there were some decisions too important to delegate to someone else, and some choices that I must fight for. There are just some things too important to not stand for, some things you have to do yourself, and for the right reasons. And I think you will make those right choices too. Don't let them take it from you." He smiled to himself, and ran his fingers over the writing that said 'Richard Bancroft'.
As others around them started reading the letters, generation after generation of Legacy left behind by students who had lived in these halls, found friends and etched memories into the walls, Damian almost felt envious for those who could claim Legacy, who had fathers, uncles, brothers who had come before them.
He looked at himself, at the blazer and the tie that he had worn with no small degree of pride since that first day he came to Hawthorne, and smiled a little. He was a Hawthorne boy too. And the messages in the shelves were addressed to him as well as any of them.
"What does yours say?" Damian asked, looking at Darren, who was staring at the letter in his hands. Compared to some of the letters, it's a novel.
"It's not mine," Darren murmured hesitantly.
"It's your dad's, isn't it?" Charlotte blinked at him. "Then how could it be anyone else's?"
Darren couldn't answer.
To the Hawthorne boy reading this letter. They told us to write this for our Legacy. Future generations. Other Hawthorne boys, who could possibly be our sons too. Are you my son? If you are, maybe I should start apologizing right now. It mustn't have been easy. My dad and I don't have the easiest kind of relationship either. He's the reason I got sent here—because he doesn't like how I do things.
See, I have this terrible habit. Whenever I sense that I'm failing something, that I've done something wrong with something, especially when it's important, I'll drop it and never look back. I don't bother with things I can't do or can't fix. Or should I say, won't do and won't fix. I can only look at the things I could do that I've got no problems with. He hates that. He hates that I won't get up and fix anything I've broken in his eyes. He hates that I only do what I want to do—what I think I can do.
I guess I just don't like thinking about the fact that I've failed at something. Anything. It makes me feel ashamed? I don't know. I can't look at it. I get so angry, it won't let me do anything about it. My relationship with him is like that too. I already know I've messed it up with him. I don't want to look at it any more. It's something that can't be fixed. I tried it, and I can't. I tried really hard.
I keep telling myself right now, I don't want to be like that to my kid, if I ever have one. If you are my kid, I feel sorry for you, having me as a dad. I could swear to myself right now to do my best, but I'm honest-to-God worried. I'm worried that I've given up all over again. Only you'll know the answer to that. Me standing here, I don't know. A lot of things can happen between now and when you read this.
I want you to know, though: it's not you. There's something wrong with me, and I'm fighting it like I'm fighting to breathe, and a lot of the time, I don't win, I can admit that. Anger wins. Shame wins. So it's not you.
But—and this is the important bit—whatever you do, don't give up. Giving up isn't an option for you anymore; we've robbed you of that chance. Whatever you do, God help us both, don't you dare give up. Because where I failed, I'm pretty sure you can succeed. Dad gave up on me. I gave up on him. That right there's two generations of Wrights giving up. Don't be the third one. You have to beat us both. Beat us to the ground. Third time's the charm.
See you around.
P.S. I've probably given you my name. Sorry about that. Hey, I didn't ask to get an old name like my dad's either, you know.
Charlotte had watched Darren read the letter with that strange expression on his face like he's trying to breathe. But Charlotte turned around when she heard a rustle from behind her. She turned around just in time to see a piece of paper falling from a shelf where it had been hastily returned, and she looked up just in time to see Damian vanishing out the door of the huge archive room.
"Damian…?" Stunned, she looked at the shelf that Damian had just been standing by, reading the papers. He looked at the paper that fluttered down. It was a photograph of a young man with a kind smile, wearing a Jefferson crest on his lapel, and Charlotte knew immediately who she was looking at.
The young man's boyish looks had never quite faded, even when he had grown to become the music teacher that had welcomed her here in Hawthorne Academy.
The Twins, Lucas and Logan Brightman were smiling at the Headmaster, identical, mirroring each other, and extremely comfortable in their surroundings. Their smiles were almost abashed. "Things got boring a lot for us, you know. We didn't grow up with a whole lot of friends. We were a little strange, weren't we? The house was quiet a lot. So we made our own adventures to fill it up. In school, we found out that all the money in the world didn't buy people who would tolerate us. That they could be nice to you because of who you knew and what you had…but they can turn around and say other things, because they don't really like you.
We were the only ones we could trust. And there were so few who let us be their friends in spite of the way we were. When we were sent here, we thought dad was looking for another way to maybe keep us out of his hair. But it seemed he knew a little better…. People still found us strange, but they didn't call us freaks or unnatural. They didn't try to separate us…in fact some of them decided to let us come and play.
...How could we possibly want to leave?"
Damian stood in the darkness of Pipers hall trying to collect his thoughts and trying to breathe. He had to, he felt like he was stifling in that room, full of the voices of students who had passed the halls and felt hope—while right now it felt like he was drowning, floundering in the search for a direction that everyone else seems to have found.
Whenever he was looking to collect his thoughts and try to get them together, he ran to music. That was how he found himself making a beeline to the Pipers' music hall, where he always seemed to end up when he was looking for music.
He stood, looking around at the darkness that enveloped the place. All the days that had gone when the school had been untouched by a living soul left everything in the hall exactly the way they had left it.
Some music sheets rustled on a table, forgotten. A pen sat abandoned at one of the couches. Damian swallowed and realized that this place which brought students from all the Houses together, where they all created music, where he found friends and where they had worked so hard would be just as abandoned, closed, for good.
"To the Hawthorne boy reading this."
At that clear voice, Damian looked up and saw Charlotte at the door, following him in the way Alice had followed the Rabbit, smiling briefly at him before she looked back to the letter in her hand. "I think that if there is anything I want to impart on you, it's that music has been my life here at school."
Biting his lip, Damian lowered his eyes, knowing those words; he had read them himself. Charlotte continued as she read, walking to him. "Whenever something off happened to me at home—and that happened a lot—I turned up the music. I sang or I just listened and listened. Sometimes it felt like the music just sucked up all of those feelings and turned it into something else. Turned it into something beautiful, like art. It made me feel better. It helped."
Behind Charlotte, drawn by the sudden disappearance of their two friends and having followed them, some students peered in. Grace's silhouette, familiar with its curls, in the hallway light, and the Twins looking tall and alien, very curious.
As Patrick poked his head in as well, Diana in tow, Charlotte spoke again. "During my time here in Hawthorne, I was a member of the Pipers, and it was like I was with this family. A group of other students who felt the same way about music. We made music, shared it, let our feelings out in it. It's good medicine, you know, for anyone. Even the ones who think choir singing is lame. The Pipers helped me, and I want to give back the favor."
More teens appeared at the door. Many of them, not even Pipers, started to come into the hall. Charlotte watched them come in, wondering if they found their ways in through the same ones they did, looking for friends who had gone exploring and made the hall their hideaway.
Charlotte kept walking, until she stood in front of Damian, still reading. "Don't forget to try music if you need it. That's the only thing I can tell you that I think really works. A bunch of things can come and go…but with me, music stays. I want to be a music teacher, help other kids through music. Try to show them how much it could help. I want to them in any way I could, too, with it. That's how much I believe in it. For me…music is home. And anyone who shares music with me is family."
The hall was reaching its capacity. Out the corner of his eye, he saw Danny take the spot against the wall near Patrick, and remembered that Danny would be Patrick's oldest friend in school, since Washingtons was his first family. The prefects wandered in as well, clearly consenting to all this, and making sure they were not seen by patrolling teachers.
"You, reading this, if you love music this way, then you're family too. I hope you find a song that will move you to tears, or a song you would want to sing to express everything you didn't know how to really say. I hope you find music that brings you closer to people, binding you together. I hope you find music that leads you to family, friends who will stand at your side. I hope you find music that blows the world away. And I hope, like me, you can share it for others to find."
She raised her eyes and smiled at Damian. "Will Pentland, Jefferson House."
The students who had come in smiled faintly at the words of their late choirmaster.
The room was so very still—everything had gone still. Charlotte sighed and looked around the room much in the same way Damian had done. "You know…I've never really met anyone who ever became what they wanted to be when they were younger. Like you know how kids wanted to be astronauts, or firemen or ballerinas or…fashion editor of Vogue."
She rolled her eyes and Damian laughed softly. Charlotte smiled. "Looks like at least Mr. Pentland got to be what he wanted in high school."
"Yeah…" Damian gazed at the piano contemplatively. He walked to it quietly, putting his hands on the familiar instrument. He sighed heavily when he sat down and stared ahead as if he was in a daze.
Charlotte sat with him, waiting for him to continue. She felt that Damian had to let this out of system. With his father being the way he was, he must've seen Mr. Pentland as his father here in school. He had looked so much towards music, like Mr. Pentland did. The way the teacher had cared for the students, it was no wonder that when Charlotte had seen the way all the Pipers reacted to their teachers' passing; among those hit the hardest was Damian.
Damian shook his head. "…He wanted to show people music. And find family through it." The smile on his face was soft, almost bitter. "Isn't it so terrible? He was just like us. He wanted what any of us wanted. He worked hard to get it. To help."
He gestured absently to the abandoned room. "He did something about it...but now he's gone and…all of this." He closed his eyes like he didn't want to see it all disappear. "All of this will be gone with him. All the hopes he's ever had for the Pipers were as much as any of ours." He looked at the others. "Like any one of the boys' letters in that place."
"They were all like us, you know?" Diana remarked as she sat down on one of the couches. "All those letters…" she sighed and let her hands drop. "The stuff they said? Those kinds of things are what a lot of us went through."
"Yeah…." Patrick nodded, sitting on the arm of the couch where Diana sat. "Looking at all that, I remember being a Freshman here and hearing all the Seniors talk. Didn't realize that what they were saying weren't just their own experiences. They were..." he shrugged, "...they were passing it down."
Darren stepped into the darkened hall quietly, hands in his pockets. He was among the last of the students to filter in. He didn't say anything, but he took a spot in the seats as though today was any other ordinary Piper meeting. He sat lost in thought, and didn't acknowledge the presence of the other Pipers. As though he was the only one there.
Charlotte considered him for a moment before she returned her gaze to Damian, who covered her hands with his. "You know when I first came here, I didn't think I'd get this attached to this place. I mean…"
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Hawthorne
Aug 11, 2014 3:58:18 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by HburgEagle44 on Aug 11, 2014 3:58:18 GMT -5
Oh my gosh <3 the letters. THE LETTERS
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Post by tonilous on Aug 11, 2014 22:41:09 GMT -5
As she was quiet, Charlotte's face was pensive, hand resting on her chin lightly. She stared at the light from the windows, and her eyes took in the color of the sky outside. Headmaster Winters waited patiently.
Finally, she murmured, "As far as I was concerned, high school was always just this stepping stone to Broadway and New York and all the rest of it. I went through enough stuff in Huntington to make secondary education lose its appeal, you know? Being thrown into lockers…being picked on because I was different, because I liked to sing, because I wore the clothes I did…."
She swallowed a little. "…And the threat…having to live in fear just because I was different. It was just something I had to endure. I had to endure secondary education and it felt like enduring a really really long tunnel that you can't wait to see the light out of. You can't wait for things to change and just be…not here."
Another pause. From off camera, Headmaster Winters said, "And now...?"
Charlotte turned her eyes towards him. "But…being here…changed my idea of it a little."
Charlotte smiled faintly. "I thought it was something I'd have to endure. And survive. Like I did in Huntington during the worst days."
"And now?" Damian asked, smiling a little.
"Oh it's still being endured," Charlotte's lips quirked into the smallest smirk, and she nodded pointedly to the Twins. "Some people would still have us endure everything."
Lucas and Logan only laughed softly from where they sat on one of the tables. They smiled as though this really was their goal. "Well…maybe we tried to make it more interesting."
Darren snorted a little in derision from his seat at that. Grace, sitting on the carpet, looked at him at the sound.
"It's not that...daunting anymore," Charlotte murmured, leaning against Damian. She looked around the room and sighed, before she closed her eyes. "...it's leaving here that's daunting now."
The Pipers looked at the room they spent so much time in. It's like if they listened hard enough, the echoes of music that fell onto these walls for generations could still sound back. Thad and Louisa began to take some of the books off the shelves—pages filled with the faces and adventures of old Pipers. The two of them smiled faintly at each other, thinking they would leave a memory like this here one day.
Damian stared at the music sheets on the stand at the piano. In a very familiar script, someone had written, Let the students try this one. It made Damian smile. He thought of the days when he'd see his two choir teachers go through page after page of music sheets, taking music they thought they would like, and occasionally suggesting it to them. Often, they let them choose.
They had been working on this one. It was supposed to be part of the lineup of songs they were picking through for competition. They'd never quite gotten it as perfect as they all wanted. It felt like they never would get that chance.
"Man, we can't leave this place..." Patrick whispered, making everyone look at him. He was staring at the room like he was trying to memorize it. "And I don't just mean Pipers' Hall. I mean...this school. This...stupid school."
Charlie shook his head. He sighed. "Here I thought I was gonna graduate here." He picked up a piece of paper that said, Competition soon! like it was a reminder. "Just like all those students in that room did."
"That's what pisses me off the most, you know?" Diana almost sounded angry. "They were all from here. All of them! And what are they doing...? They just left."
"They graduated, Diana, that tends to happen," Derek remarked from the doorway.
"No!" Diana stood up, pacing. She passed some Washingtons on the floor, pacing. "I mean our parents! The Alumni! Nearly every adult running this school used to come from here, their faces are all over that hall, you all saw it. Their letters were in those shelves, their pictures, their...memories!"
Damian sighed and shook his head. "And now they're all out there...agreeing to close the school down, or just about to."
"They went through everything that we did..." Grace said plaintively, putting her face in her hands. "Those letters... They sounded they were coming from a place that understood us so well..."
"What this school did for us, it did for them too, didn't it...?" Spencer muttered from where he was sitting next to Felix. The look on his face was a mixture of so many things. "It's either they forgot or...they don't care. Isn't that the worst?"
Damian murmured softly, "This is our place. ...Sanctuary. When it felt like no one..." he glanced at Darren in spite of himself, remembering those times when they had clashed, from rage that came from well beyond whatever had happened between them, "...no one wanted us."
Charlotte lifted her eyes to the blond Piper who had been silent on the couch. As if sensing that he was being stared at, Darren met her gaze. After a moment of confusion, the tall boy frowned. When Damian also glanced to him, Darren muttered, "Sorry, I don't feel like throwing out there every emotional turmoil I've got going. Especially when you've all been already party to my extremely colorful history."
"Darren, we're kind of not here to judge you," Charlotte replied, rolling her eyes a little in spite of her own resistance. "If you haven't noticed."
"Then what are we here for? What is the point?!" Darren threw the papers in his hands onto the ground. "What is the point of all this?"
Charlie rose to try and stop him, but Felix, who knew all too well when anger was true rage, and when it was the safety valve, grabbed his wrist and held him back. The two stared at their fellow Prefect, who continued to fume.
Darren gestured around to the students that filled the room, many of whom staring at him, aghast. "We all ran here like scared rodents because we can't take the fact that everything is falling apart!" Darren snarled. "That because in spite of everything we just saw in that creepy stupid archive hall—that in spite of whatever the stuff they wrote in those letters and left behind for us to find—they're still the ones who ended up deciding to end it all. End it for the rest of us!"
The tall boy got to his feet and threw the music sheets to the ground just because he had nothing else inanimate to take his rage out on. The Pipers stared at him, in varying degrees of confusion and curiosity. "I thought maybe, just an off-chance, really, they weren't stupid enough to think that this was all something they could sweep under the rug like it didn't mean anything. Just because they seem to have chosen to overlook that fact, doesn't mean they have to take it out on the rest of us like they always do and—"
He stopped. He had to stop to catch his breath and by then, Damian had sighed and gotten up, standing behind him. Although every Adams Piper informed Damian with their unsettled gazes that they didn't think it was a very good idea, Damian nevertheless carefully put a hand between Darren's shoulder blades.
Charlotte watched as that one action seemed to cause Darren to drain immediately, the tension flooding out of his shoulders. The taller boy exhaled harshly and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, looking frustrated. "...God, I don't even know why I'm so angry right now," he muttered under his breath, sounding almost plaintive under the tension.
The sudden diffusion seemed to almost make some of the Pipers smile sadly.
"I didn't even use to like this place," Darren added, falling back down into his seat next to Derek and rubbing his face with his hands; Damian patted his shoulder a little before he walked on back towards where Charlotte sat.
Charlotte glanced back up at him with a small smile. "Well, I think we've all gone to depend on this place more than we'd all like to care to admit."
"Because it was safe here." The sudden remark from Noel made them stare. He was looking at the wall like it was the most interesting thing in the world, and when he had spoken, it sounded like he was talking to himself. "We were all...supposed to be safe here. It's why some of the guys came...for sanctuary. It wasn't just the zero-tolerance policy. Something else. I don't know what it is."
His dark eyes met Charlotte's, and the older girl looked away as though Noel had pointed her out in particular. She knew precisely what Noel meant. She did come here for the policy. A lot of them did—not just her and Damian, and their histories that nearly everyone knew about at that point. There were many who came here, for one reason or another, seeking sanctuary. But they stayed for something else. Something that all the other teenagers understood.
Something that bridged all the students together from House to House, making up a small world that they had come to depend on. Charlotte closed her hand over Damian's on the piano bench, unseen. Damian squeezed it back, and Charlotte couldn't tell if he was taking warmth or imparting it to him. When she saw Grace close her eyes and fold over to lean on her own knees, Charlotte thought she could feel that bridge starting to crumble around them.
There was a sudden sob that made them all look up.
Danny was pressed against the wall near the window, almost invisible in the dark, and his hands were covering his mouth, as though he had tried with all his might to have not let out that sound. Thad and Louisa were near him, clearly having noticed him first and had been trying to help him. Before any of the others could ask, Danny tried to speak but all that came out was another strangled sob—his eyes were scarlet, tears streaming down his face.
Patrick leaped to his feet—he was rushing over just as Danny finally managed to speak.
"I…." Danny's first word came out as a cough, his face crumpled in misery. "...This place is…." He took a broken breath and Patrick had his arm around him, trying to calm him. None of the Pipers in that room except for the Patrick had ever seen Danny look like that.
Charlotte made to rise from her chair, but Patrick shot her a look and shook his head, whispering, "No," and a little more firmly, "no."
Danny tried to cover his flushed face with his hands and his voice cracked. "...They'll send me back home… I don't want to go back there…I don't, please, I—there's nothing left there…. My parents don't even—they don't even want me, they don't even ever think about—" he took a gasp. "This the only place I ever—"
"Danny, stop," Patrick begged, trying to get his old roommate to start breathing properly again. His hands trembled, finely, less obviously than Danny's. "Danny, come on man, you have to breathe."
Dissolving into sobs, Danny shook his head. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do this, I wasn't supposed to cry, I just—" He raised his bloodshot, streaming green eyes, haunted in the dim light, desperate, to all of them in the room who stared at him.
"...I'm not anyone's important son."
Darren blinked and Spencer raised his eyes as Felix shook his head.
"I'm not going to be valedictorian or even close."
Diana tried to say something, but lost her words at the last minute.
"I'm not captain of a team."
Derek lowered his eyes.
"I'm not even a lead singer…or a person who came here to start somewhere new and better, or both."
Damian and Charlotte glanced at each other.
"...And I am not Legacy. I'm in this school because...because it was convenient to be near and far enough to keep me out of the way—"
"Danny," Patrick grasped his arms, staring.
Danny locked eyes with each of the students as he swallowed. "But this is the only place I can...I feel home…" He squeezed his eyes shut, leaning against Patrick. "Please...please tell me this isn't the end. Because...there is literally nowhere else. I want to believe there is. But right now...there's just nowhere else safe."
Silence fell again, heavier than before.
"Oh screw it." Felix tore away from where he was and went over to him. When he looked to the others, he looked more to the Pipers, the paragons, the ones everyone looked up to and believed in more often than they did even prefects. "Is this it?" he asked as he squeezed Danny's shoulder. "Is he right? Because...because this isn't how I ever thought we'd…"
The Pipers, the Hawthornes, they looked disgusted. As though unable to believe this was even happening, and how helpless they all were at last. That in the face of everything, in spite of all their posturing, everything they have done...it would be all over at the signing of a paper happening somewhere out there tonight.
And after that, the safe haven was gone.
"...This place was supposed to be safe." Charlotte breathed, feeling cold, arms wrapped around herself and clearly seeing so much in the hall beyond what the first gaze would present. It was supposed to be safe. The first day she set foot in this very room...was one of the first times she had felt safe for quite awhile.
The way Damian gazed at the keys of the piano suggested that he might have wanted to press a few of them, but couldn't bring himself to. "Makes you think, doesn't it? ...About how many students actually found a safe place here." He glanced to the others, who studied him as though waiting. "We were lucky enough to have found it. ...I know not very many people manage to. Find a place I mean, where they felt..." and he rested his hands on the ivory. "…safe."
He lifted his eyes, saw Charlotte watching him, as though in silent approval.
In times so grave, they still had music. The one thing Mr. Pentland had always told them to look to, to soothe them, to guide them. To help them survive the siege that raged around them.
Charlotte reached out and touched his hand. Damian met her eyes and nodded to the sheets on the stand. Darren watched them shift, as Damian made space, and allowed Charlotte to play.
When Charlotte pressed the first key, all the Pipers looked up, called by the sound that rippled through the room. All eyes remained on the two who had, for so long, been two of their most driven members, lead singers, and most of all, closest friends.
Charlotte played a some notes, so reminiscent of the way Ms. Gregor does it, to let them know, and as recollection dawned on each student, Damian began to sing.
I walked across an empty land
I knew the pathway like the back of my hand...
I felt the earth beneath my feet
Sat by the river and it made me complete... At the second line, the Pipers began to join him. Some got up and moved closer, drawn to the sound. Others remained where they sat, but all eyes remained on the two at the piano.
The song began to rise, and all Hawthorne students, who had been in the hallways, those who weren't Pipers—they crept a little further into the room, drawn to the sound of those whose music seemed to always shut down the whole school.
Oh simple thing, where have you gone?
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on...
So tell me when you're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin... "Hurry…" came Satoru's soft whisper, barely even a sound, into a small microphone. He pulled the wire closer to his friend Drew, who was singing. Drew nodded with a small smile, keeping it closer to the Pipers.
And from where he was sitting, back in Jefferson, Han's hands flew over his keyboard, and he swiped at the touchscreen of his monitors, light glinting off his glasses.
There was the almost audible hum of a connection being made. Power came on through the PA system, all throughout the school. One sound reigned through the somber murmuring in Hawthorne Academy: The Pipers.
I came across a fallen tree
I felt the branches of it looking at me
Is this the place we used to love?
Is this the place that I've been dreaming of? Heads looked up from everywhere they were. Jeffersons stopped their errands in the house and gathered at the front hall, looking up at the sound from the PA system, where they could hear Damian, Charlotte, and their Pipers friends so clearly.
Adams House fell quiet and they set down their books, staring up at the speakers above them, and gathering around it. Washington House, which had been notably subdued, now raised their eyes to the speakers as well. Small smiles graced their faces.
Even the Day Students stopped, smiling, as they heard the voices over the PA system, and they rose from where they were waiting in the courtyard, moving towards South and Main.
It sounded like hope, in its faintest thread.
Oh simple thing, where have you gone?
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin The Pipers looked to each other as they moved closer to the piano and to the music, their voices gaining more strength, as more and more students crowded into the room transfixed.
Damian's eyes met Charlotte's and he smiled and found that smile returned. He reached out and open palm to her, looking for strength in her. As Charlotte, drawing courage from him, closed her own palm over Damian's, Darren quietly slipped into where she had been sitting, seamlessly continuing the melody. He stared at the piano keys like they were the only thing that made sense anymore. Maybe to him, it was true.
Damian pulled Charlotte up, bringing her to the rest of the Pipers surrounding the piano, all of them singing.
And if you have a minute, why don't we go
Talk about it somewhere only we know?
This could be the end of everything
So why don't we go somewhere only we know?
Somewhere only we know Charlotte smiled as she looked around at those around her, singing with them, their voices rising and filling the room, spilling out into the hallway and echoing. It was filling up the sad silence that had reigned over the empty schoolrooms, the portraits, and even of the students who, in their disappointment, could not find the words to express it.
The Pipers sang their words for them.
Oh simple thing, where have you gone?
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin
And if you have a minute, why don't we go
Talk about it somewhere only we know?
This could be the end of everything
So why don't we go? So why don't we go? The students of Hawthorne Academy, now filling every corner, other looking up at the speakers over the grassy grounds, now looked at each other as the Pipers continued to sing. There were sad smiles on their faces; some of them were joining hands with friends. They had come from all over the country, some even from different nations, and this school had brought them together. They had thought they still had so much time.
They looked to the Pipers, knowing that this could be the last time they would hear them sing together this way.
One last performance to bring the whole school together.
Oh, this could be the end of everything
So why don't we go somewhere only we know?
Somewhere only we know…
Somewhere only we know… As the music faded away, Darren's hands going still on the keys, a soft murmur of appreciation replaced it. Charlotte looked to Damian with a small smile, one that Damian seemed unable to return. The dark-haired boy only squeezed her hand in his.
Charlotte turned her eyes to the other Pipers, who seemed to appear lost. As though now that this one song had ended, they no longer knew what to do with themselves. It was all over.
It amazed Charlotte to see that even the Twins—the ones who could be stopped by nothing—had fallen silent, hands linked, staring at the same spot. When they noticed her looking, they nodded to her in silent gratitude.
She gave them a puzzled expression in return, not sure what they were thanking her for.
"For the goodbye," one replied as the other nodded.
But Charlotte only shook her head. This wasn't the goodbye she wanted; it wasn't one any of them wanted. It was so strange to see them all so silent. Thad put an arm around Louisa and tried to comfort her. Patrick and Diana nudged Danny and gestured for him to step off the formation with them in silence. The prefects who were seated could not look up from the floor.
The Pipers broke off, carefully, from their formation, scattering into the music room. She and Damian remained standing where they had been from the beginning.
And it was the sight of all that resignation all around her, in all of their faces—the students that she'd come to think of as her family away from home—that made Charlotte realize….
From where he had been writing a note, Headmaster Winters looked up and found Charlotte sitting before the video camera, lost in thought, a small smile ghosting on her face. The headmaster set his pen down. "It made you realize what, Ms. Summers?" he asked gently.
The girl's eyes looked bright when they glanced to him for the briefest instant. "I'm sorry?"
"You said that it was at that moment when you realized…?"
A small laugh escaped Charlotte's lips, and her eyes glanced briefly to the camera, knowing that it captured every word and movement she made. Winters kept watching her, waiting to hear what it was that brought everything to a head.
So Charlotte crossed her legs and leaned to the headmaster, with every air of someone sharing a secret. "It was a very important moment for me, Mr. Winters. Because you see, when I make my mind up to do something—and this my mother will agree to be true—I do it the whole way."
"I see…" Winters leaned back with a small smile. "And…what did you make your mind up about then, Ms. Summers?"
Charlotte's glance flicked towards the oak doors, where she knew the others waited, waiting to see if she would tell the Headmaster absolutely everything.
That made Charlotte realize…
…she wasn't going down like this.
"…Is this really it?"
The others looked at the sudden clarity of her voice. Charlotte stared at each and every student she knew until they had to meet her gaze. "This. All this. This is it. This is what mighty Jefferson House is reduced to."
She flicked a hand out and nearly smacked Thad on the nose. "And Adams." She waved towards Felix and Spencer, who dropped their chins immediately. "And Washington. This is actually it. It's over? Everything in that hall that we just came from—all of its for nothing?"
Patrick stared at Charlotte like she grew green skin. "It's not like that, you know after everything that happened—"
"Oh believe me, I know." Charlotte raised a delicately groomed eyebrow. "I was in the third floor. I know what happened."
Instant silence. Damian considered saying something, went through what he was going to say again, and wisely reconsidered.
Charlie was next to attempt, but he only dropped his hand with a sigh. Diana looked at Charlotte as though trying to plead with her. "We don't want this either, you know? I mean, it sucks. It's really a weapons-grade suckfest here and we know where you're coming from, but…"
"Oh I want to hear this," Charlotte replied patiently, waiting to hear it.
Diana visibly deflated. She looked ashamed. And as a Legacy, Charlotte figured she absolutely was.
Grumbling, Derek rolled his eyes, arms crossed. He was another Legacy, and he was obviously not thrilled with the situation, but had lived too long in the whims of those who controlled tradition to really do anything apart from it. "It's not like you can do anything either, Summers."
"I won't know until I try," Charlotte replied coolly. "I figured the rest of you might be interested considering no one actually wants to leave."
"You talk big but you don't even know how you're going to fix this!" Derek shot back. "We are hopelessly overpowered by our parents!"
"Would you shut up, Derek, at least Charlotte's trying!" Spencer shot back. "You're the one who wants to just give up already!"
"That's big talk coming from you too, Spencer, since all you ever do is roll over and take what your old man throws at you!" Derek snarled, jabbing a hand to his chest. "You don't even have the guts to tell him you want to go to some art school!"
"And you? You're the one who practically faints when you don't have grades high enough to please your parents!"
An argument began to bubble up between a lot of people in the vicinity. It was rising in volume, and a lot of the other students uninvolved were getting unsettled.
"Guys," Charlie said loudly. "Listen!"
It went unheard. Everyone was talking now, looking at each other and voices rising.
"Guys!" Charlie repeated impatiently.
The uproar rose. People were getting on their feet, some downright squabbling between a few Jeffersons and Adams who couldn't agree. Even the Washingtons and day students were getting in on it, everyone trying to get a word in. Charlotte winced at the caucus, barely able to understand what anyone was even saying.
There was a powerful crash of metal onto the marble flooring and everyone silenced, looking up. Felix stood, glaring, having picked up a spear from one of the decorative suits of armor and slamming it to the ground. "Listen, we said!" he snarled, and Washingtons winced.
"God, this is kangaroo court..." Bailey muttered under her breath as she sank into her seat, dragging a hand down her face.
Charlie glared. "Everyone shut up! This isn't the time to be arguing. Our problem isn't each other—it's the people who've forced their decisions on us!"
"Charlotte's right," Felix added, frowning. "We won't know a thing until we try. And sure, it's probably a long shot, but…it's better than rolling over."
"I just don't want all of us to end up like this," Charlotte said, gesturing to the previous squabble. "This is exactly the problem. We can't fall apart now. We need each other to get through it."
"She…" Damian smiled a little shaking his head. In his hand, he had Pentland's letter. "…She has a point, guys." And now he looked to the Twins. "What about you two? Your faces look just like the ones on the walls. Your family and this place? It's been tied together since it began."
"And you said," Charlotte added, looking at the twins, "that above all else, you were told to look after it and everyone in it."
All eyes turned to the Brightmans now, standing before Charlotte and Damian. The identical boys looked at each other, and then at the other two, and looked uncomfortable. "It's just..." one of them breathed out, no one was sure which. "No. Who we're up against this time…."
The other twin shook his head. "Even our dad agreed to do this. You can't…we can't…prank our way out of that or sneak around it or whatever."
"And after what happened…" penetrating blue eyes pierced into Charlotte and Damian. "It just… It just can't be done, not after that kind of negligence. The two of you could've died up there, you know? And Grace. And Darren. And we still don't know if Juliet will—"
They stopped when Bailey made a swift cutting motion across her neck to shut them up, because Darren's hands were clenched and shaking over the piano keys. Derek leaned into his own fist so hard, he looked like he was punching himself.
The Twins sighed. "Yeah. It's just...this is something even we can't fix. And considering the kind of stuff we could do…that's saying something. It can't be done." Their expressions were crushed. "Just…not possible. Horrible as it is…it…just isn't."
Not one of the other Hawthornes could look at Charlotte now, even as she swept her gaze over them—so many of them in this hall right at this moment. And this, Charlotte decided, was why she had to do it.
"…Six impossible things."
Jeffersons looked up. "…What?"
Charlotte let out her breath, and kept her head held up, determined. "...before breakfast, you're supposed to believe...as many as six impossible things. Right?" She looked at her watch. "The school doesn't officially go down until all the board and the parents get here tomorrow morning." She looked out at all of them again.
Damian began to smile a little. "…That's a long headstart to get believing in impossible things."
Charlotte smiled at him before looking to the others. "Sure, I'm technically the new kid here. But you guys made me a part of this group and of this school. And I for one, am not leaving Wonderland without a fight. I don't give up unless I have a really good reason to let something go. …And this school, I think, for all of you? Is the thing we can't let go."
A soft murmuring started to rise. The Twins, who had begun to smile, gave each other a glance before saying, "…that's a very clever idea, Alice."
To which Charlotte only shrugged a little demurely. Of course it was. "We've already gotten this far. Everyone that had come and gone from this school left something in it that made it what it is now. We can't turn back now, we've built too much. I've made history here too, and I'm not backing out of all of that. I'll fall all the way down." She let out her breath. "But I know I can't do it alone. I need to know you guys want this too. Do you? All of you?"
The last question addressed the entire room, and the halls filled with the murmuring of students. Damian reached out and clasped Charlotte's hand in his. "I'm with you," he nodded, taking and imparting strength. "All the way. Whatever it is we have to do." And Charlotte smiled.
"Oh fine…" Charlie sighed, a small smile on his face as he leaned back on the couch. "It's not the craziest thing we've ever done, really, is it?" Felix laughed and shook his head.
"Well…we broke into South and Main, we're in trouble enough as it is…" Patrick added, smiling a bit.
"But guys…" Grace asked meekly, eyes wide as students started to crowd into the music hall again, wanting to hear more, "How are we even going to do this? I mean…what can we actually do right now? We have just one night to change the minds of people who've planned this for a week. Maybe more. And they're tough to negotiate with."
"Yeah…" Bailey looked unsure. "That's why they sent us all here tonight to get everything, so we'd all be gone by tomorrow like they want."
"Well…" and with the look in their eyes, Charlotte knew that the Twins were formulating a plan, "…if they want us that much…."
Damian grinned. "…They'll just have to come in and get us, won't they?"
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Post by tonilous on Aug 12, 2014 2:00:38 GMT -5
"And…that was when you came up with the idea?" Winters' mouth twitched, like he was trying to hide a smile.
Damian smiled serenely at the camera. "I certainly can't say it was my idea, Headmaster. It seemed like it was everyone's idea."
"Everyone's? The Pipers?"
"Oh, not just the Pipers. It was definitely everyone's…"
Headmaster Winters now leaned on his chair and studied Damian—his eyes were almost affectionate. "Mr. McGinty, when we arrived to see what you and the other students had done…. You mean to say that you all had done it within in a single night of planning and execution?"
"We're very resourceful, Headmaster. Hawthorne's educational system is wonderful, even if the security sucks."
Charlotte casually wrote the words Phase One onto a nearby whiteboard that subsequently got dragged away by some very enthusiastic Hawthorne students.
"Oh man, oh man, oh man…" Noel was fussing and fidgeting on the grass outside Jefferson and he was ripping up a wilted flower in his hands. "If I could count the ways how this is such a freaking bad idea…"
"Noel! Stop bouncing on your heels and come help!" Charlie barked as he and the Twins were hauling what looked like a massive dresser out of Jefferson's doors. It was so big and still so full of stuff that they nearly dropped it with its weight. "Ow! Geez!"
"That is an antique!" Noel practically yelled. "It's probably cursed! And while we're at it, that is mahogany!"
"Whatever, Trinket, just stop fussing and hold these." Todd shoved a mantel clock into Noel's arms and piled books after it. He grabbed the leather strap attached to huge trunk and leashed Noel to it like he was a sled dog. "Come on, move this stuff out, hurry!"
Grumbling, the other boy towed the trunk away as Drew and Satoru flew past carrying all sorts of heavy equipment.
"That dresser is going to make an amazing foundation bit," Grace grinned as she watched it go.
"Oh man…" Diana looked around at all the students of Jefferson running to and fro, hauling luggage and furniture out of their houses at great speed, the complete opposite to a couple or so hours ago when nobody wanted to get their things out. "I think I gotta go with Noel on this one, this is serious."
"Playing it safe never won anyone a Tony," Charlotte bristled.
Damian jogged up to her, flushed and breathless with reckless courage. "Hey. Adams House is already hauling their stuff out. Got word from Washington that they're doing the same. But I don't know if it's going to be enough."
"How'd it go?" Grace asked, curious, as Patrick skidded to a stop next to the small pack standing just outside of Jefferson.
"We did it!" Patrick grinned, grinning like a maniac at the conspirators around him. "It's all set. It was a lot of talking but we did it. Message has been passed."
"Well, the parents all think they're being very kind to us," Grace told them, looking only a little bit ashamed that she had lied so convincingly. "That we all were sentimental and emotional and wanted to just have one last sleepover on campus in a big bonding experience before it all closed down and we all go our separate ways."
"There's no way Senator Wright would've bought that," Charlotte raised an eyebrow.
To which Darren—who had been passing by—only replied, "I told him I was staying over and he can do nothing about it. That ends the matter."
Damian grinned. "Well, a lot of misinformation had to be spread. They think we're safe." He lifted an obnoxiously blue-colored walkie talkie. "Hey Caterpillar. Was it all done?"
The walkie crackled. "Well, it took some serious effort on my part, you're all welcome, by the way, but I did it. I'd like to thank my team for their stupendous acting. All I had to do was tweak the voices a little bit."
Diana grinned. "So all the guards think the other shift is taking this shift. No one is actually around campus. All the teachers have gone to the meeting already, we've told Burkhart that she had to talk on our behalf as the Jefferson Head, same with the Adams for Murdoch and Newman for Washington"
"Yep. Still keeping an eye on the area, though. Gonna try to draw away anyone who tries to come 'check in' on us, keep watch on the incoming calls. I'm a little worried, Lowell can smell BS from miles away."
"But they're all still at the big meeting, right?" Damian asked worriedly. "No one's going to come surprise us?"
"Didn't we already learn that it's a bad idea when there's no security in this school?" Grace pointed out.
Patrick shrugged. "Sort of. Everyone's got cops on speed dial, they're so jumpy. But just to make sure, I asked my family's, uh…personal security have to take position around the streets. It serves as double protection for our side."
"And they went with it?" Charlotte stared in surprise. "They listened to you?"
"I can't believe it either. But y'know…those guys love me. They all raised me, joint effort and all."
"Your dad is gonna get so mad when he hears." Diana shook her head.
"I'm hoping his blind paternal love for me will keep him from strangling me after he finds out what we're all actually doing here, because it sure isn't a sleepover."
"And your plan, from what I understand…" Winters smiled, "…was to just…stay in the school."
"It wasn't closed yet!" Diana replied almost defensively. "We thought everyone was fine with letting us stay over one last night and have a sleepover."
"We both know that you all went in there with no intentions of a sleepover, Ms. Sullivan." His amused smile made Diana wonder exactly how much the Headmaster really knew. "This was…the idea that all of you came up with?"
"We had to do something. Jeffersons break the boundaries."
"Or in this case…" the headmaster chuckled, "…you created one."
Charlotte studied the steadily growing pile with satisfaction. What amazed her most was how successful they were being. It was solid. "We're making good time."
"It's still not enough," Damian remarked, standing next to her and staring at the mountain they were creating, "but I think we've become too good at Jenga. That's an amazing height."
"Parkour!" someone yelled, leaping through a tangle of tables, chairs, and over a resin model of a blue whale from the Science Department. There was a crash and the sound of things falling. Laughter sounded.
Jefferson's Alice tore away from staring at the growing pile of furniture and luggage, being expertly stacked by people who had obviously watched the movie 300 way too many times, and asked, "What do you mean not enough?"
"Well, if we drag out everything in Jefferson, everything in Washington, and everything in Adams, we might be able to fix two of the entrances." There was the sound of soldering from somewhere which was subsequently ignored. "There are four gates. We need more things. And…" he glanced at Charlotte. "We need more people."
"Oh." Charlotte frowned. Behind her, someone standing on the pile yelled for another chair. It got thrown upwards and Charlotte ignored the sound of wood and metal and clanging as smothered laughter erupted. "But…all the Houses are already in. All the faculty and staff have moved out already and are at the meeting, and even I'm not sure we can convince them."
Something that sounded like a vial cracked against something and there was a rapid hissing noise.
"Holy crap dude, what was in that thing?!" Bailey yelled.
"Um..." Drew stared.
"Is that corrosive acid or something?!"
"No...Blair's 16 Million Reserve sauce...?"
"Are you insane?!"
"You guys, I said nothing lethal!"
"Not all the Houses are here," Charlie remarked from nearby. How he had produced the nail gun was beyond comprehension, but it did help with their plans. He leveled the others with a stare, clearly trying to ignore the surrounding madness. "We haven't asked the Day Students."
"Do you seriously think they'll help us?" Patrick asked doubtfully. "We're the ones who started this mess in the first place, and the ones who are here are looking at us like we're out of our minds."
Very patiently, Charlie replied as he gestured to unmistakable pile of objects still growing, "Patrick. We. Are. Making. A. Barricade. We are literally barricading ourselves within Hawthorne Academy. Like it says in the rulebook. Defending against an attack."
"It's…it's not our regular brand of crazy?" Grace tried, and knew it was a lost cause.
"Do you guys realize what we are?! We are the freaking barricade guys, okay?!" Charlie gestured to that ever-growing wall just yards from them. It was hard to tell if he was excited or getting hysterical. Charlotte found her prefect's descent to total madness fascinating. "We're actually staging a revolution within Hawthorne grounds!"
"You can't use Les Mis as a comparison!" Noel protested.
"Why not?" Charlotte stared, scandalized.
"Because they nearly all died and we just narrowly missed that!"
"Look." Damian dragged a hand down his face. "We have four major entrances in this school, one in every cardinal direction, the biggest one being the main gate, which is probably where all the action's going to be. We're going to need every single piece of furniture in this school, every piece of luggage we've got, to make the barricade, and we need a lot of people to line the whole area, including people to watch at that ridiculous rail fence we've got. We need more people. We need help."
There was a beat, and Charlotte suddenly murmured, "…Exactly how many more people would you say we need?"
"Well, as many as we can. More people is good, right? People who would…want to support our cause…." Diana looked around hopefully. "I mean, people would've heard what's happened to us? Maybe we're not the only ones who wouldn't want this place to close."
Charlotte started to grin, and she nodded over to the side of the barricade that was starting to grow parallel to the rail fences.
Students with blue, red, and white badges were hurrying around, dragging even more furniture and their bulky luggage to add to the growing barricade. Not far from this busy movement, a few students stood, curious and seemingly at a loss on what to do. They wore badges too—the gold-plated "H" of Hawthorne Academy. They had no luggage in their hands, and carried only expressions of wonder at what the others were doing.
Damian followed her gaze, and realized what Charlotte was implying. Then, grinning in a way that was so reminiscent of Shane's own impish manner, he looked to the others. "Alright. Call 'Phase Two' our recruitment."
To which the Brightman twins also looked quite delighted. "Plans?"
Charlie spoke up with a nod, "Alright—Damian, you take the day students. They're nice to you; you don't make as much ruckus as the rest of us."
Charlotte raised an eyebrow and Patrick coughed violently before saying, "I'm sorry, Chaz, what was that you said? Sorry man, I couldn't hear you, there's so much crap flying around, could you run that by me again?"
Charlie smacked Patrick in the face with a foam mop. "Quiet! I like to live in denial. Anyway, Felix and I will go out of the territory and see what our…neighboring kingdom thinks."
Felix only smiled in return, and added, "We'll take Spencer. He's got some leverage there."
Charlie now turned his eyes to Charlotte. "And I think, Charlotte, you might ask some old friends to come join us. If they wanted."
With a delicate shrug, Charlotte flashed the prefect a smirk. "Well, then—I'll round up the Momeraths."
A group of students sat in front of Winters, fidgeting only slightly, abashed but entirely too pleased with themselves.
"And it was your influence that drew more troops into the barricade?" Winters spoke calmly, eyeing Charlotte, Damian, Charlie, Felix, and Darren.
To which Charlie, with the perfect composure of someone who had been in the hot seat so often that it has ceased to make an impression, "We were only trying to see if our cause was worthy enough for others to want to take part of."
"It would've made no more difference than if we had a petition up online," Felix added, shrugging.
The headmaster looked at Damian. "I was told by Riley Paige that it was you he spoke to, Mr. McGinty."
"I was, sir."
"And what did you tell him?"
"Riley? Damian McGinty is here to talk to you."
The boy who sat at one of the stone tables just by the terrace of the South and Main was one who Damian had met more than once. It is in this area that the day students congregated, as they did now, surrounded by packages of books and things. Upon seeing Riley Paige, Damian had the impression that it was as though he was the highest official in a war room, as all the other day students surrounded him, asking questions, worried, looking to him for answers.
He had seen Riley whenever there was collateral damage towards the day students during the Jefferson-Adams clashes. He was Damian's age but seemed older from the way he had such a commanding air over his fellow students without trying. He was protective over the day students, keeping them under his wing and occasionally shooting the culprits a sharp disapproving expression.
His attention settled onto Damian with surprise. "Hello, Damian." Riley rose and extended a hand, which Damian shook. "I assumed you and the other boarders were busy with…well, apparently trapping us all here."
The White Rabbit knew better than to kid around with a dragon—this was why Charlie sent him, after all. "Hello, Riley. It's not all barricaded yet. We can make sure the day students have a way out before we close it all down. Of course…" and here Damian smiled a little more, "…that is if you want to leave. We were hoping that you and the day students would stay."
"Who might 'we' be?" the stocky teen Damian recognized as Isaac, from the football team, asked while allowing only a slightly raised eyebrow. "Jeffersons?"
"Jeffersons, Adams, and Washingtons. Anyone who wants to stay within school grounds."
"Stay…here? It's closing down." Terry, the school drama club scriptwriter, stared as though Damian just proposed skydiving with the Brightmans. "We don't even know what you guys think you're doing. I mean…barricading the school?"
"So this is a siege," a very tall girl with sandy hair looked oddly fascinated, basketball in her hands.
"We can't let them close our school down," Damian told them fervently, looking around. He wondered if this was how Charlotte had felt, facing down the others who didn't even have the will anymore. "Look, I know that we boarding students haven't exactly given you guys an easy time, but you guys are Hawthornes as much as we are."
"Are we?" the girl with the basketball looked doubtful. "You know, Summers and the others weren't the only ones that Clavell terrorized. Spooked some of the day students too when they got too close to Larson. But no one listened to us."
"Colby," Riley spoke in warning, and the girl just shrugged. Then Riley spoke to Damian. "You're right, Damian. We are Hawthorne students. And we don't want this place to close down any more than you do."
He considered him for a moment before continuing. "But if we're going to do this with you…I'd like your personal assurance that you boarders will start considering the day students a little more. We're not your 'reserve' forces. We're not your 'extras'. I want to know for a fact that if we all do this, you'll take this up with the House Heads and prefects with me."
"Whoa," Damian did a double take, startled. "I…I get it, I mean, you guys aren't our anything, and definitely not any less than we are, but what makes you think that I—"
"You're a Piper." Riley's unsettling green and yellow gaze was intent. "And there's no other group in this school, maybe not even the group of prefects, who have as much sway as the Pipers. And you're their lead singer. One of them anyway." He crossed his arms. "The day students will help save the school, whatever it takes. But I want to know that we'll stand on equal ground once we're done."
He talked like the plan wasn't absolutely insane. He talked like he was a hundred percent sure that they were going to manage it. And Damian decided that yes, they needed the day students if they all had a conviction like that. Damian extended a hand that Riley readily shook.
"It's a deal," Damian nodded. Riley nodded somberly, and it was worthy of an allegiance between nations.
Colby laughed, flashing pearly whites. "Alright. Let's help brick up this place."
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Post by tonilous on Aug 12, 2014 2:27:51 GMT -5
"And it was only the day students," Winters asked, with a completely inappropriate amount of amusement at the entire thing—for a headmaster, at least. "They were the only people you'd directly asked to help you?"
"Yes," Damian replied guilelessly.
Then the headmaster turned to the prefects. "And you…? Were you responsible for the other groups involved?"
Charlie and Felix glanced at each other out of the corner of their eyes. Charlotte resisted the urge to smile and failed.
"What did Huntington say?" Charlie muttered as the group hurried over a stretch of immaculately maintained school ground. "You sounded loud on the phone."
"I was trying to be heard over the outrage." Charlotte pushed a branch away from her face. "But I believe the reply is positive. I'll hear from them by the time we finished here. …Whatever it is we're doing here."
"Well, this place is not a sister school for nothing…." Felix told her, sounding almost embarrassed to be infiltrating the place in this way. "For some people more than others."
Charlotte frowned. "I thought Laura goes to school in London."
"He means me," Spencer told her in a long-suffering, resigned tone that Charlotte recognized hearing among those who are prepared to go into their doom. "I have one in here. A sister, I mean."
"And we're going to ask her to get the other Dobry students to help us?"
"If anyone can, she can," Felix shrugged. "And Charlie's girlfriend."
Charlotte turned to her prefect with a suspicious expression. "…Your girlfriend isn't that girl who—"
"—Was screaming and took a golf club to my car before setting it on fire? Yeah no." Charlie shook his head.
"Good, because I've had enough of that kind of hysterics from Tabitha."
Charlotte had never set foot into Dobry Hall, and she really had no reason to. While obviously smaller than Hawthorne, Dobry looked newer, infinitely better-maintained, and had a sense of constant aesthetic rather than the mishmash of styles that one sees among the buildings in Hawthorne. Like Hawthorne, it was only two years ago that it had decided to accept both genders into the school.
She was surprised to pass only two dormitories on their way to the main building of the school. She had expected a triad like Hawthornes, but apparently, Dobry only had Prima House and Royal House, both of which were larger edifices than their Hawthorne counterparts.
Charlotte supposed, as they snuck into the main school building, that if the students were looking for more recruits into their crazy plan, they would find a considerable number to draw from in here.
They passed a large board in the front hall that was covered in paper stars—it was some kind of 'scoring' system like Harry Potter house points between Prima and Royal—when Charlotte began to hear the singing. Surprised, she listened a little more carefully and realized that it was a group of students, using only their voices.
Very much like the Pipers.
He had it comin'! He had it comin'!
He only had himself to blame!
If you'd have been there—
If you'd have seen it—
I betcha you would have done the same!
(Pop! Six! Squish! Uh-uh! Cicero! Lipschitz!) The girls were clothed in deep black, all of them, moving in perfect sync with one another, each heeled step echoing on the hardwood floor of the huge practice studio. Two of the girls stood apart from the rest, apparently overseeing how everything went. There were a few boys, also dressed in black, who were either background dancers or part of the act. They were so completely focused on their work that they didn't notice the Hawthorne students had stepped in about several yards away.
Charlotte marveled at the size of the room; if the Pipers had a space this big to call home, Patrick's backflips would reach all-star cheerleading levels.
The dirty bum, bum, bum, bum, bum!
The dirty bum, bum, bum, bum, bum! "This is very dangerous to interrupt, I'd say; the Terpsichores are singing about murdering menfolk," Felix remarked, and received a sharp elbow from Spencer.
"Is your sister in there?" Charlotte whispered.
"Yep." Sighing as though it was such a huge burden, Spencer nodded towards the group again, while Charlie watched on with immense pride.
They had it comin'! They had it comin'!
They had it comin' all along!
'Cause if they used us and they abused us—
How could they tell us that we were wrong? "Why do you sound so miserable?" Charlotte hissed to Spencer. "They're good! You're not happy your sister's in here?"
"Thrilled. Proud." Spencer just kept watching with a little smile. "She's brilliant. Can do everything, really. That's the problem."
"He just has some self-esteem issues to work through, Charlotte," Felix informed her.
Spencer? The hardworking saint of a boyfriend that Merril Portman is so madly in love with? Charlotte was incredulous. "Your sister must be quite a piece of work. What's she like? How do you see her, really?"
Spencer considered. "Well…I wouldn't really call her 'girly' in the disney princess sense and I wouldn't really call her a single-minded goal-driven 'balrog'…"
"What would you call her?"
"I'd call her 'ma'am'," Felix answered.
The group—Terpsichores, Felix called them—kept on practicing until Charlotte saw the smallest of the girls, a bright-eyed little redhead, catch sight of them from the mirrors, and she immediately stopped, delighted.
"Westwood!" the brunette one from the two who were standing apart suddenly barked, putting a stop to Cell Block Tango. "Pay attention, you missed a step again!"
"Sorry!" Charlotte was surprised to hear Han's last name attached to the short girl. She pointed to the Hawthornes. "We have visitors!"
The pack of students spotted them from the mirror before they turned around to look at them with no small amount of delight. The blonde girl overseeing the practice immediately dimpled as she moved over to the Hawthornes, trying not to appear as though she was actually running.
"Charles!" she bloomed under the Jefferson prefect's scrutiny and Charlotte had to bite back a smirk as his prefect was reduced to the teenage boy that he actually was. "We weren't expecting you!"
"Hello, Hope." It was a pleasant surprise to watch Charlie's IQ plummet at that pretty Southern belle's attentions. He only allowed himself to hold onto her elbows when he lightly kissed her cheek. "Charlotte, this is Hope Clayton. Prefect for Prima House and Terpsichore co-captain."
"I know her, Charlie, she's that brilliant singer of yours."
There was a smacking sound of someone punching someone else's arm and Spencer howled, rubbing his shoulder as he glowered mutinously at the tall brunette. "Ow?! Uncalled for?"
"You should've come to us sooner," she shot back, but gave him a big bear hug.
"This is your sister?" Charlotte raised an eyebrow.
"This is his twin sister, Sydney Willis, prefect for Royal House and Terpsichore co-captain," Felix replied, smiling, since Spencer was too busy being winded under the crushing hug of his twin sister. The other boy managed a squeak not unlike a rubber duck and his sister released him, clearing her throat. "Sorry. We were wondering why it took you so long to come to us, actually." She looked at Felix and extended a hand, but rolled her eyes when Felix took it and bowed instead of shaking it.
"Come to you for…what?" Spencer blinked. "You already know?" He was standing at parade rest, just like she was. They both seemed completely unaware they were doing it.
"Oh now don't be like that," Hope smiled sweetly. "Moment we heard that the men up top were trying to close the school down, we were sure that you weren't going down without a fight."
Charlotte gave her a strained smile. "Trust me, they still needed some motivation."
"You guys disappoint me," Sydney huffed. "If that were our school, we'd be up in arms the moment they told us to pack."
"Well, hopefully you'd put that same motivation into helping us," Charlie smirked. "Hawthorne's closing down—but we're going to stay until the end."
Charlotte lifted her chin and looked at the two girls with the same determination she'd given the Hawthornes. "We need more people to stand with us. We're hoping you would consider rounding up a few more troops."
"This is brilliant," the redhead Westwood, ridiculously excited, looking up from what must be a phablet. "My brother says I can help with surveillance and monitoring and intercepting chatter headed our way."
We might actually stand a chance… Charlotte realized, amazed.
"Well, if we're going to make it so official…" Hope smiled and nodded. "I'll have Lucy and Casey call up all the Primas and tell them to spread word."
"And you, Syd?" Spencer looked at his twin.
"I'll round up the Royals to do the same. I'll make sure Jordan gets sent to Diana; he'll worry about her if I don't." Sydney nodded.
"We're very grateful," Felix told them, nodding.
"But the question is," Charlie suddenly said, thoughtful, "Is this absolutely enough to make an impression? We have to make a really really big impression if we want to make an impact. That was your plan, wasn't it, Charlotte?"
Charlotte, who had been looking at her phone to find a text from Damian, replied, "Damian's gotten the day students on board. And if my connections in Huntington pull through…" she grinned when another message cropped up. "…We'll have more coming in from that way. Wait, hang on." She frowned.
A new message from Han had appeared.
Han, who was looking very tidy and extremely uncomfortable with such a clean-pressed uniform, coughed as he read from the tablet.
"The message I sent to the others at that hour was: 'Message to all: The meeting has officially begun. The school board, with the support of a number of parents—many of whom are Legacies of Hawthorne Academy—are giving their statements. They are proposing to shut down Hawthorne Academy in the wake of the terrible events that had happened involving a number of Hawthorne students being grievously injured by the student Adam Clavell, who had also instigated the fire that resulted in the death of a faculty member, William Pentland. Statements will be heard from those supporting and protesting the closing of Hawthorne Academy. Decision will be sent to everyone as soon as it arrives.'"
"It must have been a dire moment for all of you." The headmaster watched him. "I understand none of you would've been allowed to the meeting. You could not have made your voices heard."
"I kept track," Han murmured in reply, pushing his glasses. "I had to. I wanted to stay here, as much as any of them. I…I know I'm not going to college; that's not in my future. So this…all of this? Is all I have left of the time I'll ever be in a school, with friends. I don't want it to end that early."
"And you decided that this was how you would all make yourselves heard."
"Everyone decided. And the moment we decided it, it felt like…" Han tried to find the words, a little stunned. "…it felt like it was coming together. I had no idea the kind of response we would get."
Damian immediately came running up to Charlotte the moment the prefects' group returned from the side gate. "Charlotte! Come with me, hurry." His smile was blinding. "There's a bus that just pulled up. I think it's your guests."
Charlotte didn't wait. She bolted off with Damian towards the main gate where a flock of Hawthornes were gathering, trying to get a look. Already, the barricade was high—tall enough that if you were to climb on it, you could vault the high rail that surrounded the school. Students had clambered up onto it like it was a jungle gym, looking over to the bus that had pulled up just outside the gate. Down below, at the base of the barricade, a small gap was being cleared.
When Charlotte saw a familiar red jacket, she couldn't control the smile that split her face. "Alex!"
"Hey!" Alex lit up at the sight of his stepsister, and he made to move toward him. Unfortunately, the rest of Huntington had the same idea. Natasha charged to Charlotte with the same impassioned enthusiasm she had during competition.
"We're here!" she exclaimed, smile broad and taking a quick sweep of everything around her. "We've spread the word and we're reporting for duty. I'm sure we can help you guys with this…um…." she gestured to the wall. "Well…that."
The Twins were happily helping Fiona climb up the barricade. They looked at Natasha now. "Hey, pretty singing flower! Yes, you, lovely small one! Come join us!"
"Go, please, go," Charlotte hurried her off to the barricade, "the more occupied they are, the better control there'll be to their madness until we need their evil—and they think you're pretty."
"Excuse me." Alex gaped.
"Ladies!" Patrick materialized and grinned at Kassie. "This way, please, let's make sure you've got a fine selection of nonlethal weaponry to choose from." She laughed.
"Down, tiger." Charlotte rolled her eyes before she grinned up at Alex now. "Thank you, for getting everyone to come."
"Hey, we know how much this school means to you," Alex smiled. "Not that we wouldn't love to have you back, because—you know we do, right? We'd be so happy to have you back, be a team again. But…"
Alex shoved his hands into his pockets and looked around at the ongoing mayhem: uniformed students running to and fro with supplies, some of them still constructing the wall, others just whooping with joy in the excitement of the big adventure. "Looks like you grew into this place. And we'd want you happy wherever you want to be. Oh! And if it means anything, I heard Ellen and dad were there at the meeting. They said they'd protest the school closing."
Charlotte stared at him, aghast. "Wait—what? Mom…she really said that?"
"Yeah, sure, why?" Alex's brow furrowed.
It was Charlotte's turn to give him a confused expression. "She said she… Well, when she took me to the hospital to visit…she said she agreed with the school closing. She said that she sent me here to be safe, and the school couldn't do it. She sounded upset." She wrapped her arms around herself, staring at the grass in disbelief. "…That of all things, I thought that was the reason I'd be leaving here."
"Well…." Alex allowed himself a glance at the barricades, a little bit bewildered at the magnitude of it all, but when he returned his attention to Charlotte, his eyes were almost fond. "Whatever you said to her must've worked." He made a twitchy kind of double take when he saw Austin waving at him to get his attention from one of the highest points of the barricade, and he's singing to One Day More, urging those around him to join in. "That, and she could probably tell you really like these guys if you were willing to go through all this. Like…everyday."
"You get used to it. Now go tell Austin to pipe down a little, we're trying to be inconspicuous here." She glowered at Alex.
"You guys gave him a stage!" he protested, but was already walking to him.
"Like gasoline to a fire, I know…" Charlotte grimaced at herself. "Sorry. That was too soon."
"Well, we're nothing if we can't bounce back…" Damian remarked, smiling at her. "You look better than you have in days."
"I like it when a plan comes together. Especially if it's my plan." She smiled at her boyfriend. "You know I actually feel a lot like a Jefferson now? Hatching plans and having them work beautifully?"
"We don't know how beautifully it'll work until tomorrow," Damian shook his head. Behind him, someone was setting up that landing pad again. "Or at least until Han gives us what the board has decided. If we're lucky—and I mean really really lucky…we might not have to stage it at all."
Charlotte stood with him, and looked to the others who were talking and helping one another. She grimaced when she saw Noel flailing at them to unhand the antique chest. "…I want to say I hope we don't have to, but I have the feeling that the parents we're up against will make it so we'll have to fight. After all…" she glanced at Damian, "…A lot of them were Hawthorne students themselves. You know as well as I do how hardheaded they are."
Damian grinned. Something not far from them made a flash bang and there was laughter as the prefects told them to cut it out. "It's tradition to be horribly mulish."
"Apparently so."
That was when Danny came running up to them, breathless and desperate. "Guys! Guys!" He plowed right into Grace, who had been walking by, sending the two of them into a heap at Charlotte's feet. "Ow! Oh god, I'm so sorry, Grace!"
"Are you kidding, that's the first time in days I've taken a tumble that I didn't do to myself, that's awesome…" the artist grunted.
"You okay?" Shane quickly helped Grace up as the shorter girl dusted her skirt.
"Danny, you shouldn't be running like that, you'll rip something open!" Merril told him as the others approached, seeing the commotion.
"Guys!" Danny got back to his feet, panting, as the Jeffersons started to approach. "The West exit."
"You've got company," Han continued from the walkies. "They didn't come in sending texts or whatever, I didn't see them until the street cams did. A flock of them. Coming your way."
"Who?" Damian asked, perplexed and alarmed.
"See for yourself," Danny replied, and he looked almost amazed.
After one of those long pauses they had to endure in that waiting room, with only the sound of the secretary's typing in the distance, Patrick finally looked at the others.
"Did you have any idea that they would—"
"Nope," Diana shook her head.
"…I mean, can you believe they actually—"
"Nope," Damian also shook his head, looking stunned.
Patrick paused. "…do you think they'll ever—"
"We are never going to see that happening again," the Twins replied firmly.
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