Chapter 4

"I'll be fine," she replied, almost in a whisper. And then, louder, "But call me Elle, please? Only my fa... Well, nobody really calls me Elizabeth."

Jeff nodded and set down his backpack, pulling out a notebook and tearing off a piece of paper. He scribbled something on it quickly and folded it over.

"Alright... If you need anything Elle, here's my phone number. You can call anytime."

Elle smiled and nodded softly, wondering again why this guy wanted anything to do with her. "Thank you," she said softly.

They turned and walked their separate ways. Jeff heading the two blocks back to his mother and sister, his "normal" family life, while Elle walked the blocks back to her "home", such as it was.

Not for the first time, she wished she were with her mom.

Jeff watched her walk away with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was afraid. He was afraid of many things, he realized on his walk home. He was afraid of seeing that darkness in Elle's eyesagain. He was afraid of what might happen to her. He was afraid that come tomorrow morning the bitchy, I'd rather slug you than speak to you Elizabeth would be back. He was afraid that he wouldn't get the chance to find out what it was that was drawing him to her so. Most of all, though, he was afraid of the feelings he seemed to be developing. He wasn't used to these kinds of feelings, and that scared him most of all.

So, Jeff did what he always did when he was scared and confused. He went home, said a quick hello to his sister, and shut himself up in his room. Then he turned on his stereo, put in one of his mix CDs and hit play. The sounds of Pam Tillis' "In Between Dances" floated out of his speakersas he sat down with his favorite fountain pen and his journal and started writing. As usual, he poured his soul out into his journal. Without the little leather-bound books he had stashed in the bottom of his bookshelf he would have gone crazy for sure. They were filled with all sorts of his writings. Everything from diary entries to essays to poems were tucked away between the pages of the books. He'd been journalling for at least 5 years, and had quite a good stack of volumes tucked away, volumes that no one would ever get to see. There were some things in his journals that he would never share with anyone -- they were just too personal. Today's entry would be one of those.

I don't know what it is about her, but I can't seem to stay away. The entire
time I was walking home from school with her I couldn't stop thinking
about her. When I asked her if she was alright it seemed like she really wanted
to say something, but she didn't. I don't know what to make of it. And of course
she could go right back to being evil miss asskicker tomorrow morning, and
I'll never know anything. I don't know why I care about her at all, but... I do.
Why the hell does the first girl that I have any interest in getting to know
have to be the one that can tear me to shreds without thinking twice about it?

By the time Jeff's mother got home and started to prepare dinner he'd written two full pages, just thinking on paper. Jeff looked at his mother when he went down for dinner and thought about how glad he was to have her to talk to. He walked over and gave her a hug.

"What was that for?" she asked, surprised. It wasn't that getting a hug from her son was especially unusual, he just didn't usually come up and do it out of the blue for no reason.

"Just because... I just wanted you to know how glad I am to have you here," Jeff said quietly.

Katie Andrews hugged her son back, all the while wondering what had brought this on today; Jeff wasn't saying anything more however, and she was loathe to pry about it. She'd finally realized not that long ago that her relationship with her only son would be a lot smoother if she let him do his own thing and just made sure he knew she was always there for him. When she was constantly trying to know every little thing, and be a part of all of it, their relationship suffered. Ever since she'd eased off some and let him start finding his own way they'd grown closer, and friendlier. And she would much rather have that than the constant fighting that she saw between many teenagers and their parents nowadays.

For her part, Elle stopped a block closer to her house and, once she was sure she was out of Jeff's sight, sat down on a bench in the park, resting her head in her hands. "Why couldn't I tell him?" She asked herself. She had desperately wanted to cry out for help, but just couldn't make herself do it.

That's when the tears started. Long, racking sobs that came from someplace deep inside. The kind of sobs that Elle hadn't known since her mother had died. She couldn't understand what was happening inside her. She didn't want to live like this anymore. She had wanted to tell Jeff just now, but the words just wouldn't come. Once again, she felt trapped. Trapped in the life that she was living. She fingered the slip of notebook paper in her pocket with Jeff's phone number on it, thinking seriously about walking to a pay phone and calling him, but she didn't.

Instead she just sat for there for another few minutes, waiting as her tears slowed and finally stopped. Only then did she stand up, set her jaw, and head off for her house. Elle hoped Randy was gone, but she didn't really believe she would get that lucky.

She was right.

That night was another rough one for Elle. Randy was home, and he'd gotten money for more booze, which was always a bad combination. At least his friends weren't over tonight. She shuddered just remembering it. Randy alone she could handle; she'd been dealing with him for long enough that it didn't really matter anymore. So, he beat her. Big deal. She could usually hide the bruises just fine, nobody ever noticed them. By now she hardly even noticed it anymore. And as for the rest... Well, it was just her life. She sighed.

By the time Elizabeth finally cried herself to sleep around 2 a.m. she knew that she would talk to Jeff. It wasn't a question of if anymore -- just when. Before falling asleep she set her alarm clock for 6 a.m. She'd need the extra time to cover up the bruises this time, she thought sarcastically. Then, mercifully, she fell into a deep sleep.

Jeff was having a restless night as well. After dinner he'd gone back upstairs to work on his homework, but he was distracted. He found himself thinking back to his conversations with Elle, replaying them in his head and trying to figure out the pieces to this puzzle. He was sure that there was something going on there -- there just had to be. Something was tearing the girl apart, and he couldn't help but feel like he should be able to figure out what it was. There was some piece that he was missing, he thought, and he didn't want to be. He hated feeling helpless -- and right now, that was a perfect description for the way he felt. Helpless. He should be doing something to help her, but Jeff didn't have the foggiest idea what. The little bit of homework that he had left to finish should normally only have taken him forty-five minutes, or maybe an hour at the most. Tonight it took him almost two hours, he was so distracted.

The rest of the night didn't get much better. He tried to read for a while, but couldn't bring himself to get into either of the books he was working on. That was unusual. Jeff almost always had at least two books going at once, and he did that mostly for times like this -- moments where he couldn't quite get his mind around one or the other. Usually one of them was something lighter that didn't involve too much thought. At the moment, besides his books for school, he was reading the most recent Tom Clancy book, as well as James Michener's Alaska.

Right then, however, he couldn't get into either of them. Finally, after half an hour of trying to force himself to get through Clancy or Michener, he gave up and grabbed a copy of The Color of Magic that had been sitting on his bookshelf for some time. One of his friends, who was big into all kinds of fantasy novels, had recommended it a year or so ago, and it'd been sitting on his shelf ever since. Fantasy, especially the humorous kind, wasn't one of his preferred types of reading. But at the moment it was just what the doctor ordered. He managed to get into it, mostly because it was so strange that it had him shaking his head every few minutes.

"A world supported by four elephants standing on a turtle? And I thought my life was crazy," Jeff thought.

He finally fell asleep around midnight, after tossing and turning in bed for what seemed like hours. It wasn't a restful sleep, though. He kept waking up in a cold sweat every hour or so, worrying about Elle. When he did get to sleep the "dreams" he had nearly caused him to scream out in fright. By the time he decided to get up for good at half-past six his nightshirt and sheets were soaked through from sweat. He'd actually been awake since 4 a.m., when an especially nightmarish dream caused him to bang his arm on the nightstand and woke him. Normally Jeff didn't remember his dreams, but this one was so horrific that he doubted he could ever forget it. He shuddered just thinking about it.

He thought about writing it down in his journal, but decided this was one experience that he didn't want to remember. He took his shower and got dressed, trying to keep his mind off what he was feared was going on a few streets over.

Except that Jeff was wrong. The only thing going on a few streets over was a hurried session with a makeup mirror.

Elle had woken up before her alarm went off at six, just to make sure that it wouldn't wake Randy. He was out cold, and would probably sleep for quite a while after the amount he'd drank the night before. Even so, she didn't want to take the chance of her alarm waking him, leaving him both hung-over and in a bad mood. She took a quick showerand then sat down at the mirror to do her makeup. She knew it would take her a while to cover up the bruises today.

An hour later, she was finished. She was wearing enough makeup to surprise even a veteran stage actor, but it didn't look like it. What it did look like, however, was that she didn't have any bruises on her face. That was what she was aiming for. She grabbed an outfit out of her closet and winced as she started getting dressed. She gave up on her bra after she almost screamed when the straps touched the bruises on her shoulders. "At least my shirt will hide those," she thought. Putting on her shirt still made her wince, but at least this pain was tolerable. She grabbed a quick breakfast and picked up her books, walking out the door a few minutes before 7:15. It was better to be waiting around outside in the cold than it was to take the chance of waiting around at home and having Randy wake up.

Elle walked to the spot where she was going to meet Jeff slowly, deep in thought. She was trying to decide whether or not to say anything to him. In her heart, she knew she wanted to tell him -- she wanted someone to get her out of this nightmare, but she knew that wasn't likely to happen. She'd tried telling someone once before. After the first night, she went to a teacher at school and talked to her. Elle managed to get out that Randy was hitting her, but she couldn't bring herself to say the rest. The teacher, at least, took her seriously, and went to the principal. However, nothing more ever came of it. Nobody ever came to visit the house; Elizabeth wasn't even referred to the school counselor. It was like everyone just forgot about it -- or didn't care.

It was shortly after that that she started to change. The first time she got into a fight, the principal didn't do anything, he just wrote it off to the stress of adjusting to her mother's dying. The second time, he called her into the office to talk with her. It wasn't until she broke a boy's nose - for no reason - that he took any real action. And even that wasn't much: he referred her to the school psychologist. After three sessions where the doctor just asked about how she felt about her mom and why she was fighting in school -- and where she didn't really say anything of substance -- she quit going. The shrink wrote it up as problems adjusting to losing her mother and recommended that she be given some latitude and time. She didn't bother opening her mouth to anyone else after that. By the end of middle school her grades had gone from A's and B's to C's and D's, and she was routinely picking fights and causing other mischief.

That's how she was known when she started high school: as a troublemaker and a bully, and things didn't get any better during her freshman year. Elle spent a lot of time cutting class and just generally being a pain in the ass to anyone that got in her way, and a few people that didn't. She fell in with a group of troublemakers and spent most of her days either high on something-or-other or drunk, sometimes both. It wasn't until January that the shit really hit the fan, though. She was caught trying to break into the chemistry storage room. She was just trying to steal a few chemicals; not to damage the school or hurt anyone like the administration claimed. The plan was just to grab some stuff and hopefully find a better way to get high. Unfortunately, the Dean didn't care what the reason was. They may not have done anything to stop her back in middle school, but this was high school. It was bad enough that she was already one of the class bullies. She was already spending most every afternoon in detention, either because of the fights or the vandalism or the cutting classes. Things like this, though, "Absolutely can't be tolerated," he'd said. He suspended her for a week and called home.