FIC: Scarred Tissue [ R ] Veronica-centric
Title: Scarred Tissue
Author: Blondiekins
Disclaimer: The characters and places of Veronica Mars described in this story are not my creations and belong to Rob Thomas and some studios. No infringement is intended. I am merely borrowing them for entertainment purposes. Also, there are mentions of Veronica’s pre-season rape.
Pairing: Veronica, Veronica/Troy, Veronica/Leo, Veronica/Logan (eventually)
Rating: R - Langue and Adult Situations. Mentions of rape.
Summary: It was just a clumsy card house rape and now Veronica has to hold it all in place.
SPOILERS: The story is set in S1 and will follow episode by episode - All of S1 & some of S2.
Word Count: 4,425
Author’s Note/Warning: I feel horrible that it took so long to get this part out, but finally I’m happy with it. I can’t promise a speedy follow up to this chapter, unfortunately. But I hope this serves as proof that I haven’t given up on this story. Also posted @ veronicamarsfic
PREVIOUS CHAPTERS
Chapter Six
“Rent it if you want to rent it,” she says tersely to her father as she attempts to push the stroller through the video store. “I’m just saying I’m not gonna watch it.”
She knows that she sounds like an insolent teenager, but she can’t help herself. Things between them are still tense, despite Keith’s attempts to pretend that everything is okay. His light tone is obviously forced and his ludicrous video suggestions are doing nothing to appease her ill mood.
“This is impossible,” she huffs, growing increasingly more frustrated as she tries to navigate the narrow aisles. “I’m going up by the register. We’ll wait for you there.”
In mid-turn, Lucas begins to fuss in his stroller and almost without thinking Veronica reaches into the diaper bag and pinches a pacifier between her index finger and thumb. Unceremoniously she pulls it out and leans forward to shove it into the angry baby’s open mouth.
“So, um,” the pubescent kid behind the counter startles her, “is it t-true that your dad is a P.I.?”
She shifts her gaze from Lucas to the kid behind the counter. His slim face and stick arms make him look like a twelve-year-old, but he is working at the video store and Veronica immediately decides that he is about fifteen. Probably a freshman at her school, too.
“That’s what it says on the sign.” She tells him, rounding the front of the stroller and deftly scooping Lucas into her arms.
He is instantly calmed by the gentle bouncing.
“And you work with him?”
His eyes seem to be glued to Lucas. It makes her uncomfortable, even knowing that this kid couldn’t possibly have been at a 09er party. “Sometimes.”
“Can I talk to you about something?” His hesitance makes her nervous.
He finally drags his eyes upward, from Lucas to her face, and she has to remind herself that he couldn't possibly have been at a 09er party. “Sure.”
“It's kind of private.”
She tells herself that it’s curiosity dragging his eyes toward the baby she’s clutching. He doesn’t know anything, how could he? He’s a freshman, his job at the video store clearly indicates that he is not wealthy - in any way shape or form - and would therefore have no connection to or knowledge of anyone who might have been at a 09er party.
It’s unrelated. She thinks, forcing herself not to crush the suddenly content baby to her chest and flee the store. A muscle in her calf stops its frantic spasm when his tiny fingers curl around the loose material of her shirt, almost as if he can sense her nervous energy.
“Find me at school on Monday.”
“I got ‘The Cowboys’ too,” Keith says as he approaches the counter, laying his movies down on, “I thought we might need a backup.”
***
His name is Justin Smith, and just as Veronica had surmised, he is a freshman at Neptune High. He also happens to be looking for his deadbeat dad, the somewhat inconveniently named John Smith.
Having an absentee parent herself means that Veronica can unfortunately relate, and despite herself she does. It is why she agrees to help him for a modest fee; she is not completely without a sense of self preservation after all. It is far less than the rate she would normally charge someone, and she tells him so before leaving the bathroom that she has adopted as her office.
Breathe. She tells herself as she exits the bathroom and rips the convenient out of order sticker off the door.
Justin’s plight to find his father only serves as a reminder of how much she needs her mother. She feels the crushing weight of need and emptiness weigh her down as she turns away from the bathroom door, shoving the sticker into her bag and heading toward her next class.
His case has reminded her of how unfair life can be. It is always pushing and pulling. Forcing her into something that she isn’t ready for, something that she wasn’t sure she ever wanted in the first place, pulling things away from her when she needs them the most.
She longs for everything that she used to have: both of her parents, her best friend, her social life, her freedom. All of the things that equate to teenage normalcy. She longs for a chance to pretend that she’s just another girl, even though she isn’t - even if she can’t ever be.
She is so lost in these thoughts that she walks right into someone, easily startled as arms reach out to steady her as she staggers sideways.
Troy.
“Hey, how’s it going?” He asks, removing his hands from her upper arms and shoving them in his pockets.
She hasn’t spoken to him since the day he’d proposed a ludicrous boat trip, setting off every skeptical alarm in her head as she imagined the copious amount of nefarious intentions that he could have for asking her out. But as leery of his interest in her as she had been, she suddenly sees it for what it really is: her chance.
“Let’s go out ” She says suddenly, surprising even herself as she grabs his forearm, banishing thoughts of babies and mothers and fathers unknown to the back of her mind.
“Finally ” He shouts, withdrawing his hands from his pockets and flinging them into the air. “The girl comes to her senses ”
Her smile is genuine and the curious on lookers around them seem to fade out of her peripheral vision. Her game of pretend has already started. Just another girl.
***
She waits as long as she possibly can before telling Keith about her date, and when she finally gathers the courage to do so he is more than a little concerned.
“Honey, I don’t know how to say this without sounding . . . ” he dances so closely around the subject of boys and sex, without actually saying it outright, that it makes Veronica’s head spin. “It’s just that, you’ve got this new friend Wallace helping you at the office, and now a date with this other boy . . . ”
“Don’t worry. I’m not sleeping with them.” She bites out, angrily crossing her arms over her chest.
For a moment, Keith looks sufficiently shamed. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Really?” She asks, facetiously. “Because it certainly sounded like you were headed there.”
“Veronica, that’s not what I said.” His face grows red as he strikes a defensive pose on the couch.
“You didn’t have to.” She is irrationally hurt by her father’s insinuations. “Wallace is just a friend, nothing more. And I’m not going to sleep with Troy, either.”
“I just meant to say that you never spend time with girls anymore.” He apparently thinks that this will clear things up for her, though it only serves to make Veronica angrier.
“Yeah, well girlfriends are harder to come by these days.” She says, uncrossing her arms long enough to gesture to Lucas, who is content in his swing and fixated on his grandfather’s masculine voice. “I made a mistake, okay? I’m a walking after school special Believe me, it’s not a performance I’m looking to repeat.”
“Veronica,” his tone is full of warning as his eyes dart toward Lucas. He looks as though he can’t believe she would say such a thing, especially in front of the baby.
“Look. I just need to socialize with people my own age. I need to be with people who won’t drool or puke on me. I need a life outside of this apartment.” Veronica is suddenly tired, and she can feel the fight draining out of her. “They’re boys and I’m a girl and that doesn’t always equal wild and crazy premarital teenage sex. I’m just asking for a little trust, here.”
“Honey . . . ” he sags into the cushions, seemingly defeated as he closes his eyes and rubs his forehead. It is with a sudden awareness that Veronica realizes her misstep, and she is grateful that he lets it hang unspoken between them.
A muscle in her jaw ticks several times before she bites down on the inside of her cheek. Her eyes sting from the salt of unshed tears and the shift of her head as she looks down at the floor sends them blazing traitorously down her cheeks. Her fingers curl so tightly around her own arms that bruises are a distinct possibility.
She can’t fault him, not really. She led him blindly into these insinuations and issues of mistrust with all of her lies and omissions of truth. Her blurry vision stays trained on the area rug her mother bought shortly before they sold their house in the coveted 09 zip, even as she hears the rustle of fabric as he moves to stand. In seconds he is across the room and wrapping his arms around her in an awkward attempt to comfort her. “Forget it,” he says softly, stroking her short hair. “Go on your date and I’ll watch Lucas. It’s not a problem.”
She nods against his shoulder as she wraps her arms around his waist. Her voice sounds small and distant when she says, “Okay.”
Momentarily she is jarred out of her world of make-believe, and as she clings to her father’s waist she wonders how she is going to convince herself that she is ready. But two days later, she is nervously fixing her hair in the bathroom and leaving to meet Troy somewhere near the marina.
As she laughs and flirts, she thinks that maybe she didn’t need to work so hard to convince herself after all. But the requisite end-of-date-kiss allows reality to flourish once more as she flinches away from his puckered lips, closing her eyes and cursing herself.
“A-ah, o-kay then,” he gently takes her hand and shakes it softly, before bowing. “And a good night to you, madam.”
She climbs into the car when he opens the door for her, and sits inside passively as he closes it as well; watching, regretfully, as he nods and turns to walk in the direction of his own vehicle. Angry with herself, she heads for home wondering what is wrong with her, asking herself what she’s waiting for.
It isn’t as if Duncan, the pure white knight of yesterday, is going to come galloping back into the picture. It isn’t as if Troy is asking her to strip naked and swap bodily fluids with him, though if they date long enough that’s going to be an inevitable part of the equation. He was only asking for a peck; a touch of lips. It doesn’t seem totally unreasonable.
“Does it?” She asks Lucas as she performs his routine midnight diaper change. “You’re a boy, what do you think?”
He flails his arms as he makes a gurgling noise.
“Right,” lifting his legs she easily slides the fresh diaper under his bottom. “Veronica, you’re losing it. You’re asking a baby for dating advice, and talking to yourself. Seek mental help, immediately.”
She thinks about the near kiss and her reaction to it all weekend long.
***
At school on Monday, Wallace approaches her locker as she is stuffing books into her bag. “Justin’s permanent file,” he says, pushing a manilla folder at her. “You might want to take a look at that.”
“Why, is it going to self-destruct in five seconds?”
She expects a smile, at the very least, as Wallace is always up for laughing at a corny joke. The lack of response makes her nervous and she immediately begins to rifle through the contents of the nondescript folder he has given her. It seems like hours before she finally stumbles across the document that has Wallace in such a foul mood.
“I’ve been had, Wallace.” She says, snapping the folder shut and staring at him in angry disbelief.
Her confrontation with Justin is short. She spends all of five minutes berating him for wasting her time before telling him that he owes her money for postage. Her mind keeps flashing back to his eyes on Lucas at the video store and she is more weary of the skinny freshman that she ever was. Even the delivery of a letter, a clever attempt made by Veronica to lure John Smith out of hiding, can’t seem to soften her.
Veronica’s feeling of unease stays with her for the rest of the day, though she tries to shake it off. She replays Justin’s words in her head, trying to decipher some hidden meaning to them. He had claimed to invent a missing father simply to spend time with her, because he had some sort of stupid crush on her. She wonders how true that excuse is, or if there is something more sinister going on behind the naive, boyish exterior.
She hopes that by the time she gets home and pays Sarah, she will be able to put Justin and her ill feelings toward him out of her mind. Though as she settles herself on the floor of her bedroom to study with Lucas laying next to her, sucking on his hands, she realizes that banishing Justin from her mind is going to be a lot harder than she thought.
“Someone to see you,” Keith says, poking his head into her room and smiling at the efforts of his grandson.
Her eyes do not leave the paragraph she had been reading, even as she says, “Describe this someone.”
She rolls her eyes when her father describes a pint-sized, desperate white male who is clearly not having a good day. Gingerly, Veronica scoops up Lucas and hands him off to her father.
“He’s that kid from school,” she says, hoping to explain why yet another boy is darkening their doorway. “The one with the dead beat dad.”
He nods his head and takes Lucas from her arms, shifting his attention onto his grandson and pulling silly faces.
She finds him standing outside their front door, sweaty and slightly out of breath. His bicycle is propped up against a support beam for the balcony above them, and she finds herself relenting as he tells her about his confrontation with his mother.
“Let me see the letter again,” she holds out her hand expectantly.
The letter Justin received from his long-lost father bore a San Diego postmark. The results on her computer show that of the 440 John Smiths out there, only three are in San Diego. It seems likely, to Veronica, that one of these men is the biological father that Justin is looking for.
Absently, her mind wanders to the mother that she has been looking for. Almost without thinking, Veronica pulls up the infamous license plate image from the Kane case and inputs the numbers into her computer.
She grabs a post-it from the corner of her desk and hastily scrawls an address onto the neon blue paper, pinning it to her board and staring at it for several seconds, the end of her pen stuck between her teeth.
***
“Wait up.” Veronica calls out, running to catch up with Troy. He slows, but not by much. “You’re really going to make me work for it, aren’t you?”
Several people turn in her direction, tossing her knowing looks. She is relegated to slut once more, and she doesn’t even care. She speeds up, trying to match his long strides as they head toward the football field.
“I think I may have given you the wrong impression,” she says carefully, slightly winded. “I had a really great time. I just . . . ”
“Veronica,” he stops suddenly as she begins to suck in a large amount of air, “I kind of get it, okay?”
“You kind of get what?” She asks, skidding to a stop and turning to face him.
“I thought about it all weekend, and I know why you flinched away from me. You have a kid.” He says it as though it explains all of her bizarre behavior. “That kid has a father out there somewhere, and he obviously burned you.”
She averts her eyes, staring at the ground beneath them as she mutters, “You have no idea.”
“I get that you would need time, or space, or whatever.” His features are arranged in an understanding, concerned expression. “I’m happy to take things slow with you. I’ve been avoiding you because I was upset with myself for pushing it too fast.”
It is apparently just the admission that Veronica had been hoping for, because before she realizes what she is doing her hands are sliding up to Troy’s shoulders and she is pulling him toward her. The moment their lips touch, she wishes that she hadn’t acted on impulse.
It seems like forever before the kiss is broken by shouting and a loud thud. She is grateful for the distraction, until she notices Duncan laying several feet away, dazed and bleeding from the head.
“Oh my god,” her fingers reflexively curl themselves around the material of Troy’s jacket as she looks at her former boyfriend.
She is by his side in seconds, leaning over him and pressing her hands to the back of his head in a fruitless attempt to stop his bleeding. “He needs to go to the hospital,” she says tersely, annoyed at Logan’s laughter and antics.
Immediately, she realizes that his 09er friends will not be much help to him in their current condition. The task of helping Duncan Kane get the medical attention he requires falls squarely onto her shoulders. She is both grateful for the ready-made excuse to say goodbye to Troy, and nervous about being alone with the boy she has pinned all of her stupid maternal fantasies on.
***
The ride had been awkward, and Veronica puts it out of her head as soon as she leaves him with his father at the hospital. Opting instead to focus on the case she is working for Justin. Frustratingly enough, he doesn’t seem to have any pictures of this elusive John Smith to aid her in her investigation, but as it turns out, a picture would have been pointless.
John has become Julia. Justin is understandably upset and Veronica can’t imagine how she would handle the news if she finally managed to locate her mother and found her growing facial hair and calling herself Lee. Still, a part of her can’t help but focus on the fact that Joh-Julia is a regular at a video store in Neptune, where her son works. Despite living in San Diego.
“Ninety miles,” she says suddenly, startling him from his confused thoughts.
“What’s ninety miles?”
“The distance your dad travels every week, just to see you for a few seconds.”
Her answer to his question hangs between them in the car, stretching out into a long, pregnant pause.
“Do you know why I even agreed to help you?” In her peripheral vision, she can see him shaking his head in the negative. “I helped you because my mom has been missing too and honestly, I would give anything to feel that she cared enough about me to do that.”
She doesn’t tell him that maybe Lianne does care about her enough. Doesn’t mention that her mother was in Neptune, that she was meeting Jake Kane in a cheap motel room, or that mysterious presents were left on her door step. Doesn’t let it slip that she suspects her mother of these anonymous gifts. She simply lets it wash over him, watching him from the corner of her eye as he appears to consider her words before turning to stare at the passing scenery again.
Veronica is unable to sleep later that night. She sits in bed, propped against the head board and listening to the soft rhythmic breathing coming from across the room, staring at the neon blue post-it in the dim light of the street lamp outside her bedroom window.
Kicking her legs free of the covers, she swings them over and practically vaults herself out of bed. She crosses the room, resting her hands on the edge of the wooden crib.
She reaches in and fingers a tuft of his sandy blonde hair. It had been a dark brown when he was born, and in the two months since it has lightened considerably. His glacial blue eyes are a mirror image of her own, though the shape is slightly different. The angles of his face are unfamiliar to her, though they seem to change daily.
“She isn’t going to find to us,” she whispers softly to him, “we’re gonna have to find her. If the roads are clear, we can make it to Arizona in four hours. You’ll sleep most of the way.”
He takes a shuddering breath, but continues to sleep. “We need her.”
***
She is driving down Parakeet Lane in Phoenix, nervously checking the numbers of each houses that she passes. Several houses down, she spots her mother's car, the one she'd been driving when she met up with Jake Kane at The Camelot, parked in the car port of a small yellow house. A blonde woman is kneeling in the garden.
Her heart is pounding in her throat as she yanks the wheel and pulls the car up alongside the curb across the street. “This is it,” she tells Lucas, who is fastened into his car seat. She leans into the back, making quick, practiced work of unbuckling him and scooping him out. “This is it. Are you ready?”
His only answer is a soft sucking noise as he gums his fingers. She seems to take this as a yes, nodding her head and reaching for the door handle.
She calls out from across the street, growing frustrated at the woman's lack of response. “Mom!”
Veronica stops short, clutching Lucas to her chest as the woman turns toward her. It is not her mother. “Can I help you?”
“I-I'm looking for Lianne Mars.” Veronica forces the words from her tight throat, disappointment beginning to unfurl inside her stomach.
“Veronica?” The woman seems surprised, noticing the baby for possibly the first time. “I'm Adrianna, a college friend of your mom's. I feel like I know you, your mother talks about you all the time.” There is a brief pause as Adrianna's eyes drop down to the baby in Veronica's arms. “She didn't mention you had a baby.”
Her heart is sinking under the weight of the sudden realization that her mother might not be the mysterious gift giver after all. “Where is she?”
“She left a couple of weeks ago,” Adrianna says hesitantly.
“Did she say where she was going?” Veronica feels a growing sense of urgency, her hopes dying out as Adrianna denies knowing where her mother went. “Don't lie to me,” she says, feeling distressed. “I need to know, where is she?”
“She thought your father might come looking for her,” Adrianna says softly, as though she means it to be comforting, “and she knows I'm no good at keeping secrets.”
“Doesn't she care about me?” Veronica's eyes are burning. “Doesn't she know that I need her?”
Adrianna's eyes are soft and full of sympathy. “Honey, you're all she cares about.”
Shifting Lucas in her arms, Veronica's spine straightens. “Mark me down as skeptical.”
Five hours later, she is carrying the baby seat into the apartment, being careful not to jar the sleeping baby inside it too much.
“Where the hell have you been?”
The sheer volume of his incredulous demand is enough to wake Lucas from a very peaceful sleep, and immediately, the guilt is etched into Keith’s face. “Jesus, Veronica. You’re a mother, you can’t just go traipsing off to God knows where whenever you feel like it anymore.”
She barely has time to catch her breath before he is snatching the baby seat from her hands and setting it atop the nearby coffee table.
“No note, no phone call. Your cell phone was off,” he says, leaning over the baby and gently scooping him out. “What were you thinking? I was worried sick!” He doesn’t wait for her to answer as he cradles the baby in his arms. “How long has he needed a diaper change, Veronica?”
He stalks off in the direction of her bedroom and Veronica assumes that he is changing the baby and putting him back to bed. It is a full twenty-five minutes before Keith emerges. He stops short at the sight of Veronica, standing just where he left her, her jaw trembling.
“I went to find her,” she says, her voice shaking as she sinks into the couch. “I know you told me to drop it, but I couldn’t. She’s my mother and I need her.”
He sighs, a defeated exhalation of warm air. “Veronica,”
It is the only thing he can manage to say, as finally her shoulders start to quake and her face starts to crumble. He envelopes her, rubbing her back in a manner he apparently feels soothing. Wrapping her arms around his middle, Veronica holds onto him for dear life; crying hard into his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she says a short time later, when her sobs have given way to tiny hiccups. “I should have called you, or left a note, or something. I shouldn’t have just disappeared for nine hours with Lucas.”
“I wish that things were different, honey.” His voice is so soft, and Veronica is taken back to a time and place when everything was still perfect. Her mom wasn’t missing in action, wasn’t a drunk, and her father still proudly wore his badge. “I wish that you had your mom to help you through this, no matter how things turned out between us. I can’t help but feel like it’s my fault, but honey, we have to stop living in the past. She’s gone and whether or not she comes back, we have to move on and accept things for how they are now.”
He holds her for a few more minutes, before sucking in a steadying breath and sending her to bed. Lucas is already asleep, having been awake for most of the car ride home. He had only fallen asleep about an hour out of Neptune.
Instead of heading to bed, she makes her way across the room, stepping over baby toys until she reaches his crib. Leaning against it, she stares down at him.
“I’m sorry I dragged you into that,” she whispers. “I guess as much as I need my mother, you need yours, huh?”
His rhythmic breathing is his only answer.
“I’ll work on that.” She tells him. “‘Night, kid.” Reaching into the crib, Veronica’s finger grazes his round cheek before she crosses the room and crawls into bed.
TBC
Author: Blondiekins
Disclaimer: The characters and places of Veronica Mars described in this story are not my creations and belong to Rob Thomas and some studios. No infringement is intended. I am merely borrowing them for entertainment purposes. Also, there are mentions of Veronica’s pre-season rape.
Pairing: Veronica, Veronica/Troy, Veronica/Leo, Veronica/Logan (eventually)
Rating: R - Langue and Adult Situations. Mentions of rape.
Summary: It was just a clumsy card house rape and now Veronica has to hold it all in place.
SPOILERS: The story is set in S1 and will follow episode by episode - All of S1 & some of S2.
Word Count: 4,425
Author’s Note/Warning: I feel horrible that it took so long to get this part out, but finally I’m happy with it. I can’t promise a speedy follow up to this chapter, unfortunately. But I hope this serves as proof that I haven’t given up on this story. Also posted @ veronicamarsfic
PREVIOUS CHAPTERS
Chapter Six
“Rent it if you want to rent it,” she says tersely to her father as she attempts to push the stroller through the video store. “I’m just saying I’m not gonna watch it.”
She knows that she sounds like an insolent teenager, but she can’t help herself. Things between them are still tense, despite Keith’s attempts to pretend that everything is okay. His light tone is obviously forced and his ludicrous video suggestions are doing nothing to appease her ill mood.
“This is impossible,” she huffs, growing increasingly more frustrated as she tries to navigate the narrow aisles. “I’m going up by the register. We’ll wait for you there.”
In mid-turn, Lucas begins to fuss in his stroller and almost without thinking Veronica reaches into the diaper bag and pinches a pacifier between her index finger and thumb. Unceremoniously she pulls it out and leans forward to shove it into the angry baby’s open mouth.
“So, um,” the pubescent kid behind the counter startles her, “is it t-true that your dad is a P.I.?”
She shifts her gaze from Lucas to the kid behind the counter. His slim face and stick arms make him look like a twelve-year-old, but he is working at the video store and Veronica immediately decides that he is about fifteen. Probably a freshman at her school, too.
“That’s what it says on the sign.” She tells him, rounding the front of the stroller and deftly scooping Lucas into her arms.
He is instantly calmed by the gentle bouncing.
“And you work with him?”
His eyes seem to be glued to Lucas. It makes her uncomfortable, even knowing that this kid couldn’t possibly have been at a 09er party. “Sometimes.”
“Can I talk to you about something?” His hesitance makes her nervous.
He finally drags his eyes upward, from Lucas to her face, and she has to remind herself that he couldn't possibly have been at a 09er party. “Sure.”
“It's kind of private.”
She tells herself that it’s curiosity dragging his eyes toward the baby she’s clutching. He doesn’t know anything, how could he? He’s a freshman, his job at the video store clearly indicates that he is not wealthy - in any way shape or form - and would therefore have no connection to or knowledge of anyone who might have been at a 09er party.
It’s unrelated. She thinks, forcing herself not to crush the suddenly content baby to her chest and flee the store. A muscle in her calf stops its frantic spasm when his tiny fingers curl around the loose material of her shirt, almost as if he can sense her nervous energy.
“Find me at school on Monday.”
“I got ‘The Cowboys’ too,” Keith says as he approaches the counter, laying his movies down on, “I thought we might need a backup.”
***
His name is Justin Smith, and just as Veronica had surmised, he is a freshman at Neptune High. He also happens to be looking for his deadbeat dad, the somewhat inconveniently named John Smith.
Having an absentee parent herself means that Veronica can unfortunately relate, and despite herself she does. It is why she agrees to help him for a modest fee; she is not completely without a sense of self preservation after all. It is far less than the rate she would normally charge someone, and she tells him so before leaving the bathroom that she has adopted as her office.
Breathe. She tells herself as she exits the bathroom and rips the convenient out of order sticker off the door.
Justin’s plight to find his father only serves as a reminder of how much she needs her mother. She feels the crushing weight of need and emptiness weigh her down as she turns away from the bathroom door, shoving the sticker into her bag and heading toward her next class.
His case has reminded her of how unfair life can be. It is always pushing and pulling. Forcing her into something that she isn’t ready for, something that she wasn’t sure she ever wanted in the first place, pulling things away from her when she needs them the most.
She longs for everything that she used to have: both of her parents, her best friend, her social life, her freedom. All of the things that equate to teenage normalcy. She longs for a chance to pretend that she’s just another girl, even though she isn’t - even if she can’t ever be.
She is so lost in these thoughts that she walks right into someone, easily startled as arms reach out to steady her as she staggers sideways.
Troy.
“Hey, how’s it going?” He asks, removing his hands from her upper arms and shoving them in his pockets.
She hasn’t spoken to him since the day he’d proposed a ludicrous boat trip, setting off every skeptical alarm in her head as she imagined the copious amount of nefarious intentions that he could have for asking her out. But as leery of his interest in her as she had been, she suddenly sees it for what it really is: her chance.
“Let’s go out ” She says suddenly, surprising even herself as she grabs his forearm, banishing thoughts of babies and mothers and fathers unknown to the back of her mind.
“Finally ” He shouts, withdrawing his hands from his pockets and flinging them into the air. “The girl comes to her senses ”
Her smile is genuine and the curious on lookers around them seem to fade out of her peripheral vision. Her game of pretend has already started. Just another girl.
***
She waits as long as she possibly can before telling Keith about her date, and when she finally gathers the courage to do so he is more than a little concerned.
“Honey, I don’t know how to say this without sounding . . . ” he dances so closely around the subject of boys and sex, without actually saying it outright, that it makes Veronica’s head spin. “It’s just that, you’ve got this new friend Wallace helping you at the office, and now a date with this other boy . . . ”
“Don’t worry. I’m not sleeping with them.” She bites out, angrily crossing her arms over her chest.
For a moment, Keith looks sufficiently shamed. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Really?” She asks, facetiously. “Because it certainly sounded like you were headed there.”
“Veronica, that’s not what I said.” His face grows red as he strikes a defensive pose on the couch.
“You didn’t have to.” She is irrationally hurt by her father’s insinuations. “Wallace is just a friend, nothing more. And I’m not going to sleep with Troy, either.”
“I just meant to say that you never spend time with girls anymore.” He apparently thinks that this will clear things up for her, though it only serves to make Veronica angrier.
“Yeah, well girlfriends are harder to come by these days.” She says, uncrossing her arms long enough to gesture to Lucas, who is content in his swing and fixated on his grandfather’s masculine voice. “I made a mistake, okay? I’m a walking after school special Believe me, it’s not a performance I’m looking to repeat.”
“Veronica,” his tone is full of warning as his eyes dart toward Lucas. He looks as though he can’t believe she would say such a thing, especially in front of the baby.
“Look. I just need to socialize with people my own age. I need to be with people who won’t drool or puke on me. I need a life outside of this apartment.” Veronica is suddenly tired, and she can feel the fight draining out of her. “They’re boys and I’m a girl and that doesn’t always equal wild and crazy premarital teenage sex. I’m just asking for a little trust, here.”
“Honey . . . ” he sags into the cushions, seemingly defeated as he closes his eyes and rubs his forehead. It is with a sudden awareness that Veronica realizes her misstep, and she is grateful that he lets it hang unspoken between them.
A muscle in her jaw ticks several times before she bites down on the inside of her cheek. Her eyes sting from the salt of unshed tears and the shift of her head as she looks down at the floor sends them blazing traitorously down her cheeks. Her fingers curl so tightly around her own arms that bruises are a distinct possibility.
She can’t fault him, not really. She led him blindly into these insinuations and issues of mistrust with all of her lies and omissions of truth. Her blurry vision stays trained on the area rug her mother bought shortly before they sold their house in the coveted 09 zip, even as she hears the rustle of fabric as he moves to stand. In seconds he is across the room and wrapping his arms around her in an awkward attempt to comfort her. “Forget it,” he says softly, stroking her short hair. “Go on your date and I’ll watch Lucas. It’s not a problem.”
She nods against his shoulder as she wraps her arms around his waist. Her voice sounds small and distant when she says, “Okay.”
Momentarily she is jarred out of her world of make-believe, and as she clings to her father’s waist she wonders how she is going to convince herself that she is ready. But two days later, she is nervously fixing her hair in the bathroom and leaving to meet Troy somewhere near the marina.
As she laughs and flirts, she thinks that maybe she didn’t need to work so hard to convince herself after all. But the requisite end-of-date-kiss allows reality to flourish once more as she flinches away from his puckered lips, closing her eyes and cursing herself.
“A-ah, o-kay then,” he gently takes her hand and shakes it softly, before bowing. “And a good night to you, madam.”
She climbs into the car when he opens the door for her, and sits inside passively as he closes it as well; watching, regretfully, as he nods and turns to walk in the direction of his own vehicle. Angry with herself, she heads for home wondering what is wrong with her, asking herself what she’s waiting for.
It isn’t as if Duncan, the pure white knight of yesterday, is going to come galloping back into the picture. It isn’t as if Troy is asking her to strip naked and swap bodily fluids with him, though if they date long enough that’s going to be an inevitable part of the equation. He was only asking for a peck; a touch of lips. It doesn’t seem totally unreasonable.
“Does it?” She asks Lucas as she performs his routine midnight diaper change. “You’re a boy, what do you think?”
He flails his arms as he makes a gurgling noise.
“Right,” lifting his legs she easily slides the fresh diaper under his bottom. “Veronica, you’re losing it. You’re asking a baby for dating advice, and talking to yourself. Seek mental help, immediately.”
She thinks about the near kiss and her reaction to it all weekend long.
***
At school on Monday, Wallace approaches her locker as she is stuffing books into her bag. “Justin’s permanent file,” he says, pushing a manilla folder at her. “You might want to take a look at that.”
“Why, is it going to self-destruct in five seconds?”
She expects a smile, at the very least, as Wallace is always up for laughing at a corny joke. The lack of response makes her nervous and she immediately begins to rifle through the contents of the nondescript folder he has given her. It seems like hours before she finally stumbles across the document that has Wallace in such a foul mood.
“I’ve been had, Wallace.” She says, snapping the folder shut and staring at him in angry disbelief.
Her confrontation with Justin is short. She spends all of five minutes berating him for wasting her time before telling him that he owes her money for postage. Her mind keeps flashing back to his eyes on Lucas at the video store and she is more weary of the skinny freshman that she ever was. Even the delivery of a letter, a clever attempt made by Veronica to lure John Smith out of hiding, can’t seem to soften her.
Veronica’s feeling of unease stays with her for the rest of the day, though she tries to shake it off. She replays Justin’s words in her head, trying to decipher some hidden meaning to them. He had claimed to invent a missing father simply to spend time with her, because he had some sort of stupid crush on her. She wonders how true that excuse is, or if there is something more sinister going on behind the naive, boyish exterior.
She hopes that by the time she gets home and pays Sarah, she will be able to put Justin and her ill feelings toward him out of her mind. Though as she settles herself on the floor of her bedroom to study with Lucas laying next to her, sucking on his hands, she realizes that banishing Justin from her mind is going to be a lot harder than she thought.
“Someone to see you,” Keith says, poking his head into her room and smiling at the efforts of his grandson.
Her eyes do not leave the paragraph she had been reading, even as she says, “Describe this someone.”
She rolls her eyes when her father describes a pint-sized, desperate white male who is clearly not having a good day. Gingerly, Veronica scoops up Lucas and hands him off to her father.
“He’s that kid from school,” she says, hoping to explain why yet another boy is darkening their doorway. “The one with the dead beat dad.”
He nods his head and takes Lucas from her arms, shifting his attention onto his grandson and pulling silly faces.
She finds him standing outside their front door, sweaty and slightly out of breath. His bicycle is propped up against a support beam for the balcony above them, and she finds herself relenting as he tells her about his confrontation with his mother.
“Let me see the letter again,” she holds out her hand expectantly.
The letter Justin received from his long-lost father bore a San Diego postmark. The results on her computer show that of the 440 John Smiths out there, only three are in San Diego. It seems likely, to Veronica, that one of these men is the biological father that Justin is looking for.
Absently, her mind wanders to the mother that she has been looking for. Almost without thinking, Veronica pulls up the infamous license plate image from the Kane case and inputs the numbers into her computer.
She grabs a post-it from the corner of her desk and hastily scrawls an address onto the neon blue paper, pinning it to her board and staring at it for several seconds, the end of her pen stuck between her teeth.
***
“Wait up.” Veronica calls out, running to catch up with Troy. He slows, but not by much. “You’re really going to make me work for it, aren’t you?”
Several people turn in her direction, tossing her knowing looks. She is relegated to slut once more, and she doesn’t even care. She speeds up, trying to match his long strides as they head toward the football field.
“I think I may have given you the wrong impression,” she says carefully, slightly winded. “I had a really great time. I just . . . ”
“Veronica,” he stops suddenly as she begins to suck in a large amount of air, “I kind of get it, okay?”
“You kind of get what?” She asks, skidding to a stop and turning to face him.
“I thought about it all weekend, and I know why you flinched away from me. You have a kid.” He says it as though it explains all of her bizarre behavior. “That kid has a father out there somewhere, and he obviously burned you.”
She averts her eyes, staring at the ground beneath them as she mutters, “You have no idea.”
“I get that you would need time, or space, or whatever.” His features are arranged in an understanding, concerned expression. “I’m happy to take things slow with you. I’ve been avoiding you because I was upset with myself for pushing it too fast.”
It is apparently just the admission that Veronica had been hoping for, because before she realizes what she is doing her hands are sliding up to Troy’s shoulders and she is pulling him toward her. The moment their lips touch, she wishes that she hadn’t acted on impulse.
It seems like forever before the kiss is broken by shouting and a loud thud. She is grateful for the distraction, until she notices Duncan laying several feet away, dazed and bleeding from the head.
“Oh my god,” her fingers reflexively curl themselves around the material of Troy’s jacket as she looks at her former boyfriend.
She is by his side in seconds, leaning over him and pressing her hands to the back of his head in a fruitless attempt to stop his bleeding. “He needs to go to the hospital,” she says tersely, annoyed at Logan’s laughter and antics.
Immediately, she realizes that his 09er friends will not be much help to him in their current condition. The task of helping Duncan Kane get the medical attention he requires falls squarely onto her shoulders. She is both grateful for the ready-made excuse to say goodbye to Troy, and nervous about being alone with the boy she has pinned all of her stupid maternal fantasies on.
***
The ride had been awkward, and Veronica puts it out of her head as soon as she leaves him with his father at the hospital. Opting instead to focus on the case she is working for Justin. Frustratingly enough, he doesn’t seem to have any pictures of this elusive John Smith to aid her in her investigation, but as it turns out, a picture would have been pointless.
John has become Julia. Justin is understandably upset and Veronica can’t imagine how she would handle the news if she finally managed to locate her mother and found her growing facial hair and calling herself Lee. Still, a part of her can’t help but focus on the fact that Joh-Julia is a regular at a video store in Neptune, where her son works. Despite living in San Diego.
“Ninety miles,” she says suddenly, startling him from his confused thoughts.
“What’s ninety miles?”
“The distance your dad travels every week, just to see you for a few seconds.”
Her answer to his question hangs between them in the car, stretching out into a long, pregnant pause.
“Do you know why I even agreed to help you?” In her peripheral vision, she can see him shaking his head in the negative. “I helped you because my mom has been missing too and honestly, I would give anything to feel that she cared enough about me to do that.”
She doesn’t tell him that maybe Lianne does care about her enough. Doesn’t mention that her mother was in Neptune, that she was meeting Jake Kane in a cheap motel room, or that mysterious presents were left on her door step. Doesn’t let it slip that she suspects her mother of these anonymous gifts. She simply lets it wash over him, watching him from the corner of her eye as he appears to consider her words before turning to stare at the passing scenery again.
Veronica is unable to sleep later that night. She sits in bed, propped against the head board and listening to the soft rhythmic breathing coming from across the room, staring at the neon blue post-it in the dim light of the street lamp outside her bedroom window.
Kicking her legs free of the covers, she swings them over and practically vaults herself out of bed. She crosses the room, resting her hands on the edge of the wooden crib.
She reaches in and fingers a tuft of his sandy blonde hair. It had been a dark brown when he was born, and in the two months since it has lightened considerably. His glacial blue eyes are a mirror image of her own, though the shape is slightly different. The angles of his face are unfamiliar to her, though they seem to change daily.
“She isn’t going to find to us,” she whispers softly to him, “we’re gonna have to find her. If the roads are clear, we can make it to Arizona in four hours. You’ll sleep most of the way.”
He takes a shuddering breath, but continues to sleep. “We need her.”
***
She is driving down Parakeet Lane in Phoenix, nervously checking the numbers of each houses that she passes. Several houses down, she spots her mother's car, the one she'd been driving when she met up with Jake Kane at The Camelot, parked in the car port of a small yellow house. A blonde woman is kneeling in the garden.
Her heart is pounding in her throat as she yanks the wheel and pulls the car up alongside the curb across the street. “This is it,” she tells Lucas, who is fastened into his car seat. She leans into the back, making quick, practiced work of unbuckling him and scooping him out. “This is it. Are you ready?”
His only answer is a soft sucking noise as he gums his fingers. She seems to take this as a yes, nodding her head and reaching for the door handle.
She calls out from across the street, growing frustrated at the woman's lack of response. “Mom!”
Veronica stops short, clutching Lucas to her chest as the woman turns toward her. It is not her mother. “Can I help you?”
“I-I'm looking for Lianne Mars.” Veronica forces the words from her tight throat, disappointment beginning to unfurl inside her stomach.
“Veronica?” The woman seems surprised, noticing the baby for possibly the first time. “I'm Adrianna, a college friend of your mom's. I feel like I know you, your mother talks about you all the time.” There is a brief pause as Adrianna's eyes drop down to the baby in Veronica's arms. “She didn't mention you had a baby.”
Her heart is sinking under the weight of the sudden realization that her mother might not be the mysterious gift giver after all. “Where is she?”
“She left a couple of weeks ago,” Adrianna says hesitantly.
“Did she say where she was going?” Veronica feels a growing sense of urgency, her hopes dying out as Adrianna denies knowing where her mother went. “Don't lie to me,” she says, feeling distressed. “I need to know, where is she?”
“She thought your father might come looking for her,” Adrianna says softly, as though she means it to be comforting, “and she knows I'm no good at keeping secrets.”
“Doesn't she care about me?” Veronica's eyes are burning. “Doesn't she know that I need her?”
Adrianna's eyes are soft and full of sympathy. “Honey, you're all she cares about.”
Shifting Lucas in her arms, Veronica's spine straightens. “Mark me down as skeptical.”
Five hours later, she is carrying the baby seat into the apartment, being careful not to jar the sleeping baby inside it too much.
“Where the hell have you been?”
The sheer volume of his incredulous demand is enough to wake Lucas from a very peaceful sleep, and immediately, the guilt is etched into Keith’s face. “Jesus, Veronica. You’re a mother, you can’t just go traipsing off to God knows where whenever you feel like it anymore.”
She barely has time to catch her breath before he is snatching the baby seat from her hands and setting it atop the nearby coffee table.
“No note, no phone call. Your cell phone was off,” he says, leaning over the baby and gently scooping him out. “What were you thinking? I was worried sick!” He doesn’t wait for her to answer as he cradles the baby in his arms. “How long has he needed a diaper change, Veronica?”
He stalks off in the direction of her bedroom and Veronica assumes that he is changing the baby and putting him back to bed. It is a full twenty-five minutes before Keith emerges. He stops short at the sight of Veronica, standing just where he left her, her jaw trembling.
“I went to find her,” she says, her voice shaking as she sinks into the couch. “I know you told me to drop it, but I couldn’t. She’s my mother and I need her.”
He sighs, a defeated exhalation of warm air. “Veronica,”
It is the only thing he can manage to say, as finally her shoulders start to quake and her face starts to crumble. He envelopes her, rubbing her back in a manner he apparently feels soothing. Wrapping her arms around his middle, Veronica holds onto him for dear life; crying hard into his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she says a short time later, when her sobs have given way to tiny hiccups. “I should have called you, or left a note, or something. I shouldn’t have just disappeared for nine hours with Lucas.”
“I wish that things were different, honey.” His voice is so soft, and Veronica is taken back to a time and place when everything was still perfect. Her mom wasn’t missing in action, wasn’t a drunk, and her father still proudly wore his badge. “I wish that you had your mom to help you through this, no matter how things turned out between us. I can’t help but feel like it’s my fault, but honey, we have to stop living in the past. She’s gone and whether or not she comes back, we have to move on and accept things for how they are now.”
He holds her for a few more minutes, before sucking in a steadying breath and sending her to bed. Lucas is already asleep, having been awake for most of the car ride home. He had only fallen asleep about an hour out of Neptune.
Instead of heading to bed, she makes her way across the room, stepping over baby toys until she reaches his crib. Leaning against it, she stares down at him.
“I’m sorry I dragged you into that,” she whispers. “I guess as much as I need my mother, you need yours, huh?”
His rhythmic breathing is his only answer.
“I’ll work on that.” She tells him. “‘Night, kid.” Reaching into the crib, Veronica’s finger grazes his round cheek before she crosses the room and crawls into bed.
TBC