Alive Again

Reese had mastered the art of not paying attention to the things around her, at least when she was walking the halls at her rumour running school. She was especially good at it on Monday mornings, when all the fresh gossip was being exchanged from weekend sexcapades. She was too good at it; she never heard the hurried footfalls pursuing her.

“Holy shit,” Reese cried out as she was checked painfully into the nearest row of lockers. She lost her balance and landed painfully on her left shoulder and side of her head, sliding down before she gained her wits and used her hands to push herself out of her half crouching position. She was barely on her feet again before the same strong force from before had slammed her face back into the lockers.

Reese recovered more carefully this time and turned to see her assailant. Christine was breathing hard and already had angry tears pooling her eyes; her hands were clenched trembling at her sides. It was obvious to Reese that whatever physical pain she had just experienced could not hold a candle to the emotional pain that Christine was obviously going through. Reese’s angry expression fell into one of sympathy.

The girl was shoving Reese’s shoulders into the lockers again, pulling her back and slamming her again causing a resounding bang. Reese lost her sympathetic emotions quickly and glared at the girl. She could already feel her cool slipping at these unprovoked attacks but fought diligently to keep her inner beast reigned in. Christine raised her hand and brought it down quickly to connect with Reese’s face—however her aim was off and that resulted in her nails scraping along Reese’s cheek.

“What the hell are you doing?” Reese cried out, panicked. She had always been verbally attacked, and this unprovoked physical abuse was startling. The rapid change in emotions was only adding to Reese’s chaos—she was losing her initial shock and anger and was now progressing into fear. Christine looked capable of murder, or at the very least capable of breaking bones.

“What the hell am I doing? What the fuck was your tramp of a sister doing on Saturday night? Oh yeah, she was fucking my boyfriend!” Christine punctuated her last sentence with another slap, one that actually connected and sent Reese’s head back and to the side. The side of her face collided painfully and loudly to the locker again. She was beginning to feel disoriented when Christine began to shake her, and her head kept hitting the same tender spot over and over on the metal behind her.

“You and your sister are both pathetic little girls; toying with Kennedy and John like that, you’re just as bad as your sister. No wonder your daddy doesn’t love you, you fucking bitch!” Christine hadn’t been finished screaming—and boy was she shrieking like a banshee—but Reese had finally snapped. With a group of students to witness it, Reese let out an enraged scream and pushed herself away from the metal lockers, tackling Christine with enough force to send them to the opposite side of the hall. This time, it was Christine colliding loudly with the lockers. Reese’s hands were gripping Christine’s upper arms as the girl wriggled beneath her. Unintelligible words were falling from Reese’s mouth, some half-formed cuss words and a lot of animalistic shrieking.

Christine was fighting back with all of her power, lifting her legs to collide with Reese’s and trying to fend off this seemingly wild girl. The struggle lasted until Christine finally fell to the ground with Reese beside her. Christine’s goal was a success—Reese had let go of her arms but now it was a blur of limbs as Reese’s hand raised and came arching downward, hitting the flesh of Christine’s stomach and face.

It didn’t take long for Christine to flip them over and then Reese could feel the sting of nails raking along her collarbone as Christine attempted to land more slaps to her face. It was a symphony of screams and grunts. Christine was crushing her, all of Christine’s weight forcing the air from Reese’s lungs and making her dizzy. It was when Reese’s cheek collided painfully to the tiled floor that she began to lose whatever fight she had in her. She went from being a feral girl to a rag doll, allowing Christine to grip her neck and raise her head. Reese lifted her hands to grip Christine’s wrists, fearing suffocation but then Christine threw her head back down with a dull thud. Christine repeated this action once, twice, and then relief.

Reese was suddenly able to gain breath again, and she gasped for it and coughed, her eyes rolling with the urge to pass out. Christine was lashing and kicking—trying to connect to a body part of Reese’s and cause more damage. Through her blurring vision, Reese could see Kennedy gripping Christine around the waist and hoisting her off of her feet. And then someone was sliding their hands under her arms and pulling her up. Reese couldn’t find her footing, she couldn’t prevent her head from falling back and she couldn’t force the spots in front of her eyes to disappear.

John tried desperately to help her to her feet, but it was soon made apparent that she wasn’t capable of holding her own weight. He had jokingly carried his best friend Eric across a parking lot while intoxicated, bridal style. He had never held a girl that way, but he knew that Reese couldn’t be as heavy as Eric. In front of a large crowd of students, John O’Callaghan literally swept Reese Wallace off her feet and carried her out into the sunlight.

She wasn’t the easiest person to carry, not because she was heavy or anything, but because once she realized she was being carried, she began to kick her legs in an effort to get down. John sighed when she tried to escape his arms, knowing that Reese was back to being fiercely independent. He wanted to drop her, grip her arms and shake her until she understood that she needed help, and that sometimes it was okay to lean on friends. Instead, he tightened his hold on her and tried to act like carrying her wasn’t putting a strain on him.

He ignored the stares from students cutting class in the parking lot and carefully walked between the cars until he reached his own. Reese had stopped struggling in his arms and now had one of her arms wrapped loosely around his neck. He bent his knees and made sure she had her feet under her before he stood up—but he couldn’t bring himself to relinquish his grip on her.

“How are you feeling, Reese’s Piece? I mean, like on a scale of one to ten, how’s the pain?” he asked while searching through his jeans for his car keys. It took Reese a while to comprehend the question—by the time she had it processed, John was helping her into the passenger seat. She didn’t answer until John was in the driver’s seat and starting it up.

“About a seven or a six,” Reese answered. She didn’t deliberately speak that slowly, and she was trying her hardest to hold her head up but her body seemed to be out of her control. John put the automobile into reverse and placed an arm behind Reese’s chair to keep a visual of what was going on behind him. Reese gave up and rested her tender head on the seat. She tilted her head to the left and blinked frequently, trying to keep John in focus. The initial dizziness was wearing off and now Reese mostly felt shocked—and sore, very sore.

“Do you think you need to go to the hospital?”

Reese thought about John’s question—focusing hard to ignore the sound bite from her head hitting the floor just minutes before. It hurt, but it was just an ache. She felt more shocked at the speed of everything—the fight, being rescued by John, and then being in the car. It happened too fast for her. Reese shook her head, John barely catching the movement from the corner of his eye.

“Why did she do that?” John muttered to himself. It was a rhetorical question, but Reese answered nonetheless.

“Clary slept with Mitch. Apparently the solution to that is to beat the crap out of me. Because really, I was supposed to tie her up and lock her in the attic. It’s ridiculous.”

“Mitch slept with her? No offence Reese’s Pieces, but didn’t he stop to think about the possibility to contract something? You essentially sleep with everyone your partner did, right? Mitch just had sex with the majority of our school’s male population!”

Reese saw what he was trying to do—he was trying too hard to do it, though. She gave a feeble chuckle at his attempt at humour and then settled back for the rest of the car ride. She had been tired beforehand, but now she was just plain exhausted. John pulled up into the driveway and unintentionally allowed the vehicle to jerk forward, resulting in Reese’s head dropping back onto the seat painfully. She tried to mute her groan, but John noticed.

“Shit, baby, I’m sorry.”

Reese pretended not to notice John’s cheeks reddening or that she heard him call her baby at all. He had spoken so fast that it had to have been an embarrassing slipup. He didn’t try to say anything after—in fact he jumped out of the vehicle. Reese barely had the door open before John was there, assisting her. Sitting down, Reese had felt close to normal, but now she was standing up and very unsteady on her feet.

Even though she didn’t want to, Reese leaned heavily on John. He guided her to the front door and half-leaned her against the wall. He refused to relinquish his grasp on her waist as he bent down. His free hand was tugging at Reese’s shoe.

“What are you doing?” She asked when he had tugged her shoe off.

“I’m getting your key,” he answered, like it should have been obvious.

“It’s in the other shoe,” she told him. John flushed again, but thankfully his face was turned away from Reese. She and John both pushed on the shoe until it was back on, then Reese lifted her foot and John pulled the other shoe off. He turned it over his palm and caught the silver key, but just barely. He stood up and gripped Reese to his side while he unlocked the door—she was looking down and trying to get her other shoe back on.

John navigated through the Wallace house like it was his own. He guided Reese straight to the kitchen, even going as far as to hoist her onto the counter. Reese flushed at this action, without really knowing why. Perhaps it was his hands gripping her hips, or even the fact that he was able to lift her—wasn’t she heavy? She didn’t like the idea of John knowing how heavy she was—although it struck her that he already knew—after all, he had carried her out of school.

He looked around the kitchen and Reese expected him to ask her where the first aid kit was. John didn’t ask, he just wet a cloth and began to gently scrub off the dry blood. Reese opened her mouth to protest—her open wounds could get infected if that cloth was dirty! Her voice, and her breath, died in her throat. John was close to her—standing between her legs and God was he warm. She sat rigidly on the counter, trying her best not to lean toward him, and allowed him to clean her up. He had his head bowed and held her by the chin or the back of the neck to keep her in place while he softly brushed away dry blood and maybe even some dirt. He was right to hold her like that; she tried to flinch away several times.

When all the dry blood was gone, leaving only angry pink scratches, John lifted his head. Reese usually had to look up at him, crane her neck to initiate eye contact (something she avoided, she preferred to watch his mouth while he talked), but on the counter she didn’t have to. Eye contact just sort of occurred, he looked up and her eyes were there and they were looking at each other. Reese quickly began to feel awkward at the extended eye contact—there was nowhere she could look without making it blatantly obvious that she was avoiding his eyes.

All at once she became aware of her own body—of how John hadn’t removed his hand from the back of her neck yet and how his body was touching both of her inner thighs. The feeling of his breath fanning her face was almost calming—she wanted to shut her eyes, pitch forward and find comfort in his warmth. He felt so safe, so comforting and so welcoming to her. John must have felt the same way about her, because they both were pitching forward with half lidded eyes.

Until the front door was thrown open. Reese let out a sharp gasp and turned her head—John remained silent but leaned away from her immediately, almost as though he had been scalded by hot water. Reese came out of her haze when John’s warmth was removed from her. Both John and Reese stared at Kennedy Brock with evident surprise. He smiled sheepishly at them and shut the door behind him.

“I come, bringing Reese’s Pieces for my favorite part of Reese—her mouth,” Kennedy announced, making his way into the kitchen. He held up the clear plastic bag nearly bursting with orange, yellow and brown candies. He leaned over and placed a chaste kiss to her temple, receiving a backhanded slap to his stomach in return.

“Kenny, stop being such a flirt, you loser.”

John was staring at the two with a blank expression. He couldn’t seem to find control over his body—his mind was too caught on Kennedy’s actions toward Reese.

“Whatever Reese’s Pieces wants, she will get.”

“What did I just tell you?” she reprimanded again, slapping his arm this time. Kennedy grinned in response, but nonetheless pulled his slapped arm closer to his body.

“Alright, I give in just stop hitting me, woman! I come here with candy, no less, to see how my friend is doing, and all she wants to do is smack me around. Is that fair John Oh?” Kennedy turned his careless grin onto his other friend—it slipped from his face instantly.

John wanted to tell Kennedy that yes, he deserved it. In fact, he deserved to be hit by a bus. Reese’s Pieces was his name for her—his alone. It was their thing, just for them. He was so angry—his hands were trembling and twitching at his sides, like they wanted nothing better than to ball up and swing through the air. He was so infuriated that he could hardly think—barely speak.

“I have to go,” he said. It was blunt, steady and vague. His announcement was brash and maybe even a little bitter. He turned on the spot and moved toward the door—leaving Kennedy confused and Reese in a panic.

“Jolly, c’mon, Jolly wait!” She called after him, but to no avail. John shut the door on them and she let out a sigh, her entire form crumpling.

“Was it something I said?” Kennedy asked, trying to lighten the mood. Reese rolled her eyes at her friend and turned her intense stare on him. It was then that Kennedy knew he had done something wrong.

“Yes! Kennedy, you told me yesterday that it was for closure. You can’t just come around me after that and act like this. You can’t flirt, you can’t kiss me—cheek, head, or hair at all! Don’t start playing mind games with me—don’t try and keep me interested, Kenny. Let me go! I want to be your friend; I don’t want to be your friend that you flirt with because that could lead to something else. I’m not Clary!”

Kennedy staggered backward, like Reese had done him some great physical harm. He stared at her incredulously—and with good reason. She was never this outspoken, at least not to him. John had witnessed her freaking out once before, over Kennedy sleeping with Clary, actually. This was all new for Kennedy, scary even.

“I’m sorry, Reese. I don’t think you’re Clary. I’m not trying to make you a friend with benefits, not at all. I’m not playing any mind games with you. I flirt with all of my friends; it’s just the way I am. I shouldn’t have overstepped my boundaries; I should have respected your need for space. I especially don’t want to make things weird with us after your birthday—I want that to be weird free, it was the only present I had to give you.”

Reese flushed and played with the hem of her shirt. She became quite heated whenever he so bluntly brought up her first kiss. She had to agree—she didn’t want that to be awkward. It was a hard feat to accomplish, considering the circumstances. She had a crush on him since she met him—it was hard not to, Kennedy was right, he did flirt with everyone and he was too charming for his own good sometimes—and he had slept with her sister. They were just now beginning to have a real friendship, and then he had to go and kiss her.

And god, that kiss, it had been so... exciting. Reese had been terrified when it was happening—had trembled. She would think of it when she couldn’t sleep. She was fairly certain that eventually the novelty would wear off. Soon she would realign, and this off kilter personality she had taken hold of would fade into a blurry memory.

A silence that didn’t feel uncomfortable at all blanketed the room. Reese bit her bottom lip, like she was prone to doing whenever she thought of the kiss, and Kennedy watched the innocent action. He truly tried to keep himself from thinking that she looked very attractive doing it. Not many people could pull off lip biting—Reese could, she just made it look so damn innocent.

“But why did John leave?” Kennedy asked, already having his suspicions.

“I don’t know,” Reese answered—she had no suspicions. She didn’t want to try and figure it out either; she already had a big enough headache as it was.