"Okay Stace, no one is home here now," Isaac paused,"so I want to know the secret." he stared back at himself in the mirror again. With all of his rehearsing he had about fifty different ways to tell her to spill the beans although he knew that he would never force her to tell him.
Pull it together Ike, he thought to himself, worrying never made any problem better. But he couldn't help it. The longer she waited to tell him, the worse he imagined it was. The doorbell rang. Isaac smoothed down his hair and pulled the door open for Stacie,"Hi." he smiled.
"Hi." she replied quietly as she walked into his house.
Isaac's face fell,"What's wrong? I can tell when something's wrong."
Stacie's eyes watered over,"I just realized how much I cared about you..." she trailed off.
Isaac's forehead creased in confusion,"Isn't that a good thing?"
"I haven't been fair to you Isaac. You trust me and yet I keep these awful secrets from you and..." she trailed off again as she tried to muster up all of the courage she had to tell him.
Isaac just stood there frozen. Awful secrets? he thought to himself, They're awful? I knew I wouldn't want to know!
Isaac wrapped his arms around Stacie,"Whatever it is, it can't be that awful."
"It is." she cried onto his shoulder.
"Come on Sta, tell me what it is and I'll be the judge of that okay?" he asked looking in her eyes.
Stacie nodded when she saw that his eyes held caring and understanding.
"Come on..." Isaac guided her into the kitchen and sat down next to her,"I'm ready to listen when you're ready to talk."
Stacie took a deep breath.
"Would you guys cry if I died?" Erica asked Kerri and Zac.
"Are you dying Erica?" Kerri asked in a concerned voice.
Erica laughed,"No, I'm still very much alive. I was just wondering if you guys would cry or miss me."
Kerri nodded,"Yeah, I'd probably cry."
Zac looked at the carpet,"Well, Taylor would but I don't know if I would."
Kerri slapped Zac's arm,"Zac!"
"No, it's okay," Erica said,"at least he was being honest."
"More than you are." Zac mumbled.
Erica sighed,"Zac, don't make assumptions when you only know one side of the story. I was honest. But it's probably just because he's your brother that you take his side. Well, that and you're too young to know any better."
Kerri shifted uneasily,"How about if I died?" she asked in a pitiful attempt to change the subject.
"I am not too young," Zac protested,"and I would take his side even if he weren't my brother!"
"Would you guys cry if I died?" Kerri repeated.
Erica stood up,"Look this is ridiculous. I'm not going to discuss this with you, I'm going to leave."
"So no one would cry?" Kerri questioned.
"You stay, I'll leave." Zac said as he kissed Kerri's cheek,"I have to go home for dinner anyway," he told her,"but I'll call you later."
Kerri sighed,"Okay Zac."
Thunder boomed and the sky darkened,"Oh perfect." Zac muttered as he pulled his jacket slightly over his head and hurried out the door in hopes that he would soon be home.
"Isaac, please say something." Stacie pleaded.
Isaac finally looked at her. He hadn't looked at her for the whole half an hour that she had been telling her story to him,"What do you want me to say?" he asked rudely.
"Anything." she mumbled.
"Well how about, why didn't you tell me sooner?" he yelled,"Why didn't you tell me that for four years you were a fucking drug addict! Why didn't you tell me that for those four years that you had had more sex than the average person with more people than the average person in an average lifetime! Why didn't you tell me? How could you..." he trailed off as emotion choked him.
Years of external and internal torture had poured out of her and onto him. And even though he would have loved to believe that he would have been caring and understanding about anything she could tell him, he wasn't. In a nutshell she had basically told him that the person he had cared about didn't exist. She was a complete stranger telling him her mournful story, sitting next to him in his kitchen. And she sat there expecting him to love her. Well, he didn't know how to do that. His mind was clogged with emotions, none were winnning out. He had to get away, he got up from the table and started to leave the room.
"Isaac, please don't walk away from this." Stacie said to his back.
He turned around and glared at her,"Why not? You tried to." he said harshly.
Stacie lowered her head,"That was my mistake." she mumbled.
"As you were mine." he said numbly as he left the room.
She followed him and grabbed his arm,"Please, don't turn your back on me. Too many people already have. Please Isaac!" she begged.
He searched her eyes,"Please leave." he said.
Tears ran down her face,"If I leave now I'm not coming back." she threatened.
Isaac shrugged and tried to walk away again.
"You don't know what it's like!" she yelled,"Imagine if no one trusted you anymore. Imagine if you always have to look over your shoulder incase someone remembers the old you that you had hid so well! You don't know what it's like to be me! Put yourself in my shoes! Don't leave me!"
He stopped and turned around again,"Why not? Why shouldn't I turn my back on you Stacie? Give me one good reason!" he yelled.
"I love you," she yelled back,"that's why!"
He turned around again,"Get out." he muttered angrily.
She walked towards him briskly and turned him around,"I love you Isaac! Don't push me away please! I love you!" she begged as she put her hands on his face.
He pushed her hands away,"I hate you! You're a whore and you could never in a million years know anything about love!" he exclaimed.
She stood there stunned,"What?"
"I hate you! Get out of my house!" he said louder.
"Isaac..." she started.
"Get the fuck out of my house!" he yelled pointing at the door.
"You don't mean that." she stood up to him.
"Do I have to throw you out? Get the fuck out!" he screamed as tears rolled down his cheeks,"OUT!" he yowled in pain.
Stacie slowly backed away from him.
"Get in your fucking car and leave!" he yelled.
She gasped and grabbed her keys and ran out into the rain.
Isaac fell to the floor as the pain overcame him. She ran out that door and took his heart with him. Was this love? It hurt so much, if he didn't love her it wouldn't have hurt right? He didn't want to know love right then. Not if love was this painful. He didn't want to have a heart, but he knew he did because it hurt so much. She walked out that door and it hurt so much. He knew he would regret saying that he hated her.
Stacie rushed through the streets in her car. The rain was coming down in sheets and pounding against the windshield as the wipers tried frantically to wash it away. The combination of tears with the rain only made it harder for her to see. She wiped at her eyes and sniffed.
Out of the corner of her eyes she could have sworn she saw Zac darting through the rain. She turned back to look. A horn honked and Stacie's attention snapped back to the road.
She slammed on her breaks as she saw the car that was coming out of the intersection.
She heard glass shattering and the crunch of metal against metal and the screaming. Horrible ear-shattering screaming. She felt herself flip over, and again. It was then that she realized that the screaming was coming from her. It all went black.
Moments later she opened her eyes to flashing lights. She was being wheeled into an ambulance. People were barking orders at each other and she had something an her face. An oxygen tank perhaps? She didn't know. Then she felt the pain. Where were her legs? She couldn't feel them.
"Can you hear me?" a man asked as they hooked her up to machines into the ambulance.
"Isaac..." she mumbled half aware that she even spoke. Then she started to close her eyes. She had to get the sentence out. She had to.
" Don't talk and don't close your eyes, stay with me." the man said to her.
"Tell Isaac..." she started to mumble again, but she didn't get it out.
"She's crashing..." the man yelled.
Erica ran down the street. It was really raining. She turned her head as she watched an ambulance fly past her with the sirens screaming. She shook her head as she ran, she hated seeing those things. She always thought it was someone she knew in there.
She walked into her house dripping wet. She sighed as she kicked off her shoes and dropped her keys on the table next to the door. As she started to head up the stairs she thought about soaking in a luke warm bubble bath and then sitting around in a pair of warm, baggy sweats and vegging out with Mike or possibly Stacie.
The phone rang. Erica stood still on the stairs and pondered ignoring it but there was something inside of her that told her to answer the phone. She sprinted down the stairs and lifted the phone from the cradle,"Hello?"
"Erica, it's Aunt Jean..." she said.
"Taylor, it was horrible." Isaac muttered as he ran his hand through his tangled hair.
"I know Ike, I knew the secret." Taylor quietly told his brother.
Isaac looked at him through bloodshot brown eyes,"You knew?"
Taylor nodded,"I know I should have told you when I found out but..."
Isaac held up his hand in an attempt to stop his brother from apologizing,"It's okay, I probably wouldn't have believed you anyway. I mean, hey, I really couldn't even believe it when she told me so, no offense?"
Taylor grinned,"None taken, don't worry."
Erica hurridly put her shoes on as images of her and Stacie flashed through her mind, and her warm bath was no longer even a memory.
She dug around nervously in her pockets for her house keys. She spotted them on the table next to the door where she had dropped them when she entered. She grabbed them and hurried out the door into the freezing wind and rain, she didn't even notice it. She fumbled around and locked the door.
She leapt off of her porch and onto the front walk. She fell forward on her hands. Her shoes scraped the pavement as she picked herself up and started to run across the street in the pouring rain. She splashed through a few huge puddles, splashing water and mud onto her jeans and shirt.
She leapt up the stairs onto the Hanson's doorstep and pressed her finger into the doorbell. She pounded with her fist on the door while continuously ringing the doorbell,"Taylor! Answer the door Taylor! Hurry up! Answer the door! Please hurry! Answer the door! Taylor!" she screamed.
Taylor and Isaac paused their conversation when the doorbell started to ring and someone pounded on the door. They both got up slowly and headed for the door.
"Whoever it is, they're impatient." Isaac muttered.
It was when they reached the front hall that Taylor could hear Erica screaming from the other side of it. He sprinted to the door, unlocked it and pulled it open. He stood there staring at her. Her hair was matted to her face from the rain, mud was splattered all over her clothes and tears and rain were dripping down her face. She was shaking from the cold.
Taylor glanced back at Isaac. Why was she standing there, in the freezing rain, crying and shaking and not talking,"Erica?" Taylor asked.
Erica started to cry harder and her knees buckled and she started to fall on the doorstep. Taylor rushed out into the rain and caught her before she fell. He wrapped his arms around her tightly,"What is it? Did Mike hurt you?" he demanded.
She sniffed and shook her head as she regained her footing,"I didn't know where else to go," she cried as she looked over his shoulder at Isaac,"it's Stacie..."
They ran through the hospital emergency entrance and towards the waiting room. Suprisingly, Isaac was ahead of Erica and Taylor. Oh please God, he thought, please let her be okay.
They reached the waiting room and Erica spotted her aunt and uncle,"Aunt Jean!" she yelled running over to her,"Is she okay? What's going on? Have you seen the doctor?" she asked.
She shook her head sadly,"We know just as much as you."
"Well where's the damn doctor?!" Erica huffed.
"Right here," a voice came from behind her,"I'm Dr. Adams. You're the relatives of Stacie Fink?" he asked.
Stacie's mother and father stood up,"We're her parents." her father said.
The doctor adjusted his glasses,"Mr. Fink, your daughter suffered a concussion and multiple contusions and fractures. She severed some major arteries and fractured her scull. She was internally bleeding when she arrived and..."
All of the medical terms swirled around in Erica's head,"English! Tell us in English!" she yelled.
The doctor sighed and dropped his clipboard to his side,"She was half gone when she arrived, I'm sorry. Perhaps if she hadn't been internally bleeding we might have been able to save her. There was nothing I could do."
Stacie's mother started to cry and her husband wrapped his arms around her and started to cry with her.
"You're supposed to save lives! You're a doctor, that's what you do!" Erica yelled.
"She severed too many arteries. We couldn't stop the bleeding." he explained again.
"But she was alive when she got here!" she pointed out,"Just keep her that way!"
Taylor placed his hands on her shoulders.
"Do you know how much pain she must have been in? Bleeding to death and looking to you for help!" she screamed.
"We did all we could." the doctor explained once again before walking away.
Erica's throat tightened and she swallowed hard. She felt Taylor's embrace from behind her. She glanced at Isaac who was blinking profusely. She looked at her aunt and uncle who were holding each other and crying. The hospital no longer smelt clean and like medicine. The horrible stench of death filled Erica's nostrils,"I'm going to be sick." she muttered breaking away from Taylor and running into the ladies room.
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