The Great Pretender

22: All Shook Up

"Done?"

"Nope. It's only Friday anyways."

Cherish rolled her eyes and returned them to the history text in front of her.

"Is this her?"

She looked up to see Seven holding a picture of Len in his hands. She was stunned for a moment, teetering on the unsure edge of talking about it and exploding. Her hands wanted to jump forward and rip the picture from Seven's hands; Len was hers, hers! But Seven held the picture reverently, as if he was afraid it would disintegrate between his fingers. Somehow she knew he wasn't going to be the insensitive butt-hole he normally was.

"Yeah, that's her," reaching out, she caressed the picture; it was the one she kept taped to her headboard. She swallowed back a lump in her throat, the pain that came whenever she tried to talk about Len. She hadn't talked about her since the day she had told Harper and Delia. Sure, she had mentioned her name in passing once or twice, but actually talking about her? It hadn't been necessary with the people who had known Len.

"She was my best friend," she breathed, and leaned over Seven to get one of the photo albums that she kept in her night table. She handed it to him and looked away; she hadn't shared these moments with anyone, these quiet painful moments in which she visited her Len. She saw Seven smile as he flipped slowly through the pages. "We did everything together." As if he couldn't already tell.

He grinned at a picture of the two of them dancing on the bottle fence at Audrey's place. Cherish flipped the page over quickly, pressing her hand down on the page like it would turn itself over again.

Seven glanced at her cautiously, "You okay?"

"That was the bottle fence," she said quietly shaking her head. "The guys used to line up all their empty bottles and use them for target practice. Len and I used to sit up there whenever Audrey had a party, which was practically every weekend. You can see the entire field from there. Everyone parks by the fence, so there's music from the cars, and drinks in the trucks. It was the perfect spot. Len and I used to dance on the fence."

Her voice cracked and she took a deep breath to steady herself, "The night she died, we were up there. You know, it was my fault..." The tears were surging out of her eyes and she blinked rapidly, trying to force them away.

Seven put the album down softly, "I'm sure it wasn't your fau-."

"No. No it was. There're woods behind Audrey's place, and a road right in front, and I was dancing in the street. If I hadn't been such a stupid shit, she wouldn't have had to jump in the fucking road to save me. So it was my fault... She died because of me."

He didn't care about her, so she knew he wouldn't say some bullshit crap about things happening and it not being her fault. He didn't love her the way the rest of them did, so she knew he would agree that it was her fault.

"God, Rish! It's not your fault," he pressed his shoulder to her comfortingly. "It was an accident! It could have been her in the street, and you jumping to save her. And you would be pissed if she blamed herself."

She couldn't help but smile, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand and leaned back into the pile of pillows, "Gah, Len would totally kick my ass if she was here right now."

Seven laughed as he settled against the pillows beside Cherish, "Well if she was anything like you, of course she would."

"I miss her..."

Ignoring the way Cherish leaned into him, Seven picked up the album in response, flicking through the pictures once more. He laughed as he examined a picture; there were six bodies tangled up in the picture, but only five heads.