MOUSE
Mouse leaned back against his car, watching as Nora shifted uncomfortably from her own position. She was sitting on the ground, her legs crossed neatly in front of her as she drew with her finger in the dust on the concrete. She looked uncomfortable, but Mouse wasn't sure if it was because of the storm or because she'd just been pelted with a million tiny shards of glass. He was not looking forward to picking those out of her skin.
Maxi was leaning against the brick wall, one eye on Nora and the other on the ceiling, which was a bit too creaky for any of their likings. Harrison was studying the graffiti in the stall next to Mouse's. He didn't appear to be all that interested, but it was a distraction.
"Mouse?"
Mouse looked down at Nora, who was already staring at him. "Yeah, sweetheart?" He responded softly, keeping his voice gentle. He had no idea how spooked she was by the storm, so he decided to tread carefully.
"When's the storm supposed to end?"
"Oh, I don't know," Mouse pulled out his phone and checked his text messages. Deano and Whippet both had assumed that he hadn't written down when it was supposed to end, so they'd texted him the details. Cell service was out, so Mouse couldn't directly check the weather. "Uh, in like five minutes," Mouse told her, turning his phone off and putting it away again.
"Okay," Nora leaned her head against the door of the car next to Mouse's. She looked tired.
"So are you excited for school?" Harrison asked all of a sudden, breaking the once again heavy silence.
Nora leapt at the chance of conversation and nodded eagerly, "Yes!" She said.
Harrison, Maxi, and Mouse all laughed. None of them had particularly enjoyed their own years in the public school system, but they couldn't help but be excited as Nora was. Her positive attitude was quite infectious, to say the least.
"What are you most excited for?" Harrison continued the conversation, knowing all too well that he was distracting her from the raging weather outside.
"I'm not sure. Learning, I guess, but also making friends and maybe sports. But I don't know what you guys have for sports," Nora responded.
"Football, swim team, cricket team, cheer leading, tennis, golf, cross country, and track," Maxi recited, having gone to the same school as Nora would be attending.
"Well what are you going to choose to do, then?" Mouse added himself into the conversation.
"Maybe I'll try-oh, I just remembered that your football is actually soccer. So maybe soccer, and swim team, and cheer leading, and the running sports. I don't know what I would have time for, but that would be what I would choose," Nora said with a wistful smile, "I did track at my old school in seventh grade, but I only went to the first meet because I got hit in the face with a discus and broke my jaw."
Mouse was about to respond, but he had to do a double take. Harrison beat him to responding. "What?!" He exclaimed.
Nora shrugged, "It's okay, now. I couldn't do any sports for three months and I had to eat everything from a straw for a while, but that's about it."
"How long is a while?" Maxi questioned.
"A month."
"I'm more concerned about the fact that you broke your jaw on a discus," Mouse interceded before the other guys could ask anything more.
"Well, it was sort of my fault," Nora told them, blushing slightly, "I was waiting to throw, and I was leaning against a pole in the court. And a stray discus went flying and it bounced off of the pole, and then went through the mesh netting, and then hit me in the face."
"Wow. Talk about freak accident," Mouse chuckled.
"I know, right?" Nora laughed.
Mouse heard a loud, moaning shudder from the structure they were sitting underneath, and then absolute silence. His ears relished in the noiseless environment, and his whole body began to relax. They were safe. They could leave, and then finally deal with Nora's wounds and the broken patio door, which would have to be replaced.
"Do you think we can go upstairs now?" Harrison asked.
"I'm sure we can," Mouse stood from his position and held out a hand to Nora, which she did not accept. He watched her carefully as she pushed herself off of the ground, wincing, and swayed slightly as if she were about to collapse.
"Alright?" Mouse asked her in concern.
"Yep," Nora nodded, popping the 'p' in her word. She steadied herself, and then lead the way to the car park entrance.
Mouse, Harrison, and Maxi filed after her, watching her closely as she swung the door open and trotted out into the once again sunny day.
NORA
Looking around at the damage and destruction outside of the underground car park, Nora's jaw dropped. She stopped dead and stared at a huge oak tree that had, previously, been upright. It now was lying sideways across the driveway, fencing the apartment complex in. There was a trickle of flood water coming out of the storm drains, but, thankfully, not much.
Branches littered the street like a spiky brown and torn green carpet. A tree had fallen on top of a neighbor's car a few apartments away, as well.
"I wonder if Rosie is alright," Nora said softly, looking around her at the damage dealt by the storm.
"She has a storm cellar," Mouse was quick to reassure her, which she was grateful for.
Harrison broke away from the group, striding to the shattered main apartment doors and stepping delicately through the glass, careful not to cut himself. Maxi followed, with both Mouse and Nora close on his tail. Thankfully, most of the windows hadn't been knocked in.
They proceeded down the hallway carefully, talking quietly to each other and the neighbors as people stepped outside of their living areas and surveyed the damage. Nora was quick to notice that the side facing the ocean had fared much worse than the other side.
Mouse's own door had broken off of one hinge, and was hanging limply in the hallway. The brass knocker had fallen off of it when the hinges had broken. Nora looked for the knocker and found it protruding out of a wall. She cringed.
The carpet was soaked and soggy, but the television was still on and looked quite unharmed. The fridge door was hanging open, having been blown by the wind, and the cabinet with the paper plates had been blown open. Its contents were strewn across the whole place.
Nora walked around the glass and down the hallway, checking first her bathroom to find nothing damaged, save for a gurgly shower head, and then she checked her room. The window, thankfully, had not been broken. But, it had leaked. Water had spilled from the ledge down onto her dresser and some of the stuff on top of it.
"Aww," She complained as she walked over and began to look through what was damaged and what was not.
"What?" Mouse appeared in her doorway, "Oh, your window leaked?"
"Yeah," Nora pulled out a soggy photo of her posing at the beach with Talia that she'd gotten on one of her first days at Bondi.
"Sorry, Kid."
"That's alright. Not your fault," Nora set the photo aside and began to look through the other stuff. She pulled out another photo, this one of her and her parents.
Her mom was smiling at the camera, her skin wrinkled and weathered by the Iowan sun and her hair blowing around her face crazily. Her dad looked just as happy, little crows feet at the sides of his eyes all crinkled up as he placed a heavy, large hand on Nora's shoulder. Nora herself was also grinning at the camera, her eyes dancing as the photo caught her midway between a burst of laughter. In the background, Nora spotted her brother making a crazy face at the photographer.
And, oh! her brother. How she missed Aaron and his crazy jokes and fun times. If only he hadn't left her as well.
And not in the way her parents had. A day after their death, he'd literally just disappeared. Nora hadn't heard from him since.
And her other brother, Devon, had died with her parents. Nora could still recall the look on his face in perfect detail as he stared at her in horror. She shuddered involuntarily. Their deaths were her fault.
"Nora?"
Mouse's hand gently touched Nora's bicep and she flinched, hard. But instead of pulling away like she expected him to, Mouse just tightened his grip and pulled her into a hug. "What's going on in that little head of yours, hmm?" He asked gently.
Nora didn't respond. She was too busy in her head, thinking about her original family. Devon, Aaron, Mom and Dad.
"Nora?" Mouse's voice suddenly sounded muffled, like Nora was underwater.
Like she was back in the car.
"It's my fault!" She gasped, her whole body collapsing into Mouse, "I was distracting him! It was me who turned the music up. It was my fault!"
Nora thought she heard Mouse ask, "What's your fault?" But she wasn't sure. Everything was so muffled. Everything was strangely focusing and unfocusing.
Nora's feet lifted off of the ground and all of a sudden she felt a soft surface under her bum. Her bed, a small part of her realized. She was sitting on her bed.
"It's my fault because I turned the music up too much. And then Dad got distracted, and then when the car hit us we fell off the bridge. It's my fault, it's all my fault," Nora gasped.
Mouse's arms around Nora went stiff, and Nora realized that this was the moment he got mad at her. This was the moment he called her a murderer and kicked her out. Her best friend and nearly her whole family, save one brother who'd abandoned her. Clearly, she wasn't destined to have relationships.
"Don't say that, and you're not a murderer," Mouse murmured softly, "You're alright, Nora. You're safe here."
Had she said that all aloud?
"But they drowned," Nora whimpered, "They drowned because of me."
"No, they didn't. How old were you when it happened, Nora?"
"F-five."
"You were so young, doll, and I'm so sorry it happened. It's not your fault, okay? It never was. A car rammed into you, didn't it?"
Nora nodded, sniffling. Mouse's voice was becoming easier to hear.
"So you have one brother alive?" Mouse asked.
Nora shrugged, "I think. Aaron disappeared after Mom and Dad and Devon died."
Mouse sighed. He rested his head atop Nora's and pulled her closer. She snuggled into him deeply, relishing in the heat from his body and relaxing in his comfort. It wasn't her fault. It wasn't her fault.
And for the first time since she must have been five years old, Nora allowed herself to well and truly relax.