🎵 Stand Up - James Bay🎵
Red lights and blue seep through the curtains of Gale’s home.
The music stops and everyone bolts for the nearest exit possible.
She looks through the distressed crowd and finally realizes what’s going on.
Cops.
“Come on!” someone yanks her out of her daze and they escape into the night through the garden.
The alcohol in her body causes her to lag behind the person gripping tightly onto her hand, but as soon as she sees the chaos going on in the front yard her legs pick up and she runs even faster than the person before her.
“Wait!” she is pulled away again and falls on to her back.
She groans and immediately tries to rub the pain away.
“Sorry.”
Everything is dark but she can still see the specks of red and blue lights from the cop’s car.
“What the fuck?” the alcohol slurs her words.
“SHhhh.” A hand covers her mouth but she has barely enough energy to shoo it away.
The leaves rustle and branches poke at her skin.
“Where are we?” her voice is muffled.
The person before her looks down at her half-conscious body.
“What?”
She pulls the hand away from her mouth, “Where are we?”
“In a bush, now shut up or else we’re gonna be found out.”
The scent of cigarette and bitter beer reaches her and her mind slowly recalls to the only person who always seemed to smell like both.
“Jackie?”
She smirks and laughs, “Wassup babe.”
Dani laughs too, but her mouth is too heavy to lift into a smile that it only comes out as a struggled huff of air.
“Let’s go.” Jackie wraps Dani’s arm around her neck and drags her along to Mavis’s car.
“Jesus!” the girl behind the wheel jumps in fright as Jackie knocks on her car window.
“Nope, just me.” Jackie jokes while struggling to keep the mumbling girl in a half-excused standing position beside her, “Mind helping me out here, Mav?”
Mavis quickly jumps into action and carries the lump of drunken Dani into the backseat of her car.
“Get her sobered up before you drop her off.”
“Wait, you’re not coming? I can give you a ride.”
“Nah, I got my own.” Jackie points to her bike, already occupied by a masked driver.
Mavis looks at the creepy guy on the bike, who was now waving at her slowly, and back at Jackie, “Are you sure?”
Her friend only chuckles and squeezes her shoulder in assurance, “Don’t worry, he’s just messing with you. Just go and take care of the drunk in your car before she-“
Dani hurls everything she’s eaten for the night out on Mavis’s backseat and soon the stench of vomit pervades the entirety of her car.
Jackie only laughs as Mavis shouts at her unconscious friend.
***
Dani hugs herself close as the cold night nipped at her skin.
“Tell me again why we can’t eat inside the diner instead?”
Mavis arrives with a bag of takeout.
“Because,” she sits beside Dani on the hood of her car, “One, I need to sober your ass up before I drop you off, and the cold will help with that and two, I opened all my windows to let out the smell of your vomit and I’m not taking the risk of losing my car tonight if anyone chooses to steal it.”
“Who would wanna steal this piece of crap?” Dani bites into her burger with a sassy smile.
Mavis scoffs and zips up her jacket, “Compared to your piece of crap that hasn’t run for a year?”
“Hey,” she frowns, “imma get that thing running soon.”
“Yeah right, you said that last year.” She takes a few fries from the paper bag, “You owe me by the way.”
“Owe you what?”
“The vomit in my car and the food that I had to pay for.”
“Sorry.” Dani laughs with mouth still full of burger.
Mavis looks and smiles at her. She notices the disappearing bruise on her forehead.
“How’s the forehead.”
Her friend stops chewing and drops the burger on her lap, “For god’s sake I told you I bumped my head while fixing my car!”
“Woah, okay. No need to get defensive here-“
“Well, I don’t have to if you guys keep asking about it.”
Mavis sighs and quietly nods.
There are a lot of things people keep from other people, regardless of their relation; whether by friendship or by blood. In the case of Mavis and Dani, they share both; they are best friends and cousins, though no one would have guessed they were at first if you compared how they looked like. One was pale and the other was brown.
Despite their relation, Dani was hiding something and Mavis had an idea of what it was, including the rest of the girls, but they just didn’t know how to approach it.
It started last year, first with the dark circles under her eyes, how red they would always be and how tired they looked whenever she came to school. Second it was her appearance: it was as if she never cared of what she wore, throwing on clothes at the last minute; something out of character for Dani. Then it was the third that scared her friends the most, the bruises.
They appeared on her neck at first but they brushed it off and thought they were hickies and teased her about it, but then they started to grow; from her neck down to her arms. They even caught her in the girl’s bathroom frantically trying to cover them up one time; it was confirmed then that they were more than just love bites.
Mavis and the rest didn’t know how to handle the situation. They saw the signs and they recognised them. They wanted to ask her, but they didn’t know how or if she would even answer them; and if she did answer them, what were they going to do with the information?
So as every helpless teenager does, they sit and watch.
They sit and watch and they suffer, they suffer quietly along with Dani.
Their mouths closed and they deemed themselves completely incapable of doing anything about the situation.
But after graduation last year, Dani looked like she was getting better. She looked more alive, kept together, and no more bruises, which was a great relief for the rest of the girls. Everything was finally done and over with, no more of that silent suffering for them.
But the calm broke and the storm began when the fight happened, the fight between Keith and Christian on the first day of school where they found Dani huddled on the floor between the two angry boys.
They knew Christian had something to do with the fight and the bruises inflicted on Dani. They knew from the very beginning that he had something to do with their suffering, but like they decided ‘what are we gonna do?’
The cold fills in the silence between the cousins.
Dani chews quietly with an added frown on her face.
Mavis watches her breaths turn into little clouds before her.
“Look, we’re just concer-“
“I know you guys are!” Dani snaps.
Mavis looks down on her feet, studying her aging sneakers damaged through years of use.
Maybe it’s time I get a new pair.
“I know you guys are.” Dani mumbles quietly, “But just… let me handle things my own way, okay?” she smiles.
Mavis notices how it’s so small that she could barely see it, even from up close.
She nods at her cousin and copies her smile, “Yeah, okay.”
But Mavis and Dani can’t even believe in their own words.