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Chapter 5: (Sh)It Follows
"Huh." Stavo protruded his lower jaw and nodded in exaggerated fashion. "Someone who appreciates my humor and intellect. I could see why you tried to clock her, Brooke. That's legit competition."
***
Leslie narrowed her eyes, resigned to her fate. "Fucking cop," she muttered, letting herself for the first time in her years of activism be taken by the Man.
-Stavo and Leslie
Brooke fixed Stavo with dagger eyes, regretting this gambit more and more by the minute.
***
"Save your slurs for somebody else."
With one final nod in Teague's direction, Theodora frogmarched Leslie out of the common hall.
-Brooke and Theodora
Without a word, Teague went into the kitchen, and retrieved a set of gloves.
Laying the Buck knife on the table, he started going over mentally what he would need to attempt this. He'd tried this several times, on a whim, after watching several videos on YouTube.
He'd need a fine powder, a makeup brush, paper, and some tape.
Sawyer
"It would be hyperbole to call Brooke Competition, Stavo." Sawyer smiled lovingly, flipping a sly bird to Brooke
When the two exited the common hall, Leslie asked, "So, what's my cell, warden? My cabin? And whose gonna watch over me? The Mexican gangster you've welcomed into your graces or the closeted candy CEO?"
She actually kind of hoped Fitz would be her night-watch. They'd gotten so well together not long ago, maybe she would be able to smooth-talk him into freeing her. Where was he, anyway?
***
"Please, don't stop this," Stavo said with a devilish smile. "Hurl some 'Yo momma' jokes while you're at it. It's probably gonna be a long walk."
-Leslie and Stavo
"It's bad form to speak ill of the dead Stavo," Brooke said immediately.
Maybe that was in bad taste.
Oh well.
***
"The 'Mexican gangster' is not here on my invitation, I assure you," said Theodora, "As for Mr. Smith, I understand he's currently being martyred for our sins."
As they approached the ring of cabins, she continued, "Yes, your cabin. I'm not going to dump you into a ditch and bid you goodnight. This is for your safety as much as anybody's. Even if the killer isn't back with all those others, when word spreads about this 'chase' of yours, you'll be swarmed with questions, probings and worse."
She did a double-take, "And don't think I'm leaving you alone either. Heaven no."
-Brooke and Theodora
Stavo glared at Brooke, smile gone in an instant. "I suppose. Same for addicts."
***
"For my own safety," Leslie nodded, not at all buying this. "Just like the serial killer was locked up for his own safety. Right. I used to think you'd be a good fit for politics but considering how bad you are at this double-speak thing, I take that back."
-Stavo and Leslie
Sawyer
"You both have dead parents?" She asked softly.
She fiddled with her fingers before I speaking.
"Do you think you'll be able to move past it?" She asked, hoping her parents would be able to cope when the time came.
Brooke looked askance at Stavo, "She isn't an addict, she's in..."
Sawyer spoke up.
"...recovery."
At least she hadn't interrupted to ask them the meaning of Christmas.
"No, honey, my mother isn't dead, she's just dead to the world 90% of the time. It's a touchy suspect. As for Stavo, his Dad is alive, well and contributing to Lakewood's thriving economy of useful police."
***
Theodora was well past caring...
Or she thought she was.
"You...thought I'd do well in politics?" she asked, in as measured a voice as she was capable of managing.
-Brooke and Theodora
Sawyer
"But Mayor Maddox is dead right?" She asked.
"In fairly spectacular fashion," said Brooke shortly, "It caused something of a stir..."
She looked Sawyer over, "Your interested in this...why?"
Sawyer
"I just want to know that the death of someone that important to you wasn't the end. That you can move on." She said.
"Yeah, once upon a time," Leslie said morosely as they approached her cabin. "We need more women of color in power and I thought you could get shit done." She looked the vice principal over. "I see I was wrong."
And so she entered the cabin, frustrated with her captivity. Fortunately, Leslie still had her journal. She got to writing.
***
Stavo glanced at Sawyer, surprised at the dark turn this conversation took. "You can." He nodded, reminiscing about his mother, Ignacio, Micah--he hadn't even been able to mourn Micah tonight.
"You won't be the same but you'll move on." His eyes returned to the way ahead. "For better or for worse."
-Leslie and Stavo
Sawyer
"Even the death of your child?" Sawyer asked Brooke and Stavo.
"Mr. Smith seems to be handling it well."
"Powerless, am I?" asked Theodora, "The sad fact is, Leslie Adon, I'm probably the most powerful Black woman in the county."
It wasn't really anything to boast about, though, and she knew it. Still, she could at least be proud of her own advancements.
"Running a school is every bit as taxing as serving in public office, sometimes moreso."
Though she had, once, dreamed of something bigger. In college she had fancied herself studying civics instead of sciences, learning the Constitution, the rights of the people, how to argue in a court of law, how to defend and how to prosecute. She'd imagined herself sitting at a desk, an American flag over her shoulder, perhaps a photograph of Thurgood Marshall on the bookcase, next to a portrait of her grandmother...
But college was expensive enough, and her future was too tenuous to put her money in dreams so tenuous. So education it had been, and education she had made her own, to the best of her ability.
Nights like tonight, she wondered if it was enough.
"Revolution is all well and good, my dear, but it's nothing if you can't govern the pieces when the dust is settled," she sighed as they approached the cabin, "Nobody sings songs for the sweepers, true, but we're just as important."
She paused, before saying again, "Maybe moreso. Or else revolution would never end."
***
"Usually for worse," said Brooke, thinking, maybe meanly of her father, of the void his death had left in her. Of the regrets, the guilt, the shame...
She'd had unfinished business with every one of them...some more painful than others.
"It's not the kind of thing that goes away either. It festers and it boils and it makes a general mess for a long while until, eventually, you start forgetting about them, all except for those things that hurt the most...their jokes, their insults, the promises they made, or that you made to them, the schemes you cooked up, with them and against them...the things you did to them, the things they did to you...for you."
She turned to Sawyer, "Eventually, I guess those go away too. But I haven't quite got there yet."
-Theodora and Brooke
Sawyer
Sawyer would nod quietly, having a lot to think about. She hoped when the day came her parents would be able to lean on each other. She had done her research and the death of a child tends to end most marriages.
"You might not even have to worry about that," Stavo spoke up, contriving a somehow morose and positive outlook. "With a killer on the loose, life could be so short, you won't have time to forget. But we're going to a criminal's hideout in the middle of the night with said killer on the loose, so I guess we already know that."
Sawyer
"You always know just what to say Stavipoo!" She squealed hugging him
"Oh, I swear to Christ!" Brooke whirled around on the girl, "Are you for real or are you just trying to drive me insane because at this point, I honestly don't know! Either way: great job!"
Sawyer
"Such a bitter shrue." Sawyer commented rolling her eyes at Brooke.
"Do you hate happiness?"
Noah
"We should get down, I git something to take care of."
Brooke narrowed her eyes, "Hate is a destructive void that sucks down everything in its path. So, no, I don't hate happiness, I'm just suspicious of your happiness."
She slowed down, looking from one of them to the other, "Frankly, honey, I don't see much to be happy about."
***
"Get down?" asked Zach, "You mean...right now?"
Well, this was awkward. Wasn't sure where it came from either, but Noah usually knew best...
"Oh..." he realized, his shirt half over his head, "You mean get off the roof. Right. Yeah. I knew that."
-Brooke and Zach
Sawyer
"Of course you wouldn't, spoiled little princess like you." She said, the venom dripping from her words.
"I'm walking with a cute boy to hold onto, it's called a silverlining."
Noah
Noah watched in horror as the living greek statue began to strip, He can't possibly be that dumb can he? He thought to himself.
"While your willingness to have sex with me is flattering, yes I meant off the roof."
"You've been desperately pursuing aforementioned 'cute boy' all day," said Brooke, "Hell, you might have walked out of the sea, fully formed, with no goal in mind but seducing a man several leagues out of your...league."
She paused at a heavy overhang of cypress trees, debating whether or not she could ethically get away with telling Sawyer to get in first, and whether it mattered.
"Surely, there must be someone you have more in common with?" she asked, "Snap, perhaps? Or Crackle? Even Pop?"
***
Zach cleared his throat, "Oh. Yeah."
He looked around, "That was...uh...that's pretty obvious, looking back. I'm sorry, I've been distracted.'
He peered over the roof.
"I...I'm straight," he said, "Not that it matters if I wasn't, but I am. I mean, for all the good it's done, right?"
Painful laughing noise, hastily stifled.
Zach drops off the roof, "Do you want me to catch you, or did I just make it weird?"
-Brooke and Zach
"Hey," Nicodemus pulled Phyllis aside, honestly dumbfounded by their success. "That was some nice surgering there, sister."
***
"Maybe one of the Keebler elves?" Stavo quipped, before dismissing the whole thing. "Leagues are overrated, Brooke. We're probably not in the same league, take that as you will. Noah is never in the same league as his girlfriends. Micah and Carl were in so different leagues that Micah was playing polo and Carl football."
He looked down at Sawyer, still desperate to get her off his arm. "That doesn't give you an opening, by the way, so please don't take this out of context."
-Nicodemus and Stavo
Sawyer
"Oh I'm sorry do I have to wait for you to be in a coma before I start dating him?" She asked coldly referencing Jake.
"Small town Malibu Barbie."
Brooke turned to Sawyer, aghast, "Is that what you think this is?" she gestured from herself to Stavo, "I...shacked up with him because my flavor of the month was comatose and subsequently dead?"
She took a step closer, heedless for the moment of the task at hand, "If that were true, little girl... What does that say about you? I'm clearly not holding him prisoner."
Sawyer
Sawyer stepped closer as well, staring roght at the girl's breasts as she was not tall enough to make eye contact with her.
"You wanna go for round two bitch?"
Brooke looked down at her, "Do you have any idea how sad this looks? Tiny girl desperate to feel your High School Musical fantasy, cottons onto the most obvious hunk in the vicinity and decides she's got herself a love triangle! Are you deluded or just lonely?"
***
"Well, I'm not sure I did any 'surgering', really," said Phyllis, pulling her coat back on and nodding to the door, "But it's good to be useful."
She started out of the infirmary, watching the retreating trio of father, son and whatever Tracy was.
"...I think I'll make a habit of it."
-Brooke and Phyllis
Sawyer
And that comment was all it took, Sawyer's nails swiped at Brooke's cheek, clawing her drawing blood.
"Ugly outside, Ugly inside."
Brooke staggered back, pressing a hand to her face.
Not the time, killer on the loose, don't do anything stu...
"Little bitch!"
And here they went again, Brooke belting Sawyer across the face.
"I do not have time!"