Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s not like it’s hard for Courtney to sneak out of the house most evenings after dinner. There are more than enough people to distract her parents, given there’s still six kids living at home (Kathryn moved away for college. Lucky) – and besides, they’re too busy arguing and screaming and yelling at each other all the time anyway. It’s not like anyone is paying attention to Courtney as she walks towards the back of the house downstairs and ducks into the laundry and out the side door.

She realised how easy it was to sneak out about the same time the yelling started, not long after school went back at the end of last Summer. It’s late January now, and as Courtney ducks under the window line to move up the side of the house, she shivers slightly. She probably should’ve brought a jacket – she isn’t sure why she forgot, she brought one the last two nights – but she’s already out of the front garden and passing by their neighbour’s house so she can’t exactly go back now. Maybe she just won’t stay out long tonight.

Courtney’s house is only the third back from the park at the end of the street, so she doesn’t need to go far. The park is well-used during the day, with a decent playground and a handful of weathered picnic tables and chairs, but it’s empty at this time of night, when the sun still sits just above the horizon but the streetlights have flicked on to bathe the spaces below them in garish yellow. She’s been coming out here at this time for a few months, now, and she doesn’t think she’s ever come across another person out at the same time.

As always, she heads straight for the platform at the top of the slide in the centre of the playground. She climbs the ladder two steps at a time – the playground is definitely designed for people much younger than her – before clambering inside to sit on the platform, side pressing up against the wall and legs curled up against her chest. The little plastic room, of sorts, is perfect for hiding: two-and-a-half sides are fully enclosed, and the one-and-a-half open face back over towards the picnic tables, away from the road. It’s a little warmer under the plastic roof, too.

The quiet is why she comes to this park. It’s nothing like her home, where everything is always loud. It never used to bother her – she’s not exactly a quiet person herself – but it’s just getting too much. She can handle her younger brothers – Conrad and Clarke – laughing and squealing as they play with toys together. She can kind of handle KC always loudly grumbling at everyone to shut up so he can study, even though she thinks he’s boring and he could just go and study upstairs where he has an entire bedroom to himself. And it’s not like Kami and Kari are exactly loud, but they do always tell her she’s too much of a baby to hang out with them and kick her out of her own damn bedroom she shares with Kari, even though they could just go and use Kami’s downstairs instead.

But then the yelling started. Her mother has always complained – about Courtney’s grades, and her friends, and her clothes (even though most of them are Kari and Kami’s hand-me-downs), and telling her she’s not allowed to do this or that or anything – but it’s got louder, and now she yells at her Dad too about church and his job and his friends and her job… and now her Dad nags back, too, and it never seems to stop.

And God forbid she ever be upset about it all at home. Then she’s an ungrateful brat and Kami and Kari laugh at her and call her a baby and still won’t let her in her bedroom.

She sniffs quietly, roughly reaching up to wipe across her cheek with the back of her hand. Maybe she is a stupid baby crying just because her parents are yelling but why does she have to be the one that’s always doing the wrong thing and the odd one out that everyone makes fun of or ignores-

“Hey, are you okay?” a young male voice snaps through the thoughts in her mind, and she feels herself immediately tense as her hand shoots down to press against the platform, preparing to push herself up so she can jump back down over the stairs and run away.

When she glances up, though, to see a guy… maybe a couple of years older than her? His brow is furrowed in concern, and he takes a step back, seemingly scared by her tense response.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to freak you out, I’m not being creepy or anything I just-” he rushes out an explanation, before glancing down for a moment and scuffing his foot against the rubber playground base and running a hand through his hair. “I’m Shayne, I live just down the street, I come out here for a walk most evenings and I’ve seen you here a few nights in a row and you always look upset and I just- I wanted to make sure you’re okay, I guess. Sorry if that’s weird. I can go.”

When he glances back up to her, now looking hesitant and apologetic, she slowly lifts her hand back up from the platform and relaxes her body. It might be stupid – her Mum would tell her she’s being stupid – but something tells her it’s okay. She doesn’t think she’s seen him before, and she does know most people on the street, but…

“Are you new to the street? From the family that moved into number 8 at Christmas?” she asks, hearing her own voice come out a little tense.

“Yeah. Moved here from Arizona. Dad’s Air Force, got posted to the base here and military owns that house for families that get posted here with kids too old to actually live on-base,” he answers, a little awkwardly, before abruptly turning his head to the side, “but you… probably don’t care about that.”

“Makes you less of a stranger,” she quips back, trying to force her voice to sound more normal and watching as he responds with a light laugh, looking back to and smiling up at her. His laugh sounds like it would be infectious, but her mind is still stewing in discomfort.

“I’m guessing… you live nearby too?” he asks, hesitantly, dragging her back to the present. She nods.

“Yeah. Number 12. Guess we’re almost neighbours. And I’m Courtney,” she replies, a little disjointed. He nods gently in response, before shifting awkwardly on his feet. It makes her realise that, as much as they’re both clearly too old for the playground, the platform is at his shoulder height and he’s having to crane his neck to look up at her. “Come join me up here?”

“Is that… are you sure?” he asks, hesitantly. She shrugs.

“Yeah, whatever. If you were gonna murder me you would’ve by now,” she shakes her head, before shuffling forward to let her legs hang down off the open side of the platform, side leaning heavily into the edge of the slide beside her as she adds, in a mumble, “and it’s not like anyone would miss me anyway.”

Shayne is already clambering up the stairs to her side when she says it, and she doesn’t expect him to have heard. He doesn’t say anything immediately, as he shifts until he’s sitting beside her, legs hanging off the edge of the platform and body turned just a little to face her.

“I highly doubt that’s true,” he says, after he settles. It makes her shudder, shoulders tensing up as she looks down and to the side, away from him.

She’s not really sure what to say to that, so she stays silent, keeping her gaze fixed on the slide-wall beside her. She feels the silence grow awkward after only a few seconds, but it’s another couple of minutes before he breaks it.

“Is stuff happening at home that you want to get away from?” he asks, carefully. She sighs heavily.

“Yeah. Too many siblings but I’m the odd one out everyone ignores. Mum and Dad won’t stop fighting. Mum won’t stop telling me everything I’m bad at,” she mutters, hearing the way he sighs softly in response.

“I’m sorry you’re dealing with that. I guess it’s… nice and quieter out here?” he offers. His voice is sympathetic and gentle and she feels tears springing to her eyes again. Ugh. She’s such a baby.

“Quiet. But I’m still alone,” she mumbles, knowing her voice sounds teary. She feels him shift beside her, although he never touches her as he does.

“I mean… you’re not alone now if you don’t want to be. I’m here,” he tells her, reassuring. She turns herself even further away from him before she reaches her hand up to wipe the tears from her cheeks, silently praying he somehow hasn’t noticed she’s crying like an idiot.

“I’ll probably never see you after tonight,” she mutters.

“Nah,” he shoots back, immediately, his tone light, “we’re almost neighbours, like you said. And… I haven’t seen you around school at all, but there is a couple of high schools here and I’ve only been going since after the holiday break. Unless you’re home-schooled, I guess…”

It makes her panic. He’s a damn high schooler and somehow he’s thought her stupid, immature, dumb ass is too. He’s definitely going to be weirded out and tell everyone that she’s a loser crying on a damn kids playground-

“Not home-schooled anymore. But you’re definitely never going to want to go near me again because I’m a stupid middle schooler and crying like a baby-” she starts, because it’s not like lying will save her now.

“Hey, no,” he cuts her off, his voice turning insistent, “being upset about stuff happening with your family is normal. Better to cry than push stuff down and have it explode later. And middle school doesn’t make you a baby either. What grade?”

“Eighth,” she mutters.

“See? You’re only half a year from high school anyway.”

“My sisters say that hanging out with middle school kids means all your friends will never talk to you again because you’re not cool enough,” she explains, matter-of-factly. Maybe Arizona is just different and he doesn’t know-

But he immediately scoffs.

“The group of friends I’ve been hanging out with at school don’t really care about all the… “cool” stuff. And I mean, there’s some sophomores in our group that don’t care that most of us are freshmen. Eighth grade is basically the same,” he argues. Courtney can’t be bothered to argue back – he doesn’t really have a reason to lie. Maybe his friends just really don’t care.

And screw it. She could do with someone to talk to out here.

“If you say so,” she lets her voice turn lighter, a little joking, as she carefully shuffles back around to let herself face him again. She can feel the tears dry on her cheeks, and she awkwardly reaches up to brush at them as she meets his eyes and watches him give her a reassuring smile.

“Not that I’m like, forcing my company on you, if you want me to leave you alone I will. But… don’t try and convince me I don’t want to hang out with you, yeah? Meeting the neighbours is meant to be good and all. And just like, seeing you upset three days in a row in the same place and not saying anything felt rude,” he muses, Courtney shrugging lightly in response.

“I know who everyone on the street is but I’m not really friends with any of the kids. Most of them are younger. My brothers are friends with some of them.”

“How many siblings do you have?” he asks, head tilting to the side. She rolls her eyes.

“Six. Or well, I think technically more, but six that aren’t step-siblings I’ve never met. Mormons,” she explains, watching as his eyebrows raise in intrigue. He doesn’t look as shocked as she expects, his face quickly settling back to normal.

“That’s cool. A bunch of my friends back in Arizona were Mormon too, although I think… no more than 5 kids. Are all your siblings living with you at the moment? Is that part of the reason it’s so… loud, but you’re kinda left out?”

“Oldest sister has moved out to college, but the rest are still there, yeah. KC is a senior so he’s always studying. My older sisters Kami and Kari have each other so they tell me to go away. And my brothers are both still in elementary school and they play with each other…” she shakes her head, suddenly realising she’s talking about herself too much. “Do you have siblings?”

“Two older brothers. Technically they’re step-siblings, I guess, but I’ve always lived with them and I think my Dad legally adopted them. Brian is a senior too, but he’s staying back in Arizona to finish school before he moves over here to join us, and Chris is in college in Colorado… so just me and my parents at the moment,” he shrugs, “it’s too quiet.”

“What do you do when you’re not at school or talking to random girls crying on playgrounds?” she asks, Shayne immediately laughing at the question. She feels herself smile involuntarily. His laugh is so happy.

“Okay, this is the only time I’ve approached a random person on a playground other than when I was like 5 years old trying to make friends with other 5-year-olds on playgrounds,” he defends, his tone joking, before he continues, “I like doing sport stuff, I used to play soccer, I’ll probably join whatever team they have at school here too. And video games and stuff, and the whole Marvel series is cool – like, the movies obviously, but one of my new friends here is super into all the old comics and he’s already leant me some and I think I might get into that, too.”

“Marvel stuff is really cool,” she agrees, feeling the words bubble happily out of her as she rushes to continue, “I have some of the old comics, and some like- old Disney comic and movie storyboard stuff, I really like all the art in them and I like trying to draw similar stuff- my great-aunt was a Disney animator, she used to give me heaps of that kind of stuff.”

“That’s really cool. I’m liking the comics because you can see how like… how different the old stuff is to the new movies. And I think I like the new movies better, and apparently they’re gonna do a heap of TV shows in the next phase that sound really cool, but the older stuff is more… interesting, I guess, if that makes sense?”

It launches them into a seemingly endless conversation that twists deep into their shared love of Marvel, and sport – she likes soccer too, although her parents never let her join the team at school because they always have to travel for the games and it’s too expensive – and they discover they both like theatre but hate how intense the other theatre kids are.

“I joined when I started high school in Arizona but like… it was a lot. And then Dad got re-posted here so I had to move anyway,” he explains, shrugging, his voice a little disappointed. It makes her tilt her head, shifting to face him a bit more directly.

“Have you had to move around a lot?” she asks.

“More than I’d like to. When I was a kid he was on two year postings, and sometimes he got renewed in the same place, but I never really lived in the same place for more than three years. Arizona was three-and-a-half, that was the longest,” he answers, his tone turning much darker than it has been, “kinda hoping we stay in Mansfield now. It’d be nice to do high school in one place like Brian got to. But I guess I’ll find out in a couple of years.”

“Is it likely you could stay?” she asks. She’s seen the military kids come and go – although a lot of them go to the schools on the other side of town, she hasn’t known many that actually went to school with her.

“More likely than it’s been before. Dad’s old enough he could retire. And like, there’s non-military stuff here he could do too. But it still kinda… I don’t really know how it works,” he shrugs, before shaking his head.

It brings them to a natural pause in conversation, and Courtney feels herself suddenly shiver. She hadn’t noticed how cold it got or how dark it is, the sun firmly below the horizon and the yellow streetlights providing the only illumination. She glances down to her watch, but she can’t see it in the dark and she didn’t bring her stupid excuse for a phone anyway. Her parents won’t let her get a smartphone until high school.

“Almost nine,” Shayne speaks up, a moment later, and she glances over to see he’s evidently pulled out his (smart)phone to check, “is that… a problem? Will you get in trouble?”

“I’ve been doing this for months and no one has ever noticed I’ve gone. Although I usually sneak back in before now,” she shrugs, carefully pulling her legs up from under the railing to press against her chest again. “I… guess I should go.”

“Sure. But hey, it was nice to meet you and chat. And… you can always to tell me to go away if you wanna be alone. But I go for a walk most nights, so if you are out here again tomorrow…” he trails off, voice turning awkward, but Courtney nods.

Part of her doesn’t believe him… but she guesses it won’t hurt.

“If they’re yelling, I’ll be here. So I’ll probably be here,” she tells him, simply, glancing over and watching his face twist in sympathy.

“Well… I don’t wanna say I hope you are here, then. But… yeah. I hope stuff is okay tonight, and I might see you tomorrow,” he tells her, still a little awkward, clearly unsure what to say. Courtney simply nods, gesturing for him to move back down the ladder before her when they both move towards it.

“Thanks for… this. It was nice to meet you too,” she tells him, rocking back on her feet slightly when they stand just at the base of the playground for a moment. She’s dreading leaving, but she knows she has to.

“’Course. And I should probably go home too. So… yeah. See you tomorrow? Or another time sometime, anyway?” he offers a final goodbye, Courtney merely giving a silent nod as they both turn and move back down the street. They do need to go the same way, given he is in fact two houses up from hers, but he walks ahead of her as she carefully slows her movements so she can sneak back along the side of the house without anyone seeing her approaching.

She hadn’t told Shayne, but part of Courtney is terrified she’s been so long that everyone will be there to scream at her the second she steps back inside. But, instead, she steps inside to an empty laundry, the quiet noises of her Mum upstairs putting her brothers to bed and her Dad talking to KC in the kitchen echoing through the thin walls of the house.

There’s a load of washing just finished in the dryer, and she launches at the opportunity, grabbing the laundry basket off the counter to empty the dryer into it, carrying it casually to her side back out into the living area where Kami seems to be silently watching TV while the (older) boys talk. They all glance up at her, but she’s had a walk up the hallway to work out an excuse.

“Was just looking for my track shorts for practice tomorrow and I saw the dryer was done… may as well fold it all?” she offers, casually. It’s not like it’s out of character. She does step in to do laundry a lot, because it’s low key the easiest chore but seems to get her the most praise.

“Sure, thanks Courtney,” her Dad tells her, simply.

There’s always a tiny sense of accomplishment when she manages to sneak out and back in without anyone being any the wiser – but tonight, somehow, it feels a little bit bigger.

Chapter Text

Courtney considers telling her friends at school about Shayne – when Isabel keeps bragging about how the soccer team that she, Yasmin and Hollie were all in won the north Californian interschool competition – just to brag that she’s friends (kind of) with a high schooler. But they’d ask how she met him, and why, and her boyfriend Carter is already mad that she was talking to Johnny in geography before lunch (ugh, gross, she’s over Johnny – he’s just a friend now) so it doesn’t feel like a good idea to mention another male friend.

“That shirt makes your boobs look even smaller,” Carter points out, after lunch, as he walks beside her to history. It makes her heart sink as she glances down – she liked this shirt. Ugh. – but she quickly twists together a response.

“My Mum made me wear it,” she shoots back, defensively.

“Still,” he shrugs lazily, “I don’t want to date a 12 year old.”

“Yeah that’d make you weird. I’m not 12,” she argues, watching him roll his eyes and step into the classroom ahead of her, letting the door fall closed immediately behind him instead of holding it. Ugh.

She’d break up with him if she had a better replacement, but she doesn’t.

Courtney has track after school, at least – the one sport her parents let her sign up for – and it’s a break from all the shit. Natalie is the only one of her friends also in track, but she’s too busy flirting with Johnny to pay attention to her, so she just does her own thing. And she definitely doesn’t care that Natalie is flirting with Johnny, she just kinda judges her for it because there’s a reason Johnny is her ex. He’s a drama queen.

But, of course, she has to go home after track. Her Mum picks her up, and they need to pick up Conrad and Clarke from their own after school sport at the elementary school – they get to play soccer – but their school is a ten-minute drive from hers.

“Why on earth did your father let you out of the house wearing that? Cover yourself up!” her Mum snaps, not twenty seconds after she gets in the car. It makes Courtney squirm.

“I’m literally wearing my track clothes, Mum…” she trails off.

“We shouldn’t even let you do that, completely inappropriate, they’re working you girls up to be stupid, useless wives-” she starts ranting. Courtney immediately shuts up, shirking back into her seat and trying to block it out as she stares blankly out the car window.

It doesn’t seem to stop all night – although she changes her yelling to direct at her Dad, it’s still all about everything Courtney has apparently done wrong now – and by the time Courtney is quietly shutting the laundry door behind her after dinner with tears rolling down her cheeks, she’s convinced she’ll never see Shayne again. Sure, he ended up being nice and they lost track of time talking about all the stuff they both liked, but… it was kinda weird.

And, as Yasmin had reminded her in lunch when she wasn’t bragging about winning soccer, and Carter had said on the way to class after, she wasn’t even that cool for an eighth grader. Like, obviously she was cooler than most of their classmates – that’s why she and Hollie hung out with Yasmin, Natalie and Isabel, duh – but her clothes were all obviously hand-me-downs and she’s not that pretty and she looks like a twelve-year-old because her boobs are still too small.

She has no idea how cool Shayne actually is – other than the fact that he seems cool and he’s definitely at least low key a jock – but he is a freshman, and high schoolers don’t actually want to hang out with middle schoolers, especially when they’re like her.

But as Courtney sniffles walking past the house beside the park – the Richardson’s. She can walk normally past their place, she knows they would never rat her out to her parents. They really don’t like her parents, although she doesn’t know why – she spots a figure moving slowly back and forth on the swing set beside the platform she’d sat on the night before.

As she draws closer, Shayne pauses his swinging, shoes scuffing against the ground to bring him to a stop as he lifts up one hand and lightly waves at her. He’s already there waiting for her.

“Hey Court. Not a good night?” he asks, gently, when she lets herself fall messily down into the swing beside him. It’s too small for her and it digs into her hips, but she pushes herself off to swing lightly back and forth as she roughly shakes her head.

“Tonight Mum’s just yelling at Dad about how much of a disappointment I am,” she answers, under her voice. She doesn’t know why she’s telling him – she never tells any of her friends the shit her Mum says about her. Her friends have their own shit to say about her (although theirs is more accurate and probably more helpful, given they tell her exactly what she needs to do to be cooler).

“That’s really shitty, Courtney. I’m sorry she’s doing that to you,” he answers, sympathetically. She glances over to see him watching her, concerned.

 “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that,” she sighs, letting her eyes move back down to the ground.

“Don’t apologise. If you wanna talk, I’m happy to listen. Or we can talk about something else,” he offers, and she forces herself to look back up at him.

She knows her Dad has told her she should talk to someone instead of hiding everything inside herself. He offered to pay for therapy, but her Mum screamed at him about that – apparently therapy is un-godlike, and it’s disrespectful to her parents, and they can’t afford it anyway.

But she doesn’t feel like talking just yet. She’s known him for like 24 hours.

“You said you’re into Marvel… d’you think Guardians of the Galaxy counts as Marvel?” she asks, eyebrow raised, silently telling him she wants to go the distraction route.

Shayne immediately launches into an answer, and it sends them into a string of conversations that flow just as easily as the night before.

It quickly becomes a habit. It’s not every night – her parents don’t fight every night, this week was just particularly bad – and sometimes Kari is bugging her instead of running off with Kami and she can’t find a moment to slip out. But at least a couple of times every week, she ends up sitting somewhere on that playground with Shayne by her side talking about anything and everything they can think of – except why she’s there.

They exchange numbers about the fifth time they hang out – a week and a half after they meet – so that Courtney can let him know what nights she’ll be around. It’s the same night that he admits that he has told his parents he’s sometimes hanging out with a friend from the neighbourhood when he takes longer on his walks, but apparently, they don’t mind and they’re just happy he’s making friends in California.

“I’m just waiting until I get caught sneaking back in sometime. But I’m good at being invisible,” she half-jokes, in response, smoothly slipping past the slight waver in her voice by asking him something about his friend, Zach, who owns all the Marvel comics he keeps loaning.

To her own annoyance, she’s had to settle with the idea of not telling her school friends that she’s low key actually friends with a high schooler in her neighbourhood. She can’t work out how to explain how they meet and hang out – her friends know her parents never let her do anything – and she doesn’t want to piss Carter off any more than he already is over the whole Johnny thing.

And Natalie is dating Johnny now, anyway, so it’s not like he’d go back to her.

————————————————

Courtney fails a math test in early March, when sneaking out to talk to Shayne has settled firmly into her usual routine like it’s nothing out of the ordinary. It’s fine at school when she gets the result back: Courtney immediately pushes down her silent disappointment to instead force a loud laugh, paper held up to show the red F at the top of her paper and the grade showing she missed the pass by a single point.

“Damn, wonder what’d happen if I tried,” she jokes, Yasmin and Isabel and Carter laughing in response. She has math, geography and history with all three of them, and they always think her low scores are hilarious. Trying is the most uncool thing someone could do, and it looks like she never does.

“Yeah, my stupid dumb blonde girlfriend!” Carter grins, reaching over to grip Courtney’s shoulder as he does. As much as it’s kind of an insult, it sounds like he’s bragging, so she’ll take it.

They walk out of class towards lunch hour a few minutes later, Isabel loudly making fun of the try-hard nerds that got praised by their teacher for their results as they do. Courtney silently stuffs her test into the front of her math book, only to transfer both into her backpack when they pass by the lockers. She knows there’ll be a shitstorm to follow – but she has art and English after lunch, both of which she loves, and track practice after school. The shitstorm can wait.

“Did you get that test back today, Courtney? Is it in your bag?” her mother asks, just as Courtney is taking her dishes from dinner back through to the sink to wash up later that evening. Her Dad had picked her up from track, this time, and all he asked was how practice went.

“No-” she starts, quickly glancing around only to see her mother has immediately dived into her bag herself, pulling the test out and turning it over. Damn it. She should’ve taken her bag upstairs to her room.

“Courtney! A fail? By a single point?!” her mouther raises her voice immediately, whipping back around to face her.

Courtney immediately turns the other way to look down into the sink as she grabs the detergent and runs some hot water to actually clean up her dishes, because at least she can’t say she never does chores in whatever rant is coming.

“This isn’t good enough, Courtney! You know that! You need to stop being such a lazy, irresponsible, useless child and do better! Is this about a boy? Are you hiding a boy? You know you’re not allowed to date yet, we should never have let you go to that school when you’re such an irresponsible brat, you’re ruining your life and you’ll end up a useless-”

She continues, but Courtney blanks it out as best she can, feeling her eyes sting with tears as she rinses the dishes and, still refusing to turn around and face her mother, grabs a tea towel to dry and put them away. But she can’t avoid turning around forever, and eventually she slowly rotates back to see her mother red in the face and still holding up the test, gripping it in her hand so much it’s starting to rip.

“There’s no boy and yelling at me won’t make me any less stupid!” she snaps back, loudly, before rapidly darting out of the kitchen and around the opposite side of the dining table to her mother, heading straight upstairs to her bedroom. She doesn’t hear anyone following her upstairs – her Dad, KC and Kami were in the dining room, too – but when she slams open the door of her room, she’s immediately met by Kari glancing up from where she’s sitting on her own bed typing away at her phone.

“She was loud today. And you’re crying-” she starts, her voice turning teasing.

“Fucking shut up,” Courtney snaps, before immediately snapping her hand back over her own face.

Okay, so she swears, but not in the house. Not anywhere near her parents or her family and what if Kari runs downstairs to rat her out-

“Okay, okay,” she answers, instead, holding a hand up defensively for a moment before her attention immediately turns back to her phone.

It makes anger surge in her mind, her face heating up and white noise screaming in her ears. Yes she’s crying, she’s stupid and pathetic and she did fucking try at the test but she just doesn’t understand this stupid teacher and she can’t ask for help without her friends making fun of her and he refuses to help people anyway and she’s angry and tired and all everyone ever does is tell her everything she does is wrong and how awful she is but she can’t even be upset without Kari making fun of her-

Abruptly, Courtney turns to grab the still slightly-damp towel sitting on the end of her bed.

“Conrad’s in the shower,” Kari tells her, immediately.

“There’s another shower downstairs,” she snaps back, before she stalks out of the room. The bathroom downstairs is right beside the laundry, but she stalks straight past it and throws her towel into the washer as she moves straight through the laundry and out the side door.

She doesn’t have her phone. She didn’t tell Shayne she was going out – she’ll probably just be alone tonight. Of course.

She lets herself sob loudly as soon as she gets to the Richardson’s place, eyes blurring with tears even as she stumbles through the playground and up the stairs to curl up in the back corner of the platform at the top of the slide, against the two solid walls. Her body wracks with loud sobs that echo off the crappy plastic room around her, but there’s no one there. No one will hear her anyway.

“Courtney? Hey, Courtney, are you okay?” Shayne’s voice cuts through her sobs god knows how long later, echoing with concern around the small space as he rapidly clambers up the steps and sits, crossed-legged, opposite her, “what’s happened, Court?”

“I’m just fucking stupid and dumb and useless and I failed this stupid fucking math test and I had to pretend I didn’t try because then my friends think I’m cool but I did fucking try but this teacher just doesn’t even help anyone and is just mean to everyone that isn’t his favourite nerds and Mum found it and she wants to take me out of school and she thinks it’s because I’m not Mormon enough and-” she launches into a breathless, panicked explanation, voice muffled even in its self-hatred by her knees as she remains curled tightly in the corner of the platform.

She’s only stopped when he seems to reach a hand forward, carefully gripping her bicep where it curls around the front of her knees.

“Courtney, hey, no, that’s- failing a test sucks, but it doesn’t mean you’re stupid or dumb or useless, especially if your teacher isn’t even teaching properly. No one can expect you to be magically good at something you aren’t properly taught,” he reassures, his voice insistent, “and I’m sorry that’s how your Mum reacted. I… I know it must suck and it must feel awful to have her say stuff like that. But you’re not stupid or useless or anything, okay?”

“Everyone thinks I am,” she mutters, in response.

“I don’t. From what you’ve said about her, I bet Hollie doesn’t. And… does your Dad think that, Courtney?” he asks, carefully. She shrugs.

“No. But Mum keeps saying he’s brainwashed or something and he’s not hard enough on us.”

“I… know I don’t really know your Mum, but… she seems to say a lot of things that aren’t true,” he points out, his voice cautious and hand falling away from her bicep. She immediately misses the contact, but she kicks herself for it.

She’s 14, she shouldn’t like hugs and she knows her touchiness is too much. She’s not a little kid anymore.

“But what if they are true and what if I am just stupid and going to be a failure at everything forever,” she continues, almost sulking, as she lifts her head only to twist to the side, away from Shayne’s gaze and so she’s leaning her side fully up against the wall beside her.

She feels Shayne immediately shift himself around so he’s sitting right beside her.

“There’s more to life than math, Court. Maybe it’s not your thing, but- I know you’re not useless or stupid or a failure at everything. You’re really good at drawing and art stuff, I was literally talking to Zach about it the other day and he told me how when he was at your school last year he knew you just because the art teacher always talked about how great your stuff was. And you do really well at track, you even have medals for that stuff,” he tells her, before quickly adding, “and I think you’re a pretty good friend, actually.”

She doesn’t want to believe him. He’s just saying stuff, he can’t actually mean it, but- he sounds honest.

“You tell your friends you talk to me?” she asks, instead, letting her confusion leak into her voice. As much as he had absolutely denied the idea of being embarrassed about hanging out with a middle schooler, she was still sure he wouldn’t actively try and tell people they were friends or anything.

“Yeah, of course. I mean, I tell you about my school friends, why wouldn’t I tell them about you too?” he asks, simply, gently leaning over and nudging her side as he adds, “and please don’t start about how I should be embarrassed to be friends with you or anything.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that, but she sniffs lightly, leaning in silence against the wall beside her and trying to push down all the dumb, childish, stupid shit in her mind. She should be better than this.

“Sorry I- tell me if it’s not cool to touch you at all. Just kinda- didn’t think,” he breaks the silence, after a moment, his own voice lowered and apologetic. It makes her snap her head around to face him in surprise, watching as he frowns softly when she does.

…Screw it. She already broke down to him like an idiot and somehow he didn’t call her weird and make fun of her.

“It’s fine. I… I’m a touchy person. I like hugging my friends and I used to just randomly touch people all the time while I talk and it means nothing but once I got to middle school they started saying it was weird and creepy and childish and Mum told me it was too much too and I should stop so I… had to stop,” she explains, carefully watching as Shayne raises an eyebrow in response. She waits for him to tell her how weird it is.

“That is dumb. Not you being touchy but like – people being weird about it. That’s totally normal for some people. Like, where do people think all those aunts that are constantly hugging and kissing everyone come from? They were teenagers that liked hugging people once too,” he shakes his head, before shifting to meet her eyes directly, “d’you want a hug, Courtney?”

She feels her eyes immediately fill with hot tears and her cheeks flush in embarrassment, but silently, she nods. He doesn’t think she’s weird.

Shayne doesn’t wait another movement, as he moves a touch closer to her and leans over until his arms wrap around her upper back. It’s an awkward, slightly uncomfortable hug, given they’re sitting down, but carefully she lets herself hug him back.

With the exception of those exact hug-prone aunts he was talking about – she has a couple of those – it’s probably the first time she’s hugged someone in three years. She doesn’t really want it to end.

But, of course, her day has to get worse, and not thirty seconds into their hug, it’s broken by an abrupt, surprised, almost angry voice from the playground below them.

“Courtney?!”

Chapter Text

“Courtney?!”

The voice from outside the tiny little plastic space she’d hidden away in makes Courtney immediately snap away from Shayne, as he pulls away much more casually. They both glance over at the same time, Courtney immediately identifying that it’s Kari that is standing out in front of the railing side of the playground with arms crossed. Her expression quickly cycles from angry, to confused, to a smirk. It makes her relax a little, too.

“Hey, aren’t you that new freshman kid? Shayne, was it?” she asks, head tilting to the side.

“Um… yeah, Shayne,” he answers, a little hesitantly.

“Damn, Courtney, sneaking out to see your high school boyfriend?” Kari teases, gaze glancing back from Shayne to look right at Courtney.

It makes Courtney blink dumbly a handful of times, before she feels herself instinctively laugh and shake her head. High school boyfriend. As if.

“Not my boyfriend, Kari. Just friends. You’re not going to be the one to try and argue girls can’t be just friends with boys, are you, given like all of your friends are boys?” she shoots back, watching Kari raising an eyebrow in disbelief. But like… she’s right. Kari has so many friends that are boys.

“Yeah, yeah, but c’mon. You were hugging. And I’m not gonna like, tell the parents. And they didn’t tell me to come out here. I’m being a good sister and put my phone in the downstairs bathroom with shower noises playing and said you were in there and I was going for a walk because I figured it’s past time to tell you I know you keep sneaking out,” she explains, matter-of-fact. Courtney sighs. It shouldn’t surprise her that Kari knows.

…And as much as Kari ignores her more than she’d like, it also doesn’t surprise her Kari isn’t telling on her. It would be very hypocritical, given Kari is the most rule-bending of all of them.

“I’m… guessing you’re one of Courtney’s sisters?” Shayne asks, a little awkwardly, before clearing his throat, “and yeah, just friends. Friends can hug.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry – Courtney’s next-oldest sister, Kari. I’m a sophomore, why I know there was a new freshman,” she answers, with a brief smile, “are you sure you don’t wanna admit you’re dating? You never know when you’ll need the big sister to help you sneak out, Courtney…”

“Dude. We’re friends. I’m literally dating someone else at school,” Courtney mutters, eventually, feeling frustration leak into her tone, “Carter.”

“Oh, right, Carter. That… does make more sense, actually,” Kari nods, arms uncrossing as she steps back and visibly relaxes out of teasing, “but seriously, Courtney, not dating, but – still probably should come home. Mum’s still stewing. Dad told her to be reasonable and got screamed at for being blasphemous, because somehow that’s related… but yeah. Sorry to cut your hanging out with your friend short. D’you live nearby, Shayne?”

“Yeah. Two houses back from you guys,” he answers, his tone still a little awkward as he shuffles further away from Courtney.

“Oh! That makes sense, you’re the new person on the street as well as the new freshman. Okay, cool,” Kari nods, “and I promise I don’t usually try and stop Courtney hanging out with her friends. Just… this time.”

“All good,” Shayne answers, carefully, although Courtney almost feels that he glances across to her after he does to check that it is okay.

“Are they gonna bust me on the way back in?” Courtney asks, instead, glancing back at Kari, but she shakes her head.

“Nah. I’ll go back in the front when you get back in the… back? Laundry? I can’t actually work out how you get out. Anyway, I’ll distract them,” she tells her, Courtney silently nodding in response as she clumsily moves to climb back off the playground, Shayne doing the same just beside her.

Kari doesn’t look away at all, but after all the shit that has happened tonight, Courtney knows she can’t just leave Shayne without a word.

She glances over at him before abruptly making a decision, stepping forward and giving him a quick hug that he barely has time to return before she’s stepping away again.

“See you whenever I next see you, I guess?” she asks, but he smiles and gives a reassuring nod.

“Sure. And nice to meet you, Kari,” he adds, giving an acknowledging smile over towards Kari before he lifts one hand up to wave lightly in the same way he always does. He turns to walk back to his own house, and part of Courtney expects for Kari to immediately launch back into teasing her about Shayne being her boyfriend once he’s gone.

Instead, as they slowly walk back out of the park, Kari brings them to a stop again in front of the Richardson’s.

“Can say whatever here, they hate our parents. I get that he’s a friend, Courtney, nothing more. But… still happy to help you sneak out and see him if you need to sometimes. You could do with a friend around here sometimes,” she tells her, her tone turning serious. Courtney silently nods, before choosing to change the topic.

“Why do they hate our parents, anyway?”

“They think they’re crazy,” Kari answers, “which could be true for one of them.”

“She’s still our Mum.”

“She can still be crazy.”

Courtney lets the topic drop there, though, instead quietening as she sneaks back through the laundry door and immediately grabs her towel to dart into the bathroom. Kari’s phone is in there – alongside the pyjamas she’s been wearing the last couple of nights.

Maybe Kari doesn’t entirely ignore her.

She quickly runs the tap to flick water all over the towel to dampen it again as she changes into her pyjamas, hearing Kari talking to her parents out in the living room as she soon steps back out of the bathroom. No one calls out to her, so silently, she dumps her towel in the washer for real, this time, before moving back upstairs and into the bedroom, setting Kari’s phone back on her own bed before she reaches for hers to text Shayne.

“Sorry about everything tonight…” she sends, initially, unsurprised when his reply arrives only thirty seconds later.

“No apologies. Always happy to be there for you when stuff sucks. And I hope Kari was being honest that she wouldn’t tell your parents anything?” it reads.

“Kari’s done way worse, she could never tell on me for anything. And thanks. Sorry she thought we were dating or something,” she sends back. It honestly hadn’t occurred to her until Kari brought it up that people could think they were dating. They were just hanging out. She’s pretty sure Shayne didn’t think otherwise.

“Meh. Friends can hug. Zach is a hugger too and Zach and I are both straight so I’m pretty sure we’re not dating…”

It’s one of the many times Courtney wishes she could respond with an emoji, but she’s stuck with an old boring phone and sending an “LMAO” that she hopes doesn’t sound as fake as it looks.

————————————————

It honestly doesn’t get any easier to sneak out after she occasionally has Kari covering for her – it was already easy to sneak out, anyway. It was getting back in that was sometimes riskier, and now, if she knows Kari is either pissed enough to just want to kick her out of their bedroom in any way possible or in a good enough mood and not making fun of her for overreacting to all the fighting that she wants to be helpful, she can quietly send her sister a text a few minutes before she returns to make sure it’s clear.

After breaking down to him once, though, she lets the floodgates open, and suddenly she finds herself telling Shayne everything. The bigger thing, though, is that she finally finds a way to tell her friends about Shayne, in late April.

It’s during one of the many conversations at lunch where Natalie and Johnny are all over each other, Johnny occasionally breaking out from their weird closeness to glare over at Courtney and then say something about how Natalie is prettier, has better clothes, better at sport, everything.

“You guys both do track though, neither of you do soccer,” Yasmin points out, leaning back in her chair, “like, do you even know how soccer works, Courtney?”

“Duh. I used to play, my parents just won’t let me now. And anyway, I talk about the real soccer in Europe with Shayne all the time,” she answers, pointedly, hanging the bait right in front of their faces.

“Who the fuck is Shayne?” Carter snaps, accusatory. She rolls her eyes.

“He’s a freshman, he lives up the street from me, we hang out sometimes,” she answers, forcing her tone to stay calm and matter-of-fact, like it’s not a big deal. Like she doesn’t know exactly what they’ll say.

“As if you have a high school friend,” Johnny laughs, “you’re such a drama follower, you’re literally making up friends.”

“You’re gross,” she shoots back, before turning back to the other girls, “I guess you guys can meet him next year or whatever.”

“Remember Max and Zach and all them? I think he hangs out with them,” Hollie pipes up, casually. It makes sense – Hollie’s Mum is actually a teacher at the high school, so she tends to hear about new students.

As much as there’s a couple of high schools, three middle schools, and five elementary in town, they are kind of split to each side of town and everyone ends up at the same schools. Her parents have said something about it being based on where you live.

“Weird,” Yasmin says, quietly cutting the conversation short, but Courtney sees the quiet look of surprise on her and Isabel’s faces. She got what she needed: they actually believe she is friends with a high schooler.

She thinks it will be the end of it, but she has history after lunch again, and Carter all but drags her away from the others with a claim that he has to walk her to class (…a class that he’s also in. Right).

“The dumb blonde things is funny and all but you can’t pretend to have friends that don’t exist,” he snaps, as Courtney grabs her books out of her locker. She pauses, turning to face him, as he continues, “you still look like you’re twelve and your clothes are all old and you’re stupid, no high schooler is going to want to hang out with you. And I know what you’re doing with Johnny and now you’re trying to make up some other guy too to pretend you could ever date anyone? No one actually likes you, Courtney, don’t be stupid.”

“I’m not doing anything with Johnny, he’s the one being weird. And I’m not dating Shayne, I can have friends,” she snaps back, rolling her eyes, but Carter immediately lets out a sound somewhere between a scoff and a groan. It’s actually kind gross. Ugh, she wishes she could get rid of him.

“No you can’t! You need to accept no one likes you and they just fake it!” he answers, frustrated, before turning, “whatever, we have to go to class.”

She doesn’t say a word to him for the rest of the day. But, after her Mum starts arguing with her Dad while they’re still preparing dinner and continues all the way through all eight of them sitting in various places around the kitchen and dining room to eat, she sneaks out the laundry room as she always does, meeting Shayne up on the platform at the top of the slide.

She doesn’t talk about her Mum this time – she can’t even work out what they’re arguing about at the moment – but she does tell Shayne about her dumb argument with Carter after she told her friends about him. She expects him to laugh, but instead, his face twists and his eyes narrow.

“Why are you dating someone that says that kind of stuff to you, Courtney? He just sounds… mean,” he responds, his tone almost dark.

“I mean, it’s not like I can break up with him,” she shoots back, her own voice remaining light. Shayne’s face seems to twist even more.

“What? Why not?”

“I can’t not have a boyfriend, and he’s kinda my only option at the moment… although I think Johnny is just trying to make me jealous by being with Natalie but I did break up with him in November and I don’t like him anymore. But like, everyone else is gross and uncool and I can’t be single,” she emphasises. She watches as he immediately shakes his head.

“What’s wrong with being single?” he asks, arms crossing over in front of his chest. It quietly reminds her that, as far as she knows, he’s single. Oops.

“Like, it’s not a problem for boys- but all the girls are dating and whatever, I can’t be the loser that isn’t,” she explains, her tone reassuring, “it’s okay for Yasmin because she’s too cool for any of the guys at school but I’m barely cool enough to hang out with them with a boyfriend, they’d kick me out if I didn’t have one.”

“You need better friends,” Shayne all but snaps. It makes her tense up, moving back away from him.

“There isn’t better friends! I’m literally friends with all the popular girls, I need to do everything I can to stay with them!” she argues.

“But they’re mean to you, that’s not what friends do,” his voice sounds tired, as he continues, “except Hollie, I guess. But you just- you surround yourself with all these people and are constantly talking yourself down and doing things just to try and impress them but you’re never going to impress them because they’re just mean people that want you around to be their punching bag or something.”

“They want me around because I’m just cool enough to be there! It’s a compliment and I should be grateful for all the stuff they say because they’re just helping me be a cooler person and then people will like me and everything will be fine!” she tells him, voice raised as she feels her cheeks heating up and her mind rushing and twisting, “don’t you fucking say I’m not cool! You think they’re mean? You’re the one saying I’m not good enough for them or to have a boyfriend or anything!”

“I’m- I’m not-” he starts, before letting out a long, frustrated sigh as he shuffles back away from her, towards the ladder. “You don’t need them. You don’t need a boyfriend that treats you like shit – but if you’re so insecure the only way you can value yourself is by surrounding yourself with people that beat you down, then that’s your choice I guess.”

His tone is harsh as he finishes, and abruptly, he turns and clambers back down the stairs. It makes her fume, hands tightening into fists as she leans forward to where he’s leaving.

“I fucking told you you never wanted to be friends with me! You fucking liar, you just wanted to build shit up and then make fun of me because I’m not as cool as you!” she calls after him, almost shouting.

She wants him to turn back to face her, but instead Shayne simply rounds the playground to walk away and out of the park, towards home. She feels like she’s going to vomit, and she sobs sharply as she lets her back thump heavily back against the wall behind her.

She never should have let herself believe he was her friend, and now her school friends are going to think she made up ever being friends with him, she’s so stupid and immature and she should’ve known he was just tricking her and he wanted to undermine her and now he has all this information about her and her family and he’s probably going to use it to destroy her as soon as they’re at the same school-

She doesn’t want to be at the playground anymore, and for the first time, Courtney rapidly launches herself back out of the platform above the slide with tears still streaming down her face and sobs wracking in her chest, stalking back towards home. She barely tries to hide as she sneaks back in – screw it, everything is ruined anyway – and she immediately moves to her room, faceplanting onto her bed as her body continues to shudder through harsh sobs.

“What?” Kari asks, from across the room. Her tone is annoyed, like she’s about to tell Courtney to go be a baby somewhere else. She tries to sink further into the bed.

“I’m stupid and Shayne tricked me and he was never my friend and he doesn’t think I’m cool enough to hang out with my school friends or date Carter and he’s probably going to tell everyone at the high school how stupid I am-” she rambles, muffled into quiet, barely discernible sounds by the duvet under her. Kari still seems to understand.

“That… doesn’t sound like Shayne,” she replies, her voice moving closer and softening a little as she talks, until Courtney feels her weight settle on the bed beside her. She still refuses to look up.

“Well that’s what he fucking said. I’m not good enough for anyone,” she answers, harshly, hearing Kari sigh in response.

“I’m sorry, Court,” she replies, voice sympathetic as she reaches out a hand and rests it against her back, gently rubbing.

It makes Courtney cry even harder. She’s so dumb. She’s so immature.

But for once her fucking sister is being nice to her and she can’t force herself to ask her to stop.

————————————————

Shayne tries not to think about Courtney at all when he gets up and gets ready for school the next day. He was too late to sign up to actually do theatre, auditions were before Christmas when he was still in Arizona, but he’s helping the drama club out with rehearsals and stage setup stuff during his lunch hour, anyway, so he’s got stuff on all day. It should be fine.

It’s only five minutes after he enters the building – he likes to give himself some time to catch up with friends before first period – that his desire to put it out of his mind is completely ruined, though, as a loud, angry voice calls out his name.

“Shayne Topp!” Kari says his name with so much venom he instinctively recoils away from her. She doesn’t say anything else, but her eyes are burning and she grabs his arm and drags at him, pulling him away and around a corner into an empty corridor.

Christ, Courtney’s sent her sister after him. He wonders if Kami and KC will end up going after him too (it was easy enough to find all her siblings at the school – they did all look the same).

“Why did I have my baby sister crying her lungs out and saying you tricked her and you never wanted to be friends, you just wanted to screw with her and undermine her and say she’s not good enough for any of her friends?” Kari asks, straight to the point, demanding. It makes Shayne pause, taking a deep breath.

“That’s not what happened, Kari,” he replies, his voice level, “I didn’t say any of that. I just- she was telling me about all this awful stuff her boyfriend and her friends said to her, and I just- I told her she deserves better, not that she isn’t good enough for them. She was insistent I was insulting her and saying she wasn’t cool or something but I just- that wasn’t it at all. I was trying to… just… she doesn’t need a boyfriend and everyone around her just seems to use her as a punching bag. That’s all I told her. And she’s not your baby sister, she’s 14.”

Kari doesn’t respond immediately, but she sighs and closes her eyes, tilting her head up towards the ceiling as she leans back against the corridor wall behind her.

“I know they sound like they’re mean to her. I know that on a general level, she doesn’t need to be dating all these stupid boys she pretends to like, but… you have to understand, that’s what her year level is like. It’s literally been like that since the start of elementary school, they’re all so cliquey and mean to each other. It was an achievement for her and Hollie to be allowed to hang out with those girls and when she says she has to have a boyfriend, it’s… kinda true, just in a social sense,” Kari explains, before shaking her head and looking back down to face Shayne, “I know it sucks. And I know she’s extremely insecure – god knows why, not like she’s her Mum’s punching bag as well as all her friends or whatever – but that shit is important to her, and you need to be more careful how you talk about it.”

“It just… it seems ridiculous, I can’t just say it’s funny and totally cool and fine and normal that her boyfriend tells her no one actually likes her including him and insults her appearance and her clothes and everything…” he trails off, shuddering slightly.

“Look, she can be… a lot. And if you don’t wanna hang out with her, that’s fine, but maybe at least tell her you were never trying to undermine her or anything,” she shoots back, bluntly. It makes Shayne grimace, but he slowly nods and turns to walk away, hoping Kari won’t follow him.

She doesn’t, and it’s time for first period, so he immediately heads for his locker to grab his books as it slowly turns over in his mind and he bites his lip.

He never intended walking away from her at the park to be the end of their friendship entirely. He doesn’t want that – he likes hanging out with her. He doesn’t mind that a lot of the time, it’s when she’s upset. It’s just… for all the things she’d thought might be weird to him, the fact that she turned him saying it wasn’t good that her friends were mean to her into him somehow insulting her was actually… weird. And as much as Kari’s explanation made sense…

Ugh.

Chapter Text

Courtney doesn’t sneak out for the rest of the week – it doesn’t seem appealing anymore. Instead, she sits blankly on her bed and lets the arguing from downstairs twist up in her mind with the homework in front of her that she desperately tries and always fails to actually understand. Clearly she is stupid. She knows Natalie has like a professional tutor outside school. Why can’t she get that? Why can Natalie literally spend time outside school getting help with maths and science and stuff but they make fun of her if she even asks the teacher a question? (To be fair, so does the teacher).

Sunday night is quieter in her house. It’s getting warmer, and her Dad had grilled burgers for dinner, KC taking a rare break from study to play with Conrad and Clarke out in the backyard while he did. Her Mum was quiet too, for once, other than a jibe at Courtney about how she won’t be able to fit any of her clothes properly if she takes a second burger. But whatever.

She heads back to her bedroom upstairs after she helps clean up the dishes with Kami, grabbing her phone in search of a text from Yasmin – they were all going to coordinate outfits this week, but she was going to message everyone Sunday night. She does have a message from Yasmin – “pink on Monday!” – but her eyes are quickly drawn to the other message in her inbox.

“Come to the playground? Please?” Shayne’s text reads. It makes her heart sink. The boys are still out the back – she can’t really sneak out tonight.

And she knows it’s pathetic, but he’s nice to her and she likes hanging out with him and she can actually talk to him about things and she doesn’t want to lose that. Except he said all those things about her friends and about her-

Courtney stuffs her phone in her pocket, grabbing her school track jacket and slipping it on as she moves downstairs. She finds Kami, Kari and both her parents sitting in the living room, her mother immediately turning to look up at her when she walks in.

“Uh… is it cool if I just go for a walk down to the park and around a bit since it’s nice out? I feel like I haven’t been active enough this week since track was cancelled the other day,” she asks, tacking on an explanation that she knows her mother will buy, given the earlier comment about eating too much.

“Sure, just be home before dark,” her Dad answers, simply, her Mum not saying anything as she turns back to face the TV.

It’s weird. She’s always rushed to the park when she sneaks out, but today she’s almost reluctant, slow footsteps taking her past their neighbour’s, and the Richardson’s…

She doesn’t immediately see Shayne, and it makes anger shoot through her chest. Did he fucking lie? Is he not even here? Is he-

“Hey, Courtney,” he starts, his voice low and one arm crossed awkwardly across his chest as he grips at his opposite bicep while he walks slowly from the slide platform – he must have been waiting up there – towards her.

He comes to a stop six feet in front of her, leaving them both awkwardly standing out in the open on the playground’s rubber floor. She doesn’t know what to say, though, so she simply crosses her arms and watches his face twist in discomfort for a moment.

She pretends it doesn’t make her twinge in her own discomfort, too.

“I… I didn’t mean to insult you, Court, and I’m sorry if that’s how it came across. I’ve never done anything to trick you or undermine you or anything like that. You’re my friend, and I just… I guess it doesn’t make sense to me, that your friends and your boyfriend say that stuff about you, but I guess… those people and those things are important to you, and I’m sorry I didn’t understand that,” he starts, his voice dripping with a sincerity that makes her feel nauseous. Shit. “I can’t say I’ll ever think it’s funny or okay that they say those things because I don’t agree with them, but… I don’t want you to feel like I’m insulting your friends, or you, or saying you’re not cool enough for them. And I don’t want to lose you as a friend, because I really enjoy spending time with you, Courtney.”

He glances down when he finishes, shoe scuffing against the ground below him. She feels like she might actually be shaking as she glances around for a moment, unsteady on her feet and lightheaded.

Screw it.

Courtney shuffles forward awkwardly, but she’s quickly standing directly in front of Shayne, prying his hand off his bicep so she can crash against him and wrap her arms around him in a hug.

She feels him tense in response, immediately, his hands hovering away from her – until slowly, he relaxes, and his arms carefully settle around her back, too.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you and accused you of faking being my friend,” she mumbles, near his ear, feeling the way he squeezes her lightly in response. She takes a deep breath, before she continues, “I guess it’s all… weird. But that’s how it is, and I- I’m doing the best I can. And they’re not always like that, just lately I guess there’s been… more reasons for them to be like that. And I wish I could break up with Carter because he sucks but it would just… cause other problems.”

“I understand that now,” he replies, quietly, before they both reluctantly step out of the hug. He gives her an awkward smile, but she lets herself smile properly as she gestures over towards the swings.

“Wanna hang out for a bit? My parents know I’m out this time. Told them I was exercising because track was cancelled the other day,” she asks, knowing her request is a little softer than usual, but Shayne immediately nods and wanders towards the swings.

“Why was it cancelled? Track practice is Thursday nights, right?”

“Yeah. Coach was sick or something and usually they just get someone else to watch instead and we do our own thing but… not this time, I guess,” she shrugs, setting herself down in one of the swings as he does the same next to her. “Hey, what do you think about that last trailer for the new Spider-Man?”

————————————————

It’s, weirdly, Isabel that next mentions Shayne at school. They’re sitting in the back of the auditorium waiting for some whole-of-grade discussion about graduation – the school is really treating it like it’s a bigger deal than Courtney or any of her friends think. They just want it to be over – when, midway through talking about summer plans, she tilts her head to the side and looks over at Courtney.

“Hey, my sister said that Shayne guy you’re friends with is really buff and his family is like, intense military,” she points out, but Courtney shrugs.

“I mean yeah, he’s buff, but I don’t think his family is intense… His dad is in the Air Force, he’s a mechanic that like fixes all the planes and stuff, that’s why they moved here so he can work on all the planes at the base. But I think Shayne is just really into sports and stuff,” she answers.

“Why the fuck are you calling other guys buff?!” Carter jumps in, angrily.

“Uuugh, Carter, get over yourself,” Yasmin steps in, immediately, aggressively rolling her eyes, “if Courtney dumped you for her much better-looking friend that would just be on you for sucking… but she’s not dating Shayne and you should be grateful she’s dating your sorry ass.”

It makes happiness bristle in Courtney’s chest, but she quickly pushes it down. It might’ve been the first time Yasmin has actually hyped her up like that, but she’ll take it, and she laughs along with the others.

“Do you think he’ll want to like hang out with you next year?” Hollie asks. Again, Courtney shrugs.

“Who knows. He already has his big group of friends there,” she answers, plainly, before quickly adding, “although he wants to do athletics next year as well as soccer – field, not track, but still – so might end up having practice with him and stuff.”

It makes Natalie suddenly pipe up about how she wants to switch from track to basketball next year because she heard there’s a brand-new basketball court at the high school, and soon they’re off to talking about next year, and eventually, back to summer plans.

As much as she’s riding a high from her friends evidently accepting that she is cool enough to be friends with a high schooler and shutting down Carter trying to be a jerk for the sake of it, the summer plans is a… bad point. Yasmin’s Dad owns half the buildings in town, Isabel’s parents are both living off weirdly good royalties from acting jobs back in the 80s, and Natalie’s family own a holiday house in Canada – they’re all going to be somewhere overseas from like, mid-June until school starts back in August. Hollie, for her part, will be around in late July and August, but her family is heading up to Colorado for some hiking and camping adventure literally the day after school finishes.

Courtney is going nowhere – she’ll be home, dealing with way too many fucking people also being home in the form of all her siblings (even Kathryn is coming home for the Summer, although KC is heading off on some graduation trip with some friends for a while) and grumpy parents and shitty, sweaty, California Summer. By herself. Ugh.

She makes a mental note to ask Shayne whether he’ll at least be around over Summer, so she might at least still get to see someone other than family on a rare occasion at night.

She doesn’t actually see him very often in the last few weeks of the school year. She has exams – which she manages to at least pass all of so she can graduate middle school, which is good, she guesses – and he has slightly more serious exams, and amongst the fact that four of her children do in fact have exams with KC’s being the most serious, her mother seems to calm down for a little while.

Even Conrad and Clarke quieten their playing and spend a lot more time in their bedroom, while the other four all uniformly concentrate on their books for once. And like, Courtney doesn’t study at school – none of her friends do – but she does actually want to leave middle school, thank you very much, so she has to study a little bit at home.

It means that, other than the occasional text, she doesn’t talk to Shayne much for a little while, and she doesn’t physically see him until the Saturday after school’s out for Summer, when he texts her to ask her to come to the park mid-afternoon.

They don’t see each other in the day much, but no one asks why she’s going out at 3pm, so Courtney simply shoves her phone in her pocket and steps outside to wander up the street.

“Hey, how’s things been?” Shayne asks, casually, when she spots him at one of the picnic tables and wanders over to slide into the seat across from him. There are some actual children on the playground at this time of day.

“Good, I guess. Sorry it’s been a while, kinda had to focus on studying and shit at night for a few weeks,” she answers, shrugging, “but I guess I passed middle school, so that’s something. And it’s Summer now.”

“All good, it was kinda the same for me. And hey, well done!” he nods towards her, quietly hyping up her joke about passing. She lets herself smile widely in response.

“I’m guessing your smart ass had no problems passing freshman year?” she prompts in return, watching him laugh awkwardly.

“I guess not, but I don’t think it’s my ass that is smart,” he jokes back, before leaning back a little, “you gonna be mostly around Mansfield for Summer?”

“Other than like, a 4^th of July trip to see family in Utah – yeah, just here, I’m boring,” she answers, shaking her head, “you going anywhere?”

“Will probably head up to Colorado one week with Brian to see Chris, he’s got an actual house up there and whatever… but otherwise I’ll be around, most of my friends will be too. You mentioned before a lot of yours are travelling?” he asks, tilting his head to the side.

“Yeah. I mean, Yasmin and Isabel and Natalie and the guys are around the first couple of weeks so I’ll probably hang out with them a couple times and Hollie’s back for the last couple but otherwise… I’ll be alone,” she gives a wry smile. He laughs lightly.

“I still live up the street from you in Summer. And, hey, Zach and Alicia and I are going to see the new Spider-Man on Wednesday afternoon, you want to come?” he asks, before quickly adding, “and like, I know you’ve said your parents don’t know I exist, so I don’t know if they’ll be okay with it or whatever but my Mum is happy to talk to them if that helps and she’ll be driving me to the cinema so it’s no problem if you need a ride over there too-”

“I don’t want to like, crash your hangouts with your friends, don’t feel you have to pity invite me just because my friends are disappearing or whatever,” she tells him, but he abruptly shakes his head.

“Not a pity invite. My friends want to meet you. And also, Zach and Alicia are like almost dating, so you’d also be saving me from having to third wheel them. But it was Zach’s idea to invite you anyway,” Shayne tells her, his voice almost teasing. It makes her smile.

“Okay, okay. I will have to ask the parents, but… I think I can invent a way to suddenly be really good friends with you and not have them question how we met. Kari might help. And I wanna see that movie,” she agrees, letting herself settle into the idea.

She gets her opportunity to test the idea with her mother the second she gets home – not least because she actually walks home with Shayne and her mother is looking out the front window for some reason or another and sees her waving goodbye to him as he continues up the street to his own place.

“Who was that?” she asks, immediately accusatory, the second Courtney steps inside.

“Shayne, he lives at number eight, that new family that moved in at Christmas remember?” she answers, simply, watching her mother seem to process the information and try and decide whether to be angry or not. She seems to settle on just prying more.

“How do you know him? Do you go to school with him?”

“No, he’s a freshman – or was, I guess – but Kari knows him from school too. I’ve just talked to him a heap at the bus stop or just like, running into him in the street, he’s super into sport and stuff so he’s always out exercising,” she fibs, keeping her voice calm. Shayne never takes the bus to school and he mostly goes out at night. Her Dad seems to appear out of nowhere into the room as she finishes.

“Oh, are you talking about the Topp kid – aaaah, what’s his name? I think he’s about your age Court, you should hang out with him, I was chatting to his parents the other day, they seem nice,” he muses. Score.

“Oh, okay,” her mother seems to settle with it all, “Courtney says she does hang out with him already.”

“Just, like, when we run into each other, but I was just chatting to him in the park then… him and a bunch of his friends are going to see the Spider-Man movie on Wednesday, is it cool if I go with them?” she asks, slowly sliding the idea forward. She watches her Mum’s brow furrow, but her Dad hums lightly.

“Sure, although your mother and I will both be at work so you might have to walk to the bus stop or something to get there,” he tells her.

“Shayne said his Mum is happy to drive me there, she’ll be driving him anyway and they are literally two houses down,” she explains, before quickly snapping her mouth closed. That could’ve been a little too sharp.

“What do his parents do?” her mother asks, instead, looking over at her Dad.

“Oh, Robert is in the Air Force – he’s working at the base as a plane mechanic – and I… don’t think I caught what Cathy does? I think she works from home though,” he answers.

“She like, edits textbooks I think? Something like that,” Courtney supplies, quickly.

“Ah, military family, good, good. Well, as long as Cathy doesn’t mind taking you in Courtney, that seems fine,” her mother agrees, her tone settled.

Heck yeah. She gets to go hang out with Shayne and his friends and maybe, if it all goes well, it might happen… more than once?

She silently kicks herself. She should probably wait until it actually happens before she gets up too much hope. They might hate her.

————————————————

Courtney can’t stop herself buzzing with excitement on Tuesday morning. Kari teases her about it, jokes that she’s acting like she’s spending time with her boyfriend or something – “No, seeing Spider-Man with Shayne and his friends. And I’m just excited it’s Summer”, she’d defended, immediately – before letting up and giving an almost understanding nod.

Kami has taken babysitting duty for the day, taking Conrad and Clarke – and pre-reading for her senior English literature class, because she’s a loser – down to the park to see some of their friends. Kathryn isn’t back from college yet, KC has already disappeared off to God knows where, and Kari is busy lying back on her bed watching dumb stuff on her school-issued laptop (God, Courtney can’t wait to get one of those. And the smartphone she’s been promised will arrive sometime before August). It means the house is almost eerily quiet and empty, so Courtney takes her buzzing energy downstairs.

She doesn’t need to walk down to Shayne’s house until 11am – they’d ended up deciding to get lunch before the movie, too, and she prays it will be somewhere cheap enough it doesn’t entirely blow the tiny allowance she has to take with her – so she spends the remainder of the morning flitting around, tidying as best she can amongst the tornado of things that is their tiny house crammed with eight people’s (or nine – Kathryn left a bunch of things here) worth of stuff.

She has a minor breakdown over what to wear, at about 10:30. They’re just going to the movies, but she already gets told all her clothing makes her look like a baby by her friends and that’s middle school friends, not high school standards, and-

“Ugh, Courtney, relax,” Kari breaks into her panic, shoving her laptop aside and rolling off her bed to wander over to stand beside Courtney at her closet, “there’s nothing wrong with your clothes, your friends just suck-”

“No they don’t!” she snaps.

“Okay, okay. Well, I’ll put it this way – maybe your friends have it the wrong way round, and actually you already dress like a high school kid. Jeans, tee, maybe throw that black and white checked shirt you love over the top?” she suggests, indicating towards the items of clothing she suggests.

Courtney shrugs, picking out those clothes – and one of her favourite blue tees – and taking to the bathroom to change. She does a little makeup, but just a little – the kind she’d do on a day where she has PE or track after school and can’t redo it after – before carefully shoving her phone, purse, and a couple of random other things in case she needs them into her small backpack, saying a quick goodbye to Kari and all but bouncing out the door.

She manages to calm herself just a little – she hopes – before she reaches Shayne’s house. It makes her feel kind of awkward, but she opens their small front gate and walks up the path to knock three times on the front door.

She hears rustling inside after only a second, and then not a few moments later the door opens rapidly to Shayne at the other side, smiling as brightly as he always does.

“Hey! Come in, Mum’s just finishing something off, we’ll leave in like five minutes,” he greets her, stepping aside and gesturing for her to come in.

It makes Courtney feel even more awkward – visiting people’s houses for the first time is terrifying – but she greets him with a small “Hi,” before she steps in, angling her head towards the (empty) shoe rack beside the door in a silent question.

“Nah, all good – it’s only a few minutes, we don’t really do no shoes in the house. The military-owned houses are kinda designed to be a bit… rough. Or tough, I guess, dealing with big military boots and stuff,” he explains, shrugging a little awkwardly, before the door closes behind them and he silently gestures her down the hallway and then through an archway into an open living/dining/kitchen area taking up the entire half of the house.

“Oh, Courtney, hello! Good to meet you finally – I’m just finishing up one quick thing for work and then we’ll be going,” Shayne’s Mum speaks up, head lifting from where she’s leaning against the kitchen bench looking down at a laptop.

“Hi, thanks, that’s fine,” Courtney answers, quickly, immediately kicking herself. Was that rude? Too plain? Too informal?

“I’ll have to invite you over to actually hang out during the day sometime and play some of these,” Shayne cuts through her quiet panic, grabbing her attention and directing it over towards the TV and the games consoles – and large piles of actual games – sitting on the cabinet under it. She still feels extremely awkward, and her bag is strung awkwardly over her shoulder, but she lets Shayne lead her over and start showing her his favourite games until his Mum is ready to leave.

Chapter Text

To Courtney’s relief, Shayne slides into the back seat with her when they get into his Mum’s car. His Mum makes small talk with her as they get into the car – just asking how she is, how her parents are – but as soon as she turns the key in the ignition and presses the button on the little remote to open their garage door she turns her attention away, twisting the radio volume up a little and leaving Shayne and Courtney to talk in the back seat.

“Have you seen any spoilers?” he asks her, almost immediately, and she shakes her head.

“I try to avoid them, but it’s also a lot easier without a laptop. Or smartphone. Or social media of any sort,” she answers, with a raised eyebrow, watching Shayne give her a wry smile in response.

“I guess that’s one way to do it. Although I’ve managed to avoid them anyway,” he shrugs, before tilting his head to the side, “you said all your siblings got a smart phone when they started high school, right?”

“Yeah. I don’t know exactly when but I’ve been promised one by August…” she trails off, before they shift back to talking about what they think might or might not happen in this particular movie.

It’s as they approach the mall that Courtney feels her earlier anxiety twisting back into her mind.

“What’s the plan for lunch?” she asks, a little more carefully than she intends.

“There’s a pizza place near the cinema that Alicia is obsessed with, probably that,” Shayne answers, lightly, “to be fair, it is really good – and I figured pizza would be okay with you too?”

“Um, yeah, pizza is- pizza’s good,” she answers, feeling the way her heart immediately sinks reflecting in her tone. Maybe there’ll be a cheap small one, maybe it’s a cheap place anyway, maybe she can just pretend she isn’t hungry-

“Is that… not okay?” Shayne asks, his voice lowering slightly and turning concerned. She sighs.

“Pizza is good. Just… hopefully it’s cheap?” she tries to keep her voice quiet, but she knows it squeaks awkwardly as she does. Dammit.

She watches a slow realisation dawn over Shayne’s eyes, and she presses herself back into the car seat, feeling her cheeks heat up. He doesn’t not know her family isn’t exactly wealthy, she’s never hidden it, but she’s never explicitly talked about it either and she gets the vibe as much as they’re not Yasmin-rich, his family is doing okay, and-

“Don’t worry about it, honey,” Shayne’s Mum’s voice pipes up, from the front seat, one hand reaching back and producing a $20 note seemingly out of nowhere, out towards Courtney.

“I- I- it’s fine, you don’t need to, you don’t-” she stutters, embarrassed, but Shayne’s Mum sets the twenty on the space between the two front seats and hums.

“Take it, Courtney, it’s okay,” she reassures, simply, before pointedly turning her attention back to the road as she starts looking for a parking space to pull into.

Courtney feels her own gaze fixed on the twenty in front of her, feeling guilt roll through her stomach. She doesn’t know what to do. Is this some kind of test? Does she have to refuse it again to be polite? Or is it rude if she doesn’t take it now? Her Mum has always said it’s shameful to take from anyone, but-

Shayne solves her problem for her, reaching out and taking the twenty before he reaches for her bag, slightly unzips it, and slips the twenty inside.

“Oh, fell in, that makes it yours now,” he says, matter-of-factly. She tries to scowl at him, but when he grins, she can’t help but burst into laughter. Dammit. He’s such an idiot.

Shayne’s Mum waves them off with a smile when she finds a park and they get out of the car – she asks Shayne to text her when they need to be picked up – and Courtney feels herself fall into step beside Shayne, letting him lead the way to lunch. They mostly walk in silence, but just after he tells her they’re nearly there, he scoffs lightly and nudges her side.

“See what I mean?” he jokes, “that’s Zach and Alicia ‘totally not dating and not going to make you third wheel at all, Shayne’,” he explains, voice rising in pitch as he apparently quotes one of them and points to two people standing just beside the door of the pizza place, so close together they could be almost – but not quite – kissing. It makes Courtney laugh lightly, before the two seem to sense their approach and step apart.

They have to know Shayne and Courtney would have seen them, but they seem to go with pretending it never happened, Zach instead launching into a loud greeting.

“Shayne, my guy!” he greets, enthusiastically, pulling his friend into a hug before turning straight to Courtney, “and Courtney, we finally get to meet you! Hey!”

“Hi!” she replies, trying to match his enthusiasm but hearing her own nerves sneak through, before she’s slightly taken aback as Zach pulls her into a hug, too, although a slightly less boisterous one than Shayne’s.

She manages to briefly hug him back, but she still feels Shayne laugh beside her when she steps back.

“Told you Zach’s a hugger,” he quips, before turning and introducing Alicia, who is busy rolling her eyes at Zach’s exuberance and greets Courtney with a much more level, although still friendly, hello.

She quickly turns to lead them into the pizza place – it seems a little more café than fast-food pizza – and tells the host there’s a reservation under her name before they’re led to a table halfway down a brick side wall.

It’s immediately cooler than any pizza place she’s been to – as much as some of her friends have money, they still always end up at Dominos – and she feels awkwardness creeping back into her movements as she takes a seat at the table, opposite Zach and between Shayne and the wall. She has no idea what to talk about other than the Marvel interest she knows they all share, given what movie they’re going to next – but they can’t just talk about that all lunch and the movie doesn’t start until 2 anyway.

Alicia saves her, in a way, by immediately asking her about this art she apparently does that Zach keeps mentioning. She has to kick herself not to react defensively: these are Shayne’s friends, not hers, Alicia isn’t digging for some reason to say Courtney is somehow stealing her not-boyfriend before even meeting him. She’s just talking, and she did go to a different middle school, so Courtney’s never even remotely known her at all before (not that she knew of Zach more than like… vaguely knowing he existed in the grade above her).

Much like Shayne, though, his friends make it easy to settle into conversation. There isn’t an awkward silence or a jibe at anyone to be seen – save for Shayne making a joke about Alicia and Zach’s apparent not-dating status and Alicia returning it with a half-hearted dig about how he’s been single, like, forever – and, through ordering and eating and the half-hour they stay there even after they finish eating, they just keep talking.

Courtney is silently glad for the twenty Shayne’s Mum had slid her way. She still feels herself gravitating to the cheapest option when she first opens the menu in front of her, finger hovering absently over it, but she immediately feels Shayne’s elbow dig into her side.

“Important question, Courtney – pineapple or no pineapple?” he asks. It makes her glance up at him, immediately seeing his eyes managing to look stern and joking at the same time.

“Pineapple, duh,” she answers, automatically.

“Hell yes, girl, I have someone to join the pineapple side!” Alicia cheers, immediately, “these dumbasses are so fixed on just calling it a fruit and refusing to remember tomato is also a fruit that they won’t budge. Would highly recommend the pineapple and jalapeno if you don’t mind a bit of spice.”

“Would you put tomato in a smoothie?” Zach pipes up, pointedly. Something tells Courtney this argument has happened before.

“Gazpacho,” Alicia shoots back, plainly, eyes shooting back down to her menu, before glancing back up to Courtney, “hey, obviously choose your own if you want to, zero pressure, but… want to split the two pineapple options? I’m feeling indecisive but they charge too much for half-and-half on one base.”

“That’s a soup!” Shayne replies, at exactly the same time, voice full of exasperation.

“Close enough,” Courtney pipes up, before glancing back down to her menu and quickly locating the two pineapple options Alicia was referring to.

…They do sound good. And if they ordered both and halved the total cost, Shayne’s Mum’s twenty would cover her half easily. Screw it.

“And sure, let’s split the pineapple ones.”

There’s not a single moment after that where she feels awkward or uncomfortable or like anyone doesn’t want her there. Even Alicia and Zach seem to give the slightly suspicious closeness a miss, as Alicia falls into step beside her while Zach and Shayne move just ahead of them when they walk from the café over to the cinema. She immediately asks who it was in her family that was an animator at Disney – and when – and Courtney lets herself dive into talking about how cool her great-aunt was.

There is one moment she glances over mid-movie and sees Zach pulling the “stretch and put your arm around their shoulders” move on Alicia, but she silently makes a note of it to tell Shayne later, in case he hadn’t seen.

The movie is awesome, and the four of them stand outside the cinema – not near the entrance, they don’t want to spoil it for anyone – gushing about how cool it was and all their favourite parts for a good ten minutes before Shayne remembers to pull out his phone and text his Mum that they’re ready to be picked up.

“Hey – Mum wants to meet us back near the mall, want to start walking over there Courtney?” he adds, not thirty seconds later.

She nods, saying goodbye to both Alicia and Zach and trying to thank them for inviting her without being awkward about it. They seem to stay by the cinema, and as Shayne and Courtney walk further away from them, she glances over to see his grin widening into a smirk.

“Mum didn’t actually say that, I told her to meet us back near the mall because I wanted to leave them alone,” he admits, after a moment, Courtney laughing lightly.

“I saw Zach pull the stretch-and-arm-around-the-shoulder move on her partway through the movie, I just happened to look over at them when he did it,” she tells him, conspiratorially, Shayne gasping in exaggerated surprise in response before bursting into laughter.

There’s a handful of benches along the sidewalk near the mall parking lot, and Shayne gestures to one with a tree offering some shade over it – it is getting warm out – as they wait for his Mum, who he says is probably another five minutes away.

“I hope you had a nice time and the others weren’t… too much, or anything,” he starts, his tone almost nervous, when they sit down. It makes Courtney glance over at him, giving him a reassuring smile.

“It’s been good. Thanks for inviting me,” she tells him, simply, watching him nod.

“I’m sorry I didn’t think about the cost side of things, it was… a dumb oversight on my part,” he adds, but she shakes her head and sighs softly.

“It’s okay. I should’ve thought of it before saying yes to lunch. I just feel bad your Mum gave me money and I can’t really pay her back,” she admits, glancing away.

“Nah. It’s fine. She wouldn’t let you anyway,” he reassures, shaking his head when she glances back over, “I don’t like… tell my Mum anything we talk about, but I think she probably just guessed that being one of seven kids means you don’t exactly get a huge allowance or anything. Although, to be completely honest, I did tell her that time we fought just because I… didn’t know what to do, especially after Kari yelled at me.”

“Wait, Kari yelled at you?” she asks, gaze snapping back to him and feeling her mind twist in confusion. Huh?

“Oh, I thought you would’ve known that or something…” he trails off, shrugging awkwardly, “she dragged me into an empty corridor just before school the day after we fought to yell at me for pretending to be your friend and saying you weren’t cool and stuff.”

“I didn’t ask her to do that,” Courtney feels herself answer, immediately, before sighing and looking down to pick at a loose thread on her jeans, “but I might’ve cried to her that I thought that’s what you said. Kinda hard not to when I ran home crying and we share a bedroom.”

“It’s okay. I told her what I actually meant and… she kinda explained your side of it a bit, I guess,” he explains, before his tone turns more cautious, “I think… maybe she’s not always perfect, but deep down, Kari cares about you a lot.”

“Yeah. I just wish she’d stop calling me her baby sister when she does it,” Courtney shoots back instinctively, hearing Shayne laugh softly from beside her.

“I hope you don’t mind that I kinda told her off for that.”

“Not at all,” she answers, letting her own tone lighten before they settle into a comfortable silence until Shayne’s Mum arrives.

She asks them how the movie was as they drive home, and they excitedly talk about it until they’re pulling back into their garage.

It makes Courtney’s heart sink. She doesn’t want this to end, but the movie was more than 2 hours long, plus all the ads, and now the drive home… her parents will be home from work soon, too. She can’t drag it out.

She reluctantly says goodbye to Shayne only a few minutes after they get back to his house. His Mum offers her something to eat, if she’d like to stay longer, and there’s a part of her that’s even comfortable with saying yes, but she knows she can’t.

To make it even worse, her mother comes home in the worst mood she has for a month. She snaps at Conrad for playing too loudly, she snaps at Kami for nothing in particular – she doesn’t snap at Courtney, after abruptly asking who tidied up, and when Courtney silently raises her hand to admit it was her, pausing the yelling for a moment to thank her – and when their Dad gets home, she starts yelling at him about… she really doesn’t know what.

She quietly retreats upstairs as soon as she can after dinner, leaning back against her bedhead and typing out a text to Shayne as Kari types away at her own phone across the room in much the same position.

“I don’t think I can ask you to come out to the playground after spending all day with you…” she texts, knowing he’ll be able to read between the lines.

“I think my parents might actually question it if I say I’m going out to see you tonight,” he replies, quickly followed up with a second text, “directed at you tonight, or just general?”

“Everyone except me for once. I tidied up a heap this morning for her before I went to your place, I think it’s a get out of jail free card for the day… or a couple, hopefully,” she replies, letting herself smile softly as she imagines his quiet laugh at her half-joke. He laughs a lot. It’s nice.

“You know, there’s nothing stopping us from hanging out during the day? I don’t know how it’d work with your parents, or if they’re at work and you can just walk out… but I’m not doing anything tomorrow if you wanna just come over and hang out. Mum will be home, but usually she’s working upstairs in her office, she was just at the counter today to do something quickly,” his next reply is a lot longer, and it makes her loll her head sideways to glance over at Kari.

“Mum’s working tomorrow, right?” she asks.

“Yep. They’ll both be out all day. Matt’s picking me up to go hang out with them after they leave,” Kari answers, simply. Courtney has to jump at the opportunity she’s been given.

“Oooooh, Kari’s got a boyfriend,” she teases, voice almost sing-song, unsurprised when one of Kari’s pillows hits her in the stomach a second later.

“I do but it’s not Matt,” she answers, pointedly, “why do you need to know if Mum’s working, anyway? You going to your boyfriend’s place?”

“Nah, Shayne’s,” she replies, simply, hearing Kari scoff in response, although she knows this time, they’re both just teasing.

————————————————

“If Courtney’s parents are okay with you hanging out normally, why does she always sneak out to meet you at night?” Shayne’s Mum asks, when he’s lying across the living room sofa later that same evening of the movie, texting his friends while both his parents sit up at the dining table behind him. Her tone is curious more than accusatory, but he still slowly shuffles himself to sit up and turn around to face them.

“Um… they didn’t know I existed until she asked them about going today. There’s some… difficult stuff at home for her,” he answers, a little awkwardly, trying to balance vagueness and not sounding like he’s hiding anything.

“Oh, she sneaks out to get away from it all?” his mum follows up, but her tone is sympathetic and concerned more than anything else. He nods slowly. “Is she safe, at least?”

“Yeah, she’s- physically safe, yeah, it’s just… a lot of yelling and fighting,” he hesitates, before continuing, “and I’m not trying to be sketchy or hide anything, I just… it’s not really my business to share.”

“That’s fine, honey, we understand. How did you meet her, anyway?” she asks, turning the conversation slightly. Shayne sighs softly, pausing for a moment in consideration.

“I… I saw her crying sitting up the top of the playground three nights in a row back when I was just going out to walk around a bit. And the third time I just… I felt like it’d be rude not to check that she was okay, and then… we ended up getting talking, and realised we like a bunch of the same stuff,” he explains, quickly adding, “and sometimes she does talk to me about the stuff going on and I think I’m the only person she does actually talk to about it but I’m okay to be there for her and a lot of the time we just talk about whatever. And for the record, we’re not dating, we’re just friends. Since her sister has quizzed me about that.”

He finishes a little abruptly, but he watches his Mum immediately nod.

“I know, Shayne, it’s okay,” she tells him.

“I’ve heard her mother yelling when I’ve walked past their place, I think,” his Dad speaks up, after a moment, and Shayne sighs. He doesn’t know what to say to that, and his Dad quickly asks, “I hope she has good friends at school too, at least?”

It makes him wince and glance over at his mother. He told her when they fought – but he didn’t tell his Dad.

“Uh… not… exactly. They’re kind of… mean. Her boyfriend, too. But it’s… her sister Kari explained it to me once, it’s just kind of… how her grade is,” he explains, a little messily.

“Hmmm, that’s unfortunate. What do you think will happen when you’re at the same school as her? Are her friends going to your school too?” he asks, Shayne nodding gently.

“Yeah, they’ll all be there. I… don’t know. I don’t wanna try and interfere and accidentally make stuff worse for her. But like… Zach and Alicia really enjoyed her hanging out with us today, my friends all want to meet her, so if she wants to hang out with us sometimes that’d be cool,” he admits, before shaking his head, “but I won’t force it or anything. I don’t wanna like… plan anything, that’s kinda weird and… manipulative. We’ll just… see what happens. Who she hangs out with is up to her.”

“Makes sense,” his Dad answers.

“Please never tell her parents any of this,” Shayne quickly adds, tone turning serious, “if she was like actually in danger or something I’d tell an adult and stuff and make sure she was okay but it’s just- it’s just a kind of sucky situation and she’s my friend and I want to do what I can to help, and that means hiding some stuff from her parents.”

“Of course, Shayne. You know it’s- like everything, it depends on context. Normally, we wouldn’t hide that one of your friends is sneaking out of home at night to see you – but because we know why it’s happening, this time, it’s okay. But, you know, you could always hang out with her during the day too,” his Mum adds, lightly, to the end of her much more serious reassurance. It makes Shayne smile.

“Kinda invited her over tomorrow already, if that’s okay…”

Chapter Text

Courtney does catch up with Yasmin and Isabel and Natalie once before they all fly to other countries, but for the most part, she quickly settles into spending a quite significant chunk of her school holidays with Shayne, and occasionally, his friends. His friend Ethan’s older brother has just bought his first car and wants every excuse possible to drive it, and he’s not past driving around to collect the group – Courtney included – and drop them off at the mall in town. But, mostly, it’s simply her and Shayne hanging around his house – they avoid the park, given it’s constantly full of kids over Summer – and talking, or watching something, or playing some of the seemingly endless stack of video games he has that he’s more than happy to teach her how to play.

(It’s never been her strength – they don’t own any consoles, and her cousins only ever let the boys play on the one they have at the big house half her family in Utah lives in)

As is always the case, her birthday in mid-June passes with little acknowledgement – it’s a Thursday, so her parents are both working, KC still isn’t home, and she’s asked to spend the day with her younger brothers at the park since Kathryn, Kami and Kari are all busy doing something else together. She gets a text from Natalie – although it’s a plain ‘happy birthday’ quickly followed by a rant about how much Johnny actually sucks and how he broke up with her over text while she’s in Canada, and as much as she agrees that he sucks, it’s not really what she wants to deal with on her birthday. Hollie is off somewhere without phone signal, but she’d evidently planned ahead, because when her parents hand her a handful of envelopes with birthday cards from family members over normal breakfast in the morning, there’s one from her included.

She gets a little bit of money from various relatives (and $10 from Hollie and a nice message about how excited she is to go into their high school together after spending all of elementary and middle schools as best friends, which Courtney agrees with, but she’d never let the other three know that), and her brothers do awkwardly run up to her with a couple of their friends midway through the afternoon at the park and sing an out-of-tune rendition of happy birthday in her face, but for the most part, that’s it.

Her Dad gives her a birthday hug, and her Mum says happy birthday, but her silent prayers for the last few months that she’d get the promised smartphone on her birthday and have it for most of Summer doesn’t eventuate.

She can’t even sneak out to see Shayne that night, because her Mum gets out her own phone and makes Courtney call and thank all the family that had sent her cards.

(She doesn’t blame Shayne or his friends for not acknowledging it, given none of them know it’s her birthday anyway, but she kinda wanted to give herself a birthday present even if it was quiet and calm at home in the form of sneaking out to hang out with at least one of her friends).

She’d planned to spend the next afternoon with Shayne, anyway, but she receives a text at 10am on the 20^th that makes her groan out loud.

“Hey babe come hang out with the boys, don’t be boring at home all summer, meet you at downtown bus stop at like 2,” Carter’s text reads. She lets herself huff in annoyance and fall back against her bed.

She’d managed to avoid actually seeing him, just maintaining an occasional conversation over text to acknowledge they were in fact still together or whatever, since school ended. But, she can’t say no – she kinda has to hang out with her boyfriend when he asks to. Ugh.

“I haven’t been home I’ve been hanging out with other people. But yeah see you then,” she replies, a little snappy, before quickly shifting to open her messages with Shayne.

“Hey dude, sorry, I’m going to have to cancel today… Carter texted me to hangout and I can’t really say no, haven’t seen him since school finished,” she explains, part of her wondering if Shayne will come back in annoyance that she’s cancelling to hang out with her boyfriend he kinda knows she doesn’t even like.

But, of course, he doesn’t.

“No worries Court, we’ll just make it another time – hope hanging out with him is okay,” he replies, not thirty seconds later.

Courtney doesn’t know what to expect from Carter – but, as he promised, he’s there waiting at the bus station downtown when she steps off the bus in the early afternoon, and he spends the walk they take alone from the bus station to the playground nearby where his friends are waiting – and, apparently, a couple of other girls from school she’s never really hung out with – talking about, and occasionally asking her about too, what’s been happening since school finished.

It's nothing like the brightness of the three times she’s already spent time with Shayne’s friends or the casual familiarity of the time she spends at his house, but the other two girls there – Maddie and Jane – and Carter’s two friends, both of their boyfriends, are nice enough, as they all amble around the playground and progressively scare off more and more of the little kids that were there before them until it’s just them.

It's then that Maddie and Jacob disappear into the enclosed section at the bottom of the slide to make out – it makes Courtney shudder. Not the making out, just the fact that there’s gonna be gross little kid feet germs and whatever in there – and the others laugh when she expresses that out loud, before Carter tugs on her hand to lead her over to behind a tree.

“Not the slide?” he offers, face settling into a smirk. It’s not exactly sexy.

“Really?” she snaps back, a little antagonistic.

“Come on, Courtney, we’ve been dating for like 6 months and you haven’t even kissed me,” he complains, his tone whining.

“You haven’t asked me to,” she points out. He rolls his eyes.

“You should kiss me,” he responds, and as much as it’s more a demand than a question, he does seem to wait for her to say something else.

“Whatever,” she agrees, with a half-hearted shrug, and then suddenly he’s right there and he’s pressing up against her as his lips mash messily against hers and his tongue immediately stabs at her upper lip.

She tries to kiss him back for what feels like forever, but it’s just… uncoordinated. Saliva-y. Gross.

She mentally notes it as one of her worst kisses ever, before carefully placing a hand on his shoulder and moving him back away from her to bring the kiss to an end.

He doesn’t seem to notice that she ended it with some intention – or how awful it was, given he grins at her when he does pull back – so she simply gives him a hopefully unreadable smile, before glancing back around.

“I should probably go home. You won’t be getting any more kisses this Summer if my parents find out and ground me,” she points out, and it’s an excuse, but he immediately nods. Carter – most of the boys at school, actually – are well aware that she’s a Mormon and very much not allowed to date anyone until 16.

It’s never stopped her, but like, she’s dated a few of them and they’ve recognised that for their own sake, they also need to keep stuff quiet and hidden from her parents.

Carter waves goodbye to the others and walks her back to the bus station, but to her relief, he doesn’t go for a second kiss, instead nodding a silent goodbye at her before he turns and walks further into the bus station to find his own bus home.

The kiss replays in her head as she watches out the window on her way home. Not, at all, because it was enjoyable: the exact opposite. He had worked out the angle a little better after a moment, but even then, it was weak – he’d mashed his lips against hers with so much force it almost hurt, but he’d immediately lost any pressure whatsoever and just kinda been… there.

As much as she tries to, she honestly can’t get it out of her head. She knows he’s kissed other girls before – is it always that bad? Has no one ever thought to tell him? Does he know, but he just can’t work out how to fix it? Is he in denial?

She ends up quietly joking about it with Kari that night when they’re both in their bedroom, her sister laughing at her description and immediately shoving her pillow over her face to mask the sound.

“That sounds so gross… Like, even worth breaking up with him gross,” she jokes, her tone lowered to keep it within their room. Courtney laughs in response, although to be entirely honest… part of her is kinda considering it.

He is a jerk, Shayne isn’t wrong about that. And she didn’t miss him in the slightest not seeing him for over three weeks, and she kinda wants a fresh start for high school anyway. She knows there will be boys from other middle schools she hasn’t met before, and people coming into town from out in the hills for high school that she hasn’t met before – any of them could be better than Carter. That’s not exactly hard. And, maybe now, she can just tell her friends it was because he was an awful kisser. They’d think that was funny.

Courtney considers for the next two days, but on Sunday afternoon she types out a text that gets straight to the point (she knows she should call, but… she doesn’t want to. And her parents can’t overhear this, so…).

“You suck at kissing,” she sends.

“Okay,” he replies, blankly, a few minutes later. It makes her brow furrow in annoyance. Does he really not fucking care? Ugh.

“We probably shouldn’t date anymore,” she adds, next. Maybe this will actually get a reply.

“Wtf,” his reply is much quicker this time, but as much as it shows slightly more emotion, it’s still… dead. Nothing. Just as quickly, though, another message appears: “is this about Shayne you slut?”

She gasps to herself at the insult – how fucking dare he call her a slut? He’s the gross one – and she taps harshly at the keys of her phone in response.

“No dude you’re an asshole and boring and not even cool and you suck at kissing and I never liked you I’m not a slut you’re just desperate and stupid… bye,” she sends, mind burning intensely in rage. Two days ago he demanded she kiss him and now he’s calling her a slut and he should be upset she’s breaking up with him, he should be-

“Whatever,” Carter replies, and it makes her mind whir even more. Should she date Shayne to piss him off? No, she’s not ruining that friendship for some dumb boy. Date another sophomore once they start back at school? One of his friends? Johnny?

They all seem like they could be possibilities – except maybe Johnny. Natalie wouldn’t like that, although he’s already starting messaging her again since they broke up – but none of them work until school starts back, so reluctantly, she throws her phone to the side and lets out a frustrated huff. She guesses she’s single for the rest of the Summer.

————————————————

Courtney doesn’t manage to reschedule with Shayne until Tuesday. She’s honestly kinda moved past the whole breakup thing – she’s still pissed at Carter, but whatever – by then, but when he asks her what she’s been up to after they settle into his living room sofa, it immediately jumps to mind. He’d like to know that.

“I broke up with Carter the other day,” she starts, watching Shayne’s face immediately twist in a mixture of surprise, concern, and a touch of relief.

(She’s getting used to reading him. It helps that he’s just… very expressive).

“What, really?! Why? When you hung out with him? Did he do something, are you okay?” he rushes out a series of questions, but she just gives a calm nod.

“I’m fine. Like I said, I’ve wanted to for a while, and… moving to high school is kind of an opportunity to say I just want someone new. And… like, I hadn’t kissed him before, but he kissed me on Friday and it was… really bad. Like, can I be graphic about how bad it was?” she asks, the concern falling from his face as he instead raises an eyebrow in intrigue.

“Go for it,” he tells her, so she does.

He squirms and makes fake-gagging faces and laughs just as she’d wanted to at the time, and when she runs out of ways to describe how gross it actually was and comes to a stop, he nods understandingly.

“I’d get why that would make you want to break up with him so you never have to go through that gross mess again… first kiss or something?” he jokes, Courtney laughing before quickly stopping herself and rushing to clarify.

“It definitely wasn’t my first kiss, I definitely had my first kiss before I was fifteen, but I know it wasn’t his either. I guess no one’s ever told him,” she finishes into a shrug.

“Hey, I’m fifteen and I’ve never kissed anyone,” he points out, before he seems to realise something as his face suddenly twists in confusion, “wait, I thought you were fourteen?”

“Birthday the other day,” she explains, simply, but Shayne immediately reaches a hand forward to grip at her bicep.

“Courtney! You should’ve told me, when was it? I’m sorry I didn’t say anything or do anything for it, I can’t believe I missed your birthday, I promise I’ll make it up somehow-” he rushes out, until she cuts him off and he retrieves his hand.

“It’s okay, Shayne, you don’t have to do anything. It was last Thursday, I don’t blame you for not acknowledging it, you literally didn’t know, it’s fine,” she reassures.

“Wait, last Thursday? So on your birthday your three older sisters hung out together without you and left you to babysit your younger brothers all day while your parents were at work? Please tell me you at least got cake?” He all but pleads, but she shrugs lightly.

“My family like, said happy birthday, and I got a bunch of cards from other family and stuff. And Clarke and Conrad got some of their friends at the park to help them sing happy birthday to me,” she answers.

“So no cake?” he prompts, again, his tone almost distraught. It makes her sad too, in a way - Shayne is always so bright, she doesn’t want to bring him down.

“It’s okay, Shayne, don’t worry. My birthday’s never really been a big deal,” she insists, trying to brush it off.

“You could have at least texted me to hang out that night and done something for yourself,” he pushes, still.

“I wanted to, but Mum made me call all the family that sent cards to say thank you,” she answers, instinctively, before quickly snapping her hand over her mouth as she watches his eyes immediately narrow. Oops.

“You had a shit birthday, didn’t you?” he prompts, again. It makes her sigh lightly. He’s so hard to lie to.

“It… kinda sucked, yeah. Kinda just made me feel alone and ignored and useless even though Mum wasn’t yelling at me. Hollie was good, she made sure to organise a card before she left and everything because she doesn’t have phone signal while she’s away but… that was kinda it,” she admits, quietly, glancing down at her lap and wringing her hands together awkwardly.

She immediately feels guilty – she shouldn’t need people to celebrate her birthday, that’s selfish and rude and her birthday is a weird time of year for everyone, and it’s not like her family have ever been the type of Mormons that refuse to ever have parties but being in the second half of June means she’s always just before the whole family usually gets together for 4^th of July, and she should be grateful for the cards she did get-

“I’m sorry it sucked, Court. I wish I’d known and could have celebrated it with you,” he tells her, his tone gentle as it cuts through the swirling in her mind and hand reaching out to reassuringly tap her shoulder again.

But Courtney shrugs, silently brushing it off and stopping him from saying any more as she redirects the conversation to ask if he wants to teach her another game.

————————————————

It’s almost another week until she next manages to see anyone outside of her family. Her Mum decided to take the last three days of the week off to look after the two youngest boys, but in the process, it traps her (and Kari) at home until at least Friday without the freedom to come and go as they please, too. Then, after a particularly loud argument on Friday night that has her Mum stalking up and down the downstairs hallway and preventing any chance of Courtney sneaking out, her Dad declares on Saturday morning that every single one of them needs to spend the weekend at home cleaning the house and garden until they’re perfect.

The only exception is on Sunday, when everyone is required – even KC, who just got home on Saturday night – to go to church. They don’t usually make the older kids go anymore unless it’s a special occasion, but this time, they do.

On Monday, though, her Mum leaves early for work. Her Dad leaves not long later, too, taking the two youngest boys with him to drop off at one of their friends’ houses for the day. KC appears to be completely dead to the world sleeping off his weeks of graduation travel in his own bedroom, while Kathryn and Kami are planning to go shopping downtown and Kari is, well… who knows, but it’s not like she’ll stop Courtney going out.

She honestly couldn’t care less who she sees other than family at this point, but of course, it’s Shayne.

She doesn’t feel awkward knocking on his front door anymore – his house (at least in the living areas) has already become as familiar as her own, and his parents have told her to make herself at home every time she’s seen either of them. She’s still scared to go into the kitchen by herself for anything except water, but she does know where the glasses are, and she’s slowly learning how they organise their fridge from all the times she’s made lunch with Shayne and he’s asked her to grab something for him.

When Shayne’s Mum opens the door with a knowing smile, though, she immediately knows something is up.

“He’s just in the dining room, honey,” she tells her, warmly, and Courtney mumbles a thanks – but it confuses her. Then why didn’t he answer the door? Shayne’s Mum seems to follow her the few steps down the hallway and through the archway into their main living spaces, too, instead of heading to the stairs and up to her office – although that’s not super weird. Maybe she just needs to grab something.

When Courtney steps into the room and swivels to face the dining area, though, she’s met with a sheepishly grinning Shayne standing beside the table, a neatly decorated chocolate cake in front of him adorned with a number 15 candle sitting on top.

“Happy belated birthday, Court,” he greets her.

“Shayne!” she exclaims, immediately, feeling her cheeks flush in equal amounts of embarrassment and appreciation at the same time, “what have you done?!”

“I didn’t want to throw you a full-on party without asking, but… cake,” he tells her, simply, as Courtney feels herself blush even more as a comfortable buzzing starts in her chest. She didn’t ask him to do this. He wanted to.

“I- you-” she tries to respond, but she immediately finds herself lost for words, internally kicking herself as she instead wanders closer to lean against the dining table opposite him, looking down at the cake.

“I hope you like chocolate cake, I couldn’t really ask without revealing what I was doing and I thought you’d tell me not to then… Mum helped me make it. I’ve been trying to learn to bake but I couldn’t mess this one up,” he explains, almost rambling, Courtney feeling her eyes snap up to him in surprise, and then glance back to see his Mum still standing in the living room looking over, watching them.

“Thank- Thank you,” she tells them, nodding towards his mum before looking back at Shayne. They actually made a whole cake for her but it’s got multiple layers and looks professional and…

“There’s also…” Shayne trails off, his voice twinging awkwardly. She tilts her head to the side to prompt him to continue. “I told Zach I was making a cake and he asked why. I didn’t tell them everything, just that I missed your birthday because I didn’t know it was last week and like- it wasn’t my idea, but he and Alicia got annoyed they missed it too and they want to come over later today and make it a mini party for you, but I told them I wanted to like… check with you first, that you’re okay with that. And it’s okay if you’re not and you just want today to be us hanging out here like normal with bonus birthday cake.”

“I have to be home by 4, mum’s finishing work early,” Courtney answers immediately, instinctively, before pausing in consideration.

She was scared Shayne would do something for her out of pity- but it’s not that. She can see it’s not that. Alicia and Zach have no idea she hated her actual birthday. It’s just… they’re used to celebrating their friends birthdays, and as of very recently, they see her as their friend. And Shayne is just fixing his annoyance at himself for missing it in the first place.

“Okay,” she answers, eventually, swaying forward slightly and gripping one hand against the top of the dining chair She’s leaning against, “okay, a mini party would be… kinda cool.”

“Perfect, I’ll let them know to come over… maybe lunch time ish? Then no worries about you getting home in time,” Shayne grins, Courtney feeling herself smile too as she nods silently in response.

Chapter Text

Courtney and Shayne settle into their normal style of hanging out for the remainder of the morning – that is, laughing and talking on his living room sofa as she fakes grumpy at him for going easy on her at Rocket League – but it’s as it edges closer to 12pm, when Alicia and Zach are apparently coming, that she hears a rustling in the background and glances back over her shoulder instinctively to see what it is.

Shayne’s Mum has evidently moved into the room at some point without them noticing, and she’s in the middle of tying a foil “Happy Birthday” balloon to the small table in the corner of the dining room so it floats up above it. Courtney feels her cheeks heat up immediately, as she feels Shayne also glance around and watches his Mum glance over, evidently hearing the pause in their game.

“You- you don’t have to-” she starts, immediately, hearing the nerves and guilt leaking into her own tone.

“Nonsense! We’ve done this for all of our boys’ friends since Chris was a toddler,” she answers, cutting her off with a tone that – in a very warm way – tells her not to try arguing.

Shayne nudges her in the side to drag her attention back, immediately hitting play again and causing her to spin out halfway across the pitch from not being ready to control her car again yet.

“Heyyyyy,” she whines, lightly. He laughs loudly beside her, before pausing his car for a second to let her regain her composure.

“I told her not to go overboard… but this is your birthday, Court,” he tells her, voice lowered under the noise of the game when they get back into it again.

Courtney simply shakes her head, prompting them to dive back into the game until much closer to twelve.

They do turn it off a little while before, Shayne moving off the sofa and tilting his head towards the dining room, as if asking Courtney to turn around and look at it. She soon finds out why – it’s not elaborate, but rose-coloured one and five balloons have appeared on the sideboard beside the dining table, too, alongside a matching rose-coloured table runner down the dining table and disposable, similarly rose-coloured plates sitting at the end of the table.

She never had the birthday party at school, given her birthday is in Summer, and she doesn’t think she’s had a party at all since like… first grade, maybe. And that was just with family, not friends (although Hollie usually tries to do something for her birthday when she’s not away). She doesn’t know how to act at a party – or mini-party, or whatever – with other people her age.

The beginning of her silent worry – and her attempt to quickly locate Shayne’s Mum and thank her or say something about how they didn’t need to do anything – is interrupted before it can really start, though, by the ringing of the doorbell.

“What’s the bet they arrived together?” Shayne jokes, lightly, Courtney snapping her head back to face him and blinking for a moment as she tries to make sense of the comment in her mind, before she laughs lightly.

“You’re really convinced of this, huh,” she shoots back, although she watches the way he raises an eyebrow to silently tell her he noticed her stumble. He doesn’t verbally acknowledge it, though, standing from the couch to move to the door.

“You saw them the other week too,” he calls back, lightly, turning to grin at her before disappearing into the hallway.

Courtney stands from the couch, too, awkwardly fiddling with her hands as she wanders slowly around to lean against the back of the couch as she listens to the door open and Zach and Alicia’s voices immediately appear, greeting Shayne loudly and enthusiastically, and asking where she is.

“Living room,” Shayne answers, half-laughing. It calms her a little – there’s something very reassuring about the way Shayne’s voice becomes almost a constant laugh when he’s comfortable and happy.

It also reminds her of the last time – and the two before that – she’d seen Alicia and Zach, and she lets herself sway back away from the couch in preparation just as they round the corner to step into the living room.

“Courtney, happy birthday!” Alicia greets her, voice full of excitement, as Zach – just as she had guessed – races forward to hug her with his own bubbling ‘happy birthday!’ seeming to almost trail behind his physical body.

Courtney grins in response, quickly returning his hug before he steps away and turns back away from her so the four are standing in a loose circle in the back of Shayne’s living room.

“Thanks, guys,” Courtney tells them, immediately, before she feels her heart drop. Shit. What… now?

“So – birthday girl picks the game? Or gifts first?” Zach asks, quickly glancing between Courtney and Shayne. It makes her freak out even more, eyes glancing around rapidly and suddenly seeing the tote bag Alicia is carrying.

Gifts? They thought they needed to do-

“What do you think, Court? You up for 4-player Rocket League? It’s even more chaotic than what we normally do…” Shayne trails off, clearly trying to distract her from the gift thing. She pauses for a moment, but…

“If we’re doing 4-player, can we do teams so I at least have backup if I suck?” she asks, instead, letting herself sway backwards again to lean against the couch, “and who should I be trying to get on my team?”

“If it’s basketball, absolutely me,” Alicia steps forward as she speaks, sending a challenging look at both of the guys as she does, “have you played basketball before?”

“Yep. Come on then, 2v2 basketball and Alicia is on my team,” she answers, immediately, Shayne faux-complaining in response, even as he moves over to his PlayStation so he can start the game and find his spare controllers to allow them all to play.

Alicia wasn’t lying – she’s weirdly good at the cars-playing-basketball mode in the game, and Courtney even manages to get a few assists as they battle against the two boys. It’s engaging and it’s fun and she finds herself laughing loudly and aggressively shoving Shayne in the side from her spot beside him on the couch to sabotage their goals, mostly forgetting about why Alicia and Zach are even there with them in the first place.

It's the sound of the garage door opening in the hallway across from the living room archway, soon followed by the distinct smell of good fast food, that brings all four of them out of the game a little while later. She hadn’t noticed she’d left in the first place, but Courtney turns alongside the others as Shayne’s Mum steps into the room carrying a large Five Guys bag. Frick, she loves Five Guys but she never gets to have it because it’s the expensive fast food in town and it’s just near the McDonalds which is so much cheaper and-

…she’s definitely dropped that in conversation with Shayne that one time they got into a heated argument about whether fast food is trash or not. She knows his own favourite is Raising Canes, except there’s definitely no Canes in Mansfield and the closest is like 3 hours away in Sacramento. She’s never even had it.

But, the point is, Shayne’s Mum has just walked in with her favourite fast food, and she stands up with the other three, quietly and insistently thanking her when Zach and Alicia seem distracted. She simply smiles, setting the bags on one end of the dining table and starting to pull out an assortment of burgers, fries, and milkshakes.

“Just got a few of the standards, hopefully there’s something you all like in there,” she tells them, as they all gather around, before immediately reaching for a burger from the bottom of the bag, “but Shayne has assured me no one your age eats mushrooms and I can keep the one I got mushrooms on for myself.”

“You have such a boring palette, Shayne,” Alicia adds, immediately, grinning as she glances over at her, “do you hate pineapple as much as he does, Cathy?”

“I don’t hate pineapple, I just don’t want it with cheese!” he argues, immediately.

“That comes from his Dad, not me,” Shayne’s Mum answers, pointedly, Courtney grinning as she watches Shayne scowl in response. She quickly continues, though, “anyway, there should be plenty there for all of you, so get in while it’s still hot!”

The other three immediately prompt Courtney to choose first, as they all sit down around the table, and it feels like it’d honestly look weirder if she didn’t just go for it, so she does, immediately reaching for a bacon cheeseburger with grilled onions and strawberry milkshake. No-one seems to be at all displeased with her taking those options, as they all pick out their own and settle into eating, conversation quietening to the occasional comment between mouthfuls.

It's exactly as good as she remembers, and she probably eats too much and too quickly but – whatever. None of her friends say anything about it, and her mother isn’t here right now. She doesn’t even know this is happening and she probably never will.

It makes her pause, mind tuning out Zach and Shayne bantering about something for a moment. She’s doing a lot of stuff without her parents knowing. Sneaking out seemed fine – it was just being somewhere they have no problem with her being, but at the wrong time of day. They’ve known when she left her neighbourhood with Shayne to see his friends. Going down the street to a friend’s house is nothing, she did it all the time as a kid. But… eating fast food? Having a whole birthday party thrown for her?

“So you go for strawberry over chocolate?” Zach asks, pulling her attention back to the present. It takes her a moment, but quickly she buries down the swirl of guilt in her mind, instead shrugging to give herself a moment to remember how to respond.

“I like both equally,” she answers, simply, “but both my brothers prefer chocolate everything so that’s all we ever get and strawberry is rarer. Or well, younger brothers.”

“I don’t know whether I’m lucky or missing out by being an only child,” Zach comments, head tilting to the side, “or well, I guess you can compare Shayne, since you’ve kinda had both?”

“There’s good and bad to both,” Shayne answers, shrugging, “it was cool to have my brothers around when I was a kid, but they were so much older than me that a lot of the time they wanted nothing to do with me anyway. And now it’s kinda… lonely sometimes. But it’s nice to have space, too.”

“Wouldn’t recommend going to the extreme and having six siblings, if you can avoid it,” Courtney adds, deadpan, “I don’t think I’d like being an only child, though. Like, they suck, but… not always.”

“I think I lucked out with being the middle child with a sister and brother,” Alicia adds, laughing lightly, before she glances around and changes the topic, “hey, Five Guys was a good call, Courtney. It’s like, the best we have here, by a long way.”

It immediately makes her guilt shoot forward in her mind again. Alicia and Zach think she chose Five Guys, the most expensive fast food there is anywhere nearby, for someone else’s parents to buy for them and what if they think she’s rude and what if Shayne told them she asked for a party or something and-

“Raising Canes is still better, but yes, it’s the best here,” Zach agrees, Shayne immediately jumping in to enthusiastically agree with him, the conversation evidently never having arisen between them before.

She uses the moment to try and tell her mind to shut up. It’s fine. They don’t think that. They chose to come here.

Shayne’s Mum had seemed to disappear elsewhere with her own lunch, and the four all jump up after they’ve eaten to tidy up the containers and wrappers from their lunch back into the Five Guys bag sitting up on the kitchen bench so it can be easily disposed of. It makes her feel just a tiny bit better, and she silently hopes that they’ll just move casually back to hanging out in the living room now.

They do move back to the living room, and she quietly excuses herself to the bathroom when they do. The TV is still off when she returns, but that’s okay – she’d be totally cool with just chatting and hanging out instead of playing another game. When she rounds the sofa again, though, she immediately sees three wrapped gifts sitting on the coffee table between it and the TV.

…Shit. She’s really not good at receiving gifts.

“Courtney!” Alicia starts, gesturing for her to sit into the seat they’ve left spare in the centre of the sofa. Something about it makes her feel even more weird, like she’s sitting up and making herself the centre of attention and- she tries to push it down, Alicia continuing with an almost apologetic tone, “I hope we’ve managed to get you things that you’ll like, kinda had to go off short notice and only knowing you for a few weeks but-”

She cuts herself off when she reaches for one of the gifts, handing it to Courtney, who can’t do anything except take it as she glances awkwardly down, holding the box loosely in her own lap.

“You didn’t have to get me anything at all, it’s fine, it’s-” she starts, unsurprised when Alicia cuts her off.

“Yeah, but wanted to,” she reinforces, pointedly, although her smile is light when she says it. Courtney knows the deep breath she takes in response is audibly shaky, but slowly, she glances back down at the present in her lap. “Go on, open it.”

She can’t exactly do anything else, so Courtney carefully starts unwrapping the orange paper covering Alicia’s gift, shaking hands tearing at the paper roughly and awkwardly struggling to lift the tape. When she does, she’s met by a box she recognises immediately: The Ordinary – and what looks like a whole base-regimen set. Isabel’s been talking about how great it is but how her parents refuse to let her buy it for months, and weirdly, Courtney’s parents don’t have any problem with her doing skincare, but she hasn’t replaced her own stuff since they actually started selling it in CVS.

“You mentioned the other week that you’re running out of cleanser and I don’t know what you usually use but my sister got me onto this stuff and it’s really good,” Alicia explains, a little nervously.

“One of my friends at school – Isabel – always talks about how cool this stuff is but her parents have some weird thing against it, I’ve wanted to try it for a while,” she answers, immediately, quietly letting excitement bubble in her chest – even as the anxiety continues swirling in her stomach – as she turns to smile at Alicia, “thanks, this is really cool.”

“My Mum was weird about it for a while too because she thought it looked like it was weird medicine stuff or something,” she laughs, shaking her head, “but it’s just… their branding, I guess?”

“That kind of makes sense for branding because like, their whole thing is being like… basic stuff without all the unnecessary extra shit? So their branding is trying to look basic too,” Zach adds, head tilted to the side, before quickly apologising, “sorry, ad and branding stuff is… interesting. To me, anyway. I’ve been told it’s boring.”

“That makes sense though,” Courtney agrees, with a nod, seeing Alicia and Shayne doing the same.

“Anyway, I also have a gift,” Zach quickly changes tact, reaching for his own gift and handing it over to her. Courtney manages to push herself to unwrap this one a little less awkwardly, and it’s very quickly obvious from the brightly-coloured pages through Zach’s white, almost see-through wrapping paper, that he’s gifted her a couple of DC comic books, so he continues to explain as he unwraps, “these aren’t regifting like I keep doing to Shayne, I haven’t actually read these ones – but Wonder Woman got her own series a while back and I guess you can tell me what it’s like.”

It gives her something to respond to, as she and Zach end up off on a tangent about how it kinda feels like Wonder Woman has been forced into some of the recent DC releases to make it more like and build on the success Marvel has been getting, until Shayne jumps in to politely stop them.

“You two and your comic talk… but I do have a gift too, actually,” he points out, lightly, before handing over a much weirder-shaped package to Courtney – larger and flatter, with an odd hump in the middle. He continues, hurriedly, “and yes, I suck at wrapping.”

“I’ll teach you to do better next time Mum makes me wrap like a million different gifts for younger siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles for Christmas,” Courtney deadpans, as she lets herself tear at the wrapping paper a little to get it open.

Shayne has already done more than enough by throwing her a whole party – he even baked a cake, she silently reminds herself – and she expected literally nothing at all, let alone a present too. When she finally manages to tear the paper away (his wrapping job was… really bad), though, she feels a lump forming in her throat and her cheeks heat up. He’s got her some drawing tools – she knows she probably complained to him at some point about not having stuff at home other than her school art book and a handful of pencils – but it’s not just anything: there’s a full set of Faber-Castell sketching pencils (in an oddly-shaped container, which explains the weird package) sitting on top of a high-quality spiral-bound sketch pad.

“Oh, this is- this is really cool, thanks, Shayne,” she tells him, immediately noticing her own voice sounds teary and only then feeling the pricking at her eyes. It immediately makes her flush with embarrassment. She’s fucking crying, she’s such a baby, she-

“Hey, come with me,” Alicia speaks up, immediately, her tone almost reassuring even as she grabs Courtney’s arm from where she sits beside her, gently prompting her to get up out of the chair and follow her out into the hallway.

It makes Courtney immediately start to panic. Does she look ungrateful, do they think she’s awful, is Alicia going to throw her out of Shayne’s house for some reason or another-

“You okay, Courtney?” Alicia asks, instead, her voice soft as she stops just out in the hall and turns to stand immediately in front of Courtney, both hands landing gently on your biceps, “is there… something that made you uncomfortable? I don’t need to tell Shayne if you don’t want me to.”

“Not uncomfortable,” she answers, immediately, sniffing lightly when she does and feeling the actual tears on her cheeks. Dammit.

“It’s okay if it is. Is it… too much?” she asks. It makes Courtney pause for a moment, but slowly, she shakes her head.

“It’s- I’m not used to it. My friends don’t really give me gifts except Hollie but she was away this year and my parents don’t really do anything anymore and my birthday is just kind of nothing and I haven’t had a party for like 8 years probably so it’s just-” she rambles, feeling it spill out of her and immediately regretting it, but she can’t seem to stop, “it feels nice and I like it and you’re all so nice but it makes me feel guilty like I’m somehow rude for not debating Shayne more when he said you guys wanted to come over too and his Mum organising all the stuff too…”

She trails off into another sob, finally, but Alicia immediately reaches forward even further to pull her into a hug, squeezing her tightly for a moment when she does. Courtney carefully hugs her in return, before Alicia carefully steps back with her hands resting gently on Courtney’s shoulders.

“That’s not rude at all. Shayne’s Mum loves doing this, he gets kinda embarrassed about it but don’t think it’s just you or you should feel bad or anything, okay? She’s like that. And it might not be how your other friends do it, but we all do parties all the time – not like, crazy stuff, but some junk food, gifts, hanging out for a few hours kind of thing. And you’re our friend so of course we want to for you too,” she explains, and as much as her tone is gentle, there isn’t even a hint of talking down in it.

Courtney takes a deep breath in response, as she lets the words settle in her mind.

It’s not weird. She’s not rude. This is just… this is just normal.

“Okay,” she replies, quietly, reluctantly lifting up a hand to brush at her cheek and wipe away a stray tear she can feel sitting there, “thank you.”

“No problem. Want to head back to the guys? They won’t say anything,” she tells her, Courtney silently nodding. She’s right – when they step back into the room, they pretend nothing happened, the four quickly settling back into talking about other bits and pieces.

She does notice a tinge of worry in Shayne’s eyes, though, and when Zach and Alicia leave a bit later, not long after they’ve brought out the cake and lit the candles and sung happy birthday (she knows she was awkward during that, but isn’t everyone?) before eating it, she isn’t surprised that Shayne brings it up.

“Was everything… okay earlier, Courtney? I don’t want to like- I don’t want to make you uncomfortable or anything with things being too much. My Mum is like that all the time with friends’ parties – like, for her and Dad’s friends too as well as me and my brothers’ friends – and this is kinda what my group of friends does, they haven’t done it for me yet because I haven’t had a birthday since I moved here but… yeah,” he explains, rambling a little as he fidgets with his hands, but Courtney shakes her head and smiles softly.

“Not uncomfortable, Shayne. Just… it feels nice to be appreciated and have my birthday be a… thing, for once, and I was scared I was being rude or something and I was kinda overwhelmed but… you didn’t do anything wrong,” she tells him, firmly, before picking up on something else he said. “When is your birthday, anyway?”

“September,” he answers, shrugging, before quickly adding, “14^th, because I’m guessing you’ll ask.”

“Yep. Noted,” she grins, lightly, before shaking her head and stepping forward to briefly hug him, “thanks for all this, Shayne. It was fun.”

Chapter Text

To Courtney’s annoyance, she doesn’t manage to get away from her family again before their 4^th of July trip to Utah. It’s honestly not a trip she entirely hates – she does like hanging out with some of her cousins, and not all of her extended family are awful – but it’s always messy and chaotic and she’s already packed a bag ready to go, but everyone else is still rushing around the house trying to finalise things the night before the gruelling 12-hour drive over to her aunt’s house in Utah.

(She wishes they could fly, but for nine people, driving two cars across two-ish states is still a lot cheaper. And they’d have to drive down to Sacramento to fly anyway.)

She’d been quietly hiding away in her bedroom sketching with the notepad and pencils Shayne had given her, but her mother had screamed at her about being antisocial – so, she’d instead shifted to doing exactly the same thing sitting at the dining room table while her Dad tried to get her younger brothers to stop fighting on the living room floor behind her.

“Hey, is that a new set of pencils? Where did you get them?” her Dad asks, casually, one time when he’s passing by the dining room.

“Courtney, Christ in heaven, please don’t tell me you’ve started stealing-” her mother starts, voice beginning to raise.

“No! Of course not!” she answers, immediately. To be fair, she’d been with Yasmin and Isabel when they stole makeup from CVS – as if they needed to – but she’s always been too scared to do it herself. She continues, her own voice calmer as she does, “Shayne and his friends gave me some stuff for my birthday the other week, that’s all.”

“Why?! You barely know them, are you demanding presents? How rude are you?!” her mother changes tact. She sighs.

“I didn’t ask for anything at all, and it was only an accident that they even knew when my birthday is, I wasn’t going to tell them that, but once they found out they got me stuff because they do that for all their friends apparently,” she defends, hearing her mother huff – a clear sign she can’t find something else to complain about – before she stalks back out of the room to go and tell Kari to hurry up and finish packing, while Courtney’s Dad instead hums and moves over to pat her shoulder, leaning over to see what she’s drawing.

Part of it makes Courtney squirm, but she wouldn’t be drawing anything risqué out in the dining room anyway, soooo…

“You’ve always been very good at drawing,” he tells her, instead, patting her shoulder a couple of times before continuing to wander through to the kitchen. Courtney feels herself blush, before quickly glancing back down and continuing to sketch a random beach scene – it’s a long time since she’s actually been to a beach, she’s not sure where this came from – out on the paper in front of her with the ambient sounds of Kari and her mother’s arguing descending down the stairs to join her father rustling around in kitchen cupboards.

She doesn’t look up, for a while, using her other senses to keep at least a vague idea of where everyone is in the room – Kathryn has come downstairs to help get the two youngest boys to cooperate so she’s in the living room helping them tidy up the toys they’d been throwing around, her mother is folding clothes up the other end of the dining table, her Dad is still in the kitchen seemingly moving things between cupboards for god knows what reason – as she sits in the middle of the chaos. Her attention is snapped up probably ten minutes later, though, when a white, rectangular box is set down immediately on top of the part of the sketch she’s working on.

“Hey! You’ll smudge-” she starts, annoyed, before her eyes catch up with the Apple logo on top of the box.

“Thought you might want to include this in your packing to help you keep in touch with all your friends – middle school, and new – while we’re away,” her Dad tells her, Courtney glancing up and meeting his grin with her own wide smile.

“Seriously?! Thanks, Dad!” she exclaims, instinctively, feeling her voice grow in excitement.

“No Facebook still!” her mother snaps, immediately. She glances up to her.

“No one my age uses Facebook anyway, Mum, I don’t want it. More of your friends would probably be on Facebook than my friends,” she answers, pointedly.

“Don’t you dare get snappy or we’ll take it away again-” she starts. Shoot.

“No, no,” Courtney cuts her off, quickly trying to turn her tone… careful? Does that work? “I didn’t mean it like that, Mum. Like- like maybe you should actually get Facebook? I know it’s harder for you to see your friends and keep up with them now you’re working more, maybe you could get Facebook and talk to them a bit easier and see photos of their kids and stuff. And I’m not gonna get it so you don’t have to worry about that.”

“Hmm, maybe,” her mother answers, after a moment, attention quickly turning back to the washing she’s folding. Courtney feels her Dad lean over, arm wrapping around her shoulders for a moment to squeeze gently before he moves back down to the living room to ask Kari if she’s finished packing.

“Yes!” she answers, snapping, “why are you bugging me and not Courtney?”

“Courtney already finished packing, Kari,” her mother answers, without looking up, Courtney glancing back to see her sister simply roll her eyes in response.

It reminds Courtney of one thing she doesn’t know about tomorrow.

“Do you have a plan for who’s in what car tomorrow?” she asks. She silently prays she gets to be with her Dad.

“Kathryn will be with me and KC with your Dad so they can swap out driving with us,” her mother starts, “and we might change on the way if anyone starts fighting but… the two boys with me and Kathryn, you other three with your Dad.”

It immediately doesn’t make sense to her – why wouldn’t the car with only four be the older kids, not her brothers who are small enough that one could sit in the middle seat just fine and not be squished? She knows she’ll end up stuck between Kari and Kami in the middle seat in her Dad’s car.

…but it’s her Dad’s car, so instead she nods silently and bites back her comments as she carefully packs up her sketchbook and pencils and glances up at the clock visible on the oven in the kitchen. 8:45pm. She might be able to manage this.

“Is it okay if I go up to my room now? I’m all ready for tomorrow, and I want to get up early and have a shower before we go so I kinda want to get to bed early tonight and rest,” she asks, not entirely sure which parent she’s addressing it to.

“Okay, but you might have to shower downstairs in the morning,” her mother answers, Courtney simply nodding in response as she slowly – so as not to look too eager to leave – arranges her now-closed sketchbook, the tin of pencils, and her new iPhone box (!!!!) into a pile before she stands and wanders upstairs with it.

The patience ends the second her bedroom door closes behind her, as she carefully sets her sketchpad and pencils on top of her duffle bag before flopping down on her bed with the iPhone box and roughly grabbing her old phone. They’ve given her the iPhone XR, and she knows it’s the lower-cost version, but it’s technically the newest release still, so at least there’s that. She watched Kari set up her own first smartphone a couple of years ago, and Courtney starts pulling the contents out of the box to go through the process of setting up her own.

Kari returns to their bedroom around the time Courtney is transferring the last of her contacts over – manually, given she’s going from an old Motorola brick-thing to a smartphone – but she doesn’t say anything, simply pulling out her laptop to open YouTube and watch whatever weird stuff she watches and leave Courtney be on her side of the room.

It takes a little while, but eventually Courtney gets it all set up and has her SIM card transferred into the new, activated, fully-charged-in-box (thank god, although she’ll make sure it’s also at 100% again before they leave tomorrow) iPhone. She can’t transfer her text history at all – she tucks her old phone into the back of her keepsakes drawer beside her bed, so it’s still somewhere – but she only has to think for a second before deciding who her first text will be to.

“Who’d have thought 9 people getting ready to drive for 12 hours leaving at 6am tomorrow would be chaotic 🙄” she sends Shayne.

“LMAO couldn’t have predicted that,” he sends. She waits ten seconds, watching the typing bubble appear for the first time ever – she can see when people are replying, now! – and unsurprised when his next message comes, “WAIT!!! You used an emoji!! What?? 😲😲😲”

“Dad (or my parents I guess… but Dad gave it to me and Mum just yelled at me not to download Facebook) gave me my smartphone before we go to Utah. I got an iPhone,” she sends, in response, forgetting to add an emoji this time. She’s not used to using them.

“Awesome!!! No one uses Facebook anyway tho… would they let you get snap or insta?” he asks.

“Probably not if they knew what they were… but they don’t. Might have to wait until after holiday to get them though, too much risk of siblings telling on me on the drive tomorrow. I have to sit between Kami and Kari 🤦‍♀️”

She has to stop texting Shayne and actually sleep eventually – she does really intend to get up and shower early before the awful drive to where they’re staying at her aunt and uncle’s huge farmhouse – but her phone helps her pass the time in the car the next day, between reluctantly engaging with her family, as she slowly discovers the possibilities it opens up outside of just emojis and future social media apps. She could send pictures on her old phone, but they were awful and annoying to send – it’s so much easier now even just by text, and she texts Shayne photos of the dead desert out the window a handful of times.

“Would your parents let you get WhatsApp?” he asks, at one point.

“They made me get it for a family group chat thing,” she replies, immediately.

“Perfect! You’ll get a text in a minute inviting you to join group chat with our friends too then! 😁” he sends, closely followed by said link – and, suddenly, Shayne’s friends are talking to her too.

(She hasn’t met Evie yet, but Zach and Alicia she’s comfortable to call her own friends too, and she has met Ethan and Max too – so it’s not too weird to be in a text chat with all of them suddenly.)

She knows none of her friends have anything like that – they mostly snap – but she starts dropping emojis into the occasional text she exchanges with Yasmin and Natalie, too (and Johnny, although mostly she just tells him to shut up and leave her alone, now with an added eye-roll). Isabel doesn’t text – she only snaps – and Hollie doesn’t have signal for another two weeks.

“Omg why are your messages coming up blue????” Yasmin asks, at one point. It makes Courtney grin to herself as she sits at her aunt’s dining table a day and a half into their actual stay there.

“Oooh, grinning at your phone – talking to a boy, are we?” her aunt teases, immediately.

“Absolutely not! Courtney, we’ll take that phone away from your immediately, you cannot be talking to boys-” her mother rushes out, her tone immediately angry.

“I’m just joking with my friend Yasmin from school! Geez,” she answers, audibly annoyed, but knowing her mother can’t exactly say anymore right now. They’re staying with her Dad’s family, this year – as much as both her parents’ families are from the same area and the whole messy, complicated extended family will be there for the actual 4^th of July party the next day – so her Mum has to at least be kind of reasonable.

It makes the five days they spend in Utah ultimately uneventful. She texts her friends and Shayne’s on-and-off, she hangs out with her cousins, the men grill in the huge backyard of the farmhouse for the 4^th of July and her Mum’s brother lets off a bunch of fireworks that have her mother crossing her arms and grumbling in annoyance about stupid boys that never grow up and the three dogs there for the day howling loudly.

She hates to agree with her mother, but she doesn’t love the fireworks either.

The trip back is a little less bearable than the trip there, as much as Courtney kind of wants to go home and be back in her own bed, sharing her bedroom with just one sister instead of both Kari and two of her cousins. Conrad and Clarke had got into a screaming match the night before they left, and it means, on the way back, they get separated, as well as other siblings being shuffled around. It leaves her riding in her mother’s car with KC, Conrad, and Kami, and after being snapped at for being on her phone only an hour into the trip, means she has to spend much of it sitting in silence, trying not to get yelled at as she wills the time to pass faster.

It's 11pm by the time they finally get home. The younger boys are whining and cranky with tiredness, Kathryn is all shaken up and giving everyone the silent treatment because their Dad apparently got annoyed with her driving, and somehow her mother is already angry that the house is a mess even though they’ve literally just got home from a week away-

Courtney would love nothing more than to sneak out and see Shayne and get the fuck away from her family, but it’s too late and there’s too many people around, so she simply lets herself crash into bed and bury her head under the covers as she tries to drown out the noise downstairs and get to sleep.

————————————————

Summer always seems to speed up from mid-July. Her parents are both at work almost every day, and Kathryn heads back to college early for some reason or another, and it means she gets saddled with staying with the younger boys at least once a week on a kind of rotation with Kami, Kari and KC. At the same time, though, she manages to get out of the house as often as she possibly can (although, given her mother has taken to stalking in circles around the house whenever she’s angry, mostly during the day).

Ethan’s brother isn’t sick of driving them around just yet, and she spends another day at the mall with Shayne and his friends – this time, Ethan, Alicia and Max, because Zach is busy – and one at a public swimming pool near Alicia’s place where she absolutely refuses to actually swim, given her Mum will still only let her wear gross old lady swimwear. To her disappointment, though, she starts seeing Shayne less and less, shortly after she returns from California.

“Hang out tomorrow?” she’d texted him, two days after returning.

“I’m sorry, can’t this time. My Mum’s friend is a psychologist and she asked me to help fill in working the reception at her practice for the rest of Summer because the normal person quit 😔,” he’d texted. She immediately felt her heart sink, although she tried to be positive anyway.

“That’s kinda cool you got a job though! Do you know how often it will be?” she’d replied, silently hoping it wasn’t that often.

“Mon, Wed and Thu until school goes back… sorry it’s going to cut into our hangout time so much. Maybe we can go back to evenings?” he’d suggested. It made her shiver.

“Maybe, but Mum is making sneaking out harder. But we’ve still got some days, maybe?”

She still manages to end up at his house once a week – but that’s only another four times before the end of Summer, and she only manages to sneak out once.

Courtney is saved from complete loneliness, though, by Hollie’s return to California. Hollie’s parents have always been open to letting her do whatever she wants, so on the day immediately after she returns home, Courtney races off to the bus stop first thing in the morning to meet Hollie at a park in a part of town neither of them know anyone – partially to avoid guys from school, but also because they’d been there once with Hollie’s Mum when they were much younger and it was cool. And pretty quiet.

“Courtney!! How’s Summer been?” Hollie asks, excitedly, as she rushes up and pulls her friend into a hug when she arrives. Courtney doesn’t hesitate to return it.

“It’s been kinda good,” she answers, shrugging a little as she pulls back, “I broke up with Carter a few weeks ago because he kissed me and it was gross and he sucks anyway… and I want to start new in high school. I’ve been spending a heap of time with Shayne and some of his friends, I guess you can meet them when we go back to school. Although I guess they won’t wanna be anywhere near me at school.”

“Yeah I’ve heard people don’t really like freshmen… that’s cool though. Are you spending heaps of time with Shayne like… as a maybe dating thing?” Hollie asks, eyebrow raising in intrigue, but Courtney simply laughs.

“No, no, definitely not. He’s cool but like – not like that, he’s more like a brother to me than anything else,” she replies, immediately, “how was your camping and stuff, anyway?”

They spend a nice couple of hours just moving around the playground talking, but their apparently private and hidden park away from anyone they know is breached, in the late morning, as Courtney hears an irritatingly familiar voice calling her name.

“Hey Courtney! What are you here for? You two hiding off to be lesbians or something, that why you won’t date me you weirdo?” Johnny calls out, moving almost aggressively to stand in front of her and Hollie.

“No you freak you’re just gross,” Courtney shoots back, immediately, before glancing to the boy standing beside him. She doesn’t recognise him – he definitely didn’t go to their middle school – and he looks awkward for a moment, seemingly leaning back into the heels of his bright red converse.

“Who are you, anyway?” Hollie speaks up, gesturing towards him.

“This is Cody, because I’m not too much of a loser to have friends that I didn’t go to elementary school with,” Johnny answers, for him.

“We did go to the same elementary school though dumbass,” Cody speaks up, immediately, rolling his eyes and flicking his dark black hair off his face.

…He’s definitely trying to be an alt emo kid like it’s 2010 or something. Courtney’s not sure she buys it.

“You going to West High next year?” she asks him, instead, watching him nod in response, “guess we’ll see you there then. Especially if Johnny won’t leave me alone. You literally broke up with one of my best friends by text while she’s in another country, dickhead, why do you think I’d ever go near you?!”

“But I broke up with her for you!” he almost whines, in response, Courtney immediately huffing and rolling her eyes.

They do eventually leave them alone, at least – Cody says he has to get back home, he apparently lives nearby, and Johnny thankfully leaves with him – but it sours Courtney’s mood.

“Maybe I need to make a resolution to go full Mormon like Mum wants this year. No boys at all,” she muses, pushing herself up higher on the swings not long after they leave. She glances over to Hollie beside her, watching her shrug as she scuffs her feet to bring her own swing to a stop.

“Mum said I can date once I’m in high school but it’s way less appealing when she’s literally a teacher at the school and can just like… see everything. We gotta find places to hide at lunch,” she answers, almost grumbling, “but I feel like Yasmin’s gonna kick me out or something if I don’t date someone soon.”

It’s something Courtney tries to avoid actually talking about with Hollie – she knows that it was her that got the two of them the invite to hang out with the popular girls, and if anyone’s going to make them lose that invite, it’s Hollie. She’s just not… she just doesn’t care quite as much as Courtney. She’ll go off and do some lame thing with her parents and openly talk about enjoying it. She doesn’t get it.

“Maybe. There should be better boys to choose from now, anyway,” she answers, almost cryptically, before asking if Hollie wants to come to her place for once the next week. Her Mum’s never seemed to mind Hollie coming over, something about her Dad being part-Mormon.

(Courtney doesn’t really know how part counts for Hollie’s Dad, but she gets yelled at for not being perfectly Mormon. Whatever).

Chapter Text

The first day of a new school year is always weird. Courtney takes the bus – Kami drives and takes Kari with her, but they have to drop off the boys at the elementary school on the way and she’d rather not. Isabel ends up on the bus with her as they get near the school, Courtney immediately pulling out her phone to exchange snaps and Instagram handles as she listens to Isabel brag about her trip to Mexico with her family and how her parents let her buy all new clothes so she can dress like a real high schooler.

(She says nothing, at that. She has more of Kami’s hand-me-downs, although they’re still mostly fashionable at least. And it’s not like she can actually wear all the low-cut crop tops that are around now, that she very much doesn’t own any of, to school. There is still a dress code.)

Isabel is in a different homeroom to Courtney, though, and after they arrive at the school they separate off to find where they each need to be. It makes Courtney’s heart beat hard in her chest, as she tightens her grip around her backpack strap slung over one shoulder. The letter sent to her parents with her homeroom details on it did include a rough direction on where her homeroom is, but she has no idea who else is in it. What if she knows no one? What if she’s ended up in a homeroom for lame loser kids and it means she can’t be popular here either?

“Hey Courtney! Which sister gave you that shit? Or was it your brother?” Johnny calls out, when she steps into the homeroom. She rolls her eyes, letting herself groan audibly as she glances around the room. There’s a bunch of people looking at her now – some of the jocks from middle school that Johnny is friends with, a couple of weird nerd girls that immediately look away when she glances at them, Cody now with dyed-black hair sweeping across his face and a wide studded leather bracelet that she knows is gonna get confiscated by like, the end of homeroom – but she instead beelines for Yasmin in the back corner of the room, who seems to be entirely ignoring Johnny.

“Hey Yasmin,” she greets her, as she sits into the seat beside her, Yasmin looking up from examining her obviously fresh manicure to look at Courtney.

“Oh, hey. Did you actually make Johnny break up with Nat like that or is he just being a dickhead?” she asks, to the point. It makes Courtney roll her eyes yet again.

“He’s a dickhead. I’m trying to avoid him, he keeps turning up where I am like a stalker or something,” she replies, grumbling. She watches Yasmin sigh.

“What happened with Carter anyway? I didn’t like, have much phone data in Paris,” she switches topic ever-so-slightly, but Courtney feels herself grin.

“Ugh, he made me kiss him and he was the worst kisser ever, it was disgusting, I broke up with his lame ass. Can find someone better in high school, there’s new people,” she answers, Yasmin simply nodding in response, before their conversation is stopped short by an older man bursting into the room wheeling a cart of laptops.

She can’t pretend she isn’t like, a little excited to be given a school-issued laptop. She does get to take it home and they can use it for whatever stuff isn’t blocked at home, and she knows from Kari that only like, really bad stuff is blocked. But, she keeps her mouth shut, instead settling into quiet silence leaning back in the chair and listening to her homeroom teacher – Mr Douglas – drone on about the laptop rules as if they weren’t already outlined in the letter that went to incoming freshmen a couple of weeks ago.

“Ugh, I wish I could get a Mac for art stuff,” Yasmin complains, when she’s handed hers.

“If you take art electives the appropriate programs will be activated on your device. It’s not only Apple products with art programs,” Mr Douglas snaps back to her, immediately. It makes Courtney cringe slightly.

No teacher dared talk back to Yasmin in middle school or elementary school. Her parents have so much money-

“Whatever,” Yasmin mutters, as Mr Douglas moves on to hand laptops to Johnny and Cody and their other dumb friends over near the door. She adds as soon as he’s out of earshot, “he’s a dick. But he knows my Dad.”

“Hmm,” Courtney hums, plainly, as she glances over to watch Cody sulk as he is instructed to remove his bracelet. Such a faker.

He flips his hair back across his face with an overstated swish of his head, glancing over to look at her in the process. She immediately looks away. Creep.

There’s a weird five-minute gap between homeroom and their first actual period. Yasmin and Courtney are in the same English clash in first period – with Isabel, Natalie, and Hollie too. English was the only class they knew about before they got the rest of their schedules in homeroom – but it’s only a short walk away, so they move slowly back along the first-floor front hallway, where all the freshman lockers are, towards their English room.

As much as Shayne had been texting Courtney earlier in the morning wishing her good luck for her first day and offering to help if she needed to know how to get anywhere, she’s realistic about it all. She’s had a good time with him and Zach and Alicia and the others over Summer, but that was outside the walls of the school. She knows things are always different in here, where they’ve got other sophomores and all the juniors and seniors to judge them for talking to freshmen.

Halfway through their walk to English – after Hollie and Isabel have both joined her and Yasmin – though, Courtney hears a familiar voice excitedly calling her name from just beside her, emerging from a cross-corridor full of lockers.

“Hey, Court! Have you got your schedule and stuff? What lunch hour are you?” Shayne greets, brightly, as he comes to a stop at the same time she – and her friends – do. She pauses for a moment, glancing between her friends before she looks back to Shayne.

“Uh, yeah – fifth period,” she answers, quickly, knowing her own voice is a little confused. Shayne almost bounces on his feet as he grins in response.

“Awesome! Same, so are Zach and Alicia, haven’t talked to the others yet though,” Shayne answers, immediately, before turning to her friends, “and hey, guys, haven’t met before but I’m guessing your Courtney’s friends? I’m Shayne.”

“Hey, it’s good to meet you finally Shayne! I’m Hollie,” Hollie speaks up, immediately, “I’m fifth period lunch hour, too.”

“Ugh, Hollie, don’t get your hopes up, you’re not sitting with sophomores at lunch,” Yasmin grumbles. Courtney watches as Shayne’s eyes narrow, but he seems to bite his lip.

“I’m Isabel,” Isabel steps forward, then, Courtney glancing over to see a familiar look cross her face – one eyebrow raised in intrigue, a determined smile poking at the corners of her mouth. It makes Courtney feel a little nauseous. She’s not sure how Shayne would feel about being preyed on by a popular freshman girl, given… everything she knows about him.

“And that’s Yasmin,” Courtney adds, tilting her head to her side to gesture to Yasmin, when she doesn’t seem to add an introduction to her rebuff to Hollie, “and Natalie is god-knows-where. But like, we won’t bother you at lunch if you don’t want.”

“Nah, not bothering at all, you guys do whatever you want of course but – there’s space at our table,” Shayne answers, simply, Courtney watching his fingers tap a little erratically against his side as he evidently holds back the rest of his answer. She gives him a silent look, hoping it conveys her thanks for not saying anything.

“We should go to class,” Hollie speaks up, after a moment of silence, her voice a little downtrodden. Courtney winces lightly. Why does she show when she’s upset. Why can’t she hide it for once?

“Yeah, I gotta get to Geometry. Ugh,” Shayne agrees, shaking his head, “well, nice to meet you guys, might see you later.”

They are almost late to English, though, and none of Courtney’s friends have time to say anything else as they move into the classroom, grabbing a group of tables up in the back corner as they always do and turning their attention to the young woman standing at the front of the room as she begins to introduce herself and what they’ll be doing in high school English.

(It sounds a lot like middle school English, but whatever.)

For the most part, the first day of high school is easy. She doesn’t have a single class with Johnny (score!), although she has a handful with his friend Cody, who won’t stop looking over at her. There’s almost no real work in any of the classes, just teachers explaining how the year will work, and over lunch she sits with her friends – they all have the same lunch hour – and just lightly waves at Shayne and his friends, quietly glad they leave them be for now.

Yasmin spends the entire lunch period bragging about how cool Europe was, but whatever. Courtney simply listens as she picks at her lunch (still as bad as middle school food) and internally wonders why people care so much about buildings and stuff just because they’re old.

The rest of the week seems to settle into the same boring pattern as if it’s no different to middle school. Natalie is still mad about the whole Johnny thing even though it was like months ago now (although not mad at Courtney, especially when she expresses how gross Johnny is now), Yasmin seems to have an answer to literally everything anyone else says that involves her trip to Europe, and on Wednesday, Isabel makes fun of her for wearing the same black jeans three days in a row.

“But they’re real vintage denim, if you wash them heaps it literally destroys them,” Courtney answers, pointedly, not mentioning that they were definitely Kari’s at one point. She does actually like these jeans though.

“Yeah real denim is different, I was talking to the owner of this store in Amsterdam…” Yasmin adds, and Courtney feels like rolling her eyes, but she keeps it internal as she instead fiddles with the threads hanging across the (intentional) rip across the knee of said jeans.

Courtney doesn’t see Shayne a whole lot at school in that first week. She waves at him or his friends or says a quick hello if they pass by each other in the hallway or cafeteria, but they sit in a section surrounded by other sophomores – it quickly becomes apparent, as Yasmin seems to be actively annoyed by when she points it out, that they are the popular kids too, or at least everyone else seems to be nice to them like they are – and the table that Courtney’s friends end up occupying every lunch hour is across the other side, near Johnny and all his boys (ugh).

It's on the Monday of the second week of school that Courtney finds herself wandering into the cafeteria with only Isabel by her side. There’s tryouts for something or another every lunch period this week – Courtney fully intends to do track tryouts on Wednesday, although her mother has reminded her that she is not allowed to try out for anything else at all even if it’s free – but on Monday, Natalie, Yasmin and Hollie are all off trying out for the drama club’s freshman production.

“Hey, can we sit with Shayne and his friends?” Isabel asks, as she stands beside Courtney as they line up to get food, “instead of just like, being two people, or ending up with the boys.”

“Ugh, yes, anything to get away from Cody. He’s being so weird, he keeps trying to talk to me,” Courtney replies, her voice grumbling as Isabel nods.

“He doesn’t seem too bad, though. Like, he’s all emo and whatever but apparently he plays drums and all that kinda cool stuff,” she answers. It makes Courtney shrug, although it twists in her mind. Drums are cool. She didn’t know that, all he seems to say around her is stuff about Johnny.

“Maybe. But he keeps staring at me,” she says, instead.

“Yeah, that is kinda weird,” Isabel agrees, before their conversation stops as they reach the front of the line and move across to get food.

Courtney is used to waiting for Yasmin or Isabel – and sometimes Natalie –’s prompts on what to do, when they’re at school, but this time she feels Isabel hovering just slightly behind her shoulder as they glance across the cafeteria. She immediately sees the table Shayne and his friends usually sit at, but Shayne isn’t there yet – it’s Alicia, Max and Ethan, for now – and she feels a tinge of nerves.

…But at least Alicia is there, right?

“Hey, mind if we sit-” she starts, a little timidly, Isabel still following just near her as they wander up to and pause at the edge of the table. She can’t finish her sentence before Alicia cuts her off.

“Courtney! Hell yeah, sit with us. Zach’s off at theatre tryouts, Shayne will be here soon, god knows where that dumbass is,” Alicia greets her, excitedly, before turning – still brightly, but a little less intensely – to Isabel, “and you’re… Natalie? Or Isabel? Sorry, still learning the new faces from your grade.”

“Isabel,” she answers, seeming to step forward in front of Courtney when she does, snapping out of her earlier hesitance as she slides into the space at the end of the table beside Max – who immediately introduces himself, alongside Ethan – while Courtney sits down beside Alicia, opposite Max.

“Hey, before he gets here… is Shayne single?” Isabel asks, out of the blue, not thirty seconds later. It makes Courtney bristle uncomfortably as she glances across at the other three to see their reaction.

Ethan and Alicia both immediately laugh.

“Dude is like, chronically single,” Alicia confirms, before tilting her head to the side and looking over at Isabel, eyes probing as she does, “why do you ask?”

“Just wondering,” she answers, fake-sweet. It makes Courtney feel like actually nauseous. The last time Isabel got this way over a guy it was some kid named Mark from a different middle school in year seven and it ended in him running away from her crying when she broke up with him like 2 weeks after he asked her out (after months of teasing).

Any more conversation on that particular topic is quickly dropped by the arrival of Shayne himself, who immediately sits down beside Courtney – opposite Isabel – and turns to enthuse about her being at their table.

“Court! The others at tryouts for something?” he asks, and she nods in response.

“Yeah, drama club. I’m just waiting for track on Thursday. You going to do field this year like you were saying?” she turns the question back on him, watching Shayne immediately nod.

“Definitely, I can’t do soccer because they’ve said practice will be Monday nights and the psychologist wants me to keep working Monday afternoon for a few hours… not sure if I’ll do anything else,” he answers, before glancing back across to Isabel and mouthing a low “oh, sorry.”

It confuses Courtney for a moment, but Isabel simply gives him that same fake-sweet smile and doesn’t say anything.

“Nah, Shayne, you know what else you’re doing – you’re joining us arty kids doing sets for drama club,” Alicia points out, successfully distracting everyone again, as she throws an arm around Courtney, “and this isn’t a sign-up deal, it’s literally whoever volunteers because more people is always better, so Courtney, I’ve already decided I’m dragging you into this. You can actually do good art, anyway.”

“Okay, okay,” she answers, feeling herself laugh lightly as she settles into the rest of lunch talking to… mostly everyone except Isabel, as she continues to sit up the end of the table, occasionally commenting something towards Shayne.

It’s all technically innocent – asking him if he wants to be military like his Dad (he gives a very decisive no to that), how his morning was, what classes he has after lunch, what he likes to do in his free time – but she doesn’t ask anything similar of the others, even though she knows them just as much as she does Shayne (only as much as Courtney has told her).

“I gotta go fix my makeup before next class, Courtney, you probably should too,” Isabel comments, five minutes before they actually have to leave lunch. But, sitting amongst the others, Courtney feels her mind tugging her – for once – not to follow.

“Nah, I’m good, it’s not worth it when I have PE after,” she tells her, feeling her shoulders relax a little when Isabel shrugs and makes some comment about needing to not look gross before turning and moving away from the table.

“So she’s… friendly? But also not?” Shayne comments, when she’s out of earshot, his voice awkward and uncomfortable as he twists his body back around to face Courtney. He seems to immediately realise what he said, hand raising up to press against his forehead as his continues, “I didn’t mean like, I don’t want to-”

“It’s fine,” Courtney cuts him off, immediately, shaking her head and hesitating a moment before she continues.

Telling boys when another girl likes them is like… really bad. It’s mean. It embarrasses them.

…But it’s not like she’s subtle.

“Isabel has a tendency to… if she thinks someone is hot, she kinda just targets them and goes from there. She’s not subtle. And she’s persistent,” Courtney explains, eventually, glancing at Shayne with a raised eyebrow to watch him react. He seems to curl in on himself a little.

“I apologised because I thought I accidentally kicked her but then she kept touching my feet with hers it was so weird I didn’t know what to do,” he replies, his voice still awkward and almost panicked.

“D’you think she’s cute?” Alicia asks, probing. Shayne squirms, and Courtney feels her heart sink, although she’s not quite sure why.

Would it be like… a good thing if her friends dated each other? She’s like, actively encouraging it (quietly) with Zach and Alicia. Why not Shayne and Isabel?

“No- I mean- I don’t- like, she’s pretty I guess, but I don’t even know her,” he answers, a little messily, glancing back at Courtney as he does, his gaze nervous.

“But you don’t like what you do know about her?” she adds, leaning back in her chair a little and fixing her eyes on him, a little demanding. He shrugs.

“Look, I don’t love weird comments about making her friends put on makeup so they don’t look gross, but as I said, I straight up do not know her at all and I know some guys will just like, go for whatever girl they think is cute and says yes, and I probably should do something about the fact I’ve been single since one very short awkward relationship in 7^th grade, but…” Shayne rambles, a little, before stopping and shaking his head, “are you gonna be annoyed or happy or something either way if I tell your friend to leave me alone if she keeps like… doing stuff?”

“Just do whatever you want to, Shayne,” she answers, immediately. That’s his choice, she shouldn’t think anything of it. “Besides, she might not even do it ever again, might’ve just been messing with you today.”

“Maybe,” Shayne answers, simply, seeming to relax a little as he does, as they all glance at the time and start packing up to head back to classes.

“You do need to actually date someone for once, though, Shayne,” Max speaks up, as they all stand from the table, “you’ve gotta be interested in someone.”

“Maybe,” he answers, again, Courtney glancing over to see Alicia immediately mouth the name ‘Hannah’, silently. She doesn’t know a Hannah, but she also doesn’t know all the sophomores, and she quietly tucks the information away in her brain.

It’s very hard to get that kind of information out of Shayne – but maybe Alicia knows a way.

Chapter Text

As much as there are tryouts for track and field, it’s not exactly a competitive tryout – there’s no limit on how many people can participate in trainings, it’s just that later in the year there’s some interschool stuff that only a smaller number of people can go to. Courtney hasn’t done a whole lot of specific exercise over summer, though, and she’s excited to just get back out on the high school track – she’s been here before, sometimes the middle school competed here – and run.

“Think you got in?” Shayne jokes, grinning at her as he wanders up to her after the tryouts, swigging from a water bottle. She laughs, falling into step beside him as they both wander slowly back towards the gym changerooms.

“I got second-fastest time so… probably,” she shrugs, “what about you?”

“I don’t know why they even do tryouts for field. You literally just like, tell them what parts you’re interested in and mess around a bit, they don’t even measure scores or whatever… So yes,” he answers, nodding.

“Which ones are you doing?”

“I like the throwing shit so shot put and stuff. And I said high jump but that’s mostly a joke,” he answers, “they had a minimum height for it in Arizona and I did not qualify but since they don’t here… Short guy attempting high jump, just for the meme.”

“You’re not that short. You’re like the same height as me,” Courtney shoots back, but he shrugs.

“But I am almost a year older than you and a guy. Maybe I’ll grow more in a couple years, apparently guys’ growth spurts are later than girls’,” he muses, before they pause at the entrance to the building. “Hey, I’ll ask my Mum, but we should just like carpool home from practice since we’ll both get in, right?”

“Yeah, we should, I’ll ask my parents,” she nods, before waving as they wander to their respective changerooms.

Courtney doesn’t get a chance to bring it up that evening, though: her Dad picks her up from school, but Clarke and Conrad are already in the car loudly and violently fighting with each other over god knows what. Their argument seems to set the tone for the whole evening, as her parents start arguing over her Dad’s hours at the fire station, and quietly, Courtney disappears back into her room – god knows where Kari is, but at least it means she gets some time alone – to pull up YouTube on her new school laptop and let it play through some random stuff.

Hey, at least she has multiple devices with access to the internet now instead of none.

It, in a weird way, cuts into her time with Shayne over the first few weeks at school. She doesn’t sit with him and his friends at lunch super often – maybe once every couple of weeks – and for the most part, as her year all settle into the high school environment, things seem to become exactly the same as they were last year.

Yasmin and Isabel pick on her lack of makeup – her Mum won’t let her wear what she wants to, she can only use concealer, but whatever – and Natalie makes fun of Hollie for being picked as goalie for the freshman-and-sophomore girls’ soccer team they’ve both made, as if Hollie didn’t actively want that position and beat 4 other people that wanted it too. Johnny is always trying to call out shit to her in homeroom, but mostly she just ignores him now he isn’t even dating any of her friends. Her teachers mostly suck, she sits just above a pass in every test she takes, her Mum screams at her every time she finds that out… and she quietly retreats up to her room, maybe to flick through some homework, but usually just to snap her friends and scroll through youtube or instagram.

She texts Shayne and his friends pretty regularly in their group chat, of course, and the times she does sit with any of them at lunch, they always act as if it’s totally normal and she’s always there. It’s just not… often.

But, of course, every Wednesday evening, they have track and field practice. Her Mum said no to them carpooling home together – she didn’t bother to ask why, given she screamed the ‘no’. Mostly, she and Shayne are doing different things during practice, but there’s always those few minutes, where someone is getting yelled at or something is being set up, and they always fall into place beside each other and chat lightly when they happen.

It’s on their second training, two weeks after tryouts and a month into the school year, that both the track and field coaches wave at everyone to just wait by the edge of the field and talk amongst themselves for five minutes, when they’ve managed to lose the keys to the storage shed where all the equipment is.

“Hey Court,” Shayne greets her, wandering over and sitting himself down onto the metal bleacher beside where she’s already sitting, “how’s it going?”

“The usual,” she answers, shrugging, “Can’t believe they lost the keys, really? How are you, anyway?”

“I’m good. It’s kinda dumb they lost them,” he agrees, shaking his head, “saw you and your friends have been sitting with Cody and Johnny and all them again?”

“Yeah, I mean, they’re kinda part of our group still? I think we all hate Johnny now though, guy is a freak. He won’t stop like, throwing paper at me and yelling across the room at me in homeroom,” she grumbles, “but Cody seems… alright. I only met him over Summer, different middle school.”

“Johnny sounds like a weirdo. Are any of you like, dating any of them?” he asks.

“What, you wanna know if one of my friends is single?” she shoots back, but Shayne laughs.

“Nah, just wondered, because I know you’ve said you all like… used to date a lot of these guys, so I don’t know. And like, Alicia keeps asking where you are and I’d feel slightly worse dragging you guys back to our table if it means I’m messing with boyfriends and shit,” he explains, Courtney simply nodding.

“I mean, Hollie and I definitely aren’t dating any of them. Or Yasmin, Yasmin’s too good for anyone at school. But I think Natalie and Mason might have something going on,” she answers, sighing, “I probably should work out someone soon, the others are getting on my case about it again… and like, I just said it needed to be someone better than Carter, which isn’t hard. He’s gone off with the weird intense football kids. But whatever. What’s this I hear about you and a Hannah someone? Or… Isabel?”

She turns her tone a lot more teasing and probing, at that, watching as Shayne groans and his cheeks redden. Well one of them must be accurate.

“I still don’t even know Isabel so that’s just weird. She sat up the other end of the table last time you guys were with us so maybe she was just being weird the first couple times we met… which I would prefer. I didn’t like that,” he trails off, shaking his head. Courtney shrugs – it’s not like Isabel has said anything to her about it, she doesn’t know.

Shayne doesn’t say anymore, though, settling into silence with his lips pursed together and cheeks continuing to heat up, and she can’t have that.

“Hannah, then?” she pushes, watching him grimace and squeeze his eyes together for a moment before opening them and rapidly looking around. The rest of the track and field team are hanging around, but everyone’s engaged in their own conversations and no one is paying any attention to them.

“Did Alicia go blabbing about some shit?” he responds, although his tone is more resigned than aggressive.

“Not so much blabbing, she just said a name,” she tells him, still grinning.

“Just… do you know who Hannah is?” he asks, seeming to change track mid-thought. Courtney nods.

“Your year, tall, brunette, basketball girl?” she confirms. She’s never like, talked to her, but she did try to work out who it was after Alicia had mentioned the name, and it was pretty easy given her and her friends talk really loudly and sit at the table diagonally across from Shayne’s at lunches.

“Don’t tell anyone, okay?” he presses, voice lowered to a whisper as his tone turns shyer than Courtney thinks she’s ever heard it. It makes her relent on the intensity of her teasing, just a little, leaning back and relaxing her own posture.

“Yeah, ‘course,” she agrees.

“Ugh, I’m not like- like, obsessed with her or anything, but we chat in class sometimes and she’s cute and Alicia and Max have been trying to get me to ask her out or something for ages,” he answers, rushed, “and maybe I kinda think I will sometime but I dunno when or how to.”

“Aww, that’s cute, don’t be embarrassed Shayne,” she tells him, reassuring, “she like, talks to you in class and stuff too?”

“Yeah, she was the one that started talking to me. But like, she could just want to be friends… but Alicia thinks it’s not that. Alicia had English with us last year,” he answers, his tone relaxing a little, “but I don’t know. Asking people out is weird. How the hell do you do it?”

“I mean, I usually wait for guys to ask me so… I don’t think I can help you there,” she answers, with a shrug, Shayne sighing and nodding.

“Maybe I’ll let Alicia help me work it out sometime…” he trails off, head tilting to the side.

“Yeah! Alicia seems like the best hype person for that kind of stuff,” she agrees, “other than like… the whole thing with Zach.”

“Other than that,” Shayne laughs, seeming to snap out of his funk over admitting his little crush – Courtney honestly thinks it’s kinda funny that he’s so shy about it when he seems to not care what anyone thinks about him otherwise, although she doesn’t say it – as he instead turns to see that the coaches are now visibly arguing with each other over by the equipment shed.

“Think we’ll do much today?” Courtney asks, seeing where his gaze has moved.

“Nope,” he deadpans, before his tone turns challenging as he angles his head towards a group of other freshmen who have started doing their own jogging warmups along the edge of the field, “wanna do fake warmups anyway like your other track people over there? Bet you can’t get to the end of the field faster than me?”

“I’ve done track since I was like a toddler, Shayne, you sure?” she shoots back, watching him feign indecision before she launches herself up from the bleacher to start jogging towards the other end of the field, hearing him call out an indignant ‘hey!’ from behind her and laughing in response.

————————————————

Courtney has an oddly quiet Wednesday night after practice, almost definitely because her mother is out with some church friends and her Dad just grills burgers and lets everyone do whatever they want as long as they’re in (or at least getting ready for) bed before their mother gets home.

It gives her a nice start to the next morning, too. Her mother still seems weirdly not around – maybe sleeping in – and she manages to actually wear a little more makeup than usual and dart out of the house with Kari to walk down to the bus stop without anyone paying any attention to them (her Dad is too busy getting her brothers organised to drive to school).

Isabel immediately compliments her makeup when she slides into the bus seat beside Courtney as they get closer to the school – she’d tried something weird with a pink graphic eyeliner, so she’s glad it seems to be working – before turning to ask why Shayne never rides the bus.

“He does sometimes I think but his Mum works from home so she can drive him,” she answers, shrugging, “and the bus sucks, anyway.”

It kills that conversation quickly, Isabel instead turning to bitch about how their Spanish teacher seems to be making things difficult for everyone on purpose and favouring the boring nerd kids for no reason. It’s not like Courtney disagrees, and the conversation seems to continue when they meet up with Yasmin and Natalie near all their lockers – those two are in a different Spanish period, but they all have the same teacher, and Yasmin muses about seeing if her Dad can complain to the school about her or something.

“Yo, Courtney!” Johnny calls, when she steps into homeroom just behind Yasmin as always.

“Shut up, dude,” she snaps back, immediately.

“Come onnnn! Don’t pretend you don’t want me, you’re so desperate and keep flirting with me and you’re just obsessed with making it drama,” he snaps back, “you know you want to be back with the guy you reallllllyyyy like.”

“I don’t like you, dude, screw off,” she rolls her eyes, exasperated. He’s such a loser.

“Language!” her homeroom teacher snaps, stepping into the room. She groans, ready to be yelled at-

“He was harassing her, though, like really gross harassing her…” Yasmin speaks up, her own tone stern. Courtney glances up, watching Mr. Douglas pause and glance back at Courtney.

“Is that true, Courtney?”

“Yeah, he’s constantly trying to force me to date him,” she answers, glancing over at Johnny pointedly and watching him scowl.

“He is. It’s weird,” Cody adds, glancing back and meeting her eyes. She gives him a small smile.

“Okay. Johnny, you know better than that,” Mr. Douglas adds, seeming to finish the conversation as he moves up towards the start of the room to take attendance.

“Hey, I like your eyeliner. Better if it wasn’t pink, but… the different lines are cool,” Cody adds, quietly, just before Courtney turns away.

“Oh, thanks.”

Yasmin, Hollie, and Natalie have a meeting with the drama club at lunch – they don’t have meetings every week, but they have something about finalising who’s doing what and giving out scripts – and Johnny has been weird since Mr. Douglas called him out this morning so, as she and Isabel wander out the end of the lunch line, Courtney beelines immediately for Shayne’s friends’ table.

Max and Zach are already there, the two immediately greeting them as Isabel and Courtney sit opposite them at the table, Max immediately drawing Isabel into a conversation about how she feels about the soccer coach given they’re both playing and the same guy coaches both under-16 teams.

Courtney, for her part, is midway through asking Zach how his day is going when Alicia slides almost aggressively into the seat beside her, side bumping into Courtney’s when she does. It makes her jump slightly, glancing up and watching Shayne rolling his eyes as he sits a little more calmly across from Alicia, evidently knowing what this is about.

“Courtney! Shayne! I was talking to Mr. Gardner in the art rooms before and he wants to get volunteers signed up for doing the sets for the drama productions soon… you guys have to do it with me, okay? I’m not taking a no for this one!” she tells them, insistent and voice raised.

“Okay, okay-” Courtney answers, simply. She’d half-brought it up around Yasmin and Natalie once just to check, but they didn’t seem to have a problem with art people. Just as long as she didn’t end up hanging out with band weirdos or nerds or full-on-goths or the super intense sporty people that Carter has gone off to-

“I’ve already said you can sign me up, Alicia,” Shayne adds, eyebrow raised, before turning his attention to his lunch.

“Oh! Can I join too?” Isabel calls out, suddenly, from up the other end of the table, leaning slightly over Courtney as she does, “is that cool?”

“Yeah, sure, the more people we have the easier it is,” Alicia answers, her tone a lot calmer, before she turns back to Shayne and grins, “hey, I had a look at whose names are already there, it wasn’t many yet but I saw Charlotte is there… maybe she’ll bring Hannah and those guys too? Basketball people might make it easier to paint the tops of the sets…”

“Yeah us short people are just awful at everything,” Shayne answers, dodging around Alicia’s less than subtle hint (to those of them that know the story, anyway…)

“Aw come on, guys just grow later! You’ll probably be like 6 feet before graduation,” Isabel speaks up, as if reassuring him, “you’ve totally got tall energy.”

“Pretty sure that’s not gonna happen given my whole family is short,” he answers, eyebrow raised.

“But your brothers look super tall in all the photos I’ve seen of them?” Max adds, but Shayne shakes his head.

“Yeah, but their Dad was apparently like 6’8 and they take after him,” he answers, laughing it off, “my Dad isn’t even 6 feet. And I don’t really care, anyway.”

“Oh, are your parents divorced?” Isabel asks, eyebrows narrowing and tone turning judgemental.

“Not my parents. My mother was married once before and both of my brothers are from that marriage,” he answers, simply, before turning and rushing to ask Zach whether he’ll be joining them painting sets.

“Nah, man, Mr. Gardner was asking me about it too in the hallway the other day but I’m not even doing any art stuff anymore and I’m already doing too much stuff with soccer and I’m gonna help the organising committee for adventure club,” he answers, eyes narrowing towards Shayne for a minute – Shayne wasn’t subtle either – before he glances back over towards Courtney, “oh, hey, I saw Hollie at signups for adventure club!”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s pretty perfect for her, she spent like half of summer on some remote hike with her family in Colorado… she’s super into all that outdoorsy stuff,” Courtney answers, simply, “she’s got all the high-tech gear and everything.”

“Oh, is that like a… thing here? That’s kinda… gross, right?” Isabel asks, seemingly confused, “it’s all just… being smelly and out in the outdoors and isn’t that mostly what weird creepy pervert guys do?”

“Not at all,” Zach answers, pointedly, “last year the one big trip we did was on a trail that had proper cabins we could use for showers and stuff, anyway, but it’s super athletic and you have to pass fitness tests and stuff to even join. And we do like, survival skills stuff.”

“Oh, okay,” Isabel answers, shrugging, before seeming to quieten down as the others move on and Zach and Alicia launch into an overstated argument about a geography assignment.

Chapter Text

“Hey baby,” Natalie comments, walking up to the table that Courtney, Yasmin and Hollie are already sharing with Cody, Michael, and – the person Natalie’s comment is directed at – Mason, at lunch on Friday. Evidently, there is something happening there.

“Hey,” he answers, plainly, as Natalie sits down beside him, soon followed by Johnny sitting up the other end of the table (thankfully) from where Courtney is.

“You two really need to get boyfriends already,” Yasmin starts, lifting the straw out of her drink to point at Courtney and Hollie across from her when she does, “like it’s been long enough since you dumped Carter, Courtney, and Hollie you’re going to be like 16 and have never even kissed anyone and I don’t know if we can let you hang out with us then.”

“I’ve kissed someone, god, you already know that,” Hollie shoots back, “I’m not going to date someone just for the sake of it.”

“You have to, though,” Natalie adds.

“No one wants to date Courtney because she’s a teasing bitch and stuffs her bra,” Johnny adds, from up the end of the table, Courtney immediately whipping her head around to glare at him.

“No I don’t you loser! I’m not desperate enough for your stupid ass,” she snaps, before glancing back to Yasmin, “I’m just giving it a little bit more time to work out the options here…”

She honestly isn’t. There isn’t really anyone that has drawn her eye specifically for that reason – definitely none of Shayne’s friends, she’d never be able to date up a year anyway, and all the other guys they hang out with are tainted by being friends with Johnny and it’s not like anyone else in their year is really cool enough. Maybe Cody’s cooler than she thought but he’s definitely not interested in her… – but she hopes Yasmin buys it anyway.

“It is only like a month after school started. And there’s a lot of losers here,” Cody backs her up, before glancing over and lifting his hand up to whack Johnny’s shoulder, “and you are just making yourself look like a fucking ass, dude, grow up.”

“Yeah, Johnny,” Yasmin agrees, “you’re such a fucking pig. What happens if we tell you to get lost, huh?”

“Whatever,” he rolls his eyes, Yasmin doing much the same before she glances back at Courtney.

“Whatever. The options aren’t all great. But there’s gotta be someone soon or you’ve been single for too long and you aren’t normally single for too long, you’re usually cooler than that.”

“Yeah, yeah, can’t end up with another Carter type though,” she defends, shaking her head, before Mason makes some gross comment towards Natalie that she grins at and everyone else groans and rapidly tries to change the subject.

Courtney has her visual art elective on a Friday afternoon (which is kind of perfect). The art elective is pretty relaxed for the freshmen: they need to make a folio by the end of semester covering three different projects using different types of art, but they get a long list of projects and they can pick and choose which ones they want to do – and they don’t even need to decide which ones at the start of semester. She has her eye on a photo-editing one for later in the semester and maybe cartoon-drawing, but she beelined – like most of the class – straight to the digital art project about creating branding for a new product so she could use the big old iMacs in the back of the art classroom. Yeah, okay, her laptop is technically newer and she has art programs on it because she chose this elective – but the iMacs are much bigger screens.

Yasmin is in the art elective with her, but she hasn’t gone for digital art – she already has a Macbook Pro at home and does heaps of visual art stuff herself – and is instead spending most of the classes sitting over at one of the front desks by herself sketching out a 3D architectural design onto a large canvas. It means Courtney usually sits by herself in art class, her crap $20 headphones plugged into her phone sitting on the table as she listens to music and works away at her project.

“Hey, can I sit here?” Cody asks, sliding into the – usually empty – seat beside her at the start of class that afternoon. She knows he’s in this class and he’s doing digital too, but he usually sits by himself listening to music too. But she’s kinda been finding he… isn’t actually the worst? He’s not Johnny, at least.

“Yeah, whatever,” she answers, simply, logging on to the computer in front of her and letting her attention turn back to it. She doesn’t expect him to say much, maybe just sit there.

“Sorry Johnny is so weird to you. It’s super not cool,” Cody starts, like ten seconds later, “I didn’t know he was like that with girls because we like didn’t really talk about girls when we weren’t at the same middle school.”

“He’s been like that since I met him,” she answers, shrugging, trying to brush the topic off, but Cody sighs.

“Gross. Are you doing the branding project? What are you thinking of doing?” he asks, changing the subject and sounding interested as he glances over at her screen. It makes Courtney instinctively lean forward into his way. She doesn’t like people looking at her art.

“I think like, a makeup brand, because then I can do 3D model stuff with bottles and lipstick tubes and stuff as well as logos,” she answers, after a moment, forcing herself to lean back in her chair and glancing over towards his screen to see a lot of black and a giant skull icon, “what’s that?”

“Just like… base designs. I think there’s a drum kit model in this program so I might do a like, bike wrap and some clothes or something,” he shrugs, “something different if they actually let me do it.”

“So are you like, emo?” she asks, “Isabel said you play drums.”

He scoffs.

“I’m not emo, I’m just different. I do play drums but I don’t see how that’s emo. And I don’t have to like stuff just because everyone else says I have to, I like my own stuff and I don’t care if it’s old or other people don’t like it,” he answers, pointedly, “like I bet you wouldn’t know any of the music I listen to.”

“Sure I don’t,” she answers, rolling her eyes a little, “so, Tumblr?”

“Tumblr isn’t good since Yahoo bought it,” he answers, shaking his head, “but like, what do you even to listen to? Just like Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande and Post Malone I bet.”

“I mean, I like them, but I like other stuff too, like 5SOS and Bastille and Rex Orange County,” she shoots back, watching Cody hum in response.

“5SOS is popular. But I guess the others aren’t as much. You should try Gang Of Youths, you might like them,” he tells her, before he seems to relent on conversation and instead turn back to focus on his own work, letting her do the same.

She gives in, when she gets home that evening – her Mum is off taking her brothers to soccer practice and her Dad is still at work – and pulls up YouTube on her laptop, typing ‘Gang of Youths’ in the search bar and letting the first result play. It’s not… bad. She kinda enjoys it.

Maybe his whole “alternative” thing is kinda weird but maybe there’s some good stuff in there too. Also, the drums thing is definitely cool. She knows that, at least.

————————————————

Courtney is just entering the cafeteria the next Tuesday when Alicia races straight up to her, reaching out and grabbing her arm.

“Courtney, there you are! Meeting in the auditorium for the people helping with drama club sets like now, come on, is Isabel-” she starts.

“I’m here! Is Shayne coming?” Isabel pipes up, seeming to appear out of nowhere behind them.

“He’s already there,” Alicia shoots back, a little tersely, before tugging lightly on Courtney’s arm, “come on, we’ve got snacks there, let’s go have a better lunch than cafeteria shit.”

She isn’t wrong – the auditorium is mostly empty when they get there, save for ten-or-so people, mostly sophomores, hanging around on the chairs up near the front with a bunch of random snacks being passed around. Courtney doesn’t know all of them, but she spies Shayne sitting and talking to Hannah and another girl, quickly glancing over at Alicia and watching her silently nod.

They move towards the other side of the group, instead, but Isabel immediately moves herself over and sits heavily into the seat immediately beside Shayne.

“Oh, hi, Shayne!” she tells him, too loud. Alicia grumbles under her breath, and Courtney sighs.

“Why is she doing this?” Alicia mutters, to Courtney, looking a little annoyed.

“I don’t know. She just does it to guys sometimes,” she answers, keeping her own voice low, “I swear if I could I’d tell her to knock it off.”

“I know, I know, I don’t blame you,” Alicia answers, quickly, before glancing back over towards the others. Courtney’s eyes follow, seeing Isabel leaning against Shayne’s side and laughing loudly at something he said, the two other girls looking actively pissed off.

Ugh.

“Come on, no point staying away now,” she adds, gesturing for Courtney to get up and follow her to sit into the couple of spare seats with the others.

Shayne immediately looks up at them when they arrive, his eyes almost screaming out for help as he shuffles his chair sideways, away from Isabel.

“Hey Charlotte, Hannah!” Alicia starts, brightly, as they wander up, “good to see you helping out again! Oh, and I’m not sure if you’ve met our new friend Courtney?”

She tilts her head towards Courtney as she does, Courtney turning and giving awkward ‘hi’ to the other two girls as she glances around before reluctantly taking the seat the other side of Isabel.

“Oh, and I’m Shayne’s friend Isabel,” Isabel adds, then, voice turning artificially sweet as she looks over at the other two.

“Uh,” Shayne answers, dumbly, glancing over between Alicia and Courtney for a minute.

“Shayne barely knows you, Isabel,” Courtney speaks up, after a moment, feeling her heart launch into a race and her chest tighten as she does. She’s not meant to challenge those three ever or say anything bad about them or-

“Well we’re getting to know each other, aren’t we?” she answers, voice still fake-sweet.

“Not really,” he answers, weakly. Isabel is prevented from saying anything else, though, as the drama teacher – Mr. Gardner – wanders in and, just like every drama teacher ever, sits down on a chair at the same level with all of them and starts casually chatting about what help they’ll actually need for the sets.

Isabel never stops leaning towards Shayne during the meeting or shuffling her chair closer (the chair scrapes against the floor every single time). Shayne, for his part, just looks uncomfortable and a little pissed, as Charlotte and Hannah both turn their chairs around away from them and instead talk quietly between each other whenever the teacher pauses or asks them to give their own thoughts.

The meeting doesn’t really take all of lunch, but when they finish everyone stands up to go and grab an information sheet the teacher has left sitting on the front of the stage while she wanders over to talk to some of the other sophomores who are interested in helping with lighting during the actual shows. Shayne stands up abruptly from his seat and rushes over to the stage, Alicia quickly jumping in beside him as Courtney lets herself fall into step beside Isabel instead.

The four of them settle back into a loose circle as they stand together just away from the stage after they grab the paper. Courtney tries to stand Shayne’s other side to Alicia, but Isabel all but pushes her out of the way.

“What do you think you’ll do?” she asks him, her voice somewhere between fake-sweet and teasing.

“Shayne and Courtney are going to be painting set pieces with me,” Alicia steps in, firmly, “maybe you could help with designing fliers and programmes? I’m sure the painting would be too dirty for you.”

“I don’t mind painting,” Isabel shoots back. That’s a lie – she literally refused to do clay work in middle school art because she didn’t want to get her nails dirty – but Courtney’s already called her out once today, so…

“I’ll see what I do,” Shayne adds, eventually, his voice strained, before he rapidly steps away, “uh, I should- grab my book I left over there.”

“Oh, I can grab it for you?” Isabel offers, but he rapidly shakes his head and darts back towards the book he had left sitting on the seats where he’d been earlier. Not that there’s any reason for him to – there’s still another fifteen minutes of lunch.

“Hey, did Yasmin and Natalie know you guys had stuff on at lunch? Maybe you should make sure they aren’t looking for you now we’re kind of done here,” Alicia comments. She’s not subtle at all, but Isabel gives her a smile that screams that she doesn’t care at all what Alicia thinks. It makes Courtney shudder. Maybe Yasmin could get away with being like this to sophomores, she can get away with anything, but Isabel, really? As much as Isabel and Natalie were guaranteed cool enough to hang out with Yasmin, talking back to sophomores is a whole other thing.

“Oh I’m sure it’s fine, I’ll just stay here,” she says, “Shayne keeps saying he doesn’t know me enough, can’t get to know each other if we don’t talk!”

Shayne seems to reluctantly return to them as she does, placing himself close to Alicia. Isabel immediately moves closer and reaches out a hand to touch his shoulder, Shayne instinctively jerking away.

“Can you stop that?” he snaps, arms crossing over his chest and right hand tapping messily against his left bicep, “I know you’re doing some weird hitting on me thing and I don’t know you enough for that not to be creepy and you’re not trying to get to know me you’re just being creepy and getting in my space so I’m permanently not interested.”

“Oh, you really don’t know what’s good for you, do you?” Isabel shoots back. Courtney sighs quietly, immediately recognising the tone.

…Except Shayne straight up doesn’t care about this stuff.

“What? You gonna tell me you’re so cool I should be desperate to date you? I’m not interested. I date people I enjoy spending time with. You’ve never done anything except be weird to me so why would I want to be around you more,” he replies, shaking his head.

“Ugh, you’re so fucking stupid I don’t know why Courtney even wants to hang out with you weirdos,” Isabel answers, snapping, “you’re missing out on being with someone who is actually cool, not this weird shit where you guys are just default cool because no one else is.”

To Courtney’s relief – and she figures, Shayne and Alicia’s too – Isabel then turns rapidly on her heel, stalking out of the auditorium.

“What’s her problem?” Alicia asks, grumbling, but Shayne immediately turns to Courtney.

“Shit I’m sorry I snapped at her, I should’ve just said I wasn’t interested and asked her nicely to stop but she was freaking me out and I felt awkward and she kinda screwed up stuff before but I don’t want to make things difficult for you or make the others get shitty with you-” he starts, rambling, but she makes a quick decision to step over and lightly, reassuringly, tap him on the shoulder.

“It’s okay. She was being weird. You don’t have to let my friends be weird to you. You are a sophomore, she’s just a freshman,” she tells him, shaking her head, “she’ll get over it quickly enough.”

She doesn’t know if that’s true – although she kinda hopes it is. Between this and her still not dating anyone, it could make Natalie and Yasmin join in to blame her for it… but Isabel never actually seemed to like Shayne, she just liked messing with him – but she’s not about to let Shayne feel bad or his friends get mad at her over it.

“You wanna go back over to the others, Shayne? We can go with you?” Alicia offers, but he shakes his head.

“Not today. I’ll… see another time. We were just talking about nothing anyway, it’s not like anything was… happening,” he shrugs, brushing it off, before they too decide to wander back out of the auditorium in preparation for lunch finishing soon.

Courtney feels a lump rise in her throat even as they do, quietly glad that she has science straight after lunch with none of her friends. She usually hates it – and she hates science, period – but maybe today it’s a good thing.

She doesn’t have any communication with her friends for the rest of the day, really – and her mother decides everyone has to sit out at the dining table doing homework after dinner, so she has no chance to talk to anyone after school either – but she finds out early the next morning that her hope about Isabel just getting over it immediately isn’t gonna come true.

“Oh my god, are you really ruining Isabel’s relationships just because no one will date you?” Natalie snaps, when she walks up to the three of them – Hollie isn’t there yet – before homeroom.

“Um, no?” she answers, feigning ignorance.

“You made Shayne reject me because you don’t want me to be with your friend,” Isabel shoots back, Courtney shaking her head.

“Shayne said no to you because you were being too much for him, he told you that… I had nothing to do with it,” she tries to shrug nonchalantly, even as her heartbeat quickens in her chest, “I wouldn’t care if one of you dated Shayne if he wanted to date one of you too. That’s whatever. But you were acting like Johnny.”

“Who do you think you are calling her Johnny?!?” Natalie snaps back, defensive, although Courtney glances up to see Yasmin seeming to glance between them all, more interested in what’s going to happen than actually… mad.

“It’s not my fault she was desperate. And hey, don’t act like I can’t get a boyfriend when there’s literally multiple boys trying to get with me and I’m just making them wait until I decide,” she snaps back.

“What did you even do, Isabel?” Yasmin asks, “all those guys seem pretty chill… or did he get weird suddenly?”

“I was just flirting,” Isabel responds, defensive.

“…Was it that aggressive touchy thing you do sometimes?” Yasmin asks.

“Yes, but it works,” Isabel answers.

“Whatever. You shouldn’t be like, pissing off the popular sophomores. Courtney, don’t get in other people’s way with relationships and shit, but Isabel, maybe you should try going for a freshman,” she finishes the conversation, decisively.

Courtney knows she hasn’t entirely got away with it – Natalie and Isabel are pissed – but Yasmin isn’t… totally convinced. And that’s something, at least.

…She really needs to get a boyfriend.

Chapter Text

As much as Johnny has seemed to be a little quieter in homeroom since he got called out, he hasn’t stopped trying to piss Courtney off and claiming she’s obsessed with him and causing drama.

…She doesn’t know how she’s the one causing drama, given she’s taken to completely ignoring him and just rolling her eyes and glancing over to see Yasmin doing the same.

“Is Johnny one of the options you’re considering?” she asks, on Friday morning, “you have to hurry up and get with someone, you look like a loser, but not him. Although Isabel’s really trying to knock herself down to your level with that shit with the sophomores.”

“He’s not an option but you can’t say he doesn’t want me,” she answers, pointedly, Yasmin just sighing heavily in response and saying nothing else as Mr. Douglas wanders in (late) and rushes into attendance.

She isn’t surprised when Cody takes the seat at the computer beside her in art on Friday afternoon again – he has every art class since last Friday, although they’d only occasionally talked about random stuff, music or school or whatever, nothing important – and she glances over to see his project looks like it… hasn’t changed a whole lot. It’s still a lot of black and skulls but he’s added some red squares and stuff to the sleeve of a t-shirt shape.

She glances back to her own screen, pulling open the project file of the flat design she’s working on first. She wants to decide on a final logo and colours and stuff before she starts trying to make it into actual things, then it’ll be less work later on…

“That’s a cool logo,” Cody comments, a few minutes into the class, evidently looking over at her screen.

“I thought you hated pink,” she shoots back, pointedly, before quickly adding, “don’t think shimmers are your vibe either…”

“I mean I don’t like pink but it works for makeup stuff I guess,” he answers, shrugging a little awkwardly, “and like… if you like it that’s fine I guess.”

“It’s very different to your… dark stuff,” she replies.

“Do you hate black?”

“You can’t hate black, it’s like… base colour,” she replies, matter-of-fact. She pauses for a moment in hesitation, glancing back over at his screen. “The red squares on the shirtsleeve are kinda cool. Makes it more… interesting.”

“Thanks,” he answers, simply, turning back to his screen.

Courtney figures that will be the end of their conversation for the class, pulling out her phone as she untangles her crappy headphones and plugs them into the adapter that lets them fit into her iPhone. She pulls up Spotify – with ads, of course, as if her parents would buy premium – and stares at the screen for a moment, before typing out ‘Gang of Youths’ in the search bar. She’s listened to them a few times now, she kinda likes it.

“Like my suggestion, huh?” Cody speaks up, a couple of minutes later. Normally she’d be annoyed by someone looking at her phone screen but… whatever. She pulls one earphone out and turns towards him slightly.

“They’re kinda cool,” she admits.

“I have more suggestions if you want them. Or maybe you’d even know something I don’t, if you like some things I like…” he trails off, lightly.

“Maybe. I don’t just listen to one kind of music,” she answers, watching him nod.

“Makes sense,” he says, before seeming to pause in hesitation for a moment, before he shuffles slightly sideways in his chairs to face her. “Hey, Courtney… I definitely don’t want to be like Johnny or anything but… I think you’re kinda interesting and… would you maybe want to go on a date sometime?”

It shocks her a little, and she feels herself blink a few times as she tries to mentally process it. Okay, so that came out of nowhere…

…Except he’s never not been nice to her. He stood up to Johnny. He’s kinda cooler than she expected. Her friends have been on her case about the dating shit…

“It’s okay if you don’t have an answer right now, too. I know your friends are pushing you about this stuff and I don’t know what’s going on with anyone else or if you’re waiting longer to date anyone for a specific reason…” he trails off, his voice a little nervous. It makes her rush to actually reply.

“I… don’t want to immediately say no. But… maybe? I’ll think about it over the weekend?” she suggests, quietly taking up his offer, watching Cody nod in response.

“That’s fine, just let me know when you decide. And I’m not gonna tell your friends or anything if you say no,” he tells her, Courtney simply nodding and mumbling a quiet ‘thanks’ before they both turn back to working on their projects.

She’s glad it’s the last class of the day, because it has her head spinning in confusion. Her Dad picks her up from school, asking her how her day was – and not asking anymore after she says “normal” – and she settles into the back seat of the car beside Conrad and Clarke and continues trying to think to herself.

She was surprised when he asked, but… maybe she should’ve seen it coming? He was way nicer to her than any of the other guys they hang out with. He was the only one that actually said something about Johnny, other than Yasmin’s half-telling him off. He’d complimented her outfits a couple of times when she was wearing vintage stuff she got from Kari and her eyeliner that one time and he sat next to her in art and he relented on the making fun of her music taste…

It's kind of perfect timing for all the stuff with the others… he’s even hanging out with them already, he’s cool enough for the others to leave her alone. They’ve never seemed to have a problem with him. And as much as she was kinda suspicious of his emo-alternative thing with the studded bracelet on the first day of the year, he’s not actually that intense. He’s just into his own thing, which is kinda cool. And he isn’t not cute.

“Cody asked me out in art this afternoon,” Courtney texts Hollie, when her Dad pauses at a gas station not far from home, quickly adding, “don’t tell the others.”

“Omg, what did you say?” Hollie replies, almost instantly.

“I didn’t really. Said I’d think about it over the weekend, he said I didn’t have to answer yet,” she explains.

“He seems pretty cool and he’s not mean like Johnny. If you actually want to date someone again?”

“I have to date someone again, it’s just who. He might be an option,” she reminds Hollie.

“If you think so then I guess you could go for it,” she responds, Courtney leaving the conversation at that. Hollie’s never really… got the dating thing. She dated like one guy in fifth grade just before Yasmin let them start hanging out with them, and one in seventh and that’s it.

Courtney’s night is loud. Her mother screams at her Dad for filling up the wrong car with gas almost as soon as they get home, and Conrad starts screaming and refusing to eat his dinner in response like he’s four, not in fourth grade. Isabel is trying to pick fights in their group chat about whether Nyx is actually crap makeup that none of them should use (Natalie seems to strongly disagree, as she accuses Isabel of wearing Covergirl anyway. Even Courtney doesn’t use Covergirl when she’s trying to find cheap stuff).

The group chat she’s in with Shayne and his friends isn’t quiet either, although it’s less angry – Max, Evie and Ethan are talking about the start of the football season, while Zach and Alicia throw in fake team names and pretend they’re talking about it too. Shayne, for his part, is absent though, and it makes Courtney hesitate when she finally escapes up to her bedroom after dinner and leans back against the head of her bed.

She hasn’t actually snuck out to see Shayne at night since school went back. They see each other at school at least every couple of days in some way or another, they hang out at track practice every week, but… it’s all a bit different. In a weird way, she kinda likes the quiet and the chill in the air up in that plastic playground equipment at night with just him and no school shit and no thinking so much about if she’s being cool enough. But if he’s not talking in the group chat, when they’re talking about football (she learnt one time she was at his house over Summer that him and his Dad are obsessed with it)… He's probably got better things to do on a Friday night, right?

And besides, it’s his birthday tomorrow, maybe he’s doing something with his parents... He is having a party tomorrow – at his place – but her Mum won’t let her go so she’s not seeing him this weekend either.

Her consideration is interrupted by two things at exactly the same time: her phone buzzes with a snapchat from Johnny – ugh, what shit is that going to be – and her mother yelling something up the stairs about trying to find Kari.

“She’s not in here!” Courtney calls back, loudly, reluctantly. She doesn’t exactly want to advertise her existence to her when she’s angry, but… she might just burst in otherwise and she’s pretty sure she’s only being allowed to stay in her room because her mum thinks she’s doing homework. She, just in case, quickly leans sideways off her bed to grab one of her school notebooks out of her bag so she can grab it quickly if she needs to.

Her mother’s yelling doesn’t directly acknowledge her response, but it descends back downstairs and Courtney grumbles as she shoves the book aside again and flips over to snapchat to see what stupid thing Johnny is sending this time, now it seems like there’s a few photos.

The first is of like, nothing… just a black blurry nothing, with the caption, “stop pretending you don’t want to date me again bra stuffer…”

She rolls her eyes, tapping through to the next. It’s still blurry nothing, this time captioned “you’re so basic drama queen”. She’d just like, close the app if she didn’t hate leaving stuff unread because the notification number things on the apps annoy her.

“Ack!” Courtney exclaims, under her breath, phone immediately thrown out of her hand and down the other end of her bed when the next photo appears. What the fuck? What? Gross, gross, gross, it’s so fucking gross-

It was still blurry and dark but it was a photo of his dick and gross, she never wanted to see that, he’s such a weirdo and her snapchat sound goes off again and she reluctantly leans back up to see who it’s from. Him again.

Ugh, no, no, no, no.

It’s not like she’s never seen a penis before – she has brothers that are younger than her enough that she’s old enough to remember when they just ran around naked sometimes – but she hasn’t been sent a dick pic before and it looked so weird and he’s so GROSS and why won’t he just go away-

Courtney feels like she might actually vomit as she reaches down the bed to pick up her phone and bring it back up near her, although she very quickly closes snapchat and pulls open her direct texts to Shayne.

“Park?” she texts, quickly, not thinking it through. She just wants to get away from that awful photo and the other one that is probably still there and she doesn’t want to look at her phone and-

She probably should have checked where her parents are first, but Shayne’s reply comes through before she can backtrack.

“Okay, I’ll be there in five minutes,” he replies, and Courtney sighs, standing up from her bed and pulling her jacket off the post at the end of her bed, stuffing her phone away into the pocket inside it.

She manages to sneak out without anyone noticing her, to her relief, and the quietness of the night air immediately settles over her. It’s still pretty light out, the weather is still decidedly summer, and there’s the distant sounds of people in backyards and things, but… not much.

The park is empty – thankfully – and she heads straight up the stairs of the playground, taking them two at a time and settling down with legs outstretched in front of her and back pressed against the plastic wall beside the slide.

“Hey Court, everything okay?” Shayne’s voice cuts gently through the quiet of the night as he climbs – more gracefully than she had – up the stairs only a couple of minutes later. She sighs lightly, sorting through it in her head even as she relaxes just a little.

“Weird day,” she mutters, after a moment, glancing over to see his face scrunch up in concern as he sits down beside her, knees raised up near his chest.

“In what way?” he asks. It makes her pause.

…Should she even tell him about all the stuff? Her mother screaming, sure, that’s normal, he probably thinks it’s just that like normal. But like… he didn’t exactly like when she was dating Carter. Maybe he’ll think she’s just being stupid considering dating Cody and he’ll say something about her friends being mean again because he doesn’t get it, although he doesn’t seem to mind Cody, but then like the whole gross Johnny thing she’s trying not to think about was the thing that ACTUALLY made her text him to hang out so she could get the fuck away from it-

“Mum’s angry about everything although not me for once and my brothers are being loud and picking fights with everyone too but I guess that’s not weird,” she starts, shaking her head lightly and flicking her eyes up to the faded blue plastic roof above her, speaking before she can stop herself, “are you gonna get mad about other stuff?”

“It sucks your family is being loud even if that’s not abnormal,” he answers, immediately, before his tone lightens, “I’m not gonna get mad if you want to talk about something…”

“Cody asked me out,” she blurts out, quickly, glancing over to see how he reacts.

“What did you say?” he asks. He sounds… interested, more than anything else.

“He said I didn’t have to answer immediately so I said maybe but… I’m kinda thinking I might say yes,” she answers, glancing down and picking at a thread at the hem of her pants.

“I’m not gonna get mad if you want to date someone else, as long as you like… actually want to date him,” Shayne tells her, shaking his head, “Carter was just because… he wasn’t exactly nice to you.”

“He’s nicer to me than any of the other guys we hang out with, and I guess he’s kinda cool… he listens to cool music and he plays drums,” she replies, shrugging lightly, “and like… I need to get a boyfriend soon. And Johnny is not an option.”

“That kid is such a weirdo,” Shayne mutters, before quick adding, “Johnny, I mean, not Cody. I’ve only kinda seen Cody with you guys like once but he seems… okay. He didn’t really say much the one time I kinda met him.”

“Yeah,” she replies, simply, curling her own legs to hold them up against her chest and silently deciding she’ll… leave it at that. Shayne might be less grumpy about the dating stuff and it’s not like she’s just consider Cody because her friends tell her to date someone but- she’s pretty sure he’ll like, make her tell an adult about the whole Johnny dick pic thing.

And who the heck could she tell, anyway? Not her parents, they’d just disown her for it happening. And it’s not like anyone at school could do anything and it’s not like she did anything wrong but everyone would just say it was somehow her fault for leading him on or something so-

“I still don’t… like… you shouldn’t have to date someone just because your friends say you do. But it’s different if you actually wanna date someone,” Shayne adds, hesitantly, cutting off her spiralling train of thought. She nods slowly.

“I think dating someone is important. It’s not like I don’t agree with the stuff my friends think is important, I think it too. And it’s not like it’s only me that does the wrong stuff sometimes, Yasmin is annoyed Isabel is making popular older people hate her with the stuff with you and Natalie is getting in trouble tonight for using bad makeup,” she explains, almost defensive, before rapidly adding, “it’s like- your grade doesn’t date as much, I guess, so I guess it’s… fine that you’re like, all single. But for us it matters.”

“Evie is dating a guy who’s a junior like her – from the group of people she hangs out with when she isn’t with us,” he comments, lightly, “apparently she just started hanging out with our group last year because she’s been family friends with Max forever and none of her friends had the same lunch hour as her second semester last year.”

“That makes sense,” she answers, nodding, because it does, but she also knows he’s trying to dodge the topic, so… she’s not the only one with stuff happening, and she adds, “did Isabel really mess up stuff with Hannah the other day?”

“Like, a bit,” Shayne admits, his tone turning a little strained, “I mean, I was talking to her and Charlotte but it was kinda flirting talking and it kinda seemed like Charlotte was trying to make stuff happen. But they both got annoyed when Isabel turned up… I texted Hannah after and explained that Isabel was just being weird and there’s nothing there, though.”

“I’m glad you could explain it to her… did she understand?”

“Yeah. And she knows even though Isabel is your friend it’s like- nothing to do with you,” he adds, audibly hesitating for a few seconds before he continues, “I… kinda asked her out via text this evening. Not like, anything big, just… asked if she wanted to go see a movie or something sometime and she asked if I meant as a date and… yeah.”

“Shayne!! Why didn’t you say that before instead of letting me talk about dumb nothing stuff?! What did she say??” she pushes, her voice raised and energetic as she turns and lightly hits against his arm. Shayne laughs lightly.

“I dunno. It’s so long since I asked someone out, it felt stupid. But yeah, she said yes. She’s busy this weekend and so am I, I guess, but maybe we’ll do something next weekend,” he shrugs.

“That’s cool, though, it’s not stupid. I hope you have a nice date with her,” Courtney tells him, forcing herself to calm her tone (although she’s super excited for him anyway), watching Shayne nod before turning back to her. She adds, quickly, “I’m sorry I can’t come to your party tomorrow. I don’t know why Mum’s got a problem with it this time… I hope it’s good.”

“It’s fine, like, it’d be cool if you were there but I get why you can’t be. It’s just going to be a casual small thing anyway. Did Cody ask you on a specific date or just to like… generally date?”

“He asked if I want to go on a date sometime so it was kind of vague but… if I say yes on Monday maybe we’ll go on a date next weekend too,” she answers, Shayne humming in response.

“What kind of date do you think? I said movies for Hannah because that was all I could think of…” he trails off.

“You should do like lunch and a movie like we did with Alicia and Zach, but minus the two other people? That seemed to work for them,” she jokes, Shayne immediately laughing, before she adds, “I dunno what Cody will do, I don’t think he does movies. He doesn’t like mainstream stuff. Which I know is lame like a goth thing to say but he’s not actually as bad as he tries to say he is. He just likes his own things.”

“I know guys like that. Max does it sometimes with music. It’s not the worst thing,” Shayne agrees, “and especially if Cody like, plays music, maybe he just knows really good stuff that isn’t necessarily popular?”

Chapter Text

Courtney feels kind of awful about Shayne’s birthday. She’s got a tiny bit of money built up again from just like, her birthday back in June, and the small allowance she sometimes gets when she looks after her younger brothers (she wishes she could get a job to earn more but her Mum won’t let her apply for anything), but she doesn’t have enough to buy him anything like what he got her for her birthday. She’d been undecided and annoyed about it all for a couple of weeks, and she still wasn’t happy with what she’d ended up on, but at track the other week he’d joked about how he was basically human Johnny Bravo and he loved that cartoon as a kid and she used to watch it too – her Dad let them watch all that kinda stuff ages ago, her Mum’d never allow it now – so when she saw a Johnny Bravo POP Vinyl at the store, she’d grabbed it.

“Happy 16^th!!!! Hope u have a fun party today. Sorry again I can’t come but I did get you a (dumb) gift that I’ll give you… whenever I next see you I guess. But enjoy the party! Is Hannah going to be there?” she texts him, on Saturday morning when she’s still lying in bed. She knows he always gets up early, so whatever.

“Thanks 🤪 you totally didn’t need to get me anything but I’m sure it’s not dumb. And no, Hannah wasn’t invited, it’s just my usual school group and Ethan couldn’t make it either so just a small one,” he answers, not five minutes later, quickly followed by, “small is more my style. If I wanted big I prob would’ve invited all your friends and stuff too and more of my grade…”

“small parties are fun too, I’m sure it’ll be good with all you guys. Your Mum bake a cake? The one you guys made for me was 🔥”

“Hey, I made that cake for you mostly she just helped! But nah, she apparently bought a like fancy fruit tart thing for something different because apparently 16 is big… which I don’t get.”

“It is tho, sweet 16 or whatever. I think Yasmin is already planning her sweet 16^th, it will be huge… anyway I gotta go remind Mum I exist so she doesn’t get screamy at me for being in bed too long. Have a good birthday!!”

“thanks court, hope your day isn’t too bad. I’ll be free tonight or tomorrow, just send a text if you wanna hang out.”

She doesn’t manage to see him over the weekend – her Mum is firmly home and on all their cases both nights, after her Dad gets stuck at the fire station late on Saturday for some emergency meeting or whatever – but when she stuffs the Johnny Bravo figurine in her schoolbag on Monday and hurriedly pulls it out to give him when she spots him in the hallway after homeroom, he grins and laughs loudly and pulls her into a hug.

“This is awesome, not dumb! It’s perfect Courtney, thanks!” he tells her, excitedly twisting the figure in his hands before carefully putting it in his own backpack and waving as he rushes off to class.

Cody wasn’t in homeroom, and it confused her. She’d kinda wanted to go at him with the yes straight away on Monday morning before he changed his mind or something, and outside of the slight distraction of handing over Shayne’s present, she finds herself nervously chewing her nails. Where is he? Why hasn’t he like, texted her anything? Should she text him?

She can’t pull out her phone to do anything in the first couple of classes of the day, but as she settles into geography – with Isabel and Yasmin – after lunch, the door opens again and she glances up to see Cody hurrying in and handing a note to the teacher before he glances to the back of the room and beelines for the desk beside her.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to just like not show up earlier, Dad’s car broke down and Mum’s out of town for work and then my sister was sick and it’s this whole thing but… my question is still there, if you have an answer?” he asks her, tone turning from frazzled to almost nervous. She smiles at him.

“Sounds like a sucky morning. But yeah, I’ll go on a date with you sometime,” she answers him, almost feeling the way her friends whip around to look at her when she (intentionally) makes it clear what has happened, “did you have anything in mind? Or when?”

“I was thinking we could maybe go to the mall or that park near there next weekend? Just hang out? I don’t like movie dates, you can’t actually like… talk,” he suggests, Courtney simply nodding. Okay, so that’s a lot of time to find stuff to talk about but… they’ve been talking in class.

“That sounds cool,” she tells him, watching him give her a smile in return.

It does not surprise Courtney in the slightest that, the second the bell rings to signal the start of their 5^th-period lunch, Yasmin leaps out of her seat and grabs her shoulder to hold her back, letting Cody go ahead to find the other boys as the girls all find each other to group in slightly more privacy just outside the cafeteria.

“Courtney! Cody asked you out? When?!” Yasmin asks, her voice somewhere between excited and accusatory. She pauses, for a moment, before deciding to be honest.

“Friday afternoon in art he did, but I said I’d think about it over the weekend. I’m not like, desperate to jump at whoever… but he seems decent,” she answers, calmly, Isabel immediately scoffing loudly.

“Bitch!” she snaps.

“What?” Courtney responds, raising an eyebrow, although internally grinning. She might’ve planned that a little, but Isabel fell for it.

“Ugh, calm down, Is, she’s right, Courtney isn’t desperate and was talking about how Johnny is being, but well done identifying that you’re desperate with this whole Shayne shit,” Natalie pipes up, before shaking her head and glancing back to Courtney, “are you like, actually going on a date with him, or did he just ask to be, like, together?”

“Actual date, mall next weekend or something,” she answers, brushing past the whole Isabel thing as Yasmin gestures for them to turn and continue moving into the cafeteria for lunch.

“I kinda like the idea of mall dates. You can like, hang out and talk, and I bet he knows what to look for at that cool vintage store,” Yasmin muses, before the conversation is dropped as Mason appears and latches onto Natalie, and Johnny appears to start jeering at all of them.

This time, though, Johnny’s statements have something else to go up against: his supposed childhood best friend.

“Hey bra stuffer, only a loser would date you,” he calls out to Courtney as they all sit down at the table, where Cody and Michael are already sitting.

“Oh, you’re calling me a loser are you, dickhead?” Cody shoots back, immediately, Courtney feeling herself grin as much as she tries to hold it back, watching Johnny’s face shrivel up. Heck yeah.

“What?” he asks, confused.

“Well I’m dating Courtney – and stop calling her dumb names – and you’re a creep and need to back the fuck off,” he snaps.

It’s not like none of them swear at school – she even does sometimes when she’s really pissed – but it’s enough that she feels everyone react, Johnny recoiling and grabbing his lunch tray as he stands up.

“Whatever,” he mutters, before turning and walking off.

“Well, solved that problem,” Yasmin adds, in the beat of silence that follows, before turning and asking Hollie whether she’s going to finally start dating someone, now Courtney has.

Just as Courtney had hoped, her very-new relationship with Cody takes away like… everything the others were saying she was doing wrong. She leans into wearing more of Kari’s vintage stuff than Kami’s trying-to-be-fashionable stuff, and Cody likes it, so her friends can’t complain. He’s nice to her in class, he doesn’t get too aggressively touchy too quickly, he sometimes walks her to her locker after art if it won’t mean he misses his own class or bus or whatever…

It's nice. Also, the more she thinks about it, the more she can convince herself he’s cute, and the others think he is, so that helps. She doesn’t know how she didn’t realise it before, but in their first date to the mall, she realises his arms are like… huge. Compared to most of the guys she knows, anyway. Muscley and toned and… maybe it’s something to do with the whole drums thing?

The date is different, and she feels a little awkward initially – she’s so used to Carter either dragging her to hang out with his friends she doesn’t know, or Johnny always just wanting to go and see dumb action movies – but she settles into it. He meets her at the bus stop with an awkward hug, they wander around the park beside the mall talking for a while about school and their friends, but they soon venture into the mall. They don’t buy anything, but as they wander between stores – and, yes, including the cool vintage store Yasmin thought he might like, which was accurate – their conversation grows more comfortable and a bit more… interesting. Music, when she spots a band tee of someone she likes because her Dad introduced her to them that it turns out he’s never heard of. Old school cartoons when he finds an old Tom and Jerry figurine, and doesn’t even make fun of her going off on a tangent about her great-aunt’s animation.

“So… what’s the chance of me getting a second date?” he asks, a little awkwardly, when they pause again at the bus station a couple of hours after they first meet. She doesn’t need to consider her answer this time.

“Yeah, there’ll be a second date,” she answers, smiling lightly, watching his face split into a smile too as he nods.

“Cool. That’s, yeah- cool. Let me know if there’s something you want to do for a date? Not like, you don’t have to right now, but… yeah,” he tells her, a little rambly, before flicking his (still dyed-black) hair up off his forehead and seeming to snap out of his nervousness, “can I kiss you? It’s okay if you don’t want to yet though.”

“You can,” she answers, quickly, although she just as quickly feels the memories come rushing back of her last kiss – that awful, saliva-y mess with Carter – and starts to regret agreeing so quickly-

But it’s too late, and Cody steps a little closer, hand settling gently on her shoulder as he leans in and pauses for a moment before kissing her.

It’s not a long kiss, but she returns it, and her worries subside. He didn’t go straight to making out. And he’s not aggressive about it. It was just… nice.

“This was a nice date. Thanks. See you at school Monday?” she prompts, when he steps back a moment later and she quickly glances over to see her bus is arriving.

“Yeah, yeah, it was nice – I’ll see you at school,” he agrees, before waving lightly as he turns to wander to the other bus platform, where he’ll get his bus home.

————————————————

She goes on a second date with Cody the next weekend – to an old-school arcade, which is actually very fun and very cool – and it starts becoming a rough pattern. He’s cute, he actually like, asks about what she wants to do, he’s into some cool stuff and her friends like him too… she realises at about a month in that, for probably the first time ever, her relationship just feels kinda… easy. Relaxed.

It's good that it is when everything outside of school is very much not. Her mother continues her screaming – although, for the most part, she doesn’t find a whole lot to scream at Courtney about when Clarke has started acting out and breaking things and Kari is threatening to drop out of school – and there’s a bunch of fires in late September that aren’t close enough to Mansfield to be like, worrying, but her Dad has to be away for days at a time to fight them and he always comes back grumpy and tired.

It's not the first time her Dad has had to go away to fight fires, and she’s always thought it’s a cool job, but this time they just seem to… go forever. Usually he goes and fights a fire and puts it out and it’s done, but now they’re going forever and there’s all these crazy images when her Mum puts on the news every night of burnt-out cars and creepy, abandoned, black forests…

She’s started feeling a little weird whenever she uses the 🔥 emoji. And, with her Dad away… she has to ask her Mum for everything.

Lying to get permission to go on a date is easy – all she has to say is she’s hanging out with her school friends, or studying with them, or something – and for the most part, they have their dates in places that she can just take an easy bus to. In hindsight, she probably should’ve like, thought about making sure no one saw her, but like… Kari’s the main one in her family that goes out, and Kari’s never going to tell on her. Especially not now.

She’s just been hanging out with Cody, Natalie and Mason at a park on a Sunday afternoon – it wasn’t even a date for either couple, really, they just hung out – and she kisses Cody goodbye at the bus station, letting it progress to making out. He knows what to do, he’s not gross like Carter.

He makes a comment about how he bets she’ll finish her first art folio project in class the next day like way before he does – which, yeah, she’s been really loving art class and she’s almost done with the first project already – as he waves her off. Courtney sticks in her headphones when she clambers onto the bus, as always, pulling up her notes app to start jotting down a couple of final ideas after his comment sparks the thoughts in her mind. It puts her in a good mood, and she wanders happily up the street to her house, intending to go straight to her room. It’s only like, 4, no one will be around.

Instead, the second she opens the front door, she’s met with a screech.

“Courtney Ruth Miller!” her mother’s voice makes her take a step black, and she blinks a couple of times in confusion.

She does, however, have the experience to know she should not ask why her name is being screamed-

“How fucking dare you walk around like that? You’re sinning! You’re a whore! How dare you go behind our backs and waste your time with a boy?! Or did your Dad put you up to this?” her mother continues screaming, Courtney’s heart sinking. Oh no. “I go out to shop for food to feed you ungrateful little brats and I’m assaulted by my daughter engaging with a boy like that! You’re disgusting, we should have never let you go to that godawful school, you’re being ruined by the liberal agenda to turn all the women into vapid idiots!”

Courtney doesn’t exactly… know what to say, even when her mother pauses. Trying to lie her way out of it isn’t going to work. It’s not like she can argue, but she also can’t just walk away, and-

“What’s this noise about?” her Dad starts, stepping into the house just behind her.

“Courtney was at the bus stop with some disgusting boy’s tongue down her throat! She’s probably been doing this forever, we should never let her out of the house, none of the girls should ever be out of the house ever again if we can’t trust them not to-”

“Courtney, you know we’ve said no dating until you’re sixteen,” her Dad cuts her mother off, although he doesn’t disagree with her.

Courtney still doesn’t know what to say.

“Well it’s too late now, she’s ruined! She’s probably sleeping with all these men and she’s never going to amount to anything and she’s just a-”

“Mum!” Courtney snaps, feeling herself squirm. Ugh. “I’m not sleeping with anyone that’s disgusting! I just dated one guy because my friends said I should and it hasn’t been for long and I’ll just break up with him, okay?!”

She knows her tone is exasperated and probably just going to set her mother off more, but-

“We can’t trust you to do that! We can never trust you again! We’ll have to take you out of the school, you can’t leave the house, you are grounded until you’re eighteen Courtney!” her mother continues screaming, but her Dad holds out a hand.

“Courtney, yes, you will need to break up with this boy. And you have broken a rule, and you will be grounded – for the next month, at least, and you need to be on your best behaviour. But we know that school doesn’t let you date either, do they?” he points out. It’s… wrong. The teachers don’t care what any of them do as long as they’re not like, swearing or fighting in the cafeteria.

…But honesty probably isn’t the right thing right now.

“They don’t,” she confirms, making her voice a little quiet and sadder, as she rapidly adds, “can’t I even see Hollie?”

“Tell Hollie to get her Dad to start coming to temple again and maybe you can see her,” her mother snaps, although she’s stopped screaming at least.

“No friends, you’re grounded. Now how about you go upstairs and do your homework, I’m sure you have some for this week,” her Dad pushes, and she rapidly takes the exit, trudging her way upstairs as it all starts stewing in her brain.

Everything was going okay and her friends were happy and she was cool because she was dating a cool boy and she definitely can’t tell any of her friends that her parents stopped her dating, she doesn’t want to be one of those religious freaks that won’t even high five because that’s apparently too sexual, she can’t actually break up with Cody but how does she actually stay in a relationship when she can’t go on dates and how does she tell her friends she’s grounded and can’t go to stuff and hang out with them without saying why and-

“Found out?” Kari comments, raised eyebrow, when she collapses straight back onto her bed and tries to ignore the other person in her bedroom.

“Shut up,” Courtney mutters, in response, grumbling under her breath as she stares up at the ceiling.

Chapter Text

There is absolutely no way Courtney is actually telling any of her friends why she was grounded, but she trudges grumpily into school after being dropped off on Monday morning, her mother having decided that grounding means she can’t take the bus because that counts as socialising with her friends.

“What’s up with you?” Yasmin asks, immediately, her voice expectant.

She’s had a whole night to come up with something now, though.

“My stupid brothers were fighting in the living room and broke Mum’s favourite old vase from her grandmother but neither of them will own up to it so she’s grounded all of us for a month,” she grumbles, “it’s so dumb and unfair, I wasn’t even home when it happened but apparently that doesn’t matter… and she won’t even let me take the bus!”

“Ugh, younger brothers are so gross. Mine stole my eyeshadow palette to draw with on Saturday!” Natalie sympathises, Yasmin quickly agreeing and piping in with a story about her own younger brother – who is like, only 6 – spilling food on the white linen shirt she bought for him to match her so they could take cute sibling photos at their Dad’s request.

“What are we talking about gross siblings for? My younger sister is gross too, she’s obsessed with Harry Styles and thinks he’s the best ever and like… no,” Cody jumps in, wandering up to join them.

“Courtney got grounded. Super unfairly,” Yasmin explains.

“What? Aww… how long for?” Cody turns to her. She grimaces.

“A whole month… and yeah it was because of something my brothers did, it literally happened while I was out with you guys yesterday,” she shakes her head, making her face annoyed.

“Damn, that’s basically until Thanksgiving… I’m guessing this means no dates?” he responds.

“Yeah… sorry dude. I’ll try and find a way around it but my Mum gets way too strict and if I try and push it, it’ll be even longer,” she explains, a little hesitantly, but he nods.

“That sucks. We can still hang out at school at least, though,” he muses, before they all have to disperse to homeroom.

It does give her at least some relief. He’s not going to like, break up with her over it or anything. Carter definitely would’ve just told her she was a baby that should just break the rules and go out anyway, Johnny would’ve broken up with her over it-

Cody does bring it up again, although it’s at lunch, and it’s totally feeling sorry for her being locked down, not mad that they can’t go on dates.

“Wait, you were grounded? Why?” Shayne asks, intrigued. They’d decided to sit with the sophomores this lunch since some of the others were off at a drama club thing – just her, Cody, and Isabel were actually there (although Hannah was there too, and Alicia subtly forced Isabel into a seat far away from Shayne. Thankfully).

“Clarke and Conrad broke Mum’s favourite vase from her grandmother while they were fighting but because they won’t like apologise or something and maybe because she just likes being mean, Mum grounded all of us for it…” she explains, rolling her eyes.

Shayne looks confused, though, and immediately, she can tell he doesn’t believe her. Shoot. What if he ruins it all for her and-

“That sounds like your Mum,” he responds, instead, and the panic in her chest immediately settles, before Hannah grabs his attention and he turns to speak to her.

Courtney hasn’t actually been able to get Shayne to talk about what’s going on with him and Hannah. Isabel is still being weird – she definitely cornered him in the hallway the previous week and told him she was better than Hannah, although Yasmin had seen it and yanked her away – and going on dates with Cody had cut into her time to visit Shayne on weekends, but they still had sneaking out at night. What she does know, from the couple of times she’s snuck out to see him at night since she started dating Cody, is that they’ve been on like three dates now.

And all of them were, at least, okay, from what he said. Not that he said… much.

(Alicia had told her he just like, won’t talk about girls at all. She joins Alicia’s annoyance with that. She wants the gossip, dammit!)

It doesn’t surprise Courtney that later that night – when she’s in her room doing homework, and she is actually kinda reading a book she has to for English – her phone buzzes beside her. She is confused, but happy, that her grounding apparently didn’t include anything to do with her phone (and it can’t include her laptop, that’s how she does schoolwork).

“Hey! What’s up?” Shayne’s text reads, plainly. She immediately knows it’s his way of checking if she can text him.

“In my room doing homework because I guess that’s all I can do lol… they didn’t take my phone. Mum might’ve forgot they gave it to me,” she replies, before quickly typing out, “but she did try to ground me until I’m 18 and pull me out of school.”

“yikes 😬… is it actually why you said? And all of you?” he asks. She glances across the room to see Kari is paying her zero attention, lying on her bed facing the other way and tapping away at her own phone.

“just me. Mum saw me kissing Cody at the bus stop I guess… screamed at me when I got home. Dad calmed her down a bit. But I dunno if you know the Mormon rule from the people you used to know… no dating until 16. So I’m grounded even from Dad.”

“Yeah I’ve heard of the 16 thing before. That sucks… guessing you had to “break up” with him? And can’t really tell your friends?”

“they’ll be weird about it but most of them have dumb younger brothers too,” she replies, immediately realising that… Shayne is a younger brother. Oops. “not that all younger brothers are dumb…”

“🤪 nah they all are sometimes I definitely was to my brothers sometimes… do you still get to do track?”

“they haven’t said anything about that so I hope so… and like, it’s not like they know I sneak out anyway… but I might have to be a bit more careful. I dunno.”

“all good, we’ll see what happens! Just a month to get through… and you still have school, at least.”

As much as it is just a month… it doesn’t feel like that. It’s only like, two weeks in, when she feels like Cody might actually be starting to get annoyed about it. And she’s missed out on going to the mall with her friends after school twice so she wore the wrong clothes the next day and looked stupid because they’d planned stuff there, and she does have to miss track practice once because her Dad can’t pick her up later after it, and she is pissed about the Cody thing too.

The dates were fun and it was an easy relationship with a cool guy and her parents can’t ruin that.

But she can’t like… think of a solution. She literally isn’t allowed to leave the house except for school and church, and okay she can hang out with Cody at school, but they can’t even kiss because that’s kinda weird – although they do once hide away in a hallway during lunch so they can, but he decides that’s weird and she doesn’t really like it either so they don’t do it again – and he’s not at church and she’s definitely not going to invite him. Her Mum would probably murder her.

It is, weirdly, church that gives her an idea, though. Her parents are involved in the whole community around the church or whatever, they go to the social events and her Mum has some church ladies club thing and whatever, and one Tuesday evening, Courtney spots a flier sitting on the dining table at home from the ladies club, asking if anyone has daughters that could babysit younger children while their parents go to no-kids church events. And get paid for it. Not much, but something.

“Hey Mum, I know I’m grounded, but would I be allowed to go out for like-” she starts, still ready the flier as she directs her question at her mother up in the kitchen

“No,” her mother tries to cut her off immediately.

“-this church babysitting thing? I can babysit small kids, I’ve done it with Clarke and Conrad and some of the cousins,” she continues, anyway, glancing up to see her mother pause and turn to face her as her eyes seem to cycle through consideration.

“Well… you know, it would do you good to get involved in the church more and spend more time with good people and good kids. And it would be good practice for your own kids, those schools certainly don’t teach you to be a proper mother,” she considers, out loud. Courtney fights herself not to roll her eyes, simply staying quiet as her mother continues, “okay, you can babysit. But only the youngest kids, I don’t want you corrupting any of the middle school children with your disgusting things from school.”

“I think I prefer toddlers and small kids,” she answers, simply, her mother nodding and turning back to what she was doing in the kitchen.

Courtney’s mum doesn’t ask her Dad if she can amend the grounding to include going out to babysit, but when Courtney mentions it casually the day after seeing the flier, he’s enthusiastic about the idea – although he mentions the benefit of Courtney earning a bit of pocket money for when she can go out with friends again.

“It’s hardly appropriate for her to earn money while she’s grounded!” her mother snaps. Her Dad sighs.

“Kerryn, it’s a job with payment and she’s of working age. It’s a federal crime to take that money from her,” he points out. Her mother simply huffs, although she doesn’t say anything else of it when they go through and actually schedule Courtney to babysit someone’s kids – she doesn’t actually know the parent and she doesn’t think her Mum does that much either – the Friday night only a couple of days later.

It sounds like a pretty easy job. The kids are 3 and 5, and they have a super early bedtime – all she has to do is just like, get them cleaned up and ready for bed, and then hang out in their parents living room for a couple of hours until the parents get home and make sure nothing is wrong. Easy. As long as they aren’t little monsters, so she guesses she has to factor that in.

“Hey… so I’m doing a super easy babysitting thing on Friday night, the parents have said grounding doesn’t include jobs,” she mentions to Cody in art class the next day. He immediately raises an eyebrow at her.

“Why easy?” he asks.

“The kids are 3 and 5 so I just gotta get them to bed then hang out at their parents place alone for a couple of hours…” she trails off, pointedly, watching Cody grin.

“That sounds great. I’m not doing anything Friday night…”

“Now you’re helping me babysit,” she shoots back, immediately, returning his grin before turning her attention back to the sketches she’s working on for her second project as their teacher approaches.

————————————————

The two kids she babysits are angels. Her Mum drops her off at their house – conveniently, like, three streets from Cody’s – and greets their parents with her, but their parents just give her basic instructions about their bedtime, and how they’re only able to watch a maximum of thirty minutes of TV and it has to be educational, before all the adults depart.

She does let the kids watch their promised half-hour of TV, but they do so peacefully, the younger son squealing happily in response a couple of times to whatever dumb educational kids show must be a thing now and the eldest (Chloe) simply sitting quietly and watching.

Chloe grabs Courtney’s hand and drags her into the bathroom after she’s got them both to change into their pyjamas with some assistance, bragging about how she’s the best ever at cleaning her teeth and Courtney has to watch. It almost makes her laugh, but she lets her drag, the youngest toddling along after and messily copying his sister in brushing his own teeth.

They share a bedroom, both with small toddler beds at opposite sides of the room (Courtney kinda feels sorry for them – she can tell the house has more rooms than that. And five is totally old enough to have a real bed, she’s pretty sure). The youngest needs help climbing into his bed, and Courtney does so and tucks him in, before glancing across to the other side of the room.

“Can we have a bedtime story?” Chloe asks, almost musically, as she clambers into bed. Her brother looks like he’s already on the verge of passing out, having already shuffled further down under his covers and almost aggressively flopped his head back on the pillow, but Courtney nods softly and reaches for the book Chloe produces from her small bedside table.

It’s a generic book about good little girls praying, and it makes Courtney inwardly roll her eyes. It’s newer than the stuff she had to read, but it’s still annoyingly familiar. Either way, she reads it out, keeping her voice soft as she glances back over to see Chloe’s brother already asleep. Chloe smiles as she reads, before her eyes flutter closed, too.

Courtney had, of course, expected that it’d go way worse than this even though it sounded easy. Crazy kids that refused to go to bed, parents with a million rules and things she had to do, but… nope. Just kids TV and reading them to sleep. It means that, when she closes the book and carefully sets it back on the bedside table so she can move out of the room and close the door, she’s back in the living room by herself a full thirty minutes before she’d told Cody to come by.

But like, she has her phone – she has to have it so she can text her Mum if she needs help, according to her Mum. Not that she’d do that – and she quickly pulls up his contact.

“These kids were scarily easy to get to bed… they’re already asleep. I’ll give it fifteen minutes to make sure they’re ACTUALLY asleep and not gonna come out looking for something… but you can probably come over earlier.”

“See you in 15!” Cody sends back, immediately, and she smiles to herself as she leans back onto their living room couch and glances around the room.

She feels like she should like, clean, or something, but they hadn’t told her to do anything like that and she doesn’t want to end up doing the wrong thing…

Courtney spies a kids’ activity table in the corner, paper strewn across the top and a few crayons scattered onto the floor near it. She stands from the sofa, stretching slightly and wandering over to at least straighten up the papers and put the crayons back in the container she finds on the shelf just beside the table. She finds little things like that – wiping down the kitchen bench, picking up a couple of plush toys from the floor to sit back up on the sofa – to occupy her time until her phone buzzes with a text that Cody is there.

She quickly pokes her head down the hallway, but there’s still no light coming from under the kids’ door and no sound from their room, so she pads back to the front door and opens it.

“Hey,” she greets him, lightly.

“Hey Courtney. This was a cool way to get around stuff, how did you come up with it?” he asks, although he keeps his voice lower than usual as she quietly closes the front door behind him and they wander back into the living room.

“Some mother’s group Mum is part of was looking for babysitters,” she answers, her own voice still lowered as she shrugs lightly, “I’m just glad they’re good kids. I barely had to do anything except read them a bedtime story and watch half an hour of weird kids TV.”

“Was it a good story at least?” Cody asks, his voice almost laughing. She holds back her own laughter for fear of waking up the kids.

“Nah, some boring educational thing about brushing teeth,” she replies, quickly mashing together the earlier events of the night into one, “they liked it though. Or, well, the 5-year-old did. Three fell asleep immediately.”

“Perfect,” he replies, shaking his head, before he pointedly shuffles just a bit closer to her on the couch.

Courtney doesn’t complain at all, doing much the same as his arm settles around her shoulders and she turns towards him, her own face settling into a soft smile.

“I’ve missed not being able to go on cool dates. We’ll have to do something fun after Thanksgiving when your parents let you again… but this is cool too,” Cody comments, eyes on her the whole time, before he slowly leans towards her.

She very much agrees (other than the part about her parents ever letting her go on a date, but anyway), and she lets her own eyes flutter closed until Cody’s lips press against hers.

It’s actually the first time they’ve kissed like… not standing up, and as his kiss becomes more insistent and his tongue presses inside her mouth, his hand settles around her waist before moving down, slightly lifting up the base of her shirt as his fingers brush the bare skin just above her hip. Courtney feels herself flush with embarrassment in response and her cheeks heat up, but it’s not like she hates it, and he can’t see her cheeks while he’s making out with her so…

They spend most of the evening making out on the couch, but they don’t let time get away from them, Cody clambering up from the couch and away from her thirty minutes before the kids’ parents are due back. He kisses her once more at the front door, pausing after they say their goodbyes and seeming to consider something for a moment.

“I know it’s super old school but I’ve had more time the last couple weeks so I like… made you a CD of some cool music I think you’d like that is way better than all that pop stuff. But like, I don’t know if you have a CD player and I didn’t want to give you anything you have to hide from your parents tonight so… I’ll send you a link to the Spotify playlist version?” he explains, Courtney smiling and thanking him as she scoffs inwardly.

He's lost the dyed-black hair – it’s back to his still dark, but less dark, brown – and he’s stopped trying to wear studded bracelets to school after having no less than 7 confiscated, but he’s still Cody. His second art project is (somehow, she doesn’t know why the teacher approved it) designing a medieval torture-castle or something, he does drum lessons twice a week (although she’s still never seen him play), and he is intense about the music.

…As long as it’s not his really intense screamo stuff, though, she kinda likes it too.

Chapter Text

Chloe and her brother’s parents are more than happy with Courtney’s babysitting, and her mother seems to be okay with it all too. Her mother turns up to pick her up a little early and starts to grumble about what on earth Courtney has actually done with the time, but she quickly tells her to be quiet because the kids’ room is just down the hallway, and she’s cleaned a little, but she didn’t want to move their stuff around so she just stayed in the living room and read a school book on her phone.

Her mother suggests she should bring homework next time instead of reading on her phone, but is soon interrupted by the return of the parents, who thank Courtney and hand over $60 in cash for her efforts.

…It’s a lot more money than she’s had for like, a long time. She could get used to this (even though she feels just the tiniest bit guilty for being paid to make out with Cody. Not, like, guilty about her Mum not knowing – who cares about that – but guilty that the parents kinda paid her to… not do anything for them).

“If I can do stuff like that sometimes and earn some money, maybe I can buy some of my own new clothes,” she comments, to her mother, on the drive home.

“You are not allowed to pick your own clothes. At least what Kari and Kami own is appropriate,” her mother snaps back, immediately, shutting down the conversation. Well. She tried.

And she can probably just do whatever she wants with her money once she’s allowed to go shopping with her friends again, so…

She has her next babysitting gig mid-the next week, on a school night, and this time she does actually have to do homework in the hour or so she has between the kids (who are much rowdier and harder to get to sleep, this time) going to bed and their parents getting home. She mentions it to Cody, but it’s near her place instead of his, and he can’t really get over there easily on a school night so… that one is just babysitting. And, honestly, she still doesn’t really mind it.

It does get her out of the house, too, so that’s good.

She has a big babysitting job the next Saturday night. It’s for one of the church leaders’ family members, and they have five kids under 10 and the adults are gone from 4pm all the way until midnight for some important conference or something. She kinda wishes she had someone else there to help her manage the kids, but for the first few hours, she just… has to do it alone.

It’s not the break from her own chaotic house she wanted. They’re fine, really, the two eldest kids and the two youngest each seem to be happy entertaining each other and playing while the middle sits in the dead centre of the living room floor reading a children’s gospel, but she has to try and watch all of them and the two youngest start throwing pencils at one point, the two eldest start quizzing her about why she isn’t at church enough-

“Well, sometimes I have lots of homework to do for school,” she answers, trying to brush it off.

“But my Dad said girls shouldn’t be at schools that mean they miss temple and girls should be home-schooled,” the oldest – a 9-year-old boy who Clarke and Conrad know and both hate – argues back. She tries not to roll her eyes visibly.

“Some people are home-schooled if their parents want to do that and other people go to other schools, different families do different things,” she answers, before one of the youngest cries out and grabs her attention to complain about being hungry.

It is almost the time their parents had said to give them dinner – she doesn’t have to cook, at least, just heat up a couple of different things – so she tells him he can help her get dinner ready, before quickly being told no, that’s a girls’ job. Ugh.

She gets why her brothers hate this family and she wants to just quit and leave, even when the five kids finally sit dutifully at the dining table to eat their dinners. But she can’t, and she tries to stay outwardly happy and positive as she wrangles them through dinner, and arguing over not being allowed to watch TV (at least the 9-year-old helps her with that one, telling the younger ones that TV will rot their brains and make God mad), requests to do some schoolwork, and eventually, getting them all into bed.

It doesn’t stop there. This time she had been asked to clean, and she lets herself grumble audibly after they’re finally all in bed with lights off and doors closed and she starts cleaning up the mess they’d made of the dining room and kitchen, and the toys strewn all over the living room.

It’s after 9:30 by the time everything is finished and, as planned, Cody silently turns up at the front door and texts her that he’s here. She’d been looking forward to being able to see him again (and she kinda liked the irony of making out with her boyfriend on such a big church person’s couch… what they don’t know won’t hurt them) but now she’s just… exhausted.

“This is a huge house,” he comments, although still keeping his voice quiet, as they wander from the entry into the living room – thankfully, separated by the dining room from the hallway to the kids’ rooms.

“Yeah. There’s five kids,” she answers, muttered, “awful kids.”

“Ugh, gross. And like- are those just all bibles? Are they religious crazies?” he asks, glancing up over to the bookshelf that is filled with various King James Bibles, Books of Mormon and children’s gospels, “I know there’s like some weirdo Mormon people in Mansfield, are they those?”

“Maybe,” she answers, trying to push down the hesitance in her voice. Okay, yikes, really don’t let him know her family are Mormon…

“Weird. Whatever. They all asleep?” he asks, turning back to her, his face turning into a grin when Courtney nods before he gestures towards the couch. She doesn’t decline, of course, shifting down onto the couch beside him and pulling him into a kiss that barely breaks for the time until he leaves again just after 11.

Courtney has to bite back her annoyance when this family’s parents get back at 12:15am – late – and hand her a single $50 note for that whole time with all those kids. Neither of her parents can pick her up this time, either, and she shivers in the cold of the late-Autumn night as she walks the couple of blocks home after.

Not. Worth. It.

————————————————

“What the actual fuck?” Cody grumbles, immediately walking up to Courtney in the hallway outside their homeroom on Monday morning. She instinctively takes a step back.

“What?! Did Johnny make up some dumb crap? You know he’s a liar,” she snaps back, defensively.

“He is but so are you,” he shoots back, “my sister is a dumbass but she’s a dumbass goody-two-shoes that never lies and she told me that your brother isn’t grounded, it’s just you, because your Mum saw you kissing me and made you break up with me because you’re not allowed to date until you’re 16!”

Her heart sinks and she feels a string of curse words run through her head, not able to stop herself openly wincing.

“But I didn’t break up with you and I am grounded and I’m trying to still make it work!” she answers.

“I don’t actually care that you lied except my sister said you can’t date until you’re 16 because you’re a weirdo Mormon?! Are you actually? Your family are part of- they’re like that?” he sneers.

“It’s not like I listen to the rules,” she rebuts.

“But are YOU Mormon? Do you believe all the dumb shit?” he asks, his voice forceful and judging. It makes her shudder a little.

“I don’t like go to temple and shit unless they make me, I don’t do all the Mormon stuff,” she answers, again, but he shakes his head.

“That’s not good enough! Religion is just a dumb thing to make people do what they’re meant to and unless you’re actually, like, fighting your parents and making them stop it you’re part of it and-” he rambles, before cutting himself off and snapping his head around to Yasmin, who has evidently appeared at some point, “did you know Courtney was a weirdo religious freak?”

“We know her parents are, like, strict and whatever,” she shrugs, “and it’s not like Courtney follows any of the rules.”

“Whatever,” he snaps, turning back to Courtney with glaring eyes before he turns and rushes into their homeroom.

Great.

She’s prevented from saying anything else – to Yasmin, or Cody – by their teacher arriving and ushering everyone into the class, although she feels nerves swirling through her stomach and her mind as she completely zones out of whatever he’s saying other than making sure she answers when he calls her name for attendance.

Was that Cody breaking up with her? Is she single now? Are her friends gonna get on her case for ruining stuff? And it’s not like it’s fair anyway, it’s not her fault that her parents are intense and strict and whatever and it’s not her fault Cody is like weird about the Mormon thing…

To Courtney’s relief, her friends don’t really… say anything. It’s not like they don’t know she’s not meant to date until she’s 16 and her parents are strict and whatever, as long as she breaks the rules, they think it’s cool. If anything, she’s more cool because she does have strict parents and ignores them. Whatever.

Cody, on the hand… also doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say anything to her at all for the rest of the day, he doesn’t sit with them at lunch (she can’t find him anywhere), he sits as far from her as he possibly can in the art classroom during the week.

“Why are you being weird? Have you like broken up with me or what? I said all the stuff was dumb and I don’t do it, I’m literally breaking all the rules to see you… what’s your problem,” she texts him, on Tuesday evening, but he doesn’t say anything to that either.

“So are you, like, single now?” Isabel asks her, at lunch on Thursday when a few of them – her, Courtney, Yasmin, Mason and Hollie – are sitting at Shayne’s table with him, Max and Ethan. Courtney shrugs.

“He didn’t like, actually break up with me, but he’s being weird and not answering texts,” she answers, plainly.

“He kinda overreacted… it’s pretty weird,” Yasmin adds, and as much as it kinda relieves Courtney that they aren’t blaming her for it, she still feels an uncomfortable thudding in her chest.

She thought Cody was cool, and he was her boyfriend, and he was kind of a good boyfriend and she doesn’t want to have to go and find another one because everyone else sucks-

“Wait, what happened?” Ethan asks, “I thought you were dating Cody?”

Courtney has like, half-mentioned to Shayne that something happened with him in passing when they were chatting at track the previous day, but she hasn’t gone into detail with any of his friends, and she just shrugs.

“He found out my parents don’t want me dating anyone until I’m 16 and went weird about it even though I don’t care about that rule,” she answers, before rapidly changing the topic.

To her relief, the others take the topic change, moving on to complain about the intense Spanish teacher that all of them are now dealing with.

Courtney had kinda hoped that Cody would respond to her text eventually. Even if he was angry and dumb, at least he could respond- but on Thursday night, she lies back on her bed staring at her phone in silence. She is getting messages – Natalie and Hollie are arguing about whether glitter nail polish is for kids or not, because Hollie had been excited about getting some because some actress she’s obsessed with wore it or something, and Ethan and Zach are talking in the group chat about football – but none of them are directly to her and none of them are from Cody.

She blinks her eyes rapidly when she feels them start watering. No, dammit, she’s not going to cry over this dumb boy- but there’s only one day of school left before Thanksgiving break and he hasn’t talked to her for almost four whole days and she’s babysitting again next week and they could’ve done stuff again and-

She can hear her parents talking loudly – or well, arguing – about something in the kitchen downstairs, but tonight, there’s no screaming. Kami and Kari are in Kami’s room, for once, and KC is at work, and Conrad and Clarke are… watching TV or something. Whatever. She doesn’t care.

Sighing roughly, Courtney shuffles messily onto her side to let her phone fall against the bed, held in one hand, as she brushes at her eyes with the other and taps into her messages with Shayne.

It’s been like, two weeks since she talked to him alone. They’ve messaged about whatever and they’ve talked at lunch and practice and whatever, but…

“Can you go to the park tonight?” she texts, with no context, although she stays lying on her bed facing the wall as she stares at the phone. He reads the text immediately, but she stares as he doesn’t start typing for a minute or so. Maybe he’s busy. She shouldn’t have-

“Yeah, can be there soon, just had to ask parents. See you there?” he replies, and something about it makes her sob sharply, immediately pulling her hand to her mouth to muffle it.

She’s such a dumb baby. Maybe Cody is right about all this stuff and her parents being like that is making her stupid.

“See you there,” she sends Shayne, as she roughly sits herself up in bed and shoves her phone into her pocket.

Courtney wipes at her eyes as she moves to the closet to pull out one of her big winter jackets (it’s, like, weirdly cold this week). She moves downstairs quietly and cautiously, but her parents are busy arguing in the kitchen and everyone else seems to be elsewhere, so she quietly sneaks down the hallway and out the laundry door. She ducks below the kitchen window as she passes it, hearing her mother’s droning about her Dad spending too much time at work or whatever, before returning to a slouched, trudging walk up the street to the park.

“What’s up? Cody stuff, or home?” Shayne asks, gently, when she collapses into the empty swing immediately beside the one he’s already sitting in, lightly pushing his foot against the ground to sway himself back and forth.

“Cody,” she mumbles, immediately hearing the tears in her voice and sniffing loudly to try and clear them. It doesn’t work. “He found out through his sister talking to my stupid brothers or something that I lied about why I was grounded but he wasn’t like, that mad I lied I don’t think, but then he got really weird about my parents being strict and Mormon and whatever and like…”

“Weird in what way?” he prompts, when she doesn’t continue. She sighs roughly.

“I’ve been getting him to sneak out and see me when I’m babysitting after the kids are in bed. And like last Saturday I told you it was the like, church leader’s family or whatever… he was weirded out at their place just by seeing all their bibles and whatever,” she shakes her head, glancing down and scuffing her shoe against the floor below her.

What does she even, like… how does she…

“He was saying stuff about how Mormons are dumb and are weirdos and whatever, and like, I think all the rules are too strict and silly and whatever and I don’t follow them but he didn’t care about that, he said I was dumb and weird too unless I like, fought my parents about it, and he asked if I was Mormon and if I believe the stuff…” she trails off, shivering slightly as she does.

She suddenly realises that Shayne is like… his family don’t go to a church. She hasn’t seen any bibles in their home, the ones she knows or otherwise. Is he gonna be weird about it? He’s talked about knowing Mormons in Arizona too but she doesn’t know if he was friends with them and-

“That’s a pretty extreme reaction to just like… finding out your family is Mormon,” he answers, hesitating audibly for a moment before he continues, “you… don’t like being asked what you think about it? Or don’t like him making fun of your family?”

“I grew up with basically just Mormons and some of them are dumb and the rules are stupid but they’re not all dumb and stuff…” she trails off, before adding, “and I just… I don’t know.”

Shayne doesn’t say anything to that, immediately, and it leaves them in a slow silence. There’s no one else out at the playground tonight – it’s already practically fully dark, but the sky is clear and the air is cold. Her own feet are planted firmly in the ground below her, stopping her from moving, but Shayne’s swing squeaks slightly as he rocks it back.

She sniffs lightly.

“I don’t know what I think about the Mormon stuff and I don’t know if I believe it and I don’t like being asked about it because I just don’t know anything and everyone at school makes fun of the kids that actually believe that stuff and I’m not like intense about it and I think the rules are stupid but I was taught this stuff my whole life and I just- I just don’t know and I don’t wanna have to have an answer just to date someone when it’s not like I even act like a Mormon so it shouldn’t matter and my Mum thinks I’m going to hell and I probably am but he shouldn’t care,” she rambles, messily, feeling the words almost explode out of her, before abruptly twisting her swing away from Shayne, voice turning quiet. “Sorry. You probably don’t wanna know that. I should’ve just said of course I don’t believe it.”

“Don’t apologise,” Shayne tells her, immediately, but he pauses, and she listens to his swing squeak back and forth a couple of times before he continues. “It’s like, a huge question, and you don’t have to know what you think. It’s hard to completely undo something you’ve been told is true forever… and as long as you’re not forcing him to do anything because of it, he really shouldn’t care.”

“Do you think religious people are weird? Your family definitely aren’t, right?” she turns the question back on him, slowly letting her swing rotate back and glancing over to him. He shrugs.

“I like- I don’t like when people use it to be mean or whatever and my family never have been religious but… not just like, in general, I don’t have a problem with it. And your friends don’t really, do they?” he turns the question back to her, and she glances back down as she picks at the seam of her jeans.

“They just think it’s cool that I break all the rules,” she mutters, before feeling her eyes filling with tears again as she continues, “I don’t want Cody to break up with me over it. But I think he’s going to. But I at least want him to just tell me what he’s going to do…”

“I’m sorry this has happened, Court. It sucks, he seemed like he was an okay guy… but maybe, if he’s happy to get that intense and mad at you about something, he’s not… the best,” Shayne replies, a little hesitantly, before continuing with more force, “but just not replying and not telling you anything is definitely a dumb move. Can you try making him talk to you at school?”

Chapter Text

Cody doesn’t make it easy to talk at school, because he isn’t even at school on Friday. She stomps grumpily through the day, even as Hollie tries to tell her she’s better off without him (like she knows anything about boys) and Natalie and Yasmin both start making fun of Isabel for being single for too long, for once, instead of her.

Why won’t he just reply to her already??

“You’re being weird. At least reply… I can’t date a guy that just goes weird and silent and disappears,” she texts him, again, when she’s sitting bored in one of her Mum’s friend’s houses the next Tuesday afternoon, wasting her Thanksgiving break babysitting a toddler that is apparently going to be asleep for like the whole time she’s there anyway.

“Are you going to say that religion is stupid and they’re all dumb and you’re going to like disown them? Because otherwise you’re just as bad,” he replies, and as much as her heart starts racing at the reply, she quickly descends into a frown.

“I can’t disown my family even if I wanted to. You’re being way too extreme about this…” she replies, borrowing Shayne’s and Yasmin’s words as she tries to… kind of answer him. But not really. But like, she’s not wrong. A kid can’t disown their parents, right?

“No! Religion is literally a scheme to make sure workers and stuff never go against what they’re told to do and it makes stupid people and we need to fight it so the mainstream doesn’t ruin everything!!!!” he answers, after a minute, Courtney openly groaning.

She could deal with his intense screamo alternative music but even the fake-punk aesthetic was too much and okay he played drums but he probably only plays weird intense screamo stuff on drums too, he’s probably not even good at it, and-

“I’m not dating you unless you say you don’t believe in any of it and you’re going to make them not believe either,” he texts, while she’s grumbling to herself instead of replying.

“Bye,” she replies, instantly, kind of expecting that he’ll come back retracting it.

…But he doesn’t, and she feels a lump form in her throat as she roughly stands up off the couch she’s sitting on to glance around the room. There’s gotta be something she can do while she’s here, right? Something? She’s pretty sure she’s just lost all hope of having a boyfriend to invite to join her babysitting ever again.

————————————————

“That was really weird and intense of him but you could’ve just like… lied so at least you aren’t single,” Yasmin points out, raising an eyebrow judgementally at Courtney when they sit at lunch on the Monday after Thanksgiving break.

“How can I lie when he’s asking me to like, leave my family? That’s literally impossible,” she answers, matter-of-factly, watching Yasmin shrug in response.

“Just like, get a hotel or something,” she answers.

“My sister did that once when she was mad at our parents…” Natalie adds, Courtney inwardly rolling her eyes although she outwardly just shrugs.

“Whatever. If you’re not dating Cody anymore you gotta find someone else again… and you scared two guys off this year now between Johnny and Cody so you gotta be careful,” Yasmin speaks up, again, but she just glances down and stabs at the food in front of her with the stupid plastic fork they provide with school lunches.

It makes her want to go and find Shayne’s friends to hang out with – she hadn’t seen any of them (or any of her friends, to be fair, she wasn’t officially un-grounded until the end of break when her Dad decided she was – over the break, and Shayne had been in Arizona with family so she couldn’t even see him if she snuck out. Some of her Dad’s family had come over for Thanksgiving dinner and she didn’t mind them as much, her cousins from Dad’s family were okay, but her Mum had spent the three days since yelling at her Dad about how his brothers all had better jobs and better kids than him and she just wanted to get out.

But sneaking out by herself really doesn’t feel like it does anything now she’s had the option of Shayne for so long – almost a whole year, now – so she’d just stayed in her room, scrolling through Instagram.

She hopes her friends will forget about it and find something else to talk about, at least, but they settle into talking about it all the time.

“I guess the sport people aren’t too bad, like Carter used to hang out with us, maybe you could date one of them,” Natalie points out in class a couple of days later, when two of said sports boys get yelled at by the teacher for throwing paper planes at each other.

“The whole point was dating someone better than Carter,” she answers.

“Yeah, but you messed up and got broken up with so… maybe you aren’t good enough for better than Carter,” she had replied, Courtney simply giving an annoyed huff and pretending to look down and do her schoolwork. She is better than Carter, she swears, and she didn’t do anything wrong, it wasn’t her fault that Cody ended up being a complete weirdo-

The drama club’s first play of the year is not long after winter break, so the one thing that Courtney does have to look forward to in the three weeks between Thanksgiving and winter is the lunch periods she gets to spend with Shayne and Alicia painting sets.

Isabel is there too, but she’d ended up being assigned to designing programs or whatever, and for the most part Courtney gets to just paint and listen to Alicia joke back and forth with Shayne and Jason, the other sophomore working on the set-painting with them. She doesn’t say much, happy to just listen and laugh occasionally as she tries to stop her mind wandering back to Cody and Carter and dating and all that… whatever.

“Hey, Shayne,” Isabel starts, on one such lunchtime meeting the week before winter break, when the drama teacher has just been through and told them all to take a break for a while so she can look over everything.

“What?” Shayne answers, a little snappy, Courtney immediately tensing. What now-

“You don’t… have to be defensive. I’m sorry if the way I am wasn’t what you wanted me to be a few months ago. But I know you’re single now, and so am I, and it would be cool to get to know each other better on a date sometime and I’m sure you’d enjoy it, and Courtney has said you’re good to spend time with,” she continues, and as much as she’s much more level and calmer than her previous attempts, Courtney still feels her breath catch in her throat.

“I appreciate you trying something less aggressive, Isabel, but I’m really not interested in dating you, I’m sorry,” Shayne answers, immediately.

“Why? You’re single. Do you think you’re too good to date a freshman? Thought you don’t think hanging out with freshmen is a problem?” she questions, Courtney glancing over to watch him shake his head roughly, looking down for a moment before glancing to her, and then back to Isabel. She barely catches his eye, although he just looks… nervous?

“It’s not that you’re a freshman or anything. I just don’t really want to date anyone or get to know anyone like that at the moment. And I know that’s important to you and Courtney and Yasmin and things, and that’s okay, but it’s just not as important to me. And… if you’re going to be less weird than you were before and respect my boundaries, then I’m happy to know you as a friend within the group, and things, but nothing more than that,” he responds, his voice slowly growing in confidence as he speaks.

“You crossed a lot of boundaries and were kind of an ass back then, Isabel,” Alicia steps into the conversation, pointedly, “I know your friends got pissed at you about it too… we can all be friends. But maybe you need to move on to someone else, with the dating stuff.”

“Whatever,” she answers, rolling her eyes at Alicia and not looking back at Shayne before she turns and flounces across to re-join the group she’d been working with on the programs.

“Was all that… okay? Is she gonna be pissed at you? I tried to be gentler this time and hopefully she maybe gets the picture and targets someone else and just lets me be a friend and nothing more but…” Shayne trails off, turning to Courtney with concerned eyes. It makes her smile lightly, and she nods.

“It was fine, Shayne. I dunno what she’ll do about it, but it’ll be fine. And I’m not going to stop you saying no to someone who’s been like, harassing you for months,” she reminds him, watching him nod in response before all of their attention is grabbed by the drama teacher again.

In all the time she’s been hanging out with Shayne in the park of an evening, she doesn’t think there’s ever a time he’s asked her to hang out. Sure, there were the first few times when mostly she was already there and he walked up and said hi, but… ever since they started actually planning things, sneaking out (or, like, asking his parents if he could go out in his case) was always her decision.

“Hey… is there any chance you can come to the park tonight?” Shayne texts her, out of nowhere, that same evening. They had already been talking, but it was in the group chat where they were talking with the others about how they’d try and plan a time to all watch the new Spider-Man movie that had just released that day. For her part, Courtney’s not convinced her parents will let her go, but… she’ll try.

She pauses when she does flick over to her private messages with Shayne, listening out to try and work out where everyone in the house is. It’s when she quickly remembers her Mum isn’t even here, she’s staying at a friend’s place to help with their kids or something, and KC and Kami are both at work, Kari is hanging out with her Dad and brothers downstairs…

“I think I can. Meet you there soon?” she replies.

“Okay,” Shayne answers, immediately, and she shuffles off her bed to search through the pile of clothes on the chair at the end of it to find her coat. LA is really acting like they’re actually going to get a cold Christmas this year (not that she’ll be in LA for Christmas).

She kind of figures Shayne just wants to hang out, or ask her more about the whole Isabel thing, but when she wanders up to the park she doesn’t find him loosely swinging on the swing set like he usually would be. Instead, as she clambers up into the platform above the slide, she finds him sitting leant up against the plastic back wall with his arms crossed over his chest and eyes glancing down at his legs stretched out in front of him.

“Hey,” she greets, as she sits down beside him.

“Hey,” he answers, his voice quiet and more down than she’s ever heard it. It immediately makes her brow furrow.

“What’s up, Shayne?” she asks, tilting her head to the side and twisting a little more to face him. She watches his mouth open, for a moment, before he simply lets out a tired sigh and shrugs, falling back into silence.

She doesn’t know what else to say, though, so she simply stays quiet and watches the way he lets one hand fall roughly away from his chest only to pick at the seam of his jeans. It’s so quiet out that she can hear the sound of him scratching at the fabric.

“I don’t, like… know,” he mutters, after a couple of minutes of silence, his face twisting in discomfort as he seems to wrestle with what to say. “It’s, like… not about Isabel or Hannah, but it is, but it isn’t, and just dating stuff and… Alicia keeps talking about how single I’ve been forever and I don’t even know if Hannah and I technically dated or if we just hung out so maybe I have been single forever.”

“That’s okay, though, even if it has been forever, isn’t it? You’re a guy, and like you’ve said, it’s just… not something that is important to you, and your friends might tease you but I don’t think they actually care,” she tries to reassure him, shaking her head likely, “Alicia would stop if you asked her.”

“It’s not important to me and they don’t really care but… maybe it should be important to me? Maybe I shouldn’t just brush everything off and whatever?” he answers, voice twisting in uncertainty, “I thought I liked Hannah but I just…”

“Did something happen with Hannah, Shayne? You’ve never really… talked about it,” she answers, a little hesitant. He lifts his shoulders in a half-hearted shrug.

“There was nothing really to talk about. We went on like four dates, and they weren’t bad, but nothing really… clicked, I guess. I didn’t immediately feel like I wanted to… be with her all the time, or anything,” he replies, shaking his head, “and we didn’t end up having much in common to talk about, and I guess we could’ve talked about basketball more because I’ve kinda wanted to start following the NBL and she’s into that but I just… didn’t bother.”

“That’s not… too bad, at least. No one really got angry or anything?” she prompts.

“I guess. I just don’t know if I should have… gone with it anyway or tried more,” he mumbles, before finally straightening himself up to glance over towards her. “Is it like… when you first go on a date with someone or say yes to someone, is it immediately like- you like-like them? Or… what?”

“I dunno. It’s not like… one thing. As long as the first date isn’t awful I’ll usually date them,” she answers, matter-of-factly, “especially if like, my friends like them, and they aren’t a loser and super ugly or boring or anything…”

“Maybe I need to… think like that more,” he sighs, roughly.

“Do you wish you said yes to Isabel?” she turns the question back on him, watching him immediately shake his head.

“No. I know she’s your friend, but she still gives me bad vibes. It’s more, like… I know I’ve been dumb to you about the whole needing to be in a relationship thing before but maybe I go too far the other way and I should’ve actually tried more with Hannah,” he admits, glancing back down and picking at the seam of his pants again, “I did kinda like her but when I didn’t like… immediately fall for her or whatever I thought that was it. And it took me like six months to get the courage to even ask her out, even though she was clearly interested too, and now I have to do that all over again with someone else and maybe I messed up the dates but she just didn’t say and that’s why she stopped seeming interested and maybe there is something I’m doing wrong that I have been single forever…”

“Did you talk to her about why you stopped going on dates?” she asks, “like, did one of you decide to break up? Because I think you went on enough dates that you did date her, you weren’t single then…”

“We didn’t really see it as breaking up though. At the end of the fourth date we were just kinda awkwardly standing at the bus station and I swear she was leaning in to kiss me which I think I would’ve been okay with but then she… didn’t, and instead she asked if I thought we should go on another date and I said like…” he trails off, for a moment, glancing up at the plastic roof over them as his head tilts back against the wall. “I just said that I wasn’t feeling like it was really going anywhere even though it was… kinda nice. And she agreed. So I guess it was… mutual?”

“Sometimes kinda nice can be enough, though,” Courtney points out, a little carefully, but she watches him level his head and nod.

“Probably. And I did want her to kiss me then but maybe I should’ve already initiated a kiss earlier than that because I’m the guy and I should be doing stuff like that… and I planned most of our dates, I tried to find stuff she’d like, we both liked the couple of movies we went to and we had nice lunches before the movies but… I dunno,” he shrugs again, his tone turning to a mumble, “I don’t know where it’s come from but I just suddenly feel like maybe I screwed up somehow and I’m bad at dating but I don’t know what I did wrong, I try to be nice and respectful and kinda like… sweet, without being too much, but… I don’t know what to do different. And I kinda wish I could just date someone like you do. You make it look easy.”

“Over-analysing what went wrong with Hannah probably isn’t going to help you, though,” she tells him, shaking her head, “I guess I just… don’t think dating has to be a big thing or perfect or whatever, just… I guess it just kinda happens. But like you’ve said, maybe it’s just… my grade is different about it. You could always ask Hannah whether there was anything she thought you did wrong? Or ask her to try again?”

“I feel like that would be weird, though, and then I’d be the weird ex that can’t move on…” he trails off, Courtney humming lightly.

“As long as you’re not being weird and desperate like Johnny always is – he’s literally started texting me again now Cody broke up with me… - it might be okay. Don’t be mean, just… ask her. And if she doesn’t wanna talk then… I guess you tried?” she offers, but she knows Shayne isn’t convinced as his face twists back and forth for a moment.

He doesn’t seem to have an answer for her, though, instead turning their conversation back to her.

“How is stuff going with… Cody and whatever?” he asks, Courtney scowling as she turns to look back down at her own lap.

“I don’t even know, he’s apparently going to start hanging out with us at lunch again and not ignoring me, he told Yasmin that, but I have no idea what that means but I kinda hope he apologises and wants to get back together because I have no idea who the heck I would date otherwise, because it’s not like I meet anyone outside school when Mum won’t let me do anything even though I’m not grounded anymore…”

Chapter Text

“Hey… can I talk to you?” Cody mumbles, wandering up beside Courtney in the hallway on Thursday morning before homeroom. Yasmin isn’t around – she started Winter break early so she could fly to Aspen with her family – and she sighs roughly as she turns to face him.

“What?” she asks, a little abruptly. She hasn’t actually talked to him since he broke up with her, even though he had sat with them at lunch yesterday and she’d heard via Hollie that he yelled at Johnny in class for saying she was going to date him again now because she was desperate.

“You don’t need to be like that. I guess like… you do break all the rules. And it’s not like you can just leave your parents even if you wanted to, it’s not your fault they’re like that,” he starts aggressively, before his tone turns a little more neural and almost… apologetic. “I’m sorry I overreacted. And I guess, if you wanted to, we could try again?”

“I mean, it’s two days before winter break, Cody. I’m about to be stuck in Utah with my Mum’s crazy Mormon family for a week and probably not allowed out of the house for the rest of the time,” she shoots back, testing him. He shrugs.

“You can have someone else to text that isn’t crazy? Like me?” he offers. She rolls her eyes, but she lets herself smile a little.

She was not going to date Johnny again, but Cody…

“Yeah, okay, whatever. Just like, don’t get weird about this shit again. It’s not like I like my family. And I don’t even know anything about yours, for all I know they could be crazy too,” she reminds him, Cody simply nodding in response and silently gesturing in the direction of their homeroom, walking there by her side.

Courtney’s winter break is exactly as she expects it will be. She endures a painful drive to Utah in her mother’s car with her two younger brothers either side of her and Kari in the front seat, before being thrust into days of church and weird nativity plays and Christmas dinners with people she’s pretty sure she’s never met even though they all know her name and treat her like she’s five.

She texts Cody when she can – so, like, when none of her family are watching, which is rarely. Even her stupid cousin tells on her for having her phone out in the bedroom a bunch of them are sharing at night – and she tries to keep up with all the messages from her friends and Shayne’s friends, but mostly she just ends up annoyed and stuck with all her family.

It’s not any different when they eventually get back to California on the 27^th of December, either. Now there’s church things they have to do there, and her Dad has shifts at work and her Mum keeps going off to see friends so she has to babysit her brothers, and Natalie hosts a New Years Eve party but there’s absolutely no way she’s going to even bother asking to go to that.

She doesn’t even get to sneak out and see Shayne, either, because he’s in Florida for the whole break to visit his grandparents. Although at least she’s able to text him dumb Florida jokes once she’s back home. And she finally gets to see Cody playing drums – on a video, anyway – because he gets a new… something? Cymbal? She doesn’t know what he actually means – for Christmas and puts a video of him playing on Instagram. It is kind of hot. And he’s not playing screamo, it’s just an old rock song she thinks her Dad likes, so that’s something.

“You finally get your single ass a boyfriend over winter break?” Yasmin asks Courtney, pointedly – and clearly assuming she hasn’t – the second Courtney sees her friends in the hall on the first day back after break.

“Cody calmed down and apologised, I’m dating him,” she answers, plainly, watching Yasmin stutter for a moment in surprise.

“Oh, that’s… good. That video he put on insta was cool,” she answers, Courtney nodding.

“Oh, you’re not dating your best friend Shayne to stop him dating me, are you?” Isabel cuts in, her voice artificially sweet. Courtney involuntarily shudders.

“Um, no, dude. I haven’t even talked to Shayne over break,” she shoots back, throwing in a small white lie. It’s not like she talked to him much.

“Oh my god, are you on this shit again?” Yasmin asks.

“She asked him out normally and he still said no! He doesn’t know his place, he should be grateful anyone like Isabel asked him out!” Natalie pushes, her voice raised, Courtney shooting Hollie a look to shut up when she looks like she’s about to say something, before glancing over to see Yasmin shrug.

“Maybe he is like, secretly dating someone else. Or gay. I don’t see why else he’d say no either. But I don’t think Courtney has anything to do with it… you know better than that, don’t you?” she turns her gaze over to Courtney, eyes burning with intensity.

“I didn’t say anything to him about any of it, he’s just doing whatever he wants to. He’s not gay, though,” she answers, brushing it off.

“Why does he hug Zach so much then?” Natalie pipes up.

“Zach hugs everyone like that. He literally hugged a random forest guide he’d never met before on the last outdoor camp,” Hollie pipes up, before their conversation is interrupted by a teacher they don’t recognise rushing past and yelling at them to get to homeroom and catch up at lunch.

Courtney kind of hopes that will be the end of it, but at lunch when she casually greets Alicia when she passes their group in the lunch line, Yasmin scoffs.

“If one of them was stupid enough to reject Isabel maybe they aren’t so cool after all… They do some pretty lame stuff,” she points out, “I don’t think any of us can hang out with them anymore. Unless you want to leave us… but your boyfriend is with us, too.”

“Maybe he wouldn’t have rejected Isabel if she hadn’t been so weird earlier,” Courtney shoots back, but Yasmin shrugs.

“That was ages ago. Whatever, you going with them or coming with us?” she asks, Courtney simply rolling her eyes and standing in line with them. Great.

“Hey! Survive Utah?” Cody asks her, when they do sit down at lunch and she takes the seat beside him.

“Ugh, barely,” she answers, before turning to ask him about his own winter break. It seems to get her friends off her case – she’s busy talking to her boyfriend, they can’t have a problem with that.

They apparently don’t change schedules or classes or anything in second semester Freshman year – so she’s not really sure what the point of all her classes being limited to one semester before break anyway – and it means that she has, as she has all year, a gross Monday afternoon: Spanish and physical sciences. Ugh.

At least in Spanish she can quietly complain about the teacher behind her back to her friends, but in science, they’re hit the second they walk into the room with the reminder that they have a test today they were meant to study for over break.

…It’s not like it’s her fault she didn’t actually study at all. She was in Utah! She wasn’t allowed to take a bag big enough to pack her schoolbooks in, or her laptop, and then she was stuck babysitting her brothers the rest of break and…

————————————————

“Hey! You guys want to sit with us today?” Zach asks, wandering past Courtney, Hollie, Yasmin and Mason at the entrance to the cafeteria later in the week.

“Sur-” Hollie starts, but Yasmin quickly cuts her off.

“Uh, no, since you apparently think you’re too good for Isabel so clearly you’re stupid losers,” she shoots back, before glancing back to Courtney, “or letting other losers stop you from doing the right thing.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Zach shoots back, incredulous, but Yasmin simply scoffs and flicks a hand up at him as she turns to walk away. It makes Courtney wince, trying to glance over and give Zach an apologetic look as she turns to follow Yasmin and find the others.

She thinks Shayne’s friends get it – none of them seem to approach her, or any of the others, for the next couple of weeks. It sucks, she misses hanging out with them, but it’s not like they don’t still reply to her when she occasionally messages in their group WhatsApp, so they must… get it. They aren’t like, glaring at her in the cafeteria, they just aren’t looking at all. They must not be mad at her, right?

Track isn’t on this semester – she can’t do anything after school this semester, according to her Mum – so she doesn’t get then to hang out with Shayne there, either. And her Dad is suddenly home all the time – she guesses it’s because her Mum kept getting mad about him working too much? – so she can never sneak out, either. Ugh.

“Did you really tell Shayne not to date Isabel?” Cody texts her, one evening in late January, when she’s lying in her bed after she’s meant to be asleep, scrolling through Instagram. It makes her grumble silently to herself – not him too.

“Of course not, that would be weird? I don’t tell him anything about dating stuff… he just didn’t like her lol,” she replies.

“It’s weird he didn’t like her though? And he’s always single? You’re not like into him or something are you?” his next comes.

“Ew, no, that’d be weird,” she replies, instinctively, because yeah. Ew. Shayne is her friend and they talk about all this weird dumb stuff, there’s no way they could ever date. He’s seen her cry like a baby too many times for that.

“Is he gay? Like, it’s cool if he is… does he know it’s cool if he is here? Maybe someone needs to introduce him to the people that run the pride club…” Cody follows up with, Courtney raising an eyebrow. Why do all her friends suddenly think Shayne’s gay? Have they all forgotten that the first time he rejected Isabel it was for another girl?

“He did date Hannah for a bit though… Who knows. Isabel is being super weird about everything with him tho like she was actively harassing him last semester,” she adds, biting her lip as she waits for Cody’s reply. Yasmin and Isabel and Natalie have seemed to decide that doesn’t matter anymore, but…

“Yeah I didn’t see any of it happen but from what I heard it was weird. Maybe he’s just creeped out. Hey, you wanna go to a movie next weekend? It might suck but that new Birds of Prey Harley Quinn movie is out next Friday…”

“We haven’t had a proper date in ages, yeah, should be able to just say I’m going to a movie with friends… This weekend is definitely out though, babysitting. Too far from yours though ugh,” she replies, happily taking the topic change and mentally planning how, exactly, she can make sure her parents will let her go out to “see her friends”.

(She ends up getting it easy: Kari gets caught making out with a boy, this time, and even though she is 16, apparently that’s still a problem, and Courtney is suddenly the ‘good girl just seeing a movie with her female friends!’, per her mother. Although Kari does grumble at her in their room later that she knows Courtney’s not actually seeing it with her friends. At least she doesn’t tell.)

She has a nice date with Cody the next Saturday – the movie’s not great, although she secretly tries to work out whether she could do a Harley Quinn costume for Halloween this year if she manages to convince her parents to let her go to a party and can dress up at someone else’s place and leave hers in a slightly more covered fake costume – and she spends much of Saturday afternoon texting him music recommendations back and forth amongst dumb jokes about nothing. He says something annoyingly alternative every few messages, but whatever. He’s nice.

“what about this though???” he messages her on snapchat – they usually talk on WhatsApp more than snap, but whatever, he was snapping pics of his drums earlier – much later that evening, when she’s again lying (alone, thankfully. Part of Kari’s punishment is helping her brothers with their elementary school homework) back on her bed pretending to be asleep. She doesn’t know what he’s referring to, but she assumes it will be another drum something-or-other she doesn’t entirely understand when she clicks onto the picture that follows it.

…It is very much not an innocent photo of his drums.

“Dude what the fuck!!!!” she replies, immediately, after she taps straight out of the picture and feels mildly gross about touching it even though it was just a picture on her phone screen, channelling her desire to throw her phone across the room into replying instead.

“Johnny said you like that,” he replies.

“When has Johnny ever been anything but an ass about me? That’s weird and gross Cody you know it why would you let him tell you what to do,” she shoots back, accusatory.

“Ugh he’s at my house okay I can’t not listen to him…”

“So he knows you did it?? Like right now?? I’m your girlfriend dude I thought you weren’t even friends with that weirdo loser anymore and now you’re basing what you say to me on what he says???”

“Our parents are friends, he’s only here because his Mum is hanging out with my Mum,” he defends, Courtney’s heart pumping heavily in her chest as she rushes to type out her reply.

“Well I guess your family is crazy too but the type of crazy that you GO ALONG WITH instead of ignoring it… I’m not your girlfriend anymore,” she sends, before she can think twice.

She immediately feels her throat tighten in panic. Heck. What did she just do?

“Courtney come on! I don’t hang out with him at school!” he replies, almost pleading, but she rapidly turns her phone off and shoves it into her school bag at the end of her bed.

Her friends are already pissed at her for something she didn’t do and think she’s being a loser trying to stop them getting boyfriends and now she broke up with her boyfriend for sending a dick pic she didn’t want even though there’s no way she can tell her friends why she broke up with him and-

This is bad.

————————————————

“Courtney will you please talk to me?!” Cody races up to where she’s already standing with Yasmin, Natalie and Mason the next Monday morning, his voice desperate and pleading. She forces her face to stay neutral as she rolls her eyes in response.

“Go away, loser,” she answers, not looking at him, simply turning and waiting for Yasmin’s inevitable questioning.

“Why are you calling your boyfriend a loser?”

“Because he is one and he’s not my boyfriend,” Courtney answers, immediately, “found out he’s still hanging out with Johnny when he’s not at school and we can’t see them. And he does everything Johnny tells him too, because he’s too weak to stand up to losers…”

“Ugh, gross, Cody, you’re meant to be better than that,” Yasmin agrees, immediately, before shooing him off.

Courtney makes a point of watching him when they go into homeroom anyway, seeing him pointedly take a seat right up the front of the room – away from Johnny. But whatever. He still did that. And he doesn’t sit with them at lunch – she has no idea where he sits because she doesn’t even see him in the cafeteria – and Isabel and Yasmin are too busy bitching about how Shayne might secretly be a loser to make comment about her own sudden singleness. So… whatever.

It doesn’t surprise Courtney that her gross day gets worse in physical sciences in final period. They’re getting that test back from the first day of the semester – finally – and, again unsurprisingly, she failed. Badly.

“I had better things to do over the break than study,” she mumbles, so only her friends can hear, Yasmin and Isabel both laughing.

“Hell yeah, same!” Isabel agrees, holding up her own test – also marked with a red F and a score only two points higher than Courtney’s. Courtney feels her heart pick up pace in excitement.

That’s the most positive Isabel has been towards her in months…

“You guys are hilarious,” Yasmin grins, shaking her head, “I dunno how I passed, Dad does know the science head here though… whatever. Hey, you guys wanna go to the mall this weekend?”

“Oh my god yeah, Courtney, you need to show us where you’ve got those graphic eyeliners. I think I want to get into my glitter phase… that new kid that joined, the military guy or whatever, he was talking about liking girls that do the glitter stuff…” she trails off, with a raised eyebrow.

“Oooh, is this Harry? He’s only going to be here for the rest of this year apparently, his Dad only got posted here for like a temporary thing,” Yasmin reminds her, Isabel simply nodding.

“Perfect. I don’t want anything longer than that. And I guess Shayne just wasn’t interested so gotta find someone else,” she comments.

“Yeah, you need to move on,” Yasmin agrees, a little sternly, Courtney’s mind spinning. So like, this is all solving itself suddenly just because she failed a test?!

Except…

“You should totally do the glitter Is, it’d look awesome. But also, I think the chance of me being allowed to go anywhere this weekend if Mum finds this test is pretty low… But I can try and hide it from her until next week?” she suggests, considering as she speaks.

“Or, didn’t you need to kill time on Thursday nights when your brothers have soccer? Let’s go then, I’ll get Dad to get an Uber for us,” Yasmin suggests, “hey, we could invite some of the sophomores? I don’t know if Alicia or Evie do makeup and stuff?”

“Alicia does, I can ask them if you want,” she offers, Isabel nodding in agreement.

Alicia can’t come, in the end – she has to help her little brother out with something – but Yasmin, Hollie, Natalie and Isabel – and Courtney, with her parent’s permission, to her surprise – go to the mall on Thursday after school, and on Friday, they sit with Shayne’s table at lunch again. Finally.

The physical sciences test, conveniently, gets forgotten in her locker for the whole week. Oops?

Chapter Text

Courtney is under no delusions that her mother won’t absolutely explode about her failing that test, and when she asks about it the following Monday when they’re all at home during a random holiday, Courtney has her explanation laid out.

“They never told us there would be a test, and it was literally the first day of semester, I didn’t have a chance to study over winter break because I didn’t take my laptop to Utah and then I was looking after Clarke and Conrad,” she tells her mother, calmly, before instinctively flinching when she almost screeches in response.

“Stop making excuses! You’re stupid, you’re wasting your life! You’re probably goofing off in class and ruining yourself with all these stupid boys you sneak around with, you’ll never find a decent husband and you’ll never be able to be a decent mother if you’re too lazy and stupid to even know the basics to help your kids with their homework!”

“You never helped us with homework,” Courtney snaps back, against her best judgement.

“I did absolutely everything for you because you are the most useless, pathetic excuse for a child I’ve ever had! Why can’t you be anything like your older sisters? Even Kari isn’t as much of a worthless, vapid idiot as you are!” she yells, in response.

“Kerryn, calm down for a moment, please,” her Dad steps in, suddenly appearing in the room, although his own face looks concerned as he turns to Courtney, “Courtney, you know this isn’t good enough. But this is becoming a pattern, and I think there’s something going on that you aren’t telling us about. Have you been feeling sick? You look like you aren’t healthy, you need to see a doctor and work out what’s throwing you off like this.”

“What?” Courtney answers, blinking. She hasn’t felt sick or whatever, she’s perfectly healthy as far as she’s concerned, but…

“What, you think she’s pregnant? Probably is with all these stupid boys,” her mother snaps.

“Mum! Ew, no!” she replies, insistent, “I’m not dating anyone, I never even talk to guys, they’re all gross!”

(It’s a lie, but it’s one that they might believe, given she did actually think that when she was younger and as far as they’re concerned she’s stopped dating anyone since they found out)

“Not that. But you might not be eating properly, you’ve put on weight, too, Courtney,” her Dad continues.

“Hmm, she has. That’s not good for the future husband, either. Well, I guess we can see if the family doctor can see you soon. But I better see you studying every night now, young lady! Hardly a lady!” her mother turns back to her, Courtney forcibly holding back her eyeroll as she grumbles internally.

She has not gained weight, thank you very much. She’s just growing because she’s over fifteen-and-a-half now and that’s what happens!! And if anyone has gained weight it’s Isabel since she stopped doing sport and got her parents to write her a note to get out of almost everything they do in PE because she said it was bad for her skin to have to sweat and whatever-

But something about her Dad’s weird rambling about her being sick seems to make her mother forget about the test. She doesn’t get grounded, this time. She doesn’t get punished so much as just needing to do more of her studying out in the kitchen to avoid being yelled at (whatever, at least they still let her wear her headphones while she does it).

For the first time in way too long, she manages to sneak out to hang out with Shayne in the park a couple of days later. They mostly just talk about how much they’re loving WandaVision, and Courtney lets Shayne rant a bit about how awfully his NFL team did last season again, but she’s not surprised when he asks about Cody.

“How are things going with him, anyway? I heard you guys broke up again?” he asks, more curious than anything else. She nods.

“It was dumb timing because my friends were already getting shitty at me trying to say I somehow made you reject Isabel but… yeah he sent me a dick pic because Johnny was at his house and told him to. And I was just gonna tell him it was gross and to not do it again, but the fact that he was listening to what Johnny told him to do… I kinda just broke up with him immediately without thinking,” she explains, sighing, “it sucks. I don’t think I can find someone else that isn’t a complete ass. And I know he’s done some shitty things but compared to the other guys…”

“That’s pretty weird that he just did something because Johnny told him to… but also, that’s straight up sexual harassment, it’s more than just gross,” he points out. Courtney shrugs.

“I know, but they all do it and if I told anyone I’d be the one that got in trouble so I can’t,” she replies, pointedly, hearing Shayne give an almost annoyed sigh in response, although he doesn’t debate her.

It puts them into an almost awkward silence, and she finds herself quickly blurting out the rest of the context before she can stop herself.

“Johnny sent me two pictures like months ago just after Cody first asked me out and that was why I asked you to come to the park that night, not Cody asking me out, because he just sent them out of the blue when I wasn’t even talking to him in general and I was so weirded out I just wanted to talk to someone in person instead of touching my phone and like Cody got super angry at Johnny for harassing me around that time and stood up for me and whatever and it’s super weird for him to do something like this so I do think he only did it because Johnny pressured him to,” she rambles.

“Johnny is such an asshole… I wish he’d just leave all you guys alone. How long is it since you dated him, anyway? And wasn’t Natalie the last person that dated him? Does he harass her?” Shayne asks.

“Just me, not her. And it’s literally years ago, he was before Carter. And I like, kinda dated someone else between him and Carter too, some dude from middle school. But he’s dumb and obsessed with me,” she trails off into a quiet grumble, Shayne humming sympathetically in response.

“That sucks. Have you talked to Cody since it happened?” he asks, his tone a little more gentle.

“I wouldn’t let him talk to me when he tried last week and I haven’t really seen him much since then. But now I… kinda want him to apologise because things were fine otherwise,” she replies, shaking her head, “my friends have let up on me suddenly on everything, I dunno why, but I think Isabel has found someone else to harass – that new guy, Harry – so they’re not fixated on her being weird to you anymore so it’s like… I don’t know. I don’t want to be single right now.”

“Not good timing, huh?” Shayne acknowledges, nodding, “we kinda gave you space for a while because I told everyone it’d make things harder for you if we pushed it. But like, it’d be cool if you guys hung out with us sometimes again. Zach’s mad he hasn’t got to talk about this new hiking thing he’s found out with Hollie…”

————————————————

“Hey, Courtney… can I please talk to you?” Cody approaches her again at school the next day, when Courtney – to her annoyance – is there like ten minutes before she wants to be because her Dad had to drop her off on his way to work because her Mum refused to take her for who knows what reason this time. Reluctantly, she nods, awkwardly wandering beside him just down one of the smaller hallways away from where other people are gathering.

“What do you have to say, dude?” she asks, when he doesn’t immediately start, and she watches as he sighs roughly and looks down at the ground, hands shoved in his pockets.

“I know I shouldn’t have listened to Johnny. It’s- it’s hard, we’ve been friends literally since preschool and our Mums are friends and they still think we’re friends and they would never believe that he’s this awful manipulative dickhead but I know he is and I just… I’m not good at saying no when he’s right there telling me I have to do something or he’ll make everyone hate me or try to blackmail me or something or like-” he pauses, shaking his head, before his tone turns aggressive, “I don’t have a fucking Dad around because he’s a deadshit that ended up in prison for some shady tax shit and Johnny thinks it’s so funny to tell everyone that and make everyone be shit to me for it and it’s dumb and it fucking sucks but I shouldn’t have listened to him on that thing because it was gross and stupid and I- I’m sorry I did that. And I get why you’re upset with me. But I’m sorry and it won’t happen again.”

She had no idea about his Dad. Sure, she’d only heard him talk about his Mum and his sister, but she hadn’t like… thought of that stuff. And she knows Johnny is always trying to make everyone gang up on anyone that won’t do what he says, he’s done it to make her friends gang up on her so many times, but does she really want to date someone that actually listens to him-

“I was more mad about you listening to him about stuff with me than the actual… thing,” Courtney admits, after a moment, although her tone remains harsh, “it’s literally years since I dated him and he’s still weirdly obsessed with me and I hate it and if I’m dating you I don’t want my actual boyfriend to let him use you to get to me?”

“Yeah, I… understand that. I really fucked up that one. And I don’t like doing things like that anyway, you didn’t ask for it, but letting him… yeah. I’ve told my Mum I don’t want to hang around with him anymore because he’s gross to girls, and she didn’t entirely believe me I don’t think but… I’m sorry it happened. And I kinda hope you’d maybe give me another chance to prove it’s not going to happen again?” he asks, a touch of hesitance in his voice, Courtney feeling her shoulders slump.

Ugh. She doesn’t want anything to do with Johnny and if Cody means she keeps having to deal with him, does she want anything to do with him either, but he does actually seem angry about the whole thing too and he said sorry a bunch and things with him are always nice…

“I don’t wanna end up having to keep dealing with him being dumb because I’m dating someone that was friends with him. But if you’re really trying not to be around him anymore then… I guess I could give you one more chance,” she offers, carefully, Cody nodding quickly in response.

“I texted my Mum about it, I’ll literally show you what I texted her to try and not see him anymore or not have him invited to our place…”

She lets him show her the texts, and he’s not lying. They’re there – he did ask his Mum to not see Johnny again. He wasn’t specific, but he did say he wasn’t a good person anymore. And… she’s not really sure what else she can ask for.

So, she guesses she’s not single. Again.

————————————————

Courtney doesn’t go to the doctor very often. For one, she never like, gets sick, but also her parents are just sketchy about doctors in general and they don’t like how they just throw medicine at everyone and don’t tell you what’s in it or what it actually does so… yeah. Whatever.

She wishes she could go to the doctor by herself, or even with her Dad, but she doesn’t dare suggest it when they book the appointment for her to see the family doctor that she doesn’t think she’s seen since she was like, 10. And her Dad is at work that day anyway – not that her Mum isn’t, but her Mum takes an hour off to pick Courtney up from school and take her there.

Mostly, Courtney’s just excited she gets to miss a Spanish period for it.

The doctor doesn’t say a whole lot in the appointment, instead letting out gruff noises as he mumbles directions for her to do all the random check-up tests they do and mutters a “fine” or “normal” after each one. She’s already had a blood draw done – she hated that, there’s some Mormon thing about needles that made her parents super weird about it and as much as she got all the vaccines eventually, she hates needles and she’s usually had them done by like, church-linked doctors – and the doctor brings up the results of that on his screen near the end of the visit.

“Now, were you worried about things like fatigue, feeling a bit tired, or struggling with sport classes at school-” he starts, before her mother quickly cuts him off.

“No, no, nothing like that. So she’s doing very poorly at school, she’s not tired, but she’s being very lazy and irresponsible, and we think she might have gained some weight which is incredibly inappropriate at her age…”

“Ah, no, no, Courtney is definitely not the wrong age to be gaining weight – she’s growing, probably quite quickly right now, but her body-mass index is at the very low end of the recommended range actually,” he says, immediately, before turning to looking at his screen, “now, I’m not sure about doing poorly at school, and whether that might be something you want to look into the psychology side of-”

“No!” her mother spits, immediately.

“Okay. Okay. Well, I’m just looking over the blood tests here, and most of those are in range, however – something we see very common in women her age – Courtney is a bit iron deficient, which can cause fatigue and difficulty concentrating and things like that… I think it would be a good idea if she went on just a basic iron supplement,” the doctor tells them, still addressing her mother. Courtney simply sits there silently. She hasn’t been feeling tired, but whatever. She knows Yasmin has to take an iron supplement because of like, bad periods or something.

“What’s in that? If there’s any of that ridiculous mind-altering drugs-” her mother starts, before cutting herself off.

“It would be a direct iron supplement. They have some vitamin C in them because that helps the body with iron absorption, but the only active ingredients are iron and vitamin C,” he reinforces.

It must satisfy her mother, because immediately after the appointment, she drives to the chemist to fill the prescription Courtney had been given.

“Hopefully this will fix you being such an awful failure at everything,” her mother mutters, when they get back in the car afterwards, Courtney simply keeping her mouth shut and inwardly hoping they get back to school soon so she doesn’t miss too much of her art period. And she doesn’t have to spend more time with her stupid mother.

————————————————

Courtney doesn’t know whether to be annoyed or happy that the rest of her second freshman semester is just unendingly… boring. Her Mum is still screaming and angry about like every single thing she can think of to be angry about, Kari keeps getting in trouble and taking the heat off her at least, Kami is insufferable about how she needs more space because she’s a senior and more important or whatever stupid shit she’s on about now…

Since there’s no track, she mostly just hangs out with her normal friends at lunch, or sometimes Shayne’s. She sneaks out to see Shayne at the playground whenever her house gets way too loud or Kari is trying to kick her out of the bedroom, and she sneaks Cody in to make out and whatever whenever she manages to get a babysitting job near his place.

…When they’re dating, anyway. He breaks up with her once for babysitting for religious people again (until she reminds him that she invited him over to make out on the religious people’s couch, so how the heck can he think she’s not breaking the rules?!) and she breaks up with him for breaking his promise and spending time with Johnny one weekend, but then he starts rambling about how Johnny is trying to blackmail him about his Dad again and…

Whatever.

“Hey Mum, can I go to the mall after school on Wednesday? Natalie’s Mum is going to drive us, we’re just thinking of picking out some matching outfits for the last week before summer break for the like, school spirit stuff,” Courtney asks, casually, in the last week of May. She just assumes her mother will be fine with it – she hasn’t said no to going to the mall for a while, and Courtney has quietly started slipping some better clothes into her school bag or hiding them under jackets that she can take off after she leaves the house of a morning – but apparently, she’s caught her in a bad mood.

“Absolutely not! You cannot let these disgusting girls dress you up like a whore and we can’t trust you to not be lying and going off with your boyfriend!” she answers, pointedly, Courtney sighing in response. Although she is dating Cody currently, but he wasn’t going to be there. He doesn’t like the mall, he thinks it’s stupid.

But… she can’t go to the mall. Ugh.

“At least text us what you end up going for so we can still match!” Hollie requests – she can’t go either, although it’s because of an outdoors club meeting or something – on Wednesday afternoon.

“Of course!” Isabel responds.

“We decided to go for lots of pink! Like, pastel, super cute cottage core aesthetic stuff. And we’re going to do it tomorrow while everything is new!” Yasmin texts, later that evening, Courtney immediately feeling her shoulders relax in relief. She can totally do that – Kami had so much stuff in that aesthetic that is buried at the back of her own wardrobe now.

She’s pretty impressed with her own outfit when she turns up at school the next day – Hollie has clearly tried, too – but when she spies Natalie, she finds her in just a normal black jeans and checked shirt.

“What happened to pink cottage-core?” Courtney asks, straight out.

“Ugh, I bought these really cool white pants but my Dad got angry that they’d get dirty or something and wouldn’t let me wear them,” she answers, Courtney humming sympathetically. That does suck, and she’s had similar things happen before. Her Mum liked this outfit for being more girly than she usually dresses, so…

To her annoyance, though, Isabel and Yasmin both turn up in completely different clothes, too. Yasmin doesn’t have an excuse – she just said she didn’t feel like it, in the end – and Isabel says that Harry, who she’s currently dating (kind of? Courtney thinks? They were broken up a few days ago but they were making out at lunch yesterday), said he doesn’t like pink because it’s too pretty.

“Kinda looks weird just you two dressed up the same… sorry. Maybe you should change?” Yasmin suggests, with a raised eyebrow, but Courtney shrugs.

“Not a PE day, I don’t have other clothes here… keeping clothes at school is gross, the lockers are so gross,” she brushes it off, before quickly placing herself over the other side of the group from Hollie as they all walk to homeroom.

Chapter Text

“You want to hang out at the park this afternoon? I’m home doing nothing lol” Shayne texts her, a few days into their summer break. Courtney immediately glances up from where she’s sitting in the living room to try and work out whether she can.

“I can probably do that. Mum and Dad are both at work but they didn’t technically ask me to look after the boys…” she replies, eventually. She has kinda been hanging out with her brothers and making sure they’re not going to actually kill each other with their fighting, but KC and Kari are around too. And she thinks Kathryn is due back from college soon, although she hasn’t seen her appear yet.

“Great! See you in fifteen minutes?” Shayne replies, and she sends a vaguely positive confirmation in response before trudging upstairs to get changed. She hasn’t exactly got out of her pyjamas yet today, she hadn’t planned to leave the house, so…

She passed all her freshman classes – just, other than art, which she aced, and she got a B in English so that’s something at least – but she’s not really… vibing summer break. Something feels off, and she doesn’t know entirely what it is. Cody’s going to be around for most of the break so she has her cool boyfriend – he’s even invited them all to a music thing he’s doing with some of his friends from middle school, so she’s excited for that – and her friends are going to be around at least until the end of June, although July most of them will be overseas again or, in Hollie’s case, in North Carolina or something hiking. So it should be fine, but, it’s just… weird.

“Hey Court, feel like it’s been ages since we properly hung out,” Shayne greets her, waving lightly as she wanders up to the bench he’s sitting at, off the side of the playground. She shrugs as she sits down beside him.

“I guess we both had exams or whatever so it’s been a while,” she half-heartedly agrees. She’s honestly kinda forgotten about trying to hang out with him and his friends, it’s been a busy few weeks. “You excited for Summer break?”

“I guess so. I think I’m going to be working a lot, which is like, good and all, I still enjoy this job and the money is nice and whatever but it’s not going to really feel like just… months of no responsibilities like usual,” he muses, shaking his head, “and a bunch of my friends are going to be away in July… yours too, right?”

“Yeah, although this time they’re all still around until the end of the month. It low key feels like everyone got their parents to plan their family holidays around Yasmin’s sweet 16^th party…” she trails off, raising an eyebrow to echo her suspicions.

Much like her, Yasmin’s birthday was in June – although a couple of weeks after hers – and she would be turning 16 this summer. Unlike Courtney, though, her parents were going all out and throwing a huge sweet 16^th party at her house with like, a hundred people invited.

“I’m assuming you’ll be going to that?” Shayne asks, with a weird edge to his voice. She glances over at him in confusion.

“Yeah, duh, she’s my friend. Are you going? I know Ethan and Alicia were going to but Zach said he couldn’t make it…” she trails off. Shayne’s friends had all been invited, other than Evie, who Yasmin hadn’t seen as much since she had a different lunch hour. And was a junior.

“She invited me so I guess I will? And yeah, the others are going. Max too. Zach will be over doing the Appalachian trail already,” he answers, his tone seeming to return to normal, before it turns almost teasing, “Hollie is doing that too, right?”

“Yeah, but later in July. It’s weird, I’d almost think there was something with Zach and Hollie except like… Alicia,” she picks up on Shayne’s teasing, and he laughs brightly in response.

“Yeah, same. D’you know if Hollie is into him?” he asks.

“I honestly don’t know. She never talks about boys and she hasn’t dated anyone since like, elementary school, it’s kind of a problem,” Courtney shakes her head, “but she is aware of the Zach and Alicia thing-that-isn’t-a-thing so I doubt she’d say anything even if she did like him.”

“For part of this year I kinda like… lost faith in the Zach and Alicia thing. They got weird around each other for a bit and weren’t as close but… They are again. I swear they just always appear in the same place at the same time and they literally finish each other’s sentences,” he almost rants, “just… date already!”

“I got that vibe too, like, around set painting she got weird about him when Is was being weird about you… low key, dude, kinda thought Alicia might be thinking something about you,” she points out, raising an eyebrow again, but Shayne just laughs.

“Nah. She thinks I look like, to quote her directly, ‘a fake ken doll who subsists entirely on protein powder’ and I’m very much not her type. And she’s not mine,” he answers, simply, before his tone turns down just a little, “after Hannah I just kinda… gave up on girls again. Not really feeling anything for anyone.”

“I mean, Alicia isn’t wrong,” Courtney shoots back, teasing, before softening her tone, “it’s okay if you’re just not vibing dating for a bit. You’ll find someone someday, I’m sure. You’re cool. Someone must like fake ken dolls.”

“If you say so,” he answers, laughing, before turning the questioning back on her, “you’re with Cody again?”

“Don’t say it like that,” she shoots back, immediately, watching him tilt his head.

“Like what?”

“Judging the again so much,” she answers, because he was. He just-

“I didn’t mean to like that, I meant more just – because I knew you were broken up a few weeks ago but I was only 95% sure you’re together now,” Shayne answers, a little defensively, and she sighs and leans back against the chair behind her.

“Yeah, whatever. We’re together so that’s fine. I finally get to see him play drums properly next week, he’s doing some battle of the bands thing with some of his middle school friends and he’s invited us all to go watch,” she brightens, because honestly, she’s kinda hyped about the whole thing. Her boyfriend is in a band, how cool is that?!

“That’s cool,” Shayne answers, plainly, the same edge to his tone that he had when he asked about Isabel’s party. It makes her furrow her brow.

“Why do you keep going weird like that?” she asks, straight-out, turning her gaze challenging as Shayne turns to look directly at her. He pauses, for a moment, seeming to piece together a response in his head. She crosses her arms over her chest. Not this again.

“It just… I know you say Cody is nice and whatever but you’ve seemed to be on and off with him a lot the last few months and you’re always mad at each other and he was like, getting angry at you for not doing what he says again-”

“I broke up with him the last two times for going back to Johnny, I was just standing up for myself, isn’t that what you want me to do?” she cuts him off, “but you tell me it’s wrong when other guys tell me what to do but apparently you think you can…”

“I’m not trying to tell you what to do, Court. I just like- doesn’t he keep making the same excuse about why he’s talking to Johnny and says he’ll never do it again and does the same thing again anyway? He’s kinda just… using you. And your friends are being awful to you again, with all the like, making you and Hollie dress up and whatever…” he adds, exasperated. She rolls her eyes.

“Whatever, Shayne. You always having a problem with my boyfriends is weird, you don’t know exactly what’s going on with Cody because it’s not your business and I want to be with him so it’s fine. And my friends weren’t doing that on purpose, we all planned to do stuff but Natalie’s Dad has got really weird about what clothes she wears and Isabel is doing everything that Harry says – and she probably won’t anymore anyway, he’s leaving and they’re breaking up, he’s not even coming to Yasmin’s party – and Yasmin is always changing her mind about clothes last minute,” she explains, pointedly, watching Shayne sigh and tilt his head to the side.

“Okay. If you say so. I just like- I don’t know. You’re my friend, Court, I don’t enjoy watching people treating you like shit and I’m just waiting to have you texting me to come out here one night and you crying on my shoulder over Cody doing something awful and them blaming you for it and trying to ditch you for good and then you getting mad at me for blaming them for being shit to you,” he almost rambles, Courtney huffing in response.

“Whatever. Why are you going to Yasmin’s party if you hate her so much?”

“I don’t hate her. And like, a bunch of people I’m friends with will be there, like you and Hollie and Alicia and Ethan and Max, and other people from school… But if you don’t want us there we won’t go,” he answers.

“You can go to whatever party you want, I’m not telling anyone what to do with their social life,” she snaps, Shayne sighing heavily.

“I’m not trying to tell you what to do, Court. You’re right, it’s your decision what you do about Cody and your friends and everything. And I don’t know everything about Cody, as far as I know his excuse about Johnny is just that their Mums are friends-”

“His Dad is in prison for tax fraud for like forever and Johnny always blackmails him about it and you know what Johnny’s like,” she snaps back, Shayne pausing and looking taken aback for a moment.

“Oh. Yeah. That sounds like Johnny. Although I thought tax fraud would kind of go with Cody’s alternative, anti-Government stuff?” he asks, clearly trying to lighten the topic. Courtney shakes her head.

“I dunno. Apparently not. Or maybe it’s not what it’s about, it’s just the prison thing. I haven’t asked and he doesn’t like talking about it. And I shouldn’t have told you so don’t tell anyone,” she pushes, insistent, but Shayne nods firmly, miming zipping his lips.

“All good. You never told me. And I’m not trying to like… undermine you or tell you what to do, Court. Just worried about you,” he echoes, and she grumbles.

“Don’t want to have to deal with me being a baby crying over shit at night?” she prompts.

“God, no, not that,” he answers, immediately, Courtney feeling him reach out and grab her bicep for a moment, “I’m always happy to be here for you if you wanna talk or anything and you’re never being a baby. I’d just prefer if you didn’t have so many things to be upset about in the first place or… something.”

“Well my parents have stopped fighting and now they both hate me so I guess that part stopped,” she abruptly switches topics, glancing over to see Shayne nod sympathetically.

“You mentioned your Dad has started like… being strict too?” he prompts.

“Yeah. They both got so intense on literally all of us – other than Conrad, he’s still too young – about exams this year even though mine meant nothing and Kari’s didn’t totally matter either. Like it made sense for Clarke, he had to pass elementary school to start middle next year, and Kami’s were finals even though she’s just like, going to community college in Arizona and staying with Dad’s cousins…”

“That’s rough. I’m guessing they’re not doing anything for your 16^th?” he asks, and she shakes her head.

“I’m surprised I’m even allowed to go to Yasmin’s, Dad decided that the entire concept of sweet 16^th parties is inappropriate and ‘promotes promiscuity’ and doing stuff with boys and I just keep telling them I hate boys and they’re gross but like- they won’t even let family send me cards, apparently,” she grumbles, crossing her arms over her chest again, “there goes getting some money so I can do stuff in the holidays. But I guess part of the strictness is making me babysit more and Dad is still refusing to let Mum touch my money from babysitting so I have that. I think I’m gonna be super busy this break too, though…”

“Yeah, I think everyone is,” Shayne agrees, shrugging lightly, “I don’t work Sundays or Tuesdays ever, and sometimes I have other days off, if you still want to come over and hang out sometime… and like, my friends are trying to do stuff while we still can this month, maybe you can come to that? And… I guess you’re doing some stuff with Yasmin and Cody and whatever?”

“Yes, I’m hanging out with my friends and my boyfriend, Shayne,” she shoots back, pointedly, hearing that same stupid tone in his voice before continuing, “I guess I’ll see with whatever else. Can’t do Sundays, have to go to temple every Sunday and like, not do stuff or whatever, I don’t know.”

“Oh, they’re making all the kids go now?” he asks, Courtney simply nodding in response. “That sucks. Well… we’ll see, I guess?”

Courtney doesn’t stay at the park with Shayne much longer. They talk a little about TV or whatever, but she’s kinda ticked off with him being stupid about her friends and Cody again and it’s not entirely a lie that she has to get home before either of her parents might turn up because they never said she could go out and she doesn’t feel like being screamed at again.

So, after a little while, she makes her excuses and leaves, trudging back inside the confines of her home and immediately having KC start yelling at her that she’s irresponsible and stupid and he’s going to tell their parents she was off with a boy and she’s meant to be at home looking after her brothers’ because that’s the girls’ job-

“I was hanging out with my friend Shayne, Mum and Dad like his family,” she shoots back, pointedly, “and Kari could’ve looked after them too. Or they can look after themselves just at home, they’re not babies anymore. No one said I had to today.”

“Whatever,” KC answers, rolling his eyes and walking out the door she just came in. Ugh. Why does he get to go out and do whatever he wants – he’s always been allowed to do literally whatever, it’s not fair.

————————————————

Courtney’s birthday is a few days later, on a Friday. Kari wishes her happy birthday when she wanders into the kitchen, Courtney halfway through thanking her when her father cuts in.

“Uh uh! Not this time! You can say that on a birthday that isn’t about turning girls into godless whores,” he points out, although as always, he delivers her mother’s words with a lot less screechiness and a weird, joking lilt. Courtney still rolls her eyes.

“You celebrated my sixteenth,” Kari shoots back.

“And I don’t think I need to elaborate any further, do I?” her Dad points out, Kari also rolling her eyes in response.

“Whatever. I’m not even dating anyone. But if dating boys is so bad then I guess I can date girls? Would that be better?” she provokes. It makes Courtney smirk, although she pointedly looks away and steps over into the kitchen to pour herself a bowl of cereal.

Kari’s always been the only one to actually call her parents out, and it’s always been kinda fun to watch.

“You couldn’t deprive your mother of grandchildren like that, Kari,” her Dad points out, simply, not taking the bait.

“Adoption? Or like, the fact she has literally 6 kids other than me that could give her grandkids? But also, you’re a person too, why not try having your own views instead of just parroting her to try and save your shitty marriage?” she asks, her tone turning vindictive. Courtney feels her own heart leap into her throat as she turns back to the kitchen bench to pour her cereal, facing them in the dining room.

…It’s not like she disagrees. Her Dad has basically become Mum 2.0 just repeating literally everything she thinks about whatever, he could go back to being cooler…

“Kari Miller! Go to your room this instant, how dare you talk back to your parents,” her Dad snaps, aggressively, “do we need to enrol you back in youth group so you can learn manners with the toddlers again? Because you certainly act like it!”

“Parents because you’re just like, one entity now, not actual people,” Kari mutters under her breath, although loud enough to hear, as she turns and trudges back out of the room and upstairs.

Courtney’s Dad turns towards her, then, and she rapidly turns back on her own heel to face the other way, reaching into the fridge to grab the milk.

“Don’t use too much milk, we need it for the mac and cheese for dinner, or maybe you’ll need to buy more out of all that babysitting money,” he speaks to the back of her head, Courtney shrugging lightly as she turns back to her bowl.

“I won’t use much. I’m just having cereal,” she points out, watch her Dad huff and cross his arms over his chest.

“Good. No celebrating!”

“I get it, Dad. It’s not my birthday. It’s just a normal random day and I’m going to spend it at home reading the book I have to read over summer for English next year,” she pushes a little aggressively. She watches her Dad go to say something and get angry at her again, but after a moment, he seems to relent.

“Okay. And you’re babysitting just down the street tonight, right?” he confirms, lighter, Courtney nodding silently in response as she sits at the dining table and lets her spoon clink loudly against the edge of her cereal bowl before she starts to eat.

Exactly the birthday she wants. Reading a dumb book she’s going to hate for English (Shayne would be so mad at her, he loves reading – but whatever, she’s not really talking to him after the other day anyway) and babysitting literally five eleven-year-olds on her own. Yay.

Chapter Text

That Friday night is the first time Courtney has babysat a group of kids who aren’t actually related to each other. She knows the family (duh, they live down the street) and their son Elijah is friends with Clarke and Conrad since like forever. As much as they met in church (she’s still mostly babysitting for church people), Elijah has been to their place and he went to elementary school with and played soccer with Clarke and is going to the same middle school next year, too. And usually he’s an okay kid, so she’s not like… mad.

Except she is babysitting for his own birthday party (a couple of days early – his birthday is two days after hers) with four of his other 11-year-old friends, because it had apparently been planned ages ago and at the last minute his parents realised they had to spend the afternoon and evening just out of town at the nursing home with his grandmother because she’s sick, so they panic-called Courtney’s Mum and asked if she could help out.

She hated the idea at the time, but her Mum said yes before she could say anything else and she didn’t feel like she could ask if someone else could help her out for this one. She’d considered asking Kari, for a while, but Kari was not into looking after kids like at all. And maybe it’d be fine, anyway.

Eleven-year-old kids will just like, keep each other entertained, right?

It starts fine. She arrives at 3:30pm as requested, pulling a small gift – that Conrad had helped her pick. She isn’t entirely sure why Clarke and Conrad weren’t invited to this party, but maybe they’re not Elijah’s inner circle or whatever – out of her tote bag to hand Elijah, who cheers and thanks her and says she’s going to be the best babysitter ever to have at his party.

“Well, you guys just gotta be good and I’m sure you’ll have heaps of fun with Courtney!” his mother reminds him, a little pointedly, before turning to Courtney and gesturing for her to follow her into the kitchen.

“The other four getting here soon?” she asks, his mother nodding.

“Yes, yes, in about fifteen minutes – and we’ll still be here until four to make sure everything is all good, but I’m sure it will be, they’re all good kids. Thanks so much for doing this for us, they’re almost old enough to just be left but just in case something goes wrong, really need someone a bit more mature around,” she muses, shaking her head, before pulling a $50 note out and handing it to Courtney. “They’ll be happy with getting some takeaway pizza for dinner, and that should cover more than enough – feel free to get yourself something, too. Now, we’ve got plenty of snacks and things ready for them too, just over here…”

Elijah’s Mum has always seemed nice enough, and she shows Courtney where everything is that the boys might need in the kitchen – snacks, glasses, drinks, plates – and then shows her the bathroom, and the spare bedroom upstairs where a bunch of inflatable mattresses have been set up – plus one in Elijah’s room beside his bed – for the boys, if they happen to want to go to sleep before they get home.

“I don’t expect they will – and honestly, it’s a party, not really any rules or curfews or anything tonight. Obviously, just… no breaking anything, and no being loud enough to annoy the neighbours, but they’re eleven, they’ll be fine,” she repeats, with a smile, Courtney simply nodding in agreement before following her back downstairs to greet the other kids as they arrive.

The kids all greet her when Elijah’s Mum introduces her, but they quickly run off to join the others playing out in the backyard. It’s where they still are when Elijah’s parents triple-check everything is fine and say goodbye, Courtney simply leaning against the brick wall of the house watching them for a while until they ask her to join in as referee – and like, why not? She’s here anyway and she’s already worked out their rules for this half-correct game of soccer from them shouting them at each other.

“Hey guys, you think we should go inside for presents soon? And ooh, your Mum showed me where all the snacks are Elijah, if you guys wanna have some before dinner?” Courtney suggests, brightly, as it draws closer to 5pm. The kids are all more than on board – Aaron, one of them, screams the word “cookies” louder than she’s heard anyone scream for ages as he races inside – and she follows them in, pulling out (as loudly requested) chocolate-chip cookies and Doritos and sour patch kids to set out on the living room coffee table as they all line themselves up to give Elijah his gifts.

(She’s quietly jealous that they have all the real name-brand snacks, and she manages to sneak herself a few, too, as she watches to make sure everything is fine with the gift-giving).

All the boys cheer and enthuse over Elijah’s gifts as if they all got them, and honestly, it’s kinda cool. He gets a Minecraft hoodie, a new game for his PS4, and a couple of Nerf Blasters – very standard 11-year-old boy things. It’s Aaron, though, that suddenly makes Courtney nervous.

“Hey, where are all your other blasters? I bought mine! We should battle! Make forts!” he yells, statements rapidly tacked onto the edge of each other.

“You know, you could have a Nerf battle outside while it’s still light before dinner? You shouldn’t lose the darts in the grass when they’re orange and you can run around all you want out there,” Courtney suggests, quickly, trying to subtly shepherd them out that way as she becomes acutely aware of the amount of glass cabinet doors in this house.

“Yeah, let’s-” Elijah starts, agreeing with her.

“No! We can’t build a real fort outside, we need like the couches and stuff,” Aaron cuts him off, quickly gaining the agreement of all four other boys. Courtney relents a little – it should be fine, it’s just nerf darts… - and all five of them start scrambling to set up their forts (two couches opposite each other, which only requires moving one slightly, so that’s fine) and locate a seemingly endless supply of nerf blasters and accompanying darts.

Somehow, it all seems to be perfectly fine for a while, even as Courtney pretends to be sitting in the dining room not paying attention while peering nervously through the archway between the two rooms.

“Hey, forts is boring like this… Josh, let’s move the cabinets!” Aaron calls out, just as she’s started to relax, Courtney immediately bolting up and moving into the living room to find him already tugging at one of the big cabinets, trying to move it away from the wall.

“Aaron! Come on, let’s not move any of Elijah’s Mum and Dad’s furniture, okay?” she tells him, sternly.

“But you let us move the couches and they’re furniture too!” Josh argues.

“Couches are a bit different, they’re not too hard to move and you didn’t move them much – but cabinets are a bit bigger, guys, and you might accidentally break some of the things in them, and those things might be very important to Elijah’s Mum and Dad, okay?” she tries to reason, calmly.

“But they’re just like, dumb pretty things, they don’t matter. This is Nerf!!!” Aaron argues, emphatically, two of the others jeering their agreement.

“Pretty things aren’t dumb though, and you might not know that they’re actually secretly really important, not just pretty,” she continues to argue back, before quickly changing tact, “and you have been running around heaps today… how about you just have a think about what you’re going to do so you can play without moving or breaking anything, but first, we can order pizzas for dinner?”

“Pizza!” Josh screams, in response, although to Courtney’s relief, it does get them all racing over to her to look at the Dominos app on her phone and pick toppings and argue about what they want for a while.

“The pizza is only gonna be like twenty minutes away, guys, how about you tidy up the living room a little and wash your hands from playing outside before it gets here?” she suggests, although she’s not hopeful they’ll agree. But, to her surprise, they do, quietly moving to collect the Nerf darts back into piles on the couches and shifting the couches back to where they had been before scuttering off to the bathrooms to wash their hands.

Dinner is loud, and chaotic, and messy – one pizza ends up completely upturned on the table, although that doesn’t stop the boys eating it – but it’s more at the level of what she expects. She lets herself eat three slices, too, quietly sitting up one end of the table and making sure their loud, boisterous chatter doesn’t verge into any plans to wreck the house again.

But, of course, it doesn’t stay that way for very long. Something about the combination of pizza and soda seems to spur them on, Josh piping up after they finish with a request to play some game or another outside – one that she quickly grants, because hey, at least they can’t break anything outside.

She leaves them be for a little while so she can tidy up the kitchen a bit – plates in the dishwasher, wiping the table down, leftover pizza into one box in the fridge – but it’s when she’s taking the empty boxes to the trash out the back that she discovers their outdoors game involves screaming at the top of their lungs and throwing the soccer ball directly at each other’s heads.

“Boys! How about we keep it down a little, please? Elijah’s neighbours might not like you screaming like that,” she suggests, quickly adding, “and be careful, if you get hurt it might ruin your sleepover!”

“No!” Josh bellows, immediately, somehow louder than they were being before. She flinches.

“Maybe we can be a little bit quieter, Mrs. O’Brien next door is kind of grumpy,” Elijah almost agrees with her, a little cautious, but Josh simply repeats his loud ‘no!’, Elijah shrugging and racing back to join him.

It makes Courtney – after she’s disposed of the pizza boxes – pull out her phone to glance at the time. It’s… not that late yet, it’s only a bit after 7pm, and it is summer break. Maybe she can let them go for just a little while, and then she kinda hopes they’ll tire out and just want to come inside and play the PlayStation or something.

They do all charge inside like half an hour later – leaving the back door wide open as they do, which she has to rush to close over – but their energy is still there, as they start tearing up and down the stairs screaming (but at least they’re not… damaging furniture?). They try to move the cabinets again when they tire of the random running around, Courtney having to literally stamp her foot and yell to get them to change their mind. They shift to target practice with Nerf darts, then, and she’s about to okay it and suggest using one of the large stuffed animals she’d spotted in Elijah’s room, when Aaron spies and decides their target will be the large ornate blue vase on top of one of the cabinets.

“You’re not tall enough to get that down, buddy,” she reminds him.

“I’LL CLIMB UP THERE!” he yells, immediately launching at the cabinet as if to do so. She, instinctively, leans forward and grabs his shoulder to hold him back.

“No, buddy, it’s glass, you could break it – the vase and the cabinet. How about one of the giant animals Elijah has?” she suggests.

“No! It needs to be hard so they stick to it properly!” one of the other boys argues back, Courtney trying to wrack her brain for a solution. She’s not quick enough.

“Let’s just use the cabinet!”

“Or each other!”

“If we got out the big gun we could see if it would shoot through the animals!”

She manages to quickly argue off every idea, but even when they accept her suggestion to play upstairs with the blasters in the spare room that she knows is mostly just inflatable mattresses and their bags they’d dumped, their game quickly turns into shooting the blasters point-blank at each other.

“Guys! You don’t want to get hurt, do you?” she asks, a little exasperated.

“Fine, no guns!” Josh sighs, dramatically.

“Oh my god, wrestling! We have the mattresses and everything!” Elijah screams, next, Courtney inwardly groaning although quietly hoping it’s just like… mild… play-wrestling.

It’s not, and it’s when she’s physically pulling Josh’s arms off another boy’s neck and admonishing them and saying she’ll have to call their mothers (she can’t! She only has Elijah’s parents’ number and they’re busy looking after a sick grandmother for heck’s sake-) that she feels her own mind snap. Why is she doing this? Why are they being like this? Why couldn’t they just be calm and play a stupid game or want to watch TV like normal kids and they’re so loud and they keep hurting each other and she’s trying to pretend she didn’t see it but Aaron definitely scratched the living room wall just trying to tug the cabinet the first time and-

“Boys, I need to go downstairs and update all your mothers on how you’re doing… if you promise you’ll at least behave now I might not have to tell them you’re trying to hurt each other and break everything and annoy the neighbours,” she somewhere between warns and rants, the five boys falling into silence and glancing between each other long enough for her to dart out of the room and downstairs.

She doesn’t know what happens next, but she feels hot tears burning at her eyes as her mind spins.

She’s not even allowed to acknowledge it’s her birthday but she has to try and engage with these kids trying to destroy everything and each other instead for Elijah’s birthday and he gets presents and everyone celebrating him and his parents wouldn’t cancel his party even though his grandma is sick and she’s stuck here by herself for another three hours and there’s no way they’ll go to sleep or calm down and Cody isn’t coming because he lives too far away so she was just going to be here herself and she doesn’t know what to do-

She pulls out her phone as she sits heavily into a dining room chair, seeing it full of messages from various group chats with her friend’s and Shayne’s, Hollie asking her what she’s wearing to Yasmin’s party next week, Zach spamming her with Marvel memes, Cody getting annoyed that she had to say no to a date this weekend-

They all get to just do whatever and have fun on a Friday night, probably, and it’s not even their birthday and she suddenly wants to call on Shayne but she hasn’t talked to him since at the park and he was being mean about her friends again and he kept saying Cody wasn’t good except she guesses he kinda relented when she explained about his Dad and whatever but he still said it!

She can’t do this stupid thing for another three hours though and she can them hear yelling again and she knows Elijah is right, Mrs. O’Brien next door is a grump who would definitely come over and bang on the door if they keep screaming like this and she doesn’t want to deal with that and have Elijah’s parents tell her Mum that she’s an awful babysitter-

“Help. I’m babysitting Elijah at number 3 and four of his friends at once for Elijah’s birthday sleepover and they keep trying to fight each other and break everything and I can’t stop five of them at once but his parents aren’t due back until 11,” she texts Shayne, hitting send before she can stop herself.

“There in two minutes,” Shayne replies, almost instantly, and she lets herself sniff loudly as she quickly glances around to find a box of tissues and wipe her stupid tears off her stupid face.

He’s not wrong. Almost as soon as Courtney has dried her eyes, Shayne is knocking quietly on the door and stepping inside, immediately heading up the stairs with her when she tells him the boys were – last she knew – in the spare room wrestling.

Josh is sitting on Elijah upside down, the latter screaming bloody murder, when they get there.

“Someone told me there’s some unofficial wrestling going on in here!” Shayne starts, immediately, although his voice is bright, “you know, I had a friend in Arizona who was going to be a real wrestler, like, the WWE talent scouts were talking to him, but when they found out he did unofficial wrestling with his friends sometimes they had to say he was banned forever. You’re not allowed to do that if you ever want to be a real wrestler!”

“Wooooah, really?” Josh asks, immediately moving off Elijah as all five boys turn their attention to Shayne. They seem to think absolutely nothing of the random guy they don’t know turning up, but they’re soon asking him question after question about his wrestling friend in Arizona, and then when Shayne makes an offhanded comment about the exact game Aaron bought Elijah for his birthday, they all suddenly want to rush downstairs and play it together.

…Calmly.

“Was any of that true?” Courtney asks, under her breath, when Shayne briefly joins her in the dining room to get snacks for the boys while they play.

“Nope. But they were eating it up, so…” he trails off, grinning, Courtney nodding and giving him a grateful smile.

“Who are you, anyway?” Josh asks Shayne when he’s taking a break from the game (there are only four controllers).

“Yeah, are you Courtney’s boyfriend?” Elijah asks, “but wait, Clarke said Courtney isn’t allowed to have a boyfriend…”

“I’m not Courtney’s boyfriend, but I’m her friend. My name is Shayne, I live just up the street at number 8,” he answers, simply, “she let me know there was some unofficial wrestling going on, so I had to come and make sure everything was okay.”

“Okay, cool,” Josh answers, simply, before swapping out with Elijah to take another turn at playing the game.

It’s not like they’re all perfectly behaved for the rest of the night. They’re still loud, they shout, they occasionally launch at each other when they get into an argument about someone cheating in the game, they spill snacks all over the couch and the floor…

But she’s not dealing with it alone anymore. Shayne helps her try and (unsuccessfully) convince them to be quieter, he slightly-more-successfully separates a fight between Aaron and Josh, he gets one of the others to actually clean up the Cheetos he spills everywhere while she gets something to clean the couch with.

And, when Elijah’s parents finally turn up just after 11pm – as they said they would – they don’t bat an eye at Shayne’s presence.

“Oh, I hope they weren’t too much trouble that you needed backup?” his mother asks, Courtney awkwardly grimacing. What does she even…

“They… had a lot of energy and were trying to take some of that out on your furniture and each other. But everything is okay, nothing broken and no injuries,” she answers, quickly, Elijah’s Mum simply nodding in response.

“I’m very sorry they were such a handful, this group is usually calm enough… thank you so much for looking after them and keeping everything under control, and thank you for helping out Shayne,” she tells them, firmly, before reaching into her purse and pulling out some extra cash for both her and Shayne. They both try to be polite and reject it, but eventually, they give in, before walking back into the living room to say goodbye to the boys.

“Awww! Shayne is cool!” Aaron complains, loudly, when they tell them they’re leaving, before adding, “sorry we were being loud and fighting, Courtney.”

“Thanks for apologising, Aaron. Maybe you had too many cookies and too much pizza?” she suggests, carefully, Aaron nodding in confirmation before they say a goodbye to all five kids and, finally, wander back out onto the street.

Shayne’s place is only two up and across the road from Elijah’s, but instead of immediately turning in when they reach his driveway, Shayne pauses at the front gate and turns to pull Courtney into a hug.

“I’m sorry you had to deal with all that and had to babysit someone else’s birthday party on your birthday. I’m not gonna be able to throw a surprise party for you this year or anything, but… I hope it at least got a little easier with another person to get them under control?” he offers, quietly, Courtney feeling her eyes prick with tears again.

“It’s not my birthday. It’s just a day,” she answers, almost instinctively, as she pulls back from the hug, but Shayne immediately shakes his head.

“Just, like, turning 16 doesn’t make you immediately some kind of trash person or whatever your parents say. You’re allowed to have a birthday,” he points out, but she shrugs.

“Sweet 16ths are kind of like, sexual and weird… except I guess Yasmin’s won’t be because she doesn’t even date boys because she’s too good for anyone here. It’s not like I want to be some kind of dumb whore no one will ever want to marry, even if my parents are being stupid,” she answers, watching Shayne’s face screw up.

“You’ve only dated like, one guy this year, though. And it’s not like you’ve done anything except kiss him,” he reminds her, shaking his head, “that’s just normal. And it’s not like you have a limited number of kisses or whatever else in your whole life, that whole shit about like… ruining yourself for a husband or whatever is just sexist and dumb.”

“Still,” she answers, shrugging, glancing up the street and hesitating slightly. “I… should get home, I guess. And I guess I’ll see you at Yasmin’s party or whatever.”

“Sure. Or just text me before then if you want to hang out,” he replies, before waving lightly and turning to walk up his front path as she continues the two houses further up to her place.

Chapter Text

Courtney doesn’t see any of her friends, or Shayne’s, for the next few days – her mother demands she clean the house on Saturday, she’s at the church basically all day Sunday, and she has to look after her brothers the next two days. But to her relief, when Wednesday comes and she gets ready to walk to the bus stop to meet her friends at Cody’s band thing, there’s no one around to tell her not to go.

She’s pretty sure her Mum would tell her not to go if she was there, but she’s at work, so whatever.

“This seems pretty cool. Did Cody say who’s in his band?” Yasmin asks her, when the five of them are wandering from the bus stop in the city to the park that this band competition thing is in, at the small stage at one edge.

“He hasn’t said who, I think it’s just people he went to middle school with, I don’t think we know any of them,” she answers, shrugging lightly, Yasmin seeming to accept her answer as she instead turns to talking about how great her birthday party is going to be on Friday.

She’s talking about it a lot but it does all sound like, stupidly cool. It’s kinda pool party themed, but also just sparkly-themed – apparently her parents have even found a way to turn their swimming pool sparkly for it, and there’s going to be a glitter photo wall, and she’s showed them pictures of all these really cool grazing tables of food and this huge, tiered cake-

So, yeah, Courtney gets why she keeps talking about it.

Yasmin only stops talking about her party when they get to the park and the noise of some of the other bands drowns her conversation out. It is some kind of like, band competition or show or something for under-17s, and the park is loosely dotted with groups of people evidently there to support their friends (and the occasional parent).

Hollie has, usefully, brought a picnic blanket for them to sit on, and as much as Isabel fusses about it being gross and probably having been on all the weird hikes Hollie goes on, no one can say it’s worse than sitting on the wet grass. They choose a spot to sit not too far from the stage, half-talking and half-watching the other bands as they run through a couple of songs each – mostly covers.

Some of them aren’t great (the first guys up when they got there sounded screechy and awful. It hurt her ears. Although they might’ve been trying to do Cody’s screamo shit) but there’s some that are okay, and one all-girls group that is actually, like, good and they have an original song that won’t get out of her head after they play it.

Cody’s band is about the fourth after they get there, and Courtney lets her attention turn more closely to the stage as she inwardly buzzes with excitement. Cody wanders out first and sets up at his drumkit, doing so with an ease and casualness that makes her blush and almost accidentally brag out loud that he’s her boyfriend. Another three guys wander out, then, two she doesn’t recognise each moving to the microphone and acoustic guitar before she suddenly feels the blush in her cheeks turn to a cold steeliness as her heart drops and her eyes burn.

Johnny. Fucking Johnny is up there on stage in his band picking up an electric guitar.

“Woah, did you know he was in a band with him? I thought he said he didn’t hang out with him anymore?” Isabel comments, with a raised eyebrow.

“Yeah he did say he never hung out with him anymore,” Courtney answers, seething.

“Yikes,” Yasmin responds, plainly, although Courtney immediately knows it isn’t sympathetic.

Because if Cody is hanging out with Johnny and Johnny is in his band then it isn’t cool at all, and he knew they were coming to watch him for this thing, he invited them, and why the fuck did he keep lying to Courtney and he knew her friends would get weird at her for breaking up with him but also for dating him if he was hanging out with Johnny and-

She can barely concentrate on listening to the performance, instead feeling her whole body bristling with discomfort and her back ache from sitting on the picnic rug on the ground as she desperately tries to blink back the tears pushing at her eyes because she’s a dumb baby that always angry cries. The tears still cloud her eyes so the band up on the stage is only a blur of colours, and she digs her nails into her thigh as she grips it sharply and tries not to feel the way her friends are judging her.

She’s so stupid and dumb and a baby and she should never have trusted Cody and his weird alternative stuff but what is she going to do now and does she have to deal with Johnny being weird so she can keep Cody especially since he’s like the only person she can see all Summer or is she going to have to be single again and go for someone even worse or just be a loser or-

Natalie prompts them all to get up and go and talk to Cody and his… band… backstage after they finish, like Cody had mentioned they could. Courtney’s legs feel dead and numb but she shrugs and forces herself to follow them backstage, eyes steely when they all slowly approach where Cody and the other three are standing loosely in the shady area to the side of the stage, all of the other bands also hanging around nearby.

“Hey Cody,” Yasmin starts, stepping forward – as she always does –, “I don’t think you’ve introduced any of us to your band?”

“Uh, yeah, guess not,” Cody answers, shifting around to open up the circle the band had been standing in to let the girls join, “this is Robbie and Ed. And guys, these are some of my friends from school – Yasmin, Isabel, Natalie, Courtney, Hollie.”

He introduces them all awkwardly, not mentioning Johnny, and Courtney immediately tries to meet his eyes. Friends?! She’s his GIRLFRIEND, and he’s the one that was stupid and lied about who was in the band and Johnny is just standing there smirking-

He avoids her gaze, instead turning around and relaxing his posture as he calls out a greeting to someone else waiting around side-stage. Johnny, for his part, turns and wanders off to talk to someone else.

“Oh, sorry, I don’t see these guys as often anymore, most of the good music is at the other high school,” Cody comments, lightly, Yasmin scoffing in response.

“Why don’t you go there, then?” Hollie almost snaps, Courtney immediately shooting her gaze over to tell her to stop, but Cody simply laughs.

“You of all people should know how school zoning works,” he points out, eyes rolling, “anyway, you girls got a reason to be here other than following me around, or…”

“You’re so fake,” Courtney feels herself snap, before quickly closing her mouth and internally wincing. Heck. Shit. Shitshitshit she shouldn’t have said anything-

“It’s you guys that wanted to see your friend play, don’t be weird,” he answers, pointedly, before turning away again, “oh, hey, Laura! It’s been ages!”

Courtney glances over to see the group of girls whose song is still in her damn head amongst all the anger and confusion and discomfort twisting around wandering over, the lead singer immediately leaning in to give Cody a hug.

“Cody! It has! Oh, and who is this? Haven’t seen any new girls on the registrations?” she asks, although when she turns to glance over the five, her eyes are friendly.

“We’re-” Natalie starts, but Cody immediately cuts her off.

“Just some friends from school that wanted to come check this out,” he fills in.

“G-” Courtney starts, but this time, Yasmin cuts her off.

“Anyway, we should go,” she says, before turning to face Cody more decidedly and gesturing towards the group of girls now standing near him, Laura now with her arm around his shoulders – Courtney feels like she’s going to be sick – “hey, Cody, you could invite your band friends to my party? But like, not Johnny. But your band friends seem cooler than you now you’re hanging out with him again.”

Laura immediately looks confused, but Yasmin turns on her heel to walk decidedly away from them, and Courtney can’t really do anything except join the others in walking away from her boyfriend.

If he’s still her boyfriend. She has no idea what just happened.

…but she does know she doesn’t really like Laura’s band’s song anymore, though.

————————————————

As much as Courtney’s friends have been kinda hanging out with Shayne’s friends for like a whole year now, they’re still… separate. They certainly aren’t in the WhatsApp group chat she’s in with his friends. Except for Hollie, who Max had added ages ago for who knows what reason.

“Hey! Wasn’t that band thing today @Hollie and @Courtney? How was it? My older sister used to be in a band that went to that a few times, said it was pretty cool,” Evie asks, later that evening. Courtney chooses not to reply, but Hollie just has no clue about not telling people shit that she shouldn’t so…

“It was pretty good, but we went to see Cody’s band because he invited us but he went super weird and like, pretended he was too cool for us and we were following him around, and he like didn’t acknowledge Courtney being his girlfriend and was letting this other girl be all over him… and johnny was in his band but he left when we went to talk to them at least,” Hollie types out the entire damn story, Courtney groaning in response.

“That’s super rude and weird of Cody? Gross,” Evie replies, immediately.

“Ugh. COURTNEY you deserve so much better!! Ditch the faker band boy!” Alicia adds, not much later, Courtney immediately tapping into settings to mute the chat. They just don’t get it and it doesn’t help that Hollie doesn’t either.

She considers muting Shayne’s texts, too, knowing he’s about to get on her case all over again because Hollie can’t keep her stupid mouth shut about how much of a dumbass stupid loser she is that can’t find or keep a decent boyfriend, but she isn’t quick enough.

“Hey,” he messages, simply. She rolls her eyes.

“Cool you going to get on my case again and tell me I have to break up with Cody and all my friends are awful and I’m actually a loser that can’t keep friends or a boyfriend?” she texts, typing rapidly. She watches Shayne’s typing notification appear, and then disappear, back and forth for like, three minutes.

“No, Courtney, and you know that’s not what I’m doing. I’m not saying anything like that – you’re saying that to yourself and just redirecting it onto me so you can get angry at someone instead of admitting that’s how you feel. I’m saying the exact opposite, but I know you don’t want to listen to me. I was just gonna ask if you want to hang out tomorrow, come over or something, the psychologist is sick so she’s closed the office for the day so I’ll be home. But you’re going to say I did something wrong by you and refuse to hang out with me, probably, so… Whatever. Your choice.”

She shudders. He’s wrong, that’s what he is saying. He’s done it so many times now where he starts being weird about her friends and her boyfriend and maybe Carter was gross but Cody isn’t usually and she’s tried to tell him so many times how she can’t just go breaking up with people or pissing her friends off because then she’ll just be alone and a complete loser than no one ever wants to talk to. Or even worse, the other losers will try and make her sit with them! Is that what he wants?!

“Whatever. I don’t know what you expect me to do, have no friends? And don’t be like that then say you want to hang out with me. I’ve probably gotta look after Clarke and Conrad anyway,” she texts back, before throwing her phone aside and letting herself fall heavily back onto her bed.

Ugh.

It’s not even that late yet and Kari is who knows where – off with some friend her parents hate, probably – so she has the bedroom to herself, but her friends aren’t saying anything tonight and she doesn’t feel like watching anything on her laptop and she really doesn’t want to study…

…she should probably text Cody. Why does she keep having to text so many people who are being stupid?

Courtney reluctantly reaches for her phone again, leaning sideways off her bed to reach for where it landed on the floor. She probably shouldn’t throw it like that, but whatever. It’s carpet.

“What on earth was that dude?” she sends Cody, without elaborating. He knows what he did.

“I didn’t want him to be there but Robbie invited him to stand in for the other guy that normally is there and because he’s lead singer he kinda gets to say who fills in when someone is sick or whatever. Didn’t say anything because I knew you’d overreact and be stupid and immature about it,” he replies, quicker than she expects him to. She feels a shiver run through her body as her brow furrows.

She can’t break up with him about the Johnny stuff again, she’s already done it too many times. But it wasn’t just that, it was like, he lied to her, he didn’t tell her, he keeps promising he never even talks to him then she finds out he does, and then he was just calling them all his friends and wouldn’t introduce her to any of his band as his girlfriend and then there was that whole thing with Laura and now she might be at Yasmin’s party too and…

“whatever. Why did you keep saying friends friends friends nothing else?” she texts, trying to leave out all the other stuff and the confusion and-

“Ed was with this girl for like 4 years and she broke up with him the other day because her parents made her. We have to be careful for a bit, I don’t want to make him feel bad. You wouldn’t want that either, would you?” he responds, almost accusatory, and she groans audibly. Why does he have an answer for literally everything?

“whatever. You inviting all your band people to yasmin’s party on Friday?” she pries. She hopes he isn’t. Like maybe Robbie and Ed, and she knows Yasmin banned Johnny so he couldn’t come anyway – she does have like, someone on the door for the party or whatever to keep losers out – but why did Yasmin go and say he can invite other people too?

“maybe some of them, not Robbie or Ed because Ed is boring while he’s all sad about his ex and Robbie doesn’t do parties, but maybe the girls? Their music is really good and Laura’s Dad owns the recording studio in town so like, we really need to try and be friends with them…” he texts, a second message coming through not ten seconds later, “don’t tell me you’re going to be weird because I’m friends with a girl… don’t go all clingy on me. I let you have a bunch of guy friends (even Shayne that you’re weirdly close with) and you have no problem with me being friends with your friends…”

It makes her shudder again as she grumbles and falls back on her bed, this time, turning towards the wall and curling her body up.

He was pretending to not be dating her back there and Laura hugged him and like had her arm around him for ages, it wasn’t cool, but she can’t be a clingy obsessive weirdo and yes she hugs Shayne when he’s not being a dumbass but Cody knows Shayne too and she’s not even slightly interested in him so why is that even relevant?

But she can’t say that. She can’t say anything.

“whatever, dude. See you Friday at Yasmin’s” she replies, after a moment.

“we ever going to go on another date or you just not even trying to make that happen anymore even?” he sends, before she has a chance to put her phone aside again, Courtney grumbling again in annoyance.

“I am trying, dude. I told you my Dad’s gone super-strict too. I’m trying to get another babysitting job near your place so that can work again, but my options near you are mostly the super religious people, so… You going to be weird about that again?”

“Not as long as you let me do stuff on their couches…”

“When have I ever stopped that?” she answers. And it’s true. He’s not got any further than like, half-putting a hand under her shirt but never further up than her waist, but she’s never done anything to suggest he stop.

“Okay. See you on Friday anyway,” he answers, seeming to finally also consider the conversation finished.

Courtney still doesn’t know what to do with the rest of her evening, and reluctantly, she rolls off her bed and sets her phone on her bedside table before she stretches a little. There’s not really anything she wants to do in her room. Maybe her brothers will have something mildly watchable on TV, even if it’s some weird Mormon-edited movie.

“I can’t believe how awful all these people are,” her Dad is in the middle of muttering when she gets downstairs, hand waving vaguely in the direction of the TV. Her mother and Kami are sitting on the couch – she can hear the two younger boys outside in the backyard with KC, now she’s downstairs – and she wanders further into the room so she can see the TV, arms crossing over her chest.

It’s just the news – boring – but it’s some special report about a charity supporting single mothers going to college.

“If you’re so irresponsible to destroy yourself being reckless with men and end up looking after children, how dare you destroy those children too by putting aside their care for your own selfish wants?” her mother agrees, although her tone is light and casual. Something about it still immediately irks Courtney, but she keeps her mouth shut as she wanders over to sit heavily in the spare armchair, watching the story change over to the sports segment.

All that does is make her Dad get mad that all of Mansfield’s teams suck, but whatever.

Also… didn’t her Mum go to college after Kathryn was born? Didn’t she get pregnant with K.C during college?

Chapter Text

There’s no way Courtney’s parents would approve of the outfit she’d bought for Yasmin’s party – it’s not, like, bad, but her shoulders are bare and it’s tight over her chest on purpose and the shorts are actually short – but she’d managed to buy it on a shopping trip with her friends, and she gets herself to Hollie’s place with an outfit much more parent-friendly so she can change and do her makeup there.

“So like, did you break up with Cody?” Hollie asks, when they’re both standing in the main bathroom in her house applying makeup. It makes Courtney sigh.

“I can’t break up with him, Hollie. I’m not going to end up single again!” she replies, glancing over to see Hollie shrug.

“Is it really that bad? And besides, he keeps doing this…”

“You should get it by now, Hol. We can’t be single, it’s the worst thing we could do, we’re already so close to not being cool enough for the others to go near us and you don’t want us to look like undateable freaks too do you?!” she reminds her, glancing back to the mirror to continue doing her eyes.

“They’re not going to like, kick us out, Courtney. They’re our friends. And no one cares that Yasmin is single! And Natalie has been single all year too. It would be silly for it to be a problem with us,” she answers, lightly, and Courtney tries to keep her eyeroll internal. She seriously doesn’t know how Hollie just… misses everything! Literally everything! They tell her to her face that it’s not okay for them to be single and she still doesn’t get it? She doesn’t realise that maybe the fact Yasmin lives in a like 6-bedroom mansion with a pool and like, staff, means she is completely untouchable compared to them in their small suburban rundown houses?

Not that Hollie’s house is as bad as hers. And it’s just her and her parents, and they do have a spare room, so.

“Whatever you think,” she answers, instead, knowing it isn’t worth arguing this time, before quickly changing the subject, “hey, pass the glitter?”

“I’m gonna be so mad I find glitter in my stuff for months after this,” Hollie answers, immediately.

“It’s fun, though,” Courtney points out, her friend laughing lightly before turning back to finish up her own makeup. She’s done ages before Courtney is, but hey, she seems to be happy to just sit there and chat about nothing while they wait.

Courtney had learnt how to properly arrive at a party before they even started hanging out with the cool girls. The official start time is 5pm, so they time their arrival for 5:20-ish, wandering up to the house from the bus stop at the end of the neighbourhood – there certainly isn’t any busses in Yasmin’s neighbourhood – to find it already full of loud music and voices spilling out from the open front door.

One of her parents’ usual staff is at the door to let people in, but he knows both Courtney and Hollie and they nod at him in acknowledgement as he waves them inside without even asking their names.

The party is exactly how Yasmin had described it: it’s bright, it’s pink, there’s glitter and sparkles everywhere, there’s cool lights set up to make the whole room look somehow gold and pink at the same time. Courtney and Hollie first move over to the ridiculous pile of gifts to deposit their own with it, before they wander further into the room to find the birthday girl in question.

“Oh, hey!” Yasmin greets them, brightly, seeming to appear out of nowhere in a long, glittering gold dress and a pink ‘sweet 16^th’ sash, “you just got here?”

“Yeah! This looks really cool, exactly how you wanted it right?!” Courtney replies, trying to hype it up, watching her friend laugh and grin in response.

“It’s pretty good. The pool looks cool, although the colour isn’t as good as I want it to be… but anyway, it’s good. I think Is and Natalie are outside, none of the guys have turned up yet though,” she explains, glancing around, “or like- Shayne and his friends are coming right, Courtney?”

“I think so,” she answers, trying to shrug it off non-committally. She’s ignored them for the last day or so since she got annoyed with Shayne, so. But last she knew they were coming.

Hollie and Courtney do as Yasmin had suggested, wandering out the open glass back doors to the pool. Courtney immediately recognises almost everyone there – some people from school, some of Yasmin’s cousins – but she can’t help but screw her nose up a little at the pool. Evidently they’d added some kind of like, glitter effect to the walls, but it just looks…

“The pool just looks dirty,” Hollie mutters under her breath, Courtney humming her agreement before they both locate and wander over to talk to Natalie and Isabel, sitting on sun loungers up one end of the dusty, vaguely green-looking pool.

The evening is warm and calm, and they sit on the sun loungers chatting for a while as they watch the house and outside gradually fill with more and more people. Shayne and his friends all turn up pretty much together (except for Alicia and Zach, who arrive together after everyone else has), and Shayne doesn’t approach her, but some of the others wander over to say hi before wandering off to mingle with everyone else.

She sees Laura and the two other girls from her band turn up too (she wishes she knew their names) but one person she definitely doesn’t see is her own boyfriend, as much as she tries to look for him. It’s after 6pm and everyone has kinda gravitated inside to the huge grazing tables of food decoratively laid out by the time there’s a weird stirring and muttering over near the door, Yasmin looking like she might just kill someone as she wanders over to see what it is.

Courtney and the others – the five of them had been standing together, Yasmin having wanted a break from talking to her cousins that she kinda had to invite even though they were kinda weird – watch carefully, but they don’t follow her closer to the door. There’s some harsh words and more grumbling, but after a while, Yasmin wanders back in followed by Cody, Robbie and Ed. So much for Cody not inviting his bandmates.

The three boys wander into the party and immediately head for the girls from the band competition, but Yasmin walks back to her friends with a scowl on her face.

“Ugh, you’ll never guess who tried to show up. Or you probably will, it’s just like him,” she complains, Courtney immediately rolling her eyes. Johnny. It had to be.

“At least you could stop him coming in I guess,” she sympathises, although Yasmin grumbles in response.

“Yeah but today was meant to be perfect and it can’t be if he showed up. Almost seems like your boyfriend brought him, Courtney,” she turns to face her directly, eyebrow raised, but Courtney shakes her head.

“It would’ve been Robbie or Ed who don’t like, know he’s banned and gross,” she rebuts, immediately, and none of the others argue. Isabel quickly changes the topic, asking Yasmin where she got her dress and starting to talk about everyone’s outfits. It’s relieving, until she turns to Courtney.

“Oh, that’s just… the stuff you got on sale at Forever 21, right? Couldn’t have made more of an effort, something that didn’t cost nothing?” Isabel points out, and Courtney really doesn’t have a reply, but Isabel quickly turns to do the same to Hollie, “and where was that from?!”

“Oh, the shirt is from Uniqlo, it’s that really cool Japanese brand, I got it last summer when I was up in Colorado,” she answers, immediately, and Courtney watches Isabel visibly deflate just a little.

She doesn’t have an excuse, her clothes are cheap, but whatever. At least they aren’t Kami or Kari or Kathryn’s hand-me-downs this time.

The five of them soon separate to talk with some of the others at the party, and Courtney immediately finds Cody – still talking to Laura and her two bandmates – and beelines straight towards him.

“Hey Cody,” she greets, immediately standing close to his side and placing her hand on his back before turning to the other three, “and hey Laura, and I’m sorry I didn’t catch your names last time?”

“Oh, Courtney,” Cody mutters, in response, casually swaying away from her and dislodging her hand in the process, although the other two girls introduce themselves as he does. She doesn’t get a chance to say anything else to them before Cody continues, “hey, I think Mason wanted to talk about that English book for summer like you did too, let’s go find him?”

“Wha-” she starts, quickly finding Cody almost dragging her away from the girls. She’s pretty sure Mason isn’t even here, given his breakup with Natalie wasn’t exactly pretty, and Cody doesn’t lead her to a person, instead dragging her back towards the entry and slightly around the corner near the front door.

He doesn’t say anything when he pulls her to a stop there, immediately stepping close into her personal space and almost smashing his mouth against hers. It’s jarring and she’s not ready for it, but she quickly forces her mind to catch up and kiss him back. It has been too long since they’ve even like, hugged, and he is her boyfriend.

Cody still doesn’t say anything when he eventually releases her from the kiss and tight hold he’d ended up locking her in, but he grins slyly before wandering back into the main party area and seeming to disappear. It’s weird, but Courtney simply shrugs, quickly distracted when Zach appears and starts talking to her.

She finds Cody a couple of other times during the next couple of hours, but every time she approaches him, he either brushes her off and ignores her or leads her off into some hidden area to make out. And like, she won’t complain about the making out, it has been WAY too long, and maybe he’s just feeling touchy and doesn’t want to do PDA in front of people he doesn’t know as well or something, but...

“Hey hey Court,” Alicia appears at her side, when she’s just wandering back from grabbing a glitter-topped cupcake from the grazing table. They haven’t cut the birthday cake yet, but Nat had told her the cupcakes are good.

“Oh, hey Alicia, you enjoying the party?” she asks, lightly. She hasn’t talked directly to Alicia since school ended for the year.

“It’s pretty cool! Yasmin’s really gone all out with the theming, it’s a lot but it works,” she answers, brightly, before her tone turns a little lower, “you’re… still dating Cody right? I mean, I assume you are, given all the hiding away to make out.”

“The point of hiding is no one seeing that. But yeah he’s still my boyfriend… why?” she asks, confused, watching Alicia grimace.

“Shayne tells me you’ll just get angry at me for pointing this out but… he’s getting very close to that Laura girl. And she’s reciprocating. And he’s telling her he’s single,” she points out. It makes Courtney narrow her eyes.

“I know. It’s happened in front of me – other than the saying he’s single which he definitely isn’t actually doing – but he’s just like, hugging his friend, like I do with all you guys. It’s fine,” she argues back, quickly, but Alicia immediately shakes her head.

“It’s not just that, Court,” she pushes. Courtney just sighs. She mentioned Shayne – so he must have… told her to be like this too? Whatever.

“Whatever,” she answers, out loud, before glancing around and quickly finding an excuse to go and talk to someone else and finally eat her cupcake.

As much as Shayne and Alicia are being dumb, she can’t stop her eyes from searching out her boyfriend as she passes the next half hour or so inside talking between different friends and acquaintances. She finds him, occasionally, and every time Laura is glued to his side. His arm keeps landing around her shoulder. He’s laughing and smiling and actually talking to them. She swears she’s not clingy and stupid and immature but… it’s…

————————————————

“Shayne, buddy, come with me,” Alicia’s voice appears beside his shoulder when he’s standing at the (admittedly, very cool) grazing tables.

“Can you let me eat first?” he asks, pointedly, glancing back to see her shaking her head.

“Nope. Let’s go have a little chat to this Laura girl,” she tells him, pointedly, Shayne feeling his heart sink. He’s kinda avoiding Courtney but he’d seen Cody and Laura, too, but he doesn’t want to just get yelled at for intervening and it’s not their place and-

“Hey, Laura right? Nice to meet you, Courtney mentioned you’re in a band?” Alicia starts, brightly, when they seem to find the girl standing by herself not ten seconds after she’d accosted him at the food.

“Oh, hi! Yeah, I am – I haven’t had a chance to actually talk to Courtney, Cody keeps dragging her away every time she comes over… are you her friends?” she asks, lightly. Shayne raises an eyebrow – so Laura has noticed that, too – but he lets Alicia do the talking.

“Yeah, yeah, we’re her friends – I’m Alicia, and Shayne,” she answers, gesturing over towards Shayne when she introduces him. He smiles and gives an acknowledging nod, but just as he expects, Alicia doesn’t hold back her reason for introducing them. “So like… is there something going on with you and Cody?”

“Oh, uh… I don’t know,” Laura answers, her cheeks visibly reddening as her tone turns nervous, “I… think he’s flirting with me. And he’s not not cute… Why do you ask?”

“He’s… not exactly single,” Alicia answers, although her tone is careful more than accusatory.

“Wait, what?!” Laura answers, immediately, her face twisting in confusion, “he said he was, is he- is he dating you or something?”

“God no,” Alicia laughs, before shaking her head and turning her tone careful again, “Courtney is his girlfriend. We think he’s dragging her away from you guys to hide that he is dating her.”

“Oh, shit,” Laura answers, immediately, Shayne watching as her face turns almost distraught and her tone races into a nervous, apologetic ramble, “I’m so sorry, I had absolutely no idea at all, I thought he was being weird about her and I was annoyed because I wanted to actually get to talk to her properly because I haven’t had a chance yet and he kept dragging her away but I never connected it being that and I didn’t mean to go near someone else’s boyfriend or anything and-”

“It’s okay, Laura,” Alicia reassures, gently, “we were pretty sure you didn’t know.”

“Her friend, um- Issy, is it? She said Cody was single but Courtney was like… dating you, Shayne?” Laura points out, her brow furrowed in confusion. Shayne sighs roughly.

“Isabel is pissed that I rejected her like, months ago, and she keeps being shit to Courtney over it because I’ve been friends with Courtney longer than any of the others because she lives on my street. But I’m definitely not dating her, Cody is,” he answers, speaking up for the first time, tone a little harsher than he intends. Although he hopes Laura knows he’s mostly directing it at Isabel.

“She sounds awful… I feel awful, Cody sounds awful too, but I need to- I need to find Courtney, has she seen stuff? Does she think he’s cheating on her or I’m like doing this on purpose or-?” Laura asks, tone turning panicked again.

“Courtney’s kinda… in denial about Cody being shitty to her,” Alicia explains, a little reluctantly, Shayne wincing in response. God, she refuses to be vulnerable to anyone, they shouldn’t be spreading this shit- but Alicia continues, “but she has seen you and Cody being close. I think Cody told her she was being too clingy or something and he was allowed to have female friends, but like…”

“That’s not what he was trying to do,” Laura finishes, nodding, seeming to start rapidly looking around the room, before she pauses glancing back over her shoulder near the doors out to the patio and pool, “I need to go talk to Courtney.”

She immediately turns and walks away from them, Shayne turning to face Alicia.

“I know you’re trying to help her out, Alicia, but… you can’t like, tell people stuff she’s told us. Her friends would tear her to shreds and never go near her again if they knew she was concerned about Cody or anything,” he points out, but Alicia sighs and grimaces.

“Are they really friends then?”

“I don’t know. But hanging out with them is important to her. And she’s- she’s being extra shitty to me at the moment over it when I haven’t even said anything, but we shouldn’t interfere either. It’s gonna make shit harder for her. And you were super fucking lucky that Laura was good about it, because she could’ve turned around and said Cody like deserved better than Courtney or something and been happy he was kinda trying to cheat,” he points out, watching Alicia’s face turn.

“I’m so glad our year isn’t as cliquey and mean as theirs.”

————————————————

“Courtney!” she hears her name being called from an only vaguely familiar voice, heart dropping when she turns around from who she’s been talking to – one of Yasmin’s cousins – and Laura immediately grips her arm and tugs lightly.

Maybe they are better for each other than her and Cody since they both like dragging people off or whatever.

“What?” Courtney asks, a little grumpily, when Laura pulls her away from the cousin – although not like, anywhere hidden – and she immediately watches Laura’s face fall and her eyes shine with… tears? What?

“I’m so sorry Courtney, I’m so sorry, I had no idea you were dating Cody and Isabel told me he was single and he did too, I was kinda letting him flirt with me but there’s no way I would do that knowing he’s not single and I’m really, really sorry and I feel awful,” she tells her, her tone ringing with honesty, “I thought you seemed cool and I wanted to actually get to know you and I thought it was weird he kept dragging you away but I didn’t think that and instead I’ve definitely done the wrong thing by you and I’m just… so sorry.”

Courtney doesn’t know what to say, immediately, blinking in surprise. She’d kinda prepared herself for Laura to launch at her about how she’s not cool enough for Cody and she deserves to be cheated on anyway and…

“It’s- I- thought you knew what was going on and were helping him make me look like a loser that gets cheated on,” she answers, nervously, watching Laura rapidly shake her head.

“God, no. And that wouldn’t make you a loser anyway, he’s the loser. So’s your friend Isabel,” she replies, pointedly, before her tone turns apologetic again, “I’m really sorry, Courtney. And I’m sorry if I’ve ruined your friend’s party for you, too.”

“Cody just told me you guys were friends and he needed to be friends with you because your Dad owns a recording studio or something? I was just being too clingy or whatever. It’s fine,” she answers, trying to shrug it off, but Laura scoffs.

“Yeah, my Dad won’t let his band touch the recording studio now. So he was just trying to like, use me too? Gross. We both deserve better,” she reinforces, Courtney trying to stop herself from debating it. Like, Laura definitely does.

But this is the third guy Courtney has scared off by being a weirdo, so… she probably doesn’t. And it’s not like she can break up with him anyway.

“Come on, let’s go back to the party,” Laura interrupts her train of thought after a moment, “or like, you might never want to see my face again, that’s valid. But I think Alicia and Shayne would want to hang out with you?”

Chapter Text

Courtney doesn’t have time to find Alicia or Shayne when she wanders outside, kinda with Laura wandering beside her – Ethan and Max find her first, along with Hollie, and it’s not long before Shayne and Alicia join them too. She doesn’t try and find Cody again, she really doesn’t want to deal with that shit tonight, but she does find herself settling into the party again.

Yasmin grabs her, Nat and Hollie to stand just near her (with Isabel) when she cuts the huge multi-tiered cake, and afterwards, Courtney finds Yasmin also joining her and Shayne’s friends sitting around outside, laughing as some of the boys from school join Yasmin’s cousins in actually jumping into the pool. They don’t join – although Ethan and Max seriously consider it – but it does look fun.

“Hey, you guys wanna come to the pool with us next week sometime? When are we going, Shayne?” Max starts, glancing over at him for confirmation.

“Thursday – not that I’m joining, I’m working,” he answers, frowning.

“Oh, right, yeah – but hey, Yasmin? Hollie? Courtney?” he asks, Courtney glancing to the side to watch both Yasmin and Hollie respond that they’ll be away from early in the week, before providing her own response.

“I’ll be here, but I’ve got a like lunch to dinner babysitting job,” she replies, shrugging.

“Oh, how’s that going anyway? You’ve been doing heaps right? It seems like a pretty chill job and you get to like, snoop in people’s houses,” Yasmin points out, grinning.

“It’s usually pretty chill. And my parents won’t let me go out and do much else, so at least it means I can get out of the house,” she answers, lightly, before carefully glancing over towards Shayne, “had a rough one the other weekend, had to call Shayne to help out. Was looking after the 11-year-old down the street and his friends at his birthday party and they went full on psycho.”

“They really went psycho,” Shayne agrees, laughing, Courtney feeling tension she didn’t know she was holding fall from her shoulders. Okay. He’s not… like… totally blanking her.

“That sounds awful,” Yasmin laughs, before turning to talk about her holiday – she’s going to Europe again.

Courtney certainly doesn’t forget about Cody for the rest of the party, but she pretty much doesn’t see him at all – she sees Robbie and Ed and Laura and her friends way more than him – so she just kind of…

It can be tomorrow’s problem. Or whenever.

She’s staying at Hollie’s overnight after the party, thank god, and Hollie’s Dad just asks them if they had fun when he picks them up a few houses down the street from Yasmin’s place after midnight. To Courtney’s relief, Hollie doesn’t ask about Cody or anything when they get home – instead, she just wants to remove her makeup and go to bed. Courtney isn’t complaining, although she lies awake for ages, mind buzzing from the music of the party, and the fun with her friends, and… the quiet wonder about what the hell she’s going to do about Cody. But it’s still like… she can deal with that tomorrow.

————————————————

Courtney doesn’t deal with it tomorrow – she completely ignores Cody all weekend, instead, even though he casually texts her a couple of memes as if nothing happened at all. Maybe he actually thinks nothing happened? Whatever. He doesn’t get shitty at her for not replying, so she continues not to reply. Easy!

She spends most of the weekend and Monday listening to her mother stomp around the house ranting about how it isn’t clean enough and no one helps her out and all her children are useless and rude and don’t even help out their mother and they must take after their father because he’s useless too-

Her mother also forbids any of them from leaving the house, so she gets through the rest of the prep work she needs to do for school before the start of sophomore year and spends too much time lying on her bed watching stuff on her laptop.

“Hey, you wanna come over today? You able to go out? I’m just home. Games or something like last summer?” Shayne texts her, relatively early on Tuesday morning. It kinda surprises her, she thought he might just blank her for not immediately breaking up with Cody and losing all her friends or whatever he wants her to do, but… he had been kinda normal to her at the party. And maybe it was Alicia making him do that, she’s pretty sure, but he is inviting her over and her parents are both going to be at work today and Clarke and Conrad are going to Elijah’s place down the street…

“yeah okay won’t be able to come over until like 10 though after the angry parent is definitely gone,” she replies, Shayne immediately sending a sad-face emoji.

“Ew, she being angry again? At everyone or you?” he replies. She pauses, for a second, before sighing lightly. Whatever. It’s… he’s still Shayne.

“Everyone but weirdly she’s kinda taking it all out on Dad? She’s saying we’re all lazy and don’t help her (which is completely wrong…) but it’s Dad’s fault for raising us wrong or spoiling us or whatever. So dumb. She’s only quiet at church lol,” she replies, honestly.

“That’s super weird… I guess at least there’s one place she’s quiet? And hopefully she isn’t targeting you as much?” he almost reassures, Courtney twisting her face a little as she considers it.

“church sucks though it’s so boring and she’s so fake-sweet to everyone lol. But yeah I guess she isn’t targeting me anymore…”

She sets her phone aside, then, wandering downstairs to see how said fake-sweet mostly-grumpy mother is doing this morning. She’s huffing around folding laundry, and Courtney immediately wanders over.

“I can finish folding it if you want to get ready for work?” she offers, a little hesitantly, her mother immediately looking at her with accusatory eyes.

“What did you do, Courtney?! What now? Sneaking off with a boy again?” she snaps, Courtney blinking in surprise for a moment.

“No, Mum… I just offered to help. I’ve barely even left the house this summer,” she answers, a little pointedly, although her mother just huffs in annoyance and all but throws the clothes she’d been holding back down into the basket and stalks off.

————————————————

Courtney wanders over to Shayne’s place around 10am, just like she’d said she would. Her mother had left just after 9, but KC was still stomping around and he demanded she walk the younger boys down to Elijah’s at 9:30. But, by 10, KC is gone too, and she’s the only person actually in the house, grabbing the spare keys from near the front door to lock it as she heads out.

She swears she can hear voices inside Shayne’s house when she steps up onto his porch, but she shrugs it off as she knocks on the door. Maybe his brother is home – he was going to move back in with them in Mansfield over the Summer so he could start a trade school thing over here now he’s had a year off after school in Arizona – and has friends over too, or something.

“Hey Court, come in,” Shayne answers the door, casually, although there’s a weird tinge of nervousness to his tone when he does.

“Hey,” she answers simply, anyway, stepping in and then furrowing her brow in confusion when she instinctively moves over to the living room only to see Alicia, Max and Evie already sitting around the living room. Why didn’t he tell her they were here too? She doesn’t, like, mind – she probably would’ve been more okay with coming over if she knew it wasn’t just Shayne and his being weird to her – but it’s super weird he just… like…

He didn’t even just not mention they’d be here, he really made it sound like it would just be the two of them hanging out like last summer. What?

“Courtney, hey!” Evie greets her, waving and beckoning her further into the living room, before she has a chance to turn back and ask Shayne why he’s being weird again, “come play, Shayne sucks at this, we need a better fourth player.”

“Hey!” Shayne replies, indignant, but Courtney quietly pushes past her confusion and moves into the living room to take the seat and controller that must have been Shayne’s before she arrived. She hasn’t played this game before – it’s some like, exploring RPG type thing but also fighting? She’s not sure – and she hasn’t picked up a gaming controller since she was last actually at his house months ago, but… She quickly settles into it and into laughing at how much their team sucks with the others while Shayne pretends to be angry that he’s not playing.

It's always felt so easy to just… settle in with Shayne’s friends and hang out with them, and for the first time in what feels like forever, she just lets herself relax. They continue playing the game for a while, but after a string of dismal losses, Max makes a comment about getting fresh air and they all end up wandering down to the park. It’s full of younger kids, though, and they soon give up on trying to find a place where the parents there won’t glare at a bunch of teenagers hanging around, to instead return to Shayne’s place and order UberEats for lunch.

It's when the two boys and Evie are tidying up from lunch and arguing over what they’ll do next – Evie wants more of the same game, Max is arguing for a board game he brought and wants to try instead – that Courtney steps out to use the bathroom. After she steps out of the bathroom, though, Alicia seems to appear out of nowhere in the hallway and gesture for Courtney to follow her into the other formal sitting room, the opposite side of the hallway from the living room where they’ve all been.

Courtney assumes maybe they’ve gone for the board game option and the coffee table in there will be better for setting it up, or something, but when she follows Alicia into the room the others aren’t there.

“Courtney, we need to talk,” Alicia starts, her tone turning a little sharper. It makes Courtney flinch.

…She’s going to tell her she can’t hang out with them anymore, isn’t she? Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. Stupid Shayne and his demanding she do everything to ruin her life or she isn’t good enough for him and his friends that are going to be juniors next year and-

“And don’t go running away on me and pretending I’m like, telling you you’re not good enough for us or something,” Alicia cuts through the rambling panic in her mind, as she moves further into the room. Courtney isn’t sure whether to follow, so she stays standing awkwardly near the doorway as Alicia continues, “Shayne won’t actually say anything, but like… You’re kind of being pretty shitty to him, Courtney. He’s not saying anything bad about you, he’s not trying to undermine you or cause problems or whatever, he’s just looking out for you and he’s mostly not even doing anything, he’s just mentioning things and you go off and yell at him about it and assume what he’s trying to say.”

“I don’t need him or you or anyone intervening in my relationships,” she shoots back, immediately, “or telling me what to think about my friends or my boyfriend.”

“We’re not telling you what to think. We’re just… ugh. I don’t know. These people all treat you like shit, Courtney, it’s not just Shayne that thinks that. They’re constantly making fun of you and trying to make you feel bad and like you deserve to be made fun of for all this dumb shit that doesn’t matter, and Shayne said to just not think about the Cody stuff earlier this year because it was more complicated than it looked but like, he was literally trying to hide you and pretend he was single so he could cheat on you,” she explains, pointedly, Courtney feeling a lump rise in her throat and her heart race as she tries to work out what to…

“Well, Laura stopped him anyway,” she answers, quickly, watching Alicia shake her head.

“Yeah, Laura was great about it… after Shayne and I told her that Cody was actually dating you,” she tells her, raising an eyebrow. It makes Courtney blink in confusion for a moment as she tries to process it. She… didn’t know that. She mustn’t talk for long enough for Alicia to think she isn’t going to say anything, because she continues, “and like, Shayne got annoyed at me for doing it, it was mostly me, because like… he was saying it makes things worse for you or something. But… you’ve gone and got this guy who is supposedly your really good friend scared that you’ll yell at him and blank him forever if he even like, stops your boyfriend from cheating on you.”

“It’s Shayne saying that, not me,” she points out, but Alicia narrows her eyes.

“He’s saying it because it’s what you’ve accused him of. He’s told me about you guys fighting, Courtney. Last year and recently. And like… maybe we don’t fully understand all the shit with your friends and why you want to hang around with people that are shitty to you all the time, but you’re kind of being a shitty friend to Shayne too. And like I said, it’s not him just like, being weird about you having boyfriends or other friends or anything. All of us agree that you deserve better than the way all those people treat you,” she continues explaining, her tone level and calm. Courtney’s stomach twists in discomfort, and she immediately regrets all the junk food she had for lunch.

What’s she even meant to say? She’s- just-

“It’s… my friends are being better later. Especially Yasmin and Natalie, Isabel is weird still but she’s being weird to everyone. I’m better than I used to be, I’m not giving them reasons to want to kick me out, I’m not going to give them reasons to,” she half-argues and half-explains. Alicia shrugs.

“I… can see that kinda being true. Them being better anyway. Yasmin especially seems to be less judgey. But it’s like… you shouldn’t need to subject yourself to an asshole guy that keeps lying to you and trying to cheat on you just to keep some friends,” she points out, Courtney simply shrugging in response and letting them stand in silence for a moment as she tries to work out what else to say.

“I… don’t like what he was doing with Laura. But he called me clingy and immature when I confronted him about it and I don’t want to be like that anyway-” she starts, rushed, but Alicia cuts her off.

“It’s not clingy to not want your boyfriend to cheat on you, Court. He wasn’t just hanging out with a friend, you were right to be worried about what he was doing,” she points out.

“He’ll tell my friends he broke up with me for being clingy and weird like a kid though,” she shoots back.

“Then you get in and break up with him first for the Johnny shit?” Alicia suggests, shaking her head, “I know it seems like the end of the world to you to be single. But it’s really not – and like, all your friends are away over summer anyway other than like Shayne and Max, you can try and find someone else before next year. We could even help try and sus out if there’s anyone decent from the other school or something.”

“I dunno,” Courtney answers, plainly, before shaking her head, “you guys not going to tell me I can’t hang out with you anymore because you don’t like my friends?”

“Nope,” Alicia answers, immediately, “and it’s not that we don’t like them – except maybe Isabel – we just don’t like how they act towards you. And Hollie.”

“Was you getting so mad about Isabel a you and Shayne thing?” she asks, almost accusatory, but Alicia immediately laughs.

“Not at all. She just creeped me out, too, and he’s bad at standing up for himself. But like… you know, you could always date Shayne if you need to date someone? He’s nice, you get on okay, he’s a year up from you… friends can’t complain about that,” she shoots back, although her tone is lighter.

“No. Absolutely not,” Courtney answers, although she lets her own tone lighten, too, hesitating for a moment before adding with a grin, “what was it he said you called him? A fake Ken doll that lives on like, protein powder? Nope.”

“Something like that,” Alicia answers, laughing lightly, before moving forward and reaching out to lightly tap Courtney’s arm, “come on, let’s go back to the others. We actually like you hanging out with us, okay? You’re our friend. We care about you – all of us, but especially Shayne. And I know I said he told me about you guys fighting, but he doesn’t tell me anything about all the chats you guys have about other stuff. That’s your business.”

“Okay,” Courtney answers, knowing her voice comes out a little timid, as she lets herself walk along beside Alicia back towards the living room. She kinda expects the others to all stare and confront her when they get back, but instead, they just launch into (badly) explaining the rules of Max’s board game.

She doesn’t think she ever actually works out how the game works through the afternoon, but she does feel herself relax again as she settles back into their company – her friends.

And, quietly, she makes a resolution with herself to find a way to hang back after the others leave and talk to Shayne.

Chapter Text

Courtney doesn’t need to do anything in particular to end up staying behind at Shayne’s when the others leave: Alicia says something about needing to get back to her place for something or another, and Max and Evie quickly realise they need to as well, and within like two minutes, the house settles into silence and Courtney feels herself grow awkward as she crosses her arms over her chest.

“Why did you make a point of pretending they wouldn’t be here? I would’ve been more likely to agree to come over if I knew they were,” she asks him, a little aggressively, turning and watching Shayne’s shoulders hunch forward as he shrugs slightly.

“Alicia told me to. I told her you’d prefer not to hang out with just me, but, she made me say it was just me,” he answers, sighing lightly as he does. It makes Courtney sigh, glancing up at the ceiling and feeling her brain rush back to Alicia’s words early.

…She swears she’s not being a bad friend to Shayne. He’s the one that won’t just drop all the stuff about Cody and her friends.

“You’re the one that just keeps being weird,” she answers, pointedly, watch Shayne let out a frustrated sigh.

“But I’m not, Courtney. You keep putting words in my mouth and trying to tell me what I’m thinking or saying. I know I snapped at you last week but it’s frustrating. I care about you but it feels like no matter what I do – or even if I don’t say anything now – you’re just blaming me for trying to tell you what to do or ruin your friendships or whatever. And I’m not, at all, but I don’t know what I can actually do now when you get angry no matter what,” he almost snaps, but she shakes her head rapidly.

“I’m not getting angry no matter what! If you just stopped constantly talking about them and being weird whenever mentioning them it wouldn’t be a thing,” she answers, fists clenching against her arms still crossed over her chest as he squeezes his eyes closed for a moment, hand lifting up to press against his forehead.

“I don’t want to have this argument with you all over again, Courtney. All I said when I texted you was literally ‘Hey’ and you went on-”

“You said it in the middle of Hollie and everyone making fun of me in the group chat!” she snaps, watching him blink in response.

“They weren’t making fun of you, they were sympathising and they – not me, I made a point of saying absolutely nothing until I at least heard the story from you instead of someone else in case Hollie was missing some context, actually – were saying you deserved better,” he argues.

“That’s making fun of me! It’s making me look pathetic and weak and vulnerable and like a baby and you keep saying they don’t treat me well but if anyone ever doesn’t treat me well it’s my fault and it means I’m a fucking loser that should just hide away and die!” she rushes out with, feeling her mind twisting in knots and her eyes sting as she rapidly blinks to try and stop the tears coming. What fucking ever, he’s right anyway, she’s awful and stupid and she can’t keep a boyfriend and her friends hate her and Hollie is probably trying to undermine her now too and that’s why she kept telling everyone else everything and-

She looks rapidly down at the floor when she finishes, trying to hide her face. It means she’s not prepared when suddenly Shayne’s shoes are right in front of her, immediately in her eyeline, and he pulls her into a hug.

She half-asses trying to resist for a moment, twisting around to the side, but Shayne holds her tightly and she sobs sharply as she instinctively relaxes into his arms.

Shayne doesn’t say anything, for a while, and she keeps sobbing and crying like a dumb baby, anger still fizzling in her mind. She’s so stupid. They were always right, she’s a loser and she never should have tried-

“D’you want to go up to my room?” Shayne breaks the silence, his voice soft. It immediately makes Courtney’s brain stutter as she pulls back and raises an eyebrow at him. She watches his face drop into panic, as he rushes to continue, “no- not- I don’t mean anything like that, god no, just- privacy. I think Mum will be home soon, is all. But we could go to the park, or somewhere else, too.”

She immediately feels stupid all over again. Of course someone like Shayne would never even try anything with her.

“Your room is fine,” she mutters, eventually, returning her head to stare at the floor as her arms cross over her chest and she trudges upstairs behind him.

It’s not the first time she’s physically been in his room – she followed him in here a couple of times in the past when he was grabbing a game or book or something from his shelf – but it’s the first time she lets herself sit on the end of his bed, feet scuffing against the carpet as she still refuses to look up. She feels the weight of him sitting down to her side, and she isn’t surprised when he starts talking.

“Are you upset with Cody, or are you going to let him move past it? I’m not- I’m not judging you. I’m just asking,” he asks, gently, although he sounds almost apologetic as he continues.

It makes the smallest trickle of guilt appear in her chest. And she’s a loser anyway, so… whatever. If she loses all her friends and him maybe she’ll just let her Mum go back to home-schooling her to be a boring Mormon stay-at-home Mum.

“I didn’t like him being like that with Laura. Or inviting Johnny to join the band. I don’t believe him that it’s never his fault anymore but I don’t know what to do because what if I am being clingy and immature,” she mumbles, feeling Shayne reach out and settle a hand against her upper back.

She takes a deep, shuddering breath and sniffs lightly to clear her tears.

“It’s totally reasonable to be mad at anyone in your life for routinely lying about something that matters to you. And definitely about cheating – and I mean, if Laura was really upset at him for it, it’s definitely okay for you to be upset at him about it too, right?”’ Shayne replies, almost cautiously, “I know it’s not as easy as just breaking up with him. There’s… other factors, I get that. But whatever you do, it’s not clingy to be upset at him about this stuff.”

“I guess,” she answers, quietly, reaching up to wipe the slowing tears from her face, “I don’t wanna deal with him anymore. I’m just ignoring him, he’s sending me memes like nothing happened but I just… I think I want to break up with him but I don’t know how I can argue it to the others and I don’t know who’s next.”

“I… don’t know if I have an answer to that, Court. I know it’s difficult, and I’m not trying to say it isn’t. There just… has to be a better way,” he answers, his voice almost confused.

“I have to answer him eventually,” she mutters, shaking her head, “but I don’t like him anymore like… at all. But I should.”

“There’s no, like… you shouldn’t like anyone, and I don’t mean liking no one but- you know what I mean. You don’t have to. If you don’t, you don’t,” he replies, messily.

“He’s like… if he’s being shit to me then it means he’s better than me and if someone is better than me I should be trying to stay with him,” she points out, glancing over to see Shayne shake his head.

“You say I don’t understand how it is for you, Court, but… I don’t think you understand where I’m coming from, or Alicia and stuff, either. It’s- when we say these people treat you like shit we don’t mean there’s something wrong with you. It’s… if anything, the way they behave makes them worse people for being rude. And it’s… I want to help you and support you but I don’t know how to when you always turn it around to that kind of stuff because all I can say is that I don’t think that’s how it works,” he responds, voice turning tired again. It makes Courtney’s stomach twist, and she clasps her hands together tightly in her lap.

“But everyone else tells me that’s why and everything is my fault for being a loser or not enough of a loser if you asked Mum and everyone laughs at me and makes fun of me if I pretend like I’m not worse than all of them,” she pushes, her voice small.

“Only some people tell you that, Court, not everyone. And even like… Are your friends even making that big of a deal about dating at the moment? Yasmin seemed way more chill the other night but I guess that might have been because it was her party,” he points out, carefully.

“They are less interested in dating at the moment. Except Isabel I guess. But Hollie keeps trying to drag me down and saying stupid things and I feel like I can’t risk being single and whatever shit she does that makes me look like I’m basic as shit and naïve and boring.”

“I get the vibe the others are annoyed with Isabel at the moment too,” Shayne agrees, lightly, before continuing, “and you know… I know you’re worried about what they’ll do. And that doesn’t make you weak, it’s… I get it. They matter to you. But I honestly think if you did stand up for yourself more, and break up with Cody, and be yourself… you aren’t basic and naïve and boring, actually. You’re just… way more confident and positive and outgoing around us than them. What if you could be like that around them?”

“They’d make fun of me for trying too hard,” she reminds him, glancing over again to watch him shrug.

“Is it really… trying anything? It’s just… being you. You don’t have to like… suddenly be a different person. Just… do what you want to do for once, not one anyone else you to do,” he tells her.

“Except you’re telling me to do what I want,” she points out, although she tries to keep her voice light, and Shayne lets out a quiet almost-laugh in response. It settles calmly in her chest, and it brings her to try and gather together something in her head… properly. “I’m… sorry I made you feel like you couldn’t talk to me and that I was getting snappy and annoyed at you. I guess you’re not… wrong. Everyone puts all this stuff into my head but I can’t yell back at them but if you say it I know I can actually say stuff to you but I… could just talk to you instead of trying to pretend you’re doing something wrong.”

“I’m always happy to talk to you, Court. I’m not going to judge you for anything, you are just a normal person with some dumb stuff happening to you and being upset isn’t bad. But… it’s not nice to have you yelling at me and accusing me of stuff I didn’t do,” he agrees, his tone turning soft. She nods.

“Yeah, it’s… not. I’m sorry. I’ll… try not to again,” she answers, before giving an almost awkward smile, “I know I’m usually the one being upset over something but… I care about you too, Shayne. And you can always talk to me about stuff, like you did with… the girls stuff earlier in the year. And anything else.”

“Thanks, Court,” he answers, gently, his hand shifting to briefly wrap around and squeeze her shoulder before he retracts it back away from her.

“It was cool hanging out with the others today, but I kinda miss when we just hung out and did whatever,” she admits, after a moment, carefully shuffling back on the bed just a little so she can twist to face him a little more, watching Shayne nod.

“That can be arranged, too – well, maybe. If your Mum will let you?” he asks, Courtney grimacing for an entirely different reason.

“Yeeeah, that’s the hard part. Talking of which… I should probably go home and get screamed at for being out all day, even though literally everyone else was too,” she sighs, Shayne giving her a sympathetic nod.

“Sorry if I kept you here longer than you wanted to be…”

“No, it’s okay. I wanted to stay after the others and talk to you after Alicia kinda… confronted me,” she admits, as she reluctantly stands up off the bed and watches Shayne do the same. Her voice grows nervous, but she continues, “I… wanted to apologise. It’s just… still hard. And I know it wasn’t great and I argued with you again instead but… yeah. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Court,” he answers, simply, and she nods almost awkwardly in acknowledgement before making a snap decision, stepping forward and pulling him into a hug.

He hugs her back, of course, before they both wander downstairs. His mother has got home and she’s wandering down the hall when they get downstairs, but she doesn’t make anything of Courtney’s presence – other than asking her if she’d like to stay for dinner.

“Thank you, but I don’t think my mother would be okay with that,” she replies, carefully, as she has almost every time Shayne’s Mum has asked.

“Okay, honey. But you’re always welcome here, you know that, yeah? And I can always talk to your Mum or Dad to try and get them to let you stay longer too, if you think it would help,” she reminds her. It’s kind of been implied before, but it somehow sits… weirdly with her.

Courtney knows that Shayne’s told his Mum that her parents aren’t exactly quiet or like, calm all the time, and sometimes they blame her for stuff. But…

Whatever. She needs to get home, even if she suddenly wants to do everything she can to not leave the Topp’s house.

————————————————

Courtney is right: her parents are both home when she gets home. Her Dad asks her where she was, and when she answer’s that she was just at Shayne’s place, he asks how he is and how his parents are and if she had fun.

Her mother yells at her: she was meant to stay home, she has to look after the house, she can’t make the boys do it, she’s not a kid anymore that gets to run off on playdates, she needs to prepare herself to be a real woman so she isn’t useless and lonely forever (Courtney doesn’t know how that fits in with not being allowed to even mention boys, but whatever)…

She’s banned from leaving the house for the next week, except for work. Great. Not that she had plans anyway.

It does remind her, though, that she has a babysitting job the next night – one that Cody knows about. One that is a like, 5-minute bus ride from his place, so he’d planned to go there and make out with her on the couch again.

She trudges upstairs later that night with that thought in her mind, inwardly cringing at the entire concept of making out with Cody. She doesn’t want to see his stupid face again. She’s pretty sure he was going to go for like, feeling her up this time with the way his hands kept getting further onto the bare skin of her waist, and the thought almost makes her vomit.

No. She can’t just… she doesn’t want to do this with him anymore. He’s probably going to run off and tell her friends she was being clingy and childish but the others are right, she’s not. He’s being a fucking weirdo.

“you tried to cheat on me to use a girl for a music studio (she told me. Good luck, she hates you now!) and you keep dragging fucking johnny to things… you think you’re so cool but you can’t even stand up to a gross loser like him and you can’t actually try and earn something… we’re over. Forever. Go have fun with your weird screamo anti-everything shit,” she texts him, letting herself type out the text without thinking it through. Whatever. Who cares?

And like, sure, he’s going to go and tell all her friends but…

She has an idea.

Courtney screenshots her message to him, immediately flipping into her group chat with her friends and attaching it to a message.

“taking out the 🗑️. And maybe johnny will screw off with him.”

She isn’t entirely sure what to expect, but Hollie sends a “Yay!” (why can she even use emoji?!) and Yasmin crying-laughing reacts her message.

“Boys are so fucking overrated. Hey, maybe he’ll end up with Sasha from the theatre people? I heard she like… does everything with everyone. Gross,” she replies, a minute later, Courtney raising an eyebrow.

She has heard the rumour that Sasha was caught at school and got detention for some upperclassman’s hand being up her shirt, but… nothing more than that. Huh.

Chapter Text

By the time the last week of Summer arrives, Courtney honestly can’t wait for school to go back. At least then she’ll get to leave her stupid house and maybe some of her friends will actually be in the same state and able to hang out with her. Literally all of her friends were away allllll of July, and most of Shayne’s too, and like she went to his house like… once? Twice? But otherwise all she’s done is look after her stupid brothers and do babysitting and listen to her Mum go on and on and on about how expensive co-curricular activities are and how she’s still mad at her Dad for something his sister said at the 4^th of July thing they trudged to her aunt’s place in Arizona for.

(She doesn’t know what her aunt said to her Mum, but she thought that aunt was cool. She always bought Courtney drawing stuff for gifts instead of stupid bibles and clothes she’d never wear, and she was the one who kept trying to find Courtney’s great-grandma’s Disney animation things to show her, too.)

To be fair, Courtney probably wouldn’t have been able to see her friends even if they were in California instead of being off in weird parts of the country (or like, world, since Yasmin was in Europe again). Her parents have just been stupid and strict and her Mum keeps saying she has to do more summer reading even though she hasn’t had any to do for like a month because she already did it all and she has to look after her brothers even though she always apparently does it wrong somehow and is turning them as awful as she is-

It's kinda what she expects when her Dad calls her downstairs from her room late evening on the Saturday before they go back to school. She took her brothers to the movies with her today, and she bets they blabbed about how the film had like an actual making out scene in it even though it was only PG and somehow that’s her fault even though they were the ones wanting to see it and she didn’t even know what it was about before she went in.

“Courtney, we need to have a serious discussion about your behaviour,” her Dad starts, sternly, when she wanders downstairs to see him sitting at his usual seat at the head of the table while her mother stands, arms-crossed, between the table and kitchen.

Courtney doesn’t really have a response to that – she never really does – so she just raises an eyebrow.

“Don’t you dare look at us with that attitude! Who taught you to do that? Is the school teaching you that? Are they teaching you to move your face around like a disgusting harlot to train you to sell your body because you’ll never be able to amount to anything else?!” her mother shouts, immediately, Courtney instinctively flinching backwards in response.

“I was just saying Dad should continue. It’s just a normal expression,” she mumbles, fidgeting with the loose string on the hem at the top of her jeans’ front pocket.

“Hands in your pockets! Just like everything! You are such a lazy, ungrateful, careless waste of space and you don’t even want to change! You’ve grown into such a useless excuse for a person and I don’t know what we can even do for you! You’re too far gone to ever be saved and it’s all your fault!” her mother continues, borderline screaming. She doesn’t have a chance to say or do anything other than continue standing there – now fiddling with a loose string on the seam of her pants halfway down her thigh, instead – in awkward silence before her Dad steps in.

“Courtney, you really do need to take some responsibility for yourself for once. Your grades are absolutely abysmal – you are clearly mentally deficient and it has to be a result of the awful things you’ve managed to watch and do outside our control. We have every indication that you’re a drug addict with absolutely no direction in life except being with as many boys as you possibly can and dressing up like a slut,” he reinforces, although his voice is level and calm. It makes a thread of anger twist in her mind. What the hell is he even talking about?!

“I passed last year and I did really well in art and English, my grades aren’t bad compared to most people! And I don’t watch or do awful things and I’m not on drugs and I have no idea why you keep saying that, I’m literally just being a normal teenager! And I don’t go around with boys, I don’t do anything with boys because they’re gross and none of the ones at school are cool enough for me anyway,” she shoots back, insistently, watching her Dad sigh in frustration and bring a hand up to press against his forehead.

“LIAR! You are a liar! Don’t you dare lie to your parents!” her mother shouts, “Art and English are useless subjects! You waste so much time on your stupid drawings, they will do nothing for you and you’re not even good anyway, you never have been! And no one is too cool for you, you’re such a worthless whore that you’ll never deserve even the worst man in the temple! You’ve ruined yourself forever and you have no direction in life and you’re not even worth trying to educate and make useful again! We thought babysitting and looking after your brothers might teach you the value of housework and looking after children but you’ve been an absolutely failure at both, I don’t know if your brothers will ever recover from the damage you’ve done to them and I’m in half a mind to tell everyone at the church that you’re turning their kids into heathens!”

“I didn’t do any damage to anyone and everyone I babysit for says I do a good job! The only thing I’ve ever actually taught a kid is I managed to teach Eleanor’s toddler how to brush his teeth, is brushing your teeth evil?!” she snaps back.

“Courtney, you let the boys watch content that will scar them for life. It might be normal to you, but children making out is disgusting and you have exposed your younger brothers to the same material that ruined you!” her Dad emphasises. She feels her eyes growing hot, as her hands shake and grip against her own thighs. She blinks rapidly.

“Watching people making out is disgusting but the characters were like 17 not kids and I had no idea what the movie even was, you said it was fine and they wanted to see it because of the car stuff or whatever! I literally had no idea that was going to happen and like some people at school are gross and make out with whoever everywhere but I hate it and Yasmin and Natalie and stuff hate that too because boys are so gross and the girls that do that kinda stuff get detention and whatever anyway! And I haven’t got a detention for years,” she rants. It’s true – Yasmin has started going on about how these people that let boys do stuff to them are gross and ruining their bodies and like, she gets it. It’s so gross. And it’s not what she does, she’s only kissed like four people ever and no one has touched her chest like all those weird sluts at school-

“It’s your responsibility when you’re looking after children to know those things, Courtney, and you have to accept this. You have a problem with taking responsibility – you need to take responsibility for the things you do and the things you cause,” her Dad continues, his eyes stern when she briefly meets them before looking up at the ceiling.

“You’re a waste of space and a waste of money and you’ll never change. Your brothers still have hope – you are not going to be doing any extracurriculars this year, we need to make sure only the kids that deserve that are able to,” her mother snaps, “now go to your room and try and find some reasonable clothing you’ve got from your sisters to wear to school on Monday, not this awful junk you’ve been blowing all the money you should be using to look after your brothers and save them from your influence!”

Courtney never ignores an opportunity to get out of these conversations, and she quickly turns on her heel. Her knees feal weak and they wobble and collapse under her as she grips the stair rail to slowly trudge back up the stairs and into her bedroom.

Kari isn’t there. She’s in Kami’s room – Kami doesn’t have to move to Arizona to start college for another couple of weeks – and Courtney has no goddamn idea where any of her other siblings are, but whatever.

She collapses down onto her bed when she gets into her room, letting the door slam closed loudly behind her and hearing her mother scream something up the stairs about how she’s breaking the house and destroying the entire home and family. Tears sting at her eyes and she rapidly tries to blink them away as they blur at her vision and cause a lump to sit dry and heavy in her throat.

Her Mum is wrong, she’s a stupid nagging loser that doesn’t understand anything and she keeps disappearing for like three days at a time to stay with friends so why is she complaining to Courtney about not looking after kids right? Shouldn’t she look after her own kids?!

But her Dad is usually… he’s normally logical and yeah her grades aren’t good but like, they’re not bad and it’s not her fault she can’t study without literally ruining her entire life by making her friends think she’s a disgusting nerdy loser covered in acne that doesn’t even wear makeup to cover it up. The clothes she wears are still gross cheap boring things compared to normal people and why does he think she’s on drugs, she hasn’t even seen an actual drug in her life and as if she’d ever be like the weird druggo kids at school and… why is her Dad saying all this stuff too now?

Courtney doesn’t know how long she lies with her head pressed against her pillow, bedcovers strewn messily underneath her and face stinging from the tears and snot collecting between it and the pillow. Her mind spins with anger and she’s confused and why do they have to do this to her and why is her Dad being like this now and Kari is actually the one that like, she literally knows Kari hangs out with some of the druggo kids and she’s like failing school and skips all the time and why doesn’t she-

Her spinning mind is interrupted by exactly her, door flipping open and half-slamming behind her again as Courtney hears her sister snort-laugh pointedly.

“Awwww, baby Courtney crying because mummy and daddy are accusing her of sleeping around but she can’t even keep a real boyfriend?” she teases, Courtney feeling her face redden as her body shakes and she feels like she’s going to turn around and slap her sister and throw up but also just curl up in the corner and disappear into nothing.

“Shut up,” she mutters, sharply, as loudly as she can with her voice muffled by the pillow under her face.

“You know they’re gonna do this shit, stop being a loser about it. And if you’re going to be a loser about it screw off with your not-boyfriend down the street or whatever, don’t get your gross baby crying all over my room,” Kari shoots back, Courtney reluctantly shifting over to see Kari pointing at the door. “Come on. I have shit to do. Out.”

She doesn’t want to deal with Kari being stupid and making fun of her all night but she hasn’t been a dumb baby crying to Shayne for so long and what if she texts him and he says he’s busy-

“Get out or I’ll tell them you’re dating Shayne or grow up and stop crying,” Kari speaks up, again, Courtney cussing under her breath as she fumbles her way off her bed to reach for her coat and immediately trudge down the hallway and back downstairs before Kari can keep being stupid.

She has no idea where her parents are but who cares anyway if they see her, they already hate her and think she’s too far gone to ever fix and maybe they’re right and she’s just stupid and a loser and somehow everyone hates her for opposite reasons so she can’t do anything right for anyone and-

She hasn’t actually been outside since she got back from taking her brothers to that movie this morning, but when she steps out the laundry door (her parents were still in the kitchen arguing about the house or whatever, there was no way they could see her in the hallway or going out the back) she’s immediately hit with rain against her face and the sound of distant thunder. Great. Her jacket isn’t even waterproof, it’s just a light summer one.

Her phone is in her pocket, but she can’t just stand here waiting until Shayne says if he’s free or not, she needs to get away from the house before someone sees her, and she rushes along the side of the house to the sidewalk before pausing as her hair sticks to her forehead and drips down her face.

It’s cold somehow even though it’s goddamn Summer and abruptly she turns to the left, instead of the right, ducking down slightly and hiding her face as she walks rapidly past the front of her parents’ house – she knows all the curtains are closed anyway, but still – the opposite direction from the park. His house is only two up the street from hers, and she soon finds her fingers slipping as she tries to undo the catch on their front gate twice before she manages to open it and step into their front yard.

Shayne’s house has a small, covered porch at the front door up two steps, and she pauses after she trudges up the steps, shivering lightly. She’s out of the rain on the porch but it’s enough that her hair is uncomfortably damp and dripping down her forehead and her jacket held off some of the water but her skinny jeans are wet in patches at the back of her calves, the fabric scratching and pulling uncomfortable against her skin as she shivers slightly.

Should she text Shayne from here? Should she just knock? What if his parents answer? But what if he doesn’t see his texts immediately – she hasn’t looked at her phone since like dinner, she has no idea if he’s talking in any group chats – and she ends up just standing on their porch like a creep-

Courtney feels like she might throw up, but slowly, she reaches up to brush her hair back into place – it’s warm enough outside the rain that it is kinda drying already, although she knows it probably looks gross – and turns to step over to the front door, raising her hand hesitantly for a moment before gently pressing the doorbell.

She doesn’t hear anything immediately and she rocks nervously back on her heels before there’s footsteps and a light shuffling before another moment of silence that she guesses is someone looking through the peephole. She hopes it’s Shayne.

Please be Shayne.

When the door is eventually opened, it’s done so with a rapid fling to reveal Shayne’s Mum reaching out towards her, Courtney’s heart sinking. She’s stupid, she should have expected this, but still.

“Courtney, honey, come inside, come in, how long were you out in this weather?” she rushes, her voice warm and gentle and worried and because she’s evidently just a huge fucking baby, Courtney feels herself bursting into tears all over again in response.

“Just- just to walk over,” she manages to mumble, trying to hold back her tears as she messily steps on the edges of her shoes to tug them off while Shayne’s mother continues to almost pull her inside.

“Oh, well honey, come in here where it’s nice and dry, you can take off that wet jacket, and would you like to dry your hair? Shayne is in the shower upstairs but you can use my hairdryer in our bathroom, it’s okay,” she continues, Courtney feeling herself cry harder in response.

She can’t manage to vocalise a reply this time, and she does awkwardly take off her jacket to hang on the coat rack beside their front door, but she quickly shakes her head. She’s intruding enough just by turning up at their home and she’s crying like a baby and her Mum used to tell her that going off crying to people was manipulative and rude and she’s probably never going to be able to see Shayne again and-

“Would you like to come through into the living room, then, and sit down? Shayne is upstairs, but Robert and I can give you some space while you wait for him if you like or-”

“I shouldn’t have come here I know, sorry, you don’t have to stay out of your own living room,” she mumbles quietly, cutting Shayne’s Mum off.

“Honey, you’re always welcome here, okay? Shayne doesn’t tell me much at all of what you talk about, that’s your business, but he’s mentioned your Mum isn’t always very nice to you to explain why you ask him to meet you out at night a lot, and you can always come here if being at home gets too hard,” she reinforces, firmly, Courtney feeling herself blush and look down at the floor in response.

Shayne’s parents are too nice and she doesn’t know what to say and she still feels like she’s doing something wrong going behind her parents back when maybe they were right and she’s an awful person but she feels just as weird standing in the entry so slowly, reluctantly, she follows Shayne’s Mum into the living room to sit down heavily into their sofa.

Chapter Text

“Would you like to talk, Courtney? Or would you like to put something on the TV?” Shayne’s Mum asks, carefully, as Courtney sits into the sofa. She shrugs gently in response, looking down, and Shayne’s Mum continues, “Robert is just outside in our shed anyway, had a bit of a leak in the roof out there that he wanted to check on with the storm, but it’s absolutely not a problem if you’d like to just have some quiet space to yourself, okay honey?”

Courtney immediately feels herself shaking her head as she suddenly realises she doesn’t want to be alone in their living room feeling completely out of place and how is Shayne even going to know she’s here-

“Was it your Mum being mean to you again?” she asks, after a few beats of silence.

Courtney feels her the response almost burst out of her even though it does so in a quiet, slow mumble.

“It’s not just Mum it’s Dad now too and I’m just an awful person and it’s impossible to fix me now and I can’t ever do anything right ever and they think all this stuff that isn’t true but they keep saying it anyway.”

“What are they saying that isn’t true?” she asks, gently, Courtney feeling the slight movement of the cushion under her as Shayne’s Mum sits into the sofa to her side.

“Tonight they were saying I’m on drugs and have like brain damage or something because I’m stupid and I’m not I’ve never even seen a drug and they keep saying my grades aren’t good enough and they’re not great but I passed everything last year and I did better in some subjects and I can’t study more anyway without my friends disowning me because they think only losers study, and they keep getting mad at what I wear and calling me a slut and they think I’m constantly dating boys and doing stuff with them but I’ve been single for months and they keep making me look after my brothers but then they say I’m destroying my brothers forever and doing it wrong,” she rants, voice still low and eyes staring down at the dark grey carpet on their floor, before adding, “and they made me go to my room but I share a room with my sister and she came back in and was yelling at me for being a baby and told me to get out and I don’t know where else to go except Shayne and I don’t think I wanted to walk to the park in the rain and…”

“You can always come here, Courtney. We mean it, okay? And it’s okay if you just want to ask Shayne to meet you at the park when things are hard, too, and it’s really not very nice of your sister at all to kick you out of your room, but you can always come here. Please don’t think you’re intruding or anything, honey, we have plenty of space here and we’re always happy to have you over, whatever it’s for,” she cuts her off, her words insistent and caring. It makes Courtney’s eyes start tearing up even more, although it also makes her shoulders relax a little.

“Thank you,” she mumbles, quietly.

“I’m sorry your parents are saying things like that about you, and I can’t know why they’re thinking those things or what they’re trying to do, but you aren’t an awful person and you’re certainly not a lost cause. You’re a teenager, being a teenager is hard. It’s okay to make mistakes sometimes, it’s not the end of the world if sometimes your grades aren’t perfect,” she continues, her tone almost careful, “it’s… I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in clothes that are all inappropriate for a girl your age, and I know friends and boys and things can be really difficult and complicated at your age. And I know I haven’t spent much time with you, honey, but what I can see is that you’re a good friend – to Shayne, but the others, too.”

It makes Courtney feel a tinge of guilt in her chest as she sniffs lightly. She hasn’t always been the best friend to Shayne, she knows that now, but she’s… trying, she guesses.

She’s saved from having a response when Courtney’s mother continues, even more hesitantly.

“Can I hug you, honey? It’s okay if you say no.”

“You can,” Courtney mumbles, instinctively, carefully lifting her head just a little and wiping across her cheeks to clear the drying tears as Shayne’s Mum shifts across the couch and gently wraps an arm around her shoulder, squeezing slightly.

“I’m not sure if Shayne is finished in the shower, I can go-” she starts, quickly interrupted.

“Hey- Courtney?” Shayne’s voice appears, quickly turning to confusion. Reluctantly, she twists herself a little to glance over at where he’s entered and wandered half into the living room from the door behind them. She knows her face will be red and she didn’t have time to remove her makeup so it’ll be streaked like anything and-

“You can go upstairs, I’ll give you some space, okay?” his mother tells them, her tone turning gentle again as she lets go of Courtney and stands from the sofa. Courtney weirdly misses the half-hug, but she quickly shakes it off and shrugs as she watches Shayne’s face twist in concern.

“C’mon, Court,” he says, simply, gesturing towards her, and she slowly stands from the sofa herself to follow him upstairs.

He doesn’t say anything as they walk up towards his room, but the second they step inside Shayne turns back towards her and open his arms for a hug.

She’s a dumb baby but she feels herself start crying again as she all but rushes to him, feeling his arms wrap securely around her upper back.

“I got you, Court, it’s okay. And we can talk about whatever and you can tell me what happened or you can just sit here but it’s okay and I’m sorry I wasn’t there, I haven’t checked my phone so I’m not sure if you texted me to go to the park but-” he starts, his tone sure and firm and starting to turn into an almost panicked ramble before she stops him.

“I didn’t text you, Mum and Dad both yelled at me then Kari kept calling me a baby for crying and kicked me out of our room and I had to leave so quickly and then it was raining outside and I just- I just came here,” she explains, messily, “but… your Mum is nice. I feel bad for just coming to your place uninvited but she said it was okay.”

“My parents always say my friends are welcome here whenever,” he answers, gently, before slowly letting go of her and shifting to sit on the edge of his bed. Courtney follows, sitting down close beside him and letting herself lean her head into his shoulder as she starts slowly explaining all the stuff her parents said.

Shayne denies all of it is true, of course, just like his Mum did.

“I feel like I’m being a baby about it though because I know it’s not true and they’re just being weird but I keep crying and getting upset especially because Dad is doing it now and-” she tells him, before breaking off into a sob that makes her want to crawl up inside herself and just stop existing. Shayne’s hand has been resting gently on the back of her shoulder, and he shifts it up around her shoulder to squeeze gently.

“That’s not being a baby, Court. It sucks, it’s… you thought your Dad was the reasonable one, and he wouldn’t do this stuff to you. It’s totally normal that you’re upset he’s going along with it now too. You… thought you could trust him and he could stop your Mum from being really bad,” he responds, Courtney feeling her stomach twist with nerves. He’s right but she doesn’t want to think about it because she feels like she’s lost the only person that actually stood up for her and he’s meant to be her Dad and he always seemed like he actually cared about her but maybe he doesn’t really and no one does and-

“Yeah,” she mumbles, “he was meant to be okay. But I don’t wanna think about it.”

“Do you wanna talk about something else, Court? Get your mind off it?” he offers, hand letting go of her shoulder and letting go of her. She slowly lifts her head off his shoulder, shrugging as she moves just a little bit further away from him.

“I… yeah, but I don’t know what to do,” she replies, sighing softly, “it’s… late. I normally check where everyone is before I go and I try to be home before they’ll be putting Clarke and Conrad to bed or whatever but it’s already late and I left so quickly because Kari kicked me out of our room and… I don’t know.”

“D’you think your parents will go looking for you?” he asks, and she shrugs.

“They might. But Kari won’t let them into the room. But she was in a shit mood so maybe she’ll tell on me, I don’t know,” she mutters, tone darkening. Kari probably is going to tell her parents and then she won’t be allowed back in the house ever and they’ve probably thrown away all her clothes already and they’ll just kick her out and she’ll be a complete loser and-

“How about… you can go home, if you want to, but you can come back here if you can’t get back in safely or something? And after you’re home, we could always text about something else?” he offers, Courtney slowly nodding in response.

She knows she doesn’t want to even try going home, but she has to, and that… that might be okay.

“Okay,” she mumbles, after a moment, as the two stand up from the edge of Shayne’s bed and slowly make their way back downstairs and towards the front door.

“Oh, are you coming downstairs? Would you like to watch something, you can change the channel?” Shayne’s Mum asks, seeming to sense them walking down the hallway and finding the two hovering in the large archway to the living room. Courtney glances over to Shayne, before glancing back at his mother.

“I… think I should try and go home. It’s late, I don’t want to get in even more trouble,” she replies, carefully, watching Shayne’s Mum frown lightly in response, although she is quickly smiling again as she stands and wanders around the couch to face the two in the doorway.

“Okay, honey. But you can absolutely come back here if you need to, even if it’s later,” she tells her, with a nod, seeming to hesitate and almost say something else before she stops.

“Thanks,” Courtney answers, instead, speaking softly. She feels herself blush, suddenly wishing Shayne’s Mum would hug her again, but that would be weird and Shayne would think it’s weird too and-

“Here, honey, can I give you a hug?” his Mum asks, suddenly, and she feels herself nod before she can stop herself, stepping forward away from Shayne slightly and letting herself lightly wrap her arms around her as Shayne’s Mum holds her tightly.

It almost makes her start crying again, but she manages to hold back the tears, slowly pulling back from the hug and also briefly hugging Shayne before she wanders to the front door – the other two still beside her – and peers out.

It’s stopped raining, and she reluctantly grabs her jacket off the coat rack to pull on before she steps outside into the humid, after-storm air to walk back home. She has no idea how long she’s actually been gone for other than that it’s completely dark now, but when she ducks along the side of the house, she can still hear her parents arguing – now with Conrad, too – in the kitchen, and she manages to slip back in and upstairs without seeing anyone.

Kari looks up and rolls her eyes at her when she steps back into the room, but Courtney simply turns the other way to move to her side of the room, hanging her jacket back up in her half of the closet and pulling out pyjamas to go and get changed in the bathroom so she can just go to bed.

Only one more day until she gets to go back to school and get out of here five days a week.

————————————————

“Come here, Shayne,” his Mum tells him, gently, arm lifted to pull him into a hug just after the door closes behind Courtney as she steps down the steps to walk back to her own house.

Part of him wants her to stay, but he knows she can’t, and he reluctantly returns his mother’s hug.

“You okay, honey?” she asks, and he nods as he steps back.

“Yeah. It sucks knowing she’s having to deal with all this and I can’t do anything about it and she’s one of my best friends but… at least I can be here for her,” he replies, shrugging lightly.

“Mhm, sometimes you can’t do anything except be there for your friends when they have to go through something difficult. And… I hope you don’t mind your Dad and I saying she can be here, and trying to help too?” she almost asks.

“Did you ask her to talk to you?” he asks, curious.

“I asked if she would like to talk to me, but she wasn’t sure, and I didn’t press it any further. But then she ended up breaking down to me after I convinced her it was okay that she came here,” she replies, carefully, Shayne nodding.

“That’s… how it kinda happened when she first talked to me about it ages ago too,” he replies, before he mumbles, “I wish I could say she should see a therapist but they got rid of the school ones and her parents could never afford a private one. Or they’d probably send her to a barely qualified super biased church one that would tell her they’re right about some of the stuff.”

“Mm,” his mother nods, lips pursed together, before she continues in a slightly more level tone, “you don’t need to fix everything for her, you don’t need to be a therapist – you aren’t one – but you can be a friend. And… I’d like to try and find little ways to give her more time that she can be away from there, too. Like, if she does athletics or drama with you again this year, maybe I can drive both of you between home and practice or to meets. Things like that…”

“I wouldn’t mind that. And I don’t think she would either,” he replies, shrugging lightly, before he suddenly remembers last year, “although we both thought of that last year with track and field meets and practice and whatever but her parents said she wasn’t allowed to carpool with me or anything before she even mentioned it.”

“Hmmm, interesting. Well, I’ll see if I can subtly say something next time I see them out in the street or anything,” she nods, before reaching over and patting Shayne on the shoulder again, “would you like to use the TV?”

“Nah. I might go back upstairs, I have to finish this book for English prereading before Monday…” he trails off with a sigh.

It’s not like he got bad grades, he was sitting on a 3.5 GPA at least, but with his older brother about to move in again to start doing trade school in Mansfield now he’s had a year off post-high school and Shayne about to start junior year, he’s suddenly thinking about college and applications and… he probably does need to at least not start the school year behind.

Chapter Text

They’ve all had their schedules for the new school year emailed to them the week before, but Courtney honestly hadn’t thought to compare schedules to anyone other than asking her friends which homeroom they had. She’s with Yasmin again, and Hollie this time, while the other two are each by themselves in a different homeroom. She has the same lunch hour as all her friends again, but besides that, she just kinda figures she’ll see what happens on the first day.

One of the first thing she discovers as she wanders into homeroom listening to Yasmin rant about how Europe was totally ruined because her parents decided to go to a cheaper hotel this year and she didn’t get to go to France this time, just Italy and Greece, is that their homeroom is just a… mess. There’s like no full group of friends anywhere, there’s a couple of goths and there’s some jocks and one of the giant basketball girls and the president of the maths club and just… it’s weird. There’s none of the boys they hang out with, although given they like broke up with all those boys in June… maybe that’s a good thing.

And no Johnny is nice.

As first days go, it’s exceptionally normal. There’s a lot more explaining what’s happening for the year and handing out of syllabus than there is actual work, and she cruises through it and tries to find time to talk to her friends amongst it. Isabel seems to have chilled out over Summer and is just rambling excitedly about her parents letting her go to some music festival in LA last week, Natalie is trying to get everyone to help her decide what sport she should do this year, and Hollie keeps rambling about all her hiking over in North Carolina and showing them pictures of mountains and trees and whatever.

For the most part, Courtney just responds to everyone else’s stories, shrugging when they ask what she got up to. It wasn’t much. They don’t seem to care, as long as she’ll listen to them ramble.

“It sucks we have to share lunch hour with the freshmen instead of the juniors now,” Hollie comments as they all walk from math – the five of them are in the same geometry class – over to the cafeteria. Courtney blinks slowly to herself.

Wait… really? Is that how it works? How didn’t she know that? She swears there were some juniors and seniors in their lunch hour last year and it was just random but-

“Yeah, sucks they changed it. Makes sense for extracurriculars though since they’re organised by year,” Natalie answers, with a shrug, Courtney feeling her heart sink in her chest.

Ugh… really? She thought it would be just like last year. She thought she could hang out with the others sometimes and she’s always have someone she could sit with and she’d get to spend time with Shayne at school but now she can’t do extracurriculars and she won’t have lunches with him and she kinda chose a gym elective just to see if she might end up in the same gym class as him since those are totally mixed year levels other than the seniors and she knows he always does gym but she won’t know until Tuesday if she has that class with him and she’ll never even see his friends-

She tries to push down her concern and just get on with the day, although it becomes a topic of conversation in the WhatsApp group chat that evening when Alicia tags her and Hollie and says she missed seeing them at lunch.

“It sucks!! Never gonna see you guys…” she replies, agreeing, literally all of them reacting with a crying emoji.

“Alicia and I are joining you and Shayne in track/field this year though!” Ethan messages, next, Courtney feeling her stomach twist in nerves all over again. She’d managed to just sidestep all the conversations about electives with her friends all day because they’d just call her boring and stupid and tell her it’s ruining her college chances if she does nothing which she knows but… Shayne’s friends are different, right?

“Dunno if I’ll be able to do anything this year…” she sends, before quickly adding, “Hollie and Zach you guys both doing your adventure club thing right?”

“Zach is actually gonna be president of it this year!” Alicia answers, immediately, Courtney feeling herself grin in response despite her best intentions, immediately switching into a private chat with Shayne to send him a side-eyes emoji.

She hasn’t seen Alicia and Zach for a while. She wonders if anything has actually… happened.

“They’re still denying it!!!” Shayne answers her private message, seeming to know her question before she even asks it, before he adds, “it sucks we can’t do lunch together now and I’m guessing your parents are saying no extracurriculars… but we can still find things. We’ll make sure we find things. What gym block have you got?”

“The way it’s going I don’t think I’ll be allowed to leave the house except for school and maybe babysitting 🙄,” she answers, quickly following up with an answer to his actual question, “gym B tomorrow before lunch ew… you?”

“gym A last thing tomorrow… ugh. We tried to have a class together… sorry Court. I hope all your friends are okay after break at least?”

“They’re more chill. Although Yasmin is mad she didn’t get to go to France this time, just Italy and Greece,” she replies, quickly settling into holding two conversations – one privately with Shayne, and one with everyone in the group chat.

The first couple of weeks of school are… fine. Sure, she ends up eating lunch by herself reading a book on the one day that all her friends are off doing tryouts for extracurriculars, but she kinda likes the book they’re reading first in English this year so it’s not that bad. She’s still sitting at their cool table and no one else is cool enough to sit with her, not the other way around. And like, there is only one day where everyone isn’t there – every other day, there’s at least one of her friends around.

There just aren’t any boys at all, for a while. Apparently Isabel is in a long distance relationship with some guy she met at this music festival who lives down in LA, and she brags about having a boyfriend from a real city, but everyone else seems contentedly… single. Yasmin doesn’t say a thing about it – but she does roll her eyes and scoff when they walk into lunch one day early in the third week to see Sasha, one of the girls that hangs out with the druggo kids although Courtney’s pretty sure she doesn’t smoke, making out with a random freshman.

“Ugh. So desperate, she’ll sleep with literally anyone that will take her,” Yasmin mutters, “girls are really out here ruining themselves forever by throwing everything away to the first boy that will take them. Have some self-respect.”

“It’s kinda weird how she’s all over a freshman so quickly,” Hollie agrees, Courtney nodding her agreement, although it does remind her a little of Isabel’s approach to Shayne last year. And to Harry, whatever happened to him. Andddd to a guy she’s met like once at a music festival…

Anyway.

“It’s a good thing none of us are ever that desperate. There’s no decent guys here, don’t wanna drag yourself down trying to date one of them when we know they’re all stupid and gross,” Yasmin continues, simply, Courtney feeling it hit her as almost a wave of relief at the same time she tries to hold back her expression of confusion.

She knows Yasmin always thought she was too cool for any of the guys here, but now… they all are? They’re not going to ditch her forever if she doesn’t race to find a new guy as soon as possible?

“That’s why I went for someone in LA. We can’t be single, that’s just as bad, but it can’t be anyone here unless you wanna be stuck in this stupid dead-end town forever with no life,” Isabel adds, Courtney feeling her chest immediately tighten in panic again.

How the hell is she going to find a boy from elsewhere when she never goes anywhere except her family’s house in Arizona and-

“Nah, I mean, LA boy sounds alright, but maybe we need to be single this year,” Yasmin pushes, glancing pointedly at Courtney.

She feels like talking back at her that it’s not like Courtney wanted to date any of those boys, Yasmin told her she had to, but she quickly bites it back. That would not be helpful. Also… it’s not true? She totally wanted to, why is she thinking she didn’t. She did like them at the time and she needed to date boys back then to be good enough to be able to not date them now. There.

She’s saved from any more talk of boys by Yasmin launching into talking about this beach she went to in Greece again, anyway.

“Why haven’t you gone to any tryouts this year?” Natalie snaps at her later the same lunch, Courtney trying not to wince in response. She thought she’d gotten away with just not saying anything so far, but it’s not like she hadn’t had time to think about an excuse. Or something.

“My parents won’t let me do anything because my brothers want to do too much or whatever,” she rolls her eyes pointedly, “younger brothers suck.”

“Tell me about it. My parents won’t let me get my driving permit because they want me to keep using their driver with my brother and I can’t drive him around on a permit,” Yasmin agrees, shaking her head, “maybe you could get a driving permit and say you could take yourself to practice and stuff though?”

“My parents won’t let me get one either,” she answers, shrugging, although she hasn’t actually asked. Kami and KC had got theirs in junior year, but Kari is a senior now and still hasn’t got hers and Courtney’s still only just a sophomore so… she doesn’t even know when she can get it.

Whatever. None of her friends have their driving permits – she’s pretty sure Hollie’s Mum will let her get it as soon as she’s legally allowed to, but Hollie isn’t even 16 yet – so it’s not like they can make fun of her for that, and they don’t, as their conversation moves on.

————————————————

Courtney openly winces when she’s sitting on her bed one evening later that week – Thursday – and her mother calls her name up the stairs. She’s actually doing some homework because she’s trying to at least keep up with this US history class because it’s kinda interesting and she doesn’t want her night ruined by her Mum going on some stupid rant about stupid whatever. She doesn’t have any test results back from this year yet anyway, she’s only had one math quiz and it was like, yesterday. But she can’t ignore her mother, and slowly, she trudges down the stairs.

“You still friends with that boy up the road, Shayne?” her mother asks, almost aggressively, when she gets downstairs.

“Um… yeah?” she answers, openly confused, watching her mother sigh heavily in response.

“Can’t even form a proper sentence anymore you’re so stupid. Well, whatever, you have a long weekend the weekend after next and the family is going out for dinner on Sunday night but we don’t want you mixing with the young kids and ruining them too so you have to go over to Shayne’s house for dinner, I was talking to his mother about your antics and she offered to make sure you don’t keep destroying yourself or destroying our house with your ungodly whims,” she explains, amongst the insults, Courtney feeling her mind bristle with excitement at the same time her heart sinks heavily in her chest.

She’s not stupid and she’s not ungodly and she wouldn’t hurt anyone and usually her little cousins like hanging out with her and she doesn’t mind them because it’s Dad’s family that live in California, not her Mum’s, and she hasn’t had a proper dinner out for AGES, but…

Shayne’s Mum wouldn’t actually agree with her mother or try and say stuff like that to her, she’s pretty sure. It kinda seems like Shayne’s Mum is just… making her be allowed to go over to Shayne’s place.

“Okay, I guess I’ll go to their place then,” she answers, trying to make her reply seem neutral and at least mildly annoyed instead of showing even a hint of the quiet excitement fizzling in her chest.

“And you better be grateful that family is willing to feed such a selfish, stupid whore!” she snaps, immediately, Courtney feeling herself shudder in response.

“I’ve got a US history test next week I’m studying for, can I go back upstairs to study?” she asks, and her Mum just sighs aggressively instead of actually replying, but it isn’t a no.

Courtney fully intends to go back to studying because they’re studying the Civil Rights movement and they’re doing it properly and she wants to learn about this stuff with everything she hears about going on for POC now even though Mansfield is like, super white, but first, she pulls out her phone to type out a text to Shayne.

“Soooo I think your Mum might’ve tricked my Mum into letting me go over to your place next weekend?”

“She did! 🤪 Mum told me. She had to say some dumb stuff to your Mum to get her to agree but Mum actually just wanted you to be able to come over here. And I think you’ll be able to be here for most of the afternoon and dinner too?” Shayne answers only thirty seconds later, and it makes her grin to herself. It’s… kinda cool to have Shayne’s Mum scheming for her like that.

“I think my cousin’s (Dad’s side) must be coming into town for something, Mum said I can’t go out with them because I’ll ruin their kids, they’re only like elementary school and preschool kids. But whatever. She’s dumb and they usually get here just after lunch so… maybe it can be like when I could actually come over and play games?!” she replies, mind wandering back as she does.

The Summer before last was so much better than any time since, she actually got to hang out with Shayne and his friends and just relax and do fun stuff and no one was making fun of her and they just liked her and invited her to everything and she became their friend so quickly and now she hasn’t even seen any of them in literally months, other than passing Max in the hall a couple of times because they have classes in rooms near each other on a Thursday afternoon, and the couple of times she saw Shayne back in the holidays. She hasn’t even snuck out to see him since when she ended up at his house crying to his Mum…

But it’s okay. She gets like, half a weekend AND dinner and probably time after dinner until they get home, too. And it’s only like, a week and a half away.

But, for now… US history. And she’ll just pretend she doesn’t also have a biology quiz tomorrow that she’s completely ignoring because the biology teacher is awful at explaining things.

Chapter Text

It feels like the next weekend and week drag, although nothing really happens. Her friends at school aren’t really saying she’s doing anything wrong this year except for like, dressing too plain, which she knows but her Mum has been super on her case about not dressing like a slut so it’s all she can do, and her Mum is mostly just yelling at her Dad again about how the house is falling apart or something (it’s not, Courtney has no idea why she’s saying that. Their house is fine and there’s even a spare room now Kami has moved to Arizona, although she doesn’t dare suggest she and Kari could have separate rooms now). She’s pretty sure she failed the biology quiz, but she’s also pretty sure she aced the US History one, so… whatever.

Sunday can’t come soon enough, but when it does, she forces herself to act at least a little bit put out as she makes her footfall heavier down the stairs in the morning and roughly grabs a bowl out of the cupboard to pour her cereal.

“Don’t grump around like that, you should be grateful we’re even letting you eat at all!” her mother snaps, “you’re going to end up needing to wear KC’s old clothes if you keep gaining weight like that.”

Okay, she’s actually mad now. She isn’t gaining weight! She’s literally losing it because she isn’t exercising as much because she never gets to leave the house and she isn’t doing track so she’s losing muscle and her Mum keeps feeding her less than everyone else anyway-

“Maybe she’s stopped the drugs, those make you lose weight,” her Dad comments, appearing out of nowhere into the room.

“Are the cousins coming here first?” she asks, stepping past all the weight comments.

“Yes, they are, but you’ll have to be out of here before they get here – 1:30pm. I confirmed with Robert that you can go to their place then and they’ll deal with you,” he answers.

“We’ll have to give them something as an apology for having to deal with her,” her mother adds, almost sneering. Courtney assumes she’s no longer actually part of this conversation, successfully managing to tune it out as she pours some milk onto her cereal (she ignores her mother screeching about how she’s using too much) and starts eating her breakfast.

She spends most of her morning sitting in her bedroom scrolling through Instagram on her phone and half-listening to Kari clearly trying to make her jealous as she rambles about how excited she is to get to play with their little cousins and how she bought a new dress that she could wear out to the (very boring, but whatever) semi-fancy restaurant they’re going to for dinner.

“You do know I’m literally getting to spend half a day with Shayne, right?” Courtney snaps, glancing over to Kari’s side of the room in the middle of her bragging about how much fun she’s going to have with the kids and how Courtney must be so sad she’s missing out.

“Yeah it’s his house but you’re being babysat by his parents because you’re a baby,” she teases, her voice almost singsong. It makes Courtney roll her eyes, before she pauses.

…Does Kari actually think Shayne’s parents have agreed with their parents that she needs to be looked after for the day? Should she pretend even to her sister that it’s like that? She certainly is to her parents, but… Even when she’s being stupid, it’s not like Kari ever sides with her parents about literally anything.

“You of all people should know most adults don’t buy Mum’s bullshit,” she says, simply, raising an eyebrow as she watches Kari.

“And most parents won’t actually undermine someone else’s parenting even if it’s stupid parenting, so… don’t be so sure you’re just gonna hang out with your not-boyfriend all day,” she answers, tone turning a little more serious, but Courtney merely shrugs and turns back to scrolling through her phone. She can’t be bothered to try and convince Kari otherwise. And she knows Kari is fully aware Shayne is very much not her boyfriend.

She doesn’t get to spend her whole morning doing nothing: she does get yelled at to clean the downstairs shower (why they need to clean the shower for guests that are only staying during the day she doesn’t know) and she has to tidy the kitchen after lunch, but at 1:30, she finds herself firmly kicked out of the house. She manages to keep a vague annoyance on her face until she’s walked up the front path and turned left towards Shayne’s, but as soon as she’s off her parents’ property she feels her steps lighten and her lips turn upwards ever-so-slightly.

Courtney isn’t sure who will answer the door at Shayne’s place, but it doesn’t entirely surprise her that it’s Shayne’s mum with Shayne nowhere in sight - just in case one of her parents walked her over, or something. Not that they’d ever care enough to do that, but anyway. She figures that’s why.

“Courtney, honey, come in! I hope you don’t mind I had to just bend the truth a little bit to get your parents to think we don’t care about you-” she starts, brightly, cutting herself off as much as Courtney does as she invites her inside and straight into the living room.

“I understood what happened as soon as Mum told me, thanks…” she hesitates for a moment, “uh, thanks Mrs. Topp.”

“Cathy, you can call me Cathy honey. Or Cath,” she tells her, immediately, Courtney feeling the slight tension that had appeared in her shoulders disappear just as quickly as it had arrived. Mrs had immediately felt way too formal given everything the other day and she thinks… She thinks she can be okay with a first name.

“Mum asked me to bring this as… She told me to say it’s an apology for having to deal with me,” Courtney adds, a little awkwardly again, as she reaches into the bag she’d been told to bring over and pulls out the box of dodgy church chocolates that had been shoved in there and handed to her with a long rant about how awful she is. She tries to push down all her mother’s words about being manipulative by going crying to people and how she shouldn’t tell anyone their business and- her Mum did literally tell her to say that. So.

“Oh… well, no apology necessary, but thank you,” Cathy answers, a little hesitantly, as she reaches forward and lightly taps Courtney on the shoulder. She has no idea what to say then, but she’s saved by Shayne wandering into the living room just behind them. She turns around to see him grinning just as much as he usually is.

“Court, hey!” he greets her with a bright exuberance that immediately makes her forget to feel awkward.

“Hey Shayne,” she replies, feeling herself laugh lightly for no reason as she sets the now-empty bag down just behind the sofa and follows him around to sit down into it, his mother wandering out of the room to leave them be.

“You up for playing something? Or something else? We can do whatever you feel like,” Shayne tells her, Courtney glancing up over to his PS4.

“Teach me some new game? It’s been forever, way back in summer with your friends was the only time I’ve played anything in like, a year,” she replies, feeling herself grin as she watches Shayne jump up from the couch and bounce over to the cabinet where his games are stored.

“Ethan gave me this really silly co-op game so the rest of us could play it here, it’s called Overcooked, it’s like… Did you ever play those old Diner Dash games? Or CakeMania?” he asks, as he sets the game up and grabs two controllers.

“Never had computers at home or school before like, last year,” she answers. It was always something her friends made fun of her for, but she doesn’t feel the need to be sketchy about it to him.

“Okay, well, it’s cooking where you have to like move things between different places to finish them and serve customers but the stages move and do weird things and… I’ll just show you? We can start working together instead of competing,” he offers, and she nods and takes the controller he hands her.

She’s not good at the game in any sense at all - she manages to mess up enough that they fail the first two levels they try - but slowly, she starts to work it out just a little, and either way, it’s fun. She’s laughing and hanging out with one of her best friends and she doesn’t have to think about anything except his stupid, way too loud laugh and trying to cook what the game’s customers are asking for without burning down the whole kitchen (again).

It's easy to lose track of time, especially when Shayne suggests they switch to a competitive mode and she actually manages to beat him once and then gloat about it even as he beats her four times in a row afterwards. They’re talking about everything and nothing at all as they play – she keeps blaming her losses on him distracting her asking her opinions about some of the sophomore teachers she has now that he had last year, because it’s true, he’s totally distracting her on purpose – and she doesn’t really look up until she hears his mother call out to them from the kitchen.

“Hey Courtney, Shayne, would you like some of this apple cake while it’s still warm from the oven?” she asks, lightly, Courtney immediately feeling a familiar twinge of guilt swirl in her stomach. She knows Shayne’s Mum bakes sometimes, but… usually just for special events. For birthdays, and yeah, she does it for Shayne’s friend’s birthdays and she’d eventually felt okay with the fact Shayne helped her bake a cake for her 15^th birthday but… It’s no one’s birthday and it’s not a special event and the only thing different to a normal weekend for them is that she’s here.

“Look, I think we can abandon this level anyway, the customer serving area is currently on fire,” Shayne comments, lightly, before hitting pause on his controller and turning to Courtney, “c’mon, this cake is really good, you gotta try it.”

He doesn’t offer an explanation for why his mother made it, but slowly, Courtney sets her own controller down on the coffee table in front of the sofa and follows Shayne over to the kitchen where his mother is busy cutting four sizeable slices out of the cake and setting them in bowls.

“We’ve got vanilla ice cream in the freezer too if either of you would like ice cream with yours,” his mother comments.

“I’ll have ice cream with mine!” Shayne’s Dad’s booming voice seems to appear out of nowhere – Courtney’s pretty sure he’s been out in his shed – and it almost makes her jump, before she realises it’s just him and glances over as he continues, “Courtney, good to see you! What have you kids been up to this afternoon?”

“Shayne’s been trying to teach me how to play this game,” she starts, trying to reach for the right way to explain said game to an adult man that she’s pretty sure has no idea about anything to do with video games, before he quickly answers.

“Oh! Is this the one that Max was yelling about setting a fire extinguisher on fire last weekend?” he asks, turning to Shayne, who simply laughs in response.

“Yeah, Overcooked. Maybe I should teach you to play sometime, Dad? You can do like, mechanic things, hand-eye coordination and whatever is good for games too.”

“Oh god no, even back when I was a teenager and it was just arcade machines I was always awful at them,” he answers, laughing just a loudly and boisterously as Shayne always does. It’s the only reason it doesn’t make Courtney jump.

She doesn’t choose to have ice cream with her cake – she’s never been a fan of ice cream with baked things, even pie, the different textures and temperatures kinda weird her out – but she watches as Shayne and his Dad both scoop ice cream onto their slices, awkwardly holding her own and one of the small forks his mother had set out.

Shayne starts eating his cake standing near the kitchen bench as his mother asks his Dad how whatever project he’s working on in his shed is going, so Courtney starts eating too, trying to force herself not to start panicking as she does. It’s all normal and fine and they’re not gonna get mad at her for doing the wrong thing especially just for eating cake that his Mum gave her-

“Shayne mentioned you’re not doing track this year, Courtney? Have you switched to something else?” his mother asks, conversationally, and she feels herself wince slightly. She can hear Shayne start to say something, but she quickly cuts him off.

“Um, no, I- my parents said I couldn’t do anything this year, they want my brothers to do more stuff instead,” she answers.

“Younger brothers?” his Dad asks.

“Yeah, two. 5^th and 6^th grade,” she replies, “and my older brother still lives with us too. And just one of my older sisters now, the other two moved for college.”

“Ahh, it is nice to have just one kid at home,” his Dad nods, before glancing over to Cathy, “Brian is moving back in with us next week actually, he’s got a job here in town doing a mechanics apprenticeship, I knew one of the boys would end up doing it… although I don’t think that’s going to be you, is it, Shayne?”

“Nope,” Shayne answers, laughing lightly at his dad’s teasing, “too dirty. I’ll leave that to you and Brian.”

Shayne’s Mum takes the bowls and forks off all of them before Courtney has a chance to offer to help clean up, waving them all off to go do their own thing. Neither Shayne nor Courtney actually feel like going back to the game now, and instead, she follows him up to his room to look through some comics Zach had found and loaned to Shayne for a while.

“Hey, Shayne? I know you don’t like getting your hands dirty, but I need a second pair of hands to get this table moved. And I have stained it already so it’s not really dirty,” his Dad comments, lightly, appearing in the doorway of his bedroom as it moves into evening, “I’d ask your mother, but she won’t let me near the kitchen, thinks I’ll ruin dinner…”

“I mean, she’s been right about that in the past,” Shayne jokes, lightly, before shrugging, “okay, I guess. Court, you wanna come out the back or you can just stay here?”

“I’ll come. Could do with some fresh air. I don’t like, get out ever anymore,” she answers, honestly, stretching a little as she stands up from where she’d been sitting with her legs twisted over beside her on his bedroom floor. It’s… annoyingly true. Gym class is inside the gym more than it is out on the fields, her friends never leave the cafeteria during lunch hour, and her parents always tell her she’s ruining the boys’ play time if she goes out in their backyard so she just kinda… doesn’t go outside now she doesn’t have track. And her Mum has been driving them to and from school every day, so she doesn’t even get to walk to the bus.

Maybe if her Mum is saying she’s gaining weight she should ask to go to the park to exercise or something.

Shayne’s backyard isn’t anywhere near as picture-perfect as the front of their house is. It’s mostly mown, although there’s an overgrown patch in the back corner, and the paved patio area has a handful of faded fabric chairs but no table.

“I’m trying to do up all the outdoor furniture so it’s useable again… they came with the house when we moved in but they were trashed. It’s all really good quality hardwood, though, it’d be a shame to waste it,” Shayne’s Dad comments as she glances around the back garden, and she goes to apologise for seeming like she was unimpressed by their yard or something before she realises he was just… agreeing with her.

“My oldest sister did up some outdoor chairs my Dad had had forever for some like, senior art project, they ended up kinda cool. She designed and printed all new fabric for them and stuff,” she comments, instead, remembering back to when Kathryn had done that like 4 years ago now. They had looked pretty cool, for a while, but her Mum just kinda threw them in the back corner and they’re faded and falling apart again now.

“That sounds like a great project,” his Dad comments, Courtney slowing to a stop and trying to stay out of the way when they get to his shed in the back corner of the backyard – it takes up a good third of the space out there – and see the metal roller door open to reveal what looks like a very heavy wood table sitting on the gravel floor. “Shayne, you want to grab the front or the back?”

“I think I can walk backwards,” he answers, shrugging and moving to lift the table from the end closest to the door while his Dad wanders further into the shed to get the other.

Shayne visibly struggles to actually lift the table up off the ground, though, and after a moment, Courtney pushes her nervousness aside and steps closer, shoulder-bumping him out of the way so they’re each on a corner of that end.

“See, Shayne? Not that hard,” she jokes when they lift it with ease between the two of them, moving it further out of the shed so it’s resting on the mown grass in the sun. Shayne’s Dad laughs openly while he scowls at her teasing.

“Thanks Courtney, Shayne- need it to dry out in the sun for a while before I paint it,” he nods.

Chapter Text

As much as Courtney would love to stay outside after they help Shayne’s Dad move the table, there really isn’t anything out there to do, and they wander back up to Shayne’s room to look at Zach’s comics and hang out and chat until dinner.

She’s not… really used to eating dinner together as a family anymore. Sure, it happens sometimes, but there isn’t actually enough seats at her parents’ dining table for everyone to sit down at once even now Kami is gone – KC is still around so there’s 7 of them and only 6 seats – and even if they are all eating the same thing there’s usually someone yelling or someone rushing in or out. She doesn’t know if Shayne normally eats dinner with his parents – she figures he probably does sometimes? – but when his mother calls them downstairs, she wanders down behind Shayne to find his parents in the midst of serving themselves from the two trays sat on the end of the kitchen bench.

“Hi you two, we figured better you serve yourselves whatever you like!” Cathy starts, brightly, gesturing across the roast vegetables on one tray and carved slices of roast… lamb? Courtney thinks it looks like lamb, she isn’t entirely sure… on the other, “I hope you don’t mind a roast, Courtney honey, we often do a Sunday night roast.”

“It looks good, thank you,” she replies, immediately, and she’s not lying. They used to have roast on Sunday nights in the church youth group sometimes when she was younger, and it was always kinda cold by the time it got served to all the kids and not great but this looks… nice.

She sits down beside Shayne at the table, across from his Dad, with her plate of food and immediately starts eating. The soft quiet of the room as the four of them eat almost feels awkward and uncomfortable for a moment, compared to the chaos she’s used to, but Shayne’s Dad soon breaks the silence to ask Shayne how his field practice was the other day and which events he’s doing this year.

Courtney knows it’s not intentional at all, but it still makes her just a touch sad. She misses being able to do track. Not even because Shayne was there – just being able to run and exercise and move her body. The coaches sucked and she didn’t really talk to anyone else in the track team, but it was still something she could do.

“You do track right, Courtney? Or you said earlier, not this year?” he turns the questioning to her, and she tries not to wince as she glances down to pretend she’s concentrating on cutting the roast potato on her plate.

“Um… I have done it in the past, yeah, I like running. Not like, cross country length, shorter stuff. But nothing this year,” she replies, a little awkwardly.

“Was there… a reason your parents wouldn’t let you this time?” Shayne’s Mum asks, hesitantly. She shrugs.

“My brothers wanted to do more stuff and I think me doing something too was too much for like… driving to practices and cost and stuff,” she replies, shrugging, watching both of Shayne’s parents frown lightly.

“I suppose you can still run around the neighbourhood?” his Dad offers, after a moment. It makes Courtney pause for a moment. She’s a guest in their house, she should just be polite and quiet but… she’s only here because her parents are being mean and stupid and Cathy is trying to help her out.

“It’s… they kinda aren’t letting me go out like at all,” she answers, after a moment, “I guess I could sneak out to go running but it’s harder to sneak out during the day and I don’t want to run at night.”

“Mmm, that might not be safe, honey,” his mother agrees, nodding, although her brow furrows, “do you guys get to spend much time outside at lunch and things at school? You have all those big fields out there and the basketball courts…”

“People tend to stay inside at lunch except like, some of the seniors I guess. Evie plays basketball out at lunch sometimes but your friends prefer to stay in the cafeteria right, Court?” Shayne answers, before glancing over to prompt her to continue. She’s kinda glad he answered and gave her a minute.

“Yeah, we usually just stay in the cafeteria,” she agrees, simply.

“Maybe I need to get you to help me painting that table so you can get some sun!” his Dad comments, and it’s clearly a joke, Courtney feeling herself smile in response as the idea twists in her head.

“I mean… sure,” she answers, lightly, part-playing along but also… honestly? It’s outside. It’s at Shayne’s place, so he’d probably be there making dumb jokes. It sounds alright.

“He’s kidding, honey, you don’t need to,” Shayne’s mother speaks up, gently, but Courtney shakes her head in response. Screw it.

“I know, but… I’m probably going to get like, vitamin D deficient. I’m not even allowed to walk to the bus anymore to go anywhere, I want to have reasons to be outside,” she answers, honestly, glancing over to see Shayne’s Dad raising an eyebrow and quickly adding, “I don’t want to take your project from you, though, of course.”

“He hates the painting part, he’s been putting it off for weeks,” Shayne jumps in, his Dad shooting him a glare for a moment before breaking into a smile and a loud laugh.

“Yes, yes, I know. I do fixing things, machines, building things. The painting is just… it’s not my favourite part,” he admits, shaking his head before glancing back over at Courtney, “you’re more than welcome to help out – but only if you’d like to.”

Their conversations jumps between all manner of things for the remainder of dinner, although none of them are about her or her situation after that – it’s all just casual, chatting and joking, and she almost says yes when his Mum asks if she wants a second serve of dinner just to keep it going. She quickly makes herself decline, though – she doesn’t want to be greedy, and she thinks she’s full anyway – before offering to help clean up.

“No, no, not at all, we’ve got that under control,” she answers, smiling, and she watches as Shayne’s Dad soon stands from the table and starts to tidy the dishes and stack the dishwasher while the other three remain chatting a little while longer.

“D’you know what time you have to be home, Court?” Shayne asks, and she shrugs, but his mother quickly speaks up.

“Your mother mentioned after 9pm to me – she wasn’t sure when they’d be back. Robert and Shayne and I often watch a movie Sunday night, would you guys like to watch something with us tonight? Or you’re welcome to go back upstairs, if you’d prefer,” she offers, Courtney immediately knowing her answer.

She doesn’t care what the movie is. She’s done feeling awkward – she wants this, she wants to be in this happy, quiet, little family environment where everyone is calm and joking and she doesn’t have to run away to her room straight after dinner and hide herself in her own mind.

“I don’t mind. Court?” Shayne asks, glancing over, and she glances back over to him to try and convey her response before she suddenly panics.

Is he going to think this is weird and it’s too much? Is he going to be upset she’s kinda like, intruding into his home and life outside school and friends and whatever? Is he going to get sick of her?

“Actually, we’re watching the first Tom Holland spiderman tonight, right?” Shayne quickly adds, glancing back over to his mother.

“That was the plan…”

“That’s a good one, I’d be happy to watch if that’s okay,” she speaks up, glancing from Shayne back to his mother.

“Of course!” she replies, with a nod, “I’ll go and get the TV going.”

“Thanks,” she whispers, turning to Shayne after his mother moves into the living room.

“All good, Court. I wanted to watch it anyway,” he whispers back, face splitting into a grin. She laughs lightly before following him over to the sofa.

It’s dark by the time the movie is finished and she needs to go home. Shayne hugs her goodbye, as does his mother, but Cathy steps outside and wanders down the path with her, telling her she’d like to walk her home and make sure everything is fine.

“If your parents answer the door, you can pretend to be annoyed or something about this afternoon, yeah?” she whispers as they pass the house between Shayne’s and hers.

“Yeah,” she replies, quietly, fashioning her face into a dejected almost-glare and shifting her gait to trudge along the ground as they enter her parents’ yard and approach the front door.

“Ah, Catherine, I hope you managed and she wasn’t too disastrous and rude?” her mother answers the door mere seconds after Catherine knocks on it, Courtney rolling her eyes in response, unsurprised when her mother continues, “Courtney! Have some respect!”

“We managed,” Shayne’s Mum replies, simply, “it must be so difficult for you having to manage – what is it, six children at home?”

“Five, now, our second-eldest daughter has just moved in with my sister in Arizona to start college over there,” her mother answers, with a nod, “ah, it can be a lot, but our eldest son is a good boy and if Courtney doesn’t completely destroy them her younger brothers are just good kids, too. She’s the worst, I’m sorry to have to put her on you.”

“Ah, not a problem, Courtney’s one person – and Shayne is a good kid, he doesn’t need much parenting these days,” Cathy nods, her tone light and… weirdly unlike how Courtney’s ever heard it before, especially as she continues, “you know, we are just up the street – we’re happy to have Courtney over whenever necessary if you’d like a bit of a break or anything.”

“Oh, we might take you up on that,” her mother agrees, with a nod, “as long as you don’t mind – but we really do want to stop her ruining her younger brothers, and I’m sure Shayne is old enough to hold his own.”

“Not a problem,” Cathy answers, simply.

“Okay, well, we’ll see what happens – but yeah, sure. Courtney, go to your room, you don’t want to keep Kari up when she needs to study,” her mother finishes, having turned to face Courtney instead of Shayne’s mother.

“Uh- bye Mrs. Topp,” she mumbles, glancing over at Shayne’s Mum for a moment, quickly stopping herself from using her first name before she trudges inside and up the stairs.

Courtney doesn’t hear if her and Shayne’s mums say anything else to each other, instead heading straight up to her room to find Kari lying out on her bed on her phone.

“Heard Shayne’s Mum had to bring you home because you were that shit?” she comments, Courtney immediately rolling her eyes.

“Believe what you wanna, Kari,” she shoots back, moving over to her own bed although glancing back over when she hears the movement of covers to see Kari sitting up and crossing her legs under her as she looks over.

“Is Shayne’s Mum really like… inviting you over to help you?” she asks. It makes Courtney pause. Does she… want to answer that?

“Why do you need to know?” she asks, pointedly. Kari sighs.

“I’m not gonna rat you out, Courtney, you know I think Mum is a fucking psycho,” she answers. Courtney rolls her eyes, although she reluctantly shuffles to sit down on her own bed facing over towards Kari.

“…Yeah. She knows what’s going on. She’s trying to get Mum to send me over there more so I can get away from here,” she replies, eventually, before turning her tone a little snappier again, “you should like it, I’ll get out of our room when I’m not here.”

“Does Shayne have any siblings?” she asks, brushing past Courtney’s comment.

“Two older brothers, but like, way older. Oldest is in Colorado and the other one stayed in Arizona when they moved to finish high school and then took a year off over there but he’s moving back in with them here like, this week,” she answers, watching Kari nod in response.

“Kind of an only child kind of not then I guess,” she muses, Courtney simply shrugging before she moves back off her bed to search for her pyjamas so she can change and go to bed.

It’s not, like, that late, and she’s buzzing from the afternoon of just getting to chill and have fun at Shayne’s place, but she’d like to go to sleep before any yelling starts while she’s still got that buzz in her mind.

————————————————

The rest of September and October pass by with everything just settling into… normal. She’s somehow doing really well at US history, but she’s low key failing biology and geometry and Spanish, but so are all her friends (except Hollie) and it becomes a thing that they all joke about failing and refuse to study because the teachers are stupid anyway. Isabel’s LA boyfriend breaks up with her in late September – Courtney hears from Yasmin that it was because Isabel had lied about where she lived and once he found out she was from Mansfield he didn’t want anything to do with her – and suddenly all of them are single, and there’s a couple of the jocks that hang out with them at lunch sometimes but they’re all kinda gross and none of them date anyone.

Sasha gets expelled for hooking up with a senior in the gym locker room – Evie tells Courtney and Hollie that the senior just like, got suspended for a couple of days and had to clean the locker room – and the whole thing makes Courtney shudder every time she thinks about it. For one, just like Yasmin says, Sasha has totally ruined herself forever and boys are disgusting but also… the gym locker rooms??? Courtney doesn’t even like changing in there after class, she tries to do it without her or her clothes touching anything, and they literally hooked up in there? So. Gross. It makes her want to throw up whenever she thinks about it.

But whatever. Her and her friends aren’t ruining themselves with dumb Mansfield boys, so they’re fine and other people can keep being gross and she’ll help Yasmin keep reminding everyone how gross they are. And it gets her parents to shut up about her supposedly sleeping around with all these non-existent guys, because she rants about how gross Sasha is to them and the school sends a letter home, so…

It doesn’t stop her parents yelling about other things. Her Mum keeps screaming at her about failing biology and geometry, although she doesn’t even look at her Spanish grades so that’s something, and she rants about how Courtney is wasting time studying US History when the subject is full of made up lies that try to make people feel bad about being better people or something. She has no idea what her Mum is on about. Maybe Kari is right and she’s like… actually psycho?

She still isn’t allowed to leave the house, like, ever, but whatever Shayne’s Mum has kept saying whenever she sees her mother seems to work: every couple of weeks, she randomly gets yelled at to leave and go to Shayne’s house. Every time, she scowls and trudges out the door, only to feel her shoulders loosen and her smile grow as she opens the Topp’s front gate.

Shayne and Courtney paint the outdoor table together, after his Dad shrugs and tells them he’s not particularly interested in doing it, and she gets paint on one of the few shirts she likes that her Mum doesn’t scream at her for wearing but she simply shrugs and laughs it off and flicks paint onto Shayne’s shoes, since he accidentally splashed her shirt (she knows the shoes he’s wearing are his like, super old dirty sneakers anyway, so whatever). They watch movies – by themselves, or with his parents – and she gets to playing games often enough that one time, when they have the idea to invite Zach and Alicia over on a Saturday night she’s been told she has to go to Shayne’s, she manages to team up with Alicia and absolutely destroy the boys like five rounds in a row.

She’s just dragged her feet back up the path to her parents’ front door on a Sunday evening in early November, having spent most of the day at Shayne’s hanging out with him, going out to a park in the mid-afternoon with Ethan and Max and Evie, and then eating lasagne with Shayne’s parents for dinner. Her parents are in the living room arguing over some random piece of paper, her Dad halfway through snapping at her mother for having disappeared off to her friends’ place for four whole days last week and leaving him and KC to take everyone to school, and she doesn’t actively acknowledge them as she heads straight to the stairs to head upstairs.

“Courtney Ruth Miller don’t you dare walk away from us!” her mother snaps, loudly, attention evidently moving away from whatever her Dad’s saying.

“I didn’t know you were talking to me, Dad was talking to you,” she answers, as she turns on her heel and takes like, half a step back towards the living room, refusing to step back inside.

“What on earth do you think you’re wearing? Are you trying to look like a cheap whore? Cover yourself for once! Where on earth do you keep getting all these awful things?!” her mother screeches, Courtney immediately glancing down at her outfit.

She has no idea what’s wrong with it. It’s just her normal three-quarter jeans and converse, and she did buy this t-shirt and it is a V-neck but it completely covers her bra and it covers her shoulders so what is even her problem?!

“We can’t let you keep babysitting anymore if you’re just going to use all your money to dress like that! If you’re not careful I’ll have to go through your wardrobe myself!” her mother continues, Courtney sighing lightly in response. There’s nothing she can say, so she simply waits for her mother to switch from screaming about her clothes to screaming at her to go to her room.

Chapter Text

When Courtney asks her parents if she can go to the mall with her friends on Veterans Day when they don’t have school, she’s honestly kinda doing it out of spite. There’s no way they’d actually say yes when they haven’t let her leave the house for months except for school, Shayne’s place, and very occasionally babysitting, so…

“Well I guess it gets you out of my house for once,” her mother answers, before her Dad can say anything, Courtney feeling her eyebrows raise instinctively in shock. What?

“It’s not your house Kerryn! Your name literally isn’t even on the title!” her Dad snaps, immediately, “and you’re never even here anyway-”

It makes Courtney raise her eyebrows for an entirely different reason, quietly walking backwards out of the room as her Mum starts yelling back at her Dad about a mortgage and his job and why she apparently has to be away so much. They don’t say anything else to her, they just yell at each other about all this stuff she knows nothing about, and she quickly retreats upstairs to her room. She… guesses she can go to the mall tomorrow after all?

There’s part of her that expects her parents to start yelling and screaming and asking where she thinks she’s going when she wanders downstairs with her bag over her shoulder late morning, but they… don’t. Her Dad is at work anyway, and her mother is just grumping around in the kitchen so… whatever.

She wanders down the street and gets the bus into the shopping mall in the middle of town, immediately finding Yasmin and Natalie near the entrance to the mall. Isabel couldn’t come this time, her parents had taken her somewhere for the long weekend (she even got extra days off school since Veterans Day was Wednesday – so not fair), but Hollie joins them only a couple minutes after Courtney and they wander into the mall to start looking around.

“You really need to buy some new things… everything you’ve been wearing is so old and boring and uncool,” Natalie comments, to Courtney, when they wander into Forever 21 not long after they’ve got sushi for lunch at the mall food court. It immediately makes her grimace – it’s not her fault! She wants to wear better things, but-

“My Mum is stupid, she’d literally murder me if I wore what I wanted to,” she answers.

“Do you want to dress like a slut then? Just wear normal clothes, no adult is going to have a problem with just wearing a shirt that isn’t twenty years old with some gross random logo on it and your weird jeans that don’t fit,” Yasmin points out, and Courtney knows Hollie goes to say something but she quickly shoots her a look and tells her to shut up as they wander further into the store and split up a little to look around.

Hollie got lucky: she dressed in like weird, kinda boho, secondhand-looking stuff all the time, and all of them used to make fun of her for it. But then that stuff became cool and now she just like dresses cool even though she hasn’t changed at all from her uncool stuff from when they were in elementary. Courtney can’t do that, like, sometimes Kari wears stuff she doesn’t mind but she never gets Kari’s clothes, she always gets Kami’s hand me downs and she always just wore boring things and none of her clothes actually fit Courtney anyway-

She tried. She’s literally bought a bunch of stuff that is cool now and that she wants to wear and she did, for a little while, but it’s been sitting buried in the back of her closet since last year now. Her Mum literally won’t let her leave the house is anything that isn’t gross and old and frumpy, it’s not her fault.

Courtney doesn’t end up buying anything, even though she has money and they spend like four hours wandering around different shops in the mall. She finds a couple of things she thinks her Mum might actually let her wear, but every time, Natalie and Yasmin screw up their faces and shake their heads. And everything they shove at her is either WAY too expensive – she can’t spend $70 on one shirt! – or she knows she could never actually wear it.

Ugh.

It's nice to wander around with her friends and actually get to hang out with them for once, though, and it’s nice that she gets to be out of the house. She doesn’t rush home when they leave the mall – she walks slowly to the bus stop and waits for a second bus to come instead of racing to catch the one that’s about to leave and already packed with people. She catches the next bus, and it’s only like 4:30pm when she gets back to her neighbourhood, so she wanders slowly back up the street on the opposite side of the street to her place so she can stay in the sun.

It seems refreshingly quiet when she first steps in the door – her Dad doesn’t seem to be home yet, but KC is sitting with Clarke and Conrad in the living room helping them build some city thing out of their knockoff Legos and she can’t immediately see her mother anywhere. Maybe she’s out too.

“Courtney Ruth Miller where are you hiding them!” she screeches, appearing at the top of the stairs, face red and hair frazzled as she glares at Courtney the second she steps onto the stairs. What?

“What are you talking about?” she asks, because she seriously has no idea.

“The drugs! The condoms! I shouldn’t be surprised you don’t have condoms though if you’re such an irresponsible slut!” she yells, Courtney having to force herself not to outwardly roll her eyes as she trudges upstairs towards her Mum.

“I don’t have drugs, I’ve literally never seen a drug in my life! And I’m not sleeping with any-” she shoots back, cutting herself off as she storms past her Mum and pushes open the door to her room, only to freeze in place as her heart sinks and she feels like she’s been slapped in the face.

It’s a mess – everything is a mess. The covers have been ripped off her bed, replaced by what looks like the entire contents of her wardrobe but she can see scissors and she swears all her makeup was in the bathroom not her room but it’s all dumped out on her bed too, and she feels her chest tightening and a lump settle harshly in the back of her throat as her eyes slowly move around the room. There’s pages torn from her sketch book all over the floor, and she quickly realises, her school art project which is due in a few weeks is in pieces too. Everything. She fucking ruined literally everything that was hers-

“What did you do?!” Courtney snaps, loudly, before she can stop herself, sobbing abruptly after she does and hearing it all as if it’s coming from someone else standing up a hallway, not from her own mouth.

“You’re destroying yourself! You’re destroying this house by bringing the devil in! You’re a disgusting worthless whore, you can’t keep acting like anything you do is fine! Everything is your fault, you are ruining everyone’s lives and we need to fix you!” her mother screams, loud and high-pitched and it rings in Courtney’s ears as she instinctively pulls her hands up to cover them as she walks slowly into her bedroom, glancing backwards to see Kari’s side of the room completely untouched.

It makes her angry. Kari literally smokes, Courtney KNOWS it, she hangs out with the stoner kids at school, if there’s any drugs in their room it will be on her side! And she has clothes like Courtney’s too but apparently it’s only Courtney that is a problem and now all her fucking clothes are ruined and now she’s closer she can see her Mum has literally tipped open makeup all over her bed and cut things and ripped thing and Courtney feels like she can’t breathe-

“What on earth is happening up here- COURTNEY, WHAT ON EARTH HAVE YOU DONE TO YOUR ROOM?” her Dad suddenly appears, quickly turning to a yell.

“I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! I WAS OUT AND I CAME HOME AND SHE DESTROYED ALL MY STUFF!” she screams, before she can stop herself, turning on her heel and feeling her face stinging with tears as she watches her mother almost grinning and her Dad just looking confused. Kari, for her part, is sitting on her own bed, eyebrow raised as if she’s enjoying the show.

It makes Courtney want to punch her and her Mum and get out of here, and she knows she can’t hit anyone but she goes to race out of the room, only to find her mother standing in the doorway, physically pushing her back in.

“No! You’re grounded! You deserve this! You’re a useless, disgusting whore and the only way you’ll ever be saved from the devil is if you never leave this room and do every single thing we tell you and nothing else forever!” her mother screams, immediately.

Courtney wants to push. She wants to scream and get out of here and leave but she can’t, she can’t breathe properly, she feels like she’s inhaling her own tears instead of air and she can’t move and she crumples down onto the floor, vaguely feeling a bunch of unopened markers press against her from the floor under her.

Her eyes glance awkwardly down to the floor beside her, immediately seeing the case of art pencils Shayne gave her for her birthday just after she met him in two pieces, the contents nowhere to be seen.

“Kerryn, let’s go downstairs,” her Dad tells her mother, but she can’t find it in herself to respond or even look at them as she vaguely hears the door to the bedroom close and she remains lying on the floor, paper scrunched under her and who knows what poking into her.

“You gonna be dramatic and run off to Shayne’s house?” Kari asks, at some point, but she barely hears it.

Courtney knows there are a million things she should be thinking and worrying about, and she’s angry and she’s upset but her mind is just… empty. She can’t move, she can’t think, there’s nothing she can do. It’s done. All her stuff is gone, and she lies silently on her bedroom floor through the evening as Kari goes downstairs for dinner – no one calls her, she’s pretty sure they wouldn’t let her eat – and returns later, and as the tiny scraps of light through the always-closed blinds in their bedroom turn to dark.

Her mother returns to the room the next morning – after Kari has already got ready and disappeared – and yells at her she needs to get ready for school. It makes Courtney cringe, but the last thing she wants to do is stay in this stupid house, and reluctantly, she sluggishly moves up off the floor and over to her wardrobe.

There’s a handful of clothes that aren’t touched, but they’re the ones Courtney never wears. The shitty old jeans from Kami that are so big around her waist they make her look like she has literally no ass and she has to wear a belt to hold them up – although she guesses she still had the jeans she wore yesterday, but she can’t wear the same outfit she did yesterday. She has to change her top at least.

She tries – she finds a graphic shirt from Kami of some kinda obscure band, at least, not a dodgy Mormon summer camp, and she tucks it in and tries to make it look cool – but she knows she looks gross. She can’t wear any makeup because everything in her room is trashed and she doesn’t even want to check the bathroom drawer that was meant to be hers, and the only jacket she has is an old sweater that is oversized in a gross way, not cool, and doesn’t match anything else she’s wearing. She has to wear the same shoes as yesterday – she can’t see any of her other shoes anywhere – and it seems, at least, her mother didn’t touch her school backpack. Her school laptop seems fine, and the English book that was in there that she was meant to finish reading last night.

And her phone – her phone was with her when she was out. She makes a point of stuffing it in the bottom of her school bag in the middle of getting dressed so her mother might not even remember she has it. She can’t let her take away her phone. Then she may as well just give up and hang out with the disgusting loser kids – not even the nerds, or the theatre people, or whatever. Just the losers that literally no one else likes.

Courtney doesn’t want to go to school. She doesn’t want to have to try and explain around everything and she knows her art teacher is going to be pissed she doesn’t have her book and she’s the one teacher she actually likes and her friends are going to make fun of how gross she looks but she can’t tell anyone what actually happened because they’ll laugh at her even more then and it will be even worse but she can’t just stay home either-

“Oh my god what the hell are you wearing that for,” Yasmin starts, eyes narrowed, the second Courtney steps through the school doors and finds the rest of her friends already standing there. She’d had a completely silent car ride to school to try and prepare an answer – her brothers were in the car too, her mother won’t yell at them – but she feels nothing and she’s not even sure she likes the bullshit she came up with because it’s not even a good excuse.

“My Mum literally forced me to wear what she told me today and said she’d break my phone if I didn’t,” she replies, trying to look annoyed and rolling her eyes pointedly.

“You need to stand up to her more,” Natalie shoots back, immediately, “she’s just your Mum. Why do you even listen to her? It’s not like she can do anything. Just hide your stuff or sneak past her or do what she tells you not to anyway.”

“She always hovers at the front door and physically blocks it to stop anyone going out in anything she doesn’t like,” Courtney shoots back, making it up on the spot.

“That’s weird,” Yasmin replies, face screwed up, and it makes Courtney’s heart sink all over again. It’s not sympathetic and it’s not understanding. She’s telling her she’s weird.

She’s saved from anything further by the need for them all to get to homeroom, and she’s almost relieved that none of her friends are in the first two periods she has today and she can just sit up the back and talk to no one like she always does in those classes, because no one in the them is cool enough for her.

Except one of them is art, and while the rest of the class gets in to working when their teacher puts on her usual Spotify playlist of, as she calls them, “cool tunes” (it’s lame but in the way that it’s kinda okay for teachers to be lame), Courtney silently moves over to her desk.

“Um… is there… a spare sketchbook I could use?” she asks, quietly.

“What happened to your sketchbook?” she asks, immediately, although she’s more questioning than immediately accusatory.

“It, um- it got ripped up. One of my brothers…” she trails off, not sure how else to pull a story together, but immediately her teacher gets up and reaches over to a shelf behind her desk to pull out a new sketchbook.

“Oh, oh no! Brothers can be the worst,” she sympathises, handing over the book, “now you’ve still you over a month until your final project is due for the Semester… had you already done much work on it? How badly did your brother destroy it, can you reference what you’ve already done and will you have enough time?”

“I think I’ll be able to reference it. That’s the section he ripped up most but I have the pieces at home still I think,” she replies, shrugging lightly, “and… maybe I will leave my sketchbook in my locker at school if I’m going to be leaving the house at all outside school hours now? He did it when I was out shopping with some friends yesterday afternoon.”

“You might need to work on your project at home to catch up again, though – maybe one of your parents could help you find somewhere at home your brother won’t be able to get to it?” her teacher suggests, and it immediately causes a lump to form in Courtney’s throat, but she mumbles a ‘maybe’ in response before moving back to one of the desks to start her project all over again.

At least she likes drawing.

Some of her friends are in her next two periods, before lunch, but the teachers are droning on and on about whatever in both and there’s no chance to talk or anything – or at least, her friends aren’t talking to her. She dreads lunch, she doesn’t want to deal with trying to make up shit and fight off her friends’ comments over lunch because she can’t agree with them that she looks gross even though she knows she does because then they’ll tell her she can’t be friends with them anymore and-

Courtney can’t do it, in the end. They all go to their lockers to put their stuff away, but when everyone else turns to move towards the cafeteria, her feet won’t let her.

“Oh, track practice is today, I’m gonna go talk to the coach and see if I can join late because I think I worked out a way I can,” she tells her friends, and they don’t seem to have a problem with that – Isabel even makes a comment about it being a good idea that seems to be, like, genuine and happy for her – so she walks the opposite direction from them, away from the cafeteria.

Chapter Text

Courtney doesn’t know where she’s actually walking. She continues to walk further into the depths of the school, back towards where she’s pretty sure the senior’s lockers are. The hallways are crowded with juniors and seniors going to their fifth period classes – they have lunch in sixth, now – but she still feels completely alone and exposed, her brain twisting in circles at the same time it feels hollow and empty and she looks down at the floor.

“Hey Court, why you around here?” Shayne’s voice appears out of nowhere, and she swears she’s imagining it until she glances up to see him and Max, both holding what looks like Spanish textbooks – she recognises the weirdly-posing woman on the front as the same one on her own Spanish textbook – pausing to glance at her.

It immediately makes her panic. She doesn’t know what to say and she feels tears springing at her eyes and why can’t she just disappear into the floor-

“Max, tell them I had to go to the nurses for a migraine,” Shayne speaks, quickly, before she feels his hand reaching out to grab her arm, tugging her sideways.

She can’t do anything except follow him and she feels like a dumb, stupid baby as tears start hitting her cheeks as Shayne drags her through the crowd of people who are probably all looking at her and judging the baby crying in the hallways until-

“Hey, Court, it’s gonna be okay,” Shayne tells her when they stop, leaning down to set his books on a random chair beside the wall. It’s only then that she realises they’re now in a mostly empty side-hallway – one full of senior lockers, but no classroom doors, that she thinks is like a back-hallway into the library – but she doesn’t have long to dwell on it before Shayne is pulling her into a hug.

She instinctively clings to him, sobbing sharply as she feels like everything suddenly comes flooding back into her mind. She wanted to run to him last night and she wants to go home to his house tonight with his Mum who will feed her a nice dinner and make sure she has everything she needs for school and nice, fluffy towels for a shower but she knows she can’t and she feels so guilty that he’s skipping class but she just- she just-

“Mum let me go shopping with my friends yesterday afternoon but when I got home she’d destroyed my room and cut up all my clothes she didn’t like and she ripped up all my sketch books even my school art project and broke all my markers and the pencils you gave me for my birthday and she dumped all my makeup out on my bed and kept screaming at me that I’m the devil or something and I just- all my stuff is ruined and my friends are probably going to kick me out because I look gross and I’m not wearing any makeup and I agree but I can’t tell them what happened because they’ll think I’m even weirder and- and-” she rushes out the story through sobs, feeling Shayne squeeze her tighter as she does.

“Shit, Courtney, that’s… I’m so sorry. That’s disgusting and awful of your Mum and I- I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry,” he mumbles, his own voice chocked up and mumbled a little against her shoulder.

————————————————

Shayne feels like throwing up when Courtney tells him what happened. It’s not even just her Mum being mean anymore it’s literally… it’s… it’s not okay, it’s so far past okay, and he has no idea what to do and no idea what to say.

Part of him knows he should tell someone at school, like, a guidance counsellor or… something. But he knows the guidance counsellor is awful, he knows from work because the psychologist is always complaining about how the kids she treats wouldn’t be so messed up if their high school guidance counsellor didn’t always make them feel like everything was their fault. He can’t risk making that happen.

And now he’s skipping class but he just – he can’t fucking leave her. Why is she even at school today?

…Because her only other option is being home with her mother. Fuck.

“I don’t know what I can even do. I have some money I’ve saved from babysitting, I could replace some of my clothes but… what if she just ruins them again? She even messed up my sheets, what the fuck was wrong with my stupid plain purple sheets?” Courtney mumbles, when they eventually pull back from the hug. Shayne can’t stop himself from frowning and sighing. He feels useless. What can he do? Anything?

“I… don’t know either, Court, I’m sorry I can’t… I can’t be helpful. It’s, like- I think she could get in actual trouble for doing that but then… you might not be allowed to live there anymore,” he mutters, feeling his own mind twist in uncertainty.

“Please don’t tell anyone. I- Dad wasn’t home and when he got home he thought I ruined all my own stuff and then he made Mum go downstairs when I said it was her and maybe he’ll… maybe he won’t let her do it again?” she suggests, shrugging lightly, although Shayne can tell she doesn’t fully believe herself.

“Is one of your parents picking you up from school today?” he asks, feeling his own phone suddenly heavy in his pocket. He wants to call his Mum.

“I think Dad is, Mum is going out with her church friend tonight,” she mumbles in response, and it makes Shayne relax, just a… little.

“Maybe that’s… maybe that’s a good thing. That she won’t be there, but your Dad will be?” he offers.

“I hope so. And I haven’t even picked up and sorted through the stuff all over my room to see if anything could be saved so I guess I should go home and do that but…” Courtney trails off, glancing away for a minute before looking back to Shayne, “I don’t wanna be rude and I don’t wanna get in your way but I want to come to your house.”

“I kinda want to call my Mum and ask if you can,” Shayne admits, “but I… don’t want your parents to work out my Mum is helping you and then stop you coming over at all, or something, either. I don’t… know.”

“Yeah,” Courtney answers, quietly, head glancing down at the floor. They fall into silence for a moment, before she continues, “you should go to class, or actually go to the nurse and say you have a headache and get a note-”

“No, it’s fine Court, I can deal with that. Is there… I know I can’t help everything and this sucks and it’s awful but could I try and help in some… small ways? Like, I think Alicia keeps some spare makeup in her locker at school, I could text her and be super vague about why but ask her if you can borrow it?” he offers, the idea suddenly coming to him. He watches Courtney bite her lip, before slowly, she nods.

“That would… that would help a little bit. And I know I have basically the same skintone as her anyway so if she doesn’t mind…” she trails off, a little awkwardly, Shayne giving her a (hopefully) reassuring smile in response as he quickly pulls out his phone to type out the text.

“hey Alicia. Urgent. Gotta be vague not my story to tell… but Courtney has ended up not being able to use any of her makeup. Do you still have the spare stuff in your locker here?” he texts, quickly, and he knows Alicia is in class but he’s pretty sure she’s in math and she lucked out with the cool teacher that lets you use phones and take little breaks as long as you still get the work done.

“absolutely – she can take all of it home if she wants, it’s all duplicates of stuff I already have at home. My lock code is 37-5-35” Alicia replies, almost immediately, Shayne quickly handing his phone over to Courtney to show her the text.

“All good. We could go to her locker now?” Shayne offers, feeling his own shoulders relax when Courtney nods and gives him a small smile.

————————————————

“Why do you have makeup on now?!” Yasmin asks, when Courtney wanders into Spanish after lunch, but this time, her brain had let her think of a good explanation.

“Oh, I had a couple of spares in my gym bag, I ended up joining track practice for a bit – even though they don’t think I can do competitions this year, it’s too late – and when I checked my bag after I found some,” she answers, simply.

“Oh, that’s a good idea to have spares in your gym bag. I should think about storing some at school in my locker or something,” Yasmin muses, nodding lightly. It makes Courtney relax.

She’s not totally trying to trip her up. If she just has a good explanation, she’s fine.

Courtney isn’t entirely sure how they managed to hide out in a corridor for half of lunch and then walk around past classrooms and break into Alicia’s locker (is it breaking in if they gave her the code?) without a single person seeing them or getting them in trouble. And Shayne texts her later in sixth period that he was able to go by his Spanish teacher’s room and explain he forgot to get a note from the nurse because his head was off from the migraine, and his teacher just accepted it and said it was totally fine and he knows Shayne would never skip class without a good reason.

…Which Courtney is pretty sure is absolutely true, and she feels warm and fuzzy when she realises that to Shayne, helping her was a good reason.

He’s like, the best friend ever. She needs to do something to thank him, but she’ll work that out… later.

First, she has to face the end of the day, and awkwardly climbing into the back of her Dad’s car when he picks her – and Kari – up.

“Are we getting the boys?” Kari asks, but he shakes his head.

“No, no, they have soccer practice, I’ll get them later, but we need to get Court home first,” he answers, Courtney immediately feeling her heart sink, before he continues, “I haven’t touched your room, because I don’t know what’s what. But maybe we can sort through everything and tidy it up and work out what can be cleaned, and what needs to be thrown out.”

…her stupid, dumb, childish hope that she didn’t even really believe in might be right. Her Dad might actually be not letting her Mum just do this. She might not be totally locked into her room-

It’s not perfect. Her Dad never says her Mum was wrong or stupid or crazy or any of the things she probably is, but he waves Kari out of the room and stays in there while he helps her sort through things. He doesn’t fully get it – he keeps saying her makeup is fine, even when it’s been sitting open upside down and got all over random other things, and he doesn’t get it when she explains that it will have got germs and dust in it and it’ll give her acne if she uses it – but he lets her keep the things that aren’t totally ruined, and he collects a few things that aren’t ripped, just dirty, to put in the washing that night because apparently her mother isn’t coming home tonight.

He says that with some annoyance, but Courtney chooses not to push her luck, instead glancing down and pushing back the tears trying to form at her eyes when she realises every single page of both of her main sketchbooks has been ripped, and all her pencils are broken.

“Could you… sharpen them where they’ve broken, so they’re just a lot shorter?” her Dad asks, Courtney shrugging.

“Maybe. But I think the leads are shattered all the way down so it’ll just keep breaking off. And the case is in half.”

“You mentioned you’ve helped Shayne’s Dad with some things in his workshop – I wonder if he could get the case back together?” he asks, and she has to bite back her response.

She has no idea, but she knows if she asked, he’d try. She wants to ask if she can go there, but she knows as soon as she starts wanting to go over there, it’ll be the end of her mother forcing her over there, and she can’t risk that.

She has no idea if her Dad knows Shayne’s parents are being nice to her, but she doesn’t want to test that, either. As much as her Mum and Dad are constantly screaming at each other even more now, they do actually talk, and what if he tells her?

She doesn’t get to sneak out that night. She eats (boring hamburger helper) dinner with her Dad and her younger brothers and Kari, and she reluctantly goes to bed – her sheets where fine, they’d just been pulled off the bed not damaged – in her and Kari’s room and tries to get to sleep, trying not to think of the fact most of her clothes are hanging on a clothesline downstairs in the living room and if her Mum comes home she might destroy them all over again.

But, eventually, Courtney falls asleep, and when she wakes in the morning, she still can’t see her mother anywhere. She manages to pull together a mostly okay outfit – she still hasn’t found any shoes except the white sneakers she wore to the mall on Wednesday and her Dad has no idea where they’ve gone and Kari swears she doesn’t know either even though she was in the room when her Mum destroyed everything, Courtney thinks – for school, her friends don’t make fun of her for it, and a combination of Alicia’s makeup and the setting spray still in her bathroom drawer that her Mum must have thought was skincare, not actual makeup, means she can mostly do her face and just have a normal Friday at school.

She doesn’t encounter her mother on Friday night, either – she mostly just hides in her room trying to get back to where she was on her art project – but early Saturday morning, she’s literally woken up by her mother screaming up the stairs.

“Courtney, get yourself out of this house! Go to the Topp’s until tonight, we don’t want you here!” she yells, Courtney immediately rushing out of bed and instinctively grabbing a handful of clothes, all her surviving art supplies, her phone, wallet, and Alicia’s makeup and shoving it in her school backpack.

It’s bursting and she can barely zip it closed by the time she gets all the things in there, and as she trudges downstairs, Kari laughs.

“It’s a weekend, stupid, you don’t need to take your school shit,” she teases.

“Language, Kari,” her mother pushes, calmly.

“I need to study,” Courtney answers, pointedly – she’d came up with the excuse in case her Mum questioned her – before quickly getting out of the house to walk down the street and to Shayne’s house.

“Courtney, honey! It’s good to see you- are you staying? Your mother just mentioned today?” Cathy asks, when she answers the door, and it immediately makes Courtney feel awkward. She has no idea what Shayne told his Mum, if anything, and if she should say-

Screw it.

“Um, I- on Wednesday Mum let me go shopping with some friends but while I was gone she tried to destroy all my stuff but some of my clothes survived and a few of my art pencils and now I’m scared to leave them there when I’m not there in case she does it again,” she mumbles.

“Oh honey, I’m so sorry,” she tells her, immediately pulling her into a hug – although it’s a little awkward with the bulging backpack still on Courtney’s back, “Shayne did mention to me that your Mum had damaged some of your stuff. Is there anything we can do to help? Do you have enough clothes for school now, and materials and things? And I know you like drawing, do you still have enough to keep doing that?”

“I… technically always have enough clothes, I guess, it’s just the stuff Mum will let me wear is all Kami’s old stuff that doesn’t fit me and that my friends at school make fun of me for wearing but I guess they’re still clothes,” she replies, shrugging, before quickly adding, “and some of my stuff is okay. And the outfit I was wearing when I went out on Wednesday. So I guess it’s fine, if she doesn’t ruin anymore.”

“Honey, it’s really not good enough that you don’t feel like your belongings are safe in your own home, but I’m… not sure what we can do to help,” Cathy responds, glancing over when Shayne appears down the stairs, eyes widening in surprise. Courtney figures he didn’t know she was coming, Cathy quickly confirming as she continues, “oh! Shayne, sorry, I wasn’t sure you were up yet – Courtney’s mother just called and asked if we could take her today half an hour ago and said she needed her out of the house immediately, so…”

“All good, glad you’re here Court,” Shayne answers, smiling and wandering over to give her a brief greeting hug. It’s still awkward with the bag.

“Would you both like to come shopping this afternoon? I know it’s not a perfect solution, but Courtney honey, maybe you could leave just a few things here at our house so you know there will always be something safe?” Cathy offers, and she immediately feels guilty for how much she wants to say yes.

“You don’t need to buy anything for me and I don’t know if I really have enough money to-” she starts, rushed, but Cathy cuts her off.

“We might not need to, Courtney, but I want to. We look after our kid’s friends whenever they need it, okay? You don’t need to feel guilty – and if you really don’t want to leave anything here, then that’s okay too. But don’t say no out of guilt,” she tells her, gently, before adding, “and we could go to the big shopping mall over the other side of town, not the one near the bus station, to make sure your family wouldn’t have any chance of seeing us.”

“It… I think it’d be nice to know I have some stuff here if I need it,” Courtney answers, after a moment, watching Shayne and his mother both smile, in their own ways, in response.

Chapter Text

She doesn’t stay over at Shayne’s place any night, but she ends up spending most of the weekend there. It’s a dull, dreary, rainy weekend, so they spend most of their time playing games in the living room or studying at the Topp’s dining table (both her and Shayne have a bunch of pre-finals next week before Thanksgiving break), other than the couple of hours on Saturday afternoon where they wander around the big, shiny, new mall Courtney has never been to while she forces herself not to say no to Shayne’s Mum at all.

She doesn’t get too many clothes, but she remembers back to this video Yasmin linked them all about capsule wardrobes and with the help of Shayne’s Mum (and… Shayne tries to help by referencing what his friends wear, but he’s not exactly good at fashion. He just wears cuffed jeans and a tee pretty much always) she finds two pairs of neutral pants that actually fit her properly, a jacket that could go with pretty much everything, and a few shirts – neutral basics, and two colourful ones she likes the look of - that she can leave at Shayne’s.

They don’t technically have a spare room anymore, now his brother Brian has moved back in – although with all the time she spends there, she’s only met Brian in passing like, four times, given he’s always at his girlfriend’s place or at work because he works like, super long hours – but there’s an empty dresser in the corner of the separate formal living area they don’t really use, and some of her things go there.

(She takes one pair of pants home with her at least, though – they look similar enough to her normal pants, just with a better fit, that she hopes her Mum won’t notice).

————————————————

Courtney has no idea why they’re making such a big deal about it, they’re still only sophomores, but her next week at school is full of tests and quizzes and finals prep and reminders about how the thanksgiving break isn’t really a break and they can spend Thanksgiving Day with their family but they should be spending the rest of it studying. As much as she scoffs at it and jokes with her friends that there’s no way she’s wasting a break studying, Courtney kind of… does intend to spend most of it studying.

It gives her an excuse to stay in her room, away from her parents yelling about whatever stupid stuff they decide to yell about now (mostly at the moment it seems to be her Mum saying her Dad works too much and is never home and him arguing back that she keeps rejecting shifts at work and running off to her friend’s for days, which… is true). And she’s pretty sure she can pass all of her classes this semester, biology is the only one that she has to really try not to fail, but maybe she can bump a few things up to a C instead of D+ or C-.

And she’s not getting much out of the actual classes and prep their teachers make them do in class when she spends every day at school panicking that she’ll get home and find her Mum has gone through all her stuff again.

The Saturday and Sunday at the start of their week off are easy: her Dad has double-shifts at work both days because he said he’s running some training course for new firefighting volunteers, and her mother leaves on Saturday morning and tells Kari to make sure the boys are fed and doesn’t come back until Monday.

Kari grumbles about misogyny and how KC is the oldest and she’s a senior and needs to study for finals – which… probably valid – but he’s picking up extra shifts at work, too, so reluctantly, Courtney steps in and helps her sister cook for the four of them that are actually there and tries to keep her brothers entertained.

They’re annoying and needy but they’re still too young for her to actually hate them as much as she hates KC and they never really do anything bad to her other than being annoying and whiny, so, whatever.

Both of her parents are in the house on Monday, and Courtney assumes it means she can hide in her room studying all day, but when she wanders down to get breakfast, she walks in on them arguing about her.

“Well we can’t push her on the Topps on Thanksgiving Day, Kerryn! They might not even be here, they have their own family too. There’s nothing wrong with Courtney coming to my sister’s house with us for Thanksgiving,” her Dad argues.

“No! How are you so stupid?! She can’t be allowed near any family, she’ll ruin their children or knowing your family they’ll bring out all her shit and turn her against her parents! It’s bad enough that your stupid family believe all your lies about how you’re not the most useless, lazy excuse for a husband that can’t earn enough money and is never home and-”

“How do you expect me to earn more money if you don’t let me pick up more shifts at work?!” her Dad snaps back, immediately, “I’m not the one telling you not to work, you decided to start only taking part-time shifts and spending all your time off shopping and having lunch with your friends from church and whining about how your life is so hard while you make everyone around you do everything that should be your responsibility!”

“You’re meant to be my husband, Kenn, provide! No wonder you don’t like going to church anymore and the church doesn’t like you when you can’t even do your one godly duty,” she answers him, arms crossed over her chest as Courtney hesitates in the doorway between the hallway and kitchen/dining/living area.

She’s pretty sure her Dad has seen her, but he keeps arguing with her Mum anyway.

“It’s 2020, Kerryn, you know it doesn’t work that way anymore! You want this house to not be mortgaged? Fine, then work more and pay some of it off! It wouldn’t even take that long, we’ve been ahead on it for years because of your stupid need to keep trying to pay it off instead of spending money on life and the kids!”

“The kids don’t deserve our money! KC and Kami have their own money, Courtney is a worthless whore who we should kick out on the street sooner rather than later, the boys are too young and they already get everything they need!”

“You do have a third daughter too, you know,” her Dad rolls his eyes, and Courtney has to stop herself from laughing. She’s pretty sure Kari would not care one bit about their Mum just like, forgetting she exists. Kathryn, well, she usually liked Mum – but Mum was never so screamy and grumpy when Kathryn lived here, she’s been gone for years and graduated college and whatever already.

“You give the daughters too much, you’re ruining them! They’re women, they need to learn their place! Kami and Kathryn were lucky they knew not to pay attention to you, or Kathryn got out before you became such a-”

“I haven’t changed, you have!” her Dad almost bellows, Courtney instinctively taking a step back and, slowly, retreating back upstairs.

…Okay. No breakfast today. Ugh. She hates studying on an empty stomach.

————————————————

By the time Thanksgiving arrives on Thursday, Courtney just wants to get out of the house or have everyone else get out of the house. She likes Thanksgiving at her Aunt Anne – her Dad’s sister –‘s house. The food is always good, and her Dad’s family are usually nice, and they live on a big farm in the middle of nowhere but it’s only like an hour away so she doesn’t have to sit in a car with all her family forever like when they go to Utah for her Mum’s and the rest of her Dad’s family. But this year, she just wants the yelling to stop.

She’s tried her hardest to study and mostly she has been able to just hide out in her room, but even with her headphones on, she just keeps hearing them argue – about who is ruining what kid, and who works too many hours, and what they want to cook, and they spend thirty minutes on Wednesday screaming about the right way to clean the sofa cushions, and-

Ugh. Why won’t they just stop? They’re being so stupid.

“Come on Courtney, Kari, we’re going in thirty minutes!” her Dad calls up the stairs, mid-morning, Courtney immediately scrambling up off her bed and rushing to find clothes. Thirty minutes?! She thought she wasn’t invited, she hasn’t even started getting ready-

“Where’s Mum? Do we need to take a second car? Who’s going with her?” KC asks, when they all gather downstairs – or, well, him, the two young boys, her and Kari and her Dad do.

“Your mother isn’t coming today, just all of us, we can take the van and Clarke and Conrad can sit up the back so just one car,” her Dad answers, tight-lipped.

It immediately makes Courtney panic, as much as she’s relieved for the day without her Mum. Is she staying home alone? Will she destroy all Courtney’s stuff again? A bunch of her school books are home including her second attempt at her art project since she needed to study all week and work on it a heap and-

“Where’s she even going?” Kari asks, a little aggressively.

“She drove to Utah overnight, her parents wanted all their children to be there this year but we already planned to see your Aunt Anne,” he answers, pointedly, Courtney glancing over as they all clamber into the car to see Kari go to say something else before she evidently decides not to.

Utah is safe, though. Courtney’s Mum can’t touch her stuff there, and as much as her Dad is grumpy and silent the whole drive there, she feels like she can have a nice thanksgiving.

And she does. She’s kinda been helping Shayne’s Mum cook occasionally – plus the trying to make food for her brothers when her Mum disappears – and she steps into the kitchen and asks her aunts if she can help finish preparing the food, and they let her, all of them chatting happily as she does and asking how school is and if she is still friends with Hollie (she thinks Hollie met a bunch of her Dad’s family when they were in like, kindergarten, but she can’t really remember) and whether she has a boyfriend (she very clearly says no to that, in case her Dad is listening. And also because it’s true.)

Her Dad appears just after they ask that, and she fully expects him to start saying something about how she isn’t allowed and she’s already ruined herself with the boys she supposedly sleeps with or she’s lying or something but he… doesn’t. He even just… doesn’t seem to care.

“Oh, I’m not sure Courtney is looking for a boyfriend at the moment,” he comments, casually. He’d seemed to lose the weird grumpiness after they got here – maybe he just didn’t like driving the van.

“Oh honey, why not? You’re 16, it’s totally fine if you do now! You have to date a couple of high school boys, and they might not be great, but it’s how you know what you don’t want in the future when you’re looking for a husband,” Aunt Anne comments, laughing as she does. Still, her Dad doesn’t interject – he laughs along too.

“I suppose that’s true,” he comments, before wandering back out of the room. Courtney feels her brow furrow, but she knows her aunt asked her a question, so she shrugged.

“Mum says I’m not allowed to. And all the boys at school suck anyway,” she answers, shrugging, and she watches her aunts exchange a look for a moment before they seem to laugh.

“High school boys are awful. It’s not bad to wait until you find someone you really like!” her other aunt comments, before they move on, asking her if she can start taking some of the food out to the table to serve.

After lunch, she hangs out with some of their cousins – even though they’re heaps younger than her – but by the time they leave in the late evening, she’s happy to go. She just wants to get home. And she figures her Mum won’t be home for a couple of days if she’s gone to Utah randomly?

“KC, buddy, you might have to get the boys sorted for school Monday morning – you’re not working until later Monday, right? – I’m not sure when your mother will be back, the girls can take the bus, but the boys will need a ride over to school, I’ve got 8pm-midday shifts on Saturday and Sunday,” her Dad comments, as they approach home. KC grumbles about it for a moment, tells him that it’s meant to be the girls’ job to look after the kids- but her Dad quickly shuts him down.

“No. You’re the oldest, the girls both have to get to school for finals. Grow up,” he tells him, firmly, KC not saying anything else in response.

Her Dad ends up being right – her Mum isn’t back yet on Monday morning, and for the first time this semester (in the last part of semester, ugh) she finds herself getting ready for school and wandering down to the bus stop on her own time. No parents dropping her off and no dealing with siblings in the car (although Kari walks to the bus stop at the same time, she wanders ahead).

She doesn’t have her first final until the end of the week – US History, weirdly, has its final and then a couple more weeks after where they apparently just get to study whatever they want and not be tested on it – so she eases into the school week easily. None of her friends had seen each other over the week off – everyone had travelled somewhere different in America to see family, although no one has any cool stories to tell – so they catch up between classes and during classes when teachers aren’t looking, just like normal.

Her Mum appears again on Monday evening, immediately starting to yell at her Dad that the house isn’t clean enough and he should’ve stayed home from work all weekend to clean. He argues back that she can clean, too, and she didn’t need to run away to Utah for so long without planning it beforehand, and Courtney tries to tune it out as it continues in waves through the rest of the week.

And the next week. And the one after that.

She passes all her finals and she passes all her classes – even Biology – but she honestly isn’t even looking forward to Christmas break when she knows it just means being stuck at home listening to her parents argue and Kari occasionally jump in with something to provoke them because of course she has to. She can’t just like, leave anything.

Also, supposedly, they’re all going to Utah for an entire week over Christmas, and they’re staying in her Mum’s parents’ house again, and… ugh. She bets her Mum will make her go in her car and yell at her the whole way there.

Chapter Text

Courtney’s Mum doesn’t force her to travel to Arizona in her car: she spends the first few days of the Christmas break arguing that Courtney shouldn’t even come but also can’t be trusted home alone, but when the time comes for them to all load into cars to travel the stupid long trip to Utah, she tells her Dad that he has to take her so Courtney doesn’t make her car dirty by being in it. Which is so stupid but whatever. She gets to ride with her Dad (and Kari and Clarke – Conrad and KC are with her Mum, and the other two are only joining them on Christmas Day travelling from their own places anyway).

She hasn’t stayed at her grandparents’ house for years. She doesn’t really like her grandparents on her Mum’s side – they’ve always been kinda creepy and intense and have all these dumb little rules like no one being allowed in the front living room and kids can’t eat before adults and making all the kids under 12 kneel beside their beds and pray before they go to sleep – but their house is kinda cool. It’s old, but it’s large and they have like three big fireplaces that always make it nice and warm even in the middle of winter.

“Hi mother, father,” Courtney’s Mum greets her parents, rushing ahead of everyone else – mostly because she didn’t help get any of the luggage out of the cars like the rest of them did, even Clarke and Conrad – to where her parents step out of the front door when they park in the large gravel drive at the front of their house.

“Kerryn, darling, so lovely to see you again!” her grandma greets her, voice almost warbled as she does, pulling her into a hug. She pulls back from the hug, ushering her mother inside out of the cold, before turning her head to where Courtney and her Dad and siblings are now actually getting to the door and adding, in a much more level tone, “Kenn. Go on, George, take their stuff in.”

Her Grandpa George merely huffs in response, before turning and heading back into the house. Courtney watches her Dad grimace, and she looks over at Kari to see her grinning widely as they all trudge into the house and take off their shoes before they head upstairs.

There’s three spare bedrooms at their house, but Courtney fully expects – as is often the case – she will be shoved in the room with two bunk beds with Kari and Conrad and Clarke, her parents will get the largest spare room, and KC will get the third to himself.

“Have you remembered Courtney can’t sleep near the boys so she doesn’t ruin them?” her mother calls up the stairs.

“Yes, Kerryn,” her Grandfather responds, gruffly, before indicating for the other four – Conrad, Clarke, Kari and KC – to go into what used to be the second double-bed room, which she quickly peeks in to see now has brand new bunks with doubles on the bottom that Kari and KC immediately claim, before her grandfather grunts and points at the door of the smallest room while looking at her.

…O…kay…

Courtney steps into the room, immediately feeling a chill over her as she does, although she remembers the bedrooms here are usually cold. There’s no double bed to be seen – but there’s a small single bed over by the window, and a small bookshelf completely full of books that she doesn’t pay any attention to as she sets her bag down at the end of the bed and goes to turn and head back downstairs.

“Courtney!” her Grandmother suddenly appears at the doorway, eyes narrowed and voice raised. Courtney rapidly takes a step back. “Your mother has told me what a filthy, useless woman you have become and you will not be tolerated in this house! You will stay silent unless asked to speak and you will not leave this room unless myself or your mother tell you to, understood? And it would do you good to read some of those books!”

It makes Courtney blink slowly, mind spinning in disbelief. What? She knows her Mum is crazy but surely at least her grandparents would realise that her Mum is literally going crazy and-

“WELL?!” her Grandmother snaps.

“Uh- okay,” Courtney answers, quickly.

“And no electronics! Your mother said your father gave you a phone, probably what ruined you! Give it to me now,” she snaps, holding out her hand towards Courtney.

“I didn’t bring it, I left it in my bedroom at home because I thought I’d be spending time with family,” she answers, immediately, pulling the thought out of nowhere and hoping she sounds believable. It’s not remotely true, she was literally using her phone in the car on the way here and she can hear KC and Conrad talking in the hallway outside as they walk downstairs and are they going to rat her out-

“Hmph. Okay. Well. Stay in here,” her Grandmother finishes, before turning and shutting the door harshly behind her.

It’s only then that Courtney lets herself panic, feeling tears pricking at her eyes. Is her grandma serious?! She knew this week would kind of suck and she’d probably have to do chores and cook and watch awful Mormon movies made for toddlers but at least it’d be warm and nice in their big plush living room sofas and their food was usually okay and- it’s cold in here and she glances around to try and find where the old, yellowed radiator control dial is in this room that she remembers being in here when it had all the bunks in it, only to realise it’s gone.

The bunks were at the window and on the opposite wall beside the door, and the radiator was in the centre of the wall at the ends of the beds immediately in the door- but the bookshelf is there now, there’s not even a radiator outlet in this room anymore.

And, as she glances over it, she realises the bookshelf is lined with bibles and Mormon books about teenagers – how to be a good Mormon, how to save yourself from the devil, how God will punish misbehaviour.

Courtney sobs sharply, before immediately slapping her hand over her mouth and turning back over towards her duffel bag to pull out her heavy outdoor jacket as she feels her shoulders tensing and her mind tightening.

Courtney stands absently beside the bed for a moment as she pulls her jacket around her, glancing out the window at the gross, grey sludge on the ground outside and grey sky. It’s boring and empty and she turns on her heel to face the other way again, glancing around the room before sitting heavily into the bed beside her bag and feeling the tears wash over her and start pouring out of her eyes.

It's an entire week and she didn’t have room in her bag to bring anything except clothes so she has nothing to do and she’s just going to be locked in here by herself the whole time and are they even going to let her go down for food, she bets they won’t because her Mum’s whole thing is not letting her near her brothers or whatever but she has to eat somehow so will they bring things up and will they keep checking on her so she won’t even be able to use her phone in case someone comes in and the only power socket she can see is out in the open on the empty wall opposite the bed so it’d be too dangerous to charge her phone and she’s going to be so alone and-

There’s a knock on the door, Courtney rapidly sniffing and lifting her jacket up to wipe her face on her sleeve.

“Yes?” she responds, carefully, quickly glancing over to her bag and making sure her phone isn’t visible – she’d shoved it in her duffle when they were getting the bags out, but it seems to have fallen down under her clothes somewhere – before she glances back at the door.

“Ah, you get your own room for a week! Awesome!” her Dad starts, his voice bright, when he opens the door and steps in, before adding, “would you like to come downstairs and spend some time with everyone? Your grandparents would appreciate if you did.”

She pauses in silence for a moment, blinking slowly as her two hands press into the bed either side of her. Does he… not know?

“Grandma said I’m not allowed out of here all week unless she or Mum tell me to come out… did they?” she explains, before turning the question on him and watching as her dad’s face seems to cycle through emotions quickly before he steps further into the room, turning to softly close the door behind him.

“When did she say that?”

“Just when we got here, I put my bag down and I was going to go straight downstairs with everyone else but she stood in the doorway and snapped at me that I wasn’t allowed to talk or leave the room,” she mumbles, glancing down and picking at the seam of her jeans with her nail. She’d let her nails grow a bit because she wanted to paint them gold for Christmas with this cool nail polish Hollie had given her a while ago, but when she went to do it, all her nail polishes were gone.

“Why did she want you to do that?” her dad continues, his voice prying.

“Because I’m filthy and useless or whatever. Or ruining my brothers. I don’t know,” she answers, abruptly, immediately cringing. She shouldn’t snap she should-

“Fucking Christ,” her Dad mutters, under his breath, and it makes her abruptly glance back up at him. Okay so she knows she’s started saying the F word sometimes around Shayne’s friends because they always say it but she’s never heard either of her parents say anything worse than shit and-

“Did they tell you to get me to go downstairs? Then I guess I can go?” she asks, but her Dad shakes his head.

“Your mother told me to unpack our case so her clothes don’t get creased before I go downstairs, I haven’t been down yet,” he answers, plainly, before lightening his tone, “well… you have your phone here, at least? Did you bring your sketchbook? Maybe you can at least get some nice quiet time to draw or talk to your friends?”

“No,” she answers, rapidly, shaking her head, “I left my phone at home and I didn’t bring my sketchbook because I thought I’d be spending time with family.”

“What are you talking about, Court? You had your phone in the car?” he asks, gently, and she feels panic rise rapidly in her chest and almost explode out of her.

“No Dad. Please, Dad, no, my phone isn’t here,” she almost begs, her eyes blurring as they fill with heavy tears that start pouring down her face again, “Grandma said no electronics and told me to give it to her and I didn’t because it isn’t here, please Dad.”

“Oh,” he replies, after a moment, and she can’t see anything through her tears but she feels the bed sink beside her as her Dad lightly reaches an arm over to settle on her back. She immediately wishes it was Shayne or his Mum or-

“Don’t tell them,” she begs, again.

“Your phone isn’t here. You told me before we left the house early this morning that you decided to leave it in your room at home because you didn’t need it when you were going to be spending time with family, and all of your friends are with their families anyway,” he tells her, Courtney feeling the panic subside slightly. He adds, his voice quiet, “you have your charger? And headphones?”

“No-” she starts, but he quickly cuts her off.

“No, Court. Really. I had no idea they were doing this, and locking you up in a room for a week with literally nothing to do isn’t going to fix anything,” he pushes.

She sighs. He still thinks she needs to be fixed, she knows, but at least maybe he’s not as… aggressive with his methods.

“I have them but the only power here is over on that other wall and what if they come in and see a cord or something or…” she mumbles.

“Have you looked on the wall beside the bed? Maybe there’s one down there?” he asks, turning around himself and reaching a hand down between the bed and the wall, “aha! Yep, there’s one just down here.”

“That helps I guess,” she answers.

“I might leave you to it, I should head down. And maybe turn the heat up in here too, Courtney? You don’t need to be wearing that big winter coat inside,” her Dad tells her, voice a little brighter again as he stands from the bed.

“I don’t think there is heat in here, the radiator thing used to be over where the bookcase is now and I can’t see a dial or anything anywhere,” she replies, watching her Dad glance around the room before his lips purse together tightly for a moment.

“Okay,” he tells her, voice tense again, before he turns and steps out of the room.

Courtney doesn’t break into tears when the door closes behind him again. She sniffs lightly, reaching up to wipe the remnants of tears still sitting in the corners of her eyes, before slowly shuffling around to fish her phone out of her bag and curl up on the bed, facing the wall.

She stares at her phone for a couple of minutes, mindlessly swiping her home screens back and forth. She doesn’t want to talk to her friends, she has nothing good to say, and she doesn’t want to find her headphones to watch anything and she doesn’t want to scroll through Instagram posts of all these people with their perfect family Christmases and…

“i guess mum talked to my grandma because apparently i’m locked in the tiny bedroom by myself for the whole week in utah and i’m not allowed to talk and i’m not allowed to go out unless they tell me to so i guess they’ll have to for meals or whatever but there’s not even heat in here and i only have my phone because i lied and said i left it at home when they asked me to hand it over,” she types out rapidly in her messages to Shayne, hitting send before she can think otherwise. She knows he can’t do anything anyway and he might be busy, but she lies still on the bed, staring at the screen.

It takes five minutes, by her phone clock, until the message switches to ‘Read’.

“That’s awful Court, I’m so sorry… I’m glad you have your phone at least. Do you have warm clothes at least if there’s no heat? It’s probably kinda snowy in Utah right?” his reply comes not thirty seconds later. She sighs softly.

“It’s not as cold as it usually is by this time of year I don’t think but it’s cold. And I have my big winter jacket I only ever use when we leave California and it’s like a waterproof outside jacket but I can wear it inside I guess,” she types out her reply.

————————————————

Shayne had been having an awfully unproductive day, lying in his room playing Breath of the Wild on his Switch pretty much the entire day, but the second he rushes out a reply to Courtney’s text he darts downstairs to find his Mum.

“Mum- Courtney texted me, it’s-” he starts, rapidly, before shaking his head and handing over the phone, watching his mother’s face twist into displeasure and her brow furrow as she reads through the message.

“Her grandma – is this her Mum’s mother? Do you know where she is?” she asks, glancing up at Shayne.

“Yeah, her Mum’s mum – she’s at her Mum’s parent’s house in Utah. I don’t know where in Utah, but somewhere,” he answers, fidgeting with his hands as he feels hopelessness coursing through him.

“That is… really awful. It’s… I hope they will feed her proper food, and that they’ll let her go to a bathroom and things but it’s… no heat in that area in Winter isn’t good,” his mother continues, seeming like she’s speaking her thoughts out loud. Something about it makes Shayne panic.

“Please don’t go to CPS or anything like that, I- I know sometimes it seems like you should and they’re being awful to her and I want it to stop because I don’t like seeing my friend being sad and hurt all the time and I thought about going to the guidance counsellor at school but I do work with psychologists Mum and they’re always talking about how awful the guidance counsellor at our school is and how CPS in Mansfield sucks and they always make things worse instead of better or like do things that make the shitty parents retaliate against the kids they’re meant to protect and-” he rushes out, rapidly, before he feels his mother reach out and squeeze his shoulder.

“I know, honey. I’ve heard bad things about the services here from some people at my gym, too. I don’t think… I don’t think that’s how we help her. And I know you’re sad your friend has to deal with this, and… it makes me sad too, she’s a lovely girl, but I’m not sure there’s much we can do right now except what we’re already doing. And maybe you can text her, give her some company even if it has to be from a couple of states away?”

Chapter Text

Courtney finds out late on the first night in Utah that she doesn’t get to leave her room for meals, but they do bring her a plate of dinner. It’s not enough and it’s only lukewarm by the time she gets it, but it’s… something. She does get told to leave the room and shower even later that night, after everyone else has already showered and gone to bed, and she rapidly shoves her phone and its charger inside the small bag of bathroom stuff she has inside her other bag to take into the bathroom with her.

There is still some warm water, but she rushes through the shower and drying herself and getting dressed again as quickly as she can, feeling like someone is going to bust in and demand she leave immediately again or something.

Her mother does start grumbling through the door that she needs to hurry up and not be so rude wasting her grandparents’ hot water, but Courtney is already dressed and has shoved her things back in her bathroom bag and is just wrestling to pull socks back on (ugh, socks on wet feet are the worst, but she is not walking on the freezing floor without them).

It settles into a kind of… routine, as awful and boring and lonely as the routine is. Her breakfast the next morning is a bit larger and is actually warm, delivered by her Dad, but her lunch and dinner are delivered alongside strings of ranting about how awful she is and how she should be reading the books on the shelf to fix herself by her mother. She makes a mental note after dinner to pull one out and make it look read or something.

…Except she doesn’t want her Mum to think she’s actually listening. But she wants them to let her out, but…

She spends most of her time in the room on the 23^rd and 24^th (so, like, all day both days) lying on the bed on her phone. She still doesn’t feel like watching anything and she doesn’t reply to any of the messages her friends are sending about their own breaks, but Shayne has evidently taken it upon himself to keep her company and he keeps starting conversations about all sorts of stuff – movies, school, books, never families or Christmas – in the group chat with all his friends too. So she does get to talk to some people, even if they are all in different states. They are better people than her family, at least.

She overhears Clarke in the hallway asking why she isn’t leaving her room at all, her Mum immediately snapping back something about how Courtney needs to be punished for being a bad person.

Part of Courtney hopes Christmas Day will be different. It’s literally Christmas: she’s pretty certain they’ll drag her to church in the evening, but what about Christmas lunch or dinner?

The entry to the house is just near the stairs heading up to the second floor, and Courtney lies in silence on the bed through the morning and listens as the doorbell rings over and over and family come inside and greet everyone already there, before their voices fade again as they move away from the entry and further into the house downstairs. She glances at her phone at 11am when it buzzes, seeing a message from Shayne sitting on her screen.

She feels stupid. She’d told him she thought maybe on Christmas Day it would be normal – even if just so the rest of her family don’t quiz her parents about where she is – but she was wrong and dumb and the rest of her family probably hate her too anyway since it’s all Mum’s family. Some of her Dad’s family live around here too, but she knows they were all going somewhere else this year.

“Merry Christmas Court. How’s things?” his text reads, and she sighs. It’s Shayne. There’s no point lying.

“I guess I’m just stupid and they all hate me. Nothing changed. Still stuck in the room. No Christmas. Just listening to people get here and go through the entry and disappear off into the house so it’s silent up here again,” she replies.

“😢😢😢 I’m sorry Court, that’s awful. But your whole family probably don’t hate you – because they don’t know what’s really happening. If they even know you’re there it will be through your Mum’s total lies,” he sends back, not long later. It makes her shiver slightly, even though she’s got the curtain closed to try and keep out the cold and her heavy jacket over the top of her warmest sweater.

He could be right, but… all of her Mum’s family are Mormons and they’re not like her Dad’s family that are kinda just casual about it and don’t even go to church every week anymore. Maybe they all would agree with her Mum about everything.

It’s after midday when she first hears footsteps – two sets – coming up the stairs. She hurriedly shoves her phone charging cord back down the side of the bed and her phone under the pillow, inside the pillowcase, but they seem to walk past her room.

“Where’s Courtney?” she hears Kami’s voice, and it makes her cringe. Who is she with-

“In there,” Kari answers, and Courtney has no idea whether to be relieved or even more nervous. Kari hates their Mum but she hates Courtney too but Courtney doesn’t even know if any of her siblings know why she’s in here except Kari wouldn’t buy any of her Mum’s lies-

“Why? Refusing to be social?” Kami almost jokes, and Courtney has to bite back the urge to stalk over to the door and snap back at them. She’s not antisocial, she doesn’t even want to be stuck here-

“Nah. Mum and grandma are locking her in there the whole time we’re here to punish her,” Kari answers, lightly.

“What?”

“They think she’s on drugs and like sleeping with all these guys or something so Mum is going super crazy on her. None of it’s true, Courtney isn’t remotely cool enough to be offered drugs or for any guy to want her… but Mum believes it. She tore up all her stuff in her room last month trying to find evidence,” Kari’s response is almost laughing as she says it, and it makes Courtney’s skin bristle with anger.

“Huh. Weird,” Kami answers, simply, before the two seem to descend the stairs again.

It’s only 45 minutes later – just before 1 – that another set of footsteps moves up the stairs. Whoever it is pauses at her door this time, though, immediately followed by a knock. Courtney had never got her phone and charger out again after Kami and Kari were upstairs before, so she simply shuffles to sit up in the bed and face the door as she tries to give a polite-but-neutral “yes?” to answer the knock.

“You might need to help me open the door,” Kami says, through the door, Courtney surprised by the voice but quickly getting up and pacing over to quickly open the door.

Kami is balancing not one, but two plates loaded with Christmas lunch in her grasp, and, as she hands one plate to Courtney and sets the other on the top of the bookshelf after glancing around for a moment, apparently also two sets of cutlery that she pulls out of her pocket, setting one with the other plate and handing one to Courtney.

“Wow, it’s cold in here,” she comments, lightly.

“I think they removed the heat to this room. I think the radiator in here used to be where that bookshelf is? I dunno if you remember when the two bunks were in here, it was at the opposite end of the room to them so your feet were always too hot and your face froze…” she trails off.

“Oh yeah I totally remember that – I guess they’ve removed it. Weird. Hang on, I’ll be back in a sec,” she answers, before quickly moving back out of the room – leaving the door wide open as she does – only to return twenty seconds later holding a small electric heater. “Saw this in the other room when Kari was showing me something on her phone earlier – this should help.”

It immediately does, as soon as she plugs it into the wall and switches it on maximum. Courtney is still ultimately confused, though, especially when Kami closes the door, then wanders over to grab the other plate of food and set of cutlery and sits down onto the edge of Courtney’s bed beside her.

“How has school been this semester? Did you get a better Spanish teacher this year? The freshman ones are awful,” she asks, plate of food balanced on her lap as she starts to eat.

“Uh… it’s been okay I guess. Yeah, Spanish teacher was way better and she actually taught stuff properly. Most of my teachers were better this year,” she replies, although she knows her voice is hesitant, and she glances down at her food as she holds the knife and fork dumbly in her hands. She should eat while it’s hot. But why is Kami here?

“That’s cool, were you happy with your grades?” she asks. It immediately makes Courtney cringe, as she quickly swallows the mouthful of green bean casserole she’d taken.

“Mum wasn’t,” she answers.

“Of course she wasn’t. But were you?” she asks, again, Courtney shrugging lightly.

“I… guess? I really liked US History and I got an A in that. And most of my grades were up a little bit. But I only got a B+ in art which sucks but I had to redo my project in way less time than we were meant to have,” she answers, eventually, although she doesn’t say why.

“Why did you have less time?” Kami asks, immediately. …Ugh.

“Mum ripped it up,” she answers, glancing down and staring at her plate as she carves through the overcooked turkey on her plate with her knife.

“Kari mentioned she damaged some of your things…” Kami trails off.

“I heard you both in the hallway. There’s not much noise up here,” she replies, a little bluntly.

“I thought you might have,” she replies, falling into silence for a moment, the only sound between them that of knives and forks against their plates as they both continue to eat their lunch. It’s Kami that breaks the silence again, what feels like five minutes later, though, her voice much more serious, “I’m sorry Mum has decided to pick on you. It’s… pretty shit. I know last year she was on your case about dating and grades and stuff but this year seems pretty… extreme.”

“Most of the stuff she’s mad at me about isn’t even true,” Courtney answers, pointedly, “I haven’t had a boyfriend literally all year, all my friends are being weirdly Mormon at the moment and refusing to go near boys. And I’m not on drugs and I’m not the devil or ruining Clarke and Conrad or whatever she’s on about…”

“Mm. It’s… all pretty typical stuff the church doesn’t like, but if it’s not actually true… she’s being pretty cruel to you,” Kami agrees, Courtney carefully glancing over to see her shaking her head and frowning slightly, “I hope she calms down soon. And maybe you can come out with everyone to church tonight, at least?”

“Maybe,” Courtney answers, glancing back at her plate, and then back at Kami’s. It… seems like she’s just eating her lunch in here. “How is college going? And living in Arizona?”

————————————————

Shayne tries to get himself into Christmas Day with his family. It’s the first time he’s seen Chris in a while, or any of his aunts and uncles – both of his Dad’s sisters and his Mum’s brother and their families are all at his grandparents’ place this year – and he tries to engage in conversation with all of them and his cousins (most of whom are closer in age to Chris and Brian than him), answering questions about how school is going and how he likes living in California.

Once their Christmas lunch is finished in the late afternoon and the family have either retreated into the front lounge to nap or left back to their own houses, though, he gives up on trying to act bright and upbeat and positive, letting his funk settle heavily over him as he zones out sitting at the dining table with his parents and his grandmother.

“Shayne, honey, maybe you should try going for a drive with one of your parents in the snow tomorrow, get some practice in snow since you’re learning? I know you don’t get much over in California, but you never know where you’ll end up and you might need it one day,” his grandmother encourages, out of nowhere, drawing him into a conversation that he guesses was about the weather.

“Could drive over the border into Utah,” he comments, instinctively. It had not escaped him since flying into Colorado yesterday that his grandparents’ house was in fact right near the border with Utah, and Courtney was stuck in some tiny town. And it was still like, 4 hours drive away, but…

“Utah?” his grandmother asks, a touch confused, and he immediately regrets his slip up.

“Uh, where someone I know is for Christmas,” he replies, trying to brush it off.

“Your girlfriend?” his grandmother teases, and at that, Shayne immediately shakes his head.

“No, I don’t have a girlfriend, Nana. It’s – one of my best friends from school, Courtney,” he replies, shaking his head lightly, “her family are being… pretty mean to her.”

“Even today?” his mother steps in, lightly, Shayne nodding.

“She thinks they’ll let her leave her bedroom to go to church with everyone this evening. But other than that… even with all her family there for Christmas lunch she isn’t allowed to leave her bedroom like ever, and it’s really cold over there too and there’s no heat in the room. And she’s not even meant to have her phone with her but she hid it and pretended she left it in California so they wouldn’t take that at least,” he explains, rambling a little.

“Is this why you’ve been a bit upset, Shayne?” his Dad asks, and he nods slowly in response.

“It sucks knowing my friend is basically being tortured and they’re doing it for totally made up things, she didn’t do anything wrong,” he answers, a touch awkwardly, “and she kinda hoped at least today would be normal and it isn’t, she’s not even getting Christmas.”

“Is it her parents doing this to her?” his grandmother asks, gently.

“Not her Dad, he didn’t know they were going to – but her Mum and her grandma. She’s staying at her Mum’s parents,” he replies, before shaking his head, “sorry. I don’t want to keep talking about it. It’s not my stuff to share. I just feel kinda helpless and it sucks. I know I can’t actually drive four hours away because she couldn’t get out of the house anyway and it’s still ages away but it just sucks.”

“It’s okay, darling, it does sound really awful that your friend has to deal with that. Will it be better when she’s back in California? Can you catch up with her then?” his grandma asks, and Shayne nods gently.

“A little better at least. And maybe I can try and see her soon after she gets back,” he replies, quickly glancing up to his mother and watching her nod in response, quietly agreeing with him.

Chapter Text

Kami sits with Courtney as they both eat their lunch, chatting about bits and pieces as they do, but after a while she slowly stands from the bed again.

“I’ll have to head back down now, sorry. Just so you know if they say anything – I told Mum and Grandma I was going to talk to you about being a better Mormon or something. But I know what they’re saying isn’t true. You’re fine. Just didn’t want you to eat Christmas lunch alone,” she tells her, gently, stepping out of the room before Courtney has a chance to actually reply.

Just as she’d thought, as afternoon moves into evening, her mother slams into the room – she’d kept her phone hidden all afternoon just in case this happened – and tells her to put on some decent clothes for church. She does – a long skirt that definitely used to be Kathryn’s years ago, and a warm wool sweater under her big coat – and carefully moves downstairs, awkwardly standing by the entry.

She can hear everyone else still in the living room, but she knows she’ll get yelled at if she goes in, and she really doesn’t want to start crying in front of everyone.

Courtney’s Dad wanders out of the living room first, immediately gripping her forearm, whispering a near-silent ‘come on, I’ll take you’ before turning his face gruff as he almost marches her out to their car – parked in a completely different place to where it was when they first got here. Something about the thought of her Dad being out at some point in the last few days and her still trapped in the house with her Mum and Grandma makes her nervous, but she quickly shakes it off as she silently gets into the back middle seat of his car and waits for whoever is allowed to join them.

It's the older siblings, of course – Kari, KC, and Kami – and she starts the car ride in silence, listening to them talk about how nice lunch was.

“Are you actually going to stop being antisocial and hiding away in that bedroom and talk to someone?!” KC snaps, leaning around from the passenger seat to look at her a few minutes into their fifteen-minute drive into the church in town. She winces.

“KC, Courtney isn’t staying up there by choice,” her Dad answers, immediately, sounding tired.

“Well if you stopped pissing off Mum then maybe everything would be fine,” he snaps, towards their Dad.

“KC! Stop it. Be rational. We’re lucky the family that are actually looking after Courtney this year haven’t called goddamn CPS and then you’d all probably be taken away,” he replies, his voice stern and tired and heavy. It makes a lump form in Courtney’s throat – she knows Shayne’s Mum had considered it, and Shayne wanted to say something to someone at school, but they hadn’t for whatever reason – before she suddenly panics, realising what he said. He knows. Shit, he knows.

“They’re not looking after me they agree with Mum-” she starts, rushed, but her Dad cuts her off.

“Courtney, it’s fine. I know Shayne is one of your best friends. I know they’re looking after you, and I’m glad they are – I mean, it’s not great, I’d prefer if we weren’t making another family buy you clothes and feed you because we won’t – but anyway. Your mother is… going through some things. And maybe in a few months it’ll be… calmer,” he tells her, his voice seeming to sway between hesitant and just… tired. Annoyed.

She takes it as her sign to shut up, quickly blinking back the tears in her eyes and leaning her head heavily back against the headrest to look up at the ceiling.

“Can I got to Shayne’s when we get home?” she asks, quietly, two minutes of awkward silence later.

“Yes, I’ve already mentioned it to your mother,” her Dad answers, simply.

“Cathy will want to do a second Christmas there for me,” she mumbles, near-silent, feeling Kami reach over and squeeze her shoulder for a second when she does.

It’s the only time she’s allowed out of the bedroom – other than one shower the day after Christmas – until they finally leave Utah on the 29^th. Her mother had forced her to sit between her and her Dad during the church service, and she rode back to the house with her mother and grandparents, both of the women lecturing her the whole way about paying attention to the service and being a real Mormon and how awful she is.

She’s forced into her Mum’s car on the way back, too, and she occasionally yells at her, but for the most part she sits silently while KC and Kari talk – without her phone, this time, having left it buried in her duffel bag.

All she wants to do when she gets home is curl up in a heap in her bed and cry, but the second they get back in the late afternoon, her mother tells her to clean the bathroom. She does, silently and numbly, scrubbing everything harshly and messily until it’s sparkling clean and she can trudge upstairs and to bed. It doesn’t surprise her that she doesn’t get called down for dinner.

————————————————

Courtney’s mother is yelling at her to get out of the house at literally 7:45am the next morning. Courtney grumbles to herself about wanting more sleep – she barely slept in Utah even though she was lying in bed for a week, the bed was awful – but she quickly forces herself to get up and find some clothes.

She feels gross. She hasn’t showered in four days – she wanted to last night, but Kari and all three of her brothers claimed both showers one after the other before she could – and she hasn’t eaten since they left Utah and she can’t even convince herself to be excited as she trudges up the street to Shayne’s house.

“Come in, honey, have you had breakfast? I can make you something?” Catherine greets her, immediately ushering her inside. She takes a heavy breath, staring down at the floor.

“I haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday,” she mumbles.

“Okay, come on, big breakfast then!” she answers, immediately, gently tugging her in the direction of the kitchen.

“You don’t have to,” she half-protests, weakly, but as always, Shayne’s Mum simply hums lightly.

“Shayne told me what they did to you in Utah, honey. It’s not okay – it’s awful – but it’s over now, and you’re here, and nothing is a problem,” she reminds her, gently and firmly at the same time.

Courtney tries to take it to heart, taking a deep breath and trying to straighten her shoulders up.

But she feels so gross-

“Can I take a shower? I haven’t been able to for a couple of days, I feel gross,” she asks, forcing herself to vocalise her discomfort.

“Of course! Of course, honey – Shayne is actually in the main bathroom showering, but come on, use our bathroom, I’ll get you a fresh towel, you can shower while I cook up some breakfast,” she tells her, gesturing her back out of the kitchen and towards the master bedroom, “oh, honey, did you want to wash your hair too? I can get you two towels so you can have one for your hair too, if you’d like. I found that much easier back when I had long hair?”

“That… that’d be nice. Thanks,” she answers, quietly, before quickly adding, “although I… didn’t bring shampoo.”

“Not a problem! Just use mine,” she replies, simply, before lowering her voice, “it is a blonde toning shampoo, my natural hair is a tiny bit greyer than this these days… but it’ll be good for your blonde, too, even though yours is real blonde.”

Courtney can’t help but smile lightly at Cathy’s joke, letting her lead her through the bedroom – Shayne’s Dad wanders out of the room just before she goes in, nodding a quick greeting before heading off – and to the bathroom.

Catherine leaves her be, then, telling Courtney to take as long as she wants. Their bathroom isn’t particularly fancy, but the water warms up quickly and as she steps under the showerhead, she closes her eyes and imagines it washing away the last week. All the slightly cold food, all the ick of that bed, and the awkward cold sweat of being wrapped up in a million layers in a cold room.

She doesn’t stay in the shower for too long, but she can’t bring herself to feel guilty for being there. She shampoos her hair twice and conditions it after, even leaving the conditioner to rest for two minutes like she knows you’re meant to but she never does at home, but after she rinses out the conditioner she soon turns the shower off and steps out to dry herself.

It's silly, but it’s so nice to have two towels at once, as she wraps her hair up over her head to stop it dripping all over the rest of her as she dries herself and gets dressed again. There’s a hairdryer sitting on the bathroom cabinet just beside the sink, and after only a couple of seconds of hesitation, she reaches for it. She doesn’t have a brush so she has to use her fingers to comb through it, but carefully, she blow-dries her hair enough that it’s not going to make her cold or dampen her shirt.

She feels lighter and fresher when she walks back out of the bathroom, wandering down the hall and back through to the kitchen at much the same time that Brian seems to appear from upstairs and wander in. Shayne is already in the kitchen with his mother, his Dad sitting at the dining table reading something on his phone, and Courtney moves towards the kitchen towards the distinct smell of bacon, eggs and hash browns.

“What’s all this for?” Brian asks, wandering over behind her.

“My favourite guest is here,” Cathy answers, brightly, Courtney feeling it bubble in her chest as she smiles shyly and dips her head.

“Can I help with anything?” she asks, quickly.

“Nope, pretty much done,” Shayne answers, immediately, “hi Court, by the way.”

“Mm, well, thank you for being here if it gets Mum to cook bacon for breakfast,” Brian jokes, glancing over towards Courtney with a nod before he moves around into the kitchen and starts getting things out of cabinets.

“Coffee anyone? Tea? Orange juice?” Brian offers, glancing between everyone, “I’m making myself a coffee…”

“Oh I’ll have one too thanks honey,” Cathy tells him.

“I’ll have a juice, I’m trying to avoid coffee at least until I’m in senior year,” Shayne jokes, before glancing over towards her, “Court?”

“Orange juice is good,” she tells him, before managing to also move around into the kitchen and start helping Cathy serve up breakfast before anyone can tell her not to.

She probably eats too much and too quickly but she’s hungry and Cathy cooked up all this food for them and she can’t convince herself not to. Shayne’s Dad leaves not long after they start breakfast – he has to head off to work – but she sits there chatting with Shayne, his Mum, and Brian for a while as they eat. It’s the longest she’s ever spent with Brian, and he just seems like an older version of Shayne, with slightly dorkier jokes and a lot more… roughness. Not in a mean way – but, as he talks, she immediately understands that he’s definitely a mechanic.

Brian heads off eventually, too – he says he’s going to see a movie with his girlfriend, his mother immediately bugging him to bring her here for once so they can meet her – and it leaves Shayne, Courtney and Cathy to tidy up from breakfast. They do, getting it all done quickly between the three, before Cathy follows Shayne and Courtney out into the living room.

“Now Courtney, honey… I know the last week will have been awful for you. We weren’t sure what you’d feel like doing now, and it’s completely up to you. If you’d like to stay here, just have a quiet day with Shayne, that’s okay. Or… if you’d like to get out, spend some time outside, we could do that – the park down by the lake, or the museum, or anything you’d like,” Catherine starts, pausing for a second, “and… I know you missed out on having a real Christmas. If you don’t want to think about it or talk about it and just want the holidays to be over for this year, we’ll leave it at that. Or… if you’d like a redo and a better Christmas, we can do that too.”

Courtney feels herself smiling softly, glancing around their living room. They have a Christmas tree up – a fake plastic one, but still – in the corner, although not much else in the way of decorations. It’d be so easy to just say she’ll hang out here with Shayne and do whatever, but she glances between him and his Mum for a moment.

“I haven’t had a chance to go and buy the gifts I wanted to buy for you both… but a Christmas re-do would be kinda nice,” she admits, after a moment, Shayne grinning brightly in response and his mother’s smile widening.

…She has a feeling they wanted her to say that.

“Perfect! Okay, well, I’ll let the other boys know it’s Christmas dinner at our house tonight – maybe Brian will finally bring Madison – and honey, you don’t need to get us gifts of course, but if you and Shayne would like to go out at some point today, you’re more than welcome to,” Cathy tells them, nodding.

“I wouldn’t mind getting outside,” she admits, lightly.

“D’you wanna play games for a bit – I got a bunch of new Switch co-op things for Christmas, there’s one I think you’d really like – and then a bit later this morning we can take the bus like… over to the lake area, and the shops over there?” Shayne suggests, Courtney turning towards him and nodding in response.

“Sounds good. What games did you get?!”

Shayne plugs his switch dock into the living room TV, and Courtney finds herself quickly relaxing in to joking around and playing games with him – he was right, she does like some of his new games – through most of the morning.

“D’you want to head out sometime soon? We could grab lunch somewhere over near the shops, the psychologists’ office is over there so I know a few good places,” Shayne offers, late morning.

“Sure,” Courtney answers, simply, as she glances over at the window, “I might change though, it looks kinda cold.”

“Don’t forget jackets, both of you! It might look sunny but that wind is chilly,” Cathy adds, from where she’s pottering around the dining room and kitchen doing something or another.

The air is cold outside, but it’s cold in a way that makes Courtney feel free. Courtney shoves her hands into her jacket pockets as they wander down the street to the bus stop, but her body feels warm as the winter sun shines down and she laughs at Shayne rambling on about his (in her opinion) completely off-base conspiracy theory about what the twist will be in the latest Marvel show he’s been watching. Not that she’s caught up on it – she hasn’t been able to watch the last few episodes with everything over Christmas. Maybe she can ask him if they can watch some later.

Courtney doesn’t visit Mansfield’s lake area much anymore. There’s a huge playground that she used to go to all the time as a kid, but it’s a smaller shopping area than the one in town near the main bus station, and it’s further away. It’s relatively quiet out, given it’s a couple of days after Christmas and probably the coldest day they’ve had all winter, but she doesn’t mind.

“Hey, how do you feel about ramen? There’s a place I like just up here, warm lunch seems like a decent idea today,” Shayne comments, as they wander from where they get off their second bus along the concrete path at the edge of the lake, vaguely in the direction of one of the blocks of shops.

“Your Mum did tell you to wear a jacket, dude,” she answers, laughing, “but yeah. Ramen is usually cheap, right?”

“It is – but I’m paying anyway,” he answers, simply, “and yes, yes, I know. I can’t remember where it is.”

“You literally just got back from Colorado, you would’ve had a jacket there right?” she continues teasing him, knowing it’s not worth arguing about paying. She’s given up on trying to argue that with the Topps, instead quietly resolving that somehow she’ll try and pay them back one day in the future.

“Yes but I didn’t unpack properly,” he answers, “which is my fault. But whatever, stop being mean!”

Courtney simply laughs in response, both of them falling into a comfortable silence in response as they approach the ramen shop, Shayne opening the door and gesturing for head to step inside before him.

It’s small and cozy, with only a couple of other tables already filled, but it immediately smells so good and a server greets them with a smile and leads them to a table in a corner. Part of Courtney wants to panic: she hasn’t ever had real ramen anymore, just the dodgy instant top noodles when her Dad can’t be bothered to cook. She’s awful at chopsticks, having only ever tried to using them when she’s got cheap sushi rolls with her friends at the mall and usually ended up just picking it up with her fingers, and the table is set with a set of chopsticks and a deep, oval soup spoon she doesn’t think she’s seen before.

But, she takes a deep breath, letting herself settle back into chatting with Shayne. She orders the pork tonkatsu ramen – a little bit because it seems easiest to pronounce, a little bit because it sounds good – and, when Shayne requests a couple of forks, she gives him an appreciative smile.

She doesn’t need to panic. He’s got it covered.

Chapter Text

Courtney thinks pork tonkatsu ramen might just be her new favourite food. It might be because holding the sides of the bowl of warm broth and noodles takes the chill out of her hands into a comfortable warmth, or that Shayne seems to know their server and she is friendly and kind and jokes with them and gives them a discount, but it’s somehow the best meal she’s had in like, months.

She does raise her eye at Shayne when the server tells them she’s given them a discount when he pays, but he doesn’t seem to respond to it in any particular way.

“She was totally flirting with you. Something going on…?” Courtney asks, when they step outside, watching Shayne shrug a little awkwardly in response.

“I know she was, and I guess she’s not not cute, but… I don’t know. I don’t think I’m really interested,” he replies, as they turn down a small side-street lined with shops, “where did you want to look?”

“Someone else, then? Or just still happy being single?” she pushes, ignoring his question and simply stepping into the first boutique they wander past just to see what’s in there. It’s been a while since Shayne has said literally anything about dating.

“I… think just happy being single,” he replies, after a moment of hesitation, “it seems like a lot of effort and there’s not really anyone I really… like. I’ve got so much other stuff going on with work and school and sport, anyway.”

“Mm. I think I’ll be single for a while,” she adds, after a moment, knowing he’s probably being honest and there isn’t anything else to quiz him on, instead slowly turning her own thoughts over in her mind, “the one time I’m not dating and Mum is obsessing that I am. And like, I’m technically allowed to now, church just says not until you’re 16. But all the guys I know suck.”

“A lot of guys suck,” he agrees, laughing, before their conversation moves on.

They wander around the shops for a couple of hours, Courtney managing to find a set of three fancy soy wax candles for Shayne’s Mum (she makes Shayne smell them, and he confirms that he thinks his Mum will like them) and, after kicking him out and telling him to go look elsewhere for a while, an alarm clock/Bluetooth speaker/rainbow lamp from a little anime and gaming store since she knows he’s been wanting a new lamp for the study desk in his bedroom and he keeps talking about how cool internet gamers look with all their coloured lighting setups.

A lot of the shops in this area are open really short hours during the holidays, closing at 2:30pm, so it’s only mid afternoon when Shayne and Courtney decide to start walking back towards the bus station – although they take the long way, Shayne pointing out where he works and a few other stores nearby as they walk one street away from the lake before turning back down towards the bus station.

When they eventually return to Shayne’s house, Courtney feels warmth wash over her in more ways than one. It’s immediately obvious why Cathy was insistent they go out (not that they needed much encouraging anyway), and Courtney glances around at the now much more Christmassy living, dining and kitchen areas. There’s tinsel and candles on the mantlepiece over their (fake, but still) fireplace, reindeer ornaments sat each side of the TV, and a Christmas-patterned tablecloth lining the dining room table with starry serviettes folded neatly under cutlery set at six places at the table.

“Brian actually called me to confirm Madison can’t come tonight,” Cathy tells them, laughing, after greeting them and gesturing them inside, “he must know I’m only teasing. We’ll meet her eventually…”

“I’ve met her,” Shayne mumbles, under his breath, when his mother turns back to doing something else. Courtney has to hold back a laugh, immediately knowing Shayne is just covering for his brother by pretending he hasn’t.

She’s also, like… not mad there isn’t another person coming tonight who she hasn’t met and who might not understand why Shayne’s friend is randomly at his house and they’re doing a weird second Christmas two days late.

Courtney has no idea how close this not-Christmas is to a real Topp Christmas celebration, but regardless, it’s nice and it’s relaxed. She and Shayne both change into slightly nicer clothes – she pulls out one of the shirts she stores at their house, and Shayne actually puts on a casual button-up shirt instead of just a tee for once – before wandering back into the living area to ask Cathy if she needs help with anything.

“No, no, all under control – you two can just do what you’d like for a little while, Robert will be home a bit after 4 and Brian said he would be too, we’ll do gifts then before dinner,” she replies, waving them off.

“Oh – would you have some gift wrap somewhere? I haven’t had a chance to…” Courtney trails off.

“Yep! Mum keeps it in the other living room, I’ll show you. And then I’ll get out and let you wrap things without me looking,” Shayne answers, grinning, Courtney laughing lightly and following him down the hall.

She sets her two presents under the tree – there appears to be a handful of others under there, too, and it confuses her a little. Wouldn’t they have done all their gifts already? – after she’s wrapped them, before she asks Shayne how he’d feel about rewatching the last couple of episodes of that show he was rambling about, since she hasn’t seen them yet.

“Yes, let’s watch it. I swear I’m right!” he answers, immediately rushing to the TV and navigating to Disney+. He’s quiet while they watch, at least, although Courtney can’t get his theory out of her mind as she tries to fit it in to what she watches.

…Nope. It still doesn’t make any sense.

“I think you’re actually crazy, that theory doesn’t make any sense,” she teases him, after they finish the latest episode, Shayne crossing his arms and overstating a frown at her in response.

“You don’t make any sense.”

As with most Marvel things in the last few years (she’s ranted about this to Shayne and Zach so many times. She doesn’t have the attention span for it!) the episodes are long, and it means by the time they finish watching two and finish making fun of each other afterwards, the front door opens to Brian wandering back into the house and then quickly moving upstairs after he realises the others are a little more dressed up. Shayne’s Dad, for his part, gets home five minutes later, immediately moving to the master bedroom to wash up (he is a plane mechanic, after all. His job is probably dirtier than her Dad’s, and he sometimes does basic maintenance on the trucks and complains about his hands feeling greasy for like a week afterwards.)

“Ah, it looks like everyone’s here! Would we like to share gifts?” Cathy enthuses, once the two older men return to the living area. It doesn’t immediately feel weird to Courtney – she hasn’t actually had a Christmas yet this year, she didn’t get anything from any of her family – but she suddenly realises it will be for everyone else. It’s not really Christmas. They’ve already done Christmas this year-

“Come on, Mum, you’re getting slack,” Brian jokes, immediately, wandering further into the living room and leaning down behind the Christmas tree for a second, until it suddenly lights up in a mass of twinkling lights and he stands back up and turns to face them, “merry Christmas, Mum, Dad, Shayne, Courtney.”

“Ah, how could I forget the lights!” Cathy laughs, her own tone warm, “merry Christmas, Brian, honey, come on, give your mother a hug.”

It starts a chain of merry Christmases and hugs between everyone, and as much as Courtney’s brain holds the niggling reminder that this isn’t really Christmas for them, it all seems… natural. Genuine. Not at all like it isn’t real to them.

“Here, I’ll hand out gifts from Cathy and I first, I’m definitely the closest to Santa,” Shayne’s Dad comments, ushering everyone else over to the couch. Courtney ends up sat in the middle of the largest sofa – between Shayne and his mother – while Brian sits into the two-seater closest to his mother.

“Mum, you should’ve told me we’d have Courtney here for Christmas – I didn’t get anything, I feel bad,” he comments, lightly, his mother shrugging an apology.

“I didn’t manage to get you anything either sorry,” Courtney replies, a touch quietly, Brian immediately shaking his head.

“Ah, all good, Courtney! Our rule has always been that you’re not really expected to buy gifts yourself until you’re either graduated high school or working a few days a week,” he answers, his father immediately agreeing.

“So I didn’t need to buy anything this year, really?” Shayne jokes, lightly, his brother immediately starting to ask him about how his job is going and whether he’s going to keep it during senior year, even as Shayne’s Dad starts handing gifts to everyone on the sofa.

“I’ll keep it if I can. It’s a good job, I like it, and they let me study in quiet periods. And I’m going to be taking psychology in senior year anyway, so it won’t be a bad thing to be hanging around a couple of psychologists,” he replies. There’s the slightest edge of nervousness in his tone that Courtney picks up, and she glances over to him, silently querying why, but Shayne subtly shakes his head and moves to unwrapping his gift.

She unwraps her own gift when she realises everyone else is unwrapping theirs. She’s still confused that they all seem to have gifts they hadn’t given to each other yet too, but her attention is quickly drawn when she pulls open the box in her lap and realises it’s full of makeup supplies – and not just anything, but good things. A set of Smashbox liquid lip glosses (she’d been wanting some of those even before her Mum ruined all her makeup – liquid lip glosses were definitely coming back in and she liked the vibes), an Urban Decay eye set, multiple Tarte eyeshadow and blush palettes.

“I really hope this will all work for you, honey – the lady at Sephora had to help me a lot, I haven’t had to know what is popular for a while… although I ended up buying myself a new foundation too!” Cathy tells her, leaning over from her own seat beside her on the couch, quickly moving from concerned to enthused.

“This is so cool, thank you so much,” Courtney answers, immediately, carefully pulling out one of the eyeshadow palettes and peeking inside to see the array of colours, before glancing up to see what everyone else has got and immediately slipping back into confusion. They’re clearly actual, substantial Christmas gifts, Brian flicking through a huge hardcover book (that she can’t actually see the title of) with deep intrigue, while Shayne practically hugs the box of a set of Bose wireless headphones and Cathy peers inside a fancy-looking black handbag.

“Court, come on, we can both do ours now?” Shayne comments, next, prompting her to get up from the couch. She does, quickly reaching for the gifts she’d hastily wrapped and set under the tree earlier – still better-wrapped than Shayne’s, she notices – and setting one in front of his seat on the coffee table and handing the other to Cathy. Shayne, for his part, has one gift that he says is for both his parents that he hands to his Dad, one for her, and a small one for Brian.

“Here, I’ll do mine now too,” Brian adds, quickly standing up to hand his out too.

It ultimately doesn’t surprise Courtney that when she opens her gift from Shayne, it’s a brand new set of markers – but she has to resist the urge to try and fight him when she realises they’re actual Copic Sketch markers.

“Shayne! Seriously?!” she says, instead, glancing sideways at him.

“Zach told me they’re good,” he replies, with a shrug, although his almost scheming smile tells her that he knows they are in fact like, professionally recommended and more than just good.

There’s a slight lull after they all enthuse over their gifts and thank each other, and as Cathy stands up and goes to add one of the candles Courtney had gifted her to the table and find her electric lighter to light it, and Shayne’s Dad and Brian both pore over that huge hardcover book, Courtney quietly turns to Shayne.

“I’m confused how you still all have gifts for each other, too,” she almost-whispers, a little nervously.

“We didn’t take any of them to my grandparents’ – we were always gonna do our own thing here once we got back. And when I told Mum about what was happening with you over there… she and I kinda decided instead of being lazy we’d do it properly with you too, if you wanted to,” he explains, his own voice low as he does before it turns joking, “it’s cool to have you here for Christmas. I don’t have to be the youngest and get made fun of for how bad I am at wrapping things.”

“It’s cool to be here,” she replies, softly, “thank you. Your wrapping is awful though. And I’m not that much younger than you.”

“Next time I have to wrap a gift for someone’s birthday or whatever I’m getting you to teach me,” he tells her, his voice slowly raising to normal level again.

“Do you think you can be taught or is it just impossible for you to learn that?” his mother calls out from the kitchen, teasing him, Courtney feeling herself giggle in response.

There may only be five of them, but as food starts appearing in serving dishes crowding the kitchen bench, it’s nothing short of a full Christmas dinner (although a little different to the ones Courtney is used to). There’s a baked glazed ham, sweet potato casserole, stuffing, what she thinks might be creamed spinach, and some kind of mixed mushroom dish that she’s definitely never seen before. Courtney adds some of everything to her plate – as does everyone else – and she finds herself quickly gravitating to the middle chair on the living room side of the dining table, in what has become her usual position beside Shayne and opposite his mother at the dining table.

Their conversation remains loud as they start their dinner, as people ask for sauces and salt and pepper and bread and butter to be passed up and down the table, but it soon falls into a comfortable lull as everyone eats.

It’s Shayne’s Dad that breaks the silence after a few minutes, telling Cathy the ham is really nice this year, and Courtney quickly agrees, adding that everything is nice and she enjoys the change from turkey, since thanksgiving was only like a month ago anyway.

“I’ve always thought that – why do we put both our turkey holidays within a month of each other? I always try and do something a bit different for Christmas,” Cathy comments, “I wanted to try a turducken, but Robert refused that.”

“I just don’t want three birds mixed together, Catherine. If you must cook a duck, you can make it for yourself and whoever else wants it,” he replies, a little tense, but Catherine and Brian both laugh.

“Roast duck is really nice, though. There’s a really good Chinese place in Aspen that does proper roast duck,” Brian comments, “Madison introduced me to it when I went there with her last year.”

She watches Brian immediately regret mentioning his girlfriend when his mother starts asking questions about her – where she’s from (Aspen), what she’s doing, how they actually met given Brian wasn’t living in Mansfield until recently but he’s been dating her for a while and she’s been here a few years…

“Why don’t you quiz Shayne about his girlfriend?” Brian almost whines, after a while.

“He doesn’t have one to ask about,” his mother answers, lightly, “that I know of… Courtney, you got any inside info I don’t know?”

“Unfortunately not. He’s single. He won’t even tell me anything about girls ever,” she answers, shaking her head and glancing over at Shayne to see him putting on a frown again.

“Well I definitely won’t tell you anything if you’d just go and tell my Mum if I do,” he comments, Courtney merely laughing in response. She’s pretty sure Shayne knows that if the answer was anything other than no, he’s single, she wouldn’t tell his parents.

Their banter all through dinner continues light and calm, and more than ever, as it grows closer to 8:30pm – after some of them have had seconds, and they’ve all had apple pie for desert – Courtney dreads the thought of leaving. This is where she wants to stay. In this happy, calm family that teases each other with love only, that has brought her in like she’s not just some random friend of their son, where she feels like she just gets to be herself for once and not have to constantly think about what she does and what she says and how she reacts.

“This was really nice. Thank you so much. Kinda the best Christmas I’ve had in years,” she admits, lightly, letting herself hug Cathy tightly at the door.

“It was lovely to have you here, honey,” she replies, simply, hugging her back before wishing her goodbye as Courtney steps back out of the house to reluctantly trudge home.

She’s changed back into her other clothes hurriedly thrown on this morning and left most of the makeup Cathy and Robert had gifted her with her stash of clothes at their house, but Courtney had buried the markers and just a couple of the liquid glosses from that set in the small backpack she’d taken over to take home.

She’s hesitant to step back inside her house, but when she does, it’s almost eerily quiet. She wanders hesitantly into the entry to their living/dining room, but she only finds her Dad sitting at the head of the dining table with a newspaper open in front of him, quickly glancing up towards her.

“Oh, Courtney, hi- your mother is staying with her friends to help prepare for some new years party they’re hosting. You probably could’ve come back earlier, but I thought you might like to spend a day with your friend,” he tells her, his voice tired, “everyone is asleep or working.”

“It’s weird for it to be this quiet here,” she mumbles.

“Mm. It’s nice,” her Dad replies, with a nod, before glancing back down to his paper. Courtney takes it as her signal to trudge back upstairs to her room.

Chapter Text

“Hey. Any chance you can get out tonight? The park, not my place,” Shayne texts Courtney, late night on the Sunday a couple of days later, the night before they go back to school after break.

Courtney’s last two days of break had been… boring, she guesses. Her Mum was out Thursday night for New Years, not getting home until late the next day, and her Dad let the rest of them stay up at least to watch the ball drop and the fireworks from New York on TV, even if they couldn’t actually stay up until midnight. Once her Mum had got home her parents had gone straight back to arguing, but Courtney managed to disappear into the background of every meal and hide away in her room enough that nothing seemed to be thrown her way.

Shayne’s text immediately makes her worry, quickly shifting up from her bed to walk over to her bedroom door and try and peer downstairs. It’s been ages since she actually snuck out to see Shayne and went to the park – it’s always his house now. Why does he want to get out of his house? Is there something wrong? And is it related to the hint of nerves she keeps hearing in his tone and the awkwardness in his movements whenever… she hasn’t quite worked out the pattern yet. She saw it about his job, but about senior year too, and…

“Think so. There soon,” she replies, simply.

It's dark out – it is the middle of winter, after all – and Courtney pulls on her jacket, silently descending the stairs. She feels like she’s out of practice sneaking out, her movements nervous and cautious, but she feels her shoulders relax when she gets downstairs and immediately hears both her parents locked in an argument in the kitchen about food, and a movie blaring from the TV. That’s where everyone is, and she silently slips through the laundry and out the back door before ducking down as she moves along the side of the house.

Courtney shivers when she stands up properly and walks a little quicker after turning right and away from her parents’ front yard. She doesn’t miss hanging out with Shayne out in the cold night air in the playground now that the warmth of his house has become an option, it’s so much less comfortable out here. But, at the same time, it’s quiet. It’s peaceful. It reminds her of how glad she is that she was, admittedly, pretty dumb and let a random guy she didn’t know sit with her and told him everything that first time so long ago.

“Hey Shayne. Everything okay?” she asks, gently, climbing messily up the stairs at the edge of their usual hiding place on the playground to find him already sitting up there, legs hanging out through the gaps between the metal side gate as he stares back up the street.

“I don’t know,” he replies, his voice tense. Courtney shuffles over to sit beside him, twisting slightly so she’s leaning against the plastic edge of the slide beside her and facing him.

“Is this about the same thing that’s been making you sound nervous when people ask you about stuff sometimes lately?” she asks, carefully, “I don’t know if it’s… I’ve just noticed a few times you seem to be getting kinda tense, which isn’t normal for you. Like when you were talking about your job the other day.”

“It is, yeah. It’s not my job though,” he replies, sighing heavily, “Dad’s contract here was for two years. It ended in December. But it was extended three months because he’s in the middle of some project that isn’t finishing until the end of March. But… I don’t know what happens after that.”

“You might move again?” she asks, trying to keep her own voice level even as she feels her own body tense. She knew his Dad worked at the military base, but she’d honestly forgotten they were like all the other military families. They wouldn’t be here forever. And he might be leaving soon-

“I don’t know,” he replies, again, his voice strained, “I think Mum and Dad are talking about it, but they haven’t said anything to me yet. I know he’s eligible to retire from the military, but even if he does… we could still move. And it could be to literally anywhere. Brian is thinking of getting a place here with Madison. But it’d be weird to stay here without my parents – when Brian stayed in Arizona for senior year it was because he’d already started anyway and we have family over there. I just… I have no idea what happens in three months and it’s terrifying.”

“Yeah... That sucks. It’d be hard just… not knowing. Do you want to stay?” she asks, knowing her voice turns small when she does, against her best wishes. Shayne immediately turns to face her, and he watches a handful of tears pool in the corner of his eyes as he nods.

“Yeah. It’s- It’s not even the longest I’ve been anywhere but I’ve settled here more than I ever have anywhere before. I forget I’ve only been here two years. It feels like my group of friends at school have been friends since we were kids or something, I don’t want to leave all of them. I don’t want to leave you, you’re one of my best friends I’ve ever had. And my job is so nice and it’s easy but it’s kinda I think in the field I want to end up in myself eventually and they’re cool to keep me on even if my availability is a mess when I’m a senior because of school and I just-” he almost rambles, before shaking his head and turning back to look up the street, “I know everyone says Mansfield sucks and it's just some dumb small town and yeah it’s not huge but it’s… I actually have a life here.”

“It makes sense, that you want to stay, when everything is like, going so well for you,” she replies, quietly, biting back her immediate response of telling him she wants him to stay, too. “Could you talk to your parents about it? Could they work out how you can stay, even if they don’t?”

“I think my parents would let me influence their decision and something about that makes me feel guilty,” he admits, head bowing as his hand reaches up to brush heavily through his hair, “I don’t want Dad to end up missing out on some opportunity just because I want to stay here but I… don’t know. I’ve never been close to my brothers, they’re only a year apart from each other but Brian is 4 years older than me so it’s… it’d be weird to live with him.”

“Maybe you do need to talk to them, Shayne. It’s… it seems like a lot to think about. Especially when you’re trying to work out what you’re going to be doing in three months,” she tells him, carefully, “I think your parents would be good about it”.

“I should. But it’s… I’m scared about what will happen. It’ll be the first time I actually give an opinion about where we live instead of just going with it,” he almost mumbles, and Courtney gently reaches over a hand to press against his back, feeling him immediately lean into it.

“You have good reasons for having an opinion, though, Shayne. Like… like Brian staying back in Arizona last time. You’re at a kind of important part of your life,” she tells him, “you shouldn’t feel guilty about wanting to stay. And it’s… like… if your parents really want to move, they will. If they stay here, and partly it’s because you want to stay, it’d be because they know it’s important for you too.”

“I guess,” he replies, softly, before glancing back up and down the street again, “when I was a kid I always tried not to get too friendly with anyone because I always knew I was gonna leave but here I just… forgot. Or maybe you guys all tricked me into letting myself feel like here was home.”

His tone rises a little at the end, and it makes Courtney smile, slowly reaching over and squeezing his shoulder slightly.

“I think you actually tricked me into letting you become my friend. But I could see Zach and Alicia tricking someone into friendship,” she replies, before softening her own tone again, “I hope you stay. And I kinda hope your family does too.”

“Same,” he replies, almost a whisper, before the two fall into a quiet silence sitting up in the playground.

They sit there for a while, in the quiet of the playground. It feels like at least fifteen minutes later that the wind starts to pick up, Courtney shuddering involuntarily in the cold and accidentally bumping Shayne’s shoulder when she does.

“Sorry,” she mumbles.

“S’ok. You should probably go home, don’t get too cold, and don’t want to risk anything,” he tells her, softly.

“I can stay here if you’d like, Shayne. But… maybe you should go home, too. And talk to your parents,” she tells him, encouraging, watching him slowly nod.

“O…kay. Okay. We’ll both go home, and I’ll… I’ll try and talk to my parents,” he agrees, sighing, “please don’t tell any of the others? I’ve kinda… not mentioned it to them. I don’t want Alicia to make a big deal about it at school and she probably would. I just… I just needed to talk about it with you before I started really working it out with my parents. Part of me doesn’t want to know.”

“I won’t say anything,” she confirms, starting to slowly shift backwards to move off the playground only after he starts to move too, “and it’s okay to be scared about what’s gonna happen. But I think your parents will want it to work for all of you.”

“Thanks for letting me talk it out,” Shayne mumbles, pulling her into a brief hug when they both move away from the playground.

“Of course. I know you’ve helped me out a lot, but I’m always here for you too,” she tells him, as they step back from the hug, watching Shayne smile at her in response.

Courtney manages to slip back into her house without anyone noticing – the movie is still blaring and she’s pretty sure even Kari is downstairs watching whatever it is – but she does so with her own thoughts swirling in her mind. Part of her is completely convinced Shayne won’t leave, at least – his parents would make sure he could stay, wouldn’t they? – but part of her is suddenly scared. She’d pushed it out of mind ages ago, but there was a reason she usually stayed away from the military kids. They always left.

And now it wasn’t just Shayne she was scared would leave – his whole family, too. His house where she gets to feel safe.

She’s used to having random, weird nightmares, but tonight, her nightmare is almost annoyingly predictable, as she tosses and turns through her subconscious making her panic over and over about Shayne leaving, and Cathy and Rob leaving, and she never hears from any of them ever again and Zach and Alicia and all of them stop talking to her too and her friends realise she’s an awful loser because now the juniors hate her too without Shayne to convince them otherwise and-

Ugh. The last thing she needs on the first day back at school at the start of a new semester is to look gross and overtired.

…Especially when she has gym first period Monday in her new timetable. Ugh. This semester is going to be awful.

————————————————

Courtney’s first few weeks of the semester are just… mundane. Her classes go straight back into everything, barely different to before the break just with slightly different material. There’s a new girl that is in homeroom with her, Yasmin and Hollie, that turns up with bright pink hair and an undercut that she immediately gets dress coded for and heavy black boots who Yasmin seems to immediately gravitate to making fun of, Isabel and Natalie and Hollie immediately piling on too, so Courtney joins in.

She’s clearly looking for attention, turning up with insanely coloured hair. She – Billie, according to their homeroom teacher – probably thinks she’s so cool even though she’s a new kid that doesn’t know her place. Isabel compares her to Cody – who still goes to the school, but to Courtney’s relief, they kind of never see him and she doesn’t have any classes with him – with all his forced emo alternative stuff and saying she probably listens to awful screamo music, or something. It isn’t totally off-base. She does seem to fit that aesthetic.

“She wears so much makeup to look pretty like that, she tries so hard to be all put together every day, I bet she’d look awful if she took any of it off,” Yasmin comments, one lunch time a few weeks into semester.

“Bet you’d like to find out,” Billie’s voice appears, light and teasing, Courtney glancing up to see she was walking right behind Yasmin when she said it. She expects Yasmin to immediately have something to shoot back at her, but she seems to blink in shocked silence for a moment.

“Screw off, creepy bat girl. There’s a loser like you named Cody that you should probably go hang out with,” Isabel speaks up, after a beat, Courtney having to bite back a laugh. Is bat girl really an insult? She guesses it’s not batwoman…

“Ooh, bat girl? That’s what I’m going for, thanks,” she replies, laughing, “and I don’t do hanging out with boys.”

Billie turns and walks away at that – over to all the other alt-emo kids, of course – but Courtney quickly turns with interest to see what the others will say. Because bat-girl kind of did just shut them down, then, and she evidently hasn’t got the message that no one does that to Yasmin and her friends.

“Oh my god Yas, that was so gross of her, she’s such a creep,” Natalie comments, almost apologetic.

“She’s such a fucking weirdo. Wear a goddamn colour for once, it’s like all these emo kids have never heard of colours,” she replies, shaking her head, eyes returning to a scowl.

“Was she insinuating she’s a lesbian,” Hollie points out, a moment later, her tone a little judgemental. It immediately makes Courtney cringe. She also thought she heard that, but come on Hollie, it’s literally 2021…

“Yeah but we don’t make fun of that, that’s okay, it’s just that she’s a creepy weirdo at the same time,” Isabel points out, immediately, Courtney glancing over to watch Hollie shrug in response before they all seem to move on, Natalie quickly starting to bitch about how much she hates the basketball coach for continuing to refuse to put her in the good positions.

“But like, are you actually any good?” Yasmin comments, plainly, as she takes a loud slurp from the Starbucks drink she’s taken to (very against the rules) ordering to campus for lunch every week or so.

“Yes, duh! I’m literally the best shooter on the team,” Natalie responds, aggressively, before continuing to complain.

She knows it’s something Yasmin does – she has to remind everyone else they’re not that great, compared to her at least – and Courtney just quietly hopes she’s not going to be shot down next over… whatever.

She really hopes they don’t start deciding they all need boyfriends again, especially since Isabel is apparently dating that dude from the concert in LA last Summer again, but nothing seems to come her way. Instead, not ten minutes later, Yasmin seems to glance around the room in search of a target and settle straight back onto Billie.

“Oh my god, have you guys seen her jacket? It’s not even real leather, it’s probably just like cheap shit, look at that, it’s literally falling apart,” she almost laughs, and Courtney can’t quite make out the jacket from where she’s sitting on the opposite side of the table to Yasmin with Hollie, but the other two look over and laugh in response as they look back.

“Even Courtney’s clothes are better than that,” Natalie jokes. Ugh. There it is.

“I don’t wear broken stuff,” she shoots back, trying not to sound too defensive, “or emo stuff… my sister does sometimes.”

“Yeah but your sister wears like, cool vintage dark stuff, not cheap shit,” Yasmin replies, “she evidently got more of the cool than you did. Other than being like, a weirdo stoner. How does your Mum like that?”

“She doesn’t know,” she answers, shrugging, “but Kari would definitely get kicked out if she was found out. I think she stopped for senior year though. I dunno why, she doesn’t even want to go to college.”

“Weird,” Hollie answers, and Courtney instinctively knows it’s about the college part. Hollie was obsessing over dream colleges when she was like, 8.

“Anyway. No one is as creepy as weirdo bat girl. Is she actually a fucking vampire? Has she ever even seen the sun?” Yasmin continues, again.

Chapter Text

Courtney doesn’t understand why, since New Year – and especially after how awful she was at Christmas – her mother seems to suddenly be leaving her alone. But she isn’t complaining, either. There’s still yelling and fighting, but it’s mostly between her parents, and she knows her name is said more than anyone else’s but she tries not to listen. Her Dad seems to be working normal hours again, and she thinks her Mum is working more again too – mostly because she keeps yelling about how it’s not fair that Dad is making her work – but instead of being kicked out to Shayne’s place whenever she’s actually at home, Courtney keeps being told to go to her brothers’ Saturday soccer games with KC and make sure they don’t hurt themselves.

Wasn’t she supposedly ruining her brothers? Whatever. At least she gets to go outside sometimes, even though it’s always freezing and the sound of all the kids screeching and disinterested teen referees blowing their whistles gives her a headache every time.

“Courtney! We’re cleaning the house this weekend, you’re too worthless to be helpful, get out of here and out of the way!” her mother calls up the stairs at 9am the Saturday a couple of days after Yasmin’s little incident with Billie in the cafeteria, though. It immediately makes Courtney grumble to herself.

Her brothers’ soccer had been cancelled because of storms overnight or something, she was hoping for a weekend she could actually just stay home for once.

…Although she figures ‘get out’ probably means she’s going to the Topps’, and she finds herself suddenly getting ready a bit more quickly and a bit more eagerly, before putting her scowl back on as she moves downstairs and out of the house, backpack still filled with more than she needs to be gone for the day. “Cleaning” seems threatening.

Maybe her mother is trying to clean out her entire existence, or something. Whatever.

Courtney is halfway past the house between hers and Shayne’s when she suddenly remembers the last time she’d really talked to Shayne, that night at the playground. They’d chatted by text and whatever since, of course, and said a couple of brief hellos in hallways between classes at school, but the last time she talked to him…

She feels her pace slow, just a little, as worry slowly creeps into her mind again. She might be losing this soon, and if she is… maybe it’s better not to enjoy it too much. Maybe it’s better not to take it for granted. Maybe it’ll just make it harder if they leave.

“Courtney, darling, so good to see you again! Shayne’s just upstairs in his room, you’re welcome to go straight up there and bug him,” Cathy greets her at the front door, and Courtney smiles and returns the greeting and lets Cathy pull her into a quick hug, but she still feels a tendril of discomfort twist through her body as her mind reminds her this might all be over soon.

She tries to stamp it down, following Cathy’s suggestion and heading straight up the stairs and directly to Shayne’s room. She passes Brian in the hallway just stepping out of his own room beside Shayne’s, and she says a quick hello in response to his own, before knocking three times on Shayne’s door, then opening it to step inside.

“Oh, Court! Hi, sorry, Mum said you were coming, this book keeps trapping me in way too deep,” he replies, rapidly jumping up from where he’d been sitting on his bed, head curled uncomfortably forward as the book sat in his lap.

“Don’t let me stop you and your secret-nerd reading,” she shoots back, lightly, as he finds his bookmark and marks his page, before setting the book down on the edge of his study desk.

“This book is literally about a college football star, is it really nerd reading if it’s about sports?” he asks, raising an eyebrow, pausing for a moment before he continues, “…but he does accidentally fall into a cupboard in a science lab and discover a futuristic Tron world. So maybe it’s a little nerdy. Have you ever seen Tron?”

“Weirdly, yes, my Dad likes it. The old version. Ages ago though,” she replies, laughing slightly, “what do you want to do today, other than reading? It’s gross outside, I think we’re very stuck here. The boys’ soccer even got cancelled.”

“It’s so gross, the storm last night woke me up. Could do movies? I might wake up more later but I kinda feel too dead for games,” he admits, Courtney simply nodding.

“A quiet day is good,” she replies, before following him downstairs and to the TV. It takes them ten minutes to actually decide on a movie, but when he eventually picks a light-hearted comedy neither of them have seen, they settle into the couch to watch it, aimlessly chatting every now and then.

“Mind if I joined you? Everything I planned to do today was outside but the backyard is a mud pit,” Cathy asks, wandering over some thirty minutes into the movie.

“Go for it,” Shayne replies, and Courtney tries to study his tone, tries to find the hint of nerves that might tell her whether he’s actually followed through and talked to his parents, but she can’t interpret anything except his lack of care as to whether his Mum sits with them or not.

They have lunch after the first movie – leftovers of an Italian soup of some sort Cathy had apparently made the previous day – but quickly return to the couch to watch a second movie after.

“I’m just going to head out for a little while, couple of errands – I’ll be back soon, your Dad is out in his shed doing god knows what if you need anything, Shayne,” she tells him, lightly, Courtney hearing the garage door opening and shutting not much later.

She considers, for a moment, but she soon finds herself turning slightly and bringing one knee up onto the couch to face Shayne, silently grabbing his attention even as the movie transitions through its introduction.

“How is stuff going, Shayne? Did you talk to your parents about…” she asks, a little hesitantly, but she watches him slowly nod, acknowledging the question.

“I talked to them after I got home from talking to you. And… they understood why I wanted to stay, and they agreed, but they were pretty sure Dad won’t be able to stay on with the air force here. But they don’t know otherwise, whether he could get a different job or something, and I still don’t know how I’d feel about staying if they left,” he explains, his voice soft and turning nervous again, “it’s… I think it’s better now that I know they agree I should stay. But it’s still daunting, and I still have no idea what’s happening and it’s only like two months away now.”

“I’m glad you talked to them and they understand. It sucks you still don’t know though…” she replies, carefully.

“I hope I do soon,” he answers, “I think Brian does too, I think Madison has roommates at the moment or something and needs to move before he can move in with her if that happens… and I guess, either way, if Dad’s leaving the military probably, we’ll have to move houses, this is a military house.”

“I guess you will. But maybe, hopefully, you’re just moving houses somewhere else nearby?” she offers, feeling Shayne nod in response.

“I’ll tell you as soon as I know what’s happening, promise,” he confirms.

“You don’t have to, Shayne. Whenever you’re ready,” she tells him, but he quickly shakes his head.

“You’re allowed to be worried about it too, Court. I know coming over here has become really important to you. I’m happy it has. And like, I’ll tell all my friends pretty much immediately, they just haven’t really remembered and don’t know what’s going on so they aren’t thinking about it. You just gotta be first,” he nods, his voice lightening, “or maybe my Mum will tell you before I can, anyway.”

“Maybe,” she replies, letting herself laugh softly at his joke before they both try and engage with the movie.

It’s… an okay movie. This morning’s was funny, but Courtney finds herself growing bored of this one by an hour in, and when Shayne stands up from the couch and stretches slightly out of nowhere, she glances over as he tells her he feels the same.

“This is sending me to sleep. I need something more energetic,” he mutters, glancing around the room for a while, “I wish there was a Switch sports game like Wii sports. You ever play that? I think I still have my Wii somewhere, I just have no idea where…”

“I was the best at Wii bowling when my cousins had it at their place we used to go to in Utah. Haven’t been to their place for like ten years though,” she replies, shrugging.

“Okay. Wanna help me search through cupboards to try and find this Wii, then, and I can challenge your best claims?” he asks, Courtney feeling herself laugh properly as she quickly stands from the couch, reaching for the TV remote – it’s nearer to her, anyway – and flicking the TV off before she follows Shayne into the garage and starts looking through the tubs stashed on shelves behind where his parents park.

“What are you guys looking for?” Cathy asks, her voice a touch confused, when she drives back into the garage not too long later.

“The Wii. Courtney claims she’s the best at Wii bowling, so clearly, we need to test that,” he answers, immediately, his mother laughing lightly in response.

“Okay, okay. I think we would’ve kept it inside – is Brian still around? He might know. Or actually, maybe not, we definitely packed it up and brought it here when we first moved…” she trails off, seeming to be thinking out loud as she steps inside.

Courtney knows she probably should feel weird as she follows Shayne between rooms searching through the things stuffed up the top of his parents’ cupboards, but honestly, she doesn’t. And she has a little more success with telling her mind not to keep thinking that this might be one of the last few times she gets to hang out here like this when Shayne is joking around and laughing at his own jokes constantly.

They do, eventually, find the Wii – it was at the top of Shayne’s cupboard all along, and Courtney makes a point of reminding him that she had asked if it was maybe in his room – and Shayne plugs it into the TV, quickly cheering when he realises it does actually work. Score.

Courtney silently wonders if she might have lost her skill at this – it has been like, ten years – but as soon as they start up Wii bowling, and then quickly drag the coffee table out of the way so they have room to play without hitting anything, she feels herself remembering it all. She scores almost entirely strikes, and although Shayne isn’t too far behind her, his handful of spares through the ten rounds mean she does, in fact, beat him.

“Told you so,” she grins, Shayne scowling at her in response before breaking into a grin again.

“Okay, okay, so you’re best at Wii bowling. But what about tennis?”

“Whatever is next, just make sure it’s not too long! Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes,” Cathy calls, from the kitchen.

It had taken them a while to search through all the cupboards. Like, most of the afternoon. Oops.

They start a game of tennis, but it turns out they both suck at this one and keep missing serves and double-faulting all over the place, constantly stuck trading advantage-40 back and forth.

They’re technically still in the match fifteen minutes later when dinner is served and Robert and Brian both appear to join them, but they quickly exit out of it without finishing. Maybe tennis isn’t for them.

“Smells good, Mum, what have you made?” Brian asks, as Shayne and Courtney stand from the couch and join the others in wandering over to the kitchen.

“It’s a beef and potato coconut curry, one of my gym friends gave me the recipe,” she explains, “I hope it’s good – go on, serve yourselves.”

Courtney has never had anything that calls itself a curry at her parents’ house – that was definitely too adventurous even for her Dad’s occasional attempts to do something interesting with food – but she’s had a few meals like that at the Topp’s. It’s never actually that extravagant (or, if it’s international food, authentic) she’s pretty sure, but it’s still different. And Cathy always puts a lot of effort into it – she says she likes the process of cooking, every time Courtney or one of the three boys that live in the house offers to cook for her one night.

They’re quiet over their meal, tonight, everyone seeming to enjoy the food (Courtney certainly does. She doesn’t think there’s anything she hasn’t liked here, except maybe the creamed spinach at Christmas. Something about the texture of that weirded her out). The air isn’t awkward, though, until Brian goes to get up from the table after he’s finished, and his mother quickly calls him back.

“Brian, honey, can you stay for a moment please? Your father and I have something we wanted to talk about,” she tells him, her voice a touch nervous. It makes Courtney immediately glance to her side, towards Shayne, silently asking him what it is.

And… should she like, be here for a family conversation?

Shayne shrugs lightly, Courtney quickly turning back to his mother to watch her glance over, seeming to catch the end of her silent interaction with Shayne.

“And Courtney, honey, we did want you here for this too,” she adds, Courtney silently nodding in acknowledgement as she quickly finishes off her last mouthful of dinner.

The silence feels a lot more awkward as Robert and Shayne finish their own meals, Courtney feeling herself flinch slightly at the noise when Robert sets his cutlery down into his bowl to signify he’s finished. He starts talking before she has a chance to work out what she’s on edge about.

“So, as you all know – Courtney, Shayne let us know he told you – my contract with the Air Force base in Mansfield expires on March 26^th, and they do not have the option to renew or extent it,” he starts, Courtney immediately feeling her heart leap into her throat.

Oh.

“Your mother – Cathy – and I have been trying to work out what happens for some time. Cathy can work anywhere, of course, but if I stayed with the military, we would have to move again,” he continues, his voice level and almost stern, “we understand that Brian, you will stay here regardless, and Shayne, it would be much better for you if we all stayed in Mansfield. Cathy and I chose to keep things a bit quiet until we could know for sure, but… when they confirmed they would not renew my contract here, I did inform them I will be retiring from the military entirely at the end of my contract. And I just got confirmation, this afternoon, that Southwest airlines can offer me a similar job in their plane maintenance facility in Mansfield – so we all will be staying here.”

“We will have to move house – and Brian, I understand you might not follow us and might move in with Madison instead, but you are still welcome to move with us – but we won’t be moving from Mansfield,” Cathy confirms, Courtney feeling her body fill with excitement and a grin spread across her face as much as she tries to fight it back. Shayne, evidently, has less success hiding his reaction.

“We’re staying?!” he almost cheers.

“Yes, darling,” his mother responds, Shayne immediately launching from his chair and almost toppling it over as he races around the table and leans down to hug his Dad, and then his Mum.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he tells them, almost chanting, “I had no idea what I was going to do if you left because I want to stay here school is here and all my friends and my job and everything but if you left then…”

“I know, Shayne. I’m sorry if this has been a stressful time for you – and this is an important time for you not to be uprooted again,” his Dad tells him, nodding, as Shayne shuffles back to and sinks down into his seat again, Courtney glancing over to see him blushing, evidently embarrassed by his own loud excitement.

“And Courtney, honey – we know things are still difficult for you, and as much as we won’t be just down the street for much longer, you will be just as welcome in our new house, too,” Cathy turns to her, Courtney letting herself nod in response.

“I’m really glad you’re all staying here. It’s… I really appreciate everything you do for me. Thank you,” she tells them, her tone turning into her own embarrassed mumble as she finishes.

“Of course, darling, I’m glad we can continue to be somewhere you can be safe,” she tells her.

“It’s good to see Shayne will still have a friend that can knock down his claims that he’s the best at every game ever,” Brian speaks up, lightly, Courtney feeling herself laugh lightly in response as Shayne lets out an exclamation.

“Brian – if you are moving in with Madison, can we please meet her already? You’ve been dating for 18 months!” his mother turns to him, almost accusatory, Courtney glancing over and watching Brian sigh.

“Okay, Mum, I’ll bring her over for dinner one weekend next month. But please don’t embarrass me – and she’s having issues with her place, she can’t break her lease until at least July, so I might have to move with you anyway,” he answers, his parents immediately telling him that’s fine, before his mother quickly starts building up excitement about finally getting to meet Madison.

Chapter Text

Courtney’s mother disappears for a full week at the start of February. She doesn’t explain herself or announce her departure, but she drives off late on the Sunday at the end of January, while Courtney’s Dad is at work on an all-weekend shift. KC is out at work when she leaves, too, and Courtney immediately takes it as an opportunity to wander outside and up to the park just so she can get outside for once before it gets dark. She still isn’t allowed to do any extracurriculars this semester either, so other than Shayne’s house, she’s mostly just been stuck at home or school all the time.

Her Dad gets home at 7pm – Courtney has been home for a while by then, as has KC – and immediately calls upstairs to ask where everyone is. Courtney is the only one who wanders down to answer him, telling him that KC and Kari are still upstairs, the boys are in the living room (obviously – they can both see them from where she’s standing at the base of the stairs and he’s standing near the garage door), and her mother is out somewhere.

“Well. Hopefully she’s back soon,” he replies, sighing roughly. Courtney doesn’t choose to ask anymore, although she does step in and help cook dinner when he asks if someone will help and neither of the others answer.

(Conrad also asks if he can help, but he’s… not old enough to actually be helpful or trusted with a knife yet).

Courtney doesn’t know if she’s glad or annoyed when her mother isn’t back soon. It means the house is uncharacteristically quiet – or as quiet as a house can be with six people in it – for the whole week, but her Dad has a lot of work too, and as the week goes on he grumbles more and more about how she’s screwed him over by running off and leaving no food or asking anyone to be in charge when he’s at work.

KC refuses, as he usually does, although after her Dad snaps and yells at him that he needs to stop being lazy and unhelpful and at least take the boys to school each day, he agrees to do that. What he still won’t do is cooking, and cleaning, and tidying up – if anything, he seems to start making as much mess as he can – and Kari keeps claiming she’s too busy with schoolwork since she’s a senior, so of course, it falls to Courtney.

She can technically cook, she just… could also be doing so many other things. Her own homework and stuff, not that she has heaps this early in semester since she’s not failing anything yet and the first quizzes aren’t until early March. She could be lying on her bed scrolling through Instagram. Messaging her friends.

But, no – she trudges around the house every day trying to pick things up and put them where they’re meant to be, begs her younger brothers to clean up their own stuff, cleans the kitchen, cleans the bathrooms, and tries to scrounge together something for dinner every night. At least, she reasons, both her Dad and KC are at work and Kari is god knows where on the night when all she manages to do is make instant ramen and add some sesame seeds from a jar at the back of the pantry that is probably 10 years old on top and tell her brothers it’s this cool noodle dish her friend taught her to make.

They buy it, so whatever.

Courtney is in the midst of helping her Dad make dinner the following Sunday night by chopping up some vegetables when her mother finally turns up again. She’s honestly having an okay time – at least she’s not doing it by herself this time, and her Dad went grocery shopping and planned some meals so there is actually real food to cook with.

“What are you doing?!” her mother screams, the second she tears in from the garage and storms through the living room to stare at them over the kitchen bench, “its too late! The boys should be in bed by now! How useless are you? They’ll rot their brains staying up this late and it’ll all be your fault!”

“Kerryn, it’s 7pm, they’re not toddlers anymore. They don’t need to go to bed for a couple of hours. And I only just got home from work,” her Dad answers, his tone level and tired.

“Then come home from work earlier! You don’t care about anyone except yourself, you selfish idiot! You should be here to look after your children!” she yells back. Courtney can almost feels the way her Dad spins around from where he’d been facing the wall at the back of the stove as he stirred something in the pan.

“YOU’VE GOT SOME DAMN NERVE TO SAY THAT, YOU HYPOCRITE. YOU JUST DISAPPEARED FOR A WEEK!” he bellows, Courtney flinching in response. His voice quietens just a touch to a normal yell, but he continues, “you just left without leaving anything set up for the kids or for the house to be under control and you didn’t tell anyone and you did it in the middle of my 36-hour shift that you knew I was on-”

“Then don’t go on 36-hour shifts!” she snaps, before her gaze turns to Courtney, “and YOU, why are you out here? Don’t you dare touch my knives with your dirty, disgusting hands! You’re a worthless, good-for-nothing whore, you never do anything for anyone! You’re a waste of air!”

“I’m literally helping cook dinner for your children,” Courtney snaps back, before she can stop herself.

“You’re too worthless to do anything! You’re too lazy, you never even try! You don’t even know how to cook or clean without burning down the house-” she continues ranting, anyway. Courtney feels her heart racing and her head turning hot.

“I did everything for the last week! KC refuses to help because you’ve made him think he’s above chores and Kari is busy with school and Dad was at work and I cleaned and I tidied up after everyone and I cooked!” she half-yells back, insistent, “I’m not worthless!”

“Yes you are!” she shoots back, gruffly, before turning back to her Dad, “Kenn, control your useless excuse for a daughter! How dare she lie like that and act like she-”

“She’s not lying, Kerryn, she literally did all that all week,” he answers, plainly, “we’re cooking dinner, if you want your youngest in bed soon then let us finish cooking so he can have dinner and go to bed.”

Courtney’s Mum lets out a wordless scream in response, evidently out of things to actually say, before turning on her heel and moving in the direction of her bedroom at the back of the stairs.

Courtney still feels her entire body pounding with anger and anxiety at what her Mum’s going to do next and say next and whether she should be rushing upstairs to protect her things in her own room, but instead, she continues chopping the vegetables as her Dad silently returns to cooking behind her.

She carries the cutting board with all of the vegetables over to near the hotplates when she finishes, dumping them all into the pot of boiling water when he silently indicates for her to, before turning back and almost slamming the cutting board down on the benchtop again.

She fucking stepped up and did all the household chores and everything her Mum always says she should do to be a good housewife or whatever. She did it. But she still gets called worthless and awful and why does she even try? She doesn’t want to be here. She doesn’t want to do this. Her Mum thinks she’s horrible no matter what she does, she may as well just walk out whenever she wants to and date a bunch of shitty boys and fail her classes and wear whatever she wants and never help with anything. She’s apparently too far gone to save already, so why does it matter?

“Courtney, please, I don’t need two angry women in the house tonight,” her Dad mutters under his breath. She feels like turning around and snapping at him that she’ll just leave then, but instead, she squeezes her eyes closed.

“I’m not angry. I dropped it, it’s slippery,” she replies, trying to keep her voice level and unfeeling as she picks up the chopping board again and moves over to the sink to rinse it and sit it in the dish drainer to be used again, since it’s not really dirty.

“Okay,” he replies, not saying anything further even when Courtney walks out of the room and straight up the stairs to lock herself in her own room.

“What was all that?” Kari asks, with a raised eyebrow, when she flops down onto her bed opposite where Kari is sat reading something on her school laptop.

“Mum’s home. Apparently I’m worthless and can’t cook or clean even though I did literally all the cooking or cleaning for the last week and was actively cooking when she said that,” she answers, plainly, “whatever. I don’t know why I even bother trying.”

Kari doesn’t jump in to make fun of her, this time, so Courtney simply rolls over and faces the wall as she drags her phone out of her pockets and opens her texts to Shayne. She hasn’t seen him in person for a few days – she briefly chatted to him and Ethan at school the other day about a bunch of them maybe going to see the new Tom and Jerry movie when it’s out, just for fun – but she’d mentioned via text that her Mum had gone M.I.A all week and she was picking up all the chores in the house.

“so mum’s back. Apparently I’m worthless and can’t cook and clean and whatever even when I’m literally cooking in front of her. Why do I even bother,” she texts him, ranting, unsurprised when he reads it almost immediately. He’s always quick to respond of an evening – his parents let him have his phone at the dinner table, after all.

“you’re not worthless at all, I’m sorry she’s being awful again. Did your Dad say anything?” he replies, only thirty seconds later.

“Dad told her I did everything all week but she just screamed and went to their room,” she replies, before quickly adding, “back at Christmas Dad made some comment in the car to church with me and Kari, Kami, KC that she might calm down in a few months. I need a few months to happen already. It’s been 2…”

————————————————

“Is it bad that I want my friend’s parents to divorce?” Shayne asks, out loud, as he types out another reply to Courtney telling her that he hopes things calm down soon, too, and at least it seems like her Dad is realising there’s something wrong with the way her Mum acts.

“Not if it’s Courtney’s,” his mother answers, sighing lightly, setting her fork down on her plate and glancing up at Shayne, “what’s happening tonight? If you don’t mind saying?”

“Her Mum disappeared all week and Court had to step up and do all the cooking and cleaning and whatever because everyone else was busy or whatever. And she tried to do everything right but her Mum got home tonight and just screamed at her for being worthless again,” he answers, shaking his head, “but her Dad seems to be seeing through it now, and apparently at Christmas he said something about it calming down in a few months but she doesn’t know what that means. And I know I’ve never even met her Mum but I kinda just wish she’d leave Courtney alone for good.”

“She’s not a nice woman,” Shayne’s mother replies, shaking her head, “I haven’t spoken to her Dad as much – Robert, I know you have a couple of times…”

“Not in any detail, but I know a couple of guys from work volunteer at the fire station during summer, and they all speak highly of him,” he answers, before shaking his head, “I know it’s hard, Shayne, but it’s beyond anything we can do or meddle in. All we can do is hope for the best for Courtney.”

“I know,” Shayne answers, sighing, “and I’d never say to her that I’m hoping her parents are divorcing. Something just… feels like it. She said her Dad just seems tired and annoyed all the time.”

“Wouldn’t be a happy home life for him either, I’m sure,” his mother replies, shaking her head.

————————————————

Courtney doesn’t go back downstairs to eat any of the dinner she half-prepared herself that night, and part of her wishes her Mum would just leave all over again. She doesn’t, she’s annoyingly present all damn week and through the Presidents’ Day weekend the next too. Courtney doesn’t manage to eat a single meal without her picking on how she can’t even eat like a real lady, and she’s eating too much and gaining too much weight, nor can she leave the house for school any morning of the week without her mother yelling at her about some part of her outfit and how she’s a worthless slut that will never find a decent man.

She gets screamed at to clean and to cook then screamed at for cleaning wrong and using ‘her knives’ when she cooks – there are literally no other knives – and she gets called lazy and good-for-nothing every time she trudges upstairs and falls onto her bed when she just doesn’t want to deal with it anymore.

She vaguely hears her Dad trying to reason with her mother, sometimes – about her, about everything else she’s screaming about too – but every time it just seems to become another argument about which one of them is at fault for everything.

Courtney is just… over it. She’s so sick of all the yelling. She’s not being sent off to the Topp’s house and she isn’t even technically being sent to her room, and her head pounds from all the noise. Her Mum’s screaming follows her into her sleep as she tosses and turns between nightmares and being actually woken up by someone yelling somewhere in the house. Her brothers have started yelling and fighting with each other for no reason, too. God. Can it just stop?!

Her mother actually goes to work the day after Presidents’ Day, while her Dad has the day off. She’s not due home until a bit later in the evening, so her Dad decides to cook dinner with the intent to have it ready before she gets home, Courtney happily agreeing to help as she relishes in the (relative) quietness of the house. Conrad is watching some random cartoon on the TV in the living room that she’d kinda prefer wasn’t on, but at least it’s just the TV. Clarke is actually studying at the dining table alongside Kari – Courtney bites back the urge to tell him it’s not that serious, he’s only in sixth grade – and KC is god knows where.

They’ve just finished putting together an actual lasagne, on a weeknight, Courtney sliding it into the oven to bake for thirty minutes just as she hears the click of the garage door opening, silently hoping it’s just KC. He’d at least appreciate the lasagne. Her Dad had done a little – mostly attending to the meat, and pots on the stove – but she’d finely diced an onion, grated carrot and zucchini to hide vegetables in there for the sake of her brothers, and done most of the assembly herself because she kinda liked the routine of layer after layer after layer, three times over. And okay, it was a jar of white sauce they hadn’t made themselves, but whatever. She doesn’t know how to make white sauce and she’s pretty sure her Dad doesn’t either.

“What absolutely garbage are you feeding us this time?” her mother’s voice arrives in the kitchen before she does, Courtney having just closed the oven door.

“Courtney made lasagne – I helped a little, but she did most of the work, just needs to bake for a while now,” her Dad replies, his voice almost light.

“Don’t waste electricity on baking that – we know it’s trash if she did it. Just throw it out. It’s probably just tasteless slop. She’s too worthless to ever cook anything decent,” her mother snaps, in return, marching over towards the oven.

Courtney abruptly presses herself back against it, leaning against the door handle even as it blows annoyingly hot air against her back.

“Get out of the way!” her mother snaps at her.

“It’s not trash,” she shoots back.

“Kerryn-” her Dad starts, but Courtney’s Mum reaches up over her head to the oven controls, flicking it off before Courtney can stop her.

“No! Stop being stupid, Kenn! She’s too useless to cook anything, if she’s tried to cook dinner then none of us are eating tonight,” she argues back, her voice raising as she turns over to the dining room, “and everyone can know that it’s Courtney’s fault you aren’t getting dinner! She’s trying to starve all of us!”

“I cooked an entire lasagne after school on a weeknight I’m not useless and I’m not starving anyone,” she replies, rapidly blinking as she feels the tears pooling in her eyes.

“Yes you are! You’re disgusting and worthless!” her mother replies, loudly, Courtney feeling the tears already starting to run down her cheeks as she immediately darts out of the kitchen and upstairs towards her room. She vaguely hears her Dad and Kari both say something, Kari getting up from the table as she moves past, but she doesn’t hear what. A set of footsteps follow her up the stairs, but she tries to dart into her room and close the door, leaning back against it to hold it shut, to stop them coming in. She doesn’t want her Mum to keep yelling at her, she doesn’t want Kari to come up here just to make fun of her-

“Courtney, it’s me, can you please let me in? I don’t want to hurt you if I push the door too hard,” her Dad’s voice comes through the door.

Why is he here?

Chapter Text

Courtney leans back against the door for another minute, but eventually, she can’t be bothered to push back against the door anymore. Instead, she paces messily over to her bed and collapses down onto it, arms crossed in front of herself as she curls up facing the wall. She hears her dad step into the room and the door close behind him, and she tenses as she waits for the sound of him coming closer and getting in her space.

It doesn’t come, and instead she hears the slight squeak of Kari’s mattress spring as he evidently sits onto the other bed in the room, behind her. Courtney tries to hide her involuntary sniff as tears sting at her eyes under the sound of the spring.

“I’m sorry she didn’t acknowledge your effort and said all that, Courtney,” her dad starts, gently, after a few beats of silence. She blinks heavily in response, but tears still cloud her eyes, and she just wishes he’d go away. It’s not like he thinks much better of her anyway.

“Whatever. You should at least be down there trying to stop her throwing it out so it isn’t a waste of money and time and the rest of your kids can actually get fed tonight even if it’s tasteless slop,” she mutters, her voice harsh. Whatever. Whatever. She doesn’t matter. He should just go look after everyone else-

“I don’t want your effort to go to waste at all, you did a really good job and it looked really good, we were all looking forward to eating it,” he answers, his tone light, “but you need to be okay, too.”

“Whatever. I’m fine. I’ll just stay up here by myself like usual being worthless and useless and whatever you all think. It doesn’t matter. I’m apparently too far gone to fix anyway so don’t bother,” she mutters, brows furrowing and face twisting into a scowl as she crosses her arms tighter across her chest. Why is he still here?

She hears her dad sigh heavily, and after a moment, the bed creaking again as he stands up. Good. He’s going to go downstairs and leave her be and she doesn’t want to hear whatever shit about how her dad thinks everything is fine now and she can fix herself by continuing to cook and clean all the time. He can just go back downstairs and look after the children he actually cares about that don’t need to be fixed and leave her alone-

Instead, though, his footsteps come closer, and she feels the bed sinking behind her as he sits just beside her shoulder. It makes her start tipping back towards him, and she quickly turns herself back towards the wall, face leant towards the covers of her bed.

“You’re not worthless, Courtney. You don’t need to be fixed. I know you’re trying – and I really appreciate you stepping up to help when your mother has disappeared lately, and so do your brothers and Kari,” he starts.

She rolls her eyes to herself. Her siblings don’t even care and maybe he likes not having to do everything around the house but he still thinks-

The grouchy, swirling anger of her internal monologue is interrupted when he reaches a hand over to set on her shoulder and continues talking, although she immediately shrugs his hand off.

“I messed up, Courtney, and I’m sorry I have. I know I’ve said all those things to you too, but they were never true. When she started doing it, I thought… maybe your Mum knew something I didn’t, and I was at work so much I was missing something. And parents are meant to be consistent with each other, I couldn’t fight her about it, so I just tried to go with it while I worked out why she was doing it. But it’s… none of the things she’s said about you the last while have ever been true, I know that now. There wasn’t something I was missing. And I can wish I’d never gone along with it and I’d tried to stop your Mum earlier but I know it happened. But I want to help you now, Courtney. The only thing that needs to be fixed is how our family looks after you,” he tells her, long and almost rambling.

Courtney feels her lip quivering as tears start flowing from her eyes again, as much as she tries to hold them back. Her Dad was never as crazy as her Mum – but he started saying all the stuff too. And he could’ve not done it and she always wanted him to stop her Mum and he’s saying all this now but he never stopped it back then and he didn’t even really help her at Christmas and- he doesn’t mean it. He can’t. He doesn’t care about her either. He’s probably just doing this to trick her somehow and she doesn’t want him to help her anyway, she just wants it all to go away.

“Leave me alone,” she mumbles, eventually, sniffing involuntarily after she does as salty tears hit her lips.

“If you want me to go, then… I’ll go. But please listen to me, Courtney. None of this is your fault. Something is wrong with your mother, not you, and I’m trying to work out how I can fix it. But if you want to be alone, that’s okay,” he replies, slowly standing up from her bed, his footsteps moving back towards to the door before he seems to pause again, “maybe what’s really too far gone to fix is the family’s relationship with you. Especially mine.”

Courtney can hear the tears in his voice and the waver in his tone but she pretends she doesn’t, arms staying crossed tensely in front of her face as she lies silently and still, staring at the wall, trying not to hear any of the noise of family continuing to go about their business without her downstairs.

It has to be at least an hour before she hears anyone else actually walk up the stairs, but when the footsteps move to her door and fling it open before letting it fall closed again as they move inside, she immediately knows it’s Kari. Great. Now she gets to be made fun of for being a baby-

“Your lasagne was really nice, Court. All the boys liked it, too, even Clarke ate his entire serve,” she starts, at the same time Courtney hears her dragging something loudly across the floor. Whatever. Kari always does weird stuff.

“Mum didn’t just trash it?” she shoots back, keeping her tone harsh. She hears Kari sigh.

“I told Conrad and Clarke that Mum was pretending to be an evil dinner-stealing monster and they needed to help me defend the oven. She couldn’t keep it up once it was a game for her boys,” she answers, her tone rising in pitch at the end, before she lowers her voice and adds, “you don’t need to be defensive. I know you’re upset - of course you are, she’s being awful - even if you pretend you aren’t.”

“You’re just going to start calling me a stupid whiny baby again,” she replies, still harsh, her nails digging into her arms as she almost braces herself for it.

“No,” she starts, firmly, before audibly hesitating for a moment, “I’m… sorry I have before. You’re not a baby. People keep being shit to you. It’d be weirder if you weren’t upset.”

Courtney sniffles lightly. Kari would never fake being nice or apologising or whatever. She’d get out of it if she could. She always avoids whatever she doesn’t want to do. She probably still thinks Courtney is weird for always getting upset though.

“I’m just so over it. I just want it to stop and to never see her again,” she mumbles, letting the sadness leak back into her tone. Whatever. It’s just her sister.

“I blocked the door so she’s not getting in here tonight, at least. Unless… you wanted to get out?” Kari asks, carefully, before quickly adding, “I’m not kicking you out. But if you wanted to go to Shayne’s, or something.”

“Not tonight. I just want to stay here,” she replies, still in a mumble, before the two of them fall into silence.

She vaguely hears the sounds of Kari shifting around her side of the room, probably tidying up or planning an outfit for tomorrow or getting out something to do or whatever, but Courtney simply remains lying tightly curled on her bed, listening in silence to the sounds outside their room again.

She hears the rushing, messy footsteps of her brothers coming upstairs to brush their teeth and get ready for bed, and KC’s heavier footsteps as he returns to his own bedroom. It’s only after it seems like everyone else has settled for the night, and Kari has turned off the overhead light to their room, evidently also in bed, that Courtney again hears the faint sound of her parents arguing with each other as they move into their bedroom.

She can tell it’s not the start of the argument – she misses something her Mum says, instead just hearing a jumble of noise – but her Dad’s voice soon becomes distinguishable.

“Don’t you feel anything, Kerryn? When she’s trying, and she’s put so much effort into something, and she’s stepped up to help out when we’ve needed it and then you turn around and tell her all this stuff and make her feel like it was all for waste so much that she can’t even stop herself crying? She’s your daughter,” she hears her Dad empathise. She tries not to think too hard about it.

“I wish she wasn’t,” her mother’s reply sounds venomous, even hearing it barely audibly through the walls. Not that she expects any different. She knows her mother doesn’t want her here.

“But she is our daughter, Kerryn. She’s your child. And you must know everything you say about her is a complete lie – why are you trying to hurt your child like that? Or are you actually delusional and I need to be getting you some serious help?” her Dad continues. She feels herself shivering lightly, and she slowly shuffles around to finally clamber under the covers of the bed she’s been lying on for hours now. She pulls her duvet around her tightly, trying not to make enough noise as she moves to drown out the conversation she can only just hear anyway.

Her mother’s rising voice does make it a bit easier to hear.

“How dare you accuse me of lying! She’s a liar, you can’t believe anything she says, you’re delusional and you’re kidding yourself if you can’t see what she’s doing! How stupid are you?!” she yells, still muffled through the walls, although much louder to Courtney’s ears, “we ought to kick her out and hope someone gets rid of her for good! She’s sixteen, she isn’t welcome in this house or this world.”

“Are you insinuating you want your daughter murdered?!” her Dad responds, his own voicing rising, too.

“Would solve every single problem anyone in this family has,” she replies, her own voice settled. Courtney feels it stab at her heart, thoughts twisting up in her mind all over again.

“Then that’s it. I’m done. We’re not doing this anymore,” he snaps, and Courtney can imagine him tensing up and the tiredness she keeps hearing in his voice just from the hint of tone that makes it through the walls. It makes Courtney cringe.

What aren’t they doing anymore? Arguing about her? Looking after her?

Her Mum wants to kick her out, and her Dad doesn’t think he can have any relationship with her ever again even if he wants her Mum to stop attacking her. It has to be that – they’re done with her. They’re going to kick her out. And maybe he’ll try and help her work out somewhere to live, or find a job, but it’s not like he can do much when her Mum won’t let him.

She guesses that she’d probably end up at Shayne’s place first, at least, but she can’t rely on them forever. It’s not fair – they’re too nice to her and she’s never been able to do anything in return. She can’t take advantage of their kindness forever.

Her parents seem to stop arguing again, and her own mind settles into a dull numbness that seeps through every part of her body.

————————————————

Courtney barely sleeps that night, but it’s a school night, and when she reluctantly drags herself out of bed the next morning to find her family all going about their business like nothing has changed, she finds herself having to to her wardrobe and her dresser, glad she has some of the clothes and makeup from Shayne’s parents in the house. She manages to make herself look presentable for school, although the dull numbness doesn’t leave her as she blindly moves through the day and tries to act normal around her friends and teachers and join in making fun of Billie again when she wanders over and makes some comment about how Yasmin would look good with pink hair.

She tries to do it all without actually saying much in case she bursts into tears over nothing all over again. She doesn’t pay attention to her classes, but she’s probably going to have to drop out of school when she’s kicked out, so whatever.

She knows she should probably try and find Shayne or text him to let him know she’s probably about to be kicked out, but she can’t bring herself to do it. She feels too guilty. A day here and there was fine, but telling them she’s being kicked out would basically be like asking to actually live with them. She can’t do it. It’s too much.

Her mother isn’t there when she gets home from school, nor is her Dad. She trudges straight up to her room anyway, until a while later, her Dad appears and stops at the door, head peering in.

“Hey Court, would you like some dinner? There’s leftovers from your lasagne last night, you should try some of it- but I can do something else if you’d prefer instead,” he tells her, before adding in a slightly darker tone, “your mother won’t be back until late tonight.”

“I guess I’ll have something. I don’t know if I want any of the trash lasagne though,” she mumbles her reply, slowly standing herself up to follow her Dad downstairs.

“Maybe you need to have some, so you know it’s actually very good,” her Dad reminds her, Courtney merely pursing her lips together in response. Whatever. She’ll eat it. No one else will want to.

She spends the next week just waiting for someone to turn around and tell her she has ten minutes to pack and leave forever. She has started secretly packing things into her duffel bag in the bottom of her wardrobe, but there’s only so much that fits in there, and she keeps having to stop when she feels tears prick at her eyes as she thinks about everything she’ll probably have to leave behind.

It’s almost eerily quiet in the house for that week. Her mother is barely there, but when she is, she is merely silent with a steely gaze, occasionally snapping a demand at someone. Her parents seem to suddenly stop arguing, and she guesses it’s because they found their answer. Get rid of her, and everything will be okay.

But nothing happens that week, or on the weekend. Nothing happens on the Monday or Tuesday.

But, on Wednesday night, her father separately – although not particularly quietly – asks all five children, KC included, to please eat at the dinner table at the same time tonight because their parents need to talk to them about something. Courtney knows what’s coming, although she’s just mad they apparently have to do it in front of everyone.

Couldn’t they just let her quietly disappear into the night like she never existed in the first place?

She delays going downstairs as long as she can, staying behind for a while after Kari wanders out to force a few more things into her duffel and her backpack – all her makeup, the markers Shayne got for Christmas. She’s been leaving her school stuff at school every night, so she has more room. – until she knows she can’t delay it any longer.

There’s still only six chairs at their dining table for the seven people in the house, but it feels only right that Courtney is the one who has to move piles of junk and papers from one of the old, wobbly stools stashed against the wall in the living room to pull up beside the table. She squeezes in between Kari and Conrad, slowly stabbing at and trying to make herself eat the food on her plate with barely enough room to actually stay on the table. She knows she isn’t welcome here anymore.

“Now, kids, we… know things have been a bit hard and a bit messy at home for a little while,” her Dad starts, carefully, Courtney letting her head fall forward as she stares down at her plates and feels KC and her mother both glaring at her. Her Dad continues, his voice taking on a strange tone that is somehow tired and serious and frustrated at the same time it’s lilted for the benefit of the younger children, “unfortunately some things will have to change to fix that. And your mother and I have decided that the best thing for us to do going forward, to make things a bit easier for all of us, is to get a divorce.”

…wait. What?

Chapter Text

“What’s a divorce?” Conrad asks, his voice confused. Courtney’s mind is whirring with her own confusion, although something about the question makes her want to roll her eyes. He’s old enough to know that.

“It means-” Kari starts, her voice straightforward, but her Dad quickly cuts her off.

“It means that your Mum and I aren’t going to be married anymore because we don’t think it’s a good thing for us or for our family anymore, and sometime soon we won’t be living together anymore,” he steps in, his voice light and child-friendly. Something about it makes Courtney want to vomit, although she merely stays in silence and presses down against her chair, feeling it wobble underneath her.

“Why?” Clarke asks, an edge to his own tone, “do I have to move? I don’t wanna leave my friends!”

“You boys will be staying with your Dad,” her mother replies, immediately, “but your sister is a disgusting, worthless whore who is trying to ruin everyone in this family and she’s made your Dad delusional and stupid so she’s coming with me so she can be punished appropriately and know her place in the world.”

“No I’m not,” Courtney replies, before she can stop herself, her tone sharp and angry as she suddenly feels hot tears pricking at her eyes.

“KC and the girls are old enough to choose what they do, we don’t need to work that out tonight-” her Dad starts, his voice almost desperate as he evidently tried to calm the situation.

“No! Don’t lie to your children and ruin them too! He asked why? Courtney! That’s why! Every single thing in this house is Courtney’s fault for infecting us with her disgusting, useless ways! She’s destroyed herself she’s so far gone, she’s ruined our reputation in the church and disrupted the boys’ proper religious education, she makes KC do inappropriate things in the house that should never be a man’s responsibility, none of this would need to happen if we just got rid of her!” her mother continues ranting, Courtney feeling the numbness seep into her bones all over again as her head remains bowed.

“You’re a fucking psycho,” Kari snaps, suddenly, Courtney feeling her roughly rise from her chair beside her, “Mum is insane, that’s why they’re divorcing. Finally. Also I’m in goddamn senior year I’m not going anywhere.”

“Kari! How dare you speak like-” her mother replies.

“I don’t listen to insane people,” she shoots back, pointedly, her voice fading as she seems to walk straight out of the room.

“Kari is just freaking out a bit because she doesn’t know what else to do, sometimes teenage girls do that, they don’t really know how to react to things like normal people because they’re too emotional and silly,” KC starts, seeming to be directing it at the younger boys as his tone becomes almost patronising. It makes Courtney shudder. Her Dad isn’t that stupid and misogynistic, why the hell does her brother have to be?

“KC, stop it, stay out of this. You’re being sexist. Maybe we all just need to step out and have some time to ourselves,” her Dad speaks up, his voice tired. KC huffs, but he stands up and walks out, Courtney taking it as her own cue to slowly rise from her own chair, dinner barely touched, and walk numbly upstairs.

“Courtney don’t you dare go up there, this isn’t your house, you are a disgusting waste of space-” her mother almost screams after her, Courtney feeling it as a shudder through her body, although she chooses to ignore it.

“Kerryn, for christ’s sake-” she hears her father’s voice, but she misses the rest of his sentence as she lets her bedroom door fall closed behind her.

Kari is sat on her bed, brow furrowed in anger as she taps away aggressively at the screen of her phone. Something about it grates at Courtney’s mind, the noise drilling into her skull as she stands beside her bed and stares blankly at it.

She can hear one of her brothers crying as he rushes up the stairs, and her stomach churns. She doesn’t even know what she feels. She can’t cry. Her Mum just told everyone all the shit about her – she can’t go and break down in front of them. Even if Kari thinks her Mum is literally insane. But Kari is weird and alternative and she’s been saying all this crazy conspiracy stuff about the church forever and maybe her Mum is right and it’s all Courtney’s fault and she’s still fucking tapping away at her phone and does she need to do it so loudly-

Abruptly, she reaches for her own phone, navigating straight to her messages to Shayne as she turns back out of her room and trudges down the stairs.

“park. now. please” she texts, pocketing her phone as she gets to the laundry and wrenches open the door. She didn’t even clock if anyone saw her walk past the living room or if anyone was still there. Whatever.

Courtney’s footsteps grow faster and heavier under her as she steps out of the laundry and turns left to walk down the side of the house. She can’t be bothered to duck, she doesn’t care, she just needs to get away from here and-

Courtney glances to the side as she passes the small window at the side of the dining room, seeing her Mum’s back and her Dad facing the opposite way, towards the window, his eyes locking with hers for a moment.

He looks like he’s crying, but he nods slightly, and Courtney feels herself break into a run as she rushes out of the yard and away from the house. She needs to get out. She needs to get away.

She feels her tears start harshly hitting her cheeks as she paces towards the park, immediately clambering up into the platform and pressing into the back corner as she feels her mind spinning off in a million directions at once, screaming over the quiet of the night.

As much as the tears flow down her face, though, she stays silent. The playground is cold as she leans against it and the wind is chilling the night air around her, but she doesn’t feel it and she simply sits in place, body tensed and curled tightly together.

“Court, what’s wrong?” Shayne starts, his voice urgent and worried as he climbs up the stairs into the playground and shuffles to sit to her side.

She pauses in continued silence, for a moment, squeezing her own hands together in her lap.

“They’re getting divorced,” she mumbles, eventually, letting the silence hang for a moment before she continues, quieter, “it’s my fault, I guess. She told everyone it is.”

Shayne doesn’t say anything, immediately, but he shuffles closer, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and squeezing comfortingly. Courtney can’t explain why, but it makes her break, her body wracking with a loud sob as she lets herself lean sideways against Shayne and feels her tears start streaming down her face so heavily she can barely keep her eyes open.

“I’m sorry, Courtney,” he sympathises, his voice gentle as his hand rubs gently against her shoulder.

She feels like she sobs leaning against him without saying a word for ages. She has no idea how to gauge how long it really is, everything spilling wordlessly out of her as he stays calmly and solidly by her side.

Eventually, when he briefly squeezes her shoulder, she finds the words.

“It- It- all this stuff happened last Tuesday I made dinner for everyone but- sh-she tried to throw it out and kept screaming at me and I overheard her and Dad arguing later and, and, he said something about them being done with something after she was saying everything would be fixed if I was gone and then they just stopped arguing so I figured they decided to kick me out and I didn’t want to tell you because I felt guilty but it’s- now it’s-” she explains, messily, through her flood of tears and sharp sobs. She feels like she might be sick, coughing and gasping for air when she tries to take a deep breath, but she forces herself to continue, “-but now they’re divorcing and Mum is saying it’s all my fault and telling my brothers that and saying I have to go and live with her and be punished to fix me because I’m worthless and disgusting and KC was kinda saying it was my fault too and Kari called Mum a fucking psycho and walked out and I-”

She cuts herself off, letting the tears take over again, feeling Shayne’s arm tighten slightly on her shoulder again.

“Court, you can tell me anything,” he reminds her, insistent, hesitating slightly before he continues, “it’s… I’m sorry she’s doing that to you, Court. I’m sorry she’s trying to turn everyone against you.”

“Dad was trying to make everyone calm down but I didn’t hide properly when I snuck out and he saw me so he’ll probably send me off to live with her now anyway,” she mutters, sniffing loudly. She feels gross. Shayne doesn’t seem to mind.

“You’re old enough you get a choice, Court. They legally can’t make you go with either of them,” he tells her, gently.

It’s the first thread of relief that feeds itself in amongst everything else in her mind, but at the same time, it’s only small. What if her Dad doesn’t want her to stay anyway? Then she’s just back to being homeless-

“Or I end up with nowhere to live because-” she starts, soon interrupted by the feel and the noise of her phone vibrating in her pocket with an actual call.

Why is someone calling her now?!

She reluctantly fumbles to pull her phone out, feeling her mind stutter at the name on the screen. Kari. She can’t… she can’t ignore that, and she carefully tilts the phone sideways to show Shayne before slowly hitting answer and bringing it up to her ear. She immediately flinches at the slightly distorted, squeaky sound of the audio.

“Court, Dad knows you snuck out, but he’s not mad at you, he just wanted me to call you because Mum has like… chilled out and is just stomping around in their room avoiding everyone like a little bitchy toddler,” Kari starts, Courtney feeling the numbness slowly seeping back into her as she does. She doesn’t know what to say, simply remaining in silence for a beat, before Kari starts speaking again, “Dad wants you to come home and he’s like, freaked out that you think you can’t come back here or you won’t ever come home or something. I dunno. He’s had a fucking night trying to get the boys to calm down. Oh, and KC just like, locked himself in his room. God I hope that prick doesn’t have a girlfriend. Poor girl if he does.”

It all twists together in Courtney’s mind, a collection of things she doesn’t even want to think about right now. She doesn’t care. She just-

“I don’t know,” she mumbles, eventually. Kari sighs.

“Are you with Shayne?”

“Yeah.”

“I can tell him you just needed to spend some time with a friend if you don’t wanna come back tonight,” she offers, her voice softening, Courtney squeezing her eyes closed tightly as she sniffs slightly, having buried down her sobs again when she called.

She doesn’t want to go home. She just wants to stay here where it doesn’t matter if she’s a mess and upset and no one is trying to say all this huge stuff to her and it’s just her best friend but she-

Her mind twists tightly into knots all over again, guilt pouring into her chest as she lets her mind piece together all the shit her Dad said over the last few… weeks. Months. Whatever.

“I guess I’ll come back,” she mumbles, her voice almost silent, “I can’t be bothered to sneak back in the laundry.”

“Okay, Court. See you soon,” Kari replies, before hanging up the call.

Courtney slowly lets her hand with her phone drop back down into her lap, eyes staring blankly straight ahead of her.

“You going to go back home?” Shayne asks, softly, and it almost feels like his words rattle around in her head.

“I guess,” she mumbles, slowly starting to shuffle away for the wall before she climbs down the set of stairs and out of the playground, her limbs feeling heavy and awkward as she does.

Shayne rushes down beside her, moving to stand in front of her when she pauses still beside the play structure. It’s the first time she actually meets his eyes tonight, and she feels her own fill with tears at the care in them, everything flooding out of her mouth before she can stop it.

“I don’t want to go back there I don’t want to be around them I just feel dead there and numb and whenever I’m upset everyone judges me and everything and I just wanna stay here with you but now I- now I know they’re divorcing and I think Dad- I think Dad is upset with himself for not doing something sooner to help me and he keeps half-crying and I feel guilty that I’m ruining everything for him too,” she rambles, letting her head fall forward onto his shoulder when Shayne steps forward and pulls her into a hug again.

“I’m sorry there’s so many things at the moment, Court. I’m sorry it’s so hard for you. If you feel like you need to go back, that’s okay, but you can always come to me. Especially when it’s stuff like this,” he replies, and she feels the way his voice moves through his chest, pressing closer for a moment.

“Dad already knows I left, I’m not sneaking back in, can you walk back with me?” she asks, timidly.

“Sure,” he replies, gently.

Slowly, reluctantly, Courtney steps back from his hug, reaching up to brush at her face with the sleeve of her top. They walk slowly back out of the park and up the street, and she deadens her expression with every step as her feet feel heavier and heavier. She forces herself not to hesitate at the front of her parents’ yard, instead turning straight in and moving towards the door, Shayne still walking along beside her at every step.

She slows as she reaches the front door, feeling herself hesitate. Shayne pauses beside her, and she starts to turn towards him, suddenly realising she probably needs to tell him it’s okay if he goes home now and she’ll handle the rest herself. Before she can say anything, the door flings almost aggressively open, and she flinches as she glances back towards it to find her Dad standing in the doorway.

“Courtney, honey, it’s okay if you wanted to go and talk to a friend, but you can come back in and I know it’s cold out and this is your home and you’re always welcome-” he starts, his tone almost rushed.

“Courtney?!” her mother’s voice screams through the house, interrupting him. Courtney watches him wince at the same time she feels herself shudder slightly, her mother’s voice growing closer as she continues, “you snuck out? You are disgusting! You’re sneaking out to sleep around like a disgusting little slut? You’re not welcome in here, you’re never allowed in this house! You’re too dirty, you’re ruining it for everyone else and all this is your fault and we should’ve shipped you off to Utah years ago to train you into being a proper lady but you’ve turned into a worthless, disgusting freak and you’ve ruined your entire family!”

“Kerryn, please-” her Dad pushes, his voice tired and frustrated again. Courtney tries to hold back the tears pressing at the back of her eyes, instead focussing on the awkwardness she feels knowing Shayne is still standing right beside her and seeing it all play out.

“No! Kenn, quit it, you’re a disgusting heathen now too, you’ve let this freak ruin you too,” she replies, before her voice turns level and sharp as she directs it towards Courtney, “you will be coming with me to Utah and you will go to a facility where they will teach you to be a proper woman or you’ll find out what punishment you really deserve. Until then, stay outside! You can’t come in this house, this is not your house, you don’t deserve being inside or all the clothing you try and destroy yourself with and-”

“You can’t lock her out of the house! It’s not even your house!” her Dad retorts, suddenly, his own voice tensing and rising in pitch. Courtney feels Shayne shuffle closer to her, his hand reaching out and landing on the middle of her back.

“SHE’S NOT COMING IN HERE, SHE’S DISGUSTING AND FILTY AND SHE RUINS EVERYTHING SHE TOUCHES AND EVERY PERSON SHE’S NEAR,” her mother screams, loudly, and her Dad had still been standing in the doorway blocking it, but suddenly, her mother lurches forward, trying to push past him.

He rapidly shifts to block her, and Courtney feels her tears starting to fall all over again as she feels her body break into a constant shiver. If she goes back in there her Mum is going to attack her but if she doesn’t she’ll ruin all her stuff and she’s not even welcome in her house anymore and-

“Courtney, honey, this is your house and please don’t listen to her, please, but I don’t know if maybe it’d be better for you if there was somewhere else you could stay tonight and I’ll try and work out how to get her to stop-” her Dad pushes, Courtney involuntarily sniffing deeply as tears starts to hit her lip in waves. Her Mum screams something else, but she glances quickly to the side as she feels Shayne move, watching him rapidly pull his phone out of his pocket and tap on the screen twice before he lifts it to his ear.

“Mum, Courtney needs to stay with us tonight, please, I’ll explain later but I know we don’t have a spare bed but you can change the sheets on mine and she can use my room, it’s fine, I can sleep on the couch and-” he speaks into the phone, rapidly, his own tone tense and upset until he cuts himself off, Courtney vaguely hearing the warmth of his mother’s tone as she replies.

She slowly glances back to her Dad, her mother starting to screech something about how Courtney must have ruined Shayne too because he used to be a good boy according to his mother, watching him shake his head, tears lightly shifting on his cheeks as he does.

“Court, you can stay with us tonight, if you’d like to,” Shayne tells her, his tone gentler, having evidently hung up his call to his mother. She turns towards him, slowly nodding in response. She opens her mouth to respond audibly, but she quickly closes it again as her mother starts yelling all over again.

“No! She doesn’t deserve a bed! She doesn’t deserve clothes or sheets! She needs to sleep out in the cold dirt like the disgusting animal she is!” she yells.

Shayne had stood calmly and quietly at her side for all this time, but at that, she feels his hand suddenly gripping tightly at her bicep.

“You’re insane!” he snaps, back at her mother. It makes her glance over, watching his eyes immediately turn to panic even as he seems to be slowly tugging her away from the door.

“Courtney, you’re always welcome in my house, you’re my daughter, I love you, but please go now before she says anything else awful to you. Shayne, please thank your Mum for looking after Courtney,” her Dad implores, his own voice desperate and teary. Courtney’s brain immediately panics – she doesn’t have pyjamas, or any of her makeup, or her backpack for school tomorrow at their house.

But Shayne is still gripping her arm like he’s trying to stop himself from pulling her away from them, and she can barely see through her tears again, and rapidly Courtney makes the decision to turn and walk back out of her parents’ front yard, turning left towards Shayne’s house.

The tears don’t stop falling from her eyes as they walk the short distance to his house, and she’s crying too much to speak, but she silently, mentally anchors herself to Shayne’s steady pace beside her, until he’s pulling open his front door and gesturing her to step inside before him.

Cathy rushes into the entryway at the sound of the front door opening, and when she opens her arms and immediately pulls Courtney into a tight, all-encompassing hug, she lets her own arms wrap around her, too.

“Oh Courtney, honey, I’m so sorry,” she tells her, her own voice wobbling as she hugs her tightly, “I’m so sorry, but you’re here, and you’re always safe here, and you’re always welcome and we’ll always have a place for you.”

She sobs sharply into the hug, but at the same time, she feels the tendrils in her mind relax ever so slightly. Everything is still awful. She has no idea what happens now. She’s terrified that her Mum is going to somehow destroy all her stuff again and her brothers will hate her now and will always resent her even if she does get to stay with her Dad or her Mum will somehow force her off to those awful church punishment camps she’s heard about-

But tonight, at least, can be okay.

“Have you had dinner, honey? Would you like anything to eat?” Cathy asks, when she eventually pulls back from the hug and steps slightly away from Courtney, and she quickly shakes her head.

“I don’t think I could eat,” she mumbles.

“Shayne?” his mother turns to the side slightly.

“I don’t think I could eat either,” he replies, his own voice strained, and it makes Courtney blink rapidly a few times.

…Shit.

“Shayne, did I mess up your dinner? You didn’t need to come to the park if you were in the middle of-” she starts, rapidly, but he cuts her off.

“Court, please don’t worry about that. I’m glad I could go out and be there for you with… all this,” he tells her, insistent.

“Can I… ask what happened? Or if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay too,” Cathy asks, carefully, “come on, come inside properly, it’s nice and warm in the living room.”

Shayne and Courtney both follow her through into the living room, both sitting heavily into the couch, but Courtney has finally got her crying under control again and she feels like she’d start bawling again if she tried to explain it all.

“It’s- I…” she starts, hesitating for a moment before carefully turning to her side and asking, timidly, “Shayne, can you say?”

He nods, and carefully, he explains it. That her parents are divorcing, and her Dad was trying to be reasonable, but her Mum blamed everything on her. That she’d snuck out, but agreed to go back at her sister and Dad’s request, until her Mum stood in the doorway and yelled and screamed and wouldn’t let her in. That she was threatening to take her to Utah.

“Honey, that’s a lot for you to deal with, and I’m so sorry. It’s okay that you’re upset,” she tells her, carefully, “and I’m glad to hear that your Dad cares about you, and he’s trying to help you.”

“And if we need to step in and make sure she isn’t allowed to take you anywhere, we will,” Shayne’s Dad’s voice appears, gruff and careful at the same time, Courtney quickly glancing up to see he is hovering just behind where Cathy is sitting on the sofa.

“Mm,” she agrees, before lightening her tone again, “but for now, Courtney, you’re here, and whatever you need or want to do tonight, is fine.”

Courtney doesn’t think she has an answer, but they’re interrupted by the sound of a sharp knock at the front door. It immediately makes her tense up again, glancing up to watch as Robert moves decidedly over to the door. She twists around to watch as he peers through the peephole, before opening the door.

“Hi, sorry, you don’t know me, I’m Kari, Courtney’s older sister, I just brought a bag of some of her things because I didn’t know if she had pyjamas or clothes for school tomorrow or anything,” Kari’s voice comes through the door, a touch awkward. Courtney glances back to see Cathy looking at her with concerned eyes, silently asking if Kari is okay.

Courtney, for her part, quickly stands from the couch and walks back over to the door.

“I had some clothes here but not… pyjamas and stuff. Thanks,” she tells Kari, quickly, her own voice dripping with awkwardness.

“I don’t know where you got Copic markers but I left them in there too just in case she tries to get to your stuff again. But I’ll drag the dresser in front of the door overnight and Dad’s guarding the room until I’m back,” she replies, nodding lightly, hesitating for a moment. Robert seems to step back at that, leaving Courtney holding the door open – and now holding her backpack, heavy and stuffed full of things, in her other hand – and watching as Kari continues. “I’m sorry, Court. I hope you have a better night now you’re here, and I’ll… see you tomorrow?”

“See you tomorrow, I guess,” she replies, quietly, before stepping back and gently closing the Topps’ front door again, wandering back to where the others are all in the living room, “she’s my older sister. We share a room. And she’s thought Mum was insane for years.”

Chapter Text

Courtney had settled back into being at the Topps’ just a little, after her sister had dropped off a bag full of her things so she wasn’t without what she needed for the night. Shayne had watched her try to argue when his mother had told her Brian was going to stay with his girlfriend and they’d put fresh sheets on the bed in his room so she could have it for as long as she needed, but she’d quickly accepted it, especially when Brian himself had wandered through and joked about how he doesn’t mind having an excuse to stay at Madison’s without his parents bugging him he’s never actually home.

She hadn’t wanted to eat any dinner – Shayne understands, his own mind and stomach are swirling enough himself and he knows he couldn’t stomach any food – but she had eventually agreed that she wouldn’t mind just having a warm, quiet shower to try and calm down a little.

It’s when she’s in the shower that Shayne finds himself standing aimlessly back in the living room, feeling his mother wander over and wrap an arm around his shoulders, too.

“Are you doing okay, honey?” she asks, Shayne feeling tears prick at his eyes as she does.

“I… I don’t know. I’ve heard about it so much. But standing there beside her while her Mum actually yelled all this stuff at her was… a lot,” he replies, hesitantly, “after I called you she started saying Court didn’t deserve a bed or anything and should be made to sleep outside in the dirt and I- I snapped and called her insane. And I know it was dumb. But I couldn’t stop myself.”

“It’s hard to just stand there and let it happen when she’s hurting your best friend?” his mother asks, gently.

“Yeah. I- I felt so protective of her, I just-” he starts, before cutting himself off, shaking his head.

“Shayne, honey, is she still just your best friend? Or is there something… else?” his mother asks, and it makes Shayne wince, slowly stepping away from her and letting his own hands knot together in front of himself as he feels his mind start twisting in circles.

But his heart still hurts and he can’t work out how to dodge the question.

“I… I- I think I feel something else,” he mumbles, before rapidly continuing, “it’s only new and it feels like it’s come out of nowhere but with all this stuff I just want to hold her and protect her and she’s so amazing and I’ve never felt as hopeless and broken and awful as I did standing there listening to her Mum say all those things awful things to her.”

“Oh, honey,” his mother answers, gently, “I know that must be really difficult for you.”

“It’s not going to change anything. I’m not saying anything. It’s- maybe it’s just a short-term thing, and it’ll go away. She’s my best friend, I’m never gonna ask for anything else, I just want to be there for her and help her through this,” he adds, rapidly, watching his mother nod.

“Okay, Shayne. I’m sure she appreciates what you do for her, too.”

————————————————

The shower helps, a little, but afterwards, Courtney is exhausted. She drags herself back out of the bathroom, now in pyjamas Kari had packed for her (she’d packed the nice, newer pyjama pants and just a basic tee, thankfully) and with her teeth brushed. Part of her is worried they’ll ask if she wants to do something, or Shayne will lead her back downstairs, but instead he wanders out into the hallway from his own room, also in what appears to be pyjamas and with tired eyes.

“Hey, court. Shower okay?” he asks.

“Yeah. But I’m exhausted,” she replies, quietly, watching him nod in response.

“Same. I was thinking I might crash, as long as you’re okay if I do…” he trails off, but this time Courtney nods.

“Yeah. I will too,” she replies.

“Okay. Good night, Court. And if you need anything overnight, I’m just next door, and I know Mum wouldn’t mind if you woke her up either,” he tells her, his tone insistent and warm. Courtney immediately knows he’s not just being polite – every single word is true.

She wishes him a good night in return, letting herself reach out and pull him into a brief hug before she wanders into Brian’s room, where she’d already sat down her bag, and carefully climbs into the bed.

Brian’s room doesn’t look a whole lot different to what Courtney had glimpsed of it before he’d moved back from Arizona. It’s got a double bed with a neutral-patterned duvet cover, a dresser over in the corner, and a set of cupboards along one wall with a mirror affixed to the outside of the one furthest from the bed, although she knows the dresser and cupboards are full of his things now, and there’s a handful of bits and pieces sitting on the top of the dresser that she knows are Brian’s, too.

Courtney tries to let the exhaustion pull her into sleep, but she finds herself tossing and turning through the bed. She’s never slept in a double bed before, and it feels empty and cold. The only time she’s even slept in her own room in as long as she can remember is over Christmas, and her mind twists in discomfort as it starts playing out, behind her closed eyes, the loneliness and bottled-up anger she felt stuck in there by herself for a week with no one willing to really try and help her.

She rapidly twists over again, trying to throw it from her mind as she searches for sleep, but instead she finds herself thinking back to earlier this evening, her chest filling with guilt as she remembers her Dad desperately trying to calm everything down, before it quickly twists back into anger. He’d had years to do something before it got this bad, why only now?

“Let me sleep,” she mumbles, out loud, her voice tired and frustrated as she tries to forcefully push everything out of her brain, pulling the pillow up over her head.

Courtney continues to toss and turn in the bed for at least another hour, but she never gets any closer to sleep. Her mind is twisting with fear and guilt, anger and sadness, and every time she rolls over she shudders at the expanse of bed beside her.

She doesn’t even know what would help, but slowly, she lets her tired arms pull back the covers as she groggily sits up and shuffles out of the room and to the next door to Shayne’s room, finding it already propped open slightly.

Courtney peers into the room, only to find Shayne sitting up in his own bed, arms pressing into the mattress either side of him. She steps halfway into the door, gently pushing it open a little further and watching as he glances up and looks at her, concerned.

“I… don’t know what to do. I can’t sleep. My brain won’t shut up and I feel alone and it’s- it’s dumb, sorry,” she whispers, inwardly kicking herself for even coming in here.

“It’s not dumb,” Shayne replies, his own voice tired as he shuffles around until his legs hang off the side of his bed, facing her, “why do you feel alone?”

“I’m not used to sleeping in a room alone or a big double bed,” she mumbles, eventually, feeling herself step further into the room without thinking about it.

It immediately makes her realise what she wants, but she feels stupid. It’s weird and dumb and she’s actually being a baby now but she-

“Can I sleep beside you?” she asks, before she can stop herself. She watches Shayne blink, seeming to hesitate, before he nods.

“Yeah, okay, if you think it’ll help,” he answers, and Courtney nods slowly as she wanders further into the room.

Shayne only has a single bed – although it definitely looks bigger than her own single bed at home, so maybe it’s one of those fancy king singles – but when he shuffles back under the covers pressed back against the wall and she lethargically clambers in beside him, it’s not too tight. Her shoulder is barely brushing his as they lie beside each other, and carefully, she shuffles just a little so her side presses against his, taking a deep breath as she lies back in the bed.

Maybe she can finally sleep now.

————————————————

Shayne immediately feels awkward when Courtney asks if she can sleep beside him, his mind rapidly freaking out. It’s inappropriate, he’s somehow taking advantage of how upset she is-

But her eyes are sunken and tired, and carefully, he kicks himself out of his panic, telling her it’s okay. He knows she just needs a hug, but one that doesn’t end when she needs to sleep. He knows she doesn’t even really see him as a guy, he’s just her friend, and he’s more than happy to always be her friend. He loves being her friend.

Maybe his heart is doing some dumb shit telling him he likes her a little more than that, but whatever. His heart can shut up for now, and he forces it to do just that, feeling her shuffle closer so her shoulder and arm press gently against his as she lies down beside him in his bed.

Shayne is exhausted, and he’d been struggling to get to sleep too as his mind spun with all his own worries, but he soon hears her breathing even out into sleep, and slowly, he feels himself drift off too.

Shayne’s always been a light sleeper, and it’s the slightest creak of his door that wakes him up the next morning, shifting slightly and quickly glancing over to see his mother peering into the room. Courtney has twisted to face him during the night, but she’s still fast asleep, and when Shayne’s mother raises an eyebrow at him, he simply shakes his head before letting it fall back onto his pillow.

Yikes. That might take some explaining after his quiet admission to her last night.

Courtney seems to wake not a minute later, eyes blinking open slowly. She’s so close to his face, and he instinctively leans his own head back towards the wall to get a little distance between them.

“Good morning,” he greets her, anyway, in a soft whisper.

“Morning. Sorry I took your space but I… it helped,” she replies, apologetically, but he smiles softly at her in response.

“All good. I’m glad it helped. You need a hug?” he prompts, watching Courtney nod messily in response before she slowly shuffles out of his bed and back into Brian’s room to get ready for the day. Shayne, for his part, also gets up, but quickly finds his mother reappearing in his room.

“I swear it was nothing to do with that, Mum, she just came in here because she couldn’t sleep and we were both exhausted and just fell asleep beside each other and I’d never-” he starts, rushed and rambling and nervous and quiet, but his mother quickly holds up a hand.

“Okay, Shayne, I believe you,” she replies, before her voice grows a little more hurried, “you have both slept in a little, you best get ready for school – if you’re up to going?”

“Yeah. And I think she’ll want to go so it looks normal to her friends and she doesn’t have to explain anything,” he adds, quietly, watching his Mum nod before she slips out of his bedroom and leaves him to get ready.

————————————————

Shayne’s Mum offers to drive both of them to school, but they decide to take the bus. It’s kinda nice out – it’s sunny, and bright, and warming up a little – and Courtney’s really just trying to forget last night happened at all at least until like, seventh period.

The day starts off perfectly normal. She waves goodbye to Shayne when he heads off towards his homeroom and she goes to hers, finding Yasmin and Hollie already standing outside the homeroom bitching about what Billie is wearing today (honestly, Courtney doesn’t get why. She does wear some weird shit, but she’s literally just wearing skinny jeans and a band tee today. She could’ve found the same thing in Kari’s wardrobe. Or, ironically, Yasmin’s).

Her morning classes drone on as they always do, but Courtney lets herself settle into it as the monotony drowns out any chance of her thinking back to the previous night. Spanish immediately before lunch – even with the slightly better teacher – is more than enough to fill her brain with annoyance and a handful of random Spanish words and very little else.

Courtney hasn’t actually seen Natalie at all yet, today – she doesn’t before lunch on a Thursday – and everyone else is already sat at their table, including a couple of guys from the basketball team that have only started hanging out with them this semester, before she rushes over a few minutes in to lunch.

“Oh my god, Courtney,” she starts, her tone secretive and judgemental, “you didn’t tell us your parents are DIVORCING?! Your brothers told people and like my brother heard and told me… what the hell? That’s so weird, even your family is weird.”

“Oh, ew, seriously?” Isabel speaks up, immediately, her eyes going wide, “why didn’t you tell us? We need to know this shit, you can’t hide that you’re like, totally from a broken family now, so you’re definitely going to turn into a creepy emo weirdo, no one with divorced parents is normal or cool. Or like, you’ll have to move? I bet you have to move away and no one at your new school will think you’re cool without us around you!”

“You really should have told us that,” Yasmin agrees, her eyes narrowing.

“They literally only told us last night, chill. And I’m not going to become weird just because my crazy Mum is finally leaving,” she shoots back, quickly, even as she feels her stomach twist up in knots, “and I’m not changing schools.”

“I bet you are though, I’m pretty sure girls have to go with their Mums in divorces. And apparently your brothers were telling everyone it’s your fault anyway and you’re going to be sent to Utah to some weird religious school thing?” Natalie continues, Courtney immediately feeling like she could absolutely fucking punch her brothers in the face if they were here now.

“That’s so weird, are you getting all weirdo religious on us again? We kinda don’t do that here,” Yasmin agrees, “and it’s true, I’ve never met a kid with divorced parents who wasn’t fucking gross. They either get emo or like, creepy and sleeping around with whoever will find them… my Dad says they don’t know how to have healthy relationships.”

“Especially if it was your fault,” Isabel points out, before Courtney can get a word in edgeways.

She’s about to finally come up with some defence, but she’s stopped as a senior she immediately recognises as one of Kari’s friends – one of Kari’s cool friends – pauses at her table.

“Um, Isabel, you literally have a step-brother because your Mum had a husband before your Dad… also, like, so many people’s parents are divorced and they’re totally normal. My parents are divorced,” she points out, rolling her eyes, “you guys are such babies with what you make fun of people for sometimes. You’re old enough to know better.”

Courtney watches Yasmin go to stutter out something in response, glancing across to see Isabel and Natalie now both with their mouths tightly shut.

“Whatever,” Yasmin manages, eventually, but Kari’s friend scoffs.

“You guys will really lose your edge if you keep doing stuff like this. It’s only a few months until you’re juniors, doesn’t seem like you’re up to it,” she continues, before turning and continuing to walk through and then out of the cafeteria.

“Why was a senior in here in this lunch hour?!” Hollie starts, her tone judgmental, but Yasmin sighs.

“Some of them have study period before their lunch hour. Also, that’s Maisie, she can go anywhere,” she replies, before turning back and looking down at her food.

It’s awkwardly silent, for a minute, before one of the guys asks Natalie how basketball training went last night and whether the girls team might actually get a win sometime soon, as Courtney wracks her brain to try and remember why Maisie freaked out the others so much.

Oh, right. Maisie is like, the Yasmin of the seniors. Even though she’s somehow friends with Kari.

Weird. Courtney wonders why she stood up for her.

She honestly doesn’t think much of it as she instead tries to focus back on lunch, and none of her friends mention the divorce again, although Hollie gives her a weird look after lunch when they walk to their next class together.

After-lunch classes do mean she has to go home soon, though, and Courtney finds her mind drifting further and further away from school and her friends as she gets closer to the end of the day. She doesn’t want to go back home if her Mum is there, there’s no way she’ll ever calm down, and she hasn’t seen Kari all day so she has no idea if she will have gone through all her stuff to ruin it again or-

Courtney lets herself hang back after school not far from the bus stop, chatting with Yasmin and Natalie as they both wait for parents (or, like, a driver in Yasmin’s case) to come and pick them up. She figures no one is picking her up, but whatever, and Yasmin is back to ranting about how much Billie creeps her out again, so it’s enough of a distraction as Courtney simply listens with a raised eyebrow.

“You didn’t seem so creeped out by her when I saw you at Dutch Bros last week,” Kari’s voice appears out of nowhere, sauntering up to them.

It immediately makes Courtney cringe. God, she doesn’t need this, she doesn’t need her sister interfering and making her friends think she’s even more of a loser by association and-

“I- I- what? I don’t go to Dutch Bros,” Yasmin shoots back, but her voice waves when she does, and Kari laughs loudly.

“Yeah, you looked super out of place there in your designer shit. But like, how does Billie feel about you constantly badmouthing her like that?” she shoots back, Courtney about to jump in and tell her to screw off and leave Yasmin alone before Yasmin cuts her off.

“Whatever. Go away,” she points out, weakly, messily, “I don’t care. She’s weird.”

“’kay then,” Kari answers, before turning and wandering away – towards the bus station, which silently lets Courtney know she should probably also go and catch a bus.

“Oh, shit, that’s my Dad. See you!” Natalie comments, seeming to step past the weird interaction between Kari and Yasmin as she turns and wanders towards a car sitting in the pick up area.

Courtney’s about to say something completely different, but slowly, Yasmin speaks too.

“I… guess I should go wait where I’ll get picked up too. See you tomorrow, Courtney,” she almost mumbles, her voice a little flustered.

It confuses Courtney, but she quickly tries to shake it off, wandering over to the bus station herself, finding Kari grinning and evidently waiting for her.

“I’ll give you the info too, sounds like it’d be great blackmail… I don’t think Yasmin hates Billie quite as much as she says. Since they were kissing at that café I saw them at last week,” Kari tells her, Courtney blinking stupidly in response.

What?

Great, another thing to be confused about.

Chapter Text

Courtney honestly could not care less if Yasmin was actually dating a girl or whatever – she’s pretty sure none of them would – but everything Kari had said just seems… off. Dutch Bros is maybe a little better than like, Starbucks, but it’s still some chain café in a part of town that Yasmin would never go to. And like, why the hell would Yasmin be constantly making fun of Billie and then randomly kissing her in public?

She’s pretty sure Kari was totally mistaken and it was some other random person. And like, yeah, Yasmin acted weird when Kari said that, but she was probably just weirded out by Kari. So whatever. Courtney has bigger things to worry about anyway.

…like the fact that, far too quickly, the bus pulls up in her neighbourhood, up the end of her street, and she has to force herself to stand up and follow Kari (and a couple of other kids from school that live in their street) off.

She feels a lump forming in her throat as she walks slowly up the street, trudging along well behind Kari. She can just imagine that she’ll get to the door and her mother will be there, screaming and yelling again and stopping her from even going inside, telling her how worthless she is and how this is all her fault. She remembers back to lunch, and amongst her friends being weird just about the divorce, that Natalie had said her brothers had been telling people it was all her fault. They probably hate her now, too, they still think anything any adult ever says is right. And maybe her Dad might have told them otherwise, but ‘her fault’ is what they apparently repeated to everyone at school.

Courtney drags her feet as she walks past the Topps’ house, desperately wishing she could turn into their front yard and walk up to their front door. Shayne isn’t there, he wasn’t on the bus home – he had athletics practice after school – but she figures Cathy is probably home and she’d probably invite her in, no questions asked, and pull her into a hug.

She forces herself to keep walking, but as she gets to the front of her parents’ yard, she drags her feet to a stop on the sidewalk outside.

She’d held it together all fucking day but she knows if her mother appears in the door and starts screaming at her again, she won’t be able to. She doesn’t want to cry in front of her, it just makes her look weak and stupid and-

“Coming, Court?” Kari calls, having paused at the front door with her hand on the doorhandle and turned back to see where her sister was.

Courtney shivers, bowing her head and scuffing her shoe against the sidewalk as she doesn’t answer.

“Come on, I would’ve told you to just go back to Shayne’s if I thought it’d be as bad again,” Kari continues. Courtney sighs.

“Is she there?” she asks, mumbled, not sure if Kari will even hear her.

Kari tugs on the door handle, opening it and half stepping inside as she glances back and forth for a minute.

“Hey, is the psycho here?” she asks, abruptly.

“Your mother isn’t here, no,” Courtney hears her Dad answer, his voice barely carrying out the door. Kari steps back out and turns back towards Courtney, although she holds the door open as she does.

“She’s not here,” she confirms, Courtney squeezing her eyes shut for a moment and grimacing before she takes a step forward, trudging reluctantly up the path and to the front door of the house.

Kari holds the door open for her, and she steps through it, instinctively peering around as she does. She quickly notices her Dad sat in the living room by himself, but as soon as she spots him, he launches himself up from the sofa and paces towards the door.

“Courtney, darling,” he starts, his voice suddenly teary, as he rushes straight to her and pulls her away from the door and into a hug.

She mumbles a bunch of nonsensical sounds, arms flailing slightly at her sides at the suddenness of the hug and the tug further into the house. She flinches as the door slams closed behind her, and she vaguely knows Kari is still hovering nearby – she hasn’t heard her footsteps on the stairs, and she’s usually loud on the stairs after school – but her Dad holds her tighter, and slowly, she feels her resolve breaking.

“I’m so sorry, Courtney. I’m so sorry. I’ve messed up so much, I should’ve done so much more, but it’s- it’s done now, she packed a bag and went off to her church friends and she’s not coming back any time soon and there’s more to sort out to make sure she can’t even try and take any of you kids when she eventually moves back to Utah and I know you don’t trust me either but I want you to stay here and I want to be a better Dad for you and I know it won’t be perfect immediately but I’m going to try,” he tells her, mumbled and insistent, Courtney feeling her own tears prick at her eyes as he continues, “I love you. And I’ll do anything I can to make here feel like a home you can be safe in again.”

She doesn’t know what to say. His words swell and twist and turn through her mind, and the knot in her throat grows tighter as it all crashes over her in waves of overwhelm, but slowly, she lets her own arms shuffle and wrap around him too, returning the hug.

“Did Shayne’s parents look after you last night? Was everything okay there?” he asks, after a moment, seeming to squeeze her tighter as he does.

“Yeah. They always do,” she mumbles, “they’re so nice I feel guilty sometimes but they always make it feel like me being there is just normal.”

“I’m so glad they have made you welcome in their home. I’m sure they’re happy to do it – but maybe we can do something for them, once this all settles down, to say thanks,” her Dad muses, his voice lightening slightly as he starts to let go of her.

Courtney instinctively holds on to him for just a second longer, but quickly, she forces herself to let go and step back.

“Maybe. They’re moving soon,” she replies, mumbled, glancing down at the floor, “they’re not leaving Mansfield, Robert is retiring from the military and going to work for Southwest instead, but their house is owned by the military or something so they have to move when he retires next month.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that – but that’s good that they’re staying in Mansfield. Is Shayne happy they’re staying?” he asks, Courtney slowly nodding in response.

This is a… safer topic.

“Yeah. He wanted to stay, I think it’s a big reason his parents did too. He likes the school here and all his friends and he has a good job here too,” she replies, shuffling back slightly and glancing up over to the stairs, seeing Kari still hesitating at the bottom of them, too. “I… should put my bag away. It’s full of all my stuff from last night, too.”

“Okay, Courtney. But I’m going to get Clarke and Conrad to help me with dinner tonight, and maybe we can all eat together again and just make sure everyone understands that your Mum is having some problems and the things she said aren’t true,” her Dad continues.

“Clarke and Conrad told everyone at school it’s all my fault and it got to my friends too,” she answers, listening to her Dad sigh heavily in response.

“She’s more than having some problems, she’s literally fucking insane and like- Courtney should get a fucking restraining order against her,” Kari speaks up, harshly.

“We’ll look into those things when it’s… time. For now, she left willingly, and she didn’t take a key,” her Dad replies, firmly, Courtney quietly feeling it settle reassuringly over her shoulders as she turns to head upstairs, Kari following just behind her.

Her mother can’t even get in. She’s not here – and she can’t come back, at least, not without someone letting her.

Part of Courtney still can’t bring herself to actually unpack all her stuff out of the bags it had ended up packed in, but when she lets her backpack fall onto the floor at the end of the bed, she quickly pulls her phone out and clambers up to sit cross-legged on her bed as she pulls open her texts.

Usually, she just texts Shayne, but this time, she pauses for a second before creating a new text group of both Shayne and Cathy.

“Mum left the house to stay with a friend from church and Dad said she didn’t take a key with her so she can’t get back in. And Dad is… trying to help and saying everything is going to be okay (eventually) and he’ll make sure she can’t take me or anyone,” she texts, a little messily, not sure what else to say. She knows Shayne will still be at practice, but his mother replies quickly.

“I’m glad you’re safe at home now, Courtney, and your Dad is stepping up to be there for you. You’re still always welcome with us, too,” she replies, Courtney letting out a slow, calming breath as she does.

“You okay?” Kari asks, from across the other side of the room. Courtney had honestly tuned her out and let her go about unpacking from her own day at school – she’s got good at tuning out her sister and forgetting they were always stuck in this room together.

“Yeah. Just- texting Shayne and his Mum,” she replies, listening to Kari hum in response.

“Shayne has been such a good friend to you,” she replies, lightly, with the slightest hint of teasing that has Courtney immediately narrowing her eyes. God dammit. She thought Kari had got over this dumb thing about her liking Shayne like, a year ago. Or more.

“Kari, don’t you start with that stupid-” she starts, tersely, but Kari cuts her off.

“Still not even? He seems like a pretty good guy,” she replies, but Courtney rapidly shakes her head.

“I don’t even like… see him as a guy. I know that doesn’t make sense. But he’s my best friend. It’s nothing more than that,” she replies, firmly, before continuing a little more lightly, “besides, I’m not really dating anymore anyway. All the boys I know are dumb and I don’t need another person in my life telling me everything I’m doing wrong all the time.”

“Yeah, a good boyfriend does not do that,” Kari replies, immediately, shaking her head, “your year is so bitchy and cliquey, it’s weird.”

“It doesn’t help me when you make fun of my friends, then they think you’re weird and uncool too and it’s a bad reflection on me,” she points out, quickly.

“But I’m a senior,” Kari answers, lightly, “don’t they still like, obsess over older people being inherently cooler?”

“I mean… yes. But still,” Courtney replies, shrugging, before her mind suddenly shoots her back to lunch, and she has a sudden realisation. “did… you have anything to do with Maisie snapping at them for trying to get on my case about the divorce?”

“I mean, not like, directly? I was hanging out with Maisie in psych earlier in the day and mentioned all the shit that went down, she told me after that she’d gone off on your friends for being weird to you about it, but she does also think that making fun of someone for having divorced parents and saying all divorcee kids are weird is like, stupid and ridiculous,” Kari answers, shrugging, “your friends make fun of some really stupid stuff. It’s like they have a quota of meanness they’re just trying to fill up every day by looking for random shit to fill it.”

“…Sometimes it feels like that, yeah,” Courtney admits, slowly letting her body relax as she turns and flops back onto her bed, “especially Natalie and Isabel. Yasmin usually saves it for when it’s actually like, some weird thing or someone being creepy and gross.”

“Do you even like these girls?” Kari asks, Courtney narrowing her eyes in response.

“Duh. They’re my friends,” she replies, turning her head to see Kari shaking her head in response.

“Okay then.”

————————————————

It’s… kinda nice to just hang out in her room talking to Kari about whatever boring stuff, but as dinner approaches, her Dad calls Kari down – and, slowly, Courtney follows her.

“Oh! Court, I was going to get Kari to help us with dinner, but if you’d prefer just to relax that’s okay, you’ve helped heaps recently,” her Dad tells her, lightly, Courtney smiling awkwardly in response.

“I… might stay down here anyway,” she answers, a little hesitantly.

“Okay!” her Dad responds, lightly, quickly distracted as he turns to his side, “Clarke, no, please be careful with the knife, okay? If you hurt yourself you’ll have to wear a Bandaid and I think we’ve only got the kids dinosaur ones, no adult ones.”

“Ew I’m not a kid anymore!” Clarke answers, immediately, suddenly stopping waving around the knife towards his brother and instead intently focusing on, very slowly, cutting a carrot into slices.

“Can I put something on TV? I don’t know what, but…” Courtney starts, hesitating.

“Go for it,” her Dad answers, immediately, and she wanders back to the living room to find the remote – which is enough of a task in itself, since it ends up being buried under a stack of her brothers’ weird kids magazines – and flick on the TV.

She doesn’t know what she’s looking for, but she just needed… background noise. Something. Something other than this awkwardness of feeling on edge and out of place in her own home.

She flicks through channels for a moment before landing on a random episode of Family Feud. It’s dumb – she immediately misses just like, going straight to Disney+ at the Topps’, and as much as she does share a Disney+ login with Hollie and Natalie, her parents do not have a TV that can do that – but it’s something, and it’s probably inoffensive enough for her brothers being vaguely in the room too, so whatever.

She sets the remote back down on the arm of the couch, this time, before slowly wandering back towards the kitchen, shoving her hands in her pockets as she does.

Conrad is busy rambling about his soccer match coming up next weekend and how the team they’re playing is apparently really good, but he knows how they’ll beat them, while her Dad occasionally responds, prompting him to continue, as he tries to keep everything in order for whatever they’re making for dinner. Kari steps in to take over from him standing over at the stove cooking… something in a pan.

Courtney knows he’s trying to make sure she doesn’t feel like she has to do everything, but standing at the opposite side of the kitchen bench to everyone else, she feels… weird. Out of place.

Her discomfort quickly goes another direction, though, as the front door opens loudly and she turns to see KC walking in.

“What’s for dinner? Where’s Mum?” he asks, immediately, eyes narrowing as he looks at Courtney before he looks up at his father.

“She is staying with a friend. We’re making chicken and vegetables, will be ready soon,” he answers, his voice remaining calm.

“Why are you making the boys help? Boys don’t help with cooking,” he answers, immediately. Courtney hears her Dad sigh.

“KC, it’s not 1950, as much as some people might say otherwise. Men need to learn to cook too. And they wanted to help, anyway,” he replies, firmly.

“Yeah! Adults know how to cook and I’m not a little kid anymore so I can cook!” Clarke adds, emphatically, “we were talking about it at school!”

KC scoffs openly, turning towards Courtney, but Kari seems to stop him in his tracks.

“Hey K.C., you dating anyone?” she calls out, over the noise of the chicken frying in the pan.

“Why is that relevant?” he snaps.

“Because I figured you want to get married someday…” Kari starts, pausing for a moment and poking at something in the pan before turning around to face him (and Courtney), “and there’s no way you’re gay. So… you’d probably like to know that no woman is going to want to be within ten feet of you if you don’t get over that shitty attitude from your mother and start thinking for yourself. It’s 2021, dude.”

Courtney has to hold back her own laugh, quickly turning away from KC to hide it, hearing him splutter slightly as he tries to come up with a response.

“Well, Dad? Aren’t you going to say something? She’s-”

“-right,” her Dad steps in, cutting KC off before he can finish, “maybe you need to go upstairs and freshen up before dinner.”

KC huffs in response, but he doesn’t try and say any more, turning and trudging out of the room and upstairs towards his room.

Kari laughs lightly, turning back towards the chicken, although Courtney watches her Dad shake his head.

“Kari, I know you have your own thoughts about a lot of things in this family. And there might be at least a bit of truth to a lot of them. But just… please don’t make this any harder on me at the moment,” he speaks, eventually, his voice tired.

“Yeah, okay,” Kari answers, her voice moderated, “sorry, Dad. But he can’t be saying that stuff in front of the boys, we don’t want two more of him. And he was about to launch at Court.”

“I know. And Clarke, Conrad, you don’t need to listen to what KC says about what boys should do and what girls should do – anyone can do whatever, and everyone needs to know how to be a good adult,” he turns to the boys, quickly, although neither of them seem to pay him much attention, instead locked in a battle with each other over who did a better job of cutting the vegetables into even sizes. She feels her Dad look up to her too, then, his voice lowering slightly, “and if he starts at you, he is not getting away with it.”

She lets herself give him a small smile when she nods in response, before slowly, she wanders around the bench and over to her brothers to try and get them out of this debate.

Chapter Text

Courtney is almost nervous when KC comes back downstairs to join all of them for dinner – they do all fit at the table now – but, for the first five minutes of her Dad and all five kids sitting down to eat, they do so in silence. The TV is still playing in the background, some random game show Courtney barely recognises, and there is the occasional scrape of cutlery against a plate, but nothing else.

Something about it makes Courtney want to get up and leave, although she simply looks intensely down at her food and tries to make herself eat quickly enough to get out of here ASAP, but not quickly enough to draw attention.

It’s her Dad that breaks the silence, although he does so just as Kari looks like she’s about to say something, too.

“Now, kids, I think we need to have a bit of a talk about what happened last night – but I need you all to listen to me, no interruptions,” he starts, his tone light and a little patronising until it turns quite firm.

“All of us?” Kari pipes up, immediately, Courtney glancing up as she quickly shakes her head, seeming to change her mind, “sorry, no, we do all need to listen to Dad this time.”

“Thank you, Kari. So… I know last night might have been a bit tough for all of us, and any of you can talk to me about anything, and I’m happy to talk to you individually. But I think, what’s really important to know, is that… your Mum has been saying a lot of things that aren’t true. I don’t really know why she’s been saying those things, and it’s possible she is a bit sick,” he explains, a little slowly and carefully, Courtney trying to continue repetitively stabbing at her food with her fork and bringing it up to her mouth even as she feels her arms and legs and chest deadening with numbness.

“Do we know they’re false? She’s probably right,” KC snaps, Courtney feeling it reverberate around her head.

Not again. Not another night of-

“She is not correct. We know it is false. Because, boys, you need to understand that your mother was saying some very, very mean, very wrong things about Courtney for a very long time. What she was doing to Courtney is called abuse, it’s very serious and it’s a very, very bad thing for a parent to do to their children. It needs to stop, and you all need to understand that you cannot repeat any of those things about your sister, either,” he continues, Courtney shuddering slightly at the mention of her name, “if your mother kept doing that, she might have had to be taken by the police, or Courtney might have needed to leave our family forever so she could be safe with a family that treated her well.”

“But that still means the divorce is Courtney’s fault right? Even if it was like, good?” Conrad asks, suddenly. Courtney feels herself wince before she can stop it, quickly glancing back down and pretending she’s really trying to concentrate on cutting her piece of chicken.

“No. The divorce is no one’s fault, and it is not because of any of you kids. It’s a decision that your mother and I made, it is between us only,” he answers, almost angry, before taking a noticeable breath and pausing for a moment. “It’s okay for this to be difficult for you. It’s okay if you’re upset. It’s okay to miss your Mum, even though she has done some bad things. For a little while, you’re probably not going to see your Mum at all, but if you want to, then we’ll work out a way in the future that you can. But you just need to help me out for a little while, too, yeah? Please don’t be mean to your sister. Please don’t fight with each other about this – KC, Kari especially you two – and it's okay to be confused and sad and mad but we need to be nice to each other, at least, okay?”

“Okay,” Clarke answers, a little casually, “can we start taking the bus to school if Mum isn’t here and you have work?”

“No, buddy, not just yet – it’s like all you kids, no taking the bus until middle school, your elementary school bus doesn’t come to our street,” he answers, his tone exhausted.

“What about me?! I’m in middle school!” Conrad answers, pointedly.

“We’re done talking now? I’m heading out. I’ll be back tomorrow,” KC cuts in, before their Dad can reply, quickly standing up from the table and letting his cutlery rattle loudly against his plate as he sets it down.

“KC, at least clear your plate,” her Dad answers, almost desperate, but KC simply ignores him and walks out.

“I’ll get them,” Kari answers, quickly, standing from the table herself as she picks up her own plate, KC’s, and after checking she’s done, Courtney’s.

Courtney has no idea what to do, carefully glancing up to watch her Dad wipe a hand across his forehead before glancing back down at his own, mostly untouched, dinner.

Something about it feels bad, but her body just feels heavy and slow, and she has no idea what to say.

“Come on, boys, you gotta eat up so you’ll be big and strong! Hey, you wanna tell me about soccer this weekend and how you’re gonna win while you eat?” Kari speaks up before anyone else needs to, her voice interested and kind as she quickly re-takes her seat and leans over to draw the younger boys into conversation.

Courtney doesn’t want to hear about soccer. She doesn’t want to hear anything, and slowly, she rises from the table herself to drag her feet heavily up the stairs and to her room, immediately lying back on her bed and staring blankly at the ceiling.

Courtney has no idea how long it is that she lies there alone in her room. Her body feels like nothing, she doesn’t feel like she even exists, her eyes slowly unfocusing and refocusing over and over again as she stares at the random marks on the ceiling over her bed.

It’s a knock on the door that makes her glance to the side, however long later. It’s not Kari, and it’s definitely not her Dad – they both knock way louder than that – and, reluctantly, she shuffles herself around to sit up. She sees stars spinning in her vision for a moment as she does, sitting in place at the end of her bed with hands pressed down into the covers beside her until the room stops spinning around her and she can stand and walk to the door.

“I’m sorry I thought it was your fault and I’m sorry Mum was mean to you and Dad said I shouldn’t have told my friends at school so I’m sorry I did that too,” Conrad rushes out, without taking a single breath, when Courtney opens the door to find him standing, a little awkwardly, with hands clasped together in front of him at her door.

It makes her inwardly cringe. She doesn’t want this. She doesn’t want to do this, she just wants them all to leave her alone-

But he’s just a fucking kid and her brothers are annoying but they’re not like KC or anything.

“Thanks, Conrad,” she replies, not sure if she managed to actually carry an emotion of any description in her voice. He doesn’t seem to mind.

“Can I hug you?” he asks. She immediately wants to say no, because she knows it’ll just make her wish she was two houses down the street where hugs meant something and were from people that didn’t make her feel like… like… whatever this is.

“No, I wanna hug her!” Clarke calls out, before she can respond, also barrelling up the stairs. She immediately hears her Dad’s footsteps moving heavily up behind them.

“Boys, come on, I said apologise, don’t ambush your sister-” he tells them, firmly.

She tries to hide her sigh.

“Both of you, but only quickly, okay?” she tells them, carefully opening her arms to allow both boys to move forward and half-hug her for a mercifully short moment.

“I’m sorry too. Mum is mean. But she’s gone now,” Clarke adds, after they both step back from the hug, just as their Dad gets to the top of the stairs near her room.

“Boys, come on, how about you go into your room and get ready for bed?” he starts, rapidly turning and mouthing a ‘sorry’ in Courtney’s direction before he has to rush off after them.

She simply turns, letting the bedroom door fall closed behind her again and moving back to collapse on her bed all over again.

Maybe it’s over now and she can just. Whatever. Nothing. She doesn’t want to do anything.

It doesn’t feel like much later that the door opens again, but there’s no knock, and she doesn’t need to glance away from the spot on the ceiling she’s vaguely not looking at despite staring straight at it to know it’s Kari. She hopes Kari will just pretend she isn’t there.

“You okay, Court?” she asks, immediately.

“Fine,” she answers, plainly.

“You sure? You wanna talk?” Kari continues.

Courtney chooses not to say anything, because she figures that will be enough of a response. It’s evidently not enough for Kari.

“How was school today, other than the stuff with your friends? Classes?” she asks. Courtney scrunches her face up and finally rolls over, but she rolls towards the wall, back facing to Kari.

“I’m not the fucking boys I’m not twelve leave me alone,” she grumbles.

“You have to talk to someone, Court.”

“Not here.”

It seems to be what finally makes Kari stop, and Courtney lets herself return to staring unfocused and aimless ahead of her, only this time, at the wall beside her bed.

————————————————

Courtney trudges silently through her morning routine the next morning. It’s not like she wants to go to school but she doesn’t want to be here, either, and she doesn’t want her friends to be on her case again, so all she can do is silently scowl and ignore Kari and her Dad’s attempts to ask how she slept (she didn’t, thank you very much) as she gets a bowl of cereal for breakfast, picks out an outfit in her room, and stumbles to the bathroom to do her makeup as much as she can still with only half the products she needs.

At least, to her relief, her Dad does need to get to work straight after taking the two younger boys to school, so she and Kari need to walk down the street to the bus. Natalie is on too, today, but she doesn’t seem to say a thing about Courtney, instead immediately starting a conversation with her about some TV show that Courtney has definitely never seen, but whatever.

It’s mindless talking about nothing and she barely has to think, so whatever. It’s fine.

The bus gets held up by a dumb car accident not far from school, and it means that by the time they get there, Courtney and Natalie both have to rush straight to homeroom without seeing any of their other friends. Courtney, of course, immediately finds her usual seat between Yasmin and Hollie open, quickly sliding into it and mumbling a greeting to both of them.

She watches Hollie almost flinch back away from her without acknowledging the greeting before she seems to rapidly reach for her school planner and start writing something in it. Weird. Whatever, she is obsessed with that planner, and Courtney instead turns back to Yasmin, who also mumbles a quiet greeting before much more reluctantly glancing up to their teacher up the front of the room as he starts to take attendance.

The day starts, ultimately, very boring. Her math teacher drones on and on and one about something she doesn’t even try to understand for all of first period, and in second, biology is just as bad.

She has a double-period of English after biology and she’s dreading it, until they get to the class, and their teacher simply sits up the front and tells them to get out one of their assigned books and read as they’d like. No actual work. It sounds… okay. It sounds bearable.

Courtney quickly finds her mind twisting into knots as she rereads the same page what seems like ten times in a row, not a single word seeming to actually seep into her mind. She thought she liked this book – they did actually get a range of books to choose from for English this year, and they weren’t all awful – but suddenly it seems annoying and boring and she feels her eyes glossing over as she stares at the page.

She absently turns a page, even though she still has no idea what the other one said, only to repeat that all over again.

She only snaps out of her pattern of blankly staring at page after page of the book, never seeming to actually take anything in as her hands feel ever-number, when their teacher stands up from her desk at the front of the room where she’s also been quietly reading or whatever, just as third period comes to an end.

“Okay, everyone! Feel free to have a bit of a break now, stretch out a bit, have a chat to your friends – and we’ll get back to reading in a few minutes, or if you’re feeling like you’re ready to start preparing to write a report on your book, I can hand out a few pointers for you to start that,” she explains, the room immediately erupting into a cacophony of noise.

Courtney has English with just Yasmin, none of her other friends, this year. She honestly likes that – Yasmin just ends up being pretty quiet and doing her own thing in class, unless someone actively does something dumb, so she doesn’t draw Courtney into things she’ll get into trouble for quite as much as Natalie or Isabel. And she doesn’t get in trouble anyway because all the teachers know her Dad.

She instinctively turns over towards Yasmin when they’re told to take a break, anyway, blinking her eyes a couple of times to focus back on the room as she awkwardly twists her fingers together to try and shake off the weird numbness in her extremities again. Except she can feel her fingers, they aren’t actually numb, they just feel… weird. She doesn’t even know.

“Hey, Courtney?” Yasmin starts, her voice almost oddly quiet. She feels her heart immediately start beating rapidly in her chest, waiting for whatever reminder she’s not cool enough for her friends is to come, but Yasmin doesn’t immediately continue.

“Yeah?” she prompts, knowing her voice squeaks slightly in nerves. God, she’s such a fucking dumb baby and of course they’re going to kick her out now-

“I’m sorry we got on your case about your parents divorcing yesterday. That was… pretty dumb. And I’ve told the others not to say anything else again either. Because like, it’s probably a good thing, actually, your Mum seemed pretty insane and like maybe you can do more stuff now?” she almost rambles.

Courtney feels herself blinking stupidly in surprise. Wait, what? Yasmin has literally never said the word sorry to anyone that Courtney knows of. She’s Yasmin. She doesn’t do anything wrong, she’d never admit that, and especially not making fun of people for something, but-

Courtney quickly kicks herself into gear. She can’t go and be weird and silent and dumb about this and ruin it.

“Thanks. Yeah, it’s good, I’ll probably be able to do more stuff. Dad’s always been way more chill about letting me hang out with you guys and wear decent stuff and makeup and whatever,” she answers, keeping her tone light as she shrugs casually. She thinks it’s right, but… who knows.

“You are definitely staying here right?” she asks, but that’s an easy one.

“Yeah. There’s no way I’m going to Utah,” she replies, firmly, “Kari and my brothers are definitely staying here too.”

“That’s cool. You think you’d be able to come to the mall after school sometime next week? I can’t do this weekend, my parents have some business thing on that they want me and Preston to be there so it’s like, the whole family or whatever. But maybe after school Tuesday or something?” she offers, Courtney simply shrugging in response.

“I’ll have to ask Dad still, but maybe. I think Hollie has adventuring then, though…”

“Meh. She doesn’t like malls anyway.”

It’s not wrong, Hollie has always complained about how boring it is when they just go and wander around a mall. Which is dumb, because it’s literally not boring, there’s always things to look at that are new or something and they always talk while they’re doing it.

Their English teacher grabs everyone’s attention not much later to quieten down the room again, asking them to go back to their books. Courtney shuffles back around in her chair so she’s no longer facing Yasmin beside her, again, eyes returning to stare at the words on the page.

She still isn’t taking in a single thing she’s reading, even as she flips pages every few minutes, but this time her mind is distracted. Because, seriously, why on earth did Yasmin actually apologise? What is going on? Maybe they would’ve all realised it does mean she might be cooler without her Mum making her dress like a loser and never leave the house eventually and they would’ve stopped being weird about the divorce, but not apologising. That’s just… it’s weird. It’s so weird. And Yasmin, too…

Why does everything have to be weird and dumb suddenly?

Whatever. Deep down she knows there’s something off about it all, but she can’t work out what and she’s so tired and when the bell at the end of fourth period rings she simply pushes it all out of her mind to trudge to her locker to put her things away, and then to the cafeteria for lunch.

And, to her relief, lunch is okay. Natalie is still talking about her show. Yasmin talks about her parents’ big like business party thing on the weekend and how she gets to wear a brand new, sparkling floor-length dress. Hollie is unreasonably excited for a hike with the adventure club thing.

It all just feels normal.

Chapter Text

Courtney is kind of dreading the weekend. She just doesn’t want it to happen. She doesn’t want anything to happen, she doesn’t want to be at her house, she doesn’t want to go to Shayne’s, she doesn’t want to go out with her friends, she doesn’t want her Dad to try and talk to her or Kari to keep telling her she needs to talk or-

But she can’t stop Friday afternoon from becoming Friday evening, and she reluctantly trudges home from the bus stop and straight up the stairs to her bedroom, bag slung messily on the floor at the foot of her bed.

Her Dad isn’t home from work yet and Kari is on the phone to some friend or something, so Courtney simply collapses back onto her bed and stares at the ceiling. Maybe she can just stay here all weekend with no one to bother her and no one to talk to and nothing to do.

She grumbles under her breath in response, but she isn’t surprised when her plans not to leave her bed until Monday are disrupted only a couple of hours later by her Dad calling her down to eat dinner. Still, it’s not like she’s the only one of the four kids in the house that replies a monotone “fine” when he asks how her day at school was, and for the most part, she simply stares down at her plate and eats in silence as her brothers’ chatter about soccer this weekend and her Dad talking to Kari about something that happened at the fire station today spin together in a mess of noise.

She’s momentarily relieved for the break in the noise when the doorbell rings as she’s just about to finish her dinner, and everyone falls quiet. It’s only a second later, though, that she panics, mind suddenly spinning as she glances at her Dad and then up to the stairs, hands tensing around the cutlery in her hands.

Is it her? Is it her mother come to destroy her things and throw her out and turn all her family against her again and what does she do, does she run out the back away from the house to avoid her but then she can’t protect her stuff and-

“I’ll check who it is,” her Dad speaks up, after a moment, his voice firm and low.

“Court, hide, in case,” Kari mutters, Courtney numbly grabbing her mostly finished plate of food and standing to carry it over into the kitchen, angling herself behind the corner of the kitchen wall so she can’t be seen from the front door. The plate shakes in her hand and she tries to grip it tighter so it stops.

“Where’s Courtney?!” the person at the front door asks, her voice frazzled and loud and insistent, Courtney immediately recognising it as Kami’s voice.

But… what? Kami is in Arizona like twelve hours away for college. Why is she in Mansfield? Why is she asking for her?

“Kami, why are you-” her Dad starts, his own voice firm.

“Mum called me and I need to-” she starts, Courtney feeling a chill shiver through her body as her Dad immediately cuts Kami off.

“No, you can’t listen to anything she said, she’s-”

“I know, Dad! She said Courtney was the devil and you were going to kick her out and destroy all her things and make sure she never gets to sleep inside again and that’s insane and you can’t do that to her she’s literally your daughter and-” Kami rushes out, her voice getting higher and more frantic with every word.

It makes a lump form uncomfortably in Courtney’s throat as, slowly, she turns back to the sink to properly put her plate and cutlery down, knowing it will mean Kami might just be able to see her from the front door.

“Courtney is here. She’s safe. Your mother doesn’t have a key anymore,” her Dad replies, as she does, Courtney hearing his voice almost echo as he seems to let go of the firmness he was holding earlier.

“Can I at least see her? You let all this shit happen, I don’t trust either of you-” Kami starts, Courtney slowly turning around and glancing over to see her Dad step aside and look back into the house, towards the dining room.

Kami, for her part, looks further into the house, her eyes locking on Courtney standing awkwardly in the kitchen. Kami looks rough – her eyes are sunken and red, her cheeks streaked with dried tears – but her expression is unreadable as she suddenly pushes into the house, past her Dad, and rushes to the kitchen.

“Courtney-” she starts, emphatic, as she’s suddenly right there and pulling Courtney into a hug that has her flailing her arms for a moment, not sure what to do, “are you okay, are you safe? Did they hurt you? Is your stuff okay?”

“It’s… fine,” she mumbles, after a moment, feeling as much as she hears her older sister sigh heavily in response.

“Have you had some dinner, Court? Are you finished? Can we go up to your room, maybe?” she asks, stepping back from the hug, although her hands remain on Courtney’s shoulders. Courtney appreciates the little bit of distance, although the question makes her shiver.

Does she have to do this? Can’t she just lie on her bed forever doing nothing and thinking about nothing and not having to talk to all these people and look like a stupid weak dumbass and-

“Here, I’ll come too,” Kari suddenly appears in the kitchen beside them, setting her own plate down beside Courtney’s, “I know what’s been happening.”

Courtney doesn’t feel like she needs to say anything, then, feeling her feet grow heavy all over again as she shrugs and starts to trudge back up the stairs towards her room, knowing the other two walk up behind her.

She knows she can’t just lie back on her bed like she wants to, this time, but she still shuffles up onto the bed to sit near her pillow, knees pulled up tightly against her chest and shoulders hunched forward as she stares down at the creased, messy comforter beneath her. She can hear Kari sitting down onto her own bed and dragging something in front of the bedroom door, but she feels the weight of Kami sitting down on the other end of her bed.

“Are you okay, Courtney?” she asks, her voice quiet. It makes Courtney shiver.

“I’m fine,” she repeats, almost forcefully. Kami sighs.

“We know you aren’t, Court, and it’s… I just want to help you, okay? Please?” she almost pleads, although it doesn’t make any sense to Courtney, and she remains silent as Kami continues, “I know they were already doing stuff when I was still here but I’ve been away for a while and I don’t really know what’s happened. Dad called me, and Kathryn I think, the day before he told all of you, so I knew the divorce was happening, but he didn’t say anything about why, and then Mum went and called me way too early this morning and said all this insane shit and… I don’t know. I know we’re not close, Courtney, but you’re my baby sister. And I’m not here to judge you or make fun of you or make your friends think you’re a loser or something or…”

“She’s not our baby sister anymore, Kami. She’s 16,” Kari steps in, her own voice much quieter than it usually is. Before Courtney has a chance to snap back that she isn’t a baby.

“Right, yes, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to refer to you that way – you’re a very capable almost-adult. Just… Kari and I do care about you, Court,” Kami adds, Courtney grumbling under her breath in response.

What do they even want her to say?

“She’s gone now. It’s fine. I don’t wanna keep talking about it,” she mutters, eventually.

“Well… is there something you do want to do, Court? Do you wanna catch up with your friends this weekend, go to the mall or something? The three of us could go do something together?” Kami asks.

“No,” she replies, plainly.

“D’you want to go to Shayne’s house?” Kari adds.

“No,” she answers, again.

“Is there anything you do want to do?” Kami pushes.

“No,” Courtney answers, firmer this time.

“That… worries me, Court. You can’t pretend none of this has affected you, it clearly has, and I- I don’t even know what has happened, really. But… it’s not like you not to want to go out and do things. Even if something has happened, you usually want to go out with your friends and pretend it didn’t. It’s… I don’t really know what to do. But I think you need to talk to someone, Court,” Kami reinforces, her tone insistent.

Courtney hunches further forward, remaining silent as she curls up against herself and avoids looking elsewhere in the room.

“You talked to Shayne and his parents a bit, yeah?” Kari asks. Courtney shrugs.

“Shayne is… up the street, right? Is he a…” Kami starts.

“No, he’s not Court’s boyfriend,” Kari steps in, “he’s a good friend, and I think… his parents worked out what was happening and have been tricking our parents into sending Courtney there as much as possible so she can get out of here and just hang out with her friend.”

“I’m still not entirely sure what was happening,” Kami mumbles, lightly. Something about it makes Courtney snap, feeling her body suddenly grow uncomfortably warm and tense as her eyes burn with anger and she rapidly looks up towards Kami.

“I was just a useless good-for-nothing godless whore and everything I did was wrong and I was destroying everyone around me and I was too far gone to fix and I was ruining her house just by being here and-” she rants, until Kari cuts her off.

“Court, none of that was ever true. You know that, you said it yourself,” she starts, standing up from her bed. Courtney’s ready to start yelling at her, if she’s gonna go and get their Dad and tell him she’s stupid or something or-

Instead, she walks over, sitting herself down onto Courtney’s bed, too, Kami moving as she does until they are both sitting on the bed, looking at her.

Courtney feels her face burning and she feels like they’re staring at her and judging her and why can’t they just-

“I know it started when I was still here with just… Mum being really hard on you about clothes and your friends and stuff, but… it evidently got a lot worse than that,” Kami starts, as if prompting Courtney to continue.

She doesn’t, she remains silent, but after a while, Kari seems to step in.

“She kept getting harder on her. A lot about her grades at school, but then she… started blaming really weird stuff for it. Like, accusing Court of being on drugs and sleeping around with boys and stuff, which like, was never true,” she starts, shaking her head, “I think once she caught Court with a boy somewhere in public but like… only once. And I don’t think they were even doing anything.”

“Just kissing,” Courtney mutters, curling back down and looking back down at the bed.

“Were you 16 yet?” Kami asks. Courtney cringes in on herself.

“No…”

“You can’t say anything about that though, Kami. You were dating before you were 16,” Kari quickly points out, Kami giving half a laugh in response.

“Yeah, I know, just wondered if that was why Mum got weird about that one,” she responds.

“A little, but also, she took it way too far, saying she was like, ruined forever, acting like it was way worse than it was and proof that Courtney was on drugs,” Kari continues, sighing, “and she kinda started blaming everything on all this made-up shit about Courtney. Grounded her for ridiculous stuff. Tried to take her babysitting money, although I think Dad stopped that. Not letting her go out or do anything, making her do chores but then yelling at her for never doing chores, but then sometimes just kicking her out for a day which is when Shayne’s parents stepped in…”

“She thought they agreed with her,” Courtney adds, quietly.

“They didn’t?” Kami asks. She simply shakes her head.

“I think it’s, like… the last… year I guess? 18 months? Mum got really extreme, like, not letting Courtney be around the boys or other family, and you saw what happened at Christmas, and the like- there was one time last year where she came in here while Courtney was out and starting ripping through her stuff looking for drugs,” Kari seems to finish, there, and it makes annoyance twist in Courtney’s head. She’s just talking like- like she-

“It’s not like you’ve been any fucking help Kari, stop acting like you’re some fucking angel that didn’t repeat what Mum said and call me a loser and laugh at me and you just fucking sat here watching Mum ruin all my things and you say she was looking for drugs but she didn’t need to rip up my schoolwork or break my pencils or destroy all my shoes or cut up my clothes if she was just-” Courtney almost rants, sharply, although she knows her voice comes out muffled as she remains curled tightly with her knees against her chest.

Both her sisters fall into silence for a moment, then, Courtney feeling her body tense again. Now they both know everything and they’re just going to say she’s being a loser again overreacting and they’ll make fun of her and she should’ve just never said anything and not let Kami in the bedroom and-

“I know, Courtney,” Kari starts, after a while, her voice low and cautious as Courtney feels her shift on the bed slightly until she shuffles into the space between Courtney and the bedside table, arm loosely wrapping around her shoulders, “I… I didn’t know what to do, and I guess it was easier to just… not take it seriously and be a dumbass and make fun of you but it’s… that was wrong. I should’ve supported you earlier, just like Dad. And I’m sorry I didn’t. But… I do care about you. And if I can support you now…”

“Dad kinda… went along with Mum, didn’t he?” Kami asks, carefully. Courtney hears Kari go to speak, but quickly, she steps in first.

“Mostly, yeah. For a while he was as bad as her with saying stuff and like refusing to let me acknowledge my 16^th birthday because if I did I’d become a slut or whatever but… when she destroyed my half of the room he helped clean up and try and salvage things. And he didn’t know she was pulling that stuff at Christmas until we got there and he knew I had my phone there but hid that from her. And now, he’s- he told her to leave, she didn’t choose to leave,” she answers, in a mumble. She feels Kari squeeze her shoulder slightly.

“I think Dad didn’t know what to do either, but now he’s… trying,” Kari adds, “he feels awful about it all and he wants to help you now”.

“Christmas was the first time I kind of realised how… bad it got. But I didn’t know what I could do without making stuff worse for you somehow,” Kami mutters, Courtney carefully relaxing her body just a little to lift her head up and watching as Kami shakes her head, “it sucks you didn’t even get Christmas.”

“I got a Christmas. It was just a Topp Christmas instead of a Miller one,” she speaks up, carefully, watching Kami twist her face in question.

“Shayne’s family,” Kari confirms, quickly, “Mum made her go over there for ages the day we got home. But… you got Christmas with them?”

“They hadn’t done their just like, only their house Christmas yet, they didn’t take each other’s gifts to Shayne’s grandparents place. So they… we did proper Christmas with decorations and roast dinner and everything when I was there, too,” she explains, feeling her cheeks blush all over again. It feels dumb and stupid but-

“I’m glad you had the Topps this last little while to be there for you,” Kami comments, lightly, “did you want to spend more time at their house this weekend instead of being here? Here doesn’t sound like it’s a… great place for you, even if Mum’s gone and not coming back.”

“No,” Courtney answers, immediately, shaking her head, “they’re moving soon. Like, next month. It’s… I don’t wanna be there. It feels weird. It’s all over. And it’s not like I need to go over there more because I’m not being kicked out of here or anything…”

“Military family. They’re staying in Mansfield though, aren’t they?” Kari confirms.

“Yeah. But other side of town.”

“That sucks, Court. But… I’m sure you’ll still always be welcome at Shayne’s place. But… if you don’t want to go there… that’s okay. Are you sure there isn’t anything you want to do this weekend? I kind of just- I kind of just threw shit in the car and drove up here as soon as Mum shut up but I may as well stay for a bit since I’m here,” Kami shrugs lightly, quickly adding, “I might call Kathryn, make sure she knows… knows what’s actually happened, too. But. Yeah. Anything¸ Courtney?”

She feels herself quietly glance around the room in response, eyes immediately falling to the shoes she’d happened to be wearing that day she’d been out with her friends and her Mum attacked her room.

It’s… it’s just her sisters. They aren’t going to let her lie in her bed doing nothing all weekend and they’re not making fun of her and… she may as well go with it.

“I… I never found any of my shoes after she destroyed my stuff. I only had the ones I was wearing that day and I got another pair of cheap shoes for gym classes but I really can’t keep relying on just one pair of decent shoes and I have some money from babysitting still I think even though I haven’t done it for a while so-”

“Mall it is, then – is there anywhere in particular you wanna look? We can go tomorrow morning,” Kami agrees, simply, Courtney forcing herself not to curl back into the bed in response.

Chapter Text

“Is everything ok? Don’t want be nosy or anything, you just said you’d text tonight and you haven’t,” Shayne had texted Courtney, somewhere on 8:30pm. She hadn’t responded immediately – she ended up kinda just talking about… whatever… with Kami and Kari for a while, until their Dad quietly popped in and asked if they could be a little quieter since the boys were going to bed, and in response, Courtney had admitted she kinda wanted to go to bed too.

But, when Courtney finally clambers under the covers around 10pm with Kari silent on the other side of the room and Kami off in her own room apparently calling Kathryn, she pulls out her phone and feels a swirl of guilt through her chest.

She’d forgotten she promised she’d text him every day for a while just to confirm nothing had gone wrong again. She doesn’t mind doing that – she likes that he’s looking out for her, and she knows it’s as much for his Mum as it is for him – and she rapidly swipes across his text to type a reply.

“I’m so sorry I forgot Shayne, everything is fine, I promise. I thought I’d just be laying here doing nothing bc that’s all I wanna do but Kami just turned up out of nowhere because I guess Mum called her and she freaked out or something so I’ve had Kami and Kari talking at me all evening about everything…”

“I’m glad it’s ok. I hope your sisters aren’t pressuring you too much? Talking might be good, and it’s good if they care about you, but… what you want to do matters too,” Shayne replies, almost immediately.

“I dunno. I feel gross. I don’t wanna do anything… but I guess since Kami is here… it’s ok. I think I’m going shopping with them tomorrow to finally get another pair of shoes again,” she replies, quickly adding, “which is good, I guess. Idk. Idk what I wanna do”

“As long as it’s ok Court. And you can always come over to mine if you wanna – but if you want to just be alone, you can tell them that, too,”

“Maybe,” she replies, and she doesn’t know what she’s actually replying to, but she flicks her phone onto silent and reaches over to set it on her bedside table before turning over to face the wall.

She’s barely slept since the other night at Shayne’s place and she really hopes her exhaustion will be enough that she just passes out tonight.

Maybe then she won’t have to think for eight hours. Or six. Maybe four?

She’ll take at least four.

————————————————

Courtney does end up getting to spend most of her weekend lying in her room in silence, and she does get at least some sleep. Kami and Kari take her shopping on Saturday morning, after Kathryn sends her a text saying she’s sent $500 to Kami to help Courtney replace some of her things her mother destroyed so long ago because she just didn’t know it happened until Kami called her the previous night.

Part of Courtney wants to feel bad, but she also knows Kathryn has a decent job now she’s graduated college and like, actually has money, so… whatever. She really needs shoes. And maybe to finally get a proper concealer again.

But, after the morning out shopping, when she shrugs at everything her sisters offer and just says she wants to be alone, they don’t question it and she retreats back into her room alone. Even Kari gives her space, instead spending much of her time with Kami or the younger boys.

She doesn’t get anything done with the rest of the weekend – she has homework, but whatever, she doesn’t want to do it so she doesn’t – but it eventually ends and she pushes herself into the school week, hoping she can just pretend nothing happened. It works well enough: she gets in trouble for not doing her homework (whatever), she doesn’t have a whole lot to say to her friends since she isn’t even listening to music or watching TV or anything, but she just… floats through it and lets her friends do the talking and her teachers rant to her about how she’s going to struggle to get decent grades if she doesn’t do her homework.

Was she ever going to get decent grades in the first place anyway?

Kami had stayed all week, stepping in to take the younger boys to school, arguing with KC whenever he showed up and started saying dumb stuff about Courtney (or just like, girls in general). It meant Courtney didn’t have to do a whole lot, for once, and she finds herself doing a tiny bit of homework the following Friday night before dinner just because she… doesn’t know what else to do.

She’d offered to help with dinner but Kami had waved her off and said it was under control, and Kari was sitting at the other side of their bedroom working on her own homework.

They all move downstairs for dinner – Courtney’s Dad makes KC pull up one of the old stools buried in the living room mess for his seventh seat at the table – and have a largely uneventful meal, with the occasional conversation about nothing between her Dad and someone or her younger brothers and Kami or Kari, but not much. But, of course, she can’t just have a normal weekend, and as some of the older kids start to finish their meals, their Dad speaks up.

“So, everyone… on Sunday, we might have a bit of a difficult day. I have been in contact with your mother. There is some of her things here that she needs to come up and pick up,” he starts, Courtney immediately feeling her heart drop into her stomach.

She feels like she’s going to be sick. She doesn’t want to see her. She doesn’t want to remember she exists. She just bought new shoes and makeup and even a couple of new shirts since Kathryn sent that money and she doesn’t want them to all be destroyed again and-

“It’ll be good for everyone to see her and apologise-” KC starts, Kami, Kari and their Dad all cutting him off at once.

“Absolutely not-”

“You fucking psycho-”

“KC, please don’t start-”

Courtney’s sisters both stop to let her Dad continue, although Kari seems to get away with her language even as KC splutters in response.

“-with that. You have work on Sunday anyway. Conrad, Clarke, boys, I know you have soccer in the morning – how about after, do you wanna go hang out with your friends? I know Sam’s Dad was saying he wanted to take some of you boys to the new skatepark near their place…”

“Yeah! That sounds awesome!” Conrad responds, immediately, both boys seeming to completely bypass the idea that it’s happening because their Dad is trying to keep them away from their mother for now.

It makes Courtney cringe slightly. Is it like… is it bad that their Dad is kinda hiding the kids from their Mum now? Will it mean she can like… try and argue to have them if she accused him of stealing her kids?

She doesn’t think too deeply about it, though, as her mind immediately returns to her own worry. She can’t be here. But if her Mum is in the house then she can-

“Kami, if you could help take the boys to soccer and… Kari, I know you can do whatever you feel like-”

“I’ll stay here in our bedroom and put something in front of the door so she can’t get Court’s stuff,” Kari speaks up, immediately, “and Courtney you can like… make sure you get everything you can think of. And I guess if there’s anything else in the house too we wanna hide from her…”

“Yeah, I- that would be helpful, thank you, Kari,” her Dad replies, before turning back to Courtney, “and Courtney… it might be best if you-”

“You can’t just hide everything from her! This is why you’re the problem! Her kids need their Mum, and Courtney needs to be taught right!” KC snaps.

“KC, you pay nothing to stay in this house, you are an adult, be careful,” her Dad snaps back, just as fiercely, Courtney glancing over to watch KC narrow his eyes.

“Then I’ll go to Utah like you all should be!” he snaps.

“Please do,” Kari deadpans, before glancing over to Courtney and lightening her voice, “you’ll be able to go to Shayne’s, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she answers, simply, trying to turn over in her head how she feels about that.

KC disappears off to his room without saying anything else not much later, and Courtney finds her own mind still stuck on just… trying to think anything at all as she slowly helps her Dad and Kami clean up after dinner.

She knows she needs to wash her hair, and Kami tells her to take the shower first, her brothers can wait, and she moves lazily upstairs to grab her towel and her pyjamas from her room before moving back to the downstairs bathroom.

Her mind still stutters through nothing as she showers, but at the same time, she glances around the room. Some of her makeup is in a little tray in this bathroom cabinet, she thinks. And she left one of her school books in the living room the other day and it’s just a book for English but maybe she should get it anyway because she’d have to pay a fine to the school library if it got damaged, and she definitely needs to get all her stuff out of the upstairs bathroom and she should probably even take her shampoo and conditioner and maybe her hairdryer too just in case and…

Courtney returns upstairs lugging an armful of random bits and pieces of hers that she knew were downstairs, but when she gets to her room, she unceremoniously dumps it on the end of her bed and reaches for her phone to open her still relatively empty texts to Shayne’s Mum.

“Hi Cathy. Is it okay if I come to your place Sunday? I don’t know for how long. But Mum is apparently coming to get some stuff so I can’t really be here,” she texts.

“Of course! Look forward to seeing you, honey, and we’ll plan for you to be here the whole day in case. Is there anything in particular you’d like for lunch or dinner?” Cathy’s text comes not two minutes later. She feels it sit lightly in her chest, although she can’t quite manage a smile in response.

Shayne’s Mum has been asking about what food she would like for a while now, and it always makes her feel… nice. Except, right now, she doesn’t really feel like… anything.

“Thank you. Nothing in particular, whatever is fine,” she replies, after a moment of consideration.

————————————————

Courtney’s mother apparently refuses to tell her Dad or anyone (Kami tries asking, too) what time she’ll actually be getting to the house. Her Dad thinks it’s unlikely to be before 10am, but Courtney feels herself already feeling like she’s going to throw up at 7:30am as she abruptly packs a handful of things into her backpack – she knows Kari will be blocking off their bedroom from inside but still – and walks out of the house without saying a word to anyone.

She knows her Dad saw her leave, though, and she thinks he might have said something to her, so whatever.

Cathy answers the door at their house as soon as Courtney rings the doorbell, and it doesn’t surprise her that she immediately pulls Courtney in and into a hug. She feels herself start tearing up in response, but she quickly sniffs the tears back and tries to push the sadness back out of her mind and into nothingness again. She doesn’t want to keep just breaking down and crying like a baby.

“Courtney, darling, it’s good to see you again – how are you doing, would you like breakfast or anything to eat? Shayne’s not quite up yet, he’s slept in a bit, but no worries at all, I’m sure he’ll be down soon,” she speaks warmly, sentences rushing into each other. It gives Courtney the opportunity to just respond… selectively. She hasn’t eaten, but she doesn’t want to.

“I’m okay thanks, I had breakfast. Sorry I’m so early, I just… we have no idea when she’s coming and I didn’t want to risk being there… I can just hang out until Shayne is up, it’s still early anyway,” she answers.

“It’s not a problem at all, and okay. Would you like to put something on the TV?” Cathy asks, Courtney shrugging lightly in response and slowly moving out of the entry and into the living room.

She doesn’t want to watch anything, but she has no idea what else to do, slowly moving to sit on the sofa and reaching for the remote from the coffee table to pull up a show on Netflix or something like that.

Cathy seems to understand she doesn’t really want to talk, Courtney hearing her wander further into the dining room and kitchen, pulling open cupboards and taking things out. It immediately makes Courtney glance over to the corner of the living room, where she’d been trying to avoid – she knows they hadn’t packed much, yet, they still have about a month left, but there’s already a stack of three cardboard boxes in the corner that makes her shudder and quickly look back to the show.

It's a Marvel one – an episode Shayne (and Cathy) have probably already watched before – that she’s missed in the last couple of weeks of not wanting to do anything, but she still finds herself fidgeting with the hem of her shirt and struggling to engage as it plays out.

It’s only twenty minutes later that Shayne appears from upstairs, and she glances up to nod silently towards him in greeting as he says hi to her and walks past the living room to go and pour himself a bowl of cereal.

“Have you had breakfast, Court?” he calls out, lightly.

“Yeah, before I left,” she answers, her voice catching a little as she tries to speak at full volume so he can hear.

Shayne doesn’t immediately saying anything, continuing to get his breakfast ready before wandering back to the living room to sit down into the couch beside her, bowl of cereal balance on his lap.

“You don’t wake up early enough for that to be true,” he mumbles, quietly. Courtney feels herself sigh, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment.

“Not today. Please,” she answers, her voice small and even softer. Part of her expects him to fight it, to immediately tell his Mum she isn’t eating properly and needs to have breakfast-

But he doesn’t, and she watches as Shayne nods and falls into silence, sitting beside her and eating his breakfast.

They barely say a word through the morning, as the two sit on Shayne’s living room couch and watch Netflix continue to play on the TV in front of them. Courtney knows he will have seen it all, but he doesn’t say anything, and her mind is barely there anyway. Cathy and Robert – and Brian, once – occasionally wander through the living room, and she greets the two men and Shayne holds half a conversation with his Dad about moving, once, but otherwise…

It's quiet. It should be what Courtney wants, no one is bugging her or asking her questions or making her think about anything or talk about anything and it’s not like her mind is even really digging into what might be happening two houses down the street.

But, still, she just feels uncomfortable. Her body is tensed and aching, she can’t get in a comfortable position no matter what she tries. The couch feels weird to sit on even though she’s sat right here a million times before with no problem, her clothes are uncomfortable, she just feels like she wants to get out of her skin but that’s weird and dumb and stupid and impossible.

“What would you like for lunch? I think we’ve got… sandwiches, things like that, or you can order something in. I’m planning on making pasta for dinner,” Cathy asks, appearing beside the sofa sometime around midday. It takes Courtney a moment to blink herself back to reality from whatever nothingness her brain was stuck in, but she glances over and watches Shayne take a moment to respond, too.

“I don’t know- Court? Anything in particular?” he asks, turning back to her.

She simply shrugs. She doesn’t know.

“Sandwiches should be fine,” Shayne answers, glancing back at his Mum, “we can sort something out, all good.”

“You sure? I’m happy to make something…” his mother trails off.

“It’s fine. Thanks,” Courtney answers, quickly, suddenly realising her silence could be rude. She doesn’t want to be rude to Cathy and she knows she wants to help her and do things for her but she just… she just…

She just doesn’t know what to do or think or feel or anything.

“Okay, well, I’m going to head out to the shed and see what Robert is up to – but feel free to get whatever you’d like from the fridge,” she tells them, her voice light and calm again, before she does move out into the hallway and turn towards the back of the house.

“C’mon. We don’t have to have a big lunch and I know you feel gross but… please eat something, Court?” Shayne prompts, after his mother leaves, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder for a moment before he stands and walks towards the kitchen.

“Okay,” she mumbles, reluctantly standing from the sofa to follow him. She can probably manage a sandwich. And she doesn’t want him to get on her case if she doesn’t.

Chapter Text

Courtney would really like to just go back to sitting quietly on the living room couch and half-watching nothing after lunch. As uncomfortable as it felt, she can’t think of anything else even half-bearable. But, instead, when they finish lunch and tidy their plates away just as Cathy and Robert come back inside to get their own lunch ready, Shayne immediately gestures for Courtney to follow him upstairs.

She doesn’t know what to do other than ascend the stairs a couple of steps behind him, following him as he moves straight into his bedroom. It immediately reminds Courtney of the last time she was in this room, waking up on Thursday morning having actually got some goddamn sleep. She didn’t feel weird then and she literally slept in his bed. She can’t bring herself to feel weird about it when he acted like it was no big deal, too.

…So why does being in his room feel so weird now?

“Court, you’re allowed to want to do stuff still, you know?” he starts, shuffling further into his room and glancing around for a moment before sitting onto the edge of his bed.

He sits in the middle of the bed’s length, though, leaving no space for her beside him without being too close, and Courtney glances around herself for a moment before reaching for his desk chair and tugging it over so she can sit… kind of beside him but not.

“I don’t want to do stuff, though. I literally don’t want to think or feel or do anything,” she replies, pointedly, looking down and running her finger back and forth along the seam of her jeans beside her knee.

“You can’t just not feel things, though. It’s… it’s normal, shit happened and it’s okay to feel things about it,” he replies, carefully, before his tone softens, “and even if you don’t wanna be upset around everyone… you know I’m never gonna judge you about anything.”

“I know. But I don’t wanna just be crying like a stupid baby and it doesn’t fix anything or change anything and I can just stop it happening and feel nothing and that’s easier,” she answers, almost arguing, although she tries to stop herself actually being… angry.

She’s not mad at him. And she knows he’s trying to help and she’s trying not to get upset with him over stuff anymore but…

“It’s not stupid to be upset, Court. You kinda- at some point you’re going to have to feel everything, you can’t just pretend it never happened forever,” he points out.

“Why not? And I’m not like… hiding it. I’m just choosing not to be crying all the time. I just want everything to be normal,” she answers, letting her hands press into the chair beside her as she glances down.

“I get that. But… you still keep saying you feel gross, Court. Is this really any better?” he asks, although his voice is gentle. She lets herself sigh audibly as she pauses for a moment.

“It’s… I don’t know. I just don’t know how I feel about anything and food isn’t good anymore and I don’t like watching things and I don’t wanna play games but I don’t think being a crying dumb mess is any better,” she almost rants, before turning to a mumble, “everything sucks but at least with this I’m not being a loser.”

“I don’t think crying would make you a loser at all, Court. But… I guess… if you don’t want to do anything, then do you want to do nothing? It’s- we don’t have to do anything today,” he starts, tilting his head to the side lightly as she reluctantly lets herself meet his eyes, “if you wanna just chill in the living room downstairs with nothing on the TV or anything, that’s totally fine. Or, if you want some space from my parents, up here. Or, hey, even if you wanna be alone – I can go find something to do elsewhere if you just wanna hang out in here.”

“I don’t want to be alone,” she replies, quietly, biting her lip and looking down again.

“Okay. Then… downstairs? Here?” he offers.

“Here,” she answers, softly, after a moment. She doesn’t want to talk to his parents this time, or Brian whenever he gets home.

“Mmkay. I might just… I might grab the book I’ve been reading, if that’s okay? But we don’t have to talk, and we don’t have to do anything. I’ll just be here,” he tells her, standing up from the bed and moving past her, over to his desk.

“Can I lie on your bed?” she asks, before she can stop herself. She just wants to lie down.

“Sure,” Shayne replies, lightly, and instead of sitting back onto the bed, he takes the desk chair as Courtney shuffles over and lets herself fall back onto his bed staring up at his bedroom ceiling.

She isn’t entirely convinced that he won’t just keep trying to talk to her or convince her to do something with the afternoon, but as she lies in silence, all she hears is the occasional turning of the pages of his book across the room.

Courtney doesn’t feel any less empty, but after what has to be at least an hour of lying in the quiet of his room, she lets herself twist around to face the cupboard door in the wall across from his bed, away from him. He still doesn’t say a word, and slowly, she feels her eyelids drooping as tendrils of exhaustion move through her limbs.

————————————————

Shayne is honestly at a complete loss for what to do when Courtney turns up at his house on Sunday with no discernible desire for… anything. He’d kinda got the vibe through the last ten days since that awful night of the divorce, through texts and occasionally seeing her at school, that she quietly felt kinda blah about it all but was pretending to most people that everything was fine and it never happened.

He expected one of the two at his place, too. Maybe she’d be upset and sad and tired, but he could absolutely deal with that and he knows his Mum was ready to spend a day talking through it all with her, too, if that’s what she needed. Maybe, she’d act like nothing was even happening and she was just there to hang out for a day, and they’d play games and laugh and have fun and at least he’d know he was giving her a way to do that for a day and not have to think about her family or what her friends would think of it.

But somehow it was… neither, and he suddenly understood all the “I don’t knows” in texts over the last ten days. She refused to feel anything. She just seemed like she was kind of pretending she didn’t even exist in the world around her, like time was just passing by and she didn’t really want any part of it. It makes him feel helpless. He has no idea how to deal with that.

But, she ate something for lunch. And she willingly followed him upstairs where he stumbled through a conversation trying not to be scared that she’d turn around and blow up at him, and all it ended with was them just… sitting in his room and doing nothing.

He tries not to think too deeply about it as he picks up the book he’s been reading and twists the chair to face the desk instead of the bed, when she all but collapses onto his bed. He loves this book series, but he finds his mind drifting frequently as he glances back over to the bed to check she’s still okay. It’s when she twists over onto her side, facing away from him, that he forces himself to concentrate harder on the book instead of glancing over at her. He doesn’t want to creep her out if she can see him looking over to check constantly.

He manages to get through two full chapters before he looks over again – there’d been this whole action-fight sequence and it definitely helped – and blinks a couple of times.

Shayne is pretty sure Courtney has actually fallen asleep, and quietly, he places his thumb against the pages of his book to stop him losing the page as he stands up for a moment to look over her slightly.

It only confirms his suspicion, and it reminds him of the one thing Courtney had clearly admitted in the last week or so. She had not been sleeping very well at all – a mixture of nightmares, and her sisters bugging her, or just not being able to fall asleep – and Shayne makes his movements as quiet as he possibly can as he sits back down and goes back to his book.

He has no idea what to do. He wishes he could get her to see a therapist, but he knows there’s no way she can afford that and probably no way she’d accept the idea either given she’ll barely even go to a standard doctor.

But… she’s fallen asleep at his house, after telling him she didn’t want to be alone. She can get a little bit of sleep here. And maybe that’s… something, right?

————————————————

“Hey. You have a nice rest?” Shayne asks, his voice soft when she feels herself waking up and immediately sits back up on his bed, glancing around the room.

She spies the clock on his nightstand reading 4:45pm. Shit, she has to have been asleep for… hours.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to-” she starts, but Shayne shakes his head, and she stops apologising.

“It’s all good. I know you’ve been having trouble sleeping- you must be tired, it’d be good for you to get some sleep when you can,” he answers, carefully, Courtney feeling herself nod in response as she shuffles around to sit on the edge of his bed, feet landing against the floor.

“It’s… yeah. I think I feel a little better. It was good sleep,” she admits, after a moment, watching Shayne smile at her in response. His smile is almost infectious. Almost.

“I’m glad. And I’ve made so much progress on this book, it’s been great for me too,” he adds, lightly, holding up his book with what looks like only a couple of chapters left before the end.

“D’you want to keep reading? Looks like you’re almost done,” she asks, raising an eyebrow at him, watching Shayne laugh softly in response.

“Nah. I’ll save it for tonight before I go to sleep,” he answers, simply, Courtney nodding in response and glancing around again for a moment.

“I’m sorry I’ve kinda… messed up your Sunday by moping around,” she apologises, again, after a moment, letting her gaze settle on him again.

“Nah, you haven’t messed up my Sunday,” he replies, immediately, pausing for a second as he seems to collect his thoughts. “It’s… I still think it’s probably… it’s usually good to let the things you feel happen, instead of burying them down. But I also can’t really know what you’re going through at the moment in the same way you do, and… you’re my best friend, and I wanna support you, and I’m kinda used to that being giving you a shoulder to cry on- but if you don’t wanna cry and you just wanna be in silence in the same place, that’s okay too.”

“I just don’t wanna be a complete mess… yet. I just want it to go away,” Courtney admits, hesitating for a moment, before carefully reaching out and patting the spot beside her on the bed. He has to reach for a bookmark to put into his book, but after he does, he quickly moves over to sit beside her, and she lets herself lean lightly into his side. “It’s not over yet. KC still keeps trying to be a dick and I still feel weird about Kari and Kami suddenly being all caring about me when they’ve literally never done that in my life and I’ve just been their dumb little baby sister and I don’t know how to act around Dad and I think he doesn’t know how to be around me either and it’s all just so much all the time and it’s exhausting and it’s easier to feel nothing but at least here it’s… I didn’t have to try so hard to not think about everything. I could just relax and fall asleep and know that if anything happened, you’d handle it, or Cathy would.”

“Mm. You don’t have to worry here,” he tells her, nodding gently, “and… I know you don’t love that we’re moving. I mean, neither do I, I’ve lived down the street from one of my best friends for two years and it’s been awesome. But I’m still gonna want to hang out with you whenever at my new place and my Mum is definitely still going to invite you over all the time.”

“It’ll be harder, though,” she points out.

“Maybe. But… I’m getting my driving permit soon, I’m 17-and-a-half next week. And Mum would always be happy to come and get you. There might even be busses between here and our new place, I dunno, I haven’t looked it up,” he answers.

“Still. Not quite as easy,” she mumbles, before adding lightly, “I keep forgetting you’re so old. You’re gonna be a senior, you gotta start doing college applications and stuff.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” he answers, faux-groaning, “but hey, I’m not that much older than you. You’re 17 in like, three months.”

“Kari’s been 18 for ages and she still doesn’t have her permit, I don’t know why. All my other siblings got them as soon as they possibly could,” she muses, carefully lifting herself up so she’s no longer hunched leaning into his side, “I’ll get mine as soon as I can, I think. I guess I’ll have to do lessons or something, Dad doesn’t have time to teach me even if that wouldn’t be kinda weird and uncomfortable.”

It's where they stay, sitting just beside each other on Shayne’s bed chatting about bits and pieces of nothing, until Courtney feels her phone vibrate in her pocket just on 5:30. She pulls it out, sighing lightly as she clicks into the text from her Dad.

“All clear, and she never even went upstairs. You can come home whenever you’d like,” he’d texted.

Courtney glances up from her phone to her side, at Shayne, before looking around his room again, and then back down to her phone.

“Can I stay at the Topp’s for dinner?” she asks, to-the-point.

“Sure, just don’t be home too late, you have school tomorrow,” he replies, Courtney simply shoving her phone back in her pocket after he does, not feeling the need to say anything else.

“Want to head downstairs and see what Mum’s up to with dinner?” Shayne asks, after she does. She knows he will have seen the texts over her shoulder, and she nods in response, carefully running her fingers through her hair to un-muss it from falling asleep on the bed as she follows Shayne down the stairs.

“Hello! Have you had an okay afternoon up there? We thought we’d just give you both some space,” Cathy greets them, warmly, as they wander towards where she’s starting to pull ingredients out onto the kitchen bench.

“Thanks,” Shayne replies, immediately, as Courtney feels her chest bubble with warmth for the first time in quite a few days.

“It’s been okay. I ended up falling asleep, I haven’t been getting much sleep,” Courtney admits, after a moment, before gesturing towards Shayne and turning her voice teasing, “this nerd just read almost an entire book.”

“Not quite! I’d already started it and I still have a few chapters left,” he answers, defensive, Cathy laughing lightly in response.

“Ah, well, it sounds like you both had a nice quiet afternoon. Dinner will probably be another hour or so, is that okay? Are you staying, Courtney?” she asks.

“Yeah, I’ll stay, and that’s fine,” she answers, quickly, glancing over as Shayne echoes that an hour is fine.

“Anything you… wanna do until then, Court?” he asks, hesitating and clearly regretting his question before he even finishes it.

She shrugs, but slowly, she glances over to the living room.

“Can I just watch you play Animal Crossing or something like that?” she asks, after a moment.

“Yeah, yeah, totally,” he answers, quickly, gesturing for her to follow him over to the living room couch again as he turns on his switch and reaches for both of his pro controllers.

He sets one on the coffee table, though, simply taking his own and navigating through his home screen to the game as he sits down into the sofa beside where Courtney has already placed herself.

“Could you help me work out how to lay out my top cliff level? I was trying to do a like, fancy garden up there, but I couldn’t get it to look right and it’s like a month since I’ve looked at it and I feel like you might be able to help,” he asks, lightly, Courtney humming softly in response.

It’s okay – it’s easy, to just let herself suggest Shayne move a bench seat a little to the right and rotate a fountain a different way. Her body still feels heavy as she tries to numb her mind and guard her thoughts, but she feels just a little bit less tense as it feels like everything stops trying to push quite so aggressively back over her.

Shayne exits his game and turns off the Switch when Cathy tells them dinner is almost ready, and Courtney lets herself give her the tiniest smile in thanks when she hands over a serving of a sundried tomato and pesto pasta. She knows she’s quieter than she might usually be at the dinner table, and she eats a much smaller serve than usual, but at the same time, she knows it’s okay. No one questions her about the food, and no one – not even Robert or Brian – forces her to talk or asks her any real questions.

Chapter Text

Courtney feels like her body tenses more and she feels even less every week as March drones on. Her mother leaves for Utah – that, at least, feels kind of nice and kind of relieving to hear, that she’s states away and not coming back – and Kami goes back to college and KC stops making dumb comments at dinners and trying to attack her and instead starts stomping around silently and refusing to talk to anyone. She doesn’t get a chance to spend any more time at Shayne’s place – the Topps are busy packing up for their upcoming move anyway, and she keeps having to help look after her brothers because KC won’t and Kari really needs to study since she’s a senior anyway and her Dad is trying but he still has to work – but she goes to the movies with him, Zach, Alicia and Evie once when Evie says she desperately needs a break from her own senior year studying; and she hangs out with her own friends a couple of times, too.

Courtney spends Easter Sunday, the first weekend in April, with her dad’s family that live out in the middle of nowhere in California. It’s not too far to drive, at least, but neither Kami nor Kathryn come and Kari elects to stay home so she can study in peace, too, and KC is who knows where, so it’s just her and the two boys and all the younger kids in her dad’s family.

Courtney’s cousins are as wild and loud as they always are, but her aunts and uncles are just a touch nicer than usual, and after awkwardly pulling her dad aside, he confirms that they at least vaguely know that her mother had treated her awfully for a while and that was at least part of what lead to The Divorce, as they all refer to it in hushed tones.

It makes her shudder a little, although it does mean her dad’s youngest sister offers her an extra serve of dessert after lunch – and her Dad’s youngest sister works in a bakery and she made dessert, and Courtney isn’t going to say no to that offer.

Even though it just makes her feel vaguely nauseous the whole ride home, and she’s not sure if it’s because she ate too much sugar or if it’s just… life.

She knows Shayne’s family had taken possession of the house they’d bought across the other side of town – weirdly, only a few streets away from Yasmin’s place, although not in a fancy gated community like hers is – on the Saturday, and they spent their Easter starting to move the things they’d already packed to the new house. But she really tries not to think about that, instead answering plainly and non-committally when her uncles ask how school is going and her aunts ask how her friends are and feeling the nothingness grow heavy in her body again.

Shayne had told her they planned to pretty much move everything except the furniture that had to go by U-Haul by the end of Tuesday, and on Wednesday, the truck would come for the final things. He doesn’t text her quite as much over Easter as he had in the last few weeks, nor does he in the days that follow, and Courtney silently resolves to give him some space. She hasn’t moved since she was a toddler and they came over to California so she can’t even remember, but it sounds like a difficult process, and she doesn’t want to be in the way. She’d made sure to collect the handful of her things from their house and take them home the last time she visited, back in early March.

“Hey. Can you come to the park?” Shayne texts her, on the Tuesday evening when she’s still sitting at the dining table for dinner. It’s not the whole family this time – just her Dad, her, and her brothers – and she quickly glances from her phone back to her Dad.

“Hey… Dad. Can I go meet Shayne at the park?” she asks, carefully, before quickly rushing into an explanation, “I know it’s kinda late but it’s still break and I won’t be out super late or anything and it’s their last night here, the truck is coming to move the last of their furniture tomorrow so it’s…”

“Sure, Courtney,” he answers, simply, and she feels herself let out an audible sigh of relief, before her Dad quickly adds, “and if you want to visit Cathy and Robb’s house one last time before they move too, that’s okay.”

She doesn’t have an answer for that, but she nods anyway, slowly getting up to clear her plate – she’d pretty much finished anyway – and quickly darting upstairs to grab a jacket as she texts Shayne that she’ll be there soon.

He’s already sitting up on the playground, looking back down the open side towards the street, when she arrives. She climbs the steps two-at-a-time to join him up the top, shuffling over and sitting just to his side as she, too, watches back down the street from the park.

“How’s everything going?” she asks, breaking their quiet silence after a few minutes.

“I hate moving so much. I don’t know if it’s because usually it means losing all my friends and any sense of home or anything like that and my brain just hasn’t clicked that this time I’m not going very far but it takes so long and I always feel like I’m going to break things and damage my books and I don’t even have that much stuff but it still takes so long to pack and move everything,” he almost bursts into a ramble, annoyance moving through his voice until he comes to a stop, roughly shaking his head, “I think it’s going… fine, technically. There’s not even much furniture to move tomorrow because the fridge and the dining table stay with the house, the military owns them, and the bed in Brian’s room too. It’s just annoying.”

“It sounds like it’d be an annoying process,” she answers, simply, “the thought of moving our place sounds like a nightmare. We have so much stuff.”

“We try not to have too much stuff but it still sucks,” he agrees, sighing heavily, before he lightens his tone lightly, “but I didn’t ask you here to complain about how much I hate packing and unpacking boxes. I just kinda thought… last chance for a random evening at the park. Can’t miss that, right?”

“Maybe I should’ve snuck out instead of asking Dad so it was more like most times we’ve done this,” she comments, lightly, in response, hearing Shayne laugh softly.

She’d absently known when he texted her that it was something like that. Just him… asking her to hang out for the hell of it. But, as they settle into silence again, she feels it begin to swirl in her chest. It’s the last time she gets to do this.

No more single text and sneaking out the back door when she just needs to get out and away from her family for a little while. Sure, she could still come out here by herself, but that will never be the same when he’s not just up the street to come out and sit beside her.

No more walking down to the Topps’ house and suddenly having a second family that just feels normal and safe and happy with and like no one’s trying to trip her up and no one’s ever going to say anything bad about her. No more easy lifts into the cinema at the mall from Shayne’s Mum whenever there’s a new Marvel movie out and no more dissecting the movie afterwards with Shayne in the car home.

She can’t even imagine what she would have done the night of the divorce without-

“I’m gonna miss being able to do this so easily,” Shayne comments, his own voice sad. Courtney feels a tear trickle down her own cheek, but she sniffs rapidly, trying to hold it back.

“I’m gonna miss you being down the street too,” she replies, pretending she doesn’t hear the tears growing in her own voice as her mind suddenly fills with a million things.

No. No. She’s not doing this, she’s not being a weird baby breaking down just because her friend is moving a few suburbs away and okay she can’t get a bus to his new place very easily but Kari said she’s going to get her permit after she graduates so that’s only a few months away and she’s pretty sure her sister will drive her around now that she’s suddenly being super nice to her and Shayne’s Mum would totally come and pick her up and Shayne has his permit now and okay he can’t drive alone for another six months but once he can-

She wipes roughly at her eyes as she tenses her body, trying to push everything down. It’s okay, it’s going to be fine, he’s still her best friend and she’ll still see him all the time and- and-

Courtney suddenly feels like she’s going to throw up, abruptly twisting to the side away from Shayne as she presses her body against the cool plastic of the wall to her side. It stops the nausea pressing at her throat, but instead, she lets out a harsh, loud sob.

“Hey, Court, it’s okay,” Shayne starts, reaching out for her, “you don’t need to turn away, it’s okay-”

“I felt like I was gonna- like I was- like I was gonna be sick,” she cries, between sobs, feeling the tears streaming down her face and pooling uncomfortably on her top lip, “I- I- I’m sorry, I’m trying to stop it, but I just-”

“Let it out, Courtney,” he tells her, quietly, “it’s okay. You’ve been holding in a lot for a while. Let it out.”

“I don’t want you to move,” she cries, gasping sharply after she does as she fights for breath between her tears, letting herself shift back and lean against his side and somehow crying even harder when he immediately wraps an arm around his shoulders. “Everything is awful all the time and I feel like I’m dead and I don’t want to exist anymore and Mum’s gone but what if she comes back and KC still agrees with her and he lives here and what if he does something because she told him to and I’m scared she’s going to try and take Dad to court over him not letting her see the boys anymore and her family will all back her up and say she’s just trying to help me and I’m on drugs or something and they’ll say I need to go to Utah and something weird is going on with Yasmin and I can’t work out what it is because she’s being way too nice to me and Hollie just like won’t talk to me at all and I don’t know why and I feel so weird around Dad because he like feels guilty about everything but I don’t really want to be near him either and I don’t trust him and Kami and Kari suddenly being nice to me feels like they’re just treating me like an incapable baby again and I feel so dumb and I’m so tired but I can’t sleep and I feel sick all the time and at least with you and with you parents everything can just be fine and I know you’re still my best friend and your Mum will still want me to come over but it’s going to be so different and so much harder and if everything goes to shit again I can’t just run down the street to you anymore and- and-”

She finishes only for lack of air, gasping sharply as she tries to fill her lungs with oxygen, shaking violently as Shayne’s hand holds her shoulder sharply and securely. She feels like she’s going to pass out, she can’t breathe, she can’t-

“Courtney, it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay, just breathe with me, okay?” Shayne speaks up, his voice strained but careful, breaking through the panic in her mind, “just slowly, okay? Like-”

He counts her through breaths out, and in, and holding in her chest. She stutters and gasps through it, tears still streaming down her face, but slowly, she manages to breathe, until her head is no longer spinning and she’s no longer gripping tightly at the edge of the platform below her without even realising.

“I’m sorry, I don’t, everything just-” she starts.

“It’s okay,” Shayne repeats, gently cutting her off, “you’ve been holding so much in for so long, Court, it’s okay. You’re allowed to feel like this. I wish so much I could still be just down the street from you and I know my parents do, too.”

“I’m scared of everything and it feels like everyone I know could just turn around and destroy my life and no one is really doing anything to stop that, except you and your Mum and it’s dumb and I feel guilty but I just…” she trails off, still speaking through sharp sobs as tears stream down her face.

“I know everything sucks and I’m sorry you don’t feel like you can be safe. I wish there was more I could do,” he tells her, after a moment. He pauses, again, before continuing gently, “did you… want to go back and see my Mum tonight, Court? I know she wouldn’t mind. And if everything is just feeling like too much and maybe talking to her could…”

“You’re moving tomorrow, I know you’re all busy and probably trying to prepare for that and I don’t wanna be in the way,” she replies, quickly, although she lets herself lean heavily into Shayne’s side as she does, head falling to rest on his shoulder. It’s why she feels him shaking his head in response.

“It’s all sorted and ready to happen, there’s nothing to do tonight,” he confirms.

It makes Courtney sigh, although it catches in her throat and instead comes out as a garbled sob. She roughly reaches up to wipe at her face again, although she’s still crying what feels like an unending stream of tears and her head aches.

“Maybe I should see Cathy,” she mumbles, after a minute or two of… well, it’s hardly silence, as she cries and sniffs and tries and fails to get her emotions under control again.

“I think that’s a good idea,” he agrees, lightly, slowly starting to shift and prompt her to climb back down to the ground, off the playground. His arm never leaves her shoulder as he does, somehow, but as they step out onto the street, he drops his hand back to his own side.

She feels her body start tensing and shivering again in response, still crying softly to herself as she walks up the street with her head down and eyes watching his shoes walking along beside her own. She feels like an idiot, like someone else is going to jump out from their house and see she’s a gross crying loser and Shayne’s Mum is going to be angry she’s coming in and ruining their last night before they move when nothing’s even really happened, she just feels gross and sad and-

“Courtney, darling,” Cathy greets her, seeming to appear in the entry as soon as Shayne opens the door and gestures Courtney to step inside before him. She pulls Courtney into a hug, arms wrapping tightly and comfortingly around her, and Courtney feels herself crying even harder in response as she hugs her back.

“Did something…” Cathy starts, and Courtney immediately feels guilt swirling into her mind. Nothing happened, she’s just a dumb baby and somehow that makes her cry even more and-

“Nothing explicitly. Just… everything got too much,” Shayne answers, his own voice quiet as he seems to hang just to her side, the three standing still in the entry to this house that won’t even be theirs after tomorrow.

Courtney hasn’t even thought about the fact someone else will be moving in here and there’ll probably be another kid who is at least as old as her younger brothers and something about that makes it even worse than just them leaving.

“How about you come through here, Courtney, into the living room? Let’s sit down?” Cathy offers, Courtney simply following blindly and trying to sniff back her tears and get them to stop already, soon finding herself collapsing into the couch just to Cathy’s side. “Shayne, could you get some water for Courtney please? We don’t want you getting a headache from all this, too.”

“I already-” she mumbles, before quickly stopping herself, arm reaching up to brush roughly at her face. She needs to just stop and to shut up and-

“Here, Court,” Shayne reappears beside her with a glass of water in hand. She takes it, and she feels herself gulping it down rapidly as Shayne sits back down beside her.

“Now, honey, do you want to talk about what’s making you feel like this?” Cathy asks. Courtney can’t bring herself to lie.

“Everything,” she mumbles, her voice choked and rasping with tears, “everything is just- everything. I’m scared. I know you have to move and it’s only a little bit but once you’re not here and Shayne isn’t here then it’s- and everything-”

She sits on that couch for god knows how long slowly letting Cathy draw out everything that had exploded out of the emotions she’d been burying down for a month – months – and now wouldn’t stop swirling and twisting together through her mind. Robert’s there for a while, too, and when everything is said and she’s just sitting on the couch crying lightly trying to work up the nerve to go home and feeling even worse every moment she stays, Brian even appears.

“Do I need to…” he starts.

“No,” Cathy answers, lightly, before turning back to Courtney, “I think… Courtney, honey, you’re always welcome at our house. Always. Don’t feel like you can’t be here tonight, or any night, or ever. But I think I want to walk you home, and I want to sit down and have a talk with your Dad. And… if you want to sit with us while I do, that’s okay, or you can go to your space and just leave me to talk to your Dad. But I’d like to do that.”

“Okay,” Courtney mumbles, eventually. It still takes a while – and a long hug from Shayne when they all first stand up from the sofa – but eventually, Courtney finds herself walking back down the street with her hands shoved in her pockets and Cathy by her side.

Chapter Text

“Oh- Catherine! Hello, is everything okay? Courtney, are you okay?” her Dad answers the door, his voice frantic and a little shocked, when Cathy knocks before Courtney has a chance to just… open it and step inside with her.

“Hello Kenn- I’d like to come in and have a bit of a chat to you. Nothing has happened. Just… before we move,” Catherine starts, Courtney glancing up to watch her Dad seem to hesitate for a moment. It’s only a moment, though, and he soon nods, turning and silently telling them to step inside and follow him into the dining room.

“Boys, could you go play upstairs, please? In your room?” he speaks, his voice tense, Courtney quickly glancing over to see Conrad and Clarke with a set of knockoff fake Legos on the living room floor. They glance up, seeming to both look at the woman they’ve never seen before for a bit, before shrugging and racing towards the stairs.

“Courtney, did you want to be here with us too? It’s up to you,” Catherine tells her, as the three move towards the dining table and she pulls out a chair opposite Courtney’s Dad.

It makes Courtney pause for a moment. The air is already so awkward she wants to run away and she feels her body tensing up all over again, but at the same time, she… she wants to know what happens. What Cathy says and whether her Dad… cares. So, slowly, Courtney pulls out a chair beside Shayne’s mother and sits down, looking down at the table without saying a word.

There’s an awkward silence for longer than Courtney wants to handle, and it makes her glance up, to her Dad – who simply looks… she can’t tell – and then Cathy, only to see Cathy clearly trying to put a thought into words. She’s seen it before, when something has happened, and Cathy pauses and tilts her head to the side as she searches for the right words to say to reassure Courtney. And she always seems to find them.

“So… I understand that there has been a lot happening for your family, and we only know what we can via Courtney. However, especially with us moving, I think I just need to make sure Courtney is being supported appropriately at home now,” Catherine starts, Courtney immediately glancing down again and picking at the edge of her nail.

“I understand you’ve likely seen even more than I have of how all of this impacted Courtney. But she is absolutely being supported now – by myself, her sisters, and I’m doing what I can with her brothers too. Her older brother is making some stupid comments too, but he is an adult, and I have told him he will be kicked out if he doesn’t stop. And her mother has left the state, she is not returning,” her Dad answers, his voice relaxing slightly.

 “I understand – but I don’t think that’s enough, Kenn. I…” Cathy hesitates for a second, her tone turning more hesitant than Courtney has ever heard it before. It makes her glance up to see Cathy looking over at her, as she continues, “Courtney, honey, I’m going to mention some things that I haven’t told Shayne – and it’s okay for you to stay, this is important, but could you maybe not repeat them to Shayne? It might be best he hears things like this from me directly.”

“Okay,” Courtney answers, quickly, watching Cathy nod lightly before turning back to face her Dad.

“I’ve been divorced before. Shayne’s brothers are both from my previous marriage, although they were only very young when the divorce happened and it wasn’t quite in these kind of circumstances. But their father turned into not a nice man, and it took me years to have his parental rights revoked even though he refused to provide any support. Even five years after we divorced, when Robert wanted to adopt Brian and Chris not long after Shayne was born, he tried to fight it just because he could, and he tried to claim against me to have all three children taken from me – including Shayne. You can’t think this is over. I don’t want to pry into your personal affairs, but you need to ensure the divorce is legally valid. You need to think about rights to the house and whether she will be able to get any of your assets, or even require you to sell and provide her portions of the house, in divorce settlement. And, if you do nothing, she still has parental rights over all her children – removing them is incredibly difficult. It may not be what you need to do immediately. But Courtney needs more than just her being away by choice,” Catherine speaks with a firm tone, and it makes Courtney shrink back in her seat, but at the same time, she feels it settling in her chest.

That’s what she… that’s what she feels. It’s not over. Her mother could still come back, her family all still know where they are and they know how to contact Courtney and they probably agree with her Mum and they could still come back and her Mum could try and take her away to Utah and-

“The divorce will be processed legally, I have talked to lawyers, but it’s going to take some time – but I am working on that. And the house has always been in my name only, she had some hang-up about refusing to have her name on a mortgage because of something to do with the church,” her Dad answers, a little defensively, “she has run off to Utah with no intention of ever coming back. She is gone. And if she does turn around and say something about the children – well, she’s not going to have much luck given everything she’s done, is she?”

“She will lie, though. She will make up things about you. She will say she is trying to protect the children from you and your influence. She will use your Church against you. And family – does she have family that will back her up? People on her side?” Catherine pushes, her tone almost aggressive.

“All her family will,” Courtney speaks up, instinctively, “it was her Mum that did all that stuff to me at Christmas and no one said anything against her and-”

“Other than Conrad and Clarke, the kids are all old enough that their own opinion will matter the most,” her Dad answers, after Courtney cuts herself off, although his voice is a little more… measured. Uncertain.

“Unless someone thinks that they’re being influenced into a decision that isn’t safe for them. You need to do something, sooner rather than later, to give Courtney some actual protection from her mother. This woman has been abusing her for years – and I know you’re trying now, but sometimes, so have you. Robert and I would be prepared to help if it came down to it and verify that Courtney needs to stay in California with you. But… now matters, too. Courtney needs to be able to feel safe,” Cathy continues, firmly. Courtney glances over when her Dad sighs audibly, watching him look down, away from the two of them, too.

“Do you feel safe here, Courtney?” her Dad asks, suddenly looking up towards her. She instinctively shrinks back in her chair again, her mind spinning into a rapid panic. She knows what her answer is, but can she even- is it going to make things weirder, or-

“No,” she mumbles, eventually, hands gripping at the side of her chair as she does, continuing even more quietly, “especially not without Cathy and Shayne there.”

“I…” her Dad starts, hesitating audibly and sighing heavily once again. His voice sounds strained, as he continues, “I want to support you. Kari is really trying to, too. I’m not sure what else I can do- but if you don’t feel safe here, then that’s… yes, that’s something we need to work on, I… guess.”

“You could look into legal protections – minors can seek restraining orders, or you can seek one on behalf of Courtney. And…” Catherine hesitates again, but when she continues, she does so with the care and certainty Courtney is so used to hearing two houses down the street. “I respect that Courtney is your daughter and this is her home, and this needs to become a place she can be safe. Emotionally, as well as physically. But I – and Robert – care about her just like our three boys, and it will be a bit harder after we move, but Courtney will always be welcome with us, too.”

“I really appreciate that you’ve stepped up and looked after her where her mother and I failed. And that Shayne has been such a good friend to her. If… If she wants to visit you, I don’t see a reason I would prevent that,” he answers, shaking his head, “and I guess- I guess here needs to be better, too. And I can try and work on that, too. But Courtney, I- I might need you to sometimes tell me what you need, too. I’m trying, and so is Kari, and I think you… you do tend to tell Kari, or Kami, when they’re annoying you more than helping. Could you extend that to me?”

“Maybe,” she mumbles, shrugging, “I don’t know what I want anyway.”

“Some things might just take… might just take some time. You don’t have to know everything right now. That’s okay. And Courtney, honey, you have my number – whenever you’d like to come over, I’m happy to help make that happen. But it’s always your choice,” Cathy speaks to Courtney, mostly, but it’s her Dad that replies first.

“Where are you moving to? Is there a bus route from here?”

“There’s no bus. Shayne and I looked it up. It’s like- kinda near Yasmin’s place. Like, a few streets away, but kinda near,” Courtney answers, although she looks downwards and continues to mumble as she does.

“Rose Hills,” Catherine answers, lightly, “I don’t think the bus services there are very good – although there is a bus to the high school, I think that’s it. But I’m happy to pick Courtney up when I can.”

“I can probably drive you over there sometimes, too,” her Dad answers, his voice straying into hesitance again. It makes Courtney looks up, watching as he glances awkwardly around the room.

“I guess,” she replies, lightly, feeling herself grow awkward as the three fall into silence again. She just wishes she could be back at the Topps’ house and they weren’t moving and she could just sit on their couch and exist in peace while they watched a movie or something but she knows she can’t, and they’re leaving, and she’s… she’s just home again. And Catherine probably has to leave to go home soon, too.

“Is there anything else you wanted me to talk about here, Courtney? Or anything you want to say to your Dad while I’m here?” she asks, breaking the silence a few moments later. It makes Courtney pause.

She doesn’t want to talk to her Dad. She wishes he just knew everything was weird and awkward and would magically know what to do to stop it so she doesn’t have to. She wishes Catherine could just say it all for her, but she knows she can’t.

But she is… here. She’s sitting beside Courtney and that’s still something. She knows after Catherine leaves she just wants to run back up to her room and hide away, not deal with her Dad or her brothers (or Kari, but she never has any choice about that). So if she’s ever going to say anything…

“I don’t know what I want and I don’t know how it’s meant to be fixed but you and Kari turning around and being nice to me all the time about everything like nothing ever happened and it’s normal and you’ve been like that forever when neither of you have is just weird and it’s like you’re treating me like a kid again and pretending you never did anything wrong,” she rushes out, although her voice remains quiet and her hands tense against the edge of the chair again.

“Thank you for telling me that, Courtney,” her Dad answers, immediately, although he seems to pause for a while. He continues, eventually, “I… I’ll have a think about how I might be able to… make it less like that. And I can talk to Kari, too, if you want.”

Courtney simply shrugs in response. She has no idea. Her Dad talking to Kari about how to act around her is weird too but she doesn’t want to have to say anything, either, because the only way she can ever tell Kari to leave her alone is when she’s angry but she can’t be angry about her suddenly being nice and she just- She just doesn’t know.

“I think… I think I’ve said everything I wanted to say, for now, at least. But Courtney, honey, was there anything else?” Catherine speaks up, after another minute of awkward silence. It makes Courtney immediately feel guilty.

“You don’t have to stay here any longer, it’s okay, I know you have to finish moving tomorrow and everything and-” she lets her voice grow a bit louder, a bit closer to normal, but Cathy quickly cuts her off.

“It’s okay, everything’s all ready. This was important, too,” she reassures, “I might head home – but only if you’re sure, Courtney?”

She knows she doesn’t want to say anything more anyway. She either wants to collapse into her bed or, ideally, one at Shayne’s house, but she knows the latter isn’t an option tonight.

“Yeah,” she answers, her voice quiet again, “I just wanna go to bed.”

“Okay,” Cathy answers, before her Dad can say anything, although all three of them stand from the dining room table at the same time and start moving back through the living room to the entry. It doesn’t surprise Courtney in the slightest that when they stop in the entry, she immediately opens her arms to prompt her into a hug.

It occurs to Courtney that it might annoy her Dad or something, that she’s way more open to hugging her friend’s Mum instead of any of her own family, but there’s no way she’s rejecting the hug and she lets herself be pulled into Cathy’s arms, hugging her back tightly too.

“Thank you,” she mumbles, quietly. She doesn’t know what for – she just had to say it. She hopes her Dad didn’t hear.

“Always happy to do anything we can to support you, honey. You’ll have to come over and see our new place soon, okay? I’m sure Shayne will invite you over sometime soon,” she tells her, when they pull back from the hug, Courtney simply nodding in response although filing away her own response quietly in her head.

She’s… not sure about that. But whatever. She doesn’t have to think about that now.

Catherine gives a much more standard goodbye to her Dad, him doing the same and thanking her a little messily and awkwardly for coming over to talk to him and advising what he could do to help Courtney, but soon she steps outside and the door closes lightly behind her and Courtney is left standing awkwardly in the entry with her Dad.

“We’ll keep trying. I- I won’t ask to hug you, I don’t think that’s… what you want. But… I can look into a restraining order against your mother. I can talk to someone that knows about that stuff and see what they think. And we’ll keep trying,” her Dad tells her, his tone strained and uncertain, although his words are firm. Courtney shivers lightly, as something immediately comes to her mind.

“Can I get a new phone number?” she asks, rapidly moving into an explanation, “I know it probably costs money or something but Mum and all her family have my number and I don’t want to have to deal with them ever and I don’t want them to have my number and-”

“Has someone been messaging you, Courtney? One of her family?” her Dad asks, his voice suddenly serious. It makes her grimace. Okay, she’s not going to get a new number.

“No, so I guess maybe it’s not a big deal, they probably would have already if they were going to…” she trails off.

“No, no, Courtney, absolutely we’ll get you a new number – I can take you to AT&T tomorrow, they’ll be able to swap it over to a new one. I just want to make sure, because if one of them has been saying things to you, that’s not okay,” he steps in, “if you want me to leave you alone a bit more, and to let you work through things yourself, that’s okay. But I really need to you to tell me if someone else, in the family or elsewhere, is saying stuff to you about all of this, because that’s when I absolutely can find ways to stop them doing that.”

“Unless it’s KC,” she mumbles, a little pointedly.

“No. I’m strongly suggesting he needs to move out,” he answers, before lowering his voice, “and if he says anything, he will be kicked out. Anyway. You… wanted to go to bed?”

“Yeah,” she mumbles, not particularly interested into digging into the KC thing. It’d be cool if he left. She’s pretty sure he won’t, he probably wouldn’t know how to survive by himself without women to boss around – but whatever.

Courtney’s Dad doesn’t say anything else, and slowly she turns to trudge up the stairs and to her bedroom. Kari is already there, of course, with books and papers spread out over her bed, and she glances up at Courtney even as she heads straight for her own bed and collapses down onto it.

“Did I hear Shayne’s Mum at the door?” she asks.

“She came over to talk to Dad about stuff,” Courtney replies, letting her voice be muffled as she twists her head to hide her face against the pillow.

“Everything okay?”

“She just wanted to tell Dad he needs to do better. But whatever. Leave me alone,” she snaps back, hearing Kari simply hum in response as she evidently turns her attention back to her books.

It’s weird for Kari to actually listen to her when she asks to not be bugged anymore, but she thinks she’s okay with that one.

Chapter Text

Where are we going to sit today? They’ve said we can go to those tables outside now it’s warmer… I dunno though. You have a preference, Courtney?” Yasmin asks, as all five girls approach the end of the lunch line in the cafeteria on the first day back after break. It had been an exceptionally normal day so far – classes getting too intense about exams that were still more than a month away, her friends talking about their easter breaks that were way better than hers – but the question makes her pause in confusion for a second.

She still doesn’t get why Yasmin is suddenly being nice to her. She’s literally never done anything for Courtney before. She’s never asked her opinion on anything. She’s rarely just complimented her… but when Courtney got a new number a few days ago, Yasmin volunteered to make sure all their friends had it – extended friends, too – but none of the weirdo boys they tried to avoid. She asked how her break was. She complimented the shirt she’s wearing this morning before homeroom, in front of all of the others, without any sarcasm or any hidden insults about how it would look even better on someone else. And now she’s asking where Courtney wants to sit at lunch. What?

She knows she needs to answer quickly so she doesn’t look like an idiot, though, and she does so on instinct.

“Nah, let’s just go with our usual table,” she replies, shrugging lightly, “the benches outside still look gross.”

“They’re way too big, too. We’d end up with dumb boys joining us,” Natalie agrees, grumbling, “would be better if we could sit out there with the juniors.”

“Not at the moment, I think they’re all just being boring about exams,” Courtney adds, before she can stop herself.

“Ughhhh,” Isabel groans, as they all sit down at their usual table, “all my teachers keep going on about these exams like they aren’t ages away. I have better shit to do.”

“It’s like they’re not good enough to do literally anything else in a classroom,” Yasmin agrees, before glancing back to Courtney, “hey, did Shayne move or something? He was on my bus this morning.”

“Oh, yeah, they had to move because his Dad retired from the military. He’s a few streets from your place now,” she answers, shrugging, although she quickly glances around, trying to change the subject. She… doesn’t want to think about that. She hasn’t seen Shayne or his Mum since the night Cathy ended up sitting in her dining room and she is fine with that.

“Hey, why did you change your number? That’s kinda weird,” Hollie gives her the topic change, although she feels herself cringe internally in response. She doesn’t want to be quizzed about that either.

“That’s no big deal though. A new number is just good sometimes,” Yasmin shoots back, almost defending her, while Courtney is still mentally scrambling for a response.

…what? She has no freaking idea what is going on.

“Whatever. Hey, so this basketball competition on the weekend, we like totally won and there’s no way it would have happened without me…” Natalie starts, rambling on about the weekend, and how she basically saved the entire team, and a bunch of the boys on other teams kept trying to talk to her, and maybe there’s one of them that isn’t the worst and she might let him take her on a date…

It’s so normal that Courtney feels her shoulders relax as she remains quiet, laughing and raising an eyebrow when necessary as it flows through lunch. It seems, amongst bragging about how good she is at sports, she’s made it true that dating guys is all okay again, Courtney quietly filing that away in her mind.

There’s not, like, anyone she’s interested in at all. Everyone at school sucks. But still. Maybe it’d make her Dad act like her Dad again instead of all this fake… nice… weirdness.

 ————————————————

Shayne first invites her to visit his new place the weekend after they go back to school.

“Can’t sorry need to look after the brothers,” she replies, immediately. She’s not sure if it’s entirely true – no one has asked her yet – but she knows KC will refuse, Kari will want to study, and her Dad has a long shift pretty much all weekend after taking a lot of time off during their Easter break, so it kinda has to be her. And she does know she doesn’t have much interest in going to their new place just yet.

She hadn’t seen Shayne much at school during the week, but when she had, she’d made sure to quickly look away or find a reason to leave before he said too much. It all just felt… off. It was different now. He lives in a different part of town, the rich part of town near Yasmin and all the places that she’s always felt like she isn’t allowed in, he’s not just down the street. She can’t just send him a text to hang out anymore, it has to be a whole thing with talking to his Mum and talking to her Dad and finding a way to get there and she doesn’t want to deal with that.

She does end up spending most of her weekend looking after her brothers, and it’s not the worst –they’re not quite as little as they used to be and sometimes they wanna watch or play with something that she doesn’t completely hate – but she still just feels the emptiness crawling back through her bones with every minute that passes. It feels like the house is stealing her breath and sapping her energy away with every minute she spends in there, but even when night falls and everyone is distracted doing their own things, she can’t get out.

There’s no one to sneak out to see. She can’t really get any further away than the park, and she doesn’t want to just be alone there, either.

It’s the following Thursday when she next sees Shayne. He’d even seemed to be absent in the hallways at school, no one had mentioned him – Yasmin wasn’t taking the bus at all this week – and Courtney tried to tell herself she liked it that way. It was all good. She didn’t have to constantly be reminded about him not being up the street anymore, so it was all fine.

“Hey, Courtney!” Shayne calls, his voice bright and almost bouncing as he seems to appear out of nowhere and stop right beside where she’s just closed and turned away from her locker at the start of lunch on Thursday. Zach is standing beside him, and he greets her with his own bright smile. She immediately wants to run, glancing around quickly for an excuse, but it’s lunch and she’s waiting for her friends before she goes to the cafeteria because she has class just near the lockers and she can’t come up with anything quickly enough. Shit.

“Oh, hi,” she answers, hesitantly, “do you… Have class near here?”

“Nah. Study period,” Shayne replies, shrugging, “heading to the library. But hey, it’s been ages since I’ve seen you, Court.”

“Well, you moved,” she shoots back almost defensively, feeling her stomach twist into knots as she watches him narrow his eyes for a moment, before he seems to glance to his side - towards Zach - before forcing his features to relax.

“Sure, but I feel like I’m not seeing you as much at school either. Anyway. You wanna come over this weekend? Or even after school one day?” he asks, his voice turning light. She feels her shoulders tighten in panic and a lump form in her throat.

“Oh, I- I don’t think I can, I-” she stutters, before pulling an excuse out of thin air, “I’ve got a babysitting job this weekend, I’m going back to doing that now that things have… calmed a bit.”

“Oh… people from the church still?” he asks, his brow furrowing, but she shakes her head.

“Uh, no, actually one of Dad’s trainees at the fire station, um- he’s working an overnight shift but his wife is out of town dealing with a family thing and Dad asked if I was interested in looking after their five year old and it’s easy money and they’re a cool family I think, so… yeah,” she explains, the details quickly falling into place in her mind. That sounds good. That sounds reasonable. That honestly sounds like something she’d actually like to do for real, because the money was good and it gives her reasons to get out of the house. Other than, you know. Travelling all the way across town to Shayne’s.

“Oh, that makes sense, well- I hope it’s an easy one, then,” he replies, glancing around for a moment before adding, “I guess… we should get to the library. See ya, Court, hopefully we can catch up soon?”

She doesn’t answer him, but she’s filled with an uncomfortable sinking feeling in her chest as she turns away from him and quickly locates her friends to follow to lunch.

She doesn’t need to see him or be around him all the time anyway, everything is fine, so why does it suck when he leaves? Whatever. He already left.

She rapidly pushes herself out of the funk it had got her into, pushing Shayne out of her mind to instead listen to her friends start gossiping about what Mason - Natalie’s ex, Mason - might have done to warrant the week-long suspension he’d apparently got. Some of the theories are dumb, but she backs the one that he’s just an idiot. Natalie seems to agree, although Hollie starts saying something about how maybe he was caught doing stuff with Billie behind the locker rooms.

Yasmin immediately scoffs, although she does so in a way that makes Courtney abruptly glance over towards her. Almost… violently? So not like Yasmin. What?

“Like that’d ever happen. She’s a lesbian, anyway. She’s so loud about it now with all that pride club stuff, trying to tell everyone all the time,” she almost spits out. It immediately makes Courtney think of that very weird, very confusing conversation with Kari she’d had the day after the divorce.

…But that was clearly Kari just being dumb or trying to make her not think about the divorce or something anyway, so whatever. Maybe Yasmin just doesn’t like that the whole pride club thing has been getting way more attention than her own attempts to constantly be the centre of attention.

“Hollie, you keep being weird… You need to stop that,” Natalie adds, pointedly, Courtney glancing over to watch Hollie immediately look to her for help.

She says nothing. It’s not like she’s actually talked to Courtney in what feels like months, anyway, they just like stopped texting each other and she only seems to reply in the group chat with Shayne’s friends when Zach is talking about hikes or whatever (and Courtney’s kinda not paying attention to that at the moment, either. There’s not much happening. There’re no more movie hangouts planned until after all the juniors have finished their finals).

Hollie grumbles to herself in response, then, and Courtney lets herself zone out as the conversation moves on.

She pushes through the afternoon and her evening at home, even mentioning to her Dad over dinner that she might start babysitting again, him simply nodding and agreeing that if it’s something she actually wants to do, then that’s totally fine, although he might not be able to drive her anywhere too far away. It turns into a semi-argument between her Dad and Kari about why Kari hasn’t got her driving permit – she says she’ll do it after she graduates – and she lets her mind settle back into nothingness instead of listening.

Kari decides to stay downstairs to study, tonight, and it means when Courtney trudges up to her bedroom after dinner she does so alone. She immediately throws herself messily back onto her own bed, the covers crumpling under her and bunching in a way that presses uncomfortably against her lower back. She doesn’t move, simply lying in the silence of the empty room.

She feels her chest tighten and a lump grow in her throat as she lies in the silence, though, a quiet nausea appearing in her stomach and tears stinging at the corners of her eyes, threatening to emerge.

She felt like she was going to be sick when Shayne appeared at lunch. She feels so dumb and so stupid and all she wants is to be able to just sneak out the back door out to the park, or down the street, and sit with him like nothing has changed, but it has. She knows he wants her to visit him still, his Mum does too, but it’s all too… something. She doesn’t know. It’s not the same and she doesn’t have him right there anymore and she doesn’t feel like she can tell him everything without being judged anymore because-

She sniffs lightly. She turns roughly to her side, facing the wall and curling her legs up to her chest.

She’s such a stupid fucking baby that she can’t handle her friend moving even when he’s just moved in the same town. It sucks. She knew it’d suck when they first moved but she figured it’d be fine, eventually, she’d just work out the new ways to hang out with him. But she knows she regularly goes weeks without seeing him after school this year since they don’t have lunch together and their lockers are nowhere near each other, and she can’t really just go hang out with him after school, and weekends are hard now too, and-

It's stupid. She is the one avoiding him, she knows that, but she fucking misses just getting to hang out with Shayne. Alone, not with any of his friends. Not at school. Where it can just be them. But she doesn’t want to have to do all this stuff just to be able to hang out with him like it’s some big deal, and she doesn’t want to look like a weirdo that is way too needy about some guy that’s not even her boyfriend or anything, he’s just a friend. She should be able to handle this.

Shayne invites her over to his place again the next week, but this time, she has an actual babysitting job the day he asks her to come over, and she watches his face turn into confusion for a second when she says so before it settles back into a smile, and he asks how babysitting is going.

She tells him it’s good, but she doesn’t say much more, quickly locating Natalie and using her as an excuse to leave the conversation.

Courtney had still been kind of replying to Shayne’s texts, here and there, but that night she finds herself lying alone in her room again feeling some combination of embarrassed and guilty and lonely and sad, and when he sends her a random meme, she simply reads it and exits out of the message, telling herself it’s just because Yasmin had just messaged all of the group asking about whether they had any plans to coordinate outfits for the school spirit week after finals.

…Courtney has always found school spirit annoying and dumb and over-the-top and she doesn’t know why Yasmin is suddenly into it like she hasn’t been saying she hates the school and how her Dad would totally run it better ever since they started Freshman year, but anyway. If her friends are all wearing the same thing, then so will she.

It’s a month away, but Yasmin decides they need to go shopping the next weekend, before anyone starts getting busy studying for finals (Isabel and Hollie were both actually trying this year, and as much as Courtney didn’t want to fail, she’s not aiming for much more than a pass). Courtney is babysitting on Saturday afternoon and into the evening – when Shayne had asked her to come over – but Yasmin suggests shopping on Sunday, and immediately, she agrees, continuing to type away to her friends for the evening and pretending she doesn’t see the notification of Shayne asking her if everything is okay.

Kari had been studying downstairs again, but not long after Courtney hears the familiar sounds of her brothers getting into a fight over some toy or another – she can’t wait until they hit puberty so their voices aren’t so squealy – she glances over to the sound of her bedroom door opening and Kari wandering in carrying a textbook and notebook.

“Texting Shayne?” she asks, immediately, glancing over at Courtney. She shrugs.

“Friends,” she answers, plainly.

“Is Shayne not your friend?” Kari shoots back, although her voice is teasing more than anything else, and Courtney feels her stomach tangle in nerves again for no reason as she narrows her eyes.

“Yes. But the juniors have finals too,” she shoots back, aggressively.

“So do you!” Kari points out, although Courtney chooses not to reply this time, instead turning to face away from her sister and looking back to her phone, leaving Shayne’s last message unread.

Chapter Text

It had been a really long time since Courtney last did any babysitting – she’s pretty sure, from her memory, it was that awful time at Elijah’s birthday party up the street where Shayne had needed to come and help her, but she tries not to remember that too much – and she’s a little nervous when she gets to the kid’s house at 2pm on Saturday. He’s six years old, an only child, and he is a friend-of-a-friend of someone at her Dad’s work, although she’s never met him and his parents don’t know anything about her.

Part of her wants it to be difficult, just to give her something to do and something to think about, but it’s not. He spends half the afternoon reading and the other half building a Lego set sitting quietly on the living room floor and occasionally asking Courtney to help him find a piece he can’t locate. She’d been instructed exactly what to order for dinner – takeaway kids pepperoni pizza from Dominos for him, and a small pizza for herself too – and he makes a mess of himself and his shirt as he eats the pizza. But his mother had said that would happen, he doesn’t get it on the table somehow, and he barely even needs Courtney’s help to clean up as he rushes into the bathroom and wipes over his face with a washcloth.

She can’t help but think back to that night at Elijah’s house, and the pizza upside down on the table, the food thrown all over the living room, the fighting and the furniture-moving-

Maybe, if this kid was a little bit like that, she’d have an excuse to call Shayne over to help her out.

She inwardly kicks herself the second she thinks that. She doesn’t need to see Shayne, she doesn’t want to see him, it’s fine, she can do all this by herself totally fine.

The 6-year-old asks to put on a movie after dinner, and Courtney agrees. She regrets it as it approaches his bedtime with no sign the movie is close to finishing: she doesn’t want to have to argue a kid into bed. She doesn’t want to do anything again, especially not by herself-

She forces her mind to shut up again. She has to do this stuff by herself, and she stands up as it approaches 8pm, ready to turn her voice stern.

“Is it time for bed?” the boy asks, glancing up at her.

“It is, Declan,” she answers, ready to continue, before she pauses and blinks in surprise as he nods, immediately grabs the remote to turn the TV off and starts to wander in the direction of his bedroom, calling out for her to help him decide which pyjamas to put on.

It means that, a full 90 minutes before his parents are even due home, Courtney finds herself standing back in their living room with nothing left to do. She grumbles to herself as she wanders back to the sofa, flopping back onto it and pulling out her phone.

She knows she can’t text any of her friends. Hollie is… well, being Hollie still. Yasmin has some thing with her family tonight for something her Dad did. She doesn’t really talk to Isabel by herself ever, and Natalie is out on a date with that one boy from the basketball competition over break and Courtney knows she’ll hear the entire story, good or bad, tomorrow at the mall.

The group chat she’s in with Shayne and his friends is as busy as it always is – she swears these people never stop talking to each other – but as she watches notifications pop up, never clicking to open the full message, she can see the conversation is currently Ethan and Shayne talking football and trades and things she doesn’t understand in the slightest. Or care about. And it’s Shayne.

It means Courtney spends the next 90 minutes sitting on the couch, barely paying attention as she scrolls through Instagram photos of influencers and people she knows doing way better stuff than her, the knot in her stomach growing ever tighter as she does.

————————————————

Courtney wishes she would stop feeling like every weird, different thing is bad. It’s not like she wants her Dad to be angry and telling her what she can and can’t do and making her wear weird ugly things, but when she tells him on Sunday morning that she’s going to the mall with her friends, it’s jarring that he simply tells her to have a good time.

No lecture about not buying anything that makes her look like a slut. No telling her she’s wasting her money and wasting herself on trying to look good when no boy will even like her. No questioning how she even has money (she barely does, she isn’t going to be buying much, she’s mostly looking, but whatever).

As peaceful as it is to walk out of the house with her bag over her shoulder later in the morning, she feels the lack of arguing sitting uncomfortably as a heavy weight in her chest. She can almost hear the yelling as she steps out, even though it isn’t there, and she shoves her headphones in her ears and turns her music up way too loud when she gets on the bus to try and drown everything out.

It’s a little bit easier when she actually gets to the mall – because this part is like she always knows it is. They wander around, they poke in and out of shops without ever really buying anything. They end up in Urban Outfitters where Yasmin and Isabel both buy things and Courtney pretends she doesn’t like anything she sees because she definitely can’t afford Urban Outfitters. Hollie, for her part, is loudly complaining about how unethical the brand is, and Isabel is on her phone standing by the door waiting for everyone to leave.

They end up sitting down in the food court for lunch not long later. It’s busy – it always is on a weekend – and Courtney lets the noise fill her mind as Natalie loudly tells them about how her date with that guy from basketball actually went well and he’s totally a great kisser (she could do without the level of detail Natalie goes into on that) and definitely cool but at the other school in town.

“Oh, hey, Courtney, he mentioned some guy that apparently knows you – Thomas?” she mentions, at one point, Courtney raising an eyebrow in response and pausing as she tries to remember. Thomas? Does she know a Thomas?

“Oh! Right, like, track Thomas? Yeah, I used to hang out with him sometimes at the interschool track meets but I haven’t seen him for forever. He was an alright guy, never saw him except at meets though,” she replies, after a while, shrugging, “never been at the same school as him.”

“Track Thomas? That sounds like me,” a voice appears, just near their table, Courtney rapidly glancing up and around behind her to where it came from as her friends do much the same.

“Oh! Uh, yeah, hey, Natalie was on a date with your friend last night- what was his name, Nat?” Courtney replies, rapidly, quickly glancing back to her friend.

“Connor,” Natalie answers, “he mentioned you know Courtney?”

“Oh, yeah, kinda, we used to hang out at track meet. We were the fast ones that always beat everyone else and had to kill time,” he answers, laughing lightly as he does, glancing back down towards Courtney. “Hey, I’m with family, I should go- but it’s been forever, it’d be cool to catch up sometime. Could I get your number?”

Courtney immediately recognises what is happening, and it makes her pause for a second. So… she never disliked Thomas, they just weren’t close. And it’s at least 18 months since she’s actually seen him and he is definitely a lot less childlike than she remembers. And there is the kind of hinting from Natalie that he’s one of the cool kids – from the other school, even – and she was wondering if she should be looking for a boy again sometime soon now that’s okay again…

“Yeah, sure,” she replies, casually, taking his phone when he hands it to her and tapping out her number in his notes app. She doesn’t let on that she knows what he’s doing in the slightest, but she smiles at him as she hands the phone back, before turning back around to face her friends.

They do wait until he’s out of earshot, but Natalie and Yasmin are quickly telling her that was totally him asking her out (“I know, guys, but I’m not gonna be desperate about it,” she had replied, immediately) and Isabel is somewhere between joining in and grimacing, and Hollie makes some comment about how Courtney probably isn’t allowed to date anyway since her mother is gone.

That one makes Courtney roll her eyes, choosing to ignore Hollie when the others do exactly the same.

She only ends up buying a single shirt at the mall – from Forever 21, after lunch – but, even when she gets home and it’s almost eerily quiet and empty in the house, she finds herself feeling… not good, of course, it’s never gonna be good again. But okay. Fine. She had a nice day at the mall with her friends (other than Hollie who just tried to ruin everything but whatever, she still doesn’t know how to act around people), Thomas has already texted her and he’s not being weird he’s just asking what she’s been up to, and when all of her family reappear later in the evening, it becomes just an exceptionally boring evening at home.

KC is there, although he simply grumbles under his breath and stomps up to his bedroom. Kari makes dinner, her Dad gets home – and brings the youngest boys home , having collected them from a friends’ house – just as it’s ready, and they barely talk over dinner other than the boys babbling about their day and it’s… fine.

Courtney honestly plans to kinda study that night when she retreats back up to her room, Kari doing much the same just behind her. Her finals are this month now, and as much as she doesn’t intend to go for As or Bs or anything – except maybe in Art, but she’s pretty much done that already – she has no intention of having to repeat any sophomore year subjects. And somehow English has picked the most awful book of the year to be the one their final is on, so she really needs to start trying to read that.

Courtney manages to get a chapter and a half in – slowly – before her phone pings with a text. She glances down, and instinctively goes to look away again without reading the actual text when she sees Shayne’s name. But, quickly, she finds herself looking back in confusion as her brain registers the text.

“Was the mall fun today? Saw you guys having lunch when I was there with Brian briefly, hope it was good!” his text reads, and she feels anger bubbling in her chest.

“Are you stalking me or something?!” she texts back, feeling her face grow hotter.

“No, but nice of you to reply for once. I was just helping Brian buy something for Madison’s birthday,” he answers, quickly, Courtney immediately knowing he’s annoyed. Ugh. She doesn’t need to talk to him all the time!

“Sure. Don’t be a creep,” she replies, setting her phone down afterwards and fully intending to leave it there.

She struggles to get back into this godawful book again, though, flicking back and forth between two pages as she constantly forgets what she just read and finds it not making any sense. She can’t stop herself glancing back to her phone when it pings, although it’s a few minutes later and she kinda hopes Shayne has just left her alone and it’s one of her friends. …It is not.

“I’m not, but you’re avoiding me ever since we moved. It’s cool if you’re busy or hanging out with friends or whatever, but you’re running away from me at school too. Why? I know I haven’t done anything wrong, and you can’t be like that just because we moved. Or is that just it? I’m no use to you anymore if I’m not down the street and you don’t want to even try and hang out now?” his text is rambling, angry, and somehow it makes her feel guilty and pissed at the same time.

It's his fault this is all difficult now, she’s not doing anything wrong, she’s just not being a weirdo and she’s not going to let anyone see that she’s such a fucking baby that she can’t handle her friend moving away and-

She hovers her thumb over her phone keyboard for what has to be full two minutes, but eventually, she closes out of it. She doesn’t want to deal with it. She doesn’t want to admit she’s stupid and a loser and have him never talk to her again over it and maybe if she says nothing it will all just go away and she won’t have to do anything about him ever again.

Her phone pings again not two minutes later, and despite her best intentions, she glances down to read the message, feeling her throat dry and her chest tighten as she does.

“I know things are hard for you at the moment, Court, and us moving was awful timing. I’m sorry I snapped. But I know you’re avoiding me, and I don’t know why, and I’m worried about you. I still care about you. You’re still my best friend. I really do want to show you our new house and hang out sometime, although I might not be able to the next few weeks anyway because finals ugh. But I want to hang out with you! And when you said you were babysitting all weekend but then I see you at the mall with your friends… that doesn’t feel great, because it kinda seems like you made up a reason not to see me. You totally could’ve just said you were already doing something and that would be totally cool,” the message reads. She feels like she might throw up, but she hangs on to the last line.

“You asked me to come over Saturday, not Sunday. I was babysitting yesterday,” she shoots back, choosing not to respond to anything else, and immediately switching her phone off and shoving it onto her bedside table.

She doesn’t want to deal with this.

Courtney immediately picks up her book again but this time, as she tries to take in the pages her eyes scan over she instead finds them dotted with tears she can’t manage to blink back quickly enough.

It makes her put the book aside, grumbling silently – so as not to alert Kari – and shuffling back down onto her bed, facing the wall as the tears trail down her cheeks and her eyes sting painfully, reminding her she’s yet to remove her makeup from going out earlier.

She wants it to be normal. She wants him to be back just down the street and she wants to hang out with him but it’s not normal and it’s not gonna be normal ever again and she has to accept that and-

She prays that Kari won’t hear her as she slowly cries herself to sleep, and it seems to work, her sister remaining buried in her own books over the other side of the room.

————————————————

The rest of the semester seems to pass in a blur of discomfort. School sucks, she has to keep studying for finals and she ends up babysitting like every weekend too and she has no time. Shayne stops contacting her at all and he stops looking her way even though she feels like she’s suddenly seeing him everywhere at school, feeling it press uncomfortably at her chest every time as she wishes he’d go away at the same time she just wants everything to be back to like it was and then suddenly feels like she’s going to start crying like a baby all over again.

She doesn’t want to try when finals arrive. She doesn’t fucking want to do anything, she doesn’t want to answer these stupid exam questions that mean absolutely nothing and who really needs to know all this stupid geometry in the real world anyway and why does gym have a final like it’s not just an excuse to mess around in the gym for an elective-

She hangs out with her friends occasionally even as finals start happening in some classes, but even then, she feels her limbs grow heavier and her stomach grow more and more twisted and nauseous each time as her brain tries to tell her she wants to be with her other friends. She tries to tell it to shut up.

There’s an end-of-year formal for the freshman and sophomores, as much as there’s one for the juniors and seniors, but her friends all collectively decide not to go. None of them are dating people at the school anyway: Yasmin is still single, of course, because no one in this town is good enough for her, Natalie is dating Connor from the other high school (and they don’t even have a formal for anyone below junior year), Isabel is apparently talking to some guy from LA again, Hollie is still pretending boys don’t exist, and Courtney is kind of talking to Thomas, but again, different school.

Still, Courtney finds herself absentmindedly tapping into Shayne’s friends’ group chat when they’re talking about their junior/senior formal. She knows some of them are going – it’s Evie’s senior formal, and Max and Zach are going as friends, Alicia going with Evie. She watches Shayne’s typing notification, instinctively holding her breath in her chest as she does.

…But why does she care? She has no reason to care if Shayne is going to the goddamn formal and who he’s going with and-

“Nah, I’ll wait until next year. I hate getting dressed up like that,” his message reads, Courtney feeling her shoulders relax in relief. No secret serious girlfriend he’s taking to formal or something.

…What? No. That’s dumb. She knows he’s single. And she also doesn’t care in the slightest, she has no goddamn reason to care, he’s not talking to her anymore and she’s not talking to him either and- she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care at all.

Chapter Text

The last day of school for the year is always weird. Finals are all done and they all know if they passed everything or not – she did, miraculously, although geometry was only by a single point – but they still have classes, scattered amongst a bunch of random other things. There’s a weirdly long lunch but still with exactly the same food and cafeteria access so it just ends up being boring, and there’s a whole-school thing in the afternoon to unofficially farewell the graduating seniors before their official graduation the next day and for once Courtney kinda has to pay attention, given Kari is graduating this year.

She doesn’t make a big deal about it. She doesn’t cheer or clap any louder when Kari’s name is called, leaving that to Kari’s own friends, although there’s a part of her that is mildly surprised Kari did actually pass everything and graduate on the first try, since a few years ago her grades were even worse than Courtney’s. She just always seemed to get away with it and make Courtney the target of all the yelling about being stupid instead.

Courtney can’t stop herself glancing the direction of the almost obnoxious cheering when Evie is called, though, unsurprised to see it coming from Zach and Alicia. She’s never hung out with Evie as much as the others in that group – especially since she’s never had lunch hour with her – but she guesses she is one of their close friends, after all, and neither Zach nor Alicia are ever quiet about hyping up their friends.

She knows Shayne is sitting beside them but she tries to not look at him, but as if her mind just won’t let her not, she finds her eyes suddenly sitting on the side and back of his face – or mostly his hair – and his recognisably broad shoulders. It makes nervous energy flood through her body, and when he seems to know she’s looking at him, he turns around and even from what has to be like six rows of seats away, meets her eyes.

She feels her cheeks immediately flood with an embarrassed blush and her heart start racing in her chest and she can’t look away and she-

Something seems to suddenly click in her mind, and it’s enough to make her pull her eyes rapidly away, looking down at her lap. Fuck. Fuck.

She likes him. She’s getting feelings for Shayne fucking Topp. She’s so stupid and how could she have let this happen when he’s almost definitely never going to talk to her again and- and-

Courtney tries to keep her panic contained, keep it locked inside her mind and her body even as she feels like her cheeks are constantly on fire for the rest of the day and her neck is constantly betraying her, craning to try and find him in the crowd leaving or the groups of students waiting near the busses.

It’s Kari that ends up distracting her, bouncing over already laughing about god knows what.

“I fuckin’ graduated! If I can do it even in this fucking year, you’re going to find senior year easy,” she says, loudly and brightly, as she wanders over to where Courtney has been waiting with Natalie.

“Oh, congratulations on graduating, Kari,” Natalie speaks up, politely – there’s been an air of hesitance to the way Natalie and Isabel, although not Yasmin, had spoken to any of the seniors ever since that time Maisie snapped at them in the cafeteria – although Courtney simply rolls her eyes at her sister’s antics.

At least this is the stupid, loud Kari she knows and …loves? She’s not sure whether she could say that. She is her sister.

Whatever. Her brain doesn’t need to be trying to dissect exactly how she feels about people in her life more than it already has today.

“You going to sit through my actual graduation ceremony too hey, Courtney?” she asks, Courtney blinking a couple of times as she tries to bring herself back to reality before she grumbles.

“Do I have to? Didn’t you like, invite our grandparents? You only get three people, right? Dad, Dad’s Dad, Dad’s Mum… I hope you know how to count to three since you graduated high school and all,” she answers, although her tone is light and both Natalie and Kari laugh in response.

“Grandma can’t come, it’s just Dad and Grandpa and you,” Kari reminds her, Courtney shrugging as her sister continues, “gotta have my favourite sister at my graduation.”

“Oh, Kami’s coming? Is she driving over today or is she flying?” she asks, and as much as it’s a joke, she feels the whole thing bury into her brain. She is absolutely not Kari’s favourite, that has always been Kami. Kari barely tolerates her. She might be pretending to be nice and whatever now, but she knows Kami is the one Kari grew up with.

“You, dumbass,” Kari comments, her tone faux-annoyed, before seeming to spy someone else she wants to bug and wandering off. To Courtney’s relief, Natalie doesn’t comment on the interaction and instead quickly continues talking about how she can’t decide where to go for the Summer – it feels awfully late to be still trying to decide that, but Courtney chooses not to comment.

Her relief is short-lived, though, when she feels her brain suddenly jumping back an hour or so. And then to her panic about the formal. The last time she hugged him. That time she slept in his bed.

Her brain won’t stop and with every memory she just feels herself grow more and more embarrassed. She’s so stupid. She’s so stupid. She couldn’t just not develop feelings for her best friend even though he’s so insanely out of her league that he’s always just laughed whenever anyone has accused them of dating because it’s such a ridiculous suggestion and she did, too, because she knows that would never happen, and-

“Hey Thomas. I got heaps more free time now school’s out… when were you thinking for that date?” she texts, abruptly, when she’s sitting in the bus twenty minutes later, after Natalie has got off at her stop and her thoughts are swirling with embarrassment and stupid memories and just won’t stop.

He doesn’t reply immediately, but only a few minutes after she gets home and tries to trudge into the house while avoiding Kari, her phone pings.

“Hey Courtney! Absolutely – are you free this Saturday? We could see the new Black Widow movie, since I know you love Marvel?” he suggests, and it makes her pause.

Marvel releases were her thing with Shayne. Every goddamn one since she met him, she’d ended up going with him and Zach and a rotating selection of his other friends. The idea of going with someone else makes her chest tighten in discomfort.

But maybe, it’s… what she needs. She’s been stupid and she let herself think that she even had a chance with him when she knows she never will. He’s been her friend, nothing more. Now, he might not even be that. Going to Marvel with her new boy – who isn’t trying to be anything he isn’t like Cody, and isn’t weirdly obsessed with her like Johnny, and has never made fun of her like Carter and the handful of other boys she dated in middle school – could be… right.

“That sounds great! I will have to double check my Dad doesn’t need me to look after my brothers on Saturday but it should be fine, Kari should be able to look after them now she’s done with school,” she replies, quickly.

Courtney’s Dad is already home – he’s down in the living room with Kari, who hasn’t ascended the stairs like Courtney did – and she carefully moves back downstairs, glancing around. Kari is heading for the stairs to go up, though, and her Dad glances over.

“Oh, hi Courtney,” he greets her, a touch awkwardly. It’s been like that ever since Shayne’s Mum spoke to him, and she doesn’t know if she hates it more or less than the weird niceness before then. She knows both of them are worse than him just being normal.

“Can I go see the new Marvel movie on Saturday with some friends?” she asks, instinctively making it seem like it’s a hangout with a few people, not a date.

“Oh, Shayne and his friends invited you, have they? I thought you might’ve been to his new place by now,” he answers, Courtney feeling her heart start twisting uncomfortably in her chest in response. Why can’t people not bring that up?

“I’ve been too busy for that. And no, some school friends,” she replies, a little vaguely, praying her cheeks aren’t burning with embarrassment all over again. Her face just feels numb, this time.

“Oh, okay- that will be fine, just don’t be home too late,” he tells her, before abruptly changing the subject, “are you coming to Kari’s graduation with us?”

“I don’t think she actually wants me there, Dad, she’s just joking,” she points out, immediately.

“She does, Courtney – you’re her favourite sister. She’s shared a bedroom with you for most of her life,” he says, as if that makes perfect sense. Courtney scoffs.

“That’s exactly why I’m not her favourite sister, I’m the annoying baby she wishes didn’t exist,” she shoots back, “she might be playing nice since everything but that’s not actually what she thinks.”

“You’re hardly a baby. You graduated sophomore, you’re literally a junior next year,” Kari calls down the stairs, her voice loud and growing louder as she seems to step back out of the bedroom and move to the landing at the top of the stairs, “you don’t have to come to graduation, it will be a bunch of boring stuff and you already sat through the in-school thing today. But like, stop saying I’m faking nice to you, okay? It’s not fake.”

It makes her instinctively shudder in response. She doesn’t want to do this. She doesn’t know how to react, because it’s not true, Kari has been calling her a baby practically her entire life and she isn’t just going to change that out of nowhere and why does this have to be today too, with everything else and her brain being so stupid about Shayne and- she just wants it all to stop.

“Whatever,” she mumbles, rapidly glancing around herself as she tries to work out how to get out of this conversation. She can’t go to her room – Kari’s in there too, getting ready to go out with friends tonight – and she can’t stay downstairs because her dad is here, and she can’t go anywhere else in the house because nowhere is her space and she can’t leave because there’s nowhere to go-

“Anyway, we can work graduation out tomorrow,” her dad comments, lightly, Kari seeming to disappear back to getting ready and Courtney feeling her breath start to speed up as she stands frozen and trapped in the middle of the living room.

Where does she-

She forces herself to turn around and walk back up the stairs, silently pleading the whole way that Kari will just leave her alone, that she’ll be too busy getting ready and she’ll be going back out soon anyway, and she won’t say a word to her.

It works, somehow, and Courtney sits herself onto her own bed facing away from her sister’s side of the room and pulls out her phone to tell Thomas that her dad said she can go to the movies on Saturday.

————————————————

Courtney’s Dad offers to drive her to the mall for the movies on Saturday, but for obvious reasons she declines and says she’ll take the bus. She tells him she doesn’t know how long she’ll be anyway, she might hang out for longer after too, and it’s kinda true. She has no idea if Thomas has planned anything other than the movie, and she kinda hopes he has, because movies are fun and all but they’re not the best place for a first date. Can’t even talk, and she feels like she still barely knows anything about him even though they’ve been texting for a while now.

Thomas says he’ll meet her at the entrance to the cinema ten minutes before the screening starts. It’s a post-lunch 2pm screening, and part of her expects she’ll be too nervous to eat before she gets ready to leave. When she wakes on Saturday, though, she just feels… fine.

Maybe it’s a good thing, that he doesn’t make her nervous. Maybe this will just be comfortable and easy.

The house is fairly quiet for the day. KC and her Dad are both at work, her brothers at the park having been entrusted, for the first time, with looking after themselves all day, and Kari has gone over to the coast with some friends for a week or so. It means Courtney actually has her space to herself as she opens her closet to work out what to wear. Her wardrobe is still so much emptier than it used to be – especially since, in the last few months, she’s slowly cleared out all of the hand-me-downs she never actually wears – and it means there’s less to choose from, too. It only takes her a few minutes to decide on her outfit. She chooses her favourite jeans from the small selection of pants she actually has, the pair of white sneakers that had managed to escape her mother’s wrath, and a tucked-in vintage band tee that was definitely Kari’s at some point but she does actually like that one. It’s kinda nice. The soft and faded kind of hand-me-down, not stretched and uncomfortable and clearly not her size.

She wanders down to the bus by herself, internally starting to stress about the time. The bus will get her to the cinema pretty much exactly on time – but you can’t turn up to a movie that close to the start, especially a Marvel movie in its first week out. There will be a line for tickets, for popcorn, for the drink machine.

“Hey, Courtney,” Thomas greets her, his own voice a touch nervous, when she wanders up to find him standing just outside the front of the cinema. To her relief, holding popcorn and two empty drink cups, “it was so busy when I got here- I got tickets and popcorn already, I hope popcorn is good? And we can just fill up drinks and go in.”

“Marvel opening weeks are always really busy,” she answers, lightly, quickly realising it might sound judgemental (it is a little, honestly. How didn’t he know that?) and adding, “thanks for getting tickets and stuff.”

“All good, let’s go?” he offers, leading her inside and towards the drink machine. She follows him – she doesn’t have a whole lot of choice – and quickly finds any chance of conversation drowned out by the noise inside the lobby. The drink machine isn’t too busy at least, and they both fill their cups – she gets sprite, since she never can have the actual sprite at home and she rarely buys these dumb overpriced drinks when she comes with Shayne and his friends and goddammit why can’t she stop thinking about Shayne – before continuing down the hallway to the theatres.

Thomas doesn’t say a word between when they step inside the cinema and when they sit down in their seats, although she knows he doesn’t really have any chance to. It’s loud, and it’s busy, and her own mind is whirring internally as she desperately tries not to think about all the times she’s got lunch with Shayne and his friends and ended up in this very cinema for these movies. They always sit further up the back, although she knows that Thomas won’t have had any choice in where their tickets ended up.

She turns towards him when they sit down, desperate for some kind of distraction from her thoughts running away on her. The lights are still up, but he seems to blink in surprise at her looking over.

“Looking forward to the movie?” he asks, quickly. Well. It’s something.

“Yeah, yeah, it’ll be good I think. I hope. It’s the start of the new phase, it has to be good,” she answers, a little pointedly, before twisting her head to the side, “are you? You said you’ve watched some Marvel stuff before, at least, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, definitely watched some. I don’t like, get all the phase stuff, but I think this one is meant to be good. And Scarlett Johannson is cool,” he answers, Courtney trying not to immediately write off that comment. Basically every guy thinks Scarlett Johannson is ‘cool’, where cool means hot and not a whole lot else. But maybe he actually thinks that.

They don’t have a chance to say a whole lot more before the lights in the theatre dim and the crowd slowly falls into silence. Courtney’s mind is still trying to run away from her all through the pre-show ads, but when the movie starts, she feels herself sinking into it and her thoughts coming to a stop. She’d kind of forgotten this movie was coming with everything going on, but she wants it to be good, so much.

She’s so engrossed in the movie that when Thomas reaches an arm over like halfway through to rest over her shoulders, she almost jumps in surprise. She’d almost forgotten he was even there- but, quickly, she shuffles to the side so she can lean against him a little, letting his arm stay around her.

Her brain immediately tries to compare it to Shayne’s hugs – his are so much more comforting and less awkward, and his arms are so much bigger – but she quickly pushes it down and lets herself return to being engrossed in the movie.

It works, and even when the movie ends and she finds herself walking silently beside Thomas back out of the theatre with the crowd, her mind buzzes with theories and thoughts about the movie more than anything else. And, when they step out into the sun, curiosity – what has he planned next?

“That was cool,” he comments, nodding lightly, “did you enjoy it?”

“Yeah, it was really good,” she replies.

“It was nice hanging out with you. You took the bus here, right? Can I walk you to the bus station?” he asks, Courtney trying to not show her surprise on her face.

So that’s… it? Well. Okay.

He seemed nervous. Maybe he hasn’t been on many dates. Maybe he didn’t want the stress of trying to make conversation the first time, and next time might be better. Does she even want a next time? Yeah, she has to.

“Sure,” she replies, quickly adding, “it was nice hanging out with you too.”

Thomas does kind of make conversation as they wander the short distance to the bus station – asking her if she’s going to be doing track again next year, before saying that he probably won’t because he thinks he might switch to soccer – but, for the most part, they stand in a nervous silence as they wait for her bus to arrive.

She’s glad it’s only a few minutes later that it does, and she mumbles something about it being her bus, turning to face him as she does. Part of her is suddenly terrified he’s going to lean in for the kiss… but he doesn’t, simply reaching out for a hug. She accepts it, hugging him back. His actual hugs are okay.

“We’ll do this again sometime? I’ll text you?” he asks, the nerves returning to his tone. It’s… kind of cute. Maybe? She feels like she should find it cute.

“Sure – talk to you later,” she replies, waving awkwardly as she rushes over to get onto her bus before it leaves.

Chapter Text

It’s only a week later that Thomas asks her on a second date – again, Saturday – and she really wants to give him another chance, maybe he was just nervous last time, so she says yes. It’s not like she’s left her house a whole lot otherwise, because like most summers, Isabel, Natalie and Yasmin have all rapidly jetted off overseas and she doesn’t know what Hollie is doing but she hasn’t talked to her directly for a while, so she also doesn’t really care. She’s bored. Kari isn’t back yet either, so she just has to hang out with her younger brothers and she’s really getting sick of that.

The day of her second date with him happens to be her 17^th birthday, too, although he doesn’t have a clue that it is. They haven’t discussed birthdays, so she doesn’t mind. Her Dad had asked her what she wanted to do for her birthday, and Courtney had immediately answered that she didn’t want to do anything at all. He doesn’t do entirely nothing – there’s a handful of cards from his family, one from each of her three older sisters, and one from him with a Sephora gift card tucked inside – but when Courtney asks if she can just hang out with some friends for the day without specifying who, he simply agrees and asks no more. Which suits her just fine.

Thomas’ date suggestion this time does seem a lot more interesting and like they might actually get to hang out instead of sitting in silence watching a movie. He’d asked her to meet him at a new arcade-slash-Instagram-backdrops-thing in the large shopping centre on the other side of town to her, and it means she has to take two busses – one to the mall downtown, and then another over to the shopping centre further away – but it does sound cool.

Courtney gets out of the house before 10am. It’d taken her longer to pick out her outfit today, purely because she needed something casual for the venue but had to go noticeably different to last week, at least, but she’d eventually settled on her light blue ripped jeans, the same shoes, and a crop top that she hides under a jacket just in case when she wanders past her Dad to leave the house. It was a recent purchase, but she hadn’t bought it to not wear it.

Thomas is exactly where he said he would be to meet her at 10:30 and he greets her, voice a little calmer than last time, before launching into conversation as they walk the short distance to the arcade. It’s… better. He asks how her school year finished up and she awkwardly asks about his own, although that conversation doesn’t go any further, but they arrive at the arcade and need to go to the counter to buy tokens for the machines anyway, so it’s okay that they fall into silence.

Courtney has rarely been on dates that cost much money, given neither her nor the boys she dated ever seemed to have much money – although Cody did pay for her a few times – but Thomas immediately steps forward and buys enough tokens for both of them.

“I figured we can probably share some too,” he comments, lightly, before leading them further into the arcade.

They drift around the arcade, between different machines and games and none of the photo spots, for almost two hours. They drift between conversations, too, although Courtney notices that for the most part they are short, or about whatever game they’re playing at that point in time, or what they want to do next. But it’s not like they’re in silence, too often – just a kinda normal amount – and it’s not like he isn’t trying to talk, this time. It’s just not… deep. Or anything. Which probably makes sense, it’s only a second date, after all.

They wander back out of the arcade when they use all their tokens, but this time Thomas seems to have more plans, and he directs her in the direction of the food court. It’s not like, the nicest place – it’s loud and busy and a little on the dirty side – but they manage to find a table and Courtney silently thanks him for choosing a place where they could get different food, when his choice is a plain cheese Sbarro’s pizza. He doesn’t offer to pay for her lunch, but that’s fine – he paid for everything else – and she goes and grabs a couple of sushi rolls while he saves the table sitting with his shitty food court pizza.

They don’t hang around after lunch, but this time, Courtney’s comfortable it’s done. They had their date. It was kinda fun, and she honestly can’t complain as he walks with her back to the bus station. He hugs her goodbye, again, and as much as she feels like a second date should probably be a kiss, she lets it slide. He seems to be new to the dating thing. And also, he probably has pizza breath, and she did have sushi, so… maybe not the best for kissing anyway.

Courtney feels her mind slipping away from the date almost the second she gets onto the bus, instead feeling her chest tighten as she bites at her nail. There’s a part of her scared that her Dad will have done something for her birthday, something to try and act like it’s all fine and nothing ever happened and he’s totally been the best parent ever and he didn’t forbid her from even acknowledging her last birthday existed. A cake, or a fancy dinner, or… she doesn’t know what else. At least she knows there is no one around to think to throw a party.

To her relief, the house is still quiet when she gets home. Kari is due back that afternoon, but she doesn’t seem to be in just yet, and everyone else seems to be out. She instinctively moves upstairs to her room, glancing around for a minute before pulling out her school laptop and navigating to YouTube, where she has spent much of her almost two weeks of break so far. Maybe she’ll learn some cool makeup stuff by the end of the break if she has nothing else to do and no one to hang out with.

Kari turns up in the mid-afternoon, and she says happy birthday to Courtney when she steps into their bedroom, but she doesn’t say any more as she gets to unpacking her bag and then carting a loud of clothes downstairs to the laundry. Otherwise, Courtney’s afternoon is uninterrupted until somewhere after 5pm when she hears her father calling her downstairs.

It immediately makes her tense. Is this going to be some-

“Hey Courtney. I was thinking of ordering something for dinner, did you want to choose something? I know there’s some different stuff you teenagers can get these days on those apps instead of just pizza…” he trails off, Courtney letting her shoulders relax.

It might be a birthday thing to let her choose what take out they have for dinner, but at the same time, it just screams adult that doesn’t know how to use technology and is asking his teenage daughter to do it for him instead. She shrugs.

“Ramen? But like, the nice stuff- it’s the Japanese noodle soup. It’s not super spicy or anything, I think the boys would like it,” she answers, almost instinctively. It’s ages since she had some actual ramen because her friends never go for it, they always want pizza or sushi, and she always enjoys it. She may as well take the opportunity.

“Sure – could you order it on your phone, with my card? Or do I need to?” he asks, clearly clueless, and she sighs lightly.

“I can order it,” she tells him, pulling out her phone and searching for the place over by the lake that she hopes will deliver to their neighbourhood.

She didn’t want them to do anything for her birthday, but as she pulls together an order that she thinks makes sense for the five of them – she’s assuming KC won’t be around for dinner, he never seems to be these days, not that she’s complaining – she feels discomfort growing in her mind again. This was really just him pushing something off onto her instead of trying to do it himself. She was just here to be domestic and do all the women’s duties and maybe she wanted everything to be normal like this again, but it still settles uncomfortably over her.

At least she gets ramen out of it.

The delivery arrives in the car of some guy in his mid-twenties that looks vaguely annoyed to be working for DoorDash, and she tips him with her dad’s money and carries the two bags inside. It’s nowhere near as pretty as she remembers from the place near the lake, served in plastic takeaway bowls and with sliced scallions sitting clumped together in a separate little container to add on top. She sets the five bowls out on the table, her brothers racing over in excitement and – thank god – immediately diving into theirs (after Clarke gets his Dad’s help to remove the lid) as Kari and her Dad take a more measured approach to sitting at the table and opening up their dinners.

Courtney does the same, carefully prying the lid off without spilling any of the broth and waiting a moment for Kari to be finished with the little container of sliced scallions before she takes it to messily tip some onto her own.

There is not even an offer of chopsticks here, just forks and (American) soup spoons, but Courtney quickly stabs into the bowl with her fork to twirl some of the noodles up. The soup is nice, just like she remembers, but as she eats and listens to her Dad asking Kari about her trip and Kari giving half-answers in response, she feels nausea growing in a pit in her stomach. She doesn’t want this. The ramen is nice, but all it’s doing is making her feel sick and she doesn’t know why.

But she can’t not eat the takeaway she asked for, and slowly, Courtney forces herself to continue eating the bowl as her family do so much more enthusiastically around her, her mind and her stomach both twisting uncomfortably as she does. She’s halfway through the bowl before her mind finally reveals why she suddenly feels so gross and like she’s going to fucking cry, and it makes her hand tense around the fork she’s holding.

She loved going out for ramen at this place – but she’s only been once, and it was with Shayne. And that’s half the reason she loved it so much because everything felt easy with him and she didn’t have to care about everything and there was that waiter who flirted with him who is absolutely way more in his league than her, the stupid sophomore that couldn’t just let him be a friend. Maybe he’s actually dating that waiter. He probably should be – she looked a little older, a little more put together, a lot more mature and less of a dumb cry baby than Courtney. She’d be way more suited to him than Courtney ever could be.

Courtney manages to eat most of her ramen, making some excuse about it being a huge serve and bigger than she remembers when she leaves a little at the bottom. She feels like she’s going to vomit, her head hurts from her tensing her shoulders and her forehead to try and hold back the tears pricking at her eyes, and as soon as she tidies up her bowl, she finds herself rapidly darting upstairs to her bedroom.

Courtney throws herself onto her bed, curling up facing the wall and sniffing loudly as tears start rolling down her cheeks. It’s not fair. She doesn’t want to be so dumb and immature but she is and she’s never gonna be able to talk to him again and she’s never going to be good enough for him and she should be focussing on her actual boyfriend that she had a date with earlier today but all she can think about is how she can’t even use chopsticks properly, and she can’t stop crying all the time, and it doesn’t even make any sense but she’s mad at her family for being nice to her now, and she almost failed geometry because she’s just stupid and useless and she should be grateful she has any boy at all because there’s no way anyone interesting would like her.

————————————————

“Hey! What time we going to Black Widow this week? Who’s in?” Zach had messaged the group chat, the first day of summer. It was tradition, in a way, but Shayne immediately knew it wasn’t for him this time. Max and Alicia were both in straight away, but he shoves his phone to the side and pulls out the book he’s been reading to put off replying a little longer.

“Not me this time,” he replies, simply, when Alicia pings him twice about it later that afternoon. Max asks if it’s because he’s working lots this break, and it’s not entirely correct, but he goes with it. He is doing three days a week all Summer, but he knows his friends would’ve gone to the cinema on a weekend if he asked.

Shayne really hopes that’s the end of the conversation, but later that evening, he gets a direct message from Alicia.

“Please don’t tell me you’re not going all ‘but black widow can’t be a real Marvel hero because she’s a woman’ on us? That doesn’t seem like you,” she had texted. It makes Shayne grimace, although not at that message. He had seen that discourse and it was, in fact, gross. And maybe Scarlett Johannson had her issues, but it should still be a good movie.

“Absolutely not,” he replies, before quickly adding, “I’m just busy.”

“Sure you are. And sure it has nothing to do with the person that may as well not even be in that chat anymore with how long she’s been ignoring it?” the next message reads, and this time, Shayne winces. It’s not like it hasn’t been obvious to all of his friends that Courtney has been avoiding him but he still feels gross when they talk about it.

“Please don’t remove her,” he replies, instead of actually answering the question. Max had mentioned it once, but Shayne was adamant they couldn’t. She’d see that, and she might go into some spiral about how she’s not good enough for them and they’ve always hated her. And… it’d destroy the last hope he had that one day, she might start talking to him again.

“I’m not going to remove her. I’m just saying, dude, admit that you don’t want to go see Marvel without her after so many years doing it with her but you definitely won’t see this one with her so you’re going to avoid seeing it at all,” her reply read. She wasn’t wrong, but he’s not going to admit that, so he simply switches back to the group chat where Evie is sending photos of clothes looking for help deciding what to pack for the beach trip she’s taking with some other seniors now they’re all finished with school.

Shayne’s break is busy, although two weeks in, it still feels like it’s dragging and it’s been going on forever. He’s helped his Mum keep unpacking from their move, worked six days already, been out with his friends once the previous weekend - not to the movies, just hanging out at Zach’s house for once - and had lunch with Brian and Madison to try and reassure them that Madison really should meet the parents already and there’s no way they’d have any problem with her.

Shayne wakes up on the second Saturday of break - June 19th - acutely aware of what day it is. He pulls out his phone and opens his messages to Courtney, typing out three different birthday messages but deleting every one before he sends it. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what he’s meant to do but he feels gross and his heart hurts and his mind swirls in anger at himself for not being able to stop feeling like this, and her for avoiding him, and his friends for continuing to bug him- he just wants to spend the day doing nothing in his room. And at least his Mum understands, and he’s said ‘no’ enough times to his friends asking to see the new house that they’ve stopped.

The doorbell rings at 11am. It’s weird, but he knows his Mum is downstairs and will answer it, so he tries to pay it no mind.

“Shayne! For you!” she calls up the stairs, though, and he feels himself blink in confusion. What?

He knows he can’t leave… whoever… Just standing at the door, though, and he scrambles to put a bookmark in his book and get downstairs and to the front door, only to find… Alicia. Oh.

“Don’t worry, I won’t actually step foot inside this house until Courtney has been here,” she tells him, pointedly, before tilting her head back away from where he’s now awkwardly standing just inside holding the door (his Mum had wandered off as soon as he got downstairs), “Come on, we’ll go up the street or something. But this isn’t optional.”

Chapter Text

Shayne knows that Alicia’s non-optional conversations are very much that, and he sighs heavily as he shuffles on his shoes sitting just inside the door and follows her up the street. There’s nowhere to sit at the park they end up at - it’s small, and there’s kids everywhere - but they pause beneath a tree and Alicia crosses her arms over her chest.

“So what gives, dude? She’s your best friend. You act like you love her or something, but whatever, either way, this girl was your most important person and she was going through a rough time and then you just… stop talking? Refuse to admit you won’t do anything that reminds you of her?” she asks, her voice accusatory. It makes Shayne shiver even in the warmth of the summer day.

“I didn’t do anything, she just started avoiding me and wouldn’t talk to me when I tried to ask why,” he answers, defensive. Alicia raises her eyebrows.

“And how many times did you try?”

“Once, but-”

“And how many times has Courtney gone all weird towards you or all of us when she’s dealing with some mild insecurity, let alone all the shit she went through like immediately before she stopped talking to you?”

“That’s the thing, though, Alicia. She doesn’t care about me. It’s fine. I was useful and Mum was useful to her when we lived down the street and she could ask me to meet her in the park when she snuck out to have someone to cry to and she could come to my place to feel safe when her Mum was being crazy but her Mum is gone now and I’m not down the street so I’m not useful and she doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore,” he snaps back, voice rapid and matter-of-fact. He watches Alicia’s eyes soften.

“That doesn’t sound like you, Shayne, getting insecure about whether your friend was really your friend. It sounds more like her. She clearly liked spending time with you. Have you thought that maybe her avoiding you could be nothing to do with you? Something about everything that’s happened?” Alicia asks, gentler this time. Shayne signs heavily, although he doesn’t know what to say, and after a moment Alicia continues. “You guys were never dating or anything, right? But… you do like her, don’t you?”

“Never dated,” he mumbles, glancing off to the side and pausing for a moment. Whatever. She’s never going to talk to him again anyway. “And… yeah. I guess. It’s only recent, like the last six months, and I’m trying to make it go away but it won’t.”

“Look, whether it’s friendship or more, I know she means a lot to you. Try and get her back as your friend at least, dude. You clearly miss her a whole lot and maybe, even if you don’t tell her everything you’re feeling with her blanking you, you need to remind her that you do want to spend time with her. Check that it’s not her feeling like now you’ve moved to the other side of town you don’t want to hang out with her anymore,” Alicia pushes. Shayne can’t help but take the cheap shot.

“But last time she did that, didn’t you tell her to stop doing it and say she was doing the wrong thing not me?” He points out, watching Alicia immediately roll her eyes.

“I don’t need to tell you what absolute shit she’s been through in the last six months. Or longer. You know better than me. And you’re the one that works with psychologists. Cut her some slack this time. She’s not been in a good position for a while and I know you want to help her. Shutting out people she feels safe around seems like a pretty easy way to refuse to deal with it…”

“But she refuses to talk to me,” he mutters, under his breath, watching Alicia look as him sympathetically for a moment.

“You can still try. And hey, I don’t know whether you’re happy moping around today with full knowledge it’s her birthday, or you want to do something to distract yourself…” she trails off. She doesn’t say anything else, but Shayne shakes his head. He just wants to go home and wallow in how much of a dumbass he feels like for falling for his best friend and how gross he feels that she’s not even really his friend anymore. Or how paranoid he is that it’s because she knows somehow, and she’s creeped out and scared he’ll hit on her.

Alicia doesn’t stay when they get back to the house. He awkwardly tells her she can if she really wants to, but she immediately shakes her head and repeats her earlier assertion. She can’t come inside until Courtney, the person whose second house this should be, has been there. And silently, he chooses not to argue with the way Alicia has evidently read his mind.

There’s nothing he can do, and Courtney’s made it clear she doesn’t want him around anyway. It’s fine. He’ll just go back to spending the rest of the day in his room, getting grumpy about his feelings and inability to pretend they don’t exist.

Shayne does just that, but it doesn’t entirely surprise him that it’s only ten minutes later that his mother appears at his bedroom door.

“Everything okay?” she asks, carefully. He grumbles under his breath.

“She was just bugging me about Courtney,” he mutters, after a moment. It’s not like his mother isn’t already very aware that Courtney is avoiding him – it’s their house she’s avoiding – and he’s not exactly happy about it.

“Oh? Bugging you in what way?” his mother pushes. He sighs.

“Saying I need to try and talk to her again. But I already did and she didn’t even respond, what am I meant to do?” he almost rants, watching his mother step further into the room and pull his desk chair out from under his desk to sit on.

“Well… maybe you do need to try more than once. Or maybe there’s something else you can try? Shayne, honey, you know she’s still not going to be feeling very good after everything that happened. And you know she’s tried to refuse help to feel better before. You do need to respect her boundaries if she actually tells you she wants some space, but… has she done that? Do you maybe need to try a little harder to support her?” his mother asks, but unlike Alicia, her tone is careful, considered, and it makes the gears start turning in his head. It’s not like his Mum doesn’t also know… pretty much everything that happened. And he wants to support Courtney, of course, that’s the whole point, but she’s avoiding him. How is he meant to help her without talking to her or spending time with her? Everyone is saying he needs to try again – but what is he meant to try?

————————————————

Courtney doesn’t see anyone her age for the next ten days and she hates it. She has a couple of babysitting jobs that mean she can get out of the house at least, and for the most part her family don’t bother her, but she’s literally just sitting at home by herself and it’s awful. Thomas is on holiday with his family for a couple of weeks so no more dates with him, even. It sucks.

“Hey, come to the park near my place tomorrow morning?” Hollie texts her, completely out of the blue, the Tuesday of the fourth week of Summer. It immediately confuses Courtney. What? They haven’t spoken directly in literally months and they’ve barely even spoken at school in the group since Hollie has just seemed to keep saying weirder and weirder things that have everyone, even Courtney, looking at her and silently telling her to shut up.

But maybe she’s got over whatever weird shit she was doing and she just wants to hang out like they used to. That would be fine. Courtney could do with the company, and Hollie was almost always easier to hang out with when the other three weren’t there too.

“Sure, see you there at 10?” Courtney had replied, getting a simple thumbs up emoji in response – but Hollie did text like a 40-year-old most of the time, so that doesn’t surprise her.

Hollie isn’t on the same school bus route as Courtney – she hasn’t been since the bus routes changed near the end of elementary school – but she’s an easy bus ride away on the city busses, still, so Courtney can have a lazy, slow morning and wait for everyone else to disappear from her house before she needs to think about getting up and wandering down the street to catch the 15-minute bus to Hollie’s.

The park near her place has always been nicer, better kept, and much more teenager-friendly than the one in Courtney’s street. That had been a bad thing when they were little, Hollie was always coming to her street instead, but it means that when Courtney wanders up to the park and heads straight to sit into one of the swings when she arrives a couple of minutes early, there isn’t a million kids running around screaming. It’s just her, a couple of boys about her brothers age messing around with skateboards on the couple of ramps at the back of the playground, and the constant stream of women jogging along the path beside the park.

“Hey Hollie, how’s your break been?” Courtney asks, immediately, when her friend appears and walks straight over to sit in the swing to her side, Courtney pushing lightly with her feet to sway as she does. Hollie stays with her feet firmly flat on the floor.

“It’s fine,” she answers, with an edge to her tone, “how has yours been?”

There’s something almost harsh about the way she asks it, but Courtney can’t put her finger on why, and she shrugs.

“It’s been okay, haven’t done much. Went on a couple of dates with Thomas, he seems okay,” she replies, shrugging lightly.

“You can’t be dating a guy now, Courtney, you should know that! Not when your parents are divorced!” Hollie snaps, turning to her with angry eyes. It makes Courtney recoil, foot slamming down and skittering across the ground as she brings her swinging to a stop.

“What? That has nothing to do with my relationships.”

“Yes it does! Your parents are divorced, that means you’re ruined and you can never have a relationship again because you’ll just ruin it for everyone because you’ve had bad relationship practices modelled by your parents and all you’re ever going to be able to do is sleep around with shitty guys because other guys should stay away from you!” Hollie almost rants, but her tone is so certain and matter-of-fact, and Courtney feels herself blink in confusion. The confusion stops the words actually feeling like anything – because what the hell is Hollie on about?

“What are you talking about, Hol? Who even told you that? That’s so dumb,” she replies, but Hollie almost growls in response.

“I can’t believe the others are letting you get away with this! No! It’s disgusting, you’re disgusting that you don’t even come from a proper, real family anymore! And it’s all your fault too which makes it even worse, and you don’t have a mother anymore and no woman can ever be a real, good woman without a mother to guide you and tell you what to do, you shouldn’t have stayed here in California with your Dad that’s so disgusting and inappropriate, you need to go with your Mum so you have a parent that actually knows how to look after girl kids instead of making them into weird disgusting sluts and you’re never even going to be able to get a job anymore because there’s no way a real job will hire someone with divorced parents since you’re going to ruin an office environment by fighting with all your coworkers all the time because that’s all you know how to do and you’ll be so needy and spoiled and entitled and it’s literally your fault and you’re acting like it’s no big deal?! You’ve ruined your whole family’s life!” Hollie is almost yelling by the time she finishes, and Courtney feels her heart sinking in response.

What… is… what?

“Hollie, that’s… my mother was insane, you know that, there’s no way I’m going to ever live with her again. My Dad is fine, he knows how to look after his kids,” she replies, although she knows her voice comes out almost questioning in its hesitance. Hollie grumbles.

“It doesn’t matter if your Mum was insane and she probably wasn’t, anyway, you just say she was because she wouldn’t let you wear all that disgusting slutty stuff like you’re just trying to make everyone look at you or whatever,” she mutters. That, at least, makes Courtney roll her eyes.

“My mother wouldn’t even let me wear shorts when it was hot anymore, Hollie, she was insane. She was literally abusive, are you saying I gotta live with a parent who did that shit?”

“I mean… if she’s your Mum, probably. You can’t just choose not to live with your Mum, that’s literally illegal, they should be arresting your Dad for abducting you and Kari,” she replies, and as much as Courtney knows that is completely not true – there’s nothing illegal happening – it does bring back the swirling, niggling thought in the back of her mind, that Catherine had mentioned sitting at her dining room table.

Her Mum could try and get all the kids to be forced to live with her. She could lie and say her Dad was hurting her – especially if she had people like her family backing her up. Or… Courtney’s actual friend since elementary school.

Shit.

“It’s not illegal. We chose to stay in California. Who told you all this stuff anyway? It sounds like stuff the Mormons would say and you guys left that years ago,” she almost snaps back, although she tries not to get too angry. Maybe if she just… maybe she can just tell Hollie whatever weird thing she read on the internet is false?

“My parents left the Mormons because we actually have morals and ethics. Divorce is disgusting and it means the entire family failed and is going to be a failure forever. Everyone knows that and you’re just pretending you don’t because you don’t want to admit that it’s your fault that everyone in your family is useless and disgusting now. You should be doing everything you can to be back with your Mum and you should be doing everything you can to make your Dad stop destroying his family by acting like he can just leave his wife because he wants to,” she answers, before sliding back off the swing and standing up, “I’m going. I’m not going to be hanging out with someone from a broken home. That’s what it’s called. You’re broken. You’re ruined. You should stop trying to drag everyone else down with you.”

Her voice is almost melodic as much as it is taunting and firm, and without another word, Hollie turns on her heel and stalks back in the direction of the house, Courtney feeling herself suddenly break into a shiver.

What was she even meant to say? She thought the others would get on her case about the divorce, she was just lucky that they got scared out of continuing to do it by having a senior snap at them, but Hollie? Hollie was never like that. Her family was all hippy-progressive, nature-everything, eco-friendly. The biggest fight they’d had in the last like decade was about a brand of makeup Courtney liked that Hollie wanted her to boycott because they wouldn’t confirm that they didn’t test on animals for a while and even when they did confirm they didn’t, Hollie refused to trust them. They’ve been friends literally since they were toddlers playing with blocks in the corner of the church, back when Hollie’s Dad was still Mormon and they still went to church.

Courtney feels tears stinging at her eyes all over again, sniffing harshly to try and pull them back as she stands from the swing set and crosses her arms in front of herself. She’s not going to cry all over again like she’s a stupid baby. She doesn’t need Hollie anyway, she’s not even cool and she never tries to improve herself and maybe if the others know that her and Hollie aren’t talking anymore then it won’t matter to how they see Courtney anymore if Hollie keeps doing and saying all this weird dumb kinda offensive stuff about people at school and maybe it can be a good thing.

Courtney manages to hold back her tears for as long as it takes to walk back to the bus stop, take the fifteen-minute bus ride home, and walk back up her street to her house. The house is dead silent when she steps inside, though, and it has her rushing up the stairs and almost launching herself onto her bed as she feels herself sob sharply as tears start trailing down her cheeks.

It’s not fair. Why does everyone say all these awful things about her and why did Hollie have to suddenly sound like she agreed with her Mum and if Hollie is getting all that from her parents like she kinda half-said then are her parents going to turn around and help Courtney’s Mum take all the kids away again- and now she’s just a baby crying alone in her bedroom again because the juniors don’t like her and she’s not cool enough for them, and her friends are so much cooler than her and all off overseas for their holidays, and even her boyfriend is on a holiday for a bit, and now her only friend she’s managed to keep all the way since she was little hates her and never wants to talk to her again-

All her brain can think is that she just wants to go and talk to Shayne, but she bites her tongue and digs her fingernails into her arm in response. No, she’s being stupid. She can never talk to him again, it’s too embarrassing and needy now.

Chapter Text

It had taken Shayne almost a full week to pull together a plan, of sorts, but on the Friday just under a week after Courtney’s birthday, he finds himself getting to the psychologist’s office just a little bit earlier than he needs to, setting his things down at the reception desk before wandering back to the small breakroom to find the head psychologist – Dr Robin Castillo, although she’d long told him to just call her Robin, and her associate Laura – making a coffee.

“Robin, can I talk to you about something? Or… someone, I guess?” he asks, a touch awkwardly. He’d had more than enough random chats to Robin and Laura around the office – about their families, his, how school was going, the whole saga with Laura’s five-year-old managing to break the same arm twice in the space of 4 months at preschool – but he’d never asked them for… advice, he guesses.

“Sure, what’s up?” she replies, lightly, turning to face him as she brings the mug of coffee up towards her mouth, although lowers it down again before drinking it, seeming to sense it’s still too hot.

“So… my friend, Courtney, I think I’ve kinda mentioned before… she used to live up the street from me before I moved, and…” he starts, trying to work out what to say. He doesn’t want to say too much, and he knows they can’t like, advise him directly what to do. He quickly changes tact. “I think she needs to go to therapy because of some stuff that’s happened to her, but I don’t know how to suggest it in a way that she won’t immediately shoot down. The school counsellor is awful, but her parents are recently divorced and even before that she didn’t have much money, she has six siblings, she couldn’t afford to come somewhere like here or anything like that and it’d probably be a bit weird if she did come here since I work here. But I don’t know if there’s… anything else? Anything that’s good, but not expensive?”

“Hmmm,” Robin responds, tilting her head to the side, “there are cheaper options, like online counselling, things like that, although it might depend on what the issues your friend is having are, and whether she has somewhere private at home to access online counselling. Those online ones… might be okay, if it’s just she’s feeling a bit upset after the divorce, but they don’t always have the experience to handle bigger things.”

“I’m… not sure that would work for her,” Shayne admits, hesitating again for a moment, “she has to share a bedroom with her sister, she doesn’t really have a private space. And… there is some bigger stuff. Her Mum was emotionally abusing her for a long time and the divorce kinda happened because her Dad finally stood up for her and told her Mum to leave, I think, but… a lot happened before that. And there’s a chance if she did do therapy it might have to be behind her Dad’s back because he might not be cool with it, her family are Mormon and there’s some… like… thing about doctors, or something. I don’t really know what that is. But… she’s 17, she could see a therapist without her parents finding out, right?”

“Technically, yes, although depending on insurance, it might show up on her Dad’s insurance bills, if he looks at them closely… I’ll have a think about it. It sounds like your friend has been through a lot, it would be good if she could talk to someone professional. Is she doing okay at the moment? Is she safe?” Robin asks, her voice turning a touch concerned. Shayne feels himself glancing down at the floor, for a moment, before the words start tumbling out of his mouth.

“She’s physically safe, but I- I don’t know how she is, ever since we moved she’s been avoiding me and refusing to talk to me, and me and my Mum were basically the only people she ever let see how much everything upset her and she used to come to our house a lot to get away from her Mum, my Mum ended up basically lying to her Mum to get her to send her to our house all the time, and I’m pretty sure she’ll get angry at me if I suggest therapy but if she’s already angry at me and avoiding me then I guess I may as well suggest it anyway and just try because she’s my best friend and I want things to be better for her,” he almost rambles, Robin humming sympathetically in response.

“It sounds like a really difficult situation, Shayne. I’ll have a think, see if I can come up with someone I know who might be able to chat to her discreetly and without charging much. But it can be a bit difficult to get someone to agree to therapy if they don’t want to address their problems, and maybe her avoiding you is part of that too?” she suggests, Shayne simply nodding in response, although he’s not yet sure he fully believes that. Part of his brain is still convinced he somehow creeped her out or pissed her off and she wants nothing to do with him ever again.

But he has to try. And, the following Wednesday when he turns up to the office, Robin wanders over and hands him a typed list of providers with their specialisations, costs, and insurance arrangements detailed beside them, two with asterisks beside the name in green highlighter.

“These might all be options for your friend, and the two highlighted are people I’ve worked in collaboration with before, so I reached out to them, and did not share any detail, but they’re happy to find a way to make things work for her. I just mentioned it was a friend of my receptionist who had gone through a really difficult time,” she tells him, turning and moving back to her consult room to prepare for the day before he can say much more than a ‘thanks’.

Over the last few days Shayne had formed a proper plan in his mind, and as much as he sits quietly and moves through his day at work as he always does, he feels a ball of nerves grow ever larger in his stomach as he does. He can’t put it off. He’s going to message her tonight, and there’s every chance this is where he loses his best friend forever.

————————————————

“How was catching up with Hollie?” Courtney’s Dad asks, conversationally, when Conrad briefly stops blabbering about this new show he’s been watching obsessively at his friend’s house over dinner. Courtney had spent most of the day alone in the house, although everyone who had got home in the late afternoon to evening had assumed she got home just before them, not hours earlier.

“It was okay,” she answers, lying through her teeth and immediately stabbing a piece of carrot from her plate to shove into her mouth, like it might push down the lump trying to make itself known in her throat again at the reminder of how not okay it was. This summer is just going to keep getting worse, isn’t it? She literally has no one now.

Except Thomas, she tries to remind herself, although that doesn’t help a whole lot.

Kari stays downstairs after dinner to entertain the younger boys – KC grumps up to his bedroom as soon as he finishes his food, although that’s not surprising – and it means that when Courtney trudges back up to her bedroom, so doesn’t try too hard to hold back the tears the prick lightly at her eyes. She’s not bawling, anymore, but she just. She hates this. She hates everything. Everything was meant to be better after her Mum left but somehow it’s just weird and different and still awful and she just wishes she still had someone she could spend time with like Shayne.

She immediately curses herself out under her breath. He doesn’t want anything to do with her, and all his friends are probably mad at her like she’s done something wrong now anyway so they won’t either, she needs to stop just-

Courtney’s phone pings loudly from where it had fallen just under her hip, and she grumbles to herself, scrambling to reach for it and trying to work out which of her friends will be bragging about how great their overseas trips are this time.

Instead, she feels herself blinking harshly, trying to clear the blurring tears from her eyes as she stares at the message from Shayne.

“Come to the park, now, please?” it reads. Just like old times, just like when he lived down the street – but he doesn’t anymore and it’s not like that.

“What. You don’t live in my street anymore.” She texts back, not able to stop herself from engaging but wincing as she does. She was meant to stop bothering him.

“I know, and I don’t know what has happened or why you’ve stopped talking to me, but I need to talk to you, Courtney. Just once, please? If you really want, I’ll leave you alone forever afterwards. But I drove over here and I’m sitting in the playground and please just come and talk to me,” his next message reads, almost pleading, and it makes guilt start rising up from her stomach.

She shouldn’t go and see him, she doesn’t want to, but he- he drove all the way here, and she can’t just…

“Fine.”

Courtney feels like her body weighs a million pounds again as she slowly pushes herself up from the bed and searches through the pile of things on the floor at the foot of her bed to find her shoes, but eventually she pulls them on and trudges out of her room and down the stairs, phone gripped in her hand and her brain whirring with a cacophony of noises that she can’t even try and disentangle into actual thoughts.

“Where are you going?” her Dad’s voice cuts through her trudging down the hall, and it immediately makes her freeze. Oh. Shit. She forgot to check if anyone was around and he’s going to scream at her for trying to sneak out now so she may as well just-

“Shayne texted me that he’s at the park. It’d be rude not to go if he’s driven all the way over here,” she replies, a little pointedly, expecting her Dad to argue – but instead, he nods.

“Oh, sure, okay. Well, just don’t be out too late, please?” he requests, Courtney simply shrugging and taking another step towards the back of the house, before pausing again and turning on her heel. Why walk the extra distance around the back and along the side of the house when her Dad knows she’s going out, anyway?

It’s not a long walk to the park by any means, but as Courtney steps out into the late-evening summer sunset, she looks down at the ground and feels her mind start to fill with worries about why he’s done this.

Is he not even here, and he’s just trying to trick her and make her look like an idiot? Does he know somehow, did she stare at him long enough at that stupid in-school graduating seniors thing that he just knew she’s stupid and has dumb feelings for him and he’s going to tell her it’s inappropriate and he never wants to see her again? Is he going to tell her his Mum has decided to support her Mum now?

…No, probably not that one, she’s pretty sure Catherine wouldn’t do that. But maybe his Mum is mad too, that she hasn’t come to their place yet, and she’s getting him to tell her she can never, ever come to their place or see them ever again and she kinda knew all of that was over anyway, but do they really have to make her hear it and react to it actually said out loud?

As she approaches the park, she crosses her first worry off the list of options. Shayne is there, she can see his car parked at the end of the street and she soon glances up from the ground to see him sitting on one of the swings, feet planted firmly on the ground and brow furrowed as he fiddles with… something in his hands. A piece of paper?

Courtney feels her feet come to a stop below her, scuffing on the playground surface, as she gets within six feet of the swings. She can’t do it. If she sits down, she knows this is it and he’s going to be the second friend she loses forever today, the second one that tells her how she’s done everything wrong, sitting on a swing beside her.

Shayne glances up at the sound of her feet scuffing to a stop, and she watches him smile, almost relieved. She doesn’t understand it. She looks away, off to the side.

“You going to sit down?” he asks, cutting through the quiet tension of the night, although it feels like his words stab at her skin just as much. Courtney shudders, but slowly, she drags her feet forward until she turns and sits heavily onto the swing beside him.

It’s not like she can say no, and she just has to accept it’s going to happen, as she lets her hands grip painfully hard at the metal chains holding the swing up and looks back down at the ground.

“I know you’re avoiding me. I haven’t talked to you in two months, it’s way too long, but I guess if you’ve made that decision for some reason or I’ve done something wrong and you’re angry at me and don’t want to say anything about it then I can’t make you still be my friend if you don’t want to be. But since you’re angry at me anyway…” he starts, pausing and taking a deep breath.

Courtney winces. This is where he’s gonna say she did everything wrong, isn’t it? She doesn’t say anything, because what would she say, anyway?

“Of course I’m paranoid that I did something wrong or you never actually wanted to be my friend in the first place, but everyone else keeps telling me that maybe you’re just pushing away the people that want to support you because it’s easier than dealing with everything that has happened and everything that has changed. And if that’s the case… or even if it isn’t… you need to speak to a professional, Court. You need a therapist. And that doesn’t mean you’re broken, or there’s something wrong with you, it just means a bunch of huge, awful stuff has happened and you need someone to help you know what you’re meant to do and how you’re meant to process it and how you can feel okay again. I talked to the head psychologist at my work, and without like saying anything much, I’ve got her to recommend some places that might be able to help you and, if you needed it, could make it discreet so your Dad doesn’t know,” he tells her, his voice swaying almost messily between firm and hesitant, before she watches his hand appear over her lap holding the piece of paper he’d been fiddling with as she walked over.

“I can’t afford therapy, Shayne,” she snaps, immediately, not taking the piece of paper.

“I know. The ones she recommended are low-cost, or do sliding scale fees based on income, and- I know you’re going to refuse it, but my Mum said she’s happy to help pay if that is the only barrier,” he replies, seeming to consider for a moment before he drops the piece of paper onto her legs and retracts his arm back away from her.

She stares at it, and she has half a mind to rip it into pieces and throw it on the ground. He can say all that, but for all she knows, it’s a list of psychologists that will just tell her it’s all her fault and she did everything wrong and she should be living in Utah with her mother and being punished for ruining her family’s lives forever.

She chooses not to say anything, and they fall into silence, as she continues to grip the chains either side of her and stare at the paper sitting on her thighs. Her hands are starting to hurt, but slowly, she tries to shut down her mind and let the numbness creep back in. She doesn’t have to feel anything. She just has to sit here until he gets annoyed and stands up and leaves.

It has to be at least five minutes of silence before Courtney hears the sound of Shayne standing up from the swing. She doesn’t look up, rapidly blinking to push back the tears pressing at her eyes, just waiting for his footsteps to get further and further away.

But, instead, she watches as his shoes land directly in front of her, feeling herself flinch instinctively when he reaches forward and puts one hand on her shoulder. He immediately pulls it away again, but he doesn’t move, stood right on front of her as she continues to refuse to look up at him.

“I have no idea what has happened, Courtney, but… You are my best friend. You were my best friend, I guess. I miss you. Yeah, it was cool to live down the street and I’m always happy to give you a shoulder to cry on when things are hard, but- I also just really like hanging out with you. Playing games and arguing over Marvel theories and just having fun, and inviting you to hang out with all of my other friends too so we can silently make fun of Zach and Alicia’s whole not-dating-but-still-acting-like-they-are thing even though it’s getting kind of tired now it’s years old, and none of that has changed. And if things suck now and you feel gross and you don’t want to do anything except just sit in silence then – well, I still just want to hang out with you, no matter what, okay? I care about you. I want to still be your friend,” he almost rants at her, although his voice is pleading and strained. She still doesn’t know what to say when he pauses, for a moment, before adding much quieter, “and if you don’t want to be friends anymore… can you just tell me, so I know? Then I’ll leave you alone. I won’t bug you anymore if you don’t want me to. But I just want to… know, for sure, before I give up.”

Courtney presses her feet against the ground, pushing her slightly back, away from him. She feels his words rattling around in her head and it’s so much and she doesn’t believe it, and she just wants to get away-

Chapter Text

Shayne feels like he’s going to throw up, when Courtney’s only response to him rambling dangerously close to the feelings he’s trying desperately bury deep down is to move away from him. His eyes are stinging with tears but he feels guilt flood through him and he takes a step back, away from her. Giving her space. It’s too much. He’s being a creep, she’s made it clear their friendship is done, he should’ve never done any more than just hand over the piece of paper and walk away but-

“I can’t keep wanting to hang out with you because it’s stupid and needy and everything should be fine and I shouldn’t be upset about you moving because that’s selfish and stupid and immature and I shouldn’t be upset anymore and I’m just wasting your time and you don’t want anything to do with me,” Courtney pushes out, suddenly, her voice wavering and bursting out of her like she’s trying to hold it back even as she’s actively speaking. It makes him pause in place. She…

“That’s none of those things, Courtney. And I don’t want nothing to do with you. It’s- of course you wanna hang out with your friends, that’s not needy or stupid, it’s normal. And there’s no way anyone should expect everything that has happened just goes away and is magically fixed. Us moving was gonna suck for you, too, I know, but Mum – and me – wanted to make that easier by making sure you knew you could come to our new place, too. It’s not selfish to want support from your friends,” he almost argues, although he tries to keep his voice light, his brain stepping back to what Alicia had mentioned ten days ago now.

Maybe, in the past, he’d got frustrated with Courtney just refusing to accept he actually wanted to be her friend, but this was… there was a lot more in her mind, now. A lot more awful things she’d been told to believe about herself and her place in the world and he’d been horrified just by the ones he heard, let alone everything that happened behind closed doors that she hadn’t repeated in full. He needs to cut her some slack, this time.

“But it’s always you supporting me and that’s not fair to you and I’m just being a stupid baby and you could have more fun with your other friends,” she mutters, in return. Shayne can’t help but sigh heavily, slowly shifting back to sit into the swing beside her.

“That’s what best friends are for, Court. I mean- I wish your other friends were more supportive, too, and you had more people that you could go to when things were hard – but I don’t mean that because I don’t want you to come to me, I mean it because I want you to have really good friends,” he replies, before rapidly adding, “and I’m not saying that your school friends aren’t real friends, or… anything like that. I get that your friendship with them is different. But maybe, if just one of them you could talk to about things a bit more. Like… Hollie, even?”

“Hollie isn’t talking to me anymore,” she replies, plainly. He instinctively twists sideways to look at her as his brow furrows in confusion, although her head is still bowed to look at the ground.

“What? Did something happen?” he asks, knowing concern leaks into his voice, although he can’t bring himself to hold it back. He watches her hesitate, for a moment, as if she isn’t sure if she wants to share- but eventually, her head lifts, looking straight forward back out of the playground and down the street.

“She’s been weird for a few months. Since the divorce. To me, but everyone else too. She’s started saying a lot of weird stuff at school but like- offensive weird,” she starts, her voice level, before it dips as she continues, “she asked me to hang out this morning at the park just near her place and I just thought… it’d be all good, it’d be normal now. But instead she ranted at me about how I caused my parents to divorce and it means I ruined everyone’s lives, and kids of divorced parents are disgusting and can’t date anyone or get jobs or anything, and that I need to be in Utah with my Mum because she knows what’s best for me and Dads shouldn’t ever be allowed to keep their daughters in a divorce, and… everyone else is away all break, and you don’t want anything to do with me and your friends are probably mad at me too, and I don’t even have Hollie anymore because she said she never wants to see me again.”

“I’m so sorry she did that, Court. That’s all… really, really stupid things to say, none of it’s true, but it still sucks that your oldest friend went and did that,” he sympathises, trying to resist the urge to reach out and touch her arm. He’d got so used to them being casually touchy, and it meant nothing – he was the same with like, Zach – but he feels like he shouldn’t now.

“Well, whatever. That’s just what happens now. I sit on swing sets in dumb parks and lose all my friends because even if it’s not the divorce I’m just needy and stupid now,” she mutters, almost aggressively, although he knows the aggression is targeted inwards, but he quickly latches on to one of the first things she’d said. Swing sets.

“Were you sitting on the swings at the park near Hollie’s this morning when she said all that?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she replies, her voice quiet.

“Oh, shit, okay,” he answers, quickly getting back up off the swing he’s sitting on and moving back closer to her, “come on, let’s go sit up the top of the slide?”

“No, it’s fine,” she replies, quickly, head bowing down again, but he shakes his head.

“Nope. If swing sets are where people say mean things to you and that they don’t want to be your friend anymore – this conversation should not be happening on a swing set, because it’s not that at all,” he tells her, his voice firm but light. She still doesn’t budge, though, and carefully, he moves himself back in front of her – although a few steps away – before he continues with a softened tone, “It’s okay that you’re upset about all this stuff that keeps happening to you. It’s not fair. And it’s okay if you just feel blah and you aren’t up to games or hanging out with the rest of our friends or anything. I still want to be your friend, no matter what. I’m not going to argue with you, or get angry at you. I know everything is really hard. But… it kinda sucks for me, too, when it feels like you’re trying to never speak to me again and you don’t wanna hang out with me. I just miss my best friend, okay?”

“I miss you too,” she mumbles, barely intelligible, but he feels himself smile in response anyway as relief floods through him.

“Will you please come and sit beside me, up the top of the slide?” he asks, gently, quickly adding, “I won’t touch you, or anything, you don’t have to hug me, we can just sit there. But… please?”

“Okay,” she mumbles, again, slowly standing up from the swing and absentmindedly taking the piece of paper to tuck into her pocket as she does, “you can hug me if you want to. It’s fine.”

He immediately hears the words under her quiet mumble, though, recognising her quiet request for comfort that she doesn’t quite feel she can actually ask for, and immediately, Shayne takes one step closer to her and opens his arms.

————————————————

She still has no idea what to feel, but Courtney can’t stop herself from immediately falling into the hug Shayne offers, her own hands wrapping around his upper back to return the hug. He holds her tightly, and securely, and she feels tears start leaking from her eyes all over again, although the noise and the nerves flowing through her body start to calm.

They step out of the hug after a moment, and slowly, Courtney lets herself follow him over to the other side of the playground, climbing up onto the platform before him when he gestures for her to go first. She sits down and leans against the plastic wall, still staring straight out as she feels him sit to her side – although he doesn’t reach out to rest a hand against her back, this time.

“I’d really like you to come and see our new place, Court. If you really don’t want to, or you need more time, that’s fine- but I really do want you to come over,” he starts speaking, after a few beats of silence. She sighs softly.

“I… want to,” she answers, before lowering her voice, “that just makes me feel needy and like I’m too immature or something”.

“It’s not, at all, but if you’re feeling that, then that’s… okay. Do you think it’d be okay, if you did come over sometime soon?” he asks, again, and she hears the nervousness in his voice. This time, her brain can’t trick her into hearing anything other than what it is.

He wants her to be there, he just… he’s just scared of doing the wrong thing. She feels guilt swirl in her chest again, and it pushes and pulls in a fight against the part of her mind still screaming at her that she’s stupid and she’s done the wrong thing and she should never let herself near him again. She swallows heavily, trying to push both of them down.

“Yeah. I should… I should come over. When are you working this summer?” she asks, softly.

“Full days Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday. So I’m technically free tomorrow, or this weekend, or… another time, if that’s too soon,” he answers, seeming to pull back halfway through his sentence. Her brain fights itself over how to answer, again, and it leaves them in silence for a moment. A long enough moment for Shayne to suddenly continue with a low, almost apologetic voice, “I don’t mean to… push you, about the therapy. It’s up to you. And there’s nothing wrong with being upset and feeling blah about everything, I’m not saying you should magically be happy and act like everything’s fine because I know it’s not. But I just… because I could ask at work, and… maybe… if you did want to know how you could be happy about some things, sometimes, or even just feel like being upset is validated, maybe therapy could help you out with that.”

“I’ll think about it. About therapy, I mean,” she answers, quickly. She knows there’s this whole… thing, now, with it being cool to get therapy and all that, it’s not like when she was a kid and everyone said it was only for people who were broken and crazy and weird. But she doesn’t know what her Dad thinks about that, and the logistics seem… difficult. She doesn’t even know what insurance she has other than that it’ll be something to do with her Dad’s job. But, she quickly remembers Shayne had asked another question first, and while she’s busy letting herself be confused about health insurance, she lets her heart slip past the arguing in her head. “I could come over tomorrow. I’m not doing anything else.”

She wants to, deep down, and she quickly glances to the side to see Shayne almost grinning in response. It makes warmth flood into her chest, too, and she smiles lightly before glancing back away from him.

“Cool, cool, that’s- yeah. I don’t think I can technically drive you yet, until I’m 18, but- we can work something out?” he suggests. It’s that little bit of difficulty that she knew would make it feel different. She knows her Dad won’t be able to drive her- but she doesn’t let her mind dive too deep into that worry.

“Okay,” she answers, simply, letting herself trust that something will work out. She could take a bus or two to get closer to their neighbourhood, so Cathy could just pick her up from not too far away. She kind of misses being outside in the sun and actually getting some exercise, she could work out where the closest bus actually goes to his place and just walk the rest of the way. It’ll be… it’ll be fine.

“Have you been getting up to much these holidays?” Shayne asks, although he still sounds nervous when he asks. It makes her cringe.

“Not… much. A couple of dates. But… all my friends are overseas like usual, so. At home. YouTube. Looking after my brothers,” she replies. She isn’t sure what else to say other than awkwardly asking him the same question, but slowly, her mind pulls her back a couple of years, to the first time he sat up here beside her. To the first time she was ever at his house. “What did you think of the new Black Widow movie?”

“I haven’t seen it,” Shayne answers, lightly, “have you? What did you think of it?”

It confuses her. He and his friends go premiere week, every time. Why hasn’t he seen it?

“I liked it, but no spoilers if you haven’t seen it. Why haven’t you? Did your friends not go this year, or did they go when you were working or something?” she asks, feeling herself settle into the conversation a little, although she hears him audibly hesitate.

“They went, I don’t know exactly when, but I said no this time,” he starts. It immediately reminds her of a dumbass theory video she’d seen on YouTube the other week.

“Please don’t tell me you’re boycotting it because of some blatantly sexist thing against Black Widow?” she asks, although Shayne laughs almost abruptly in response.

“Alicia said exactly the same thing to me when I said I wouldn’t go this year. But no, definitely not that, I want to see it sometime. I just…” he pauses, his tone turning stressed as he continues, “I’ve just got to used to going with you as well as them – like, for every release in the last two and a half years, it’s been me, you, Zach, and the others rotate a bit. But it’s always me, you, and Zach. I’ve been kinda sad you weren’t talking to me. I kinda didn’t want to go without you because it’d feel gross. And I guess that was me being dumb, because Zach was still there, and all my friends, and now I’ve missed out on seeing it with people but. I don’t know.”

It makes guilt rise in Courtney’s throat again – although she had been remembering all the times she’d been with Shayne and Zach and usually Alicia, or Max, sometimes Evie, sometimes all of them, but rarely Ethan (he didn’t like movies much), when she was there with Thomas.

“I’m sorry I went without you,” she tells him, still, knowing her voice is a little timid, “I… the guy I’m kinda dating, Thomas, that was his first date idea. But I kinda kept forgetting I was on a date with him and just getting lost in the movie.”

“You don’t need to apologise, Court, it’s okay. It was just me getting in my head about stuff and being dumb,” he reassures, quickly, before he seems to pick up on something else, “so… Thomas? I don’t know a Thomas from school?”

“Other high school. I used to hang out with him at track sometimes when we were younger, we both always finished first and had to wait around. But I hadn’t seen him for ages, but Natalie started hanging out with one of his friends and she was talking about him when we were at the mall and he like appeared and came over and asked for my number…” she trails off, suddenly realising the whole things sounds kind of ridiculous. Whatever. “I’ve been on two dates with him now, so, I… guess we’re dating?”

“How have the dates been?” Shayne asks, Courtney tilting her head side-to-side for a second in contemplation.

“They’ve been okay. I think he might be kinda new to dating- he seemed really nervous at the movies, he didn’t plan anything before or after so I think he said like a total of three sentences to me the entire time… but we went to that new arcade at the big shopping centre the second time, and that was okay,” she answers, simply, “he seems nice. And I’m not, like, obsessed with him or anything, but I used to not hate hanging out with him and it’s been a while since I’ve dated anyone so… why not, I guess?”

“Hmmm,” Shayne hums, seeming to be in agreement of some sort, “it does seem like he doesn’t really know how to plan a good date, but I feel like I can’t judge him for that because I totally couldn’t either. And like, those do sound kinda boring and meh… except maybe the arcade, I know Max took a girl there and said it was great. Although she ghosted him after, so maybe it wasn’t so great. Hopefully Thomas is just nervous and next time is better? If there’s going to be a next time?”

“There will probably be a next time, he’s just been on holiday with his family for a couple of weeks. I don’t know,” Courtney replies, simply, shaking her head, “he’s not a dick, and he’s not trying to be anyone he isn’t, and he just seems like a… normal guy. Which is kinda nice. I figure I’ll give him a chance. Anyway, what about you? Still just, pretending dating doesn’t exist?”

Shayne scoffs in response, although she knows he’s joking, as she absently notices the tension has fallen from her shoulders and she’s twisted slightly towards him. She glances just a little further, watching his cheeks tinge with pink as he picks at the hem of his jeans.

“I guess so? I don’t know if you remember that girl from that time we went and got ramen… she asked me out a few weeks back, when I went to pick up lunch for Robin and Laura – uh, the psychologists at work – and she gave me her number and we very briefly texted but nothing has happened. I was too busy with finals then, anyway,” he muses, shaking his head, “I don’t want to be rude, especially since I’ll inevitably see her again next time I have to go and pick up lunch… but I dunno. I’m still not convinced. She’s nice, but do I like her? I dunno.”

Chapter Text

It’s refreshingly easy to get lost in conversation with Shayne. Courtney really missed that part, although she doesn’t miss the anxiety of quietly opening the front door and peering inside when she gets home way later than she intended. And she has to ask if she can go to his place tomorrow. Shoot.

Her Dad is sitting at the dining table reading – the others seem to be upstairs – and she carefully wanders into the house, closing the door quietly behind her, although not pretending she isn’t there. He glances up at her.

“I… didn’t mean to be so late, sorry, lost track of time talking,” she mumbles a little, quickly adding, “I haven’t seen him all break, so.”

Her Dad’s face looks stern, for a moment, but quickly, it relaxes.

“That’s okay, it can be like that when you haven’t caught up with a friend for a while. You still haven’t gone to his new place, have you?” he prompts. She shakes her head. She hasn’t told her Dad she was avoiding him for a while, and she’s not about to.

“He and I were both busy for a while with like… finals, and his work and my babysitting, and stuff. But he actually asked if I wanted to go over tomorrow… I know you have work so you can’t take me but I’ll figure something out,” she tries to tell him she’s going, instead of asking, although she knows she still kind of has to ask. But… he’s not going to say no to her going to Shayne’s, right?

“Mm, as long as you can work out how to get there and get back, that’s fine. I wish Kari would get her damn license already…” he answers, turning to a mutter, before he seems to collect himself and calm his tone. “Is everything okay, Courtney? It just seems- you’ve seemed quite content with everything this break, but suddenly he’s back in the neighbourhood at night with no notice, and you’re going to his place the next day, and… it’s fine, but I just want to make sure me or Kari or KC or anyone haven’t done something wrong that’s making you want to get away from here.”

It immediately makes Courtney’s skin prickle with nervousness, but at the same time, she shakes her head.

“No, it’s- no one has done anything. I don’t know why he suddenly appeared tonight, I didn’t ask him to,” she replies, in an awkward mumble, before trying to lighten her tone, “I do want to get out of the house but it’s just because I’m bored and I keep getting stuck here because all my friends are busy or overseas.”

“Hmm, okay then,” her Dad answers, simply, “as long as everything’s fine.”

She takes that as the end of the conversation, trying to make her darting upstairs to her bedroom seem casual.

Courtney wants to see Shayne’s new place – she has the whole time, she just hasn’t let herself actually think that – but she still wakes the next morning with a pit of nerves already forming in her stomach. It’s going to be weird having to travel so far to his house, on busses she hasn’t taken before and still needing to be picked up from a bus stop by his Mum, instead of just wandering down the street. The actual house will be different, too, and she doesn’t know how much and at least she thinks their living room furniture and Shayne’s bedroom will be the same, but… still. She wishes something could just be normal and easy, not more difficult.

Her nerves only grow when she gets on the bus. She still feels awkward around Shayne, although she’d been too caught up in her head last night to actually think about those feelings when she looked at him or even when he hugged her, it just felt like being back with her friend. But if she felt better today, would that be a problem too? Would she be embarrassing and dumb and he’d immediately realise?

And then his Mum – she hasn’t seen his Mum for over two months, either. Is she going to be different, is she going to be annoyed at her for kinda avoiding their whole family for the last two months? Was she annoyed at her for ignoring Shayne?

Courtney tries to drown out her thoughts with the music through her headphones as she takes one bus to the mall downtown, then another she’s never caught before that ends at a small shopping precinct vaguely in Rose Hill, Shayne’s new neighbourhood (and Yasmin’s, she quickly reminds herself. Not that Yasmin is in the country). It doesn’t really work, and by the time she gets off the bus at the unfamiliar street of shops and glances around to find Shayne or his mother, she feels so awkward she almost wants to turn around and get back on the bus and leave.

“Courtney, honey, it’s so good to see you again!” Cathy’s voice appears almost out of nowhere, Courtney jumping in surprise and quickly twisting around until she finds the two Topps wandering over to her. She has no idea what to say or do, but Shayne’s Mum makes the decision for her, pulling Courtney into a hug as the bus roars back into gear and moves off from the curb behind her.

She can’t do anything except accept the hug, but when she does, she feels just a tinge of her nerves settle. This part, even if it’s in a random street she’s never been to in her like 13 years of living in Mansfield, feels normal, and she hugs Cathy back for a moment before stepping back.

“Hey Court,” Shayne greets her, a little more measured, although he smiles brightly and she can’t stop herself from smiling back as his mother turns and leads them both back to her car.

Shayne’s mother asks how she’s been going while they’re driving back to their house, and she can’t bring herself to say anything other than a non-committal ‘okay’ in response, feeling awkwardness creep over her again.

Shayne starts talking about something dumb Zach was saying to him a couple of days earlier about a show he’d seen (that Shayne hadn’t), though, and it’s such a nothing, out-of-nowhere conversation that she can’t help but join in, laughing at him (and Zach) and finding herself shaking off her funk.

It’s only about five minutes’ drive to Shayne’s new house, and she can’t help herself from peering out the car window as they approach the house. It’s immediately nicer looking than their old house, with a tidier front garden and proper concrete driveway, but it still doesn’t look as brand-new, stark-white as some of the houses in Yasmin’s neighbourhood inside the gated community, or as over-the-top fancy.

Catherine pulls the car into a large double garage – the other spot is empty, Shayne’s Dad must be out – and Courtney immediately notices the stacks of boxes over by the opposite wall, clear that even a couple of months later, they haven’t really finished moving in.

Courtney takes a careful, long breath as she slides out of the car to try and calm herself before she follows Shayne into the house from the door in the back corner of the garage. It brings them into a hallway, opposite a small sitting room. Shayne immediately starts pointing out things – the bathroom just behind the garage, the laundry around the corner beside it. His mother immediately moves back towards the front door, Shayne quickly explaining that there’s a proper office up beside the front door where she’s set up her work-from-home things.

They wander further back into the house, then, Courtney feeling herself glance around instinctively looking for signs of familiarity. The space is much larger than their old place and much brighter with big, full windows out to the backyard instead of blinds drawn over street-facing windows, but the living room sofas and the TV and TV cabinet it’s sitting on are immediately recognisable, a couple of PS5 games strewn on the coffee table as always seems to be the case.

The dining furniture is different – Courtney remembers Shayne saying the dining table at their old place was part of the house when they got it – and the kitchen looks much newer and more open than the kitchen tucked into the area beside the dining table at their old place, but Courtney doesn’t look in any detail, instead following Shayne up the stairs opposite the garage door.

“All the bedrooms are upstairs this time. We’ve got an extra bedroom, though. I don’t know why. After Brian and Madison sort out the issues with her rental and move in together we’ll literally have two entire spare bedrooms,” he muses, as they walk upstairs.

“I feel like you’re complaining about that to the wrong person, Shayne,” she answers, although her tone is joking. “I mean, we have a technically spare room – Kami and Kathryn’s old room – but I have had to share a bedroom literally my entire life.”

“Sorry,” he replies, laughing lightly, “anyway, the bedrooms are kinda boring, they’re all the same – mine is like, exactly the same as our last place, the spare one doesn’t even have furniture yet. But since there’s this random extra space up here, I figured maybe the older consoles could go up here?”

Shayne gestures to the area opposite the stairs when he does – they haven’t moved far from the landing – and she nods. It’s not much, yet, just a space with a couple of boxes and the Wii and all its accessories sitting in a pile beside them.

“That’s cool, you’d get your own kinda like- games area?” she muses, in response, glancing over to see Shayne nod.

“Yeah. Although for now, I’ve just got the Switch in my room and the PS5 down on the TV downstairs. We still haven’t been furniture shopping, Dad’s been busy with the new job and whatever,” he shrugs, “is there… anything you wanted to do today? Do you want just a quiet, doing nothing kinda thing? Or games? Watching anything?”

He seems almost cautious when he asks, but Courtney gives him a small smile in response.

“It’d be cool to… play some games, maybe? I haven’t forever,” she answers, feeling nerves start creeping into her mind again and quickly shaking them off. They’ve done this a million times. She just… she just wants to get back to feeling like Shayne is just her silly, always-laughing best friend, not some guy she’s got a stupid crush on.

“I bought this new one after finals to try that is apparently better co-op – come on, let’s try it,” he tells her, his own voice suddenly buoyant and bright, Courtney following him downstairs when he turns back and heads straight for the living area.

Courtney’s mind starts betraying her again as they get downstairs and wander towards the living room sofa. How close does she usually sit to him? They’re always like, play-fighting each other while they play games, but is that weird now? Will he work it out? What if she sits too far away instead and that is weird enough that he notices something is up?

“Which controller you want?” Shayne asks, leaning down near the TV cabinet as Courtney realises she’s frozen beside the sofa. She almost stumbles as she quickly shuffles sideways and sits herself heavily into it.

“Uh- I- whatever?” she answers, her voice stuttering and her heart dropping in response. She’s so obvious, she’s being so obvious and weird and he’s immediately going to know, and she feels herself instinctively recoil back into the couch as she watches him turn, knowing he’s going to look confused or like he’s about to start questioning her-

“You go the original one, it’s easier that way for this,” he says, smiling lightly and seeming to immediately step past her being a stupid stuttering mess as he wanders back to the couch and holds out the controller for her to take.

Courtney manages to take the controller without pausing for too long and without letting her fingers anywhere near his, and she’s too busy internally analysing why she’s so concerned about accidentally touching him when that means literally nothing with him and she has a boyfriend to even think about the fact Shayne is now sitting down in the couch just to her side.

Shayne opens the game on the TV in front of them and immediately starts explaining what it’s about and how it works, and she finds it pushing the panic in her mind out of the way even as his voice settles warmly in her chest. It’s so normal, sitting on the same couch in front of the same TV as he tries to balance explaining the game with not spoiling everything before they start playing. The room is brighter and more open than her memories, but she finds herself simply brushing past that as Shayne launches into the game and her attention is drawn to trying to beat him.

She doesn’t, for a while – he does have a couple of months’ experience playing this game over her – but as he constantly swerves between giving her pointers and tips and pulling out these random strategies to beat her anyway and laughing loudly at himself as he does, her mind falls quiet and she laughs back at him, instinctively reaching out and thwapping him in the shoulder when he executes a secret move he hadn’t told her about to kill her character when she was so close to finally winning something.

“Hey! Don’t hurt me,” he tells her, his voice whining, although she knows it’s an act and she simply laughs.

“You are so not playing fair!” she shoots back, indignant, hand gripping back at her controller, “we’re swapping characters before the next round and you have to show me this special move stuff, come on.”

They switch games a couple of times, but Courtney feels herself settling into the couch just like she always does and just as much as she settles back into talking and laughing with Shayne even as his laugh feels just that bit warmer in her chest, barely looking up until Cathy wanders up the hallway from her office and asks what they’d like to do for lunch.

Courtney has no idea what the options are for buying food in this neighbourhood – whenever she’s been to Yasmin’s house, they’ve never left the gated part of the community that her house is inside and there’s always food that appears already cooked – and she quietly realises she just wants to stay in the house and have whatever’s in the fridge, although she glances over and feels nerves start settling into her stomach as she waits for Shayne to answer.

“Maybe just whatever here?” he suggests, pausing the game and reaching forward to set his controller on the table before turning back to Courtney, “that okay?”

Courtney had found her eyes quickly pulled to the movement in the back of his shoulder as he’d leant forward, and she prays her cheeks aren’t red when she blinks a couple of times and looks back at him.

She’s so stupid-

“Here’s good,” she inwardly kicks herself to answer, watching Shayne seem to nod and stand up without noticing her panic.

“I know it’s meant to be a nice area here and all but there’s like nothing nearby. Like, that little shopping centre with the bus stop but that’s too far to walk… and there’s a weird little store that just sells takeaway stuff beside the park a couple of streets over,” he muses, as Courtney tries to shut her brain up and follows he and Cathy over into the kitchen. Cathy immediately moves to the fridge, Courtney pausing the other side of the kitchen bench, not sure where else to go. “Old place wasn’t much better but at least there was a McDonalds less than ten minutes away.”

“It’s not a good McDonalds, though,” Courtney feels herself answer, instinctively, Cathy humming in agreement.

“Your Dad was pretty sure he almost got food poisoning from there, once, Shayne. And didn’t I hear Max say once that it’s… whatever he called it. Sus? Sucky?” she adds, Courtney unable to stop herself laughing light when Shayne immediately bursts into laughter in response.

“Sus, probably. Although I guess that still means suspicious mostly,” he says, between laughs, before seeming to force himself to calm, “there’s none of my bread left, right?”

“Your bread?” Courtney asks, instinctively, raising an eyebrow.

“I baked bread,” he answers, tone turning quieter as he shrugs, “I got bored.”

“Weird thing to do when you’re bored, but okay,” she responds, feeling her chest fill with warmth when he grins at her in response and laughs lightly, the way he often does when one of his friends is teasing him.

“We used it up this morning honey, sorry! You’ll have to bake more if you want to show it off to your friends,” Cathy adds, Shayne grumbling in response about how she just wants him to bake bread so she doesn’t have to buy it as he moves around the kitchen island to pull a couple of plates out onto the counter and a cutting board to sit alongside the sandwich ingredients his mother has already set out from the fridge.

The kitchen space is bigger, the three of them comfortably moving around each other to make lunch, but Courtney finds herself forgetting all about her internal dilemmas again as she chats about nothing with both of them and makes herself a sandwich for lunch, with the fancy condiments that are never at her own house.

The three sit together at the dining table to have launch, Courtney feeling her attention drawn as Catherine starts talking about the new house and everything they want to do with it.

“I’d hope it isn’t necessary anymore – but you’re welcome to leave some things in the spare room, if you’d like,” she comments, in the middle of prompting Shayne to talk about his own ideas for the space opposite the stairs, “Brian’s room will become spare soon, anyway. If Madison is ever able to sort out these issues with her roommates.”

Chapter Text

Courtney finds herself wandering behind Shayne up to his bedroom after lunch. He actually shows her inside most of the rooms upstairs, briefly, this time – Brian’s room, which is mostly just a bed and stacks of boxes; the empty spare room; the bathroom – before they both step into his bedroom, Courtney glancing around.

“No boxes here? Your room just looks normal,” she comments, lightly. It’s the first room in the house without a stack of cardboard boxes somewhere, and as much as it’s bigger than his last, it’s laid out exactly the same.

“I’ve had time,” he shrugs, before adding, “or, well, it’s just my parents that have been too busy with work, Brian just decided not to unpack fully since he’ll be moving again soon. I’ve had a quiet break. Anyway. Have you ever been to that park near here, since Yasmin’s place is around here?”

“We never leave her place when we’re there. I mean, you’ve seen it, there’s kinda no reason to,” she answers, shaking her head, “I’m glad your place isn’t… like… that.”

“Yeeeah. We don’t have that much money,” he answers, a little awkwardly and seeming to cut himself off before saying something else, before lightening his voice again, “it’s a nice day out – did you wanna go for a walk or something, I know you usually like getting outside? Or I could show you around the backyard, not that there’s much there yet?”

“You can say Yasmin’s like, excessively rich, that’s okay. It’s not like anyone disagrees she’s kinda a spoilt rich kid,” Courtney points out, having recognised Shayne’s hesitance to say anything bad about her friends and quickly brushing it off, “And yeah, outside seems nice, we can go for a walk? Have you been to the park, what’s it like?”

They chat lightly as Shayne finds a pair of shoes before they both wander back downstairs, Shayne quickly poking his head into his Mum’s office space (not that there’s a proper door, it’s an open archway) to let her know they’re just heading out to the park for a walk.

Everything in Shayne’s street, and in the two they wander through on the way to the park, looks a million times neater than her neighbourhood. It’s like every leaf and every flower is set in the place it’s meant to be in, with neat, white square tiles leading to every front door, often hidden behind tall, black-slatted fences. The street is cleaner, too, the lines in the centre bright like they’ve only been painted recently… but at the same time, for the first two streets at least, it’s almost eerily quiet for summer break. Where are all the kids?

The park, it turns out. Shayne had told her it was usually busy amongst their casual chatting as they walked through his neighbourhood, and when they arrive she finds herself blinking in surprise at how many people are around – from little kids to people closer to their age and even some older women walking their well-manicured dogs along a path beside the playground – and how big the space is compared to the ones she’s been to elsewhere in Mansfield.

“There’s not any actual seats or benches here or anything. Like, it looks nice, I guess, if you’re a kid on the playground or walking a dog or whatever. But…” Shayne trails off, Courtney glancing over to see him looking at her with an almost perplexed look as they pause at the park entrance. “Somehow it’s worse than near your place.”

“Is it, though? It’s so much bigger and newer,” she replies, watching him shrug.

“I think I’m just mad there’s no seats. Who makes a park without park benches?” he answers, pointedly, “anyway, want to just walk a bit? If you follow that path up there, it connects over to a pond or something and you can like, loop around it. I dunno. It’s kinda nice.”

“Sure,” she answers, lightly, falling into step with Shayne again as they wander leisurely around the playground and towards the dog walkers wandering along the concrete path further into the park. Courtney finds her mind refreshingly empty as they wander towards the far edge of the visible park area and then, after winding through a grove of trees for a minute, out into a clearer area beside a… pond, of some sort, much less well-kept that the rest of the park with dusty, rocky edges and clumps of reeds. They talk about bits and pieces of nothing, she finds herself quietly obsessing over the two adorable fluffy Huskies being walked by a woman who is somehow also wheeling along a toddler in a stroller, he laughs at her in response. It’s all just… nice.

It's as they wind around a section of the pond jutting out around some thick reeds, turning back in the direction of the park, that Courtney notices two people probably about their age clearly trying to hide behind a tree, making out. She doesn’t immediately react - she’s seen as much at school forever - but the couple are not well-hidden, and as they wander closer, Courtney feels herself gasping as she brings herself to an abrupt stop, reaching out to grab Shayne’s arm and stop him, too.

“Is that…” she trails off, blinking in surprise as her mind scrambles in confusion. What? This doesn’t make sense-

“Wha- is that Yasmin?” Shayne asks, his voice hushed but rapid, “and… Billie? The girl she’s always picking on?”

“The girl she’s been really weird about ever since she started,” Courtney agrees, although she feels like she’s asking a question. She has no idea what to feel about this. What? “Who… Kari told me she saw them together once, I thought she was being stupid. And Yasmin is in Europe right now. But… What?”

“I don’t think she’s in Europe…” Shayne trails off, before abruptly continuing, “but like, your friends would have no problem with Yasmin dating a girl, right? You guys aren’t like that…”

“Yeah, that’d be totally fine with everyone. Except maybe Hollie,” she answers, quickly. That’s an easier question, although her voice dips back into confusion as she continues, “I don’t get why she’s hid it. Is it even her? What do I do? Yasmin wouldn’t make out with someone at a park anyway. This can’t be right.”

Courtney shudders lightly as she speaks, still frozen in place on the path and looking over towards a group of trees, the other side of the path from the lake. She tries to convince herself it’s not even them, because that would make more sense – maybe it’s just some random girls and one of them happens to look like Yasmin – but the two girls slowly pull apart, and only a second later, Courtney watches Yasmin glance over and meet her eyes.

It's Yasmin. In the wrong country. At a park. Making out with a girl she claims to hate.

“Shit,” she mutters, aloud, watching as Yasmin’s face turns to panic and then anger, and suddenly, she’s stalking over towards where Courtney and Shayne are still standing on the path. It makes her realise she’s still gripping Shayne’s arm, quickly letting go and dropping her hand to her side.

“What the fuck are you doing you fucking freak, are you fucking stalking me or something, you’re such an insane creepy slut-” Yasmin almost yells, her shoulders hunched forward and voice seething with aggression as she approaches them.

“I- I- wha-” Courtney stutters, not sure what to say, but Shayne quickly steps in for her.

“Absolutely not stalking you, Yasmin, my family moved and we live nearby now – on Willow Court – Courtney was just visiting me, we just wanted to go outside and enjoy the sun,” Shayne speaks up, quickly, his voice careful.

“Don’t you fucking dare say anything, don’t lie to people, I’ll fucking destroy your life, no one will ever want to go near you again you disgusting freak,” Yasmin continues, still directing all her words at Courtney and seeming to pretend Shayne isn’t there, although she does appear to have accepted that they had a reason to be in this neighbourhood.

But as Courtney feels her heart racing and awkwardly glances around, she notices the way Yasmin is almost shrinking in on herself. How her hands are balled tightly to her sides, and when Courtney glances back over her shoulder, how Billie is hovering back near the tree they were kissing under, her face somewhere between concerned and upset.

None of it is normal. Courtney has seen Yasmin angry and attacking her for not being cool enough so many times, but she’s always calm, straightforward, standing straight with her shoulders back. Nothing like… this. And maybe, for once, she doesn’t need to silently accept it or argue back.

“I’m not going to tell anyone, Yas,” Courtney starts, softening her own voice, “I don’t think any of our friends would judge you at all. Maybe Hollie, but she’s being weird about everything at the moment. But I don’t care if you’re with a girl, neither would Nat or Is. But I won’t tell anyone.”

“You guys are not the only people in my life,” she snaps back, although some of the force falls from her voice. Courtney doesn’t immediately know what she means – is Yasmin talking about some other friends? But she has no other friends in Mansfield, only in cool places overseas, and Courtney doesn’t even know any of them to be able to say anything to them-

“D’you think your family wouldn’t be okay with it?” Shayne asks, Courtney watching as Yasmin blinks rapidly a few times and carefully turns to the side to look at him.

“I…” she trails off, after a moment, seeming to almost deflate as she glances back over her own shoulder to look at Billie, before looking back down at the ground for a moment. She rapidly snaps her head back up to face the both of them, this time, her voice returning to sharpness, “you should know all about this, Shayne, your father is military. When our families have real positions in society, when we need to uphold proper reputations, these things matter. Every child has to play their role, you can’t deviate from that. Billie’s family doesn’t have that status, even if she was a guy.”

“My family isn’t like that,” Shayne replies, quickly, although his voice is careful, “but I get why it would be… hard, if they are. It’s- like- I’m definitely not going to tell anyone at all either. But please don’t be an ass to Courtney just because we happened to run into you in public.”

“I don’t even talk to your family. Like- I’m really not going to tell anyone,” Courtney adds, trying to be reassuring, “I’m just… confused. You always make fun of her. And you’re meant to be in Europe?”

“We’re going on a shorter holiday this year since my brother got into the invitation-only Summer Camp this year. We’re leaving tomorrow,” she mutters, in response, seeming to step past the rest of Courtney’s statement before she rapidly adds, “how do I know you won’t tell Hollie, your stupid weirdo of a friend?”

“I’m literally not even talking to Hollie anymore, she’s being really weird about everything,” Courtney responds, feeling her voice grow argumentative. She’s trying to be a good friend to Yasmin about this and somehow Hollie is still going to ruin another thing for her-

“Fine,” Yasmin snaps, seeming to tense up again, “well, at least I can actually get a partner.”

“I’m literally dating Thomas, you were there when he asked me out,” Courtney feels herself answer almost indignantly before she can stop herself. She scrunches up her face. “Yasmin, this doesn’t need to be like, an argument. I accidentally saw you with your… girlfriend? Whatever. I’m not going to tell anyone. If anyone gets hiding shit from family, it’s me. It’s fine, okay? Just pretend it never happened.”

“Whatever. Go away,” she shoots back, Courtney feeling herself sigh.

“O…kay. Okay. See you when school goes back, I guess,” she mutters, before glancing over to Shayne and silently telling him to just start walking again. Courtney makes a point of not looking back to see what Yasmin does once they walk past her and past where Billie is still hesitating beside the path like she doesn’t know what she’s allowed to do, as they continue walking the way they were going, ambling along in silence as Courtney feels her head spinning.

A lot of things make sense now, but at the same time, it makes her heart sink. Yasmin doesn’t actually trust her or anything, there’s no way she’s going to believe Courtney won’t tell anyone. She doesn’t think she’s cool enough to not be talking to Hollie anymore. Yasmin could absolutely just go and tell everyone she’s not cool enough anymore and kick her out of their group and then she’ll have no friends and no one to hang out with at school and Thomas will break up with her and-

She doesn’t say a word the whole way, but Shayne seems to know she just wants to go back to his place now, walking along beside her in silence until they step back through his front door.

“How was the park?” Catherine asks, glancing up from her work for a moment. Courtney has to stop herself from jumping in response to the noise, breaking through the silence of the last ten minutes.

“It was nice out, but a bit too busy to stay for long,” Shayne answers, immediately, his mother humming in response as he continues up the hall and turns straight up stairs.

Courtney finds herself almost unthinkingly sitting down onto the foot of his bed after she follows Shayne upstairs, hands pressing into his bedcovers either side of her. There’s a part of her that immediately wants to remind her of the time she slept in his bed and how weird and creepy that was, but it’s drowned out as Shayne sits on his desk chair opposite her and turns to face her.

“D’you think she’ll start being aggressive towards you anyway?” he asks, Courtney shrugging in response.

“Maybe. I don’t know if I can do anything about it. If she wants to ruin my life she will. But like, she’ll see that Hollie isn’t talking to me anymore. But… I dunno. Maybe she’ll go to Europe and forget about it all,” she almost rambles. “She’s been weirdly nice to me lately. But it started… after Kari told me, and Yasmin, that she saw Yasmin and Billie together at a café. And Yasmin just like, rolled her eyes and walked off when Kari said it and I didn’t believe Kari because she’s not exactly reliable anyway, she makes stuff up all the time, but… I guess it was true.”

“I kinda feel sorry for Yasmin. Sounds like her family is… a lot. But also, I wonder how Billie feels about all the things she says about her,” he comments. Courtney feels herself scoff.

“They like, actively antagonise each other at school. Billie was definitely flirting with her like, as soon as she moved here, and Yasmin always made fun of her but never let anyone make fun of her being gay. But whenever Billie overhears Yasmin making fun of her she seems to just like, low-key hit on her in response,” she shakes her head, “I’ve never actually talked to Billie.”

“I… hope it just kinda fades into nothing and she doesn’t make it a problem,” Shayne tells her, brow furrowing, “I didn’t think we’d ever run into her near here even though I know she’s nearby. You always say she’s in Europe during breaks.”

“She said she was flying over there just after break started. She probably is going tomorrow like she said though, they go every year,” Courtney confirms, shaking her head, “it’s weird, because I’m scared she’ll start trying to say shit about me and kick me out of the group to try and stop me saying anything but then it seems like maybe she’s been being nice to me because she was scared I’d say something after Kari told me… I don’t know. And I probably won’t know until school starts.”

“Natalie and Isabel are on holiday too, aren’t they?” Shayne asks, Courtney simply nodding in response. “Well… if you haven’t hated today, other than the whole weird park thing, you can always hang out with me? And the others. And hopefully, when your friends are back, it will all just be normal.”

“It’s been fun to hang out again,” Courtney replies, glancing down at her lap as she remembers back to the previous night.

She’d been so scared that seeing Shayne now she’d just feel stupid and embarrassed and he’d know and she has felt stupid and embarrassed sometimes today but mostly it’s just… it’s just nice. It’s just like it always has been, and he’s acted completely normal, not like she’s being creepy or like he knows her heart has gone and got dumb feelings for him. And she has a boyfriend, anyway, so it’s fine. She can just… pretend she doesn't like Shayne. He’s her friend, that’s all, and she likes hanging out with him, and she’ll get past the other stuff eventually.

“I’m sorry I ignored you for a while. Everything is still just… off. You moving felt off. Working out how to get here and whatever. But if we… can make it work. It’d be cool to hang out again, and if the others don’t hate me and want to invite me to stuff too then… that’d be nice,” she mumbles, a little, carefully glancing up to see Shayne giving her a reassuring smile.

“It’s all good, Court. I know things still suck with your family and things- but let’s hang out like we used to, yeah? And I know the others will want to invite you to stuff,” he tells her, Courtney simply nodding in response.

Chapter Text

Courtney stays at Shayne’s place until the evening just chatting and hanging out with him, but as it approaches 5pm, she knows she has to head home. She’d like to stay for dinner, but when Cathy asks if she is staying, she reluctantly shakes her head.

“I… should probably go soon. I didn’t ask Dad if I could be away for dinner or anything,” she answers, shrugging, “and it takes a while to get home so… yeah.”

“Oh, honey, I can drive you home if you’d like? The city bus interchange will be very busy this time of day,” Cathy offers, immediately. Courtney tries to debate it, for a moment, saying she can just drive her back to the bus station she picked her up from this morning – but Shayne’s mum is insistent, and soon, Courtney finds herself sitting beside Shayne in the back of his mother’s car as they take the much longer drive back to her house.

(She told Shayne it was fine if he didn’t come, but he simply shrugged and told her he had nothing else to do.)

Kari is in the kitchen getting dinner ready when Courtney gets home, and she quickly puts the bag she’d taken with her upstairs before going back to the kitchen to help her out. Everyone is there for dinner, tonight – even KC – but her Dad doesn’t ask her how Shayne’s place was, this time – she thinks probably on purpose –, and her eldest brother simply remains silent and roughly slides his cutlery against his plate as he eats.

He stays downstairs when they finish, though, sitting in the living room with Clarke as he rambles about soccer, and it has Courtney immediately going up to her and Kari’s bedroom and falling back on her bed.

She wishes KC would just leave, it’s not like he even wants to be here, obviously, but he’s still always hanging around when he isn’t at work and he might not be actively saying anything to her anymore but she still feels like shrinking back in on herself and running away every time she sees him. What if he’s talking to her mother? He almost definitely is, but what if he’s talking about her? Somehow giving her a way to come back and hurt her again?

She has a new number, sure, and none of her Mum’s family have it, only her Dad’s. Her Dad had started whatever the process is for making it impossible for her Mum to try and go near her, she had to sign a document and write down some stuff like six weeks ago now, they’re just waiting for a date where she’ll apparently have to go to court for it to be finalised or something. But… still.

She knows her Mum is demanding to have time with Clarke and Conrad still, at least, as much as her Dad is trying not to talk about it in front of her at all. And KC is still stomping around the house, occasionally quipping something that has Kari calling him a misogynist and yelling at their Dad to make him leave before he turns Clarke and Conrad into mini versions of him too.

Kari is downstairs too, tonight, only Courtney having retreated to her room after dinner. Or well, Conrad too, but that doesn’t impact her and she thinks she can hear the shower running so he’s probably in there. It means she can lie back in silence, reaching for her phone and flipping through it as she tries not to think about KC or her Mum or any of that.

None of her friends are messaging tonight, and the group chat with Shayne’s friends is quiet, too, save for Zach saying something about a hike and absolutely no one responding to him. She knows Shayne would reply if she messaged him, but she did just spend all day with him. She doesn’t know what else she has to say.

She had a nice day at his house, but as she thinks back over it, she finds her mind sticking on Yasmin all over again. What if she does turn around and kick her out of their group over this? What can she even do about it? She knows, deep down, that there is one thing she could do: she has information Yasmin doesn’t want shared.

But… she couldn’t bring herself to do that, even to save her own place in that group. It feels too mean. She’s not gonna out someone against their will, that’s not fair, even if the person is being weird about her knowing it.

She wishes Yasmin would just believe that she knows it’s important not to tell anyone. That she does actually care about her friends, in some ways. She finds herself opening her private messages with Yasmin, thumb hovering over the keyboard.

…Screw it.

“Can your parents ever see your messages?” she sends, simply.

“Why would you ask that weirdo,” Yasmin replies, although she does so almost immediately. It makes Courtney sigh.

“I know sometimes with Apple stuff it like goes to a family account on a parents computer or something. I just wanted to check before I say anything about earlier,” she replies, watching as Yasmin seems to type and delete her reply a few times in response.

“well my family aren’t weird so no my parents don’t spy on me. But I don’t need to tell you anything anyway you don’t need to bring it up,” she sends, eventually, Courtney scrunching her face awkwardly in response. How does she… do this. What if Yasmin goes and tells the others she’s been weird? Sends screenshots?

…Except Yasmin can’t send screenshots without telling them what Courtney saw, anyway, especially if she includes…

“you don’t need to tell me anything else and I’m not asking you to. I just feel like you didn’t actually believe me that I won’t tell anyone I saw you with Billie. But I seriously won’t, Yas, it’s your choice who you tell that stuff and if anyone gets that sometimes you need to hide things from family so they don’t massively overreact it’s me,” she sends.

“don’t pretend our families are the same or anything.” Yasmin replies, pointedly. Courtney feels herself sighing audibly, but part of her wants to just… she wants to at least try.

“I know, they’re not at all. It’s just this one thing and I just wanted to reassure you that I absolutely won’t tell anyone and I understand why you want to keep it quiet. and I’m not judging you for keeping it quiet or for being with billie, or whatever it is that’s happening, but you don’t have to say what that is either,” she types out. Yasmin takes a little longer to respond, this time, although she doesn’t seem to type and delete anything – honestly, Courtney thinks she might just not reply, for a while.

“we’re dating. for like 4 months,” Yasmin’s message reads, Courtney blinking in surprise, not sure how to respond. She did not expect to actually… be told more, and she’s kinda glad when Yasmin adds, “Shayne is good at keeping secrets, isn’t he? I know you tell him a lot of stuff that he never tells anyone.”

“he’s good with secrets, yeah. he won’t tell anyone,” she confirms.

“okay. thanks. maybe I’ll tell the others sometime this year I know Nat and Is wouldn’t care and Hollie can deal with it,” Yasmin replies, seeming to let up a little bit, although Courtney feels herself hesitating. Natalie and Isabel, yeah, totally. But… Hollie?

“I think Nat and Isabel wouldn’t mind. I was also always kinda confused we made fun of Billie, she seems pretty cool. But… I’d be careful with Hollie. If anyone would try and tell your parents or something to try and cause problems for you, it’d be her,” Courtney warns, carefully.

“she is cool just in a different way to us. And okay, thanks for telling me… has she done that to you?” she asks, Courtney twisting her head side to side against the pillow beneath it in consideration. She hasn’t mentioned the divorce to her friends practically since it happened, she doesn’t want them to start having a problem with it again. She doesn’t want Yasmin to turn around and decide to copy Hollie and use things against her too.

…but this is such a weird conversation to be having with Yasmin. She’s never like this. She’s never told Courtney something that Natalie and Isabel don’t know.

“she’s doing it at the moment, threatening to like tell the police I have to go live with my insane mother or something,” she types out, hitting send before she can second guess it, Yasmin immediately sending a vomiting emoji in response.

“so fucking weird. No. your mother is crazy it’s good that she’s gone and you can do stuff now,” she replies, before adding, “I am actually flying to Paris tomorrow, my brother needs me to help him pack. But thanks for being good about all this stuff Courtney.”

“no problem, have fun in Europe,” she replies, before sighing heavily and putting her phone to the side again.

That ended up… okay. She’s glad she did it. But it’s still weird, so different to how Yasmin normally acts around her, and it just adds to the list of everything else. Everything is so different and strange.

But, after everything, she did have a normal, nice day at Shayne’s house. Even at a different house, in a different neighbourhood, and with her mind and her heart fighting to stop her being weird. It was normal, and maybe she can lean into that.

————————————————

Courtney doesn’t do anything for the Fourth of July, but she does suddenly have a bunch of people asking her to babysit via her Dad when they have Fourth of July parties that they can’t include their kids in. It means Courtney suddenly finds herself with five babysitting jobs in the space of a week, filling up afternoons, evenings and nights. They vary in difficulty – her Dad’s station’s captain’s kids are fun and want her to play video games with them, but the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend of someone he knows’ kids she looks after a couple of days after the fourth spend the whole time crying about missing their Mum – but even as she sits in random houses she’s never been to looking after kids she’s never met, it, too, feels kind of normal. And she gets paid, and she’ll never say no to a little extra money.

Without anyone saying anything about her two months’ absence – she guesses Shayne might have told them all not to talk about it – she suddenly finds herself invited to all of the random things Shayne’s friends do, too. She has to miss a couple – she has a babysitting job when Ethan asks everyone to go to the pool with him (it’s also, like, super cold that day, and she’s pretty sure that ends up being cancelled last minute anyway), and she needs to look after her brothers when Zach and Alicia ask if anyone wants to join them on a hike – but when Shayne sheepishly asks if she wants to see Black Widow again one morning, and Alicia too, she makes sure she can say yes.

“Oh my god I can’t wait to see the part again where-” Alicia starts, the three wandering towards the cinema the Thursday morning, a week after Courtney had spent the day at Shayne’s.

“SHUT UP,” Shayne whines, immediately, “no spoilers!”

“Oh my god but when Black Widow and-” Courtney adds, immediately knowing what Alicia is doing, before bursting into laughter when Shayne immediately covers his ears with his hands and glares at the two of them.

“Well, you shouldn’t have been such a grumpy ass and just seen it with us the other week,” Alicia tells him, although she grins as she does.

It makes Courtney wonder if Alicia knows why Shayne didn’t see it with them – and then quickly tries to push down the warmth bubbling in her chest at the reminder of him admitting he didn’t want to see it without her, because come on, he just meant as a friend, nothing silly like that – or if he made up some other excuse about being busy.

She doesn’t seem to say anything, though, and when Shayne launches into asking Alicia how her hike with Zach was with a lilt of teasing to his voice, she can’t help but join in.

“You guys ever going to get over this teasing me about Zach thing?” she asks, after a minute, just as they all step into the cinema.

“I mean… when you stop giving us reasons to?” Shayne responds, raising an eyebrow.

“Why him, though? Why not the other three guys I hang out with all the time?” she shoots back, although her voice is light when she does.

“You spend a lot of time with him. And there’s just suspicious things,” Shayne almost argues back, insistent.

“You two spend more time together than Zach and I,” she replies.

“Not recently,” Courtney quips. She quickly regrets it, although Alicia laughs immediately in response. It’s a weird laugh, but Courtney can’t put her finger on why, and she’s much more interested in the fact that Shayne seems to want to actually pry into this whole Alicia/Zach thing a little more right now.

“Yeah, a lot of it with my Mum,” Shayne adds, pointedly, “anyway, it’s fun. Neither of you seem to actually mind. Also, I dunno about you, but he definitely likes you. And neither of you have dated anyone as long as I’ve known you…”

“That you know of,” Alicia replies, mysteriously, “anyway, maybe he’s cute, whatever, our movie starts in five minutes shut your ass up or I’ll start asking you about ramen girl.”

“You know everything there is about ramen girl, we’ve both been busy, no date yet,” Shayne answers, almost grumbling.

“Yet? So… soon?” Courtney pushes, Alicia nodding along.

“I dunno. Maybe,” he answers, shrugging, “but we actually need to get this movie. And I need popcorn, I didn’t eat breakfast.”

Courtney wishes she could hang out with Shayne after the movie more, a little to bug him about ramen girl, a little to dig into Alicia’s quiet admission that she thinks Zach is cute a bit more and ask what he’s heard from Zach. But she’s babysitting again that evening, and instead, she reluctantly says goodbye to both of them and wanders back to the bus station to go home.

At the same time, though, she takes her trip home smiling lightly. She thinks the last month of summer might just be okay.

————————————————

“Can you not make a thing about me and her, ‘licia?” Shayne sighs, letting his voice be a little annoyed, as he and Alicia wander vaguely in the direction of the mall. They’re gonna get lunch before both heading elsewhere, even though Courtney couldn’t join them. “I know, fair play, we tease you, whatever. But with everything with her, it’s… a bit difficult. If you wanna tease me about Sophie from the ramen place, go for it. But just not Courtney.”

“But you like Courtney, not Sophie,” Alicia points out.

“But Courtney has a boyfriend, and Courtney has sought out a lot of physical comfort from me and from my Mum as my friend, and the stuff I’ve helped her with is pretty extreme like you know, and it just… I really don’t want her to ever think anything I’ve done has been because I like her. And it’s not, it never has been, but I don’t want her to see something from you teasing me and suspect that without me being able to clear it up, because it might actually be really bad for her mental health,” he emphasises, watching as Alicia gives a relenting nod.

“You’re really not going to say anything, huh?” she pushes, Shayne immediately shaking his head.

“For one, I know she doesn’t see me that way, I’m like- I don’t count as a boy to her, if that makes sense. But… yeah. It just feels inappropriate, after everything,” he hesitates, for a moment, before bringing their wandering to a pause just before they enter the chaos and noise of the food court on lunch time, “the night of the divorce, she ended up sleeping in my bed. It wasn’t anything like that, she just couldn’t be alone. And in hindsight, it didn’t need to be my bed, I should’ve told her I’d just sleep in the double bed beside her or something, or on the floor in my room. And it was fine, for that situation, but I still felt guilty about it weirdly. But it's- I think it’s okay, as long as it’s friends just sharing a bed when one of them is upset-”

“-because that’s pretty normal, for girls at least,” Alicia cuts him off, nodding, “I’ve shared beds with Evie heaps, and I can assure you, bad luck for Evie, I am very straight. And it doesn’t surprise me she wanted company that night, you’re right, that’s not- anything like that. But… okay. If you’d prefer I don’t say anything about that…”

“Yeah,” Shayne replies, shrugging, “and if you really want us to stop teasing you and Zach, we can.”

“Nah, it’s whatever, just thought I’d push you about it a bit,” Alicia answers, shrugging, “if we really cared, we would’ve stopped you ages ago. But anyway. I get why you’re holding back on the Courtney stuff at least for now. But… are you ever going to say anything to her? Because… you guys clearly work very well together. And maybe it’s just as friends, but…”

“I am gonna go on a date with Sophie, sometime, I think. And maybe I’ll get over this little blip of my feelings for Courtney running off in that direction,” he answers.

“If you don’t?” Alicia asks.

“I don’t know,” he answers, before glancing back over to the food court, “come on, let’s get lunch, I’m hungry. Popcorn isn’t filling.”

Chapter Text

Courtney’s right: the rest of summer does start being okay. She settles into a rhythm, of sorts, hanging out with Shayne doing something or another maybe once a week, a handful of babysitting jobs here and there, actually doing some of her summer pre-reading for junior year, the occasional random catch up with his friends, another date with Thomas when he’s back from his holiday.

The first time she stays for dinner at Shayne’s new house is on a Tuesday in mid-late July, but it isn’t just her: it had been Max’s idea, to have a movie night of sorts, and Shayne had quickly offered up the space of his new house and, if it was a nice night, his sizeable new backyard that Courtney had only half-seen, complete with the firepit that Robert had been finishing building when she’d last seen him at the weekend.

“Can I go to Shayne’s place on Tuesday-” Courtney had started, asking her Dad on Sunday night when it had all been finalised.

“Of course,” he’d answered, before she finished, Courtney quickly shaking her head at him.

“-Tuesday night, though, all his friends are doing just a movie night or something there. Cathy said she’d drive me home after,” she finishes, watching her Dad pause in consideration.

“A party?” he asks, after a moment. She sighs.

“Not really, not like that at all. We’re just gonna watch a couple of movies, and maybe do s’mores on the fire pit Robert built,” she explains, carefully.

“His parents will be there?” her Dad asks.

“Yeah, definitely. They always are,” she answers, watching her Dad slowly nod.

“Okay, you can go, as long as you know how you’re getting there and home.”

So, early afternoon on Tuesday, she slings her backpack over her shoulder and wanders down the street to catch the first bus into the city. She knows Shayne’s friends can all drive now, but it doesn’t ultimately surprise her that she runs into Zach at the city bus station and ends up sitting beside him on the second bus to near Shayne’s, chatting about comics and their respective breaks.

“Hey, do you know what’s up with Hollie? She’s messaged me privately a couple of times about hiking but she’s never responding to anything in the group chat,” he asks, at one point, Courtney feeling herself wince and scrunch up her face in response.

“She’s… being a bit weird. She went crazy at me about the divorce, and she’s been saying some kinda offensive homophobic stuff about some people at school late last year, so I’m not really… talking to her at the moment,” she replies, overemphasising the second half and watching Zach frown.

“Yikes, that’s not good,” he answers, simply, before – to her relief – letting the topic drop.

They walk to Shayne’s place from the bus stop. It’s a kinda long walk, and it involves navigating some busy roads, but Courtney’s done it once before and it’s not too bad. And it is a nice afternoon, if not a little too warm with the sun beating down on them.

“Zach, Court, hey!” Alicia greets them both at the front door, Zach immediately going for the hug with Alicia. Courtney smirks to herself, as she wanders further into the house to where she can hear Shayne calling out about how he can answer his own door, thank you very much Alicia.

Max and Ethan are already there, too – and even Evie – and, now everyone is there, Shayne accepts Max’s request for a tour of the new house and the backyard. It makes Courtney smile to herself, when Ethan says something about it being the first time any of them have been here, as she hangs back behind the others and watches Shayne show them around downstairs. Cathy is sitting in her office at her computer, as she often is on a weekday, and while she says hello to everyone, she quietly calls Courtney back when the others go to leave.

Courtney immediately knows why, and she is happy to just hang back in the office until the others are upstairs and out of earshot. It’s not like she hasn’t spent plenty of time upstairs in this house already.

“Courtney! Come on, upstairs?” Max calls back, as they all move back up the hallway, and she tilts her head to the side as she leans through the office archway.

“Oh, Courtney’s been here before,” Alicia answers, before she works out what to say. Courtney waits for the quiet teasing under her tone – after the hint of it at the movies, as much as it scared her that Alicia would somehow make Shayne realise she has got dumb feelings, she’d kinda resigned herself that it was only fair after their years of teasing her and Zach – but it doesn’t seem to come. The others simply wander on upstairs, and she turns and steps back into the office.

“I’m sorry to mention this now, honey, just while I have the chance… your Dad let me know that on Friday, you have the time at the court to finalise the restraining order so your Mum can’t go near you. And I just wanted to know what you’d like to happen, after that? Would you like to just be at home, or would you like to come here?” she asks, Courtney knotting her own hands together in front of her, wringing them together in indecision.

“I… Shayne’s working Friday, isn’t he?” she asks, instead of answering. Catherine nods gently.

“He is, but he’s got a shorter day, he’ll be home from 3pm- and I know your appointment is earlier in the morning, and it’s okay if you want to come here before he’s home,” she reassures, Courtney slowly nodding in response as she unlinks her hands, only to cross one arm awkwardly over her stomach.

“I… I think Dad wants to have lunch with me after the appointment. But maybe, after that, it’d be… nice to come here, instead of going home,” she admits, shrugging lightly, “K.C. has started saying stuff about how he thinks the court person will deny it because I can’t stop her from going near Clarke and Conrad and I’m always near them and I just don’t want to be around him whether they deny it or not.”

“K.C. is wrong, that’s not really how that works,” Catherine answers, before softening her tone again, “and okay, honey. You just text me, let me know when and where you want me to pick you up from?”

“Okay. Thanks. I… might feel weird being here without him. But I can still… play games, or read, or something, and that’s okay?” she asks, and she knows it’s weird to ask, but his mother immediately nods.

“Of course. As much as you’d like to, treat this house as your other home, too, okay? We’re happy for you to be here, whenever you’d like to be,” she answers, Courtney mumbling a quiet thanks before moving back out of the office and heading upstairs to where she hears Evie and Alicia laughing loudly, she assumes at one of the boys.

She’s right: they’re all crowded around the little area Shayne is slowly setting up with some of the older consoles (his Switch and PS5 have ended up downstairs, but everything else up here), and soon, the start of their movie night becomes and Wii bowling afternoon.

They do, eventually, move back downstairs and spread themselves out across the large sofas in Shayne’s expansive living room – she’d kinda forgot how much bigger it really was, until there were seven teenagers comfortably spread across it without being even slightly cramped – and start a movie. Evie picks the first, a silly comedy Courtney hasn’t seen before and is pretty sure her Dad would not like her seeing, and they still chat here and there amongst it, although they chat about nothing in particular.

They order pizzas for dinner, and the process of doing so quickly becomes chaos. It turns out her and Alicia are solidly in the minority with their pineapple preferences, Evie hates pepperoni (Courtney can’t help herself, she judges that one hard), Ethan is fighting to get something with a white sauce base instead of just tomato and no one seems to be on his side either.

They get there, eventually, selecting five large pizzas as Alicia calls over the top of everyone that they will have to live with something from the selection. It’s fine, in the end, and Zach selects a second movie, much darker and much more dramatic, to watch as they wait for and then eat their pizza.

Robert gets home just before they start the second movie, half-greeting everyone before heading upstairs to freshen up from work. He doesn’t say anything, but Courtney can sense him seeming to find a reason to hang out in the dining room and watch the movie from a distance after he does. It is, after all, a like military-strategy thing, and she’s honestly not vibing with it much, although she gets why Shayne’s Dad would.

He and Catherine quietly prepare and eat their own dinner as the movie continues, staying out of their way despite being in the kitchen and dining room just behind the living area. Courtney does glance over, occasionally, as she hears the fridge open or a knife scrape against a plate, but she’s pretty sure she’s the only one. This movie is not holding her attention.

…And she’s used to keeping track of what every noise is.

“This is dumb,” Evie grumbles, bundling one of the pillows that had been set on the sofa up in front of her about two-thirds through the movie, immediately shushed by Alicia, who apparently does like Zach’s suggestion.

It feels like it goes forever, and when it eventually ends, the room is pretty evenly split between hyping it up – Zach is evening teary about the ending – and complaining that it was too long and too boring (Evie, Courtney, Ethan and Max).

“Do we feel like another one?” Shayne asks, but this time, they all hesitate in agreement. Two movies is already a lot, but it’s only 8pm and she’d got the vibe this was more a 9:30pm finish kind of movie night.

“Did you say something about s’mores?” Ethan asks, and the others all quickly and loudly jump on the idea as Shayne laughs and stands from the sofa, going to grab supplies from the pantry in the kitchen.

Robert had built a proper brick firepit in an area in the backyard, and Courtney knows he has plans to properly landscape around it and add in some seating around it, but for now it’s simply a brick pit filled with wood logs surrounded by a patch of gravel. Zach quickly takes on responsibility for starting the fire, though, and when Shayne asks her if she can show Ethan and Alicia where the camp chairs are, she nods and leads them back into the garage.

There’s six camp chairs, for seven people, but Max locates a large rock in the back corner of the garden and manages to relocate it near the fire to become his seventh seat.

The here-and-there, chaos and logistics of setting up the fire pit and the chairs and collecting their marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolate for s’mores soon give way to the quietness of a late summer evening and the crackle of the fire still getting going. It’s not fully dark, yet, and it’s still comfortably warm, but the sun is dipping low in the horizon and everyone seems to take a moment to settle into their seats beside the fire.

The quiet doesn’t last for long, although even when Evie makes a comment about how cool Shayne’s new place is and how she’ll miss any other big hangouts they have when she heads off to college kinda soon – she’s going to UC down in San Francisco – the ensuing bursts of conversation between them all remain quieter and calmer than inside. Everyone tells Evie they’ll miss her, of course, before asking if she’s excited, and then leading into everyone else talking about what their plans are for the college applications they’ll have to start submitting early in their senior year. Something about it makes Courtney feel out of place, as they all talk about this dream private colleges interstate or in LA or San Francisco.

She might be another year behind them, but she already knows she’s not going anywhere like that. She can’t afford it.

“I’m definitely gonna do the first year community college thing here, though, going to be so much more affordable,” Max comments, at one point, the others all humming in agreement and Courtney feeling herself relax just a little. Okay, so they don’t like, judge that. And Shayne, for his part, simply shrugs when it comes to him.

“No idea. Can probably get into some places via Dad’s military stuff. I should look into it, I guess,” he answers, before, slowly, the conversation twists to dating, when Alicia asks where Evie’s boyfriend is going and she admits he’s going interstate and probably won’t be her boyfriend for much longer because of it.

“Oh, hey, Shayne, how was your date with Sophie the other day?” Zach asks, after a moment. It makes Courtney raise her eyebrow and turn to face him, too. She knew he’d been out with Sophie on Sunday evening – he’d told her, freaking out a little about it, as soon as the date had been planned – for dinner somewhere nearby. Apparently she lived not too far from his new place. But, when she asked him how it had gone afterwards, all he’d offered was ‘it was okay’.

“It was okay,” he answers, shrugging as he does, immediately the same as he had when Courtney asked him straight after it. She frowns lightly. She was kinda hoping they’d dig into it all a bit more now everyone was here to pry about it.

It’s not like she’s jealous. Or well, maybe a tiny piece of her is, but she knows she has no chance with him anyway, so maybe she should just support him having a nice relationship, or even just a nice few dates with someone to get over his general nervousness about all of it. It’s not like any potential girlfriend of his is her competition – she’s not even an option.

“Really? No more than that? What did you do?” Evie pushes.

“I dunno. We got dinner at an Italian place at that set of shops near the bus stop. The food was nice, we chatted about both of our jobs and school and stuff, I came home. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t amazing. It was okay,” he expands, although without actually giving much more detail. Courtney already knew where they went, anyway.

“So just… no spark?” Zach asks, his voicing suddenly carrying a teasing lilt, “like… maybe you like someone else, not Sophie?”

Courtney watches as Shayne rolls his eyes in response, although he doesn’t actually say anything else. She figures it says enough – they all know he’s not really found anyone he’s interested in, for a while. It makes Courtney wonder, suddenly, whether he dated girls in elementary and middle school, before he moved to Mansfield. She knows he’s lived in some much larger cities than this dump of a place – maybe there’s just no one good enough for him in a place like this, when he’s used to somewhere bigger?

“Oh, hey, Courtney, did you mention you were dating someone?” Alicia asks, suddenly changing the subject. She doesn’t actually remember if she’s said anything to Alicia, but she nods in response anyway.

“Yeah, I guess, I’ve been on a few dates now with this guy Thomas,” she answers, simply. She immediately understands Shayne’s own response about his date with Sophie a bit better, as she finds her mind going down the same track. Thomas is okay. None of her dates with him have been actively bad – or, well, maybe the first one was close to being a little bad – but nothing has been amazing, either. It’s just been okay.

“Thomas Galloway?” Max asks. She blinks a couple of times, but she nods.

“Yeah. Other high school, but I used to do track with him when I was younger. How do you know him?”

“He was my debate team buddy in middle school,” Max answers, laughing lightly, “he was really good at it, they let him go up a year for competitions. Nice guy. I’ve fallen out of contact with him, though. Hey, maybe I’ll be able to catch up with him again if you invite him along to anything?”

“Maybe,” Courtney answers, shrugging, although something tells her she won’t be inviting Thomas to spend time with her with Shayne’s friends anytime soon. There’s nothing wrong with him, or anything, and their previous date the other day had been nice, but she just doesn’t… know. She’s not going to stop going on dates with him, but at the same time, she’s not trying too hard to find times to see him.

She finds herself thinking back to that conversation and the movie-and-s’mores night with Shayne’s friends two days later, when she’s sitting bored at a random family’s house at 9pm, having put their seven-year-old twins to bed a little while ago and now with nothing to do for the next hour. She suddenly realises she’s literally one street away from Thomas’ house – not that she’s been there, she just knows roughly where he lives – and she glances at her phone.

She’s been on a few dates with him now. They’ve kissed, a little bit, but nothing beyond just quick pecks on the lips. But it’s been a few dates, and if this was her last boyfriend – ugh, just thinking of Cody makes her feel kinda sick –, she’d be jumping at the opportunity to invite him over and see what happens in a stranger’s house of a night with no one there to interrupt them.

But maybe, that’s just not Thomas’ style, either. Maybe he likes to take things slower and spend more time getting to know his girlfriend. And, she reasons, it is kind of different – most of the guys she’s dated she already knew and hung out with at school, but she hadn’t seen him for a few years before they started going on dates. Maybe they do just need to spend more time getting to know each other.

Chapter Text

Courtney feels like she’s going to be sick, when she wakes up on Friday morning. She still doesn’t understand this whole process, she doesn’t know what to expect at her appointment at the court later in the morning and whether it’s just like signing something and it’s done, or whether she has to argue that it should be done even though she already kinda did that when she had to fill in a form ages ago saying why she agreed with her Dad applying for the order on her behalf. She doesn’t know what to wear, what to say, who will be there. She doesn’t know what her Dad will say. She doesn’t even know if her Dad actually does know what’s going on and just hasn’t told her, or whether he doesn’t know too.

“It’s a good thing, Courtney, stop stressing,” Kari almost grumbles, although she does so in a weirdly reassuring tone, when Courtney is sitting cross-legged on her bed that morning staring into her own wardrobe indecisively. Kari, for her part, is getting ready for work – she finally got an actual job, something about booking bands for a bar downtown that sometimes has awful live music.

“I don’t even know what it is,” she answers, pointedly, glancing over to see Kari pause and wander closer to her side of the room.

“It’s an appointment with the court registrar, which is just like – it’s like their administration people, the people who put everything down in writing so it’s formal and legal and whatever. I don’t think you’ll actually have to do anything,” Kari tells her.

“But do you actually know that,” she shoots back, “and what am I supposed to wear to a court? Does it even matter? And I know Dad said that Mum would’ve been told about this and given an opportunity to like, say I shouldn’t be able to do this, and what about that? What if they decide I can’t make her stay away from me because she has to be able to come here to see Clarke and Conrad and you or something?”

“I emancipated myself from her. I did it behind Dad’s back and only told him after. She has literally no parental rights over me anymore, and I could just do it myself because I’m legally an adult,” Kari replies, simply, “and if she wants to demand to see the boys, then she can do that elsewhere or when you aren’t here.”

Courtney doesn’t know what to say to that, and she simply crosses her arms over her chest and looks back at the wardrobe. She still doesn’t know what to wear. Kari doesn’t say anything else, for a moment, but eventually, she sighs lightly and wanders over to Courtney’s side of the wardrobe.

“Not formal, or anything, but just… neat, maybe. You’re still a teenager, no one expects you to be all dressed up, but maybe jeans that aren’t ripped, like… your black jeans, and maybe one of these shirts?” Kari suggests, pulling one of Courtney’s slightly nicer, casual, short-sleeve button-up shirts from the wardrobe. It’s one Catherine had bought for her, and slowly, she nods. That feels… right. She thinks she’d like to be wearing something Shayne’s family had helped her out with, just to remind her that after it all, she gets to go back there, no matter what.

Kari steps out of the bedroom to finish getting ready for work, not long later, leaving Courtney to slowly move through her own morning of getting ready in peace. She can hear the others moving around the house – Clarke and Conrad loudly talking to each other and about what they’re doing for the day, KC stomping around before he heads off to work – but as the morning progresses it gets quieter and quieter, until the house falls into silence at about 9:30am, just after her Dad calls up the stairs that he’s taking the boys to their friend’s place and he’ll be back after.

It's only then that Courtney emerges from her bedroom and moves to the downstairs bathroom, showering and slowly going through the motions of her skincare routine and putting on a little bit of makeup. It’s hot outside, and it seems inside into a warmth and humidity that just makes her feel uncomfortable and on edge, even when she steps out of the bathroom ready and with her clothes on ready to go.

She immediately heads back upstairs, sitting with her back pressed against the wall behind her bed as she shoves her headphones in her ears and turns on her music to try and drown out the confusion spreading through her mind.

She has no idea how long later it is that her Dad appears, knocking on before carefully opening her door and peering in. He’s dressed differently, too – his normal jeans, but a button-up shirt she doesn’t think she’s seen since they last went to church as a family when her Mum was still trying to force that to happen – and she doesn’t know what to say as she slowly removes one earbud from her ears.

“Ready to go?” he asks. Courtney shrugs, but she shuffles off the bed and searches for her shoes, before grabbing her backpack and pulling it over her shoulder. Packing that had been easier – it was just her old backpack full of things she took to Shayne’s whenever she had no idea if she’d be there for a couple of hours or overnight.

Her Dad doesn’t say a word as they both get into his car. Courtney instinctively gets in the back seat, even though the front is free – she doesn’t want to talk to him, she doesn’t want him to keep looking over at her – and puts her earbuds back in, drowning out the noise of the traffic around them and the crackling of her Dad’s car radio, always tuned to the emergency stations, especially in summer.

Courtney hasn’t been to the Mansfield Court buildings before. She watches out the window as they pull into a standard concrete parking structure on the far edge of downtown, before reluctantly pausing her music and shoving her phone and earbuds into her pocket alongside her hands after she gets out of the car and follows her dad to the entrance. The court building is as plain as its parking structure, a two-level rectangular concrete building covered with yellowed, peeling paint. The inside, at least, seems like it’s been done up a little more recently – the plasticy, linoleum floor looks clean, at least, and the receptionists’ desk sits behind a dark, red-brown counter.

“Hello, do you have an appointment?” the receptionist asks, an older lady with hair full of spray and a terse voice.

“Yes, with the registrar, at 11am. Surname Miller,” her Dad answers, his own voice serious. She feels like she’s going to be sick, barely listening as the receptionist tells them to wait at the far side of the waiting room, near a door in the same dark wood as her counter, but away from the ornate sign pointing towards the courtroom.

She wants to pull our her headphones and drown away everything in her music again, but something tells her she can’t here, and she presses her hands against the edge of the green plastic chair she sits on as she watches over the rest of the elongated waiting area at the front of the building. She knows it was like five minutes before their appointment when they got here, but time drags on with the loud, mechanical ticking of the clock on the wall beside the door that she can now see reads ‘Registrar’, past their 11am time.

People wander in and out of the building, and of random doors off the other end of the waiting room, constantly. Lawyers all dressed up coming in sweaty from outside in their full suits in the middle of summer, bedraggled mothers with children in strollers, a handful of middle-aged men dressed up in smart shirts that get called in under ‘traffic court’, and once, a man in police uniform leading a woman in handcuffs into the building.

Courtney doesn’t pay the people much mind, besides vaguely stereotyping them and absently trying to pretend she’s watching a courtroom on TV or something not actually sitting here, until she feels herself involuntarily slumping down in her seat and glancing away as the door opens to none other than Cody. He’s dressed up more than usual, too, standing beside a woman Courtney vaguely recognises as his mother, although his hair is neon purple and he’s wearing heavy dark boots despite the season.

She looks away, but at the same time, she kinda knows that he’s glanced over and seen her, too.

She listens to the receptionist tell him and his mother that they have a fifteen minute wait for something, Cody’s mother saying something in response that she doesn’t catch before she hears Cody comment about “talking to a friend”. Ugh.

“Well, looks like the little Mormon girl isn’t so good after all. What did you do, huh? You got in trouble?” Cody starts, his voice teasing and insulting and almost sing-song. It makes anger flare in her mind, momentarily forgetting her Dad is sitting beside her as she glances up and glares at him.

“I’m getting a restraining order against my abusive mother, asshole,” she snaps, although she keeps her voice quiet. She watches his face fall as he takes a step back from her, as his mother appears beside him and crosses her arms disapprovingly.

“…oh,” he mutters, glancing away from her and around for a moment, before he looks back to her with a glint in his eye that makes her shudder, “so that means you got out of all the church stuff, huh? You’re not brainwashed anymore?”

“Cody, come on, before an underage drink driving hearing is not the time to be harassing girls from school. You’ll be lucky if they don’t kick you out of that damn school,” his mother mutters, dragging him away with some force before Courtney has a chance to reply, instead slumping further back down into her chair.

“Who was that? From school?” her Dad asks, his voice hesitant. She sighs roughly. Whatever. He kinda knows she’s dated people when she wasn’t meant to.

“Ex-boyfriend,” she mumbles, “from a while ago.”

“Ah,” he answers, pausing for a moment. “He seems…”

“Yes, I know, he’s a try-hard,” she mutters, in response, “he wasn’t that bad when I started dating him. Whatever. I haven’t talked to him forever.”

She’s saved from any further prying from her Dad by a younger woman opening the registrar’s door and stepping out, calling their name, although as Courtney stands and feels her legs shaking beneath her, she’s not sure if it’s any better.

She kind of assumes that the young woman is an assistant or something like that, but she leads them into a single office straight behind the door and gestures for herself and her Dad to sit in the plush fabric chairs facing the desk while she sits into the leather office chair behind it, rolling herself into place.

“Hey guys, I’m Jacinta, I’m the registrar at this court- Kenn, and Courtney, right?” the woman starts, her voice almost bright.

“Yes,” her Dad answers, although Courtney simply glances down at the desk and fiddles with the stitching at the side of her jeans.

“So, Courtney, do you understand why you’re here today?” Jacinta asks, directed at her, and she quickly glances up. But Jacinta doesn’t seem intense or harsh like the woman out the front, she’s way younger than Courtney expected, her voice calm, and she just-

“I… don’t know,” she mumbles, before rapidly adding as Jacinta’s eyes turn concerned, “like I know it’s for the restraining order to stop mum trying to go near me and be awful again but I don’t know what… this part… is about, I guess, except that it’s the last part.”

“Ah, okay,” she tells her, nodding lightly, “well, basically today is- well, as the registrar, one of my jobs here is to get things finalised and formalised in writing, so that they’re legally valid. So a big part of today is getting that order finalised and confirmed, and since your Dad filed for it for you, just making sure you agree with everything.”

“Okay,” she replies, carefully, although mostly because she doesn’t know what else to say.

Jacinta starts reading through some documents in front of her, then, after telling them that to make everything official, she has to say it all in a certain way. It comforts Courtney, initially: the registrar reads through what the order is, what it means, what it stops her Mum from doing, and she confirms all the names – her Dad’s, her mother’s, hers. She confirms that her mother has been informed of the order and that she is currently in Utah, but it’s the next part that immediately makes Courtney feel sick to her stomach all over again.

“Now, your mother did exercise her right of reply, and I do have to present those arguments to you,” Jacinta continues.

“Does that mean the order might be denied?” she asks, rapidly, feeling the fear leaking into her own voice. Jacinta shakes her head.

“Not denied, as such – that would have happened before now, the police would have done that, but what has been done is that a couple of things have been noted and you will both need to acknowledge and agree to them for the order to progress,” she confirms, Courtney slowly nodding, although she’s not sure she entirely gets what that means.

“I’m guessing she said something about her access to Courtney’s two younger brothers – custody arrangements for them are still being worked out, she will have some access to them, but Courtney needs this to happen quicker than that will,” her Dad speaks up, quickly, Jacinta nodding in response.

“I will go to that one then – Kerryn has requested that this order not be used to prejudice her continued parental rights and occasional custody of Conrad and Clarke Miller, who I believe live in the same house as Courtney?” she asks.

“Yes,” her Dad answers.

“How would that… work? Would she be allowed to come to the house to see them or pick them up or something even if I’m there? Or would I have to leave when she’s coming, or something? What if she tries to get them to start saying awful stuff to me too again-” Courtney asks, quickly feeling her mind running away before she cuts herself off.

“The order does not let her within 100 yards of your normal place of residence, so she would not be able to come to your house and pick up your brothers while you still live there, she would need to meet Clarke and Conrad at another location,” Jacinta confirms, Courtney nodding in response. She likes that. She continues, “she did submit that the basis of you seeking the order was false, however that was rejected, so no need to go into that. And then the last once just concerns her parental rights over you, Courtney. It’s usually a bit complicated, and it almost doesn’t matter much since you’re- you’re seventeen, right? When do you turn eighteen?”

“Next June,” she answers, Jacinta nodding.

“Ahkay, yeah, so it… maybe matters a tiny bit, but basically, technically your mother would still have parental rights of access to you, but also a parental obligation to provide you support until you are eighteen, if the order was in place, and if you ever cancelled the order that could come into play again. But, she has requested to remove her obligation to ever support you, which would also remove her parental rights. So, basically, it would mean that if something did happen to your Dad, your Mum wouldn’t be required to step in and help you out, with somewhere to live, or food, or money, getting to school or anything. Now, if you have other family – like maybe grandparents, or aunts and uncles, or close friends – who are happy to support you-”

“Yeah, that’s fine, my best friend’s parents would look after me if something happened,” she almost cuts Jacinta off, carefully letting her hand drift up from the side of her pants to fiddle with the hem of her shirt.

“Ahkay, perfect, that’s all fine then. Well, now, we just need both of you to sign a few places confirming you’re okay with all of that, and then it will all be done, and you’ll be good to go,” Jacinta confirms, her voice light again as she swivels her chair around to reach for some pens behind her, handing one each to Courtney and her Dad before starting to turn around document after document for them to sign.

It takes another ten minutes, but eventually, Jacinta is telling them it’s all done and asking if they have any other questions. Her Dad does – about how Courtney accesses the order if she needs it for some reason, what happens if and when she decides to move out of home, when exactly it’s valid from. Jacinta answers, and eventually, he seems satisfied, Jacinta waving them goodbye and wishing Courtney well as she opens the door for them to step back out into the waiting room, and then out of the building.

“Do you feel okay about all that, now, Courtney?” her Dad asks, as they get back in the car. She lets herself sit in the front seat this time, although she still immediately pulls her phone out. She just doesn’t think it’s worth getting her headphones out, since they’ll probably only drive a short distance to lunch somewhere.

“I guess,” she answers, noncommittally, although truthfully she is kind of relieved and Jacinta did make it all feel… okay.

“Okay. Like I said, I’d like to get lunch with you now, and have a bit of a talk – is there anywhere in particular you’d like to go?” he asks, Courtney sighing in response. She doesn’t know what she wants. She just feels weird.

…but they’re downtown, and her Mum is basically gone from her life now, and it reminds her of a time like four years ago now when her friends had kept talking about this really fun Mexican place downtown where they did real Mexican food not Taco Bell junk and they’d all gone and said it was amazing but her Mum had refused to let her go and said something that was, in hindsight, incredibly racist.

“That Taqueria place a few blocks away from here?” she asks, her voice small, but she glances over to see her Dad nodding.

“Oh, sure, I’ve heard it’s good there – proper authentic stuff.”

Chapter Text

Courtney doesn’t recognise half the words on the menu when they get to the place for lunch, despite her many years of Spanish classes – not that they ever talk about food or anything useful in Spanish. Her Dad tells her to order whatever she likes, though, and she quickly orders a serve of pulled pork tacos before wandering away from the counter to grab a table as he adds his own selection and pays.

It's not silent, but it isn’t chaotically loud either, and she settles into one side of a booth in the corner, a couple of tables away from anyone else, and immediately pulls out her phone and opens up her texts with Shayne’s Mum.

“The registrar at the court was nice, it’s all done. I’m having lunch with Dad at the taqueria place downtown but I think he wants to talk to me so I don’t know how long we’ll take,” she sends, not sure what else to say. Catherine is going to drive downtown whenever she’s ready to pick her up and take her back to their place, but Courtney has no idea what time to tell her to drive over.

“Good pick, Courtney, everything looks great – how did you know about this place? Have you been here with your friends?” her Dad asks, when he wanders over and sits at the table, setting two Mexican colas down on the table as he does. She slowly grabs one, carefully twisting the cap off as she pulls it closer to her. She rarely drinks soda, he never buys it for home and she knows her skin hates it, but… just once, maybe.

“I just randomly remembered it from when everyone was talking about it when it opened. Mum didn’t let me go with my friends back then,” she answers, after a moment, looking down at the table and hearing her Dad hum in response.

“I know you don’t want to talk to me about everything, Courtney, and I’m not going to push that… much,” he starts, after a moment of silence, Courtney instinctively tightening her hand around her soda nervously as he does. Here it goes. “But I think I do need to know, honestly, how you’re going now. I know a couple of months won’t fix everything, and things at home still aren’t perfect. But I am your Dad, I am your sole parent now, and I need to make sure you are safe and nothing is going on that I should be worrying about.”

“Nothing is going on, Dad,” she answers, pointedly, feeling her back prickle uncomfortably, “I don’t know what you even mean by that or what you’re trying to say-”

“I’m not trying to say anything, Courtney. I know, sometimes, teenagers resort to unsafe things when they go through traumatic stuff, but I don’t actually think I have any reason to suspect you’re getting involved with anything alcohol or drug-wise. But, especially since Robert and Catherine and Shayne moved, you’ve spent a lot of time alone in your room. And it’s okay to want space, but withdrawing into yourself entirely isn’t the healthiest thing, either,” he almost lectures. It doesn’t make Courtney feel any less uncomfortable, now twisting her soda around to pick at the label with her nails.

“I’m not withdrawing into myself. I just want space sometimes. And I was busy with school for a while, but before they all went overseas I was hanging out with my school friends, and I’ve been hanging out with Shayne and his friends…” she trails off, defensively.

“You have been going out more the last little while, yes,” her Dad agrees, for a moment, seeming to hesitate before his voice softens again. “I know you don’t want to tell me how you feel, about everything. But I’m just worried that sometimes you aren’t okay, and you aren’t telling anyone. And I’d like if somehow, you found a way that you were comfortable to tell me, but if you aren’t, then… maybe, you need to talk to someone else, like the school counsellor, just to check in.”

“The school counsellor is so awful that actual psychologists recommend people don’t see her,” she points back, glancing up to face him, “she’d almost definitely tell me it’s my fault and I should be in Utah with Mum and that there’s something wrong with me and I need to stop hanging out with my friends or something.”

“Well, maybe then that’s not… the right person. But maybe there’s someone else professional, you could see, just to give you someone else to talk to if you don’t want to talk to me,” he continues, “my health insurance from work does cover a lot for you kids, too, we could make something work if you wanted it to.”

“I have people to talk to. Shayne and stuff,” she replies, again, letting herself meet his eyes with a challenging gaze. She watches her Dad sigh, glancing off towards the kitchen as if wishing their food would come already.

She’s not sure she’s actually hungry, as good as this place smells, anymore. Why does everyone keep trying to make her see a therapist?

“That’s… good, and I’m glad you do,” he replies, pausing for a longer moment as a waiter does turn up with their food and set it down in front of them. It’s only after the food has been set down that he continues – after Courtney has rushed to take her first bite of food so she has a reason not to talk – “I’m not sure what you want me to do, Courtney. I know I did the wrong thing by you in the past too, and I’m trying to do better, but then you told me you didn’t want me to care too much and you want me to give you space and I’m trying to do that too, but… you’re still my child, you still aren’t an adult, and I think I need you to let me in a little bit more. It doesn’t have to be everything, but even- I just don’t know what I can do.”

She has finished her mouthful by the time he finishes his almost-rant, and she feels her foot tapping rapidly against the floor as her mind turns erratically. She doesn’t want to be here, but she is, and he’s just going to keep asking.

“Mum left and then everything should’ve been fine but instead everything was different and weird and you and Kari were treating me like a baby and then Shayne’s family moved and that was weird too and why can’t you know what you’re meant to do, you’re the parent,” she rants in return, looking up at him with harsh eyes. He frowns slightly.

“This is what I’m finding hard, Courtney. I haven’t done this before either. I want to do the right thing, I want to respect that you have your own identity and knowledge and you are a capable young woman, but you aren’t talking to me, and then when I try and talk to you, you just rant at me about all this stuff that’s vaguely… wrong. But I’m not really sure what you mean when you say I was treating you like a baby. And I know that it’s probably disconcerting, and difficult, for everything to change suddenly, but things have changed and they aren’t going to go back to how they were before, because that was a bad place for them to be,” he continues. It makes her head spin, although she tries to eat more of her lunch as it does.

The food is actually nice, and as she slowly chews and swallows the last of her first taco, she takes the time to try and work out what he’s actually asking. To break it into pieces.

“I don’t want things to go back but I want everything to stop feeling wrong and fake,” she answers, eventually, “and Shayne’s new house feels okay now, and school and my friends were fine pretty quickly, and now I’m-”

She cuts herself off, quickly, sighing roughly. She was about to say something about how dating Thomas and the way her friends had settled back into the idea of them all needing to have boys was helping in a weird way, too, because that was what it had been like forever and it means she wasn’t totally broken and ruined from being a kid of divorced parents and she could totally have a relationship, but she still has no idea if she can even admit she’s dating someone.

“Mm?” her Dad prompts her to continue. She sighs roughly.

“I don’t know what to expect at home anymore. It’s weird whenever Kami talks to me, or Kari is suddenly saying nice stuff to me, because they’ve literally never done that before and it sounds like they’re lying and trying to trip me up and make me vulnerable and look stupid and dumb like a baby, and you being too nice was the same, and if I say the wrong thing or say something that I’m not actually allowed to do are you going to turn around and be mad at me and say I’m an irresponsible kid or something but I don’t even know what I’m allowed to do anymore,” she rambles, knowing she sounds confused even as she says it. She glances up and watches her Dad nod in acceptance.

“That’s…” he starts, pausing for a moment. She takes a swig of her drink – it’s actually way nicer than regular Coke or Pepsi – and picks up the second taco on her plate of three, figuring she’s about to listen for a while. Probably too long. “It helps me to know that. I don’t think Kami or Kari are faking anything or trying to trip you up, but maybe we need something else so they can be clearer to you that this is them being honestly a bit shocked by how bad everything got and worried about you, but without them just doing more that isn’t comfortable for you. It’s… okay, if you don’t really trust them, because of how they’ve been in the past.”

“It was always Kami and Kari together and I was just their weird little sister and they hated that I even existed,” she adds, between mouthfuls, when he pauses for a moment. She watches her Dad nod.

“They did act like that, but I think they might have grown out of that in the last few years, but I guess that’s all… maybe something you girls need to work out yourselves, not me,” he suggests. She doesn’t disagree, even the idea of her Dad telling her sisters how to treat her is gross and babying, but she knows he isn’t finished talking yet. “As for me, and what you’re allowed to do at home… That is something we can work on, I think, so you know what to expect a bit more. I don’t think I’m… I haven’t really thought about allowing you to do or not do things, since she left, and I guess I kind of see it as… if there’s a reason I don’t want you to do something, then I’ll tell you the reason, and I’d hope you would understand or we could discuss it enough to have some kind of agreement. I do need to be able to say no sometimes, but at your age, you do deserve a reason.”

“You need to actually tell me that, though. I still just… don’t know. Do I have to ask you every time I see anyone? Are you going to tell me I can’t wear certain clothes, or is everything fine now with clothes? Am I gonna be allowed to do co-curriculars next year? Am I allowed to care about art more than maths and science? Am I allowed to date? She hated everything I did and I feel like I have to hide everything I ever do even if I think it’s nothing and it’s fine because I just don’t know,” she pushes, although she lets her voice turn frazzled as she does, and she watches her Dad shake his head.

“I don’t want you to hide things from me. And I know, as a teenager, you just are sometimes. But… I’d prefer if you felt like you didn’t need to. I’m not going to have a problem with your clothes, within reason, but I think you know what reason is already, and it’s probably the same as what your friends are allowed. You can hang out with your friends and whoever, as long as you’re not hanging out with anyone dangerous, but I don’t think you are. Co-curriculars, yes, if you’d like to, although anything that involves travel you just might need to make sure you have someone else you can get a ride with since we only really have one car now unless Kari sorts something out there,” he explains, although she feels her brow furrow in response.

“How am I meant to know what within reason means, or who you think is dangerous, when I think everything from before was unreasonable and Mum would’ve probably said all my friends were dangerous if she knew anything about them, even Hollie since her family went all anti-Mormon?” she prompts. She watches her Dad lean back in his seat, although he remains calm in response.

“O…kay. I guess that’s… fair,” he acknowledges, before pausing again for a moment, seeming to think it through. “How about we say… we start with, if it’s not illegal, if there’s no sex, drugs or alcohol – which are all illegal anyway, you are seventeen – and you’re not hurting anyone, then it’s okay. And, from there, if anything comes up, and I think maybe you shouldn’t be doing it, you won’t get in trouble – we’ll just talk about it. Would that… work? Would that help?”

“I… guess,” she answers, after a moment, before quickly adding with more certainty, “yeah. That’s… easier. Does that mean you wouldn’t get mad if I was dating someone?”

“No, that’s fine, you’re old enough for that. Are you? Shayne?” he asks. It immediately makes Courtney’s heart jump into her throat, but she quickly shakes her head.

“Shayne isn’t like a boy to me. He’s just a friend,” she answers, immediately, although it is no longer remotely true that her heart hasn’t solidly registered that Shayne is in fact a – rather attractive – boy, but she adds, “I am dating someone. Not seriously, just a few dates. Just a guy I used to do track with.”

“That makes sense. And I think it’s good, if you are dating someone, and it’s just… like that. Because that’s… you don’t have to say much, but that’s kind of normal for you and for your friends, isn’t it?” he asks, and slowly, Courtney nods. “Mm, I’m glad things with school and your friends have been normal and good. And if you’d like to do track again this year, or something else, that’d be good too.”

“I’ll probably do track. I miss being active,” she admits, because that’s a lot easier to say. It’s something that, weirdly, she knows she has in common with her Dad – he might be in his fifties, but his job is extremely active and he doesn’t like being cooped up unable to move.

“I think that’s a good one, to give you some time to make sure you’re exercising and being active even if studying gets a bit more intense – it’s good for your brain and your body to be able to find time to keep moving,” he tells her, settling solidly into a much less serious conversation.

She’s happy to accept it, and she lets it happen, trying not to let her voice or her movements turn to awkward as she instead carefully chats with her Dad as they finish their lunch about just little bits and pieces. Exercising. School. His job.

It’s all okay, and she does actually really enjoy the food, but in the end, she’s relieved when he asks her if she wants to text Catherine and see when and where she’d like to pick her up.

“Finishing lunch now. Where would be easiest to pick me up from? I can try and find a bus from near here closer to your place,” Courtney texts, but Catherine is quick to reply.

“I had to drop some documents off at the office downtown I work with sometimes, so I’m only about five minutes away – I can pick you up from there soon, if that’s okay?” she texts, Courtney simply replying that it is.

They finish off their meals, slowly moving to stand awkwardly outside the restaurant for a while as they wait for Catherine. It doesn’t really surprise Courtney that her Dad starts speaking again.

“Thank you for talking to me, Courtney. It doesn’t always need to be this much at once, or at all, and I think it… gives me some things to do, so you know what to expect more. But in return, could you please promise me that you’ll tell me if you feel really bad about anything, or anything happens that feels big? You don’t need to tell me everything, or be completely open with me if you aren’t comfortable with it. But I just don’t want to end up with you really upset about something hiding in your room and me not even knowing,” he tells her. It makes her skin bristle in discomfort all over again, but slowly, she feels herself resign from fighting it.

“Okay,” she answers, mumbled, after a moment, “but that might be never. I’m not gonna tell you if something just feels weird and I already have Shayne to talk to or something.”

“Mhm. Only for… bigger things,” he agrees, Courtney feeling her body almost collapse in relief when she suddenly sees Catherine’s car parking just a few spaces up the street from where they’re standing.

Chapter Text

Courtney opens the front passenger side door of Catherine’s car and slides into the seat without thinking twice, pulling her backpack in with her and placing it on the floor at her feet. She’d said goodbye to her Dad as soon as she saw the car pull up, and Cathy greets her with a smile and asks whether the tacos were as good as everyone says they are. Not how she feels, how the talk with her Dad was, how getting the order finalised in court was. Just the food.

“They were pretty good. And I had a proper Mexican cola too,” she answers, as Cathy shifts the car back into drive and pulls out into the street, “it tasted so much better than Coke and stuff. Not as fake and chemical-y.”

“Ah, those natural ones are always nicer,” she agrees, lightly, “sounds like you had a nice lunch.”

There’s a pause, then, Courtney glancing out the window and watching downtown fade into tree-lined parkways as they head up into the fancier side of town in the west hills. She doesn’t know if her statement was trying to ask her to expand on what the lunch was like – the talking parts, not just the food – or if it’s a simple comment, but Cathy doesn’t immediately say anything else, so she remains in silence for a moment longer.

Courtney has no idea what she’s going to do with the afternoon, and it’s only just on 2pm. What she does know, though, as she sits in silence looking out the window, is that she’s just relieved to be done with her family for the day. Or at least, until she gets home later and has to deal with whatever Kari does in their room tonight. She knows something about being alone in Catherine’s car and going to Shayne’s house without him should feel weird, but it just doesn’t.

“Honey, if you want to talk at all about today, or anything - now, or any time later - I’m happy to listen and help with anything I can. But if you just want to have a quiet afternoon, or not think about it all, that’s okay too,” Cathy breaks the silence after a few minutes, Courtney nodding lightly in response. Something about the calmness and openness of it makes it feel like she can just say… a little. Get it out of her head, without having to dig any deeper.

“It’s relieving that the order is there now and she can’t come near me. But Dad wanted to talk a lot at lunch and he pushed me to talk about stuff I didn’t really want to and keeps kind of implying I’m hiding stuff that I’m not and I guess I should talk to him sometimes but I’m just… done with talking for now,” she answers, Shayne’s mum giving a murmur of acknowledgment as she does.

“Of course, Courtney. You can do whatever you’d like this afternoon, I know Shayne left a couple of the games you like out- or anything you want to watch, you know what we have,” she tells her, before quickly adding, “oh, and Shayne said no problem if you want to hang out in his room to have a bit more private space. We really need to go furniture shopping, get that spare room set up…”

“Has Brian sorted out moving yet?” she asks, the thought popping up in her mind. He wasn’t there at the movie night earlier in the week, but she saw him at the house once the week before.

“He thinks he might finally have done it- or, well, Madison thinks she’s finally got everything sorted with her roommate, I think the plan now is that the roommate is leaving and Brian will move in next month,” she answers, “we don’t mind any of our kids at our house - but this has been a messy process for them and I know Brian just wants to get out on his own, or at least with his partner instead of his parents.”

“It’s felt like that since I first met him when he first kinda moved out here,” Courtney agrees, before feeling herself grumble, “I wish my older brother would decide to move out. So does Dad, I think.”

“KC?” she prompts, “still causing problems?”

“Yeah. About mum and stuff. But he’s just really sexist and he’s constantly saying stuff in front of my younger brothers and Dad or Kari have to step in and say it isn’t true and then it becomes a whole argument…” She trails off, sighing.

“Mmm, that’s difficult. I hope he finds a reason to get out and give you all a bit more space,” Cathy agrees, “does he have a partner?”

“Not that we know of. Kari always says she hopes he doesn’t because she’d feel sorry for whoever it is… but maybe that would at least give him a reason to move out,” she answers, shrugging, before their conversation falls back into a natural silence and Courtney glances back out the window.

She feels a little bit of the weirdness creep through her nerves when they arrive back at the Topp’s house and she steps into the hallway through the garage door, not immediately sure where to go next. It’s not uncommon for her to decide what they do, but she almost always follows Shayne to wherever it is in the house that will be. She doesn’t lead.

She starts, abruptly, by turning and walking into the kitchen to get a glass of water, giving herself time to think. She doesn’t really want to just sit in silence and let her mind wander, she doesn’t really want to talk more…

It doesn’t take as long as she’d like to pick a glass out of the cupboard and the jug of water from the fridge, and Courtney slowly wanders over to the living room after she does, trying not to give in to the awkwardness pushing at the corners of her mind. Cathy had turned straight towards the front of the house holding a stack of papers she evidently needed in her office, but Courtney can hear her footsteps coming back up the hall.

“I won’t bug you, or anything like that Courtney, I’m just going to be in my office. But if you do want to talk, or even just chat about anything else, that’s okay too – I don’t have anything urgent to do,” Catherine tells her, with a smile, “Robert won’t be home until later this evening, he’s got a long day at work, and Shayne will probably be back… in about an hour and a half, I think. Ah, for once it’s a girls house for a little while!”

The statement at the end makes Courtney laugh slightly, nodding. The quietness of such a large house with only two people in it felt unnerving, but suddenly, it’s… peaceful. Calm. Courtney lets herself look away from Cathy, glancing back to the coffee table in front of the sofa and immediately seeing Shayne’s Switch sitting there, instead of up in his room.

“I think I might just play something on the Switch, for now at least,” Courtney answers, Catherine nodding.

“Of course – have fun! Like I said, I’ll just be in the office,” she confirms lightly, before turning and wandering back up the hallway and away from the living room.

Courtney has never played a Switch alone before, only co-op or competitive with Shayne and his friends, but she soon finds herself drawn into a game and letting everything else slip out of her mind. She leans comfortably across half the 3-seater living room sofa, head leant on the cushion near the arm and knees tucked up under her. The room is quiet except for the noise of the game and slight clicking as she presses buttons on the controller, but it feels okay. It feels like she can just forget the rest of the world exists, for a while, so she does.

She doesn’t pay much attention to the passage of time, comfortable to just play as long as it is until Shayne gets home from work. It doesn’t feel like it’s quite long enough later for him to be home, though, that she hears the front door opening from down the hallway. Has she really been that engrossed in the game?

“Hey Courtney, what’s up?” Brian greets her, as he continues up the hallway. It makes her glance up towards him, watching him head straight for the kitchen fridge to grab something. Okay, it hasn’t been that long.

“Hey. Just playing Switch,” she replies, a little evasively, although she tries not to sound awkward. It is still Brian’s house, and she has no idea if his parents told him she’d be here even before Shayne got home today and if they did, did they say why, and-

“Cool,” he answers, simply, pausing as he turns to grab a glass out of the cupboard and fill it with water, although he glances back towards her afterwards, “Madison was asking if you might be here for dinner sometime that she could come over and meet you- I told her a while ago that you do some art and sketching and stuff, she wants to see what kinda stuff you draw. She only does digital these days, her traineeship at the advertising agency is graphic design, but she used to draw a heap too.”

“Brian! Don’t bug Courtney too much,” Cathy’s voice comes up the hallway, suddenly, although it’s light and her eyes simply look curious as she pokes her head into the living space, from just inside the hallway.

“Oh, sorry-” Brian starts.

“It’s fine,” Courtney replies, carefully cutting him off, “I dunno why I’ve still never met Madison. I guess it’s not always predictable when I’m here…”

“Ah well. Sometime, hopefully,” Brian replies, shrugging, “I gotta go call my bank about some credit shit. Enjoy your game!”

He wanders out of the room and upstairs, at that, as Cathy seems to go straight back to her office and Courtney glances back to her game. It was a while ago now that Madison did go to the Topp’s house to meet Catherine and Robert – at the old house – and it’s not like she’s tried to avoid her, or anything, she just hasn’t been around when Courtney is. And she figures she probably will sometime if she’s here a lot again, but she lets the conversation slip back out of her mind as she instead returns to playing the game.

Her next distraction from the game is Shayne returning home from work and happily greeting her when he enters the living room, and this time, she saves and quits and sets the switch back on the coffee table as she wanders over to lean against the kitchen bench while Shayne settles back out of work mode. He immediately reaches for a red bull, Courtney narrowing her eyes judgementally at him when he does. It’s like, 4pm, but when he rolls his eyes at her and grumbles about her probably telling on him, he does so with a joking tone that just makes her laugh at him in response.

“How has today been?” he asks her, a moment later, Courtney immediately hearing the carefulness behind his choice of words. She lets her face settle as she sighs softly, trying to piece together a response in her head.

“Here has been… nice. Just quiet. Just played a bunch of the Zelda game you showed me the other week,” she starts, tilting her head side to side for a moment. She doesn’t want to go into it in depth, but… “Court was weird. The actual appointment was fine, I guess, it’s all done, and it’s… relieving. But the actual building was strange, and Cody was there I guess because he did do something and tried to like make fun of me or something but got told off by his Mum and I don’t wanna think about whether he’s going to go and tell Johnny and all those awful people he saw me there, and I had lunch with Dad at the taco place in that part of downtown and it was awkward and he keeps getting on my case about talking to him more. But the tacos were good.”

“Ugh, that sucks that Cody was there,” Shayne replies, immediately, scrunching up his face. It gives her something to reply to.

“His Mum said something about an underage DUI…”

“Like, underage drinking AND driving drunk? Damn. That’s… not good,” he answers, raising an eyebrow. Courtney nods. She did not know what DUI meant, but she guesses it must be that.

“His Mum muttered something about him being kicked out of the school. I haven’t seen him much forever but I wouldn’t hate that,” she replies, letting herself give a wry smile, Shayne laughing lightly in response.

“I’ve seen him a few times, had a class next to where he had one last semester – he was always trying to be all tough guy glaring at me and whatever. So weird,” he shakes his head, before softening his voice, “if you wanna talk about any of the stuff about the restraining order, or your Dad or anything, we can. But I get the vibe you don’t?”

“Not… really. I just wanna hang out,” she admits, Shayne grinning in response.

“All good. Anything in particular?”

“I think Brian is in his room on the phone with a bank, so maybe not upstairs. I haven’t seen the last episode of the Loki series, have you?” she asks, Shayne immediately shaking his head and wandering over to the TV to pull up Netflix.

It was already after 4pm by the time Shayne got home, and after they chat for a while, watch the episode and play a couple of rounds of a game on the PS5, Catherine is wandering out into the kitchen and telling them she’ll start making dinner. It makes Courtney abruptly scramble to her phone to confirm with her Dad that she is staying here for dinner, although he simply answers with an “I thought you would” that makes her skin crawl just a little bit at his forced attempt to seem like he understands her, as she stuffs her phone away again.

She and Shayne head upstairs to his room while Catherine makes dinner – she refused their help, Brian is back downstairs helping anyway, and Courtney has had enough playing games for the day – and they quickly end up sitting in his room talking about bits and pieces of nothing. The show, his day at work, how they feel about there only being two weeks of summer vacation left.

Shayne’s phone buzzes almost on cue when he’s complaining about how he hasn’t actually got to do much summer stuff this year since the weather has been weird, Courtney feeling her own vibrate in her pocket. She doesn’t pull hers out, although he quickly glances over to his.

“Oh, guess Ethan’s on the same wavelength,” he comments, and it makes Courtney reach for her own phone to see it is in fact a message from Ethan in the group chat.

“Guys!! I wanna go to the pool next Wednesday, they’re doing a midweek special on those like individual spaces you can book with the square umbrellas and tables and whatever, it’s only $60 to book one for a whole day and we could totally split that… who’s in???” his message reads.

“It’s called a cabana, dumbass,” Zach replies, immediately, before adding, “but I’m in!”

“HELL YES,” Alicia’s reply comes at almost the same time as his, Max and Evie also responding that they’ll go, although Courtney glances up as Shayne grumbles in response.

“Ugh. I have work, that sounds fun,” he mutters, out loud, Courtney humming lightly in sympathy as she watches him type roughly the same thing into the chat.

“I wonder if my Dad would let me go,” she mumbles, out loud, as her mind jumps back to the conversation at the taqueria earlier. Nothing illegal. And he thinks her hanging out with her friends is good. And getting outside and being active. So… “I think he might?”

“You should go, it’ll be super fun. The others would definitely like you to be there,” Shayne comments, lightly, almost reassuringly. She glances up and gives him a smile, before turning back to her phone.

“I’m in (will have to ask my Dad. But I think it would be fine),” she sends.

“Yeeeeah everyone’s in! (except boring but financially responsible Shayne working all summer)” Alicia replies, Courtney instinctively laughing when Shayne grumbles out loud again in response.

“I’m not even working that much,” he replies, in the chat, Courtney quickly glancing around the room for a moment and hovering her thumb over the screen. She knows exactly what she wants to say to make fun of him, especially as he pouts in overstated grumpiness sitting on the edge of his bed across from where she’s sat in his desk chair, but she doesn’t know if it’s too…

His friends know she spends a heap of time at his place, though. Right? They won’t be weird.

“He works so much I literally got to his house like two hours before he did today,” she sends, quickly, Shayne giving her an indignant ‘hey!’ in response both out loud and again typed into the chat. She simply laughs, until he is too.

Catherine does ask her if she’d like to stay tonight – she tells her they can make something work – after dinner, but carefully, Courtney shakes her head.

“I think I’m okay to go home tonight,” she replies, simply, mentally settling with the idea. She still feels weird about her Dad, but deep down, she knows she can hide in her room away from KC and her younger brothers and her Dad, and Kari is… she’s trying to be helpful, and if she asks her to leave her alone, she will.

Chapter Text

The night after her appointment at the court ends up being quiet in a way that Courtney is more than comfortable with. KC is already in his room being grumpy, her Dad has brought some scheduling thing or another home from work to continue looking at, her younger brothers are glued to some dumb TV show and Kari is out at work.

It gives her a rare hour-or-so in her room alone, and she finds herself suddenly driven to reorganise her closet. She’s been moving bits and pieces of it between houses and bags for a while, now, and it’s a disorganised mess. And maybe she can stop hiding anything, start wearing what she wants to without second-guessing whether she’ll be yelled at trying to leave the house in it.

She tidies her tees back into neat piles in the pull-out drawers still covered in stupid stickers she stuck all over them as a kid, and her nicer shirts, dresses, skirts and jackets onto the two rails across half of the closet space. She finds space to collect all her makeup from the bathroom drawers and her bedside table, too, organising it – a little bit, it’s hard to organise different-sized palettes – into one of the drawers.

The last drawer at the bottom of her cupboard she goes to last because she knows it won’t need much organising. Her sports and athletic clothes, for some reason, her mother had never attacked – maybe because they were crappy old clothes, and even her track shorts managed to be baggier and longer than she liked. Her couple of bathing suits are shoved in the top of the drawer too, though, and when she pulls them out, she feels herself pause as she thinks back to the plans made earlier when she was still at Shayne’s.

She’s been to pools with Shayne’s friends other summers and just worn a one-piece swimsuit like she’s always been told she has to wear swimming, and it was fine. It was still a kinda nice, patterned one-piece, and those were kinda in fashion more than bikinis that year anyway. But, on a whim last time she’d gone shopping with her friends, she’d bought a bikini.

It’s not tiny – because bikinis aren’t right now, they’re high-waisted and padded and cover a bit more of everything – and it certainly wasn’t an expensive one, but it’s a bikini. She’s never been allowed to wear one before, to her continued annoyance when she’d more frequently had pool parties at Yasmin’s house before Yasmin started spending all of every summer in Europe after middle school, and had been constantly made fun of for it.

She bought it. It’s a cute pattern – geometric, in pinks and lilacs with a subtle gold glittery line throughout making it look cartoonishly 3D – and her Dad had said anything that her friends would be allowed to wear would probably be fine for her, too. It’s probably twice as modest as some of the bikinis her friends have been allowed to wear for years. She should wear it, right?

The pool hangout is still a few days away, though, and she pushes that decision to the side as she carefully re-folds her crappy old yoga pants back into the drawer.

————————————————

The weekend and the start of the next week are just… boring. Courtney has another babysitting job on Sunday night, but it’s with a kid she’s met before who is mostly well-behaved so it’s fine. She spends half of Tuesday hanging out with Shayne at his place just playing PS5, and otherwise, she just hangs around at home, pulling out her sketchpad to spend much of the time drawing after Brian’s comment about Madison had quietly reminded her she misses it. And it is almost back to school time, and she did have summer homework to prepare for some of her classes, so she does at least some of that too.

When Wednesday morning comes, she isn’t really thinking about what to wear to the pool – she’s just excited. Her Dad is on shift and her younger brothers were sleeping over at a friend’s place or something, and Kari is doing whatever downstairs as Courtney spends the first half of the morning lying half-on her bed sketching away at a half-finished drawing she started the day before after getting back from Shayne’s, trying to pretend she isn’t hurting her neck lying awkwardly to see the paper.

She packs a few bits and pieces in her backpack as the morning carries on – sunscreen because she knows she’s way too pale not to do that, towel, the usual pool things – but she puts on her bikini at home, throwing a tee and shorts back on over the top. Mansfield’s public pool is nice enough, as far as public pools go, but the changerooms are still gross and she refuses to actually get changed there.

The pool is a little way out from the centre of town in a random suburb, but Evie has her full driver’s license and Courtney meets Zach and Max at the bus station in the middle of town to get a lift with her to the pool itself. It’s literally a perfect day for being at a pool, warm and sunny with a disgustingly stereotypical cloudless California sky, and she feels herself buzzing internally with happiness as she jokes and laughs with the others when they all climb into Evie’s car.

It's not like Courtney hangs out without Shayne’s friends without him very often – Alicia, maybe, but the others she could probably count the times she has on one hand – but it still just feels… easy. For all of the trip from the bus station to the pool, Max and Zach simply grill Evie about her very quickly-approaching departure from Mansfield to move to college in San Francisco as she reluctantly answers all of their questions.

Ethan had ended up booking their spot at the pool, and when they arrive he’s waiting with Alicia already, loudly and happily greeting everyone before quickly asking for the $10 everyone owes him for the booking. This one is easy, even for Courtney – she can do $10. She got $70 the other night from baby sitting, $10 for basically a whole day hanging out with her friends with access to a pool and their own private space to dump their things and hang out is nothing.

There’s nothing particularly fancy about the Mansfield pool’s cabanas, as Zach had called them. They’re nothing on the fancy tables and booths with individual white rooves over them and fabric privacy curtains and lush cushions all over Instagram from exclusive pools in LA. But they do have a table surrounded by benches with enough space for all six of them all under the shade of an almost electric-blue square canopy, and there’s a plastic sign sitting on the table with Ethan’s name on it.

They all pick out spots around the table without much attention paid – although Courtney does make a point of putting her things down beside Alicia’s – and, to probably no one’s surprise, Max and Ethan immediately start pulling off their shirts and loudly declaring a race to get in the pool first (without running or doing anything that will get them told off by the random college-aged guy sitting up in the lifeguard chair near the shallow kids’ end of the pool looking bored).

Evie is the only one of them that hasn’t changed before coming to the pool, and she quickly turns back towards the block of changing rooms over near where they had wandered in from. Alicia, for her part, is humming in consideration about what she’ll do first, Zach hanging beside her. It’s something that inwardly reminds Courtney of how everyone usually teases them, although Shayne the most, and she feels just a touch awkward like she’s third-wheeling them, but she doesn’t feel quite so confident to pull out the teasing in Shayne’s absence. And also, she’s trying to work out what she wants to do first.

“Screw it, we’re at a pool,” Alicia decides, out loud, quickly starting to shimmy out of her own shirt and shorts evidently thrown on over her bathing suit. Courtney shrugs absent-mindedly, figuring she should do the same. She bets Zach will follow Alicia into the pool, and even if Evie stays out, she doesn’t feel like she knows her well enough to sit alone with her back at the table with everyone else in the pool. And, like Alicia said… it’s a pool.

Courtney pulls off her own shirt and shorts without thinking much of it. She’s done this a million times at pools back when she used to go with her family all the time, it’s not like she’s undressing, it’s more like… removing a jacket, or something.

She steps out of the shade into the sun just a little as she balls up her clothes to tuck back inside her bag, feeling the warmth of the sun immediately beating against her bare skin. She revels in the warm – it’s such a perfect day – until her mind ticks over, and suddenly, she feels her stomach turning as she becomes blatantly aware of the sun against her lower back and her stomach.

She glances around, quickly, to see Zach already halfway to the pool to join the other boys. Alicia is standing at the table – maybe waiting for her, she doesn’t know – and Evie is still nowhere to be seen. She shivers lightly.

“Coming, Court?” Alicia asks, her voice bright and unassuming.

“Uh, yeah- uh, sure,” she stutters out, in response, forcing herself to release her tight grip on the edge of her bag. She hadn’t even realised she was still holding it.

She hears the loud sounds of a mother telling a child not to run from the other end of the pool, Courtney flinching violently as she does and instinctively crossing her arms over her stomach. Come on. It’s fine. It’s fine.

“You good?” Alicia asks, glancing back to her. Courtney forces herself to look at Alicia’s swimsuit, for a second. She’s wearing a bikini basically the same style as Courtney’s. It’s fine. It’s normal. No one is yelling at her.

“Yeah,” Courtney pushes out an answer, as she forces herself to keep walking forward and sit down onto the edge of the pool to slide in.

Evie joins them a few minutes later, jumping straight into the middle of the group leisurely moving around in the water and sending splashing waves over Alicia and Max in particular, who both cry out indignantly before bursting into laughter. Courtney tries to get into the way it immediately sends the other five into joking and laughing with each other, too, but she forces her smile and finds herself instinctively craning her neck around the pool deck. She swears she sees her Mum, but it’s not her, and then she swears she sees Hollie, and then a woman from her Mum’s church, and-

“Hey, lunch soon? I’m hungry,” Zach suggests, probably forty-five minutes after they get in the pool. Courtney feels like she’d shaken off some of her funk in the last fifteen minutes or so, maybe – she wants to be here, to have fun with the others, and she tries desperately to shut her brain down so she can do that – and she happily joins in with the others agreeing. She didn’t really eat breakfast, and something about being at a pool always makes her hungry.

Zach and Evie jump out first to go and order food from the small shop set up near the changerooms, Courtney following the others clambering out of the pool and back over to their table. The water in the pool is kinda cool, and the slightest breeze in the air pricks against her skin and makes her shiver in cold as she pulls herself out to sit back up on the edge. Alicia squeals at the cold as she gets out beside her, Courtney laughing with Max and Ethan in response.

“Put a shirt on, for God’s sake!” she hears a woman’s voice calling. It’s distant, but she immediately feels her head swivel violently towards where it came from, watching a woman chasing a toddler. She shakes her head as if to dislodge her response, but she feels her movements grow hurried as she twists to stand up and move back across the hot pavement to wrench her towel out of her bag and wrap it around herself.

The towel stops the dumb shit in her head as she wraps it just under her armpits and tucks the corner in so it stays while she sits down at the table – just like all the others do – to eat lunch. They’d all brought bits and pieces of snacks, and Zach and Evie return from the little café-shop-thing with a mountain of fries in a cardboard box, a bottle of Sprite and six plastic cups.

“I haaaate the single-use plastic but they won’t do anything else by the pool because glass is dangerous or whatever,” Zach complains, grumpily, as he divides the cups out and roughly shuffles them towards everyone.

The easiness of just sitting and talking with Shayne’s friends settles back over Courtney all through lunch. She doesn’t think twice about grabbing bits and pieces of food because the others are all doing exactly the same. She doesn’t think twice about joining in with Max and Ethan to make fun of Evie’s complete avoidance of even thinking about packing up to move to San Francisco even though she’s going in 3 weeks, or talking in depth with Zach about the Loki season finale.

And, after lunch, when Alicia spies three free sun lounges beside each other just in front of their table, Courtney enthusiastically agrees with the idea of lying out on one beside her – and Evie – in the sun, while the boys all race back to the pool. She’s starting to feel like she’s wasting the niceness of the day, just staying in the shade wrapped in an uncomfortably wet towel.

“Didn’t your parents ever tell you not to swim so soon after eating? You’ll all get cramps and just like, drown,” Evie jokes, but the boys wave her off as they dump their towels over their bags and head back for the water, while the three girls take their time getting up from the table, reapplying sunscreen.

“Should we like, move their towels into the sun so they don’t end up damp and making all their stuff wet too?” Alicia asks, raising an eyebrow as she glances around at them.

“Nah. Their fault,” Evie answers, simply, Courtney instinctively humming conspiratorially in agreement as she unhooks her towel so it’s simply hanging over her shoulders as they move to the lounges.

She takes the one on the edge, laying out her towel – and internally reminding herself she should look into buying a better beach towel, since this one that was probably Kathryn’s at one point is thin and old and not super comfortable anymore – on the lounge and half lying onto it, body twisted sideways to continue talking with the two girls to her left.

The sun beats warmly against her skin, against the top of her hip, back of her legs and small of her back. She starts feeling like someone is watching her from behind, though, rapidly glancing back after a few minutes to look. There’s no one there, everyone engaged with their own friends and families and activities. She shakes her head lightly to try and stop it.

It happens at least another 5 times, slowly dragging her further and further from conversation with the other two each time as she feels like she’s under a spotlight, the sun reflecting violently off her pale ribs and stomach and sides. Evie decides to head back under the shade, after a while, saying she needs to send an email or something on her phone about college stuff, Courtney forcing herself to roll to lie fully on her back as Alicia does the same beside her.

They lie beside each other in silence for five minutes, Courtney feeling more and more uneasy with every minute that passes. She almost jumps out of her skin when Alicia speaks.

“Why do you keep getting nervous today? Is something making you uncomfortable?” she asks, her voice kind more than annoyed.

“I’m not-” Courtney starts, instinctively, before realising she literally jumped at Alicia just… talking. That’s a bad lie. She lets herself audibly huff in embarrassment, knowing it says enough.

“If one of us is doing something you aren’t comfortable with, you can totally tell us, Court. We won’t get upset or anything. We want you to have fun hanging out with us like usual, and you seemed totally fine at lunch and stuff, but I just noticed… when we first went to the pool, and in the pool, and now,” Alicia adds, Courtney scrunching up her face in response.

Whatever. It’s not like Alicia doesn’t vaguely know about all the shit.

“I feel weird wearing a bikini,” she answers, carefully, before feeling herself start rambling almost without thinking, “and I also don’t because I wanted to and I like this and I want to get a better tan but I keep feeling like people are watching me or my Mum or Hollie or someone from the church is going to jump out and start screaming at me for it because I’m doing the wrong thing but it’s not anything wrong because it’s normal and everyone is wearing bikinis but what if someone-”

“If you’re more comfortable in a one-piece, that’s totally cool too, though. There’s heaps of really good-looking swimwear with more coverage around these days,” she answers, almost encouraging, when Courtney cuts herself off. She shakes her head lightly, carefully twisting it to the side to glance over at Alicia.

“I don’t want to, though. I want to wear this. I actually like… feel good in it when I’m not thinking about it. But I don’t want to feel like someone is going to appear and scream at me for it,” she responds, feeling her voice almost descend into a mumble. Alicia frowns sympathetically.

“I’m sorry you feel like that. It’s… no one is going to do that, but I get why your brain might tell you that could happen,” she replies, a little hesitantly. She pauses, as if trying to work out what to say. “Is there anything I could do to help? Or any of us?”

“I don’t know,” she answers, awkwardly, before resigning her voice, “distraction, to some extent, maybe. I was okay after a while in the pool. Or with the towel around me. But I don’t want to have to hide under a towel, it’s nice lying out here. I don’t know how to make my brain shut up. Maybe I need to-”

She cuts herself off midway through the sentence, as if trying to stop it happening. She’d kind of had the thread of it all sitting in the back of her mind the last little while, and she’d picked up and read over the piece of paper from Shayne that had been sitting in the top drawer of her bedside table ever since he’d given it to her, as if reading it again would tell her it’s a bad idea and to stop thinking about it, what feels like fifty times. But maybe… maybe he was right.

“Hm?” Alicia prompts, cutting into her internal monologue.

“I should probably see a therapist,” she adds, trying to sound casual even as her heart races, “but for now I’m just going to deal with it. I want to lie in the sun.”

“Might help get your Mum out of your head,” Alicia answers, simply, before lightening her voice, “and yes, this is nice. Also, you look hot in that bikini. You totally have a right to feel good in it.”

“I like how it sits on me,” she admits, lightly, before glancing back upwards to lie flat on the lounger. The conversation shuts the worry in her head up, at least for a little while, although when they get back in the pool later, she finds herself glancing around in panic every few minutes again.

She’s going to call one of the psychologists’ numbers next time she’s home alone.

Chapter Text

It’s Friday night before she has a chance to even think about the psychologists again. Some fire has started and it’s threatening a town over near the coast, and it means her Dad is suddenly travelling off away from Mansfield for at least a few days, hurriedly asking Kari if she can please try and keep everything okay at home. Kari grumbles, a little, but she steps up, Courtney quietly doing the same. At least Kari finally got a driving permit literally three days ago so she can go out to the store to get food in their Dad’s car instead of having to take the bus.

Not that KC doesn’t also have a car here, but he seems to barely be home, too.

Her Dad is very much still away Friday night – he will be until at least Tuesday – but KC is out, Kari is working, and Kari convinced Clarke and Conrad to think it was their idea to have a sleepover with Elijah down the street, even though she’d reached out to Elijah’s Mum with the idea first.

As much as the house is silent and empty, Courtney trudges upstairs with the bowl of ramen she’d slightly jazzed up from a pack of instant ramen as soon as she finishes making it. She doesn’t want to sit out in the living room constantly wondering if KC or someone is going to turn up and yell at her to get out of the space. She just has to be in her own space, kind of, that isn’t entirely hers anyway.

She sighs as she sits down on the bed. The house is literally empty but she felt like she had to sneak around downstairs and like she was doing something wrong by using the things in the kitchen, like she wasn’t allowed because none of it was hers. And her bed is absolutely not the right place to eat ramen, but it’s all she felt like she could make because she knows her Dad does kinda buy that flavour of ramen for her-

It has Courtney’s mind jumping back to the pool, and then quickly back to that night Shayne had turned up at the park. She doesn’t want to feel like everything is weird and wrong and she doesn’t know what to do and what she’ll get yelled at for and who might be trying to spy on her for her Mum. And maybe her Dad might not be yelling at her about things and he did a load of washing on Wednesday night before heading out towards the coast and he had to have seen her bikini and known she wore it that day and he said nothing about it, but she still just- she still…

Courtney absently pulls her bedside table drawer open again to fish out the piece of paper sitting on top, in handwriting that she hadn’t recognised but she guesses is the psychologist Shayne works for. She sets her bowl of ramen down on top of the dresser, unfolding the paper and glancing over the list again. The psychologist – Robin, Shayne had called her – has put an asterisk beside two in green highlighter, and Courtney sets the paper back down beside her bowl as she reaches for her phone and googles the two phone numbers.

Kari returns early Saturday morning – very early – and it means that when Courtney wakes up a bit later in the morning, she has to silently grab a change of clothes and shuffle out of the room and downstairs instead of staying up in her room. She slowly moves through getting a bowl of cereal for breakfast and eating it standing in the living room with her shoulders clenched as she looks towards the front door, and forcing the half-working lock on the downstairs bathroom door closed before she showers.

It's after 9am by the time she gets out of the shower, and she pulls out the slip of paper and her phone that she’d grabbed before she left her bedroom and sat underneath her pyjamas while she showered to protect them from the steam in the bathroom. Her googling the previous night had her quickly feeling drawn to one of the psychologists over the other, and it had told her they were open Saturday morning.

…But she knows she can hear things from this bathroom upstairs, sometimes, and slowly Courtney steps out of the bathroom and across the hall into the laundry, instead. If she can’t even hear the awful old noisy washing machine upstairs, Kari won’t hear her making a phone call down here.

“Hi, Jessica Rowan Independent Psychology, Jessica speaking. How can I help you?” a woman answers the phone, Courtney immediately feeling words drop out of her mind. She should have rehearsed this.

“I, uh- Hi, I- my friend works for a psychologist named Robin and Robin recommended you as someone I could go to or something and I-” she cuts herself off, a little awkwardly.

“Ah! Yes, yes, Robin called me a few weeks ago about something like that- what’s your name?” she asks, her voice kind even as Courtney’s phone crackles and she instinctively pulls it away from her ear in discomfort.

“Um, Courtney,” she replies, hesitating for a moment. But she is a psychologist, so… “I don’t really know what to do, I’ve never booked an appointment for myself or any medical thing before.”

“No worries at all, Courtney. How old are you?” she asks.

“Seventeen,” she replies, simply.

“Okay, no worries, so since you’re over sixteen I don’t need to ask to speak to a parent, or anything like that, you can book by yourself if you’d prefer that. Now, if you’d like, I could book in a time now for an initial appointment?” she offers, before quickly continuing, “the initial appointment is a bit of getting to know you, and what you might like to talk to me about or want help with, and I can explain a bit more about what I do if you haven’t done therapy before – unless you have?”

“I haven’t,” she answers, knowing her voice turns reluctant in response, but Jessica hums lightly.

“Sure, well I can definitely give you a bit more info in that initial appointment – if you like, I could also email you some basic things beforehand?” she pauses, seemingly mid thought.

“Yeah, that would be… nice,” Courtney replies, rocking back on her heels and fiddling with the edge of her shorts’ pocket with her spare hand.

“Okay, I’ll find a time for that appointment for you then… you’re still in high school, are you? I know school goes back soon, I probably won’t have anything for a couple of weeks unfortunately, but if you know your schedule I can try and book when you have a free period or if there’s a day you would like to do after school, or a Saturday morning…”

It takes another few minutes, to find a time – on a Thursday after school, because she’s pretty sure track practice won’t be on Thursdays and her Dad usually works late then anyway so she can just take the bus to the psychologist’s office instead of straight home – but after she does, and after Jessica quietly confirms that because she’s a minor attending independently she will work out payment later so it will work okay for her, Courtney hangs up and slowly lets it settle in her mind.

She’s booked the appointment. And Jessica usually has a receptionist, apparently, but was doing it herself this morning, and she sounded… nice. And she’s going to send over some information so maybe she’ll know what to expect before the appointment too.

Courtney glances out the small window in the laundry door absently. It looks nice outside, and she knows Kari will still be sound asleep (it was literally 3:40am when she got home and woke Courtney up in the process of getting into bed), and slowly Courtney turns and wanders towards the front door so she can go out, just for a walk, just to get out of the house, before the morning sun becomes too hot.

————————————————

Courtney’s technically been on four dates with Thomas, now, and when he texts her early the next week and asks if she’s free on Wednesday night for a fifth, she doesn’t immediately know what to say. It’s not like she doesn’t want to see him – they are texting each other back and forth a bit, and he’s a nice enough person to talk to and he’s got progressively less visibly nervous about their dates – but she’s not excited about the prospect, either. They’ve been on four dates, and they’ve been fine, and she really should be getting back into dating.

But they’ve still barely kissed, and he doesn’t seem to know how to hold her hand without awkwardly smashing her fingers against each other, and she doesn’t feel like she can actually name any interests they have in common other than track. But maybe that will be more relevant once school is back and track is happening again?

“Sure, what do you want to do?” she asks, raising an eyebrow to herself in expectation. He said night, so… dinner? Maybe?

“I’ve heard good things about the new Japanese place near the mall, and maybe we could get ice cream after if it’s warm?” he suggests. Just as she thought, although she’s also heard good things about the Japanese place, so she’s not going to complain about that. Apparently they have proper sushi like you’d get in LA or something and that’s gotta be better than the stuff she gets with her friends in the mall food course.

“I’ve heard it’s good too, awesome!” she replies, forcing herself to finish working out the dumb logistics of where they’ll meet and when – was that always so hard with the other boys she’s dated? – before she flicks over to read the message she got from Shayne while she was organising it.

“Hey. Come over Thursday? I refuse to spend the last few days of Summer studying,” his message reads, Courtney laughing under her breath in response, although she totally agrees. She’d done a bit the last couple of days while she stuck around the house with her Dad still off near the coast somewhere, but she was over summer reading.

Her Dad is back late Tuesday night, and when she tells him Wednesday afternoon that she’s going out that night, he simply nods.

“With your boyfriend?” he asks, although there’s no expectation or teasing or anything. It’s just a question.

“Yeah,” she replies, shrugging it off, simply rolling her eyes when Kari appears and starts to make a big deal about it all.

She meets Thomas near the bus station, because this time, they both got the bus from their respective neighbourhoods to the city bus station – he does live in the like, weird new bit of town up north ages away from anything, so – and then wanders beside him towards the restaurant. He asks how her holiday has been going, and she talks vaguely about going out with Shayne’s friends, and how much annoying summer homework and reading she had. He talks about hanging out with his friends – apparently they went dirt biking up in the national park outside Mansfield and camped for a couple of days, which sounds cool other than the camping, but her parents wouldn’t let her keep biking in the forests after she was like 8 because it wasn’t girly enough – and he mentions that Connor is kind of annoyed Natalie hasn’t been on another date with him since she got back to Mansfield.

“She did only get back like, two days ago, but I guess she was away a while,” Courtney answers, shrugging lightly as she does. Natalie and Isabel were both back in town, but they’ve only kinda talked here and there and there isn’t time for them to all hang out before back to school. She knows all the stories about how great their summers were will come after school starts back.

There’s no awkward silences through their dinner date, and Courtney finds – like every time – it a bit easier to hold a conversation with him than the last time she saw him. She loves the food, and she does like that he tells her he’s paying and suggests she should choose food for them to share, because it’s that kind of place. Not that he disagrees with her choice of getting the tempura platter and the maki rolls platter – he wanted the same. So maybe they have some food preferences in common, too?

Thomas reaches out and takes her hand when they step out of the restaurant. He doesn’t squeeze quite so uncomfortably, this time, nor is his hand clammy like it sometimes is, and he seems to pause just outside as if he doesn’t want to end the date yet.

Maybe he is doing better. Maybe she did just need to give him time? This date has actually been kinda nice, so far, even if it wasn’t super creative. He’s trying.

“That was amazing but your idea of getting ice cream sounds good too,” she speaks up, after a moment, glancing over at him. It’s not entirely a lie – it’s still light out, the sun isn’t setting until like 9pm at the moment, it’s warm and there’s heaps of people just wandering around this area of the city full of restaurants and cafes and stuff – and she watches him grin in response.

“I like the way you think. D’you like gelato? That new place with the fancy pastel green walls sounds awesome, if you do,” he suggests, Courtney simply nodding in response and letting him lead her up the street and around one corner. There’s a line out the door, but they chat aimlessly as they wait, and when they order the – kinda overpriced, but she steps forward and pays for both of them anyway – gelato she is immediately okay with the wait and the line. She gets it. It’s very good gelato.

They don’t hold hands as they walk back vaguely in the direction of the bus station, this time – they are both holding cones of gelato, after all – but instead of heading straight to the bus station, this time, Thomas slows them to a pause in the nice area of the park just behind it, just as they both finish their gelato. He quickly turns to face her, gently reaching to take both of her hands in his and stepping closer to her.

He normally still asks if he can kiss her out loud, but this time, he doesn’t vocalise it – he does still pause some distance away from her, and then again as his face is almost touching hers, to give her a chance to pull back. She tries to appreciate it, to remember he’s just trying to be respectful and nice, but she’s relieved when he finally presses his lips against hers.

He kisses her with a much greater strength and intensity than he has before, without being overbearing. She couldn’t fault the kiss in any way, and when he carefully parts her lips to progress the kiss even further, he does it gently and she’s honestly kinda relieved he’s finally gone for making out. Except, as long as they kiss, her mind doesn’t shut up. She doesn’t feel herself sinking into it literally or metaphorically, even as she willingly kisses him back. Why isn’t her brain in this?

She wonders much the same thing, out loud, as she stabs a tomato in the salad Catherine had made for lunch, sitting with Shayne at his dining table at lunch the next day. He’d been on a second date with Sophie and told her it was okay but he just didn’t… really… feel anything, and she’d soon found herself telling him almost every detail of her date with Thomas the day before, down to the kiss (she asked him if he was okay with the gory detail, and he’d simply shrugged in response).

“It’s not like he did anything wrong. Like, if anything, he’s doing exactly what I wished he would when I first started dating him and it felt kinda weird. He’s trying, and he’s being kinda… romantic, or affectionate, or something I guess, and we’re having better conversations and everything,” she shakes her head, “but I just like. My brain is constantly analysing it. And I know I always do that but not normally during a date, and it’s not like it’s stuff about it being weird because of anything to do with Mum or the divorce or whatever, it’s just… I don’t… know. I’m not excited to go out with him. I’m not like, actively trying to. But I also have no reason to break up with him.”

“Just not feeling it is probably an okay reason to break up with someone, and I think you’ve told me that in the past,” Shayne answers, raising an eyebrow for a moment, before moderating his voice again and adding, “but like, if you wanna just keep going on dates with him, as long as you aren’t making him think it’s more serious than it is… that seems fine too.”

“Maybe once we’re back at school I’ll like get the pressure from my friends to have to be dating someone and I’ll finally realise how good he is and how I should be happy he wants to date me,” she comments, lightly, “because like, he is being a really… decent guy, compared to what I’m used to. That’s why I keep getting in my head about it. My friends almost definitely are going back into saying everyone has to be dating someone, and I can say I am dating someone. And like, I did have fun last night. Maybe I’m just… being unreasonable. That’s kinda what I’m worried, like, am I being an ass expecting too much of him or something? I dunno. Maybe I need to talk about that with the therapist too.”

“Maybe. It’s good if you did have fun on the date, though – maybe he’s not the most creative, or forward, but… if you both just want to hang out sometimes and you do want to keep hanging out with him, and it’s not super serious, and he’s treating you well, then… it doesn’t seem like it hurts to keep doing it,” Shayne responds, lightly, “although I think I’m… not gonna go out with Sophie again. Because that’s not so much that it’s fun but I’m not fully invested, it’s more… I don’t think I’m actually having fun and it feels unfair because she’s clearly a lot more invested in me than I am in her and I don’t want to lead her on.”

“Yeah, I think for me it’s not that, it’s more just… I need to accept that this is just casual chill dating, and maybe that’s a good thing,” she answers, simply, “but yeah, don’t lead Sophie on.”

Chapter Text

Courtney’s first day back at school goes exactly as she expects it to. She has homeroom with Natalie and Hollie this year, and she briefly says hello to the others as well but none of them are there with much time before homeroom starts, so she’s soon wandering beside Natalie and Hollie – while Hollie tries to pretend she doesn’t exist and mostly just stays silent – to their homeroom. Natalie, of course, makes it easy for them by rambling endlessly about her holiday and quietly slipping in the fact that she cheated on Connor while overseas but it’s okay because he doesn’t know.

That makes her feel a little uncomfortable. She doesn’t know Connor and she doesn’t really have any way to do anything, but that feels like a shitty thing to do and she might expect it of Isabel and her scheming, manipulating approaches to people around her but Natalie is usually just more… direct.

The holiday talk from Natalie – and Isabel, and Yasmin, who seems to be going the route of pretending Courtney doesn’t know she wasn’t away as long as she says she was – continue through every class she has with any of them (so, every class) and into lunch. They have the same lunch hour as the seniors again, but it doesn’t surprise her that today Isabel leads them straight to a table by themselves with a handful of basketball guys, including a couple of Natalie’s exes (although thankfully, none of Courtney’s) who are apparently okay to be around again.

Courtney does get asked about her holiday – a little snarkily, by Isabel – and she immediately starts talking about how nice it is to be able to buy cool clothes with babysitting money and how she bought this totally great bikini and had a really fun day at the pool with her other set of Senior friends. Isabel narrows her eyes at her for a moment, before the three – Hollie is sitting there, just not saying anything – agree that it sounds fun, and they don’t have anything they can pick on about the whole shopping thing. She made that question work for her.

Hollie is not quite so adept – she starts rambling about camping before anyone asks her and quickly gets shut down by Yasmin talking about how she went glamping in the Swiss Alps for a couple of days which is totally just a better version of the same thing – and Courtney inwardly cringes. No one is reflecting Hollie being weird back on her, right at the moment, but she’s just… so…

She wishes she wasn’t there. She’s just mean and awful and they might have been friends for 13 years but Courtney doesn’t think she actually recognises anything about Hollie as a person anymore and she doesn’t really want to think about that.

Isabel, as she often does, starts talking about how she met a guy on her travels – in Canada, this time – and she’s totally in a long distance relationship with him now and it’s totally going to work out because maybe he’s going to be moving to San Francisco with his family sometime soon anyway, or something like that. It, predictably, leads Yasmin to quickly turn to the others.

“And what about you? Do you still have a boyfriend or did you lose him because you aren’t cool enough?” she asks, directed towards either Courtney or Hollie or both of them, it isn’t clear. Courtney hears her mind jumping straight to Yasmin’s girlfriend, but she quickly shuts that down – she’s still not doing that even if Yasmin is getting on her case about nothing again – and she’s soon interrupted, anyway, by Hollie.

“Of course Courtney can’t have a boyfriend anymore because she’s a disgusting useless broken slut,” she snaps, as if the others will agree with her, although Yasmin simply narrows her eyes and the others look at her weirdly.

“Um, right,” Natalie mutters, sceptically.

“I went on a date with Thomas the other day, still dating him,” Courtney quickly says, shrugging casually, “oh, Natalie, are you still dating his friend Connor?”

“He still texts me like we’re dating,” she answers, immediately, non-committal, Courtney feeling the attention draw comfortably away from her all over again.

So she was right. The boyfriends thing matters again – but it’s okay, she has Thomas, and he seems to want to keep dating her and she doesn’t have to do much more than hang out with him sometimes and maybe her mind will finally get with the idea, now.

The rest of the first week of school is as predictable as she kinda hopes it will be. Junior and senior tryouts are in the first week, and she does the track tryout Wednesday lunch time and – of course – makes the team with ease, although none of her friends are doing it this time and athletics tryouts are a different day, so it’s just her. They tell her practice will be Tuesdays starting the week after next, and Courtney grumbles to herself. She has a free period last on Tuesdays, she could’ve left early instead of hanging around in the library if it was any other day. But at least she gets to do track again.

Her friends are off at various lunches for other tryouts, of course. Hollie is secretary of the adventure outdoors whatever club that Zach is president of, so she spends like two days away from their table claiming she has to sign up all the new members, but Courtney isn’t going to complain about that. Natalie does basketball, Isabel and Natalie both do theatre, Yasmin tells them she’s going to be on the yearbook and prom-organising committee so she can try and start making it less awful this year so theirs next year will have to be even better.

Courtney sits with Shayne and his friends one lunch – Thursday, when all her friends are off doing something or another except Hollie who also sits up the end of their table and is ignored by pretty much everyone there – but otherwise, she’s with her friends, and random boys they let sit with them occasionally, and it’s just like it always is.

————————————————

Courtney’s first appointment with the therapist is the Thursday of the second week of school. She kind of forgets about it, for most of the day, and she has the just-introduced music elective that she jumped on as soon as she saw it just in case it was fun or easy or something last thing on Thursday, so her mind is elsewhere. Because she’s right – it’s like, they are doing a bit of music theory and book stuff, but they also get to play around with instruments, and analyse popular songs later in the semester apparently, and Natalie is in the class with her but they both keep to themselves and actually do the work. It is kind of fun, and Courtney feels like she just… gets it, even the music theory. It’s interesting. And the teacher is cool too, so that helps.

The only thing that had confused her about that class, the first time she had it, was that Cody wasn’t there to immediately start saying dumb shit to her and acting as if she hadn’t been ignoring him for literally over a year. Why the hell would he not be in a music class, when that was his whole try-hard thing? She’d almost gone for a different elective to try and avoid him.

But there’s a rumour late in the first week that his family had to move interstate because he murdered someone. She rolls her eyes at that just as much as her friends – that is so bullshit – but in her mind, she quietly lines it up with seeing him at the court and what his Mum said and then Shayne explained about driving drunk underage. And the stuff with his Dad. So, he’s not here anymore, and she…

Quickly realises she does not care, past the extent of being relieved she gets a peaceful, fun music elective four times a week.

Her mind immediately sinks back into her after-school plans that second Thursday of semester, though, as she shoves her things in her bag and walks to a different part of the school bus pick up area. She’s not even taking a school bus, she’s taking a city bus into town, to where the psychologist’s office is upstairs above the building beside the cinema. She spends the bus ride sitting in silence – she can’t be bothered to find where her headphones have ended up in her bag – and she grips her hands awkwardly against the straps of her bag as she walks from the bus station through the open plaza area between the cinema and mall. She keeps her head down as she pushes open the door marked “Jessica Rowan, Psychologist” tucked in between two shops, trudging up the narrow staircase to the second floor.

The woman sitting at the reception desk in the small waiting area – there’s only room for three chairs and the desk – looks way older than she expected Jessica to be from her voice, and Courtney awkwardly wanders up to the desk. It must be the receptionist.

“Um- I have an appointment with Jessica. At 4?” she almost asks, the receptionist nodding in silence as she clicks around on her computer for a while.

“Okay, Courtney, since it’s your first appointment, there will just be this patient details form you need to fill out… and do you have your insurance card with you?” she asks, Courtney immediately panicking. She doesn’t even have a card for her Dad’s insurance, and she thought-

“Um, I don’t- when I called Jessica said because I’m a minor and attending without my Dad knowing she can do something different- I can’t really put it on my Dad’s insurance-” she stumbles through the explanation, the receptionist looking annoyed for a moment before turning back to her screen.

“Oh, there’s a note in your file. Okay. Well- just fill in the form, then,” she tells her, a little stern, Courtney grabbing the clipboard and paper and pen resting on top of it and shuffling over to sit in one of the seats just behind her.

She starts trying to rapidly fill out the patient details form as it feels like the receptionist stares at her – it’s mostly just her name, address, email and phone, so that’s fine – and she just skips over the insurance details and previous diagnoses because like, she’s pretty sure she has none since she never goes to the doctor, but she feels herself stumbling as she hits the end of the form. She needs to put an emergency contact. And there’s a box for what relationship they have to you, and-

“Put your Mum or Dad. Probably your Mum,” the receptionist speaks up, and as much as Courtney guesses she’s trying to help, it immediately makes her shudder. So she is watching her, and there’s no fucking way she’s putting her Mum and she doesn’t want to put her Dad because what if they just go and tell him everything and then her Dad just gets angry at her too and-

She grips the pen sharply in her hand, the cap digging into her palm uncomfortably. Something about it makes her think back to the court a few weeks ago, and something that the registrar had said when she was asking if there was someone else who could take her in if something happened to her Dad.

She quickly scribbles Catherine Topp in the name, pulling out her phone to copy down her number before writing out – much clearer than she had the rest of the form – ‘Alternative Guardian’ in the relationship field. She doesn’t know if it actually has some legal meaning that isn’t true, but the registrar had said it, so…

The receptionist doesn’t say anything when Courtney stands up to hand back the form, simply taking it from her, so Courtney moves back to the chair to wait for the psychologist. She waits five minutes, until she sees a younger blonde woman walking out with a younger boy and a woman, clearly his mother, holding his hand to lead him along back to stop in front of the receptionist.

“Courtney?” Jessica calls, and Courtney scrambles up from her seat and over to the far side of the waiting room to follow her up a hallway and into another room. Here goes nothing, she guesses.

————————————————

The psychologists appointment is… okay. She kinda knows what to expect after the stuff she’d been sent, as Jessica had asked a bunch of general questions about her life, and school, her family, her friends, how she was going. Most of the questions were easy, although she simply shrugged when asked how she was going, because that’s honest. She doesn’t know. The session ends before Jessica has a chance to push any further, though, and Courtney walks slightly ahead of her back out to the reception area.

The receptionist is gone, and Jessica steps behind the desk and pulls up something on the computer, instead. It relieves her a little. Her head is swimming and she doesn’t want to deal with a crabby receptionist again.

“Okay, so, technically I do need to ask about your father’s income and number of dependents to get the correct rate, for the sliding scale fees, but… do you know that, really?” she asks, Courtney shaking her head.

“He has three kids under 18 including me though. And two over 18 that still live at home,” she quickly adds, although she figures Jessica already knows that from the session.

“I think we can assume you probably sit in our low income category, just because having lots of siblings like you do almost always means that’s the case,” she confirms, nodding and clicking something else on the computer, “so, that would be $120 for the first session today – and it will be a bit less, for other sessions, initial one is just a bit more. Do you have a way to pay for that?”

Courtney does, as awkward as she feels about it. She’d ended up telling Shayne and his Mum that she’d booked an appointment with a psychologist, and quietly, Shayne’s Mum had handed her $250 cash later that day to cover at least the first appointment, until she worked out the payment stuff and how much it was ongoing. She still feels a little guilty as she pulls three $50 bills out of where she’d hidden it all between two old kids’ store loyalty cards in her purse, but at the same time, she’s… relieved. She doesn’t want to take the Topp’s money but she swears she’ll pay them back one day, somehow, and for now, it means this doesn’t have to be hard and she doesn’t have to have the conversation with her Dad that will have him freaking out she’s mentally unstable or something.

Her Dad knew she was going to be going somewhere after school today, of course, but she’d just told him she was going to the mall with her friends since she hadn’t seen them much over break and none of them had anything on Thursday afternoons so it was the only time that worked. He’d bought it, and he had no problem with it, and she has the bus ride home to figure out a bunch of things she could say that would make it seem like she was with her friends at the mall, if he asked.

“How was the mall?” he asks, predictably, called out from the kitchen when she gets home. She makes herself wander casually through the archway and into the living space so she can see him properly.

“Oh, it was okay,” she answers, shrugging lightly.

“No shopping bags? Or they fit in your school bag?” he almost jokes, but she shakes her head. She has no idea how much he pays attention to what clothing she owns, but she figures saying she didn’t buy anything is safer than making up something and potentially having him question where it is in the future.

“The shops aren’t really selling anything good at the moment, it’s only the bad stuff left in the end-of-summer clearance and they don’t have any good winter stuff in yet. We just wanted to hang out mostly,” she answers, watching her Dad nod in response before turning back around to attend to something in a pan on the stove.

“Well, glad you had an okay time. Dinner will be ready in about half an hour – could you tell Kari? Oh, also, Matty from the station asked if you could babysit his kids again this Sunday. I know it’s last minute, it’s okay if you already have something else planned, he just had a shift swapped and his wife is out of town with her mother…”

“I don’t have anything planned Sunday yet, I guess I can do that. How long for?” she asks, her Dad telling her it’d be from early-afternoon when they finish their Sunday sports, until about 9pm.

She’s not lying – she doesn’t have anything planned for the weekend yet – but after she trudges upstairs and tells Kari dinner will be ready in half an hour before promptly turning to her own side of the room and pretending her sister isn’t there, she grumbles internally.

She kind of wanted to go to Shayne’s for a bit this weekend, but if she’s babysitting for half a day, and she thinks Shayne is working Saturday morning… Plus, it’s not like she thinks she’s going to get straight As or like she wants to really try or anything and have her friends dump her over it, because she’s also not trying to fall behind two weeks into the semester and she does have homework she should probably do over the weekend. Ugh.

Is this semester just going to be stupidly busy? Should she study at Shayne’s? No, she wants to actually have time to hang out with him. Which she knows she isn’t going to get, this time. Maybe next weekend?

Chapter Text

Courtney feels like she barely has a chance to think for the next two weeks. She has another two Thursday afternoon therapy sessions (thankfully, her Dad has been moved to a Thursday evening shift so he never notices she’s home late Thursdays anymore), track practice after school Tuesday, she’s trying – and kind of managing, except with Algebra II – to keep on top of her school work, and she keeps having random babysitting jobs appear on weekends and school nights. Plus, she has to make herself find time to go on another date with Thomas, and to hang out with her friends once so they don’t get too on her case about being a loser that never does anything.

It's not like any of them have jobs, they just get money handed to them by their parents. Except Hollie, but she’s still being dumb and obsessing over the adventure club like being the secretary of a high-school club is actually a real job or something.

Courtney doesn’t find time to hang out with Shayne at all for the rest of August, or the first week of September. She kinda wants to, she wants to just be able to chill and she needs to brain-dump on him about how her date with Thomas she just kept getting more and more irritated the whole time for no reason, but she just doesn’t have the time. They sit with him and his friends at lunch a couple of times, but it’s not the same. And his senior athletics trainings aren’t even the same day as track, either.

She finally gets her chance on a Monday that they have off for some random holiday. She does have a babysitting job that evening, and she’d had one Sunday night too, but when she rolls out of bed at 9am on Monday she ignores Kari grumbling about how it’s too early to be up (Kari worked until 3am again) and quickly gets changed so she can head out and get the 9:20am bus from down the street to the city.

“Babysitting tonight, remember?” her Dad comments, as she moves downstairs and beelines straight for the door, “have you had any breakfast?”

He’s not telling her not to go out, and she feels something her therapist said cycling through her mind about how it’s not going to hurt to just try and… act like herself around her Dad.

“I know, I’m just going to Shayne’s, I haven’t been there for like a month. And I’ll get something there,” she replies as she briefly turns back towards where he’s standing through the archway in the living room, trying not to sound too defensive. Her Dad simply nods.

“Okay, have fun,” he tells her, Courtney nodding and turning back to wander out the door.

The time it takes to get to Shayne’s new house still annoys her but at the same time, she’s kind of… used to it, as she flicks through Instagram and messages Isabel and Natalie about an influencer they all used to like who has gone and got himself arrested for breaking into a golf club. Courtney kind of hated his makeup, anyway, it was always too over the top and shiny.

“Hey Courtney!” Brian, of all people, greets her when she rings the doorbell at Shayne’s house. It confuses her, for a moment – he did move out a couple of weeks ago – and he must realise.

“Hey, Brian-” she starts.

“I was just here picking up some clothes, heading back to my place soon – but are you going to be around for dinner tonight? I was gonna invite Shayne to get dinner with Mads, you could finally meet her,” he answers, before she has a chance to ask why he’s there. Courtney screws up her face in annoyance. She does actually want to meet Brian’s girlfriend, she’s been hearing about him for ages.

“Gotta babysit this evening, sorry… but another time, I want to meet her too,” she replies, before Shayne suddenly appears and she wanders further into the house and follows him upstairs as she says goodbye to Brian again behind her.

She instinctively lets herself flop messily into Shayne’s desk chair when they wander into her room, already chatting about how he kind of regrets picking a literature elective for senior year even though he hates reading because it just takes up so much of his time. Shayne, for his part, sits on the edge of his bed.

“What have you been up to, anyway? I feel like I’ve barely seen you this semester with all the babysitting and stuff,” he comments, Courtney groaning in response.

“The babysitting is so annoying. It’s so unpredictable. Every time I think I’m gonna be able to plan for a night free after school to draw or something or even time to hang out with you or my friends I get a last minute babysitting request and the money is nice but-,” she rants, rolling her eyes, “and between that, and track, and therapy every week, and finding time for dates with Thomas… there’s too much shit to do. I swear it wasn’t this bad last year but all I’ve added is therapy and track and they’re both meant to be good things. And I guess Thomas.”

“It sucks that babysitting is so unpredictable like that… at least with the psychologists office I know when I’m gonna be working every week,” he responds, sympathetic, “but I get why you kinda need to say yes for the money.”

“It’s the only way I have a way to buy anything for myself. And I guess I could ask Dad but I dunno… we probably have even less money than we used to now that Mum is gone, not that she worked much near the end anyway, I’d feel guilty if I asked for anything. Probably should talk to the therapist about it,” she finishes in a mutter, “another thing to add to the list.”

“How are things going with the therapist? I can’t remember if you told me her name? You don’t gotta say any detail, though. Just… vaguely, I hope it’s going okay? Or helpful somehow?” Shayne seems to be second-guessing himself as he asks, and something about it makes Courtney blush. She tries to push that reaction down. Come on, she hasn’t felt silly around him for a while, he’s just her friend.

“It’s okay, you can ask. Her name is Jessica, and I think it’s… okay. It’s taking a while because there’s so much stuff and yes you were probably right I’ve needed a therapist forever and it’s gonna take a while but it’s… okay. Kinda been talking about some stuff around me feeling weird about everything now, before we get into the heavier stuff,” she admits, shrugging. She doesn’t exactly feel like she needs to hide what she talks about with her therapist from Shayne, given he was kinda… being her fake therapist before this. “It’s kinda been about making me feel like I don’t have to pretend I don’t exist or I don’t have a personality at home.”

“Mm, it makes sense to work through that stuff first so you can feel a little more okay with everything now, before you go into the other stuff,” he agrees, nodding lightly, “don’t feel like you have to tell me stuff, if you don’t want to.”

“It’s okay. You were my fake therapist forever, I’m kinda used to telling you everything,” she answers lightly, before suddenly remembering why she’d been so annoyed at her therapist appointment last Thursday when she’d just wanted to find a way to see Shayne, “but actually, can I dump all my thoughts on you about something I haven’t bothered talking about with the therapist? Thomas, specifically. Not something bad. Or I dunno.”

“’Course. Did something happen?” he asks, his voice turning concerned as he shifts his head to look a little more directly at her. She shakes her head, although she sits up a little straighter in his desk chair, too.

“Not exactly. I just… ugh. I went on another date with him last Wednesday evening, we got dinner again. And the food was good, and he was nice, and we made out again, but every single thing he did all night pissed me off and I don’t know why and now every time he texts me I’m just annoyed,” she grumbles, “it doesn’t make sense! And it was all dumb stuff, like how he took weirdly large gulps from his drink and how he holds his fork and how he squeezes my fingers too much when we’re holding hands and how he’s not even doing track this year because he suddenly wants to play professional soccer so he’s doing that and I don’t even know if we share any other interests but it’s not like there’s anything wrong with him.”

“And you’re annoyed because you’re annoyed at him?” Shayne prompts.

“Yeah,” she replies, simply, “I want to dump him. Even though he did nothing wrong and my friends would get on my case about being too much of a loser to have a boyfriend. And I should be fine with him because he’s never done anything wrong but I just keep finding him more and more annoying to be around and I just… I have so much going on at the moment and he’s just taking up even more time.”

“What do you think would happen if you did dump him? Would you regret it?” he asks, Courtney sighing heavily.

“I… don’t know. I mean, I know my friends would start calling me a loser again for not being able to keep a boyfriend. Which isn’t even true this time because I can keep a boyfriend, it’s just that I’m being dumb and can’t make myself keep liking him. But I… think it would be relieving to not have to deal with him anymore,” she admits, after a moment, watching Shayne nod.

“I get that it’s… difficult, with your friends. But maybe it’s…” he hesitates, stopping himself, Courtney feeling guilt start swirling in her stomach.

“I’m not gonna get mad at you for saying my friends shouldn’t do that to me,” she tells him, glancing down at her lap. That one had definitely come up at her therapists, when she ended up rambling about how she kept ending up fighting with Shayne or avoiding him and convincing herself he was trying to ruin her life or something.

“I know. But I think I also… understand more now how even if I think it’s completely not true, you’re not a loser and I’m sure any guy would be lucky to be with you, they are your friends and that’s important to you guys’ image and it still matters,” he answers, his voice swaying between hesitant and strong. She can’t stop herself from scoffing, though.

Any guy? Really? She’s pretty sure he wouldn’t ever like her that way, he definitely doesn’t see her as a girl like that. But whatever.

“Yeah,” she says, quickly, “I mean, I am kind of a loser if I can’t make myself like a guy. But maybe at the moment I could deal with them saying that because I just… I am so over never having time. And I kinda want to quit babysitting too but I’d need to find something else, a Saturday morning job or something like that.”

“I mean… it is hard to make yourself feel feelings that aren’t there,” Shayne points out, “as I learned recently…”

“You looking at dating anyone else since Sophie didn’t work out?” Courtney asks, comfortable to take the topic change. She’s got it off her chest to Shayne, now, and that’s all she needed. She thinks she knows what she’ll decide now. And also, she’s kinda interested in prying into his personal life a little more again.

She’s trying to tell herself it’s not because she’s jealous, although truthfully, that is only a tiny bit of it anyway. Mostly, she wants something to tease him about.

“Nah. I’m okay being single for now,” he answers, simply, “you know well enough that I’m not really into anyone at school, and I don’t really see people our age outside school, and there was no new kids this year, so…”

“Hmph. Boring,” she jokes, Shayne immediately laughing in response.

————————————————

Thomas asks Courtney if she’d like to hang out at the mall with him sometime the next weekend. The text comes through when she’s reluctantly sitting out in the living room on Friday evening with (most of, KC is absent as he often is these days. She won’t complain) her family, her brothers playing some card game on the floor as her Dad watches TV and she and Kari both type away at their phones.

It had been a challenge from her therapist the day before, to spend more time out with her family and reclaim the rest of the house as somewhere she belonged and was allowed to use. She’s not exactly comfortable, but… whatever. She’ll try it. And it’s physically a little more comfortable than sitting on her bed leaning against the wall.

“Can I go out tomorrow night, Dad?” she asks, plainly. She instinctively hopes he’ll say no. She doesn’t want to go out with Thomas again. She’s still annoyed at him over literally nothing and she just doesn’t want to keep spending time with him and he’s probably suggested the mall because he thinks she’d enjoy it and she should be grateful for that but she just- ugh.

“Sure, with your boyfriend?” her Dad asks. She grumbles lightly to herself.

“I guess,” she mutters, eventually, when she glances up to see her Dad staring expectantly at her.

“You guess? It’s not Thomas?” he continues. She shakes her head quickly.

“No, it’s Thomas. I dunno,” she continues, still not saying anything, before she sighs. She’s meant to be challenging herself to not hide so much here. “He’s just annoying me at the moment. Kinda hoped you’d say no.”

“I can say no if you like?” her Dad offers, joking, “why is he annoying you? He did something wrong?”

“No, I’ll… go,” she replies, shrugging, “I dunno. He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s just annoying me.”

“Giving you the ick?” Kari comments, Courtney glancing over at her.

“What?” she asks, eyes narrowing. If she’s gonna make some stupid comment about Courtney being too much of a baby to date or try and say something that will get her in trouble-

“It means he just does some random thing that makes you not like him anymore. And it usually doesn’t make sense, but it just make you feel ick,” she explains, Courtney relaxing her expression.

Yeah, that’s… it. That’s pretty much it.

“He holds his fork weird. Like, super aggressively,” she mutters, after a moment, hearing Kari hum almost understandingly in response.

“Ew, that’s definitely an ick,” she replies, before glancing back to her phone, Courtney glancing over and watching her Dad shake his head at them, although he does so light-heartedly.

Something about it makes Courtney shiver, quickly glancing back to her phone and reluctantly typing out a message to Thomas to tell him she’ll see him the next afternoon, but just at a café or something, she can’t do dinner. She’s not gonna break up with him at dinner. But a café… seems okay. If she decides to, she still isn’t sure.

He replies a generic yes, of course, and she finds her mind drifting back to the conversation she’d just had out loud, in front of her Dad, with her sister. It still felt uncomfortable. But… her Dad wasn’t mad, and he maybe pried a tiny bit about Thomas but it kinda seemed like he was just… talking for the hell of it. And for once Kari didn’t make fun of her.

She’s still not entirely convinced Jessica is right, though. Kari will probably turn around and use it against her next time she holds a fork weirdly or something- She knows she should talk to Kari (and Kami), but she just… doesn’t want to. It’s not like she can hide from Kari if it goes badly either, they still share a room.

————————————————

Courtney is still tossing up in her mind whether she’s going to break up with Thomas when they wander into a random café near the mall in the city together mid-afternoon Saturday. He offers to buy her a smoothie, but she shakes her head, quickly stepping forward to pay for her own as it all twists together in her mind. She doesn’t want to be here, she doesn’t like him at all really, and it’s not like he thinks she’s in love with him or anything so she’s not leading him on really and he’s technically done nothing wrong and her friends will be on her case until she dates someone else and she really doesn’t want to deal with finding a new boyfriend or having one at all but she just-

They sit in the back corner of the café drinking their smoothies, Thomas talking about his family’s Thanksgiving plans as she tries to force herself to engage. All it does is make her vaguely worry about what the hell she’s doing for Thanksgiving – her Dad’s sisters place close by, maybe? She has no idea – and her heart sink in her chest.

“Hey… Thomas?” Courtney starts, abruptly, in a silence as he finishes his smoothie only twenty minutes after they got to the café.

“Yeah?” he asks, head tilting to the side. Something about it feels like he’s making fun of her. She sighs.

“I… don’t think this is really working out. You haven’t done anything wrong. But I’m just… not really feeling it, and I think maybe we should stop hanging out,” she tells him, trying to keep her tone neutral and a little gentle but not too much. She watches as something flashes across his face and his shoulders slump, before he seems to settle.

“Yeah, it’s… not really going anywhere. Okay,” he tells her, although his voice is a little strained.

She has no idea what to say next, but two minutes later after a stilted line of conversation where he stumbles over saying he does like her but he’s not gonna be an ass about it and he will leave her alone now, she finds herself walking back to the bus alone. She feels lighter. She feels relieved.

This is gonna be hell at school on Monday, but she just… she can deal with that. It’ll be less annoying than trying to force herself to have feelings for him.

Chapter Text

“What are we doing for Thanksgiving this year? Anything?” Courtney asks her Dad, wandering back into the living room after getting the bus back from the city. He glances up from where he’d been reading a paper sitting at the dining table, blinking slowly for a moment before he replies.

“I don’t think anything, actually, I’ve agreed to work the holidays at the station. Did you want to do something, though?” he asks, his tone suddenly turning a little more… concerned, but she shakes her head.

“No, just wondered, Thomas was talking about plans even though it’s ages away and I didn’t know if we had any,” she replies, simply, because it’s true. And she very much likes the idea of just getting a week off school to hang out at home or with her friends or whatever, not being forced to spend time with her Dad’s family. They aren’t her Mum’s family, but she still doesn’t… like being around them.

“How was your date?” her Dad asks, Courtney immediately snapping out of her mind and screwing her face up. She should’ve known he’d ask that. She did almost tell him to, by saying it was Thomas talking about Thanksgiving.

“I broke up with him,” she replies, shrugging.

“Oh. Because of the… what did Kari call it? The ew?” he prompts. She shakes her head. She’s pretty sure he’s just being old and clueless, not intentionally wrong.

“The ick. But I dunno. I just don’t like him,” she replies, before glancing back away from her Dad and slowly wandering out of the room, ending the conversation. He doesn’t try to continue talking to her, anyway, so there’s that at least.

————————————————

Courtney takes her newfound single freedom to go to Shayne’s place late Sunday afternoon. In theory, she’s going to study with him because there’s more space to study at his dining table than her Dad’s (or hers, whatever her therapist wants to call it), because they both kinda need to. She’s also trying to make it a thing for his 18^th birthday later in the week since he’s refusing to actually celebrate it, and she does bring him a small gift – a game for his PS5 that he hasn’t shut up about in the group chat for the last month – that he accepts with a thank you before they sit down to study.

It doesn’t surprise her that, when she grumbles about switching to a different subject after finally finishing a worksheet for algebra II, he takes the opportunity to ask how she’s feeling about the breakup.

“Fine, I think,” she answers simply. She’d told Shayne as soon as she’d gone back to her room the day before, but she hadn’t gone into much detail because he was at work and then Kari was in her space bugging her about hiding away on her phone too much. “It is kinda relieving to not have to think about him anymore and to not have to… try. I think it’s… I missed being single, weirdly. I kinda think I want to go back to being single at least the rest of this year. And my friends will have a problem with that but I’ll… try and think of something.”

“For now, at least, it’ll probably help that you broke up with him instead of the other way around, right?” Shayne offers, Courtney nodding in response.

“And Natalie finally broke up with Connor the other week too – she’s been cheating on him since like, Summer, I kinda feel sorry for him – so it’s not like I’m the only single one. I’ll just have to, like… I almost want Johnny to start going after me again so at least I can say there is a guy that wants to be with me and it’s my choice to be single, it’s not because I’m a loser. And maybe I am a loser because I can’t find a guy I like enough anyway, but. They don’t need to know that,” she rambles, jumping between topics.

“That still doesn’t make you a loser, but yeah, it’s good if you’ve got something to stop them being too… on your case about it, if you don’t actually wanna be dating anyone,” he answers, simply, “not Johnny, though. Is he even still at the school? I know Cody left, but I didn’t hear anything about him…”

“He’s still around but I have no classes or anything with him literally for the first time since the start of middle school,” she answers, rolling her eyes, “yeah, I think I’d prefer them making fun of me than him. I… hate thinking about it, because I’d never actually say anything. But after what we saw in Summer… I don’t think Yasmin would be game to try and kick me out of the group.”

“Yeah, it feels a bit like that. And as long as you don’t ever actually use that info against her, I don’t think you’re necessarily doing anything wrong, it’s her that’s internally telling herself you might. And you literally told her you won’t, right?” he replies, Courtney nodding in response before reluctantly shifting to her civics homework now algebra is done.

It ends up taking until Tuesday lunch time, on Shayne’s actual birthday, before one of her friends – Natalie, specifically – asks her how Thomas is going. She’d really tried to sit with the seniors for lunch at least, but her friends had refused and she’d had to make do by spamming Shayne with happy birthday gifs earlier in the day. And now they’re grilling her about Thomas. Ugh.

“I don’t know, broke up with him on the weekend,” she answers, simply, shrugging her shoulders as she does, “he got so boring.”

“Oh my god, like you could get anyone better though,” Yasmin replies, immediately, eyes narrowing, “what is with all of you and being so single this year? It’s gross. You should be better than that.”

“Hey I literally had multiple guys at once,” Natalie points out, deflecting the attention of Courtney a little.

“That’s not better!” Yasmin replies, rolling her eyes, “and now you have none because you dumped Connor who was actually kind of cool and then got dumped by that loser that isn’t even in school anymore.”

“I have a boyfriend, he just lives in Canada,” Isabel adds.

“And that’s about as real as Courtney having a boyfriend that went to another school in fifth grade,” Natalie points out.

“I literally did though, you all met him,” she responds, before she can stop herself. But it’s true. She knows it’s a dumb cliché but she was literally dating some kid from another elementary school in 5^th grade that she met at a church thing. Although she should’ve stayed quiet, because she doesn’t actually believe Isabel’s thing about Canada guy – supposedly he doesn’t use social media, which is why she won’t even show them pictures of him – and also the attention was off her for once.

“Courtney shouldn’t be allowed to date ever again, though, she’s ruined and disgusting because of her parents and it’s so gross that she didn’t go with her Mum,” Hollie pipes up, her voice forceful and disgusted. It’s far from the first time she’s heard it, and she’s usually kinda just let it shake numbly through her mind, but this time Courtney feels it stab uncomfortably at her chest. Why does Hollie keep doing this?

“Um, stop being weird,” Yasmin responds, after a moment, glaring at Hollie before glancing away back to the others, “whatever. I guess we’re all single now. So no excuses not to come to the mall next weekend, right?”

“Can we go after school Thursday instead?” Isabel asks, Courtney feeling her heart immediately race in panic. No, no, she has to take a bus to the city on Thursday after school for therapy, they can’t be going to the city on Thursday too, and fuck it’s probably already obvious she’s panicking and going to the mall would be the easiest way to make them forget she’s not cool enough for a boyfriend but if she can’t go-

“Nah, Mum is making me take my brother to his karate practice on Thursday. Friday, though? We could do the mall then get food somewhere, everything’s open later,” she suggests, instead, Courtney instantly feeling her heart slow and her shoulders loosen. That’s okay.

“Yeah, Friday is good, and I need more fall vibes stuff,” she comments, lightly, relieved when the others (except Hollie) quickly agree with her and Yasmin starts rambling about some designer sweater she wants.

Courtney feels her heart dropping in panic all over again that night, though, when she’s reluctantly sitting out at the dining table eating her dinner with her Dad, KC and her two younger brothers – Kari is working – and her Dad suddenly tells her one of her increasingly-regular babysitting clients from the station would like her to babysit Friday night.

Their kid is nice, and they pay well, but she just…

“What? Busy Friday?” her Dad asks, when she doesn’t respond for a while. She sighs heavily.

“Kinda, yeah… my friends want to go to the mall and then get dinner. And I know that’s hanging out with my friends and I should be working and earning money but… having babysitting pop up last minute all the time is kinda making it really hard for me to actually plan anything and it’s getting in the way of study too and I do need to be able to hang out with my friends sometimes,” she answers, rambling and knowing her tone is uncertain and almost fearful. Is he gonna get mad at her?

“O…kay,” her Dad answers, slowly, pausing for a moment to collect his thoughts, “I think that’s… that’s valid, that it’s making hard for you to plan when things are only a few days’ notice. You’ve already planned going out with your friends?”

“Yeah,” she replies, carefully, “and it kinda has to be Friday because that’s when late night shopping is, everything closes at like 4:30 at the moment so it’s hard to go other weekdays…”

“You kicked out the real woman of the house, you should be working every minute you can to pay us back,” KC mutters.

“KC!” her Dad snaps, immediately, “cut that out, you know that’s completely unacceptable. Courtney did nothing wrong and you are so close…”

He trails off without saying anything, but Courtney quickly glances over to watch KC purse his lips together and look down silently at his plate of food.

“If they really need me I guess I can-” she starts, after a beat of silence, but she watches her Dad shake his head.

“No, no, go out with your friends. You’ve been doing a lot of babysitting, and that unpredictability is going to become even more of a problem as you move through this year and into senior year, maybe I should be helping you try and find something else that’s a bit more regular and predictable? If you did want to keep working?” he suggests, Courtney slowly nodding.

“It’s nice working and like- being able to have a little bit of money so I can buy stuff for myself instead of asking you for money. But if I could just get something that was like every Saturday for the same hours, and in the same place… it’d be easier,” she admits, her Dad nodding slowly.

“Hmm, yeah, I’ll see if I can find anything that might be a bit easier on you,” he agrees, before turning and asking Clarke pointedly why he’s making pictures on his plate with his vegetables instead of eating them.

————————————————

As much as Courtney had sat with the seniors a couple of times early in the semester, it had become rarer as the weeks passed. Her friends didn’t seem to want to hang out with them much, instead preferring to invite dumb sports boys to sit with them who only ever talked about their fantasy sport leagues like it wasn’t nerdy math stats. She knows Shayne and a couple of his friends are super into that too, but at least they admit it’s actually math with all the statistics and stuff.

At lunch on Thursday, though, she finds herself standing at the end of the lunch line with Yasmin and Hollie, the other two mysteriously absent – she doesn’t know why, they didn’t say they had anything on but neither of them were in her physics class before lunch – as Yasmin glances around.

“Come on, lets sit with the seniors for once, I don’t feel like dealing with the dumb boys today,” she comments, almost forcefully, although Courtney doesn’t complain as they wander over to the half-full table of (so far) Max, Alicia and Shayne, sitting herself beside Alicia and across from Shayne.

Isabel appears, after a while, along with Zach and Natalie, although Ethan never turns up – has something on, apparently – as they all chat about bits and pieces over their lunch.

It doesn’t ultimately surprise Courtney that Natalie soon starts talking, though, about how she was talking to a handful of boys on a dating app the night before and they all totally want to be with her.

“Not gonna be single for long, not a loser like Courtney,” she comments, lightly, Yasmin laughing in response. Courtney glances up, watching Shayne’s eyes narrow, although he purses his lips together and doesn’t say anything.

“She’s not just a loser, she’s literally a broken disgusting slut,” Hollie steps in, as if agreeing with her.

“That would require any guy to actually be interested in her, which is never going to happen,” Isabel debates, although the other two say nothing. Courtney almost feels Alicia explode from beside her.

“What the fuck is wrong with you guys? Literally all of you are single. And Hollie, seriously, what fucking stupid shit are you talking about?” she snaps, firmly. Courtney watches Shayne wince, although she glances sideways to see Alicia glaring over to Hollie, Zach doing much the same beside her.

“You sound like you’re preaching some insane conspiracy theorist bullshit,” he adds, pointedly.

“I’m not! Her parents are literally divorced, why is no one else taking this seriously? She’s a daughter of divorced parents who stayed with her Dad, she’s so useless and disgusting she should be homeless,” Hollie repeats, Courtney feeling each word hit her a little harder. Why is she doing this? Why are the others yelling at her about it, it’s just going to make it worse? And why does Courtney even care, Hollie is just some dumb weirdo now and she shouldn’t care what she thinks of her because none of the others care what she thinks of them and-

“Dude, like, a bunch of us have divorced parents. It means nothing. Stop reading dumbass shit on the internet,” Max steps in, almost laughing, “that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You gotta be smarter than that, right?”

“It’s pretty dumb. Like no one in the real world actually thinks like that. Isn’t the divorce rate like, 50%?” Zach agrees, shaking his head.

“Even my Dad’s best friend is divorced,” Yasmin points out, after a while, although her voice sounds a little less confident than usual when she says it, and soon, the topic moves on.

Courtney hasn’t ever come into a therapist appointment with an actual plan, she’s just kinda let Jessica tell her what to talk about, but that evening as she takes the bus into the city and presses her hands into the seat either side of her, she still feels Hollie’s words swirling around in her head. It’s so dumb but she keeps saying all this shit and why does Courtney even care? She doesn’t. She’s being weird. And maybe if Jessica can stop her feeling like she can’t talk about anything in front of her family or exist in her own house (or like… reduce, anyway) she can stop her caring about her dumb ex-friend who hasn’t even really been that close to her since middle school anyway.

“Well, it sounds like she’s been your friend for a really long time, so it makes sense that it would hurt to have her say those kinds of ridiculous things about you even if you know they’re ridiculous,” Jessica comments. Courtney argues back that it doesn’t make sense, but Jessica is steadfast, and this time, her suggestion is to write Hollie a letter and explain her side of the story and how she values their friendship but won’t accept this behaviour.

That suggestion makes Courtney scoff when she steps out of the building to walk back towards the bus station. She is definitely not going to be writing Hollie a dumb letter. She’s just gotta get used to her being even more of a weirdo than she has been the last few years and maybe, if Courtney distances from her enough, she won’t care that she’s being mean and the others will decide to kick her out of the group. And that would be okay. That would be fine.

Hollie might have been her friend since they were like, toddlers or whatever, and they might have worked their way into Yasmin’s group of friends together, but she’s changed so much. Courtney doesn’t think Hollie even watches any of the shows the rest of them do, and she doesn’t wear the same style of clothes, and she only half-does her makeup sometimes and now she’s saying all this dumb stuff…

Courtney truly does not care about what she thinks of her, she decides, although unfortunately that does nothing to stop the thoughts about it all racing around in her head the rest of the night and most of Friday. That has to be the biggest waste of a therapy session she’s had.

But, at least, she’s going to the mall with the others Friday afternoon, and Hollie isn’t coming. She has home economics after lunch on a Friday, and she shakes her head as she wanders into the classroom to try and dislodge all the thoughts. Just two more periods to go and then the mall, and she doesn’t mind home eco (she does mind algebra II after and she thinks she failed the quiz they’re going to get back today, but whatever).

“Hey Courtney,” a voice snaps her out of her concentration, at the desk to her side as she mindlessly walks to her usual spot up in the back corner. She glances up to see Billie looking at her with half a smile, Courtney blinking in surprise for a moment.

Billie and Yasmin are completely avoiding each other at school, although she assumes they’re still together, especially if Billie is actually talking to her randomly in class. Courtney’s kinda been trying to pretend she’s just another random classmate she pays no attention to, although her currently half-blue hair doesn’t help that.

“Uh, hi,” she answers, eventually, smiling and nodding awkwardly before, thankfully, their teacher turns and asks for everyone’s attention to start class.

Chapter Text

Courtney doesn’t think she’d spend much of the weekend outside her room even if she was comfortable being around all her family and using all the other spaces in the house. She spends much of the two days – after getting home kinda late Friday from shopping with her friends, although only buying one or two things because they kept saying everything else she tried on looked gross – sitting on her bed either scrolling through things on her laptop, messaging her friends or the seniors, or half-heartedly studying. Everyone is home Sunday night, though, and her Dad asks them to all come downstairs for dinner together.

Courtney trudges downstairs, although she does so quickly, grabbing the seat between Clarke (who is already sitting there with a plate of food and babbling to Conrad across from him about something she doesn’t pay attention to) and Kari. She’d prefer to be up the other end of the table from KC, but sitting diagonally across from him is still better than beside or directly across.

As almost always seems to be the case, it is her Dad and the two youngest boys who carry most of the conversation over dinner. Her Dad asks the others how their days were, and Kari elaborates a little on whatever band it was that played at the bar she works at last night when prompted, but Courtney merely gives a one-word answer of ‘okay’ and otherwise stays silently eating.

“Oh, guys, I think Kami is planning to come and visit us next weekend. I’ve got the weekend off again, maybe we can go out for dinner on Saturday night?” her Dad comments, breaking a brief silence, “are you working, Kari?”

“Friday and Sunday next week so I could do Saturday,” Kari answers, simply.

“DOMINOS!” Clarke shouts, Courtney wincing slightly and leaning away from the noise.

“Probably not dominos, buddy, but we’ll find somewhere we all like,” her Dad tells him, calmly.

“Why is she coming anyway?” KC asks, his tone as grumpy as it seems to permanently be now. Courtney swears he used to occasionally smile and spend time with her younger brothers but she’s pretty sure now he just grumps around and gets angry and says mean things to her.

“Hey! Kami is cool!” Conrad replies, pointedly.

“Yes, be nice, KC,” her Dad agrees, although his voice sounds tired as he does, “since we aren’t doing anything for Thanksgiving this year, she thought she’d come and visit now before college gets really busy for her.”

“What do you mean we aren’t doing anything for Thanksgiving?” KC asks, sharply.

“Well, none of my family are, and I figured you kids might just like a quiet holiday at home to spend time with friends or something,” her Dad answers, his voice light, as if trying to calm KC down. Courtney is not even slightly surprised it doesn’t work.

“Then I’ll invite Mum here! She should be coming here, you’ve stolen her kids from her!” he snaps, Courtney’s Dad immediately narrowing his eyes.

She doesn’t actually know what has happened with Clarke and Conrad and if their Mum has visitation rights or something. Her Dad hasn’t said anything, but she figures that it’s not like her Mum was being like that to anyone except her, so…

“Your mother will not be stepping foot in this house ever again and you will be breaking the law if you invite her here,” her Dad answers, firmly, “you are an adult, if you wish to see her you can go and do so.”

“But Clarke and Conrad-“

“Nuh-uh we gotta wait until the law people say when she can see us!” Clarke speaks up, pointedly. Courtney guesses maybe her Dad had told the boys what was going on with them, at least, and not her.

…Something about that feels weird, but she pushes it down and just tries to zone out and finish her dinner as her Dad seems to forcibly change the topic.

Courtney would love to just run upstairs and get to spend the rest of Sunday night by herself (or like, with Kari… ugh), but when she turns to leave the room after clearing her plate and helping load the dishwasher, her Dad calls her back.

“Oh, Courtney! I saw a couple of advertisements in the newspaper at work earlier today, a couple of places looking for weekend staff from the high schools – the paper is on the sideboard near the door, if you’d like to look,” he tells her. Courtney immediately scrunches up her face.

“Newspaper? Jobs are like, online now,” she pushes, but her Dad shakes his head – although he doesn’t look annoyed.

“Well, yes, some may be, but I think a lot of businesses in town still advertise in the newspaper and online. Anyway, they’re there if you want to look,” he tells her, before turning back to continue cleaning up the kitchen. Courtney shrugs, half-heartedly grabbing said newspaper off the sideboard as she finally trudges out of the living room and upstairs to the bedroom.

Her Dad has circled two job ads in the paper – roughly, in blue pen – and she quickly scans her eyes over them. The first, a weird antique store that has always creeped her out, she immediately rolls her eyes at. Yeah they’re paying decently and easy to get to by bus but… ew, no. And her friends would totally judge her for that.

The other, though, is the CVS pharmacy in the mall in town, and she raises an eyebrow to herself. They’re looking for someone to work Saturday 9am to 3pm and Mondays from 3pm until 5:30, and she does have a free period Monday afternoon and she knows they’re allowed to leave school early if it’s for like, a job…

Plus, it’s CVS. Maybe she’ll get a staff discount on makeup? Yeah, that could be good and her friends shouldn’t have a problem with that one. Maybe she’ll send an application in.

…Just, like, later in the week, because it’s Sunday night and she can hear KC and her Dad arguing downstairs and she really just wants to listen to her music and draw.

She pretends she doesn’t hear when KC stands immediately outside the bedroom door at the top of the stairs and pretends to be (she thinks he’s pretending…) on the phone to their mother and telling her to come and visit for Thanksgiving so she can start fixing what an awful person she’s apparently become again.

————————————————

Courtney has an awful week at school. She’s somehow already getting warnings about failing Algebra II only like a month and a half into the semester, her friends won’t ever sit with the seniors, and they keep making fun of her and Hollie for being single like they aren’t all single except Yasmin (not that anyone except her knows that) and like she’s anywhere near as bad as Hollie.

Johnny even reappears and sits with them one lunch, Hollie happily chattering away to him like they’re best friends or something, as they both rant about how much their former-friends whose parents are divorced suck. At least, Courtney tells herself, Yasmin evidently gets sick of Johnny being around too and tells him at the end of lunch that he’s the worst loser she’s ever met and she never wants to see him again.

Which is a lot. But, like, Courtney isn’t gonna disagree. It had been nice not really seeing or hearing from him for so long (and it helps that she had blocked him on like every social media just before summer).

She applies to CVS after school on Monday, although she isn’t surprised she doesn’t hear back at all during the week. She has a babysitting job Tuesday night, therapy Thursday night, and she goes to see a movie with her friends – some dumb romance that they made fun of her for never having heard of, but apparently it’s like, from France or something even though it’s in English – on Friday. By the time the weekend comes, she just wants to hide away in her room again, but when she finally gets home at 9pm on Friday she’s immediately greeted by her second-eldest sister.

“Courtney! Hey!” Kami’s tone is excited and overly-friendly and Courtney has to fight herself not to squirm away when she reaches out to hug her. Kami doesn’t hug her, Kami isn’t excited to see her and they aren’t friends.

“Hey,” Courtney answers, a lot more subdued.

“Dad said you were seeing a movie? How was it? How are your friends? Are you still friends with Hollie?” Kami’s questions come one after the other, each one drilling further and further into Courtney’s mind.

Why is she questioning her? Why is she acting like she’s a little kid that just got home from a playdate? Is she gonna start making fun of whatever she answers with?

“It was fine. Hollie wasn’t there, just the others,” she answers, plainly, “I’m tired, I’m going to bed.”

She immediately turns and moves towards the stairs, vaguely hearing Kami turn and ask her Dad if Courtney is normally like that after seeing friends.

“She’s been really busy lately, it makes sense she’s tired,” her Dad answers, his voice drifting up the stairs and getting quieter as Courtney reaches the landing outside her room, “you can catch up tomorrow.”

She kinda hopes that she will have Kari’s perpetual morning-after-work grumpiness to allow her to stay in her bedroom without being disturbed until at least, like, 10am on Saturday. She heard Kari get home around 3 (she knows it’s Kari’s job, but like… being woken up at 3 a few times a week definitely isn’t helping Courtney’s tiredness) and even though Courtney wakes around 8, she simply stays in bed and reaches for her phone.

“Hey, Courtney, you wanna go to the mall or something today?” Kami’s voice appears through the door not long after 9am. Courtney grumbles quietly to herself, twisting over to face Kari’s side of the room and expecting her to grumble out at Kami to go away and shut up.

Instead, she watches as Kari shuffles around and sits up, facing back towards Courtney.

“Yeah, Court, wanna go shopping?” she asks, her voice immediately bright.

“Not really,” she answers, grumbled.

“Aw, come on, it’ll be fun! Girls day out, we can get lunch somewhere, you can pick?” Kami continues, opening the door and peering in. Her tone is so fake-sweet Courtney feels like she’s going to vomit as she shuffles further down in her bed.

“I have to study,” she answers, pointedly, grasping for an excuse. Kari laughs.

“Studying sucks. Come on, you’re allowed to have fun and go out and do things,” she tells her, getting up from her own bed and wandering over to her side of the closet to pick out clothes, “I’ll just get ready, we’ll go in like – 20 minutes? You can get ready that fast, right, or do you need more time to do your makeup?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Courtney replies, again, pointedly.

“Aww, come on, you don’t wanna hang out with your favourite big sisters?” Kami continues, Courtney feeling herself roll her eyes.

“What if Kathryn is my favourite?” she snaps, a little vindictively, although Kami’s face turns… concerned.

“I’m sure Kathryn would be here if she could be but with work and everything it’s a bit hard for her, and-” she rambles.

“I’m kidding, I hate all of you equally,” Courtney cuts her off, “you guys can go shopping but I’m staying home.”

“Aw, we were going because we thought you’d like it? Dad said you wanted new clothes for fall?” Kami continues, wandering into the room and moving towards Courtney’s bed as if she’s going to sit down beside her. Courtney immediately scrambles up to sitting half-under and half-over the covers, although she angles her legs to block the bed, leaving Kami standing in the centre of their room.

“I got stuff when I went out with my friends the other week. Just leave me alone,” she snaps, watching Kami’s face twist. She doesn’t look angry, and Courtney waits for the dig about how her friends suck or her clothes suck and she doesn’t know how to dress herself. Instead, Kami purses her lips and steps backwards.

“Okay, then, but how about you come up with something we can do later? Or we will?”

Courtney doesn’t give them a response, but to her relief, both of her sisters then step out of the room and leave her alone. She does get out of bed and get dressed, then, but she hears them leaving the house and reaches for her sketchpad and the set of Copic markers from Shayne and spreads them out on her bed. Maybe after all that babying nonsense has left the house, she’s actually going to get the morning with the bedroom to herself to do what she wants.

————————————————

Courtney really hopes that will be the end of it and she’ll get to have another quiet weekend other than going out on Saturday night (and her brothers picked Olive Garden, so like, she’s not entirely mad they’re going out. She could go for a stupid amount of free breadsticks). But, instead, they don’t seem to stop.

When Kami and Kari get back from lunch, they’re immediately in her room asking her how her friends are and if she has a boyfriend and how school is going. She blanks them out as much as she can, until Kami says something about baking cupcakes together. Courtney rolls her eyes openly at that, rapidly inventing an excuse about needing to wash her hair that is only half-true and darting into the downstairs bathroom. She doesn’t bake. She leaves that to Shayne and his Mum.

They are, mercifully, back in Kami’s room when she silently returns upstairs, and she gets to keep her space again until they are all getting ready to head out. Kami immediately tries to organise a “girls’ car” since they won’t all fit in her Dad’s (even though KC has disappeared for the night and isn’t joining them), although Courtney instead beelines for the front seat of her Dad’s car first even though it means sitting on a bunch of old newspapers.

She tries to avoid sitting anywhere near either of her sisters when they get to Olive Garden, but she finds herself between Clarke and Kari with Kami directly opposite from her. All the incessant questioning starts again – about school still, her teachers, how track is going. She tries her best to answer without ever actually telling them anything they could turn against her, and to her relief, her brothers manage to distract Kami from when the food arrives until when they leave with their own incessant babbling about school and friends and soccer.

Her brothers are still busy trying to get their older sisters’ attention when they leave, and they bundle into the back of Kami’s car as Kari sits in the front seat. Courtney, for her part, gets back in her Dad’s car before anyone asks her to sit elsewhere.

“You know, they’re just trying to spend time with their sister. You could engage with them sometimes,” her Dad comments, breaking the silence when they’re halfway home.

“Their baby sister who they’re just gonna make fun of. I just wanna do my own thing on my weekend and not be pestered,” she grumbles.

“They don’t think you’re a baby,” he rebuts.

“Then why do they act like they do and talk to me like one?!” she snaps back, and her Dad doesn’t seem to have an answer for that one.

It’s not late when they get home, and reluctantly, Courtney lets herself be requested to stay downstairs for a not-entirely-optional family movie night. It is one of the old spiderman movies, at least, picked by Conrad, and she has Clarke and her Dad’s constant shushing of anyone that starts talking over it to thank for her ability to sit there silently and scroll through her phone. Instagram is still slightly more interesting than old spiderman.

(Tobey Macguire always looked a little too much like this one weird kid that creeped her out in middle school).

It’s well after 9pm when the movie finishes, and Courtney fully intends to just brush her teeth, wash her face and go to bed. She gets the first two done, but when she returns to the bedroom she finds both her sisters sitting on Kari’s bed and clearly waiting for her.

“Hey Court,” Kami starts. She grimaces. Her sisters usually use her full name, they aren’t her friends. Or, like, even her friends barely call her that, it’s mostly Shayne and his family sometimes.

“What? I’m going to bed,” she answers, immediately.

“Or you could talk to us a bit? How are you going?” Kami continues, her voice gentle and almost teasing. Courtney rolls her eyes.

“I am literally going to bed, it’s 9:45pm, can you not? I’m tired,” she snaps back at them.

“Why are you so tired, though? Is it because stuff is hard?” Kami continues to push. She feels anger bubbling in her chest.

“I’m tired because you woke me up early this morning and it’s literally almost 10pm. If you guys wanna hang out can you do it in your room? I’m going to sleep,” she tells them, and she knows her voice if forceful and growing in volume but she doesn’t pay attention to their reactions as she turns away and climbs into her bed.

She knows they’re still sitting across watching her, but she faces the wall and lays there in silence for the ten minutes until they finally stand up and leave the room. She hopes she’ll actually be able to get to sleep after – she is actually tired – but instead, she finds her mind crawling in discomfort.

Was Kami’s whole reason for coming back this weekend just to try and force her to do stuff? Is she gonna keep doing it until she tells them how she’s feeling about everything like they’re a therapist and not her older sisters that think she’s a dumb baby? She wouldn’t care if they were here but they just keep pestering her and the way Kami is talking to her is so patronising and dumb and-

Ugh.

Chapter Text

“Kami would not fucking leave me alone yesterday. And she keeps talking to me like I’m a little kid that got hurt playing or something like that it’s so gross and I just want to enjoy my weekend… I wouldn’t necessarily hate spending time with them today if they wanted to but not if they’re gonna keep asking me a million questions and prying and talking down to me,” Courtney texts Shayne, blatantly ranting, but he’d texted her at 8am Sunday morning and Kari was definitely still asleep across the room. He’d asked if she wanted to come over and study again, and she’d told him she couldn’t because Kami was around.

Although maybe she could have. Kami can’t annoy her when she’s over the other side of town, although she bets Kami would get on her case and make fun of her for leaving the house again.

“It sucks that they’re babying you. You told your Dad you hated them doing that ages ago didn’t you? Has he said anything to them? Or you?” Shayne texts. She sighs quietly.

“Like forever ago but I told him not to say anything to them because that’s weird and they’d probably tease me about that even more. Yesterday after dinner I just went in his car even though the others were all with Kami and he told me to let them engage with me but like they aren’t just trying to hang out Kami is putting on this weird fake-sweet voice and Kari is just like silently staring at me and I don’t wanna hang out with them when they’re being like that,” she replies.

“Yeah that’s valid… I wonder if telling them straight up to stop babying you would help. But like, I get why you might not want to do that either,” he sends, Courtney shuffling around in her bed to face across the room to Kari before she replies.

The last thing she wants is to be vulnerable with her sisters who are being weird and fake-nice to her and probably trying to dig up information they can use against her like they always used to. But she’s already… kinda considered just snapping at them and telling them they’re being weird. She just wants them to stop and let her exist like she has been the last few months, is that so hard?

“Maybe. Idk. I wish I could escape them at your place but I think they’d use that to be like ‘omg are you scared of being home are you sad tell us everything’ ☠️” she sends, quickly adding, “no mf I just want to be left alone!!!”

“They really should understand that you just wanna be left alone like… they are not that old either, don’t they also want family to just leave them alone? I know my brothers don’t like being crowded by family either,” Shayne answers, and something about it settles the tightness sitting in Courtney’s shoulders. Yeah. She’s not being unreasonable or anything and this isn’t even her feeling weird at home, she just… wants her normal weekend to herself.

She talks to Shayne for a little while longer – mostly about how much he wishes he hadn’t picked an extra math elective this year, statistics, when he totally would’ve preferred to do music like she had – before slowly shuffling out of bed to shower and change in the upstairs bathroom before someone else steals it. Neither of her sisters appear to be up yet, but not long after she moves downstairs to get breakfast, midway through pouring milk into her cereal, they both seem to appear out of nowhere at the same time.

“Courtney! How are you going this morning, feeling a bit better?” Kami asks her, immediately, her voice still annoyingly concerned. Courtney glances over to her Dad sitting at the dining table.

“Than when I was tired? Yes, because it is not 9:45pm and I’ve slept less than 14 hours ago now,” she answers, obviously, as she twists the cap back onto the milk and turns to put it back in the fridge.

She could’ve left it out for Kami and Kari, but… whatever.

“Aw, Courtney, you don’t need to pretend like that,” Kami starts, her voice even more sickly sweet. Courtney huffs as she pushes past her to sit down at the dining table and eat her breakfast, Shayne’s comment about telling them they’re not helping swirling through her mind and seeming to be joined by a smattering of memories of things her therapist has said in the last month and a half.

Kari goes to say something else, her own voice artificially light, and Courtney feels herself snap.

“Can you fucking stop, dude?” she rushes out, “you keep making up all this shit that isn’t real and talking to me like I’m a child when I’m just trying to have my normal weekend without you two constantly getting in my space and digging for information for whatever you want to do to use it against me probably. There’s nothing wrong except you two being weird, I literally just want you to shut up and leave me alone.”

“But you can’t possibly be okay after everything, you’re just lying because you don’t feel like you can talk to anyone but we’re your sisters and you need to talk to us because-” Kami starts rambling.

“Kami, stop,” her dad speaks up, suddenly, “you two are being super over the top towards Courtney. Actually listen to her for once, she knows what she needs.”

“Like you know anything about-” Kari starts, but Courtney still feels the anger sizzling through her mind and she can’t help but cut her off.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Kari? We share a bedroom, you know I’m fine already and you stopped constantly staring at me and asking stupid questions ages ago but now Kami is here you’re being weird again- are you two trying to gather information to tell Mum, or something?” she snaps.

“Of course we’re not gonna tell her anything, I’ve literally blocked her number. We’re your sisters, we care about you-” Kami starts.

“You have literally never cared about me ever in my life. I’m your annoying baby sister and you’ve always just tried to mess with me and wished I didn’t exist,” Courtney shoots back, “at least then you didn’t constantly pester me like this.”

“Oh come on, that’s never been true,” Kami pushes. Courtney rolls her eyes almost forcefully.

“I’m not stupid like you seem to think I am,” she rebuts.

“I don’t think you’re stupid!”

“Then why are you lying? You literally spent the entire time you lived here hating that I existed. You two always kicked me out of my own room so you could hang out there. You didn’t want to spend time with me ever because I’m a baby to you. You literally said it for years,” Courtney’s voice is forceful, and part of her kind of expects her Dad to tell her to calm down. Or yell at her because she’s pretty sure she used the f word, but he seems to just… sit there.

“She’s… got a point,” Kari mutters. Courtney absently glances down. Ugh, her cereal is getting soggy. But she figures they… probably needed to have this conversation.

“But it’s different now! Obviously we don’t think that now and after everything that happened you probably need our help-” Kami continues.

“I don’t need anything from either of you. Other than you to stop being so weird and patronising,” she cuts her off, again, “and why would I think it’s any different? Literally nothing changes, you were both still like that to me when Mum was here screaming at me constantly. You literally agreed with her when it’d get me out of your way. I don’t have any reason to think anything has changed.”

“But everything has changed,” Kami points out. Courtney grimaces, forcing herself to pause and actually take a bite of her cereal, letting the others sit in the silence while she does.

“Has it? I’m still the same person. The only thing that changed was everyone being super weird around me and over time that has stopped, except you coming back and doing this,” she pushes.

“But you won’t be the same person, she was like that to you and you’re going to need therapy and to talk to people and learn how to be okay again,” Kami continues.

“I have a therapist and she would definitely tell me I need to tell you to leave me alone and stop treating me like some stupid child,” she snaps, forgetting her Dad is sitting diagonally across from her.

…Uh. Shit.

“Courtney’s right, girls, it’s not for you to tell her what she needs. Courtney is still Courtney. She’s… working things out herself. You might be doing this from some place of caring, but… you aren’t being helpful. She has all her friends she can talk to, the Topps, she’s just being a normal teenager,” her Dad says, although he seems to slip past the whole therapy thing, “if you girls all wanted to go and hang out together, that’d be fine, but… neither of you would want to spend time with someone who was constantly infantilising you, would you?”

“No,” Kari mutters, after a moment, moving over into the kitchen to, finally, actually get her own breakfast. Kami, for her part, remains standing cross-legged to the side of the dining table, although this time, she’s staring at their Dad instead.

“I don’t trust you. You didn’t stop her for so long. You did that shit too,” she tells him, forcefully, after a moment, “are you still abusing her? Is she too scared to say anything here? Why won’t she leave the house?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Courtney feels herself snap, standing up and almost toppling her chair backwards as she does, “come on. Upstairs.”

She hears both of her sisters following behind her as she trudges up the stairs, although all she can think about is how goddamn awful her cereal is going to be after sitting in milk for like, twenty minutes. Maybe she can make Kami give her money to order in McDonalds hash browns or something instead.

“He wouldn’t have let me say fuck in front of him twice if he was abusing me,” she mutters, as she pushes the bedroom door open and trudges over to sit on her bed, before quickly adding, “stay away from my bed. I don’t like other people sitting on my bed and that’s not new that’s literally forever.”

“Okay,” Kami mumbles, Courtney turning and sitting on her own bed and watching as the other two sit on Kari’s opposite her.

They pause in silence, for a while, both staring expectantly across at Courtney. She grumbles to herself, before launching into a ramble of every stupid thing.

“Everything Dad is saying is right. I don’t know how many times I need to say it – you two have treated me like I was just annoying and always in your way for my whole life, of course I don’t trust you now. It’s nothing to do with Mum. It’s weird that you’re being like that and of course I’m going to think you’re trying to make fun of me or tell her or something. But if you must know- yes shit felt weird here for a while but Dad is trying to be helpful and things are just normal at home now and it’s fine and I’m seeing a fucking therapist that Shayne recommended – or like, his boss recommended, he literally works for a psychologist – and I’m working through all the deeper shit and I’m literally never going to want to talk about that stuff with you. And Kari should know everything is fine at home, you literally live here.”

“Everything seems fine at home, yeah,” Kari admits, after a while, “but… we do care about you. And yeah we always tried to get space from you when you were a kid but… you aren’t a kid anymore.”

“Then stop talking at me like I am one. You are literally putting on fake-sweet baby voices,” she points out, watching Kami cross her arms over her chest again.

“Well I don’t know how I’m meant to-”

“Just normally! Literally just normally like I’m a normal person,” Courtney replies, “and stop assuming everything is because I’m depressed and hate life or whatever. Yeah I probably have PTSD or whatever but it doesn’t mean I’m always sad, and I just wanted to chill in bed yesterday and spend some time doing what I wanted to do. I had a nice morning lying in here drawing. I don’t have anything to say about school or my friends because it’s all just normal and boring. I’ve never liked anyone questioning me about literally everything like that. And now you guys ruined my breakfast.”

“I guess arguing in that kitchen isn’t good for you or something, yeah…” Kami trails off, Courtney sighing heavily.

“Not like that, do you even listen to me? You ruined my breakfast because it’s sat forever and now my cereal will be gross and soggy,” she points out, “if you guys wanna be nice and sisterly to me or whatever now then fine. But don’t act like you always have been and don’t act like I’m some kid you have to protect and second-guess everything I say.”

“O…kay…” Kami starts, “are you sure you’re fine?”

“Yes!” she snaps, “it would’ve been better if you asked that a year ago. I wasn’t then. But she’s literally been gone for more than 6 months.”

“Come on, Kami. She’s fine. Let up a little,” Kari speaks up, then, “I, uh… sorry we pressured you so much, Courtney.”

“Uh, yeah… Sorry,” Kami adds, although it sounds hesitant more than genuine, “we… were gonna ask if you wanted to go see a movie later but I guess you won’t want to, so that’s… I guess I shouldn’t say anything.”

“What movie? Because if it’s that dumb French love story thing, that’s what I saw with my friends on Friday,” she answers, a little abrupt as she stands from her bed and starts pointedly moving out of the room and back downstairs.

“That one sounds so pretentious, no,” Kari answers, as the other two evidently follow her, “no, Shang-Chi. The Marvel one.”

“I think Shayne and Zach would be pissed if I saw that without them,” Courtney tells them, instead, letting her voice settle a little. It’s true. No one has tried to plan seeing it yet even though it came out a couple of weeks ago, but… she’s pretty sure that will be a thing.

“Is Shayne your boyfriend?” Kami asks. Courtney rolls her eyes. What did she just say?

“No,” she answers, anyway.

“Nah, that’s Thomas,” Kari adds.

“If you’re so invested in all this information about me then why don’t you remember I broke up with Thomas two weeks ago?” she points out, neither of her sisters seeming to say anything else as they all return to the dining room. Courtney’s Dad is now at the sink washing up the dishes, and she reluctantly returns to her over-sogged cereal at the dining table. Ugh. If they wanted to upset her, this is going to do it.

Neither of them sit beside her at the dining table when they eat their own breakfast, and Courtney scrolls absently through her phone as she eats as much of hers as she can tolerate before wandering in the kitchen to clean it up. She isn’t entirely sure what she is actually going to do with her day today, but she still wanders straight back upstairs to the bedroom after she does so.

There’s a knock on the door only a couple of minutes after she sits back on her bed, but this time she can kinda tell it’s her Dad.

“Yeah?” she responds, trying not to snap. She kinda figures he’s gonna come and make sure she’s okay after all the arguing with her sisters, although she also kinda hopes he would understand the irony of doing that when she was arguing with them to stop getting in her space.

“You… mentioned before that you’re seeing a therapist?” he starts, body half-stepped into the bedroom although he’s mostly still standing in the hall.

“Are you gonna have a problem with that?” she asks, pointedly, but he quickly shakes his head.

“No, I… just haven’t seen it on the insurance, and I’m not sure if it’s listed as something else to be private and that’s okay, just… as long as you aren’t spending all your money on a medical expense, because that’s something that I should be paying for,” he continues. Courtney sighs roughly in response. Is she gonna…

“Um… they aren’t charging me heaps because I’m a minor. It’s like… sliding scale fees. And um… Catherine is paying,” she admits, carefully, watching her Dad’s face twist.

“It’s… it’s good that you have that help. I… I would prefer if you did switch it to our insurance, and I can get you a card from the insurance since you’re over 16 so it’s all fine. And it doesn’t mean I can see anything except the charge that comes through the insurance, they wouldn’t even be allowed to tell me anything if I asked. But if you’d prefer not to do that then that’s… okay, too, I guess,” he almost rambles, Courtney slowly nodding in response.

“Can you get me an insurance card anyway? It’d be… good to have, I think, in case I like… wanna take myself to a doctor or something,” she mumbles, before rapidly adding, “not that I’d be hiding anything or whatever I just mean like if you’re busy with work or something and like-”

“No, it’s fine, I agree, it’d be a good idea regardless,” he nods, “I’ll order one tomorrow.”

“I’ll probably switch the therapist to the insurance if I can. I know Cathy doesn’t mind giving me money but I still feel kinda bad about it. I’ll find a way to repay them someday,” she adds, although she knows he would’ve just stepped out quietly anyway. Something in her vaguely wants his… opinion, on all that. Whether she is being totally rude and unreasonable by even letting them pay.

“I’m sure Catherine is more than happy just to help you out and have your company over there sometimes,” her Dad says, instead, simply, “are you going over to Shayne’s today?”

“I don’t think so. I… guess maybe I’ll go and see the movie with the others. I wanna see it anyway. I’ll just have to pretend to Shayne and Zach that I haven’t seen it yet when they ask me to go with them.”

Chapter Text

“Yo! We doing Shang-Chi finally next weekend? I have been avoiding spoilers for WAY TOO LONG,” Zayn texts the group chat late that evening, Courtney immediately laughing to herself. She did end up going with her sisters, and it was fine. Well, like, the movie was awesome, hanging out with her sisters was fine. They didn’t bug her and Kami bought her movie snacks, so that was okay.

“I kinda already saw it because my older sister was visiting this weekend and made me go with her… but I’ll see it again,” she replies, as Alicia and Shayne both say they’ll join.

“Not fair!! Watching without me?! This is twice now…” Shayne texts her, directly, Courtney laughing lightly to herself and rolling back to lie on her bed. Kami and Kari are both in Kami and Kathryn’s old room, so she has the space to herself for a little while. It’s nice.

“Oops. Sorry. But uh… I kinda spent like thirty minutes this morning arguing with Kami and Kari about how they’re treating me and I kinda felt like I had to hang out with her at least once before she leaves tomorrow. Also Dad knows I’m going to therapy now,” she replies, messily.

“Oh god… Do I need to drive over? Everything ok?” Shayne asks, Courtney feeling it suddenly bristle warmly within her chest. She would really like him to come over and she’d like to hug him and repeat everything to him and get it all out of her head, but… she can also recognise that her heart is getting involved in those feelings, this time, and she pushes it down.

“It’s all good now I think. They are in Kami’s room and leaving me alone finally. And Dad doesn’t mind, he’s just gonna get me a card for our insurance so your Mum doesn’t have to pay for it anymore,” she types back.

“You know my Mum doesn’t mind at all tho,” he reinforces.

“Oh, I know, but if I can get it on our insurance then I will now he knows anyway. And he doesn’t care.”

————————————————

After how annoying her weekend ended up being with Kami and Kari pestering her, Courtney is kind of glad that her week ends up being just… boring. Sure, she gets an actual phone call (ew) from the CVS to schedule an interview for the next Saturday morning, and track is cancelled last minute because the coach is unavailable and she heard a weird rumour that he tried to attack a senior at athletics practice (Shayne tells her that did not actually happen, but he heard the coach yelled at a cheerleader in public). But otherwise, it’s just normal.

School sucks except music and home economics (she really likes her electives this year), her friends are on her case about being single but spending slightly more time making fun of a new military kid who refuses to hang out with anyone except the weird intense emo guys (not even the emo girls like Billie and her crew), and on Thursday her therapist almost congratulates her for standing up to her sisters and being honest about how she felt about how they were treating her. At least it seems like she got that… right.

She’s called down for a family dinner again on Friday night, and she’s ready to sit in silence and pretend KC isn’t there while she listens to her younger brothers rambling about their own school like it’s actually interesting. A few minutes in, though, KC clears his throat, and she instinctively winces and refuses to look at him.

“I have something to say,” he starts, his voice terse. Courtney continues to not look at him and takes another mouthful of her burger, and he continues, “I was recommended by my manager for a transfer, to another location. And it was a hard decision, but… I have decided that I will accept the transfer and I’ll be moving to Arizona later this week.”

She has to stop herself from outwardly cheering as much as her brain does internally. He’s leaving?! And not even to Utah where she has to worry about him like getting close with their mother again and telling her stuff or whatever, to some other random state-

Her brothers ask him tonnes of questions, of course, but Courtney quickly notices her Dad isn’t saying a whole lot, and she lets herself glance up and meet his eyes. He doesn’t say anything, but he nods slightly, and when everyone else seems to rush out of the dining room to wherever else after dinner – KC and her brothers head into the backyard apparently to play soccer, Kari upstairs – she carefully hangs back.

“Did you kick him out?” she asks, directly.

“I… strongly suggested he should consider it and consider moving further away than just elsewhere in Mansfield after his little stunt about Thanksgiving the other week,” he answers, after a moment, his voice low, “and we won’t be keep his room set up for him to come back, he’s taking everything.”

“So we’ll have two whole spare rooms?” she answers, raising an eyebrow. She immediately wants to ask if she can move into one of them finally, but he beats her to it.

“Well, after he’s gone, I’m planning to ask Kari if she would like to move into his old room. We’ll keep Kami and Kathryn’s room set up, Kami does still visit every now and then. But… I figured you two would be okay with having your own rooms?” he tells her, almost questioning his decision, although Courtney rapidly nods.

“I just want my own space. And I’m not gonna like totally lock myself up in my room all the time if you think that’s gonna be a problem, no more than now, but I just-” she rambles, before cutting herself off.

“I know, it’s fine. Totally understandable you need some time to yourself and your own space, this can be a very busy and loud house with the boys even though it’s less than it used to be,” he agrees, pausing for a moment before adding, “I get my own space at the station sometimes when all the guys are out doing things- I don’t think you’d quite get that at school so much…”

“School is always pretty busy,” she nods, a little awkwardly, before glancing back behind her. She didn’t entirely want to end up in an actual conversation with her Dad, she just kinda wanted to plant the seed of the idea of her and Kari having their own rooms, and that seemed to happen way quicker than she expected.

“All good, you can head upstairs if you want to. Just- don’t tell Kari yet, I’m not going to mention it until after he’s gone so he doesn’t get all angry about it,” he tells her, Courtney simply nodding and turning upstairs.

She knows she doesn’t need to hide from Kari how excited she is by the prospect of KC finally leaving instead of constantly grumping around the house and snapping at everyone. Her sister like, blatantly hates him and is always making fun of him. Although maybe she’ll miss having someone to be mean to all the time since he’s kind of the last one left.

“Fuck yes, misogynistic prick is moving out,” she almost-cheers when Courtney wanders into the bedroom, and Courtney doesn’t stop herself from grinning.

“About time. He clearly hasn’t wanted to be here for like, a year.”

————————————————

She’s never had a job interview before. Courtney doesn’t know whether to be nervous when she takes the bus into the city Saturday morning, and she’s dressed up slightly more than she usually would on a weekend but otherwise she just feels… normal. It probably helps that she’s seeing the movie with Shayne, Zach and Alicia after the interview just like the four of them used to.

“Hi, Courtney Miller, here for an interview?” she greets the person working at the service counter at the back, where the email she’d got on Thursday had told her to go for her interview. He looks like he can’t be more than a couple of years older than her, and he smiles and nods and gestures for her to follow him past the counter and through a door marked ‘staff only’.

The back of the pharmacy is dark and a little dirty, but a slightly older woman in a white pharmacists’ jacket smiles at her and invites her into a small room with a table and a couple of plastic chairs and introduces herself as Anna, the general manager and one of the actual pharmacists.

The interview feels… fine. Anna asks her why she wants a job there (she’d managed to pull together a response to that beforehand on Shayne’s advice and come up with something about always shopping there and already knowing a lot of their product lines), how long she’s been in Mansfield, whether she does any extracurriculars and when those are.

“Okay, thanks for that Courtney. I’ll get my head cashier to give you a call next week about when you might be able to start your trial period,” she tells her, as the interview comes to a close. It’s vague, but as Courtney says goodbye and moves back out of the pharmacy she turns the sentence over a couple of times in her mind. It sounds like she got the job… right? That was easy.

“Hey! How was the interview?” Zach asks, bounding up to her for a hug as he often does – Alicia tagging along beside him and rolling her eyes, too, of course – a little while later when she meets them over near the cinema.

“I think it went okay, she implied that I’ve got the job so I can’t have messed it up too bad,” she replies, shrugging, “said something about calling about a trial shift.”

“That does sound promising – but like, make sure they pay you for that, you can’t do trial shifts for free or anything, that’s super illegal,” Alicia warns, Courtney nodding in response. She’s heard about businesses trying to do that to some of the guys from school who had got jobs at like, sportswear and sneaker stores and weird cafes.

Shayne turns up not thirty seconds later, also pulling her – and the other two – into hugs. She repeats what she’d said to the others when he asks about the interview, but when he asks how everyone is generally, she lets herself grin.

“KC is moving to Arizona next week, so… that’s nice,” she comments, Shayne immediately almost jumping in excitement beside her.

“Seriously? Finally! Dude sounds like he doesn’t want to be here anyway,” he replies.

“Exactly what I said. And like, Kari doesn’t know yet, but Dad said he’s gonna ask her if she wants his old room and then I’d finally get my own room too…” she trails off.

“Oh that’s so cool!” Alicia responds, “I totally get why large families have to do shared bedrooms but like… it sounds like it sucks unless you’re besties with whoever you share with. Which I get the vibe you are not.”

“Kari is… fine. We’re not friends, exactly, but she’s fine. But I want my own space. It sucks sharing, and she’s like, almost 20,” she agrees, before they move on to talking about a hike that Zach has been planning for the adventure club, although thankfully, he doesn’t mention anything about Hollie.

It’s nice to have another day out with Zach, Alicia and Shayne. It’s been a while since it was just the four of them somewhere, and after the movie they wander into the mall food court for lunch, chatting about the movie (they wouldn’t for a recent release, but it’s been a few weeks and there are spoilers all over the internet anyway) and how much they liked it.

“I think it was better the first time, I don’t think it’s gonna be a like, rewatch all the time one, but it’s still great,” Courtney comments, at one point, but Zach immediately agrees with her and says he thinks without some of the suspense and the mystery of what would happen next it wouldn’t hit quite as well.

It’s still only just after 1:30pm when they wander back out of the mall and into the sunlight of the early Fall afternoon. Alicia and Shayne both drove to the movie – Alicia picked Zach up – and Courtney wanders vaguely in the direction of the parking lot with them, given it’s kind of on the way to the bus station anyway and their conversation never quite comes to a stop, as she and Zach debate Alicia about whether pumpkin spice lattes are actually good. They reach Alicia’s car first and say goodbye to her and Zach, but only a handful of steps later, Shayne comes to a stop.

“D’you wanna come hang out at my place? Or do you need to go home?” he asks, shoving one hand in his pocket as he turns his head towards her. Courtney shrugs.

“I’ll have to ask Dad, but I think that’d be chill. It’s been too long since I’ve beat your ass at Overcooked. Or Smash Bros,” she answers, pulling out her phone and immediately tapping out a text to her Dad. It has been a while, and it’s not like she had any other plans for today other than like… she should probably study. But she can do that tomorrow.

“Sure, will you be home for dinner?” her Dad responds, quickly.

“I don’t know, will let you know closer to the time,” she quickly taps out, before turning back towards Shayne, “all good, I can hang out.”

It’s, weirdly, the first time Courtney has been in Shayne’s car. He’s driven to her place that one time he turned up in the park and demanded she go and talk to him, but she’s never even really looked at his car.

It’s not new or fancy by any means, but it’s clean – she’s surprised by that, for a moment, until she remembers how spotless and neat his bedroom always is. Why can’t her brothers be like that? – and she doesn’t think much of sitting down into the front passenger seat without their conversation ever breaking as he drives out of the parking lot and starts heading towards his house.

“What do you think is going on with Zach and Alicia these days?” she asks, at one point, Shayne immediately humming in response.

“It’s hard to know. They seem like… weirdly a bit more chill and less close than they used to be?” he comments, “but at the same time, super comfortable and like, finishing each other’s sentences and just like, seeming to know everything the other says already. I don’t know. It’s not as fun to tease them anymore.”

“I’m getting the same vibe, like it’s less obvious and maybe they’re less close but also more close? It always seemed like he was into her but I’m not sure if she liked him…” she trails off, and Shayne laughs lightly.

“Don’t tell anyone?” he prompts.

“Yeah?” Courtney responds.

“She admitted to me that she does like him, but I’m pretty sure she also implied that they aren’t actually together, they’re just friends,” he tells her, “which does make me want to tease Zach until he finally asks her out…”

“Has Zach ever told you anything?”

“Nah, he and I don’t talk about stuff like that. I only really talk about that kinda stuff with you, and Alicia, and sometimes Max,” he replies, “I refuse to talk about girls with Ethan because I get the vibe he’s a little gross about them sometimes. Not, like, really bad, but maybe a little objectifying which… I do not like.”

“Sometimes it surprises me that more guys haven’t been like that towards me,” Courtney comments, lightly, because it’s… kinda true. Guys used to always stay stuff to her and her friends, but… Mostly they seem to be leaving her alone at the moment. Her friends, too.

“Johnny, though. And Cody. Those guys were both gross to you,” he comments, his voice almost angry as he does, “Thomas seemed okay though… you still feeling like you want to be single?”

“Yeah, at least for the rest of the year. I just… can’t be bothered. And my friends keep making a thing out of it but it’s not like any of them are dating anyone either. Except Yasmin, I guess. What about you? Still no one in Mansfield good enough for you?” she asks, turning her tone teasing, although when she glances over Shayne’s brow is furrowed.

“It’s definitely not that, but no, I’m happy being single,” he replies, straightforward, before quickly jumping on her other comment, “you think Yasmin and Billie are still together?”

“I… think so? Billie has started sitting at the desk-station thing beside me in home eco all the time and she always says hi, although not much else,” Courtney answers, “she actually seems nice, I feel like she’d be fun to hang out with. But… her and Yasmin are totally avoiding acknowledging each other exists at school. I figure that’s because they’re hiding but who knows.”

Their conversation is cut off as Shayne pulls into the area at the side of the driveway of his parents’ house – they must both be home already, he doesn’t open the garage – and they both step out of the car and wander to the front door.

“Hey Shayne, how was the movie- oh, Courtney, honey, nice to see you!” Catherine greets them both, head poking out of her office, evidently surprised by Courtney’s presence.

“Hi, Shayne asked if I wanted to come over, hope that’s okay,” she replies, lightly.

“Oh of course! You’re always welcome here,” Catherine answers, as she always does, “oh, and I’m actually planning on making that curry you like for dinner, if you’d like to stay!”

“I might, actually,” Courtney answers, simply, before quickly turning to Shayne, “if you’re not gonna get sick of me after like, 7 hours?”

“I think I’ll manage,” Shayne laughs, “but hey, you wanna get to that beating me at Overcooked you were talking about? Or well, trying to, anyway. I don’t buy it.”

“I learned from the best,” she banters back, as Catherine waves them off and they wander down the hallway to the living room.

“Me?” he replies, pointedly.

“Max,” she answers immediately, Shayne bursting into laughter in response before he settles into a grumble.

“Go on, then, pick a controller…”

Chapter Text

Courtney had forgotten how nice it is to just hang out in Shayne’s living room playing games. It had been a while again, the handful of times she had found time during the semester to be here so far it had been to study, and this is just… fun. It’s so easy to let her mind empty of literally anything else and just dive into the game and their banter. There’s a part of her heart that keeps trying to get involved, that leaps every time he laughs at one of her jokes, but she tells it to calm down.

Yes, Shayne likes hanging out with her. He does enjoy her company. But he’d never like her that way, he’s blatantly way too good for her, and that’s… okay. Not that she’s mentioned liking Shayne to her therapist, but they had talked about how she could let herself recognise that she could be a likeable friend and not everyone was out to get her. And, internally, she’d reasoned with her feelings on and off for a couple of months now, and she’s… okay with it.

They stay in the living room playing games all afternoon, Courtney’s attention only drawn away when his mother appears in the kitchen in the evening and starts pulling ingredients out of the fridge to cook dinner. They both offer to help her with dinner, but she shakes her head as always, telling them it’s all good and they can keep relaxing.

(Courtney has developed a suspicion over the last couple of years that Cathy just doesn’t like sharing a kitchen with other people, even now she has a much larger kitchen. When she’d mentioned it to Shayne back in Summer, he’d laughed and agreed.)

“You wanna head upstairs for a bit? I think my eyes need a break from the screens,” Shayne comments, not long later, Courtney nodding and setting her controller aside before she follows him upstairs.

She figures they’ll probably hang out in his room, but instead Shayne comes to an abrupt stop at the top of the stairs.

“Oh! You haven’t been here since we finally actually got furniture for the spare room, or redid Brian’s, right? Or like, Mum and Dad did, it was last weekend and I was studying all weekend for that awful stats quiz,” he comments, instead leading her first towards what was Brian’s room, closest to the stairway.

She feels momentarily weird stepping into Brian’s room, but the weirdness quickly falls away. It’s still the same bed frame she knows Brian had here, but everything else of his seems to have either gone or been relegated to a cupboard. The bed is covered in a subtly patterned pastel-orange duvet, now, with a couple of indoor plants sat atop a white dresser and a panel mirror in one corner.

“They’re kinda generic, although I think Mum picked the duvet in the other room because she thought you’d like it,” Shayne comments, lightly, as he moves back out of Brian’s room and towards the other, in the back-left corner of upstairs and beside his own, “I convinced her to decorate this one with something other than plants for once!”

Courtney’s body fills with a comfortable warmth at the casualness with which Shayne mentioned his Mum thinking of her, as if this was somehow her room. She can immediately see what he means when she steps in, though: the bedcover is white and textured, but with a subtle peachy-pink sparkle throughout and fluffy pink pillows sitting against the headboard. She’s not, like, obsessed with pink, but at least two of the things she’d bought with Cathy are in that same peach-pink colour.

“They look really cool and like… neat and minimalist,” Courtney comments, stepping a little further into the room and glancing around. It has the same dresser as the other, but the mirror here is affixed to the wall and there’s an armchair in one corner of the room, instead, in light grey fabric with gold detailing, “completely the opposite to my place. Which I guess you… still haven’t seen.”

“I feel like I understand the vibe of your place even though I’ve only kind of seen inside the front door once,” he replies, immediately, “oh! So you’re actually gonna get your own room?!”

She lets herself ramble happily about that one as she follows Shayne into his room and perches on the edge of his bed as she often does, their conversation flowing through until his Dad appears upstairs and tells them dinner is ready.

It’s just the four of them for dinner this time (Shayne had told her Brian and Madison still come over for dinner at least once every couple of weeks, but they had only a few days ago) and Courtney can’t remember the last time she stayed for dinner at their place, but at the same time, it feels as normal as it always had. There is an equal mix of silence and conversation as they eat dinner, the sky rapidly darkening through the huge windows out to their deck.

“Oh, Courtney, Shayne mentioned your family isn’t doing Thanksgiving this year?” Robert starts, at one point. She doesn’t think much of the topic change, and as much as she doesn’t remember having that exact conversation with Shayne, it sounds like something she probably would’ve mentioned to him in passing.

“Yeah, we’re just staying home. I think it’ll be nice to not be travelling anywhere and to just have a week off school at home,” she answers, simply.

“Yeah, we’re not travelling either, we’ll be going to Robert’s family in Arizona for Christmas this year so we thought it’d be easier for Shayne with school and everything if we just stayed here,” Catherine agrees, “my parents are coming over from Colorado, though, and Brian and Madison of course, and Chris and his partner are coming too… it’s your choice of course, honey, but we wanted to ask if you’d like to come over for Thanksgiving dinner? We’d love to have you here, and I know you’ve been trying to finally meet Madison for even longer than it took us to meet her…”

Courtney almost says yes without thinking, because duh, she’ll always say yes to hanging out with Shayne’s family where she feels totally welcome and like she doesn’t have to think twice about anything. She forces herself to pause, anyway.

“I think I’ll have to ask my Dad, but thank you for inviting me,” she answers non-committally instead, trying to turn it over in her head.

Shayne’s grandparents will be here, too. She hasn’t met them, what if they think it’s weird that Shayne’s random friend is at their family Thanksgiving? And she’s never met Shayne’s eldest brother Chris, either, nor does she know like anything at all about him given Shayne never really mentions him because he’s so much older. She really should feel weird about all that, but she’s… not sure she actually does.

Shayne’s parents don’t say any more of the invitation over dinner, just asking her to let them know what she decides whenever she does. When she wanders back upstairs briefly with Shayne after dinner, though, she’s not surprised he brings it up again.

“Inviting you to Thanksgiving was Mum’s idea, not mine, but like, it’d be cool to have you here. Only a little bit because it means I won’t be the youngest and the only high schooler here,” he jokes, shaking his head, “but seriously, like, it’s okay if you don’t wanna, I know you haven’t met my grandparents or Madison or Chris and Rachael before. They’d all be chill if you do come, but it’s totally your choice.”

“Honestly it seems kinda fun, I don’t hate Thanksgiving – you heard me earlier, I’m all for the basic bitch fall vibes – and I’m sure your family would do a nice cosy Thanksgiving. But I will have to ask my Dad and think about it for a bit,” she answers, honestly, watching Shayne nod and laugh.

“Look, I didn’t say anything earlier because I didn’t want all three of us to gang up on Alicia… but yes, cosy fall vibes are great. I kind of miss this time of year actually being cold. Like okay Arizona wasn’t freezing but it still got cooler than here in November,” he replies, “anyway, d’you want me to drive you home soon? You can stay as long as you like, but I figure your Dad will want you back home since you’ve been out since before the interview.”

“Oh shit, I forgot to text him I was staying for dinner,” she realises, suddenly, rapidly grabbing her phone from where she’d absentmindedly left it sitting on the end of his bed. She has an unread text from him, although it doesn’t seem upset.

“I figure you’re staying at Shayne’s for dinner? Just let me know when you’ll be home,” her Dad had sent, some hour-and-a-half earlier. Oops.

“Sorry Dad I got caught up and forget to text you. Yes, I had dinner here, but I’m going to head back soon – they will drive me back,” she sends, intentionally not saying exactly who will drive her back. She doesn’t know if her Dad will have a problem with her being in Shayne’s car, although he is 18 and he does have his full drivers license now.

“No worries Courtney, see you when you get home,” her Dad texts, almost immediately, although Courtney takes the whole exchange as her cue to agree with Shayne that she should probably head home now.

She knows Kari will be out at work for the night, but the house is almost uncharacteristically quiet when she wanders in the front door after Shayne drops her off. She can see her Dad sitting at the dining table working on something or another – he probably brought work home again – but no one else, and she slowly wanders through the archway and the living room towards him.

“Oh, hey Courtney. How was Shayne’s?” he asks.

“It was good. Where is everyone at?” she asks, in return, watching him glance vaguely in the direction of the stairs.

“Oh, your brothers are all upstairs – KC found one of his old gaming consoles while he was packing, he’s still packing and the boys are playing it in their room,” he answers.

“Ah, cool,” she nods, pausing for a moment and glancing around. He doesn’t seem mad at her or anything, and it’s not like it’s particularly easy to find her Dad without one of her siblings around. “Hey, so… Robert and Catherine asked me if I wanna go to their place for Thanksgiving dinner. Both of Shayne’s brothers will be there with their partners I think, they’ve kinda invited me because I still haven’t met Brian’s partner after like a couple years of him moving to Mansfield. But is that like… okay?”

Her Dad pauses, for a moment, and she feels her heartbeat quicken just a little. Is this gonna be too much for him? Is he gonna turn around and ask her if it’s because she’s unhappy in this family again or something, or doesn’t feel comfortable here, or-

“Sure, I don’t see why not, if you want to go over there. Just might have to have someone drive you there, I don’t think the busses run on Thanksgiving Day,” he answers, simply, although Courtney’s heart doesn’t calm at all.

“Yeah I’ll… work something out,” she replies, simply, intending to turn and head upstairs herself and get out of this conversation before it turns another direction. She is, evidently, not fast enough.

“Would you stay down here for a moment, Courtney?” he asks, Courtney inwardly wincing as she turns back towards him.

“Hm?” she prompts, trying to sound… casual. Or something. Whatever will get her out of this conversation quickest.

“I don’t like to do this just after last weekend with Kami, but… I just wanted to check in with how you’re going?” he asks, although his voice retains its normal tone.

“Just because I’m having Thanksgiving at their place doesn’t mean there’s something wrong, I just like hanging out with my friend and we weren’t doing anything anyway and I like thanksgiving food just not most family,” she grumbles in return, anyway.

“And I know it doesn’t necessarily mean anything is wrong… and if everything is going okay, then that’s fine, but I still just wanted to check in,” he pushes, again. She crosses her arms over her chest.

“Why?”

“Like I explained when we had those really good tacos… I am your sole parent and guardian, and I need to look after you. I know I might not be your favourite person and I did wrong by you in the past, and I understand that you might want to keep a lot of your life with school and friends and boys and things to yourself, but I do care about you, Courtney, you’re my daughter, and I want to do better, and a big part of that is being able to know if anything is going wrong and I do need to step in anywhere,” he explains, his tone growing insistent before calming again, “like… I know Kami was really getting on your nerves last weekend, and in the past you’ve asked me not to say anything to them about how they treat you but was it… okay, that I did step in? Did I do the right thing there, or in the future would you prefer I leave it just to you three to sort it out?”

Courtney’s arms remain crossed over her chest, but she feels herself resign to the conversation. She’s… not gonna avoid this. And Jessica would probably tell her, at least some extent, to let it happen unless he pries into things he doesn’t have any reason to know.

“It was fine for you to step in since they were arguing about it in front of you. Not wanting you to say anything to them is more… I don’t want you to go out of your way to tell them unless it’s like, relevant in a conversation anyway,” she replies, watching him nod in response.

“Mm, I kind of hoped that was… what you’d meant,” he replies, “and I don’t mean to be… prying, or anything. But I guess I just… to me, it has seemed like you’ve actually been going okay, and you might be getting more comfortable at home. But I also don’t think I’m very good at reading you, and I guess I wanted to check if that’s… accurate, or if there’s anything else I could be doing or not doing?”

“It’s… yeah. Therapist kinda started initially with focussing on being able to feel normal and like I’m allowed to exist in this whole house not just on my bed,” she answers, a little reluctantly, glancing down at the floor, “and stuff will take time. I still don’t know about using the kitchen and stuff… but I don’t think anyone is doing anything unhelpful. Except KC.”

“I think it will be good for all of us, including him, that he will be moving out into his own space,” her Dad agrees, “especially… you. And I- you don’t have to tell me anything about therapy. But I think it’s… good, that you’re feeling better here, if that’s the outcome. Because it is your house, and you’re allowed to use all of the spaces and things in the house.”

“It still feels easier to just get whatever food I want from the fridge and the pantry at the Topps’ than here and that probably… shouldn’t be the case,” she mutters, glancing back up and watching her Dad’s brow furrow.

“I don’t think it’s… bad that you do feel like you can there, but you can here, too, maybe they should be equal,” he emphasises, “the food here is for everyone. And also… I was hoping that having your own room might help too?”

“I dunno if it will help feeling like I belong but I think it will help with just… having somewhere to relax,” she answers, instead, “and that’s still… something I need. Sometimes it’s hard when Kari is there trying to talk at me or asking me what I’m doing all the time or asking about my friends for no reason.”

“Of course, yeah,” her Dad replies, nodding, “and if you don’t have anything in particular to say about your friends, or boys or anything, that’s okay too. If ‘it’s fine’ is your actual answer to how things are, then that’s what it is.”

“Yeah,” she answers, simply, before abruptly adding, “there’s gonna be nothing to say about boys for a while. I broke up with Thomas and my friends always get on each other’s case for being single but I’m not gonna even try dating again for like, the rest of this year. Maybe even the rest of junior year. And for the love of God, I’m not dating Shayne, no matter what Kari says.”

“Teenage boys seem like they’d be… more hassle than they’re worth. In hindsight, I don’t know why anyone would’ve wanted to date teenage me,” her Dad comments, shaking his head, “and I know Shayne is your friend, that’s fine.”

She can’t stop herself from scoffing lightly at his comment about teenage boys. Yes, most of them suck and she hates that she’s had to deal with them so much for so long… but the conversation seems to be over, at least, too, and she finally turns to wander upstairs.

Chapter Text

Courtney’s younger brothers plan this whole thing for the afternoon KC loads up all his belongings in the trashy car he bought recently, complete with balloons and party food and lots of jumping around asking him a million questions about what he’s going to be doing in Arizona. Courtney, for her part, plans – mostly unintentionally – to spend Wednesday after school at Natalie’s house with these new nail art kits that Yasmin acquired… somehow. Something to do with her Dad knowing someone.

(She’s not entirely sure why they aren’t going to Yasmin’s place instead, but Natalie’s is closer to school)

The five of them – even Hollie is coming this time, it’d usually be one of her adventure club days but Zach had mentioned they were doing less after school this month since they’re doing a like 3-day hike at the start of Thanksgiving break – all pile into the back seat of Natalie’s usual school bus, Courtney ending up between the window and Isabel. She turns her body away from the window, leaning back against it but mostly just watching and listening as Natalie and Yasmin argue about whether coloured hair looks cheap (Natalie’s view) or try-hard (Yasmin’s position).

Courtney tries really hard to keep her face neutral as they talk, although her mind dives deep into that one little thing she knows about Yasmin that the others don’t. Billie has started talking to her more and more in home eco, and honestly, Courtney has just started engaging with it. She seems nice enough, and if it weren’t for the studs on the heavy black boots she wears most days and her ever-changing hair colour which her (probably still?) girlfriend is currently saying makes her a try-hard, she’d probably fit in just fine with their group of friends. And it’s not like there’s anyone else in home eco that pays any attention at all to the two of them in the back corner, given the elective is mostly full of the super religious girls and dumb jocks that just wanted a zero-effort elective.

For her part, Courtney doesn’t get all the weirdness about coloured hair. Like, half of the influencers and celebrities they follow have unnaturally died hair and she’d love to be able to dip-dye her own pink. Maybe once she starts her job at CVS next weekend and gets that staff discount – it’s only 15%, but still – she’ll look at all the hair-toning and temporary colour products a bit more. She knows even her natural blonde could do with a better-quality toning shampoo than the one she’s used since she was 11.

The conversation quickly moves to the nail art kits in question when they get off the bus and wander just up the street to Natalie’s place. Her parents are never home, nor are either of her younger siblings, and the five messily shove their backpacks onto the living room floor as they spread out across the sofas and Yasmin spills the kits out onto the coffee table.

“Oooh, I want the green, it’s totally my colour,” Isabel comments, immediately snatching a pastel green set of press-ons from the table. There’s not just press-ons, though, there’s packs of sequins and gems and stickers and Courtney finds herself gravitating towards a peach-coloured set and a pack of translucent, gold sparkly stickers.

“You sure your clothes are cool enough to wear that one, Courtney?” Isabel asks, glancing over, “they just might make your clothes look even older and dirtier…”

“Most of my clothes are like, a year old at the most,” she shoots back, before she can stop herself.

“Why not just cover your nails in fake jewels? Just as trashy whore-vibes as you are, unless you go and live with your Mum already,” Hollie adds, her voice low and disgusted, “Nat’s gonna have to disinfect the whole sofa just because you’re on it. Gross.”

“And you’re picking navy blue polish even though your skin is red undertone and you have warm hair? Did you pass primary school art?” Yasmin shoots back, as Courtney feels her mind stuttering and refusing to come up with a way to talk back to Hollie, before she turns back towards Courtney, “those black gems would actually work if you’re doing the gold geometric lines… but ugh, of course you aren’t cool enough to come up with it yourself and needed one of us to.”

Courtney simply rolls her eyes at that. She doesn’t reach for the gems – she doesn’t actually want to do gems that will inevitably fall off and be messy with nail glue – but she does reach for the scissors Natalie has got out of the kitchen to carefully open her package of press-ons and starts sorting through to find the right sizes.

She manages to engage in conversation a bit more, this time, and when she finds a way to drop in that she gets a staff discount with her CVS job, Isabel and Natalie both admit that is pretty cool in amongst making fun of the fact that she needs a job at all.

“I feel like having a job as a senior is just like, setting yourself up to fail and end up stuck in this dead-end awful town forever,” Yasmin comments, “like, you need to concentrate on study, no one actually needs a job as a teenager.”

Courtney does everything she can not to roll her eyes. Also, like, for all their shitting on Mansfield – and she doesn’t entirely disagree – their parents all ended up here as adults.

And then, of course, Hollie turns it into a dig about how she’s not going to last in her job and deserves to end up homeless and jobless forever because of her parents and it twists together with everything else she’s been saying for the last few months and refuses to get itself out of Courtney’s head for the rest of the afternoon.

She likes how her nails turn out, and as much as Isabel keeps telling her they’re wonky and just going to fall off because she didn’t use enough glue (that’s not even true), Yasmin does admit that the subtle gold sparkle she did with the stickers did work out okay.

They order in pizza for an early-ish dinner after they finish the nails, Dominos accompanying them through a conversational stream of complaints about their various teachers. It makes Courtney ever happier about the two electives she chose when Natalie complains about how the PE and sports science teacher keeps picking on the girls and creeping them out, and Yasmin complains about how all the books they’re reading in literature suck.

She says just as much as she reaches for her third slice of pizza – they aren’t big slices – but she’s quickly interrupted.

“Are you sure you need that? You don’t wanna put on more weight than you already have…” Isabel comments, with a raised eyebrow. Courtney tries to shrug it off and reach for the pizza, because she’s very much aware that she has gained a little bit of weight but she needed to after not eating enough when her Mum was still around, thank you very much, and it’s probably mostly muscle anyway because she’s getting back into track-

“Probably all you’ll ever eat now since you’re too useless to cook because you don’t have a Mum anymore because you abandoned her,” Hollie adds, and she finds that one just a little bit harder as it worms its way into her mind alongside everything else.

When Courtney gets the bus back towards her Dad’s, she feels like she should be excited to return to a home with no more KC. No more people that say shitty stuff to her all the time. With a bonus free bedroom that she knows her sister will be moving into and will finally, for the first time in her life, give her a private space at times other than when she locks herself in the bathroom and deep-cleans her hair.

Instead, her head spins with all the shitty things said about her. Not anything Yasmin, or Natalie, or Isabel said – they’re probably right about the pizza, it’s not good carbs, and Yasmin’s design might have looked better than the one she came up with since Yasmin is objectively more fashionable than all of them – but, as happens more often than she’d like, Hollie’s words.

They twist in circles that she can’t force down as much as she tells herself she doesn’t even care, because it’s Hollie, and when has she ever known how to be cool or interesting or anything other than a slightly alternative weirdo? Not any time recently, obviously. They keep twisting anyway, and then they’re digging deep into her forcibly repressed memories and her mother’s voice suddenly sits along beside them, too, the words frustratingly similar.

It has Courtney trudging down the street to the house, frown fixed on her face as she wrenches open the door and steps inside.

“Hi Courtney! How was Natalie’s place?” her Dad calls out, amongst a considerable level noise from the living room that she glances into to see her brothers acting out some kind of fight scene with knockoff definitely-not-Marvel action figures on the coffee table. Kari and her Dad are sitting up at the dining table eating dinner, and she rapidly forces her face to settle into neutrality.

“It was okay. Did nails,” she answers, wandering slightly towards the dining room and holding up one hand, palm facing herself, to show said nails.

“The sparkles are cool, is that glitter polish?” Kari asks, immediately, Courtney shaking her head.

“Nah, Yasmin got these nail sticker kits that aren’t trash and actually blend into the rest of the nail,” she replies.

“Would you like some dinner, or did you already eat?” her Dad asks, not seeming to have any particular comment on her nails (which is the best she could hope for, probably. She definitely wasn’t allowed to use press-ons before her Mum left but she’s tested that a couple times since with no reaction).

“Had food at Natalie’s. I’m gonna head upstairs, I’ve got homework to do,” she answers, before turning to do just that.

It’s not a lie, she has a report for her music elective due Friday morning and as much as she has a class tomorrow that she knows she’ll be able to work on it in, she probably needs a little more time. It’s not even the worst thing she could have to do for homework, because they got to choose any artist they wanted to write the report on and she was doing hers about Oliver Tree, someone she’d found on Spotify a year or so ago.

She pulls her school laptop out of her backpack as she collapses back onto her bed and opens the document she’d already started in class the previous week, rapidly reading through what she’d already written to reorient herself with where she’s up to. Her eyes glaze over as she scrolls back up to the top, realising she had managed to not take in a single word of it. Or if she did, she forgot it immediately. She reads over the first couple of paragraphs again and goes to tab into her other document full of research notes, but she finds herself immediately tabbing back again as her mind drags her out.

It begins a ten-minute cycle where she keeps finding her mind dragging her away from the task at hand, where she only manages to write two sentences that, on reflection, she doesn’t like anyway. She highlights and deletes them, before absently opening a new, blank, document and staring at the screen as she lets the mess in her mind come to the top again.

It’s still Hollie’s dumb shit and her mother’s screaming and now her therapists’ voice too and that stupid idea that she had and-

Fuck it.

“Dear Hollie,” Courtney types. She immediately backspaces it and starts again.

“To Hollie,

What the hell are you doing? You have to know that all the stuff you’re saying about children of divorced parents is ridiculous and dumb. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with me and it doesn’t change where I can live or what I can eat or who I can date or what jobs I’ll get… I know you’re not stupid, really, and your parents aren’t either. Even the Mormons don’t say stuff that stupid and your parents haven’t been Mormon for years.

So why are you doing it? Why are you just constantly being mean to me and making up all these things? We’re meant to be best friends and we have been since we were literally toddlers, it’s weird and rude of you to turn against me like that for no reason. I haven’t done anything to you, but suddenly you just started insulting me and never ever saying anything else and pretending I don’t exist.

You wanna know the real reason my parents divorced? My mother went insane and was abusing me and saying awful things and trying to lock me up in the house so she could neglect me. She destroyed my clothes and screamed at me all the time and tried to kick me out and make me homeless all for reasons that weren’t even true. And now you’re saying a bunch of the same things she did, and telling me I should go and live with her. It almost sounds like she put you up to it or something, but that’s literally illegal because an actual court agreed with me and my Dad and put in a no contact order and she’s not allowed to contact me even via other people.

The stuff the others say to us is true and it’s just saying what’s cool and what isn’t, about things we can actually change. But you’re just being mean for no reason and it sucks. We’ve been friends practically forever but I feel like you’re not my friend anymore and if you keep acting like this I don’t really want to see you ever again… Is that what you want? Do you not care at all about any of your friendships or what people think of you or whether people like being around you? Because being around you sucks now when you’re just stupid all the time. And don’t think anyone else agrees with you, because they don’t.

I don’t feel like I even recognise who you are any more. You’re not the Hollie I grew up with and was always friends with and liked hanging out with. Now you’re someone that just reminds me of my awful abusive mother that my Dad divorced and the court literally made it illegal for her to contact me because she hurt me so much. And I don’t want to be reminded of that because she was wrong and I’m moving on and having a better time with her gone.

If you don’t get over whatever weird thing is making you do this I never want to see you again.

Courtney”

She stares at the page, unblinking, after she types it. It’s messy and stream-of-consciousness and it’s probably not what her therapist had in mind because she’s definitely skirted around how it’s all drilling in her head and making her feel sick and dragging back all the dead, grating numbness from her mother’s screaming at her because she’s scared Hollie will just screenshot anything she sends to the others so they can make fun of her for being vulnerable-

Courtney abruptly highlights and copies the entire document, opening her personal email client and opening a new email. Hollie’s email address comes up as one of the first in her address bar despite the fact it’s probably years since they’ve actually emailed each other, and she copy-pastes her ramblings into the body of the email and hits send before she can think twice. Or add a subject line.

Courtney’s hands are shaking and her body shivering in a way it has not for many, many months when she moves the laptop off her lap to sit a distance ahead of her on her bed. She hadn’t noticed how far forward she had been hunched, but she straightens up, head spinning as she does. She’s sweating and clammy and she feels like she’s going to be sick and pass out, and slowly, she reaches forward and slams the lid of her laptop closed.

It's not like she can do anything else. She sent the stupid email to stupid Hollie and her stupid shit against divorces like it’s 1960 and her voice never fucking leaving Courtney’s head no matter how much she tries because if all her other friends can be fine and have no problem with it then why can’t her supposed best friend of practically her whole life? She hasn’t been her best friend for a while, sure, that’s obviously Shayne, but she’s still been her friend literally forever. Until this.

Courtney flops backwards on her bed, covers sliding into an uncomfortable lump behind her as she stares up at the ceiling and feels tears prick at her eyes and a lump settle in her chest. She doesn’t feel like this anymore, but it’s all washing back over her and all she wants to do is sneak out of the house and down to the park to see Shayne.

But he’s not there, and she can’t sneak out quite so easily anymore, and her phone is buried in her bag somewhere and she really doesn’t want to see what bullshit Hollie is probably going to text her or text everyone else in response.

It reminds her that Kari will definitely appear sometime, and she won’t call her a baby and kick her out of the room, but she will ask if she’s okay. She doesn’t want to tell Kari she’s crying over her stupid ex-friend being mean to her and abruptly Courtney pushes herself back up and off the bed. Stars flash in her vision for a moment, but she pushes through it, quickly grabbing together her things and pushing out of the bedroom and straight into the upstairs bathroom, door locked immediately behind her.

She still has the shower. She can be alone here for like… thirty minutes, at least.

Chapter Text

Courtney doesn’t check her phone until her regular alarm goes off at 6:50am the next morning and she has to fish it out of her bag to shut it off. There’s no evidence of any mention of Hollie or her sending any stupid brain-dump letter to her in any of the group chats, and the only direct message she has is Alicia sending her like twenty memes about Shang-Chi.

Every message she receives through the morning as she drags herself out of bed to get ready and take the bus to school makes her heart race in her chest, but each time, it’s just… normal. Yasmin is complaining about how her brother embarrassed the family by not qualifying for his next karate belt at his first try, Max and Shayne are arguing about fantasy football in the group chat, and her house has that tiny bit of extra peaceful feeling that it always does when KC is away.

She still feels jumpy and on edge when she gets to school, but as Hollie appears and walks vaguely in the direction of the junior lockers with all of them, she doesn’t acknowledge anything different. She doesn’t acknowledge Courtney at all, for that matter, but she vaguely engages in conversing with Yasmin as she continues to complain about her brother and then transitions into talking about how she’s going to make sure this year’s senior (and junior) prom is the best the school is ever had, because she’s so good at organising events already.

Courtney feels like it’s probably too early to be talking about prom before Thanksgiving, but anyway.

She finds herself rapidly distracted – from both her panic over whether Hollie or her other friends are gonna turn and make fun of her for the letter, and from the thought of prom – by the civics quiz she has in first period. She doesn’t hate civics in the same way she didn’t hate US history last year, but she still hates quizzes. Because like. Who doesn’t, really?

The quiz is the start of a boring, painfully slow trawl of classes through the rest of the morning until their 6^th period lunch hour. It drags so mind-numbingly slowly that Courtney feels like racing out of her seat and just leaving the entire school building by the time she gets to 5^th period physics for yet another quiz only this time it’s a surprise one, and it means that by lunch, she’s… kind of forgotten about the whole letter. It really seems like Hollie either… didn’t read it, or if she did, she’s not going to acknowledge it.

Yasmin is off at lunch with the yearbook and prom committee and Natalie is at a basketball practice, and Courtney finds herself gravitating to the senior’s table with Isabel and Hollie in tow. Their table isn’t full either – Ethan and Alicia are both off at their own clubs and sports – but she slides into the seat beside Max, Isabel sitting to her other side and Hollie taking the seat beside Zach at the end of the table.

Courtney rapidly settles into talking to the juniors at the table – and Isabel, sometimes, too – but Hollie seems to stay largely disengaged from the conversation, tapping away at her phone for a while. She puts the phone away, eventually, but she simply turns to Zach and starts asking about this big hiking trip they’re doing with their club over thanksgiving and Courtney immediately zones out of that conversation.

It quickly becomes apparent, through Friday and the weekend, that if Hollie did read the email then she’s not gonna acknowledge it and she certainly didn’t forward it to any of the others. No one says a word about it, Courtney intentionally avoided mentioning it to her therapist on Thursday too (they were in the midst of this whole thing about how she still keeps panicking about being yelled at in public for no reason anyway, so…), and she tries not to think too hard about that.

She thinks she wanted some kind of a reaction, but she tries to tell herself that no response is better than a bad reaction. Maybe? Hollie hasn’t said anything dumb since she sent it, but it’s only been two days and Hollie hasn’t actually said anything to her at all in that time.

It’s still simmering and running around her mind in indecision on Saturday morning, but she really tried to push it out as she dresses in slightly less casual dark black jeans and a white button-up she’d picked up on Thursday night between school and therapy for the first trial shift at her new job.

She can feel a thread of nervousness twirling through her as she scrolls aimlessly on Instagram in the bus into the city in the uniform that mostly but not entirely fits her, but she pushes her shoulder bake and shakes her head as if to dislodge it when she steps off the bus. She’s sure it’ll be fine. She knows this store anyway, it’s just until mid-afternoon, and the interview seemed… fine.

The same woman who interviewed her is standing just near the (closed) front door when she arrives, and she lets Courtney in and tells her where to put her things in the break room before directing her to a stack of parcels in the back of the shop and asks her to unpack them and load them onto the shelves. It’s the start of a parade of repetitive, kinda boring tasks that, paired with her simmering nerves, seem to make the day drag – but it’s… okay. She can put things on shelves, and change over price tickets, and she spends the last hour of the day standing behind the service counter with a blonde guy in his like… mid-20s, she thinks, Brad.

He keeps rolling his eyes at her every time she doesn’t know how to do something and he has to teach her, but she tries to ignore it. Maybe she is being annoying but it’s her first day and what else is she meant to do when she’s never done anything like this before? She’s pretty sure it’ll get easier, and it’ll be fine. And, like, there’s a bunch of staff here, she won’t be working with Brad every time she works.

Nothing she’s done during the day has been particularly difficult or energetic, but when Courtney grabs her bag and trudges back towards the bus station fifteen minutes after they’d closed the shop at 3pm, she feels like she could just lie down and sleep. Her head is pounding in an almost-but-not-quite headache, her feet are sore, her legs feel heavy and she can’t even be bothered to pull her headphones out of her bag to listen to music on the bus ride home.

Courtney kind of hopes that she’ll miss Kari and have the bedroom to herself when she gets home – Kari starts work at 4 or 5 most Saturdays so she’s usually out of the house mid-afternoon. Instead, though, after she begrudgingly climbs the stairs – ugh, she’s gonna need to spend her first paycheque on some new black shoes for this job, her only comfortable shoes are white – from the weirdly quiet downstairs, she finds herself pausing abruptly two steps from the top as her Dad carries a bedside table out of her bedroom.

“Oh! Hi Courtney, how was work?” he asks, voice disappearing slightly as he moves into KC’s old room down the hall slightly.

“It was okay,” she replies, a little abruptly, just as Kari wanders out of the bedroom with an armful of clothes. Her own, thankfully.

“Oh hey Court. I told Dad we didn’t need two spare rooms, so… guess you’ll get the old one to yourself,” Kari comments, her voice almost expectant. Courtney’s brain is still in sluggish post-work mode, and it takes her a moment to realise Kari is, in fact, moving into KC’s room. And, also, thinks it was totally her idea.

“That’s a good idea. Wonder who mentioned it first,” Courtney answers, a little sarcastic, before taking the gap in back-and-forth traffic to finish climbing the stairs and step into her room.

“What?” Kari calls after her.

“Courtney and I talked about it the night KC told everyone he was leaving,” her Dad responds, his voice almost teasing, although Courtney quickly finds herself distracted by the absolute tornado that looks like it has torn through the bedroom that she guesses is finally becoming hers.

Kari’s bed is in three pieces piled on top of each other on the floor where it used to sit, her mattress propped up against her half of the wardrobe. The contents of the wardrobe and of Kari’s bedside table seem to be covering every other inch of the room, including Courtney’s bed, although when she wanders over to inspect it she can’t see anything of hers caught up in the mess.

And the collection of charging cords, pens, random hair ties and notebooks on her own bedside table is still just as she left it that morning. So that’s… something.

“Ah, sorry, it’s a bit of a mess – but we’re getting there! Just as soon as I get this mattress moved and the bed downstairs we’ll be able to finish off and give your space back,” her Dad comments, as he steps into the room, seeming to see her glancing around. “One of the guys from the fire station needed a new single bed for his little one – you know Mia, who you’ve babysat for a few times? She’s just big enough for her own real bed. He’s coming to pick it up after 6 tonight. Hey, might even be room for you to get a desk or something in here with only one bed…”

Her Dad trails off his rambling again as he awkwardly hoists the mattress up and starts dragging it out of the room. Courtney, for her part, manages to step over enough of Kari’s belongings to find a place to set her bag down at the end of her bed, turning back to survey the room again just as her sister steps back in.

“Want to help move things? It’s a mess, I’m just carrying it over there and dumping it, I’ll sort it out tomorrow. But you’ll get your space quicker if you help,” she comments, Courtney simply shrugging and stacking together a few piles of tees on her bed that are definitely not her own, covered in slogans of dodgy local bands.

She quickly finds her post-work sluggishness falling away as she moves armfuls of things into Kari’s room, and then helps her Dad carry part of the bedframe downstairs. The vacuum is sitting just beside the stairs, and she abruptly grabs it. The floor of their bedroom is gross and she doesn’t know when it was last vacuumed and Kari’s whole side of the room is empty, so why not?

Her Dad offers to vacuum for her, but she shakes her head, plugging the cord into the socket that had been hidden behind Kari’s bedside table for years and starting to vacuum the newly clear spaces… and she’s already doing it, so why not do it properly? Courtney soon finds herself shifting her bedside table, too, vacuuming behind it and as much as she can with the random boxes of stuff shoved there, under her bed.

Kari’s things are all gone, now, half of the room looking decidedly empty – and half of the closet. Courtney goes to start moving her own clothes, but she quickly notices how much random dirt is all through Kari’s closet and she may as well clean out the shelves now they’re empty, too, right?

It had been about 3:45pm when Courtney got home, and Kari leaves for work just after 5, everything successfully dumped into her new – KC’s old – room. But Courtney doesn’t stop, and her Dad steps into, helping her wipe out inside the closet and dusting light switches and the top of the door.

“Good idea, get a nice clean slate and you can do what you like with it?” he had commented, Courtney simply nodding before remembering his earlier comment.

“I think a desk would be a good idea, for studying and stuff,” she adds, quickly. She’s not entirely sure that’s true, given she’s slowly realising that she much prefers studying with Shayne at his dining table. But maybe having more space would help her study at home since she definitely can’t at school when her friends are around or anything, and she’s not going to ruin an opportunity of her Dad being open to buying more furniture for her.

He'd agreed, of course – it was his idea in the first place – and then they continued cleaning and tidying her room, largely in silence.

She wanders downstairs with him when they finish to put the cleaning stuff back in the laundry and have dinner, and it’s only when Courtney returns upstairs afterwards that she kinda lets it sink in.

The room looks so big now, with half of it empty. She’s been able to spread out everything in the closet and now she can fit her school bag and her art stuff in there instead of in piles at the end of the bed, and for once, she steps in and lets the door fall closed without walking straight over to her bed.

She has the whole space now. And… she could totally move her bed away from the wall, right? Switch the bedside table over to the other side? Something about a bed that isn’t completely pressed against a wall feels more… adult. Or teenager. Not kid. Whatever.

Courtney pauses her vague mental rearranging to pull her phone out of her pocket and open her messages to Shayne, leaning back against the door to take a photo of most of the room to send him. He’s been as excited about the idea of her getting her own room as she has.

“Got home from work to Dad and Kari moving all her stuff out of the bedroom…” she texts, before finally moving away from the door and over to sit on her bed. She’ll move it tomorrow; she’s done enough moving and cleaning and shit for one day.

“You got your own room now!! That’s cool. It looks like a decent size too… and cleaner than I expected from what you say,” he replies, quickly. It’s only then that Courtney realises it’s the first time Shayne has seen inside the (her?) bedroom. Is that… weird?

It’s not like she’s ever sent a photo of her bedroom to any guy she’s dated or any of her friends, her house is old and gross and embarrassing, Hollie is the only person that’s ever been in her room other than family- but Hollie is awful and gross and still ignoring Courtney and she’s trying not to think about that, and Shayne is way cooler than her but he’s nothing like any of the guys she’s dated especially since she isn’t dating him and there’s no way he even remotely thinks of her like that.

Courtney’s phone buzzes again in her hand with another text, her mind quickly snapping back to the present, although she still feels her shoulders tense. Has she just messed up and done something wrong? Is Shayne gonna be weirded out? Is he going to know somehow?

“You gonna get anything else to fill the space where I guess Kari’s bed was?” his second message reads. It just reinforces that he’s never seen her room before and that probably means that was normal and this is weird and-

“Probably gonna move my bed away from the wall and get a desk where Kari’s was. Also, it’s only clean because I cleaned it after Kari got all her shit out of the way,” she replies, before rapidly putting her phone to her side and shuffling back across her bed to press against the wall behind her, hands gripping awkwardly at the covers to her sides. Maybe the bed needs to stay beside the wall as long as she keeps being so awkward and dumb and failing to push down her dumb feelings for him-

“So you’re actually as neat as me when you can be?!?” he texts, and he’s clearly joking, but Courtney grumbles to herself anyway. She’s not. At all. She knows this tidiness is going to last like, a few days at most, and then there will be stuff everywhere again, and how on earth does she think she could ever date him and be with him when he’s so tidy and she’s just not and-

“…no ☠️,” she replies, simply, trying to stop her mind running away from her again. She was meant to have buried all this stuff away. It doesn’t matter if Shayne knows he’s messy, he’s just her friend and a friend is never gonna care her own bedroom is a mess.

She tries her best to shut down her sudden detour back into those feelings as she continues to text him about nothing in particular at the same time as she answers Isabel asking how her first day at work was. It quickly turns into the group chat making fun of her (minus Hollie, who still isn’t saying anything despite reading every message) for even having a job. But that’s just normal.

It’s at 2:30am, though, that Courtney feels herself abruptly waking up, head spinning in the darkness of her room. It wasn’t Kari waking her up this time, but it was a stupid fucking dream that she rapidly tries to remind herself wasn’t real and is never going to goddamn happen.

Shayne had been in her bedroom, sitting in a desk chair across from her bed that doesn’t even exist yet in her actual room, laughing and chatting like they always do at his house. But then stupid dream-her had tried to kiss him like the dumb idiot she is and he freaked out and told everyone and they all made fun of her because she was obviously not hot enough or mature enough or cool enough or smart enough or anything for someone like him-

“Shut up,” she mutters, aloud, praying her mind will listen as she twists around and grumbles into her pillow.

Chapter Text

By Monday when she wanders over to sit with Alicia, Shayne and Zach at lunch – Isabel trailing behind her, the others who knows where – Courtney seems to have, thankfully, got over whatever random freakout it was that made her brain start digging back into her relationship with Shayne. She’d had one more dream-nightmare-whatever on Saturday night, where she’d kissed him and he’d responded positively, but that one was a lot easier for her to brush off. As if.

“Why are you even doing such a long hike? How will you even like, not be gross?” Isabel asks, blatantly judging, not long after they sit down. Zach had been talking about how the planning was going for this Thanksgiving-week trip.

“There’s huts with running water and everything. And like, it’s not actually hard to stay clean hiking,” he shoots back, immediately, shaking his head, “Hollie was in charge of working out how much stuff people need to bring for hygiene and whatever so I’m sure it’ll be fine. You guys all care about that stuff, right?”

“I dunno if Hollie does,” Isabel answers, pointedly. Courtney glances between the three seniors, watching them all seem to go say something and decide not to. She knows they aren’t scared of Isabel snapping back at them – but she’s pretty sure Shayne isn’t the only one of their group who thinks Hollie is being awful at the moment.

And why the hell is Courtney being forced to think about her when she isn’t even here, anyway?

The conversation moves on, thankfully, and Courtney tries not to pay attention to the fact her mind keeps trying to drag her back to the fact that Hollie hasn’t said literally a single word to her since she sent that letter. Which is technically what she asked for, she guesses, except she also said she never wanted to see her again and she’s still everywhere.

She has her second shift at CVS that afternoon at 3pm, and she kinda likes the feeling of being able to walk off campus, having changed into her work uniform in the gym locker rooms, and grab a city bus into town before the day is officially over. She had to like, get a permission slip signed by her Dad and file it with school admin and whatever since she’s not 18 yet, but obviously her Dad didn’t care and that’s all done now and she gets to validly skip Monday afternoons. And okay, she’s skipping a free period and it’s to go to work. But close enough.

The eye-rolling 20-something Brad isn’t there when she wanders into the pharmacy this time, nor is the older woman – but another girl who looks to be in her twenties or something too, with jet-black hair, seems to be expecting her and smiles and introduces herself as Abigail.

Courtney ends up behind the service counter helping Abigail for the whole shift, and it’s kinda busy and a bunch of customers get grumpy at her for being slow and asking Abigail questions, but at least Abigail simply answers with a smile and, between customers, chats to her about nothing in particular.

It makes her second shift much less exhausting than her first (it was also, like, a third as long), and she wanders back into the house a bit after 6:30 – her bus got caught in traffic between the centre of town and her neighbourhood – feeling just… calm. Her job seems like it’s gonna be okay, predictable, kinda easy.

“Oh! Courtney, I hope you don’t mind- I found a desk when I was out at the shopping centre today, I just thought I’d have a quick look but I found this one on sale that matches your existing furniture and has a nice built in set of drawers since I know you want more storage- I’ve set it up against the wall opposite your bed, but we can always move things around if you want to,” her Dad greets her, almost as soon as she steps in the door, and she immediately feels discomfort creep over her.

She nods silently in response, heading straight upstairs and into the room. She steps in hesitantly, glancing over to where Kari’s bed used to be, her stomach twisting into knots as she does. Her Dad wasn’t wrong – it fits into her room well, it looks nice, and she definitely needs the storage for her art stuff (and she guesses school stuff, when it needs to come home, too). But something just…

She pushes aside whatever weirdness her mind is conjuring up, sitting her school bag down on the floor beside her bedside table and quickly changing out of her work uniform before she moves back downstairs for dinner.

“How do you like the desk?” her Dad asks, of course.

“It’s good, it matches everything,” she agrees, simply, before turning back to eating her food. Conrad and Clarke start asking why they don’t get desks or their own rooms – her Dad shuts that down with something about how they’re only middle schoolers and Courtney is almost a senior, which feels like it’s stretching the truth when she isn’t halfway through junior year yet – and she doesn’t find herself needing to speak any more as she finishes her dinner and moves into the kitchen to tidy up a little.

She feels the weirdness creep over her again when she goes back up to her room after dinner, though, as much as she tries not to let it. She unpacks her school bag, hesitating in front of the desk. She needs to study for a physics quiz she has first period tomorrow, and she should really use the desk, but… there’s no chair. Maybe that’s why the whole thing feels weird, and she abruptly turns away from the desk and moves back to her bed to spread out her books over it.

She’s interrupted not much long later by a knock on the door, immediately knowing it’s her Dad. Kari is out – at work, probably – and her brothers’ knocks are way more annoying and repetitive than that.

“Yeah?” she calls out, and he opens the door and steps half-in the room as he does.

“All good? You definitely happy with the desk?” he asks, seeming to second-guess her earlier response. It immediately makes her shoulders tense and her skin prick with discomfort.

“Yeah, it’s good, Dad, I said that before,” she replies, knowing her voice comes out a little annoyed. He raises an eyebrow.

“Then… something else isn’t? Or it’s not actually? It has a return period, I can return it if it’s not what you wanted,” he tells her, taking a step further into the room.

She instinctively shuffles backwards to press her back against the wall. She hadn’t got around to moving her bed yesterday.

“The desk is good, Dad, I swear, I’m not lying,” she replies, a little forcefully. It’s true. The desk is basically exactly what she would’ve chosen if he’d let her choose something for herself. She just feels… uncomfortable. And she doesn’t know- oh.

“Something is bugging you, though, it’s… more obvious than usual,” he replies, matter of fact. She grumbles, glancing down at her lap and wringing her hands together.

“It’s not the desk. It’s literally what I would’ve chosen if I’d been able to choose for myself. But… you could’ve let me choose for myself. And you could’ve asked me first and not gone and spent ages in my room when I wasn’t here without me knowing to build it,” she rambles, refusing to look up from her hands. She’s being dumb. It’s not like she’s going to truly have her own space as long as she lives in this house, her Dad probably isn’t gonna look through her things like her Mum used to but he would still come in here without asking her to like, clean things or if he decides to do everyone’s laundry like he does randomly-

“Ohhhh,” her Dad responds, his tone softening, “I… didn’t think of that, and I probably should have. Sorry, Courtney. I promise you I didn’t touch a thing in the room other than the desk, and I didn’t look through your closet or anything- but I know that probably doesn’t change it either.”

“It’s fine. It’s dumb, of course you’ll be in this room without me knowing, it’s your house,” she answers, mumbled.

“No, no- it’s your bedroom, and you’re very close to being an adult, the rest of the family does need to respect the privacy of your space and your agency to choose what and who goes in it for yourself,” her Dad answers, instead, Courtney rapidly glancing up and blinking a few times as she watches him pause in consideration. “How about… so, if the desk is really what you wanted, then I don’t think there’s much point un-building it and returning it. But… you’ll need a chair of some sort for the desk too, and how about you choose what chair would work for you, and tell me which one? You can always look online and send me a photo, or we can go looking next weekend… and if it needs to be assembled, I can assemble it in the living room then you can bring it up here into your room?”

She watches him for a moment after he finishes, searching for some sense of hesitance or that he’s going to turn around and laugh and tell her she’s being ungrateful and stupid. But she finds… nothing.

“Um… yeah. I’ll find something online that you could get at like, Walmart or something,” she replies, instead, carefully unlinking her hands and pressing them into the bed either side of her.

“Sure, whenever you’d like to. And I won’t come into your room while you’re not here without asking you again,” he tells her, nodding, “I mean, if you wanted to… you could get a lock or something for the door? I’d just ask you not to lock yourself in here too much, because that can be a bit dangerous in house fires or other emergency situations.”

Something about the fact his immediate concern with her locking herself in her bedroom was fire, instead of like, drugs, or alcohol, or boys, or junk food, or looking up stuff online she shouldn’t, almost makes her laugh, although she shakes her head.

“I think it’s fine with no lock. And like… if you need to grab my laundry basket or something that’s fine. But just not… lots of time in here,” she replies, carefully, watching him nod.

“Okay, as long as that’s what you’re comfortable with. It’s your room,” he tells her, simply, before stepping back out of the doorway and letting it fall closed behind him.

“That could’ve been worse,” she mutters, to herself, mentally making a note to talk to her therapist about whether she should be wanting to lock her door or something on Thursday. The conversation seems to have allowed her to get rid of the discomfort, though, and finally, she turns to studying for this stupid physics quiz. Trying to, anyway. She hates physics.

————————————————

The rest of October and into November settles into a routine so much easier than the start of her Semester. Okay, she hates a bunch of her required subjects (and she also kinda regrets picking photography as an elective when she doesn’t have, and can’t afford, a proper camera other than her phone), she’s very close to failing both algebra and physics, and she’s still busy. Hollie hasn’t said a word to her at all in the whole month, and she can’t tell if that’s good or bad, and at least 50% of the customers she deals with at work are rude older people that yell at her for stuff that’s never her fault.

But… otherwise, her job is okay, and Brad even quits the eyerolling after a while. She finds out Abigail is like five years older than her – 22 – but they weirdly become work friends, to the point they text about makeup sometimes outside work. The rest of her coworkers seem okay, if not a bit distant. She at least knows when she has work and she manages to plan hangouts with both her friends and Shayne’s amongst it all and mostly keep up with her classes. And track, although she has to opt out of the Thanksgiving meet in San Francisco even though she qualifies. She has no way to get there.

And her Dad doesn’t seem to ever step foot in her room without asking her again, as much as she’d said sometimes was okay. He’s started subtly asking if it’s okay to get laundry out of her room by telling everyone on the mornings he plans to do laundry and asking if they have anything that needs to be washed. It’s not necessary, but she… kinds appreciates it.

She’s feeling okay enough with things at home now that she’s started digging a bit deeper with her therapist into some of the more uncomfortable stuff rattling around in her head in her mother’s voice.

As much as her friends are constantly on her case for being single (at least it’s slightly less hypocritical when Natalie starts dating Mason again and Isabel starts kind-of dating a guy from the soccer team at the other high school), school is otherwise pretty much drama-free. Yasmin and Billie are still pretending the other doesn’t exist at school, and Billie is still talking to Courtney every now and then in home economics and Courtney just lets it happen. She’s nice, and Courtney quickly learns, super into baking. She apparently wants to be a professional pastry chef, which is specific enough to make Courtney panic about the fact she doesn’t have any idea what she’ll do after high school. But whatever. She’s not a senior yet.

It's the week before Thanksgiving – a kind of weird week, given they’re not yet doing end-of-semester tests until December but everyone’s kinda in the holiday vibe anyway – that Courtney gets a direct message on Wednesday evening that makes her raise her eyebrows slightly. From Zach – usually, her direct messages with Zach are 100% Marvel and comics, but this is… a little different.

“Hey Courtney… Kinda feel like I should tell you that Hollie asked me out at lunch today when we were doing the last prep for the trip next week. I said no, I’m not interested in her like that but also I really don’t like all the dumb shit she was saying to you before, and even though it seems she’s stopped… I dunno. Will probably tell the others, but weirdly felt like I need to tell you first since she is or was your friend first?” the text reads, Courtney pausing for a moment before she replies.

It… really doesn’t surprise her. Hollie has been obsessed with Zach and that adventure-hiking club as long as they’ve been at the high school, and she didn’t mind Hollie being friends with Shayne’s friends until Hollie turned around and started being weird and mean. At the same time, it doesn’t surprise her Zach isn’t interested: he might also be a hiking nerd, but he’s a much cooler one, and she’s always got the vibe Hollie creeped him out a little.

Also, it’s definitely Alicia he likes, she swears.

“Thanks for telling me, although tbh I’m not really friends with her anymore… she hangs out with us but she hasn’t said a word to me for over a month. My friends will attack her if they find out she got turned down by someone tho,” she replies, after a while.

“Will you tell them?” Zach asks, Courtney hesitating for a moment. It’d be such an easy way to make fun of Hollie but… she doesn’t want to stir her up and have her turn around and start attacking her again. At least when she’s saying nothing she isn’t saying shit that echoes in her head and slowly changes from her voice to her mother’s.

“nah. Won’t deny if they find out. But I just don’t wanna deal with her,” she replies, before immediately switching over to her messages with Shayne.

“Dude Zach just texted me that Hollie asked him out,” she types out, sending it before considering whether Zach might have had a problem with her sharing that. Oops. But like… it’s Shayne, and he did say he was gonna tell the others anyway.

“Omg!! Please tell me he didn’t text you to say he was dating her now… because 1. She’s been so disgusting to you and 2. ALICIA!!!!” Shayne’s reply comes, Courtney feeling herself laugh in response before she can stop it.

“Nah he said no and said he doesn’t like her. I was thinking that too… he obviously doesn’t like Hollie, because he already has a girlfriend that he swears isn’t his girlfriend,” she answers.

“Duh. No one can ruin the Alicia and Zach teasing stuff except Alicia or Zach and every time I bug one of them about it they just roll their eyes and let it happen,” he answers, before quickly sending a text, “although I guess if Zach said yes to someone else it would be Zach ruining it…”

“tragic… except he didn’t say yes so you can continue to tease your friends like the ass you are,” she shoots back, settling into her banter with Shayne. Okay, so Hollie asking Zach out was weird, but he said no and unless her friends find out, it’s probably going to be nothing. Shayne and Zach’s friends will just accept it and move on.

“um rude you tease them too,” Shayne replies, and she can almost hear the way he’d deadpan it before bursting into laughter.

“Nowhere near as much as you. You’re lucky you’re boring and never show interest in any girls really and they don’t have someone to tease you back about,” she tells him.

“Trust me, they’ve tried… and failed,” he replies, simply, before switching topics to ask her whether she worked with Abigail on Monday. She’d mentioned her random new work friend to Shayne and had rapidly discovered that Abigail was in fact one of Madison’s, Brian’s partner, closest friends. Not that Courtney has met Madison yet – but thanksgiving is only just over a week away, so finally, she will soon.

Chapter Text

“Hey… Mum?” Shayne tries to grab her attention, pausing beside the kitchen bench. He’d not long got home from an extra half-day shift at work, and she’d just got home from buying the last-minute groceries for Thanksgiving tomorrow. The house, otherwise, is quiet and empty, with his Dad at work and the family staying with them not due to arrive until late evening.

“Mmmhm?” his mother answers, half-distracted as she tries to make everything fit in the fridge.

“Should I wait?” he asks, instead, hearing his mother laugh lightly in response.

“You could help me by packing away the pantry things,” she suggests, and he nods (despite the fact she has no way of seeing him with her head inside the fridge) and turns to start putting things away.

“Now, what were you after, honey?” his mother turns back to him, just as Shayne has his own head now buried in the pantry trying to find a place to stash way more pecans than appears necessary.

It makes him forget what he had come downstairs to say, for a moment, but when he steps away from the pantry and turns to face his mother again, he feels his heart grow just a little heavier in his chest.

“I… wanted to talk to you about something. About tomorrow,” he starts, stuffing his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his feet slightly.

“Yes?” she prompts.

“What have you told Nan and Pa about Courtney coming tomorrow? And Chris and Rachael?” he asks.

“I’ve just said your close friend will be having lunch with us this year since her family isn’t doing Thanksgiving this year – I haven’t said anything detailed about her,” his mother answers, her voice turning more serious. Shayne sighs lightly.

“That’s good, but I meant more… exactly what you’ve said about why she’d come here. Brian knows what’s happened but Nan and Pa and Chris are probably going to assume I’m dating her or something and you’re just saying close friend as some weird euphemism-” he almost rants, before she cuts him off.

“I’ve just said close friend, Shayne. That’s not what I call Madison or Rachael. And anyway, if they think otherwise, you can always correct them,” she tells him, voice lighter. He feels it grating at his nerves, although he tries to keep his own voice calm.

“But she’s not my girlfriend, Mum. It will be cool to have her here, yeah, but… you need to properly tell everyone she’s just my friend. I don’t wanna to make a big deal out of it and freak her out,” he tries to reason.

“Do you want her to be your girlfriend, honey?” his mother asks, instead. He screws up his face.

“That’s… a complicated question,” he admits, before he can stop himself.

“How so?”

“It just is. And it’s not what I-” he tries to change the topic back to Thanksgiving, but his mother seems intent on taking this opportunity to dig a little more. He shouldn’t be surprised. It’s hard to not tell his parents stuff when it’s just the three of them in the house all the time.

“Well, did the feelings you mentioned last year go away?” she asks, her tone almost expectant. He feels like the whole fact he’s even raised this issue probably already answers that, but…

“No.”

“Do you plan on saying anything to her?” she continues to pry.

“No,” he answers, again, immediately.

“Why not?” his mother asks, Shayne shaking his head although he feels his shoulders relax just a little, because maybe if he just explains, his Mum will absolutely get it and agree. She has to.

“I’m not a boy to her, I’m something… different. And I think I’m her closest friend, I don’t want to ruin that and be a creep. And besides, she’s decided she wants to avoid boys entirely for the rest of this year if not longer, and I agree that’s a good thing to be able to work on healing herself from everything that’s happened, there’s no way I’m going to disrespect her decision on something like that,” he answers, letting his voice show his honesty, carefully watching as his mother seems to pause in hesitation for a moment. He knows she won’t disagree with that.

“I guess, that’s… that makes sense, for this year. But… you shouldn’t discount it forever, Shayne. If she means that much to you,” she tells him, carefully. Shayne shakes his head.

“The ideal is that I get over these dumb feelings and it never has to be a problem. But anyway. Can you please just make sure no one tries to miscategorise our relationship tomorrow?” he pushes, trying to drag the topic back. He’s just had too many worries swirling through his mind the last couple of days about his Nana or Chris teasing and making Courtney uncomfortable and then she works out he feels something as much as he tries to hide it and it sets everything she’s been working through back ages and he ends up hurting her-

“I wouldn’t be so sure that will be how it ends, honey,” his Mum points out, but thankfully, she then takes the topic change. “Okay, I’ll make sure everyone is clear – I can send out a message or something and say I was concerned my previous message might have been misleading, make it clear.”

“Thanks,” he answers, simply, “do you… need help with prepping anything for tonight? Or is it okay if I go study?”

“Go on, you’ve gotta take a couple of days off for the actual holiday, if you must spend so much of your break studying then go and do it now before family arrive,” she tells him, shaking her head lightly and almost shooing him upstairs.

————————————————

Kari ends up driving Courtney across town to the Topp’s mid-Thanksgiving morning. She spends half the trip teasing her about how going to his place for Thanksgiving to meet his family makes it seem like he’s her boyfriend, but Courtney really tries to ignore it. And she really tries to pretend it isn’t tugging at a thread of worry becoming ever clearer in her mind.

She’s chill about meeting Madison, but… there is the rest of his family. They don’t know why she’s close to Shayne’s family, and she doesn’t really want them to. But what if they do assume she’s his girlfriend? And what if he gets so weirded out by that he doesn’t want her to be there?

She doesn’t say anything to Kari when her sister pulls up just in front of the Topp’s driveway and she immediately opens the passenger-side door to step out, given Kari’s own goodbye came in the form of more teasing and a reminder she’d be back at like 8:30pm to pick her up.

Courtney feels nerves building as she walks up the front path and rings the doorbell, but the door opens not five seconds later to Catherine greeting her warmly and inviting her inside as she always does.  She tries to use the normalcy to calm her as she hugs and greets Cathy, before following her up the hallway to the living room.

She immediately notices Shayne turn and start walking over to greet her, and four other unfamiliar faces glance over from the other side of the living room, but it’s Madison who appears suddenly out of the kitchen, rushing across the room towards the end of the hallway.

“Courtney, finally!” she exclaims, exuberant and bright and grinning as she rushes over and immediately pulls Courtney into a hug, “I can’t believe it’s taken this long when we both spent so much time here and never managed to cross paths- I’m so glad I can finally meet you! And Abigail mentioned you’ve been working with her at CVS, somehow you met my best friend before me?!”

“I don’t know how it took so long,” Courtney agrees, after she has recovered just a little from the suddenness of the hug and steps back just a little, although Madison’s excitement seems to have transferred through the hug, now twisting through her body and drowning out the nerves.

“Don’t scare her, Mads,” Brian emphasises, now also wandering over to greet Courtney.

“It’s fine,” Courtney laughs, because honestly, it… is.

“Hey Court,” Shayne greets her, when he can finally get a word in, rolling his eyes at Brian and Madison as he does, “Madison has Zach energy. I probably should have warned you.”

“I can see that,” she replies, grinning, Madison laughing in response. She has a feeling this won’t be the first time Shayne has told Madison she has the same energy as his equally excitable and hug-happy friend.

“Courtney, honey, I’ll introduce you to everyone else,” Catherine speaks up again, as everyone moves gradually further into the living room. Catherine’s parents are further across the room looking out at the back patio, but two she assumes must be Chris and Rachael slowly wander over to meet them just behind the sofa.

“My eldest, Chris, and his partner Rachael,” Cathy introduces them, before turning back to face Courtney, “Shayne’s friend, Courtney.”

“Hey Courtney, it’s nice to meet you, Shayne’s been talking about you since he moved over here – you live down the street from the military house they were in, right?” Chris greets her. Combined with the slight emphasis Cathy had put on the word ‘friend’, it had started to pull back her worries from the ride over- until he continued and mentioned their old house. That’s okay. Nothing weird. Shayne and his family talked about her because she was his friend from the same street he lived in when he first moved to California.

“Yeah, it’s nice to meet you too,” she answers, knowing her voice still comes across a little nervously polite.

“I love your nails, those are so cool,” Rachael comments, in greeting, Courtney instinctively glancing down to her own hand. She’d caught up with her friends at Natalie’s to do nails again a couple of days ago, and she’d leaned into a red plaid effect with a combination of red press-ons and black polish over a stencil. It took forever, her friends thought it looked stupid, but she did it to match with her outfit today. And it seems at least someone appreciates it.

“Thanks,” she replies, not sure what else to say and dreading the awkward silence that will surely follow. Only… it doesn’t.

“Are they a pre-done press-on? Or is it a stencil?” Rachael asks, seeming genuinely interested, Courtney feeling herself instinctively starting to explain how she did it and how her friend’s Dad got given these kits from a business friend or something, Rachael listening and nodding and prompting her to continue the couple of times she pauses in hesitation that she’s just saying stuff no one cares about.

A tinge of nerves appears in her chest yet again when she moves further into the living room with Shayne and Cathy to meet Catherine’s parents, but Jenny and William introduce themselves and tell her to call them by their first names, not seeming to make any particular comment about her attendance at a family celebration of a family she isn’t part of.

She ends up talking – mostly alongside Shayne – with all of his family through the morning, from his grandparents asking her how school is going and what subjects she’s studying (that bit feels the most like her own family gatherings, until they don’t say a single negative word about the fact she’s doing home economics, music and photography as electives, instead asking what kind of things they do in a music elective these days); to Rachael talking about makeup with her and asking about a bunch of ‘Gen Z trends’, as she calls them, and Madison and Brian asking whether she’s still sketching.

“I’ve been doing it a bit more lately, ever since-” she starts, before quickly cutting herself and awkwardly glancing down. Catherine’s parents are definitely in earshot, and she really doesn’t intend to think about all that today, and-

“That’s cool you’ve had more chance to do it lately, is there a specific style you like to do?” Madison asks, quickly pushing past it, seeming to sense her hesitance.

There have been platters of snacks and appetisers scattered around all morning that she takes bits and pieces from, knowing Thanksgiving lunch is always, like, nowhere near a real mealtime. It’s a big deal, of course, when the turkey leaves the oven – under Robert and William’s watchful gaze – a bit after 2pm, and some time later William takes to carving it as every Thanksgiving side, sauce, and snack Courtney can think of appears and begins to cover the kitchen bench, until Robert and Catherine start beckoning everyone over.

“Youngest gets first pick at the turkey, right? Shayne, come on!” his grandfather calls. It makes Courtney raise an eyebrow, glancing over at Shayne – he’d been off over the other side of the living room talking to Chris while she was talking to Rachael and Madison closer to the kitchen - to see if he’ll say anything.

He looks back at her, seeming to silently ask her if he should say anything. She shrugs. This isn’t exactly a bad thing to give the youngest, and as she carefully turns and wanders over to the kitchen with everyone else she does have her eye on the cleanest pieces of turkey breast. She doesn’t love gristle and fat and stuff in meat. But she’s also the outsider here, and…

“Oh, I think someone else here might be just a few months younger,” Robert comments, before Shayne has a chance to say anything. He seems to immediately regret saying it, his eyes suddenly turning apologetic as he glances at Courtney.

…But not a single part of today has actually made her feel out of place, or like she’s not meant to be here.

“I think like, nine months, actually,” she answers, shrugging as if to minimise it, “but I don’t mind.”

“Hey, half the reason I invited you was so I wasn’t the only high schooler here for once,” Shayne jokes, “go for it.”

A couple of the others laugh at that – the more of Shayne’s family she meets, the less she understands where his constant, loud, always laughter comes from, because none of the others laugh quite as much as he does – but it definitely feels like they’re laughing at Shayne, and Courtney pushes herself to step forward and reach for a plate.

To her relief, they don’t all wait for her: the others start getting plates and loading up sides at the same time she takes her choice slices of carved turkey breast. William pokes fun at her for taking the breast – “ah, it’s the driest part, Courtney!” he tells her, from just beside her where he’s scooping out a casserole dish of stuffing – but she feels comfortable enough, now, to immediately retort back.

“But it doesn’t have all the fat and gristle, there’s more actual meat,” she tells him.

“I know right?! Thighs might be juicier, but at what cost?!” Madison backs her up from across the opposite side of the kitchen bench, tone dripping with drama, “is there any other rules about who gets to pick turkey after the youngest, or…?”

“Free for all,” Cathy replies, laughing, Courtney immediately handing the serving grippers over to Madison with a nod of understanding before moving down the bench and starting to load up her plate with everything else.

There’re usually eight chairs at the Topps’ dining table – three each side and one each end – but they all seem to fit comfortably even with ten chairs now squeezed around it. Conversation settles as they all eat, instead carrying just the occasional comment about how well something is cooked or calling early dibs on seconds of something (William, for his part, calls early dibs on turkey seconds before quickly brushing off everyone reminding him that all the compliments he’s handing out for how the turkey was carved are very much to himself).

She ends up between Shayne and Brian at the table, and she feels herself smiling and laughing between mouthfuls without much thought. She doesn’t feel out of place, her brain isn’t trying to tell her anyone is judging her or thinking badly of her, and she’s vaguely aware she put a lot of food on her plate, but hey, it’s Thanksgiving, and so did everyone else. It’s all just nice, and the only reason she declines the offer of seconds after she finishes her plate is because she knows Cathy was going to make an apple pie for dessert. It won’t be the first time Courtney has had Cathy’s apple pie, and she knows she has to save room for that.

(Billie had made an apple pie in home economics the week before that tasted eerily similar – she claimed it was the brown sugar crumb she put on the top, although Courtney knows Catherine refuses to tell anyone what her recipe is. Maybe one day she’ll pass it down to Rachael or Madison and Courtney can pry it out of them.)

“Everything good?” Shayne asks her, quietly, leaning over towards her slightly not twenty seconds after she declines seconds, when many of the others are distracted talking to each other or back at the kitchen bench adding more to their own plates.

“Yeah. This is fun,” she replies, honestly, watching him grin in response as she adds, “and I’m waiting for your Mum’s apple pie.”

“You are such a basic bitch,” he replies, his voice hushed and Courtney rolling her eyes at him and holding back her audible laugh. His whole family seem just as cool as his parents always have, but she’s pretty sure they still wouldn’t get the casualness of that phrase.

Chapter Text

It’s well and truly the evening by the time lunch and dessert are finished, and the kitchen has been mostly tidied with leftovers stashed in the fridge and dirty dishes either in the dishwasher or stacked beside the sink. Catherine, William and Chris start handwashing the piles of dishes, and Courtney offers to help, but Catherine quickly tells her to just relax.

The post-lunch fog has settled over the house, and to Courtney, it just feels cozy. It had been her favourite part of Thanksgiving when she was a kid, when she’d been able to run off with all her cousins on her Dad’s side – they always did Thanksgiving with her Dad’s family and Christmas with her mother’s – and play with their toys that her parents would never let her get. Here, it means many of the adults settle into quieter conversation sat across the sofas or clusters of chairs at the dining table.

Shayne, for his part, asks if she wants to go upstairs and play a game or something, and she simply nods and follows him up to the little games area setup in the space at the top of the stairs. Shayne argues for something on PS2, but Courtney is feeling some Wii Smash Bros, and she rapidly tries to event an argument to debate him with.

“It’s a one-handed controller, though, you don’t use as much energy and it’s post-lunch sleepy-time,” she comes up with, eventually, Shayne simply raising an eyebrow incredulously at her.

“Mind if we join you? The conversations down there are so boring and adult-y,” Madison’s voice appears behind them, before Shayne has a chance to argue back. Courtney glances around to see both Chris and Rachael just behind her, too.

“Sure, but we’ve only got 4 controllers for this if you want to play. Also, not enough seats. And you’re all adults,” Shayne shoots back, evidently accepting Courtney’s argument as he holds up his copy of Wii Smash Bros, although his tone is light and joking and his brother laughs openly in response.

“I think I’ve beat your ass at that game enough times when you were younger, Shayne, the rest of you can play. And I can take the floor,” Chris answers, with a raised eyebrow.

It is a three-seater couch at most up here, though, and Courtney shuffles closer to the middle of the couch so Madison can sit down to her side, Rachael taking the other spot on the floor, just in front of the couch and across the space from Chris.

“Also, Shayne, I can promise no twenty-something is really an adult. Still waiting for whenever we become real adults and we’re technically closer to thirty than twenty,” Rachael adds.

“Don’t remind me,” Chris deadpans.

“Damn, really? Kinda hoped it’d be the next few years,” Madison jokes, in response, “you have much Smash Bros experience, Rach?”

“Not… much,” Rachael admits, laughing, “Shayne, Courtney, do you? Or do you mostly play the new one, saw the Switch beside the TV downstairs?”

“I’ve definitely played more of the Switch one than this, my family never had a Wii, but I also always beat Shayne on this, so…” Courtney trails off, glancing over to see Shayne scowl at her in response.

“Could you not let me win occasionally instead of always beating me at all the games I’ve taught you how to play?” he tells her, his brother and Madison both starting to tease him in response.

“Hey what about you, Madison? Played much?” Courtney asks, when they’ve all settled down and picked characters, waiting for Shayne to choose a stage (part of her is tempted to wrestle his controller off him and do it herself since he’s taking so damn long).

“I have two younger brothers, so… yes. A lot,” she replies.

“Hey, do you have many siblings, Courtney?” Chris speaks up, as Shayne finally selects a stage and it starts laughing. The question makes her stomach twist slightly, but she pushes it down. It’s just a question about siblings, nothing more, it’s not like he’s gonna start quizzing her about why she’s here or something-

“Uh, a few. Six,” she replies, quickly adding as an explanation, “Mormon parents.”

“Damn, seven kids at home and no games consoles? That would suck,” Rachael comments, her tone sympathetic. Courtney almost feels the way both Shayne and Madison glance towards her, although she uses the moment of distraction to launch an attack directly at Shayne and knock him clean off the edge of the level.

“Mormons don’t really… do technology like that much,” Chris answers, before she can say anything, “we went to school with a heap of Mormons in Arizona. Mostly really nice people, just home always seemed a bit… different.”

“I think most of my family are technically ex-Mormon now,” Courtney speaks up, after a moment, trying not to think of the parts of her family that are most decidedly not ex-anything.

“Are all of your family in Mansfield? Or California generally?” Rachael asks, and this time Courtney feels her mind slowing just a little more as she rapidly glances to the side towards Shayne, her character stilling on the screen. She knows Chris and Rachael are just making conversation, just trying to seem interested in her and include her, but-

“Let’s not ask too much about Courtney’s family,” Madison says, quietly, seeming to jump in before Shayne does. Courtney waits for the why, for the narrowed eyes from the two she’d just met today. It doesn’t surprise her Madison knows – Brian would’ve had to tell her some things, like why he last-minute had to stay at her place that night-

“Oh, okay,” Rachael answers, her own voice soft, before it quickly returns to normal volume, “hey Shayne, I can see what Courtney… and Chris… meant about beating you. Aren’t teenage boys meant to be good at games?”

“Okay, I am, but I’ve been busy being a senior and studying and shit so I’m out of practice. And this isn’t my usual console, it’s literally Brian’s he just didn’t take it with him when he moved out,” Shayne answers, faux-grumpy again, rolling with the topic change. Courtney tries to mentally follow it, too.

“Ah, I already had one- or, well, my old roommate left hers when I kicked her out so Brian could move in finally,” Madison laughs, “you’re welcome.”

Their conversation continues as a mess of banter and light teasing as the game moves on, but Courtney feels the tinge of darkness seeping through her mind and she knows the fact she rapidly loses her next two lives and ends up first out of the match isn’t unrelated. She was having such a nice day, and she knows they didn’t mean it, but she just-

“Hey Courtney, does Shayne have a girlfriend or partner or anything we can tease him about?” Chris asks, out of the blue, when the responsibility is handed to Madison to choose the next stage and she spends a little too long deciding between two she apparently remembers from playing with her brothers years ago.

“Nope. He’s boring, he never even has crushes I can make fun of him for,” Courtney replies, feeling herself settle just a little. At least they evidently are under no impressions she’s his girlfriend, and she tries to push down the reminder that it was a stupid worry to have in the first place because they can probably all see she’s not good enough for him. Madison and Rachael are both clearly way cooler than her, too. She tries to kick herself out of it, abruptly adding, “or like, the last one was in his sophomore year, so it was ages ago, and he didn’t even like her that much.”

“Damn,” Chris replies, putting on a face of disappointment that immediately tells her where Shayne got his regular faux-scowls from.

“Okay, rude, I just haven’t found anyone,” Shayne shoots back. Courtney can see a slight blush on his cheeks anyway, and something about it makes her heart flutter just a little. She quickly pushes that down, too, glancing back over to Rachael as she starts talking about something completely unrelated.

————————————————

“Courtney?” Chris mouths, silently, when Shayne glances back towards his eldest brother as Courtney turns to joke with the other two girls about something. He knows it makes his cheeks flush even more, but he abruptly shakes his head, hoping Chris will drop it.

He seems to, thankfully, although the smile he gives him tells Shayne that it won’t be the last he hears of it while Chris and Rachael are staying at the house for the next few days.

————————————————

Part of the reason Kari wasn’t picking Courtney up until later at night was because Robert had mentioned, if it was nice enough night out, they might get the firepit out in the backyard going after dusk. It is a nice night, and ninety minutes or so after dinner finishes Robert calls up the stairs, everyone trailing back down and out into the backyard. Almost everyone, anyway – Jenny, William and Catherine had headed out for a scenic drive to somewhere or another.

No one is particularly hungry yet, but packets of marshmallows and graham crackers appear, so of course they get eaten. They’ve been out there chatting for quite a while when Rachael quietly gets her attention.

“Hey, you wanna show me where the extra marshmallows are?” she asks.

They are, after all, out of them, and Courtney figures that through bits and pieces of conversation all day, Rachael and Chris have realized she’s not exactly new to this house. So she nods in response, standing from the camp chair she’d been sitting on beside Shayne to wander inside. It also doesn’t really surprise her when Rachael pauses and leans back against the kitchen bench, instead of going straight to the pantry.

“Hey, I… just wanted to apologise for earlier. I didn’t mean to push too much with the questions, I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable. I should have known better than that topic,” she tells her, her voice soft and genuine. Courtney shivers slightly, although she shrugs as if to brush it off.

“It’s okay. It’s… normal stuff to ask about, I’ll have to get used to it someday,” she replies, brow furrowing and glancing down as she inwardly kicks herself. She could’ve avoided all this if she’d just been able to say something vague instead of falling back into her mind. She quickly regrets her words, too, as she realises how much they implied. God, she literally met Rachael today, she’s just her friend’s older brother’s partner and yeah Courtney’s practically part of the family now and she’s felt like everyone has accepted that all day but-

“Some things always stay difficult, it’s okay to want to avoid things. I… really should have known better. I didn’t have the best family growing up, I haven’t seen the bad person for a decade, but it’s still… there, sometimes,” Rachael continues, her own voice growing a little distant. Something about it makes Courtney feel… a little calmer. Like she doesn’t need to retract everything and run away and shut up.

“It’s okay now. She’s in another state and I have a restraining order against her,” she says, knowing her voice is quiet, “but she only left… February. And Catherine and Shayne did a lot to help me when it was bad.”

“I’m sorry it happened, but I’m glad you’re here today and I got to meet you,” Rachael answers, kindly, before lightening her voice, “and I don’t think I’m quite yet able to authoritatively say who is and who isn’t a Topp, since I’m not formally one until Chris hurries up and proposes… but I can tell you’re part of this family as long as you want to be, to them, anyway. Catherine and Robert are lovely.”

“They are. I always feel like it’s just normal and okay for me to be here even for stuff like this,” she admits, before she can stop herself. She quickly picks up on the other part of Rachael’s comment, though, and lets her own voice turn intrigued, “you know he’s going to propose soon? Or do I need to get Shayne to bug Chris about it…?”

“I accidentally saw he bought a ring like a month ago, he used our shared credit card and didn’t hide the transaction details and then asked me to check another transaction on the account like, the next day…” she starts, laughing lightly, “I can wait. But you know, if his family did try and give him the confidence to ask as soon as he’s ready I… wouldn’t… complain.”

“Noted,” Courtney answers, nodding lightly before turning and finally reaching for another pack of marshmallows from the pantry, “come on, they’ll wonder where we went.”

“We couldn’t find the marshmallows, easy,” Rachael replies, simply, “oh, and… no one else in the family knows about my family, so… yeah. And I won’t mention anything to Chris?”

“It’s okay if you vaguely tell Chris it’s… something. All the others know except Jenny and William,” Courtney answers, shaking her head softly, “although I might never see you guys again…”

“Nah, I bet we’ll see each other plenty more,” Rachael replies, simply, stepping ahead of Courtney to pull open the sliding door and gesturing for her to step out before her.

To Courtney’s surprise, no one says a word about their extended departure when they return. But, of course, as they all head inside not much later, Shayne gently directs her up the hallway and towards the quiet of his Mum’s office.

“Was everything okay with Rachael? You guys were inside for a couple minutes,” he asks, his tone turning concerned. Courtney simply nods, although she quickly remembers the quiet way Rachael had asked her not to say too much.

“Yeah, she just wanted to apologise for earlier upstairs. But it was okay,” she replies, simply, Shayne nodding in response.

“Has today been okay for you? Even with that stuff?” he asks, and this time, she smiles gently at him.

“My mind dug into it a little bit upstairs but… not too much. And it was okay, it’s gonna come up sometimes, people are gonna ask me about family and stuff. And the rest of today has been really nice, yeah,” she replies, “it’s weird and also completely not weird that being at your family’s holiday things just feels… normal.”

“As far as my parents are concerned you’re basically family,” he answers, “although I think you’re less annoying than a sister would be, from what you’ve said about your sisters… anyway. I’m glad you came. It was good to have someone to talk to. Although the more I spend time with Rachael and Madison the easier they are to talk to, too.”

“They both seem cool,” she agrees, laughing lightly, “both your brothers got pretty cool girlfriends… one day you’ll have to, too, right?”

“Ugh, you were meant to be the person that doesn’t tease me about being single at a family holiday event,” he replies, although she can tell he’s joking and his voice softens as he continues, “can I hug you?”

“Of course,” she answers, simply. She’s pretty sure she’s never said no to a hug from Shayne and she’s not about to start now.

He steps closer to her, arms wrapping carefully around her upper back as hers settle somewhere just above his waist. He squeezes her for a second, before loosening his hold just a little as Courtney lets herself settle into it. It’s been a little while since she had a proper, long, Shayne hug – probably since the last time she was crying to him about something – and as much as she actually feels kind of content and happy after today, if not a bit sleepy, it’s nice.

And she liked his hugs before her heart went and made her have all these dumb feelings, so it’s not like she likes them for that reason, and it’s not like she has to get annoyed at herself for it. It’s fine.

“How was it?” Kari asks her, the second Courtney opens the door to get into her car when she pulls up only fifteen minutes later. Or, well, a few minutes after she’d pull up – Catherine had needed to give her a goodbye hug, too.

“Fun. Shayne’s brothers and their partners are cool. And Catherine is a good cook,” she answers, simply, happy that Kari seems to accept that and let her sit in quiet for the rest of the drive home.

————————————————

Shayne wanders back into the living room after saying goodbye to Courtney, and then Brian and Madison – the others are all staying at least tonight – as many of the others wander upstairs. He soon realises Chris has followed him, though, when he corners him near the living room wall.

“So… Courtney?” he asks, with a raised eyebrow. Something about it immediately makes Shayne fill with annoyance.

“We’re not dating, she’s just a friend,” he answers, pointedly, “I asked Mum to be clear about that so none of you said anything…”

“Oh, I know, Mum was clear, I can tell you aren’t dating now. But you… like her? How long have you been friends, anyway?” he asks two questions at once, and Shayne happily takes advantage of that.

“Three years, almost. Met her when we lived two houses up the street from her,” he answers.

“And how long have you liked her for?” he pushes, again, Shayne rolling his eyes.

“Do you have to?” he shoots back, his tired grumpiness getting the better of him. It’s… fine, mostly, for his Mum to ask. But Chris was always an ass to him as a kid, and he doesn’t want anyone to make a big deal out of it or make fun of him and-

“Well, she seems like a nice person either way. It was cool to have her here today,” he continues, seeming to immediately let up on all the pressure, before adding it back on a little, “hope we get to see her again, whether she’s still just a friend or something else.”

“I’m not a boy to her, Chris, okay? It’s… complicated. Yeah, we’re really close, and she went through some shitty stuff for a while and went to me a lot for help when it was happening. But she’s just a friend, and I’m never going to creep her out or be inappropriate saying anything like that and you can’t make a big deal out of it either,” he almost snaps, watching Chris’s brow furrow for a moment before his face softens.

“I… don’t mean to actually piss you off, Shayne. I just thought I saw something and I’m guessing I wasn’t wrong. But if there’s a reason nothing can happen, then that’s okay. I won’t ask about it again,” he tells him, stepping back from the teasing. It makes Shayne feel just a little guilty for being so grouchy towards him.

“I don’t mind that nothing will happen, but just… don’t say anything in front of her. She’s my friend, I don’t want that screwed up, and I don’t want someone to make her think I’m only friends with her because of some gross shit like that. I like being her friend, that’s enough,” he explains, his tone still certain, although he tries to sound less sharp.

“Okay, Shayne. I won’t say anything again,” Chris confirms, nodding and stepping back away from him.

Chapter Text

Courtney fully intends to spend the last three days of Thanksgiving break in her bedroom, doing nothing and trying to avoid her family as much as possible. It works on Friday – her Dad is working a double shift, her brothers are playing outside with each other despite it being kinda cold, and Kari is locked in her own room – and she even manages to buy a couple of things online in Black Friday sales since she’s started getting her pay from CVS into an actual bank account of her own.

Her Dad had got turkey of some kind – not a full turkey, but something anyway – for Thanksgiving at home when she was out, and on Saturday she feels like she’s recovered enough from how much she ate at the Topps’ to get a couple of slices of turkey and stuffing to make a leftovers sandwich for lunch. She forces herself to sit at the dining table to eat it – her therapist has been pushing her to take ownership of the house and not ask for permission to exist in it – despite the fact Kari and her Dad are both out and her brothers are sitting on the living room floor being loud, so effectively she’s still just scrolling through her phone while she eats in a different part of the house.

The seniors’ group chat is full of Max, Ethan and Shayne talking football, while her friends’ chat is just quiet. It means she mostly just scrolls through Instagram, until a notification appears at the top of her screen that makes her blink heavily in confusion.

Why is Hollie messaging her directly?

Ugh, this is gonna suck. So much for a nice, quiet weekend at home. But it’s not like leaving it is gonna make it go away – she has to at least read it before school is back Monday, and if it’s some bullshit attacking her, probably try and make sure Hollie doesn’t lie about stuff to her friends before Monday too – so she grumbles to herself and switches to WhatsApp to open the message.

“Hi. I’m sorry I haven’t replied to your email. I’ve been trying to work out what to say. But maybe it’d be better if we talked in person somewhere?” the text reads. It immediately makes Courtney’s heart sink.

Is this gonna be a trap again? Some plan to have her turn up somewhere where she’s just going to tell her all the things wrong with her again, or she’s invited her mother back to Mansfield somehow and she’ll be there, or one of her mum’s family, or she’ll have told Yasmin or something-

“I said I don’t want to see you again if you keep acting like you have been,” Courtney replies, instead. She’s not gonna fall for it again. She’s not stupid.

“I know. But I want to talk to you about the other stuff you said and explain I guess,” Hollie replies, Courtney inwardly groaning.

Why does she have to deal with this? And why did she have to try and eat downstairs today so she can’t deal with it in the privacy of her own room?

She chooses not to reply immediately, instead moving back to Instagram to continue scrolling until she finishes lunch. She sees two more messages appear at the top of her phone while she does, but she tries not to look at who they’re from until she’s upstairs.

One of them, to her relief, is in fact Alicia sending her a dumb Thanksgiving meme – she sends a gif, in return, of a pug with a turkey hat on – but the other is Hollie, and reluctantly she opens it as she sits heavily into her bed.

“I know you’re mad at me and I guess I see why. I don’t want to never see you again. And we go to the same school anyway. Can we please talk? I can come to the park near your place or you can come over near mine. This afternoon or something,” Hollie’s text reads, Courtney rolling her eyes and falling messily sideways back onto her bed, so she’s half-lying on it with legs still hanging off the edge.

She doesn’t want to have to do this. She doesn’t want to look stupid if it is a trap and she doesn’t want to hear Hollie saying all those things again- but she sent the email. And she didn’t send it not to get a response, and…

“Fine. Park near your place at 2:30,” she replies, fingers tapping aggressively at her screen to type out the message before throwing the phone onto the bed to her side.

If it all goes to shit, it’s easier to get a bus from Hollie’s place to Shayne’s than it is from hers. And she can just get on a bus and run away, she can’t do that in her neighbourhood.

————————————————

Courtney doesn’t know what to expect when she walks out of the house, holding only her phone, keys, and bus card, a little after two. She knows she’ll be late to the park near Hollie’s but she figured that was better than being early with the bus twenty minutes earlier. And it’s not like she really wants to go anyway.

Hollie is already there when she arrives, sitting on one of the swings where this whole thing had started with her legs angled forward to hold her still and eyes staring blankly ahead as Courtney approaches. She, for her part, makes a point of stopping at least 6 feet away, arms crossed over her chest.

“Hi,” Hollie starts, her voice strong but… neutral. At least she isn’t trying to act like they’re friends again suddenly. But Courtney doesn’t want to act like this is just a normal conversation.

“Well?” she asks, instead, a little demanding. She watches Hollie’s eyes narrow for a moment before she looks away and sighs heavily.

“Don’t just be snappy at me, I invited you here to talk,” she comments, her own voice a touch annoyed. Courtney rolls her eyes.

“So talk. You still haven’t said anything that is even close to justifying how shit you’ve been acting for literally months,” she snaps.

Hollie doesn’t respond, for a minute, and Courtney crosses her arms even tighter over her chest. Why did she think this was even worth doing?

“It’s… weird,” Hollie starts, eventually, before pausing again. Courtney feels herself growing impatient, although she simply glares and waits expectantly for her to continue. “My parents heard about everything that actually happened. How you tried to teach your brothers to swear and fight your parents and that last Christmas you bought drugs to your Grandma’s house and had to be kept away from all your cousins and aunts and uncles so you wouldn’t hurt them too. And that your Dad was trying to get you and Kari to give up education to just get paid to sleep with people and he divorced your Mum so she wouldn’t get in the way of that.”

“What the fuck?!” Courtney snaps, in response, “who the fuck told anyone that bullshit?”

“Mr and Mrs Graham, from the church. They saw you teaching all the Sunday school kids at church about-“

“I haven’t been anywhere near Sunday school kids since I was one when I was like seven,” she interrupts, abruptly, “and they stopped going to our church like, five years ago.”

“Well they said they saw it! And they said your mother told them what was happening and that’s why she left town so quickly!”

“You can’t be that stupid, can you?! Or your parents?!” she pushes back, exasperated.

“Well who was I supposed to believe? My parents, or someone who’s apparently a drug addict,” she sneers, “and of course the other three didn’t care because they’re too dumb to know anything happening in the real world but-”

“They literally know way more about the real world than you since their parents all do business and shit,” she interrupts, again, “and I didn’t come here for you to spout a bunch of bullshit that clearly was never true again, so-”

“If that’s not true then what is?!” Hollie raises her voice, cutting Courtney off this time, “your Mum never did anything wrong when we were younger! She was just religious! And even your brothers were saying that your Dad divorced her because of something to do with you and you go and claim she was abusive but there’s no way she would ever-”

“I literally have a restraining order against her. An actual court agreed that she was abusive and shouldn’t be allowed to ever go near me again!” she feels her own voice grow louder as she replies, her throat tightening.

“But why?? What did she even do?? She told you to wear more clothes? That’s not abusive.”

“She destroyed all of my belongings, she locked me in a room with no heat in Utah in winter for almost a week and wouldn’t even let me leave for the bathroom, she kept trying to get me not to eat, she wouldn’t let me see a normal doctor, she accused me of a million things that weren’t true like you keep doing, she screamed at me all the time, she kept kicking me out of the house and trying to make me sleep outside with nothing-” she feels herself rambling, voice growing tighter and tighter, before she abruptly cuts herself off.

Hollie sits in silence, for a moment, looking down at the ground again.

“That’s not what your Mum said to people,” she mutters, her voice lower.

“Yeah, of course it’s not! Because she was making up all this stupid stuff about me!” she shoots back.

“But why was she doing it then? Your Mum would never do anything you don’t deserve,” Hollie points out, Courtney feeling it dig deep into her mind as she squeezes her eyes shut. Why did she even come here.

“Because she went crazy. She had a, like, like a psychotic breakdown or something, I don’t know. She was screaming at Dad over fake things too. She was delusional and she was wrong,” she pushes out, her voice forceful, “and I don’t need you trying to argue about this shit so if you’re just going to-”

“You still have to go see her, though, right? Isn’t your Dad technically abducting you if you don’t go see her like, every two weeks?” Hollie interrupts.

“No. She has no parental rights over me anymore. Or Kari, we ended them,” Courtney pushes, feeling tiredness push through her body. Why is she even explaining this? “She still has visitation rights with Clarke and Conrad, they’ve been working them out with the court and whatever, she’s just not allowed to come to the house to pick them up because of my restraining order. But they’ll have Christmas with her. Just the court wanted to sort it out so she can’t have them by herself and someone else in the family that knows what actually happened has to be there whenever she’s with them so she doesn’t start saying stuff to them.”

“Oh,” Hollie mumbles, falling into silence again. Courtney hopes she’ll have something more to say, but when the silence goes on for a full two minutes, she shuffles to lean on the opposite foot and takes half a step backwards.

“I didn’t come here to have to justify all this shit to you. You’ve known me for literally forever, you shouldn’t have ever had any reason to believe all that bullshit. And I don’t know why you think my Mum has ever been reasonable, even when we were kids all of her rules when I had you over were stupid and just controlling because she could. You chose to believe that shit and turn into an awful, mean person and I don’t want to deal with you anymore if you’re going to keep doing that,” she speaks, watching Hollie slowly glance back up towards her.

“I didn’t want to believe it because it meant I’d somehow got you totally wrong and my best friend was actually a degenerate disgusting person- and it’s not like you ever told me anything was happening, you just went to Shayne,” she snaps. Part of Courtney kinda knew Hollie would, one day, have a problem with Shayne.

“I can tell Shayne shit without him judging me or second guessing me. His parents don’t listen to bullshit that clearly isn’t true told by gossipy ex-church people, they actually look at what’s really happening. And part of it was that he was down the road from me and his place was somewhere I could go when she was attacking me,” she explains, a little more carefully. Hollie is still being gross but she’s… a little more sympathetic to the whole, other-best-friend thing. Even though it never would’ve happened if Hollie actually acted like a good friend.

“Just say you’re dating him,” Hollie grumbles.

“I’m literally not and never have. He’s my best friend, that’s all,” she answers, trying to keep the frustration out of her tone.

“Do his friends like, not date the class below them because they’re too cool or something? Is that why they’ve always said no to anyone in our group that has asked any of them out?” she asks, Courtney shaking her head and immediately hearing Hollie’s self-reference that she’s pretty sure she doesn’t know she knows.

“No, nothing like that. And like, it’s not like Shayne has ever said no to me, because I’ve never asked him out. I talk to him about other guys,” she argues, although the topic change is… easier. “And I know you asked Zach out, he told me.”

“He was pissed about the stuff I was saying to you too,” Hollie mumbles, her own voice low and suddenly hesitant.

“I think everyone was, Hollie,” Courtney points out. She watches Hollie sigh and glance up.

“Yeah, but I… didn’t know. I thought you being this awful person had manipulated everyone else and I was the only one that saw through it and knew the truth but… I guess…” she hesitates, “maybe that… wasn’t… true.”

“It wasn’t. You were manipulated by a bunch of gossipy, awful church adults,” she points out.

“I… guess. Yeah. Yeah,” she mumbles, before glancing up, “I… I’m sorry I screwed up. I’m sorry. I can try and… talk to my parents. Or something.”

“Or you could not gossip about your supposed friends with your parents?!” she suggests, raising an eyebrow, watching Hollie shuffle the swing backwards a little in response.

“I guess.”

“Whatever. Just stop with all the made-up stuff that you know was never true,” Courtney pushes, although her tone remains angry, “and don’t act like it was ever really confusing, you should’ve known.”

She fully intends to turn around and leave, then – this was probably a waste anyway, Hollie will just gossip with her parents who will say all the made up stuff her Mum evidently fed to her old church friends and then be right back to saying all the stuff to her at school that rattles uncomfortably around her head and her chest – but Hollie stops her.

“Wait- Yeah. I guess. And I’m not gonna say stuff anymore. And I guess I can… not tell my parents,” she pushes, “I said I’m sorry. If you are still just normal Courtney then I don’t want to not be your friend. And evidently I’m not cool enough for boys or whatever if Zach made up a lie about being with someone else to reject me but-”

“That’s guilt-tripping, not an apology,” Courtney cuts her off, pointedly, “and Zach might’ve said something like that to let you down easy, I don’t know. He used to like hanging out with you at your hiking club stuff, before you turned awful. He just doesn’t like you that way. And if you wanna be all weird about whether I’m still me or not- I didn’t change. You did. I don’t recognise anything about you. You’re mean and rude and intolerant, you were about Billie being a lesbian ages ago too. You’re always just negative about everything everyone else likes and you never listen to anything we say and you don’t seem to be interested in anything.”

“I’m interested in hiking! And all you guys do is trying to make boys sleep with you!” she shoots back.

“You sound like a boomer. That’s not why we like clothes and makeup and nails and you know it. We like stuff that looks cool. We liking looking cool for us, boys are… secondary, or whatever,” she argues, feeling like she’s arguing against one of the boring-ass anti-teenager news commentators her Mum used to watch, “and like half of the influencers we follow and shows we watch have nothing to do with looks anyway. And you can dislike stuff without being so weird about it all the time. You used to like going to the mall with us.”

“I don’t know,” Hollie mutters, “I still like that stuff but I have to say I don’t because- because-”

She cuts herself off, seeming not to have an answer to her own justification as she lets out a frustrated huff. Courtney simply watches her, again, watching Hollie glance back down and shake her head.

“I thought not being into girly stuff made me better and smarter and boys would like me more but boys still don’t like me and no one else likes me either so…”

“Boys don’t dislike you because you like hiking. I mean, I haven’t exactly talked to boys about you. But Zach doesn’t like you because you’re mean,” she points out, again, “and that’s some sexist bullshit about being better because you aren’t into girly stuff. What happened to you being all progressive and whatever?”

“I dunno,” she mumbles, looking back up, “look… I… I screwed up. A few things, I guess. And I get you’re mad at me. I’m sorry I got everything about the divorce so wrong. I won’t say anything about it again. And I know you wanna leave, so, yeah. I guess… that’s… everything I wanted to talk about. And I guess I’ll see you at school Monday.”

“Yeah. See you at school,” Courtney answers, simply, after a moment, turning abruptly on her heel and starting to walk up the street.

She’s not sure she believes her but she doesn’t want to be here anymore.

Chapter Text

It’s much too late in the afternoon to be going to Shayne’s, by the time Hollie finally shuts up and lets her go. She’s pretty sure Chris and Rachael will still be there too, if not his Grandparents, but before she can stop herself she gets onto a bus at the end of Hollie’s street that takes her further away from her house, and closer to his.

“Can I come over? Or can we go to that park near you or something? Hollie messaged me to go and talk to her and I did and idk what is happening with her now 😬” Courtney texts him, as soon as she settles into a seat on the bus, silently hoping he’ll say it’s ok.

“Family is still here but I’ll come and meet you at the bus stop, there’s another park not far from there, I can be there in ten minutes,” he texts her, only thirty seconds later.

“I’ll be there in fifteen, just getting the bus from near Hollie’s,” Courtney texts back.

Shayne is standing at the bus stop when she gets there, and he immediately opens his arms up to invite her into a hug. She didn’t know she needed it, but she lets herself lean against him as she wraps her own arms around him, too, for a moment. She’d spent most of the time on the bus thinking absolutely nothing despite her mind and body twitching in agitation, and she feels just a little of the discomfort settle off her shoulders as she walks beside Shayne to the small park just beside the shops that the bus stop is at.

There’s no playground at this park – there never is in these fancier neighbourhoods – but there’s a handful of benches along the path through the centre of it, and she follows Shayne to one mid-way into the park and sits down beside him.

“You said you don’t know what’s happening with her now? What did she want to talk about?” he asks, carefully, his brow furrowed in concern. She sighs and feels herself wince before she responds. She had, back near when she sent it, told Shayne about her abrupt, probably stupid decision to write Hollie an email about everything.

“The email I sent her… kind of. She wanted to like… justify what she’s been like, I think,” Courtney answers, trying to pull together an explanation, “She- apparently her parents heard something from someone that used to go to church with us and it… sounded a lot like Mum might have fed it to the church person. And she was going on about how she couldn’t believe me and I wasn’t the Courtney she’d always known anymore because of the stuff her parents got told, she had to believe them. And like, she said she messed up, and she kind of apologised, and then she was talking about not being cool enough for guys or whatever because Zach rejected her but it all… just… it felt unfinished.”

“Unfinished in what way? Do you think she’ll still act the same way?” he prompts, carefully.

“I don’t know. She said she’d stop and she kind of implied she wants to be friends again but I don’t know if I… believe her,” she answers, shaking her head, “it’s not just this, she’s been really weird for like- a couple of years now, probably, what with suddenly being conservative and kinda pro-religious again and repeating a bunch of weird stuff about wearing makeup making you a slut and whatever even though she used to be into that stuff too. She tried to blame everything on me being different even though she was saying she thought I was different because I was a drug addict or something, but… she’s the one that has gone weird on us.”

“It’s… yeah. I’d say it seems like she might have something going on too but even then, it doesn’t actually justify how she’s been, and she should’ve known better than believing the stupid stuff when you guys have known each other forever,” he replies, his voice almost perplexed, “it makes sense that you wouldn’t believe her, but I hope she… is going to stop saying that awful stuff, at least. Even if you don’t wanna be friends with her again. You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t know. It’s- I’m angry at her. And it’s hard to actually work out why I’d want to be friends with her if she thinks pretending she hates makeup and clothes when she doesn’t makes her better than me,” Courtney replies, shaking her head, “but if she is going to stop being like that, and actually… maybe apologise properly sometime, and go back to being Hollie…”

She trails off, at that, not sure whether she wants to continue or not. Because like- she wants a best friend. But… it’s a while since Hollie has actually been that, and she has so many other friends now. And okay, some of them will be gone next year since they’re all seniors, but she’s trying not to think too much about that when it’s still more than 6 months away.

She ends up sitting with Shayne at the park for another twenty minutes, and slowly, it teases all the confusion and the agitation out of her mind to settle. She doesn’t know what Hollie is going to do now. And she’s not happy with her half-assed apology. But she’ll just… wait and see what happens at school.

“I’m sorry it had to be here instead of home, I wish I could invite you over properly, but I just didn’t want to put you in a position where you were around my family again when you were upset or trying to work something out,” Shayne tells her, as they wander back out of the park eventually.

“It’s okay. I don’t think I wanted to see your family again today and like… pretend I was just hanging out or something,” she answers, nodding slowly in agreement.

She hugs him goodbye at the bus station, again, before boarding her third – and then fourth – busses of the day to make her way home. She resolves, then, to spend her last day of Thanksgiving break entirely at home, thank you very much.

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Courtney doesn’t have any actual quizzes or tests or anything on the first day back after Thanksgiving break, but it is only four weeks until their Christmas/Semester break, and it means her classes are full of studying and warnings about the quizzes that are coming and ugh. Can’t she just pass this semester and have it over with and stop having to listen to her Algebra II teacher drone on about how there isn’t any college courses that don’t require Algebra (she knows that isn’t true, she’s heard the seniors talking about college applications enough this year)?

By lunch, she’s even annoyed at her music and civics classes and she just blindly walks with her friends from their lockers to the cafeteria and through the food line. Hollie is there – everyone is, today – but she hasn’t said a thing to or about Courtney all day and she’s too frustrated with her classes to think any deeper about whether that annoys her or not.

They usually sit at their own table when it’s all five of them, with a couple of guys sometimes – Courtney’s pretty sure Natalie is still dating Mason, and that usually means he’d sit with them – but Yasmin immediately leads them towards the seniors’ table, and Courtney let’s herself take the seat between Alicia and Yasmin, the former greeting her happily and asking how her Thanksgiving was.

(She knows Alicia knows she had Thanksgiving at Shayne’s, although she just answers generically and turns the question back on Alicia. She doesn’t know if her friends would be weird about her doing Thanksgiving at his place).

It’s Ethan that asks Zach about how the Thanksgiving hiking trip early in the week off had gone, and Zach and Hollie both quickly jump in to explaining how perfect and fun and whatever it was. Courtney isn’t exactly interested, and she can tell her friends are getting a little annoyed at the fact that the others are engaged and keep asking more questions about the trip.

“Hey Hollie, I think Zach can tell the story without you. He already rejected you for being a massive loser who no guy could ever possibly be interested in once, if you keep acting like you’re allowed to be included in things people might think you’re, like, delusional,” Natalie speaks up, abruptly, at one point. It makes Courtney blink in surprise.

She didn’t tell any of her friends that Hollie had asked Zach out, and she watches Zach glance at her for just a moment before looking back over at Natalie.

“That’s a bit of a mischaracterisation. Hollie helped organise the trip, she can definitely talk about it,” Zach answers.

“Who told you?!” Hollie snaps, a little less gracefully, immediately glaring at Courtney.

“Not Courtney, why on earth would Courtney know anything important like that? Mason’s friend was on the hiking trip, he told me. Jace,” Natalie replies, rolling her eyes, and Courtney doesn’t know whether to be relieved it doesn’t look like she’s trying to cause problems or annoyed that Natalie is now on her case, too.

“Man, you really like being wrong,” Zach laughs, “Courtney was the first person I said anything to, so yes, she did know… and hey, it’s nothing to do with this made-up cool thing you guys talk about, but I’m already dating someone else.”