A knock on the door made Shane wake up from his fifth nightmare in three days. He stepped into a pair of track pants and opened the door of his caravan. Outside one of the girls from the past hunt was staring off into the distance. Lucy, he remembered as his head cleared from sleep and terror sweat.
"Can I help you?" His voice was rough from disuse and he sounded a lot harsher than he had intended.
Lucy frowned, "Actually I'm here to help you." She pushed past him and pulled a stack of paper from her shoulder bag. "Dennis told Mary you struggled with maths and because you haven't been at school for a few days you missed a class."
"Sure, come in." Shane closed the door, the cool morning breeze made him shiver. Perhaps a shirt would do him some good. "Do you drink coffee?" He offered her a cup.
She accepted it without looking away from the papers and took a big sip, "Anyway Mary wanted me to bring you Dennis' class notes." A huffed laugh, "I took mercy on you and decided to rewrite my own for you. Then because I was already at it anyway I also summarized everything we already covered for you." Lucy licked her lips, "This is good coffee by the way."
Shane stood there not sure what he was supposed to do. Some girl he vaguely knew just barged into his home and started talking about maths at... seven in the morning! "Thanks I guess, you didn't have to do that."
"I know, but Mary said she'd finally teach me how to crochet if I gave you the crappy, no good notes. Honestly Dennis needs a tutor because his work was sloppy at best and just plain wrong at worst." Lucy zipped her bag up again, "I know you don't want me here so I'll be off now but before I do that I am actually curious why you haven't been at school." She didn't sugarcoat anything, considering he probably disliked her asking it straight might get a better result.
Shane sighed and set his cup down, "I've never dealt with so many demons at once before, in the struggle I got some bad cuts on my back and they keep opening up again." He turned around to get his last clean shirt. A hand on his arm stopped him.
"Oh damn, it's a miracle these aren't infected although one of them is starting to look like it." She traced her finger gently next to a deeper one down his shoulder blade. "What did you disinfect them with?" Silence. "You didn't disinfect them... Dude if you can't reach just ask a bud to help out." Lucy grabbed her phone from her back and texted Mary. "You should always clean your wounds or you could get seriously sick." She didn't know why she cared, maybe it was the goodness of her heart, maybe it was the idea that if he died she would be a suspect.
"I never clean them, they always heal just fine." Shane pulled away from her hand feeling more exposed by the second. "Closes up after a few days leaving another scar on the tally."
He could hear Lucy huff behind him, "If you took proper care of it you would have way less scars. Not none but much less." Her phone went off and she ignored it, "Honestly if it wasn't for Mary I probably would do the same thing so I can't get too heated over it." She thought for a moment. "You do know how to get blood out of clothes right?"
Shane shook his head, he felt ashamed. Everything was fine until she tried to mess it all up. Sure it sucked to have to get new shirts every once in a while because of the blood stains and his cuts itched and hurt for weeks on end. He could even deal with the looks on his friends' faces when he resurfaced after a few days later. Bruises fading and another layer of bricks on his wall of shit.
"Hey, it's okay. If you give me everything with blood then I'll get the stains out for you. My parents aren't home anyway so there's nobody to ask questions." Shane stayed silent as he pulled a shirt over his head. "Yeah okay you go and collect the clothes, we'll go to my place and I'll show you how to get it done."
He pulled the thrash bag with blood stained clothes from one of the cupboards and slung it over his shoulder, "Sure, not like I have anything better to do." Shane resigned and pulled out a pair of sandals. "How far is it?"
"Not that far, only a few kilometers. I live just down the road at the end of the forest path." She stared at the thrash bag, "I hope I have enough soap for that, oh well I'm sure we have a stock." Lucy smiled, "Ready?"
Shane nodded, "Yeah, but you go ahead. I have to change and eat breakfast first, I'll meet you there." Her smile faltered slightly before getting pulled back up. He regretted it the moment he said it.
"Oh, sure!" Lucy huffed a nervous laugh, "I probably woke you up or something damn sorry." She opened the door. "I shouldn't have intruded, there are your notes and homework and such. If you want help with the stains you can just let me know and come over or something. Bye." With that she closed the door behind her and sped down the driveway. Through the curtains Shane could see her turn the corner. Her smile was gone and with one hand in her hair she looked defeated.
"God damn it Shane, why can't you act like a person?" He chastised himself in the mirror after a long shower filled with back pain and rampant self-doubt. Sitting down at the table with his breakfast his eyes fell on the notes Lucy had left for him. She really hadn't lied when she said she had summarized everything for him. All of it painstakingly neat, written down by hand. "Must be eight whole pages." He mumbled to himself, a side-effect of living alone. Shane was wrong, it was twelve pages front and back.
"Why can't you ever act like a normal person?!" Lucy cursed at herself as she sped back down the road. This is what happens when you let your guard down for just a second: You offer strange, half-naked men to show them how to get blood out of clothing at seven in the morning after yammering on about how bad his best friend is at maths. You just don't do that! And you definitely don't touch them and chastise them for not taking care of themselves when they clearly just had a rough time.
In hindsight, Lucy could see where she went wrong in that social interaction, everywhere. Why did she even put in the extra effort for the notes for him, she doesn't know him! "Oh well, at least I'll probably never have to talk to him again after this." She admitted to herself in defeat.
Almost exactly an hour later the doorbell rang and Shane stood on the other side, his bag of clothing slung over his shoulder like he was the secret overgrown eighth dwarf or Santa's twink son. "I always wondered what was at the end of that path." Was all he said before walking in. "I brought my clothes like you asked, it's a little much so I don't know how far we'll get." Shane looked around the living room, "I don't want to take up your whole day."
Lucy closed the door behind him, feeling like the internet connection between her brain and her mouth was down. "I didn't think you'd come." She admitted as she stepped into the living room and took the bag from him. "Do you want something to drink? Our coffee isn't as good as yours but I have a lot of coke."
"Coke would be great, thanks." Shane followed her through yet another arch and into the dining room/kitchen. "I said I'd be here didn't I?" He noticed the box with two scrub brushes and bars of strange beige soap inside on the table. "Nice place, very isolated." Outside the window looked out over the pond in their back yard, the water glittering in the light of the sunrise.
His focus returned when a startlingly cold can of cola touched his chest, "Here you go. Follow me," Lucy picked up the box from the table, "We can use the bathtub upstairs." She slung the bag over her shoulder awkwardly, her hand already supporting both the box and her opened can of coke.
Shane wordlessly plucked it from her grasp and followed her back to the front door and up the stairs. They turned right twice into the bathroom. In their passing, Shane could only catch a glimpse into what he assumed to be his new friend(?)'s bedroom. He'd think about what they were later, colleagues?
Somehow Shane was not surprised to find the tub already filled with nice warm water, he _was_ surprised however by the two desk chairs next to it. Sure Lucy hadn't expected him to come but at the very least she seemed to have hoped that he would. He dropped the bag between the chairs, "So how does this work?" As sad as it was he had never done a run of laundry in his life.
"Well," Lucy took out a scrub brush and a bar of soap, "I prefer to make the clothes wet first." She laughed and turned over the entire bag into the tub. With her hands she pushed the fabric under to make sure it was all soaked. Pulling up a garment Lucy noticed it was the shirt he wore when she met him, the blood dried up covering the entire front of the shirt. "Oh shit, sorry for that. This one's on me." She put the shirt aside, "It'll need some more work."
