Beyond the end

Shattered

Brenda, Brandon, Clare, Andrea, Hannah and Steve arrived early at Kelly's house. Sooner than it should be. Sooner of what had been granted. They wanted to wake everyone up and leave earlier. They wanted to help prepare and gain a lot of time. They feared traffic and wasting time in preparation. A cheerful squadron.
Steve had temporarily abandoned the corvette for a rented Volkswagen van to remember the camping done years and years earlier. Camping where Clare wasn't there and that's why she couldn't share the memories. She listened to them. She imagined them. Brenda who had forgotten Brandon's shoes. Brandon who had risked his life. Dylan who had saved him.
They parked without entering the driveway, leaving the keys inserted and the hatches open to charge the stuff faster.
Sammy was awake and already in the living room orchestrating a surreal scenery with a couple of dinosaurs. He was happy about last night and was excited for that new adventure. All together.
He saw them coming through the window and didn't even give them time to knock.
The group was surprised to find him already awake but Sammy was too Excited.
He opened the door smiling.
"Good morning Buddy!"Brandon told him and Sammy slapped him a kiss by calling him to himself and pulling him by the t shirt.
"Nice good morning," he said, "Mom?"
Brenda followed and then everyone else.
"Dad and mom are in bed they said they don't want to be disturbed, they kissed All night long, They thought I was sleeping but instead I saw them" Sammy made a mischievous and innocent giggle "and they sent me down to play but I want to go to the camping!"
There was a moment of silence. Glacial. Atrocious. Brenda was a gray mask. Tetre.
Brandon was a little further behind. With his head down and lost.
"Okay," Brandon smiled, trying to put in order what he didn't want to believe, "I'm going to call dad, is he in your room?"
"No, he is in mom's bed. But they don't want to be disturbed. Mom told me to play down."
Brandon felt his fists clenched. Brenda climbed the stairs quickly and unpredictably. It was a blinded fury. She snapped open the door to Kelly's room. And she saw them lhugged. In her bed. Both Asleep and cut by half a ray of light that filtered from the shutters. Brandon arrived soon after but he didn't want to look, he had nothing to see, he wanted to stop his sister. Brenda rushed against Dylan, waking him up with a start. With punches on the chest.
"What happened?" He took a few seconds to realize that he was half naked in Kelly's bed and Brenda and Brandon were in the room..
"What did you do?" Brenda yelled at him, staring at him with damn furious eyes. She wanted to beat him. She wanted to smash him, but she didn't want to give a damn to him anymore. She calmed down quickly.
It was a surreal scene. Brandon felt his ribs slipping like broken glass under the flesh. Turn around. Let a kind of low liquid boil that was suffocating him. He couldn't breathe. Losing everything. Lose what?
"One moment, it's not what you think," Dylan said. Kelly was ted with shock.
"go to hell Both of you. Go Straight to hell. Damn cowards"
Then Brenda ran out involuntarily giving a shoulder to a Brandon who remained standing with his fists closed and his gaze low. Dylan followed her by overcoming the barrier of hatred that was the limit of the door, he wanted to stop her.
They passed in front of the other impietritis in the living room. From the screams and the situation.
Andrea grabbed Sammy and Hannah and took them to the garden so as not to make them hear and see, so as not to understand anything as cruel life can sometimes be as people could be.
"Bran nothing happened," Kelly kept saying.
"Dad and mom are in bed they said they don't want to be disturbed because they were kissing."
So had Sammy said. When it was still a sunny day. With a Volkswagen van. Before the world collapsed into a thousand pieces. If they hadn't arrived so early they wouldn't have noticed anything. They would play the part. They would have pretended nothing happened. They were not new. They had it inside.
Kelly got out of bed and tried to reach out to touch him.
"Don't do it" he shook his head looking even further, the broken voice "don't touch me" Brandon told her in a barely audible voice ""I'm over."
Then he looked at her with furious eyes then walked out of that room.
Dylan didn't have time to stop a desperate Brenda who had gotten into Brandon's car.
"Bren please" he clung to the car that splashed away causing him to lose his balance.
He stood up. In underwear. In the driveway of a bourgeois house, hidden from the eyes of neighbors still asleep.
He stood there bent and on his knees until it was Brandon who got behind him.
"Bran listen to me."
"Steve let's go," Brandon shouted without looking at him.
"Bran nothing happened."
"Leave me."
"Bran"
Dylan's eyes looked fully at Brandon's and this blinded him.
He took him by the neck by slamming him on the trunk of the nearby tree, the more Dylan retreated the more Brandon's fury spread and began to hit him on the cheeks. He couldn't regain control. Brandon lost. Violent Brandon. Brandon destroyed.
He knew it. He knew she wanted Kelly for life. He knew everything. He had told him about it. He knew it years ago. He knew it now. He knew how difficult it was for them. My sister, me, destroyed by this who can't keep his pants buttoned because he can't stand not having everything. Dylan began to defend himself and it was Brandon who took the shots. But he didn't feel pain. He didn't feel anything.
Steve came to divide them while Kelly and Clare had gone out. One shocked and the other petrified.
"That's Enough," Steve shouted, holding back Brandon, Who was shaking with anger. Both of them's lips were bleeding and Brandon had a conspicuous cut over his eyebrow.
"Give me the keys ," he said to Steve, "I want to leave here."
"We're all leaving," said Steve surrendered.
He got into the van and waited for Clare, Andrea and Steve to get in shortly after. He didn't say a word. Andrea tried to convince him to go to the hospital to put a few stitches but Brandon didn't answer anymore. His eyes had shielded. He just wanted to leave. The anger was as if dissipated. Evaporated in the violence of the fists struck.
Sammy stayed in the garden, you could hear the bounce of the basketball and his complaints because they couldn't go to the lake. Not today, never again.
Bran's phone began to ring desperately. "Kel".
He opened the window and threw it out of the running van. The phone shattered at contact with the asphalt as he was in pieces. The name Kel is spent on the display immediately. Brenda remained to be sought. Brandon couldn't think.
They decided to go to Andrea's house. Brandon needed help. The buffered cut did not stop and at Andrea's house there was the necessary to heal the wounds. The ones on the face at least.
No one said a single word. There was very little to say. A film worthy of the worst set design in a second-class cinema.
The husband who discovers the lover.
Andrea took everything he needed "we have to look for Brenda".
"And where?" Steve asked.
Andrea grabbed some anesthetic "beat you in front of the children, in front of Hannah," she said Brandon.
"Andrea not now," sighed Brandon.
She shut up but only because the time to talk about was postponed.
The disinfectant burned a lot and Brandon pulled his head off.
"You have to stand still" Andrea had planted his eyes on him and was trying to keep him still by his chin.
"I'm going to take back the Corvette," Steve said, at least we can go out looking for her".
"I'll go with you," Clare replied, "so we also return the van. I don't think we'll need it today," he said, taking a look at Brandon.
Andrea and Brandon were left alone while Hannah had gone to lock herself in her room. She had understood very well what had happened, and it gave her some satisfaction, they certainly wouldn't go to the lake that day with her mother's furious friends and Sammy's brat.
She Turned on the music and the laptop.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Andrea asked Brandon.
"No."
"You didn't even give him time to explain"
"I don't want to talk about it," Brandon repeated, "please. You saw it. They didn't tell it.?We didn't imagine it? You saw it. That's enough."
"Agree" Andrea raised her hands and applied a conspicuous patch to him "try not to wet this for the first few days. Okay?"
"Ok"
She smiled at him. Andrea's smile was always reassuring.
"Anyway I have to find Brenda"
"Think about places she likes."
"I have no idea, Brenda hasn't lived here in years"
'The Peach Pit?'
"I don't think so, but let's try to call Nat."
The call was immediate but the result was negative. Nat tried to ask questions. Why they weren't at the lake and what had happened. He didn't receive an answer, which he was used to. Then with time, like a shelter, the guys came back to him. Slowly. They sat down. They told.
"Could she have gone to you?"
"I'm thinking she might have gone to London directly."
Andrea surrendered to that statement. They didn't know Brenda anymore. They had never met her.
The phone rang at that moment and Andrea and Brandon looked at each other, there was no need to ask.
"Hallo? Ah Kelly.. " Andrea looked at Brandon for a few seconds but he didn't look back "no, I'm sorry he's not here. Not even Brenda. Yeah... but you don't have to explain it to me and honestly there's not much to explain. You talk to the wrong person." Andrea's morality was rising fast "see you. I'll let you know yes bye."
She hung up the phone
"I don't like to lie."
"I know."
"How long do you want to hide? Or can you hide?"
"I don't want to hide."
"And what do you want to do?"
"God Andrea I don't know. You are always asking a hundred thousand questions. I don't know.. I" Brandon couldn't formulate a sensible thought "I don't want to see them, I don't want to talk to them, I don't want to have anything to do with them anymore, is it so weird to understand?"
Andrea re-ordied the emergency room box "No, it's not."
At that moment Andrea's pager began to ring and drew the attention of both of them. Andrea took it in her hand trying to read the number better.
"It's the hospital," she said, "I have to go."
Brandon nodded "I'm waiting for Steve."
"I'm sorry Brandon," Andrea said just before going out.
She hugged him tight without him answering. He waited outside in the garden for the arrival of Steve and Clare.
Sitting on the steps. Sitting in the rubble. Brenda's phone was not availble and his was destroyed in front of Kelly's house.
His face was pulsing. It hurts him. He looked back at Dylan's gaze defear under his fists.