Wounded; A Brallie Fan Fiction *EDITING*

Chapter Twelve: A Mother's Cry

Brandon's POV
I stood in the same aisle, unable to move. My entire perspective on losing Callie had shifted in sixty seconds, and it was for the better. But when I saw Mom marching toward me with tears in her eyes, I could see through clear eyes that she most certainly did not feel the same.

"You saw her, didn't you?" She asked.

Unable to mask the dazed smile on my face, I nodded slowly.

"Did you speak to her?"

I looked at my feet with shame, but not a trace of regret in the adrenaline coursing through my veins. "I kissed her."

She looked at me with a familiar, down-turned expression of anger, and let out a short breath through her nose. I could see that she was coming to terms with that fact that Callie and I couldn't stay away from each other, so she pushed it to the side, for now.

"Did you see your brother with her?"

"Jesus? Yeah. I swear to God, I have no idea about that part." I promised her, with my hands up in front of me like she was going to cuff me.

She looked at me with sad eyes and shook her head in disapproval of not only what had just happened, but seemingly, the shattered path we were all walking on.

"What is happening to our family," she whispered under her breath.

***

While A.J. was out with my dad, who would soon be fostering him, Mom sat us all down at the table that night to discuss what I suppose we could call our Game Plan.

We were going to get Jesus and Callie back home, and we were going to tell the social worker, and anybody else who asked, that Callie did not run away; she got a drunken phone call from Jesus, and did what any worried sibling would do, and tracked him down. She'd simply spent the last few days trying to bring him home.

I was surprised. I'd never seen Mom so determined to lie, to break the law, but I knew that it was under crucial circumstances, and it was unlikely this would ever happen again.

"What about Jesus?" Mariana asked, concerned. "Why did he get kicked out in the first place?"

Mom sighed, and laughed a little under her breath. "I called the school, and from what I gathered, Jesus used his wrestling skills outside the gym, when another student made racist remarks about how just because his last name wasn't Latin, he wasn't a 'real Mexican' in his book."

And at the stupidity of that story, the five of us laughed in unison, which is something we hadn't done in a long time. But we stopped, when we all felt the same thing; that it wasn't right without Callie and Jesus.

Author's note: Keep reading. Sorry this chapter was short, but the next chapter is the climax of the story. SPOILER; Callie gets into an argument with Jesus and finds herself in a life-threatening car accident.