Francine & Earl

Catch

(A/N Two more chapters left!)

Earl spent the day after he was bailed out completely confused.

After his father picked him up with a pseudo-stern frown on his face to show the officers that, yes, he could be a concerned parent, Earl was hustled into the car. When the door shut, the grim look on his father's face fell back to reveal a blinding smile that his son had to blink at repeatedly before believing it was real.

Earl Sr. clapped him on the back, and with a gleam in his eye, congratulated him on his first arrest. He went on to reminisce about his own high school days, when he was the top of the food chain at Dempsey High, and how he was glad that the tradition was continuing on. That shocked Earl into silence, and he spent the rest of the ride with a grueling headache and a feeling of disappointment with himself.

As soon as the beat up car touched the pavement outside their house, he bolted. The stairs were a blur, the journey up was a flash of memory. Yet, when he finally gathered what was left of his wits, he was in the cramped bathroom they all shared, littered with evidence of his father's shave and his brother's excess use of hair gel. His father called up at him to say that there was aspirin on the table, but Earl was too busy tugging off his putrid clothing to pay attention to anything.

He didn't want to look at the muscles he worked so hard to get that now felt totally separate from him. He felt as if he didn't belong in this skin that was supposed to be his, like he was renting it for the price of his morals and self-respect. Earl wanted to blame it on the drinks he chugged at the party, but he knew what he was experiencing wasn't an after-effect of being drunk; it was from being disgusted at himself.

What am I doing?

He tugged at his hair harshly, as if the answer would be pulled out with the random strands of hair. His body was an itch he couldn't scratch, something he couldn't reach or figure out for the life of him. Starting a shower, he hopped into the freezing spray in hopes it would organize the jumbled thoughts in his head, but all it did was make new ones appear.

Dammit.

* * *

Earl was lying on his bed when a tentative knock tapped against his door. He had spent the past hour staring at his ceiling, distracting himself with counting how many depressions there were in the paint. The game came to a stop, however, when a familiar head of brown hair peeked around the edge of the wood.

Mae.

He knew that he was a terrible friend for what he did. He completely ignored the one person who had consistently been there for him for most of his life. The constant phone calls and texts, visits to his home, attempts to talk in school, he avoided. He wondered if it was just to move on to his new crowd of acquaintances, or if he was subconsciously ashamed of what he was doing and didn't want her to see the full extent. All he knew was that he threw away a bond that took years to build, and he was beginning to wonder if what he was doing was worth a relationship that spanned over a decade.

Earl sat up on his bed and regarded Mae with the same type of contemplative silence she was giving to him. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words would come out. He didn't know what to say, how to apologize. He felt even worse when he saw the dark rings under Mae's eyes and the mixed-matched clothes she wore that she claimed she would never be caught dead in. She had been distracted, which only happened when she was extremely worried.

"Mae. . ." he began, but couldn't quite string together words better than the usual 'I'm sorry' that he always felt was said in a disingenuous and condescending way.

She just held up a hand, fully stepping into his room to reveal Jared hidden behind her. Earl furrowed his brow at his consistently stoic brother, seeing the faint down turn of his mouth that could be assumed to be a frown. That was the most expressive his face had been since their mother left, and it shocked him to see a slight variation.

"Your brother," Mae said," wants to talk to you, and it's really something you need to hear. Listen to him."

She finished her statement and turned on her heel, but couldn't get fully away before Earl clambered off his bed and grabbed her hand.

"Why did you come?" he asked, still searching for the right way to say he was a terrible person and deserved whatever punishment he got for abandoning his best friend.

Mae used one of her rare glares in his direction before tugging her clenched hand from his.

"Jared called me and told me you were arrested and didn't say what for. I was worried that you got hurt, so I came to check on you." She paused like she was thinking over whether she should say something, but Mae had always been impulsive. The words spilled from her lips and shattered Earl, leaving him outside his room reeling while she disappeared down the stairs. Her words echoed in his head.

"Like a real best friend would do, but I doubt you know about that, Earl."

"Earl?"

Looking away from the staircase, Earl tilted his chin up to meet the gaze of his younger brother. The sixteen year old gestured for them to enter his room, as if he did not want anyone else to hear their conversation. Earl complied, just because he was sure that this would be the only way for him to truly talk to Jared without his much dumber clone breathing down their necks.

Jared sat on the edge of his bed, long limbs looking out of place on his too small bed. He looked completely uncomfortable, and Earl would probably feel bad if he didn't have a pounding headache from his restless thoughts and alcohol from the night before.

"You're an idiot."

Those were the first words that came from his sibling's mouth. Earl just blinked in response, not wanting to admit to agreeing with the same sentiment.

"I thought you were smart, but you are one of the most socially dumb people I have ever met," Jared continued, his expression getting angrier with each word. "You care about what other people think way too much, and now you're squandering the chances you've been given. You are so lucky that Dad's friend broke the law to keep this out of your record. One of the perks of being on the football team, huh?"

Earl let out a bitter chuckle at Jared's words.

"What chances? What chances do I poss-"

"Are you seriously asking me that?" His brother's voice was eerily calm as he interrupted him, and Earl crossed his arms as he leaned against the doorjamb to fight off the sudden chill. "Do you seriously think that you have no chances?"

Earl tried to respond, but was easily cut off.

"You are surprisingly intelligent, when it comes to school, and colleges are willing to offer you their metaphorical first-born child to just consider to go there. You actually get to leave this hell hole in a few months, too. And, to top it all off, you were able to be the skinny nerd that you were under in this house and this effed up town. But you decided to change all of that, didn't you? Just to feel like you fit into a school with people who act as if they have a serious common sense deficiency."

There were no other words spoken for a moment, with Jared avoiding Earl's gaze and Earl still processing what just happened.

"Why did you tell me all of this?" he asked, voice at a whisper because it felt wrong to speak after what had been told to him. "I thought you hated me."

Jared stood, his unfeeling mask finally sliding back onto his face as he made his way to the door. But, before he left, he gave his older brother one last thing to think about.

"I don't hate you; I just strongly dislike people who have no backbones and are clueless to the opportunities they have. You fall under both categories," he had said, eyes hard and unyielding.

"I wish that I was half as smart as you, or that I could just play a sport for fun rather than worry about how I can possibly play well enough to get a scholarship to go to college. And, if you wanted to, you could completely ignore the people around you because even if they single you out for your body type, they won't damn you to the darkest pits of hell at every chance they get. You get to escape this small town with an even smaller minded population of people in a few short months, while I'm trapped for years. Now stop being an imbecile and fix yourself up, stupidity will never be in style."

And Earl did, because he knew that the only one that could catch himself before he hit even harder against rock bottom was himself.