Eleven

Chapter Eighteen: A Favor

A/N: Check it out; I'm alive.

Chapter Eighteen: A Favor

There are moments in life that have been seared into my brain, filed away in a little cabinet in the back, somewhere between table manners and long division. They're the highlights; the stop-moving-stop-breathing-and-do-everything-you-can-to-hold-onto-this-moment moments. Most were good.

Some were bad.

The time my parents took me and Marie to a carnival was the first one I could remember. The lights, smells, sounds. Seeing a ferris wheel for the first time, and feeling my eyes grow as wide as the caramel apple I'd been holding. I was young, but even then I knew it was a big deal. I knew I'd remember every little thing about it.

A big one was my first time getting into the car with Kota and Victor. Scared out of my mind, but hungry for the tiniest taste of freedom. Something outside of my books and the woods. Not the typical way teenage girls were usually excited for the mall...but still. It was the first time I felt like I was a part of something.

Opening day of boot camp. Holding my first scalpel. The day Jessica called me her sister. Our zombie, fingernail painting, cupcake birthday. Seeing the boys graduate. Sex Ed class with Dr. Sean. The first time I initiated a hug with Erika. Owen's smiles, North's belly-laughs, and Gabriel's singing.

My first car accident...my second car accident...Victor's attack.

And the first time I made the boys lunch when we moved into our home.

It physically pained me to say that watching Uncle make love—quite vigorously—to a woman where I used to peel bananas as a teenager was now involuntarily tucked away in that same filing cabinet.

"What the—" Uncle cried out in surprise—oh, God, please let it be surprise—as his head spun around to our unceremonious entrance. My feet were frozen in terror. I couldn't look away as he stumbled backwards, no matter how desperately my brain was telling me to, and North's large hand quickly curled around my eyes as he blocked the sordid rendezvous from my sight.

"No, don't stop!" The shameless woman pleaded, her throaty voice stuck in that land between a gasp and a moan, and I realized that being blinded was not helping the situation for me. I tried to pull my jaw up from the floor whilst swatting North's hand away. But as soon as he backed off, I regretted it and almost pulled his hand back. "I'm so close, just—"

"Of course I'm going to stop, Mina!" Uncle cried over her pleas, staggering away from the table, sounding dumbfounded as he blindly pointed a finger towards our gaping faces. "Those are my nephews and their girl! Get a hold of yourself."

Uncle was standing in front of me naked. Naked. No clothes. He wasn't wearing anything. Everything just sort of...out there. I barely had a moment to try and fail to process this, before he was throwing clothes at the equally naked woman and hastily shoving his legs into a pair of pants.

My eyes dully noted that his forgotten briefs were lying untouched on the linoleum floor.

"So...this is Hell," Luke whispered in audible torment beside me, tone laced with pure misery. His voice sounded as far away as my ability to blink.

"But we weren't finished." The lady seemed to pout, and now that she was grudgingly pulling on a dress, albeit backwards, I felt more comfortable getting a look at her. She was pretty, definitely pretty, and most definitely younger than Uncle.

"Get dressed, Mina," Uncle answered firmly, shrugging into a white undershirt.

My eyes finally blinked.

"I'll be in the car," North muttered flatly, and he fled so quickly the door was swinging shut by the time I'd turned to stop him. Or join him. Or find a fork to skewer my eyes with.