Living With The Emerson Girls

Chapter 20

~Ariel's Point of View~

"Yes, Doctor, she has this kind of fever. But she passed out. And she's delirious. And she's been in and out of consciousness for the past day and a half," I hear Zac say in the hall, as I'm emerging from my fog. I'm still lying on his bed.

"Bring her in? Oh shit, I-" I hear his footsteps as he walks back in the room to check on me. During my haze, his hands and towels and glasses of water and blankets are all I remember. Now though, the heat is unbearable, and I shove all the covers off my body. I sit up and steady myself, but I'm dizzy, and my body is soaked in sweat, and I remember Brooklyn, and suddenly there's this nauseous feeling inside me, something like guilt mixed with stomach acid, and Zac's coming over to me as I lean over and empty my empty self.

"I'm sorry," I mumble pathetically, tears welling up in my eyes. I know I'm full of self-pity at the moment, but I don't care.

"No, no, Ariel, it's fine, baby, it's fine," Zac says softly, gently, smoothing my hair back, like he's afraid a single word could tear me apart all over again.

"I'll clean it," I say- there's the guilt again.

"Are you sure?"

I nod.

"I'll help you." He smiles at me, and takes my hand, and there, in the comfort of his simple action, as we clean my gross puke off his floor, as he teases and laughs at my stubborness, I have never been more in love with him. I have never been more sure that we're going to be okay.

It's too bad you're not, says one of the voices, still lingering from the delirium.

*****

The drive home is quiet. Once every couple hundred miles, a few tears fall out of my eyes, turning into sobs, and Zac stops the car and just holds me. We pull into another hotel at night, and Zac makes sure to get separate beds for us. 

"You can talk to me, Ariel." 

"No," I whisper. 

"Yes, you can," Zac says, coming closer to me, inching in so that he's eye to eye with me on my bed. 

"I ruined you," I say. 

"I was fucked either way," he mumbles. "And now I'm definitely fucked." 

"What do you mean?" I say. 

He tells me what he did to Brooklyn. I shut my eyes and crawl under the covers, and he takes that as a hint to go away. 

*****
We're back in California the next day. We haven't even attempted to get off the car when the sound of sirens fills the air, and the police is pulling Zac out of his car- This arrest is the work of Mr. Hills and of Brooklyn no doubt, who wouldn't have been satisfied with a simple court order. Zachary doens't resist, he just quietly allows  the officer to push him into the car, giving me a nod of reassurance. I turn to my father, who has watched the whole thing. 

"Daddy?" 

"Yes, princess?" 

"You told his parents right? We can't let him stay there, in an actual jail!" 

My father sighs. "His mother is trying to come, but I don't think his father is even aware of what's just happened. I'll try to bail him out in the meantime." 

 When I enter the house, all seven of my sisters are standing in the doorway, and they all engulf me in a hug. No one asks any questions, they just sort of get it. Something bad has happened. I push into my room and try to sleep, but Athena walks in. 

***** 

~Athena's Point of View~

Zac spoke to me on the phone last night. He told me Ariel was going to be weird when she came back. She was depressed, but he couldn't really be sure. Then he told me what happened.
Looking at my sister's crumpled form on the bed was sickening. The boy she loved had been taken from her, once by Brooklyn,  and once by the police, for something he hadn't even done.

I felt guilty for anything I had ever felt towards Zac, and immediately, the reamaining bits of lust were washed away by empathy for my sister.

"I can't do it, Athena," she says, looking up at me.

"Do what?" I say.

"I can't be with him."

"How come?"

"Because we'll never get past this. And the guilt is going to eat one of us alive and... I don't think I want it to be me."

Ariel has always been dramatic, but this is different. Watching your boyfriend be tricked into having sex with someone you both despise isn't a natural occurrence. It isn't something you can just deal with, or work through.  

"I think..." I breathe in, preparing to speak the most I've ever spoken in my entire life, "I think you should do what you think is best. But remember that you aren't at fault here. He was going to get screwed over no matter what. But you love him. The two of you are special, you just work, like you were sort of meant to end up all along. And yeah, there are things you'll go through that will suck, but life sucks and sometimes there are things we just have to fucking go through." 

Ariel blinks at the vague ending of my message to her, and nods. I don't know what else to say, and I have never really been affectionate with anyone, so I nod back and exit the room, leaving Ariel to herself. 

***** 

~Zachary's Point of View~ 

It's been at least twelve hours since they stuck me in this holding cell, yet I've managed to remain surprisingly calm. The cop even let me have some of his McDonald's. Maybe he knows what happened at the party, and he just feels bad. But there's no proof. 

Wait. 

"Um, sir, Officer?" I say, unsure of how to address him. 

"Yes, Mr. Oliver," he says, hardly looking up from where he sits.

"Could you reach into my phone?" 

"You know I can't-" 

"I don't want to text anyone. I just want to show you something. Scroll through my messages until you find Brooklyn Cresta." 

He needs no further explanation. When he reads the messages, his eyes widen and he turns to me. 

"It was stupid of me to go to that party. I don't know why I went. But I went with my girlfriend, and we were supposed to..." 

The officer nods understandingly, a small smile on his lips. 

"It didn't happen. Brooklyn blackmailed me into being with her at the party, and then she blackmailed Ariel, my girlfriend into getting me really intoxicated. I thought I would just have to dance with Brooklyn for a little bit, but she locked Ariel in my closet and had sex with me. I thought she was Ariel- I couldn't see left from right and they're kind of similar looking. Brown hair, light skin, both of them. She used my expunged records to blackmail us." 

"Yes, I got that, I do, but besides providing for your character, what kind of solid evidence does this give me to help you?" 

"Well, how would she have known that I was in trouble?  I hadn't even been arrested yet. Nothing official had happened. She's creepy, but she doesn't have any way of finding that out. Her father, however, is a successful, lawyer, very well known among the upper class. And you already know-" 

"-that you didn't rape Carolynn Hills." He pauses, unsure of what to do for a moment. "Tell you what. I'll make some calls, see if I can dig into Mr. Hills's phone records.

And so I wait.