Falling Fast

Chapter 3 - Injured butch hooker mutant freak

"You so owe me," Dan hissed at me the next afternoon after he got back from school.

I was lying on my bed looking at some of the Russian work we'd done on Wednesday trying to re-learn it when he just stormed in completely breaking my concentration bubble which I'd been in for an hour. I glanced up from my note book for a moment. He dumped his bag down and took his blazer off.

"Bad day?" I asked.

"Could say that. There's rumours about me and Georginaanyway and then I had to walk home with Alexis because she's claiming that you haven't been texting her all day and she's worried you've died," he ground out.

"What?" I asked quickly and put my work down.

"She just kept asking me if you were ok and in the end –"

"No, not Lex. Rumours about you and Georgina? But no one else saw the pictures!"

"Apparently they got shown around," he ground out.

"But... Why? I mean, she's doing herself as much damage as –"

"Zo, you up there?" Lexie called with the worst timing possible.

"Go deal with her," Dan said impatiently. "I don't want to talk about this right now, ok?"

"But –"

"Zoey," he sighed letting me know he really meant it.

"Ok." I got up and walked out the door squeezing his hand as I passed.

"Zo?"

"I'm coming woman, hang on!" I snapped in my friend's direction. "It'll be ok, Dan. I'll make sure it is."

"I don't need you to help."

"Do you want it?"

He sighed. "It's complicated, Zo. Just... Go see Alexis."

I sighed and walked down the stairs. Lex was sat in the lounge tapping her foot impatiently. As soon as she saw me she jumped up from the sofa, pulled me into the room and closed the door. She was bursting to tell me something. I could tell by the sparkle in her eyes and the bounce in her step. Whatever she wanted to tell me it was obviously important. I let her drag me over to the sofa.

Dad came in with a couple of glasses of juice and put them on the end table near Lexie's arm and then quickly retreated. I grabbed my drink before Lex could start speaking and took a long sip.

"So what's he going to call it?" she asked.

"What's who going to call what?" I asked wearily. She didn't gossip all that much, but I didn't like the sound of this.

"The baby! Dan –"

"You listened to that and believed it?" I asked incredulously. "What the hell, Alexis?"

"Isn't that what you were so worried about with Dan?"

"Yeah, but –"

"Hang on, you flew off the handle –"

"I'm allowed to think like that! He's my brother! I get to think the worse so that I can protect him. You... you really believed that?" I demanded.

She squirmed in her seat, clasped her hands together and her cheeks flamed bright red. Good. "Well, with his reputation..."

"I'm going back to bed," I said and walked out of the room.

"Oh, no, Zo, come on," she pleaded and grabbed my hand. "Come on. I'm sorry ok?"

"Not me you need to apologise too," I said flatly and walked upstairs quickly.

I went into mine and Dan's room and slammed the door closed. Dan was sat on his bed with his headphones plugged in and his eyes closed. I climbed up with him and lay next to him. I didn't even have to put my head close to his to hear the cheesy seventies or eighties that was blasting into his ears. If the volume determined how good a song was, then Boogie Wonderland was awesome incarnate. I wondered how he wasn't bleeding from the ears.