Deviating from the Norm (A "Freaks and Geeks" Fanfic)

Chapter 26 - Obligations and Revelations

As I had joylessly predicted, my mother's flare didn't pass; it bloomed. If it wasn't one thing it was another over the past couple of months and I was desperately looking forward to the point at which things became easier again, but I had to ask myself if I truly believed they would. Life only seemed to grow more hectic and complicated the older a person got, so would this the new easy? I could only hope not.

I spent the rest of the weekend cooped up inside with my father as we tried our best to both accommodate my mother in her ill state and duck her wrath whenever possible... sometimes it was just completely unavoidable, though. Since I had nothing but an enormous amount of time on my hands, I decided to study up on the playbook that Coach had provided after our little pep talk. If he was going to force me to try for the role, then I just had to suck it up and accept my lot... because I had bigger issues to stress me out than someone believing in me. Besides, stumbling around blindly on the field was painful and probably made me look like a huge buffoon... and it was simply not something I wanted a repeat of when it was my turn to play quarterback again.

There were so many different plays, so many things to take into consideration and be mindful of... just studying it gave me a headache. I found that if I split my time reading, checking in on my mother from time to time, trying to formulate my own runs and going outside to practice my throws every now and again (my accuracy was god-awful), cabin fever did not have a chance to set in and my jittery states were far and few between.

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Save for football practice (which I looked forward to more than usual with my mother under the influence of a flare), my week commenced pretty much the same as the weekend had. Somewhat claustrophobic and very repetitive. On Wednesday, after being yelled at by my mother for absolutely nothing other than her reasoning of me 'planning' something and she knew it, I decided it was time to call Lindsay and see if I could convince her to team up with me to save Andopolis' stupid ass from military service. Much to my dismay, the phone just rang endlessly. As far as I knew, she was supposed to be back in town on Monday, but not a soul was answering at their house. I tried again and again throughout the rest of the afternoon, but was met with the same result each time.

On Thursday, I decided to quickly head over to the Weir household after practice (before I was stuck at home with my mother for the rest of the day). I knocked on the door and waited. No answer. I knocked again. No answer. After the third time and a lengthy wait (and more than a few attempts to peek in some windows), I gave up and began heading back to my car, rather surprised to see Millie just staring at me from the stoop of the next house over.

"Hey Millie," I greeted as I stopped at the bottom of the steps, looking up to talk with her. She was dressed in her usual attire- a colorful, long-sleeved shirt that covered all but her neck and a long pair of brown pants.

She flashed a quick smile and continued looking down at me awkwardly, leaving me to wonder if she was secretly judging me for something or not. "Hi, Donovan," she greeted and then, almost timidly, walked down the three levels of stairs so we were standing on even ground.

"Do you, uh, know where Lindsay or, well any of the Weirs are?"

She shook her head, squinting as the sun bounced off of somewhere and plastered her in the face. I shifted my body to block the path of the beam and stop the poor girl from going sun blind. Once the light was out of her face I could see that she was still squinting, as if trying to come to terms with some argument going on inside of her head.

"Do you know if Lindsay got back into town yet? I mean, the summit ended on Monday, I thought she would have been home by now."

"Lindsay might be in some kind of trouble," she finally breathed out in a hurry, as if the secret was just bursting to be freed.