Gah, I realized in this that Keith uses "hell" when he swears, as do the others in other chapters. It has been rather difficult to keep the characters in When It Clears to not say it, because if they aren't Christian, then they wouldn't have a Hell. Huh.

Anyway, the first chapter in over a month. It's actually been written in my notebook, but I never typed it up... XD

Enjoy. Jesse reveals something as if a leaf simply floated down in front of his face.

The twins and I basically just hung out at my apartment for the day. I didn’t want Jeremy alone at his house and Jordan didn’t want to leave his brother’s side, so I was stuck with them both. We had a good time, though. Better than I would have expected from Jeremy’s emotional state. I could actually stand the two of them knocking on my coffee table for once.

Keith called early in the afternoon and asked if I knew where Jeremy was, and it dawned on me that he had no idea what had happened to him the previous night. But I let him talk to Jeremy, who took the phone into my room and closed the door for privacy. Keith had it good; he knew all our problems. He probably knew the twins better than they knew each other in some ways. But his talk with Jeremy seemed to brighten him up a bit, so I wasn’t going to complain.

Keith himself showed up that evening to the twins and I still in the clothes we had slept in the previous night. He must’ve though we were all a bunch of slobs or something, sitting on my living room furniture with as much couth as the men in the Boise bar had. But we were having fun being obnoxious.

After he left, Jeremy decided to go home as well. He promised Jordan and I that he wouldn’t get into any trouble at his house, so we let him go. Then Jordan left too, and an eerie silence fell over my apartment.

---

By the next day when I finally turned my television on, every entertainment piece on the news shows had some part about Jeremy on it. I don’t know what possessed Kada to alert the media so soon, but she did it, and I hated her for it. Kyoonyt society says you don’t just ditch someone like that. You don’t go sneaking around behind their back to go fuck someone else. You don’t leave them once, then come back and do it again. And you definitely don’t exploit it if something like that happens. It’s disrespectful to the other party involved.

I mean, sure, whatever’s Aleena’s business is everyone else’s business, but that’s the nature of being as famous as we were. When I say Aleena, I mean the band as a whole, not its individual members. Kada could at least have had the decency to give it more than a day before she went and ran her mouth.

There was absolutely nothing on television, and I didn’t feel like watching a movie, so I decided to go out. Lĕnk has a beautiful park, with a man-made pond and ducks and little kids. The works. After wandering aimlessly thinking about Kada, I found myself there. I had never really gotten the chance to go there when I was young; there was too much other crap happening in my life: Moving around so much, arguments with my parents when I hit my teen years, ultimately their deaths.

Not wanting to linger on that last thought, I stood from the bench I was on and made my way to the pond. All the snow had melted while we were in Arizona, and it was finally beginning to feel like spring was coming. The ducks weren't quite back from wherever they went during the winter, but the little kids still found ways to amuse themselves with the pond, all the while with their parents complaining that it was still too cold to be playing in it.

As I leaned on a tree to watch them, I remembered Jeremy’s words from the previous day: “I want to be ‘Daddy.’” I tried to imagine him down by the pond, messing around with his son or daughter. It wasn’t all that hard. Jeremy was much like a kid in many ways. If he wanted to be a father so badly, he could have my kid. I couldn’t do very much with him when his mother moved him to Georgia right after he was born. I have one picture of myself with him, from the day he was born. That was the last time we saw each other. I could send Jeremy to meet him and he’d think Jeremy was me.

If Jeremy ever did settle down and have a family, he would realize how difficult having a child was. Especially if said child lives thousands of miles away and has no idea of who you are. All it takes is a one-night stand, or a bitter argument, and paradise would shatter. I knew from first-hand experience. If Aleena ever went to Georgia on a tour, Keith told me I could take a day and go see my son. The twins didn’t know about him, which was probably for the better. They would probably freak out if they knew. If I could, I would’ve kept it from Keith, too, but he was there the whole duration of the pregnancy, and I couldn’t help but tell him everything. Even when he was eighteen, he was a shrink.

A foam ball bounced off my forehead, jerking me back to Idaho. I picked it up from where it had fallen at me feet and threw it back to the small mob of kids that was chasing after it. I could’ve been mean and made them jump for it, the little pip-squeaks. But I have a thing for small children. Not a very good one, either. Maybe I was jealous of them for being around their parents? Maybe I was jealous of the parents for being around their kids? I don’t know.

I couldn’t get myself out of the rut I’d crawled into by the time I got home. My depression just sneaks up on me at the worst times. Triggers are everywhere. I’d known what I was getting into by going to the park, but I did it anyway. Why? Because I’m a moron. Always have been, always will be.

I don't think getting stoned is a medically proven way to treat depression, but it certainly worked faster and felt better than waiting for a pill to work. Keith made me flush all my pills anyway. I was lucky I hid my weed in my boxers, or he would've made me get rid of that, too. I don't know why he got on my case about having pot in my possession. Jeremy had plenty more where it came from and Keith never made him get rid of it.

Lighting up as I laid on my bed, I took the first, most potent drag off the hit. Almost immediately, I felt the airy effects of the drug.

When I was fourteen, my shrink told me I was bipolar. I think it may have been Keith's mom who told her about my mood swings, but Keith was the one who told his mom in the first place. Even if I was bipolar—which I'm not—I think I had a good reason to be. I can't imagine how the psychiatrist didn't connect my ups and downs with the fact that my life had just been ripped out from under me.

Just before I passed out, I put the joint out between my fingers, ignoring the sharp pain as my mind left me.

It was Tuesday. I had forgotten. Not only that, it was the first Tuesday of the month: Poker night was at my house.

I don't know how long I was out for, but I must have been long enough for evening to fall. I wasn't so fortunate as to wake up as peacefully as the smooth transition from day into night. Instead, Keith shook me awake, roughly at first, but more gently once he had confirmed that I was still alive. Only because he was Keith did he worry I had died.

His chocolate eyes swirled before my own blue ones, and I closed them. I groaned and rolled away from him, wanting to go back to sleep.

"Jess," Keith said, trying to pull me back toward him. He repeated my name when I completely ignored him; this time, however, I groaned. "What did you do, Jess?"

"Go away, Keith," I said, curling into a ball.

I felt him sit in front of me on the bed, on the opposite side as he had been on previously. "What's wrong, Jess?"

"Can't I just get stoned if I want?" I really didn't feel like going through all his questions.

"Jesse." He pushed my shoulder until I was laying flat on my back, then held me down with both hands. "What the hell is wrong with you? Tell me, please."

"Do I need an excuse to get stoned?" I shot at him, rephrasing my previous question as I fixed my eyes angrily on his and struggled to be free of his grip.

"If you're alone, you do. Dammit, Jesse, you know I don't like it." Keith never forgot anything.

"Get the fuck off me," I yelled at him, the force of my words making him let go. "Gods, Keith. You don't need to be so fucking paranoid."

"I almost lost you last time, Jesse." He looked like he was debating on knocking my head off the wall a few times. Maybe it would've knocked some sense into me. "I think I have a right to be paranoid as all hell. Do you know how scary that was?"

"You weren't the one living it―"

"I was too living it. You were in the middle of it. I had to stay with Jeremy and Jordan and Bekka and all the other people who cared about you. I had to be prepared to hear some stone-cold doctor tell me you weren't going to wake up. If that experience didn't teach you anything, I don't know what will." He shook his head to add even more emotion to his words. "What is wrong with you?"

I grinned bitterly as I closed my eyes. "Don't you wish I still had my pills?"

"Then you would be in the bathroom drinking ipecac or in the hospital having your stomach pumped. I'm not a moron, Jesse."

"You're not a doctor, either," I shot at him.

There was a light knock on the doorframe. "Are you guys all right?" Bekka asked cautiously.

"I'll be right out, love," Keith told her. When she left, he turned to me and stood. "Kill yourself if you want, Jess. Don't expect me back until I come tomorrow for your body." With that, he turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. He and Bekka left.

Keith was overacting. Why would one hit kill me?

I was back to sleep in an instant without another thought spared for him.

I can imagine him getting hit in the head with the ball. XD