Title: Pact
Author: perfectionisty
Rating: PG-13
Summary: pact n.—an agreement made between two or more people, either formally or informally, to do something together or for each other
Disclaimer: This story is mine, all mine. Do not steal and do not copy.
A/N: Chapter One. Eventually a full fledged novel. Please leave reviews. Please?

His whisper echoed around the room loudly, coming full circle against his ear drum. He couldn’t understand why she remained still. Couldn’t she hear it?

It was the third day he’d been here and stood in the exact same spot. Pillow poised in hand, ready to set the machines into a beeping frenzy.

Paul Jared was a Man, with a capital M. He played football, hockey, and lacrosse. The gym was his best friend and he worked out whenever he wasn’t playing sports. Girls fell at his feet and his weekends were filled with parties and hot dates.

God damn, he was a real Man. No one had ever doubted that, would ever doubt that.

Especially not Dana. Real Men had girlfriends and best friends who were guys. This real Man had girlfriends, best friends who were guys, and an absolute best friend who was a girl.

A beautiful, funny, intelligent girl. One who believed in him and was there for him one hundred percent of the time.

They made promises that if they weren’t married in twenty years, they’d marry each other. They made pacts about private things.

Standing in this room, looking over her still figure, Paul wasn’t sure if those promises would ever get a chance to be fulfilled.

He vividly remembered the first day he’d met her, this beautiful porcelain doll. His family had just moved in to their new house. Jake, his older brother, and his parents were moving stuff in; Paul had tried to help, but had gotten underfoot and had sent a box full of records flying. In unison, his parents had told him to go play outside.

The suburbs had been a new experience. For the first years of his short life, the Jared family had lived right in the heart of Chicago. His mother had never let him go outside alone or leave her sight for more than a few seconds. He’d been in daycare and preschool for as long as he could remember and was used to the mother who came flying through the door five minutes late, her hair astray and her suit about to get paint on it.

So when his mom had stopped coming to pick him up in a suit and his dad had started circling and highlighting things in the newspaper, Paul had felt strangely out of place. He hadn’t known the mom who had pancakes ready for breakfast on week days and fresh cookies when she picked him up from school. The father who laid his head on the table in frustration had been a vast change from the guy who came home late but stayed up without complain to help Jake with math homework.

Things were different after the move. His dad had found a new job, one to support the one his mother had lost. Tammy Jared, former Attorney at Law, had become a housewife. And Paul had been sent outside, for the first time, alone.

Sitting in their small box of grass, partially shaded by their even smaller tree, Paul had had no idea what to do. Play? What was there to play with? More importantly, who was there to play with?

Right on cue, in a trait that Paul would wonder about for the rest of their friendship, Dana had walked out of her house across the street. She had been singing to herself, a song about her Barbie dolls. It had been the sound of her slightly off key voice that had forced him to look up.

“Hi!” she had said brightly, meeting his gaze.

Paul had looked around, unsure if she was talking to him, a neighbor, or her doll.

“Well, aren’t you gonna say hi, silly goose?”

“Hi,” he had replied. That was all it took, and their friendship was sealed. The girl had run across the street, hardly stopping to look both ways, and plopped down next to Paul.

“I’m Dana,” she had told him, pointing to herself. “And this is Laura,” she had said, holding up a doll with blonde hair and a dirty face, “and this is her sister, Beth. Beth has red hair like me!”

“I’m Paul,” he had said, pointing to himself in a way that felt vaguely stupid and unnecessary.

“You wanna play dolls with me?” she had asked.

Even back then, Paul had been a Man. “No way. Dolls are for girls.”

The rest was a blur for Paul. He wasn’t sure when they had gone from neighbors to best buds, but he guessed it was when they were put in the same kindergarten class that fall. Ever since then, they had been inseparable.

That gut wrenching thought hurtled him back to the hospital room, where the girl who played with dolls was barely breathing and the real Man wasn’t man enough to follow through.

He heard footsteps in the corridor and quickly replaced the pillow haphazardly behind Dana’s head. Moments later, a haggard looking middle aged woman padded into the room. She clutched a paper cup of coffee in her hands, holding on for dear life.

“Paul!” the woman said with as much enthusiasm as she could muster.

“Hi, Mrs. Veeto,” Paul said dutifully, ever the gentleman. “How you holding up?”

“Me? Oh, just fine,” Mrs. Veeto brushed his concern off. “Are you okay, sweetie?”

“I’m fine, just worried,” he replied dully. “And pissed off at the guy who did this to her.”

“You and me both,” she said wearily. “The police said his blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit. Dana never stood a chance once his pickup truck spun out of control.”

“I hope that guy gets thrown in jail,” Paul said bitterly. The Man inside of him was itching for a fight.

“Right now, I just hope my baby wakes up.” Helen Veeto pulled one of the hard chairs over to the bed and perched upon it. Absentmindedly, she fixed a pillow that wasn’t quite straight, being sure not to disturb any of the numerous wires.

One of the nurses, a nice lady named Jeanie, had patiently described what each wire and monitor was for. At the time, Helen had nodded as the information passed right through her overcrowded and overworked brain. Now, she wished she had paid better attention.

“You should go home, Mrs. Veeto,” Paul said, leaning down to touch her shoulder gently.

“I’m not leaving her here by herself.”

“I’ll stay. You should go, get some sleep, freshen up. You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”

“That’s because I haven’t,” she said wryly. Paul was a sweet boy and had been a fixture in her household for years. Sometimes, though, Helen missed the quiet.

“Then I insist you go. At least go find some place to take a nap. You’re not doing her any good if you’re not keeping yourself healthy.”

Helen really wanted to protest, to say she could last another seventy-two hours. But she knew Paul was right. She wasn’t the college student who could pull all-nighters anymore. Ever since Morris had died, it seemed her energy was gone the moment she opened her eyes.

The death of her husband had been hard on Helen, as it had been for Dana and her sister, Eve. Dana had never met her real father; he had died before she was born. Morris was the only father she had ever known, and Eve’s biological father. Helen had been deeply in love with Morris and every day was a struggle without him, even two years later. Cancer had claimed him, increasing her death count to two.

Dana and Eve were all she had left, and Helen was not about to let that count go up yet again.

“Come and get me in an hour,” she instructed Paul fiercely before slowly walking out of the room.

Silently, Paul breathed a sigh of relief. This morning, he had made a promise to himself that he would do it today. Today would be the day he stuck to the other promise he had made just a year ago. He was going to do it, too. After all, real Men didn’t run away from their problems.

It’s just that, this was the scariest thing he’d ever done. Or even considered doing. Going through with it could put him in jail. He didn’t know how to be stealth or sneaky and not leave behind fingerprints. He wasn’t a trained criminal, for god’s sake. He was a teenager, not even eighteen. Was this decision really his to make? Life or death, they say, can only be decided by God.

Ironically, he figured, that was probably why they had made this pact in the first place. Dana had never believed in God. She’d gone through a lot of loss, a lot of heartache, a lot of unfairness. She always said that if there was a God, he was one cruel son of a bitch; if she was going to believe in a higher power, it would have to be one who was kind and benevolent.

Right now, Paul was inclined to agree with her. He’d been raised in a strict Roman Catholic household. It was church every Sunday and catechism every week. Midnight Mass on Christmas. 40 days of Lent. The whole works. Yet, despite his parent’s rigid standards and the constant drill of Jesus, he didn’t understand how life could be so miserable if God was looking out for everyone. Yes, he had to atone for his sins. But if one-third of the world was atoning for their sins, in some way, shape or form, how could there constantly be such violence and hate?

It just didn’t make sense.

So it really shouldn’t have surprised Paul when his friend, Nick, had landed in the hospital with third degree burns on over eighty percent of his body and internal bleeding. Nick’s house had caught on fire and he had been trapped inside, a fallen beam straddling him, until the fire fighters had arrived on the scene and pulled him out. By that time, Nick had fallen unconscious from the pain.

In the middle of surgery to repair the extensive damage done to his insides, before the team had even gotten to the damaged flesh, Nick had crashed. The doctors had tried for twelve minutes to get his heart started again. By the time his heart resumed its slow beats, he was brain dead.

He spent six weeks in the hospital, his brain dead, his bodily functions being controlled by machines. Paul remembered sitting beside the bed with Dana, tears streaming down his face.

“His hand’s cold,” Dana had said. She had rubbed his hand, trying to infuse warmth into it.

“He looks so lifeless,” Paul had said in return.

“That’s because he is,” Dana had replied, her ever present cynicism seeping through in her bitter words.

“He’s still alive, Dana,” Paul had reprimanded. “They said he could wake up.”

“They’re doctors, idiot. They have to say hopeful things to the family. You and I both know that Nick left us weeks ago.”

“We have to be positive for him, okay? Him and his family.”

“His family doesn’t need false hope!” Dana had exclaimed. “They need to realize that Nick wouldn’t want this!”

“How do you know?”

“I just do, okay?” Dana had exhaled loudly and her fists clenched at her sides.

Paul had gone to comfort her, but she had backed away.

“Promise me something,” she had blurted out.

“Anything,” he had answered honestly.

“If I’m ever like this, brain dead, in a coma, anything, end it for me.”

“What?” That had not been what Paul had expected to hear.

“If I end up in a hospital, machines breathing for me, kill me. Suffocate me, strangle me, I don’t care. I just don’t want to lay here for God knows how long, suffering inside.” Dana had been staring at the wires running in and out of Nick, watching as the monitors pulsed and beeped.

“I…I could never do that, Dana,” Paul had whispered.

“Yes, you can.” She had turned to face Paul. “You can, and you will. And I’ll do the same for you.”

Paul hadn’t been sure. Not about killing Dana, although that was hard enough to fathom, but if he really wanted Dana to end his own life. There was always a chance, in any situation, to defy the odds.

A machine had beeped and forced him to take a good look at his surroundings. It hadn’t been the wires that did him in. It hadn’t been Nick’s burnt body, or the pumping of the ventilator. It had been Nick’s family, standing outside the hospital room. His mother had looked beaten and broken; his father had looked like he’d aged ten years in one week. Nick’s younger sister had sat in the chair, looking utterly lost.

Paul could not imagine his family ever having to go through that.

“Deal,” he’d said, sticking his pinky out to Dana.

Dana wrapped her pinky around his and squeezed hard. The pact had been sealed.