CHANGES [eric matthews]

The Fugitive

↳CHAPTER 1.10
The Fugitive.
✩
『 "We can get through things,
all of us, together." 』
   〉〉〉〉

TW— short references to domestic abuse!! Please take care of yourself, don't read if you can't!

SICK.

Beck felt absolutely sick to her stomach. She had been downtown when she heard about the cherry bomb in the mailbox incident. The moment she heard about it she knew who it was—Shawn. She blamed herself for it happening.

He had asked her to hang out today, but she said no. For once in her life she told Shawn she had plans with Jason instead and for that she hated herself. As soon as she heard the news she sprinted home, leaving her friend shouting her name as she went.

It was pouring outside, but she didn't care. She could barely see as she pushed past civilians, who protested angrily at her. She ignored them and sprinted until her lungs felt like they would burst.

She didn't know how long ago the incident actually happened, only hearing it from the booth behind her at Chubbie's. All she knew is she had to find Shawn, because knowing him, he would be dramatic about it.

She shakily entered her key in the door of her trailer and slammed open the door, eyes darting. Her parents looked up warily from the kitchen table, making her jaw clench. Where is Shawn?

"Becky."

She ignored her mother trying to speak to her and stormed back to Shawn's room, spinning in a circle to search every corner the moment she entered it. Her breathing became thick and her heart dropped.

He wasn't here.

"Becky," Her mother now stood in the door to the boy's room and gave the girl a sympathetic look, "he's not home."

"What do you mean?" Beck narrowed her eyes, "you know where he is, right?"

Virna nervously looked to the ground in a guilty manner.

"Right, mom?"

"..No."

Beck pushed past her mother with a stern head shake into the living room. Her father was now standing, clutching a ticket, "That boy owes money. He blew up a mailbox today."

"I know what he did, but is that really what we should be worried about right now?" She heaved, feeling anger towards her parents. An absent father and a guilty mother.

"He'll show up." Chet muttered, "Go clean up, you look like a wet dog."

"You're unbelievable! God, it's like you don't even care that your child is missing, alone, and afraid of what his parents might do if he comes home." The girl burst, ignoring the warning look that came from her teary-eyed mother.

"Is that what you think?" Chet narrowed his eyes, "that boy isn't scared of us. He's scared of the police. You better start showing some respect in this house."

Beck scoffed, feeling tears well up in her eyes, "You have no idea." She whispered so low she wasn't even sure she said it out loud. She collapsed in the kitchen and lowered her face into her hands.

She'd been in Shawn's position when she was younger. She pulled the fire alarm in the sixth grade, and in the seventh she'd clogged the sinks in the bathroom and flooded the second floor. Needless to say, she had been much more of troublemaker back then.

Her father could get angry, really angry. She remembered the screaming matches she had with him, while her mother and Shawn held on to each other in the kitchen. Chet had never hit any of them, but that day she flooded the bathroom, he raised his hand and threatened.