Alex Carter: A Red Band Society Fanfiction

Being Alone

"Uh, I was with her on the roof a few minutes ago, but I would think she'd be here already," Emma explained.

"Yeah, where is she?" Leo asked.

"I can go check up on the roof," Emma offered.

"I'll go check the café," Leo said, "She could be working."

"Yeah, I'll go check The Swamp in case she goes back there," Dash finished.

"We'll be right back," Leo called to Jordi, but he'd already closed his eyes, the drugs the doctors had given him taking effect.

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"Alex," Emma called, her friend not having moved since she'd left.

"Yeah?" She answered, not looking at her.

"What are you doing up here?" Emma asked.

"Didn't we just have this conversation?" Alex said, still refusing to tear her eyes away from the view.

"No, I mean, why aren't you downstairs with Jordi right now?" She clarified. "Do you even know what happened to him?" She asked, confused.

"Yeah," Alex answered.

"Well, why aren't you downstairs?"

Alex shrugged.

Emma sighed, exasperated. "Well, come on, we have to go see him."

"Nah," Alex said.

Now Emma was really confused. "Alex, come on, he needs us. He's waking up from passing out," She stressed.  She stared at Alex's unmoving figure. She walked over to her and spun her around to face her. "What is wrong with you?!" She practically shouted. "Come on, Alex! He's alone. Completely alone, no one's there. Not his mother, now not his friends! We need to go down there and be with him. So cut this out and get downstairs."

"You don't think I know he's alone right now?" Alex questioned, her eyes darkening. "You guys can go down there and rub it in his face that he has no one except for us, but I'm not going to hurt him like that," Alex answered, and whirled around to reposition herself at the railing that ran along the roof.

Emma stood, completely confused. What was going on? She didn't understand any of what Alex had just said, but it was clear she wasn't moving from the roof.

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"She's not coming down," Emma told the others as they gathered in front of Jordi's bed.

"What?!" Leo said, surprised. "I'm going to talk to her," Leo said, angrily.

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"Alex!" He shouted across the roof.

"Oh for the love of God, WHAT?!" Alex shouted back, annoyed.

"Why are you still up here?! You can't just abandon your friend when he needs you! You kept comforting him, telling him he had to stay true to himself, not lose hope, and you're just standing up here! Was all that a bunch of words? You don't believe in him as much as anyone else. No, you're backing out when he needs you most," Leo said, watching her. 

"I believed every word of everything I told him. Don't you dare say otherwise," Alex said darkly. "And you don't know what you're saying. You don't know what it's like to be left when all you need is someone to believe in you. You don't know," Alex continued.

"Then why are you up here? Why aren't you down there?! He needs someone to believe in him, and we need to be there for him."

"Leo, Jordi has faith. He has faith to know that even though I'm not standing next to him, I still believe in him."

"It doesn't matter, he's hurting right now. He's waking up completely alone. We're all he has."

"Don't talk to me about being alone, Leo, you don't even know what alone even means. Jordi's own mother is gone. She left. Not coming back. She's not just out, she's gone."

"I didn't know--" Leo said, surprised.

"You don't. You haven't had to wake up alone. You've always had everyone you cared about there for you. Jordi's world just came crashing down around him, and sometimes, when that happens, you just need to be in pain."

Leo stood, not sure of what to do.

"You can go downstairs, but I'm staying up here because he probably wants to be alone. Every time someone walks through that door, he's going to wish it was his mother, even though he knows it won't be. Despite reality, the reality that his mother is gone, he saw her leave, he still has hope that she'll be the next person to open his door. And when it isn't her, his hope will crash. They'll crash again and again. And I'm not going to be the source of his disappointment. " 

Leo nodded, and walked away.

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Emma and Dash watched Leo walk down the hall toward them, anxious to know what happened. He approached them, sadly.

"She's not coming?" Emma asked, disappointment growing in her face.

"Nope, she's staying up there."

Dash sighed, also disappointed.

"She's leaving him alone," Leo continued, "because she cares."

"What?" Emma asked.

"She's staying away because she cares," Leo repeated.

Emma and Dash watched Leo walk away down the hall.