Alex’s POV:

I could sense that Mickey was going to snap back something to Jack that was very witty but she hadn’t thought through completely. Jack had just made a semi-joke about her working at the ice cream parlor with him and Rian; something that could be considered at an actual option. But it was typical Mickey to shoot things like that down immediately. I didn’t know why she always did it, but she refused to get any help from anybody concerning anything. I was pretty sure that if I offered to change the strings for her--cause I would, any day--she would just blow me off and try to insult me in the process.

So, rather than having her do that again, but to Jack, leading to her rejecting the offer without even thinking about it for a while, I decided to step in. And how the all mighty Alex Gaskarth decide to try and do that? Well, let me tell you. It was quite a complicated maneuver, but I dared to use it. Switching the subject.

“So, how about we actually use the remaining 30 minutes of band practice to actually practice?” I suggested, switching out Mickey’s disastrous-sounding guitar for my own again. It wasn’t that it was a bad guitar, I actually felt like it could be great to play with, but man did those strings need changing.

“I do need to hear if you guys are any good,” Mickey agreed, dropping what was said before, “since last time and only time I asked Rian he said ‘I don’t know’.”

“Way to promote our band, Rian.” I rolled my eyes in a joking manner. He was a humble guy, the only time he would boast about himself was if it was as a joke and it was way too over exaggerated.

“In my defense, I had just been threatened by some girl I didn’t even know!” Rian exclaimed, the drumsticks in his hand nearly flying across the room.

“Ooh, I’m threatening,” Mickey smirked, satisfaction spread across her face, “I like that.”

“We’ve already long established that.” I strummed my guitar once to check if the volume wasn’t too loud or too quiet through the amplifier. “Jack freaks out every single time you have that knife near you.”

Jack gasped, his tongue clicking from the sudden movement. “I do not!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mickey sneakily reaching into her backpack. I didn’t even have to ask what she was doing and she had already pulled out her black knife seemingly out of nowhere. Her rapid gesture got everybody to look in her direction out of surprise. Almost immediately after, Jack let out an ear-piercing scream. He could recognize that knife from a mile away. Mickey burst out in laughter, nearly doubling over as she clutched her stomach.

Jack quickly cleared his throat and mumbled, “huh? Totally wasn’t afraid, you see. I was totally cool. Let’s just…”

He proceeded to start playing the riff of a song off of our latest EP which we had released in the summer vacation and tried to sell to anybody that came our way. Honestly, we didn’t even care about selling that much, it was more about spreading the word. We’d do anything just for people to take it. Maybe they didn’t even listen to it, but it didn’t matter. They still had one of our CDs. Playing a few shows in the summer also helped a bit, but I still wanted to get out there more often to play more shows.

After playing two more songs, trying to get a reaction out of Mickey, I finally decided to give up. All she did was look at us play without any emotion. I thought it didn’t go all too bad, but she looked like she was either bored out of her mind or thinking about something else completely. I at least expected her to bob her head along with the beat a little. No matter how shitty a song was, the beat always got you moving a little. With how she would dance at The Depot, I would never have thought she could be so still and so emotionless while listening to music.

When she noticed that we weren’t going to play any more songs, she looked up and around. “Do you guys still want my amateur opinion?”

I wanted to get a little defensive and snort to ask what opinion she could have possibly formulated, but held back. I didn’t need to set her off and go all crazy on me. If she actually had an opinion, I wanted to hear it. Never getting to know what it was would drive me insane.

“Any feedback counts, right?” I smiled instead, nearly sickening myself with it.

“Right…” She eyed me a bit weirdly, but decided to ignore whatever she saw. “I guess it’s fine. It’s not all that amazing. I mean, for a high school band it’s pretty good. Of course, it isn’t as great as all the popular bands out there right now. But let’s be honest, they’re all in their late twenties or thirties. They have had way more experience and also had to start somewhere. They probably weren’t any better back in high school. If you guys keep going, you’ll probably eventually get there, but you still have time.”

“That the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” Rian put a hand to his chest, right where his heart was, taking the words out of my mouth.

“Don’t get used to it.” Mickey’s tone changed back to her usual ‘I will fuck you up’ tone, but with her next sentence, it faded a little again. “I just don’t think beating you guys down for no reason for something you guys like doing makes any sense.”

Before I could try to dig a little deeper with her hard shell that seemed to be cracking, Ms. Kathi appeared at the top of the stairs. I was really just expecting for her to offer some cookies or something that Rian would refuse to give us, but it wasn’t that at all.

“Hey, Mickey, your dad’s here to pick you up,” she announced instead.

“My dad?” Mickey asked, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “He wouldn’t be back until ten-thirty earliest.”

“No, not Garry, your other dad.”

“I have another dad?” She continued to question, but then realization hit her and I could physically see the blood drain from her face. She still tried to play it off, though. “Oh, yeah, right. I’m coming.”

Without saying a goodbye to us, she picked up her bag and rushed upstairs. She didn’t even glance in our direction. Usually, I would have just said it was her being her rude self, but I couldn’t do so this time. With how her face had turned pale, nearly white in contrast with her hair, something told me that she was trying to hide it. Just ignoring us all together made that so much easier.

“Huh, I don’t recall her mom telling me anything about this…” Rian remarked after the door at the top of the stairs was closed once again.

And that was the statement that got me a little more worried. I might not have known much, or practically anything about Mickey, but I knew enough that something was wrong here. She didn’t come to my house that one time drunk off her ass because she thought it was fun, she hadn’t randomly broken her phone, and that slap I saw sure as hell wasn’t some hallucination.

But I didn’t say anything. Why? Because Mickey never wanted help and we had just sort of left things on a good note. I wouldn’t risk losing that if it ended up being nothing.

“Anyway, it’s five, time for you guys to leave!” Rian clapped his hands together and stood up, practically pushing us towards the stairs.

He might have let us use his basement for band practice, but he sure as hell didn’t like us hanging here for any longer than that. By now we were all used to it. There literally wasn’t anything we could do that would let us stay much longer. He was so protective over his ‘me-time’.

So, we all slowly left, but not without Ms. Kathi asking if we were staying over for dinner and Rian telling her that we were leaving now. It happened pretty often, and every single time I was the one made to feel guilty even though I was pretty sure she knew that it was always Rian who was throwing us out. I was actually pretty surprised he was so okay with hanging out with Mickey for so long, but then again it normally didn’t happen in his house.

As I sat in my car that was parked on the road and was about to leave, my phone started ringing. I looked at the pixelated screen to see it wasn’t a number I had in my contacts lists, but I still answered nonetheless. You never knew what the person wanted. And it was good I did, because you would never have guessed what happened next.

“Ok, Alex, I need you to be waiting out in front of my house in your car in five. Be ready to drive away as quickly as possible.” The voice on the other side ordered, sounding quite out of breath.

“Wait, what? Mickey?” I frowned, nearly wanting to pull my phone away and check the number again, but also not wanting to miss a thing she said. “How did you get my number?”

“That doesn’t matter,” she urged, a loud bang sounding close to her. “Now, can you meet me in five?”

“Yeah… ready when you are,” I mumbled, not sure what I was getting myself into. Before I could ask any further questions, the dial tones were already playing.

I sighed and hung up as well before trying to get my car a little closer to her house. It was practically a failed attempt, but since she asked me to wait in front of her house, I figured it was worth a try in the five minutes I still had to wait.

It was the longest five minutes of my life.

Eventually, I saw Mickey climb out of her window just like I had seen her do before, only this time she kept her backpack hanging from her shoulder instead of throwing it out first. I got to witness why she usually didn’t slowly take it down with her. After getting on the roof just under her window, she tried to grab something else. However, her bag made her lose her gripping and fall the distance instead.

My eyes went wide and I was about the jump out to check how she was doing. No need, though. She already jumped right back up and ran towards my car. As soon as she had gotten in, I drove off like she had requested. It was completely silent except for her trying to catch her breath.

Only after I had taken three turns, did I realize I had no idea where I was going. I was just driving blindly. “So… where should I take you?”

“I don’t really care.” She shook her head, her right hand gripped around her left arm. Her eyebrows were furrowed as she looked down, her nose scrunched up slightly. She mumbled a ‘fuck’ under her breath, still not looking up to see where we were.

“Everything ok?” I asked, mainly wondering why the hell she wanted to get out of her house so quickly.

But she answered, taking the question from a completely different perspective. “I’m pretty sure I broke my wrist…”

I frowned and briefly looked at her. She looked so calm and composed, not like somebody who had just broken a bone. “You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty damn sure, Alex.” She snapped back, not removing her eyes from her arm. Her hair, which was pushed behind her ear, fell forward, creating a curtain between us.

I shut up, trying to figure out what to say while she was obviously mad at me. But then I heard it. It wasn’t very loud, but I managed to pick up on it. Just over the sound of the motor, I could hear her sniffle. She wasn’t mad at me, she was mad at herself for crying in front of me.

I decided on not bringing it up, trying to give her the satisfaction of not being caught. She didn’t need me making a comment about it even though I didn’t mean it in any way other than trying to help her. “We should probably go to the hospital and get it checked out.”

“No.” She blurted out right away. “We can’t go there.”

“Mickey, if your arm’s broken like you think it is, we can’t just leave it be and act like nothing’s going on,” I tried to reason. “Your arm can only get worse if you try to ignore it.”

I saw her shaking her head as she still didn’t change her position. “No. My mom’s there. She’ll freak out on me if she finds out.”

“Okay, well…” I didn’t know Mickey’s mom was a nurse, but it definitely made sense with all the late shifts she often had, “is it worse for her to find out right away or have her find out you were trying to hide a broken wrist from her? I’m pretty sure she’ll get even madder. And, let’s be honest here. What are the chances that she’ll be the one to check up on you? There’re probably so many other nurses that could be the one to check it out.”

“Okay,” she whispered, to my surprise not needing any convincing other than what I said.

“You know, I can only imagine how much it hurts.” I decided to take my chances on making sure she didn’t hide anymore. “Last time you were in this car, I did offer to be a shoulder you can always cry on… you don’t have to keep in confined to that chair.”

She finally looked up and right at me, seemingly caught off guard by me knowing that she was silently crying. To be honest, though, she was quite good at hiding it. Her voice didn’t even shake, but then again her sentences were quite short. I was just a little bit better at finding out what was going on.

Her heavy black makeup had smudged a little and started running down her cheeks. Usually, a sight like that made me cringe away since it meant it was another girl upset about me leaving after a one night stand, but this was different. This actually broke my heart a little. She was in actual pain.

When we got to the hospital, we were actually tended to quite quickly. I wasn’t sure exactly where to go, but I eventually opted for the emergency room. Mickey seemed quite relieved that none of the nurses walking around were her mother and she happily obliged when they had to take her to the x-ray room to get some pictures. However, after receiving the results from the doctor, some of the nurses happened to have switched places.

Instead, a nurse with a frown replacing the usual be-nice-to-the-patient smile came in. “I’m not sure whether to be concerned or angry.”

I didn't know whether I was supposed to stand up or stay seated in the chair they put next to the examination table.

Mickey flinched and started batting her eyelashes. “You know which one I would prefer.”

“I thought they were joking when they said my daughter was in here.” Mickey’s mother shot her a disapproving look and briefly looked in my direction. She seemed to mainly want to ignore me, though. “I guess I got a very unpleasant surprise. What in the world happened? I thought I made it clear that you were supposed to stay with Rian. Something--more specifically a missing phone call from the Dawson household--tells me you weren’t there when this happened.”

I watched as Mickey tried to defend herself. “I was there, but--”

“That ‘but’ is all I need to hear.”

“No, I actually have a reason!”

“You are full of excuses today, aren’t you?”

“No, I swear!” Mickey tried one last time, her attempt nearly coming out as a whine. “I was there, but then Rian’s mom comes and tells me dad’s there to pick me up. I’m confused at first, but then it turns out to be Michael. I didn’t want to risk him causing a scene, so I just left. Good thing I did, because to me he was obviously drunk, but as you know most people don’t really notice that. He takes me back home, tells me that you told him that I was staying with Rian cause nobody was home. He gets mad that I didn’t stay with him instead and freaked out on me. I locked myself in my room and escaped through my window. But I slipped… Al-- Rian’s friend brought me here…” She pointed at me.

“Right, that’s me…” I awkwardly smiled and gave a small wave. “... Rian’s friend…”

“As glad as I am that you’re ok and only broke your arm,” Mickey’s mother seemed to loosen up a bit, believing what Mickey was telling her, “did you leave him in our house?”

“No, I called 911 and said there was a burglar in my house. While that might have been a small lie, I could hardly tell them that my father was at my house. That wouldn’t do anything,” Mickey explained, using her good hand to scratch her cheek, which we had made makeup free with some tissues. “I don’t know how it ended, though.”

“You should have called me.” Mickey’s mom shook her head, but didn’t press it any further. “Anyway, I think it’s time to put a cast on this.”

She left the room to get the supplies, leaving me and Mickey in silence for a little while. I wanted to ask her why she had refused to use my name, but before the words could leave my mouth, Mickey’s mother returned with a small cart that had a bowl of water and the patches of cotton covered in plaster.

“Why do I have a feeling you just had to explain who Rian is to ‘Rian’s Friend’?” She asked us as she put the sock-like thing over Mickey’s arm.

“Oh, no, I swear I am Rian’s friend,” I answered, deciding to show there was only truth behind Mickey’s story. “Rian plays drums in my band… or I sing and play guitar in his band… or we play in a band together…”

Maybe that wasn’t the best way to explain, but the first two options I gave didn’t sound right. Luckily, Mickey’s mom looked past that. “Oh, the red guitar situation.”

“It’s quite a nice guitar.” I nodded, to also show that that hadn’t been a lame excuse Mickey gave before. “Needs some new strings, but is great other than that.”

Once again, there practically was silence as Mickey’s mom put the plaster on Mickey’s arm--luckily, it was only her wrist, so she didn’t need a full arm cast. With how quiet Mickey and her mom were being, I thought there was some tension between them. Maybe they didn’t get along all too great. But then again, it was just a feeling.

The feeling was proven wrong with what Mickey’s mom did next. “Normally, we only leave the cool color choices to the kids, but since you’re my daughter, I think I can make an exception. Unfortunately, we have just run out of black that is as dark as your soul, so we’re going to have to choose something else. Definitely not hot pink, and this purple will also clash with your hair... Ooh, look a nice red.” She took it out of the drawer and brought it up to Mickey’s hair before scrunching up her nose a little. “Ok, no, these reds differ. That’s not going to work. It will be like when you complain about your black clothes not being the same color black. I guess this blue will have to work.” She pulled out a darkish gray-blue and started putting it over the cast after she had gotten Mickey’s approval.

Somehow I felt like I had managed to get closer to Mickey without having to do anything myself. Maybe I was going about the friendship all wrong. I wasn’t supposed to force it.

Notes

Super long chapter written very poorly. I feel like I have used the same words and phrases over and over again but my brain shut off. I need to start reading more again to improve my writing skills.