Hello, everyone. See? I promised to try and be more timely. It's only been a.. whole week... ;o) I'm sorry, guys. Now, for the bad, bitter news. There is only one chapter left of this story, and then a epilogue. Lucky number 13 seems to call out to me. As I told my friend Cele.. I'm a short story writer. I can write one characecter forever, but I can only do it in short story arcs. I hope that you all have enjoyed "RPL"'s run, and I promise that in the near future, I'll have something else out for you'all. You've been great readers.
Standard disclaimer applies: I know nothing. Don't read if you can't vote, and don't read if you think that only oppisite sex couples should exist.
Remembering Petticoat Lane
Chapter 12: "I'll make it to the moon if I have to crawl."
The confession had been easier than Lance had thought it would be. Dr. Johnson really -was- a nice lady, and somewhere inside he had always known that. She had listened to him quietly, without judgment, and had let him get out everything he had to on the incident. The lack of a reaction from her should have been unsettling, but it made him realize that it was okay. She wasn't going to flip out over this. Unlike Josh, and unlike his mother, she wasn't going to throw a fit about it, she simply accepted it as another thing to cover and help with in therapy. She had asked him a couple of questions about the abuse itself, but nothing that he didn't feel comfortable with answering. She only had one question that really made him stop and think.
"How do you feel now that you've told me?"
There was a seconds worth of pause, but then, Lance got a small smile on his face. "I actually feel better. It feels.. like it's okay to talk about it with you. Everybody else flipped out on me. Everybody else made such a big deal about it that it felt -wrong-."
"Did you feel like you were causing them trouble, or was it just painful for you to deal with their reactions instead of focusing on yourself?"
"A little of both, I guess. I don't like to see my friends hurt, but at the same time, I got so angry at them. -I'm- the one he did this to, -I'm- the one he hurt, who are they to tell me what I need? I guess I feel a little silly about it all now. 'Turns out I did need this."
Kathleen smiled at him, and warmly reached out to shake his hand. "You've come a long way today, Lance. You should be proud of yourself. If you keep on this track, you should be well on your way to healing."
There was really no way that Lance could think of to respond to that, so he just smiled again. It was a broad, bright smile, and he shook her hand confidently before he stood out of his chair and made for the door. "Which one of the guys do you wanna see first?"
"Umm.. Send in Justin."
"Okay. Thank you."
"Thank yourself, Lance, -you- did all the work."
Lance made the walk down the hall to the waiting room with more life then he had ever had before. He felt like he had accomplished something for the first time since he had been here. When he walked into the small, almost cozy room, he noticed that the guys were listening very intently to a radio broadcast, it sounded like breaking news, but it ended just as Lance had walked in. "Hey, guys. What'd I miss?"
"Ybor City's burning, man."
Lance's mouth kind of dropped open at that. Ybor City was the historic Cuban section of Tampa, it was where all the cigar factories had been during the turn of the century. It now was home to quirky shops, restaurants, and to a growing club scene that the guys had frequented more then once when they wanted a change from Orlando. No wonder Joey had looked so worried. One spark and all the alcohol in the place would probably go up in a flash. "Ybor is burning?!? The Square?"
"No, not yet. So far it's just the new construction and the post office, but they're having trouble putting it out."
Well, that was no surprise. Fires were raging in Florida. The drought had dried out the brush to the point that even half-lit cigarette butts were a serious danger to the countryside. It was so bad, in fact, that the biting smell of smoke had hung around outside all morning. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that the smell was the brush fires, the smoke had a different scent to it than grill scent, or even the smell of an actual house burning. To add to the growing chaos outside, most of Florida had been put on strict water usage restrictions. In most places, you could only water the outside once a week, there was no washing cars in the driveway, and if your water usage went up for any reason, you could be fined some hefty fines. Fires were raging everywhere these days, inside and outside of the group. It was an ironic truth.
"Wow. Um, well, Justin, she wanted to see you first."
Justin nodded, and got up, putting on his sunglasses. So much growing up in the spotlight had almost made the therapy experience as harrowing for Justin as it was for Lance. He was so used to people trying to invade his privacy that the natural barriers he had erected against it manifested themselves even in situations where he -should- let them down. Kathleen was working on that, too. "You told 'er, right, Scoop?"
Lance nodded, and got a small, proud smile on his face. "Yeah, Justin I told her."
Across the room, JC's face broke into a big grin.
"How did you feel when Lance told you, Justin?"
Justin squirmed in the chair. He had taken the glasses off, out of respect and deference to Kathleen, but he was still uncomfortable. "I was angry, first."
"Why were you angry?"
Justin's eyebrows furrowed, as if this idea should be obvious to everyone. "He hurt Lance. He hurt one of my best friends, my -brother-. Was I supposed to be happy about that?"
"You don't necessarily have to be happy about it, Justin, but there are other emotions that you could have felt. Like.. sympathy, worry. You in particular use your anger as a cover for other things. Anger is a mask for your other emotions, the ones you don't feel you should manifest. What were you really feeling?"
Justin's first response was to glare at Kathleen, but she showed no sign of interest, merely paused to write something else down on her notepad. For some reason, that action triggered Justin's outburst. "I was scared, okay?!?"
"What were you scared of?"
More squirming. This was obviously an uncomfortable topic for Justin, one that needed addressing. "When.. I... Well, when the group first formed, I was even younger than Lance was, and I guess I didn't notice then, but.. Lou kind of said some things, made some actions that made me uncomfortable even back then. I mean, what if my mom hadn't been around as much as she was, would I be Lance? And I feel so... god, so dirty and selfish for asking that, 'cause I love Lance like a brother, but it could have been me and I'm glad it wasn't."
"It's okay to have mixed feelings about a topic like this, Justin. Lou could have picked any one of you, it's okay to feel creeped out by that."
There was a slow, superstar smile then. "Is 'creeped out' a technical term, Doc?"
Joey sat, relaxed in the chair across from Kathleen. He had seemed at ease with all the questions so far, but she had yet to hit the big guns yet. "So, when you heard, your first reaction was to comfort Lance. Why?"
Slight movement in the chair, not uneasy, but fidgeting. "Lance is my bandmate, I care about him. Towards all of them."
"But why choose comfort? There are a million reactions to choose from in this scenario. Justin chose anger, you chose comfort. Why?"
"I.. I owed him." Joey was fidgeting now, rubbing his knuckles against each other.
"You owed Lance?"
"Yeah." Kathleen waited patiently for him to elaborate on that. "I.. They're my brothers. I'm almost the oldest, and I'm the one that every one of them looks to for warmth. I protect them from sort of.. the harsher sides of thing. I like to think of myself as a buffer for them. Lance and Justin especially. They're so young..."
"And you were unable to protect Lance from Lou Perlman, and one of the harshest realties of life."
Small, pained smile. "Yeah. I failed him, and I owed him"
"You know, it isn't your job to protect them, Joey. You can't protect them from everything."
"I know, but I like trying."
"I hear that when you first heard, you reacted in shock."
"I did react with shock, I didn't know what to say, I was thinking." Chris sat leaning forward in the chair, his hands clasped together and resting on his knees. "I kept thinking, 'Oh my God. I don't believe this.' and then I did believe it."
"You kept trying to convince Lance that it wasn't his fault. Why is that?"
Chris smiled the smile of a psych student who -knows- that they were diagnosing themselves, but also knows they're probably right. "Because I was thinking at the same time that it was -my- fault."
"Your fault? Why on earth did you think that? You aren't Lou, or Lance in this case..."
"I was the beginning of the band. It started with me, and Lou. Lou with the money, me with the voice. I pulled all of them into this, and then at the beginning I didn't even -like- Lance. I exposed him to a.. a slimebag, and then I went right around and ignored him half the time, too. He sacrificed so much for 'the group', he worked so hard. That's what eventually made me change my mind about him, his effort. I didn't.. see this whole thing though, and I should have noticed the signs. I just.. 20-20 hindsight, I guess."
"20-20 hindsight indeed." Then, Dr. Johnson gave Chris a small smile. "You know this wasn't your fault, right, Will?"
Chris grinned at her. "Who says that pop culture's never good for anything, eh?"
JC was the last to sit down with her, and he looked so happy that she just -had- to question him about it. "He told you. That's what's made me happy. I.. don't know what Lance's told you about our relationship."
"Just that you're involved in a romance?"
"Yeah, and he told you." Same, bright smile. "We had a fight last night. After we made up, I told him that my conditions were that he start relying on me when he feels self-destructive, and that he tell you, talk to you. He's done them both."
"That would certainly explain why both of you have seemed so energetic today, despite the fact that neither of you looks like you slept well. You do realize that there's still a long road to walk with him, right?"
"Of course I realize that, but I think we're finally pointed in the right direction."