S3, E5 | As The Truth Spills Out

> Tuesday, 23rd November 2038 <

With his eyes open and stoic, Andrew’s lips press against the knuckles on his hands, palms pressed together and elbows spaced apart from each other, resting on the kitchen’s island. Without uttering a word, the man’s face keeps itself steady and unwavering, the muscles within it eased and unexpressive. Distant and having become partially uncertain of what’s being said around him, the father of two’s mind feels empty and weightless, as if not bothered by a thought, nor concern.

Though the air outside is cold at the touch of the Missouri winter, the temperature of the room can only feel even colder to the skin of the family’s patriarch, whose distant eyes hold firm upon the young woman that sits across the table from him. His own not leaving the eyes of his daughter, Andrew stares without much in the way of an expression before he’s pulled back into the conversation, brought free from the chilling seclusion he’d built himself into at the touch of his wife’s warm hand.

“Andrew?” Elaine whispers, looking at the countertop as her husband’s face turns toward her own, snapping back into reality before quickly attempting to clear his throat. “Why, um...” the man begins to ask, falling short of getting the question off before looking down once more, hands forcing themselves apart to rub at the sides of his head, “...why keep this as a secret from us?”

With hands that desperately wish to shake despite her refusal to let them, Liv parts her lips slightly whilst looking at her father, his eyes squinting as he leans forward, arms pressed against the table to support himself. “I- I didn’t, uh-” the teenager stammers, equally as hard-pressed to get her words off without the fear of anxiety-induced interruptions.

Unlike her father, Liv’s attempt at responding is interrupted by intentional silence, her unsuredness over what to reply with proving too great to come up with an answer on the spot. “What, did you want us to make you feel special or something? What was-?” Andrew questions, looking around the room as he speaks, struggling to find sense in the young woman’s reasoning, “was it that you- was- just why? Why keep this from us?”

“I don’t know!” Liv quickly blurts out, finding herself on the verge of tears at the struggle that her father finds in presenting solutions, offering her one response after another- all refused. “You guys had just had the baby, and you wanted to expand the plant shop, and everything was just so confusing with the court dates and the lawsuits, and it all just-!” she hurriedly persists, eventually surrendering to her lack of a valid retort by placing her head in her hands, “-it was all too much!”

Hurrying out of her chair and toward her step daughter’s side of the table, Elaine rests her hand on the girl’s shoulder and leans close to her, pulling her in for a reassuring hug whilst her husband processes the information across the table. “Honey, I’m not- fuck!- I’m not mad at you or stuff like that, I’m just trying to understand why!” Andrew remarks, trying to dissuade his daughter from thinking otherwise, “this is fantastic, don’t get me wrong- I just don’t know how to make sense of it!”

“Neither do I!” Liv exclaims back, running her hand over her tied-back hair whilst failing to hold back her tears, “I just didn’t want to spring such a change on you guys once Galen was born, and then everything started changing, and I needed you to keep getting the pills, and I just didn’t know how to cope!”

Confused at the emotional welling of her step daughter, Elaine tries to offer comfort through her embrace, though her eyes take back toward her husband with the shake of her head. “What do you mean everything changed? What’s with the pills? I don’t understand what that means, honey” Andrew continues, leaving his chair and slowly approaching the side of the young woman that his wife doesn’t already occupy, “I’m over the moon, but I’m just trying to make this make sense!”

Hyperventilating, Liv gently pulls a few inches away from Elaine and tries to clear her thoughts, closing off the world from her line of sight for a moment as she presses her palms against her eyes. Resting his hand against the countertop for support, Andrew pauses for a moment to allow his daughter a chance to process her thoughts, looking toward his equally-confused wife for clarity that she can’t offer anymore than he can.

“The pills make time go a little slower. They- they help me figure it all out, before anything bad happens” Liv stammers, rubbing at the tears that surround her eyes, desperately wishing to fall down her soft, youthful skin. “I get mad sometimes and they help me take a second to breathe and keep the bad ideas in my head” she furthers, drawing the slight amount of concern that her parents take further outward the longer she speaks, “I don’t want to risk doing bad things again.”

“Bad th- what bad things?” Andrew inquires, resting his hand on his daughter’s shoulder whilst watching her stare off into the distance, struggling to find the words to respond with as the gravity of her confession settles its weight upon her. “What bad things?” the man asks again, doubling down on the inquiry before leaning into his offspring, using his free hand to guide her face toward his own, “what bad things are you talking about, Liv? What’s wrong here?”

Stricken with pains in her stomach worse than the ones felt when starved, Liv leans back in her seat and tries to regain her composure, staring into her father’s eyes with a guilt-ridden face. “I attacked one of my classmates” the girl replies, sinking her top row of teeth into the soft bit of her bottom lip, “I followed her into the bathroom, I hit her and I left when she fell on the ground.”

Pulling his head back, Andrew shakes his face from one side to the other briefly, letting the admission sit with him for a moment before squinting. “Why?” he asks in a breath-like tone, failing to understand the motivations that would drive his child to do such a thing. “Because she’s a bully! She picks on me all the time!” Liv proclaims, offering the best reason she can provide, “it was that one week where you had a problem getting me my meds! I just didn’t-”

Pausing again, the secret-spilling young woman presses her hand against her head and centres her mind once more, trying to regain her composure. “When I went without the meds, everything felt like it was moving quicker. The pills helped slow things down and gave me another second or two to just think” she confesses, fingers tightening into fists to relieve the tension.

“Why would you need things to slow down?” Andrew retorts, kneeling to the ground after the third time his daughter’s face distances itself toward the corner of the room, “why not tell us this sooner?”

“Because the other med the doctors wanted you to try didn’t give me that extra second!” Liv hurriedly quips, defending her stance before falling silent at the sight of her father’s palm, his presentation of it signalling for the young girl to pause. “Listen, listen... I’m just going to forget the bit about you attacking that girl for a second, alright?” Andrew questions aloud, trying to redirect the conversation to his original question, only to be met with his daughter’s reluctance.

“No, that attack is why I need the meds. When I get angry, the meds give me a second to stop and not do the thing I want to do” Liv quickly interjects, refusing her father his intended recourse, “I worried that- if I told you- you’d think I was just-” Again falling short of finishing her sentence, the teenager closes her eyes and leans her head against the back of her chair, the pause greatly intriguing Andrew, whose become too invested in hearing her reasoning to leave it unattended.

“I worried you’d think I was just like S-” Liv responds, her hush-like voice thwarted from capping off its point by the refusal her father shows her. “Don’t say her name” Andrew interrupts, squeezing his eyelids shut and bowing his head as he winces, presenting an excruciating visage as if the pain were physical.

Staring at her father, the tear-wearing daughter goes quiet for a moment as she looks into the man’s face, struggling to read anything more than the disdain she knows he already has for her older sister. “Am I?” she asks, watching the man look back up at her amidst the change in pace their conversation had taken, her stepmother standing by and watching the discourse continue, “am I her?”

With widened eyes and a horror-afflicted face, Andrew quickly thinks to shake his head in refusal, rummaging through his brain in an effort of finding matching words to utter. “Never in a million years will I ever let you end up like that girl” the man refuses, vehement in his declaration as he takes his daughter by the hands, coupling them within his own, “that will never, never be you.”

= Generation Alpha is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 from the start of Season 1 onwards =

> Monday, 29th November 2038 <

Though her bruise is clearly beginning to fade as her face heals from the assault she’d sustained, the rapscallion ways that had partially been responsible for Derby’s earning of the battlescars prove to remain intact. “Liv!” the student calls out, wearing an all black sweatshirt with a pop punk band’s wordmark written across the front of it in gold lettering, hurrying around the corner with glee at the first sight of her friend.

“Do you have the homework from last night!?” the girl calls out as she races down the hallway, closing the distance between herself and her friend. Without uttering a word, Liv pulls away from her locker and hands her teenage acquaintance a blue-coloured folder, its glossy exterior immediately meeting the fingertips of the student whose effort is purposefully poor.

Nodding to herself, Derby lowers herself to the ground and opens the small notebook that she’d hurried from her own locker with, quickly taking the tip of her pencil toward the white pages. “You didn’t do your homework?” Liv asks, her tone slightly automated in an effort of keeping up her ruse, a question that’s immediately laughed at by the girl that stations herself on the floor beside her.

“I’ll get arrested in four years for getting drunk in a public park and pissing on a cop car, what makes you think I’d do my homework?” Derby jokes, continuing to jot down the answers that her friend had taken the time to figure out, purposefully getting a handful of them wrong along the way. “Why won’t you go to college?” Liv questions aloud, the inquiry one that her pal takes as much humour in as the one that it had followed.

“Who says I wouldn’t go to college? Hell, that’d probably be why I got drunk and pissed on a cop car” Derby responds, moving her graphite tip across the paper with great speed, “besides, I’d flunk out after my first semester. Maybe my second semester tops.” Displeased with that conclusion, Liv finds no real alternative proposition to offer, instead allowing herself to fall silent and patiently wait for the student to finish her obvious thievery of work.

“The questions of the day are on the board- you can get started on them after you pass in your homework” the masculine teacher speaks aloud as he departs from the front of the room, making back for his desk. Stepping out of her chair, Liv carries her paper in both hands before taking a momentary glance at the girl that sits beside her, noticing that- whilst she’d copied down her homework almost five minutes ago- her friend refuses to leave her desk.

“Aren’t you going to hand in your homework?” Liv whispers, catching the girl’s attention away from the assortment of school materials that she stacks atop her still-closed notebook. With a raised eyebrow, Derby considers her friend’s question for a moment before shrugging, a brief shake of her head and outward-extended bottom lip dismissing the proposition as unimportant to her in the moment.

Reading the visual language shared, Liv turns away from her pal and approaches the front of the room, skating past a handful of students that travel in the opposite direction in an effort of returning to her desk on her way toward the front of the aisle. Keeping her eyes toward the ground, the instruction-following student holds the loose sheet of paper close to her chest before being forced to brace, shielding herself as she topples over and into the ground.

“Oh, shit!” three or four students exclaim, raising their obscenities whilst the other students keep to themselves, having seen the special needs student descend toward the ground from their various sides of the room. “Oh, shoot! I’m so sorry!” a familiar and eye-roll inducing voice blurts out, immediately firing out of her chair and rushing to the assistance of the girl that her foot had sent flying into the tiled floor, “are you alright!?”

Gritting her teeth and concealing her face as best as she can, Liv soon presses her lips together and bows her head, lifting her right arm from the ground as a tingling pain shoots from her elbow and toward her wrist. “Are you alright, Olivia?” Mr. Calhoun asks, immediately stepping out of his seat to watch the girl responsible for the event kneel toward the ground in the name of offering assistance.

“She’s fine! Probably just a little bruised!’ Coleen hurriedly exclaims, reaching her hand out for the fallen student to take for support with a less-than-apologetic expression worn. “I was sliding into my desk quicker than usual and my foot went further out than I was hoping for!” the blonde bully continues, offering a reasonable explanation whilst her outstretched palm remains unmet by either set of five fingers that her target wields, “it was an honest mistake.”

Letting out a deep breath, Liv refuses the help of her adversary and pushes herself off the ground instead, reclaiming her loose sheet of paper and turning away. Extending her hand toward the maths teacher’s desk, the assaulted student drops off her assignment and turns away, taking a brief look toward the man whose class her fall had interrupted on the way.

Though Liv had been the one affected by the unassuming altercation, Mr. Calhoun’s eyes settle upon the girl who stands at the front of her desk, a slight judgement carried behind her visage. Somewhat surprised by the focus that she receives in spite of her attempted admission of fault, Coleen’s personable visage falls into a slightly-noticeable face of bewilderment, genuinely shocked that the teacher doesn’t seem to think highly of her apologetic facade.

Returning to her desk, Liv turns toward her seat and carries a similar glance in the direction of her academically-inferior acquaintance before returning to the comfort of her seat. Keeping her thoughts held internally, Derby stares daggers toward Coleen’s end of the rows of desks, the palms of her hands pressing into the surface of her own hardwood tabletop with enough force to define the tendons that stretch along the back of her hands.

Gestured to leave the classroom at the sound of the school bell, the students disperse through the pair of doors at either end of the classroom, spilling out into the hallway to continue about their day. Pressing her belongings closely into her chest, Liv begins following the jacket-wearing student that occupies the seat ahead of her until she makes it to the front of the room, her inner elbow taken into the possession of her friend.

“No, no, no... We’re going through the other door” Derby remarks, a slight hint of malicious intent carried through the tone of her voice as she walks alongside her special needs acquaintance, guiding her in the opposite direction that she’d originally ventured. Through the door that the underperforming student had set her sights upon, the pair of friends- though at the behest of the one whose arm holds the other closeby- make their way around a few sets of corridors with a destination in mind.

“Coleen!” Derby calls out, catching the merest glimpse of the young woman’s blonde strands of hair between the heads of her two close friends, the sight proving more than enough for her to belt out the girl’s name. Stopping in the middle of the hallway, the trio of students spin around and attend to the calling out of their presence, watching with varied smirks as the pair of foes draw closer.

“If you’re thinking about trying your hand at shoving me back now that there’s not a teacher around to send you off, I’d take a look in the mirror at the bruise we left you” Coleen remarks, speaking on behalf of her group with a grin, “at least what we left you last time is starting to heal.”

“You think that’s gonna stop me?” Derby questions, letting go of Liv’s arm as she gets closer to the blonde bully’s face, the subject of her aggravations remaining closely at the sides of her reinforcement-offering friends. “If you had any brains, it would” Coleen responds, not backing down from the confrontational front that her adversary presents to her.

“I’m not afraid of a couple bruises, Barbie. I’ll take fifty punches from your dumb little soldiers over here just to break one of your teeth” Derby retorts, standing her ground whilst maintaining the close proximity between herself and her disliked fellow student, “I’ve already told you once and now I’ll say it again- if you’ve got a problem with Liv, you’ve got a problem with me.”

“Oh, I’ve got a problem with Liv alright” Coleen replies, her teeth presenting themselves through her parted, glossy lips, “as a matter of fact, Liv knows I have a problem with her.” Having refocused her sights upon the special needs student, the bully’s line of sight is reclaimed by the unrelenting student that stands before her, having not moved an inch since getting in the teenager’s face.

“Then I guarantee that the warehouse won’t be the only time you put your hands on me” Derby retaliates, inching closer to her adversary’s face in spite of the combined efforts of Leila and Elva to shove the rebellious teenager away, “I hope the next time we fight, you go into it thinking I’m as easy of a fight as what you got then.”

“Considering how stupid you are, I think you’re a lot easier to fight than you think you are” Coleen rebukes, a conclusion that only sparks a smile on her confrontational foe’s visage. “You better leave Liv alone, got it?” Derby dares, shoving Elva’s hand away as she steps back, allowing for the distance that the blonde girl’s pals set to re-establish.

“Don’t worry- I don’t think she’ll be bothering me any time soon...” Coleen responds, stepping back with her henchwomen following suit, eyes taking toward the direction of her reluctant and purposefully self-guarded teenager as she does so, “...will you, Liv?”

Unsure of what to make of the question, Liv stands by with a curious glint in her eyes as the threesome of girls turn away and resume their stroll toward their initial destination. Remaining quiet, the subject of the now-concluded conversation keeps to herself as Derby ventures back toward her, dismissing the inquiry that had been raised by their shared-adversary in the name of keeping to her friend’s side.

|

“Two prescriptions this time, sir?” a man in a long, white coat wonders aloud, approaching the blue countertop with a set of paper bags in hand, lengthy plastic-coated sheets of paper stapled onto both of them. “Yes, two prescriptions” Andrew responds, watching the pharmacist tap his fingers along a nearby screen before reaching for a small, soft-topped device that’s plugged into it.

Leaning forward, the father presses his right index finger against the handheld device and keeps it steady for a few seconds, waiting for the cheerful ring on the pharmacist's machine to inevitably reach for his ears. “Alright, Mr. Carrion... you are all set!” the man politely quips, passing the man a half-smile alongside the set of bags that now reach the family man’s possession, carried through the doors of the supermarket the medical bay is built into and out to his vehicle.

With the closing of his door, Andrew quarters himself off from the public, and by extension- the noise of traffic that lines the street just beyond the asphalt-paved curb that separates the parking lot from the main road. Drowning out the world beyond his vehicle’s shell, the father of two holds the bags against his chest and stares forward with a blank expression, eying a local restaurant, a line of trees and a few cars parked various spaces apart from one another- all unimportant.

Sitting with himself and the quietude that surrounds him for a few seconds, the father eventually sets the pair of prescriptions on the passenger’s seat beside him, starting his car and driving off at more peace of mind than he was prior to entering. After roughly ten minutes, Andrew powers the engine down and leaves his vehicle parked in the alley behind his storefront, departing the vehicle empty-handed before entering the building.

“My apologies for leaving you waiting- your appointment just completely slipped my mind” the man apologises, opening the front door to allow a pair of contracted men into his shop. “Well a few minutes never hurt anyone I suppose” the first man replies, his face bearing the stubble of a five o’clock shadow, his heavy set colleague’s clean-shaven face following him inward.

“And you want the terrace built here?” the larger fellow replies, standing a few feet further out from his partner and the man presenting him with the open space. “Yeah, I laid stones at either end. That’s how long I want it to be” Andrew replies, pointing in the direction of the side lot’s either side, “and I want it to stretch from the side door to the chain link fence.”

“And you want us to lay that terrace down?” the semi-bearded coworker responds, finding the task to be one that doesn’t fully make sense to him. “Yeah. That won’t be a problem, will it?” Andrew responds, immediately watching the contractor shake his head in refusal.

“No, it’s just that you said you dug up the whole area and got it flatted for us to lay the concrete down on” the bearded worker replies, turning half of his body toward the store owner’s direction, “I just would’ve figured you’d be the kind to finish the job on your own. Laying concrete isn’t exactly rocket science, that’s all.”

With a chuckle, Andrew crosses his arms and shrugs whilst looking back to the evened-out side lot, its dirt surface smoothened and cleared of any obstruction. “I just figured this way would be much easier” the father of two replies, assured in his stance. “Well, alright then” the bearded labourer replies, passing a glance toward his colleague for insistence, “we can get a crew out here on Friday to have the concrete poured. It shouldn’t take more than half a day or so.”

“Sounds perfect” Andrew replies, releasing his arms from each other’s company before extending his dominant hand, shaking that of the labourer he’s put to work.

|

“I hate when it gets dark out early” Derby murmurs, leaning closer toward her windshield whilst glancing out at the sky above, watching it begin to darken as the day winds to a close. “The sun goes down earlier in the winter” Liv replies, automated in her reply as if reciting lines she’d memorised long ago, “it starts to stay in the sky longer when the summer comes aro-”

“Yeah, Liv- I... I know about the winter solstice” Derby replies, passing the girl a half-hearted smile and nod before allowing her to finish, letting free a chuckle as she looks to her passenger seat-occupying friend, “I’m not a complete dumbass.”

Looking back to her undeniably loyal acquaintance, Liv pauses for a moment before staring away, eyes locking onto the empty parking spaces in front of the one he friend’s vehicle takes up. “I know you’re not a dumbass” the special needs girl replies, her reassuring remark accepted half-willingly by the driver, who takes her eyes to the dashboard and stares blankly.

“You’re someone that’s smart and chooses to make people think she’s dumb” Liv continues, speaking in the same insistent patterns of speech that her former condition had forced her words to abide by, “you’re not dumb. I don’t know why you want people to think you are and I know you’re not.”

Having regained the line of sight that her increasingly less-bruised friend wields, Liv looks into the girl’s eyes and puts on a more friendly smile. “I know you’re not dumb” the innocent-appearing teenager reassures, nodding toward the driver before turning away and setting her hand upon the door’s handle. “Goodnight” the special needs teenager concludes, trying to depart on that note whilst the opportunity affords itself.

Lifting the corners of her mouth upward as best as she can, Derby- visibly pleased to be afforded the kind remarks that her friend pays her- nods before thinking better of leaving off on such a silent note. “Hey, Liv?” the driver inquires, her left hand resting on the inward slope that her door’s interior provides like an arm rest, watching her acquaintance turn back once she’d already stepping out of the car.

“What did Coleen mean when she said you wouldn’t bother her again?” Derby inquires, the question being one that’s sat on her mind since earlier in the day, though the opportunity to search for clarity on the topic hadn’t shown itself until now, “did something happen between you two that I don’t know about?”

Looking toward her newly-freed seat for a moment, Liv considers the question and leans her head toward one side, finding satisfaction in the answer she can afford. “She followed me into the bathroom two weeks ago and pushed me” the exiting passenger replies, immediately spotting a well-concealed look of displeasure in the driver’s face, “so I got up and punched her in the mouth.”

The dissatisfaction instantly passing by in favour of a widened-eye look of surprise, Derby’s bottom lip falls away from her upper one for a moment, her shock failing to prevent her from also feeling a sense of pride in her friend’s confession. “Really?” the troublemaker inquires, sitting slightly further upright than when she’d initially put the car in park.

“It was after I found out that they attacked you that night you wanted my help. She deserved it” Liv responds, nodding to her pal before attempting to leave once more, only to be called back for by the driver’s voice. “Weren’t you worried that you’d get in trouble?” Derby questions back, watching her friend’s face dip back into the vehicle at her inquiry’s behest.

“That wouldn’t make sense, would it?” Liv replies, doing the calculations in her head before begging the question that not even she, herself, would be capable of answering with anything other than reassurance, “who’d believe that a retard like me would set her straight?” The brazen, self-awareness not only brings awe upon Derby, but impresses her outright, the homebound teenager closes the vehicle’s door and finally makes for her front door, leaving her acquaintance speechless.

“Way to go, Liv” Derby mutters beneath her breath after a few seconds, bobbing her head up and down with a smile before taking her car to the open road once more, travelling the way in which she’d entered the street on her way toward home. As Liv dips through her front door and vanishes into the Carrion household’s interior, the opportunity presents itself for the street to fill with a pair of headlights, the vibrant shade of pale white cascading itself along the residential street.

Pulling out from the opposite side of the street as the car that leaves the string of houses behind, the vehicle’s patient driver takes after Derby’s taillights, following them around the nearest corner and onward, setting out to follow the rebellious teenager toward wherever her intended destination may be.

== Generation Alpha ==