fic: B is for Bethany

[Millijana]

1.
Bethany cries. She does not often cry, and not even loud, but it is never unnoticed. Everyone takes care for her. No one can look behind her mask of cuteness, or makes any effort to do so.
Except for Jo, she knows her sister best.
Bethany has the ability to wrap people around her finger with just a glimpse of her big eyes or a smile. Jo can’t do that, she’s too wild and too loud. People like her a lot, though not for her cuteness, but for her being mouthy and her open behaviour. But people often get enough of her. They never get enough of Bethany.
Jo is only sometimes jealous, when it’s unfair. When Mom and Dad behave not right. Caver says he hates Beth for that. He’s not loud but not really cute either. And he doesn't want to be cute.
Jo doesn’t understand why he is angry with Beth all the time. But who does understand boys. Jo hopes that he will be more like dad when he is grown up. But she isn’t sure he ever will be grown up. He’ll possibly say something stupid and something terrible will happen to him before Junior High.
Jo is eight and her siblings are four.


2.
She likes the girls. Yet she isn’t very fond of the idea to have them around the whole weekend. It wouldn’t be a good idea to invite Brian over with those giggling and whispering girls in the house.
She frowns when she hears another spike of laughter from the living room.
They are sitting there watching Disney movies, drinkin’ Coke, stayin’ up late and Jo is supposed to take care.
All three of them on the sofa, Beth in the middle. Her face shines even more than usual. Like someone who has the best time of her life. It’s just an evening with friends, what's so special about it?
The egg timer rings and she opens the oven door. While salting the oven fries, she thinks about her own friends and the differences between her and Bethany.
Well, maybe Beth treats them more like it is an honor to have them as friends. She gives them little presents, writes them nice letters with little hearts on the margin.
They give each other nicknames that have nothing to do with their real names. In their letters Beth is for example Lilly. Like some kind of code name.
Jo thinks it’s cool but she has no friends to do such things with - never had. They are too cool for these childish attitudes. Oh, she has notebooks for letters with her friends too, but it’s mostly about boys, and their parents, who don’t let them behave as grown up as they are. So... more serious problems.
But to be honest, she doesn’t know what Beth and her friends are writing about, she respects the secrets of her baby sister - she’s not Carver, who read those things more than just once. And he got a slap for every time Jo caught him reading it.
“Stop it, or I will tell everyone you peed your bed till a year ago.”
“But that’s not true!”
“I don’t care. But I know that they will believe me, even if they know it’s not actually true.” She grinned at him evilly, but got more friendly again in the next moment. “You wouldn’t want her to read your diary either.” He wanted to say something, but Jo kept talking: “Don’t deny it, I know you have one. And no, I never read it. I respect your private space as well as hers. Now get the fuck out of her room!”
Beth never knew that Jo defended her privacy. These letters and her diary were the only things Beth truly had for her own, since everyone tends to step into her room whenever she has closed the door, for whatever she’s doing there alone in silence. Probably reading some book.

“Girls! Supper!”, she yells before entering the living room with the bowl of fries and three plates in her hand.
She puts it all on the coffee table in front of the sofa and smiles at them.
“But where is the fourth plate? Aren’t you going to eat with us?” Beth seems to wonder about that.
Jo smiles at her sister. “No, I think you can handle yourself pretty well alone here. I’ll be upstairs if you need anything. It’s your evening, not mine.”
Beth’s eyes got even a bit brighter. “Thank you”
Jo is sixteen and Beth is twelve.

3.
The phone rings and her mother gets all serious. “Yes, I am. What...? Oh my God. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Jo hears her from the sofa and sees her hurrying through the living room without looking at her daughter. “Where are you going? What’s happened?”
“I’m picking up your sister. I’ll be back soon, I hope.” Then she’s out of the room.
Jo looks at the closed door for some moments, then shrugs and returns to her TV show. She’d find out when they return.
It is two hours later when they finally do. It’s all four of them. Jo stands on the upper landing and watches them silently.
She’s never seen Beth like this. Her head hanging, tears in her eyes. But her jaws tight and her mouth twitched in her stubborn manner. Her slender hands clenched to fists that shake from time to time the tiniest bit. Barely seeable, but Jo is sure it’s there.
“What have you been thinking?” Leandra asks her daughter, disappointment in her voice. Jo knows this too well. Her own school skipping had urged this a lot. Leandra never was loud, but had a bunch of emotions in her voice that hit you harder than any harsh spoken word could have. Disappointment was one of the worst.
Beth doesn’t answer, doesn’t even look at her mother but keeps staring at an imaginary point and tightens her jaws and fists a bit more.
“Let her go, she’s learned her lesson”, Jo hears herself speak.
“Josephine, go back to your room”, her father warns her throwing a serious glance at her.
“No I won’t. Carver’s here, too.”
“But he will leave now. Both of you, go to your rooms.”
Carver makes his way to the stairs muttering that this one time she broke the rules and got into trouble with their parents he can’t stay and watch it, but if he does anything wrong they are all around.
Jo ignores him and lets him pass.
“Jo, please.” Dad gets more serious.
“No, I want to know what happened.”
Leandra answers her, her voice still heavy: “She stole a lipstick at the mall. The particular lipstick she had asked for and got the money from me for.”
She sees how her sister shrinks even more, how her shoulders sink lower and her eyes get watery. Jo narrows her eyes in anger and looks at her parents. “Look at her. There is no punishment you can give her worse than this. She will tell you why she did this, when she had figured out herself.”
Jo felt the looks of her parents. Those looks that told her they had expected her to say something like this. They had always expected her to be brought home after such an event by the police. But never Beth. They would have never expected their perfect, nice and good girl to do such a thing.
Malcolm sighs and Jo sees him giving in. “Four weeks grounding.” That’s the last thing he says that day about this matter.
Beth’s eyes linger on Jo and the expression in them says ‘Thank you’.
Jo is seventeen and Beth is thirteen

4.
“I’m sorry”
Beth looks at her from her place on the window bench. “What for?”
“You broke up with that boy, didn’t you?”
Beth lays the marker carefully into her book and puts it aside. “Actually he broke up with me, but yes, it’s over between us. He wasn’t the right one anyway, I think”
Jo smiles. Only her sister would think about Mr-Right at her age. Those over-romanticized visions are so typically hers. “Do you think it’s already time for Mr-Right?”
She shrugs.
“What about having fun?” Jo raises her eyebrows a bit. It’s no offense and Beth knows that.
She thinks a moment before answering. “I think that wouldn't help me if something happens like...”
Jo drops her gaze. She knew what her sister speaks of. Their father is dead for seven months now. The shock still in their bones, they haven’t learned to live without him ever since. It’s too difficult to face the truth. Jo often thinks he would enter the house any minute, but then realizes it isn’t that way. That she has to take care for everything her mother isn’t able to do.
“But having only known him doesn’t help you either”, Jo whispers.
Beth sighs sadly. “I know, but at least I’ll have as much time with him as possible, have learnt as much of him, have more to remember about him and have used the time given to us in the best ways. I’ve learnt that a happy life isn’t granted.”
“No, it isn’t.” She swallows heavily and blinks away some tears.
Jo is twenty and Bethany is seventeen.


5.
“How is he?”
“Stable, they say. Mum’s with him right now.”
Jo embraces her sister.
They hold each other. Grateful to have someone to hold and to be held. She felt the shaking of her sister, at first just lightly, but getting stronger with every sob. Jo strikes her sisters head lightly and hushes words of comfort. “He’s alive, he will be fine. It’s okay.”
When they let go of each other, Beth’s eyes are red and her makeup’s a mess. “Go home and take Mom with you.”
“I would have to carry her.”
Beth smiles faintly. “Then drag her into the car and chain her, I don’t care but take her home, she needs to sleep. And you too. I’ll stay here and watch over him.”
Jo smiles. There could be no better person than her to do so. She’d called Jo right after the moment she got herself the phone call by a colleague about the attack on her brother. One of these strange moments where Beth and Carver felt like more like a unity than just fraternal twins.
‘Something had happened, I know it and don’t you dare to hide it from me’ had been everything she had said. She had called once more from the airport before boarding her plane. That had been when Carver had been brought to the emergency OR.
That was seven hours ago. Their brother is safe now. They had closed all the injured vessels. He’d lost a lot of blood and it had been tight. But he would make it.
They enter his room together and Mum looks up. After some more embraces and tears Beth throws her plain out of the room. Carver would need some quiet to recover. It would be her turn to watch over him now. They could come back tomorrow.
Mom leaves. “When goes your flight back?” Jo expects her to leave very soon again. She has some exams in the near future.
“When he is back on his feet.”
“But your exams..”
She starts to unpack one of her bags and piles up books on a table. “I’ve already taken care of an alternative date from the airport before coming here and got affirmation by my professor when I landed.”
“Beth, he’ll be fine, you shouldn’t risk...”
She swirls around and throws some books on the floor in her movement. “I am old enough to decide for myself what I can and shall risk. He is my other part. He is my twin brother, I felt him being injured. I woke up in the middle of the night, without a clue what caused it, feeling bad, worried about something I didn’t know. It took me some time to realize that it was Carver. He had been injured, and my heart literally ached a hundred miles away. So don’t tell me when I have to leave again, or what’s at stake.”
She will stay the full four weeks to leave on a last minute plane to her exam.
Jo is twenty-seven and Beth is twenty-four.


6.
“Hey, sunshine!”
“Remind me to throw something heavy at Varric when I see him next time.” She hates this nick. Jo could call her Lilly, but that would be a bit too inappropriate.
“That would be in about a week I guess.”
“Yes, that’s why I’m calling. Do you think you could talk to Mum?”
“Okay. You aren’t coming?”
“No, no it’s not that. It’s more that I’ll be accompanied by someone. And you know her, it wouldn’t be too bad if you could prepare her a bit for my call.”
Jo smiles. “Oh, I’ve already heard about him.”
“Carver is already there?”
“Yes, arrived yesterday. I’m on my way to mum anyway.”
“I told him she wouldn’t take it lightly. Well then my news are good ones, aren’t they?”
Jo laughs and stops in their mother’s driveway. “Yes, that is great news. What does your gut tell you? Mr-Right?”
Jo knows she is smiling. “Not sure, yet. But a bit fun isn’t wrong either, I guess.”
Jo starts smiling, too. “No, it isn’t.”
Jo is thirty and Beth is twenty-seven.