DRY KIND OF LOVE

by - Tanith

TITLE	DRY KIND OF LOVE
AUTHOR	Tanith
DISCLAIMER	It's all about Joss, Mutant Enemy, the WB, and now UPN.
ARCHIVE	It's all yours, just let me know.
RATING	PG-13, just to be safe.
SPOILERS	Probably some minor ones here and there.
FEEDBACK	Bring it on.
SUMMARY	You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

Part 1

Zoe Barnet runs up the stairs to the third floor laughing, her fingers feeling for the solidity of the walls for balance, leaving splotched fingerprints on the white paint. Roger Waxman races up behind her in a last feeble attempt to overtake her, but Zoe reaches the landing first and spins around to face him while he is still three steps away.

"Ha! Beat you!" she yells triumphantly, leaning back against the wall, a smug grin on her face.

Roger slumps up the last three steps. "Only because I forgot to take my socks off. I kept slipping."

"You're just slow." Zoe sticks out her tongue at him. She slides her back down the wall and lands with a thump on the floor, her legs splaying out in front of her. Roger plops down next to her.

"You just cheat," he says.

She whacks his arm playfully, and her whacks her back, but then stops, his gaze caught by the trap door in the ceiling above their heads, a two by two white square with a thin silver handle.

"What's up there?" Roger asks.

"Huh?" Zoe follows his outstretched finger. "Oh that? Just the attic." She turns to her friend, grinning. "When we moved in, my dad found a whole bunch of used bedpants up there."

Zoe is disappointed when the expected expression of disgust does not spread across her friend's features. Instead, Roger merely scrunches up his nose, inquisitively. "What are bedpants?" he asks.

Zoe finds herself grinning again. "Well, the guy who lived here before us, Mr. Drake, he was 103 when he died, and before that, he was really sick and couldn't get out of bed for anything, not even to go to the bathroom. So he had these special pants..."

"Ewww!" Roger makes a face. "Why did he keep them?"

Zoe shrugs. "I dunno. He was a weird old guy. When we moved in, there were also a bunch of handwritten notes tacked all over the place that said things like, 'This is the bookcase,' 'This is the pantry.' And there were like forty layers of linoleum on the kitchen floor. My dad spend over two days just scraping it up."

Roger is still fixated on the trap door. "So what's up there now?"

Zoe shrugs again. "Junk?"

A gleam appears in Roger's eyes. "You wanna check it out and see?"

She does not want to check it out and see. Dread settles in the pit of Zoe's stomach; at 12, she's still afraid of the attic and the basement, and after dark, even her closet seems sinister. But she will not allow herself to appear cowardly in front of Roger.

"Okay, sure," she says. "My mom keeps a stepladder in the kitchen. We can use that."

"We have to go back downstairs?" Roger whines.

Zoe rolls her eyes. "Well, you can see if you can reach the handle by standing on your tippy toes," she says sarcastically.

Roger sighs and pulls off his socks. "Fine, we'll get the ladder. But this time," he says, standing, "I'll beat you downstairs!" And he leaps off down the steps before Zoe has even had a chance to get up off the floor.

"Cheat!" she yells after him, but she trots down the steps anyway, still grinning.

************* The attic is small and musty, the roof of the house sloping in to make it barely more than a crawlspace. It smells, Zoe thinks, rather like cooked cabbage. She swings her flashlight in a slow arc around the room as Roger pulls himself up through the trap door behind her, his own flashlight clattering loudly against the splintered wood floor. Zoe is glad she remembered to put her shoes back on.

"There's really not much up here," she says to Roger, who has also begun to peer about with his flashlight. "See? Just a bunch of old boxes."

"Yes, but what's in them?" Roger says mysteriously.

"As I said before, probably junk."

"But we won't know before we check, will we?" Roger smiles wickedly and squats before a box. He holds the flashlight between his teeth and rips off the long brown strip of masking tape.

Zoe decides there's nothing better to do than to follow suit. She walks over to another box and pulls off the tape.

Roger has pulled a partially deflated basketball out of his box. He holds it up for Zoe to see. "Obviously a priceless family heirloom!" he says. He chucks the ball over his shoulder; it makes a sad fwump when it hits the floor. "And this!" Roger continues, struggling to lift a heavy, old typewriter. "A historical artifact of unspeakable value."

Zoe crinkles her nose at what she has pulled out of her box: a large ceramic horror, possibly the ugliest vase on the face of the earth. "I think that this is all nothing more than yard sale rejects."

She puts the vase back in her box and stands, shakily. The darkness is starting to get to her; she can feel the blackness that lives in the corners seeping closer, like smoke, like fog, ready to consume her the moment she drops her guard. "Let's go back downstairs," she says, trying to hide the pleading in her voice. "I'm hungry," she adds. It seems like a logical excuse.

Roger ignores her, clamouring to his feet and heading over to one of the corners of the room, where it's darkest. He shines his flashlight down on a large, black object. "Cool! Check this out!"

Zoe walks over slowly, clutching her flashlight. The skin on the back of her neck burns, pins and needles. "Hmm?" she says quietly.

"It looks like a treasure chest!" Roger says with enough enthusiasm for the both of them. The end of his flashlight goes into his mouth again. "Here, help me get this open."

Zoe fingers the small silver cross she has worn since she was a baby, her poker tell, her single nervous habit, but she kneels beside her friend anyway. The chest is huge and wooden with a large gold lock; it *does* look like a treasure chest. Roger is pulling on the lock ineffectually, so Zoe pushes his hand away, an expression of scorn plastered on her face to mask the fear.

"Not like that, silly," she says. She plucks a thin metal clip from her mane of wavy brown hair and inserts it into the lock. After only a couple of seconds of maneuvering, the lock clicks open. The expression of awe on Roger's face is enough to make Zoe smile for real.

"Where did you learn how to do that?"

Zoe shrugs nonchalantly. "My dad taught me."

Roger looks at her incredulously. "Your dad?" he starts to ask, but grows silent as, with a creak, Zoe forces back the lid of the trunk.

Zoe is half expecting the chest to emit a deep orange glow, like a mystical object in an Indiana Jones movie, and bask her and Roger in golden light. Either that, or a large swarm of bats. Instead, a small cloud of dust wafts ups and fills the air, leaving Roger coughing, and then disperses. And the contents of the trunk sit before them, in all their mundane glory.

"Aw, it's nothing but more junk," Roger laments. He gets up and moves to the other side of the attic, but Zoe stays on her knees and shifts through the trunk's contents. Her Nancy Drew-reading instincts tell her that no one, not even her over-protective and paranoid parents, would bother to lock a trunk entirely filled with old clothes, as this one appears to be.

Her hand stops moving as it comes across the somehow comforting texture of worn leather. She pushes away the other clothes and lifts out a long black leather duster. She holds it to her face and breathes in its scent, which reminds her of baseball gloves and cigarette smoke. Why would such a nice coat be stored away in the attic? Even if her parents don't want it any more, she could still wear it. She pictures herself walking down the street at night with this coat flapping behind her like a cape, and she grins. She would look so cool...

She has nearly made up her mind to bring the coat back downstairs with her when she hears a door slam from far away and her mother's voice calling, stretching up three flights of stairs and through the trap door into the attic.

"Zoe! Roger! I'm home! I brought lemonade!"

"Crap!" Zoe drops the coat and slams the trunk shut. "Hurry, we have to get downstairs! If she catches us up here I'll be in so much trouble!"

Roger doesn't argue; he is already halfway down the ladder. Zoe shimmies through the trap door after him, pulling it shut behind her. She tucks the step ladder into the corner of the playroom's closet; she'll have to sneak it back downstairs later when her mom is distracted.

Unlike now, since her mom seems pretty focused. Anne Barnet's feet are pounding up the stairs and she is calling Zoe's name, an edge of worry creeping into her voice. "Zoe? Where are you?"

Zoe darts down the steps and meets her mother on the second floor landing. Relief floods Anne's face.

"Sorry, mom," Zoe says. "I didn't hear you. Roger and I we're playing on the computer with the headphones on."

Roger appears on the stairs behind them. "Headphones," he says.

"You guys should get outside some," Anne says. "But if you want, I can give you some lemonade first."

"Lemonade sounds great, mom," Zoe says, grinning from the natural high that comes with getting away with something just barely. She and Anne and Roger walk down the last flight of stairs together, all three smiling broadly for their own private reasons.

Only later, after Roger has gone home, and Zoe's dad has returned from the library, and they have all eaten supper, and Zoe is staring at herself in the mirror as she brushes her teeth, does she realize that she never found out what was so special about the contents of the trunk that it should be padlocked. As she slips between the covers and her parents kiss her goodnight, Zoe vows to go back up to the attic soon, to face the darkness and find out the truth. Tomorrow, she thinks. The step ladder's still on the third floor; it would be fairly easy to sneak up there when no one's looking. Tomorrow she'll go back up there and she'll find out.

But tomorrow she and Sarah go swimming at the town pool, and then they meet Roger at the Ben Franklin and they end up at his house, where they gorge themselves on the penny candy they bought. And the summer days all fade into one another, and then school starts, and even though Zoe always means to go up to the attic and check, she never does.

Pretty soon, she forgets all about it.

Part 2

The dream is always the same.

She wakes on a bed of cold, hard stone. She looks down at herself; she is clothed in a long dark dress, pale wrists and hands and ankles and feet jutting out from beyond the rich fabric. She drops off the stone platform onto the ground, and pads silently across the room, the edges of which shimmer and mist and remain out of sight. Still, she walks forward with purpose, rounding a corner and finding herself in a sterile white bathroom. She places her hands on either side of the porcelain sink, and looks up. The white tiled wall reflects back at her; the mirror is filled with empty white space, barren, with nothing in between the wall and the glass.

She has no reflection.

And with that realization, she wakes.

************* By now, Zoe is so used to the dream that it no longer bothers her. Much. It still makes her nervous if she thinks about it too long, but she has grown accustomed to not thinking about it, and so she doesn't. There is far too much else to think about anyway. Like APs. And finals. And colleges. And Roger...

Zoe sighs and rolls over in bed, smushing her hair down with the back of her pillow. It's unusually warm for a Vermont May, and Zoe shifts uncomfortably under her sheets, her bare legs breaking free to caress the cool breeze drifting in the open window. Last year this time, there was still snow on the ground. Global warming, she thinks. A sign of the coming apocalypse.

She glances over at the clock on the bedside table. The glowing red numbers read 3:55. Through the walls, Zoe can faintly hear her father snoring. She sighs; she knows she will get no more sleep tonight. Resigned, she reaches over and flicks on the lamp. By her bed is a worn copy of "Neverwhere." She flips it open to her favorite part and begins to read.

************* "You snore like a broken weed wacker," Zoe informs her father the next morning at breakfast.

William raises his eyes from the pages of The Burlington Free Press, and his glasses slip down the length of his nose. "Do I now?"

"I think it's more comparable to a rusty chainsaw, actually," Anne says. She leans against the island and spoons a cluster of Fruit Loops into her mouth. Sometimes she eats at the table with William and Zoe, but mostly she prefers to stand. The entire family is always alive with nervous energy; none of them can stay seated for long. Zoe has been teased more than once about how much her dad paces when he teaches.

The teasing is clearly the biggest disadvantage to having both of one's parents be teachers. And one at each school, too, Zoe has often thought ruefully, so there's no escaping. When she was in elementary school, Zoe was purposely not placed in her mom's kindergarten class, but once in high school, it was inevitable that she would have to take one of her dad's classes. There was only one 11th grade AP English class. Zoe wanted to take it. William taught it. End of story.

"I'll try not to embarrass you too much, luv," he had told her when the counselor had given her the news. "And likewise, you'll do the same for me."

He had smiled at her and she had smiled back. "Does put me at a disadvantage, though," she had told him. "Means I can't write any revealing stories about my family."

"I might specially request those."

Zoe smiles at the memory. "I think I feel my next reflective piece coming on," she says. "'My Dad, The Human Outboard Motor.'"

"That's funny," William says, flipping the page of his newspaper casually. "I think I feel some creative grading coming on, too." He mimes drawing a big fat "F" on an imaginary paper in the air.

Anne laughs, and plops her bowl down in the sink. As she turns on the faucet, she checks her wrist watch. "Uh oh, folks, we're all going to be late again."

"You know what's not fair?" Zoe grumbles as she swings her backpack up onto her shoulder. "We might all be late, but I'm the only one who gets detention."

"Life's not fair, pet," William says, reaching over his daughter to snag a last sip of tea. "But at least you never have to worry about getting a ride to school."

That was true, Zoe decided as she headed out the door. So there was at least one advantage to having both her parents be teachers.

************* Cafeterias tend to be loud and hot and soaked with the stench of burning grease, and Middlebury Union High School's cafeteria is no exception. The cafeteria is as old as the school, dating back to the early 1950s, and the only updates it has been given since then are a new layer of linoleum on the floor and four new drinking fountains. Zoe sits in the corner near the only one of the four that is still working, cutting her slice of pizza into pieces with a plastic knife and fork. It's too slimy to eat any other way.

"I think they're trying to kill us," Roger says, finishing the last bite of his plate-size chocolate chip cookie. He holds the plate itself up in front of his face; the grease from the cookie has turned the white paper murky grey and left it nearly transparent. "I mean, I can practically see through this thing."

Sarah makes her patented "eww" face at Roger. "And that is precisely why I bring my *own* lunch," she says, taking a large bite of her homemade sandwich and gloating at her companions.

Zoe takes a thoughtful sip of Country Time lemonade. "You know," she says, "once, when my uncle Alex was visiting, he started telling me this gonzo story about how his high school cafeteria lady tried to put rat poison in the Jell-O, but then my mom gave him The Look and he shut up."

"You don't mess with the lady when she's got The Look," Roger confirms.

"But you don't think it's really true, do you?" Sarah asks, scrunching up her nose. "About the cafeteria lady and the Jell-O?"

Zoe considers for a moment before answering. "No. Uncle Alex is full of it. He used to try to pull quarters out of my ear and all that crap." She pushes the her plate of half-eaten pizza away. "I can't take any more of this. It tastes like burnt rubber." She stands and walks over to the garbage can and starts to scrape off her tray. "Can you believe my dad actually likes this stuff?" she asks over her shoulder.

"Maybe compared to the food in England it's really good," Roger suggests.

"Then I pity the British."

"I don't pity them a bit," Sarah says, as she rises to dispose of the remnants of her lunch. "Least not the women. They've got themselves a whole country full of men who talk like your dad." Her eyes grow misty.

"Sarah!" Zoe stares at her friend, aghast. "That's disgusting! Stop it!"

"I'm only kidding," Sarah says, recovering slightly. But her cheeks are still so red that she has to turn away.

Roger is watching them from the table, an expression of barely contained laughter smothering his face. Zoe sits back down across from him, her head in her hands.

"God. It's bad enough to have Kelly and Emily and their minions, all of whom otherwise hate me, trying to get placed in my group for projects just so that they can come over to my house and make up lame excuses to repeatedly go into his study. And then it's like," she pitches her voice higher to mimic the Kelly and Emily minions, "'Oh, hi, Mr. Barnet! I think I left a book in here, let me bend over in my skanky top right in front of you and pretend to look for it!'" She fixes Sarah with a steely gaze. "I really don't need that from you, too."

Sarah sits down next to her friend but still doesn't look at her. "Jeeze, sorry."

"Oh, come on, Zoe!" Roger surpresses his laughter long enough to say. "It's not as if your dad sees it as anything other than ridiculous. Besides, he's so into your mom it's scary." He leans in low over the table, grinning. "Remember that time on the camping trip when we caught them--"

Zoe slams her hands over her ears and starts humming, loudly. "I'm not listening to this!" she yells between bars of "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts." "Must we bring up everything that makes me want to hurl?"

"Well, we could talk about the food again..." Sarah says.

"Arrgh! That's it! I'm going to class!" Zoe says and storms away.

Roger and Sarah look at each other for a moment before going after her. Roger reaches her first and taps her on the shoulder.

"Er," he says. "We all have class together. Remember? It's called AP English, your dad teaches it, Kelly and Emily sit up front and bat their eyelashes at him...sound familiar?"

Zoe freezes in her tracks, her shoulders tense. Then she spins around and kisses Roger hard on the lips.

"I hate you," she says as the kiss breaks. She turns on here heel and walks the rest of the way to class, smiling in spite of herself.

Sarah approaches Roger who is standing completely still, grinning like an idiot.

"You're grinning like an idiot," she tells him.

Roger just watches Zoe's retreating form, still smiling. "We should really fight more often."