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 3

Being in her father's class is far from easy for Zoe, even if she were able to ignore the Kelly and Emily factor. Because she has to deal with William both at school and at home, if she misbehaves, it will come back on her double. Furthermore, he refuses to let his daughter off easy, perhaps holding her to an even higher standard than the rest of his students. And worst of all, even after eight months, she still slips sometimes and calls him dad instead of Mr. Barnet. Kelly and Emily just love that.

And today is shaping up to be one of the less good days. As she enters the classroom, still flushed from kissing Roger, William rises from his desk - around which Kelly and Emily are huddling, Zoe notices with displeasure - and approaches her.

"You're ready for your presentation, right luv?" he asks, looking at her over the rim of his glasses. Behind her, Kelly and Emily laugh giddily.

"Of course," Zoe lies, while her mind screams, what presentation? And then it comes back to her: she was to pick a poem and anaylize it, and then present the poem and the analysis to the class. Only somehow, she forgot. Why can't you remind me of these things when there's still something I can do about it? she thinks. "It's not like I need you to remind me of these things," she says.

"Of course not." William walks back over to his desk, over which Kelly is now leaning, exposing her breasts suggestively. "Girls," he says, through slightly clenched teeth, "why don't you both take your seats?"

Zoe takes her seat as well, desperately trying to recall any poem she might have accidentally memorized, as she accidentally memorizes everything from song lyrics to TV commercials, and decide whether she can use it. "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"? No, too obvious. This was Vermont, for christ's sake, half the class probably chose to do Robert Frost. "Hanging Fire"? Did she actually have all of that memorized?

She is interrupted from her reverie by the arrival of Roger and Sarah. Roger smiles at her, uncharacteristically shy, and sits at his assigned desk across the room from her. Even though they had been going out officially for over two months, it was still weird for both of them, and perhaps weirder still for Sarah. She takes her seat next to Zoe, an unreadable expression on her face.

"My, if it isn't PDA girl," she says, not unkindly.

"My, if it isn't British accent fetish girl," Zoe replies, a bit too loudly. Sarah looks up at William, mortified, but he is writing on the wipe board and not paying any attention. But then Zoe turns to her friend and says, much more quietly, "Did you remember to prepare your presentation?"

"Crap!" Sarah swears under her breath. "Tell me yours is all ready."

"It will be."

Sarah bangs her head on the desk. "Great." The first bell rings and the rest of the class begins shuffling in. "Why does your dad have do everything in alphabetical order? And why do we have to be B's? Why should Roger have all the luck?" She sticks her tongue out at Roger, who gives her a strange look from his place across the room. "You don't deserve to be a W!" she yells.

"Shut up, Sarah," Zoe says, and is pleased when her friend complies, even though it had more to do with the fact that William looked over his shoulder and arched his eyebrow at her. "I'm trying to concentrate."

The second bell rings and William turns to face the class. He leans against the old wood lectern on which his attendance book is spread and speaks to the students as he checks off their names. "First the good news. We only have to deal with each other for another 43 days and then we're all free for the whole summer." Several people cheer. William grins. "Believe me, you lot are nowhere near as happy as I am. But sadly, we have the inevitable bad news to contend with as well. Starting Monday, we enter AP prep hell. So prepare yourselves for cramming and that weird buzz you get from too much pizza and Dr. Pepper." He takes off his glasses and fixes the class with a cold stare that Zoe is sure he must think of as intimidating. "And study your vocab words! Honestly, they really do help."

The glasses go back on and Zoe can feel William about to shift subjects. Talk more about the vocab, she prays.

"And now we're going to start our poetry presentations," William says. Since Avery's conspicuously absent, we'll begin with Zoe."

"Take a really long time!" Sarah whispers as Zoe rises from her seat. Zoe shoots her a dirty look and takes her place at the front of the class. She looks at her father, back behind his desk and watching her expectantly. Then she takes a deep breath, and begins to recite.

Death is before me today
Like the recovery of a sick man
Like going forth into a garden after sickness

Death is before me today
Like the odour of myrrh
Like sitting under a sail in a good wind

Death is before me today
Like the course of a stream
Like the return of a man from the war galley to his house

Death is before me today
Like the home a man longs to see
After years spent as a captive

Once she finishes, Zoe stands dumbly for a second. Most of her classmates are either staring at her with glazed-over eyes, or ignoring her all together. Roger is still smiling at her rather shyly, and Sarah mouths "Good cover!" when she looks her way. Her father sits silently in the back of the room, a small twist of a smile playing on the corner of his mouth. She finds she cannot read the expression at all. Just open your mouth and start analyizing, she thinks. So she does.

"Um, there have been many poems written about death, but what made me choose this one is the fact that it presents death in a totally different manner than most. To most people and poets - not to imply that they are two separate groups," she adds, and she watches as her dad's odd little half smile grows, "death is regarded as the inevitable end to the wondrous journey that is life; it is viewed as something to dread, something to attempt to avoid, even though one cannot. For most, death is the ultimate enemy."

She pauses, partially for effect, and partially to gain a moment to figure out where she is going to go next. Rhetorical devices, she thinks. Now is the time to start blathering on about metaphors.

"But not in this poem," Zoe continues. "This poem is essentially a group of similes - 'death is like the recovery of a sick man,' 'death is like the course of a stream' - that make up the underlying metaphor: death is the natural end to life, death is the rest and relief one finally achieves at the end of their journey. It seems that the poet is almost anticipating his death, because he longs for release. It is an interesting and not often explored point of view."

Again, she pauses. Just keep going, she thinks. You're almost there, almost there!

"Er, other elements of the poem, such as the structure, seem less important to me. While the stanzas and lines are all approximately the same length, this does not strike me as a particularly conscious choice on the part of the poet. Of course, in poetry, the selection of almost every word involves conscious choice," again, William favors her with an odd smile, and she wonders what was so funny about what she said, "but this element still does not have much to do with the meaning or power of the poem in my opinion.

"Elements of the tone, however, do. This poem uses very simple, sparse language, quite intentionally. It has a very soft tone, and when I read it, it calls to my mind the image of a man on his deathbed, explaining, in a whisper to the loved ones around him, why he is not afraid of his approaching death. The tone speaks so strongly of bravery and acceptance in the face of the terrifying unknown and usually unacceptable that it really serves to strengthen the poem's metaphor. The tone enables the poet's unconventional ideas to be expressed with a sense of truth."

Home stretch! she thinks, and finishes off in a last rush of air.

"I chose this poem because, using all the things discussed previously, the poet has been able to convey a message I have often sought to convey, only without sounding so cynical. Death is nothing to dread anymore than one dreads the sunset and the coming of the new day. Instead, it is the natural end to the journey we have all begun, and all one day must finish."

She moves unceremoniously back to her seat, and the class applauds without enthusiasm. William nods to himself. "Very good," he says, the greatest praise he'll ever give to any student while the rest of the class is present. "Sarah, you're up."

Sarah gets slowly to her feet. "You could have talked slower!" she whispers to Zoe before trudging to the front of the room. She clears her throat. "Uh..." she says. "'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,' by Robert Frost."

Part 4

After class, Zoe and her friends hang around the room while William collects his papers so they can get a ride. Zoe is the only one who lives in town; Roger had moved to Bristol when he was nine, and Sarah lives "off in the boonies," as she likes to put it, in Shoreham. Therefore, they often stay at Zoe's house after school until their parents can pick them up after work.

William slides the rest of his stuff into his black messenger bag, and throwing his jean jacket over his shoulder, heads for the door. "Come on, kiddies," he says, joivially. "We depart."

The others push past him as he turns to lock the door, and then they walk down the hall and out the side entrance to the parking lot. They clamour into William's old Cabrio, Zoe up front with her dad and Roger and Sarah in the back.

"Straight home, or stops?" William asks.

"Uh, I don't know about you," Roger says, "but I could really use a Coke."

Sarah nods. "Me, too."

"I hear an iced tea calling my name," Zoe, who is strictly anti-soda, admits.

"All right then. Beverage break." William pulls out of the parking lot, eerily emptied in just the few minutes they stayed behind so he could pack up. The sky has turned dark, rolling with deep, thick clouds, and as they leave the campus, it begins to rain, the little drops spattering messily on the windshield. William drives a couple of blocks to the Champlain Farms and parks in front of one of the gas pumps even though he isn't planning on getting any gas. The three teenagers pile out of the car and disappear into the dryness of the convenience store. William follows, not bothering to lock the car behind him.

Roger and Sarah both grab Cokes, but Sarah pauses with her hand still half in the freezer, looks down at herself critically, and selects a Diet Coke instead. Roger watches this disapprovingly, but doesn't say anything. Zoe scours the various brands of iced tea, grumbling, "Why must everything be sweetened or flavored?" before finally choosing the most basic kind she can find. All three return to the front of the store, beverages in hand, to find William standing at the counter, trying to order a slurpee.

"We're all out of strawberry," the clerk is saying. Zoe recognizes him from school: his name is Arnold, and he likes to yell, "Run, Zoe, run!" at her when she speeds down the hall in fear of being late for class. She hates him.

"Well, how about raspberry?" William asks patiently. Zoe can see that his patience is waning, however. His fingers are gripping the counter so hard that his knuckled have turned white. They must have been at this for a while.

"We're out of that, too," Arnold says, sounding bored.

"So you're out of lemon, blueberry, strawberry, and raspberry." William grits his teeth. "What flavors do you have?"

Arnold shrugs, picking an issue of "Guns and Ammo" back up off the counter and leafing through it.

William sighs. "Look," he says, "just give me whatever you have, okay?" He hands Arnold some money, and the clerk turns reluctantly to the slurpee machine and begins to do his job.

"Wanker," William mutters as soon as Arnold's back is turned. Sarah giggles, sounding not unlike Kelly and Emily.

Arnold comes back with the slurpee and slaps it down on the counter. Over Roger's protests, William pays for the rest of the drinks, and as he waits for Arnold to bring him his change, takes a sip of his slurpee.

"This is strawberry," William says pointedly when Arnold returns with a fist full of grubby quarters.

Arnold shrugs again, the master of indifference. "I guess we weren't out after all."

"Right." William has his lip firmly between his teeth. "Well, have a nice day," he says as he walks out the door. Once outside, he adds, "You great bloody pillock."

Sarah giggles some more, and Zoe fixes her with a harsh stare. They all climb into the car again. William is still seething, but doing a good job to control it. "Charming lad," he says as he pulls his seatbelt across his chest. He starts the car and pulls out onto the street. "He goes to our school, doesn't he?" Zoe nods. "Pity he's not in my class so I could flunk him."

Roger laughs nervously. "Which is not something you'd ever do to anyone present, right?"

William turns around and smiles at Roger a little too broadly. "Just as long as no one present ever does anything to hurt my daughter."

They ride the rest of the way in companionable silence. Zoe's house is actually right across the river from the school, but due to the location of the town's only automobile bridge, William has to wind through the town to get there. He drives past the Middlebury Inn, whose big brick facade is always decked out in ostentatious holiday decorations, currently mother's day themed; around the curve of the town green with it's old white gazebo; past the Congregational Church, its tall spire scraping the clouds; and down Main Street. They drive by dada, the housewares store where Zoe works on weekends, and cross the Battel Bridge to their side of town. The Barnets live on South Street, just off Main and a mere three blocks away from the library and movie theater. The street is lined with trees and big, old houses, all of which are painted white, save for the Barnet's three story behemoth, which is bright yellow with blue trim. Their unconventional paint job got them a lot of hate mail when they first moved in.

William pulls his car into the driveway behind Anne's and puts it into park. Everyone spends a good minute heaving backpacks onto shoulders, and then they all stumble up the steps to the front porch, laughing because the inevitable has happened, and they are getting soaked. The big wood door is unlocked, but it is always unlocked. This is Vermont, after all - no one locks their doors. William pushes the door open with his shoulder and walks into a room of blood.

Blood on the floor, blood on the furniture, messages scrawled in blood on the walls. William falters for a moment, even though his first instinct tells him to get his daughter and her friends out of there. But his instant of shock and indecision is enough for the three teens to enter the room behind him. Zoe has the mail between her teeth, and it slips to the floor as her mouth falls open in an expression of mute horror. Sarah murmurs, "Oh my God," before bursting into hysterical tears. "I'll call the police," Roger sputters, reaching for his cell phone. His wrist is caught, mid-motion, in William's firm grasp.

"No," William says, his voice brittle. "No police."

Roger looks up at the man who holds his arm, a man who he has known almost his entire life, and who he has thought of as many things, but never as threatening. And for the first time, Roger is afraid.

William doesn't even look at him; his eyes are fixed on the writing on the wall. He realizes that the words to "Helter Skelter" are running through his head, but these are no song lyrics written here. COME HOME TO MUMMY. The letters still drip. I WANT MY SPIKE.

"Dad." Zoe's voice is barely audible, and her hand is fumbling about for his. "What does it mean, Dad?"

He swallows. "Nothing. It means nothing."

"Dad." He almost can't hear her anymore. "Where's mom?"

William shakes himself. "Zoe, Roger, Sarah, go next door to the Kieran's house and stay there until I come and get you. Don't talk to anyone."

"But they're in India," Zoe says. She sounds as if she has gone away.

"Use the key that they gave you so you could feed the dogs. Go! Now!"

They go, leaving him alone in a room he knows to be covered in his wife's blood.

The first thing he does is shut the door and lock it. Then he walks over to the piano and picks up the note he saw, just as he was meant to, when he first came in. He is relieved to see that it is not written in blood, but rather in pencil. In fact, the offending pencil is still resting by the note. It is one of Zoe's, with her name embossed on the side and her teeth marks covering the end, and William feels his small taste of relief drifting away. They could easily know about Zoe.

He forces his hands to stop shaking as he reads the note.

You have been running from us for a long time, but we grow weary of hide and seek. We've been watching for some time, just waiting for a cloudy day. She is ours now, as you are ours. Come home to us and maybe we'll let her live. Maybe we'll even let you keep her.

Come home. You can't hide what you are.

He crumples the note in his hand and tosses it to the floor. His eyes drift over the bloody mess that was his home, his gaze coming to rest on the big old mirror next to the piano. Anne found it at a junk shop when they first moved in, and she sponge painted the wooden border sage green to match the bookcases. William stares at his own reflection, at his mess of brown hair and lightly tanned skin and blue eyes hidden by wire rimmed glasses.

"Lies," he whispers. And then he walks slowly into the kitchen and fills a bucket with water and readies himself to scrub his wife's blood from the walls.