34: The Lost Road

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Another road trip was the last thing that Julia wanted to do, but for Alison she was willing. She had a lot to apologize for and if her old friend would let her, she had a lot of love to give Alison too.

Brady did not mind the road trip as much, he was using it to observe Julia. She had changed, and while Brady was scared of that, he was also in awe of how confident she was these days.

Particularly, today when she blew off brunch with her parents to come on the trip with the boys. Something the old Julia would have been terrified to do.

Meanwhile Max had only one thing on his mind: Alison. He needed to see her, he needed to know that she was okay, it was killing him to know that she was missing again.

"We're here," Brady announced.

Max recognized the cabin. He had been here a few summers ago with Alison. Under different circumstances, Max would have loved being here. The cabin was secluded and away from the noise of the town nearby. It sat on a mountain with lush forestry all around. The cabin itself was quite lavish too. With glass paneling and solar panels on the roof.

They got out and cautiously went to the door. They knocked, but got no answer.

Max was losing it though and quickly pulled out his lock picking kit. He had gotten quite good at this by now. He got the door open and they all rushed in.

"There's no one here," Brady said disappointedly.

The boys looked around to make sure while Julia inspected the kitchen. Inside, she was surprised to find groceries in the fridge and cabinets that had not expired yet.

"Guys, I think Ali was here not too long ago," Julia called.

"Me too," Max yelled back. "Come here."

Julia followed the sound of Max's voice to a bedroom. In there he found Max looking at some clothes.

"Are they Ali's?" Brady asked from behind Julia.

Max nodded. "I gave these back to her when you two were found, she's here."

"So, are we just going to wait for her to come back?" Brady asked.

"I guess," Max said.

Brady looked between Max and Alison's things and then signaled for Julia to follow him.

"Let's give Max some space," Brady suggested as they stepped outside.

The two of them sat on the front step and were looking anywhere but at each other. It was the first time the two of them had spent any time alone since Brady first returned.

"I made a lot of mistakes," Julia mumbled. "Losing you and Ali turned me into a really horrible person."

Brady finally turned and looked over at her, she was making an effort, so could he.

"It couldn't have been easy," he said back.

"None of us had it easy, Brady," Julia replied quietly. "I spent a whole year forcing myself to get out of bed everyday to try to move on but I just couldn't. Eventually, my therapist thought it would be good to take the photos of us I had all over my bedroom down but I just moved them into the closet." Julia bit her lip but then continued on. "When I couldn't sleep at night I used to open the box and just stare at the pictures of us. It was all I had left. It took me months to be able to move on and the second I did, the second I finally felt like I could breathe normally without feeling the pain your disappearance left me with-"

"We came back," Brady finished for her.

"Yes," she said in a tiny voice. "You came back and I moved on. I was dating someone else, I was best friends with someone else. I replaced you guys and I shouldn't have."

"You didn't know we were alive," Brady said half-heartedly.

Julia stared at him. "I'm sorry."

Brady stared into the woods for awhile, it looked like he was lost in his own thoughts for awhile. Finally he looked back over at her.

"It's not like you did anything you have to apologize for," Brady said. "I mean I get it. I spent a year locked in a basement and all I could think about were you, Max, and my family, but you had a whole life to get back to. It's...understandable."

"You thought about me?" Julia said, looking up at him with a small smile.

Brady blushed. "Come on, you think I forgot about you?"

"I don't know," Julia mumbled shyly. "The last things we said to each other weren't so kind."

Brady's bashful smile fell a bit. "Yeah, I wish I hadn't said those things"

"Me too," Julia whispered.

Brady and Julia stared at each other for a while, old feelings were beginning to stir. The ones that they both did everything possible to repress. It was all seeping back into their eyes. The other saw in their former flame the kind of love that was so innocent and pure.

It was the look that used to sit on Brady's face when he watched Julia dance. She would catch him in the audience with such an awe-struck look on his face, as if she was perfect. It was the look Brady would catch on Julia's face after one of their dates when she refused to leave his car and beg him to whisk her away from the dreaded home where her parents were waiting to berate her for her choices yet again.

They still loved each other.

While Brady's green eyes stared back into Julia's blue ones, a shadow slowly emerged in front of them. They didn't see it, but the shadow saw them. She bolted at once.

The rustling of her receding figure, caused Brady and Julia to snap out of their reverie and their heads turned to see the back of a familiar looking girl running down the path. Both of them stood up at once.

"Max!" Brady yelled through the door.

Julia raced after the girl. Brady quickly followed when Max came out.

"Come on, it's her," he said to him.

Max quickly followed and the three of them together chased after the girl.

"Why is she running?" Max asked as they chased her into a valley.

"It's Ali," Brady replied as they pushed farther into the woods. "When has she ever made things easy?"

"She is not getting away from us," Julia said as she sped up.

Finally, it seemed like Alison ran out of steam. Julia caught up and quite literally tackled her into the ground. Alison struggled under her old friend's tight grip.

"God, why are you so freakishly strong?" Alison complained.

She stopped thrashing and gave up. Julia continued to hold her down as Brady and Max arrived though. Julia looked down at Alison, her hair was different. When she and Brady had first returned, their hair had been dyed a dark brown. Brady's hair had gone back to normal quite quickly thanks to some hair dye; however, for some unknown reason Alison had not bothered to change her hair back, until now. It was dyed back to the color Julia had known it to be: a light brown that looked blonde in the sun. She looked like her old self again, except for one thing: her eyes. Ali's piercing green eyes that were normally as sharp as sea glass shattered from rage were now directed at Julia, in all their years of friendship even through the nasty parts since her return, Julia had never seen such hatred in her old friend's eyes.

Brady and Max finally arrived and took a moment to assess the situation.

Brady was looking at the girl with whom he spent a year trapped with, in his eyes one could see the worry he held for her. Normally, Alison was scary, but not to her friends. For they knew who she really was deep down. A child tormented by demons too big to slay. But this version of Alison, she didn't look fierce because of her demons, she looked fierce because she was mad at them.

While Brady looked uneasy, Max was worried. Alison wasn't the girl he had built up in his head anymore. Now, she had this edge to her as she stopped fighting and simply stared at her old friends, this kind of look that Max didn't like to see on her: Contempt. She was angry that they had found her.

"Get off her, Julia," Max said quietly.

Julia looked at him as if he were crazy.

"She's not going to run again," Max explained.

Julia looked unsure but trusted him enough, she rolled off her and stood up. At once, Alison got up and turned around, Julia thought she was going to run off again, but she just went over to one of the trees that had fallen over and took a seat on the trunk. One by one, they all followed and sat around her. Brady sat on the ground across from her while Julia took a seat on the log nearby. Max stood and paced back and forth a little bit behind Brady

"What are you guys doing here?" Alison finally asked.

Everyone stared at her like she was insane.

"Why do you think, Ali?" Julia asked back with a hint of hurt in her tone. "We were worried about you."

"Why?" Alison asked almost as if the idea that someone would care for her was foreign to her.

"Because we're your friends," Brady said.

Alison's head shot up at the sound of Brady's voice.

"So, you're talking now?" she questioned.

There was something bitter about Alison's words. She would never say it out loud but she was jealous of what that meant. Brady had healed a part of himself, the torture inflicted on them had led him to silence, him talking meant that a broken piece of himself mended again. She had yet to make progress like that.

"I just don't get why you were worried," Alison murmured. "It's not like I'm in danger here."

"We didn't know that," Julia pointed out. "I mean for God's sake, you already got kidnapped and tortured once, who could have predicted what could happen the second time you go missing?"

The words weren't meant to come out as sharp as they had but Alison had always been keen. She could sense the feeling of betrayal Julia felt right now, like Alison leaving had hurt her.

Her eyes narrowed in Julia's direction. "Well the last things you said to me would suggest to me that you didn't care whether I was dead or alive anyway."

Julia's hard expression fell a bit. "I'm sorry for what I said, I really thought you and Brady hooked up behind my back."

Alison studied Julia's face, searching for sincerity, it angered her that she found it. Alison wasn't sure why, maybe because she wanted to hate her friends.

"I would never do that to you, Julia," Alison said quietly. She looked over at Max who had yet to look her in the eye. "I wouldn't do that to you either, Max," she added.

He didn't acknowledge what she said. All these days spent searching for her, Max hadn't figured out what to even say to her.

"Why did you leave?" Brady asked, looking up at her.

She squirmed in her seat uncomfortably.

"Did I have a reason to stay?" she deflected. "What was holding me there anyway? The family who never wanted me? A mom a thousand miles away? A dead friend? My other friends who hated me?"

"That's not fair, Alison," Max said at once. "You pushed me away first," he pointed out.

"You would have pushed me away anyway," she snapped back. "Don't tell me that you would have stuck around to watch me be the way I was. I saw the way you used to look at me. Like I was some broken doll you could magically fix. I did you a favor pushing you away."

Max angrily stormed over to her.

"You don't get to decide things like that," he yelled at her. "Do you think that low of me that I would abandon you at a time where you were so clearly hurting?"

Alison glared at him. "You did abandon me, Max. The night I needed you the most, when my parents split, I needed you and you didn't come. I didn't need to feel that way again when I was already suffering enough as it was."

Max laughed dryly. "You've always got some excuse don't you, Ali?" he shook his head at her. "There's always going to be a reason to fault everyone but yourself."

Julia and Brady watched with fearful expressions as Max and Alison looked to be ready to go for each other's throats. Yet another Max and Alison brawl was about to ensue.

Julia stood up and got in between them.

"Guys, let's not-"

"Stay out of it," both Max and Alison snapped at her.

Brady quickly took Julia's arm and gently pulled her away.

"Let them fight this out," he whispered in his ear.

Max ignored them and looked back at Alison. Her eyes were dangerously fiery and he had yet to calm down. Too many emotions were building up.

"I spent two weeks looking for you," he said. "I barely slept and all you want to do is fight."

"I didn't ask you to come find me," Alison said back, her arms still crossed. "In fact, how did you even find me?"

"You have no idea how much effort it took," Max replied. "I don't even know if it was worth it anymore."

"You're right," Alison shrugged. "I'm not worth whatever effort it took, so just leave me alone."

This seemed to reignite the flame in Max. "You don't just get to do that!"

"Do what?" she demanded. "Tell you point blank that I'm not worth the trouble?"

"You don't get to decide when we give up on you," Max said. "We love you, Ali. We want to be here for you, just tell us what you need but don't tell us to leave because we are not abandoning you, we're not your parents."

The mention of her parents seemed to break her. Max thought she would just get angrier, that the flames in her fiery eyes would burn even brighter but instead, they seemed to dim as her eyes began to pool with water. She began to cry.

Julia and Brady had never seen Alison cry before. Max had seen her cry once before she was kidnapped, more often since then, but still he was surprised to see how fast the tears were pouring down her face. She had never cried when others were around. Only when it was just the two of them.

"They knew I left," she mumbled through her tears. She half-collapsed half-sat back on the trunk as her legs wobbled. "My mom knows I'm here, my dad too. I told them I wanted to be alone and they just...listened. As if I was some all knowing adult who knew any better."

"I don't get it," Julia said quietly. "I thought you wanted to be alone."

"Her parents were supposed to know better, Julia," Max explained, not taking his eyes off Alison. "Her parents were supposed to know the difference between what Ali wants and what she needs."

Julia began to feel sick inside. Her own relationship with her parents was strained, but at the end of the day, her parents loved her. Through their own convoluted way, keeping Julia in dance, making her go to fancy charity events, forcing to go to the country club they were trying to give her the life they never had; Julia didn't understand it then, but she did now.

Brady too was having misgivings about the way he had been treating his parents since his return. Of course his parents had done everything possible to help him, in any way he wanted. How often had he overlooked that? How often had he just pushed them away and called his mother smothering and his dad a worry wart when all they wanted was for Brady to be okay? He felt terrible.

Max was thinking about his own father. All the times he had pushed him to do better in school, the countless fights over his inability to push himself, the nights where his father would stay up waiting for Max to come home. His father cared, and as much as Max hated it, his father worked his tiresome hours so that he could provide for his kids. Max did not like that he sounded like such an ungrateful brat now. All the complaints he made towards a father who was trying his best.

All three of them realized something in that valley, Alison had no family that truly understood her, who unconditionally loved her, all she had was the idea that no one in this world could love her for who she was if her own parents did not do the same.

"They know where I am," Alison whispered through more tears. "I used my dad's credit card last week to get groceries and this is my mom's family cabin. I tripped the alarm when I first came in. They know I'm here and they just don't care. How is that fair?"

Max never knew what to do when Alison cried, how could he comfort her? Thankfully, Julia came over. She wrapped her arms around her friend and let Alison sob onto her expensive jacket. She smoothed Alison's hair and let Alison fall apart in her arms so that she could catch all the pieces.

At that moment, Max was no longer angry with Alison. In fact he was mad at himself. For something that would always anger him: he had no idea how to comfort Alison in her darkest moments.


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