(Andrea Raymer continued from
Can Fall Down)
[note - this post encompasses times and situations that have not yet occurred. Specifically it takes place mostly during an upcoming timeskip. I apologize in advance for that, but we're on a tight schedule with these characters and can't really afford to wait. Should anything in future posts invalidate what occurs here I will edit in response]
Andrea awoke. Again. Seemed she'd been doing that a lot lately, lying down and passing out and waking up. At least there were no accompanying song lyrics this time.
As she'd also been doing a lot lately, she brought a hand up to feel her face. It had been disinfected, bandaged. By Allen, of course. It stung like a bitch and she was still sure something was broken, but it was better than the half-assed job she'd done. She'd look pretty silly once she put her glasses back on, though.
It had been a couple hours since she'd stumbled into the makeshift campsite by the grocery store, which itself had been a couple hours after Alex White crashed the party. And since his encounter with Andrea had been such a rousing success, he'd apparently decided to turn it up a notch for his next audience. Allen had seen her and practically had a stroke, and everyone else was busy dealing with injuries, grief, exhaustion, or grave-digging. The whole area felt creepy, like she'd stumbled into something post-apocalyptic, and Andrea herself felt small and out of place. These were the kids she was supposed to find and fuck over the game with? Isabel Guerra? Felicia Carmichael? Her ingenious new plan already seemed a million miles away.
Never mind that. It'd all be fine. What was important was that she had that plan. She had a plan; she had a plan; she had a--
"Hey Andrea."
GAH.
"Hey Allen." Well of course it was Allen.
She answered his question before he could ask it.
"I'm doing just peachy, thanks."
Allen had, in his trademark half-terrified manner, filled her in on all the details while fixing her face. Quite the uplifting tale, it had been. All the fucking work she'd put in to find Allen before Alex did, to warn him in advance and get her drugs back, to tell him all her great new ideas, and well, things weren't exactly working out that way. After Allen finished telling her how Alex had killed the two girls and then started on himself and Isabel, she'd had enough and politely told him to shut up and let her rest for a while.
"Andrea." Allen was talking again, ducking his head. "I mean, I'm sorry but he had Isabel and he... he just stabbed her. He drove that spear into her and... I just had to stop him. I didn't want to, but..."
"Wasn't your fault, Allen." Andrea said.
God, she was tired.
"Fuck, if anything it was mine."
"How was it your-" Allen started.
"I dunno, OK? Just... I mean, I'm a fuckin' drug dealer and I never even told you that, I shoulda.. I dunno warned you earlier or something." Arrgh, this wasn't even making sense to her. She just felt like shit, no shocking revelation there.
"I'm just glad that you're OK." Allen said. He looked tentative, then rested a hand on her shoulder. "I thought he'd... well really hurt you worse than he did."
Andrea couldn't help but smile at that. "You're sweet, Allen. Seriously, not trying to be sarcastic there. And you're uh, I dunno, genuine."
More than she was.
"I'm good at taking advantage of guys like that, so I'm uh, sorry if I ever did that with you. I dunno, I'm talking kinda nonsense here, I mean I'm practically going withdrawal I think."
Oh, there was no 'practically' about it.
"Alex take everything?"
She caught Allen ducking his head again. "Yeah. I think there's a bottle of Aspirin left in there, but that's it."
"Well, whatever," Summed up the situation eloquently, didn't it? There was sweet fuck-all could be done about it now.
Andrea shooed away any remaining sleepiness and got to her knees, Ugh, she needed something to occupy her mind for a bit. Checking her bag might accomplish that.
"He grabbed a couple of your grenades off me," she said, pulling the zipper. "Guess that makes us even?"
Andrea rummaged through the lonely remnants of her supplies. Thank god her other shoes were still there, at least. One in the plus column. She pulled them out, then returned to her search.
"Lemme find that Aspirin, I have a massive headache and these might be the fast-acting ones that have caffeine in them; it's better than nothing I guess."
There it was. She plucked the bottle from a corner of and held it up, squinting with one eye. No caffeine. Yeah, she'd expected that. In fact what the hell brand was this and why did she have....
One. Second. There.
She recognized that bottle.
You have got to be fucking kidding me...
Andrea poured a series of white tablets onto her palm. A tiny smile smarted to bloom. She brushed the pills carefully, sifted them, panned them for gold.
She recognized these, all right. Most of the pills were regular aspirin. Some were not.
Some of them were Ritalin.
Alex.
She couldn't help it. She laughed, and it felt good.
Alex. Younger brother Alex, not Alex fucking White. She had totally, 100% forgotten about that whole scenario well more like she'd pushed it out of her mind but what was this irony or karma or oh fuck, now Allen was staring at her, and what the hell was she going to say, she didn't want to get into the whole ridiculous story that had led to her having a secret stash of drugs that even she didn't know about.
"Sorry!" she said, managing to choke down the laughter a few seconds. "It's just that.. oh Christ I had totally forgotten that I had these and I guess Danya's fucking goons never checked it and..."
Great. Now she was laughing even harder. She needed to stop this before she went into total lunatic mode. She popped two of the Ritalin, dry-swallowing them. Oh yes.
Andrea closed her eyes She breathed in, trying to fill her lungs.
"It's uh, it's a long story. I'll tell it to you in a bit, OK?"
Yeah.
---------------------
After Allen had gone off for a while, Andrea returned to her belongings. Her journal was still there. She pulled it out, grabbed a pen.
OK. Focus. She could do that now. No excuses. Figure it fucking out. It was a simple plan, wasn't it? A simple genius plan.
The life raft. Fix it; inflate it at the Fun Fair.
The generator. Either at the fair or the mine. Had to be one of them. Had to be.
She just needed to put everything together, and then she'd be golden.
The game would be hers again.
Andrea looked down at the journal. She tapped pen against paper. She doodled for a while.
It was a long time before any words came.
---------------------
Some time later, she walked up to Ray Dawson. Ray-J Dawson himself, who
a fucking lifetime ago had teased her in the mall parking lot after she'd made a deal. She'd bought some Vicodins off him. Sure would be nice to have those now.
She looked down at the papers she carried. Yeah, like Ray gave a shit. He'd spent most of the last few hours off by himself. Andrea didn't know if Ray had any desire to leave this place at all, let alone tromp around the whole island with her on a scavenger hunt. There wasn't exactly a deep streak of optimism running through this area. Andrea had tried to outline her genius plan; she'd tried to at least sell them on the possibility of it. because if nothing else there was still a chance
(there had to be a chance, had to be, had to be--) of it working out. They had to go somewhere, so why not the Fun Fair. Ride the Ferris Wheel. Get some cotton candy. Look around for escape tools without alerting the Mod Squad somehow.
And then of course the announcement had blared over the speakers and declared the Southeast Woods a dangerzone. Which meant that any sojourn to the fair would involve going all the way around the mountain. Real fucking cute, Danya.
"Hey Ray."
Ray was standing above where he'd buried Annaliese Hansen. He'd loved her or something. Rosa Fiametta was also somewhere nearby, under the ground. Felicia had been her paramour. Andrea had come across a few other spots that looked like hastily-dug graves during over the last week or so. Maybe she should have been the island's resident mortician instead of the resident Liz Polanski wannabe.
Ray was still looking down at the grave, and she tried again.
"I, my dad was a funeral director. Don't know if you knew that or not. Raymer & Schenn. He'd uh... I have no idea what he'd actually say."
Well, so much for that dream. She'd never wanted it anyway. If her time on this island had convinced her of anything, it was that the whole fucking business of funerals and burials was pretty pointless on the whole, wasn't it?
No offense, dad. She actually thought her father had felt much the same at times. But of course, he wouldn't tell his customers that.
"But uh, I know that doing this shows that you really, well, cared about her. So.. now everyone'll know, no matter what happens, they'll know that. I think my dad would say that it'll always be a symbol of that. Hell of a lot better than I'll get or, well, most of us will."
Damn SOTF. Making her talk like this.