I lay in bed, wanting to awaken fully, but I was distracted by the sensation that my eyelids were evidentially fused onto the eyes themselves. 

            I felt terribly stiff, as though I had been a part of a very rough night that I seemed to have no recollection of.  Even with my eyes closed and lying motionless, I still had the sense that I wasn't where I would have assumed.  The bed felt a bit too firm, the sheets slightly softer than I was prepared for, and yet it was all very familiar.

            What was going on?  I couldn't remember how I had gotten to Ben's house, let alone his bed.  We must have had a date, but I couldn't remember what we had done.  The sick feeling radiating through me was giving the impression that perhaps wine had been involved.  Insane amounts of it, by the feel of things.        I paused to listen to his breathing, a comfort in my uncomfortable state, but froze when I realized that what I heard could not have been coming from him.

            All at once, flashes of the previous night came back to me.  On a normal day, it would have knocked the wind right out of me, but in my current state, I thought I might die from the pressure building in my head.

            "Oh god," I croaked.  My voice sounded as though I was choking on sand.  My body was trying to sit up before my brain had given the all clear, and I regretted it immediately.  My eyes managed to flutter open, only to be blinded by sunlight flooding in through the windows, and my head began to spin wildly,

            "And how are we feeling today?" A voice beside me asked.

            I turned, slowly, to look at Callie, who was curled up beside me, smiling, in Ben's bed.

            I could not have been more confused. 

            "Trash can is by the bed," she informed me.  "In case you are going to get sick again."

            "Again?"  I tried to clear my throat, and could feel that indeed, I'd had a rough night.  "How bad was it?"

            "Well, for someone who I don't think ate anything yesterday," she began.  "I am pretty impressed on the sheer volume you managed.  I was a little concerned you were going to hack up a kidney or something though."

            "Please tell me I hallucinated the whole day," I groaned.

            "You actually remember it?" she asked.

            "Parts of it," I qualified.  "I remember what I said to Ben," I shuddered.  "I remember going to that stupid party.  Creepy Craig.  Oh ick.  Did I imagine people getting punched?"

            "No," she grinned proudly.  "That was real."

            "Well done, sweetie!"  With all the energy I could muster I managed to extend my hand for a pitiful high five.

            "And, um," I went on.  "I remember Ben, uh, coming for me."

            "You weren't real coherent after that," she gave me a sympathetic look.

            There was a brief pause where she allowed me to try and sit up all the way.  "So, where is everyone?"

            "Nate went to work last night from here, after we were all sure you weren't like, dying of alcohol poisoning."  I flinched at her words.  "Then he went back home after his shift to sleep.  And Ben went to work this morning like normal."

            My head was flooded with questions, some I was aching to have answered, others I was too afraid to hear them asked, let alone to be presented with the responses. 

            "And," I hesitated.  "Why am I here, and not at Grams?"

            "Well," she inhaled deeply.  "We debated taking you to the hospital, but even as gone as you were, you couldn't have been more against the whole idea.  And although I told Ben that I would keep a really close eye on you all night, he was pretty insistent on watching you himself.  So, he brought you here, and we all stayed."

            "You all stayed here?"

            "Sure!" she smiled.  "Nate passed out in the guest room since he had to work in a few hours, but Ben and I were with you pretty much all night."

            My face turned bright red.

            "He was in here?"

            "Oh yeah," she chuckled.  "Couldn't kick the guy out!          He was so worried about you that he sat there all night," she gestured to a chair that had been pulled up beside the bed.  Sure enough, sitting next to it stood a trash can.  "He even slept in it after a while.  I told him I would go stay with Nate or on the couch or something, but he wouldn't hear of it."

            Typical Ben.  Taking too much responsibility, and feeling needlessly guilty for my stupidity, and worrying about someone who didn't deserve the consideration.  Of course he would saddle himself with watching over me.

            I wanted to know more, I wanted to ask her for every little detail about his behavior, but I knew that would only lead me to hope for a resolution that was just not in the cards for me.  I couldn't allow myself to toy around with the idea of saving he and I.  I had managed to make peace with our ending, and just because he had merely proven once again to be the picture of human perfection, and done so much for me the night before, did not mean that I would confuse that with anything that might prolong the inevitable.

            "I feel like such an idiot," I cringed, happily changing the subject from Ben specifically, but stinging from the reality of my night.  "I can't believe I let myself get that drunk."

            "Believe me," she sighed.  "You are not the first person to let that happen, hon.  And I am not sure if it was just alcohol that got to you last night."

            "The smoke cloud?" I wondered.  I had been aware of it not being strictly tobacco, but hadn't thought it could have been a big contributor to my low tolerance.

            "Maybe," she considered. "I was thinking something a bit more intentional."

            I blinked through my memory haze, trying to put her words together.

            "You think someone gave me something?"  My voice came out a bit hysterical sounding.

            "It's possible, but I don't have any way to know for sure."

            "Why?" I gasped.  "Why would someone do that?" 

            She stared at me solemnly for a moment, as if hoping I would be able sort something out, if only given the chance.  The pieces weren't fitting properly at first.  I couldn't imagine why someone would do such a thing, or what the end result was supposed to have been. 

            Another memory was trying to flash its way back to me, but my subconscious was working overtime to keep it hidden.  It occurred to me that this particular thought had been around for a while, but I had never wanted to address it.  My memory from the previous evening only strengthened its ability to break free.  Despite fervently wishing I would never have to acknowledge it, it wasn't about to go away again.

            The air in my chest pushed itself in a sharp gust, as though someone had slapped me hard on the back, and my eyes gaped as I looked at Callie.

            "See?" she forced half a smile.  "You aren't the only idiot."

            I shook my head hard to clear the idea from my mind.  It didn't work, but instead made me feel more nauseous.  "Is that why you hate Allison?"

            "I probably should have told you about it earlier," she spoke, seeming less her spunky self, and more like an adult than I had ever seen her.  "But it isn't my favorite story, you know?"  I nodded silently.  "I used to be friends with Allison.  It was after my first semester of college.  I hadn't done great in school, I wasn't sure of what I was doing there.  The whole not knowing that I wanted to be when I grew up thing, I guess.  So I came home for winter break, and ran into her.  She had a place of her own, and was working, and partying, and I was really jealous.  It seemed a lot easier, and there was a lot less pressure than I was dealing with.  I spent a lot of time with her those weeks, and when it came time to go back to school, I panicked, and she offered to let me be her roommate.  I was jazzed about not having to go back, and we had been having a blast, so I quit school and moved in.

            "Right away, I was miserable.  She and I just have very different ideas of what's good fun, I guess.  She was into the dating scenes, and had lots of different guys she was going through.  I am more of a one at a time kind of gal.  Anyway, after a few months, I had started dating this guy from the tech school in Saint Charles.  His name was Cory, and I was very into him.  We started to get really serious, and I would spend a lot of time at his place, or he at Allison's and mine.  We had even talked about moving in with each other after eight months or so. 

            "Well, one day we had a fight.  I mean, we had argued before obviously, couples do that.  But it was our first real fight.  It was stupid.  Of course it was stupid.  We'd had plans one night, and he broke them, saying he had to study for a big test, and I found out later that his friends had convinced him to go out to some big party instead.  I had a right to be annoyed, but at the time, was too young and ridiculous to know I was being a complete idiot with how I reacted.

            "So anyway, I was super pissed after our fight, and had gone home to mope.  Allison was there, getting ready to go out, and I vented to her about all of it.  You know how it goes.  You start complaining, and then all of a sudden it is a full blown man bashing, even though the guy didn't do anything horrible enough to deserve all of it."

            She paused, and looked guiltily at me, and I understood her reference to our hidden in the woods spy session the previous day.         "Yeah, you get it," she went on, as I listened in silence.  "After an hour, she'd gotten me worked up into this huge tizzy, thinking he had done me so wrong.  It was weird though, because even though I was saying how awful he was, and how wrong he had been, deep down, I didn't feel like it fit.  Like, I knew I was making too big a deal out of it, but it was sort of fun to get carried away.

            "She convinced me that the thing to do, to take my mind off it all, was to go with her to the party she was heading to.  I am sure you can guess where the party was..."

            I could.

            "So I got all dressed up, and went out with her," she explained.  "Imagine the party we were at last night, but just eight years ago.  The story of my fight with Cory went around fast.  People were handing out drinks, I took them.  Got completely carried away.  Two hours in, I was so gone I could barely stand, and Cory was being painted as the cruelest guy in the universe, and I was going along with all of it.  Was weird, but it felt good to have all these people on my side, even considering who they were, you know?

            "So, being young, pissed off, and completely hammered, I clearly wasn't making any good decisions.  There was a guy who was hitting on me, and at first I wasn't having it because well, even though I was being an idiot, I was still in a relationship.  The other girls, Michelle and of course Allison, were egging me on, saying that I should enjoy flirting the night away.  Make Cory jealous and all that.  Childish, yeah, but did I mention that I was young and stupid?"

            She took a very deep breath, and stared off towards something behind my head.  I had felt terribly nauseated already, but having an idea of what was coming next was making me feel like the adjacent trash can, may be necessary. 

            "I won't torture you with the details," she sighed.  "But I did flirt.  That was really the last thing I remember, was laughing and macking back on the guy.  When I woke up the next day, I was on that god awful couch, same as you."

            "Oh god," I gagged.  "You were..."  I couldn't manage the word.

            "I don't think so," she answered thoughtfully.  "I have been over it in my head a thousand times, trying to find a little bit of the night that I hadn't remembered before.  My gut tells me I just got carried away and slept with him.  Not at all my proudest moment, and certainly not something I would have chosen to do under normal circumstances.  But, it was my choice to drink what I drank, and my choice to play along with all the rest of it.  I completely regret it, and there is always that question of whether or not I had a say in what happened, but there isn't much I can do about that now."

            "Did you go to the police?" I squeaked.

            "The idea of going public saying that I am not sure if I meant to or not, but I had sex with some guy that I willingly flirted with and got smashed with all night long, and pretty much feel that I did in fact agree to have sex with him, but don't really know, didn't seem like a grand idea."

            "But, Callie," I stammered.  "It could have been--".

            "I know, and believe me, I think about it more than I would like," she flinched a bit.  "Look, I can't change what I did or didn't do, or what happened.  All I can do is make damn sure I never let it happen again.  That includes to you," she winked.

            I shrank down into the bed in shame.

            "I found out later that it was a bit of a set up," she continued.  "Allison was never one to stay faithful to a guy, and it seemed to confuse her that I was.  Even when I was with Cory and there hadn't been a fight, she always tried to get me to go to bars with her, to go pick up guys.  I wasn't ever interested as, well, you go to bars to meet guys and hook up, and I already had someone.  I went with her a few times, but she always tried to put me in a wingman spot, and I wasn't comfortable with it, so I stopped going.

            "It sounds crazy to say that it was her goal that I end up being an idiot and sleeping with that guy, but I swear that is what happened," she insisted.  "I am even more confident in that now after what happened to you last night.

            "You see, once Cory found out what I had done, he broke up with me.  No second chances, no nothing.  That was it.  Not that I blamed him at all, honestly.  And even though I was completely crushed by this, my dear friend Allison seemed very pleased.  Downright jubilant, even.  She thought I should just snap out of all of it, not be sad about Cory, or freaked about the party, and just hop right back into the scene with her.  It bothered me enough to make me suspicious, and eventually, I asked around.  She made it known that Cory was such a dreadful guy," she rolled her eyes.  "And that she was only trying to help me move on from a bad relationship.  In reality, she knew that if I were to have to come clean that I had been with another guy, chances were very high that my boyfriend wasn't going to be very understanding."

            "So, she sucked at relationships," I hedged.  "And wanted to sabotage yours?"

            "Pretty much," she agreed. 

            "I knew there was a good reason to hate her," I muttered.

            "Well, I have even more reason for you now," she frowned.

            I winced.  "What do you mean?"

            She took a deep breath.  "When I went outside to take that call from Nate last night, right before I came back inside to get you, I got stopped by Christine Brant."  I remembered seeing Christine at the party, having appeared to be the source of the giant smoke cloud.  "She knew about what had happened to me before, not shocking because obviously the whole town knew, but she told me she had heard Allison say something that even though it wasn't her business, she thought I should know.

            "She said that she had heard Allison on the phone with someone earlier, saying that she had gotten Michelle to track you down and invite you.  Christine seemed to think it all sounded kind of fishy, the way she was laughing, and how they were talking about you.  It all just sounded to me like they were trying to set you up into something bad.

            "When I tried to come back in to get you, they kept saying I wasn't welcome at the party anymore.  Michelle was being a huge, snarky bitch, and Sandy and Mary were right there with her, so I knew it had to have something to do with Allison."  She looked at me regretfully.  "I am so sorry I didn't get back in to you sooner.  It's not like I feel my most comfortable there anyway, but I was outnumbered, and didn't know where you were, so the only thing I could think to do was to call Nate again and have him come help."

            "Don't apologize!  I am the moron that brought you there in the first place," I insisted.  Then, something she'd said pulled at me.  "Wait, did Christine say who she thought Allison was talking to?"

            "Yeah, she did."

            I waited.

            "Amber," she hissed.  "I believe you are familiar with her work?"

            My jaw dropped open with a popping sound.  Callie watched my face as I put all the pieces together in my head.

            "Oh my god," I gasped.  "You have got to be kidding me!  So, what?  Amber recruits Allison to, what, convince me to hook up with that freak last night?"

            "Something like that" she nodded slowly.  "See, I knew she saw us when she went to Ben's, at least when she was pulling in, if not when she was leaving, but I was more focused on what we thought Ben had done to think what it meant that she had spotted us.  I think she was hoping we would be there.  Michelle had called a while before inviting you to the party, and then Amber showed up.  I think that Amber was trying to set you up so that you would make the same dumb ass mistake that I did.

            "However, I don't think that they ever expected me to actually show up with you, and so it's not like they had the time to let the guy put the moves on you, or maybe they just realized you weren't the type to get as carried away as I had, so when I went outside, they ran you into that room."

            "But why?" I shrieked through my charred throat.  "Why would they do that?"

            "Because they were hoping that if you had to go crawling back to Ben and explain that you had been with someone else, that he would peace out to you just like Cory did with me."

            "That is crazy!" I shook my head.  "What kind of people would sit around and plan something like that?"

            "Max, we live in an insanely small town, with very little to offer outside of gossip," she sighed.  "Believe me, people are capable of that and much, much more."

            My head was spinning faster.  "But, Amber, why would she--".

            "Sweetie, I think she was trying to pull the same thing with him too," Callie suggested.  "I think she was hoping that she would go there and get him into bed, and then if Allison was successful with you, well then, there wouldn't be many relationships that could handle all that nonsense in one day, know what I mean?  It was a very thorough plan."

            "So all that yesterday was just to try and break Ben and I up?"  I was dumbfounded.

            "Sure looks like it," she declared.

            My chest suddenly felt very heavy.  "It's funny.  They didn't need to go to all the trouble, I am sure it would have ended on its own soon enough."

            "Oh yeah," Callie furrowed her brow.  "I meant to talk to you about that."

            And then she smacked me on the back of the head. 

            "OW!" I yelled, blinking through the stars of my already unstable head.  "What the hell!"

            "Look, you do what you need to do with Ben, stay together or not," she frowned at me.  "But all this talk that you don't deserve him, or that he would realize he is better off without you?  I'll be damned if I let anyone talk about my best friend like that."

            "Did you have to hit me?" I whined.  "Could have written me a note or something, geez."

            "I felt it would really help drive my point home."

            I flopped back onto the bed, feeling pitiful, and embarrassed. 

            "God, you all must hate me," I groaned.  "I pull everyone into my giant world of crazy."

            "Dear," she grinned, and lay down next to me.  "I would never empty the puke bucket of someone I hated."

            I flushed hard and groaned again.

            "And besides, thanks to you, I got to punch Allison in the face!  If you ask me, that makes everything look a bit brighter!"

            "That was absolutely brilliant by the way," I said proudly. 

            "And Ben socked out the jerk too, that was pretty cool."

            I had to ask.  "It was him, wasn't it?  Creepy Craig was the guy from your party?"

            She inhaled slowly before answering.  "Yeah, it was.  Although, I wasn't smart enough to have named him Creepy Craig at the time," she laughed.

            I chuckled dryly with her for a brief moment, but the motion set my stomach off again in a very unpleasant way.

            "Well," I cringed.  "With all the trouble I caused, take solace in the fact that I am pretty sure I am being punished with a slow and painful death right now."

            "Ben gave me full run of the manor while he is at work," she giggled.  "Can I make you some tea or something?"

            I gave her a beatific smile.  "You are in fact an angel, aren't you?  Well, the kind of angel that knocks you in the head before making you tea, but an angel nonetheless."

            She bent down and gave me a quick kiss on the forehead before bouncing, albeit carefully so as not to jar the hung-over person, and flitted off to the kitchen.

            I had been resisting the urge since the moment I had managed to pry my eyes open, but now, all alone with the thoughts I had swimming in my head, and the ever more turbulent churning in my stomach, I knew my vomiting willpower had reached its end.

            My body was not pleased with the forced motion that sent me from the soft confines of the bed, and stumbling into Ben's bathroom, where I began retching as soon as I reached the toilet.  I figured, the least I could do at this point was to make the trip to the commode as opposed to partaking in the trash can again.  I knew I would be giving some serious thought as to a gift to be given to Nate, Callie and Ben, for not only rescuing the damsel in distress, but also dealing with her repeated bouts of puking.  I still owed Callie a fruit basket for that whole punching the evil chick thing as well.

            After I was sure I was finished getting sick, for the moment at least, I slid my way across Ben's beautiful black and white tiled floor, and propped myself up against the bathtub.  Things had become such a mess.  I took some solace in the fact that at least part of it wasn't a direct result of my own boundary-less stupidity, but resulting from a clique of real life, grown up, mean girls.  Not much solace, as quite frankly, I had managed to piss all over pretty much everything well enough on my own. 

            Where had I gone?  I may have never been known for my sage wisdom or anything, but I had never, not even in my living it up college years, been as irresponsible and spastic as I had become over the last few months.  Somewhere along the line, I had lost myself, or at the very least covered up the real me in nonsense.  I was very quick to place all the blame on my return to Biddleton.  It was as though that first day, driving back into town, smelling the unfortunate essence of my childhood, had managed to knock sensibility right out of me.

            Or maybe not.  In the spirit of honesty, I had to admit to myself that just because Eric and Carmen had chosen the week of my Gram's death to inform me of their budding relationship, didn't mean it had anything to do with my return.  It had seemed neat and tidy to place it onto the pile of insanity that seemingly first began with my grandmother’s demise, but in reality, it had been brewing for some time before that.  Just because I had been too stupid to realize it before they came clean doesn't link it to this place. 

            No, my mistakes were deeper rooted than my homecoming.  It was reassuring somehow to tie it all up with a little Biddleton bow, to place all the blame on geography.  Whether I liked it or not, I had to acknowledge that even without this place, I wasn't as grown up and polished as I would have liked to imagine I was.  Entering into a relationship with Eric, certainly knowing deep down that type of person he was.  Even without the affair with Carmen, I knew he wasn't my perfect fit.  Being raised on loneliness had clouded my judgment enough and allowed my fear of being alone again to work at a relationship that never warranted the effort.

            Even my career.  Could I even call it that, by the point I had reached?  Supposedly I claimed to be a photographer, but as I sit, with my cheek pressed gratefully against the cool edge of Ben Stevens’s bathtub, it occurred to me that somewhere within Gram's house, there was a box, still sealed tight with packing tape, the contents being all of my camera equipment.  Not so much as thought about since my arrival. 

            This saddened me.  I loved photography, it was something that had been a very secure part of my soul since I happily picked my major in college.  It was a perfect fit, something that was so obvious once I made the choice.  And I had been very happy with my chosen field as an adult.  I was good at what I did, fairly successful even.  Even with that, I had always insisted on being freelance, never taking any sort of full time, or even lengthy job at any time.  I wasn't willing to commit myself anywhere, no matter how great the draw.

            It was spilling through my head quickly now.  I had spent many hours insisting to myself that I wouldn't allow any roots to be placed in Biddleton.  I wouldn't fall for Ben, I wouldn't start working from here.  I had even refused to re-subscribe to a magazine I loved, and had received for years, for the simple fact that I had balked at the idea of putting Gram's address as my own.  Even knowing why I did it, I couldn't find a drop of logic within the plan.

            What a contradiction I had been living.  Refusing to allow myself to create a home, and yet choosing to latch onto a relationship that was doomed before the first date.  All a way to give myself evidence that the world was in fact evil, and there was nowhere that I belonged. 

            I had been blaming my return to Biddleton for everything, but it was becoming clear to me that I had never allowed myself to live away from this place, no matter how many miles I put between us.  I thought that by running away, by abandoning ship as soon as I was legally allowed to escape my mother's custody, that I would break free of the spell, and all the scars would just fall away.  Disappear, never to affect me again. 

            What a ridiculous notion. 

            How had I ever expected to just snap my fingers and be normal?  I am sure most therapists would agree that a lifetime being raised by my mother all by itself would be grounds for periodic psychotic breaks, let alone being the town jester all the while.  Even so, it's not like I had the worst upbringing there ever was.  On the other side, even people with lives that I would have considered to be perfect certainly have their own closeted skeletons to be dealt with. 

            Even worse than my error in dwelling in the damage that has been done from a lifetime in Biddleton, was choosing to ignore all of it and then running away.  One of the most basic principles of life is realizing that where we come from, every experience we have, is what makes us who we are.  Trying to hide from it, pretend that it isn't there, has only served to keep me from knowing who I really am.  I had been telling myself that there was a Biddleton-less version of me that was worthy of the likes of Ben, but how could I know that if I wasn't even sure of who she was either?

            My epiphany was surging through me, even more powerful than my epic hangover by that point.  I knew what I needed to do.  My issues with Biddleton, and the mean girls, and even Ben would have to wait.  It was time to stop hiding, to stop making excuses.  It was time to take a breath, and figure out who I really was, underneath all my carefully placed defenses and protective tricks.

            I heard Callie making her way back towards the bedroom, and with my newfound energy, I pulled myself up and went to the bathroom door to meet her as she entered Ben's room, a mug of tea in each hand.

            "Hey," she smiled brightly.  "Are you feeling better?"

            "Much," I answered honestly. 

            "You look, um," she appraised me while handing me a mug.  "Something."  She laughed, still looking at me.  "You alright?"

            "I have just had a tremendous moment of clarity while vomiting in my boyfriend’s bathroom, actually," I grinned, and took a sip of the hot tea. 

            "I am all ears," she chuckled. 

            "I need your help, Callie," I admitted.  "I have a plan."