This choice: Follow Belinda and mediate with Taylor. • Go Back...Chapter #30How to Deal with a Guilty Conscience by: Nostrum   Now's your chance to do what Taylor brought you up here for. Just put your hands on Sawyer's brow, mutter the magic words, and if there's a mask on Sawyer it should pop off.
You're hovering over the unconscious student, your hands sweaty with anticipation, when you hear Belinda's voice blasting from the other side of the door. "Fancy meetin’ you here, Scott! You’ve got a lot of nerve!"
You pause. You're leaving your only friend to the mercy of someone who hates his guts.
You look down at Sawyer, who despite his drawn features looks as though he's only sleeping, and decide that he can wait. It sounds like Taylor needs you.
Belinda's bellows burst into the room as you open the door. "—and then, instead of calling and telling Mom and Dad what happened, you just ran away, and don’t have the guts to tell anyone until you leave Eastman and everything dies down! No, Mom!", she screams as her mother gently tries to restrain her. "I have to say this!"
Scott, who looks like he's trying to shrink up inside himself, shoots you a frightened, bewildered look.
So you jump between him and Belinda.
"Hey, hey!", you shout at her, and she looks at you like she's been slapped. "Hey; I know this isn't any of my business", you yell into the sudden silence, "but if you're yelling at Scott because he didn't come in before, why are you yelling at him now? Isn't late better than never?"
"He was a coward!"
"If he was a coward", you retort, "he wouldnt've come in at all!"
The girl snaps her mouth shut and glares at you. "Belinda, honey", her mother says, "you're not making anything better."
Belinda wheels and stomps off down the hallway. You, Scott and Mrs. Harrison watch as she disappears around a corner.
"I'm sorry, Scott", Mrs. Harrison says.
"No, I'm sorry", he replies in a wretched-sounding voice. "She's right, I should've come seen you earlier, told you."
"Is there anything you can tell us about how Sawyer—? What happened that day?"
"No." Scott folds his arms and stares at the floor a moment before looking up to glower at you from beneath his brows. "Except all of us, including Sawyer, got into a box of stuff out at Salopek."
Mrs. Harrison's lips disappear into a thin line. "I know that's what the company said about firing him. That he was—"
"It didn't have anything to do with that", Scott says. "It was something else." Still he holds your eye. "Well, maybe it was nothing," he says. "And it's all gone now."
"What was it?", asked Mrs. Harrison.
"Just a box of stuff in the distribution center. It was open because it was being returned to—"
"Was it toxic?"
"Ma'am?" Scott looks startled.
Now it's Mrs. Harrison's turn to hold his eye. "Tell me what it was, Scott. Because—" She swallows. "Because I don't know what we're going to do about Sawyer! He's stable, but he doesn't want to wake up! The doctors want to make more tests, but our insurance is already run out and—" She wipes tears away as they suddenly spring from her eyes. "Our only hope may be to sue Salopek. If there's something out there that caused this—!"
Scott is stunned into silence. So are you. You glance around, thinking that maybe you can edge back into the hospital room.
"Well, I don't know if I can help with that", Scott mumbles. "Like, I can't even say for sure what it was we were— What the stuff was. And it's gone now, returned to wherever it came from."
"But couldn't you—?"
"I'll think about it, Mrs. Harrison", Scott assures her. "Real hard, I'll try to remember what the stuff was. And I'll definitely keep in touch, and come up to see see Sawyer more often. Maybe that'll motivate him to wake up? In fact, I could go in now and—"
"Thank you, Scott." Mrs. Harrison squeezes his arm. "Even if you spend just a few minutes with him, that'd be nice."
You let out your breath—which you didn't realize you'd been holding—and turn to follow Scott into the hospital. Just a minute alone with him, if we're lucky, you think, and then we can—
But your heart sinks when Mrs. Harrison pushes ahead to lead you and Scott into the room. She sinks into a chair next to her son, and grips his hand.
Dammit!
--
You spend about twenty minutes in the hospital room with her and Scott. They talk in low voices about Sawyer, and Scott manages to make her smile a couple of times with reminiscences about him. You notice that he subtly tries a couple of times to get her to leave the room, but she won't budge.
Then Belinda comes in. She apologizes to Scott for yelling at him, and then it's the three of them talking.
Eventually it becomes clear that neither the mother nor the daughter are going to leave you or Scott alone with Sawyer, and so you make your farewells. Mrs. Harrison makes a special point of thanking you for coming; Belinda makes a point of apologizing to Scott again.
Only when you’re at the truck does Scott looks at you, and his face flushed red with anger, guilt and disappointment. "What the hell was that, Will? Why didn't you—? I told you to go in and—"
"I was worried about you! That girl was in there, and when she ran out and started yelling at you—!"
"It would'a been okay if you got the mask off Sawyer!"
"We can still do that! Maybe we could come up here tomorrow!"
That shuts him up for a moment, and he lapses into a mulish silence. You're halfway back to Acheson before either of you speaks again.
"I'm sorry I yelled at you", Scott says. "You're right, we can try again tomorrow, or sometime. And thanks for wanting to come out and save me from that tiger cub that Sawyer calls a little sister."
"Well, I'm sorry I didn't get the mask off him while I could. I guess my instinct was wrong there."
"No, your instinct was okay. You wanted to help me. I just wish— Well, nothing."
"No, what?"
"Well, that you'd thought it through a little more. But you didn't do wrong", Scott assures you.
You don't want to fall back into that awkward silence, so you ask Taylor to tell you the full story about him and Scott and Sawyer, from the top.
The story is a little confused, but it explains why Belinda was so mad at him. After Sawyer fell unconscious and they couldn't revive him, Taylor—in Scott's face—left his friend Scott—now wearing Taylor's own face—to talk to the cops, as Scott had been in a legal scrape before and it seemed best that someone answering to Scott's name not get involved. So Taylor ran away, and then Scott got himself killed later that afternoon. Since then, the remorseful Taylor has been fighting to give himself the courage to tell the Harrisons that he was there that fatal afternoon as well, even though he doesn't know what good it will do to tell them.
But there's more, additional details that catch your attention. The box they raided at Salopek held a lot more than the masks that they took. It also included some metal strips, some papers, a notebook, and more. You ask what happened to these.
"Some of it we left at Salopek, didn't even take out of the box", he says. "Scott and I split up the rest of it. I don't know what happened to the stuff he took. Maybe it's still at his—" Taylor catches and corrects himself. "Maybe it's still at my house. Or maybe my mom and brother got rid of it." He turns pale. "The rest of it I wound up bringing up to Eastman and hiding in one of the maintenance corridors. I just wanted to get it out of my—" Again, he stammers. "Out of my place. But I wanted to keep track of where it was."
--
Taylor drops you off at your place, and you're in a thoughtful mood as you climb the stairs to your room. Not even the noise of rap music coming from your brother's room can disturb you. Indeed, it only makes you more thoughtful.
Taylor has a brother who doesn't know he's alive. How would you feel if everyone thought something happened to you, and you couldn't see or talk to your brother again?
A week ago you'd have rejoiced at the chance to shake the little twerp off. Now, you know you'd be a lot less happy.
You mucked things up at the hospital today. Maybe you can make it up to Taylor by reintroducing him to his brother.
Okay, on that much you are determined. But there's also the other stuff that Taylor mentioned—the contents of that box he and his friends found at Salopek. You should try retrieving it all. But where should you look first?
Easiest thing would be to get Taylor to return to Eastman and retrieve the stuff that he hid. Or you could talk to Caleb, who is now working at Salopek, and maybe through him see if the original box is still there. That could be a very important clue, not only because of what is inside it but because of where it came from. Or you could combine this side quest with your main quest by approaching Taylor's brother, asking for stuff that Taylor left behind, and maybe that way lure the two brothers into a meeting where they can reconcile.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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