DeviousMonkey: Winthrop Prep -- Episode #9 -- Choices

We make choices every day. Which dress do I wear? Which space do I park in? Do I take the elevator or the stairs? We face easy choices and we decide them. But, some days, choices present themselves which ultimately decide us, who we are, and how we make all future decisions. As dawn broke, one heartbreaking decision had been made down at the boathouse.

Sheridan: I’m very sorry for what happened to your daughter.

Ted: Have they found Alison yet?

Sheridan: No. There’s an APB out, we’ve got roadblocks set up. She won’t get out of Sunset Valley.

Ted: I’m going to go see if I can get her to talk to me. Before I do, I know her, she’s going to want to see him before they take the body.

Sheridan: That isn’t a good idea. Coroner said there wasn’t much left of him to see.

Ted: Okay.

Sheridan: Ted? There’s something else I have to tell you.

6 HOURS AGO

Bianca woke on the cold, hard ground down by the boathouse. Once upon a time, the surrounding cabins had been used for changing facilities, the longest one a classroom for rowing instruction, back when Winthrop Prep was competitive. Now, it held a foosball machine and a couple of soda and snack vendors, for when kids would come down to the lake during their free time.

She gazed around, confused, until she remembered. She’d been in Franklin’s room, then Alison had been there and – did she hit her with the gun? Somehow, she got her here. Everything was fuzzy.

Alison: Oh, good, you’re awake.

Bianca: What the hell? Are those my clothes?

Alison: I know, you’re particular about other people wearing your things, but, you have to admit, Binx. I wear them better.

Bianca: Don’t call me that.

Alison: Well, I hope you had a nice rest, but now that you’re awake, our game can begin.

Bianca: What game? Did you bring me down here for Scrabble?

Alison: No, the stakes are a little higher than what you’d get out of a Scrabble match. Look around. Four cabins, one of them the very boathouse where your beloved Jasper deflowered you behind his best friend’s back. One of these cabins holds Jasper. Another holds Franklin. The other two hold nothing.

Bianca rolled her eyes. Alison was crazy and Bianca had zero interest in humoring her.

Bianca: Forget it. I’m not playing whatever psychotic game you want to play. I’m getting my best friend and my boyfriend and I’m getting out of here.

Alison: Ah-ah-ah. I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Binxy. See, these four cabins? They’re all rigged with explosives. You open one door, the other three detonate. So, I’d be careful before you go running into one. It might hold Franklin, it might hold Jasper, or might hold nothing at all, while the boys you love burn.

She was bluffing. She had to be. Explosives? But, what if she wasn’t? Bianca resisted the urge to go inside. She had to be cautious, until help came, because she couldn’t live with herself if Alison wasn’t bluffing and it got Franklin or Jasper killed.

Bianca: Why are you doing this?

Alison: You know why.

Bianca: Because of Pete?

Alison: Give the girl a cookie, she picked up on her context clues.

Bianca: Why do you care about Pete? What was he to you?

Alison: My father.

Bianca was stunned.

Bianca: Pete had children? He never mentioned them.

Alison: A child. Me. And, you took him away from us.

Bianca: Us?

Alison: My mother and me.

Bianca: Well, he was a monster. I did you a favor.

Alison: He was all we had and you killed him! And, now, you’re going to lose one of the boys you love. It’s poetic justice.

Bianca: Justice? Justice was Pete going over that railing and dying on my foyer floor. You have no idea the way he treated my mother and me.

Alison: He never loved your mother.

Bianca: I know that. Men who love women don’t say the hateful things Pete said to my mom.

Alison: When he left, he said he’d met a new mark, a real rich woman, multiple marriages under her belt, hit the jackpot when she married Ted Bishop, heir to the Bishop Fortune, and that it’d take a couple of months before she divorced him and he’d come home with money. He was going to get us out of Petunia Plains, finally. But, you killed him before he had the chance.

Bianca: And, I’m glad, too, Alison. That man didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as a woman.

Alison: Because he said a few cross words to your mother trying to get her to divorce him?

Bianca: Because he –

Alison: Because he what, Binx? Did he yell at you, too? Did he hurt your feelings? Did he make fun of your stupid headbands?!

Bianca: I don’t want to talk about this anymore.

Bianca walked away. Her heart was beating a million miles a minute and she wanted to believe it was fear, Jasper and Franklin being in this situation, adrenaline, something. But, it wasn’t. She could feel it, something inside her head, clawing at her memory. She could hear Pete’s voice in her head, telling her to remember everything that happened that night, and though she covered her ears and tried to ignore it, there was no escaping.

Alison: Aw, poor Bianca got yelled at by her stepfather. Let’s all feel sorry for her. Meanwhile, I avenge my dead father and I’m the devil?

Bianca: I could handle the yelling.

Alison: Then, what couldn’t you handle? Did he cut off your allowance? *Gasp* Put you on a budget?

Bianca: Leave it alone, Alison.

Alison: I don’t want to, Bianca. I want to know what my father could do that was so bad you could possibly justifying standing by and watching him bleed to death in agony.

Bianca: Please, don’t push this.

Alison: Tell me.

Bianca: No. Please…please don’t make me say it.

Alison: Say it! Tell me what Pete did to you! Come on, Bianca, don’t stand there sniveling, say it!

Bianca whirled around, pure rage boiling in her veins.

Bianca: He raped me!

She remembered, and it felt as if a train had just hit her. Bianca’s knees went weak and there was no air. Her stomach turned and she threw up in the nearby bushes, as that night finally came back in focus for her.

Bianca: They’d been arguing again, my mother and Pete. I heard them from the corridor that connected the parlor and the kitchen. He called her a slut, accused her of going off to meet some other man, then, when she denied it, he said of course she wasn’t. As ugly and terrible as she was, what other man would want her? No one ever stayed, they all left her and she was lucky he hadn’t walked out by now. And, then she apologized to him and she kissed him and told him she promised she would make it up to him that she had to

go out. I couldn’t believe it, he’d...

...been doing this to her for so long and she kept acting like it was okay, like it was her fault, and I couldn’t take it anymore. So, I called him out on it. I told him she was strong and beautiful and she deserved better than him. I begged her to leave with me, told her we could go home, we could go back to Daddy and he would give us a place to stay. I missed him so much.

Pete told me to stop interfering with adult business, then he slapped my face and my mother told me to apologize for being disrespectful to him. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. So, he slapped me again and she sent me up to my room.

After she left, Pete came upstairs. We argued, we fought some more. I thought I got away, that we struggled and he fell, but that wasn’t what happened. I didn’t get away, not then. He was so much bigger than I was, so much stronger. I knocked the lamp over and it broke and the lights went out. Then, he threw me down on the bed and he – oh God he –

Alison: You’re lying.

Bianca: I wish I were.

Alison: You are! You’re making that up to justify what you did! He was a good man, he would never do something like that! And, if he did, maybe you deserved it. Maybe it was karma.

Bianca: I don’t know what a thirteen-year-old girl could do to deserve that as karma. It’s funny, before you came along, every time I tried to be with Sam, I kept going back to that night and I couldn’t figure out why. But, then you distracted him and I found Jasper, this safe, warm place and he never once reminded me of that night. Sam’s hands were always Pete’s hands, but Jasper’s were his own.

Alison: So, you pick Jasper, then?

Bianca: What?

Alison: The game isn’t over until you’ve gone into one of the cabins.

Bianca: Are you seriously going to continue this? After I just told you what he did –

Alison: You are so dense! I don’t care what he did to you. All I care is what you did to him! And, to my mother.

Bianca: Your mother?

Alison: She saw you. I missed him so much I couldn’t sleep at night, so she went to find him. And, she did. She found him and she saw you standing over his body, listening to him beg you to help him. She was never the same. Something just broke inside her, her memories were all jarred. She’s in one of those assisted living places now and she never remembers anything, to bring the wash in, to take her medicine, me. But you, Bianca? She remembers you. Always.

Bianca: I didn’t know anyone was watching.

Alison: Someone is always watching. You should get a move on, Bianca. No one’s coming to save you.

Bianca: You’re sick.

Alison: An eye for an eye, it’s what the good book says. You took from me and now I’m taking from you.

Bianca: You bitch.

With a smug smile, Alison turned away from the lake and went back to the cabins. Bianca followed, unable to contain it any longer. She pounced.

Alison: Forgot to tell you one more thing, Binx.

Bianca: What?

Alison: The detonators are on timer.

She looked at her watch.

Alison: You’ve got about sixty seconds left before every damn one of these cabins goes up in flames and you’ll have no Jasper, no Franklin and nothing but memories of my father to keep you at night.

Bianca couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Sixty seconds? Her mind flashed back to each of them.

...To Franklin, who’d always been there for her, the only real friend she’d ever had. She could tell him everything and he never once hurt her....

...But, neither had Jasper. He was the boy she’d never expected to love, and he loved her in a way she never thought anyone could. How did she pick between them? How did she kill one of them?

Bianca: Please, don't do this! They're innocent!

Alison: No such thing. Thirty seconds, Bianca. How about if I make it easier? Jasper’s in the boathouse. Franklin’s in the one behind me. Who’s it going to be? The best friend or the boyfriend? Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Bianca, sobbing, made her decision. She ran for the door and threw it open …

...and she saw him, tied in a chair on the other side, just as the other three cabins exploded.

Ted: Bianca? Honey, I need you to talk to me.

Bianca: How is he?

Ted: Franklin’s fine. They got him to the hospital. His injuries were minor.

Bianca: What about Jasper?

Ted: I’m so sorry.

Bianca: I want to see him.

Ted: Honey, you can’t. Even if the Sheriff would let you, I wouldn’t. You don’t need to see that.

Bianca: You saw him?

Ted: When the coroner was bringing him out of the remains of the cabin.

Bianca: What did he –

Ted: I can’t tell you that.

Bianca: I need to know! I need to know what I did to him!

Ted: They recovered what they could of the body, some of it is still in the wreckage.

Bianca: Oh my God…

Bianca screamed and raged so loudly the firefighters could hear her over the remaining blaze and the crackle of snapping beams and floorboards.

Ted: Come here. Come here...shhh. I know this hurts, Bianca. If I could take this pain away from you, I would.

Bianca pulled away and ran down to the edge of the lake, where the coroner’s van had been parked, intending to see for herself. But, the van was already gone. Jasper was already gone.

Her mind took her back to the boathouse, to that night when she made love for the first time. To how Jasper had held her and asked nothing of her in return. And, now he was gone. He was gone and her soul felt empty.

Bianca: I went into the boathouse.

She said Jasper was in the boathouse and I went into the boathouse, but it was Franklin.

Ted: Alison is going to be found and punished for this.

Bianca: It’s my fault. I was an idiot for believing her. But, the seconds were counting down and I went with my heart. She knew I would. She knew Jasper was the one place that kept me safe from Pete and she made sure that I lost that!

Bianca began to cry and Ted pulled her close to him, holding her like he wished he’d held onto her all those years ago. If only he’d fought Rachel harder, then Bianca never would have been in that house and she wouldn’t be dying in his arms right now.

Ted: I spoke with your mother. We both agree that maybe it might be a good thing if you went to the Reynolds Center.

Bianca: For how long?

Ted: Just for observation. She contacted your doctors, they’re in agreement that with everything that happened tonight, it would be for the best.

Bianca: Maybe it is. I can’t face Franklin and I can’t be on this campus.

Ted: Okay. Just, wait here. I need to go finish speaking with Sheriff Sheridan.

Ted returned to the Sheriff, keeping his voice low, in case Bianca heard. He knew she remembered about what happened with Pete, but how much she remembered was still unclear.

Ted: I’m sorry, I had to go tend to her –

Sheridan: It’s alright.

Ted: You said there was something else?

Sheridan: She went into the building where Jasper was, I guess she was trying to help him and that’s how she got that wound on her face. But, when we pulled her out of the fire, she was asking for someone.