Part Two, Chapter Nineteen: Anger

Another day, another session of getting her ass beat by Lin for an hour.

Things had been relatively uneventful for the past couple of weeks. Beatrice was grateful for the momentary lapse in stress. Well, at least for her anway. If anything, Charlie was three times as stressed as usual. Between hardly being able to go in public, and trying to get her finances together, Beatrice had hardly any time to hang out with her. When she did

Especially since she started actually going to work. Speaking of—

She was currently laying flat on her back on the sticky blue mat, out of breath and covered in sweat. Lin walked over to her, his hands on his hips. It looked so cocky. His attitudes pissed her off even more than being thrown onto the mat.

"You know what your problem is, don't you?"  He said it as if it should have been obvious.

She sat up, and used the hem of her shirt to wipe the sweat from her eyes.

"What?"

"You're too angry." He said. "It's getting in your way. You're fighting with white hot rage, and it's foolish."

Her first instinct was to snap at him that he didn't know what he was talking about, but she winced at the cruel irony of her thoughts. He was right. She kept her mouth shut and nodded.

"Don't let your anger control you like that. You need to be calm and rational in a fight. You need to think through your actions. You need a clear head to do that thinking fast." He said. "You need to let your anger go."

She closed her eyes and breathed out, shaking her head from side to side.

"You don't understand."

"You don't think I've been angry like that before?" He said. "I was a closed nineteen year old, growing up with a lot of eyes on me once. I know what it's like to be angry, Beatrice."

She winced at the way he said her full name. She closed her eyes and exhaled, and shook her head.

"I don't know how to let it go. I feel like it's the only thing that makes me strong."

She expected him to berate her, but there was a brief moment of silence before he stood up and extended his palm to her.

"Stand up." He instructed.

She did as he said and stood up, raising her firsts back into position. He did the same.

"What are you angry about?" He said, throwing a punch her way.

It took her by surprise, so she dodged instead of blocking it.

"Uh, like right now, or...?"

Another punch was sent her way, but this one she managed to block.

"Don't think too much about it. Just tell me."

She swallowed and nodded.

"I'm mad at you sometimes." She said. She threw another punch, but he swiped her hand away easily. "I still feel like what happened to TJ was your fault sometimes."

She expected her words to upset him, for him to falter at the pain she knew it would cause him, and give her an opening. It didn't happen. His face remained blank, focused, his hands easily fending off everything he threw at her.

"Anything else?" He asked.

Automatically, her brain shifted to the next most obvious topic.

"I want to kill my fucking mom." She said, "I even get mad when I see other people with parents that love them. It pisses me the fuck off. I don't know why they deserve that and I don't."

The faster her heart beat, and the angerier she got, the better it felt like she should be doing. She tried to calm herself, to be more deliberate with her movements. She started to press into him a little more. None of her blows landed, but they got closer and closer.

"Well, for what it's worth—" he said as she swung at him. "My mother loves me. I think she's awesome."

Though she didn't say anything, she bristled internally, and immediately found her feet swept from underneath her.

"Fuck! Shit!" She spat.

"Get back up." He said.

Each time she got knocked down, it got harder and harder to swallow her pride and get back up again, but she managed it.

"How does holding onto your anger about these things help you?" He asked calmly.

Thoughts, excuses, insults; they all flew through her head, but she couldn't find anything that justified how miserable she made herself. She shook her head silently.

"We're going again." He said his fists again. "What are you mad about?"

She exhaled and pursued him again.

"I'm mad at TJ." She said.

"Why are you mad at him?" Lin asked, his face just as straight as ever.

"I'm mad that he was always sacrificing so much for me, and putting himself in danger for my sake. I never asked him to do that. I never wanted him to do that. It made me feel like a burden."

"Are you a burden?" He asked, clearly trying to provoke her into giving him an opening.

Somehow, she managed to keep it together and kept her defenses up.

"I don't know. I've always felt like I was a burden on everybody, my whole life. On my mother, On TJ, on you— even on Charlie… that's why I—"

She cut herself off.

That's why I took this job I didn't want. So I wouldn't have to depend on anyone else ever again.

She faltered at her own thoughts, enough so that she dropped her stance completely and just kind of stood there. Lin immediately picked up on her change in attitude, and dropped his stance as well.

"Why don't we call it there for today?" He said.

She cut her eyes away.

"Sure." She mumbled.

As he walked by her, he patted her on the shoulder.

"You did good today. You always do good."

"Sure."

He said hello to somebody as he went out of the door, and she turned around to see her brother sitting on the floor agaisnt the wall. When he saw her he smiled and stood up to walked over to her.

"Hey B."

She tried not to look him in the eyes as she took a sip from her water bottle. How much of what she said had he heard, she wondered? It was possible that even if he didn't overhear her, Lin would just tell him later anyway.

"Hey TJ." She said, "What are you doing here?"

He shrugged.

"I'm here to pick up Lin." He said. "Plus it's not like I had anything better to do. It's not like I have a job or any friends or anything. I could go look at my dirt pots."

"I'm glad you still have your weird sense of humor."

He laughed, kind of to himself.

"Yeah— hey, why haven't you invited me over to your place yet—"

"Oh, uh, you see—"

"Or to meet your girlfriend either—"

Beatrice awkwardly pulled at a strand of her hair. She didn't want to talk to him about Charlie. She had been successfully been avoiding talking to him about Charlie for a while. She wanted that to continue.

She tried to come up with an excuse as fast as she could.

"Uh, well, you see— I'm— straight."

"... what?"

Beatrice mentally slapped herself.

That's the best excuse my brain can string together under pressure? Really?

Maybe I'm saying stupid thing becuase Charlie's personality is rubbing off on me, and we're doing that thing that lesbians couples do where they started to become so similar to each other that they eventually become indistinguishable.

No, no. If that was the case maybe some of her social skills would have transfered over to me, and I wouldn't have to live with the charisma of soggy toast.

Wait. What was I freaking out about? Oh yeah. Charlie. My brother meeting Charlie.

Shit, I guess I should just tell him the truth. It's not like I can hide it from him forever. Unless... No. No I can't. Shit.

"Uh, B—"

He blinked, obviously even more confused at her long stretch of silence.

"Sorry. I was having a inner monolog. I don't know if you know this, but I'm actually kind of stupid."

He opened his mouth to say something else, but she interrupted him before he could even get any words out.

"Listen, my girlfriend's dad owns the company that was holding you captive. I haven't invited you over to meet her because of that. I didn't want you to be upset with me."

She braced for some sort or negative reaction from him, but to her surprise, he started laughing.

"Yeah, I knew that." He said.

"Wh— you knew already?" She said.

"Yeah. What, do you think I just don't have access to the internet, or cable, or newspapers, or gossip from random people on the street, or—"

"Okay, okay. I get it." She said. "Does that mean you're not mad at me?"

"No, I'm not mad at you." He said cheerfully.

"Okay." She said, though she didn't entirely believe him. "When I get home I can ask her if we can all have dinner or something soon. I'll call you later and let you know."

"Okay, I'll call you later on tonight!"

Thirty minutes later, Beatrice was finally back at the apartment and ready to take a long nap.

"Charlie?" She said as she stepped into the apartment.

It was clean now, and the lights were dim.

It was quiet. Charlie was supposed to be home right now, but it was quiet.

Strange. She thought. Maybe she's working on something?

She pulled out her phone and gave Charlie a call. Buzzing filled the silent apartment, and Beatrice wandered around following it. The sound led to Charlie's nightstand, where the phone was still plugged up, buzzing with her contact name and a picture of Beatrice frowning and telling Charlie not to take her picture.

"Hm." She hummed to herself as she ended the call.

It wasn't like Charlie to leave her personal phone behind, even if she had only walked down to the store. Beatrice tried a couple of other numbers that Charlie had, but none of them got her an answer either.

An uneasy pit opened in her stomach, and she tried to calm herself down, to tell herself that everything would be okay. It was possible Charlie had gone to the lobby to meet someone. It was possible she had gone somewhere and just forgotten her phone.

A ping from her phone broke her thoughts, and she perked up. She thought it might be Charlie, telling her she was running late.

It was not.

It was a link from that same email that had been harassing her weeks ago. There was a set of coordinates at the bottom.

Her hand started to shake, and she swallowed as she clicked the link.

It was a video. Her hands started to shake as it buffered.

It loaded, and she suddenly found herself face to face with her mother.

"Hello Beatrice."