I REALLY WANT TO GET THIS STORY OFF HIATUS. I ALSO KIND OF JUST REALLY WANT TO FINISH IT.

I'm thinking like three to four more chapters, plus an epilogue? I don't know. I typically don't plan this stuff out.

Also, it's 2:57 AM and I should probably get to sleep.

Disclaimer: not mine, not mine, not mine. Disowning it because it sucks.

The screen went black. Ally cussed under her breath.

"Austin!" she called, in the most obnoxious voice she was capable of. "I neeeeeed you!"

Ally was still currently an honorary member of the Moon family. And Ally's laptop was still currently back at the Dawson household, where she'd forgotten to grab it the one time she'd gone back to get herself some clothes. She missed it, sure, but she would much rather be laptop-less than go back home. It was so full of bad memories now, her house. And it was so lonely and empty in there — her dad was still stuck in the hospital, and she went to go visit him every day after school like the good daughter she was. Other than that? No contact with that life she'd left behind.

She was surprisingly okay with this.

Like the dumb teenager she was, Ally had been repeatedly putting off the writing of her history essay until now. "Now", coincidentally, referred to the night before it was due — it was one of those essays that got assigned with several reminders along the lines of "This is a quarter of your entire trimester grade!" and she simply could not turn it in late. She refused to butcher her teacher's-pet reputation like that. And yeah, with the impending threat of exhaustion hanging over her like a fat black storm cloud the paper probably wouldn't be any good, but she wasn't going to slack off just because her father had cancer. What kind of flake would she be then?

She'd been on such a roll with her essay, and then Austin's stupid laptop had to go and die right as she was finally getting frustratingly close to the last paragraph. The whole ordeal made her want to punch Anthony, or Arthur, or whatever stupid nickname Austin had given his stupid laptop back when it was still cool to name your technology, for his timing.

Unfortunately, her fingers were stiff and cold from typing for like three hours straight. Any punch she threw now would probably be incredibly lame. This did not help her current mood.

She needed a charger pronto, but she didn't know where Austin kept his and he was all the way downstairs. She crossed her arms over her chest. Maybe he hadn't heard her or something. Unacceptable.

"Austin!" she yelled again, with more vigor.

"What?" thundered up the stairs.

"I need a charger!"

"You feed Carter?"

"What? No, that's not what I —"

"Hang on, I'm coming up."

He was there in a flash. Ally loved this about him: he would easily drop anything he was doing and as good as teleport to her assistance in a split-second, regardless of how irrelevant or small the matter might be. He must care for you a lot, remarked a small voice in the back of her head.

"Okay, what's up?" There was something green in his teeth. He must've been enjoying supper's leftovers.

"Charger," she replied. "Your stupid computer quit on me. Also, you have spinach in your teeth."

Austin, in turn, completely ignored this comment. "Ally. I own one charger and it is literally four feet away from you."

Oh. Yes. It was also already plugged into a socket, she noticed. The only one in his room.

Ally felt herself flush red. She'd interrupted his snack and forced him up two flights of stairs to do something she could've done herself — and she hadn't even tried to do it before she'd called for him. Here she was, relying on him for the exact little things she had promised herself she wouldn't rely on him for. In fact, she was deeply ashamed. How could she possibly not have noticed that charger?

"How could you possibly not have noticed that charger?" Austin said. She noticed that he was biting back a chuckle, which somehow made her feel even worse.

"Sorry," she mumbled quickly, reaching over to plug in the laptop. "Just kind of exhausted, I guess."

The laughter died on his lips. Instead he tilted his head and leaned against the door frame, studying her with his molten-amber eyes. It occurred to Ally how she must look: pale as milk, purple circles under her eyes, hair unwashed and tied back in a bun that was not the cute kind of messy. She was wearing the same clothes she'd wore yesterday, and the day before that. She'd forgotten to put on makeup in the mornings for three days straight now.

She must look like hell, and knowing Austin Moon, he was beating himself up for not being able to fix her.

"Hey, I'm fine." She smiled weakly. Thin and wan, sure, but still a smile. "No need to worry about me."

Austin didn't reply. His expression was unreadable. It startled her more than she thought it would.

She took his silence as an opportunity to study him: his tousled golden hair, his broad shoulders, the swoop of his mouth, the freckle on the left side of his neck. Every beautiful thing she loved about him. His lips were pursed slightly, which, if possible, made him all the more adorable.

"You know, I wish you wouldn't do that," he said finally.

Ally blinked. He wished she wouldn't check him out? What kind of straight white male wasthis boy?

"Sorry?" she said.

"Tire yourself out like this. Work so hard all the time." He shrugged and crossed his arms over his chest. "I wish you wouldn't."

"I don't work all the time," she said automatically. It was defensive and immediate, a natural reflex: he was worrying about her, and the best thing she could do for them both was convince him not to.

"Yeah, you do. Every single day after school you go straight to Sonic Boom to work from three-thirty to eight—"

"It's only manning a cash register— "

"—and then you come home and do pointless homework for hours on end—"

"That's just because I have to—"

"—and you insist on doing all your own laundry around this house even though you know my mom would be perfectly happy to do it for you—"

"I just don't want to outstay my welcome—"

"—and on top of all that you lie awake at night — no, don't look at me like that, you do and I've noticed. You need your sleep and you don't get it and it's taking its toll on you, Ally, just look at you! You're a mess and—"

"I know I'm a mess, okay? You don't have to keep reminding me—"

"My point is that you're making everything so hard for yourself because you're too damn stubborn to ask for help! It would be so easy, so easy, Ally, to ask your teachers to cut you some slack, or to go to bed an hour or two earlier, or even to get financial help—"

"Austin, listen—"

"No, you listen to me, Alls. All I want is for you to be okay, and I know you're not and that kills me. I want to help you. That's all."

"You are helping, so much. You're housing me and feeding me and—"

"No, not like that. I want it to somehow get through to you that don't have to be strong all the time. That it's okay to lean in on other people sometimes. That I just want to help."

His eyes had taken on a wild, desperate look. He ran his hands through his hair and fisted the gold locks in a white-knuckled grip. "But you just…you don't let me near you at all! You're so busy trying to put on a brave face, you're so obsessed with being strong and doing everything by yourself that you push me away, all the time, and…"

He trailed off. Ally felt sudden tears stinging in her eyes, but she willed them to stay shut up and sealed away. She wanted desperately to say something to him, but she knew any word that left her mouth would coax the tears out, so she kept silent.

He looked up at her and met her eyes, then. His were weary and dull. "It hurts, Ally. I feel…I don't know, rejected."

"Don't be childish."

"I'm not being childish, I'm voicing my feelings. Which, as you've so consistently reminded me, I'm really horrible at."

"Yeah, well, you're making me feel really horrible too. You can't turn this situation around and make it seem like it's all my fault, that's not fair."

"That's not what I'm doing. I'm just saying that if you maybe let me in for once, if you let yourself lean on other people once in a while…it could be so good for you, Ally. Just to take a break."

"You don't get it, do you?" Ally's voice cracked as the words left her throat, even though she was desperately trying to keep it calm and level. She was this close to getting angry. "I have spent my entire life sweeping up the pieces of other people's problems. My mom, my dad, even you. And it's hard, okay? Some days I don't want to be the custodian of your lives anymore, but I do it because there's no one else who will." Her hands tore frantically through her hair. She wasn't and had never and would never be good at talking, and she was grappling for the right words. "You, what you're doing right now, it's exactly what I didn't want you to do. You're cleaning up my mess for me when I can do it perfectly well myself. And I want that to get through to you."

The lines deepened around his eyes. "Ally—"

"Don't tell me that's stupid. Look, I don't need help, and I don't want to ask for it. I just…don't want to burden other people the way they've burdened me, you know?"

Austin scoffed. "A burden? You?"

"Yes, me. Forcing you all to help me and feel bad for me and all that."

"Forcing us? Ally, if anything we're the ones forcing help on you!"

"Exactly, and I don't want to be your pity show!"

"What the hell does that even mean?"

"My father is dying!" she cried. "Don't you think I feel awful about everything already? Don't you understand that pretending everything's normal right now is the only way I'm surviving? I can't, I can't feel sorry for myself because it will break me and that'll just be another fantastic mess for you to wipe up, Austin, and breaking down is the absolute worst thing I can possibly do right now! That's why I don't want to ask for help, okay? That's why I don't want your pity!"

She was so mad. Anger was rolling off of her in waves, radiating hot and bitter and tense to every corner of the room, unfurling its greedy talons, wrestling every rational thought out of her body, pumping her full of explosive adrenaline. How dare he. How dare he demand her to do for him the exact thing, the only thing that was impossible for her to do? How dare he make it even harder for her to stay calm and put together, when he knew she was trying so hard not to fall apart? It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair of him, and it wasn't fair on her.

It took her a second to realize that he hadn't replied to her outburst at all. Maybe he could feel it too, her rage; maybe it was eating out his heart the same way it was hers.

"You're crazy," he said finally. It came out an absurd, deathly quiet after all their yelling. "You're absolutely insane."

"Yeah?" The anger was fastening its nails, razor sharp, into her head, cracking open her skull and clawing apart her brain. "Then maybe you shouldn't be having this conversation with a crazy person. Maybe you're just feeling too rejected for that."

He furrowed his eyebrows and the patch of skin between them creased. "Alls—"

"Don't Alls me." She grabbed her favorite denim jacket from where it was strewn across his bed and tugged it on. She was suddenly acutely aware of how coarse the material was against her bare arms. "I'm leaving."

She didn't bother to stick around for his reaction. Instead she turned on her heel and stormed out of his bedroom, thundering down the stairs and pausing to snatch her scarf from the pegs beside the front door. She heard Mimi Moon call her name, but she couldn't find it in herself to care; she yanked open the door and slammed it shut behind her. The sound was a thunderclap in the quiet night.

The cold February air hit her like a wall, and she looped the scarf around her neck the way her mom used to do for her when she was little; despite her efforts, the chill bit through the fabric, brittle and sharp and prickling like it was stabbing her exposed skin with needles. She rubbed her arms through her jacket in an attempt to keep the temperature from settling in.

Now what?

She had no clue where she was supposed to go now. It had to be beyond ten in the evening, at least; she was dressed in sweatpants, a camisole, and her admittedly flimsy jean jacket. She hadn't bothered to tie her sneakers. She didn't even have her phone on her. Desperation started to claw its way up her throat, the talons tearing long vertical gashes into her flesh; the pain did nothing to dam the flow of tears on her cheeks. They were hot and stinging, but dried quick, leaving her face even colder than it was before.

Calm down, she told herself. Breathe and then rationalize.

She couldn't turn back to the Moons' house; although she had proved her point with Austin, it would be way too awkward to just bust in there again. So where else could she possibly go? To Trish's? No, they were still technically fighting. To her mom's? Nope, also still a battlefield. Besides, she didn't even know where her mother was. To her own house? That was the absolute last place she wanted to go.

What she did want was to drop down on the curb and cry into her knees, but that would do her very little good, and it was too cold for that to be satisfying.

An idea poked at the back of her brain. There was one place she could go…

Yeah, that would work. Besides, what other choice did she have?

With that thought in mind, she squared her shoulders, straightened her back, and trudged into the night.

omfg guys please don't be mad at me.

I know I say this like every chapter nowadays, but I really do mean it: I love you guys. I wouldn't be doing this without you.

~Mia