FicWad

A few minutes later Molly heard Patrick pull away from her house and laughing to herself she headed down the hall into the kitchen to grab a drink before going upstairs for the night. Upon entering the kitchen however she was met with a sight that shocked her to her core. Her father sitting at the kitchen table holding his head in his hands and looking like he had been crying. Seeing your father in tears is probably one of the scariest sights a child will ever view.
"Daddy?" Molly questioned from the kitchen doorway. She left the question open ended part of her hoping he would explain and the selfish part of her hoping he would just tell her to go upstairs and go to bed so she wouldn't need to know what was going on.
"Sit down Molly. We need to talk." When he responded with that Molly knew what the conversation would be about. The past few weeks since the family had moved had been esspecially bad. Her mother had been even more erratic then usual. Molly walked over to the table and pulled out a chair, carefully she pearched herself on the edge of it poised to run if the fight or flight instincts kicked in with her fathers news.
"It's your mom. We got into a fairly large argument earlier."
"What else is new? Where was Jamie during all of this?" Molly interrupted thinking at this moment only for her baby brother.
"Sean had taken him to the park to go sledding. Don't interrupt me." He responded before continuing, "Anyway, we got into an argument and she finally went upstairs to lay down. About an hour later I headed up to see if she had passed out yet and apparently she decided it would be a good idea to take what was left in her perscription bottle. And as her behavior has clearly proven the past few weeks, there was quite a bit left over."
"and..."
"She's in the hospital. Seventy-two hour lock up. You know the drill. She's clearly been in a manic state the past few weeks, I just didn't want to call her out on it."
"No, 'cause that would ruin the image of your perfectly unperfect marriage. Instead you let Sean, Jamie and I put up with the brunt of it while you work eighty hour weeks to get away from it. What did you tell Jamie? Sean? Everyone else?"
"Your mother is visiting your grandparents for a few days."
"Fine. I'm going to bed." Molly got up and walked up the two flights of stairs to her attic room. Flopping down on the bed she grabbed Sunny and snuggled up with her before finally letting herself sob.
A week later and things were slightly back to what passes for normal in the O'Conell house. Molly made sure her mother had been taking her pills regularly and because of that Maureen O'Conell had been the sweet loving mother she had been until Molly was twelve and she was diagnosed with having 'bi-plolar NOS'. Since the diagnosis her mother's life had been a series of high's and low's. During manic periods Maureen would berate her daughter and never find anything good with her, verbally abuse her husband, ignore her oldest son, and make fun of her youngest. During depressive periods she was just as nasty to every person in her family only usually alcohol was also involved during the depressive swings. During both periods things would be thrown, fights would be started--it just depended on the swing of the cycle if Maureen was screaming or crying during the fights. But the past week, well, things had been almost tolerable.
None of Molly's friends had any clue what went on in her home. Her friends in New York had never been allowed over the house, as per her own rules, and her friends in Glenview hadn't known her for long enough, or were just to busy, to even question as to why they never hung out at her house. Eventually though it was the middle of March and Molly was fairly settled in her new life. She had three great friends, Elyse Michaels, Patrick Stumph, and Matt Jennings. The four of them spent whatever free time they could together. Although between Elyse's job and internships, Matt's job at the record store and his schoolwork, and Patrick's job at the record store, his band and his work as station manager for their school station they didn't really have a whole lot of free time.
One day during the second week of normalcy she had even called them on the whole thing and had been told by Patrick to "come work at Empire with me and Matt." When she responded with,
"but I don't need a job." They had similarly replied, "and we do? We work 'cause we like it there. We don't want to be spoiled and spend our parents money. You should consider that one of these days."
Molly had shocked her three friends by responding to that not with a laugh and teasing them back; instead, she told them to go fuck themselves and stormed off. It was this reaction that promoted Patrick to show up at Molly's the following Sunday afternoon at the beginning of the third week of March.
"Molly?" Patrick asked as he climbed the steps to her bedroom, "Your brother let me in. You up here?"
"What are you doing here?" Molly asked him as she stood up from her desk. Standing there in the middle of the room the two teens shuffled their feet awkwardly and just stared at each other. Both knew this wasn't going to be a pleasant conversation. Finally Molly broke first.
"I'm fine Patrick. I know you guys were surprised by my reaction on Friday and I'm sorry. It was rude of me, I've just been really stressed out lately."
"Ok I'll buy that. But why?"
"and you're going to have to accept that its really none of your business."
"Molly, I'm your friend. I care about you."
"Yea...well. It's really none of your business."
"Fine," Patrick ground out sounding incredibly frustrated and more then a little pissed off, "just know that you CAN talk to me. I'm gonna go since you're obviously not in a talking mood." he turned his body poised to head down the stairs when she quickly shot out
"No wait! I'm sorry, please stay and hang out. I just don't wanna talk about what's had me stressed. Please be my friend and respect that?"
Patrick just raised an eyebrow as though to ask 'then what are we going to talk about?' Molly responded to the non-verbal inquiry with,
"Your band! How about you finally actually sit down and tell me about your band. Like whose idea was it to go with a Simpsons theme?"
"I've told you before, we had no idea it had anything to do with the Simpson's at the time."
And just like that the two friends flopped out on Molly futon and started talking for hours as they had discovered was only possible with the other person. One of them forgetting about the original reason for the visit, and one of them having it stabbing them in the back of their mind constantly hovering there waiting to break out.

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A/N: this is kind of short. It wasn't originally planned but it wouldn't let itself not be written. Damn the voices.
Title is from "Hole in My Soul" by Aerosmith.