Page 41 of Elemasters

The group had come up with a story about sliding off the road during a late night Burger Belle run because of the thunderstorm and earthquake (that local news was chalking up to a freak occurrence instead of Bailey’s magic… obviously) and James added a detail about Chris hitting his head on the steering wheel, and them having to drive him to the ER since the storm was interfering with their cell service. It was a hastily crafted lie, but thankfully plausible enough to be believed.

It wasn’t enough to spare Dustin completely though.

“Have you completely lost your goddamn mind?!” his father growled through clenched teeth; his voice echoing through the deserted ER waiting room despite his “hushed” tone, “your brother could’ve been killed!”

Dustin could’ve been killed too… but he supposed that wasn’t as important.

“I wasn’t even the one driving…” Dustin mumbled in response. His father’s face flushed red with barely concealed rage.

“DON’T YOU DARE GET SMART WITH ME YOU LITTLE…”

“Elliot, please,” Charlotte interrupted, “we’re in public. What your father is trying to say, is that you two shouldn’t have been on the road in that weather in the first place, but if you absolutely needed to go somewhere, you should’ve been driving. You’ve always been more reliable in that regard,”

Of course; even when they made up a lie to explain the situation without revealing their powers, Dustin somehow still ended up getting blamed for Chris’s recklessness. He wanted to defend himself, to question how they could twist the situation into being his fault… but he’d played these games before. It would be as pointless as trying to explain the complexities of color theory to a jellyfish.

So instead, he took a deep breath, pushed down all the emotions dredging themselves up from the depths, and simply said his most enduring catchphrase…

“I understand. I’ll do better next time,”

“From here on,” Charlotte continued, Dustin’s well-worn accountability sliding off her like water off a duck’s back, “your car privileges are revoked. If you thought letting your brother drive like a maniac in the pouring rain was a good idea, we clearly can’t trust you to be responsible with it. We were already lenient with you after the accident,”

Of fucking course they’d bring that up.

Dustin remembered Chris holding his bleeding lip as the paramedics loaded James onto an ambulance, pleading with him to take the blame so the potential DUI wouldn’t ruin his entire life…

Dustin agreed, and in turn it ruined his.

Even though the driver’s side of the windshield was shattered, and Chris was the one sporting a cut across his upper lip from the broken glass, his parents didn’t hesitate to believe that Dustin was the one who caused the accident. They believed it was because he’d spent the weeks leading up to the performance practicing his ass off and barely sleeping. That was when they decided that Colorful Trauma was nothing more than a distraction, and a dangerous one at that. For a while they micromanaged every moment of his life until he’d entirely packed up that version of himself and stashed it away in his closet.

Until he became quiet, respectable, reliable. Everything that Chris was never expected to be.

“For how long?” he muttered, barely able to pretend like he was shocked or upset. It was difficult keeping up the act when the whole ordeal just left him feeling so hollow.

“Until we decide to change our minds,” Elliot snapped, his glare hot enough to melt steel, “now, we’re going to step outside for a moment so we can talk about the further details of your grounding,”

As his parents disappeared through the automatic doors leading out into the parking lot, Dustin rolled his eyes. He couldn’t bring himself to care about whatever bullshit punishment they cooked up for him; he’d been through this with them a thousand times before. The important thing was that Chris was safe, and that Leo was finally free of Qin Shi Huang’s influence.

Before he could ruminate on it much more, Bailey and James came in from outside, shaking off their umbrellas and slipping their cell phones back into their pockets.

“Just talked to my parents and let them know about the ‘accident’,” James said as the group took their seats among the empty waiting room chairs, “they offered to pay to fix your car, and I couldn’t explain that it wasn’t actually damaged so… they’re gonna be writing you a big ass check. Use it for whatever you want, I guess,”

Dustin chuckled.

“I probably won’t have a chance to spend it. My parents are probably gonna ground me for life,”

“But… I thought our cover story made it very clear that this wasn’t your fault?”

Bailey and Dustin scoffed in unison.

“Never stopped them from blaming him anyway,” Bailey replied, sensing Dustin’s frustration, “speaking of parents, I talked to my dad. He was one of the firemen that went to handle the fallout from the um, earthquake. I discreetly asked him if there were any bodies on the scene, trying to find out what happened with Leo. But apparently, they didn’t find anything,”

“Do you think he like, walked away or something? That it’s not really over?” Dustin choked out. For the first time since they’d arrived at the hospital, his heartbeat kicked into overdrive; the sheer idea that Qin Shi Huang might still be puppeteering Leo’s corpse after everything they’d done was almost enough to send him into cardiac arrest.

“I don’t think so,” Bailey assured him, placing a hand on his shoulder to hopefully calm him down, “my dad mentioned something about finding a huge pile of ashes in a hole in the ground, with absolutely no explanation. I’m guessing his body just like, disintegrated or something,”

“Maybe all that extra power just kind of burned his body out… literally,” James thought aloud.

Dustin cringed at the thought, but he still felt a deep sense of relief at the knowledge that Qin Shi Huang’s grip on Leo had truly been severed. Before he could ask any follow up questions, Chloe came through the ER doors; her arms bandaged up and stitches across her left eyebrow.