by C. L. Stone
He just wanted to make sure I wasn’t dying? “Well... nice talking to you. I guess.” I didn’t really mean it. I just wanted to wrap things up.
“Just a minute,” Brandon said, holding out a hand to me again to stop me. “Let him talk.”
“He’s not talking,” I said.
He motioned to Jack again.
I waited.
Jack flexed his hands over and over. “I’ve changed, Kayli,” he said. “I’ve got a job now. And a place to live. A house. A real one.” He paused and then wiped at his lower lip with a thumb before going back to folding his hands again. “I know we haven’t had anything in a while, but I just wanted to let you know...if you need a place to stay...”
“Not needed,” I said, although I wasn’t really thinking about a place to live. I was more struck he’d up and gotten himself a job. Why? He was living on government checks before. Or was it not enough now?
How could he afford a house? His credit was horrible. I didn’t really understand. Who would let him rent?
He looked at Brandon and then at me again. “I know. They tell me you’ve got a place. I just wanted to offer. But maybe you’ll come visit.”
“I’m not interested.”
“I don’t drink anymore,” he said.
“It’s true,” Brandon said quietly. “He’s been at AA meetings regularly. He’s got a nice job. Steady.” He stepped close to me, providing a strong, steady hand at my lower back, rubbing through the robe I was wearing. “He’s trying, Kayli.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“Maybe you can come see me every once in a while?” Jack said. “I guess that’s it. Let me know how you’re doing? And let me make up for all the trouble I’ve caused.” He paused to wipe at his mouth again. “Look, I know it’s been rough the last several years…”
“Tell me about it,” I said with a heavy drip of sarcasm.
“I haven’t really been myself. Not since your mother died. But let me make it up to you. I know you don’t need me or anything. You’re good on your own. Let me do something since I couldn’t do it before.”
“There’s nothing I need,” I said. I didn’t understand all this. And why bring him to me now? I questioned Brandon with a stern stare. I wasn’t happy with this.
Brandon shrugged but said nothing, nodding his head in my father’s direction, silently telling me to listen.
I sighed loudly. “I don’t know what you expect from me. You want me to visit?”
“And let me know if you ever need anything.” He made a motion with his hands around the room. “Like here. Let me help pay for some of this.”
“It’s not needed,” I said. I didn’t exactly know how the hospital was funded, actually. Since it seemed to be Academy owned, I didn’t know how it operated. Would I never get a bill?
This time, Brandon interrupted. “But actually, if you’d like, you could spare a bit for the medications, perhaps? If you’d really like to help.”
This seemed to make Jack happy. I wasn’t sure why Brandon was offering this. Jack was just getting on his feet and he wanted to give me money for medical costs? Why was he encouraging it?
“I’ll do that,” Jack said. “Just let me know.”
“I guess,” I said, more to just close the conversation. I could yell at Brandon later about making this more awkward.
Jack stood up and nodded his head. “Well, I guess…”
“I have to get dressed,” I said. “I get out of here today.”
“Right,” he said. He looked to Brandon.
“Once she gets dressed, she’ll have a nurse come in with any prescriptions she needs and we’ll be right out.”
“I’ll wait by the car,” Jack said. He walked out the door.
I waited until I was sure he was down the hall. “The car?” I asked Brandon the moment he was gone. “Why is he waiting?”
“I drove him in. I’ll need to drive him back.”
I sighed. “And there’s no one else here to pick me up?”
Brandon raised an eyebrow. “No?”
I groaned and then shrugged my shoulders. “Why do this now? Why bring him here when I was just leaving?”
“He wanted to see you. And I thought you might prefer to see him here and not at the apartment where he could show up whenever he liked. Especially right now with Alice poking around. At least this leaves you in control of if you want him to come by.” He shrugged. “Besides, might be our last chance if we do get out of town. I just wanted to let you know he was okay.”
Made sense. I probably should have trusted his judgement, but still. “You could have warned me. And what’s this about making him pay for medication?”
“Let him help,” he said. “If that’s what it takes for him to feel like he’s contributing to his own daughter, let him. It’ll help him have some confidence when he’s getting back on his feet. I won’t let him offer more than he can afford.”
I went to the couch where Jack had been sitting and sat down myself. I put my head into my hands, putting pressure at my temples for a moment. “I didn’t really want to see him again.”
Brandon came over, sitting beside me. The weight of his body caused the cushions to shift in the old couch and it had me leaning into him.
He put an arm around me, rubbing my back and shoulder. “I was at his place when I got the call from Corey. It kind of slipped out while I was checking in on him. He got upset when I told him you were in the hospital. He wanted to come see you. I thought the anxiety of not doing so might set him back. I’m sorry I sprung it on you, but with Alice…and I thought you’d say no if I asked you.”
“I didn’t know you were talking with him.” I looked up at him.
He pressed his lips together for a moment, the depth of those eyes piercing me through like he was analyzing my feelings and trying to find the best way to talk to me about what he wanted. “We’ve always kept an eye on him, Kayli. That’s what we do. Not only to look out in case Wil ever went back to him, but to see if he’d help himself at all. And he did. He sobered up after you left. He started visiting the bars less and started looking at newspapers. At job sections…”
I pressed my hands to my face again. “I didn’t ask you to keep an eye on him. Or to get involved.”
“You think you know what the Academy is, Kayli, but you don’t really know. You’ve gotten involved with us, and you might have assumed a few things...”
“You adopted me,” I said. “I heard it. You adopted me and Wil. I still don’t know what it means exactly but…”
He reached around me, grasping the hand that was pressing at my face. He held the hand in his and squeezed it gently. “Look,” he said. “When we take people on, it’s because they usually just need a gentle push in the right direction to get them back on their feet. That’s usually all people need. It can be hard for someone to listen to a family member if that relationship has been ruptured. But if you’re strategic with a few choice people, placed in just the right time to talk to a person at the right moments, you can usually plant ideas into someone’s head…and that just starts them looking at improving their lives.”
“You think Jack just needed a good talking to?”
He smirked. “Not just him.”
I got his intent. “You didn’t talk to me. I recall I was kidnapped and forced to do a job.”
“Sometimes it’s more than just talking. But it worked. You’ve stopped stealing.”
“I would have stopped anyway.”
He shook his head and shrugged. “I thought we would, too. My brother and I…” He pressed his lips together and then released me. “Get dressed. I don’t want to talk about things here.”
I didn’t think I needed to talk more about it. He and his brother set up a scam to get forgotten money from banks, and they’d gotten caught. Axel and the others all had a similar story. They were caught doing something illegal, even if their intentions were good. And then this A
cademy stepped in. Made them some sort of offer. Join them, and they’d get them off the hook.
Was that going to be my life, too? As I got dressed, I was thinking about the hospital, about the apartment they lived in, the stuff they purchased for me sometimes. It all cost money, and it seemed like the Academy paid for a lot, even if they kept their own jobs and businesses, like Axel’s work with animals at the Charleston Aquarium, and Brandon’s bike shop, and Corey creating game apps. How the Academy fit into it all confused me, and trying to learn from them without asking directly just led to more questions. They said the Academy didn’t pay them, but it did. It provided stuff instead of money, like the hospital. Like the teams of people who came to give us support whenever we asked.
And it had gotten involved in my life. It took care of people like my father even when I never asked them to do that.
But did I want that to continue? In a way, I felt an obligation. To listen to them. To behave.
Which meant doing whatever it took to redirect Alice, to get away from the Academy so people like her never found out what they were about.
THE ROAD TO RECOVERY
Brandon had brought some new clothes for me. For the first time, it was jeans and a black T-shirt that actually fit, along with bra and underwear. It was like someone else helped them pick out my clothes. They usually gave me sweats because no one could figure out what size I was. Not that I really remembered either. It wasn’t like I went shopping for clothes often.
I got dressed, and after talking with a head nurse who insisted on wheeling me outside in a wheelchair herself, Brandon followed us to the lobby. The lobby had a few people putting up Christmas trees and decorating the space for the holidays.
I’d no idea what day it was and realized I must have missed Thanksgiving while in the hospital. How long had I been here, really? It felt like weeks.
We stopped at the in-hospital pharmacy to pick up birth control and other fake prescriptions. We were giving the illusion I was leaving to the cameras. Whenever Alice did show up, if she came to look for me here, she’d find footage of this. It was hard not to look for the cameras.
My father was waiting in the lobby, not by the car. He stood when we came by and offered to wheel me outside. The nurse stayed nearby while he did so.
Oddly enough, this looked completely normal. Would this be believable to Alice?
Were we inviting trouble for Jack if she went to him to ask where I was?
I could feel his huffing and puffing behind me while he pushed. I mentally yelled in my own head at Brandon for abandoning me when he went to go get the car. He wasn’t strong enough to push me and it was getting awkward, but Brandon just let him do it.
It was agony waiting for the car to come around, a black SUV.
After he parked, Brandon skirted around the nose of the vehicle and opened the front passenger door.
Jack offered to help me out of the wheelchair. I waved him off. “Stop,” I said. “I can walk.”
“Sorry,” he said.
The apology rattled through me. In a strange way, the more he was nice to me, the more I didn’t want to see him. I needed time to think about how I felt about the new Jack. I motioned to the front seat. “You get in there. I’ll get into the back.”
He protested but I wasn’t listening. I opened the rear door myself to climb into the middle seat. I did let Brandon close the door, and my father got into the front passenger seat.
Brandon got back behind the wheel, and the car was silent as he pulled away from the hospital.
I leaned against the window, staring out and hoping this car ride would be over quickly. I kept an eye out for anyone following us, but before Brandon left downtown, he made so many turns that even I got lost for a few minutes.
Brandon eventually took to I-26 and headed west for a bit, before getting off a ramp somewhere amid North Charleston. I had my nose nearly pressed to the window. I’d been outside that morning, but I still felt I’d been cooped up in the hospital for eons.
I was free.
I could go where I wanted. Not that I had any idea where to go or knew what I wanted.
The North Charleston streets were broken, filled with ruts and potholes. I’d been through such neighborhoods nearly all my early life. There were dangerous parts in this area, depending on which street you landed on, with crumbling industrial buildings and homes that hid whacked out druggies and gangs if you entered at the wrong times. However, North Charleston was starting to have pockets of nice areas where some homes and even some business sections were getting redone.
Brandon pulled into one of these newly redone streets. It was a single lane of various late 60s model homes with short front porches screened in. The street ended in an empty lot. The lot had a path and benches and a few toys left out like the local kids used it as a park.
Brandon stopped at one single story house with a wide front porch and a short fence surrounding the front yard.
I leaned over, looking through the front windshield at the place. My mind was reeling. “Are you renting a room?” I asked. “Here?”
“I’m renting the whole house,” Jack said. “It wasn’t a bad deal for the place. It’s only two bedrooms, one bathroom, but…it’s not bad.”
He had enough money for this? He was able to get a place...like this? A house. An actual house. With a yard. No wonder why he was trying to offer a place to stay. Before, when we were in a hotel room with my brother, we could barely afford the weekly rate rent there. Before that, we were in falling apart apartments that were probably never up to code.
And here he was, in an actual solid house.
I tried not to let the anger bubble up inside of me over it. Let him keep his house. I didn’t want it.
Jack got out and stood by the open door, waving at Brandon. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” Brandon said.
Jack turned to me, doing a short wave. “Come by sometime, okay?”
I didn’t say anything but nodded. I just wanted him to go away. I didn’t dare open my mouth as I was sure I’d just rail at him.
He could have provided this for us.
For Wil and me. We could have had a place like this. Wil and I were working hard, and we could have helped out.
If he’d only tried. And that’s what sucked about it all. He could have worked. He could have been fine. He’d just given up. Wil and I weren’t enough for him to worry about or make an attempt for. It was only after we were gone, he’d given a shit about his own life and made some sort of effort.
I wasn’t sure I was happy with the Academy helping him out. I wasn’t sure he deserved it.
But did I deserve all the help they’d given me? I wasn’t sure any more about who deserved what exactly. Or if deserve was an actual thing to be concerned with.
My mom didn’t deserve cancer and to die so young. Maybe that word had lost its meaning.
And I got the feeling, with the Academy, with what Axel and the others had done for me, it wasn’t about what we deserved. They were just trying to do something good. They had the opportunity to help and they did. They put so much effort into my family, into me.
My fingers clenched into fists as Jack shut the door and headed to the porch of his house.
I jumped over into the front passenger seat, crossing my arms over my chest. “How could he afford a place like this? In this neighborhood?”
“Don’t you recognize it?” Brandon asked.
I squinted, looking over the place again, noting the trees that were lined up along the back of the house, providing some shade to Jack’s house and his neighbors. The place did look a little familiar. “Have I been here before?”
Brandon chuckled. “Maybe you don’t remember because that’s when you got pissed off at Marc and shot him in the leg.”
My mouth wrenched open and I blinked rapidly. I’d been up on the roof trying to help them put new shingles up, when Marc made some sassy comments and I shot...at him. I didn’t mean to shoot him. I just
missed the ground. And it was only a nail gun…
I was leaning forward, looking at the place now. The roof had been completed. The whole place had been tidied up. The fence hadn’t been there before. Other houses in the neighborhood had not been in as good of shape either and now looked okay. “You were redoing the whole street?”
“Academy neighborhoods are designed to be safe areas where people can rent clean and upgraded houses for a low cost. It gives them confidence to be able to support themselves in a nice place, and the rent money pays for the entire project over a few years.” Brandon leaned over to me, putting an arm on the seat next to me and focused. “We didn’t just help him, Kayli. You did, too. And we can do a lot more.”
I said nothing as Brandon put the car into reverse. Several houses had Christmas decorations already out, with lights around the edges or wreaths at the door. A normal neighborhood.
When the house was out of view, I sat back, my arms folded across my chest, processing the information.
I hadn’t thought about that house and why they were fixing the roof until now. I’d assumed at the time it was some sort of job. I didn’t know it was for the Academy.
Brandon was right. There was a lot I didn’t know about their group. The more I learned like this, the more questions I had, and the more I realized they’d woven themselves into my life so very deeply.
AN ILLUSION OF NORMAL
Brandon avoided getting back on the highway and drove slowly through smaller roads I wasn’t sure I was familiar with until he pulled into the lot of Henshaw Customs. I recognized the place, although during the day, the entire building wasn’t what I remembered.
Given the last time I was here, it was under duress after being kidnapped…
Henshaw Customs was actually two buildings instead of the one I remembered. The first building was a large warehouse with three large garage doors along the right side and an office in the front. Directly behind it, and hard to see from the road unless you were in the lot, was a second, even longer warehouse with several more garage doors. Most of those doors in the second building were open now.
