Gently, she asked, “Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Did she wear a shirt?”
“No. Her dress was unzipped.”
“Was the bra on when she asked you?”
“Yes. Kind of.”
“So you fastened it. From the back?”
He nodded.
“Then what?”
“She said, ‘Thank you,’ then kissed me on the cheek. A long kiss.”
“Was she your mother?”
He peered into her eyes. “I . . . I don’t know. She was old enough to be. She called me Baby.”
Chapter Ten
Joe bought a new computer for Hunter, a few flash drives, a Trac Phone, and had VPN apps installed on everything to hide his device location and ISP addresses. The technician at the computer store had assured him that the app would prevent anyone from locating his phones, including the old phone he had hidden from Hunter. Dr. Ru’s warnings had made him paranoid about someone finding Hunter and exploiting his ability.
Though he didn’t want Hunter to go through something so invasive, he was more concerned about others finding out about himself, his past behaviors, his role in his wife’s death, or what he considered his role.
While Hunter’s stories were being copied and bound into two spiral books, Joe sat in his truck, thumbing through old photos on his phone: Savannah, Hunter, and little Frankie back before the incident, before their world was destroyed. The last time he tried to view these pictures he was in a hospital room a year and a half ago while Hunter recovered from a procedure Dr. Ru had recommended.
Joe never tried therapy. He could get through this, he’d told himself and others. But mainly, he just didn’t want to tell anyone the truth. Joe knew his shame was partly irrational, but pure reason rarely stood a chance against tears or screams or guilt.
His main worry, he told himself and others, was Hunter, who had attempted suicide several times and mutilated his arms with a knife.
Joe knew he wasn’t fine. He realized now he should have found someone to help him.
When the boys were young, he and Savannah took them camping. Their favorite parks were Mount Rainier and Olympic. Every year Savannah would insist on taking the family on the ferry to Victoria and spend the day amongst beautiful flowers at the Butchart Gardens. He had hundreds of photos of his family in campgrounds, on trails, in the snow, being wild, and hundreds more in the structured, colorful fairyland of the Gardens. The pictures revealed a happy, young family.
Then he got laid off, and their lives changed. They left the city and Savannah’s job, forcing her to stay at home with the boys in a cheap house in the country. Eventually, Joe got a job at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, which paid great wages, but he would be gone for two to three weeks at a time then home for the same lengths. Even after paying for travel, Joe earned enough to get them free of the crushing debts, which had caused so many arguments during the early years of their marriage. Things seemed to be good in the Williams’ household.
But they weren’t.
The last photo he had taken of them was outside their home during the summer. Joe said he wanted to have a poster made to put up in his room in Deadhorse. Savannah wore shorts and a tank top as she sat on a painted bench with eight-year-old Frankie sitting on her right leg, his arms around her chest and head against her shoulder sporting a big smile. Hunter stood on her right side, her left arm around his waist, her face close to his stomach. Hunter, 13, towered above her, shirtless, wearing gym shorts, his right arm behind her head, his left hand holding a basketball. His body faced his mother while his head looked at the camera in what Joe knew now to be a smirk.
At the time Joe had no particular thoughts about the photo, other than his boys were handsome, and his wife seemed happy. However, when he got the poster-sized print in the mail and stuck it onto his wall in Deadhorse, he wondered about some of the details. When one of his buddies pointed out the obvious bulge in Hunter’s shorts so close to his mother’s face which now seemed to be laughing, even glancing down a bit, Joe ripped it down.
He told himself the photo was grainy, and the light was dappled through the trees, so what his buddy saw was not real. He stared at that photo now on his phone and resisted the urge to expand it. Why torture himself again?
He flipped through more photos until he found Stanley’s. Joe’s heart skipped. The man was beautiful, especially with no clothes. Stanley had been married to a woman for two years before he realized he couldn’t pretend any longer. After Frankie and Savannah died, Joe stopped seeing Stanley. None of what happened was Stanley’s fault, but Joe knew that the fight between him and Savannah had ultimately led to her death. He told himself many times he should have continued pretending, that he was selfish for wanting to feel passion and lust.
Other times he told himself he should have never pretended, that his cowardly denial of his essential self-led to all the blood, the nightmares, the excruciating anguish that followed him and Hunter for nearly four years since that horrible day in May.
He hadn’t seen Stanley since before the accident, though he’d talked to him a few times. Every time he’d tried to explain to Stanley why he couldn’t see him, his heart burned and ached with such longing for the man. How could he feel such desire when his wife and child had died? He couldn’t stand the thought that someone would point to him as the cause. He hid behind self-sacrifice, the guise of a father living only to keep his son alive.
Now he wondered if he’d made a mistake. Perhaps he should’ve told Hunter everything, introduced him to Stanley, admitted to his son that he had passions, too. That they were often uncontrollable, undeterred by rules or conventions.
But Joe hid his feelings from himself and his son and now lived in a purgatory of daily tasks, which led to more tasks until he wondered if he were even alive.
Until he read Hunter’s stories and his passions were rekindled. Joe didn’t think he could simply go back to the drudgery of his life before this morning.
The next pictures were what Savannah had found on his phone. She had complained that his two weeks of work had grown to sixteen days, allowing for a day layover in Fairbanks each way. She had accused him of having an affair, which would explain his lack of sexual interest in her. When she found the nude photos of Stanley, the fighting intensified, and the threats to expose him to his sons began.
When Frankie confirmed what Joe had begun to suspect between Hunter and Savannah, Joe’s anger turned to hatred and such deep disgust. He knew a part of him was relieved when she died. And that part filled him with such shame and fear.
He was stuck with a son he barely knew, who sooner or later would learn the truth, forcing him to live in fear of exposure and guilt. He had thought about telling Hunter everything and being done with it all, but Hunter was seventeen, still Joe’s obligation and burden, and though he could not in truth say he loved his son, he did not want him to suffer more than he already had. Joe couldn’t imagine feeling more guilt; the glass was already brimful.
Options?
Reset the chip and hope for the best.
Continue to live with Hunter and hope his memories did not become his son’s stories.
Tell Hunter that Joe’s phone was traced after speaking to Ru, so he and Hunter had to live apart for a while. Nefarious people could find Hunter through Joe, so he would need to lead them astray by moving elsewhere, thereby preventing Hunter from seeing Joe’s memories.
That seemed the flimsiest option.
He walked inside the store and retrieved the bound copies of Hunter’s stories, which were now in chronological order.
He decided to find a music shop where he could pay someone to play one of the most famous guitar riffs backward while Joe recorded.
After that, he would finish reading the stories and decide what to do.
Chapter Eleven
Jazz had begun to suspect that Hunter had been victimized by his mother. Every story contained sex,
yet his fantasy world was gender neutral. At least that was the case for the first stories he’d showed her. But the last few had depicted a civil war between traditional procreation and artificial methods. Wouldn’t a boy who had been sexually abused by his mother hide in a sexless world?
Especially if the only sex he’d known was illicit or forced.
And if the truth were so horrible, it would make sense that Hunter would have to approach the topic indirectly through the experiences of others. So all of his stories started with a brief glimpse from his own life before diving into another person’s memory that in some way connected to his own past experience, which he couldn’t yet see.
What other woman besides his mother would ask him to fasten her bra and call him Baby? He’d mentioned no other women in his life. And what mother would do that unless she had ulterior motives?
“How are you doing?” she asked Hunter who was silently staring out the windshield as she drove them back to school.
“I can’t get her image out of my mind.”
“Her face or back?”
“Her back.”
Jazz could tell he was still seeing her body. His eyes were open but unfocused. “Was she wearing a dress?”
“Yes.”
“How far down was it unzipped?”
“All the way.” He looked at her then dropped his eyes. “I could see her underwear. I could see her shoulders.”
“How did you feel?”
He sat up and turned to her. “What if that was my mother? Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know, Hunter. How did you feel?”
“Scared. Excited. Really nervous. The same as now. My heart won’t stop racing.”
“Do you remember anyone calling you Baby?”
“Not until then. What mother calls their teenage son Baby? And what teenage boy would want that?”
Jazz waited for Kelly’s ATV to turn into the school parking lot before she followed it with her truck. Kelly and Skylar were middle schoolers returning from eating lunch at home just like most of the kids at school did before afternoon classes. There were almost as many ATVs in the parking lot as cars and trucks.
Jazz drove past Eric and his girlfriend, Drew, seemingly arguing outside his truck.
“What’s that about?” asked Jazz. She parked and quickly opened her door. Hunter jumped out on his side.
Eric reached for Drew’s arms, but she hit them away then turned toward the school building.
“Lovers’ quarrel,” whispered Jazz to Hunter as they walked toward the school entrance.
“Stay away!” Drew shouted over her shoulder to Eric who slammed his truck door.
“Drew! Wait up!” shouted Eric.
She turned and glared at him, pulling her long black hair back from her face. “You’re disgusting!” She ran to the school entrance, yanked open the door, and disappeared inside.
Jazz and Hunter stared at Eric.
“What’re you looking at?” barked Eric from across the lot.
“Not much,” Jazz smirked.
She and Hunter walked inside and headed toward the gym for their PE class.
Hunter stopped in the lobby outside the gym. “The pounding is starting. I need to sit down.”
“I’ll tell Mr. Harris you’re feeling bad. Just sit here, and I’ll check on you in a few minutes.”
Hunter sat down and opened his computer.
“Do you know who the story’s about yet?”
Hunter was breathing hard. His eyes closed. “Them.”
“Are you going to be all right?”
“Yeah.”
Jazz squeezed his shoulder and ran to the girls’ locker room. If Hunter was going to write about Drew and Eric, Jazz wanted to see how Drew responded. Maybe she could get Drew to tell her what happened before she forgot.
Inside the girls’ locker room, she found Drew sitting on the bench between rows of lockers, crying. Two other girls finished changing and left. She heard someone close the door to a toilet stall.
Jazz sat next to Drew. “Are you OK?”
“Why would you care?” she scoffed and turned away.
“Eric’s an asshole. He pushed Hunter into the Pit this morning. We both have to serve detention after school.”
“Why you?”
“Because I stomped on his foot and threatened to kick him in the nuts.”
“They should be cut off,” Drew snapped. “He’s sick.”
“Do . . . you want to talk about it?”
She drew in a long breath and turned toward Jazz. “We went to my house during lunch. My little sister, Kelly, and her friend, Skylar, showed up a few minutes later. I was making sandwiches for lunch when Kelly asked Eric to help get the snow off of the trampoline so they could jump. A few minutes later I went to the back door to tell him lunch was ready, and he’s standing there on the porch, watching the two girls jump on the trampoline while taking a video of them as their sweatshirts bounced up to their boobs. Skylar doesn’t wear a bra yet. They didn’t know he was watching them. I called him inside, and he walked in with the biggest hard-on.
“I said, ‘What the fuck, Eric!’ And he said, ‘What’d I do?’ And I said, ‘Why do you have that bone in your pants?’ And he said, ‘I do not.’ And I said, ‘Eric, I know when you’re hard, dammit! You’re gettin’ off watching twelve-year-olds jump?’
“‘I said, ‘First, you’re gonna delete that video right now so I can see you do it.’
“He cussed and said, ‘You’re crazy, Drew. I didn’t do anything.’
“Then after he deleted it, I said, ‘You take me back to school right now and never come here again.’”
She covered her face with her hands and cried. As Jazz held her shoulders, she thought she heard someone vomiting, very quickly followed by a toilet flush.
“I’m sorry, Drew. At least you caught him doing it so you can warn the girls about him. You should report him.”
She stopped crying and looked at Jazz with a quizzical look. She shook Jazz’s arm off her shoulders and stood. “Why were you hugging me?”
Jazz heard a toilet flush again. “You were crying.”
“I was?”
Tatiana walked past them and opened her locker. Jazz watched her put a toothbrush on the top shelf and grab a water bottle then close the door. She must have sensed Jazz watching her because she turned to Jazz, raised her brows, and said, “What?”
Jazz shook her head. Tatiana turned and walked away while unscrewing the bottle and guzzling some water.
Jazz turned back to Drew. “You were upset with Eric?”
“What’d he do?”
Jazz stared at her. Drew had forgotten everything she had told her. Had Hunter finished typing the story and thereby stolen Drew’s memory? The same way he had stolen the memory of Jazz shooting at Leon? What should I say now? “Eric pushed Hunter into the Pit this morning.”
Drew shook her head and frowned. “Why’d he do that?”
Molly opened the door to the locker room. “Hey, Coach wants to know why you guys are late.”
“Give me a minute,” shouted Drew. She looked at Jazz. “Aren’t you going to change?”
“No, I have to check on Hunter.”
“Whatever.”
Jazz ran out of the locker room.
“Jazz, where are you going?” shouted Mr. Harris.
“Hunter was sick before lunch, and I left him in the lobby. I need to see how he is.”
“Maybe he should go to the nurse,” said Harris.
“I’ll tell him.” Jazz exited the gym and found Hunter typing. “Show me.”
Panting, he gave her the computer. “I just finished.”
Jazz skimmed through the story about Drew and Eric. “Drew told me about this in the locker room. Then she forgot she told me. You hijacked her memory, Hunter.” Jazz pressed keys to print the document in the library. “C’mon.”
“What are you d
oing?” He stood and followed her.
“She needs this back.”
They hurried down the hall to the library and stood by the printer as it rolled out Hunter’s story.
Jazz picked up the pages. “I’ll show this to her after class.”
“And tell her what?” he asked in a tense voice. “Hunter stole your memory, but you can have it back?”
“What else should we do? Eric knows this happened. He’ll expect Drew to be angry with him. What will he think when she kisses him by his locker between classes like she always does? And besides, Eric’s a pervert who shouldn’t be anywhere near Kelly or Skylar.”
“OK. But if you tell Drew about me and the stories, then everyone else will know.”
Jazz thought for a second. “Maybe I could tell her I wrote this based on what she told me. I typed it up because she blanked out in the locker room, and I was worried.”
“I don’t know.” Hunter seemed unconvinced.
Hunter’s phone dinged. He pulled it out of his pocket and noticed the message on the screen. “Dad.” Hunter typed in his code and opened the message. He and Jazz read it together.
I am driving home from Fairbanks, so I’ll be later than usual. I took all your stories with me because I wanted to read them and to make sure they stayed safe.
You need to be very careful with who knows about them. I found at least three stories that appear to be real memories from people who shared something of their past with me. Maybe all the stories are real. I have no idea what’s happening to you or why, but you can imagine what might happen to you if your ability becomes known.
I bought you a new computer. I don’t think it’s wise to have these stories on your school computer. If you have a flash drive, you should transfer the files ASAP and delete the originals. We’ll talk about all this tonight.
Maybe you should go home early today.
“Whoa,” said Hunter. He locked eyes with Jazz. “Life just got more complicated. You sure you want to be part of this?”
“I want to help you.” She gave him a wry smile. “Besides, I have some memories I’d like to get rid of.”
Someone To Kiss My Scars: A Teen Thriller Page 9
