But I had to go on. So I swallowed my shame and checked to see if Conrad was at all swayed by Alistair’s admission. But Conrad was still just staring straight at me, approaching slowly, showing nothing. “So what do you make of that?” I asked him.
“Now I need you to listen to me, Jonathan, okay?” His voice was calm and even. His eyes wouldn’t leave mine…not for a second. He kept on approaching. Slowly, slowly. “Alistair did not kill Ryan. He was nowhere near that ravine when Ryan died. Dozens of witnesses—many in this room, I imagine—can attest to that.”
“Well, they’re lying!” I screamed at him. “I was there. I saw Alistair trying to beat the crap out of Ryan right before he wound up at the bottom of that ravine. Tell him, Alistair. Tell him how I found you all there, and how you were so fucking scared that I’d tell a teacher about your damn coke that you started to beat on me and Henry, and when Ryan came to defend me, you took it all out on him, the three of you beating him until you pushed him into the ravine.” And then I gave the wire the hardest jerk yet.
Alistair screamed. Tears were covering his face. “Okay, yeah, we fought, okay? We fought, but when Ryan ran off into the woods, he was alone. Jesus, just ask Tristan, she was right there with me.”
And this is when it all started to fall down on me. Everything slowed. I turned to find Tristan, standing by the wings, clutching the curtains and silently crying. “Tristan?” I said, though too softly for her to hear. “What…what is he…?”
But she wouldn’t even meet my eyes, much less respond. My hand loosened on the wire, sending Alistair swinging though the air. The cracking and the gasps grew louder in unison.
“Christ, Tristan,” Alistair screamed. “Just tell him. Who cares what he knows. It’s not your goddamned fault. None of it is your goddamned fault, already! Just tell him.”
My eyes were still on Tristan, waiting for a response. But she just stood there, staring at the floor like a coward.
After a moment more of swinging, Alistair said it all for her: “She broke up with him, okay? Tristan and me had a thing and so she broke up with him. She tried to give him his damned school ring back and he freaked out and ran off into the woods. But that was way after you and your friend took off.” He paused to catch his breath. “I mean, we tried to go after him, but he just disappeared. And Tristan’s been going crazy about it ever since, because she feels so freaking guilty and because she’s been so afraid you’d find out about us. But Jesus, Jonathan, no one fucking killed him. Now just please let me down!”
I hadn’t even begun to process any of this when Conrad spoke up again, still moving closer with every step. “Listen to me, Jonathan,” he said, his voice clear, articulated. “Listen to me very carefully. You’re confused, and upset, and that’s okay. But listen: What you think happened is impossible.”
I didn’t have the strength anymore to argue. “But…”
“You told me this all happened right after you got let out early that day, right? About one o’clock?”
“Yeah…”
He stepped closer. “Ryan made three phone calls between two and three o’clock. Two to Tristan, and one to your mother. He left messages, Jonathan. He could not have fallen into the ravine before four o’clock.”
“What are you…?” I began, but I couldn’t finish the question…My mind was searching back, dizzy and confused: It doesn’t make sense. Ryan died right after I left. Hadn’t someone told me that? Did I just assume it? Did I really…?Could I have? “It doesn’t make…why was he…he should’ve been home….or somewhere….”
“Listen to me, Jonathan,” Conrad repeated, now at the foot of the stage, keeping his hands at the ready and his eyes on me. “Listen to me closely. Ryan had a fight with Alistair about his girlfriend—long after the whole thing with you and Henry—and then Ryan ran off into woods. Alistair followed him, and came back a few minutes later. Lots of people saw him come back—teachers, coaches, bus drivers—lots of people—but Ryan didn’t die until almost two hours later. Both Alistair and Tristan were long gone by then. Look Jonathan…Ryan probably just got too close to the edge and lost his balance. Maybe it was the wind, maybe it was just bad luck, but it wasn’t murder.” He put his foot on the first step leading up to the stage. “I should have told you this when you came to see me last weekend, but I thought it would be better coming from your parents. It’s my fault that I didn’t tell you, and I’m sorry. But I need you to let Alistair down now, okay? Nice and easy, okay?”
I turned again to look at Tristan, and the sorry, pathetic expression on her face told me everything I needed to know: She knew that Alistair was innocent all along; she was just trying appease her own guilt, or sadness, or something. I turned to Alistair, swinging above me, and suddenly felt so sorry for him. Sure, maybe he stole Ryan’s girlfriend, but he didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve any of it.
So I began to let him down. What else was there to do? Inch-by-inch, nice and easy, just like Conrad said. But before I had lowered him all the way back to the stage, that cracking sound returned, louder and harder. With at least ten feet left to go, the wooden bar where the wire attached to the chair gave way. And Alistair fell.
What happened over the next few minutes is kind of a blur: I heard the unmistakable crack of wood breaking against the stage. I heard Alistair yell out in pain, and then a general panic erupted in the room. I don’t know exactly when I made the decision to run, but I know I didn’t wait long. I just remember bursting through the stage doors into a torrential downpour, feeling the rain soak my clothes as I ran across the parking lot, under the bleachers, and collapsed on the fifty-yard line of the football field.
Now, I’m not going to lie to you. It would have been really nice if Jesus could have swung by right about then. I could have used the friend. But he didn’t. I whispered his name: “Jesus? Jesus Jackson? Jesus Jackson? Jesus Jackson?” But nothing happened. And after about five minutes I began to see the flashing lights from the police cars and the ambulance as they came driving up to the gym, and I decided that staying on school grounds was probably a bad idea. I had to find someplace to hide.
So I cut through yards and parks and woods, avoiding all the major roads and even most of the minor ones, until I finally reached the radio tower. It had already stopped raining by then, and I found a dry patch of pine needles at the base of the tower where I could rest until morning. Despite everything, I fell asleep almost instantly. And as I began to nod off, I stared up at the spot on the tower where Cassie and I had first spoken. At that moment, I had more regrets about her than about anything else from the whole ordeal…the way she stared up at me while I was on that stage, finally aware that I had been using her the whole time. Of course, it was never that cut-and-dried for me—and the real tragedy is that she didn’t even know how hard I fell for her, or the simple, pretty truth that in the midst of so many questions and contradictions, she was the only thing I was ever certain of at all.
Thirty-seven
I woke up just before dawn, and there was no question of what I had to do next: I would go to the football field, I would sit on the fifty-yard line, and I would wait for Jesus Jackson. I was sure that half the police in town were looking for me by that point (not to mention my parents). I was going to have to deal with them eventually—I couldn’t hide forever. And besides, I was going to get my goddamned twelve dollars back.
Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be anyone waiting to snatch me up at the school. They probably figured, quite logically, that St. Soren’s was just about the last place I’d turn up. I tried to keep myself as hidden as possible, though, so I had to sneak through the woods before making a dash to the football field.
To be honest, I really didn’t expect to find Jesus Jackson there at all (and I was starting to think that I might never see him again). But to my surprise, there he was: just how I first found him, standing on the fifty-yard line, playing a game of imaginary fo
otball with no one.
I stopped at the edge of the field and watched him for a minute before he noticed that I was there. He seemed to be having a grand old time with his pretend tight-ends and invisible opponents, and I couldn’t quite tell if it was infuriating or hilarious. It just didn’t seem to matter to him at all that he was alone, that none of it was real, that nothing about his game—not the winners or the losers, not the moments of glory or embarrassment of defeat—would ever matter at all to anyone but him, or even exist outside of the confines of his mind.
When he finally saw me, he smiled and waved as if greeting an old friend after a long time apart. “Jonathan! There you are. I was wondering when you’d show up.”
I walked out onto the field, trying to decide if I should plead with him for help or punch him in the face. In the end, though, I decided on a more practical approach.
“I want my twelve fucking dollars back,” I said.
Jesus frowned. “I was afraid you might say that.” He sat down on the field, patting the grass beside him. “Sit down. Tell me what happened.”
I sank to the ground, glaring into his eyes. “Alistair is innocent. Tristan was lying to me the whole time. Cassie is never going to speak to me again. And I’m probably going to jail. If that isn’t proof that my leap of faith was a failure, then I don’t know what is.’
Jesus seemed to have been expecting me to say precisely that. “Interesting, interesting. So Alistair didn’t confess, eh?”
“No!” I yelled. “He didn’t confess because he didn’t do it! He’s innocent! Ryan died hours after their fight.”
“Oh,” Jesus said, with a furrow in his brow. “Did you at least find out how Ryan really did die?”
“No. Tristan dumped him for Alistair, they fought, and then he ran off on his own. A couple of hours later he was dead. Maybe he jumped. Maybe he fell. Maybe a goddamned alien threw him into the ravine.”
“Well, you’re still going to find out what really happened, aren’t you?”
“Whatever…” I said. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I don’t even care how it happened.”
“But…you do care, don’t you?” he asked, his voice softening a touch. “You need to know how he died, right?”
“No,” I snapped back. “I really don’t. Knowing how he died is not going to bring him back. Knowing how he died is not going to give me a brother again. That’s not the fucking point. That’s not the question I care about.”
“Then what is the question you care about?”
“I want to know where he is now!” I screamed. “Right now! At this moment! Dead! What the hell happened to him after he died, not before. What happens to everybody, what’s going to happen to me? And I don’t want any of your stupid ‘constructions’ or my school’s stupid god or my father’s lame-ass pamphlets, I want the truth! A truth I can live for, and die for. An irrefutable truth about what the hell it means that Ryan is dead and that someday I’m going to die too! I want proof, not faith. I want to know!”
Jesus reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled wad of money. “Here’s your twelve dollars,” he said. “I can’t help you.”
I stared at the money in his hand. “You can’t?”
“I can’t give you the truth,” he said calmly. “I don’t have any to give. That’s not really what I do.”
I sighed. Of course it wasn’t. I wanted to snatch the money from his hand, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. “So what the hell were you doing for me all this time, anyway? What was the point of all this?”
“Look,” he said, “I don’t build real gods or invent real religions. I can’t give you knowledge, or proof, or anything like that. The best I can do is to help you get to a place where you’re ready to take a leap of faith, to make a decision, to find some version of reality that you can believe, and then start believing in it.”
“Yeah, well then you clearly didn’t get the job done,” I said. “All I found out for sure is that there are no answers, and no matter how hard I look for them, there never really will be.”
I reached my hand out to take the money from Jesus, but he snapped it back just as I was about to grab it. “Now hold on one second,” he said. “How sure are you, exactly, that you can never find these answers?”
“Excuse me?”
“You said that you are sure that there are no answers, and that there never will be, no matter how hard you look for them, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So I just want to know how sure you are about that statement.”
Now he was just getting on my nerves. “Completely sure,” I said. “Not a doubt in mind.” I reached out again for the money, and again he pulled it away from me.
“Would you say, for example, that you’re one hundred percent sure?”
“Yes!” I yelled. “One hundred-freaking percent! Now give me my goddamned twelve dollars!”
“Sorry,” he said, hopping to his feet and placing the money back in his pocket. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. One hundred percent faith is what I promised, and one hundred percent faith is what you have. Technically, you still owe me thirty-six dollars and seventy-five cents, but we’ll just call it even at twelve.”
“But you were supposed to give me faith in nothing. Not faith in the fact that there’s nothing to have faith in!”
“Well now you’re just quibbling,” he said, quite pleased with himself. “And besides, I made no such promise.”
“And what, exactly, am I supposed to do with this crappy faith? Just be happy that I don’t know anything?”
“You can do whatever you like with your faith,” he said. “Be happy, be sad, be anything you want. But my job here is done.”
And before I could protest, I heard the sound of a siren somewhere behind me. I wheeled around to see if I had been spotted by the police, but thankfully they seemed to be on the other side of the school.
When I turned back, Jesus was gone.
I stood there, frozen, for a few minutes (or maybe more) just thinking about what Jesus Jackson had said: that he had succeeded, that he had fulfilled his end of the bargain. That I now had faith: one hundred percent.
And I had to laugh, because he was right, just as he had been right all along. In the end, you can’t be so concerned with reality. Sure, there has to be a real truth out there, somewhere. But if Jesus Jackson taught me anything, it’s that you can never really know the truth. Not about life, not about God, not about what’s in another person’s heart, or even your own. All you can ever really know is what it feels like. What it feels like to laugh and cry and hate and hurt and hope and fear and love; what it feels like to live.
Thirty-eight
Having no place left to go, I just started walking back toward home, figuring that I would be found at some point before I got there, but not caring enough to hide anymore. After just a few minutes of walking, though, I found myself passing by the entrance to Saint Christopher’s, and decided to step inside.
The chapel seemed empty, so I wandered slowly toward the altar, just taking it all in, and thinking back on all the Sundays I had spent there when I was a little kid. I was almost at the first row of pews when I heard a voice say my name.
“Jonathan? Jonathan Stiles?”
I turned to my left, and there was father Kevin, kneeling just a few feet away. “Oh,” I said. “Hi.”
“Please sit down,” he replied, almost in wonderment. “What brings you here so early?”
Thankfully, he did not seem to know about the previous night’s events. But I had to give him some kind of answer, so I brought up the only possible topic I could ever want to discuss with him. “I want to talk about Ryan.”
He smiled at me gently, as if he was expecting this very answer, and then motioned for me to sit down beside him in the pew.
“What about Ryan would you like to ta
lk about, exactly?” he asked.
Of course, I really didn’t feel like talking about Ryan with anyone, much less a priest. And yet, there was one question that I always wanted an answer to. “Three years ago, when Ryan and I came to talk to you, what did you say to him after you sent me out of the room?”
He looked a little surprised by the question (I imagine he was anticipating a more general inquiry about death, or heaven, or something like that), but he didn’t let it faze him much. He folded his hands across his stomach and nodded slowly in recollection. “Ah, yes. That was a long time ago. Why come back here after so long, for that?”
“I just…Well, I think Ryan changed after that. A lot. And I just need to know why.”
He nodded some more, apparently accepting my reason. “I didn’t have to say much, really. I figured out pretty quickly that his fervor was for your benefit, so once you left the room, I just asked him to explain to me again why he didn’t believe. The next thing I know, he’s telling me a very long, involved, and personal story about not believing in Christianity, but still needing there to be a god.” Then his eyes flickered into a smile. “And if I recall, he said that he had researched just about every god that ever was, and couldn’t find any evidence to support any of them. Is that right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s right.”
“And when I told him it was impossible to find proof about something that you’re supposed to have faith in, he told me that it was impossible for him to have faith in something without having any proof about it.”
I had to chuckle a bit. “Yup, that sounds like Ryan.”
“And so I told him that he had reached an impasse. He couldn’t believe in any god without evidence, he couldn’t find evidence about any god at all, and yet he still felt like he just needed to believe.”
I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach. It sounded quite familiar, this dilemma. “So, what did you tell him?”
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