by David Beers
John heard the call end. He didn’t take the phone down from his ear, but stood there staring out at a full parking lot. Everyone going to lunch. Everyone moving through their lives, worrying about inconsequential problems, without any real idea what true issues were.
John knew now, though. Had he before? Standing there, holding a silent phone to his face, he didn’t think so. The other times, all of them, had simply been nuisances. No, real issues were when a detective called your phone and accused you of murdering your priest—not to mention, that was the third person in the last week he thought you killed.
John had a real issue now.
He looked around and didn’t see Harry. He took a few steps back toward the restaurant, peering inside, but Harry wasn’t there either.
“Of course not,” John whispered. “Why the fuck would he be around when the cops show up? They can’t see him anyway.”
He put his phone in his pocket, his appetite as missing as Harry.
He had meant to talk to his boss today about working from California. He had actually set up a meeting to do just that, but why would he now? What was California going to give him that Tremock couldn’t take away? A few calls and extradition would take place, moving John from one state to another with shackles on his wrists and ankles.
“Motherfucker,” he said, the only word that summed up his frustration, his unholy anger at everything around him. Because this was rock bottom, wasn’t it? What the people in all those meetings said brought them to sobriety—but what they missed, what they couldn’t understand, was that John couldn’t stop. Father Charles figured it out in the end, and when he tried to help in the only way he could, he really found out.
John went to his car, opened the door, and sat down. He didn’t put the key in the ignition, just sat in silence.
He didn’t see any other way out. Harry might not be here now, but would he stay away forever? Only a fool would think that given everything John had experienced. Maybe John was a fool, but not about this—Harry would return, and when he did, he brought what John couldn’t turn down.
John could kill himself.
Or he could leave.
But if he left, it couldn’t be for somewhere in the States. And he couldn’t return. Maybe he could bring Diane and the kids down there. Hopefully. But if he returned …no, things were too far gone for that.
John started the car and pulled out of the parking lot.
21
A Portrait of a Young Man
Lori looked at John with eyes full of tears. They blurred the rest of the scene, so that she could only focus on him.
Scott stood next to her and Alicia next to him.
What was supposed to be a bittersweet scene, was only excruciatingly bitter for her—brutal even, though she couldn’t let anyone else know it.
The tears had to appear like tears of sadness and happiness.
Not the radical fear running through her every cell.
“Not forgetting anything, right?” Scott said.
John laughed. “A little late now, if so, huh?”
“That’s right, because I’m not running back to the house to grab it,” Scott said. He turned to Lori. “Come on, honey, give the kid a break. It’s hard enough he’s leaving for another country without you sobbing.”
“I know,” Lori said, forcing a smile. “I know. I’m just going to miss you.” She reached forward, closing her eyes, and John stepped into her embrace. She put her face on the side of his head that Scott couldn’t see, and as she closed her eyes and pressed close, tears dropped to her cheeks.
“I’ll miss you too,” he said.
She didn’t pull away to see if he had tears, but she thought she heard a hitch in his voice, an emotion John didn’t usually show.
“Be careful,” she whispered.
Neither of them spoke about the underlying whys, indeed, if forced to say for sure whether he knew what she meant, she couldn't have said. She knew what she meant, though. Be careful with what you allow yourself to do over there. She couldn’t protect him, but he wouldn’t have anyone looking into him either. He would be a stranger without a history. And maybe, this affliction would pass when he left.
Maybe.
“Alright, alright. Come give your pops a hug,” Scott said.
Lori let go and wiped at her eyes, not making eye contact with anyone.
John went through the same process with his father and sister, hugging them both, though neither of them cried like Lori.
“You’ll call us when you get there?” Scott said.
“As soon as I get to my room.”
“But don’t talk too long; we can’t afford the charges,” Scott said with a smile.
John smiled but didn’t say anything.
“Go on now, before your mother has a breakdown,” Scott said and John smiled even wider.
“See you guys, soon.”
And then he turned around; carrying a book-bag over one shoulder, he walked away from his family.
Lori didn’t say anything on the way home. She managed to keep the tears at bay, even as she cooked dinner for three.
She sent him there to keep him away from Vondi’s prying eyes, but now who would watch out for him? Who would protect her baby boy?
* * *
John had flown a few times before, but nothing so long. The flight seemed to stretch forever, as if instead of flying to another continent, he was making an interstellar jump.
It did finally end, though.
John exited the plane and stood in line at customs. He said nothing to anyone the entire time. He watched as others spoke and smiled and laughed. He didn’t do any of that. Watching everyone, he wondered if life had been training him for this? He didn’t need to speak to any of these people and felt completely comfortable in his silence. In his aloneness.
His mom cried when he left, but he hadn’t. Not when boarding and not during the nearly never-ending flight.
Be careful, she said.
How much did she know? That question bugged him more than anything else. Neither ever truly spoke about what bothered them. Yet, she seemed to know—at least partly. Did she know the thoughts which grew inside him, those of killing a person?
Is that what she meant by be careful?
And if she did know, was she condoning it?
Of course she knows, John thought. Why else is she sending you over here to get away from Vondi?
And yet, John didn’t think anyone knew—not wholly. They couldn’t, because if they did, he would be eradicated. Either by death or quarantine. No one could love him if they understood the thoughts going through his head. Not even his mother.
So, no, she couldn’t understand the totality of it all.
She wouldn’t have sent him here, if so. She would have disowned him and turned him over to the authorities.
Be careful, she said.
And what she meant was don’t turn into a monster.
John was in a new country, but as he made his way through customs—the officers checking bags and looking at passports—he wondered if any of it mattered? Because he had brought himself, after all.
* * *
A few weeks passed.
John spent the time in his dorm room. His parents paid extra to make sure he didn’t have to room with anyone, which was an argument between his mother and father that he wanted no part of. His father didn’t want the extra expense for a single room--his mother fought for it and won.
Mom had been right, though. He liked being alone.
He explored the city, using the trains much more so than he ever did in Dallas. The tube, they called it—which he found hilariously odd.
He had arrived wondering if anything would change, or if the thoughts driving him to something heinous would simply take over. He found that everything around him, the sheer newness of it all, kept any urges he had at bay. The sights, the sounds, even the people he overheard in restaurants—all of it felt so foreign to him that his mind held little interes
t in anything besides discovering.
Even when he started class, he didn’t feel the same boredom as in America. The kids, all of them, spoke with this beautiful accent that he couldn’t get enough of. The teachers were much stricter than those in America, and something about that amused John. Had he ever felt like this in his entire life? He didn’t think so; perhaps his mother had been right to send him here. Perhaps what he really needed was a drastic change of scenery to shock himself out of whatever trance he’d been falling into.
John sat down at the end of a table on his first day there, his lunch tray in hand. He hadn’t said a word to anyone the entire day, and didn’t feel like starting now. It was enough for him to watch.
“You’re the American?” someone said from behind his shoulder.
A someone that sounded like she might be very pretty.
John turned around, facing the table next to his, and saw himself looking at a blonde girl. She must have worn braces at some stage, because her teeth weren’t as ragged as other’s he saw in this country. She had blue eyes and was smiling, both friendly and sultry.
“Yeah, I am,” he said, hating the sound of his voice when he compared it to her accent.
“How long are you here for?” the girl said.
“Well, until they kick me out or I graduate.”
The girl laughed and turned all the way around so that her legs faced John. She wore jeans and a black shirt that revealed enough, but not too much.
“I’m Cindy,” she said.
He stuck his hand out. “John.”
“Nice to meet you, John. What’s your next class?”
“Ah, give me a minute.” John reached into his bag and pulled out his schedule. “History,” he said as he looked at the small print.
“You think they’ll talk about how ungrateful you Americans were when you went and started that war?”
John laughed, leaning back against the table. “I hope not,” he said. “I’ll probably be kicked out earlier than I thought.”
“Well, if you’re still here after history, maybe we can chat more,” Cindy said.
* * *
John lay in bed, the television on opposite him. The place was small: a bed, a small desk with a chair, and a closet with a curtain in front of it. He had a small sink in one corner of the room, but that was pretty much it. He could either do homework, read, or watch TV.
He looked at the clock on his nightstand.
Twelve o’clock.
He yawned and pulled the blankets further up to his neck. He would need to turn the television off and get to sleep soon. The headmaster came by a few hours ago and told everyone lights out; John legitimately tried to sleep, but found he couldn’t. An energy ran through him, and he wasn’t sure if it was the first day school-jitters still carrying over, though he hadn’t felt nervous at all while in class.
John reached for the remote control and turned the television off, casting himself into darkness.
He lay there with his eyes open, that energy still crackling just beneath the surface despite his yawn. John had never done cocaine, but he felt like some of the characters in movies that he’d seen take it. Like he could jog ten miles right now.
“Hey, John.”
John leapt out of bed in a singular motion. He turned as he jumped, trying to face the direction the voice came in, which, thank God, was on the other side of the room and not next to the door.
“It’s me.”
John scrambled backwards, his back facing the door trying to see who spoke.
Who spoke? WHO SPOKE? YOU KNOW THAT FUCKING VOICE!
“John, you’re going to hurt yourself,” the voice said.
He reached for the light switch, desperately trying to see anything in this black void. He couldn’t tell exactly where the voice was, only the general direction, and he thought—just maybe—if he turned the light on he’d find that he imagined the whole thing. Because what he heard wasn’t possible.
He flicked the switch.
Harry stood on the other side of the room.
Not a vision of Harry, or some kind of hallucination; no, John stared at his dead friend. And there could be no doubt that Harry was dead, a ghost or ghoul haunting this room, somehow so far away from where he died.
“You’ve got to calm down,” Harry said. “You’re hyperventilating … you ever realize how funny that word is? Hyperventilating?”
John stared at his friend’s teeth, which had once been pearly white, were now chipped or gone completely. He saw his friend’s tongue moving inside his mouth, a black and swollen thing that looked more like a diseased slug than human flesh. One eye had burst, his cornea clouding the iris, so it looked like he stared endlessly at everything.
“Okay, I won’t joke, but don’t freak out on me here, bud.”
Much of the hair across his head had been removed, almost like an Indian scalped him. John looked at raw, white bone.
And his skin, Christ, his skin might have been the worst part of the whole thing. A blue tint that made John think about food poisoning and vomit. Puffy, as if Harry had some kind of thyroid disease, nothing like the thin, tall kid John had known.
“Hey, man. I accept you for who you are, can’t you accept me?” Harry said, smiling, his lips peeling back against black gums.
Darkness moved in toward John, taking over everything. He didn’t even realize when he collapsed to the floor.
22
A Portrait of a Young Man
John opened his eyes, immediately feeling pain in his neck and an awful dull thumping in his head. He looked around, blinking, seeing the light burning above him and the sun lazily streaking in through the blinds.
John lay on the floor, his head uncomfortably craned against the door to his room.
It didn’t happen, his mind thought, spitting out thoughts almost faster than John could keep up. What you thought you saw last night, you didn’t.
Except another, deeper part of him decided to talk back.
You can lie to other people, John. Your mom, dad, and psychologist. You can’t lie to yourself, though. Not about this. You know what you saw.
IT WAS A GODDAMN DREAM! the first voice shouted, trying to break down whatever resistance existed to the structure it needed to put around reality.
No, John. It wasn’t, came the second voice, quietly, but speaking more truth.
He pulled himself up from the floor, rotating his neck and trying to massage out the stiffness. The clock said it was nearly nine in the morning, which meant he had fifteen minutes to change and dash across campus to his classroom.
He didn’t know what happened last night, nothing solid that he could speak of, but he did know that if he didn’t make it to the second day’s class, someone would call his parents in the next few hours, which would be awful. On day two, no less. Not on day two.
John dressed as if someone held a gun to his head and a timer in their hand. He flew across campus, seeing nothing except the path he needed to make it to class.
And he did, one minute before the bells chimed across the school.
“Have a tough time waking up?”
John looked to his left, his breath coming in huge gulps, and saw the blonde girl from yesterday sitting next to him.
Cindy, he thought.
“I was up all night fighting the redcoats,” he said, smiling, despite his inability to get enough air. “They wanted to tax me without letting me vote.”
The girl smiled and turned her face to the front of the class as the teacher began speaking.
John sat in class, halfway paying attention. The other half of his mind struggled with last night, with what he saw and heard.
That couldn’t have been Harry. A dream, or nightmare, yes. But why had it taken so many years for it to happen? Harry died when John was thirteen; he was turning seventeen now. The kid he saw last night wasn’t a thirteen year old version of Harry, either. He looked like Harry would have, if he lived. At least, if Harry had somehow lived after
being scraped on the bottom of the ocean for sixteen hours.
And yet, the voice had been real.
Not a dream.
John had backed up and rammed into the door, turned the light switch on, and looked at his dead friend. Smiling.
Harry’s smile.
Yet different, too. Because Harry’s smile was always kind. Even when making fun of the kids that picked on him, John never detected true malice from him. Last night, though, that smile held nothing but malice. Maybe not toward, John—he didn’t get the feeling that Harry wanted to hurt him—but certainly toward someone.
“Hey,” Cindy said. “You going to stay for the next class?”
John realized the girl stood next to his desk; he looked up at her, his eyes hazy from thought. “Huh?”
“Well, class is over, so I wasn’t sure if you would like to leave or if you needed a refresher on the lesson.”
John looked to the front of the class and saw that the teacher sitting at her desk, doing something on a computer. Most of the kids were gone, with a few stragglers still putting books in their bags. He turned his head back to Cindy, shaking it as if trying to clear cobwebs. “I don’t know what I was thinking about.”
“Come on, let’s go or we’re going to be late,” Cindy said.
John grabbed his bag—all his books still inside—and stood, exiting the classroom with Cindy.
“What are you doing tonight?” she said. “You look like you need some company.”
Harry’s image hadn’t completely left his mind, yet he knew he had to focus here. She was talking to him, asking him something, and all he could see was Harry’s huge pupil, looking like the size of a black ocean.
“Huh?” he said.
“Do you know any other words?”
“H—,” he paused, almost saying it again. Finally a smile spread across his face. “Maybe, I don’t.”
“There you go. You’re getting a hold of the English language now. I was concerned for a bit; I mean, I know you Americans have butchered our beautiful language, but I didn’t think it was this bad.”
