Chapter 12
TWELVE
Jesse
Age sixteen
I stare into the empty trunk, my thoughts winding back to the man I’d tricked two weeks ago at Whitaker’s request. It hadn’t gone well.
I’d flirted with him, and he’d acted so interested in me that I got a bit lax.
And then, when I pretended to be tipsy to lead him out to the car, he’d smashed a bottle against the back of my head and crammed me in his trunk that looked much like this one.
I was bleeding, my head fuzzy, but still I tried to fight him.
If Whitaker hadn’t been following, what would he have done to me? Beaten me? Raped me? Killed me?
He was a bad man… and I’d started to wonder if Whitaker wasn’t telling me the truth about how bad these people were. At that moment, when the man was leering over me, watching me with a grin on his face and clear intentions of what he was going to do to me, I realized how much I hated humans.
A part of me had wondered if my parents would even care if I died. Would they go to my funeral? Would they pretend like I was still a part of their lives? Or would they go, “Good, that’s what he deserves”?
This was karma for being the son they never wanted. For being unwanted.
And at that point, I stopped even trying to fight.
Sure, I was bound, but I could have tried to fight.
No, I lay there and waited for it because I deserved to have him kill me.
Because I hated myself so fucking much, even if I hid it and pretended like I didn’t.
I hated myself. I never sought help from social services because I knew I was a waste of life.
I would be taking resources and a placement from some child who deserved to be helped.
And just as he was reaching down to me, Whitaker had whacked him across the back of the head so hard, the man hit the ground.
Whitaker had reached in and pulled me out, pulled me free.
He’d saved me even though I’d resigned myself to the understanding that I didn’t deserve to be saved.
And the way he’d held me like he was relieved to find that I was okay.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize he was that bad.
My client… my client wasn’t clear how horrible he was,” Whitaker had said as he’d checked me all over, then hugged me while I cried.
I think he thought I was crying over the trauma of the man’s attack, but I was crying for myself.
I was crying as I faced the fact that I hated myself enough that I was resigned to whatever that man was going to do to me.
“Everything okay?” Whitaker asks, snapping me back to the present.
“Yes, just… seeing the trunk made me… think of him.”
He comes over to me and wraps an arm around my shoulders.
“We can’t excuse what horrible people do.
These people come from the darkest pits of hell.
You, my dear Jesse, you were just born from dark people, but I can already see their hold slipping off of you.
It’s weighed you down for sixteen years of your life.
It’s time to let that darkness go. We need to cleanse the world of those who hurt others. ”
I smile as he squeezes my shoulder. “I’m going to help Zach.”
“Please be careful. She might be a woman, but women do horrible things. Trust me,” he says as a dark expression crosses his face.
A part of me wants to question what happened to him, but I can’t find the words.
Instead, I savor having found someone who understands me.
Someone who has also suffered the way I have.
I’m so tired.
I’m tired of the world. I’m tired of this life. I’m tired of being treated like shit.
And I’ve finally found someone who treats me like a person.
So I rush into the woods, eager to help Zach and find the woman who would make someone suffer like my mother made me suffer.
She wasn’t like my father. No, it was her words that would twist and bite.
The way she could make me hate myself with just a look expressing that I wasn’t the son she expected me to be.
Honestly, I don’t think I could ever do anything to make her love me.
I hear a crash and then a young woman dashes through the trees, away from Zach who can’t be far behind. She sees me and hesitates before realizing that I might be her only hope.
“Come here, I’ll help you,” I say, and she believes so easily. Did all the people she’s manipulated or hurt believe her like she believes me in that moment?
She rushes to me and I grab her, pinning her arms down, and when she screams and tries to run, I see her as my mother and find myself knocking her to the ground.
I want to hit her, scream at her, tell her how much I hate her, but when I’m leaning over her, all I see is fear on her face and it snaps me out of whatever I’d been caught up in.
I pull back, but Zach is on her now and she can’t get away.
Her tears run down her cheeks that are smeared with blood and dirt.
She’s shaking and begging, and I find the hatred that had welled up inside of me dissipating.
She’s not my mother. She’s not my father.
She’s not the man who locked me in that trunk.
I don’t know who she is or what she’s done or what will happen to her.
All I know is I kept her from getting away.
That for one moment, she trusted me.
I watch Zach slap tape over her mouth before his eyes catch mine. I’m not sure what he sees in my eyes, but the look he gives me makes me turn away. And long after he’s gone, I’m still left standing there.
Whitaker comes then. He walks over to me and wraps his arms around me. When he does so, I start to draw back, confused by what he’s doing before realizing that this is a hug. He is hugging me.
“All they do is take and hurt. They’re monsters but they don’t see it that way. They treat us like we’re trash. Like we’re the ones who should suffer, and what have we done?”
“I don’t know why they hate me so much.”
“Why do you need their love?” Whitaker asks. “You are perfect the way you are. Don’t let the monsters take that from you. Don’t let them ruin you.”
And I want to believe him. I want to cut the monsters out of my life, so when he leads me back to the house, I follow him.
I don’t know where the young woman went and I don’t ask.
In Whitaker’s presence, I find myself prepared to do anything he asks, anything he wants. He makes me feel good. He makes me feel like I could be loved. But the moment he’s gone, the darkness comes creeping back—the doubts, the fears.
I begin watching the way he goes into the basement and the way Zach watches me. Zach’s grown distant from me, but I don’t care because I only need Whitaker’s attention.
One night, when Whitaker is gone, I take the keys I’d stolen from his room and let myself down into the basement.
I don’t know what I’m expecting to find or what I want to find.
Down there is a hallway with a bunch of doors, and I discover that I don’t want to open any of them because if they stay closed, then my vision of Whitaker can stay the same.
He’s saving others from a fate like mine, where these monsters feast off the weak and destroy their lives.
I close my eyes and decide that I’m not showing Whitaker how much I trust him by sneaking down here, but before I make it to the stairs, I hear a noise behind one of the doors.
“Please… please… let me out,” a feminine voice whispers. “I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
I walk up to the solid door and press myself against it. “What kind of monster are you?”
“Please! Please, let me out. Please,” she begs, growing more vigorous upon hearing my voice.
Does she think I’ll be easier to persuade than the others?
“I will do anything. I don’t have any money.
It’s just me and my little brother. He’s young and he has no one else.
Please. He has to be so scared with me gone. Please.”
“What do you do to him?” I ask.
“What… what do you mean? He’s my brother.
Our parents died and I agreed to adopt him because he has no one else.
He has no one but me. I try my best. I really do.
I gave up my plan of going to college because I knew I wouldn’t have the money to do it and time to raise him.
I’ve done everything that I can to make sure he has a home and food.
I know he doesn’t have the life he deserves but I promise I’m doing my best. Please, I need to be there for him. He’s just a kid.”
“Is that how you manipulate him?”
“I don’t know what you mean. I’d never hurt Kent. I’m not a monster. Is that what they told you? That I’m a monster?”
I hear a car pulling into the driveway and dash up the stairs.
My hands tremble while I lock the basement door and rush to put the keys back.
I’m shaking, afraid that I’m not going to make it in time.
The front door squeaks open and I drop the keys.
Quickly, I pick them back up and shove them into a box just as the bedroom door opens and Whitaker faces me guiltily standing in his room.
He’ll know what I’ve done. He’ll yell at me, hit me, scream at me, throw me out.
“I found this letter in the mailbox. Did… did you tell your parents you’re here?” he asks, holding up an envelope.
I’m so startled by the question that for a moment I don’t even know what to say. I just stare at the letter in his hands before he lowers it.
“Would you like me to read it?”
I nod but it almost seems like my head moves without me directing it.
“Looks like it’s from your mother.” He reads it to himself before sighing. “I want to explain to you that… while it looks like an apology, it’s likely some kind of manipulation. Are you sure you want to read it? I’m not sure you should.”
I take the letter from him and read over the apology where my mother begs me to come back, telling me that she promises she’ll protect me.
She says she’s sorry for what’s happened and asks me to give her one more chance.
My hands start shaking harder because even if I’ve pretended like I’ve cut her completely out of my life, I know I haven’t.
I want my mother. I want someone to love me.
“What if we just stop by so you can grab some of your old things? And we’ll talk to her. Maybe, if she’s being honest, you can start to build some kind of relationship.”
I nod. “Is that okay?”
“Of course. I’ll go with you. You won’t be alone.” Whitaker squeezes my arm. “You don’t ever have to be alone again.”