Chapter Forty-Three - Ethan Hernandez
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Ethan Hernandez
ETHAN SHOVED THE door of the diner open and stepped out into the night. The air was sharp against his face, his eyes threatened tears. He embraced the bite of air into his skin. His chest heaved with frustration and despair. The argument with Jason played in his mind on a loop. The vision of blood and Jason’s wound.
He did that.
Ethan hurt the one person who wanted to help. The only person who stood beside him the last two weeks. Jason was there when he had no one else. Ethan trudged across the street from the diner towards campus, the large evergreen trees positioned at the edge of campus premises stood sentinel as he walked beneath them. He needed to clear his head, but then again, that was the whole problem. The noise in his head made it impossible to focus, to think anything but how to survive from one moment to the next.
The words plagued Ethan, “You can’t keep pushing people away.”Jason was right, Ethan had pushed people away. That was much easier than letting them in, only for them to leave again. He was letting the walls down with Jason, but tonight, seeing his mother, it brought it all flooding back. With her death, he was left all alone. He had nothing and no one.
Ethan wasn’t defeated, he was shattered. Any courage he’d once possessed had now been drained from him, leaving behind a hollow ache. Seeing his mother’s death again had been the death blow to any light that he kept burning. He wanted more than anything to go back— to rewind back to freshman year. But it all seemed like a distant memory now.
He remembered moving into the university dormitories, and his foster parents dropping him off on the curbside. He hauled all of his belongings up the three flights of stairs by himself, feeling a mix of excitement and dread. Part of him felt comforted at the thought of just being another face in the sea of students, but now he was on his own. His foster parents made it very clear their obligation to him had been completed once he arrived on campus that August.
While Jason claims that he saw Ethan first, the reverse is actually true. Ethan spotted Jason playing football with his friends on the common green in front of their residence hall. With a large box in his hand, he watched as Jason’s friend threw the football and Jason ran to catch the pass toppling over two girls sitting on a blanket in the green grass. Jason grabbed the balls, muttered a quick apology, and ran back towards his friends. The girls swooned over him, and so did Ethan — although he’d never show it.
Convinced he was alone, Ethan moved about the first few weeks of college like a phantom on campus. He found an easy rhythm to his classes and worked diligently on his homework, setting up shop in the university library. Then came the offer to work in Bellamy’s lab, where he and Jason were partnered. Jason had an endearing dopey grin and infectious charm. After working together the two developed a stilted relationship. But eventually, Jason made it his mission to pull Ethan out of his shell. It had taken some coaxing, but by the end of September, Jason was dragging him along to frat parties, late-night pizza runs, and impromptu karaoke sessions in the dorm common area.
One night, weeks after Jason had asked Ethan out for coffee, they all piled into Jason’s freshman biology lab partner’s beat-up van, the kind that ominously rattled whenever it hit a pothole. The air inside the van was thick,sharp, and tangy with the scent of cheap weed. They all sat in the back off campus trading sips from a cheap bottle of liquor passing a haphazardly rolled joint around a circle of five of them. The blunt arrived to Ethan, who hesitated at first, unsure, but Jason laughed and handed it to him, “Come on, just one puff, it’s a rite of passage.”
Ethan took it, inhaling, and then coughed embarrassingly. Everyone giggled as Jason gently rubbed his shoulders, sending tingles down Ethan’s back. Later, after they returned to the dorms, everyone had stumbled back to their rooms. Jason and Ethan stayed in the dimly lit parking lot and leaned against the van. The hazy glow of a campus streetlight illuminated Jason’s grin, as Ethan studied him.
“So, what’d you think? First hit was life-changing?” Jason teased.
Ethan chuckled nervously, his inside felt like they would float away, “Tasted like cut grass.”
Jason laughed, then leaned in. “Well, it is a plant,” he whispered, and then before Ethan realized it, their lips had met. It wasn’t grand or cinematic— it was awkward but soft.
It was everything, Ethan knew it would be.
It was wonderful.
Now, sitting in the silence, of the present moment, the air wet, chilled, and heavy — he felt the memory slip through his fingers. Ethan had reached campus, his path was erratic, aimless. He walked and walked, making circles around the quad as his mind reeled. He passed the library, only to turn sharply toward the residential halls.
How much longer would Jason put up with Ethan’s moods? These migraines? The medicine only kept things at bay and Bellamy looked at him like a hungry predator waiting to seize the moment to strike. The last person Bellamy worked with jumped from a high building, killing themselves. Ethan shivered from more than the cold when he remembered Bellamy’s words — a very high place.
The girl from his nightmares jumped from the bell tower. Was that it? Was that the key to all of this? The bell tower? Somewhere high?
Ethan’s pulse beat rapidly as the thought solidified in his mind. Before he fully realized it, he was standing in the main courtyard, the Summit Spire towering over him. The moon broke through the heavy clouds, casting a glow over the water in the fountain at its base. The brass lion standing guard in the center seemed to glare back at him, its fierce expression amplified by the pale light.
“I need to see what’s up there,” he muttered to himself, his voice barely audible over the faint rustle of the leaves.
The air was heavy, charged with a static. It was just curiosity drawing him closer to the tower — it was a compulsion, a magnetic pull he couldn’t resist. He was tired of fighting it, he had to know. The bell tower had haunted his dreams for weeks, etched in his head. It wasn’t just a place in his mind anymore, it was here, real, demanding his attention.
Why?
He had passed the Spire hundreds of times to and from class. What was it about now that beckoned him upwards? Ethan’s feet carried him forward, his toes cold from the night air. He glanced up, the height of the tower almost dizzying as it disappeared into the sky. The faint sound of wind whistled through the openings at the top. It seemed to sing to him, pull him forward.
The Halston girl was found here. The image of her lifeless body flashed in his mind. He could still feel her residual energy, it created a thick and bitter taste in his mouth. The presence of her death pressed against his chest.
The cold metal of the entrance handle sent a shiver up his arm as he turned it. The handle creaked and groaned, as he hesitated for a moment. His heart pounded in his ribs. He glanced back at the courtyard half-expecting someone to call out to him, to stop him, forbid him to enter. But the campus was deserted, no one here.
The lion in the fountain stared at him, unblinking, as if testing his resolve. He swallowed hard and turned towards the door. Ethan took a deep breath, his fingers tight around the handle, “This is it,” he murmured. “This is where it all started.”
He stepped in.