Chapter 28 Good August
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
GOOD AUGUST
THIS AIN’T A LOVE SONG
Agony rips through my back as I slam into the headboard for the billionth time.
It shakes, but it won’t budge. “Mrs Huang!” I scream for my landlady again.
She can’t hear me, I know that, but I try anyway.
She can’t be at Mahjong already. The room’s still bright red, like this weird sunrise won’t lift, but it must be at least half an hour since he left.
I thrash back, my spine screaming. Then I crumple, and cry more of these useless tears.
How can I be this hopeless? How can he be about to kill himself, and I’m stuck here chained to this fucking bed?
I roll over, crossing my arms, pulling as hard as I can, kicking the headboard, kicking the wall, and none of it does a thing.
My forehead drops against the solid mahogany in defeat.
Please, August. Please don’t do anything stupid.
Then a sound.
A scuff of shoes on the concrete outside.
And like a miracle, a knock on my door.
“Help! Help me, please! I’m trapped! Help!”
I can’t even believe it. The sound of a key in the lock.
My leg kicks out to pull the sheet up, to try to cover a bit of my nudity before I scar poor Mrs Huang for life.
But my mouth drops open at the first glimpse of that long strawberry-blond hair, the familiar accompaniment of chains jingling up and down his wrists. “Jon!”
He stops dead still, adjusting to the darkness of the room before reeling back at the sight of me. “What the fuck did I just walk in on?”
“Help me! The key’s on the record player. Please. Please, undo me.” Even as I’m speaking, he’s running for the key, dropping onto the bed, working the lock.
His worried eyes meet mine only fleetingly. “Did August do this to you?”
“No. No, he didn’t do anything.”
“Then who did this?” His tone makes it clear he doesn’t believe me at all.
“I can’t explain.” I pull my bruised wrists together, rubbing them. “Did you bring the van? Tell me you’ve got it.”
“I’ve got it, but—August, talk to me.”
I pull on the first pair of jeans I can find, snatching up any shirt and sweater, running for my shoes. “Keys—give.”
“No. Not until you tell me—”
“Give me the fucking keys, Jon!”
His face hardens, as well it might. I’ve never once yelled at him like that. But it does the trick. The keys are in my hand with a reluctant jab, and I smash the front door open.
Red hits me from every angle. The whole sky has turned blood-red. There’s dust floating on the air, green. The clouds swoop by too fast in the sky, violet. “What the fuck happened?”
“I don’t know.” He’s by my side, staring with the same unsettled worry at the world around us. “I came to check on you when you didn’t answer your phone.”
His look’s accusatory. Hurt. And I don’t have time for this. “I have to go.”
I know exactly what’s wrong with the sky. It’s my world ending. It’s everything August’s sacrificing himself to prevent.
I spot the van a few doors down and sprint for it. I’m in, keys in the ignition, when the door opposite slams. “Jon, out!”
“No.”
“Get out!”
“No.” He shakes his head resolutely. “Whatever’s wrong, I’m coming. Tell me what’s happened.”
Jesus Christ. Now he wants to be my friend?
I start the van, smash down the accelerator, and try to figure out the fastest way across London while on the move. South. There’s only one place I can think of that I might have a chance of finding him. If I’m fast enough. “Look up Imperial College on your map.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t August who did this.”
Christ, I hate his tone. “Fucking do it!”
He taps fingers down on his screen, even if he does it angrily.
“I need the fastest route. Really, the fastest. If there are parks, we drive through them. As directly as possible.”
“The parks all have barriers, you know that.”
“Yeah. They do.” My tears start to overflow, messing up my vision. Gripping the wheel with white knuckles, I swerve unsteadily through the relatively quiet roads of St. John’s Wood.
Jon’s shoulder slams into the door when I take a corner too fast. “Do you want me to drive?”
“No.”
I can feel his eyes on me. On my wrists. “He hurt you. Why are we doing this? Why is he worth so much to you?”
“He didn’t do that. It’s not like you think.
He’s trying to… He’s…” I blink to stop the flow of tears so I can see the road.
Then a flash of brown out of the corner of my eye smashes my foot down on the brakes.
The wheels screech, we both hit the dashboard, and I raise my head slowly, terrified of what I’ll see.
I barely pulled up in time.
The silence is a living thing, knowing what I almost did.
An old man glares at me as he hobbles over the zebra crossing. And so he should.
My voice comes out small and pleading. “Can you drive, please?” Jon only nods. He gets out, comes around, so I slide over. “But please drive like you mean it.”
“Fine.” He’s clearly pissed, but his foot goes down hard as soon as we’re clear of the crossing. It’s a smoother ride than I’d have managed, even if he smacks the curb a few times avoiding the sparse traffic.
A lot of people must be at home, either because of the hour, or because it looks like the sky is bleeding.
Jon’s quiet, concentrating but giving me space, and it’s the most respect I think I’ve ever had from him in our entire relationship.
“He’s going to kill himself,” I confide.
He glances at me for explanation, so I tell him the whole thing.
All of it. The entire ridiculous story, because we have too much time.
We have all this time to waste on driving—time that’s the difference between life and death.
And it’s so sad to me, so sick, that space-time is this malleable thing, something that could stop this, if only we could learn to control it.
It was a thing he was learning to control.
And in that moment, I really understand him.
What he did was wrong. But it wasn’t a bad intention. He’s not a bad person. I wish he knew that.
When I conclude my story, more or less, Jon offers his judgement. “So basically, your boyfriend’s a supervillain?”
I huff, just a little. “I guess. Technically.”
“Punching up,” he mutters.
“Shut up, Jon.”
He offers a much-needed moment of levity with a snicker, then softens. “We’ll get you there. Are you sure the college is where we’ll find him?”
“No,” I admit. “But I don’t know where else to go. And if I were him, and I am, I guess, I’d go there first. To destroy his research. To stop anyone else figuring out what he can do. To prevent this happening again.”
We drive on, trees flying past, their leaves blowing loose in the increasing wind, sickly green fog rolling in drifts around the car.
Quietly, Jon asks, “Do you love him?”
My answer is both slow and soul-destroying. “I don’t know what else to call it.”
Jon’s pace doesn’t slow. If anything, he goes a little faster, but just as steady, thinking over the words.
I feel bad for him. I feel bad for everyone involved.
“I know it’s fast. I know this seems crazy.
But you have to understand, he’s me. I know him inside out.
Even if he fucked up, I know who he is underneath it all.
We’re the exact same person, and maybe I don’t really know him, but I’ve known him my whole life. ”
It takes a long time, and for a while I think Jon’s given up talking to me at all. Then finally… “I do understand,” he says softly. “You’re very easy to love, August. I don’t know how anyone could not fall for you.”
It’s the sweetest thing he’s ever said to me. Maybe because it’s the only thing not tinged with jealousy and control.
He keeps going. “I’ve been awful to you.
You made that clear last night. And I’m sorry.
For everything I’ve done. I don’t want to lose you.
That’s why I came over today.” I’m so scared he’s going to tell me he loves me again.
That he’ll make another stupid proposal.
But he doesn’t say any of it. “I was bringing your key back.”
Gallows humour brings a chuckle to my lips. “I think you’d better keep it.”
He laughs too. Then gently reassures me, “We’ll find him.”
Even if he’s lying, if he doesn’t believe that last bit, it means a lot that he said it. “I’m not going to be okay if we don’t. I’m not going to recover from this. I can feel it. He’s killing us both today.”
“Not if I can help it.” Jon swings us too fast through the entrance to Imperial College, scratching up the van’s paint job that he was so proud of.
But he’s as quick as I am when we both pile out in record time and run for August’s building, stopping only briefly when we see the sign stuck to the front door:
August Blackthorne – Basement Level 3.