19. Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Nineteen
Silas
R ichard doesn’t push after that. He tells me he wants me to think about that boy for the next couple of days. He wants me to look at my past from an outsider’s perspective. And it’s not a totally stupid idea, except that the scene he thinks I’m looking back on has a few jarring differences from the one that really happened.
I can tell he’s pissed that my aunt never set me up with a therapist, and he’s a decent guy for giving a crap. But come on—how much more do I have to re-hash this shit before I can finally move on from it? And I doubt there’s too much a shrink can do that will help me sleep through the night at this point, anyway. Other than maybe prescribe some strong sleeping pills. Which, yeah… on second thought, would be sweet. Maybe it’s not so bad that he’s determined to set me up with some colleague of his when I get back. “Someone I might feel more comfortable talking to,” as he puts it.
Right now though, all the excavating the doc’s been doing in my brain is starting to give me a headache. Like I said: I’m an avoidance-at-all-costs guy—and Richard is clearly from the total opposite school of thought. Basically, we’re a match made in hell.
I tell him I’m exhausted after a full day on the road (not a lie), and that I’m heading to bed (total lie). I’m not sure he buys it, but at least it gets him off the phone and off my back, and I’m free to breathe normally again. Well, semi-normally. I’m still jittery as hell and jonesing for a drink more than ever. I have to settle for a cigarette instead. It helps, but only a little .
A breeze has picked up now that the sun is down and I’m just wearing a T-shirt, so it’s cool. I open one of Trudy’s outdoor storage compartments and haul out a bag of logs, then arrange them in the low metal fire drum and use my zippo to light it.
Soon the fire is full-grown and throwing off a decent amount of heat. I drag the picnic table a few feet until it’s closer to the fire pit, then sit and go back to smoking and staring into the flames. The heat is nice. So is the smell: that musty bonfire smell that stings the edges of your eyes. It smells like my childhood. Which tugs my thoughts back to the conversation with Richard, and to that ten-year-old boy tearing his room apart.
I don’t hate that kid.
I should—because that kid is me. But instead I’m intrigued. Even though, yeah, I get that I’m just falling for Richard’s mind games—that this is exactly how he wanted me to feel. He wants me to realize that if I can forgive that kid, then I can forgive myself. And it’s not a bad end-game—if it weren’t for that missing puzzle piece. The one I’m holding on to so tightly it cuts right through to the bone. The one I’m not willing to let go of.
And yet… when I think about that boy holding it—when I think about him waking up every night in a sweat of nightmares and pain and guilt—it changes things. It does feel different. Even knowing everything he’s done—the part Richard doesn’t know about— I still feel bad for him.
I still don’t blame him.
And I don’t know what to do with that thought. I don’t know if I’m okay with it. Because if I don’t blame that kid, taking into account the full truth of what he did, then that means…
… it means—
“You made a fire.”
I look up and Jackie is standing just a couple of feet away. I didn’t even notice her coming outside. I nod, and she stands there for a moment, her gaze skimming my features. Hell knows what she’s hoping to see there. Whatever it is, she’s likely going to be disappointed.
“Do you mind if I come sit?” she asks .
I keep my eyes on the fire.
“Sure.”
She walks over to the picnic table and sits on the bench next to me, parking her ass a good two feet away. Clearly, she’s picking up on my moody vibes.
We both sit in silence for a while, just watching the sparks popping and misting into the night. It’s nice: the quiet. Not having other campers around or crowds or music. The sky is a mix of a bunch of navys and purples, and you can see the stars really good out here. Thousands of them.
I could probably see the stars at home, too. It’s not like we live in a big city or anything. I just never took the time to look. But it feels different out here. It’s more peaceful. Less heavy, I guess.
I’m dying for a drink, though. Even worse than before. And I’m not even as stressed out as I was earlier. I hate to admit it, but that call with Richard calmed me down some. It stirred up a bunch of shit in my head, but not all of it in a bad way.
I look over at Jackie. She’s got her head tilted back now, and she’s looking up at the sky. I’m guessing she takes the time to notice the stars when she’s at home, too, though. The firelight casts a warm glow across her face and honest-to-God, this girl is stunning. I don’t know why it wasn’t the first thing I noticed when I first saw her a few days ago in her camper. My senses were clouded with liquor, I guess. Also, I was jolted awake by her high-pitched scream. And then informed I was in an entirely different state.
I stare at her a while longer. And then:
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I say, surprising even myself.
But it’s wrong that I’ve been keeping the truth to myself for this long. I need to just come out and tell her.
Jax turns to look at me, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Her eyes are round; her full attention on me.
“Okay…” she says. “What is it?”
She has no idea what this might be about. She definitely isn’t expecting anything close to what I’m about to tell her .
Only I can’t bring myself to say it now. Maybe because of the way she’s looking at me, like she’s expectant but not weary. Because she’s so fucking good . And always so trusting. Even with an asshole like me.
I take a breath.
“It’s about… It’s uh,” I stall, my words stockpiling in my throat. “Shit… Sorry. I just… I can’t.”
She keeps looking back at me, her eyes even wider. Which I didn’t think was possible. And now she does look concerned. Which is probably good: she should be concerned. She needs to be prepared for the fact that what I’m about to tell her is going to be bad. And it’s going to change the way she feels about me.
“Is it… Is everything okay?” she asks with that same cautious voice Richard uses with me. “Did something happen or…”
“No.” I comb my fingers roughly through my hair. “No, it’s not— it’s not something that happened.” I pause. “I mean, yeah. It is. But it’s not something recently… It’s something I need to tell you. That I should have said before.”
I tear my eyes away and look back at the fire. “It’s something I should have told you years ago. After what happened… With our parents.”
“Okay…”
I jump to my feet, unable to sit still any longer. I’m regretting that I brought this up now. I want a drink so badly.
I turn to her, dragging my fingers through my hair again.
“You don’t happen to have, like, a bottle of liquor stashed somewhere in the camper, do you?”
This time, she looks surprised. And then confused.
“No…” Her eyes narrow; suspicious now. “Why? Is that what this is about? The thing you have to tell me? Is it about—”
“No!” I drop my hand. “God, no. It’s not about alcohol. I just…” I shove my hands in my pockets and drop my eyes to the ground, watching the shadows of the flames dance across the grass. “Never mind. Sorry… I shouldn’t have asked you that.”
“Oh… Okay,” she says. “Anyway, I don’t have any alcohol or anything, so…”
“I know.” I look over at her, embarrassed. “I know,” I say again. “It’s fine… It doesn’t matter.”
She doesn’t say anything and God love the crickets for filling in the awkward silence that follows. I busy myself stoking the fire, throwing another log on and poking at it with a stick I found by the woods earlier.
“Why don’t we just hang out here for a bit?” Jackie finally suggests. “Just talk or whatever. And then you can tell me later whatever it is you wanted to say. When you’re ready.”
I rock back on my heels, still not meeting her eyes.
“Sure.”
“I have stuff to make s'mores,” she says. “Geez, we can’t have a campfire without s’mores!” She gets up. “I’ll go grab everything and bring it out.”
She heads inside without waiting for my reaction. And man, I love her in that moment for not pushing me when it’s obvious that what I have to tell her is something big. Because she must be dying to know. And still, she’s more worried about making me feel comfortable than about dragging the words out of me.
Also, I haven’t had s'mores since I was ten.
I wonder if she remembers how much I used to love them. I’m guessing she does. I follow her into the camper to grab a hoodie, because even by the fire, it’s chilly.
Inside, Jackie’s got all the supplies piled up on the table, and she’s rummaging under one of the kitchen benches.
“Can you take some of the s'mores stuff and I’ll grab a couple of blankets for us to sit on?” she asks over her shoulder. “It’ll be more comfortable than the picnic table.”
So I load up and lug everything outside, and Jax follows me a few seconds later. She’s carrying an arm-load of blankets, which she spreads out on the grass close to the fire. This girl thinks of everything. Seriously: if there’s a zombie apocalypse, I’m sticking with her. I’ll bet she’s got a bunch of Rubbermaid totes already packed and ready to grab at a second’s notice.
While she’s laying everything out, I head into the woods to scavenge for a couple of marshmallow roasting sticks. And five minutes later, I’ve got the perfect ones: long and almost arrow-straight. I may not have many talents, but I do have my uses.
Back on the sprawling picnic blankets, the mood is less tense, and I blow out the stress I’ve been holding in since my call with Richard. I spear the first marshmallow onto the end of my stick.
“Man,” I chuckle, “I hope I still remember how to do this.”
“I can roast your marshmallows for you, if you want,” Jax offers. And I arch an eyebrow at her.
“Was that a pickup line or…”
“Shut up!” She whacks my arm with the bag of marshmallows. “Geez…”
I grin. Until a few days ago, I thought the only people who used expressions like “geez”, and “gosh” were old geezers born in the 1950s. Apparently, I was wrong.
“Remember the bonfires at Lymans Beach?” Jackie asks, smashing a marshmallow onto her stick.
Of course I remember the bonfires. But like everything else from back then, I try to forget.
I don’t mind remembering right now, though. With Jackie. Hell knows what makes it different, but it is.
“Yeah. Dad’s bonfires were epic.”
Better than epic, actually. My dad was the master of kick-ass bonfires. They towered way over our heads; the tips of the flames almost seeming to touch the sky.
Of course, I was probably about four-foot-nothing back then. Still, they were definitely high. Definitely taller than the two-foot flames we’re sitting in front of right now. To be fair, we’re limited because we’re confined to using a two-foot wide fire pit.
I find a little patch of red coals toward the edge of the fire and hold my marshmallow just over it. The marshmallow-to-embers distance is key, I learned early on. It’s everything, actually, when it comes to roasting the perfect marshmallow. Jax never got this, though. And watching her now, she still doesn’t. Which doesn’t make any sense, because she’s so damn meticulous about everything else in her life. Why drop her standards at a perfectly roasted marshmallow?
She holds it almost directly in a flame. Right at the tip. I can already see it starting to blacken and it makes me cringe. Maybe this is how Jackie feels every time I drop the F-bomb.
“What are you grinning at?” she asks.
I shake my head, still smiling.
“You,” I say, motioning with my chin toward the fire. “You still suck at roasting marshmallows.”
“No, I don’t,” she shoots back.
And then her marshmallow bursts into flames.
I chuckle and she side-eyes me as she whips her stick out of the fire and starts blowing on the charbroiled mass.
“You distracted me,” she accuses, once the flames are extinguished. “Anyway, it’s still fine. It’s totally edible.”
It’s totally not.
But apparently Jackie’s inability to accept failure extends even to marshmallow-roasting.
“Okay. So eat it, then.” I push.
“I will.”
She turns the stick slowly, studying the black blob that is slowly slipping off the end.
“Like, this week or…?”
“Shut up. I’m waiting for it to cool off.”
She’s totally stalling.
I bite down lightly on my lower lip and raise both eyebrows at her in a look I’m hoping makes it obvious I call bullshit.
“What?” she asks indignantly. “I am!”
The message conveyed by my look was clearly received.
The charbroiled glob slides off her stick and lands with an unceremonious shlop! on the blanket between us.
Jax looks down at it, then back at me .
“Shoot… I was excited to eat that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I was! It was roasted just the way I like it: crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside.”
We both look back down at the marshmallow carcass. Then I scoop it off the blanket with the tip of my finger, pick out a piece of fluff, and pop it in my mouth.
Jackie’s jaw goes slack with shock as I chew slowly, still watching her.
“Burnt on the outside…” I say, as she schools her expression into one that is more indignant now than disgusted.
“Annnnd….” I swallow, nodding gravely. “… Burnt on the inside, too.”
Jackie glares at me.
“You’re such a jerk.”
I bring the end of my own stick up to my lips, my eyes still locked on hers as I use my front teeth to slide the perfectly browned marshmallow off the stick into my mouth. I chew slowly, milking the moment for all its worth.
“Maybe.” I grin wickedly through a mouthful of gooey sweetness. “But man, do I ever know how to roast a perfect marshmallow.”
We talk for almost two hours. I can’t remember ever talking that much with anyone. And it’s not just bullshit small talk; we have actual conversations. It feels easy. And different from what I’m used to when I was at Trenton, or people I hang out with back in Allerston Lake. Except maybe my next-door neighbor, Maggie. But I don’t really count that since my relationship with Maggs is so… weird. We can’t stand each other most of the time, but then I’ll find myself sitting on her couch watching fucking soap operas, of all things, the same day she’s made some smart-ass comment about juvie turning me into a douche-bag or whatever. Or after we haven’t talked for days, she’ll go and cover for me with my uncle, making up some excuse when I’m home a couple hours late. We’re more like brother and sister, I guess. She’s the only person I ever talk to about anything real, the way I am tonight with Jax.
I still can’t believe I’m sitting by a fire in Ellsworth, Maine—with Jackie Delaney. Who, by the way, is not annoying when she’s not poking and prodding and trying to fix me. She used to be so timid and awkward. But she sure isn’t timid anymore. Maybe still awkward, but not in a way she’s self-conscious about like she used to be. Basically, she’s turned into the best parts of herself.
Except for that whole perfectionist thing—that’s new. It’s the way she got messed up by what happened back when we were ten, I think. She might not see it, but I do—even after just a few days: she feels guilty about where she landed after everything went down, and she’s on a mission to do everything she can to feel like she’s earned it.
And also the whole “trying to fix Silas” thing is new. I mean, when we were kids, she acted like a mini-adult around me a lot of the time—because she was used to being the adult in the relationship with her mother, who was a total basket case. But she wasn’t on a mission to reform me back then. In fact, when I broke rules or did something that got me in trouble, she was in awe of me more than anything. She was envious that I had the balls to not give a crap about risks or consequences or whatever. I think secretly she wanted to be like that, too. Probably because it must’ve been exhausting as hell: playing the parent role with her mother—having to always be responsible and on top of things when you were supposed to be doing dumb kid stuff, like breaking into abandoned houses and jumping across old tires in some muddy lake where you’d been forbidden to go.
Back then, that rule-following side of her personality was a burden on her. Now, though, she thrives on it. She totally owns it: the planning and rule-following and organizing, with those stupid color-coded stickies and trip-planning binders and everything.
This is the kind of stuff I’m aware of tonight. The fact that she’s changed, but is also still familiar. And that everything about her is so… authentic? I think that’s the word. Our conversations are, too. And we’ve been laughing, which is definitely not something I do with anyone back home. Or ever. Not even really with Maggs. Because any humor between Maggs and me is usually sarcastic, so that doesn’t really count.
Anyway, tonight has been nice. It’s been easy . We’ve been out here all night and we’re down to only two more logs. I grab one and place it over the embers, and we both watch as the flames curl slowly around it, then swell and sway in the breeze.
I brought out another one of my hoodies for Jax when I went inside earlier to grab more chocolate, since I could tell she was getting cold. Her face lit right up when I tossed it to her, like I was offering her the world instead of some ratty old hoody with a hole in the hem. It looks more like a dress on her than a sweater. She still looks hot. Not in a runway model way, but more like… wholesome. Natural, I guess. If there was a word for a cross between cute and sexy, that would be Jax. I mean, she’s got a fucking button-nose for chrissake—with freckles . But then she has these eyes that are just… they draw you in and they are full-on smoldering. And she doesn’t even realize it. Which is the real kicker. That’s what gets you right in the gut: when a girl is smoking hot and doesn’t even realize it. It either makes you want to push her away—because who the hell wants to hold on to something that fragile? Who even thinks they deserve to be around something that fragile?
Or it makes you want to pull her close; like some sort of primitive caveman, to protect her. Because, man, it would be crushing if anything ever changed that about her - if she ever realized how gorgeous she is. How rare she is.
She’s watching me now, her head turned away from the fire and her arms wrapped around her bent knees. Her hands are hidden, tucked up somewhere in the sleeves of my sweatshirt.
“So…” she says. “What was it you wanted to tell me earlier? Before the s’mores?”
And I’m so gut-punched, I don’t even make a dig about her epic marshmallow-roasting fail when she brings up the s’mores.
“Yeah… that.”
I inhale a long breath, then let it out through rounded lips .
“Jesus, Jackie… You’re gonna be so… I mean, you’re gonna hate me. After I tell you - you’re gonna want me gone. Like, for good. And I want you to know that tomorrow morning I’ll go. First thing in the morning, I’m outa here. I promise.”
“Oh my gosh…” Her face looks pained. She already looks crushed, and it kind of kills me a little inside. “What? What did you do?”
I blow out another breath. Then I just say it.
“I killed your mom, Jax. I’m the one who shot her.”