Thirty
OREN
The weight has lifted from my shoulders as more and more details of my father’s murder are announced online. There hasn’t been an image released, so there’s still that niggling doubt that maybe they’ve just mistakenly identified someone else as my father.
Though, they’re saying that my brother positively identified him.
He’d been one of the first on the scene where his body had been found.
He was stabbed seventeen times, his face mutilated, but not beyond recognition.
They also said that every injury inflicted appeared to be intentionally placed, so he’d remain alive and suffering. They wanted to punish this man.
This wasn’t a random murder. It was planned. A crime with emotion behind it. It wasn’t committed by a stranger, but by someone who had known Jessup in life. The killing blow was a classic prisoner-made blade plunged through his neck, so he suffocated on his own blood while he bled out.
I should feel something other than relief. Right? But the only other things I feel are liberation and then guilt at not feeling something else.
Adak’s words run through my head like a chant. It’s over.
We don’t talk about it over the next several days as we go about living.
Adak has been home except for when he joins members of his team for a workout at ass o’clock in the mornings.
There haven’t been any other meetings or anything concerning work.
He’s been planning the rafting trip for the Bobcats and I think he’s super excited about it.
I’ve been working, shifting between Second World and YouTV depending on whether I want to be combing through code or watching clips. And when I need a different distraction, I look up Rainbow Dorset University.
The only college I’d looked at before was the one that Haze currently attends. The only one my father approved of, for whatever reason. But when I didn’t agree to enroll in the courses or follow the career track that he chose, I was forbidden to attend.
At first, Shelton, Huntley, Greta, and I tried to come up with a believable plan where I could take one or two courses at a time in a field that I wanted. But it became far too complicated. Too many lies. Too easily found out. It just wasn’t feasible and wouldn’t have worked.
Then there was the matter of financial aid, which requires your parents’ information, which I clearly couldn’t get on my own.
So… I stopped trying. I took a single online course, paying for it out of my own pocket.
But even that wasn’t sustainable. How was I going to have enough time to study, work, and sneak around to do what I needed to do?
The basic courses were going to be easy enough but when I got to something more complicated where I’d need to study for real and do projects and such?
Without being able to do it at home, it just wasn’t going to work.
There were two things in my life that I’d managed to keep to myself and my father, though pissed and threw a tantrum, wasn’t able to get his hands on. My phone and my bank account.
He tried a lot of really slimy things to get access to my bank account, including going to Nutter Bean and attempting to convince Shelton (as the owner/manager) that he should have access to my payroll and where it goes.
The audacity of asking one of my friends for not only something illegal but to give him further means to control me was just sickening. Obviously, Shelton refused. My father literally threw a fit, threatening to call a lawyer and whatever.
But nothing came of that. What lawyer was going to agree my father should have access to the account of his twenty-year-old son?
Honestly, I’m not entirely sure why he agreed to let me work there.
In the end, I thought maybe because the fact of the matter is, Shelton is young.
He’s my age. He’s not someone who would see my father’s behavior as abusive and try to do something about it.
In some sense, we’re all kids there. We’re too young to have the means and experience to know what to do. Where to go. How to help someone. Allowing me to work at Nutter Bean was another way to keep his control of me.
Hindsight.
It’s over.
My first impression of Rainbow Dorset is that the campus is bright. There are pride flags and paintings everywhere. Don’t get me wrong—it’s absolutely breathtaking. All masterfully and artistically done. But I’ve never seen somewhere with such a constant, vast set of colors.
I scroll through the education programs and then open another tab on a second screen to search for what one might do with that degree. It’s fascinating. I’ve never known so many careers existed in the world.
I also spend some time thinking about Kendrick’s new project and wonder if that place had been up and running ten years ago, how would I have found out about it? How would I have reached out without alerting my father? Better yet, how does a minor escape the place he’s in to attend?
Even if I’d known about this new project, I have a lot of doubts it would have helped me.
Four days after my father’s death, I receive a text from Frankie.
Frankie
Come home now
I think I start a response no less than a dozen times.
No.
That’s never been home.
Don’t text me.
In the end, I block his number and write it off. He’s not an issue anymore. Without our father to enable his bullshit, he can’t hurt me.
An hour later, Dane texts me.
Dane
This is your fault.
I roll my eyes. This time, I don’t contemplate how to respond, I just block his number too.
I have half a mind to block Haze’s but, in the end, I don’t.
He was never a bully to me. He was a silent observer.
An enabler at most. But I don’t for a second think he’ll message me.
Especially not with anything like Dane or Frankie.
After lunch, Adak and I are lounging on the couch. I’m tucked into his arms, which might just be my favorite spot ever, as we absently alternate between watching television and scrolling on our phones.
Conversation doesn’t lack in these moments, but we also don’t feel the need to fill the silence either.
We talk about the show or what we see in the apps we’re in.
Some of these simple things are my very favorite times.
Nothing monumental happens. We don’t have any life altering revelations. But I feel closer to him all the same.
Maybe I should have learned my lesson, but for some reason, I’m once again scrolling through Spectrum.
I shouldn’t. It’s a cesspool and the platform all these hate groups use the most. Which I find hilarious because of their ‘community guidelines’ and such.
A comment that says ‘that’s fucking epic’ can be blocked for offensive language, but posts like those my father put up were left alone.
I haven’t been on Spectrum in a few days, so I guess maybe I thought everything was done.
News of my father’s death was viewed as a hate crime and either in retaliation for the unfounded lies he’s been spreading, or maybe it was a prisoner he mistreated striking back.
Either way, I open the app and the third post I see is my brother’s.
He’s sharing an article from the EEPD that says ‘MURDER SUSPECT IN PRISON OFFICER’S DEATH STILL AT LARGE. ’
Frankie Prosser the fact that the world can’t see that his was a planned act is horrifying theirs no questin whos to blame adak did this Adak stol my brother taught him gayness and then killed my father when he was called out and were doing nothing about it
It’s disgusting to read. Continuing to spread my father’s lies, plus a brand-new accusation.
“Adak?”
“Mmm,” he answers.
“Have you seen this?” Part of me wants to protect him from it ,but at the same time, I think he needs to know.
Adak looks at my phone. Half a minute passes and he sighs. “Send me the link, please.”
I do and then watch as he forwards the link in an email and then a text message.
Throughout the afternoon, posts like that one disappear and then new ones come up. One of the last ones, in all caps, says:
Frankie Prosser TAKE MY POSTS DOWN ALL YOU WANT ILL KEEP POSTING AGAIN THE TRUTH NEEDS TO BE HEARD AND A RAPIST OFF THE STREETS
“Rapist,” I mutter. “He’s just throwing new shit out there to get attention now.”
“He is,” Adak says. “I know it’s hard, but ignore it.”
I turn off my phone with a sigh. “It’s difficult.”
Adak nods. After a minute, he turns his phone off too and turns to pull me into his lap. He’s staring into my face for a long time before he says, “What do you want to do this summer?”
Oh. I hadn’t been expecting that. Also, I don’t even have any ideas. So I shake my head. “What kinds of things are there?” I ask.
He smiles, leans in, and kisses my lips softly. I love how he touches me. Sometimes it’s all soft and reverent, and other times it’s hot and intense. I love them both and everything in between.
“So many things,” Adak says, his fingers tracing my jaw.
“We can explore California since we’re here.
We can take a train trip across the US or fly to Hawaii.
Spend some time on the Isle of Kala, a chain of islands that houses a gay resort.
We can tour abandoned places, discover ruins, hike mountains, go to amusement parks, or libraries, or see the pyramids. ”
His fingers continue to trace the contours of my face as he casually lists things that would honestly never occur to me. These are all things people do. Things I didn’t even know existed.
Adak’s watching me, but I’m not sure what he’s seeing. His touch remains soft and continuous.
“Ah, I have an idea. My family owns a chalet in the Colorado mountains. How about we escape there for a week? We’ll explore nature, be pampered in the chalet by butlers, enjoy the hot tub and the views.
Disconnect from life here and wait for everything to be taken care of while we’re not being affected by it. ”
“Are we leaving our phones here?”
He hums. “No. But how about we temporarily uninstall social media apps? That way we can still take calls or texts—I don’t want to disconnect entirely in case we’re needed.”
“Is your family rich?”
Adak laughs. “My sister married wealthy, yes. She and I don’t come from a poor home, exactly. We’re upper middle class by birth, but the kind of money my brother-in-law has is close to royalty, I’d say. Maybe richer than some countries.”
“Oh!”
He chuckles. “I’d love for you to meet them. Maybe we’ll ask if they’d join us for the last day or so we’re at the chalet. What do you think?”
“This is Rakesh’s family?”
Adak nods. “Yep. He has a sister and a brother too.”
I know Adak talks to his sister often. I’ve heard their conversations, and even talked to Laska a few times.
“Okay,” I say. “That sounds… relaxing.”
“It will be. Go pack.”
“Now?”
Adak kisses me in such a way that I’m practically panting when his mouth leaves mine. “Yes, now. When we lay our heads down next, we’re going to be in the chalet.”
“What do I pack?” I ask, pulling myself up.
“Bathing suit. Some warmer clothes for outside since we’ll be high in the mountains. Otherwise, whatever you’re most comfortable in.”
I nod as I head upstairs. I’m not even sure what a chalet is. It sounds like something a king lives in. Or at the very least, a prince. I should see if Albie has a chalet somewhere.
It doesn’t take me long to pack. I don’t have a lot of clothes outside of what we brought from my father’s house, which is primarily what I end up packing. However, I change from the clothes I’ve been lounging around the house in today.
With another pair of underwear from Albie—and then getting distracted with that thought because I totally think there’s a cool ring to that and he could have a subscription service called Underwear from Albie—I pull on the leggings that he sent and then a shirt he sent, too.
Okay, time to see if I’m dressed properly to be seen in a chalet.
But the thing I’m looking forward to the most—being alone with Adak away from the shit that’s going on here. Silence. Solitude. Just us.