by Cassie Beebe
Seeing those two images morph together in his mind, he could feel the panic rising in his chest at the thought of losing someone else in that same gruesome way. His instinct was to flee, to run away from anything that had the potential to cause that kind of harm. But it was too late for running. He was in too deep, now, and no amount of avoidance could remove the way he felt about Jenna.
The last thing he wanted was to make her uncomfortable, to push her away just when she was finally starting to open up to him, but he couldn’t stop himself from saying what was on his mind.
“My mom…,” he trailed off, feeling her eyes on his face again. He swallowed back the emotion and continued. “She killed herself when I was fifteen.”
Jenna stayed silent, waiting.
“I found her in the bathtub. She, um…,” he paused, re-thinking the subject, but it was too late to turn back now. “She had slit her wrists,” he stated, forcing himself to meet her eyes.
Once the words sank in, her face fell, and she turned away from his gaze. In doing so, her view fell on her arms beneath her, and her hands moved to her phantom sleeve, an instinct to cover them, but her jacket was on the ground.
He didn’t say anything, but the silence was deafening. Even the chirping of the crickets had ceased for a brief stretch, as if they knew the intensity of the moment required complete stillness.
Jenna peeked at him, and he was looking at her – no anger or judgment, just waiting.
She took in a breath and let it out slowly. “It was a long time ago,” she muttered at the grass under her fingers as she toyed with the pieces.
Jacob nodded, afraid that speech would burst the fragile bubble of the conversation, and he wanted her to continue.
There was a long silence, and for a minute he thought she wasn’t going to say anything more.
“I… tried once,” she whispered.
Jacob’s heart thumped harder in his chest as his fears were confirmed.
She let out a sigh, her shoulders falling, as if a literal weight had lifted up and disappeared.
He thought about her words, tried to picture them, and then shoved that thought out of his mind. He didn’t want to imagine finding her like that, and his heart ached for whoever had to be the one to live with that image for the rest of their life, because he knew exactly how it felt.
“Who found you?” he asked in a quiet voice.
She peeked up at him again, and he could see the guilt in her eyes as she said it. “My mom.”
He turned back to the stars, focusing on one particularly bright orb in the middle of a cluster of dimmer beauties. The crickets had returned to their loud bellowing, but the rest of the campus was silent. The moment was surreal, fragile, and it felt as if any word would shatter it, sending even the memories floating away with the light, river breeze, into the night.
So, they didn’t say anything. After a while, Jenna flipped over, laying on her back beside him to examine the night sky. She lay further away from him than usual, half a foot of ground separating them, but he felt as if she had never been closer.
In that moment, he knew her. In the deepest levels of her soul, he understood her, and he racked his brain for any indication of the last time he had felt that way about anyone. He came up blank.
The closest example he had was Sarah, but even with her, there was something missing. Their relationship was one-sided: she gave, he took. He needed, she provided.
But with Jenna, in this moment, there was no giving or taking, just understanding. He understood her at her core, and the only thing that put a shadow on the moment was a longing in his gut to be understood in return. And once that ache was acknowledged, it began to fester and grow, pounding in his chest and ears, overflowing until at last, the words fell out of his mouth in a whisper on their own accord, desperate to be said and longing to be heard.
“I killed somebody.”
Silence.
A long silence followed his admission, and the momentary relief of finally saying the words aloud was quickly replaced with panic. She didn’t say anything for a long moment, and he stopped breathing altogether, not daring to look at her expression. But despite the panic, there was something about the mixture of adrenaline coursing through his veins and the desperate need to fill the uncomfortable silence that pushed him to want to share more.
At first, he tried to stifle the instinct, but there was a part of him that ached for the freedom of laying it all on the line, not just to a therapist, but to someone who mattered. And if she was going to hate him for it, the damage was probably already done, so what could be the harm?
“Four people,” he said.
The minute the words were out of his mouth, he wanted to take them back. Even across the distance, he could feel her stiffen beside him. His stomach tied up in knots, and his hands and feet were tingling, screaming at him to run, hide, get out of there. But against his better judgement, he kept talking.
“That’s why I started school so late. I was incarcerated in a mental institution for eight years,” he explained. “Just got released on parole in September.”
But before the silence could drag out again, loud footsteps stomped through the nearby brush, making them both jump at the sound.
“Jennaaa,” a woman slurred in a whiny voice. “Are you out here? I wanna go homeee.”
Jenna sat up, turning toward the voice. “Anna? Where’s Marcus?”
“Marcus is an asshole,” she yelled the last word over her shoulder toward where the fire had been burning, presumably for Marcus’ benefit. “I don’t feel good. I wanna go home,” she moaned, dragging her feet begrudgingly forward like a child.
“Okay, fine,” Jenna answered, grabbing her jacket from the ground and standing up.
Jacob stood, too. After slipping on her jacket and zipping it up, Jenna finally looked at him.
They stared at each other for a moment, and there was no denying the distance in her eyes.
“Um,” she began, gesturing to her roommate. “I gotta go. So….”
He waited for an end to that sentence, but it didn’t come, so he simply nodded and said, “Yeah, of course.”
Jenna paused, still staring at him. The way she looked at him, like he was someone she didn’t recognize, cut deeper than any words could have.
After a moment, prompted by more whining from Anna, Jenna turned around without another word and they scuffled toward the dorm buildings.
Jacob stood in the darkness for a long while, giving them a head start. He stared forward at nothing, and the silence that was once peaceful had now turned ominous. In all his rough years, he had never felt more alone.
He waited a few more minutes, making sure there was enough distance that he wouldn’t cross their path again, and then he started toward their building.
He tried to keep his mind blank as he walked, because numbness was surely better than any of the other emotions that were pounding on his carefully constructed walls, struggling to burst forth. He successfully thought of nothing at all as he walked through the field, onto the sidewalk, and into the building, but the minute he stepped into his room, it all came crashing down on him. The panic, the fear, the anger with himself for being so stupid as to think anyone could ever hear the truth about his past and not run away, screaming.
The second he was through the doorway, he slumped to the floor, back against the wall, in a full-fledged panic attack. His hands were shaking, and his body had broken out into a cold sweat under his clothes that were now sticking to his skin. The room started spinning, even though he was already seated firmly on the floor, and it made his stomach turn. He started to crawl toward the bathroom, but the shaking and the vertigo made the task too difficult, so he simply turned onto his back and lay on the hard floor.
His breath was coming in short, quick bursts, and the lack of oxygen in his brain clouded his vision, so he closed his eyes and tried to get a handle on his breathing. Once the initial fear of the attack had subsided enough for him to realiz
e he was having one, he remembered the breathing method Doctor Yang had taught him.
In for four, hold for four, out for four.
After a few minutes of repeating that mantra to himself and following its instructions, he was able to breathe semi-normally. He could open his eyes without feeling dizzy, but his body still let out involuntary tremors every few seconds, and he could already feel a headache coming on from the stress of it all.
After breathing intentionally for another minute, he cautiously pulled himself to his feet, using the bed beside him to steady his shaking frame, and stumbled to the bathroom. He quickly took his regular medication, along with an over-the-counter painkiller to stave off the headache, and climbed into bed.
Staring at the ceiling and feeling the emptiness in his gut, he started to worry that the pills would make him sick if he didn’t eat anything, so with great effort, he forced himself out of bed again, stumbled over to his backpack for a leftover granola bar, and fell back into bed. He took a bite of the tasteless bar, chewing mechanically, and forced it down his throat, groaning against the nausea that fought back.
It felt like he had been lying on that floor for an hour, but with a glance at the clock, he realized it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. He forced himself to finish the whole bar, to give himself a better chance of not spending the rest of the night on the bathroom floor, and once it was finished, he dropped the wrapper on the floor shut his eyes.
The panic attack left him so physically exhausted, he didn’t have enough mental energy to worry about anything, which was almost worth the horrid experience, given his current situation. He quickly started to drift off, but a loud ding-ing brought him back to consciousness. It was a familiar sound, but in his current mental state, it took him a full minute to realize it was his cell phone. Once he did, he reluctantly pulled himself out of bed again to grab it from his backpack.
He looked at the clock on his bedside table again, wondering who would possibly be trying to talk to him at this late hour. For a brief moment, he wondered if his therapist had some kind of telepathic sixth sense and could tell that he needed her. But when he opened the phone, the mystery was replaced with anxious anticipation.
Text from Jenna
HE STARED AT HIS phone screen, stepping back to sit on the edge of the bed. He took in a deep breath of preparation and opened the message.
Was it self-defense?
His heart raced. He hated himself for the answer he had to give, but at least she was still talking to him. That had to be a good sign, right? He typed out a quick “no” and hit send. All of his grogginess had faded as he waited for a response, tapping his foot impatiently against the floor. With the action, he realized he was still wearing his shoes, so he kicked them off.
His phone vibrated in his hand with a loud DING and he quickly opened the new message.
Were they bad people?
That question was more complicated than the last. Clearly, the man who killed his sister was a bad person. Of that, he could be certain. There was a good argument to be made for his father, as well. But the other two… well, that’s where things got complicated. Too complicated to explain through text, so he simply replied:
Some of them.
He found himself holding his breath as he waited for a reply, but he had to let it out eventually. This pause was longer than the previous one, and he wondered if that was it. If the knowledge that his crimes were not self-defense and that not all of the men whose lives he took were bad people was enough for her to decide he wasn’t worth speaking to anymore.
Before he could get too depressed about that thought, his phone vibrated again, this time ringing out an electronic tune.
Jenna Calling…
His finger hesitated over the “accept call” button, as his breathing started to speed up again and the pounding in his chest returned. He closed his eyes for a brief moment to center himself. Now was not the time for another panic attack.
In for four, hold for four, out for four.
He cleared his throat and pressed the button.
With the phone pressed to his ear, he listened to her quiet breath. He couldn’t find his voice, but he didn’t need to. She spoke first.
“Why?”
He waited for clarification, but she didn’t say anything more.
“Why what?” he asked.
In a low voice, she said, “Why did you… do it?”
He wondered where she was, if she was whispering for privacy or because the question was so unspeakable. Was she in her room, where Anna could wake up and overhear, or was she in the lobby, where someone could walk by at any moment? If she was in the lobby, should he go out there and speak to her in person? No, over the phone was better. It allowed her privacy to react however she was going to react, and perhaps not being able to see the look of disgust on her face would spur him to tell her the truth more openly.
Jacob sighed. “I don’t…,” he shook his head. He didn’t want to answer that question, but if he simply refused to respond, he was certain that would be the end of it. He would have lost her for good. If he had any hope of a future with Jenna, in any capacity, he had to tell the whole truth. “I’m afraid that if I try to explain why, it’ll sound like I’m making excuses for my actions,” he admitted. “And I don’t want to do that, because there’s absolutely nothing defendable about the choices I’ve made.”
Jenna was silent for a long moment, deliberating.
“I won’t take it that way,” she promised. “I want… I want to know.”
He nodded. “Okay. I guess… I’ll start at the beginning.”
He told her about his father’s abuse and more details of his mother’s suicide. He talked about growing up in a shack of a house, sharing a room with his teenage sister and trying to keep her out of the line of fire from their father. He told her what it was like to practically be a parent at fifteen, and in as much detail as he could manage, described the pain of being told that his little sister was raped and murdered.
“The cops were… well, they were doing their best, but you know how it is. They have so many rules, hoops they have to jump through. So, I decided to… take matters into my own hands,” he admitted. “I figured out who the lead suspect was, and I broke into his house. I found…,” he paused, swallowing back the emotion that rose in his throat at the memory. He breathed deeply through his nose and started again. “I found her backpack there. Her clothes. I wanted to take it all, but I had to leave it for the police to find, so they would know.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees as he got into the tough part. “I brought a gun. A revolver my dad kept under the bed.”
Closing his eyes, he could picture the room around him. It was pristine. All white cabinets and marble counters, and everything in its place. Everything except the backpack, overflowing with clothes that were sprawled out on the modern gray, leather couch.
“I didn’t plan on using it. At least…,” he shook his head. “I don’t know, I don’t think I did.”
There was a digital camera on the couch, beside Maggie’s clothes, and the sight of it had made his stomach drop. He stared at it for the longest time, trying not to understand why it was there and what photos might be on it.
“But… he came home,” he continued, the echo of the sharp gunshots ringing in his ears. “I just reacted. I didn’t…,” he shook his head.
Jenna was silent on her end, but he could hear her breathing enough to know she was still there.
“Anyway, after that I knew I had to run,” he said, snapping out of his memories. “So, I went back to the house to get a few things.” He looked toward the bottom drawer of the desk in his dorm room, where Maggie’s journal was now stored.
He thought back to that night, stopping short on the front porch and telling himself he was going to head straight for the bedroom, find her journal, grab a few other necessities, and ignore whatever his father tried to say. Of course, as
soon as Jacob had opened the front door, the man was hot on his tail.
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded, following Jacob to the bedroom.
Jacob ignored him, quickly searching the room for the diary he knew Maggie had kept, and grabbing a few other things along the way.
“Hey! I’m talking to you!” his father shouted, grabbing him forcefully by the arm as Jacob tried to reach behind him for his backpack on the floor.
Jacob shook him off and stayed on task, checking every drawer of Maggie’s dresser.
“The fuck is your problem, boy?” the man exclaimed. “First your sister goes off all half-cocked, thinking she can run away without a dollar to her name, and then you take off?”
The mention of Maggie made his teeth grind, but he kept his mouth shut and kept looking for her journal. It wasn’t in the backpack – he had checked – so it had to be in their room somewhere.
He stood up from the bottom drawer of the dresser to check the closet, and his father took the opportunity to grab him by the front of the shirt with both hands.
“Hey! You look at me when I’m talking to you!” he shouted, inches from Jacob’s face.
The anger boiled over, and Jacob shoved him away, knocking him into the door of the bedroom.
His back hit the door hard enough to put the knob through the wall, and as soon as the loud BANG of contact sounded, Jacob froze.
The sound hung in the air as he stared with wide eyes at his father’s rage-filled face. He stopped breathing, and his pulse pounded hard as he waited for the kickback.