The Fixes

by Owen Matthews

  “On the contrary.” Jordan shakes his head. “This town is a shithole, E. I’m doing the world a favor. And if I happen to get really, really freaking famous in the process?” He shrugs. “Well, shit. I guess that’s just a perk of the job.”

  “You’re a hypocrite. You know that, right? You’re just as bad as any of these assholes.”

  Jordan’s smile doesn’t waver. “Think about how far you’ve come since the first day of summer. Think about all the fun we’ve had. It’s been amazing, right?”

  Eric starts to reply. Jordan holds up his hand. “Just answer me. Did you have fun?”

  “We freaking killed people,” Eric says. “That’s supposed to be fun?”

  “Psh,” Jordan says. “Listen, E, I’m just saying, I’ve never steered you wrong before. Just trust me, and this will all work out fine.”

  (Just trust me.)

  (Just trust me.)

  (Let me do this and then we’ll be together forever.)

  (You’ll thank me when this is over; just trust me.)

  344.

  But Eric’s through with that bullshit.

  He’s friends-off with Jordan.

  (Enough of that trust me crap.)

  He looks up at Jordan. “Where’s the second one?”

  Jordan laughs. “Oh, is this the part where the evil bad guy is supposed to reveal his evil plan to the helpless hero?”

  Eric shrugs. “I mean, whatever.”

  “Fine,” Jordan says. “You want to know where the second bomb is, E? I’ll show you.”

  Jordan pulls his phone from his pocket and types in a number. Presses send. “Here you go,” he tells Eric.

  And halfway across the lot,

  a GMC Yukon blows the fuck up.

  345.

  Between the fireball and the chaos and the hundred car alarms, Eric’s thinking—

  I recognize that truck.

  It’s Donovan Connelly’s personal Yukon. It’s Eric’s dad’s ride.

  “I meant to save that one for your dad,” Jordan says. “You know, while he was in it. Just one final ‘Fuck you’ to the senator for all the ways he screwed up your life. But I guess I can’t resist showing off for you, E. And he’ll get his in the end, anyway, don’t worry.”

  The lot is insanity now. The Yukon burns bright. What cops remain in the park are pouring in from the perimeter as rich people in tuxedos and gowns spill out of the gala. Everywhere is car alarms, sirens, and screaming. Eric can see Paige at the exit, searching the crowd. He sees Liam, too, coming out of the forest.

  “You’re totally crazy,” Eric says. “You should be in, like, a mental institution, for real.”

  “Poor people are crazy, E,” Jordan says, shouldering the bag. “Rich people are eccentric. That’s just facts.”

  He turns away from Eric, walks out from between the Porsche and the Range Rover. Starts to walk toward the crowd milling around in front of the gala. And that’s about when Eric pushes himself to his feet and launches his body at Jordan’s.

  346.

  You can picture what happens next.

  (Cue the ACTION-MOVIE FIGHT SCENE.)

  Except we’ve already established that Eric’s not much of a fighter. He’s tall, but Jordan’s taller. He’s strong(ish); Jordan’s built. Plus, his head is kind of pounding from where Jordan punched him, and oh, also, the bomb. He’s hardly in the best fighting shape.

  He does have the element of surprise, though, and that counts for something. Specifically, it counts for enough to knock Jordan stumbling down to the pavement, where he lands on all fours.

  Eric lands on top of him. Police are running past, and security guards, and old rich people in five-figure formal wear. And Eric and Jordan are fighting.

  It’s not a fair fight. (See above.)

  Jordan lets the bomb go and proceeds to kick Eric’s ass. Again. Like, Eric gets a few shots in, but mostly it’s Jordan with the fists and the kicking and the elbows and the knees. And eventually Jordan gets Eric pinned, and he’s straddling Eric’s body and raining punches, no mercy, until he’s sure Eric’s ass has been satisfactorily kicked.

  (And Eric, for his part, can just lie there and take the punches and, like, bleed.)

  And then Jordan lets up. Stands and picks up the Herschel bag. Looks down at Eric—

  (who’s lying there, dazed, thinking he might never get up).

  “I’m sorry, E,” Jordan says, and he looks like he truly means it.

  “I really thought we’d be famous together.”

  347.

  It’s Eric, Eric wants to tell Jordan. My name’s freaking Eric.

  But that argument seems inconsequential now,

  given the circumstances.

  348.

  So, Eric lies there.

  (Surrounded by chaos.)

  Watches Jordan pick up the bag with the bomb inside and start down the rows of cars toward the gala doors.

  Looks past Jordan to the crowd at those doors, and if he looks close, can see his dad in the crowd, standing with his driver, looking upset but not at all blown up.

  But Paige and Liam are over there too, struggling to hold back the crowd, all those terrified gala-goers who are going to go down as collateral damage, and none of them really deserve it.

  They’re rich, and shallow, and really kind of awful, but that doesn’t mean they deserve to die.

  Especially not so that Jordan Grant can become the infamous Suicide Pack Killer.

  So, you know what’s coming.

  Redemption.

  (Kind of.)

  349.

  Jordan’s cutting between a big Range Rover and a Lexus. Once he gets through, it’s a clear path to the gala entrance. Nothing stands in his way.

  (The time to act is NOW.)

  (This is the Moment.)

  Eric rolls over. Pulls his phone from his pocket. Scrolls through his contacts to Jordan’s first burner phone. Points it at Jordan, like a remote.

  (You don’t have to point it like that.)

  Presses send.

  350.

  Nothing.

  351.

  Eric scrolls down to the second burner’s number. Presses send again.

  (And if you’re at all acquainted with the rule of three,

  you can figure out what happens.)

  352.

  Jordan keeps walking. The bomb still doesn’t go off.

  (Wrong number again.)

  Eric scrolls to the third burner phone in his contacts. Lifts his head and finds Jordan. He’s still between two cars.

  “Jordan,” Eric calls out. “Drop the bomb.”

  Somehow, Jordan hears him. He looks back at Eric. He just smiles, and it kind of looks like he knows what’s about to happen.

  (They’ll remember my name.)

  But he doesn’t stop walking. He keeps going, daring Eric to do it.

  And Eric’s running out of time.

  So he does it.

  353.

  BOOM.

  KIK -- CAPILANO HIGH PRIVATE MESSAGE GROUP – 08/27/16 – 06:26 PM

  USERNAME: SuIcIdEpAcK

  MESSAGE: So long, Capilano. You’re too broken to fix.

  354.

  (I would like to tell you that Eric saves the day, and nobody dies, and he gets away clean, and even Jordan survives.

  I would like to tell you there are no consequences for the things that Eric did. But that would be a cop-out. You wouldn’t feel satisfied.

  Real life has consequences.)

  355.

  Eric wakes up in a hospital bed. He spends a few days there, and then he goes to jail—

  (more accurately, a juvenile detention facility).

  Detectives Dawson and Richards come to see him. They take him to an interview room, and they tell him that Jordan’s dead. They tell Eric that with Haley and Jordan dead, and Paige already confessing, he’s the only target they have left. They tell Eric he’s an easy target, and they’re going to take him down.

  They tell him
the prosecution is going to try him as an adult.

  And they tell him his father ain’t chipping in a dime for legal representation.

  (If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.)

  Basically, they tell Eric . . .

  he’s fucked.

  356.

  . . . and that’s when Haley comes back.

  (Okay, so there’s one cop-out.)

  It turns out Haley doesn’t drown when Jordan knocks her off the Sundancer. She splashes around for a while, and she inhales a lot of seawater. She pretty well thinks she’s going to drown.

  But she doesn’t.

  She washes up on one of those western islands, clutching a piece of driftwood like the girl in Titanic. A couple kayakers find her a day or two later, soaking wet and shivering and clinging to life.

  (But still alive.)

  The kayakers call the coast guard, and the coast guard brings her back to the city, where they throw her in a hospital bed and nurse her back to life.

  It takes a while.

  And then when Haley’s feeling better, she turns on the TV in her hospital room, and there’s Eric’s face on the news, and Haley hears the whole story.

  And she decides she can’t let Eric take all the blame.

  357.

  Haley’s reemergence does a wonderful job of un-fucking Eric.

  For one thing, Haley is alive, so that’s one less murder charge on Eric’s rap sheet. And Haley is more than willing to tell Dawson and Richards that it was Jordan who knocked her overboard, Jordan who tried to kill her. She tells the detectives that Eric was just as surprised as she was.

  Further, Haley gets Eric off the hook for Mike McDougall’s murder, too—

  Haley tells Dawson and Richards about the conversation in the Sundancer, how Jordan bragged about killing the special effects guy. She tells Dawson and Richards how she and Eric and Paige were all together at Jordan’s house while Jordan was killing McDougall, how Jordan did it all on his own.

  And Dawson and Richards grudgingly accept this, especially after someone at Cap Marina tells them he remembers Jordan coming back on the Sundancer by himself that morning, no sign of pretty girls or, like, Eric.

  So, boom, that’s Haley and Mike wiped from Eric’s list of charges. That just leaves, let me see, , plus the Côte d’Azur bomb, plus, well, the Room spree, and maybe even that trashy magazine office Haley broke into way back on page 101.

  That’s a long list of charges.

  That’s a lot to answer for.

  (I hate to say it, but Eric’s still fucked.)

  358.

  Liam knows a lawyer, a Legal Aid guy named Rob. He agrees to take Eric’s case as a favor.

  Lawyer Rob manages to get Eric charged as a minor. He gets the murder charges downgraded to aiding and abetting, on account of how Eric was in the lobby of the St. Regis when it actually happened.

  The bombing, though, is pretty tough to dispute. Ditto the Room spree. Lawyer Rob can’t do much but ask for a plea deal. The prosecution obliges, but they still come back with jail time.

  “You’ll be in a juvenile detention facility until you turn eighteen,” Lawyer Rob tells Eric. “After that, they’ll move you to an adult prison, minimum security. Give them three years with good behavior and you’re out.”

  Three years.

  Adult prison.

  (So much for law school.)

  359.

  (On the plus side, the Connelly name is really, really tarnished.

  And you can imagine how Eric’s dad feels about that.)

  360.

  “So, I guess I’ll never be president,” Eric tells Liam.

  They’re sitting in the visiting room at the juvenile detention facility. The dramatic stuff is over. Haley caught a three-year sentence (she’ll make parole in twelve months) and Paige is under house arrest (twelve months, three years’ probation, five hundred hours of community service).

  (I told you rich kids get off easy.)

  Right now, Eric’s trying to get used to prison life. Trying to toughen up in junior jail before the big move to the big house.

  (I mean, it’s minimum security, but still.)

  His dad hasn’t visited. His mom has come, twice—

  (she had to sneak out on Eric’s dad to do it).

  (She cried both times.)

  (Eric didn’t tell her about Maggie Swenson.

  Or Roger Dodger.)

  (He figures his mom doesn’t need to hear it right now.)

  But Liam keeps coming back. He’s come four or five times now. And Eric doesn’t ask why, because he’s afraid Liam will stop, and Liam’s visits, really, are the only thing that keep him sane.

  “Who wants to be president, anyway?” Liam says. “Did you see what it did to Obama? Dude aged, like, thirty years by the end of his second term.”

  Eric laughs, despite himself.

  “I just don’t know what I’m going to do instead,” he says. “I spent my whole life thinking I would just follow in my dad’s footsteps. Now I’m, like, a convict.”

  “Not for long,” Liam says. “You’ll still be young when you get out.”

  “Yeah, and then what? All I ever planned for was law school and political office. I never considered other options. I don’t even know where to start.”

  “You could come back to the health center. We could always use more help.”

  Eric makes a face. “What, giving needles to junkies?” He catches himself. “Sorry.”

  Liam laughs. “Think it over. It might not be so bad.” He shrugs. “It would be nice to see you again, anyway. When you’re, you know, outside.”

  Eric looks around the visiting room. Looks at Liam.

  (Eric can see how Jordan would have liked him.)

  “I mean, yeah,” he says. “I mean, I would really like that.”

  361.

  So, that’s that. Eric settles into life as a convict, and it’s harder and easier than he ever imagined. He reads a lot, and he lifts weights and he attends classes and tries to figure out what he’ll do when he’s out.

  The days pass, and it’s lonely and scary and rough, but Liam keeps coming, even after Eric moves to, you know, real prison.

  And then a year passes, and it’s not Liam waiting for Eric in the visitors’ booth, and it’s not his mom, either.

  It’s Paige.

  She looks different. She’s cut her long hair short, and dyed the blond dark. And Eric can tell by her expression that he looks pretty different too.

  “So, here we are,” she says when the (inevitably awkward) first moments are over. “A couple of regular criminals, huh?”

  Eric nods. Regular criminals.

  “Of course, we did save the whole town from a terrorist attack,” Paige says, smiling wryly. “So maybe we’re kind of heroes, too, just a little?”

  “I killed Jordan,” Eric says. “Does that make me a hero?”

  Paige shrugs. “It was him or the whole town. Him or me. And I know . . .” She pauses. “I know it couldn’t have been easy, but you did it anyway.”

  “Yeah,” Eric says. “I thought I loved him.”

  Paige doesn’t say anything to this, not for a while. She just looks down at her free hand for a long time, on the other side of the glass.

  “He was a psychopath,” she says softly. “You know that, right?”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.”

  Paige straightens. “Anyway, I didn’t come here to talk about Jordan.”

  “No?”

  “No,” Paige says, and she’s kind of smiling again. “You promised me a real apology that night, and you never came through.

  “I’m here to collect,” she says.

  Eric blinks. He can feel Paige watching him, and the guards, and he knows their time is almost up. And he is sorry. For a lot. He just can’t figure out where to start.

  “I’m sorry I was such a shitty friend,” he tells Paige. “I’m sorry I bailed on you junior y
ear and never told you why I broke up with you.”

  Paige raises an eyebrow.

  “I’m sorry I never actually broke up with you at all,” Eric says. “I’m sorry I couldn’t just talk to you. I’m sorry it took the freaking Suicide Pack to make us actually talk to each other again.

  “I’m sorry about the Suicide Pack,” Eric says. “I’m sorry I encouraged you to run a Fix on , and I’m sorry I didn’t have your back when you wanted to do the right thing when he died.

  “I’m sorry I took Jordan’s side over yours.

  “I’m sorry,” Eric says.

  And he is.

  About everything.

  362.

  Well, practically everything.

  363.

  “I’m not sorry I met Jordan,” Eric says.

  Paige’s face darkens a little bit. She starts to say something. But Eric continues anyway.

  “I’m not sorry I met Jordan, and I’m not sorry I joined the Pack,” he says. “I’m not sorry about the Fix we ran on The Room, because you were right, fuck those guys for putting spikes down where homeless people try to sleep.”

  Now Paige smiles again, a little.

  “I’m not sorry I let Jordan drag me out of my stupid internship that day, and I’m not sorry we burned down his car. I’m sorry I didn’t make a confession that night, but I’m not sorry I was there to hear yours. I’m sorry I didn’t do more to help.”

  Eric takes a breath.

  “Basically,” he says, “I’m sorry for everything shitty that I did, up to and including the crimes I’ve been convicted for. I’m not sorry about the Jordan and the Pack stuff because—” (Cue the sappy stuff.) “This is going to sound cheesy, but I don’t think we’d be talking right now, and, like, I want to be friends again and I hope you come back.”