by JA Huss
“Because you! You’re so… so damn…” But I can’t say it.
He grins. And it’s not the same grin he’s been grinning either. If it was daytime instead of night, I might accuse him of blushing.
And that’s it. There’s nothing more I can do.
I am lost.
Utterly turned around.
Not even a compass could help me now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - JOHNNY
I just want to stare at her for a while. Memorize her so later, when shit gets bad, I can think back on this night. Think about her and how she’s charming the pants off me and she’s not even trying. Think about how her blue-green eyes catch the sparkle of the neon plankton down below and how I could picture her as a thing of the sea.
An octopus, maybe. Those little blue ones that people use to make poison. Or one of those glow-in-the-dark jellyfish. All willowy arms and legs. But touch her and she stings.
I know she stings. I know she’s got secrets. I know this is all a very bad idea, but—
“Oh, my God. Say something.”
—but I have secrets too. “When I was a kid—”
“Wait,” she says, holding up a hand. “Is this some story that will only make sense tomorrow when we’re swimming with glowing dolphins? And then I’ll be like, ‘Yeah, I can totally see your point. Why did I ever think differently?’”
“What?” I chuckle.
“Is it a trick? Or is it real?”
“Uh… well.” I think about this for a moment. “I don’t think it’s a trick. But I wasn’t trying to trick you earlier, either. I actually didn’t plan that conversation about death. It was just…” I shrug. “I dunno. I was in a weird place, I guess. Which brings me to this story, but if it’s gonna make you hate me, then I won’t tell it.”
She sucks in a deep breath and then lets it out all dramatic and shit. “OK, then. Go ahead.”
I close my eyes and smile. “OK, so when I was a kid it was pretty cool for a long time. I had a pretty great childhood, actually. I mean, if you take out the fact that my mother went missing before I was old enough to go to school, then I can’t complain about the early days.”
She frowns at me. And I can’t tell if that frown is because she can relate or because she can’t.
“My brothers were always there,” I continue. “And we’re so close in age. Just one year apart. So when I was like nine and Joey and Jesse were eight and seven, we had this little… I dunno. Imaginary world going on in our building. I explained the building, right? The high-rise where I grew up?”
“You mentioned it.”
“It’s not an apartment building. It’s an office building. Seventy-five stories tall and we all lived on the top five floors. So it was huge. Like… I’m talking mega-mansion, castle-like huge where you could actually get lost three or four times in one afternoon of playing.”
She smiles, her eyes fluorescent blue now because the waves have picked up, and the yacht is rolling with it, and that has the plankton crashing around down below all excited beyond belief.
“So this world we lived in. The imaginary one? Like, I’m not even sure who made it up first, or which of our minds it came from, or how it got to be so complicated, but we were space pirates. Like a cross between Luke Skywalker and Captain Hook, ya know? We had costumes and everything. Some maid or nanny must’ve made them for us. I’m sorry I don’t remember her name. It looks bad that I don’t remember, and I should just make something up so you don’t start thinking of me as a bratty trust-fund kid. But I get the feeling you’re looking for honesty right now, so I’m trying to be honest.”
“I’m not judging,” she says, crossing her heart with her finger.
I hold my breath for a moment because I really want to kiss her. It’s just… not yet. “We had laws, and legions of imaginary friends, and we had all these battles in the various stairwells, and rooms, and hallways. I think we drove our father crazy back then with all our imaginary play. Because one day he took me up into his office and said I had to stop. I was too old to play those games anymore. I had to stop living inside my head and be part of the real world. And Joey and Jesse were still kids so they could play, but I had to grow up.”
Megan crinkles her nose at me. “That’s not fair. You were only a year older.”
“That’s what I thought,” I say. “But my father’s word was law. Everyone knew that. So he put me in this chess club.”
“Chess, huh? That’s… ironic.”
“Yeah. I mean, is it? Ironic? Do you play chess?”
“Not seriously, but… everyone plays chess.”
“Do they?” I laugh.
“Don’t they?”
God, this girl. “Anyway. I was in the chess club now. And maybe you’ve never seen a chess club? But it’s filled with kids just like me.”
“How do you mean?”
“Kids who are too smart, too calculating. Kids who set up a flawless fucking argument to gain a person’s trust and put them at ease, only to go in for the kill later.”
“You’re throwing my words back at me.”
“I know. But I’m doing it in a playful way.” I grin at her and she looks down at the sea. “But for the record, I don’t like people like that either. My dad was like that. And now I was forced to be with kids like that. So I decided to just”—I shrug with my hands—“opt out, I guess.”
“Opt out, how?”
“You know. Hate people. Not really hate people, but hate being with people, maybe? I’m trying to say I became a loner. I liked the imaginary world my brothers and I created. I wanted to do that. I wanted to live that life. I wanted to be the hero. But as I got older I realized I’m not the hero. I’m the villain. So I just… dropped out. And now I’m used to it, Megan. I’m used to living inside my own head. So that’s why people see me this way, ya know? I cultivated it. But not in a malicious way. I’d like to make that clear. I just had to find a place where I fit in. And the only place I had was inside my head. So I get it. I’m this tatted-up, scary, violent dude with just enough power to make him effective and that’s all people see these days. And it’s sad.” I shrug. “It is. I get it. But I’ll tell you a little secret if you promise not to judge me.”
She crosses her heart with her finger again.
“I like it,” I whisper. “I like being alone. I don’t want to play someone else’s game. I don’t want to outthink people, and manipulate them. I don’t want to grow up.”
She makes a lopsided grin. “You’re Peter Pan?”
“No, Megan. I already told you. I’m Captain Hook.”
“Oh.” She frowns. “Right.”
“But that chess club experience didn’t define me. I read this book a couple years ago about mental illness.”
Megan sucks in a deep breath, very uncomfortable about where this might lead. And she should be. It’s dark as fuck inside my mind. But I hold up a hand. One pointed finger. A give-me-a-minute-to-explain kind of gesture.
“I read this book about mental illness because I had done something that couldn’t be filed away inside my brain. I didn’t have a place to put it, ya know? I just didn’t understand what happened, or how it happened, or why it happened, and I was trying my best to make sense of it because up until this point I’d done a fairly good job at keeping all that shit up in my head sorted out, ya know? I had done a decent job at staying sane through it all. ”
“Did you kill someone?” she asks. I nod yes. Then shake my head no. And of course, this confuses her. “I don’t understand.”
“Me either.” I sigh. “Because it didn’t start that day. The whole thing started eight years earlier when my uncle died. He’d taken some of the money and put it away into a trust for my cousin Zach. My father did the same thing for us when we were infants. Even Joey. And even now, I make sure some of the money I collect goes into their accounts every month. It’s the least I can do after I pushed them away. But my uncle hid Zach’s trust, for some reason. He took the money and then some
one came asking for it, and my uncle refused to tell them where it was.”
“Hmm,” Megan says. “I guess that didn’t look good.”
“No. It didn’t. And even though no one ever told me this or spelled it out, I think my uncle was trying to get Zach out. The Way killed him for that. And that money is still missing to this day. But that’s just the setup to what happened eight years later when my father… died.”
“They killed him too?”
I shake my head and close my eyes. Trying to make the memory of that day go away. Doesn’t work, though.
“This is the day that defines me. I just knew that there would never be another day like that. I would never have another opportunity to change again. I was on a track now. One way trip only. Because… because I killed him.”
I pause to look at Megan. Find her squinting her eyes in confusion. “You killed… your father?”
I have never told anyone this. Ever. And even though I’ve lived with the secret for five years now I don’t think I can hide this shit inside me one more day. That folder file up in my head called dad? Yeah. It’s damaged. Beyond repair.
And there’s no going back now. The only way to put this little genie in the bottle is to… kill Megan. Wipe all trace of it off the earth.
And I’m not going to do that. It’s time. It’s long past time to face this truth.
“He was going to do it himself,” I say. “The Way had come up to the top floors of the building to beat the shit out of him more times than I can count. His face was always swollen. His eyes were always black, or blue, or some sickly shade of green and yellow. Some bone was always broken. And the threats, ya know? You can only live with that kind of fight-or-flight response inside your body for so long before it makes you wish for death.”
I stop and picture my father. Slumped up against the window of his office. Backlit by a blue, cloudless sky outside. Gun in his mouth. Finger on the trigger.
“He’d sent me down one level to meet the Way representatives who were on their way up for a meeting. And by the time we came through the stairwell door and saw him, it was over. He’d made up his mind. He was done. One way or another, he was out of here. There were no words I could say to make him reconsider. No threat the Way could make to keep him alive.
“But he had words. He had lots of words left inside him just before he died. But his last words were, ‘Johnny. It’s your turn now. Do your job and do it well.’ And then I shot him.”
“Why?” Megan gasps.
“Why?” I ask. And then I remember the words that came before my father asked me to kill him. It’s not like I forgot. It’s not something you can forget. I just… never thought about it again. I just stuck it in a folder and filed it away.
That was the only way I could manage to wake up in the morning.
“Because right before I did that he said, “Your mother was just here.”
“And I remember being so fucking confused.
“What?” I’d said. I could smell the whiskey on him. The whole room was filled with the scent of drink. He was fucked up. My mind was racing. Trying to put his words into some kind of folder. Trying to force it into some neat little filing system so I didn’t go insane.
“But he just kept talking.
“Big plans. That’s what he said. She was in on it. Joey was her child. She had Joey with another and the baby’s father was—
“And then I shot him.
“The window behind his head cracked and then there was this great rushing of wind.
“Wind.
“In the top of the tower.
“I remember that more than anything else about that day.
“The wind.
“I sucked the air in like I was starving for it. Like I might never take another breath ever again.
“I did my job. Not because I wanted to save him, but because I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to know who Joey’s father was. I had lost too much and in that one moment I was about to lose more. I accepted the fact that my mother was dead. But hearing she betrayed us? That she came back, after all those years, and didn’t even find me? And then… I know I wasn’t the best brother to Joey, but he was still mine in that moment before my father opened his mouth to tell me that secret. He was still mine. And if I let my father finish that sentence, he wouldn’t be. We’d never be brothers again.”
“Wow,” Megan sighs. “OK. Um. OK, well. That’s a lot to process.”
I think about it for a moment. Then decide I left something out and if this is both the first and last time I’m ever going to tell this story, then I’m going to do it right.
“Actually, the real reason I killed him was because he lied.”
My words come out detached and without emotion. And I know what Megan’s thinking right now. She’s thinking… Well, I lied to you too. So what are you going to do with me?
“And he was bad,” I add. “And he made me bad too. And… and because he was done and I wasn’t. And that was the only way I could think of to save myself in that moment. No one was gonna help me. No one was gonna save me. No one was coming to get me out of this so I had two options. Be Johnny Boston or be my father. And while I admit both of those choices were pretty shitty ones, they were the only ones I had. So I chose me.”
Megan says nothing. And a long, painful silence sets in.
“I’m the bad guy,” I finally say. “Every story needs one. Every fairytale has one. And some of them are epic and some of them are sad, and if I have to leave a mark on this world before I die, then I’m gonna lean towards epic. But I’m just gonna be honest here, Megan. The headline is never going to be ‘Johnny saves the world.’ I wish I were different. But I’m not.”
Megan sighs, clearly disappointed in how this story turned out.
“But hold on,” I say. “I’m not done yet. Because I still remember a time when I was more than that. I still remember the boy who played space pirates. I still have his dreams locked deep inside this head of mine. They’re there. Somewhere. Filed away in one of my old, tattered folders. And meeting you was an unexpected surprise. Because for one moment down in that dungeon I wasn’t Captain Hook. I was Peter Pan. And you were… Wendy, I guess.” I grin at that. “Not really the best analogy.”
“I’ll take Wendy,” Megan whispers.
“Yeah, because Wendy, she’s bossy and sure of herself. Trying to make Peter grow up and stay with her. And you’re definitely a bossy girl.”
“I’m glad you’re not Peter Pan,” she says, her voice low and serious.
“How come?”
She shakes her head. “Peter didn’t love her back. Not the way she loved him.”
“He never grew up,” I say. “Can’t blame him.”
“I know,” Megan says. She smiles at me and leans her forehead against the yacht’s handrail.
“I don’t mind if you’re Hook. He was callous and bloodthirsty.”
“Yeah.” I laugh. “That’s me, all right.”
“But he was a magnificent pirate, don’t you think?”
I grin at her, then look down at the sea. “Obviously, one of the best.”
“So he was heroic in his own way.”
“How do you figure?”
“He was a boy once.”
“Weren’t we all?” I ask. “Is that enough to make us heroes?”
“No, but once a boy, always a boy.” She scoots closer to me, looks at me with an almost shy innocence and then slips her hand behind my back, her fingertips swiping along the bare skin under my shirt until her palm finally comes to rest on my hip. And then she leans her head on my shoulder and sighs. “Maybe you just need to find that boy again?”
I can’t see her face, obviously. So I can’t know for sure. But I think I feel her close her eyes. And then a wave crashes against the bow and lifts us up, and down, and up again.
This motion jerks me back into the present. What I’m doing here with her. What needs to be done tomorrow.
But it also spin
s me back in time…
Because I knew Charlotte Kane. I wouldn’t call us friends, but I knew her. I went to a party at her estate once when I was eleven. Not really a boy, so I’m not sure this memory counts towards Megan’s directive to find that part of me again. But not really an adult, either. Not even a teenager yet.
It was Charlotte’s tenth birthday. And I’m pretty sure that Jesse was there with me, but Joey was sick that day and he was not. I remember that part clearly.
It was a magical day. Birthdays at the Kane estate are no small thing.
Charlotte was wearing a yellow dress with long skirts. It was fall, so not hot, but not too cold that the party needed to be taken inside. There was a grand tent behind the mansion and even if I account for my child-like brain exaggerating the number of people, there had to be at least three hundred guests.
There was a carousel, and one of those jumpy tent things, and pony rides. Not pony rides where you walk in circles, but actual pony rides across the hills and forests of the grounds.
I didn’t go on the pony ride. I vaguely remember someone telling me I was too tall. But Jesse did. Everyone else did, actually. Except for me and Charlotte. I can’t remember why Charlotte didn’t go on her own birthday pony ride, but thinking back on it now, with my cynical, Captain Hook brain, it feels a lot like a setup. Because that’s the only time I ever had a conversation with Charlotte Kane.
I was annoyed with her because she wouldn’t leave me alone. She followed me around the entire day trying to hold my hand, and get me interested in the magic show, or the jumpy house thing, or what the fuck ever was happening at the time.
But during the pony ride, when we were alone with the adults, she cornered me at the punch table. And she said something weird. Something I’d forgotten about until this very moment. She said, “My daddy says you’re going to marry me when we grow up.” To which I answered something along the lines of, “It’ll be a cold day in hell.”
I’m almost positive I didn’t say those exact words, but I’m equally as sure that I was thinking them.