He plugged in his phone and noticed a text from Jazz. I’ve got something cool to show you tomorrow morning! Try to get here early—for once! Jasmine was his only real friend at school. She had liked his Marian stories, but he hadn’t shown her any since the visions started. Jazz was a genius. She could read the stories and probably figure out what might have been happening in his life when he wrote them. But first he’d have to tell her about the visions, something he’d avoided because she might think less of him. What would she think about the story he’d just finished?
He took another sip of whiskey and felt the comfort of drowsiness envelop him. Before he crashed, he replaced the thermos in the ceiling then pulled his latest story from the printer, intending to pin it to his wall where dozens of others hung. But blessed sleep came suddenly, and he fell onto his bed, the pages of Sexual Encounter drifting to the floor.
Chapter Two
The next morning, Joe found his son sprawled sideways on the bed, oblivious to the alarm clock ringing on his desk. For a few seconds, he watched Hunter’s chest to make sure he was breathing, a habit he’d forged years ago when he worried what he would find coming into his room each morning—his son curled into a ball in the corner, or bleeding from a fresh wound, or staring blankly at the ceiling.
“Wake up, Hunter! You can’t be late to school every day!” Joe silenced the clock then pushed on the bed. “You want some coffee?”
Hunter wiped his eyes and pushed his hair out of his face. “Yeah.”
Joe left the room to pour a cup of coffee. When he returned, Hunter had already turned on the shower in the bathroom. Joe noticed some papers on the floor, two with heel indentations. He picked them up and found the first page with the title: Sexual Encounter. Store Dressing Room.
Sexual encounter? His heart skipped a few beats. What was Hunter writing about?
Joe started reading.
A teenage boy carrying two pairs of pants over his arm walked along the row of closed dressing rooms until he found a door ajar. He pushed it open and saw another boy about his age standing in his underwear. His skin was pale with just a whisper of hair across his chest. The boy with the pants stared at the other boy’s abs and the trail of hair that led down from his navel into his underwear. He noticed the bulge, then pushed his eyes back to the boy’s face. The boy in his underwear licked his lips, catching the perusal with a flicker of amusement.
A glimpse of a memory flashed in Joe’s mind.
The boy with the pants blinked, snapping out of his trance and turned away. “Sorry,” he said as he backed out of the room.
“Hey, no problem. I was just getting ready to leave. What’s your name?”
“Um, Parker.”
“Cool name.”
The boy shot a big smile at Parker. He had a nice smile, and Parker liked the way it made the corners of his eyes crinkle, deepening the blue of his irises. “You can use the room.”
“The door was open. I thought no one was inside.” He could feel his pulse pounding in his throat.
“You can close it now so no one else comes in.” He laughed. “Might get crowded.”
“You sure you’re through?”
The boy walked toward him. “Hey, I like those pants.” He took both pairs from Parker. “I was actually going to try this pair on but forgot to carry them back. Do you mind? We’re about the same size.”
Parker hesitated. He should leave now. Giving him the pants kept him in the dressing room. He had to force himself to keep his eyes above the boy’s waist. He licked his lips and swallowed. “No. Go ahead.” The boy took the khakis and gave Parker the jeans.
“Great. Hey, don’t let me stop you from trying on that pair.”
The boy slid the pants up each leg while Parker watched him. The boy smiled back at him. “Try on yours. Bet those will look good on you.”
Parker felt pressure against his zipper. His bulge would be obvious when he moved the jeans to try them on.
Beads of sweat had gathered on Joe’s forehead. He listened to make sure the shower was still on then read the next lines.
Parker kicked off his shoes, took a deep breath, then undid his buckle. He looked at the boy to see if he was watching him, but he was posing in front of the mirror. Parker turned slightly away, dropped his pants, then tried to get them off his feet quickly, but he stumbled. He cursed under his breath and reached down to pull his pants off one leg, hopping around. Then he pulled off the other. Parker quickly picked up the new pants and held them to his waist, hiding the stiffness beneath.
“I might like those better,” said the boy as he turned toward Parker and pulled down his pants. Parker’s eyes were frozen as he saw the boy’s underwear slip down his hips.
Parker dropped his pants to the floor.
Joe’s heart pounded in his chest. How? he thought. How could he know this? Joe reached for the corner of the first page as if to turn it, but hesitated. Many years ago he had walked in on a kid named Parker in a dressing room. He thought he had shoved that memory into a vault, never to be opened. He honestly thought he had forgotten the incident.
But now it lived again.
Joe started to flip back the first page and read the rest, but heard footsteps in the hallway.
“Dad? What’s wrong?” asked Hunter as he entered the room in boxers carrying a long-sleeved t-shirt in his hand. “You look like you’re about to faint.”
Joe took a deep breath and cleared his throat, feeling his own erection growing in his pants. He worried Hunter would notice, so he shook the papers in front of him. “Where’d you get this story?”
“It just came to me. Just like all the others.” Hunter frowned. “Did you read it?”
Joe swallowed, trying to get some moisture into his throat. “Yeah. Part of it.” He tried to think of something to say. “Seems like I read something like this before.” He tossed the papers onto the desk. “You better hurry. You’re going to be late for school.”
Joe tried to glimpse the scars on his son’s arms and chest as Hunter slipped on his t-shirt. He didn’t see anything fresh, just the rows of pale welts, some thicker than others. Every few days he checked Hunter’s room for knives. Joe didn’t want his son cutting himself again, not only because of the wails and blood from Hunter, but also the guilt cutting through Joe’s conscience. This was one of the main reasons Joe had sought drastic treatment for Hunter a year ago.
Afterward, Joe had been able to fill his son’s head with any story he wanted. Hunter’s scars came from a biking accident. His mother and brother were killed in a wreck on an icy road.
Only recently had Hunter asked questions and been more skeptical of Joe’s answers.
Hunter turned to grab his shirt off a hook in the wall. While Hunter worked the buttons and put on his jeans, Joe wandered around the room looking at all the papers.
“So many! How late have you been staying up?”
“Haven’t slept much lately.”
Joe turned to look at his son and noticed the dark skin under his bloodshot eyes. “The melatonin doesn’t help?”
Hunter shook his head. “Seems like as soon as I write one down, another one pushes in. I thought you were going to take me to a doctor.”
“No. I never said that,” he said while rubbing the muscles in his chest. “It was just the school nurse who suggested that. What does she know?”
“She’s a nurse. So why don’t we go?”
Joe had already taken Hunter to dozens of psychologists and psychiatrists. Only the last one had done any good. “There’s no point. What’s a doctor going to do? Give you a shot to fix your overactive imagination?”
Hunter looked to the floor.
Joe turned back to the wall full of papers. “Do you have to write down every one of them?”
Hunter sat on the bed. “Like I’ve told you before, if I don’t, the same story keeps playing in my brain. I can’t get to sleep or think about anything else.” He pulled on
his socks and stomped his feet into his boots. “You said you read that story before?”
Joe felt cool sweat collecting in his armpits. He knew his face had lost color because he felt nauseous. He kept his back to Hunter, pretending to examine the stories on the wall. “Maybe. Coulda been a TV show. I don’t know.” He scratched his bristly face as he moved to another set of papers. “Kind of an inappropriate topic, don’t you think?” His eyes flashed at Hunter then back to the papers. “How can you know about such things?”
“Dad, I don’t know anything about most of my stories. At least, I didn’t. That story was pretty mild compared to the others. I just describe what I see in my head.”
“Well, if this story were a movie, I wouldn’t let you watch it.”
“I wouldn’t want to watch it, but I have no choice, same as the others. Two boys having sex. Boy and girl. Two girls. Brother and sister.”
Joe gasped. “Are you in any of them?”
“No. I see it . . . and feel it.” His shoulders slumped. “It’s not like I want to. Sometimes it’s pretty hard to watch.”
Joe picked up the Sexual Encounter papers. “Was it hard to watch this one?”
“It was better than watching a rape or child abuse. At least neither boy forced the other. I felt bad for Parker. He felt excited and ashamed. I’m pretty sure that was his first gay experience.”
Yes, it was, thought Joe.
“Watching two boys having sex doesn’t repulse you?” Joe peered intensely at his son, looking for any signs of disgust.
“Watching anyone have sex embarrasses me, but I’ve seen so much in the past two months, I’m not shocked anymore. Why? Does gay sex repulse you?”
His eyes widened. “Not my preference.” He tried to chuckle and even wink. “Guess I’m old school.”
At his son’s age, Joe played every sport, raced cars on weekends, and kept two or three girls interested in him. Many times in the past Joe had thought of his son as a Mama’s Boy and couldn’t help feeling disappointed in him. But he knew now Hunter wasn’t to blame.
Joe wondered how disappointed his son would be in him if he ever knew the truth about Joe’s past.
Most of the time, Joe thought he was living with a stranger, never sure what to talk about, so they hardly said anything to each other.
Until Joe read this story. He probed some more to assure himself his son hadn’t remembered anything about the wreck four years ago. “Maybe I saw this story on one of those HBO movies. Probably fell asleep and you had to turn off the TV. I’ll probably think of it later.”
“Let me know if you do.”
“Sure. You better go.”
Hunter grabbed his keys off his desk and turned to leave.
“Where do you get the names?” Joe said with a quivering voice.
Hunter stopped in the doorway, looked at his father, then shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. They’re the ones people use in the story.”
“Only one of the boys in this story had a name. Why didn’t the other one?”
Hunter shook his head. “For some reason the name didn’t come to me or wasn’t mentioned in the story. Happens sometimes. Gotta go.” Hunter ran out of the house. Joe heard the truck engine rumble to life then move farther away.
Joe looked at the pages in his hands and realized he couldn’t remember what happened next, other than the obvious. But the details were missing. Maybe he should put the story down and walk away.
But he couldn’t. He had felt excited as he read, a feeling he hadn’t experienced in years—an urgency, a need he couldn’t stop thinking about. He had forgotten what lust felt like.
He pulled out his phone and punched in the number of his supervisor at work. “Hey, Matt,” he made himself cough. “This is Joe. I’ve been up all night puking. Think I need to stay home today. I don’t know if I caught a bug or ate something, but I know you and the guys don’t want this.” He listened. “OK. I’ll call you later today.” He ended the call.
Before he turned the page, he looked at all the stories on the wall.
Would he find himself in any of the others?
Then a larger worry slammed into his gut.
Had Hunter written about his mother?
Chapter Three
The wind flung Hunter’s tangled blond hair across his mouth, hiding the hairs barely growing across his lip and chin. He still saw the look of horror on his father’s face when he walked into his room. Why did he seem scared? Hunter decided he would talk to his father about it this evening.
He always felt his father was hiding something from him. Was there really a fire? Did he really lose his phone?
He noticed rabbits lined up on the shoulder every fifty yards or so along the gravel road that undulated through a forest of black spruce and naked aspen. It was early April in the Alaskan Interior, and humps of snow lingered among the trees, slowly revealing the death of the past few months. The already blinding sun flashed like a strobe light through the trees as Hunter picked up speed. He felt sluggish and so sleepy. For a few seconds, he phased out in the blinking sunlight. He almost heard a beat in the background—DadadadaDadadadaDadadada—then just before his truck missed the curve on the road, he jerked his wheel to the left, his right tires kicking up gravel from the shoulder.
He breathed again as his truck stopped fishtailing. He couldn’t see the sun flashes any longer. This stretch of road had hundreds of alders and willows bent over like cat claws reaching for the pavement. The snow had weighed them down for months, and only now were they beginning to straighten up as the weather warmed.
Spring here did not burst forth with colorful life. It dripped from the melting dirty road snow and swelled into tiny buds at the top of willows, popping into fuzzy catkins barely visible from the ground.
Hunter had driven this road to school for the past eight months after he and his father had moved from a small town in Washington. His dad had said he wanted a change of scenery and found a mechanic’s job at a remote Air Force Base near Clear Creek.
Hunter was happy to leave. There was nothing keeping him there—no friends, no memories.
They’d arrived in late July and found a house a week later—isolated, off the highway, about ten miles from the nearest school at Clear Creek.
He’d met Jasmine Williams during new student orientation in mid-August.
Jazz had chosen him to mentor, she said, because they had the same last name. She devoured fantasy and sci-fi novels and showed immediate interest in Hunter’s stories about the Tremarians. No one had ever read them, as far as he knew. He remembered her first comments as they entered the gym during the Open House before school started.
“Everyone is genderless in this story?” Jazz asked. She wore a dark red, floral housedress she said she bought at a garage sale, cinched at the waist (not much of a waist) with a wide leather belt and silver buckle. Her bell-bottom jeans emerged from under the dress and covered the high-top leather uppers of her combat boots.
“Yeah,” he shrugged. “Sex causes every problem in the world.”
They moved to the top row in the bleachers past students, parents, and alumni and sat down next to each other.
“Every problem?” Jazz frowned. “I would argue against that premise, but continue.”
“Tremarians eliminated gender bias in their culture and gradually modified their bodies until their genitals became vestigial, like the appendix. You know, kinda shriveled and useless. Or at least the Tremarian’s considered themselves evolved beyond their use.”
She looked at Hunter with arched brows and a slight smile. “I know what vestigial means. So how do they reproduce? And more importantly, how do they have sex, or did they eliminate that, too?”
“No sex,” he said.
“Are you kidding me? What creatures would willingly eliminate orgasms?”
Hunter’s mouth dropped open, his face warming. “Because their leaders recognized that deriving pleasure
from sex would perpetuate the abuse of women.”
“Only women?”
“Sometimes males . . .”
Hunter!
He turned around, hearing someone call his name, but saw no one in the gym paying him any attention. Odd.
He turned back to Jazz, who wore a quizzical expression and said, “Sorry.”
“Let’s look at this from a purely scientific standpoint,” said Jazz, “since I’m an aspiring scientist. I just read an article claiming that 40 percent to 60 percent of women do not have orgasms during sex with men, while men have it 98 percent of the time. Of course, because we live in such a male-dominated, conservative society, which prohibits real sex education in the schools, why would guys ever learn anything useful about a woman’s needs? The article also claimed that 20 percent or more of women do not have an orgasm their entire lives. So at least in your Tremarian world, that disparity doesn’t exist.” She chuckled slightly. “Though I think both sides attaining 98 percent would be preferable to both at zero, don’t you think? At least in the real world.”
He found himself just staring at her. Jazz was so smart and seemed able to talk about anything.
She stared into his eyes. “Do you think it’s OK for only half of women to enjoy sex while nearly all of men do? Is that fair?”
“No. Both should be the same, but on Marian—”
“I think you have an interesting premise, and I would love to read more of your stories, but I’m glad I don’t live on Marian. I hope that my future lover will care about how I feel at least as much as he cares about himself.”
“I hope so, too.”
Her smiled beamed. “What a nice thing to say. Thank you, Hunter.”
She leaned against him briefly, sending a flash of warmth up his arm.
Someone To Kiss My Scars: A Teen Thriller Page 2