“Jasper. Jasper.” Like my crumbling, destroyed house, the robotic voice couldn’t have been real — a blond woman squatted in front of me and said my name. I wanted to respond, but both She and I were cowed by the violence and losses.
“Jasper Andrews?”
Light flooded my pupils, blinding me. Latex-covered fingers pressed on the inside of my wrists and carotid artery. Someone noticed the blood dripping from my right ear and cleaned it with gentle fingers. Those same hands checked me for bruises, poking, and prodding.
But I kept staring at my house, waiting for my parents, Livie and Jude to come running out from some hiding place. But after the fire marshal and the police detectives combed through the ashes, my family still hadn’t appeared.
Grief welled in my chest at the sudden acceptance that they were gone. My eyes blinked rapidly, and I burst into gut-wrenching sobs.
✽ ✽ ✽
“Jasper, honey, let’s wrap this blanket around you, get you nice and warm,” said a young EMT. The scratchy wool blanket took away the worst of the chill,. and I nodded my thanks.
“Not leaving,” I reminded her in a scratchy voice. “Can’t make me.”
“Jasper!” A desperate male voice cut across the crowd of law enforcement and spectators.
Hope flooded me. “Jude!” I jumped up from my perch on the back of the ambulance and spun around. “Jude, where are you?”
“Jasper?”
“Jude! I’m over here by the ambulance.” I bounced on my toes and waved my hands wildly above my head. “Jude!”
The crowd parted. I fell to my knees and clutched my stomach, the grief attacking me all over again. “Adam,” I whispered. “I-I-I thought… you sound like Jude. Is he with you?”
My brother’s closest friend from school, Adam Norwood, knelt next to me. “No, Jas. He’s not. You’re the only one.”
“I didn’t know. One minute I was there and then noises and heat and I couldn’t see. Then I could, and the house blew up, and it looked like a mushroom cloud. Where are they?”
Adam’s lip quivered. He looked like his five-year-old self after Jude ate one of the roses on his birthday cake. “Jasper,” he said slowly. “Jasper, what did you do?”
I stared at him blankly. “What do you mean? Adam, my family. They’re gone and I need to find them. They might be hurt. You have to help me.”
He grasped my shoulders and shook me roughly, the transformation sudden and frightening. His face was splotchy red, and his body shook.
“What did you do?” he shouted. “What did you do to them? I know it was you. Why did you kill them?”
A nearby firefighter pulled Adam off me. “Son, what the hell is your problem? She’s injured, for Christ’s sake.”
From my vantage point, sprawled out on the sooty, wet ground, I saw Adam struggling, spitting, and snarling. “It’s her fault! Didn’t you see the high school earlier? She did this! She killed her family!”
“Whoa, son. That’s a huge accusation. Come with me.”
The same EMT who wrapped me in the blanket helped me to my feet and brought me back to my perch.
I frowned and pointed to my bandaged ear when her lips began to move, but no sound reached me. She tried again.
“You had us scared for a while. Nod if you understand me. Good girl. What’s your name?”
“Jasper Andrews.”
“Do you know today’s date?”
I stuttered over the month and day. “I didn’t do anything. My family.”
“I’m here to treat your wounds, but I can send for someone who can take your story.”
No. Shit. Shit. Shit. This is just like earlier. They don’t believe me. Only this time, I really didn’t do it. It. Blow up my house. Kill my family.
“Oh, my god,” I said as it all sank in again. What little was left in my stomach came up with force before I could turn away and hit the poor EMT. The saint of a woman sighed and sanitized me to the best of her ability before leaving for what I could only assume was a decontamination unit.
“My family. They’re dead.”
“Ms. Andrews.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Detective Lattimeir. Detective Bryant,” I said wearily. “My family’s dead. My home is gone. I don’t know what more I can add to your reports.”
The burly detective knelt before me and tapped my shoulder. “Where were you going?”
My camping bag was a sack of rocks I’d forgotten.
“Oh.” I pressed my lips together as my mind raced. “My parents, after the incident earlier this week, they thought it was best that I finish up the school year with one of my relatives. I was waiting for them to arrive.”
“Who was coming to get you?”
“Them. My mom called them. I don’t know their names. I think Mom knows. Knew.”
In the back of my mind, She sent me a warning. Watch those words, Jasper. They already think you’re unstable. And that shit head, Adam. I swear he’s next on our list.
Next?
Next, as in asses we need to kick after these detectives.
“Ms. Andrews?”
Fingers snapped in front of my face, startling me.
“Sorry. They’re my mom’s people from where she grew up or something. All I know is they were supposed to arrive in a Lincoln Town car. My dad said I should practice walking with my bag since we didn’t exactly know where I’m headed. So I took a walk in the meadow. Then something felt off, and I was hit by this… concussive blast that knocked me to the ground. But it wasn’t until I got up and started running toward the house that it exploded.”
“Were you angry about being sent away?”
She wasn’t the only one who was angry. The implication of her warning and the detective’s tone sunk into my thick skull. “What? Are you saying that I did this? Destroyed my life? My family?”
That smug jerk, Detective Bryant, crossed her arms and jutted out her hip as if she had just found Carmen San Diego. “You said it, not me.”
Big mistake.
She gave up all pretenses of civility and tossed me to the backseat, leaving me to watch with horror as She/I hauled ourselves to our feet and punched the good detective in the jaw. Except for Jude, I’d never gotten into physical altercations, and the thrill of punching him had gone away a long time ago.
But this? The bones and muscles in my hand tightening into a compact fist, pulling my arm back and launching it forward with extreme velocity.
She purred on contact, relishing the way Detective Bryant’s skin rippled under the force of the assault. The raw, physical gratification nearly overwhelmed me.
Detective Bryant wasn’t expecting the punch. She screamed shrilly and cradled her chin. I swung again, this time connecting with her temple.
The sickening crunch of bone, the parting of flesh and slow oozing of blood from the wound She/I inflicted…
Glorious.
“Let go of me,” I shrieked.
“Jasper Andrews, you’re under arrest for assault of a police officer and suspected murder of Jude, Olivia, Mark and Delia Andrews. You have the right to remain silent…”
CHAPTER THREE
DETECTIVE BRYANT HAULED ME into the station, her hand a vise around my bicep. The big bad detective brought in the evil arsonist, all five and a half feet and less than a hundred and forty pounds of me. My hands cuffed behind my back made me a real danger.
Her chest puffed out, and her face almost split from that crap-eating grin. That, and the barely-healed cuts on her lip and just above her ear. She shoved me into a chair and handcuffed me to it.
I bared my teeth and snarled at her. “Let me go,” I spat.
“Right. Officer Rodriguez, please book Ms. Jasper Andrews. Watch out, though. She’s vicious, and she can make an incendiary out of anything.”
“My family’s either hurt or dead, moron. Do your job and find them.”
Detective Bryant smirked and walked away, leaving me with a terrified Officer Rodriguez who couldn
’t have been much older than my tender eighteen years.
“Did you go to Clarkson Senior High?” I asked.
“Yeah, class of 2013. You?”
“Would have been the class of 2016.”
“Yeah, huh. Sorry about all that.” Officer Rodriguez pulled up the booking software and straightened in his seat. “Full name, age, sex, occupation?”
“Jasper Lee Andrews, eighteen, female. Depends on who you ask. Arsonist. Terrorist. Murderer.”
My tantrum garnered more attention than I anticipated.
“You tell ‘em, sweetie. We’re all innocent in here,” jeered a middle-aged man with a bad comb-over and cheap polyester pants. “Bet you could set me on fire.”
Your name shall be Landlord-in-a-low-rent-adult-movie.
I hissed at him. “Eff off.”
“Jasper. Ms. Andrews. Did the officer tell you why you’ve been arrested?”
“Huh? Sure.” Landlord and I were engaged in a staring contest; only his anger was laced with lust. Mine was laced with murder.
Come at me, bro.
Officer Rodriguez’s questions buzzed around me. “Were you read your rights?”
“Yup. Do I get a phone call?”
“No, not yet.”
Landlord’s thin lips flapped again. “Who ya calling, Sparky?”
Kill him. Murder him. Tear his skin from his flesh and separate his bones. No one calls us Sparky. No one except Jude.
Jude.
My chest heaved and sweat poured down my face as three officers tilted my chair, with me in it, upright and shouted at Landlord to shut his mouth.
“Listen, Andrews,” a furious police officer snapped. “You’re already facing charges of arson, manslaughter, and assault of a law enforcement official. Keep this crap up, and I’ll tell everyone that you’re trying to kill yourself. You’ll be on a 5150 before you can say boo. And that’s before you go to jail.”
I stared at my wrists in horror. The struggle to get to Landlord had been violent enough that I had cut myself on the handcuffs and was bleeding. The rest of my body bloomed in pain and bruises. “I didn’t, I don’t know,” I babbled.
My unit of guards marched me over into the nearest holding cell. Some officer told me to cool off, that they’d send someone to finish my booking away from the pervs and junkies.
Nothing but the finest for Clarkson’s top criminal.
They took off the cuffs and left me alone in the tiny room with nothing but memories that flashed across my eyes as often as the fluorescent lights blinked above my head. Nothing made sense, no matter how I tried to arrange the facts and mix in circumstantial evidence. I had blown up. Less than two days later, as I waited for strangers to hide me the boogieman, my house had blown up, and my family died.
Open and shut as the television shows always said.
I curled up in the corner of the cold metal bench and closed my eyes. There was no fight left in me. I knew that they had all the evidence that they needed for a conviction. I was going to jail.
She woke up abruptly and told me, in no uncertain terms, that we were not going to jail. We had a family to avenge. Murderers to find. Neither of which could be done from a jail cell. We had to get out.
I began to feel hot from inside my body, a heat that wanted to expand outward, past the barriers of my flesh. It took the form of millions of tiny needles, ready to lance me at Her signal.
“Officer Rodriguez!”
Don’t work against me, Jasper. You’ll regret it.
Shut up and stop being such a psycho.
Doesn’t work like that, little Jas. Stop pretending like there was any other way.
“Officer Rodriguez,” I screamed again, and as he came into view, I collapsed with relief against the wall. “Officer, you have to either get me out of here or clear the station. It’s important to clear the area right away.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he tried to speak. “Is that a threat? Do you have a device on you?”
“No, no, no. Just… trust me. Please. You have to get out of here. I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” I begged.
Millions of white-hot pinpricks were at the surface, ready to go. She had her finger on the detonator and had picked her moment.
My camping bag hadn’t yet been searched or logged into evidence; instead, it sat next to the chair at Officer Rodriguez’s desk. That meant they hadn’t found the thick envelope of cash with our life savings. Money, Jude had told me that would get me by until we could reunite. I needed my bag. I needed to get out.
Officer Rodriguez took a cautious step backward.
Heat and anger burst out of my skin in a frightening concussive blast that knocked over anything that wasn’t bolted down, blasted glass windows and electronic screens and rendered unconscious everyone around me.
“Run, Jasper.”
I looked around wildly for the source of the voice, but I was alone. Since it was good advice, I pushed the holding cell door open and picked my way across the floor littered with bodies. I picked up my camping bag and quickly divested an officer of his weapon. I turned the safety on and stuck it in my jacket.
One last look and I was gone.
✽ ✽ ✽
I rubbed my hands together and breathed on them to keep the circulation flowing. Escaping a police station that I was already being accused of bombing made getting out of town more difficult than I thought.
I spent the remainder of the day running through the woods along the river and making my way toward Manhattan. Although we didn’t visit often, Jude, and I marveled at the anonymity to be found in the City That Never Sleeps. I didn’t have a plan, but Manhattan seemed like a safe bet. With my brother’s foresight, I had the cash to find a cheap, sketchy motel to hide until a bright idea came to me.
But I was running and hiking over twenty miles; I had to make camp, or I’d be wandering in the dark. I found an overgrowth within a mile stretch of forest between the river and the parkway and set up camp as best possible. I ate jerky and protein bars and washed it down with a few sips of water.
Although it wouldn’t have been easy to spot, I didn’t put up my tent. I’d have to leave it behind if I had to go suddenly and I refused to risk my only reliable shelter. Instead, I unzipped my green sleeping bag and wrapped it around my shoulders.
September winds whipped through the trees, scattering leaves and pine needles danced around me. It reminded me of something my dad and I talked about the first time he took us camping. Jude snored next to us, but I was scared of the noise.
“Daddy, there’s too many things out there trying to eat us,” my eight-year-old-self had whispered.
Dad had laughed and put an arm around my shoulders. “Nah, only a handful of things want to eat us, Jas. Most of the creatures are like us, moving around to keep warm.”
“Why does Jude get to be a hibernating bear?”
“Because your brother isn’t scared of much, is he?”
Shame had warmed my cheeks that night. “No. I’m the scaredy cat.”
Dad jutted his head toward my twin. “But you’re cleverer in some ways. He’ll do anything, but you have to get him out of those messes.”
“Don’t tell him. He doesn’t like to think I help him. But I do because he beats up kids who try to mess with me and my friends,” I said, proud of our complementary natures.
“You keep sharp, Jas because I have a feeling you two are going to end up in some crazy situations as teenagers.”
CHAPTER FOUR
MANHATTAN WELCOMED ME WITH open arms. From the moment I stepped out of the bus terminal at 181st Street and Broadway, I breathed easier. No one looked for an upstate New York teenager in the middle of the city. No one was that dumb, at least I hoped not.
Safety was accomplished, so my inner Maslow began the search for sustenance and rest. Sustenance was easy. Washington Heights had more smells and scents than I had ever experienced. I walked into the first store and ordered a plate of rice, beans, and chicken. This was
not the time to stick to my vegetarian ways. I needed calories and protein, and I was not going to be picky. The waitress smiled kindly at my bad Spanish and came back a few minutes later with water, bread with butter and garlic, and a bowl of grapes.
I nodded my thanks and demolished the grapes while keeping an eye on the television where the Spanish newscaster talked about everything but me. Tension melted from my body at the realization that I was safe in this neighborhood.
The chicken melted in my mouth, salty and juicy with a hint of lime. The rice was just as good and even more filling. I shoveled the food in my mouth, rice falling on the table and my lap. I ate voraciously because I didn’t know when I’d eat something this good again. Crap. Living from one day to the next was awful, and I’d been doing it less than twenty-four hours.
I paid as soon as I was done and made my way to a park down the street from the restaurant. I’d reached the point where recklessness and adrenaline would suffice. Any plan would have been better than none at all.
Two teenagers ambled by the bench where I was sitting. They were gossiping about a friend.
“She had to leave, son. Her mom wasn’t gonna let her stay there pregnant,” one of the young men told a younger, lankier teen. “It’s crazy.”
The other guy responded in Spanish. The only words I understood were dormir, bañar, and comer. Sleep, bathe and eat.
Gold.
Upon hearing those words, She nudged my consciousness after several hours of petulant silence. Apparently, disagreeing with her about blowing up a police station was out of line in our relationship.
Too easy. Why is everything so easy?
Her advice had been terrible thus far, so I made the executive decision to ask the guys about a place to stay. I pretended to be a tourist, which they must have encountered all the time because within minutes I had the name of two hostels and a few homeless shelters.
✽ ✽ ✽
The shelter where I showered, took a nap, and ate a quick lunch was no longer an option, not after my face showed up on the afternoon, mid-afternoon and evening news reports.
I grabbed my belongings and jumped on the first bus that looked like it was headed toward a crappy neighborhood, the kind where they only ask for identification if you’re buying beer. Not that I had any firsthand experience with crappy areas, but my knowledge of television had paid off thus far.
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