Rewrite Redemption

by Walker, J. H.

  I didn’t need A.J. Jones.

  A brief ghost of her eyes looked up at me, haunting; causing an ache that filled my whole body. I saw her in the moonlight…

  I slapped that image out of my head and closed a steel box around it, locking it tight. I needed some kind of distraction. I caught a bus to Twenty-Ninth Street and sat through two showings of a movie I barely watched. At least it was dark and the theater was practically empty. I wasted the rest of the afternoon roaming the Pearl Street Mall.

  Finally, beat and ravenous, I bought a hot dog, scarfed it down in three bites, and then got another, dripping with yellow mustard. Rage works up an appetite, but food soaks the anger up a little, so your brain can function again.

  Earlier, I’d been wicked angry—angry that lately, nothing ever seemed to work out for me. Angry that I’d screwed up. Angry that my family was falling apart and that I had to leave Seattle and my redwood. Angry that I’d let myself get so wrapped up in some girl, when we’d never even had a conversation. What a moron. What was wrong with me? I sure as heck didn’t know.

  And I was angry about that too.

  But since a few hours had passed, and my stomach was full, the anger was burning out or at least diminishing. Besides it was hard to stay pissed off with the taste of mustard in my mouth. I slumped back against the bench, totally wiped out. At that point, I was mostly confused.

  Something had happened in the hallway. I was sure of that. But when I saw A.J. and Ipod lying there together, nothing made sense anymore.

  Now I didn’t know what to think.

  It had to have been a melding. It was exactly how it was described in the footnote. I saw into her world. My vibrations matched hers completely. I knew how I felt and what had happened to me. But A.J. was snuggling up to Ipod minutes later. He was stroking her hair. That wouldn’t be happening if she’d just felt that kind of connection to me. She’d be thinking about me.

  I tried to remember if the footnote said that melding could work in a one-sided fashion. That would suck. Could I be all hung up on a girl who loved someone else? How lame would that be?

  I wasn’t in love. What had I been thinking? I’d let myself get sidetracked with this girl, getting all emotionally involved. The melding had complicated that even more. But it didn’t control me. No matter what, I had to fix my family. That meant I had to think this out…do it right. I needed to suck it up, get her to help me, and then move on.

  During the melding, when the images had been whizzing past, there had been scenes with her and Ipod. Now that I stopped and thought about it, I could have sworn there was one where they were sleeping side by side. They were a little younger, maybe, but she had her arm around him. They were together. I had to accept that.

  I got up and tossed my hotdog wrapper in the trashcan. School had let out hours ago, and the mall had gotten crowded and loud. I needed some peace and quiet which meant I certainly didn’t want to go home yet. The home scene was sure to be in full-scale warzone.

  I walked to the park on Thirteenth Street and found the oldest tree there. After pulling some energy to take the edge off, I sat there until the sun sank into the mountains just trying to make sense of it all.

  But no frickin dice!

  Finally, I gave up and hauled my ass home.

  “Earth to A.J.…helloooo.” Lex waved her hands in front of my face.

  “Sure,” I answered, staring at her blankly.

  “Sure?” She laughed. “I just said ‘I’m running off to join the army, want to come?’ And you say sure? Whoa, you’ve got it bad! I don’t believe it. Our little A.J. has a crush.”

  We were in the tree-house living room. Ipod was playing Portal 2. I was slumped there beside him on the sofa, watching. I’d been inside my head again, lost in thought about you know who. “I’m just tired,” I lied. “I was spacing out on Ipod’s game. It’s kinda hypnotic.”

  “Give her a break, Lex,” Ipod said. He paused his game and grinned at me. “Can’t you see she’s in love?” He drew the word out like we did in grade school.

  “I’m not in love,” I protested. “I barely met the guy.”

  “Hey, sometimes it hits you like a bolt of lightning,” Lex said. “Constantine and A.J., sitting in a tree…” She wrapped her arms around herself and made kissing sounds. “Shrink Five told me this day would come.”

  “Yeah, Shrink Five also told you that love doesn’t work like that. That’s why you were keeping the whole Jason Jackson thing on the down low. You need shared experiences. You need time. I’m not in love. I’m just kinda, I don’t know, preoccupied.”

  Lex smirked. “You like him. You like, like him.”

  “You guys need to rein it in,” I said. “I’m taking a shower.” I grabbed my pajamas and headed for the door.

  “K. I. S. S. I. N. G.,” sang Lex.

  “Not likely,” I called from the porch.

  Whatever! I’d had my private, little crushes before on guys who never knew I was alive. But I’d never done more than watch them from behind my hoodie. They were always my secrets. Lex and Ipod had never seen me show interest in a guy before. They didn’t really know what to do with it. Unfortunately, they were choosing to act like we were five.

  I crossed the bridge to the big house and hopped in the shower. I wanted to clear my head. Okay, so something had happened in the hallway. Maybe for a few minutes, I felt some kind of connection, but I wasn’t dumb enough to think that was love. I mean, I knew stuff about this guy, but I didn’t know him. I needed to get a grip. I stood under the shower until the hot water ran out.

  But the thoughts of Constantine stayed.

  All I wanted to do was shower and crash…maybe listen to some tunes. After the day I had, I wasn’t in the mood to deal with more madness. It was almost eight when I made it home. Surprisingly, it was quiet when I reached the front steps—no gaming. Maybe Devon was eating. I was contemplating sneaking in the backdoor when I saw that the front door wasn’t shut all the way. I pushed it open, slowly, scanning the foyer.

  Silence.

  Not expecting that. Silence only happened during mausoleum mode. By day, the house was at war. If he wasn’t playing games, he’d have the TV blaring—something loud and angry. What was up?

  The living room, family room, my dad’s office, and the dining room were empty. I headed to the kitchen to check for a note. I was attacked by a disgusting smell—burnt broccoli. Gagging, I yanked the offending pot off the stove and whirled the mess down the disposal. The room still reeked.

  A roast chicken sat on the table intact. I touched it—stone cold. Dishes covered the counter. The table was set for four and wine had been poured for my parents. One glass was on its side, flooding the table, dripping blood red splotches on the white tile floor.

  Not good.

  I ran for Devon’s room, calling his name—no answer. His room was dark and I flipped the light switch—no Devon—just an empty wheelchair, turned on its side. A cold wave of fear snaked down my spine.

  Bam! The front door slammed and I almost jumped out of my skin.

  “Mom? Dad?” I yelled.

  “Constantine? Thank God! We need to leave immediately,” my dad called from his office.

  I let out a breath and ran down the hall. “Leave for where? Where is everyone?” I blurted out, confused.

  “The hospital,” he answered, shuffling through a file drawer in his desk. His hair was sticking out, his shirt was buttoned wrong, and he hadn’t shaved. He grabbed a file, slammed the drawer shut, and headed for the door.

  I followed him at a run, jumping into the Audi as it lurched away from the curb. My father clutched the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white. Before I could get my act together to question him, his phone rang.

  “Rebecca?” my dad rasped. “My God, no. But what…yeah, I got the insurance stuff. Yes, I found Constantine. No. My God, Rebecca. Wait…hold on….yeah, just hold on for a minute.”

  He pulled to the side of the road and jerked the
car to a stop. “The hospital on Broadway—you drive,” he said as he jumped out of the car.

  I slid over the gearshift and grabbed the wheel.

  He got in the passenger side, still talking into the phone, one hand frantically pushing back his messy hair. “Go, go!” he yelled at me, waving his arm ahead. He turned back to the phone. “Well, what do they…no, no, no. How could this…my God, Rebecca. No, this is not your fault. No, it’s not! I was the one…I know, I know. We’re almost there. I know…just hold on.” He shoved his phone in his shirt pocket, leaned his head against the back of the seat, and let out a ragged breath.

  “Dad,” I said.

  He stared at me as if he was confused I was even there.

  “Dad,” I said again, “what’s going on?”

  “Don’t you…didn’t…” he stammered, trying to make sense of my confusion.

  “Dad, I have no clue what’s happening.”

  “It’s Devon,” he blurted out, looking at me with bleary, red-rimmed eyes. “He…he tried to kill himself.”

  “What? How? When?” My words were ice now, clear, sparse, precise.

  “This evening,” he choked out. “Your mom found him when she went to get him for dinner.”

  A knife slashed through my gut and I had to grab my stomach. “How?”

  “Pills. He took a bottle of your mother’s pills and some of his own and drank them down with a pint of vodka.”

  The world morphed into slow motion. I drove with hyper-focused precision. This couldn’t be real. I glanced over at my dad. He was drumming his hands on his knees like that would speed up the car. Suddenly, I realized my dad wasn’t in a suit.

  “You were home?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “You didn’t go to work today?’

  “No.”

  “How come?”

  “We had a late night. You can’t tell me you didn’t hear it.”

  “I was…I went for a run,” I answered. Guilt made my words defensive. “I ran a good part of the night. It helps me sleep. I didn’t—”

  “He was screaming at your mother and he just wouldn’t stop. Yelling…screaming…he said the most hateful things. She was crying, hysterically. He just went on and on and on. Finally, I just lost it,” he choked out. Tears were streaming down his face. “I…I slapped him. I just couldn’t take it anymore…the way he was hurting your mother.” He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and blew his nose.

  “This morning…this morning, he wouldn’t come out of his room,” he continued, staring straight ahead. “I stayed home to help your mother. We tried to reason with him. We…but he wouldn’t even get out of bed. He wouldn’t eat. He wouldn’t do anything. The only thing he’d do was yell at us to get the hell out of his room. Finally, we did.”

  “Well, what else could you do?” I muttered lamely.

  “We thought he’d get over it if we gave him some space. Then your mom went to see if she could get him to come to dinner…” His voice trailed off.

  I went cold inside.

  “I’d just sat down at the table when I heard this scream. At first I thought it was a stupid video game. You know how they scream. Suddenly, I realized it was your mother screaming. I ran into the room and there he was, just lying there, barely breathing. Oh my God, what kind of father slaps his kid?” He let out a heart-wrenching sob.

  It sucks to see your father cry. It sucks big-time.

  “It’s my fault,” he said, quietly to the windshield as if I wasn’t even there.

  I stared silently at the road.

  I knew whose fault it was.

  I had no appetite. When I tried to study, I couldn’t concentrate. I watched a movie with Lex and Ipod, but I kept losing track of the plot. It was as if my brain had only one channel—all Constantine, all the time. I couldn’t turn it off. What was up with that?

  Lex was having a field day, laughing at me being such a space case. I thought about what she said about me knowing him in a past life. He did seem familiar. But I didn’t know if I believed in past lives. I just knew I couldn’t get him out of my head. No matter what I did, I couldn’t shake him.

  And strangely…I didn’t want to.

  Hospitals have a pulse. If you listen closely, you hear it swoosh under the drone of desperation. It throbs, guiding the flow of staff and machines as they scramble to keep it going. Periodically it skips a beat, and alarms sound, and workers in white rush to the damage site. I knew its beat well. I knew the music. I’d heard it non-stop when we practically lived in the hospital for the first two weeks of Devon’s stay in intensive care.

  Then there’s the smell of death. Like toxic rain, it burns when it touches you. It can soak clear through to your soul and drag it down into the abyss along with the dying, leaving your startled body behind to stumble through life as an empty shell. My mother was already sucked dry, having offered up her soul in a desperate attempt to exchange it for Devon’s life. My father waited in line to offer his. Me, I was holding onto mine with every fiber of my being, but I felt guilty as hell about it.

  I spent two hours slumped in a waiting room chair—full blown deja vu from the accident. Florescent lights made everything stark and washed out. The unwatched TV droned in the background. In intensive care, it’s the white noise of despair.

  My parents huddled together, stroking each other, like terrified monkeys in a cage. I felt so bad for them; I could hardly stand it. They clutched Styrofoam cups of stale, hospital coffee and looked up frantically each time someone came through the door. They were waiting for any sliver of hope that Devon was going to make it. It was hard to believe they were the same parents I knew from before. These withered and dried out husks had no power, no juice. I kept waiting for them to crumble into dust like on some Simpson’s intro.

  The intermittent twang of the intercom made it impossible to sleep—not that I could sleep anyway. Devon was still in a coma. They didn’t know when or if he would come out of it. They didn’t know what he’d be like if he did. They didn’t seem to know much of anything.

  The only thing I knew was that it was all my fault.

  My mother wasn’t even crying at that point. She just sat there, pale as a ghost, lips pressed together tight, as though if she opened her mouth, she might start screaming or something. She wore the last six months of her pathetic, soul-crushing life like a train wreck. The damage was just too horrifying to watch anymore.

  I ripped my eyes away. I needed to get out of there. I launched abruptly out of my chair. If I didn’t escape that minute, I’d suffocate. I told my parents I needed air. My dad nodded and quickly turned back to my mother. They barely noticed me. I had become a bystander, outside the circle of awareness.

  Okay by me—I felt like hiding anyway.

  The night was crystal clear and about twenty degrees cooler than it had been that afternoon. The brisk air jolted me out of my waiting-room coma. I breathed it in, exchanging bad air for good. I just stood there for about an hour; trying hard to shut my mind off. I swore to myself one more time that I would fix my family if it was the last thing I ever did.

  An ambulance screamed in the distance…someone else’s life falling to pieces. Worried-looking people hurried in and out of the hospital doors. Periodically, someone erupted from the side exit to make a phone call or grab a smoke. The outside lights faded their harried faces, making them look like the walking dead…which is what I felt like.

  I kicked at some peeling paint on a pole, finding perverse satisfaction in flaking it to the ground. A woman walked by and frowned accusingly. A bleary-eyed orderly, leaning against the building sucking down a cigarette, saw her and smirked at me. Ha! If you only knew. Like peeling paint was the worst of my sins. I glared at him and walked back in the building.

  I made it as far as intensive care. But the moment I got there, all hell broke loose. Suddenly, buzzers sounded, and a woman screamed out for a nurse. Panicked family members streamed out of a room, yelling for help. Bells dinged, th
e intercom squawked for a doctor, and a crew raced down the hall with the crash cart. I turned abruptly and bolted back through the exit, down the halls and out of the hospital.

  I was ready to explode.

  The orderly was still sucking on his cigarette. He looked up with a scowl as I headed for the parking lot. A car screeched to a halt, and the driver cursed me as I thumped the hood and scurried past it.

  I grasped frantically for my memory of where I’d left the car, pivoting one way and another, until I saw it parked crookedly a few lanes away. I slumped down into the driver’s seat with my arms against the steering wheel and my head on my arms. All the grief I’d collected and stored away for months came pouring out. I banged my fists against the dashboard.

  Time crawled by, I don’t know how much. Eventually, I got in back and stretched out, sticking my long legs out the window. I just lay there, thinking of nothing but doom and gloom scenarios, and pounding my fist against the back of the front seat. Finally I sat up, my feet stomping on my dad’s gym bag.

  I didn’t even question it. I tore into the bag, dragging out a sweatshirt, pulling it over my head. Then I locked the car and took off down the street at a brisk pace. I didn’t even stop to stretch or warm up. Within seconds I was running full bore, tearing down the road like a mad man. I kept it up nonstop, giving it every ounce of energy I had. A few minutes later, I found myself on her street.

  The critic shouted for me to get back to the hospital. But the sound was turned off in my head, and all I had was a blurred picture of an open mouth calling me.

  I ignored it.