Take One With You

by Oak Anderson

  When she looked further, she found the amazing exchange with Jesus Two Bears.

  I can’t believe you wrote that.

  Looks like he calmed down. Perfect grammar.

  call me we need to talk

  A moment later, Sarah’s phone rang.

  “I can’t believe you hacked her,” Charlie said before she could even say hello, but it was obvious he wanted to know what she’d found out, and Sarah was eager to share. She told him everything, from her private conversations with the girl they now knew to be Melissa to what had happened with her sister to what Jesus Two Bears had apparently done.

  “What, you mean you haven’t hacked him yet?” Charlie asked.

  Sarah paused. “I thought I should talk to you, first.”

  “I’m not your dad,” he answered, and like Sarah and her “chikless” textabout the death and subsequent hacking ofclairebear, he immediately regretted his choice of words.

  Sarah didn’t wait for him to apologize, but immediately jumped in to save him.

  “Dude, this is what we talked about.”

  Charlie went silent. They had indeed discussed such things, mostly in the context of his anger towards both his stepfather and his mother, the former for driving her to suicide, and the latter for not taking him along for the ride. It was amazing to them both thatclairebear, who had seemed so shy and reserved online, had actually done such a thing.

  She had not wasted her death.

  During the time of his estrangement from Sarah, Charlie had had many heart-to-hearts online withclairebear and revealed a lot more of his inner thoughts than he had with anyone else since his mother. Even Sarah.

  Charlie had considered Sarah a kind of touchstone in his life, one of those people you meet who change you in ways most others don’t. Fundamental ways.

  He had been very depressed over his relationship with his mother and what he perceived as her inability to see what Brad had done to their lives, but Sarah had snapped him out of that. She had truly affected him. Changed the course of his life.

  That was why, even though he initially lashed out at her after his mother’s death, Charlie could no more divorce Sarah from his life than he could his mom. They were intertwined, he confided in Sarah. Connected to each other.

  “You’ll find that, too,” he’d assuredclairebear. “Something or someone that’ll wake you up like a cold slap in the face. Someone that changes everything.”

  Neither Charlie nor Sarah said anything for a moment. It was obvious they were both thinking along the same lines, although Charlie’s thoughts were laced with guilt that he had helpedclairebear to her death, somehow. He had discussed his dream where his Mom took Brad with her, but also about being woken up.

  It looked like this Jesus guy had woken her up, all right. And they were damn sure connected. Briefly in life, forever in death.

  Sarah felt guilty as well, thinking back to her suggestion of the tattoo. She’d gotten the idea from her father’s last text to her, but she regretted that now. He would not have wanted to be connected to what they’d done in any way.

  It was something she’d just have to live with.

  Finally, Charlie spoke.

  “First off, let’s stop calling her Clairebear,” he said, and Sarah agreed. They were both in awe of what she’d done and how she’d done it. Far from being a cowardly act, hers had been one they both felt exhibited great courage.

  “Unless it’s an emergency, or something,” Sarah said, more because it popped into her head than from any sort of prescience.

  “Agreed,” Charlie said. “Melissa from now on.” He paused. “It’s good to talk to you again, Sarah.”

  “You too, Charlie.”

  “So tell me again why you haven’t hacked Jesus?”

  Sarah smiled and listened as Charlie talked about his idea. She didn’t tell him that she had already been all through the email account of Jesus Two Bears, and was waiting for the media to catch up. The connection to El Culo had either been discovered and kept secret, or had not yet been found. Either way, there was no sense in going off half-cocked.

  Anyway, she wanted to let Charlie vent a little. He seemed to need it. Plus, he was on a roll with this idea. She even liked the acronym. T.O.W.Y.

  Had a nice ring to it.

  ***

  Speaking of acronyms, while Charlie and Sarah batted around their idea for a movement to help rid their community of people like El Culo and Big Max, a low level NSA employee in Utah at the newly opened ICCNCIDC, or Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center, had found some recent activity connected to a murder-suicide with an interesting domestic terrorism angle.

  He walked it down to his supervisor on his bi-hourly fifteen. Fred Dean liked to see his boss’ face when he solo’d because he never knew when he was getting an eye roll, otherwise.

  “What’s up, Freddie?”

  “Got something to run by you,” he grinned. “On the QT.”

  His supervisor rolled his eyes. Freddie was always using phrases like that. Twenty-three and he sounds like some bad 50’s detective show. “Go ahead,” he said. Freddy annoyed him, to be honest.

  Freddie hated when his supervisor rolled his eyes at him, which he did quite often, which was why Freddie always bothered him in person if he was able, which only further increased the likelihood of an eye-roll, which only further led to the annoyance of them both.

  Such was American bureaucracy, even at the NSA.

  When Freddie was through explaining what he’d found, his supervisor rolled his eyes and asked him a few questions.

  “How’d we get the woman in Spain?”

  “FISA, sir.”

  “And that got this…Asshole character?”

  “The Asshole of Arica, yes sir.”

  “Who’s dead.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “But you think someone may be…what?”

  “Well, I’m not sure,” Freddie said excitedly, and sat down in the chair across his supervisor’s desk, completely missing the expression on his boss’ face as he did so. “But I think I should keep an eye on things in case there’s any funny business.”

  Jesus. Funny business. The supervisor rolled his eyes again. “How much time we got on the warrant?”

  “Another ninety days, renewable, sir.”

  The supervisor leaned back in his chair and looked at Freddie. What a load. No wonder we’re getting bum-fucked by Congress, our interns are dumber’n theirs.

  But if he told Freddie to “keep an eye on it,” what did that even mean? And if it kept him out of his office for three months, it would be well worth the trouble if he was questioned about it. No, sir, he had an interesting idea and I just told him to keep an eye on it for the duration of our access. Nothing more.

  “Keep an eye on it, Freddie,” he said, and damned if the kid didn’t almost leap right out of his chair. I transfer in two months anyway.

  “You won’t be sorry, sir!” Freddie said, and was out the door even before his supervisor could even roll his eyes. Kid almost saluted me.

  ***

  Charlie and Sarah decided to start with a small website, very unobtrusive, and put out some anonymous feelers in places likely to be frequented, either virtually or personally, by people who were terminally ill. That seemed like a good place to start, with people who were going to die anyway. Before soliciting anyone suicidal.

  In spite of his hatred for his stepfather, Charlie’s mother had not been sick, only depressed, and Charlie wanted to be very careful with people like her. He knew, in spite of everything, that had his mother been able to kick the prescription drugs, she might have found the strength to divorce his stepfather and change her life for the better, and he would never want to deny someone like that their possible happiness.

  That was the reason he had considered suicide himself, because he felt like he failed her. He didn’t want to fail anyone else.

  But his hatred for Brad was a powerful motivat
or. Hatred always was.

  Sarah wanted to move more quickly, and she made her views known with typical aplomb. “Shit or get off the pot, dude.”

  “I see why everyone thinks you’re such a pain in the ass,” Charlie said, and Sarah laughed until she cried. Her father had always called her that, his little pain in the keister, cleaning it up when she was a child and using the unexpurgated version as a term of endearment as she grew older. Charlie could hear her sniffling over the phone.

  “You miss him, huh?”

  “Don’t you?”

  They were both quiet again.

  “I want to see you,” Charlie said.

  “I…wasn’t sure if you ever would again,” she said, leaving unspoken what happened the last time they had met in person, a meeting she had insisted on.

  “Are you kidding?” he asked, incredulous. “We’re like, connected, dude.” Charlie thought Sarah was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, and added shyly, “Plus you’re totally out of my league.”

  There was silence on the line and Charlie wasn’t sure if he’d made a mistake. In spite of everything they’d shared, he was still very much a typical teenage boy, awkward and unsure about almost every word around a pretty girl.

  Please say something, say anything, just say something.

  “What, you thought you were gonna get some?”

  They both laughed, Charlie not quite as heartily as she, and Sarah told him she’d come by the following week. She didn’t tell Charlie, but she’d already had idle thoughts of renting an apartment near him. There was a small portion of her inheritance available to her, and she was nineteen now, so why the hell not? Her mother was grieving by spending time with her father’s former chief of staff, so they were getting along even worse than before. Charlie was just about the only person she knew who could make her smile anymore.

  “It’ll be really good to see you, C,” she said, and hung up.

  Charlie sat looking at his phone. She shortened his name, which was a very familiar thing to do. A tiny little thing, but he thought it could mean something. And she joked about having sex with him, too. I think.

  “Fuckin’ A!” he shouted, and flopped backwards on his bed.

  The door opened, and Brad stepped in. “How you doing, Sport?” he asked, in that typically fake, obsequious, used-car salesman type way he had.

  “Why?”

  “I heard you yelling.”

  “Are you listening outside my door, now?”

  “No, I just thought – ”

  “I don’t care what you think, Brad!” Charlie said, and probably because he always felt somehow bolder after speaking with Sarah, added, “so fuck off.”

  Brad had been turning to leave, but he slammed the door open again violently.

  “What did you say to me?”

  Charlie sat up. “Nothing. Just leave,” he mumbled.

  “What did you say to me?”

  “I said nothing!”

  “Let’s get something straight, pal. This is my house. Not yours. Not your mother’s.”

  “Don’t talk about my mother!” Charlie screamed, jumping off the bed as if he was going to physically challenge his stepfather.

  “I was married to her!” Brad screamed back. “I can talk about her all I want!”

  The two of them stood there, flushed and angry, their chests puffed out and heaving like two boxers before a fight.

  “So you got anything to say to me?” Brad asked rhetorically, his obnoxious smirk practically begging to be wiped off his face, something Charlie had dreamed of doing, and worse.

  Finally, Charlie backed down, as they both knew he would, and sat on the bed. “Would you just leave, please?” he asked softly.

  Brad walked over to the bed and sat down next to him. For a moment, Charlie was horrified. Was he actually going to try and have some sort of father-son moment?

  If he puts his arm around my shoulder, I’m gonna fucking lose it.

  “Look, Charlie. I know you miss your mom, okay? I miss her, too. But she’s gone, and we both have to just try and move on.”

  Charlie said nothing. The only reason he didn’t burst into tears was because he was seething. It would not be the first or last time Charlie had been saved by anger, an emotion he was coming to appreciate more and more.

  “We just have to move on.”

  Stop saying that!

  “Nobody knows why people do what they do,” Brad continued, and Charlie really thought he was going to scream.

  Why doesn’t he get the fuck out of here?

  “Some people just have problems, you know?”

  No shit, asshole.

  “Sometimes…it’s just easier.”

  “What?” Charlie asked, startling Brad, who had almost been talking to himself by that point.

  “Killing yourself,” he explained. “Some people just can’t take…life, I don’t know, and they just find it easier.”

  “Easier?” Charlie said. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Brad stood up, and Charlie followed. “I know somebody who better take it a little easier right now.”

  “Oh, really, Brad? Should I kill myself, maybe?” he screamed. “Like my mother?”

  “Calm down, Goddamnit!”

  “No, you calm down!” Charlie screamed, and stepped towards Brad, backing him up. “There’s nothing easy about suicide!”

  “I didn’t say it was easy, I said it was easier!”

  “Easier than what, Brad?” Charlie demanded, taking another step and backing him up again. “Easier than letting you take over her life? Easier than watching you fuck around behind her back?”

  “I said take it easy!” Brad shouted.

  “You fucking killed her!”

  Brad, infuriated, shoved Charlie, who fell backwards onto the floor at the foot of his bed. He started to get up, but his stepfather was on top of him in a flash, his red face hot and sputtering.

  “You little shit, you don’t have any idea what I put up with!”

  “What you put up with?” Charlie tried to throw him off, but Brad worked out regularly and outweighed him by fifty pounds.

  “That’s right, kid,” Brad spat. “Your mother was a drug addict!”

  “Because of you!”

  “She was worthless and weak, and that’s why she killed herself, because she couldn’t take life!”

  “She should have taken you with her!” Charlie screamed. He was crying now, but his anger was such that he had no idea. If he had had a gun or a knife he would have killed Brad right then and there. If his hands were free, he would have beaten him to death with his skateboard or stabbed him with a coat hanger or killed him any way he could.

  At that moment, Charlie wanted nothing more than to kill Brad and then himself and end the pain forever.

  Brad struggled to hold his wrists. The kid was getting hard to handle. He honestly didn’t know what Charlie would do if he let him up at that moment.

  “Okay, okay,” Brad said, trying to calm things down. “Relax. Just…take a breath.”

  Charlie looked up at him with the eyes of an animal. The hatred was so intense he couldn’t imagine Brad didn’t feel its heat. But he stopped struggling. It was hard to breathe with that asshole sitting on his chest, and Charlie just wanted him out of his room so he could calm down and think. He tried to relax his face, to appear as if he was no longer angry, but he didn’t want to say anything. The first one of them to speak now would be weak, in Charlie’s mind, and the irony of that belief was lost on him.

  Just get out, Charlie thought, willing his stepfather to leave.

  As if he’d heard, or maybe because Charlie’s concentration was actually having the desired effect of relaxing his body in spite of himself, Brad let go of Charlie and got to his feet. The boy’s wrists were as red as his face.

  He stood over his stepson for a moment, wondering whether he should say something. Jesus, the kid wore me out, he thought. I can barely breathe.

  Finally, B
rad turned and walked out of the room, purposely leaving the door open as a tiny, childish victory.

  I need to get rid of that little fuck, he thought as he went downstairs to make himself a drink. At least his stupid bitch of a mother did one thing right. Thank Christ she gave me some time, otherwise the kid could...fuck.

  Brad shuddered at the thought of Charlie inheriting half his assets.

  “‘He can’t know until he’s twenty-one, otherwise he’ll get lazy’,” Brad spoke aloud in a whiny, high-pitched voice, imitating Charlie’s mother. He laughed at the thought of her ignorance, and his laughter swelled, turning into an evil, raspy cough that grew larger, like a snowball rolling downhill, gaining momentum and becoming bigger and bigger until he very nearly choked on the rage that lay just beneath it.

  Charlie lay there on the floor for a while, allowing his breathing to slowly return to normal. He heard Brad banging around downstairs for a few minutes and then some massive coughing fit, and then there was silence.

  Maybe he choked to death, Charlie thought. Probably just getting drunk in the den.

  Charlie briefly considered waiting until Brad fell asleep and then slitting his throat, but he suddenly wanted to accomplish a few things before he succumbed to that desire.

  Sarah was coming over in a few days, after all, and they had plans.

  Big plans.

  But killing Brad was definitely on his bucket list.

  8 MONTHS AFTER TOWY WEBSITE

  THE HILL

  .

  Bipartisan House group fails to reach an agreement on TOWY resolution

  By Rusty Bachman 11:25 AM ET

  .

  Lawmakers negotiating a proposal to curb the growing TOWY movement could not come to terms acceptable to enough committee members to allow the bill into conference. The lower chamber’s response to the Senate bill means that TOWY legislation is probably dead for the year. “This was time to be part of the process,” a Democratic negotiator, Rep. Candace McMillan (D-Chicago), said Friday afternoon. She added she had been “cautiously optimistic” about the bill’s success in the House up until the morning of the vote, when liberal groups such as the ACLU banded together with libertarian leaning conservatives to pressure the members of the committee to vote down the measure. Civil libertarians on the left were concerned the bill would lead to new restrictions on the rights of the accused, while conservatives disliked additional mental health funding included in the bill.