“What got you up off the mat so quick?” he asked. “The way your roommate described things I thought I might not see you for a few weeks.”
“A pretty girl told me to, well, to be brave,” Jonathan said.
Mr. Fletcher thought for a moment, looking Jonathan over, then chuckled. He’d have likely laughed out loud if Jonathan had used Leah’s exact words.
“Yeah, that’d about do it, wouldn’t it?” James said. “Still kid, you let me know, if you need any time off, people need to take their time with these things.”
Jonathan nodded.
The shop had missed him. Mr. Fletcher’s other part-timers had covered some of Jonathan’s shifts but he got the impression that his boss had covered the brunt of his absence. James said he came from a time where men “worked for a living” and didn’t much care for what he referred to as Jonathan’s generation’s “pussy footing around.” He never put Jonathan in the pussy foot category, because of all his employees Jonathan got his work done and never complained, always staying until the job was finished.
“So tell me more about this girl you got busting your balls.”
Jonathan shrugged.
“Guess I’ll have to wait until there’s actually something to tell,” he said.
“Bah,” James said disappointedly.
“Speaking of women, how’s your mom taken all this?” James asked.
Jonathan looked away.
“I haven’t told her,” he said.
A time passed and James finally nodded sympathetically.
“I get it, Jonathan,” he said.
James turned away then, returning to the cash register and leaving Jonathan to work. He felt gratitude as he watched the old man walk away. It was the first time that particular disclosure hadn’t been met with, at least, a look of disapproval. It occurred to him that James was the only person he knew who’d lived through a war. Maybe that was why Mr. Fletcher, more than anyone else he knew, could understand.
Grant and Paige sat on the couch. She was giggling, trying to get control of her laughter.
She’d been listening to stories from his first few weeks in the army. More often than not they’d made her smile. Grant was so attentive. He’d never been clingy or overly talkative, never pressed her for her time or her feelings, but lately he seemed to want to see her whenever she’d had a free moment.
His presence alone was relieving, not just because he was a shoulder to lean on, but because the man was built like a bull. Since the attack, awareness that they might be being watched by some criminal had lingered in the background. When she’d confided in Collin that the soldier’s presence made her feel safe, she could see bringing it up had bothered him, so she tried not to talk about it. The paranoia would subside with time. For now though, she could tell Grant about her fears, and feel safe with him around.
Jonathan walked through the door, returning from his shift at the hardware store. He waved as he put his stuff down and walked over to visit with them for a moment.
Grant’s demeanor changed, he quickly went from relaxed to stiff. He hadn’t seen Jonathan since the hospital, she realized. Maybe he was apprehensive about how to behave around him. Then he surprised her, but not in a good way.
“Jonathan, I just wanted to let you know,” Grant started, “you ever see this guy again, I want you to call me. We’ll make him regret ever coming into this house.”
It was so forward, so misplaced, and it exposed how much she’d told him when it was really none of his business.
“I’ll give that guy a beat down he’ll never forget,” Grant punched his fist into his open hand for emphasis.
Paige was dumb struck with embarrassment. She’d specifically asked him not to bring up the attack in front of Jonathan.
“Sure. Thanks,” Jonathan said.
Paige could see Jonathan’s gears grinding, he didn’t know how to respond to Grant’s bravado.
“To be honest, I’m just trying to put it behind me,” he said.
Paige let it show on her face that she wasn’t the instigator behind Grant’s offer. She didn’t have to try very hard, her cheeks had turned a hot red the moment Grant started speaking. Unfortunately, Grant only got weirder from there.
“Take this,” Grant said, reaching into his pocket.
He pulled out a business card. It read Grant Morgan, Specialist, U.S. Army. Paige could see Jonathan was having difficulty taking the card seriously as he looked it over.
Please stop talking, she found herself thinking.
“Thanks, Grant,” Jonathan said, putting the card into the front pocket of his coat. When Grant looked away for a moment, Jonathan looked to her with a shrug and expression that captured the awkwardness of the transaction. Paige desperately wanted to change the subject.
“Anyhow, Grant was just leaving. I’ve got a lot of studying to do,” she said.
Grant looked surprised. She supposed he’d expected that he’d be spending the night. Now, she could see he was trying to think quickly as he searched for an angle that would end in her bedroom. He seemed to fail and take the hint.
“I’ll call you. Maybe do something this weekend?” Grant asked.
Paige nodded and walked him out. Maybe the guy had meant well, but she couldn’t get out of this moment fast enough.
What the hell was that? Jonathan thought sarcastically.
How Paige could bear talking to the arrogant ass for more than a few minutes escaped him. Besides being the product of hundreds of hours of physical training, he didn’t see what she valued in the man.
He realized then that he’d answered his own question.
He’d originally thought Collin’s instincts on the guy were a product of jealousy, now he thought they might be genuine. Regardless, he couldn’t help but think it was lucky for Collin that Grant wasn’t staying the night. His bedroom was right below Paige’s after all.
Jonathan had thought about what he would do if he saw the stranger again, and it wasn’t what Grant imagined. He wanted to know if he was crazy far more than he wanted revenge. Though he spent most of his hours trying not to obsess about it, he didn’t believe the man had failed to accomplish whatever his goal had been that night.
You’ll know what to do. I’ll be there to help you, when it comes. Follow your...
It was part intuition, and again he found it maddening, but there was something in those words. Perhaps the man had had to escape quickly when Hayden and Collin had shown up on the porch, but he’d done whatever he was there to do. That he must have finished in a hurry didn’t give Jonathan any comfort.
Dammit.
All that strength, Jonathan a toddler in the man’s hands, and he couldn’t have said whatever he was trying to say before knocking him out? Follow your what? He realized Grant’s intrusive offer had forced the questions to the forefront of his mind again.
There aren’t any answers at the end of these thoughts, he reminded himself.
The table beside the kitchen was often used as a communal study area. He tossed his backpack onto it and started unloading books. Paige came back in shortly after and joined him with her own homework.
“He was honorably discharged a few weeks ago,” Paige said upon returning. She still looked embarrassed.
“Oh?”
They looked at each other for a moment and Jonathan softened. She was clearly mortified by the man’s behavior. He really had nothing to gain making her feel worse about it.
“He wasn’t expecting it. I’m a little worried. He doesn’t seem that concerned with what he’s going to do for work now,” she said, clearly trying to ignore the incident, “and he thought I was joking when I said he should go back to school.”
Jonathan listened, but didn’t have anything insightful to say. He doubted she was really worried, just changing the subject.
“I’m sure he’ll figure something out.”
Some quiet time passed. They fell into their old ritual, hitting the books together and after an hour or
so she spoke again.
“I’m glad you’re studying again. Hayden and Collin almost never hit the books. I missed having someone to sit here with, it helps me focus.”
Jonathan smiled.
“I’ll be playing catch up for the next few weeks. I got way behind while I was sitting around feeling sorry for myself.”
She looked at him sympathetically.
“A few weeks getting it together after an experience like that isn’t feeling sorry for yourself,” she looked at him knowingly. “It takes time to process things, especially when there is no closure, no explanation.”
He understood the statement came from a well-intentioned place, but he’d heard the sentiment a dozen times since leaving the hospital, so he simply nodded. Part of finding normal was going to include being comfortable when friends offered their encouragement.
“Too bad we don’t have a psych major in the house,” he said, looking down into his book.
They spoke infrequently after that, both focusing on what they were reading until Hayden and Collin arrived together.
Jonathan had been curious to talk to Hayden about what had been so important the previous day that he’d resorted to asking a complete stranger to watch his roommate just so he could leave the house. When Jonathan brought it up, Hayden looked a little apprehensive before Collin interjected, putting one hand on Hayden’s shoulder, and the other in the air as if to mockingly restrain Jonathan.
“My client had an understandable reason for his actions, your honor. You see, he has a well-documented addiction,” Collin said.
“I have an addiction,” Hayden repeated, nodding in agreement.
Jonathan raised an eyebrow, already knowing this explanation was going to be ridiculous.
“David Tennant was putting on a viral marketing campaign for the new season’s premiere of Doctor Who and was at the comic store giving away free signed Tardises, but for only three hours,” Collin said.
“I didn’t understand a thing you just said to me. Is ‘Tardis’ a real word?” Jonathan asked.
Paige, sitting beside him, nodded as though she’d been thinking the same thing.
Collin and Hayden both exchanged a look that said if he doesn’t understand, it would take far too much time and energy to explain it.
Paige whispered “comic dorks,” under her breath and returned to her reading.
As though there weren’t two people in the room studying, Collin and Hayden sat on the couch and started watching television. It was Jonathan’s and Paige’s turn to exchange looks, silently commenting on their roommate’s unconscious rudeness. Jonathan smiled as he returned to his textbook. A night at home didn’t get more typical than this. It seemed, with less time than he thought, normal might look like a life he recognized.
Then he felt something move in his chest.
CHAPTER NINE
THURSDAY | JUNE 30, 2005 | 08:30 PM
HE’D been trying to focus, to ignore his roommates watching television on the couch behind him.
“I don’t want to wait for September for the new season of Lost to start,” said Hayden.
It was a flutter of sorts in his chest, a twitch of his muscles. He didn’t make much of it right away, but within a few seconds he was starting to feel warm.
“Does it seem hot in here to you?” he asked Paige
She shrugged, but didn’t answer. A few more seconds passed and he was so uncomfortable he couldn’t focus. It was beginning to burn.
His mind made the connection quickly, the burning in his chest and the sensation he had waking on the kitchen floor. He fought the urge to jump to conclusions. Not to panic before he was sure it wasn’t something simple, he didn’t want to alarm everyone if he just had a case of hives. He stood to make a line for the downstairs bathroom where he could remove his shirt and take a look.
He never made it that far.
His motor functions were suddenly not in his control. His legs quivered and he collapsed to the linoleum.
“Jonathan, you okay?” Paige asked. “Jonathan?”
He heard her, but couldn’t form words. The burning in his chest was pulsing, growing hotter with each beat of his heart, spreading rapidly out from his ribs toward his limbs. Panic began to set in, but for all his alarm, he couldn’t move. The burning grew stronger and stronger, his nerves lighting up in pain. It seemed to fill him from the outside in, skin to the bone until his entire body was on fire, lava in his veins, his brain screaming out for him to act while he was immobilized on the floor.
Paige had stood and come around the table while Hayden and Collin had turned to look from the couch. His eyes suddenly stopped darting from one face to the other and became fixed on the ceiling. In horror he realized he could not look elsewhere, his eyes no longer minded him. He could feel his hands clenching at his chest out of some kind of instinct, but as the fire expanded, his sense of touch was crowded out by pain.
Paige’s face jumped into his vision, she’d dropped to her knees beside him.
“Jonathan! What’s wrong?” she asked.
He heard her, but her voice was growing distant. He was too consumed with the flames scorching their way to his fingertips to focus on her voice. The searing moved up his neck toward his head, the surface of his face felt as though he was being drowned in flame. The heat began to sink in, toward his skull, toward his mind. His vision went black suddenly, his hearing completely mute.
Jonathan’s terrified thoughts crashed into one another, as each sense was taken away. He pleaded, not knowing who he begged for help in his thoughts.
Please give it back, please make it stop! Dammit let me see them!
He was alone in the dark, unable to scream out, and pain was all he was aware of, the only thing letting him know he was still alive. It seemed as though acid had been poured into his skull, it seared into his temples, his eyes sockets, the nerves of his teeth and yet still burned further into his mind.
His thoughts devolved into disjointed panic, until they seemed to cease entirely. He lost track of time, the very concept of beginning and end. Fire became all he knew.
“It seems like it’s passed,” Collin said.
“Was it a seizure?” Hayden asked.
His heart thudded in his ears. He didn’t know if he’d been gone for a moment or an eternity.
Suddenly, he felt his limbs. His eyes shot open as he realized his lids were responding, vision flooded back into him. The burning was gone, the pain suddenly sucked into a black hole within him. Thought returned slowly, drifting in from somewhere that language had not existed, becoming comprehensible words again.
“Shit! Shit!” Paige yelled.
He felt her hands drawn back from his chest in surprise as she swore. He became aware that he was on the floor again, staring up at her wide eyes. He could hear the television still playing in the background. His roommates were surrounding him, Paige still on her knees at his right, Collin standing above his head and Hayden to his left. All staring with their mouths hanging open, but they weren’t looking at his face. They stared at his chest as though he had an armed hydrogen bomb ticking away on his torso.
“What happened?” Jonathan asked.
No one responded.
“Guys!” he yelled.
They snapped out of their trance and shut their mouths, looking him in the eye.
“Jonathan, your chest,” Paige whispered, bringing her fingers to her mouth in worry.
Slowly he propped himself on to his elbows and looked down. His chest was flickering, and as he watched in panic, it suddenly became alive with light.
It hadn’t just kicked on abruptly. Like a halogen bulb, it had worked its way to full illumination. The light seemed organic, glowing red-orange from beneath the skin and submerged in the muscle tissues over his rib cage. He could see it through his shirt like neon lights had been surgically implanted inside his chest.
His hands moved to touch the light, but then he stopped, unsure if it was wise to touch them. Instead, he
reached up and slowly lifted the collar of his shirt.
Three lines ran over his front and around his back. Two of the lines, one on each side of his torso, followed parallel to his arms from his shoulder down to his hip. These two lines were intercepted by the third, running perpendicular to his arms across his chest. The third line reached around from his back. It appeared to start at one lat muscle, crossed over his chest, and terminated in the muscle on the opposite side.
The lines looked like liquid energy running through him.
“What the hell is it?” Collin asked.
Only one thought occurred to Jonathan.
This shouldn’t be possible.
How could all of those tests they ran at the hospital have missed something like this in his chest cavity? Jonathan didn’t know what to do. He laid his head back down on the kitchen floor trying to think. His roommates, seeming to fear he was about to go catatonic again, tried to think for him.
“Call an ambulance,” Hayden said.
“What the hell for?” Collin asked. “Whatever that thing is the doctors don’t have an ointment for it.”
“Well, what the hell else are we gonna do?” said Hayden.
“Why don’t you try praying?” Collin snapped back.
While they began bickering, Paige came to her senses, finally taking her hand from her mouth.
“Jonathan,” she said softly. “Does it hurt?”
His attention shifted to her when the concern in her voice registered. It was hard to gauge exactly what he felt given the circumstance, but he wasn’t in pain any longer.
“No. I mean, there was a terrible pain before, worse than anything I’ve ever felt. Like I was being cremated and I couldn’t move. But it stopped right before this came on,” he said, pointing at his chest. “I feel normal. I’m—”
He realized then that something wasn’t normal.
“Wait—” Jonathan paused.
Collin and Hayden, seeing that something was developing, became silent.
“There’s something tugging at my attention,” he said, then shook his head. “No, it’s not tugging. It’s strange. I can’t… I can’t not notice it.”
Chronicles of Jonathan Tibbs 1: The Never Hero Page 7