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Jack always thought eighteen was a stupid age for people to start finding their soulmates. What made someone at that age any different? He certainly was just as stupid at eighteen as he was at fifteen or sixteen or seventeen. The cops told him so, his teachers told him so, and his parents told him so. Not that he listened to any of them.
Everyone else in the world seemed to think differently. Not about him, obviously. They’d already written him off as another delinquent. Someone who already had his life drawn out in the stars. A twinkling constellation reading “disappointment.” Nothing promising. No, everyone else in the world thought eighteen was the prime age to start searching for soulmates. As though anyone could figure out the logic behind the pairings.
There were no happily ever after’s. Soulmates still beat soulmates. Cheated or lied or hurt them in more ways than one. Nothing in the fine print said they had to be faithful. Jack had heard stories of more than one person showing up on the doorstep of another all, accurately, claiming to be soulmates. All anyone could be sure of was that at eighteen there was a feeling alongside a strong emotion. A tug in the direction of their soulmate.
What if there was a tug in the north and the south or the east and the west? Jack didn’t want the headache of sorting out which tug to follow. Making the wrong decision was the least of his worries. He’d made plenty of wrong decisions in his life. It was the possibility that one of those two tugs could change Jack’s life for the better.
So Jack did the only responsible thing he knew.
He ran from the cops in a desperate attempt to drown out those tugs with a stronger rush of adrenaline.
“Get back here!” The officer yelled between desperate huffs. He wasn’t much older than Jack, probably fresh out of the academy if he had to guess. One would think he’d be more equipped to handle these high action chases around the city, but not everyone had the stamina of Jack Kelly. “I order you to stop!”
“I think you’d do well following your own orders!” Jack called back over his shoulder as he vaulted from one rooftop to another. Nothing Jack did was necessarily illegal, in the sense that he’d get charged with a felony should he get caught, at least he wasn’t that stupid. Roof jumping, parkour, whatever got his blood pumping that day was perfectly legal.
His feet scuffed the ledge he had been avoiding in his jump a move that sent him sprawling. Scrapes were souvenirs. A reminder of a good chase or, in cases like this, a stupid distraction that Jack would work harder to avoid next time.
There were pebbles imbedded in his palm. Blood trickled down his knees. Resting on them as he pushed himself up from the less than graceful position he landed in sent a new rush of epinephrine through his system. Between the blood rushing in his ears and the dull ache of pain settling in his hands and knees Jack could just barely feel it.
The tug. A pull that sent his feet itching to head forward. He waited a few seconds for that feeling to pass like always. Five seconds passed, then ten, then twenty, but the sensation never wavered. The presence of his soulmate was as ever present as the discomfort in his palms.
Jack spared a glance over his shoulder. The cop had stayed on the other rooftop. To be expected, but Jack would have to move soon. No telling if this officer was more ballsy than the rest and intended to keep up the chase, granted he could even catch his breath. The ten flights of stairs had turned his face red with rivulets of sweat rolling down his temples, down his neck, and into the confines of his uniform.
“C’mon kid,” he said. Hands supporting him as he leaned closer to Jack’s roof and shout above the din below them. “You won’t be charged. I just have to take you in, detain you for a bit, and give you the speech about safety and trespassing and all that.”
Fat chance. Jack ignored him, acting as though the officer was a physical embodiment of that tug. The second one had surfaced, faint and weak. Further away than the one ahead of him, but still important enough to be felt after his intense emotions had died out.
“Are they in the same fucking city?” Jack grumbled to himself. His clothes were covered in grime, split at the seams. The blasted sneakers he was wearing “Fuck!”
His scream echoed over the rooftops. A few old people tending to the gardens up there looked up, smiled and waved, then went back to planting. Ignorance was bliss. Or senility was a blessing. Either way Jack followed the old people’s lead and pretended the shouts of the officer was merely the wind propelling him forward on the rooftop.
There was a bigger gap between this roof and the next, plus a drop of about one floor. Jack tried to avoid making jumps like this when he wasn’t fully centered, but if the officer saw him headed downstairs, then he might as well just hand himself over now.
“Don’t you dare!”
Jack picked up speed, legs pumping faster while his mind mapped out exactly how he was going to accomplish this leap. The pull, not that Jack would admit it to himself, helped keep his focus. The sensation was too much to back out of. He was going to hop over the high ridge of the roof, leap, and tuck himself into a ball to roll onto the other roof.
Visualize. Manifest. Complete.
A sense of weightlessness before reality followed in the biting crunch of concrete. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to truly prepare himself for the sharp pain of landing on solid rock. Nothing like the movies where someone can just shoot up after that with no discomfort whatsoever. Jack did shoot up, though, and he kept moving too.
“Person of interest heading north up Medda Street.” Jack could hear the officer speaking into his radio. He’d heard his profile spoken many times over the past few years, there was no point sticking around to make sure this particular officer got it right. “Male, around 15 to 20 years of age, Hispanic, brown hair and eyes, around 160 pounds, wearing a blue hoodie and black pants.”
The tug dropped deep into his stomach on the third rooftop Jack vaulted over. Never before had he come so close to meeting his soulmate. Nerves along his neck started tingling. Jack blamed it on a predisposed excitement over anything conscious. He had a police force to evade.
Still, the running from a night in jail seemed to take a backseat in his mind. All Jack could focus on was heading in the direction of his soulmate. His feet took over and everything else acted on instinct. Balancing along rooftop ledges, showing off as he scaled down two stories to a lower building, and swinging across fire escapes.
“Hey! I see him!” There were shouts a few blocks ahead of Jack. Two officers had burst through the door and immediately spotted his bright blue hoodie. Jack let out a spew of obscenities. These tugs were messing with his head. He had to get off the rooftops and start heading a different direction, but that would seriously slow him down.
Not that Jack’s burning muscles weren’t doing so already.
Fire escapes groaned under his weight. Serving only to heighten the adrenaline rush within him. There was nothing more freeing than the charge of possibility to make Jack feel alive. Possibly getting caught. Possibly falling six stories. Possibly meeting his soulmate.
That last one put a scowl on his face. The rational half of his brain knew his feet were heading in the right direction. What better person to hide him than someone the world promised was his perfect match? Who he would end up marrying and loving no matter what. Jack would just be cashing in the ‘for better or worse’ half of his vows sooner than later. He didn’t see the harm in that.
The stubborn half of his brain had him rip his blue hoodie off, exposing the soaked Spiderman shirt he wore underneath. He was grateful for the dark coloring to cover up the sweat stains under his arms and down his back. Jack had escaped more police presence with less help before. Just because the tug was strong didn’t mean he had to follow.
But Jack followed anyway. As soon as his feet hit ground level, hoodie abandoned far above him in the alley, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
Everyone always talked about how a gut feeling never lied. Did it still count when the gut feeling had been genetically modified and injected at a young age? Jack didn’t puzzle over the thought long. The voices of the two officers on the rooftops sounded again and his blood pressure spiked. So did the intense tug towards Medda Street. He had a heading.
Snow was melting on the sidewalks with spring’s newfound sunny days, but that wasn’t enough for Jack to not look out of place in just a t-shirt. He ignored the odd glances, letting his stride carry him as fast as he could without breaking into a full on sprint. Even though that’s exactly what his legs itched to do.
Maybe being eighteen was the right age for this soulmate. Who else would be stupid enough to sprint for blocks just to confess one’s love for an absolute stranger?
Jack lost himself in the idea of the foolishness of this whole mess when the tug went from pulling him forward to jerking him back. He’d passed whoever it was he was meant to be with, but who on this crowded street could it even be?
There wasn’t anyone his age from what Jack could tell in his two times turning around in circles, unless that twenty-something lady screaming at a taxi driver counted. Thankfully the tug in his gut sent him across the street and in front of a small shop rather than into that cab. He’d take a night in jail over dealing with a soulmate that entitled any day.
Jack peered up at the store front his body was begging him to enter. Suddenly the air around him wasn’t good enough to fill his lungs. There wasn’t enough of it to catch his breath. The cold air did nothing to stifle the heat spreading throughout his torso, like when he was forced to stand at the front of class and stutter through a work of Shakespeare he could barely make out words in.
Jacob’s Stationery: 2B or Not 2B. That’s what was sending the great Jack Kelly into so much of tizzy. He didn’t get the reference but understood enough that this soulmate was a nerd. Someone Jack would aim spitballs at in class. Someone that would be as disappointed to find out that Jack was their soulmate as everyone else was to simply know him.
Half of him was screaming to just walk into the shop. Get it over with, just because they were soulmates didn’t mean Jack had to stay with them. All he needed was to find a safe place to hide while the cops combed the area. Nothing permanent.
But this whole situation felt permanent. That’s how the story of soulmates always went. Choosing to meet them and spending forever with them. Even when forever was far too big a choice to make at eighteen years old.
The second tug hit him a bit stronger at Jack’s left. Maybe following that sensation would be smarter. There was a good chance they could be better suited to complement Jack rather than whatever poor soul awaited him in this stationery shop, but when he turned to walk off in that direction he saw a police car heading down the street.
He’d just have to hope that the nerd found it in his heart to help a soulmate out. Jack would play up his whole belief in the damn system if he had to. Whatever it took.
“Welcome to Jacob’s Stationery,” a young voice said at the sound of the bell. It echoed over the small shop. No one else was milling about. “Is there anything I can help you with?”
In fact, Jack could almost see the dust layering all the products, which only made this situation worse. There would be no mistaking who his soulmate was. No playing the experience off as a blunder.
The tug hit him like a punch to the gut when he stepped over the threshold. Jack watched recognition dawn on the young man’s face behind the counter. The pull had to have affected him too because neither of them could form a sentence for a few moments.
All Jack could hear was the growing sound of his heartbeat. The door swung shut behind him and, with every step closer towards the counter, he could hear the faint echo of that heartbeat. This kid’s beating perfectly in time with his. Perfect down to the cliché skips and everything.
He had never seen a boy as beautiful as the one behind the counter. Sure, he had acne and a nose a bit too big for his face, but none of that matter compared to the way he looked with the top buttons undone on his uniform or how his pink lips pulled back into a polite smile. Every fiber of Jack’s being urged him to crack a joke. See what his full shining smile looked like, the way his laugh would sound amongst the empty aisles. A private concert just for Jack. Only for Jack.
Maybe this whole soulmate system was on to something.
“I’m your soulmate,” Jack started with, figuring it best to state the obvious as he headed over towards the side of the store. He thrust an open hand out over the counter in greeting. “And I’m running from the cops. Is it okay if I hole up here for a while?”