Chapter Text
Alyssa
As Jamie's father drives the car, we sit in silence, not knowing what to say. I stare outside watching the power lines and houses and trees and all the while thinking of how quiet the world suddenly is when I'm out of that stupid house where I can't even like breathe or pause or think or anything.
It feels like forever as I think about another conversation I had with my mum when we talked about dating.
“Are you sure?” my mum had asked.
I had rolled my eyes.
“Sweetie, I just need to know for sure. You’d be better off with someone...stable, someone nice and normal. What about that Todd fellow?”
Todd, the blonde boy next door, was a “nice, sweet boy” as Mum put it. We had met up a long time ago at his house. I admit that I had liked him, but when he showed me this imaginary view of the future, this invisible house with the cupboards clean and a nice car and two children, I just felt a gut punch. Not even the good, satisfying gut punch. The sad one.
“No," I had said.
“What can he do for you, buy you a house? Raise a family?” It was obvious who he was.
“I don’t care,” I had said. James was worth ten Todds.
As if echoing that conversation, my phone buzzes and I see Mum texted me. She asks me a similar question now as we pull up to the front of the hospital.
Are you sure you need to visit him?
I type back.
He saved my life, mum. He did all that for me.
It takes a second for her response back. I can like feel her panic from the other side.
He's not normal.
Right, like anything about Tony and my mum and the twins or this shamble of a house are normal. It was only pretending to be normal, like a dollhouse with mannequins. And lots of fucking money. A fuckton of it.
You should think about your future.
“I don’t care, but thanks for your concern,” I mumble.
My future is right in front of me, of course. James's dad parks the car in front of the hospital and I bolt out before he even has a chance to stop me.
—
James
As a rule I used to not dance. I’m not sure if I can dance anymore. I’m not even sure I can walk, given my sustained injuries, and it’s funny because I didn’t think dancing is ever useful or important, but it is, and I only ever got to dance once in my life. And it was in the house of a serial rapist-killer with my girlfriend. No, not girlfriend. Partner-in crime? Fellow runaway? What are we even, these days?
I settle for my only friend in the world. Because that part is true for me. Even if it might not be true for her.
And now today, there she is: Alyssa, standing in front of me.
It seems like while I only lost one rule, Alyssa’s gained a whole rulebook. She used to be angry, but today, she looks a little less angry and a lot more empty. Something like my mum used to be. Her face is lined, and it’s not like I’ve never seen her without makeup before, but she looks older.
She stands outside of my physical therapy room. She waves.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey.”
She gives me a once-over. “You look like shit. ”
She is bouncing on the balls of her feet, almost as if she is nervous, and instantly I know the right thing to say.
“Fuck off,” I say.
She grins widely and it's like the clouds parting ways for the sun. Inside, I feel my stomach flipping. She is really here.
“Alyssa,” I say, my voice cracking.
She throws her arms around me, leaning over the metal bar as she awkwardly puts her arms around my neck and torso.
She is really, really here.
“I thought I lost you,” I croak.
She tenses, because we both know how true that was.
When we separate, we stare at each other. Her blonde hair is gone, and she seems to have dyed it back to a darker red now. It is smooth, straightened, longer by a bit. I probably look like decrepit now, in my sweatpants and jumper, arms shaking as I try to walk again and grip onto the metal bars for dear life.
The nurse comes back in and stops when he notices we have a guest in the room.
“Oh, you’re that—” he stops and covers his mouth. “You’re not supposed to be here, we’re under strict orders—”
“New times, new orders. My mum is parked just outside so ask her,” Alyssa scoffs. This is a lie but even I find myself convinced whenever Alyssa uses that tone of voice.
“But I can’t just—”
“Please, Nicholas?” I ask, trying for the endearing voice again.
I pray that Alyssa was trying to smile and appear innocent.
She must have because Nicholas’s eyes soften, and he says, “Right, I’ll keep mum. Shall I leave you two alone?”
“Yeah, thanks very much,” Alyssa says curtly.
“James talks about you all the time,” the nurse continue, putting on a smile that seemed obviously fake, even to me. “Should I go over what he needs—”
“It’s alright,” I say. “Thank you for all your help.”
“Sorry,” he says. “Call me if you need anything.”
He leaves.
“Well, he was annoying,” says Alyssa.
The lilt in Alyssa voice makes me happy, even if it is just Alyssa being mean again. But when you haven’t seen someone you love in a long time, seeing them again makes it easier to breathe.
I must have been staring too long because Alyssa breaks the gaze first and starts looking around the room.
“What’s that?” she asks, pointing at the rubber balls and various exercise bands that were hanging off the wall.
“Physical therapy,” I say. I straighten myself up, hoisting myself up on the metal bars, just to seem a little cooler than I was feeling. “I’m training my muscles to work again.”
“Right, bet the therapists use it for more interesting stuff when you aren’t looking.”
That confuses me, so I begin, “I don’t think so—”
“Just a joke, James!”
She quirks a grin, and I smile back. Right, just a joke.
We fall into an awkward silence. What did we do when we weren’t on the run? I realize that in a world where we weren’t on the run, I didn’t really know anything about Alyssa at all. Just bits and pieces, like her stepfather being shit, her mum being a doormat, her deadbeat biological father being a drug dealer for teenagers on the beach.
Or maybe the opposite is true. Maybe we know each other so well that we lost the ability to be normal with each other.
Gripping the metal bars, I stretch out my right leg and took another step. She watches me do this in silence, until I reach the end of the bars and need to turn around.
I must have taken too long because Alyssa finally speaks again.
“Can I help?” she asks.
I nod, and she hoists me up by the armpits. I should have warned her about the sweat or something, but then I remember that we both tried to carry a bleeding corpse. Sweat was nothing compared to blood and bile. I turn around successfully and start toward the other side, Alyssa watching me with her arms crossed.
At that moment, my dad runs into the room.
“James, I saw the nurse outside and — Alyssa?” He walks closer toward us. “Oh good, it is you. I wasn’t sure if you’d find the room,” Dad says, striding toward her, arms outstretched. "Thank you again for seeing Jamie."
To me, it’s obvious that my Dad is about to offer a comforting hug. I turn and see Alyssa take a step back and freeze, her eyes were wide in fear, that’s obvious too — don’t think about Clive pinning her down or the blood — and suddenly I’m standing in front of her again, my hand leaving the metal bar and toppling forward — “Stop, Dad,” I begin — I tell myself, wait, it’s just your Dad — and I find two pairs of hands holding onto my elbows. My Dad on my left and Alyssa on my right.
“Fuck’s sake, James, I leave you for a month and you’re useless as shit," she says, but I can feel her arm trembling as she hoists me up.
My Dad stares at her in shock at how insensitive her words were. Sometimes it is hard to remember that Alyssa sounds like a right arse about everything when she is scared. It must shock everyone except for me.
I give my Dad a look and shake my head, and he didn't say anything. The past six months, my Dad had gotten better at reading my emotions somehow. That is progress, I guess.
“Yeah?” I say. “How shit?”
“Really shit.”
We smile at each other. Or rather, I smile, and Alyssa looks away with an eye-roll, which I realize now that she only does when other people were around us. My Dad looks like he wants to say something, but he keeps it inside. Maybe he would tell me when Alyssa left.
“I’ll uh, be out by the vending machine. Do you want a snack or anything? Alyssa?” asks my Dad, nodding toward the door.
I shake my head.
“A drink and a snack would be nice,” says Alyssa. “Bag of crisps?”
Dad nods enthusiastically. “Sure.”
—
Alyssa
“Yours,” James’s dad says when he hands me the bag of crisps and the paper cup of black tea.
“Thanks.” The paper cup is warm against my palms. I grip it tighter for moral support.
His dad offers me the chair, but I shake my head and say he ought to sit on it because he is old and probably diabetic. He frowns but says nothing about my rudeness. I settle into my corner and where I stand and eat the crisps, staring at the mirrored wall at my reflection and its sad, sorry expression.
“Don’t worry about it, Dad,” James says. His Dad looks like he wanted to protest but James shakes his head.
While James continues his physical therapy and his father guards him like a hawk, I am observing too, watching the two of them in the mirror as if it is some inspirational film. Father and son. Rebuilding their lives after some traumatic experience. Even I can tell something has changed in the past months.
Something that made James change from punching his father and stealing his car for a girl he barely liked...into whatever the hell this is.
Somehow, those two had become picture-perfect normal. A father who cares for his son, and his son who loves him back. Not the fake normal that my mother and Tony and their two twins have, but a real normal.
I finish the last of the tea and crumple the paper cup hard, squeezing the waxy edges into themselves before hurling it at the rubbish bin. It bounces off the edge and I cuss before trodding over and picking it up for a second successful throw.
I am the only one who hasn't changed.
Why am I jealous? Something is like actually wrong with me, I think. Maybe it’s true, and maybe I really, really need some therapy or something.
I stuff more crisps in my mouth and chew loudly, just because I can and for no other reason.
“So you and James,” begins his father. “He’s been having a rough time.” He studies me and shakes his head. “I suppose both of you are. But I don’t want any funny business.”
I roll my eyes. “Are you like angry at me for showing up?”
Slack-jawed, he stares at me. “Funny, that. James asked me the same thing. Whether I am angry.” He shakes his head. “Well, I’m not.”
I buried my hands in my pockets and stared at my runners.
“He’s been asking after you, and I’ve been trying to get you here. Your mother and stepfather weren’t helping, until I pleaded with them. She called me, your mum, and I told her where I brought you.”
I shrug. “They’re cunts. Mum’s a little better.”
He exhales a sigh, but doesn't comment on it. “Take care of him. God forbid if something happened to him, or you, either of you.”
“Sure.” What else could I say?
“Just wanted to ask if you were alright? Even if you can’t tell James, you can talk to me.”
Right, like I’d trust him. “I’m fine,” I say.
He is about to pat me on the shoulder, but hesitating, pulls back his hand. “I’ll be off then. Toilet’s pretty far, so you stay and watch over James.”
And then he leaves.
—
James
When Alyssa comes back in, she has a strange facial expression. Dad must have told her something he didn’t want me to hear.
Maybe my Dad did not trust Alyssa at all. It was all just politeness. Odds were that he was still nearby, waiting to come running the moment he heard something go wrong. So this wasn’t going to be a private conversation at all.
“What happened?”
Alyssa shrugs, “Is it bad that you’re the only person I feel safe around because you’re crippled?”
“Alyssa.”
“Well, you’re not going to do anything, are you.”
“I’d be lucky if I can go to the toilets on my own.”
She laughs.
The doctors had mentioned that the piping down there would stop working, but I wasn’t ready to bring that up yet. Alyssa seems like the type of girl who’d want…sex. I brush the thought off. Instead, I tell her, “I’m not crippled, Alyssa. Doctors said I’ll be able to walk again.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine, you’re like temporarily crippled, same thing.”
“How’s your mum?”
“Worse than usual. I was promised a car for my birthday, only I think they’ve like changed their minds.”
I just realized I don’t even know Alyssa’s birthday.
“Happy birthday,” I say.
“Thanks, even though you’re a couple of weeks early,” she says, giving me a gentle shove. “When that happens, we can drink legally together. Not that it matters, fuck it. Do you want to go to a bar when you’re better?”
“Okay.”
She wanders around the therapy room and when she grows bored, she takes my crutches that were leaning by the chair at the end of the metal bars. “Holy shit, you have, like, real crutches.”
“Alyssa.”
“What?”
“Stop it. I know what you’re doing.” The slight anger in my voice surprises even me.
She pauses and gently sets the crutches down by the chair again and walks over to the metal bars. “James, you’ve grown a spine, even if your legs don’t work. if I have to stop being an arse, then you have to stop getting yourself killed.”
The corners of my lips quirk up. “I’m still alive, aren’t I?”
“Don’t do that again.”
She isn’t smiling this time, so I knew she meant it.
The nurse returns a couple minutes later and it is awkward for the rest of the time where he actually leads me through my exercises and tests my various limbs for flexibility and ranges of motion. Alyssa mostly sits in the corner toying with a paper cup while watching us work. I don't really know what to say or do, or whether anything I say would really make Alyssa happy or send her angry.
In the end, neither of us say much of anything at all. One hour later, she gives me a furtive pat on the shoulder before she leaves.
"My mum is here," Alyssa announces.
"Okay," I say.
"I'll see you again."
I want to ask when she will come back, but I'm afraid of the answer. She looks like she is waiting for me to say something, and I must have hesitated too long because then suddenly her mum is there and dragging Alyssa away and she just simply leaves and doesn't turn back and it feels like all the tension in the room is taken away with her.
As I strap myself in the car, my Dad helps me into my seat. I've grown used to this part now, but oddly enough, I don't mind so much when my Dad helps me.
“Some girl, eh?” chortled my Dad, ribbing me gently with his elbow as we drive back home. I lean my back against the windowsill and stare out the window.
I faked a quiet sort of laugh. “It’s how she is.”
Dad looks at me sadly, and I wonder what he was seeing. Maybe an echo of him and my mother. We go for the crazy ones.
The next week, the constable who found us at Leslie’s trailer — whose name I finally learned was Eunice — comes in to visit in order to discuss the case proceedings.
Eunice is later joined by Teri, another constable, who I didn’t like as much. Teri looks like she is out to get both of us, and particularly me, for having committed a crime that I am barely getting away with. The two constables explain that they had received ample evidence of Clive’s criminal activities from his elderly mother — it turned out that the photos we laid around Clive had gone missing —and thus, the original indictment against me has been dropped.
“After everything is settled,” says Eunice, “you will be tried for your crimes as an adolescent instead of as an adult because they were committed while you were under eighteen. You will also have a self-defence plea.”
“Okay.”
“You’re looking at some imprisonment sentencing, but it should be lighter than typical,” she continues.
I feel exhausted, and simply nod. Eunice gives me a look of sympathy — pity, even — before turning to my dad and offering him a list of other options.
I stop listening to them. The room drifts around me like sand. The white walls glow whiter and the words people spoke swarm my head like buzzing flies. I just hold onto the fact that at some point in the future, I will be visited by Alyssa again.
—
Alyssa
The next time I visit James, the officers explain everything to me. When they leave, and our parents are discussing us with each other inside the police building, I grab James's hand and drag him outside with me. They protested but we can’t even like see the cloudy sky because we’re stuck in this room, with its creepy incandescent bulbs and white walls and white floors. So we're leaving, I already decided.
In some other world, this would be a date, us sitting on this rusted bench torn away from a picnic table behind the police station. The tree that it once rested under is straining and lifeless.
But this is not a date. Those days that felt like a date were forever ago: when we sat on the beach, staring at the remnants of the sun slipping away into darkness. Maybe I should have foreseen some future like my mum asked. I should have imagined there was no sunset, just car exhaust before we enter the building only to be greeted by the smell of alcohol and hospital and old people. I should have imagined a rusted park bench in the backyard alley of a police station in the middle of nowhere.
But it's a better shithole than the one I came from.
“I don’t care if they sentence you to prison. I’ll come see you, you know,” I say.
Despite everything, James stares at me. The way James stares at me was nothing like how Leslie looks at me, all pitiful and pathetic. It was nothing like Tony, who leers at me, or my mother, who feels simultaneously sorry for me and ashamed of herself. And the shame would win out.
No, James looks at me like I am some kind of perfect girl. And that terrifies the hell out of me.
It had been three weeks since the physical therapy session that his Dad had snuck me into.
“Happy birthday, Alyssa,” James says out of the blue.
Oh right, I am eighteen today.
“Thanks.”
I sit on the bench and feel the edge digging into my thigh. He pushes himself up against the bench, holding himself upright as he takes each careful, trained step. At one point, he almost falls, and I almost get up to help him, but he catches himself.
An image flashes before me: James in a warm jumper, cradling a ceramic pot of flowers.
I rest my face against his shoulder as he silently strokes my hair with his marred hand. I can tell that he lightly kisses my hair. I can feel the hesitation just before he kisses my forehead too.
“I missed you, you know,” I finally admit into his jumper.
“I missed you too.”
I think about when we were dancing, sitting by the ocean, rewriting the past with whatever there could be until we outlived our freedom.
I hug him tighter and try to memorize the way he smells.
“I have a confession,” James says. “If you…if we’re going to do this.”
“What?”
“I used to be a psychopath.”
“So what? I’m probably one too.”
But then he says something I don’t expect.
“That hunting knife. I— I had it because I was...planning to kill you.”
Everything falls silent. Then—
“No!” I scream back into his face. He startles back as I grab his arms. He winces.
“You’re not a psychopath, you hear me? I would know!” I shout.
But then James has that sorry look in his eyes, and I know that look.
Oh my God, James can’t lie to me to save his life. Maybe he was a proper psychopath. Maybe I am in love with a proper psychopath. And that knife. He never could give me the right answer even back then.
“Why?” I ask softly.
He stays quiet. “I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
“That I could feel things because of you," he tells me, his voice cracking.
Maybe that is the breaking point. I can feel James’s shoulders sag in relief. For just this brief moment, I stop thinking about the future and what it will look like. I laugh at the mental picture of mum worrying over me as I visit James in prison, through those glass walls like in those crime serials, unable to touch and feel the way we were doing now. I imagine James confessing his turmoil through the bars.
“Stupid, shut up about being a psychopath. Psychopaths don't feel anything. Obviously.” Which is like obvious, I think, he couldn’t even drop the stone on that dog—
“I could have killed you."
"No you couldn't have," I snort. "And if you did, maybe I would have deserved it. Just genetically fucked for life because of my parents, so maybe—”
“No, stop.”
“Was the whole, like, sad act after the killing just acting?” I ask absently. "If yeah, you're a shit actor. Because psychopaths don’t feel sad about killing a dog? Remember that? They also don’t tend to cry unless you’re just like a really, really good actor. But like, you’re not?”
He blinks at the sudden reminder. “The vomit was real—”
I am crying — when did that start? — while he hugs his elbow. It feels like he has shrunken back into his shell while I’m trying so hard not to burst out of mine.
“I’m not a good person, Alyssa,” he says quietly.
“Well, neither am I. But you’re like the opposite of—”
“I’M NOT LYING!” he shouts. I had never heard James shout before, especially not at me. I step back warily. “Why can’t you believe me?” he asks, his voice trailing off at the end.
"You didn't kill the dog," I say simply.
“I used to be able to,” he says. “Now I can’t.”
I think about James and all the ways that being with him could fuck up my life. The arguments Mum had brought up. Stability, a nice future. But what good is a future if even tomorrow feels too far? But there is something broken in me too. He’s getting better somehow, both of us were, becoming something resembling real-life humans. So it doesn’t matter.
“Well, I used to feel nothing too. This whole month,” I finally say. “Then I saw you and I could feel things again. And the last three weeks sucked.”
“It’s not—”
“Not the same?" I laugh. "Don't be so arrogant, James. Why don’t you believe me as well?”
To be fair, there was something not right about both of us even before we met each other.
He blinks slowly, his hands gripping the bar until his shoulders relax again. He gives me a dopey smile and that's when I know we are alright. If you can call not-stealing-money-from-people and not-murdering-rapists to be an alright state of being. More than okay. Even if we are mentally fucked up.
“Then we both feel things,” James concludes. “What are we now, Alyssa?
“Together,” I say sincerely. “What else?”
He smiles away from me. I can tell he’s pleased.
A sudden thought bursts into my head, and I laugh. “Even better. Do you think we could ever get married?”
“What?”
He tilts his head away from me as his cheeks heat up. I swallow nervously at the sudden image in my mind: me in a white wedding dress and James in a suit and our two lonely figures walking along some harbor. And riding a real proper boat and getting away for real and leaving this shithole of a town.
“Of course, two fuckups like us?” I say, answering my own question. But when he isn’t saying anything, I lose my confidence and add, “Or not. It was stupid, forget—”
“Okay.”
“What?”
“Yes,” he says.
He looks like he wants to hug me again so I wrap my arm around his jumper.
“But like, years later,” I said, my voice muffled by his shoulder. “Not now, because it’s not like you have a real job.”
“Well, neither do you.”
“Shut up.”
It all starts sounding so funny, so I laugh and my giggles just keep going forever. James shoves me on the shoulder and winces at the sudden pain from his side. I loosen the hug and help him lean against me before wrapping my arms around his shoulders again.
I kiss the back of his neck. He blushes.
James and I aren’t seventeen anymore. We no longer had all the time in the world, maybe not even the rest of our lives.
But it is enough, because it had to be. Maybe that is the difference between seventeen and eighteen. The distance you have to sail so that nobody can hurt you anymore. The time spent on a beach, watching the sun rise at the edge of the world with somebody who understood you. I put my hands over both of his hands — the ugly one and the one that saved my life — and then I hug him and he holds on, and I like to think that this is enough.