LOTF: Before and After

Phase 3: Chapter 71

"Say something" Jack whispered, reaching his good hand down to take Ralph's in his. But he was surprised when Ralph harshly pulled away, stepping back, almost into the twins, when he did so.

Ralph just shook his head in a disapproving, pained manner as tears welled behind his eyes. Before they could fall, he ran out of the room without a word.

Jack felt all the eyes in the room on him in the split second before he took off after Ralph. He watched as Ralph, several feet in front of him, pushed open the first floor's communal bathroom door, letting it swing shut behind him.

A few beats later, Jack pushed open the door to find Ralph standing over the sink; tears running quickly down his face, breathing so heavily and rapidly Jack thought he might combust right then and there.

"Ralph" Jack approached him, reaching his arm out to him. Ralph stepped back, forcing his body against the wall beside him. "I'm sorry, okay? I shouldn't've said anything about us without talking to you first. But Roger was going to if I didn't, and I didn't want him to be the one to tell them."

"I'm not mad that you told them" Ralph's words were distorted by his aggressive tears, and the hiccups that had resulted from them. There was an unsteady, violent shaking in his voice.

"Then what? What's this about?" Jack asked, confused, his train of thought racing at a dizzying pace of a hundred miles a second.

"Why didn't you want to come tonight?" Ralph asked in his blubbery, shaky voice. The question seemed to come from nowhere.

"What?" Jack was evidently taken aback, struggling to catch up to the conversation.

"Is it because it was too hard for you? Too emotional? Or because you knew it wouldn't be?" Ralph asked harshly, his chest heaving rapidly, his white button-up shirt wet from the tears that ran down his neck, his eyes bloodshot and pained.

"What are you talking about?" Jack asked as a genuine wave of confusion washed over him.

"You don't care about what happened on the island" Ralph struggled to get the words out. "You don't care that you led the others to ruin, turned them into violent animals, that your thoughtless decisions led to the deaths of two of my best friends! You tried to kill me, Jack! You ordered them, all of them, to stab me to death like Simon! Except it wasn't like Simon because it the sun was out and you knew exactly what you were doing. You don't care now that they're dead, you felt nothing as we sat through that ceremony, not a single tear, nothing. Their innocent faces were right there in front of you, and the lives they had ahead of them before your desire to have a little fun went so goddamn wrong that it cost them everything! It cost them their whole lives, Jack! They'll never hug their parents again, or graduate from high school, or go to college, or have a first kiss, or fall in love, or eat their favorite food, or even just look up at the stars ever again. Don't you understand? Don't you get that you fucked up; that your idea to start a new camp because you were tired of me killed them? But that's the thing; you don't get it. Or you just don't care. Maybe it's both! But you don't feel a goddamn thing. You sat there tonight, through the whole thing, stone cold. The look in your eyes was deader than Piggy's were when he actually died. How can you except me to just forget about that? How?"

Jack stood in across from him, staring at the mess of a boy Ralph turned into right in front of him. Jack felt his legs daring to buckle beneath him, his injured leg threatening to take him down first. He stared into the angry eyes of the boy he loved, wondering how long he'd been burying this intense rage and hatred he clearly felt for Jack. He struggled to find the words now, any words, to say that would even reach Ralph.