Chapter 9: Truths
Sometimes, when you hear about some horrible truth, you do everything you can to rationalize it away.
‘It’s only a heart tumor’
‘It’s only a small down size.’
‘It’s only a couple drinks.’
No matter the case, you don’t want to imagine that the worse possible fate could come true. Even as more and more evidence comes in, you want to believe in something else, believe that the secrets aren’t anything to worry about, and that he is all that he appears.
Maybe I should have known better.
Maybe I should have told someone.
Maybe I shouldn’t have lied to Dad that morning.
Maybe that’s why I’m writing this now, because I’m tired of the lies, and want the truth, no matter how ugly it might be. I’d like to think I was a good person, one who rarely messed up. But the truth is, I’m one of the liars, one of the cowards, one of the broken. It took Jace for me to see that for myself.
…
Breakfast the next day was tense, or at least more so than normal for Jace and myself. Between the fact that my parents were on the other side of the house last night and our family is known to be able to be able to sleep through a collage marching band coming through our bedroom, they didn’t know of anything strange happening that night, although Dad did notice the bandage on Jace’s hand.
“What happened there?” he asked.
“He hit his hand on his nightstand during the night, so he came to me and I put a bandage on it,” I answered before Jace could say anything. It wasn’t technically a lie, everything I told them was true, but I still felt bad about hiding the truth from them. But, can you blame me? I was scared, didn’t know what else to do. Sometimes it feels like if we just pretend something bad isn’t real it will just go away, be buried among the simple truths of our lifetime. Sadly though, this isn’t always how it works. Sometimes we bury it for it to come back with an even greater fury, causing much more harm than if we’d just told the truth to begin with and faced whatever danger that would have brought us.
I knew that even as I spoke those words.
But I pretended otherwise, I put my faith in what I wanted to happen, not willing to admit the unthinkable alternatives.
“Thank you for taking care of that,” Mom said to me.
Jace looked toward me, as if he was pleading for something more, for some recollection from that night.
“I was glad to be able to help him,” I said. I mean, that was true. I was glad to help, with everything that happened.
After breakfast I went back upstairs to get my backpack before I left for school. As I filled it with the text books I needed that day, I didn’t notice Jace entering the room behind me.
“Caleb,” he said.
“What is it?”
“About last night.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
However, I knew the worry wouldn’t leave him so easily. He seemed to pace around my room for a little while, while kind of pretended he wasn’t there, just putting everything away that I needed to. I honestly wanted him to leave there.
“I’m scared,” he finally said.
I set my backpack back down and sat in my chair, turning it to face him. “You’re afraid that’s going to happen again?”
“You don’t think it will?” he questioned me in such a way that I knew he was digging at what we both knew was the logical answer.
“I hope not,” I said.
“Sometimes hope doesn’t mean anything,” he responded.
“Do you know if something caused that…whatever it was?”
He nodded, which gave me some relief, but not as much as I would have thought it would. Sure, it was good that Jace knew the cause of it; that could mean that we’d be able to prevent something like this from happening again. Even so, if he knew what caused it, and was so afraid, that added some substance to his fear. “The music.”
“Music?”
“You know how they make those whistles for dogs, where you blow them and it’s at a frequency that only they can hear. Well, it’s kind of like that for me. Back when I was with Ren, they’d play the music sometimes, and I’d wake up like I was with you, with someone else normally hurt really badly.” He mumbled something else that I didn’t hear him say.
“I didn’t hear any music like night,” I said, not wanting it to be true.
“I’m the only one who can,” Jace said before walking across the room and sitting on my bed. “If they play it again, things could get any worse.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll figure out a way to stop this music then. Then we’ll all be good.”
“But what if we can’t?”
“You don’t have to ask that, because we will; I promise.” Sometimes I promise things without knowing how in the world I could ever fulfill them. This was one of those times. But it seemed to comfort Jace some, he smiled a bit at me before speaking again.
“Thank you. I don’t want to have to leave this place.” I couldn’t help but smile at the relief in those words. However, before I could say anything else, I noticed the clock telling me I was almost late for school.
“Sorry Jace, I have to go!” I said, grabbing my backpack and running as fast as I could down the stairs, hoping that I wouldn’t trip and fall. Sure, it entertained my family when I did that, but the pain wasn’t the most pleasant thing in the world.
…
I had an even harder time than normal concentrating at school that day.
I just wanted to go back home, to see how he was doing.
So when I ran into Thomas after my last class, and he asked me to hang out at his house after school, I said the first thing that came to mind.
“Of course.”
Yes, I wanted to see how Jace was doing.
But I was also terrified of what might happen. I believed that if I stayed away from him, did something pointless to distance myself from it, then things would get better.
Stupid, I know.
But I went over to Thomas’ house, texted Dad about what I was doing, and then got back later that evening. I pretty much wasted the day, but it was kind of fun, so I didn’t care.
When I got back home, I saw Jace sitting in the living room with my parents watching something on TV. It looked like one of those overly dramatic reality shows, so it didn’t interest me much. But I still walked into the room, and said hi to them.
“Have a good day?” Dad asked.
“Yeah, it was fun.” I sat on the couch beside Jace, who turned to face me. “How was yours?” I asked politely, not really directing the question toward anyone.
“Work was busy for me, but it was good to be back,” Dad said. He’d gotten a couple days off when Jace came to live with us, but he had to go back today.
“I think this school stuff is going to be pretty hard,” Jace said.
“I called the school today,” Mom said, “With how far behind he is with so much, it might be a good idea to home school him.”
That made sense. “What about work?”
“That I still need to figure out.” Shortly after she said that and the show came back from a commercial, Jace got up and as he walked by me he bumped into my shoulder. I looked up at him, and he seemed to motion for me to follow him.
“I have some homework to do, so I better go work on it,” I said, using that as my excuse to get away, although it was quite true too. I followed Jace into his room, and as I entered it, he shut it behind me. I still noticed some of the things out of place from last night, the mattress was crooked, and one of the blades of the overhead fan was cracked.
“Your mom’s going to have to quit her job, isn’t she?” he asked once as he sat on his bed.
“What makes you say that?”
“I heard her on the phone. Talking to some people.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “No one ever wants me to be around, at least not for long. People are nice when it doesn’t cost them anything, but when that changes, then the people change.”
“Well, even if she does decide to leave her job to teach you, she’s doing that because she wants to.”
“What about when she doesn’t want to anymore? What about when I screw up all of her plans and I become just a pest to her.”
“I’m sure you’ll never be like that to her.”
“Why not? I have to everyone else.” What brought this on? Sure, taking Jace in wouldn’t come without some discomfort, but even long before we knew his name, it was something we were all prepared for. Our family had so much, we’d be fools not to share our blessings with someone who really needed it.
“We want you here Jace, no matter what it may lead to, we’re glad you’re here. And you’re family, so for good or bad, we’re all in this together.”
Jace looked down at the back of his hand, where the bandage covered the cut from last night. “I guess if you’re still here after last night, then maybe you’re right.” His disposition seemed to lighten a bit now. “No one else would be this close to me after I tried to kill them.”
I wanted to tell Jace that I wasn’t afraid of him, but that wasn’t entirely true. I saw what he did, and he even said that what he was doing was trying to kill me last night. But that didn’t matter. “My family can be annoying. But when they get set in their mind to do something, they won’t let anything stop them. Even if you think that 13 years old is too old to have your picture taken with Santa.”
That caused him to laugh, which made me laugh too. “They’ll probably make you do that too. Trust me, you’re not going to get rid of us.”