Jess
Oh. Oh.
He’d just made Layla laugh.
There was no coming back from this.
It’s like these few moments of realizing that you were going to drown, that the water was going to fill your body soon and there’s nothing you could do about it. Perhaps he could also say it was like standing face to face with a foe and knowing before the tip of the sword reached its target that you were going to be struck down.
That’s what happened that night. He didn’t know if Layla realized the power behind her form of weapon but as soon as she smiled at him, as soon as he heard the echo of her laugh, it hit him right in the chest and, he immediately fell.
He feared that he could understand Icarus more and more every day. I, too, am flying too close to the sun. I, too, know I will burn soon, he thought. It only took one smile from her to get him to consider willingly getting burned.
“So when you say you hate touching, is it completely off limits or is it something that requires time and baby steps?”
“Time and baby steps was how it was okay for me to touch Matty and Celia.”
“Right.” Hope was really a dangerous thing.
Layla became quiet when she noticed him staring at her. “We should probably get going,” she whispered. Jess needed to be up early, but he didn’t feel like he had a sufficient dose of her.
“Could we stay for a little longer? I’m not done flirting with you yet.” She rolled her eyes and pulled him to the car.
That night, Jess had the worst nightmare he’d had in a long time. It felt like it was happening all over again. He woke up shivering and ready to vomit with his heart pounding. It was a sign, he thought. He needed to go to the graveyard tomorrow.
He didn’t like to think about that day. He felt guilty and ungrateful whenever he did.
It was strange how fast something as life changing as this could happen. Eight years ago, a shooting happened at their school. Shootings were something he’d always heard about, but you never expect it to happen to you. Especially for a sixteen-year-old year old.
He remembered the sound of that first gunshot all too well. While everyone scrambled to hide, Jess took advantage of the teacher trying to calm everyone down, and snuck out. He knew it was stupid, but his first instinct was to go find Kione. If he could make sure Kione was safe, that was all he wanted.
He knew it was stupid. His feet had mindlessly carried him and he had that horrible feeling in his chest screaming at him to go hide, but he could not stand the idea of anything happening to Kione, there was no world where Jess existed without him, there was no point in staying safe if Kione wasn’t.
The hallway had been empty. Jess walked a few steps when he saw the blood. He knew the girl; she was in Kione’s class, one of the smartest girls and as soon as he saw her knew who the shooter was. He remembered hearing her complain about how a teacher had dismissed her when the girl told her that the John had been making her uncomfortable.
She wasn’t dead, though. Jess had knelt down and put pressure on the blood. It was something he remembered his dad telling him about.
Jess looked around frantically,and his eyes met with John’s when he looked up.
Everything after that was a blur. He remembered being aware of the pain in his throat; it was sudden and horrible and he thought that he was going to die right there, on the floor of the school.
I want my mom, he thought. He felt like he was fading.
When he woke up, he tried to call out to his mom, and she burst into tears when nothing came out. That’s when he knew something was wrong.
He learned that his vocal cords had suffered significant damage during the shooting and there were complications during surgery that ensured he would never speak again. Jess asked about the girl, about Kione.
The girl had survived, Kione was fine, and six people were dead. Including John. He had shot himself in panic when the police arrived. John was seventeen, and the gun belonged to his father.
Jess had gotten two more visits that he thought about all the time: one from Kione and his family, the other was from the shooter’s mother.
Jess constantly visited the graves of those who passed away to ask for forgiveness that they can’t give him. He couldn’t help but feel guilty for surviving.
Later, he drove back in time for team dinner. He really did not have it in him to be his usual outgoing self. He felt like the last couple of months had knocked him off his feet.
Kione’s gaze kept finding his. He tried to avoid it; he could see right through Jess. It took him one look at Jess and Layla to know they had a ‘thing’ as he described it.
He decided to leave early, sneaking out before Kione could corner him.
He still had a few hours with nothing to do, he didn’t want to go home, Jess headed to a place where he could be alone but, where his loneliness would turn into something that’s not really taking up too much space in his chest.
Jess had always been someone who was driven by his emotions. He was loneliest when his emotional needs were not being met, but at the same time, he hadn’t been letting anyone attend to those needs.
He walked into the library.
He picked up some of his favorite YA books: Legendborn, An Ember in the Ashes, The Hunger Games, and The Sun and the Star. He started analyzing the structure of each book, the writing style, what made them so loved. He looked at some of the reviews, the good and bad ones. He took notes.
He called his parents next. They used to ‘force’ themselves to read some of the books he read so that they could bond and talk about all the characters and themes they loved. Jess and his father used to act like the time spent discussing the books was a chore and they teased her about it all the time, but they were the ones who got an attitude if she was too busy to have their book meetings.
“I think I’m going to start writing again in my free time,” he told them when they answered. They had never seen his writing before, but they were aware of his love for it. “At some point, I want to write about things I felt back then,” he said, hesitantly. Jess didn’t like to remind his parents of what had happened, they were so happy it felt cruel to keep reminding them of it but he thought he should at least vaguely mention what kind of things he wanted to write about and how much it made him feel better to write it down.
“Oh, honey, that’s a great idea,” his mom told him. She opened her mouth to speak, but he beat her to it.
“I was just wondering, as elderly people who still love reading YA books,” that’s followed with a “hey!!” And a stern “Watch your mouth, young man.” from his dad.
“Anyway, what things didn’t you like about all the books we read?”
Anne was more of a vibes reader. She read purely for escapism, so she was never one to fixate on negativity. Andrew was more of an intellectual reader. He annotated everything and pointed out symbolism, parallels, and stuff, so he talked for a while. Anne listened with a smitten look on her face.
He wrote down some of the things his father said, then because he could tell they really wanted to kiss, he hung up and set a word count on his Laptop.
Today’s goal: write until I get a headache.
He had a project that he’d thought about for years. Jess had many works in progress, but he kept going back to that one; it was a Treasure Hunt X Hunger Games-inspired story where a huge, deadly arena appears every couple of years with a magic artifact hidden inside. The artifact renews the people’s magic so they need to send people in to find it. It was a tale filled with twists, danger, and forbidden romance.
He sat on the floor of the bookstore, hidden in a corner, and he wrote until his eyes burned.
When he went to bed, he felt a little better about himself.
