Microsoft Word - BREATHLESS.doc, page 11
Lilith shook her head at him. "I can't believe you're doing this," she said to him.
"Shut up, Lilith," said Toby.
That was more like the Toby-Lilith exchanges I was used to. Jason was found and everything was back to normal. The world was perfect. I took Toby's hand. "Let's go,"
I said.
"Right now?" asked Toby. "But we haven't eaten lunch yet."
"I can't eat right now. I'm too excited," I said.
I was terrified teachers would stop us in the halls or in the parking lot. But both the halls and the parking lot were empty. Once we were in Toby's truck, the drive back to my house seemed to take hours and hours. I thought it would never end. On our way, I wondered how Jason was. Had he been hurt at all? Had he run away or had he been captured? If he'd been captured, had he gotten away? Would he look dirty and tired?
Would he just want to sleep? Would he tell me everything?
Fat chance of that. Jason never told me anything.
Finally, however, we did make it back to my house. Toby didn’t come in. "I'm going back to school," he grumbled. "Maybe if I go back, I won't get in as much trouble."
That was fine with me. Toby dropped me at the top of my driveway, and I ran all the way down the hill to the door. I burst inside.
My mother and father were in the kitchen with Sheriff Damon, two of the deputies, several members of the search party, and, yes, Jason. But Jason was handcuffed.
There were scratches on his face. His clothes were a little worse for wear. And the expression on his face was not happy.
I didn't care. I was so happy to see him, I bounded across the room and flung my arms around him. He couldn’t hug me back because his arms were handcuffed behind his back. But he did smile when he saw me.
"You're okay," I said. "I was so worried."
"I'm fine," he said.
I pulled back and looked into his eyes, shaking my head. "I'm so glad you're okay.
You have no idea what I thought might have happened to you."
"Nothing happened," he said, and he grinned at me. His grin looked like the grin in the picture. A real grin, not like his usual brief one.
"What are you doing here?" asked my dad.
And both Jason's and my grins faded.
I turned on my father. "I had to see for myself," I said.
"You should be at school."
"Dad!" I said. "I risked ISS to get here. I'm willing accept the consequences of my actions, nonproductive as they may be."
"Your mother's taking you back to school," he said.
"No she's not!" I said. "I'm staying here. And why is Jason handcuffed?"
My father strode over to me, took my by the arm and led me out of the house. What was wrong with him? My dad never forced me to do things. My parents always wanted me to make my own decisions. And I'd made my own decision. They couldn't make me go back to school!
But they did.
* * *
Later that evening, I was sprawled on my bed in my room working on the French assignment I couldn't get done earlier. Someone knocked on my door.
"Come in," I called.
Jason came into my room. He sat down on the bed next to me. Startled, I sat up straight. He was very close to me, and my eyes settled on different areas of his body.
His shoulders were broad. His forearms were covered in downy dark hair. His fingers were thick and powerful. I shook myself. Forced myself to look at his face. "Hi," I said.
"Azazel, you have to help me get out of here," he said.
"What?" I said. "No." After all of that, after I'd just gotten him back, there was no way I was helping him leave again. I wanted him as close as possible. I couldn't handle the worry.
"You don't understand," he said. "It's not safe for me to be here. If anything happened to you—to your family—I wouldn't ever be able to forgive myself."
I hadn't had any time to talk to Jason. Dinner had been a boisterous affair, full of the regular noise my large family made. Somehow, the subject of Jason's escape had been avoided over mounds of spaghetti and meatballs. We hadn't talked about my leaving school early to come see him either. Instead, my mother had dominated the conversation, asking the guys all about their schoolwork. Since that was the last thing they actually wanted to talk about, they'd tried to change the subject often, without much success. My mom was persistent. After dinner, I'd gone back to my room to work on the huge pile of homework I had. Now I had Jason to myself. "What happened, Jason?" I asked. "Did you run away? Did that man take you away?"
"I left," he said. "I haven't seen Hallam since last night."
"Hallam?"
"That's his name," said Jason.
I nodded.
"Sheriff Damon says that no one else has seen him since yesterday either, but that doesn't mean anything," said Jason. "He's out there. And he's not going to give up until he finds me. That's why you have to help me get out of here."
"I'm not helping you run off so that man—Hallam—can get you," I said. "If I did that, and something happened to you, I wouldn't be able to forgive myself. "
He sighed. "I can look after myself," he said. "I'd be fine. But here...I'm like a trapped rat."
It was true. Jason was practically on house arrest. He could go to school and come home. That was it. "Even if I wanted to," I said, "I couldn't." I gestured to Jason's ankle, where he wore an ankle monitor.
Jason glowered at the little black device. "Sheriff Damon was excited about putting this on me," he said. "Apparently, the department never gets to use it."
If Jason went anywhere besides school, the ankle monitor would send a signal to the police. It also transmitted his location, so that they could track him down.
"How would you get around the monitor?" I asked.
"I'd have to get it off," he said. "If I could do that, would you help me?"
"How would you get it off?"
"It's not indestructible. Of course, after I took it off, they'd know and come for me immediately." He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "Maybe you're right.
Maybe it's hopeless."
Another thought occurred to me. "Do you want to leave?" Maybe Jason just didn't like it here.
He turned to me. "No," he said. "I don't want to. I wish I could stay here forever."
So did I. "So, stay," I said.
"But Hallam—"
"Let the police deal with Hallam."
"They'd be no match for him," said Jason, shaking his head.
Really? I believed Jason when he said that Hallam was dangerous, but the idea of one guy overtaking numerous police officers? It seemed unreal. I caught Jason's eyes with my own. "I don't want you to leave," I said.
Jason gazed into my eyes. His lips parted slowly. Our faces were so close. I looked at his lips. I thought about—
And then I tore my gaze away from Jason. What was wrong with me? Frantically, I looked around the room for something else to talk about.
"We finished 1984 today in English," I said. "You missed it." I still didn't look at him.
"That's too bad," said Jason. "I really like that book. Orwell is brilliant."
"Yeah," I said. "He really is."
We were quiet. I still wasn't looking at Jason.
"Should I go?" Jason asked.
I swung my eyes back to him violently. "No! I don't want you to leave. I don't know how to make that clearer to you!"
"I meant your room," said Jason.
"Oh." I felt stupid. "No, you can stay. It's fine."
"Okay," he said.
And then we didn't say anything for a long time.
"Um..." I floundered. "Do you read stuff like Orwell for fun?"
"Sure," said Jason. "I guess. It's been a while since I read anything for fun. What about you?"
"I like Dan Brown," I said. "I think stuff like that—like secret societies and the Illuminati—is interesting."
"If you like the Illuminati, you should read Robert Anton Wilson," said Jason.
Book recommendations, huh? I liked Jason. There were so many layers to him. I just wanted to unpeel them all. He was so enigmatic, like a puzzle. I wanted to solve him.
Understand him.
Jason looked serious again. "I can't stay, Azazel," he said.
"In my room? Sure you can. I mean, I do eventually have to get back to my French homework, but—"
"I mean here. I mean in your house. I can't be here."
"You have to," I said. "How are you going to leave?"
He made a face. "I know," he said. "And all of that is just strange. I'm not allowed to leave." He pointed at the ankle monitor. "This is overkill, don't you think?"
It did seem like everyone was trying very, very hard to keep Jason from going anywhere. I was grateful, but I did think they only gave ankle monitors to criminals.
Jason stood up. Faced me. "When Sheriff Damon found me hitchhiking, he handcuffed me and threw me in the back of his car."
"Well," I said. "You are my parents' foster child, legally. They have a responsibility to you. Technically, you're legally bound to be here."
"I guess," said Jason. "But there was a search party, and everyone was on red alert to find me. That doesn't make any sense."
Sure it did. We'd all been worried about Jason's safety. Well, I'd been worried about Jason's safety. I guess everyone else had too. Was he right? Was it too much? "Maybe you're just not used to what it's like for people to care about you," I said.
"Maybe," said Jason. "But I don't think so. Something weird is going on in this town."
* * *
As I was falling asleep that night, I couldn't help but think about what Jason had said.
Was something weird going on in Bramford? Things had gotten strange after Jason arrived, but I couldn't put my finger on why exactly that was. For the most part, things were going on exactly the way they had been. Nothing was strange.
Nobody liked it when I spent time with Jason. Toby was jealous of him. Lilith had told me to stay away from him. My dad had made a comment that I'd been spending too much time with him. But maybe they were all just concerned about my safety. If Jason were tied to some dangerous group of people who were tracking him, it made sense that they wouldn't want me to be around him all the time.
There was also the fact that Lilith and Toby had both said something about not being allowed to tell me things or to do things with me. Who was telling them that? Who said they weren't allowed? And today in the lunch line, they'd been almost civil to each other for a second. Then they'd been talking about something they both understood, but I didn't understand. What was it that Toby and Lilith had in common?
How could they have anything in common? They hated each other. They'd hated each other for years. I didn't understand. That was definitely weird.
But it didn't really mean anything, did it? There were lots of reasons why Lilith and Toby could say they weren't allowed to do something. It was probably unrelated. I was worried because I'd been talking to Jason. Jason was paranoid, with good reason.
I could tell that he hadn't had an easy life. He probably saw conspiracies and danger under every rock. Talking to him was making me paranoid. That was all there was to it.
Then there was the mystery of Jason himself. He appeared out of nowhere, running for his life from an unseen person or group of people. He claimed the people after him were dangerous. That they were fanatics—Freemasons with guns. Jason was usually composed and unemotional, but he knew how to fight. I'd watched him incapacitate at least three guys who looked bigger and stronger than him. He was very well educated.
He'd read all kinds of things. He was smart. He could out-argue my dad, and Ms.
Campbell was dazzled by his brilliance.
Hallam—the man who'd come after him—had claimed Jason was his brother, and there'd been a certain sincerity to what he had to say. I'd almost wanted to believe him. In the picture he'd brought, Jason looked happy. Jason made his past sound like it had been horrible. Had it always been horrible? At one point, when that picture had been taken, he'd been happy. I had to consider the possibility that Jason wasn't telling the truth. What had happened to him? Why was he running? And were we all in as much danger as he claimed? I didn't know the answer to any of those questions.
I did know something else, though. Something unsettling. There was something to Toby's accusations. Earlier that night, when Jason had been sitting on my bed, so close to me, I'd looked at his face, and I'd thought about kissing him. I'd been out of my mind with worry when I thought he was in danger. And I liked being around Jason. The thought of being around him for an indefinite period of time sounded like a wonderful idea to me.
It wasn't too serious. I still loved Toby. Toby and I had been through a lot together.
He was the person who I wanted to lose my virginity to. I wanted us to be together for a very long time. I'd never do anything to hurt him. I knew that.
But Jason was beautiful and mysterious and kind of dangerous. He'd saved me. And when I was around him... But none of that meant anything. I didn't want to worry about it too much. I had a crush on Jason. That was all. I had to be careful, because I owed it to Toby, to the man I loved, to be faithful. These feelings I had for Jason would fade away eventually. But I did have to acknowledge they existed.
Chapter Eight
morningstar68 (06:24:16): we almost lost him. it's been a terrifying 24 hours. sorry I haven't been in touch.
michaela666 (06:24:57): it's understandable. but you're certain he won't be escaping again.
morningstar68: (06:25:08): Impossible. we've got him under lock and key.
michaela666 (06:25:35): and the man who seems to be pursuing him? is there a chance of rescue?
morningstar68: (06:26:12): he seems more scared of them than he is of us. or, more accurately, he isn't frightened of us at all. he has no idea what we're planning for him.
michaela666 (06:26:45): Good.
morningstar68: (06:27:10): samhain is days away. It's almost over.
After being so honest with myself, I didn't know how to be around Jason anymore. At breakfast, our hands brushed when we reached for the same cereal box. I recoiled as if he'd stung me. He shot me a strange glance, but I avoided his eyes. When Toby arrived to pick me up, I felt strange around him too. I felt guilty when I got into his truck. Here was Toby, a gorgeous boy, like an angel or something. He was blonde and tan and strong. He was a Ken doll. How could I be finding another boy attractive when I had this? He leaned across and kissed me, and I felt horrible.
In English, I found myself staring at Jason across the classroom. He talked so much that it seemed normal to watch him. Even after missing a day of school, he was caught up on the reading. He offered his viewpoint on the poem by Robert Herrick we were discussing.
Ms. Campbell said, "It's hard to explain the word 'coy,'" she said. "I think the best modern equivalent is that it means a girl is being a tease."
Jason raised his hand. "I don't think so," he said.
Ms. Campbell spread her hands. "Okay, Jason. What do you think it means?" she asked.
"If the virgins in the poem were being a tease, then it would mean that they truly wanted to get married as Herrick urges, but they were just playing hard to get." Jason was so dark. His hair fell into his huge dark eyes. His face was shaped like a heart.
Ms. Campbell nodded. "I've always read it that way," she admitted.
"Don't you think that implies a little bit of cynicism on Herrick's part?" Jason asked.
"If they're all just teasing these guys, then they're sort of...well, they're more world wise than innocent."
"If Herrick didn't think the virgins wanted to get married, would he be telling them to do it?" Ms. Campbell asked.
"It's a didactic poem," said Jason. "Herrick is giving fatherly advice. He's telling the virgins what he thinks would be good for them, because he doesn't think that they know what it is."
I looked from Jason, who was animated and engaged with Ms. Campbell, completely invested in the meaning of a poem from hundreds of years ago, to Toby, who was flipping idly through the textbook as if he were too bored to be bothered. Toby was the all-American boyfriend. He was what every girl should want. Jason was odd. He was the antihero. He was the guy in the movie that pined over the popular girl, but never got her. Why did I find him so appealing? What was wrong with me?
"If what you're saying is true," said Ms. Campbell, "then the poem takes on dirty-old-man overtones. Now, Herrick is telling a bunch of teenage girls who haven't given marriage a second thought to get married?"
"No!" said Jason. "No way. I just think everyone's motives are pure in the poem. I don't think the girls are trying to lead anyone on."
