Chronicles of Jonathan Tibbs 1: The Never Hero (48 page)

Jonathan looked at Douglas with a frown, but his father had grown quite serious now.

“Don’t let that damn alien make you see what he sees. He means well, but he isn’t all-knowing.” Douglas paused. “You know there is a part of you that wants this more than anything you’ve ever wanted. You felt it in that hallway when Heyer had you by the throat. It pulled you into the fight when Sickens the Fever had you crippled with guilt and fear. You almost gave it the wheel when that arrogant asshole picked a fight with you in your driveway. You feel it when you train; you sense it watching from behind your eyes, learning. You’ve seen it looking back at you in the mirror.”

“You think that’s the answer?” Jonathan asked. “My inner psychopath?”

“Don’t call it that, Jonathan. Don’t try to give it a silly name so you can cast it aside. Don’t try and make it separate from you. It isn’t. Stop trying to bury it and try to understand it,” Douglas said.

“What’s to understand?” Jonathan said. “You say it’s part of me but it feels more like something that wants control of me.”

Douglas nodded and let out a heavy breath.

“You’ve been angry for a long time, Jonathan. Maybe since the day I left you and your mother,” Douglas said.

He put his hand on Jonathan’s shoulder.

“Your anger comes from an intense desire to change something, Jonathan. You see, you couldn’t give that anger what it needed, you couldn’t put a face to a villain. You’ve been holding in all this rage because you couldn’t give it anything to destroy. Even as a child you started tucking it away. You chained it down inside because you couldn’t find a compromise with it, hoped that if you starved it to death it would die. I think you were wise in that, it’s been for the best that you did so. Until now, that fury you’ve kept locked up wouldn’t have done you a damn bit of good.”

“Dad, that doesn’t make sense. I never hated anyone. I never wanted to hurt anyone,” Jonathan said.

“No, but that is part of your problem,” Douglas said. “Violence from anger is one of the crudest tools. It can’t solve complicated problems. You don’t remember what drove you to study biology, but you forget how angry you were when I died. You wanted so desperately to find a way to get your hands around death’s throat. The things you’ve spent your life angry about are the things you couldn’t find a solution to, couldn’t imagine any way to change. It wasn’t just my death, that was just the start. It was the lifetime of unfair realities you didn’t know how to rebel against.”

Jonathan listened. He didn’t want his father to stop. He felt like there was finally a voice within him telling him the truths he couldn’t see on his own.

“Most people eventually make their peace with things they can’t change. Instead, you pushed them down until they became a violent thing hibernating inside of you. An anger that’s been waiting for a fight for so long it won’t take no for an answer now that that fight has come. I admit, Jonathan, you’re outmatched, and you’re right to be afraid. But that rage inside you won’t tremble. It isn’t ashamed; it doesn’t hesitate. It wants you to take off its chains. It wants its freedom.”

Freedom
, Jonathan thought, remembering how he hadn’t been able to tell Heyer what he needed it for. Did this part of him know the answer?

Jonathan looked at the floor, silent for a while as he considered. “It’s neither here nor there, Dad. I can’t turn it on or off.”

Douglas nodded, his eyes showing his sympathy.

“I don’t think you’ll need to, Jonathan,” he said. “Somewhere past the pain and fear, it won’t need to be given permission. It’s waiting for its moment.”

Silence fell over them for a time. Douglas put some of the tools back on the workbench, turned on the stool, and looked back up at the metal sculpture that had loomed in the background. He smiled as he folded his arms over his chest.

“I think she likes you more than she lets on,” Douglas said with a lighter tone.

“Why is that?” Jonathan asked.

“This; it’s done,” Douglas said pointing to the metal statue. “She used your idea.”

Jonathan looked the statue over and saw what his father meant. She had taken a cloth and wrapped it around the statue’s head where its eye’s should be. The exposed skeleton of the arm was now completed. The missing piece of metal had been welded on. Instead, the statue now appeared to be finishing work on a set of eyes.

The blacksmith was still blind. It couldn’t change what it had been shaped into, but it was fashioning its eyes. Soon it would be able to see itself. Once it knew what it was, it could take control over what it was going to be.

“Dad,” Jonathan said, “Heyer said I was chosen by a computer, for genetic and psychological reasons. Do you think it was this thing? Do you think he somehow knew about it before I did?”

His father didn’t look away from the sculpture.

“No, son” he said. “That’s not the reason.”

When he awoke, he was relieved. There was no panic.

He lay on his side, his eyes facing the clock, its blue display reading four in the morning now. Still coming out of sleep, he became aware of her hands on him, pulling on him. She’d woken him, interrupted his dreams before they turned to nightmares.

She’d rolled back to him, pressing herself to his back. When he turned to face her, she pressed her lips against his, pulling her body on top of him, her long hair hanging down around them.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she said, looking down at him, “put me back to bed?”

His hands found their way up her curves. When his thoughts were on the brink of being engulfed by his lust, he had that feeling again, like he could choose to believe that the universe was pulling strings on his behalf. That it had sent Leah, and somehow she was there to level the field. How dare he die, if he might be the one who could put her back to bed.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

FRIDAY | SEPTEMBER 2, 2005 | 8:00 AM

STOP
putting this off,
he thought as he stood in a towel in the upstairs bathroom.

He walked over to the bag and grabbed the hair clippers. The time to remove the unkempt handicap on his head was here. He started shaving before giving himself too much time to think about it. He didn’t want to look like a skinhead so he cut the hair just short enough that it couldn’t be used against him and called it good.

More than ever, he didn’t recognize the Jonathan Tibbs looking back at him. His face and jaw were more chiseled than they had seemed before. His black eye from Grant had healed. His shoulders seemed broader, his muscles more prominent. He seemed older. He must be 25 pounds heavier than he had been three months before, and he carried it all in his chest, back and legs.

He felt like a Marine, as he examined himself now without the long hair.

He showered and let the cuttings run off of him and down the drain. He’d left Leah’s bed to get ready for his shift before she had woken again. He left a note that said he had to get to work and wanted to be gone before Jack woke up. He’d wanted to say something romantic, but remembered her warning of getting attached. It was for the best, he might cease to exist in the next three days. If she hadn’t meant what she said, what good would it do to give her another reason to hate September?

When he arrived for his shift, Mr. Fletcher clapped at seeing him.

“Thank God! You finally cut that mop you called hair,” he said. “I was beginning to think you were becoming some kind of hippie.”

Jonathan nodded and smiled, “It was time.”

“Good thing, I’d say. Mr. Donaldson is coming by to give you an impromptu interview today. Make sure you’ll fit in on his demo-team. Don’t worry. You don’t need to know a damn thing about it before you start. They’ll have you doing all sorts of labor before you need to do anything technical,” Mr. Fletcher said.

“I can’t thank you enough for your help, Mr. Fletcher,” Jonathan said. “I really need the money these days.”

“I could tell. All those shifts you’d been wanting,” Mr. Fletcher said. “Any thoughts to when you’re getting back to school?”

Jonathan hesitated at the question. He didn’t want to tell the man he wasn’t likely to be going back. He didn’t want a lecture on his future. Obviously he couldn’t explain that his future was precarious at best.

“To be honest, I’m taking an extended break, Sir. This year has been a bit of a wakeup call. Biology is fascinating, but I’m not sure it’s the right road for me,” he said.

Jonathan didn’t think that would get him off the hook but Mr. Fletcher surprised him.

“Nothing wrong with that, Jonathan, especially these days; I can’t go a week without hearing on the radio about how all you college kids are drowning in student loan debt with degrees you aren’t even using.”

“Thanks, just wish my mother felt the same way,” Jonathan said.

Mr. Fletcher shrugged. “You’re a grown man, at some point parents have to understand that you have to make your own decisions and mistakes, if it is a mistake.”

“You haven’t met my mother,” Jonathan smiled.

“Speaking of women, anything ever come of that redhead next door?” Mr. Fletcher asked.

Collin sat at the kitchen table, his school books laid out around him. He was behind in some classes, as all the work on the comic book had taken up his spare time, but that wasn’t his chief reason for being there now. He tried to give the appearance that he was deep in the throes of a long study session when Paige came home.

She walked through the door and looked surprised to see him at the table. He sat back when she entered and waved.

He sat where Jonathan used to, when Paige and he would study together. She walked across the kitchen and sat in her spot.

“Hitting the books?” she asked.

“Yep, got some catching up to do,” he said.

She nodded and pulled some of her own books out of her backpack.

“Never seen you study out here,” she said. “Don’t you usually hide in your room when you’re cramming?”

Collin shrugged.

“I figured I might absorb some of your study willpower if I sat out here with you,” he said.

It was hard not to look up at her. He kept his face in the book, feeling sure she would see through him, a boy with a crush, trying to find a good excuse to be close to her.

He’d never have said it to Jonathan, but he’d been jealous of the time the two had spent together studying. Tibbs had no interest in Paige and Collin knew that; he just wished that he’d had a good reason to spend as much time in a room with her, even if it was mostly spent in silence. It was obvious she missed the company. Collin thought, now that Jonathan wasn’t attending school for another quarter, maybe he could sit with her.

Couldn’t hurt his grades, he’d figured.

Her gaze shifted off of him and onto the book she had open in front of her. Collin tried not to smile.

Some time passed. She seemed to reach the end of a page and she spoke.

“I wanted to tell you again. My birthday present, it was really thoughtful,” she said.

Collin glanced up at her.

“The idea came to me one day, and I knew you’d go nuts over it,” he said.

“It’s one of my favorite things,” she said. “I’ll hold onto it forever.”

“I’m glad you like it,” Collin said.

They sat there for a few hours. They spoke infrequently, just as she had with Tibbs. Collin found it hard to study as he was just happy to be where he was. Eventually there was a knock at the door. They both looked up at one another.