AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And how did I respond? I did what a woman who was already mourning (re: Dave) was apt to do.
I started cracking the fuck up. Laughed so hard that tears stung my eyes. Oh, and I kept on laughing. So hard I “accidentally” hung up on my own damn mother.
Chapter Three
Aftermath
I wondered if it was a joke. No, that was not why I laughed so hard. See, what you should know about me is that when I’m upset, I laugh. Or smile. Or a psychotic combination of the two.
Jamie hat gestorben.
Because for some reason it was so fucking funny that my head started to hurt.
So fucking funny that after a while, the laughter morphed into tears.
So fucking funny that I began bawling my eyes out.
My phone rang.
Mom’s name and number continued popping up on the screen. First, I threw the damn thing across the room. Then, when she kept calling, I slunk down to the carpet, crawled across the floor like a toddler who couldn’t walk right, and shut the cell off. I lay against my back—against the barren floor which once felt like home. I stared up at the ceiling. Wondering at which point I’d takenmywrong turn and ended up in Albuquerque.
Then I realized… I wished it had been my own death.
How’s that for a button?
Chapter Four
Seventeen Years Before
“Pretty epic, huh?” a soft voice said from behind me.
I clutched the art museum map against my chest before letting it fall to the floor, startled by the sudden interruption of my thoughts. I’d been looking at a grey sculpture that caught my eye— a figure of a man squeezing his hands around some kind of beast.Prometheus Strangling the Vulture, the title card beneath the piece read. For some reason, until now, I hadn’t been able to stop looking at it.
The Stony Point embroidery on my uniform rubbed against my left knuckle as I faced away from the artwork.
This kid with soft blue eyes and sandy blond hair half-smiled at me, his hands dug deep inside his pants pockets. He shifted back and forth. As he smiled, his eyes glistened, too. But then, like seeing me made him nervous, the joy faded from his expression. Everything about him—his stance, his arms, even his expression—withdrew a tad as his lips fell into a controlled, neutral position.
I knew this guy. Sort of, anyway. His name was Jamie, and he always sat in the back during our psych class together at our boarding school. Actually, I think this was the first time I’d ever heard him speak.
“Yeah, pretty epic, I guess.” I shrugged. Not sure exactly what to say. To indulge him, I continued. “I’m just wondering what that thing ever did tohim.”
Sure, I’d kind of been thinking that. Truthfully, right before this kid had shown up, this sculpture held my focus because of the pain in the man’s eyes. Theanger. That longing for the suffering to be over. That longing for all the injustices of the world to shrink and die and never come back. Somehow, I understood that. Especially after losing my dad the last summer.
But… Jamie didn’t need to know that. No one did.
He looked beyond me now, toward the sculpture, and he stepped next to me so that our shoulders barely touched. He was taller than I realized. Not that I’d ever really taken the time to look at him before. He’d already been at Stony Point when I started back in the eighth grade, and in two years I’d never really noticed him too much. Jamie was that kind of guy. He sort of simply… existed… and passed through without much notice.
He narrowed his eyes and pressed his right fist against his full, rosy lips, genuinely analyzing the art. Without thinking too deeply about it, I mimicked his action with my own fist and stared back at the man and the vulture. They intertwined, Prometheus and that thing, as if they were one. A toxic union.
Jamie let out a deep breath. Almost like a happy sigh. Then, he said, “He finally got his justice, after all those years.”
“Huh?”
“Prometheus.”
“Yeah. I saw the name of the art. But what do you mean, he finally got his justice?” I smiled curiously.
“Are you familiar with the story?”
