Chronicles of Jonathan Tibbs 1: The Never Hero (34 page)

“I’m afraid.” The words escaped him, and he shook his head as he wished he could take them back. He started to stutter. “I wasn’t, I’m not—“

“—Hey, Leah, on second thought, come help me pick something to wear,” Paige called down into the garage.

Both startled by the interruption, a moment passed before she called back up to Paige.

“Okay,” Leah yelled. “One second.”

When she turned back to Jonathan, her hand reached up, touching his arm.

“Tell me,” she said softly.

The interruption had snapped him out of whatever hypnosis she’d had him under. Every cell in his body seemed angry that he was changing course. What had he ever planned to say anyway? He let go of her hand, and smiled at her. The smile didn’t reach the disappointment in his eyes.

“Damn,” she said quietly, her face returning from compassionate back to curious.

Aware that the moment was lost, she turned to head up the stairs. As she left a thought jumped into Jonathan’s head and he blurted it out.

“You know, I might need some welding done myself.”

She shrugged at the top of the stairs.

“Happy to help,” she said. “Just let me know.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

SATURDAY | AUGUST 13, 2005 | 10:00 AM

COLLIN
favored honesty. He’d always been drawn to the ugly and often offensive truth. It was a character trait that won him few friends. Still, he held that it was what he wanted from the people around him, and as such, he would have to give it to get it.

“Tibbs, as your friend,” Collin said, “I’m going on record and reiterating that I think this is a bad decision.”

“Keep an open mind, I guess,” Jonathan said. “I don’t need your opinion; I just need you to make sure it works.”

Collin frowned at Jonathan.

When did Tibbs become such a dick?

Did the guy realize how rude he would have come off had he been talking to someone, anyone, else? Statements like, “I don’t need your opinion,” were becoming more and more frequent, when the guy even bothered making a statement. It was disturbing how much a person could be changed by one little incident.

Okay, not so little of an incident
, Collin reminded himself. Even now the image of Jonathan crawling through all that blood was something he forced out of his thoughts when it arose.

They were sitting on a bus headed out of downtown Seattle. It was the third transfer they’d needed to take to get to the White Center area of the city, not the friendliest looking neighborhood they were heading into. Collin had never been there on foot, the idea of trekking through the neighborhood evoked fears of being mugged at gunpoint. Tibbs had asked him to meet at an address, but he’d decided to ride the bus with him instead.

“Tibbs, I don’t mean to pry,” Collin paused. “Well, no, that’s BS. I do mean to pry…”

Jonathan looked impatient, closing his eyes as he appeared to know where this was heading. Collin knew he wasn’t the first to ask, but he might be the first who wasn’t going to sugar coat it.

“What is up with you?” he said.

“I’m fine. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude,” Jonathan said.

“Come on, Tibbs, you’re not ‘fine.’ Paige has been worried about you for weeks now. Hayden told me he’s been praying for you. I’ve been ignoring it. I figured, after what happened, you earned a few months to get it together,” Collin said, “but come on, how much should people ignore?”

Jonathan touched his fingers to his eyelids. Clearly he was sick of feeling like his behavior required explanation. Of course, the guy could put it all to rest by just ‘explaining it.’ Collin wasn’t especially interested in being overly involved in anyone’s business, but he couldn’t live with a person who was acting nuts and turn a blind eye to it. That’s how people wake up one day and find out their roommate took a sniper rifle to a rooftop while they’d been too busy minding their own damn business. Collin hadn’t doubted that Jonathan had his reasons, but Paige and Hayden’s concerns had cracked his confidence.

As such, Collin knew his place in their household dynamic. If something had to be said, and everyone was too polite, Collin cleared the air. Admittedly, these issues were usually more like “stop leaving your damn nail clippings in the sink,” but still, Paige and Hayden were not going to tell Jonathan that they’re afraid of him.

“Let’s just say it, shall we.” He paused. “When I say ‘worried,’ I’m being polite. Paige is past worried. She’s closer to afraid for you, of you.”

There, it was out.

Jonathan didn’t like the word
afraid
, it was obvious on his face. Collin thought he looked almost nauseated by it. How could Tibbs really not have realized it? Be so unaware of his own behavior as to not notice when he had crossed the line of peculiar to deeply concerning.

“Why?” Jonathan blurted out, immediately reigning in the concern in his voice. He let out a long breath. “How could they be afraid?”

Collin did not detect any hint that Tibbs was being disingenuous. That was what made it even more puzzling. How caught up in his own world had Jonathan become to be so surprised? It was hard to believe that he would have to explain to him how he looked to everyone else in the house, yet that was exactly what needed to happen.

“Tibbs, imagine you’re this guy, and you live with a bunch of roommates. No, not just roommates; you started out as roommates but now you’re all friends. One day, one of these friends, a pretty standard guy, if not a bit of a workaholic, has something just, admittedly, unimaginably terrible happen to him.”

Collin paused, he didn’t want to bring up the incident but there was no way around it.

“You understand that this friend of yours is a mess. Frankly, you’d be worried if he wasn’t a mess. So you and the rest of your friends do your best to be supportive. Then, this friend, he seems like he’s started to process things, like he might pull himself together. But, unfortunately, he’s more broken than he realized. He tries to go back to school but he just isn’t ready, which again, you understand. You don’t even judge him for it, because you can’t begin to imagine what he’s going through.”

Collin stopped again, wanting to make sure it was understood that he made no claims at comprehending what Jonathan’s trauma might have done to him.

“You start to feel terrible for your friend, because you hear him screaming at night. He’s clearly scared shitless. You know you shouldn’t say anything. You don’t need to add embarrassment to his problems. You don’t think your friend has a damn thing to be embarrassed about though. So you say to yourself, hey, if he wants to talk, I’m here for him.”

Collin took a long breath. Jonathan was staring at the seat in front of them, but he was listening; he seemed to want to know what it looked like from the outside.

“Your friend never says anything, so you take the hint, and you don’t bring it up. Then he seems to take an interest in things he never cared about before. He wants to watch action movies, he wants to talk about superheroes, he even seems to care when your other idiot roommate goes off on ridiculous rants about these things. He is overly interested in
art reflecting life reflecting art,
Blah, blah, whatever. You don’t care because you assume that your friend is just trying to distract himself. That he might even be afraid to sleep, or even be afraid to be alone. He just needs time, and if he wants a distraction, hell, it’s the least you can do.

Then, stranger things seem to start happening. He’s gone most of the day, but he isn’t at school. He starts eating like a health nut. He starts exercising like it’s the only thing in life that matters. Still, though, there are worse things a guy could do between semesters. So, you even try to workout with him a bit.

You start seeing less and less of him. You tell yourself, maybe he met a girl. That would be great, just what the guy needs. But that doesn’t seem to fit. Your garage transforms slowly into a gym. Your friend, when you see him, is exhausted. You go days at a time without speaking to him. You catch a glimpse of him one night and his shoulders and arms are covered in bruises. When you talk to him, sometimes, you seem to be talking to someone else. Then he starts having this look is his eye that you don’t recognize and it’s intimidating. He never smiles, well, at least when he does, you think he’s faking. You start to worry that maybe he’s so afraid of something, that he’s becoming dangerous.”

His friend looked concerned; though, Collin actually found that to be relieving. Jonathan must have underestimated what it would be like to live with him the last few months. The wakeup call looked like it was far worse than he’d suspected.

“Paige said that Leah even asked you to come out the other night and you blew her off. Which, Tibbs! When a woman like that wants you to go out, the word ‘no’ should have been erased from your vocabulary.”

Jonathan’s eyes were closed again. He was nodding as he took it all in, but his shoulders were slumping and his expression looked like he had something bitter coating the inside of his mouth that he couldn’t spit out. He didn’t appear to be denying any of it, and again, Collin found that relieving.

“Now there’s this excursion, which, don’t get me wrong, I’m kind of excited about, even though I don’t get the hurry,” Collin said. “Tibbs, it’s not like you to do something like this, so hastily. The way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out you went nuts and blew up a Walmart or something.”

They sat in a silence, the unspoken finally said. Jonathan sat deep in thought as he stared out the window at the passing streets; Collin stared at the bus seat in front of them. Minutes passed while Collin waited for him to get defensive, to explode with some explanation that he was a misunderstood victim, but Tibbs didn’t. He didn’t even look worried anymore, yet the words had made him heavier somehow.

When he’d started to worry that he’d done some irreparable damage to their friendship, Tibbs finally spoke. “I don’t know what to say,” he started. “I’m not crazy; I have no plot to take out Walmart.”

Collin smiled with relief that he’d said something. “No, I know. I was going too far with that one, but still, you must see that you aren’t ‘fine’ at least.”

“I’ve been taking some instruction in self-defense. I’m trying to get stronger,” Jonathan trailed off, this didn’t seem to be the road he wanted to go down, so he started over.

“When I needed to act, I froze. When I needed to think, I couldn’t,” he said, looking Collin in the eye now. “You say you can’t imagine what this has been like. You’re right; you can’t imagine it at all. You have some idea about how someone is supposed to react, like there’s some right amount, some appropriate response.”

Jonathan stammered, restraining some anger, but Collin didn’t think it was directed at him.

“Next time you have to look some monster in the eyes as he forces a syringe into your neck, then we can talk about what an appropriate reaction is.”

Collin blinked, he felt himself stiffen.

Jonathan hadn’t talked about the attacker, not since that first week. The mere story Jonathan had told about that syringe going into his neck made Collin shiver. Tibbs was right; he couldn’t imagine being the one who had to own the real memory of it, the one who had to see it again and again in his nightmares. He thought to apologize for making him explain, but Jonathan spoke again before he could.

“I can’t be a person who this can happen to again, Collin. Next time something tries to go for my throat, they can’t, they won’t be dealing with a scared kid pissing his pants and hoping something will save him.” He said this as he pointed to his chest, “They have to be dealing with someone else.”

Collin nodded. He looked down at the seat in front of them, breaking eye contact. It would be easier for Jonathan to talk without someone trying to stare into his soul as he did so.

“I don’t know how long it’ll take, okay? What I do know is that school books and drinking with girls isn’t the answer. It’s not going to help. I’m not afraid of getting a job after college, or of being lonely. I’m just afraid.”

A long time passed and the bus rolled on as they sat in silence. When Collin decided to speak again, he tried to make it clear he aimed to steer the conversation away from such seriousness.

“You know what it is, Tibbs? It’s that you’re actually doing something, that’s what is scaring people.”

Jonathan frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“Horrible things happen to people,” Collin said. “Crap, not so horrible things happen to people. They get emotionally scarred, most either self-medicate or go to a therapist and get medicated. Almost everyone openly whines about it though.”

“I still don’t follow,” Jonathan said.

“I’m just saying, when ‘Jonathan Tibbs’ got scared, he went on a yellow brick quest to find courage and didn’t think for a second that he needed to explain himself to anyone. It’s actually a little inspiring. Or, at least it would be, if you lost that creepy look you’ve been getting.”

Jonathan made a face like his eyes were about to cross.

“Really?” he said. “The cowardly lion?”

Apparently Tibbs disapproved of Collin’s reducing his explanation to a children’s book analogy.

Collin laughed.

“Well, it’s true, Tibbs. I don’t think a wizard will give you a badge, but how else can this end? You either find you always had it or you don’t.”