Forgotten Truths (The Forgotten Truths Series) (2 page)

The night before we were supposed to dock, I was in my room. I had a book open on my lap
, but I wasn’t interested. My father made sure that I knew how to read and write, though I never understood why. When would I ever find the need to write to anyone? Reading, on the other hand, was something I liked to do to pass the time. I had a very limited selection, but it was good enough. I was a very slow reader, and I put a lot of concentration in the books because there were so many words I didn’t know. I really wanted to understand the story, but I really couldn’t. So this usually resulted in my thoughts drifting away.

I was about to set the book down and douse my candle when there was a k
nock at the door. I crossed the room and opened it. Mark stood on the other side.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

I followed him up the stairs just outside my door and went up to the top deck at the stern where the helm was. He went all the way to the far railing, but I stood a few feet behind him. I watched him closely. He was unusually tense.

“What’s wrong?”
I asked.

“Jason and I had another argument, a pretty bad one.”

“What about?”

He looked back at me. “About you.”

I came closer. “What about me?”

He sighed and looked up at the stars. After
a minute or so, he turned his attention back to me. “I really like you, Andy.”

“What do you mean?” I stopped short. I was close beside him and leaned against the railing.

He hesitated and then reached his hand out to touch my face. I instantly stepped back, not because of what he had said but because he had tried to touch me. Besides when it was a sudden grab, which I immediately ripped away at, or if I were in a fight, I would stop someone touching me if I knew it was coming.

He continued to stare at me. “What do you think I mean? And why do you step away from me anytime I want to touch you? If I’m your best friend, then shouldn’t I be allowed special privileges?”

“You are my best friend, and that’s all you are to me. And I don’t like anyone touching me. It has nothing to do with you. It’s everyone.” I felt like I always had to restate this with him. I didn’t like feeling defensive, but he’d made me feel that way a lot lately.

He took a step toward me,
but I took another step back. He noticed, and a frown appeared on his face. He kept coming until I was backed up to the railing. I started to get very uncomfortable with this conversation and being backed into a corner didn’t help.

“Andy, you and I have a relationship a little stronger than best friends. You can’t deny that. And I don’t want to be apart from you.”

“When are we ever apart?” I started to look away, but he quickly cupped my chin.

“That’s not how I meant that.”

I tried to lift my head out of his hand, but he held on a little tighter. I reached up and grabbed his wrist, but he was stronger. I started to struggle while a minor panic started to rise inside of me. “Let go of me.”

“Not until you tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinking that if you don’t let go right now, I’m going to scream.”

“And what would that do?”

The panic was rising, as was my anger. The anger started to overpower the panic, and suddenly I was out of his hold, setting some much needed space between us. I’d hit him before, but it wasn’t very often and it had never been for this reason. The punch hadn’t meant to hurt him, not that it did. He had hard muscles across his midsection so I knew it would have taken a much harder punch to harm him. It was more to catch him off guard so that he’d let me go. He tilted his head and examined me with a confused and annoyed expression. I could see in his eyes that he was rethinking his strategy.

“I started this all wrong. Well, maybe not started it, but it didn’t go as I planned. I’m going to start over.”

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just stayed where I was and kept quiet.

“I’ll start from the beginning. I really like you, Andy. I know you think of me as just a friend, but we could be so much more than that. Please just think about it.”

I couldn’t shake the unsettled feeling I had in my gut, but I nodded anyway. After all, he was my best friend. Maybe there was some sense to what he was saying. I didn’t know anything about relationships, but maybe he did.

“Okay,
” I said quietly.

“Okay as in you agree or okay
as in you’ll think about it?” He looked hopeful.

“Okay
as in I’ll think about it.”

He sighed, but it was more out of relief than anything. He
started to come toward me again. My body automatically tensed. He noticed, but continued forward. He stopped right in front of me, and it made me so uncomfortable that I couldn’t look up at his face. When he stood this close, I couldn’t help but notice how much taller he was. My eyes were level with his shoulders. I felt a chill go down my spine. I wasn’t sure if this was how you were supposed to feel around someone who had just confessed his feelings toward you, but I didn’t think so.

“Don’t be scared of me,” he said softly as he leaned his head down to look in my eyes. When I returned his gaze, he smiled lightly.  “Come on, I’ll walk you downstairs.”

After I settled into my hammock, I started to think about what Mark had said but stopped. I didn’t know anything about relationships. I didn’t fully trust Mark either, but maybe everything he had said was correct. But why would this matter cause a fight between him and Jason? Jason was smart, so if something like this was unsettling to him, then maybe it was the same reason why I wasn’t so sure about it. I lifted my head and looked down a couple rows where Jason was. His arms were behind his head, but that was all I could really see in the darkness. Mark was at least further down from him, but as of where I wasn’t sure. This made me feel more settled. I relaxed back into my hammock and closed my eyes and let the slow rocking motion put me to sleep.

When I woke
, I was one of the first. I heard someone close by snoring loudly. I quietly rolled out of my hammock and noticed that Jason wasn’t in his hammock either. This was the perfect time to talk to him. I went up on deck and looked around. I didn’t see him. Then again, I didn’t see anyone. A fog had rolled in during the night. I turned around and jumped. He was right there.

“Hey.”

“Hi.” I paused, while I tried to get my heartbeat back to a regular pace. “You startled me.”

He shrugged.

“I was looking for you actually. I want to ask you something.”

He looked down. “Mark talked to you didn’t he?”

I nodded, even though he wasn’t looking at me. “He wants us to be closer. I’m not sure what he means exactly though.”

He sighed. “Can we go into your room for this conversation?”

He followed me and then stood behind me as I shut the door. We hadn’t had this private of a conversation before. I’d had a couple with him and Mark that were private, but Jason and I hadn’t had one that required us to be locked in my room. Even though Jason was the only other person I felt close to, we had an awkward relationship. He was protective of me, acting as a brother would as I had come to think, but we never seemed to be completely relaxed when we were around each other and no one else was with us.

I turned around to look at him. He stood and looked uncomfortable by the window. I observed him in the candlelight for a few minutes waiting to see if he’d speak.
He was my height, but hunched, so he seemed a little shorter. He was lean and he had muscles, but he almost looked like he had none. He could hold his own when Mark would throw out one of his challenges though. He told me once that he could actually beat Mark but didn’t want to shatter Mark’s self-esteem. His white-blonde hair he kept a little longer and ruffled at the top, as if he had just run his hand through it. His eyes were twilight-blue and with his eyelids naturally drooped he always looked tired. It wasn’t a tired as in he was ready to fall asleep, but more as if he had seen too much in the world at his age and couldn’t take much more. He was only a year older than me, but whenever I gazed into his eyes, he looked much older. He had joined the crew a few years earlier, but it felt like I had known him much longer.

I leaned back against the door and crossed my arms over my chest. “So what is it between you two? He said you guys had a fight about me.”

He nodded. “Yeah. He’s not lying about the fact that he really likes you. It’s more of why he does, and that’s what we fought about.”

“Why does he?”

He scuffed his foot. “I can’t say.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not my place to say.”

“But you think I should keep my distance or what?” I stepped away from the door.

He shrugged, but still wouldn’t look at me. “I can’t tell you what to do. I just have my own thoughts on the subject.”

I stood next to him. “Why is this such a big deal? Does it have anything to do with being the only female on this ship?”

He sighed again. “No.”

This was getting tiring. I wasn’t getting answers, and it felt like he just kept going in circles. But whatever happened between the two of them was big enough to make them not
want to be near each other. It had to do with me, and that bothered me.

“I’m getting rather impatient here. I need something more.”

He finally looked at me. “I can’t.”

“Then why was this necessary?” I motioned to the room.

“I don’t know.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I felt like I should say something, but I really didn’t know what.”

He was really getting on my nerves. He never kept his thoughts in his head. If he disagreed with anything, he wasn’t shy about speaking up. That was one reason why I liked him as a friend and thought of him as the brother I never had. This was not normal, so it must have been something really horrible.

“Jason, if you aren’t going to tell me what’s going on then I’m not going to stand here and pretend I’m not mad at you.” I turned on my heels and went toward the door. Suddenly, his hand was on my arm and he was pulling me back. I started to struggle, but that only made him hold on tighter. “Let go of me.”

“You need to understand that he isn’t a good person. He isn’t as good as you think he is.”

I started to struggle more, and panic flared up inside me. He spun me around so that I was close to his face; close enough to feel his breath on my nose. I glanced at his eyes, and I felt my body drain itself of everything. They were unlike anything I’d ever seen. The desperation and fear made me feel like something terrible was going to happen. I forgot everything but those eyes for that instant. Then reality settled back in, and I started to struggle against his grip.

He let go, and
watched as I backed against the door and slid to the ground. I was never going to forget the way his eyes looked. They would haunt me forever. I looked up at him again, but he had turned around.

“Jason, what is it?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what?”

“He’s not a good person, Andy.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. “I can’t tell you why because I don’t know why. I just have this feeling, and I care about you too much to let you walk into a situation without giving you any warning. You’re practically family to me, and I couldn’t bare it if he did something to you.”

I was so confused. What was he talking about? What would Mark do to me? How was he a bad person? But if all he had was a feeling, then how could he actually know?

I struggled to get up, since I was still shaken. “I’ll keep my eyes open for anything suspicious.”

He shook his head. “No, Andy. That’s not good enough.”

“Then what is, Jason?” I snapped at him. “I don’t understand what you’re saying, and neither do you it seems.”

“Don’t trust him.”

I rolled my eyes and turned to leave, but his hand was once again on my arm. I instinctively turned, my arm already swinging. He ducked, but let go as I ran from the room.

My reaction to people touching me depended on what they did exactly. Usually I would start to panic and struggle until I was loose. Sometimes, if I had been startled, my arm was immediately swinging as if it had a mind of it’s own. But I would almost always get so shaken that it took several minutes to relax. I was the only one who knew why I reacted like this. I felt like my father knew, but I’d never actually told him.

I returned to my room a while later to find that Jason had left. Good. I could finally get the alone time I was desperately seeking. So for the next few hours, I hid in my room with the door locked. Even when someone knocked and tried the handle, I wouldn’t move. I stayed curled up on the cushion by the far back window and stared out at the water behind us. I didn’t move until I heard the men getting louder outside. They were yelling at each other over how to do things correctly. We would be docked very soon. I slowly sat up and stretched. I took my time until I was sure that we were stopped and that a good portion of the men were off the ship. I walked across the room to unlock the door, and when I opened it Mark was waiting. I walked right past him, as if I hadn’t seen him, and kept going until I was at the railing.