Jim felt the world knocked off-kilter before he even opened his eyes. A profound air of tension, of wrongness hung over his head. He startled awake, sitting up to see the shape of his father making his way down to the dock where the boat was moored. This wasn't unusual. Now and again his father went out, and Jim had come to accept it. But he couldn't remember his father ever leaving so early in the morning. There was always enough time to say goodbye before he set sail.
Instinctively Jim knew that if his father left this morning, he was bound to disappear forever.
He forgot to get dressed or even pull on shoes. He simply sprang from his bed and rushed downstairs, his pulse beating out a two-word phrase- Don't go, don't go, don't go… Once he got to the bottom of the stairs, an unsettling sight caused him to halt. His mother was slumped over the table, head in hands, her body racked with useless sobs. Jim had never seen her so upset, not even when she and his father argued. His desperation increased. Rather than stop to comfort his mother, Jim dashed out the door, following his father as he retreated.
Come on, move faster, faster… But he couldn't travel swiftly down the steep incline without tripping over himself. His unsteady steps left him too breathless to call out. By the time Jim reached the dock, his father had cast off, bound for the dizzying heights of the Aetherium. One minute he was there, and the next he had slipped right through Jim's fingers, swallowed up into the morning's mist and vanishing within seconds.
For a long while after, all Jim could remember of that morning was that throughout his pursuit, his father had never looked back.
If he had seen me… if I caught up to him… I could have made him stay.
That moment remained in the back of his mind for the next seven years, and its impact never diminished. Even when Jim wasn't thinking about his past- even when his mind was sufficiently distracted by the gleam of his solar surfer above the clouds- any occasional gesture, word, or glance could turn back time. Suddenly he was that same little boy watching his father abandon him, over and over again. They always chided him to be more open at school, but they didn't understand that he had a good reason to withdraw. He'd rather hurt others before letting anyone hurt him.
In the weeks that followed his father's disappearance, Jim carried the sense of loss in his heart like a knife in the gut. He never understood why guests at the Benbow had the audacity to smile at him. Couldn't they see how badly he'd been wounded? The pain was renewed every morning and every night as he sat by his window and daydreamed about spotting his father's boat. Maybe when he returned, he would have stories to tell that would make his mother laugh, and she would be happy again. And maybe he'd have gifts for Jim, instead of turning away like usual. Maybe he'd listen to what Jim had to say and help him build a solar surfer like he had always said he would. Maybe when he came back, everything would be all right.
But it wasn't all right, and his father never came back. And gradually the pain shrunk, its rough edges rounding out into a hard marble of stone that Jim buried deep inside. He refused to talk about it anymore- but he never forgot its existence.
Hey, no big deal. I'm doing just fine…
He wore his thick, oversized jacket like body armor, huddling in on himself and shying away from human contact. If he never made himself vulnerable, they couldn't get to his heart. It hurt like hell when he jabbed a long needle through his earlobe, and his mother had nearly had a fit when she caught sight of the golden ring shining beneath his lengthy bangs. "James Pleaides Hawkins…!" But her disapproval was worth the feeling of control that it gave Jim. He was a man now and he could decide what he wanted to look like. No one else needed to interfere.
Still, for all Jim's bravado, the same thoughts kept intruding on him. Whenever his teachers gave him a one-sided lecture on doing well in school, or the robotic cops hauled him in for various violations, a little voice sang in his ear. It doesn't matter. You're worthless anyway. There's no future for someone like you on this backwater planet. You can do whatever you want, and literally no one will care about you. So just make the most of it.
The only time Jim was able to forget this line of thinking, at least for a few minutes, was when he was flying high on his solar surfer, climbing onwards into the sky. But they always caught him then, and told him that he would never amount to anything if he kept up this behavior, which only reinforced his thoughts. So the cycle continued, day in and day out, until he finally began to believe them.