Part I: Jim "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning." –Psalm 30:5
Free.
Free like speeding through the cornfields in his convertible he'd brought up with his own money, the stalks smacking against the car, whipping raw across his face. The wind rushing past his hair as his girlfriend screamed in exhilaration, her voice sending ripping pain up through his ear.
As the car weaved and corn clonked against its sides, he kept one hand on the steering wheel and reached for her with the other, met her wild eyes.
"Jim, you're crazy!" she breathed.
He smiled his cocky little smile. I know. Before she could laugh, he leaned in and kissed her. When he opened his eyes, he was gazing down at her in that way that suggested they were the only two people in the world and she saw that his eyes were an elated hazel, his pupils tiny little pinpricks.
This was the way he could live—the only way he could live. Breaking rules others made for him, defying every possible limitation, every restriction, and usually in the most dangerous way possible. He was only himself when his chest heaved so hard that he could hardly draw a breath. That was life—struggling, experiencing what almost felt like dying, and watching his girlfriend's hair tumbling at her shoulders again and again, like oceans he'd seen in holos . . .
When his hair whipped back to reveal his face, his girlfriend caught white-hot flashes of his teeth, his grin, which was nearly as hot and bright as the Iowan sun. It was summertime, but the heat had been forgotten, replaced now by the breeze.
He flung his arms out because he knew this was as close as he'd ever get to flying up there in that field of stars he dreamed about.
"Jim!"
Beside her, he jolted to alertness and jerked the wheel violently to the right, flinging them into a turn and narrowly avoiding a cow that had been smack in their path. As they skidded to a halt, corn bumping against the sides of the car, they were silent.
The cow gave a tremendous, terrified moo and ran around them, disappearing into the corn. Jim's girlfriend turned around to watch where it went and gasped. Slowly, he turned around, too. Long green stalks of corn had been mowed down and scattered every direction. Tire tracks blackened the grass that had been in their path, so that it looked wilted and bruised.
"Whoever owns this land won't be happy . . ."
"Then I'll make sure they never find out who did it," Jim said, and smiled reassuringly, pulling her closer.
"If you say—"
Without warning, he threw the car into reverse and rammed the gas. Breathlessly, they both slammed back into the seat, but even as they did, Jim's logic was clear: go back the way you came and nobody had a trail to follow.
Once they were on the back road, he slowed down, but he was obviously still a little loopy.
"Some poor farmer's going to be really upset," she said.
He didn't reply. His own father was a farmer, and he would be furious if Jim had done this to his field, but it hadn't been his father's field, so it wasn't his problem. There would be no consequences, so he had nothing to worry about.
"Jim, I kind of feel bad," she said quietly. "Maybe we shouldn't have done that."
"Just a bit of fun," Jim said, trying to quiet her with a grin.
Her brow furrowed and her eyes reached for him, glittering sad. "Oh, don't gimme that smile. I really feel bad. That poor farmer's going to have a little less corn to sell, a little less money, and for what? Two crazy teenage kids out on a date with nothing else better to do." She sighed. "I wanna go home."
Jim's smile vanished. He didn't know what to say, how to make it okay, how to make her want to stay with him, or even why she didn't want to. Really, just because of some little thing like driving a few feet into somebody's cornfield? Suddenly angry, he said tightly, "Okay, whatever you want."
"It's not you, Jim, I promise. It's not you." She tried to plead with him, but she could see he'd already retreated into his shell, into that anger that was impassible, unbreakable. But it was nothing new. He always reacted that way when he was hurt, and because he was too prideful to let it show, revenge became his only goal. Hurt them because they hurt you.
But why was he angry? He couldn't truly have been hurt by her rejection. He was Jim! It didn't matter that she was going to leave him, because in a few weeks he'd get over it, go around flashing that smile of his or do a tough workout at the gym, shirtless, and he'd have himself a new girlfriend.
She was just another girl that had drifted to his side and now she was going to drift away again. She wanted to ask, "Jim, aren't you lonely?" But she knew that he could not understand why everyone left him. He had a hunger for adrenaline, willing to go farther and farther each time to get a rush of fear. But in his case, the fear was exultation. He reveled in it, lived by it.
He pulled into her driveway, gravel crunching under the tires. The headlights fell on her porch and the path leading up to the steps, her house. She pushed the car door open, but knew she couldn't just leave him sitting there gripping the wheel and gazing straight ahead with his jaw drawn tight.
"Jim," she began, "it's the way you are. I know that. But someday, you're going to get hurt. You're going to hurt yourself. And I don't want to be there for that. I don't want to grow to love you, only to see you die just when I have grown so fond of you."
His hazel eyes crept toward her, just his eyes, softened by her words, and she thought for one beautiful moment that he'd give her his big old grin, stand up and reach out to lay a kiss of forgiveness on her cheek. His eyes met hers and hardened back into that cruel, harsh anger almost immediately.
"Just get out."
"Oh, Jim . . ." It was all she could say or she would break. She slammed the car door and stormed inside, where she stood in the entryway, pressing her fists to her mouth to keep from crying and listening for the sound of his engine and the crunch of gravel to tell her that all was lost.
He managed only to back down the driveway before he started crying, too. She had been right. He was irresponsible and restless, with dreams that everyone else called impossible stirring in him. How could a small-town, country boy rebel like him ever command one of those sleek starships? There were better people in the world, and the better jobs would go to them. He'd grow up to be a poor farmer like his father, his only worries in life a couple of crazy teenagers on a date plowing through his cornfield.
He drew himself up, lashed at the tears. It had been a boyish dream, anyway, belonging to a little boy that he no longer was. As a child, he'd secretly used his allowance to buy models of starships. It was childish reasoning that had led him to believe that if he placed them as far as possible under his bed that they would never be found. He could still remember when his dad had discovered them; his models, his previous models, whose instructions he had diligently studied and whose pieces he had labored over, had been broken by his father's rage and lay scattered around his room. Tearfully, he had collected every single one of the pieces, and though the models were impossibly broken, he kept those pieces and slowly, carefully, rebuilt them out of spite and because it was what he wanted.
But he knew that the only starships he would ever command were those ones he had rebuilt as a boy, pathetic and misshapen. Because who would want to take orders from him, from this?
Jim hated the memory, hated those little starship models, hated his father, but most of all, he hated himself. It was his fault his girlfriend had left, and his fault that he'd been unable to speak, to give her the words to make her see what he felt, why he needed someone, anyone, who would listen to his impossible dreams.
He found himself at home because there was nowhere else to go. He shut off the car, and it was strange to hear silence instead of the reassuring hum of the engine. There was nothing for him, no one. He glanced up at the sky which was, maddeningly, very clear, and thought that he could make out every single star, every constellation. He had always felt alone under that sky, and thought now that perhaps that was the way he was meant to be: solitary.
This is my first fic on here. Please read and review; I'll really appreciate it! :)