1. Stealing twenty quid from mum's purse.
I considered it an investment. I told myself, of all people, mum would understand the necessity of immersing myself in music history, and Kiss This, the Sex Pistol's greatest hits, was like the Magna Carta of punk. Liam had all their albums on vinyl and we used to sit for hours listening to them in his room, debating who was the better bassist, Matlock who was clearly more talented or Vicious whose riffs lacked finesse but had more character. When Liam moved out he took with him all the classics: The Clash, The Ramones, and Patti Smith, leaving me with Mum's Schubert, Dad's BBC Singers and my worn copy of Purple Rain.
The previous Christmas we got a CD player and I was slowly building my own collection. I spent most of my wages earned working after school in Mr. Bunward's pharmacy on CDs, but having splurged my latest paycheque wooing Lindsey Rosewell, the Presbyterian minister's daughter, (rumoured falsely, I sadly discovered, to perform lewd acts on the first date), I had empty pockets come the release of Kiss This. Rather than wait another two weeks until I got paid, I nipped the money from mum.
In my defence, I didn't think she would notice. Money didn't flow through the Pace household but we certainly always had enough food on the table. I never knew how much this was due to mum's penny pinching and careful budgeting until I came home that evening to find the house torn apart and dad thundering at her for being careless. Rather than come clean, I just tiptoed upstairs and put on the CD.
I don't know what I was more ashamed of, that if I had just asked she probably would have loaned me the money or that she trusted me so much she never asked if I took it.
2. The third time I tried heroin.
Practice makes perfect.
The first time simply made me drowsy and later, constipated. It must have been a pretty weak batch and I didn't feel compelled to try it again for another month; I got more of a buzz from Pimms.
The second time I tried heroin it had the opposite effect. Within seconds I was engulfed in such an intense bliss that it actually hurt. While my insides were melting, my skin was on fire. I think my body just couldn't deal with feeling absolutely nothing and rebelled. I blame this on injecting it; the rush came too fast to process.
One might think that these two experiences would have put me off drugs for good but instead it made me feel like a failure and more determined to try to reach the same euphoric peak that hit Liam every time. My third attempt, on a hotel balcony in Berlin, just outside the very room U2 supposedly wrote the lyrics for One, I finally got what all the fuss was about.
It's a sensation almost impossible to describe to anyone who has never used. I can only compare it to the satisfaction Tenzing and Hillary must have felt when they ascended Mt. Everest and looked out from the summit. You're entirely grateful for life and there's no challenge unconquerable. At the same time you're in awe of your smallness, just a speck of dust in a galaxy of stars.
Third times a charm.
3. Conning the Heathertons
"Respectability" was a word my mates and I spat out with the same disparaging tone reserved for "neo-liberalism", "Hitler" and the "Liverpool Football Club". Yet throughout the whole time I was with Lucy, a part of me yearned to give and receive all the privileges associated with respectability: security, trust, dependability. Once I was welcomed into that world these didn't seem like bad things and I let myself dream that I was ready to settle down with one woman, hold an ordinary job, and indulge in nothing more than a few too many pints on the weekend.
I fell hard for my own con. I believed going without a fix couldn't be as bad as Tommy warned, especially if I already had a new life lined up with people who believed in me, waiting on the other side.
I have since learned that nothing is equal to the torture of withdrawal but there is a close second. For someone who craves love, just as much as they crave an artificial high, seeing hurt and disappointment reflected in the eyes of someone you care about and knowing you are the cause is almost as painful.
Lucy was not the first or last person to look at me this way but she is the one who haunts me most often. I think this is because it's easy to picture a universe where there is a Charlie who comes home every night smelling of toner, kisses his wife on the cheek and settles down with a cup of tea in front of the telly. This run-of-the-mill Charlie is neither happy nor sad but he is content, and sometimes I think I could live with that.
4. Trusting Ethan
It's not your fault, Charlie, they kept telling me when I returned. No one suspected Ethan as being anything other than who he claimed to be. We had no reason to believe we weren't alone. There was nothing you could have done, they said over and over again. Except that wasn't quite true.
Claire knew someone was after her baby and I told her I believed her. But had I only said so to make myself look good? To make her like me? Hadn't I secretly been pleased that I was the only one to take her side?
It wasn't that I didn't believe Claire, I just never gave as much thought to the actual danger, than I did to positioning myself as her protector. A true guardian would have worked harder to convince Jack that this was not in her head. They would have organized rotating sentries for the caves, come up with an idea like the census, and done everything to make Claire feel safe and calm so she never would have felt compelled to return to the beach.
In those days I had been so wrapped up trying to prove to myself and others that I was more than a junkie and a has been. I could be useful. I had skills to contribute. It was all about me. If I hadn't been so self absorbed maybe I would have noticed Ethan watching Claire.
Shooting Ethan is not on this list. That was the first time I put Claire's interests ahead of mine. I didn't care if she thought I was a cold blooded killer. I didn't care if the others would be mad at me for halting their interrogation. I didn't care if a murder hung over me. He would never be able to hurt her again.
5. Attacking Sun
Sun had always been perfectly nice to me and I had considered Jin a good friend ever since he waited with me the night Aaron was born. Hurley and I called the couple the island's own Ozzie and Harriet, except more interesting, since I was pretty sure Harriet never lied to her husband about her fluency in another language and Ozzie didn't have a mean right hook. Yet I didn't object when Sawyer told me who my target would be.
I didn't even hesitate until I had Sun pinned to the ground and my thumb grazed the fragile skin across the inside of her wrists. It was already red and I realized by tonight it would be black and blue. Suddenly I was no longer deaf to her cries. She kept saying please over and over again. The same word I had repeatedly cried when I begged Ethan for my life.
I had become exactly what Locke said I was—dangerous.
I could have stopped right there, helped her up, fallen on my knees and pleaded for her forgiveness. But proving Locke right made me only more resolved to expose his weaknesses. So I tied her hands behind her back and dragged her into the tall grass behind her garden. My only deviation was removing the hood. I risked letting her see me because I couldn't leave her in the dark. Then I ran.
x x x
Charlie tears off the piece of paper and folds it into a tiny square. He walks through the camp with it clutched in his palm. When he gets to the church he wonders if he should add abandoning its construction to his list. He makes a silent pledge if he somehow manages to survive Desmond's latest vision, he will start building it again.
He finds a stick and digs a small but deep hole by one of the support posts. He unfolds the paper, reads over his list one more time, then refolds it and drops it in. He fills in the sand and puts a rock on top.
On the walk back he notices what a beautiful day it is. It's sunny but not too hot, and the air smells fresh and clean. The blue of the ocean matches the sky and it's almost hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. Despite the tense atmosphere at camp, people are going about their business with smiles on their faces. This is how he wants to remember the island, a picture postcard he could send home saying, having a wonderful time, wish you were here.
Once Charlie's back at his tent he opens his notebook to a fresh page and starts another list.
x x x