Fledgling

by J.R. Godwin

Rated: M

Disclaimer: All characters belong to the makers of "Labyrinth". There's no money being made off of this.

Author's note: This started as a one-shot vignette, but people asked me to expand on it. Wishes granted.

My shadow's shedding skin and

I've been picking scabs again.

I'm down digging through

My old muscles looking for a clue.

-Tool

I heard a definition once: happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I'd invented it, because it is very true.

-Audrey Hepburn

1.

Among all the horror stories that filter out of Japan after the earthquake rips that country apart, one report actually makes me smile.

A man named Hideaki Akaiwa, living in the port city of Ishinomaki in the northern prefecture of Miyagi, was at work when the earthquake hit. It was an 8.9 on the Richter scale, one of the strongest in recorded history. A colleague of mine – a graduate student from Morioka – said her office shook for an astounding three minutes. Japanese people are trained from elementary school on how to deal with earthquakes. They're used to living on a fault line, so when the Japanese get freaked out by a quake, you know it's bad.

But back to Mr. Akaiwa. Incredibly, the worst was not the earthquake but the tsunami that followed. It buried Ishinomaki in minutes, transforming the city (population:160,000) into a lake. 10,000 people were immediately listed missing, among them Akaiwa's wife and mother.

Most people would give up at this point, but not Akaiwa, whose response was to strap on scuba equipment and dive into the tsunami to find his family. He swam through the submerged city until he found his house, where his wife was trapped on the upper floors and submerged up to her neck. He not only got her out alive but returned to the raging waters to find his mom. All survived.

The last news item I ever manage to find on Akaiwa reports that, days after the disaster, he is still leading rescue missions for survivors. When people can't (or won't) continue the search, Akaiwa gets his scuba gear and forges ahead on his own.

Some Australian newspaper has a photo of Akaiwa in a sweatshirt and army pants, the cuffs sealed with Duct tape. He looks like a hero, I think.

Full disclosure: the following story is completely true, except it's not.

Every school has the scapegoat, the kid that everyone picks on even if there's nothing wrong with him or her. Michael Jacobi was ours. By 4th grade, he'd gotten beat up so many times that you just sort of expected it, the same way you expected Oregon Trail Tuesdays.

This was before schools start taking bullying seriously. Back then, it was like, What did he do to deserve it? Or, It's just a part of childhood. Or, It'll toughen him up. You don't want him to be a pussy, do you? That's the adults talking, by the way. When even the grown-ups act like you deserve to be terrorized, you know the world's out to get you.

I saved Mike once from a group of kids who'd jumped him after band practice. Terry Arnoldi had Mike dangling against a locker. I didn't think about the consequences, just plowed Terry from behind. We all got detention for fighting, but I saved Mike. We became sort-of friends after that, which made middle school a little less frightening. It was easier, having an ally.

Actually, that whole last paragraph is complete bullshit. Here's the truth: I didn't bully Mike, but I didn't protect him. I think I was too scared of getting hurt, myself. I'm the weird girl who claimed to see fairies (though I stopped talking about that by 2nd grade, once I realized how unacceptable it was to see things). My social credit was already non-existent.

There was one time in 6th grade when Brett Lawrence broke Mike's nose. It was during gym class, and the adults said it was an accident, only it wasn't. Anybody who saw it happen knew it wasn't. I should have told someone. Mom was drinking by that time and working on a new movie, but Dad was around, and he would have believed me if I told him.

I didn't.

Mike's family moved to Florida the summer of 7th grade. A month later, he and his older brother John died in a car accident. A lady driving in the opposite direction, her Buick jumped the meridian and steamrolled them. Both boys died on the scene. Nothing the paramedics could do.

I cried when I read that. People deserve a fighting chance. It's only right. Unfortunately the world's not a fair place; Mike never had a fighting chance anywhere. Neither did his parents, I guess, because they lost both children in one day. Mr. Jacobi was a big name executive for a big name company – Sony or Virgin or something. After his boys died, he retired early, and he and his wife left Florida. I don't know where they went. I've scoured all news sources but never turned up anything.

For years, I sometimes pretended that I had helped Mike when he most needed it. It sounds so stupid, so self-serving, I'm embarrassed to write about it here, but it's the truth. I pretended all sorts of stories where I stopped Mike's tormentors and we became friends.

During my freshman year of college, we were discussing the bullying epidemic in my Social Psych class, and I was halfway through my story about the time I jumped Terry Arnoldi when I suddenly froze, horrified, in front of a class of 40 people ... because I'd just remembered that I was lying. I'd relied so long on the stories that they'd somehow taken center stage in my brain as the truth. But I couldn't come clean to my class and look like an idiot and an asshole who lets kids get beat up, so I finished the lie and prayed no one would ever ask me about it again. Nobody ever did, so I suffered in grateful silence.

When I read about Hideaki Akaiwa, my 1st thought is: This guy is a total badass. My 2nd thought is: I'm so sorry he wasn't around when Michael Jacobi needed help. This guy would have helped him.

People sometimes ask: Sarah, why study clinical psychology? There are so many answers to that. The only one I have the time and patience to delve into today is this: the mind is fascinating. I'm not sure why astronauts want to spend all their time floating around up there when we have an endless universe right inside our own heads waiting to be explored – I would even say, desperately waiting to be explored.

I mean, what causes someone to recreate their world, to make it more palatable? What happened to Mike Jacobi was awful, but I have to accept what I did and move on. Daydreaming about the what-ifs doesn't serve anyone. Mike's still dead, I doubt his bullies even remember his name, and I'm a grown-up now with a life of my own.

I want to understand the lies we tell ourselves and others. I have so many weird memories from childhood. I've had them for years, but frankly, after that humiliating gaffe in Social Psych, I began questioning everything I thought I knew, picking apart the tangled threads in an attempt to find the truth.

For example, the fairies thing: I know I had an overactive imagination in 1st grade, but still ... I remember seeing fairies. I think I'm remembering a lot of movies and they've somehow gotten enmeshed with my real memories.

Michael Jacobi: Already explained. I made up some fantasies to make me feel better about my inaction and cowardice.

The worst memory I have from childhood is one that I'm pretty sure happened, because it's so awful that I can't imagine the reason why I'd make it up. It was in 7th grade, the day after Halloween and Mom came home.

She'd been someplace called Majorca, working on a plum role the media said Meryl was regretting having passed up. The tabloids showed photos from red carpet events where Mom and Meryl looked like they were giving each other the side-eye, followed by anonymous commentary from "close friends" who said there were a lot of hurt feelings and cat fights going on backstage.

Mom thought the whole thing was hilarious. She said there were no fights, that Meryl had never been in the running for the movie at all. In fact, Meryl hadn't said a word to her in twenty years – she still hated Mom for stealing a boyfriend when they were just girls studying drama at Yale. It had nothing to do with a stupid role, Mom insisted, as if that made their enmity any better.

(Mom had such an expressive face that even when she told you something despicable, you couldn't help but be entranced. She had a gorgeous, mocking mouth that people said put Julia Roberts' to shame, and when she wore red lipstick, she looked like a nightclub singer in a 1940's gangster film.)

Anyway, whenever Mom came home from a movie, she always spent a few days doing what she called "decompressing". This meant sitting around in her robe drinking, reading scripts, and fielding calls from people in New York and Los Angeles. Sometimes strangers would filter through the house – adults I didn't know who wore designer clothes and talked on cell phones. I thought this was neat because I wasn't allowed a phone yet. Mom was all for it but Dad put his foot down and said I was too young.

That day, somebody let off a stink bomb in the gym so school got cancelled, and Cindy Myers' mother dropped me off at home. Mom was rehearsing her lines for a Broadway play she was doing in the spring. One of her actor friends was helping her, reading as the romantic lead. Jeremy was one of those chiseled gentlemen who, even at 12-years old, I was already wishing would look at me a certain way but I knew never would. I wasn't a head-turner like Mom was.

Reading lines shouldn't have been strange, but there was something about the way they jumped when I walked into the kitchen. Mom quickly removed her hand from Jeremy's arm, even though they were obviously just rehearsing. Something thick lay heavy in the air, something that didn't belong there.

I said nothing, just grabbed a peach from the fridge and went to do my homework, but I felt nauseous and I didn't know why.

Mom left us four months later, the same week she won her Oscar. The papers made a big stink out of it, calling her a bad mother (which she was) and a bad wife (which she was). A year later, the same papers had forgotten about her infidelity, and they published photos of her in a bikini on a yacht in the Keys. Jeremy was at the wheel.

I began hiding all the newspapers when they arrived and blamed it on the delivery boy. I would have gotten away with it, but Dad eventually found out what I was doing and made me stop. He said he appreciated the thought, but despite my subterfuge, he'd already seen the papers and he was alright. I didn't believe the last bit, but I didn't question him.

There remains a gaping hole in my life, a mystery I have never been able to solve. I keep circling back to it, the same way you can't stop tonguing a painful sore in your mouth. All paths return to the Labyrinth, as if every neural circuit in my brain is dead set on dragging me back no matter how much I try to focus elsewhere.

I can be doing laundry, buying eggs, jogging in the park, it doesn't matter, something will set my memory off. A small child moves in a way too reminiscent of a goblin. A TV ad sounds too much like something the dwarf said. The color of the sunlight outside in early fall, when the heat dies and the leaves turn: it's the same shade as the Goblin King's hair, thin as spider silk. Forgetting is futile. I feel like Sisyphus rolling his rock; no matter how hard I try redirecting my mind, I'm always returned to the beginning.

Insane, I know. I should write children's books. They'd be bestsellers. But the memories are so real that I question my health.

Guilt. Repressed guilt from my jealousy over Toby, and for mistreating Karen when she first arrived. But I can't imagine hating Toby so much that I'd wish him away to a monster. Right now Toby is in school and trying desperately to woo this girl named Katie Deng. He talks his head off about her to me, the little goober is so in love and trying not to show it. He has Karen's blond hair and Dad's toothy smile. If anyone ever hurt Toby, I would kill them.

I can't fathom a life without my brother. The idea of putting him in danger is ludicrous. And of course, it's only fitting I'd craft some elaborate story about rescuing Toby to make myself the hero again, just like I did with Mike Jacobi.

It's actually pretty sick. God, I hope I'm not becoming my mother.

I remember only snippets of the Labyrinth, but I do recall the Goblin King accusing me of being cruel. He was right: I am cruel. There's a wicked irony in my teenage self projecting my shadows onto this imagined creation, this king. It's like I couldn't accept my sins, so I looked elsewhere for a villain, and lo and behold, I found one.

To be continued.

Author's note: This story began as a one-shot vignette, but people asked for it to be expanded. Upon reflection, I realized just how deep this story actually could go, so I've decided to continue. I know the plot, how the story ends, and a few of the adventures that happen along the way, but I'm not sure how many more installments will be required to tell it all. It could be 2, it could be 20. I guess we'll find out together.

Hideaki Akaiwa is a real person. You can read more about his heroic exploits here: 2011/mar/17/world/la-fg-japan-quake-scuba-20110317.