A/N: This chapter took all day to get right. I kept running out of ideas, leaving it, then coming back. I'm not going to take a break, I'm going to write the finale now and release it on the tenth, in English time.
This chapter turned out well, I think, so enjoy it.
Chapter 12: Finding Meaning
My future self didn't come back onto the radio; the signal went completely. I did as I was told though, and waited for Dad to come back in. I waited for shouting, shouting about the car, but it never came. Everyone came back, one after another, and no one mentioned it. Had Jess meant this to happen? Why would he want no one to notice the car? It just didn't make any sense...
Night dragged on and I watched the sky darken. Conveniently, my older sisters had both slept over at other people's houses, probably to escape this house for a bit. This made things a lot easier, because the two of them were unbearable.
I knew that whatever was going to happen would happen at around eight, knowing this, however, made it even worse. I thought the clock was broken, at one point, because the minute hand just wouldn't move.
Jess hadn't told me why, he didn't tell me what he was thinking until he lost his temper or got too emotional, I had to listen out for the reason for why Dad was leaving for the Highway. He had said not to fall asleep until something had happened. He had said not to blink until something had happened. I had no choice but to trust him; he had been right every other time.
Nothing happened all day, it was quieter than it had been in a while. Dad, as usual, came in and tucked May Belle in. "Good night, sweetie," he whispered in her ear, pulling the cover over her.
Now, usually he would look over to me (who would usually be drawing) and tell me lights out. He looked over, then put his hand in front of his face and sighed. He came over. "Are you going to draw?" he asked, sitting down on the edge of the bed.
I shook my head. "I'm tired," I lied.
He nodded. "Well, good night, Jess," he said, ruffling my hair. "See you in the morning."
Wait a second, I thought. Had Dad just done the boy equivalent of "tucking me in". I think he had... what there something wrong with him. Jess's words came back to me when he was explaining the plan.
I could almost hear the cogs in my future self's head. "If this experience has taught me one thing," he mused. "It's that everything, however small, is important." He paused for a second.
"Why do you say that?" I asked, pushing my fringe out of my eye.
"Everything is important, now," Jess explained. "You need to remember that. Everything..."
"I get it," I grumbled, hating him treating me like a stupid kid. "Everything is important."
"I don't think you do get it," he argued. "You need to take in everything around you. I know it sounds silly, but you need to notice everything and try and change nothing. Don't interrupt May Belle when she's talking, don't step on a bug. Try to do as little as possible today, you've seen enough films..."
"Yeah, that bug could end up the president of the United States," I joked.
"This isn't funny," he growled at me. "There is nothing more important that today. I know this must be scary, but time itself is resting on our shoulders. I can only tell you what to do," he sighed. "If there is a mistake, then on your head be it. All I can do is instruct you from this here radio."
"Just watch what you do, and memorize everything in case I need to ask you about it," he sighed, he was doing that all of the time now. "Especially whatever happens past eight o'clock."
"Got it," I replied. Then he got back to the details of his plan.
Dad never 'tucked me in'; this was a change that I needed to remember. I stayed still, waiting for everything to go quiet upstairs. Once I heard footsteps going down the stairs, I knew I was OK. Now I had to be silent enough to get to a point where I could listen without disturbing May Belle. She usually took about ten seconds to fall asleep, but I wasn't going to move until I heard her breath become deep.
I usually killed time, when I couldn't sleep, by hiding under my cover with a torch, drawing. Grabbing my notepad and pencil, which I always kept beside my bed, I began to draw. Usually I drew knights, fish, anything. Tonight, I was going to draw someone else. I put my pencil to the paper and began to draw the radio, Leslie and the boy on the radio. Before I had even drawn a single line, I heard voices outside.
"This is it," I whispered, rolling out of bed as slowly as possible and tiptoeing to the window next to my bed. Why were people outside. I looked out to see a strange scene, it was Dad and Mom, but they looked angry: angry at each other.
I pushed the window open a tiny amount when they looked away. "Keep your voice down," Mom hissed, "you'll wake the kids!"
Dad glared at her. "You don't get it, do you!" he growled. I tried to look at this like my older self would. I needed to find out exactly what was wrong, and to do that I needed to figure out what they were thinking.
"It doesn't make any sense!" she retorted.
"I been thinking about it since the girl was hurt, when I shouted at him," he explained. Of course, it was about me. Everything seemed to be at the moment, it was always my fault... Wait! Don't get distracted... listen to what they were saying.
"Jess has always been a loner," Mum argued.
"Have you ever wondered why?" he replied. "I sure as hell haven't. Not until recently, anyway. You aren't born lonely, Mary, you become a loner." He put his head in his hands and I could see him pulling his hair. "It's been my fault all along."
His fault? Why would it be his fault? "He's not that tough to understand, he's just a boy," Dad said.
"What do you mean?" Mum asked, but I whispered exactly the same thing under my breath.
"We never made him feel like he was worth a damn thing..."
"Stop swearing, Jack," Mum growled in interruption.
"Why? Will I get in trouble with God?" he retorted. "I deserve it!"
That was when I realised how similar the two of us were. At that moment, I actually thought of him as just an older version of me. He was my dad, but now I felt like he was completely. "You don't deserve that," Mum sighed.
"You didn't let me finish," he grunted. "We never got him anything, we always gave him his sister's stuff instead of giving him something he could be proud of, we never spoke about his drawings..." He put his head in his hands again. "I used to ignore him, no wonder the boy's so interested in that girl. He's never had a friend before."
Mum didn't reply to this one. "He always disappeared with Leslie," Dad continued. He was venting now, rather than talking. "Didn't you think it was weird, they were so far out playing around?" Mum shook her head. "He was trying to escape."
He was exactly right. That was what was so incredible about Leslie, she completely took me away from my life and plunged me into her world. Dad understood me...
"No kid deserves to feel like that," he sighed. "Even that damn race, remember he trained for that thing? Every morning he would go running. He was trying to be good at something because I always made him feel worthless. He was trying to prove that he was worth something. When he lost, I was disappointed. That must have made him feel worse."
"You did what any parent would have done," Mum told him.
"No..." he replied, his voice sounding harsh and angry again. "No I didn't, I did the exact opposite." He took a long pause. "What if he'd have gone on the rope-swing?" he whispered.
Mum said nothing, but I think she had been wondering that; I know I had. "Leslie might not have jumped in to rescue him," she would of done, no doubt about that, "or, if she had, she might not have been strong enough to save him, or she could have died as well..." he trailed off after that. "I would have had two dead kids to answer for..."
I gasped, a silent but sincere gasp. He knew what it was like...
"Like I told you, he blames himself," Dad told Mum, as if reading my mind. "He's had to grow up too early, he's become a man on his own and he's not ready for it all. I'm just useless!" His voice getting slowly louder.
"You're not useless," Mum told him. "It's not your fault. It's no ones fault, bad things just happen."
"Yeah, you're right," Dad agreed, though he didn't seem happy about it. "Bad things do happen, but never to the right people. Jess loses his only friend into a coma that she might not wake up from, Bill and Judy might lose their kid because I forced Jess to have to run from his own home..."
"You haven't done Jess any wrong," Mum explained. "We've been poorer than usual, you've had to whole family first."
"My kid shouldn't be second best," Dad said, voice rising into shout. "My own flesh and blood should be the only thing that matters. An eleven year old shouldn't be the victim for his father's problems... am I doing the same thing to May Belle as well?"
Dad sounded so familiar. He sounded so much like my future self. The same forced voice, the same hidden problems coming out in anger... it was like listening to the same person, but my voice was higher. Both Dad and Jess had been through so much...
"You getting louder again, Jack," Mum repeated, in the same hiss. "What if you wake May Bell, you know what she's like when she's woken."
"I'll be as loud as I want," Dad growled.
"Stop being selfish!" Mum retorted.
"Yeah, I know," Dad sounded like he was barely holding back a scream. "I wish you'd have told me that earlier, before I ruined Jess's life!" His head fell into his hands for the third time. "I call him 'boy'... is that any way to talk to your kid?" Dad then looked up. "I can't take this," he said, turning.
"What do you mean," Mum asked in confusion as Dad trudged over to the car.
So this was how it happened. Mum and Dad had got into a row, once again over me, and Dad had left... He was going to the highway because he wanted to be as far from the house and his problems as possible. Just for one night, maybe, just so he could ignore his problems rather than be reminded of them. Well, he couldn't leave now, not after my handiwork. For the first time tonight, I felt glad of slashing my dad's tyres.
"Jack, listen to me!" Mum called when he didn't answer. "Where are you going? What are you going to do?"
"Out," Dad said, vaguely and in a voice that oozed anger.
"What?"
"Just out, don't wait up," he said, before getting in the car and slamming it behind him.
Here we go, he was going to discover what happened. Dad started the car, tried to reverse but, and it was really obvious now he was driving (he must not have seen the way the car was leaning because of the dark). The car was leaning, dramatically. "What the hell?" I heard. It was more of a murmur because of the fact he was in the car, but I could piece together what he had said from the sounds I heard.
He opened the door. "Oh," he gasped. "Damn it, the wheel's flat."
I thought Mum would be shocked and outraged. However, she looked both relieved and angry. Had I done it? Had I stopped him from dying? "You were going to leave," she hissed in fury. "Don't come back into the house! Stay in there and think about what you were going to do!"
With that, she walked back inside and shut the door. Dad, looking shocked, collapsed back into the car.
Dad felt exactly like I did. Jess had explained to me how guilt was crushing. It made every day become a battle to get through it. I understood Dad, now. He never meant to treat me like he did, it was just money. When I had felt bad, just after I came home from Leslie, he had comforted me. He had made me feel better when I felt like all was lost. I couldn't leave him like that. But what if Mum caught me going outside? She didn't want Dad to come in, and now was the only time that I could properly talk to him. I had to sneak out.
That wouldn't be easy. May Belle was still asleep, but there was this one floorboard that always creaked that could wake her up.
Carefully, I walked across the room. May Bell, oddly enough, didn't even stir. She must have been tired out from doing all of my chores. That was good, someone must be on my side. I headed out the room, not even considering shutting the door behind me (the creak was so loud it would rock the house), and snuck down the stairs.
As I snuck down the stairs, I was stopped by the sound of sobs. Was that Mum? I was about to lean around the stairs and look into the kitchen to see when I realised that Mum would see me and stop me. Thinking about everything was really starting to hurt my head, I just wish it would stop. I was looking forward to when Jess would tell me on the radio that everything was fine, Leslie was with him and Dad would not have died.
As I crept down the stairs I became more and more confused. Was I going to keep talking to him forever? Oddly enough, that would be terrible. Even though he had helped me, saved Leslie's life and was about to save Dad's, I hated the idea of having to know what my future was constantly. Having to plan everything out and knowing the consequences all the time. I would never get any sleep, I would never have any fun, or have a life again.
I pushed the front door open as little as possible, and sucked in my gut to fit through. I was outside now, I could afford to run to the car. Dad couldn't see me, yet, because the car was facing the other direction. He was still there, though, so I could talk to him.
I knocked on the window. "I'm not coming back in," he grunted, then he looked over. "Oh, it's you."
I opened the car door and sat beside him. "Why are you up," he paused, "son."
"I heard you and mum, Dad," I explained. I sounded more and more like my older self every second, it was weird. I must be picking that up as I spoke to him.
"You shouldn't have been dropping eaves," Dad said, looking ahead and more annoyed than ever, before he realised what I had said. "What did you... what did you hear?"
"Everything," I said, not holding back. We needed to talk this out, whatever it was.
"You shouldn't have been listening," Dad started.
"I don't blame you," I said, interrupting him.
Dad didn't say anything. Seconds passed; so many that I started to count them. Then, just before it reached a minute, he began to speak. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"Nothing's your fault," I told him. "You haven't been a bad dad, you've just had other things on you mind."
"You're just a kid, you don't know what you're talking about," he grunted, keeping his gaze facing ahead.
"I do," I said, taking a deep breath. "You weren't nasty to me, ever. You're a dad, you have to think about money and keeping us from, you know... becoming homeless." I looked at him. "You made me feel better."
When I didn't tell him why, he finally looked at me. "What do you mean?"
"Remember when you told me to wait after the first day of Leslie's coma," I reminded him. He nodded. "I felt awful, Dad. It was all my fault, I had sent my best friend to hell because of my stupidity, I'd..." I trailed off. "But you spoke to me. You convinced me that it wasn't all over."
"It was me who told you that you were stupid," he said. I could see that he was holding back tears, and I was glad, I hated it when he was upset. It made me feel really uncomfortable.
That was true. But, thinking like a future self for a second, I realised why after thinking about it. "Dad, you were scared," I said, frowning as everything fit together. "It was the only way, in your head at the time, that it would stop me from going to the stream again." I paused, I was never this smart. "You were trying to protect me, and were furious I had put myself in danger."
I looked ahead, looking back over all the things Dad had ever said to me. They all made sense when you looked through his mind, realising how he really felt. When I came to, Dad was staring at me. "When did you get so smart?" he asked. He wasn't joking, he was serious.
"I..." I was about to tell him everything, everything about Leslie, my future self, and the fact that I knew he would die if I hadn't burst his tyre. "I'm not sure."
I couldn't. Jess had warned me, he had told me not to let anyone know. I was inclined to trust him. I didn't even sound like myself any more... not even the words I thought were my own. This was so weird. "Well," Dad said, trying not to choke up. "Whatever you're doing, it's working."
I really hoped so, or this would be the last time I spoke to Dad.
"I'm sorry about your friend, Jess," Dad said. "I'm sorry for not comforting you soon enough, I'm sorry for everything."
I hugged him, not giving him chance to continue. He ruffled my hair. "I was right about you Jess," he said. "You've become a man."
I smiled into his chest. "Love you, Dad."
He paused for a second. "Love you too..." he paused, squeezing me tighter, "son."
A/N: That's it, the last chapter before the finale. I really hope you enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to all of your responses!
Till next time, the last time,
Tend to Infinity