Disclaimer: That '70s Show copyright The Carsey-Werner Company, LLC and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC. The fictional band Degenerate Matter, their albums Vagabondage, Ultrarelativistic, WIMPs and MACHOs, Frozen Stars, and all the lyrics contained therein copyright to the author of this story (username: MistyMountainHop, maker of Those '70s Comics).

CHAPTER 34
SPARK

December 23, 1994

Point Place, Wisconsin

The Formans' House

…

Izzy was crying.

Her right arm hung limply at her side, and Red stared down at her, stone-still. Hyde had dashed into the living room from the den. But Jackie rose from the sectional couch, climbed over it, and placed a hand on Red's back.

"I heard a crack," Red whispered gruffly.

Jackie gave his back a soft pat. "Mr. Forman, it's only a dislocated shoulder."

The TV screen lit with a kaleidoscope of color. A children's cartoon was playing on it, and Red's pale face appeared corpse-like in comparison. "I shouldn't have swung her around. Fine time for everyone to be out of the house. I have to call Kitty."

"You were just being a fun grandpa."

"By 'fun,' you mean a dumbass. Stay with her."

Red hurried into the kitchen, and Hyde kept a safe distance by the den. He wouldn't risk setting Jackie off anymore than he had today.

"Izzy," Jackie said, "I'm going to rotate your arm and pop it back into place, okay?"

Izzy sniffled and nodded.

"Steven—" Jackie glanced back at him while grasping Izzy's wrist—"sing something."

He launched into the Sesame Street theme song, and Izzy's lips lifted into a smile.

Jackie raised Izzy's arm above her head and wound it backward. Izzy's face contorted in pain then relaxed. The arm had slid back into the shoulder socket.

"See?" Jackie said and smiled brightly. "Not so bad, right?"

Hyde stared at Izzy's arm. "How did you—"

"Mr. Forman," Jackie said. "Steven, tell him she's okay."

"On it."

In the kitchen, Red clutched the phone receiver to his ear, voice shaking. "Okay, Kitty, I'll—"

"Arm's good as new, Red," Hyde said.

Red covered the phone's mouthpiece. "What?"

"Jackie popped that sucker back in."

"Oh." Red relayed the information to Mrs. Forman, listened for a moment, and said his goodbye. "Steven, Kitty says the arm needs to be kept still and put into a sling. I've got to get one of her scarves."

Hyde followed Red back to the living room. Jackie was sitting on the sectional with Izzy in her lap, and Red gently palmed the top of Izzy's head. "Izzy, sweetheart," he said, "I'm getting you one of Farmor's scarves to wear. Don't move."

Red rushed up the carpeted stairs, and Hyde sat on the sectional as far from Jackie as possible. Without prompting, she said, "My arm slipped out of its socket a lot when I was a kid. My nanny learned how to put it back in from my doctor." She gave Izzy the slightest of hugs. Hyde doubted Izzy even registered the embrace, but its significance wasn't lost on him. "My younger cousins had the same problem, so I got plenty of practice fixing theirs."

"You're good with kids," he said.

"I'm good with this one, especially because I'm not her mother."

He had no chance to respond. Red was back with a translucent paisley scarf. "All right, kiddo," Red said, "let's get this done."

A minute later, Izzy's arm was immobilized in a sling. Red picked her up and kissed her cheek. Dinner wouldn't be for another two hours. Time had come for her nap, which meant taking her over to the Pinciottis'.

"Can Jackie read me a story?" Izzy said.

Red raised his eyebrows at Jackie, as if asking her the same question.

"Sure." Jackie snatched a book off the sectional couch—The Little Prince. She must've been reading it before Izzy's arm was dislocated.

"Thanks, Jackie." Red's gratitude was etched on his face, woven through his voice. Hyde hoped Jackie absorbed at least part of it, but she simply nodded.

Hyde spent the next half-hour holed up in the basement. The new song he'd tried out on Jackie earlier, lyric-less and untitled, needed to be put down on tape. Her visceral reaction to it had confirmed the music was headed in the right direction.

He'd brought his Fostex four-track recorder with him and recorded what he had. The main structure of the song was solid. Ro would probably tweak it a bit. Hell, she might reverse-engineer the whole composition, but she'd dig the riff. He also had ideas for the lead guitar and melody. Those he recorded on track two, but Lee would reject the lead outright without a veto from Ro, Sherry, and Nate.

His equipment was put away by the time people returned to the house. Voices packed the living room upstairs, but the absence of one—Jackie's—screamed the loudest at him. She might've gone for a walk, but the Wisconsin winter sky was dark. He'd go looking for her if she didn't show soon.

In the living room, Hyde leaned his hip against the sectional couch. "Are you sure, Mom?" Forman said. He had Izzy in his arms by the Christmas tree, and her head rested on his shoulder. "I mean, does she need to go to the hospital?"

"Don't be silly," Mrs. Forman said. She replaced some tinsel that slipped off the tree. "Jackie did a fine job. This sort of thing happens to children Izzy's age all the time. I'm surprised it hasn't happened earlier."

"But what if she damaged a nerve? Her middle finger could be frozen in a profane position."

"Then she'll be primed and ready for the punk scene," Hyde said, joining the three of them by the tree, but his gaze fixed on the kitchen door. "I'll give her guitar lessons and a record contract."

"Punk?" Mrs. Forman shook her head. "No grandchild of mine is going to have mohawk or a safety pin through her lip."

"You could get her a cello," Forman said.

She brushed her fingers through Izzy's hair. "Now the cello is a classy instrument."

"So she'll be the first punk cellist," Hyde said, and footsteps thudded down the carpeted stairs. He peered up and spotted Jackie. Her cardigan on was inside-out, and her cheeks were flushed. He had no guesses why.

"Jackie," Mrs. Forman said, waving her over to the tree, "have you ever considered a career in nursing?"

Jackie raised her hands in defense. "Oh, no. I can't deal with blood."

But a thin streak of red marked her left palm. It disappeared into the edges of her sleeve cuff, and Hyde said, "What happened?"

"Huh?" She looked down at where he pointed. She curled her fingers into a fist, hiding the streak. "Oh, I was writing labels on Christmas presents. I should go wash my hands."

She scurried back up the stairs, but a memory surfaced in his skull: two red markers had spilled from her purse at Izzy's birthday party. She could've developed a preference for writing only in red, but his gut said no. Still, the story was hers to tell. He wouldn't pry open pages she'd glued together.

December 24, 1994

Point Place, Wisconsin

Mt. Wilmot Ice Skating Rink
…

Jackie had escaped the Formans' house shortly after breakfast. She'd walked all the way to the skating rink in Mt. Wilmot Park,. A light snow fell on her, but she sat on a bench as the rink became crowded with teenage sweethearts, families, and the lone show-off skater.

She'd belonged to all three groups once, at various stages in her life. But as Degenerate Matter played from her Walkman into her ears, she watched worlds she wasn't part of.

Izzy had moved on from Jackie this morning, their private club dissolved. Her attachment switched to Mr. Forman. She'd clearly picked up on his half-suppressed worry, his fear of hurting her again. "It's okay," she said to him at the kitchen table. "I forgive you."

Empathy at four-years-old. A gift Jackie's heart melted down and discarded like slag.

Steven hadn't spoken much to her last night, after spying the red mark on her palm. She'd scrawled her frustrations on her arms, hidden them with her cardigan. Her skin tolerated ink but not the touch of other people's skin. Had he seen the words, he might've taken her in like a stray dog sleeping in the cold. But those were her thoughts, not his. Assuming pity was easy. Accepting love, that was a skill she barely possessed anymore.

Last night, she stayed away so he would stay away ... because she'd craved his company on a fundamental level. Ached for him to ask where the stray mark led. To absorb her inky scratches and process them out in ways she couldn't, like a human dialysis machine removing waste from blood.

A child squealed in the skating rink, a young girl holding the hand of her father. They were skating away from the protective railing, jackets covered in snowflakes. The girl stumbled and clung to her father's arm. She latched on for dear life, as Izzy had latched onto Jackie yesterday.

Jackie peered up at the gray sky. The trees branches above her had dagger-like icicles.

"Didn't bring your skates?" Steven's voice cut through the music from her Walkman, but her body jumped as if a stranger had attacked her. "It's just me," he said. "Hyde."

She pulled off her headphones. "How—what are you doing here?"

"You've been gone for hours. Thought I'd bring you back."

"But how did you know?" She looked him over, not quite believing he wasn't an hallucination. Tan-colored Frye boots were on his feet. They appeared lived-in but weren't the ones she'd bought him ages ago. His wool coat covered what his jeans didn't, and he had a backpack slung over one shoulder. "How did you find me?"

"This wasn't the first place I checked." He pulled off the backpack and plunked it down on the bench. "Hope you don't feel stalked."

"I don't, but ..." She forced her gaze upward. His long hair was tucked into a backwards baseball cap, leaving only his face to focus on. "Why?"

"Mrs. Forman's got the kitchen full of smells that were killin' me. Laurie and Tim have the same thing going on at the Pinciottis'. They're cooking and baking for a Kenosha homeless shelter. Everyone else headed off to a Christmas festival."

"And you're here with me. I'm your homeless shelter."

"You're my friend. When are you gonna get that?"

She folded up her headphones and put them into her coat pocket. "My friends wouldn't come looking for me."

"You've got a crappy set of friends. Told you that already." He began to unzip his backpack, but the snow was still falling, and he didn't unzip it completely. "Brought your Christmas presents with me. Figured you might want to open them without an audience."

"Presents? As in plural?" The opening in his backpack was too small to see inside. "You didn't have to. I just made you one."

"So you made me something, huh?" He was smiling, and tingles agitated her stomach like a kicked-over hornets' nest. He hadn't sat on the bench. He was giving her space, or maybe he preferred to stand.

That was good. Because if his body got closer, if she felt any hint of his physical warmth, she'd have to slice herself open and run her skeleton to the nearest graveyard.

"Talk to me, Jackie," he said, a compassionate plea, and the tingles intensified.

"Yeah, I did." She lowered her head, and her hair fell in front of her face. Her gift to him was hardly worth mentioning or, probably, giving. She'd pushed through mental and emotional barriers to create it, largely thanks to his music and him, but the result was pathetic. "Can you show me your left wrist?"

He pushed up his coat sleeve, revealing the topside of his wrist and his bracelets: one of braided black leather and one of knotted, colorful thread. "You made me something like that?"

"Mm-hmm. Sorry for spoiling it."

"I remember your box full of thread." His smile had left his lips, but it remained in his voice. "How long since you touched that stuff?"

"Long," she said. "Who gave you the others?"

His finger hooked the colorful friendship bracelet. "Betsy made me this a few years back. She owes me another 'cause it's fallin' apart.." He tapped the braided leather. "Ro got me this one."

"What's your favorite charity? I'll donate five-thousand in your name."

"A nice gesture, but I'll take what you made."

"You don't want it."

He laughed once, incredulously. "One thing hasn't changed: you still assume what other people want."

"Sometimes people don't realize what they don't want until it's too late." She glanced at his face, and the look in eyes ignited the tingles in her stomach to flames. "Stop doing that."

"Doing what?"

She pushed herself off the bench and fled to the skating rink. She stopped at the metal railing; her ungloved fingers gripped it, but he was by her side in moments.

"Doing what, Jackie?"

A teenage couple held hands on the ice. They spun each other around, laughing.

"See those two kids?" she said. "That's joy. Right there is joy."

"Seems like it," he said, but his right arm was leaning on the railing. He was turned toward her; her peripheral vision revealed that. "And right here can be joy, too."

"I prefer pain. It offers no expectations it can't keep, makes no promises it won't break." Her palms stung from the cold railing. She pried them off, and they stung worse as blood and heat rushed back into her hands. "It's comfortable and familiar," she said, wrapping her fingers around the railing again. The cold numbed her skin this time.

"Staying in it is a slow, torturous suicide."

Her gaze remained on the ice. "So is loving me."

"Trying not to love you is what almost killed me." His words reignited the ashes that used to be her stomach. The fire crawled up her esophagus and into her eyes, and he backed off a step. "I'm not in this for you to love me back, all right? If us reconnecting is making shit worse for you—"

"Do you want me to love you?" The frigid air had made her throat raw, given her question icy teeth, and he sucked in air through his nose as if she'd hurt him. "No one should want to be loved by me, Steven. There are too many consequences. I have too many expectations—"

"Your only expectation is to be loved back." He pointed to his head. "But I was too fucked up in here to love you how you needed. How you deserved, man. 'Cause you deserve—"

"Don't say it again, okay? I don't..." She shut her eyes. Snowflakes continued to fall, each one colliding into her body like meteorites. "There is no one capable of loving me. Not the way I need or want, and it's not their fault." She swallowed, and her voice lost its edge. "There is something inherently wrong with me. I don't know what it is. God knows I've tried figuring it out."

Cold tears squeezed through her closed eyelids, but she wasn't aware of a feeling to cry. "I'll never be good enough, Steven. Or pretty enough. Or self-sacrificing enough. Or—" she slapped the metal railing, eyes still shut—"damn it! I should just have to be me, but my head's been fucked with too many times. Or maybe I've just caught up with the truth about myself."

Warmth edged toward her cold, damp cheeks, and she backed away. Her eyes partly opened, but wet eyelashes made a blurry cage. Even so, she glimpsed Steven's hand. It was raised at the level of her face, like he'd tried to wipe her tears away.

She wiped her own tears and opened her eyes fully. "Stop loving me, Steven."

He held his hand out toward her. "The truth is you've wrapped yourself in so many lies you don't know which way is up. You think you're untouchable? You're not. I saw you with Izzy. With Red." His hand shook once in the air. "Grab it."

She stared at what he was offering, and his hand shook again.

"My skin ain't covered in acid," he said. "You won't get burned. And I'm told I've got a strong but gentle grip, so you won't slip or get crushed."

She made no moves. He wasn't just talking about his touch but his friendship.

"Okay, we can start smaller." All but his index finger curled into a fist. "Let's try the E.T. method."

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Jackie had never watched that movie, though she'd seen posters and commercials. The scene where the little boy touched the alien's glowing finger was iconic. But this moment reminded her of a more highbrow work of art, of Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam.

"People can touch you, Steven, but that doesn't mean you're affected by their touch." As she spoke, his finger didn't withdraw. He kept it steady in the air, waiting. "If I do this," she said, "will it make you feel better?"

"Don't do it for me." He tugged on his baseball cap with his other hand, and the closure at the back rose on his forehead. "Do it so you can find out how it feels. If it sucks, you don't ever have to do it again."

Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, blocking chatter from the skating rink. The snowfall had grown intermittent. A few flurries drifted down from the clouds, and one landed on Steven's nose. It melted into water.

Love and light, Steven's measure of both was far bigger than scraps. The more she accepted, the stronger she became … and the more his light threatened to grow dimmer.

"You must be dying for a cigarette," she said.

"I've cut back." He finally withdrew his hand, only to present her with the other one. "Anyway, I don't like smoking around Izzy or Mrs. Forman. Or you."

Her mouth grew slack. His voice did sound healthier now and more vibrant when he'd sung yesterday. She hadn't smelled smoke on him, either, or caught him obsessively chewing gum.

"How did you climb out," she said, "from your point of no return?"

He exhaled a white cloud of breath. "Your body'll struggle if you try to hang yourself. It's got a visceral instinct to survive." His eyes flicked to the skating rink, but they came back to her, his gaze more intense than before. "My soul's survival instinct was stronger than I thought."

"Your soul? You believe in souls?"

"I believe in somethin' beyond all this, yeah." He sighed, and another white cloud floated from his lips. "It's a guess. Who really knows? But somewhere deep in my guts is a drive not to be miserable."

Both of his arms fell to his sides. His hands disappeared into his coat pockets, and her own guts cried out. She should have reached out to him, taken his offer.

He leaned his back against the railing. His gaze was no longer on her, gone to a place she couldn't track.

"Death is a guarantee," he said. "Whenever you're ready to go, you'll figure out a way to go. Doesn't mean I'm not still fighting with gravity." His focus returned to her, and she recognized a fear on his face so familiar she shivered. "The dark, my fuckin' dark—terror gives birth to it. Tells me there's no damn alternative. That terror is life. Life is terror." His hand reappeared as a fist and lightly punched his chest. "But this is too stubborn to believe it."

He gestured toward the bench. "Look there, man. See that tree, the icicles hanging off it? The snow on the branches? Freakin' simple things—like laughter, Mrs. Forman's cooking, watchin' bad TV with someone you love—they're all sparks of light breakin' through the hopelessness."

Jackie shivered harder. This Steven wasn't the one who'd left her. This one had journeyed through hell without her, coming out with more wisdom than she could ever carry. "I can't see an exit sign," she said. "Not one that leads to some place better."

"Alls I can tell you is I take risks. Not all of 'em pan out. Sometimes I fall off the cliff, but the risks I've taken before—" he pointed to the ground—"they gave me people down below, holding a safety net. Keeps me from becoming vulture meat."

"Steven..." She reached for him with her whole hand, and he extended his hand to her. She blinked wetly, fully conscious of the need to cry. But her fingers wrapped around his palm, and a small laugh hiccuped out of her. His skin was warm. She was touching him, being touched by him, and she felt intact. Like her old self, before Ralph and Dale Fischer and Michael. Before life had torn her apart.

Steven had given Jackie a gift she couldn't repay. She was unsure of how long they'd held each other's hands. It could have been a heartbeat or an eternity, but the effect was potent. It allowed her to sit with him on the bench comfortably, after he'd shaken the tree above it free of dangerous icicles. His knee slid against hers as he struggled with his backpack. The contact buzzed through her skin, but she didn't flinch.

"Zipper gets stuck on the damn fabric," he said.

"Maybe it's time to get a new backpack." She indicated the duct tape on the backpack's side. It shielded what had to be a sizable hole. "That one's pretty beaten up."

"Been with me through a lot." He yanked the zipper free. "Not giving up on it." He rummaged in the backpack and pulled out a gift-wrapped present. "Number one."

He dropped the present into her hands. It was a book. She could already tell, and she ripped off the paper, revealing The Collected Poems of Ryōkan Taigu.

"That helped my uncle get through prison," he said. "Did the same for me."

"I thought you hadn't gone to prison," she said, but he jabbed his temple with two fingers. "Got it."

The snow had stopped falling, but a gust of wind blasted through the the park. Kids in the skating rink screamed. Some laughed. Jackie's instinct was to pull her coat sleeves over hands, but an image glowed in her mind—Steven putting his arm around her shoulders, letting her shelter herself in his body.

The vision was a smoldering ember of the past, and it died as the wind calmed down. The book of poetry he'd given her had flipped to a random page, but he flipped it back to the title page. He'd written a note on it: "The ones I dig the most," followed by page numbers. She turned to the first one. It was titled, "Too Lazy to Be Ambitious".

"That sounds like you—who you used to be."

"Read it," he said.

She did. The poem was about a man content with his life. He had food, shelter, a fire, and nature. And, strikingly, no compulsion to fix anyone else's life. "But you are trying to make the world better," she said. " For everyone."

"Not everyone."

He took out a larger but relatively flat present from his backpack. The shape wasn't quite right for a record, and she tore off the wrapping. Inside were a pack of pens and a notebook, the cow-patterned kind children used in grade school. Only this one was three times as thick.

"That goes with this, " he said and handed her a sealed envelope.

Whatever was inside was heavier than paper and hard like plastic. She slid her thumb under the envelope's seal and opened the flap. "A cassette tape? A Degenerate Matter concert?"

"You got one out of two right. Check it out."

Her fingers trembled a little when removing the tape. It was housed in a plastic casing and labeled, "Point Place A".

"It's a demo," he said. "Recorded it in the basement yesterday. Title's just a placeholder."

"The song you played for me!" she said, her excitement obvious and drawing a grin from him. "Is the band working on a new album?"

"Starting to, but Lee and Sherry are finishing separate side projects first." He rubbed his eyes and pulled off his baseball cap. His hair fell in thick waves onto his shoulders. "Refreshes their batteries, so album number four is on hold for the time being."

His fingers scratched through his scalp. He seemed tired, or maybe he was nervous. The two states were indistinguishable on him, impossible to discern from his behavior alone. She hadn't been able to tell which he felt when they were teenagers, and she still couldn't without asking. "See where the song brings you," he said, gesturing to the notebook on her lap. "Write it down."

"You mean lyrics?" She made a face. The idea was ridiculous. "I'm not a writer."

"Neither was I."

She held up the tape. "Is this the only copy? Because I can't take it if—"

"I've got the master," he said. "If I end up using anything you give me, you'll get credit and a royalty. 'Course, you don't have to show me shit. You can keep it to yourself."

She nodded, though she had no intention of writing any lyrics. "Can I listen to it now?"

"Go for it.

She switched out her tape of Degenerate Matter's concert in Edinburgh, Scotland from her Walkman. "Thank you," she said as she pressed play. Her gratitude was inadequately conveyed by such simple words, but as she listened to his new song, she continued to mouth, "Thank you."

The music shifted from hesitation to grief, fought through emotional violence and reached a celebratory coda. She rewound the tape once the song finished and pressed play again. The music's first chords were cautious, but as the riff transitioned into mourning, she said, "January eighth is the anniversary of my dad's death."

She was looking at Steven, unwaveringly. His eyes met hers, equally as unwavering.

"I'm going to Michigan, to his gravesite," she said. "I'll read some passages from his favorite books, tell some stories. And, at night, I'll go to Truwood Park with my telescope. We used to go there together and stargaze."

"You two reconciled after he got out of prison," Steven said.

"Yes. He more than made up for his mistakes before he died. He..." Her voice faded. She wasn't sure how much she could, or should, tell him. But as his song for her continued to play in her ears and exploded into the bridge, his emotional strength flowed over her doubts.

"My dad protected me," she said. "Kept me safe. I wanted to make this anniversary a celebration of his life. I contacted old friends of his, colleagues, but none of them were interested. He'd burned too many bridges. I asked—practically begged—my mom to come with me, but I'll be going alone."

Steven indicated he wanted her to shut off the Walkman. She pressed stop, and he pushed his hair from his face. "I could celebrate his life with you."

"You?"

"If he kept you safe, protected you, then he deserves to be celebrated."

She shoved her Walkman inside her coat pocket. Adrenaline was spilling into her bloodstream, causing her whole body to tremble. Her bones felt frozen and cracked; Steven's warmth made her acutely aware of it. "Won't you be busy with the band?" she said. "With your record label?"

"That's the beauty of being the boss: I can do what I want." His fingers tapped a rhythm on his knees. Then he grabbed his baseball cap from his backpack. "I'm meeting Ro in Switzerland a few days before New Year's Eve. We're stayin' in a place my dad vetted. Should be little threat of tabloids following us there."

He stuffed his hair into the baseball cap and poked stray tendrils into it as he talked. "You give me the info where you're staying. I'll make sure I'm in Michigan on the eighth of January—if that's what you want."

Her heart creaked. Its rusty gears rotated in an uneasy, chug-a-chug rhythm, but at least they were moving. "It is," she said. "And I'm beginning to believe this is real."

His eyebrows rose, wrinkling his forehead. "That what is?"

"Our friendship."