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 54
STARQUAKE

April 5, 1995

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

The Barnetts' House
…

Hyde grew sweaty pacing the back of his dad's property. He was tempted to take off his coat, but his breath went in icy and came out white. Clouds smothered the stars, and bouts of rain dropped cold water onto his face. The night was perfect for an argument.

"I've got to do it," he said as cigarette smoke irritated his nose. Ro was on her fourth stick. He could've smoked a whole carton himself, but he stuck to pacing—from his dad's barbecue grill to his stepmom's patio dining set. "If I ever needed you to walk my road, man, it's now."

No camera flashes went off. Guards were patrolling the metal fence surrounding the property. They had the place secured from paparazzi, but Hyde remained cautious. No one but Ro should hear his words. Relaying the details of Edna's death had gone smoothly, until he mentioned she'd named him executor of his will.

A fresh drizzle fell onto him and Ro. The patio lights shone through the rain, and each drop burst like fireworks on the paving stones. His gaze rose toward the smothered sky but stopped somewhere between the grill and dining set. "I'm not goin' to Vegas by myself."

Ro answered with a long drag on her cigarette. The sizzle of paper burning away echoed inside him.

"I'm not goin' alone," he said again, "'cause if I do, I might not come back."

"Shit." Ro dropped her cigarette to the paving stones but didn't stamp it out. Raindrops bounced off her faux-leather jacket as she went to him. "You want to drink," she said, sounding more afraid than he was used to.

"Don't want to. It's like a fucking magnet. That's why I need you with me, Spark. To ground me, to disrupt the magnetic field." His damp hair clung to his face. He pushed it off, but the double-meaning of his plea stuck to him. Jackie had a pull on him stronger, more perilous, than booze. "You're a safer place for how I'm feelin' than a damn bottle."

"I'll ground you right now." She grabbed his wrist. Her fingertips edged into his coat sleeve and rubbed against his skin. "You don't have to be the executor of your ma's will. Let the state handle it."

"Her crap still goes to me. I'm her closest living relative."

"Don't accept it." Her fingers slipped from his sleeve and grasped his hand. "When we first got together, your stories overwhelmed you: what you'd done, what you hadn't done. If you go to Vegas, it'll be another choice to regret. The same as reading that Come On article, a useless exercise in self-mutilation."

Waterdrops splattered the paving stones. The drizzle had turned into full-on rain, and it pounded the sugar maple just beyond the patio. Ro's perspective was doing the same to his skull. Going to Las Vegas—or, more accurately, Paradise Township, where Edna's house waited for him—could be harmful, but it wasn't useless.

Ro pressed her lips to the back of his knuckles. "What good can come of going through your ma's things?"

"Tying up a loose end."

"She's dead. That end's tied as tightly as it gets."

He palmed her cheek. Her skin was freezing, but her heart had to be a furnace, pumping white-hot blood through her body. "Not asking you to understand my reasons. I'm asking you to put your philosophy aside a few freakin' days and support me."

"I am supporting you—" she peeled his fingers off her cheek—"by telling you to make a different choice. If you go to Nevada, you'll be choosing your past instead of your present."

She reached behind his head. Her fingers inched beneath his wet coat collar, and they found the chain attached to her guitar pendant. She tugged on it, and the pendant slid up his chest, toward his throat. "I've let it happen for almost a year," she said. "Thought it would help, but look at where we are. I've only been enabling you."

He pried her fingers from the chain but held onto her. "Enabling me how? Let what happen?"

"I won't enable you anymore." She squirmed free of his grasp and backed up from him. Raindrops fell between them, exploding in beads of light wherever they landed. "If I go with you to Nevada, I might as well take a bottle of Bourbon and hold it to your lips."

"That's just crap."

"You told me boozing stopped you from thinking. Stepping into your ma's house, you'll be bombarded by thoughts, by stories." She stepped closer to him again. "If you don't want to drink, then stay here with me."

He glanced away from her, and his gaze landed on the house. His dad's den, a room full of happy memories, peeked from dark, rain-streaked windows. "Everyone grieves their own way. Going through her stuff is mine."

"Doesn't have to be."

"So what're you saying? You'll help me through this if I don't go? Listen to whatever comes up 'cause shit's already comin' up."

The back of her knuckles grazed his wet sideburn. "I'm sorry, love, but I've indulged your time-traveling enough. If you want to live your life, I'll be waiting for you in the present."

"What the hell are you afraid of?" He unbuttoned his coat with stiff, slippery fingers. Maybe a bit of madness had seeped into his brain, but the coat felt oppressive. "It can't be about me," he said and flung his coat across the patio. He'd aimed for the dining table, but his coat fell short and crashed onto the paving stones. "Is it about this?"

He rolled up the long sleeve of his thermal shirt, exposing his scarred left arm to the rain. "You cut me to keep my stories from bleedin' out. Are you scared if you hear 'em, your own wounds'll reopen? That you'll bleed out?"

"My stories are in a book I burned."

"There's more than your dad pressuring you to go into astrophysics. More than your ma abandoning you and taking your sister—"

"It's not something I want you part of." Ro strode to where his coat had landed and picked it up. She shook it, maybe as a stand-in for himself. Droplets of water flew into the air, and with a grimace she slammed the coat onto the dining table. "I won't poison you with what tried to poison me." She pushed her wet hair off her forehead, and her eyes locked onto him through the rain. "And I won't be poisoned by what you're letting poison you."

"Yeah, that's what you say, but it's not what I'm hearing." His shirts were soaked through, sticking to his skin like frost. The frigid night had closed in on him, and he began to shiver. "You're afraid of connecting with me, really goddamn connecting. Either that, or you don't trust me enough to let me in."

She charged across the patio, kicking up water with her boots, and shouted in his face: "I've let you in!"

"Not enough."

"If I'm not enough for you, then fuck off."

"You are. That's what I've been tellin' you!" He was speaking to her back. She'd turned it on him. He crossed his arms over his chest for warmth. His teeth were chattering, and his fraction of madness had given way to sanity. Both his T-shirt and thermal shirt were wet and useless now. Taking off his coat had been a bonehead move. "Never given everything to anyone. Been tryin' to do it with you—"

She whipped toward him and batted at the air, as if mosquitoes were pestering her. "It's not what you'd give me. It's what you'd give up."

"You want me to give up who I am."

"Your past isn't who you are."

"It made me what I am," he said and headed for the flagstone path. It led to the front of the house, but she grabbed him from behind. Her arms tightened around his drenched stomach, and her chest pressed up against his back.

"Don't leave," she said. "Finish this."

He was done with the rain, this night, this conversation, but he stayed put. "I'm not the only one with a choice to make. You've stared down your history without me? Super. Then stand by my fuckin' side while I stare down mine."

"Or what?"

"Or we're gonna have a problem."

Her grip on him loosened, and she sighed into the nape of his neck. "How about a compromise?"

"I can deal with that," he said, barely aware that he'd spoken, "dependin' on what it is." His eyes had unfocused, turning the flagstones into jagged splotches of color. His mind painted Jackie's face onto them, not the the teenager she was but the adult she'd become. He tried to wipe the image away, but it resisted, alive and full of compassion.

She shouldn't have been here. Not now. His subconscious called upon his connection to her only in his worst moments. This night didn't qualify. Ro was offering a compromise, but his grief felt tripled, like he had more than just his ma to mourn.

"Hyde," Ro squeezed his middle, "did you hear me?"

"Rain must've drowned you out."

"Bullshit." She stepped in front of him, holding out her hands palm-side up. The rain had lightened back to a drizzle. "Listen this time," she said. "I won't judge you for taking care of your ma's business. You're right. Everyone has to grieve how they grieve. I wouldn't want someone telling me how to. But go to Nevada with someone you trust because it won't be me."

Her faux-leather jacket crinkled as she hugged his waist. He held her loosely, and his gaze returned to the flagstone path. Jackie's face was still there, appearing skeptical, as Ro finished explaining her offer: "I'll listen to the highlights of what happened, and I'll listen to one story about your ma—and you better make sure it's worth me hearing."

"You actually gonna listen?" he said.

"I'll be a lot more attentive to you than you were to me just a minute ago."

He embraced her tightly but felt no warmth. His icy, waterlogged shirts were plastered to his body, just as sorrow plastered itself to his heart. It belonged to this moment between himself and Ro, and his imagined Jackie rose, fully-formed, from the flagstones. He shut his eyes against the one loss he couldn't lose, closed his mind to what her conjured presence meant. But the sensation of her holding him cut through his defenses, catalyzing the mourning process, and he hugged Ro even tighter.

Jackie awoke screaming. A sensation like a kick between her thighs had propelled her from sleep. A flashback, mixed with her dreams, was the culprit. She couldn't remember much, but Dale Fischer had cornered her in a pitch-black room. The only bright spot was the red recording light on his video camera.

Her eyes opened to a living room striped in white-gold. The sunrise came through Brooke's blinds in bands, disrupted by an occasional shadow caused by early-morning traffic. The golden light was soothing, especially after her flashback-laden nightmare. Last night's conversation with Brooke must have triggered it.

She pressed her feet against the fold-out bed, to make sure she was where she thought she was. Then she turned onto her side, pulling the blanket over her shoulders. The phantom kick to her privates was fading, but it hadn't really been a kick. It was a memory of Dale's Fischer's assault on her.

Rage surged up her spine, the same fury she'd had no emotional connection to yesterday. Too many of her injuries remained unhealed, and they'd begun with that night in Chicago with Michael. He'd made amends with her, owned what he'd done. All of it. That was more than most survivors got, but he'd never confessed to Brooke about Chicago. He should have, especially before getting involved with her romantically again, but now it was too late.

The phone rang. Jackie stayed in bed and glimpsed her alarm clock. It sat beside her pillow, displaying 6:42 am, and she slid the alarm button to off. It was all she had energy for, but the phone stopped ringing. Maybe the library had called, double-checking that Brooke wouldn't be in until the afternoon. She'd taken the morning off to spend with Betsy, but Jackie closed her eyes and tried to rest her mind.

She sat up twelve minutes later. A cup of caffeinated tea was definitely on the menu, and she trudged to the kitchen.

"Jackie?" Brooke said, and Jackie turned from the stove. Brooke was visible through the cased opening, standing by the fold-out bed in her pajamas. "Steven's on the phone. He wants to talk to you."

"Me?" Jackie clutched Brooke's empty tea kettle. "How did he know where I was?"

"I told him. It's urgent."

"I'll take it in here," Jackie said and left the kettle on the stove. She didn't need tea anymore. The word urgent sharpened her senses, made her heart race. She grabbed the phone receiver from the kitchen wall, and Brooke disappeared into the hallway. "Steven?"

"Hey, Jackie." The devastation in his voice was subtle, an undercurrent, but it flooded her senses. "Sorry to spring this on you so early, but—" The telltale click of a phone came through the earpiece. Brook had hung hers up. "You there?"

"I'm here. That was Brooke."

"Got it. So … my ma kicked the bucket a few days ago. "

Jackie half-leaned, half-collapsed against the kitchen counter. She'd expected bad news about his dad or the Formans, but her breathing relaxed, and she mentally thanked God. "What of?" she said, trying not to sound relieved.

"Cirrhosis. Apparently she had it for while, maybe five years. She must've quit drinkin', but she started again and dropped dead."

Jackie hesitated before speaking. His pain was palpable through the phone, and empathy stabbed the back of her eyes, but tears wouldn't help him. Neither would being dishonest, especially if her intention was to subtract herself from his life. "I'm not sure whether I should offer condolences or congratulations."

"Both would probably work," he said, "but don't worry about it. I've got to head to Nevada. Her house is by the Vegas Strip, in Paradise. I'm gonna clear out the place before the bank forecloses on it."

"You? Why you?"

"She named me executor of her will."

"Again, I ask: why you?"

"She had no one else or never bothered changing it. From what her lawyer told my dad, she'd been widowed about two years ago. Could've been when she picked up the bottle again."

Jackie tangled her fingers in the phone cord. "Is Ro going with you?"

"No."

"Right. I know you like to deal with these things on your own."

"That ain't it. She's not goin' 'cause she won't—" he cut himself off—"'cause she can't."

"Oh." She freed her fingers from the phone cord. His response hadn't satisfied her curiosity, but his tone indicated the subject was classified. "What about Eric? Or your dad?"

"Forman's got his own stuff to take care of. Dad and Angie offered, but where I'm going, they can't follow. Same as the other people I could ask." Static interrupted him, as if he were switching the phone to his other ear. "Calling Brooke was a last resort, but she's got the French fry to look after, thanks to me."

He was being cryptic, holding back, and she didn't like it. She went to the fridge and rearranged the colorful magnets on the door. Steven had carried the burden of Michael's poor choices with him for years. And in Minneapolis, he'd told her he carried hell inside him. If he was harboring more lies, more secrets ... "Why can't they follow?" she said. "What aren't you telling me?"

"Been too much bullshit this year. I've got no place to hide with the tabloids ripping my life to shreds, and I've hit my limit. I've hit it. Dealing with Edna's crap, I'm not gonna be recognizable. Only a few people have seen me like that, you know?"

Her instincts begged her to abandon the conversation. He hadn't called her but Brooke. Jackie was the secondary fallback, lower than a last resort. "I don't, Steven."

"Fuck. This isn't something I want to involve you in—"

"Then why are you talking to me?" Her fingernails dug beneath a strawberry magnet. It fell to the floor, and she lost all semblance of control over her emotions. Her body dropped beside the magnet. Her back pressed against the cabinet under the sink, and the truth squeezed her throat. She had to lose the one loss she couldn't lose. Again.

"Promised my dad I wouldn't be alone," he said before she could sever ties. She flipped him off, not that he could see it. "But I've put you through enough. Brooke told me about the paparazzi swarming your house. Screwed by association, huh?" He coughed, but it wasn't phlegmy. "I'm freakin' rambling, but I'm staring into the nothing, Jackie. The one person I need the most right now, I can't fucking have."

His words were familiar, a part of her. She'd spoken to him the same way about her dad, about the days after his death. "Your mom?" she said, forcing her shaking voice into words. "Ro?"

"You."

She lowered her forehead to the tiled floor. Tears cascaded through her eyelashes, and she cursed each one. "You're using me," she said. "You'll say whatever you can to get what you want—" She hiccuped and didn't continue. Her accusation had no logic to it. Steven wasn't Michael or Dale Fischer, but what he'd said also made no sense. "I'm not a replacement. I won't be a substitute for someone else."

"Jackie, that's the point, man. This is gonna sound nuts, but you're the one I've been tryin' to find a substitute for. Soon as my dad told me about Nevada, you were the first person I fuckin' thought of. Then I called Forman a second later, from my dad's office."

He blew out a breath, and it crackled in her ear. "Forman would've gone with me, but he sucks at hiding his stress. Izzy didn't cope with Donna's month-long absence too well. Him leavin' her right now wouldn't be good, so I let him off the hook."

Jackie sat up and against the sink cabinet. If discomfort had different circles, like Dante's version of hell, they were co-existing inside her all at once. She began to sweat, even as anxiety-chills rippled through her body. "Why didn't you call me?" she said. "Why don't you want to involve me? Just say it!"

"'Cause this isn't shit you should have to deal with! Last thing I want is for you to feel used. But when I ran out of viable options, when Brooke told me you were there, I gave in. Man—" another breath crackled through the earpiece—"what killed Edna is tryin' to get back on my good side."

Alcohol. He meant alcohol, and her fingers tightened around the phone. "Steven, no. You can't—"

"I'm not. I haven't," he said, "but are you gettin' it now? You trust me to be present, and I can't promise you I'm gonna be while I go through Edna's crap. One way or the other, I'll be fucked up."

Her grip loosened on the receiver. It slipped from her ear and pushed into her cheek. "You don't think I can handle it."

"You'd handle it fine—in the moment," he said, voice muffled against her skin. "But afterward … I won't turn your concept of me inside-out."

"But Ro already knows you inside-out." She lifted the phone back to her ear. "It makes no sense why she isn't going with you. Or why she wasn't your first choice."

"Our philosophies on grieving are incompatible." He fell silent, and when he spoke again, she held her breath. "You know what hell looks like, feels like. That's where I'm goin', and out of everyone in my life, I trust you and Forman to stick by my side—and to pull me out."

She released her breath slowly. Her romantic feelings were not the beginning and end of her love for him. Severing ties was not an option, not now, not when he needed her.

"Steven..." His name was a wet wobble in her throat. Her thoughts had left her quaking, crying, but she didn't curse her tears this time. They weren't oppressive. They were liberating. "You're my Orpheus," she said, revealing what she'd realized a few weeks ago.

She rubbed her heart. It was no longer a malfunctioning hunk of rusting machinery. Emotion pumped through it without much impediment. Certain gears still moved inefficiently, but she was working to fix that with her therapist. "You rescued me from the underworld," she said. "If you need me to go with you to yours, I'll go."