A/N: This story emerged from nowhere. I don't know where most of the ideas for it come from. Everything written is dreamed up in the process of writing, and only late at night. How the story unfolds is a mystery that is being revealed to me as I try to get it down in a document. It is exactly what it wants to be when it wants to be it. I tried to pin it down with a structured plot and an outline, but the moment I started doing that, it took itself away from me and refused to be written. It lay dormant for about six months before I felt that I could finally start writing again. I read a passage in a profile on AIM (Emu's profile to be exactly). The passage went like this, "I sit in the dark, thinking. I close my eyes. But there is no difference. The dark is still dark. You have to try harder than you ever thought possible. And realize: there will be light." And I thought, that's Moon. I should use that somewhere. Suddenly, it called to me again, and I've not been able to stop writing it since. It's taken three days, which is immensely fast for me. I've forgone almost all of my other projects to get it down before it leaves again. If you don't understand it, don't feel bad. I really can't say that I do either. It makes no sense and perfect sense to me at the same time. This is the strangest and perhaps the most brilliant thing I've ever written. I feel confident saying brilliant because it's not mine to brag about. It is its own and will always be that way. Therefore, enjoy and review please.
(Also, if you haven't caught on by now...it does not follow a linear timeline. All italicized passages are flashbacks to an event that's happened sometime within the recent or not so recent past.)
Chapter IV
When they brought her in, Raven instinctively cast a forlorn look to Jack, her dark eyes immediately locking with his. Though the others were the ones that spoke, she paid mind to only Jack. She stared at him as though her eyes were willing him to stand up for her. To speak. To say anything on her behalf….for one kind word, no matter how meager. Yet, he said nothing. Even if he tried, he could not force his lips to move, much less have intelligible words come from them. His eyes were unable to break her gaze, so he simply stared silently – his feet riveted to the floor and his mouth stitched shut with steel threads. Her sad eyes pleaded with him further, but still his only offering to her was more silence. Jack thought he saw her shoulders begin to slump and her breaths grow more ragged. Her eyes were red rimmed and her lids sagged. Were they watering? Or were his own that were blurring his vision? Without looking away or faltering, he saw her mouth open slightly and noiselessly form one word.
Please.
It jolted Jack. Raven did not beg. Raven never begged. Try as he may before the last week, Jack would have never been able to conceive that Raven could be in such a pitiful state. He tilted his head and befuddled, squinted his eyes and searched her face for clarification. "What?" he mouthed to her, hoping that she'd repeat her plea so that he'd be certain of what she had said. However, in response she only turned her head away, apparently humiliated that she had even let so much as that one foolish word slip away from her as physical proof of her vulnerability. Though she didn't reiterate her question, her secondary reaction was enough to convince Jack. The one word, alone, coupled with her air of defeat was enough to practically send him over the edge. His throat began to burn, and his insides shrieked, twisted, and writhed. He felt as though he were holding his breath and had been for hours. His heart was in his stomach and his hands gripped the chair until his knuckles turned white and his palms sweat even more. He could stand it no longer. Suddenly, he rose from his chair. It fell to the floor with a clatter as Jack swiftly exited the room.
"Hey! Where do you think you're goin' Kelly?" Lamp called after him, but Jack neither answered nor heeded the unspoken command to stay. He simply kept going, swiftly striding onward out of the front door of the Brooklyn Charity Lodging House for Newsboys and down darkened Charles Street. He walked at a ground eating pace, his boots rhythmically thumping the cobblestone path. Jack slowed his pace. Where did he think he was heading? Back to Manhattan? It was a damned long walk. He cleared his throat and spat sour tasting phlegm on the ground. His pace slowed to nothing, and he ran both hands through his hair twice. He turned and over his shoulder looked back toward the lodging house. The light still glowed orange in the window. He thought of Raven's pleading eyes and how he had just walked out on her. Again, he thought. I've walked out on her again.
He licked his lips and pulled his cowboy hat onto his head. Biting his bottom lip, he looked up to the stars and instead found the moon glowing amidst the darkness. "It's the same moon as here," he heard a voice say inside his head. He laughed at the thought. "Well," he said out loud to no one but himself. "If it's the same moon as here, why does it feel so far away?" He cast one more glance toward the glowing window. Jack didn't know whether it was obligation or loyalty that beckoned him back to the lodging house, but after he kicked a stray pebble and cursed himself and his heroic notions, he found himself walking toward it.
"Well, well...looky who's back," Lamp snidely said when Jack walked into the dank, smoke filled room.
"Shut your face, Lamp," growled Jack, pulling up a chair. Its legs screeched painfully against the floor as he dragged it to the table. He turned it backwards and then straddled it, propping his elbows on the table. Glancing around, Jack saw that Raven was absent. "What'd you do with her?" he asked, directing his question toward Midtown's leader.
"Don't worry, Jack," Lamp answered smoothly, "We ain't did nothing to her. Your boys got her, and they're takin' care of her."
"I wasn't talkin' to ya, Leonard. So, like I said before, stick that pipe you're so proud of in your face and shut it before I have to take care of you. I'm not gonna ask ya again," Jack snarled, his voice rising to an authoritative volume. Lamp for once heeded the command. He scoffed slightly and then stuck his grandfather's pipe between his lips, sucking on it thoughtfully as he silently fumed like a reprimanded child. Jack nodded toward Kit, raising his eyebrows to wordlessly pose his question once more.
"She's fine, Jack," Kit assured him. "Snoddy and Kid took her upstairs. They're up there with Specs right now. Nothing's going to happen to her. Don't worry."
"Raven with three boys alone in a room? My, my...I bet she's not thinkin' about Spot right now," Lamp butted in with a smug smile. Kit shot him one good stern look, and Lamp waved his hands in surrender. He leaned back in his chair and returned to his sulking and pipe smoking.
"What are we gonna...um...do about 'er?" Jack asked hesitantly. He stared down at the dirty, worn oak of the table, afraid to lift his eyes to meet any one of the other boy's faces. He was uneasy about what the answer might be. In truth, he really did not want to know, and would have been perfectly fine being ignorant of it for the rest of his life. But his compassion made him care and forced him to inquire and await their response with his heart in his throat.
"The only thing we can do. We do to her what she did to Spot," Charlie Mulready spoke up. He took a ragged breath. "We talked about this while you were gone. We can't come up with anything better that won't cause trouble in the long run."
Jack could barely bear the thought, much less speak it. When he finally managed a reply, his voice came out in a choked and wavering, "We kill her?"
You got a better suggestion? Lamp asked. "We're not little kids anymore. We ain't playing around here. This ain't some stolen shooter or petty fistfight. This is serious shit."
"But we can't just kill her. We're not a bunch of savages that go around murderin' women. What's next? Are we gonna start knocking off the old beggars in the street to put them out of their misery? What about babies? We gonna go down to the orphanages and twist their little necks so that they don't have to know what a miserable life their gonna lead?"
"That's not the issue, Jack and you know it," Kit reminded.
"Oh? It's not?" was Jack's sardonic reply.
"Don't be protecting her jack. Don't you dare protect her," Esco muttered.
Jack sighed. Head in his hands, he wanted nothing more than to live in the past, where life was simpler and his heart weren't so heavy. "Calm down. I ain't protecting her. All I'm saying is that isn't there some other way? Something better? Anything?" He searched the room for comfort, but all he found was a lack of it. He was surrounded by his friends, but yet, in that room, he had no ally amongst them. Every boy present looked at Jack with the same fierce expression in their eyes. They had all learned early on that to tolerate even the slightest betrayal was to invite danger to their table for tea. The absence of tolerance had kept them safe, and to stray away from their code of survival for some tiny shadow of doubt was foolish and would only eventually cause more harm. The urchins and poor boys of the street were a ragged family, but a family nonetheless. Nothing was more important than a fellow family member except for the well-being of the family, itself. Jack knew this reality well. He had been a firm subscriber to it and swore his life to defend it. How ironic for him to now doubt it and crusade against it.
"Fraid not, Jack. Fraid not," said Kit in a weary voice.
Esco chose that moment to rally behind his leader and defend the fallen Brooky's honor. He looked up, his eyes coloured incredulous and almost menacing. "Don't you understand? She deserved it Jack," he spat out and beat his fist upon the table. He rose up three inches from his chair and thrust a pointed finger at Jack. "Spot was your friend too, even if you weren't outta Brooklyn. I thought that you would be the first one to stand up for Spot, and now you're sitting here in front of everybody defending that whore that slit his throat. You're crazy, Jack. Fucking crazy if you think that you're going to get her out of this with some kind of pity vote. Well, I got news for ya – there ain't no reason anybody should feel any sympathy for that bitch upstairs. Ain't nobody forced her to do anythin'! You know it, I know it, and everybody sitting 'round this table knows it. There's nothing else to it. She brought this upon herself!"
"Sit down and shut up, Esco! I thought I told you to stay out of this," Kit said sharply. Esco sat down and held his tongue, but drummed his fingers on the table and shook his head in disbelief. Kit paused as he surveyed Esco. He sighed, and then his voice changed. "But you do have a point. This is the way it has to be." After another ragged sigh, he tapped his thumb on the edge of the table and turned to Jack to state simply, "You know as well as I know that this ain't always about doing what's right or fair. We gotta protect ourselves, that's what's most important cause nobody but us gives a damn about us. And we gotta keep the peace amongst the boys so that all hell don't break loose. That's how it works. That's how it's always worked. Everything we worked so hard for all falls apart if we change it now. I'm sorry, but that's how it's gotta be…..An eye for an eye, Jack. "
Jack closed his eyes at the blatant truth of the statement. It was beyond his control, and he knew it. There was nothing he could say or do to change anyone in the room's mind. Besides, why should he? "An eye for an eye," he repeated finally.
When Jack looked around the table once more, he felt as though he were finally looking with his eyes open. He saw what was really there in the cluster boys gathered close around him and scratching their chins with furrowed brows of worry and contemplation. The harsh reality of it was that they were not the officials set to keep the peace amongst the boys, holding the trial for the goodness and well being of their own. No, they were mere boys, manchildren playing at a grown man's game. They knew nothing of life, only a mere sliver of it that they could mimic...reproduce to their best knowledge. Yet they took it as seriously as they took death or any other harsh matter. And this scared Jack more than anything he had ever known before.
While he was forced to be absent from it, Jack longed for his own familiar surroundings – the streets, buildings, sights and sounds of Lower Manhattan. Though he'd only been gone a mere four days, he found himself longing to return to it as though he'd been gone from it for a year. He missed his bed and the younger kids' fights and complaints. He missed the comfort of his selling spot and the monotony and challenge of pushing over a hundred papers a day. He sniffed his hands and clothing. They reeked of smoke-ridden mold, water drenched wood, and fish – North Brooklyn's stench. It was all over him...in his hair, on his skin, in his nostrils. As he trudged the long way back to his own territory, he thought of just how nice it was going to be to wash it off of him. It was such a pleasant, welcoming thought that Jack quickened his pace as he drew nearer to Duane Street. Once the lodging house was in sight, he almost broke out into a full sprint. Yet, he held back instead. A few steps later, he noticed a solitary stranger lingering on the front stoop. He squinted his eyes, but could still not make out the figure's identity. When he got finally came close enough, he could make out that it was a female, dressed in long, dark attire. He rolled his eyes, figuring that it was probably one of Blink's conquests that he'd left behind. "Poor silly girl," he muttered to himself, "Waiting out there all alone for him to meet ya when he ain't gonna." Jack shook his head at the fate of the abandoned wench and called out to her, "Hey! What are you doin' there?"
The girl was obviously startled by his cry because she jumped and her hand immediately went to her heart. She whirled around in a flourish of long skirts, accompanied by her long black braid. Once she turned to face him, he could make out the surprise in her round, doe eyes. "Looking for you," was her simple answer. It was not some broken-hearted broad waiting out for Blink, but Marion adorned in a warm smile that almost made Jack forget every last trouble that had wrapped itself so tightly around his heart. "But I heard that you weren't around," she continued, "and no one knew when you might be coming back."
"Yeah," Jack said, shoving his hands in his pocket. He'd left the Brooklyn lodging house directly after Kit had delivered the final word. His obligation to the cause was over, and once the meeting had adjourned properly, Jack had taken hold of his freedom. He was sick of wasting time and effort, sick of the helplessness and pain – sick of Brooklyn as a whole. He shoved the few belongings he'd taken with him into his pockets and told his boys to watch over Raven and make sure nothing happened to her that wasn't supposed to. He was going back to Manhattan, he said. And he didn't care who tried to stop him. Jack wouldn't spend the night with murderers, he assured him as he walked through the door. It wasn't his style. Standing on his own doorstep and happy to be there, Jack simply told Marion, "I was in Brooklyn. Tendin' to some business."
"Well," she asked, eyeing him curiously with hands on her jaunty hips. "What are you doing here now?"
"Gettin' away from some business," he answered. Jack scraped the toe of his boot along the cobblestones and cleared his throat before cautiously starting to speak. "You told my fortune once." Marion nodded. Jack returned her nod with one of his own and continued, "Well, do you know anything about dreams?"
"I know some things about dreams," was her answer.
"Good. Because I've been having a lot of them and there ain't one of them I can say that I understand."
"That's how dreams work, dear. You aren't supposed to understand all of them. Every once in a while, you do come to grasp a few. But it's usually a belated understanding, revealed only with hindsight's perfect vision." As Jack was finding more and more, when she spoke, Marion's words were often cryptic. His brow furrowed, and her face eased into a sympathetic expression as she offered Jack as comforting, compassionate smile. "I'm hungry," she said, "I think there's a diner up the street that's still open. Why don't you let me buy you something to eat, and we can talk about what's been troubling you, okay?" Jack nodded. Upon his agreement, Marion threaded her hand through the crook of his arm, and the two walked down the street arm in arm for a ways until they reached the diner that Marion had spoken about.
The lights inside were still blazing. When Jack pushed open the door, he found the restaurant mostly bare. What remained of the clientele were a few nighthawks and workers knocking off from their last shift. A worn looking waitress stood at the counter, her chignon unknotting itself from its pins and loose tendrils falling around her face and neck. She poured a man in pair of grease stained pants and a dirty shirt another cup of coffee before looking up to see the new arrivals. Marion led Jack to a table in the back of the room. They both sat down and the waitress soon made her way over to take their orders. "What can I get you?" she asked in a pleasant, yet fatigued voice. She turned over two of the coffee cups on the table and began pouring them full of hot black liquid from the pot she held.
"I'll have some buttered bread and a bowl of leek soup. Oh, but make sure the soup doesn't have garlic in it. I don't think leek soup does. I can't really stomach garlic well," Marion answered. Both she and the waitress then looked to Jack.
"I'll just have a cup o'coffee," he mumbled.
Marion's brow furrowed. "Are you sure?" she asked. "Aren't you hungry?"
Jack shook his head. "Nah. I'm not hungry. I haven't been hungry for a few weeks."
"Oh," Marion returned, "Are you sick?"
"Yeah, I might be," was his reply.
The waitress soon brought Marion's food to her. She started in on it hungrily. After a few full spoonfuls of soup, she broke off a piece of her bread and tried to hand it to Jack. He refused, wishing it away with a wave of his hand. Her hopeful face fell slightly, tinged with a bit of hurt and worry. She took another swallow of her soup and said, "Tell me about your dreams, Jack. Describe them to me."
"Well...sometimes there's blood," he began.
"Blood?" she interrupted.
"Well, not all the time. Just every once in a while," Jack explained.
"Why don't you tell me about the ones that you have most frequently then?"
"Well, they're kinda like...." As he tried to recall a vivid example, Jack found his mind drifting backward to a memory. How he'd remembered it or even why it was being brought back to his mind at that moment was a mystery to him. But he leaned back in his chair and let it consume his thoughts. Within it, he allowed himself to escape to a sweeter time. As the light in the room, the furniture, the weather, and the white noise of that day flooded back into his mind, he felt lighter – as though a great stone burden were lifting off of his chest.
"So, Spot – do you like her?"
It was just a simple, innocent question, but Jack had known better than to ask. Spot's eyes flashed a shade of nervous vulnerability. It was sudden and almost imperceptible to the human eye, but Jack caught it. Spot laughed and tapped his fingers on the table. He leaned back in his chair and tilted his chin up so that he looked at Jack through slitted eyes. "Well well Jacky-boy, if I didn't know better, I'd swear you've grown a spine since last time I saw ya," he said. The tone of his voice was one of joking and jest, but behind the smiles there was a note of defensive condescension. Spot's lips curled into a sideways smirk. Jack hated that smirk. He had seen Spot pissing mad, seething and fuming with hellfire and rage. He had also seen him blindly vengeful and merciless. But it was only when he saw that crooked smirk that he felt the most uneasy. It meant that Jack had crossed the line, and Spot was deciding whether or not he would let him escape with his dignity. It meant he had all the cards and knew who would win the hand.
He stopped laughing and cleared his throat with two short coughs. The smile never leaving his face, he leaned forward and propped his elbows on the table. "Look Jack, Lizzie's something special. She ain't like us, and you know that. I'll admit to that. But what I do or do not do regarding whatever feelings I might be havin' toward her is none of your business, I'd say." He spoke with the assured tone of one telling a small child that fire would most certainly burn him.
"Alright," said Jack, surrendering. He threw up his hands and played it off as though he hadn't expected Spot to answer all along. He went back to eating his sandwich but as he chewed in silence, he seethed. Jack was older, taller, and as far as he was concerned, wiser. What gave Spot the right to treat him as he did? It was embarrassing, the way the Brooky bullied him sometimes. Jack hated saving face and backing down to his every command. Just once, in one burst of pure glory, Jack wanted to reach across the table and give the smug boy one good swipe across the face with his fist.
As though reading Jack's thoughts, Spot leaned over once more and said in a low voice, "Yeah, so I like her. What's it to you? It ain't never gonna go nowheres. I got Ray, and Lizzie can't stand the sight o'me. So, I put her down to just another pretty face that's fun to toy with sometimes. She's probably too good for the likes of me anyway." Spot shrugged. "And Jack," he added after a moment's passage, "If you tell anybody this, you're dead." He smiled widely. "I swear. I'll kill ya with me bare hands." Spot produced a smoke from his pocket and struck a match on the table to light it. As the cigarette smoldered, Spot leaned back in his chair once more and gazed off into the distance. He took a long pull from the smoke's end and added, " And you tell your boy Skittery to keep his hands offa Ray if he knows what's best for him. Does he think I don't have eyes or..." Spot took another drag lowered his eyes to meet Jack's. "Ears?" His lips curled into a knowing smile and he offered Jack a drag. Jack refused and Spot shrugged. "It's gettin' late. Don't you have papes to sell?"
"Yeah, Spot," Jack replied. "There's always papes to sell."
"More coffee sir?"
Jack sat up, startled with the arrival of a waitress holding a piping hot pot of coffee and looking at him expectantly with arched eyebrows. "No," he told her, "No thank ya." He glanced at Marion and found her staring at him with an oddly bemused look painted across her face. "What?" he asked her, sitting up in his chair and rubbing resolutely at his itching nose.
"I was wondering what you were thinking about. You looked so distant. I thought you'd left me," she replied.
"No, I was, uh..." He coughed, the building congestion from too much night air rattling in his lungs. "I was just remembering one of the dreams. It was strange...like a memory or something. In fact, I know it is. I remember it like it was yesterday. We was, me and Spot, sitting in a diner." Jack paused to survey the room. "Yeah, it was a diner a lot like this one we're sittin' in now. And we were talking just like we always did. There was nothing too strange about it, I guess. I just don't know why I'd be dreamin' about something like that." He shrugged, and shook his head as though trying to ward off some unsettling thought. Jack picked up his coffee mug by the bowl of it instead of the handle and took a few full mouthed sips from it. "I'm fine. Really, I am." As he hoped, Marion seemed satisfied with his response and had returned to hungrily gulping down her soup. He was safe – at least for the rest of the night.
Jack didn't know how he got there or why, but he found himself standing in the foyer of St. Peter's Cathedral. He hesitantly walked down the long aisle that split the pews into two sections, each footstep resounding like thunder through the eerily still building. He settled into the seat of a hard wooden pew about eight rows back and stared at the statue of the crucified Christ that rested in a recessed portion behind the very center of the altar. Almost mechanically, he knelt and crossed himself. Still kneeling, he closed his eyes and tried to utter a prayer that he had learned in his youth, but found himself stumbling clumsily over the words as he tried unsuccessfully to recall them.
Frustrated with his lack of ability to bring them to mind, he got up off of his knees and once again sat back into the wooden pew. What was he doing here, here wondered. Church was no place for a dirty, tarnished soul like himself. After the events enveloping his life of late, Jack doubted that he would ever be able to wash enough to be clean enough to ever step foot in any church. In order to make himself more presentable to God, he folded his hands neatly in his lap and resolved to sit until he had emptied his mind of all the foul thoughts that plagued it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another slide into the pew beside him. When he turned, he found that it was a priest attired in the traditional black and white robes. He was getting up in years and most of his dark hair had turned to gray. Yet, he had kind eyes, and a warm, welcoming smile.
"Hello, my boy," he said to Jack. "What's a fellow of your age doing here? One would think you'd be at work."
"Work. Yeah, I guess. I came here to think," Jack answered. "I hope it ain't a problem. Cause if it is, I can leave."
"No, no. It's perfectly fine. All are welcome in God's house," the priest assured him. "What did you come here to think about?"
"Some serious stuff. Nothing that I wanna mention. I just needed a quiet place to think...and I don't know, maybe pray a little or something."
"Are you a Catholic, my boy?" the father asked.
"Yeah. Well, no. Well, I mean...you see, I used to be. I don't know. I guess I'm not anymore," Jack said, his eyes downcast. He didn't dare look at the priest for fear that he'd disappointed him somehow by not being the model of a faithful, practicing Catholic.
"Then, tell me son," the older man replied, "In this great city, what made you seek out a church to take refuge in?"
Jack looked at the priest dead in the eye and answered him point blank. "Because I can't forgive myself for what I've done."
The priest looked slightly taken aback for an instance, but quickly recovered. In a calm, nonjudgmental voice, he simply asked, "And what have you done child?"
"I told you. I can't talk about it. I can't." Jack reverted his eyes back to the floor and nervously tapped his foot on the stone tile below. He was certain the priest was eyeing him warily for such inconsistent behaviour, and it made him nervous to think of it.
"Do you feel lost?" the father asked kindly.
Did he feel lost? In response to this, Jack said not a word. He licked his lips and stared off into the distance. He could hear the brief strains of vocal harmonizing coming from the choir loft. Did Jack feel lost? He thought that perhaps that was exactly how he felt. No one, not even Jack, had ever nailed his sentiments so perfectly. How odd it was that a complete stranger, a fifty-something year old man of God, had pinned down his sea of emotions in one word. Still, answering the father's question or trying to convey his situation This old man would not understand half of it even if he related every inch of it to him in detail. He would not understand anything of Jack's world, and there was nothing Jack could do to help him. Therefore, why should he even try? Why should he make one earnest bit of effort if it would all be grossly in vain? Jack fixed his eyes on the crucifix behind the pulpit and uttered not a word.
The priest was apparently a patient man. He waited in silence, giving Jack ample time to answer if he should choose to. Unbeknownst to Jack, he had quite a bit of experience dealing with the problems of lower class men of his age. Through time and experience, he had learned that it was best not to push or try to coax anything out of young men like Jack. When it became obvious that Jack wasn't going to volunteer any information or offer up the slightest explanation, the priest deemed it proper to pursue another method, one that was closer to his own heart. "If you do feel lost, my child," he began, "You should know that there is no reason for you to. Jesus is the answer to any hardship you may face, no matter the difficulty. He is always there and can guide you through anything. You must only trust and obey him. There is no sin to great for the Lord. Jesus came here to die for our sins so that we may all never have to feel lost again."
"Oh did he?" Jack finally said. "Even for a poor, dirty street rat like me?"
"Yes, my child," was the priest's answer, "He did."
"Yeah, well, I might need him to come down here an' die again for what I did." Jack rose from the pew. Standing, he felt the need to offer the baffled priest some explanation. "I got papes to sell," he offered as though it were an answer that refuted any question the father might have asked, then excused himself and walked back down the aisle and out of the smoke smelling church. Just before the massive wooden door slammed shut behind him, he caught the last verse of the doxology sung by the rehearsing choir. The song echoed from the high loft and filtered down upon the rest of the church with a perfectly harmonized haunting melody filling the ears of whomever was in close enough or cared to listen.
"Jack, what's your vote?" When Jack didn't answer, Kit tried once more. He rapped his knuckles loudly on the table and raised his voice to a volume of force. "Jack!?! You alive down there? I asked you what your vote was."
"I, uh...I'm," Jack heaved an exhalation full of frustration and exhaustion. He rubbed his temples as though massaging them along could chase the dull, persistent ache from his head. "Oh, what does it matter what I vote? You got your answer."
"You still have to vote, Jack," Charlie insisted.
Jack didn't bother refuting Charlie. He didn't even bother acknowledging him with a look. He didn't want to plead for his side or make his case. He didn't want to fight anymore. He was tired and homesick and sick to death of the entire damned thing. Therefore, Jack only stared down at the table and continued rubbing the sides of his head. "In that case, I vote not to vote," was his reply. "It's not what Spot would have wanted."
"Well," spoke up Mac. "If Spot were still here, there wouldn't be any need for him to want or not want anything." Mac had been practically silent for the entire proceeding. It seemed to Jack that he'd only found his voice within the last two hours. He spoke up when there was something to be won, Jack mused to himself. Only when he had to, and other than that, he didn't appear to give a damn.
"Whatever," said Jack with a sneer.
Kit groaned and mumbled curses under his breath. He was long tired of Jack's stubbornness and his downright refusal to comply with anything the entire meeting. He disputed anything that was said in opposition to his case, and refused to pay mind to or even hear reasoning if it did not support his cause. Jack's attitude was impossible and selfish, and Kit had had just about enough of it. If Kelly wanted to act like a child, he supposed he'd have to treat him as though he were one. "Okay, Jack. Fine. Have it your way. I'll count your vote to not vote as an "against". That alright with you?" When Jack said nothing, Kit nodded and then began to look around the room to each boy as he quickly tallied the votes in his head. After he counted them once more just to be certain, a somewhat relieved look of finality came over his face and his brow unfurrowed itself for the first time since the talks had begun. "Alright then. It's settled," he said, "That's two against, and four for."
Jack's shoulders slumped. He knew what the count would be. He knew exactly how things would end. But in his head, somehow he held onto to the prospect that perhaps it would somehow not turn out that way. Now that the votes were in and everything was said, done, and utterly final, Jack found he could deny it no more. It was what it was and there would be no changing it. His heartbeat slowed itself to a painful thumping, each pulse of silence injuring him more. He closed his eyes and clenched his left hand in his right, bracing himself for the next inevitable sentence to fall from Kit's mouth. However, it would not be the smooth, cool tone of Kit Nellwyn that breached Jack's ears. Instead, he heard a snide, pleased voice dripping with oily satisfaction rise out of the silence.
"She can meet Spot in the river," Lamp Leonard remarked, "It's only fitting."