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Chapter 2

"Where were you?"

Jo had returned to her locker to get the rest of her stuff and found her father waiting for her. His arms crossed his chest as he glared down his nose at her. Jo fought to keep the wave of panic surging inside from showing on her face.

"I went to look for you in the library. I didn't see you."

Jo opened her locker door and grabbed a few books. "I was there, Dad."

"I didn't see you at any of the desks."

Did he know?

"I wasn't at a desk. I sat in one of the corners to read. It's… quieter there. You, uh, I guess you didn't look hard enough."

Jo's father raised an eyebrow and frowned at her. Her heart thumped hard against her ribcage. Had he seen her coming back from the woods?

He didn't buy it, but he looked too tired to push her about it. He scoffed. "Guess I didn't. But I didn't see you in any of your afternoon classes."

Jo shut her locker door. "I… got lost."

"You got lost?"

"Yeah."

"Trying to find all of your classes?"

"...yeah." The walls shrunk around her.

"But you could find the library. Okay."

"It's… bigger! …than the other classrooms."

He sighed. "It's not rocket science, Josephine. But you've never been the sharpest tool in the shed, have you?"

Her stomach turned at the insult. Jo shook her head.

Take the bait. Take the bait. Take the bait.

"We're on the same page, then. Take these." He handed her his keys. "Get in the car. I'll be right behind you."

Jo nodded, snatched up her backpack, and scrambled to find her way to the parking lot. She followed the sound of revving bus engines, as the horde of students had already made their way out of the halls. Finally she made it outside, squinting against the bright afternoon sun. She found her father's pinto, fumbled with the keys, threw her backpack in the back, and shut the door.

The tape.

She knew she'd need a creative way to smuggle it in. The first thing he'd do when they got home was make her empty her backpack. Every pocket. He never said what he was looking for. But she did know if he found that tape, she'd never get it back. And it wasn't hers to begin with.

Looking over her shoulder at the front doors of the school, she watched for any sign of her father. He hadn't emerged yet, but she didn't have a lot of time. Jo yanked open the front pocket of her backpack and snatched the tape out as fast as she could, covering it in the loose folds of her shirt as she dove into the front seat.

Jo looked in the rearview. Her father was at the front doors. He turned to say something to someone behind him. This was her chance. She thought about putting the tape in her jeans pocket, but she didn't own a wallet, so she never had anything in her pockets. He'd see the bulge and question it.

He was walking towards the car.

Jo panicked and slid the tape under her bra strap, just below her collarbone. She adjusted the front of her baggy shirt to hide anything that looked like it shouldn't be there. Before she could even try to look in a mirror, her father was opening the car door.

"Keys."

Jo tossed them into the seat. Her hands had started to shake.

"God, Josephine, hand them to me!"

"Sorry." Jo fumbled to pick them back up before her father sat down. "Sorry."

When she held them out to him, he snatched them out of her hands and silently started the car. Something soulless came over the radio as they began to move. Jo watched the other cars go by, the clusters of students standing around them.

They passed a van that had clearly seen better days. A cloister of boys stood around the open driver's door. They wore mostly black. One wore an Iron Maiden shirt. Another twirled a drumstick between his fingers as he talked with his friends. They all fell silent and turned to whoever was in the driver's seat, listened a beat, and burst out laughing. The speaker poked his head out of the driver's seat with a mischievous grin sprawled across his face long enough to get rapped in the head with a drumstick. The guys, all of them, laughed harder as the driver gave the boy a playful shove. He smirked at all of them, the afternoon light turning his brown eyes golden.

Eddie.

Jo put a fist in front of her mouth to hide the smile that had burst across her face. Part of her hoped Eddie wouldn't see her… and a lot of her hoped he would.

Her father sighed. "You mark my words, Josephine. If anybody's gonna burn this town to the ground, it's those punks."

That tape suddenly felt a lot heavier.

Town passed in a blur. No one said a word on the way home. Home was a small house in one of the lesser neighborhoods in town, but compared to the old apartment back in New York City, it should have felt like a palace. The second story was where her room was, where she was itching to retreat as soon as she came through the front door. Her father shut the door behind them and turned around with his arms across his chest.

Shit. He saw me. He saw something. He was just saving the explosion for–

"Backpack, Jo. Now."

Jo set it down and unzipped all the pockets, her cheeks burning with embarrassment at the invasion, but relief seeping through her. She was safe for now… and that meant Eddie was, too.

It was only half as full as it should have been, considering what she'd missed. She took out the textbooks she had managed to collect before lunch, her sketchpad, Lord of the Rings, and her Walkman before turning the bag upside down and dumping everything else out. With an eyebrow raised, her father pawed through everything… which was only the books, the sketchpad, her Walkman, Lord of the Rings, a box of pencils, a few wrinkled syllabi, and a pack of gum she never chewed. He frowned.

"Pick this shit up. Go do your homework or something."

She wasn't stupid enough to tell him she had none.

Jo sank to her knees and bent to pick up the first book tp put it in her bag. The tape started to slip. She gritted her teeth. He was still watching her. As quickly as she could, she shoved everything back inside her backpack, holding her arm just so, hoping the tape wouldn't fall–

It wriggled free. Jo slapped a hand over her stomach and caught it under her shirt before it could rattle to the ground. Her father scoffed.

"Just… a klutz." Jo's heart galloped in her chest. She turned her back to her father and slung her backpack over her shoulder with one hand. She folded her arms across her stomach, pinning the runaway tape in place as well as she could, and turned back around, looking at her feet as she scurried past her father, up the stairs, and into her room.

Jo pulled the door shut behind her, dropped her books, and fished out the renegade tape, staring at it for a second. She wouldn't be able to listen to it until well after her father had gone to bed for the night, so she needed a place to hide it. After pacing around with it for a minute or so, she wound up stowing it in a drawer under a stack of t-shirts. It was only once everything had been re-folded and closed up that she allowed herself a sigh of relief.

She worked on repairing her sketch of Charlie until dinner, which she didn't eat much of and ate quickly. After a shower, she returned to her room, her focus divided between her sketch and the noise in the rest of the house. It was by no means big, and sound traveled. The sun had set a few hours ago, so she'd be hearing the TV downstairs turn off at any minute. She'd then only have a half an hour at best until her father went to bed. Once that happened, her night could truly begin, and the time until it did dragged its feet.

Finally, she heard snores rumbling from the room below hers. Jo made herself wait a few long minutes more to make sure her father was really asleep before she tiptoed across her creaking floor, careful to avoid the places in the wood that squeaked the loudest. Smiling widely, she lifted her Walkman out of her backpack, set it on her bed, and fished Ride the Lightning out of its hiding place in her chest of drawers.

She eased her curtains back to let the starlight in. That was one thing she immediately enjoyed about moving to the middle of nowhere. The stars didn't hide behind the city lights here; they were the city lights. She could see the vapors of the Milky Way stretching across the sky. Everything outside was bathed in silver.

Her mom would love it.

Jo sat down on her bed, put the tape into her Walkman, slid her headphones on, pressed play, and fell backwards onto the pillows, letting the music wash over her. The album eased her into its world with a peaceful acoustic passage, before fire was spewing from her headphones, and with a giant grin, she was punching a fist into the air. The sheer speed of Fight Fire with Fire took her breath away. James and Kirk, blowing her mind once again.

Eddie played guitar. Could he get his fingers around this? From what she'd seen, he might just be crazy enough to try.

The smile hadn't left Jo's face. She closed her eyes and imagined her mom there with her, sitting on the edge of her bed, her head and long black hair bobbing in time with Ride the Lightning and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

The ride slowed into Fade to Black. As she took in its meaning, tears rose to Jo's eyes. Trapped Under Ice met her where she was at. A gnawing feeling eating at her stomach, she raised one headphone off her ears, just to make sure the snores were still there. They were.

She readjusted her heatset just in time for the next track to start. Like with the others, she'd held the casette case up to the silver light pouring in through her window and squinted to read the title.

Escape.

Feel no pain, but my life ain't easy

I know I'm my best friend

It certainly felt that way sometimes.

No one cares, but I'm so much stronger

I'll fight until the end…

Jo nodded along through the rest of the first verse and the chorus, trying to take in all the moving pieces at once, just as she had with the other tracks. Her ear usually drifted to one thing at a time, until–

Rape my mind and destroy my feelings

Don't tell me what to do

I don't care now, 'cause I'm on my side

And I can see through you

Jo's eyes flew open. Her heart started to pound.

Feed my brain with your so-called standards

Who says that I ain't right?

Break away from your common fashion

See through your blurry sight

"Holy shit," she whispered.

Out for my own, out to be free

One with my mind, they just can't see

She could think of one person who definitely couldn't see, and never would.

No need to hear the things that they say

But those things were so damn hard to fight, it was hard to tell where his voice ended and hers began…

Life's for my own, to live my own way

She'd always felt like an animal trapped in a cage, with a keeper poking an electric rod through the bars. She'd curled in the corner and resigned herself to it.

See them try to bring the hammer down

No damn chains can hold me to the ground

But… what if there was a way…

Life's for my own, to live my own way

It took her a second, after the music had faded between tracks, to realize her hands were shaking. She dove for her Walkman, rewound until she got to the beginning of Escape, and let it roll again. Her mom would say she was breaking the laws of first-time album listening–maybe Eddie would, too–but she needed to hear it again.

I don't care now, 'cause I'm on my side

And I can see through you….

Maybe…

Life's for my own, to live my own way….

Maybe there was a way out of the cage.

But she didn't have the faintest idea of how. The cage, though it had seemed bigger when her mom was around, was all she'd ever known. The chains had bitten so far into her flesh, they were all but a part of her now. Removing them would not be easy. But maybe…

Maybe she didn't have to live like this.

But… what else was out there? And how did she do this without–

Baby steps, JoJo. This isn't something you can sort out in one night.

Her mom had returned to the foot of her bed. She smiled, but there was grief in her eyes. Jo remembered what she'd told her the last time she'd seen her:

When things get dark, look for the helpers. Things to look forward to. Find your friends. They'll do everything they can…

but if you tell a soul about this, her father's voice cut in, you don't wanna know what I'll do to you if you do, let's just leave it at that

The quiet between tracks roared in her ears. This time, she let it go on. Besides, the next track was Eddie's favorite… and it had teeth.

Once it revealed its full ferocity, it enveloped her entirely, sending her to an ancient world of plagues, of power, of vengeance and deliverance…

Yeah. Creeping Death was a masterpiece. She'd be sure to tell him that when she saw him tomorrow. As the final instrumental track tickled her ears, Jo found a smile lighting her face again.

She would see him again tomorrow. That was something to look forward to.

'Atta girl, JoJo.

She'd listen through the album twice more before she finally decided to go to bed. She put her Walkman and her sketchpad back into her backpack and carefully tucked Ride the Lightning into the front pocket, concealed under a few folded syllabi and her horde of pencils.

The words still echoed through her mind as she fell asleep:

Life's for my own, to live my own way

She dreamed she broke the lock of her old apartment door and ran through the city streets, laughing and dancing in the rain. Her mom was by her side.