Bad: Chapter 21

"Little bird
Hoppin' on my porch
I know it sounds kinda sad
But what's it all for?
Right now you're the only friend I have in the world
And I just can't take how very much
Goddamn
I miss that girl"

- The Eels


Jet was convinced that this portal was sucking his soul right the fuck out of him.

His eyeballs were aching and burning and he wanted to pull away, but he couldn't stop himself. He was horribly and hopelessly lost.

This child, this sweet innocent thing, the only pure soul he'd encountered in this trash heap of a galaxy was just a few blips and bleeps away, and the melancholy of such an insinuation was shredding his insides to pieces. And this thing, this tenebrous, awful hole was the only door through which he could reach her. Sickening is what it was.

In the thousands of hours and minutes that had passed since Edward's departure, he'd learned that not only could he not teach himself to stop worrying about her, but also that she may have been his only hope for some salvation in this life.

Only Edward could save them from this meandering misery and mediocrity.

Even still, it wasn't her burden to bear, and he'd be damned if he let their failings land on her shoulders. She had no way of really knowing how deep it all went.

But what could he do? Nothing. Not a goddamn fucking thing. He was as useless to her as he had been to Spike when he'd returned to the ship, standing over him as he slept, in the darkest hour of the night. All he could do was cook the condemned his final meal and watch him march into oblivion. Jet didn't have the brass to try to question fate the way Faye did. She was a survivor—the only one of the three of them who was brave enough to fight that which he and Spike accepted to be inevitable, to try to spin the wheel of fortune in her favor.

Who was he to interfere? It was she who had kept pulled them through the bedlam when the sky caught fire and rained down the scorching ruins of their wasted lives.

But still, the panic wouldn't leave him. He wanted so badly to blame her, to blame Spike. It was him she was helping after all. He wanted to curse them both for their insane self-regard. Instead, he simply sat on his worn-down sofa in his rusty ship and let the uncertainty and dread push in on him from all sides.


"It's time for bed, love."

"I know, babe."

Madeline Houten leaned on the back of her husband's chair.

"You know, but here you sit."

Miles turned his head up to look at her. She frowned lightly. Small wrinkles were starting to form at the corners of her mouth. He didn't mind.


When he'd met her she'd been Maddy Nichols, co-captain of the equestrian team, ever-present headband simultaneously securing and taming her elegant oaken curls as she serenely tread through along the brick walkways between campus halls. He studied her intently in their British literature class when he should have been studying Brontë.

Much like the trained thoroughbreds she galloped upon, she was a female of excellent breeding. She exuded class at a level that could easily be mistaken for snobbery. Despite his attraction to her, even Miles was willing to concede she was probably an uptight bitch. He would only find out later that her aloof detachment from her peers held far greater meaning than could be explained by common arrogance.

However, it would be many years before he would be allowed to witness, to experience all she held inside. In retrospect, he was able to reconcile that the ill feelings and fear that seized him in her presence were truly nothing greater than the result of being shown his own self in the reflection of her divine, simple purity, which was fortified by her unimpeachable rank and the prestige of her family's incontestable wealth. While he had grown up in a wood-framed foursquare, she had been raised in a Tudor revival. In his mind, not a single thing about him could possibly enhance her already sublime existence.

Naturally, it was his duty as an impudent proletariat male to drunkenly inform her of his conclusion.

He'd been sitting in the waiting area of the diner near campus that all the students frequented. It was 1:00am and he was inebriated at a level which he'd found he was far more vulnerable to melancholy—it resided somewhere between 4 and 5 scotches.

His friends at his side were in far better place, loudly joking, bothering the frenzied hostess with their obnoxious behavior.

It was then that she appeared.

"Hey, Maddy!"

Miles' friend Charlie, the least self-aware member of their tribe, beckoned her over. She'd been heading either to or from the ladies room; he was too dazed to know which.

She stood before them, looking perfectly put-together even at this late hour, her crisp navy slacks and striped sweater more appropriate for a lunch at the country club than a late-night meal at a greasy spoon. Miles admired the way the slim, brown leather band of her watch accentuated the daintiness of her small wrist.

"Hi, Charlie."

"Maddy, dear, what brings a girl like you to a place like this?"

"The same thing that brings all of the other students here—coffee and conversation." She knew very simply and astutely the larger implications of his remark and was having none of it.

"You shouldn't sully yourself by associating with riff-raff like us. You, my darling, are a lovely rose, and we are but ragweed. Persistent, but pedestrian, and the cause of much sneezing."

"Poetic, but a bit droll for my taste."

Charlie stood theatrically, sliding his arm around her waist, pulling her close to him in an unoffending way.

"My point is made! We are but jesters in your noble court!"

Maddy leaned back, avoiding the vapors of alcohol following Charlie's every word.

"Now, if you do not mind, I would appreciate it if you would save my seat while I take a piss."

Gaily shoving off with one foot, Charlie departed, leaving Miles to stare up at a somewhat bemused and befuddled Madeline Nichols.

She slid her hands down the back of slacks, smoothing them in a truly lady-like fashion as she took Charlie's open seat next to Miles. He became instantly nervous, and sobered considerably for it. However, his melancholy persisted.

"He certainly makes no attempt to hide his opinions."

"Yeah, he should learn to shut up sometimes."

"I appreciate the candor. I often get the feeling others wish to share similar sentiments, but they don't."

"I wouldn't take it personally. People just get intimidated is all."

"I suppose I understand on one hand. On the other, I can't say I'm not disappointed."

"How's that?"

"Everybody looks at me like I'm an alien."

"Well, you sort of are."

She tried to take it in stride.

"My parents were upset that I chose to enroll in a public university, but it was important to me. I didn't want to continue living in such an insular world where everything was so goddamn…palatable." She made a face at this last word.

Miles was as surprised by her blaspheme as he was appreciative of her extraordinarily reasonable perspective. Still, his sullen, affronted ego was not willing to let her off so easily.

"How are you enjoying your time slumming it with the common people then?"

She cast him a sideways look. "Fine, I guess."

"You guess?"

A fragile smile began to form, a soft and special shifting of her innocent features. She tilted her head and her lips parted, as though to force the words she was holding to move. He wanted to be charmed by it, and he was, but he was certain anything that such a gesture might have meant to suggest could never have been intended for him. It hurt so damn bad. He couldn't help but take it personally.

"Why'd you come here?"

"My friends and I…"

"Not here." He gestured. "Here."

She looked at the floor. "I just told you, I…"

"You know, I think your friends probably miss you by now."

"Oh…Okay."

She rose rigidly, and looked only ahead, into her exquisite and uncomplicated future, as she left him sitting in the alone and went back to her table, somewhere out of sight.


Days of agony followed. He woke every morning feeling run down, his mind spinning even in his sleep.

He wanted only to be able to crawl inside her mind, to live inside her thoughts, which were surely so fully-formed and not at all a mess like his own, thoughts which he knew so little about and now never would.

He wanted to be someone else, somewhere else. When was it, he wondered, walking down through the cemetery during winter break, the sky and grass and headstones all the same colorless hue, that he'd begun to hate himself so much?

Despite how much his very being pleaded, so loudly that he swore there was no way she could not have heard it, she gave him no reprieve. She did not acknowledge him again, soon the semester had ended, and they did not share a single class for the rest of their undergraduate careers.

The following autumn, she did not return, and never did again.

He knew he was being a little dramatic, but he was convinced, after thousands of hours of solitary deliberation, that he'd just changed the course of his life for the worse.


AN: Let's pray I can keep this going.