Chapter 13: Welcome Home
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I don't know exactly when it hit me, and it didn't come all at once. The moment I saw him, I saw the little boy again, waving and smiling at the back of a ferry. Only, he wasn't a little boy. And he wasn't waving and definitely not smiling. He just stood, watching as Kai stood up and fumbled around, and I lay back on the sand, staring directly up at him.
"Jack, I... hey, welcome back.. uh," Kai was muttering.
But Jack wasn't paying attention to him. He was staring back at me.
"Listen, I know this doesn't look.. I mean it isn't what you..." Kai's voice died out. He had lost all confidence in what he was saying, and knew it didn't matter anyway.
Jack turned to Kai with a glance that said nothing at all, yet it held an infinite amount of words. Then he turned back to me, almost pleadingly, and walked off. The only sound at the moment was the soft crunch of the sand beneath his feet as he headed toward town.
What had I done? I knew now for sure that something was wrong, all wrong, and I had walked straight into it, not unknowingly.
"Karen," Kai started again, a while after Jack had gone. "Look, I-"
"What? What, Kai! I knew this wasn't right, I should have known all along.. I should have trusted my instincts. I can't even, I don't even..."
My temper flared. I didn't remember exactly what I should be extremely angry about, but it knew me better than I knew me. I yelled and growled and swore at Kai. And if I knew anything at all, I knew one thing for sure. The old Karen was back.
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The days that followed were hollow. I was recovering the pieces of myself, my past. And somehow I knew that as soon as they were back, they were shattered again. I had messed up the Karen that had been becoming. The Karen that had found out how to live.
That Thursday was my birthday, and I celebrated by throwing a book across the room when Kai tried to enter for the eighth time that day. My mother was sympathetic, and she held me as I cried about the things I had done. She told me the truth about Jack and Kai, and she had regretted not telling me soon enough. My father returned the following day. I heard the whispered conversation that took place between them late into the night.
Soon it was New Year's Eve, and I was already in bed, crying into my pillow. There was a knock on the door in the evening. I didn't say anything. I knew it was my mother when she entered softly.
"Karen, honey... your father and I are heading to the bar tonight for the celebration. You should come with us, it'd do you some good."
I didn't lift my head from the pillow.
"I'd rather stay here," I mumbled miserably.
"Well, Kai is staying too..."
I was up out of bed and out the door with my parents a few minutes later. I hadn't bothered changing or putting on any makeup. I merely combed the tangles out of my hair and put on a jacket. I was scared of going back into town... surely they had heard the story by now, not only of my memory loss but of my rendezvous with Jack... yet my resentment toward Kai far outweighed my fear.
The bar was stuffy and overcrowded with the town's residents. I hadn't been there since before Jack had left, and yet it was just as I had remembered it. Ann came up to me happily as she saw me enter, pulling along a tipsy Cliff.
"Karen!" she yelled a little too heartily. "You remember meee?" She let out a massive hiccup.
I couldn't help but smile. I had never seen Ann drunk before.
"Of course I do, Ann... just not like this."
"Well y'know..." she laughed. "Cliff and I are... en... enga... we're getting married!" Cliff stood behind her with a huge grin on his face, swaying. "How bout youuu and... Jack?"
I was shocked at this. Not so much that Ann was already engaged to Cliff, whom she had been only going out with for less than a season, but that she thought Jack and I were still... well, a couple. Were we?
"Jack?" I repeated dumbly.
"Mmmhmmm.." she nodded. "Don't you remember how... how crazyyyy you are about him?"
"Oh, Jack. Right. Yeah."
Ann grinned, seeming to take this as a sign that we were also soon to be married. She grabbed Cliff and pulled him to another table, wishing me "the breast" for the New Year.
I grabbed a table in the corner by myself. Well, technically Jeff was there too, but he was passed out over the chair. Duke brought over a large mug of beer and set it before me. "Good to have ya back, kid," he said, patting me heavily on the back.
Did no one know of what I had done? Hadn't Jack told them? I took a large gulp of the alcohol in front of me.
Hadn't he been out of his house? Hadn't he said hello to any of them? Slowly I drank down beer after beer. The room was becoming a blur, I had joined the stupor of the other villagers. But it was different. They were loud and rambunctious, celebrating the hope for the upcoming year. I was drowning in the current one.
I cursed profusely when someone stepped on my foot. I had already consumed more than my normal amount of alcohol and I was feeling even more horrible. Physically and emotionally.
The light in the room was blinding. The shouts of Ann and the other villagers were pounding on the insides of my head. I realized someone had begun to count down, sometimes repeating the same number twice. It was moments until the New Year.
Something had blocked the light in front of me. I looked up, squinting, my head and vision swimming. A blur of blue and orange.
"God, Karen..." was what it said.
I knew it was him. The whole experience was so clear and so vivid that I began to wonder if, apart from feeling like I was going to hurl at any moment, I was even drunk at all. I looked up at him, his face a shadow and a blur, but I could picture his eyes clearly shining with sympathy... a look that I knew should be filled with hatred, but was not.
"I'm so sorry, Jack..." I slurred.
The room erupted in cheers as I ran toward the nearest toilet.
AN: Oh boy, vomit!
