Strange Famous

Well, I wrote this for something else, but I guess I can put it here. It isn't very good really, I only wrote it one day when I was bored, and there really is going to be a part II and III, for what it's worth. I hope "fanfics" count as literature...... if not sorry.

Boot Camp Clique is just me btw


Title: Hope, Fear and Epiphany in an abandoned Paper Mill (AWTR Fan Fiction part I of III)

Author: Boot Camp Clique (December 2003)

Subject: A Walk To Remember (Shane West & Mandy Moore)

Disclaimer: This fan fiction is not written for any commercial motivation or gain. Nor is it intended to be entirely faithful to either the film or book or this title, but is my own interpretation of the story and the two main characters. The author discourages playing or socialising in abandoned factories of any type.

Selected Bibliography: Jaime’s reading material is “Darkness Tell Us” by Richard Layman

The song playing when Landon and Jaime leave the club is “Slippin’” by DMX

In his bag, Landon carries a copy of “Bitch” by Elizabeth Wurzel, which he has only half read.


“I’ll break it down simply, I’m horrifyingly empty” – Warcloud

“Sometimes I look up at the stars and analyse the sky, and ask myself was I meant to be here? Why?” – Ghostface Killah

“You have to be the cutest grave digger I’ve ever seen.” – Alkaline Trio


It was 6 AM when I woke, my head throbbed and swooned and my mouth tastes like sour whisky. I pulled myself out of bed shakily, uneasily, and groped my way to the bathroom for my morning piss. I caught my eye in the mirror and did not look back, I fumbled back to bed, folded the pillow against my head, which felt cold and hard, and struggled to find my way back into sleep. I meditated on my life, my world, as sad as a dead father, and no less pointless. Last week at school we had been forced to interview with a career guidance councillor, but when I look at the future I don’t see anything. Do I want to fuck around and drink and do drugs all my life? I might. It seems to me the only way to live is to keep moving, to never let anyone or anything in to have the power to hurt you, to break you. So I’ll leave school, and I’ll probably graduate, and I’ll get a job doing this or that, and I’ll fuck around, get drunk or do drugs, and there’ll be some girls, and this, and that. And now I lie here, a thin film of sweat covering my aching body, my hangover holding on to me and reducing my thoughts to random, stuttering, kick start paranoia and self-pity.

*

By 6:30 AM Jaime was also getting up. She knelt by her bed to pray, and a stabbing pain shocked through her shoulder and made her flinch, and as she automatically mumbled her prayer she imagined her body a derelict building. The pipes where clanking and thudding as they stirred into life, the windows were broken, the roof was full of holes. “I’m broken, I’m broken” Jaime told herself, and she wanted to cry. She was scheduled for demolition, she was falling apart, her strength was drawing in on itself, retreating slowly to the centre. She knew God was with her because God was everywhere and yet sometimes she felt so afraid. And this… this… this was a terrible way to feel afraid. She rose, dressed in a conservative grey dress and the same pullover she wore the day before. She steeled herself, she told herself of the love of God, the might of creation, and how now rational being can fear a thing she cannot feel. She could smell now her father cooking breakfast downstairs. She went down to him. She thought of God, of stars and cars and shape of her own hands, turned outwards and upwards. She never thought about her mother, who was dead, also.

“Two rashers or three?” offered her father, brandishing a frying pan in her direction as she pushed into the warm, too big, kitchen.
“Gosh, only one thanks” replied Jaime despite herself, she always tried to keep her intake of fatty foods to a minimum, knowing that they were unhealthy and key contributor to heart disease.
Her father nodded and smiled, but looked dissatisfied with this response. Jaime sat and folded her hands on her lap. She pulled her hair back into a pony tail, smiled lopsidedly at her father, the Reverend, and then blinked. Outside the sky was grey and dull and threatened rain.

*

Having given up on the possibility of sleeping, I forced myself to wash and dress, throwing on the first clothes I found and brushing my teeth. I took a mouthful of water, ran my hands through my hair, and clenched my hands into it, the back of my head was throbbing rhythmically and painfully. I sighed, rubbed my bleary eyes, took two paracetamol and swallowed them dry, rubbed my chest, which felt tight and achy. I flicked my hands, which felt tingly and full of pins and needles, and finally made my way down stairs, grimly thinking of heart attacks and stomach cancer and sudden death syndrome. I found that my mother was already in the kitchen.
“Would you like some breakfast dear?” she asked
I shuddered. “Not really”
She was wearing too much make up and the hemline of her skirt was too short, showing too much of her slightly fat thighs which had once looked great to other people I suppose. It is hard to be dispassionate, to be unaffected, buy these things. What is she trying to do, I wonder? Where is her life taking her?
“Oh, Landon, you must try and eat something, breakfast is the most important meal” she complains
“Who gives a shit?” I reply, and hunker down into an uncomfortable wooden chair, and unhappily watch her shrug and turn away from me.

So, I live here with my mother. No brothers or sisters. I had a father once but he is dead. Our house is small, untidy, but nice. My mother likes to play bridge, and watch golf and Mel Gibson movies and go to Church. She used to make me come with her (to Church) when my father was alive, but I haven’t been for years. I remember the preacher, a handsome looking man, stocky and greying, who used to spout forth the most childish and ridiculous platitudes, quote scripture about a God that meant nothing to me, and whom he was so ignorant of that he hung pictures of a white Jesus all round his Church. He told me God was everywhere, that he was love: but if God is everywhere, he must be everything else too, all the hate and fear and destruction and alienation… or maybe that is just us. I never go to Church anymore because it bores me and none of the girls I like are there and your God is not mine.

When my mother was younger, her mother - a mad old bitch that no one can stand to be around now - had believed her to have some kind of psychic powers and had forced her to take part in faked seances; when a bunch of crazy old bitches and bastards sat around and talked to their dead uncles. Secretly she feared the power of electricity, and she also had confessed to me that she suffered reoccurring nightmares about the sea and being paralysed and then carried away by a giant wave. She could do conjuring tricks which I could not deny impressed me. She worked as a sales ledger supervisor at the head office of a small, state-wide, insurance company whose head office was based 4 miles out of town. When she was younger she was pretty, and now still some of my friends told me they would like to jump her. She is a middle aged woman who wears skirts that are too short for her and eclectic blue eye shadow and purple lipstick. She loved me and cared for me, provided for me, gave me food, shelter. Sometimes I hated her, but most of the time I loved her and it hurt my heart to think of her being sad or unprotected. She never swore, she never told me she cared when I swore, she asked me how I was doing at school sometimes but she never seemed to care when I told her I didn’t care. I guess she did her best, and I tried, and what more can anyone do?

*
Jaime polished off her scrambled egg and bacon without any real interest. She asked her father for permission to leave the table, washed her plate and cutlery, and then moved through to the sun room. She glanced at the old piano that her mother had played, and walked on. She curled herself into the window seat that faced the back yard, and picked up her book. When she was twelve she had dedicated herself to read one improving book every month, which she still did, although things where very different then to now. She no longer worried about how she would fit in at college, or whether the man who would be her husband would think her boobs where too small, or whether or not someone who lived a good life but followed another god, and not God, would get into Heaven, for example. Jaime kept her word to herself all the time, nothing was more important to her, for she knew God watched her from inside, and the promises she made herself where also to Him, in some way.

Ever since she could remember her father had told her about God, and now she drew strength from Him, felt she was never truly alone because she was with Him. Jaime read at least one improving book every month. Sometimes she even read the Bible, even though she had read it already. Once she had toyed with the idea of reading the Qu’ran, but had decided that to do so would be wrong, and would also dishonour her father, who had talked to her about God for as long as she could remember.

Jaime also watched trashy talk shows on TV where people fought and cursed, and she also read trashy horror novels at the rate of roughly two a week. Jaime eased herself into the corner of her window seat of the sun room, which faced at all sides the bleak grey autumn day, and picked up her book. She smiled her lopsided “funny face” smile. And then, self consciously, her real smile. She read. A nymphomaniac English lecturer was being chased, naked, around a mountain by a (naked) bald headed hermit body builder, while the other kids where raiding the (naked) hermits collection of girls underwear and stealing the skeleton he kept in his cave… Jaime hugged knees to her chest and held her lurid paperback in crossed hands in front of herself. Of course, the Reverend would not approve, but her father hardly spoke to her anymore except to offer her things or ask if there were other things that she wanted that he could give her. She felt sorry for him, she felt sorry for herself. Half of her still searched her body for the beginnings of pain, like the stabbing pain that had pierced her as she prayed this morning. The other half was lost, in some Californian mountain being chased by (naked) hermits and haunted by Ouija boards, and protected by the wild eyed football jock who clenched a rock in both hands and made fun of fat kids. She read for an hour, and then got up, and got herself ready for Ridgemount.

*

A few weeks ago I got myself into some shit, running from the police. Some kids and me run together, hang out together. It isn’t a gang, more like a clique, nothing criminal, we just hang out together like I said, look out for each other, and smoke weed and drink beers and talk about girls we’ve screwed, or whatever. A dude in the year below me wanted to hang with us, but no one really wanted to hang with him, like I said, this isn’t a gang, just a clique, just a group of friends. My man, Leon, came up with some stupid stunt, some initiation rite, to put the kid through. I don’t know, I’m not proud of myself, you must understand that if you don’t understand anything about me, I’ve never been proud of myself. Yeah, I told him to do it or egged him on at least, I guess I thought it would be funny, I didn’t really think about him hurting himself. So we got the kid to jump from too high up into a pond at the building site round of the back of Franklin Street I guess he got hurt, broke both his legs it turned out.

Some kids split, some kids bugged out. I went down and tried to check the kid who was hurt, I pulled him out the water, but someone must have called the cops. I had an ounce or two of weed in my car and some beers so I ran from those jake’s, they chased me, I hit a wall some old dude’s garden, and fucked up my ride… ah, it’s a long story. I wound up getting 40 hours community service plus my fucking prick of principle threatened to expel me. My mom sat me down and told me I needed to change, I told her I would one day. She asked me to talk about how I felt, and I told her I felt alienated, lost, alone, that the whole world seemed to close in around me sometimes, that I hated conformity, I hated America, I hated capitalism and the way that things are. She looked sad and helpless, we took whisky together and watched a Colombo special. She guessed the killer before me.

My PO gave me community service at some stupid project my school ran, for kids who were backward or falling behind. All of the tutors where volunteers, older kids from school… and me now obviously. The Ridgemount project it’s called. Pretty fucked up, huh? What do you get at the top of a ridge, but a hole you fall back into? So here I am, sat next to some fucking fat Spanish kid who’s 4 years younger than me and about one and a half times my size. I’m supposed to be teaching this great lummox trigonometry, and I’m thinking “what is the point of this?”
When, in his career as a Burger King server, one day gaining promotion to chief French Fries cook, is this poor fat bastard going to need to calculate the area of a triangle? And what do I care? What does any of this mean to me? The world if unfair and people in Iraq are dying because our country is evil, why the fuck do am I supposed to care about triangles, or whether or not the fucking police want me to smoke weed or screw girls?

“I don’t get this!” the kid next to me complained for about the eight time. Finally I lost it.
“Jesus, it’s a fucking triangle! Shut up! I don’t fucking care, stop saying that!” I yelled at him.
I stared up, embarrassed by my outburst, I saw goody goody’s shaking their heads and tut-tutting me and blushed. A girl to my far left half smiled at me, then look like she pitied me. She was pretty, dark eyed and slim. I shrugged, looked down. Yeah, poor me, poor me… whatever…

I put my hand on Anthony’s arm and muttered “sorry man”
He flinched and I looked up at him, he seemed half way between squaring up to me and crying.
“Look, seriously, why do you come here man?” I asked
“We play basketball in the afternoon” he muttered
Motivated partly by boredom I admit, but also by the slim, dark girl I had seen in the class; I stood up and put my hand on his shoulder.
“Alright, fuck this shit then son, lets go play some one on one”
He looked unsure, then smiled and rose also. He wasn’t much of a player, but I let him win. What can I say, I’m the good guy here, right?

*

Jaime disapprovingly watched Landon and Anthony playing basketball outside, and then turned her attention back to the little girl she was helping to read. She knew Landon from school, he hung around with a whole gang of his friends, who used to act up, cause trouble, turn up for school drunk sometimes. Jaime had never really noticed him especially although they had spoken maybe half a dozen times, until she had seen him turning up at the Ridgemount. Then she had looked on him in a new light. He was tall, bulky but not fat, blue eyed and languidly handsome. Maybe she had misread him. Then he had started cursing at Anthony, and then had taken him out to play basketball, as if intimidating and threatening the younger boy wasn’t enough, and wasting the time he needed to help him catch up with his class just finished it. For a moment she had imagined how she had miscalculated Landon, and that his arrogant persona and gangsta clothing hid a good heart, a honest heart, a loving and vulnerable man despite the aura of rough and protective violence which hung around him; that he would never hurt her, and instead would hold her close, and keep away anyone who wanted to hurt her, and all the fear and all the rest of it. Or whatever. She turned away from him, just as Landon drove at Anthony and was robbed by him. She guessed she had mistook him for something he was not; instead he was just another good looking bad boy, and those were ten a penny, nothing at all.

On the bus back into town, Jaime found herself sitting in the opposite seat across from Landon, who stared into space, his hooded jacket pulled up over most of his face, and his headphones pumping rap music loud enough for Jaime to feel sure she disapproved of the lyrics. He started ahead as the bus ran over a bump in the road, and then turned, caught Jaime’s eyes, looked startled for a second, then shrugged, looked down. Despite herself, Jaime smiled, but she still had to ask him twice before he took his headphones.
“I haven’t seen you here before” Jaime repeated
“Ah, well, I haven’t come here before actually.” Landon answered, he imagined urbanely
“I think it’s a really good cause”
“Yeah, well, I guess. I mean, it is, but I caught a case for running from the Jake’s and I got community service…”
“Oh”
Jaime remembered now, that her father had told her one of his parishioner’s sons had been arrested for drunk driving and crashing his car…
“You were drink driving and crashed your car”
“Well, you know… I wasn’t that drunk really I’ve been a lot more drunk other times anyway, I wouldn’t have crashed if they didn’t chase me I suppose.”

Jaime remembered herself.
“I see you and Anthony were playing basketball all morning”
“Fat Tony?”
“That’s not very nice, I think…”
“Oh yeah, sorry, he is pretty fat though”
“I think the point of Ridgemount is to help people, no to waste their time” Jaime finished angrily
“How does it help him to patronise him?” Landon replied, forgetting himself and angry too.
“Oh, why is it patronising someone to try and help them with their education and to learn?”
“Because he will never need your knowledge and your education and it doesn’t mean anything to him” said Landon finally, and then replaced his earphones, and turned the volume up on his hip hop mix tape.
“I do not patronise anyone, I give up my time, every week, to help people, who do you think you are to decree what people are and are not capable of anyway?” Jaime demanded, but Landon was not listening, and she turned away from him, and did not even get her book out for the remainder of the journey. Instead she stared at the scenery for the rest of the 20 minute bus ride, and did not speak again until the bus stopped and she found herself trying to get off the bus at the same time as Landon.
“How is Tommy?” she asked, nastily
“Who?” Landon replied
“Who? Oh just the guy who you left behind in the old factory when you where off on your drunken driving spree: with a broken leg because you didn’t want him in you little gang?”
Landon stared at Jaime “he broke both his legs, and two ribs and he fractured one of his vertebrae.”
“Is that supposed to make it better?” asked Jaime automatically, and hurt
For the first time, Landon looked genuinely taken aback, and he was incredulous as he spoke “Of course not, it makes it worse, a lot worse.”
Jaime pushed in front of Landon and walked out of the bus before him.
“You can think what you want of me, but I’m not stupid, whatever else I am, I’m not stupid” Landon called after her, but Jaime only half heard him as she walked out and Landon felt angry with himself for saying it.

*

I got off the bus a little past lunch time and grabbed a fast food burger, I felt the grey stain of my hang over draining from my skin, because of the exercise playing ball with the fat kid had given me I guess. For no real reason, I found myself walking away from home and towards the hospital. I found myself up the children’s ward, and at the bedside of Thomas Long.
He stared unblinkingly at the ceiling, both legs where encased in unsigned plaster casts, a brace held his body straight. He did not acknowledge me as I walked into his room.
“How are you doing son?” I asked, determined to be friendly.
“Why do you care?” the kid asked, laying there with his back broken because I dared him to jump of a building into a 3 foot deep pool of water.
“Well, yeah, I care, I pulled you out of the water, cos I cared and I got a fucking case cos if it man”
“Look at me! Am I supposed to be sorry for you, you bastard?” I thought he might, but I guess he didn’t. I shrugged, and couldn’t think of anything else to say, and felt sorry I had ever come here.
“You never even came to see me until now” the kid spat
“No”
“All of this… I did this for you and your friends, and look at me” he said, and he seemed like he was about to cry. I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t see why anyone should care that much one way or the other about me or my friends.
“I’m sorry”
“That doesn’t mean anything to me now”
“No, you don’t understand. I’m sorry… I mean, I’m sorry that you feel that way.”
“You don’t care about this even now, do you?”
“I’m sorry” I replied quietly, and shrugged again, more to myself than him, and then turned and walked out before I could hear what he said next. I mechanically found my way out of the hospital and into the street outside.

How can we care in this world, so full of pain and disappointment? How many had died in this place… this week? This year? And how many times was it fair? How many people cried? How many places are there in the world like this, worse than this most of the time, where people came to die… how is it fair, how is life worth it? To live in this world and care, to really care, about all of the injustice and pain and loss and destruction… surely it would kill you too. As I closed upon my house the rain finally came; and I felt a sense of blankness envelope me, a coldness that came from inside… the rain drove the smell of bleach and decay, but not the thoughts of death that I had taken from that place.

I pushed inside of my house, uncommittedly responded to my mothers querulous voice that echoed out of the back of the house, and logged onto my PC and booted up a game. I remembered a poem we had studied at school last year, “how high they build hospitals” the guy had complained. Too high, I was certain, much too high. Soon I was controlling my character, who strode around a space station blasting aliens and monsters with automatic weaponary, and not thinking about how one day I would die and be nothing at last.

*

Jaime stood at her bedroom window, and watched the rain. She imagined to herself that she saw ghosts in the shapes that reflected from the puddles and driving rain. Grey, smudged men and women, insubstantial and weak. Who killed them? She wondered, for surely they hadn’t died that way… but such thoughts, such thoughts were not right, and Jaime believed in God and His Word and His Angel’s and His Kingdom. Jaime did not believe in hell, but she believed in heaven, and not having sex before she got married, and well, she was never going to get married but… She believed that she loved her neighbour, that she turned the other cheek, that she did good deeds, and that she was a good person. But was she made that way, or was it just that all around her had always been good things? Her thoughts turned to strange things in the rain, but yet her thoughts often turned to strange things these days.

What was her belief in God made of? Some people said that a belief in God was born in fear, of unknown powers, of destruction. Yet Jaime saw the proof of God in everything. And all through history every society, however separated from each other, had found the proof of God or God’s in their worlds. Yet such different God’s they were. She thought of the Aztecs, of whom they had been taught about at school, who worshipped devil’s as Gods, and who, unlike the Spanish Christian’s who knew that God gave his blood to redeem mankind, believed that men must let their blood to redeem the Gods. Would they go to heaven when they died? Would leading a good life and loving their neighbours be enough, when they had believed in and worshipped such evil things? But how could God abandon them, when they did these evil things not because they were evil in their heart, but because they were ignorant, and men who wanted power had lied to them and told them to worship those false god’s?

Jaime had never questioned her belief in God, but rather questioned exactly who it was that she believed in. How big where His hands? As big as the world, as big as the sky? Or just big enough to stretch from here to the disused paper factory on the Old Foundry Road? How could men find Dinosaurs that where a million years old if the world was only 6,000 years old? And was Adam the first man, or a clever ape? Despite her doubt though, Jaime saw the proof of God everywhere, in all creation, she just feared that men had not understood or known God as well as they all thought, and that the Bible was written by men. But all of this, could not, just could not, be random.

She turned away from the grey rainy day, depressed by her thoughts, and by, not the weakness of her faith because it was still strong, but its unspecificity. The dirt path that lead around the side of Jaime’s house was not filled with ghosts and was not quite empty.

*

“How was it to day?” my mother asked.
“Ridiculous” I replied honestly, “unbelievable, hypocrisy and shit…”
“Oh, well… you have to keep going you know”
“Yeah I know”
“I expected you home for dinner”
“Really? Why?”
“Well, I just…I thought it finished at three”
“I went to the hospital on the way home”
“Oh, did, did you go to see your father?”
I stood to leave, “No”
“Landon, he would love to see you, you know that. You can’t blame him for everything.”
“I can, I don’t care, and I don’t want to see him.” Somehow she still seems to need clarification of these facts, with I have stated clearly and many times by now. I walked out of the room rather than listen to anymore. I want to tell my mother that he is dead: don’t you know that he is dead? That he died two years ago? That I went to his grave, that I wept at his funeral once, and then got drunk at his wake? My father is dead, and what killed him is killing me somehow. I don’t tell her this, it seems pointless, and she does not understand, and worse, she thinks she does, and so do you, but no one else understands and they never will.

*

Jaime listlessly wandered from room to room, with nothing to do, and no one to call. Time was so precious, and yet she had nothing to fill it with it seemed, but the fear of its end. A year, maybe two or maybe less, time was running out on her, and she could see no point in the world now sometimes, she could feel it all disconnecting from her and she didn’t want any part of it. What was the point of going to school to learn things she would never need to know? She found her father in one room, preparing tomorrow’s sermon.
“Jaime, would you like to read this passage with me?” he offered, sternly
“No, no thanks, actually” muttered Jaime, and wandered out of the room, not noticing the slight shock that registered in her father’s face at the coldness in hers.
She thought of the three quarter full bottle of whisky she had stashed in her closet three months ago, and wrinkled her nose girlishly, and could not help but think about Landon today. And she did not think of his sloppy good looks, or his suddenly impassioned defence of his own alienation and anomie. She thought of the way he looked he when he didn’t know anyone was looking at him, his eyes bloodshot and his complexion pale, his face puzzled with a confused and muddy aggression and helplessness; his hands unconsciously clenched into tight fists.

She sighed, smiled to herself, and curled up on bed with her book, and immediately lost herself in the plot. The shy but pretty girl was tied to a radiator by her mad perverted great uncle who forced her to wear sexy lingerie, and who right now was being threatened with a beating by the wimpy boy with the pen knife and the sexual obsession with the English teacher… At these moments, at her most beautiful, there was no one there to see. Except God, who is everywhere and sees everything.

*

“I’m going out” I called, and did not pause on my way out to listen to any views that this elicited.
“Landon, you will try not to get drunk, wont you?” my mother called after me.
For some reason this startled me, and turned back and leaned around the door, I checked with myself that I still had the bottle of bourbon I had picked up on my way home from the hospital, and felt a mild sense of expected relief that it was still there.
“Well, I do keep trying not to all the time, actually, but it’s quite hard to when I keep drinking so much”
My mother smiled despite herself as she walked towards me. “Well, perhaps you should try not to drink so much also?”
I considered this, obviously, it made sense, but I didn’t see myself in the future as I have already pointed out “Well, I drink because I’m unhappy” I complained.
“Oh Landon…” my mother signed, and looked unhappy too
“Oh come on, it isn’t that bad, I mean I’ll be all right in the end I suppose”
“I hope so, I believe so, but you really should try to be more positive, and no drinking on school nights, I should…”
“I only drunk on days that end in a “Y”” I said, and she did not smile, and then I found myself having to internally check this statement, but oh yeah, there is a “Y” in Sunday...
“Where are you going tonight anyway, don’t get in trouble, will you?”
“No, no, no trouble, just the football club I guess”
The football club was a local social club were everyone hung out because there wasn’t really anywhere else to go.
“And no driving Landon”
“Look at my wheels, how can I drive it anyway?” I protested, pointing to my wrecked car that sat in the front yard next to us
“Landon, I’m serious”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. No driving, I’m not going to drive.”
“Ok, well don’t wake me up when you get in trying to cook yourself a snack either, ok?”
“Ok, I wont.” I stepped away from the house, and then some instinct prompted me to offer as a parting shot “I love you”
My mother blushed, and I blinked, unsure why I had said it. She smiled, “well I love you too Landon, you know that”
I smiled, turned, and trudged into the dark, my hand resting through the material of my jacket on the bottle in the inside pocket.

*

“Could you give me a lift please, I want to go out tonight” Jaime asked, thinking that maybe if she phrased this as if was the most natural request in world for her to make, it might not sound so absurd.
“I’m sorry?” her father asked
Jaime recomposed herself “I just asked if you could give me a lift. To the Wildcats Social Club”
“Why do you want to go there?”
“Well, some friends of mine…”
“Which friends…”
“Well, some friends from school, Aimee and Mandy, were talking about they might be going tonight, and…”
“Well, I don’t think that this is a good idea, Jaime, and I am not sure I like the sound of these girls. That place is not a good place.”
“I thought we agreed I could do what I wanted?” Jaime whined, annoyed by the way she sounded
“Within reason, we agreed, Jaime”
“I don’t think it is unreasonable for a 17 year old girl to want to go out on a Saturday night.” Jaime complained petulantly.
“Jaime, Jaime, listen, I don’t want to argue. I just am asking you to think about it. This is a place, where youths go to drink, to fornicate, to listen to aggressive and hateful music, even to take drugs and commit other criminal acts. Is this the sort of place you want to spend your time?”
“A lot of kids from school go there” said Jaime, not liking herself for what she was now doing,
“And do you think that is what you want to be like those children?” her father asked
“It’s just… people talk about it, and I’ve never been there.” She paused, felt her eyes getting hot “and… I didn’t want to never have gone there.”
Her father coughed and turned away for a second
“Look Jaime…”
“I just want to go to a party. I only want to go to a party.”
“Of course, I’m sorry I didn’t understand Jaime”
“I’m sorry too” she muttered
“When do you want to go?”
Jaime considered getting changed, and then considered she really didn’t have anything very different from this to change in to, so she said “now would be ok, if it’s ok for you”
“Sure”
Jaime thought about her conversation with Landon this morning. I don’t think I am better than everyone else, she told herself forcefully. I chose to live my life the way I think is right, not to fit in or be above anyone else, it doesn’t mean I have to be so far apart from all the rest does it? She pulled a patterned cardigan over her long shapeless grey dress and pulled her hair, which smelled slightly of soap, back into a ponytail.

*

I sat in the great barn of the main room, which was filled with framed pictures of old players and teams, and which was busy but still half only half full. I topped up the diet soda I had bought liberally with whisky. I took a sip and despite myself winced at the strength of the mix. I thought about it for a second, then reached across to grab the bottle of brandy my man had bought in, and emptied about a treble measure of that into the glass. I didn’t wince the next time I took a pull, and I felt my head spin pleasantly with the mellow buzz of being half drunk and warm when it is cold or miserable outside. I keep telling you, that I don’t see myself in the future that much, so I live for now. I don’t want to hurt anybody, and everything I ever did, really I did to myself. I am sorry for that kid who broke his back, I never meant him to do that shit, and I never thought he would. I wouldn’t do anything like that to impress me or people like me, and I guess it never occurred to me anyone else would feel any different. All I ever asked of this world, or all I ever meant to ask, was not to care about me. I’m going my own way, my own path, I don’t know how its going to work out – not necessarily that well: but the only people I can really hurt are the one’s who really care. So don’t care about me, just leave me here to get drunk, puff weed, screw any girls maybe if they’ll let me – a life doesn’t have to matter or be important to be lived.

I leaned across to my boy and slapped his arm, took another pull of my drink we talked of cars, and where, where to drive them, and who to drive them with…

“Hey, we should go out after this and race and shit” Danny Boy speculated.
This seemed like a good idea to me, but I sought clarification
“Really, who wants to race?”
“That black kid Jermaine…”
“That kid?
“He heard about how you fucked your ride, and he was saying you couldn’t drive for shit”
“That bastard”
“He was saying with car like yours he would never get caught my the police”
“That fucker, that wanker, how dare he?”
“Samoan Steve said you could take his ride man, we should go race Jermaine and make him shut the fuck up, son”
“That cock sucker… that, that whoremonger, that fucking rat bastard…” I continued, not really listening to the last thing Danny Boy said. I realised he had said something though, from the way he looked at me, so I had to ask himself to repeat himself.
“A’ight… or no, actually. No driving. No driving for Landon”
I shook my head and stared at the floor, felt close to tears and needed to take a long pull of my drink, and then top it up with brandy also.
“Ah come on, don’t be a pussy man”
“A what? Jesus, I caught a fucking case for DUI and for smashing that old dude’s garden fence like three fucking weeks ago, I’m gonna get locked next time man, why don’t you race him? I’ll watch.”
“I guess” said Danny Boy sullenly
I stared at the floor for a second, then muttered in a conciliatory tone “I’d like to see that little crooked toothed little bastard Jermaine even find his own dick after drinking as many beers as I did that night man, let alone almost beat those fucking Jake’s”
Some of my boys murmured in agreement to this. I looked up, not really knowing why I acted this way, why I affected this whole persona “Has anyone got any wine, actually?”

*

Jaime nervously stood in the corner of the room looking for anyone she knew, could not see anyone, and felt that this wasn’t such a great idea. She could not see Aimee or Mandy even, who she didn’t really know very well anyway and she had only actually heard mention they would be here to tonight, not really to Jaime at all. She stood aimlessly for ten minutes or so, glancing up at the people who passed her. A couple of people nodded or smiled at her, but no one stopped to talk to her. Just as she was on the verge of giving up, calling her father on her cell and going home early, she picked out Landon sat with his back to wall in the far corner surrounded by a gaggle of other people dressed like him in baggy hooded sweatshirts. Determined at least that she would see it through to the end now, she walked nervously over to the group
“Hi… Hi Landon”
He looked up, confused for a second, and seemed to need to refocus before he realised who she was, Jaime wondered how much he had had to drink already.
“Hi. Hi Jaime, what’s up?”
“Oh, just, you know…”
“I’ve never seen you here before” He sounded embarrassed as soon as he said it, realising how corny he sounded.
“Well, I don’t normally, you know…”
“Right, well, it’s ok though. It’s pretty boring actually. Look, would you like a drink?” He offered his drink to her and smiled uncertainly
“No, thank you”
“Oh, its ok, its not just Pepsi, there’s lots of alcohol in it. Brandy and JD for sure.”
“Thank you, no”
“Wait, there was some vodka…”
“It’s ok really”
“I wanted some wine but there wasn’t any.” Landon muttered, mostly to himself
“I don’t really drink wine either”
“Oh, well, I could, I mean there must be something else, some beer?” he turned to his friends hopefully
“I don’t drink alcohol at all.”
“Really, not ever?”
“Not really, I haven’t ever.”
“My mum said I should drink less.”
“Maybe she is right”
“But, well, what else is there to do?”
Jaime shrugged, and stood there awkwardly, wondering if one of them was going to ask her sit with them, or if she just should, or if she should just go home.
“So how come you don’t drink, if you’ve never tried it, I mean, you might like it.”
“She’s all trying to be holier than thou or whatever I guess” said one of the others,
Landon looked confused for a second
“Holier than me?”
Jaime looked down and started to edge away
“I don’t see what being holy has to do with it.” Landon continued
“Jesus liked wine, anyway, he made water in wine.” Someone else offered
“He did?”
“For party’s and shit.”
“Nice”
Landon rubbed his head and took another pull of alcohol before he found his voice “But… but, the water wasn’t safe in those days it was dirty, they used to drink wine because it was safer, it wasn’t just cos he wanted to get fucked up I don’t expect.”
Jaime uncomfortably cleared her throat and tried to speak
“How do you know that?” Danny Boy challenged
“It was on TV, about an English King. Or something.”
“Oh, right, well I don’t know. He could have just made the water pure rather than made it into wine I suppose, one should be as easier as the other.”
“Yeah, that’s true. Maybe he just liked wine.”
“It isn’t really because of God I don’t drink, it’s just because of me.” Jaime finally managed to tell them.
“Oh” Landon said, and no one else seemed to have anything else to say. “Well, that’s ok too really” he added, generously.
Landon leaned back into the wall and found it wasn’t there and his head thumped into the wall
“Jesus!” he cried out and rubbed his head where he had bumped it, and accepted a beer that was passed to him from the left.
Jaime tried to hide her disapproval, smiled and half waved and moved away from the group not sure if any of them actually noticed, inwardly feel kind of shocked and somehow wrong herself. She went and stood by the bar and ordered a soft drink and eased nearer to the corner and away from the main swell of people.

*

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

Strange Famous

*part 2 of Part I*

had to post in two parts cos of posting size limit!






*

“What a bitch” my man Joe Joe laughed when she was out of ear shot
“Really? You think so?” I asked
“Walks around with her fucking nose in the air, what a bitch, what a fucking geek, did you see how she was dressed.”
I thought about it, I had. “Yeah”
“Probably die a virgin I expect.”
“Well, I don’t know, I don’t see why?”
“What, would you?”
“Oh, you know, I mean… definitely. Yeah.”
“Haha, she’d never fuck you man”
“No, I don’t suppose so” I admitted. This was probably true.
There was silence, so I offered “I think Katie might though”
“Who?”
“That girl… Kate… She has very big beagles”
“I have no idea” Danny Boy shrugged
“I know the one you mean, she has the biggest melons man”
“I think they’re great” I agreed and smiled contentedly and realised I was very drunk.

*

Jaime turned and found herself standing before a tall, meaty guy, a football player from the year below at school
“Hey cutie” he drawled, sounding half cut.
Jaime started and backed off. “No thank you” she muttered
“Come on, come here and talk to me” he leaned closer to her and rested his arm against the wall, trapping her in the corner
“I was just going home” she muttered again, panicking inside, thinking of all the things her father had told her about places like this.
“Aw, come on, its really early”
“Well, I have Church tomorrow”
“Ah, fucking hell, does your folks make you go?”
“Well, I think… I think he likes me to go, but I…”
“Ah, that fucking sucks”
“I don’t mind going really, and I really have to…”
“If you want to get out of here we could go somewhere.”
“Oh, thank you, but really I should be getting home.”
“Aw, that’s a shame.”
“Well, you know… I…”
“You’re really cute you know”
Jaime didn’t even blush despite herself, she felt scared and hard and just wanted to be alone and at home in her room with a rubbishy horror novel and a glass of cocoa. She smiled a tight-lipped unfriendly smile and looked away.
“It’s ok, hey I’ll walk you home” the big guy offered.
“Oh, no thanks, it’s not that far”
“Why not? Come on, I’m just being friendly.” He placed his arm on Jaime’s shoulder and she pulled away, suddenly noticed Landon blundering past 10 feet away
“Landon! Hi Landon” she said, and smiled at him a little too eagerly for it to look natural.
“Hey, hey man. Hey, what’s going on?” He stared suspiciously at the younger, bigger boy, storm clouds gathering in his clear blue eyes
“Nothing, I just… would you walk me home, please?”
Landon glared at the boy who just shrugged back and held his ground
“Well, yeah, of course, actually.”
Jaime gratefully pushed past the other guy and stood behind Landon, who glowered balefully into the near distance and let his fists swing threateningly around by his waist as his weight shifted.
“All right, let’s go” he finally decided, but as they walked off together. A burst of laughter suddenly peeled from behind them, and Jaime turned to see the football guy now surrounded by four or five other guys.
“Was that guy bothering you?” Landon asked suddenly
“No, its ok, I just, I just wanted to go home”
“Look, I’ll go kick the shit out of him if you want” Landon threatened, and wheeled around shakily, an unhappy sullen frown fixed on his face
“No, Landon, please, I just want to go home…”
“Ok, Ok… I’m sorry.”
Jaime took his arm and guided him out of the room, the sounds of laughter and chatter and flirting and alcohol welling up all around her like a headache.

*

The cold air hit me with a dizzying blast as I stepped outside. Something suddenly occurred to me
“Look, I’m sorry about today, actually.”
“It’s ok” the girl said, not sounding like she meant it.
“You know, I just, I just get frustrated. By a lot of things.”
“That’s hard”
“I just… I mean, I’m not saying people should feel sorry for me. I just… nothing in my life seems to ever be true.”
“There are some things in the world that are true”
“What, God you mean?”
“Well, that…”
“If that’s how you feel. I can’t… I just don’t see any meaning to the world, or any fairness. Why create a world so miserable and full of violence and destruction, a people so wicked and hateful as men?”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“Look at the world, torture, war, famine, poverty…”
“Maybe God made the world and people made these things of it”
“Then He fucked up when he made us.”
“Landon! You can’t mean…”
“He filled his creation with violent and intelligent animals with no real morality other than the morality of greed and vengeance, and that will tear it and themselves apart one day, where is He now?”
“There is good and bad in the world. It’s not like you make it out.”
“I don’t think the good things matter.”
Jaime stopped and pulled Landon around to face her. “Why? Why don’t they matter?” she demanded of him, desperate to make him see the truth,
He looked tolerably sober now, and he looked down as he said
“Just because all of the bad things will beat them and destroy them, the bad things and the wicked people rule this world, and those who are good only have the margins left that the bad in us all leaves them.”
Jaime sighed “It must be very sad to live in a world as you see it.”
“It is sad, if you care about it.”
“If you don’t care then there’s no hope at all, surely?”
“I suppose not, but it’s the hope that brings you down.”
“The hope that saves you, even if the world WAS like you think it is.”
“I guess it’s a question of perspective.”

“I don’t want to go home” Jaime decided suddenly, and couldn’t quite believe that she had said it out loud. She did know Landon that well at all, had seen him round school for years, had spoke to him a few times before this and the conversation on the bus. But never about anything other than the everyday: or in fact, when in the past he had asked her if they really had a test, or they really had any homework, or what class he was supposed to be in next. He scraped D’s in about half of his classes and at the same time Jaime suspected he was one of the most intelligent people in their year.
“Well, you said you did, I mean…” Landon complained
“I just wanted to get away from that guy”
“Right, that fucker! I told you I’d kick his ass!”
“No, really…”
“I ought to…”
“It wasn’t really his fault, I mean, he didn’t do anything to me, I just, I didn’t really feel comfortable, that’s all.”
They walked on a few steps. “Would you like to go somewhere?” Landon asked and Jaime tensed.
“Landon, I. I’m not asking you to…”
“Yeah, I know, I know you’re not, Jaime. I meant, do you just want to go somewhere that isn’t home.”
“Ok, sure, I’m sorry”
They walked in silence for another twenty yards or so
“We could go hang out at the old paper mill.” Landon offered
“OK”
They walked on.

“Jaime?”
“Uh huh?”
“Can I ask you something?
“Uh huh”
“I mean, I don’t mean this to start a fight or like in a negative way…”
“erm… ok…”
“Do you, do you think the way that you live is better than the way I live? I mean, for you personally?”
Jaime thought she knew the answer, how could she say it?
“I really don’t know Landon.”
“Maybe we are both getting it wrong then” he considered.
“I don’t know, I always tried to do the best things, to be the best I could.”
“Does it make you happy?”
“Does living like you do make you happy?”
“Of course not. Not really. Well, I’m not happy most of the time, in any event.”
“Do you remember when you used to go to Church, I mean, when you were younger?”
“Yeah”
“Where you happy then?”
“My father lived with us then.”
“He doesn’t…”
“I wasn’t happy then.”
“Ok, I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok.”
Jaime felt awkward, as if she had made some tactless or rude comment. To try to change the subject she asked “And can I ask you a question?”
“Sure, sure you can.”
“Do you ever watch the stars.”
“I… sometimes I do, I mean, I don’t know a lot of the constellations and things like that, but sometimes I just stare at the sky.”
“I love to watch them, sometimes I spend all night out in my yard watching the night sky. I guess it’s my hobby”
“I… the stars scare me. Frighten me I mean”
“They do…?! How do they frighten you?” Jaime was genuinely shocked.
“They are so small, so temporary”
“Small?” Jaime didn’t understand
Landon gestured at the sky “This is the universe, everything, or at least everything looks like this but more… and look at them. Such tiny pinpricks of light barely illuminate in such a huge blanket of nothingness, timelessness. The greatest force in creation, and it burns less than a candle, less than a firefly, through the space of emptiness it has to struggle through,”
“I never really thought of it that way” Jaime commented honestly
“No, no I suppose most people don’t” Landon murmured thoughtfully, and pushed through the rusty gates of the old factory, leading Jaime through them also.
“You can see all the stars from here… well all the one’s close enough anyway” Landon offered
Jaime giggled despite herself “You can see all the stars that are close enough in my back yard too”
Landon laughed
“Ha, yeah, yeah, I just mean, here, there isn’t so much in the way, it’s easier to see them.”
Jaime considered this, and the falling down building that they stood before
“You’re right” she admitted.
She know longer knew what to think of Landon, who definitely did not have a heart of gold but rather a heart filled with confusion and defensiveness against the world, and who definitely was not just a good looking bad boy either.

They walked together towards the far side of the old factory, and Landon sat down, as Jaime moved to sit next to him, he jumped up, and with a tender shock, Jaime watched him take off his hooded sweatshirt and drape it on the floor next to him.
“There I don’t want you to mess up your dress” he offered
“Landon…” Jaime smiled, and had to catch herself. Is this what it feels like to like someone, she wondered? And wondered then, just for a second, how God could make her wait till now to find out if it was.

“Do you mind if I drink?” Landon asked.
“You can if you want to” Jaime replied, trying to hide her disapproval again.
“Well I know you said you didn’t, I didn’t know if you where really against it, or just, you know, didn’t want to do it yourself.”
“I just don’t want to do it myself, if you want to drink you can.”
Landon produced a half full pint bottle of brandy which he had somehow picked up on his way out of the club.
“I think you are probably right, it doesn’t make me feel any better either” Landon admitted.
“Well, I mean, I’m not trying to preach to you Landon, but if you don’t like it, why do you do it?”
“I really don’t know I suppose. It just, it just takes me away from the world.”
“The world doesn’t have to be so bad.”
“I know, but… but in a way I would rather it was I guess. To look at the world, and see God instead, that would be wonderful I suppose, but I can’t, so I look at the world I see, and if I looked at that world, and I wasn’t angry and I didn’t reject it… anger is a more authentic response I think, even if it doesn’t make me happy.”
“I wish you could see the beauty in the world that I do”
“I wish I could too…”

Jaime rested easily against the corrugated iron of the old factory wall and sighed. Contentedly. “I feel like I can talk to you, like really” Jaime suddenly said
“Thank you” Landon took a pull of brandy, thought and then placed the bottle away from himself, although he didn’t do anything silly like pour it out or anything like that. “You make me feel the same way, but I think you mostly have just listened to me talk.”
“Not at all, and I like listening, you make me think about things.”
“Sometimes I guess I don’t say things in the way I mean to.”
“I think I understand.”

*

“I guess you probably disapprove of me, or the way I am” I asked her
“I, I don’t know if I do. I don’t think it is the best way to be and I don’t think it makes you feel better… but I don’t think I have the right to tell you to live the way I think is best either.”
“Have you always believed in God?”
“Yes, always.”
“My father believed in God I guess. I mean, I do in a way, but he lived his life for God. He used to take me to Church. My mother still goes.”
“Is… is your father dead?”
I stuttered, unsure how to answer
“I’m sorry, it isn’t any of my business.” Jaime apologised.
“No, it’s ok… he isn’t dead, but, but to me he is, does that make sense?”
“That’s sad, but yes it does.”
“ I don’t… I don’t really like to talk about it.”
“It’s ok”
“I’m sorry”
“Landon”
“it’s just…”
“it’s ok”
“It isn’t just like cos they split up or whatever, it’s more…”
“Landon, it’s ok, you don’t have to talk about it, I understand.”
“Thanks… your father is the preacher, isn’t he?”
“Yes”
“Did… did you ever resent that if it was harder to fit in at school or whatever, because of that?”
“No, I never did.”
“I think I would”
“I don’t think so, I don’t think you would.”
“I don’t know, I think you’re probably a better person than I am”
“I don’t know if that’s true.”
“Well, it’s like, you help people just to do it. I went to that thing at school cos I caught a case.”
“Maybe you could help them all the same.”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to not help. I wouldn’t do anything on purpose to make those kids feel worse, but… I just don’t see if it’s worth it or not”
“Really?”
“I mean, that kid today… I didn’t mean to curse at him and that was my fault that I was hung over and pissed off, but… in his life he is never going to need to know these things, he’s never going to college, he isn’t going to get a job where his SAT’s or GPA matters.”
“But is that the point?”
“I don’t know, I don’t… What else is the point of it all? Of school?”
“Well, you can’t see it because you’ve never felt like Anthony, for example.”
“Well…”
“I’m not being nasty Landon, but do you know what it feels like, to never understand the things that everyone around you can?”
“I don’t know.”
“And can you imagine what it means to someone like Anthony to be able to see, to be able to understand.”
“I guess I never thought of it like that.”
“Well, maybe it’s a matter of perspective.”
“I…” I felt unable to articulate myself adequately “I was just sorry I shouted at him and I thought playing ball would make him happy.”
“I’m sure it did… but you know, maybe being able to do his homework like everyone else might make him happy to.”
“I… I just never thought of it that way.”

I felt lost, bested. I reached over to my left and found the bottle of brandy. I mentally checked my own state, found myself to be relatively sober, and worried noted how little brandy was left, I was sure there was not enough to get me drunk. There was port and white wine at home I knew, but I was a long way from there.

“It’s funny, how, I mean, we’ve been at school together all this time and we never really talked.” I volunteered, wanting to change the subject
“Yes, I wish we had known each other sooner” She said strangely
“Oh well, there’s plenty of time still I suppose. I wish so too though, I probably wouldn’t drink so much or be on probation if I had had more friends like you.”
Jaime kind of blushed, and smiled up across at me “Well, the drinking is down to you, but maybe the driving when you’re drinking isn’t a great idea”
“I know.”
It was kind of funny how this was going. I mean, she had made it pretty clear that she wasn’t interested, and she was probably one of these chicks who wouldn’t even do shit before they were married or whatever anyway; but she was acting like she liked me. I didn’t know how to take it, maybe I just misread it, I guessed that maybe she didn’t have a lot of friends, and anyway, I don’t need so much complication as this and the way I was starting to feel in my life. I thought of Kate, and her magnificent breasts, her legendary bosoms, and the cell phone text she had sent me the other day, and about that thing with the tongue that my man swore to me that wasn’t a rumour and she actually did…

“Do you really hang around with many people from school?” I asked Jaime
“Not really, I… I don’t really have any friends at school.”
“Well, I know we don’t… but I think that you’re my friend now.”
“I think of you as a friend too Landon, but, but… I didn’t have any friends before today.”
“Isn’t that lonely?”
“Sometimes. I mean, I have people around me, and people I care about… I just, I never really socialised that much at school.”
“Is that, is it that you don’t really like to hang with people who aren’t, who don’t go to Church and everything?”
“No, gosh, no! Not at all”
“Oh, I thought…”
“I really don’t try to judge anyone. Things like tonight, I mean, it isn’t me, drinking and that music, and everything, but I wouldn’t not be friends with someone because that was what they liked.”
“I guess it will sound funny now”
“What?”
“Well, at school, sometimes I used to think I would like to get to know you, I mean, I guess because you are pretty or whatever, but you… I never thought you’d like me.”
“Why did you think that?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think maybe people look down on me because of who my father is, because I go to Church, and Ridgemount, and that, I mean, everyone knows I am a Christian.”
“Well, I don’t know that that’s true.”
“You heard tonight, everyone thinks I am “Holier than Thou”, that I am a loser”
“Who? Carlos? He’s a fucking idiot, I wouldn’t really assume many people feel like that to be honest with you.”
“Well, I… I don’t swear, or drink, or go to parties, and I believe in marriage, I have always tried to do what I thought was the right thing and I think a lot of people look down on me.”
“I never looked down on you.”
“Well…”
“I mean, before we talked, I never looked down on you. I thought you looked down on me, I thought you didn’t like people who weren’t, you know, religious…”
“Landon, I don’t…”
“I mean, I know now that you aren’t like that, I see that cos I got to know you, but before I knew you, I, I just always thought you were that way.”
“I never know people felt like that” Jaime commented sadly.
“Well, you know, it’s just, I mean how I felt isn’t necessarily how anyone else felt.”
“Maybe it was though,”
“I don’t know.”
“I wish I had known, or I had been different, if that was all it was…”
“I don’t think that’s all of it, and I don’t think people don’t like you, it’s just, it’s just that, sometimes maybe people think, you know, that we are all sinners or something.”
“I don’t want people to think that.”
“Well, I don’t know, maybe you should just, you know… I mean you don’t have to go somewhere and get drunk to hang out, you can just hang out.”
“I know, but my father likes me to come straight home after school, I mean, he doesn’t have anyone else… to look after the house.”
“He makes you clean the house and whatever?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say he makes me…”
“Damn… but, you know… it isn’t, it isn’t just that one thing or probably any other one thing…”
“I guess”
“And if you are happy like it is…”
“I don’t know if I am or not, I feel, sometimes I feel I’m missing out on a lot of stuff.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“Well I don’t know…”
“No, you’ll see, I think.”
“You know, you aren’t like I thought you were.”
“I’m not.”
“The way you are with your friends isn’t how you are to me.”
“Well… but I don’t, I don’t which of, is the real me.”
“I don’t think the other one can be the real one, or, but maybe they both are.”
“Which one do you like better?”
“This one I think”
“Ok”
“But the other is ok too”
“I… I never really know who I am.”
I saw that next to Jaime was struggled not to yawn, I saw the time was 2 AM.
“Hey, you probably better be getting home I guess”
“I… gosh, yes, my dad will be worried probably”
“Come on then.”
I took the last of the brandy and swung myself to my feet, the buzz of the alcohol had faded to a mellow glow, but somehow I felt sad and empty inside. I helped Jaime to her feet and we stumbled back into town and to her house.”

*

Jaime had guessed that her father would be waiting for her, but had hoped at least he would not be standing in the doorway watching as she tried to say goodbye to Landon. It wasn’t like she was going to try and kiss him anyway, that was the last thing she needed right now and it seemed as if he would just laugh at her if she tried anyway. Her father glared at the couple as they turned to face each other, but it was the worried glance of reproach from his daughter that stopped him speaking out or descending from the doorway and onto the porch, and not the look of mean dislike that flashed through the eyes of the boy.
“I’ll see you at school on Monday I guess”
“Yes, sure, I’ll see you on Monday” said Jaime, and smiled
“A’ight, see ya later, peace.” Landon finished, leaned in towards her for a second as if he was going to kiss her cheek, but then pulled away again and set off down the street
“Peace” Jaime offered, not sure what it meant.

“Jaime, it’s half two in the morning” her father snapped.
“I’m sorry father, you didn’t say a time, I didn’t know when I should be back for.”
“You stink of cigarette smoke.”
“Yes, yuck… a lot of people there were smoking”
“And drinking I guess.”
“Yes, some of them were.”
“Was that boy drinking?”
“Landon?”
“I know who he is, that hoodlum.”
“He isn’t a, a hoodlum”
“Was he drinking.”
“I think he might have been.”
“Jaime, I know… that we said that you could decide what you wanted to do now, but this is really not the sort of young man I think you should be associated with.”
“I don’t know, maybe not. He’s nice in a lot of ways, but… I’m not sure if it would be a good idea to spend too much time with him too.”
“I hope you were not smoking or drinking at least.”
“No, I don’t want to do anything like that.”
Jaime was tired and just wanted to go to bed.
“It’s a filthy habit”
Finally she lost her rag “Well, I don’t know why you keep going on about it, it’s not like I need to worry about it giving me cancer, is it?”
“Jaime!” her father almost cried out, and stepped away from her as if she had struck him.
“I’m sorry…”
Her father stared at the ground his face resolved and hard
“Dad, I’m sorry…”
“It’s ok, it’s ok, we’re both tired, lets just all go to bed and talk about this in the morning.
“Ok, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“No, it’s… sometimes… sometimes you are so strong, I forget how great the burden you have been given is.”
Jaime bit her lip, nodded, sloped off to bed.

Jaime knew that God was everywhere, and every night she said her prayers, as she did tonight, but she cried quietly for twenty or so minutes first, tears for herself, tears of bitter, abject self pity and misery.

*

I quietly eased myself through the front door and padded upstairs, lay on my bed fully clothed, and stared sleeplessly at the ceiling of my room, which had changed from black to dull slate grey before I finally slept. Outside the rain fell again, softly kissing the earth with its soothing touch, easing her pain away in the night.

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas