Liam
Present
Jesse trails off. “It sounds so fucking stupid, Liam. Why was I so gullible? I wasn’t a naive kid. I was raised by an asshole father who was convinced that every person was out to fuck him over. But Whitaker? There was something about him that just… maybe I hated myself so much that I wanted to throw myself into the situations he tossed at me. Maybe I wanted others to hurt for hurting me. Maybe I was just some naive asshole.”
I shake my head because that’s not really how I see it. “He manipulated you every step of the way. He gave you safety, something you hadn’t had in a long time, maybe not even since birth. He gave you food, warmth, and most of all he created a divide. He was good, the outside world was not. So now the question is, what did he do to the people he had you collect?”
Jesse swallows hard, tears in his eyes. “I didn’t know. I wanted to believe him so I simply believed him.”
“How long did you not know?”
“A month, maybe.”
“And how long did you keep doing it after you knew?”
“I didn’t know what he was doing to them… they just… the ones he was sending me out to trick weren’t good people. They were lecherous men who wanted to prey on me. A few of them got rough with me. One beat me so badly I thought he was going to kill me. I hated them. I wanted them to suffer…”
“Was he killing them?” I ask.
I have to hand it to Jesse, he doesn’t even look away from my eyes as he says, “Yes.”
“How long before you knew that?”
“I don’t know, Liam. A part of me thinks I knew for a while. Another part tells me I didn’t know at all. But I think I was just… pretending not to know because Whitaker made everything bad in the world right. He knew I wasn’t ruthless like Zach was. He… he sent Zach out and he brought back a woman. I didn’t know that he had, but I found his trunk open with blood in it and Zach was gone. I looked up at the house and found Whitaker wearing this… look on his face. A look I’d never seen before. I just… I remember telling myself to go to my room because this wasn’t my problem. And Whitaker… I knew something wasn’t right. I knew it was wrong. I knew I needed to get away. I knew so much, Liam, but still… fuck.”
“So what did you decide?”
“I smiled at him and I told him that I would help Zach find the missing person. And I think Whitaker thought I’d finally decided that I belonged there. That I was broken enough, that I hated the world enough to become his puppet, much as Zach had. So I ran into the woods looking for someone, not knowing what I was going to find.”
TWELVE
Jesse
Age sixteen
I stare into the empty trunk, my thoughts winding back to the man I’d tricked two weeks ago at Whitaker’s request. It hadn’t gone well. I’d flirted with him, and he’d acted so interested in me that I got a bit lax. And then, when I pretended to be tipsy to lead him out to the car, he’d smashed a bottle against the back of my head and crammed me in his trunk that looked much like this one. I was bleeding, my head fuzzy, but still I tried to fight him.
If Whitaker hadn’t been following, what would he have done to me? Beaten me? Raped me? Killed me?
He was a bad man… and I’d started to wonder if Whitaker wasn’t telling me the truth about how bad these people were. At that moment, when the man was leering over me, watching me with a grin on his face and clear intentions of what he was going to do to me, I realized how much I hated humans.
A part of me had wondered if my parents would even care if I died. Would they go to my funeral? Would they pretend likeI was still a part of their lives? Or would they go, “Good, that’s what he deserves”?
This was karma for being the son they never wanted. For being unwanted.
And at that point, I stopped even trying to fight. Sure, I was bound, but I could have tried to fight. No, I lay there and waited for it because Ideservedto have him kill me. Because I hated myself so fucking much, even if I hid it and pretended like I didn’t. Ihatedmyself. I never sought help from social services because I knew I was a waste of life. I would be taking resources and a placement from some child who deserved to be helped.
And just as he was reaching down to me, Whitaker had whacked him across the back of the head so hard, the man hit the ground. Whitaker had reached in and pulled me out, pulled me free. He’d saved me even though I’d resigned myself to the understanding that I didn’t deserve to be saved. And the way he’dheldme like he was relieved to find that I was okay.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize he was that bad. My client… my client wasn’t clear how horrible he was,” Whitaker had said as he’d checked me all over, then hugged me while I cried. I think he thought I was crying over the trauma of the man’s attack, but I was crying for myself. I was crying as I faced the fact that I hated myself enough that I was resigned to whatever that man was going to do to me.
“Everything okay?” Whitaker asks, snapping me back to the present.
“Yes, just… seeing the trunk made me… think of him.”
He comes over to me and wraps an arm around my shoulders. “We can’t excuse what horrible people do. These people come from the darkest pits of hell. You, my dear Jesse, you were just born from dark people, but I can already see their hold slipping off of you. It’s weighed you down for sixteen yearsof your life. It’s time to let that darkness go. We need to cleanse the world of those who hurt others.”
I smile as he squeezes my shoulder. “I’m going to help Zach.”
