Actually, I didn’t. If ever one had been typecast into the Sodapop Curtis role, it was me. Not only had I been strategically placed in a supporting cast part, but genetically, I’d been gifted with certain lady-pleasing attributes, which made it easy for people to dismiss me as someone who sailed through life on a perpetual high. But that had never been me. Don’t get me wrong—I was always up for a good laugh, but when the day came to a close, I tended to retreat into my own head, where even good genes couldn’t save me.
Thankfully, Jess would never see that side of me. No one would. As the old saying went, what happened in my head, stayed in my head. There was no big mystery how I’d become such a mind freak. By all accounts, I’d been a normal little human all the way up until the year Jake disappeared. That was the year my mother locked herself in her room with sleeping pills. The year my father wore the soles out of his shoes searching for a ghost.
And the year I realized I just didn’t matter.
People sometimes asked if I was screwed up because of what had happened, and I never knew how to answer that. Life after the kidnapping was all I’d ever known. And although I’d deny it in public all day long, privately I might even admit to being jealous of my older siblings who got live a normal life before Disappearance Day—or D-Day, as I liked to call it in my head. They rode their bikes to the park alone, hung out with friends unsupervised, and lived their early years without fear and without Mom standing off to the side serving as their wingman.
Not to downplay what my older siblings went through after D-Day, because no one would deny they went through hell. But at least they knew what life was like before the grim reaper came-a-knockin’. Grace and me, we grew up thinking the Prince of Darkness was a long-lost relative—one who’d drastically overstayed his welcome.
My siblings and me all adapted to our new normal in our own unique ways. Jake screamed. Keith lost himself in drugs. Kyle got friendly with knives. Grace morphed into Pollyanna. And Emma folded in on herself. My method of coping had always been to silently seethe. There was nothing pinpoint specific about my anger; it was just an overall feeling of being slighted and overlooked my whole life. Then add to that a past that needed to stay in the past but didn’t always oblige—like today.Come on, people. I shoved those memories far down into my consciousness for a reason.If they’d just stop digging shit up, maybe I’d be a more pleasant person.
The thing I’d learned about suppressing memories was they had a tendency to resurface at the most inopportune moments. Like the time at band camp when one of the counselors growled like a monster outside our cabin before busting through the door laughing. Everyone else thought it was hysterical. I did not. And while the normal kids went on with their day, I crawled under the cabin and refused to come out until my parents arrived many hours later to bring me home.
And let’s not forget about the time some kid in the McDonald’s ball pit called my Obi Wan Kenobi socks dumb, triggering the dormant anger in me to break free of its constraints. Let’s just say that eight-year-old fashionista would forever think twice before disrespecting the legendaryJediMaster again.
I wasn’t normally a violent, unstable guy. In fact, I’d say I was your average everyday Joe ninety-eight percent of the time. It was that other two percent of trip-wire moments that made others take a step back. Maybe if I’d been more like Jake as a kid, storming around like a fucking lunatic one hundred percent of the time, I would’ve gotten it all out of my system before I grew up and that behavior wasn’t as cute anymore.
“Are you carsick?” Jess asked, mistaking my trot through McKallister hell as a gastrointestinal issue. I wasn’t sure what would make me less attractive to a female: reliving crippling childhood memories or having a stomach so delicate it couldn’t withstand a ten-degree angle.
“Something like that,” I mumbled.
“Sorry, we’re almost there.”
“Where isthere?”
“You wanna guess?”
No, I really didn’t want to guess, but by the peppy expression on her face, she was expecting me to.
“Uh… we’re headed toward Anaheim, so…”
“No,” she stopped me mid-sentence. “Not Disneyland. You already said amusement parks were entirely too much fun for you.”
“So that knocks out my second guess, Knotts Berry Farm. All right,” I said, squaring off. This girl came to play? “How about boating?”
“Is there a lake nearby?”
“We have a whole fucking ocean over there,” I said pointing in the direction I thought might host the mighty Pacific.
“No, we’re not boating, but you’re getting warmer.”
I was tired of the game now. Patience had never been one of my virtues. “I don’t know, Jess. Hell?”
“Not that warm,” she said with a smirk. Jess’s sparkle caught me totally offguard. She was beautiful in that way people who truly knew themselves were. There was a depth to her that intrigued me. She was confident and guarded, but also relaxed and upbeat. It was an interesting mix of personality traits, yet somehow they all worked together to create Jess, the world’s most perfect getaway girl.
“You win,” I said, conceding defeat. “I’ve exhausted my knowledge of the area.”
“Norwalk,” she blurted out, naming some random-ass city I’d only ever heard of but would be hard-pressed to point out on a county map.
“Well, of course.” I palmed my forehead. “Norwalk! Why didn’t I think of Norwalk? What’s in Norwalk?”
“Only the best miniature golf place ever. You get golf and go-carts and bumper boats. Dude, it’s going to be so much fun…” Jess stopped and raised a finger. “But nottoomuch fun. Just what you asked for.”
I nodded, impressed. She’d actually listened to me. Not many people did.
“Well done,” I acknowledged. “Just confused about how I was getting warmer when I said boating.”
“Bumper boats.”
