John Hart - The Last Child

“Should he be?”

Steve shrugged, but looked nervous. “Anything exciting?”

“One shoplifter. Two D-and-Ds.”

Steve explained. “Drunk and disorderly.” He tapped Johnny on the shoulder and crossed the room. “Come here,” he said, and Johnny followed him past the bank of monitors to a wall of glass that was nine feet high and twice as long. The view was onto the Food Court. Steve tapped the glass. “Mirrored,” he said.

Johnny peered through the windows and could see everything spread out below: storefronts and food stands, escalators, people. The fat guard ambled up, cupped both hands and breathed deeply. “This must be what God feels like.” Johnny wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the comment, the sheer smallness of it.

Then he saw Jack.

Red-faced, humiliated, awkward-looking Jack.

He stood at the edge of the crowd, a small, tan boy with a shriveled arm and no meanness in his entire body. He stood, taking it, because fighting back would get him nowhere, and because walking away would imply that he actually cared about the shame that was being heaped upon him. His tormentors were seniors, lean, muscled kids with self-aware smiles.

Johnny cringed when he saw spit go down the back of Jack’s shirt; but his anger spiked when he saw Jack’s brother, who stood ten feet away and did nothing to stop it. He was surrounded by fawning girls, four at least.

Johnny pointed. “Do you see that?”

Steve leaned forward. “Gerald Cross? Yeah, I see it. The girls have been like that ever since he signed with Clemson. He’ll go pro in a year. His contract will be ten million, minimum.”

“Not him.”

“Then what?”

“Can I go down there?”

Steve shrugged. “Go. Stay. I’m not your daddy.”

Johnny pounded down the stairs, through the security door and into the crowd. He smelled pizza and scorched beef, the crush of overheated bodies and, somewhere, an unchanged diaper. He angled for Jack and heard his name whispered. Fingers pointed.

That’s the guy.

It took Johnny a minute to understand, but then he did.

The story was everywhere.

By the time he crossed the Food Court, a dozen people were watching him, but he didn’t care. One of the seniors was snapping rabbit punches at Jack’s bad arm, hitting beneath the meat of the shoulder, right where the hollow bone had the least protection. Jack was trying to hide it, but Johnny saw that his friend was about to cry.

Johnny bulled his way into the group and punched the senior as hard as he could. He connected with the kid’s mouth, felt whiskers, teeth, and the ripe softness of a burst lip. The guy stumbled left, caught himself, and his hands came up, fisted. He drew back to throw a punch, then recognized Johnny. “Holy shit,” he said.

Johnny stared at the startled brown eyes, the stained teeth, and the long hair spiked with gel. The kid spit blood and stepped away. “Damn freak.”

Johnny shook with rage, with a long year’s silence and with all of the things he’d repressed since waking in a hospital room stained red. The senior mistook the trembling for fear and started to smile, then looked over Johnny’s head at the suddenly watchful crowd. He lowered his hands, tried to laugh it all off. “Easy, Pocahontas.”

No one else laughed. Johnny was a celebrity of the darkest kind, a strange, wild kid with eyes that were savage and black. He’d seen things no boy was supposed to see. He’d lost a twin, found Tiffany Shore, and maybe killed a man.

He was war paint and fire.

Insane.

Johnny held up a single finger, then looked into his friend’s bright, brimming eyes. “Let’s get out of here.”

He started to leave, then saw Gerald, who stood three rows back, tall and broad, with sandy hair and skin the color of fired clay. Johnny pulled Jack into his wake, and the crowd parted. He stopped in front of Gerald and saw how the pretty girls stepped back, how naked Gerald looked without them.

Johnny dragged Jack from his shadow and draped an arm around his neck. He did not see how his friend lowered his eyes and rolled a curve into his spine, did not see the shame and the fear and the quick, nervous twitch. Gerald towered over Johnny, ten inches taller, a hundred pounds heavier. He was summer sweat and green grass, a hero in the making, but no one watching could doubt who was in charge.

Johnny held up the same finger, stabbed Gerald in the meat of his chest. “He’s your brother, you dick. What’s wrong with you?”

The boys stalked through the press of silent people. Johnny looked straight ahead and tried to avoid eye contact, but he did see one person he recognized, another senior, tall with white-blond hair and wide-set eyes. It was Detective Hunt’s son, Allen. From the river. Alone, in steel-toed boots and a jean jacket, he leaned against a column near the back of the crowd. A toothpick rolled between his teeth, and he guarded his eyes. When Johnny looked at him, he neither blinked nor moved. Just the toothpick. Side to side.

The security door accepted the key card that Steve had given him. The door clicked open and Johnny pushed through, into a cool, open space that smelled of damp and cement. Stairs rose to the right and beneath them was a low, gray space. Jack threw himself onto the floor, back against the wall, feet drawn up. Johnny sat next to him. Chewing gum made dark marks on the floor. One of Jack’s shoes was untied, and his jeans, at the knees, were stained with grass.

“Well,” Johnny said. “That sucked.”

Jack put his face on his knees and Johnny looked up. His fingers explored a rivet, then a weld line. When Jack’s face came up, Johnny saw wet spots that turned the grass stains black.

“How did you get us in here?”

“Uncle Steve.”

Jack sucked in two quick breaths, smeared mucus along the back of his bad arm.

“Those guys are dicks,” Johnny said.

Jack sniffed. “Shit munchers.”

“Yeah. Asswipes.”

Jack laughed, a nervous expulsion, and Johnny relaxed. “What was that all about?”

“He wanted me to say something,” Jack explained. “I wouldn’t do it.” Johnny looked the question and Jack shrugged. “Jocks rule. Gimps drool.”

“Fucking Gerald. How’s your arm?”

Jack rotated his arm at the shoulder, then pressed it across his chest. He pointed at Johnny’s chest. Bandages were visible above the buttons. “You’re bleeding, man.”

“I tore some stitches.”

Jack stared at the bandages. “Is that from the other night?”

The bandages darkened. Johnny pulled the shirt closed.

“I should have gone with you, Johnny. When you asked me for help, I should have gone.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” Johnny said.

Jack beat a fist on his leg. “I’m a bad friend.” The fist sounded like a hammer on meat. “I am”-he paused, hitting again-“a bad friend.”

“Stop that.”

“I didn’t do anything for Alyssa.”

“You couldn’t have.”

“I saw it happen.”

“There was nothing you could do, Jack.”

But Jack ignored him. “I didn’t do anything for you.” He hit again, hard.

“Stop it, Jack.”

Jack stopped. “Is it true?” He looked at Johnny. “The stuff that they’re saying about you? You know?” He made a motion over his face, fingers wiggling.

Johnny knew what he meant. “Some of it, I guess.”

“What the hell, Johnny?”

Johnny looked at his friend, and knew, without a doubt, that Jack could never understand Johnny’s desperate need to believe in something more powerful than his own two hands. Jack had never felt the loss or the fear. He had never lived the nightmare that had become Johnny’s life, but he wasn’t stupid, either.