WAKE (Wattpad edition)

50. Dig out of the rut.

Soundtrack: 'Mess of me' - Switchfoot

{Jon}

Jon found his body was too tense and restless to get under his covers and lie down. He picked through the objects on his desk, opening drawers and checking the closet like the room belonged to a stranger. In a way, it did—he wasn't going back to being the old Jon. He didn't have to go back to church, ever. It was slowly sinking in.

He removed the posters of Christian bands and sticky notes of verses from youth group lessons papering his walls, balling them up and stuffing them in his trash bin. His headache throbbed quietly at the base of his neck, but he felt like he could breathe more easily with the walls open and bare.

He pulled out his drawers one by one and dumped their contents onto the floor into a cluttered mountain of battered notebooks, mismatched socks, guitar picks, and clothes that no longer fit him. Laboriously, he began to sort through the pile, collecting on his desk the very few things he wanted to keep from his old life and take to their new house, wherever that was.

His father knocked on the door and then opened it and looked inside. Jon sat back on his heels, meeting his dad's searching glance with his own weary expression. He didn't get to keep his door closed anymore: he got it.

"Do you want me to pray for you before you head to bed, son?" Pete asked hesitantly.

Jon dropped his eyes. "No, thank you."

Pete was silent for a long moment. "Jon, I—put the knives and scissors away." He cleared his throat softly. "I know you might—have a sharp on you and I...just want to say please don't. Hurt yourself tonight."

Jon folded his arms over his stomach. He didn't have a sharp on him—he'd left it on Cary's bed while Cary and Pete had been fighting. He touched his dad's look just for a second and nodded.

"Also," Pete said hesitantly, "we want you to have your phone back. To keep in touch with friends you trust. With Cary."

He turned, wide-eyed, in time to see Pete lay the phone on Jon's desk. His father met his eyes, his face lined with worry and much of the same exhaustion Jon felt. "I took it to the phone place to wipe it and change the number, as a precaution. In case your...dealer...reaches out again."

Jon's eyes dropped to the phone. He'd had a lock on his phone screen—probably his parents hadn't checked his messages before they'd wiped it. And once his dad left, he could access those messages and all his old contacts with a couple keystrokes.

Which was something, under their new agreement, his dad needed to know. Jon exhaled. "I can still reach my dealer. I backed my stuff up on an app I can just log into. And get it all back." He met his dad's eyes, feeling heavy. "But I don't want to—contact him. I don't want to have to go through quitting again. It wasn't worth it." The skin on his arms crawled at the thought, and he was sweating a little now. "I can just block him, but—maybe you shouldn't trust me with that."

Pete put his hand over the phone, frowning as he searched Jon's face. "I'm willing to trust you with this," he said slowly. He slid the phone toward Jon. "But I don't trust anyone involved in the drug world. They're going to want you back." He sighed heavily. "If you were me—what would you do with this phone?"

Jon held still, looking at the device, black and blank and a little battered. He knew what the right thing was to say but he wanted to read those notes from Kurtis again; he wanted to hear Cary's voice on the other line. He hated to have to be the one answering this question. "I don't need it," he said in a low voice. "I can do shit on there and hide it from you. I think you should confiscate it."

"Seems pretty hard on you to just be cut off—from people who care about you right now."

Jon met his dad's eyes. He had expected Pete to be hard on him now that he was back under his roof. Instead, Pete's look was concerned and open—he was genuinely ready to give him this, to trust him again even with Jon standing in the middle of this mess he'd made, trying to come clean. Jon ducked his head, blinking rapidly. "I could block him. You could tell me to delete my social media accounts so he can't use those to reach me. If I don't contact him, he won't have the new number."