LOTF: Before and After

Phase 3: Chapter 34

Jack Merridew had a life so complicated, God himself wouldn't have the means to dissect it. People tended to think being a member of the Merridew family was like striking gold or winning the lottery, but Jack wasn't just a Merridew; he was the youngest Merridew, and the only son of Evan Merridew. Believe it or not, this was actually more of a disadvantage than it was a leg up in life.

But Jack knew that having a complex life didn't make him exceptional. It'd be implausible to come across a person who's life wasn't complicated in some way or another. What separated Jack Merridew from the rest is what his complications made of him; who he had to become to make sense of the nonsensical.

Ralph's label of masochist wasn't totally far-fetched, Jack knew. But it went deeper than that. Jack didn't just accept pain, he sought it out. He thrived in encounters with danger, tragedy, uncertainty, and imminent threats. The greater the risk, the more alive Jack felt in the face of it. While he knew this wasn't what a psychologist would deem typical human behavior, Jack didn't wish to change this about himself. He was comfortable in his satisfaction with torment and tribulation.

The exception to this comfort resided in Evan Merridew, and whoever aided him in bringing Jack into this world. Family was certainly the only adversity Jack had ever grappled with that he couldn't stay standing long enough to face. There was no sweet talking or snarking his way out of those conversations. Jack knew only how to shut down when asked about his parents. It made him weak, it made him stutter, drop his head, lose the words in his throat and choke on them.

If Jack had to choose between jumping through a ring of fire and holding his own in a conversation about his family, he'd choose the ring, without having to give it a single thought.

Everything about where Jack came from and who he was because of it was a substantial part of the reason he rejected the idea of getting close to another person. He never desired having a serious girlfriend. Since he first stopped finding girls repulsive, Jack decided that casual was the way to go. Kissing in front of lockers, holding hands in the hallways, watching movies at their houses, things like that. He didn't want a girl who'd ask him about his family, who'd obsess over him to the point of wanting to immerse herself in every detail about him. The girls who thought him pretty, athletic, and in-demand would be enough; the girls who saw him as nothing more than a trophy of popularity, who would want him for nothing more than arm candy, to show off. Jack didn't want anyone to care about him. Dating would be a mutually beneficial investment: she'd get a high status boyfriend all her friends would be jealous of and he'd get to be touched, kissed, and desired without being loved, cared for or understood.

What could possibly go wrong?

Jack knew he shouldn't have chose Emma. She was too kind, too smart, too endearing. She fit none of the previously established criteria for what he was planning on looking for in a girlfriend. But Jack had the misfortunate factor of the island weighing on him when he returned to Dalton. He'd gone to the same elementary school with all the kids he reunited with in the last few months of eighth grade. He was nine-years-old when he got sent off to the academy, and everyone knew why he left. And when he returned, they all knew why then too.

Though his entire school knew he'd just survived five months stranded on an uninhabited island, Jack still considered himself lucky. Nobody knew he'd had any hand in killing anybody. Nobody knew he'd managed to single handedly turn a bunch of civilized cadets who were being groomed for success into raving, animalistic savages who nearly stopped blinking in the face of murder. But the island itself was enough to scare the civilized, untainted girls in Dalton, Georgia away from Jack Merridew. It was as if the tragedy of being stranded and abandoned on the island was a contagious disease, and if they got too close to him, they'd catch his misfortune.