Breathe Me || Completed

22.2

22.2 - Jack

We find the boys playing in the dirt with some other kids, setting up tracks made of sticks and cans for their match box cars to go through. There are only four cars so the six kids wrestle for a turn each time someone is finished whooshing through the course.

Samantha sits down with them without hesitation and asks, "Can I play?"

Brady launches himself toward her, crying, "Sam! Sam! Sam!"

Jack and I are a little more hesitant. We sit down a little ways from them in a grassy area, close enough that we can hear their squeals of delight but far enough away that they don't notice us. I watch a barefoot girl in overalls hand Samantha a dusty lime-green racecar.

Jack shakes his head. "She really is something," he says.

I feel a twinge of annoyance. Step off, asshole. She's mine. But Jack is looking at me sideways, grinning. I try to smile back. "Yeah," I say.

"Can't believe all that shit she said to Junie. Girl really knows how to press buttons, huh?"

"Yeah," I agree again.

Jack starts tearing up blades of grass from the ground. "You know, she really ain't an awful person. Junie ain't, I mean. Maybe she don't make all the right decisions all the time, but she ain't a bad lady." He looks to me for my agreement.

I want to nod, but I tear up my own blade of grass and start to shred it in my fingernails while I watch Brady push his little car through a beer-can tunnel. She's not awful, maybe, but if she never strived for herself, shouldn't she have at least thought about her children before she let drugs consume her life? Where's their chance, their future? She's giving them nothing. When she dies, their inheritance will be a tin of match box cars and all her debts to the bank and her dealer and everyone else.

"She had her reasons why she never visit," he mutters, sort of an afterthought.

I look at him. Sweat slicks his brown curls, making each ringlet shiny and defined. His green eyes are focused, a little watery. He's wearing jeans and a t shirt and a pair of sandals that are falling apart at the seams. He never got much of a chance, either, I guess. "What were her reasons?" I ask.

"What?"

"You said she had her reasons. What were they?"

He blinks at me, then at the grass. "Well," he says. "She never says it, but I think it's 'cause she used to have a daughter."

"She did?"

"Mhm. Amber. Dont' talk about her a lot no more, but she told me once. She had 'er when she was sixteen. She died when she was seven."

I feel sick suddenly. Sixteen? That's only a year older than Samantha and I. I can't even imagine how traumatic that would be, having a baby that young and then losing it so soon. "That's awful," I say.

Jack nods. "If she was alive now, she'd be around our age. So Junie used to figure maybe she'd save up the money and the two of 'em would pick up and move to New York and they'd grow up together."

"She told you this?"

"She was high." Jack gives a bitter chuckle. "Maybe that's why she love me," he mutters to himself. "Just a replacement child."

My thoughts exactly. I flush, feeling as though he caught me in the act of devaluing him in my mind, although he isn't looking at me at all. I get bold enough to put my hand on his shoulder in comfort. "I don't think so," I tell him. "The way she looks at you . . . she really loves you. Even if you started out as some sort of stand-in, she really does think of you as her son."

"How could you know that?" he asks, but the tightness in his muscles relaxes slightly under my hand. He sighs. "So y'all are headed out tomorrow, huh?"

"Yeah. That's the plan."

"I got half a mind to go with you."

I blink at him. "You want to run away? Really?"

Our eyes meet. I see confusion and a little amusement in his face. "Run away? Nah. But that David . . . Sam's dad? He ain't a good guy. I don't feel right 'bout you two goin' down there all on your own." He clears his throat, looking back across the dirt plain at Samantha whose hair two of the little girls have started to braid. A sorry smile falls over his face. "An' he owes my Ma a shit ton of money."

"Your ma as in Junie?" I ask.

Jack's chest puffs with laughter. "You seen any other of my Ma's 'round here?" he jokes. "Far as I know, she's the only one."

My face reddens. "Sorry."

"Nah, don' be sorry. I'm only joking around with ya."

But it's not just that remark. It's all of him. Meeting people like Jack never fails to remind me of what a selfish, dumb piece of shit I am for giving up a perfect life to do whatever it is I'm doing now. I had a loving mother and father, a house that was not on wheels, plenty of food in the fridge. I had running water and new shoes every other year. I never had to watch anyone do drugs. I never had to worry that my parents were going to leave me.

And yet. Here I am. Why?

When my eyes land on Samantha's sweaty back, I remember.

Either way, I was going to hurt people. I guess I chose to hurt an innocent small-town family with two daughters to spare, rather than a tired, neglected, abused girl at the end of her rope, ready to splinter and break at any moment.

"But really," says Jack. "If y'all will take me, I might just come along. Get Ma her money an' give that motherfucker a square punch in the face." He glances at me. "So whaddya say?"

The first words that come to me are, Oh, no don't ask me, ask Sam. But I take a deep breath and kick away the urge to defer. Samantha will surely say no, anyway, to a teenage boy with no money and a genuine smile who wants to suckerpunch her father.

"Sure," I say. "We'd be happy to have you along, Jack."