'Youth Novels'

Chapter Eight

They dropped off Ray first, John insisted on it. Cock-blocking wasn't his style but Watts looked twisted up in knots trying to get away from him. That was punishment enough in itself in John's book. For the entire drive to the small white picket abode, she said nothing, not that he expected her to. She'd slipped into the darkness of his van like a mouse hiding from a cat, and crouched there, face down and shadowed. Occasionally John would catch a glance of her blonde hair in his rear view mirror or the beat of her thin hands slapping against her thighs.

"Thanks man!" Ray mouthed through the window.

The street light in front of his house had turned his hair to red hot spikes and blocked out his pimps. John could almost tolerate looking at him in that light. Something had been murmured to Watts too. Sentimental most likely, maybe he'd even tried to land a kiss.

They watched in silence as keys slipped through Ray's fingers with a soft curse.

"What a tard," John scoffed, unable to contain himself any longer.

Claire giggled lightly. He jacked the van into gear and they rolled away down the sleek black road. Fucking Police Academy. He was glad as hell they were no longer going to the drive-in.

"I live the other way," Watts piped up, irritated. His mouth curled. Fuck her too. She should be gracious that he was even giving her a lift at all.

"I need to sing by the garage. I'm fresh outta cigs. Someone keeps robbing mine," he eyed his girlfriend reproachfully.

"You keep offering."

And she gave him that look, the one so soft and sweet and innocently beguiling. Greater men had launched a thousand ships for that look, what chance did his cigarettes have?

John pushed his heart back down his throat. "Only cause you never have any of your own."

"I don't have any of my own because I don't smoke usually."

"Hypocrisy does not become you."

"How is that hypocritical? I only smoke when I'm around you."

"You're bad for her health," announced Allison idly. She was dabbing the cigarette ash on the dashboard with the tips of her fingers turning her skin to grey and smoke. Watts snorted back a snigger. "Why don't you like him?" She was asking about Ray.

"He doesn't like anyone," Claire teased.

Her head was rolled back against his arm, the tips of her hair splayed against the blue denim of his jacket in beams of orange and gold; his own personal sunset over the ocean to warm him both inside and out. As they hit the red, amber and green of the stoplight, the beads of sweat on her still slick forehead were illuminated like an exploding nebula. John couldn't compare her to diamonds anymore. There was nothing impressive about diamonds except the mining.

"Correction," he threw his cigarette out the window. "No one likes Ray. Ask Watts, she just spent an entire evening with him. I'd imagine there were more humane forms of torture invented during the medieval ages."

"He's not bad, he's just not my type," said Watts, obviously trying to scrape together the remnants of her pride. "He's fine to talk to, better than most guys. At least he's got good taste in music."

It was a dig at him and Blue Oyster Cult. John glanced at her in the rear view mirror. "So if a Down Syndrome kid had, what you consider, a "good taste in music" would you date him?"

There was a stunned silence. A satisfied smirk split across his face. It was too easy to enrage girls. Everything was fucking politically correct and precious to them. Allison was grinning. Good for her.

"…John, that is like really insensitive," said Claire in a slow and diplomatic fashion, like she was teaching a two year old not to wipe its ass with its hands. "Shayne and I volunteer with Down Syndrome children at Clearbrook-" Of course, they did. Saint fucking Claire. Luckily, she didn't catch the roll of his eyes. "-The kids there really like music. Dancing and singing is a huge part of the work we do with them."

"My apologies, Mother Teresa."

She let out a small angry hiss as she slumped back against his arm, like steam escaping from a boiling pot. "Forget I said anything."

"The point is, Claire; you wouldn't date one no matter how many Duran Duran tapes he's got."

"Oh, I don't know… I'm dating you, aren't I-?" Watts' laugh broke the air. Even John had to smile. "-Besides, I don't think anyone who listens to a band called Judas Priest has a right to insult anyone's tastes," She held up the cassette.

"Does the name offend your Catholic sensibilities, Saint Claire?"

"Hardly. It's just stupid."

"So you won't mind it if I play the tape for you then?"

Before it could even register, he pushed the eject button on the sorely abused tape player with vindictive glee and snatched the cassette from her hand before ramming it in the mouth. Eat me alive came thrashing on in its fast beat tempo. Claire looked as if she'd just swallowed a fish.

"This song is about getting a blow job," he told her cheerfully.

Claire glowered and lowered the volume. "You are so crude! Even your music is crude."

"Christ, you're such a prude."

She bristled immediately. Biting back a smile, John cast a sidelong glance to Allison who was shaking with laughter. He should probably let it drop. Claire didn't like talking about sex. It was too fun though to watch her squirm. The girl had some serious issues.

"I just don't think it's the sort of thing that needs to be sung about in a song."

"Claire," he said patiently. "Half the pop crap you hear these days is just a subtext for sex. That new blonde chick, Madonna or Mini Magda, whatever her name is, is down for it and so is Blondie. Music, no matter what the genre, has always been about sex. Fucking Greensleeves is all about Henry the VIII trying to bone Anne Boleyn."

"Greensleeves is about him proving his love to her. She'd rejected him before because she thought that he only wanted to seduce her and that's why he had to tell her that he loved her."

"And thus he was able to get into her pants because she fell for it."

"He later chopped off her head," added Allison as she pushed the ash into long thin grey coke lines. "So he could marry Jane Seymour."

He nodded in gratitude to the girl. "See? Sex, Claire. It's all about sex."

Her upper lip stiffened distastefully. "That is a really cynical way to view the world, John. Not everyone lies about being in love just to have sex…"

There it was again, the little niggling doubt in her voice, like she was suspicious of something. Surely she would know by now that he was an asshole not a shitbag? The wallet, his conscience niggled at him. He'd have to do something about the damn wallet, but making Duncan toss it right now would be too much like stapling his balls to the line. He wasn't ready for that yet.

"Self-entitled pricks like Jenns do," he said, pushing it out of his mind.

She smiled.

"You mean to tell us that you've never fed a girl a fast one?" interjected Watts. He shook his head. "Not ever? Not even once?"

She'd said it to make him uncomfortable, stupid bitch. He couldn't not answer it. The way Claire was looking at him all doe eyed and waiting, letting him know he couldn't blow it off. This was serious. Claire was serious, and he was serious about her. Fuck Watts with two hockey sticks and a shovel.

"If you have to bullshit someone into having sex then you're doing it wrong."

Watts let out a soft 'huh' of surprise. He could see her eyes now, hooded with begrudging respect. She'd raised her head a little to reflect the top of her face in the mirror.

"…Huh."

"What?" His temper flared.

"I'm surprised, that's all. I never figured you to be that much of a gentleman."

Gentleman, hah! "I don't say stuff I don't mean. Since when have I ever said something to you that I don't mean?"

"Right back at you."

Her face was locked in hatred right now. John relaxed a little. Hatred he could deal with. He thrived off it. It was the other stuff that confused him. The wallet. Claire was settled back against him again, her suspicion gone. He felt a little guilty. She looked far too excited for his thundering heart to take, like she wanted to be the first to be told it. Christ, girls were weird.

"You say stuff you don't mean all the time," interjected Allison. "For instance, you told Andrew that you wanted to be just like him and get a lobotomy and a pair of tights."

"It's called sarcasm, look it up in a dictionary sometime. Fucking required uniform," he shook his head as a soft smile spread across his face. That had been funny. Dweebie was comic gold.

"So why don't you like Ray?" Allison asked again.

"Why do you need to know?"

She shrugged. "He seems okay?"

John sucked in a deep breath in preparation. "Ray's a STD. He's a goddamn freeloading vampire. He only hangs around us cause he's hoping to score free dope. Half of the time he's paying off a tab."

"Why do you keep giving it to him for free?" asked Claire.

"I don't. Garth does. He always goes splits with Garth cause he knows I'll let him get me back later. Nine times out of ten it all comes from Garth's pocket and McCarthy just fobs him off, saying he'll pay him back."

"That's Garth's problem, not yours," pointed out his girlfriend in her empathetic way. "If he's dumb enough to fall for it then why do you care?"

Care? What a word. It was Garth's business, true but it irritated him. Arnie, his sister, his Mom, everyone could do whatever they liked and Garth took it. John could do whatever he liked to him and Garth just fucking took it. No pride, no self-respect, he was a gutless turd in every sense of the word. It made him wince. Vernon again. He couldn't get those words out of his head. "…You ought to spend a little more time trying to make something of yourself and a little less time trying to impress people." Screw him.

"He lets people walk all over him," he said eventually. "It's fucking pathetic."

"Is that why you're such a jerk to him? Because he puts up with it?" Allison stared at him imploringly, her little face all solemn and judging. "He didn't like what you said in art class about his sister."

What did he said again? Tampons? That's an interesting euphemism for your friends' dicks ─ that was it. Brown eyes stared back hard. In the washing machine of John's mind, the rise cycle switched on and he was all at once flooded with shame. She was right, and Goddamn her. He kept his eyes trained on the wheel for a moment, not daring to look at Claire's face.

"It's not my problem that he can't handle the truth. Besides, he was so stoned I'm surprised he even noticed."

"What did he say?" Claire asked her curiously.

"Doesn't matter," he shot Allison a warning look as she began to open her mouth. Garth's sister. No, no, not another word. "So I said it? So what? I've got a policy of not giving a shit just in case you haven't noticed."

"Liar."

Everyone jolted and into one another like skittles as the tires screeched to a halt and the painting fell over. Claire was pissed; her eyes and mouth were dancing. John ignored her.

"You don't know jackshit about me and Garth ─ Got that?" Perfectly oval pink fingernails pressed gently into his thigh to calm him. "-So either keep it to yourself or you can take it outside and walk. Either way is fine by me."

Allison looked neither hurt nor offended. She didn't push back though; she didn't even give him that weird bird look of hers. Her lips screwed closed in a thin line and her feet planted face forward. There was silence from the back too. Allison should have realised the score was different. Allison should have known when to leave well alone. It wasn't Saturday detention anymore.

He took his foot off the break and the wheels rolled forward, gradually picking up pace. Judas Priest was annoying him. He turned it off, and festered in the darkness of his own guilt and shame. Maybe Vernon was right? No, no, he couldn't be. John wouldn't let him be.

"Is that Vernon?"

Speak of the devil. John's eyes shot up to the familiar pompous black Merc turning right at the crossroads in front of them. Sure enough, there in the driver's seat looking like a 70s kiddie fiddler was the Dick himself. He breezed through the lights, not noticing them and turned into the large carpark of the late night Liquor & Grocery on the top of Main Street.

As soon as the lights turned green, John swung the van sideways as fast as he could, his eyes trained on the back of Shermer's finest Vice-Principal as he stepped out of his car. He'd show him a gutless turd. He was going to ruin his entire night; his entire life too.

"John?!" Claire was wide eyed and alarmed. He must've looked insane at the speed he was going.

"Change of plan." He pointed to Vernon's car.

Her eyes widened even more as she put two and two together. "No! No! There are security cameras outside."

"They're fake."

"How do you-" she had the good sense to stop herself. "He'll see you. He'll be in and out of there like a light. No one goes shopping for that long at this time. It's not worth it."

"I beg to differ, Princess. He fucking deserves it."

There were no arguments there. John hadn't told either of them what had happened in the closet, his pride wouldn't let him. Besides, he didn't need to. They'd already seen just how twisted up the old bastard was.

"He won't see me," he assured her as he pulled up into a side street and killed the engine. "One of you will go in and keep watch."

"He probably knows that I'm dating you. He'll be able to put two and two together, John."

John highly doubted that. His eyes fell of Allison. The girl was already getting out of the passenger seat. With a grin, he reached over to the glove compartment and pulled out a spray can.

"You-" he pointed to Watts. "-with me." For a second he thought the girl was about to protest. "Consider it payback for the ride home," he added.

She rolled her eyes at him, and sneered but she got out behind him nevertheless. One thing that could be said about Watts was at least she had a sense of fairness. It was really too bad that she wasted her time firing it at him and Duncan.

"You're going to leave me by myself?" Claire demanded, her arms crossed huffily across her chest.

"Go into the shop with Allison. You can buy me some cigarettes," he told her, half joking.

"I won't get served."

"You will; you're not Watts."

"Why her?"

John glanced over his shoulder at Watts. "Because I need someone to keep watch while I'm out here too and I don't care if she gets caught," he replied frankly.

"Gee, thanks, asshole," muttered Watts.

It was good enough for Claire though. She shimmed out of the car, grabbing the tail of her long buttery leather coat from behind her like a bridal train and jumped onto the tarmac. Her shoes clicked and clopped. John gave her a quick hurried kiss and watched her hips sway as she walked into the yellow glow of the shop. What on earth was she doing with a guy like him?

He shook it off. Signalling to Watts, they hurried, half crept towards the car. John shook the can in his hand up into a flurry and popped the lid off, shoving it in his pocket. Watts was bent around the side, watching Claire in the window as she pretended to flick through a magazine. They were pretty exposed out there with nothing but the wet night and the stars above them. Had he worn all black it would've been easier to hide against it.

Pulling the bottom of his shirt over his nose, John set to work against the sleek black driver's door. It was a '78 and still in immaculate shape. Vernon probably washed and waxed it every Sunday. The nozzle of the can spat at first. John shook it again. Placing it an inch away from the door, he drew the curve of the S in large, neat, bright yellow. '..H..E..M..E-'

"So are you and Ray like totally ready to take it to the next level?" he teased in a mock valley girl accent as he put the legs on the 'R'.

Aggravated, Watts dragged her soles across the tarmac. "You know I could just walk in there right now and tell Vernon what you're up to?"

John scoffed at her. Watts wouldn't do it. Contrary to Vernon's deluded belief, no one liked him. Even those he had never been subjected to his full blown dickheardery knew that something was wrong. It was in the way he walked, in the way he held his hands on his hips before he began to talk. He thought everyone was shit. Kids could smell that sort of thing, they had an inbuilt sensor for bullshit and Vernon was full of it.

"Now, in terms of sex how would you do it? Scissoring or strap ons?"

"You're such a chauvinistic pig."

John oinked and sprayed the # sign. Watts wasn't half as fun to rib as Claire, with Claire you could really see it on her face. She jumped all in and fought, even when she couldn't find the words to fight. Watts lacked… chemistry, yes that was it. Every time Claire got angry at him, all he could think about was grabbing her and kissing her and turning the shouts to groans.

"So did you become a feminist before or after the guy rejected you?" he asked.

Watts glanced back at him, her mouth pursed in a frown. "He never rejected me. I haven't told him…" Her eyes flashed as she remembered herself. "Shut up."

"Ah! He likes someone else?"

Bingo. Watts turned away from him, hiding her face in the dark in the same way she did in the van. The tenseness in her back was a sight John was all too familiar with. It was like she was trying to cram all of her feelings back into the miniature box from which they'd exploded.

"…Is that what she told you?" she then said quietly.

He finished the final d. "Who?" John straightened up and surveyed his handiwork. It was a thing of beauty. "Claire?"

"Allison."

For a moment John considered her. Allison hadn't said a word. In fact he was pretty sure the girl had never spoken to Watts before tonight. "What's she got to do with it? Are you guys friends?"

"…I guess we kinda are."

He let out a low whistle and drew an arrow across the doors, connecting the words to the driver's seat. Duncan was not going to be pleased about that. Fuck Duncan. John wasn't too happy about it either but who was he to piss on Allison's parade? All she saw around her were whitened out eyes and empty vodka bottles. It made him protective of her. He locked eyes with Watts, sizing the girl up to see whether or not she was worthy.

"She's weird," he said eventually. "We like her that way so don't fuck her up with your self-righteous feminist bullshit." And don't you dare try to turn her against us; she's all we've got. Me, Andrew and Claire. She's ours.

"Weird's fine."

John grunted. The girl had no idea what she was letting herself in for. Allison took weird and brought it to fourth dimensional extremes.

"And she's dating the Captain of the Wrestling Team, just so you know."

"Andrew Clarke? Aren't you guys like mortal enemies?"

'Enemies' wasn't the word anymore. They were both real chips of the old block, apples from the same tree. John knew that he could see the world through Andrew's eyes just in the same way Andrew could see it through his. That sort of revelation was the last thing they both needed. It could shatter both their carefully constructed cocoons, and Andrew had one hell of a lot more to lose than John. Out of respect for their one time friendship, he'd let it be.

"In the wise words of Michael Corleone," he turned to her with a grin, but it felt weak to him, fake. "Keep your friends close but keep your enemies even closer." He raised his head slightly over the top of the car. He could see Vernon at the checkout. Claire and Allison were nodding towards the door. "Let's go."

Claire was surprised when John opened the door for her into the family restaurant. She'd never taken him as one for gentlemanly gestures. Watts and Allison were gone, probably tucked up in their respective beds. John had dropped them off pretty promptly after he desecrated Vernon's car. He wouldn't tell her what he'd written but rather said she should wait until the morning for the surprise. They had however stuck around long enough just to hear the old man curse and drop his beer bottles on the ground.

They settled in a booth by the back, across from one another this time. Claire let her shoe slip off and rubbed it against his calf. John had great legs; she could feel it through the material. He had great everything, she was sure. Unlike the lean athletic boys Claire had been told to like, John was broad and strong, like a football player with good shoulders, she liked that. She liked how opposite to her he looked in every way.

"Aren't you going to take off your gloves?" she said before she could stop herself.

They had ordered pizza, and John still had them on. Sometimes his levels of barbarity were too much for her but the more she let on, the more he held on to them just to annoy her.

John glanced down at the offending items. "Since when has there been a dress code for pizza?"

She peered down her nose at him, a slight wrinkle forming along the bridge of her eyebrow. "Em, since wearing gloves while you're handling food is incredibly unhygienic?"

"I'm not handling, I'm eating."

"You're going to get pizza grease all over─ NO!" she swatted his hand away when he went to rub it on her face. John recoiled in laughter. "Why do you wear them all the time anyway? You're like an old grandmother who's afraid of getting freckles on the back of her hands."

Silence. John put down his slice and unstrapped the glove on his right hand. He tugged it off in one sharp motion and laid down his hand on the table between them, his fingers splayed. Ugly ravaged scars, deep, thick and purple cut into the flesh in a line across the ridge of his knuckles and spreading upwards like branches along the bottom part of his fingers and up to the middle joint.

Claire's breath caught in her throat. "What's that from?"

John picked up his pizza, taking a bite. As he chewed and swallowed, Claire continued to stare down at the knotted marks, a sense of dread growing in the pit of her stomach.

"He slammed the car trunk closed on my hand."

Her jaw dropped. "Your Dad?!"

"Who else-?" Her cheeks flushed red with embarrassment. "-I had to get operated on to set the bones right."

"Why did he do that?"

"…Does there have to be a reason?" The guard was up. John was waiting for her to make a wrong move.

She lowered her gaze to his hand once more. "…I guess not."

Slowly then, he began to speak and as he did, his eyes took over a slightly glazed and harden aspect. "We were bringing bottles to the recycling bank. He had them all in the trunk of his car. My brothers and him had got most them out except one so I decided to help. It figures that I'd drop it."

"So he slammed it closed on your hand?!"

He nodded, taking a swig of his drink.

"That's psychotic!"

"That's my old man. He only got married and had kids because there weren't enough small animals around for him to torture." Claire bit down on her lip as she waited for him to continue. He was staring at his hand, seemingly lost in thought before he released a heavy sigh. "It wouldn't have been so bad but it was an old Ford Fairlane so there wasn't a rubber guard around the bottom lip like you get nowadays. I tried to yank my hand out straight away and it got even more mangled. I'm lucky I didn't lose my fingers."

She dropped her pizza on her plate and pushed it away.

"The damn bastard wouldn't open the trunk until I begged him to─ He wasn't even going to bring me to hospital either until Reinette saw me. I had to sit on the floor of the bedroom me and my brothers shared while they argued over and over again over whether or not I needed medical attention despite the fact that my hand was black and blue and the skin was peeling from my fingers like a banana. You could see the bone-" She put her hand over her mouth. "When I got there, the doctors had to rush me into the operating theatre straight away."

The air all around her felt suddenly and inexplicably stifling. Freshly cooked pizza no longer was an inviting familiarity; it stuck in Claire's throat, sickening her. And there was fear as well, she dreaded him continuing.

"Didn't the Doctors notice something was wrong?" she asked. "Usually they're good at notic-"

"Reinette would have lied about it," he reminded her grimly. Her shoulders slumped a little. She'd forgotten. How could she have forgotten? She didn't want to believe, that's what it was. It was just too horrible. "…When I came around from the op, she wasn't there. I was six. I had a plaster cast from the length of my fingertips up to my shoulder. I didn't know what the hell was going on."

Instinctively, her hand reached across the table and she laced her fingers between his and the scars. His hand felt rough, warm and slightly damp from the cloth of his glove. It was much larger than her own; but still recognisably a boy's hand, a human's hand. John's fingers curled against hers. It was probably the most intimate and vulnerable gesture she'd received from him so far. Suddenly she was filled with this wild notion that maybe if she just held on to him, then she could somehow absorb some of the pain and he wouldn't hurt so much anymore.

"When she did finally show up she… she'd come to tell me that my Dad didn't want me in the house anymore so I couldn't come home…I was gonna have to go someplace else. They stuck me in a Children's home."

She swallowed and rubbed her thumb along the side of his hand, tracing circles into the soft skin there and tried to imagine how tiny it must have been; probably half the size of her own hand. It made her want to cry.

"The older kids liked me," he told her, like it was important. "I made them laugh. I was quick. I used to steal cigarettes from the carers for them and hide them in my cast─ I wasn't like the other kids. They didn't-…I stayed there for three months. No one called, no one visited. When they finally came to get me out, they just played it like it never happened."

While her mind reeled with the horror of it all, John's emotions had already moved on. He was angry now; his eyes had that same furious intensity she'd seen on Saturday.

"You remember that whole speech Dick Face gave?" he asked, struggling to keep himself contained. "The one about him doing society a favour by keeping me locked up in detention─ remember that?" Claire nodded dumbly. "That didn't come outta nowhere─ and I'm not talking about my illustrious high school career here. It all started back when they marked down my stint in juvie hall preparatory on my permanent record. Since then I've been a fucking red flag problem child for every teacher I've ever had from the 1st grade onwards."

His nails were biting into the coves between her knuckles. God, it hurt. It ached all over. All she could feel was the pain. She squeezed back twice as hard but to no avail. He was a million miles away.

"John? My hand…" she breathed at last. She couldn't take the pain, she realised. No matter how much she wished to lessen it. Some things were unbearable.

John looked down immediately, his eyes widening in what Claire could only describe as horror. The spell broke. He released her hand. Claire's fingers sang in relief as the blood rushed back.

"You should've said something sooner," he muttered, looking away.

She smiled a little sheepishly. "You're the one who's bleeding."

He held up his hand to inspect the biting red nail marks on his knuckles. One of them was glistening slightly.

"Fucking claws on you!"

"Sorry."

"Didn't feel it," he admitted, and she didn't think he was saying it just to make her feel better.

"Your nerves are damaged?"

"No."

He is used to it. The silence stretched. She picked up her drink and cupped it in her palms, feeling the condensation work out the tenderness. John was not a brute, hard yes, but never a brute. He wasn't his father. He'd promised her that he never would be.

"Why haven't you run away?" she asked finally.

"Got no place to go."

"You'd find a place if you needed to. I know you."

"…I promised Duncan I'd stick around until his Mom dies."

"His Mom's sick?"

John nodded. He looked away, and Claire took it that the topic was to be dropped. They weren't John's questions to answer, nor hers to ask, no matter how curious she was. Duncan was another lost boy, just like John, just like poor fatherless Garth Volbeck. Life had forgotten them.

"Where will you go?"

"Anywhere?" he shrugged. "I don't know. Once I leave Shermer, I'm never coming back."

It made Claire sad that there was nothing there to keep him. Shermer had always been good to her. It was warm and familiar, like the scent of pine at Christmas. John had never known that warmth. Maybe, hopefully, he would be able to find it elsewhere someday? Still, it saddened her and the more she thought about it, the more anxious she became. Their lives were different, their futures were likely never to cross and the thought of that opened a hole up in her chest, sucking out her fears regarding Steff McKee and the coming day.

"…Promise me you won't leave without saying goodbye first."

John stopped; his pizza half in his mouth. He pulled it out. For a long moment he considered her request as a complex look twisted his face.

"Sure."

So she swallowed what she wanted to say. It would do neither of them any good. John would have to leave one day, they both knew that.

To be continued…

A/N: What makes the whole hand getting trapped in the trunk even more horrendous is that I based that on a true account- everything from the trunk being closed on his hand to being sent to a children's home did in fact happen to a living breathing non-fictional human being. It's not someone I know, I read it somewhere a long time ago and it always stuck with me because it was so horrific.