“You,” Jack answered easily and my life flashed before my eyes. Okay, not my whole life. But the me and Jack part where we were stuck together in the boring asylum, wearing boring clothes and watching the clock tick, tick, tick us towards madness. It had felt like being slowly, agonisingly lowered into a black abyss, deeper and deeper, knowing nothing awaited us below, and clinging to the view of the sky above. Jack had been a little glimpse of blue between the clouds. He’d always been there, standing at my back while I beat Cannibal Carol at chess by triple vaulting her bishop and round housing her pawn in the ass, or sitting at my side while I flicked a checker into Small Willy Norman’s eye.
Now he was back, I realised how much I’d missed the constant presence of him. Missed our looks that held a million words, missed watching him workout until the nurses came and injected him with a sedative. They didn’t like when we tried to be strong, they wanted us weak, unable to fight back. But Jack had never surrendered to that in the way I had never surrendered. Our souls were built from diamonds, and everyone knew you couldn’t break those.
“Did you miss me, Angry?” I whispered, a fuzzy little creature rolling through my stomach at the thought.
“Yes,” he agreed.
“I missed you too,” I said. “We always said we’d be free one day, didn’t we? Do you like it here? Niall’s fun, isn’t he? He plays the kind of violent games people like us crave. He can be cruel too, but I think I like that about him. How he doesn’t ever wear masks. He lives his emotions, pretty or ugly, he embraces what he is, and that’s something I’ve always struggled with. I’ve worn all the masks, AJ. I tried to fit in once upon a time, I tried to make my crazies go away, but the longer you ignore them, the more they build and build and make new friends. They started building villages then towns, then one day, bam, there’s a whole city of crazy in your head and it doesn’t matter how high you built the wall to ignore it, that city needs food and water and eventually you have to give it everything it needs to survive or else, poof, the city falls and you fall with it. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” he sighed, taking my hand in his and it was so big that mine was lost within it, never to be found.
“You’ll like Mateo. He’s got angries too. But his are dark and deep, and I’m not sure I’ve met them all yet. I think he’s trying to hide them, but they’ll get out. They always do, don’t they? We have to be ready for that, AJ. I think we can handle each other’s demons though. I think we were all meant to end up in this house actually, now that I think about it. Me and you and Niall and Mateo and Brutus. Look at us all, we’re the sum of all the bad things that have ever happened to us. Brutus would be put down out there in the real world, some mean man in a hat would take him away and stick a needle in his neck, send him right away into death just because he bites the people who touch him. But what if every person who’s ever touched him has made him bleed and hurt and cry? That’s why I bite, Jack. Because if you don’t bite, you die. You disappear into a nothing person made of nothing, and that’s so much worse than the world hating you. It’s not fair really, is it? We’re hated because we didn’t disappear quietly into the night when the world cut up our hearts with knives and made us bleed on the inside. We’re the bad guys. But what if the real bad guys are the ones who claim to be good? The ones who tell the world what’s right and wrong, the ones who try to crush differences out of society so everyone will just go along with what suits them? That’s why we have to keep killing them, AJ. We have to wipe out every last one of them until all the bad lawmen are gone and we can make our own rules.”
“Like?” he asked and I beamed, loving how deeply he listened to me, how he wanted to hear more of what so many people had called my crazy ramblings before. But I had a point, didn’t I? It may have been carved a little wonky, but there was something to it I really, really believed in. Because if I’d been shown one percent of the acceptance that Jack and Niall and Mateo had shown me since I’d met them, maybe I’d have found somewhere to fit in out in that big, wide world. But maybe that was my salvation right there, because I had found that here. Even though I feared it wouldn’t last, it was still here right now, right in this second, and I was gonna cling to it with every ounce of strength in my bones.
I leaned in conspiratorially. “If the world was mine to rule, I’d make sure everyone was given a big fancy boat that they could go up and down rivers on. I’d paint mine pink and blue and green and yellow and I’d have ribbons hanging from all the railings so when the wind blew, they went whoooosh.” I mimed the ribbons with my free hand. “I’d have wind chimes too, so they dinged and linged all the time and when we docked, there’d be a man with a bell there who announced that Captain Brooklyn had arrived. Then my second rule would be that all the cats and dogs and all the birds and piggies and fluffies and cuties of the world, would all get to go live on big happy farms where they could run and play and be free and no one could ever, ever hurt them. And anyone who did I’d get to kill with a giant catapult and a shotgun. They’d get launched into the sky and – bang! I’d blast them to smithereens.” I started laughing at the image and Jack’s mouth twitched ever so slightly at the corner.
“Then?” he pushed.
“Then…” I tapped my lips as Jack’s intense stare burned into me and I felt like my skin was peeling back to reveal everything that lay beneath. A blush was blazing along my cheeks and I glanced at him under my lashes, feeling all floofy in my chest. I cleared my throat, biting my lower lip. “Then I’d make it a rule that no one could ever be touched unless they agreed to be touched. We could all wear stickers, or pins, or… – hats! And on the hats they’d have the names of the people who were allowed to touch us without asking. But if we ever decided we didn’t want them to touch us anymore, we could scrub their name right off just like that. And if anyone broke that rule, I’d get to blast whoever did the unwanted touching out of a cannon and they’d fly into a tank full of sharks who’d play snappies with them until they were all dead and gone.” I bounced a little on the bed and Jack leaned closer to me, his eyes roaming all over my face like he was committing my expression to memory.
“Names?”
“The names I’d pick?” I guessed and he nodded and I prodded him in the knee.
“Yours. Niall’s. Mateo’s. And Brutus’s. Oh, and all my favourite weapons. And – oh no -what about all the fluffy creatures? How will I fit all their names on my hat? Maybe animals can just default touch me. Unless it’s a peeping squirrel. He can’t touch me. Unless…well I suppose he can touch me a little just not while I’m pooping.”
“Mine?” he asked, like he’d latched onto the first part of what I’d said and his mind couldn’t let go of it.
“Yeah, AJ.” I took his hand, tracing my fingers all over the lines and callouses marking his palm. “I like you touching me. I can always sense the bad touches, but yours feel safe. You wouldn’t hurt me, would you?”
“No,” he swore, the gruffness to his tone making my flesh spark all over.
I leaned closer to him, my eyes on his mouth, his eyes on my mouth and everything felt so warm and good that I just wanted to stay here in our little bed tent forever. I swear I could almost hear his powerful heart pounding, or maybe it was the furious drumming of my own in my ears because suddenly I wanted a kiss so bad it made me feel like my soul was tethered to his and we were being wound together by the hands of fate.
“When I was small, my dad hung these curtains in my room which were deepest orange. But they let the light through, see? So every morning when the sun rose, it would blaze through those curtains and it’d feel so warm and safe in that room, like I was surrounded by a circle of fire that no one could ever get into. You make me feel like those curtains made me feel Angry Jack.”
“Rook,” he croaked, a demand, a plea. But then the comforter was ripped off of us and a massive palm slammed down on my forehead, shoving me flat onto the bed.