The Art of Hero Worship (4 page)

“Thank you, Detective.” Liam stops just
short of the other double bed and turns to the three law
enforcement officers, placing his hands on his hips defensively. “I
think we can take it from here.”

“You know you aren’t allowed to leave this
room for any reason,” Spader reminds us.

Liam and I nod.

“If you need anything, use the cell phone I
gave you to call and make a request.” He looks from Liam to me, his
brow creased, and admits, “We just don’t have the manpower to leave
a couple guys sitting outside your hotel room to guard you. We’ve
decided the best use of the officers’ time is to search for Dom
DeSalles, see what I’m saying? So yeah, use the phone.”

We both glance at the cell phone that’s on
the table between the two beds.

“How’s your head, Jason? Do you need to see
the doctor again?” Detective Spader asks, as if it is an
afterthought.

I shake my head. I still can’t feel any
pain.

“Good. Now, there are bottles of water and
some snacks in the mini-bar if you can’t wait until we bring you a
meal.”

The silence in the room informs us all that
everything necessary has been said.

“Well, we’ll take off then.” The three men
head for the door. One more time, Spader reminds us, “No leaving
this room. Don’t open the door for any reason.”

And then Liam and I are alone. It’s awkward.
This kind of thing, thankfully, doesn’t happen every day, and
neither of us knows exactly what to say. Finally, Liam kicks off
his boots and falls back on his bed. “How are you holding up?”

I lift the small plastic bag meant to line
the ice bucket and wave it in the air. “I’m still hanging onto a
barf bag, if that gives you a clue.”

He’s quiet, and I figure he can’t think of a
thing to say to a guy who hasn't exactly been the picture of grace
under fire. Okay, a guy who has crumbled under the pressure like a
week-old sugar cookie in a backpack filled with heavy
textbooks.

“Off to the john,” I say, figuring I can
escape from the awkwardness there, and I slide off my bed. When I
get to the bathroom, I grip the sides of the sink and glance into
the wide mirror to find out what sort of horror show Liam has been
seeing for the past day-and-a-half. A bit thinner than usual from
stress, my short, dark hair is in place except for the stripe of
raw scalp on the top left of my head, but my olive-colored skin is
paler than usual.

The red rims around my green eyes and major
dark circles beneath them prevent me from appearing like the “2014
Face of an Angel,” which was one of the superlatives I won as a
high school senior, among “Most Popular Boy in the Senior Class”
and “Boy Most Likely To…wink, wink.” I splash water on my face and
brush my teeth one more time with the hotel-supplied
toothbrush.

I can’t get the taste of death out of my
mouth.

Ten minutes later I feel more mentally
together, so I exit the bathroom and head back to my bed.

“I know Dom DeSalles from the business
program. We both did internships at the Langston Industrial Park
last fall,” Liam says softly.

I sit down on my bed and listen to the
cadence of Liam’s deep voice because, despite the topic, it
comforts me.

“Plus we live on the same floor in
RetroHouse.”

“I live in the RetroHouse basement. I’m one
of the few lucky freshman that got the
privilege
to live in
upperclassmen housing.” I smirk. “Lucky me.” If I lived with the
other freshmen I probably wouldn’t have a clue who Dom DeSalles is,
and he may not be searching for me so that he could blow my brains
out, since he missed by a few inches on his first attempt.

“I’ve seen you around. We’ve passed by each
other at the laundry center and in the cafeteria too, I think.”

“Yeah, gotta have clean clothes and food.”
I’m not a funny guy, but today I’m fighting my embarrassment and
deliver the line with what Ginny used to call my
Sponge Bob
voice
. As expected, it falls flat.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about Dom.” Liam
directs the conversation back to the topic of Dom. He seems to want
to talk about the asshole and I just want to listen to his calm and
steady voice, so it’s a win-win situation. “He wasn’t the
friendliest dude on our floor. He always seemed sort of pissed-off.
Like he had a chip on his shoulder, you know?”

“I guess.”

“I think his roommate, Mason Maguire,
requested a transfer out of their dorm room a couple of weeks
ago.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He’d been telling a bunch of us all
year that DeSalles was a total headcase and he couldn’t put up with
it much longer. He didn’t say a lot in the way of specifics, but
I’ll tell you, DeSalles was supposedly bent out of shape when
Maguire ditched him.”

“Where did Mason end up living?”

“On the RetroHouse third floor in a single
that opened up. Cops said that his room got broken into Friday
night at dinnertime but Maguire wasn’t there, and a little while
later DeSalles was shooting up the theater.”

“So, it was like a revenge thing?”

“I guess so. Warped, huh?”

I turn my back to him. “Sure. Makes no
sense, really. You know, I’m still wearing your friend’s clothes? I
don’t know if he’s gonna want them back any time soon.” Stupid
thing to say.

“I don’t think he’s too worried. Speaking of
clothes, I’m gonna pull these off. Can hardly breath they’re so
damn tight.”

I hear rustling as he pulls off his borrowed
clothing, and soon the creak of the bed. Then he seems to settle
down.

“You want to tell me about your girlfriend?”
Liam’s deep voice cracks a bit and I know he’s nervous. “I’m a
pretty decent listener.”

“No, not right now.” I’m not ready to think,
let alone to talk, about Ginny. “Sure wish we had a keg.”

“Well, when this is all over, I’ll take you
out for a brew or two.”

“I’m not twenty-one. I can’t go to a
pub.”

“Well, I think you earned a couple of beers,
getting through that shit the other night. My friend’s a bartender
at a pub near my house, so you can come visit and I’ll make sure he
serves you, ‘kay?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

It’s dark in the room. The shades are drawn
tightly, which makes it seem like time is standing still. But
outside of this room the early morning sun will soon shine in the
real world onto a new day I’m not ready to face. Before I start to
think too much, which seems to lead to major stomach issues,
sweating, and a lot of trembling, I shut my eyes and think about
tennis. Tennis is a safe topic for me, always has been.

“Night, Jase,” Liam says.

“Good night,” I reply, although I know it’s
already morning.

***

I’ve been lying here for hours, turning from
one side to the other, then onto my back and onto my stomach. No
matter what I do, sleep won’t come. I’m shivering then perspiring,
and I cling to the plastic bag like it’s a damned lifeline. I use
the bathroom and try to decide if it would be rude to turn on the
TV.

I’d figured he was asleep because his
breathing has sounded so even for the past hour, but all of a
sudden Liam pops up out of bed as if he’s as wide awake as I am,
walks purposefully to the door and checks that it’s bolted. Then he
comes to my bed and says in a husky voice, “Move over.”

Without a hint of resistance, I slide across
the bed so that I’m against the wall. Liam stretches out on his
back in the middle of the bed and pulls me right onto his bare
chest, which is as rugged and furry and manly and safe as the rest
of him. I rest my head over his heart and listen to the only sound
I want to hear right now—the steady thudding, a constant reminder
that he’s very much alive. Then his big hands come around me and
begin to stroke my back. He does this with hesitance, at first, and
so softly I can feel the calluses on his palms scratching my
shoulder blades. But soon he starts to knead my skin, and I can
literally feel the tension draining from my back into his hands. He
spends a lot of time working on my neck, as if he can tell it’s
where most of my anxiety dwells.

“Go to sleep, Jase. Just sleep…. We’ll
figure things out tomorrow.” Even though he doesn’t specify
how
we’ll figure things out, I like the hopefulness in his
voice and I decide that for now, I’m going to believe him. I feel
warm, but not too warm, and safe and comfortable and soothed. I
close my eyes and drift away.

***

I wake up crying.

Okay… if I’m going to be real, I’ll admit
that I’m
sobbing
. In these strong arms—no, sprawled
on
top of
the solid chest of a man I hardly know—I sob in a way
that I never have before. And hopefully, I’ll never have occasion
to cry this bitterly again.

My emotions are practically indescribable,
yet I need to apply words to them, in an effort to make some sense
of what I’m feeling. The pain is raw, grating, and unbearable… and
unfortunately there’s more. I’m guilt-ridden and mortified.
Devastation crossed with desperation—this is me, at the moment.

And I’m not sure why I’m still here on
earth.
I want to disappear.

Liam stays silent, but I know he’s awake
because his hands have resumed the rhythmic stroking on my
back.

“Why’d you have to go and s-save me? Y-you
should have let me d-die like I was supposed to!” I’m furious,
which is evident in my trembling accusation. The pain would be over
if he’d have let me die. I add
mad as hell
to my list of
indescribable emotions. And
highly irrational
… I tack this
one onto the end of the fast growing list.

He inhales deeply. “We’re gonna survive
this. Our bodies survived Friday night in the theater. Now we’ve
gotta make our minds survive the aftermath.”

“What makes you think I
want
to
survive it? What makes you so sure I didn’t want to go with her?”
It’s too hard to say her name.

Wide palms freeze on my shoulder blades and
rest there heavily. “Sorry, dude, but it wasn’t your day to die.”
He takes another one of those huge swallows of air that causes both
of our bodies to rise and fall. Then the mesmerizing movement of
his hands resumes.

I focus my mind on doing verbal justice to
Ginny’s memory. And even if both Ginny and I knew deep inside that
ours wasn’t a
forever
kind of romance, we also knew that the
deep bond of friendship we shared would last. I admired her for
being everything I was not—outspoken, opinionated, and at times,
confrontational—and I was one of the few people whom she trusted
implicitly.

“She had dreadlocks.” As soon as the words
come out of my mouth, I realize this is a strange place to start
when describing Ginny’s awesomeness. But her long dark dreadlocks
were what caught my attention when I saw her standing outside the
dining hall on the first day of freshman orientation. “And she
hated wearing the nametag they gave her that day… you know, the one
that says, ‘
Hello, my name is so and so.’”
I can’t help but
smile when I remember how Ginny had unpinned the tag that labeled
her
Virginia Eloise Blankenship
as soon as our small group
had started on the campus tour. She’d leaned against me and
muttered, “Labels are for suckers,” and I’d been so honored that
she’d chosen
me
to enlighten with that shiny pearl of
wisdom. “Never saw her in anything but Birkenstocks or bare feet.”
I smile again. “Kind of dirty bare feet, but they didn’t smell bad,
or anything like that.”

Liam doesn’t seem to think the facts I’ve
chosen to share about Ginny are in any way odd. “Were you guys in
love?” His voice is husky, likely sleep-deprived, but more likely
indicative of his emotional preparation for what he now expects me
to say.

I, however, reply too quickly for it to be
the full story on the subject. “I loved her.” I can tell he’s
nodding because his beard is rubbing up and down against my head
and it hurts.
It hurts…
I can feel the painful throbbing on
both the inside and the outside of my head now; something is
changing inside me. The knot of fear and pain is starting to
loosen. “Who were
you
at the play with on Friday night?”

He sighs. I already recognize it as an
expression of frustration and of wishing desperately that things
could be different. “I couldn’t help any of them. It happened too
fast… and then I heard a sound from you and so I headed—”

“That’s not what I asked.” I already know
him well enough to understand that he’d have died trying to save
his friends. He’d nearly died trying to save me, a perfect
stranger.

“There were three of us. It was our
marketing final project group. We were creating a sales plan for
the product we developed,
A Taste of Cinnamon Organic Whitening
Strips
—I guess the world is going to have to wait for an
all-natural, recyclable, and sweetly spicy vehicle for dental
bleach….”

“Do you think any of them are… you know…
still….” I can’t make myself say the word
alive
, which is
strange.

“No.” His response is gruff and firm and I
realize he’s in a lot of pain over this. I also realize I’m not
crying anymore.

“I… uh… I’m not proud of how I acted… in the
theater,” I inform him, while fighting to suppress what I suspect
is going to be a hiccup-sobbing-gaspy thing, but it escapes my lips
anyway, and is louder than I expect. “I… I let go of her hand…
after she was shot.”

Liam clears his throat, and says, “You never
know how you’re gonna act when you’re scared. You know,
truly
terrified
like on Friday night.”

“I always thought I’d be a hero if something
like Friday night ever happened and I was around. A hero, like
you.”

He sniffs, obviously uncomfortable with what
I just said. “I’m no hero, Jase. All of my friends I went to the
theater with died.”