13

kids in america – the muffs

"look boy, don't check your watch, not another glance. I'm not leaving now, honey not a chance"

"What are we going to do?" I was close to tears as I put the cooler back on the glass kitchen table. "He already knew our faces, now he knows our names. And the cops are after us!"

"I know, Charis." Nate sighed, pulling away from me, head in his hands as he cursed, kicking the wall and leaving a dent in the plaster.

I was thankful that the kitchen was empty, a country song made popular by fucking TikTok filtering in from the patio door. But I was being naïve. There were bound to be other people in the house. Other people who would recognize us both from the news report and have the cops here in minutes.

"Maybe we should turn ourselves in, Nate. The report said we're not considered suspects."

"Think about it, Forrester. Because clearly you haven't thought that through!" Nate shouted, showing me a side of him I always knew was there. A side of him I should have expected to get tonight, given the circumstances.

Nonetheless, I was disappointed. I thought I was seeing a Nate Macauley that nobody else knew. Turns out, he was just hiding that one underneath his nineties boy-band exterior.

"Don't shout at me!" I snapped. "You're not the only one with something at risk here. Rehab. That's what's waiting for me. But at least I'll still be alive. And maybe it will be a wake up call. It will show my parents that I'm not fucking okay and haven't been for a while."

Nate laughed, a terrible, terrible sound in this context. "And what then? I bet Lords has a contact there. And if not at rehab, than in the police and that is how he has managed to stay one step ahead." The words cut like a knife, digging into my heart and wrapping around it like barbed wire. "Don't you get it? Whatever way you cut it, life as you know it ends tonight. We're always going to be running, Charis."

"Fuck you, Nate." I spat. "I'd rather take my chances with the cops than spend another minute taking orders from you."

"I've kept us alive this far! We wouldn't be here without me!"

I shook my head, backing out of the kitchen, towards a doorframe that lead god knows where. I just knew that I couldn't stay in a room with Nathaniel Macauley any longer or I was going to blow my top.

And someone was going to get hurt.

"That's not good, Nate! It's not normal! No eighteen-year-old should know how to hide form drug dealers. This was a mistake. Getting involved with you was a mistake."

"Charis, wait!" There was remorse in his tone, but I was past the point of caring as I turned around and ran.

I didn't want to hear another word from Nate as I walked around, dodging bodies and solo cups and couples making out against walls in an attempt to find a quiet place. Somewhere to hide.

I ducked into the first empty room, a bright white laundry room with a thick wooden door I kicked closed before moving to sit on top of a red Samsung washing machine. A front loader, just like the one we had at home.

The one that mom didn't let anybody touch, lest they break it.

"Charis?"

"Nate, I don't want to fucking hear it."

"Charis, it's me." As if my night couldn't get any bloody worse.

He looked just as good as the last time I saw him. His sandy hair curled around his head, dotted with the obvious staining of saltwater. He had been surfing before he came here. Those same hazel eyes seemed to reach into the far depths of my soul as we finally met eyes.

I had once almost ruined his life. I never expected to see him again.

"Jeremy. I thought you were in Boston?"

"Cambridge, actually. Because that's where Harvard is." Jeremy sighed, kicking the laundry room door closed behind him. "So, it's been a while."

I scoffed at him, crossing my arms over my chest, indignance on my face. He wasn't allowed to just come waltzing back in here and acting like we hadn't been headed for mutually assured destruction. That we were terrible for each other.

That he hadn't been investigated by the Harvard ethics board after we broke up.

That I hadn't been ostracized by the entire student body.

That my parents wouldn't even look at me.

"So, you're still at Harvard? Sounds like you got off better than I did. Figures. The man always does. Guess what, I'm addicted to drugs now. I need two lorazepam to get through the day." I snapped. "Everybody in Bayview thinks they know the full story. That I was some naïve little girl who got taken advantage of by some spiritual surfer boy Patrick Swayze freak. It ruined my life, Jeremy."

His eyes darkened. "That's not fair. You played a part in it, too. You were seventeen, there was only a year between us."

"That doesn't matter. Not to TJ, not to Simon and sure as fucking hell not to the police, who kept asking me if I wanted to press charges! You were an adult, and I was a minor!"

"Only by ten months!"

"What do you want, Jeremy?"

Jeremy sighed, placing his can of Molson on the counter top before sliding down the white wall, almost knocking a sign reading 'laundry: the never ending story' off the wall in the process. When he ran his fingers through his hair, I saw the small diamond stud glittering in his earlobe.

I guess we had both coped in different ways. A stupid piercing was his way, drugs and solitude were mine.

"I wanted to make sure you were okay."

I snorted. "A fat lot of good that is doing you. How does your conscience feel?"

"This isn't funny, Charis!" Jeremy shouted. I was getting damn tired of being shouted at by men who thought they knew more than me. "Your face is all over the news. You witnessed a gangland shooting! Tj has been going crazy since they ran the first story. He can't get a hold of you, can't get a hold of your parents. He's worried sick!"

TJ. I'd almost forgot that TJ was here. My heart sank to the floor, my limbs feeling numb as moved to sit across from my ex-boyfriend, the cold tile floor seeping sadly through my borrowed jeans, adding to my dread.

"I can't go to the cops, Jeremy. I'll get sent to rehab. Nate will go to jail."

"Maybe it's what you need." Even though I had just said those same words to Nate, it hurt me to hear them come from someone else. I had been pushing away help from the people who cared about me for years. "You can't worry about anyone other than yourself right now. We've all heard the stories about the Albanians in this town. You should be more concerned with staying alive, with getting somewhere they can't hurt you."

"Jeremy, I'm scared." My voice cracked, and for the first time since this nightmare started, I thought that I was going to cry.

And I didn't fight it, for the sake of coming across as tough. I let the salty tears make their tracks down my face, falling to the tile floor in dewdrop like bubbles. Jeremy's face softened, and he hesitantly reached for my hand, as if he wasn't sure if I would freak out at skin-to-skin contact. In reality, I couldn't care less.

I just needed to be held, crossing the floor and curling myself up against his familiar, warm embrace.

It wasn't healthy, I knew that. I was falling into old patterns. But at that moment, I needed security. I needed to know that I was going to be fine.

"You're going to be okay, Charis. We'll sort this out. A buddy of mine from school is taking pre-law, he's back home for the long weekend. I can give him a call, he can meet you at the police station and lay out the terms." Jeremy offered, brushing my hair out of my face. Against my own good judgement, I leaned into his touch.

But his touch didn't feel the way that Nate's did.

"You need to leave Nate behind, Charis. I mean it. If he doesn't want to take the easy way out and keep risking his life over this, you can't stop him. But you can act in self-preservation, keep yourself out of the crossfire."

"Okay." I swallowed the lump in my throat, trying to silence the voice in the back of my head that was telling me not to leave Nate behind. But Jeremy was right. A line from one of Pastor Staedtler's sermons drifted back to me, echoing in my head the same way it did in that church: the Lord cannot help those who cannot help themselves. The same can be said for neighbours. Though the Bible says to love thy neighbour, sometimes those neighbours don't want to accept thy love, or thy help. And sometimes, there's nothing you can do but accept that fact and move on. It doesn't make you a bad person, or a bad Christian. "What do we do from here?"

"Take my car. I'll come with you, if you want. Flynn can meet us there, I'll call him once we hit the road."

His mouth was open, ready to tell me more when there was a huge crash from the very direction I had just come. Fearing the worst, fearing that Lords had found us once again, I was frozen with fear. Stuck in my freeze reaction. Fight, flight, freeze, faun.

I used to think the four f's were bullshit.

"Stay right here. That window swings open, jump out it if you have to. I drive a black Honda Civic, take my keys." He pressed the warm key fob into my hands. "I still care about you, Care Bear."

"You lost to right to call me that when you ghosted me." I sniffled, clinging to the Honda keys like they were a lifeline.

"I know."

That was the last thing Jeremy Ruffalo said to me before he opened that laundry room door, and I wondered if I was ever going to see him again.

"TJ, mate, cool it! Let him go!"