You Complete Me - 20. Chapter 20 - Plan B

Though he would much rather put his foot to the gas and speed off into the next town, Jake managed to safely park Bond on the side of the street in front of the house before turning on his sister in a fury. “Why didn’t you remind me that he was coming home today!?”

“I would have if I knew!” she shot back. “I’m just as surprised as you are.”

If they were going to get through this, they had to be a united front. So Jake took a deep breath to swallow his panic. This didn’t have to be chaotic. He had nothing to hide; his father just had this strange way of making him feel like he did. The dented car, though... “What are we going to say about Duende?”

Ellie bit her lip uncertainly. “There’s nothing wrong with the occasional fender bender. And we’ll tell him we were just out for dinner, I guess.”

Dinner, right, Jake thought, even as his stomach growled audibly. “Alright. And your face?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

Jake reached across her and pulled down the vanity mirror so she could look at her disheveled appearance. Ellie jumped as if she had been startled, then tried in vain to smooth down her hair.

They spent a few more minutes constructing something of a cohesive story without too many suspicious details, hoping that Samwell would be too jetlagged to ask a lot of questions, but by the time Jake reached the front door with his sister his mind had gone blank from nerves.

Their father wasn’t in the living room as they walked in, but Jake became acutely aware of the state of the house. Since Ellie had moved back in, they’d made a lot of progress in making it look normal family-with-teens cluttered, but that wasn’t the way Samwell had left it. If the house didn’t look like it was being staged for a Better Living magazine cover, it wasn’t within Samwell’s standards. Ellie seemed to have considered this as well, and the two of them shared a grim look.

Before either of them could decide on their next move, Samwell, in the flesh, walked out of study. His sandy eyebrows climbed up his forehead in surprise before they quickly returned to their more natural, grumpier position. “There you two are,” he said, not sounding exactly happy about it. “Where were you?”

“Getting dinner,” said Ellie, at the same time that Jake blurted out, “The mall.” She looked like she wanted to strangle him, and Jake probably wouldn’t have stopped her if she tried.

Samwell frowned at them, focusing on Jake because they all knew he would crack first if pressed. “Want to try that again?”

“All that can wait!” Ellie chirped. To everyone’s surprise, she went to Samwell with her arms outstretched for a hug that he hesitantly accepted. They weren’t a hugging type of family even on a good day. The last time Jake saw them engaged in one was when they dropped Ellie off at college for the first time, and they both looked so uncomfortable about it that he was worried someone might call the police.

None of that reservation was evident now, though. Ellie embraced their father as if it was the most natural thing in the world and Samwell looked as utterly perplexed as Jake felt over her shoulder. “Missed you too, sweetie,” he said, awkwardly patting her on the back.

When Ellie released him, Jake saw her desperate attempt to distract working in real time. It was hard to catch Samwell off-guard, and even harder to put him in a good mood. She’d managed to do both with one action: as he went to greet Jake, he was smiling good-naturedly. He palmed the side of his son’s head, ruffling his hair with his fingers. “You need a haircut,” he told him.

Jake couldn’t help but smile back. He’d kind of forgotten what genuine parental warmth felt like, but it was nice. “Yeah, so do you, Dad.”

It had been a month since Samwell had last been home, but it may as well have been years. A lot had happened in his absence, much of which Jake had good reason to keep to himself. More importantly, California seemed to have done his father some good. He looked as if he had just returned from vacation: well-rested despite the long flight, scruffier than he’d been before he left, and a few shades darker, rivaling the complexions of his children.

“Assuming you weren’t actually ‘at the mall’ or ‘getting dinner,’ I believe I owe you one, Jake – McAllister’s is your favorite, right?”

That was actually Ellie’s favorite restaurant, but Jake was too hungry to be petty about free food. “I could eat, yeah,” he said, with a sheepish shrug.

“Good. We’ve got a lot to catch up on – starting with that dent in Ellie’s car.” He chuckled a bit at the answering silence. “What? You thought I wouldn’t notice?”

Within twenty minutes, the three of them were back on the road in Samwell’s car. Ellie, who had flattened her hair enough to cover the scratches on her neck, was sitting in the backseat. Jake was next to his father, fiddling with the satellite radio by switching channels every other song. This – along with most of Jake’s hyperactive quirks – usually annoyed Samwell, but he was actually humming along. This was starting to feel like a dream.

“I guess you enjoyed this trip,” Jake commented, finally letting the radio rest on some mellow coffeehouse channel.

“You’d love California,” Samwell said. “Maybe next summer, we can all go for one last trip before college. Speaking of – ” Jake readied himself for some nagging, but Samwell glanced over his shoulder at Ellie instead. “You thinking of re-enrolling next year? There’s still time to catch up.”

“Hm.” Ellie was on her phone and didn’t look pleased about being interrupted. “Maybe, but a different one.”

Samwell did something with his jaw in a way that reminded Jake that the old, judge-y Samwell was still alive and well in there somewhere. It looked like he was literally biting back words. “I don’t think your scholarship will carry over.”

In the rearview mirror, Jake saw Ellie’s eye twitch in irritation. “You know, speaking of scholarships, Jake has one.”

Jake felt his father’s intense grey stare turn to him. “What? Why didn’t you tell me right away?”

“Because I don’t have a scholarship,” Jake said, with a sigh. “It’s just something I was encouraged to apply for. Just some small school in the U.K.” He shrugged in an effort to convince both of them that it wasn’t a big deal. He had wanted to keep this close to his chest until it was a more definite thing.

Almost forgetting his turn, Samwell made a sharp right onto a downtown street. Despite being a stickler for order and safety in every other respect, he could be a somewhat erratic driver. “Well, that’s still good news. What are the requirements?”

“Being good at rugby and a 3.0 grade point average.”

“You know what that means.”

Just like that, the dream was beginning to feel suspiciously like reality. “Yep,” Jake said tightly, wishing Ellie had kept her mouth shut. “Study hard, right?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. They were finally in the restaurant parking lot and Jake hopped out as soon as the car stopped rolling.

Unfortunately, a public setting didn’t halt the interrogation that was to come. As soon as the waitress had walked away with their orders, Samwell continued peppering Jake with questions about the scholarship, and by extension, his grades. It started out friendly enough, but since Samwell came from a family full of lawyers, it didn’t take long before Jake felt as if he were being cross-examined. It was always easy to tell when Jake’s answers failed to satisfy him. You know I got a copy of your report card, right? Do you have a study plan in place? There’s still time to turn this around, but you need to focus 100% on school if this is going to work. How are the meds working? We can always talk to Dr. Halloway about adjusting the dose if needed. Are you still being tutored? Are you open to taking college credit? I’m just trying to help in any way I can, Jake. I want you to make something of yourself.

The last part always got him. Jake knew that Samwell probably meant well when he hyper-focused on these things, but that didn’t make it sting any less. He’d never been this hard on Ellie in high school because he never had to: she was brilliant and Jake was constantly reminded that he was not. School wasn’t exactly Jake’s thing, but did that alone mean he couldn’t make something of himself?

Before the waitress had even returned, Jake had begun wondering if it was worth applying for the rugby scholarship at all, if his own father seemed convinced he was on the verge of flunking out anyway. No matter how good he was on the field, it would just mean four more years of never being good enough in the classroom.

As Jake gradually shut down, Ellie had tried unsuccessfully to redirect the conversation a few times. Jake could feel her frustration and sensed something big was coming when she let out a frustrated sigh. “Hey, Dad?”

Samwell was in the middle of requesting an appointment with Dr. Halloway on his phone. “Yeah, sweetie?”

“You had asked about the dent, remember? Yeah, I had relapsed and crashed it a few weeks ago.”

The waitress chose a very poor time to approach with her arms full of dishes. She had clearly heard what Ellie had said, but she was too close to bail gracefully. She slid the plates across a painfully silent table, comprised of Ellie and Samwell were glaring at each other and Jake was staring into space and wishing for an out. The waitress didn’t bother confirming orders before scurrying away, and when Jake looked down he saw that he’d gotten his father’s order.

“Why?” Samwell demanded.

Ellie shrugged. “Do I need a why?”

At that moment, Jake’s prayers for an easy out were answered as his phone buzzed with a message from Nic. He was trapped in the window seat, so he nudged his sister to move. “Bathroom,” he grunted.

“Now, really?”

Jake wanted to tell her that this was her battle to fight, not his. He’d done his time in the hot seat and wasn’t interested in witnessing his sister take his place. Instead, he just nodded emphatically until she got up with a heavy sigh.

Once he was in the safety of the four walls of a bathroom stall, Jake let out a long exhale that he didn’t realize he had been holding. He took out his phone to see what Nic had to say: Can you send the pictures?

Jake nodded to himself, even though that meant having to look at them again. At least he was in the right place to be sick. Each time he thought about Meg and Neumann, it stung a little less each time – he mere winced this time as he skimmed them and attached most of them to his next DM to Nic.

Thanks.

What are you going to do with them?

Knowing Nic at least a little by this point, Jake didn’t really expect to be privy to his schemes; he was just doing his due diligence in at least being curious. So when Nic replied relatively quickly, Jake was caught off guard: I’m going to print a fuckton of flyers with them and put them everywhere around the school. You in?

“The fuck?” Jake muttered out loud.

For the first time since allying himself with Nic in this revenge scheme, Jake hesitated. After spreading stuff about his mother, Meg seemed to have realized she had taken it too far and had left him alone since. Did she still deserve the same level of humiliation she had sent Jake’s way? People still whispered about him and avoided him, but the intrigue had been fading into the general cacophony of the high school dramasphere. It would never be completely forgotten, but no one dared talk about mail-order brides in his presence. The ball was in his court, and he had the power to call this off and let it die.

But then Jake thought about Jazzy and Luke, innocent bystanders, getting hurt by Meg. He thought about the ripple effect of losing Jazzy as a tutor and very nearly as a friend, costing him precious grade points that he couldn’t really afford to waste – and that’s when it hit him. Meg hadn’t just tried to embarrass him; targeting Jazzy had been a very intentional choice. She knew about Jake’s academic struggles, that Jazzy was his tutor and that she had had a crush on him, and she had exploited that. For what? She had wanted his grades to tank. If he didn’t get his grades up, if he didn’t get this scholarship opportunity, it would all lead back to Meg and her intense need to control and manipulate. At least, it would be easier to blame her for his failures than himself.

Jake wrote to Nic: I’m in. Where are we meeting?

Tomorrow night, around 10, front of the school. Wear something dark.

The atmosphere had not improved by the time Jake returned to his family. Whatever Samwell and Ellie had discussed in his absence, it hadn’t been pleasant: there was a lot of sulking and angry chewing going on. Jake wondered what he had missed, but he also didn’t want to restart an argument by inquiring. They resumed a very tense lunch, but at least Samwell left a very large tip, which Jake appreciated on the waitress’s behalf.

When they got home, Jake almost expected Ellie to start packing again – either to disappear for another few months or go straight to rehab. Instead, she locked herself in her room and refused to talk to anyone, so he didn’t get a chance to ask her how Samwell responded to her relapse. His father wasn’t feeling very chatty anymore, either.

“It’s getting late,” he said from the doorway of his own room. “We’ll catch up more in the morning, okay?”

Oh joy, Jake thought. “Yeah, sure.”

“You going out tonight? With Meg?”

“We broke up.”

The jet lag was clearly starting to catch up with Samwell, but he perked up a little at that. He scanned Jake’s face for any signs of distress, glanced over his shoulder at his bed, then back at his son. “Wow. That’s...unfortunate. Do you...want to talk about it?” The inquiry sounded a bit forced.

Jake huffed. “It happened a few weeks ago. You’re off the hook.”

Samwell rubbed his face tiredly. “Okay. We’ll definitely talk in the morning – tomorrow, at least. I’m dead on my feet.”

Jake smiled without warmth. If they were just going to pick up where they left off, Jake was out of things to say. “’Night, Dad,” he said, turning away.

“Goodnight, Jake.”

As the door clicked shut, Jake sighed into the empty silence. He glanced at Ellie’s closed door, where light and faint music emanating from the bottom crack. That had always been her subtle request to not be bothered. He didn’t feel like going to bed just yet, so that meant another long night of watching TV until he passed out the couch. They were all together again, but it was like nothing had changed.

The next morning, Jake did not get a chance to “catch up” with Samwell. His father was one of those infuriating morning types – minus being chipper – but he had slept in today. Jake himself woke up curled on the living room couch to the smell of fresh coffee being brewed by Ellie in the kitchen.

“In two minutes I was probably going to pour this on you,” she said wearily, holding up her cup. “Want any?”

Jake found his phone tucked under the throw pillow he’d been sleeping on. “Nah, no time.” He stood up and stretched until his stiff joints stopped protesting. “Dad didn’t kill you?”

“Not physically, at least,” Ellie said, with a sad smile.

Yikes. Jake had definitely been there. Samwell wasn’t the yelling type, but at times, Jake wished he was. Getting iced out could be worse in some ways. It was what came after you fucked up one too many times, when Samwell decided that lecturing and throwing money at the problem wasn’t solving it, so ignoring it was the next course of inaction. Several years ago, before Jake started earning his own money, he stole his dad’s credit card to buy a morning-after pill for an ex-fling. When Samwell inevitably found out, he wouldn’t even look at Jake for weeks. He didn’t have to say he was disappointed that Jake had ever been born when he was in those moods, but he didn’t need to.

“Are you staying?” Jake asked, hopefully. Drudging up old memories didn’t make him excited to be alone with his father again.

“Yeah. If anything, just to spite him.”

Jake knew that that probably wasn’t the best reason to stay for the sake of her sobriety, but it was as good as reason as any, as far as he was concerned. He acknowledged her with a nod, then finished getting ready for another long day of school.

It wasn’t a notable day in any way other than the weight of what he had planned that night, so Jake was essentially counting the hours until 10 PM for most of the day. When lunch time eventually crept upon him, he wasn’t sure how much Luke knew until his friend brought it up first.

They had been having a normal conversation until there had been a lull and Jazzy was distracted with homework. Luke cast a furtive glance her way, then then leaned in to get Jake’s attention. “Are you going to do it tonight?” he asked, whispering.

Jake didn’t need to ask what “it” was, but he now knew that Jazzy apparently wasn’t privy to what was going on, so he just nodded slightly. A part of him was a little disappointed that it wouldn’t be just himself and Nic carrying this out tonight, but he accepted it. The more hands, the better.

As it turned out, there were more hands, just not the ones Jake expected.

That night, after using Luke’s name as part of a half-assed excuse to escape, Jake parked his car a few blocks from Greendale High. He didn’t want his car to be recognized, and it gave him time to scope out the streets as he walked along the chain link fence along the perimeter. It wasn’t very late, but since it was a Thursday night, there weren’t many cars on the road, especially in such a residential area. He kept his head down, though, trying not to look suspicious, until his eyes were drawn to a flash of white stuck to the fence.

At a glance, one might think it was a flyer for a missing pet. Not Jake, though, who knew the subject of those pictures quite intimately. The nudes he’d extracted from Meg’s phone were arranged in collage, almost like an R-rated senior page in a yearbook. As if anyone could mistake her for anyone else, her full name and phone number were printed in capital letters across the top of the flyer, along with a short list of “services” ranging from five to twenty dollars.

Jake didn’t know how to feel at first, besides mild disbelief, possibly numbness. Other emotions gradually leaked through, though, and regret or trepidation weren’t any of them. He was impressed – flattered, even. This felt like one hell of a favor, and it didn’t even end there. Jake looked to his left, tracing the rest of the fence, which was dotted with more flyers identical to the first. Not close enough to draw too much attention right away, but the message was still clear. Like a trail of breadcrumbs, he followed them to the end of the block and turned.

Near the entrance of the school, at the end of the trail, three shadowy figures gathered: two short, one much taller. They all stopped what they were doing and turned to look at him, which Jake found eerie – especially since the two shorter figures became Nic and Shiv, and the third was too tall to be Luke.

Nic made a show of tapping an invisible watch. “Ten-fifteen. Five more minutes, and I’d think you had chickened out.”

“Some people would call it fashionably late,” Jake said. “Looks like you didn’t need much help, anyway – nice work.”

“So’s she,” the new guy said. Up close, Jake realized he had seen him before – it was the tattooed guy that had accompanied Nic to Flaming Amy’s a few weeks ago, the one that looked at him a second too long when he thought no one else noticed. The guy held up one of the flyers and pointed at it. “She yours?”

“Not anymore.”

“Unless this is a mutual business decision between the two of you, obviously. I feel like I’ve seen you before.”

“You have,” Jake said, and nothing more. There were very few people that Jake disliked instantly, and this guy was one of them. He wasn’t even sure why, but the fact that he was slightly taller vexed him the most at the moment.

The guy just smirked at him in a patronizing way, the kind of smile that would often be accompanied by a sardonic applause. “Name’s Arnie.”

“Jake.”

“Oh!” Arnie snapped his fingers suddenly. “I remember now – I never forget a pretty face. You work at Flaming Amy’s.” He looked over at Nic for confirmation, who had been silently watching the two interact. “You said he was a douche.”

“Ouch,” said Jake, also looking to Nic.

Nic didn’t bother explaining himself. “Nothing gets past you, Arnie.”

Shiv, who had been resumed taping flyers to the fence while the boys chatted, impatiently clicked her tongue. “Now that we’re past introductions, can we get on with this before security drives by?”

Nic went to go help her, but hesitantly, as he kept glancing over at the other two. Arnie didn’t move; he continued sizing up Jake, who did the same. Arnie may have had him on height, but he wasn’t nearly as bulky, even under the long, thin coat he was wearing that made him look a bit like a vulture. There was an air of danger to him, though, stemming from a sort of confidence that said he was used to being underestimated and it didn’t bother him one bit. He suddenly reached for something under his jacket, and Jake flinched.

If Arnie noticed, he didn’t say anything about it. He offered Jake the silver flask he had produced from his inner pocket. “Drink?” Even though he was asking, it sounded like a command.

Jake had the distinct feeling he was being tested. He resisted the urge to check if Nic was offering any silent cues, then took the flask from Arnie and unscrewed the cap. It smelled like vodka, but if there was anything else in it, he wouldn’t have known. He brought it to his lips and knocked back a swallow, tried not to wince as it burned its way down, and handed it back. “Thanks.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nic visibly relax; if it was a test, Jake appeared to have passed. In front of him, Arnie grinned at him – just a quick flash of teeth that looked more like a snarl, but that was probably just Jake’s nervous interpretation at this point. Then he just turned his back on him and sauntered off to help Shiv.

A little addled from the shot, it took Jake a second to realize he had been dismissed. He saw a discarded backpack on the sidewalk that was full of papers and grabbed a handful, noticing that it was the fancy, glossy kind, like a real poster. He went up to Nic, about to ask him what the fuck was up with Arnie, but then he got a good look at him and did a double take, forgetting that question in favor of another one.

“You go out tonight?”

Nic did his signature quizzical head tilt, catching the dim lighting just right so that his makeup was even more obvious. It wasn’t much more than the usual eyeliner, but there were some enhancements that Jake didn’t know how to name, stuff that made his features sharper and more alluring.

Realizing he was staring, Jake shook himself out of it and clarified. “The makeup,” he said, gesturing at his own face.

“Oh, that. I had a date tonight, kind of. Part of my cover to get out.”

Jake let himself relax for the first time this evening. He stuck some tape to the back of the poster and tried unsuccessfully to adhere it to the fence; clearly, there was a technique to this. “I guess that makes Luke the communal scapegoat.”

Nic bent to collect the fallen paper. “No, just yours. I took one for the team and went out with Kenny tonight – you okay?”

Jake must have looked as if he had been slapped across the face, because he certainly felt like it. Nic didn’t look all that concerned about it, either; if anything, he was trying not to laugh, which didn’t make Jake feel much better. “Kenny Enzo? Kenzo?”

“I don’t call him that, but yeah.”

Nic was still smirking, so Jake did too, feeling his jaw strain with the effort. “And you took one for the team, huh?”

“Well, yeah,” Nic said airily. “If I need a free two hundred copies of something in cardstock, the head of the newspaper committee is probably the one to fuck, right?”