Chronicles of Jonathan Tibbs 1: The Never Hero (49 page)

“Expecting anyone?” she asked.

“Nope,” Collin said, “and it’s too late to be a Jehovah’s Witness.”

Paige got up from her seat to answer the door. He couldn’t see who was there. He could only see the door and her beside it.

“Hello?” she said.

Collin noticed her body language change subtly. Her weight shifted onto a hip, and her voice seemed lighter. He knew her well enough to know she was flirting.

“Hi, I’m looking for Jonathan,” said a man’s voice.

“Oh,” Paige said. “Jonathan isn’t home yet. Do you want to come in and wait?”

“Yeah, that’d be great,” said the voice. “I’m Lincoln.”

Collin felt his joy receding at this interruption. Maybe he misread it. Maybe she was just being friendly; then the guy walked through the door. He was bigger than Grant.

“I thought I knew all Jonathan’s friends,” said Paige as she stepped aside to let him through the doorway.

“I’m his trainer,” Lincoln said.

Paige looked at Collin then.

“Did you know Jonathan had a personal trainer?” she asked.

“Nope,” Collin said. “Explains a lot though.”

“Jonathan said he’d be home around now,” Lincoln said, “I was just going to drop off this movie we’d talked about.”

“You can leave it with us,” Collin said. “We’ll make sure to give it to him when he gets here.”

“What’s the movie?” Paige asked.

Lincoln smirked at her. “Just a bad movie from the eighties.”

Paige looked at the DVD box.

“What’s it about?” she asked.

Collin sighed. He had no doubt that Paige could care less about the movie.

When he arrived home, Jonathan was approached by Paige before he ever made it down the stairs to the garage.

“Friend of yours stopped by,” she said.

“Oh?” Jonathan said. “Right. Crap, I’m later than I expected.”

“He brought this for you,” she said, holding out a DVD case.

Jonathan reached out to take the box, but she pulled it away and tucked it behind her back.

“How long have you been keeping your personal trainer a secret?” she asked.

At first he thought it was another interrogation. Then she bit the side of her lip and raised an eyebrow at him and he recognized it as the face she gave right before asking a favor.

“Awhile now, I guess,” he said.

“How come you’ve never invited him over?”

“Uh…”

He turned off the light in the garage around nine o’clock and walked up into the living room. Collin had come down to visit a little while before he’d finished training.

“You lifting weights tonight?” he’d asked.

“Not tonight,” Jonathan had replied. “Why?”

“I want to start,” he said. “Not as much as you do, I just want to try and put on some muscle. Let me know next time you’re lifting?”

Jonathan had nodded. Unsure what brought on the renewed interest.

Hayden and Collin were at the table when he came through the door. As he walked towards the stairs, he stopped. He’d noticed a DVD that Hayden had left out, one the roommates had already made him watch.

“Mind if I borrow this?” he asked Hayden, holding up the
Karate Kid III
case.

“Go for it,” Hayden said.

After he’d showered, he played the DVD on the laptop in his room, fast forwarding to the climactic end scene. The story’s protagonist, Daniel, has been beaten and humiliated. He lies on the arena floor panicking, needing to stand up and fight but frozen on the ground, failing to find the courage. All the while his more experienced opponent ruthlessly taunts him, eager to inflict as much pain as possible should Daniel stand again.

Daniel, with nowhere to turn, cries to his teacher.

“Mr. Miyagi, it’s over! I can’t fight him! I want to go home! I’m afraid!”

Miyagi lays a hand on Daniel’s shoulder, to help calm him.

“It’s okay to lose to opponent,” says the teacher, “but must not lose to fear.”

A few months ago the teacher’s words would have rolled off Jonathan as the cliché antics of the early nineties. Now, he didn’t have to project himself into this scene, he understood it from having lived a nightmarish reflection of it. Daniel’s moment wasn’t life or death, but the chaos he felt around him was the same brand.

The music synced up to the teacher’s words for dramatic effect, tinkering with viewer’s emotions. Jonathan felt the inspiration that these films were designed to bring out. It was too easy to remember his own fear as Sickens the Fever had beaten his face into that pillar under the viaduct. How he had struggled and struggled, but found himself unable to match his opponent’s violence, how his panic had overwhelmed his thinking.

As he watched, he felt an unexpected anger rising up, the thing inside him again, struggling to be freed of its chains, enraged by the very idea of what was happening on the screen. He thought he understood then. His father, in his dream, he had been right; he’d known. It was the things that weren’t fair. The things he couldn’t fight with his fists.

Things like abandonment.

These wise men weren’t there in the real world; they didn’t show up when the protagonist needed them. There would be no heroic music, no referee, no family or friends on the sidelines. Most of all, though, there would be no one to tell him exactly what he needed to hear.

When Jonathan’s time came, there would be an alien standing in the shadows, powerless to intervene. There would be a city in chaos around him watching something they couldn’t understand, but there would be nothing and no one to help him.

Nothing but what he brought with him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

MONDAY | SEPTEMBER 5, 2005 | 3:45 AM

WHEN
Hayden woke, it was early morning. The clock on his bedside table read three forty-five. He rolled around a bit trying to get back to sleep, but failed. He heard movement in the house and knew Jonathan was likely awake. How his roommate slept as little as he did and still had the energy to train in that garage for hours on end was beyond him.

When he reached the kitchen he filled a glass from the tap. He hadn’t seen him when he walked in, but Jonathan was leaning against a table, staring out their front window. It wasn’t a comforting scene.

“Jonathan, FYI it’s creepy to wake in the middle of the night and find your roommate with his new militant haircut staring out the window at four in the morning,” Hayden said, taking a sip from his water.

“Can’t sleep,” Jonathan said.

“What are you looking at anyway?” Hayden said, joining him by the front window.

“Absolutely nothing,” Jonathan said. “I’m just daydreaming.”

Hayden shrugged, and turned to head back to his bedroom.

“Hayden,” Jonathan said, “would you stay up with me for a bit? I wanted to ask you something anyway.”

Jonathan looked lonely, and Hayden detected a note of anxiety in his tone, even if he hadn’t meant it to be there.

“What’s up?” Hayden said, taking a seat at the table.

“Well, you’re the only person of faith in the house. I don’t know what Paige believes, but Collin isn’t religious. I don’t want to offend you,” Jonathan said, “but is it the fear of death? Is it the idea of ceasing to exist? Is that why you believe in God?”

Hayden didn’t like this question and it wasn’t because it was offensive. It just made him reappraise what he might have walked in on. He felt a tinge of nervousness. What might be the real reason for Jonathan’s creepy hundred yard stare out the window at nothing?

“Well, it’s part of it, maybe the root of it, but not all of it. The idea of ceasing to exist has always been unpleasant,” Hayden said. “What’s got you thinking about the afterlife?”

Jonathan returned to looking out the window before responding.

“I just think the fear might be misplaced.” Jonathan seemed to be looking for a better way to put it. “I guess, life is a lot of work. It’s exhausting, really. It seems like it might be nice, at the end to just ‘not be’ anymore.”

Hayden grew more anxious. It occurred to him that he might start looking around to make sure his roommate hadn’t taken a bottle full of pills. He’d never heard Jonathan talk like this before, not even in the weeks after the hospital.

“Jonathan, I know you’ve had a rough few months.” Hayden hesitated. “You aren’t thinking of doing anything stupid, are you?”

Jonathan looked confused by Hayden’s question before realizing how this might look from Hayden’s perspective.

“No, nothing like that. It’s just one of those things you start thinking about at four in the morning when you can’t sleep,” Jonathan said. “Seriously.”

He seemed to be holding in a laugh. The levity did make Hayden relax.

“Suicidal, really?” Jonathan asked. “Is that how this looks?”

“Little bit, bro,” Hayden replied, smiling now.

“I just wanted to ask. My family wasn’t ever religious,” Jonathan said.

“Well,” Hayden replied, “it’s not that I don’t see what you’re saying, but the idea of ceasing to exist makes my soul quake.”

Jonathan looked like he was thinking about it. A moment or two passed before he spoke again.

“I’m afraid of pain, broken bones, drowning, being mauled by a bear. I’m afraid of feeling helpless, like when that man attacked me in the house. I don’t think I’m afraid of what comes after,” Jonathan said.

Hayden shrugged. “Call me a coward if you want, but it disturbs me.”

Jonathan frowned, suddenly growing too serious in Hayden’s estimation.

“Hayden, I’ll never call you a coward. You’re probably the bravest person in this house. You might be afraid of the end, but I know you would put that fear behind you if your friends needed you.”

Hayden raised an eyebrow. What the hell had gotten into Jonathan this morning? Maybe he should be looking for an empty bottle of booze somewhere instead of worrying about finding a suicide note.

“Thanks, Jonathan,” he said slowly. “So, what have we been drinking then?”

Jonathan just smiled.

“Speaking of religion, how are things going with the gospel reboot?” Jonathan asked.

Hayden smiled, “We had a pretty awesome breakthrough for the next story arc,” he said excitedly. “I mean assuming the first run does well enough to bother with a second.”

“Do I get to hear about it or is it a secret?” Jonathan asked.

“Come on, Tibbs, you’re in the circle of trust, of course,” Hayden said. “Jesus is going to find out that the son of the devil is also on earth at the same time as him.”

“That seems kind of obvious, plot wise. Why is it so exciting?” Jonathan asked.

Hayden, so pumped to talk to someone other than Collin about the new ideas, didn’t know where to start.

“Tibbs, you have to understand, in comic books superheroes and super villains are essentially the same character,” Hayden explained.

“The hero or villain has something bad happen to him, and then they either become good or bad. Bruce Wayne’s parents die, he becomes Batman. Harvey Dent gets his face blown off, he becomes Two-Face. Uncle Ben gets killed and Peter Parker becomes Spider-man. Erik Lehnsherr loses his family in the holocaust and becomes Magneto,” Hayden said.