Misplaced Childhood -Part 1: Chapter 4
Jared graduates with honors at seventeen. It’s been a year and a half since he last saw Jensen. They still talk on the internet, even if it’s barely once a month. Jensen has had some trouble at school and was brought to the attention of a social worker. He even had to do some community work, after he’d been caught drawing graffiti on a wall of his high school. That’s why he hasn’t been able to visit in the past few months.
Jared worries about him, even though he tries to tamp it down. Tries to live his own life. “Jensen isn’t the five years old trapped with you in that basement anymore,” Alaina had told him. “Seriously, Jared, you have to let him go.”
Jared tries. On his graduation day, he celebrates with Felicia as they throw their mortarboards in the air. They both have been accepted at their first choice, Brown University, majoring in computer science. Jared hadn’t wanted to be away from home during college. That’s where he feels safe. Felicia had tried to coax him into applying to an out-of-state college, but in the end, her own parents had decided that it was less expensive to have her close, and Jared couldn’t have been happier. He just can’t imagine his life without Felicia.
As they hug each other and step away from the stage, though, Jared feels something hurting inside him. He still feels that Jensen a very important part of his life, and his absence on such an important day for Jared is weighing on his shoulders. His parents and Meg (and Jeff, through his cell phone from California where he studies) surround and congratulate him. Even Blue attended the graduation. She’s a quiet old dog now, but she licks Jared’s face and wiggles her tail a little. He pets her head softly, suddenly thinking about Jensen meeting her for the first time and rolling on the floor with her, laughing out loud and clear.
Jared swallows down the lump in his throat. This is a good day. He should be happy. He’s supposed to go out with Fel and a couple of friends later to have some pizza. Jared is still not the party kind of guy, and his friends respect it.
“Hey, Jared,” his mom calls.
He’s still crouching on the ground with Blue.
“What?”
His mom is smiling, pointing through the crowd of parents. Jared takes a look and sees Jensen making his way through it, taller than he remembers, different too. The tips of his hair is tinted blue, he now has several piercings in each ear, and wears army supply clothes with black, tall boots. When he smiles, though, it’s still Jensen. Jared doesn’t care at all what he looks like. He’s so damn happy to see him, he kind of runs to meet him halfway and grabs him in his arms, hugging him tight. Jensen smells of tobacco and marijuana. He laughs nervously, shakes against Jared’s own body.
“A damn giant, I’m telling you.” Jensen mumbles, patting Jared’s back.
“Man, I didn’t know you were coming.”
“Wouldn’t have missed it.”
“When did you arrive?”
“This morning.”
Jared pulls away from the hug and takes Jensen by the shoulders. “So what, you’re some kind of rebellious skinhead, now?”
“Ha, you have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jensen smiles back. “Nerd.”
“Fuck you,” Jared laughs. “No, seriously, you took the bus?”
“Nope. Hitchhiked.”
“You did what?”
Jensen points the duffle that’s resting at his feet. “Yep, like a grownup. Didn’t have the money to take the bus.”
“It’s dangerous, man.”
“Look, I’m here, and I know for a fact that you have a car, according to the pics you sent me -nothing but a trashcan with wheels, but why don’t we go for a ride?
“Hey, my car is awesome, you’re just jealous!”
“Yeah, whatever.”
It takes some time before they can be alone. All of Jared’s family wants to say hi to Jensen, then Jared has to assure Felicia that yes, he’ll join her and their friends at the pizza place in the evening. Jensen is invited. He shrugs. “Maybe. I’ll see.”
Jared had taken off his graduation robe and hat, leaving it with his parents. He settles behind the wheel of his maybe ugly, but working, car and smiles at Jensen. It’s a beautiful day; Jared is still riding high on the fact that he’d been accepted to college, that he’s a graduate, and that Jensen is there, with him. He slides sunglasses on his nose and asks with a playful voice, “Where to, babe?”
Jensen bursts out laughing. “Anywhere you want.”
They drive through town, talking. Jensen seems a bit nervous and on edge. Sometimes, when he thinks Jared isn't looking at him, his expression shift to a serious, almost tense one, and in those short moments he looks older, older than Jared even. Tired.
They talk. Jared speaks about his and Felicia’s project of creating an app while in college, about Jeff getting married in December, about Megan, who’s still a pain in the ass. Jensen talks about a couple of friends he has, not from school, but with whom he sometimes plays music. He wants to save enough money to buy a guitar. He doesn’t say much about his mother, just sarcastically pointing that she’s still her good old self. Last year, she’d met a man, and Jensen had thought that maybe she would get off his back, being occupied with someone else, but it didn't last. As for his grandmother, she keeps trying to take him to church and making comments about Jensen’s disgraceful appearance.
“Can’t wait to be old enough to get away. Got enough of fucking Underhill for a lifetime,” Jensen sighs, his booted feet resting on the car’s dashboard. He takes a cigarette out of his bag and asks if it’s okay to smoke. Jared nods. Whatever Jensen wants, he’s just happy to see him.
“Hungry?” Jared asks, trying to take Jensen away from his not-so-pleasant thoughts.
“Nah, I can wait for the pizza,”
“Wanna come home for a little while, then?”
Jensen clears his throat and turns his head toward the window. When he speaks, his voice is unsure. “Actually… I thought maybe we could… shit. Forget it.”
“What? Come on, tell me, man.”
“The… Did you know the TV show True Crime made a whole hour about Benton Glass and our kidnapping last month?”
Jared’s hands tense on the wheel despite himself. If he knows? The producer of the show had called home several times, asking for his parents -or even Jared- to be interviewed for the show. They had refused, of course. It had made Jared’s mom angrier than he’d seen her in a long time, and when the show aired, they went out to a restaurant, then the cinema, like Jared wouldn’t have been able to get away from the TV and watching it. That’s the last thing he would’ve done. He tells Jensen that much, surprised by his friend’s answer.
“Watched it. I don’t even know if that producer of yours called my mom -she didn’t tell me anyway. So that evening I watched it in my room.”
“Fuck, Jensen, why would you do that?”
Jensen sniffs and shrugs. “I… couldn’t help myself. I needed to… Shit, it’s hard to explain. Wish I hadn’t, though. They kept showing those pictures of me and you -the ones that were everywhere when we were abducted, and also, those other two boys: Tommy McIntyre and Joshua Roberts. I… I was so young, Jared. I never knew there had been others before us, and that they had died.”
Jared swallows, hard. It seems like the feeling he’s had so far, the impression that this would be a perfect, beautiful day has suddenly shifted. As he keeps driving through the town, it’s as if Providence is showing its ugly side, like in those H.P. Lovecraft stories. Clouds have started to gather, covering the blue skies, toning down the brightness of the sun.
“I knew,” he whispers.
“Well, my mom never talked about this with me. Got used to it, tried not to think about it. I never… fuck, I didn’t even know where Glass was serving his sentence.”
“So what?” Jared doesn’t want to sound defensive, but he does. “What good can come out of this… knowing more, what does it change?”
“Don’t tell me what to think and what I should do,” Jensen snaps. “You don’t know how it was when I was younger and my mom wanted me to pretend that nothing happened. Your family… they were supportive of you… Hell, you’re still seeing Alaina after all these years. But me, I never… I never had anyone helping me to get through this!”
Jensen’s words hit Jared hard, because he’s right. And maybe Jared doesn’t feel like talking about the freaking monster that abused them sexually, but he can’t just shut Jensen up with meaningless sentences. Jensen has been raised in a different way than he was, and maybe this is something he needs because he was never allowed to work on his issues. His mother never brought him to see another psychologist after Alaina, she never accepted what had happened to her son. At least, that’s what Jared’s mother had said. And as far as Jared’s concerned, she’s right.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m just… “
“Scared?” Jensen laughs without a hint of joy. “Because, Jay, I still am. Still freaking scared of him and just… Just seeing his face in the documentary, it was like I was five and on that mattress all over again.”
“Yeah,” Jared agrees. He tries not to think of Glass, but his memories are getting the best of him. What he remembers the most are his eyes, small and dark and squinting in his heavy, large face. And his voice, raspy, tone too soft.
A sudden nausea flips his stomach upside down, and he slows down the car until he can park at the side of the street. There are more clouds now, big, dark blue ones, covering the sun completely.
He’s sweating. He can feel it, dripping down his neck and back, making his shirt cling to his body. He takes deep breaths until his stomach settles down. All this time, Jensen looks at him in silence, biting the nail of his thumb.
“I’m… Sorry. I’m ruining your big day,” he finally says. “I shouldn’t have bothered you with this.”
“No, it’s alright. It’s been a long time since I really thought about Glass, that’s all. I mean… I still dream about him sometimes but-“
Jared shrugs. It’s hard to explain.
“I wanted to go see the farm,” Jensen murmurs. “I… I don’t remember anything of this place except from the basement and the white room. And in the TV show, they kept showing those distorted camera plans of it, you know… colours inverted like a negative, or shaky cam, zooming quickly and always moving and… It got me angry. I realized I never knew what it looked like, where we were abducted and kept for all those months.”
“You want to see the Glass farm? That’s where you want to go?” Jared asks in disbelief.
“It was a bad idea, I’m sorry,” Jensen says quickly. “Listen, I can go on my own, you don’t have to endure this on your graduation day. It’s something I need to do. I have no right to drag you with me.”
Jared tries to get used to the idea. The Glass farm is located on the outskirts of town. It’s been abandoned ever since Benton Glass was arrested. Jared knows he had a daughter that was living with her mother at the time of the abductions, and that none of them had wanted the old farm -who can blame them really? They had left Rhode Island shortly after the trial, and had tried to sell the farm but never succeeded.
It’s a good forty minute drive. The Glass farm is deep in the country, at the end of a back wood road. Jared remembers because his parents used to talk about the place, his father saying he was glad it was too far for kids looking for a thrill to get there easily, and his mother saying it should be torn down.
Jared doesn’t know if he could drive up there without getting lost. It’s only then that he realizes he’s going to do it, going to find this place with Jensen, because his friend has asked him, and that he can’t do this on his own, without a car.
Jared won’t let him be alone in the place where their childhood had turned into a never-ending ending nightmare.
“I’m not sure I can find it,” he whispers uneasily.
“You don’t have to. Really,” Jensen says quickly. He looks so upset and apologetic. He’s a kid, barely fifteen, despite the clothes and the piercings, despite the expression in his eyes that tell that he’s already been through enough shit for a lifetime.
He’s still the little boy Jared used to rock to sleep in that dirty basement.
“No, I want to do this,” Jared says with as much confidence as he can gather. “We’re in this together, always have been. Still, I know where the farm is located… vaguely, but I’m not sure I can get there without getting lost.”
Jensen rummages through his bag and gets a crumpled map out. “I wasn’t sure either, so I traced the way,” he says, showing Jared a thick line made with a red marker.
“Well, let’s go, then,” Jared says, getting the car into gear.
“Jay, are you sure? Because-“
“I’m sure,” Jared cuts Jensen off. “We’re doing this. Together.”
Before they leave downtown Providence, Jared takes his cellphone out to call his parents. He’s never been that good of a liar, but he tries to sound natural as he tells his father that Jensen and him are going to hang around for a while, maybe grabbing something to eat.
“Be careful,” his father tells him, and it’s like he can read straight into Jared’s mind.
He’s lucky his mother wasn’t the one to answer. It would have been worse trying to lie to her.
The drive is silent. Jared stops by a McDonald’s to buy himself a coffee. That’s his new addiction, coffee. He offers something to Jensen who orders a huge chocolate milkshake and drinks it compulsively, making loud slurping noises. Maybe it’s nervousness. Jared sure does feel nervous, swallowing his too-hot coffee in large gulps.
As they reach the outskirts of town, Jensen points to their right, where the asphalt stops and is replaced by an uneven dirt road.
“Fuck,” Jensen whispers.
“Yeah,” Jared nods, turning the wheel and slowing down.
The road is still muddy after a long winter, and full of water-filled holes. The trees on each side are twisted, the grass yellow and growing in uneven patches. It’s like they’re on their way to hell. Which is a strange thing to think about -not the good kind of strange.
“They were saying all this stuff about Glass on the TV show,” Jensen says very softly, like he’s afraid to break the silence. “Stuff I never knew. And I didn’t have any reason to know because I’m… Well, we were kids. Why should have I known all this? Still, it’s… it made him more human-like in my eyes. I’m not saying this in the good sense of the human word, but-“
“Yeah, I get it. Got the same impression when I asked Alaina some questions about him. S’like before, he was just, well, a monster, not someone who I could’ve imagine going through his everyday motions.”
“Exactly!” Jensen snaps his fingers. “Shit, the guy was a nurse. He’d go about his business caring for people, helping them, and then come back home and abuse little boys.”
Jensen is shaking his head, his expression a mix of repugnance and disbelief.
Jared is about to add something when the woods around them suddenly open up, revealing a big, abandoned field with an old, wasting away farm in the middle of it. The paint, probably white originally, is almost completely peeled off, revealing grey, moldy wood. The house is long and low, with its one-story frame and almost flat slate roof. A barn that had been standing next to it is now crumbled in on itself from the middle of the roof. Behind the farm, a couple of acres of fields have been left to rot, wet soil disappearing under old and new ill weeds, even small trees.
Jared stops the car. The only time he’d ever seen the farm from the outside was when he’d been taken out by the medics and police. He remembers the brightness of the sun that had brought tears to his eyes, and turning back, looking at the house, nightmarish in his eyes with its door opened like a mouth that was ready to swallow him right back inside.
The farm had seemed enormous back then. Not so much today. It’s just a small house, abandoned for so many years, forgotten.
“This is it,” Jensen whispers.
Without waiting anymore, Jensen gets out of the car and starts walking toward the farm, a new wind that had risen blowing through his hair, making the bushes dancing around him as he cuts through them.
I don’t want to get out, Jared thinks. I don’t want to get close to it.
Still, he finds himself opening his door and stepping outside as well. The temperature has definitely decreased. It might rain soon. The clouds are running in the sky, carried by the ever-growing wind. It's like this place can’t ever witness being warm and sunny, like there’s a permanent storm hovering around, ready to burst.
“Jensen, where are you going?” He calls.
Jensen stops dead on his feet a step ahead of Jared. He turns his head, looking scared, but determined.
“That’s really the place?”
“Yeah. I… I don’t want to get too close.”
“I’m not… sure…” Jensen says.
He gets something out of his pocket: a small, cheap-looking flask, and takes a long mouthful, then winces and shakes his head quickly.
“Alcohol,” Jared states with the sudden urge to take it away from him. He’s a kid, god damn it.
Except it’s not true. It’s been a long time since Jensen had seemed like a kid.
“Can I have some?” he asks instead.
Jensen nods but doesn’t move, and despite his reluctance, Jared has to walk the distance between them to grab the flask.
The alcohol burns down his throat and makes him cough. Jensen smiles.
“Not used to it?”
“Not really.” What about you? Jared wants to ask, but remains silent. Jensen’s the one with the flask.
“So,” Jensen says. “This is the place. I don’t even see windows for the basement.
“I think it was more like a cave,” Jared whispers.
His legs are unsteady and the alcohol is still burning its way through his esophagus. He turns around and goes to sit on the hood of his car.
Jensen looks at him, then at the house, shifting from one foot to the other. Then, it’s like he’s made up his mind suddenly. He turns back and goes to sit next to Jared, lighting up another cigarette as he settles.
“Yeah, I don’t think I can go inside,” he rasps, blushing slightly, as if ashamed of himself.
“What’s left to see anyway? It must be empty by now.”
“Yeah…” Jensen trails off. “Damn it. It’s… It’s just a freaking abandoned house, why am I so afraid?”
“I don’t know,” Jared murmurs, shivering despite himself. “But I feel the same.”
“I thought… I don’t know, that it would make me come to terms with… stuff.”
“Alaina says it will stay with us forever.”
Jensen snorts. “You still see her?”
“Yes. Only once a month, but yeah… I’ll have to change soon, though. She’s a child psychologist, and I’m barely a kid anymore.”
Jensen shakes his head softly, looking at Jared with affection. “A child, I don’t know: a giant one, maybe. But what good does it do to for you, after all these years?”
“We talk. I… Jensen. I still have symptoms of what she calls some form of PTSD. I have… issues. And you probably have some too.”
“What kind of issues do you have?”
Jensen isn’t mocking or disbelieving. He looks sincerely curious, and all of sudden, Jared can see the kid behind the rough teenager, the bad boy with the piercings and the blue hair and his flask of alcohol hidden in his jacket. He sees the blond, quiet little boy that Jensen may have not ever ceased to be, like he can exist at once in two different ways. Jared decides to be honest, as honest as he can be.
“I… I’m not really up to the whole liking a girl thing,” he starts, wondering if there is any other way he can say that he just can’t have an erection without feeling physically sick. “And I hate being somewhere where there aren’t any windows. Having my picture taken or someone making a video makes me want to yell at them to stop it. I don’t do it if I can do otherwise. And I’m shy, I don’t like being amongst too many people, I don’t have a lot of friends and I’m still scared, sometimes, walking alone on the street. That’s…”
“That’s maybe just who you are,” Jensen objects. “You can’t… like, attribute your whole personality to this,” he points vaguely toward the farm.
“What do I know? I don’t know whom I would have been if Glass had never done those things to me. Do you?”
“Well, it doesn’t change anything. Even if you keep on talking to a shrink about it, you can’t change the fact that this shit happened.”
True, but Jared still needs to understand himself, to understand the man he’s becoming -as Alaina puts it- in regard of those events that have shaped him. He doesn’t think Jensen can get it, maybe because he’s never seen another psychologist, maybe because he’s just different.
Jensen seems to understand the difficulties Jared means because he shrugs, as to dismiss the whole thing, and wraps an arm around Jared’s shoulder, coming closer so that their bodies are tucked against each other.
“We shouldn’t have come here,” he says in an almost inaudible voice. “Doesn’t change anything. This, or knowing more about Benton Glass, or what happened to the two other boys. You know, most of the time, my mom is a pain in my ass, but maybe she was right. Maybe just forgetting the whole thing was the better way to cope.”
“I don’t think so,” Jared replies.
“I don’t remember much, ya know. About the time we were here… Well, I remember you and me and also some of the stuff that happened in the room, hearing the flash of the camera or lying on white, fluffy sheets, feeling sick… I think I used to remember more, but it got wasted away. And maybe it’s for the best. I don’t have nightmares anymore. I don’t think I’m still… traumatized.”
Of course he is, Jared thinks, but maybe Jensen has to figure it out on his own.
“You and me,” Jensen adds. “That was the only thing worth remembering. M’glad you’re my friend, Jared.”
“I’m glad you’re mine.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Jensen says, smiling wide. “Time to celebrate your graduation and leave those ugly memories behind.”
That’s what they do. It’s not a bad evening. Jensen smiles and jokes and stuff himself with pizza. Felicia, Aldis and A.J. are friendly enough with him, especially Felicia, whom he’s met before.
Jensen says he has to leave the day after. Jared insists on buying him a bus ticket. He fights a little, just for the principle of it, but he seems relieved. Jared accompanies him to the bus station on a gloomy, misty afternoon.
“You know,” he says, as Jensen gets ready to get on. “Maybe I could be the one visiting next time. I do have a car.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Jensen trails off, carefully avoiding Jared’s gaze. “Although I doubt you’ll have the same warm welcome from my mom and gran.”
They hug each other -manly, briefly, then Jensen disappears inside the bus.
They don't see each other for the next two years.
Chapter 5
___