27

  Susie

  Christian seemed to be doing a bit better since our last visit Somewhere Else. We had a nice day in the field, a quiet hike through the woods, even went fishing by one of the non-magical lakes with some poles Brad brought from home. Brad reassured us that if it’s one thing that can clear a man’s head, make him see the beauty of life, and get him to forget about his problems, it was fishing.

  I just misspoke, he seemed to be fine after our last adventure. No, that’s also wrong, he was doing great, thriving even. I had heard he still got some light ribbing, some sly looks and grins laughing at what a loser he was. But after a good week worth of time in a weekend Somewhere Else, he just learned live with it, roll with the punches as I’m sure Cody tried to tell him to do. I felt good for him, a feeling that makes me sick knowing just what a monster he was now, but in the moment, I did feel good for him. He wasn’t so far gone by now. He had hope, hope Cody, that ignorant bastard, most likely instilled in him out of that same pity that drove this whole awful affair.

  Cody, he blinded me so much back then. I was in love. I’ll just say that Cody’s not a bad person, he just defends bad people.

  You need to cut that kind toxicity out of your life. That’s what Christian taught me.

  It’s one thing to want to help someone, to want to defend someone. I see men, mostly men arguing against me the courtroom, defending actions committed by other men that are so barbaric every day in my line of work. I can’t understand how any man, takes any amount of money, any amount of gold, to defend these actions. Murder, rape, what good do these defense attorneys think doing for the world, our world, the real world. I question how they sleep at night. I question how Christian slept at night, next to her, next to that poor girl. I like to think that today, if he’s even still alive, his nights are restless and wracked with guilt and shame. I like to think that he tosses and turns and finds no solace, not even in his sleep, if he’s even still alive.

  I think I just gave away too much. I don’t care. This is my argument for Christian’s guilt, nothing more. Cody wants this stupid project to be an accurate account, well I’m giving you my so-called accurate account. I don’t give a damn about the legacy of Christian, despite how much good he thinks he did for the world, that world. He was net negative there, never mind that business with Morgan, never mind the fact that this was a pathetic man escaping to his own play world, that girl. I’ll never forgive Christian for everything he did to us, how he bent all our lives out of shape. I’m sorry, Cody, I know that I used to care for you, and I used to care for you deeply. But I want to make it clear to you, that Christian was a monster. Nothing could convince me otherwise.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  I’m rambling now. I apologize, not to Cody, but to you, whoever it is reading this. Christian did look like he could be the man that Cody somehow thinks he could have been. He let those lessening taunts roll off his back. He even got a good comeback in on one. A guy said, “You sully any honors lately?” and to that Christian replied, “No, but the day is young,” even smiling as he said it. He got another laugh, another ribbing, as bad as it was, he seemed okay with it. Like he didn’t care about this world anymore. He shouldn’t have cared about high school anymore, he really shouldn’t have, he was screwed there. But his uncaring was deeper, he didn’t care about anything in this world anymore. I wish Cody could have convinced Christian that the key to getting over this Highschool bullshit was to just let it slide off your back as you count the days to all of it being over.

  Let me try to get back to recollecting that time in the moment. We played white board in Pre-Cal. When Christian took his turn, he took it hard. Every question, he was first to scrawl out his answer, his correct answer, and take a knee for the win. That probably brought back some of his social credit. He won half the class an extra two points on the final, and that thankfulness earned him a bit of a reprieve from some of the other students who were so thankful to him. Cody says he did good in that other world, did good in Somewhere Else, and he may have. He saved those children from the piper, he slew the big bad wolf and rescued that little girl, and he did all those meaningless helpful errands compared to the evil he showed us he was capable of in that place, but he did do good there for a time.

  I saw a smile on his face, one I’ve seen on a few criminals I’ve sent away. To be honest, in my experience I would call it the same smile of a man who was ready to kill himself. It’s such a stereotype, what people say that just before someone kills themselves, they become happy, ecstatic even. That knowing they have finally found their way out makes them content. They know that they have an end to their suffering just on the horizon, so they get this kind of joy, this experience of being able to let all the cares and troubles of this world just roll off them. I didn’t want Christian to kill himself, not in the moment at least. If he had turned that twenty-two his father owned into his mouth when he was sixteen before this horribleness began none of this awfulness would have ever happened. But I wasn’t thinking about that then. To me, like so many people who have had the pain of someone they know killing themselves, this happiness I saw in him tricked me into thinking he was getting better, that he was getting well. When I was younger, I really did feel bad for him. I stopped feeling bad for him after that business with Morgan, after I had what was left of my innocence destroyed by the actions of another man.

  It’s so clear to me now, that I’m ashamed of how ignorant I was back then. Christian wanted to kill himself, I think. But he didn’t, he didn’t kill himself and because of that, he found her. I wish he had have gone through with it. Again, I’m sorry Cody, all of this could have ended so much better if he had just died like he wanted too.