Ringing in the Sane

Jared took us to a small restaurant with very aggressive and very fast driving. Luke looked at me questioningly when my eyes found his but I didn’t say anything.

“Jared, are you okay?” Pixie eventually called out from the backseat.

Jared answered with a sharp swerve around a corner.

We arrived only around half an hour later. Jared leapt out of the vehicle and slammed his door. He walked inside, not waiting for any of us.

“What’s wrong with him?” Pixie whispered quickly as soon as Jared disappeared into the building.

“I don’t know,” I said, trying to make them stop talking to me. I was upset and confused, I didn’t want to talk to any of them. Especially about the source of my confusion and anger. “He’s just moody. The lady behind the counter gave him a weird look or something.”

I was hoping this would make them back off and dismiss it as nothing, but it had the opposite effect.

“Was it a look of recognition?!” Pixie asked loudly. He then added more quietly, “We might have been on the news or something.”

“What for? We haven’t done anything.”

“Jared has! Plus, my house exploded!” Luke said. “Or is that nothing to you?”

Pixie was taken aback, then regained his composure. “It’s not nothing, I didn’t know.”

“Oh,” Luke said sheepishly. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Pixie said impatiently. He turned back to me. “Do you think she recognised him from something?”

“No,” I lied. “Have you smelt him? He stinks.” That wasn’t a lie. All of us stank.

Everyone seemed to calm down completely after I said that, except for Pixie who still seemed anxious.

“It’s nothing, Pix,” Luke soothed. “Come on, let’s get some food.”

Leaton and I followed Pixie and Luke into the building. We walked over to where Jared was sitting, murdering chips with his fork. Pixie looked at me as if to say he didn’t believe my story as to why Jared was upset. I didn’t blame him, it was an awful lie. Pixie, however, didn’t say anything.

We had just ordered our meals, I had ordered gnocchi, when someone came up to our table.

“Luke, is that you?” the stranger said. He had short brown hair and I predicted he would be about the same height as me, or maybe taller.

Luke had just taken a sip of water as Dan spoke. He inhaled some and was spluttering until he said, “D-Dan! Um, hi!” He turned a strong shade of red.

“Who’s that?” Pixie whispered heatedly.

“How are you?” the man named Dan asked.

“Do you know who he is?” Pixie whispered to the rest of us. He wasn’t looking too happy.

Dan and Luke continued their conversation with Pixie whispering in the background for a few minutes before Jared jumped slightly in his seat and walked off quickly to the toilets without a word.

As soon as Dan had left, Pixie turned on Luke. “Who was he?”

It turned out that he had been an old boyfriend.

Pixie glared at Dan from across the room.

Our meals had arrived, and Jared still wasn’t back. His mound of murdered chips was beginning to get cold, and the tomato sauce had decided to take them over.

I glanced at the toilets, before I decided I should go check on him. I excused myself, saying I had to go to the toilet.

I pushed against the chipped green door of the toilets and went inside. I could see Jared’s feet sticking out from one of the cubicles. “Jared?” I asked uncertainly.

He didn’t answer, so I walked over to him.

He was leaning over the bowl, and I could see vomit inside it. I cringed.

“Jared? What’s wrong?” I knelt as close to him as I could, which wasn’t very close. I ended up next to the lower half of his legs. I put a hand on his back in comfort.

“Sorry,” he said after a while. He wasn’t looking at me, he hadn’t moved from the position he was in when I walked in.

An apology, in broad daylight? Wow.

“I’m just a bit...messed up right now.”

Messed up? Now? A bit?

“I shouldn’t have gotten angry at you before. And I’m sorry for...you know.”

The kiss?

“I shouldn’t have done that either.” He shuddered heavily, then got to his feet.

He turned toward me, his expression almost kind, then put on what I like to call his “rough face”: the mask he wore most of the time.

The only thing different about the mask was it had softened. It was only slightly, but I could see the difference.

I noticed that the sleeves of his shirt were pushed up, probably so he didn’t get any vomit on them.

The lines of the scars on his arms stood out starkly in the fluorescent lights of the toilets.

He washed his hands as I went to go to flush the toilet he had puked into.

“Come on, Pete,” he said as he waited for me at the door.

He used my name?

We walked out together, and then sat down at the table. Pixie was still glaring at Dan, Luke was looking extremely uncomfortable and Leado was trying to disappear whilst still eating his dinner.

“I just got a call,” Jared announced.

Well, that explains the puking.

Pixie stopped glaring at turned to face the rest of us. “What?”

“Desmond knows where we are,” Jared began.

“Well, duh,” Luke said. Jared glared at him, but didn’t do anything violent.

He continued on, patiently. “Desmond knows where we are. He said he’s going to keep following us, until he gets me. He said to meet him at this address.” Jared showed us a scrap of paper.

“That’s the place where we spent the night after you stabbed me in the leg,” Luke said quietly.
“Why does he want us to go there?”

“We’re not going,” Pixie said firmly. The panic in my chest subsided as Pixie said those words.

“I am,” Jared replied.

So much for subsided panic.

“No, you’re not.” Pixie looked at him sternly. “He’ll do something worse than what he did before.”

“I can protect myself.”

“Not from him,” Leaton said quietly. “He’ll have plans for every situation. You won’t be able to win.”

“I’m still going. We can’t keep running from him!”

Yes we can! I screamed inside my head.”You can’t go!” I blurted out.

“I have to, Pete.”

Why was he being so calm about all this?!

Jared stood up. “I’m going.” He began to walk out to the van.

Pixie sighed. “He’s not going to change his mind, is he?” He must have mean the question to be rhetorical, because he went on after only a brief pause in which none of us would have had time to answer in. “We’ll go with him, and try to stop Desmond.”

Leaton tried to interrupt him here, but Pixie held up a hand to silence him. “Would you rather let Jared go and get himself killed?”

Pixie stood up. “Come on, before he drives off without us.”