You Could Be My Compass

The interviewer and her team were quick with their work and it was just two days later that they received an email with the video attached. Assuming they approved of it, she said she’d do a little editing and it should air at the beginning of July, which wasn’t that far away. Alex didn’t want to think about that, though, because the beginning of July meant just a little over a month until school started back.

They were curious about what kind of spin she’d put on the two of them—after all, they’d kind of forgotten she was there at all and acted like themselves. What a scary thought—so Alex made snacks and they settled on his bed in front of his laptop.

It started with a black screen and her narrating. “They were best friends from the very beginning,” she said, only it didn’t sound like her. She must’ve altered her voice to make it sound more professional. There was a picture of their mothers standing next to each other, both pregnant. A picture of them when they were infants. And the slideshow continued, showing lots of photographs of them as they aged. “It wasn’t long at all before they were inseparable.”

The home movie of Jack’s fifth birthday party started playing. It was just their families, since they didn’t know any other children at the time. That was during the peak of their isolation, but they didn’t care at all. Alex was beaming as he handed Jack a present. He’d saved up and it was the first time he’d actually paid for and we was on tenterhooks waiting to see if Jack liked it. Their mothers were giggling with each other, Alex’s dad was holding the camera, and Jack’s was nowhere in sight. Jack opened the present and dropped it immediately, giving Alex a huge hug.

It was a stuffed Jack Skellington.

“I bet I still have that somewhere at my house,” Jack mused. “That’s definitely the best present I’ve ever gotten.” He kissed Alex’s temple.

“The two boys you see here are the sons of two of the most well-known businessmen in the country. The blonde is Alexander Gaskarth.”

“Did she have to call me that?” Alex whined. He hated being called by his full first name.

“Oh, shut up.”

“Make me!”

Jack grinned cheekily and paused the video. “Okay.” He grabbed Alex’s face and kissed him with more force than usual. It was hard to explain, but he just really loved how he felt when he kissed Alex, and he was really good at it. Alex, he meant. While it had been Jack’s first kiss a few days ago, he kind of figured that Alex must have kissed other people. He was seventeen, after all. And how else would he be that good of a kisser? But he didn’t like to dwell on that, because he was selfish and Alex was his and he just hated the thought of anybody else kissing him.

He pulled back after a couple minutes. Alex’s cheeks were tinted pink like every time Jack kissed him by surprise. It was sort of really adorable. Jack pressed play again and Alex lazily slung an arm around his shoulders.

“The other boy is one whose story the entire nation would hear. His name: Jack Barakat.”

There was dramatic music playing now, and Jack burst into laughter. “This is a joke. An absolute joke. Oh my god. Is anybody going to take this seriously?”

“Shut up, Jack,” Alex said, dragging out his name into three syllables.

“Make me!” he retorted at once.

Alex deliberated. He knew Jack was expecting a kiss. “Mm, maybe later.” He smirked when he saw that Jack was pouting.

“They lived what the Gaskarths now admit was a sheltered life for their early years, with private tutors and very little contact with anybody outside of the two households. It was a perfect world, where nothing could go wrong.”

The next video clip was from a random day when they were eight or nine. They were climbing trees and just acting like normal kids, having fun. It was fall; there was an enormous pile of leaves under the tree. “Dare you to jump!” Alex called to Jack. Alex was on a branch much higher up, while Jack was only about eight feet off the ground.

“I will if you will,” he replied nervously, because there was always that chance that Alex would just go for it.

“I still can’t believe you jumped,” Jack commented mildly.

“What was I supposed to do? You know how stupid I used to be. I’d never back down from a dare.”

Jack held back from saying the almost-obligatory sarcastic question of used to be? “But I meant jump from the same height as me. Not from all the way up there.”

“Count of three,” eight-year-old Alex was saying. “One…”

“Two…”

“Three!” they said together, jumping into the leaves.

“I’m surprised you didn’t die jumping. That was like, thirty feet off the ground,” Jack exaggerated.

“It was maybe fifteen feet. We can go measure later,” he offered.

“Like most children, they thought they were invincible. Nothing would ever happen to them. They didn’t think anything could tear them apart. Until the unthinkable happened.”

“That’s literally one of the most overused phrases ever,” Jack complained.

“Jack, I know people that would sell a kidney to have a thirty minute special about them aired on TV.”

“Your point?”

“Don’t zone in on the fact that they used a cliché phrase. There’s only so many ways to say ‘something really bad happened.’”

“Whatever,” he muttered, not being able to come up with a suitable response.

There was another montage of their pictures; these were all from right before Jack’s disappearance. Alex had another bad haircut in several of them, one he’d tried to do himself. He’d never tried that one again.

“It was a day like any other.”

“Another overused phrase.”

“Jack, I will physically force you to be quiet.”

“I wouldn’t complain if you did.”

Alex put a hand over Jack’s mouth, only pulling it back when he bit him. “Ow!”

“Your fault.”

“They decided to walk home from school, a choice that would change the course of one of their lives. In an instant, they went from normal middle school boys to a crime scene.”

“Awful way to put it,” Alex said.

“If I’m not allowed to comment, neither are you. So either I get to whine all I want to, or your commentary stops hear.”

Alex rolled his eyes and made the motion of zipping his lips.

“Alex! Jack!” Alex’s mom called, already halfway upstairs.

Alex paused it again and looked at Jack expectantly. “You can talk again, Lex. Your silence, while short-lived, was appreciated.”

Giggling, Alex called back, “What?”

She didn’t say anything when she got to his room, just handed Jack an envelope. “This came for you today.” Her voice was thick, and she turned and walked out immediately.

The handwriting on it looked so familiar, but Alex just couldn’t place it. Jack opened it and his jaw dropped. “It’s a letter from my mom.”

Alex pushed the laptop away, all thoughts of their interview gone as he put his chin on Jack’s shoulder and read along with him.

Jack,

I want to begin this by saying I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry for everything that happened. There is a lot that I’m sorry for, as you are about to find out. I also ask that you try not to hate us, though I understand if you do.

When Isobel first informed me that you were back, I didn’t know what to do. A normal, caring mother would drop everything and get on the next flight back home. But it isn’t my home anymore, Jack. There are too many ghosts haunting that city for me to set foot there ever again. Deep down, I know I should have put aside how I felt and returned, but I didn’t. I’m not strong enough to come back. It’s taking everything I have just to write this.

This letter proves how weak I truly am. I’m going to tell you a story. Before I do, I want you to know that I love you and your father very much. You may not believe me on the first one when you’ve finished reading, and it’s hard to believe I still love your father, but I’ll revisit this subject later. Now, it’s time for the worst story I’ve ever had to tell.

When your father was in high school, he experimented with cocaine. At first, it was a one-time thing, a stupid mistake he made at a party he was accidentally invited to. Then it turned into a coping mechanism for stress. He was under a lot of pressure from his parents to be at the top of his class and to get into a good school. He started using regularly. Peter never knew about this; nobody was supposed to know about it. He didn’t even confess it to me until four years into our marriage, and I didn’t know the full story until much more recently. He managed to quit near graduation after a close-call with the cops. He went off to college, and he thought he’d left it all behind.

Unfortunately, your past is never really gone. It’s still there, lurking in the shadows. The past lingers no matter how hard you push it away. He found this out when we were sophomores in college. Again, I didn’t know this at the time. I had no idea what was going on. If I had, maybe I could have stepped in and gotten him the help he needed. But I, just like everyone else, was oblivious.

I don’t know what exactly changed, what made him reach back into the world of drugs, but on a whim, he contacted his old dealer from high school. They met up, and just like that, your father was hooked again. I don’t know how he kept it a secret from us. Looking back, there were signs. Signs none of us saw at the time.

There was a night that seemed so insignificant to the rest of us. It was tragic, yes, but it was merely a tiny dot in our lives. Or so it seemed. It was October nineteenth. We were juniors and the four of us shared an apartment together. I woke up just before midnight to the sound of sirens. The other side of the bed was empty. I didn’t think anything of it, but why should I have been suspicious? Over the next few days, though, there would be many reasons to become suspicious that just weren’t obvious until I found out everything, when it was too late.

Isobel came out of her room and asked what was going on. I didn’t know, and we were both curious, so Peter went with us and we followed the sound outside and joined a mass of students. We were all gathered under this old clock tower on campus, watching behind the yellow crime scene tape. There was a body at the base of the building. They would later reveal his identity, and the name sounded familiar somewhere at the very back of my mind, but I couldn’t place it. I assumed I had just heard his name in passing at some point and was just searching for a connection.

Bassam insisted that we attend his funeral. He left us as soon as we got there and spoke with a group of men I hadn’t seen before. The conversation looked heated, and he never would tell me who they were or how he knew Steven, the man who had apparently jumped from the tower.

This is all relevant, I promise. It all comes together in the end.

He quit using cocaine for good. He was so sure that he had left everything behind this time. Again, you can’t leave your past behind forever. It will catch up with you, especially a past like Bassam’s.

When you were nine or ten, he received a tape in the mail. There was a note with it that said this is only a copy. Rest assured, I have the original. It was from October 19th, the night of Steven’s death. Although there was no return address, he knew it was from Adam, his former dealer…who happened to be Steven’s brother.

The tape was very incriminating, as I found out when I watched it years later. He was up there, one of the most secluded locations on campus, for a deal. Steven was there as backup for Adam, his bodyguard that he always brought along with him. I don’t know why Adam chose to film it that night. Maybe he suspected something would happen, or maybe he did it at random just on the off-chance that one day, he’d catch something, and he got lucky that night. Or maybe there were security cameras up there and he stole the video, I don’t know. Whatever the case, he caught what happened on tape. They started fighting. Your father was upset about an increase in the cost. He lashed out and punched Adam in the face. They fought, and it escalated…it ended when he pushed Steven with too much force. He stumbled a little, and instead of helping him back, Bassam shoved him once more, ensuring that he fell.

When Adam got back in contact with your father, he tried to blackmail him in an effort to avenge his brother’s death. Adam said he would send copies of tape to every major news station and the police. That was the easiest possible way to ruin both Bassam and the company in one move. But he was sure he wouldn’t, because that would mean shouting out to the world that he was involved too, that he used to sell cocaine. Nobody would do that, right? The more he objected, the more Adam persisted. He threatened to raise the stakes. He said he wasn’t above taking drastic measures, but wouldn’t specify what those were. Your father didn’t believe him.

Until the day you were kidnapped, that is.

When it happened, as soon as he found out, Bassam started to come apart. I didn’t know why. He didn’t tell me anything until a few years after you were kidnapped. That’s when he confessed everything, all the details I didn’t want to know. Adam and his friends, they’re the ones that did it. He offered your father a simple way to settle it, an easy ransom. A few million dollars, and he would never speak about it again. But he wouldn’t have it. He’s stubborn, you know, and he’s proud. He wasn’t about to give any of his own money to those people. So he struck up a deal. He began embezzling money from the company. Just a little, but he made sure it wasn’t his. He was paying off your ransom in installments of stolen money. It would all have been paid by December.

When he told me, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t scream at him like I should have. I didn’t slap him like I should have. I didn’t break down and hug my knees and sob like I should have. And worst of all, I didn’t contact the police. Your father knew where you were and who took you this whole time and he didn’t tell anybody.

And I’ve know for a couple of years and I kept my lips sealed. That’s what I am sorry for, Jack. I am so sorry for not doing what I should have to help bring you home sooner. My reasoning is pathetic and I don’t expect you to try to understand; despite what he did, I still love your father. I love you, too, but I couldn’t betray him. I’m aware that this makes me a horrible mother.

I left, not because I don’t love Bassam anymore, because I still do. I left because I couldn’t deal with the guilt. Before we divorced, I donated the money and a new middle school was built, with the library dedicated to you. I know it will never make up for what I did, or rather, didn’t do, but it eased my conscience just the slightest.

Peter, Isobel, and Alex are good people, and I’m glad you have them…they’re a better family than your father and I will ever be. If you ever do wish to contact me, just tell Isobel; she knows how to get in touch.

Love always
Yours truly
Love
Sincerely
Much love

No matter how I tried to sign this, it sounded insincere.
I am so sorry.
Mom