You Could Be My Compass

Alex woke up and rolled over to face a still sleeping Jack, a smile spreading across his face as he thought about last night. Jack had a lazy grin plastered on as he slept, and he’d somehow ended up with the entire blanket…again. Just like every night. Alex brought his lips to Jack’s ear and whispered, “Wake up, Jacky!”

Okay, so maybe he didn’t actually whisper it.

Jack’s body jolted and he sat up, glaring at Alex. Alex chuckled at him. “Come on, my parents are probably flipping their shit by now. Get dressed and let’s go.”

Jack blushed, gathering his clothes. “Should we clean up, or…?” he trailed off, gesturing to the pillows and chairs and, well, the room in general.

“I’ll be back here before anyone notices the mess,” Alex laughed. He turned on his phone. Twenty-nine missed calls, ten texts, and seven voicemails. “Shit,” he muttered, calling his mom without bothering to listen to any of the messages.

“What is it?” Jack asked, putting his shirt back on and throwing Alex’s clothes at him.

“Alex, what the hell is wrong with you?” his mom screeched into the phone.

Okay, she was swearing directly at him. Yeah, she was pissed. “Sorry, Mom, I—” he began, before she cut him off.

“We’ll talk about this when you get home. You have twenty minutes starting now.” And then she hung up.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck. We have to go now,” Alex said, throwing on his clothes as quickly as he could. “My mom’s definitely mad.”

So Jack was once again treated to Alex’s terrible driving. “Um, Alex, not to insert myself where it’s not really my business, but do you think maybe you should slow down just a little?” Jack suggested cautiously, noticing that he was nearing ninety miles an hour.

Alex barked a laugh. “Princess, it’s six in the morning. Why would there be any cops watching the road this early?”

Jack grinned, partly because it was a good point and mostly because, though he sure as hell wasn’t about to admit this out loud, he kind of liked when Alex called him Princess. He had no idea why Alex had decided to start calling him that, but he probably thought it bugged him.

“What are you smiling at?” Alex teased, an eyebrow quirking up.

“Nothin’. Just watching my life flash before my eyes and I’m sorta enjoying it,” he replied sarcastically, eyes flicking to the speedometer again, watching as it ticked past ninety-five.

“I’m not even going that fast,” Alex protested.

Jack glanced in the rearview mirror and sighed, hearing the sirens starting up. “I think that cop would beg to differ.”

“We’re only a mile away!”

“Alex, just pull the fuck over,” Jack sighed. “Going this far over the speed limit is bad enough. We don’t need ‘evading arrest’ added to your record.”

“Oh, fine,” he grumbled, jerking the car sharply to the side and slamming on the brakes.

“If you keep doing that, I’m gonna have a permanent scar on my neck.” The seatbelt had tightened uncomfortable against Jack’s neck again as he went forward. “Didn’t you learn to ease into a stop?”

“Says the boy without a license.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me!” Alex challenged, eyes gleaming mischievously.

The cop tapped on his window. “Out of the car, Gaskarth.”

Alex climbed out without arguing and Jack watched through the window as the two argued. Alex was talking with his hands a lot, making huge gestures, and then the officer broke out into a grin. A few seconds later, he was doubled over laughing.

“What the hell,” Jack asked as soon as Alex was back in. “Did you say to him?”

He brushed it off like it was nothing. “Just told him an old football joke.”

Now it was Jack’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “You follow football?”

“Oh, of course not!” Alex exclaimed. “But Officer Puckett actually gives a damn about sports, especially football, so I just told him this old joke I heard about an old Georgia farmer that went to hell. I don’t find it that funny, but I didn’t tell it for my own amusement.”

Jack was impressed. “How many of these tricks do you have up your sleeve?”

“What tricks?” he asked, his voice far too innocent.

“These get-out-of-a-ticket tricks. You’ll have to run out at some point, right?”

“Eh, probably not.” He smirked. “I know a lot of tricks. Turn on the tears, say I don’t want to disappoint my parents, beg and plead, bribe them with food, tell them a joke, strike up a conversation about whatever they’re really passionate about until they forget why they’re talking to you in the first place, explain that there’s an emergency at home—damn it, I could’ve just used that one! But yeah, there’s a lot of ways to get out of a ticket.” He reached over and ruffled Jack’s hair. “One day, you’ll learn this yourself.”

To Jack’s surprise, Alex gently pulled into his driveway, so there was no seatbelt snapping this time. “I really don’t want to go in there,” Alex groaned, knowing that there was the distinct possibility that shitstorm was brewing. And a Gaskarth family shitstorm was something that nobody wanted to see.

Jack leaned across him and opened his door for him. “If you don’t go in now, you know you’re never going to.” He pushed Alex’s shoulder lightly before getting out through his own door. Alex knew Jack was right, so he swung his legs out and jumped up. “Ready?” Jack asked.

“As I’ll ever be.”

When Alex opened the door, he expected to be yelled at or given the ‘we’re not mad, we’re disappointed’ speech that makes every teenager cringe with shame. But his parents were sitting on the couch, watching the TV with wide eyes. He cleared his throat. “Uh…we’re home?”

His mother’s head snapped up. “Took you long enough,” she said.

“Got pulled over on the way back,” Alex explained lightly.

Jack flashed him a look. Sure, telling your parents that you got pulled over is definitely going to make them go easier on you.

But surprisingly, her face softened. “You know I didn’t literally mean twenty minutes, right?” Then she shook her head. “Where were you?”

“Spent the night at the library.” Because he couldn’t help it, he added, “I didn’t want to listen to you guys fighting all night.”

“Alex, honey, we weren’t—”

His dad sighed loudly enough that she stopped talking. “We were fighting, and I’m sorry that it got so loud,” he said.

Got so loud? It started off loud. “It’s cool, I guess,” Alex mumbled awkwardly. “The library was quiet.”

“Alex, you two can’t just run off like that right now.” His mother fidgeted a little, her eyes making a cycle back and forth between all of their faces.

“Why not?” Considering the fact that she could have been flying off the handle right now and screaming at him, but she was relatively calm, he should’ve just gone with it and not challenged her.

She looked to his dad, like she was nonverbally asking for his permission. He ran a hand over his face and through his hair, and Alex noticed for the first time how tired he looked. Since yesterday, he looked like he’d aged several years and gone weeks without sleep. Something was definitely up. He deliberated for a minute before letting out a long breath. “Go ahead and tell them. They’ll find out eventually.”

“Now, there’s really no need to worry yet,” she began nervously, fiddling with her sleeve. That meant that there was probably a need to worry. “But we’d like for the two of you stay here and not go out until this all blows over.”

“Until what blows over?” Alex pressed. She needed to just spit it out.

“Adam Perkins has been spotted a few times, but the police never get there in time. He’s been stealing cars along the way and is going on a very roundabout route, but it’s very clear that he’s moving north.”

“So…what does that mean?”

“He’s the prime—well, the only—suspect in the double murder in Georgia. His fingerprints were quite literally all over the scene. We, and the police, think that his next target might be Jack.”

“Why not my dad?” Jack asked. Didn’t that seem more logical?

Damn it, his parents were exchanging another one of those looks. “Well,” she continued slowly. “They seem to think he wants revenge, wants to get even. Apparently he and his brother were very close…he wants to even the score and kill someone that means a lot to Bassam.”

“But I don’t mean a lot to him!” Jack protested. And he wasn’t even saying it to have a pity party; he actually meant it. “And you’d think the fact that Dad didn’t jump at the opportunity to save me when I first got kidnapped should clue him in to that.”

“He’s a deranged ex-cocaine dealer. What could you expect?” Alex’s dad helped lift the tense atmosphere in the room with that. “Look, I know it’s not an ideal way to spend the remainder of the summer, but—”

Alex decided to take the mature road. “But you’d prefer it if we play it safe and stay at home?”

Both his parents nodded.

Awesome.