You Could Be My Compass

Einstein said something about time being relative to the observer and not a constant. Although Alex had admittedly not paid much attention in physics—honestly, it was physics! Anybody that said they understood more than half of it was lying—he had to agree with Einstein. The tiny fraction of a second after he heard the shot seemed to drag on and on, giving him plenty of time to think.

Please let it hit me. If Jack dies, I don’t know what I’d do. I should tell him I love him again, just in case it’s the last chance I get. I don’t mind dying, but not if he doesn’t know for sure that I love him. He does know that, right? I really should tell him one more time. Either way—he dies, or I die—I want him to know without a doubt that I’m in love with him. Why can’t I just open my mouth to say so? What’s wrong with me? It’s not like I’m scared. I AM scared, just not of dying. I’m scared of what he might do to Jack. He can’t, though…Jack’s too perfect to hurt. But it’s not that I particularly want to die—who does??—but it has to be me instead of him, because in a totally non-pathetic way, I don’t think I can live without him. Damn it, why can’t I just say something to him? There’s time, isn’t there?

Jack had never taken physics, so he couldn’t explain it with a theory, but he definitely felt like time was going impossibly slow. But instead of a million thoughts, he was experiencing that cliché thing everyone talks about, when your life flashes before your eyes.

The weird thing was, it wasn’t the highlights like people always think. It wasn’t what were supposed to be the biggest moments of Jack’s life, like birthday parties and getting kidnapped and his first day of school. Not even his first kiss, which he’d say without a doubt was way high up on the list of good events in his life. No, instead, it was the little things, things he’d nearly forgotten about. When they were seven years old and he fell and scraped his knee, so Alex kissed his cheek and he stopped crying. That time he fake-proposed with a blade of grass he’d tied in a circle. The year he spent Christmas with the Gaskarths and the tree fell on Alex’s dad and they had to take him to the emergency room on Christmas morning to get stitches and he and Alex sat in the waiting room and watched an old black and white Christmas movie on the tiny TV. Trying to build a toothpick bridge for a school project. Seemingly insignificant memories were resurfacing, and under any other circumstances, he’d probably enjoy it.

And then, at the same instant, both boys thought, Why the fuck is Adam on the floor?

Adam was face down on the floor, his gun dropped a couple feet to his right.

It hit them that neither of them were dead. They shrieked, a combination of adrenaline and relief and lingering fear, hugging each other tightly. They probably would’ve started making out right then and there, but Jack asked, “So…what the hell just happened? Did he shoot himself, or what?” He’d kind of credited Adam with being a better shot than that. You know, the whole drug dealer/kidnapper/murderer thing…being at least a decent shot probably came in handy.

Then Alex saw someone, and his jaw just about hit the floor. “Mom?! he shouted.

There, in the hallway, stood Isobel Gaskarth. In one hand, she held a gun, still pointed at Adam. What the actual fuck?

“Mom,” he said again, voice a little quieter this time. “Did you…?” he trailed off, gesturing uselessly to the body on the floor, who appeared to be dead, blood pooling around him.

“I did,” she said, voice surprisingly strong, letting her arm go slack, the gun just dangling idly at her side.

“Where did you…I, we don’t…do we even have a gun?” He was finding it very difficult to form a simple question. His sweet, kind, peaceful mother had just fired a deadly shot like it was no big deal. Holy hell, that was pretty kickass. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I mean, obviously we have a gun, since you’ve got it right there, but how long have we had it?”

“I got this right after Jack got kidnapped,” she explained. “Uh, your father doesn’t know about it…but I guess he’ll have to find out now. Damn it,” she muttered, mostly to herself.

Alex was frozen in shock. It was awesome and scary at the same time, the fact that his mom had just done that. But Jack, Jack wasn’t stuck in place. He jumped to his feet and gave Alex’s mom a huge hug. “You. Are. So. Fucking. Wonderful,” he said, grinning like an idiot.

They heard sirens, and before they knew it, the police were there. After that, time seemed to speed up. One second, they were all just standing there; the next, the pets were removed from the room and placed in the hall—much to their displeasure, as Jack the Ripper was keen to point out with a hiss, and Jack Skellington gave them his saddest puppy-dog eyes—and the room was designated a crime scene.

Well, that wasn’t exactly how Alex had expected his day to go.

But to be fair, this hadn’t been how he’d expected his summer to go. He’d planned on a boring couple of months, hanging out with his eccentric-but-loveable friends a lot, and basically just not doing much of anything, just existing. He hadn’t planned on finding Jack, or doing an interview for national news, or spending the night at the library, or having his first kiss (and everything else, too), or almost getting killed by a semi-neurotic ex (or possibly current, he didn’t know for sure) drug dealer that murdered his own girlfriend and Jack’s dad, only to be saved at the last second by his mom, who’d apparently had a gun for five years that she hadn’t felt the need to mention to any of them.

Yeah, this summer was full of surprises.

But, he thought to himself, smiling and knitting his and Jack’s fingers together as they sat in the backseat of a police car, headed to the station again—another thing he hadn’t really planned for his summer to include, but at least he wasn’t in handcuffs and it was just a protocol thing—he knew he wouldn’t have it any other way.