THE END…


The house sat crooked on the hill. It had been a home to a hoarder, and after Anna died, Andy made no effort to clean it up. The twenty-year-old could barely handle himself, let alone a house, so it became even more of a mess with a growing number cockroaches and mice. It was disgusting and horrid and falling apart. Paint was chipping, shingles were sliding off of the roof, windows were broken, doors didn’t close properly, but no one did anything to fix it.
Maybe no one noticed, or maybe no one cared.
That was the problem with everyone in the town. They never cared enough to notice, and they didn’t notice enough to care. Sick of the bad hand life dealt them they turned everything off and laughed at their pitiful lives. To them, that was easier. So they didn’t care about where they lived, what they wore, or how they made money. They managed to get by, and every day that they woke up on a park bench or in someone else’s home, the only thing that mattered was that they woke up.
The town was also filled with impeccable liars. Their lives became an existence and not much more than just that. They knew that there was something bigger waiting for them; they just didn’t know how to look and where to start. They pretended that they didn’t care because they had to appear strong, and not compromise their appearance. But they all were liars, every single one of them. The rule was to only care if someone else did, but no one appeared to care, so no one openly did. They all lied and said that they were fine, and for some reason, everyone believed them.
Maybe they were all just idiots.

The boy stared at the crooked house and the steps leading to it. The day before, the house was a refuge. It was a place to go get away from it all, to take a deep breath and gather your baggage, to sort through a chaotic life. But now he realized how crooked the house really was. He made his way to the back and down the steps towards the basement. A giant spider sat in its web in the corner of the doorway. He kept his eyes on it as he listened to the voices inside the house. They were loud enough for him to hear, but dispirited enough to be distant. For a second the boy hesitated. Standing in front of the doorway, he desperately wanted to run away from everything that happened. He wanted to forget because that was easier than living with what he remembered. But there was one answer that he didn’t have, so he sucked it up and swung the door open.
Inside, Andy eyed him, worried. Steven toyed with a string on his shirt, and the girl pretended like she was the only person in the room. She stared at the floor, refusing to make eye contact, refusing to acknowledge his presence, but that didn’t bother him. There was a sudden chill in the room. It was some unexplainable cold that swept across them, stealing their words and breath.

“Where’s Jimmy?” The boy asked.

No one answered.

“Does anyone know where he is?” He knew he was angry. He felt it boiling inside of him all day, but he didn’t know why it was there.

Then Andy shifted in his seat and directed his gaze to the boy. He held it there for a few seconds then looked back down at his hands.

“You mean, he wasn’t with you?” Andy muttered.

The boy sat down beside Andy in a rickety chair by the table held up with duct tape. Defeated, he dropped his head into his hands, fighting back the flood of emotions that sprung up on him out of nowhere. Everything just went horribly wrong so fast.

“We have to find him,” The girl finally said.

He looked into her green eyes for the first time after he found out what she did.

“We have to stop him,” she added. She was now standing, smoothing out her faded t-shirt. Her eyeliner was smudged around her eyes and spilled into her cheeks a little bit. He knew her well enough to know that she was crying. It was hard to look into them, though, so he looked away.

“You know we have to,” she whispered a whisper that was meant for only him.

At that very second, the boy realized he despised her. He desperately wanted to get up and leave the room and leave her behind for good, because he knew she was right. She was always right, and he hated that. He hated her.

But he has always been a good liar.

The boy stood from the table and joined her by the doorway, towering over her. The girl looked up at him with her green eyes that were dripping with an apology he ignored. The boy placed his hand on the doorknob, and slowly turned it, fearful of what he will find once he steps outside and looks for Jimmy.

“Wait,” Andy said. “Is Smurf really…” He couldn’t formulate the word.

The boy turned around and looked at Andy. He felt the emotions swell.

“Yes… he’s dead.”

He and the girl left Andy and Steven swimming in the silence that overcame them.


JESUS OF SUBURBIA…

There was something at his window. The boy woke up and saw her next to him, curled up and lost in the sweet oblivion of a dream.

There was the noise again.

He climbed out of bed gingerly, hoping to not wake her up. His eyes fought the thick shadows as he headed towards the window, trying not to knock into anything. He saw Jimmy waiting for him, slouching with his hood up and hands in his pockets. There was something eating away at him.
Jimmy was once King. He would walk around town as if he was the richest man in suburbia when everyone knew he was the poorest. But no one cared. They let him do what he pleased because he was Jimmy. In a town filled with criminals and couch potatoes p***** at the world, he was the bad influence. They all respected him and held him on a pedestal because, according to the legend, he came out of the womb flipping off the doctor with a wide grin on his face. He drenched the town in anarchy, which everyone loved him for. To them, he was a king, because no one could control him, and no one could make him who he’s not.
But the boy wasn’t looking at a king through his window. He was looking a young man whose life just caught up with him. So the boy put on his sneakers and met Jimmy outside.

Jimmy was standing by the front door beneath a buzzing light. Looking around before any words were spoken, the boy noticed the trailer park looked dead. It had always been dead.

“Have you talked to Tunny?” Jimmy asked.

“No, I haven’t,” he replied.

Jimmy looked up towards the sky like he always did before he got mad.

“You have to talk to him,” Jimmy said flatly. He was trying to suppress the anger welling up in his gut. “You have to talk to him,” Jimmy repeated.

Jimmy took out a cigarette from his pocket and lit it, trying to calm himself, and shifted his footing on the dirt ground. He shivered.

“Please talk to him. He will mess up my only chance of getting out of here! I can’t take it anymore. Talk to your damn brother,” Jimmy turned away and headed out of the trailer park. His figure disappeared into the shadows and became nothing more than a faint padding sound.

The boy watched Jimmy for as long as he could. There was something on the tip of his tongue. He couldn’t formulate the words to describe it, but it was burning in his brain. Then he realized how alone Jimmy was. There were cracks in his façade, and the boy was the first and maybe the only one who ever saw them in person.

And then he realized that the king, Jimmy, was in bad enough shape to ask for help.

“What did Jimmy want?” She stood in the doorway in her underwear and his T-shirt. She shivered in the sudden wind.

“He wants me to talk to Tunny,” he said walking past her and inside.

He turned on a light switch. A tearing recliner and a lawn chair sat in front of a TV with rabbit ears that worked every other Wednesday. The tiny kitchen area was a disgusting mess with stains that were there long before he moved in. The table was an old card table that was prone to falling and a crooked chair was tucked in beneath it. The lights flickered and hummed. The place made him feel sick.

“Are you going to?” she stepped closer to him, blinking away a distant dream.

“I think so,” the words didn’t taste right.

“You can’t,” she whispered a whisper that was meant for only him.

“Tunny’s my brother, if he won’t do it for Jimmy, he just might do it for me,” he said heading towards the phone.

“Stop lying to yourself! He’s not going to let up and you know that! A phone call won’t make a difference. Jimmy owes him money and that’s that!”

“He owes him five grand! He doesn’t even know what that looks like!”

“Five grand?” She sat down in the recliner and folded her hands in her lap. “How did he manage to do that?”

“I don’t know, it’s Jimmy,” he said, pulling out the rickety crooked chair from the table. “It’s Jimmy,” he repeated to himself.

The two sat in silence for a long time. They wanted to return to sleep and lose themselves in a dream again, because they most definitely didn’t want to talk anymore about what was going to happen and what could happen. They never wore their hearts on their sleeve because hearts bleed and things get messy, and eventually the whole shirt has to be thrown away. So it was best to sit in silence or even better, sleep long enough for all of it to just go away, but once they woke up, they couldn’t fall back to sleep again.

But sitting in silence was better than talking, so that’s what they did.

“What do you want, little brother?” Tunny asked handing the beer to him.

“We need to talk about Jimmy,” he said taking the can.

“He owes me money and I will collect it,” Tunny leaned back on the couch and propped his feet up on the coffee table.

When they were kids, their mother would cringe whenever she saw feet on her coffee table. That’s why Tunny has always done it and will always do it.

“Tunny, it’s five grand, that means nothing to you!”
“Yes, but if I let Jimmy slide, then I will have to let others slide and next thing you know, I lose my credibility. I have to set an example, little brother.”
“But he doesn’t have the money! No one around here has that much money to just throw away! This is ridiculous. Just let up,” he said not wanting to look his brother in the eye.

Tunny just laughed and looked out the window. The boy watched him and in the sunlight, he saw the young Tunny he knew when he was growing up. The Tunny that talked back to his mother with sticky fingers and was constantly in trouble, but yet that Tunny was different than the Tunny the boy was looking at now. The old Tunny was someone who would let people in, but his heart bled on his shirt and he had to throw it out, so the old Tunny was gone for good.
The silence was enough of an answer for the boy. So he left and headed for Andy’s, a little disappointed. The boy nearly tripped several times from stubbing his foot in the cracks in the sidewalk, and the sun was so bright that he had to squint to be able to see. When the crooked house on the hill guarded by a chain link fence came into view, he took a deep breath before he entered the yard. He knew Jimmy was screwed; Jimmy knew that too and so did everyone else, but no one wanted to hear it.

“How’s your mother?” Anna asked as he headed toward the back of the house.

Anna sat in a lawn chair she had set up on the front porch. In her lap was a newspaper from two years ago with coffee rim stains and fraying edges. She nudged her oversized glasses further up the bridge of her nose.

“She’s doing well,” he smiled back. Reminding her that his mother died when he was sixteen would do no good.

Anna was Andy’s grandmother with a failing memory. Her daughter left Andy at her doorstep when he was three and then disappeared. She didn’t leave a contact number and she never wrote, so Andy grew up knowing only his grandmother with confused eyes and a fading smile.

The boy headed down the steps and into the basement. Inside, lounging on the couch and cheap chairs were the usual: Andy, Steven, Smurf, the girl and Jimmy. They all looked at him hopeful that maybe the Tunny business was over.

“He’s not letting up,” he said taking a seat at the table.

Jimmy looked towards the ceiling.


THE END…

The sun was setting and the time they had was dwindling down. He and the girl stood in front of the fence by the crooked house. She pulled out a cigarette and lit it, trying to calm her frantic nerves. They stood still, thinking, shoving aside irrelevant thoughts and narrowing in on the ones that wouldn’t move. They knew that they had to get going, but something was holding them back. Maybe it was fear, maybe it was something else, but the one thing they knew for sure was that they had to find Jimmy.

She blew out a puff of smoke. He watched it dwindle in the air then float away to only disappear into the setting sun.
He began to walk just for the sake of walking. His feet traveled across the decrepit sidewalk towards an unknown destination. There was something out there, maybe something beyond the sunset that he was trying to find and understand. He didn’t know if it were Jimmy, or why Tunny did what he did, or something completely different, but he did know that he was after something.
“What are we doing here?” the girl asked.
He stopped walking and snapped out of the daze that overtook him. He was staring at a faded green one-floor house with dying grass and already dead bushes. It was where Tunny lived with two other guys he couldn’t remember the names of.
The boy turned around and watched her flick ash onto the ground.
“Do you think Jimmy’s here?”
“No…” He didn’t know why he was there, but the rage he felt earlier was swelling and building in his gut.
Then he noticed how quiet it was. Turning around, he watched the girl drop her cigarette and put it out. His stomach churned when he noticed that she was barely hanging on by a thread. He turned away and looked back at the house. It was hard looking at her, especially now. Realizing that she was human was almost as painful as trying to forget her.

“Why is it so quiet?” he whispered as if he was afraid to break the silence.

The girl watched his frame begin to disappear into the shadows. It made her want to touch him, hold him and tell him that she was sorry, but she knew she couldn’t. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“Does that seem weird to you?” he said.

It did. The house always had some sort noise coming from it. Whether it was a TV, a radio, laughing or yelling, there was at least something. Now, it was completely silent and not just any silence, but the type of silence that builds the suspense so that when the killer jumps out, a heart will skip a beat. Through the windows, she saw the yellow light. Someone was clearly home, but there was no sound. The front door was opened.

She watched him walk towards the house, slowly, timidly. She didn’t want to go in and see what was inside. She was too afraid of what might be in there.

He gingerly stepped up towards the front door and pushed it open with bated breath. Papers and shattered bottles were scattered across the floor. A coffee table was turned over and the cushions on the sofa were in the other side of the room. He looked towards the kitchen and there he saw it.

Lying in a bloody heap was Tunny. A pool of blood was growing around him, engulfing him into its crimson abyss. He stepped back and down the steps in horror, refusing to believe that what he just was reality. The boy noticed he was shaking when he met her at the end of the driveway. She handed him a cigarette and lit it for him. He took it out and looked back at the house and wrestled with what he had to do and what he should do.

“Tunny’s dead, isn’t he?” she asked.

Her ESP always surprised him.

“We should call the police,” he noticed her voice was flat.

They weren’t on the same page.

“Jimmy did it,” he muttered.

She nodded her head.

“You find him. I’ll call the police,” she said.

“But what about Jimmy? He’d be put away for the rest of his life,” he looked into her eyes for the first time since they were at Andy’s.

With her eyes, she wordlessly gave him an answer. His gut sank. She was right.

Jimmy just might already be dead.

WHATSERNAME…

“You’re a sweet girl,” Anna said.

With a wrinkled hand, she pushed back a blond strand of the girl’s hair. Anna smiled a warm smile, now happy that she can see the girl’s green eyes.

“You wear too much makeup,” she added.

The girl smiled and stood from the table. It was probably time for her to join the others in the basement. Anna glanced back down at her cup of tea as if she were trying to read what the leaves at the bottom said. She twirled the cup with her frail aged fingers then looked back at the girl.

“Andy and the others are waiting,” she said.

The girl smiled and said goodbye, then headed towards the basement. The house was cluttered with forgotten objects that Anna kept for memories. There were too many to count and barely any room to get through the crooked home. The girl stumbled her way to the basement door. She placed one hand on the doorknob and the other on the wall for support as she opened it, trying not to lose her balance on the mound of stuffed animals she stood on.

Wisps of smoke snaked through the basement. The girl rolled her eyes as she stepped down the steps. Collapsed on the couch were Smurf and Steven, watching a bug walk across the ceiling. At the table, Andy and the boy counted the money stacked before them. In between their fingers were cigarettes, the source of all the smoke.

“You can’t open a window?” She said, leaning over the sink and to the clouded glass window. It was painted shut and wouldn’t budge. She gave up and headed towards the door. The girl opened it and grabbed a large rock sitting by the steps and propped it in front of the door. She walked back into the basement and moved Steven’s legs off the couch and sat in between him and Smurf.

“So, did we make enough?”

Andy said through a cigarette, “Why don’t you ask my grandmother?”

The girl rolled her eyes.

“She’s a nice woman, I like her… besides, she wouldn’t be able to give me a straight answer.” She looked at the boy. “Did we make enough?”

He counted the last dollar and set it on the pile. He put the cigarette in his mouth then exhaled more smoke.

“Yes, we did,” he said.

Smurf sat up from the couch, eyes wide.

“We made enough!?”

“Yes,” the boy replied, leaning back in his chair.

Everyone stood in the silence of disbelief. They somehow managed to get Jimmy out of his mess.

That night, when everyone left, Andy went upstairs to check on his grandmother and say goodnight, like he always did. He shoved the basement door open; the pile of stuffed animals was growing every day. Pretty soon, he would have to take the front door to get above the basement. Walking towards her bedroom, Andy was hit with something. It was premonition-like, a feeling that made his stomach sink and his fingers tingle. Pushing open the bedroom door, he saw Anna lying in bed. He smiled. Nothing was wrong.

But Anna wasn’t snoring. She wasn’t even breathing. That night, she passed away in her sleep, managing to escape the town for good.

That night, the girl decided that it was time for her to leave as well.

The girl stood outside his trailer. Her hands were shaking, but she didn’t notice over the frantic beating of her heart. She knew where the boy kept his part of Jimmy’s charity. She could sneak in and out without his realizing, and by the time he wakes up in the morning, she would be far away enough to stay hidden. She would be far away enough to forget about the godforsaken town. The girl knew what she had to do, but she didn’t want to do it.

But she’s paid her dues and spent too much time in the town. It was her turn to leave, and this was the only way she could. So she took a deep breath and exhaled as she headed towards his trailer. She pulled the key out of her back pocket and unlocked the door.

The girl apprehensively stepped into the living area, and shut the door behind her. Her heart was pounding so loud that she feared that she would wake the boy. With every creak of the floor, she froze where she stood; straining her ears to listen for the slightest hint that he was awake. After a few moments, she deemed him asleep and made her way closer and closer to the money.

She pushed open the door to his room. Her hand was shaking. She was so close, but the slightest noise could ruin everything. She held her breath, and slowly opened the top dresser drawer. She paused and turned behind her. He was a heavy sleeper, luckily. Seeing him wrapped beneath his thin bed sheets, she felt a small pang. She knew all of this was wrong. She would be hurting Jimmy, she knew that, but she never liked him and she told herself that over and over again.

But she never thought about hurting him, the boy. Staring at him, drenched in the light of a full moon, she almost decided to go home without the money. Maybe she should forget about all of this and leave the money alone. She’ll just wait until she makes enough on her own, then she could leave.

But the feelings went away just as fast as they came. She took out the shoe box and the wad of bills. The girl stuffed them in her bag, put the shoe box back and left the trailer before another thought was able to change her mind.

The walk to the bus station was the longest in her life. Her heart was beating louder now, but not because she was nervous. A wide grin spread across her face as she traveled beneath the starry night, heading towards city lights or where ever her heart desired. She was leaving, finally getting out and she couldn’t believe it.

For twenty years, she was trapped within the grasp of the town everyone called home for the lack of a better word. She was on the moon; she could’ve been floating for all she knew. When the bus station came into view, she stopped just to make sure this moment was real and not something in her head.

Yes, this was happening.

She left that night and went somewhere far away.

ST. JIMMY…

Jimmy sat on the curb of the 7/11, waiting.

He was screwed, he knew that, and he knew exactly what happened.

The girl who his best friend was wasting his time with messed everything up for him. It left a bad taste in his mouth. He never liked her.

That morning, Jimmy got her on her cell phone, which was a surprise. He expected her to have discarded her phone or at the very least ignore his calls, but she picked up almost immediately. Her voice was frail from guilt, and with a wide smile on Jimmy’s face he took advantage of it with a simple, little lie.

“He’s hurt, he’s hurt real bad. Tunny did it,” that’s all he had to say to get her to come back.

When he hung up, Jimmy was shaking with anger. She didn’t feel guilty for screwing him over; she could care less about him. She was guilt stricken because she stabbed the boy in the back, and he was the one who was hurt the least.
Once Jimmy took a few minutes to compose himself, he finally saw the humor in all of it. She got away before him, but she didn’t get away far enough. Jimmy might’ve made the mess, but all she did was add to it. He wasn’t going to let her miss out on all of the fun.

It was his dying wish after all.

When he saw the girl, he could tell she figured out the boy was fine. She looked as furious as Jimmy was, but Jimmy knew that couldn’t be. He stood from the curb and held out his arms for a hug, wearing a cocky smile. She glared at him.

“Now, I should be the one giving you that look,” Jimmy said.

“What do you want?” She was lacking the venom she hoped for.

“Do you honestly think I was going to let you miss all of this?” Jimmy saw her eyes betray her for a second and reveal the guilt she was burying. “How far did you go?”

“Not far,” she said.

“What happened to all of the money?” Jimmy asked.

For a second, they weren’t enemies.

“I couldn’t use it to get away, I thought I could, but I couldn’t… But I couldn’t turn back; I got too close… so I gave it to my brother. It’s all gone. I’m sorry.”

Jimmy wanted to shake some sense into her, scream at her and tell her how stupid she was. But for some reason, he didn’t. So he just said, “You’re an idiot,” and walked away.

Maybe it is true. Maybe they really are just idiots.

Jimmy found his apartment door open. Taking a gulp, he slowly entered and found exactly what he expected.

Tunny sat on his couch with his feet propped up on the coffee table. He sat in between Smurf and the boy, comfortably.

“Hi, Jimmy,” Tunny said. “I showed up here and was going to wait for you, but then I ran into this kid and my little bro,” he gestured to Smurf and the boy.

“What are you doing here?” Jimmy asked them.

“We wanted to talk to you, but got here too late,” Smurf said.

Jimmy shut the door behind him and sat in the falling-apart recliner.

“So do you have my money?” Tunny asked with a large grin on his face. His feet wiggled on the coffee table as he shifted in his seat.

“No,” Jimmy said.

“I want what’s rightfully mine, Jimmy. You stole my money and I want it back,” Tunny leaned forward, taking his feet off of the coffee table. “And I don’t like it when people steal from me, just ask my little brother!”

“Jimmy, you stole it?” the boy’s eyes widened.

Jimmy looked at his friend with sorry eyes. They all knew Tunny’s rule for thieves.

“Oh, you didn’t know that? Yeah, your childhood friend stole from your big brother!” Tunny’s voice became tenser. “Jimmy, would your mother be proud of what you turned into? She must be turning over in her grave right now, as we speak!”

Jimmy rose from his seat and stepped towards Tunny. He looked at him square in the eye and spat at him.

Tunny jumped from his seat and walked around the coffee table, eyeing Jimmy down, who was a good five inches shorter. Then Tunny punched him square in the nose. Jimmy stumbled back, cupping it, blood seeping through his fingers. He took his hands away and wiped the blood above his lip. Then he hit Tunny right back, and the two yelled at each other, excavating past demons and throwing each other across the room.

Then Tunny pulled out a gun.

“Whoa!” Smurf yelled. He came up behind Jimmy and tugged on his arm, hoping to get him to retreat, but Jimmy stood his ground.

“Tunny, stop this,” the boy was standing too.

Jimmy’s eyes lit up with the pride for what he was about to say next.

“Sarah was smart to leave.”

Even the boy knew that was going too far. Sarah was Tunny’s first love, the one who got away, the one who left him pregnant with Jimmy’s son.

Then Tunny shot the gun and everyone in the room froze.

No one knew who was hit. For a second, the boy thought it was he; everyone stood so still and clueless that it could’ve happened.

Then Smurf fell to the floor, finally realizing that the blood he saw was his. Jimmy went down with him, trying to ease Smurf’s fall. Jimmy stared in disbelief, forgetting about everyone in the room, looking at Smurf as if he were in the middle of someone else’s dream. He didn’t hear Tunny leave or the boy come up from behind him. He stayed there, kneeling on the ground in his apartment, waiting for Smurf to die.

THE END…

The boy’s mind was filled with childhood memories of him and Tunny and when they were innocent. Then, he thought of the look in Tunny’s eyes when he held the gun. There was no way they could’ve belonged to him; they were wild and piercing with fury. And then the look when he accidentally shot Smurf. They were horrified and filled with regret. And then he thought of his bloody body in the kitchen.

Once again, he didn’t know where he was walking. He was just walking for the sake of walking, hoping to run into Jimmy on his way.

The sun was setting even further. His pace quickened; the last thing he wanted was to be looking for Jimmy in the dark.

That’s when he saw Jimmy’s truck. It was his dad’s red pickup that was hanging by a string just like everything else in the town.

The boy finally realized where he was standing. The truck was parked just by the bay. Looking out into the distance, he saw Jimmy standing on the dock, watching the sunset. His heart skipped a beat. Finally, he found Jimmy before it was too late. There he was, he could see his silhouette, slumped over from the long day.

From a long life.

There he was, tangible, alive. He headed towards Jimmy, about to call his name when he saw something in Jimmy’s hand. It gleamed in the sunset. It finally set in what Jimmy was about to do.

“Jimmy!” he shouted his name perhaps three more times, but Jimmy ignored him. The boy began to run towards the dock, not stopping to think about anything. He might not have known a lot of things, but he knew that he had to stop Jimmy.

If he couldn’t do anything in life, he at least had to stop Jimmy.

But he couldn’t run fast enough. He saw the spray of blood and Jimmy’s body drop on the dock lifeless. The boy stood, paralyzed, barely standing.

Jimmy died that day. He blew his brains out into the bay.

Suddenly, he was twelve years old again, and stood in front of the 7/11. It was in the afternoon, and they should’ve been in school, but they skipped and felt as if they were on top of the world. The boy impatiently waited for Jimmy to join him.

Jimmy rushed out of the 7/11 and grabbed the boy’s hand and dragged him out to the polluted bay. Catching his breath, the boy asked Jimmy what that was all about.

“I stole these sodas,” Jimmy said with a large smile on his face. He handed one to the boy who took it uneasily.

“You stole it?”

“Yeah, I stole it,” Jimmy looked at the boy then rolled his eyes. “What? That bothers you? Who are you? The Jesus of Suburbia?”

Offended, the boy said, “The day I’m the Jesus of Suburbia, you’re St. Jimmy.”

Jesus of Suburbia twisted off the cap and raised his bottle. St. Jimmy did the same, and they drank to skipping school and working parents.


Jesus of Suburbia stared at St. Jimmy’s body, all bloody and pale. He didn’t say a word, he couldn’t. Jimmy was dead and he didn’t want to believe it. He couldn’t stop thinking of the day they skipped school and sat at the same place without a care in the world.

He wanted those days back.

Jesus of Suburbia didn’t stick around the town much longer after that. As soon as he saved up enough, he left Andy and Steven for somewhere else.

He never saw the girl again either. Sometimes, he would think of her though. He wondered where she lived, if she was seeing anybody, if she found a way to live with herself.

He still hated her, but he couldn’t forget about her. As time went on, her face faded, her eyes did the same and as did her voice. Soon, he couldn’t remember her name. When he thought about her, he remembered her hair and her frame, but there weren’t any details. He was forgetting about her, but he could never forget about the time when it was just him and Whatsername.

After all, he made a point to burn all of the photographs. His past was his past and although he tried to ignore it and forget it, he could never really leave that town behind.