J. Huss - PANIC

I learned my lesson. I got to the shelter early the next day, got a number for a bed, and was once again on the streets that night because I didn’t know you had to get there right at six PM to line up with your number or they’d give your bed away to someone else.

I think I cried the whole night. And one night in the bus station is forgiven by the Denver PD, but not two.

Two is a habit, the cop told me. But he let me stay because I was so upset. In fact, he almost called social services thinking I was a runaway. But I showed him my ID and told him a little bit of my story, so he never ran my name. He even bought me a cup of coffee from the vending machine.

By day three I had learned the ropes. I got my bed number, I got in line early, and I finally got the pleasure of sleeping on a cot in a smelly room filled with drunks, addicts, and criminals. And a couple weeks later I was still there, being robbed of all my clothes and trying my best not to get raped.

Just after I got robbed of my clothes, I met Ronin wearing my thrift store equivalent replacements and my whole life changed.

What if I had never met him? What if I hadn’t spent that last ten dollars on a ridiculous coffee at Starbucks? What if those models hadn’t sat next to me and what if I hadn’t been so upset and desperate that taking a chance on a test shoot with Antoine Chaput seemed reasonable?

It makes me so sick to think about that. How horrible my life would be if Ronin wasn’t in it. And not because of the money and the jobs, but because of him. I’ve never known love until him. He’s everything to me now. Everything. I do not care what he did in the past, and I know that’s probably wrong in all kinds of ways, but I can’t even muster up some righteous indignation to feel bad about it. Because life is not some cakewalk through the land of the straight and narrow. Life is a crazy, crooked, fucked-up road that sometimes requires a bit of cheating.

Sure, you gotta do your best to prepare for your luck to arrive, and you have to be ready for the opportunities, but in the end it always takes more than luck. And sometimes, skill isn’t enough either.

So if something is important—I’m not talking pre-algebra important, OK? I’m talking real life-or-death important shit—well, then you do what you gotta do.

When you want to win no matter what, you just get the job done and say fuck the straight-and-narrow. Karma can kiss my ass for this one, I earned it.

Life is not always fair, but it does present you with choices. I could’ve taken my ten bucks and bought food. I could’ve ignored that card and called myself delusional for even thinking I could be worthy of that kind of job. I could’ve walked out when I heard what the TRAGIC contract really was and I could’ve told Spencer Shrike no when he asked to paint my body.

Fate is fragile. Deviate from it just a tiny fraction and you end up somewhere else. And as scary as that sounds, what it really means is that I’m the one in control. I’ve always been the one in control, I just never saw it clearly before. I control my reactions to the things life throws at me, so I control my fate.

Ronin might not be perfect, but he’s close enough for me.

I want him, I love him, and he’s mine.

That’s why I’m on the road right now. I know Ford and Spencer are probably going crazy—and if I turned my phone on I’d have dozens of messages telling me how pissed off they are—but I do not care.

Ronin might be required to take the fall for them, but he will not take a fall for me.

No way.

I’d rather go down fighting than give up and slink away like a coward. I can fix this, I know what that FBI guy wants, and I’m gonna go chase it down and get Ronin out of that jail cell if it’s the last thing I do. 

The drive to the village where my life with Jon made my dark childhood look like a bright Easter morning sunrise is long, filled with dread, and scary as fuck. I have all that time to just replay all the terrible things that happened inside that house.

Wayne, Illinois is not the kind of place where horrors happen. Wayne is the type of place where little girls join the Pony Club, boys get Porsches for their eighteenth birthdays, and parents stay together because there’s too much money at stake to split up. At least that’s how it is now. But a hundred years ago it was just another farm town known for breeding draft horses.

Our property butts up against a pretty forest preserve and I pull into a parking lot about half a mile from the house. The park is deserted this time of year unless there’s a classroom of little kids on a field trip, and today there isn’t. So no one notices when I ride the bike into the woods, weaving my way between trees, until I get far enough away from the lot to hide it behind a thicket of shrubbery. This way I can walk up to the house from the back and make sure no one’s waiting for me. It also gives me a nice hidden getaway route and all that fucking running with Ford is gonna pay off big if I have to make a break for it.

The house Jon and I lived in is at least a hundred years old and when it comes into view through the heavily wooded trees, I get the same creepy feeling I did that first day we came to look at it after his uncle died.

Picture the house in Night of the Living Dead. Not that pussy remake where the house is some beautiful, sprawling Victorian-ish thing. But the original Night of the Living Dead, the black and white one from the Sixties that has that two-story farmhouse sitting off in the distance in a large field, white siding, half-ass porch, and those tall, skinny windows that just scream horror movie.

That’s my house in Wayne, Illinois.

The first time Jon and I came to look at it I refused to get out of the car. I was so creeped out he didn’t even push the issue, simply left me there in the passenger seat while he went inside and looked around. He only stayed about fifteen minutes and when he came back all he said was, I’ll clean it up and remodel the kitchen. I just stared at him. Because it was so out of character for him to give a shit about what I thought that I couldn’t even process it. I have no idea what he saw that day but I can take a good guess. Because his uncle was psycho. Psycho as in I keep my quadruple amputee mother under the bed on wheels, X-Files style.

I’m not exaggerating. Uncle Pete was caught with body parts in his basement and died while on trial.

I almost forget to breathe as little by little the house comes into view. It looks small on the outside but inside it’s one of those old places with huge rooms. It’s dumpy because the outside never got any attention. The siding is still a dingy grayish white, the tall hedges that line the far side of the property are all overgrown and bushy, the unattached garage roof is slightly sagging, and the yard grass is knee-high. But if you include the third-floor attic and the basement, it’s almost three thousand square feet of dump.

I never once set foot upstairs. Not even the second floor. It was off limits to me and even though it was kinda cramped only living in that little bit of space, I had absolutely no problem with that. I gladly made do.

Money did not make a shit of difference in my life once I got with Jon. When I was out on the streets, hungry, cold, and desperate, I thought for sure money was the answer. That’s the whole reason I went home with Jon in the first place. He had it all. He was cute, he had the job, the college degree, the Lincoln Park condo, the car, the clothes. He had everything I thought I wanted.

Just like Ronin, right? Ronin had all that too. And he wonders why it took me so long to get on board with him. It was a fool me twice kinda thing.

And seriously, if you were me back then and you suddenly had an established, nice-looking guy interested in taking care of you, you’d go for it too. What girl on the streets would say no to that? Who?

No one, that’s who. But I know better now.

Yeah, everything I did with Antoine and Spencer was for money, but it was my money. Not someone else’s. There’s a big, big difference. After I left Jon I wasn’t looking for the things money could buy, I was looking for the freedom to walk away any time I wanted.

That’s what money really gives you. Walking privileges.

I hesitate at the edge of the woods. I don’t see anyone but I stay hidden and stalk around the perimeter as best I can before setting foot out on what’s left of the lawn. Both of our cars are still there. He must’ve picked mine up from where I left it the day I ran. I peek in the window as I walk past and catch sight of the crystal glass hanging from the rear-view. I open the door impulsively and snatch it until the nylon string breaks, and then close the door gently.

It glitters in the sun and makes my stomach turn. Jon gave me this early in our relationship. I huck it out into the grass because it needs to be forgotten, just like all the rest of the stuff in this place. I continue on to Jon’s car and peek in his windows too. Mine’s an old Toyota Camry, but Jon drove a late-model Mustang. There’s nothing in there, not even a scrap of paper from a straw wrapper.

Jon is a neat freak.

I suppose he left his car here because it would be stupid to disappear in your own car. I don’t open his door, just continue walking up to the back stoop. No railing, just five concrete steps leading up to a door. I stop and lift up the roof of an empty birdfeeder off to the side and take out the spare key taped to the top. The back door doesn’t function. Nailed shut courtesy of Psycho Uncle Pete. Too close to the basement, I always figured. So I creep around to the front of the house and listen for signs that someone might be inside.