If It Made Sense, It Wouldn't Be a Mystery, Would It?

Chapter 13

POV: JUSTIN

I feel genuinely uncomfortable going back to Ethan's neighborhood, and I slump down in the passenger seat of the Skylark, trying to make myself invisible. Plus the address is-- Brian glances over at me and laughs.

"Justin, if you see Ethan, you see Ethan. You don't have to hide- and you certainly don't have to avoid him on my account."

"I know…" I mumble, straightening up, sort of surprised Brian used Ethan's real name. God I fuckin' hate that guy. Actually, I really don't think about him at all anymore, so hate is too strong a word- it was almost instant after that little episode with the roses that clarity struck. But being in his neighborhood is odd. I push him out of my mind and begin to look through the photographs Carl had left with us. Some of them are of Jason, and several are of Jason with Reikert. The bulk of them are of Reikert and someone around his age, I assume it's Gary. "Brian?"

At that moment, Brian's cell rings and he looks at me briefly as he flips the phone open. "Yeah, this is Brian..."

'It's fucking Hunter!' He mouths to me as he steers us over to the side of the road to park while he talks; he kills the engine. Fuck me! And we're about a block from Ethan's. I hunch down and listen.

"Jesus Hunter! I can't understand you! Calm the fuck down!… Is Michael with you? He--? Where the fuck is he?! WHAT?" Brian runs his fingers through his hair, a look of concern and exasperation on his face. "Fuck, Hunter! Goddammit…" He pauses, listening. "No. Don't. I won't. Listen, Hunter-" He pauses again, listening. I watch his face. His expression looks more and more shocked, which worries me. What the fuck?

"Yeah. Yeah, okay…" He's quiet. Very quiet. "Okay, yeah, well, it won't be till tonight, okay? You're at least three hours away. We'll be there as soon as we can. Fuck. Be careful." He pauses. I put my hand on his knee, looking at his face. He glances up at me as though he'd forgotten I was there. His eyes are troubled. "And fucking lay low." He says finally. He flips the phone off and continues to stare at me.

"What is it, Brian?"

"Mikey's missing. Hunter ran off this morning after I talked to him- I guess Mikey never caught up to him. When Hunter cooled down or whatever, he decided to go back to find Michael." Brian is whispering. I squeeze his knee, waiting quietly. All I can think is, 'fuck fuck FUCK…'

"And...?" I say, finally.

"Michael was gone. With the car. Hunter's still at the rest stop. He's scared shitless. He wants us to go get him. He's stranded."

"Michael probably took the car out to look for Hunter, Brian- I'm sure he's okay. I mean, that's the logical explanation."

"Yeah, but- fuck, it's been at least three hours since I talked to him. And, I know Mikey. He'd have called me by now if he were still out looking for Hunter. Well, unless…" His voice trails off. Brian is still, thinking. "Hunter won't call the cops- and he fucking begged me not to. Give me Horvath's number," he demands, gesturing towards the papers and photos in my lap. I look down and sift through it all, finding the paper with his number scrawled on it.

"Brian, are you sure you should? I mean, Hunter didn't want you to- maybe there's a reason."

"But Horvath isn't a cop. Anymore, anyway." But then Brian hesitates. "Well, maybe we should just go get the brat and then figure out what to do. Michael will probably be there with him with a fucking grin on his face by the time we get there. Fucker." Brian chuckles but I can see he's scared. "So, my partner in crime-solving, bed and the shower, we are off to the outskirts of New York FUCKing City. Your home away from home, Sunshine!"

He turns the key and the Buick roars into life. He pulls away from the curb, tires screeching, and heads out of the neighborhood and towards the highway. In the back of my mind, I feel a sense of relief that we're away from Ethan's. Which is fucking stupid- there are much bigger issues at hand at the moment. Fuck.

After some time, I find myself looking through the photos again. One in particular keeps bugging me. "Brian?"

"Hm?" Brian is distracted. He's absently chewing on his thumb as he steers us down the highway. It's about 4PM, and it's getting dusky. The sky's a steel bluish gray and it smells like it's going to snow; I love this 'gloomy', brooding weather- Brian loves it too. Under different circumstances, we'd probably be looking to the sky, pointing out the different cloud formations the wind has whipped up. Yeah. Fuck that right now.

"I know you can't see this while you're driving, but did you notice in this picture," I hold the photo out and peer at it, "it looks like Horvath in the background here?"

"Hm?" Brian says again, not really paying attention, wrapped in his own thoughts. "What about Horvath?"

"This picture. Did you look at these photos very carefully?"

"No, I didn't." Now he focuses on what I'm saying. "Why?"

"Well, I can't really tell, but it looks a little bit like Horvath's in one of them. Behind this tree, see? And it looks like Stockwell's sitting with him. And some woman." I peer at the picture. I have no clue who she is.

"Justin, I can't look while I'm driving." I roll my eyes. Brian goes on, "But so? What's it say on the back of the photo? Maybe it was at a police thing. You know, Reikert would have been invited to whatever the fuck cops do when they get together. Well, besides making the streets safe for fags everywhere by merely being absent from the beat…"

"The picture is actually of Reikert and Jason- see? They're mugging for the camera. I mean, he took his fuck buddy to a police gathering? That's weird."

Brian glances over and then turns his eyes back to the road. "Maybe. Anyone else there?"

I study the picture carefully.

"Wonder who took it… what's it say on the back? Did you say?" Brian repeats.

"The back just says, 'annual picnic'." I squint at a blurry image on the other side of Reikert's head, far in the background. "It looks like there's another person back there. Real lanky. Definitely young, you know, Jason's age." I look at the fuzzy image closely. Long baggy jeans, three sizes too big, crotch down to the knees. Floppy coat. Seems to be jumping to catch something. "The kid sure dresses like shit. In fact, he dresses like Hunter. In fact…" Hm. It may BE Hunter.

Brian chortles. "Listen to you: you're hardly one to criticize someone else's fashion, Sunshine." He looks over and sizes me up. "Jesus. What is with the youth of today?"

It's nice to see Brian's mind temporarily off of Michael, so I decide to ignore the dig. Sort of. "Ha ha. I've seen photos of you when you were in high school. You were a total dweeb. At least that's what Mikey called you once- or said that Ben had called you that. I forget. And you kind of were, Brian. You were skinny, tall, kind of gangly, and you had that goofy hair-"

"Enough!" Brian clips tersely; he reaches down and flips on the headlights. It's getting pretty dark out. "I don't recall anyone ever complaining. Girls and boys alike were partial to my dashing good looks." He looks at me and winks, the luminous reddish glow from the dashboard twinkling in his eyes. Then he rolls his eyes. "Gawd. High school sucked."

I smile and sit back. "You wouldn't have survived a day at St. James Academy." I say, smugly. Brian reaches over and gives me a push with his right hand.

"Whatever, Sunshine. From what I know about the people at your school, I wouldn't have wanted to sit through one fucking class. Fucking homophobic republican rightwing religious assholes."

"Hey!" For some reason, I feel the need to defend that shit-heap of an institution- I'm not sure why. "Academically, it's a great school. And not everyone there was like that- I mean, Daphne's cool."

"Yes. Daphne is cool." He concedes. "But, not as cool as I was when I was in high school. And certainly not as cool as I am now." Brian has that wicked little grin on his face that he gets when he knows he's pissing me off. Fucker. I ignore him and turn to look out the window.

In all honesty, Brian was fucking cute in high school. I've not only seen Mikey's yearbook, but I've also seen Brian's. He keeps it in a box in the back of his closet. And judging by the number of people who signed Brian's yearbook, he was pretty well liked. I lean back and allow my mind to momentarily let go of worry about Brian, Michael and Hunter for awhile.

I remember grilling Michael about "young Brian", fascinated to know what he'd been like when he was around my age. He told me that Brian was a lot like he is now. He never played any of those clique games that every high schooler encounters- he could care less about those kind of 'games', and was actually accepted by just about all his classmates for that very reason. I'm sure the fact that he really didn't give a shit if he fit in or not- and his sense of humor- had a lot to do with it too; but the geeks liked him because he didn't treat them any differently than he treated anyone else (in fact, his best friend was among their ranks, Michael stoically admitted); the jocks respected him for his athletic ability in soccer and running and swimming-and the few jocks who didn't like Brian kept their distance after the locker incident. I grin when I remember the story Brian told in Woody's after I was suspended for fighting with Hobbs; after being dunked in the toilet head first by some jock, Brian later came up behind him and smashed the guy's locker door on his hand, breaking three of his fingers. After that, jock-boy and his buddies left Brian alone. And by association, they left Mikey alone too- which, Michael told me, was a godsend. It is nice to have him on your side, that's for sure- like when he came between me and Hobbs outside of Babylon, when Hobbs started for me. Brian can be downright intimidating.

Brian was apparently well liked by the girls, too-- for obvious reasons. He dated a little, but mainly out of curiosity. Brian has told me that he's known practically from birth that he was gay- "I knew I loved cock as soon as I looked down and saw my own," he said. So modest. Still, as one of the most sexually ambitious, motivated and charged animals on the planet, he was willing to go out with classmates of both genders, and even a coach and teacher or two- men and women. But, Michael told me, Brian never developed a relationship that was steady or serious in highschool. Well, except for with Michael. I look up to watch the streetlights overhead strobe by.

Michael told me a long time ago about Brian's home life- Brian rarely talks about it. And no wonder, really- from what little I know, I find it hard to believe he survived to adulthood- literally and figuratively. He stayed over at Michael's a lot; Mikey mentioned how it was almost daily that Brian would come to his house to walk to school together or hang out, often sporting a new bruise or welt. Jack was a vicious drunk, and Brian seemed to be his punching bag of choice in the family. Claire somehow escaped his wrath, and his mother was always away from the house, as she was heavily involved with the church. And even when she was there, she really wasn't.

Michael said he was over at Brian's once soon after they'd met- they were both 14, and Brian's family had just moved to town. The two of them were in the living room playing Yahtzee or something and Brian had gone over to the hutch by the front door to get some more paper. Suddenly Jack Kinney burst through the front door drunk, careened into Brian knocking him off balance, and then quick as lightning Jack stood back and sucker punched Brian right in the jaw, knocking him backwards onto the hardwood floor- Brian never knew what hit him. A split second later, Jack stepped over and kicked him as hard as he could in the chest. The whole time- all of maybe 5 seconds (5 of the longest seconds Mikey says he's ever experienced)- no one said a word. Michael said he was so stunned; all he could manage was to start whimpering. He also said the smell of alcohol was so strong, even from across the room, it stung his nose.

Brian didn't do anything except gasp for air for a long time- his father had kicked him so hard the wind had been knocked right out of him. When he finally caught his breath, he very deliberately got to his feet, clenched his jaw, and limped back to the card table where Michael was sitting. Michael, terrified, crying, was frozen, unable to act upon his first instinct to run for his life before getting hit himself- but by the time he felt he could actually move, Brian's dad had lurched off to the liquor cabinet, grabbed a bottle of Beam, staggered over to the sofa and had literally collapsed, passed out with the bottle clutched in his fist. Michael had looked over at Brian, he said, and Brian- Brian showed no emotion at all- his eyes had become completely unreadable, like he had gone somewhere else in his mind. He just sat down slowly, hugging his body with one arm, reaching up with the other to tenderly brush his fingers over his jaw. A very dark bruise was already beginning to spread under the red marks left by Jack's knuckles, and a nasty gash on his lip was swelling, a thin trickle of blood slipping down his chin and onto his fingers.

This whole time, Joanie was apparently in the next room, door wide open, arranging flowers. A few minutes after Jack had passed out, she had quietly set the vase of flowers on an end table, fussed slightly with her skirt, and had simply gone upstairs. Not once looking into the room, not once acknowledging that her son was broken, bleeding, silently sitting at the table, not once seeing her son's friend standing there bawling, staring at the whole scene incredulously, not once casting a glance at the passed out drunk on the sofa who had swept in and had caused this unbelievable drama. It was breathtakingly fucked, Michael said, and he never has been able to get over it. To think it was a regular occurrence was literally frightening. Is literally frightening.

Michael said he rarely went over to the Kinney home after that. He also said that Jack had apparently cracked one of Brian's ribs that day. Michael told his mom what happened. Debbie had called family services, but nothing came of it- and a few days after she'd made that call, Brian had shown up to walk to school with his arm in a cast and a black eye. He told Michael and Debbie that he'd hurt himself falling out of a tree. They didn't believe him- and Brian had known they hadn't- but Debbie apparently thought she'd made matters worse for him so she never called the authorities again. Besides, Mikey said that back then, domestic violence, child abuse- that was considered something private, something that you just didn't talk about. A family thing. Jesus. Luckily, the abuse became less and less frequent once Brian had a growth spurt at 15- he'd already been tall, but that summer he shot up to 6'3". And with all of the sports he was involved in, Brian'd become very strong. Jack probably started to think twice before taking a swing at the boy.

It's amazing, really- he is so gentle, loving, tender with Gus. Where he learned that is a mystery- certainly not in the Kinney House of Horror. Maybe from Vic. Or maybe it's innate. However it happened, he couldn't be less like Jack as a father. Luckily for Gus.

I pull myself out of my reverie and look over at Brian, who's been quiet this whole time. He has a blank expression on his face, steering the car past slower moving vehicles, glancing in the rearview mirror every so often. "How are you doing?"

"I'm on autopilot." He answers, matter of factly. "There's too much to think about, but not enough to draw any real conclusions. So, I'm zoning out- much like you are, it would seem." He pauses. "Here's your favorite question, although I am loathe to say it: what are you thinking about? You haven't said a fucking word in 75 miles. I'm getting a bit concerned- unless you're sleeping, you never shut up. And even then," he cranes his neck around to check his blind spot before flipping on the blinker and changing lanes, "even then, you talk up a storm."

"I talk in my sleep?"

"Sometimes. I know all your deep and dark secrets. You can be very talkative."

"No way!"

"Way."

I look at him. I can't tell if he's kidding or not. But, really, I don't have any deep, dark secrets from Brian, so I shrug it off. "Whatever."

After a few more minutes, he says, "So?"

"'So?' what?"

He rolls his eyes. "Soooo: what have you been thinking about?"

"Oh. Nothing, really. Just about stuff Michael has told me about you."

His eyebrows shoot up. "Like?"

"Just you in high school. Your family."

"He's talked to you about my family?"

"A little." I can tell he's thinking hard about that.

"Okay…" he says, hesitantly.

"About your parents."

"My parents, eh?"

"Uh-huh." I continue to look at him, gauging his reaction. "Your dad was a real shit, wasn't he?"

Brian blinks, caught a bit off guard. "He had his moments." He keeps his eyes trained on the road.

After a few moments, "Brian, can I ask you something?"

His eyes never waver. "Depends."

"Why don't you talk to me about when you were younger? I mean, about how it was for you growing up?"

"You never ask me. And why? What do you want to know?"

"How… hm. Well, what was it like growing up in your house? How come you're so great with Gus? I mean, Jesus- from what Mikey's told me about your dad and how he beat the shit out of you- with your mother standing right in the next-"

"Justin, fuck that. Really, there's nothing to talk about. It's over. Done. History. Jack's fucking dead. Joanie's a fucking alcoholic church freak. What's there to talk about, really?"

I'm quiet for a while. Brian's expression has become unreadable. I wonder if this is what Michael had been talking about. I want to reach over, to touch him, to show him he's loved. But I'm afraid. Or, I sort of sense that he is.

Then he gets a small smile, a genuine smile. "…And," he adds, "Gus is a special boy. Fucking drama princess, but special nonetheless…"

"Well, of course he is." I agree. But I think a moment, and add, "What, you think you weren't?"

Brian snorts. "Oh, I was special, alright. I was a complete shit from day one." He grins bitterly.

"Fuck that, Brian!" Jesus- does he really believe he deserved being hit and kicked and whatever the fuck all else? Fuck! "Bri-"

"Justin, just stop it. I really don't feel like strolling down the sordid dark alleyway that is my personal memory lane, if you don't mind…" he looks agitated.

"Sorry…" I let it go. Fuck Jack and Joanie Kinney, I think. I busy myself by putting the stack of papers into the pocket of my jacket. Then I lean over against Brian, quietly undoing my seatbelt so that I can reach him.

"Quit it! Put that back on, Justin. The last thing we need now is for you to end up dead, or missing after flying through the windshield into the river…"

"Maybe I'll find Michael in there," I say, but I quickly realize that wasn't really the appropriate joke for the moment. I hope he doesn't read too much into it and quietly click the belt back on. I hold it slightly loose though, and lean my upper body against him. He smells so good, he's so warm; I close my eyes. I feel his arm wrap around me. "Don't fall asleep on me, asshole. We're almost there." I shift and dig a finger into his ribs teasingly. "Ow!" He yelps.

I find myself beginning to doze lightly when Brian says, "Jesus," turning up the heat. "Hunter must be freezing his fucking balls off...!"

"I'm sure there's a restaurant or something there." I hope so. I'm starving.

"I fucking hope Michael's shown up." I open my eyes to look up at him, then I give him a small kiss on his jaw, trying to reassure him that it'll be alright. I see him check the rearview mirror.

"What do you keep doing that for? Checking the mirror?" I ask.

"Eh, I dunno. I've kind of gotten this feeling that someone's following us- they keep up with us two cars back, passing when I pass, changing lanes when I change lanes. I'm just being paranoid. My mind's all over the place since Horvath showed up. Fucker. I'd rather not know about any of this shit. Whatever there is to know, I mean."

I crane my neck to look behind us. "Which car is it?"

"That white one. It looks like a Cutlass or something. Another piece of shit car."

"Have you gotten a look at the driver?"

"Some chick, actually. But it's too dark and she's too far back for me to really see her."

I turn back to face front again.

"Exit 245A. This is it!" Brian says, putting on his blinker and getting into the right lane to exit. As we slow to stop at the signal at the bottom of the ramp, we both look around, incredulous. "Fuck me. This isn't a Bob's Big Boy kind of rest stop. This is a vending machine/hole in the ground with one-ply toilet paper rest stop." Brian grumbles. "Why'd Mikey pull off here?"

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