Chapter Text
Now Angela is nineteen.
Bryon is here, on her boardwalk, and it’s like falling into a photo from another time.
She tells him she dances for work, which hasn’t been true for two years. She references having a husband, even though Mark and her both agree they aren’t made for marriage. It feels good to shock Bryon, in a strange, cold way that fits her like an old pair of shoes that she wore every day before buying nicer, newer ones.
“Yeah, I figured you left that creep friend of your brother’s. I heard about when you ran away back in that summer…it was the same summer Mark escaped.”
“Oh, it was?” It occurs to her that they never did send Bryon those photos of their first kiss back on Venice Beach. That was half of why she even agreed to let Mark hitch a ride with her in the first place, getting to rub it in Bryon’s face. She wonders when that stopped mattering to her.
“I’m still sorry though. For what it’s worth.”
“Thanks,” she says. “He wasn’t a good husband.”
“Not just for that,” he murmurs, looking at his shoes.
“Oh. Well…I probably wasn’t much better,” Angela admits. She can give him that much. “It don’t matter. We were kids,” she says, more graciously than she feels.
“Yeah...” Bryon looks away, wringing his hands. “Well, some of it still matters now.”
“Like what?”
“Aw, it’s nothing. It doesn’t matter—I mean, not to you. You don’t care, I don’t needa—it’s sad, that’s all.”
“Well, I’m asking…might as well share.”
Bryon sighs, and he looks out at the water.
“He uh…did you hear about it? Mark died a bit ago. God, it must’ve been two or three years ago now…” Bryon winces, and he looks away from her. “I don’t know. I just keep wishin’…keep wishin’ things had gone different, that’s all.”
“Yeah…I heard about that. Down in LA, right?” Angela murmurs.
“Yeah. Lord, he drove straight into that ocean. I just…God. I still can’t get my head around it sometimes…” he trails off and shakes his head. “I’m sorry. You ain’t here to hear me moan and groan.”
“Hey, Bryon,” Angela touches his arm, “it’s okay.”
He nods and gives her a rueful smile.
“I remember hearin’ ‘bout it too,” she says, leaning on the railing. “Hey, you ever reach out to him?”
“Huh?”
“Before he…well, before?”
“Once. Kind of,” Bryon says. “Or, he reached out to me.”
“When?”
He chews his lip. After a moment, he says in a quiet voice “The night he broke out of prison. I caught him breaking into my place.”
“You did?” Mark hasn’t told her that.
“It’s…you really wanna hear about that?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Then…can we go somewhere quieter?”
So Angela leads him to the lot behind her work. Her new (used) car is parked here, and she opens the trunk so they can sit in it and talk.
Bryon takes a minute to get comfortable. She offers him a smoke under a guise of politeness, although really it’s so that she won’t smoke it, as she’s been trying to wean off the cancer sticks—they cost money she could be using for nicer lenses or tripods or film.
Once he lights the cigarette, he seems to relax a bit.
“Well, it went like this,” Bryon begins. “It was the night of the jailbreak. At the time, I thought I was dreaming, I think. I didn’t change my room, you know, after Mark got locked up, and his bed was still there. Is still there now, actually. I never moved it.
“And that night, I woke up, and Mark was there, on his bed, like he always was before. He was in a jumpsuit. Blue, I think. It was blue. Worn to hell. More than it shoulda been for just six months. Too big, too, it hung off him like a limp sail…he got this look to him in prison, all…gaunt, like his skin was drawn too tight against his skull.”
That’s true. Angela remembers it. She hadn’t noticed it much then, but looking at photos…Mark looked so small and wiry back then. His boyish looks had grown sharp and jarring. A mix of pitiful and dangerous, like a lion with its mane shaved off.
He doesn’t look like that now. He doesn’t look how she remembers him looking before prison, either, not exactly—he’s older and wiser and probably a bit less sane—but he’s fuller-faced and wider-shouldered, and his golden curls are back in full force.
For a while though, she supposes, he could have been eerie, if you were Bryon. She hadn’t known it then. To her, he’d just been that asshole Jennings.
“He had a knife. I realized later it was from the kitchen, ‘cos we were missing one, but at the time, in the dark, it looked like a switchblade.” As Bryon speaks, his nerves slough off, as he begins to grow engrossed in his own story.
“Did he…” Angela says, trailing off.
“He stood over me. I wasn’t sure if it was real. I mean, I’d dreamt stuff like that before. He had the knife and was all ready to use it, and I said… ‘Get it over with.’” Bryon stops. When he starts again, his voice is heavy and low. “He looked at me for a real long time, and then he put the knife down. He sighed. I can still hear it. It was like something behind his eyes just…died. He asked me if I was gonna call the cops again. I said ‘No.’”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I made the biggest mistake of my life turning him in. I wasn’t gonna do it again.” Bryon takes a drag of his smoke. His dark hair shines coppery in the afternoon sun. It’s longer now, hanging to his shoulders, and wavy. She didn’t know he had wavy hair back when he kept it short. It looks good long. For a moment, Angela can remember why she used to like him.
“Angela, if you want the truth, I think I wanted to die, and I wanted him to kill me. It felt…right. Poetic. I dunno.”
“But he didn’t?” She isn’t sure why it feels so suspenseful, she knows damn well he didn’t, but still…why didn’t he?
“No. He went to the closet, took out his old jeans and jacket, and watched me for a long time. I still thought he might kill me. I still wished he would, maybe just so it would be done. Life for a life, eye for an eye. That sort of thing. Then he went to the bathroom and came out again in his own clothes. I remember that because he never used to mind changing in the same room, but now he did, and I didn’t blame him. I didn’t wanna see him change either. It didn’t feel like Mark looking at me. Does that make any sense?”
“A little.”
“I asked him what he was gonna do, and he said he was gonna quit wasting time thinking about me and find a way to get the hell outta the state. I told him I was sorry, and he kind of scoffed, which was…fair enough. I asked him if he had anywhere to stay, and he told me to go screw myself, but not in an angry way. It was breezy. That got to me, the way he said it. It was like Mark—cheerful as ever—but all twisted up and wrong. I told him to stay the night and I wouldn’t tell a soul. He looked like he thought I was crazy. But he had nowhere else to go.”
“He stayed?!”
“Yeah…he stayed. Just for the night. I don’t know why, and I didn’t want to ask him. He stayed, and then in the morning he was gone. I watched him leave. He thought I was asleep, but I wasn’t. I didn’t sleep again for a long, long time after that.”
“Wow,” Angela breathes. There isn’t much more she can think to say.
“Yeah. It’s…I told you it was a lot. I didn’t know you cared so much about Mark Jennings.”
“Oh…well, he was always the best-looking of your friends. I was sorry he died. And I always was confused about why you turned him in.”
Bryon nods, eyes closed. “Yeah, well. So was I.”
“Was?”
“I guess I’ve figured it out now.”
“So why did you?”
He shrugs dully. “I was a kid. And I wasn’t a good kid. But I wanted to do the right thing. I was scared, Angela, and tired of being bad.”
Bryon grew up, and Mark didn’t. That’s all it was. Mark was broken down, ruined and reshaped, all because Bryon was tired out of being bad.
Angela hates him for it.
A darker part of herself wonders what she would have done, if Mark hadn’t grown up for her. She wouldn’t have reported him, but…
But she’s also long since tired out of being bad.
Bryon leaves the car and rejoins his friends without fanfare. Angela says goodbye, and is glad to see him go.
Mostly.
She goes home early that day.
-
Mark walks in and tosses the mail into the trash and his suit jacket onto the couch.
A mottled purple bruise has appeared on his face since Angela saw him last, but it isn’t really worth it to ask how that happened. Nine times outta ten, it’s that he started something he couldn’t finish and paid for it with his looks. He’s still pretty cute though, so Angela lets it slide. The day he loses a tooth, sure, maybe then he’ll be on thin ice, but for now she can stand it.
“What’s for dinner tonight?” he asks, untying his tie. He pokes his tongue out and tries to land it onto the bedroom doorknob, and it hits, but then slips off. “Aw.”
“Olives and chickpeas,” Angela says, because those are the cheapest things she can buy canned and still enjoy eating.
“Oh,” Mark says.
“You’re welcome to cook if you want somethin’ else.”
“Naw. I’m beat. No kiddin’ neither,” he says, pointing at his eye. She makes eye contact, and he grins at her wanly.
“Ouch,” Angela says without smiling back. She curls up on the couch with her bowl, and shrugs Mark’s jacket onto her shoulders. It smells like bonfire and sand and that too-strong pine of car air fresheners. It’s a smell that has started to make her feel at home.
He collapses on the couch next to her, butting his head against her arm gently. “How’s things?”
“Fine,” she says.
“For real? ‘Cos you’re bein…quiet.”
“Mark, what would you do if you saw Bryon again?”
He looks at her like she asked the question in Chinese.
“Where’s that comin from?” he says, eyes narrowing.
“No matter. I just…wanna know.”
“Well, I’d kill him, I figure,” Mark says matter-of-factly, “but why?”
“Don’t just say it all reflexively. Think. Imagine you meet Bryon, say, walkin’ down the boardwalk.”
“Why?”
“Humor me.”
He frowns, but doesn’t protest.
“Just picture it, okay? You’re lookin’ at the palm trees and the waves splashin’ and not thinkin’ about anythin’ at all, and then there he is, walkin’ up to you, eyes wide as saucers ‘cos he never thought he’d see you again. What d’ya do?”
“Well, he got a girl with him?”
“Why’s that matter?”
“I always hate him more when he’s got a chick with him,” Mark says, light like he’s joking, but she thinks there’s an element of truth to it. Mark used to get so mean to her when she was with Bryon, all those years ago. Of course he doesn’t like when Bryon has girlfriends.
“No girl, he’s alone.”
“Okay,” Mark says, closing his eyes as if to picture it better.
“Well?” Angela prompts.
“Huh?”
“What do you do, Mark?”
He opens his eyes again. “Honestly? I dunno.”
“What?”
“I dunno, okay?” He works his jaw soundlessly for a second, looking for the right words. “I can’t…I don’t know, I just…yeah. I guess I don’t kill him, but only ‘cos…jeez, I don’t know…I don’t care.”
Angela thinks of all the things that happened to Mark because of Bryon. Of the cops, of the trial, of the jail cell where he lost his innocence, of faking his own death just to have some semblance of freedom. Of his whole future being tossed down the drain.
“How can you not care?” Angela asks.
Mark shakes his head, like he can’t believe the words he’s saying either. “Shoot, man, beats me. I’m just…I’m not finding it.”
“It?”
“Hate. It’s not…it’s just sorta empty, y’know?” he says, looking at the ceiling. “I’m picturing him, and I’m just…bored.”
“How is that possible?”
“Shit, hell if I know. What if you met Tim?”
Tim. God, was there really a time in her life when she saw him every day? It feels so distant now. Not in the warm, fond way that Curly, Evie, and Joan feel distant, but distant like her husband whose face she can’t seem to picture. Distant like the unborn baby she didn’t mourn.
And underneath that, she sees Tim, age fifteen, looking so old and tough to her once upon a time. He doesn’t have his scar yet, or even his first chest hair, but he seems like he can do anything he wants. He can steal anything, get anything, fight anyone, and he ruffles Angela’s hair and smiles at her. Angela is proud he is her brother. Then he is older, and his arms are around her, and she is crying because Dallas Winston is dead before taking her to the Oklahoma City rodeo like he said he would. Tim doesn’t cry, but he’s shaking.
Then he’s making her breakfast in the morning, because Mom won’t and Dad’s out of town. Then he’s gone to the jailhouse for a spell. Then he’s out and she’s slept with Ricky and he’s not gonna fix it anymore.
She’s married and miserable and her ex-boyfriend Bryon and his asshole buddy pick her up. Bryon holds her, and she cries. Mark squeezes her shoulder, and looks at her with big, sympathetic eyes, like he’s sorry.
Then she wakes up at Tim’s house with her long curls in her hand and not on her head, and Tim won’t talk to her. She finds out later that he beat up Bryon so bad he is on bed rest, and she doesn’t give a damn. Who needs to be beautiful when you’re good as dead? Who cares what happens to Bryon Douglas?
Except that she does care, and a part of her is glad, because it hurts that she cried in front of those bastards Bryon and Mark. Deep down what hurts worse is that for a second both boys looked like they cared, and she bought it…
Angela thinks about Tim, and wonders how Curly got a car to drive to LA back when he lived with her.
“C’mon, what would you do if you met Tim?” Mark says softly, tracing the scales of the mermaid tattoo on her shoulder.
“Jesus, Mark. I don’t know.”
“Okay, good, I thought I was crazy.”
“I guess you ain’t. Not for that, at least.” She thinks for a minute. “I think I almost miss him. Is that nuts?”
“Nah. I missed Bryon for a while. Or the Bryon I thought I knew, I guess. Or his presence. Maybe not him exactly, but his being there.”
Well, the Tim she thought she knew and the Tim she knew are one and the same.
“Did you stop missing him?”
Mark shrugs. “I think I stopped missing him around the same time I realized I wasn’t gonna ditch you.”
“When was that?”
“I guess when I told you I wasn’t into fuckin’ people and you still liked me.”
“Lordy, Mark, that was months into our relationship! I stopped thinkin ‘bout ditching you before we even hit LA!” Angela says, drawing back.
“Hey, take it easy, that was just when I realized I wasn’t gonna ditch you. I wasn’t gonna by then, and I knew I didn’t want to—that’s just when I knew for sure I never would. That make any sense?”
“No,” she says, because her feelings are a bit hurt.
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I knew I loved you, at least a little, a lot earlier than that.”
“When?” she says, arms still crossed.
“It was after the accident on the bus, back in…what, New Mexico? Arizona? When that guy tried to kiss me. You saved me, and you didn’t get on a high horse about how you were right, even though you coulda. You just saw how shook up I was and made it better. And then when I woke up that mornin’, you were huggin’ me, and your makeup was all smudged on my white shirt because you’d wound up with your face pressed into my chest. I about melted. I mean, I wasn’t in love with you yet, but I felt myself slipping.”
“Oh,” Angela says. “Okay.” She leans against him again, because that was a pretty good answer. He puts his arms around her shoulders.
Mark is silent for a while, just holding her. A minute later, he says “If I saw Bryon again, I’d ask him to say hello to M&M Carlson for me.”
“M&M?”
“This kid who had a bad trip. Bryon blamed me. I guess it’s why he reported me. I didn’t think it was my fault back then.”
“Was it?”
“I don’t think it was. But how can I know? It happened. Things happen. That’s just how things are.”
“But they could have gone differently.”
“Well, they didn’t,” he says simply.
“They are now, ain’t they? Things are goin’ different. You’re different. I’m different. You don’t push drugs. I don’t…I dunno, I don’t throw bottles at your head.”
Mark laughs. “Shoot, I guess you don’t.”
“I don’t need Tim no more, y’know?” she says, but it feels sour on her tongue.
“And I don’t need Bryon.”
Angela sighs, and leans her head into the hollow where Mark’s neck meets his collarbone.
“If I met Tim again I think I’d say I’m sorry.”
“Why? You ain’t got nothin’ to be sorry for.”
“No. But our Ma sure does. He had to grow up fast. And I couldn’t grow up at all. I don’t think he was right, to tell her, but…Lord, I get why he thought he was.”
Mark nods slow. When he speaks again, he says “What made you think of all this?”
“Nothing. I dunno.”
“Really? You just…happened to think of this?”
“…Oh, don’t be mad.”
“Why would I be mad?” he says lightly, but he stiffens just a degree.
“I ran into him today.”
“Tim?”
“Bryon.”
Mark doesn’t say anything for a long time. When Angela finally pulls away to look at him, she expects him to look angry, or shocked, white-faced and wide eyed. He’s neither. Mostly, he just looks a little confused.
“Mark?” Angela says, touching his jaw.
“The hell is he doin’ out here?” Mark says, voice quiet.
“He’s goin’ to school out here. San Francisco, I reckon.”
“How’s he affordin’ that?”
“I didn’t ask. It didn’t occur to me.”
“No, yeah, ‘course not, that makes sense. How’s he look?”
“He’s grown his hair out like a hippie. He’s in school for journalism.”
“Christ. Go figure.”
“I told him I’m married to someone else now. I told him I’m a stripper. I wanted him to feel bad, to be caught off guard. It worked, but that didn’t really make me feel better.”
“He mention me?” Mark asks, overly casual, but his voice goes raspy at the end, and she knows it kills him to ask.
“Yeah. He…thinks you’re dead. He was…really shook up over it, even now, three years later. Says turnin’ you in was the worst mistake of his life.”
“Oh.” Mark looks away, and Angela rubs his cheek gently.
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
“For real?”
“I…yeah, actually,” Mark says, sounding perplexed. He looks back at Angela, and he looks fine, strange as it is. “I’m…glad he’s sad that I’m dead.”
“I’m glad you’re not dead.”
“I’m glad you’re not married to that creep friend of your brothers’.”
“No, just to the creep friend of my ex.”
Mark smiles a bit. “I’m glad I tried to steal your car.”
“I’m glad you did too.”
“You know somethin’ funny? I think I’m glad Bryon did what he did,” Mark murmurs, looking up at her. “I’m glad I wound up with you, end of the day.”
“I’m glad Tim told Mom about the baby. Without that, I’d never have had to run away. And I’m glad I didn’t have to go alone. I don’t know what I woulda done without you by my side.”
“I love you, Angel,” Mark says, voice soft.
“I love you too.”
-
Angela hangs a picture on the wall of the RV. The walls have been looking pretty blank ever since she and Mark moved into the duplex, and she wants to show off her photography.
“All swept?” Mark says, poking his head in.
“Hours ago, man, get with the times,” Angela winks.
“It looks awesome in here, dude. Almost bums me out we ain’t gonna get to use it while it’s all clean.”
“I’ll make them vacuum ‘fore they gotta go, okay?”
“Jesus, who am I? Since when do I give a damn ‘bout vacuuming?” Mark says, a look of horror coming over his face.
“You’re gettin’ old, darlin’,” Angela says, kissing his cheek as he comes to stand next to her.
“And which of us is about to have a twenty-first birthday, you or me, babe?” he says innocently. She flips him off.
“Anything else you think I oughta do?” she says, stepping back to look at the pictures. They look good, all the colors are harmonious.
“We get the fridge stocked?”
“Yep.”
“The beds set?”
“You tell me, that was your job, dingus.”
“Well that’s set, then. All three of ‘em.”
“Cool.”
So with everything prepared, Mark and Angela lock up the RV, and climb into the car.
Curly, Kimber, and Tim are arriving at the San Francisco Greyhound station in an hour, and Angela can’t wait.