Life is Strange, page 18
A whimper escapes his lips, and I lean in closer, until pain shoots up my thigh and I wince.
“Alex, we need to get you to a hospital before this gets worse,” urges Clover, reaching down and gripping my arm to support me to stand, but I don’t. I stay right here.
And I realize this is what I had hoped to see from Jonah Macon. This kind of remorse, this clear turning point, a moment that might mean the future of Barbazal. And I have a second chance right here, right now, with Mayor Biggs.
“You have a choice,” I continue. “You can continue to run from your pain. You can keep covering it up…”
He winces and sniffs again.
“…or you can reach out to your daughters. Hold them close. Put away this idea of paving over your family’s history with a theme park. Stop trying to bury what you’re feeling, under the guise of doing what’s best for Barbazal tomorrow. Because the Barbazal of today needs you. They need water. And they trust you to lead them to greener pastures.”
He’s solemn, and painfully quiet, digging his thumbnails into his nailbeds and peeling away a hangnail, fraught with nerves.
It’s time to put him out of his misery.
“I won’t report this,” I say. He looks up at me with wide, unbelieving eyes.
“You won’t?” he croaks.
“Why would I?” I ask. “It won’t help anything. You’ll just be a sad, lonely man… in prison. And Barbazal will move on with that theme park with or without you, burying the history of all the hard-working farmers and diner-owners and mechanics who have called this place home since they were born.”
Biggs blinks once or twice in disbelief, and I squeeze Clover’s hand, indicating I’m ready to go. My leg is still screaming, and I grimace against the pain as she and Steph help me to my feet—or my one good foot.
“I won’t report you, Mayor Biggs, because I think you and I both know,” I say, as I hobble to turn around, draping my arms over Steph and Clover’s shoulders, “you have work to do.”
He nods frantically, and even after I turn my head and focus on balancing my weight between Clover and Steph as they help me across the field to the town square, I know he’s sincere.
I’ve had days, weeks to dwell on what happened to Jed. Righteous flares of anger turning to disgust and then sadness, then the recognition that only letters of contrition are left to him now. Biggs’ bullet has pierced me deeper than Jed’s, but that doesn’t mean a cell for him is the best way to help this town.
I hear him shuffle his fingers in the sticks and leaves and grunt as he stands to his feet.
“Yes,” he says behind me. “Yes, I do, Alex.”
He’s silent for a long while, and I wonder if he’s just going to… let us go? Take my words to heart? Save the whole city? Is this the part where Steph, Clover, and I walk off into the sunset? Or, I guess, to the car? So we can replace these pistons and get me to somewhere with some serious pain meds?
“Clover?” he asks, his footsteps getting louder in my ears.
I look to Clover for direction, but she marches on, her eyes fixed directly ahead. She’s not going to stop for him.
I look to my left where I find Steph’s face, so close to me. I look into her eyes. Hers glance back at Biggs, and I hope she understands, in the silence between us, that the choice is up to him.
We can only hope he makes the right one.
“I want to be in this baby’s life,” he says.
Warmth floods me, and relief.
Clover freezes, and I hear a soft grunt escape her throat.
“I want,” he continues. “Well, I guess I’ve been doin’ a lot of talkin’ ’bout what I want. Whatever you want, Clover, I want to support you. Promise you that. Just… don’t shut me out? Not totally?” His voice cracks. “Please?”
Silence passes, and I wonder if Clover is going to say anything this time.
“Okay,” she whispers.
“What?” he asks, clearly making sure he heard her right.
“I said okay,” she says, looking at me for permission. I nod and slip my own arm from her shoulder.
“I never wanted to shut you out,” she sighs. “But I don’t know how I can have you in my life and the Barbazal I know and love.”
He shrugs.
“I’m… sorry, Clover. I’m afraid Barbazal has already signed a contract with the Water Republic of Denver. I can’t reverse it. There’s… there’s nothing I can do—”
“I know,” she says, turning and supporting my arm again, spurring us forward. “That’s why I’m going to.”
Alarm bells ring through my head.
Steph looks at me and asks a single question, “Alex?”
She asks the same thing I’m thinking.
Clover, what are you planning?
16: The Car
The car is exactly where we left it, parked safely at Elias’s shop, tucked away in the garage. With each step—or, for me, hobble—I wince more and more.
Jesus fuck this burns!
I keep my eyes on that burgundy wonder that got us from Haven Springs to… well, almost to here.
Steph lets out a relieved sigh and steps forward, resting her hands on the trunk.
“Missed you, girl,” she says.
Clover grunts, “You talk to this car like you’re talkin’ to a horse.”
“About… six horsepower if you count the one on the dash,” says Steph, swinging the back door open and scooping her arms underneath my good leg. “Now help me get this one out to pasture.”
Steph and Clover gently lift me between them and help me into the back seat. Fuck fuck fuck it hurts.
I yelp in pain as my hurt leg whacks the center console.
“Fuck!” I scream.
“Ooh, sorry, I’m so sorry!” cries Steph, cupping her hands over her mouth, as frantically as if she’d been the one to whack her shot leg on something. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I grimace, gripping the seat and scootching my way deeper into the car until my head clears the door.
Steph leans forward into the car and asks, “Need anything? Before we go, I mean?”
“Got any whiskey?” I ask.
“Wow, it is bad,” she says, smiling. “That’s not even your drink of choice.”
“Better than a shot of Bedazzled Kiwi Schnapps.” I try to smile up at her, but a wince takes over as another splintering pain rips through my leg.
“Now, I’m happy to help y’all on your way,” Clover says, “but I need a question answered first.”
“What’s that?” asks Steph.
“I need to know who Jonah made the deal with about this dam power siphoning.”
She wants me to out a politician on intel that I gathered with my powers? Absolutely no way am I telling her that. What if it gets back to me? To Steph? I glance at her, and her face tells me all I need to know. This isn’t my choice to make. It’s both of ours.
“I-I don’t know,” I say.
Silence hangs in the air between the two of us.
“You’re a godawful liar,” says Clover, stepping up to the car and leaning against the driver-side door. Red radiates from her, filling the room with a shower of sparks, spraying in all directions. I flinch, and the quick jerk sends another shockwave of pain through my leg.
“We’re not going anywhere until you prove to me you haven’t been lying this whole time. If you learned something from Jonah,” she says, resting a hand over her stomach, “it’s my right to know.”
“You’re really going to do this now?” hisses Steph, motioning to me. “While my girlfriend is in excruciating pain from a gunshot wound?”
“Steph, don’t—” and then the word girlfriend sinks in. My eyes find hers, and I can’t help but smile weakly, though this pain is searing hot.
Clover remains immovable, and I quickly realize there’s no other way out of this. Luckily, Steph and I think alike.
“Tell her, Alex,” she says. “It’s the only way to get you help.”
I sigh, knowing she’s right.
I level my eyes at Clover and say the name so sharply I hope it hurts her.
“Brickleby,” I admit. “It was Senator Brickleby. Happy?”
“Quite,” she says, grinning cunningly before stepping around to the passenger side and swinging the door open.
The engine hums to life—a sound I’ve waited for for what feels like weeks—we back out of Elias’s shop, and I look around as we peel out of the driveway and down the highway, hoping to catch a glimpse of anyone…
Elias. Silas. Owen. Anita.
…Opal.
We didn’t say goodbye to any of them.
And I guess I didn’t help them either. Unless Mayor Biggs decides to do something about it. And who knows how genuine those tears were? Anyone will cry at the thought of losing family, no matter how distant.
I push myself to sitting with a weary groan, and I see Steph’s judging eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Alex, please, sit still.”
“I’m just putting on my seatbelt,” I protest. “Bleeding or not, I’m more likely to die in an accident if you’re gonna drive this fast.”
“I’m doing eighty, it’s not a big deal,” she says.
“In a fifty-five?” asks Clover. “Darius’ll have your neck.”
“What, is Darius the one cop in Barbazal?”
After a moment, Clover nods.
“Actually, yeah.”
Steph and Clover look at each other, and I see something I never thought I’d see five minutes ago.
They… smile at each other.
“Hey,” says Clover, “I’m… sorry. I just knew I wouldn’t get that information outta Jonah, and… I just had to know. How am I supposed to fix this problem if I can’t find the root of it?”
“I don’t know,” replies Steph. “All I know is Alex and I have a gig to play in nine hours, with a six-hour drive ahead of us, and a fucking bullet wound to address first.”
Steph sighs in exhaustion.
“Sorry, Alex,” she says, “your leg is the priority. I just…”
Her voice cracks.
“I so wanted to make it to Fort Collins.”
My heart shatters into a million pieces for her. Steph, who only wanted the open road and the wind in her hair, who wanted that, with me.
Because of me, our car broke down.
Because of me, we took our sweet time stuck in Barbazal, and now we’re going to miss Fort Collins by mere hours because of my gunshot wound?
I look down at my leg. The pain’s subsided a bit. I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I guess I’ll find out. I turn my knee. From the tourniquet down, my leg is bright red, and I wonder if Clover tied it too tight. Am I at risk of a blood clot with this thing being wound so many times? A wave of nausea washes over me.
I quickly force my eyes away, focusing on the trees flying past us out the window instead.
Breathe, Alex.
I let my mind meander. How long could I sit here in this car with this bullet in my—
“And before you even think about it, Alex, we are not driving to Fort Collins until you’ve been given the all-clear at the hospital.”
“Y’all won’t make it to Fort Collins in time, then.”
The silence settles into the car like a thick, stuffy cloud that we all struggle to breathe through. The truth settles with it.
We’re not making it to Fort Collins.
At least not tonight.
“Hope you plan on spending the night with us at the hospital then,” says Steph, “because we are not pushing ourselves past our limit anymore. We’re tired. We’re hungry. One of us has been shot, thanks to your dad.”
More silence, before Steph sighs.
“Anyway, apology accepted.”
“Really?”
“The hell else am I going to do?” asks Steph. “Carry a grudge forever?”
I can’t help but smile. She’s so quick to forgive. That’s my Steph. Tough outer shell. Soft and gooey inside.
“Besides,” she says, shifting her weight in the driver’s seat. I turn my gaze back to the window, where I find a gap in the trees and see a huge gray wall in the distance, maybe a hundred yards from the road, rising up to the sky. “Without help from an army, you’re not going to take down the dam by yourself.”
And then I notice the crowd gathered around the bottom, on either side of a ten-feet-wide river of water, more like a creek really.
And they’re all staring, hands up to shield their eyes from the late-morning sun, at the very tip top. And who stands on the very tip top of the dam?
A man in electric-blue shorts and a gray shirt.
“One person can’t take down a dam,” says Steph, still waxing poetic to Clover.
But he’s going to fucking try, I realize.
“Stop the car,” I demand.
17: The Dam
The minute the car screeches to a halt, my seatbelt is off. “Alex, what the hell are you doing?!” screams Steph as I lean my body out of the back seat and mean for my good leg to find the ground, but it catches on the edge and I spill onto the pavement along the shoulder of the highway.
“Making things right,” I groan, pushing myself to my feet, slowly, painfully.
Clover’s out of the car too and around the side to help me up. Steph joins eventually, after getting over how stunned she is, I’m sure.
“Are you trying to die out here?” she thunders. “Forget what I said about Fort Collins. I just want you to be okay. Please get back in the car!”
“You don’t get it, Steph!” I blurt out, even as she helps me forward. My good leg finds dry withered grassy patch after dried withered grassy patch as I explain, “When I met Jonah up there at the house, past the woods, by the lake, I talked to him. But I didn’t tell you how it went.”
“Oh no, Alex. You didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” asks Clover.
I glance at Steph, who returns my gaze with her own. What the hell do we tell Clover? That I wormed my way into her boyfriend’s memories and sent him running off into the woods, terrified of his greatest fears realized, afraid to lose her and lose Barbazal? Even more afraid than losing the election?
“Alex has a… way with words,” explains Steph. “She probably just told Jonah how dire the situation with the dam is, and he… didn’t take it well.”
“What?” asks Clover, who only now notices the enormous crowd gathering at the base of the dam up ahead.
“Holy shit,” she says, turning her gaze slightly upward. “Oh my god! Is that—?”
“Jonah Macon,” Steph and I say in unison.
“What the hell did you say to him?!” cries Clover. “What if he jumps?!”
“He won’t,” I say.
“You seem damn sure for someone who met him yesterday.”
“I told you, Alex has a way with words. She knows people. And if she says Jonah won’t jump, then I believe her.”
“Well,” says Clover, gently stepping out from under my arm as Steph takes all my weight upon her, “my baby’s father’s life depends on her bein’ right.”
She jogs ahead, cupping her hands around her mouth and hollering, “Jonah Macon, you get your ass down from there right this minute!”
I can’t help but note Clover’s tone. She’s taken on the sharpness of a Southern grandmother hollering at her grandkids to come home from the creek ’cause it’s getting dark out. Even though he’s probably too high up to hear any of us from way back here.
Jonah Macon, atop the dam, takes a seat. He swings his legs over the edge, and I gasp, along with everyone else in the crowd. I was so confident before that he wouldn’t jump, but now, with him sitting up there, and his legs swinging like that…
We join the spectators at the back, and I hear their whispers now.
“Is that little Jonie Macon? Is this some kinda demonstration?”
“He better not jump or his daddy will be heartbroken.”
And then I hear two voices I recognize.
“His daddy’s the one person here who wouldn’t be heartbroken,” says Bobby, from Bobby’s Books.
“He’d better get down from there before the news gets wind of this,” replies Paisley.
“Alex, what do we do?” whispers Steph.
“I-I don’t know,” I say.
I truly don’t.
Do I just march forward—hobble forward—and demand to talk to him? Talking to him got us into this mess! This is all my fault—I crept into his memories, his sadness, his fears, and made them more intense just to further my own agenda.
My chest sinks with the weight of the question: Am I no better than Senator Brickleby?
I can’t leave things like this. I have to do something.
“Can’t you talk to him?” asks Steph.
“I couldn’t get up there on top of the dam if I wanted to,” I say. “Besides, I think if he saw me again he’d just panic and be even more afraid.”
“Why?”
“I, um…”
It’s time to confess.
“I kind of… grabbed ahold of his fears and… dialed them up a bit?”
“Yeah, we talked about that. His fears about the environment going to shit?” she asks, before she sees my face and realizes this was something far, far less ethical. “Alex? What fears did you dial up?”
I sigh, shame washing over me like a freezing-cold wave.
“Jonah Macon isn’t afraid of the environment wasting away. What he’s most afraid of… is failure. He’s afraid of everyone he knows and loves thinking he’s an utter waste of oxygen. Especially—”
I glance up ahead to where I see Clover worming her way through the crowd.
“Especially Clover,” I say, and I lower my voice. “Especially their child.”
Steph gasps.
“You… told Jonah they… think he’s a failure?”
“Well, no, not… exactly?” I offer, looking at her. But her eyes narrow at me, glance at me up and down like she doesn’t recognize me.
Tears prick my eyes. I’d give anything to never have to see her look at me like that, ever again.
A red aura springs to life around her head.
