Life is Strange, page 20
“What are you planning, Alex?”
“I’ll show you,” I croak, my voice hoarse and weathered from… well, everything.
I lift my guitar over my head and lower it until the strap settles over my left shoulder.
My fingers find their home—their familiar place along the fret and—
Steph reaches into her pocket and pulls out a pick.
“Thought you might need it,” she grins.
No way. How does Steph think of these things?
I give her a grateful smile, take the pick and find the note I want.
“You know me too well,” I say.
“I kinda like you,” she says again, stepping back with a gesture that says, Well?
I pick softly at first, gingerly testing out the tune. It’s only Steph and me out here now, besides the occasional—
Wham!
I pluck string after string, and when my eyes find Steph’s, hers are huge.
“Why does that sound familiar?” she asks. “I know I’ve heard that tune. Like, recently.”
I keep picking, a steady handle on the tune now.
“Music box,” I say, playing the tune like I’ve known it all my life. Bless my ability to play by ear.
“Oh yeahhhhh,” she marvels. “Wow, you picked that up fast. Why are you—”
I study her as she connects the dots.
“Are you going to play that for Jonah?”
“Maybe if that song meant something to Elias, it’ll mean something to Jonah,” I sigh. “If I can’t get Jonah to come down, maybe I can bring Elias… up.”
I keep playing, my fingers finding their rhythm and memorizing where to fall over the strings, feeling little notes of joy plink-plink-plinking from the strings. An A chord releases a bright red burst of vapor, and a D releases yellow to follow, a purple G, and then an F launches a blast of blue into the air. Finally, I land back at a D chord, which raises up a golden yellow cloud all around me. The tune sinks into my hands and into my blood as I let my fingers play among the strings.
And then, I step forward.
“No, Alex,” whispers Steph, cradling my arm. “Let me help you.”
“I can’t play if you’re holding me, Steph. I… I really do have to do this one alone.”
She looks at me with huge searching eyes, looking for some kind of excuse, a reason to keep me from walking on my leg like I’m about to.
Wham!
But she understands the stakes as well as I do, and hesitantly, sadly, she clasps her hands together and takes a step back.
“I’ll be right behind you,” she says with a nod, her eyes brimming with tears.
I give her a grateful smile.
I love you, I want to say. It feels so right to say it.
But I don’t.
I back out, like a coward.
“I know,” I say. Goddammit, that’s not quite what I meant but there’s no time to make it right. “I…have to do this.”
I grip my guitar and drag my bad leg along, my fingers moving over the strings, plucking hard enough that the music seems to vibrate in my ears, humming over the grass as I walk-drag-walk-drag-walk-drag across the open field.
“Jonah!” I holler up to him. God, he’s so high up. Maybe fifty feet. I wonder if he can even hear me from down here. “Jonah Elias Macon!”
The sledgehammer swings up over his head again, and it freezes. He stares down at me.
“What do you want?” he asks, his voice faltering now. He lowers the sledgehammer and lets the handle drop at his side. “I’ve done what you’ve asked. Are you happy? It’s all coming down, Alex!”
There are so many things I want to fire back at him. How dare he insinuate taking down the dam was my idea? I dialed up his fear, unfairly, arguably unethically… but… I didn’t tell him to go climb up the dam and take a sledgehammer to the hundred-foot wall beneath him!
But I shut my eyes tight, blocking out his accusation, and focus on making my fingers move, sending a rainbow of colors into the air, soothing the angry purple clouds above.
A long moment passes. Moment after moment, and I don’t hear another wham. Instead, I hear Jonah’s voice again.
“That tune…” he says, so softly I almost miss it. “How… how do you know it?”
I look up at him, eyes narrowed, playing even harder, letting the chords answer for me.
He stands staring at me, mouth agape.
“You’ve… been to see my father?” he asks.
“No one thinks you’re a failure, Jonah,” I say, which isn’t a lie. “I’ve talked to so many people in Barbazal the last few days. Even knowing what you had to do in Denver to get the platform you have, you’ve made such a huge impact on this place. Look at you. You’re willing to do anything to give Barbazal your best. Even if it means giving up your life.”
I keep playing, and as I stare up at him, I see that monster look down at me and send an angry HISSSS in my direction.
“I don’t need your patronizing!” he hollers. Thunder crashes overhead, and the clouds deepen into an even richer purple, glowing neon in the sky. It’s just him and me out here, alone, in this field by this river that could surge with water from behind the dam at any moment. That five-foot crack from earlier has grown another two feet, and I take a deep breath, steadying myself. I know that if I can’t talk Jonah down from there…
…I’m gone.
“Steph,” I whisper behind me. “Go to the car.”
“Alex—”
“Now,” I hiss bitterly, knowing this might go south. “If something happens to me out here, I’ll know I did my best for this place. If something happens to you, I’ll never forgive myself.”
She steps forward, a tear rolling down her cheek. She rests her hand on my lower back and slides it around my hip, leaning in and kissing my shoulder.
“Then let me forgive you for you,” she says softly. “But I’m not leaving. Because if something happens to you out here, and I left, I’d never forgive myself.”
I sigh because I know she’s right. The only scenario worse than both of us getting killed out here is me going on living without Steph.
I can at least grant her that.
I give her a nod before turning back to Jonah. He hollers down at me again.
“You made yourself very fucking clear, Alex!” Past the diplomacy and platitudes, there’s a real live man under there. And here he is. “Unless I do something about this dam, I’m a failure, and everyone knows it.”
“That’s not what I said!” I yell. “Jonah, I’m sorry I made you feel like you’re a failure. Like anyone in your life might think you’re a failure unless…”
I confront the root of the problem, stare it in the face holding a can of gasoline, drizzle it all over the top, and light it on fire.
“…unless you did what I wanted.”
Crack!
… What the hell was that?
Jonah’s let go of the sledgehammer, and there’s nobody else out here. Most of the spectators watch silently from their cars parked along the side of the highway. I turn to look at Steph, whose eyes are huge and scared like I’m sure mine are.
We’re out of time.
“Jonah, get down from there!” I holler, my fingers still playing despite everything. “Please, if this dam comes down, you’re—”
“Going where I can be most useful!” he hollers, his voice shattering.
Suddenly I hear another voice behind me, this one warm and rich and raspy. Familiar.
“You’re most useful in Denver!”
I turn so fast I almost fall over, but Steph is there to catch me under my arm. But it breaks my playing. And my guitar is replaced by the droning, soulful wail of a harmonica.
And there, Elias Macon steps forward, cradling the instrument against his mouth and playing with all his heart—the same song from the music box. A far cry from the Elias who just hung up on me.
Relief sinks into my chest like a cooling salve, and I let out a sigh. I stare at him, and finally, he looks from Jonah to me. His eyes are even, his cheeks full of air, his mouth preoccupied with playing. I give him a nod, and force a smile. Whatever he said to me on the phone, about not having a son, the point at the end of it all is…
…he came after all.
I look back up to Jonah, who’s gone completely silent, his mouth hanging open in shock.
“Dad?” he calls.
He asks it with a tone that says both I can’t believe you’re here, and I kind of wish you weren’t.
But Elias doesn’t stop playing. He marches forward, past me, past Steph, across the open field. I keep my guitar going, matching Elias’s notes but staying where I am. This conversation is between Elias and Jonah.
Working man and politician.
Father and son.
Elias plays on. Jonah sits down, legs swinging, even with that ten-foot crack splitting the dam down the middle. Wait, it’s ten feet now?
And getting… longer?
“Alex,” says Steph, gripping my arm.
And then I realize. That’s not a crack in the rock. That’s… a water trickle.
“Alex, we have to go,” she urges, pulling me.
“Steph,” I say, squeezing her hand. “Go.”
She stares at me for a long moment, her face a few shades paler. “What?”
“Go meet Harson. Play your drums. Rock the place. I know you can.”
“Alex, what the hell am I supposed to do without a vocalist and a guitarist and—”
Crack!
A force rattles the ground beneath us, and Steph gasps. We look at each other. Then we look up at the dam.
That seven-foot crack is now fifteen feet tall, and that trickle is now a spout.
“The dam’s gonna go!” hollers one of the remaining spectators from their car.
I squeeze Steph’s hand.
“I’ll be okay,” I say.
She furrows her brow. “What the hell am I supposed to do without my girlfriend?” she asks, getting to the root of it all. “I’m not going without you. Stop asking me to.”
“I want you to live the life you want—”
“And I want you to stop living your life for other people!” she screams. “You tried to do it for Gabe, and Ryan had to save you. And if I have to drag you away from this dam to keep you from doing the same thing for Jonah Macon, then so help me, I will!”
“Jonah!” calls Elias’s voice, finally. But it’s not the voice of an angry man, or an enraged father—I know that voice—it’s that of a desperate man. “Quit playin’ around and get your hoity-toity ass down from there!”
Okay, now he’s angry.
But just as the warm moment sinks in,
Crack!
Whoosh!
That spout is now a slightly bigger spout, oozing over the side of the dam wall.
“I’m doing it, Dad!” comes Jonah’s voice as he lifts the sledgehammer over his head. “I’m doing what’s right for Barbazal!”
Wham!
My gasp catches in my throat as the hammer comes down right where that crack meets Jonah’s feet, wondering how many more whacks before the whole thing comes down, and Jonah with it.
I pluck on, as Elias pockets the harmonica and cups his hands around his mouth.
“I don’t give a damn what’s right for Barbazal if…” He hesitates. “… if… it takes away my only son.”
I didn’t even believe the tone of that, and I’m new to both Elias and Jonah.
Jonah lets out a mocking, “Ha!!!” and wipes his forehead. “You want me dead! You all do! Don’t lie to me!”
He raises the sledgehammer again.
Whack!
“I don’t!” hollers Elias. “I know I’ve said some things in the past.”
Whack!
“I know I’ve made mistakes. I know I’ve hurt you. Real bad.”
Whack!
Elias’s tone dials up to eleven, and a huge purple aura around his head flares into a blue supernova, radiating in all directions, fizzy almost like soda, nostalgic.
“But do you really want to die on me?!” he screams, his voice echoing through this vast, flat land. “Please, Jonah, come down and let’s talk about this! I’ll do whatever you want—” his voice crumples into sobs. “I’ll do whatever you want, I’ll say whatever you want! Don’t take my boy away from me! I’m sorry!”
Jonah, sledgehammer raised above his head, stops.
The whole world seems to stand still. And slowly, surely, as the water hisses through the wall of the dam, Jonah Macon lowers his sledgehammer to his side.
“You… what?” he asks.
“I’m sorry, Jonie!” calls Elias. Little Jonie Macon. “I’m sorry for it all. I’m just… I’m sorry.”
That huge monster over Jonah recoils in pain, shrinking just a bit like a slug under a blanket of salt.
Tears prick my eyes, and I shut them against the memories surging up in me.
My own father, slamming the bedroom door in Gabe’s face. Throwing a ceramic cup against the kitchen cabinet and shattering it into a million pieces. Throwing his sweater down angrily on the sofa and his shoes down the hallway.
And then I try to imagine his face looking down at me. Maybe his eyebrows are relaxed this time, his eyes soft, his smile slight but there.
Saying…
I’m sorry.
And I open my eyes, because I can’t picture it.
But I imagine, as he was down there in the mine, pinned behind a mountain of rubble, clinging to the necklace Mom gave me, the one he took with him when he left us for good, that maybe, just maybe…
…he said it.
“I’m sorry!” calls Elias again. “Now, please come down!”
That monster over Jonah shrinks just a bit more, writhing now, withering under Elias’s words, until it vanishes in a puff of purple smoke.
And just like that, Jonah—little Jonie Macon—steps to the side, takes hold of the safety rail along the steps downward, and disappears behind the dam wall.
“Oh my god!” exclaims Steph.
“Is he coming down?” I ask, to Steph, to myself, to no one.
And then, out from the other side of the dam, emerges Jonah Macon, dragging the sledgehammer behind him.
“Dad,” says Jonah flatly.
Elias says nothing, but I can see his hunched shoulders trembling. He pushes himself forward, looking like he might collapse at any moment, until he meets Jonah and embraces his son so tightly, it’s like everything between them has been forgotten.
“I know I’ve been a shitty son,” says Jonah, burying his face in his father’s shoulder. “I… abandoned Barbazal when it needed me most. I disappointed you, and Mom—”
“I may have been disappointed,” interrupts Elias, “but don’t you ever think your mama was disappointed in you. She’s lookin’ down on you even now, hear? And as for me… I should’ve been more understanding.”
A long silence passes, until Jonah pulls away and stares down at his father in disbelief.
Elias sighs as he continues, “I should’ve… realized how bad you were hurtin’. I shoulda seen it. Shoulda recognized it. Cuz I’ve been feelin’ the same hurt.”
“Aw, Dad—” Jonah cuts his own sentence short. But he’s said all he really needs to in those two words.
He throws his arms around his father’s shoulders, and a golden burst of light glows from both of them, melting the purple haze all around us, both of their heads glowing like the sun with joy. The lightning stops, the clouds dissolve, and the blue sky returns.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Dad,” explains Jonah. “I’m in a lot of pain, but—”
“You wear it well,” says Elias. “Or… you hide it well. For the cameras.”
“Barbazal doesn’t want a leader who can’t acknowledge his own feelings.”
“But Barbazal—hell, Colorado—needs… you.”
I hear Steph gasp softly beside me. “Aww,” she says.
Jonah smiles like I’ve never seen him smile. Not here in Barbazal, not in that memory of him riding through the town square grinning down at his supporters, not when he spoke to me by the lake…
It’s a smile of sheer gratitude.
“So,” he says, chuckling, “does this mean I have your vote?”
Elias extends a hand for a firm handshake.
“It means we have a lot to talk about.”
I smile along with them.
Crack!
All of us turn back to the dam, where that steady flow of water has progressed into a whitewater surge, bursting from the crack down the side.
“Um, guys?” asks Steph, ushering me back.
“Let’s go,” says Jonah, hand in the middle of his dad’s back as they run to us. I turn as fast as I can and move, the ache in my leg unbearable. Steph, without a word, darts under my arm and heaves me forward across the unforgiving ground. I yelp in pain.
“Steph, my leg!”
“I know, Alex, I’m sorry! We have to go—”
Crack!
Crack-crack-crack-boom-boom-boom!
“Oh my god!” Steph and I scream at once. Elias and Jonah climb into Silas’s truck up ahead, and I look back, even as I hobble as fast as I can.
The whole dam wall, once solid concrete, disintegrates before my eyes, melting into nothing as the water explodes through the rock. The sound. The sound. It booms in my ears like thunder.
My heart races.
Our car is a good hundred feet down the highway. We’ll never make it!
“Steph, the truck!” I scream.
Silas is closer. Way closer. He leans out the window of the truck, arm extended.
“Alex! Steph! Get in!” he calls.
I glance over my shoulder again. The water, a monster behind me, surges forward with such force into the river, spilling over the banks.
I feel Steph let go. She leaps up into the truck as fast as a tree frog and immediately starts grabbing for me, tearing at my clothes and limbs to haul me into the truck bed. I don’t feel my leg anymore – I don’t have time to. I collapse into the truck bed with a thud. I hear tires squeal.
I’m propelled to the wall of the truck bed so hard my head spins. Everything goes fuzzy, and Steph’s voice turns to jello in my ears.
“Alex?” she calls from far away.
“Alex, can you hear me?”
