Chapter Three- The Tragedy of Jackson Maldori

Amara's POV

Fifteen Years Ago

"Maree!" The sweet cadence of my best friend came over my shoulder as I was quick to turn.

"Jackson..." He ignored the full use I made of his name before pressing the reason for his excitement flat against my chest.

"Is this..."

"First edition. Just make sure you have it back to me by Friday..." I studied the hardcover book that was far too valuable to be in my adolescent fingers. But where some girls treasured shoes and makeup, I did this with books. Even if they were mostly borrowed, I held them like lifelong friends in my memory. And Jackson fed that obsession by stealing from his family's archival library whenever his parents were too busy to notice.

"Are you kidding? I'll have it back to you by lunch!" I teased, already carefully pulling apart the cover from that initial title to begin the descent into another world. One where ink and paper had power our families held now. Or at least mine did...

"You don't have to keep stealing for me..." I explained nervously. Jackson was the complete opposite of me. Where I was known for being a bit outspoken, he was the type to push up his glasses and hide away in himself no matter the words spoken against him. Maybe that was why we bonded. I always wanted to protect him. Or maybe it was because I couldn't understand why anybody else would want to do anything else.

"It's borrowing...It isn't like they'll notice anyway..." He shrugged, applying his nervous tick by brushing those black rimmed glasses up a nose a bit too wide for his face.

"You're sappy for me." I teased to lighten the mood, pressing a gentle shove into his shoulder before climbing the steps of our shared school.

Although my siblings had attended the private school outside the city, I had no care for uniforms or following behind them. I wanted the experience I saw on television of teen angst, yearbooks, and maybe even heartbreak. After all, once I turned eighteen, my entire life was mapped out for me through arranged circumstances once my father found the right candidate. Until then, I wanted to live and rebel as much as possible.

"Jack-off son!" The name came as we stood at my locker, my textbooks lingering between my fingers as I didn't hide the roll of my eyes. Of the three boys that came in our direction, the one currently at my side in a lean to the fellow lockers, was my source of turmoil.

"When will you get the hint she won't fuck you?" Where Jackson was at a loss of words, too flushed at the image I'm sure now plaguing his mind, I was already glaring at Dean.

"Maybe you should offer to take his books. I'm sure his arm is pretty tired from jacking off to you all night..."

"I-" Jackson went to defend before I beat him to it.

"Nothing else better to do then annoy us?" I sighed as I turned my back to him. He was quick to crowd my space, a nose against my cheek.

"He isn't the only one who got off on the thought of you last night." Even though nobody else heard this remark, my reaction made them tense. Shawn and Lewis, his trusted minions, were quick to feed off of his bravado in a false sense of their own as I pushed their leader back with a shove of my shoulder.

"Come on, don't be like that...We could have so much fun you and I-"

"Yeah...no." I deadpanned. "Let's go..." I guided Jackson who was blocked by Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb.

"Oh maybe I got this wrong...maybe you're into the whole broke ass nerd thing..." The boys around us had all begun to adjust to their hormonal changes whereas Jackson was a bit of a late bloomer. His dark hair came over those unique eyes I found calming across any chaotic space in a way that was a young Clark Kent with his black framed glasses. I was certain if had the height on the guys like Shawn did then maybe he wouldn't be so shy.

"She use her hand or her mouth-" Jackson tensed, wanting to defend me.

"What if I did?" The collection of boys stood in shock.

"So you admit it?" Dean scoffed with disbelief.

"Absolutely. Because anyone would be lucky to be with someone like Jackson. Not some wannabe Eminem who steals his brother's steroid stash to make up for what's lacking..." My eyes fell to his crotch as his friends looked at each other with gaping mouths.

"You little-"

"Come on baby..." I interlaced Jackson's fingers with my own before pulling him down the hall with me. Pressing a kiss to his cheek for good measure, I led us away until we came to the corner and out of their eyes.

"You didn't have to do that..."

"Do what?"

"Lie..." He pushed a finger to the bridge of his nose to correct his fallen glasses.

"I didn't." I confessed without a second thought. "I would rather have it be you..." It was a truth that didn't hold a weight on me as it did him. I wasn't harboring a juvenile infatuation with him or anything, but I couldn't deny how comfortable I was around him. Comfortable enough to confess things like that without understanding the gravity of how it may have affected him.

"He isn't going to stop you know..." He finally broke the silence between us as we lingered outside my homeroom.

"It's my fault after last summer." Dean had lost his mom in an accident that brought our families to bond as she worked for my family. There wasn't a day we weren't together one way or another and it ended up with seeing a different side to him.

"I kissed him and now he's pissed..." I shrugged as the confession was one I kept away from Jackson for the very reaction he gave me right now. Stunned-no, disappointed.

"You kissed him?" I cringed now at the thought.

"So he's taking the fact I stopped it from happening again as a reason to torment you...So yes...I do have to." The bell rung overhead as I reached across and pushed his shoulder. "Don't stress about it. I can handle Dean McAllister." I gave a confident smile as I did believe this.

After a slew of classes that were difficult to not sleep through, I waited at his locker at our usual time. My eyes were enamored with the chapters of the borrowed book as I quickly kept track of time. Some damage had come to it between classes from what I estimated to have been the weight of other books in my locker, but it was important I gave it back to him before anyone noticed. My return to reality only came when I saw the custodian come into my peripheral vision. Too much time had come to pass.

Twenty minutes.

Forty.

An hour.

I made quick rounds of where he may have been. But with the library and lab empty, I pulled my walkie talkie from view. Turning it live and to the right channel, I came down the steps of the school and questioned him. With his mother's tight leash this had been the only way we could talk after school as she saw me as a harlot trying to corrupt her son. I tried it twice, speaking his name in frustration and then in worry before stepping forward and onto something that cracked beneath my weight.

His glasses.

The glass was cracked and infiltrated with blood that sent my stomach to weigh heavy with worry.

"JACKSON!" I begged to the air around me, hoping he was nearby and simply fell, maybe disoriented from the lack of a visual aid. But with each further step, my intuition knew better.

"Jack-" I came to a stop at the mass of people crossing the street a few blocks from the school. An ambulance and two police cars were set aside as I pushed my way through.

"Jackson..." His name was weak on my mouth as I saw him almost unrecognizable with wounds.

A bloody shirt stained the ironic joke beneath that I admired when seeing him at lunch earlier that day. The dimples making up a nervous smile were dormant and hidden in bruises that coated sporadic sections of his face. He was heavily beaten and immobile as two paramedics hovered over him.

"What happened?" I asked more myself than the crowd before seeing the reason being taken away in handcuffs. Dean and his two older brothers were being hauled away as I rushed them. I was apprehended by an officer almost immediately as another caught my attention as they frisked the assailant.

"Any other weapons on you?" Dean gave me a wicked grin as I looked back at Jackson.

Any other weapons?

I tore back through the crowd and towards Jackson, held back by another officer despite my pleas to be allowed by him. Eventually he was lifted into an ambulance and I wasted no time sprinting to the hospital about a mile away.

I sat in the waiting room for thirty minutes before his mother found me among the plastic chairs. Her rage was understandable if she was anyone but who she was. She accused me of being the one to hurt him, called me everything under the sun, before ultimately having the hospital staff send me away. I still waited outside until his father came to me.

He was the shy type, much like his son, but knew how I adored them both. He gave me the mercy his wife hadn't as he found me on the bench with a crick in my neck and tears in my eyes. This only worsened to the tears in his own.

"Amara..."

My world didn't just collapse, it imploded. It suddenly felt unreal and like some bad dream. I wasn't able to breathe or move behind the denial quick to rationalize this truth.

"No...No..."

"I'm sorry honey..." He sniffled sharply as he wrapped a hug around me and I couldn't even react with anything but disbelief.

I replayed everything in my mind through that day and made a vow to myself that Dean would pay for Jackson's life with his own. If he wasn't haunted by the life he had taken, then he would be by the one he took away from us.