Lemonade

Chapter 20: Out Of It

Jackie's POV

Before we joined the others, River asked me to go speak to James. Why, I'm not sure. The guy did look frustrated when he left the car. But I'll go to him anyways. Everyone was where they were supposed to be— the kitchen— except for James. When I asked, Alex said he was in his room. "I'll show you." He led upstairs and pointed to the desired door.

I tentatively knocked and waited for a response. A muffled, "Come in." came back which gave me the go ahead to burst through the door. I took a quick look around the room and spotted James sitting on one of those drummer swiveling chairs in a corner where a desk was situated. His head was bent down and he looked like he was deeply concentrated on whatever was in his line of sight. In his hand was a long stick of what I think was charcoal that was just striking the paper in its way. As I came to stand beside him, James suddenly tensed up. He put the charcoal down and tried to flip the page around so fast I almost didn't see the sketch. Luckily, I caught his wrist before the edge was fully turned around. When he didn't let go, I squeezed it a little harder until he yelped and set the paper free.

The work I saw in front of me left me truly speechless.

"I know, it's not good. It's stupid, really." He went to rip the art down the middle but I gripped his wrists, again, before any damage was done.

"What are you doing? Stop." I started. "This is amazing. It's..." I really had no words to say. What James had drawn a close up portrait of a person to excruciatingly precise detail. She had bright eyes, you could see through the black and white that the subject was gleaming with joy. Her face shape was shaded to perfection with voluminous hair surrounding her face. The nose, the lips, even her eyebrows. Who knew I'd be jealous of a piece of paper. "This is beautiful, James. Who is she?"

He took a deep breath before huffing out a heavy sigh. "My mom."

"But she doesn't look anything like you." It confused me but it was understandable. He gave a feeble 'mhm' and closed his eyes. "How come you drew her now?"

"You reminded me of her. In the car."

Uhm..."Is that a good thing?" I hope it was.

"No."

Well, damn. Thank you for the reassurance. "Why? What's she like?" She could be a psycho or something.

"She's crazy."

Pshh. Ha. "James, everyone is crazy. I mean, she's not cooked in the head, right?" It would kind of explain James' behaviour but that's just plain unusual. Imagine, part of her Schizophrenia gene passed down to James. That's why he's so obtuse sometimes.

"She is." He turned his seat to look right up at me. Dammit. "She's Schizophrenic. Hallucinates a lot. I checked her into the mental hospital last year because she wouldn't do it herself."

Well done for offending his mother. I looked down, ashamed of what I had said and bit my lip. I feel so bad, now. "Oh, I'm sorry about what I said. It came out totally wrong." I apologized bashfully but a sudden realization came to mind. "How do I remind you of your mother?"

"When..." Hesitantly, he started. "I was younger, she would often hallucinate that she had a perfect life. Well, as perfect as her life could be. In her brainwashed sense, she'd finally have someone who loved her, despite her mental illness and cherish her and they lived close to a normal life. Blah, blah. These happened when I was at school but some days they'd carry on into the afternoon where I'd come back home. Because I was still a kid, I had no idea what was going on and being the immature brat I was, I'd say a lot of stupid stuff. The man would leave and my mom would start screaming at me, calling me names. She was basically my own personal bully. A few times things got out of hand and she hurt me." His head lowered. "She'd hit me with a whip and call me 'pathetic' and 'incompetent' because she was too sad about her own life she decided to lay all her problems and sorrows on me. What you said in the car just brought back unwanted memories. It's no big deal." He turned back to his artwork and tore the beautiful sketch down the middle.

"What do you mean, no big deal? I'm so sorry, James. I didn't know." I engulfed him in a suffocating hug when he stood up to throw away the destroyed charcoal work. "Do you have scars?" I wouldn't think so. Back at Zara's house, he was fully nude and nothing came into my line of vision.

"Yeah. They're on my back though." Ohh. That's why I didn't see anything. "You wanna see?" Did I?

"Uhm... sure." We pulled away from each other and he turned around, pulling his shirt up over his head. Damn. There were a lot of them. Only a few protruded but I could see two long lines that curved along the vertical line of his back. Suddenly, my heart filled with a heaviness that I couldn't handle. I choked on a hiccup, silently, but James has super hearing so he turned his head around to see tears falling out of my eyes. He put his shirt back on and came to me.

"Don't cry. It's over now, okay?" He wiped my tears and put his arm around my shoulder. "Let's go downstairs."

He switched his light off as we exited his room and we descended down the stairs. On the last step, I slipped and landed on the floor. James only stood there, stumped at my form. My hands weren't fast enough so I landed head first, causing a hell of a lot of pain. How that happened? I don't know. I think I made a loud thud when I landed on the ground because everyone— and I mean, everyone— came to the source of the sound. I smiled at their confused expressions. "Someone help me?"

They all cracked up. Those little... "What did you do?"

"I fell." It all went silent and they started laughing at me again. Since no one was attending to my request, I painfully untwisted myself and just lay on the ground.

"Okay, okay. Let's see what's wrong." Zara neared me and spun my body to face the ceiling. Her face came into view but she had a creeped out expression. "She looks like she's high."

Slowly, her face morphed into something so delicious, I lifted my face to lick it. "Mmm. Chocolate bunny."

"Uhm, excuse me."

"You taste so good."

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So, yeah...