Far From Home - Chapter 14: Chapter 14
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Mid-October
Buildings, buildings, buildings. Every inch of Jake's sight had a building, or two, or three. Some were two-story homes, some were expensive restaurants on a strip with flashy lights, some towered over him as apartment complexes or office spaces, and some seemed too quiet to fit the city at all. He had walked three miles around the campus—in the spaces both part of the university, and the bustle that existed outside of it—but none of it offered him any relief.
Once he had walked the streets not too far from here on a summer night with Connor and been absolutely engaged with the liveliness of it all, but when all he wanted was something quiet, that life seemed to drain every ounce of his body. Even bordering on ten o'clock at night, people were out and about, students walking home from study nooks, concert-goers smoking cigarettes outside of a venue, people floating in and out of local bars with single drinks that Jake knew cost more than a six-pack of beer, the buzz of windows lit in apartment buildings overhead and the cars that passed by going places Jake would never know. He shoved his hands into his sweatshirt pocket before he found himself playing with the hood strings while he walked.
Dissociation was something that happened most frequently on nights like this. A light fidgeting with something on his person that turned into being absolutely consumed in it, tuning out all signs that the real world was trying to communicate with him as he stared off into nothingness. At home it wasn't scary, but here it was something else. Here he couldn't afford to be lost to his own mind. He needed to know where he was going and to stay alert at all times. This was uncharted territory—there would be no muscle memory to bring him back to his dorm like his feet might have taken him back out of the woods. Being anywhere but awake and present in his own body was not somewhere he could afford to be right now. Despite how badly his mind ached to leave him, he kept it occupied by counting each sidewalk block as he passed through it.
The number had climbed to fifty-two from the time he had restarted it on his trek back down the sidewalk of familiar territory. His dorm building stood tall in front of him, but he couldn't find it in himself to go back in yet. He paused the number in his head at sixty-one and veered off into the grass beside the concrete, a small courtyard of sorts that was used by residents of a couple different buildings on days where the weather fell somewhere between scorching hot and freezing cold. Today had been one of those days, the afternoon high being somewhere in the low-sixties, whereas now it bordered closer to fifty—just cold enough to make Jake grateful for his sweatshirt, but not cold enough to where his fingers had gone numb or his nose turned red from his last hour spent outside.
The grass had been mowed earlier in the morning, Jake had heard the familiar sound of commercial lawn mowers when he woke up, and for a second he contemplated if it was Aaron and if he was late for work. Now, he laid back into green stripes sprinkled with fresh clippings and he didn't care that half of them would cling to his clothes when he stood up because he was all-too-familiar with having grass in places where it wasn't supposed to be, and somehow shaking the grass off would give him some sort of odd comfort that he missed. It tickled the back of his neck as he rested his head down flat on the Earth. His fingers brushed over freshly-cut blades and Jake was thankful for the familiar sensation they left behind, reminding him that not only was he alive, but that the grass here felt just like the grass at home. Grass was grass. Such an obvious revelation had never brought him so much joy.
His eyes traced the sky for another familiarity, but the dark wasn't really dark. The light of the city was too bright to see the stars. It was something he should have expected, but somehow it just made him want to scream. The one thing he could always count on at home to get him out of his head, the one thing he needed more than anything in this minute was the only thing he couldn't have. He winced and turned his attention back to the grass.
At least I've got the fucking grass.
The panic was coming back in waves. Even though he was laying completely still, each breath began to feel like he was still walking—pacing even. He blinked his eyes in search of something new, but everything around him was the same every time. Stifling, busy, inaccessible. It all felt too big to be real, too much to find any semblance of relaxation, too constricting to catch his breath. Too much...
Not enough.
Not enough space. Not enough silence. Not enough stars. Not enough to make him want to stay someday, but too much to make him wish to go home.
I don't want to go home.
I don't want to stay here.
What the fuck do I want?
Jake closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It didn't help any. Nothing subsided when he opened his eyes again, it all just felt a little too real for comfort. He didn't know what he wanted, and while he was used to that, it seemed like an answer he should have had by now. Who the fuck comes to college without knowing what they want?
What happens if I don't figure it out?
Will I end up back where I started?
The fear of failure overcame him in the midst of searching for a solution. Not failing his parents because he had already done that, not failing his professors because they didn't know enough about him to be emotionally attached to his success in any way, but more the fear of failing himself. The thought that maybe he wasn't good enough to live up to his own expectations, that maybe he wouldn't amount to anything worth noting, and maybe he would end up being just another boy who tried to get out and got stuck coming back like a scared dog with his tail tucked between his legs.
God wouldn't be so cruel... would He?
Jake felt stupid. He had no answers and too many questions. There was something so nightmarish to pondering the rationality of his own decisions—the second-guessing itself was his mind's favorite torture device, always willing to take a jab at him when he showed even the faintest inkling of insecurity. It would swallow him alive before his body could sink into the Earth below him.
In the familiar tingle of anxious electricity that flooded his senses, his fingers were itching to find his phone. He knew it wasn't an emergency, but he felt like it was. He felt like he was dying and he wanted someone to convince him that he was still very much alive. Jake Holmes was still a person under this impenetrable layer of self-doubt. Someone could still talk him down before his mind turned into his own slaughter-ground.
Calling Aaron was second nature. It was his first and last resort. The line rang for far too long and when it went to voicemail, Jake hung up and tried again. He tapped his fingers out over the back of his phone case at a rate too fast to match his heart rate, but it didn't do anything to make his best friend pick up the phone any faster. In fact, it sent him to voicemail again.
"Come on." He whispered as he pressed the call button for a third time.
He had only used the three-call rule on Aaron once. It had been quite an evening after an argument with father over his lackluster football performance, and out of an interesting switch up in his usual fight or flight tactic, Jake had grabbed a knife from the kitchen counter instead of falling still against his father's hand. He didn't know why he did it, but he knew when his father's eyes flashed with contempt he had made a huge mistake. Defending himself ended up doing more damage than remaining small and scared would have. It wasn't the first time his father used something on him that wasn't his hands, but it hurt more than all the rest combined. They had spent the entire night debating if he needed stitches because they didn't think going to the hospital was a good idea. Aaron made the call that night, and the long uneven scar on the left side of Jake's abdomen was a painful reminder that it had been the wrong one.
His voicemail box sounded for the third time and Jake felt it like a knife to the throat.
"Fuck, Aaron."
He dropped the phone down onto his chest, scrubbing over his face with fingers that smelled faintly of grass. The essence should have given him some comfort, but he couldn't focus too long on it before he felt tears welling in his eyes for the second time that night. Get your shit together. You're not crying in the middle of the fucking lawn. He rubbed his palms over his eyes and pushed them back towards his ears. Fuck, Jake.
Take a deep breath you piece of shit. It's not that bad.
He tried and failed, then tried again. It wasn't the end of the world, it was just a rough night. It wasn't like he hadn't been through this time and time again, but this time it was different. This time he was alone, not because he chose to be, but because he had no other option. Aaron was over a hundred miles away, Connor hated him, McKenna was asleep by now, and none of his new campus friends needed to see this part of him—nor did he trust them enough to be honest. Jake had never been alone in his life, and now in a city full of people, he was undoubtedly on his own.
I'm alone. I'm alone... I'm–
The phone began to vibrate on his chest. He couldn't have picked it up fast enough.
"Aaron."
"Jake?" There was an unsettling concern in his voice that Jake wasn't used to hearing, it scared him more than reassured him that everything was okay.
"Hey." He whispered.
"Hey man, what's—" The phone shuffled as his attention turned to someone else. "Get off, seriously. I'm not playin' right now..."
Jake listened patiently while Aaron was talking to someone in the room with him. When his voice finally came back into focus, he gave a tired sigh and cleared his throat.
"Sorry, what's up?"
"Who was that?"
"Kath. She thinks it's funny to try to steal the phone when it's one of you damn Holmes' callin' me, but it's not."
The way he said it, Jake knew he was talking directly to her in the same room. It brought a smile to his face as he thought about his dumbass friends fighting over who got to talk to him, especially knowing he had used the three-call rule and Katherine had no fucking clue what that meant.
"Tell her hi."
"Jake says hi." Aaron grumbled away from the phone.
"Hi Jake!" Katherine called out faintly in the distance.
Jake's smile felt a little more real.
"You good?" Aaron sighed back to focus.
"Yeah... yeah... I'm..." He reconsidered what he was saying. "Mmm... I don't know."
"Why'd you call then?"
"To hear your stupid voice." Jake closed his eyes. "To help me remind myself that it's so much worse than mine."
"Glad I could be of service to ya."
"Mhm."
Jake's hand fell over his sweatshirt as the other clung on to his phone at his ear. He pulled one of the strings between his fingers and worked to tie knots in it while he talked. Not sure what else to say, he was pleasantly surprised when Aaron broke their temporary silence.
"What's going on?"
Jake sighed. "Midterms man. It's fucking rough."
"You're havin' a breakdown over words on a piece of paper?"
Well when you put it like that...
"Fuck you."
"It's all in your head, man." Aaron mumbled. "You gotta let that shit go. If you fail, you fail. You can't control it, so don't let it control you."
"I know you did not just pull that out of your ass." Jake found himself laughing. "What the fuck are you, my therapist?"
"Nah man, it's from a self-help podcast we we're listenin' to in the car yesterday–"
"Hold on, you're listening to podcasts now? Is Katherine holding you at gunpoint?"
"They make me feel smart, okay?"
"God, tell Kath I love her. This is hilarious."
"You're a fuckin' dick." Aaron sounded defensive, but Jake knew he was smiling behind the phone. "Stop makin' fun of my girlfriend."
"I'm not! I'm making fun of you, bud."
"I learned a lot the past week, so you can shut the fuck up. I'm workin' on my emotional intelligence."
"Uh-huh..."
"I'm gonna make her send them to you. You need them."
Jake rolled his eyes, but Aaron couldn't see him. "No."
"Yes."
He knew Aaron wouldn't let him get away with it, no matter how hard he tried. Katherine was going to send them to him whether he liked it or not. It was all a matter of if he was going to humor them, or if he was going to lie and tell her that he found them really interesting when he didn't know the first thing they talked about.
"So, what else do your psychology podcasts have to say about me?" He sighed.
"I don't know, we haven't finished the series yet."
"Fantastic, well let me know what you diagnose me with when you're done, Dr. Phil."
"Who the fuck is that?"
"Aaron."
"What?"
"Are you serious? Have you never watched cable TV? Dr. Phil, Judge Judy..."
"I know who Judge Judy is, your sister watches that..."
Jake shook his head with fond memories of his 'crime' loving sister. "Yeah, okay."
Behind a faint smile that lingered on his lips and the feeling of his fingers twirling the string on his chest, Jake had begun to feel a little more normal. He knew the only thing that would eradicate his nerves completely would be a full night's sleep—if he could manage to get that much—but until then, he had a lab write up to finish and three equations he had left to memorize for tomorrow's exam. If he was lucky, he might even be able to take a shower by midnight and call it quits before the next day's date came creeping on to his phone.
For the next ten minutes, he and Aaron rambled on about a range of topics including murder mysteries and Hunter and Alyssa's breakup—which surprised Jake more than it should have—but at the end of it all, Jake forced himself to go back upstairs, sit down at his computer, and face the last two of many assignments the weekend had taunted him with, the urge to break down over it all washed from his mind.
Buildings, buildings, buildings. Every inch of Jake's sight had a building, or two, or three. Some were two-story homes, some were expensive restaurants on a strip with flashy lights, some towered over him as apartment complexes or office spaces, and some seemed too quiet to fit the city at all. He had walked three miles around the campus—in the spaces both part of the university, and the bustle that existed outside of it—but none of it offered him any relief.
Once he had walked the streets not too far from here on a summer night with Connor and been absolutely engaged with the liveliness of it all, but when all he wanted was something quiet, that life seemed to drain every ounce of his body. Even bordering on ten o'clock at night, people were out and about, students walking home from study nooks, concert-goers smoking cigarettes outside of a venue, people floating in and out of local bars with single drinks that Jake knew cost more than a six-pack of beer, the buzz of windows lit in apartment buildings overhead and the cars that passed by going places Jake would never know. He shoved his hands into his sweatshirt pocket before he found himself playing with the hood strings while he walked.
Dissociation was something that happened most frequently on nights like this. A light fidgeting with something on his person that turned into being absolutely consumed in it, tuning out all signs that the real world was trying to communicate with him as he stared off into nothingness. At home it wasn't scary, but here it was something else. Here he couldn't afford to be lost to his own mind. He needed to know where he was going and to stay alert at all times. This was uncharted territory—there would be no muscle memory to bring him back to his dorm like his feet might have taken him back out of the woods. Being anywhere but awake and present in his own body was not somewhere he could afford to be right now. Despite how badly his mind ached to leave him, he kept it occupied by counting each sidewalk block as he passed through it.
The number had climbed to fifty-two from the time he had restarted it on his trek back down the sidewalk of familiar territory. His dorm building stood tall in front of him, but he couldn't find it in himself to go back in yet. He paused the number in his head at sixty-one and veered off into the grass beside the concrete, a small courtyard of sorts that was used by residents of a couple different buildings on days where the weather fell somewhere between scorching hot and freezing cold. Today had been one of those days, the afternoon high being somewhere in the low-sixties, whereas now it bordered closer to fifty—just cold enough to make Jake grateful for his sweatshirt, but not cold enough to where his fingers had gone numb or his nose turned red from his last hour spent outside.
The grass had been mowed earlier in the morning, Jake had heard the familiar sound of commercial lawn mowers when he woke up, and for a second he contemplated if it was Aaron and if he was late for work. Now, he laid back into green stripes sprinkled with fresh clippings and he didn't care that half of them would cling to his clothes when he stood up because he was all-too-familiar with having grass in places where it wasn't supposed to be, and somehow shaking the grass off would give him some sort of odd comfort that he missed. It tickled the back of his neck as he rested his head down flat on the Earth. His fingers brushed over freshly-cut blades and Jake was thankful for the familiar sensation they left behind, reminding him that not only was he alive, but that the grass here felt just like the grass at home. Grass was grass. Such an obvious revelation had never brought him so much joy.
His eyes traced the sky for another familiarity, but the dark wasn't really dark. The light of the city was too bright to see the stars. It was something he should have expected, but somehow it just made him want to scream. The one thing he could always count on at home to get him out of his head, the one thing he needed more than anything in this minute was the only thing he couldn't have. He winced and turned his attention back to the grass.
At least I've got the fucking grass.
The panic was coming back in waves. Even though he was laying completely still, each breath began to feel like he was still walking—pacing even. He blinked his eyes in search of something new, but everything around him was the same every time. Stifling, busy, inaccessible. It all felt too big to be real, too much to find any semblance of relaxation, too constricting to catch his breath. Too much...
Not enough.
Not enough space. Not enough silence. Not enough stars. Not enough to make him want to stay someday, but too much to make him wish to go home.
I don't want to go home.
I don't want to stay here.
What the fuck do I want?
Jake closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It didn't help any. Nothing subsided when he opened his eyes again, it all just felt a little too real for comfort. He didn't know what he wanted, and while he was used to that, it seemed like an answer he should have had by now. Who the fuck comes to college without knowing what they want?
What happens if I don't figure it out?
Will I end up back where I started?
The fear of failure overcame him in the midst of searching for a solution. Not failing his parents because he had already done that, not failing his professors because they didn't know enough about him to be emotionally attached to his success in any way, but more the fear of failing himself. The thought that maybe he wasn't good enough to live up to his own expectations, that maybe he wouldn't amount to anything worth noting, and maybe he would end up being just another boy who tried to get out and got stuck coming back like a scared dog with his tail tucked between his legs.
God wouldn't be so cruel... would He?
Jake felt stupid. He had no answers and too many questions. There was something so nightmarish to pondering the rationality of his own decisions—the second-guessing itself was his mind's favorite torture device, always willing to take a jab at him when he showed even the faintest inkling of insecurity. It would swallow him alive before his body could sink into the Earth below him.
In the familiar tingle of anxious electricity that flooded his senses, his fingers were itching to find his phone. He knew it wasn't an emergency, but he felt like it was. He felt like he was dying and he wanted someone to convince him that he was still very much alive. Jake Holmes was still a person under this impenetrable layer of self-doubt. Someone could still talk him down before his mind turned into his own slaughter-ground.
Calling Aaron was second nature. It was his first and last resort. The line rang for far too long and when it went to voicemail, Jake hung up and tried again. He tapped his fingers out over the back of his phone case at a rate too fast to match his heart rate, but it didn't do anything to make his best friend pick up the phone any faster. In fact, it sent him to voicemail again.
"Come on." He whispered as he pressed the call button for a third time.
He had only used the three-call rule on Aaron once. It had been quite an evening after an argument with father over his lackluster football performance, and out of an interesting switch up in his usual fight or flight tactic, Jake had grabbed a knife from the kitchen counter instead of falling still against his father's hand. He didn't know why he did it, but he knew when his father's eyes flashed with contempt he had made a huge mistake. Defending himself ended up doing more damage than remaining small and scared would have. It wasn't the first time his father used something on him that wasn't his hands, but it hurt more than all the rest combined. They had spent the entire night debating if he needed stitches because they didn't think going to the hospital was a good idea. Aaron made the call that night, and the long uneven scar on the left side of Jake's abdomen was a painful reminder that it had been the wrong one.
His voicemail box sounded for the third time and Jake felt it like a knife to the throat.
"Fuck, Aaron."
He dropped the phone down onto his chest, scrubbing over his face with fingers that smelled faintly of grass. The essence should have given him some comfort, but he couldn't focus too long on it before he felt tears welling in his eyes for the second time that night. Get your shit together. You're not crying in the middle of the fucking lawn. He rubbed his palms over his eyes and pushed them back towards his ears. Fuck, Jake.
Take a deep breath you piece of shit. It's not that bad.
He tried and failed, then tried again. It wasn't the end of the world, it was just a rough night. It wasn't like he hadn't been through this time and time again, but this time it was different. This time he was alone, not because he chose to be, but because he had no other option. Aaron was over a hundred miles away, Connor hated him, McKenna was asleep by now, and none of his new campus friends needed to see this part of him—nor did he trust them enough to be honest. Jake had never been alone in his life, and now in a city full of people, he was undoubtedly on his own.
I'm alone. I'm alone... I'm–
The phone began to vibrate on his chest. He couldn't have picked it up fast enough.
"Aaron."
"Jake?" There was an unsettling concern in his voice that Jake wasn't used to hearing, it scared him more than reassured him that everything was okay.
"Hey." He whispered.
"Hey man, what's—" The phone shuffled as his attention turned to someone else. "Get off, seriously. I'm not playin' right now..."
Jake listened patiently while Aaron was talking to someone in the room with him. When his voice finally came back into focus, he gave a tired sigh and cleared his throat.
"Sorry, what's up?"
"Who was that?"
"Kath. She thinks it's funny to try to steal the phone when it's one of you damn Holmes' callin' me, but it's not."
The way he said it, Jake knew he was talking directly to her in the same room. It brought a smile to his face as he thought about his dumbass friends fighting over who got to talk to him, especially knowing he had used the three-call rule and Katherine had no fucking clue what that meant.
"Tell her hi."
"Jake says hi." Aaron grumbled away from the phone.
"Hi Jake!" Katherine called out faintly in the distance.
Jake's smile felt a little more real.
"You good?" Aaron sighed back to focus.
"Yeah... yeah... I'm..." He reconsidered what he was saying. "Mmm... I don't know."
"Why'd you call then?"
"To hear your stupid voice." Jake closed his eyes. "To help me remind myself that it's so much worse than mine."
"Glad I could be of service to ya."
"Mhm."
Jake's hand fell over his sweatshirt as the other clung on to his phone at his ear. He pulled one of the strings between his fingers and worked to tie knots in it while he talked. Not sure what else to say, he was pleasantly surprised when Aaron broke their temporary silence.
"What's going on?"
Jake sighed. "Midterms man. It's fucking rough."
"You're havin' a breakdown over words on a piece of paper?"
Well when you put it like that...
"Fuck you."
"It's all in your head, man." Aaron mumbled. "You gotta let that shit go. If you fail, you fail. You can't control it, so don't let it control you."
"I know you did not just pull that out of your ass." Jake found himself laughing. "What the fuck are you, my therapist?"
"Nah man, it's from a self-help podcast we we're listenin' to in the car yesterday–"
"Hold on, you're listening to podcasts now? Is Katherine holding you at gunpoint?"
"They make me feel smart, okay?"
"God, tell Kath I love her. This is hilarious."
"You're a fuckin' dick." Aaron sounded defensive, but Jake knew he was smiling behind the phone. "Stop makin' fun of my girlfriend."
"I'm not! I'm making fun of you, bud."
"I learned a lot the past week, so you can shut the fuck up. I'm workin' on my emotional intelligence."
"Uh-huh..."
"I'm gonna make her send them to you. You need them."
Jake rolled his eyes, but Aaron couldn't see him. "No."
"Yes."
He knew Aaron wouldn't let him get away with it, no matter how hard he tried. Katherine was going to send them to him whether he liked it or not. It was all a matter of if he was going to humor them, or if he was going to lie and tell her that he found them really interesting when he didn't know the first thing they talked about.
"So, what else do your psychology podcasts have to say about me?" He sighed.
"I don't know, we haven't finished the series yet."
"Fantastic, well let me know what you diagnose me with when you're done, Dr. Phil."
"Who the fuck is that?"
"Aaron."
"What?"
"Are you serious? Have you never watched cable TV? Dr. Phil, Judge Judy..."
"I know who Judge Judy is, your sister watches that..."
Jake shook his head with fond memories of his 'crime' loving sister. "Yeah, okay."
Behind a faint smile that lingered on his lips and the feeling of his fingers twirling the string on his chest, Jake had begun to feel a little more normal. He knew the only thing that would eradicate his nerves completely would be a full night's sleep—if he could manage to get that much—but until then, he had a lab write up to finish and three equations he had left to memorize for tomorrow's exam. If he was lucky, he might even be able to take a shower by midnight and call it quits before the next day's date came creeping on to his phone.
For the next ten minutes, he and Aaron rambled on about a range of topics including murder mysteries and Hunter and Alyssa's breakup—which surprised Jake more than it should have—but at the end of it all, Jake forced himself to go back upstairs, sit down at his computer, and face the last two of many assignments the weekend had taunted him with, the urge to break down over it all washed from his mind.
End of Far From Home Chapter 14. Continue reading Chapter 15 or return to Far From Home book page.