× Mercury

The moment he told me who he was, it all came back to me. That game last year, and then again over a month ago in the grocery store...

Ethan Vendor was Katie Vendor's cousin, or in other words, the referee who called Katie's move against me last year fair game, resulting in not only a lost game for UCLA, but Katie getting away with purposely sabotaging my future career.

The only time I ever saw Ethan was at that game, the beach, and the grocery store, each time was a short encounter so it didn't come to a surprise that I didn't recognize him right away. But now that he was standing in the doorway of my room, I remembered clear as day.

"Why are you here?" I asked him.

"I need to talk to you," he responded desperately. He made a move to step into the room, but Jamie was right there to block his path.

"Whatever you have to say, I don't want to hear it," I sneered. "What happened last year was wrong and you know it. But it's in the past. I've moved on."

Ethan looked Jamie up and down, probably determining if he was able to take her out, but from the death glare she was giving him, I was surprised he didn't just drop dead.

"This isn't about that game," he explained, looking back at me - pleading for me to let him clarify. "It's something else, something that's been eating me alive. I'm in London for a scholar opportunity and I couldn't pass up the chance to talk to you. I need to talk to you."

"If it's not about the game, then you can leave," I advised.

"It's about your parents."

My heart went cold.

The guy had no right to be talking to me about my parents. He didn't know them. He didn't know anything about them or me. And the simple fact that you would dare utter anything about them made my blood boil.

I glared at him. "What about my parents?"

"I know they died in a house fire," Ethan clarified, taking another step toward me. "And that-"

I didn't give him the chance to continue before I was on my feet, Jamie quickly coming to my side. "Lynn, you need to stay off your ankle," she advised, her hand wrapping around my bicep, trying her damnedest to get me back on the bed, but I was too determined to budge. "The doctor said-"

"How do you know that?" I demanded from Ethan, shrugging off Jamie's grip. "How do you know they were killed in a fire?"

Ethan looked between me and Jamie anxiously. I noticed that he kept playing with his fingers and messing with his hair and I wondered if he had ADHD or some kind of nervous tick.

"Do you think we can talk about this alone?" he finally asked.

"Seriously, Lynn," Jamie stressed. "You need to sit down."

"Ethan, I swear to God I'll call campus police if you don't tell me what you came to say."

"Okay, okay," he said, holding his hands up in surrender. "I know your parents were in a house fire because I was the one who started it."

The moment the words were out of his mouth, Jamie removed her hands from me, like she too couldn't believe what he just said. I tried desperately to connect the dots, the sparks in my brain trying everything they got to understand, but instead just causing a short circuit.

It didn't make any sense. Why was he doing this to me? If he was telling the truth, then why would he even tell me in the first place?

"Explain," I demanded coldly.

Ethan nodded eagerly. I watched him carefully as he took a deep breath and spoke. "I'm bipolar," he said in a steady voice that didn't match his jittery tendencies. "I was diagnosed with the disorder around three years ago. I kept telling the doctor and my parents that I wasn't - that I was fine - but they insisted that I had to take these pills to keep me leveled out. I was twenty one at the time, going to college, and I didn't want to be held back because of a disorder. So I refused to take the pills."

"What does this have to do with Lynn's parents?" Jamie asked, crossing her arms over her chest and looking rather intimidating.

Ethan ignored her and continued to look at me, like my friend wasn't even in the room. "Katie and I were never really close, so this was around the time news got to me that she was kicked off her high school soccer team because of drugs. And that you were the reason she was caught.

"I was pissed because even if I didn't talk to her that much, Katie deserved to go professional. She was damn good and she wouldn't even get the chance to prove that to the world. I wanted revenge just as much as she did. But then Katie moved away and didn't get the chance to take it. So I took it upon myself to do it for her."

I clenched my jaw, knowing exactly what happened next. "Stop," I bagged and sat back down on the bed. "Get out of my room."

"No," Ethan argued. "No, let me explain. I need to tell you what happened!"

Jamie took a step toward him, but he side stepped around her and stood right in front of me. His brown eyes were wide and flashing with a kind of hysteria that made me fear for my life.

"You have to understand that I wasn't myself when I did this," he said, his voice finally starting to shake. "I was off my meds and totally out of my fucking mind. It was never my intention to kill your parents, just for your car to burn. I wanted you to suffer like Katie did."

"What do you mean by my car?"

"Your car, that was the only thing I wanted to catch fire," he clarified. "It was something big but not all that important; enough to grab your attention. But when I was dousing gasoline on the vehicle, I must have... I don't know, it must have dripped onto the lawn and the next thing I knew the house was in flames."

I sunk into the bed, trying to get as far away from him as I could. "Please stop."

"And you know that California has a dry heat, and there was a hell of a lot of oxygen for the fire to pick up energy." He paused and looked at me, probably expecting me to say something. But all I could do was stare into the depths of his brown, cold eyes. "Lynn, you have to know that it was never my intention to kill your parents."

As he talked, I notice his fingers start to mess with the sleeve of his shirt, pulling up around his wrist just enough to catch a glimpse of a scar.

When I was six years old, I was playing too close to my uncle's motorcycle that he had just gotten home from taking on a little joy ride. The back of my calf hit contact with the muffler and instantly left a burn mark on my skin. To this day, there was a faint scar left in its wake, and it looked a lot like the one I saw on Ethan's wrist.

Was setting fires something he did a lot? The word pyromania came to mind and I wondered if you're even allowed to be a professional referee if you're bipolar and have tendencies to set things on fire.

"The second I heard your parents were in the house, I wanted to find you and tell you everything," he continued. "Seeing you in California nearly knocked me cold. I was going to tell you when you were in town still, but I was terrified. I was a killer! Your parents were supposed to be out of town, that's why I chose that night to do this!"

"Ethan, get out," I heard Jamie snap, but I was too focused on the scar on his wrist to even register what she was saying.

This boy in front of me was my parent's killer, when all along I thought I was the face of their death. The straightener I had plugged in wasn't the reason, and instead it was an intentional attack that went all wrong.

After three years of mourning, I felt like the Victorians when Edison came along - all those years in the darkness, and then light. It was all coming out into the light.

"A year and a half ago I graduated from college and got my cousin back into the sport. I had been taking my pills every day and staying out of trouble. And as Fate would have it, six months later I was refereeing not only your game, but the game you were playing against my cousin," he continued. "You'd think after what I had done, I'd be over the revenge, but after Katie tripped you, I couldn't just say it was a bad call because then Katie would have gotten a red card. Calling it a good play was the only justification I could do."

"I don't..." I trailed off, trying desperately to wrap my head around all of this. "I don't understand why you did any of this. It had to be more than just revenge."

"That's what happens when you don't take your pills," he explained. "I was a mess and so, so livid. I needed something to put that anger into and that was when I heard Katie's bad news. Revenge was the closes excuse I had."

"Excuse?" Jamie spoke up, her voice getting high with rage. "You murdered her parents for revenge, that's not an excuse! You think that's going to go over well with the judge?"

Ethan stepped away from me and shook his head slowly. A slow, smirk spread on his face that reminded me of the Joker.

"See, that's where you're wrong," he said, his voice a lot more aloof and confident. "I'm not going to jail for this; you don't have any proof. I came here because I felt guilty, and now that I confessed, I can finally live my fucking life without seeing fire behind my eyes."

He was right, I didn't have any proof. All I had was his confession, but that was out in the air with no recording of it. The cops weren't going to believe me, not without solid proof. The house was long gone to go back and prove that there was a source. There were security cameras out in the hallway, but that would be useless as it only proved he came to visit.

I had nothing.

"You just came here to get that off your chest?" I asked him softly.

"I needed to be set free," he answered firmly.

"So in doing so, you made sure I would suffer more than I already had. I was at peace that the fire was an accident, but now you made it clear that there was an intention and that intention was my fault."

Ethan looked at me with hard eyes. "You never should have ratted Katie out."

I stared at him. His sudden change in mood - going from pleading to get his word across, to outright taunting - made me question if he was off his meds at that moment.

They were everywhere, lurking behind faces that you'd never expect. Shifting their forms from one person to another, lying in the darkness until the time comes to strike. My mom would tell me Greek stories with monsters of every kind - the Hydras, Arachne, Gorgons, and the Chimera - but none of them were as monstrous as the person standing in front of me.

When Ethan made toward the door, Jamie blocked his way.

"Let him go, Jam," I told her.

She looked at me like I had lost my mind. "We can call the police," she tried to reason with me. "Maybe they can do something. We can't just let him go, Lynn."

I ran my hands through my hair. "We don't have a choice," I said. "We don't have any proof."

Jamie looked at me, a mix of anger and sadness in her eyes and I knew she was trying to think of something that might be able to throw this boy in jail, but as messed up as Ethan was, Jamie knew he was right.

She sighed heavily and stepped aside, letting Ethan through.

"It was good to see you, Lynn Mercury," he said before he disappeared around the corner.

After Jamie closed the door, I grabbed the camera on the bed and turned it on once again. I found the video of my mom and started playing it.

I could recite the video by heart, word for word, sound for sound.

I watched as the screen shifted from grainy blackness to flashes of white light. I wondered where Ethan was at the time this was recorded. Was he running away from the scene? Or was he in a neighbor's yard watching it all crumble in front of him? Did he regret it the second he lit the match? Or was it until he learned the house wasn't empty?

"I want to see you succeed. And you will, I know you will," my mom said in the recording.

This was too much.

I turned the camera off and sat it on the bedside table and stood up.

"Lynn," Jamie warned. "You should get back in the bed and ice your ankle. I can get whatever you need."

I just shook my head and grabbed my phone and room key.

"You can't get me this," I said and left, leaving my friend behind.

× × ×

I was only able to get a few blocks away before my ankle really started to throb with pain. I looked around to see if there was a bench I could sit on and give it a rest, but when I looked up, I saw that I was in front of the art building.

Instantly, my hand went up to wrap around the ring on my necklace.

There was something about those trees in the front of the building that really drew me to them. It went deeper than the story of Tristan and Isolde with the two trees coming together. It reminded me of my parents and their tie together.

Abandoning the idea of finding a place to sit, I walked over to the trees. They were dormant for the winter, nothing on the branches but snow and ice. But it glittered in the setting sun behind them, the light glowing between the two trunks like something from the great beyond was standing there... watching me.

I was never sure how much heartache someone could take in a lifetime, but I think I found the limit. Ethan's confession was the last straw.

As cliché as it was, there was a reason why it was overused because there wasn't a better representation to how I was feeling then: broken. Whatever that was left of my pieces had finally crumbled, and I had left them behind in my room. The feeling of being numb was nothing new to me, but this was more than that. I felt empty. There was nothing holding me together inside, and everything, all the happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust had disappeared and I was left with a void I wasn't so sure I could bear.

Leaning my back against one of the tree trunks, I slid down along the rough bark and sat on the ground. I didn't care about the thin slush of snow or the harsh bite of the wind, I just needed to get off my ankle and cry.

It was a Sunday evening, so there was hardly anyone walking around campus, but even if it was the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday, that wouldn't have stopped me from balling my eyes out for what seemed like the millionth time that week.

"Lynn!"

From the mention of my name, my head shot up. I was taken off guard for a moment because the figure running toward me was only about four feet tall and was missing one of their front teeth.

"Jonah! What did I just say!?" I heard someone shout after the boy. "No running!"

I saw Liam walking out of the building with a scrawl on his face, and the boy who was running toward me instantly stopped from the stern voice. Seeing the two of them together made the memory click and I smiled at the boy who was now looking down at his shoes sheepishly.

"Sorry, Li," he said in a soft voice.

The boy looked over at me then, taking a slow step in my direction, like if he went too fast I might get spooked and run away.

"Hey, Jonah," I smiled. "What are you doing here?"

From the sound of my voice, his confidence grew and he walked closer to me, standing a few feet away now. "You gave us tickets to see your game, remember?"

With everything that had been going on, I had forgotten that I had given Liam two tickets to see the last game like I had promised I would do at the gallery showing. So much had happened between then and I now, I was surprised I could even remember my name with all the events filling my mind.

"Are you okay?" Jonah asked, looking at my ankle.

"I will be."

"Can you still play?"

"If I decide to."

"Will you?"

"Jonah!" Liam shouted again. "Maybe you should lay off the questions, yeah? I don't think Lynn really wants to answer them right now."

Considering I had just been crying, I wouldn't doubt it if it showed on my face. And even though Jonah was harmless and just a little too curious, I was thankful Liam stepped in because he was starting to ask some hard questions that I didn't have the answer to.

I shifted on the ground, the snow soaking into my sweat pants and making my underwear and ass wet. I suddenly regretted sitting there.

"How long have you been out here?" Liam asked, concern written on his face.

Shrugging, I adjusted my ankle carefully and looked up at him. "Not sure. Something... happened and I needed to get some fresh air. Found myself here."

Liam looked up at the two trees. He probably didn't know the story of Tristan and Isolde, and I knew for a fact he didn't know the story about how my parents were engaged under a tree, but the look on his face told me that he had a story of his own he was thinking back on.

Then he crossed his arms and looked down at me again. "Use this to your advantage," he advised. "I don't know what happened, but don't let it get to you. Put it into something, like your photography. Add to your collection of broken things. Or better yet," Liam added. "Start a new collection. Instead of broken things, try things that have been fixed."

He was right. There wasn't anything I could do with the new information from Ethan. It was what it was, but it was sad of me to feel this way. Nothing has changed, my parents were still dead, Ethan was still out on the streets, and I was just as lonely as before. But I could change that by putting all that energy of feeling lost and secluded into something productive.

But that did nothing to remove the sudden anger rushing through me. It was like I was hitting the five stages of grief all over again.

I looked out toward the parking lot and noticed a single car.

"Did you drive here?" I asked Liam.

"Yeah, do you want me to drive you home?"

I tried my best to stand up. Seeing my struggle, Liam assisted and soon enough I was on my feet, making sure to keep my weight off my right ankle.

"Not home," I said. "But can you give me a lift somewhere else? It's on campus."

× × ×

Edit (12/23/20): It's been 4 years since I wrote this chapter and I came back to mention to take all this with a grain of salt regarding what I wrote about Ethan's disorder. Seeing a lot of bad comments saying he's crazy and I do not like it, however I wrote him with his bipolar disorder wrong so that's on me. With the inaccuracies of the disorder, I do apologize. It was a poor hot take on this and I do intend (maybe) to rewrite this in the future to reflect more accurately with the disorder (or remove it all together).

-Jess