Jude

Percy and I returned to the living room to get to work. 'Work' meant something different to Percy. I had so much shit to do, I didn't want to waste time calling my mother. The pain of her most recent abandonment still lingered, making it impossible for me to forgive her. She'd abandoned me dozens of times before, but this last time was the worst. Percy insisted we 'have to try' to get her to talk.

Percy had used the law firm's investigative databases to find my mother's number. Sitting beside me on the couch, he made the call on my phone.

"You speak," Percy said as the phone rang. I hadn't spoken to her since the day of the accident. She completely cut me off, blocked my number, and moved away. Recognizing my number, she answered the phone, but she didn't wait for me to speak.

"Never ever call this number again," she said and hung up. Percy didn't hesitate and immediately called her back. It didn't surprise me that the phone went to voicemail. Percy left a message.

"Hello, Ms. Hills, my name is Attorney Alonzo Richler and I'm here with your son, Judah Prak. I just have a few questions for you about the car accident of February 2023. Please return my call at your earliest convenience. If I don't hear from you within forty-eight hours, I will ask a judge to issue a subpoena. Thank you very much for your cooperation."

Dumbfounded, I stared at him in awe. He had bigger balls than I ever imagined.

He shrugged, tossing my phone on the couch between us. "You acted like my attorney," I said as if he didn't already know that.

"I never said I was your attorney. She'll call back."

And he was right. Within ten minutes, my phone rang. Percy answered it, "Attorney Alonzo Richler. How may I help you?"

"Who are you?" she asked, her voice filled with paranoia. "How'd you get my number? Am I on speakerphone?"

"Yes, you are on speakerphone and I'm here with your son."

"If Judah's in trouble, keep me out of it. He's a grown man and can take care of himself."
Anger filled my veins, remembering all the times she screwed me over.

"Actually, Mom, I'm sick," I said, unsure how to describe my affliction. If I described it to anyone, they'd say I was just psychotic. "Something happened after the accident. The ambulance took me to a hospital and someone injected me with a virus or something. The name of the hospital is blacked out in the police report. I need to find the doctor who did this to me and you're the only one who knows where the ambulance took me. Why the hell did you leave the scene of the accident? You left me for dead."

"They promised they wouldn't hurt you," she said.

"Who's 'they?'" I asked.

"I can't say. I've already said too much. Please don't call me anymore. I hope everything turns out okay for you. I had to do what I had to do."

"I don't get it. What did you have to do? I'm gonna die. Don't hang up. Don't—"

But she didn't listen to my pleas. The bitch hung up.

"She doesn't care if I die," I said, fighting back my tears. Percy called her back, but she blocked my number. As I curled up on the couch, sobbing, he called her again using his phone, but again she didn't answer, probably realizing it was Attorney Alonzo.

"I'm sorry," Percy said, rubbing my leg. I kicked his hand away. "I bet she signed a non-disclosure agreement."

"She doesn't care if I die. No one will miss me if I'm gone. I'm a perfect lab rat."

"I'd miss you."

"Why? You don't know me. You just know me as this time traveling freak."

"I never thought of you as a freak."

"We got nowhere," I said. "She just pissed me off even more. I fucking hate her. Don't tell me everything'll be okay because it won't be. Nothing will ever be okay."

"I have to believe things will be okay. I guess it's the optimist in me."

I sat up, nearly chucking my laptop across the room. Since I couldn't afford a new laptop, I restrained myself.

After ending the call with my mother, I had the urge to kick him out. There was no way in hell he could help me, and he was more of an annoyance with his phony, over-the-top optimism.

But his optimism wasn't phony. There was nothing phony about Alonzo "Percy" Richler. He was genuine, and since I'd already expressed I wanted to die, wishing for a gun—even though I doubted I'd really kill myself—Percy insisted on staying. He wouldn't leave, not even for ten minutes to get food.

"Leave me alone," I said. "I need to get some work done."

While I worked, Percy continued his own investigation in my bedroom. I overheard him talking to someone from the police department. His exasperated voice mirrored my frustration when I questioned the police about the report. They were just as eager to get Percy off the phone as they were with me.

"I have an idea," he said, storming out of my room, bursting with excitement. "You need to go back in time and tell me to go to the scene of the accident. I'll follow the ambulance and find out where they take you."

"You don't understand... I have no control over where I end up."

"I don't think that's true. First, we meet in 1999, then 2006, then  2010, 2014 and 2018. We're due to meet again in the 2020s."

"I can't deal with this shit right now."

He plopped down beside me, sighing an exaggerated sigh. "You have to deal with this shit. Maybe you shouldn't work right now. Maybe you should take a leave of absence."

"How the hell will I pay my bills? You live on another planet."

"I'll help you. I can afford to help you,"

"How? You're in school."

"I work, too. I live with my parents and don't pay rent. I may need to take a hiatus from school. I can't leave you alone."

"I'm so confused. I'm nothing to you. Why would you do all this for me? You don't owe me anything. You're not obligated to me. What's wrong with you?"

"Maybe I just care about you as a human being. No one's ever cared about you. Just let me care about you because right now no one else does and that's wrong. It's very wrong." Percy pulled me into his arms, shrugging off my weak protests. "How did you get to me those other times?"

"I don't know, Percy. I know you don't believe me."

"It just makes no sense."

"And time travel does?"

Percy paused, pondering something, maybe searching his brains for a solution. He couldn't come up with anything. "Let's go for a ride. I need to get some things at home."

"You don't want to leave me alone, do you?"

"No. Let's go."

I hadn't been out of my apartment in days. The sun blinded me as we left the dilapidated building. I gave up thinking I'd ever get out of that hell hole. I took a risk riding in the car. The movement could send me into a deep sleep. Even though Percy only lived thirty minutes away, the monotonous drive was enough to lull me into a deep sleep. Just as I drifted off, Percy smacked my leg to wake me up. He whacked me a dozen times on the way to his house, a house I'd visited before. It was his childhood home. The two cars in the driveway freaked me out.

"I'm gonna stay here," I said.

"No, you're not. Let's go." Percy opened the passenger's side door and reached for my hand.

As we entered the house, the sounds of the local news came from a nearby room. "Percy, is that you?"

"Your mother still calls you Percy?" I whispered.

He ignored my comment, responding to his mother. "Yeah, Mom! I'm just here to get a few things."

Emerging from the kitchen, a woman with dark shoulder length hair wiped her hands on a tea towel. She and Percy resembled each other. Their eyes were the same shape and color. I wondered if his sisters looked the same. She immediately turned her attention to me. I was in no state to meet the mother of a man who fucked me hours ago. "Who's your friend?" she asked Percy, although her eyes remained on me. She treated me like an alien from outer space.

"This is my friend, Jude," he said. "I'll be staying with him for a few days."

"Are you going away? I thought you were sick."

"Jude's sick. I'm going to take care of him." He held my hand, leading me away from her.

"Take care of him? You need to stop taking care of other people and start taking care of yourself," she said. "Why are you taking care of him? We're going to talk about this later."

"I'm thirty-two years old!" he shouted as we approached a stairwell. "We don't have to talk about anything."

He stormed up the stairs like an annoyed teenager. I wished I had a mother who nagged me. Percy had no idea how good he had it.

His room was exactly as I remembered it, except more cluttered. "Let's get outta here as quick as we can," he said as I lay on his bed. He opened his closet, searching for something. "Don't go to sleep here."

"I'm not," I yawned. "Have you come out to your parents yet?"

"I tried," he said, dropping a duffle bag on the bed. He then rummaged through his dresser drawers. "Only to my mother, though, but she kinda thought I was joking. I haven't gotten around to telling my dad." With an armful of boxer shorts, he returned to the bed.

"When I was sixteen, my mother caught me going down on a guy in the living room," I said as he shoved clothes in his bag. "She was more pissed that the guy was thirty-five years old."

Percy stopped packing and looked at me. "That's disgusting. I know you like older men, but you were sixteen... a kid."

"Yeah, I guess. I did a lot of stupid shit."

"Doesn't everybody?" He removed more clothes from his drawers and placed them neatly on top of his boxers.

"Are you moving in or something?" I asked.

"For a little while."

Percy's bed was more comfortable than mine. As he retrieved his toothbrush and other things from the bathroom, my eyelids grew heavy. Within minutes, I found myself dozing. Percy returned at the right time. "Jude, wake up!"

I bolted upright, panting, on the verge of a panic attack. My head spun, my vision blurry.

"Let's go," Percy said. "If you're gonna fall asleep, I don't want you falling asleep here. If we stay any longer, my mom's gonna interrogate us, and I'm not in the mood for an interrogation."

Luckily, we evaded an interrogation.

On the way back to my apartment, we stopped at an IHop and gorged ourselves with pancakes, bacon, and sausage. I drank about four cups of coffee, hoping that would be enough to stay awake. Percy continued to problem solve, trying to figure out a way for me to get to him around the time of the accident. He convinced himself that hypnosis might work.

"Do you know any hypnotists?" I asked.

"No, but we could find one."

"That's a stupid idea. Let's say we find a hypnotist and I fall asleep, and then I vanish? What happens then?"

"They might think you're a magician."

"I'm not going to a hypnotist. It's useless, Percy. I'm stuck like this forever. I might as well jump off the Aiken Bridge."

"I won't let you jump off a bridge. What if we have sex before going to sleep?"

I laughed, taking another sip of coffee. "You just want to fuck."

"That's true, but at least you'll be thinking of me when you fall asleep. Maybe you won't and you don't give a shit about me. Maybe I'm being stupid, and you should jump off a bridge and get it over with. Maybe this is a lost cause."

"I don't want to die, Percy. I just see no way out. Fine. Let's go back to my place and fuck."

At least we'll have some fun.

Words: 2022

Total words: 19,129