Shielded In The Shadows

“No.” That would have changed things with his Dad, too.

“It sounds like you were a normal guy with a great life. You were lucky, yeah, to be born to good parents with financial security, but you didn’t squander the opportunity. You made the most of it.”

He’d done what he’d wanted to do. Period. Just turned out that what he’d wanted to do had served him well.

Leaning forward, he put his elbows on his knees, looked at the floor. “There was this kid, Emory Smith. He was in my high school, a couple of years behind me. He used to tag around after me whenever he could. Like an adoring puppy. I liked being so great that I had fans.

“Emory tried out for football his sophomore year. He wasn’t real big, or all that tough, but he was in great shape, had determination and dedication, and a leg that wouldn’t quit. He played first string kicker my last year. And then his last two years after I left. Helped take the team to state again the year after I graduated.”

Emory had studied, too. Had straight A’s. And worked twenty hours a week at some fast-food joint.

“My freshman year of college at the University of Southern California, I pledged the most prestigious frat on campus. I quickly rose up the ranks. And I learned how to drink. Really drink. Anything. Anywhere. As much as anyone wanted to give me. I wasn’t playing football, but I was still working out, playing intramural sports, having a great time. I thought life was great. A game that was never going to end.”

There would always be an end. That’s what he needed her to understand.

“Emory used to come down to campus to hang out,” he continued. “He kept saying that he couldn’t wait to graduate and get to Southern Cal. I knew he had better things waiting for him, but I didn’t say so. I just kept telling him, ‘Yeah, kid, you do that.’ He got a scholarship to Harvard, for Christ’s sake. He was going to change the world. I never figured he’d give all that up. I thought he was just talking, you know, like kids do. That whole Southern Cal thing, I never took is seriously.”

“What happened?” Her question came again. Softly. Almost as though she knew he needed to be led over the bridge that wasn’t going to let him turn back.

Or go forward, either, as she’d soon find out.

“He followed me to Southern Cal.” He told her the god-awful truth. “He’d been scouted by the

team, got a scholarship there, too, and started in the very first game of the season. Damn near set a field goal record. He’d wanted me to come to one of his games, but I was done with that. I didn’t want to be out on the field badly enough to do the work required. And if I couldn’t be out on the field, I didn’t want to be there. College football isn’t like high school. Physically, maybe they’re similar, but in high school, to most of the guys, it’s a game. In college, it’s work. With the goal of making it a career.”

“You were smart to see that. And make the appropriate choice for you.”

He’d been all about a good time. Living life. Doing pretty much whatever the hell he’d wanted to do. He was a golden boy.

“Did you do well academically?” she queried.

“Yeah.” He’d done what little he’d had to do to meet his father’s minimum requirement of B’s across the board.

Eyes adjusting to the near darkness, with only the moon to light his view, Jayden could still pretty much make out every nuance in Emma’s face. She focused on him, as though prepared for whatever was to come.

As if she already knew death waited at the end. Which of course, she did. He’d told her he’d killed a boy.

“Even after I ditched his first game, Emory was still hanging on me, so I thought I’d do him a solid and sponsor him for the frat. He could meet up with some of the coolest guys at school, guys who were his own age. I figured I was giving him the best days of his life. Four years of them.”

“You were being kind.” The words were firecrackers. Soft, almost whisper-like firecrackers.

“In order to get into the frat, pledges had to pass some...tests.”

“Hazing,” Emma said.

He shrugged. He’d gone through it. Hadn’t felt hazed. It had all been a big game to him. A challenge. He’d never felt better the night he’d been the first to make it back to the frat house. He’d been appointed freshman liaison to the fraternity’s campus board for how well he’d done that night.

“Pledges are taken out by their sponsors, dumped in a particularly dense part of some woods with more alcohol than they could ever drink, a tracking device and nothing else. No compass. No phone. Their only challenge was to make it back. Their upperclassman sponsors tracked them and if, in a specified amount of time, they weren’t headed in the right direction, they were picked up. Dropped off at campus. And let go.”

His chin sinking to his chest, Jayden tightened up. His lungs. His muscles. Everything about him grew tight. Uneasy.

“I can see what’s coming,” Emma said, still attempting to rescue him from himself. There was nothing she could to change his story. “You were Emory’s sponsor, so you had to be the one to go pick him up when he didn’t make it back.”

He looked at her. So far, she had it right.

“When he knew he’d been dumped by you...after all those years of idolizing you, of giving up Harvard to be close to you, he committed suicide, didn’t he?”

Wouldn’t have made him feel any less guilty if he had. But...