Page 84 of Encounter

“Does it remind you of somethingyoudid? Do I... remind you of a kid you bullied, or something like that?”

“Maybe,” he nearly whispered. “The first part, I mean. I— Mhmm...” Pausing, his weight behind me moved once again while he cleared his throat. “Dunno if I should even tell you this. Probably have a bad enough view of me already.” His restlessness made me more and more anxious.

“I don’t, Chast,” I assured him softly.

His eyes burned into the back of my head, but I didn’t turn.

“You know, I probably would’ve been a little shit for a whole lotta longer without thiswake up callI got when I was like fourteen.” So very unlike him, Chast delivered each word in a painfully hesitant manner. “There was this kid in my class... Scroungy, quiet, always lookin’ like death. I never paid much attention to him, but I would overlook when the othertop dogssneaked up to him on a lunch break to spill a carton of spoiled milk all over his head, or when they’d ‘accidentally’ make him fall. I’d laugh with ‘em—found it cool, entertainin’.”

My breaths became shallow and careful. I sat there, not making a sound, wondering if him telling me this meant as much to Chast as it did for me.Was he doing this because he felt bad or... because he was comfortable with me?

“One day, he walked up to me after class. He musta known my dad had a lot of guns, so he asked if he could come over and try shootin’ some.” A bitter, melancholic huff escaped Chast’s lips, making him pause for a moment. “I was so surprised he even talked to me—that he just... came up to me like that. I guess that’s why I said yes. Was just so unexpected.”

Chast claimed he was a bully back then, but he clearly wasn’t nearly as bad as he tried to present. A bully would have laughed him off, or worse.

I never wanted him to stop talking.I never wanted to leave this place of tenderness and vulnerability we found ourselves in. Chast had experienced and seen so much, to the point I couldn’t ever fully understand him, yet... he decided to open up tome.I don’t think I’ve ever felt this special.

“So, we went shootin’ behind my house, and it was pretty fucking awkward, as you can imagine. Nothin’ interesting happened, and he left. I laid in bed that night, wonderin’ about it, but eventually figured it was stupid, and I shouldn’t’ve let it happen. ‘Can’t associate myself with a loser like him,’ I told myself.”

There was already a considerable amount of regret in Chast’s voice, but I got a feeling it wasn’t the end of the story.

“The next day, everythin’ seemed normal. At one point, I glanced at him in the class, and he... smiled at me. Was probably the first time I saw him smile ever. Anyway—I ignored him and left school early with some friends to do somethin’ stupid, like street racing in a crappy old Honda or somethin’. As we were comin’ back past the school a few hours later, there were cops and sirens and crowds everywhere.”

Chills ran down my spine.Oh no...

“Turns out he shot dead three students, the ones a year above us who tormented him, and then himself. With a handgun he stole from my house.”

Was it disturbing because of how horrible it was, or was the way Chast spoke making it so? I saw him kill people, I saw him fight, and I always had this idea that it meant nothing to him. That he was strong because he could separate himself from it.

Now, he sounded as horrified and appalled as I would’ve been.

“Shit,” I mumbled, half choked-up, unsure if I should even speak at all.What does one say in a situation like this?

He puffed more air into the nape of my neck with a bitter scoff. “Yeah,shit—was exactly what I thought. My father drilled into me ever since I was little how guns weren’t toys. How I had to be responsible around ‘em. I— I wasn’t thinking he’d try and steal any, but I still shouldn’t have left him alone with the open cabinet full of ‘em. Not even to go and take a piss.”

I opened my mouth, intending to blurt out those tired old words. ‘You can’t blame yourself. It wasn’t your fault.’ But I held them in, knowing Chast was probably the type of man that wouldn’t appreciate hearing something like that.

I wanted to make him feel better. He sounded so—

“Was a fucking circus. News stations, cops, firemen, even the feds were there. This was all before Columbine and all that—a different time, I guess. Everyone was blindsided, and I was shocked and scared, so... bein’ the dumb fourteen-year-old, I knew I had to tell ‘em the truth. They didn’t know where he got the gun, so I had to tell ‘em.”

The more he spoke, the less like a heartless bully Chast sounded. Blake would’ve probably framed his little sister before confessing to something like that—before taking some damn responsibility.

“Oooh, the trouble I was in!” He laughed, probably to hide his true emotion. “And not just me. I was a minor, and the guns were my father’s. Probably the only thing that saved us was the fact what a shithole we lived in. The kid was fostered—like half the school. The cops found out his foster dad molested him on top of everythin’, and even the boys he killed were livin’ in overcrowded, nightmarehomes, so their foster parents didn’t want to sue my old man in civil court for damages. It would have meant the spotlight would be on them. As bad as it sounds, we got lucky...”

“Jesus.”

“I still remember my father’s face as the cops grilled him. When they finally left our house, after hours and hours of talkin’ and paperwork, he—” Something about Chast’s voice shifted—his tone turned raspier, and I heard his slow, controlled breaths louder. “I really thought he was gonna kill me that day... Remember him pinnin’ me to the kitchen floor and beatin’ the shit out of me, screamin’. Could barely hear him—my ears were ringin’, my heart poundin’ like crazy. Ended up in the hospital, havin’ to say someone jumped me.”

At that point, I couldn’t help but turn at him with a disturbed grimace. It horrified me, the way he said it, almost like he found it normal.

Noticing my widened eyes full of worry, Chast smiled and looked down. His hands slid off my shoulders, and it was only then when I realized he had kept the massage going this whole time, probably as a way to calm himself, too.

Anxiously playing with his hands, he stared at the floor in silence.

“That’s when it all really clicked for me,” he spoke again. “Sure—I thought about how it could’ve been me. If he wasmypunching bag and not theirs, I could’ve ended with a hole between my eyes, but— The thing I couldn’t get out of my head was that... What I and those kids genuinely saw as nothing but some fun and mischief pushed himsofar he walked up to me—with an intention of stealing that gun—and then decided to throw every single possibility of his future away only to get... away from it all.Justto take back control. It was that bad. He was...thatdesperate.”

I didn’t know when or how our eyes met, but I found myself staring right into Chast’s soul, and... he was letting me.

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