Fault Lines Acrostic

“This is Officer Laramie of the Waller County Police Department. Am I speaking with Shelly Johnson?” 

The words sink in my stomach, churn my intestines, and run a chill down my spine. I know what he is going to say next before he even says it. This is about Jakob. 

I try to speak, but my lungs feel incapable of even the slightest exhale. I am petrified.

“Ma’am, this is urgent. Are you Shelly Johnson?”

“YES”, I somehow manage to painfully gulp out between heaving breaths. 

Is this what a panic attack feels like?

“Ma’am, I’m terribly sorry, but there’s been an incident…”

His words are drowned out by the ringing in my ears and the feeling of my heart beating in my throat. I knew something was wrong–I just knew it. Something hadn’t felt right this morning when I dropped Jakob off at school. “A mother should always trust her gut”, that is what my mother had taught me. Why hadn’t I listened to her? I should have kept him home. None of this would have happened if I would have just kept him home.

This is all my fault.

***

“Is it too much? I feel like it’s too much” Juno said, as she inspected her make-up in the mirror.

“Babe, it is just right. Besides, you are the most beautiful girl in the world–with or without all of this”, Micah reassured her, as he gently placed one hand on her cheek, the other on her waist, and gently pulled her in for a kiss. “We are going to slay at the dance next week.”

“Oh, yeah? Tell me again how beautiful I am” Juno said, with a sly, sexy smile.

“You are so, so beautiful, my love–inside and out.”

“And you’re full of shit” she said, as she pushed Micah down on the bed, positioned herself on top of him, and began to kiss him tenderly on the neck.

“Oh, fuck. Babe, that feels so good. It's been so long… We really shouldn’t though, your parents might hear us.” 

She continued to kiss his neck and then slowly worked her way down to his nipples. 

“Let them hear us. I’m tired of sneaking around and I’m tired of lying”, she said curtly the next time she came up for air.

“But, what…what about…” Micah lost track of his words as Juno began sucking on his nipples and letting her hands wander his body and the thoughts in his head were replaced by a mutual throbbing between their pelvises.

***

“All this gender ideology, woke, LMNOP+, Black Lives Matter bullshit is ruining our fucking country. When will people learn? All of this happened before, in Greece and Rome, and both of those empires collapsed. I tell you; if it weren’t for all the money the American church sends overseas for mission work, God would have destroyed us a long ti–” Peter ranted at the dinner table.

“Jakob” interrupted Shelly, “What’s wrong, honey? You’ve hardly eaten a thing and you’re really quiet. Did something happen at school today?”

“No. Nothing happened at schoo–”

“MA’AM. NO MA’AM” Peter corrected.

“No, ma’am… I just think it isn’t right to be talking about people that way. It isn’t very Christ-like.”

“Stop it with your self-righteous, moral superiority complex. Just because you’re reading the Bible now, doesn’t give you the right to talk back to your mother and I like that. Honor thy father and thy mother–”

“I wasn’t talking back.”

“You sure as hell were. Now apologize.”

“I’m sorry, I guess”

“Say it like you mean it. AND SIT UP STRAIGHT. Be a man for once.”

***

My drive down to the Medical Examiner’s office is tense. I argue with God the whole way there. 

“WHY ARE YOU TESTING ME LIKE THIS?!”

“WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE YOU TAKING MY SON FROM ME?! MY SON! MY SON–NOT YOURS! WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?”

“I DID EVERYTHING RIGHT: I RAISED HIM IN CHURCH; I PRACTICALLY DRAGGED HIS ASS TO THE ALTAR TO BE BAPTIZED; I TAUGHT HIM RIGHT FROM WRONG; I DISCIPLINED HIM WHEN HE NEEDED IT; I KEPT HIM AWAY FROM BAD INFLUENCES, LIKE THAT TILLY KID; AND THIS IS MY REWARD?”

“I WAS WRONG. THIS WASN’T MY FAULT! THIS WAS YOURS! OR ARE YOU NOT SOVEREIGN ANYMORE?!”

“GIVE ME MY SON BACK!!!”

All of my screaming is met with silence: no sign from above, no stirring in my heart, no still small voice. Nothing. My anger dies down and the melancholy sets back in. 

I guess that settles it. This IS a test. Mother always said that “the Teacher is always silent during the test”.

“Be still and know I am God”, I whisper to myself, as I step out of the car to meet with Officer Laramie, and the numbness of dissociation descends over me.

Did I remember to take my meds this morning?

“Mrs. Johnson, we spoke on the phone earlier, my name is Todd Laramie; I wish we had met under better circumstances. I was the officer that found your daught–”

“Son. Jakob is my son.”

“Sorry ma’am, I meant no offense. The school just said that, well, nevermind.”

“The school says a lot of things it has no business saying these days. Now where is my son.”

He leads me through the interior of the building and into the morgue. A wave of grief attempts to break through the protective wall my mind has put up, but it is quickly swallowed up by the cold indifference of apathy. There will be no more tears today.

“Before we go in there, you should know that your…son was found under the bleachers at the school. His wounds give all indication that this was self-inflicted.”

He always was a coward.

“Was there a note?”

“Yes ma’am, but it was addressed to another student.”

***

“Fault in Our Stars was on last night. I know it was your favorite” spoke Micah Tilly. It had been two months since the funeral and he still came to visit Juno everyday. 

“I cried the whole time. I couldn’t bear to turn it off, but it was torture watching it without you. I would do anything to hold your hand again–to feel you next to me. I love you so much and I miss you even more.” He began to cry, “I don’t know why, but it made me think of Prom. You would have been so pretty in that pink dress we bought…I still take it out sometimes and lay with it on my bed–hoping that I might catch a lingering whiff of your perfume, or remember what it was like to hold you.”

“Did you know that–that I was going to ask you to–to marry me after Senior Prom? I saved up my delivery money for the last two y-years so I could buy the ring. We were going to be together forever! It was just going to be you and me, baby.”  He said through what had become heaving, guttural sobs and as he held his fist tight around what would have been their engagement ring.

“I should have listened to–to–to you. I should have got you out of–of there that night. I should have–should have known how bad that conversation with your parents would affect you. Why was I so stupid in thinking that we could make it to graduation?–that–that our love was enough to get us through…I’m so–I’m so–I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”