I overheard Jamie in the hallway, she was freaking out and I wasn’t supposed to be there but I was, so anyway [[Jamie->Leading up to our first interaction]] was talking and talking and crying a little bit and she was with Josh for the most part but he had this faraway look in his eyes; that dreamer boy kind of look in his eyes and he wasn’t really looking at her until she slapped him, she slapped him so damn hard that I swear he had a handprint, her handprint branded on his face for a whole week (and in high school: a week is almost as long as a month, which just as well may be a quarter, semester, or a whole year, everybody talked about it for a year.) Anyway, [[Josh->Josh 1]] wasn’t looking at her because he didn’t want to hear her. Because Jamie was sobbing and telling Josh that she was pregnant with his baby and that she wanted to keep it. [[And,->The end of the beginning of the beginning]]She said that it was my fault this was happening to us; that if I hadn’t gotten with Jessica; and I did get all the way with Jessica; when we first started making out under the bleachers then karma never would’ve come around and bit us in the ass by making her pregnant. But I was loyal to her for four years after that; eighth grade to our senior year I stood by her and never fucked around on her again (well one time I was at a party with my older brother when I went to visit him at Alabama roll tide baby] and I definitely hooked up with that girl after the [[tailgate->Josh 2]].) It was so bad
—so, so bad—
the way everyone treated her after everything happened, it was so bad because if anybody actually watched her, like I did; really watched her, the look on her face, the growth in her pupils dilating when she smiled, the way her body opened up and accepted the baby into her womb; if anyone had watched her the way I did, they would’ve seen how happy she was. She was so damn happy with him; Jamie and Josh had never been so crazy about each other; I’d never seen anyone more in love than the two of [[them->leading up to our first interaction]]
I’m not really sure where the idea began the idea that I had when I was looking at them looking at each other, but it came, it hit me in my forehead like a gunshot between my eyes (and you might not know this but my imagination is real active, so when I finally got to the bathroom I saw myself, smiling in the mirror my lips like snake scales cause it was getting chilly out, and I was smiling in the mirror and there was this blood dripping down from right above my nose, and it was falling and dripping into the sink until I blinked it away.) But I think that’s how the idea got into my head, I think God shot it in between my eyes and told me what I had to do. And I did it, I sort of fell off the face of the earth, buried myself in her core to get closer to my God, but really I just hopped on a few trains until I made it as far south as I could in the states, and I kept going on foot and by boat cause that was easier, I kept going until I found a faraway coast somewhere in Brazil and I didn’t speak—you know I played mute—until I was able to learn what I needed to learn of their Portuguese and I got a job and I had a good life; and that’s all I thought about; and looking at myself in the mirror with imagined blood dripping down my face I was not even a little scared of that future.
I still believed in that future when I fell in love with [[her->Son 1]].And I was supposed to be in class, everybody was supposed to be in class, but I had to use the bathroom and I heard everything and for the rest of my four years at that school I never told a soul what I heard or saw in that hallway because it wasn’t none of my business. And nine months later Jamie had a baby and [[Josh shot->Jamie 1]] himself in the head because the baby wasn’t his, and everyone told everyone that was why, and so everybody believed that and that was all anybody could talk about and they didn't even know if it was true or not. Everybody said he’d wasted his life on this baby. At least that’s what everyone said, because he gave up a full-ride, D1 college offer to play football at Alabama for that [[baby.->The beginning of the beginning]]. (if we’re being honest I never really had the opportunity to see anyone really happy so maybe they weren’t all they were cracked up to me in my head but I want to believe I’m right so I do.)
But when everything got bad and Josh fell in on himself and Jamie was alone, and everyone had nothing better to do than attack her that’s what they all did; because I guess there really isn’t anything better to do in a Podunk down in a nowhere place and that’s just where we live. They wanted her to feel awful because they were so confused and didn’t have access to any of the answers and so they had to make their own no matter who they hurt in the process I [[guess->more thinking about how I can't stop thinking about her]] (but my Aunty Mae did raise me like that, she told me I was gonna be better than all of that shit.)
I think the thing that changed the most was her skin, when she was nearing the end of her pregnancy she had this radiance about her, and Josh did too, and they had this skin that glowed together, they were so much more beautiful together, and then all that shit happened and everything changed and Jamie looked like a ghost when I’d see her around town even in the heat of the summer; she looked see through and shrunken; like a raisin.
And everyone called her all these names, so many people harassed her and made a fool of her and she had no one to protect her any more and more than anything I wanted to be the person that could protect her but I wasn’t big enough for all that, I was too small to shield her from the wrath God had brought down upon her. And one day I walked real close to her on the sidewalk,
(at the time I was still in high school, I was slowly working through my senior year by the time I had the courage to reach out to her)
I didn’t know it was gonna happen, all of a sudden we were just upon each other and I whispered to [[her;->Our first conversation]] <font color=cadetblue><em>hi Jamie</em></font>
and I smiled at her. She flinched away from me and looked at me with bloodshot empty eyes and she said;
<em><font color=mistyrose>Who’s Jamie anymore?</font>
<font color=cadetblue>Well; ain’t she you?</font>
<font color=mistyrose>I don’t know her anymore.</font>
<font color=cadetblue>I always wanted to know her.</font>
<font color=mistyrose>Well, I’m real sorry she went away then.</font>
<font color=cadetblue>Well, I’d like to get to know you too.</font>
<font color=mistyrose>I don’t believe you.</font>
<font color=cadetblue>Why don’t we go out for coffee right quick? I’ve got an hour to kill if you’re free.</font>
<font color=mistyrose>I can’t do much else, so sure.</font>
<font color=cadetblue>Good.</font></em>
Jamie told me I couldn’t leave her; that if I left her I’d be a dead beat dad just like my old man, and she said that cause she knew how much I hated my old man, how I’d promised her if anything ever happened and we were going to have a baby I wouldn’t do her like that. I guess she didn’t have leverage like that over the real father and that’s why she targeted me, but I lost everything in that hospital room at 3 am with her hand in mine, I lost my future, my career in football (and I was on track to go pro), I lost my baby and I lost my girlfriend. I don’t know what Jamie expected me to do, I feel so bad about the way I acted, I feel so bad about the way it all happened, I feel so bad inside; like there’s a rock in my stomach that the acid can’t dissolve; I can’t believe I acted the way I did in that hospital room with Jamie at 3 am I can’t believe that I said all that and did all that shit that I did in that room; but She made [[me->Josh 3]]. She always had that kind of control over me, I never did anything without tying it somehow back to Her; ever since I was five She has been a part of my life and has had each of my decisions by the collar. It was all Her, I know it was, when I ran my big wheel into the street and got hit by a car because She was there; across the street, calling out to me and telling me I didn’t need to look both ways, that I was safe. She was there in the hospital room after. And She was there in that room with Jamie; standing on the opposite side of the bed from me and looking at Jamie with our baby in her arms, She was there looking at the baby with me, her head pressed against mine and I heard Her say that’s not your baby. and then She started to scream, and I knew She wouldn’t stop until I did something about the fact that that baby in Jamie’s arm wasn’t mine [[too->Josh 4]]. I hit her; Jamie; I hit Jamie in that room with our baby weeping in her arms, I hit her and I called her a whore, I told her she ruined my life and that her bastard child would never have a father because no one would be able to stand the sight of her for more than a week, I told Jamie she would never get her body back and that was wrong of [[me->Josh 5]]. But She wouldn’t stop following me, She walked beside the security guards as they dragged me out, She laughed the whole way. And She sat in the passenger seat and got so close to me, whispering in my ear saying shit like you should’ve killed her, she ruined your life why does she deserve to live? and on and on and I asked Her to go away, but She just dug her nails into my thigh and told me She would never let me go; that She would be right next to me until the day I died, that if I wanted to get rid of Her I would have to off [[myself.->The idea]] She never went to Brazil in a boat—nor did she play mute until she was able to learn Portuguese—she never went missing. She just watched her senior year of high school unfold until she went to community college and then finished out at a bigger state school and worked as a receptionist until the company fell apart. She fell in love with a man at a bar in Sunbury, PA and became an alcoholic. At least that’s how I remember my childhood happening, though I’m sure she’d tell you something different.Jackson High School Student Newspaper May 1988
//Interview with a Killer//
—I don’t want to talk about him. I don’t know what you want me to say about it all; it happened and now it’s over and I have a life that I need to live that is bigger than what happened in his head.
—No, I didn’t, don’t you say that about me. I did not. I did not. I did not. Don’t you dare say that. Stop putting words into my mouth.
—I told you I don’t want to talk about him, how hard is that to understand. Stop asking me questions about him. Stop. Stop following me with your tape recorder stop.
—I don’t want this to be a part of my life anymore; [[I want to forget everything.-> Jamie 2]]
//Jackson High School [[Yearbook;-> Jamie 3]] Senior Superlatives Class of 1988//
Most likely to Become an Alcoholic before the age of 30
//Jamie Mesbith//
-Principal Maverick there has to be a way for you to retract this statement in the yearbook; do you even know how embarrassing this is and you’re saying that you can’t help me?
-Well I know you expelled the people involved but this yearbook is going to exist forever. There’s a copy of it in the time capsule that people are really going to open in fifty years. I reached out to you before it was even put in there and now it’s all buried and as good as gone until it’s all the way rediscovered.
–Don’t tell me that you want to help me; [[if you wanted to help me these past two weeks you would’ve-> Jamie 4]], and you didn’t, you didn’t and that’s that isn’t it? He never even asked me if the baby was his, but he implied all of it in his note or nearly lack thereof. I never did him wrong, he was the one who cheated, he cheated on me up until the day I told [[him.->The beginning of the beginning]].