Who: John, Vanessa, OTA When: Wednesday afternoon Where: The library What: Fun with memory loss! Or not so much. Note: Apologies for the stupidly long length of this post, but I've been meaning to post this scene for a while and decided now was as good a time as any.
Besides that clearing out in the woods or his room, when he could get it to himself, John's favorite spot in the school was the library. Specifically, there was a little nook in the back near the economic books that no one ever looked at, which meant it was pretty well secure from unwelcome visitors. So what if he was actually supposed to be reshelving books and making sure they were in order as part of his extra chores for the whole Spring Break ordeal? If someone wanted to come in and bitch at him about it, let 'em.
For now, he was content to sit at a table in that quiet little sanctuary, huddled over his laptop and trying to figure out what in the hell he was doing. He was still a bit rattled from parent week a while back, so maybe that could explain why he had spent the past hour trying to track down the one foster family he'd actually liked. For what purposes, though, he couldn't quite discern. It wasn't like he could show up at their door and say he just stopped by for a chat. He still had very vivid memories of his powers manifesting and burning their house to the ground, of their only biological child running back toward the fire to rescue the family dog. He still had nightmares that haunted him, left him pacing restlessly and shaking so hard his teeth chattered. They had taken him in when no one else would, had treated him like their own child, had been the first to ever see and encourage his gift for writing and love of reading. And he had repaid them by razing their home and killing their daughter.
So it was, then, a very, very bad idea to try to look them up again. He hadn't seen them since the social workers had shown up to take him back to the home, didn't have any idea where they were now or how to get in touch with them, or even what he could possibly say if he did somehow get the nerve to speak to them. John wasn't the remorseful sort, usually just shrugged everything off and went about his business, but he had never been able to shake the cold, gnawing guilt for what he'd done to the only real family he'd ever known.
After trying and failing to find Melissa Jenkins, the half of the couple who had seemed most regretful about giving custody back to the home and who John assumed would be least likely to kill him on sight, John then began to try to find her husband. Kevin, it turned out, had evidently left his job at NYU to join the English department at Rutgers, which made John's task much easier. He found a fairly recent syllabus for one of the man's classes and breathed a sigh of relief that, apparently, Kevin was still all too trusting of people and still listed his home phone number. John remembered many dinners interrupted by frantic students calling to check on deadlines, asking questions about assignments, or begging for extra credit. That much hadn't changed, it seemed.
It was then only a short Google search to trace the phone number to an address, which John scribbled onto the notebook open beside him. He shut down the browser windows and closed the laptop, then just stared at the address he'd just written. So they had moved to New Jersey. They probably couldn't stand to stay in the same neighborhood, the same city, even the same state as before; too many memories, too many raw wounds that would never heal. John knew that feeling well.
Before, when this had all just been a wild idea in his head, he'd thought that maybe he could do this. Maybe he really could just call them up or even knock on their door and catch up, presuming they didn't call the cops on him immediately. But now he had hard, physical proof that they still existed as something besides abstract memories in his mind. They were still going about their lives, still doing the daily routine, and John was suddenly and irrationally angry that they were able to move on so easily without him.
But what had he expected? Were they still supposed to be stuck in some monolithic state of grieving over the death of one child and the surrender of another? And what kind of person did that make John that he even thought that was an option? He knew he was an asshole even under the best of circumstances, but he'd never actually considered himself to be such a cold little bastard.
Slamming the notebook closed, he got to his feet and bent over to unplug his laptop from the wall, only to get a sudden case of vertigo and toppling forward as the world went dark around him. When he opened his eyes again, he had no idea how long he'd been unconscious or, for that matter, where he was or even who he was. He didn't have any knowledge of walking into this room -- a library, clearly, but it didn't look like a normal library, more like a private study or something -- and he didn't have any plausible reason for why he should be in the floor. Had he suffered a head injury or something? Now that he thought of it, there was a dull throbbing pain somewhere in his head that made him feel like the top of his skull was going to blow off at any moment. Pleasant.
"Hello?" he called, shakily pushing himself first to his knees before attempting to stand. He swayed uneasily, forced to grab onto a nearby chair, but he stayed upright. That was a good sign. Wasn't it? "Anyone here?" he tried again, attention drawn at last to the notebook on the floor. After bending over to pick it up, he leafed through a few pages, brow furrowing as he only found disjointed lines of what looked to be poetry, a few random mentions of certain personal quirks of people walking by, and then an email address, a telephone number, and a physical address. Well. That was somewhat less than helpful.
Reaching into his pocket, he found a wallet and pulled it out, surprised by a handful of IDs falling out. Interesting. They all looked authentic, as far as he could tell, but there were two with different dates of birth but the same last name. That looked like a winner. Except that he couldn't figure out where the hell someone got a name like St. John Allerdyce. That sounded like a snooty lord out of an English comedy or something. Wait, was he English, then? He hadn't recognized any kind of accent in his voice when he'd spoken aloud, just a generic northeastern tint to his words. Huh. Weird.
Still infinitely confused and now starting to panic a little, he headed for the door and stepped out into the hall, desperate to find anyone who might have a clue what in the hell was wrong with him and how to get him back to normal.