CHAPTER 15

“Oh no, he did not ruin my wedding,” Chris said, mostly to herself, as she charged the front of the chapel where Scott was standing. Jonathan grabbed her by the arm and held her back. She could have twisted free easily with the anger-strength she had pulsing through her body, but Jonathan’s semi-calm touch rocked her back to reality. She remembered that a potentially dangerous gentleman holding a switchblade was directly threatening them. So, she slowed her roll.

“Calm down, honey,” Jonathan said to Chris. Then he turned to Scott, “What the freaking heck, Scott!”

Scott just laughed.

“You know this is where we were supposed to have our wedding, right?” Jonathan barked. “Like, you did this on purpose, to us specifically?” He couldn’t wrap his mind around the concept.

Charlie and Roheed burst in and quickly assessed the scene.

“Not cool,” Charlie said quietly. He and Roheed fell in line with Jonathan, Chris, and Tammy.

Scott still stood across the room, groom wedding cake topper still in hand, the eye of it freshly gouged. He began walking the chapel stage dramatically, as if he had a soliloquy prepared.

“They say an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind,” he blustered, “and I’m blind all right, blind with rage. And I’m here to collect my pound of flesh.” He banged his shin on an overturned pew. “Ah, goshdaggit!”

Charlie whispered to Roheed, “It’s the depth perception.” Roheed nodded knowingly. Scott hopped around holding his shin in anguish.

“Is this about the swim race?” Jonathan asked. “Is that why you’ve ruined our wedding?” Jonathan sort of remembered that Scott and Matt Hedge had probably tied in their most recent meet, but that Matt had received the first-place ribbon.

“The swim race?” Scott scoffed. “The swim race was just the decorative groom on a wedding cake of despise and hatred. No, our origin story goes back far before the swim race.” Scott got an almost wistful look in his eye.

• • •

Scott flashed back to the Yellow County Community Swim and Racquet Club locker room, many moons ago. Jonathan was about ten years old and he and some other pre-tweens were having a soap hockey scrum in the communal shower area. The boys kicked around a pearl-colored bar of soap, guffawing and jostling as they tried to score a goal against the tile wall.

Young Scott, several years younger than the other boys, watched with two bright eyes, both working—two fully functioning windows to the soul. He was thin, small for his age. He entered the fray.

“Hey,” Scott said, too quietly. “Can I play?”

No response. No one heard him; they were caught up in their soap hockey match.

“Excuse me,” Scott tried again. Nothing.

There was no malice intended by the playing pals, they simply could not hear Scott’s meek words. Scott edged closer, hoping to catch the eye of one of the boys who would undoubtedly ask him to join in. At that moment, another boy checked Jonathan up against the wall. Jonathan’s heel kicked the soap bar and it went flying—right into Scott’s left eye. Scott hit the floor, hand pressed to his eye, too stunned to cry out. One of the young lads retrieved the soap and everyone went back to playing the game, not noticing that Scott was in pain and too hurt to speak.

Scott squinted at the boys, his eyes bleary. He heard the sounds of delight from the fun they were having kicking around the makeshift puck, but he only saw the action through a hazy white film. He tried to call out but his voice got caught in his throat.

Scott rubbed his eye to try to dull the pain. It didn’t help. He ran to the nearby bank of sinks and began washing his eye, but he couldn’t get the sting out fast enough. He ran out of the men’s locker room onto the pool deck looking for comfort. The only two lifeguards at the guard station were a guy and some girl, but they were flirting, and even though they sort of saw Scott in their periphery, they ignored him, assuming his predicament wasn’t that perilous.

His eye was still burning, and of course the sweat from his fingers wasn’t helping as he rubbed the white residue into his ocular area. On his way to the snack bar he passed his mother with a pair of baby twins, one a boy and one a girl, who were taking turns sucking from the same bottle. Scott’s mother was preoccupied, chatting up another pool patron. Plus, the twins were a handful, so she hadn’t been paying him much attention. Anger started to rise from his core. He got pissed.

When Scott reached the snack bar, he was at his wits’ end. There was no relief in sight and he wasn’t thinking rationally. He just had to end the stinging, right then. He grabbed a fork from the utensil caddy on the stainless steel countertop and scratched his left eye with it.

• • •

Back in the chapel Scott was almost done telling his epic flashback.

“And it hurt. But it hurt good and it eased the pain that I was feeling, and not only in the eye that was aflame from the soap. The pain soothed something else in me, deeper, that had been hurting since the twins were born and maybe even before that.”

The room was awed, silent. Jaws hung open.

“Plus,” Scott continued, “I really liked going to that pool. After the incident my mom wouldn’t let me go anymore. I had to go to stupid Brown Town Hall and Recreation’s dumb pool. It was all Jonathan’s fault!”

Roheed interjected. “It seems like the accidental soap injury was just a catalyst and not the main root of the issue.”

“Yeah, what he said,” Charlie agreed. “And also, nobody told you to gouge your own eye out with a fork!”

“And you just said it was your mom who made the call about going to the pool, not Jonathan,” Chris said. “So you can’t honestly blame Jonathan for any of that.”

Scott laughed. “Oh, but I do.” He looked at Jonathan. “You ruined my life, and now I’ve ruined yours. Even Stevens, Shia LaBeouf!” Scott threw the groom wedding cake topper at Jonathan. It hit him squarely in the chest and bounced off innocuously.

Then Scott did something that, as my phone would autocorrect, really made the shirt hit the flan. He kicked over a candelabrum of still-lit candles. They scattered and flames started to lick up the ripped ribbons. The yellow carpet caught. Fire spread about the chapel.

Until then, everyone had been frozen, listening to Scott’s story and then seeing what he would do. The heat unfroze them, and they sprang into action. Jonathan and Roheed began trying to stamp out the flames. Chris grabbed Tammy and escorted her to the front lobby to flee. Scott ran out of a side door that led to a back exit. Charlie followed in hot pursuit; not only was he close on Scott’s tail, but it was also getting roasty-toasty in that chapel.

Charlie burst out the back door of the chapel and saw Scott hopping into Jill’s car. Charlie made it to Jill’s driver-side window.

“Jill?”

“Charlie,” Jill said. “What’s going on?”

“Drive, Jill,” Scott growled from the passenger seat.

“Jill, what are you doing?” Charlie asked.

The chapel’s fire alarm finally went off. Jill panicked. Her eyes wide, she mashed the gas pedal and sped off into the night. Chris, with Tammy holding onto her shoulders, caught up with Charlie. Charlie helped support Tammy. Roheed and Jonathan weren’t far behind.

“There’s nothing else we can do,” Jonathan sighed. “We tried.”

Charlie took out his phone and dialed the Yellow County Fire Department, and as Kanye once quoted Usher, “They had to let it burn.” They watched as the smoke billowed, then flames appeared from the windows.

Jonathan and Chris sat on the cool grass and waited to hear the sirens that would salvage what was left of the burning chapel, knowing that no number of firemen or firewomen could save their extinguished wedding plans.