Paper Wings and Missing Things

Part 6

Seven Years Ago

Officially, Jonas woke up at 4:40, but he had been restless long before the harsh white light snapped on and began droning. From the bunk underneath, he heard the man who had introduced himself brusquely yesterday—Chris? Kevin? Something nondescript—get up and splash his face with water from the sink.

He sat up, feeling the thin mattress groan, and clambered down the side of the bunk. His roommate took about thirty seconds to change into the provided blue-and-white khaki shirt, khaki pants, and boots. It took Jonas longer to force himself into the unfamiliar clothes, already obsessively scratching his skin where the coarse material chafed. Because he didn't feel inspired to join Chris's yoga session, he went up to sit on his bunk until the door automatically unlocked.

It would be a long day.

Jonas had applied for a job as a cook, thinking he could at least make use of the skills ingrained in him by his mother as a kid, since he had wasted his adulthood so far. He had dreaded the idea of applying, imagining the judgment and distrust would follow him wherever he went, but even that stress was preferable to nothingness.

An hour after breakfast had been served, he gave up on the struggle to read the first chapter of a book about global inflation and wandered into one of the open rooms.

Walking through the silent rooms, he burned with shame as heads turned in his direction and condemning gazes followed him. He thought he could distinguish their whispers, their silent contempt, the way they turned slightly to increase the barrier between him and everyone else. At last, he recognized that his presence in the outskirts of the rooms only drew more attention to himself, and he toyed with the idea of joining a group of people clustered around one table. And yet his forehead burned like it was branded, like his crimes were exposed for the world to see. Murderer. Thief.

A chorus of hoots and applause broke out from the group. "Undefeated champion," crowed one of the two men sitting down, while a younger man standing behind him groaned and made an exaggerated show of throwing something down on the table. Someone else swiftly reached across and slipped it under the table, throwing a quick but significant glance toward Jonas.

The younger man flapped his hands. "He's just a fish."

The champion looked appraisingly at Jonas. "You know how to play chess?"

It came as something of a surprise to discover that the table they were hunched over contained a simple black-and-white chessboard. "I...I mean, yeah."

"Up for a game?"

"I'm not very good."

The other man laughed. "That's all right. I am."

The group assembled around him began cheering Jonas on, motioning toward the seat just vacated by the second man. For a moment, Jonas hesitated, almost stepping forward, but he couldn't bring himself to take the chair. Why would he deserve their friendliness? "A-another time..." he whispered. Before they could change his mind, he turned to escape, his face burning.

Despite himself, he came back after that first day. If there were only a few people around, he would play, focusing mostly on trying to keep his hands from shaking at first. More than once, the champion was there, whooping over his latest victory, occasionally loudly bemoaning a rare defeat. His boasting was not unwarranted—he was good, and Jonas lost consistently, but he came back to play anyway.

One quieter day, they were sitting alone, concentrating on the game, when he looked up and said suddenly to Jonas, "I used to hate it."

Jonas, whose head was beginning to hurt from trying to anticipate his opponent's next three moves, was thrown off. "What?"

"Chess. I hated it as a kid."

"Then why do you play?"

He shrugged. "You need something to keep you going, you know? Something to define you. I used to love the outdoors—hiking and camping and seeing wildlife. Birds, especially. Now, I get an hour a day to jog around a cement yard and maybe scare some pigeons away."

Jonas considered this for a moment. "What if you don't have anything?"

He fiddled with a defeated pawn, rolling it back and forth between his fingers. "You find something."

Jonas stared at the checkered board. "I don't even know what I like," he said quietly.

The man returned his focus to the game, quietly stealing a knight away from Jonas. "You'll find out." His voice had the ring of quiet, simple confidence.

The next day during the afternoon, Jonas didn't show up in the chess room. He sat alone in his room, swinging his legs off the edge of his bunk and staring at the tiny TV set in the wall. He didn't like chess. He didn't even like cooking anymore. What was the point of life if he had nothing to define him, if he couldn't even serve as a functional member of society? He rubbed his head in his hands, feeling the shorn edges of his hair prickle his scarred skin.