Back to Jack

I was fourteen when I had this need to make alternative worlds. It gave me comfort in the nasty school hallways, with vicious women and wicked men. There were at least people as good as me. I had stranger people around them. I needed to be a hero, but I'm not a selfish person and couldn't do it alone. I needed a team. I needed support and people to interact with, who would help me as much as I helped them. People who had more confidence then me. People who had less.

This world was of course very different from my own. There were many more characters and their powers were much more advanced and fantastical. In my stories now, I remain largely human. It makes the struggles so much more exciting when you have to face them not with wings and super strength, but with personal intelligence and ingenuity. But at the time having wings and a tale was exciting. Most of my real life friends had a power or two. Blessed by some Buffy the Vampire Slayer esque fluke that allowed each little story to run across my high school life and create them. Very few of those people and character transcended the change and dimensional shift I created in my mind, when I wanted something more real and I wanted less baggage to go with it. Yet Jack, with his roots in one of my very first stories made it through.

According to my story, I met Jack at the Library. My home library, where I used to volunteer. His family recently moved him away from his old group of friends. The previous friends had introduced him to drumming, music, alternative religions and people with alternative life styles. Fearful of their son's mental safety as well as the safety of his immortal soul, they moved town. A smaller town, where there were less children, fewer streets and a more conservative town. Why not mine?

Holding the hand of his little sister as they made their way to the restricted Harry Potters, Jack realized he was being watched by myself. Seeing the wild fear ebb slightly with a flickering flame of curiosity, I offered him some help in checking out some other titles like that of Rowling.

I was lucky. He was still angered by his parents taking him away from his new found friends and so decided to warm to me. He expressed his sin-sear interest in  A few nights later, while introducing him to a shared friend, I discovered his gift.  It violently assailed my other friend, but he remained in tacked and there after Jack was protected, often becoming the source of knowledge for a coming adventure or solution to one I had placed myself in. He was protected at all cost and his struggle with a deep foreknowledge was enough. He needed no wings, no tail, no super strength, no fangs. It was the greatest and most terrible gift.

But he came at a time of my early transition from Public School to high school, from writing fan fiction to becoming a writer, and my constant story writing with him helped flesh out and mature my ideas. And he would end up being the thing I strived for, fantasy, but tempered with human struggle. Of course I didn't know it then. All I wanted was a friend to come on adventures with, who was the same as me physically.

It's kind of a simple meeting, but what  started was my writing journey. My friend Jack's protected me against everyone, taking me into hiding when worried I was threatened. He's struggled to better himself despite his disability and fear of people, so that the world does no harm to them as it has to him. Often, when the chips are down, he is the most reliable.

He's been shot in one adventure, made hero in another and was the first one to be given a girlfriend, Lola March, who is still around the outskirts of my story.