Page 118 of Johnny

But last night started to feel different. Megan was trying to help me out. Not trying to figure me out

so much as help me understand myself.

No one has ever done that before. Not even my brothers. Not even my father.

And the funny thing is, that girl on stage last night? Those feelings about her, they were real. I

wasn’t pretending.

I don’t understand how some people get the rules of this game so quickly. How they understand

them so completely at such a young age. Did someone give her a rule book? And if so, who? Also,

why didn’t I get one?

I understand that all this waxing poetic is pointless.

No one gets a rule book. But someone helped that little girl on stage get to where she was last

night. Someone took her aside once and told her the rules. And then she decided to play by them.

No one ever did that for me and it really pissed me off.

I’m not really a naive guy. I get it. I understand how the world works, but there’s still this little boy

inside me who wants to believe that people are good and nothing’s as pre-planned as it seems.

I hate that kid. I really fucking hate him. Because he’s the reason I trusted people in the past. He’s

the reason I had hope once upon a time.

And it’s just better to assume everyone is a dick, the whole world’s out to get you, and there are no

spare bundles of hope lying around.

This reminds me of Brooke when she came up to my office just a couple weeks ago. She wanted

Joey to get his daughter back because that little girl gave him hope.

Do you really think I have a little bundle of spare hope lying around here?

That’s what I asked her.

And then my thoughts are aimlessly wandering down another twisted path as I try to imagine Maisy

Kane and the life she’s about to live.

What will that look like?

Will she end up like Brooke? Like Megan?

Or will she end up like Emma? No notion of the evil that lurks behind the curtain of this world?

Maybe I don’t have any spare hope for myself or this life I’m living, but I have a little bit when it

comes to my niece. I want her life to be normal. I want Jesse and Emma to get married and start a

family. I want Joey, and Huck, and Wald, and Brooke to have whatever happiness looks like to them.