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Old photos were difficult to keep up with. Johnny’s life was spent always on the move from country to country, state to state, and then later rehabilitation center to prison and back to rehabilitation center again. Home having such a loose meaning made keeping something as fragile as photographs almost impossible.
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There were three. The oldest photograph was from their first ‘crossover adventure’ as their father’s called it. What it really meant was someone did something stupid and needed a boost to their public persona. The newspapers loved it when Johnny Quest and Rusty Venture would cross paths in some distant corner of the world and the few times it happened were news fodder for weeks.
Johnny was 8 and Rusty was 6. They were both posed carefully in the photo by their father’s to look heroic in their signature outfits perched atop a massive carved stone pillar which had fallen on it’s side. They had met deep in the Amazon. The two families were planned to cross paths and team up to discover the origin of strange music that came from the jungles at night. Everything was staged but Johnny didn’t know it at the time. He was just a kid who still thought this adventuring thing was fun sometimes. He didn’t expect to be babysitting a kid two years younger than him.
Rusty had been scared and stuck a clammy hand in his. It was the first of many times they would hold hands. Maybe that was what made this picture special, he wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like they were holding hands in the photo it was just some publicity shot. The back had ‘Bolivia Johnny & Rusty’ written in faded ink. A lifetime ago.
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When they were teenagers the crossover adventures had been long over. Dr. Venture and Dr. Quest were needling away at each other but it was clear that Quest was on the decline. Rumors were not doing the family any good as word was the nature between the relationship of Dr. Quest and his bodyguard might be more than platonic. At the center of the rumors was of course, Dr. Jonas Venture. The man never skipped a chance to kick someone while they were down. It didn’t matter what the truth of it was.
The stress of his father’s declining favor in the public eye, his own struggles with puberty and the raging hormones it brought, and a growing addiction problem had Johnny acting out at every chance he got. The next photo was during this time. Johnny was 16 and Rusty 14. They had starting finding any excuse to meet up and complain about their father’s and how life owed them so much more for the way it had treated them. Meeting places were anywhere they could sneak off to when their fathers were in the same city for the Science Now Conference,the U.N. Science Expo, or any number of fundraisers. It wasn’t long before their long conversations about their problems while passing whatever drugs Johnny had on him turned into more kissing and less talking.
Johnny had lost count of the amount of times he had folded this photo and shoved it into any hiding place he could find. If anyone had ever found it there was no way to know what the consequences would have been. All limbs and awkward puberty the two were tucked in close to each other. The camera had been large and heavy, awkward to position so that it would get them both in the shot. Johnny had an arm around Rusty’s shoulders and they both were flushed from the excitement of knowing they were taking a photo that would have either of them facing the wrath of their fathers if found. Johnny’s lips were pressed to Rusty’s cheek and Rusty was wearing his jacket. A pang of guilt twisted in his stomach as he saw the signs of his growing addiction in the photograph. His cheeks were growing gaunt and even next to the gangly Rusty he was looking thin.
He hadn’t dared to write anything on the back.
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Third was a Polaroid where everything in it was tinted orange from the bad film. It was poorly lit but there was clearly a fire raging in the background and their faces were blurry as the pair could barely stay still long enough to snap the photo. It was hard to remember the year it happened due to Johnny’s daily doses of whatever drugs he could get his hands on with plenty of alcohol to follow. What he did remember was that he had burned his father’s laboratory down and Rusty had his old instant camera with him and felt the need to memorialize the event forever in a photograph.
It started as the two meeting up in Maine for one of their quick weekends in a cheap hotel room together. They were in their early twenties and life had begun to wear the two down in ways that they feared they wouldn’t recover from. Even these secret meetings had begun to lose their luster. More often than not they desperately just wanted to talk to the other. All of the fire and hormonal collisions of their bodies together in an awkward tangle of limbs had faded. They talked more these days. Laying together nestled in the faded sheets of the hotel bed they both still smelled of the outside air. They whispered things to one another that were always half a joke and never serious despite how urgently they wanted to believe it.
They loved each other. They would leave their lives behind and escape together to travel the world on their terms. No one would hurt them anymore. They would never have to do anything that they didn’t want to ever again. For hours that felt like only minutes they held one another until the promises to each other turned into complaints about those who had hurt them. Before long they were both heated and with tempers flared decided to stop by Quest laboratories to steal what Johnny felt was owed to him.
Stealing some pharmaceuticals had ended up with the bright idea to burn the facility down to hide the evidence and the pair had laughed as they watched the blaze consume everything. It felt like freedom. A release. Something new would rise from these ashes, a life together. They would leave this time and never come back.
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Rusty never showed up when Johnny called his bluff and made arrangements for them to leave. Two new people had entered his life and consumed any room for someone else in his heart. His sons. Where would two infants fit into their plans and besides, Rusty didn’t want someone like him around his children. A druggie. Someone who could barely stand on his own let alone keep the family safe. OSI had issued him a bodyguard so what did he need him for? Rusty had cut him out of his life overnight and the wound still ached to this day.
Old photos are hard to keep up with but somehow he had managed it for a few. Johnny had been from home to home, rehabilitation center to prison, rehabilitation again and now a couch lent to him out of guilt by his former nemesis. Everything he owned fit in a plastic bag from a convenience store and none of it meant anything but these three photographs of a life gone by. Today he added something new to the pictures in his wallet. A business card with the VenTech logo on it and a phone number hastily scrawled on it. Rusty’s number.
Today Johnny would make the call.